After thinking about the poor broadband speed, the s!@£^y equipment and the poor customer service Sky provided me when the equipment with known issues and faults being used 24hrs a day decided to break. I have to give them credit, the energy monitor and discounted plan helped me get over initial anger but inside I was hurting

I always change, monitor, upgrade, service my own IT equipment as I can do that, if the router breaks, I pick up the spare one, plug it in and then get a new one to replace the backup! not with sky, they use their own routers with their own software leaving me with sod all I can do to get back on line. I waited only a day luckily but could have been up to 5 days without internet at home they reckoned. So the fact that I can not get myself back on track means, me and my business have to go else where! Its unfortunate as the nicely lady on the phone when I was leaving started offering me a good deal and was talking about having all my issues sorted, new router, high priority support team support and basically helping me out in order to stay!

50 MEG BROADBAND!!!!!!!!

Thats the reason I am leaving, well that and the other features. I have gone for it, almost the top package but not quite, top package is so expensive and I dont love watching sport enough any more to be able to dedicate my time to it and get my moneys worth. So what did I get then?

1. 50 Meg unlimited broadband.
2. 100 free prints per month via snap-fish
3. Free wireless N router and dongle
4. V-Stuff unlimited online storage
5. HD V+ box
6. Virgins XL tv package
7. Virgins phone package

So all of this is being sorted for me this weekend, ah boy this weekend the inner geek will be going mad, will be back online with another post reviewing my install and telling you just why you should be jealous or if you have Virgin TV, phone and broadband just stating the obvious! oh and my posts will be written just as slow but  when submitting them they will be about 6 times faster.

Just before I went away on holiday I invested in a lovely DAB radio and iPod docking station. The Hitachi Vertical DAB Micro with iPod Docking station was my chosen product due to having some great little features for a good price. Its currently retails on Argos at £120 (at time of writing) but I paid alot less than that and it was a real bargain. Thats not to say its perfect, it does have some minor issues which sound petty but hey, I would like better from this product in these areas but would not stop my recommending it at all.

Specs

• 2 x 10 watts RMS.
• 40 station presets (20 DAB plus 20FM).
• MP3 playback.
• USB port.
• 1 CD tray.
• Digital tuner.
• CD-R/CD-RW playback.
• 60 tracks CD / MP3 programmable.
• Play/pause, stop, skip/search-up, repeat, intro, skip/search-down, random function.
• 5 equalizers (Flat/Rock/Classic/Jazz/Pop).
• LCD display.
• ID3 tag.
• Clock/sleep timer.
• 2 way speakers.
• 1 x earphone, 1 x video out and 2 x speaker out sockets.
• Made for iPod.
• External AC-DC switching power adaptor supports various voltages, 100V-240V, line in function.
• Headphone socket.
• Remote control requires 2 x AAA batteries (not supplied).
• Size of main unit (H)40.0, (W)15.4, (D)21.1cm.
• Size of speaker (H)16.0, (W)15.4 (D)21.1cm.

Con’s

So the cons first, start with a low and finish on a high.

1. When turning it on for the first time, it picks up your stations, sets the time and works quite nicely. But as a radio I want it to turn on and work straight off without any user interaction, so that it can be used as a security measure, as a deterant! but thats not the case. Its comes on and goes to stand-by! bloody hate stand-by functions on things like this, once turned on, turn on proper and go onto stand by if I tell you too.
2. The next thing for me is the shabby remote you get. For £100 you expect the remote to be of good quality and by not doing so you get annoyed by pressing so hard it feels like it might break. Then actually finding the right part for the infa red signal is hard work too. I often dont know if I am not hitting the spot or the botton is not working right.
3. Lastly is the annoyingly short areal, digital signal is so hard to get in certain areas of the country right now, which means you need a good areal or atleast an easy way to add another areal or use and extension lead / areal on the the end of the one supplied. I had to add a coat hanger for now till I get a long lead to hide under my table or along the floor out of sight to actually get all the DAB stations I want.

Pro’s

Lots of them so lets keep the detail short….

1. Good price for features.
2. Looks great, not to big but big enough to look like a proper docking station and DAB radio.
3. Has both digital and analoge radio.
4. Input options are great, the fact you can use usb, sd card, ipod and cd sources is fantastic.
5. The slide left and right of the door on the ipod holder and the cd player is nice and slick ( does need some space to the left to open fully)
6. The Ipod control is far greater than I thought, it charges the ipod while allowing you to move through tracks, stop, play, fast forward and all the other functions you need via the remote ( when it works ), this was really nice and made me consider using it all the time, I used to listen to it via the mixer I use for DJing.
7. Blue screen lcd display looks very nice and modern.
8. Packaged well, if not a little bit to well packaged.
9. Speakers look good with or without their covers.
10. Speakers are very good for sound quality and can be enhanced with extra speakers via the other output port for headphones. Currently it has two mono outputs, one each side, an improvement would be having them together at the back to join up a sound system using stero leads, without having to play about splitting the lead to reach either side.

Overall I would recommend this and would possibly give it a 8/10, may be 7/10, I think its around that point. I would have possibly spent a bit more money to get a better system but it does what I wanted so inactual fact the price you pay for what you get is really really good value.

Now go buy one…..