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iRiver H10 Junior


June 14th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

The iRiver H10 Junior was announced a while ago and is just now becoming available. iRiver H10 Junior The Jr. (shown at right) is a smaller version of the full-sized H10, having shed half of the latter’s weight and about a third of the volume … this was largely accomplished by ditching the 5GB disk and replacing it with 1GB of flash memory. Despite the lobotomy, the H10 Jr. continues to play MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, MP3 VBR, WMA, JPEG, TXT, and FM radio as well as support voice recording. And battery life has more than tripled thanks mostly to not having to spin the disk around. iRiver H10 Jr. product page

Posted in Music Players ~ No Comments

Multitools


June 12th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

Leatherman Charge Ti The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed 5 of those pocket multi-tool products : The Leatherman Charge Ti, Kershaw Multi-Tool, Gerber Legend, SOG PowerLock and the Swiss Army SwissTool X. They deemed the Leatherman as “best overall”, and the Kershaw as “best value”. Many of the devices lost points because of flimsiness or difficulty of operation. The reviewer liked the Kershaw’s locking pliers, but preferred the Leatherman’s “impressive engineering” and its tool release mechanism. If you’re like me and never actually use these things after buying them, go for the SOG … it was voted “best looking and most elegant”. For Dad, a Pocket-Sized Toolbox - Wall Street Journal 06/10/05 Leatherman Charge Ti - product page

Posted in General ~ 1 Comment

Sony NW-E507 – Reviewed


June 10th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

Sony NW-E507 Trusted Reviews thinks highly of the Sony NW-E507 MP3 Player. They’ve just rated it as a 9 out of ten, and deem it to be ‘recommended’. TR liked the looks (”absolutely stunning”), the controls, the OLED display, the sound quality (”very impressive”) and the battery life. They conclude with the words : “best flash based digital music player I�ve ever used”. Sony NW-E507 – MP3 Player - Trusted Reviews – 9 Jun 2005 Sony NW-E507 Sony product homepage

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CVS Single-Use Video Camcorder – Reviewed


June 8th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

CVS Disposable Video Camera Disposable camcorders for $29.99? Pure Digital makes them, and CVS sells them. For $12.99, the CVS chain of drugstores will also copy the twenty minutes of video it produces onto a DVD. Walt Mossberg has evaluated this camcorder. His assessment – its convenient, rugged and easy to use. While outdoor shots were ok, the indoor videos were sometimes grainy. The sound quality was often poor. The bottom line: “It’s well designed and does the job. Just don’t count on great results indoors”. CVS/pharmacy Pure Digital Technologies Testing the New Disposable Video Camera - Walt Mossberg – June 8, 2005

Posted in Cameras ~ No Comments

PalmOne LifeDrive Dissed


June 8th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

palmOne LifeDrive The palmOne LifeDrive mobile manager has just been reviewed by the Washington Post. They disliked almost everything about the device including (and especially) the poor handwriting-recognition software, the high price, the bulky size, the low capacity, the lack of multi-tasking and the short battery life. On the up-side, the reviewer liked the built-in WiFi and the software that supports Office documents. The reviewer concludes by saying that the LifeDrive is not ready for prime time. New PalmOne Offerings Fall Short of Promise - by Rob Pegoraro June 5, 2005 Gadgetmaniac postscript:- We recently made note of a very positive review of the LifeDrive by the New York Times dated May 19. This new ‘anti-review’ in the Washington Post represents a nearly perfect counterbalance to the somewhat effusive style of the review in the aforementioned NYT piece. One supposes that the truth lies somewhere in between these two remarkably diametrically opposed reviews.

Posted in General ~ No Comments

Sharp SL-C3100


June 7th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

Sharp SL-C3100 Sharp has a new PDA, the SL-C3100. Its a product refresh of the SL-C3000, reviewed here previously. Not a lot has changed … flash memory has been increased to 128MB from 16MB … but it still runs Lineo uLinux on a PXA270 cpu at 416MHz. The VGA touch screen stays at 3.7 in and the weight and dimensions are unchanged. If you want one you’ll have to go to someplace like dynamism.com, because its never going to show up around these parts. SL-C3100 Product Announcement - Sharp 2005-6-7

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Cell Phone Reliability


June 7th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

Samsung SGH-D500 shown with the SoundMate auxiliary speaker According to Connect Magazine, and as reported by Samsung and Telecoms Korea , the most reliable cell phone is the Samsung SGH-D500. Connect Magazine reviewed, and hopefully tested, 38 phones from 9 different manufacturers to derive their stats. I can’t vouch for the reliability of Connect’s reliability list, as their approach/methodology was not disclosed. If Connect’s “rank list” is indeed accurate, then Motorola seems to have strayed from the 6-Sigma quality improvement program that they pioneered in 1987 … Connect Magazine list of Cell Phone Relability For those who can’t read the graphic, the Samsung SGH-D500 is at the bottom of the list (which is good). Three out of the 4 most defective phones belong to Motorola, with the Motorola V300 appearing to be particularly bad, with a 38% defect rate. Telecoms Korea Connect Magazine

Posted in Phones ~ No Comments

Samsung’s New 4 Millisecond Monitors


June 7th, 2005


By GadgetManiac

Samsung has announced some new 4ms LCD monitors – the SyncMaster 178B (17 inches) and the SyncMaster 198B. Samsung SyncMaster 178B A grey to grey response time of four milliseconds is outstanding, and a boon to watchers of videos and to players of games everywhere. However, Samsung is not the first to market … that honor went to the ViewSonic VX924 and VX724. World�s fastest response monitor - The Korea Times, 06-07-2005

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100 Best Products of 2005


June 3rd, 2005


By GadgetManiac

PC World has just published its list of the 100 best products of 2005. Ranked at number 1, and with 50 million downloads worldwide, PC world’s product of the year is Mozilla Firefox, that free web browser. Firefox logo The review describes Firefox as being streamlined, customizable, and just plain better. The main features that they liked were- support for tabbed browsing, and the better security (as compared to IE). Curiously, PC World continues to promote Internet Explorer as being “Best for corporate users in controlled environments “. At number 2, we find Google Gmail, followed by Apple’s Tiger OS in third spot. The remainder of the list is a very mixed bag, with routers, spam filters and newspaper websites sharing space with bona-fide gadgets such as the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT camera (#9) and the Rio Carbon MP3 Player (#13). The 100 Best Products of 2005 – PC World, June 1 2005 Factoid: Apparently, the firefox logo was inspired by an ink drawing of a red panda aka Ailurus fulgens (brilliant cat), lesser panda, Himalayan raccoon or bear cat. Red Panda

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Gadgets for Travellers


June 3rd, 2005


By GadgetManiac

The International Herald Tribune has an article on 5 gadgets that can make life easier for international travellers :-

  • Plug adapters from www.warrior.co.jp. They apparently fit almost any wall socket on the planet.
  • Power adapter from iGo. Takes power from almost anything; sends it to two devices.
  • Hand generator from Sidewinder. For quick/small/emergency recharges.
  • Sierra Wireless AirCard 775 for connecting a laptop to the internet via a cellphone connection.
  • Garmin eTrex Vista Garmin eTrex Vista GPS device. Also downloads data to computers.

The article includes some anecdotes about how useful the devices have been in a variety of circumstances. Small arms for road warriors - IHT, June 4 2005

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