At some point I think we have gone overboard with the amount of space we are consuming, but the best part is space keeps getting cheaper. There is about 24 TB sitting on the table destined for two servers, for K’s & myself monstrous server that we are building. This time its a server with a 20 HD slot WHS so it can be maxed out 40 TB and my current solution is running with 22.1 TB, so the numbers keep jumping up. The only large storage I trust is Western Digital Caviar’s, the Green are great for lower power consumption and lower heat, heat is very important because it affects the life of the hard drive and with that many in the same proximity that is a lot of heat.
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I have been using these headphones for a while now and they have been working great. They keep out the sound of the annoying safety videos on planes while flying, I can hear clearly on the motorcycle, they don’t irritate the ears after riding some time and you can clearly hear a nice solid base in the head phones. The one annoying part is the tips, when ever I pull them out o my pocket or out of bag there is always a possibility that tip might fall off and this time I ran out of extra tips. I went onto ebay to find some headphone tips, they sell them in bunches so I bought 10 pieces of the medium size for $11 from a supplier in Hong Kong since their weren’t that many other choices, I’m just hoping that they are the same quality and fit, I’m worried they might be fake or might cause irritation at a later point but I really like these headphones so hopefully this will solve my problem of losing those tips.
I have been an advocate of Sonos products for some time now, showing it to friends and how it integrates into your system provides for the perfect music playing system as well as all the other streaming features it has. I haven’t done a review Sonos yet probably because I have been too lazy to get to it and I want to do it justice. But now I’m talking about the perfect all in one Sonos unit which they are now offering, the Sonos S5. One thing that should be known about Sonos is that they are sound guys before anything else, they care about the quality of sound that is why they have always had solid products with perfect sound more then anything else and they have never lowered that standard. Now they have came with the integrated all in one solution which is the Sonos S5, previously their other units had to have separate speakers which works for certain situations.
It can connect to all the streaming options such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.fm, Sirius, and more. Then you can easily integrate into your iTunes music library and you get to see all your playlists, as well as other music databases, you just have to point it and it will play it. If its the only Sonos unit then you have to wire it into your network but if you have other Sonos unit in the house then you can connect through the wireless network as only one needs to be connected physically. You can control the Sonos S5 through a desktop controller on your computer, through the Sonos iTunes App which can be installed in your iPod Touch or iPhone, and through the Sonos SC100 or SC 200 controller. An amazing product that every music lover should have, the best part is getting those music services to hear all those new and different tunes which you might enjoy. Technically this is one very powerful product, it is a five driver speaker system – two tweeters, two 3†mid-range drivers, and one 3.5†woofer. Each driver of the product is individually powered by a dedicated amplifier ready to play music at volumes ready to break windows. All of this priced at $400 which isn’t too bad considered the quality of the product, Sonos products are never cheap.
Link: Sonos
We have internet at home, even though its a little bit on the slow side but I needed an access point to put another location to cover the whole house because the one from the modem is very weak. I thought that would be simple enough, but it turned out to be a lot more difficult then I expected. I was in Harrods and decided to ask if they sell access points in the computer section, the lady looked at me like I was speaking Chinese to her so I thought I would go to Totenham Court road and find many there. I walked over there and I stopped at nearly 9 different electronic and computer shops on that street and every one of them don’t sell access points any more, they sell so many kinds of modems, routers and switches but no access points. It seems London is no longer in need of access points so I decided to order it from Amazon.co.uk and it came the next day, much simpler then running around for a few days.
There was a lot of problems with the pre-release of BBM 5 months ago, contacts were being deleted and the chat program was crashing. This time around its Blackberry that had the official release of BBM 5 with all the new features. After using it for over a week and a majority of my usual contacts have switched over the change is interesting.
Pros:
- You can see details of the other person’s contact
- Enlarging the contact’s photo
- Associating BBM contacts with your phone book, the picture from BBM gets associated with your Phone book
- Groups are a great edition you can share pictures, lists, dates and conversations between the group and its very organizing unlike inviting people to conversations such as before. Also you can have the group symbol on your Blackberry Homepage so you won’t have to go into the BBM to see it.
- Barcode scanning makes it easier and unique to add people to your list, you always notice people looking for their BBM PIN no matter how many times you explain it to them.
- Backing up contacts remotely and locally.
Cons:
- The one major con that I think BBM 5 has is when your trying to send images. It’s not as easy as before and you have to transfer a picture, it doesn’t compress it and sends a simple small picture as it did before. Takes time to transfer the image so the half the time it fails.
Overall I think Blackberry did an amazing job with BBM 5, the only problem is with sending images but still its a huge step forward. Maybe they will be able to adjust it at a later point, but the benefit of the groups and shareing details are enourmous.
I have had my SE T700 for about a year and a half now, I update the firmware but the phone has pretty much gone into crashing spiral. If I call a number that isn’t stored it rings but the screen hangs, and if I go into sms it takes a minute or two to load up, it has its moods when it wants to work. I have to admit though that it has survived some pretty damaging falls and lasted a while but I need a replacement.
I was thinking for a while not to take a chance get a completely different phone but I’m a bit put off:
Garmin G60 – Linux based Garmin phone with simple functionality and Garmin map functions.
I’m not getting it because of the horrible reviews that it has gotten as it seems to have issues.
HTC Hero – I have always wanted to try an Android phone and the HTC UI is appealing but I’m very hesitant.
I’m avoiding all Windows phones at all costs, I took that road a long while back and I refuse to do that because of the hell that I went through with their crappy products and even their new Windows Mobile OS is crap. So after all that I’m left to go back to Sony Ericsson phones even though I think they are great phones and do the job as phones.
(iPhone is not an option, I would break it in one day)
Every once in a while you come across an interesting piece of electronic/tool, the GorrilaTorch Flashlight from Joby. They made those very flexible and useful tripods for cameras and DSLR cameras, and now they made this flash light with the same idea behind it.
Pros:
- Battery compartment is right behind the light making it easy to rotate in any direction or angle without restriction
- LED light used it bright and perfect for its use, but the dispersion is centered like a flash light, it would have been more useful if it flood a little more
- Magnetic tips at the end of the tripod is perfect for mounting to metal objects
- The ball and socket joints of the tripod are very flexible to bend in almost all directions, and rubber pieces provide great traction
- The light is dimmable
- Reasonably priced at $35
Cons:
- The focused light could have been a little better, that is my only issue
Rating:
There are a lot of laptops currently in the market, more then ever before and one of the laptop series that I do prefer are the Dell Latitude line. This time around I think Dell has done a good job coming out with a unique quality product, a lot of the ultra-thin laptops were a bit on the weak side but not the Dell Latitude Z, at 0.79″ this laptop packs a punch with a 16 inch screen, and they have a wireless charging system through the docking station and starting at $1,800.
Specifications:
- A svelte body that’s just 0.57 – 0.79″ tall
- Weighs in at just 4.5 lbs.
- Features a Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at either 1.4 or 1.6 GHz
- Up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM
- Four-cell battery
- Soft-Touch Black Cherry finish
- Two USB ports
- One DisplayPort
- Wi-Fi
- Optional built-in 3G Wireless
- Bluetooth
- A beautiful 16-inch, 1600×900 display with a touch interface built into the bezel
Link: Gizmodo
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Now this is a graphics card that packs a punch and doesn’t burn a hole through your wallet. The 5870 and 5850 are both very powerful graphics cards, with the 5870 being the higher end and the 5850 being on the more affordable the starting price is around $250 which isn’t too bad for a graphics card. And these cards are the first to fully support Directx 11, basically being able to support 6 – 30 inch Monitors, thats a lot of realestate to deal with, and I won’t lie, I’m pretty tempted.
Link: Gizmodo
I think Apple has gotten flooded with tons of Apps that you don’t really know the good from the bad and which one exactly fits your need and the rating system is too simple for how complex some of these applications can be. I have managed to find some apps that I will be downloading, some are games which I really want to try and some are useful apps for my use, this isn’t even including the ones I currently have, I wish they would get Google Latitude already loaded as an app.
- NFL Mobile (Down side is you have to be a Direct TV subscriber with the sport package, but I want an NFL App so I’m gonna try it out)
- Need for Speed: Undercover
- Blades of Fury
- Madden NFL 10
- Modern Combat: Sandstorm