Life Of Navin

And finally, I'm at the final post of my three part series dedicated to the awesomest month ever, Feb 2010.

After the great outings throughout the month (read part 1) and the kickass events (that I'm part of) beginning to take shape (read part 2), you'd be forgiven for thinking that it simply couldn't get any better. But there's a thin line between being a "Great" month and a "Awesome" month.... Two major gadgets that I bought during the course of the month transformed Feb 2010 from "Great" to "Legen ....wait for it ...dary"!! And here they are:




1) A Dell Studio 15 Lappy
I'd been planning to buy a lappy for quite some time, and plans finally finalised in Feb 2010. I'm now the proud owner of a Dell Studio 15! I have just one word to describe it's looks - KICKASS! Watching movies on the HD LED TrueLife™ display has been a complete joy, and stuff like the slot load DVD really makes it look very slick! Battery life is pretty great, and heating issues are virtually non-existent. Here are the rest of my specs:

• Core i3 Proccy
• 320 Gig HDD
• 3 Gig DDR3 RAM @ 1333 Mhz
• 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
• Built-in 2.0MP webcam
• Dell Wireless Bluetooth Internal (2.1) mini-card
• 2 USB 2.0 compliant ports
  
• 1 USB/eSATA combination port
• HDMI and VGA Connectors
• IEEE 1394 port (Firewire)
• 8-in-1 Media Card Reader
• Preloaded with Windows 7 HP (Personally repartitioned to include a Linux partition)
  
• Loads of other Preloaded Software
• A Targus carry case
  

The lappy weighs around 2.5-2.7 KGs, though it feels much lighter. The final price came up to ~47-48 K. The preloaded face recognition software (FastAccess) is initially pretty crappy (understandably), though it gets a pretty acceptable face detection rate as time goes on. Highly recommend that you go for the Studio incase you're currently planning to buy a laptop.

Unboxing of the Lappy [IMG] [~1MB]

1) A Cellphone
And this is the big one ..... I finally got myself a cellphone!! After over half a decade of being president of I-Don't-Have-A-Cellphone club, and having insults hurled at me by everyone ranging from my 10 year old cousins to my 70 year old uncles for not having a cellphone, I've finally joined the leagues of the network enabled brick wielding generation. And it didn't take me too long to decide on my cellphone of choice: the Micromax Q5

Pretty odd choice? I'd generally agree.... but my trip to Bengaluru set one thing straight. Indian phone makers were entering the scene, in a BIG way. I actually saw more Lavas, Micromaxs, Karbonns and Lemons in Bengaluru than Nokias, and SonyEricssons. Also, speaking to my uncle, who currently works in the R&D at the cellphone division of Videocon convinced me to change my choice from Videsi to WeRDesi!! :)


Anyway, here are the specs of the Q5:

• Dual SIMs, GSM-Dual-Band (900/1800 MHz)
• 262K Color QVGA Screen (320*240 Pixels, 5.6 cms)
• Trackball Navigation with Full QWERTY keypad
• A Yamaha sound chipset
• 2.0 MP Camera
• Bluetooth (A2DP), Speed Dial, Conference Calling etc.
  

The USP of the phone is the inclusion of keys that directly connects to Facebook. Infact, the phone is generally called the "FB phone". There's a pretty crazy ad for the phone on the Micromax site. The FB key simply launches a nifty java app that connects to FB and has basic features like updating your status, checking statuses etc. There's a similar key on the phone that launches messengers like Yahoo Messenger, GTalk, MSN messenger etc.

Internal memory is pretty low (15 MB) though the microSD slot enables you to add upto 8 gigs of external memory. The phone weight is less than a 100 grams.

Overall the phone, being the (sort of) blackberry clone that it is , performs pretty well. The Java UI is pretty quick and the camera and music player too are more than satisfactory. And at a selling price of ~7 K, it's a definite steal!!

Unboxing the Cellphone [IMG] [~ 1 MB]

Well, that's it I guess.... Feb 2010= Travel +Events +Gadgets +Loads of other random awesomeness!! If I could sum up the entire month in a single expression, it'd probably be something like this:

I can only pray that a month like this will show up again sometime soon! :)