Saturday, September 28, 2013

Jumping to Green Camp (StarHub Cable Broadband)

I getting the 25 Mbps plan from the roadshow in Tampines Mall which is only $24.90 per month with $50 NTUC voucher and free 1st month subscription. This in fact to me is a better deal compare to the September Comex show where only $30 voucher is given and  mobile broadband (1GB usage) which i don't need.

The installation was carried out today. It was with a bit of drama when the technician told me that my house termination point signal is very weak. So i left with 2 choices of either cancel the plan or call the contractor to come in to take a look and i have to pay for it. As i had been told is not expensive, i decided to fix the problem rather than cancel the trip. So when the contractor was here, he found out that the problem is in the main box outside of my house and the fix is a pretty straight forward process. After the fix, he mentioned there will be a service charge of $30 and as the problem is not in my house, i asked him whether can waive the charges and luckily i asked, he made a call and the charges was waived. Connecting my ancient Linksys wireless router also is another issue. Only after i google then i realize the important of making sure my cable modem is power cycled before power up my Linksys router.

So far the speed of surfing is good for me and i think this will be probably  true for me for any upgrade as my previous broadband is the ancient 1 Mbps plan for Singtel (The cheapest, $22.90). Just to quantify the speed a bit, i also did the speedtest and for local, the speed is around 15Mbps (Saturday night) and 24Mbps (Saturday afternoon) and for oversea, the speed range is around 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps.

Japan

ShangHai

LA

KL

p.s. Called to singtel for termination and they countered offer 15Mbps plan for 29.9 per month, not really that attractive. I once get an offer for 12 moth free subscription for my 1Mbps plan.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Olympus E-PM2 for 498 in Singapore

Bought this from the COMEX show today. The price is SGD 498 (~USD 391) and come with one extra original battery, one 8GB SD card, case and one China made tablet. With just the price itself, i think is a bargain as US price is actually USD 449 and it is so rare to see that Singapore price is actually cheaper compare to US after conversion.


E-PM2 box content


Free gifts. Probably the most useful free gift is the extra original battery. The case is very big and seems like is for the E-PLx or E-Px type of camera. The card is only class 4. The tablet is china made tablet running on single core processor, 512MB RAM and 8GB space, not fantastic but still usable, just have to tolerate some lagging. (3 August 2014 update: Basically i never use the tablet now as it is really lag, my regret on getting this free gift, maybe should try fight for other free gift next time)

p.s. The price is still 498 at Courts online website with free 8GB SD card and case.

27 Oct 2013 update: The online deal is no longer available but i did see deal at Courts Tampines where it is advertised as SGD 438. If the deal is not a gimmick, it is indeed a very nice price. But looking at that price, i do feel that the price might get lower in the future.


Olympus products are covered under international warranty.