Reviews

The AT&T Tilt Unboxed and Discussed

Yesterday, as my Fujitsu T4215 was experiencing an irritating hardware failure, and as the whole world was grinding to a complete stop, a box in a plain brown wrapper showed up on my doorstep. I had had little advance notice, and there was absolutely no fanfare. Inside, was this – the new AT&T Tilt, AKA the HTC Kaiser. Finally, a bright spot in my day. And no, I do not get to keep it. The box content list is printed on the side… The opened box… All of the included AT&T paraphernalia, program disks, special offers, etc… Opening the tray…


The Toshiba Tecra M8 Laptop Computer Review

For the last month or so, I have known that this would be a very hard review to write. Not because of the subject matter, but because once the review is finished I’ll no longer have an excuse to keep “my” Toshiba Tecra M8 loaner. Ah well, the deadline has come and gone (eep!) and I can’t procrastinate any longer…so let’s jump right in. Toshiba has different lines of laptops designed to meet different people’s needs: Satellite, Qosimo, Tecra, and Portégé. Satellite are listed as “Laptop PCs with all the new mobile technologies at affordable prices;” Qosimos as “Entertainment media…


The Battlefield 2142 Review

When you see all the new DirectX10 titles coming out for PC it becomes very easy to overlook the newer DirectX9 titles. Battlefield 2142 is one of these titles, and it most definitely shows itself as proof that DX9 is not dead yet! Now, don’t get me wrong, I am fully aware that Battlefield 2142 came out almost a year ago now, so it’s not anything new. However, it is new to me! Now, without further ado I will now begin… I got my hands on a copy of the game Saturday, and I figured it would be a nice…


Sync your mobile digital lifestyle: The Ford Focus | Sync Review

[THIS is a monster post with lots of photos – so give your browser some spinning wheel time!] GearDiary was invited to join traditional media and automobile journalists to experience the launch of the redesigned Ford Focus and Ford Sync™. Hosted in Seattle, Washington by Ford Motor Company and Microsoft, the program included significant drive time with the Focus vehicle, demonstration of the Sync technology and a visit to the Microsoft campus to view the House of the Future. Geekness and coolness personified ❗ . Sync is the newest mobile technology to emerge from the Ford-Microsoft relationship. Debuting in the…


AntWorks – Space Age Ant Habitat

Observing ants in your home used to mean obtaining the typical ant farm which used sand as the medium for the ants to live in. A modern development and improvement on the old sand ant farms are the AntWorks ant habitats. This habitat uses a special gel instead of sand. The gel setup was originally developed for an NASA experiment, in which ants were sent into space on board the space shuttle to study insect life in near weightlessness. Traditional soil-based ant farm tunnels would collapse from the intense vibrations during a take off. To solve the problem, NASA scientists…


Aerobie Aeropress Coffee & Espresso Maker Review

I enjoy a hot cup of coffee every now and then. But, I never had any interest in learning how to brew the coffee (cooking is really not my thing). I have always bought my coffee from restaurants and coffee shops. When I came across the Aerobie Aeropress Coffee & Espresso Maker while searching the web for interesting devices, it really caught my attention. The Aeropress is said to be easy to use and that it makes the best tasting coffee. This I had to find out for myself and we got an Aeropress to review. The Aeropress System consists…


Tersano Lotus Sanitizing System Review: Cleaning Has Never Been This Easy.

Imagine if I told you there was a device out there which could replace all of your soaps and cleaning supplies with water. Pretty unbelievable, isn’t it? Need to remove some heavy duty mildew? No more heavy abrasive cleaners. Just use tap water. Need to remove food stains from clothing? No more spray cleaner. Just use ordinary tap water. Preparing fruit? Preserve it with tap water. Just about anything you can think of can be made better with tap water…according to Tersano, the creators of the Lotus oxidizing system.


Nokia N95 Review

As I am sure you have seen, Jenneth has been extremely impressed by the Nokia N95 smartphone, going as far as to call it her “JesusPhone”. I managed to get my hands on one for a couple of weeks to review, and while I agree with many of her points, I have some reservations. The N95 comes quite nicely presented. You don’t even have to take it out of the box to see this gorgeous phone. That large screen dominating the front panel looks fabulous. Like Sony Ericsson with the P1i, Nokia hasn’t skimped on the included accessories either. Not…


The Funslides Carpet Skates Review

Recently, Judie did a post about the FunSlides Carpet Skates. Because of a technical glitch with our email server, I never got the team email about reviewing them. It was after Judie did her write up on the skates that I thought to myself, these may be just the thing to solve the problem my Robosapien robots have with walking on carpet. I mentioned this to Judie, and she thought it would be a great idea to let the bots volunteer. The FunSlides Carpet Skates come in six color choices, blue, silver, red, purple and hot pink. I was sent…


The Astraware Solitaire Review

[Note: This is a joint review between Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! and Gear Diary, and it is being simultaneously posted on both sites. Clinton’s comments appear in black; Judie’s comments appear in italics.] I love card games.  From the first time my mother taught me how to play Spades to my addition on Free Cell on Windows 95, card games have always been at the top of my list of things to keep myself entertained (Nintendo Wii aside of course). I was more of an Uno kid while growing up, but once I discovered Solitaire, Pyramid, and Poker, I was…


Sony Ericsson P1i Review

Last year I bought a Sony Ericsson M600i for several reasons. First off it was very small, fit easily in a pocket without bulging, and felt great in the hand. It also had both a thumboard and UMTS, both features I wanted. The hardware aspect of it was fantastic, and I loved it, but it was disastrous on the software side. It would crash repeatedly, the web browser would often require 4-5 attempts before it would open, and I would regularly pull it out of my pocket to find it sitting on a wonderfully helpful screen saying it had restarted…


Rocketfish Universal Wireless Rear Speaker Kit Review

Rear speakers have been pretty much the bane of my existence for most of my married life. OK, let me back up for a minute. I love stereo equipment. To me, it ranks right up there with my mobile devices. I have been an aficionado of multi-channel sound since it was first introduced back in the early 1990’s. While 5.1 surround sound (and now 7.1) is a phenomenal way to add an extra dimension to your television and movie watching experience, it does come with one major drawback. The rear speakers, which must be on the opposite side of the…


The SoundID SM100 Bluetooth Headset Review: Enjoying The Sounds of Silence.

Since I have been writing here at Gear Diary, and at JAMM, I have had the opportunity to test numerous Bluetooth headsets. I love the freedom that Bluetooth gives you to talk on your phone without tying up your hands. On the other hand, I hate having a piece of plastic stuck on my face all the time (especially one with an annoying flashing blue light). To me, the ideal Bluetooth headset must find a middle ground between these two interests: allowing me to easily use it to place and receive calls, while remaining unobtrusive and accessible when not in…


The HobbyTron.com Hornet 3 Mini RC Helicopter Review

Radio-controlled helicopters are cool toys and the manufacturers are still making new models and evolving them to include new and better features. When HobbyTron.com approached Gear Diary to review the new HobbyTron.com branded Hornet 3 mini RC helicopter, Judie thought immediately of me and asked me if I wanted to review it. I said yes! So, I guess I am now the resident RC helicopter pilot around here. 😀 Review updated July 22, 2007: Added video of the Hornet 3. The features of the Hornet 3 helicopter are as follows: 15 Step Digital Proportional Controls Tail Rotor Trim Dial (persists…


The Sprint HTC Mogul Review

[Note: This is a joint review between Just Another Mobile Monday and Gear Diary; it is being simultaneously posted on both sites. Doug’s comments appear in black normal typeface. Judie’s comments appear in blue italics typeface] Even if you have never used a device branded by HTC, you have probably used an HTC device. Most of the popular Pocket PC’s available today were designed and manufactured by HTC, including: the Dell Axim, the HP iPaq, and the Palm Treo (to name only a few). So, it came as little surprise when HTC began branding devices on their own, or that…


Unboxing the HTC Mogul, Sprint’s New WM6 Phone

I got a sweet surprise from HTC on Friday: the brand new Sprint HTC Mogul, which is a major upgrade to the HTC Apache / Sprint PPC-6700 and which incedentally does not appear to be called the PPC-6800 anywhere but on its battery. I’ll have the use of it for a month, and a full review will be coming soon. But in the meantime here is a video unboxing, some information, and a few photos…


DLO TransDock Deluxe Rox!

Lately, it seems like I can’t walk into a Costco or a Sam’s Club without seeing a new wireless adapter to play an iPod though the stereo system of my truck. Unfortunately, it also seems like I can’t see one of these without buying it. This is because most of them haven’t really worked worth a squat between their awkward controls and their inability to hold a station to deliver a static-free transmission of the treasure trove of southern rock, funk and Richard Pryor albums I have stored on my video iPod. Of all the gadgets I’ve tried to retrofit…


The HTC S710 (Vox) Quick Review

As a person who is constantly looking for the next best device for business use, it amazes me that no one came up with this design before HTC did. A quote straight from PhoneArena.Com says it all:  The HTC S710 is the most compact messaging phone with an auto-sliding QWERTY keyboard. It is the first smartphone powered by the new Windows Mobile 6 Standard platform. This new platform provides genuine mobile Office Outlook experience, greater control of Outlook Mobile Calendar, better Internet Explorer Mobile browsing experience and Windows Live. It also offers greater interoperability with Exchange Server 2007 providing you…


The DVD Stripper Review

You know how there are certain gadgets that you just don’t think you’ll ever need until someone shows you theirs? And then you catch yourself going, “hmm…that’s pretty cool!” Well, you’ll find that tonight’s review falls into that category. Think about all the times you’ve bought a DVD, and while unwrapping the clear outer plastic you wondered to yourself why, in addition to the outer wrapper, there had to be a heavy plastic sticker across the top and front of the DVD. I’ve gotten in a hurry before and accidentally broken fingernails while trying to peel back these heavy stickers;…


The Docupen RC800 Review

I have always wondered about these devices and wanted to give one a try. Personally I have no need for something like this, but I can see where such a portable scanner could come in very handy. This is the Planon DocuPen RC800 Portable Scanner. DocuPen RC800 Features: – Rechargeable lithium-Ion Batteries – The DocuPen RC800 uses rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that allows it to remain perpetually charged without utilizing a separate charging unit. Once a user plugs the DocuPen RC800 into a computer’s USB port to download the scanned information, the scanner’s batteries are automatically recharged – Expandable MicroSD memory…


Soothing the savage beast: the DLO iBoom Travel Review

English playwright William Congreve wrote in 1697, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast / To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” There may have been a Freudian slip when Congreve meant beast. Fast forward to the 21st century. We can certainly be savage grumps when it comes to waking up to an alarm clock with an obnoxious buzzer or worse, annoying morning chatterboxes with Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs as the musical selection to reside in your head all day. Get you someone really to pull the wool with you What?I say it’s…