Chillaxin’ With Vista

Posted by: Steve Laser on Oct 08 2007 - 758 views

Last week I was visiting customers when I settled in my hotel room.  I pulled out a cold one, turned my Vista lappy on, and connected to the wifi.  Or at least tried to.  My connection was on again, off again.  Everytime I connected and clicked on a link, I would lose the connection.  I kept restarting it, using the Dell Wifi Utility, and using all my meager powers to maintain a connection - all to no avail.  I knew that since my pocket pc connected with no problem, that my laptop had the problem. 

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iM-490S iMetal Isolation Earphones Review

Posted by: Steve Laser on Oct 02 2007 - 1,397 views

I’m always in search of the next pair of great headphones. It’s an obsession. I love music. I play drums and I need great headphones.

I need them when I workout, I need them when I travel.

I want them when I’m out and about; I need them to unravel.

Are you singing along?

So when Maximo Products offered up their iM-490S Earphones up for review, I jumped. They are "acoustically tuned to provide optimal audio playback from your Sansa®MP3 player", though they are supposed to work well with other brands as well. My wife happens to have a Sandisk Sansa e260. How convenient!

When my plastic blister package arrived, I tore into it like a child at Christmas - who owns a very sharp scissors. But my rush was premature. In order to truly enjoy these sophisticated in-ear headphones, I was told to condition them overnight, by playing music through them at medium volume. Oh, the wait!

 

 

The Sandisk Sansa is really a tiny player, and the headphones come in a tidy carrying case. They even have an extended cable section that gives you an extra couple feet. The headphones are very handsome, the case looks great and I’m ready to roll after I pick out one of the three included pairs of tips that fit my ears the best.

 

Comfort and Fit

What good are headphones if you can’t wear them for more than a few minutes? These happened to fit great. They come with small, medium and large soft silicone tips. I chose the medium. These headphones actually go into your ear, unlike the iPod type that "fit" outside the edge of your ear. But unlike some of the in-ear headphones I’ve tried in the past, I didn’t feel like they went in so far that my brain was getting penetrated. iPod headphones are actually decent headphones - until you hear good headphones. And good headphones must fit properly. iPod headphones just lay on the edge of your ear. These cans fit nicely, and create a comfortable seal that locks out the ambient sound. iPod style cans are incapable of that, as they do not form a seal in your ear.

Sound

Would the sound match the good looks? These are $49.95 msrp headphones, so I went in not expecting to be blown away. The sound was clear and loud, even at low volumes. The Sandisk Sansa can really crank and I played with various equalizer settings to experiment with the range of the cans. What I found was that these headphones have a nice high end, clean and smooth. The Midrange struggled to get on the better side between being full balanced and flat. The bass was undistinguished and distant. Overall, the cans tended toward the warmer side of the spectral audio landscape. They blocked the outside sound beautifully as well. In fact, I forgot I had the TV on. I’ll have to rewatch the final episode of Bret Michaels - Rock of Love, as I didn’t hear a thing.

Conclusion

I have found that everyone has their own set of ears and their own set of preferences, so if you like cans that lean toward the treble / high end, these are your set. They are smooth, fit very well and look great. For the price, they are a nice deal. If you shop around you can find them for a better price.

Features

• Light-weight aluminum alloy body
• High-fidelity 9mm neodymium drivers
• 3 pairs/sizes (L,M,S) of eartips
• Gold-plated 3.5mm stereo plug
• 2-ft extension cable
• Premium carrying case
• Lifetime warranty

Specs

• Frequency response: 18Hz-22KHz
• Sensitivity (1KHz, 0.1V): > 100dB
• Maximum SPL output: >120dB

Read more at Maximo Products

[tags]headphones, sansa, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]

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Softmaker Office Announces 2008 Beta

Posted by: Steve Laser on Oct 02 2007 - 853 views

The best just got better.  This free public beta is just for your windows machine.  If you have used Pocket Excel or Pocket Word, and wanted a complete version of Excel or Word on pocket pc, then Softmaker is the place to go.  Those of us that have used their Softmaker Office for Pocket PC have enjoyed the high life.   Their versions of Planmaker (Excel) and Textmaker (Word) are like working with the desktop versions.  They make Pocket Excel and Pocket Word seem like toys.  Indeed, Planmaker and Textmaker for the Pocket PC include full formatting, charting, spell checking, and are just a joy to use.  They are fully compatible with Microsoft Office, and Softmaker even has Desktop versions if you don’t have Office.

And why wouldn’t you have MS Office? Well, for one, it starts at $150 and the newest version, with the new ribbon, is convoluted and confusing to use.  Softmaker is looking to compete head to head with Microsoft.  That means that their Windows version should be competitively priced, easy to use and offer features that match or beat those offered by the industry leader. 

Softmaker feels they are up to the challenge with their free, 40mb Beta download.  It includes the following:

SoftMaker Office 2008 for Windows contains:

Word processor: TextMaker 2008
Spreadsheet: PlanMaker 2008
Presentation graphics: SoftMaker Presentations 2008 
BASIC macros: BasicMaker 2008 (a scripting language modeled after BASIC)

Softmaker is going after the heart of MS Office.  Excel, Word, Powerpoint and the Visual Basic Scripting language are all turned on their tales and and thrown like daggers back at the heart of the beast. 

Be a Beta Tester.  Free Download.

Read more at MobilitySite

[tags]office, excel, word, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]

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What is Windows Live?

Posted by: Steve Laser on Oct 02 2007 - 671 views

Mauricio Freitas of Geekzone, wrote an interesting article attempting to explain what Windows Live is.    He found this definition:

“Windows Live brings your online world together and helps you manage your social network.”

Doesn’t Facebook do that?

Microsoft generally doesn’t create the game.  They don’t show up on time, but they have the most money and resources, so they either recreate the game or just buy it out.  But when it comes to Live, they have an uphill battle.  Because the king of that hill is Google.  That’s a big hill, and Google is Goliath.  And in this context, Microsoft is actually David.

Read the excellent article that Mauricio wrote

Read my previous article about the David and Goliath battle

[tags]windows live, geekzone, google, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]

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Zune 2 Announcement Coming Wednesday

Posted by: Steve Laser on Oct 01 2007 - 591 views

Hey ice cream man! Don’t those Zunes look like ice cream colors? Well, the rumors are flying everywhere, and apparantly, Wednesday is the big day! Stay tuned, Microsoft is supposed make a big announcement about Zune 2. And we all know what a huge impact Zune 1 was supposed to have against the iPod. Ok, I’m being sarcastic. But now that Apple laid down the gauntlet with their recent new lineup, including the Nano fatty, the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPod Classic, methinks Zune 2 better bring its A+ Game brutha.

Read more at Engadget and Mobilitysite

[tags]zune, ipod, mp3, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]

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The Dictionary Says Apple is…Insane?

Posted by: Steve Laser on Sep 27 2007 - 829 views

Today Apple released a press statement. It goes a little something like this:

“CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple has   discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.”

Read the rest of it here.

The people who buy the iPhone and hack it for whatever reason, are saying to Apple that they want to live outside of the “box” that Apple has put them in. The users want a choice of carriers, and they want 3rd party software. They will go to any extent to get it. From the first day that the iPhone was released, the hacking began. The more that Apple fights it, the more the hackers hack. Heck, the more I tell my kids to stop whatever they’re doing, the more they do it!

You know how I became a great parent? I took the Microsoft approach to parenting. I changed the rules. In the Microsoft world, hacking is encouraged. Now my kids love me:) And customers love third party software. To me, this is a repeat of the initial computer war that Apple and Microsoft had at the beginning with the PC v. the Mac, way back in the early 80’s. Apple had a better product but locked the architecture. MS did the opposite, they opened up the architecture. We all know the story. Apple, for some reason, thinks they can make money selling hardware. They should get out of the hardware business and into the software business. They are damning themselves to repeat the same mistake.

Does anyone know the definition of insanity? Read more at Aximsite.

[tags]apple, insanity, microsoft, hacker, jamm, just another mobile monday[/tags]

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