Category Archives: Product Reviews

GEEK! Product Reviews

TVCatchup.com – Watch live freeview TV online for free!

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I just randomly found a fantastic free service. It’s called TVCatchup – bit of an odd name for a service that isn’t a catchup service. EDIT: One of the moderators has let me know that they are planning to add in recording capabilites in the future – looking forward to that.

It allows you to stream all of the freeview channels available in the UK for free. You can watch every free-to-air channel online, using the helpful online service. It even has a simple but useful EPG that runs in your web browser.

The service, predictably, is only for use in the UK. However, it works anywhere in the UK that can get a broadband connection, so if you’re in an area where Freeview/digital signal is poor, this service is a godsend! If you don’t have a TV license, it’s probably a bad idea to use the site, too. TVCatchup has said it will not actually police this.

You simply sign up for a free account and you’re off. Watch whatever channel you want whenever you want. The only thing you have to be careful of is your bandwidth limit – this will quickly chew up your bandwidth – so if you’re on a tight limit, I wouldn’t recommend prolonged viewing.

There is a short advertisement when you start a channel, but as far as I know that is all (with exception to adverts shown on TV channels).

I think it only works on some ISPs. Me, being on Tiscali (don’t ask why), miraculously it works. The service will tell you on signup if your ISP is not supported. TVC has told me that it is peered with all ISPs – I’m not totally sure what this means, but presumably there are few (if any) ISPs that actively block usage of TVCatchup.

This really is a fantastic service. I can now get all the channels I don’t get on Freeview, online. If you want to see for yourself, get a free account at www.tvcatchup.com.

New in Office 2010 – The new “dashboard” (as I like to call it)

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Well, as promised, I’m going to be doing some in depth previews at new features in Office 2010. Today, we’re going to have a look at the new replacement of the “ribbon button”‘.

In Office 2007, there was a circular “ribbon” button that users would click to get the general functions of Office – such as getting a new document, saving, printing etc.

Now, the “ribbon” button has been replaced by a simple rectangular button, as shown below.

officebutton

Click it, and you’ll get a brand new “dashboard”. Here is the one for Microsoft Word.

officeworddashboard

There are differences to the “dashboard” for every piece of software in Office 2010 – they all have their own colour and they each have different options specific to each piece of software.

In the “dashboard”, you’ll find all the features you’d expect in Office – new document, open, save, print etc. You’ll also find recent documents and ways to share the document with others.

It’s all fantastic, and I really love the new idea. However, it does have its problems:

  • When you are in the “dashboard” and you click the red X (exit) button, it closes the whole of Office, rather than just the “dashboard”. Ok, it is something you’ll get used to and remember not to do, but it can be really annoying. You just have to get used to using the ‘Back’ button at the top left of the dashboard. I’m sure Microsoft will do something about this before the final release, though.
  • The print button is a little unobvious – you click the ‘Print’ section, choose your settings, and then its quite hard to find the ‘Print’ button. The button you have to click is actually at the top left, but it was a little hard for me to find at first (yes I know – you’re thinking “well how dumb can you get?!”, but honestly – you don’t see it at first).

Other than that, I really like this new “dashboard”. It works really well, and it’s really easy to access. Good one Microsoft!

First looks at the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview with screenshots

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Well, I was very pleased to receive an email from Microsoft early this morning letting me know that I’d been accepted for the invitation only Office 2010 Technical Preview. So I’ve got my copy, and I’m going to do a little review here so people can get an idea of what they are in for.

Well, to be honest, I’m pretty impressed with it. The GUI is pretty similar to Office 2007’s, but there are some pretty cool new features that have really brushed up the usability of Office. The image below shows a typical new Word document in Office 2010:

office2010

If you view the image full size (click it), you’ll see the ribbon from Office 2007 has gone – hoorah! It’s been replaced with a new button with the Office logo, which is a different colour for each piece of Office software. Click it, and you get a handy little menu of Options. Here’s what it looks like in Word…

2010menu

It’s quite cool. Anyway, that’s enough of a taster for now. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to do a series of blog posts outlining the highlights of Office 2010, so stay tuned to GEEK!.

Charge your gadgets for free… while you’re on the move – with the Black Hills Outdoor Solar Backpack (review)

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Black Hills Outdoor Solar Backpack

I finally have my solar backpack – have been wanting one for ages. I just love the idea of being able to charge all of my gadgets for free, with the bonus that I can basically be doing whatever I want – whether it’s walking, cycling – whatever.

Anyway, I bought the Black Hills Outdoor Solar Backpack because it basically did exactly what I wanted. And at £49.99 it was hardly expensive.

It arrived in 3 days – ordered June 30th and it arrived today (July 3rd). It arrived it good packaging – no signs of damage in transit or anything like that. I was very pleased to find that they hadn’t wasted time and resources with stupid packaging – it was simply wrapped in a plastic sheet, which was in the postage bag. I hate companies that ruin the environment with pointless amounts of packaging, as you can probably guess.

I opened the back and I found the 17 adapters, battery back, and instructions. The adapters cover most phones and gadgets. It charges my Nokia 3120 Classic, PSP and my iPod Touch 2G very well so I’m very pleased with that. Sometimes the iPod Touch’s charge takes a little while to initiate and requires a bit of fiddling with the adapter, but it works well once it is connected.

Charging a device is very simple. You simply connect the charging cable to the ‘OUT’ socket, and then the adapter onto the charging cable. Then you just turn the switch to the 5.8V setting and off you go.

The solar panel is about the size of a 6″x4″ photo, so it isn’t huge, but on the other hand it catches light very well and is pretty efficient. You can tell how much energy is being captured by the solar panel with the LED on the battery pack. If you connect the solar panel up to the ‘DC IN’ port on the battery pack, the LED will show how much energy is being captured. The brighter the LED is, the more energy is being captured.

The backpack also comes with a USB cable for charging the battery by USB, and a wall adapter for charging via the mains. This is useful because you can charge the battery before you go out, so you always have power available even if there is no sunlight.

Another cool thing is that you can charge the battery pack and charge a gadget from the battery pack at the same time. This means you can have the solar cell charging the battery pack, and have the battery pack charging your gadget.

There is also a bright LED torch on the battery pack, which is not particularly big, but can light up small areas if required. I don’t really see the point of this, but it is an outdoor bag so I guess it could come in handy.

BHO say that the solar cell is waterproof and the bag is splash proof. I haven’t tested this personally, but it’s good that I don’t have to worry if it rains.

Overall, I’m really happy with the backpack. For £50 it’s very good value for money (solar cells aren’t cheap at the moment), plus it has a years warranty if it stops working for whatever reason. It will definitely come in handy for me, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes to be outdoors.

I’ve posted up a photo gallery on Flickr, so you can have a look at the product for yourself.

Freecom Network Drive and 4GB file size limit – a little discovery

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I’ve discovered something very pleasing about the Freecom Network Drive today.

I was copying a bunch of files to my Network Drive today, not noticing that in the bunch there was a 6GB file, which in theory should not copy because there is theoretically a 4GB file size limit on the Freecom Network Drive since it is formatted in FAT32.

However, after leaving the computer to copy the files, I came back to check it later that afternoon, and to my amazement the file had copied with no issues. I opened the file from the Network Drive and it worked perfectly.

I was astonished, so I decided to connect the Network Drive up to my computer over USB to see if their had been any disguised file splitting or anything like that. And yes, there was. The file had split into one 4GB file and another 2GB file.

I connected the drive back up over LAN and the file was one 6GB file again.

I am very pleased with this, as it means that the 4GB file size limit is not necessarily true. Freecom doesn’t advertise the fact that the Freecom Network Drive can split files and therefore store files bigger than 4GB, so you might want to bare that in mind if you are considering getting a network drive in the near future.