Steve Glendinning

For the last year I’ve been using a pair of Sony Fontopia MDR-EX71 headphones. They’re “ear canal” design, so take a bit of getting used to, but after a few days they’re really comfortable. They’ve had heavy daily use over the past year, and a month ago one of the ears stopped working. My first thought was to buy the same again, but I’d heard good things about Shure’s in-ear range so I decided to give them a go.

Out of the box, the Shures came fitted with a medium sized plastic end. I tried this and while I initially thought it felt like a good fit, the sound wasn’t right (I couldn’t hear any bass at all!). I switched to the medium black rubber option, which looks nearly identical to the Fontopia, and the sound was much better.

Now I’ve used the Shures nearly every day for a month. Here are some things the Shures do better:

• The sound quality really is superior. They have less bass than the Sonys, but that gives a much more balanced sound (and remember if you can’t hear ANY bass, they’re not fitting well!) . The mids and highs sound fantastic.
• LOADS of different ear fitting options (3 sizes of rubber, 3 of plastic and 3 of foam), should mean they’re suitable for a wider range of ear canal shapes than the Sonys.

But here are some things the Sonys do better:

• They’re much smaller and lighter than the Shures (see photo below). Not only the headphones themselves, but the cable and plug too.
• They’re easier to fit in your ear. This is partly due to the smaller size, but also due to the strange way you’re supposed to loop the cable over your ear with the Shures. I think this is to support the extra weight, but I just find it annoying.
• Once the Sonys are in your ear, they just stay there. Even after a month of everyday use, I still have to fiddle with the Shures to keep them in the right place. I haven’t tried wearing them to the gym, but I don’t think they’d stay in for long if i did.
• They’re cheaper. Especially now the Shures aren’t on offer at Amazon!

To sum up, the Shures do deliver much better sound quality, but it’s at the expense of convenience.

Edit (April 2008): The shure headphones developed a fault after only 3 months so I returned them to Amazon for a full refund. I’m now using Sennheiser CX300 headphones, which are IMHO every bit as good sounding as the Shures, with the size and convenience of the Sony Fontopias. They’re MUCH cheaper too!

Chris Timson has started a new blog, and I would like to claim the prize for being the first person to notice! What do I win?!

I spotted his domain as a new referring site on my Google Analytics stats.  Maybe that means someone else found his site first and clicked the link to me?

I have a fully fitted Nokia car kit (CARK-126) which I originally used with a Nokia 6230, and later a 6230i. It has a pop-port connection, as does my new N73, so in theory I should be able to convert it for an N73 with a straightforward cradle swap. Nokia don’t make it quite that simple.

Nokia don’t make a cradle specifically for the N73. I have no idea why, one of the selling points of Nokia was always their strong car kit support.

After a quick google I found this post on the Nokia forums, where one of the posters states that the CR-28 holder fits the N73 perfectly. I’m not sure that following the advice of a single unknown poster on a forum is a good idea but I ordered one anyway. It’s arrived now (damn postal strikes!) and the phone fits perfectly.

On the same Nokia forum post, “dannyboy” the car kit specialist says that the N73 doesn’t work with the CARK-126. I’ve tried it and for the most part it works fine. The radio mute function doesn’t mute the radio at all any more, but for me this is a minor annoyance (and certainly not worth replacing the entire car kit for). I think “dannyboy” was trying to sell someone a replacement car kit…

So in summary I can confirm that my Nokia N73 works fine with a CARK-126 car kit and a CR-28 cradle.

Update 16/10/2007: The CR-28 holder is available to buy from Amazon here:

In a spooky coincidence, I’d just arrived home from work today when an NPower door-to-door salesman knocked on my door. Mine was a young chap, not as good at sales as Ben’s, and I wasn’t really in the mood for leading him on. He did use similarly misleading tactics though.

He was armed with an official looking list of names and addresses (electoral role i guess), with some of his writing on some rows. He knew my name, and said if his two reference numbers for me matched the numbers on my power bill I would qualify for a price reduction. He pointed to the list (where he had written on it) and said he’d just saved several of my neighbours money.

During his entire pitch I didn’t say a word (he didn’t give me a chance), even when he started to talk himself out of a sale. I told him I’m in rented accomodation so I didn’t have the authority to change supplier (not strictly true, and he should have handled that objection!). He admitted defeat and knocked on my neighbours door.

I had a fun weekend up in Nottingham. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been up, and as usual everything is different!

The University of Nottingham students union has been completely refurbished, and is now two separate bars. The old lower ground floor has turned into a bar called “Mooch” and the old Ark is now a separate club called “The Venue”. Both look fantastic (probably because the paint is still wet), but why such a small bar in The Venue?!

I also went car shopping with my brother John, as he’s looking for a replacement after his recent Hungarian lorry driver incident. We wandered round one of the nearby car supermarkets, they’re really quite useful if you don’t know exactly what you’re after as you can have a poke around lots of different makes and models.

I’m going to start adding some technical posts, I have a few solutions to problems that I couldn’t find the answer to on Goodle, so I’d like to share them with the web. Hopefully someone will find them useful.

Yes, I’ve finally decided to start blogging, and only several years after the rest of the world!

In a similar way to Ben King, I plan to blog about both personal happenings and work.

For now it’s the standard Wordpress look, I’ll see about customising it when I get a few spare hours. Hopefully I’ll find enough time to keep it updated too!