Real Gadget Reviews

BandWidth; The Speed Test App For Windows Phone

2011-12-11T00:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason a Speedtest.net app for Windows Phone has not yet been published, but there is an alternative available. The application is called BandWidth, and is a fairly basic speed test app. There is a very large amount of servers to test your speed to, and you are able to select from a list of all of the servers within up to a 1000 mile radius of you. The actual speed test will give you information about the latency of your connection, the download speed, and the upload speed.

BandWidth for Windows Phone also allows you to change to size of the file used for the test, and the file sizes range from 2 MB to 17 MB. Additionally, the Windows Phone speed test app records all of the speed tests that you have done and allows you to brag about them to your favorite social networks. You can also see all of your results on a map, showing what speeds you got to which server.

In my opinion, the BandWidth app for Windows Phone is pretty good, but could be better. It works for testing your speed, but it also lags a lot at times. It is also difficult to see your speed at real time as it is only shown on a tiny bar which sometimes freezes. For now, this app will work fine for testing your speed, but lets hope that a Speedtest.net app comes out for Windows Phone soon as they seem to be some of the best speed test apps.

ORB For Windows Phone; An Incredibly Addicting Game

2011-12-11T00:44:00.000-07:00

There are many games available for Windows Phone, ORB being one of them. ORB is a game where you control a ball through a field of tiles, some of which are missing. Your goal is to navigate the ball through the tiles and away from the missing ones for as long as you can. If you fall into one of the spots where there is no tile, you lose. Also, as you roll over the tiles, they disappear, and the tiles at the bottom of the screen also disappear as your ball moves, making it necessary for you to go at a fairly rapid pace. There are also various special tiles that will either make you go left or right, make you go faster, make you fly for a short period of time, and more.

The Windows Phone game is very addicting and very fun. It is available in both a free and a paid version ($1.29), the only difference being that the free version is add supported. I would definitely encourage you to get this game, so everyone head on over to the Windows Phone Marketplace and get ORB or ORB Free.

Internet Sharing on Windows Phone

2011-12-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has also introduced internet sharing in Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango). Of course, this feature is carrier dependent and most carriers will choose to block it, but it is still a very nice feature to have. Most Windows Phone have either already gotten the update that enables this feature or will be getting it sometime in the near future, but let me explain to you how it works. Also, keep in mind that your carrier may have disabled this feature on your device.

The only method of internet sharing on Windows Phone is by creating a mobile hotspot with your Windows Phone device. This is a fairly easy process; all you have to do is go into settings; internet sharing, and then set up your hostpot. Your hostpot can either have WPA2 encryption, or can be open. Up to five devices can connect to the hotspot at a time, and all of the data will simply go over your cellular connection. For now there is no way to tether via Bluetooth or USB.

Now, let's talk a little bit about internet sharing on T-Mobile. T-Mobile is a really nice carrier because they tend to disable as little features on their devices as possible. Luckily for me, internet sharing was one of the features that they decided not to disable on the HTC HD7. Though T-Mobile offers an internet sharing add-on for your rate plan, they also allow you to use internet sharing without having this add on. I do not believe that there is a charge for this if you already have a data plan, but I cannot say anything for sure. For now it seems like T-Mobile has simply been really nice in enabling internet sharing for free. Let's hope that it lasts.

Multitasking on Windows Phone

2011-12-11T00:20:00.000-07:00

Multitasking on Windows Phone is confusing. When you are in an app, you can hold down the back button on the phone and you will be presented with an array of several cards. For some of you have have used WebOS, this may look a little familiar. The cards that are presented to you at this screen are all of the apps that you previously had open. It doesn't matter how you exited out of them; whether you simply clicked the home button, locked your device, or whatever. These apps are in a 'frozen' state. They aren't actually running, but they are saved in the memory and will usually resume quite quickly if you click on them.

Most apps that are running in the background on Windows Phone aren't actually running, except for a few exceptions that Microsoft has made. Music apps such as Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, and more will actually play your music in the background, as opposed to how other apps will behave in the background. Let's say you have a game, but then you exit out of it and go to the home screen. If you hold the back button and go back to the game, it will resume right where you left off, as if it were paused. This means that the application wasn't actually running in the background, it was just 'sleeping'.

Another confusing thing about multitasking with Windows Phone is that you can't actually control which apps you want to keep running; it will always be the most recent ones. If you want to keep a game open but you go to ten other apps, your game will most likely no longer be running. This makes it very difficult to control which apps you actually run in the background.

Windows Phone gives you the appearance of multitasking without actually giving you multitasking, which may be a good or a bad thing. One one side of the issue, this method of multitasking is the thing that makes Windows Phone so smooth. My HTC HD7 never freezes up or lags, and this may be the reason why. On the other hand, not having true multitasking can be a downer in some situations.

To understand multitasking on Windows Phone, you really have to experience it for yourself. It works, but it isn't what you would expect. Also, multitasking is only available on Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and above.

Tiles; What Are They?

2011-12-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

If you've ever used Android you are probably used to having widgets and icons on your home screen, and if you have an iPhone you just have icons. Well, Windows Phone is entirely different. The Windows Phone home screen is made up of an array of 'live tiles'. These tiles are in between widgets and icons. They can take you to applications, but they can also show you information at a glance like widgets can on Android. Some cases in which this is seen and can be useful is with weather apps, which will show you the current temperature, and also with social networking apps, which will show you any notifications that you may have. Of course, not all apps have live tiles, so you should read the description of the application if you are really interested. Live tiles update in the background, but if you have too many updating, they will drain your battery fairly quickly.

Personally, I love the live tiles. If I just need to check how many Facebook notifications, messages, or missed calls I have, I can simply look at the home screen without having to open any apps. It is also really easy for me to get to any apps, as the home screen is very responsive, smooth, and fast. In fact, you will almost never see any lag in Windows Phone. Although most of the devices only have 512 MB of RAM, they never lag the way that Windows Phone handles the applications, or at least this is the case with my HTC HD7.

I believe that this new style of home screen is very revolutionary, modern, and usable. It is really easy to navigate and makes the entire experience of using the phone much better. It takes some getting used to, especially if you have never used a Windows Phone device before, but once you get used to the tiles you will never go back.

Just Got My Windows Phone

2011-12-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

I just got my Windows Phone, and it is pretty amazing. First, let's start with a little bit of my background. My first smartphone operating system was Symbian, and let's admit it; Symbian is pretty bad. After that I used several BlackBerry devices for awhile, after which I was on Android for a very short amount of time. Then we arrive at the present.

Why did I choose Windows Phone? Well, for one, it looks really cool. I like trying new things, and I felt like taking a chance and going for a Windows Phone. Since I am on T-Mobile, I didn't really have that many options for Windows Phone. I chose the HTC HD7 over the HTC Radar 4G mainly because of the larger screen. The specifications of the two devices aren't that different, so I went with my gut instinct and went with the HTC HD7.

My first impression; Windows Phone is an entirely new experience. You can't compare Windows Phone to any other smartphone experience because it was built from the ground up as an entirely new platform. If you have ever used an iPhone or an Android device, or any other smartphone for that matter, Windows Phone will be a completely new experience for you. For now, I love Windows Phone, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

PNY Customer Service Experience; Horrible!

2011-07-27T00:25:00.001-06:00

I purchased an 8 GB PNY SDHC card a couple of years ago, and I was pretty happy with it. It was a class 4, and I had tested it with some flash memory benchmarking software, and it didn’t live up to its name, as you can see in the benchmark below. It should be at least 4 MB/s for each test below in both read and write speed. That was my first disappointment, but I was still fine with the card. My real problems came when the plastic on the connector pins started to chip off. At first I thought that it would not be a problem, but it turns out that plastic is sensed by most SD card readers, which use it to determine whether or not there is an SD card inserted. This meant that my SD card was practically useless. Luckily, the card had a lifetime warranty, so I decided to call PNY and ask for a replacement. I called at about noon on a Tuesday, at which time most companies are usually working. I was talking to a machine for about ten minutes, and was then told that I would be called back. I waited a couple of days, and then I was, and was told that I was not eligible for a replacement if there was physical damage. This was completely unacceptable for me. I mean, it was their fault that they built a card which breaks after less than two years. I have had many other SD cards, and they have survived for much longer than this one. I was on the phone for about fifteen minutes, with no progress. I decided that I would just give up on it and buy another card, on that was not PNY. My experience with PNY was completely unacceptable. First I had to wait two days to actually talk to someone, and then they didn’t honor their lifetime warranty.

Anyway, I ended up buying another card, the Transcend TS16GSDHC10E 16 GB class 10 card. Benchmarks are below, and I am very happy with the card. It also has a lifetime warranty, and I am hoping that I will not have to use it. If I do, I hope that it is actually honored. Overall, I am very disappointed with PNY and will never buy one of their products again, and I am very happy with the benchmarks, performance, reliability, and more of my new Transcend card.

PNY Benchmark

Transcend Benchmark

Kodak Easyshare Max Z990 Review; Well Featured, But Falls Behind on Performance

2011-07-27T00:11:00.000-06:00

So, as you may already know, I recently purchased a Kodak EasyShare Max Z990 camera. It had pretty great features including a 12 megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor, 30x optical zoom, 1080p video recording, full manual settings, and a variety of other features. I really liked the camera on paper; I mean, it has better features than any other camera in the same price range. I received the camera, and it worked great upon light inspection. Picture quality was amazing and I really liked the features. The only problem was that the camera was slow. It would randomly freeze and become unresponsive, and I had absolutely no idea why. I tried replacing my SD card with a class 10 card, but that did not help. I even got a replacement hoping that it was just my unit having issues, but that still did not fix it, so I decided to return the camera. It took great low-light photos, amazing video with stereo audio, and had pretty much anything that you could ask for in this class of camera. The only problem was that it was slow, which caused me to miss a lot of shots while I was waiting for it to become responsive again. Since I returned the camera, I didn’t even have time to do a full review. All I can tell you is that the camera takes great pictures and videos, has great features, and sells for a pretty good price, but it’s *really* slow, and causes you to miss a lot of good shots. I don’t think that the features make up for that, and I think that I will be purchasing another camera, so expect that review soon. P.S. It won’t be a Kodak, because when a brand fails on me once, I don’t consider that brand again.

I Returned It; My Kodak EasyShare Max Z990

2011-07-27T00:08:00.000-06:00

You may have read the blog post that I transferred from Tumbr, talking about my new camera, the Kodak Z990. Well, if you haven’t, let me just tell you that I was having a lot of issues with it being slow and unresponsive, and this was unacceptable for me. I decided to return it, and now I am looking for a better camera. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments below.

My Less Than Perfect HP Customer Service Experience

2011-07-27T00:06:00.000-06:00

So, let me first of all explain what has happened. I purchased an HP G42-415DX a while back as one of my main computers (I will post a review of it on the blog shortly). It worked great, except for a couple of flaws that I will mention in the review. About a week ago, which is about three months since I purchased the computer, it started to freeze. I thought that maybe it was just a glitch or something and that restarting the computer would fix it, but that was not the case. It turns out that the hard drive had failed, and I needed to get it replaced. I decided to run some diagnostics tests before contacting HP and I ran a hard drive test which failed. Then I decided to contact HP and see what they could do for me, as the laptop was still in warranty.

I contacted them via chat for the first time, and they told me that I should run the hard drive test again. I ran it and got a failure ID, but then they told me that I had to run the test via the BIOS. Until now I had been running the tests via the HP diagnostics software. I was fine with running the test via the BIOS, so I did. It turned out that the BIOS tests would take about an hour and a half, so the HP agent told me that I should contact HP once it was finished. I waited for the test to finish, but I did not get an error code. I thought that this was strange, but I decided to contact HP again and ask them what was going on. They told me to run the test again, but this was really unacceptable for me, so I told them that the test was not resulting in an error code. They put me on hold and told me that I would need to replace the hard drive. I was fine with this, and asked them what my options were. They told me that they could ship me a new hard drive and that I could replace it, and I didn’t think that this was a very good option for me because I didn’t want to be liable if anything ended up happening.

Now, I am pretty much a nerd and know my way around computers, so changing a hard drive isn’t really a very big deal for me. I guess that I just couldn’t believe that HP was making other customers change their own hard drives. I don’t know what I had against it that much, I guess I didn’t really like the idea. I asked them if there were any other options, and they said that I could send in my computer for repair, but that it would take about a month to get it back to me. This was unacceptable, as I use this computer every day and I don’t really think that I could go without a computer for a month. I asked them if it would be possible to just get a replacement computer, but they said that they don’t offer that. Then, somehow, someone from HP told me that it would be necessary to replace the motherboard, and I have no idea why they said that. I didn’t know what was going on, and then they told me that they would transfer me. Then they transferred me and the agent told me that I did not need to replace the motherboard, just the hard drive, and that the agent whom I had talked to was wrong. I was getting really confused and decided to agree on replacing the hard drive myself.

Anyway, I was on the phone with them for about four hours, which is completely unacceptable. Also, the line quality was terrible with all of the representatives except for one, which led me to believe that it was on their end. I was transferred numerous times and I don’t really think that any of the agents knew what to do.

Once I received the hard drive I replaced it. It turned about being surprisingly easy to replace it. They even sent me a 7200 RPM hard drive to replace the 5400 RPM one. That was good, even though it was refurbished. The hard drive worked fine and I was able to recover my files, although it was extremely difficult. My computer would freeze after a couple of minutes of use, so I had to recover my files in parts. I ended up getting everything back to normal, but the reason why I am writing this article is because of my horrible experience with HP customer service. I mean, it should not take four hours to get a new hard drive for a computer, and they should really get some better repair options than having the customer repair their own hard drive.

Would You Publish 12 Years of Your Text Messages in A Book?

2011-07-26T23:55:00.000-06:00

Would you publish twelve years of your life in a book for anyone and everyone to read? Well, that’s what Tracey Moberly has done. Her book, Text Me Up!, takes over 60,000 text messages that she has sent and received throughout her life and weaves them into a narrative about her life. It is supposed to be an autobiography of her life, but a fairly unorthodox one. The book is 336 pages of text messages, illustrations, and narratives about Tracey Moberly’s life. It also includes commentary about the text message conversations. It isn’t just filled with threads of text messages, they are selected and composed in a way that is supposed to make them interesting. I can’t even imagine how she would have saved all of these text messages, or how they can be interesting enough to publish into a book. Even if I did send or receive an interesting text message, I probably wouldn’t want to publish it for the entire world to see. I can’t even imagine how this woman finds all these people to text, I mean, 60,000 text messages?! Apparently, the book also includes text messages from celebrities. Well, in case you find this sort of thing interesting, I encourage you to buy Text Me Up! and comment on it, because I certainly don’t think I would find it interesting to read over 300 pages of someone else’s text messages. The book is available now.

Jawbone's Up Bracelet Will Track Everything Your Body Does, And Tell You What You're Doing Wrong

2011-07-26T23:52:00.001-06:00

Most of us know Jawbone as a Bluetooth headset and speaker manufacturer, but it looks like they are trying to expand out of that industry. Their newest idea doesn’t relate to the audio industry at all; The Jawbone Up bracelet is a bracelet, as its name suggests, which tracks your sleep patterns, activity, and eating habits and then charts them and makes them available on a smartphone app. Also, the Up, when used in conjunction with your smartphone will provide “nudges,” which will be tips to help you live healthier. Unlike many of Jawbone’s other products, the Up won’t connect via Bluetooth, but rather via a wire. The information that the Up records will presumably allow you to see which of your daily habits are negatively affecting your health, and hopefully you will want to change them. The Jawbone Up bracelet works with an accelerometer to monitor your body 24/7, and is supposed to “make it social and make it fun.” I don’t really see what people’s fascination with tweeting how much they weigh is, but apparently the Jawbone Up is only supposed to make your health status public if you want it to. Otherwise you can just observe how unhealthy or healthy you are and keep it private. There aren’t very many details on the Jawbone Up available now, but we hope that more will be released soon. The device should be released “soon,” which we believe means withing this year, and will be “affordably” priced. It will also be available in a range of colors and won’t attract unnecessary attention. So, what do you think about the Jawbone Up?

My Most Recent Technology Purchase; The Kodak Z990

2011-07-26T23:51:00.000-06:00

About a month ago my camera broke (it was a trusty Canon A590IS, which I had been using for a few years). I hadn’t really been looking for a camera because I hadn’t had any time, but a couple of weeks ago I did. I searched every technology website and retailer that I knew of in order to find the best thing that my money could buy. I didn’t want a DSLR, but I also didn’t want a compact camera. I was looking for bridge SLR-type camera. As I tend to do with all of my technology purchases, I spent about a week looking at different cameras, reading reviews, comparing specifications, and more. I finally narrowed my search down to three cameras; the Nikon Coolpix L120, The Fujifilm FinePix S4000, and the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990. Now, you probably already know which one I ended up purchasing from looking at the title of this post, but I think that I’ll explain what I found in each of them anyway.

First let’s start out with what I was looking for; my budget was anything under $300, but if I found something substantially better for a higher price, I would probably buy it. I wanted at least 20x optical zoom, at least 12 megapixels, a brand that I could trust, full manual controls, and a couple of other things. Now, onto my reasoning for each of the cameras.

Let’s start out with the Nikon L120. It was priced at around $280 at most retailers. It has a great photo resolution at 14.1 megapixels, a 1/2.3 CCD sensor, 21x optical zoom, a 3 inch LCD display with anti-reflection coating (presumably to make up for the lack of a viewfinder) and a resolution of 921k dots, it supports SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, has ISO settings ranging from 80 to 6400, however ISO 3200 and ISO 6400 are only available at a 3 megapixel resolution (The whole idea behind reducing the resolution to is to reduce noise, which is usually seen at high ISO’s. This works be reducing heat from neighboring pixels in order to reduce noise.), it uses four AA batteries, has a combination of sensor-shift and electronic image stabilization, takes 720p video at 30fps with stereo audio, a large variety of scene modes, a pop-up flash with a range of 6m, continuous shooting at 0.7 fps, NO manual settings. I’m not going to get into the more technical specifications, but they were okay and similar to most of the other cameras which I was considering. Now, to analyze these specifications. The 14 megapixels was a big plus, and I didn’t have a preference over whether the sensor was CCD or CMOS, but let me explain the differences.

CCD stands for charge coupled device, and CMOS stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor. Each sensor type has its pros and cons, but neither is clearly superior. As light strikes a CCD sensor, it is held as a small electrical charge in each photo sensor, and then converted into voltage one pixel at a time. CMOS sensors have circuitry next to each photo sensor, which converts the light into voltage. These past two sentences may have been extremely confusing, and I don’t even know how to really explain how both types work. Some advantages of CCD sensors are they they create high quality images and generally have low noise, they have also been around much longer, so they are more mature. Some of their disadvantages are that they use much larger amount of power than CMOS sensors, and are therefore much less energy efficient. They are also slower, in most cases. Some advantages of CMOS sensors are that they consume less power and are cheaper, but some disadvantages are that since there is extra circuitry next to the sensors, they tend to be less sensitive to light and offer worse low-light performance. Overall, neither is superior.

Back to the Nikon Coolpix L120, I was happy with the zoom, but when I compared it to that of the other two cameras, it was a con. I was also very happy with the display, and its high resolution. I was disappointed that there was no viewfinderon the Coolpix L120, however. The ISO settings were good, but I didn’t like that higher ISO setting could only be used in conjunction with lower resolutions. This wasn’t very problematic for me, however, because I tend not to use very high ISO’s because of their high amount of noise in non-DSLR cameras. The 720p video was also a plus, but when I compared it to the 1080p of the Kodak Z990, it failed to impress. I was happy with the stereo audio recording, which the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990 had, but the Fujifilm S4000 did not. As for the scene modes, I don’t really tend to use them very much, but I do use manual a lot as I don’t really trust the automatic settings of most cameras. For this reason, the Coolpix L120 was a little bit disappointing. The continuous shootings modes were also fairly weak. I usually like to take a couple of photos of the subject which I am photographing so that I can choose the best one later. I also liked that it used SD memory, because I already have plenty of SD cards, and that it uses AA batteries, because I like being able to simply change the batteries once they run out and being able to resume shooting, instead of having to recharge batteries.

I also read some reviews about the Nikon Coolpix L120, and the ratings were pretty good. They reported great image quality, a very good user interface, and the quality you would expect from a brand like Nikon. One of the only downsides of the reviews was that the L120 was a little short on features, and could not contend very well with some other bridge cameras, such as the ones mentioned in this post.

In conclusion, the Nikon Coolpix L120 was a strong contender, but it lacked some important features for me such as manual settings, better zoom, and 1080p video.

Now, onto the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990. It features a 12 megapixel resolution with a 1/2.33 BSI-CMOS sensor, optical image stabilization, a 3 inch display with a 460k dot resolution, an electronic viewfinder, full manual settings, and 8.9m pop-up flash, continuous shooting at 5.6 fps, 1080p video with stereo audio, SD/SDHC support, AA batteries, ISO settings ranging from 125 to 6400 (with no reduction in image resolution for higher ISO settings), 30x optical zoom, and I think that’s about it. I really liked the specifications of the Kodak Z990, they were (and still are) the best out of any of the cameras that I was considering. In case you don’t know what a BSI-CMOS sensor is, it is simply a back-lit CMOS sensor designed for amazing low light performance. The 1080p video with stereo audio was a big plus, as was the full manual option and the 30x zoom, a big improvement from the Coolpix L120’s 21x. True, the Z990 does have a smaller image resolution than the other two cameras, but the other features make up for it, in my opinion. The optical image stabilization was also a plus, because optical is always better than digital. The only doubt that I had about the Kodak Z990 is that I wasn’t familiar with the brand. My brother had a Kodak camera and said that it was great, but it was just a compact point and shoot, and was also a few years old, so I didn’t know if I could really trust Kodak based on one experience of a relative.

I decided to read some reviews on the Kodak Z990, and they came out pretty good. Image quality was reported to be great in most of the reviews, as was everything else. this time the downside of the reviews was the ease-of-use. Some reviews reported the camera being a little slow and unresponsive at times, but I didn’t really think much of this at the time and thought it was reviewers simply being overcritical. In the end, it turned out that they were being modest.

Now, onto the last camera that I was seriously considering; the Fujifilm FinePix S4000. This camera also had pretty good specifications. It has a 14 megapixel image resolution with a 1/2.3 CCD sensor, and ISO range of ISO 100 to ISO 6400 (with reduced resolution at ISO speeds of over 3200), sensor-shift image stabilization, 30x optical zoom, full manual settings, a 7m pop-up flash, 720p video with, sadly, only monaural sound, SD/SDHC memory, AA batteries, an electronic viewfinder, and a 3 inch display with a 460k dot resolution.

I really liked the features of the FinePix S4000; The 14 megapixel sensor was great, as well as the 30x zoom and full manual mode. My only problems with the specifications were the video; it was 720p (still okay), but the monaural sound was unacceptable for me. Overall, I was pretty happy with the specifications, but then I decided to read some reviews.

All of the reviews said good things about the features, ease-of-use, and most other aspects of the Fujifilm Finepix S4000, but the one area in which it did not perform well was image quality, Reviews said that images looked painted and were not sharp. Since image quality is the main thing to look for in a camera, the FinePix S4000 was pretty much eliminated from the competition.

Now, to compare all three cameras, the Fujifilm Finepix S400 was out of the running because of the poor image quality reported in reviews. The choice after that was clear; the Kodak Z990 had only one specification that was worse than the Nikon L120; image resolution, and I was okay with 12 megapixels. The reviews were great, and the only thing that I was unsure about was the brand, so I bought it.

The Kodak Z990 arrived after a couple of days, and I was excited. I un-boxed it and started using it, and it was great, but then I encountered a pretty big problem; the camera was slow. It turned on, you took a picture, and then you had to wait….and wait….and then wait some more, until you could take more pictures. I didn’t know why this was happening; maybe my memory card was slow, so I tried using the internal memory, but the same thing happened. I had no idea why, but this was a big problem. I couldn’t wait 10 seconds between each shot, it was simply unacceptable, I would miss so many good shots just waiting for my camera to get ready. Si, I thought, maybe my camera was just defective. I contacted Kodak and they said that other users hadn’t been having this problem, so I decided that maybe I had a defective unit. I asked them if I could exchange it, and they said that I could, but that it would take 10 days to get a new one sent out. I am a very impatient person and could not wait for this, so I decided to contact Amazon (where I purchased the camera). They had a much better policy and shipped out a new camera with one day shipping, and emailed me a UPS label to return the presumed defective camera.

I received the new Kodak Z990 and hurriedly opened it, and guess what happened, it was still slow. At this point, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I could return it for my money back, and try to buy a different camera, but I didn’t really like that option because there wasn’t a camera out there in the same price range with the same features, I was stuck, and I didn’t know what to do. So, I ended up not doing anything, and here we are. I still have the Z990, my return policy is still active and I have about 20 days left. I haven’t decided what to do, so, I guess what I am asking is that you, my readers, will help me decide what to do.

Immersing Myself Into The World of Technology

2011-07-26T23:46:00.000-06:00

This post was my first post on my Tumblr blog, which I am now migrating to Real Gadget Reviews. Enjoy:

For my first post, I thought that I should probably write a little bit about myself and how I was introduced to the world of technology, and maybe a little bit about why you should even read this blog and what gives me the credibility to write all of this stuff (and by stuff I actually mean my opinions on technology, etc.).

I got my first computer when I was about eight years old (at least I think that I did, I can’t remember very well). It was an old HP tower (computers where white back then) and at the time I thought that it had some pretty amazing specifications. As far as I can remember, it had 32 MB of ram, a 20 GB hard drive (I was very proud of this), a CD drive, a 400 MHz processor, on-board graphics, and I think that was about it. Attached to it I had a 17 inch CRT monitor and a 56k dial-up modem. Now, I thought that this was a pretty good setup at the time, except for the dial-up. I have always been a pretty impatient person and waiting for pages to load was extremely unnerving for me. Anyway, I think that Windows XP somehow ran on my computer, and I was pretty happy with it. Ever since then I have been extremely interested in the world of technology; printers, scanners, cameras, mobile phones, laptops, sound systems, software, you name it, and I had researched it. I spent my days on all kinds of gadget blogs, reading and re-reading posts, and then researching their contents. I knew about almost every gadget on the market.

Now, times have changed; I no longer have that old computer, I am no longer 8 years old, and I also no longer have the time to research every gadget on the market, but I try. I don’t have a fancy degree relating to technology, nor do I get paid do do anything related to technology, but I am a gadget enthusiast. I spend every spare minute of my time obsessing over technology, and those spare minutes are what I am going to write about on this blog.

Changes, And What’s Happened

2011-07-26T23:37:00.001-06:00

I realize that I haven’t been writing for quite a while; I don’t know exactly how long it has been, but it has been a pretty long time. I know there is no excuse. I don’t know if this blog actually has any followers or if people just visit it for a single post and then leave never to return again, but either way, I’m disrespecting this blog and by extension myself. The point is that I haven’t been updating the blog and I plan to start again, otherwise I wouldn’t even be writing this blog post. A lot of stuff has happened, and even though it is probably old news, I want to write about it. I will be writing reviews of a couple of new pieces of technology that I have acquired, and although they may be a little bit outdated, I still think that you will like them. Also, I had decided to start a Tumblr blog, and I did. I named it “Which Gadget?” and I thought that it was doing pretty well, but then I realized that it wasn’t being indexed in any search engines, so I decided that I would just move the posts back here. I hope that you liked them. They are in a little bit of a different style, and are more of my personal viewpoints than just specifications and stuff like that. I will slowly be migrating this blog to that type of posts as well; I would like to write more about things that actually matter to me so that my posts will be better and hopefully, you will like them more as well. I will be moving away from writing about anything and everything, but would rather like to start writing about things that are important or interesting to me. Anyway, enough with this post, I will be starting to write posts again, and I hope that you enjoy them.

Ink, Priced Like Liquid Gold

2011-03-30T18:31:00.000-06:00

We have all seen and experienced this; buying a cheap printer and then spending a fortune on ink. You may be wondering, “Why is this?” Well, there is no concrete answer to this question. Ink manufacturers have adopted the ways of many other industries; for example cars, cell phones, and more. Let’s look at some of these examples. Car; you spend several thousand dollars initially buying the car, and then you spend multiple times as much in maintenance, gas and more, at least in most cases. Now, let’s look at cell phones; carriers usually trick you by giving you free phones and fancy features, but this all comes at a price. Usually you have to lock yourself into a two-year contract, and then end up paying large amounts of money for your service each month. Printer and ink manufacturers have the same philosophy. They usually sell printers at a loss of almost 20% (according to financial analysts) and then sell the ink at a profit of almost 60%. Interesting fact; HP ink is more expensive than Russian caviar by weight (at $22 per ¼ ounce). Now that we have pointed out that ink is expensive, many of you may be asking the question, “What can I do to reduce my costs?” Well, there are many things, and some of them are listed in this article.

First of all, instead of buying new ink, you can just buy a printer that comes with ink at purchase. This could possibly save you a lot of money, considering the previously sated statistic about profits and losses on sales of printers and ink.

Another thing that you can do to save money on ink is to buy third-party ink cartridges. This option has both pros and cons. The pros are that it is usually much cheaper than buying brand name cartridges. The cons are that print quality is usually worse.

The last way that you can save money on ink that will be listed in this article is refilling your cartridges on your own or having a service refill them for you. You can buy cartridge refill kits online for pretty good prices, but the downside of this method is that it is usually messy and you might also not get as good print quality. There are also stores that will refill your print cartridges for you, for example, Costco. They will refill your ink cartridge for a much lower price than buying a new ink cartridge, but once again, you might not get as good quality.

In conclusion, ink is outrageously expensive, but there isn’t really much that you can do without sacrificing print quality. The best thing to do is simply to print less, or with lower quality setting (this can be achieved by going into the preferences of your printer and selecting fast printing mode or draft printing mode).

Wikipedia, Reliable, or Unpredictable?

2011-03-30T18:28:00.000-06:00

You may be under the impression that Wikipedia is an unreliable source of information, or maybe someone else has told you that they feel this way. On the other hand, you may believe that Wikipedia is a great source of information, and use it daily. Either way, you are partly right. Many people believe that Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be changed by anyone and everyone, but this is not entirely true. Students, you probably know what I am talking about. Your teachers tell you that Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for a project or essay. You may agree or disagree with them. You may disagree with them, but still use it at a source. Whatever the case, this article will prove them mostly wrong. While Wikipedia can be edited by anyone who wishes to contribute something, the same is true for most websites on the internet, in one way or another. Also, this is not entirely a bad thing. My first point is that Wikipedia is constantly being edited and revised, but this isn’t a bad thing. Most people who contribute to Wikipedia are honestly trying to give people valid information. Most people also add citations of where they got their information in the first place. This makes it incredibly easy to find out if a certain piece of information is accurate or not. Also, people are constantly reading the information that is posted on Wikipedia, and if they find something that seems incorrect to them, they either change it or remove it. In this way anything that is posted on Wikipedia that is not factually correct will be removed soon after it is posted, especially on popular topics. There are countless volunteer moderators on Wikipedia, and most of the time something incorrect is changed or removed by them or another member of the community. Also, if a piece of content on Wikipedia isn’t correctly, you usually won’t even get to it when searching for information on a topic. That is because if it doesn’t rank high on search engines, you most likely won’t be able to find it, as the way that most people get information is via search engines. Now, on to my second point, some people say that Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be changed by anyone. Well, anyone can put anything on the internet, and that makes the previous statement completely invalid. Anyone can put anything on the internet, whether it is true or not. In some cases it is even free. Just because it is not publicly editable does not mean that it is accurate. For example, let us search “The War of 1812” on Google, and look at the pages which we obtain as search results.

The first result is a Wikipedia page on the subject, and the second is a page from gatewayno.com. Which one of these is more reliable? Well, there isn’t any way to know. Anybody could have made the latter page and put anything that they want on it, and it could be completely wrong. The same goes for Wikipedia, the only difference is that since anyone can revise Wikipedia, if something is incorrect, then it can be fixed. On the other hand, if something on the second website is incorrect, no one can correct it and the next person that comes along will find that incorrect information.

Now, you may be wondering, why should I trust you? Well, test it out for yourself. Try writing something fictitious on a popular topic on Wikipedia, and see how soon it is removed (I do not advise you to do this, and take no responsibility if you decide to do so. This is just a way to test my theory.). Usually the answer is that it is removed in a matter of minutes, or even less.

In my opinion, these points prove that Wikipedia is just as reliable, and maybe even more reliable than other websites. If you will, please tell others about these points, and mainly your teachers, so that trust in Wikipedia will be restored. As always, please feel free to comment and post your opinions on the matter.

Verizon Makes Absurdly Dramatic iPhone Commercial

2011-01-20T21:27:00.001-07:00

Now that the Verizon iPhone has been officially announced, Verizon has decided that they are going to make an over-dramatic commercial about it. Check out the video above to see what we are talking about.

This iPhone Case Features A Built-In Calculator, Okay, Not Really, But It Is Still Pretty Cool

2011-01-20T21:24:00.000-07:00

Now you may be thinking that this is the calculator that you used to use in 5^th grade, but you would be wrong. It’s actually just an iPhone case, and the calculator decal on the back doesn’t actually work. Of course, there is a calculator on the iPhone, but if the calculator on the back did work, it would be amazing.

FlipIt!, A New USB Charging Concept (Or Rather, Product) That Allows You To Charge Your USB Devices Without Hogging Extra Outlets

2011-01-20T21:18:00.002-07:00

The FlipIt! makes it easy for you to charge all of your USB devices without having to plug multiple surge protectors into your outlets. The FlipIt! simply goes between another plug and an outlet and provides a USB port for you to charge your gadgets with. It is supposedly safe, and we would hope that it would be. You can get the FlipIt! now for $15.

Mac OS X Hacked to Run on Google's Cr-48, Reminds Us Of The Black MacBook

2011-01-01T22:22:00.002-07:00

Mac OS X has just been hacked to run on Google's Chrome OS Cr-48, and it is awfully similar to Apple's old black MacBook, except for the fact that it is a little buggy and slow. Other than that almost everything works, the only things that don't work are QE/CI and sleep mode, plus the trackpad is a little "wonky." You can also switch back to Chrome OS if you would like. Check out the video above for more details.

Why do computer manufacturers make so many different models?

2010-12-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

The reason that computer manufacturers make so many different models is that everybody wants something different. Some people want a gaming laptop, some people want a cheap computer, some people want a portable netbook, and everybody wants something different. Let’s say that a computer manufacturer made just three models of computers, they would only appeal to a small range of customers. By making many models, computer manufacturers try to appeal to as many people as possible. I don’t believe that any computer manufacturer would even try to make few models of computers because they are smart enough to know that it would not be profitable and would lead to their destruction. And anyways, it doesn’t affect the end customer, so why does it really matter?

Are wearable computers in our future?

2010-12-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

In my opinion; no, and I don’t think that they ever will be. This is for many reasons. First of all, the screen size would have to be very small for it to be viable, at the most four inches. The small screen size would make it not realistic to have it as a primary computer, because a four inch screen won’t give you very much productivity. Imagine trying to browse the non-mobile version of a website on a four inch screen, impossible! Also, a wearable computer would be bulky, get hot, and it would be too small, that is the main issue. Also, smartphones are pretty much wearable computers which you keep in your pocket, and who really needs a computer attached to them anyway? People don’t want to carry extra devices, they want everything in one device. That is why even if wearable computers are someday introduced to the market, people will not buy them. People will just continue to use their smartphones, which will continue to get even more like computers than they already are.

What printer should I buy for my home?

2010-12-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

This question could have many different answers and resolutions, but in most cases you should just look for the cheapest printer with the cheapest available ink. Since most printers nowadays print with the same quality and similar speeds all that really matters these days is cost, features, and price of ink. Reliability is also no longer a limiting factor as modern printers won’t break for years. The way that the printer manufacturers really get you is with the cost of the ink. In some cases, the printer will even be cheaper than the ink, even if it includes ink. I have actually personally experienced this. Instead of buying ink cartridges for my printer, I just bought a printer that used the same ink, and saved about $5. This means that when you are choosing a printer, you should first look at which ink is cheaper and then choose a printer that uses that ink. Even if the printer is more expensive, you will save money in the long run. The other factor that you should consider is which features you will need. For example, do you need a built in scanner and/or fax? Do you want a wireless printer? Apart from these factors the only other think that you should consider is the price of the printer. Don’t go for an overly expensive printer, especially something over $100 if it is a just a printer for your home. Overall, just get the features you want and get a printer with cheap ink.

Is it okay to charge rechargeable batteries with a charger that is not from the same manufacturer as the batteries?

2010-12-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, in most cases it is completely okay. I have tried this many times with many different battery and charger manufacturer combinations and my batteries have always charged perfectly. Most charger charge exactly the same way, except for 15-minute or shorter time period chargers, which just charge faster, but in the same way.