Simon Barker's Articles On Zath

Simon Barker is the founder and editor of Zath and has over 25 years’ worth of experience of using computers and technology in general. He can normally be found researching or testing the latest in technology products.

He has provided IT consultancy services to both home and small business users for over 15 years, building PCs, fixing hardware/software problems and providing comprehensive training.

Simon always likes to get the best out of the technology products he is using, by both making informed purchasing decisions and also optimising how they are used to get the most benefits possible.

If you'd like to follow and/or contact him on Twitter, please feel free to do so - @SimonBarker.

Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2010 Nomination – Vote For Zath!

9th November 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 6th November 2018

Here at Zath we pride ourselves on bringing our readers high quality technology and gadget related content on a daily basis, it’s always good to get feedback from people on what they think and especially when that takes the form of an award nomination. So having said that, I’m pleased to announce that Zath has been shortlisted for Computer Weekly’s IT Blog Awards 2010 under their Gadgets category!

You may remember that Zath was also nominated for a Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards in 2009, unfortunately on that occasion we didn’t quite make it through to the shortlisted section where the public get to vote for their favourite that they want to win. However this year we have, you’ve got a chance to vote for Zath, so we’re definitely in with a chance of winning this time round.
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Windows Phone 7 Preview

6th October 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 1st June 2019

Last week Zath got invited to the Microsoft offices in London, to have a sneak preview of what is in store for us with the new Windows Phone 7 operating system (OS) and also speak to Oded Ran (Head of Consumer Marketing, Windows Phone, UK) to see what answers he could give us to the various questions that are on our mind regarding Microsoft’s latest mobile phone platform.

One of the first things that strike you when you look at Windows Phone 7 is it’s very different from the previous mobile versions of Windows, perhaps following the success of Windows 7, they are now wanting a mobile operating system which is worthy of being badged with the Windows (Phone) 7 name.

Also, many of the design successes from the likes of their media players such as the Zune HD have been used in this new mobile OS and choosing to leave behind support for previous versions of Windows Mobile has allowed them to create something new from the ground up.

In fact from seeing Windows Phone 7 in action, you see how their philosophy of removing the need for you to think what application you need to load to accomplish a given task, instead you are just presented with the options you might want to do, for example, to find the nearest pizza restaurant, you can just search without first thinking, do I need to be in search or do I need to be in the mapping application.
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Silicone iPad Case Review

26th August 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th March 2019

silicone-ipad-case-cover-red-front-view The one thing that you realise once you’ve got your shiny new Apple iPad tablet device is just how high quality the design, build quality and finish really is and obviously most people will want to try and keep it in as good a condition as possible and obviously that’s when you start looking at the best iPad stands and cases that are out there.

This particular iPad case I’ve looked at is made from silicone and is probably more of a thin sleeve more than anything else which surrounds your iPad’s exterior (apart from the screen that is) and protects it from scratches, scrapes and bumps, while not adding too much bulk to the actual device.
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Xbox Kinect – Xbox 360 Motion Controller Event Preview

14th June 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 27th March 2019

microsoft-project-camera-motion-controller-natal-xbox-360-console Around a year ago, we got our first look at Microsoft’s latest innovation for their Xbox 360 console, their motion controller; Project Natal and a lot of people have been wanting to see just how well this works, well I recently got the chance to have a hands-on (so to speak) preview!

Ever since Project Natal (or Xbox Kinect as it’s now known as) was announced, I’ve been very keen to see quite what it’s capable of because the potential it holds for future games could be substantial as shown in the videos at E3 2009, especially the Milo interactive artificial intelligence that Peter Molyneux’s developers created in just a short time of having access to this in-development Xbox motion controller accessory.

Anyway, here’s what I thought of my preview session…
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3DTV Technology Uses & Applications – Should I Buy A 3DTV?

21st April 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 27th March 2019

panasonic-3dtv-active-shutter-3d-glasses-small There’s currently a lot of talking (or hype, depending on your viewpoint) surrounding 3DTV, a lot of which has come off the back of 3D movies being shown in cinemas and most notably the success that the Avatar 3D movie has had.

That particular 3D movie in itself has led to more movies being made into 3D to be shown in cinemas, even if they were originally filmed in traditional 2D, although as someone who is fairly “3D-sceptical”, it’s probably a good thing that not all of these implementations have resulted in great results. For example, many people have said that the Clash of the Titans movie in 3D, was not well done at all, so that alone might put off movie studios simply running movies through a computer to “3D-ify” it to make extra cash at the box office from higher ticket prices, hopefully, they’ll instead go to the trouble of actually filming with 3D cameras, to begin with!

I do sometimes think that the movie studios thought of 3D movies in cinemas as copy protection on their new releases, they know a lot of people will pay a premium for it and right now it’s not an experience that can be replicated by simply downloading a pirate copy to view on their small screen laptop, I wonder if that will change as the rather fast introduction of 3DTV (the next step up from the fairly recent HDTVs) gets into people’s homes?
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Low Power PCs – The Top 5 Contenders

12th April 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 22nd September 2018

Most of us take our PCs for granted, since they’re an essential bit of kit these days. How many of you consider power consumption when it comes to your computer (or any of your gadgets)? Compared to 5 years ago when being eco-friendly wasn’t quite so newsworthy, I’m willing to bet that these days, most of you do switch off gadgets when you’re not using them.

Well you might not have heard about a small revolution in low energy computers. These low power PCs are essentially standard computers that have a considerably low energy consumption compared to a standard desktop computer. A standard desktop computer consumes anywhere between 100W to 400W (maybe even more for really heavy duty gaming and processing). A low power PC consumes around 4W to 30W! Surprisingly, the latest energy efficient computers have comparable performance to regular desktop PCs too.
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Think Visibility 3 Review (Leeds Digital Marketing/SEO Conference 2010)

17th March 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 28th July 2019

think-visibility-conference-logo UPDATE: I’ve now reviewed the latest Think Visibility 9 conference, so be sure to take a look at that page if you’re interested in finding out how #ThinkVis did on its 5th anniversary!

This past weekend I packed my bags and headed down to Leeds for the Think Visibility 3 conference, as the name indicates, this is the third such event and the first of two in 2010. The whole idea behind these one-day conferences (organised by Dom Hodgson and his team) is that they cover “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process” and therefore typically covers topics such as SEO, PPC, social media, affiliate and digital marketing/branding.

The venue itself remained the same as that used for the Think Visibility 2 conference in Sept 2009; the Alea Casino (near the Royal Armouries museum) in a very smart and clean Clarence Dock area of Leeds. Upon arrival to the event we received our ID badges and just from that you know that you’re in for an event with a bit of character – the organisers had only gone and created our very own “Twitter Top Trumps” from the statistics of our Twitter accounts! These made for a great talking point during the whole event as you met up with different people that you already knew and even more importantly with people you didn’t – this was a great way to break the ice I thought, so well done to the Think Visibility team for coming up with that idea!
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Virgin Media Broadband Internet Review

26th February 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th March 2019

virgin-media-logo Virgin Media has been around for a while now and I am sure that you have all seen their adverts boasting about on fibre-optic broadband services. The problem I had with this was that it left me begging the question “how good is it compared to say, BT or Sky Broadband‘s phone line based ADSL services? (Let’s not even get into mobile broadband)”.

Well now you are in luck as I switched to Virgin Media’s fibre-optic broadband and have given it a full testing in my own “special way”. On the surface things stack up pretty well. My old service offered “up to 8MB speeds”.

Using a download speed test, what this actually equated to was me receiving around 1 MB/s – Virgin offers 10MB, as standard! The difference is though what this actually equates to speeds on average of around 9 MB/s. That put into perspective means that I can now download a typical MP3 in about 5 seconds or a typical film (800 MB) in 12 mins. This is a huge boost in performance and put an even huger (I know that is not an actual word but it is very fitting) smile on my face.
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Top 10 Free Android Apps For Your Mobile Phone

20th February 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 26th March 2019

My first Android powered mobile phone was the T-Mobile G1. Gosh I loved it. With its love or hate plastic build, easy to use functional QWERTY keyboard and all the social networking tools I could shake a stick at Android powered phones were definitely for me. Moving over from the likes of the iPhone 3GS, I jumped at the opportunity to go with an OS which was to me, for the customisation alone, better.

I now have a HTC Hero running Android 2.1 and love it — HTC Sense is no longer there, but some of the perks do remain. I can also cross use my apps which I love so much, that if they were to self delete themselves, I would cry — because quite simply I need them all. And so after testing out apps, Android powered phones and the whole shebang, I have drawn up a list of the top ten free Android apps you should have.

Therefore, if you’ve got an Android mobile phone such as the Nexus One, here are the all important apps you should take a look at…
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Zath’s Monster World of Warcraft Competition!

25th January 2010 by Simon Barker - Last Updated: 18th April 2019

As a World of Warcraft player who is eagerly anticipating the upcoming WoW: Cataclysm expansion later in the year, I’ve recently got back into playing WoW by starting a new character and it got me thinking that it might be an idea to run another competition for my fellow WoW players around the world and obviously anyone else who’d like to enter too!

With this in mind, I thought I’d try and make it worthwhile and rather than just give one prize away and there be just a single winner, I’ve put together a World of Warcraft prize pool (along with the help of SteelSeries and Starbucks) that means there are 13 actual prizes up for grabs and we have reviewed many of these items already, I’m happy that they’re worthy of such a competition!
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Simon Barker's Articles On Zath

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