Finally after waiting for ages for Apple to release an updated Mac Mini I gave up and opted for an iMac.
I had a look at my options and came to the conclusion that the 24″ 2.8Ghz model was the one for me as I wanted a big screen but the flagship model only had a slightly faster processor and a graphics update which wouldn’t be worth the money for what I do.
The machine was supposed to come on Monday but it got lost and Apple said UPS had it and UPS said it had never picked it up from Apple, eventually they worked out where it was and managed to get it here on Tuesday. Unfortunately I was working 8AM to 5PM so wasn’t in to take delivery but fortunately my mum caught the UPS guy.
When I got in from my work it was sitting in the hall and the box was massive, I knew 24″ was big but didn’t realise it was this big! Sitting beside it was my free printer which I got for free thanks to the Apple online deal that offered £60 rebate on a printer when bought with a Mac.
I unboxed the machine and it was indeed massive, nice and thin but and looks the part with it’s aluminium and glass front. Before I powered on for the first time I upgraded my RAM as it only came with 2GB and the prices that Apple charge for RAM upgrades are ridiculous so I got 4GB from Crucial for £75. I then booted for the first time and was greeted with the Leopard welcome video. Screen was really glossy and I had to close the blinds behind me but wasn’t too bothered as the colours it was producing were very vibrant and text very crisp.
I have now got the machine running the way I want and have to say it’s MUCH faster than the Mac Mini and well worth the £1149, not forgetting the free printer which was the Epson DX4400 which is a great little printer.
The complete specifications are:
24″ S-IPS Panel (Glossy) (1920×1200)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz (6MB L2 Cache) (Penryn)
4GB 800Mhz DDR2 SDRAM
ATi Radeon HD 2600 Pro (256MB VRAM)
320GB 7200RPM HDD
SuperDrive
Bluetooth (DualLayer DVD±RW)
GB Ethernet
AirPort Extreme (a/b/g/n)
Check out my Flickr for more photos and if you have any questions ask away! 
Bought one of these little beauties from eBay for £8. It turns the standard kit lens on the Canon EOS 400D round and creates a macro lens at the fraction of the price.
I have only had a few hours to play about with this but the results so far have pretty amazing for the price but I am finding it hard to control and the focus is slightly soft so need to practise that, because the lens is reversed you loose the electronic connection between the lens and the camera body therefor there is no auto focus or anything automatic at all. 
Pretty good buy but will take some getting used to but just think of the money it will save you if you do! 
Actually it had nothing to do with the rather nice hammer show above, when I was tidying my room the laptop ended up on the floor and I stood on it, I realised I had done it before I put my whole weight on it therefor there is only a cracked screen and not a hole through the whole thing.
Luckily I took out Comet’s optional insurance, I nearly didn’t as it was quite expensive adding £239 to the final purchase price but I am glad I did now. I took it into the store today and they had a look and then checked that the insurance was indeed valid, everything was fine and they said they were going to send it to HP whom would either replace the screen and sent back or declare the laptop a write off in which case I would get a refund of the purchase price for a new laptop.
Hopefully HP can replace the screen and it’s not a write off because I love the laptop and even know 8 months down the line you cannot purchase a similar specification model for the price I paid for it, and HP is not a cheap make. However Comet staff did indicate that it will most likely be a write off because the screen is the most expensive part of the laptop. If this is the case I am going to put the £600 credit towards a new 24″ 2.8Ghz iMac and simply purchase a Dell M1530 laptop with the money I had for the iMac.
Just need to wait on someone purchasing my current Mac Mini and Dell 2007WFP screen and also for Comet to get back to me with the decision on the laptop, hopefully it can be repaired as replacing it will be hard.
That’s right, I got a new phone… again!
This time round it’s a nice thin W880i, I have had one of these before but had to return it due to the network (Virgin Mobile) not having reception anywhere, but this time it’s unlocked and I am using it with my O2-UK SIM which has great signal more or less everywhere. Nice contract I have with them too, 600 minutes and 1000 texts and unlimited internet all for £30 a month.
I bought this from Tesco for the grand price of £49.99, an absolute bargain, thanks to my nice staff deals. It was unlocked but branded with Tesco firmware so the first thing I done was flash the phone with generic firmware and added a modification pack which allowed many more flash themes than the 3 that shipped with the phone.
I have only had the phone for a day but already love it, it’s a great size and you forget it’s in your pocket, 3G so I can use it with the laptop for decent mobile broadband. Plus it’s a Walkman model meaning it makes a decent music player incase you have forgotten your iPod which I always do, the Mega Bass setting is so good, if only there was an option like that on the iPod, I would love it much more.
As always there is many pictures up on my Flickr if you want a look and if you have any questions about any aspect of this phone feel free to comment and I will do my best to answer. 
As you may know I have been using a Dell 2007WFP for about 2 years now and was lucky enough to snatch one with an S-IPS panel, (if you don’t know what this means check out this page) I really like the screen and the colours, brightness and viewing angles are great. Most importantly is the fact that it has the Dell 3 year next day business warranty covering everything including dead pixels.
I recently seen a Dell 2407WFP-HC at £330 and decided to give it a go as the screen was a Dell and I hoped for good quality. I paid up and awaited delivery, it finally came and I unboxed it. The first thing I noticed was the size but I knew it would fit on my table as we had tried Jamie’s 2407WFP on my table before ordering this screen. I connected everything up and the first thing I noticed was the weird colours, these were not natural, everything on the screen looked like cartoons. I changed some settings in the OSD and calibrated it using Mac’s own built in tool that’s included with OS X and things improved slightly however I was still not impressed with white and grey which looked yellow and blueish respectively.
I thought perhaps it was all my head and that I just didn’t want to let go of my 2007WFP, however when I hooked them both up and looked at them side by side my suspicions were confirmed, while the 2007WFP was managing to produce clean whites and greys the 2407WFP-HC was struggling and display tinted colours. Again I attempted to play with the settings both on the monitor itself and the Mac however I had no success. I done some research on the monitor and found out it had a VA technology panel, while this is not the worst it’s not as good as the S-IPS panel I had become used to. The viewing angles were also shocking compared to the 2007WFP. While running another calibration video I noticed that it had a dead pixel at the top of the screen, this was the final nail in the coffin and I decided to return the monitor.
I am now back to my very good performing Dell 2007WFP which I will be very wary of actually changing, I didn’t know that a good panel in the screen made that much of a difference but I have been proved really wrong and would do lots of research before purchasing another screen. If you are thinking of buying a Dell 2007WFP after this review which I would totally recommend if looking for a good monitor please beware that only some models, mostly those shipped to reviewers had the S-IPS panels and Dell secretly started putting VA panels in them so there is no guarantee which panel you will get, the new 2008WFP and 2408WFP also use the VA panels following the trend that Dell are now reserving the S-IPS panels for use in their 30″ displays only.
If looking for guaranteed S-IPS panelled screens in a smaller size think about the Apple Cinema Display which only uses the S-IPS panels although you do pay a price premium for them but if you want the S-IPS panel it guarantees that you will get it.
As the above image suggests I have purchased a DualShock3 controller for the PlayStation 3. Since it’s not out in the UK yet I had to import one from America. It’s excellent and much heavier than the normal non vibrating SIXAXIS controller that ships as standard with the PS3, the extra weight makes it great to play with instead of feeling like a toy. The feedback is also brilliant especially in games such as GTA IV when shooting guns and driving cars, you feel the recoil from powerful guns such as the shotgun and feel the car crashing etc, it’s much more realistic experience.
My exams have also nearly came to an end, I only have computing studies left which shouldn’t be too hard by the looks of things, that’s on Monday and then I have one week of exam leave left which I can fully enjoy then it’s back to school for sixth year on the following Monday. Bit stupid as I only go back for three weeks then it’s the summer holidays and a big long seven week holiday.
My experience with the Apple bluetooth keyboard has improved better since the last time I wrote about it, I have now became used to the slightly different key placement and some keys just being completely absent and I have to admit the smaller keyboard looks cooler and might actually be nicer to use than the full size one when you get used to it.
The last thing is the 10.5.3 OS X Leopard update, I don’t really know what Apple has updated as the change log or whatever you call it on the Apple website doesn’t reveal much but it has made my Mac Mini considerably faster so if you haven’t updated yet I would thoroughly recommend it.
Blogging this from Flickr, how weird.
If it works here is a nice picture with kind of weird lighting of my new desk layout complete with my latest purchase, the Apple wireless keyboard.
I mentioned a few posts ago my wired Apple keyboard had stopped working.. again, well today I got round to actually getting to the Apple store and getting it replaced.
I don’t really know what’s causing the keyboards to break, it’s totally random, first broken one some keys such as the V simply stuck on sometimes and trying to enter URL’s was a right pain, in the first time in history Google had a V in it.
The second broken keyboard the buttons didn’t stick but instead stopped working all together, it seemed to spread as it starting with some numbers from the number pad but slowly it started moving left and covering more and more of the keyboard until it came so many buttons were non functioning that I couldn’t use the keyboard.
When I visited the Apple store today the attendant asked what computer I was using the keyboard with, when told it was a Mac Mini that was less than a year old he suggested I brought that in too for a look as it could be frying the keyboards.
I had always been looking at the wireless model so I decided to go for it today and hopefully get rid of my problems as it has no number pad to break and doesn’t directly connect to the computer so cannot actually be fried with it unless the Mac has some special powers to fry stuff over Bluetooth.
Having been using for a day I can say it’s pretty nice design wise and is also very small compared to the normal sized keyboard, for example the navigation buttons have been removed with home and other buttons on it but the thing I will miss most from that cluster of keys is the delete button. This is really handy for deleting things when the cursor is before the text, now when this happens you have to move the cursor to after the text and delete it, also when using Windows under BootCamp the keyboard does work but there is no possible way to do CRTL+ALT+DELETE, unless anyone knows otherwise? There is also some typing issues due to the placement of the keys but I am not ready to give up on that yet as it’s one of those things that you will get used to, so overall pretty good and really smart looking keyboard but will take some getting used to, maybe less so if you own a MacBook as it’s the exact same keyboard on that.
To quote Jamie it gives “the ultimate clean desk look”.
Hope you like the picture ( I even tried to capture the D for Declan’s Blog , there is more over at my Flickr.
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