Acer c20 Pico Projector

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The Acer c20 Pico Projector is about the same size as a modern SmartPhone but slighter thicker. It has a built-in battery so you can, in theory, use it without mains power. It comes with a charger and several cables/adapters to connect to various devices such as your laptop.

My initial idea was that it would be good to carry in place of a larger projector when doing small venue presentations, demonstrations or training. However I found that the connector to connect to a SmartPhone was an optional extra and when connected to a laptop the native resolution was less than the standard laptop screen so although the effective screen size was larger, the amount you could get on was less. I later found that better results were achievable if your laptop has an HDMI output in addition to the standard VGA output. However, in a normally lit office environment the image was also difficult to see clearly unless you beamed the image onto a screen close to the projector but this defeats the object and you may as well use a normal laptop screen or 19-21” TFT monitor.

Connecting the Acer c20 to a Freeview Recorder using a HDMI cable and mini-to-standard HDMI convertor (not included but not expensive) and dimming the room light levels and the c20 appears to have found a possible use. Probably not in an office but in a living room or more realistically a bedroom as a replacement for a flat panel TV.

With a flat, light coloured wall the images are clear and watchable without having to also acquire a projector screen. The HDMI feed from a HD device will give High Definition video quality up to 1080i. In my tests I mounted the projector onto a standard inexpensive camera tripod stand (<£10 from Lidl), fed a freeview HD signal from an AC-Ryan PVR and projected onto a flat wall 8ft away and achieved a watchable image with a diagonal image size of about 60”. The projector also comes with a built-in speaker and headphone/audio out socket.

The advantage of this over a TV or conventional protector is that is uses very little power (<10w), runs silently and gives you a 60” image for the same price as some much smaller TVs but takes up virtually no room.

On the down side I found that the projector did not run very long on battery so best to keep it on mains and you need to have a device such as a laptop or freeview/sky HD/DVD unit to feed it a signal as it has no built-in tuner.

I found the Acer c20 pico projector to be good, but maybe not for the original purpose intended. It takes very little time to setup, can be quickly focused using a manual focus wheel on the side although I did find that after the projector had been running for a while you had to refocus the image and the full image edge to edge/corner to corner – was not in full focus but to be fair I was probably pushing it at 8ft away and wasn’t too bothered that I was aiming exactly perpendicular to the wall.

Typical price is £160-180 online

Windows Phone 7 Review

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Samsung Omnia WP7For several years the Apple iPhone has dominated and redefined what a SmartPhone should look like and how it should do things. Microsoft was one of the first with a SmartPhone but it never grabbed the attention that the iPhone did. This is probably because the iPhone was designed for the iPod generation of domestic users and in time it became useful for ‘business’ functions.

With the Windows Phone 7 (WP7), Microsoft appear to have gone back to the drawing-board and looked at how they can capture the social networking generation but incorporate the easy to access ideas that the iPhone brought us.

Unlike the iPhone, the WP7 based phones are made by several manufacturers including Samsung, LG and HTC. This means a few more options although Microsoft insists that all WP7 devices must have a 5 MegaPixel camera, 3 standard buttons at the bottom of the screen and a standard resolution screen along with a few other requirements.

The phone I have been using for the last couple of months is the Samsung Omnia 7 which replaces an aging iPhone 3G. The phone is slightly wider and about ½” taller but after using it for a while the iPhone screen looks too small and the Samsung is much faster at starting apps, moving through pages, etc – but then it does have a faster processor than the iPhone 3G – the iPhone 4 may be a similar speed.

Everything is easy to setup and use. The design of front page of the WP7 means that you can quickly see missed calls, waiting text messages, email and social networking apps like facebook and twitter.

Many of the features that made the iPhone appealing were actually downloaded apps. Obviously these can’t be transferred across but thankfully many of the apps authors have developed apps for the WP7 too.

Anyone wanting to link the WP7 to a corporate MS exchange system will be pleased to know that this is simple so all your emails, contacts and appointments are safely held on the company server. It also comes with Word, Excel and OneNote so you can read and edit MS Office files too. It can also open files directly from sharepoint servers although I haven’t spent enough time trying to make that work.

Like the iPhone it doesn’t currently support Flash video and like the original iPhone it doesn’t do copy and paste yet. An update is planned for jan/feb this year which promises copy and paste and, apparently, speed improvements to various apps start times.

The screen on the Samsung Omnia 7 is large, very clear and bright. Video is smooth and audio is clear. The camera takes excellent photos and impressive 720P HD quality video clips.

First impressions : Good first attempt at WP7. As with the iPhone I expect it to improve as the features get added through firmware updates in the next few months and beyond. Hopefully it will also allow custom ringtones and several volume controls and possibly features to allow access to office networks like the older Windows Mobiles did.

iPhone – what iPhone?

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 Mobile Scanner

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For a number of years I have used HP LaserJet All-in-Ones as my preferred office printer and for a similar number of years I have been saying to myself that I must scan all of my personal and business paperwork into an electronic form. One of the reasons the piles of paper got higher and less organised was that the HP scanner feature was single sided and slow. That’s ok if you have only written on one side of a 10 page document but, call me a Yorkshireman, there’s another side to write on.

One of my customers asked if I could get them a ScanSnap as it had been recommended to them. After unpacking and installing the ScanSnap and its software I was a fan and had to have one for my office too.  As the title says, the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 is a mobile scanner. It’s small but not too small to compromise the task it is asked to do. The combination of the scanner and software allow you to scan both sides of the page with a single scan then save the pages as PDF, searchable PDF, JPG, load into Microsoft Word and numerous other formats.

I am now happily scanning as fast as I can to convert the mountain of paper and shelves of files into an electronic format which I can more easily access whenever and wherever I need along with ensuring it is backed up along with all of my other data.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap is fast, accurate and compact. If you are out and about on the road with your laptop then it can be powered from the USB port if you can’t find a mains point. The only hesitation to getting one of these for some people may be the price which is £200-250 which could make it more viable for business users who would quickly recoup the cost with the time saved scanning and accessing documentation.

HUMAX HDR-Fox T2 Freeview PVR

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After a few years using a Topfield TF5810PVRt I have had to move on. I was going to say ‘sadly’ as the Topfield was great. It recorded two freeview channels at the same time, had excellent video quality and, importantly, a series link feature. Series link is brilliant as you can record a series and then sit down when you have time and run through the entire series and fast forward the advert breaks (and any boring bits). Unfortuantely the Topfield let me down when the hard drive failed with over 100 hours of unwatched programming. I replaced the hard drive but 6 months later and it’s gone again.

When it failed the first time I started to investigate the alternatives and the Humax caught my eye. Now the Topfield has gone again I decided to retire it and go for the Humax.

Quickly unboxed it, glanced at the Quick Start guide, then plugged it in to all the connections that the Topfield had previously used but with one difference, the HUMAX has a network port. Powered up and 10 minutes later it’s automatically found the network (and internet) and tuned in all the Freeview channels.

First impressions – remote control & menu system easy to use and the image quality looks as good as the Topfield so far. Easy to add programmes to the recording schedule and also a nice ‘find’ feature to scan for programmes that are on later in the week.

As I’d missed a programme at the weekend that was on the BBC I pressed the ‘PC Portal’ button on the remote and then chose the BBC iPlayer icon. A few seconds later and the programme I was after started playing. I had to check twice though as the image quality was better than I’d expected.

Now I just have to wait for a few programmes to record and hope the HUMAX plays them back when I need them.

First major update for windows phone 7

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From late 2010 there was talk of a pending update for the windows phone 7 that would give it features like copy and paste. Microsoft themselves did not start talking about it officially until around february 2011.

I can’t really say that I missed the lack of a copy and paste feature and had several other things on my priority list.

First reports of the update turned out to be a minor update to prepare windows phone 7 (WP7) devices for future updates. Some phones ‘bricked’ when this minor update was installed. Worryingly for me it appeared to be mainly Samsung Omnia 7 models that were affected and that’s my phone. I am not totally clear on the process but I believe that updates are passed from microsoft to the phone makers and phone service providers who then test them and the service provider tweaks it and releases it to their users. Orange , my provider, held back until a couple of weeks ago when the minor update appeared. of course I got all excited thinking it was the major update but anyway my phone updated ok.

Today the major update appeared and I applied that to my phone. It went on without any problems and I now have a feature that lets me select, copy and paste.

A quick look through the menus does not appear to show anything else new but maybe they are for later.

I am hoping for customised ring-tones as the default ones are driving me mad.
I am also hoping for the sync feature to include synchronising of Internet Explorer favourites. This is something I found the Apple iPhone 3G managed quite well.

I’ll post more in the coming days if I find anything as I use the WP7 with the update.

New website for tKnowIT at tcommunicate.co.uk

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Welcome to one of our new look websites. Over time the word ‘new’ will become pointless but until there is more content and structure to the site www.tcommunicate.co.uk then it’s relevant.

The site uses WordPress. At the time of writing the main tKnowIT website uses a Joomla based Content Management System (CMS). After a great deal of thought I decided that the tKnowIT site should use Joomla rather than WordPress. Both have their advantages and disadvantages but I decided that Joomla would allow me to produce a website that met my requirements for appearance and structure and allowed me to upload new content easily. WordPress can do the same but it did not have the full structure and feature set I got from Joomla.

Both Joomla and WordPress do make life simpler than it used to be though. With a static website I needed to sit down at a specific machine with my web design software, Dreamweaver, and create new pages, menus and revisions and then republish the design. For a site with as much content as the www.tknowit.net website this became difficult to manage – and it became to easy to ‘put off’ updates. The site design was also redone at least once during its life as a static html based website. although CSS stylesheets, etc can make this process easier it consumes too much time for a large site.

I still think that static html based websites can work though. Search engines can easily read the page content and for start-ups and businesses with a need for only a few pages they’re a good starting point. I have noticed that dynamic websites can take a while to display the content if the platform or database server is not performing to a decent standard – resulting in slow page load times – which the search engines are not going to look favourably on.

So why a seperate site using WordPress for tKnowIT information. Well partly to see how new information can be delivered to search engines, social networking systems, etc but also to see how search engines feed on the information compared to something like Joomla. As WordPress is also more of a blogging tool then I am more inclined to enter random comments, opinions, mini-reviews of things I am trying out, etc.

Post added from Windows Phone 7 App

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Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

Looks like a fairly useful app. Create and edit posts, check stats and review comments amongst the features I can see.

Why so plain?

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This entry is posted before I start to make changes to the default WordPress Appearance template.

In time this will be replaced by a new design that looks more like the other tKnowIT sites and materials.

Easy to add new features

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like the easy upgrading feature of WordPress, adding new features or Plugins is also easy. A few clicks and the Google Anaytics plugin is now running

Easy to update

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WordPress is easy to upgrade. When you are in the admin console WordPress will tell you if there is a newer version available and given the right information it will automatically upgrade your site to the latest version