The UK Mobile Report

30 second review: Dell Precision M2300

Not a bad bit of kit. The first thing you notice however is the heftiness - it's 5.3lbs and really weighs you down when lugging it around. How some people can call it an ultraportable defeats me.

Good points: Great screen. Good keyboard.

Bad points: the one I have seems to have a fault as it keeps trying to access the hard drive, and thus clicks incessantly. Pretty poor for a new machine.

Asus desktop Ebox due June 3

To be unveiled at Computex, apparently. That's over in sunny Taipei, if you are thinking of going.

The little beastie is expected to have a 160Gb hard drive, 2Gb RAM, and run a Linux operating system.

Is Blyk screwed up?

Over at the excellent SMS Text News blog they have a regular review going from a user of the Blyk service.

Today's posting is very interesting as the system appears to be spewing out tons of repeat SMSs to subscribers. Having read previous reports I get the impression that Blyk's free offering in return for taking SMS ads is going down OK, but the repeats are seriously messing up the offering.

Let's see if it gets fixed soon.

Note: Blyk offers a small amount of free mintues and texts in return for receiving text messages from sponsors most days of the week. Some of the texts solicit a response.

Promo video: HTC Touch Diamond

Video - Asus Eee PC 900

Courtesy of TigerDirectBlog

Users loose download habit

Is your iPod gathering dust through lack of attention? Most likely yes, according to research by Leading Question. It found that new iPod users soon get sick of paying for tracks and gradually spend less and less. The number of people buying downloads actually fell from 16 to 14 percent between 2006 and 2007.

This is an intriguing statistic.

It can only mean that paid downloading isn't really catching on. Personally I fit very well into this description. I downloaded most off iTunes in the early days. Now I think it's a bit of a rip-off. I would get interested again if it was possible to use the service like a jukebox but Apple (or the labels) seems to be dragging their feet on this.

I wonder what the research says. Would there be many punters willing to spend say £9.99 per month for an eat-as-much-as-you-like offering? I suspect there would be but Apple believes that such an offering would actually lead to a decline in sales. Why buy when you can sample?

Watch out for nPower

The BBC’s Watchdog programme stuck the boot into energy provider Npower last night, saying that according to research it was the worst of the lot. It’s not totally clear how they arrived at this result apart from the fact that Watchdog and the comparison site EnergyWatch found that they were receiving far more complaints about nPower than any of the other providers.

Naturally Watchdog focussed on individual horror stories such as the pensioner who was being chased by debt collectors for a series of nPower bills that he refused to pay because they had got the billing completely wrong.

There is a serious problem here, and one that comes up time and again on consumer watchdog programmes. Namely that if you refuse to pay a bill because it is wrong, companies automatically trip into harassment mode by handing over the outstanding bill to third party debt collectors. You may complain but their customer support are seemingly trained to ignore words like ‘this is the wrong bill’ and ‘you are charging me too much’, as if it is totally impossible for their billing system to make an error.

I recently heard the story of a £50 phone bill which escalated to £900 once the debt collectors were involved. Funny that the current Government has relaxed the laws so that it is now easier for debt collectors to enter your property to remove property. It is something of a joke that the Government and its various watchdogs are often feeble when it comes to protecting consumer interests.

Here's the recent EnergyWatch statement on nPower:

Energywatch statement on announcement of probe into Npower's sales tactics (22 April 2008)

Adam Scorer, energywatch Director of Campaigns, said: “energywatch welcomes news that Npower's sales tactics are to be formally investigated by Ofgem.

“Within the last month energywatch wrote to Npower and Ofgem with details of more than 400 cases where consumers had complained about the companies sales tactics. And with the evidence suggesting Npower's sales staff were caught red-handed bullying, deceiving and harassing consumers, an example must be made of them.

“More than 100 consumers contact us each month to complain about Npower's marketing tactics. That makes them the worst performing supplier. But it doesn't stop there; Npower are the worst company in terms of complaints, shoddy customer service and any analysis of help offered to vulnerable consumers shows them to be the company who penalises their prepayment customers the most and offers the least help to consumers struggling to pay bills.

“It is highly appropriate that Npower's litany of shame has brought them to the regulator's attention. No consumer should be subjected to such bully boy behaviour and such poor service.”

Footnote (by me): While I think it is good that Energywatch keeps an eye on these things and publicises what it thinks is shoddy behaviour, it should be noted that comparison sites like energywatch are under inspection at the moment due to suspected dubious behavior in terms of not being quite what they seem.

This stems from the fact that their suggestions for alternative suppliers are weighted according to what those suppliers are paying them for referrals and not according to what is actually the best deal.

This blog is not alone in hoping that the powers that be probe this matter effectively so that we find out exactly what is going on. If you want to see an example of how this works go to the superb site www.moneysavingexpert.com which lists financial bargains according to tough editorial guidelines of what really is best for your money.

Meanwhile the site also lists results from comparison sites which are invariably different from the empirical findings. It's shows you how comparison sites are not what most consumers expect them to be - a balanced view of the offerings available.

I have no objection to them running their business this way so long as the bias is transparent, at the moment its the usual online smoke and mirrors going on, with Joe Public being hoodwinked all the way.

Comparison sites are very big business now. It's about time they opened up to closer inspection.

Vodafone admits leaked calls

The Guardian reports that Vodafone has admitted that it had a problem with allowing some users access to the calls of other subscribers.

The problem came to light because one subscriber contacted Privacy International, saying he/she had been able to listen to a call being made to an immigration official.

Vodafone says the problem is now fixed, but would not disclose how many such gaffes ocurred and over what time period.

Sounds like damage limitation? Hardly very reassuring for anyone phoning their bank or involved in sensitive discussions.

HTC Touch Diamond - a jewel in the grass?

OK. Lets take stock. Iphone sales are roaring, and with a 3G version in the pipeline, the Apple hype machine is about to switch into overdrive for the second time in twelve months. These are not happy times for the handful of other firms that make their millions by making phones. Noone likes a brand new market entrant doing that well. But HTC thinks it has an answer. It's customers and shareholders sincerely hope so. It's called the Touch Diamond. Put simply it's the 3G version of the popular (3 million sold) Touch Smartphone. Unlike Apple's 3G iPhone, the Touch Diamond is here next month. Rather than be an iPhone lookalike it seems to be trying to offer most of the same features but with a different ergonomic ethic. For example using the iPhone is largely a two-handed affair; the Diamond is designed so that you can fiddle with the touch screen with your holding hand - things like that are important to phone users. It offers the usual email, music, texting, and photos smorgasbord and has a 3.2Mpix camera. The only downside is 4Gb memory compared to 8Gb or 16Gb on the iPhone. At the end of the day this is going to be seen by most as HTC/Microsoft against Apple iPhone. Perhaps showing that when it comes to the phone wars operating systems are becoming increasingly significant. Microsoft's Windows Mobile (on all HTC devices) is loved and hated in equal measure, whereas it his hard to find many neutrals that don't love the ease of use of the iPhone.

Tech.co.uk is now TechRadar.com

This happened a few months ago, but they have just been in touch to remind me to change my links - so I have. It's one of my favourite tech sites, so it's worth changing your bookmarks in case the old URL is flogged off.