Micromax A75 … Impressive !

I was just looking around for Android phones, in general, and Samsung Galaxy Y in particular; that’s when I chanced upon Micromax A75. And I must tell you that I was mighty impressed by it.

It runs on Android 2.3 [Gingerbread], and gives you a whole lot of features. But that’s to the credit of the OS. The phone itself was of fine build quality. And the feel of the phone in the hands was pretty good. The capacitative touch-screen worked very smoothly with a single swipe of the finger. I did not have to repeat my thumb or index finger actions at any point of time.

Browsing through the photo albums was a nice breeze. Then I turned on the GPS and much to my surprise, it was great. The manner in which the maps loaded, and the smooth transition of moving north-south-east-west and all directions, left me wanting for more. The dual-touch zooming-in and zooming-out on the maps was very good. This also proved that the phone did not lose connectivity at any point of time. And it loaded the data and maps pretty fast.

The phone has a G-sensor too. The video quality was pretty nice. It has a limitation though, you cannot install any other media player. It only uses the default inbuilt media player.

Among other notable features is the front-facing camera which comes in handy for making video calls or video chat. And the screen size is good enough to browse the net and even to read a book.

Overall, a ‘superfone’ as they call it. I did not expect Micromax to catch-up with Samsung and HTC, in quality, this quickly. And that has left me impressed. I may never buy this phone or any other Micromax smartphones, but I do like the technical advancement they have made. They are no more a small brand which makes cheap phones. They are a small brand that is capable of making quality phones and would soon be giving the smaller players in Indian market, like Motorola & Sony Ericcson, a run for their money. Way to go guys!

 

Reasons For Buying A Tablet PC

I have been looking for a cheap affordable tablet for quite sometime now. But one of the problems have been that, I don’t have a good enough reason for possessing a tablet pc. I am just wondering, who actually needs a tablet!

I have a desktop at home with Win7 and 2gb RAM, and of course an external HDD of 1Tb. That desktop is connected to a HP All-In-One [printer/scanner/copier/fax]. I also have a HP laptop which gives me the mobility that I desired. So, I am no longer attached to the desktop, unless I need to use the All-In-One.

I have a smartphone, Nokia E71, in which I have configured all mailboxes and other Symbian apps for social networking. I have an Apple iPod 16gb for all the songs. So, why do I need a tablet?

I tried answering the question myself and here are a few good reasons:

a. the tablet can work as an e-book reader, since I cannot walk around with my laptop

b. watch movies which I wouldn’t watch with family and friends

c. have an android/touch-screen experience

d. play games which require g-sensor

e. play songs in a player that has external speaker

f. for vanity, since I have all else

But are these reasons good enough? I don’t really know. So, who really needs a tablet? These guys:

a. who don’t have a desktop or a laptop

b. who don’t have a mp3 player

c. who don’t have a GPS device

d. who wants one tool which can do everything that entertains, be it playing games or songs or movies or surfing the web or reading e-book.

Just about everything can be done on a tablet. Hope, I will be able to convince myself of the need for a tablet pc !

 

Celebrating Holi With Poonam Pandey

 

 

 

 

Madhuri Dixit’s Wax Idol In Madame Tussauds London

The statue was unveiled on 7-Mar-2012

A nice gift on occasion of Holi and a big honour

 

LIC Jeevan Vriddhi

I was just looking out for some insurance plans, Term Policies to be more specific. And then, I came across this new plan from LIC called Jeevan Vriddhi.

Term plans usually don’t come with return benefits, but this plan does. And that’s what struck me about it.

Salient features of this policy are:
a. its a single premium policy wherein the minimum amount is Rs.30,000.00 and no limit on maximum amount
b. sum assured is 5 times the premium
c. the term is fixed at 10 years
d. age of entry is between 8 & 50
e. policy can be surrendered after 1 year

Other benefits:
a. minimum return is almost 90% of the premium amount, if surrendered after a year
b. between premium amount of Rs.50,000.00 and Rs.99,000.00; there is an increase in guaranteed sum assured by 1.25%
c. beyond premium amount of Rs.1,00,000.00; there is an increase in guaranteed sum assured by 3%
d. policy ie eligible for section 80c exemptions in IT
e. you can avail loans at 10.25% against this policy

There are very few policies that give return benefit and sum assured. Its specially beneficial for someone in their late 40’s who want to take an insurance policy with minimum fuss and maximum gains. Even for people in their 30’s, this is a good enough plan where return of interest is about 7-8%. We can get the benefit of protected investment as well as life insurance. And since its single premium, there is no need to bother about tracking the due dates!

Update 1 on 22-Mar: I just called my insurance agent and have created a proposal for a single premium of Rs.60,000/-. So, the SA is about Rs.3,00,000/-. That’s when it struck me that the premium was much lesser than what I was paying for a Jeevan Saral plan [yearly premium of more than Rs.6,000/- for 10 years and SA of Rs.1,50,000.00], and the SA was twice that of Jeevan Saral.