card | Daz4590 – Providing technology advice and reviews

Posts Tagged ‘card’

Changing Sim Card but keeping the same number on O2?

September 22nd, 2008

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I’ve been a loyal O2 Pay as you Go user for over 5 years and I still believe they have the best service in the UK. When I got my iPhone I wanted to keep the same mobile number I’d been using for the past 3 years because it was an easy memorable number as well as not having the problem of telling everyone that my number had changed. I could have carried on with my old sim card but unfortunately mine was so old (when was 3 years not out of date with technology) it would not support the 3G network and would only be capable of reaching EDGE speeds. With this in mind and the fact I just bought an iPhone 3G I went and got a new O2 sim card which would support it..hopefully.

Well it did but I was still stuck with the problem of having this random new number which I didn’t want.

Step in O2’s website – https://www.o2.co.uk/apps/help/help?qid=29&q1=22

On this simple form all you need to do is enter the last date you topped up and some numbers contained on both the new and old sim cards and that’s it. Simply wait a while, I left it overnight, then pop in your new sim card into your phone. Once O2 have made the switch your new sim card should have your old balance on it and also your old number. I tested it quickly by phoning home and vice versa to see which numbers popped up and sure enough it was my old number on a new sim card with no extra cost. Oh and your old sim card will get deactivated and no longer usable.

I thank O2 for providing this easy online free service so I don’t have to waste time or money phoning up a representative and talk for half an hour while I struggle to get my point accross. Nice one.

Posted in News

Tags: 3g, card, mobile, o2, sim

13 Comments »

New SD/MMC/RS-MMC USB card reader

September 8th, 2008

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With all these flash based card devices around nowadays most home consumer level computers are coming with multi-card readers built in. Some new laptops are gaining this luxury, although it is something Apple has chosen to omit from it’s Macbook notebook range, and not knowing when I’ll be upgrading in the future I thought I’d get a USB reader as I bide my time. Now I didn’t want a fully fledged, steel cased, multi-card, indestructible one as some seem to be but just an SD HC reader for my camcorder specifically. After seeing the wide range on the internet I turned to my old friend eBay. Now I thought the days of bargains were over on the auction site with a saturated user base however I managed to pick up exactly what I wanted for just 3p – Yes that includes postage from Hong Kong. Bargain – job done.

The downside is I’ve had to wait 9 days to receive it but it has eventually got here, true to the word of the eBay seller. It supports SD HC cards, which was my key requirement, and also matches the silver scheme of my Powerbook and other office equipment. Theres not much too say really about it’s process but the first time I plugged it in I did hit a bit of a hiccup. From my experience you have to have the SD card plugged into the USB device before you plug it into your computer. Not only does it work perfectly but it can also help not to corrupt the card although I am not too sure on the latter. Surely it is safer and recommended to do this and obviously to eject the USB device before you unplug your SD card.

Well I’m chuffed with a device that works at such a low low price and I’ll be using it quite often because it saves all the trouble with power cables and USB cables on my camcorder. All I have to do now is take out the removable storage and plug it into this little reader. Simple…It makes me wish all life was.

Posted in News, Reviews

Tags: 32gb, camcorder, canon, card, device, flash, fs100, mmc, new, reader, rs, rs-mmc, sd, silver, storage, usb

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Did anyone ever use a GAMEPORT 2000?

August 30th, 2008

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While I was filtering through the attic I found a couple of interesting items, the most being this brand new unboxed, unused Gameport 2000. Now besides the fact its the year 2008 it still looked kinda cool and with marketing phrases like “The Next-Generation Gamecard” and “Unlimited Speed Capability” who was I to argue. It only got better when I opened it up, where I saw what looked like a pc card which had only just come out of the factory. Now even though this card was old I saw features on it which I’d never seen before and for all I knew without the box could have been a future product. Sounds strange but it just seemed like a weird product.

It was made by Suncom Technologies in Taiwan and I think from about 1993. There is no information on it what so ever on the Internet except the first result in google and even that is someones aimless question which didn’t get answered 6 years ago. It seems they have disappeared and obviously weren’t a major hit. It’s a Joystick to PC dual connection card and I quote “supports 4-axis joysticks like Suncom’s Flightmax.” If I had a spare port and it was compatible I’d install it just to see what it was like. It even touts “NO INSTALLATION SOFTWARE REQUIRED” you don’t see that much nowadays on a Windows product – how times have changed….

For more information check out the pics and pour over the amazing capabilitys of this rare device. I’ll probably be throwing it away shortly anyway but it seems such a shame when it has never been used. Oh well, thats how fast technology and electronics are progressing in this day and age.

Posted in News

Tags: 2000, card, connection, gameport, gaming, joystick, new, pc, pci, suncom

1 Comment »

32 GB SD HC Card. Yes they really exist

August 23rd, 2008

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Yes so many of you know I just bought a Canon FS100 Camcorder and with many electronics moving towards flash or non moving parts media I thought I should expand mine. Now SD cards have been around for years but the new version (2.0 you could say) is the SD HC (High Capacity) cards and they can have larger storage; the biggest so far at 32gb.

Now this is where some confusion arises -- SD and SD HC cards are not entirely compatible with everything. For instance an SD card reader may not work with an SD HC card unless it specifies and these problems are hard to see. The confusion starts because they look the same but they work slightly differently with different device firmware to get that extra space on the card. I hope the manufacturers start to make it clearer on the packaging but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Regarding hardware and card readers it seems the market was a bit slow on picking up SDHC support. At the moment I know of only one reputable internal SDHC card reader and that is the PEAK All in One Reader which I could only find on eBay here but also google it to check. I’ve heard some good reviews from it but if you’re not wanting to fiddle inside your pc, or have a laptop (I’ll answer to both of those) then a usb card reader may be easier. Now there are tons of these on the market including SDHC compatible ones so be careful to choose the right one, but for your money the Sandisk MicroMate USB card reader looks good as well as the Integral SD reader. I’ll be buying one in the next couple of days and I’ll let you know what happens as it’ll be a lot easier this way with my camcorder not having to plug the beast into the usb every single upload.

Anyway I checked the internet a month ago and saw this 32gb SD HC card come out mid-August for £59.99. Yes you read that right -- £59.99 and thats a lot of money for such little memory nowadays when I could buy a 750gb External Hard Drive for the same amount. However the beauty, and large cost, comes from the fact it’s so small and there is no difference in size of a 1gb SD card to a 32gb SD HC card. With this installed in my camcorder I can get 7 hours and 13 mins of footage! Now that is amazing on such a little card! That’s amazing really and it seems larger cards are on their way soon as with all the sectors used on an SD -HC card we could see memory of 2048 GB! I can imagine next year this same card will be about £29.99 if that with electronic prices dropping so much in the past few years…oh well I can say I had one first.