Donka's Mobile Rambles

For 10 years now, Proporta has been listening to its customers and reviewers in order to perfect their case design, and deliver the best service possible. Two main designs of the Alu-Leather Case have dominated the product so far, the case with the Side Grip, and the design using a Pouch.
Preferences differ from person to person…some people favour style over protection, some like constant access to their keyboards, and some prefer everything to be securely covered up.
Which case type suits you? Pop over to www.proporta.com/vote to see the two case types from Proporta, along with details of how to vote and a prize for 5 lucky Proporta helpers. There has been an on-going question as to which is the preferred case design for some time, and they would like to do what’s right by you, the customer.

A while ago I was on the lookout for a new mouse specifically to carry around with my laptop. One such mouse that caught my eye but wasn’t at the time available was a new folding Bluetooth mouse by Newtown Peripherals. What made this particular model so attractive was its ability to fold down into the size of a standard PCMCIA card and be stored inside your laptop. Fast forward a few months and I finally got the chance to try out this device first hand.
The MoGo mouse truly is an exceptional design; a flat unit with folding kick stand that is easily stored inside a free PCMCIA slot and also makes use of this bay to recharge when not needed. Being a Bluetooth device, you will need to pair this mouse with your laptop upon first use. This is simply a case of folding down the kick stand to turn the mouse on and then holding in the connect button on the underside for a second using a pen tip or similar to make the mouse visible – indicated by a quick flashing blue led. Using your laptop’s Bluetooth, you will now be able to find the MoGo and then select it to complete the pairing which is straight forward using the standard HID profile.
As much as I was impressed by the design of this mouse, I had reservations about how good it would prove to be as a day to day replacement to a more conventional size and design. These reservations were blown away after only a few minutes of use as the MoGo proved to be as comfortable as any other travel sized mouse I had experience of; not quite up there with a full sized desktop equivalent for extended periods of use but more than adequate for an average days work. The kick stand raises the rear end into a hand friendly angle with index and middle fingers sitting perfectly on top on the slightly recessed buttons, proving a far more attractive proposition when pitted against a track pad or stick. The only thing missing from this design is a scroll wheel although his will be addressed in a future release thanks to a touch sensitive strip between the buttons.

Performance from this Bluetooth mouse was excellent with smooth and speedy tracking and no discernible lag with the pointer or button presses. The quoted resolution of 500dpi worked fine for standard tasks although could prove a little limiting for scenarios where absolute precision is desirable such as graphic editing or gaming. Being a rechargeable device, power saving is in place and the mouse will go to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity however wakes up in around a second after a button press. Powering off is as simple as folding in the kick stand which allows the super slim profile to slide perfectly into a vacant PC card slot for storage meaning the mouse will also be carried around with you. In this state, the mouse will also charge up with the red led changing to green when fully replenished so you will never have to be concerned with replacement batteries.
I must admit to being very impressed with the design and thought behind the MoGo Bluetooth mouse. Using the PCMCIA slot solves two issues, storage and recharging and the kick stand approach makes it a simple yet surprising comfortable fit for the hand. If you hate having extra accessories in your laptop bag or tangled cables and your laptop is armed with Bluetooth then the MoGo could prove to be a real bonus for you. Only people who have a dependency on very high accuracy should be put off by the slightly limited resolution. More details can be found at the Newton Peripherals website and UK readers can purchase MoGo at EasyLaptopShop for £49.99.

With the falling prices of flash media and the influx of higher capacity USB flash drives on the market, I decided it was time to have a look at what is available out there. With capacities rising beyond 16GB, it really is a truly pocket able way of carrying a lot of data around and the plug and play nature of these devices make life that much easier as well.
Sandisk very kindly sent me one of their Cruzer line up to take a look at. This model is the Micro with 2GB of storage on board. I really like the design of this unit; one caveat of many of these drives is the cap for the USB connector can be easily lost. Sandisk circumvent this issue by not having one to start with but employ a simple sliding mechanism to keep the connector out of harms way when not in use. I have no idea about the long term durability of such a design but it worked flawlessly for me during my testing and also keeps the overall dimensions to a minimum. The Cruzer Micro has a small ring attachment in one corner to attach the supplied lanyard or a keyring.

USB flash drives typically come in two flavours, the simple storage solution and one that offers a level of security/application support. Being the U3 model, this drive falls into the latter category. The U3 system has a small partition on the drive that allows you to store applications that run from the flash drive on any PC and do not need to be installed as such. It also allows you to set up encryption using a password system to keep your data safe from prying eyes should you lose your drive. To find out more about this system, go here. The Cruzer comes pre-installed with Skype and Avast Anitvirus as well as an application for storing passwords and an Outlook synchronisation tool. While I must admit that the U3 system has limited appeal for someone like myself who carries a PDA around, the security and outlook tools would be a great asset to people who don’t. The last thing I like about this system is the flexibility; you can choose to have the U3 menu system pop up every time you plug the flash drive in or you can manually start it instead. Finally, if you so wish, you can completely remove this component from the drive altogether using the space for storage and repartition it back in at a later date.
As the name suggests, the Micro is suitably compact at 7.94mm x 20.6mm x 57.15mm (D x W x L) which means it is easily carried around and with capacities up to 4GB, should provide a good amount of storage. Armed with this information, the final important part of the puzzle when looking at flash drives is performance. While some people consider capacity as the main deciding factor in a drive, I have had enough experience with flash drives to know that no two will perform the same and not all are built equal. If you rarely transfer files and you are normally reading from the drive then the transfer rate may well not be an issue but when used on a regular basis, you really do appreciate the faster rates offered by some of the better drives out there.
Thankfully, the Sandisk proves to be a solid performer. Benchmarking with HD Tach, the Cruzer recorded an average read speed of 13.6Mb/sec. Further benchmarking using SiSoft’s Sandra showed a maximum read speed of 15292 Kb/sec using 64MB files and a maximum write speed of 6554 Kb/sec. At the lower end of the spectrum, the same benchmark using much smaller 32KB files generated a maximum read speed of 8130 Kb/sec with writing dropping down to 601 Kb/sec for comparison. So how does this translate to real world use? Well I did three simple tests consisting of writing data to the drive and then reading this data back to a different hard drive. I also repeated these tests after reboots of the PC to ensure they were accurate and consistent. First up, I transferred a single 700MB video file which posted a write time of 1m 36s and was read back in 47seconds. The next consisted of transferring a folder containing 700MB of 7MP pictures which contained a total of 172 files of between 3 and 4.5MB each. The write time here was 1m 49s and reading back took 51 seconds. The final test saw a 555MB system folder containing 3246 files ranging from a few bytes to a few MB. As expected, the write time was lengthy at 6m 26s although the read time was a respectable 1m 14s.
I think the Sandisk Cruzer Micro hits the sweet spot between physical size, functionality and capacity. While not the fastest drive I have seen, it is no slouch either and does manage to perform well above average for a small flash drive. While I would love to see this in capacities higher than 4GB, if this current limit satisfies your needs then the Cruzer Micro represents a good purchase.
More details can be found at the Sandisk website.

The Proporta Splash Proof Sports Kit is designed to give you a no compromise experience when it comes to training with your iPod nano. The package contains three silicone cases, hard screen protector, armband, lanyard and splash proof base.
The sports kit can work in a number of ways but the fundamental aspect of it lies in the multiple layers of silicone. A clear inner case forms the first layer of protection covering all areas of the iPod including the hold switch and click wheel but leaving the data port and headphone socket free and it is this layer that forms the main shower proof protection. On top of this, you have a choice of orange or black second skin with cut out sections for the screen, click wheel, data port headphone socket. This second skin is designed to give the protection a degree of ruggedness while leaving access to control your iPod. The screen protector can be inserted into this skin provided a clear but hard wearing guard over the screen.
From here, you have a few options on how you swish to wear your ipod. The belt loop on the outer cases allows a belt to be passed through or more likely, the included sports arm band. This strong, elasticated band is fully adjustable, secured in place with Velcro and is normally worn on the upper arm while running. The outer case also has a screw socket for connecting an optional free belt clip that can be ordered at the same time as the sports kit which makes wearing this on a belt or similar a much easier proposition than the belt loop alone. Finally, there is an included lanyard which can be attached to the small loop on the bottom left corner of the silicone case.

To make the whole package shower proof when out running in the rain, there is the included optional bottom silicone cover designed to seal up the protection while still allowing the headphones to connect. This bottom component is very much designed with the standard iPod earphone plug in mind and users will third party earphones will find getting their phones connect a harder task than planned; it is still possible to pass other plugs through this but it is a less refined process.
As a standard sports arm band, this kit certainly does the job however the splash proof fittings make it the perfect all-rounder, especially for those who like to train outdoors regardless of the weather. At £19.95, it seems like a good option if you are such a person. More details can be found at the Proporta website.