Make sure to head over to PadAddicts.co.uk and get the latest episode of the podcast. This week Dom and I rant about some of the coolest games we’ve been playing. Alternatively get your episode from iTunes.
After 3 years of absence I’m back in the world of podcasting. This time I joined up with Dom Hodgson, a.k.a. The Hodge for an iPad Podcast called PadAddicts. We’ve done one episode so far and although we sounded a bit rusty (or at least I did) the response was very positive. Additionally people have been trying to match us up against the TechGrumps in various vs-battles scenarios, so we will have to see where that goes.
You can follow the PadAddicts podcast on the site, or subscribe via iTunes.
We recently bought a Huawei MiFi (also known as the Three MiFi), which if you didn’t know is just a simple little 3G-to-WiFi router. We used the MiFi in combination with an iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone when on the road in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands.
Why get it?
Simple: instead of paying for mobile broadband for your iPhone, laptop, iPad, and other devices, it is often cheaper to just bring a MiFi on the road and just use the mobile broadband through one device. Additionally if you travel abroad you often don’t want to get a data plan for every device you own.
I am still using the original iPhone (2G) and I have been waiting for Apple to make a significant enough upgrade for me to justify investing in a new phone. The original iPhone was a major leap for me when I bought it 2.5 years ago and I would love to see a similar leap in my new phone.
So I have been tempted to get the new iPhone 4, but I was wondering what the investment cost would be for me. I currently have an unlocked iPhone with a Pay&Go O2 plan of £15 a month. For that I get 500mb data, 300 UK texts, and I can even call those £15 away (which I never do, cause I never call people).
Now there seems something wrong with most price comparisons that I’ve seen. Most of them don’t scale the TCO (total cost of ownership) to a per month basis, and often do they consider a 12 month plan to be better than a 24 month plan. In most of these comparisons either Three or Tesco comes out cheapest.
I on the other hand follow a different reasoning.
Based on that comparison I make the following comparison for a 16GB Black iPone 4:
As you can see, in my comparison the O2 contract is by far the cheapest. Considering that Tesco uses the same network as O2 I rather go with O2 directly. It turns out that Tesco is still one of the cheapest options, giving me about £90 discount on a new iPhone. Also, if you don’t want to go with a contract, I noticed that buying an iPhone directly from Apple is not that expensive actually. The cheapest contracts seem to be at most £40 cheaper than buying an unlocked phone.
It turns out that buying an unlocked iPhone and going with some kind of Pay&Go plan is probably the cheapest for me. Three offers 600 texts and 2GB data when you top up £10 a month (£5 cheaper than my current Pay&Go plan) after which you can still call away the £10. This gives me a total discount of £120 on an iPhone, making this a way better deal than most contracts.
Now I realize I might have missed some options here, and this clearly only applies to me and my sparse calling habits, but I thought it was an interesting alternative view. Let me know if you got some data to add.
So yes, I bought an iPad, kind of, but that’s beside the point. When I bought my first Macbook Pro I didn’t directly buy a sleeve for it and I eternally regretted that after I gave it a big dent. So when I bought the iPad I bought the only sleeve that Currys had in store: an purple Belkin Grip Sleeve, but I soon after tried the Crumpler Giordano Special in a need to find something better.
Like thousand of others I sent an email to my MP a few weeks back asking him what his stand was on the Digital Economy Bill. Today (a day after the bill has mostly passed) I finally got a response by regular mail. I thought I’d share the letter.
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