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Recent ReviewsCategoriesMonthly Archives
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Friday, January 02, 2009Blacknote DSS 30 Plays ANY Audio Format from ANY Audio SourcePosted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | General_PDA | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | (0) Comments |
The DSS 30 includes a 4-GB internal memory that can be expanded by an external hard drive, and also includes a removable Secure Digital (SD) memory card. Connections include two USB 2.0 ports on the front, two more USB ports on the rear panel, a PC input, a 75-ohm RCA input, stereo RCA outputs, balanced XLR outputs, and an Ethernet port allowing use in a LAN network. The DSS 30 can also be used in a wireless mode and, using its coax input and output, as a traditional high-end DAC for CD transports. The Blacknote DSS 30 is available now for a suggested price of $2,876. During 2009, Black Note will introduce three additional models - the DSS 15, DSS 50 and DSS 50, with suggested retail prices of $1,500, $7,200 and $12,800, respectively. Wednesday, December 24, 2008Happy Holidays from PDAToday!Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | Events | General_Interest | General_PDA | Mobile_Phones | Palm | Personal_Computer | Windows_Mobile | Windows_Mobile_News | Palm_News | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | Personal_Computer_News | Mobile_Phone_News | (0) Comments |
Wednesday, December 03, 2008Dilbert Laments on Gadget PornPosted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | General_PDA | Mobile_Phones | Personal_Computer | Windows_Mobile | Windows_Mobile_News | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | Personal_Computer_News | Mobile_Phone_News | Books | (0) Comments | Friday, November 21, 2008Review: Adesso Cyber Tablet Z12Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
The Z12 is larger than the Bamboo Fun, with a 6x10 inch active surface, compared to the Bamboo Fun’s 8.5x8.3. The Z12 also sports 1024 levels of pressure for inking, twice that of the Bamboo Fun, however, the Bamboo Fun has higher resolution, with 2,540 lines of resolution compared to the Z12’s 2000. The result is that the Z12 gives very good performance and the bigger active area makes it a bit easier to use, especially if you have a widescreen monitor. I actually liked the Z12 better for handwriting and found it was easier to get good handwriting recognition in Windows Vista. Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 7 - Keyboard and Mouse Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
Even though most people prefer the common mouse for working with their computer, I have always preferred a trackball. I find them easier to use, take up less workspace, and are great when traveling on a plane where there is almost no space to use a mouse. My favorite has always been the Kensington Orbit Trackball The original Orbit was a mechanical trackball that always needed cleaning due to dust, lint, and oil building up on the ball and transferring to the rollers inside. The new Orbit Optical Trackball has eliminated that problem with an efficient optical design. The Orbit features Left and Right mouse buttons and a small, comfortable ball. The Orbit connects to the notebook via USB. The top of the Orbit is covered in a black coating that makes it more comfortable and your hand is less likely to slide off the trackball. Read: Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 7 - Keyboard and Mouse Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 6 - Cooling Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
The Lapinator is a passive cooling device design to give your notebook good air circulation and improved comfort. It is available in two versions: the 11 oz., 13"x12"x1" Lapinator and, its large brother, the 15 oz., 18"x12"x1" Lapinator Plus for larger notebooks. Both use 3M Thinsulate sheets to block 95% of the heat from reaching your legs or desktop. By improving the air circulation, the Lapinator helps the notebooks’ internal cooling system run more efficiently. So the Lapinator helps to improve heat dissipation, comfort, and ergonomics. It’s also thin enough to fit in most notebook bags. Read: Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 6 - Cooling
Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 5 - Power Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
The Targus Mobile 70 Universal AC/DC Adapter is a good replacement power supply for any notebook. With a set of included power tips for most notebooks, and other tips available from Targus, this power supply will work with almost any notebook. Check the Targus web site for compatible tips for your notebook. With 70 watts of continuous power and up to 90 watts of peak power, this power supply can handle the needs of any power hungry notebook. Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 4 - Protection Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
This is a great bag for overnight travel and features many zippered pockets and compartments. The back is contoured for comfort against your leg when carrying the bag by the two part handle. The handle design is made of two part that are connected to the bag separately and fit together to give a comfortable grip and balances the weight of the bag. A mesh pouch for a water bottle is attached to the left side and Velcro down to store it when not in use. The rear side of the bag can be unzipped to reveal 2 large pouches and 2 smaller zippered pouches. The top of the bag contains a zippered compartment for the telescoping handle, a zippered compartment for the top-loading notebook sleeve which can be unzipped and removed from the bag. The notebook protection of this bag is good, but not designed for heavy abuse. So don’t let the bag take too many bumps and tumbles. Read: Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 4 - Protection Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 3 - Audio Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
Since there is no way to change or upgrade the internal speakers on a notebook, the best alternative is to use a set of external speakers when you are in your home / office or a set of headphone. Headphones, especially ones with microphones, can serve a dual purpose by giving you better sound in and out for Skype, gaming, or internet chatting. Most notebooks have built-in microphones that are about as good as their internal speakers. Logitech, being one of the biggest companies in the accessory market, has a wide range of speaker and headphone products. So for this profile, we would like to introduce you to a couple of our favorites. Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 2 - Memory and Storage Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
If you are already using the Vista operating system, then you must be aware of the Microsoft Experience Index. This is Microsoft’s way of rating the overall ability of your computer so that software publishers have an easier way of informing the customer of the resource and performance needs of the software. So as new software become available and more performance is required, you will be able to easily determine if your computer can run the software efficiently. Memory and Hard drive space have the most significant impact on the E.I. Read: Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 2 - Memory and Storage Extend the life of older notebooks: Part 1 Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Reviews | Personal_Computer_Hardware | (0) Comments |
For this “experiment”, I decided to use an Acer Ferrari 3400 notebook. A flashy little notebook which was very fast, feature filled, and top-of-the-line when it was released 2-3 years ago. But now the basic model with its AMD Athlon64 3000 CPU, 512MB of RAM, 80GB 4800rpm hard drive, etc. is starting to show its age. Even though its features still compare pretty well against most current notebooks, it is no longer considered “top of the line”. So how could I “upgrade” this notebook? Tuesday, August 26, 2008HTC Expands Mobile Phone Portfolio With Introduction of S740Posted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | General_PDA | Mobile_Phones | Windows_Mobile | Windows_Mobile_News | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | Mobile_Phone_News | (0) Comments |
The S740 follows the sleek design of HTC’s Touch Diamond. This slim smartphone features a matt black facetted back, a 2.4 inch QVGA display and slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 7.2Mbps HSDPA on the 900 and 2100MHz bands, quadband EDGE, a 3.2-megapixel fixed focus cam, WiFi, GPS. All that run on Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard and a Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz chipset.
The HTC S740 will be available across Europe from September 2008. [Press Release for the HTC S740]
Wednesday, August 06, 2008Bedol Introduces Eco-Friendly Clock That Operates With Only Water and SaltPosted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | Consumer_Electronic_News | Science | (0) Comments |
From the website: This new clock has a set of metal electrodes inside that extracts energy from the compound particles that reside in water. It uses water (and a dash of salt) and turns it into energy to power the clock. Sooo it’s like a chubby AA battery then. Not bad for $16 I guess. http://www.bedolwhatsnext.com/clocks-waterpowered-clock-c-89_199.html Tuesday, August 05, 2008Warcarting: wardriving on a budgetPosted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | General_PDA | Mobile_Phones | Personal_Computer | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | Personal_Computer_News | Mobile_Phone_News | Science | (0) Comments |
From the project page: To understand the Warcart requires one understand a bit of history first. Wardriving, that is, driving with a laptop computer and tracking WiFi access points, first became popular around 2001. Within a short time span, people invented warwalking, and millions flocked to walk the streets with a laptop and WiFi card in hand. Then the craze really took off when someone flew a Cessna airplane with a laptop and became the first warflyer. Within no time at all, the press and every tech blog on the internet was covering the latest war-something. There was warrocketing, warballooning, warbiking, and warboating. There were talks and seminars. News stories and blog posts. Television reports and radio shows. All about the latest in WiFi tracking. It soon became apparent to the larger community that most of these methods are highly elitist. Here are car-driving, personal-plane-owning, leisure-hot-air-ballooning, yachting aficionados armed with laptop computers. What the world needed was a low-cost, yet powerful alternative. And thus, (mostly as a joke and for reasons that will be disclosed in this talk at Defcon 16), the Warcart was born. Wednesday, July 30, 2008Trimble Nomad gets pistol whipped...er pistol grippedPosted by Bill Landon in Consumer_Electronics | General_Interest | General_PDA | Windows_Mobile | Windows_Mobile_News | Consumer_Electronic_News | General_PDA_News | Science | (0) Comments |
The Nomad’s new love grip doesn’t compromise that sexy ruggedness. The new grip maintains an IP67 rating agianst dust and moisture, and it still meets those stringent MIL-STD-810F military standards for drops, vibration and temperature extremes...splendid. In addition, the Nomad retains its all-day usage of eight hours on a battery charge, offers a range of compatible battery options, delivers a rate of up to three scans per second and offers easy field-to-office connectivity. See our previous review of the Recon X Series. The new pistol grip has a suggested retail price of US$109 and is available through Nomad dealers. For more information on the Nomad, visit http://www.trimble.com/rugged Copyright 1999-2008 PDAToday (TM) and Bill Landon, All Rights
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