• Choose your software
• Add to cart
• Pay
• Download Software

nice and simple & stress free. Unfortunately some companies don’t get it – Tomtom I’m looking at you.

Yesterday I decided to purchase the Tomtom maps of Western Europe in preparation for our holiday next month, so I spent £60 (approx $120 US) on the map and nearly a day later I’m still waiting for it to be “delivered”.

The Tomtom  map purchase experience goes like this:

• Choose map
• Add to Cart
• Confirm your Tomtom account details
• Pay
• Get a screen that thanks you for your purchase and tells you that you will receive download instructions “shortly”
• Receive thank you email
• Receive invoice email
• Wait!

Now the thank you screen did say that if I waited more than 24hrs for the download details to get in touch, but frankly I think having to wait more than a few minutes is too long – if I’m buying a software download I want it now, not tomorrow. Come on Tomtom, sort it out.

The unit finally showed up on New Year’s Eve so and I spent much of the evening being an anti social geek and playing with my new toy.

The TomTom Go 520T looked like being exactly the sort of device I’d been waiting for, as well as being an Sat Nav it supports hands free calling, has an FM Transmitter (for playing your iPod or MP3 players tunes through your car stereo) and free traffic updates with the included RDS TMC receiver.

I hoped that this would mean that with this one device I would be able to do away with my Bluetooth GPS Receiver (the TomTom software never worked that well on my phone anyway), my Griffin Itrip Auto (iPod Transmitter) and my bluetooth headset that people complained was echoey and not very clear.

A few issues:

On the day the TomTom was due to be delivered I popped down to Halfords and picked up an iPod cable for it so that I’d be all set for listening to tunes as soon as I got my grubby mitts on it. Unfortunately I very quickly discovered that the TomTom only has one port for you to plug in peripherals, so you can have your iPod Cable OR the RDS TMC receiver. The other disadvantage of the TomTom iPod cable over the Griffin Itrip Auto is it doesn’t charge the iPod which could be an issue if you are on a longer journey.

I had issues connecting my phone to the TomTom, they paired perfectly for hands free calling but there is a problem with using Windows Mobile 5(AKU3) devices which prevents you from uploading your phone book to the TomTom or taking advantage of TomTom Plus services. I’ll tell you how I got round that in a later post.

TomTom Traffic

My TomTom came bundled with an RDS TMC receiver; I think Laura chose this version as I’ve been caught in some pretty nasty traffic delays on my commute over the last few months and frankly anything that could help me avoid them is a good thing. RDS TMC information is transmitted in what is effectively a sideband alongside Classic FM. Unfortunately coverage for the roads I use most often is shockingly bad. I managed to travel from my inlaws’ to home along the M4, M25, M23, A23 and A27 and only very briefly get any reception at the top of a hill on the M23 near the M25 junction. Not good. Having read a few different forums it seems that I am far from alone in suffering poor coverage. It seems that iTIS (the company responsible for the TMC transmissions in the UK) are trying to improve coverage by bringing other radio stations on board but in my opinion they are not moving fast enough; this image shows the transmitters (red current, green future) – there seems to be a gaping hole in the south east corner. I decided that despite the fact the TMC signal was rubbish I’d still like to receive traffic updates on my TomTom so signed up for the TomTom “Plus” Traffic service, this is a payed for service (about £25pa) which receives traffic data through your mobile. This (for the most part at least) does seem to work although it failed it’s first real test when it allowed me to end up in the back of a major queue after an incident on the A23 yesterday evening. Fortunately I was right next to an exit and managed to dive off cross country to get home.

The good stuff:

It may sound like I really don’t like this device, but that isn’t true – it redeems itself with a number of good features.

TomTom have joined the web2.0 user generated content age by allowing users to share corrections to their maps using the imaginatively named “mapshare” system. I got to try this out the other day when TomTom tried to send me the wrong way up a one way street. A few taps of the screen later I had told TomTom exactly what the problem was and that I would like to share the data, once home I connected to my PC and the update was uploaded to TomTom using their TomTom home software.

Hands free calling works pretty well although it’s taken me over a week to work out how to adjust the speaker volume (hint: tap the bottom left corner of the TomTom screen); having the TomTom auto answer the phone after three seconds is also useful.I have suffered a couple of dropped calls which I never experienced with the Nokia headset. I’m not sure if this is down to the TomTom, the phone or the mobile network.

Overall I’m pleased with my new toy, it’s just a shame it didn’t live up to it’s original promise

Update  21 April 2008:

The RDS TMC reception seems to have improved a bit on my commute. I still can’t depend on always getting a signal – but it’s an improvement none the less

Overview:

The Vodafone V1605 is the Vodafone branded version of the HTC hermes; it’s a Windows Mobile 5 device. Here are the full technical specifications for anyone that’s interested.

It’s quite a large device to carry around, although not that much larger than my old Nokia N70, it feels really solid and well put together. On the whole it’s really nice to use however – this being a windows device it does lock up from time to time forcing you to carry out a soft reset. Most of the time you just roll your eye’s and reboot, but it’s infuriating when it locks up when you’re trying to answer a call.

Set up:

Things didn’t get off to a great start when the phone crashed the first time I switched it on: while running “SetHSDPA.exe/Disable, a reboot sorted that one out.

The first thing I did once I’d gone through the set up process was upgrade the ROM so I’m now running the latest version of the firmware.

Getting GPS to work on the vodafone V1605:

Next I decided to try and get Google maps for mobile installed. Getting the application installed was a doddle, getting it to talk to my GPS reciever wasn’t. After hours of frustration I found this article which explains how to activate GPS on the V1605. It turns out that by default Vodafone hide the GPS settings in the control panel and you need a registry hack to reveal them. Once I got passed the initial issue of getting the handset to talk to the GPS receiver Google maps worked a treat.

Accessories & Software:

At the same time as ordering the phone I got myself a 2GB memory card to install applications & save files on – so far I’ve only used about 10% of it! I also bought a cradle so my phone can sit on my desk in the office & stay synced with my PC. This got me thinking, if the phone is always connected to the PC wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send text messages directly from the PC rather than have to pick the phone up? After a bit of searching I found my moblier a great little piece of freeware that talks to your phone over activesync and displays the phone’s screen on your PC’s monitor allowing you to navigate around the phone’s functions with the PC’s mouse & keyboard! Then I discovered by accident that if I move my mouse pointer of the left hand side of my monitor, it appears on the phones screen! This is brilliant, it means that my phone becomes effectively a third monitor on my desk albeit a tiny one.

I’ve tried a handful of other third party applications out too, including:

• SPB mobile shell. This is “shell” that sits on top of the windows mobile operating and ads things like a fancy clock and weather forecasts to a “now screen” (today screen replacement). It is very pretty, but since uninstalling the trial I’m surprised to say I haven’t missed it
  
• HTC Custom, a tool for your HTC Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device’s settings. Pretty useful tool and free too
• Opera mini, So far this is the best web browser I’ve found for Windows mobile
• Minimo, Mozilla’s mobile browser. I really wanted to like this little app, but frankly it’s just boring to look at and doesn’t feel as slick as opera.

All in all I’m pleased with my V1605, we didn’t get off to the best of starts – but I think we’ll be happy together for the next 17 months.

I really liked the look of the v1605, My previous handset (before my current N-70) was an i-mate jam (also an HTC device) I really liked it. The only drawback with the Jam was that it had no keyboard – dialling a number or sending a text with the touch screen could be a right pain, so when I upgraded last year I decided to go back to a Nokia handset until a decent Windows Mobile handset came along.

A couple of weeks back I was in my local Vodafone store upgrading Laura’s phone and got talking to the guy about my imminent upgrade, he told me that I would be able to have “any handset I wanted” as a free upgrade. So imagine my annoyance when I walked into the Vodafone store in Crawley today and they told me it’d be £200 to upgrade to the V1605!

I decided to call Vodafone customer services on 191, I spoke to someone in the upgrades department that said that the best price they could do the handset for was £150, I could however have the V1415 (HTC Vox) free. I my opinion the v1415 is not as good as the V1605, despite the fact that it’s a Windows Mobile 6 device (the 1605 is WM5), it has a slower processor & no touch screen.

I said that this wasn’t prepared to accept anything except a free upgrade to the V1605 and I’d go to T-mobile to get it otherwise. They put me through to someone in their customer retention department. He asked why I wanted that particular handset, I explained that I wanted a Windows Mobile device with a touch screen, keyboard & wi-fi. Vodafone don’t have any other handsets (currently) that meet that spec at the moment and eventually he agreed to upgrade me to the handset I want for free, it’ll be delivered tomorrow.

So to summarise, when upgrading your Vodafone handset:

1. Do your homework, decide exactly what you want before you talk to Vodafone
2. Call 191, don’t upgrade in store
3. Be as specific about why you want the handset as you can; this limits the customer service rep’s chances of being able to persuade you to take another model
4. Stick to your guns
5. Threaten to go to another network

And with any luck you’ll be successful too.

As soon as I popped the installation CD into the PC I hit a problem, it didn’t matter what option I hit the cd opened the help box. After much swearing and head scratching I discovered that the software on the Orange installCD is not compatible with the Adobe Flash 9 player. This is frankly ridiculous, I can’t believe that Orange have sent out a disk without testing it against the latest version of the player. I think that’s unacceptable.

Anyway, once I’d un-installed flash 9 installation is a doddle, the wired connection is (if I remember correctly) automatic. For the wireless installation, you first install a client on the computer you want to connect wirelessly, then put the Live Box into “pairing mode” by pressing a button on the router and then search for the wireless network and enter the WEP key printed on the bottom of the Live Box. All pretty straight forward.

The Live Box has a USB port for connecting to a PC, I used one of the two Ethernet ports. It also has a phone socket which allows you to connect a telephone and use the Live box to make VOIP calls,this is something the in-laws may want to do later.

Overall, I was quite impressed with the Live box; I like the way that all the admin & set up stuff is handled automatically, for most home users that’s be great. I’m not sure if it’s possible to do more advanced stuff like reserve IP addresses or set your own SSID, I’ll have a look into that next time I’m at the inlaws. I think it could also use a couple more Ethernet ports, we used the two available up straight away by connecting to the desktop PC and a netgear printserver.

Isla was thrilled to bits with her camera, and actually she’s taken some pretty good photos (considering she’s just 3). I’ve put some of the photos she took up on flickr. The camera isn’t great in low light, so some of the photos are pretty under exposed but I think her composition is really good.

I think that this camera is a great introduction to photography for a small person and I’d recommend it to any parent who’s toddler is showing an interest in cameras.

Hopefully it’ll stop Isla running off with my phone to take pictures with it!

As part of my current drive to reduce the clutter caused by the computer equipment in the house I decided to look into getting a print server so that the printer could be tucked somewhere out of the way (like under the coffee table behind the sofa) without us having to scrabble about for a USB lead when we decide to print. So, last week I ordered a reconditioned Netgear PS121 from digidave.

The unit is tiny! It has three ports, one for power one USB and one Ethernet. There are two status lights at the top of the unit. The unit came with a power supply and USB lead but no Ethernet cable which I thought was odd as people are more likely to have a USB lead for their printer than they are to have a network cable laying around.
Set up is a doddle; plug the USB lead from the printer into the print server then plug it in to the mains and connect it to your router with an Ethernet cable then toddle off and find a PC.

On the PC you install two bits of software; the first lets you see your print server on the network, the second shows you the printer connected to your server and gets you to select the right driver from a list. It really is very easy indeed. I was up and running printing over the wireless network on the first network in under ten minutes. It took me a bit longer on the second machine, I think this was because my VPN client was interfering with set up, but I soon sorted that out.

I think this is going to prove to be another extremely useful bit of kit.

The poor old desktop is currently squatting on the coffee table in the lounge, with it’s 19′ CRT monitor and incredibly noisy fan it’s living on borrowed time.Last weekend we went out and bought a new laptop for Laura to use so we can retire the it.

I wanted to find an easy way for us to share our photos and music on the network so after considering various options I finally decided to order a 400GB Freecom External SL Network Hard Drive. There where two main reasons for this: First, at 400GB I reckon it’ll take me quite a while to fill, and secondly you can use it as a network drive or a USB drive which I hoping means I’ll be able to use it for video editing when directly attached to my laptop.
Yesterday My new drive arrived. More or less as soon as I got home I plugged it in to the network and switched it on.

The first thing I noticed is it’s pretty noisy. Admittedly not as noisy as the desktop, but too noisy to have running in the lounge all the time, so I’ll have to find a better home for it.

Setting up the PCs so that they could access the drive was fairly straightforward. Fist you install the drive administration software and reboot the PC. Once the PC restarts you open up the “Classic SL Network Drive Administrator Tool” and add the details of your drive. This is really straight forward; First off you can choose a name for your drive, then you enter the 20-digit Classic SL Network Drive ID located on the bottom of your Classic SL Network Drive and finally the “Write Key” assuming you want to be able to write to the network drive. The PC detects the drive and installs the required drivers and that’s it. The freecom drive appears as a local drive in “My Computer” in my case it’s the “E:/” drive.

So Far I’m impressed. pulling photos across the wireless network is a bit slower than accessing them from the local disc, and I suppose that could become irritating, but there’s always the option of plugging the laptop into the router with an Ethernet cable, or using USB to attach the drive directly to the PC.