Archive for the ‘review’ Category

Shiva Iyer at Packt Publishing kindly sent me a review copy of Instant OpenELEC Starter. It’s an ebook with a list price of £5.99, and I was able to download .pdf and .mobi versions (with an .epub option too). It’s also available from Amazon as a paperback (£12.99) and for Kindle (£6.17). The book is […]


This post first appeared on the CohesiveFT blog. One of the announcments that seemed to get lost in the noise at this week’s IO conference was that Google Compute Engine (GCE) is now available for everyone. I took it for a quick test drive yesterday, and here are some of my thoughts about what I found. Web interface […]


Since the screen failed on my wife’s Lenovo s10e netbook (and I turned it into a TV attached media player) she’s been using my old s10e, but that’s been on its last legs for a while too. The time had come for something new, with a full sized keyboard and screen. I’ve been looking around […]


Shortly after starting my new job it became apparent that I’d need a new laptop. As most of the other CohesiveFT team use Macs (and iWork) I was very tempted by the 11″ Macbook Air, but its limited memory and need for dongles to connect to things like VGA and network dissuaded me. I may come to […]


First the really good news – Lenovo (or more specifically their fulfilment partner Digital River) managed to take an order from me and ship (on time) without some major disaster happening (as I’ve suffered before, repeatedly). They seem to have entirely given up on supplying order tracking information, which is little change in practice to […]


I spent the past week as exec in residence for the London Fintech Innovation Lab, working with the 7 winning startups based in the shiny new Level 39 Technology Accelerator at Canary Wharf. It seemed like the perfect chance to try out my Chromebook in a more work oriented setting. Battery life I was brave, […]


In earlier posts of this series I’ve looked at ladder board and Quick2Wire’s boards. This post is about the official expansion project board for the Raspberry Pi, named after its creator Gert van Loo, the Gertboard. Construction Like the other boards I’ve looked at Gertboard comes as a kit of parts. The two things that […]


In part 1 of this series I looked at ladder board, and in the next part I plan to review the Gertboard. This post is about Quick2Wire‘s boards, where I’ve been fortunate enough to try out some alpha and beta samples. Quick2Wire concept There’s an interface board that connects to the general purpose input output […]


I got my Chromebook a week ago, so it’s time to reflect on my experiences so far (beyond my initial first impressions). The good parts Blogging – it’s pretty much a perfect blogging tool, and I’ve managed to get a lot of posts done in the past week. The holiday may have had something to […]


I’ve been without a laptop for a few weeks[1], and whilst tablets are fine for consumption and the occasional comment I’ve missed having a keyboard for proper creative work. I’ve been tempted by Lenovo’s Black Friday sale for the X230[2], various Ultrabooks and Netbooks[3], but by the time I’d got an SSD[4] I’d be looking at £400-£500. […]