Tag Archives: Reviews

Review: tiltpod “tripod”

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Just about every time I’ve gone on vacation, someone is missing from the pictures we take. Self timers are great, but you have to put the camera some place stable and that typically requires carrying a tripod. Small tripods such as the Joby Gorillapod are great, but I don’t always remember to take mine with me. I saw the tiltpod and just had to give it a try. It’s an interesting product that always gives a stable base to set a camera. I took it on my recent vacation and was able to take a few pictures using it; it was always attached to the camera, so using it wasn’t a problem. Unfortunately most of the pictures I took were out of focus and difficult to set up. As the tiltpod makes the camera sit on a flat surface (or so), it’s kind of hard to put my head behind it. I think part of the problem may be that I need to read up on some of the auto focus settings on my camera, so I’ll have to play around with them and see if I can get better at taking pictures.

The tiltpod is quite simple in that it is a magnetic base with a numb that screws into the camera. I really like the concept and had high hopes for it. I’m going to keep the base hooked onto the strap and use it every once in awhile; if I can get the auto focus working better, then the tiltpod will be immensely useful. As of now, it is kind of an interesting product, but has limited utility for me.

Pros

  • Easy to use.
  • Convenient.
  • Stable.

Cons

  • Hard to put head behind camera when on flat surface.
  • Potentially limited utility.

Summary

The tiltpod does everything it purports to do and does it well. While not a flaw in the product itself, putting a digital camera on a flat surface makes it almost impossible to put your head behind it if set on a rock, or something else that you can’t crouch behind. I did find it convenient when I set it on a metal chair and was able to easily get behind it.

The tiltpod is not that expensive and if you understand the limitations, I’d recommend getting it. If you expect it to completely replace a tripod, then you’ll be very disappointed with this.

Review: Ooma – Take 2

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Almost two years ago, I wrote about my experience with Ooma and how disappointed I was with it. I decided to give it another chance and did so in June. After 2 months of testing, my wife and I were satisfied with the voice quality and features, so I ported our number over to Ooma and dropped the $62 a month landline.

The price for Ooma can’t be beat even if you pay the $120 a year for Ooma premier which I chose to do. The premier service got me a free number port, enhanced caller ID (without this you just get the number and it matches it with your phone book to show the name), a second phone number/line, voicemail sent to email and text, Google Voice extensions and ability to forward all calls to a cell phone if my Internet connection goes down.

The basic question is if the voice quality is good and is it reliable. So far voice quality has been much better than it was last time I tried. This could be due to newer hardware, a different router, or any other number of factors. We’ve had a few blips, but overall the quality is more than acceptable. Reliability is a little different story. Last week they had a major outage that lasted a few hours that was blamed on a power outage. It made me question my decision, but considering we have cell phones for backup, it wasn’t a hug concern.

Pretty much everything else is gravy to me. We had a basic answering machine, so voicemail that sends to email is a great feature, but takes the excitement out of coming home and seeing the light flashing on the answering machine!

I picked up a Telo handset a little over a week ago with the intention of using it as a work line. The phone would allow me to be on a call without tying up the home number. After a few missteps setting of Google Voice extensions, I managed to set it up such that the handset is my work line for both incoming and outgoing calls. When I call out, it shows my Google Voice number. The handset is mediocre in that it is slow in scrolling through the numbers and doesn’t have a headset jack. However, it is good enough for my needs. I’ve used the speakerphone for a number of conference calls without any problems.

The only gotcha with any VOIP solution is what happens when the power woes out. I plugged my router, cable modem, Ooma box, and cordless phone base station into a UPS. That should be good enough for a few minutes. With cell phones easily reachable, this isn’t a big concern.

Pros

  • Inexpensive even with the premier service and $3.50 in monthly fees.
  • Voicemail works well and sending messages to email is useful.
  • Google Voice extensions makes it convenient to have a work phone.
  • Decent voice quality.

Cons

  • Recent outage is a little disconcerting.
  • Steep initial cost, but cost recovery can happen in about 7 months.
  • Telo Handset is a mediocre cordless phone.

Summary
For those looking to keep a home phone, but want to reduce cost, Ooma is currently a decent option. As long as Ooma stays in business and the voice quality remains good, I’ll be happy. With the initial cost of $180 + tax (from Costco), the $120 Premier service for the year and $3.50 per month the first year cost is around $350. I will be able to recoup the entire first year cost in less than 6 months. After the first year with the premier service, I’ll be paying about $14 a month which is $48 a month less than I was paying.

Review: Alfred

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When I saw Alfred available in the Mac App Store, I grabbed a copy and was pretty impressed. I’ve used a number of launchers over the years including Quicksilver, LaunchBar, Google Quick Search Box, and Butler. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. The biggest downside I found to all of the launchers was the UI.

Alfred does basically the same thing as the other launchers, but the UI I find to be quite elegant. The free version of Alfred has handled just about all my launching needs as I’m primarily a keyboard person and the less I have to use the trackpad, the better (with some limitations). Just yesterday, I saw a new version of Alfred had come out and the PowerPack (£12) had some features that I found cool including entering Terminal commands and file navigation. I plunked down my ~$20 and have been happily using Alfred all day.

I really have no complaints about Alfred and find that it is easier to use and more visually appealing than its competitors.

Pros

  • Easy to use.
  • Clean user interface.
  • Preferences are easy to understand.
  • Quick Terminal command entry is slick. (PowerPack Only)
  • File Navigation is a quick way to find files. (PowerPack Only)
  • Clipboard history eliminates need for a separate app. (PowerPack Only)

Cons

  • Searching for files could use a bit more narrowing down. For instance, I want results from my home folder, but not in my Library folder.

Summary

Without buying the PowerPack, Alfred is well worth using. The user interface is clean and the application works well. Adding the PowerPack, if you need the extra features, is worth the small cost. I find that without a launcher of any kind, I spend far too much time looking for applications; I don’t like a ton of applications on my dock, so a launcher is needed. Alfred, for me, is the best of the current crop of launchers.

Everyone has a favorite launcher and switching launchers is much like the debate about which is better, Mac or Windows. Giving the free version of Alfred a try is a no brainer. If you don’t like it, go back to using another launcher.

Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX9

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As I wrote a few weeks ago, I enjoyed editing video on my iPad 2 in iMovie which got me started on putting all my video in a format that the iPad could read without conversion. While our Canon PowerShot SD960IS wrote video in h.264, a format that the iPad can read, the audio was a PCM format that the iPad didn’t like and therefore iTunes wouldn’t put the video on the device and using the camera connection kit, I still couldn’t get the iPad to play it. If my dream of taking an iPad on vacation to edit a movie while still on the vacation using video shot during the trip, I had to find a compact digital camera that output the video in an iPad compatible format. I wasn’t convinced that just reading the specs would ensure compatibility, so I decided I was going to look and buy locally in the event I had to return the device.

About 2 weeks ago, I was going to go to Best Buy, but due to a cranky child, I didn’t make it. The following day, I saw some cameras in the Best Buy ad, so I looked up specs on a few of them. I decided to take a shot on the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX9
. Normally I’m not a huge Sony fan because of their insistence on using Memory Sticks, but a friend of mine told me that starting in all their cameras from last year or maybe earlier, the cameras also accepted SD cards.

Best Buy was sold out of the camera (it was on sale for $199, $20 less than normal) so I ordered it with free shipping and received it last Friday. After reading and re-reading the specs, I absolutely couldn’t wait for it.

The first thing I did when I got it was find the setting to capture videos in mp4 format in 720p. After doing this, I shot a video, took the card out and placed it in the camera connection kit on my iPad. The iPad imported and played the video without problems. That pretty much sealed the deal for me to keep the camera; the rest of the features were gravy since the camera already did more than my Canon.

The Sony almost has too many features to be usable, so I’ve tried to learn a few ones that are useful to me. First off is panorama mode. I’ve used stitching programs before, but due to them not being convenient, I think I have 1 wide picture in my collection. This mode makes it simple to capture a very wide picture that looks great. It’s easy to use and one feature that I’ll be using again.

The next feature that amazes me is the smile shutter. You turn it on and it detects when someone smiles in order to snap the shutter. In my testing, it works quite well if there is only one person in the picture; if there is more than 1 person, it’s only going to focus the detection on one of the subjects. However this could be used for self portraits and getting in the picture by having everyone frown until the photographer gets in the picture then everyone smiles. It should also be great at getting pictures of my son when he’s smiling even when he’s not really a happy camper.

The 16 megapixel resolution is a bit overkill, so I scaled it down to 10 megapixels and the images still look great. The Carl Zeiss lens and 5x zoom seem to perform better than the Canon.

While flipping through the options, I saw it mentioned Eye-fi and I had to dig into the docs which are inconveniently only on the CD and not the website (they’re in HTML and I prefer PDF since I can put them in Paperless and even put them on my iPad for easy access on my next vacation) to figure out what this meant. Basically there is an icon which tells you when the Eye-fi card is uploading and you have the ability to turn off the uploading to conserve battery.

I almost fell over when I saw that it charges over USB. Unfortunately one end of the cable is a Sony proprietary connector. The good news is that as long as I remember the cable, it is pretty easy to find a USB port for charging. One caveat is that it appears to draw a little too much power to charge from one of my chargers. Using an adapter I recently got for my XPal Power battery to charge my iPad, I can get the camera to charge on that charger. The large battery charges the camera without the adapter.

The one major downside I found to the camera is that the colors on the LCD are pretty awful. The images look washed out, but viewing pictures on my computer or iPad show that the colors are properly represented in the actual images.

Pros

  • Records movies in a format the iPad can read directly (720p, mp4 format; this is not the default).
  • Easy to use panoramic mode.
  • Smile shutter is pretty good at detecting smiles.
  • USB Charging.
  • Indicator for Eye-fi uploads.
  • Pretty sharp pictures.
  • Accepts a variety of formats including SD, SDHC, and SDXC.
  • Burst mode to capture 10 images in rapid succession is easy to use and works well.

Cons

  • Proprietary cable for charging.
  • Display makes pictures look wasted out.
  • Manual is delivered as HTML instead of PDF. However, using wkhtmltopdf and some command line magic, I was able to create a PDF of the HTML documentation.
  • Too many features! I haven’t been able to dig into everything and I’m not sure I can remember how to use everything even if I understood it all.

Summary

Like most of my reviews, this one is pretty favorable because I did my homework to find a product that met my needs. I’m extremely pleased that the device records video that is directly readable on the iPad; just about everything else is gravy to me. The cost of digital cameras has come down so much, that in the $200 price range, there are so many choices. Deciding on which one to get is extremely difficult. So far, I like the camera and it is taking pretty good pictures.

I don’t think that people can go wrong with this camera. If you’re looking to display your videos on an iPad and don’t want to have to deal with conversions, this camera fits the bill. (Note, however, that the 1080i default video format cannot be read on the iPad.)

Review: MacBook Pro 15″ (Early 2011)

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As someone that deals with computers all day long, I need to upgrade my hardware periodically as the applications get more complicated and my productivity starts to decrease. I try to get a new machine about every 2.5 years. My previous machine was a 15″ MacBook Pro right after the unibody redesign. The machine performed quite well and my SSD upgrade last year kept it going. There was nothing really wrong with the machine, but the new version of Xcode and the increased complexity of my projects began to cause me some frustration waiting for builds to complete.

When I started my new job, I wasn’t issued a new machine and didn’t ask for one as I wanted to wait for the next revision of MacBook Pros. When the new machines got announced, I put in my request and it was approved (slightly different from what I wanted, but still an impressive machine). I ended up with a 15″ MacBook Pro, 2.2 GHz Quad Core i7 processor, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, high density, matte screen.

Since I had an SSD in my last machine, the big changes for me were the faster processor (2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo vs. 2.2 GHz Quad Core i7) and more memory (6 GB vs 8 GB). The first thing I did when I got the new machine and set it up was to compile one of my projects. The project was taking 45 seconds to 1 minute to compile. On this machine, the compile took about 15 seconds! Sweet!

What more can I really say? Compared to my old machine, this thing screams, but I’m sure I’ll say it is slow in no time at all!

I haven’t had a chance to give it the full laptop treatment (take it on a trip and see how the battery performs), but my first impressions are quite positive. I don’t really measure app launching as some people do as I don’t launch apps all day long; the compile time is the number one performance boost that makes me glad that I got a new machine.

Pros

  • It’s fast. There is no doubt about it, this machine can outperform a lot of desktop machines.
  • Thunderbolt/DisplayPort can do audio out to an HDMI adapter which means I have one less connector to connect when I “dock” my machine.
  • Built in SD card reader eliminates the need for me to dig out a reader when I need to configure my Eye-Fi card (I don’t transfer photos using the card, just over WiFi.

Cons

  • It’s expensive. The price tag on this thing is something around $3000 which is a lot of money. However, if it was my own money, I would have gotten a similar machine as it is a tool that helps me earn money.
  • The high density display is a bit hard to read.
  • I’m undecided on the matte display; I’ve had glossy displays before and they work fine.

Summary
My “review” isn’t like the detailed reviews that Macworld publishes, but sometimes people just need a yes/no on buying something. I’ve been a fan of the MacBook Pro line for a number of years and this machine definitely doesn’t disappoint. However, when I get new machines, I like to get them immediately after Apple announces something significant and this upgrade with the Quad Core i7 is definitely one of those times. Luckily the major upgrades seem to coincide with when I want to upgrade.

For professional users, you can’t go wrong with a 15″ MacBook Pro, The size is right for the infrequent traveling I do, but is more than adequate for use as a desktop machine. I won’t get another desktop machine as the portability is worth so much to me even if I don’t use it all that often.