by: Iggy Quazi

After many years of faithful service, I recently realised that it was time to trade in my trusty old mobile phone. Despite the jeers from my friends, I had held on to my chunky old phone well after my phone company had offered me a free upgrade. It had always performed reliably and more importantly, I knew exactly where I stood when it came to use it.

As you may have guessed, I like my gadgets and was fairly excited about the prospect of getting a new phone, especially with the incredible host of features now available on the latest phones. After much research, I settled on the Sony Ericsson K750i with its colour screen, digital camera (with panoramic feature), video capture, bluetooth connectivity, access to the internet, MP3 Player and FM Radio. It also allows use of a separate memory card up to 1Gb so I can store loads of photos, songs and video. It made phone calls too!

After receiving the phone I started to look into the daunting prospect of learning how to use the thing. The first task I had to tackle was getting all my phone numbers onto the phone. After consulting the manual, I found that it was possible to copy my address book directly from Microsoft Outlook on my computer over to the phone, saving me from having to manually key in all of my phone numbers. This would save me a lot of time, as long as I could get it to work!

All I needed to do was install the phone's software onto my computer from the supplied CD-ROM and connect the phone to my computer using the supplied data cable. I also had the option of connecting my phone to my computer wirelessly using the Bluetooth facility to connect to my computer, this sounded very interesting, but meant I would have to get a USB Bluetooth Dongle for my computer, so I decided to leave that for later.

As these things have a habit of not working first time round, I thought I would follow the instructions to the word, rather than just delving in as I normally do! To my surprise, after following the steps in the Quick Set-up Guide, it actually worked! it was really that easy, my phone was connected to my computer and it worked. I made a few setting changes (as mentioned in the instructions) on the mobile phone software and within moments I had transferred all of my telephone numbers and addresses into my phone! The great thing here is that now I can update any new person and telephone number to my phone and my computer at the same time, all I need to do is connect the phone to the computer and one button automatically updates my computer with information on my phone or vice versa.

I then got even more adventurous and thought I would try and get some music onto the phone. I have never used MP3's before, but heard loads about it and following the instructions, within 5 minutes I had music on my phone! It even sound good. Using the camera is great too, easy and useful at times, not having to carry a separate digital camera for snaps.

I thing that amazed me was how straightforward everything was, I had avoided changing the phone mainly because I did not fancy the hassle, but it was actually easier to set up then my old phone which was so basic in comparison. Within an hour I had charged the battery, added my lengthy contacts list and appointments onto the phone's calendar as well as recorded a few songs. Brilliant!

Now all I need to do is expand the memory capacity of the phone as the few songs I have put onto the phone have already used most of the memory that comes free with the phone. Apparently, I just need to buy a Memory Stick and slot it into the phone then enjoy, will try it soon.