Dell mailed me my Vista SP1 disc a couple of weeks ago and I decided to take the opportunity to install fresh and see how I liked Vista. Overall it’s been much better than the initial release of Vista. Things don’t randomly freeze up (as much) and file operations don’t randomly take hours to complete for no reason (as much).
Vista is a lot more compatible with my hardware (webcam works, USB drives work faster in general etc.) than Linux is, and this has been nice. Having full syncing with my Sony Ericsson K850i is also nice.
Still, I don’t feel comfortable using Vista. Whenever I boot into Ubuntu and log in to my GNOME desktop I almost feel a sense of relief. It’s that same feeling you get when you return home after a vacation. Granted, the vacation might’ve been just what you needed, it was nice etc. but you still love that you’re home and that you’ll be sleeping in your own bed again. That’s the feeling I get when booting back into GNOME from Vista.
I just bought my first pair of ‘noise-isolating’ earbuds today — SonicGear’s EarPump. I paid RM 39.90, so I wasn’t expecting much from them.
I was wrong. The fit is excellent — with three different sizes of rubber in-ear seals to choose from, and a spare set of the medium seals there’s something for most ear sizes. In my case, the mediums fit perfectly and comfortably, sealing out most outside noise.
Overall I’m quite happy with sound reproduction. Treble comes through loud and clear, with bass being a little too far on the restrained side for me. The mid-range is somewhat strong, but that doesn’t bother me too much. Overall I’m quite happy with sound reproduction though I wish the bass was a little more defined.
Apart from the headphones and extra seals, the package comes with a carry case which has spare room for a small MP3 player; something along the lines of a Creative Zen Stone would fit perfectly in there with the phones.
A serious problem that has emerged after my testing is that the majority of MP3s in my library aren’t ripped well enough and have a constant background noise to them. My commercially purchased tracks, as well as higher bit-rate rips sound excellent however.
P.S.: I think EarPump sounds like something you’d rather not have happen to yourself :(
