Tim Smalley’s weblog

Last night I finished a review on a pair of Intel CPU’s - they fit in nicely with this week’s theme on bit-tech with it being IDF week. You should see that review on the site later today all being well. Things are incredibly busy at the moment, as I’m building up for going on holiday in the middle of September. I’m really looking forward to that - it’ll be my first real holiday for nearly 2 1/2 years.

I do a lot of travelling with work obviously, but there is rarely the time to actually play the tourist in some of the places that I visit. I’m heading back to Taiwan for a couple of weeks, as I really enjoyed visiting in June when I went to Computex with work.

I’ve got several reviews in progress at the moment, and there’s a lot of new stuff coming out in the next couple of weeks - hopefully I can get some of that done before I go away in just over 2 1/2 weeks time. I’m currently looking at a dual GPU card from Leadtek which I hope to have ready to write up by the end of tomorrow at the latest.

I’m going to i25 on Sunday to report on happenings there and there’s also a batch of Radeon X800 GT’s that I’ve got to review next week - I’m really looking forward to playing with this card as it seems to have hit a really competitive price point with the possibility of doing a bit more than what it says on the box, too…

There are many other products to review before I go away, you’ll hear about them in due course - I’d better get on with some work now as there’s a lot to do…

Take care.

Last week, I finally took the plunge and bought an 04 Registration Vauxhall Astra SXi 1.6l 16v Sport Hatch. I picked it up yesterday after waiting patiently for a few days while they got it ready for me. It’s something that I’ve been meaning to change for a while now, as my old Peugeot 106 was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.

My initial impressions are that it is about 1000 times better to drive than my 106 - it corners well, responds well and feels pretty sharp. The only thing that I’ve found so far that could be a little better is the acceleration in the lower gears - it is almost like they’re a little bit lagged. Accelerating at the top end doesn’t seem to be a problem for it though.

There’s a couple of minor things I want to do to it, but on the whole its a really nice car to drive - I’ve really enjoyed driving around in it in the ~24 hours I’ve had the car so far.