Jaya EBay !

Around two months back I lost the data cable of my Nokia n70 mobile phone, and Nokia service center was asking astronomically high price for that cable (around 1700 INR / 43USD) see older post. Since then some of you have asked me what did I do? Did I offer the ransom money to Nokia who has taken my phone as hostage, so I could not download and install any new games, themes, ringtones, wallpapers, books, etc on the phone from my PC or transfer any of the picture I have taken from the camera in phone?

Well, the answer is No. No, I didn’t pay Nokia even a single penny (not even a single new Paisa for that matter). Instead I went straight upto EBAY and Searched for the Nokia’s data cable. I found two options available CA-70 and CA-53. The former one has capability of even charging the phone from PC’s USB port. And surprisingly these nice vendors on EBay were charging less then a tenth of what Nokia asked.

So, after looking at the feedback for different sellers, I picked up one in Delhi. Went ahead and placed the order. Zap in 2 days I had the data cable was delivered. No hassle, no extra charge (except for 40INR/1USD as postage and handling, which was explicitly mentioned at the time of placing the order).

I have been using this cable for last two months now, for charging the phone and transferring the data between the phone and PC, and cable is working perfectly fine.

And to Nokia, Thank you; I mean, No Thank you for being such a hijacker.

Bonjour readers!

It seems the time has come to get up and going again.
I brought a new cell phone (N70 Music Edition) last weekend, and a new Camera (Canon S3 IS) the week before.

The N70 is a decent phone for its price (Rs 13.2 K in Bangaluru), but its interface seems to be a bit too slow, may be because of Symbian and the applications running on it. Another problem that I discovered is that its screen flickers when I play music on it (Checked on the net, both of these seems to be a common problems faced by other users too). One more small issue with this phone is that its keypad is bit too small. It would have been perfect for a 4-year-old kid, but for a person like me who has gigantic fingers it’s not ergonomic. I can cover the whole keypad with just 2 fingers. Anyway, apart from these issues, the phone is fine. It has got 1 Gig of memory (on card, which came in standard bundle with phone), Symbian OS, decent MP3 player and an FM Radio, along with a 2 MP camera, and another small camera for video calls. Today, everyone in office who noticed the new phone in my hand asked about it. Nice to know that so many people notice the phone I am carrying.

The new camera (Canon S3 IS ) is the Kelvinator in it’s range (I mean, it’s the coolest one :-). Although, I haven’t explored all its features yet. Still I could feel the power, clarity and flexibility of it in the brief usage. BTW, this one is my third Digi Cam. I have previously used a 3MP Kodak and a 5MP Nikon, and compared to those tobu cycles this one is a Land Cruiser. I still need to buy a 2GB memory card (16 MB that came with it was a joke) and a good Camera case for it as I can’t keep this beauty in the plastic bag forever). Once I have both of these, I will be clicking again.

Thanks everyone for your lovely comments on earlier posts.

Altec Lansing ATP3 2.1 Stereo Speaker System

Brought an Altec Lansing Speaker set last weekend. The performance is decent enough and it’s moderately priced. I got it for 2.8K INR from the SP Road, Bangalore. The features that I like the most is it’s sleek design, and the 3-inch bass driver gives a good output at normal volume, but at very high volume, you can hear the quality breaking away.

Fair enough performance for an average size living room, unless you are not an audiophile.