Due to the terrible build quality of the N95, the time to replace my phone draws close.

Previously, I said I was getting the all new Nokia N97. However, after reading reviews and whatnot, it becomes apparent that its terrible. Underpowered for the operating system its running [Seriously, Nokia should drop Symbian, its old and buggy], causes the phone to slowdown and lock up at points. Gizmodo reviewed the phone and seems to share my sentiments in the terrible OS that is Symbian.

Still being rather loyal to Nokia after 10 years, I have come to expect quality phones from them. This was not the case with the Nokia N95 8GB that I bought less than 2 years ago.

Being a relatively light user of the mobile and treating it nicely, you would expect the phone to last at least a good 4 years or more. Currently my N95 has lost all its metallic surrounds on the buttons, chipped off metallic paint around the camera surround and has severe problems with the sliders. I can accept that the metallic paint would chip off over time, I found this with my Nokia 6680, but slider problems? From day 1? I know you’re thinking “Why didn’t you send it back?” but at the time I didn’t really notice the dodgy slider. However, after spending many hours trawling though various Nokia forums both unofficial and official, I noticed that this was a common thing with all the N95 8GBs.

Various other things bug the hell out of me; including the fact that it can take a good 10 seconds to open the text message application on the phone, frequent lockups/crashes with the YouTube app, crappy web browser and others.

The next phone I hope to get will be the ever lovely Nokia N900.

“Nokia again?” I hear you ask. Well its Nokia again for a few reasons.

1. I still trust that I will be getting a good phone
2. Maemo 5 is the operating system of choice. A Debian based system, so essentially this is a pocket computer/phone.
3. Touch screen, gotta love ‘em.
4. Windows Mobile just doesn’t cut it for me at the moment, although 7 series looks good.

So there are my reasons, I know a few of you [Mark ] love your WinMo/Android phones but I’m a Nokia man at heart [although I was nearly seduced by Samsung with their Omnia HD]

I’ve now got to find £449 to buy it :/

Not feeling the best so I thought I’d thrash out a blog post.

 

Just been resting for the good part of 3 days now, I think its just a cold so hopefully I’ll be back at full strength in good time. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:

 

• Watched a very good anime, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. About a group of 3; brother, sister and some girl they meet along the way. A Wikipedia quote to make things more clear:

After a massive earthquake in Tokyo, siblings Mirai and Yūki, who were visiting a robot exhibition in Odaiba at the beginning of their summer vacation, struggle to reach their parents in their house in Setagaya assisted by a female motorcycle courier named Mari, who is striving to reach her own daughter and mother in Sanjengaya. – Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 [Wikipedia]

 

• Carrying on with my University course. Second semester is getting very interesting now. Becoming very involved, a cold doesn’t help when you’re trying to revise this stuff.

That’s all really, just gonna take it easy for the time being. Maybe even write a less whiney blog post too.

Good news everyone! I have Windows 7 on my Lappy.

 

You may remember I wrote earlier that I received Windows 7 the day before it came out, thanks to Amazon’s fancy delivery department. The only thing putting me off actually installing the OS was that I lacked an external HDD. So for Christmas, that’s just what I purchased.

 

The HDD in question:

Seagate Expansions 1TB External Desktop USB 2.0 Hard Drive

 

Quite the HDD indeed. With Backup and whatnot done on the old Vista installation, Windows 7 was duely loaded onto a freshly formatted hard drive.

 

I must say, the 15 minute install was very impressive. I did have a few problems however:

• Native drivers didn’t recognise my wireless network, fixed by installing Dell’s drivers
• Touchpad was a bit erratic at times, fixed by installing necessary drivers
• McAfee refuses to install on it, my fault however, I seem to have used it on too many computers

Other than that, the install was pretty painless.

 

Final thoughts: Windows 7 is indeed quite the improvement on the bloated monster that was Vista. Improvements in power management means I was able to squeeze another 30 minutes out of the battery, which is very surprising due to the battery coming up for 2 years in age. The only thing that is irking me slightly is the taskbar. The taskbar, when it gets full, groups by application, which can be a pain to navigate. I know this can be turned off but the option “Never Combine” just doesn’t cut the mustard. Also the time taken for Aero Peek to work is, by default, a tad too long. A simple registry change fixes this and makes the operating system, graphically, a bit more snappy. All in all, a great operating system indeed.

Hey all its your funtime friend Joe!

Sorry for the lack of posting, decided to have a nice quiet Christmas and New Year.

So what has happened?
Got a nice shiney new 40 inch Samsung TV, chilled over Christmas and basicaly did nothing.

Hope you all have had a good Christmas and New Year!

Joe out!

I think there should be a big well done and a “Cool!” for Joe on his new snazzy layout of Southanuk.

I’m especially liking the log in thing at the top Joe

Well done!

xxx

This is something of a test so please excuse me if this goes tits up.

As you can hopefully see this is a gloomy train station.

SO! I have news!

After about a month (*counts* 22nd August till now) of waiting, I finally have a fully fledged Student account with HSBC, and my card arrived today sooo now I have to activate it and start buying all you lovlies lovely things!

And I am very pleased that Joe’s and my timetables correspond so now we can see each other woohoo! Today has been a very happy day for me lol.

That’s all for now people, stay fab and get shakey ^_^

First post for a while eh? Well not much has changed in Southanuk, its still 10 and as usual, I’ve forgotten to post for ages.

 

Recently I have acquired a very nice little TV/Monitor for my room. The monitor in question is a 23 inch Samsung 2333HD. A very nice sized TV with a modest array of inputs (Its technically a monitor so I shouldn’t moan.) My one very big quibble is the sound with the inbuilt speakers. Now I wasn’t expecting much in the way of sound but there is absolutely no bass whatsoever on these speakers. Luckily I had some old PC speakers laying about so I just plugged those in instead, hey presto, bass.

I must say having the option for 1080p is very handy with me having a PS3 and all, however, the majority of PS3 games are only 720p max. So until Sony make it mandatory for all games to be 1080p max I’ll have to enjoy 720p games. Saying that, some games are 1080p like LocoRoco Cocoreccho.

 

All in all its a brilliant little TV/Monitor for the price (£214.)

Southanuk today turns the grand age of 10 !

Stay tuned for more things later in the day.

Notice it or not, Southanuk has had some tweaks applied to it.

 

Most notable is in the comments section where the comment form has been completely restyled and properly supports Facebook Connect in Internet Explorer 8.

 

Little tweaks to the site may appear every now and again, if you like, do tell, if you don’t… do tell!