I haven’t had much luck with external drives recently, most of them would fail after some time or they can’t take large files which was very annoying.
I got this external drive on sale at Tumi in the states, about 30% off. It is a relatively small, and designed with compact travel in mind. Overall I am enjoying the use of this little drive
Pros:
- Compact (7cm x 5cm x 1cm).
- Very light
- Has a carrying case
- USB wire tucks right into the hard drive case, but a little short
- Can take some decent drops without a problem
Cons:
- Price a bit high
- Only 60 GB
- Transfer speed is a bit slower then your average external portable hard drive
Link: Tumi
I have shifted my iTunes Library from the crappy PC to the CORE PC (iCore7 Processor), its been running perfectly dual screen and pushing all its processing power to the edge. Since shifting the library to this new PC its been going smoothly, I have synced all the videos and music to my iPod Classic and Nano 4G, when you sync it all the previous data gets erased so you have a fresh install.
Now the issue I am facing with the iPod Touch is the applications. I haven’t really figured out how to shift all the applications to the new computer, the free ones are simple enough but what about the applications that I have paid for, how do I go about shifting them?
I have been looking at Video cameras for a while now, I want to start making some videos. The main point is clarity and I would be able to mount it to a moving vehicle. From what I understood hard drives aren’t a good idea except if they are solid state or flash drives because the vibrations would damage the hard drive. At this point I’m looking at the cameras with flash drives or DV tape, and then I would need the editing skills to make interesting short clips. The prices are varying for sure, click the link for more information on the camera. The flash drive versions are the top most expensive ones, so I would probably be looking at other options and waiting for a few reviews to come out.
- Vixia HF S10: $1,299.99, early March
- Vixia HF S100: 1,099.99, early March
- Vixia HF20: $899.99, early April
- Vixia HF200: $749.99, early April
- Vixia HV40: $999.99, early June
- FS22: $599.99, mid April
- FS21: $329.99, early April
- DC420: $369.99, early April
- DC410, $299.99, early April
- ZR960: $249.99, early April
Link: Gizmodo
These are probably the most expensive speakers I have seen yet. Very heavy and composed of carbon fiber, steel, and wood. A speaker cabinet with omni-directional mirror imaged speaker arrays costing around $250,000.
Link: BoingBoing
Sony Ericsson are coming out with some powerful phones over the next couple of months and I’m surprised this wasn’t completely leaked out earlier. A very thin but powerful phone packed with all the features you can imagine. I’m going to assume a phone like this is going to have a high price attached to it.
- 2.6 inch TFT Display (262,144 colors, 240×320 display)
- 113 grams
- 97 mm x 49 mm x 15 mm
- Quad Band (GSM/GPRS/EDGE) (2G/3G Networks)
- UMTS/HSPA
- 370/360 Battery Hours of Dtandby
- 9/4 hours of talk time
- Black/Silver/Red Colors Available
- 8-Megapixel Camera
- Wifi
- GPS
- HPM-88 Noise Canceling Headphones
Link: SE Blog
I have to say that I am a fan of Netgear products, I needed an Access Point for our floor which would be able to cover this floor a little better then the other one. This would be connected to the router which has the KEMS connection.
The configuration on this Access Point is really simple, and Netgear has made the configuration screen as simple as possible with a lot of options. It does have a powerful signal once its all configured, I tried the security configuration and worked fine, but I prefer blocking by MAC address rather then Encryption.
All is great if it kept working, the problem is that this is the second access point of this kind that has failed from Netgear. I have sent one before for an RMA, and received this one, yet this one also failed. I do like Netgear products but their consumer line is lacking, their ProSafe line is excellent though. For now I am sticking to a D-Link Access Point which is doing the job excellently without any issues.
Rating:
Archos are known for making great media players which are able to play Hi-Def Video files on tablet media players with a large amount of space to store these movies. Then there is the internet surfing capability which was turned them into very successful products.
Now Archos is releasing their successful product as an Android phone with all the usual Archos capability. At 10mm thick it will have the Android software , 500 GB Hard Drive, 7 hours of video playback, and Flash support. On top of all that, it doubles as a phone.
Link: Engadget
I have noticed over the past year how many people have switched over to Blackberry phones. I always saw them in the states but never thought much of them since they were more business oriented. Recently I noticed more people Kuwait having them, even kids have them which is surprising. A lot of people are enjoying the BBM service which I think they have to unlock their phones to use. I never really thought much about the phone, and I have never been a fan of QWERTY keyboards, I much preferred a normal 12 button phone to make the calls or text messages. Its interesting how it has caught on in Kuwait, and there does seem to be a shortage for sure. I do have to say that the Blackberry Bold does have a very nice screen.
After my recent experience with External Hard Drives, which I discuss below, I was happy to get the Seagate FreeAgen Go. It has a very good track record, and I was previously happy with my Seagate drive. I sometimes need to transport large files with me when traveling and taking around media files. After my extensive experience I just decided to buy it online instead of my bad luck with stores in Kuwait.
Recent Drives:
I have been through a few external portable drives and a lot have been disasters. I originally had the Seagate from 2004 and it lasted with me for about 4 years before starting to act up. So I bought a SimpleTech hard drive which is abundant in Kuwait, after a week it started acting up and it would hang during transfers so I returned it. I knew from a lot of people that the Western Digital External HDs were having problems and I even recovered data from two crashed WD Portable HDs. I bought one anyways to see my luck, and it wouldn’t transfer anything that was bigger then 1GB, so that was useless and I returned it. And the last one I tried was the Maxtor Portable HD which only hung for a few seconds during transfer which wasn’t too bad compared to my earlier track record. Even though Seagate and Maxtor are one company they are running completely seperatly.
Link: Amazon
Price: $112
Sony officially stopped production of their rear production LCD even though they made huge improvements of technology. I currently have a rear projection LCD and its fantastic, and it was a great bargain for price. Now Mitsubishi have come up with the LaserVue TV which has amazing features and sizes ranging from 65″ to 73″, and the price at $7000 which isn’t bad compared to LCDs or Plasmas. And they aren’t as thick as before, since its only about 10 inches thick which isn’t that much for something that big and at a reasonable price. The TV uses laser beams to provide unmatched color reproduction, clarity, and depth of field. Features include 120Hz operation, 1080p resolution, x.v. Color, and 3D-ready viewing capabilities.
Link: UnCrate