Present for Grandma

When the Financial Times magazine reviewed a TFT photo frame in the Technopolis section of its October Interiors editions, I thought it was a great idea, though a 3.5" screen seemed a bit small. After a bit of research, I found that the product reviewed, while technologically advanced in being able to receive photos by Bluetooth, is far outshone by products made by such mundane household names as Philips.

This Philips frame is 7 inches across and will read photos from various memory card formats, easily outdoing the competing product, which has only 32MB of memory. It is also stocked by my favourite photo shop, which deserves a plug for its professionalism.

Guess what the grandparents will be getting for Christmas...

Hard sums

While trying to keep up with the financial calculations given as examples by my foundation course lecturer, I discovered that the awful calculator on my PDA (Palm Treo 650) has heaps of advanced features, including advanced mathematical, trigonometrical, financial and logical modes, with the exact functions he was revising - HOORAY!

Today, when reviewing what we did on Wednesday, I came to the appalling conclusion that, though the functions exist, they give inaccurate answers in some cases, such as when dividing by the square of a number, confirmed using Excel - BOO!

So I tried Documents to Go, which allows manipulation of Word and Excel documents in Palm OS. Result: rebooted PDA, no documents - double BOO!

Work around: I sent myself an Excel spreadsheet by mail, with the required formulas already inserted. Opening the document directly from the email application allows me to use the formulas in full, with no precision errors - HOORAY! Shame that once I switch out of the email application, I can't get back to the spreadsheet without a number of clicks - BOO!

Looks like I'll have to buy a financial calculator - double BOO!