Heres a question for you – Would you rather have a fast or pretty system?

Imagine that the scenario is simple – one computer with average specs – would you rather have a fast operating system which just does the job and doesn’t have any bells or indeed whistle or would you like a pretty system which perhaps is a little slower buy looks a lot nicer whilst doing the jobs. I could put this into context and say XP vs. Vista but then the security issues, compatibility and transfer would be taken into account.

I personally love to have a nice pretty computer which has bells and whistles to show off to other people, I therefore like Vista, the sidebar, Aero and flip3d. When on Xp I like Rocketdock but when I get down to doing some video or photo editing I wish that I just had a fast system which could wiz through the processing of the files rather than sorting some pretty stuff in the background – there is a compromise to be had.

So, what would you like? – Fast and get the job done or pretty and show off to friends?

I’ve just been reading about the new Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and all I can say at this point is ‘WANT’ – It looks lovely, on a second glance it doesn’t do anything special or have anything that make is completely unique apart from a nice big screen with a good resolution and a funny arc design which makes it curve but I still want it – it looks hot and is a good icebreaker (which by now I’m sure you’ve gathered is quite important to me). It appears to be running the latest version of windows mobile, which I have absolutely no experience with but I hope it has plenty of 3^rd party applications available as they make things interesting for me.

The phone also has some good 3D rendering and abilities which I’m sure makes it a bit more fun to use (much like the iPhone). I’ve just found on wiki that its got wi-fi which is great news for me as I can see that this combined with the qwerty keyboard should make it a good little web surfer (as long as the software is able and it can render well, I would imagine that with its clever 3Dness and the resources it needs for it that it would manage web browsing rather well)

Wiki page

Nice picture

I love technology, the reason for this is because at some point of other another bit of tech comes along to replace it so if it was at the forefront of modern technology at one point for example the TV eventually it will be replaced for example the prediction that TV’s will be replaced by computers. Now whilst I am in favour of replacing TV’s or rather the gubbins inside the TV (rather than the display) because computers can do just about everything that they can and more – with a good media centre computer you can do the same as a Sky + box – record and pause live TV and watch it back later, record one thing and watch another at the same time, schedule recordings and so on, where media centres come into their own is when extra functions are added for example only needing one box to do all of the above and play DVD’s, Surf the internet, Control your house and do the shopping.

Back to the question – do we need TV’s? – well yes we do because they are a great means of displaying the stuff from your computer but do we need the actual TV stuff that’s inside them? – no – a computer can do all that stuff with a TV card, sadly it cannot provide all the extra services that Sky can – like interactive TV, Box office movies etc but just plug a Sky box into your TV card and there you have it – the ultimate solution.

Then again do we need the TV tuner card? – with services from most of the main TV companies to provide TV programs and movies to download it’s a bit unnecessary. The BBC iPlayer, ITV’s Video Player (not a catchy name), Channel 4’s – 4oD and Sky’s Anytime Pc service us lot on the internet are all set for sitting in front of the computer and doing nothing else for the rest of eternity. Although the problem that I found with this is that not everything is on there (for example the episode of Al Murray’s happy hour that I missed on Friday and isn’t on the ITV website – yet, I’m still hoping).

To sum up (as always) I think that the age of the TV (in terms of proper TV rather than display) is up – I’m hoping that it’ll be properly replaced by media centres and other fancy things to provide many more services

Many people are of the impression that Mobile phones are for phoning people and phoning people alone they believe ‘why would you want to do anything else? – it’s a phone’, then there are those who used to believe they were only for phoning people but now think that texting is also acceptable.  I would then hope that the third category is where most people reading this would fit in – Mobiles are great – they are like little computers that can do anything! (which is precisely the group I am in).

The reason I’ve brought this up is because I’ve recently been using a little application for my e65 called ‘emTube’, its brilliant! – its basically just Youtube for mobiles (which I know there is an application for from the official people but this one is better).

The reason I like emTube is because I am able to search for videos on my mobile whilst at home on my wifi network and then use emTube to download them to my phone, this means I can show people when out and about, so I no longer have to remember to send a link of a video to a friend on msn when they come online, I can just show them on my phone next time I see them, excellent stuff!