Here's Why

To Amsterdam!

I'm flying out to Amsterdam tonight, for 9 days. My first time outside the airport in a country where English is not the first language, and my first time in continental Europe. I'm really looking forward to it. Research saved me money again. I want to buy a video card I can use as a PVR as well as to transfer old video to DVD and suchlike. The ATI all in wonder 9600XT looked good, and is $100 cheaper in Canada than in Australia. I spoke to someone who owned a card, and they told me that the software menu has "Australia" as one of the country settings. However a deep search through ATI's website eventually turned up that every TV tuner carrying card comes in three different versions, and that Europe, Australia and New Zealand have different hardware tuners to the American continent tuner hardware. I would have spent extra money on a TV tuner I couldn't use in Australia, when there are other cards that have tuners that work in many countries. Also saw that Aiptek have the pocket DV 5300 poised for release, and its very well designed. The previous model of this still/video, mpeg4, tiny digital camera,the DV 4500 is on sale for around US$120 at the moment, and should go down even further when the DV 5300 finally gets on the shelves. In Australia, the older DV 3100 sells for AU$400, which is outrageously expensive.

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here

Posted by iwoolf at October 18, 2004 3:12 AM | TrackBack