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All the time the Sagem MyDual Radio700 is powered up even without a station selected the front screen will display a small top line of year, date and day with a large (four time the size) bottom line showing the time in 24 hour format.

It is 20x10x14cm maximum, the right side is the larger being circular and the single speaker with a fine silver/grey mesh the rest of the unit is grey. The display is 7.3x3.5cm with white lettering on a blue background.

Outputs on the back are for earbuds, liner out, Ethernet, FM aerial (supplied) and the power lead. There is a status LED that glows green but in most cases this will not even be seen and finally a push button on/off switch.

See also: Internet

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Neither side or the bottom have any connections while the front has a USB stick socket between the LCD display and the speaker. This leaves the top this has a total of eight buttons, five arranged in the ubiquitous joystick combination and three others all clearly labelled.

There is a 30 key remote control, however for most actions the eight buttons on top of the unit are all you need. The one exception I have found is entering your WEP or WPA code that needs the numeric (mobile phone type) input on the remote.

It finds all the wireless networks in range you select the one you want and assuming it is encrypted then you enter your passcode. It remembers this so next time you return power to the unit although you need to move through the same screens and select the wireless network it then shows the passcode, here I think it should not display the actual code maybe just some dots as the passcode is there for anyone to see.

Ethernet is simpler as it is just a matter of connecting an Ethernet cable between the unit and a router.

There are literally thousands of Internet radio stations are these are split into Genres. On the Station list there are four choices Locations, New Stations, Popular Stations and Genres. There are 56 Genres listed, as regular readers will know jazz is my passion and there are 100 or these. Select what you want and after a few seconds of buffering you will be listening to what you have chosen, it could be in UK or America or New Zealand in fact anywhere in the world. I found the sound quality good.

The FM radio was not as brilliant, there are two sensitivities and even with the supplied wire lead extended fully on the lesser setting it found three stations and thirteen in most sensitive so lots of stations are not found. It then lists the frequencies and in some cases the name of the station beside them. The actual reception quality varied.

Lack of space prevents me from giving much detail about the other features, the Alarm Clock (choice of two) is easily set as in the Sleep Timer. The MP3 player works without problem and using it as a Media Server is logical.

There is a twenty page Installation Guide that should get you going and also covers using Windows Media Player 11 on your PC.

My one real gripe is your passcode being displayed anytime power is restored note I mean the back on/off switch and not the power switch on the top that is really only standby mode.

Doing my Internet searches found the Sagem MyDual Radio700 for £65.84 including shipping from the Big Box Shop - on the following link :

http://www.bigboxshop.co.uk/searchresults_detail.cfm?productid=1617&Product=Sagem%20MYDu@l%20Radio700

I found the Sagem MyDual Radio700 for ?129.90 on the following link :

www.darty.com/nav/achat/image_son/audio_portable_autoradio/radio/sagem_my_dual_radio_700.html   

Information from Sagem on the following link :

www.sagem.co.uk