I’m one of the fortunate few who get to call Vail, Colorado home. For those that ski or snowboard, you know exactly where I live and either A) will not read the rest of this review (but I hope you do) or B) hate me and my life (don’t judge).
Readers who have read my reviews here at Gear Diary or over on my site know that I travel. A lot. The bulk of my career has seen me travel to every lower 48 state and to many other destinations around the globe.
On the surface, the smart speaker market is already pretty packed with competitors. The two most well-known of these, Google Home and Amazon Echo, dominate the market. So why would someone like Harman Kardon and Microsoft team up to create what is arguably a late entry into this competitive landscape?
There was a time in the not-to-distant past when setting up storage solutions on your home network was complicated and expensive. Then, once you get everything setup, you could only access that Network Attached Storage (NAS) when you were actually in the network. That doesn’t do you a lot of good if you need that file while you are traveling.
A few weeks ago, Judie asked if I’d like to review the LG V30 for Gear Diary. I jumped at the chance. I’d heard many good things about LG’s latest flagship and had also read some concerns about it. But the chance to use it was on offer, and I took advantage of it.
So let’s be honest. A mouse is a mouse is a mouse. Right? Well, maybe not so much. Technically, a mouse pretty much does the same thing when it was conceived in the 1970s but the innards of the device itself, along with the way they connect to your PC or Mac.
Like most households, as I look around, there are devices everywhere that need charging. In my house, that means one iPad, an iPad Mini, an iPhone SE, a Google Pixel XL, a Yoga Book tablet, a Nexus 6P and three different portable battery packs.
The path that Motorola has taken with the Android lineup over the past couple of years has been a bit hit or miss. They have produced some great phones like the Google branded Nexus 6 while others like the Moto E lineup have been lackluster at best.
Whether you are an experienced, well-seasoned traveler or a person who travels just a few times a year, keeping your critical information handy and organized is essential. In my career, I’ve logged well over 2 million miles in the air, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, having all of your boarding passes, passport and frequent travel cards in one location makes travel less stressful.
I’ve always said that there is no such thing as the perfect mobile device. People have different needs and wants from a phone which is why, in part, there are so many Android devices & form factors out there today. That said, the new Huawei P10 may be close.
In a day where it seems that smartphones are only getting larger, the iPhone SE is a bit of fresh air. Sure it is nearly identical to the iPhone 5/5S – actually, externally it is identical – but it is a tried-and-true form factor that just works.
So you have Windows 7 and you are all fired up about installing it on your netbook. The problem is that your netbook doesn’t have a CD or DVD player built in which means that DVD media that Windows 7 comes on is pretty much a coaster. You can solve the problem by popping $80-90 bucks on an external drive, but what if you could make that 4GB USB flash drive do the magic for you? Well you can, and it is pretty straight forward to do. All you need is a 4GB or bigger USB flash drive, a little…
It is not a so-well-kept secret that I travel quite a bit for my day job. While 2009 has seen a slow down in travel for me, I still will easily make my American Airlines Platinum status for the 4th year in a row. As a reminder to everyone: Airline status is not something to be proud of. It means that you spend too much time on airplanes and that you know exactly which seats and rows have power outlets… but I digress. Since September 11, 2001 the single biggest challenge with air travel has not necessarily been the airlines…
One of the challenges with any MacBook or notebook PC is cooling. While these devices are made to be a bit more heat tolerant than their desktop tower counterparts, they still can overheat which can cause damage or diminish performance. Getting air flowing through the cooling fans and vents on your MacBook or notebook is they key to avoiding potential disaster and the team at Just Mobile have come up with a sleek, stylish and amazingly simple solution for MacBook users. The CB-200 Cooling Bar is an solid, all aluminum bar that you rest the back of your MacBook onto….
Editors Note: This review appears both here on Gear Diary and on Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! As I have stated many times throughout my reviews here and at Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com!, I travel quite a bit for my “day job”. Just so everyone is clear: American Airlines Executive Platinum isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It means that you have had a lot of time on airplanes. But I digress…. Understanding this, anytime I am able to find a tool that makes travel easier I’m automatically going to be interested. Once such tool has been Spb Traveler. Traveler…
In the first part of my review of the HTC Advantage X7510, I covered the physical hardware of this new device that resides somewhere between Handheld PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs. If you haven’t had a chance to read the first part of the review, you can do so here and then pick up this review afterward. In this part of the review I will be covering the software aspects of the device now that I have received the final shipping ROM from HTC. I will start by covering Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, the Operating System of the X7510 and…
I travel. A lot. While I’m sure that some of you reading this travel more than I, by then end of 2008 I fully expect to have covered well over 75,000 airline miles this year. The fact that I’m writing this review from the comfort of my townhome is, well, rare? Most of the reviews that I write both for Gear Diary and Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! are written from hotel rooms… but I digress. You get the point. As you can imagine, with as much travel as I do, receipts – and more specifically receipt management – can be…
In part one of my review of Celio’s REDFLY, I covered the REDFLY’s physical attributes. For part two I will cover the functionality of the device. First, it is important to remember that the REDFLY will only work with Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6 Professional (PocketPC) and Standard (Smartphone) devices and currently only a small subset of the total number of devices available. For a complete list of what devices are supported visit . Having said that, I did test the REDFLY with a number of devices including several that were not on the Celio website. All of them worked…
With Windows Mobile devices coming with ever increasing quality of digital cameras built into them, the need for applications to view those photos in a quick and easy way has also increased. While the built-in Photos & Videos application of Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6 does a reasonably good job, it still is somewhat stylus intensive. Fortunately the VITO Technology team has seen this as well and has developed a truly easy to use, simple and finger friendly – not stylus – application to meet the need – EyePhoto. EyePhoto is available through VITO’s iWindowsMobile division and is a simple…
One of the challenges with using Windows Mobile devices, as with most mobile devices, is the size of the screen. It is great having Office Mobile on the latest and greatest device but doing a significant edit of a document on a 3.5″ QVGA screen is, well… fun? Granted, on bigger devices that have VGA screens, the HTC Advantage comes to mind, it is a bit easier but you still end up doing a lot of side-to-side scrolling. Couple this with either a soft keyboard on the device or a small thumboard to type with and once again, doing big…
When I first began my adventure into mobile technology, it started with Handheld PCs. H/PCs, as they are known, were made from the late 90s to 2003 by a variety of manufacturers, most notably NEC and Hewlett Packard. The devices were more-often-than-not a clamshell form factor, with a built-in keyboard and VGA or HVGA screens. They were powerful and business friendly, especially in light of the fact that at that time, Pocket PCs (as they were known) did not have built in keyboards. Through a variety of market changes and marketing blunders, the H/PC soon became a non-factor in the…