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My mobile phone — a Nokia N73 — was having some issues after it took a fall on hard concrete, most annoying of which was the fact that it would spontaneously switch off for no apparent reason. So it became time for a new one.

Last week Friday, I placed an order, and after some trouble with my package being lost, my new Nokia N82 finally arrived last Thursday. Man, is that thing sweet.

Some of its key features are UMTS/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, 5 megapixel camera with xenon flash and of course you can use it to make phone calls. This is what the beast looks like:

Nokia N82

After using it for two days, the thing I noticed the most is that it is lots faster than my old N73. That one always felt a little sluggish, but not the N82. It feels very responsive, most apps launch almost instantaneous.

The number keys that I read so much about in reviews are acually kinda nice. They are rather small, but their spacing makes it almost impossible to mistype. Granted, it takes some getting used to, but don’t criticize them if you haven’t tried them yourself.

Haven’t used the camera much. But as far as I can tell, it takes excellent pictures for a phone camera, even indoors thanks to its xenon flash.

I haven’t really made a trip using the GPS yet, but it usually finds a fix pretty damn quickly, even indoors. The maps applications seems to do a decent job. The phone came with a 90-day navigation trial, so we’ll see how it performs on the go.

So far, I’m very happy with this new gadget. It might even replace my Palm T|X as my navigation device, if the Nokia Maps application does a good job. Will have to find some other use for that thing then, like letting it run Linux just for fun.

Last weekend, I got myself a 16 GB iPod touch. Managed to get a nice rebate on it. They look a bit like the incredibly over-hyped iPhone, but without the chrome rim and about half as thin. That’s only a mere 8 mm. It’s a good thing it feels quite sturdy, otherwise I’d be seriously concerned about snapping it in two… So, this is what it looks like when displaying its home screen:

Apple iPod touch

So, Ive been playing with this gem for a week now, and it’s incredible! The multi-touch interface really is as amazing as Apple claims it is. The sound is of the quality I’d expect from an iPod, and video just looks gorgeous. It’s a shame that it only supportys H.264 encoding for video, but then again, having to recode a movie specifically for it does have its advantages. I can optimize the result for the iPod’s screen resolution, which brings an hour of video down to less than 450 MiB while keeping good quality. Not too bad.

I have jailbroken the device, but that caused it to be so unstable that I’ve restored it within an hour. I’ll just wait for the App Store that Apple says will open up in June. And it is of course still mainly a portable media player, and when it comes to that, it performs like a champ.

I had some problems with my existing router, like it suddenly deciding to enter a reboot loop. Or forgetting its port forwarding rules. And other weird stuff. So I decided that it was time for something else, and ended up buying a Linksys WRT54GL. You might have seen them before, they look like this:

Linksys WRT54GL

I’ve chosen this one because it runs Linux, and most of all, because it can be flashed with 3rd party firmware, which in most cases offer a lot more functionality. After some research, I decided to try Tomato. It not only looks very nice, it also promises some interesting features.

After some failed attempts to flash the unit with its new firmware — for some reason Safari was not behaving as it should — I managed to do it using Firefox instead.

After a few more minutes of configuring everything to my needs, I left it alone. As far as I can tell after one day, it performs excellently. The near future will tell whether this little gadget will keep my network stable.

My Logitech MX1000 died this morning. They’re excellent in surviving free falls from half a meter. But accidentally stepping on them kills them, just like it would a real mouse. And that’s exactly what happened this morning. It served me well over the past few years. I did try Apple’s Mighty Mouse for awhile, but its scroll ball stopped working, so I went back to my MX1000.

But now it’s dead. So I needed something new. Something just as comfortable and preferably with the same or even better features.

I went to Logitech’s web site to look at their current line of mice. There, my eyes fell on the MX Revolution. It’s shape is similar to the MX1000. It has all the features the MX1000 has and more. But what appealed to me the most was what Logitech calls the “MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel”.

That thing is amazing! I give the wheel a good swing, and it goes into free spin, like a flywheel. Inside a scroll wheel are ratchets onto which a notch pushes that make it “click”. The MX Revolution has a mechanism that can retract that notch, so the wheel has no more friction and can spin freely.

Scrolling through long documents or web pages (Wikipedia has some good examples) is now blazing fast and super easy. I do fear that the complex mechanism is more sensitive to free falls. So I’ll try to be a little bit more careful with this one.

Here’s a pictures:

Logitech MX Revolution

Today I received my new aluminum Apple Keyboard. I knew it would type very comfortably, because it has the same kind of keys that my MacBook has. And on top of that, it’s just gorgeous. It does have a wire, but with a keyboard that’s not really a problem since I have it laying on my lap most of the time. And with the included extension cable, it easily reaches far enough.

For those who don’t already know what it looks like, this is it:

Aluminum Apple Keyboard

Today, I received a new hard disk drive for my MacBook. It’s a 2.5″ Western Digital Scorpio SATA drive, spinning at 5400 RPM, with 8 MB cache, and — here it comes — a dazzling 250 GB of storage capacity. Now that I’ve seen it up close (I’d never seen a naked 2.5″ hard disk drive), I have no idea how in the world they could possibly fit 250 GB on such a small thing, but apparently, this is only the beginning of PMR.

To give you an idea of how small it actually is, here’s a comparison with a run-of-the-mill lighter.

Western Digital Scorpio

I am now copying all my data from the external drive to my MacBook. Once that’s done, I can finally shut the former down.

Since a week or two ago my 20 GB 4th generation iPod died, I needed something else. As temporary substitute my phone (a Nokia N73) did nice, but a phone just isn’t designed to be an MP3 player. An iPod is. It just sounds better (with proper ear pieces).

Back in late 2004, when I bought my previous iPod, my music collection was about 3.5 GiB, so that left me with the choice of going for an iPod mini with 4 GB, or 3.81 GiB, which would barely hold all my music, or to go for the 20 GB iPod. I decided on the latter.

Now, my collection has grown by a little more than 2 GiB, totaling 5.85 GiB. So now I didn’t have to go for a bulky large iPod with a screen that’s far too big (I have my Palm T|X to watch movies on the go). The black iPod nano comes with 8 GB, or 7.45 GiB.

That leaves me with almost 2 GiB of growing space. Looking at the expansion of my collection the past 3 years, that means another year or 2. After that, we’ll see what happens.

Oh, and it’s definitely worth the name “nano”. Boy is it small. Here’s a comparison with my Apple Remote:

Apple iPod and Apple remote

The new white earbuds are still of inferior quality. They don’t even come close to actually utilizing the full potential of an iPods capabilities. But that’s easily remedied with some quality earbuds from Sennheiser, the MXL51 Street.

I’ve received my new monitor today, a Dell 2407WFP (rev. A04) 24″ widescreen TFT panel. It replaces my Dell 2007WFP (pretty similar model, but only 20″), which goes to a friend of mine.

Some specs:

• Diagonal: 24 inches
• Resolution: 1920×1200
• Aspect ratio: 16:10
• Brightness: 450 cd/m²
• Contrast: 1000:1
• Refresh rate: 16 ms grey-to-grey
• D-Sub, DVI, S-Video, Component, Composite connections
• HDCP over DVI
• Picture-in-Picture, Picture-by-Picture
• 4 ports USB hub
• 9-in-2 card reader

And this is what it looks like:

Dell 2407WFP monitor