This is a test of using wordpress on the blackberry!

Oh well, the good things about the Focus is about to change. Discovered that the spare tyre well had been pooling water for quite a while judging by the depth. The water had been coming in through the rear hatch – top right – dripping it’s way past the rear wheel arch before resting in the middle of the boot. Only discovered it as it was a little wet on the carpet during the rainy week. Thankfully, being a new car, it went straight round to the local Ford dealer who re-sealed the hatch area.

Other than that, still nothing else has gone wrong with it

So, after actually buying the XDA Zest out of my own money, the theory being I’ll be able to reduce my mobile  tariff and get credit thus paying for it self, I haven’t regretted it and found it far more useful than having a PDA and a separate phone.  Finding a decent Spectrum emulator is high on my task list now. Not many reviews on the web, best of the bunch is from 4WinMobile and Trusted Reviews.

What’s it like to use compared to  what I have used in the past – being a highly abused Nokia 611o (6 years!), a severly battered Sagem Mx-v55  (4 years) and an LG Shine (nearly 2 years)? Call quality is excellent though obviously battery life isn’t as good as any of those mentioned. Obviously being the fact that 2.8″ VGA colour touchscreen takes more power than a 2″  colour screen and you really can’t compare it to a monochrome  screen that takes very little battery power.  So far, a good couple of days on one charge  but as I’ve been playing with wi-fi, gps and bluetooth, I charge it once day. Good news is that it doesn’t take long to charge but  you do need to let the battery go flat 3 times before perfomance improves. Unfortunately the quick start menu doesn’t mention it but the full manual on the website does.

Wi-fi signal pickup is very good. Doesn’t seem to drop the signal as much as my Asus laptop which remains more static than the phone does.  Wififofum is an excellent piece of software for “discovering” wireless  access points. Bluetooth, as  in a previous post, works perfectly with the Focus which was  one of the reasons I needed to be specific in getting a new phone. Only issue is, that you have to  copy the SIM contacts to the phone before the Focus will pick up the numbers. Having done  that,  all you then need to do is attach a voice tag on the Focus with the number for the voice activation to work. Though you might not like the sound of your own voice being played back to you before it dials the number associated with the tag. However, it is worth the  slight embarrassment as it truly is hands free. Even dialling numbers work perfectly! BT file transfers work amazingly fast  compared to my Tapwave but that was v1 and the Zest is v2 as is the laptop so not really a fair comparison. I just use BT to transfer as I really can’t be bothered finding the USB lead and plugging it it.

Which brings me nicely onto charging. Thankfully it is a USB charger and really a standard USB to mini-USB cable (apparently not quite standard) so easily taken to work for charging onthe company’s unused USB slots.  Now the bad news, the cable doesn’t work with a USB cigarette lighter socket converter in the car. What happens is that it charges the phone but the SD card is no longer recognised. The problem? The Co-Pilot trial SatNav maps are stored on a mini-SD card thus rendering it useless if you want to use the Sat Nav on a long journey. I’ll be testing it out on a 4.5 hour journey soon to see how long the battery lasts with GPS on for that time.

Finally had to change my LG Shine phone due to the sound quality deteriating during a call. Mostly down it being dropped on one or two occasions. Ahem. Since O2 haven’t released the E71 to the consumer yet (now on business) I went for the XDA Zest which runs Windows Mobile 6.1. For the price (bought on PAYG rather than ringing up O2 for a freebie, saving that discussion for something else ),  you get GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a VGAtouch screen. Not to mention loads of stuff, software wise. More in another post.

In the week I’ve been using it, call quality is excellent and it hasn’t crashed once. However, battery life isn’t so good as heavy use needs a daily recharge. Thankfully it comes with a fast charger that can be separated into a USB charger. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work absolutely perfectly with my laptop (Asus A7G) and of course the Focus.

I finally have a  phone that I can voice dial with through the car stereo! You have to setup a name and number as as stored name first in the Focus but once saved, it dials perfectly. There’s me thinking only Nokias would work as the stereo OEM is Nokia apparently. As the Zest is classed as a smartphone, you can actually talk over the BT connection, send text messages and then surf the internet without a discernable break in conversation. Must speak to O2 about getting a web-bolt on though as the data charges can be expensive.

Normally, I’ve got quite a good sense of direction but living in Cardiff this ability has changed into the ability to get lost quickly. Must be that rift in the bay playing havoc with my internal compass. So, I need a satnav unit to get around as the A-Z is relatively useless thanks to the appalling road system here.  Me being me, I don’t want just a satnav unit. I want one built into my phone because I don’t want to carry around multiple gadgets, which at one point, was two mobile phones and my Tapwave Zodiac.

Sadly the Tapwave has fallen into the gadget drawer which is a shame as it is an excellent emulator of bygone computers especially the ZX Spectrum. I still had the rubber key version (since 1983!) until a year ago when I had to junk it as it grown mould living in the cavern of the forgotten: the garage. Fortunately I sold all my games a few years back on ebay along with all the other bits of hardware that were still in their original boxes.  Not sure if I want to sell the Tapwave as no other PDA has  a joystick controller and I don’t want a PSP but as I’m on the bus nowadays, I might use it a bit more during lunchtime.

Back to sat nav. Had to go to Swindon with a work collegue and as we had never been there before, this time I asked him to bring his sat nav even though google maps showed it was quite simple. Cardiff to Swindon is a 65 mile or so trip straight along the motorway. Good run out for the Focus but not exactly ideal for the Tom Tom to demonstrate it’s abilities but it did give me an opportunity to evaluate one (again!) before deciding to buy.

First, not so keen on the 3rd person view – I get that looking straight ahead out the windscreen – the 2D view is my preference as I get to see the road up ahead rather than a 3D one. I found the directions a little bit strange on roundabouts (hence the title). Coming back from Swindon, I had to miss the first exit and take the third one but trusting the sat nav, it told me to stay left which to me means be in the left lane. Unfortunately, by the time I realised it I needed to be in the middle lane at the approach and had no choice but to take the second exit as I couldn’t move lanes and then turn around a short distance later.

Going to try out google maps next once I get a new phone with built in GPS. I currently use google maps to find the exact postcode and print out the surround location whilst planning the rest by map. Works very well for my purposes at the moment but will update my experiences once I get the new phone. The Nokia E71 is my current favourite at the moment but as I don’t want to pay for it, I’m waiting for O2 to release it.  Which apparently was going to be the 15th September but has now slipped to October and not a firm date. Ah, a quick search reveals there is a speccie emulator for Symbian.

Well had the car nearly 2 months now, got 2800 miles on the clock and fuel economy is around 50mpg over the first 2000 miles doing a mixture of city and motorway driving. Best mpg reading was 54mpg doing 70 travelling up to Anglesey (reset counter on that trip). Drove back at 60mph thanks mainly to bank holiday traffic, bringing the total to 55mpg. All on one tank of fuel with 40 miles left. Think it was about 580 miles out of the tank on that trip.

So, the bad and the ugly? Nothing. Only the drivers side electric window groans a bit. That’s it. Nothing at all has gone wrong or annoyed me.  The good?  Sports steering setting is really really fun and strangely enough, my parking is a lot better when trying to park alongside pavements. Tempted to take off the ESP and see the difference though it is there for safety reasons so it will only be off for a short period.

I’ve yet to clean the Focus but the weather has been, lets say, beneficial to the environment so really haven’t had the opportunity and the alloy wheels are looking a bit dirty now.

One of the features that comes with the Focus is the 3 levels of steering selectable via the left hand indicator stalk: comfort – for real laziness as the wheel becomes lighter, standard - for normal people and sport for those who want to really throw it around corners. So guess what I decided to change to today. The Focus is so much more fun with reduced power steering – that’s what the manual says – and just encourages you to push a little harder. Going round roundabouts is even more fun than normal! Might need to find a less straight road to travel now.

Been trying really hard not to go over 60mph for the first 1000 miles but occasionally I’ve teased the engine by doing 65-70 for a few seconds. Thankfully, the first thousand are now done and the engine has definitely opened up. Fuel economy has been improving -  first tank full to the chime came in at 501 miles/44 to empty with the second tank at 551/50 to go (avg speed: 42mph, fuel consumption at 53mpg). Mainly due to a lot of motorway driving at 60 to get that figure. Doing 60mph on the motorway is great for fuel economy though being overtaken by Mr Softee with the side window open may be an image forever stuck in my mind.

Nothing rattles and nothing dropped off so far! I have noticed that just above the steering column the cover plate is loose but it may be like this. It doesn’t affect anything but I’ll need to compare to a dealer car. Not keen on the so called dashboard illumation control. Although it has a rotary wheel it only does normal and not-so-bright. Needs a little more reduction for me as most of my night driving tends to be along un-lit roads.

One thing I’ve noticed (and all new car owners do it), is that you spot an exact model of your car in a different colour and you start eyeing it up. Same thing goes with the Titanium version of the Focus. You can spot it a long way off on the opposite side of the road due to the different front end on the Titanium version. As you both near each other you stop paying attention to the road and start thinking “black looks good” and “light blue* may be the one they’re advertising but I wouldn’t buy it” and my personal favourite “sea grey is the right colour“. It just doesn’t work with the other models in the range

* Officially its called “Vision”

Some Sci-fi films are just great even though there made in the 50′s with no special CGI effects just the storyline and dramatic cuts. Yet Hollywood insists on “re-imagining” these films to bring them up-to-date for today’s generation of movie goers the playstation generation internet freeloaders.  So they’ve gone and added lots of special effects and atmospheric music to one of the great sci-fi films: The day the earth stood still.

But Keanu Reeves in the lead role? The original actor had some gravitas in the role but Keanu and his trademarked blank look, head turn towards the camera and speak words of wisdom just doesn’t sit right. They should have cast him as Gort. No really, all Gort has to do is stand there looking expressionless, turn his head to camera and…..hopefully they won’t stick in a pointless gun scene in the middle like The Matrix!

The original will no doubtly be on TV to cash in on the release, so see it first then go out and see this one. Please do say “the original was better” afterwards. This is the trailer for the why-do-they-bother version: