The NDX is performance upgradeable by the addition of a XPS or PS 555 power supply and/or Naim DAC.

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Amazon's new Kindle

Two days in and my Kindle has hung.  It locked up when reading the Daily Telegraph.  No button presses worked except the power switch. However although it switched off, it wouldn’t switch back on.  A quick call to Amazon’s Kindle helpline and a helpful chap called Antonio supplied the information, that the hard reset of holding the power switch on for 20 seconds would fix the problem. It did.

Reading the newspaper on a Kindle isn’t a substitute for the real thing but it’s half the price of even a subscription deal and doesn’t rely on a delivery person to be on time. This morning I had read the key news on the Kindle by 08:30 a good half hour before the paper was delivered.

A little smaller than I expected, it looks rather good and it is the size of a slightly large paperback except it’s really thin and it’s light.

The screen is amazingly good for reading text from books or magazines but is less good for illustrations and is poor when looking at web pages via the beta internet surfing.

I’ve bought it to trial The Independent and The Daily Mail the newspapers of choice here (don’t ask!).  If the Kindle proves a successful replacement for the printed page, it will save at least 50% of our paper bill. It will also save the wait for the delivery when it’s late, as it has been far too many times recently.

All the newspapers and blogs give two weeks free trial so more after that.

I guess the other question is how does it compare to an Apple iPad or even a new iPhone for reading books. This will require time to tell.  At present it feels strange going back to a Monochrome screen.  I’ll give it a couple of weeks and report back.

Very conveniently I’m going to attend the Milan Top Audio show soon, which will give the ideal opportunity to try the Kindle as a traveling book.  It’s lighter and smaller that the sort of books I usually buy to read while journeying so it may be a real winner.

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It’s working and with a Incipio Feather case the antenna problem isn’t that significant even though I hold my phone in my left hand.

The plusses are: a fabulous screen, it’s fast and mail using Exchange Server no longer slows it to a apparent halt.

The negatives are: it doesn’t fit so well or confidently in my hand, I’m struggling to get a screen protector to fit properly and I don’t like the look of it as much as my 3G. I also have a problem syncing the address book with my Parrot CK3200 Bluetooth hands free in the car. Parrot tend to be slow with updates so I’ll just have to wait I guess.

I’m certain the radical looks were the reasons for the ‘accidental’ leaks to ensure the general feeling on launch day wasn’t URGHH.

As a mobile phone is for me a mobile email device with a phone for convenience it’s ideal.  Just not as enjoyable an experience as when I first got my 3G.

Or is it Apple’s way of saying time to upgrade maybe?

With Android phones improving so much and  looking so good, it probably isn’t the time for Apple to drop the ball.  And that statement about the signal strength ‘error’. Do they really think us customers are that stupid.

I have no doubt that Apple will fix the software bugs and I will buy a suitable case to stop the antenna problem  when I buy an iPhone 4.  I also have no doubt that by the time the contact for that phone is up, Apple will have lost the lead on phones.

More when I buy the new phone.

But, and there is a big but, I could not get either operating system to let me access my NAS drive – or indeed any network drive.  I’ve Googled and tried all sorts of Samba type things but I remain stored music less. So internet radio works, Spotify works but I can’t access any stored music.

So the time has come to give up on such stupid ideas of running a third operating system (or fourth if you include Server 2003) here and the ‘Squeezebox’ PC has reverted to Win7.

At least I tried…

One more thing, I didn’t actually do any serious listening while running under Ubunto but I’m convinced BBC radio – the iPlayer streams – didn’t sound as good.  Weird.

Now I’m off to try to get hosted Exchange working.  It might be a bit more practical than a SBS2003 to SBS2008 change which basically is a full reinstall.