Articles by Gear Diary Staff

Jetart Coolstand 3 (NC 6000) NoteBook Cooler and Stand Review

Jetart Coolstand 3 (NC 6000) NoteBook Cooler and Stand Review

When I bought my laptop a few years ago, I proudly brought it home, tore open the box, and set it up on my desk. I was so excited to give it a try. With a crack of my knuckles, I sat in the chair and reached for the keyboard, which sat flat on my desk. I had to slouch a bit and sloop my shoulders inward in order to reach. I then craned my neck to view the screen, which was below my eye level and slightly askew. While this setup did result in many fantastic articles and reviews,…

E-TEN V900 WM Pro 6.1 Mobile Device Unboxing

E-TEN V900 WM Pro 6.1 Mobile Device Unboxing

I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful working relationship with the folks over at E-TEN, now officially a part of the Acer family! I received a wonderful surprise the other day. E-TEN (now Acer, now that the merger between the two has completed) sent me the V900 WM Pro 6.1 mobile device!

Sony Cybershot DSC-W120 Review: A Million Smiling Faces Can't Be Wrong

Sony Cybershot DSC-W120 Review: A Million Smiling Faces Can’t Be Wrong

Digital cameras seem to be everywhere these days, and I am pretty sure you are all familiar with the basic premises of composing a photo on them. Set subjects in place, aim camera, scream “everyone smile!” point, and shoot as everyone smiles or says cheese, or whatever other instruction you gave them. Pretty simple. Simple, that is, if you are not trying to take pictures of children. My six year old and three year old are a mile a minute. They rarely sit still, let alone, smile on command. And even if one does listen, it is almost impossible for…

Brunton Solaris 26 Foldable Solar Array and Solo Portable Power Pack Review: Al Gore Will Love You for This One

Brunton Solaris 26 Foldable Solar Array and Solo Portable Power Pack Review: Al Gore Will Love You for This One

With all the news lately about the price of oil, and our oil addiction, it is nice to be able to do a review that not only involves a very cool piece of technology, but is also environmentally conscious. I actually got the idea for a review like this one a few months back when I was having trouble with my laptop battery. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could just slap a solar cell on my laptop and continually charge my battery with the power of the sun. Of course, it was not that easy, but the…

The Altus Lumen Tri-L Light Review: Lighting Your Path and Saving the Environment

The Altus Lumen Tri-L Light Review: Lighting Your Path and Saving the Environment

Check out this tiny, portable gadget I got not too long ago. It is a very nice flip-style gadget. It is about the same size as the Sprint Mogul, though maybe a bit boxier. It is not a phone, though. Or a PDA. When we unfold it, we find…a flashlight?? Oh, trust me. You are going to want to click through the jump for the rest of this one.

EOS Wireless Speaker System Review

EOS Wireless Speaker System Review

When I was in college, it seems like someone was always throwing a house party. For those of you who are not familiar, it is a pretty basic concept. You throw open the front door of your house, condo, apartment, dorm room, or wherever you live; set out some refreshments; crank the music and wait for the people to show up…and they will. It is kind of like The Field of Dreams. If you throw a party, they will come. The problem, back in those days of the early 1990’s was the sound system. Most of us had music centered…

Is 64bit Vista Ready for Prime Time?

Is 64bit Vista Ready for Prime Time?

There’s been a big push by Microsoft to get everyone to cross over to the 64bit version of Vista. Are you and your hardware ready for it? I’ve got a MacBook Pro. I purchased the notebook in December of 2006. It’s the low end unit, with a 2.16 GHz C2D processor, 4GB of RAM (yes, Leopard will see and use all 4GB of RAM, despite what you might think, or are told), and a 120GB hard drive. It’s not a bad unit; and has treated me well in the almost 20 months that I’ve been using it. The biggest problem…

Spire Edge 15 Computer Sleeve Review

Spire Edge 15 Computer Sleeve Review

When I bought my MacBook Pro back in 2006, I was all over needing a case for it. I tried regular notebook cases, and those didn’t work for me. I tried a backpack case, and that seemed to work ok, but I couldn’t help but feel that my baby was still a bit on the naked side. When Judie offered me the opportunity to review the Spire Edge 15 Laptop sleeve, I jumped at the chance. The last thing I wanted was another ding on my MBP (see the last picture, after the break) Front of the Spire Edge 15…

Diskeeper's Diskeeper Pro Premier 2008 Review

Diskeeper’s Diskeeper Pro Premier 2008 Review

I remember back in the day, the only tool that I knew of that actually had a defrag tool of any real value was Norton Utilities. In fact, I believe that Stacker, a drive compression tool that provided real time, data compression and decompression (effectively doubling the size of your drive…) of data on your drive ended up using an embedded version of Norton’s defrag utility. Point being, I loved that utility. It did everything that I needed it to do, including consolidating my directories, without having to boot to a command prompt; but alas, those days are long gone….

PC Tune UP Review: Turn That Tortoise Back into a Hare in Four Easy Steps

PC Tune UP Review: Turn That Tortoise Back into a Hare in Four Easy Steps

I have a laptop that I use for most of my software testing and review writing. It is about a year and half old, and lately I have been noticing an interesting phenomenon. When I bought it, about 18 months ago, it was blazing fast. Even after I loaded Vista, I was still impressed by how fast it ran. Over time, however, I’ve noticed a significant decrease in speed. In short, my hare has become a tortoise. And I don’t care what they say about racing, in computers, slow and steady gets tossed out the window. As you can imagine,…

Sakar Crayola Digital Camera Review

Sakar Crayola Digital Camera Review

You know you have a good product on your hands when the next morning, my kids jump out of bed and ask to play with it before they even get dressed. Well, that is exactly what I saw with the Crayola Digital Camera from Sakar. My boys (6 and 3) love to imitate what they see me doing. And one thing I do a lot around our house is take digital pictures. As a result, they are always begging to let them see my camera. Which is no big deal when you have a cheap $100 camera, but I am…

The Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 Review

The Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 Review

Is the LifeCam the webcam to end all webcams? I went into this review wondering what Microsoft would try to do to set its webcam apart from the countless others on the market.

Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Review: Grilling Perfection

Oregon Scientific Grill-Right Review: Grilling Perfection

Every summer, outdoor chefs in neighborhoods are firing up their charcoal, propane, or natural gas outdoor grill. Roll down the car window on any weekend evening in towns across America and most likely the smell of hamburgers, steaks or BBQ ribs will arouse the saliva glands. Whether you are having a neighborhood get-together, summer party or cooking outdoors to avoid heating up the kitchen, undercooked or overcooked food is always a grill master’s challenge. If you cut the meat, the flavor of the juices run out; raising the lid on the grill loses the temperature, and worse, serving undercooked meat…

The Naneu Pro Adventure K3L Camera and Gear Bag Review

The Naneu Pro Adventure K3L Camera and Gear Bag Review

I don’t travel as much as I used to for work. But I still remember traveling enough to know what a pain it has become. With extra security measures and fees, flying hardly seems worth it anymore. Now, when I used to travel a lot, I would frequently have a backpack with all of my necessities and gadgets, and also a separate camera bag with my photography and video gear. This worked fine at the time, but anymore it would create several problems. First, I have considerably more photography gear now than I used to (not to mention nicer and…

Navigon 2100 Max Review: For Those Times When You Know Where You Are Going, but Just Need Some Help Getting There.

Navigon 2100 Max Review: For Those Times When You Know Where You Are Going, but Just Need Some Help Getting There.

Can you folks believe that it is July already? Here we are deep in the heart of summer vacation season. You probably have places to go (or come home from) and Navigon aims to get you there and back again. Their latest GPS, the 2100 Max is the perfect portable navigation system for the intrepid traveler. Let’s take a closer look. Overview and Unboxing: Before we start talking about the features in this one, let’s just take a look at what you get. The first thing I noticed was how much smaller this model was than the 7100, which I…

FotoFusion Review

FotoFusion Review

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to review Adobe’s PhotoShop Elements 6, which is probably the best consumer level photo editor. It basically takes all of the tools the pros use and bundles them into easy to use menus and wizards for the average user. The problem I have is that even with Photoshop, I am still left with hundreds (if not thousands) of photos in my “shoebox” of a hard drive, What to do? I mean, I don’t just want to say, here is a folder, have at it, when I show people my pictures. I want them…

Unboxing the Sprint Samsung Instinct

Unboxing the Sprint Samsung Instinct

After reading review after review and probably driving my poor wife up the wall about it, I decided to take the plunge and stick with Sprint(they only have 30 days to prove their worthiness). My obsession with everything iPhone 3G has been outweighed by my necessity to pinch pennies for the diapers my 4 month old Cooper so lovingly annihilates on an hourly basis. So that led me to the much anticipated Instinct, mind you it was purchased at Best Buy as they give you the $129.99 price out the door…no waiting until Halloween for my rebate check! And no…

Orb Mod 2 Speaker System Review: Getting aA Big Sound from a Small Speaker System

Orb Mod 2 Speaker System Review: Getting aA Big Sound from a Small Speaker System

In case you have not been able to tell from my plethora of media player and headphone reviews, I am something of an audiophile (heck, I was even a DJ at parties and weddings in college). I have built my home theatre system over the past couple of years, carefully selecting each component. The one thing which has always eluded me, however, are quality speakers which will fit in my space without sacrificing sound quality. I have a set of bookshelf speakers that I got in law school. They were cheap…and they sound cheap. Not terrible, but nothing to write…

XID Face LogOn XPress Review: The Future Is Now!

XID Face LogOn XPress Review: The Future Is Now!

In the future, everyone will drive flying cars (that fold up into a briefcase. In the future, computers will prepare our meals instantly. In the future, robots will do all of the household chores. And in the future, there will be no passwords. Instead,will access our data sing biometric security features. No, that does not mean you will have super strength or x-ray vision. (I wish). What we are talking about today is biometric, not bionic. And XID is taking us a huge leap forward in this area with their facial recognition software, Face LogOn XPress. They still can’t promise…

The Sony Walkman Review: Now with Bluetooth

The Sony Walkman Review: Now with Bluetooth

There it was. At last! Writ large upon the outer wrapping of the new Sony NWZ-A828K Digital Media Player (which most of you will know as a Walkman). There were the words I have longed to hear from a media player for so many years. The box read: WIRELESS. Enjoy music wirelessly with the supplied Bluetooth stereo headset. Yes, that is right folks. This will be my first media player review without the patented Bluetooth rant. And really, having found a media player with Bluetooth, I might as well end the review right here. Nice job, Sony! But no, as…

Kensington C170 Keyboard with USB Ports REVIEW

Kensington C170 Keyboard with USB Ports REVIEW

Is it time to replace the keyboard that came with your original desktop? Or perhaps the white keyboard that came with your iMac is so junked up that a black keyboard might be a nice alternative… The Kensington C170 Keyboard with USB Ports is the newest offering from Kensington. This keyboard features three built-in 2.0 USB ports; one on the back and at the top rear along the back concealed behind a sliding door which also houses a mini-USB connector.

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