Finally my K800i is gone...

After debating for a week, I have finally come to a decision.

When I bought my Nokia N95 8GB at the Comex 2008, I was supposed to trade in my Sony Ericsson K800i to enjoy the trade-in rate of $110. However, I did not return to the Comex the next day to get the trade-in offer.

The reason being that I still can't bear to let go of my K800i as I had liked it alot. Eventually I came to this decision after several long hours of thorough thinking. If I want to cling on to my K800i and sell off my N95 8GB, I would have to use it for at least 1 more year before I can change my phone. By then, the value for the K800i would have dropped drastically compared to now.

On the other hand, my N95 8GB is still relatively new and thus would be able to fetch a good price even if I were to sell it off a year later.

And so, I decided to sell off my K800i to my friend's uncle, who quoted a price of $120, $10 more than Singtel's buying price. Just now my friend, mayi, came to collect the phone from me. Hopefully everything will turn out well and I can get the $120 soon.

For now, I still have to get used to my N95 8GB as it's way of functioning is totally different from the K800i.

That's all for the day. See ya!

=)

It's the Comex 2008!

In the blink of an eye, 3 months have passed and it's now time for another big IT fair. This time round, it's called the Comex 2008, where all sorts of appliances can be found under 1 fair. Plus it's one of the biggest fair ever, occupying the whole exhibition levels of Suntec City.

With such a crazy huge area to cover, certain measures must be taken so that I don't ended up getting lost amongst the numerous vendor stalls. One main thing that I'm going to catch at the fair is the MSI Wind's 6-cell battery.

I made my way down to Suntec City today, right after the official ending of the JCI audit. I felt that it was a waste of my time to attend this last day of audit as I don't see myself being useful to the audit. Yet my boss insisted I have to come back on this Saturday to fulfill whatever needs she sees.

In the end, all I did was nothing. I just remained at my desk, doing nothing but surfing the Internet since I was so bored. I don't intend to do any serious work at all since it's a weekend.

Right. Back to the Comex 2008.

By the time I managed to reach Corbell's booth, it was nearing 2.30pm. But I ended up getting disappointed as I was told there's no stock for the 6-cell battery and there's no pre-order list for it as well.

In the end, I ended up getting gadgets that were totally bought on the spur of the moment. See the pictures below.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T300 and accessories

A free dry box for my Sony camera

Nokia N95 8GB

Yep. I bought a camera AND a mobile phone. Right on the same day too. Crazy eh? I don't really know the reason why I bought the Sony camera. Perhaps I was just too frustrated with my Casio Exilim EX-&0, which couldn't give me excellent night shots.

So far, I have not tried out the Sony camera yet but I hope I won't ended up being disappointed again. By the way, it comes with 5x optical zoom as well. So perhaps in future I could capture better shots of those stars when I go to their concerts. Hmmm...

Anyway, I got lots of accessories to go with my Sony camera. It comes with 2 memory sticks with adaptors, 2 batteries, 1 cleaning kit, 1 mini-tripod, 1 leather casing, 1 dry box and a course for learning how to use Sony cameras effectively. All these for $499.

As for the nokia phone, it happened to be a good bargain as it was selling for $488 with a 2 year re-contract of my plan. Add to it the trade-in I got for my Sony Ericsson K800i, the phone only costs a cool $368, which is several hundreds cheaper than before.

Truly a good bargain, though many people at the Comex bought the iPhone instead. Guess iPhone's sexiness still works here. Almost everybody who got to Singtel counters had indicated they were purchasing the iPhone. I seem to be the only odd one out with a Nokia phone and an old model at that. But I have been hankering after this N95 8Gb for ages. Its price was the only factor that stopped me from buying. Paying $698 for a phone that's not the IT phone of the moment simply doesn't sway me.

Now it's a different story. Wee... I'm still trying to figure out how to use the phone as the functions are totally different from Sony Ericsson's version. Damn...

Overall, I am quite pleased with my purchase. So, till the next IT fair shall we meet again.

Tada....

Nice Lunch @ Ben Jerry's Restaurant

Today's lunch was quite special from the usual fare that I had ate during working hours.

Together with my colleagues from NHGP, we went to a Ben & Jerry's restaurant along Dempsy Road (I think) which happened to be the only outlet that offers full meals other than just selling ice-cream.

I didn't take any pictures of the interior of the restaurant. However, I did snapped a picture of my food along with Susan's, using my Sony Ericsson K800i.

This is what I ordered. Some sort of a burger with ham & cheese. Yum...

This belongs to Susan's.

It was the only time that they took me along for their lunch sessions. I guess it might be due to the fact that my boss wasn't around and so I could have a longer lunch. Furthermore, I am not so close to these colleagues at my new company and thus there is no reason for them to ask me along all the time.

*sighs*

We shall see how things go. But, for the record, I really enjoyed the food. Just the food, thanks.

Yay! I finally gets my new Wind!

It has been a very long wait for this baby to come along. I had placed order for it in early June and was told that the estimated date of arrival is in July. Finally, after a month of waiting, my baby has come.

Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the MSI Wind.

I received the much awaited phone call from M/s Corbell yesterday afternoon to notify me of my wind's collection. How I wish I could go down to the office immediately to take the wind but it was not yet time for dismissal and their office hours are the same as mine. *sighs* I could only wait till today in order to go down and collect my wind.

And so, after 1 whole day of charging the batteries, I finally get to tinker with my new baby. Here are some pictures that I took of my new Wind: -

My Wind in comparison to my Sony Ericsson K800i

I bought the Wind for $864 with an upgrade of my existing 1GB RAM to 2GB RAM. Besides using the latest Intel Atom chipset, my Wind also has a 80GB hard disk, wifi, bluetooth, 1.3MP webcam, 3 USB ports, 1 ethernet port, 1 kensington lock port, 1 vga port, 1 mic port, 1 headphones port and a 10.1 inch screen. For the operating system, it comes packaged with Window XP home basic, which I prefer to use. =)

Setting up a wifi connection by myself sounds very daunting to me and I went about doing it pretty much reliance on a CD. This CD is supplied together in the package of the Linksys wireless router that I specially bought for use with my Wind. Now I can happily say that everything went well, from the connection to the security of my network. Now both my desktop and laptop get to surf Internet without any worries. Wee! =)

The only bad thing about the Wind is that it has a short battery life with the supplied 3-cell battery. If I were to wait for the 6-cell version, it would be another long wait again for its expected release period is September. Plus MSI has this bad habit of pushing back the release date so I decided to take the 3-cell version. I can't bear the long wait again. But the battery power life really sucks big time.

Other than that, everything is good. The keyboard is manageable. The screen is also relatively good. I don't own a EEE PC so I can't really compare the two netbooks together.

Nonetheless, I am loving my Wind a lot and since it's supposed to be power-saving, I am going to be using it more often than my Acer desktop. This should help to save a bit of electricity.

With the upgraded 2GB RAM, I am seeing a fast response to my applications as well. Unlike my 512MB RAM Acer desktop which works so slowly. Everything is so zippy on the Wind and I am more than delighted at its performance. Though the webcam is not quite good and the mic doesn't capture my voice at all. So when I tried out video-conferencing with Mayi, she can't hear what I'm saying and the image freezes occasionally.

All in all, I would say it has been really worth it. I don't regret buying this netbook and I hope it will be a faithful companion to me the way my Acer desktop is.

iPhone 3G Coming!!!

When I checked my email just now, I got a nice little surprise (ok, it's not exactly THAT surprising) from Apple Inc. See below:



The iPhone is coming to Singapore very soon. However, reports are speculating that it will most probably arrive after its launch in other countries. That means it will be after July. Boy, I feel an impulse to buy it immediately. Clicking on the website's retailers brought me to this:





Looks like Singtel is certainly very proud of being the first operator to announce officially that it will be selling the iPhone 3G in Singapore.

In any case, I read through the specifications of the new phone and was quite disappointed with it. The camera on board is only a measly and dated 2 megapixels. My current Sony Ericsson K800i itself has a 3.2 megapixels camera. Oh gosh, can't Apple upgrade the camera specifications? In addition, there doesn't seems to be an expansion slot included into the phone.

I don't know whether it would be worthwhile to buy the phone as Apple's presence in Singapore is quite limited. Its iTunes store doesn't even include the Singapore market. So a lot of things would be pretty much useless as Apple's products are closely linked to its iTunes online store.

Only time will tell. I'm praying hard. Very hard. =P