Yup, we enjoyed the food and ambiance so good during our visit last week that we decided to visit the local Big Horn restaurant again.
This time I wanted to try the Western Beef Steak, to find out whether it’s as good as the Mexican Pepper Steak I had the week before. I needn’t have worried there. Even though slightly different parts of the cow were used for this dish, it tasted just as delicious!
For desert I stuck to the same as last week… my favorite coffee: Irish Coffee!

(No, these postings are not in any way sponsored by Big Horn… B-) )

The powers that be, aka my CEO, has agreed my aging HP DV1045 laptop is indeed ready to be replaced. Don’t get me wrong, the DV1045 is still functioning fine, but its battery is not what it used to be… With power use, it croakes before 30 minutes have past…

The replacement unit will be a Lenovo 3000 V200 ultraportable. Tomorrow I will get my hands on this promising little toy-for-a-boy. It will come with Windows Vista Business (WVB) pre-installed, but when I have some spare time I will turn it into a dual boot, adding Gentoo Linux to the system. B-)

It had been a while, but tonight we decided to check out a ‘new’ restaurant in town. The Big Horn franchise opened a restaurant in Sarpsborg last December, and we went there to check it out.

To keep a short story even shorter: Great service, even better food! Not cheap of course (even by Norwegian standards), but worth the price, in my opinion. I enjoyed a No. 28, a Mexican Pepper Steak, ca. 10,5 oz. Beef tenderloin with 3 kinds of pepper. Served with pepper sauce, sour cream, fried tomato and warm sweet corn.
Marianne had a No. 13, Entrecôte, ca. 5 oz. (she wasn’t that hungry, even though she’s supposed to eat for 2)

Big Horn Sarpsborg is definitely a place I can recommend! As long as your wallet can handle it… Our dinner-for-two cost NOK 835 (US$ 156) for 2 people, with no alcoholic beverages. Quite steep…

Next week the Mobile World Congress 2008 will start in Barcelona, Spain. This event, formerly known as 3GSM World Congress, is a combination of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a congress featuring CEO’s representing mobile operators, vendors and content owners from across the world.

At this event traditionally many new mobile phones will be presented. Some of these to hit the market immediately after the congress, others to remain concept models forever.

These are (some of the) models that are rumored to be announced/shown on the MWC:

• E-TEN Glofiish M810
  • The Glofiish M810 is a sleekly portable, HSDPA, Wi-Fi b/g and GPS ready handset, designed to help the new breed of bloggers, podcasters, video makers, and chatters, stay online and updated wherever they are. A full QWERTY keyboard makes blogging, text messaging and chatting quick and convenient, while a 2-megapixel auto-focus camera is great for capturing pictures or video that can be uploaded easily to a web-album or video sharing site. Finally, built-in JAVA support allows fun mobile games to be downloaded and played anywhere.
• E-TEN Glofiish V900
  • The Glofiish V900 is E-TEN’s first Pocket PC Phone to feature mobile TV. With major events such as UEFA Euro 2008 and the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games scheduled this year, there are sure to be events that people just don’t want to miss, and thanks to the V900’s support for DVB-H, DVB-T, TDMB and DAB broadcasting standards, they won’t have to. V900 also offers the benefits of VGA display and all-in-one connectivity solution comprising of HSDPA, GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Along with the Glofiish V900 E-TEN will debut its newly developed touch-based user interface.
• LG KF600
• LG KF700
• Nokia N96
  • Specifications (unconfirmed):
    • Quad band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), GPRS/EDGE, dual band (850/2100) HSDPA connectivity
    • Symbian, S60 FP2
    • 2.8″ QVGA 320×240px 16M Color display
    • 5 megapixel with Carl Zeiss lens, dual LED flash
    • Secondary front camera for video calls
    • 30 fps, VGA quality
    • 16GB built-in Flash Memory
    • DVB-H, class C, 470-750 MHz TV Tuner
    • Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR, microUSB
    • aGPS
    • Full HTML, Flash Lite enabled Web Browser
    • Dimensions: 103×55×18-20 mm, 92 cc
    • Battery: Nokia Battery BL-5F, 950 mAh, Talk time: GSM: up to 220 min; UMTS: Up to 150 min, Stand-by Time: GSM: Up to 220 hours; UMTS up to 200 hours, Video playback: Up to 5 hours (in offline mode), Music playback: Up to 14 hours (in offline mode), TV Play: Up to 4 hours (DVB-H)
  • Standard package (unconfirmed):
    • Nokia N96
    • Nokia battery BL-5F
    • Nokia data cable CA-101
    • Nokia video output cable, CA-75U
    • Nokia Stereo Headset-HS-45, with remote AD-54
    • Nokia cigarette lighter charger cable DC-4
    • Nokia compact AC-5E
• Samsung SGH-E490
  • The Samsung SGH-E490 provides you aesthetic versatility. The handset features a 176×220 resolution on its TFT screen, multimedia player, EDGE and GPRS connectivity, Bluetooth 1.2 and USB 1.1, 25MB internal memory, and 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x optical zoom.
• Samsung G810
  • Specifications (unconfirmed):
    • GSM/UMTS/3.6 Mbps HSDPA connectivity
    • Symbian 9.2 OS with S60 3.1 UI
    • 2.6? 262K Color QVGA TFT display
    • 5 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom, anti-shake, face recognition, macro mode, autofocus, etc
    • 150 MB of memory and microSD memory card slot
    • GPS navigation
    • Wi-FI b/g
    • Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, USB 2.0 (microUSB connector)
    • 1200 mAh battery
    • Dimensions: 104×52×9×18 mm
• Samsung U900 ‘Soul’
  • Specifications (unconfirmed):
    • Quad-band, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
    • 2.2″ 16M QVGA TFT screen
    • 5MP camera with auto focus
    • Digital zoom
    • 106×50x12.9 mm
• Sony Ericsson G700i
• Sony Ericsson G900i
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
  • Probably the biggest surprise of the Sony Ericsson batch - the Xperia X1 is a Windows Mobile smartphone with a 3″ 800 x 480 pixel resolution touchscreen display. Coming in two quad-band UMTS variants, the Xperia X1 also has a 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS and WiFi, plus a host of other goodies. Sure, we’ve seen handsets like this before, but not from one of the big five players.
    And the choice of Windows Mobile as an operating system is a complete shock - until now, Sony Ericsson was a Symbian-only manufacturer.

Sounds too good to be true? Well… Perhaps we have another Medison Celebrity here, but who knows… Let’s give zzzPhone the benefit of the doubt:

We’ve seen super-duper Chinese cell phones at trade shows before, but usually they’re not available/usable on a worldwide basis (because of either shipping or frequency limitations). But now there is zzzPhone, a new company that promises to customize your super-duper-China phone and send it to you.

Their base model, for US$149 plus an unbelievable $5 shipping, lets you put in two GSM SIM cards at once and has a touchscreen, 3-megapixel camera, music and video players and Web browser. But the real fun comes when you start configuring your own phone on their Web site. (The site only seems to like Internet Explorer though…)
You can change the phone’s color, add a water-resistant coating, more speakers, GPS, a TV tuner, a 7-megapixel camera, a second camera, or even ask zzzPhone to pre-install movies (legally purchased, they say…), all for a price.
Try the configurator on their site. It’s a lot of fun, as you can see speakers and cameras appear and disappear as you refit your phone.

The phone is said to be running Windows Mobile 6, and use the GSM/EDGE 850/1800/1900 frequencies - perfect for the US, and usable in most European countries as well.

If this all sounds a little far-fetched to you, well… it sounds far-fetched to me, too!

I am looking forward to hear from people who have any positive/negative experiences with this product/company!

For anyone who feels adventurous: order your zzzPhone here!