Its not often I praise Microsoft but here is a product that I just can’t wait to have a play with. “Cool” just doesn’t do this device justice. I don’t necessarily agree with all the uses Microsoft suggest for surface computing; they focus too much on the business, advertising and marketing uses and not enough on the collaboration side, but I certainly do think this technology has a future.

On Sunday I finally did it - I bought myself an amazing digital SLR camera, the Cannon EOS 400D to be precise. You can read a review here. Put simply it is amazing. The freedom it gives compared to a conventional digital camera (or at least my old one anyway) is akin to releasing a caged animal into an area the size of which cannot physically be covered by the creature.

While I haven’t been able to explore all the features and indeed I’m still not entirely sure what some of them do, I have been able to practice with the different settings by taking pictures in and around the house and noting the flexibility and versatility of the options available. I can definitely see myself being able to take some superb pictures with this piece of kit.

The ability to change the ISO settings and manually focus are just two functions which make me excitied. While a film camera will allow you to focus to your hearts content its not something available on conventional digital cameras and changing the ISO with a normal SLR was reserved for film change time, and then you had to take a whole 24 or 36 shots at that ISO. Now I can chop and change at will and its fantastic - great for those low light level shots. I have high hopes for my sunset pictures in the future.

I hope to get out and about with the camera this weekend and if I get any good shots I will be sure to post them up here for all to see.

Recently I ordered a new phone from O2 as part of an upgrade package and renewing my contract. So far I’ve been very pleased with my Nokia 6280 but one thing is really getting on my nerves; the drain bluetooth places on the battery.

I have it setup such that I have control over my phone with some software on my computer when it is in range. This enables me to manage the phone book, send text messages and transfer files without touching the phone. I restrict access to the phone to my own machine by allowing only already paired devices to see the phone is there and gain access to it.

The issue is my battery only seems to last for around 48 hours standby, even if I don’t make any calls. For a phone that advertises a standby battery life of over a week this seems a bit of a con to me. My old Motorola Razor V3 had bluetooth enabled all the time (so a wireless headset I had could be enabled simply by switching it on) and the standby battery life was hardly affected at all. I appreciate that my new phone is more feature packed in general and this should be expected to use more juice, but seeing as it only seems to be bluetooth that causes this drain its not really acceptable. For any modern phone bluetooth is one of those things you can’t afford to turn off and yet likewise you are not always going to be able to get to a charger depending on travel arrangements etc.

If I thought writing to Nokia was going to help I would do so, but I thought I would post here to warn anyone who knows me and that might be considering getting one of these and uses bluetooth not to touch them with a barge pole unless they have a range of charging options available at all times.

Last week I was sent a brand new VoIP phone from Safecom to try out, test, report faults and write guides/reviews on. It is from this test that I formed some views on VoIP technology that I want to share, and hopefully some hints and tips that those looking to use VoIP may find useful.

For those unaquainted with the technology, at least in its use rather than what it stands for, VoIP is Voice over IP, and is the technology used to make telephone calls using your internet connection rather than a conventional phone line.

The advantages are easy to guess, even if you don’t know what they are from the off, its cost. You can get an incoming number, with no line rental that never expires from pretty much any area code in the country, and recieve calls on that number and make calls to all free numbers for no cost whatsoever. Not only that, but calls that do cost can be made at a fraction of BTs call costs and there are unlimited call packages available also.

After some tinkering and very little (read no) reading of instruction manuals, I had my new phone connected to my router and had popped it in the DMZ for ease of testing. I had also registered with Free World Dialup and SIPGate as two service providors to try out. The former just allowed calls in the VoIP world, the latter gave you a PTSN number as well.

I have to say, that despite initial issues with the phone that required firmware upgrades and other such things (no surprise as I was testing the phone and its was VERY new), all worked very well. The phone provides superb call quality, multiple incoming lines (and so numbers), and the ability to dial PTSN numbers when you have credit on your account as if you were using a normal phone.
One of the main downsides is bandwidth usage. The phone requires at least 100Kbps up/down on your connection for crystal clear call quality, otherwise you get distortion and breakups on call. While this is much less than many broadband connections provide, on the upstream it uses nearly half of what most ISPs provide, 256Kbps. For people who already struggle to run home servers on this upload bandwidth, it can cause problems in terms of slow server speed and call problems. If you run servers I would therefore recommend that you have a faster uplaod than the stock 256Kbps, or emply bandwidth limiting on your server(s) so that your calls don’t get swamped when more users than normal come online and use your servers.

The final issue, and its much smaller than the bandwidth one, is reliability. Free World Dialup is almost perfect. If you use STUN or direct access without a NAT all calls are made peer to peer and the connection reliablility is superb. Calling the PTSN network or recieving calls from it however can be a problem. The gateways are not perfect, and of the 50 or so times I have tried to make calls to and from my phone on SIPGate using the the PTSN network somewhere in the equation, 5 or so calls have failed. This is a high proportion, that I am sure will get better with time, but it is something worth considering - with VoIP be prepared to have to try to dial a couple of times sometimes and for people who try to call you from normal phones to have to do the same.

On the whole though, for normal home and small (home) business use, I would recommend VoIP, and in particular buying a VoIP phone for use with a VoIP type service. It allows you to not lose the familiarity and style of a normal phone, but to avoid line rental and have multiple lines at no cost. You also get caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, and calls on hold for free too. While there may be some teething problems when you first start, and calls may not be quite as reliable, once connected they sound just as good (if not better VoIP to VoIP) and so its well worth checking out.

Please leave your views on my posting or your own experience of VoIP in the comments section.