Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gadgets. Show all posts

31 March 2009

QotD for 31 Mar., 2009

On the brouhaha by some authors and publishers over copyright & ebooks in general, and Amazon's Kindle specifically:
Maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong, but the important thing is, we don't need new theories about copyright law to test the proposition. The existing, totally non-controversial aspect of copyright law that says, "Amazon can't publish and sell my book without my permission" covers the territory nicely. ---Cory Doctorow


Simple, huh ? Now, if Kindle books:

  • Didn't have odious and burdensome DRM attached (so I could make decent backups),
  • Didn't cost so bloomin' much (make 'em the price of a paperback minus a buck or so to make up for the lack of printing costs), and
  • Were compatible with other ebook readers & software

then you'd really have something... But as it is ? Meh.

[via boing boing]

10 March 2009

Book! It's Got an Intuitive, Touch-based Interface!

What with all the Kindle 2 release brouhaha, I got a real laugh out of yesterday's comic over at Penny Arcade. ;)

21 November 2007

My Totally Opinionated HDTV Review

Just took delivery of our new HDTV, a Samsung HL-T5087S and already love it. It's a 50" DLP projection set with the new LED light engine (no expensive incandescent bulbs to replace, and no rotating color wheel), goes up to 1080p resolution, and has plenty of inputs (3 HDMI, 2 component, etc... incl a VGA input for a PC :) Image is very nice on the HD channels from the Verizon FiOS service, and it does a good job displaying standard definition TV, too.

If you want a good, readable introduction to what's going on with HDTV equipment these days, you could do a lot worse than start with the Oct., 2007 Buying Guide from PC Magazine. But here's my even shorter, take-home message:

IMHO, the highest image quality with HD sources is to be found in the best grades of LCD flat panels from companies like Sony, Samsung, and Sharp. But the larger sizes of these displays (say, greater than 42") are still rather expensive and they do less well with standard definition signals. The title of "best bang for your buck" in larger displays still belongs to projection technologies like those from Samsung and Mitsubishi which use TI's DLP chips. Plasma is still the brightest and does better with signals containing lots of fast motion, but the sets are heavy, don't work well at high altitudes (above 7000 ft) and, to me, still look rather "grainy." But remember, everyone's eyes are different, so after having consulted information sources like the buying guide above, please go look at these for yourself.

However, in my house, the LED light-engine DLP sets from Samsung get a big thumbs up! Recommended.

30 October 2007

The Fastest Windows Vista Laptop

PC World magazine tested several laptops for a recent issue, and came to the rather interesting conclusion that the fastest one for Windows Vista is...

The Apple MacBook Pro.

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows.

Ironic, eh ?

[via Scot Hacker's foobar blog]

10 September 2007

Photoshopping Old Posters

There's a great set of photoshopped versions of old propaganda and advertising posters up over at Worth100. Some are on the verge of NSFW (I almost picked the pole dancer to show y'all ;) but you'll find several gems there.

Just the sort of thing that's right up a certain Mad One's alley...

[via boingboing]

07 May 2007

Great Flat-panel Monitor, Great Price

I just got done unpacking and setting up my new NEC 90GX2 19" flat-panel monitor this weekend.

This thing is fantastic. Best display quality of any desktop flat-panel monitor I've ever used. And I'm picky - used to exclusively go with higher-end Sony CRT monitors for my eyes' sake (I have to wear reading glasses for close-in work).

The screen has a glossy finish like some of the more recent notebook computer displays that really helps with brightness and color saturation. Matter of fact, it's probably too bright out-of-the-box. I've also encountered no problems with reflections on the glossy screen, which isn't any worse than many decent CRT monitors, though YMMV. 700:1 contrast ratio and a fast 4 ms pixel response time make it great for gaming and watching DVD movies as well as std computing tasks.

1280x1024 pixel resolution, both analog (VGA) and digital (DVI-D) inputs (both cables included), and a USB 2.0 hub. NEC makes rock-solid equipment, and this was priced like the high-end gear it is just a few months ago ($450+). But the current price on Amazon is less than $220 + free shipping.

You owe it to yourself to have a look at this in your local computer store, but like I said - Amazon seems to have the best price right now. Highly recommended.

31 October 2006

An Ideal External Drive

WD My Book I've recently found an almost ideal line of external hard drives with the Western Digital "My Book" series. I purchased the 250 GB model and discovered several great features:


  • It's very quiet and runs cool

  • The case is decent looking and unobtrusive

  • Most importantly, the drive spins down after a period of inactivity (unlike most of the other external drives I've seen)

The only, slight drawbacks are that the drive automatically turns on & spins up whenever the attached PC boots (vs. defaulting to "off" unless you press the power button), and that the disk is formatted with the FAT32 filesystem. The filesystem issue isn't necessarily bad - just depends on what sort of OS your PC runs. Folks who run WinXP exclusively (I'm sorry) may want to reformat the drive as NTFS, and MacOS users will probably want to change it to HFS+. But FAT32 isn't bad. All modern OSes can read/write to it. The only drawback is that a single file can't be larger than 4GB on a FAT32 filesystem.

Anyway - good piece of kit. Recommended.

19 September 2006

Old Phones

Ever wish you had a source for one of those "built like a tank" old Western Electric desktop phones ? Well drop by Old Phones and have a look. All of their phones come equipped with an RJ-11 modular jack and are made to be used, not just displayed on a shelf.

How about a brand new, military surplus, rotary dial ITT model 500 in the original box for $65.00 ? Nice, hefty handset, and a good, loud "answer me, dammit" ringer - a classic :)

[via the Silicon Underground]