ARogan

Skyrim (XBOX 360 and PC)

2012-02-10T14:33:00.009-06:00

Yes, I like the game so much I bought it twice. I picked up the 360 version on launch day but didn't get around to playing it until much later (I was trying to finish Rage first....yeah don't ask). I just picked up the PC version this week since it went on sale for $40 on steam and to check out some of the cool mods.

WARNING: There might be what some people consider to be very minor spoilers but nothing plot related.

XBOX 360
- Looks great to me. Having three 360's and cloud saves lets me easily switch rooms depending on what the family is currently occupying.
- Finished the main quest line at level 50, 83 hrs with companions and all but the last thieves guild quest (I wanted to keep the skeleton key). I'm currently working getting the remaining words of power and then I'll begin the Civil war quest line. I'll probably go stomrcloaks with this character. The Imperials almost took my head off and yeah I don't forget or forgive!!!
- I stuck to first person POV for 99% of the time.
- I really like two wiki's. The first one is great for general information and quest info. The second is good for looking up locations:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skyrim
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim
I'm not going to link a whole lot in this article since you can just search for it in the uesp wiki.
- My build was a very traditional one: one hand sword, heavy armor, block, with archery for some ranged firepower, and during the mid game I dabbled a bit in conjuration.
- Smithing and enchanting are both super powerful and worth leveling. Though once you hit level 50 or so you pretty much 1-2 shot everything including dragons.
- If you decide to power level some professions I suggest you sink your talent points into your main build areas. So for me that would be the ones I listed above. That way you don't end up getting out leveled by the enemies around you. It doesn't happen that much anyways in Skyrim as compared to Oblivion with the way scaling works now.
- I did choose to power level smithing (create about 450 - 500 iron daggers will get you to 100 smithing, faster if you have the appropriate stone buff). During this entire time, every time I leveled I would go train with one of the companions for free (make them a follower first, train your 5 levels, trade with them and get your gold back, dismiss them and pick back up the follower you prefer to use).
- Enchanting was a bit tougher which I didn't max out until I was in my mid 40's level wise. I would buy up every single lesser and petty soul gem I could find (filled or empty). There are at least 3 people who carry soul gems in whiterun (your wife,Belethor,Farengar) . Try and find a weapon (sometimes merchants will have one for sale) with a soul trap enchant on it and learn it so you can enchant your own weapon with soul trap (1 sec duration, max charges). Then go crazy trying to fill as many soul gems as possible while questing. Come back and enchant all those iron daggers you made from smithing with the priciest enchants you have (banish is by far the most profitable with absorb health being second, do both once you max enchanting). Now you can sell these enchanted daggers for big profits. Soon, money won't be an issue at all. I'm sitting on over 80K gold right now.
- I did the black star quest pretty early on, and I went with the black star choice which can absorb any soul. If I'm on a quest with humanoid enemies I would recharge my soul trap sword with the black star before I killed another humanoid which would just refill the black star. You keep doing these frequent recharges, and it also helps level up your enchanting.
- Once you max out enchanting make sure you spend perks to get dual enchants (I picked all perks except the far right branch). Read this on optimizing. I didn't go quite that crazy since I hate alchemy. Even with alchemy in the 20's I was able to create a one hand daedric sword with base damage of 361. The key thing is using 4 fortify one hand enchants that ALL STACK that increases your weapon damage to crazy levels. Add to that a fiery soul trap (3 sec duration) plus absorb health (max absorption) enchant and you become pretty unstoppable. For the bow I tried to make a mage killer: paralysis and shock. I'm thinking now though I should have probably went with fiery soul trap + paralysis. For the rest of the pieces I went with a mix of increasing max health, stamina, block, and heavy armor and a bit of magicka on the helm.
- Remember, once you enchant an item there is no undo. This also means once you get dual enchant you can't add a 2nd enchant to an item already enchanted. I you have to start with a clean item and then put both enchants on at once. It's nice that the process only takes 1 grand soul gem though.
- On the other hand you can continually improve weapons and armor through blacksmithing. So as you improve your blacksmithing (or have a better fortify restoration pot) you can go back to the grinding stone or workbench and further improve your gear.
- For armor I'm basically in dragon bone. For weapons I'm using daedric. If you are short on materials on either of those try ebony. The ebony ingots are pretty easy to get from the 3 blacksmiths + general merchants in whiterun. Basically, if you are selling enchanted daggers usually the merchants don't have near enough gold. So I would always buy up all the ebony ingots they had and then sell them my daggers and drain them of all their gold. I now have 100's of ingots which to cheaply craft ebony weapons and armor which I can experiment with different enchantments or give to my follower. The main things I always buy from merchants are lockpicks, ebony ingots, and high end arrows.
- Go get married early to pick up a nice food buff, sleeping xp buff, and a cozy little profit. I married Camilla Valerius in Riverwood since you should have already met her quest requirement (golden claw). She also becomes a merchant which is just another source for you to sell your stuff.
- Fast travel is very convenient and you can play a small amount of gold to ride the carriages (there is one right at whiterun stables) to get to any of the major cities to unlock them.
- I started with Lydia as my follower for about the first half of my play time. I recommend switching to Mjoll if you want a good melee 2 hand/archer follower. She's a bit chatty (some people like that) but it seems like she can't be perma killed (unlike Lydia which I had to reload many times b/c I found her dead after some of the harder fights).
- For follower enchants I used fiery soul trap + paralysis on all their weapons. Give them a few soul gems and some empty ones and they will be self sufficient as far as keeping their weapons charged up and filling a few soul gems to boot. On armor I stuck on fortify health and carry weight wherever I could making them the best pack mule they can be!
- My horses keep dying or getting lost. I'm thinking about doing dark brotherhood just to get Shadowmere. I had Frost but he somehow died or disappeared. Yeah, I have bad luck with horses.
- Steed stone is by far my favorite especially for heavy armor.
- Keep visiting the greybeards for more words of power locations if you are trying to collect them all.

PC
- Trying out a pure mage High Elf destruction build. I'll probably hit the mage's college early on to check that quest line out.
- Graphics look even better at 1080p + the new free hd texture pack dlc.
- I love the quicker save/load times. This is by far the biggest difference I notice. Even with the disc installed on the 360 load times take way too long. Quick save/load is also a very nice pc only feature.
- Mods Mods Mods which is the main reason I bought the PC version too. My 360 game is my pure experience while I plan to mod out the PC version quite a bit.
- First of all I'm not really using steam workshop as of yet since without a search feature it's pretty much dead to me. Instead go here for all your modding needs:
(UPDATE: As I was writing this steam workshop finally got a search bar and most of the mods I listed are there too).
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com
- Make sure you install this first:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/content/modmanager/
which makes managing your mods a lot easier.
Current mods I'm using:
SkyUI - The best UI replacement. You must install SKSE first though (read the readme. It's easy).

I also wanted to make skyrim with a bit more ummm eye candy but still making it safe to play around family.
CBBE (with the nevernude option, Make sure you follow the .ini modification needed if you have the texture pack installed)
Better females by Bella (for that glam look. I still hate bethesda faces. They were a bit better in skyrim though).
Killer Keos Skimpy CBBE V2 Armor Set -Work In Progress (for ummm more interesting looking armor)
- I've only had the PC version for a few days so I'm still exploring the mod scene.
- Regardless of what the title says I think these console commands would make you feel like a cheater but still these could come in handy:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Skyrim-Console-Commands-That-Will-Not-Make-You-Feel-Like-a-Cheater-236613.shtml
- Runs pretty well on my macbook pro 15" mid 2010. I actually got the cider wrapper to work but it was still a pretty big fps hit even at low settings (felt at least 10fps slower than bootcamp). In bootcamp I'm getting a very acceptable 30-45 fps with a mix of low - medium settings. I'm using the dropbox symbolic link trick to keep my save files in sync between this and my gaming desktop.

Highly recommended. Any game that has me coming back for more even after 83 hrs and "finishing" the game and then getting me to buy it twice says something. It's vast in content and yet all of it feels high quality and dense. It's open ended open world yet it has so many really good solid plot quests.

Macross Frontier - Aimo Tori no Hito (piano)

2011-11-12T00:26:00.000-06:00

Macross Frontier - Aimo Tori no Hito (piano).
I played it pretty clean except for one tiny bobble.

HP Touchpad and Android

2011-10-28T19:00:00.012-06:00

Thanks to a buddy who works at HP I recently snagged one of those HP Touchpad 16GB for $99 (or about $121 after tax and shipping). The hardware is pretty nice to hold and feels pretty solid. It's a tad thicker and heavier than my iPad 2. I like the rounded corners.

Specs:

16GB (about 12.3GB free out of the box)

9.7" 1024X768 IPS screen

1.2ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 APQ8060, dual-core ARM

Qualcomm Adreno 220 core GPU

1 GB ram

micro usb

Here are some benchmarks. As you can see the hardware is rather top notch. Apparently you can overclock to 1.5ghz but I didn't try. There is no dedicated GPS so turn by turn is out. Map applications though work ok with using wifi for location.

Accessories

I picked up the HP Touchpad Custom Fit Case (about $20) and the Splash Masque Clear Screen Protectors ($10 for 3). The screen protector isn't bad. It's the usual static cling type application and is pretty clear. Installation went pretty well with my usual "clean room" procedures (steam up the bathroom, make sure screen is completely clean, use long strips of scotch tape to go over entire screen to lift off any dust/lint, use smaller pieces of tape to help lift and re-position as you dial in the alignment). The case is HEAVY and adds some noticeable bulk but it does feel good in the hands. The cover looks like a smart cover but it is actually pretty dumb since it just flops around with nothing to keep the cover closed. Keep that in mind if you plan to toss this thing into a bag. Also, it uses a bit of velcro to put it in the 2 different stand modes. The cover does flip all the way around to the back for when you want to hold it. Compared to my iPad 2 with powersupport screen protector and the iCarbons on the back this thing feels like it's from the stone age with all the weight and bulk. At least it looks nice. It feels odd that I'm spending almost 30% of the cost of the tablet on accessories.

WebOS

- First thing you want to do after charging and setting up your hp account is go update your webos to the latest version. It is 3.04 as of this writing. Also, make sure you update your apps especially the hp app catalog.

- After that it is time to start side loading some stuff if you really want to play with webos. Here are some great instructions on how to get preware installed which is basically a catalog of homebrew apps.

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touchpad/292472-ereader-questions.html#post3079211

This also takes care of installing the novacom driver which is required later when we get to the android stuff. Make sure you reboot after you get preware installed and before you launch it for the first time otherwise it will continue to hang. After a reboot preware seems to run just fine. The only things I was really interested in were the file manager Internalz Pro and pReader native alpha (epub reader) both which you can install using preware. Fyi, pReader native was quite buggy and performance wasn't that great though a lot better than the pReader in the official app store. There is a lot of things to try in preware if you want to really dig into webos but I didn't really explore that much.

- I found the browser to be adequate but sluggish. It's nowhere near as nice as safari on iPad 2. It does do flash...Yeah!!!! But flash video playback is poor at best hitching every few seconds.....Boooo!!!! (issue was consistent on multiple sites I tried). I could actually stream music using the subsonic web interface. Even video worked but the hitching was really annoying.

- I installed the Amazon Kindle app and messed with it a bit. It's ok.

- I found the actual OS and UI nice and smooth but the apps all around pale in comparison to iOS apps. If you stick with just webos I guess you would still get your $100 worth out of it....barely.

Android (2.3.7)

- CyanogenMod for TouchPad Alpha 2.1

- So I had enough of webos and I figure it was time to install Android which is the main reason to own a touchpad. There is a really good guide here:

http://liliputing.com/2011/10/how-to-install-google-android-on-the-hp-touchpad-with-cyanogenmod7.html

- You can ignore step 1 and all the stuff about installing novacom since you already did that.

- I went ahead and installed gApps to get the android marketplace on there all in one shot. The file you want from here:

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Gapps#Google_Apps

is CyanogenMod 7 20110828 md5: 1647897d8ac3efb04723d2ad2c361a3f

So the files you want in \cminstall on your touchpad are:

update-cm-7.1.0-tenderloin-a2.1-fullofbugs.zip

update-cwm_tenderloin-1012.zip

moboot_0.3.3.zip

gapps-mdpi-20110501-signed.zip

Don't rename them or do anything but copy them as is to \cminstall.

And with the latest alpha all apps show up in the marketplace just fine.

- Step 10 make sure you wait a while until the usb connection is good and solid. Mine did the connect disconnect dance for a bit before it settled down.

- In the future if you ever need to update cyanogenmod follow these instructions:

http://liliputing.com/2011/10/how-to-install-cyanogenmod-7-1-alpha-2-on-an-hp-touchpad.html

I've tested that out and it works fine.

- Now you can dual boot between webos and android anytime you want. Cyanogenmod also mounts the hp media shared part of the storage as a fake sd card. This is great because any media you put on there (it looks just like a usb drive when connected to a pc) is accessible from either OS.

- Post install I had 10.3GB free so the install only used up around 2GB.

- At this point I started going app install crazy and moving installed apps to the fake sd card. You have 1.5GB of internal storage so it wasn't entirely necessary.

WARNING: DO NOT move more than 50 apps to the fake sd card. I wouldn't go past 45.

I did this and android crashed HARD and rebooted but got stuck on the blue circle screen. Then, I had to force a shut down (hold down power then hold down home key for 10 sec). After that my fake sd card would no longer mount. So yeah, move only your largest apps to the sd card if you plan to install a ton of apps. To fix it I had to boot back to webos, fire up Internalz, delete some files out of .android_secure folder before I could get android to mount the sd card again.

- The good news is most apps seem to work quite well. Almost every single google app works just fine including gmail, google+, google voice, google maps, google books, google translate, google reader, google earth, google music, etc. Everything syncs nicely with my google account. What didn't work for me was google docs. Youtube works in full screen mode (landscape) but has issues in portrait.

- The big things that still don't work properly is the camera and microphone. The microphone records what sounds like a very slow talking version of what you say.

- Other apps that worked just fine:

Aldiko (nice epub reader)

Dolphin Browser

Flash

Facebook

Twitter

Meebo

Fluent News

CNN

Evernote

PocketCloud VNC

1password

dropbox

speedtest.net

flixster

yelp

Netflix (runs great!)

subsonic (even video which uses flash works pretty well)

pandora

Vevo

Nook

Kindle

Wow Armory

Advanced Task Killer

Battery Widget (Geekyouup)

Amazon app store

adobe reader

amazon mp3 music player

plex (still no air video but not bad)

rockplayer

uPnPlay

playon

Some games I tried:

All versions of Angry Birds

CK Zombie (3d)

Dungeon Defenders: Second wave (3d)

Tetris

Seven Stars (3d)

Death Worm

Raging Thunder Lite (3d)

Stair Dismount (3d)

HexDefense

Robon Defender

Asteroid Defense

Galaxy Wars tower defense

Grave Defense

Medieval Castle defense

NExus Defense

AI Factory games (reversi, checkers, chess, four in a line, sudoku)

help out (rush hour type game that actually scales properly)

Tanagram Moment
Robotek

Some apps that don't work:

Anything that uses the camera or mic

Zinio

bing (won't let me install from app store - item is not available on your carrier)

asphalt 5

Asteroid Defense 2 (graphical glitches)

- 3D performance was pretty acceptable already on this alpha build. The games are definitely playable.

- Overall app compatibility seems very good so far. The android market app likes to crash now and then but it's not that big of a deal.

- Battery life still isn't the greatest.

- You might also want to disable mobile data (settings, wireless & networks, mobile networks, uncheck data enabled). This helps wifi to stay connected after coming out of sleep.

- The touchpad is very picky about chargers. I have mono price USB chargers rated for 2A (works great with iPad 2) and my iPad 2 charger also rated at 2A and none of them will charge the touchpad. In android it says it is charging but it still drains over time even while sleeping. Webos gives a warning. It might be worth picking up a couple of extra ones at amazon for $12.22 each. Here is a very informative discussion on why this is the case and some modding info.

Overall I'm very impressed with the touchpad especially with android on it. For a $100 it is a fantastic value no matter how you look at it. The components are top notch and performance (especially video and 3d) are already good enough in the current cyanogenmod alpha build. It is already stable enough for everyday use. The browser in android is better and faster than webos. The flash support is definitely better in android. You get 2 OS's to play with for one low price. Hopefully when ICS source gets released we'll see a port of that too. I guess I'll be cancelling that Kindle Fire preorder. Even at current ebay prices of around $200 this might be more worth it than a Fire. If you ignore price though I still think the iPad 2 is a MUCH better tablet.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE: 12/2/2011
Alpha 3 is released:
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/10121-releasealpha3cyanogenmod-touchpad/
I went ahead and did the old acmeinstaller method to update because I noticed there was a new boot loader and a new clockworkmod recovery out. I didn't think it would be wise to try and update clockworkmod recovery using the clockworkmod method. Everything installed smoothly. Hopefully this fixes the sleep of death which seems to happen quite often (won't come out of sleep and must do a hard reset).

iOS 5

2011-10-17T09:55:00.010-06:00

I decided to skip the iPhone 4S. You can read about my reasons here.

The upgrades went fairly smooth for the 2 iPhone 4 32GB and one iPad 2 64GB. One of the iPhones was updated on a Mac and the other two on a pc. Upgrades took forever (think hours) since all our devices are nearly full. It does a full backup, a factory reset, flashes the new os, a restore, and then syncs back all you apps, music, videos, photos, etc. plus the update itself is over 700MB download. I'm still running into some syncing issues especially with the calendar and contacts with outlook. I've tried some of the things listed here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2669782?start=15&tstart=0
It would work for a while but then the conflicts and errors would come back. It's annoying but not a show stopper. I'm still looking for a solid fix.
There are now a ton and slightly confusing sync/iCloud/backup solutions. If you enable iCloud backup it will no longer backup to your pc through itunes. I wish there was an option to backup to both. If you turn on wireless itunes sync (you must do it on the device summary in itunes while you the device is connected) it seems to always sync over wifi even when you have it connected to usb. It's convenient but a bit slower. What's also nice is the sync happens in the background so you can continue to use your device while it syncs. Contacts and calendars get a bit more complex. I currently sync through itunes with outlook for contacts, notes, and calendars. You can also sync these through iCloud. Once you install the windows iCloud control panel:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455
You can also sync outlook to iCloud . It seems like you would get some redundant syncing with all these methods having devices sync both through itunes wifi sync and iCloud all against outlook. I wonder if it would be better to disable calendar and contacts syncing through itunes and do it only through iCloud. You can force a wifi sync through settings|general.
Notes syncing is also less than ideal. Once I turned on icloud notes sync I had to create a @me.com email address. This creates a new account in the notes app which is separate than the account where I was syncing with gmail which was also separate what was only on my iphone, which is also separate than what was synced with outlook. I couldn't find a way to just say sync all the notes I have across all accounts to iCloud. I know, I should probably just stick to using evernote instead but sometimes I just want to fire up notes quickly and jot something down. Even more confusing is if I'm in the all notes view and I create a new note it ended up in the gmail account vs the iCoud account. I can't even seem to specify I want my iCloud account to be the default for newly created notes when in the all note view.
UPDATE: So here's what I did to get everything to sync using iCloud as much as possible to share data between my macbook pro, a windows 7 x64 desktop with outlook, iphone 4, and ipad 2.
- win 7: setup outlook with the @me.com account that was created when I turned on notes syncing on the iphone icloud. You'll need to setup the servers manually and click on the advance settings. I also set incoming to ssl (and use the right port!) and outgoing to auto (ssl didn't work for me). Here are the icloud mail settings:
  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864
  I don't really plan to use my @me.com email for anything really except to enable syncing.
  I disable calendar and contact syncing in itunes (I still left notes outlook syncing on).
  Enable wifi sync in itunes.
  In the icloud control panel I enabled contacts and calendar syncing with outlook. This creates a new icloud section in outlook for contacts and calendar.
- On the iphone and ipad I enabled all iclould syncing options.
- Mac: Update iPhoto and enable all icloud syncing options. Fire up the mail app and setup your new @me.com email. This way you can get to notes. Contacts and calendar should should sync with address book and iCal.
- This in theory should let you make changes anywhere in any of those devices and then sync across all devices using icloud.
icloud.com is quite nice and lets you not only view but edit most of your icloud data (contacts, calendars). Find my iphone is also here but notes is missing. You have to fire up the email app with the @me.com email you created when you turned on icloud notes. Yeah, overall notes is a complete mess and is anything but simple or "just works."
Photo stream actually works quite nicely especially on windows. The windows iCloud control panel lets you choose a download and upload directory. It's clean and simple just the way I like it. On the mac it syncs with iPhoto which is ok if you like iPhoto (which I don't).
Apple ID strategy: I have one main apple ID that I share among all my apple devices so you can share itunes purchases like apps. The problem is when you also use it for iCloud. You can in fact use a different apple id for iCloud vs the store on the same device. Also, it makes since to use different apple id's in certain cases. So every device uses the main apple ID that is used for all purchases for the store. I use the same apple ID for iCloud on my iPhone 4, the iPad 2 (since I use it the most), and my macbook pro. This way I can share photos, documents, contacts, calendars, etc among all my devices. It would make no sense for my wife to share my apple ID for her iCloud which would mix up contacts, calendars, documents, photo streams, etc. She uses her own apple ID for iCloud on her iPhone 4 and macbook pro yet continues to use the main apple ID that the purchases are on on both of her devices. This also helps get by the 5gb free space limit used for backups. I could NOT backup both my iphone and ipad (both nearly full) within the 5gb. Once I toggled off backing up certain apps that contain a lot of user data like good reader (pdf's, videos, etc) I was able to get it to all fit.
http://www.macworld.com/article/163006/2011/10/how_to_configure_icloud_if_you_share_an_apple_id.html
The one drawback is this splits up find my iphone because it's tied to the iCloud apple id. The new find my friends app though works well enough.
The reader feature is nice in safari. Just realize it doesn't work on every web page, only the ones it thinks are articles. When it is on a compatible page a reader button will appear in the address bar.
You can 4 finger swipe on the iPad to swap between running apps. You can also 4 finger swipe up to bring up the task bar. I love the tab browsing.
Wife's visual voice mail got wiped out again but after entering the password it was re-enabled.
1password required re-entering the master password to get dropbox syncing working again.
iSub cache was wiped out after the upgrade.
You can't put newsstand into a folder because it acts more like a special folder than an actual app. I found a few magazines that were actually a bit cheaper than zinio and nook. Just keep in mind these are actual individual apps that meet certain specifications to appear in newsstand. That means you are tied to iOS devices only. With zinio and nook you have broader device support. Right now I still really like the nook for the pricing and selection. I just wish it had push notifications for when new issues arrive (or at least an email). The lack of free trial issues in newsstand is rather annoying. It should be a requirement for every magazine in newsstand to offer at least a free preview of 10 pages or so.
I like the new usage view in settings especially the apps sorted in the amount of space each is using.

iOS 5 brings a lot of new features but IMO quite a bit of complexity too if you have a lot of devices and platforms. Notes is a mess but the rest I like. It's definitely a lot of functionality for free so I can't complain too much.

Game of Thrones Theme (Piano)

2011-07-30T18:07:00.001-06:00

Game of Thrones Theme on Piano. This theme song (of the BEST TV SHOW EVER!) really got stuck in my head. I play it a bit slower and as usual there are a couple of mistakes.

Google+

2011-07-19T10:00:00.002-06:00

So I'm really digging google+ so far which seems like it could be a nice replacement for facebook, twitter, and maybe even some blogging. I'm going to try to post smaller reviews and thoughts now in google+ and probably only write a blog post for bigger reviews/articles.

You can find me here:

https://plus.google.com/118400819998643943588

I've also added it to the Links section on the right.

Zalman Microphone Zm-Mic1

2011-05-17T09:15:00.013-06:00

My mic settings:

- $13 at amazon.

- So I've been using the xbox 360 wireless headset with the PC wireless adapter for teamspeak and ventrilo during World of Warcraft raids. It works ok but sometimes I don't want something on my ear during a long play session. Also, the 360 wireless headset is a bit glitchy sometimes and requires frequent power cycles to clear up static that occurs once in awhile. The nice part about this being just a mic and not a full headset is I still have all the game sounds + voice coming from my pc speakers (adjust your master volume in Wow to balance game sounds against voice. Titan panel is a good mod that lets you get to volume adjustments quickly). This way I have nothing on my ears.

- You can clip this mic to your shirt or do what I do. I just swing it around my neck and let it hang near the top of my chest/near my neck. I use a little tape to tape the mic to it's own cord so the mic end points up toward my mouth when it's hanging.

- It's pretty sensitive and I actually had to turn off my mic gain boost to zero otherwise it would distort.

- Everybody says I sound quite a bit better on vent now with this mic vs what I was using before.

- The cable is really long.

Highly recommended. At $13 it really is amazing and performs great. If you have an environment where you can use your PC speakers this is a great setup.

iPad 2 (black 64GB WIFI only)

2011-04-17T19:09:00.049-06:00

So this is the first tablet I've owned (I don't even own a netbook). My kids have been begging for one since last Christmas after playing with one their cousin brought over while visiting. I told them I would consider getting one when the iPad 2 came out and besides they had quite a bit of Christmas and birthday money saved up. I figure I would buy one for the family to see how they (ok mostly me) would use it.

On release day I swung by the apple store after work around 5:45 and they had already cut the line off saying they were sold out. It was the same story at best buy. I'm not much of a line waiter so I just ordered one online. Estimated ship date was April 1st. I got it on march 31st around a week earlier than the original estimate. I decided to go with the the black 64gb wifi only model. I already have a virgin mobile mifi so I figure I would use that if I need 3G. Sure, I lose gps but I think I can live with that while saving $130.

- iPad is heavier than expected. If you hold it with one hand pinching one edge your hand will get tired. It works better if you wrap your hand around the back or just use two hands. I'm sure it's pretty light compared to other tablets and the iPad 1 but for a first time tablet user it still feels heavier than it should be.
- Coming from the retina display on the iPhone 4 the 1024x768 does feel pretty low res in comparison. This isn't such a big deal for games and movies but it is pretty noticeable while trying to view tiny text without zooming in first. Other than that the IPS screen is still very nice.
- I can typically touch type at around 80 wpm without errors. My first mistake was trying to touch type in landscape mode. It's just not realistically possible. The keys are way too cramped and without any feedback it's just not possible to type without looking at the keys. I've now modified the way I type to using 2-3 fingers on each hand for a speedier hunt and peck method. It seems to work pretty well and is much faster than only using your thumbs on an iPhone. Still, I wouldn't want to use the touch keyboard for writing really long articles. Good thing any standard bluetooth keyboard works just fine like the logitech pro media board I have. My original plan was to write this entire review on the iPad. I ended up only writing about half of it using Pages. It wasn't an overly horrible experience but I much rather use a keyboard for typing articles of this length.
- The battery life seems very good in the few days I've used it. We aren't just talking surfing or video watching here. Even with heavy gaming the battery holds up incredibly well

- Yeah the iPad has two cameras now but man are they BAD and I mean really bad. The front one for facetime is about what you would expect but the back one takes mostly horrible photos. Almost any interior shot (excluding except maybe a professional lit studio) comes out incredibly noisy. The size of the CCD used must be incredibly small. Talk about cutting corners. I've read that the camera was really more designed for shooting video, and the 720p video it produces isn't half bad. Just don't ever take any still shots of anything you remotely care about. The iPhone 4 back camera is about 1000X times better.

- The apple dock connector is a little harder to plug into. The area around it is rather tapered. I guess that's the price you pay for thin.

- Movies encoded using Handbrake and the iPad preset look fantastic. File size for a typical movie is around 1.2GB.

- The mute/orientation lock switch is a bit interesting. If all of a sudden none of your apps have any sound it's probably because at some point you had the switch set to control mute in your settings. You mute the ipad and then later switched it to orientation lock. Now the ipad is muted even though there is no indication it is actually muted (like when you adjust volume). Just change the setting so the switch goes back to controlling mute to unmute the device and everything should be back to normal. Also, I noticed holding the down volume button accelerates really quickly and will quickly go to 0 volume in like .25 seconds. Not sure if I like that (I guess it's another quick way to "mute") but that's just the way it is.

- Facetime: It works quite well on the iPad. In the settings|facetime you can associate one or more emails which you would use to call the iPad. This is very similar to the mac osx app. If you want to call an iPhone just use the phone #. If you want to call an ipad, ipod touch, or mac you use the email associated with that device. If you have more than one device associated to the same email then all devices ring. Example: I have my iPad and macbook pro on the same facetime email. When I call it from my iPhone both the iPad and the mbp (if I have the facetime app running that is) rings. It all just works how you would expect it. Both cameras on the iPad work just fine for facetime and don't look nearly as bad as when taking still photos. The iPad even rings when the smart cover is closed and the iPad is sleeping. It's suggested though that each non iPhone iOS device has at least one unique email associated with it. Otherwise, I wasn't able to call my mbp from the iPad when they both shared the same email address. By adding another unique email to each iOS device gets around that issue.

Apps

- Here is a small sampling of apps that I found interesting. I'm mostly omitting any apps I've previously mentioned in my iPhone reviews since you can read about them there.

- What's great about app purchases is you can install and reinstall them on as many iOS devices as you want after only buying the app a single time. As long as you use the same apple id/itunes account you should be fine. Granted, only up to 5 pc's can be authorized for content but as far as iOS apps is concerned it's pretty much unlimited. I can buy an app once and run it on my two iphone 4's and my iPad 2.

- The kids love this thing. Besides the games there are some nice children books like Alice and How to train your dragon.

- iSub and Air Video have very nice iPad interfaces. Air Video over local wifi looks fantastic.

- Tried the Daily (first 2 weeks are free). It's pretty much fluff. I will NOT be subscribing.

- I love all the news/social network aggregators that format it into a nice magazine layout like Zite, hitpad, taptu, and flipboard. Zite has to be hands down my favorite though flipboard is nice too. It's pretty amazing how well it can create a customized magazine based on your twitter, google reader, and delicious accounts. On top of that it has thumbs up/down to continue to train it.

- I love reading magazines on this thing. Zinio is pretty good though I wish it had more magazines (and better prices on some of them). I couldn't quite pin down why I hated reading a magazine on a pc but I finally figured it out. It's a combination of the form factor, how you hold it similar to a real magazine, portrait vs landscape, touch interface, and flipping pages instead of just scrolling down with your mouse. It's a combination of all these things that makes magazine reading amazing on the iPad. No more dead tree magazine subscriptions for me. Get it on the iPad or I'm not renewing (I'm looking at you MaximumPC!). What kind of sucks is the nook color has all the magazines I like and at very reasonable prices. The problem is those only work on the actual nook color hardware and not on the iPad nook app. What is up with that?

- For reading novels I still prefer my iPhone (stanza ftw). I usually read right before going to sleep so e-ink is right out. I just find the iPhone much more comfortable to read on especially when lying in bed. I don't mind flipping pages more often. It really doesn't bother me.

- Goodreader does an amazing jobs with PDF's plus dropbox integration.

- Vevo is a nice app for watching music videos.

- I've only briefly messed with Garage Band but it seems pretty darn impressive for $5.

- Pages is a nice word processor. It needs native dropbox support but I guess dropdav works. iworks.com isn't bad though for sharing your documents.

- There are a ton of remote desktop apps. Logmein is still my default for general use but there are some interesting new high performance ones that are actually fast enough for gaming. Everyair seems to show the most potential so far.

- I love games that are universal apps like Rage HD and Infinity Blade. For 3D games it makes perfect since. For the most part it's just rendering out at a higher resolution and moving some controls around. For 2D games I can kind of understand why there are usually 2 separate versions since it usually requires a different set of art assets (where is tiny wings HD!!??!!). It's games like modern combat 2 HD from gameloft that cheese me off. It's like paying extra just for unlocking a higher resolution setting in a PC game. It's just WRONG!

- UPDATE (4/21/2011): Comics - Stanza (my favorite ebook reader) now supports CBR files. It's fast and works pretty well but no double tap to zoom. Comicflow isn't bad but I prefer Bookman. Both are free. I find bookman's thumbnail view, bookshelf, and organization better. The overall UI is just a lot more polished. Comixology engine powers their own Comics app, DC comics, and Marvel. They each have slightly different comics available and marvel requires a separate account from the others but the app works pretty much exactly the same on all 3. It has a neat panel flow mode that works well for the iPhone. I didn't bother trying comic zeal since it was $8.

- Atomix Magazine - $.99 in app purchase per issue. Produced by Area 5 (co-op guys). It has a pretty slick interface and well written content.

Accessories

- Power: My existing cheap eBay USB chargers seem to work fine. Unfortunately, my computer USB ports don't seem to want to properly charge the iPad. I get the dreaded "not charging." This was with the usb ports on the back coming directly off the motherboard. I did some reading and testing and apparently it is getting power but with the screen on there isn't enough juice to actually get a charge going. Instead, you break even holding battery levels at about even. If you put the iPad to sleep it actually does charge albeit more slowly (I did confirm this is the case). Apparently motherboard manufacturers have released drivers to up the power to the USB ports so it charges iPads properly (I have not tested this). I also have this issue with the cheap no name car charger that I use for my iPhone. Mobile usb battery packs like my Just Mobile Gum Pro work fine though.

UPDATE: Asus AI Charger works great even on my gigabyte motherboard. Now it charges the iPad just fine even while in use.

- Camera Connection Kit:

The camera adapter is interesting. I first tried my 64gb USB key drive. It complained about not having enough power. Next, I tried a 2gb sd card which works fine. I had this idea about how maybe you can use sd cards to store additional movies which you can load onto the iPad while in the field without the need of a computer or iTunes. Putting some m4v files converted with handbrake into the root of the sd card didn't work. Next, I tried to fake it by recreating the same directory structure my canon camera uses (DCIM directory) and renamed the extension to mov and added a thm thumbnail file (apparently you don't need to do this step. The key is the DCIM directory). This actually worked letting me import the entire movie file into the photo app. All of this seems rather convoluted and clunky and probably not worth the trouble. The camera adapter is really rather limited. It only works with the camera app and it only let's you import photos or movies into that app. There was no way to get them into the video app. So theoretically you can swap movies from an sd card as long you have some working space but it seems more trouble than it is worth. It's too bad you can't view media directly off the sd card. Also, the photo app doesn't resume video where you left off. I found out the best use of these adapters isn't so much importing photos from your own camera but others. I was recently at the in laws and my wife wanted a copy of all the photos her dad took. Normally this would require powering up a laptop. Now, I just pop in their sd card into the iPad and import the photos she was interested in.

HDMI Adapter

- Works with iPhone 4 and iPad 2. The low level mirroring only works on the iPad though (not the iPhone).

- It doesn't scale the image. So unless the app natively supports 1080p (like the video app and some games) you are going to get some black borders (this includes most games). There are exceptions like Chopper 2. I was able to use my iPhone 4 as the controls, playing it on my iPad 2 which is hooked up to my HDTV using the HDMI adapter. It's all pretty amazing actually.

- Real Racing 2 HD is suppose to get 1080p output support soon too though that patch hasn't hit yet. For now, mirroring works ok. Update (4/21/2011): The update is out now that supports 1080p output. I'm going to have to try this soon.

- Infinity Blade doesn't look half bad on a 52" HDTV:

Protecting your iPad 2 (making it slightly more child resistant)

- I decided to go without a case this time to keep the iPad as light and thin as possible. Instead I went with a screen protector ($30), carbon fiber back ($20), smart cover ($40 <- obscene apple tax), and a sleeve ($12) for travel. That's over $100 spent on just protecting the iPad! My kids are actually very good with electronics. They were taught to "respect the electronics" before they could walk! But a little protection sure can't hurt when your kids are handling a $700 "toy."

- Smart Cover: For the most part I really like the smart cover. The auto aligning magnets really work well. As a stand it's ok. There is only one angle in landscape, you really can't prop it up in portrait, and the keyboard stand mode flops around a bit too much to use on your lap. The magnetic on/off switch is nice though blackberry has had this for ages. Now, if only apple would add a dedicated indicator led. The switch kind of reminds me of a refrigerator door light.

Power Support HD Anti-Glare Film

Notice how difusse the light reflections are:

- $30 and you only get 1. I decided to go with the anti-glare this time instead of the crystal since the iPad lower resolution screen is minimally impacted by the slight loss in clarity with an anti-glare film (Don't get me wrong. You can barely tell it's there. It's still very clear just not as completely transparent as the crystal). Also, I just love the feel of the anti-glare and it does an amazing job of hiding finger prints.
- $30 for 1 shot is pretty darn pricey. You want to make sure you do a good job installing it. Here is how I got a pretty much perfect install.

1) Start by trying to create your own "clean room." I used the master bathroom and closed all the doors. Run the shower on hot and steam up the room. As the steam cools it pulls all the dust out of the air. Make sure you turn off any central AC/Heating too. Clean the surface you are going to work on and wash your hands.

2) I cleaned the iPad surface with a slightly damp paper towel using highly diluted vinegar and water solution. This helps make sure you remove all finger prints and oils. I next went over it with just a very slightly damp paper towel using only water this time. Wipe it dry with a fresh paper towel. Then, wipe it down with a lint free cloth. You might also want to clean the outside of the film a bit after taking it out of the packaging since the outside of the film might have lint/dust that could drop on top of the ipad during installation.

3) This step is key. Take long strips of scotch tape and stick it over the surface of the iPad and peel it off. Repeat this until you've covered the entire surface of the iPad. This acts like a lint remover and does an excellent job of removing every last spec of dust or lint. Tape is cheap. Your screen protector isn't. Use several strips of tape and be thorough!

4) Now you've got a completely clean iPad in your "clean room." Just follow the instructions from the site on how to apply it (go watch their video). It took me about 3 tries to get the alignment just right. Then it was just a matter of working out the air bubbles. Since none of the air bubbles were the dust/lint kind they were pretty easy to work out. If you did get a piece of dust or lint stuck underneath the screen protector, just use a piece of scotch tape to lift it off either from the iPad or from the film depending on where the dust is stuck.

iCarbons

Botched this corner with a tiny fold:

- $20 for back only. I wanted to keep the size and weight of the iPad 2 but also wanted to protect the back from scratches. Carbon Fiber seemed like the way to go. It's thin and light and gives it a nice texture too. I also like the look.

- The instruction video is excellent. I pretty much nailed the alignment but the corners are a bit tricky. You only need about 2 seconds of low heat from a hair dryer to soften up the film (DO NOT overheat!). I suggest you use your entire palm to press down on the corner and then smooth it out with your finger. If you use only your finger it's harder to get a nice smooth looking corner.

- The adhesive seems very strong. I'm not too worried about it peeling. You can also remove it without leaving a residue. Once removed though it cannot be reapplied.

- It works great with the smart cover. The magnets feel just as strong as it did without the iCarbons.

Case Logic PLS-9 Ultraportable Netbook Sleeve

- $12 on amazon.

- Finally, I wanted a sleeve to use when I travel with the iPad. I love the case logic sleeves that I use with the 13" MBP so I figure I'd just go with a similar one. It's not specifically designed for iPad but it fits pretty well if a tad on the roomy side.

- I like the small zipper pouch which is perfect for holding the hdmi, camera adapters, and the charger.

Just three years ago I was pretty much anti-apple with zero apple products. I was a die hard pc user. Now I have two iPhone 4's, two mac book pro's, and now an iPad 2. There are still a ton of things about Apple that I hate like: app approval process, walled garden - can't side load apps without jail breaking, no storage expansion, apple tax (though a tad less so with the iPad), battery replacement (btw it's $100 for the iPad), stupid flat out greedy subscription policy, etc. But man do they make some nice hardware. The apps are second to none not just in quantity but in quality. I think you would be hard pressed to find as many polished and just plain useful apps on any other platform. Add to that the incredible performance iPad 2 has even compared to the mighty Tegra 2. iOS is going to lead in gaming for the foreseeable future IMO.

I came into this not sure exactly how much use I would find in a tablet. In the end I've been pleasantly surprised. Most of the family is using it quite a bit on a daily basis (the wife still doesn't get it. I'm working on it....). I love using it for web browsing, catching up on news, reading a magazine, or maybe even a comic book (though I really don't read comics but it sure is nice on the iPad). For consuming content it's great and this new form factor really does change things up. Have I drank too much of the kool aid? Am I caught in a reality distortion field? Maybe just a tad. I like to think I still look at tech objectively with an open mind and give credit where credit is due without preconceived biases or prejudice. I think it comes down to do the merits of the products outweigh all the evil (and lets face it all big corporations are evil! :P). The iPad is just one really impressive experience. It's the total package. I haven't been this excited about a new toy in a LONG time (stares over at the Nintendo 3DS which I haven't touched much since the the first night I had it with two new unopened games).

Highly recommended.

everyAir - How to play WOW on your iPad

2011-04-06T23:49:00.025-06:00

on the iPad 2:

and on the iPhone 4.....

And even over 3G on iPhone 4:

some more screenshots:

....sort of

http://www.everyair.net/

- Everyair is another remote desktop solution similar to microsoft remote desktop, logmein, vnc, etc. except the focus here is on quick framerates and gaming rather than general desktop use. Think of it as running your own personal OnLive service.

- The iOS client is a universal app and is $5.

- There is a server install for windows or osx. I say install loosely since all you have to do is unzip it and run the exe. I've only tried this with windows so far.

- There is one huge drawback currently. There's no sound. The developer has promised sound in the next major release which will be 1.2.

- Framerates are great over wifi and the controls are pretty responsive with little lag. Video quality isn't half bad. All the usual gestures are there to scale, pinch to zoom, and scroll around. There is a handy button on the top right that automatically scales to full screen for the current foreground application.

- The virtual gamepad isn't too bad and is mapped to the arrow keys for the left stick and by default the mouse to the right stick. You can even toggle right click on which is handy in World of Warcraft so it acts like mouse look.

- I wish I could move the virtual keyboard to the top so I could see my chat window at the same time.

- I tried to use a bluetooth keyboard but that didn't work.

- It only officially supports wifi but it does indeed work over the internet and even 3G. All you have to do is forward ports: 9793-9893 and know you external WAN IP address (domain names do not work). You can require a password but I'm not so sure how secure this thing is. Official internet support is coming in a future build. For now I'm not going to leave the server running or the ports forwarded. If I need to fire it up remotely I can always use logmein and setup everything to get it going and then switch to everyAir. 3G works surprisingly well. The video above is on lowest quality but I also tried on medium and it also worked fine. Controls lag a bit probably due to 3G latency but other than that it really does work.

- The framerates are great so you can even use it to watch flashvideo or surf flash sites on your desktop browser. It's not that great for general desktop application use since it doesn't even emulate a scroll wheel like logmein does.

- Obviously this works with any games you might have, some types of games better than others.

- The server program is still a bit buggy. I wasn't able to connect both my iPad 2 and iPhone at the same time (or maybe that's just not supported). Then, when I went to shut down the program it would crash.

- Maybe with a custom wow UI with large buttons you might be able to do some quests but I don't think I would try a 5 man with this thing quite yet.

- Fullscreen didn't work so well for me. It caused some flickering. Instead, I just ran wow in a windowed mode which worked fine.

I'm pretty floored that this thing actually works. It's some really impressive tech. I'm not entirely sure how practical this is but it sure is neat to mess with. EveryAir has huge potential.

Highly Recommended!

UPDATE: Looks like they got bought out and stopped development. Booo. But they do plan to open source the client and server.

UPDATE: 4/8/2011

- There's another alternative:

http://www.splashtop.com/remote

- I tried it briefly. The good: It has sound!, performance is pretty good especially for flash video, it supports bluetooth keyboards, It's more polished overall especially the server software.

- The bad: It performs best when you let it change your desktop resolution to match the native ipad resolution (1024X768). Performance suffers quite a bit if you leave it at your desktop resolution (mine is at 1920X1080). Having your resolution change and then firing up wow will mangle your carefully crafted custom UI that was designed for 1920X1080 so that right there makes this a poor choice for gaming.

- The keyboard support is kind of odd (you must pop up the mini virtual keyboard to put it in keyboard mode). On a bluetooth keyboard there is a pause before the repeat kicks in while holding down a key. So if you hit "w" to move forward there is a pause before your toon continues to move forward. You can't chord keys (like alt+1) without hitting the virtual alt key in the app and then you can hit 1 on your physical keyboard. It's really awkward.

- On the virtual keyboard it's even worse. It doesn't repeat at all. You have to rapidly tap "w" to keep moving forward. It's basically completely unusable for gaming.

- It only has two quality settings: Smooth and sharp. Smooth is good for gaming/video, sharp is good for text. There is no in between slider like everyAir.

- It's not a universal app. They want $5 for the iPad version and $2 for the iPhone version.

- Scroll wheel is implemented (two finger scrolling) but it's slow....a lot slower than logmein.

- There is no handy scale to full screen for current active window.

- It doesn't support fullscreen games at all where everyAir kind of tries to.

- It strictly forces aspect ratio (this can be good or bad) when scaling.

- There are no virtual game pad controls. This is a huge deal for gaming and really makes this worthless for anything more complicated than simple mouse driven games.

- Overall, splashtop is definitely designed for more general purpose use and less for gaming. I can see it being useful for viewing flash based sites (I watched some hulu and it looked very good). But for gaming I think everyAir has a lot more potential (especially once they get sound working).

UPDATE: 4/18/2011

- I tried another one called crazyremote.

- The lite version is free and lets you try out their gaming/performance mode for a few days. The universal paid version is $20!!!!

- Performance isn't too bad. It feels similar to splashtop.

- It has sound.

- Resolution is changed.

- Only works in windowed mode.

- It's keyboard implementation is much better. You can also have a series of well laid out sets of keys used commonly in games (like arrow keys or wsad). These work quite well. The big thing it's sill missing though are the virtual control pads like everyAir has. Without a way to map the mouse to a thumb pad it makes certain games like MMO's very hard to play. Developers need to understand that controls are everything when it comes to making a pc game playable on an iPad.

- I like it over all but not $20 like! The price is way too high IMO.

Fixing Your Own XBOX 360

2011-01-18T19:00:00.005-06:00

- So my old falcon based XBOX 360 Arcade finally died with an E74 error (usually means gpu or ana/hana hardware scaler chip problem). This is the third xbox to die on me but the first one out of warranty so I was thinking maybe I can try fixing it myself. If your 360 is still in warranty then I would highly recommend you just warranty repair your 360. This fix should work for RROD too.

Things you need:

- XClamp Repair Kit for about $10 from amazon.

- I already had some Arctic Silver 5 which if you build pc's you should already have. The repair kit comes with thermal paste but I prefer as5.

- Isopropyl alcohol. Again, the kit comes with cleaning solution which I did use but I like to finish off with a good wipe of Isopropyl alcohol.

- Heat gun for about $32 from amazon. They go as cheap as $10 when on sale though. Just make sure it has 2 temperature settings.

- A nice Torx driver bit set. I bought this one from radio shack for $16 a while back (needed it for other projects.) Specifically, you need a T8 and T10 which this set has. The repair kit comes with some but I hear those are cheaply made and you do NOT want to risk stripping the screws on your 360 or you will have a very hard time taking it apart.

- A good jewelry/precision screwdriver set.

- adjustable wrench for removing the existing screws attached to the heatsinks.

- The repair kit comes with a sheet of paper with a URL that directs to 2 pdf's: one for disassembly and one for repair. Go ahead and look over those. But the most helpful things are this series of youtube videos. The disassembly video was spot on. I used my jewelry screwdriver for most of it. I used the tool from the repair kit for taking off the back panel which made popping in all the tabs really easy.

- So after taking apart the 360, removing both heatsinks, and cleaning everything really well (I used both solutions from the kit and then finally some Isopropyl alcohol) it was time for the heat gun (you do this in place of the baking process from the pdf).

- I more or less followed the heat gun video. To create my heat barrier I just cut up a cardboard box into strips, taped it around the chips I wanted to heat like show in the video, and then covered with aluminum foil. I then took a baking sheet covered in more foil and stuck the motherboard on that. I then put the baking sheet on top of some pot heat pads. I suggest you do this outside since it's probably not a good idea to breath in a lot of vaporized solder or whatever smell this process creates.

- Make sure you keep moving the heat gun in circles. Never hold it in place for even a second.

- Let it all cool off for 45min before putting the heat sinks back on and follow the pdf instructions to make sure you get the order of the washers correct.

- Reassembly goes a lot faster. Note: You don't need the black 8 X T8 torx screws anymore. This is also covered in the pdf.

I've played several hours now without any issues. It's as good as new. In fact with the xclamp fix I'm guessing it is better than new. Now that I've done it I'm sure I could do it a lot faster. The entire process took about 3 hrs. I still have an original xenon XBOX 360 (no hdmi) that I'm just waiting for it to die. If it does it's good to know I can fix it for $10 and a couple hours of work. It was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. If you've built pc's before then this repair should be pretty easy. Besides, it was kind of a fun project to do, and you learn all about your xbox 360 inside and out.

UPDATE: 3/30/2011

- I've put in probably over 25 hrs of play on this repaired xbox over the past 2 months, and it is still working great!

World of Warcraft: Life as a Mage in 4.0.1

2010-10-15T08:35:00.018-06:00

This article seems to cover the new mage stuff pretty well:
http://www.manaobscura.com/2010/10/the-mage-4-0-compendium/

more info:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104767-fire_cataclysm_discussion_updated_4_01_a/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104277-arcane_cataclysm_discussion/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-frost_cataclysm_discussion/

FIRE
This is the fire build I'm currently running :
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o0oZdfhrk0RRsfoM:zVbskMomV
- Another option instead of mage armor is to spec into improved scorch and spam that for free to help mana issues.
- There are definitely some points you can move around based on personal preference. Cauterize is cool and can save your bacon. You don't dps well if you are dead. If Cauterize triggers you should immediately ice block to remove the burning or if that is on CD pop mage ward and/or mana shield to give your healers more time to get you topped up. Molten shields and Blazing speed are mostly for pvp so leave those off. I left off improved scorch b/c mana wasn't really an issue. I picked up firestarter because I like the flexibility of dpsing while on the move. Impact goes with improved fireblast and I like the range. This really is more for aoe so it's not exactly optimized for single target dps but impact is so much fun. I'm loaded with haste so I took a point out of netherwind presence and kept two in piercing ice. As you can see I made some sacrifices in single target dps for range, mobility, utility, and survivability.
- Glyphs (note glyphs are currently kind of messed up and aren't catagorized correctly): living bomb, mage armor, pyroblast | molten armor, fireball, evocation | slow fall, arcane brilliance, monkey
- Mana burn is higher than before but wasn't an issue at all in lower ICC. Threat seems higher than before and I think higher than arcane so pulling aggro especially in larger trash mobs can be an issue.
- I'm not sure what the best way to reforge yet. I regem'd like 7 gems and reforged one piece of armor to get to hit cap. Make sure you replace any spirit gems you have. I went with more crit since I'm pretty haste loaded coming from arcane. I reforged my one other piece that had spirit into crit. Would mastery have been better?

Single target rotation:
- scorch, living bomb, flame orb (when you get to lvl 81 in cata). There is a school of thought to open up with living bomb and then scorch. The trade off is having living bomb up earlier (It's your #2 source of damage) at a potential loss of crit ticks. Either way I doubt this makes a huge difference.
- spam fireball
- renew living bomb AFTER it explodes
- hot streak proc -> pyroblast (which also renews scorch debuff so if it proc's often enough you'll never have to scorch again which is usually the case. The debuff lasts 30 sec)
- You want to stack as many big dots as you can before firing combustion. So wait for at least an ignite proc and probably a big crit like a hot streak pryoblast before firing off combustion. So remember ONLY fire combustion when the target has these DOTS: Ignite, Living bomb, and Pyroblast. I use power auras classics to help track ignite for me. I guess DoTimer would work too. Just found this: CombustionHelper which is all kinds of awesome. Install it now!
- I've been playing around with CD timing. I think it's best to blow everything you have except combustion. Get some BIG dots going, get that hot streak proc pyroblast, and then hit combustion for the biggest combined DOT.
- Spam scorch, fire blast and maybe flamestrike if you have the mana to keep dps up if you have to be moving.
- impact proc -> fire blast if the boss has adds. For single target encounters just ignore impact. Working in the fire blast when there is no movement is an overall dps loss.
- I found this nice flow chart that is pretty close to what I do.

AOE rotation:
- blastwave. If it hits 2 or more targets you get an automatic flame strike. Otherwise flame strike. If the fight is short you might try spamming flame strike 3-4 times. The idea is that the initial hit from flame strike is big enough that it overcomes clipping the dot but it's a big mana drain.
- living bomb 3 targets. I highly recommend mage nuggets to keep track of how many living bombs you have going.
- if impact procs then make sure your target has at least living bomb and fire blast immediately. This will automatically spread living bomb and probably get your 3 max. If you get lucky you might have a hot streak proc too so you can work pyro in there which would also get spread around by impact. But most of the time don't bother fishing for hot streak b/c impact will probably wear off before you get it. UPDATE: apparently there is currently a bug that prevents pyroblast! from spreading with impact.
- spam fireball

- You can pretty much stick with molten armor and burn for a good 8 min maybe. If you get below 10% mana and all gems/evoc is on CD then you might consider switching to mage armor. With the glyph you will actually GAIN mana while still spamming. This was on dummies so in a raid environment I bet mana is even less of an issue.
- On glyphing MI: The fireballs they cast do hit harder but take long to cast. It's about a wash as far as dps goes.

FROST

level 80: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#obbZoZff0hsIszMo:MmoMkqomM
level 85: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#ohhZbZffMhsIszMo:MmoMkqomM

Single target rotation:
frostfire orb (level 81) , pet freeze, deep freeze
when fingers of frost procs: deep freeze if off cool down otherwise ice lance
Frostfire bolt when brain freeze procs preferably with FoF.
don't forget pet freeze whenever it comes off of cd but make sure you use up any stacks of fingers of frost first.
spam frostbolt.

This actually looks pretty fun and might be even raid viable.

- The current flavor of the month is definitely fire, and I'm really enjoying it. Frost still lags a good 1-1.5K dps behind fire. I tried arcane briefly (build I'm using). It's still very bursty so for very short fights (< style="font-weight: bold;">Custom UI
- Fire requires a slightly different UI than arcane. I've setup power auras classic to track combustion, ignite, and Critical mass. I let the built in power auras take care of impact and hot streak. I then use mage nuggets to track living bombs. I really like the counter. I'm experimenting with DoTimer to track things like blast wave and flame strike dots.
- A few addons I use seem to be abandoned so I've switched them out. Cowtip -> startip, elkbuffbars -> satrina buff frames, and sexycooldown -> coolline. Pretty much everything else I use has been updated.
- One thing that really sucks though is blizzard now prevents addons to toggle off buffs by right clicking. This affects both elkbuffbars and sbf. If you use the default buff/debuff frames it works fine but I hate the default buff frames. The alternative is just create /cancelaura spellname macros.
- I've been trying out some new grid plugins.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gridstatusdungeonrole.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-status-raid-icons.aspx
and this so I have more places to display the icons:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-indicator-side-icons.aspx
- NOTE: There is currently a graphics issue where if you change your bottom viewport you will get weird results with water on the 2 highest settings. Just set water to fair or lower and you'll be fine. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this issue soon.

UPDATE 12/3/2010 (4.0.3a)

- I dropped star tip for tiptac. Star tip is just too buggy.

- Carbonite has a really neat map but it's a really big heavy addon. I disabled a lot of the other stuff though but I do like the map. Just don't merge it with your minimap!

Time Machine over samba shares (smb)

2010-10-09T00:40:00.009-06:00

- I've been backing up my macbook pro's with 2.5" hdd in external enclosures. It works well enough but it's a bit of a hassle to have to dig out the portable hard drive and hook it up. A 2gb time capsule is a ridiculous $500! A 2TB hard drive runs $90 and the top of the line netgear wndr3700 wireless router is $150. I refuse to pay a $260 apple tax. I already have a windows 7 x64 machine that is on 24/7 with 2TB just sitting there ready to be used.
- So I started looking around to see if I could use time machine on snow leopard to backup to a windows (samba) share.
I started with this key hint: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090905212640957 (read the comments about some potential risks though I'm willing to live with them).
- I decided to use the provided script here:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184462
- Here are some additional tips. Make sure you do this first so time machine will show unsupported volumes:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/how-to-enable-time-machine-on-unsupported-volumes/


defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

- Make sure you share the exact folder you want the backup to be in. Example if you want to save your backups into d:\backup make sure you create a share at the backup level and not at d:\. This way when you mount the samba share if you look in /Volumes you should see /Volumes/backup.
- If you are cutting and pasting on how to run the script there is an extra space after "sh" that needs to be removed. I also sudo it just to be safe.


sudo sh ./makeImage.sh 500 /Volumes/backup

- For my two macbooks each with 500gb hard drives with about 320gb dedicated to osx (the rest to bootcamp) I made the sparse bundle 500gb each.
- After doing all the above I was able to use time machine with a windows share. I would recommend gigabit ethernet for the initial backup but wireless works fine too.
- I also found the default backup frequency of every hour too frequent. Instead I just run time machine manually whenever I want to backup (probably about once a week):
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090122063202910
- Lots of time machine info: http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
- Some people seemed to have problems getting this to work. Some suggestions made were to use the ip address to mount instead of the machine name and use an all numeric password for the share. I didn't have to do any of this since it just worked for me.

This little hack makes time machine a lot more convenient and sure is a LOT cheaper than a time capsule.

RadTech ScreenSavrz for Notebooks

2010-10-06T20:22:00.004-06:00

- So I've been noticing lately that on the macbook pro 15" when I open the screen there are a few marks on it even after just cleaning it. It seems that the oils from your hands that get left behind on your keyboard can dirty up your screen when the lid is closed. This didn't happen so much with our mbp 13" but it was getting quite annoying with the mbp 15".
- Sure, I guess you could use the white sheet packaging material that came with your macbook but it's rather ghetto.
- Radtech Screensavrz are made of some really nice feeling material, are great for wiping your screen, and thin. Just place it on top of your keyboard before closing the lid.
- Washable
- I picked up a 13" ($15) and 15" ($17) from mygearstore through amazon since they had free shipping.

Highly Recommend. Works great!

Netgear WNDR3700 and DD-WRT

2010-09-26T12:34:00.012-06:00

http://www.netgear.com/products/home/wirelessrouters/high-performance/WNDR3700.aspx

- I've been using a Linksys wrt310n for the past two years. It has served me well. It run's DD-WRT and was easy to flash. It still works fine but I've been itching to upgrade to a simultaneous dual band wireless N router. Having just got uverse and a new macbook pro I felt it was time to upgrade the router.
- I was trying to decide between this model and the Linksys E3000. Both have very similar specs and are priced at $150. They both have DD-WRT support.
I was a bit tired of the Linksys flying saucer design which seems to trap a lot of heat. Also, I was interested in giving the atheros chipset a try instead of the usual broadcom based ones.
- If you look on the box label you can tell what revision the router is. I got an 01r18. I believe the latest one is r21. There is also a new red box vs the old blue/yellow box that is 02r1 which most people think is just a repackaged r21. I'm not sure how big of a difference the revision makes but I would recommend finding the latest one you can on the shelf. I picked up mine at frys, and r18 is all they had. Some say the revision is linked to quality control. Basically, if you get a good one that doesn't have any radio issues then you should probably hold on to it.
- I really like the look of this router. The vertical stand is nice too. Also, it has an on/off switch that so few routers have. There is also a button on the front to toggle wifi on/off.
- I flashed dd-wrt right out of the box. Just go to the router database and search on wndr3700 for the latest recommended images. It was a pretty painless process. Just follow the instructions in the wiki. It's kind of odd that you have to do a 30/30/30 reset twice back to back but I went ahead and did it following the instructions to the letter. I noticed this version of dd-wrt includes openvpn.
- Dual band is interesting. It's basically two complete wireless access points in one box. The 2.4ghz and 5ghz each has it's own set of settings like SSID and security. This wiki entry explains the wireless settings pretty well. For 2.4ghz I set it to NG mixed, channel auto, channel width turbo 40hz (channel bonding), and in advanced boosted tx power to maximum recommended of 22. On the 5ghz radio I made it N only, turbo 40hz, and tx power 24. I had to switch it off of mixed to NG mixed or N only and save settings before 40hz was available. You want the 40hz to get the maximum 300mbps link rate. Having simultaneous dual band is pretty important. You want the 2.4ghz for legacy g and n equipment like my iPhone 4 N is only 2.4. It's also good for guests. You want 5ghz for the latest N equipment like my MacBook Pros where the air waves are less crowded even though range is going to be shorter.
- I like how all the ports are gigabit not just on the LAN switch side but the WAN port too. Even with qos on and lots of traffic cpu stayed very very low at < 15% and most of the time it's even lower than that. I guess that atheros 680mhz cpu really helps. I noticed my old wrt310n would routinely get to over 50% on its 300mhz cpu. - Performance over wired seems fine with ample bandwidth all around including wan to lan (408Mbps according to this review). Wireless performance is pretty dependent on location of course.

The router is in my main computer room. With the macbook pro 15" mid 2010 next to it in the same room on windows 7 x64 bootcamp, wpa2, copying a large 4.5GB file using fastcopy and netpersec to determine the speed.
5ghz: 118 Mbps
2.4ghz: 64Mbps

In the master bedroom, two bedrooms down on the same floor:
5ghz: 72Mbps
2.4ghz: 40Mbps

Downstairs in the family room:
5ghz: 102Mbps
2.4ghz: 62Mbps

The best this router can do is around 120mbps which isn't too shabby. No router will ever actually do 300mbps no matter what the link speed says. Smallnetbuilders charts showing the fastest being around 92Mbps so I guess I'm doing pretty well.
- Temperature is very good and much cooler than my linksys. It was barely warm to the touch.
- I had no issues with the radios being really weak or the 2.4ghz dying after 2 hrs. It's been a few days now and both radios seem to work fine.
- I haven't tried the USB port yet. I really don't have a need for it since all my storage is shared off a pc that is on 24/7.

Recommended. The jump in price from dual band to simultaneous dual band is quite substantial (about $80 to $150) but I think it's worth it. I don't plan to upgrade routers that often and this top of the line one should last me many years.

AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet

2010-09-25T09:41:00.020-06:00

The at&t RG is massive!

Broadband Background
- My road to broadband has been a long journey. I started off way back before there was DSL and Cable modem with IDSL with a symmetrical 144 kbps in both directions. It wasn't cheap. It wasn't fast. But it was very reliable. Next, we got Time Warner road runner and things were now faster and cheaper but a bit shaky for the first couple of years. Then, evil horrible Comcast took over and things got much worse. By now cable modem was pretty stable but comcast's support was just horrible and their definition of unlimited was a joke. This was back before they even stated a 250GB/month limit. You had to just kind of guess what magical line in the sand you might cross before you got a phone call. It doesn't even matter if you ever hit the 250GB limit it's more of a principle thing with me. Plus, comcast powerboost shenanigans really messes with QoS so I couldn't really ever take advantage of it. I left comcsat and went to traditional DSL with a fantastic local ISP. Speeds were pretty slow at around 6mbps down / .55 mbps up (rated 6/768). Speeds weren't great but it was very stable, great pings for gaming, and super responsive support with me always getting a human here locally within a minute (or IM if I chose). I stayed with them for several years until uverse was finally available in my neighborhood. Having recently visited a cousin in law who had fios and becoming very envious of their speed I decided to wait out the remaining contract to avoid early termination fees and jump on the uverse bandwagon.

Install
- Had no interest in their other services just the high speed internet.
- First, I had to disconnect my DSL before I could even get an install date for uverse. This was going to leave me with a short outage which was unacceptable. I guess we could have gotten by with the mifi but still I decided to go back to comcast. I picked up the cable modem and signed up for the $20/month plan. I was only going to keep it a few weeks just to cover my gap anyways. And of course when I got home I couldn't get an IP. I go back to my dsl and chat with a support person. After handing over the modem information they provisioned it and I was up and running. Why is it after all these years EVERY SINGLE TIME I HAVE TO CONTACT SUPPORT TO PROVISION THE MODEM before it would work. They HAVE NEVER done it right at the counter in all the previous years when I swapped out modems. I see nothing has really changed at comcast. I felt dirty and had to shower. The day the DSL went down I gave a quick call back to uverse. They said it can take up to a week before the lines are shown as cleared. Lucky for me the lines did show as cleared, and I even got an appointment the next day!
- Unfortunately I wasn't present during the install but my wife was. So the only information I have is what she told me. He came out and noticed my old IDSL jack which I told him he could re-purpose which he did. I guess it was a dedicated pair that ran through my house and it was good enough for uverse. So my AT&T 2wire 3800HGV-B RG is actually hooked up through a standard phone cable RJ-11. What pisses me off is the tech steamrolled my wife a bit. I had told the wife to use the laptop directly hooking it up to the RG to do a speedtest.net run but the tech just disconnect my main server off my home network and plugged it directly into the RG. Then he installed all this at&t support tool crap on my pc which was a bit difficult to gut since it didn't uninstall properly and even installs 3 windows services. I think I got it all off but that still pisses me off. The wife told him he can't be doing that, and he did it anyways. So I highly recommend you be present during the install. You'll have to create an account and register and all that but don't let them install anything!
- There are several different plans you can get but I went for the highest Max Turbo (24mbps/3mbps) since it was available. It's $65/month plus $3/month equipment fee. You also get stuck with a $150 install fee since I didn't bundle with any of their other services. This chart shows not only downstream but upstream speeds too. I was most interested in the increased upstream speed and the only way to get 3mbps up was with the Max Turbo plan. I stream a lot of media especially to my iPhone. Also, I was planning to work from home more often since my company just moved offices and was now 40 miles away (hour commute each way)!

Performance
- Speedtest.net results are amazing to say the least. This is with QoS turned off so this is the full raw speed:

The best part these are real numbers, sustained throughput, not traffic shapped powerboost crap. It's also unmetered and truly unlimited.

Using uverse realtime my numbers looked really good:

I was an estimated 700ft from the vrad and on the highest profile 32/5. The bitloading graph looks good too with bits loaded pretty much across the entire spectrum.
Read the manual for a more detailed description.

Pings look good with 27ms to google using pingplotter.

Using your own wireless router with the AT&T RG
- There are many reasons why you would want to use your own router. For me is once you go DD-WRT you really can't go back to anything else. There are lots of features missing on the RG compared to most modern routers like upnp and wireless N.
- So reading around it seemed an easy enough task to daisy chain your router off of the att RG. Basically, you plug the wan port of your router into a LAN ethernet port on the RG. Make sure your router is on a different network segment than the RG. So if your RG is 192.168.1.254 your router should be 192.168.0.xxx. You let your router get it's WAN IP using dhcp from the RG. On the RG side you need to find the IP that was assigned to your router, select it, and mark it as dmzplus. RG password is printed on a sticker on the actual device. Disable wireless on the RG. Go back and reboot your router and the RG for good measure. You should notice that your router now has the external WAN IP that the RG has. All traffic should be just passed through the RG to your router where you can do all your static mappings, port forwards, QoS, upnp, and wireless N. Somebody else already wrote up a pretty nice guide so I'll just point you in that direction. I got all this working just fine in about 10 min. Then the real problems began....
- About every 5 min I would lose connectivity for a split second and then it would be restored. You would notice this in long downloads where it would all of a sudden stop. In games like wow, mw2, halo reach it would causes slight pauses once in a while or kick me out of my xbox live party. It can sometimes interrupt your netflix streaming. It was very annoying and took me over a week to track down. First thoughts were it was something with my dd-wrt router (linksys wrt310n). I tried adjusting TCP Timeout values and disabling QoS. I flashed with the latest ddwrt recommended version doing all the proper 30/30/30 resets. Nothing seemed to help. I next eliminated cabling, switches, the pc, etc. Finally, I took my macbook and plugged it directly into the RG and all was fine. The connection was rock solid. So the problem wasn't upstream from the RG out to the vrad. At least it was something I had direct control over. After lots of research and even buying a new router (Netgear WNDR3700. OK this was really just an excuse for me to finally upgrade to a simultaneous dual band wireless N router) I was at my wits end. I was trying to think of what else was different between daisy chaining the routers and going directly to the RG. Then it hit me: dmz plus. When connecting directly to the RG I'm under that RG's nat and firewall, and it was NOT dmz'd. So for kicks I took my router's IP off of dmz and treated it like a normal dhcp client. All the issues went away. The 5 min disconnects were gone. Of course this wasn't an acceptable solution since I need my router in dmzplus so upnp would work properly. I wanted all traffic just passed through the RG to my router. At least I now narrowed it down to something specific with dmzplus.
- What is happening is dmzplus mode fails on DHCP renewal. For dmzplus to work the ip has to be assigned by dhcp, it is also forced into a 10 minute lease. The dhcp client (your router's wan port) renews at 50% lease time. There is that magical 5 min I was seeing. Apparently the dhcp offer comes from a different IP than what was requested by your router so your router's firewall blocks it. This causes a connection reset and the momentary drop in internet connectivity. You can see this happen like clock work on the ddwrt Status | WAN page where remaining lease time counts down from 10 min until it gets to 5 min and then it is renewed back to 10 min. This is pretty well explained in this thread. The solution is in this thread. On ddwrt go to administration | Commands. Enter:
iptables -I INPUT -p udp --dport 68 -j ACCEPT
Click on "save firewall"
Reboot the router.
That allows all dhcp offers through the firewall. PROBLEM SOLVED. The connection no longer resets and everything works smoothly. I have no idea if this is a dd-wrt specific issue or if it would affect any SPI firewall router. Either way I hope this little nugget of information saves you some time because this was probably the most frustrating network issue I've ever had to solve.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you can get uverse with a clean connection. Just watch that installer like a hawk, fix that dmzplus issue, and you are good to go. The pings are fine for gaming. Interleave seemed to have little to no impact. I didn't notice pings being any worse than comcast. Being able to finally stream netflix on my 360 in hd at maximum quality is awesome. I would say it looks as good as atsc. Streaming via air video to iPhone looks significantly better too. Now the bottleneck is att 3G instead of my upstream bandwidth. The connection has been very stable and fast for the two weeks I've had it so far.

MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.4ghz (mid 2010)

2010-09-13T00:26:00.022-06:00

- So with the wife having recently gone back to school and pretty much using the macbook pro 13-inch all the time now I really missed having a modern laptop to use. The Dell Inspiron 8600 has served me well for many years but it was time to trickle that down to the kids and look for a new laptop for myself. The macbook pro 13-inch we got last year has been overall a good experience so I was considering just getting another one. What bugs me is the refresh for 2010 didn't seem all that hot. I mean it still used a c2d cpu (no core i5) and the nvidia 320m is a pretty nice bump up from the ion but still its performance isn't what you would call exciting. I really like the 13 inch form factor though. I think it's a great compromise between size, weight, and usability. I considered the alienware m11x which has a really nice gpu (nvidia 335m) but I think 11 inches might be a tad too small to play world of warcraft on. The asus n82j, a 335m optimus based laptop, also looked interesting but is still not released in the US. In the same boat is the acer timelinex 3820tg which I really wanted but is also not released in the US. It has an ati 5650 in a 13 inch laptop. Finally, there was the HP Envy 14 which is very MBPish. It's a 14" laptop with a slower clocked ati 5650. It's also pretty pricey. I came really close to getting the envy. Then, I started looking at the macbook 15". It had the core i5 (turbo boost + hyperthreading ftw), a nvidia 330m which is about 8-10% slower than some of the other options I looked at, had good battery life, and has the advantage of being able to run osx and windows 7. My thoughts were I plan to do more coding on this laptop. With bootcamp I can have a full .net development environment setup and maybe finally get serious about iPhone development. Of course a bit of Modern Warfare 2 or wow would be nicer on a 15" screen too. I figure it might even be fast enough to use at LAN parties.
- OK, these macbooks are EXPENSIVE for what you get. I felt the apple tax even more this time around. I really felt the competition was offering quite a bit more hardware for quite a bit less money. Even with the educational discount and ebaying the the free iPod Touch to help offset the cost, the cheapest mbp 15" still ran me about $1580. After reading a bunch of reviews it seemed like you go either 2.4 or the top of the line core i7. The i7 was quite a bit more than I wanted to spend on the laptop so the core i5 2.4ghz it was. This was only $80 more than what I spent on the mbp 13" I got last year. I guess if I look at it that way it wasn't that bad of a deal.
- I LOVE the keyboard on this thing. I'm not sure how different it is from the 13". Maybe there is more space between the keys. Either way I found it a joy to type on. There's no flex of course. The keys just felt right size and spacing wise. I can type really fast with very few errors. I liked the keyboard just fine on the 13" but this one is noticeably better.
- I forgot how much bigger and heavier a 15" is compared to a 13". It might not seem like much but after a few hours of use you really start to notice. The display and keyboard might be worth the trade off. Besides, we still have the 13" which we would bring on trips and leave the 15" at home. The extra 1.1 lbs might not sound like much but you do kind of notice it after long periods of use.
- The inertial scrolling is quite nice.
- Apple has it's own version of optimus with the seamless switching between integrated graphics and the 330m. It's great having good enough performance for wow and starcraft II while still getting great battery life when you are just surfing.
- I stuck with the default 1440X900 screen not just because of cost but because I wanted better game performance at native resolutions.
- I love how on first boot osx comes up nice and clean with ZERO crapware installed.

Yeah, about that apple "premium" experience that you pay for....
- I think I had more quirks with this laptop than the mbp 13" I bought last year.
- First, I had the freezing issue. It happened during wow, in 5 man instances, and even when I'm just riding around Stormwind. The computer would just freeze up for 5 seconds or so. I also noticed quite a bit of spinning beach ball. This happened more when vmware fusion was running. It seemed like it was hard drive related. Disabling spotlight using snow leopard cache cleaner seemed to fix the issue. Later, I re-enabled spotlight, and things still seemed ok. It's all moot because I swapped out the hard drive and now things run great. You pay for premium and what do you get? A POS 5400 rpm Hitachi. I mean they couldn't even spring for a 7200rpm drive. Sheesh!
- I installed steam next and got the dreaded "Could not connect to steam network." OK, this more of a steam issue than a mac one but it was still frustrating. After uninstalling and re-installing steam, it started working and I was able to download my games.
- In bootcamp I ran into a sound issue. The sound kept cutting out. I finally went into control panel | sound and noticed it kept flipping between speakers and headphones all on its own. No, it wasn't a drive issue like it was last year. This time it was a physical issue. I have no idea why this works but I took a toothpick, broke off one one of the pointy ends, cleaned off all splinters, and gently inserted it into the headphone jack and ran it around the inside edge. Do not jam it in there. I read about this from here:
http://www.fixya.com/support/t214879-macbook_sound_driver_issues
It sounds totally crazy but it worked! I hope it stays fixed but so far so good.
- So I pared my Razor Orochi bluetooth mouse just fine in osx. After installing bootcamp I had issues pairing it with windows 7. It would just hang on connecting. I found this interesting thread where it discussed how you have to unpair the mouse from osx first. Delete it from bluetooth devices. Then, boot back into windows and pair it there. After it is successfully paired in windows you should power down and cold boot into osx and pair it there again. Now it should work in both environment. This is another big WTF. I mean how are settings in one os affecting the other os? It makes no sense to me.
- Mouse Speed Switcher is a nice windows utility to let you switch between different mouse settings quickly. This is useful if you have different sensitivity settings between the trackpad and a mouse. I still wish 3 finger gestures worked in windows. Maybe trackpad++ will add it someday.

Upgrades
- SSD sounds so tempting but I need at least 500gb of space since I plan to bootcamp and dual boot. A 500gb SSD is like $1300. I'm not going to spend almost as much as the laptop itself on just the hard drive. Instead, I picked up one of those new hybrid drives: Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM. It shipped with the latest firmware SD23 so there was no need to flash it. It's basically a 500gb 7200 rpm drive with a 32mb cache and a 4gb ssd. Also, it's only $130. You pay a bit of a premium for a hybrid but it's still a fraction of the cost of an SSD. At worst it performs no worse than a good 7200 rpm drive, and at best it can significantly speed up often loaded programs. Someday I'll make the jump to a true SSD but not today. Swapping the hard drive was exactly like the mbp 13 which you can read about in my mbp 13 review. Make sure you have a torx 6 screwdriver. First, I attached the new hdd via usb. I partitioned as guid and then imaged the current hdd to the new one using carbon copy cloner. Next, I swapped the hard drives. It booted up just fine so I went ahead and did the bootcamp thing with a 300/200 split (osx/win7). The drive is quiet and fast and NO MORE FREEZING. I have no complaints. Now, I have the original 320gb hdd which I'll slap into an external enclosure and use it as my time machine backup drive. Never buy the way over priced apple upgrades for this kind of stuff. It's much cheaper and better to do it yourself.
- G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500). 8 GB of ram for $180 isn't too bad now. I think I can ebay the old memory for around $60-70 so that should help offset the cost a bit. I went ahead and bought two of these so both macbooks are now upgraded to 8gb. We run vmware fusion with win 7 32bit quite a bit so it's nice having 5 gb for osx and 3gb for win 7. Running the latest memtest86+ on the mbp 13" came out clean. When I tried it on the mbp 15" It immediately threw up a ton of errors. Apparently it's due to buggy EFI and the errors are false. Instead, I ran Remember which tested most of my memory and came out clean. I guess there's more of that apple premium experience.
- I picked up some extra magsafe 85w power supplies from the ebay seller sib-usa for around $20 shipped which worked just fine.

Gaming Performance
- All games are run at native resolution 1440X900

OSX Snow Leopard:

-World of Warcraft: video settings - good, multisample = x1, Vsync off,
riding around stormwind: 55-75 fps
riding around Dalaran: 35 fps
Played about 30 min in a 25 man Sunwell raid with about 18 people. I forgot to look at the fps but it felt fine. No problems raiding on this laptop.

- Starcraft II: 28-30 fps. A tad low but playable.
Textur: med

Shader:. H

Lighting: L

Shadows: M

Terrain: H

Reflection: Off

Effects: H

Post processing: M

Physics: H

Models: H

Unit portraits: 3d

Movies: H

Windows 7 x64 ultimate, 8gb ram, bootcamp 3.1;

- 3dmark 06

1280x800

overall: 6707

sm2.0: 2690

gt1: 23.448

gt2: 21.383

hdr/sm3: 2615

hdr1: 22.360

hdr2: 29.938

cpu: 2865

cpu1: .928

cpu2: 1.414

1440x900

overall: 6061

sm2: 2448

gt1: 21.555

gt2: 19.649

hdr/sm3: 2283

hdr1: 20.003

hdr2: 25.653

cpu: 2824

cpu1: .921

cpu2: 1.386

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Frames	Time (ms)	Min	Max	Avg
3306	60000	39	93	55.1

fraps benchmark for 60 seconds during multiplayer team deathmatch on Crash

AA: off

Sync: off

Shadows: Y

Specular map: Y

Depth of field: Off

Soften smoke edges: N

Ragdoll: y

Bullet impacts: Y

Texture quality: Automatic

Overall, I'm satisfied with the purchase. Once you spend way too much time researching and working around all the quirks in the system it's actually a very nice laptop. Is it me or is Apple getting more and more sloppy lately? Anyways, recommended if you don't mind the sticker shock or getting your hands a bit dirty to get things tweaked and working the way you want it to. Honestly though if you don't do any osx/iOS development, I would probably not recommend a macbook. There are perfectly good alternatives out there for a lot less money.

iSkin Solo for iPhone 4

2010-08-20T23:42:00.010-06:00

- iSkin Solo was my favorite case for my iPhone 3gs so I've been waiting for them to finally come out with an iPhone 4 model.
- It was half price ($15) direct from their site. I think the deal is good until the end of the month. Shipping is a bit high at around $7.
- I picked up the black one for myself and the pink one for the wife.
- This is a very nice TPU case. I really like the feel. It has a very nice texture around the edge to give it a nice grip without being sticky. The back has that standard TPU feel (slightly grippy but doesn't stick or pick up lint that easily).
- The entire case is slightly translucent to give it that smokey look. The back is properly frosted so it looks great with no weird glass meets plastic watery marks. It's pretty shinny.
- There is a bit more lip now over the front which I like. This way it will NOT interfere with screen protectors like my awesome power support crystal film set ($20). It's also just thick enough to give some protection to the front of the screen if you lay it face down. There are some slits in the top corners to help you get the iPhone in the case.
- Buttons are very easy to press. The cut outs match very well. There is plenty of space around the camera (no flash issues). The only flaw I found was the strip underneath the connector is a bit close and may interfere with 3rd party sync cables like the one I pictured above. You have to pull the case down a bit to get the cable to fit. It's a bit inconvenient. The original sync cable fits perfectly. This is only an issue with 3rd party cables that have a bit more plastic around the connector. Fyi, you can get apple oem sync cables for around $4 shipped on ebay.

Highly recommended. iSkin pretty much gets everything just right. Their attention to detail is near perfect except the aforementioned very minor bottom connector issue. After 6 cases I'm finally happy. iSkin solo + power support crystal = complete protection, great looks, and a great feel.

Belkin Shield Micra iPhone 4 Case

2010-08-20T23:26:00.006-06:00

- This was the free case I picked that you get from Apple.
- It's a hard plastic case. It has just enough flex to it to allow you to slip your iPhone 4 in. The plastic is pretty hard but doesn't seem too brittle. It would probably hold up pretty well.
- It's very thin and looks pretty good. The back where the glass meets the plastic can still leave some odd looking watery marks.
- The top and bottom are almost completely exposed.
- Space around the camera is good
- It does NOT interfere with screen protectors. The sides barely come up over the front of the screen.
- There are cut outs for the mute and volume switch. I found the volume switch a bit too recessed and hard to reach.
- It's very slippery. I feel like the phone is going to fly out of my hand.

Not Recommended even for free. It offers too little protection/coverage, and it's too slippery to hold.

Samsung SyncMaster P2770H

2010-08-19T22:52:00.007-06:00

- So the Westinghouse 24" died after only two years. It died the same way the first one I had (which died in 30 days) where the screen goes all pink. It has a crappy 1 year warranty too so I'm hosed. I'm done with third tier producers. Never again!
- So I was looking for a replacement. 27" seemed like it would be a nice upgrade and I've been very happy with my previous samsung hdtv's and monitors. Newegg had this model on sale for $315 shipped 3 day.
- I noticed most monitors these days are only 1920X1080 vs 1920X1200. I kind of miss the additional vertical resolution but I can't complain about the price.
- It has hdmi and a dvi-i inputs and audio outputs which pulls audio from hdmi. It does not have speakers. The stand is not very adjustable. All you can do is tilt it a bit. It does not swivel or have height adjustment.
- It comes with a dvi-dvi and dvi-vga cable.
- I'm primarily using this for gaming and some programming. It's a TN panel but I really don't care. I'd rather have the quicker 2ms gtg response time and reduced input lag. View angle and color reproduction are secondary to me.
- Backlight is pretty uniform with no obvious bleeding. I didn't find any dead pixels.
- HDMI worked fine with the 2 computers I'm using it with through a monoprice hdmi switch. On the nvidia 8600gt it looked fine without any adjustments. My ATI radeon 5850 hd though defaulted with a lot of underscan. It's a little hard to find in the catalyst drivers. Look here for some nice directions on how to turn underscan off so you get 1:1 native resolution without any scaling. Text is very clear.
- I'm sure a gaming console would work nicely with the HDMI too. Also, there is the P2770HD model for about $40 more you get a nice hdtv/monitor hybrid with a built in tuner, speakers, remote, and a lot more input options.
- Under setup | PC/AV Mode: Set it to PC Mode. Also set Auto Source to manual so sleep works properly.
- I tried some world of warcraft and call of duty modern warfare 2 on it. The size is pretty overwhelming at first but in an awesome sort of way. I quickly adjusted to it. Picture looked great with no ghosting or input lag.
- It has a very subtle red touch of color which matches my 46" samsung hdtv in the same room quite nicely. It also uses the same touch controls. There are no physical buttons. You just touch specific spots in the lower right corner and the area lights up with menu, arrows, etc for you to touch for each function. It's very aesthetically pleasing but some people might prefer physical buttons. My samsung hdtv is the same way too.
- 3 year warranty.
- I'm still messing with the picture settings but I already like what I see.
- No mounting holes on the back.

Highly recommended. For $315 you would be hard pressed to find a better panel. Sure some frills and features had to be cut but for the price and size it's an amazing deal.

Logitech PlayStation 3 Cordless MediaBoard Pro

2010-08-19T22:23:00.006-06:00

- So I'm a big fan of the old Logitech Cordless Mediaboad especially for htpc use. I have several of them. I decided to give this newer Pro model a try. I picked it up from amazon for $55. It's very similar to the old model except it's bluetooth. It's primarily designed for the playstation 3 but it works fine with other devices like computers and iOS as long as it has bluetooth since no dongle is included. I was just basically looking for a nice generic full size bluetooth keyboard, and the touchpad is a bonus.
- The key layout is nice and normal. I really like the feel of it. If you use it with windows or osx just note that there is no windows or command key but you can remap some other key if you want in the OS.
- It works really well with my iPhone 4. Just note that none of the extra keys or any of the navigation keys outside of the arrow keys and ctrl + arrow work. That means no home button key or any of the media controls for ipod player work. The touchpad obviously doesn't do anything either.

Recommended. It's a better value than the apple wireless bluetooth keyboard though this is a more generic keyboard so it's not going to have any OS specific keys. It feels great to type on and works well with your iOS devices. Plus you get an integrated touchpad.

Clear TPU iPhone 4 Case from ebay

2010-07-31T23:42:00.010-06:00

Note: Photos taken back before powersupport iPhone 4 screen protectors were released. What is shown here is my iPhone 4 with a modified powersupport anti glare 3gs screen protector. I even punched my own hole for the front facing camera. That's why it looks so ghetto and doesn't quite fit right.

- I picked this case up for $5 shipped from ebay. It was a US seller so I got it in 3 days.
- It has a good feel. I really do like TPU cases. Fit, finish, and cut are pretty good. It's a little more flimsy than the belkin grip vue. The bottom is just slightly deformed and the center top bulges out just a tiny bit. But overall it's not half bad.
- All the buttons are easy to press.
- The back is completely clear. This is what happens when plastic meets glass:

Yup, it's a bubbly watery looking mess.
- I went ahead and did the sharpie trick. I wasn't sure if I needed to but it's not like I was going to return this $5 case.

You can't even tell once the case is on.
- It can potentially interfere with screen protectors. If you are careful you can take a dremel to the lip and sand them down just a bit. It seemed to help.

Recommended. For $5 you could do a lot worse. I like the feel, the buttons work, it was dirt cheap. I'll stick with this case until iSkin comes out with theirs unless I like the freebie case (I went with the Belkin Shield Micra. Hopefully they fixed their button issue) I get from apple which won't arrive for another month.

UPDATE: 8/3/2010
- Monoprice just got some back in stock for about $3 shipped. They should be very similar if not exactly the same as the one I reviewed here.

UPDATE: 8/21/2010
- I got the monoprice case in. It's very similar to the ebay case but it's a bit thicker. Also, it doesn't quite fit as well and the case can arrive a bit deformed. It's ok for the price but IMO the ebay one was quite a bit better.

LifeGrip Silicone Case for Apple iPhone 4

2010-07-31T23:27:00.008-06:00

- This is the "free" case from cases.com that cnet talked about. I use the word free loosely because they are obviously making a profit from the $3.73 shipping they charge. Still, it's a pretty dirt cheap case...too cheap....way too cheap in this case.
- It looks like crap; it feels like crap. It's very flimsy. It has a slightly baggy fit. The cut outs are mostly in the right place. The mute switch cut out was a bit off. It attracts lint like crazy. It will invert your pockets. The bottom is almost entirely exposed.
- At least the buttons are easy to press.
- It makes a great theft deterrent. Your phone will look so ghetto and nasty that nobody will want to touch it let alone steal it. If Gray Powell had put the iPhone 4 prototype in this case I'm sure it would have been safely left at the bar or thrown out with the dish water.

Not recommended not even for "free"

Belkin Grip Vue iPhone 4 Case

2010-07-31T23:07:00.006-06:00

Note: Photos taken back before powersupport iPhone 4 screen protectors were released. What is shown here is my iPhone 4 with a modified powersupport anti glare 3gs screen protector. I even punched my own hole for the front facing camera. That's why it looks so ghetto and doesn't quite fit right.

- $25 at best buy. It was one of the few cases available at launch.
- Your basic TPU case. I really like the feel. It's pretty sturdy yet has just the right amount of flex to it. It doesn't pick up any lint or invert your pockets.
- Looks great, thin, sturdy, offers pretty good protection. The entier case is clear except for the frosted back. I like the frosted back. Trust me. You don't want a clear back. When plastic meets glass it ain't pretty. You'll get this watery air bubbly looking mess.
- The cut and fit is really good. You may need to do the sharpie trick. I didn't bother.
- It may interfere with the screen protector and cause the edges to bubble. It happened a bit on my phone but not so much on my wife's.
- Buttons are WAY TOO HARD TO PRESS for power and volume. I never got use to it. It bothered me enough that I ended up returning the case. I would have kept the case if it wasn't for this one major issue.

Not recommended due to the button issue. Other than that it would have been a great case though a bit on the pricey side.

iPhone 4

2010-07-31T21:15:00.016-06:00

- Why another iPhone? I'm surrounded by android users so I got to try out the Google Nexus One and the HTC Evo 4G quite extensively. There were several things that really impresses me about android especially the ability to side load apps (can we say free tethering) and tight integration with google services like goggles, voice, and navigation. As far as apps go they are catching up and rather quickly though they are still missing some key media apps. They still don't have anything close to something that works as well as air video. But in most key areas they are pretty much covered except for one. I'm a gamer. Heck it's in the tag line of this blog. I love my portable gaming and well that's one area that android is way way way behind iPhone. The top tier games just aren't there. I don't know if it's just iPhone's momentum in this segment or it's more of a development technical issue with android but android lack of big AAA titles is a huge drawback for me. So until/if android ever catches up in that department and has same day releases with iPhone for big games like Street Fighter IV, nova, Final Fantasy Chaos Rings, GTA Chinatown, Resident Evil, etc I'll stick with my iPhone. Besides, it is an iPhone, it is the best phone, it's 3g and has the wifi's, and I got the one with the bigger G B's. Of course I can't say I wasn't a bit envious when I was recently at a baseball game with a friend and he was pulling 1.8mbs (speedtest.net app) on his evo over 4g while I was struggling to get 200kbps but that's more the carrier than the phone itself. I guess it helps when you are sharing a cell tower with only 10 other people.
- So I picked up two 32gb iPhone 4's. I decided to sell our existing two 32gb iPhone 3gs's through gazelle.com (see what I did there gazelle? I didn't even hyperlink your site because I'm still kind of pissed at you) again. The day after the announcement of iPhone 4 I went ahead and got my quote locked in at $304 per phone (perfect condition, all accessories). That quote is good for 30 days (they are very strict on the 30 days). I figure I'll just preorder day one from apple.com, have them shipped to me, and still leave me about a 2 week window. Well as you know preorder came and everything went to crap. I tried all day and couldn't get the preorders in until 10pm that night. Suffice it to say I didn't get a day one ship day. I didn't get the phones that Thurs but they did come in the following week on tues and wed. So I immediately shipped the 3gs's to gazelle that thurs (a week after launch) and it got there in time. Current used value of the 3gs had dropped a ton down to $168 at that point so I really wanted my original quote. Unfortunately, they did not agree with my quality assessment which IMO is complete BS. The day I opened my 3gs I literally took it out of the box, slapped a powersupport anti glare screen protector on it, and stuck it into a case. The screen itself hasn't ever even been touched by human hands! I never dropped it. It was IMO in perfect condition. They claimed minor scratches on the back side and a small crack near the mute switch. Whatever. I think their definition of perfect is unrealistic (as in it still has to be shrink wrapped is my guess). Still, they offered me $277 each instead, and I took it. What else was I suppose to do. It was still matching current ebay prices. So if you use gazelle just a bit of a warning. Just make sure you are happy with their "good" rating price b/c you will NEVER see that "perfect" price. Other than that things went smoothly and they payed through paypal promptly.
- Pricing on the iPhones was another issue. We didn't qualify for the cheapest price because we were both upgrading only 1 year into your 3gs contracts. My wife's phone qualified for the $499 price. My phone on the other hand didn't qualify for any discount. That's right. I had to pay the full $699 price. The reason they explained is since my wife's phone was the main line and mine was the add on family line, the bulk of the monthly charges was on her phone therefore qualifying her for the $499 price earlier than mine. On the bright side I have zero commitment on my line now (where's that verizon iPhone?). This also means next year I would qualify for the fully subsidized price of $299. So $499 every year on the wife's and $299 then $699 every other year on mine. The math still works out to an average of $500 per year if you upgrade every year. Don't forget you can recover at least half of that if you sell your old iPhone.
- I highly recommend purchasing from apple vs at&t. First, last year I ordered through at&t and the sim cards were totally screwed up, and we had issues activating them. This year I had no issues activating. Also, if you have to exchange the phone you'll have a better shot at the apple store holding some stock to do that. AT&T won't have anything.

- I HAVE NO ISSUES WITH THE ANTENNA. I just spent $1200 on iPhones. Why would I not use a case? There are only two articles you need to read about antennagate:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix
Like my high school AP chemistry teach use to say: "Units are your best friend." Bars have no units. Without units they are pretty meaningless especially when comparing between different phones that use different dB brackets. Those above articles have the hard dB numbers.
- The phone has rebooted twice while syncing now (syncing daily for about a month now). Nothing catastrophic has happened but it is a bit unnerving. Hopefully it gets sorted out in a patch (either itunes or iOS).
- That's pretty much it. I haven't had any real issues so far. It has been working great.

- Retina display is best summed up by my wife: "It's so sharp it cut my eyes."
- 512mb for more multitasking fun (yeah yeah yeah set of background services exposed through their api, blah blah blah, you know what it covers all my use cases that I care about, and if it helps battery life then I'm all for this flavor of "multitasking.")
- It's zippier thanks to the A4 but it doesn't feel as big of a jump as it was with 3g to 3gs.
- LED flash, front facing camera, facetime, 720p video, gyroscope - all very nice upgrades.
- Battery life definitely seems better than 3gs.
- Speeds vary greatly from market to market and location to location but my best over 3g was 3.2 mbps down and 1.3 mbps up (speedtest.net app). HSUPA rocks. It's kind of amazing that my phone upstream speeds are twice as fast as my home dsl.
- All existing 3gs accessories seem to work (chargers, sync cable, composite av cables)
- I did some more testing with the composite av cables. Air Video and dropbox also work with tv out. SlingPlayer, cnn, revision 3, g4, hulu, tv.com do not.

- I just got my powersupport crystal film set. Yes they are pricey at $20 for two sheets but they are hands down the best screen protectors you can get. In the past I went with anti-glare because I liked the feel and it was very resistant to finger prints. I went with crystal this time because I wanted nothing to get in the way of that awesome Retina display. They are even easier to apply now. The backing is partitioned into 4 pieces. You can remove a center strip only, position and stick that part on, then peel off each additional section and stick it down. I have to say the look and feel is great (not tacky like invisible shield). It's almost like it's not even there.

Highly recommended. Yeah sure the glass back is a bit stupid too IMO. But guess what. STICK IT IN A CASE and all the problems go away. Heck Steve Jobs is giving you a free case. Take it, use it. You hate cases? Then don't buy an iPhone 4.

Virgin Mobile MiFi 2200

2010-07-31T17:49:00.012-06:00

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/phones/mobile-broadband-2200.html

- It's for those of us poor saps stuck in the US with iPhones and refuse to give up our unlimited data plans and don't plan to jailbreak (and missed that flashlight app by 2 hrs).
- $150 from best buy
- Performs pretty much just like their previous usb modem: Same sprint evdo 3g network and coverage, same speeds, same pricing plan, same great pay only what you need when you need it.
- 4 hrs of batter life on a charge. I tested this, and it indeed does last 4 hrs.
- It's a complete router with a ton of settings on it's built in little web server config pages.
- Setting up couldn't be easier with the wpa password printed on a sticker on the back along with the ssid (you can of course change all this if you want to).
- Range was good (covered my entire house).
- It does get pretty darn hot.
- The best part is the freedom you get with this thing. Having no wires or anything sticking out of your laptop is awesome. Not needing any kind of drivers (no OS specific dependencies) is even more awesome. Having it be a mobile wifi hotspot which you can use with a variety of devices (up to 5 at a time) like: nintedo ds, psp, ipad, ipod touch, iphone (take that stupid wifi only restricted apps aka evil at&t) is the most awesome-ist. On a recent road trip we rubber banded the mifi to the back of the car rear view mirror for really great signal reception. My wife surfed the entire time on the macbook pro this way.
- I tried iPhone 4 facetime over mif and it works! The video stuttered once in a while but I was surprised by the quality.
- It comes with an AC adapter charger and a usb cable (mifi uses a micro usb port). The problem is once you plug it into a laptop it tries to go into tethering mode which then shuts down the wifi hotspot part of it. I found that you can charge it from an external battery pack like the Just moble gum pro and still continue to use it at the same time. Another option is getting a cable that only charges (no data) so that way you can charge it off of your laptop's usb port but still use it as a hotspot. I little research came up with 2 possible options (neither which I have tried): Best Buy Rocketfish ($15) and a retractable one from 3gstore ($15).

Highly recommended! It's a neat little device. I've always wanted to own a mifi device ever since verizon got one but I was not going to pay a huge monthly fee for something I would only use a few times a year. Virgin mobile comes through again with the right product coupled with the right pricing structure (except for that annoying 30 days your minutes expire thing though).

UPDATE: 10/14/2010
- So they updated their plans. Now there are only two: $10 for 100MB for 10 days or $40 unlimited data for 30 days. The unlimited is quite reasonable but I kind of miss the $20 for 300MB for 30 days.