The Gadgets Page

The iPod nano may be “Impossibly Small,” but this little player costs less than half the cost of the cheapest Nano. I bought the My Musix MP3 Player about seven months ago. After dropping it several times and using every day on my hour long bike ride to work, it still plays perfectly. It is a player that comes with a 1GB Sandisk SD card. You can swap out the SD card for any other and it will run just fine. You can have four little cards and have as much memory on hand as the best iPod Nano if you want. When I bought this, 1GB Sandisk SD cards cost over a hundred bucks, so I essentially got this player for free with a 1GB card. Now, you can get a 1GB card for much cheaper, so it isn’t as great a deal as I got back then.

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“Well there’s this one…” is what I would hear every time I walked into a watch shop asking for a good looking digital watch for a woman. No matter which features I asked for, they would always pull out this one. It started to bug me after a while because I would specifically ask for a stopwatch, yet this is the first watch they would bring out. That’s because it was the only watch they had to bring out.

This watch has some great features. The date displays with the time. There is a light, so I can read it at night. It looks better than some bright pink plastic watch. Oh, and it has an alarm. What it doesn’t have is what made me have no use for it. There is no stopwatch, no countdown timer and no dual time. I could give up one of these three things, but not all three.

This watch is great if you need to know the time and date. If you want to measure time in any other manner, however, you’re out of luck.

I just got my new digital camera, the Panasonic FZ30. This is Panasonic’s latest “super zoom” camera, with a resolution of 8 megapixels and a 12X Leica zoom lens. After experimenting with the camera for a few days, I’m very pleased with the camera. I’m working on a detailed review, but in the meantime here are a few first impressions:

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SD (secure digital) cards are becoming increasingly popular for digital camera storage. They’re tiny, convenient, and getting affordable in sizes as large as 1GB and 2GB. But they come in a bewildering array of different speeds and prices, even within one manufacturer’s line. What’s with the different card speeds, and which one do you need for your camera? This article gives you the details.

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If you have been searching for a good-looking digital watch that is also functional, this one fits the bill. I own this watch, except mine is the negative display version. I have owned it for a couple of years now and I thought it had died a horrible death, which was why I was looking for a new one. It turned out that the jeweler that I took the watch to for a battery replacement was incompetent or gave me dead batteries. This watch has two batteries, so when it comes time to replace them, do it yourself. It will just break a jeweler’s brain.

The cool thing about this watch is how functional it is. It displays the date and day with the time. It has a dual time function, so when we go to Las Vegas, all I have to do is hold down one button and suddenly, my watch is on Vegas time. It has a stopwatch. When you put it in stopwatch mode, the chronograph will be counting right with your time in the spot where the date used to be. The same is true for the countdown timer and alarms. The light will turn on every time you press a button, which is kind of bad for battery life, but great when compared to so many women’s watches, which don’t have a light at all.

Now, the uncool features. It is not an inuitive watch to learn to use. You really need to read the directions to figure out how to set it. Keep the book that comes with it and guard it with your life because you’ll need it. On the back of the watch, there are little indicators that try to jog your memory about the function of the four (nearly invisible) buttons. Just be careful. If your idiot jeweler puts the back on backwards, the indicators will be wrong.

I have yet to find a watch better looking or more functional than this for women and I have been searching for a couple of years now. I’m almost tempted to buy another one as a backup just in case the jeweler REALLY screws up mine next time I need a new battery.

If you own a digital camera or camcorder, there’s a good chance you’ve spent some money on expensive extra rechargeable batteries. OEM batteries are often in the $50 range, and while there are a wide variety of cheap replacements, most of them are inferior quality. Fortunately, Maxell makes replacement batteries for many models. After testing two different Maxell batteries for a few weeks, here’s our quick review.

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O’Neill is really going all the way with their gear for skiers. They have a jacket that can control your iPod and your telephone. When you receive a call on your phone, the iPod transmission is interrupted and you can answer your call. The jacket (and the backpack) has a microphone built in to its left hand collar. You hear the call through your iPod earbuds and talk into your clothing. It’s so James Bond I want it, even though I don’t ski or snowboard at all.

• O’Neill – h2.series

The solar backpack can keep your iPod and phone charged via USB connections. It also has a microphone in one of its straps and a headphone jack on the other. You can control your iPod with the cool controls on the other strap. Very convenient. There is also a strap that can hold your snowboard on your back for transport. They have another backpack in the series that isn’t solar powered. There’s also room for a shovel. I guess snowboarders need to carry shovels for some reason.

On another note, their website is really well designed. It’s a Flash-based design, but it’s not irritatingly animated. I really enjoyed browsing through it to find out how the products work. The only thing it was missing was a big “Buy Me” button somewhere. The only question they left unanswered was, “How do I wash the jacket when it starts smelling like March snow?” Maybe they don’t have stinky March snow where they come from.

Unfortunately, when I went to the O’Neill online shop, I was unable to find the h2.series jacket or backpacks. I don’t know if it’s because their online shop wasn’t nearly as helpful as their website or if it’s not available yet. Because of this, I have no idea of the cost of these products. For all I know, only James Bond can afford them…

Via: Hautegear – O’Neill solar bag

A local CompUSA had the iPod nano in stock last weekend, so I got my first look at one in person. A few first impressions:

• This thing is thin and small, much moreso than I imagined. It’s as thin as the iPod Shuffle, and only a bit wider. It would easily fit in a pocket.
• The black finish is beautiful, as is the tiny color screen—the screen is very sharp and readable, and the tiny thumbnails of album covers are recognizable.
• The clickwheel and buttons are easy to use. I personally prefer the moving wheel on my ancient iPod, but it’s hard to imagine a better interface for something this tiny.
• The headphone connector is on the bottom of the unit, which seems odd, but won’t be a major inconvenience.
• The dock connector on the bottom should work with many of the existing iPod accessories, but the nano’s size might make it fit poorly (or look silly) in some docks. Make Magazine tested a few accessories and reports on what works and what doesn’t.

We’ll have a full review when one of us gives into temptation and buys one. In the meantime, Time magazine has an interesting article on the development of the nano. Apple certainly made a bold decision to discontinue the iPod mini and focus on the new nano, but I’m sure it will pay off.

The i.Tech Virtual Bluetooth Keyboard is an interesting idea: A small device the size of a pack of gum projects a laser image of a standard keyboard onto any flat surface. You type by touching the surface at the image of the key you want. Does it work? Yes. Is it practical? That depends a lot on your needs. Our review puts it to the test.

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A local CompUSA had the iPod nano in stock last weekend, so I got my first look at one in person. A few first impressions:

• This thing is thin and small, much moreso than I imagined. It’s as thin as the iPod Shuffle, and only a bit wider. It would easily fit in a pocket.
• The black finish is beautiful, as is the tiny color screen—the screen is very sharp and readable, and the tiny thumbnails of album covers are recognizable.
• The clickwheel and buttons are easy to use. I personally prefer the moving wheel on my ancient iPod, but it’s hard to imagine a better interface for something this tiny.
• The headphone connector is on the bottom of the unit, which seems odd, but won’t be a major inconvenience.
• The dock connector on the bottom should work with many of the existing iPod accessories, but the nano’s size might make it fit poorly (or look silly) in some docks. Make Magazine tested a few accessories and reports on what works and what doesn’t.

We’ll have a full review when one of us gives into temptation and buys one. In the meantime, Time magazine has an interesting article on the development of the nano. Apple certainly made a bold decision to discontinue the iPod mini and focus on the new nano, but I’m sure it will pay off.