Author / Henry Hunt

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Posts by Henry Hunt

Med student at Glasgow University, will write reviews and the like for Digixav and maybe the occasional rant on my own site if I haven't deleted it already
by Henry Hunt

HP announce new Z1 all-in-one workstation with hefty price tag

At Digixav we love HP computers and we all agree that they make brilliant hardware. The Folio 13 won best PC of 2011, and the Envy 14 Spectre is one beautiful piece of Gorilla Glass. The new Z1 workstation, announced today, looks to be another excellent product for Meg Whitman’s company.

The all-in-one workstation looks fantastic. The Z1 comes with a Sandy Bridge i3, integrated graphics and a 250GB hard drive as standard which aren’t fantastic specs for $1,899 but, if you have the money, you can make it phenomenal with a quad-core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon chip, up to 32GB of RAM and a top-of-the-line Nvidia graphics card. There is not much that this configuration couldn’t handle.

Not only is this an incredibly powerful computer, but it looks great too. The clean crisp lines are continued throughout the design, making it look good from any angle. The whole thing can even fold down, making it possible to store very easily. The display even lifts up to allow for easy access and upgrading of the internals.

However, there is one drawback to all this power and design which is the hefty price tag. According to the HP website, it will start at $1,899, a rather high price considering that it is the i3 base model. But considering all this, the Z1 is a business machine aimed at the rich companies, programmers and graphics designers so the price isn’t that unreasonable. Expect to see these hitting workplaces in April.

by Henry Hunt

Nokia Lumia 900 to launch in the UK in June at Carphone Warehouse

Carphone Warehouse, the largest mobile retailer in Europe, have announced on their website that they will be stocking the new Nokia Lumia 900 in the UK from June this year. This is great news for people like me who absolutely love the Lumia 800’s design but need a larger screen. On the ‘Coming Soon’ page of the site, the phone appears alongside the 710, the magenta variant of the 800, the Sony Xperia S, a couple of BlackBerries and the Prada Phone by LG 3.0. A dedicated landing page provides you with the specs and at the very bottom of the page it says expected in June 2012, however this date is subject to change. Carriers have not yet been announced, but 3 are not expecting the device which should be available unlocked from Carphone Warehouse stores.

The Nokia Windows Phones are, according to CEO Stephen Elop, the first real Windows Phones. They look and feel great, have amazing software and the polycarbonate design is one of the best out there. Now that finally there is a Lumia with a larger screen, I cannot wait to get my hands on it, hopefully with HSPA+ support. Look out for me on launch day!

by Henry Hunt

App of the Week: Crazy Survival

This week’s app of the week is Crazy Survival by Techsoft Ventures.

In this game you play as a small stick figure that has to avoid a large number of bouncing balls coming from the left of the screen. At the start of every game you have ten lives, with each hit removing one life. Although this is a simple idea, I have never played anything like it before. The simple controls (an arrow to each side of the screen) make getting good at this game fairly simple but mastering it is something completely different. My personal high score is only around 250 while the world record is in excess of 800.

This game is just what you need from a mobile game – quick, simple and addictive, and that is why we are proud to call it our first cross-platform app of the week.

But no Android. Sorry.

Crazy Survival, BlackBerry/iOS/Windows Phone, Free
Download now from the App World, App Store or Zune Marketplace

by Henry Hunt

Why I hate Android

I loathe Android for many reasons. I can’t help it, and I apologise for that. I have my reasons, and I believe they are valid, so here we go.

Continue reading →

by Henry Hunt

Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T confirmed by New York Times

The New York Times has quoted sources that confirm that the Nokia Lumia 900 is to be officially announced at CES on Monday. Apparently AT&T will be carrying the phone in America but there is no news about anywhere else in the world, except for an earlier tweet from 3 and an O2 representative telling us that he does not expect the 900 to be stocked there as they already have the 800. There has been no confirmation on the specs but what we [sort of] know is that it will have a 4.3 inch WVGA screen with 512MB of RAM, LTE in eligible territories and an 8MP rear and front-facing camera. All in all, we at the Digixav team are very excited for Monday.

Bring on CES!

 

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Ask Ziggy

The first WP7 AOTW of 2012 is Ask Ziggy by Averotek.

This app is (to quote the description on the Marketplace) ‘your personal assistant that goes beyond Siri functionality’. It is basically Windows Phone’s answer to Apple’s Siri.

To use this app all you need to do is ask it a question and it will give you an answer, rather like Siri. This app however goes into a great deal more detail than its iOS counterpart. An example of this is when I asked Ziggy how old the American President Barack Obama was. The reply was this:

“Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961 and therefore he is fifty years old. He is the 44th President of the United States. He is the first African American to be appointed to office.”

As you can see, Ziggy goes into a great amount of detail which cannot always be said for Siri.

If you have a Windows Phone and want to talk to your phone like those iPhone guys do, Ask Ziggy is the app for you.

Ask Ziggy, Windows Phone, Free

Download on the Marketplace or visit the website

by Henry Hunt

What we’re looking forward to in 2012

2011 is nearly over and we can all agree that it has been pretty good for tech. Nokia’s credibility returned and people began to talk to their phones. We all know, however, that 2012 can be epic. Here is what we want from the year ahead.

Windows 8

We know it’s coming in 2012 with a beta as early as January. I love the Metro UI on my phone and I am looking forward to seeing it on both tablets and computers, and not to forget Windows Phone 8 that is rumoured to be coming in the third quarter of next year.

Nokia’s Windows 8 tablet

Following straight on from Windows 8 comes the Nokia tablet that Paul Ansellem, GM of Nokia France, assured us would be available by June. Due to the recent partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, the ‘Lumia Tab’ would likely be the first Windows 8 tablet so this inadvertent announcement could give us information as to the release date of Redmond’s next OS. Plus, if it looks anything like an enlarged Lumia 800 as My Nokia Blog’s mockup suggested, the DX offices will be full of productive happy bunnies.

Nokia Lumia 900

Speaking with a French paper, Ansellem said that the fantastic Lumia 800 was like the BMW 5 series. Great, but a 7 series is better. Numerous leaks have suggested that it will be an 800 with a larger screen, the Lumia 900. The 800 is a great phone but in my opinion a 4.3 inch device with a high resolution and HSPA+ is what the market needs. I don’t give a damn about LTE because I hate Ofcom.

The inevitable rise of Windows Phone 7

With the number of apps on the Marketplace recently having broken the 50,000 barrier, it’s no surprise that our favourite OS Windows Phone 7 is growing. Unfortunately it is not yet at the same level as iOS or Android, but hopefully in the next 12 months Microsoft will catch up to their competitors and Nokia will produce some awesome handsets and WP will eat it’s way into the market.

Apple without Steve

With Steve Jobs having passed on earlier in the year, we still are not sure as to how Apple are going to cope without him. Even though Steve will have planned ahead before his passing, Tim Cook is having to fill a big gap that was left by the father of the modern computer.

RIM

I am sure that everyone is looking forward to the final nail in RIM’s airtight coffin which is most likely going to come in the coming year. So yeah. Death to RIM.

webOS goes open source

Since Leo Apotheker won the idiot of the year award, people have been wondering whether webOS was dead or not after HP announced they were discontinuing its use in their products. However at the beginning of  December, it was announced that HP would be making it open source, in the coming year we are looking forward to manufacturers creating webOS devices.

HTC going for quality over quantity

Apparently HTC are going to completely change their marketing philosophy and go for quality over quantity. Hopefully in the next year we will see something good come from the Taiwanese company instead of such abominations as the HTC Sensation, Sensation XE and Sensation XL. DEATH TO SENSE.

That is all.

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: Face Swap

This weeks WP7 AOTW is Face Swap by Microsoft Research.

This app, to put it simply, swaps two people’s faces. There is no practical purpose to this app as it is just to waste time. To use this app, you simply select a photo in your photo albums and the app automatically finds the faces in the image. You then proceed to select which faces to swap and the app does all the rest. You can then proceed to laugh at the results.

Simples.

Face Swap, Windows Phone 7, Free

Download from the Marketplace

by Henry Hunt

Why I hate RIM

In the tech world there is a large amount of hate towards Research In Motion, the makers of such pieces of shit such as the BlackBerry PlayBook and the Bold 9900. I hate RIM, as do most of my colleagues, for a number of good reasons. They are the company that everyone loves to hate and they don’t do a lot to help themselves.

Continue reading →

by Henry Hunt

WP7 AOTW: YouTube Download

This week’s  Windows Phone app of the week is YouTube Download.

This app is like Ronseal. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It allows you to download HD videos on to your phone from YouTube. To download a video all you need to do is to search for the video in question and press download. It then gets added to your download queue. You can even choose what quality the video downloads in. One of the best things about this app is that the videos you have downloaded are then available in the music and video hub along with all your other audiovisual content to ensure that all your media remains centralised as Microsoft intended.

YouTube Download, Windows Phone 7, 79p

Download from the Marketplace