Harry's Blog

Can any of you lend me a grand? See Canon has just announced the EOS 7D camera and I'm lusting after it.

What is clear is that the Canon EOS 7D is replete with features, many of which seem like a fulfillment of an enthusiast checklist. Other features are clear responses to just about every corner of the digital SLR market, features that are heretofore only seen on one or two cameras from Nikon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus, and even Canon's Rebel line. The end result is that much of what Canon users may have admired in other cameras is now available in the Canon 7D. - imaging-resource.com

Any of you want to buy a Canon EOS 50D and battery grip?

The Cowon S9 32GB is without doubt the best music player I've owned. Previously I had an iRiver Clix 2 4GB that I was very happy with as it combined good sound quality with the ability to read books. I've also got a Creative Zen 32GB which was great as I could get my entire CD collection on it. However the Zen didn't have a book reader.

I began shopping around for a player with a 32GB capacity but also a good book reader. Sound quality was the major factor and after reading many reviews I settled on the S9. I'm really glad I did.

The sound quality is excellent, both through my CX300 in ear phones and my PX100 open phones. The battery life is outstanding and the screen is amazing. It's a delight to watch movies on and TV programmes downloaded from BBC iPlayer.

The book reader is very good too - making it very easy and pleasurable to listen to music and read at the same time. The radio reception is the best I've had in any music player I've owned.

The user interface is very good indeed and tweaked via the freely available CLAW UCI it's even better. My only criticism of the player is that it uses a propriety USB cable rather than a regular mini plug. But that's no big deal. All in all I'm thrilled with the S9.

If you're in the market for a touchscreen music player with good format support, excellent sound quality, an amazing AMOLED screen and super video playback (including BBC iPlayer support) then the S9 is the player to go for.

This isn't my Cowon S9 32GB review. You've probably noticed that from the title. It was meant to be though. I just haven't finished that yet. Along the way though I picked up Fiio's wonderful little E5 headphone amplifier and I thought I'd post this mini review to tell you all about it.

But first, why on earth would you need an amplifier for your MP3¹ player?

There are several reasons. Firstly the headphone amp in many personal music players is cheap, nasty and the last thing on the mind of the designers of what might be otherwise an excellent quality PMP. Some lack power, meaning that even on small headphones you have to crank up the volume to hear in a noisy location but the result is distorted sound. Also small rechargeable personal music players - even the very good ones - aren't designed to be able to power massive audiophile headphones with an impedance of 300ohms.

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Trying to achieve anything with Vodafone customer services is like trying to wrestle a Vaseline-coated snake while wearing as Teflon gimp suit.

But after two weeks of trying the snake is finally back in the box, so to speak.

Here's a tip for you if you need anyone at Vodafone to show they give even the merest shit about your problem. Don't phone regular customer service, talk to the cancellations department instead. If they think their money-teat is going to go dry they'll be much more helpful.

Looks like our obscure village in Dorset will be on Google Streetview before too long. And given I was just stood at the window pointing my camera at the car I may end up online too.

You wouldn't believe the hassle we've had since moving house trying to get broadband.

Yes we now live in quite a rural location. But we're on a new build estate that apparently has superb cabling around it to enable fast internet access.

So what happened to our order for Broadband?

• BT cancelled our first two orders without telling me.
• Order three I was assured would be fine as they'd remove a tag on our line. This didn't happen.
• Another phone call to BT and the tag was removed. We ordered broadband again.
• We got a phonecall saying we couldn't have broadband at all at this location.

Now when I switch on my wireless here all I can see are about ten BT home hubs. So someone at BT has no idea what's going on here. The village seems to be in some records black hole for the company. It was the location of an experiment to bring broadband to rural areas a few years ago and clearly someone didn't tell the rest of BT.

Anyway we wonder what the heck to do next. I've already been working several weeks on dial up and it's driving me mental. We consider actually moving house again.

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You probably won't want to watch this video if you're easily offended by the word "fuck" or have no sense of humour.