Pure woof!

So i finally got my order from focalprice delivered ... it got stuck in their system for a month (i think it got confused as to whether i had to reply to a query) and took a while to come through the mail. The padded bag was pretty knocked about and even torn under some tape, but somehow the contents arrived without being busted even inside some crushed boxes.

Got a new battery for my X61 thinkpad ... the previous one died about a year ago. It didn't exactly slide in cleanly and is a bit bendy, but I got it in eventually, I guess time will tell how well it works. At nearly 1/10th the price of the last one I got, I don't have a high bar for it to be considered worthwhile. So long as it doesn't burn the house down ...

I also grabbed an Ainol Novo 7 Elf ii 7" tablet - so I finally have a tablet of my own rather than a work thing. Seems quite well built, and the performance is pretty decent. The main downside so far is the video player isn't properly playing everything I have here. Video plays ok (actually very nicely, although not scaled in the default player) but for many files there's no sound. But other players play the sound (even jjplayer almost works on this thing) so it's either something to do with the hardware sound codec or some other strange bug. I even tried cyanogenmod but to no avail (although at least the firmware install process is simple). The Mele plays a lot more formats out of the box with their custom player. It's not like I need another screen to watch videos on (right now i have 5 in visible reach), but since it's there ... The screen needs to be fairly straight on too, particularly vertically in landscape (which makes portrait mode a little tricky as unless you're in the right spot one eye gets a darker view than the other), so I probably should've gone the few extra $ for the Aurora - i knew as soon as i ordered it that it wasn't worth the few $$ difference w/ the smaller flash too. But for the price it's really not that bad - i've just been spoilt so far with high-end devices. Should be handy for hacking on anyway. Oh and firefox is fairly decent now on android so I can use it for dunny-surfing ...

And lastly just for fun I got some 'ThinkBox' MD-18 mini speaker/mp3 player things. Mostly to give as presents. My sister had a 'music angel' which was kinda nifty and after poking around on-line I got the ThinkBox equivalent which also has an LCD display because I though the 3 button/no screen interface made it a bit hard to use ... It's basically a music player/fm radio/powered speaker with a built-in battery - it puts out enough volume to be usable as a computer speaker. It has sd-card slot, a usb slot for charging and line-in, and a usb-host for usb flash drives. Fairly solidly built (at least on the outside) and the firmware - whilst not wonderful - is passable.

It's almost worth it for the blurb on the back of the box, it's pure woof!

• New mini aluminuw vibration film loud speaker, which has caear alt and pure woof. The unique design makes tone performance perfect.
• Metallic,shell shows noble and fashionable,out of ordinary, with many colours,several solution;for your option.
• Several power supply manners including bactery,computer USB,adaptor DC-5V allow you to enjoy the charm of digital products at any time.
• Mini audio box with new concept integral stereo portable mobie music, connecting your MP3, CD, DVD, iPod, GPS, PSP, mobile phone, notebook computer and Micro SD/TF.

Well that blew my morning away ... I suppose i had better do some work now.