Just got a new Plantronics Discovery 510 — this is a bluetooth earpiece that I thought would be good for travelling; no wires to get broken and tangled up in my bag. This is the third device I recieved from Plantronics. The first two, Discovery 340 I think, were both broken. I think it was a systemic fault in the manufacture as they both failed in exactly the same way, during pairing. The 510 is a nicer device (sold at three times the price so that’s not surprising). The main advantage, however, is that it actually works which is a relief. The sound quality is not that great though. I guess most people are using this over a mobile where you wouldn’t notice, while the drop from normal skype quality is clear. Still, it will be useful, so long as it doesn’t break.

Meanwhile, my new Virgin Broadband sufffered it’s first outage. Around 18 hours, no connection, no DHCP, no DNS. Pathetic. Their authomated phone support service said "Some people may be having issues, and our engineers are working on it. Turn your modem off and on may fix it". Gods, talk about lack of specifics.

Originally published on my old blog site.