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GEEK! Product Reviews

Review: South West Broadband – VPS Hosting

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If you’ve been following my tweets lately, you’ll know that I recently moved GEEK! to a brand new VPS server. I did this for many reasons – but primarily because I felt that I was ready to move on from shared hosting and onto something where I’ll learn a little more about how webservers work. GEEK!’s been running well over three years now – and I’ve been through many web hosting providers during that time. I was beginning to get tired of hoping other people on shared servers wouldn’t jeopardize your uptime stats – there always seemed to be some kind of resource hog!

Nonetheless, I went on the hunt for a cheap-ish yet good quality VPS provider (I might have stayed with my old provider HostParcel as, in fairness, they were pretty good – but sadly they don’t offer VPS services) and was pointed to South West Broadband. They seem to be pretty new in VPS services, but I was interested in their good value and seemingly honest services.

So I signed up to their lowest price package to see what was what. For £8 a month, I was given a VPS with 256MB RAM (although I’m told this will soon become 512MB), 10GB storage, 300GB bandwidth and a Linux flavour of my choice (I was recommended to Debian). Pretty neat, I thought – and very good value nonetheless! They also offer a 12 month prepayment discount – giving you 12 months for the price of 10, if you’re happy to commit.

And to be totally honest, so far I’m really impressed. The customer support is superb – better than I’ve ever seen in a hosting provider. You get access to online support via Skype or a ticketing system – as well as an emergency telephone number which isn’t premium rate (this is something I really like to see).

The server they assigned me seems to work very well. You get full SSH access (which you’d expect) and you are allowed access to all the controls and commands that you’ll ever need. Response times from the server are incredible – from my college in Oxford I can get a response from the server just outside London in just 4ms – pretty darn good!

As for value for money – I’ve never seen such value. I’d always considered VPS services very expensive – but £8 a month is hardly expensive for the system you get.

So really I haven’t got many (if any) complaints. For decent value, high performance VPS servers with decent customer support, I couldn’t think of anywhere else to recommend you!

Oh, by the way – SWB aren’t actually offering their VPS packages on their website yet. However, if you contact them via twitter they seem to be happy to sort you out with a package. They also offer a decent range of shared and reseller packages, so if a VPS isn’t your thing, they’re bound to have something that is.

Keep your gadgets charged away from the plug – Yoobao 11200mAh external charger

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Ever since I got my new phone – the HTC Sensation XE (which I love to pieces) – I’ve had the problem of stupidly poor battery life. Apparently this is an age-old Android problem where many smartphones don’t have the battery capacity to provide a decent level of charge.

With me, being a bit of a tech-head, I’ve got to the point where my phone battery will barely get me through the day. That’s because I spend a fair amount of time downloading and using apps, interacting with social networks, and generally browsing the net. Whilst none of these tasks should be particularly demanding, they do have a massive negative impact on the battery.

One way of solving this problem would be to just stop using my phone so regularly. I have done tests and found that if I’m really frugal with my phone – just using it for the odd text and call during the day – I can make the battery last all day long with some power to spare. But I don’t believe that, when I’ve committed to spending over £500 on a phone in 2 years, I should have to be limited as to what functionality I can use on the go.

So, I had to find a way of keeping the battery charged when I’m out and about. There are many ways of doing this:

  • Obviously the easiest (and cheapest) solution is to look into little chargers like car chargers – which draw current from the cigarette lighter in your car – to keep the battery going strong. Yes, if you spend hours in the car daily (which many people obviously do) then this is your simple solution – but I personally don’t. Also, bear in mind that most smartphones will simply charge via a USB cable – so if you spend most of your working life in an office, then you should simply be able to plug your device into a port on your computer and charge it.
  • You could invest in “green” portable charging solutions – such as solar chargers. Long time readers of GEEK! will know I’ve tested multiple solar chargers in the past – and in many cases they’re absolutely great. However, they do take some time to charge and if you’re not within easy access to sunlight for most of the day, you’re wasting your time.
  • Another simple option would just be to buy another battery for your phone. This is a cheap solution and will work effectively. However, the problem with this is that if you can’t get a charging “dock” for your battery, you have to constantly switch batteries in your phone to make sure each one is charged up. This is a hassle!

The usual solutions weren’t going to work for me, so I had a browse on Amazon and came across an ideal solution. It’s called the Yoobao 11200mAh External Battery Pack. It’s available on Amazon for around about £30.

You might have heard of these external battery packs before. They’re quite simple really – they have a moderately powerful battery inside them and simply provide a USB port to charge any USB device you like. However, this one is very different!

For starters, the battery is insanely powerful. The 11200mAh battery is the most powerful portable battery I’ve ever seen. If you bear in mind that my Sensation XE has a battery capacity of 1730mAh – then this means the battery pack should be able to charge my phone at least 5 or 6 times (minus some inefficiencies).

It also is a dual-port USB charger. This means it can charge two devices at the same time. Not only that, but one of the charging ports is a 2 amp charging port – which means the device is quite capable of charging more demanding devices like the iPad 2.

The device also has an emergency LED light onboard – which is powerful enough to provide illumination when most needed – and because the onboard battery is so powerful, the LED can be (theoretically) illuminated for several weeks on a single charge!

There are also 5 LED power indicators which tell you how much charge is remaining in the device.

I’ve owned my device about a week now and have to say it really is a lifesaver when my phone’s battery is running down – for the sake of £30 it really isn’t a huge price to pay. With it being able to charge more than one gadget and also being capable of charging the iPad and other demanding devices – it’s perfect for any power-hungry user.

HTC Sensation XE full review: inches away from perfection

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Last week I decided it really was time to look into a new phone. I’ve had my trusty Nokia 5230 since April ’10 and, in all honesty, it’s served me very well – but recently it’s started to show it’s signs of old age. The battery isn’t lasting as long as it used to, crashes are becoming more common and it’s started shutting down all by itself. Enough is enough.

But I faced a tough dilemma. Ever since I got my 5230, I’ve been a very loyal member of giffgaff. They’ve been great to me – and their £10 per month goodybag was perfect for my everyday needs. However, I’ve always fancied an Android phone – and they’re expensive – so a contract of some form was inevitable.

Sadly, I am about to close my giffgaff account and transfer my number to my new O2 account – a sad farewell but never mind! Anyway, on to what you want to read about – the phone!

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed by the phone. Compared to the 5230 I had before, this is a gigantic step up with new features left, right and centre. Here’s a quick run-through of the tech specs:

  • 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon processor
  • 768MB RAM
  • 8MP dual flash & autofocus camera with 1080p 30fps video recording (plus dual microphones for stereo recording)
  • 4GB internal memory (1GB usable)
  • Up to 32GB microSD expansion (mine came with a 16GB card)
  • Android 2.3.4 (with HTC saying an upgrade to 4.0 coming in early 2012)
  • GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA
  • WiFi b/g/n
  • GPS, bluetooth
  • 4.3″ multitouch display @ 960×540 pixels

That’s the most important stuff covered – and as specs go I’d call that a pretty high end phone. And these specs do play a good part in the phone – with fast boot enabled the phone will boot in around 5 seconds.

Anyway, let’s have a run through most of the key features.

Look and feel of the device

I personally happen to feel that this is one of the best looking HTC devices I’ve seen in a long time. The device is reasonably flat on the front with no hardware buttons at all – just four touch sensitive keys. The screen is very is a beauty to look at – colours are crisp and resolution is excellent. On the side, you get a volume rocker on the left and a sleep button on the top-right of the device. The back of the device has a firm plastic-type feel – it doesn’t look too bad but more importantly it wipes out the potential problem of scratching the body.

Weighing in at around 150g,the device does actually feel quite heavy in the hand – but this is normal for a device of this spec. It’s not uncomfortably heavy to hold, but I think my arm would tire after half an hour or so on the phone.

Camera

The 8MP camera on the phone does a fine job of taking crisp photos. The autofocus works well and also responds to pinpointed focus on screen, whilst the dual flash does a brilliant job of brightening up the darkest of scenes. However, I wasn’t hugely impressed by some low light pictures – and whilst the flash is great it sometimes over-saturates the picture.

The camera is also capable of filming 1080p video at 30fps – and videos recorded look well focused and consistent (little or no dropped frames). The device also packs two microphones for stereo recording – although I found that there was sometimes a worrying amount of background noise picked up by the microphones.

Android and bundled software

I’ve never properly used an Android device before – so this was a great opportunity to start.  The device comes with Android 2.3.4 (and a promised upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich early next year) and it packs a punch. Most of the bundled software works very efficiently and loads up in lightning speed (partly thanks to the dual core 1.5Ghz processor).

There are a couple of pieces of software that do disappoint me, however. For one – the music player; which seems to lack many key features. For example, it fails to remove the word “The” when alphabetising artist names which can be very frustrating. It also fails to group albums in many cases – which is incredibly frustrating at times.

Another piece of software that annoys me a bit is the Mail app. It’s great for receiving emails and will render them very well, but it does a poor job of sending mail out. It doesn’t seem to be capable of inserting line breaks to emails and also doesn’t copy sent mail to an IMAP server. There doesn’t seem to be any option to change these settings – so if anyone can enlighten me here that would be great.

Battery life

If I have one major complaint about the device, it’ll be for battery life. It really is pretty poor (I’m told most Android phones are like this) if you play on your phone a lot. I had the battery from full to flat in 7 hours after quite a lot of app downloads and web browsing. However, if you take it steady and use it normally, it should get you through a day or two without recharge. Still, I’d like to think it’d last a bit longer at this spec of phone.

Bundled “Beats” earphones

I actually really like these – and it was a nice bonus to the phone to have a decent pair of earphones included. With the beats software running on the phone, you’ll get pristine bass and treble from the earphones. However, bear in mind that the “beats” software only really works with the music player – so other apps won’t be able to make use of it.

Overall thoughts

Overall, I’m really happy with the device and glad to have it as my companion for the next 24 months. It’s not perfect – and there are clearly some software issues that could well be solved in Android 4.0 – but overall it does a fantastic job of providing a fine balance of entertainment and practicality. With pricing for the SIM free model around about £430, it makes a great competitor to the iPhone – as it has much better tech specs and a larger screen. However, it’s down to the opinions of the person using the phone – and some would rather use iOS than Android.

If you’re interested to know the contract I got for the phone – it was the o2 200 DATA Bonus contract purchased from Dialaphone. Coming in at £536 for the entire 2 year contract, it makes great value. The plan comes with 200 minutes, unlimited (3000) texts and 500MB data every month. If you’re a data junkie, you can get the plan extended to 1GB data for an extra £4 per month (change it after you’ve started your contract and received the phone).

Are wireless headphones just over-hyped or are they worth the extra money?

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I was recently browsing through the Amazon store for a new pair of headphones. I have countless pairs of earphones – some of which have great sound quality – but they tend to break so easily and are only goody for light use.

However, whilst browsing, it crossed my mind to have a look at some wireless headphones. I’ve previously known them to be very expensive and many of them seem to have poor build and sound quality.

However, I stumbled across a £24 pair on Amazon that had good reviews and thought I didn’t have much to lose – so I bought a pair.

It’s fair to say – considering the price tag – they’re brilliant. They aren’t branded (so those of you who like to show off their brands – these aren’t for you!), but that never seems to bother me!

The sound quality is relatively good and I was pleasantly surprised. The headphones have decent bass and don’t seem to sound “tinny” in the slightest.

They will happily connect to any Bluetooth audio device in stereo and/or mono (eg PC, iPod touch 2G or above, iPhone, any smartphone, etc) and it’s really simple to get them going. Simply hold down the multifunction key for 7 seconds (when the blue and red LEDs flash) and connect to them as normal.

I was also really impressed by the battery life. I’ve had these headphones for several days now and have used them for hours on end – and they’ve still only been charged once! They usually outrun the battery life of my iPod by miles!!

My only minor complaint is the LEDs on the device. When you’re using the headphones, a blue LED flashes occasionally. Whilst this is fine in a well lit room or outside, it can be irritating if you’re trying to use them in the dark or at night.

Other than that, they’re a fantastic pair of budget wireless headphones and seem to outsmart many of their more expensive competitors. At £24 a pair, you really don’t have much to lose.

Is the new “Find My Friends” app by Apple a handy tool or a stalker’s paradise?

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To coincide with the release of iOS5 on October 12th, Apple released several new optional apps for iPod touch, iPhone and iPad. One of these apps is Find My Friends, which claims to be a handy tool for locating friends and family by making use of their GPS and A-GPS functionality.

The new app has been met with mixed reviews – with many claiming the app could simply be used as a stalker’s tool in the wrong hands.

However, I happen to think that the app is a very clever idea – with many not-seen-before features that make the app a safe, unobtrusive yet helpful way of keeping track of friends and family.

First of all, the app is completely opt-in only. This means that people can only track you with full permission granted by you – meaning nobody can publicly see where you are.

You can either invite people to permanent access to your location, or temporary “event” access which gives people access to your location for a set date and time. This means, for example, that if you’re meeting somebody at a festival, you can give them temporary access which terminates when the festival is over.

Also, you can quite easily turn off the app’s location tracking if you’re going somewhere you’d rather other people didn’t know about – simply by switching on ‘Hide from Followers” in the Me tab – making it easy to hide personal places. Whilst I’d quite like it to have a function where you could tell it not to report specific places, I’m sure this could eventually be possible.

Overall, I think this is an improvement on many previous tracking apps that have been released – and could seen as very useful to many.