This is the Asus Eee Pc, I’m sure many of you will have seen it before, its been  discussed a lot recently, in real terms it a proper laptop for around £200,  which I think is a bargain, however after a trip to a local well known Pc shop I decided that I no longer like it.

Previously, I had thought that its amazingly small and is a very cheap alternative to a full size laptop - perfect for those who dont use them that often or don’t need any power - whatsoever, however I now feel that they arent as good. Whilst they can have xp installed on them which I think is a strong plus point, I cant imagine how fast it would run - is it practical?

Next to the Eee was another laptop - it was just under £300 and had a much better spec than the Eee, and if memory serves correctly, it wasnt too much bigger, this left me to the conclusion that I dont like the Eee anymore. The screen isnt really practical, the os isnt really ideal, the specs arent up to much and I wouldnt use it … at all, so thats a bubble of mine burst completly.

Has anyone else seen the Eee?

For A Level ICT we are still learning about input devices and just how many there are, now this may come as a surprise – it did to me – how much more can there be to learn about Joysticks, Keyboards and Mice but I now believe the reason is that input devices are updating and changing in this the modern age.

The mouse has been the primary input device for many years now, it hasn’t been rivalled by anything serious but nowadays there have been many contenders and I’m not meaning those trackballs and silly imitations of mice but other more serious devices – such as graphics tablets which aren’t quite as new as I’d like but still quite high up in the technical department, and then related to tablets are touch screens which are becoming oh so very common in shops now and then there are ‘Smart boards’ which are mostly used in schools – they are just a board which has a projector projecting onto it connected to the computer in use and it responds like a touch screen with sensors under the first layer to locate the pointer location – these are brilliant for schools as they allow drawing and other interactive features as well as the ability to save this.

The reason I believe that there could be some new contenders which are taken more seriously than trackballs and the like is that the new devices being developed are not just input devices but allow a lot of interactivity and may become more than just the mouse for a computer – my first example is a project by a guy called Johnny Lee based around Wiimotes – because they have a ir camera in and are able to connect to computers using bluetooth they can have other uses, such as head tracking shown in this video:

The same guy has also done some projects using the same concept but in order to create a cheap interactive touch screen like display:

And finally another innovation which I don’t see as being a replacement for mice but as some inspiration – imagine if all input devices were as intuitive and unique as the one in the following video – we could be throwing balls around a room to change the channel and so on. This video shows a large amount of imagination and creativity, using coloured balls - of gum to control a sequencer, which could essentially control a pc in reality.

With that I will leave you to ponder just what input devices you can think of which might be the next big thing

Whilst this may not be interesting to everyone I feel its rather interesting, there are absolutely loads of choices available to people for different gadgets, the main example I am going to use is for cameras, with my birthday money from last Sunday I purchased a digital camera, I researched this for quite a while to weigh up my options and I found plenty!, its made complicated by the shear number of brands available, the quality of the sensors – the number of mega pixels they have, their ISO and shutter speed options etc. What I’m trying to get to is that I looked at quite a few cameras and found it hard to decide, I will admit that I was not only judging them by their specs and how good they were but also by their appearance which for me is something I shouldn’t do as its not the right way to judge something technical in my opinion but I did and I ended up getting the Kodak v1003 in Black. It has a 10mp sensor, a 3x optical zoom, ISO speeds ranging from ISO 80 to ISO 1600, Long time exposure mode up to 8 seconds, Anti blur mode, and Kodak’s easy share stuff. I was mainly weighed over by the good number of mega pixels for the price, the looks and also the number of scene modes, which I wanted so I could experiment.

The camera looks like this and I’m very happy with it so far, I will at some point take some pictures worthy of showing off perhaps:

But I have it in black and it looks much better - well I think so anywho.

And more specifically, its my 18th birthday, the question that almost no-one is asking is what have I got?. I’ll tell you -
As my main pressie I got a Microsoft Zune, this is simply Microsofts answer to the Apple iPod and I love it, the main reason I love it is that its not made by Apple, I pretty much hate Apple and have no particular reason or justification for it, it could be because I’m a Microsoft fan boy through and through and hate macs because they are so - different. My only experience of a mac was on one of those things which only have one mouse button! - yes only ONE mouse button!, what use is that to me?!, I thought it was ludicrous! Anywho back to my Zune, its brilliant and I love it, its unique and will hopefully make people ask, ‘what is that?!’ which is what I love to hear as I like showing off my tech, I have a black 30 gb model (which has a nice big screen and can play mp3’s, videos and podcasts of both of those formats), its currently 2/3’s full - I load it up quick

I also was happy to receive a Laptop cooling stand which I’ve been wanting for a while just to make my laptop feel at home as it is most often at my desk. On top of that I received my provisional driving license as a gift which sounds odd but its what I wanted so hey, I didn’t have to pay for it which made me happy.

Finally, I’ve been lucky enough to get some money and hopefully (fingers crossed without wanting to sound spoiled) I’ll get enough to be able to buy myself a new digital camera as I currently have an absolutely rubbish fujifilm BRICK.

I guess a good question for me to ask would be:
What cameras would you recommend for under £100?
I’ve been looking at the Samsung L830 and S1030 and also the Kodak V1003 (but thats mainly because it looks good)

Yesterday I read about the new Wacom graphics tablet – the Wacom Cintiq 12WX on Gizmodo, its like a normal graphics tablet but it incorporates a screen which allows you to draw directly onto the image you are manipulating. It acts as a second monitor and then allows configuration to just control that screen, to me it looks super duper uber cool – it’s a novelty gadget that’s useful for comic people and the like but for me it would be a five minute wonder (not that I could afford such a thing). Read more