A couple of you asked if it really works. So, I decided to put it to the test. Oh, and those aren't my Quaker Grits. They belong to Product Review Coordinator PJ Jacobowitz (a.k.a. my partner in crime).
The Desktop Air Conditioner ($19.99) contains a freezer bottle that is filled with ice, which is what gives the cooling effect together with the fan. When I received it in the mail, I took it out of the box and removed the freezer bottle inside. I filled the bottle up with water and placed it in the freezer overnight. (There are a lot of Lean Cuisines and unidentifiable food items in there!)
When I returned to the office the next day, I grabbed the freezer bottle and placed it into the Desktop Air Conditioner unit. To my surprise, I turned the fan on and heard a very annoying noise. The fan part didn't seem to be screwed in tight enough into the unit, causing the loud noise. I didn't want to break the unit, so I didn't fuss with it. After awhile, I learned to drown out the sound, and the frozen bottle lasted for about 3.5 hours. During this time, I had to check the compartment tray and get rid of the water; it has to condense somewhere!
But, what do you do when the freezer bottle turns to water? You have to freeze it again, and it takes 6 to 8 hours to completely freeze...so you'd have to buy an extra freezer bottle to use as a spare. I found this to be a big pain.
Likes: It cools somewhat (not as good as a real air conditioner obviously, but it suffices if you're desperate to cool off). Got me a lot of attention at work (people would stop and ask, what the heck is that?!).
Gripes: The fan makes noise when on. AC adapter isn't included (who keeps spare D batteries around?). Once the bottle is no longer frozen, you have to wait a long time before it freezes again. There should be different fan settings (it doesn't blow very high). The unit could be smaller and come in different colors.
So what did I learn? You can get the same effect by placing a frozen water bottle in front of an ordinary fan (of course, be prepared to place some paper towels underneath the bottle for condensation). And that's just what my cubicle buddy, Commerce Producer Arielle Rochette, did.
Even so, the Desktop Air Conditioner is a cool gag gift for a co-worker.
No wonder the music industry freaked out over the Pioneer Inno, a portable XM2Go satellite radio receiver that lets you record and keep your favorite songs: People might actually listen to more music, only not under the terms the industry wants. The Pioneer Inno makes a great, if pricy, way to add satellite radio to your car.
The Inno and its sibling product, the Samsung Helix, are iPod-size XM Satellite Radio receivers with three great features: a capture button that lets you record the current song (and captures it back to the beginning); an MP3 player; compact battery power and an integrated antenna so you can listen to XM on the go—that is, if you can get a persistent signal. We've reviewed the Pioneer Inno as a walkaround device and now love it equally as a car player. (Same goes for the Samsung Helix, though it has slightly less desirable headphones.)
Inno in Cars
As with other removable satellite-radio receivers for the car, you slip the Inno in its cradle and tune your car radio to line-in or an unused FM station, and you've got music. What's magical about the Inno is that when you hear a song you like, pressing the middle button of the rocker pad three times records the whole song. You also can record a music stream.
Thanks to an always-recording onboard memory cache, the Inno can capture back to the beginning of the song, even if you request a recording after it starts. Unlike some earlier recording satellite-radio receivers, the Inno knows to stop at the end of the song and doesn't lose music from volatile RAM when you power off or switch channels. You can then categorize your music or create a playlist.
The Inno has 1GB of onboard memory, split equally between the satellite-radio cache and an MP3 player: It'll hold about 25 hours of captured XM music and 8 hours of MP3 or WMA files (satellite radio is more compressed than 128-Kbps MP3). You can also reset the cache divider to hold only XM recordings; just be warned that you'll lose all your previously recorded music if you do so. 4GB would have been more useful, but with flash memory at $50 a gigabyte, that would have pushed the Inno's already steep $400 list price well over $500.
The color 1.7-inch display reorients itself from vertical to horizontal when it's in the docking module. We found the default use of stylized logos for each XM channel made the display hard to read in daylight. Also, the buttons on the included remote were a bit small. On the plus side: In case you plug into a 12-volt outlet that's always on, a setup option lets you time out XM after 60 or 180 minutes of no activity, so you won't run down the battery. The Inno also streams stock quotes and sports scores.
Inno Outside the Car
Walking around, the Inno is great at playing back recorded material. For joggers, it's a bit heavy (4.5 ounces) compared with a flash music player; clipping the included case to nylon running shorts just pulls them down. (Ask me how I found out.)
While jogging through tree-lined residential streets, I lost the signal for a couple seconds every few minutes; it happens enough so that you won't want to record a favorite song while you're running. In buildings, reception is unreliable unless you're near a window. Even in major cities with terrestrial repeaters (radio antennas that also broadcast the signal), the signal doesn't reach very far inside buildings. On planes, the Inno doesn't capture live XM, but you're not supposed to listen to radio anyhow.
Mounts Anywhere in the Car
To use the Inno in the car, you'll need to have a car mounting kit ($70 street) and the skill to route power, antenna, and audio output wires so they don't get in the way. The kit includes an adjustable-angle dock that tilts so you can install the receiver on the console, on the dash, or atop the dash. There's also a roof-mount antenna, power cables to hard-wire the Inno so you don't need the 12-volt socket, and a second 23-button remote. A good audio shop will install the Inno for $50 to $75. So will a lousy audio shop, for that matter.
To get up and running in a hurry, though, all you need do is plug into the 12-volt socket, slap the antenna on the dash inside the car, and tune to an unused radio station using Inno's FM modulator.
Legal Issues
The legal issues should concern you only tangentially, unless of course some judge orders your Inno deactivated pending trial (which is unlikely). XM, Pioneer, and Samsung are trying to provide music the way you want it, when you want it. Is that a federal crime?
From the music industry's point of view, it licensed the music to be broadcast by satellite in real time only. It recognizes users might capture streams with separate MP3 encoders, but that this would be a lot of work. The XM-Pioneer-Samsung cabal made recording delightfully easy, and the music industry argues (with some justification) that something that provides more benefit to the consumer ought to be rewarded at a higher level to promoters, lawyers, agents, and if necessary, the musicians themselves. What must be decided is whether their contracts actually say that or the lawyers for one side didn't anticipate the one-button-record development. And that's the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.
Pioneer bundles the XM + Napster service with each player, which lets you rent music by the month (if you pay this month, you get to hear music next month), but it also gives you a quick and easy way to buy music to keep, quite likely the same music you captured a song at a time from XM. Music fans say this is how the music industry gets compensated for the music you've recorded from satellite radio, since it can't be offloaded or played anywhere other than on the Inno.
Worth the Money?
If you just want satellite radio in your car, the better bet by far is to buy a portable receiver such as the Delphi XM Roady XT, for $70 (street). Or you could upgrade to a new radio that has integrated satellite radio for less than $200 and with less dashboard clutter.
But if you want to capture and play back favorite songs, there's nothing quite like the Pioneer Inno and its Samsung workalike. They're fine for playback while you're walking, jogging, commuting, or flying: Just don't expect rock-solid satellite reception in urban canyons or under a canopy of leaves. We suspect that once you've tried the Inno, you'll be addicted.
Amazon.com hooked us up with this little gem. It houses high-resolution PDF scans of original comics, advertisements and all, from September, 1963, all the way to August, 2005.
To put the PDF quality to the test, I popped the DVD into one of Joel's gaming desktops, which was hooked up to a Dell 30-inch LCD and running a desktop resolution of 2,560 by 1,600. Man, did the images hold up to the test. The quality is excellent, and you can zoom in very close.
The DVD autoloads to a PDF clickable menu, where you can choose the decade you'd like to start reading. The simple menu system means you can find the comic you're looking for in seconds.
SanDisk is really trying to turn heads with the company's latest ads. According to PCMag.com, the iSheep ads have been replaced with a new mascot: Lil' Monsta.
If you go to the iDont.com site, you'll notice a flash animation of Lil' Monsta attacking the iSheep like he's Hannibal Lector. So what are they trying to say? Die iPod puppets, die!! Okay, maybe the company isn't thinking to that extreme (at least I hope so), but their ads surely are eye-popping. They could have used more blood though. It's a little too "Cookie Monster meets PacMan" for me.
The real fun is on lilmonsta.com where there's a whole lot going on. The chomping guy's got a message for you:
"Watch out, you've got a lil' punk on your hands...Toss movies, music, and pictures his way and it's a freakin feeding frenzy. Just don't get in the way -- you might lose a finger."
It was a really short week here at Gearlog - we were off Monday and Tuesday. So we're spending the rest of the week upgrading our recording equipment in the hope that no one will ever again have to sound like Doctor Doom on the radio, unless they want to. Also, both our fearless host Robyn and marvelous audio engineer Angry Mike have been out this week. So check back next week for our rantings and foamings, and for now go watch DL.TV or something. They don't try to deafen you with high-pitched noises and talk about robot butts, but they're great guys with a great show.
I could have used this T-shirt when I was at the Jewel and Rob Thomas concert in Atlantic City last month!
BimBamBanana.com is offering the Show Off T-Shirt ($72), a T-shirt with a built-in sound sensitive graphic equalizer panel. It has a fully functional EL (Electro Luminenscence) panel with a battery pack that fits into a pocket inside the shirt. In layman's terms, the shirt's equalizer lights up to the beat of music. Now how cool is that?!?! I like it better than the Digital Clock T-Shirt.
Thanks to editor, reviews, Lance Ulanoff, for this story!
According to various Web reports, while most United States citizens were celebrating the 230th birthday of our nation's independence, Samsung Electronics quietly announced two new robot vacuum cleaners: the VC-RS60 and VC-RS60H.
The two bots clean your floor automatically; they even use UV lights to "see" debris that may be invisible to the human eye. They have bump-detection technology, so they can work around walls, chairs, and other obstacles. Reportedly the Samsung bots will charge themselves and allow for manual override via remote control, to get those spots that you think need extra or spot cleaning.
This isn't Samsung's first foray into the robot vac world. In 2004, the company introduced the Samsung VC-RP30W Cruising Intelligent Robot Vacuum Cleaner. It was supposed to change the way we think about vacuuming. Of course, I never saw one for sale in the U.S. Let's hope the RS60 and RS60H do not suffer a similar fate. I can't wait to pit them against an iRobot Roomba.
I live in an apartment, so it will be awhile before I buy a house and can have my own garden. Although, I'm not so sure I'd be able to keep up with one. (I'm not exactly a garden guru.) My boyfriend's mom is known as the plant killer, because she can never keep a plant alive for more than a week. Maybe it's because her plants never get enough sunlight, or maybe she forgets to water them from time to time. Whatever the case may be, what she needs is a self-sustaining planting system!
The AeroGarden, made by AeroGrow, lets you grow a garden in your kitchen, minus the dirt and weeds. It's 100% natural, organic-based, and no gardening experience is required.
So what does the AeroGarden have to do with technology? Well, it uses the science of Aeroponics and Hydroponics to grow seeds without soil. It features:
A built-in plant lighting system, so no natural sunlight is required.
Computerized "Smart" Garden Technology that automatically alerts you to add water and nutrients, as well as a light timer to automatically turn lights on and off.
"Plug 'n' Grow" Bio-Dome Seed System: pre-seeded grow pods are enclosed in their own greenhouse for 24-hour germination.
Aeroponic Optimizing Chamber: plant roots are bathed in ideal levels of nutrients and water for maximum growth.
Micro-processor automatically adjusts nutrient delivery, light cycles, and water flow for specific plant types.
AeroGrow offers six seed kits for growing your own garden: Salad Greens, Gourmet Herb, Chili Pepper, Cherry Tomato, Cascading Petunias, and International Basil. I'd probably choose the Gourmet Herb and Chili Pepper kits!
The AeroGrow AeroGarden sells for $149.95. Each package includes the AeroGarden, 2 daylight spectrum bulbs, and one free seed kit of your choice. Additional seed kits are $19.95.
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