It came out yesterday so I walked into my local Vodafone shop (in Milton Keynes) but they didn’t have one in stock – and didn’t know when they would (useless!).

Tonight I called O2 and got my PAC code (was painless – but taking a while to arrive…). I’ll be ending my contract 5 weeks early – I’ll have to pay for the remainder of the contract.

I have been working out the best deals for the phone. I don’t care about minutes or texts. All of these tariffs have at least 100 minutes (plenty for me) and at least 1GB data included, except for the £15 plan which has 500MB’s.

The £15 plan is the cheapest overall (it’s a 24 month plan but cheaper than the 18 month plans). However I am going to go for the £25 month plan, then I’ll downgrade to the £15 month plan as soon as I can in the contract. 500MB’s is actually plenty of data for a mobile phone as I am often near WiFi anyway. If I need to, I can step up to the £25 plan again at any time.

Plus if I order through Quidco, I will save an additional £50.

Some notes:

• http://www.best-mobile-contracts.co.uk is a good site for quick tariff comparisons
• I have used Mobiles.co.uk  a few times before and their rebate deals sound good, but they make purposefully tricky to get your money back. I haven’t ever got the full money back.

Android

I am a big fan of Android because it is open source, not tied to a single handset, comes with some really great software (including satellite navigation), some new and innovative software (such as Google Goggles and Google Layers) and has a very good user interface. Plus it is JAVA based so easy to develop for and has a very strong developer community.

The only problem is that there are no handsets that I want at the moment. The best one available in the UK is the HTC Desire, but that doesn’t have a front facing camera (neither will the HTC Desire 2). The best (most fully-featured) Android based phone in the world at the moment is the HTC Evo 4G, but this is only available on the Sprint network in America (plus it has really bad battery life). The DELL Streak is nice, but at 152.99mm is really too long for what I want.

There will be a lot of good Android based phones coming out this year – but I don’t know when (and when I am lusting after a new gadget, I don’t like waiting!).

Windows Phone 7

Previous versions of Windows mobile have been out for years and although pretty good, they have always been a bit buggy. I have owned several Windows based phones and have always had problems with all of them (6.1 has given me far fewer issues than previous versions – but it has been far from perfect).

Windows Mobile has always had an okay developer community and you can get most types of applications for it for free with no adverts.

The Windows Phone 7 operating system is due out later this year and it looks promising. All applications for Windows 7 will need to be written in Silverlight and all games will need to be written in XNA. I am a big fan of both Silverlight and XNA.

It doesn’t have Zune incorporated into it, rather a facsimile of it (so basically the same) – this is a very good thing.

The Windows Phone 7 interface as a whole looks very good – I like the concept as they are really making the phones interface personalised to the user.

However I don’t think they are doing enough. While the music interface will be good, I think the mobile interface will end up being clunky and slow to navigate around.

Microsoft do make some really fantastic software, but they suck at promoting it. For example, compare their official Windows Phone 7 website (which was hard to find via a Google search by the way!) to the official iPhone 4 website – if you didn’t know anything about the phones and just saw those 2 websites side by site, the clear winner would be Apple.

Apple iPhone 4

I am not a big fan of Apple. They keep bringing out devices with low-spec hardware – and software missing features that competitors have had for several years. Plus as people spend lots of money on apps, they then feel obliged/trapped into sticking with Apple so that they can retain those apps (with Microsoft or Android, if you buy an App you can then use it on any hardware with that operating system, not just a single device).

I see the Apple iPhone 4 as being a good smartphone for the mainstream, unlike Android which although is gaining on market share, I think is still being bought more by the technical community.

The iPhone 4 was announced this week and it does have some very good features – noticeably:

• A really good quality screen (although small in size compared with other phones)
• Very good battery life
• 802.11n WiFi
• Physically small phone
• The resolution of the iPhones and iPad screens are proportional, meaning that applications can be scaled to run on any of them (although they are better if they are custom-developed for each device)
• Gyroscope

The bad points of the iPhone 4 are:

• Small screen
• Non-standard screen resolution, so it not true 720p (this is because it is 4x the resolution of the previous iPhones – so that applications can be scaled to run on it).
• No kick-stand (so you have to hold it if you want to watch videos, etc.)
• Glass on the back (I think this will be reflective and annoying when it is on your desk)
• No FM Radio (I use the FM radio on my Windows phone every day when I walk into town to get my lunch!)
• CPU is likely to be under-clocked (as per previous versions of the iPhone) in order to improve battery life
• Only 32GB’s (max) internal storage
• No expandable memory (e.g. Micro SD card slot)
• The main camera has a small diameter lens
• Main camera is only 5mp (other mobiles have 8mp)
• Only single LED flash on the main camera
• Only a VGA quality front facing camera
• Video chat is iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only (this is likely to change in 2011)
• Video chat is only possible over WiFi (this is likely to change in 2011)
• Currently no video Skype support (this is likely to change soon)
• No standard USB connection (this is a big deal when you go to a friend’s house and want to charge your phone!)
• No HDMI output port
• No free satellite navigation software (this is a big deal for me as I use it a lot on my current phone). You can purchase TomTom for £60 – but I would much prefer Google maps
• Not true multi-tasking
• The App Store encourages developers to make all apps either paid for, or to include advertising (many Android and Windows Mobile applications are free with no adverts)

Many applications are being written for Android and Windows first, then the iPhone. This is because the iPhone is:

• Harder and slower to code for
• Many applications are banned on the App Store which are allowed on other devices (this has resulted in some high-profile developers moving from Apple to Android)
• You can develop Apple apps on PC’s, but you need additional software to do this (more hassle) – Apple are not making it easy to do this. There are many more PC’s out there than macs, therefore there are many more PC and JAVA based developers out there than Apple ones.

Summary

The Android and Windows operating systems are more open, have cloud based technologies (this is becoming increasingly important) and have better hardware, but the Apple iPhone 4 is a nice phone (albeit with some serious limitations) and does have a good range of apps.

My personal preference right now would be the Android operating system with HTC hardware (but with the iPhone screen technology – only bigger).

If there was a decent handset for Android I would get that. I am half-tempted by the iPhone – but only half-tempted. I really want Android, but I think I’m going to have to wait a few months for some decent hardware to come out. Then again, I don’t like to wait. So I’ll make my decision once the iPhone comes out.

Hi,

I started trading in shares late 2007. Last year I cashed in about £5.5k (I gained about 7k and lost about £1.5k). I am currently about £1,800 up with the shares I have and I have around £15,000 invested (including the £1,800). Plus that’s all tax free. There is a limit above which you have to pay tax – I don’t know what it is or how much tax, but I know I’m no-where near it yet.

So for me it has worked out really well so far. Certainly much better than just leaving the money in the bank! However last year was a very up and down year so I think I was quite lucky.

Trading shares is actually very easy on a basic level. You just choose how many shares you want to buy (or how much you want to spend and the website will tell you how many shares that will buy you), plus you pay a commission each time you buy and each time you sell shares.

I use https://www.foolsharedealing.co.uk/_mem_bin/formslogin.asp simply because when I looked they were the cheapest. Their online applications aren’t fantastic, but they are okay. I have tried a few companies and haven’t found a nicer site yet.

They offer 3 types of service. I use:

The Motley Fool Share Dealing Account: an execution only account that allows you to trade for a flat rate. £10 per trade for UK stocks and £17.50 per trade for International stocks.

Most of last year I traded in UK stocks. Mainly Barclays PLC, Heritage Oil Limited, Interserve plc and also a few others (Glaxo Smith Klyne, Renold). There were times when I was up 2k and times when I was down £2k. I made about 4k during the year. In October I had to sell and made a £700 loss on some shares. I had to sell in order to pay off a credit card (the 0% interest on purchases offer was expiring) – if I had sold a few weeks before I would have made £1k.

Right now I am investing in what I know – technology and I’m up £1.8k. I have shares in Apple, Google and Microsoft. I just sold some shares in Yahoo (made £200) to invest in Apple.

Basically, buying and selling shares is easy. I can’t remember how long it takes to open an account – might be a week. I think you start the application online and usually they send you something to sign and return by post, but I can’t remember if fool did that so it might only take a few days with them.

Once you have an account, you basically choose a company and you can do one of the following:

• Buy stock straight away in real time
• Set an order e.g. buy AAPL when it reaches 211.52
• Set an order to sell e.g. buy AAPL when it reaches 216.12
• Set an order to repeatedly buy and sell (e.g. keep buying at 211.52 and selling at 216.12) – Barclays shares go up and down a lot, but I haven’t done this type of trade yet
• Set a stop loss (sell if the price goes below a set amount)
• Set a tracked stop loss (sell if the price goes down by current price – 2.00). This might be good if you know stock will go up a lot then you want to sell if it goes down by 2p at any time

But beware of automated selling – it has caught me out. The markets often close high and then open the next day at a very low value (then rise quickly to the previous days value). I believe this is often intentional to catch people out. Because of this people warn against using automated selling.

That is the basics of standard share dealing. Obviously buying when low and selling when high is the tricky part!

Some things on my mind right now:

• Apple announcement on the 26th Jan. I think it is more likely to be an eBook reader, not a tablet. Amazon have the eBook market right now with the Kindle reader. On xmas day Amazon sold more eBooks than paper books. I do think that electronic media is going to be huge (I purchased ‘Crush It’ from http://www.vook.com recently – not an ebook but similar. Plus I have seen some really interesting eBook reader design concepts. Also the magazine and newspaper industries are continuing to be hit hard, especially with more companies moving to electronic media for advertising (better ROI). Whatever Apple bring out on the 26th, it’s not an update to an existing product line, it is going to be something new – and lots of iFan boys will be out there to buy it, so stock prices should go up (even if the device is a lemon). If it is an eBook Reader, I’m sure they will sell a lot via the iTunes store – and draw people away from Amazon at the same time. I would expect this device to come out in June/July, along with a new iPhone (with 5MP camera)
• 3D TV, films and gaming is going to be huge in 2010 and the next few years. So good investments might be in the manufacturers (Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, LG, etc.) but a better investment might be in the providers such as bSkyb who have been pioneering the technology – recording live football games in 3D for the past couple of years. Or as you know, many TV manufacturers all share the same components so it might be worth finding out which components they share and get shares in that company?
• OLED is getting a lot cheaper to manufacturer and will become even cheaper once more people start buying TV’s and portable devices with it. So investment in that area would be good
• Yahoo is very cheap right now. They are basically out of the search engine business, but very much into online marketing and other things. A few months ago they made a deal with Microsoft, which will benefit Yahoo 80/20, probably starting late next year
• Microsoft have lots of cool tech coming out, plus Windows 7 is selling very well. Project Netal is going to be huge (Xbox and PC), Azure (cloud based computing) is going to be mega
• Google now have their own mobile phone and the Android OS is taking off. Plus they have lots of other things too. They already have Augmented Reality and free Sat Nav with voice activation out on their Android OS for mobile phones

You can also make money when shares go down – it’s called Spreadbetting. I’ve dabbled in this but not seriously. I’d advise that you stick with standard share dealing at first.

Also, if you buy shares in USA companies, you also have to consider fluctuations in the the exchange rate. the $ has been getting stronger against the £.

I don’t usually invest less than £3k at a time because a UK buy+sell = £20, USA buy+sell = £34 so you need to make enough to cover that before you make any profit. I usually trade over short time periods – a few weeks to 6 months. However if you can invest over a long period of time, investing a lesser amount can be ok. Also, if you want to regularly invest in stock each month, you can do that for £1.50 per trade instead of £10. So £50-100 per month would be fine.

I use Google Finance (http://www.google.com/finance) for keeping track of my stocks. It’s not great but is ok.

Another thing I do is I keep taking out credit cards with long periods (9-12 months) of 0% interest on purchases. Then I use that card for everything and instead of paying it off, I put the money into shares. I have been doing that for about 9 years now and have around 18 credit cards from various banks. I’ve check my credit rating every so often and it’s very good, so having a large amount of bank accounts and cards doesn’t harm it at all – even if sometimes I forget to make payments.

Sorry for the long e-mail, I get carried away when talking about investments

I really would recommend it. There is a lot that I haven’t discussed here, so let me know if you have any questions

Regards.

Paul

Backup plan is a Herman Miller Mirra chair.

Me: Fantastic!

Reading on: The prize is free entry into a Triathlon

Me: That’s good I want to enter a Triathlon

Reading on: It’s a Sprint Triathlon – 750m swimming (in a  lake), 20km cycling, 5km running)

Me: Eek 750m sounds like a long swim and I haven’t swum in 2 years

Reading on: It’s a week next Sunday (28th) at Dorney Lake, Eton

Me: Whaaaaaaaaat!!!

So I asked Nathan if he thought it would be a good idea for me to enter and he said I should give it a try (note to self, ask someone else next time).

My thoughts are:

• I haven’t swum in over 2 years and I have never swum  a long distance before
• I only got a road bike 3 weeks ago so although i can do 20km, I’m probably not going to be very competitive
• I can run 5km before, but I have never raced that distance (I have done 2 half marathons) so i don’t know how to pace myself
• I haven’t had any time to train for it – Monday (tomorrow) needs to be my last training day else I’ll be weak on race day
• I don’t like to back away from a challenge, so I’m going to do it!!!

On Friday lunchtime I went to John Lewis and tried on some swimming goggles. I don’t know if I still had impression marks around my eyes when I went to pay for them, but it’s likely that I did…

Then yesterday, after working from 6am – 9am, cycling with Team MK from 9.30am – 1pm) and working from 1pm – 3pm I bought myself a wetsuit (my first one). I tried 2 sized of 2XU Elite on at Phil Corley Cycles. Then I tried 2 versions of the Orca at Twenty 3c (nice shop and very good customer service). In the end I bought the Orca 3.8. The first time I get to try it will be on the race itself!

Orca 3.8 Wetsuit

I went for a swim at Stantonbury Campus today – they have a decent 25m swimming pool (£3.50 to get in though which I think is a little expensive). Anyway, I got in, did a length and immediately realised that to do the equivalent of another 29 lengths wasn’t going to be a) quick or b) easy. I swam for over an hour (I probably rested more than I swam) in a fairly busy pool – I hope on the race day there aren’t people wading and swimming in front of me. The hardest thing about the swimming was getting the breathing right – I kept ending up with mouthfuls of water instead of oxygen.

I’ll go for a swim again on Monday after work – and then maybe Tuesday, but certainly no more after that.

Pasta, chicken and all other manner of carbs are on the menu for this week

Over the past 18 months I have competed in several Adventure Races which are great fun, but there is always an element of luck in them because competitors can choose multiple routes. So I would like to try a sport that would allow me to better measure my performance against other people. I did amazingly well in the Birmingham Half Marathon last October (2008) with a time of 1:39:30, 643rd place out of ~9,000 and I consider myself to be better than average on a mountain bike, so I am thinking that I would be okay at Triathlons…

A couple of months ago I joined Team Milton Keynes which is a club that encourages its members people to do various types of events such as Triathlons, Marathons, Mountain Bike races, etc.

So after joining the club I investigated getting the equipment that I would need for a Triathlon. I was thinking of getting a Triathlon starter kit, but in the end I have opted to get the things seperately (costs more but it means I can get better items).

So I have started with:

• Trek Madone 4.7, 58cm (carbon frame)
• 2 water bottles
• 2 Trek water bottle carriers
• Saddle bag
• Keo Look Classics pedals
• Specialized Pro Road shoes
• Specialized cycling shirt

Trek Madone 4.7 2009

I took it out for a ride today and it was tiring – using different muscles to the ones I use when I go mountain biking. Plus I really miss the suspension on rough roads and pathways.

Plus been used to a mountain bike, I’m used to the brakes and gears being in a different place!

I’m going out for a 35 mile ride with Team MK tomorrow morning (at 09:30 – I should be in bed!) so I’m just hoping I can keep up and complete the distance…

I think the punctures were just a result of bad luck as I was using good wheels, tyres and inner tubes (all of it just a few months old) and the area wasn’t rocky.

Anyway, always eager to buy new kit and have good equipment, I’ve just placed an order for all this:

Item: Specialized 09 Roval Controle SL Disc

Quantity: 1

Item total: £479.99

===========================================================

Item: Specialized Sauserwind S-Works 2Bliss (Pair) (26 x 1.8″ black)

Quantity: 1

Item total: £44.98

===========================================================

Item: Stans Notubes The Solution Tyre Sealant (32fl oz refill – no cup included)

Quantity: 1

Item total: £17.99

===========================================================

Item: Stans Notubes Tyre Sealant Injector / Applicator

Quantity: 1

Item total: £7.49

===========================================================

BASKET TOTAL: £550.45

===========================================================

DELIVERY: £0.00

===========================================================

TOTAL: £550.45

from https://www.freeborn.co.uk/.

]]> http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/05/23/going-tubeless/feed/ 0 http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/04/26/films-and-console-games-cheaper-to-rent-than-to-buy/ http://blog.techboy.co.uk/index.php/2009/04/26/films-and-console-games-cheaper-to-rent-than-to-buy/#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:04:03 +0000 Techboy http://blog.techboy.co.uk/?p=178 I’ve done some sums and figured out that from what I have bought in the past, it will actually be cheaper for me to rent and buy videos (Blu-Ray DVD) and console games (you can’t currently rent PC games).

Plus I have bought some console games that I didn’t like, so I’ve only played a few times.

I have used LoveFilm in the past (on a 3 free month trial) and found it to be a good service. I have just signed up to the Tesco rental service (which I believe uses LoveFilm as a back-end) on a 3 month free service. LoveFilm is cheaper than Tesco for the service I would want (£9.78 per month for 2 discs at a time, up to 4 per month).

The reasons I’m selling them are:

• I’ve bought myself a 75-300mm image stabilised version of the same lens
• I bought a Garmin Forerunner 50 to replace the Polar F6. Mainly because the interface between the F6 and the PC is rubbish and is very hit and miss. The interface between the 50 and the PC is very good. The F6 is actually a much better watch (and it interfaces with the gym equipment where the 50 does not) but at the end of the day, the interface with the PC drove me mad so the F6 had to go – shame

http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/paulr_mk

Then once the 450D came out I did a little research (here and on other websites and magazines) and found out that the 40D (which had been out for a while) was currently on a £100 cashback offer and was a better camera. So after a lot more research on lenses and prices, I decided to get it with these lenses:

• Canon EFS 17-85mmf4/5.6 IS
• Canon 70-300mmf4/5.6 IS USM EF

I already have 2 non IS (Image Stabalised) lenses which I’ll sell on ebay.

I ordered it tonight (along with a free spare battery and 2GB CF card) so I should get it on Friday! I’ll have a great opportunity to use it (if it’s good weather) on Sunday when I go for a hot air balloon ride!