Articles by Mitchell Oke

AblePlanet True Fidelity with Linx Audio Review

Having done some traveling during December, you start to get used to the accompanying rumble associated with it, be it from passengers waiting for a plane or the sound of an engine a few feet from your ear. The best way to completely drown the world out is with a decent pair of headphones, and if you couple those with noise canceling you are onto a winner. While noise-canceling headphones have typically been a pricey proposition, these new ‘phones from AblePlanet come in at just $129.99, and seem to be pretty good value.

Reviews

Jabra HALO Bluetooth Headphones Review

Jabra None of the previous Bluetooth headphones that I have had the chance to use have really felt “right”. Many of them were either just like two enormous earbuds in each ear tethered to each other with a wire behind my head, or were too large to chuck in my slender laptop bag that I carted to uni everyday. The idea of cutting the cord between my head and my pocket was a good one, but there were just too many drawbacks. That’s until I tried the Jabra Halo, which has brought me that much closer to wireless freedom. The…

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iPod nano 5th Gen First Look

As I’m sure many of you know Apple have announced their latest refresh of the iPod Touch and iPod nano lines, and while neither were really overhauled the nano picked up a few more features than its big brother. It’s been widely speculated that the iPod line-up would gain cameras, but the rumours were only half right, with the Nano squeezing in a VGA 30fps camera, whilst the Touch had to make do with a performance boost and higher capacities. The look hasn’t really changed much, with the same basic design of the 4th generation Nano. It is still super…

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HTC Touch Diamond2 Review

Anyone who read my review of the original Touch Diamond will know I wasn’t all that big a fan. In my experience it was slow, cheaply made and its battery life was appalling. The great thing about HTC is they keep trying and seem to learn from past mistakes, which made me all the more interested in testing the Diamond2. Off the bat I’d like to talk about looks, since that was one of the big selling points of the original. Whilst the Diamond was wrapped in a consumer-style glossy plastic shell, that upon closer inspection felt cheap, the Diamond2…

How to Do It Yourself!

Getting to Locations from the iPhone Calendar

One of the things that I found odd on the iPhone was the inability to use Google Maps to plot a route to a locations directly from the calendar. Consider how easy Apple have made almost everything else on the iPhone, it seemed to be a rather odd omission. You can easily navigate to an address or dial a number out of an email, but why not the calendar? This evening however I found a rather neat trick that manages to get around this problem with almost no fuss whatsoever. Take this calendar item I have for tomorrow (well, today…

Reviews

HTC Magic Review Part 2

It’s been a month now since I posted my first impressions, and it’s time to fess up my thoughts on the HTC Magic. Truth be told, it has truly surprised me! User Interface The Android user interface is simple yet elegant, and was definitely designed with finger actions in mind. Unlike Windows Mobile, Android never makes you wish for a stylus. Icons are nicely sized, menus are large and the flicking motions to advance lists, web pages and menus become second nature as soon as you start using the phone. For some reason Android feels a lot nicer on the…

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My First Impressions of the 13″ MacBook Pro

Since Dan posted his thoughts on the new 13” Pro compared to the previous 13” non-Pro, I thought I’d throw together the thoughts I’ve had in my first day of ownership as well. I bought my very first Mac back in 2006 and I have never looked back. It was a second generation 15” MacBook Pro, the first of the Core 2 Duo models, and it was fantastic. Beautiful screen, super fast, looked great and ran an OS that I would become very happy with. Today that laptop headed off to its new owner as yesterday I took delivery of…

Reviews

HTC Magic Review Part 1: First Impressions

A few months ago I had the opportunity to test out a HTC Dream (unlocked version of the T-Mobile G1), and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t like it at all. The software wasn’t that great, the battery life was poor and whoever thought of that design should be locked away forever. When I was offered an HTC Magic for a few weeks, I was eager to see if HTC’s latest Android attempt had address many of the issues I had with the original. Straight out of the box the Magic makes a much better impression than the Dream. With…

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VAIO P Review: Tiny and Mighty

When Sony told me they had a VAIO P ready to send out to me, I was more excited about it than any other device I’ve tested in a while. Having converted to the netbook faithful with an HP Mini 1000 a few months ago, I was looking forward to trying out Sony’s attempt. The design really does trump every other netbook on the market and is extremely reminiscent of their PictureBook series of ultra ultraportables from a few years ago. It is thinner than my Mini 1000, not to mention less wide and deep. It doesn’t even make it…

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HP Mini 1001 First Impressions

This week I started back at uni, and I was instantly feeling the two problems I have with my MacBook Pro: it’s not overly light for lugging around, and the battery is gooooone. Basically this left me with a choice of either buying a replacement battery or finally getting myself a decent “netbook”. Carrying around the Shift showed me how nice it is to carry around a small and light notebook, so I decided on the latter, and today picked up an HP Mini 1001TU. This model has the 1.6Ghz Atom CPU, 60GB HDD, 1GB RAM and Bluetooth. I paid…

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Nokia E63 Review

About six months ago I bought the best phone that I have ever owned: a Nokia E71. Obviously this is a personal thing, since the E71 wouldn’t suit everyone’s needs or tastes, but for me it just fitted into every situation I put my phone in. It is the perfect messaging device, with it’s QWERTY thumboard that has excellent feel and feedback, it has outstanding battery life thanks to it’s enormous 1500mAh battery, it is as thin as possible without being uncomfortable to use, it has an bright, rich display, that while low on dimensions and resolution, looks absolutely great…

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Windows 7 on the HTC Shift

There have been two activities that have become the norm across the world of technology blogging in the last couple of years: unboxing, and loading Mac OS X onto netbooks. As a person who is lucky enough to have the opportunity to play with lots of phones, notebooks and other “unboxable” items, I’ve done the former a fair bit, and as an owner of a MacBook Pro for the past few years, I can understand peoples need to load OS X onto any device with an x86 processor. Another trend that’s come up in the last month or so is…

Reviews

HTC Touch HD = Stands for Hot Damn!!

Only a few days ago Judie posted her first impressions of HTC’s hottest new devices, the Touch HD, and I am lucky enough to be able to follow that up with my own! For several weeks I have had my cursor hovering over a Touch HD in Hong Kong on eBay, but I wanted to try it out before I committed over $1000 to purchasing one. At last, the Touch HD was released here in Australia, and HTC’s local PR agency received their review units! Having gotten my name on the list some time ago, I was set to receive…

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HTC Shift – Shifting OS from Vista to XP

While several members of the Gear Diary team have been loading up their netbooks with Mac OS X (and why wouldn’t you, it’s great!), I recently changed OSes on a device that highlighted the shortcomings of Windows Vista: the HTC Shift. I reviewed the Shift last year, and found it disappointing. With its low res screen, pokey keyboard and poor battery life, it was hard to recommend at its staggeringly high price tag. The worst thing though was the performance of Windows Vista. With its paltry 800Mhz processor, it just crawled along trying to run Microsoft’s bloated OS. It’s unfortunate…

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Blackberry Bold 9000 Review

Not too long ago I bought the Nokia E71, since it was pretty much everything I wanted in a smartphone. Excellent keyboard, excellent signal, excellent battery life, and a stable platform. Since I bought it I’ve been very happy with it, and I didn’t think anything would be able to topple it for me. Until now. Off the bat, I would like to let you know that the Bold is my first Blackberry. I’ve very briefly played with several Blackberry’s before, but I’ve never used one in depth or as my primary phone. While I may be a Blackberry virgin,…

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Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Review

Yes, the BlackBerry Bold and Touch Pro reviews are coming, but the Mini 9 showed up on my desk two days ago and I just had to post my thoughts on it, since it’s the first “netbook” I’ve really used since I sold off my Eee PC, and I could instantly tell what I thought of it. Out of the box the Dell looks great. With its glossy black lid and compact dimensions, it’s absolutely fabulous to carry it around. This morning I left home early so I could go to the coffee shop for a little while before work,…

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AOC 2219P2 Jenio 22″ LCD Review

How often these days do you see 4×3-aspect LCD monitors for sale? I’d be willing to bet it’s not often. Widescreen has simply dominated the PC market, from laptops to desktops, which a lot of people thinking is a wonderful thing. It makes laptops smaller, it’s better for watching movies and it lets you put documents side-by-side. But the downside to this is considerably less vertical room, and if you think about it that’s where you often need it. How often have to been to a website that is almost twice as wide as it is tall? Or written a…

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Palm Treo Pro Review

The Treo Pro really needs to be a success for Palm. The company that was once a team of innovators has obviously been talking to the green movement, since for ages they seem to have just been recycling. The Treo 750 was good, but flawed when put up against the competition. For a kick off there was still no WiFi, despite the move by other manufacturers to make it a regular feature in their high-end phones. GPS was notably absent too, and the design was all too similar to the Treo 650, which came out in 2004. Its chubby dimensions…

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Palm Treo Pro First Impressions

Today I received a device that could really be a make-or-break product for a company that has been stagnate for quite some time. The Palm Treo Pro really needs to be successful for Palm, as their current line-up leaves a lot to be desired. First off I’ll start with the packaging. Like the box the HTC Touch Diamond comes in, the Treo Pro packaging has a corner lopped off. Why? No idea. It is quite nicely presented though, with the device on display as soon as you take the top off. Included in the sales package is the Treo Pro,…

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Nokia 6220 Classic Review

Nokia’s latest model for the mid-range market looks to be a cut-priced N95. While it misses out on the larger screen and WiFi radio, it holds onto the 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, HSDPA radio and built-in GPS, at around half the price of the N95. The recommened retail for the 6220 is $689, but as is often the way with these things it will likely be cheaper in-store. I’ve been using one as my main phone for the last week, and I am very impressed…almost. Unlike the N95 the 6220c is a regular candy-bar phone, no funny business there….

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AOC Rivio 2230Fm 22″ LCD Review

There is no shortage of widescreen LCDs available these days. 19″ Widescreens have become the norm, and 22″ Widescreens are not much more. Manufacturers need to do something to differenciate themselves from the others, be it with available connections, built-in card readers and USB hubs, contrast ratios, viewing angles, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. AOC have decided to do something a little bit different. Their latest model, the 22″ 2230Fm, makes it possible to do away with the PC altogether, and brings new meaning to “Digital Photoframe”. It is a good looking screen, something I can’t say for the AOC screens I…

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