Phil’s Diary - [Blog @ http://www.philsdiary.net/]
Work wasn’t too bad for a first day back after a holiday. The weather has been stunning today, right up until about 4:30 when it clouded over. Shame, I could have done with a little more vitamin E.
There’s five things grabbing my attention (or more reasonably, trying to get my money) at the moment.
The first is the sat-nav stuff I talked about a while back. The stumbling block here is that with the latest HP model changeover, a new PDA will be costing over £450. Add to that the GPS receiver and software and it all becomes a little expensive at the moment. So I think I’ll put his on hold until the prices have dropped a little more.
The second is a bit cheaper, and is a set of two-way radios. I used one this weekend while at the MR2ROC meet. They proved very very useful, and aren’t particularly expensive either. But while I’m impressed by them now, I don’t really have any immediate use for them at the moment (and don’t know when I will need them), so I’ll probably hold off on those too.
Third up is a PC at home. I need to sort out a suitable harddisk for my current number three PC. It’s currently got a very old 1Gb drive in (which is enough for Win98, and that’s about it). I’ve got a fourth PC now, which I’m planning on swapping for the third one, but need to give them replaced PC back to my parents, and so it needs a decent harddisk. Cheapest I can find is around 40quid. However I’ve got a reasonable IBM drive that can go in, if I can only figure out how to get it out of my main PC (it’s currently the Primary Master). Think a reinstall of Windows is going to happen soon.
Fourth is a network adaptor for my PS2. I’ve already got ADSL and a router so plugging it in shouldn’t be a problem. And the adaptor isn’t exactly expensive either (£25). Might give it a whirl.
Finally, Bob Thompson is looking at building a PVR. I quite like the idea, and with a PC to spare, could quite happily do this. This needs a TV card of sorts. Rather than go the budget route, I may get one with an MPEG encoder onboard, which will mean I can use a lower spec PC and still do playback and record at the same time (otherwise I’ll be pushing things a little with a P3-800). Might need a big harddisk for this too. So perhaps a couple of hundred quid.
I’m loathed to jump into the the first two because there’s no need for them at the moment. The fourth I can get away without spending money. And the later, I really want to see what Bob Thompson comes up with.
This isn’t a bad thing as it allows me to build up some cash reserves to pay for the new exhaust and tyres for the car (neither of which are too cheap).
The third one is the only one which I can use now and which doesn’t cost very much. Next pay-cheque perhaps.
Posted by Phil on September 15, 2003 10:41 PM | Categories: Work
See the new PC Pro magazine for a big article on PVRs.
Posted by: Chris at September 22, 2003 5:08 PM