Ken's Tech Tips

photo: barnoid

I’ve previously written articles about how to get free calls and free texts on your existing Pay As You Go mobile. Since, I’ve recieved dozens of messages asking me how to get free data and internet access on PAYG. Unfortunately, it isn’t so clear cut for data. There are some great networks, some bad ones and then some really bad ones.

Find your network and see what it costs. You might be able to save a lot of money by switching tariff. If you’re on one of the “ugly” networks, you might save a lot by switching network.

The Good: Free internet access

Three: 3Pay

Three’s 3Pay tariff offers 150MB of free mobile internet access which lasts from 90 days from top-up (you can top-up from just £5). Best of all, you can top-up again as soon as you run out. Three have a fantastic high speed 3G data network too.

Cost: 150MB for 3 months free with a top-up; then 30p/MB

Virgin: Addict

Virgin’s Addict tariff offers 1GB of free mobile internet access which lasts for 30 days from top-up. But you have to top-up £20 to get it. If you top-up less than that, it’s 30p/MB.

Cost: 1GB for 1 month is free with a £20 top-up; otherwise 30p/MB

photo: kevindooley

The Bad: It’ll cost you

T-Mobile: Mates Rates

T-Mobile caps the cost of mobile internet at £1 per day. You’re charged at 0.73p per KB until you reach the £1 cap. So if you use more than 137KB per day, it’ll cost you just a quid.

Cost: £1 per day

Vodafone: Simply

Vodafone’s Simply tariff charges a flat rate of £1 for the first 15MB of data every day. After that it costs £2 per MB.

You can get free mobile internet access for one month though. Text webpack to 97613.

Cost: £1 for 15MB/day; then £2/MB

photo: Mark Interrante (aka pinhole)

The Ugly

Orange: Various Animal PAYG Tariffs

Orange cap data at £2 per day. It’s not exactly cheap but it’ll prevent you from running up any huge bills. The one redeeming point is that access to Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are charged differently at Orange. When you top up, you can access these social networking sites for free.

Cost: £2 per day; but selected social networking sites free for 30 days after top-up

O2: Various PAYG Tariff

“Urgh” is the most apt way to describe O2 for accessing data and mobile internet. It costs £3 per MB and there are no caps. You even have to pay to access O2′s own mobile site, O2 Active. If you want the internet on the move, stay well clear of O2 PAYG.

Cost: £3 per MB

photo: Hamed Saber

Going Abroad

Don’t forget these charges are for accessing data in the UK. Don’t assume the same charges apply abroad: they usually don’t. You could end up paying between £4 to £6 per megabyte. Check out my guide of 10 things to know before using your phone abroad and don’t make the same mistake as the lawyer who ran up a bill of £4,900 downloading an episode of The Apprentice whilst on holiday.

Other considerations

It’s worth considering that most PAYG data plans don’t allow you to tether your phone to a computer (e.g. use your phone as a modem on your laptop). Also, you might not be allowed to use instant messaging and VoIP. The exception to the latter rule is Three who actively encourage you to use MSN Messenger and Skype on their network. In fact, Three don’t charge for Skype data at all.

photo: kalandrakas

This is a really stunning product. From the 1st of May, you can buy a “Skype SIM” from Three for a one-off price for £1.99. That SIM card can be inserted into your 3G handset and will give you unlimited access to Skype with no data charges so you can make and receive free Skype calls. Furthermore, unlike Three’s existing Skype packages you don’t need to top up regularly to get your Skype access.

Kevin Russell, Chief Executive Officer of 3 in the UK, told Celluar News:

“In future you will be able to buy a 3 SIM for unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls for less than the price of a cup of coffee and talk for as much as you want without ever paying us another penny. We won’t ask you for a top-up or a monthly commitment. If you want to talk on a mobile for free, just join us and give it a go. This is for everyone.”

That really does sound stunning deal – a one-off payment of £1.99 for unlimited Skype calls forever.

I presume the reasons why Three are offering this deal is because once you’re on their network, you’ll use their other services. For example if you use Skype, chances are you’ll be interested in accessing the internet on your phone,. Futhermore, I’m not sure if you can use SkypeOut on Three – you’ll probably have to send texts and make calls through their cellular network. Given the ridiculous margins that mobile operators charge on things such as SMS, they can easily recoup the cost of providing a totally free Skype service.

Of course, there is nothing to stop you from buying a cheap second-hand 3G handset, stick a £1.99 Skype SIM in it and carry that as a “second phone” around. You can continue to use your normal phone with your existing number as you would currently use it and then use your 3G phone for the sole purpose of Skype.

Here’s another credit-crunch busting, money saving tip for all of you online shoppers…

photo: elbfoto

I’ve been using TopCashback* for my online shopping lately and I think it’s an absolutely fantastic site. Essentially they give you discounts on shopping that you do online. The discount is paid as cashback straight into your bank account or PayPal.

The cashback discounts include 6% off Dell computers, up to 6% on purchases from Play.com, £40 on a new broadband contract, etc.

How to use TopCashback

Instead of going straight to the retailer website, you’ll need to go to the TopCashback website first. Make sure you’ve got a TopCashback account and then click on the link to the retailer from there. With some luck, your purchase is tracked and your cashback gets paid to your TopCashback account.

How does it work?

Online retailers often pay commission to websites which refer customers to them. This is how many websites make a profit. The most notable websites which make their profits through commission are price comparison websites such as MoneySupermarket. TopCashback is different in that it pays the entire commission right back to you: the customer.

TopCashback makes money through adverts on their website.

See Money Saving Expert for more info.

An example…

I was recently looking to sign up for O2 Broadband. As an O2 customer, I can get 8mbps broadband for £7.34 per month (£88 per year). That’s already a fantastic deal but on top of that TopCashback is offering £40 cashback on O2 Broadband registrations. After cashback, 8mbps broadband costs just £48 for the 12 months – equivalent to just £4 per month. That’s ridiculously cheap.

What are the alternatives?

Probably the most well known “cashback” site is run by loyalty card Nectar. Nectar’s e-Stores gives an absolutely abysmal amount of cashback through (maybe ~1%) .

There are a couple of others such as Quidco and Cashback Kings. Check to see whether you get charged a fee for using the service and if you get 100% cashback.

* I earn a referral on registrations using this link. Non-affiliate version: http://www.topcashback.co.uk.

photo: G & A Sattler

So lots of my friends have been complaining about interest rates over the last weeks or so. The Bank of England has dropped base interest rates from 5.75% where they were just 6 months ago to 1.0% today. For savers, that also means interest rates have been cut which is bad news for everybody who is saving for a house/college/etc. Right?

Not really. The Times discussed this very recently. It’s no good looking at the nominal interest rate which is advertised by your bank or the Bank of England as it is meaningless. What’s important is the real interest rate. Let me explain.

Let us take a basket of goods which we define to be representative of your expenditure. The basket of goods has a cost of £100 this year.

If we have inflation of 5%, that means the same basket of goods would cost £105 next year.

What if you decide, instead of buying a basket of goods today, you choose to put your money in a savings account earning 5%? Well, the £100 you invest will have turned into £105. When you come to spend your money, all you’ll be able to buy is a basket of goods. You’ll have nothing left over. In real physical terms, you haven’t gained anything from saving as the amount you can consume has stayed the same.

Hopefully this example illustrates that the important thing is real interest rates. Whilst nominal (advertised) interest rates are at the lowest point in yonks, real interest rates aren’t too bad as inflation is very low.

Let’s take a look at nominal interest rates and RPI inflation over the last few years:

We see that it was pretty bad for savers towards the end of 2008 as inflation totally eroded any interest being earnt. However, with inflation now very close to zero, this is no longer the case. This is more clearly illustrated in a graph of real interest rates:

As you can see, real interest rates are climbing back up to around 1.5% where they’ve been for the last couple of years.

Conclusions:

• Whilst it appears that savers are losing out, they’re not doing too badly considering the drop in inflation.
• Your savings for college are still growing. And if you’re saving for a house, you’re also benefiting from the huge drops in house prices.
• The low interest rates shouldn’t be encouraging you to borrow. After all, if a house is losing 10% of it’s value each year and you’re paying 1% interest on the mortgage, you’re paying an effective mortgage rate of 11%. That’s a much higher rate than a few years ago when house price inflation would essentially pay off the interest on your mortgage.

A few weeks ago I told you how to get free texts on your existing phone and network simply by ensuring you’ve opted in to the freebies. Many UK mobile operators also offer free calls to Pay As You Go customers when you top up – and the original amount you topped up with is preserved. I hope this page serves as a reference for all of those tariffs.

photo: law_keven

First things first…

Do you get free calls on your landline number? It’s quite likely you might already have free off-peak calls on your landline – sometimes it’s bundled with broadband subscriptions (e.g. Sky Talk, Tiscali). If you’re at home and you’re calling another landline, you might as well use your landline. It won’t count towards your minutes allowance.

Do be careful with your free landline calls though:

• Usually this doesn’t apply to calls to mobiles. You’ll be charged >10p/min to call a mobile from a landline.
• It might not include international calls
• There will probably be a 60 minute limit to free calls – after that you could be charged around 6p/min.

O2: Various Tariffs

O2 has four different tariffs offering free calls – select one depending on whether you want free calls to a local area, to a foreign country, to O2 mobiles or any number.

Favourite Place: Lots of free minutes but only to a limited range of numbers

Text your postcode to 22204 free (O2 customers) or opt in in O2’s website.

O2 Unlimited: Lots of free minutes but only to O2 numbers

Text LINK to 21300 free (O2 customers) or get a free SIM card from O2.

Your Country: Free minutes to international numbers in one chosen country

Text YOUR COUNTRY to 21300 free (O2 customers) or get a free SIM card from O2.

Orange: Canary

You also get free Facebook, 2for1 on Cinema and Pizza Express, etc. More info on Orange PAYG freebies.

Not sure if existing customers can switch to this tariff; it’s worth a check with Orange customer services. Let us know how successful it is. Otherwise, get yourself a brand new SIM card.

T-Mobile: Double Your Credit, Rewards

T-Mobile doesn’t explicitly have a free calls package so compared to the other major mobile networks, T-Mobile falls short in this area.

Instead, if you top up £10 in one week, you’ll get a bonus £10 to use at the weekend. Text STRETCH to 441 to opt in.

You can also sign up for free goodies by texting GOODIES to 441 where you’ll get either free texts, minutes or mobile internet browsing.

It’s well worth signing up for “Double your credit” and “Goodies” if you’re on T-Mobile, but unfortunately no real free calls as on the other networks. The upside is you can use your free credit on texts or data as well.

Virgin Mobile: Daily Bonus

Minutes 6 to 10 are free for Virgin Mobile customers on the Daily Bonus tariff. Text BONUS to 789050 or opt in on Virgin’s website.

Vodafone: Free Weekends

Again… Vodafone has no real free calls package. But to opt in to Free Weekends. If you spend £5 during the week, calls and texts are free at the weekend. If you spend just £2.50 during the week, texts are free at the weekend. 60 minutes max per call.

Almost everybody is feeling a strain on their pockets due to the credit crunch and the global recession. For us Brits, I strongly recommend you pay a visit to Martin Lewis’  MoneySavingExpert.com website. Martin Lewis is fairly well known as a UK consumer champion these days, often appearing on TV shows such as ITV1′s Tonight and Five’s “It Pays To Watch”. The MoneySavingExpert website and weekly newsletter always has some fantastic tips and offers which could easily save you hundreds every year.

A couple of picks:

• Cheap restaurant deals – It’s amazing just how many restaurant chains are offering 2for1 on meals. We use these deals all the time when we go out for meals with friends or family. After the discount, it often turns out that you pay more for a glass of Coke than for the main meal you had. Some of the deals don’t work between Thursday and Saturday as those tend to be the busiest days for restaurants… check the small print first.
• Supermarket shopping – The challenge to downsize one brand and see if you can notice the difference. For example, trying items from the “Sainsbury’s Basics” or “Tesco Value” ranges. My personal experience is that on the whole, the value brands don’t tend to be too bad at all. Take tangerines – the Basics tangerines don’t look great on the outside but once you’ve peeled them, you wouldn’t notice a thing. In fact, I prefer the taste of the Basics tangerines to the ‘Taste the Difference’ ones but of course this isn’t a scientific double blind experiment.
• Cashback sites – If you shop online for technology or electronics items, this one can save you loads. One of my friends claimed that he managed to get a £35/mo. phone contract (with a free phone) for just £5/mo after cashback.
• Cheaper petrol and diesel – Fuel costs ridiculous amounts in Britain. But you can easily improve the efficiency of your car and make it use less fuel – for example by ensuring the tyres are correctly inflated, turning off the air conditioning or practising eco-safe driving.
• Cheap train tickets – You can save loads by booking in advance and by splitting your ticket. I recently managed to travel for £15 return on a journey which would have cost £80 full fare. This was achieved by a) booking in advance, b) buying two singles and c) buying a ticket to the station which I would have had to change at anyway and then a separate ticket for the rest of the journey.

I also strongly recommend signing up for the weekly newsletter which is very good. It’s the best way of making sure you know about those time-limited deals.

Mobile phone network Blyk offers completely free text and minutes to young people between the ages of 16-24.

photo: Christmas w/a K

217 free texts and 43 free minutes

The difference between Blyk and other networks is that whilst other networks charge subscribers to send texts or make calls, Blyk is an advertising funded mobile service. At present, Blyk offers 217 free texts and 43 free minutes every month however this is changing from mid-February to £15 of credit to be used however you would like. To put this into context, £15 gets you 150 texts (10p per text), 100 minutes (15p per minute) or 15MB of internet (£1 per MB), or some combination of the three.

Advertising

I spoke to a friend on Blyk at the weekend. He has managed to use Blyk for quite a few months and not paid a single penny. I’m also told the advertisments are pretty unobtrusive. Blyk has partnered with brands such as Coca-Cola, NatWest and Mastercard for the advertising.

Blyk also adds an advertisment to the end of each of your text messages along the lines of “join blyk the mobile network for 16 – 24 year olds”. Not so much of a problem if you use it mainly for calls and data but thats a rarity amongst young people.

Becoming a Blyk Member

photo: furryscaly

First of all, Blyk membership is restricted to 16-24 year olds. Presumbly this is because young people in this age range are most susceptible to responding to adverts. Of course, if you’re a parent, you’ll want to think about whether you want your kids to be targeted by Coca-Cola and MasterCard and encouraging them to consume sugary drinks and to take out credit cards.

You need an invite to join Blyk. If you’ve got a friend with Blyk, you could ask them for one. Otherwise, you might find other ways of obtaining invites. Try the instructions in Blyk’s YouTube videos (e.g. texting HELLO to 82595). Alternatively, Wikipedia suggests texting HELLO to 82595.

You’ll have your identity checked against national databases during the signup process. Once you turn 25, you’ll be able to keep Blyk although you won’t be able to join again if you decide to leave.

Reception

Blyk is a MVNO on the Orange Network. As such, reception and signal should be identical to that on the Orange phone network.

Conclusions

photo: eifelyeti110

Blyk is a mobile service offering free texts and minutes to young people. This sounds great but the catch is that you’ll need to put up with adverts – up to 6 texts a day. Additionally, you’ll also have adverts added to the end of all the free text messages you send. Once you’ve run out of your free allowance, the costs of texts and minutes is fairly reasonable and competitive.

Blyk is worth considering if you want free texts and minutes without forking out a single penny and don’t mind seeing adverts. However, you will probably find it worthwhile to shop around amongst the mainstream networks and sign up for free text allowances there. You’ll have to pay for your texts and calls but it could be a much less frustrating experience than sitting through adverts every day and annoying your friends with adverts in your texts.

Do you use Blyk?

Do you have experiences of Blyk to share with us? Please leave us a comment below.

With the credit crunch, we’re all trying to find ways to save money. Over the next few weeks, I hope to deliver a selection of credit crunch busting tips for the technology enthusiast.

photo: William Hook

In this series of posts, I will talk about how you can get yourself the best features of the Apple iPhone 3G without having to buy an iPhone 3G – a phone which is as well known for its high price as its speed and style.

1. Fast and convenient internet access, on the move
2. Music player
3. Personal organiser features (calendar, to do list, etc.)
4. Access to my email (Gmail and Microsoft Exchange) account on the go (this post)
5. Google Maps on the go

To recap, I have had a Sony Ericsson k750i for over two years which I’ve now “transformed” into a smartphone to access the internet, listen to music, organise my schedule and to stay in touch via e-mail.

Why access your email on your phone?

I love having email on my phone. It’s dead handy as it really means I can keep up to date with everything when I’m away from a computer or have very little time. I have:

• Several Google Mail Accounts (including gmail.com and ‘Google Apps for your Domain’)
• A Microsoft Exchange email account with POP3 access

photo: Lincolnian

I have set up my phone so that it’ll show me all my emails from my Gmail accounts as well as my Exchange email accounts. Hopefully using the same technique, it should be possible to check almost any email account from your mobile phone.

Gmail for your phone

My favourite email client for mobile phones is Gmail Mobile. It’s a Java application so should work on most modern mobile phones, subject to a working data connection. Although it’s intended primary use is to access your Gmail account, you can also use it to access your other email accounts.

Setting up your other email accounts in Gmail

The way that we achieve this is by getting Gmail to download or access your other email accounts.

On the desktop version of Gmail, go to ‘Settings’ and then the ‘Accounts’ tab. There is a section called “Get mail from other accounts”. Enter the POP details for your email account and Gmail will download all your email and import it into Gmail. Tick the box “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.” so that your email will still be available through your current desktop mail client.

If you use webmail which does not have POP3 access, you might have a ‘Mail Forwarding’ feature. Set this up to forward all your email to your Gmail account.

photo: SC Fiasco

Once you’ve set up all your accounts, you can access and send e-mails from all of your accounts on the desktop version of Gmail.

Setting up Gmail Mobile

Using your phone browser, go to m.gmail.com/mail. You can download “Gmail Mobile” here which is a very speedy mobile email client. Simply install this to your phone and you’ve got fully functioning Gmail on your mobile phone. And since you’ve set up Gmail to work in conjunction with all your existing email accounts, you can access your email from all these accounts too.

The mobile client is fantastic. It allows you to reply to emails, write drafts, features address autocomplete (integrating with your Gmail address book) and even to open message attachments such as Word documents, PDF files and photos.

A word of warning though: Watch your data usage. Some mobile networks charge up to £3/MB for data access. That’s a lot of emails, but download attachments and megabytes quickly add up. See my previous post for info on the best PAYG data tariffs in the UK.

Conclusions

With “Gmail Mobile”, you have a fully functional version of Gmail on your mobile phone. For Gmail users, the game is easy. But even if you use another e-mail provider, you can easily set up Gmail to access those e-mail accounts. The great power of this method is you can collate your emails from a lot of different accounts altogether for delivery to your phone.

With the credit crunch, we’re all trying to find ways to save money. Over the next few weeks, I hope to deliver a selection of credit crunch busting tips for the technology enthusiast.

photo: William Hook

In this series of posts, I will talk about how you can get yourself the best features of the Apple iPhone 3G without having to buy an iPhone 3G – a phone which is as well known for its high price as its speed and style.

1. Fast and convenient internet access, on the move
2. Music player
3. Personal organiser features (calendar, to do list, etc.) (this post)
4. Access to my email (Gmail and Microsoft Exchange) account on the go
5. Google Maps on the go

To recap, I have had a Sony Ericsson k750i for over two years which I’ve now “transformed” into a smartphone to access the internet, listen to music, organise my schedule and to stay in touch via e-mail.

What’s wrong with my phone calendar?

The k750i calendar system sucks. It’s a pain to use. You could use the built in reminder system, but it’ll notify everybody in the room, even if the phone is on silent. You can’t set events up to occur every other week; you have to manually set a custom reminder for each event, the interface for viewing events isn’t pretty. It’s OK for simple scheduling, but a more powerful system would be desirable.

Using Google Calendar

photo: Burning Image

When Google Calendar first came out, I was a little sceptical about it. It really didn’t seem to do a lot more than any other calendar system, it just allowed you to subscribe to other people’s calendars easily. And I wondered why on Earth I wanted to know the school timetables of my friends, etc. I just kept with the old fashioned system – a paper calendar. It did the job, it was quick and simple and more importantly: I didn’t need to boot up my computer in the morning to check my schedule for the day.

This October, I decided to give Google Calendar a go and I’ve loved it since. For me, the best features of Google Calendar are:

• Free SMS text message notifications. Google Calendar allows you to set up customisable SMS alerts. On my account, I’ve set up three calendars: Events, Deadlines and Reminders. Items on my events calendar tend to be things like parties, meetings, occasonal special lectures, etc. For these, I’ve set up an SMS alert 3 hours before each event. Deadlines are highlighted in red on my calendar and I automatically recieve a text every day in the 3 days leading up to the deadline. Reminders (of the type that the cleaner is due to visit) are of a lower priority, they don’t have any SMS alerts associated with them. It’s a fantastic system, and it works really well.
• Integration with Gmail. I often receive emails asking me to be in certain places and certain times. There is Calendar/Gmail integration so if Gmail guesses that the email is about an event, it’ll offer you a quick shortcut to add it to your calendar. It’ll even automatically fill out the event name, date & time.
• You can subscribe to your own Facebook events. You can have Google Calendar import all of your events from Facebook (howto below).
• Get it on your mobile. You can access your light version of your Google Calendar on your mobile. Point your phone at http://www.google.com/calendar/m – access it through Opera Mini for best results. From here, you can add events to your calendar too. If you don’t have a data connection or prefer not to use it, synchronise it to your phone instead (howto below).

photo: [[MorphoMir]]

How to: Subscribe to Facebook Events in Google Calendar

• Go to the Facebook Events application
• Click on the Export Events at the very top of the page
• Copy the URL given
• Go to Google Calendar
• Click Add > By URL under the Other Calendars block in the sidebar
• Paste the URL you were given here.

Once you’ve done this, you can set up SMS text reminders on your Facebook events or whatever you like.

How to: Synchronise your Google Calendar with your Sony Ericsson Phone

The fabulous MyPhoneExplorer application for Sony Ericsson phones can synchronise your Google Calendar with your phone’s built in calendar system. You’ll lose certain things on your Sony Ericsson version e.g. events that repeat every 2 weeks will repeat every week instead. That’s just due to a limitation of the phone’s calendar system.

Conclusions

Google Calendar is a fantastic system to manage your schedule. It’s great, especially if you use different computers all the time – your calendar moves around with you and can be accessed anywhere in the world. Google Calendar’s integration with Gmail, Facebook Events gives it an edge over competitors.

photo: law_keven

Where I feel Google Calendar is at it’s best is how you can then use it on the go: on your mobile phone. Google doesn’t charge for SMS reminders which is great: you can set up as many as you like. For a little bit more when you’re away from a computer, you’ve then got the mobile version of Google Calendar.

With Google Calendar, you’d never have to worry about synchronising your mobile phone with your computer (although the option is there). You don’t have to worry about not being able to access your calendar when on another machine. And it really doesn’t matter how good or bad the calendar system on your phone is: all you really need is the ability to recieve SMS text messages.

Still to come…

Keep an eye on the blog over the next few days to find out how to use your current phone for email and to access maps on the go.

With the credit crunch, we’re all trying to find ways to save money. Over the next few weeks, I hope to deliver a selection of credit crunch busting tips for the technology enthusiast.

photo: William Hook

In this series of posts, I will talk about how you can get yourself the best features of the Apple iPhone 3G without having to buy an iPhone 3G – a phone which is as well known for its high price as its speed and style.

1. Fast and convenient internet access, on the move
2. Music player (this post)
   
3. Personal organiser features (calendar, to do list, etc.)
4. Access to my email (Gmail and Microsoft Exchange) account on the go
5. Google Maps on the go

To recap, I have had a Sony Ericsson k750i for over two years which I’ve now “transformed” into a smartphone to access the internet, listen to music, organise my schedule and to stay in touch via e-mail.

The Convergence of Mobile and Music

For many years, there has been a convergence between mobile phones and portable music devices. Mobiles have gained all kinds of new multimedia features as operators have tried to cash in on our demand for entertainment on the move. Mobile phones have certainly come a long way since polyphonic ringtones – most modern mobile phones feature a MP3 player of some kind.

photo: e-magic

Portable music players such as the Apple iPod have been moving in the opposite direction. We started with Sony Walkmans and Creative MuVos which just played music. A modern music player will allow you to watch videos and play games and even access the internet.

The big mystery for technology enthusiasts is why we now need both a mobile phone and a portable music player. The Apple iPhone is probably heralded as the best example of convergence between music and mobile and proves that one device can do both.

No longer will any of us need to fit a music player in our left pocket, a mobile phone in our right and then struggle to find somewhere else for our keys.

Your Mobile Plays Music Pretty Well

The problem with the k750i is that it is limited to just 34MB of internal memory. For music, that’s pretty shoddy: you could just about fit one album on there if you squeezed the bitrate down. Luckily the k750i, and most modern phones, will allow you to expand the amount of memory by purchasing additional cards.

And good news: memory is dirt cheap. a 4GB Memory Stick Duo for Sony Ericsson mobiles costs just £13. That’ll get you 1,000 songs.

For a direct comparison, an iPod Nano 8GB costs close to £100. The equivalent amount of memory costs £30 as a memory stick duo or under £13 as a Micro SD card. Obviously, check the type of memory which your phone takes. The Memory Sticks tend to be pretty expensive compared to micro SD, but are still a lot cheaper than buying a music player with the same capacity.

photo: marfis75

Where can I get music in the MP3 format?

The Amazon MP3 store gets my recommendation for purchasing music in the MP3 format. Albums are available from £3 and individual songs from 59p.

With albums costing £8.99 and individual songs at 79p at iTunes, there are huge cost savings from downloading your music from Amazon MP3. As an additional benefit, your music isn’t encumbered by Apple’s DRM. Oh, and you get music at 256kbps – double the bitrate of iTunes. Not bad at all.

Conclusions

• It is more than likely that your current mobile phone will play MP3s
• You may need to increase the amount of memory on your device by purchasing extra memory, but memory is very cheap these days
• You can save a lot more money by avoiding iTunes and downloading your music from Amazon MP3. You also benefit from better quality music, unencumbered by DRM