Donka's Mobile Rambles

As a regular laptop user, I have always kept an eye out for what I consider to be the perfect travel mouse solution. While a cable mouse is always going to be reliable, I like the idea of a cordless unit you can just pull out and get up and running quickly without the need to untangle cables etc. The trouble with a cordless mouse is it requires batteries and I’m firmly in the camp of portable devices that can be recharged without the need to purchase replacement batteries. So a cordless, rechargeable travel mouse seems like a challenge but the majority of wireless mice on the market require a separate USB dongle to allow communication between the mouse and computer to take place which means another small item to carry around and quite likely lose. Since a lot of laptops nowadays have Bluetooth built in, this should allow a Bluetooth mouse to connect without the need for any other hardware. Now that my list of requirements has been very much refined, Anycom very kindly offered to send me their BTM-100 mini mouse which just happens to tick all the boxes!
Included in the package along with the mouse are a USB charging cradle, user manual, carry bag and rechargeable two AAA batteries. The first thing you will notice about this mouse is it is small. Not tiny like some of the mice I have seen but certainly noticeably smaller than a normal mouse. The shape provides a long, slender profile meaning it doesn’t feel as cramped as many of these travel mice however because of the narrow width, it still takes a bit of getting used to.

Setting up the mouse is very straight forward; you simply turn it on and press the discoverable button on the bottom. Searching for devices on your laptop should show the device up and selecting it for use creates a bond. There is no passkey needed for connection and once set up, the device will not be discoverable by other computers unless you push the button again. The standard HID profile is used so no other software needs to be installed, your computers Bluetooth stack should be sufficient.
At a relatively standard dpi of 800, the precision on offer from the optical sensor should be up to expectations and performance during testing was very good. There was no discernable lag during a week of using this as my main mouse and the only time there was a pause was when the device was not used for a few minutes and the power save feature kicked in. Moving the mouse slightly wakens the device up and it is back working within about a second. There is an on/off switch on the bottom to save the batteries for long periods of inactivity but should you run low on batteries, you can simply replace them with a fresh pair or if you are using the supplied rechargeables, connect up the USB charging cradle. A full charge via USB is stated as 7.5 hours giving up to 60 hours of use or 2000 hours of standby. The USB cradle is an excellent concept and well designed as it allows you to use the mouse while it is charging and also makes it feel more like a desktop size of mouse in the hand. The only downside to this is there are two components that you will typically need to carry with you so you won’t be saving yourself any storage space in your laptop bag. While the mouse is connected through the USB cradle, it is only being powered and charged; Bluetooth is still being used as the connection for controlling the pointer however given there were no issues with Bluetooth performance, I couldn’t see anything negative in this.
Trying to determine who this mouse is ideally suited to isn’t straight forward. One of the main reasons for a smaller sized mouse for a laptop is the reduced size when travelling however to get the rechargeable benefit of the BTM-100, you really need to carry the cradle as well increasing the overall size. That being said, this cradle not only offers you the ability to charge the mouse during use but is also an option to make the mouse feel bigger and perhaps more comfortable for extended periods of use so might be handy for a family or work pool laptop where there is more than one user and the flexible usage options come into play. An alternative is for people that use both a desktop and laptop at work and use the mouse connected during the day and then take the mouse only component away in the evening for use on the laptop. Either way, this is still a great performing Bluetooth mouse with the ability to recharge meaning you will never be caught short of power.

Retailing for around the £30 mark, more details can be found at the Anycom website.

I just got wind of this micro music system and it seems to offer a massive amount of functionality. This micro system, based around a progressive scan DVD player, features a hidden universal dock for iPod, memory card reader, clock radio and support for MPEG4, DivX, MP3 and WMA. Connections include USB in, digital audio out, component video out and iPod photo/video out.
This is a stylish little system and if it looks and sounds as good as its feature set, could be a great addition to any room where space is of a premium. Retailing at £180, it will be available from mid December. More details available from the iSymphony website.

The Holiday Season is upon us and if you're searching for the perfect gift for your favourite Palm OS(R) or Windows Mobile(R) user, why not get them an Astraware Gift Certificate? It's the ideal way to buy games for your friends and relations without having to know device IDs, and also allows you to give Astraware games to people who don't have a credit card.
Buying a Gift Certificate is very simple - you only need the recipient's name and email address. Astraware even offers a choice of gifting options: either buy and print the Gift Certificate so you can hand it to the person directly; or buy the Certificate and send it via email - ideal for those last minute gifts or long distance friends and relations. Astraware Gift Certificates are available in a range of values from $15 up to $100. For more information, visit the Astraware website: http://www.astraware.com/giftcertificate/.

As the demand for mobile GPS Navigation continues to increase, Proporta has announced the latest addition to its GPS offering in the form of TomTom Navigator 6 Software. If you do not want to add yet another gadget to your expensive collection of mobile devices, Proporta suggests adding this handy piece of software to your current PDA to satisfy all your GPS needs.
More details of TomTom Navigator 6 from Proporta can be found at the product webpage.

Moixa Energy is pleased to announce that DSG international plc, Europe’s leading specialist retailer of consumer electronics is first to stock the USBCELL in over 600 UK stores.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with this product, it is essentially a rechargeable battery which you can flip of one end to reveal a USB plug. This can then be inserted into a powered USB socket to recharge the battery. These batteries can even be recharged by normal NiMH mains chargers which makes them a legitimate replacement for your current rechargeable batteries.
For more information on this unique battery, please visit the USBCell website.

When I first heard from Proporta that they were releasing their USB Mobile Device Charger, I thought it would be great if they offered a form of main power connection to speed up the charging process instead of charging the battery from a PC USB port. When Proporta must have been reading my mind but have gone one better by offering the USB rechargeable battery in a great value bundle along with USB world mains adapter and USB car adapter.
At £39.95 for this package, it seems like a great deal for travellers with power hungry USB devices like PDAs, iPods etc. More details at Proporta's website.

Street, Sport and Style: Sennheiser has launched three new portable headphone product lines for these three areas, featuring 17 exciting new products that stand out with their superb sound, contemporary design and innovative fitting systems. The Street Line delivers powerful bass, stand-out design and a wide range of accessories. The Sport Line headphones not only offer a perfectly secure fit, they are extremely robust, and resistant to sweat and water. The Style Line combines excellent sound with high-class design in finely finished materials.
More details can be found at styleyoursound.com.

As an iPod owner, one of the first accessories I would look to purchase is a new pair of earphones. The supplied pair are competent but the iPod is able to deliver some very good audio quality, especially at high bit rates, and these earphones just can’t do it justice. So what do you do when you want to get the ultimate in audio quality for your ears? Well Ultimate Ears sounds like a great place to start!
This earphone follows the in-ear canal design that is popular for offering a better sound than standard style earbuds as well as a certain degree of noise cancellation making them great for listening to music on a flight or crowded subway. The first thing you will notice with these earphones though are the surprisingly thick cables employed here; typically in-ear canal style phones use thinner, lighter cables to reduce the cable thump issue when tapping of the cables will travel up the cable and be audible in your ear. This is an issue for the Metro-fi and to my ears, slightly worse than others of a similar design. This heavy duty cable does however give an air of durability to these earphones and that is carried over to the rest of the construction as they seem very well made.
It would be wrong to compare these earphones to the standard iPod delivered variety as they are two entirely different beasts and you will soon discover where the premium for the Ultimate Ears has gone – they simply sound far superior!
These phones are quite loud, somewhere between the standard earphones and the loudest on the market. One area that many people look out for is bass response and it is good here although not excellent. It is well delivered with a good solid thump as opposed to a less well defined rumble that some other brands seem to provide but it can’t quite live up the bass levels of the best I have listened to if heavy bass is your thing. Across the rest of the soundstage however, these earphones do sound excellent for consumer level phones with very accurate delivery of mid and high ranges. Listening to the guitar intro to Texas’s ‘I don’t want a lover’ encoded with Apple’s lossless codec reveals very high levels of detail. Slowdive’s superb ‘Avalyn I’ sounded equally as impressive with its dreamy guitar interspersed with the light beat of the drum and cymbals ringing through the highs. There is one drawback to this clarity of detail though; these phones will show up poorly encoded or low bit rate tracks so ensure your audio source is well produced to start with you owe it to earphones as good as these!

Included in the package are a stylish aluminium storage tin and choice of four sizes of silicon ear inserts ensuring a good fit. I found these earphones very comfortable to wear for extended periods of time and with the good seal of the correct size of insert, good bass response and little intrusion from outside noise. There is also small slider on the cable that lets you adjust the physical separation between the two ear pieces and this may help to eliminate some of the cable thump by securing the cable when worn. These earphones really do offer a full step up in audio delivery over the standard earbuds and probably rank among the best sounding in ear canal style earphones in the consumer range. This seems like a great purchase for anyone looking to get maximum audio quality for a relatively inexpensive investment. Two words of caution though, bass heads may be served by slightly more bass heavy earphones if they are happy to lose out on over all audio quality and cable thump could be an issue for those already troubled by this such as when jogging. If these two points don’t put you off, the Ultimate Ears Metro-fi 2 earphones could well be your perfect companions unless you are looking to enter the world of high end earphone solutions.
Head on over to the Ultimate Ears website for more details.

Noreve very kindly sent me one of their leather cases designed for the new iPod nano to check out, so…… without any further ado, lets do just that...
The first thing that struck me about this case was the extremely snug fit – you need to open up the flip cover and slide the nano into place and it takes a surprising amount of effort to do this the first time. I was impressed though that once in place, everything lined up perfectly with regards to the screen and click wheel.
There is excellent protection on offer should you drop your device with virtually the entire iPod covered and the firm edges absorbing any impact and ensuring a safe landing. The quality of leather used here is excellent and this appears to be internally reinforced to provide a good level of rigidity.
The design of this case is interesting; the flip cover actually swings up from the bottom where the nano is inserted and uses a magnetic closure for keeping the cover in place. This means when the case is closed, what appears to be the correct way up, with the metal emblem in the lower right corner, actually has the nano upside down. This in fact makes a lot of sense as it means in a pocket or on your belt, the headphone socket on the bottom of the nano is pointing up the way. It also means, if you look down at your iPod at this point, the screen will be oriented the correct way.

Also included in the attractive presentation box is a belt clip solution that can be screwed into place on the rear as well as a flat stud should you not wish to use this option. The included belt clip system does a great job and has a quick release mechanism for added convenience.
As mentioned, fit is absolutely perfect and the smooth embossed lining holds the nano snugly in place ensuring it is safe from scratches. When closed, the only areas that are exposed are the headphone socket and the hold switch – both of which have just enough room to make them easily accessible.
With the case opened, you have easy access to the data port for charging or syncing your iPod and it is surprisingly easy to retrieve the nano from the snug fit for use in a dock or speaker system.

The leather case from Noreve seems to be more than just another leather iPod case and I actually find it a well constructed and designed, practical option for those on the lookout for a case for their 2nd gen nano. Available in a large range of colours, I would certainly recommend visiting the Noreve website for more details.

Proporta have created a range of bundles which allow you to save up to a handy 20% on the combined products, and make sure that you can protect your device whilst on the move:

Essential TomTom Protection and Travel Kit
For all you GPS users out there the Essential TomTom Protection and Travel Kit is designed for you. The bundle includes:
Silicone Case – is precision moulded from impact absorbent Silicone to provide a thin yet durable protective skin to your TomTom
Advanced Screen Protector - reduces glare from sunlight or bright lighting and protects against finger prints and scratches
2 in 1 Stylus - both a ball point pen and generic durable stylus in one
Mobile Device Cleaner and Screen Cleaning Cloth - removes dust, grease and dirt from your TomTom

More details of this bundle can be found here.

Essential MP3 Protection and Travel Kit
The Essential MP3 Protection and Travel Kit contains everything you need to keep your iPod protected, clean and tangle-free whilst on the move.
Alu-Leather Case - handmade from high quality leather and includes the unique Proporta Aluminium “Screen Saver” System
Cable Tidies - keep your cables neat and tangle-free whilst on the move
And the same Mobile Device Cleaner and Screen Cleaning Cloth – which removes dust, grease and dirt from your TomTom

This useful bundle is available for the More details of this bundle can be found Apple iPod nano and iPod 5G with Video (30GB / 60GB / 80GB).

Monitor Audio are a name well known to many audio enthusiasts due to their commitment to excellence in acoustic design within the speaker market. So when they decided they wanted a slice of the iPod pie and enter the dedicated speaker market for Apple’s mass seller with their i-deck range, you feel compelled to show an interest. So how does a consumer level compact speaker system measure up from a company better known for their reference standard of speaker solutions? Read on as we give the i-deck compact a good listen too.
The compact is a popular design for iPod lovers having a single unit that includes an iPod dock sandwiched between two speakers making it relatively compact and easy to move between rooms as required. The compact, while relatively portable is not as small as many competing products but this perhaps helps to give i-deck an acoustic edge.
The feature set on the compact is very good for a speaker system covering all the main areas you will require; this will charge any dock enabled iPod, uses a remote control, and includes a 3.5mm line in for the Shuffle or other audio source and also has some excellent output connections. A standard iPod dock port on the rear allows you to connect this up to a computer which will allow you to update the ipod while housed in the speaker system. Video output is also incorporated allowing you to hook this system up to a large screen using the composite or s-video connection.
Included in the box along with the user guide and power supply are various dock inserts to fit older iPods but the compact supports Apple universal dock inserts which means the one that ships with your new iPod will work just fine for recent models.
The remote control that ships is Infrared but works very well with a straight line of sight for about eight metres, certainly enough to cover the distance of a medium sized room. The remote in comparison to the rest of the system seems a little cheap however the functions included are excellent; it will control power on/off, volume, play/pause and skip/seek and the iPod menu system is fully supported. It is great to be able to use the remote to cue up music, change settings and navigate other areas of the iPod menus without the need to fiddle with the click wheel while the iPod is docked. There are also dedicated buttons for shuffle and repeat which makes this a great remote for interacting with your iPod in an effortless fashion.
I was expecting good things from an audio stand point with the i-deck and I’m happy to report I was not disappointed. This speaker system will easily fill a medium sized room and doesn’t exhibit any obvious signs of distortion at comfortably high levels of music. Bass response was also very impressive, not so much in the level of bass but in the way it was delivered. While other systems may provide more bass, the compact presents this to you in a tight and well structured manner that lets you hear the thump of the beat clearly as opposed to a less distinctive rumble that others systems portray. This system seems to shine across all genres and suits the majority of musical styles however particular mention has to be made to classical and vocal tracks. The i-deck provided a hauntingly accurate rendition of a high bit rate version of the a cappella in Alanis Morissette’s alternate album version of ‘You Oughta Know’. Vocals and midrange in general are excellent and highs are almost as well realised but perhaps not as accurate as the mids. Bass, as mentioned earlier, is very good although very well controlled and never seems to sound overbearing.
Volume controls are present on the system next to the iPod and a standby button is embedded within the logo on the lower right side. A pin point blue light shines from between the volume buttons on the front giving a touch of class to the power state.

The i-deck is very well constructed and feels rock solid and weighty which helps to deliver its impressive sound. Aesthetics are good, even though it won’t win any awards for cutting edge design but its simple lines and non offensive appearance makes it at home almost anywhere. For those looking for a relatively compact but very impressive sounding speaker system that can be controlled via remote and will also charge their iPod, the i-deck compact should be very high on your list. This is a great addition to households with an iPod or two and the quality of audio on offer is truly excellent for this modest package. Throw in video output, computer connectivity and remote menu navigation and the i-deck compact comes close to perfection.
Available in black or white, more details on the compact can be found at the i-deck website.