Don’t bother with web standards!

Quite the statement huh? No, I’m not saying it, but Microsoft essentially are.

According to The Register’s article ‘Microsoft breaks IE8 interoperability promise‘, Microsoft intend on displaying a broken page icon next to all web pages that are standards compliant.

What does this say to your average Joe Blogg user? Standards = wrong. At least that’s the way I see it. And of course some lots of those users will probably want to design their own web sites. Do you think they will design to standards now? I think not!

Samsung F480 Tocco

Two years and three months on (or thereabouts) from purchasing the Motorola L6, I’ve upgraded my mobile phone to the new touch screen Samsung F480 Tocco.

My Thoughts So Far.

I love the display. One of the main requirements during my search for a replacement to the L6 was a large display. While the display on the Tocco isn’t as big as that of the iPhone, it’s not too far off. Because it’s a touch screen phone there is no real need for any buttons on the front panel. Although Samsung have decided to put three buttons at the bottom.

The widgets are pretty cool too. Much like the sidebar on Windows Vista, you can drag and drop different widgets onto the main display. By default there are not a lot of widgets to choose from. I’ve yet to try downloading/installing more, but I’m sure there are (or will be) plenty to choose from.

It also has a 5 Megapixles camera. That’s more than my Kodak Easyshare C330 digital camera (pictured left). The Kodak is only a 4 Megapixles camera. So it looks like I won’t be needing that camera anymore ;)

I haven’t played with the camera on the phone properly yet so I can’t really say whether it’s any good or not. Maybe I should hold off on throwing/giving away the Kodak digital camera for now.

Another feature I quite like about the Tocco is the leather cover optional extra. I say optional because the phone comes with two backs. One plain and one with an attached leather cover (shown right). I will be using the cover because I don’t want to get any scratches on the display. Thankfully the cover does not hinder you in any way while using the phone. Even during calls.

Speaking of calls. I have to laugh at myself thinking back to my first received call on the Tocco. Being a touch screen phone you would think that when two options appear on the display itself that read ‘accept’ and ‘reject’, that you would press the them. Right? Well, like me, you would be wrong. That’s what the buttons at the bottom of the phone are for. Sounds weird doesn’t it? It certainly caught me out :)

Before I bought the Tocco some of the reviews I read suggested that sending text messages was somewhat cumbersome. I find the opposite. To me the process is very intuitive and because of the display all the letters and numbers are easy to read and select.

So do I have anything bad to say about the Tocco? No. OK, there is one thing. But it’s so small it’s hardly worth mentioning.

In order to lock and unlock the touch screen you need to press a button at the top of the phone. What I have noticed so far is that there is a slight delay in the screen unlocking itself. This has led me to press the button again thinking that it didn’t work the first time. Only now I’ve pressed it twice and the screen unlocks itself and then quickly locks back up. From what I can tell there is certainly a difference in the time it takes to lock the screen in comparison to the time it takes to unlock. Like I said, it’s a small thing and I’m sure that over time I will become accustomed to it.

Overall I’m very happy with the Tocco and I’m sure it’ll be more than two years and three months before I upgrade again.

Why not buy the iPhone you ask?

To be honest I would have loved an iPhone. But they’re just too expensive here at the moment. Maybe when the price drops I’ll consider it, but until then I’ll be very happy with the Tocco.

Need a new Graphics Card

The graphics card in my Compaq died on me on Wednesday last. Since then I’ve been using my Dell to research new graphics cards. It hasn’t been as straight forward as I was hoping it would be. With so many different choices, it been difficult making a decision.

  • ATI vs Nvidia
  • PCI-Express 2.0 vs PCI-Express
  • DVI vs Dual DVI
  • HDMI, HDTV, HDCP, Tv-Out
  • GDDR3 vs GDDR4
  • Overclocked vs Superclocked vs Default

I’ve had to read up on what each feature meant to get a better understanding of what each card is capable of. And then there’s the choice of manufacturer.

  • ASUS
  • BFG
  • Club3D
  • EVGA
  • Gainward
  • Gigabyte
  • HIS
  • MSI
  • Point of View
  • PowerColor
  • Sapphire
  • XFX

I still haven’t come to my final decision yet. It has to be soon though, because the longer I delay, the longer my PC is out of action.

From reading reviews, it seems the best on the current market in my price range are the Radeon XD3870, the GeForce 8800GT or the GeForce 8800GTS.

Choices…. so many choices!

Update

After lots of research, I eventually decided on the EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512MB. I also ended up buying a Corsair Memory 620Watt HX Series Modular PSU, because the current PSU isn’t powerful enough for the new card.

I just hope the delivery is faster this time than it was with my last purchase from the same online store.

My Beamer passed its NCT :-)

It’s only been a few months since I changed cars. A couple of weeks ago I had to take it for the National Car Test. It failed :(

Thankfully, the things it failed on were not very major. I got them fixed and brought it back for a re-test today and it passed without any problems.

So the car is good to go until the next test, which isn’t until August 2009.