Larry’s Things .net

Observations:  

- the text to speech is not bad…  still pronounces a lot of street names incorrectly though.

Pros: 

- Screen is very clear and bright.   Even works well with polarized sunglasses.

- Menu system is more logically arranged that that of the TomTom series

- the bluetooth link with the cellphone for handsfree calling works very well.   Even with the noisy interior of a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the other person on the call can still hear the conversation very clearly

Cons: 

- the usb car adapter seems to be very specific to the Garmin.   Attempting to use a third party car adapter puts the Garmin into computer connect mode, and you end up losing gps usage while it is connected.

After using these batteries on light use for about 1 year on my Pentax 6 MP SLR, the batteries have started to be useless for the camera, not even providing enough power to turn on the camera.   Testing the batteries on a La Crosse BC-700 battery charger gives an average mAh of 2400 mAh - measurably below the advertised capacity of 2700 mAh.   In Lenmar’s defence, the batteries were not initially tested on the La Crosse and also a usage history was not recorded for these batteries.   Also, the advertised voltage of 1.2 V for these batteries is probably too low for the Pentax’s power requirements.   

Potentially, these batteries are probably more suitable for use on Wii Remotes.

Rear screen projection films:

Vikuiti :  http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Graphics/Scotchprint/Solutions/Applications/On-Premise-Graphics/VikuitiRearProjectionFilm/

Anti theft GPS tracker:

GPS snitch :  http://gps-snitch.com/

Summary - A decent low priced ($129 CDN) camera, that doesn’t skimp on finished quality.   8.2 megapixel.  3x optical zoom.  2.5″ screen.  2 Years manufacturer warranty (probably in Canada only).    Country of manufacture:  China.  Despite some negative points, overall value is well worth the money.

On the points below, I’ll focus on issues that other reviewers have not mentioned about.   There are plenty of reviews out there with sample pictures from this camera.

The Good Points:

 I don’t know when Fujifilm finally decided on this, but they’ve finally conceded defeat on the xD memory card format and implemented the SD memory card system.

The 2.5 inch viewing screen is not bad actually.   Resolution, colour, and refresh rate seem to quite accurate in representing the pictures+videos.   Replay of 640×480 30fps movies have no delays or jitteryness.

The fast 1600 ASA/ISO mode is nice to have.   Let’s you take pictures in very low light conditions, albeit rather grainy.

One tiny feature that I liked about this was that the battery/memory holder door was spring loaded, so that when slid open, the door springs up.

Battery takes about 100 minutes to fully charge.

The bad points : 

The so-called “image stabilization” that the camera touts to have is really just putting the camera into high speed 1600 ASA and activating the flash - and to Fujifilms’ credit, actually does work to stabilize the image.   But in my opinion… that’s cheating…  at 1600 ASA, even for the supposedly better CCD guts, there’s still noticeable grainyness in the picture.   And the flash then also washes out all the colours into that typical flashed look from a compact camera - giving everybody in the picture that ghostly bluish skin look.

The movie files are limited to a maximum of 2 GB in size.   After which, you have to press the shutter button again to start recording another video.   This is not too bad, as that still gives you around 30 mins of recording time.   The batteries probably won’t last longer than 45-60 mins anyways while recording (unverified).   Zooming is not available *during* recording, but can be used once recording is stopped.

To change from picture to movie mode, you have to select it through the menu system.   This is cumbersome for those who are used to other cameras like the Canon or Sony models, which allows you to change the mode by sliding a switch.

The tripod mount thread is made of plastic!   Man, did they really save that much money by using plastic instead of metal threads?   I guess “your average point&shoot photographer will never use a tripod with the camera, so why make it sturdy?”, would be their line of thinking….

The “manual” mode is quite lackluster.   There’s only 3 things one can control in manual mode:  ISO, exposure compensation, and white balance.   Sorry, you will not be able to independently control the shutter speed or aperture size.

The fuji finepix viewer is the typical crap software one would expect from Japan, unless they outsourced it to India, but then it would only mean that the programming contract was crap to begin with.   Anyways, I digress.    Immediately after installing and running the software, it connects to your camera and shows a thumbnail summary of pictures on your camera.   Your only option is to download the image…  you can’t delete it or modify it straight on the camera.   The menu structure is confusing and nonsensical.

Summary - it sucks.  The fingerprint scanner can only recognize the finger swipes maybe 1 out of 5 times.  I’ve often needed to resort to a regular password.  Also, the fingerprint software seems to have a bug in that the scan is interlaced with blank bars - the problem seems to be independent of computer or operating system version.Discussion - the kanguru fingerprint scanning usb memory stick is a device that restricts access to the usb memory contents by using the built-in finger scanner to scan your fingerprint as you swipe your finger across it.  An incorrect fingerprint will be greeted with an access denied error.   If for some reason it doesn’t recognize your fingerprint (which happens a lot), you can alternatively key in a previously set password. The software appears to work without crashing, and does not need admin access to install.  However, the interface appears to use some seriously god awful colour combinations - this is usually evident when the software has been produced by an inexperienced junior programmer or by some asian software house (sorry man - I know I’m bashing my own race… But I can’t understand why asian programmers have a really bad eye for design…  )

Quick specs

32 mb ram

OS version 5.1

Display  :  240×320,  colour depth  65536

Processor type : SC32442-300mhz

1 SD memory slot 

No bluetooth 

Generally, an ok device.   I have a blackberry from work, so most of the organizational features - i.e. syncing with Outlook, is obsolete for my purposes.  The speed is fast and responsive.   WIFI has no apparent issues.   The battery seems to last quite a while.  I haven’t been able to get a decent pdf viewer for this though.,  I mean, there’s PocketXpdf, but man, it’s really slow…  which kind of sucks because that’s about all I could use it for.    Internet Explorer works mostly ok…  some large complicated blogs like the Big Picture macroeconomics blog, do not work.   The touchscreen keyboard is easy to use if you are using it with the pen.

Cool!   I just went to http://www.google.com/pda  and downloaded google maps…..  and…. it doesn’t work.

However, realvnc works really well!   http://www.realvnc.com/products/beta/ce/

Other than that… rather difficult to find software made for the pocket pc nowadays…  but maybe that’s because of what I’m looking for.

Bought this on eBay for around $400, probably came from a corporate end-of-lease.   So far, used it for a month and another 3 months in Asia with no significant problems.

Came with 128mb of ram, which is really totally useless.   I was able to find a 256 pc133 sodimm module lying around, so it now has 384mb of ram.   I see one memory module that is accessible from the bottom of the computer, but the other one has eluded me.   Searching the internet yields nothing so far, but the toshiba specs indicate that it can support a maximum of 1 gb of ram.  

When I first got the laptop, there was a problem with the pen touchscreen.   There were bands of dead zones where the pen seems to get no signals.   No amount of calibrating the screen helped to solve the problem.   Apparently, there are two possible sources of the problem…   1)  the bios setting to “stretch” the display ,  and 2)  the video driver.    I think the only true solution was to upgrade the video driver using the one provided from Toshiba’s website.

[update on the touchscreen March 23, 2008]  - the deadzone problem seems to have reappeared, and no amount of driver or bios futzing has fixed the problem.   Searching the internet reveals that the only solution is to gently press and twist the screen - seems to work!   I guess that’s why these were available on ebay!

Works with knoppix 5.1 using the network boot.    I tried to write linux boot images onto compact flash cards, and booted them via the built-in compact flash port, but no luck.   Neither did booting using the same compact flash cards inserted into a PCMCIA adapter.

 One thing about the SD card slot.   It doesn’t recognize cards 2 GB and over.

The “quick access” buttons on the screen seem are reprogrammable, except for one, which has a “key” symbol on it.   Pressing it will activate the task manager, which is pointless.   They went through the whole trouble of designing this button, and all it does is task manager?  wtf?

The handwriting recognition was surprisingly accurate.    What surprised me even more was that it seemed to do better with cursive writing than with printing.    However, it does have problems with differentiating between 1 and lower case L.

Built-in wifi is quite good.   If there’s a base station in the area with a strange SSID name - something with a foreign character set, it tends to confuse the wifi card.  Connecting another wifi card to it solves the problem.

Overall - a great lightweight laptop.   Great for travel.

Not a bad device.  Works as advertised.   Can record 10 hours of audio.    Sound quality is decent, and playback is also good, even from its small speaker.   

The only complaint I have is of the software that’s used to download the audio files onto your computer.   First thing, the file format is in Panasonic’s own proprietary format, and you’ll need to convert them to mp3 as a second step.   Second thing, the user interface is very annoying to use,  the creators of the software trying to make the software look “cool” - with a god awful colour scheme,  rather focus on making something stable and logical.   This is typical of products developed in Asia, the software doesn’t go through significant stability and user input tests and is just pushed down the throats of customers.  

Months after not using the software, I needed to start it up again to listen to some notes.   It wouldn’t start!   Just some useless error about it “not being installed correctly”.  So fine, I uninstall it, and reinstall it.   It works again.   Then try it again the next day, and same thing!   The software stopped working.   What the hell?

Final verdict - the hardware is good.  The software sucks - Panasonic really needs to have a more thorough review of their software before releasing it with their hardware.

Crap - stopped working after 1 month.   Supports WPA encryption though…

I’ve never been a big Apple Mac fan.   I mostly had issues with OS 9 and its inability to handle threads properly.   The introduction of OS X changed everything.  Finally a serious operating system that can possibly put the mac into server class territory.    What I have is the dual ppc G5 server and also the “headless” (no video output, and no built-in cdrom) dual ppc G5 server.    First thing, I was never able to configure the headless dual ppc G5’s, via the network boot method - probably an indication of my own impatience - but I spent quite a while trying to get it to work.   I ended up giving up and just transplanting the hard drives to the headed server and installed the os, then transplanted it back it…  that basically worked, except that the dock started working strangely with a lot of question marks on them.

Everything worked relatively well… mostly…  except for the voltage level on one of the processors, which is somewhat on the low side of things.   Then one day I decided to allow an update to 10.4.10 .   Big mistake.   The stupid server wouldn’t boot up again, just the damn spinning icon.   Booting it in verbose mode seems to show that some kernel component was corrupted… however, there’s no reference on Apple’s site, or on any other discussion site on how to replace that module… in fact, most people who have had similar problems where told by Apple to just reinstall the operating system.   About 2 months later, another user experienced the same symptoms, but it crashed at a different point during bootup - same solution though - reinstall os.   This is quite unsettling, as it suggests to me that Apple does not have sufficient error checking in their os upgrades to ensure that the patch is installed correctly before reboots.   

I’ve been basically using the system as an SMB/CIFS fileserver and also to run Retrospect for backups.   So far, they both seem to run quite well.    No real issues with either of them.   Well, maybe that’s not entirely true…   Retrospect, which is now owned by EMC, has not had a major mac upgrade in a long time…  it doesn’t look like they consider it to be an area that one can make much money in - I wouldn’t blame them though - I’d pretty much come up with the same conclusion.

Now a big problem that’s been showing up lately has been my recent decision to use it as a print server for other macs.   This shouldn’t be something difficult, but the stupid print service keeps stalling.   I have to stop/restart it every once in a while, there are no errors indicating that anythings’ amiss.   My only guess is that the drivers to drive the HP 2600n are buggy.

I think that’s the core of the potential problems that one could have when using Macs.   There’s not a large enough user base for the peripheral companies to spend the time/money to make stable drivers/software.   Exception is of course the Adobe and Microsoft Office products, which so far work perfectly well on the Mac systems.

Mac x11 does not work properly if installed in non-boot drive.

If you have the time, energy and patience to deal with half-assed third party support, and you’re trying to decide whether to get a Mac or a linux based computer, then go with the Mac PPC Server.  

Generally - So far, it works…  but the very cheaply put together bios setup menu really scares me.   I haven’t seen menus like this since the old Commodore PET days.   Several times, the system wouldn’t recognize one of the mirror drives on bootup, but by the time it starts up the operating system and loads the driver and management software, it locates the missing mirror and starts to rebuild…  disconcerting…   Looks very similar to the ByteCC Raid controller (unverified).

If you’re using this card for a boot drive, installation on windows 2000 requires that you first create a floppy disk with the driver software included on the cd. 

The included management software can play an alarm sound or send an email alert if the mirror is degraded.

Conclusion:  I’d be hesitant to buy this product again.

Bought it about one year ago , late 206, for about  $200 .   As a monitor, it works as advertised, and you basically get what you pay for.    There is something odd about the colours, just something is off.  I really can’t say what though…  maybe the image quality at an angle is not that great.   The monitor has been on for 24/7 since the day I bought it,  still works, but there has now appeared some strange horizontal “smears” across at least half of the monitor.   Since I only use this as a security camera monitor, the quality is not of great concern, but for anybody expecting to use this as a primary work monitor , I wouldn’t recommend it.   

Conclusion:   Worth what you paid for it - don’t expect to use this for high end photo editing.

Update - Jan 23, 2008 - I realized that the “smears” were burned in images from the programs I had running.   Turning off the monitor, or moving the windows around would eliminate the smears after a long while.

Update - June 8, 2008 - still working

Blackberry curve.  (My previous phone - Audiovox 5600)
Overall  :  an excellent phone - this is the phone that I’ve been waiting for. My particular phone doesn’t seem to shutdown properly.  Its not a big deal, as I just take the batteries out and put it back in, and I rarely need to shut it down anyways.   
I’ve had it crash about once per month.  I haven’t been able to figure out why though.  Might be one of the java midlets I’ve installed.
When I have the password activated, it seems to sometimes take a while before the keyboard begins to respond - its not in a crashed state though, my guess is that it’s waiting for something to start from sleep mode.   Addendum: I just discovered that if I press the back/escape key, I get keyboard response back.
Make sure you remember the password that you’ve programmed it with, otherwise, if you’ve typed in an incorrect password over 10 times, the blackberry device will automatically wipe it’s memory clean.
2 mp built in camera is ok, but don’t expect much on what seems to be essentially a pin hole camera.  This camera comes with a neat led flash, useful for those impromptu pictures at social gatherings.  Pictures seem to get easily washed out if there’s a bright light source in the field of view.A micro sd flash memory card can be used.   However, like many other phones, it’s only accessible by removing the battery.   Also, there’s no protective cover on the camera, so dust and crap tends to accumulate on top of the lens.   Micro sd memory cards are tiny!  I almost misplaced my brand new card within the first hour of using it.On the Toronto Rogers network, I’ve never had any real issues with signal quality or sound quality.  Really wished they had service in the underground subways though.The google maps included with this blackberry is totally cool.  Works very smoothly and easy to use.   However , it must download the maps of the areas you’re interested in.   Ok if you’ve got a decent data plan,  but horrible if you’re roaming in another city and have to download data at higher costs.   What I do is use google maps on the blackberry before leaving town,  that way , the maps are precached in memory.  There’s no information about the size of the cache or a way to redirect the cache to your sd card. Not sure if the logitech bluetooth headset is the problem or the blackberry, but I’ve had some problems connecting to each other recently.   Repeatedly starting and shutting down the headset wouldn’t work,  neither does starting/stopping the bluetooth settings on the blackberry.   Rebooting the blackberry did work though.