I am a complete Weird Al Yankovic fan and have been since “Another One Rides The Bus.” His latest song is a Doors style parody with Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist from the Doors, on the synthesizer! You can see it here:
I love it when Weird Al gets technical! For reminiscing appeal, here’s “It’s All About The Pentiums.”
I was finishing up my vegetable stew when the bowl flipped a bit and spilled a bunch of stew and broth all over my computer keyboard. Whenever I make an “Oops!” noise, the dog comes running, in hopes that I have spilled something for him to eat off the floor. I took one look at Sid’s begging eyes and another look and my stewed computer keyboard. As if by habit, I disconnected the keyboard from the computer and placed it on the floor for Sid to “clean up.”
By the time I realized that I had done something REALLY weird, Sid was almost finished cleaning off the keyboard. I grabbed the camera and snapped this photo of him cleaning and Elvis wishing Sid would let him have some too.
Sid’s big, pink tongue cleaned off the keyboard surprising well, but that didn’t stop me from cleaning it again with a good coat of Windex. I haven’t had any troubles with it acting funny, sticking keys or doggy breath.
Who said diamonds were a girl’s best friend?
Marilyn? Hon, you gotta learn a bit a somethin’ from us Geek Girls!
I saw this commercial flash by on my Tivo the other day and stopped to watch it. It’s an advertisement for Microsoft that follows a girl named Lauren who is looking for a laptop for $1000.
The most noticeable thing she said during the ad for me was,
I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.
I was pretty angry when she said that. I would FAR rather sacrifice on screen size and go with the 13″ screen in order to have the easy to use operating system and applications that come with my Mac.
I was about to write a scathing review when I realized that Michael Gartenberg had written it for me.
In tough economic times it’s not just about price but value. Where do I, the consumer, get the most value for each dollar I spend. Or as Oscar Wilde said, “The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Apple’s ads have never been about being the cheapest, they are about the value that comes with owning a Macintosh. The differentiation of the PC/Mac experience through hardware and software design that’s what’s been attracting consumers. Apple’s continued to do well even in these times precisely because consumers are extra careful about where they spend their money. They can’t afford buyer’s remorse.
Microsoft can’t just make this about cost, it has to show value. It has to show a PC experience that can be equal or superior to a Macintosh experience. Only then does price matter in the long run.
Michael quoted Oscar Wilde, but there is another quote that rings true here:
Buy expensive and cry once. Buy cheap and cry a million times.
I fought and FOUGHT with my PC to make it do what my Mac does easily. Macs aren’t perfect. Mine crashes and I get the spinning beach ball of doom every once and a while, but the act of using my computer is so much easier now.
Sure, a Windows machine might be okay for a netbook, but if you need to do anything substantial with your machine (like video editing or photo editing), then you will get FAR more value from a $1000 Mac with a 13″ screen than that 17″ Hewlett Packard that Lauren got. I hope she doesn’t have to cry a million times.
Have I ever told you how much I love Jane from What About Mom? I read her blog every day and she mostly talks about her life, which has very little to do with gadgets, so I guess I’ve never told you how enjoyable her writing is. Case in point is this entry a few weeks ago:
Earlier this week I thought I broke my computer, and instead of freaking out, I calmly filmed it so I could show Dick just how placid I can be.
I have NEVER seen a PC do this! I would have been freakin’ out and Jane is just calmly filming so she can show her husband what the computer did. I have never once in my life shown this sort of zen in the face of computer madness. The next time my Mac does something like this to me (Don’t fool yourself, fanboys, Macs DO have crazy problems!), I’m going to remember Jane and how calmly she filmed the problem.
Any ideas on what could have caused this problem?
“You kids use the Internet, doncha?”
It was 1999. Mike and I were visiting my grandfather in Billings, Montana. He handed us a white plastic cat with a PS/2 connector at the end of its tail.
“What is it?” I held the plastic barcode scanner in my hand. My grandpa seemed proud to produce something that we computer kids had never seen. Mike piped up, “Is that a CueCat?” He took it out of my hand and turned it over.
My grandpa smirked. “They sent it to me because I have IBM stock.” Mike immediately explained that we were supposed to connect it to our computer so we could scan in magazine ads and it would automatically load up the URL.
“Why wouldn’t I just type the URL into the computer?” I asked. Mike shrugged and smiled. “I KNOW it’s the most useless thing! I heard some people are taking them apart and using them for normal barcode scanners, though.” Visions of kids playing grocery store at home ran through my head. I looked at my grandfather’s eyes. He was so proud to be able to produce such a strange treasure.
You can find out more about it here:
The CueCat (trademarked :CueCat) is a cat-shaped handheld barcode reader developed in the late 1990s by the now-defunct Digital Convergence Corporation, which connected to computers using the PS/2 keyboard port and later USB. The CueCat enabled a user to open a link to an Internet URL by scanning a barcode - called a “cue” by Digital Convergence - appearing in an article or catalog or on some other printed matter. In this way a user could be directed to a web page containing related information without having to enter a URL. The system that supported this is no longer in operation.
Because we never throw anything away, we still have our CueCat…
Somewhere…
When I got my Acer Aspire, I immediately wanted to make it look unique. Fortunately, there were a ton of skins made specifically for it from Decalgirl. I bought a bunch of different ones, but I really love this one. It’s called, aptly enough, Laurie’s Garden for the Acer Aspire.
I really like how the skin is made specifically for my laptop. They even cut out holes for the little indicator lights.
I also bought the Laurie’s Garden skin for my iPhone.
Each iPhone skin comes with a code to allow me to download a wallpaper to put on my iPhone to match up with the skin. I was worried that the Laurie’s Garden skin might look weird on my white iPhone, but it turns out that there is plenty of white in the design to make it look good.
You can see all the photos here:
Whenever I get a new gadget, I want to make it MINE. Putting a skin on my iPhone and laptop is a great way to mark my toys as mine and fulfill my matching disease in one fail swoop.
I’ve been reluctant to jump on the e-book reader bandwagon. My thoughts on the matter are here:
Matt Strebe, one of our other writers was able to compare the Sony eBook reader with the first version of Amazon Kindle here:
Now that Amazon has release its second reader, Kindle 2, it has finally reached the point where I’m tempted to buy one.
Why? One reason: FREE 3G wireless. According to Amazon’s site:
Whispernet utilizes Amazon’s optimized technology plus Sprint’s national high-speed (3G) data network to enable you to wirelessly search, discover, and download content on the go. Your books and periodicals are delivered via Whispernet in less than 60 seconds. And unlike WiFi, you never have to hunt for a hotspot.
No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a wireless bill. There is no wireless setup–you are ready to shop, purchase and read right out of the box.
Here is a quick video about the Amazon Kindle 2:
I don’t have a need for an e-book reader, but if I read best seller books or newspapers often, this is the reader that would finally get me off the fence and buy one.
The product on my Most Wanted List from CES is the WebAround.
It is a portable and lightweight disk that hooks to the back of your chair that provides you with privacy when you use your webcam. Whether it’s for video blogging or video conferencing, it is a great product. Here is a video from their website describing how to use it:
It could also be used for green screen effects or use it with iMovie to easily put yourself in front of whatever image or video you want. I would go with the Ocean Blue color if you want to do any green screen effects (unless your entire wardrobe is blue).
For only $30, the WebAround is a great product. You can order them directly from their website here:
At $99 street price at the time of this writing, the Corsair Flash Voyager is bulk flash storage on the cheap. With a read speed of 27MB/sec and a write speed of 11MB/sec, its performance is typical of mid-speed USB drives.
But with this much storage, performance becomes critical. You purchase large capacity drives because you have big files you need to move. I copied a 27GB virtual machine data file to the drive, which took 40 minutes. My A-data 32GB Expresscard drive (through a USB interface), on the other hand, copied the same file in 20 minutes, and a RAID-0 drive of 4 USB flash drives copied the data in 15 minutes (which is essentially the USB bus limit for data transfers).
It’s always disappointing when I plug a drive in and I’m reminded of the difference between what the package says and what the drive is. A 64GB drive really equals 60GB of data, which is the amount that will show up in your operating system when you mount it. Whether or not you’re being ripped off depends on the definition of a gigabyte: To everyone in the computing world except drive manufacturers, a Gigabyte is the binary 2 raised to the 30th power (1,073,741,824). To the drive industry, a gigabyte is the decimal 10 raised to the 9th power (1,000,000,000). In the days of megabyte hard drives, the difference was negligible but in the days of terabyte drives, the difference will hold an entire operating system installation. Drive manufacturer’s say they can’t change or they’ll look bad in comparison. I think it’s an issue the FTC should rule on so that all manufacturers have to change at once. But this is a review, and not a rant on ancient numerical injustices, so I’ll go on.
Like all flash drives, the Corsair Flash Voyager 64GB is highly reliable. However, out of the eight Corsair Flash Voyager drives I’ve owned, one failed suddenly. Despite the promise of a lifetime warranty, the warranty was basically impossible to execute, with the company sending forms back and forth and then basically doing nothing until I gave up on it because it wasn’t worth my time. I wound up returning it to Fry’s Electronics, who happily exchanged it even though it was beyond their return period.
There were a lot of people displaying iPod cases and USB drives in The Sands at CES this year, but the cutest of them all was from Bone Collection.
They had these adorable penguin USB drives. They were 4GB, which is enough for the transfer of some personal documents. It’s even enough to load Linux onto and run from the USB drive instead of the hard drive.
Mostly, they were just CUTE!
When I worked in an office, there were some personal documents that I used to work on during my breaks or lunchtime. I would keep them on a USB stick so I wouldn’t have to save them on my work computer or keep emailing them home to myself. This little penguin would have been perfect for that.
The USB is under his head, so you DO have to decapitate a penguin every time you use the drive, but most of the time, he can just sit on your desk looking cute.
These little guys are actually available for purchase NOW. You can buy them at X-treme Geek here:
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