We get to see an awful lot of gadgets here at Digital-Lifestyles, so it’s not surprising we get quite a few emails asking what gizmos we personally use, so here’s my personal choices. And yes, I paid for ’em all myself!
Mobile Phone
Unless you’ve managed to miss any of my endlessly enthusing Treo articles, you’ll already know that I’m a 100% Palm Treo 650 fanboy.
We’d love to hear from you what bits of kit make up your tech armoury. Write it up in an engaging way and you could see your work on Digital-Lifestyles.
Lured by the promise of Wi-Fi (which I ended up rarely using), I spent a long 12 months last year moaning, whining and unsuccessfully battling with a Windows Mobile machine, so it was a great relief to all those around me when I finally ditched my i-mate JAM and bought a Treo 650 off eBay.
Although there’s no denying that there’s sleeker, slimmer and more modern smartphones out there, I’ve yet to find anything that matches the wonderfully simple and intuitive Palm OS and instinctive ergonomics of the Treo 650.
Camera
I’m still using my Nikon D70 bought some two years ago and the camera is still capable of some fine results, although I have been casting a few envious glances at some of the new dSLRs coming out from Nikon, Canon and Sony.
My current compact of choice is the 8 megapixel Ricoh GR which is a truly wonderful camera for street shooters who understand that the best way to zoom into a subject is to get off your backside and walk closer!
Clad is an understated logo-free black body, this isn’t a camera that’s going to get people’s attention when you’re out and about, but its armoury of full manual controls and user configured settings means that it’s a great carry-around shooter.
Office Stereo
Enjoying a daily hammering of ska, punk, electro and indie tunes is the Pure DMX-50 mini Hi-Fi which I liked so much when I reviewed it last year, I bought the thing!
The ReVu facility – which lets you ‘rewind’ live radio and record it to a SD card – continues to prove an invaluable feature, and I can’t imagine life without access to DAB Radio and, in particular, BBC6 Music.
MP3 Player
Treo 650 plus pTunes and a 2GB card. That does me!
Laptop
Now in its third year (that must be something like 70 years old in laptop years!), my Sony Vaio SRX51P is still doing the business, although with a mere 850 MHz Pentium III-M CPU and just 384 meg RAM on board, it can’t keep up with the new boys.
There’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth onboard though and it’s still a pleasingly small and light (1.3 kg) machine, measuring just 25.9 cm x 19.4 cm x 3.2 cm and offering around 4 hours battery life (after a battery upgrade).
We’d love to hear from you what bits of kit make up your tech armoury. Write it up in an appealing way and you could see your work on Digital-Lifestyles.
Microsoft is looking to shove its king sized oar into the massive successful user-generated video phenomenon with the launch of an online service to take on the likes of YouTube, Google and Yahoo.
With Microsoft’s vast reserves of cash to fall back on, it’s not surprising that Bennett is chirpy about their prospects, “It’s really early days in online video; this is still act one.”
Sony Europe has announced the Vaio LA-Series, a striking all-in-one Media Centre which is sure to make a big statement on your desk (e.g. “I have pots of money” or, “keep your grubby mitts off my fashion statement transparent surround”).
In a design not entirely unreminiscent of the iMac, the slim and sleek unit has all the components and gubbins neatly tucked away behind a large LCD screen.
In line with the unit’s eye catching looks, there’s Sony comes bundled with a wireless keyboard and mouse in a stylish brushed aluminium finish, with the keyboard “folding up for a beautiful presentation when not in use.” Can’t say we’ve ever seen a beautifully presented keyboard before, but there you go.
Slated for an October release is the swish O2 Xda Stealth PDA phone, clad in ‘ebony black’ and featuring a slide-up numerical keypad.
The front panel is dominated by a 2.4 inch touch screen supporting a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and 65,000 colours.
A SD card slot takes care of expansion needs, while the 1300 mAh Lithium Ion battery provides a claimed 150 hours of talktime and 4.5 hours of standby time.
Warner Music Group has announced a deal with YouTube to distribute music videos, as well as extras such as band interviews, behind-the-scenes footage and artist rockumentaries.
“As user-generated content becomes more prevalent, this kind of partnership will allow music fans to celebrate the music of their favourite artists, enable artists to reach consumers in new ways, and ensure that copyright holders and artists are fairly compensated,” he continued.
If you’ve admired the look of that bloke in Star Trek with the funky sci-fi specs, then maybe the Eye-Theatre glasses might be just the thing for you.
Weighing just 78g, the Eye-Theatre should be good for eight hours between charges (USB charger supplied), and anyone desperate to get that cyber-berk look can pre-order their video glasses from PDT’s website for £149.99, with the launch expected in mid-October.
Dick Tracy had one and when I was a kid I would have swapped my entire collection of 2000AD comics for one, but users down under in Oz will soon be able to start talking into their wrist watches and not face arrest on psychiatric charges.
Anyway, back to the M300, the specs say that it offers GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHZ connectivity, Bluetooth (with bluetooth headset for voice call only), a teensy-weensy 65K OLED (0.9″) display and “Speaker Phone Text base UI,” whatever that is.
I guess the bit that the designers forgot about is that talking into a watch is going to make you look distinctly odd and that watch sales have been steadily declining as users are preferring to use the time displays on their phones, PDAs and MP3 players…
There’s been a flurry of interesting announcements from some of the photographic bigwigs leading up to the Photokina ‘World of Imaging’ Trade Show, which is held every two years at the Cologne Exhibition Centre, Germany.
Leica DIGILUX 3 dSLR
Leica V-LUX 1
Canon PowerShot SD900
Impressively, the $449 / €449 camera offers a wideangle 3.8x zoom (28-105mm) along with the usual zillions of scene modes.
With it’s big and bright 640 x 480 screen, built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and pocket pleasing form factor, the Palm T|X is a near-perfect PDA, except for one thing – Palm forgot to fit a bloomin’ microphone!
There’s no need to buy any third party software either, as users can download the freeware 
You must all be familiar with this dreadful situation when you’re stuck in a late Friday work meeting that never seems to end, while your mates are already in the pub.
Ringtones can be set as required and when the phone rings, it’ll even display the name of the fake caller, so you can let your boss see how really urgent the call must be.