Five useful equipment products for University students

By Simon Wright - Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

This article is also available on TheRankTank

So you have moved into student halls in your first year at University, miles away from home and those creature comforts. It can be a great chance to flourish and gain much-needed independence but there is bound to be times where you miss the comfortable environment you have grown up in.

There are some useful equipment tools to have as a student. One of the most valuable items required is a decent laptop. Whilst most Universities will have public PCs and Macs in libraries and computer rooms, students should have a laptop for personal use to keep in touch with friends and loved ones on Facebook and Twitter.

Hard Drives are a valuable equipment purchase for students

In that instance, there will be many projects students will work on at Uni. Your lecturers will remind you early on that it is absolutely essential to back up all your Word documents, InDesign creations and other raw programmes. So purchase a hard drive with plenty of space to keep those assignments together and stored in case technology lets you down. Don’t back up data and there won’t be any symphony from those who do the marking and hand out the final grades. Amazon is the best place to find hard drives (a Toshiba hard drive pictured) and they all do the same job so no need to find the best manufacturer either.

Most rooms in halls of residence will be small in space. The majority will have to share a kitchen in first year and students will need a caffeine boost to get through the day, so buy a decent kettle as it will come in very handy as assignment deadlines get ever closer. Shared kitchens will probably have a standard kettle to start with but these can often get overused, or dirty pretty quickly. Think of 4/5 people sharing and that’s a lot of boiling water per day. A nice way to catch up with a friend that doesn’t involve the expecting partying in pubs and clubs is to chat over tea or coffee. Those who prefer specialised coffees like cappuccinos and espressos could invest in a coffee maker but these aren’t cheap. Then again, nor are the specialised drinks at Starbucks or Costa branches.

With laptop sorted, a decent data storage device and a warm drink beside you, what else should fresher students invest in? Make your room look like home with a bit of decorating. Forget painting or slapping up wallpaper on the walls. Instead, blu-tack photos of good times and invest in getting posters to make the walls look bright and colourful. The fresher’s fair is ideal to stack up on posters but also try places like HMV, who have a good range of A3 prints. Yes girls, Harry Styles and One Direction posters will be stocked but don’t forget, there are other boybands available!

Lastly, a handy small piece of kit to invest in is a door wedge for your room. When busy or wanting some ‘me’ time, keep your door closed but by sticking a wedge on your door, it makes it easier to make friends and socialise better in first year. This is excellent in student residence but might not be allowed in other accommodation, so check landlord contracts carefully when it comes to using this equipment.

So there you go, these five items should help all fresher’s socialise, enjoy and find the right balance between relaxation, calmness and having a good time. University is a great experience; make the most of it before entering the full-time work world.

Categories: Amazon, Facebook, Hard Drive, InDesign, Kettle, Laptop, Posters, Starbucks, Tea, University

Can Tesco compete in the competitive tablet market?

By Simon Wright - Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

This article is also available on TheRankTank

The tablet market is one of the most keenly anticipated battles in the technology world. It has taken on a new scope with some of the major retailers joining the race to win buyers with Christmas just two months away.

With Apple’s iPad the best tablet around but also the most complicated and expensive, consumers will want the best deal. That means a combination of excellent battery life, a wealth of applications and performance levels that are so good, you won’t worry about needing an upgrade every five minutes.

Tesco Hudl's new tablet can make an impact in a competitive market

Earlier last week, Argos entered the tablet market with the MyTablet, costing under £100. It is too early to say if this will be a successful move but it follows the latest trend which was recently triggered by Tesco’s competitive move with the introduction of the Tesco Hudl (pictured).

At £119, the tablet is in the price range for many members of the everyday public and there are plenty of positives about the Hudl. Tesco have made it available in four different colours. While the standard black colour is available, those with a creative feel will appreciate the choice of red, purple and blue colours.

The design is slick and smooth and appearance levels are crucial to attract buyers. When a customer enters a store or goes searching online, they will be instantly put off by something that has a lack of care and attention in its design. The Hudl shouldn’t provide any complaints and with a seven inch screen, is big enough to read e-books, listen to the latest chart hits and stream quality movies in stunning HD.

For any tablet to be successful, they need an easy-to-find store with hundreds of applications. That isn’t just the standard apps either. Tesco’s Hudl doesn’t disappoint with access to the successful Google Play store as it runs Android operating technology. Therefore, there shouldn’t be any hassle catching up on TV with BBC iPlayer or staying in touch through video calling on Skype – both available in the store. At 16GB in internal storage, tablet space is fantastic. There is the ability to purchase a Micro-SD card separately to extend memory space to 48GB, keeping the user very happy.

There are bugbears of course. The battery life is not the best and the 3MP camera is a huge disappointment. Tesco shouldn’t invest in this and need to look at other avenues if they were to launch a second edition.

So can Tesco take on the likes of Amazon and Samsung, both viable competitors in the tablet market? It will probably struggle to match them on sales but it has the ability to cause some headaches for these companies. The tablet market is not easy to crack. HP pulled their tablet from the shelves after poor sales while the BlackBerry Playbook was so bad, it made watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow more appealing.

The Hudl sold out in its first two days on the market and this is a great start for Tesco. If you are flushed with cash, stick with the more powerful Samsung tablets but if you are sticking to a budget in the festive season, a Tesco Hudl would be the ideal winter gift.

Categories: Amazon, Android, Apple, Argos, BBC iPlayer, Christmas, Colour, HD, Hudl, iPad, Samsung, Tablet, Technology, Tesco, TV

Is Sebastian Vettel boring?

By Simon Wright - Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

Those who might be wondering where my regular Formula One race reports have gone since August’s dull and dreary Belgian Grand Prix, it is because my interest in the sport has waned on recent results. I’ve only seen one of the last four races and the chances of deciding to sleep and miss tomorrow morning’s Indian Grand Prix are relatively high.

Winning has become the norm for Sebastian Vettel in 2013

Another pole position, another win and another world championship loom for Red Bull’s German superstar Sebastian Vettel (pictured). If he achieves those aims at the Buddah International Circuit in the morning, it will be his 10^th win of the season, his sixth in a row and a fourth successive drivers’ championship, with his team looking in a strong position to wrap up the constructors’ title too.

His recent dominance hasn’t been good for the sport and that is a fair comment. However, should fans accept that we are just watching one of Grand Prix’s ultimate legends carve his way through the records into greatness or do you feel that Sebastian Vettel is boring? (BBC 2011 Vettel video below)

There is no doubt that Vettel is a remarkable racing driver. 2013 is only his seventh full season in F1 and that means he will have been the title winner in over half of the campaigns he has competed. He has it all in his locker with the sheer speed over one lap backed up by the prowess to overtake, conserve the car and take the points if required, set blistering laps and turning this trademark into artistic motion, plus he goes around with a smile and a cool sense around the paddock – something evidently missing from Michael Schumacher in his prime.

Those who say that Vettel is only winning because he is in the best car need to eat their words. He is in the best car and this season’s Red Bull machinery is way better than any of the opposition have to offer. However if it was that good, his team-mate Mark Webber would finish second all the time too. They only have two 1-2 finishes this season – one last time out in Japan and the other was that stormy day in Malaysia when Vettel ignored team orders to win. The German is able to get the absolute maximum out of the car and the Pirelli tyres and that is why he is often at the front and winning races so regularly. That is the skill of a great driver. (BBC 2012 Vettel video below)

He has developed close relationships with the other key figures in the Red Bull team, team principal Christian Horner, advisor Helmut Marko and design supremo Adrian Newey and he has a firm grip on the way Pirelli work. When the Italian manufacturer were coming into the sport three years ago, Sebastian was the only driver to come and visit their headquarters, greet the newcomers and get to understand and know how the configuration would work under the new supplier. That isn’t an unfair advantage. That is the knowledge, research and dedication going into his work to ensure he stays on top. You have to admire him for that.

The constant booing of him on the podium this season has been frankly disgusting to overhear. Of course fans thought slightly differently of him after Malaysia and he lost some respect for that. I’ll admit that I cheered when his gearbox packed up at Silverstone forcing a rare DNF but that was out of spectacle for the race and to see a different winner, not for any of his Sepang actions. The fans pay the money to come and spectate and if they don’t decide to respect the winner, then what are they doing at the circuit? They should go and find something else to do on a Sunday afternoon if they can’t do anything better than just to boo. Any backlash from Kuala Lumpur ended months ago. Unless you are a Mark Webber fan, accept it and move on.

A word has to be said about the opposition too. They have self-destructed this season. Fernando Alonso’s relationship with Ferrari has taken a severe knock after some comments made in the aftermath of an uncompetitive showing at the Hungarian Grand Prix, while McLaren’s design team came up with such a pig’s ear of a car, it destroyed any ambitions Jenson Button had for a title tilt from the opening weekend. Perhaps Martin Whitmarsh better be careful not to call Vettel 'the crash kid' and focus on getting his designers back on track. Lewis Hamilton’s mind is often questioned as once again, he isn’t the same person he is when he is happy and settled with on-off girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger and Kimi Raikkonen is really in the sport for the money and nothing else. As funny as Kimi can be on the team radio (clip below), his lack of dedication and commitment will be shown up next season when he pits himself up against fellow champion Alonso at Ferrari.

When Schumacher was winning so much, his brother Ralf made an interesting point at the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix. When asked about whether it was boring that his brother kept taking the chequered flag first, his view was: “He is the best driver and he deserves to win, that’s the end of it. And it isn’t boring that he keeps winning, it is boring that no-one seems to be able to do anything about it, drivers’ maybe and cars for sure.”

That is exactly how I feel about the current situation. The drivers can only do as well as the machinery they have around them will allow them to – as Button can vouch for in 2013. The simple fact is Red Bull’s rivals have all built mediocre or inconsistent models that might be very quick on occasional weekends (Ferrari in China, Mercedes GP in Monaco and Hungary) but are not consistent enough throughout the season. That is why Red Bull and Vettel have such a clear advantage over the rest of the field.

So in answer to the earlier question, Sebastian Vettel is not boring, he is just a great driver who is putting his name alongside the likes of Fangio, Schumacher, Senna, Prost and Clark as among the best to have ever driven a Formula One racing car.

What I will say though is the spectacle in 2013 has been really boring to watch. I wouldn’t mind so much Vettel winning all the time if the racing down the field was exciting and action-packed. That hasn’t been the case this season and stories off-the-track like the team orders debacle in Malaysia and Pirelli’s exploding tyres at Silverstone have taken the firm headlines rather than any entertaining racing. The sport has become far too sanitised, with tyres not good enough to handle the variety of track surfaces and temperatures and the KERS/DRS combination which is making passing no longer an art but a formality. If you want to see regular overtaking nowadays, take a trip down the M1 and you’ll see better passing. With the new 2014 regulations of V6 engines and heavy fuel saving coming in only likely to make the spectacle even worse, these are difficult times for the passionate F1 fan who would like to see a better show but are unlikely to be rewarded.

There is more chance of Ed Miliband showing the touch of the common person than Sebastian Vettel not wrapping up his fourth championship on Sunday morning. Let’s hope there is some decent racing to make the occasion more of a damp squib, although I wouldn’t be rushing to put those alarm clocks on ready for the race in India. 

Categories: 2013, Christian Horner, India, Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel

What went wrong for BlackBerry?

By Simon Wright - Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

This article was written for TheRankTank

It was once the powerful and popular smartphone of its time, but now the dream for BlackBerry is most definitely over.

Technical problems combined with the lack of development, clashes with society and poor sales have led to the Canadian company effectively agreeing to sell up to a consortium led by its biggest shareholder Fairfax Financial.

So what went wrong for a company that changed the smartphone landscape, but has now simply become another statistic in the economic recession we live in today?

Firstly, BlackBerry App World simply did not have the capabilities of its rivals such as the Google Play Store for Android and Apple’s powerful App Store.  While the basics any customer would expect such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were offered, that was as far as it got.  As the consumer started to want more apps for their phone and therefore a wider choice, the sales in the BlackBerry phones started to drop quite considerably.

The BlackBerry Z10 simply didn't provide the sales the company needed

This was further underlined last week by a massive loss of £600m in the second quarter of this year alone.  4,500 employers will lose their jobs as a result; around 40 per cent of the workforce although it is unclear how many positions will go at the European headquarters in Slough.

Secondly the new phones BlackBerry (Z10 pictured) put their efforts into simply didn’t sell with the market.  

While Apple and Samsung stormed ahead with major new investments in their latest gadgets, BlackBerry would only often look into minor improvements to their models – simply not enough to stay afloat as a viable competitor.  It has been overtaken by the likes of the Sony Xperia and the HTC brand in recent years.  When it decided for a complete overhaul with the new and much delayed Z10 smartphone at the start of 2013, the damage had already been done.

Thirdly the consensus is the year that completely finished BlackBerry off was 2011.  That summer saw the devastating riots that swept across the United Kingdom following the shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham.  Social media became a powerful communication tool and the private messaging service BlackBerry messenger or BBM as it is more commonly known was used to organise deliberate looting, robbing and often destruction of innocent businesses.  The media quickly jumped on the bandwagon of this, with statistics revealing that 37 per cent of the UK smartphone market in urban areas with a lack of social wealth having a BlackBerry phone.

RIM’s reputation took a big hit, and worse was to come in October of the same year when its servers crashed; meaning millions of customers were left without access to their e-mails, the internet or the BBM service for days.  This writer knows only too well as I purchased a BlackBerry at around this time, a move quickly regretted but left stuck with for the next two years.  BlackBerry’s response to this crisis can only be described as slow, lazy and unwilling to accept responsibility.  Apple users were delighted and took to Twitter with tweets such as ‘Dear BlackBerry, HAHAHAHA! Sincerely Apple!’ 

The company’s CEO made a video apology, but far too late to satisfy anyone and a compensation package of free apps was not appreciated by many.  When customers need to pay 99p to access Wikipedia, this alone sums up BlackBerry’s problems in a nutshell.  In this instance, the consumer should come first and it never did when it came to the RIM server crash.

BBM, often a unique selling point of the BlackBerry phones has now been made available as a free download for Apple and Android devices as it starts to get outmuscled by other free messaging applications like SnapChat and WhatsApp.  With its identity lost, it becomes far more difficult to sell BlackBerry phones to any sensible member of the public.

Throw in a general lack of reliability with a phone lucky to last seven months even in a calm, gentle condition and the dreadful BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that was doomed from launch due to the lack of apps, and not even having access to a decent calendar; there have been many issues that weren’t ironed out by the company’s owners.

Another former major powerhouse in phone technology was Nokia and they recently were taken over by Microsoft so there might still be a future in new hands for the popular brand that created the slick and stylish Lumia phone, but simply didn’t have the technology to take on market leaders Samsung and Apple.

For BlackBerry though, the future is a very bleak one.  It might still be a handy phone for those who focus on business in their lives, but when it comes to pleasure or leisure use, my advice is to stay well away and look at other options.  It is difficult to see BlackBerry having much of an existence in the next five years.  Its many bugs have finally been exposed to the world, and although it will have its place in the history of the mobile phone – it is definitely not going to be a part of the future of this extremely popular and necessary gadget. 

Categories: Android, Apple, Applications, BlackBerry, Canada, London, RIM, Samsung, Slough, Smartphone

FIFA 14 - Is it still the king of football games?

By Simon Wright - Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

This article was written for TheRankTank

While the obsessive fans of the Grand Theft Auto series drool over the new game that came out recently, another iconic brand made a quieter but just as productive release last week.

FIFA 14 went on sale at midnight on Friday, 27 September in game shops such as Game and HMV and on many online stores.  The latest version in the popular franchise seems to have got some of the best reviews of its long life, but is it still the king of football games?

A week earlier, Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 made its debut in the shops to almost unnoticed knowledge, such was the widespread talk of GTA as it came out just a few days earlier.  Konami have official licenses to the two European club competitions, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League but it is letdown by the lack of official club licenses.  Unless readers are fans of Manchester United, English clubs are not licensed.  There are only three German clubs and many other European sides have been removed in recent years as Konami shifted its market more towards Asian and South American outfits.

What is letdown in the license department, Konami have listened to feedback from last year’s lamentable game which was their worst in the current console generation.  The game engine has been radically improved and there is more of a challenge this year, even if the commentary is as basic and bland as ever from Jon Champion and Jim Beglin.

However Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 is a decent game, and arguably has made some ground up after having taken a battering in recent years by its EA counterpart.  Once a competitive battle has become as dominant as Sebastian Vettel has in Formula One, or Usain Bolt in track sprinting.

Nevertheless it meant EA were under pressure to deliver, and they have come up with the most realistic and playable football SIM in the business.  While I will save the more technical gameplay aspect explanations to the expert gamer reviewers, wise and useful changes have been made to allow tempo of a match to be dictated more by the user, team-mates have become smarter in off-the-ball movement and ball physics have become far more realistic.

FIFA's gameplay has improved once again on the latest edition

EA have also been helped by landing two of arguably the best three players in the world on the cover in Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and new Real Madrid signing Gareth Bale, complete in the £85m shirt that was quickly altered after his early September transfer.  The trailer (video below) also features the likes of Stephan El Shaarawy (pictured in the game), Javier Hernandez and Tim Cahill.  Any game with Messi and Bale on the front cover must be worth giving it a try for keen football enthusiasts. 

Other improvements include better updates to the popular FIFA 14 Ultimate Team mode for online users with more formation combinations and stronger team chemistry attributes.  33 leagues have been licensed in over 600 clubs with all the major teams from England, Spain, Germany, France, Italy and Portugal covered.  Lastly there are major updates to the transfer networks, Co-Op seasons and new licensed stadiums such as Goodison Park for Everton FC and Shakhtar Donetsk’s often intimidating Donbass Arena.

When it comes to football games, FIFA 14 isn’t always the king, particularly when you throw management simulations like Football Manager 2014 into the mix but it is still the leader in playable terms, and is likely to be for some time to come.  FIFA 14 is the most authentic game of its generation, but don’t spend an entire weekend infront of the TV screen.  Enjoy playing this challenge in good moderation.

Categories: Barcelona, EA Sports, England, FIFA, Game, Gareth Bale, Grand Theft Auto, HMV, Lionel Messi, September