Well I'm preparing for another overseas trip, this time to London - Kath is presenting at a conference and I'm just a passenger!

But my Sony MDR-NC5 noise cancelling headphones are a little the worse for wear. The (non-replaceable) outer foam cover has all but disintegrated which makes them a tad uncomfortable. The noise-cancelling intermittently cuts out in the left channel and I need to jiggle the cable where it comes out of the right ear (where the battery is).

So I'm starting to look around. Obviously the Bose units would be great, but too expensive for me. I found a reasonable collection of reviews on this CNet page. Based on the user feedbacks it sounds like the Panasonic RP-HC100 (review) units are a good option. The reviewer specifically compares them with my Sony model quite favourably. Reading the user reviews for the various headphones, it seems that the CNet reviewer was placing more of a premium on absolute sound quality rather than the noise cancelling and practicality so much. The user reviews (ie. people who actually use the headphones on planes and in noisy environments) seemed to rate the Panasonic higher and the Seinheisser PXC 250 (review) lower (which was another option I considered alongside the PXC 150, which is presumably worse).

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm sure one or both of the Tram Town boys have an opinion on noise cancelling audio equipment :)

Update: Unfortunately the RP-HC100 is a superceded product.

Update: It seems the updated Sony model (the MDR-NC6) has the same comfort issues as my old NC-5 (see user review on the Apple Store).

Update: The mid-range Sony MDR-NC20 cans are nearly universally loved (wheras most of the models get mixed reviews) - see the Amazon customer reviews.

Helpfully, Digital City here in Sydney has 10% off headphones at the moment, but Australian prices are inexplicably higher than overseas prices. The MDR-NC20s sell in the US for $USD77-119 (which translates to $AUD102-158), but even including the 10% discount we're talking $AUD269. That's 70% ON TOP! Sheesh.

I've emailed some outlets in Changi Airport to see what price they can do on the Sony MDR-NC20, JVC HA-NC100 and Panasonic RP-HC100 (since some online retailers are listing it as still in stock).

I made the mistake of installing Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 on my mac which also installed a safari Plugin. In principal this is great, because I prefer pdf's to open in browser tabs than in an external app, but on my original model titanium G4 powerbookk, it's a tad slow to say the least.

While Googling how to remove it, I came across an excellent Quartz based PDF plugin for safari from Schubert-IT. I'm not sure if I prefer it yet, but it seems pretty good.

While I'm plugging shareware Mac software, I think I love World Clock Deluxe from MaBaSoft enough to deploy some permanent disk and cpu to it (both scarce on my TiBook) and register it. It's great when you want to iChat/Skype someone overseas and want to be sure of the time.