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GEEK! Product Reviews

Review: Windows Live Essentials 2009

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It’s finally arrived – the finished edition of Windows Live Essentials from Microsoft Live, including the well known Windows Live Messenger, as well as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Photo Gallery plus the Windows Live Family Safety and toolbar.

We’ve waited not far off a year for the newest version of Windows Live Messenger to appear on our screens, so I’ll kick off with that. The new interface of Windows Live Messenger is fantasic and is also much more customizable than the last version. It looks especially good if you have a version of Windows Vista (or Windows 7 Beta – it works on that too) with the Aero glass. It doesn’t look quite as good in XP. Nevertheless, looks aren’t everything, the new features are good. There’s a new groups feature – where you can create groups of your favourite mates and they all share the group with everyone in it, as well as a new favourites group for you personally. Fans of the Sharing Folders will be disappointed, as it would appear they have been scrapped. I personally never used the Sharing Folders as I would just send a file manually.

Windows Live Mail is also very good. New improvements include a much cleaner interface which is much more user friendly. Under the hood, there aren’t many really noticeable changes, but it is still definitely worth downloading and using – especially if you use Windows Live Hotmail a lot.

Windows Live Writer is a good blog editing program, but I don’t personally use it myself as I’m quite happy to simply use the WordPress admin interface to add whatever I need to. However, it does include some neat features including picture editing, and it does have some cool plugin support. However, nothing will beat the ease of use in the WordPress dashboard, and since they are both free, I’d go for WordPress.

The Windows Live Photo Gallery has always been something I’ve used when I’ve been viewing photos from my digital camera. It’s neat and tidy, and resembles the Windows Media Player interface vaguely. It’s also a simple way of transporting photos from your camera or memory card to your computer.

If you need a good package for writing blogs, talking to friends, emailing and viewing your photos, go ahead and download this. Computer manufacturers are already dispatching this with their systems (Dell has agreed to do this recently) so you may already have these programs with a new PC. If you don’t, head over to download.live.com to get it for free.

Windows 7 Beta: Hands On Review

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Well, after several hours last night in line for a download of Windows 7, I finally have it installed on the computer. I’ve had a little play-around with it and seen what the biggest new features are, and also checked to see if there are any common bugs.

Anyway, what do I think? Well generally I think it looks very promising. The speed and performance is relatively good, there aren’t too many bugs despite it being in beta, and overall it looks side of it is relatively good.

There are a few things I don’t like, such as the new “super bar” (new name for the start bar). I don’t think that designed very well at all at the moment – but don’t forget when Vista beta 1 went out the start bar looked nothing like the final release. Personally, I’m not a fan of the “super bar” not showing my window names. I don’t know what other people think, but I much prefer having the names of my windows shown to me all the time, instead of having to hover over the logo.

However, I do like the new feature on the “super bar” that shows on demand information such as recently used items, commonly used features and the likes. That would be very useful to me.

I’m a fan of the new boot screen which looks snazzy while not to over the top. The nice glow of the Windows logo looks good with the simple ‘Starting Windows’ text below it. Boot time isn’t fantastic on a 1GB RAM laptop with a dual core processor (running in Virtual PC over XP), but it’s not worryingly slow and I’m sure if I had just installed it on a proper partition on my computer it would have been much quicker.

Media Center has had a few modifications, but nothing ground-breaking yet. There’s a few new features, but I wouldn’t get too excited about that yet.

So should you go and get a download from Microsoft? Well, if you really want to test it for yourself, go ahead. Beware that Microsoft are limiting download to 2.5 million and the servers have been under extreme pressure since the launch of the download yesterday. You are very unlikely to be able to get in first time (or even second or third) so unless you’ve got a lot of spare time on your hands, just don’t bother. To give you an idea, I waited nearly 6 hours to merely get to the download. The download itself took another hour and a half or so (it’s a 3GB file so don’t download it if you are on strict bandwidth limits) and then you have to worry about the actuall install process, which on a slow computer may take a good hour or two. You could end up spending a whole afternoon and maybe some of your evening on this.

So if you want a simple answer, I recommend you don’t go downloading it unless you really want to see for yourself. But, on the other hand, I do think it is something to look forward to as Microsoft are saying it could be ready in time for Christmas 09.

Next up on the reviews list is the new Windows Live Essentials pack, which will be on review here on GEEK! in the next few days.

Update: Microsoft has postponed the public release of the BETA due to high traffic. They say that especially this morning there was excessive traffic to the beta. They are now “adding infrastructure support” and I hope the beta will be up again for download soon!

Further Update: Just went and tested the beta download, and the news that the beta is no longer available isn’t entirely correct. You can still download the beta. I just went to the Technet page and tried getting to the download, and it worked first time. Go and get it now if you want a download.

Review: Sony MDR-V150 Headphones with Reversible Housing for DJ Monitoring

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I needed some decent budget headphones, preferably by a good brand and if possible under £15. So I went looking on Amazon, and found these –Sony MDR-V150 Headphones with Reversible Housing for DJ Monitoring.

I didn’t find the headphones from the company I’ve linked to, because when I ordered them (25th Dec 08) they were available direct from Amazon. However, they were around the same price if you include shipping costs.

For budget headphones, they are a fantastic buy. Since I only paid about £10 with Super Saver Shipping (available at the time), I wasn’t expecting much quality. But they are very good – the bass sounds good and can be adjusted through Windows.

They look and feel relatively sturdy, although the ear muffs look a little cheap. However, the headphones are very comfortable and I would be quite happy to wear them for extended periods of time. They are dispatched as 3.5mm jack headphones, but a 6.3mm jack adapter is also included.

I had a quick go at seeing if I could easily pull them apart and they didn’t come apart. The ear muffs aren’t detachable which I find very good as I hate headphones that have detachable ear muffs. The moving parts don’t come apart without a severe snap. You can drop them onto a hard surface and they survive easily.

They have a size adjuster of 9 sizes, which should fit most people.

Overall I think they are very good for the price. They are Sony which makes them very good sound and sturdiness. There are definitely better headphones around if you can afford to splash out, but I wasn’t requiring top-notch headphones. If you need budget headphones that will sound good and last, these are the ones to buy. Don’t go with cheap unknown brands as they will not be good and probably will be very cheaply made.

A definite buy if you want to save a bit of cash in the credit crunch and still get a good sound!

The toughest phone around – the JCB Tough Phone

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Now most people aren’t that brutal with mobile phones. I mean, people bash them around a bit and scratch them a little, but nothing horribly serious. 

Unless you are the kind of person who is really, really lethal to your mobile phone, this post won’ t interest you. However, if you’re phone is constantly being replaced because you keep cracking the screen or dropping it excessively, this might be of interest to you.

It’s called the JCB Tough Phone. Incase you don’t know who JCB are, they manufacture farm machinery and very large tractors. The JCB tough phone is one of the strongest phones around, claiming that it is splash resistant, shock proof, drop resistant and dust resistant. 

I got hold of one recently and gave it a quick test. It’s very thick and well-made, and it’s well protected from drops and other common damages.

And that’s not it. It comes with 3 year warranty and no matter how you damage it, it if gets damaged, they’ll send you a brand new one for free. That’s it. No arguement. 

In terms of features, it is slightly down. There’s no camera, but there is bluetooth and most other common phone features.

It is quite costly at £170 SIM free but it might just be worth it if you damage your phone a lot.

If you want more info, head over to http://www.play.com/Mobiles/Mobile/4-/3517231//Product.html?searchstring=JCB&searchsource=0 or www.jcbphone.co.uk

The working Freecom Network Drive review…

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Well now I finally have a working Freecom Network Drive (http://www.geekonthepc.com/2008/12/12/the-final-freecom-network-drive-update/), I thought its only fair to post a real review for it.

So, I’m reviewing the Freecom Network Drive 500GB (available from http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=3402&CatID=8020&sCatID=1146266&ssCatID=1147446)

For a drive costing just under £80 plus a bit of delivery, it’s really quite good value. You get a 500GB drive, 10/100MB ethernet connectivity, USB connectivity, a local FTP server which can be made available all over the internet via port forwarding on your router, adjustable IP configuration, seperate directories, and a couple of other things you don’t really notice.

There are a few pros and cons…

Pros:

  • Very good value for money
  • Huge amounts of storage
  • Useful powersave option
  • FTP (local and internet-wide)
  • Generally does the job fine

Cons:

  • Occasionally crashes
  • Powersave option doesn’t totally turn it off
  • Gets quite hot due to it not having a fan
  • Only capable of about 2mbps when uploading to drive which isn’t rocket speed
  • FAT32 formatting means the dreaded 4GB file size limit; change it to NTFS and you won’t be able to access it over LAN (only USB)

So it does have it’s good and bad bits, but overall it does the job fine. It does get noticeably hot so beware of that but its not caused any problems so far. I believe it shouldn’t be a problem because the alliminium casing is designed to allow heat to flow through the device. On the upside, the lack of fan means electricity usage is very low.

I’d recommend it to most people as long as your not storing files more than 4GB per file.

General thoughts: Very good for most people, ideal as a home storage solution. Maybe not so useful for people who store DVDs on their hard disks, for example.

Update 3.2.09: Since I did this post back in December, Freecom have increased the price of this drive. However, the drive itself is still the same and they have not modified it.