Nokia Lumia 920 and the tale of déjà vu

Exactly a year ago, thanks to the lovely team at Nokia Connects I've had an opportunity to trial the Nokia Lumia 800 - the first Nokia-designed smartphone running the Windows Phone operating system. Putting all ramblings whether Nokia's sudden strategy switch was right or not, the Lumia 800 impressed me, however not to the point where I'd be ready to ditch Android in favour of WP7 just yet.

Fast-forward 12 months and I find myself with the latest top dog from Nokia's Windows Phone range in my hands, the Lumia 920. Again, kudos to Nokia Connects for letting me have it.

Impressions from MWC 2012 a.k.a. "This Is My Next"

Although I'm self-proclaimed mobile gadgets maniac, somehow I don't usually follow major events in the industry as closely as someone could think. However, since I consider getting a new smartphone to replace my current HTC Desire Z sometime soon'ish, I was keeping an extra eye on the recent happenings in Barcelona where Mobile World Congress took place.

Running SSH daemon in Windows 7

Despite being Linux (fan)boy generally and running Fedora on all in-house laptops, I've decided to keep Windows 7 on my newly acquired Acer Revo RL100 media centre PC. I am fairly happy with it and don't feel the need to switch to Linux distro on such PC anyway. However, since my (ir)regular backup policy heavily relies on rsync which pushes data from my laptop over ssh to external USB drive attached to media centre PC, I was looking for a solution that works in Windows 7. Surprisingly, there is one and works pretty well. Phew!

Updating nVidia driver in Acer Revo RL100

Upgrading video driver for nVidia ION2 adapter in Acer Revo RL100 downloaded directly from nvidia website surprisingly leads to the installer failing with "This graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware" error. Funny, right? Turns out that video adapter can only be upgraded by the driver update downloaded from Acer website. However, driver provided by Acer is quite old compared to the latest version sourced from nvidia directly, and we all love to always have the latest and greatest drivers installed, right?

Acer Revo RL100 media centre PC review

For the past year or so my over-5-year-old Dell Latitude D620 laptop has been working 24/7 as a home media centre PC. Hooked up to the LCD TV with VGA lead for video and standard 3.5mm jacks for audio, combined with wireless keyboard+trackball combo it was mostly used to watch TV/VoD streaming over the internet (thankfully Xilo has truly unlimited broadband). However, I've been thinking to upgrade this rather archaic setup and replace the dated laptop with dedicated HTPC machine. I wasn't in the hurry tough, so over the course of few months I've ran through few options which included Zotac Z-BOX, Xtreamer Ultra and Acer Revo RL3700 among others. But one day I came across a very good deal on Acer Revo RL100 which I've never heard about earlier, nonetheless given its specification and bargain price I have decided to get one straight away.

HTC Flyer vs. Archos 80 G9 - thoughts and impressions

I didn't really consider changing my tablet anytime soon, as I was quite happy with Archos 80 G9 which I've got around October. But there was that ridiculous Christmas clearance of the HTC Flyer tablet at DSG stores (PCWorld, Dixons and Currys) here in the UK recently and you know... it just happened by itself. ;) When the clearance was pretty much over everywhere, I've somehow managed to bag (in fact, my wife did) a WiFi-only unit, the very last one from the display in Dixons nearby. Phew!

Sony Ericsson Xperia pro - thoughts and review

My recent involvement as an author in Coolsmartphone technology blog has opened an opportunity to get my hands dirty with mobile gadgets I'd probably never had chance to play with. One of the latest example was Sony Ericsson Xperia pro - a full-sized hardware qwerty handset, powered by Android Gingerbread due to receive Ice Cream Sandwich soon.

Judging by nowadays standards Xperia pro perhaps isn't the most compelling handset out there, yet it is still very good looking, reasonably specced and reliable handset, sporting fantastic hardware qwerty keyboard too. Official upgrade to ICS just behind the corner is surely a huge plus too. Considering that combination doesn't really occur often in Android world, Xperia pro is definitely worth a shot, especially with very attractive £272 price tag at Handtec.

I've written up a full review at Coolsmartphone, so read on if interested.