Wednesday, December 17, 2008

On Gaming, and Review:Philips GoGear

Hello dudes and dudettes,

This is literally an unexpected blog post for me as I had some extra free time due to a lst minute announcement of a holiday. This holiday was declared due to a 'bandh' - an informal, unofficial curfew declared by political parties in protest of something. The something may range from highly trivial to an astounding cause - and thus I got some time to say a 'hello' to my computer after a couple of days!

Well, the past days were uneventful except for my major step in my guitar lessons. I have nearly learnt all the basic chords, and if I get perfect with it, my teacher/coach has promised me that he would start with 'Hotel California' by Eagles next week. I'm kind of excited about this since I really love that song!

Seeing nothing more important to talk of, this time I stick to the true name of my blog and shall talk about a few interesting pages. I actually gain nothing by linking to them, but for spreading information to people who are ignorant of the existance of such pages. 

So, here we go,

The first one is gonna' interest some of you 'cause it's all about gaming. For guys still at the high school, or college: Now, would you like an XBox or a PS3 which a HDTV all set for gaming, installed in your office, available anytime? Well, that's what blokes out there intend to do. Here is a page regarding the pros and cons,(most are the pros, fortunately) on gaming in office, and how it seemingly increases the productivity of the employees.

Here's the link, 

There is space for comments there, but w.r.t spreading the awareness, you guys owe me a comment! :P

The next one is a little bit serious(than the previous one.)
Well, I just can't seem to find anything to write without putting up the whole matter here. So to avoid the gross deed of plagiarism, I'll just quote the first intorductive paragraph, which may probably explain a little. Anyways, its about the future about The Earth, and, indirectly, humanity.

"First there is the case put forward in 2003 by astrophysicist Donald Brownlee and palaeontologist Peter Ward in their absorbing book The Life and Death of Planet Earth, that biological existence here has only another 500 million years left - at an optimistic best. The processes which over the next 7 billion years will incrementally scorch the Earth, dry up the oceans, and finally engulf the planet within the immense advancing orb of the dying sun, will long before that have extinguished all living things..."

More here:

Do read and keep comments pouring in!



REVIEW: PHILIPS GoGear

Well, I've been using a Philips GoGear since quite sometime, people who reguarly read about my music interests would know about it. Now, since I've got some extra time, I feel like reviewing it. My brother's got an iPod Nano, which is actually worth not is cost, and I got a chance to use my cousin's Creative ZEN, a few things I shall use for comparison.

Design : 

The Philips GoGear looks great. It is nice and slim, not of course as slim as the nano, but sufficiently slim to fit into any pocket you care to name. The front is made of a piano black finish black which is not as scratch-prone as you may think. It doesn't even attract nearly as many fingerprints as say, the PSP, but you will need to keep wiping it if you hate fingerprints. The back, is irritatingly made of the same chrome-y material of the current ipod nanos. This has surprised me as it is one of the most scratch prone surfaces ever made. But one screen guard and one back-guard [?] later, you are good to go. 
The buttons, to be honest feel kind of cheap. There is a 4-way pad with a centre click button, a "menu" button [that according to me should have been named the "back" button] to the left, and a handy [but rarely used playlist button that adds the currently playing song to a playlist] which is located to the right. Nice to see a dedicated +/- volume rocker which is on the right of the player. To the left you will find the hold switch as well as a mic for recording. The bottom sports a reset switch, 3.5mm jack and the mini-USB port. I found the placement of the hold switch rather uncomfortable. It would have been much better on the right of the player.
The face buttons are nowhere near as responsive as i would like them to be. But there is a nice satisfying click. 
The screen is a nice bright 1.8" screen that does 65k colors at 320x240. While it is nowhere near as bright as say, the nano's screen, it is sufficiently sharp and clear for most. 

Features :

The player has quite a bit of features to boast of. It supports photos. They look great on the screen. Again only very basic functionality. 
Moving on to videos, the player leaves you sorely disappointed here. It only supports videos upto 20fps! And at a max bitrate of 384 kbps....That makes all videos boringly slow to watch. All but the shortest of videos are completely unwatchable. Forget about even watching a 15 minute cartoon. It is un-doable. 
The Radio, on the other hand was really good. The reception was stellar, better than anything I have ever used. Again, very basic usage here too. All you can do is auto tune and set presets. 
The Voice recorder did it's job really well. The recording was very audible. But i wouldn't recommend it for recording soft or far-off voices. I used it a few times to record my tries on Master of Puppets, and Battery riffs, to see what they sound like. I got an acoustic though..duh!
Even format support is very disappointing. It only supports MP3 and WMA..... nope, no AAC.

Audio:

During the past one year, the time I've spent with this little PMP, I've listened to a variety of songs ranging from Pop, Bollywood, Rock, Thrash, nu Metal, Ballads and Electronic and Rap...no Im not bragginn'!

So this is what I'd like to say,
Overall, the Player offers just middle of the road quality. It was really lacking in Bass and Treble, leading to what i will describe as flat sound. It really takes the spark out of a lot of songs. But clarity was nice and surprisingly, detail loss was minimum.
Thus, if you are even slightly a Bass Freak, or consider yourself a music lover, then stay away. If you are a strictly casual listener, then it should satisfy you. 

On the whole:
Philips GoGear SA-3115 is a decent player, true in its features considering its price and good for casual listeners. Im casual to some extent, at least now(I got to study!)...otherwise, you wouldn't really find something great in it. Anyway, the best sound quality comes from an iPod, and otherwise, I'd recommend you to visit concerts when they take place in your city. They are the best. (I visited the Boney M concert recently, my first and really good one!)

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Okay then, it's time I Disappear to my bed 'cause this lovely day is nearly over here, and I got to gear up for the next week. A couple of really fat books await at my table, to be solved. 

So until my next blog,
Cya
Templar AKA Sumanth




12 comments:

Kausthubh said...

Very nice explanation. Really informative. Keep it up!

Sumanth said...

thx!

My Thoughts said...

The Philips GoGear is pretty much decent. It would have been much better if you had mentioned the costs of all the audio players which you have written about. It would be much easier to compare that way. By the way, i feel the GoGear's features are kinda copied from the Apple's idea which is put into use in the IPOD's. For example, the Menu Button. Yeah, Ipod is scratch prone!

Anyways, good comparison. Keep posting :)

Anonymous said...

great explanation and info keep posting

theplaceoflove.blogspot.com

Sumanth said...

thx.

Preetam said...

Nice initiative of site reviews. One suggestion would be to make the posts a bit smaller. You know people like me can't read for a long time when it comes to reviews and technology. Keep up the good Work! Cheers

Sumanth said...

@Preetam - Oh! Well, I can understand that reviews do get boring, especially if its not a really hot product the review's about :-P
So, okay, I'll definitely try and make my reviews smaller. But otherwise, I think they'll have to be big, I guess.

Jhangora said...

Mate u shud have informed me before removing link to my blog.

Sumanth said...

@Jhangora - Huh? I dint get u...

Unknown said...

loved the review... very detailed. I have a sony walkman which m very fond of. But its only a modest music player... no video or pics. But its fine wit me coz m not very fond of watching movies on move.

Keep up the good work.... looking for more reviews.

Sumanth said...

@ Lakhwanisblog - Pardon me if that aint your name:P So, Sony Walkman is good IMO, though I havent compared it, one of my friends has it, and I got to have a peak into it sometime back...though it lacks features, it's got an excellent sound quality!

Hemanth Srinivasan said...

Hey very good article