Update Now it has decided to randomly erase everything when I rebooted it. Avoid this piece of tat at all costs and buy one of the Maxtor home NAS devices.

I got a 500GB Iomega Home NAS device a while ago simply because it was cheap. I needed a bit of networked storage so I could share things no matter which of my machines I was using, and it seemed to fit the bill.

Unfortunately, it sucks. Royally. Mangled SMB packets, random destruction of the domain, all manner of badness. Then I happened across a nugget of information. The firmware it ships with (K104.W11) is just rubbish, and the latest update (K108.W15) is even worse. However, an older firmware (K102.W11) is much, much more stable. Go figure.

Officially you can't get the older firmware any more. But unofficially, you can if you know where to look. So if you're having trouble with your Iomega Home NAS being crap, try reflashing it with this:

http://download.iomega.com/english/storcenter_home_fimrware-k102w11.bin

The misspelling of "fimrware" is deliberate, just so you don't think to try and correct the link. Anyway, it might make all your woes go away. It does say that it makes it incompatible with OS X leopard, but I'm not sure how that's the case if it's just using standard SMB. I think it's the automagical device discovery tool that's not Leopard aware, but the OS already comes with the findsmb command which does exactly the same thing. Suck it and see. It's dead easy to reflash with the latest firmware if necessary anyway.

So I've spent a couple of weeks with my shiny new toy, the Samsumg F480 Tocco, so it's time to write a little review of it. I have to say that I'm very pleased with it, and would gladly recommend it to, well, anyone. The touchscreen interface might be a little too alien for some, but for anyone reasonably mobile-savvy it should present no issues at all.

Of course, it's going to end up getting compared to the iPhone a lot. It looks just like it to the untrained eye. It's actually slightly smaller than the iPhone, and the iPhone users who've seen it have commented that it's a much better size. Oh, and it comes with an optional faux-leather flip-front which is very effective and looks pretty good, too.

Those of you who remember the bad old days will know that getting freebies out of mobile companies was a worthwhile, though arduous task. Free upgrades, price reductions and other goodies could be had if you were able to withstand the tiring process of pretending to want a PAC to bugger off to pastures new.

More recently, the phone companies changed their tactic. You could phone up and request a PAC, but rather than offer you goodies to stick around, they'd just give you one. You then had a choice; let it expire, or use it to try and find a decent deal in a harsh marketplace.

Thankfully, yesterday Orange proved that the tides is changing once again. They called me, out of the blue, and said that my contract expires in 2 months. They offered me, right there and then, a free upgrade to any handset I chose and a substantially better value tariff. So I did. The fact is, I didn't actually want to leave Orange this time because they are, in my opinion, the best operator at the moment. However, they didn't know that, and I'm more than happy to let them ply me with free stuff to keep my custom.

So taking advantage of this generosity, I chose the new Samsung F480 Tocco, their new iPhone-alike with more features than you can shake a stick at. I was a bit dubious, a fan as I am of simplistic devices that do exactly what I need and no more. The X820 has been an absolute dream in that respect, being both completely reliable and having a very good feature set. So here I am branching out toward the world of shiny things without keypads.

Another reason I stick with Orange: they deliver promptly, and when they say they will. Unlike, say, O2, or T-Mobile. My new shiny device arrived promptly the morning after the night before, right on my desk where I could play nicely with it. I mean, where I could get on with my work and leave it until lunchtime ... *ahem* ...

So initial impressions, then. Excellent. I was worried about build quality, but no problems there. I was worried about touch screen sensitivity, and no problems there. I was worried about typing directly on to a touch screen, but again, no problems at all. The new "haptic response" system (i.e. a little buzz when it detects a click) means you get definite tactile feedback from the touch screen, which is both novel, and an amazing boost to usability.

Feature-wise I'm not very demanding of a phone, but I know what I like and I know what I don't. The T9 system is good, the touchscreen is just responsive enough, and the menus are logically laid out. The only complaint I can find so far is that the scrolling is upside down. The iPhone gets it right; move your finger down, and the screen scrolls down. The Tocco goes the other way and acts as if you're dragging a scroll bar, and it doesn't always realise that you're not clicking on the items you're dragging over. Still, it works well enough after a couple of minutes.

I'll use the phone for a bit and probably stick up a more detailed field report later. Until then, hooray for toys!

I've just finished rewriting my MegaHAL/Irssi script to be a lot cleaner and a lot easier to configure. You can get it from the MegaHAL/Irssi page.

New features include:

• Configurable using standard Irssi /set commands instead of hacking the script
• Supports changing nick without hacking the script
• Generally requires less hacking of the script ...

So, erm, yes. Enjoy!

One of the joys of IRC is the opportunity to write scripts, bots and toys that are not only entirely pointless, but also sometimes quite profane. A little AI script I knocked up to integrate MegaHAL with Irssi has gone through a number of lobotamies and now has the number of every regular member of the channel in which it is resident. Those members know who they are and what the bot in question thinks of them ...

Anyway, I put the script on my Irssi script page and it seems to be quite popular. Unfortunately, I hacked the AI::MegaHAL module from CPAN, installed only half the standard MegaHAL 9.1.1 distribution and generally made what can only be described as a one-of-a-kind bot. However, I decided to make it right, and the script now has some ... installation instructions!

So if you run Irssi and want to use an AI to provide fun and games in channel, or just to talk for you when you're too lazy even to spod, then grab the script and instructions from my megahal_irssi.pl page, install it, and have lots of fun.

To make the Phillips DVP5960, my latest toy, ignore region encoding, simply follow these steps:

1. Turn the player on and open the tray
2. Press "Setup" on the remote
3. Go right until you get to the "Preferences" page
4. Enter 138931 using the remote. The region code will appear
5. Use the up and down buttons to select region, or 0 for region free
6. Press "Setup" then "OK" on the remote

That should be it. Thanks to everyone whose comments appear on the Google results page for the search terms "phillips dvp5960 region hack"!

Some of you may remember that I bought an Onn SW2411A-DivX 3 months ago from Asda. At the time I was very impressed with the machine for the price, and have used it for watching both DVD and DivX content throughout Christmas. Well, it seems that these cheap gadgets come at a price; a 3 month lifespan. Last week I found that it had stopped reading disks properly. It could take 4 or 5 attempts before it would even spin a disk up, never mind read the content.

Back to Asda we go, then, and get a credit note to the tune of the 30 quid we paid for it. Using this and a little cash injection, it has now been replaced with a Phillips DVP5960 unit. This has basically the same feature set as the Onn with an extra 20 quid on top. However, for that 20 quid you're getting a named brand and a far more polished product. The strange hanging that plagues the Onn from day 1, the intermittent USB connectivity and other little glitches are absent. Indeed, the DVP5960 and its predecessors have had excellent reviews on many technology sites.

Now, I do know that many people come here looking for region hacks for the Onn machine. The funny part is that it doesn't need any. However, if that's why you're here, I would recommend you go with the Phillips machine. It costs a bit more, but I'm already impressed enough to recommend it over the Onn model. If something goes bad down the line I'll be sure to blog about it.

Yes, another new keyboard. This time it's an Apple Aluminium keyboard from the new iMac line. The basic reasoning behind this purchase is because I have wrecked the knuckles of my right hand in a fight with a door and a pane of glass, so I can't bend my middle or index fingers. This means that traditional keyboards cause a problem due to their long key travel, but notebook keyboards are fine. The new Apple aluminium keyboard is almost identical to the 'chiclet' design of the MacBook, so is very much like a notebook keyboard writ large.

Today marked the arrival of my iGo bluetooth folding keyboard, so I thought I'd write a review of it. Naturally, I'm writing the review on the device itself, connected to my Nokia 770 internet tablet. So far, so impressive.

So first things first, the physical item. It clocks in at about 5"x3" when folded, and a touch over 10.5" wide when opened up. It's a quality product and doesn't feel like it will break or behave unduly when under pressure.

Like many people, I like to dial up using my mobile phone when I'm out and about. I only have GPRS, after my 3G phone got on my nerves with its rubbish battery when using CDMA and silly camera lens cover. That doesn't mean it has its uses though. For SSH and image-free browsing it's great, and as other posts suggest it works nicely with the Nokia 770.

Unfortunately OS X is a little less friendly than the Nokia device when it comes to talking to your favourite bluetooth modem. It insists that you manually specify the correct Modem Script to get it all going, and if you can't see yours then you're pretty much stuffed. Well, that's what I thought.

It turns out that a chap called Ross Barkman has made a massive collection of dialup modem scripts for all kinds of phones and other devices, including some generic ones that I eventually used to get the X820 working. The collection is all here, with instructions on what to do.

Oh, and a word from the not-so-wise; when it asks you the phone number for GPRS, make sure you enter the GRPS APN into the field, and not the strange *9***1# nonsense that other devices ask you for. It's just something to be wary of, although Ross's scripts to include a file telling you that.