For our 2005 trip to the USA I was keen to take some still photos of my own, and being a big believer in “smaller is better” and “digital or bust!” I researched for months before buying a really great little digital camera, the Minolta Dimage X20. This really was a groundbreaking camera for it’s time – it had a 3X optical zoom in a case that could fit comfortably in a shirt pocket – back then, this was amazing stuff! Steve’s DigiCams is our go-to website for all digital camera reviews and Steve gave it a 2-thumbs Up – that was good enough for me. You can still read his review here
Here’s a couple of photos that were shot with it…
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| San Francisco Cable Car |
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| Yosemite Valley – California |
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| Nokia 7250i |
Like all gadget lovers I’m a real sucker for any piece of equipment that does the job of two…or more. So you can imagine how happy I was when mobile phones started to do more than just make phone calls! I loved my little camera but when looking to upgrade my mobile phone at around that time I was determined to invest in one that could be my “fall-back” option for photos. Enter my cute little Nokia 7250i .
The result of many more hours of research, I chose this one because it’s camera was supposed to be outstanding ( for the price of the phone) – fortunately it was an excellent little call-maker because the photos it produced were pretty appalling! However, it was my first almost-smart phone and I loved it to bits. I can’t show you any photos that it took, mainly because the business of getting a phone from your camera to your PC was NOT simple , this camera-phone stuff was new and the phone-guys hadn’t quite got all the useability aspects up to scratch 🙂
Our next major trip was in 2007 and by then Neil and I had upgraded to the Nokia N70. This one shot reasonably respectable photos up to 2MP and got a great workout on our hop-on hop-off bus tour of London as you can see from this candid shot.
But I’m afraid for this trip another device had elbowed my phone out of it’s favoured spot in my heart…. Neil had recently given my a brand new multi-purpose digital companion, a Palm TX, and it had been love at first sight!
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| Palm TX |
It didn’t make phone calls and it didn’t take photos but it allowed me to carry a library of books around in my handbag – what more did a girl need! I’d been introduced into the realm of e-books and I was totally hooked. The Palm e-reader software was excellent and I was enchanted by quantity (and minimal price) of e-books that I could find online. Of course, back then, I had to download to my PC and then sync the books to my Palm but that was no problem ( the technology hadn’t quite got to the stage of downloading directly to the device)
I became deft with my little stylus and could even access the web and read my email if I was within cooee of a wireless network but the Palm’s real star turn for our 2007 holiday was when I purchased the Tom Tom GPS application to run on it. We had our first GPS at last! I downloaded the voice of John Cleese and what a boon he was when tootling along country lanes in the Cotswolds as you can hear at the end of this short video clip.
Time marches on, and so does technology. The next time Neil and I upgraded our phones I was keen to cut down again on the quantity of gadgets in my handbag…I was aiming to make one device do the work of my phone, camera AND my Palm and so we finally made the move away from Nokia and bought a Palm Treo phone each. I respectfully interred my Palm TX in the digital graveyard ( the bottom draw of my filing cabinet) and transferred all my e-books across to the new baby. Neil had bought himself the first of a succession of dedicated TomTom GPS units so the new phone no longer had to do duty in that role but it did do all the other work I asked of it.
Despite that, I had something of a love-hate relationship with this device. It did a respectable job of fulfilling all my digital needs while out and about and on our travels, but I developed a considerable distaste for its Windows Mobile operating system and a dull resentment of its tendency to play havoc with my meaning when typing in texts etc. The children enjoyed great glee at my expense when reading what the Treo had decided that I wanted to say to them in my SMSs. My “Jappy Mrs Year” greeting to them on New Years Eve was met with gales of laughter and that roll of the eyes that Gen Y do so well when faced with the ineptitude of their parents!
I blame the phone for my lousy texts but ageing eyesight may have had something to do with the problem. I was still enjoying reading my e-books on the small screen of the Palm Treo but by 2010 there was a wonderful new gadget that had taken the world by storm, with a lovely big screen and I was definitely not immune to its charms. It would not only woo me away from Palm, it would woo me away to embrace an entirely new world of devices that were going to make our travels easier…but that’s another post.