Blog Marco

Which mobile phone should I buy? Should I base my decision on the mobile phone model type or the cellphone plan and the amount of credit I get during the usual 24 month contract?

If I base my decision on what type of phone - which mobile phone type of function should I buy and look for? A Camera phone - mobile phone with camera as key feature, although there could be other fuctions like music player, but less advanced? Music phone - mobile phone with music playback capability as key feature, although there could be other functions such as camera / but less advanced? Multimedia phone - mobile phone with equally good functions of camera, music and video? Or a Smart phone - mobile phone with PDA like function?

If I base my decision on the mobile phone plan what numbers and costs should I look at? What will be my usage like? How many minutes will I be talking on the phone? How many SMS' will I send? How much credit will I need? Am I comfortable with a two year plan? What is my budget for a phone?

I'm a bit of a bicycle enthusiast. I enjoy riding my bike for exercise and leisure. I did the Spring Cycle in Sydney in 2006 and again last year. The Spring Cycle is a 50km public cycling event in Sydney held annually in October riding from North Sydney to Sydney Olympic Park. It's been a while since I gave the bike a clean: especially the most important part of the bicycle: the gears and the chain. So now I have to learn how to lubricate my bicycle chain. And from my research and asking around (thanks to the helpful guys at the bicycle shop Cheeky Transport.)

So what grease do you use to lube a bike chain?

If you live in the great ol' USA you may want to buy Entertainment Weekly. They have a free flash drive in their current September Issue of their magazine. They have a new marketing ploy of attaching a USB drive to the magazine advertising CBS and Cadillac when you insert it into your computer. Formatting the drive gives you 120MB. I assume the flash drives cost pennies to make and that someday soon we will be flooded with them like we used to be flooded with AOL CDs.

The International Consumer Electronics Show has introduced the new concept of having an all in one DVD Player and Laptop combo. Toshiba has come out with new notebooks with its "Express Media Player" feature, which enables users to instantly play audio or video DVDs and CDs with a simple push of a button and more importantly without the need to first boot the Microsoft Windows operating system. Actually, Toshioba was among the first to feature a no-waiting TV mode in 2004 with its Qosmio multimedia laptop. It then began to put the boot-less mode on its high-end models. This year, Toshiba plans to integrate the feature in about 80 per cent of its models.

Having been confused by the manufacturers about which DVD burner/player to buy - whether it is the PLUS (DVD+) or the MINUS (DVD-) variety, we have the battle between the Blu-ray and the HD DVD standards. Everyone run for cover!