The Smorgasbord

Is the Samsung BD-P3600 better than the Playstation 3?

Do you need a Blu-Ray player, but don’t want or need the gaming aspect of the Playstation 3? The Samsung BD-P3600 one of the highest rated non-PS3 Blu-Ray players on the market. The features on this player are a laundry list of what you will need to never leave your couch again (or so the marketing people say). According to cNET (the holy grail of tech reviews) “The Samsung BD-P3600 is a huge leap ahead for standalone Blu-Ray players with blazing-fast operational speed, tons of features and excellent image quality.” Well let’s see if this player reaches its potential, or lags back like the rest of standalone Blu-Ray players we’ve seen in the past.

The player claims to boast a new innovative Video Quality Enhancement (QVE) feature that further improves the picture quality by adjusting brightness, flickering and other visual “noise”. While this sounds like an awesome feature it really only goes so far to improve video quality. This feature is clearly targeting videophiles but most videophiles have manually tweaked their settings anyways. We’re talking about guys so geeked about their home entertainment that they’ll spend $120 on a single oxygen free gold plated HDMI cord. This is not a mark down, but a heads up.

Besides the QVE vido enhancement this player really shines when you see all the options for viewing your media. First it has your Blu-Ray player, of which the benchmarks of the loading times met or came close to the industry leader, PS3. Next, it has a Netflix instant streaming player, which in term of performance works only slightly as well PS3’s Netflix player (but at least it’s there). It also has a Pandora Internet radio player but it feels tacked on and load times are on the slow side. Finally, the player offers the ability to stream content from your PC or laptop. Once again the feature seems tacked on, and not as full featured as it could be. It seems like it is only there so Samsung can say “look what we did!”

I really wanted to like this player. It seems like for everything it does right, it does two things wrong. If you are in the market for a Blu-Ray player or you are looking to upgrade, get a Playstation 3. Its really easy and it offers all the features of this player and much more, but it does it all much better.

This is my Amazon Kindle 2 Review. This post was originally from September 2008 and when I first wrote this post the Kindle’s were about $400 retail from Amazon. It was even pricey when the Kindle 2 first came out in Jan 2009, but now you can get one for around $200. I’ve always like the Kindle, but the video review below shows exactly why and you get to see my Kindle 2 as well – it’s only about 6 minutes.

Original Review

Last year in 2007 I remember when the Amazon Kindle was launched, and I thought “that’s kinda cool”. But it’s yet “another device” that does something you can already do on your mobile phone AND computer AND laptop! So, my first impression (back then) was that it was “cool” but not completely necessary. Now, let’s talk about what makes it viable as a gadget and why it’s becoming more popular.

The Amazon Kindle is an “eReader”. It’s meant for you to take it with you and read things, from novels and books, to newspapers and blogs. Battery life is long and it only needs a charge about every other day, and the screen is what they call “ePaper”. It’s not like your cellphone, laptop, or monitor screen – it has no glare (and it’s not backlit). It’s easy to read in any light, just like a book or newspaper.

Kindle has an “EVDO” connection just like the high speed connections of cell phones. This means that it’s “wireless”. The Kindle is different than other eReaders because it can get new content, download new books, or get fresh newspaper or blog content from RSS feeds “on the go” wherever you are. Don’t be fooled – you have to buy the books, but the “e” version is much cheaper. A latest New York Times best seller might be $26.99, but on Kindle it’s probably $9.99. Newspaper subscriptions cost money too, but with Kindle you can download the first few chapters of a book or read two weeks for free on a newspaper subscription before you pay anything. At least you can test drive before you pay. Magazines are available too like Time and Forbes.

You can’t exactly surf the web with Kindle, but one feature that is available is the ability to look anything up on Wikipedia. The included of the New Oxford American Dictionary could be very handy as well. It also has an annotation feature and bookmarking – so you can keep notes or keep track of where you were. One of the more controversial features are the RSS feeds. You can subscribe to any one of hundreds of RSS feeds (which are freely available on the web) for about $2 per month. Many people feel these should be completely free, as they are on the web. What they fail to realize is that kindle has no wireless charges at all – once you buy the unit there are no monthly fees. Your subscription fees basically cover the EVDO wireless access charges.

I didn’t even mention that it has an SD memory card slot, and that you can email documents to your Kindle for review, like pictures, PDF files, and Word docs. Now – it’s a tool you can use to review documents for school or work.

Here’s an Amazon Kindle review from a tech evangelist that has used many other eBook readers before he got the Kindle, this was his first review 12 hours after he got it.

Another Kindle video review:

I think that the Kindle could be one of the few gadgets you could give as a gift to people that are so “geeky” if you know what I mean. It’s easy to use, and Amazon has done a good job of taking away all the technological barriers away. It doesn’t have to be charged that often, and it never has to be connected to a computer or anything to work – it’s completely independent. This could actually be a really cool gift for Mom or Dad, Grandma or Grandpa. If you’re an avid reader or on the go a lot – the Kindle may be for you. There’s two ways to get one, and they are of course “new or used” Amazon Kindle’s. There are some for sale on eBay – check out these auctions.

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In addition, you can buy one new directly from Amazon itself here:

There are a lot of portable MP3 players on the market, and we review the Nextar T-30 with Christmas looming just months away…

I think a lot of people often wonder what’s out there besides iPod’s in the portable MP3 player space. Nextar now has the Nextar T-30 for under $100, and it’s just a half inch thin, and weighs only a few ounces. You get a 3.5″ display in 320×400, 4GB of internal storage, and 8 hour battery. It has an FM tuner (and recorder), and has a voice recorder and eBook reader. It even has an SD slot!

The iPod is so wildly popular (and still expensive) that competitors are coming out with quality products that have features the iPod doesn’t.  I’ve had iPod owners tell me “I don’t care about FM radio”, but you know, it’s nice to have when and if I want to use it!  And in my opinion Apple is very self serving (and stupid) for not equipping all new generations of iPod’s with SD card slots.  I’m sorry, if you are going to sell me a portable multimedia device capable of viewing movies, pictures, and music – there better be a damn card slot on it so I can interchange between my cell phone, laptop, digital camera, or whatever!  I think for $100 the Nextar is a steal…

Here’s the best prices you can get a Nextar T-30 for now (buy an Xmas gift early!):

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The LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player is now much more affordable than ever before, and even though Blu-Ray is now pretty much decided on as the standard for surpassing regular DVD’s in HD format – having the “HD-DVD” format option available is a bonus! If you’re wondering what the big deal is about a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc versus a traditional DVD movie – all you really have to know is that it’s displayed at nearly TWICE the resolution! If you thought a traditional or progressive scan DVD movie was a pretty good picture – if you own a flat screen LCD or Plasma television, you OWE it to yourself to upgrade your DVD player to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD!

Having said that – the LG BH200 is the one we picked because it not only plays in full 1080p output, but this player upscales the picture of traditional DVD’s to Full HD as well! It’s already setup to handle the “BD-Live” features touted ahead for Blu-Ray discs, but the LG “Super Blu Player” will also do MPEG’s, H.264 Quicktime, and DTS-HD audio as well. Oh, of course it has HDMI 1.3 out too. It also has S-Video and Component outs, but who would want to use those?

Guess what – it has USB “media host” too so you can set it up to access digital pics and MP3′s. Plugin your external hard drives, portable drives, or flash sticks for quick access and review of your multimedia files. The one thing we noticed was that this thing was practically silent when playing discs. It even has a network ethernet jack!

This would be a good treat for yourself and the old home entertainment center before you have to start saving to buy other people Christmas presents! Or, you could even put it away as an early present for that special someone.

Here are the best prices you can get on the LG BH200 Blu-Ray HD-DVD Combo Player:

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We just bought an RCA RTD217 home theater for our living room. It was kind of unexpected, but I thought I would blog about it because it was such a good deal. I’m no audiophile by any means, and I’m pretty geeky when it comes to computers and gadgets – and I do have a flat screen LCD hanging on the living room wall. But for some reason we just never got any kind of surround sound or home theater system. Probably because I spent the money on an external hard drive or something else.

So I’m in the store and we see they have some display models on clearance – and I took a look. They had 2 DVD players and one was HDMI output that was pretty cool. But then I saw this RCA surround sound system for half off the retail. It was 250 watts (50 per speaker), a 5 disc DVD changer, AM/FM radio, but the thing that sold me was the fact that it would play CD and DVD data disks, Windows Media, DivX, PhotoCD’s – just about anything. The selling feature was the fact that it had a USB port on the front that said it would accept both USB flash drives or external hard drives!

So at half off we couldn’t resist – we snatched it up and took it home. I hooked it up to the 5 prong component cable to our flat screen, wired up the speakers, and fired it up! It has 4 levels of subwoofer, both surround and stereo modes, DVD’s were awesome (progressive scan), and we sent audio from the TV back to it so the cable could play through it on the AUX channel.

Then we brought in the external hard drive, and that’s when the surprise came in. We plugged in a 300GB Western Digital Mybook and brought up the menu on the TV. MP3′s played fine, pictures were great, but we couldn’t get it to play any video at all. Not Windows Media, DivX, MPG, anything! Arghh! We went back and read the manual and found out that the USB port only plays AUDIO!! Crap! All is not lost because we can still play data discs, but that means burning one every time. I guess we just have to get some rewritables. I still say that at half off it was a good deal. Let this be a lesson to you if you go shopping for a home theater with a USB input jack!

I am however, going to start searching for a stereo system that you can hook up external drives too and play video!! I’ve heard you can “hack” the menus of some DVD players too (through the firmware) and this is something that we’re certainly going to look into.

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Don’t lost valuable documents, mp3′s, and digital photos use a “Buffalo Drivestation” to backup your valuable data.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

When I wrote my “Network Storage Review“, one of the first things in that article was the “Buffalo Drivestation”. I was thinking about the Drivestation this week because I had a family member who had a hard drive crash and lost all of her family photos and mp3′s she’d purchased, in addition to saved tax returns, and many other valuable documents.

I think sometimes people forget what kinds of “digital treasures” are stored on your PC or laptop, and what kind of chaos could ensue if it suddenly disappeared tomorrow. The Drivestation came to mind because it comes in so many different sizes (from 320GB to many Terabytes), and because it’s so easy to use. Just plug it in, push the button, and you’re backed up! They make models big enough for most small to medium sized businesses, and the versions with “RAID” have 2 hard drives inside for dual mirroring. That means if one hard drive fails, there’s another as a backup. The disks are even encrypted, so if anyone takes the unit, they can’t access any of your data.

It’s like insurance for your computer in a way. You have insurance for your car and home don’t you? If you have an accident or a fire your insurance company will replace what you have lost. Not only is there no insurance for your computer, but the personal documents and data you lose there likely can’t be replaced at all. If you have pics of your daughter’s wedding on your computer’s hard drive, for example, if they were lost no amount of money could compensate you for that.

I recommended the Buffalo Drivestation to my family member that lost her data, and I recommend it to you because of it’s ease of use, multiple connections (firewire and USB), and because it works with both Macs and PC’s. The price is reasonable for the value you get, and even your Grandma or the most tech-clueless office manager or secretary could set one up.

You can nearly always find Drivestations on eBay, or Amazon (below).

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A “digital notepad” is portable to write notes on the go, and transfer them to your computer later. It’s about the same size as a regular notepad, but you use it the same way. Just write on the screen with the stylus like you’re writing on a piece of paper. You don’t have to be attached to a computer or anything. Most of these devices have internal storage so you can save lots of notes, but they also have an SD card slot so you can add even more storage.

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

How many times have you wanted to transfer something you’ve written down to your computer? With the “digital notepad” once you’ve written your notes, you can connect to your PC with a USB cable and transfer them. The better ones also convert to a full functional PC table for drawing! It could then be used with Photoshop, other graphics editors, CAD/CAM applications, and more.

The other day my wife and I were in the emergency room and when we were ready to check out and leave the nurse brought in a laptop. She flipped the screen around and set it flat and it had our discharge papers on the LCD screen for us to sign. As we were leaving my wife asked me why I didn’t want one of those. I’ve looked at “tablet PC’s” the last few years, and they’re really “cool” and all, but I told her I couldn’t think of a direct reason (other than the ‘cool’ factor) for me to own one. In fact, mostly I see them used by people that have to deal with lots of paperwork, like UPS or Fedex drivers, warehouse workers, healthcare, etc.

A college student even asked me if I thought that the Panasonic “Toughbook” tablet PC was good for him – and at $2,300 I didn’t think it was. I told him that he could get a kick-ass laptop for about $1,200, and this for aroun $150-$200. The digital notepad may not have the full functionality that an entire laptop does, but it will surely get the job done for note taking in class. I think it would be better because you wouldn’t have all the normal distractions of a computer (email, IM, the web) when you were in class. Just think of all the things you could use this for from a guestbook at a graduation or birthday party, grocery list at the store, notes at the library, you could even have people write specials notes to a bride and groom at a wedding reception!

I think for the money, when compared with other gadgets like digital cameras, that digital notepads are not only a good bargain – but very handy!
Here’s a few for you to look at:

Adesso CyberPad 8.5″ x 11″ USB Digital Notepad Imagine having a notepad with the ability to transfer what you’ve written on paper, directly onto your computer? What a remarkable convenience that would be! Adesso makes it all possible with this revolutionary CyberPad! The CyberPad is a stand-alone device with internal storage capability that digitally captures and stores everything you write or draw with ink on ordinary paper, such as letter size or A4 size without the use of computer and special paper. An optional SD slot makes it perfect for additional storage. Then you can easily view, edit, organize and share your handwritten notes on your computer screen.The Adesso CyberPad digitally stores exact reproductions of notes or graphics in real time. It includes a clip which accommodates all standard letter-sized paper pads. The CyberPad includes 32MB of internal memory which provides 26 directories (A-Z) with 99 pages available in each – and is further expandable with the integrated SD slot – which can also act as an SD card reader. It then connects to a PC via USB to instantly transfer and manage notes and images. Once connected to a PC, Adesso’s CyberPad can also convert into a fully-functional PC tablet, which is an ideal input solution for computer artists, graphic designers, photo editors and office and CAD/CAM applications. Other emerging applications include Internet whiteboard graphics, signature verification for e-commerce as well as handwriting/text conversion.

8.5 X11INCH DIGITAL NOTEPAD WITH ELECTRIC INKING PEN, BULIT-IN 32MB MEMORY ,OVER The CyberPad integrates the familiarity of pen-on-paper feel. It’s a digital notepad with an electronic inking pen that feels and works as well as a regular pen. It lets you to naturally write as you usually do with a regular pen on paper. No special papers needed! Utilizing the electromagnetic technology, it lets you put any ordinary letter size or A4 size paper on the pad and use the inking pen to write directly on the paper. Even if the thickness of papers laid on the pad are 0.75 thick; your handwritten notes can still be captured and stored in the built-in or optional SD card memory slot of your CyberPad.

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Need external storage that’s extremely portable? I’ve wished for an external hard drive enclosure that’s wireless, and my wireless hdd guide will show you the in’s and out’s of what’s currently available!

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

I’ve blogged a lot off an on about making your home entertainment network more user friend, and the gadgets that can help you get it done. Yesterday we were talking at home about the value of maybe getting a big external hard drive and hooking it up (wired) to one PC so the entire household could store their media on it. We’d maybe start it off with one big USB 2.0 external 500GB disk. You can get one new for around $120. I’ve written about the wireless USB hub and how you could connect multiple external hard drives or enclosures that way, and I’ve also posted about the value of a good network storage drive. But now they’re coming out with wireless hard drives that may start to change all of that…

What is a Wireless Hard Drive?

You have to be very careful when you’re shopping for a wireless hard drive, because devices that may appear to do the same thing may not. There are many, many flavors that may do many many different things – pay attention to what your needs are, the price, and value for the money. I’m going to show you some different kinds of wireless hard drives and enclosures:

The Iomega 33349 StorCenter has 1 Terabyte (1,000 GB) of storage and is a “Network Storage Device” – meaning you can plug it into your router or switch on your home or business network for everyone to share (without having it hooked to one dedicated computer). The StorCenter is “wireless” as well as wired, so all laptops and mobile devices can access it. Imagine having one device that could be accessed by PC’s, laptops, cell phones, PDA, iPhone, iTouch, or even your PSP or other mobile devices. There’s a price to be paid for all this technology, and it’s a little under $500 (as of this writing). You can get the latest price by following these links.

Iomega 33349 StorCenter 1 TB Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Network Storage

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You have some products that proclaim to be a “Wireless Media Player” like the MG-350HD HD Wireless 802.11G Media Player by Mediagate. This is just fancy hard drive enclosure – since the device comes sans hard drive. It does proclaim so pretty boasty features, like the ability to stream HD video via wireless up to 1920 x 1080p. It’s got all kinds of fancy connections, like L/R stereo out, and composite, component, and S-video out. This particular unit can stream video from an internal hard drive or a PC on the network and even has a remote control. So you can see that this unit (as a wireless hard drive) is very different in that it can be a set-top box OR a media gateway to access (from networked PC’s). Follow these links to find more out about this device.

MG-350HD HD Wireless 802.11G Media Player. By Mediagate

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You might be interested in an Asus Wireless Storage Router which has an internal 250GB hard drive. It has a USB connector so you can connect other (wired) storage devices to it for sharing, and it even has the ability to download files from the Internet when your PC is turned off. The specs say you can download up to 7 bitTorrent files or 10 FTP/HTTP files simultaneously. For what it does, this wireless hard drive is a pretty good at half the price (and storage) as the StorCenter. You can get the wireless storage router through these links:

Wireless Storage Router

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If you a have a hard drive lying around, you might be able to stick in a wireless hard drive enclosure box and put it on your network (wirelessly) that way. You can get one pretty reasonably, but the two I found were only for 2.5″ drives. I hope we see more (and a 3.5″ version) on eBay soon:

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You can actually make any external hard drive enclosure wireless by using the Linksys Storage Link for USB Disk Drives. Just like many other devices Linksys makes to connect computer hardware to your home or business network, they make a Storage Link that will connect any 2 USB storage devices to your wireless local network. The thing that’s always sucked about external hard drives is that they have to be attached to a physical computer via USB to work, and then you have to access them through that computer on the network. If that computer is turned off or locked up – you can’t access those drives. With a Linksys Storage Link, you can put up to 2 USB storage devices on your network independant of all your PC’s. Just plug it into your router or hub (or switch) to work. Oh – you can even stick a flash memory stick or drive into one of the USB slots to share it on the network as well. This is not only great for file sharing, but an easy way to connect with many mobile devices!

Linksys Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives NSLU2

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Wireless Hard Drive Auctions

Products and listings change on eBay all the time, so here’s the lastest auctions for “wireless hard drive” on eBay right now!

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