Sunday, October 5, 2008

Nokia 6280 Problem

Now my wife has the E71. So I took over Nokia 6280 and I'd like to use it to replace my old Samsung SGH-E388 phone and the old MP3 player. I think I would keep my Sony portable FM radio but just in case I could use 6280 as well.

However now I got a problem. My Starhub Green Prepaid SIM card does not work with the phone. The same SIM card works on my old Nokia phones and even the new E71 but just not this 6280. It rejects the SIM card no matter what I tried (cleaning up the SIM card and the phone SIM card holder). A trip to the Starhub service centre does not help either. They would not be able to help me to keep the number if they change the SIM card for me (SG$18 charge is acceptable to me). To me that is not a good idea as I have used the same number for 4 and a half years. So in the end, I may have to use my old Samsung phone. Or maybe I will look at some Windows Mobile Phone -- they are getting cheaper and cheaper. Windows Mobile SE phones like the Treo 500V is selling at SG$299 when I went to Sim Lim Square to buy the toner cartridge for our Samsung SCX-4200.

By the way, it is quite hard to find shops selling the SCX-4200 toner cartridges. Last time I tried Funan and only one shop was selling. And in Sim Lim Square, I only managed to find two. I paid SGD112 finally for the cartridge even though it was about SG$100 last time when we bought the printer.

For the trip, I also bought an SG$9.9 Sandisk 2GB SD card for the Wii and a SG$39 USB IDE harddisk enclosure for the old 250G IDE disk from my failed desktop.

A New E71

My wife would like to combine the functionality of her current three device into one. Her brother would recontract his Singtel mobile contract so this was just nice. He would buy the phone as a gift.

But it turns out that here requirement is actually high even on surface the high end requirements (Wifi, GPS) are not there.

1) Nokia 6280 Phone for voice/sms, MP3, FM radio. This was bought in the Christmas time of year 2006 as a gift. It is a good phone but the built-in dictionary is not good enough for medical study.

2) HP Jornada 545 (my old Pocket PC 2002 PDA bought in 2002) for dictionary function (MDICT and medical dictionary). It is old and heavy.

3) BESTA electronics dictionary with keyboard and voice. It is easy to use but

I was looking at Windows Mobile platform initialy since MDICT works. FM and Keyboard combination seems to be the problem. There are quite some Windows Mobile Professional (Standard is not considered as I think Windows Mobile is designed more with a touch screen in mind) with keyboard but most of them do not have FM radio. The only one selling in Singtel is HTC Touch Pro which costs SGD988 for recontract without trade-in (SGD888 for new line). She would not give up the FM requirement. If she gives up the requirement for the keyboard, there are some more choices like LG KS20 (SGD268 for recontract), some MWG (O2 XDA) device and some HTC devices. However after trying out a lower-end Asus P320 Windows Mobile 6.1 Phone, she did not feel like the keyboard requirement could be dropped.

The I started to look at Symbian OS platform. LG KT610 has keyboard and is cheap, unfortunately it does not have FM. In the end, we bought a Nokia E71 which has a lot of functionality (Wifi seems to be of good use, GPS is no use now). Most of the phones used at home are from Nokia and the quality of Nokia is really top notch based on our experiences.

Initially my wife did not quite like the outlooks. But now she thinks the phone is great.

A new Wii for us

I was thinking of buying a Wii for physical exercises for sometime.
After doing some research, I bought an authorized set this Wednesday
(public holiday in Singapore). I paid SGD710 (after comparing 7 shops
in Funan IT Mall) for the following.
1) Wii Sports Official Singapore version with 3 months warranty
by Maxsoft. Listed price is SGD499 but many shops sell for SGD519.
The so called official Singapore version is just the US version
plus an official 240V AC power supply for Singapore.
2) Extra set of Wii Remote (bundle with Wii Play: SGD79) and Numchuck (SGD39)
3) Active Life Outdoor Advantage (my wife's favorite) (SGD109).

The shop is GameScore (#05-05, Funan Digital Mall). The other
shop (Zavi) seems to have good deals with SG$499 basic sets
and SGD588 basic sets+extra set of controller offer. Many other
shops only sell SGD645 bundle (basic sets with three games and worst
is that you can not choose the game).

I was paying by cash so that the shop gave a bit of discount.
SG$710 is about US$500. I think it is much cheaper in US. Anyway,
Wii is only soft-launched in Singapore.

On Saturday, I also bought 1000 Wii Points (US$10) and spent 500
points on the Internet Channel. I spent the other 500 points on
a casual WiiWare (Defend Your Castle).

We are not serious gamers. If not, Xbox (60G Elite version is selling
at SGD499) and PS3 (basic set is selling at about SGD530) seem to
have better price performance ratio.

So far the experiences with Wii seem to be positive among three of
us in the household.