IFB 25SC2 Microwave Oven Review

THINK BEFORE YOU DECIDE

My Rating- 3/5

I am proud owner of IFB microwave oven for last 8 months without ANY problem. So it’s right time to share my views on it.

Why to buy?

This is the major question one should ask to him/herself that why you need to buy a microwave oven. Most of the people (including me) made mistakes while deciding about purchasing it. There are things that appease me before I own a MW oven that I would be able to roast, grill, brown, crisp, toast, cook food, and the list goes on. I did all these things for one or two months but ultimately I am using it for reheating purpose only. It may not be the same for all, and will surely be of major help to familie

s with demanding children.

What to buy?

Once the purpose is decided, the question arises what needs to be purchased so as to solve our purpose. For those who do not have much idea regarding microwave oven, I would like to share some basics of it.

There are three things to be decided before making decision-

1. Type of microwave oven- There are three types of microwave oven:
a) Basic/ simple microwave oven- It can be used only for simple cooking, heating and defrosting.
b) Microwave with grill- It is used for simple cooking, heating, defrosting and baking.
c) Microwave with grill and convection- It is used for simple cooking, heating, defrosting, baking and crisping.

2. Capacity- The capacity of a microwave oven defines the size of the oven and the amount of food that you can cook in it at one time. To decide the capacity you should consider following two factors:
a) Family size- Larger the family, more the capacity required.
b) Usage- If you want to use oven to supplement your cooking (reheat and defrosting), even small quantity will suffice.

3. Brand- There is many brands available in market. The choice depends on your brand loyalty and reliability. I choose IFB as it is considered among the best in Indian market.

Why you should buy 25SC2?

Specifications-
1. Power consumption- 1250W to 2000W, depending on usage
2. Oven capacity- 25 Liters
3. Net weight- 16.3 kgs
4. Cooking by Turntable system

Features-
1. 10 power levels
2. Convection with temperature setting
3. Preheat facility
4. Multi stage cooking
5. Express cooking
6. Child safety lock
7. LED display
8. 3 years warranty on Magnetron and Cavity.
9. 26 Auto cook menus
10. Cook recipe book from Nita Mehta is given free

Was that called Demo?

I would like to describe the Demo I got from IFB person. Since I have never used MW oven before I was expecting a person who could explain me all the basic things related to operation. No one came for demo for few days after my purchase. Then I called IFB customer care and they finally send a person. He was totally unprofessional with least knowledge of the operation.

He showed me only two basic thing- roasting papad and heating water. I asked him few questions and he was unable to respond to any of those.

Is it worth?

There are several advantages of using a MW oven. I observed that reheating done by MW oven is far better than done by normal oven and it also regains the freshness in the cooked food. Previously rice never tasted so fresh after reheating. You can boil potatoes in a MW oven in just 2-3 min, by putting them in a thin polythene bag. There are lot many features like these.

If you want to use the MW oven for basic purpose then there is no need of purchasing convection MW oven. The basic purpose can be solved by simple MW oven. And there is almost 100% increase in prices of convection MW oven than ordinary one.

So it’s better to think judiciously before deciding the model.

I am using IFB for last eight months and I haven’t faced any problems till date. I think all the MW ovens have the same working principle so the choice is bit easy. There are some latest ovens that promise some or other things like making curd etc. I preferred IFB just because of brand loyalty, and I have to pay extra for it (around 1-2k). The similarly featured MW oven can be purchased at lesser prices, likes of Samsung, Whirlpool, LG etc.

Considering my personal experience I would recommend it, but only if you really need a Convection MW oven. There are ordinary MW ovens and even Microwave Oven with Grill available in the market in the range of 5k. I can’t comment on after sales service, as I never needed to use it.


NB: This model is discontinued from the market. In place of this, 25SC3 is available in the market with all the same features and specification as 25SC2.

Opera Mini 6 Browser

I am in my hometown for last two weeks. Since it is a small town so there is neither broadband nor 3G services. So I have to totally depend on my mobile for internet. I am using Opera Mini 6 browser in my Nokia N8. It has got many advantages as compared to default browser of Nokia or other browsers. So here I am with my latest review on Opera Mini 6.

Opera Mini is a web browserdesigned primarily for mobile phones, smartphonesand PDAs. As per the record, Opera Mini is the world’s most used mobile browserwith more than 113.5 million users (in May 2011).

Functionality

Firstly I want to discuss the technical part of this browser. Though it is not necessary in this review but it will give a clear insight about the differences between other browsers and Opera Mini.

 

When a user browses the web using Opera Mini, the request is sent via the GPRS to one of the Opera SoftwareCompany's proxy servers, which retrieves the web page, processes and compresses it, and sends it back to the user's mobile phone.

The pre-processing speeds up data transfer by two to three times, reduce the amount of data transferred, and increase the compatibility with web pages not designed for mobile phones. Also, when a connection is established with the Opera’s proxy servers, it keeps open and re-uses as required that further improves transfer speed.

If a particular language/ font are not supported by a mobile, Opera Mini sends that content in bitmap image form.

The Opera Software Company maintains over 100 proxy servers to handle Opera Mini traffic.

Description

The Opera Mini 6 has got address bar, Google search bar, back and forward button, refresh/ stop button, tabbing option and Opera setting button on its homepage. We have option of saving 9 webpages in speed dials and remaining pages as bookmarks.

There is option as to whether we want images to be loaded or not. Even image quality can be chosen as low, medium or high.

There are shortcut keys and touchscreen control that saves time and effort. There is an option of kinetic scrolling for long pages. It has full HTML internet access support.

Features

1. Tabbed Browsing- Tab switching option is there just like other browsers available for PCs. Several pages can be opened at the same time. On touchscreen devices, visual tabs even allow us to see a preview of the open pages, just like in Windows 7.

2. Speed Dial- It launches our favorite websites with a single click. The favorite webpages (maximum 9) are visually laid out on screen in speed dial, and load each with quick tap.

3. Easy Navigation with full screen option- It provides easy navigation with maximum efficiency on both touchscreen and keypad devices. It displays complete webpages, just like on our computer, and is fully standards compliant. Address bar and toolbars disappear until they are needed, allowing to see more of the page we are viewing. It smartly fits webpages as per our screen.

4. Accelerometer Support- Comfortably adjusts to our needs by switching between portrait and landscape mode.

5. Font Size Variation- It lets us adjust the font size for easier reading. There are three options of font- small, medium and large.

6. Faster- The streamlined rendering engine and server side compression allows the browser to load webpages much more quickly than other mobile phone browsers.

7. Cost efficient- It uses only a tenth of the bandwidth of other browsers, and compress webpages by up to 90%. It saves money on data charges as it reduces data usages substantially.

8. Easy synchronization and Backup- It synchronizes the links with desktop PC, using opera link. It backup our bookmarks, speed dials and search engines to my opera, and keep them synchronized between different phones or with opera browser on our PCs.

9. Zooming- On touchscreen devices there is option of pinch to zoom if the phone supports multitouch; otherwise double tap zoom.

10. Predictive Text Input- We can effortlessly enter addresses because of sophisticated URL auto completion.

11. Virtual Keyboard- The browser has its own QWERTY keypad (optional) for typing and editing the text. We can set it for entering address only, or always/ never.

12. History- Bookmarks and previously visited addresses appear in a list as we type an address. Visited pages are grouped by date so one can easily find a site by the day of viewing it.

13. Sharing Option- It has option of sharing a link over social websites like Facebook, Twitter etc. It is very useful feature if we want to share the link of any DP/ review on MS over Facebook.

14. Search- There is ‘Find in Page’ option by which we can save time for unnecessary searching words or phrases in large webpages.

15. Download feature- Most advanced download manager available for mobile phone. Start downloading files and keep track of their progress. Pause and resume when necessary.

16. Save page feature- There is an option of saving the webpage if we would like to keep it for future reference. We can access it anytime later without having to wait for it to download- even without internet connection.

17. Privacy Management- It has got its password manager that can remember passwords for us. It has feature to accept cookies. We can clear history, passwords and cookies in one single click.

Few Negatives

1. The browser does not have flash support. It is mostly a positive factor as it prevents unnecessary data transfer in the form of advertisements.

2. The Opera’s virtual keyboard is very cramped and does not provide feasibility in moving the cursor. But we always can use our default keypad in case of problem.

3. There is no Opera Mini version for latest Windows based mobile phones.

4. Zooming is limited in this browser, but is acceptable as it is just a Mini version.

Support

1. The Opera browser support Java phones, iOS (for Apple phones), Android, Symbian/ S60, Blackberry, Windows Mobile 5.1.

2. It has support for 96 languages in user interface.

Bottomline

Let us start with its performance regarding opening of various sites. It took 30.9sec to open Mouthshut homepage, 7.39sec for Google, 10.00sec for Facebook and 31.61sec for IRCTC homepage (in GPRS connection). The performance is really awesome considering the heavy graphics on Mouthshut and IRCTC. It is further enhanced when used in 3G. I have never seen such a fast performance on any other mobile browser. Amazingly it costs less than Re.1 using BSNL (on my Nokia N8) for browsing Mouthshut for all the necessary updates.

The browser can be downloaded free from m.opera.com. I would recommend it for people who travel a lot and depend on their mobile phones for basic surfing needs. There is always an option of Opera Mobile 11 if we need to do more advance browsing.

I would suggest trying it once and you will surely feel the difference. It is way faster than other browsers and will never burn a hole on exorbitant data charges.