Having navigated for years without a Satellite Navigation system in my car, I have finally got one. I was interested in getting a TomTom Go 720 (£193) but having already got an HTC S620 WM6 Smartphone there were other options.

I finally settled for:

BlueNEXT 51 channel GPS receiver for £24 this was a bargain and had great reviews on Amazon

S620 car charger £4

Co-Pilot Live 7 software for windows mobile £72

Total cost of about - £100. Even with a Western Europe map upgrade for Co-Pilot, the total will come to less than £150.

The GPS receiver is excellent and works well indoors or outdoors. The Co-Pilot software is great and so far has proved great for navigating within the city as well as on motorways.

I opted for Co-Pilot in preference to TomTom 6 Navigator software as the HTC does not have a touch screen but has a querty keyboard and TomTom requires hacks for the keyboard to work with the navigation software. Co-Pilot however, works with the HTC keyboard out of the box and is pretty simple to use.

Co-Pilot central (the desktop companion software) is just a little bit flaky on Windows Vista, but nothing I cannot live with.

For the in-car cradle, I made one from bending a coat-hanger - light, airy, free and work a treat. The HTC sits in the cradle hanging off the central airconditioning grille in the dashboard.

I encountered error 51E while installing an update to Windows Live Photo Gallery through Vista's update. Unfortunately there was no download from Microsoft to install this offline. This was the first time I had encountered this error code on windows update. Searching the web revealed others had encountered 51E but during installation of Vista SP1.

The solution

1. Disable Carbonite
2. Disable Avast on-access scanner.
3. Use windows update to install the update - successfully!
4. Re-enable Avast and Carbonite.

Just disabling Carbonite (as suggested by some for the Vista SP1 error) did not work, neither did just disabling Avast.

Hoping this helps someone else with the same problem.

The new XPS M1530 that I recently purchased from Dell was flawless except for 1 small problem. The cover at the back of the LCD did not fit snugly over the LCD bezel on one side.

I called up Dell customer service on 4th of March and spoke to a very nice and helpful lady who asked me to send in pictures of the defect. I did the same day. I also mentioned that I would really not like to be without the laptop and would either prefer an onsite repair or a replacement. I did not hear anything from Dell till today - I received an email informing me that a replacement laptop had been dispatched. Looking at details, it seems that the replacement order was authorised on the 5th of March, the day after I sent in the pictures of the defect.

I have been a Dell customer for the past 3 years - I have bought 2 desktops, an Inspiron laptop and an XPS M170 laptop and have never had any problems with the hardware. The XPS M1530 is a brilliant machine which looks awesome and performs very well. This is the first time ever that I have had to interact with Dell's customer service and the experience been great. Good on you Dell. You have a very satisfied customer.

With the performance of my XPS M170 becoming erratic and the machine not running as fast as before (with the number of programs running concurrently), it was time to upgrade.

Just got a new Dell XPS M1530 (Product Red) the machine arrived, as usual, well before the estimated date of delivery. Installation of all the software took 2 days and I am very pleased with my choice. The laptop looks gorgeous, the display is crisp and not a dead pixel in sight. Although not feather light the machine is not too heavy and definitely portable.

I opted for the 9 cell high wattage battery, which adds an extra bump to the back of the laptop a slightly unsightly tradeoff for increased battery life.

The integrated fingerprint reader works well and elicits great "wows" from the kids!