I don’t really need a new camera but I’m getting used to having my iPhone photos geotagged so I’ve been looking around at whats available. A bit of Googling pointed me in the direction of the Nikon P6000 but some comments I’ve seen on TestFreaks such as “unreliable gps operation, intermittent gps” make me think again. Also I want something smaller and really pocket size.

If anyone has any recommendations let me know. maybe the market needs to mature?

I got a cheap Bluetooth headset at Christmas to use with the PS3 and while it worked it wasn’t very good. It looked and felt cheap, and there was an audible hiss when using it. So when I saw the Official headset back in stock at Gameplay I thought it was worth a punt.

Straight out of the box its much nicer and comes with a USB charging cradle. On the surface its functionality is standard Bluetooth headset but that’s because it comes with great big ‘gotcha’.

The headset can be paired in one of two ways, either by connecting the USB cable to the PS3 or going through a standard wireless discovery pairing. On first look of the booklet there doesn’t seem to be much difference other than ease of pairing and since I had charged the headset from the computers USB ports and didn’t have the cradle attached to the PlayStation I opted for the discovery mode pairing.

Wrong choice.. I then spent the next hour trying the find the battery gauge indicator that I’d seen mentioned in a user review.

If you read the manual again, buried casually in the middle of a preamble text before the detailed pairing steps of the two options, is this text.

“Additional features will be available on your headset when you update the PS3™ system to version 2.5 or higher, but only if you pair using a USB cable.”

Obviously on first read the combination of PS3 and updates caused my brain to skip that part however this is the only mention it gets and in addition to the lack of any other urging you to use a preferred method there is no mention anywhere of what these ‘features’ might be.

The features are in fact the elusive heads up display panel showing headset status such as charge level and volume, but also a HQ mode that delivers crystal clear audio. You’d have thought that it would be worth at least a mention?

The 360′s pad is without doubt the best and most comfortable pad I have ever used. Why Sony insists on sticking with a design that should have died of with the original Playstation is anyone’s guess but not to be defeated I set about making the best of it.

The first addition was the official keyboard attachment. It was initially intended to be a straight input device rather than mess around with the on screen text entry or a USB keyboard. What I found is that it helped with the first of my problems, namely that with a relaxed grip on the pad, especially when using the shoulder buttons, the pad would slip from my grasp. With the keyboard attached I now have a ledge that rests on my index fingers and supports the weight of the pad leaving my other fingers to press away at the ‘triggers’.

Hmm, ‘triggers’. You can’t really call an extended button a trigger. This is the next problem I needed to sort and one of the most frustrating differences between the PS3 and the 360. If they are to be classed as triggers then why do all the games I’ve tried insist on using the R1 shoulder button? Anyway a trigger it must be on my pad (and hopefully all the games I play will allow me to reconfigure the button layout) so I popped into game and bought a set of £2.99 clip on trigger extensions. Fantastically simple, fantastically effective.

I now have a pad which is ‘acceptable’ now if I didn’t have to keep inverting Y.

I always knew the floodgates would open once the deed was done and having stuck my Xbox on at 720p (the limit via component on this TV) I went looking for other HD sources. I decided that there isn’t enough content to bother with upping my Sky subscription to Sky HD but I did want a BluRay player. I’d had no interest in the PS3 to date and it was the console I loved to hate. Much in the way I had a PS2 and hated the Xbox until it had been out a couple of years and then bought one with a copy of Halo. From that point I was Xbox only. I looked at the cost of the players and found it difficult to justify the outlay for just a player when a PS3 would do as good a job, if not better, and more. So I jumped in with the enemy and got the satanic beast that was the PS3.

At first I insisted that it would remain a Blu-Ray player only but that was I saw I could download WipEout HD for £11 (only my most favourite game ever) and that has warmed me to more game action. WipEout running at 1080p looks absolutely stunning. As for the console itself it feels a lot more ‘Mac’ like with simple menu’s and navigation. As a media centre it beats the Xbox 360 hands down. Overall I’m really pleased with it although the pad is HORRIBLE! But, hey, who needs a pad for a Blu-Ray player and I’ve already added a Bluetooth remote.