Mike Slocombe

Panasonic RP-DJ100 Review (55%)
Although in-ear bud headphones are all well and good for strutting down the street with your iPod/PDA/smartphone in your pocket, when it comes to DJing or listening at home, you might need something a little more substantial.
If you’ve got deep pockets (and don’t mind looking like Biggles coming back from a WW2 mission), you can’t go wrong with the amazing Grado SR60 headphones (review June 2005), but if you’re looking for something cheap and cheerful, the Panasonic DJ100 headphones are worth a look.
Optimistically described as ‘professional’ headphones (yeah, right), the silver and black closed-ear headset is more of the cheap’n’cheerful variety, although the build quality seems pretty reasonable for a street price of around £18.
In case you’re not sure what this ‘closed-ear’ stuff is all about, it means that the headphones completely cover yer lug’oles, and thus reduce extraneous sounds interfering with your music.
Designed for DJs
You’ll note the headphones describe themselves as being for DJs – this is due to their closed ear construction (a bit of a must for monitoring in noisy environments) and the fact that the individual earpieces rotate so you can listen to one earpiece without having to put the headphones on your head.
If looking like a DJ isn’t your thing, the ‘cans’ (as those in the music biz like to call them) felt comfortable enough when worn ‘normally’ with enough travel on the plastic extending headband to cover head sizes from a pinhead skinhead to a beehived big ‘ead.
There’s also a generous length of cable supplied with the ‘phones (around 2 metres) with a gold plated 2.5mm jack plug and 3.5mm adapter supplied.
A particularly nice touch is that the Panasonic RP-DJ100’s can fold up into an impressively small space, so that you can wedge them into your record bag or laptop case.
The sound
Naturally, at this price level you’re not going to get anything approaching hi-fi, but the RP-DJ100’s produced a sound that was neither too harsh or too overbearing, with the XBS Extra Bass System adding a bit of oomph which might come in useful when listening through a cheapo MP3 player.
The Panasonics were also capable of knocking out pretty loud volumes without too much distortion which is an essential attribute for Djing.
The verdict
Considering their build and price level, we were all set to give the Panasonic RP-DJ100’s top marks until the things let us down at a gig, when both channels cut out.
After some investigation, it seemed the phones had suffered the all-too-familiar problem of a dodgy jackplug, where the wiring had worked loose inside.
No problem we thought -let’s whip out the soldering iron and do a quick on the spot repair.
Annoyingly, once we’d removed the jack, ready for replacement, we found out that Pansonic were using the chuffing annoying lacquer coating cables (popular with Sony models), which are a ruddy pain to solder (see Headwize.com for solutions).
So after our own (paid for) headphones conked out after just four months and with no chance of a replacement after voiding our guarantee with the attempted emergency repair, we’ve had to rapidly downsize our enthusiasm.
We certainly wouldn’t recommend them for working DJs as we don’t think they’re up to the job. After all, if you’re serious about your playing, it’s defintely worth paying the extra for a robust, high quality pair. However, for bedroom-bound disk-spinners and iPodders on the move, they might be worth a look. So long as you treat them gently.
Looks 65%
Sound quality 60%
Build quality 50%
Overall 55%
Panasonic RP-DJ100 Specs:
XBS Extra Bass System
Travel fold design
28mm driver unit
Response bandwidth 14 – 24000 Hz
Sensitivity* 102 dB/mW
Impedance 24 Ohm
Diaphragm 1.1 in
Magnet Type Neodymium Rare-earth magnet
27 June, 2006
Study: Desktop PCs And Laptops Get More Reliable
Something will go wrong sooner or later with nearly one-fifth of all notebooks, with a new hardware component needed to sort the problem, according to a new survey by industry analysts Gartner.
The study found that 15 per cent of new laptops will break within the first year, and over a fifth will break within four years.
The fault could be something as minor as a broken latch, but the most frequent failures were major disasters like knackered motherboards and toasted hard drives – the kind of catastrophe that could turn mild mannered folks into screaming, blubbering wrecks of rage (we speak from experience here).
The picture is better for desktops, with just five per cent of desktop PCs purchased in 2005-2006 breaking within the first year, and only 12 per cent going AWOL within four years.
Although these figures look bad, they actually represent a 25 per cent decrease in annual failure rates for PC hardware over the last two years.
Laptops have also shown a significant improvement, with features like suspension mounting of hard drives and rubber bumpers between laptop lids and keyboards helping keep the damage tally down.
Busted screens
The most common disaster to hit laptops used to be the dreaded broken screen.
Improvements by notebook manufacturers – like adding structural rigidity to the casing and screen bezel and providing more space between the screen and keyboard on closed lappies – have happily made cracked and smashed screens less common.
Motherboard fry-ups and hard drive breakdowns are now the two main sources of failure for desktops, a situation brought about by the increasingly complexity of the things, with more components being integrated into the motherboard.
Years ago, if a network card went down, a quick call to the coke-slurpin’, death-metal listenin’ IT spod guy would have the card replaced in a jiffy, but with the network card welded onto the motherboard, the job suddenly becomes a much bigger one.
According to the study, less common hardware failures include latches and hinges on the chassis breaking, keycaps disappearing into the ether and the time-honoured, “Whoops! I’ve just spilt coffee/beer/coke on my keyboard.”
Gartner
27 June, 2006
V-MODA Heavy Bass Headphones
More often than not, the in-ear headphones that come bundled with MP3 players are weedy affairs, producing a feeble floppy fart of a low end when you’re looking for a thunderous bass.
For drum’n’bass heads, techno fans and hip hop freaks, a little more bottom end oomph is what’s needed and the folks at V-MODA reckon they’ve got just the headphones for the job.
Their new “Heavy Bass” headphones have been specially designed to dish out the underpant-oscillating bass, with a frequency range running from 8Hz – 22000Hz and 122dB at 20Hz.
Bass! How low can you go?
Although 8Hz sounds like the deepest, most bassiest thing ever, the truth is that you’d need to have suffered some weird sort of genetic mutation and developed elephant sized ears to hear bass notes that low.
The human ear can only hear frequencies around 20 to 20,000 Hz, and that’s only when you’re young and healthy.
As you get older, your lug ‘oles’ decline rapidly – even more so if you’ve had a misspent youth with your head in Motorhead’s bass bins – and the highest frequency that a normal middle-aged adult can hear is only 12-14 kilohertz.
It’s the blokes who get it worst too, with their hearing range declining so quick that women can hear notes of higher pitch than men of the same age.
Silence is silicon
Back to the headphones, the V-MODA’s use the same sort of silicon covers as the Sony Fontopia In-Ear Headphones that we reviewed last year.
These come in three sizes so that they can make a perfect airtight seal with your ears and keep the bass booming in your shell-likes.
This improved the sound no end, and the ‘phones are great for using on planes and trains when you want to hear as little exterior noise as possible and don’t fancy forking out for expensive noise cancelling units.
The only problem is that this sonic isolation can do strange things to your head, with your own footsteps and breathing becoming so loud that if feels like a soundtrack from a horror film has been dubbed over the music.
Not everyone has this problem though, but we strongly suggest you try out these sealed headphones before buying.
If you still reckon these are the sort of headphones for you, we can tell you that the V-MODAs come in platinum white, mango orange, jet black with a 24k gold-plated jack for maximum hi-fi quality.
They’re priced at 8,480 Yen in Japan (£40, €58), but there’s no news on UK pricing and availability yet.
Product specs
Bus level: 122dB at 20Hz
Frequency characteristic: 8Hz – 22000Hz
Speaker driver: 10mm neodymium rate rare ground magnet
Cable size: Approximately 77.5cm (Y letter branch cable length approximately 34cm)
Plug: High sensitivity 24k gold-plating adoption stereo mini- jack 3.5mm
Bundled contents
V-moda bass freq itself
Modawrap cable winder
Silicon year pad (small and medium, 3 size sets of large)
Focal [Japanese]
26 June, 2006
Oracom UB890 Portable Media Player
Lined up on the new product runway and awaiting clearance for take off is the slick looking Oracom UB890 portable media player.
This attractively designed pocket-rocket comes in two colours (black or white) and four versions, with the memory capacity starting at 512MB and going all the way up to a healthy 4GB.
Packing a 2.0″ 262K colour TFT LCD screen, there’s enough functionality onboard to keep a Hoxton fin-toter happy for hours.
The media player covers a fair range of music formats – MP3/WMA/OGG/WAV – with MPEG, AVI, WMV and ASF (after conversion) video support.
There’s also built in equaliser and 3D sound and onscreen visual effects to keep the easily-bored entertained.
BMP and JPEG photos can be viewed onscreen (with zooming) and there’s slideshow/wallpapers support.
A handy line-in encoder with built-in microphone lets you use the thing like an old fashioned tape recorder, and if you get fed up with your own recordings, you can turn on the built in FM tuner and record tunes off the radio – either live or by using the pre-schedule timer option.
Rounding off the gadget-fest, there’s also an alarm clock, sleep timer, built-in speakers (500mW + 500mW) and an iPod-esque ‘Touch Sensor Key Pad’ for shimmying through the menus.
Through the marvels of modern technology, all these fancy gizmos have been shoehorned into a shiny case measuring just 81 X 43 X 12.2 mm and weighing a paltry 55 grams.
The USB 2.0 (High Speed) device runs off a Li-Polymer battery (which takes a patience-challenging 3 hours to fully recharge) and Oracom claim that’ll it play audio for a not-exactly-pushing-the-envelope 13 hours (MP3 128Kbps) and video for a more impressive 8 hours continuously.
Oracom
26 June, 2006
Silly USB Devices: Mini Guitar And Underwater Fingerprint Reader
Straight out of the, “What’s The Chuffin’ Point Of That” Dept comes two utterly daft USB devices.
This one goes all the way up to zero The first is a completely pointless guitar shaped USB stick, which comes complete with its own red-felt lined guitar case.
Even if you had the tiniest hands in the universe, you still wouldn’t be able to play the thing because it’s not a real guitar, and it measures a pixie-unchallenging 160 x 46 x 20mm.
Although we can’t help but admire the handiwork – a near perfect copy of the legendary Fender Stratocaster (the “axe” of choice for megastars like Eric Clapton and Hendrix) – we can’t work out who on earth would want to fork out €55 for what is essentially a cheap USB stick with a plastic guitar stuck on.
But if you fancy indulging in a bit of micro air guitar work while carrying around a paltry amount of over-priced flash memory, point your credit card in the direction of geekstuff4u.com
Mini Guitar USB Memory
Underwater windows
If you’re the proud owner of a secret underwater complex and need to have secure access to your submerged laptop while you’re flapping about in your scuba gear, look no further than the SecuTronix waterproof fingerprint reader.
This utterly bizarre invention (pictured here with a mini waterfall running over it) lets users authenticate themselves under water by swiping their fingers on the waterproof sensor.
We’re not sure at what depth the thing keeps on working or why anyone would want to be logging on to Windows in their Speedos, but there’s an English language version of the software available, and the whole sub-aqua caboodle could be yours for just €137.
akihabaranews.com
26 June, 2006
Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z70 Announced
Casio have added the new Exilim Zoom EX-Z70 digital camera to their EXILIM range, ramping up the pixel count to a hefty 7.2 megapixels.
Designed to slip in and out of pockets like the butter-coated hand of the Artful Dodger, the slimline EX-Z70 is basically a pixel-boosted version of their 6 megapixel EX-Z60.
As with its predecessor, the Exilim boasts a large 2.5-inch TFT 115k pixels display, 38-114mm equiv, 3x optical zoom and a cuddle of hand-holding modes to guide the nervous, faltering hands of newbies into the world of Casio photography.
Living up to its name, the camera’s Easy Mode is a punter-cosseting mode for beginners which simplifies all the camera settings down to three easy-peasy menus (image size, flash, and self-timer).
Exposure-tweaking enthusiasts won’t find a lot to play with here as this camera is rooted firmly in point’n’shoot territory with only Auto, Best Shot, Continuous shutter (normal speed, high speed, flash continuous), Movie and Macro modes onboard.
In an attempt to stave off the wobbles, Casio’s Anti Shake DSP is built in, although the anti-shake stuff is achieved through ramping up the ISO and dropping the image size, so it’s nowhere as good as proper optical image stabilisation.
Interestingly, Casio haven’t hopped onboard the current trend for shunting the ISO limit skywards, with the camera only reaching ISO 400.
Despite the technical limitations, there’s no denying that the EX-Z70 is a purdy little thing, with its sleek, rounded edges sure to get consumer wallets twitching.
Available in “luxurious” black or high quality silver, the black EX-Z70 will be on the shelves from the beginning of July (you’ll have to wait a month for the silver version) for around £230 ($422, €335).
Casio Exilim EX-Z70 specifications
Sensor
1/2.5 ” Type CCD, 7.2 million effective pixels
Image sizes 3072 x 2304, 3072 x 2048 (3:2), 2560 x 1920, 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 640 x 480
Movie clips • 640 x 480 @ 30fps, 512 x 384 @ 30fps, 320 x 240 @ 15fps
• WAV audio
File formats JPEG (Exif v2.2), DCF 1.0 Standard, DPOF
Lens 38-114mm equiv, 3x optical zoom
Image stabilization Anti-Shake DSP
Conversion lenses No
Digital zoom up to 4x
Focus
Contrast type AF (selectable between spot, multi)
Focus distance Normal: 40cm – infinity
Macro: 10 – 50cm
Manual: 10cm – infinity
Metering Multi-pattern, Center- weighted, Spot
ISO sensitivity Auto, ISO 50, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400
Exposure compensation -/+ 2EV, in 1/3 EV steps
Shutter speed 1/2 – 1/2000 sec
Aperture F3.1/4.4, auto switching
Modes Still image
Still with audio
Continuous shutter (normal speed, high speed, flash continuous)
BEST SHOT
Macro
Movie
Voice recording
Scene modes BEST SHOT modes
White balance Auto, Fixed (6 modes), Manual switching
Self timer 10 or 2 secs, Triple self-timer
Flash Auto, On, Off, Red eye reduction, Soft Flash
Range: 0.1 – 3.7m (wide) 0.6 – 1.9m (tele)
Viewfinder No
LCD monitor 2.5-inch TFT, 115,200 pixels
Connectivity
USB 2.0 Full Speed AV
Microphone
Storage SD / MMC compatible, 8.3MB internal memory
Power NP-20 lithium-ion rechargeable battery
Weight (no batt) 118g
Dimensions 95.2 x 60.6 x 19.8 mm
Casio
23 June, 2006
T-Mobile Offers Unlimited Mobile Surfing For A Quid A Day
T-Mobile has announced that it is to extend its web’n’walk unlimited mobile Internet access service to include pay-as-you-go customers.
From 1st August, pay-as-you-go customers will be able to gorge themselves on the Internet for a maximum of a quid a day for the web’n’walk service.
T-Mobile says the service will be available for up to 25 handsets across the contract and pay-as-you-go web’n’walk tariff range, including the Motorola V3, the Nokia 6131, the Nokia 6233, the Sony Ericsson K750i and the Samsung E870.
Phil Chapman, Director of Marketing for T-Mobile UK, looked deep into his crystal ball and saw the clouds clearing, “We strongly believe that in future, mobile will be individuals’ primary means of accessing the Internet, just as it already is for voice communications.”
All the web’n’walk handsets come pre-configured to connect immediately to the Internet, with customers able browse any web pages they chuffing well like rather than the ‘cut-down’ mobile-optimised web pages available through some services.
To help new customers on their mobile surfin’ way, T-Mobile Favourites comes pre-stocked with links to popular UK websites like Amazon, Sky, lastminute, BBC, Yell, Multimap, BAA and the RAC.
With two thirds of mobile customers on pay-as-you-go contracts, T-Mobile are hoping to scoop up new and existing customers to their new data deal, with each kilobyte of data charged at 0.73 pence, up to a ceiling of £1 – after which, customers will pay nothing more for rest of the day.
We love it
We’re already big fans of T-Mobile’s web’n’walk service – after years of paying eye-wateringly inflated data access charges, we were delighted to jump on their unlimited web’n’walk flat rate of just £7.50 a month for pay monthly contracts.
With unlimited data usage, we’ve found the service more useful than Wi-Fi in daily use – now we can get our email, check the news, download RSS feeds and waste time on IM/chat without having to wander about looking for a free hotspot. Nice.
There are caveats to the service though, with a ‘fair use policy’ applying to their definition of ‘unlimited’ and anyone trying to use their connection for laptop surfing can expect a prompt slapdown from Messrs T and Mobile.
T Mobile
22 June, 2006
Bug TOO DAB Radio released by Pure Digital
It might look like a weird mutation between Dr Who’s K9 and and the wobbly robot from Lost In Space, but we like the fact that PURE Digital’s new Bug TOO DAB radio is brave enough to stand out from the current crowd of wood’n’plastic identikit DAB radios.
Building on their success of their their earlier, Wayne Hemingway-designed Bug digital radio, the Bug Too adds the latest DAB digital radio developments, including an electronic programme guide (EPG) and textSCAN, and a new feature letting users wake up to their favourite MP3 or recording.
As with the earlier Bug DAB radio, there’s a fully specified radio lurking inside the bonkers exterior, with MP3 playback, record to SD card and the excellent ReVu feature which lets users pause and rewind live radio.
The feature set
Now sporting a new titanium silver finish, the Bug TOO looks much the same as its predecessor, offering a bright, clear, scrolling LCD display on a bizarre bendy stalk.
This usefully displays artists names, song titles, news, sports results and other information, with the EPG feature offering programme information and schedules.
With the Bug TOO being compatible with EPG broadcasts, users can browse upcoming programmes, see a short description of each programme and then select them for scheduled listening or recording to SD memory card.
As with their Pure DMX-50 DAM microsystem, it’s possible to record DAB radio to SD card or to an external MiniDisc player, with MP3 playback available from tunes stored on the SD card.
There’s also alarm, sleep and timer record functions – including an MP3 alarm – so the Bug TOO could be a handy bedside radio. We’re not quite sure why anyone would want 20 configurable alarms though, but if that’s what you’re after, the Bug’s got ’em.
We like Pure Digital and this new radio looks to be good value too, costing around £100 and available from June 2006.
The Bug
22 June, 2006
T-Mobile Sidekick 3 Announced
T-Mobile has finally officially announced the T-Mobile Sidekick 3, adding a new trackball controller, Bluetooth and EDGE data to the popular Sidekick 2.
The design’s had a bit of a spruce up in the design factory, with sleeker lines and a narrower 131mm x 59mm x 23mm (5.2″ x 2.3″ x .9″) form factor making the device feel more like a phone.
As with earlier incarnations, the new Sidekick sports a spring-assisted, flip out display with a QWERTY keyboard lurking below.
The keyboard has been significantly improved, and now boasts proper individual keys rather than the rubberised cover seen on earlier versions.
The D-pad controller is now accompanied by a new, ergonomically-improved trackball control which replaces the older up/down roller wheel.
The speed and sensitivity of the trackball can be adjusted to suit personal preferences and (we like this bit) the trackball can glow various colours. Cool!
The Sidekick boasts a new 1.3 megapixel camera and assist light, with a large 65k colour, transflective TFT display supporting a rather underwhelming 240×160 pixel resolution.
Sidekick’s new MP3 player lets users create M3U playlists or play music based on artist, album, genres or composers, with a Mini SD card expansion slot providing storage for up to 2GB of tunes and multimedia stuff.
In line with its all singin’ and dancin’ billing, the Sidekick comes with a 64MB Mini SD card in the box, along with a wired headset and USB cable.
Connectivity
With tri band support (850/900/1800MHz), the GSM Sidekick will suit jet setters flitting between the States and Europe, with a talk time of nearly six hours providing ample scope to keep up with the latest gossip.
New for version three is a Bluetooth system supporting both the OBEX Push and Headset/Hands Free profiles and a mini-USB port for transferring files from a PC.
The built in web browser zips along on sites designed for mobiles (thanks to some nifty server side pre-processing and compression), but things slow down considerably when viewing regular sites, with the low res screen soon showing its limitations.
Sidekick 3 users have the option to synchronise their contacts, notes, calendar entries and email via the T-Mobile website, or they can fork out for a copy of Intellisync to synch their device directly with Microsoft Outlook on a Windows PC.
Messaging
The popularity of Sidekick phones has been assisted in no small measure by their excellent messaging abilities, with text messaging, email, and instant messaging (but still no MMS) supported by a built in spellchecker.
New for version 3 is the support for MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, supplementing the existing AOL Instant Messenger connectivity.
Compulsive chatters can now enjoy up to 10 simultaneous active IM conversations with T-Mobile’s back-end server ensuring that connections and conversations won’t drop if the signal is momentarily lost.
What we think
Although the rather hefty bulk and teen-friendly looks of the Sidekick may not be everyone’s tastes, there’s no denying that it’s a very capable phone supported by some fun features.
There’s not enough functionality to tempt us from our beloved Treo 650, but for the targeted demographic – teens/fashion victims/schlebs etc – the Sidekick looks sure to prove a hit.
Shame about the poor screen though.
Specs:
Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Display 240 x 160 pixel, 65,000 colour display
Trackball
Bluetooth 1.2 (limited to Hands-Free profile and vCard exchange)
1.3 megapixel digital camera w/LED flash
miniSD memory card slot (supports up to 2GB cards)
64MB of SDRAM/64MB Flash memory
Music player software
Size: 130 x 59 x 21.8mm
Weight: 6.7 ounces
T Mobile
21 June, 2006
Yahoo Messenger Goes Collaborative
Hot on the heels of Windows Messenger Live comes Yahoo’s new upgrade to their own Instant Messaging service, offering plug-ins to let users share more information.
Currently residing in beta, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice (version 8), will let users embed collaborative programs into their Messenger experience.
The Yahoo Messenger update will let users run some software packages simultaneously, so groups of chums can all settle down to watch movies together, or get all interactive on each other’s Yahoo Calendar listings while yakking over the messaging system.
Early reports suggest that the service will also allow up to 1GB for file transfers, with the maximum number of contacts available to punters reaching a dazzlingly popular 1,000.
Widgets and Plug Ins
Yahoo is looking to add competition-crushing extras to their new service by getting third party developers to create mini-applications (or ‘widgets’) to let users do groovy things like combine Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Music, News, Finance, track and share wish lists on Amazon or keep their beady eye on an eBay auction.
With this new ‘plug-in’ approach, Jeff Bonforte, the big cheese in charge of Yahoo’s instant messaging products, reckons that future innovations on Messenger will most likely come from these new widgets rather than complete program upgrades.
Of course, there’s nothing new to all this embedding malarkey, with the industry boys – Microsoft, Google, AOL and Skype – all falling over themselves to make desktop-based applications shareable over IM services, but Yahoo are hoping that by opening up Messenger to become more of a distribution platform they’ll be able to attract punter-luring new services.
Yahoo Messenger is currently number three in the chatty world of Instant Communications, with eBay’s Skype in the second slot and AOL’s AIM still ruling the IM roost.
Yahoo! Messenger
21 June, 2006