It's not often that I buy a music CD... okay so I never buy music CD's. I prefer to download them as I'm not a fan of having the needless clutter of polycarbonate and printed paper in my room. However, I do make exceptions, exceptions such as when having to buy the CD and then rip it is the only way of getting it however it has to be an artist I have a very strong liking of to warrant this kind of special treatment.

Enter Hiromi, a young Japanese pianist whose style of music is quite unlike anything I have heard before. Often it's described as some form of Jazz/Jazz Fusion with classical influences, though I think you could write a paper on trying to describe her music. Listening to it is the only good explanation in my opinion.

I have become quite obsessed with her music, so much so that she might just be my favourite artist. Generally, I have never been able to decide on a favourite artist because my tastes change often but there are always a small group of artists I listen to fighting for that top spot and Hiromi is certainly one of them. I have collected all of her albums and am so anxious to get my hands on her latest album that I have pre-ordered it.

It's due out on Tuesday, June 10th in America and and Europe (having said that Gemany already has it?). If you are interested in listening to something different listen to some of the samples on her website.

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Initially I was impressed, it's faster of course. It does have headset support and space for two MMC/SD cards, OS 2007 seemed to have some very nice improvments too, all was promising till I started to use it.

It wasn't long before I installed OGG support. It's installed but I don't have OGG support. On the 770 installing OGG support meant OGG support was installed, the 800's version of OGG support means that specific applications written to use the ''OGG support" are the only ones that can play OGG. The 770 did not come with OGG support either, however you could easily install it and it would be fully supported on the device, this meant the file manager recognised the OGG files and the media player would play them. For some insane reasons, the lack of OGG support seems to be hardcoded in both of these apps now. Do Nokia have something against users using a superior free audio codec?

Next, the video support. On the 770 it was perfect, some of the same files that the 770 would play now crash the 800, that's right, a video causes the entire device to restart. This is a joke.

I have no desire to do a proper review of this device now after having being so dissapointed with it. When you buy an upgrade you expect it to be an upgrade not a downgrade.

I realise that these proplems are software issues but will they ever be fixed?

To summarise, the hardware is better than the 770 but the 2007 edition operating system is awful if you plan on playing OGG or watching videos.

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I decided it was time for an upgrade, my trusty Nokia 700 (which I am writing this post on via BT keyboard) has served me well over the years, providing a portable Linux based device with much capability.

The N800 is faster and has more RAM which is of course the primary reason for upgrade, the second most important feature is support for a headset, the N770 supported earphones but not had no microphone in. The third reason for the upgrade which really pushed the decision, is that I am looking to get a car soon and GPS would be really nice. Nokia sell GPS software for both the 770 and 80, however, the 770 version is not compatible with the 880 and vice vesa. If I bought the 770 version I and wished to upgrade to the 800 then I would have to buy the GPS software once again. One more reasons is that the 770 rocks As far as PDA's go (which I personally class this as) it's the best I have used (even if it has no PIM software). I have had a Palm, iPAQ and Zaurus all of which have fallen short of the mark. The 770 is nearly perfect and could be made so with the introduciotn of particular software but I digress.

Anyhow, I expect the device to arrive soon and will be giving it the usual run down

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I have read a lot of negative comments about Audible.co.uk customer support, however I was most impressed with the support. I joined Audible.co.uk only a few weeks ago, paying a free £7.99 a month with basically entitles me to the download of one audio book a month. At highest quality the audio books sound like 48-96Kbps mono MP3, I think this should be higher at least 160Kbps and stereo is a must but I can live with it for spoken word.

Yesterday I purchased a learning Japanese audio book (not the first) with an unconventional method of learning produced by earwormslearning.com. Basically the idea is to lay down some words and phrases to music. Being one who likes to try new things I thought I'd give it a go. I foolishly thought a music based audio book would be encoded in higher quality, nope, still mono even. I couldn't stand this, I managed to listen to some of the book but simply could not stand it. I sent an email to Audible.co.uk asking about the chance of a refund and explaining my reasoning. To be perfectly honest I didn't expect anything to come of this, just thought I make my opinion heard. Well to my surprise they did indeed refund me and contacted me only 20 minutes after I emailed them

Can't complain about that at all! I will now buy the CD from the earwormslearning.com site which is more expensive but has the added benefit of being DRM free and, one should hope, CD quality

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No I'm not going mad, I didn't really purchase an iPod Shuffle it was a "free" gift from audible.com when I joined for 12 months.

Now as you may or may not know, I'm not an apple fan. Why? Because I'm governed by sense and people with sense don't buy Apple products, people with more money than sense do . Although the hardware is very good and certainly well styled it's worth more than it's values at and I never pay for brands or a flashy design, I leave that to the folly. Not that I'm against anyone who has an Apple product! just those that have them for the Apple brand or because said product "looks nice" but each to his/her own eh?

Anyway here is a mini write-up of the iPod shuffle which I will call the iShuffle as it little resembles an iPod anyway.



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