AAC and Bluetooth

The AAC files I tested had both .aac and .m4a extensions (the latter iTunes purchased). Re. Bluetooth the J3 worked fine with the pair of Jaybirds I had on my desk.

I should perhaps have mentioned that the Cowon bundled earphones are a bit bargain basement though no worse than the sort Apple bundle with its iPods.

@ nordware

Ah, that would explain it! Thanks for the heads up.

Questions

@ Ioan - my regular run takes me under several sets of power lines and I never noticed any interference.

@ AC re. Nice Look. I watched all of Pope Joan with them on and that's over two hours long. Didn't notice any discomfort at the end of it.

@ firedog

Fair comment, I should indeed have made more of the native support for 24bit/96Khz sampling.

Incidentally, if any Squeezebox owners have Android handsets I can recommend this..

http://www.squeezecommander.com/

Well worth the asking price.

Touch as Server

Logitech has just confirmed to me that the Touch does indeed run a cut-down version of Squeezeserver and so can be used as a server for up to 3 other Squeezeboxes. Still not sure why the feature is getting less publicity from Logitech than a red-headed stepson, but there you go.

For those interested the relevant section of the Slim Devcies forum (which needless to say I shall now be reading avidly!) can be found here;

http://forums.slimdevices.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

@AC 18.04

Now that is an extremely interesting comment.

There was nothing in the reviewer notes or user manual that Logtech sent me about the unit being able to function as a server, nor did anything obvious show up when I plugged an SD card or USB key into my review unit - it simply opened up a menu to access the media on it.

Sadly my Touch has already gone back to Logitech but I will ask them what the deal is and update this comment or the review.

Part of me wonders if this was something planned for the Touch that never made it to the final production version - the Touch was due to be released in the third quarter of 2009 but was delayed by nearly 6 months.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Alun

@ tas re. AAC

My V5 wouldn't recognise .aac or .m4a AAC files. However an mp4 video file containing H.264 video and AAC audio worked perfectly so clearly it has some level of support built-in. Lack of AAC support isn't a tradition at Cowon - my A3 plays them a treat so I am at a bit of a loss to know why the same isn't true of the S9, O2 and V5. As you say, it may be a licensing issue of some sort.

RAW

Grant - sadly Cowon don't maintain a list of precisely what RAW file types are supported but both Fuji and Pentax (.raf & .ptx) files worked for me.

Kubuntu etc

Fred - I tried Kubuntu for the first time on Friday and was disappointed. The whole thing smacked of being unfinished even though I do like the look of the KDE front end. After a few hours I ditched it and installed Ubuntu which is a my default Linux distro (so maybe my problems where as much to do with unfamiliarity as anything else).

I was a bit disappointed that 10,04 doesn't support the various Realtek wi--fi cards out of the box that Samsung have installed in Lord knows how many tens of thousands of netbooks (like my N140), but a quick google and I found a walk-through to install the relevant drivers. Once I had that sorted I was away. I like the look of 10.04 but don't really see the point of the various built-in social network systems - not sure that is what Linux should be about.

My N140 now dual-boots perfectly from the GRUB menu that Ubuntu installs so I have a choice between slow-but-steady Windows 7 and fleet of foot Ubuntu. One thing I have noticed with 10.04 is that it seems able to work with a greater variety of 3G USB dongles. It's a faster boot than 9.10 too, if only by a few seconds.

@ AC 10.45

Not so sir, I slotted two broadband dongles and a chunky old Xporter 32GB USB key into the M's USB ports and they all fitted with room to spare. The space between the three USB ports on the M is actually rather more than between the two adjacent USB ports on either my N140 or Dell Mini 10v.

@ Alex Johnson 1

The Heritage does indeed play all the BBC's "Listen Again" broadcasts. Since the BBC stopped using Real Player for its listen-again services last autumn (21/09/09 to be exact) access to said is becoming more and more common on internet radios. If it didn't support the service, I'd have mentioned that fact.

@ Andy Shortland

Fair point Andy, all the apps were tested on an HTC Hero running Android 1.5. With any luck the 2.1 update for the Hero (and the T-Mobile/Orange incarnations of the handset) should arrive later this month or early next. Fingers crossed...

American?

HDI are indeed Honk Kong based. Apologies for the error.

Cost of a gallon.

I was surprised by that too. It was early last week (w/c 15/02), but today it's up to 92p according to the TomTom. Wish I'd had a couple of jerry cans in the boot - or that I lived closer to Knutsford.

Speakers

Its a fair cop guv. The NC10 does indeed have two 1w stereo speakers rather than one, though the extra power and larger, forward facing speaker grilles of the N140 do still give it an edge in the sound stakes. The N130 definitely only has the the one speaker.

@ J3 - that is why the Eee 1000HE got 90% and an Editor's Choice award.

@ Gerard re. Android Market

As part of the test we loaded the Liquid with the same dozen Market place applications we have installed on a Hero and everyone ran perfectly, though admittedly they were all free rather than purchased apps. I suspect the issue is with transferring already purchased apps from one handset to another rather than with limited Market access per se. Certainly we noticed nothing 'missing' from the Android Market accessed via the Liquid compared to the Market accessed via a T-Mobile Hero.

If you could give me some instances of apps not being available via the Liquid I'll happily check into it.

@AC re Ogg

Quite right too. Android does indeed support Ogg Vorbis, apologies for the oversight.

Adverts

@ Chris C1 - Chris, no adds on our review device, so can only assume that's a US-only thing.

@ tony trolle et al - we tested the Chumby Classic, not the Chumby One. The One is indeed cheaper than the Classic in the US but since you can't get it in the UK at the moment that's not a lot of use to us on this side of the pond. The One only has a single speaker and doesn't have the leather padding.

Volume etc

@ John King 1 - the volume knob is very slightly graduated so you can indeed turn it one click from silent for really quiet listening.

@ Andrew Roland - I blame the spell checker. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Gapless

hi-robb - sad to say the R1 doesn't support gapless playback. Its a feature I really wish the likes of Samung, Sony, Sansa etc would try to rig up for their players as I listen to a lot of opera on the go.

@ ACs

Few points of clarification. You can indeed place multiple bookmarks in multiple books and access them all from the main menu. When you open a book file you have previously accessed the Story opens it at the last open page. The QWERTY keyboard is for entering text into the Memo and Diary applications. Memos can be exported as .txt files if you need to move them off the device.

Memos can be opened or created directly from a book page via the pop-up main menu but they are not 'stuck' to the page as they are with the Sony Reader Touch.

@ BristolBachelor

To be honest I wouldn't recommend any 5 or 6" e-book reader for scanned PDF files. Yes you can view them on the Story, but like the Sony, BeBook and CyBook devices it's pretty far from ideal. The only reader i have ever used that handled large scanned files well is the iRex DR1000S Bill tested back in July.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/07/23/review_electronic_book_irex_digtal_reader_dr1000s/

Dell Mini 10

upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 on a Dell Mini 10 on the day of release and everything worked flawlessly.

@ Gerard Krupa

Fair point, but as the PRS-700 has never been officially available in the UK and our sole experience of it was a quick fiddle at the CES back in January in less than perfect circumstances to judge screen quality etc we didn't want to muddy the waters.

UPnP etc

Ian - the Hisense didn't see iTunes as a server on the PC we tested it with just Windows Media Centre.

Rob - the unit was wholly silent in operation.

Neil - the unit does not support DRM files in any form so iPlayer downloads won't play.

A Gould - fair comment but you have pay p&p from most mail order outlets. Thankfully I live 10 mins drive from Expansys!

skell - good question but sadly that's not something I tested.

Heater

The car has an electric heater - which is handy for cold mornings since it comes on almost instantly - and though we haven't been able to find out what its maximum power draw is using it will naturally have an effect on range. Unfortunately with only half a day to test working out the impact the various driving styles and systems on the car's range wasn't really possible so we tried for a "worst possible" scenario by driving like a loon and running the air con pretty much constantly (which we need to due anyway to a combination of a large glass house and torrential rain).

...esters etc

Apologies to all for getting my Chichesters and Cirencesters mixed up, As has been pointed out a trip between the former and Stroud would have been quite some achievement on a single charge.

@ Frank Bough. When it comes to information such as the 'i' not being available in the UK we are rather dependent on what Mitsubishi UK tell us. The car may well be available as a grey import but it is not available as official Mitsubishi UK product.

My comment about the car being made of steel was simply meant to differentiate the iMiEV with its steel body panels and aluminium chassis from the likes of the G-Wiz. It wasn't intended as a detailed technical description of the car's construction.

@ ChrisW, JasonW

The idea is that it sends sms alerts while being charged so you know when its "done" without having to pop back to the car and check visually. We should have made that more clear.

@Andrew Garrard

If I had to choose I'd say HTC's TouchFlo 3D is the better of the two UI's, but I think Spb's Mobile Shell v3.0 is better than both, being faster and more adaptable, so I'd use that on either handset. The jog wheel on the M900 works just fine - nudges up and down moved the highlight quickly and a simple push activated whatever was highlighted.

Regarding the keyboard, I didn't come across any problems with the 'A' key and checking the block of copy I typed in as a test I see it has two apostrophes. Two weeks after the handset went back I can't honestly remember where the apostrophe was, but it certainly had one! I seem to recall it was brought up by the 'Sym' key - not being a "problem" I didn't actually make a note of it. The voice command software works well too - no better or worse than any other handset I have tested.

In short if the choice was mine I'd go for the M900 for the larger screen and better camera at the lower price but with Acer Shell as the GUI.

@spittenkittens / UK ordering

We did mention the fact that the only LED is the power-on light. The light works now with Ubuntu 9.04 as it did out of the box with 8.04 though clearly we can't comment about a machine that for example has XP swapped out for another OS. Addressing your other issues, our 10v powers up at a touch of the button with no problems whatsoever. Similarly USB sticks and SD cards slide in and out with no problem. We do actually test this stuff - we stuck USB sticks in all three ports to make sure they were working as God intended, hooked up the VGA port to an external monitor etc. If we had come across a problem - like the SD card jutting half way out - we would have mentioned it. Finally the battery clips on our machine work just fine as does the LAN socket. Again, had we come across a problem, we would have noted it in the review.

I'm not for a moment disputing your claims, but we can only review a device as it is supplied to us.

The 10v has now replaced my Aspire One as my own day-to-day netbook and do I miss the AA1's status LEDs? To be honest no.

In regards to ordering, I am looking at the Dell UK order page:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Laptops/laptop-inspiron-10/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-10&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1

right now, and it lists three model 10s - the 10v Linux, 10v XP and 10 XP.

Prius PHEV

Just for everyone's info. Amberjac replace the standard 1.3kWh battery with a 9kWh unit. The conversion adds about 83kg to the car and the new battery pack is quite a bit bigger than the original and sits in a recess in the bottom of the boot next to the spare wheel. As with the standard Prius electric-only drive is only possible at speeds up to 31mph, though in and around central London that's hardly a drawback.

Coventry & Looks

Fair point AC, Jag's corporate HQ is indeed now down the road at Gaydon in Warwickshire, only the design and R&D dept. residing at Whitley in Coventry.

Pete - thanks for the comment re the evolution of Jag's styling language. We still like the look of the F-Type though and reckoned it was a better image to illustrate the story than the wild guesses and "artists impressions" of the XE seen elsewhere!

@ Next time...

I resemble that remark!

Alex - last para. bud. Yes it worked just fine with Skype on a Linux netbook and on a MacBook Pro.

@Dex

The audio jack on our handset was most certainly 2.5mm.

@ Claus

Fair question - the first call to a SIM rings through as normal while the second call to the other SIM rings until picked up or if unanswered/rejected is sent to voicemail. As far as the DX900 user is concerned it's just like getting two incoming calls on the same number, so swapping back and forth puts the other caller on hold. Each received sms message in the log is shown as having come via either SIM 1 or 2, if you simply hit "reply" then the return message goes out via the same SIM as the initial message came in on. The screen also shows which SIM a call is coming in via. So as far as we could gather both cellular radios are "always on".

Insight & Range

@Mike - the current Honda Insight is a petrol rather than plug-in hybrid. Honda had previously said they wouldn't make a plug-in hybrid. Hence the story.

@AC - a Tesla Roadster will do 100km on a charge with ease. One recently did rather more than that...http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/04/10/tesla_wins_at_monaco/. Mitsubishi's iMiEV will also cover 100 miles (162km) on a charge. You can buy a Tesla now, and an iMiEV is about a year. Both are plug-in EVs with no range extending IC motor. Or you can try to find a good second hand GM EV1 - the last ones built could over about 160 miles on a charge.

@ Mike Wharton

Mike, the in-wheel motors used in the BRM racing car are not supplied by PML Flighlink. And Bee are not claiming that they are unique - its the twin motor set up in the Bee.One they say is unique.

MHEG

The interactive / MHEG functions on the MDR-250 worked just fine for us. While not quite as quick as the Freeview tuner built into the Sony Bravia that was used for comparison we certainly had no cause for complaint.

@ Craig,

Craig, we rated the Logitech PureFi Anyware dock at 65% not 80%.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/03/review_logitech_pure_fi_anywhere_ipod_speakers/

Ratings also reflect the cost of the device.

@ Andy B

Andy, two of the speakers are active and two are passive rather than all four being powered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_speaker.

Plug in...

Just to clarify, the XJ-e will be a plug-in. Essentially it will work the same way as the Volt/Ampera.

this'n'that

@Alex Willmer - not sure Alex, our test unit didn't have the FM tuner. I'd suspect that yes it has pre-sets but no, probably not RDS (but I could be wrong on both counts..)

@ AC1 - we had ours for a week and it never crashed once. What more can we say?

@ AC2 - taking pics of the working screen of a DAP ain't all that easy, and anyway, the pics in the write up are very representative of the what you see when you look at the thing. If they weren't we wouldn't have used them!

@ Dave - yes you can view folders - via the Folder view. No gapless playback though.

@ AC3 - sorry, my other half was using the fine scales to baggy up some crack at the time of writing.

@Paolo

Well spotted that man. Thanks.

@AC

Just to clarify, the Chery Eastar is an exact copy of the Deawoo Magnus. Chery where in talks with Daewoo about a license deal when Deawoo went under in 1999/2000 but a deal was never agreed. Chery just went ahead with development and production and so GM took legal action.

We are not sure what, if any, parts the Suzuki Splash / 2nd Gen. GM Agila and S18 share, just that they look very, very similar on the outside. Certainly there is no deal between Suzuki and Chery - the latter is punting the S18 as all its own work.

Looking at Chery's current model range (http://www.cheryglobal.com/chery-cars-index2.asp) it's hard not to be hit by a slight feeling of deja vu.

Chery's dealings with Ricardo, Lotus, AVL et al are all preparatory to it attempting to break into the US and European markets and have yet to bear actual fruit, at least as far as I know.

By the by in 2005 Chery was upgraded to the ISO/TS 16949:2002 auto manuf. standard so its basic production quality shouldn't be all that far behind the European/US standard and certainly shouldn't be in any way dangerous.

Chery had also recently entered into a partnership with Chrysler to produce small cars for the United States and European market though the more recent deal with Fiat may have an impact on that.

@ Roffey123

One interesting fact that arose during our visit to the EfW plant yesterday was that they have no idea how much Co2 the place produces. Apparently that measurement is not one they are mandated to take by either central or local government.

Of course the EfW plant would be producing the same amount of Co2 even if the leccy Transit wasn't being charged on-site, so from that point of view they are "saving" the Co2 a conventional lorry would generate.

The firm that built and run the EfW plant, SITA UK (http://www.sita.co.uk/local-authorities/integrated-waste/kirklees) take the view that the Co2 produced is far less damaging to the environment than the methane that would be produced if the same rubbish went to landfill rather than being burned.

Build Number

Build number on our test handset is TC4-RC19-109652.

And yes, you could use the "back" hard button to navigate to a previous web page if you really wanted to but we still reckon a button in the on-screen menu would have been a good idea - perhaps in place of "refresh". Its not too much of a criticism either way.