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MOBILE EXTRAS
INTRO
COPY
WESTAR WALK ‘N’ TALK, £45.00
One of the major design flaws of the human
body is the lack of a third, or possibly fourth hand; you never seem to have
enough of them, especially when you’re busy and the phone rings. Mobile phones only compound the problem. Likely
as not you’re moving around, and having to stop whatever you’re doing, to take
the call, can be a real pain. If you’ve got a Nokia 21 series mobile, or an
Ericsson 337 then the Westar Walk ‘N’ Talk is almost as good as a third hand,
because it allows you use the phone, while you get on with something else. It
could even be used whilst-driving, though it’s clearly not as good as
purpose-designed hands-free adaptor.
It’s a simple little gadget; the Nokia model
is basically a thin plate, that clips between the back of the phone, and the
battery. It comes with an in-ear phone, with a tiny microphone dangling about
four inches below, at about mouth height. A little tie-clip stops the microphone
from swinging about. The microphone/earphone cable plugs into the side of the adaptor
unit. This has a short cable and plug, that fits into the phone’s adaptor
socket. There’s a small switch on the side of the adaptor, to select earphone
or normal phone operation, and that’s all there is to it. The ear/mic cable is
sufficiently long, to allow the phone to slipped in a pocket, or worn in a
belt-case, though the added thickness of the adaptor plate and the connecting
cable might make it an awkward fit.
The phone functions perfectly normally, apart
from the sound being routed to the external mic/earpiece. Audio quality and volume
are both adequate, and received speech quality is pretty good, the microphone
is quite sensitive, so the user doesn’t have to speak directly into it, or
shout. The in-ear phone is not especially comfy, and we found it difficult to
wear for more than half an hour at a time, but we wouldn’t claim our ears to be
necessarily representative. The bottom line is it’s well made, it works quite
well, and the price isn’t too bad.
THE FACTS
Typical Price £45.00
(ex p&p)
Features Personal
hands-free adaptor
To fit Nokia
21 series & Ericsson 337
Contact Westar
Connections, 0181 903 3903
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 82%
GRIPPAMAT, £6-£8
Car manufacturers spend millions of pounds,
dollars, yen and marks, plus countless thousands of man-hours giving their
vehicles sleek body lines, fuel efficient engines and sophisticated electronic
gadgetry, and then devote about five quid and half an hour to the dashboard!
How else can you explain the specially slippery plastic used for shelves and
cubby holes, ensuring that whatever is placed there slides around every time
you go around a corner. It doesn’t matter too much for all the usual toot we
seem to accumulate, most of it ends up on the floor anyway, but it’s definitely
not a good idea to put your mobile phone on the dashboards of most cars, unless
you specifically want to tests its ability to withstand physical shock. (It’s
not advisable to leave it in the open in any case, it’s simply an invitation to
thieves, and direct sunlight could affect the phone’s operation, but for the
sake of argument we’ll assume this is a law-abiding country...)
The solution is to a Grippamat, a thin perforated
black mat, made up of thousands of interlocking squares of an odd rubbery, plasticky
material. It looks a bit like carpet underlay, but much thinner. Just place it
on any clean surface -- it’s a good idea to wipe off any dust first, with a
damp cloth -- and there it stays. It’s not sticky, but somehow the little
squares manage to get a good grip on whatever it’s placed on. The really clever
bit though, is that whatever is placed on it, also stays put. Not just mobile
phones, but almost any object, even irregularly shaped ones, like sunglasses or
a bunch of keys.
We’re not sure exactly how it works, but under
a magnifying glass of the surface of the ‘cells’ are soft and pitted with
zillions of tiny bumps. Whatever, it works and objects placed on the mat don’t
slide around anymore. They’ve got plenty of other uses and samples sent to the
VCR office have ended up on desktops and tables, stopping bits and pieces
sliding around. We reckon the price is on the highish side, for what it is, though
it’s only got to save your phone or some other valuable from beating itself to
death on your car’s dashboard to pay for itself many times over. Worth
considering.
THE FACTS
Typical Price £6-£8
Features Non-slip
mat for dashboards, desks and other slippery surfaces
To fit you
name it!
Contact Nett
Ltd., (01273) 732464
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 85%
THE BUSINESS GUIDE TO MOBILE COMPUTING AND
DATA COMMUNICATION, £34.95
The danger with a book devoted to the subject
like mobile computing and communications is that it will be out of date before
it is published. It’s difficult enough to stay ahead of the news on a monthly
magazine, let alone a book, parts of which may have been written up to a year
previously. Nevertheless, to be fair to Neil Kuruppu and the publishers, this
book covers the non time-sensitive issues and technologies in reasonable depth.
However, carrying machine-specific references to notebook and palmtop computers,
accessories and services, quoting model numbers and in some cases prices as
well, was a brave decision. This is an incredibly fast-moving market and inevitably
things have changed.
It is written primarily for business users,
who depend on, or make their living using mobile communication systems. That
could be almost anyone, from a busy executive to sales personelle and field
engineers. The author has adopted an approachable style and manages to avoid
too much jargon, keeping the technicalities to a minimum.
The book is split into five sections,
beginning with an outline of mobile technologies. Part two deals with portable
computers, part three covers mobile data communications, part four is devoted
to wireless local area networks (LANs) and part five looks at ways of developing
mobile solutions.
This is a vast subject that could easily fill
half a dozen or more books this size so it can only hope to cover the basics. IT
professionals will probably find it a bit lightweight, but for anyone seeking a
good grounding in the technology, a broader understanding of what’s available,
how it can be done, and where to go for more information or advice, it’s a
valuable resource.
THE FACTS
Typical Price £34.95
Written by Neil
Kuruppu
ISBN Number 1-898956-01-4
Contact Orchid Publications, (01322) 559979
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 80%
VIVOX STEREO HANDS FREE CAR KIT, £90
No, it’s not a mistake, the Vivox hands-free kit
does purport to have a stereo sound capability, which is pretty amazing
considering telephones work in mono. So what’s going on? The stereo bit concerns
an optional sound-boosting facility, whereby the speaker output from the phone
can be piped through a car cassette player, using a simple slot-in adaptor. More
about that in a moment.
The kit can be installed in just a couple of
minutes. The integral speaker and microphone are built into a small module,
mounted on one end of a flexible gooseneck. On the other end there’s a standard
car cigarette lighter plug. The speaker/microphone module has a LED on/charge
indicator and two sockets, one is for the lead to the phone, the other is for
the car stereo adaptor.
The only part not supplied is a holder for
the phone; that’s not a big problem, there’s plenty of them about, costing from
around £5.00 upwards, though, for the sake of completeness we would have
preferred to see one included in the kit. There are no set-up procedures or
adjustments to worry about, though some phones may need to be programmed for
hands-free operation. The cigar lighter plug was a good fit on the vehicled we
tried it with.
It’s not difficult to see why they’ve
included the car stereo adaptor, the built-in speaker is not very loud and
would be drowned out in most family saloons. The microphone is quite sensitive,
and it helps to aim it at the user as it will pick up road and engine noise
without any difficulty. The stereo adaptor is very simple to use, just plug it
in, and slot the dummy cassette into the car stereo. It’s been designed to fit
most types of deck, including front and side loaders. Once in place the speaker
output is routed to a small magnetic coupler inside the cassette, that beams
the audio signal to the tape head inside the player. As far as the deck is
concerned, it’s playing a stereo cassette, and the decks volume, balance and
tone controls all operate normally. Obviously it can’t change a mono signal
into stereo, but the effect of hearing the caller coming from a set of stereo
speakers, is quite dramatic, and -- depending on the type of deck -- you’ll
have plenty of volume in reserve.
The only real drawback is the need to swap
cassettes, if you’re using the tape player, and the phone rings. This could be
awkward, not to say dangerous, if you’re steaming down a motorway, or weaving
around a narrow country road.
It works well, though as we’ve said, on it’s
own it’s not very loud; the cassette stereo adaptor is more of a necessity,
than an option. However, the plus points largely outweigh the niggles. It’s
very easy to fit -- a holder or cup would have been welcome too -- sound
quality is good, and the price is reasonable. Recommended.
THE FACTS
Typical Price £90
Features stereo
sound, cassette tape interface
To fit Ericsson,
Nokia, Motorola, Siemens
Contact Aerial
King, 0171-483 2281/3447
WHAT CELLPHONE VERDICT 87%
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Ó R. Maybury 1996 1109
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