Month: January 2012

Get a massive 68% off a Playbook tablet

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Blackberry PlaybookWhen the Blackberry Playbook tablet launched last year, the UK retail price for the 16GB version was £399. You can now get this nifty tablet for just £169.

Although this is a pretty powerful little tablet, it’s not caught the public’s imagination, and so Blackberry dropped the price last year. They’ve now slashed the price again, with the entry level machine now costing £169 (a saving of £230 on what you’d have paid last October).

If you’re in the market for a decent tablet at a silly price, then the discounted Playbook is currently in stock online at Currys: Blackberry Playbook 16GB at Currys. 32GB and 64GB versions are also available at £199 and £249.

What does the Playbook offer?

It’s an incredibly light and thin (10mm) tablet with a 7″ display. It supports multi-touch, and has a dual-core processor. Other top features:

  • 7″ 1024×600 WSVGA touchscreen display
  • Up to 1080p video playback, with HDMI output to connect to a TV or monitor
  • Front and rear facing cameras
  • Gyroscope and accelerometer for enhanced gameplay
  • GPS and digital compass / magnetometer
  • Support for H.264, MPEG4 and WMV video playback
  • Wi-fi, Bluetooth, USB and HDMI connectivity
The Heavily Discounted Blackberry Playbook

The Heavily Discounted 16GB Blackberry Playbook

Sure, the Blackberry Playbook isn’t an iPad, but if you’re looking for a powerful and capable tablet device at a bargain price, the Blackberry Playbook is worth some serious consideration at this knock-down price.  It’s currently half the price of competing 7 inch tablet devices such as the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab.  More on the Blackberry Playbook.

Got a Playbook? We’d love to know what you think!

Update 21 Feb: Now even better… Blackberry Playbook Gets A Facelift

Mobile Computing, Offers , , ,

Speed increases for Virgin customers

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Broadband in the UK is about to get a little bit faster, as Virgin is planning to double the speed for many of its customers in the next 18 months.

Virgin Media BroadbandVirgin Media, operator of the UK’s cable TV and Internet network is planning to double the download speed offered to customers of its 10Mb, 20Mb, 30Mb and 50Mb services from next month. The speed upgrade will start from February 2012 for some customers, and be complete across their cable network by the middle of 2013. Although the upgrades are set to cost Virgin £110m,customers will get the speed increase for free.

A free doubling of broadband speeds is a good thing, and it will take the UK’s fastest download speeds to 120Mbps, which is three times better than the maximum speed offered by other UK broadband providers such as BT and Plusnet.

Last year, BT announced its plans to roll out its BT Infinity fibre service to 66% of the UK by 2015, at a rather more pricey £2.4 billion, but currently, BT’s fibre service only offers 40Mbps.

Virgin has been in a great position to offer a fast connection as they only offer the service in the more profitable parts of the UK, and their network was built as a fibre network from the ground-up, and isn’t an old network of copper cables and telegraph poles that requires a major upgrade just to get speeds of up to 40Meg. Virgin’s also pretty accurate in its speed prediction – if you pay for a 30Mbps service, you get close to that figure, whereas here at FileSaveAs, the machine we’re using is on an “up to 20Mbps” connection, and we’re seeing a speed of about 4Mbps. Sadly, neither BT Infinity or the Virgin cable network is available where we live (yet), and each time we check on the date for fibre in our area, it seems to be pushed back by 3 months.

If fast broadband is of interest to you, the winner in the UK is clearly Virgin, and customers are also set to be winners too, as they’re about to start getting free upgrades to even faster speeds.

If you’re lucky enough to be in a Virgin Media cable area, then take a look at their combined cable TV and fast broadband service – you can find details of what they offer at virginmedia.com

 

Got Virgin? We’d love to know what you’d like to use your new shiny faster connections for – Please add a comment below.

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Podcast Review of 2011 Released

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With the start of a new year, it’s time to take a look back at the last year of tech news, as well as reflect on what might be in store for coming twelve months of UK technology. Rather than reading our wander back through a year’s worth of tech news, have a listen to our audio review…

FrequencyCast LogoIn 2011, we saw various bits of tech excitement, including:

  • Launch of the Nintendo 3DS, glasses-free 3D gaming
  • BT Home Hub 3
  • Google +1 and Google + (social networking, not a new TV channel!)
  • Playstation and Blackberry network issues
  • First experiments with IPv6, the new network standard
  • The demise of the US space shuttle program
  • The iPhone 5 wasn’t launched, but we got the Siri-toting iPhone 4S instead

Just a few of our highlights from 2011, and our podcast boys have just launched their audio review of the  last year.

Our podcast?

Not tried our podcast before? Where have you been all our life?? We’re now in our sixth year, and the won the best UK non-profit podcast in the last round of European Podcast Awards – so we must be doing something right. The show’s host, Carl, is a gadget-phobe, but he’s paired with Pete, who’s a technophile (or a “geek” as many call him)

Our podcasts are free, and you can listen to them online, or if you have an iPod, iPhone or iPad, listen to us via iTunes. There are several ways you can listen, and in each show, we cover a different tech topic.

If you’ve not had a listen, please give us a try and see what you think – You can take a listen to our review of 2011, which gives you a great idea of what we’ve been up to over the last year, and also hear us out-and-about at Birmingham’s Gadget Show Live.

For more details about FrequencyCast, our humble Technology Podcast, see our UK Technology Podcast page

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