One of the highly anticipated exhibition that I was looking forward, but felt slightly short-changed by my expectations, especially since going to the yearly HiFi equivalent in Singapore. Wasn't able to take pictures of a few vendors that caught my eye as I was in a rush to catch the Manyoo/Chelski match, and having the restriction of only able to go in at 1.30pm did not help at all.
As I was looking out for a pair of headphones to replace my Ipod originals, was hoping to find some bargains at the show. Tried out the
Shure e series, was simply bowed by e4c, I have to say its probably the best pair of closed earphones I have ever heard before. No noise cancellation technology involved, just plain simple in-ear bud designs to isolate the noise from the music. The highs and lows are so well defined, its like listening to my old pair of Beyerdynamics headphones! Seriously AWESOME, but the price of £169(already show price) was not exactly that attractive. Searching on ebay reveals that I can get similar at HALF the price, so will probably get that as my own Xmas present closer to Santa day.
Another interesting exhibit was from
Ferguson Hill Studios. They had these pairs of loudspeakers and bass that will probably take up half of your standard room, and their design is soooooo....neat! Made entirely of perpex, they are 100% see-through. The soundstage was incredible, vocals perfectly delivered and mid and highs were nice, but not perfect. As the test disc were clearly towards vocals and details. All these will set you back a cool £11,000, although you can order a set of similar but at a much smaller size to pair with you iMac for just under £500, expected to be ready by Jan 06.
Much anticipation was circled around HD TV, with most households expected to receive the signals by end 06. Certainly looked very good on the LCD screens I must say, provided I can afford to buy a screen that big. Philips LCD with Ambi-Light is pretty neat as well, with colours coming out on both sides behind the screen accordingly to the colours you see on the TV, so that you are constantly in the mood of what you watch. Sharp showcased the BIGGEST LCD screen at a monstrous 62"!
I was quite impressed with the
Arcam Solo though, been a All-in-one system with CD, Amp, DAB/FM, with a good 4x75W power output for £1000. Reasonable considering that its coming from Arcam. Denon demostrated a similar all-in-one device as well, with even a connector that connects to your iPod directly so that you can select your tunes using Denon's remote, Nifty!
If you are into something minimalist, check out
Audica, a new player coming from the Cambridge area of innovation. Rang into a few listening studios and still feel Cyrus is still the ones for me to get(in realistic sense). Excellent build and sound, together with high price tag of course =P Other than that, I think the Bristol HiFi show should be a better choice to really hear the best stuff out there, and that will happen sometime in Feb 06. Till then...
In conjunction with Mr Kofi Annan's arrival at Pakistan today, have added a link for users to have a way to donate easily to the quake that killed more than 74,000 people and left millions others homeless in Pakistan, Kashmir and India.
Got myself a 2nd hand Palm Treo 600 from ebay a week ago. Needed a phone which I can access my mails on the go due to work, and was kinda getting irritated by my old Sony Ericsson T610's too-slow-to-my-liking interface. To illustrate this point, try to visualize that the letters appearing on the screen is not as fast as your fingers typing on the keypad. But I must say its still a brilliant phone, one of those that has almost everything that you needed. Alas, I have to move on, and after spending 1 week playing around with my "new" toy, thought it is time to pen down my 2 paragraphs of Treo's brilliant lineup of smartphones.
under direct sunlight. The qwerty keyboard is really fun to use, especially composing sms or emails, much better than T9, although I am sure I am still nowhere near the gal who holds the world record for SMS-ing. As compared to Treo 650, there are a few key buttons that are not available in this model, namely the dial and hang up buttons, and the keypad is slightly too close to each other, luckily I have thin fingers, so it doesn't bother me too much. Another key feature which I feel strongly is the lack of a sroller by the side, similar to the one on Clie or even Blackberry. That is very useful if you are scrolling through emails using 1 hand. The home and menu buttons located at the bottom right hand corner are also extremely unfriendly as you will always find it difficult to press it with one hand. This has been remedied in the 650 though. Software is pretty much typical for OS 5 compatibility although I am still struggling to get use to not been able to play the games which I was playing on my hi-res Clie. As I am using SnapperMail to read my mails, I am starting to really understand why Blackberry is such a mass market leader. To have mails pushed to your handheld as and when it is delivered is simply one of the best innovations that RIM has come out with. Many palm apps try to mimic this behaviour by doing sync with your POP/IMAP mailboxes all the time or at intervals, but this just drains the battery at ridiculous rate, since you constantly have to be connected to GPRS. But for 650 owners, there is good news come Jan 06 as Palm has announced that they will be making Blackberry Connect to 650 owners and I think that is when Treo is going to gain much market share again, together with the planned release of Treo 700w.
One of the highly anticipated exhibition that I was looking forward, but felt slightly short-changed by my expectations, especially since going to the yearly HiFi equivalent in Singapore. Wasn't able to take pictures of a few vendors that caught my eye as I was in a rush to catch the Manyoo/Chelski match, and having the restriction of only able to go in at 1.30pm did not help at all.
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