Life & Technology

Spoke with Steve about Xbox movie downloads, which are now available. I see this as the future of home movies, and in a few years your DVD store will be a thing of the past. Apple are doing something similar, and the PS3 will have downloadable movies next year.

How does it work? Well, you pay using your credit card or Xbox Live credits to download the movie, and you get a certain amount of time to watch it before it is erased (we’re talking days here, not hours). You can invited friends to watch it via their own consoles remotely, however they do have to pay a fee, too.

You have to be careful of the number of downloads you do within a month, and check your download plan.

More callers queried the use of your mobile phone overseas and how to get a SIM card that can be used overseas. I know of two companies that offer these cards in Australia – TravelSIM and GlobalSIM, and they both sell to retailers around the country. You have to make sure that you mobile phone is not attached to a particular carrier or it will not work.

Shane called in and asked about buying a GPS device and asked about TomTom and Navman. Both brands are pretty good, but they do have different features and price points, so it’s worth talking to the shop assistant about which one you like. I have noticed a drop in prices over the past couple years, which is good for the consumer.

Sue was querying whether there was any way her four-year old Bose iPod dock could charge more recent iterations of the iPod Touch or Nano etc. The answer is no, it cannot, and I know from personal experience because my wife has the exact same Bose dock and I can’t my iPhone on it. Just have to do it the old-fashioned way and plug the new device into the wall.

Finally, Sid called and wondered why it costs so much for broadband in Australia, where in India it is so much cheaper. There are probably a few reasons, but one of the main ones would be that we are the size of the United States but only have less than 10 percent of the population, therefore a lower tax base and people paying for the service. It will be interesting to see what happens with pricing when the NBN is up and running.

Last weekend we had a little family event for my 15-month old daughter. To ensure the occasion was captured correctly, I busted out the Nikon D5000 that had been lent to me by Nikon for review.

I’ve used a number of digital compact cameras over the years, but I’ve never USED a DSLR for capturing a family event. To be honest, I’ve always been too busy with the BBQ or whatever, so I couldn’t walk around with a large camera slung around my neck!

I’m far from a good photographer. I know the technology inside the camera, how it works, what to look for when buying one, but when it comes to lining up the shot, I am, at best, an amateur.

I decided it was better to take a lot of pictures as many would be duds. I was wrong. I would say about five percent of the pics I took had to be deleted and most of these were because the dog got in the way, someone blinked, or the image was blurry because the person moved. Virtually none of the images I deleted were because the camera took a bad shot. I have a 28-inch monitor on my desk, and taking the images at a pixel rate (about 12 megapixels) has made cropping and shaping of my favourite pics easy.

I’m told by the camera industry that DSLRs are growing in popularity as more of us become amateur photographers (I think they mean ‘enthusiast’ photographers, I am already amateur enough). I am so impressed that I’m now in the market for a DSLR. I have some other models to try, such as the D9, and the D3S. With Christmas and New Year coming up I have plenty of places to try them out.

A fair few enquiries with regard to as query I had on the Steve Price Show about travelling overseas with your own mobile and how much it will cost.

Well, it can be expensive, but there is a solution. Once service is called TravelSim, but there are a number of competing brands around.

You buy a SIM card, open an account and attach your credit card to pay for the credit and then start using your phone. When you run out of credit your account is automatically debited to refresh with credit. The benefit is a lower price for calls received and made when you are overseas (and SMS, too).

When you are at the airport change your voicemail of your normal phone to say ‘you are out of the country and this is your global SIM number while overseas’ and people ring you back on the new international SIM card.

It’s easy, it’s cheaper and it means you can have a phone when you go overseas and not get a massive headache when you get home and look at the phone bill.