My Scottish Power lock-in ends soon, so it’s time to compare prices in the ever-complex utility world. As far as I can see EDF should work out cheapest, and MoneySuperMarket will also give me £30 for switching which isn’t to be sniffed at. But will ‘Online Tarriff 5′ still be around next week? Should I go with first:Utility, just for the smart meter?

For what it’s worth, we used 3849 Electricity kWh, and 14103 Gas kWh in the last year. IGT charge is about £40, so could end up ’saving’ OVER £100. Although every site I’ve tried seems to come up with different figures for my current & projected charges…

EDIT: first:Utility just dropped me a mail to say they can’t supply Gas on an IGT at the moment Hopefully they’ll put that in their FAQ.

Got my N97 this morning.

Things I like:
Micro-USB charging
Screen is really good, even with the protector on
Slide is cool
Barely need to use the keyboard
USB throughput with the Mac is much better than the E71 – upto 3600kB/s compared with ~800kB/s.
Destinations, how access points should have always work

Don’t like:
Battery cover feels cheap
No software update to v11 yet

So Monilink doesn’t work on the E71 – says it’s not supported. But it’s just a JAVA app, no reason why it would have any problems. So if you Bluetooth upto the phone, set Firefox user agent to match that of the N95 & follow the links in the texts that Lloyds send, it works a treat. For some reason wap.monilink.co.uk doesn’t work over Wifi, they must have it configured to only work over providers WAP APNs.

It seems that the only places with Paypass terminals are in National Trust properties around here. We went for a wander around Clumber Park last weekend, but spent over £10 in the cafe so couldn’t use it.

Yesterday it was a nice day, so off to Belton House we went. A simple trip out takes a bit of preparation, but we got there eventually. Coffee shop didn’t have the terminals, but the gift store did. And there was a nice muffin recipe book for £2.99. The lady conmented that they’d never used it before, quick hold of the card against the terminal & “Approved”. It actually works, genius.

Was looking for a way to get a large amount of protected storage, would hate to loose anything valuable like iTunes, iPhoto library due to a hard disk failure. At the moment everything is stored on a couple of 500Gb USB drives & the Iomega one (with a really bright blue LED) is a bit old. So I though it might be a good idea to get a Drobo, Tb drive  to migrate the data over. Then it’s just a case of putting the 500Gb drives in (USB enclosure could be useful to keep) & enjoying the protection.

So a Drobo is around £375, although Play.com had the old USB-only version for £320. 1Tb drive ~ £80. Putting this configuration into the Drobolator, the 1Tb drive gives 464Gb free, so I can copy over the data from the first 500Gb drive OK. When that’s inserted I’d have 464Gb of space. And if I somehow manage to get the data off the other, insert the disk then I’d have a total of 929Gb which is just enough. So £400 to protect the capacity I’ve already got, I can’t see the wife approving that. If I put an extra 500Gb or 1Tb then I gain something, for another £45-£80.

At work we’d purchased a couple of WD My Book Mirror Edition 2TB drives to use in RAID 0 mode to give us lots of quick space. As the name suggests, they do RAID 1 & come in that configuration (although formatted NTFS). £208 from Scan = 1Tb extra protected storage, a lot more affordable. Works out ~£50 for the enclosure, which isn’t bad value.

OK it’s only 2 drives, you can’t hot-swap them, both drives must be the same size & only WD are supported. On the plus side there’s a 3 year warranty, you don’t have to pay for software updates (you have to purchase Drobocare to get non-critical firmware after the first year) & if there are any warranty issues they’ll courier a new drive/chassis to you within a couple of days. Plus I can buy another one, have 2Tb of protected storage & still save a few £s. Also I have a couple of spare 500Gb drives, so one can go into my Buffalo NAS & the other be dedicated for Time Machine.

Wanted to order a few photo prints, could use my Samsung photo printer but I noticed that Asda are now doing in-store collection. Order on-line, pick up in an hour.

So setup an account (10 free photos, but only for home delivery), uploaded some images painlessly & selected the local store. 11:26am, e-mail to say order taken. 11:37am, e-mail to say order ready (Subject was ‘Order Shipped’, but it’s close enough & the body said ‘They are ready to be picked up now.’ – not the best grammar…). So under 15 minutes. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the store that quickly, but when I did get there they were waiting for me.

18p/print isn’t too bad compared for the convenience. Having to wait the full hour isn’t too much of a problem if you’ve got some shopping to do. Photobox charge from 10p/print + £1.35 P&P, so work out better if you can wait a few days and are printing more than 17 images. My Samsung 2020 dye-sub works out at 25p/print for a 6×4 (40 = £9.99 last time I bought a ribbon/paper kit) & takes 60sec/print.

Image quality is pretty decent, certainly better than using a Kodak kiosk & comparable with the Boots 1hr digital service. Not sure why they don’t offer a similar service, I’ve spent an hour wandering around the shops waiting, but all their website shows is the delivery service (powered by Photobox). 7×5 is 23p & 9×6 is 25p, after that it gets expensive. Paper is Fuji Crystal Archive.

Labour started last night, although the wife waited until the morning before waking me up. And had the decency to hold onto her waters until we got to the hospital. Couldn’t have that on my new car seat!

Born 7:16pm, 8lb 12oz, 54cm long.

Edit: Jacob Lawson

After reading the ‘news‘ that yet another operator has signed up an EXCLUSIVE version of an otherwise widely available handset, I had to wonder who in their right mind makes their mobile phone purchasing decision purely on the basis of colour? CPW has an exclusive on the Curve 8900 Titanium, which looks exactly the same colour as the grey one Orange are punting. Of course Vodafone have rightly gone with the 5800 colour that ties in so well with their corporate identity…

Oh no they didn’t (he’s behind you), they got the BLUE one. I’d place good money O2 got the exclusive RED model? Clare if that’s your idea of a joke, I must congratulate you for your wit. And if anyone actually thinks to themselves “well, I was going to get the phone from O2 because they have exactly the right tarriff for me, great coverage & all my friends are on it, but I wouldn’t be seen dead with a red phone, so off to the Voda shop I go” then it really proves that radiation does damage the brain.

Look out for the exclusive rjlawson.com in yellow, only available for certain web browsers.

There’s no excuse, it’s been February for nearly two days. No blaming the snow. The Orange Shop obviously hasn’t got a clue what month it is. And have a big banner proclaiming “the Orange shop January sale”. Well done guys (& gals). Even worse, when you click to unrap some past-it’s-use-by-date–and-smelling-funny ‘deal’, you get a big page of nothing.

Booked an early summer holiday, week of relaxing with nature in May.  Getting away from it all. Tranquility & peace. Screaming baby (hopefully not too much, I’m sorry if you’re next door to us). And they have WiFi now Well done to the missus for finding a great deal.