Anyway, I recently gave in and returned (after nearly 4 years) to 3. I used to be with them when I had my Nokia 3120 Classic (good times) on PAYG, but times have changed a fair bit since then and I can afford a snazzy iPhone 5 contract. I thought a lot about who to go with, but I have to say 3 quickly sealed the deal with their One Plan. I mean – come on – who would turn down oodles of minutes/texts and, more importantly, all-you-can-eat (quite literally – it’s realistically up to 1000GB a month) data and tethering for £36 a month? Better still, EE and 3 are the only two networks capable of ever providing LTE for the iPhone 5, so with the promise of that later in the year, it’s almost impossible to say no. EE’s £36 a month deal gives you 500MB a month, which almost questions why you’d even benefit from 4G with a limit that small.

Ok, so the awesome deal had pretty much perfected for me – until I got home and actually used it. Now, bearing in mind, at home I get roughly 7Mbps a second on our stone-age ADSL, I was pretty astounded when I started getting speeds such as this through my iPhone…

Ok, that’s only one test. It’s only fair to do a few, so here’s a good sample.

Not bad really? Overall, while at home, I’m averaging around 22Mbps. For me, it questions what benefit there really is to LTE. If I can get these kind of speeds from DC-HSDPA, why would anybody pay such a high premium for 4G?

The speed still holds up fairly well in the city too. My local city is Oxford, and I can happily get speeds of around 10-15Mbps. Given that the network will undoubtedly be under much heavier strain in densely populated areas, it still copes very well.

For me, though, in theory it only gets better. In September/October, EE will hand over a segment of the 1800Mhz LTE spectrum to 3, giving them a very valuable resource. And to top it all off, 3 have told us we won’t have to pay a penny more for it.

3 deserve to be shouting about this way more than they actually are – frankly I don’t think it’s given anywhere near enough credit for what it is.

Nonetheless, I’m delighted to be back with 3. For those that are interested – the plan I’m on is the £36 a month iPhone 5 One Plan.

However, hope is not lost. You can actually get an app for your PC which manually increases the amount of current that your PC’s USB ports provide. It’s called AI Charger and it’s by Asus. Don’t be  fooled though – it will actually work with any computer and not just computers with Asus motherboards.

All you need to do is download the app from the page, install it and give your computer a reboot. When you turn it back on, you should notice that your computer will now charge your iPad (albeit slowly).

This should actually work on any desktop or laptop. Bear in mind, though, that use of this app while using your laptop’s battery may cause excessive wear to your battery. A useful app though, nonetheless.

To enter, simply fill in the form below and like Alex Ward Web Services on Facebook – it’s that simple. You’ve got until midnight on Friday 9th November to enter – rules are at the bottom of this post as normal!

Good luck!

This competition has now ended.

Competition rules:

1. To have a chance of winning, you must like Alex Ward Web Services on Facebook (click the link above and then “Like”) and then fill in the form above.
2. You must be a UK resident and at least 13 years of age to enter this competition or claim the prize.
3. You can only enter this competition once. Multiple entries will not be counted and may result in disqualification.
4. You must supply valid and correct information in the competition form when filling out your entry. Failure to do so will mean we can’t contact you if you win.
5. No purchase is necessary.
6. The competition closes at 23.59hrs on Friday 9th November 2012. The winner of the competition will be notified by email within 14 days of the competition closing (although GEEK! will try to issue the result as quickly as possible after competition closure).
7. Each entry will be assigned a number and random.org will be used to find and verify a winner. Our result is final – no discussion or debate will be made.
8. GEEK! reserves the right to check that the Facebook page was liked when finding a winner.
9. By entering you agree that, if you win, your name may be published on GEEK! and/or the Alex Ward Web Services website.
10. If the winner does not claim their prize within 72 hours of being alerted, a new winner will be found with random.org.
11. If, for any reason, the prize becomes unavailable, it will be substituted with another prize of equal or greater value. No cash alternative will be offered.
12. GEEK! and Alex Ward Web Services will not use any information gathered from this competition for any reason other than finding a winner to the competition.

Competition listed on The Prize Finder

I think Toshiba’s idea was to create a light entertainment machine that wouldn’t cost the Earth. It seems to do that pretty well – considering it has a dedicated 2GB nVidia graphics card, Harmon/Kardon speakers and built in Bluetooth 4.0 and Wireless N Wi-Fi for easy streaming.

However, it’s not all high spec hardware. After all, the machine only has a 2.3Ghz dual core Core i3 processor. Whilst the rest of the hardware in the laptop makes the slower processor unnoticeable, you’d think they’d have looked a bit higher for something that originally cost £600.

Thankfully, the price has since fallen to £500, which I believe is far more reasonable.

The laptop will cater for the average person’s entertainment desires pretty well. The 2GB nVidia GT630M will handle most pre-2012 games at high quality settings without breaking a sweat – and even 2012 games will run if you’re prepared to sacrifice a bit of quality. I tested the machine with GTA IV, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Just Cause 2 – all of which played really well, even at high settings. That, paired with the Harmon/Kardon speakers – which provide a really good audio experience with fairly good bass and treble (especially for a laptop), make games and HD films a pleasure to play/watch. With the bonus of a 640GB hard drive, you aren’t likely to run out of storage for your multimedia.

And for those that need to travel, it’s got you covered too. Battery life is fairly good – expect 4-5 hours of use when browsing or word processing. You’ll even get a couple of hours of gaming out of the battery – but watch the laptop doesn’t overheat when fans are throttled by power management (but rest assured it will shut down if it does get too hot). The device isn’t too heavy to carry around either. At 2.6kg it’s hardly light, but it’s not something that would be too heavy to take to work or commute with. The lid of the laptop has a very smart looking aluminium finish which will stand out in the office, too.

There are a couple of issues. There seems to be a bit too much movement in the keyboard when typing heavily – which doesn’t seem fragile but I would have liked it to be a bit more sturdy. Also, don’t be surprised when you find the laptop full of bloatware from the start – although not all of it is useless. Things like McAfee security can be binned straight away (get Microsoft Security Essentials instead) – however tools like Toshiba’s Sleep and Charge can be a lifesaver.

Sleep and Charge is a utility that’s been bundled with Toshiba laptops for some time now. Basically, two of your four USB3 ports (yes that’s right – four USB3 ports) are programmed so that when you shut down, sleep or hibernate the laptop, the ports remain on. This means you can plug in your phone or MP3 player into the port and charge it off your laptop battery. There’s also a similar tool for the onboard speakers – plug your MP3 player into the 3.5mm mic jack while the device is off and make use of your nice speakers.

Overall, I think that at £500 you won’t get much better in terms of an entertainment laptop. Yes, it has it’s few minor issues – but overall it has all the hardware to keep you entertained for hours on end. I’m really impressed with it, and with a brand like Toshiba I can be confident it’ll be working well for years to come.

Stay tuned for our next competition which is due towards the end of the Summer. If you’d like to suggest a prize for the draw, please head to our Facebook page.

As with the last competition – all you need to do to enter is simply like GEEK! on Facebook (go to the page and click ‘Like’) and then fill in the form underneath.

This competition has now ended. Thanks to everyone who entered.

HTC have been rather vague in any improvements/updates that have been implemented. As far as I can see, these are the changes:

• The “Android is upgrading” phase that occurs when rebooting the phone from ‘cold’ has been removed. The phone no longer attempts to optimize apps when starting up. This appears to have drastically improved boot time – now around 20 seconds from power on.
• The autocorrect keyboard has had fixes implemented now meaning it works properly again with apps such as Twitter (it stopped working after the initial release of ICS for the devices).
• Spelling corrections in the UI – e.g. “develop option” now rewritten as “developer options” in the Settings menu.
• The device now responds much faster from sleep – the initial release of ICS left the device taking 2-3 seconds to respond to a wake-from-sleep request in some instances.
• Bluetooth streaming appears to have improved on my initial tests – the bitrate of Bluetooth streams was dreadful with the initial release of ICS but now seems to be better, although only time will tell if this is actually the case.
• ADDED: My phone no longer spontaneously reminds me every so often that it is up to date and that no updates are available.

However, some users are already reporting major issues with Wi-Fi on some devices since the update. According to some users, Wi-Fi will no longer connect properly (especially over longer ranges). I’m not personally experiencing the issue but will report back if I start to run into issues.

Most stock Sensation/XE users should be able to update OTA now. If you’re using a network supplied phone, it may be a little while longer before you receive the update.

Thankfully, there is a solution. I’ve come across a program called Unlocker – which is a Windows extension that forces files to delete even if your user can’t.

It’s free and can be downloaded here. Use it with care (don’t remove any files by mistake), but it can be a great tool for removing temporary files.

So now I have my car, I need to make sure I have a good way of guiding myself when I don’t know where I’m going. I’ve tried many sat nav apps over the years over various phones and operating systems. On my previous phone, the Nokia 5230, free sat nav software was provided courtesy of Nokia and I have to say – considering it was free – it was fantastic. Not only did it include features that would normally come at a premium (eg traffic and speed camera alerts), but it also allowed maps to be downloaded to the memory card (in order to save data usage).

Sadly, whilst Android does have free sat nav provided (courtesy of Google) – it’s quite limited. The actual navigation is very good – but considering it doesn’t have speed camera alerts and also doesn’t allow map downloads, I decided I had to look into a premium option.

After much deliberation, I decided to go for Copilot Live Premium. It comes at rather a cost – £25 up front including VAT and then £10 per year (after the first year) for ongoing traffic alerts. However, you do get all the premium features I would expect – including free map downloads to a memory card (which are also very well sized) and free speed camera alerts.

Performance of the app is very good – on my HTC Sensation XE movement shows at a lovely frame rate. The GUI is also very efficient – not only does it look tidy but you can also choose from a wide range of stats to show on the main display such as speed, distance remaining, ETA and so on.

 There are also plenty of settings you can play with – from changing how far in advance the app warns you of an upcoming junction through to the types of POIs that are displayed on the map. I found some settings hard to find – in many cases they were hidden away – but there’s definitely no shortage of customisation.

Overall, I’m very happy with the app. In future, I’d like to see better speeding warnings – right now you only get a warning when you’re over 5mph over the speed limit. Whilst this is handy, if I was doing 35mph in a 30 zone I’d easily get caught by a mobile speed camera.

Ratings
Features: 4/5
Performance: 5/5
Price: 4/5 (good value for money, but monthly payment options would be nice)

I read in the news recently that Microsoft are stripping back some of the built in features that will be included in Windows 8. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s new flagship operating system that is expected to reach computer screens in the last quarter of 2012.

Two things came to my attention as I read these two (one & two) blog posts by Microsoft.

• First of all, Windows Media Center is going to be an extra add-on to Windows 8. This means, unlike Windows 7, you’ll have to pay for it on top of the price of the core OS if you want – no matter whether you have the home or pro version of Windows 8. Whilst this won’t bother most people, for anyone using TV tuners on their computer (ie me), this could be a huge downfall. Media Center has a fantastic interface for TV and the EPG is great too – so I’ll be rather peeved if I have to pay for Media Center.
• Secondly, Windows 8 will not be able to natively play DVDs or Blu-Ray discs. Why, you ask? Well, I’m not sure, but it does make some kind of sense to an extent. The key idea of Windows 8 is that it will be usable on tablets – which, in most (if not all)  cases, won’t have a DVD or Blu-Ray drive – so Microsoft are probably thinking they don’t need to waste money on licensing codecs to decode the discs. However, this is no good for anybody who is planning to use Windows 8 on a laptop or a desktop.

I fear that Microsoft are going to fall into the same trap with Windows 8 as they did with Windows Vista/7. Windows 8 will be fantastic on new devices that have it preinstalled, but Microsoft will face the backlog of people using their existing machines with Windows 7. Then, years after Windows 8 has launched, there will still be a vast majority of people on older operating systems that are still supported.

At the moment, I can’t see any huge reason to upgrade to Windows 8. There’s nothing in it for me that stands out and makes me think “I really want that”.

Ah well, Windows 7 is going to be supported until 2020, so I think I’ll stick with that for now.