Upgrades Are Awesome

Seriously, upgrading your stuff is the best thing you can do. I've already told you about my upgrade to Vista, but today, I've done a little hardware upgrading.

First off, there's my new mouse. It's a Trust XpertClick TK-4300p. What's cool is, it's both your standard desktop mouse and a prsenter mouse.

It features a trackball for freehand use which doubles as a scroll ball when in Mouse Mode. Very nice. It also has a laser pointer and rechargeable batteries.

It's like a tiny god.

But, even more like a god is the HP w2207. It's a 22" Widescreen Glossy display running at 1680 by 1050. Damn it all, if it isn't the best screen I have ever seen. Everything on it looks gorgeous - especially Vista's smooth, glassy visual elements.

Other useful features are built-in speakers, reducing desktop clutter, and 2 USB ports which I have a WiFi dongle and (soon) a DTT Tuner hooked into - we're ditching my TV in favour of the HP. The TV in my room is dodgy anyway and this screen is just gorgeous.

As if these things didn't make today seem enough like Christmas, Apple finally added videos to the UK iTunes store. Currently, we have some ABC and Disney Channel hits (As well as Playhouse Disney shows for any of you who have kids) as well as some Nickelodeon, Paramount Comedy and MTV shows.

It's not a huge selection yet, but it's a start. It's £1.89 an episode.

Importantly, this is yet more reason to believe that Apple will be unveiling one or more new Video capable iPods at their event on the fifth.

Here are my picks for that event:

• iPod Touch - A Full-Screen Video iPod with iPhone Similarities. Double current capacities of 5G if HDD or 32GB and 64GB if Flash, same prices
• iPod Nano With Video - Refreshed, OS X-based software which works similarly to current software, but makes more use of artwork (Including CoverFlow) and uses some Leopard/iPhone style visual cues. Double current capacities, same prices.
• Increased Capacity iPod Shuffle, and a (Product) Red version, same price - maybe slightly lower
• iTunes 8 with some crazy new feature and including Beatles on the iTunes Store
  

Jens Out