Archive for the 'Gadgets' Category

Having purchased my first home recently, I’ve finally realized how resource intensive full size desktops can be (not to mention how HOT they make my office).  My main computer is a water cooled custom-built Q6700 while I have an older AMD x2 4800 (Optimus) running downstairs as my server.  The main computer (Behemoth) is used mostly for VM images and running Skype, Netbeans, etc for my day to day job and my entertainment.

Since the x2 is always on yet often underpowered, it doesn’t make sense to have to power two server grade computers up to do something 1 computer can do.  I’ve decided to gut out Optimus and replace it with Behemoth.  Up the ram, and Behemoth can run my coding desktop (VM) allowing me to code/test/compile from anywhere in the world.

Doing so will of course leave me “desktop less” and my netbook can only do so much as it is severely underpowered.  I’ve since decided to purchase a Thinkpad x201T with the dock.  This will allow me to keep my dual 1900×1200 monitors when I’m willing to work at my desk, yet I have the freedom to bring my work anywhere with me.  I’m sure the Thinkpad will be great, having used them exclusively for the previous 4 years at my company I know they are nearly indestructible.  My current work T60 has been with me for 3 years and has been through hell and back.  That bad boy has been through multiple drops, airport security, multiple airlines (traveled 100+k miles with this thing), and still keeps on ticking.

Having said that, my NC10 which has been with me for the previous 2 years has served me good as well…but it’s time for some consolidation.

So long Samsung, you were the best traveling partner I had, even better than the Macbook Air and UMPC.

I will review the x201T as soon as I receive it.  I’ve been longing to go back to a tablet since my UMPC days, but performance/lag has always held me back.  Now Lenovo is actually putting some fast enough processors in these things along with having an excellent battery life.  I’m actually excited and can see this as my desktop replacement for the next 3-4 years.

Having used Windows Mobile for 4 years (both the smart version and the touch version), Palm OS for 3 years, iPhone for 2 years, and soon an Android, I think I’ve been through the “mobile revolution” for quite some time.  As I’ve been researching the Android platform as of late to get rid of the crappy service known as AT&T, I’ve come to the conclusion that people who’ve never used all the flavors do not “get” what each of the companies really offer.

First off, a smartphone needs to be able to make calls and receive calls stably.  This concept seems so obvious that “hackers” just seem to forget about this.  When I used Palm OS (4.5) and Windows Mobile (6-6.1) it was almost expected of you to run “cooked” roms.  These alternate firmwares will always add and remove features of the stock rom, thus making the bland phone OS faster, prettier, and more functional.  The caveat is, it almost ALWAYS made the phone unstable in some sort of way.  I can’t begin to even count how many times my phone would reset for no reason, drop calls because the phone locks up, or just plan crash due to memory errors.  Couple this with the fact flashing your phone is no quick endeavor along with having to replace apps, contact information, setup your app configs, etc it gets irritating fast.

I bring this up because it seems the majority of folks are claiming that Apple NEEDs to open up their phone to beat Android.  My question is why?  Other than a few hackers wanting to “customize” their phone,  what purpose will it serve? 

The Apple SDK is miles ahead of the Android SDK/NDK at this point.  Heck Android runs ALL of it’s code in an interpreter.  The Android NDK is far from complete to allow access to all of its hardware acceleration, specifically audio/video which is what the majority of the people care about as it pertains to games and such.  So the big question is what will you gain from the iPhone when it’s opened that you can from Android?  It certainly isn’t the ability to “root” the phone as the majority of the Android phones now are still not rooted and all iPhones/iPads/IPod Touches have been jailbroken.  It certainly isn’t from the apps as we’ve already seen the iPhone kick ass with some of the most intensive and amazing graphics on ANY smartphone in that territory.  So I really don’t get it.

At what point do we stop “hacking” and just use the phone for it’s intended purpose?  Maybe I’m getting older or just finally seeing the light, but I’d venture that the majority of phone users don’t care about all that mumbo jumbo.  If my phone can make and receive calls, execute code that I’ve written or someone else has written, and integrate smoothly with the internet I’m a happy camper.  I don’t want to have to hack my OS, I just want to use it for it’s intended purpose.

In the end I honestly don’t care if I’m running an iPhone or an Android at this point and look forward to the Sprint Evo as I’ve had nothing, but good service from Sprint all these years.  The Evo will give me the SAME functionality of an iPhone including the apps that I use often at this point as a phone.  The only thing I will miss is the music integration with my car and home, but I’ll likely still keep an iPod around for that (sorry no other phone/media player/device has as much integration power as an iPhone/iPod).

So Android community, stop trying to be “better” and just be better with actual useful and fun software.  You can complain how “closed” an iPhone is, but in the end does it really matter? 

My brother and I reviewed his Jensen head unit after he installed it back in August of 2009.  Due to the move and everything I put this on the backburner, but now it’s finally uploaded!  The head unit is a pretty good buy if all you want is music, dvd, ipod integration, and bluetooth for phone!

Having played with UMPCs for quite some time, I realized that there is definitely a direct relationship between how small a gadget can be versus how useable it actually is.  As a “geek” we all want our gadgets to be as small as possible, but when a gadget is no longer efficient…we have issues.

Out goes the UMPC and in comes the Netbooks!  UMPCs were great in concept, however, most of the screen sizes were below 9 inches and they were significantly underpowered and often very expensive.  Netbooks on the other hand offer screen sizes at 9 inch+ with decent performance and are often priced below $500 USD. 

For my eyes, I believe a 10 inch screen is the limit on how much screen real estate I need in order to be productive.  Anything smaller is unusable to me as there is just too much scrolling or I need to squint in order to read perfectly.  When you have a screen size around 10 inches, the keyboard and mouse pad is actually very useable as well.  With the UMPCs I often found that I had to use my Bluetooth keyboard for me to be able to type efficiently. 

The performance on the larger Netbooks might not be earth shattering, but coupled with the fact that you can have a larger battery, faster hard disk, and is generally $100’s cheaper than a UMPC, it’s quite hard not to like it.  For day to day tasks I have no problem using my Samsung NC10.  The battery life is so amazing that I can watch 6 hours of movies/shows on an air plane and still have enough juice for when I touch down for GPS navigation if I need it.

I’ll do a full review of the Samsung NC10 at a later date.  I loved it so much that I sold off both the Fujitsu U810 and a MacBook Air for it…

The quest for the perfect phone is a long and expensive journey. Last summer I bought a Treo 650 off of Ebay with limited use. The phone was perfect. It got rid of my Dell Axim x50v and my Sony T610 all in one purchase. It also had the ability to load custom programs, had an awesome form factor, and allowed me to synch email and browse the internet for last minute information. Or so I thought…

The Treo 650 as well as the rest of the Treo line (including the 700 series) has had numerous issues since it’s inception. The phone works great when it is defaulted. As soon as you start loading programs, the Treo slowly becomes unstable. I have never met someone who did not complain about this. My Treo had little to no programs on it and was flashed to the latest firmware. I’ve tried numerous hacks, suggetions, etc. At the end of the day it was unacceptable to have your phone randomly reboot.
This leads up to the T-Mobile SDA. Having had the Treo 650 for quite some time, I realized I use my phone more for ‘pulling’ data. This helped me choose between the T-Mobile SDA and T-Mobile MDA.

Here’s a picture of the two side by side to show the difference.

Thanks to Apples iPhone 3.0 OS update, we finally get features such as Copy/Cut/Paste, AutoFill, and universal searching! 

Anyone that stores their passwords in applications such as SplashID knows that it was impossible to use any of the randomly generated passwords inside mobile Safari.  With the addition of copy/paste this problem is now solved!  I can finally use apps like eBay, Bank of America, and PayPal securely and easily now!

The searching on the iPhone rivals anything on your computer desktop (except maybe spotlight/google desktop).  The speed it searches through my mail is phenomenal.  I find it faster to search through my corporate email on my iPhone than on my desktop Outlook!

Thanks Apple for a great release!  I can finally use my iPhone in a more productive manner now!

Being roughly 1683 miles away from Jenny kind of sucks sometimes. Talking on the phone goes only so far and sometimes I just want to see her do her silly antics -=)

So being the tech whore that I am, I convinced myself to buy an iSight for myself and a Logitech QuickCam® for Notebooks Pro for Jenny.

We’ve spent most of yesterday playing with different video conferencing software. With both of us being behind a router, it wasn’t easy finding a good solution without having her learn how to port forward.

Here’s a list of the free clients (with some pros and cons) we’ve tried.

Ichat AV/Aim 5.9
– This worked great for me and some of my other buddies but, for whatever reason I could not get this to work with Jenny’s computer. This was probally the most preferable solution for me since I could use my Powerbook instead of having to jump on my PC to chat with her.

After about an hour of fiddling around with our router settings, I gave up and tried the iSight with Windows XP. Windows definately detects the iSight as a Firewire Camera but, due to the lack of driver I could not get sound with it. This was fine as I’ve been using my Plantronics DSP-500 for sound since I haven’t hooked up the speakers to my computer in a while.

These next clients were for Windows Only.

Skype with the Video4IM Plugin

– Although the iSight was detected using a generic driver, this also meant that you couldn’t adjust any of the settings. The default brightness on the generic driver was way too bright. I had to download a program called Iccapture to play around with the settings as Video4IM lacked any sort of adjustment. The quality was very good after the iccapture adjustments and it even used our Skype logins! The program was very painless and used Skypes methods to break through firewalls (which was what we wanted).

Eyeball Chat
– This is currently our favorite client. It has adjustability for the webcam, which was great since Iccapture was a 3rd party pay program. The video quality was actually better than Video4IM and had the same break through firewall idea. It also allows you to log into AIM, MSN, and Yahoo just like GAIM.

The two webcams we’ve used are much better than the old school logitechs that most of us probally used in the past. I believe they are using CCD instead of the crappy CMOS sensors and the quality definately shows. Until bandwith increases or someone develops some crazy new compression algorithm, I’m not sure if the quality that we’re seeing will get any better. I can’t wait until Skype unveils their video conferencing solution. I hope they can do the same for video conferencing as what they have done for voice communication.

Looks like Comcast in Philadelphia isn’t as saturated as I thought. I’m averaging about 5 mbps and have hit up to 7.3 mbps a few times during peak hours (wow!). Not too bad for $29.99/month.

Since I finally configured my network again, I’ll probally upload the Cali pictures real soon. I saw an iphoto gallery plugin that I really want to test out. Keep posted!

Speaking of networks, I finally bought a network printer (Dell 1600n). The cool thing is that you can scan, print, and fax through the network. No more carrying my printer from computer to computer (j/k!). The cheaper printing costs are also very welcomed.

I went to Circuit City last night to buy a SD card for my new z750 as I saw an ad in the papers for a SanDisk 512mb Ultra II SD card for $39.99 after a $12 rebate. So I go in there expecting to pay 50 bucks or so for the card only to find out they want $74 for the card. Apparently you had to buy their stupid Anika branded camera case (none of which fit my camera AND it was ugly as all hell) to get the price AND the rebate. I refused to put up with that crap and just left.

Luckily when I got home I checked Newegg for SD cards. They had the A-Data 1gb 50x for $45 after a $10 rebate!! I have the same card in my Treo 650 for weeks now and it works flawlessly. The benchmarks on this card are among the fastest according to the SD Benchmark for Palm devices. My personal scores are also on this db and is consistent with what others are getting with VFSMark and CardSpeed.

I definately recommend Newegg and the A-Data card for any one that needs a cheap and fast SD card.

I’ll be heading to LA on August 4th – August 9th to visit Kenny and his brother. With a new vacation comes new toys!

After having my heart set on the SD500 by Canon for a few months now, I decided it might be in my best interest to see what’s new on Steve’s Digicams and dpreview.com. I came across two articles that were very favorable of the Exlim EX-Z750. It’s pretty much the SD500 with mpeg4 compression for the videos instead of mpeg2. It was a no brainer since I’ve been partial with the Exlim series for a while now.

Using my favorite comparision shopping search engine, I was able to get the camera for a mere $380 shipped. I’ll do a full review on the camera after I’ve put it through the ultimate test, the girlfriend.

[edit]
Looks like Buy.com was offering the camera for $360 – $15 coupon. Also picked up the Casio Business-Card case with it for $17.

Much cheaper than my previous order..
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