Need your parents to send you some cash?  Do you pay the rent and have your roommates pay you back their share?  Oh perhaps a friend/family member just simply owes you money but just don’t want to have to deal with receiving and depositing a check?  Well, you can now (at least, as of 6/3/09) send and receive “personal” payments via PayPal which will not result in any PayPal fees (and you don’t need to have a separate personal/business/etc account – at least I don’t)!

Splitting the cost of an apartment 3 ways, one of us usually pays the rent in full and then the others pay their share to that person.  Sometimes, we’re not all around at the end of the month, so a check is usually left/sent for the others to cash.  This time around, instead of writing a check and having to wait a few days for it to clear, we decided to just skip the hassle and just send PayPal and eat the 2.9% fee – but then noticed the “Personal” tab and discovered that it can be fee free!:

Needless to say this was exciting to find out – now I can lend (and borrow) from friends/family, instantly, for free!

But what are the ‘fine details’ to this free transferring of money?  It must be:

• for a personal transaction (“A personal transaction involves sending money to and receiving money from friends and family without making a purchase”),
• the sender and/or receiver must be in the US, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Taiwan (otherwise there’s a 0.5-2% fee),
• the source of the payment must come from a bank account or your existing PayPal balance,
• (and you can not send “payment requests” for personal transactions)

Here is a more detailed listing of when you will, and will not, be charged a fee (from PayPal’s policy update on 6/3/09), copied from https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_update-policy:

Fees depend on whether you are making a commercial transaction or a personal transaction. A commercial transaction involves buying and selling goods or services, and payments received when you send a “request money” using PayPal. A personal transaction involves sending money to and receiving money from friends and family without making a purchase.

Personal Transactions. Fees depend on the payment source that the sender selects. The amount of the fee will be shown at the time the payment is sent. The Fee is paid by either the sender or the recipient. The sender decides who pays.

Domestic Personal Transactions - U.S. sender and recipient.

	Payment Fully Funded by PayPal Balance or Bank	Payment Fully or Partially Funded by PayPal Credit, Debit Card, or Credit Card
Sending / Receiving	Free	2.9% + Fixed Fee (see below)

International Personal Transactions - The sender or recipient is outside the U.S.

	Payment fully funded by PayPal Balance or Bank	Payment fully or partially funded by PayPal Credit, Debit Card, or Credit Card
Sending / Receiving	This fee is based on the country of the recipient. Recipient’s Country: Australia 1% Canada 1% China 0% Germany 2% Hong Kong 0% Singapore 0% Taiwan 0% U.S 1% Elsewhere 0.5%	This fee is based on the country of the recipient. Recipient’s Country: Australia 3.4% + Fixed Fee (see below) Canada 3.9% + Fixed Fee China 0.0% + Fixed Fee Germany 3.9% + Fixed Fee Hong Kong 3.4% + Fixed Fee Singapore 3.4% + Fixed Fee Taiwan 3.4% + Fixed Fee U.S. 3.9% + Fixed Fee Elsewhere 3.9% + Fixed Fee

 

So if you need money from (or need to send to) a friend, there’s no reason to have to wait the time for a check deposit or to only deal with local friends and family – use PayPal and save time and hassle!

The first contender from the list of Lifehacker’s Five Best Netbooks that I will be reviewing is the Acer Aspire One 10” netbook (AOD150).   Weighing in at 2.91lbs with a price tag of about $330 (or $280 using Bing.com cashback), this 10” netbook definitely holds it’s ground in the competition (not to mention quite an improvement from it’s older 8.9” sibling).  Just how nice is it?  As always, continue reading to find out!

Specifications of the reviewed system:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 533mhz, 512KB L2
• 2GB DDR2-8800 (running at 533mhz)
• 10.1” WSVGA CrystalBrite (glossy) TFT Screen
• 160gb Western Digital Scorpio Blue SATA HDD
• 6 Cell battery
• Intel 950 graphics
• 2lbs 14.5 oz
• 10.3” x 1.3” x 7.3”
• VGA, 3xUSB2.0, Headphone/Mic, Ethernet, 802.11b/g wifi.

Glamour shots / views:

I’ll start out by simply showing different views of the netbook:

First we have the top, and then the bottom:

Left side (VGA, ethernet, usb, headphone, mic, memory card reader), and right (2 x USB, power jack, lock):

And then the front (power light, wireless switch)

Screen:

The 10” Acer Aspire One comes with a 10.1” glossy screen – and as I mentioned in the Lenovo S10-2 review, it basically comes down to personal preference whether glossy or matte is better for you. 

The lid itself isn’t as sturdy as I would like.  While it’s not as flimsy as the Lenovo S10’s lid, it doesn’t take too much force (twisting action) to make the screen bend.  Over the lifetime of owning this netbook, you may start to see pressure marks on the LCD if you pack it with books and the like on top of it in a book bag.  Also, like the screen, the lid is also glossy – meaning, it is quite the magnet for fingerprints:

Keyboard and Touchpad:

The keyboard is 89% the size of a normal keyboard, which unfortunately was not upgraded from the same size keyboard of the acer aspire one 9”.  The key clicks However, the keyboard is well built though with a SLIGHT bit of flex – but you don’t notice it during normal typing:

The increased area of the touchpad (over the 8.9” AAO) is a welcome edition.  The left and right buttons are combined into one, and the entire touch pad area is slightly recessed from the rest of the palm rest:

Battery:

Compared to other 10” netbooks I have reviewed so far, I was a bit disappointed at the battery life that this Acer has (for the tests below, I had WiFi one, screen at level 4 brightness, and let the battery run down to 3% and interpolated the remaining 3%):

• 100% full screen hulu:  3 hours, 58 minutes (238 minutes)
• 100% web browsing (refreshing cnn, yahoo, and engadget every 10 seconds):  4 hours, 37 minutes (277 minutes)

This is quite lower than I would have expected, so I will try to run some more of the same tests to see if perhaps I may have messed something up, but I already ran the 100% hulu twice, but the 100% web browsing only once – so we’ll see (does anyone else get similar results?) – this is about the same battery life you get w/the 6 cell and the Acer Aspire One 8.9”.

And, if anyone happens to need it, here’s a picture of the battery all by it’s lonesome:

Performance:

As with most other netbooks, the Atom N270 is not very powerful, and therefore performs about on par with every other N270 netbook out there.  It does just fine with basic usage consisting of web browsing, office work, music listening, EVER SO LIGHT photo editing (resizing, cropping, blurring, etc), and the like – but once you start playing back full screen Flash (hulu), any sort of game above pinball, or heavily multitasking, you’ll start to see the netbook fall to it’s knees.   Below are some simple performance benchmarks:

Super Pi:

• 1M = 1 minute, 33.937 seconds
• 2M = 3 minutes, 30.078 seconds

HDTune:

• Min:  31.6 MB/sec
• Max:  63.3 MB/sec
• Average:  50.7 MB/sec
• Access Time:  17.1 ms
• Burst Rate:  62.4 MB/sec
• CPU Usage:  3.9%

PCMark 05: 1501 pcmarks (connected to an external monitor at minimum required resolution of 1024×768)

As you can see from the results above, don’t plan on replacing your normal laptop with this (or any) netbook :)

Upgrades:

As with all the other 10” netbooks I’ve seen, Acer has given easy access to the hard drive (which is replaceable/removable), memory slot, and wireless card.  Also, Acer is using the same hard drive that can be found in the Lenovo S10-2 and S10:

Versus other 10” netbooks:

So how does it stack up (visually) to other 10” netbooks with 6 cell batteries?  Well, lets see!

vs Dell Mini 10:

For all these pictures, the Acer is on the left, Dell on the right:

vs Asus EEE PC 1000HE:

Final thoughts:

While it’s not as thin or has a long of battery life as other 10”, 6 cell netbooks, it’s price helps compensate where it falls short.  The Acer Aspire One 10 AOD150 is definitely a worth upgrade from it’s 8.9” version (as well as any 8.9” / 9” netbook for that matter) as it is hardly any larger/heavier, yet packs a larger screen and touchpad.  

Buying it new from Tiger Direct (assuming the Bing.com cashback is still 15%), at $280 this netbook, in my opinion, would win the “best for the price” category (if such a one existed) – even though it’s possible to get the Dell Mini 10 (review coming soon!) cheaper, the Acer Aspire One 10 has a slightly smaller profile which should help it edge ahead of the Mini 10 (in the race for the cheaper end of the netbook spectrum)

Pros:

• Cheap ($330 @ Amazon/Tiger Direct, $280 after Bing.com cashback)
• 6 cell battery does not add to much to thickness
• Well built, weight evenly distributed
• Light weight, under 3 pounds

Cons:

• No bluetooth
• Only 89% sized keyboard (other 10” have 92-93%, albeit not much real-world difference)
• Lower than average battery life (~4.5hrs light usage)

With Google Voice (formerly GrandCentral) starting to fullfill invites and hopefully opening to everyone soon, many people may not be entirely clear about just what exactly Google Voice is.  I’ve written about it before in an earlier review when it first evolved from GrandCentral, but basically in a short, high level thought, it’s a (free) phone forwarding service — but of course, that just scratches the surface.

What all can GV do for you?  Well, to start out, what you get when you sign up is a new phone number (or, you can port your current number, if you so choose to).  With this phone number, you would probably opt to give all your contacts this new number, setup different forwarding rules on your current phones (to forward to your GV#), so some combination of both.  

What it does:

When someone calls your GV#, it will proceed to ring (forward the call to) all the phones you have listed in your account (or, only certain numbers based on rules you can setup based on who is calling):

For example, if you have a bunch of contacts you have saved under the “Work” category, you can have all calls that come in from someone in there to be forwarded to your “Office” line – have all your contacts from the “Friends” category forwarded to your “Cell” – and then have unknown callers forwarded to all your phones, or perhaps straight to voicemail. 

Once a call is forwarded to one of your phones (cell, office, etc), once the call is answered, you must (by default, but can be changed) press “1” in order to accept the call – this is to handle the event that if the call gets forwarded to two different numbers (your cell and home) and someone from each location picks up the call, the first person to press “1” will actually receive the call. 

Voicemail:

Besides “simple” call forwarding, Google Voice also offers advanced voicemail services which can (attempt to) transcribe the voicemail and send you the text version via email or text message.  At this time, it’s not perfect (as reviewed earlier), but you can usually get the gist of the message that was left and not have to go through all the voicemail prompts and listen to the long messages people can leave :)  — here is an excerpt from my earlier review:

(“hey and here is one set with the radio playing in the car all first five this is back around now just asking about six ninety five people more often the road just kind of thing and stuff like that the fax christian here and now i’m gonna put the alright the speaker and see if there’s any way or not i can transcribe the phone i’m ohh hey nine nine five and that’s the best”)

Send/receive free text messages:

You are also able to send, and receive, text messages from within the GV console (and you can have them forwarded to your cell as well if you wish):

Use as a backup for when you get poor cell reception:

Besides voicemail transcription which I use GV heavily for, I also greatly rely on it’s ability to forward calls to my Gizmo number.  Basically, you can think of Gizmo as Skype – it’s a free computer based (ip) phone client which works on Windows, Mac, and Linux (as well as windows mobile and Nokia tablets) - and, as an added benefit, you can have one of the numbers that your GV# forwards to be your Gizmo number (for free)! 

While there are many implications for this, one that I use it for is to essentially forward my cell phone to my Gizmo (computer) number whenever my cell has no signal or has a dead battery. 

How do you do this?  You’ll want to first setup your phone to forward your calls to your GV# whenever you are “unavailable” (meaning, the cell carrier cannot locate you either because you don’t have signal or because you phone is off/dead).  Then, in GV admin page, you’ll setup a call forwarding rule to forward calls to your Gizmo number.  And now, whenever someone calls your cell and either it’s out of range or is dead, you will still get the call as it is essentially forwarded to your computer!  Perfect for those who live in an area where cell reception is a bit shady!

(however, this means you’ll either need to buy a USB phone, headset, or some other sort of microphone/speaker setup in order to actually talk to someone using your computer).

What Google Voice is not:

Google Voice is not a “phone”.  If you call out from your cell/home/work number, the callee will not see your Google Voice number on their caller ID – so if you give out your GV#, if you call those people straight from your phone, they will not see your GV# but instead your “real” number. 

However, you can of course login to your GV page and place a call from there, in which case GV will first ring your number and wait for you to pickup, and then it will connect you (by calling the callee via your GV#) – in which case, the person will see your GV in caller id.  You can also instantiate the call on your smartphone by either visiting the mobile version of GV page (see the “Quick Call” towards the bottom):

or by using GV Dialer phone app (30 free trial, but must pay after that) on your smartphone:

Wrapping Up:

So basically, Google Voice cannot act as an actual “phone”, but rather is a very resource full tool.  Good for giving out to people you may not want to know your “real” number (i.e. craigslist meets), or even to use as a backup incase you don’t get good signal at your home.   Also, it’s a great way to try to move away from voicemail completely (by setting all calls to go to GV voicemail for transcriptions). 

I have, however, left out some features that Google Voice can do, and on this note, here what Google lists as all of it’s features:

One number for all your calls and SMS

• Call screening - Announce and screen callers
• Listen in - Listen before taking a call
• Block calls - Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS - Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls - Call US numbers for free
• Taking calls - Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing - Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones - Add phones and decide which ring

 

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

• Voicemail transcripts - Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail - Check online or from your phone
• Notifications - Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting - Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail - Forward or download voicemails

 

More cool things you can do with Google Voice

• Conference calling - Join people into a single call
• Call record - Record calls and store them online
• Call switch - Switch phones during a call
• Mobile site - View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 - Check directory assistance
• Manage groups - Set preferences by group

(from: http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html)

Have you signed up for Google Voice yet?  Any tips/tricks you have discovered to be invaluable?  Share in the comments!

If the Lenovo Ideapad S10 is the male, the new S10-2 would be the sleek and slender female – it’s made from (mostly) the same parts but with a different exterior.  The S10-2 was redesigned from the S10 to have a glossy screen and lid, more defined curved edges, 4mm thinner, 5.5oz lighter, and larger keyboard and touchpad.  Was the redesign of the S10 a success?  Continue on to find out!

Specifications:

Below are the specifications of the S10-2 reviewed here (as well as the S10 that it will be compared to):

Unboxing & glamour shots:

Hopefully yours will be handled better during shipment, or at least put inside a proper shipping box, because mine basically came pre-opened and a little crushed :-\

However, upon opening it, everything looked fine and upon booting it up, more importantly everything worked fine!

As you can see, you get your standard array of pamphlets/manuals, as well as the battery, ac adapter, and of course the netbook. 

And here we have the glamour shots — we’ll start off showing the left (ethernet, exhaust, vga, usb, mic/headphone) and right (wireless switch, 2 usb’s, lock, and power jack) sides:

The top (glossy and checkered-like pattern lid) and bottom (notice the two downward firing speakers on the left and right):

And last but not least, a shot of it straight on with the lid open (with the memory card slot towards the right):

Screen:

The S10-2 moved away from the S10’s matte screen and slapped on some glossiness, and on this front, it’s just your personal preference whether you like glossy or not.   The S10-2 sports a slightly smaller screen at 10.1” (vs 10.2”), and when compared to the S10, you can’t really tell the size difference.   Viewing angles are very good, I didn’t find my self having to consciously tilt or move my head in order to get a good picture. 

My only qualm about the screen (other than that I have grown to prefer matte), is that with the 6 cell battery, it cannot open at too wide of an angle.  When I’m sitting in a chair with the netbook in my lap, I have to stick my legs out a bit in order for the laptop to slightly tilt back in order view the screen straight on (that being said, it may because I am on the tall side and have a smaller chair, ha):

Webcam & face recognition:

The webcam is about on par with any other netbook webcam – it works fine to do basic video chat, and is laggy in low light situations.  What seems to really set them apart from each other, however, is the software that comes with them.  With the S10-2 (as well as S10), Lenovo has included “Lenovo VeriFace Recognition” which allows you to login using your face.  Setup is quite fast and easy, and logging in is pretty snappy.  However, please don’t use this thinking it is a good security measure – all that someone would need to get through your impenetrable fortress of security would be to pull up a picture of you on Facebook.

Keyboard & Touchpad:

The keyboard is 89% full size and requires slightly more force to depress the keys than any other netbook I’ve used.  After using it for a day, you will get used to it as I did (just as you’ll need to get used to a smaller keyboard in general if you have never used a netbook) – but, basically, I would find my self occasionally missing a space, or any other key that requires a stretch of the fingers (t, y, 5, 6, v, b, etc) as you need to press harder than you’re used to; that being said, they keyboard does feel closer to the “normal” lenovo keyboard (no flex, strongly built, etc).   Both shift keys have been elongated to respectable sizes, as well as they moved the Home and End keys to the top row. 

The touch pad not only has been increased in size from about 5.6mm x 2.6mm to 5.6mm x 3.4mm (0.8mm ‘taller’), the buttons require less force to press and are quieter when clicked.   The texture of the pad is also slightly smoother, allowing one’s finger to slide across it more easily (not that it was ‘difficult’ to slide across on the S10, but it “grabs” less to your skin when using it). 

Built Quality, Heat, and Noise:

One of the few differences between all netbooks is their build quality, and the S10-2 would rank among the top.  The keyboard has virtually no flex and the screen lid is resistant to bending.  A (slight) thumbs down on quality, however, is that the battery is a little loose, and you can feel and hear it move around when holding it which bothers me:

As far as heat goes, it stays much cooler than the S10 (even with the S10’s updated bios), and I can’t remember once being able to hear the fan (even though it was running) – again, unlike the S10’s fan which was on quite frequently and audible.    The S10-2 does get warm, though not uncomfortably so as the raised battery seems to helps with airflow. 

Performance:

Simply put, the S10-2 stacks up to all the other netbooks running the N270 Atom processor – it’s good enough for the basics (web browsing, listening to music, watching/playing non-flash based media, word processing, VERY light games), but once you start doing light photo editing, or watching flash (especially full screen) you’ll start to feel the pain of sluggishness.   When trying to watch full screen hulu, it constantly stuttered and stayed at 60-70% processor usage.  That being said, here’s some benchmarks of SuperPI and HDTune speeds:

Battery Life:

I was hoping that since many other things were slightly improved upon in the S10-2 compared to the S10 that the battery life would too – and it did (about 7% longer).  Tests were performed at level 4 brightness, wifi on, and auto performance:

And in case years down the road, someone happens to buy a used s10-2 and wants to buy a replacement battery … or something … and needs to know all the numbers and barcodes on the 6 cell battery:

Upgrading:

As with most of the newer netbooks (basically, unlike the original line of 9” ones that first came out), it is fairly easy to upgrade the memory, hard drive, wireless card, and WLAN – all you need to do is remove the bottom covers, pop out the old and put in the new.  And contrary to the Lenovo spec sheets, the hard drive IS removable/replaceable:

Comparison shots to the S10:

To further drive in the (minor) differences/similarities of the S10-2 and S10, here are a few more pictures of them together.  All-in-all, the actual main chassis of the S10-2 is thinner, but the feet are a bit taller than the S10 thus making it appear the same thickness overall.  As you can tell, the S10-2 is barely shorter than the S10:

And while the S10-2 is slightly thinner in the front, it’s slightly thicker in the back, so it evens out. 

And then two more shots showing the size of the battery (almost exactly the same), as well as their height when opened 90 degrees:

Final thoughts:

All things considered, yes, the S10-2 was a successful redesign of the S10. However, unless you really want the extra battery life, it’s not worth the extra price of the S10-2 – as of 6/24/09, you can get the refurb S10 for $277 or a new S10-2 for $399 [though, after time, s10-2’s will pop up in the outlet, for a lower price].   

As far as performance, it’s about on par with any other netbook I’ve used/reviewed.  The added benefits over other netbooks is that it is smaller/lighter than most, has a great keyboard, and when it was first released it was only $300 (now $400 through their main site, who knows if they’ll lower the price again).   With a battery life of around 5 hours with ‘normal/light’ usage, it’s definitely a netbook you could feel comfortable with taking with you on a day trip without having to pack the charger. 

Pros:

• Light (2 pounds, 11oz)
• 5 hours + battery
• Sturdy keyboard, no flex
• 3 usb ports
• Stays cool and quiet
• Large touchpad & soft(er) buttons

Cons:

• Loose battery
• Too expensive for it’s differences compared to it’s predecessor (S10)
• Fingerprint magnet (as is any glosssy netbook/screen)

Of the four different apartments I’ve lived in, every one of them has had off white walls.  A while back, I was able to get in on what now seems to be a “semi-annual” ShopOnkyo.com refurb home theater deal (like the HT-SR600S for $99), and after mounting the speakers on the wall, I was quite disappointed at what I saw:

If I had a house, I would take the time (and money for proper tools) to route the wires through the wall or behind crown molding.  However, I’m in an apartment and I’m not about to do such work in a place I won’t stay in for a while, not to mention I’d probably loose my deposit!

Here’s where good old masking take steps in.  It just so happens that your average roll of masking tape is probably close to the same color as your apartment walls:

What you want to do first is wrap up the beginning part of the speaker wire coming from the speaker (you’d probably want to do more layers than I did):

Then, for the first layer of tape, tear off about a foot at a time and try to tape down the speaker wire as straight and vertical as you can while trying to keep the wire flat or from twisting - otherwise it will look a bit wavy like this:

(one thing you can do to try to minimize the waviness is to hang the speaker wire from a door frame using a tack/nail/etc and then put weight attached to the other end over night )

Once you have the first layer down, feel free to do another similar layer of tape on top of it – since the tape is a bit transparent, if you have dark colored speaker wire, it’ll still show through.   Once it’s almost “whited out”, proceed to cover it with one more layer of one long piece of tape.  This will help hide any of the ripped, jagged edges of the 1-foot pieces of tape. 

When all is said and done, this is what a roll of $3 masking tape can do to make your apartment home theater setup look a little bit better – does it look great? No.  Does it look better than just having the wire loom down and only cost around $3? You be the judge!

(oh, and I say this is a guide for an apartment, as opposed to a house/etc, only cause I would rather at least use flat speaker wire and paint it if it was a place I was actually putting money into.  This is just a cheap, easy, and fast way to make your “apartment style” life a little better looking, ha)

The Dell Studio XPS 13 is quite the mash up of power, portability, aesthetics, and features.  This 13” laptop is packed with a current generation Intel P8600 processor, NVIDIA hybrid SLI graphics, “edge-to-edge” slim LED screen, and finally a Dell keyboard finally worthy of being typed on.  Summary in a sentence?  All around power in a medium to small package that’s almost (literally) too hot to handle.

Specs:

The specifications of the model reviewed are as follows:

• Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 (3MB cache/2.4GHz/1066Mhz FSB)
• nVidia GeForce MCP79MX chipset (9400M G graphics)
• 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz (2 DIMMs)
• Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
• 6 Cell Primary Battery
• Dell Wireless 1515 802.11a/g/n WLAN half Mini Card
• 13.3 inch HD WXGA Edge-to-Edge Laptop screen with 2.0 Megapixel Camera
• 320 GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
• Obsidian Black with Leather Accent
• 8X DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability

Video review:

Quick gallery:

Top and bottom:

Left and right:

Front and back:

Screen and general build quality:

All in all, I am impressed with the screen.  The horizontal viewing angles are very good – no matter where the laptop sits in my lap, I can still see things just fine – and while vertical angles aren’t quite as good, I don’t loose a lot of color/etc if I tilt my head forward to back (as with the Latitude E4200).

I like the “edge-to-edge” screen that Dell implemented in this laptop. This basically means that the screen doesn’t have a ‘recessed’ feature; the screen and bezel are are all one, smooth piece (besides the hinge).  The hinge itself does appear to be all metal and is “tight” enough to keep the lid completely closed even with the lack of a latch.

The lid opens a fair amount, though not a full 180 degrees, I would give it about 155 (this is of course a total guess).

Being that it is a LED backlit screen, the lid is very thin and the levels of brightness vary greatly.  There are 16 levels of brightness in total and I found that even at half brightness, the display looked great (which also means saving on battery life without having to sacrifice back light). 

Build quality, too, was rather impressive.  One major pet peeve of mine with laptops is how most of the time, the battery is always a little bit loose, even when it’s “locked” in.  The battery on the Studio XPS 13, however, is a very tight fit and has an extremely secure locking mechanism, much to my delight.   The screen lid is very sturdy – I had to give it a good amount of twisting force before I was able to see any flexing or “liquid ripple” effects on the LCD.  And of course, the item I hate most about most laptops is keyboard flex, however…:

Keyboard:

This is by far one of the best (if not the best) Dell laptop keyboards I have ever used.  There is virtually no flex, and I say ‘virtually’ because the keyboard does ‘sink in’ a tad bit only if you press really hard (which you would never normally do when typing – even when angry).  This was a big surprise to me given that so many Dell laptops I have had in the past have suffered from horrible flex (Studio 15, XPS M1330, and XPS M1210).

The keys are very quiet and require a little more force than most laptop keyboards.  This isn’t to say that you necessarily have to actually press harder to type, it’s just that it seems there is more of a “pop back up” when you let go of the key.  The keys are also “square cut” as opposed to angling outwards like a trapezoidal fashion (it’s hard to explain..just see the picture) – it’s very similar to Sony laptop keyboards:

A very nice bonus feature is that this keyboard comes equipped with LED back lighting with two different brightness levels, and it actually looks quite nice (which also proves to be very useful when working in the dark):

Performance & Gameplay:

I’ll start off by listing some benchmark results:

As you can see, it scored rather well on the Vista charts ( I was surprised to see such a high ranking for a hard disk), as well as having fast read speeds. I tired to run PCMark05, but it kept getting hard drive access errors, so I was unable to get that to work.   I used the laptop for a few hours, playing games (FEAR, Call of Duty 4) web browsing, light photo editing, and 1080p and 720p Windows Media/DivX encoded videos, and it all functioned just fine.

While playing Call of Duty 4 (shown in the video review above), the optimal settings were set at max everything except for the resolution, which as 1024×768.  Playing with these settings, I averaged about 15fps, and when I upped the resolution to it’s max of 1280×800, I averaged about 10fps.   Playing back HD content (WM or DivX) was smooth – no hiccups or lagging what so ever, and of course doing simple tasks like light photo editing in paint.net, web browsing with FireFox, or writing this review, I had no issues.

Weight, heat, noise, and battery:

One of my major disappointments with this laptop is it’s weight which clocks in at just under 5 pounds, 2 ounces. For being a 13.3” laptop, this machine is a bit hefty; the Dell XPS M1330 weighs 4 lbs 3.5oz, also with a 6 cell battery — almost a full pound lighter than this.

While the weight, though heavier than other 13” notebooks, is disappointing, the heat this sucker produces can be almost unbearable.  Without having a proper thermometer to accurately record the temperature, when I was testing COD4 and had the laptop on my lap, I felt as though it could have actually burned me if I kept it there long enough.  Perhaps it is because the main exhaust vent is located right in front of the screen when it is opened, and therefore restricts air flow.   The main source of heat is on the bottom, where the heat sink goes in between the fan and the memory – be careful, it can get EXTREMELY hot!

Perhaps another reason for such heat build up is that maybe the fan doesn’t spin very fast.  Through out the entire game testing, not once did I hear the fan get noticeably loud.  Yes, I could hear it, but not even as loud as my Lenovo X61s.  Either A) the fan doesn’t spin up very fast, B) it’s some crazy new fan technology that suppresses sound, of C) ???.

Battery life on this laptop was surprisingly good.  Given the fact that it has such powerful components, I was expecting just under 3 hours max.  However, combined with the hybrid graphics, and good power management, you can range anywhere from 1.5 hours to almost 5.  Using battery eater pro, I managed to squeeze out 1hr 30min on the classic benchmark mode.  Doing just simple web browsing, and writing a bit of this review, I managed to get about 4 hrs 40 minutes.  This was all done on the 6 cell battery, so pair this machine up with the 9 cell battery, and you could potentially get upward towards 7 hours (with light usage and conservative power schemes).   As with all Dell laptop batteries, it comes with charge indicator lights which allows you to press a button on the battery to see approximately how much charge you have left:

Conclusion:

Having owned and/or reviewed numerous 13” laptops, I would have to say that this is one of the better ones.  However, I really wish this would have been a bit lighter and ran ALOT cooler, and only then I would have possibly said this was a near perfect laptop.  To verify that I am not exaggerating the heat issue, the folks at TestFreaks.com (which gives this laptop a 9.0 of 10) also many reports of the heat issues that I also experienced. 

Coming in at a relatively small 13.3” foot print, this laptop does have a lot of power under the hood.  I was able to play COD4 at a reasonable, though not great, 15fps on almost max settings, while still being able to squeeze out a very respectable battery life of about 4.75 hours.   

Another great selling (ha) point of this laptop, is if you wait for the right delloutlet.com deal, paired with a nice 15-20% outlet coupon, you may be able to snag one of these refurbished for around $670 like I did.

Pros:

• Great battery life to performance ratio
• Hybrid graphics (scales for battery life or performance when needed)
• Fast and large hard drive paired with DDR3 memory
• BEST dell keyboard yet (no flex, good feedback)

Cons:

• Gets VERY hot, and quickly too
• Weighing in at 5lbs 2oz, it’s heavy for a 13.3”

With all the netbook hype these days, and the fact that I’ve always wanted to try one, I decided to check out the Redfly C8 “mobile companion”.  The Redfly C8 is a niche product designed primarily for the business traveler looking for crazy battery life and basic word processing, email, and web access to compliment their smartphone.  This was made to compliment “business uses” (email, word processing, etc), but that’s not all it can be used for.  Slightly smaller and lighter than the average netbook, this device is basically an extension to your smartphone – it gives your phone an 8” 800×480 screen, qwerty keyboard, and all with an amazing 8 hour battery life.  That being said, unless you are looking for extreme battery life and basic functionality, you will probably be better off buying a netbook (such as the Dell Mini 9 from the dell outlet, for around $200).  However, for the right person, this device really is neat (for lack of a better word) — keep reading to find out why:

Specs at a glance:

• 8 inch screen, 800×480
• QWERTY keyboard
• Charges smartphone via usb
• 1” x 6” x 9”
• 2 pounds
• 8 hour battery
• 2 x USB 2.0 ports (for keyboard, mouse, phone charging/connection, or flash drive)
• VGA port (for 800×600 output)
• Instant on
• USB or Bluetooth connection to your phone

Look and feel:

The C8 is a rather small device, as it’s only 2 pounds and is a tad bit smaller than your average 8.9” netbook.  It does have a rubbery texture all around (where ever it is red), it’s weight is evenly distributed, and has rounded edges all around. 

The keyboard, while small, is nice to type on (one you get used to the smaller keys).  There is no flex whatsoever, and are relatively quite when typed on.  The touch pad is honestly like any other touch pad except that it is short and wide, so you won’t be able to move the cursor as far vertically on the screen with one ‘swipe’ as you would be used to on a normal laptop. 

Screen:

The 8” 800×480 screen isn’t any thing special – it’s a ‘plain’ LCD screen, 8 levels of brightness (from rather dull, to overly bright), and has really good viewing angles (any angle I look at it, it looks fine). 

The screen opens to about 145 degrees, and there is absolutely no flex in the screen – I can’t even bend the lid unless is really put some force into it.

Features, functionality, and usage:

The Redfly is basically as feature packed as your smartphone is.  Other than video playback (which it can’t currently do, such as youtube or wmv/avi/etc playback), most software you can run on your phone, you can run on the redfly, just basically with a larger resolution.

Once the initial setup is done (basically installing the driver, then plugging it into the Redfly with a USB cable), connecting via bluetooth is a snap.  As long as bluetooth is enabled on your phone, you just need to pull out the Redfly, push the bluetooth button, and click connect:

• TomTom:  I’m not sure when or why you would want to use tomtom on your Redfly, seeing as how if you have it on your phone, you’ll probably have a dashboard mount for it, unlike for the Redfly.  Also, your phone is probably touch screen and the Redfly is not.  However, it still works pretty well:

• Opera:  Web browsing is one of the aspects that makes the Redfly shine. Combining opera mobile with redfly allows you to have a much better web browsing experience, even though (for example) if you are using a VGA device such as the AT&T Tilt.  Having the larger screen realestate (8” @ 800×480) and a closer to full size keyboard, it really helps the web experience:

• LogMeIn: One of the best ways to utilize the redfly, at least in my opinion, is through the use of LogMeIn (for those who don’t know, LogMeIn is basically a free version of GoToMyPC – a simple to use and setup remote desktop type software).  Using the Redfly allows better resolution reproduction of my laptop at home, which makes it a lot easier to use than on my small screen and keyboard on my AT&T Fuze:

• Using a flash drive:  This is one thing the Redfly enables you to do that you can’t otherwise do with your smartphone:  actually utilize a usb flash drive!  This has helped me out a few times when I needed to quickly email a file from my flash drive while I was on a trip – just connected the redfly to my phone, plugged in the drive, and emailed the document:

• External Monitor:  Surprisingly, the output to my 22” lcd looked pretty good.  When using my Tilt’s video output (RCA) on my 42” lcd, it looked pretty bad, so I sort of expected it to be the same result.  However, this is using a VGA connection (which I assume greatly helps) and it actually works out just fine.  That being said, I think that showing the display at the larger resolution of 800×600 is about maxing out the processing capabilities of the device, so any non-static screens (GPS, any kind of animation, etc) will not look too great on the external screen.  However, if you were to do a power point presentation, or just simply wanted an even larger screen for web browsing, it would be just fine:

Another feature is that you can connect your phone to the redfly via USB as well (which is how you have to initially set it up to work via bluetooth). With it’s great battery life, you can also charge you phone while being plugged into it, so this can also double as a battery charger for your phone.

Limitations:

Besides the fact that it doesn’t work without a smartphone [though, not really a limitation as it is just a smartphone terminal) — One of the major drawbacks to the C8 is that it cannot play back videos/movies, or many other ‘moving-graphics’ software (such as the HTC TouchFlo home screen).  The C8N sort of gets around this issue by having a video input (rca), which you could then utilize your phone’s video output to display youtube/videos/etc (such as the AT&T Fuze or iPhone). It is simply a known limitation and was never really intended to be used in this way, though it is something that Redfly may be trying to work into future firmware/software revisions:

Conclusion:

So who is this device made for?  A very niche market – if you are looking for crazy battery life, and just want to be able to have basic access to word processing, email, and web (and of course, have a smartphone), then this is for you.  If you want anything more, and can deal with the shorter battery life, I would highly recommend getting a netbook as they are quite easily found in the $200-$250 range these days.  In short – it comes down to the battery life - in my opinion - and whether or not you already have a smartphone! 

Pros:

• ~8 Hour battery life (and can charge the phone)
• Extends your smartphone screen to 8”, 800×480
• Small (1×6x9) and Lightweight (2lbs)

Cons:

• Cannot playback video (yet?), thought the newer C8N has video input
• Short touch pad
• Price is close/same as a similar sized netbook (Dell Vostro A90 for example)

As one of Dell’s newer additions to the Latitude family, the E4200 is a welcome edition to the realm of ultra portable notebooks.  Until recently, if you needed the small form factor of an ultra portable, you had to sacrifice performance, but no longer with the E4200.  While this not to say that E4200 offers the best of all worlds, it’s certainly a good sized step in the right direction.  I was able to have two different configurations on hand to review – one with a 128gb ssd, 3gb, 6 cell vs a 64gb, 2gb, 4 cell:

Glamour Shots:

First, here are just some different angles/views of the E4200:

Build Quality:

All things considered, I expected this laptop to be a bit sturdier than I found it to be.  This is not to say that it necessarily felt cheap, or seemed like it used low quality materials – rather – based on how sleek it looks, I expected it to be more than it was.  Given it has a “Magnesium Alloy LCD back and base”, I I was surprised to see how much flex there was in the screen pressing my finger into the center from the back (it feels slightly ‘stronger’ than the Lenovo S10).

Since owning a Lenovo X61s now for a few months, I have been spoiled by the great keyboard it has so I was also a bit disappointed at the overly “plastic” feel and non-rigid keys (non-rigid in the sense that if you place your finger on a key, you can slightly move the key around in a circular motion – more so than on my desktop keyboards or x61s). 

All that being said, everything else was well built.  One annoyance I have is when the battery is a bit loose and can wiggle around a bit, but I was quite pleased to find that the batteries in both e4200s were a tight, well secured fit.  The rest of the chassis was as good as any other laptop:  sturdy, and no way to really “squeeze” and flex anywhere (other than the screen and a bit on the keyboard).

Ports, Connectivity, & Optical Drive

One of the major differences this laptop had over most previous laptops I’ve seen in the past is the addition of an eSata port.  However, this eSata port also doubles as a USB 2.0 port, so luckily it does indeed have 2 USB (and not just 1 like I originally thought).  Another nice addition to this laptop that I have yet to see with other ultra portables is that Dell includes an eSata optical drive (CD-RW/DVD-ROM by default).  It’s your standard size self-powered optical drive, but it is nice that it is included (and interesting that it’s eSata as opposed to USB) and it even comes with a carrying case (the charger in the picture below is for the laptop, not the optical drive). 

Performance

For being a an ultraportable and ultra low voltage processor, this laptop is a great performer.   Both hard drives are MLC SSD’s:

See below for PI times, HDTune, etc for the 128gb SSD version — unfortunately, I lost the data I recorded for the 64gb :(

HDTune: Min Read:  50.7MB/sec Max Read:  72.8MB/sec Average:  61/7MB/sec Access Time:  0.5ms Burst Rate:  124.8 MB/sec CPU usage:  15.0%
Vista Score (3.2): Processor:  4.6 Memory:  4.9 Graphics:  3.2 Gaming Graphics:  3.3 Primary Hard Disk:  5.9
PCMark05:  3618 PI 1M:  33s PI 2M:  1m 16s PI 4M:  2m 52s

Battery:

Battery life was a tad lower than I was expecting, being it is a low voltage processor, smaller screen, and SSD, but considering it’s small size yet respectable performance, I could live with it (but of course one could lower the brightness, turn of bluetooth and/or wifi, etc) – below are battery eater pro readings:

6 Cell:

• 4:45 — “reader mode”, 6/8 brightness, wifi + bluetooth on
• 2:30 — “performance mode”, 6/8 brightness, wifi + bluetooth on

4 Cell:

• 3:19 — “reader mode”, 6/8 brightness, wifi + bluetooth on

And yes, the 6 cell does stick out about an inch, whereas the 4 cell is like a couple millimeters (4 cell stacked on top of the 6 cell):

And of course, as I am always curious, how much added weight must you deal with in order to get the ~1.5 hours?  A little more than half a pound:

6 cell – 2lbs 9.5oz

4 cell – 2lbs 2oz

Screen:

The screen/lid itself is rather thin and the hinges are sturdy, all metal, but with the lid closed it does have a little play in that if I were to hold the laptop upside down, the lid will open about 1/4 of an inch. 

The viewing angles also weren’t quite what I would consider great.  I found myself having to keep looking at the screen dead in the center otherwise I’d notice some washing out at at the edges of the screen.  However, the wide range of brightness levels was large, and in reality you could probably set it at 4/8 and it would be just fine (as opposed to 6/8 that I used for my battery tests)

However, I did enjoy the fact that this does not have a glossy screen, rather it is matte! (though, this is of course just my personal preference!)

Final Thoughts:

All in all, with all things considered, when compared to other netbooks laptops of it’s class (such as the Samsung X360) I would say that this ultra portable laptop ranks near the top of the lists (I say near because I have not been able to personally review other similar laptops – only basing that from what I’ve read about others).  I think what would really let this laptop outshine others in it’s class would be the price (if you go refurbished at least).  Both of these e4200’s were under $750 from the Dell Outlet, which easily undercuts the Samsung X360 (which beats even the 120gb non-ssd version) – not to mention, the e4200 comes with a portable optical drive!

For those curious how the e4200 “stacks up” next to the Samsung X360, here you go! (no, I didn’t get to review the x360… :) )

Would I recommend buying it?  If you are absolutely trying to get best performance + smallest size + smallest budget, sure – I don’t see the samsung x360 or the sony tz coming close to the e4200’s price point anytime soon for the same similar size/performance.  However, while I am currently playing around with the Dell Latitude E4300 (13.3”), I would say for spending the same amount that an E4200 would cost and only adding about a pound in weight (if you are okay with that), I’d get the E4300 (stay tuned for a review!).

Pros:

• Cheap (less than $750 in the dell outlet during a sale)
• Good performance vs size/weight
• eSata + USB
• Included eSata optical drive
• Respectable battery life (4:45 6 cell)

Cons:

• Only 2 USB ports (and no hdmi)
• Keyboard feels a bit cheap / too plastic-like
• Screen lid isn’t as sturdy as “Magnesium alloy” sounds like it should be

Just like the keyboard bulge on the Dell XPS M1330, I recently bought a (refurbished) Dell Studio 15 to find that it suffers from the same bulge/flex issue.  Just like the M1330, it has to do with the WiFi cable not sitting in it’s ‘designated groove’ in the chassis.  What you need to do to fix it is just simply push the cables back into the ‘grooved’ chassis, and that should fix most of your bulging/flexing issues! 

To do this, you can either follow the Dell Service manual of removing the keyboard and then putting the cable where it needs to go, or follow along below:

First, you’ll need to flip over the laptop, remove the battery, and remove the Center Control Cover by first removing these two screws:

Then, flip it back over and open the screen as far back as it will go.  Starting from the back of the laptop (closest to the screen), carefully pry up the center control panel (imagine the dotted red line is a hinge) while being aware there is a small cable attached to it, so once it’s loose, so don’t go pulling the panel too far away from the laptop!

Once the control panel is loose, you can just ‘fold it back’ and lay it flat on the keyboard (the next picture shows that I mean by ‘laying it flat’).  The Dell manual says to disconnect the cable attached to it, but I was afraid of damaging the connector, so I never did that (there’s enough slack to do what needs to be done for this task). 

Now, you’ll want to remove the 2 screws holding the keyboard down:

And then pry away the black plastic trim around the keyboard (it should be relatively easy to take off – no screws, just pull it off, starting at one corner and work your way around).   Then, just simply pull the keyboard off (you may need to slide it towards the screen a centimeter or two, and it may feel like it’s stuck – that’s just because there’s sticky pads underneath the keyboard):

Now if your Studio 15 was like mine, you can instantly see at least one (major) cause for the bulge – the thick (and taped) wifi cable is not sitting in it’s groove (which is shown by the dotted line):

If you have the masking tape on yours, remove it, and then guide the cable into it’s groove.  I went ahead and took the eraser side of a pencil and used that to press further down the metal tabs (marked by the red arrows below):

Finally, put everything back on in reverse order, and you should now have a less bulging keyboard on your Dell Studio 15!

So as a long time GrandCentral user, I was quite excited to try out the new Google Voice.  Yesterday I read about how it would be available "soon" and figured that meant weeks from now.  But to my surprise, I logged into grand central today and saw the update notice once I logged in!

Once I did the upgrade, I quickly went to try it out.  I dialed my Grand Central Google Voice number from my desk phone and quickly noticed that the update reset all my settings and set itself to ring every phone in my account, rather than the ones I had it set to before the upgrade (not a big deal, but it would have been nice to know because I had someone in my office randomly pick up my office phone (one of the numbers in my settings) and I was confused when someone picked up!).    I proceeded to change back my settings to just ring my Gizmo number and left myself a voice mail.  I tried to speak a bit ’slurry’ as to see how well it would pick up what I said, and about 3 minutes after I hung up. Not only did I get the normal email and text message that I had voicemail/missed call, but also a text message with my transcribed voicemail (and of course the text at google voice website):  

However, what was transcribed was not exactly what I said, but I think it did pretty good considering at times when I listened to my own message, I couldn’t even have even been able to know what I said (had I not known what I already said).  Here is a recording of what I said, then the text of what GV transcribed, and then what I really said:

• Audio File:
• Google Voice’s Transcription:  “this is james i’m just testing out the google grand central riding school voice transcription service i’ll read the headlines CNN dot com right now the department of toughest so if it does profit designation of any kind hadn’t for keeping the so how about on cana bye bye “
• What I really said:  “This is James, just testing out the Google Grand Central, or I guess Google voice transcription service – I’ll read the headline of CNN.com right now, uh, The Department of Justice says it has dropped the designation of "enemy combatant" for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.”

Wanting to try more ‘real life’ situations, I left my self a few more voicemails. 

One while walking the (less busier streets) streets of DC near GWU:

• Audio File:
• Google’s Transcription:  “this is another test of the transcription your walking down the street washington D C was cards driving by in plane flying over at this is support desk thanks “
• What I really said: “this is another test of the transcription here, walking down the streets of washington dc with cars driving by, and planes flying flying overhead.  Just doing some more testing.”

While walking through Union Station and down a train platform (google could not transcribe it!):

• Audio File:
• Google’s Transcription: Transcript not available
• What I really said: “This is one more test, uh, walking through grand central, eh, union station – walking out on the train platform…to see how easy it is for the google transcription to work with train noise in the background… and people walking around shouting.  I’m now walking down platform-12, getting on the train to get to bwi the marc penn.  <I don’t know…> … or not, walking by one of the train engines.  I’m going to assume it’s not going to be able to…transcribe what I’m saying right now, but I’ll try it and see how it goes.

And then while driving home with music playing in the background:

• Audio File:
• Google’s Transcription:  “hey and here is one set with the radio playing in the car all first five this is back around now just asking about six ninety five people more often the road just kind of thing and stuff like that the fax christian here and now i’m gonna put the alright the speaker and see if there’s any way or not i can transcribe the phone i’m ohh hey nine nine five and that’s the best”
• What I really said: “and here is one test with the radio playing in the car.  I’ll first try it with it just in the background  … uh…. just passing now 6-96 Baltimore off camp mead road .. just kind of saying stuff so I can test the transcription here.  And now I’m going to put the cell right next to the speaker and see if there’s anyway that it can transcribe the song [song plays – and not even I can hardly understand what song it is!] … Hot 9-9-5.  And that’s the test”

Update (3/15/09): In doing my initial review, I failed to notice the ‘embed’ feature that can be used to simply paste code that directly plays your message (including the option to add a ‘caption’). Below is a sample recording I received from a SPAM / Telemarketer [a pre-recorded automated message], and google voice did a pretty good job transcribing this one:

• Google transcription: warranty on your vehicle may have expired and should be reactivated to protect you against the cost of repairs if you have not responded to this notification it’s not too late please don’t make a mistake of driving without a warranty you are still eligible to reactivate warranty coverage this is the final call before we close the file press one to speak with a representative now about your vehicle press two to be removed from the follow up west

Browsing around on the site a bit more, I noticed the option where you now can directly enter in a number you want to call - as opposed to before, in order to make a call FROM grand central you had to click ‘call’ from a log in your call history, or someone from your contact list.  You weren’t able to just call any number.

As you can see, it has the look and feel that all of Google’s products have (looks just like Gmail).  Unfortunately, at least for now, I don’t see an option to ‘integrate’ it into the Gmail screen  like Google Docs is. 

What else is nice is the new SMS feature where you can send text messages:

At first, I just figured that you could only send messages.  But then I thought I’d go ahead and try replying and see what would happen, and to my surprise, the message showed up at Google Voice and it appeared in a threaded-sms style:

Another positive change is that you can now create/manage user groups (before, you were only allowed to use the 5 pre-defined groups, Family, Friends, Work, WebButton, and Other):

You also have the option on the left panel to check out your SMS messages, recorded conversations, and call logs.  Below that, you have your remaining balance for making international calls – are they good prices?  I’m not sure…I never call international so I wouldn’t know :)

However, you can see for yourself here [google.com/support…] as well as below where I’ve listed a few countries:

• Argentina - $0.02 land / $0.16 mobile
• Bahamas - $0.04
• Brazil - $0.04 land / $0.19 mobile
• Canada - $0.01
• China - $0.02
• Costa Rica - $0.07
• France - $0.02 land / $0.15 mobile
• Germany - $0.02 / $0.18 mobile
• India - $0.07
• Japan - $0.02 land / $0.15 mobile
• Mexico - $0.05
• Mexico City - $0.02 / $0.19 mobile
• Puerto Rico - $0.02
• Spain - $0.02 land / $0.19 mobile
• Taiwan - $0.02 land / $0.09 mobile
• United States – $0.00 (free!)
• UK - $0.02 land / $0.19 mobile

Conclusion:

I think this is a great addition to Google Grand central’s offerings.  Did it take a while for them to make updates since they first rolled out with GC? yep, but it’s alright, it’s free!  My ‘real world tests’ of leaving voicemails were a bit extreme, even when I was speaking clearly [at least as far as I think], it did manage to miss the correct words, so maybe it will get better [or maybe I just can't speak clearly? haha]. One, of many, uses for Google Voice would be for those with poor cell phone reception by combining it with Gizmo — [for those who don’t know, you can have Google Voice also ring a Gizmo number that you can use on your computer].   where they could have their cell phone forward to their Google Voice number if they’re out of range [and then they could pick up their gizmo phone]; Hopefully Google won’t sometime decide to charge for Voice!  +1 Google!