My wife purchased this grinder, in the hope that I might make her more and better latte’s. Being an avid espresso fan, who was I to complain! Over the last couple of months, it has been used extensively and I’m now in a good position to review it.
Build
Construction of the grinder is very good, brushed Aluminium case work, with plastic trim and switches. The bean hopper is made from very solid plastic, screwing in at the top. Turning this left and right also adjusts the coarseness of the grind. The grounds hopper is also plastic, not as solid as the bean hopper, but still adequately sturdy. Cuisinart back this grinder up with a 5 year warranty, very impressive in this day and age.
The size of the grinder is suited to a cramped kitchen, with a footprint of around 15cm square it won’t clutter up your worktop. That said, the bean hopper is still ample enough to take 250g of beans.
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My wife has an old Mac iBook G4 laptop (12″, 1.33Ghz, full spec here), which after several years, the original battery will only provide approximately 1 hour of running time. Being such an old laptop, replacement battery options are limited to just third party compatible items. After scouring ebay I came across a brand called Powercell, who produced a compatible battery rated at 4400mAh, for the reasonable price of £27 delivered.
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I recently inherited my wife’s old Mac iBook, a 12″ 1.33Ghz G4. Initially the hard disk had suffered the click of doom, which I replaced. Following that it started becoming very unstable and oddly only booting up/operating when squeezed just to the left of the track pad.
After some research it seems the iBook’s suffer from dodgy solder joints, especially on one chip just to the left of the track pad. Some people try squeezing in shims to press the chip down, other try touching the connections with a soldering iron to rejoin them. I tried the latter, however still had no success. Whilst in pieces I noticed that it wasn’t so much the pressing of the chip that enabled the machine to boot up, but more the flexing of the whole board. It was at this point I read about a solution involving the cooking of the main logic board. That’s right, sticking the logic board in the oven to cause all solder joints to flow.
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Over the last few years I’ve been using a Rega Apollo as my main CD player and a very good CD player it is too. Quite unique in design with a highly distinctive top loading mechanism, rather than a usual run of the mill tray. The Rega Apollo is special in that on loading a new disc, it will scan the discs entirety as part of an ‘initialisation’ process and set it self up as best to read it. It also has a generous 24MB memory for use as a read ahead buffer.
However times have changed, I now find myself streaming my music for playback, either stuff I’ve ripped into iTunes or over the net from Spotify and internet radio stations. Streaming bring many convenience benefits when it comes to music playback; ease of finding tracks, random shuffling across your whole collection, playlists and checking out new unheard bands. As such, I’ve bitten the bullet and sold my Rega Apollo. I will miss it, it had a unique sound quality that my Mac Mini and M-Audio Audiophile USB soundcard simply can’t match.
Hunt down ‘rega apollo’ with Hi-Fi Hunter
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A few weeks ago my wife passed her driving test and began to drive my Vauxhall Zafira. Being a new driver, the Zafira being a little large and being a sucker for gadgets I thought it a good plan to fit some parking sensors. My reasoning being the cost to remedy any reserving mishaps my wife may make, would far out way the cost of fitting parking sensors.
After reading the old review in AutoExpress comparing numerous brands, I choose the review winner, the Dolphin Parking System. Considering they could be ordered pre-coloured to match my car and were supplied with cutting tools, they were a no brainer. The specific model I went for was the DPS450, which is four rear sensors and a dash mounted display/buzzer unit. This version with the display, was only £!0 more than the base system, seemed like a good deal to me.
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Approximately 18 months ago I replaced the head unit (HU) in my Vauxhall/Opel Zafira, with this Kenwood KDC-W7544U
head unit. Over that time, I’ve put it through its paces, overcome its idiosyncrasies and worked out how to use it to its full potential. In this review I’ll go over what I liked about it, what I didn’t like and give some tips on how to get the best from it. This model is also very similar to the Kenwood KDC-W7044U
and Kenwood KDC-BT8044U
, so much of this will also apply them.
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