My new baby!
I’ve been after the Creative Zen Vision:M MP3/Video player for a long time now, to replace my aging iRiver 6gb H10. Last week I saw them going cheap for £180 on Play so I jumped at the chance. The player arrived yesterday much to my excitement and just as the reviews have stated, this thing is THE nicest and arguably the best player on the market due to it’s wealth of features.
I was shocked at the size of the thing at first, it’s much larger, thicker and heavier then my H10 but that display and its 262k colour palette means that the video display is so vibrant in comparison to the iPod Video
that it’s all worth it. Sadly the screen is just as susceptible to scratches as the iPod, so I now await a super slim case for it. This baby is a fingerprint magnet!
I’ve already uploaded a couple of films, two seasons of Red Dwarf and a few home-made videos (not that!) onto it and I still have plenty of space left, given that the device is a 30gb unit. All I need is a new phone now…
It will take the Uk by storm
It’s a step change in television technology which provides far clearer and more detailed pictures than normal "standard definition" TV. The benefits are especially suited to larger LCD and plasma display screens. Basically HD is transmitted digitally. Each step in the transmission chain must be high definition to produce the end result on your screen. So you will need a HD decoder box to decode the incoming signals, as well as a HD Ready TV in the first place so you can actually see the pictures. Sounds simple right? Well there’s a lot more to it then the above, and it can get very confusing. Riyad at Trusted Reviews has a brilliant round up of exactly what to expect from this upcoming HD era.
There has been a lot of talk going around about the web about the new Apple store that recently opened up in New York, and now I can see why. What a stunning piece of work! The store is located on Fifth Avenue, and will be supplying Apple products 24/7. You can see photo’s of the opening at gothamist.com.
Set to ship roughly towards the start of 2007, Windows Vista will be Microsoft’s first major operating system release since introducing Windows XP in 2001. The new Windows Vista operating system offers a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organization, and and a stupidly over the top but new look that is the Aero Theme, which gives your desktop a glass like look. It’s all very neat, but somewhat intensive on the user’s graphics card - so if you have an old machine (older then 2yrs) then you’re bang out of luck 
Anyway, Jake over at http://spikex.net/blog/ has a small but informative preview on Beta build 5308 of Vista. It’s a good read!
Feel cold and sweaty while I await my VGA cable from play.com, just so I can actually use the sodding console on my decent TFT screens instead of a piddly 14" TV with a mono speaker. It’s so bad that I cannot bear to play Project Gotham Racing 3 in such horrible fashion. Urgh! Bring on Tuesday 13th!
