Even though I was hesitant to buy a Universal power adapter main because whether it will be reliable and safe to my laptop, my fears were allayed by my friend so went ahead and bought it. I did my research on the net and found what size adapter pin is for my laptop and what were the power ratings.

As you can see from the above photo, that was the contents of the package. Even though the adapter box and the power plug doesn’t seem as solid as the original one. It was ok and there is a switch at the side to control the output voltage and a light at the top to indicate the output voltage. I think its safer to put a tape above the switch to avoid accidental changes. Moreover I tested it with a multimeter to check the actual voltage indicated is the output and it passed that test. So for almost a month now its been going without a hitch.

It seems it can fit multiple gadgets provided the pins (6 were in the set) and the output voltages matches the needs of your gadget. And it comes with a 6 month warranty.

• Avast Home Edition: I’ve been a ardent user of AVG Personal edition but the latest Avast Home Edition 5 with its excellent user interface and with various protective shields like Web, Mail, P2P,IM etc makes it a good protection for the PC
• OpenOffice : For years now, Openoffice has been my favorite office suite. Now with its capability to open and view even Office 2010 files like docx, xlsx its a excellent software with all the features of a full fledged office suite.
• VLC Player : For a while I’ve been using K-Lite codec (i think it still plays all the format ), I’ve now switched over to VLC player for its easy to use interface and ability to play mp4 files much better than other multimedia player.
• Firefox & Thunderbird : My favorite browser is still Firefox and with latest 3.6 browsing is much secure and easier. And thunderbird 3 has made setting up email much easier but with its customary security features still intact.
• Peazip : A excellent compression utility with its ability to handle zip,rar,iso files.
• CCleaner : A tiny software but excellent to clean all the junk files in a system with now extra features like restore point deletion and startup program cleaner etc.

For those buying a new pc / laptop or looking for free altrenatives for your windows pc the above list should be a excellent starter. Will try to list further more freewares in a future post.

Click here to download

• Opera Mobile : The katest version 10 is still in beta but provides a great browsing experience, the only let down is it is RAM hungry
• Touch Comic : A great app for reading comics in cbz format, with option to zoom , fit to width etc.
• Fring : A great app for chatting, making video calls and some social networking too
• Device Info : This is a great little widget listing out all the phone’s hardware and software resources in a graphical and easy way
• GMail : Its a java app, but a easy way to catch up with gmail. Its not perfect for a touchscreen phone but still my daily used app

Still there are some more free apps like skyfire, nimbuzz  which I am yet to try. If you know any free good apps for Series60 V5 please post your comments here

• The first thing that impressed me was the solid build and the refined finish which when you hold makes you feel good
• I was surprised by its weight which felt lighter than my nokia 5530 and the back battery cover lid with patterns was cool
• The 2.4″ 480 x 360 screen was excellent and the user interface was nicely designed but still somewhat confusing when delving deeper into the sub menus and stuff
• The 3.5mm audio jack coupled with  a nice media player and memory card slot makes it a fun phone for entertainment needs too
• The blackberry app store was a nice way to extend the phone with lots of free apps and easy to use features
• The qwerty keypad was easy to use even though i haven’t had lots of experience with those type of keypads
• The chat messages of messenger like gtalk getting integrated with the messages list and way of notifying and accessing them becomes a whole lot easier
• The browser didn’t support youtube or flash videos was a major downer
• There was no FM radio which would have been a nice addition

At 18,500 INR (395$) its a excellent business phone with a nicely complemented 3MP camera and multimedia qualities.

I was considering Sun Direct because of its plethora of tamil channels & smaller top-up packages and also for its mp4 quality, even though I am a Airtel mobile postpaid user for more than 4 years now. But the shop keeper’s briefing of the various service providers proved that almost all the service providers cost of ownership was more or less same,so I decided to go for AirTel Digital TV mainly because of it quality of hardware and also the broadcast but also because I could club my mobile and tv services online to pay and recharge.

The installation was quick and the broadcast quality was excellent, but a few days after the quality started to suffer due to poor signal reception but the service guy was helpful and re-fitted the dish to a different location and this solved the problem. The user interface is good and easy to use and the all-in-one remote is user friendly. It has a feature to mimic the tv remote but I haven’t used that feature yet. Switching through channels is tad slower than the local cable tv but i think this is only a minor downer.

I got it a special offer of Rs. 1750/ with 3 months packages but once it was over i recharged it online via my airtel account and switched the package (lots of packages / top-ups & discounts to choose from) through calling a Toll free number from my Airtel mobile. This process was also glitch free. Then last night my cable tv’s espn got cut off the wrong moment leaving me fuming, thinking i would miss ManU vs Arsenal match. I got online to my airtel digital tv account which had some balance left and selected the ESPN sports channel package and viola !! in some few minutes I was able to watch espn…to top the day off, Manchester United romped to victory….

On the whole AirTel Digital TV seems to be a good bet, but TataSKY seems to be also a excellent bet because of their excellent service….

Funny oxymorons:-
1.As i said before, i never repeat myself

2.Clearly misunderstood

3.Exact estimate

4.Small crowd

5.Act naturally

6.Found missing

7.Fully empty

And the best among the lot:

Happily Married…!

• Pizero – Excellent free themes as well as premium themes
• Symbianthemes.us -  A large collection of free themes for symbian phones
• Art4Symbian : Another site with excellent themes but not in english
• TehkSeven : Another site with great free and premium themes

Click here to download the theme based on Symbian foundation for your S60 V5 phones (5530,5800,5230,N97)

• Download “Never Feel Sick Again” pdf
• Download “Fitness Calculator” xls
• Download “Amount of Water to Drink Calculator” xls

The music player could have had a option for browsing music by flipping through album art ala iphone anyway the player does the job of sorting and playing music.

The video player also does the basic job of playing videos well. I first tried to convert video to 640 x 360 pixels but now I found out converting videos into mp4 with 640 x 480 pixels and then using the options in the video player to “Stretch” fits the screen perfectly and if the source video quality is good the converted mp4 plays and looks excellent in the 2.9″ screen.

Playing games was a mixed bag with some games requiring stylus and some being played with fingers, anyway my favorite games being Disks, MatchEm and The word game (all free and available in OVI store).

Battery seems to hold out well with extended periods of hearing music and playing games and as a portable multimedia player the Nokia 5530 seems a perfect fit for me.