Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Puan Mama Sarah's New Toy

On the same day I received my Wacom graphics tablet, Puan Mama Sarah also had a package delivered to her.
It's from Vodafone. Before I continue, I would first like to write about how having a mobile phone in the UK is different from other countries like Malaysia. In the UK, mobile phones are actually provided either FREE or with a heavily subsidised fee, with a mobile contract. As an example: with Puan Mama Sarah's phone, I had to pay a one off £20 for the phone and a monthly contract of £20 for 12 months. However, the monthly £20 comes with free 1000 minutes of phonecalls free during evening and weekends. Also free are 100 text messages per month. If Puan Mama Sarah makes less than 1000 minutes per month, the remaining minutes will be carried forward to the next month. Imagine that!

And our tariff is actually considered expensive. Some other providers would charge around £15 for around 500 minutes free phonecalls per month - any network and any time with hundreds of text messages.

What happens once the 12 months contract is up? Yup, we upgrade to a new phone - and that goes on and on and on.

Overall, it's a GREAT business model and I feel it really benefits the customers. I've also heard that such a business model does not exist in Malaysia where one has to buy their own mobile phone on top of paying monthly subscriptions to the service provider (boo!).

Opening the contents: It's a Sony Ericsson W810i
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For some reason, Puan Mama Sarah and I are very big fans of Sony Ericsson mobile phones. (That "some reason" being: we feel Sony Ericsson comes with most of the latest and greatest features, with neat styling to boot).

The package comes with:
  • The phone, battery, charger and SIM card (of course!)
  • A disc for software interconnection between the phone and a PC.
  • A USB cable, for data connection with a PC, also the phone is able to charge via the USB cable.
  • A 512mb Memory Stick Duo complete with adapter - for pictures, video and music.
  • A hands free kit
  • A pair of headphones - the "W" in the W810i means it's a walkman-type phone, with enhanced multimedia capabilites.

The W810i
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Although it's Puan Mama Sarah's mobile, personally I LOVE the styling of this phone VERY much. I really like the black finish, with orange accents. In fact, there are many things to love about this phone:

1. Features:
It has bluetooth, a 2 mega-pixel nice quality camera complete with LED flash and macro functions, video capture and playback capabilities, radio complete with Radio Data System and auto-tuner, voice recognition, excellent interconnectivity with a PC and it's an MP3 player.

2. It's an MP3 player, complete with 521Mb of memory (upgrade-able). The jukebox software controlling the music playback is not bad (i.e: I've seen better) and together with the software provided, one is able to rip audio CDs onto the phone: complete with the text data. Personally, I use the software provided very little. Sound quality though, still could be improved.

3. The improved joystick interface.
Compared to the W800i, the joystick has shortcut buttons for pause-play, forwards, backwards, and stop. Also, the bright orange button on the left is to go straight into walkman mode.

Yup, gone are the times when a phone is (a) wired (b) large in size (c) used to only make phonecalls (*I pause to look at Pycno & DITH*)

I think Puan Mama Sarah likes the phone very much (she became quiet: which signals "much satisfied").

Reviews of the W810i (most sites review the phone very highly):
  1. mobile-review
  2. mobileburn
  3. mobilereview.org
  4. mobile 9
Related Link
PS
At first I wanted to title this post "Puan Mama Sarah's New Toy - complete with vibration functions" but I'd probably get a "cubit dia nisak!" from DITH.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

And you had to ask the question about merenyam?

dith said...

Even now Mynn, my idea of a cell phone is mainly to make calls and texts. But the MP3 features would be handy to listen to Islamic lectures like KKL's.

Imagine, if the moble phone providers over there can give such good bargains and still make money, this means that our Malaysian phone providers are "cekik/mentahkedarah"!

So Nisak, congrats on your new toy and may it be of good use to you. (Kawe pakai telepon lama, tak dak camera, takdak radio, takdak WIFI, takdak MP3, takdak microwave, takdak toaster.....)

p.s. Nisak, I still cant access your comment baord!! It says, page not found, back to dashboard)

Anonymous said...

i'm a fan of sony ericsson too! ^^v

Anonymous said...

My 6th/7th try posting here...

DITH
Bila mase saya bagi ceramah agama? Heheheh yeah yeah I geddit I geddit.

Mynn!!! I put an order for the Wacom yesterday!!! I called OK especially to ask whether I could. hehehe.

Anonymous said...

Alhamdulillah berjaye juge. :D

pycnogenol said...

Bila semua dah beli Wacom, nampaknya kulit yang kelihatan licin dan gebu dalam gambar semua nya tidak boleh dipercayai lagi.

Itu lah sebab Pycno tak nak tunjuk muka di alam maya. Biar berjumpa di alam nyata dulu, baru tahu yang mana kertas pasir dan yang mana sutera.

Jangan marah Mynn...Pycno nak pergi minum air mineral dulu.... ;)

Anonymous said...

bertuahnya badan

Anonymous said...

my god, seriously pycno your comments are priceless - always gets a laugh from yours truly.

O-K
argh, touche!

dith
phone nisak yang lama tu kan kena curi. kesian dia tak berphone all this while!

kenakelayan
hmmmmmmm everyone seems to be having problems leaving comments in blogger beta it seems eh? what i do is - i don't login my details anymore, i just click on "other" and manually put my name and link. any feedback if that works? for me it does ...

Hana
sony ericsson phones (Japanese make lah DITH, bukan israel) are like marmite - you either love them or hate them :):) but to me, what's not to like? they're beautiful and have functions galore.


dith
OMG dith, i can't believe you bought a wacom board too. what size? (*i'm feeling slightly guilty promoting stuff on this blog*) but i know you'll be satisfied with it. which model? i'm sure ikelah will be very2222 happy doing his photoshop with the board:)

pycno
LOL. that's what i'm currently deeply studying: touching up photos - hahaha. i've learnt so much!!! can't wait to put all the tips to practice.

ikelah
happy using the wacom board! i'm 200% happy with my purchase so far, and have been increasing my GIMPing efforts! :) Sarah seems to enjoy painting on it as well ...

Anonymous said...

ps
dith
berapa inci?

pps
dith
the wacom board that is

mynn said...

alamak, i think i made a mistake.

it's KKL who bought the wacom not dith -- whoops sorry. because everyone didn't login, names are not highlighted anymore so i got confused reading who posted what.

withdraw my comments to dith, and divert them to KKL. so kkl, berapa inci? and congratulations on buying the board! what do you plan on using the board for?

dith said...

Mynn,

Wa banyak pening kepala bacia lu punyia komen, hehe...lu sibuk on call ka? Wa tatak beli Wacom board. Itu white board ada la. Pakai pen juga. Boleh Sapu jugak. Banyiak murah woo.

Wa punyia komen pasat handpone Erikson, awak jangan telasa...gua bukan mahu perli...wa bikin joke saja sbb gua punyia hp manyiak kodi sbb hp sini manyiak mahat! Kalau wa ada lebih duit, wa jugak mahu itu Sony Erikson, Nippon mari!

Anonymous said...

Hmm if i had money i woul go for the palm treo with WM5.. muahahaha..

alangkah sedihnya takdak duit..

as tu kulit.. i drink plenty of eichtoo-oo so okaylah kot..

WACOM board sama specs kot yang KKL beli.. as for me kat sini.. sama macam DITH guna white board.. the good news is I only have two more days to o before can rehat.. ;)

Anonymous said...

Mynn

As OK said, same as yours. I checked out the reviews, looked at my poor thumb and forefinger, and decided to give them an easier time of it with the Wacom. Monday ni inshaAllah sampailah dia! :D

I plan to use it for my data processing for the figures in my thesis... right now guna mousepad and it is so mind numbingly boring.. not to say very very slow... then it takes ages to input the data into my statistical software package. A single experiment takes 3-4 days to analyse. This should make the whole process a lot more efficient. Also I plan to have a go at using the handwriting recognition software... pray for me please! (Penat sungguh buat thesis nih).

mynn said...

O-K and KKL
oh i see, same model. the model although entry level, to me is still excellent for my level.

i feel like i want to start a bit in the blog where I upload photos of my GIMP projects lah.

dith
hehehe tukar nationality ke?

Anonymous said...

terbahak2 i gelak baca dith punyia komen!