CES - It's not too late!!

CES is starting this Thursday January 8, 2009 through the weekend. It's not too late to pack up your bags and make travel arrangements to the conference in Vegas! There will be tons of great gadgets, so you won't want to miss out.

I will be going on Wednesday so I can check out the keynote speech by Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft. See you all there! :)

Looking for other electronics to compare at CES Amazon Kindle Wireless Reading Device vs. Sony Reader Digital Book PRS700BC

So I wanted to get my parents one of the totally awesome new Kindles by Amazon for Christmas but to my dismay I log on to find out they are backordered 11 to 13 weeks! In my frantic state to find a replacement gift I checked out Sony’s offering and found to be disappointed. Physically it is great, small and light and the display is easy to read with customizable font size. As far as the capabilities go, it is just lacking, you can buy books and load them to the reader but that is where the comparisons end. The Kindle is wireless and can load books from anywhere, the Sony has to be connected to a computer, boo. The Kindle also has a large list of newspapers and blogs loaded automatically every day, this feature is not even considered on the Sony. So I will wait it out and get it for them later because I cannot bring myself to spend more on the Sony for less of a product.

Underwater Camera

So my friend just went scuba diving in the ocean for the first time and of course had to by a nifty digital underwater camera to take with her. She returned with some really amazing photos so I thought I would let you know what she thought of the camera. She purchased the INTOVA IC 600, http://www.intova.net/ , which is a 6 megapixel digital camera with a plastic waterproof enclosure that is good to 180’. The pictures she took came out awesome but there were just a couple sticky points to it. The 2 AA batteries required to run it were burned through extremely quickly, she had to change out the batteries every dive, so after about an hour of use they were done for. And the display is not great, it is hard to see and the quality is very poor, once you load the pictures to your computer you can really see how much they are, and finally the amount of time to take the picture once the button has been pressed is too long – on the other hand it did take the picture quick as in a short exposure time which was good for action shots. All in all for what the options are for camera that can go that deep this one is a winner.

Random Thing I read about

So I usually just talk about different electronics and fun stuff that is new out there. But I was slightly disturbed earlier when I found out about the level of customer classification that was going on. So are you a Young Digerati, Winner’s Circle, a Greenbelt Sports or others? If you would like to see how they classify the area you live in go the following website and enter your zip code, http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=20
And then think about how the different consumer electronics companies are targeting you to get you to buy products made by them or sold at their store. And be careful you may become overly paranoid about all the advertising you see now.

Guest Writer - Nicky Roberts

Sony Portable DVD Player Review

I recently purchased a new portable DVD player, the DVP-FX820 by Sony www.sonystyle.com, and it is great. When I was checking them out the only one with a nicer display was the LG although I was really worried about glare with it and it was more expensive. But the Sony is great, is has two headset ports for multiple viewers and the standard A/V in and out connections. And the swivel feature is nicer you can tilt the display like normal or swivel it around and tilt is that way or lay it flat, very versatile. The battery lasts for hours, through multiple flights, which is great, the only problem is the location of the battery release button, it is in a great spot to accidentally get pushed when grabbing or picking up the player thereby making you lose power for a moment until you reconnect it.

L-3 Communications and BEECube deal

L-3 & BEECube licensing deal

Sprint to introduce Mobile 4G at CES 2009 .... 3x 3G

Sprint has be losing market share to big names like AT&T and Verizon over the years for various reasons. Now, they are hoping to win back and gain a lot of customers with their 4G network. Their initial product will be air cards for the computer and will lead to incorporation into their mobile devices. They believe it is going to create a whole new class of device, especially for video. For example, you could buy and download a movie from Netflix and would not have to wait for it to complete dowloading; or if you want to watch a live video feed you don't have to wait while it buffers.

They say it can deliver about 3 times what the current 3G networks deliver or what about DSL provides at home. That's blazing fast!! I'm looking forward to see it in action and see if it really does perform that fast.