Tata’s 1 lakh car
The news about TATA about to release the Rs. 1 lakh car is getting stronger day by day. This car will be out in the market in mid 2008. There is no car in the world right now that is as cheap as this car. The car is labelled NANO
The car features miniscule features, with no advanced features like ABS, MP3 player, radio, navigation system. The car is reported to have survived the side-crash and frontal-crash tests. According to the TATAs, the car has passed all the tests that a car need to pass in order to be released in the market. Also it is reported to be compliant with EURO IV emission standards.
In my opinion, this’ll revolutionize the way middle class and lower-middle class people see the automobile industry. A lot number of people will be able to afford such a low cost car. The running cost is also expected to be less, with the on-road mileage being close to 22 or 23 kmpl. Not bad at all for a four wheeler. The car being a four-seater, will suit the modern Indian family well. More and more people will be able to purchase this car. TATA’s superior service and wide-spread service outlets are always an added advantage. Looks wise, the car is not quite that bad looking. Conisdering the fact that this car will be sold for 1 lakh, this car is really worth every penny. However it would have been really great if the TATAs roll out an LPG version or the one driven by fuel cells. Even an electricity driven model would have been great, considering the fact that the most famous electric car in India, Reva, costs close to 3 lakh, and an average to good bike costs around 50 to 60k!!!
Why I hate IPod???
I wonder why so many people go GA-GA over IPods. It’s nothing more than an audio player with some good extensions. “It comes with a huge hard-disk space and supports many different audio formats, and blah-blah-blah…..” is what the IPod users have to say about it.
If one really wants to listen to good music, why can’t he/she use his PC or home-theater system? Whenever I ask this question to people, they come up with the same lame excuse – “I travel a lot. I don’t have time, or the patience to sit at home and listen to music all day long!!!!”.
Consider the life-style of a typical teenager. He/she might spend a max of 1.5 to 2 hours per day to travel between home and office. Even I spend about 2 hours per day to travel between home and office. I have chosen other better alternatives to IPod. I normally use MP3 players, or better still, my mobile itself. If I use my mobile or a tiny MP3 player, I don’t need to carry a pouch, which I had to use if I was using an IPod. This would definitely relieve me from some serious extra baggage J Moreover I can listen to a max of 20 songs in that time. Even a normal MP3 player has a hard disk space of 2 to 4 GB nowadays. And 2GB cards are common with almost the music-edition phones nowadays. Moreover these MP3 players are a lot cheaper than the IPods. Even a 4GB IPod Nano costs around 7k!!!
I’ll never ever buy an IPod in my life. Now a new version of IPod is out – Ipod Video, which can play video files. Honestly, who would like to play movies on such a small device. I would rather prefer to watch them on my PC or TV.
Technology that empowers me
It’s high-time people started using the technology to their full potential. Let me start with the mobile. If you think mobiles are just to make and receive calls, and occasionally send a few SMS, you are absolutely wrong.
I got a Nokia N73 recently. It’s a damn good phone with so many features, that makes it look like a tiny PC. The music player is real good and is a good substitute for Ipod. The loudness i.e., the speaker quality of this phone is awesome. Another interesting think about this phone is that the current day’s calendar entries are shown in the welcome screen. This keeps me reminding about my current day’s plans, whenever I use the phone.
I find the 3.2 MP camera extremely useful. Although the Carl-Zeiss optics don’t do much justice to the camera, they are a valuable addition. Picture quality is really good, and pictures are amazingly very bright even though taken during night time. The integrated Yahoo search saves time when browsing. The PDF viewer and Quick Office are a real handy addition. I now carry all my personal documents with me, and I can access them on-the-fly, without any need to go to a nearby PC. The blogging software is nothing much to talk about. People usually use blogger to blog and not many people blog on Nokia’s blog.
Overall, this is a good phone with a lot of features, and really worth the cost.
