Bought some great new additions to the camera equipment yesterday... In addition to a excellent 512MB CF card that was given to me, I now have a excellent monopod. It's a fairly long, one-grip release trigger, excellent build quality Manfrotto Neotec Pro 684B. Also, with that I got a Quick Release head, the Manfrotto Swivel Tilt Head w/quick Release 234RC (aka 3229 in the US). I'm taking this baby on a spin pretty soon, watch this spot! :D

Well, this isn't exactly a new Gadget, but it's way kewl so I guess it qualifies :) To make a short story long, it started with me reading some IT newspaper about ADSL2+ implementation in Norway. Basically, it said most of the big operators were sitting on the fence for now. But a couple of smaller companies were rolling, and one of them turned out to be my current reseller, Dataguard. So I stopped by their site and filled out a form asking for info, including availability and pricing. No more than a hour later I got a mail back saying that unfortunately they would not be able to deliver to me until this autumn, but then they would be able to deliver the full bonanza (25Mb/s down, 2.5Mb/s up). But, seeing as I was a SDSL customer already, if I would like to sign up for another year? They could offer twice the speed (2MBit) at the same price... Having just asked about ADSL2+ out of curiosity, and being extremely satisfied with the current line (allthough looking for a bit more speed), I jumped on it! :) While accepting the offer, I asked how fast it could take effect, and while I was away for an hour fixing some stuff (I was at work), not only did a reply drop in saying it would take effect within two hours, but the change had already been made. So now I'm on 2 mbit/s SDSL - at no additional cost! :D You know, after having dealt with a lot of isp's/broadband providers over the years, I've come to expect slow responses, month-long delivery prices, and incompetent, arrogant, and generally unhelpful "customer service". But after a few years with a line supplied by Catch and with Dataguard as the reseller, I cannot praise them enough. Excellent quality product, and excellent customer service. I cannot speak for technical support, as I've never needed it.