David Campaign

the true cost of the iphone

2007-10-07T16:45:00.000Z

Apple will be selling the iphone in the UK for £269. For £269 you get to own a phone that doesn't work. To get it to work you have to signed up with O2. The cheapest plan offered by O2 for the iphone is £35 a month. So how much of that £35 will Apple be getting?

For £22.50 a month T-Mobile will give you a free mobile phone, the same amount of free voice minutes, text messages and unlimited data. Add another £3.99 a month for access to the Cloud wifi network and it becomes £26.49 a month. Then take of say £100 to remove the cost of the free mobile phone* and it goes down to £20.93 per month.

Apple's kick back from the contract must be around (£35.00 -£20.93 ) x 18 = £253.26.

So the iphone's true selling price is £269 + £253 = £522.

The big question is what will the price be when Apple are forced to sell the unlocked iphones in Europe? Many European countries have laws to restrict the ability of mobile phone operators to lock phones. Finland and Belgium ban the sale of locked phones, France forces the sale of an unlocked version and the UK forces unlocking after the mobile phone subsidy has been recovered.

The iphone goes on sale in the UK on November 9th. The mobile phone companies in the UK are regulated by Oftel who's policy on Sim locking can be read here.

* The T-Mobile contract includes a free mobile phone which if you bought it sim free would cost £230, I've guesstimated the cost to T-Mobile as being £100.

online video

2007-08-31T01:55:00.000Z

TV listings guardian.com

Watch online : youtube.com, dailymotion.com, alloftv.net, peekvid.com and gupta.com

Save flash videos with this video downloader.

U.K. house prices

2007-08-30T17:04:00.001Z

Find a house to buy at rightmove.co.uk, fish4.co.uk, propertyfinder.com, ononemap.com or home.co.uk.

Land registry data on the actual prices paid can be found at houseprices.co.uk or mouseprice.com.

To see price reductions checkout propertysnake.co.uk and to read speculation on the state of the market go to housepricecrash.co.uk.

gps

2007-01-13T17:29:00.000Z

Lots of reviews, advice and information at gpsinformation.net. UK speed camera data can be downloaded from pocketgpsworld.com for a small fee ( £2 for a one month subscription). Garmin 60CSx reviewed here and here.

junk mail and cold calls

2006-12-29T17:58:00.000Z

Addressed junk mail
Opt out by going to www.mpsonline.org.uk or calling 0845 703 4599.

Unaddressed junk mail delivered by the post office
The Post Office distributes a quarter of the unaddressed junk mail. To opt out you need to phone 08457 950 950 and request a form or write to Royal Mail Door to Door Opt Outs, Royal Mail, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1RX

Cold calling
"Under Government legislation introduced on 1st May 1999 and replaced on 11th December 2003 by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to make unsolicited direct marketing calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls. You can either do this by contacting companies directly and asking them not to call you or you can register with a central register - the TPS." www.tpsonline.org.uk

Silent calls
There is also a "Silent Callgard Service" www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/news2.html

dcZip

2006-10-01T05:23:00.000Z

dcZip is my freeware archiving program for zip/tar/gzip/bzip2/war/tgz files. To run it you need Java installed on your computer. Get Java for free here.

Download and installation instructions for dcZip.

Download dczip.jar to your computer. ( Use right click, save as... )
Start the application by double clicking on the 'dczip.jar'

Need a Windows icon for dcZip? Here it is dczip.ico . (Use right click, save as...)