Pickyreview

I’m one of the poor guys out there with acidic hand sweat, which is quite annoying when using my aluminum Apple Macbook pro. The acidic hand sweat corrodes the aluminum, causing small black pits on the palmrest, totaly destroying the slick look of the computer. This phenomenon is widely known as ‘pitting’ in the Macbook pro community.
One way to avoid this is to use a palmrest protection of some kind, this is where the Moshi PalmGuard comes into play. It is a stiff color matched plastic film that fits the Macbook pro almost perfectly. The surface has kind of the same texture as my 15 inch unibody Macbook pro, making it nice to rest my hands on it. You apply it to the computer by peeling off the paper on the back and then align it properly and swipe away all air. The film is quite thick so I believe it’s hard to get stuck bubbles of air underneath it. There is only one gripe, you only have one chance to apply it right. If you try to peel it off the computer and reapply it you will unavoidably get white strains in the plastic leaving it looking like shit, almost as ugly as the look of pitting, even though the Moshi will still protect your precious from pitting.

This is how it looks like after one try to reapply it. I did this on my old Macbook pro.

And this is what it should look like. Here it is applied on my new unibody Macbook pro.

As you can see in the images the color and fit is pretty good but with some room for improvement. The lighting situation in the photos exagerates the color difference between the plastic material and aluminum. However, if you have problems with pitting I highly recommend the moshi palmguard!

It has been driving me nuts for almost a year now. An issue where my samsung lcd tv was blacking out once in a while, totaly random when fed a full hd signal at 32 bit color depth from my HTPC, mostly occuring during online video playback, youtube etc. Was thinking of getting rid of the motherboard, a Gigabyte ga-ma69gm-s2h which in all other aspects is working nicely, but I decided to give it another evening of trial and error. And, believe it or not, I finally  curred it by downclocking the IGP from 400MHz to 300MHz, an acceptable performance hit for me since I dont play any 3D games on the HTPC.

Edit: I was too quick to post this blog. The issue still remains and I am seriously thinking of getting rid of this piece of crap motherboard.
Don’t know if I should jump on the Nvidia ION trend or stick with my current AMD rig and just switch out the mobo for something newer. I will keep you posted.

Needed a great 40 inch full HD lcd display to get the most out of the HTPC. The picture quality is great, especially with HD material.

Input lag is only noticeable during playstation 2 gaming, for example,  in Guitar Hero I had to set the video compensation to 30ms to hit the notes properly.

50Hz performance is somewhat dissapointing with a faint slowmotion waterfall effect in front of the picture. This is mostly visible when watching large one-colored areas, like the windows desktop.

Channel switching is quite fast, which is nice! However, input switching is not fast, taking around 2 seconds. With the original samsung remote you also have to cycle through the inputs. You can’t select the input you want directly. One way to get around this is to use a programmeable remote like the Logitech Harmony’s, with which you can select the desired input directly without cycling through them all.

The built in speakers are just enough for ordinary TV-use, the sound is flat and kind of powerless.  Analog TV reception is good, if viewed at a distance of approx. 4 meters.

A nice product, can recommend it!

SONY – like no other… uhhm yeah.

The vaio vgn-fw11m is a really shitty laptop, I’m not kidding you. I’ve had mine for a couple of months time now, been using it daily for software development.

First off is the screen, its a 16,4 inch wide screen with 1600×900 pixels native resolution. It is glossy, so glossy it’s hard/implossible to use it with a window in the back of yourself, everything gets reflected, it’s mirror-like. However, when using it at night the screen really shines with vibrant colors, good viewing angles and great black level. I would say that the screen is optimal for watching movies in dark environments. Using it in daylight is simply not comfortable, causing a lot of strain on your eyes.

Next off is the casing. Plastic fantastic! NOT! The case flexes a lot when you pick the laptop up with one hand placed in one of the corners. With the flexing comes creaky noises… I really hate that feeling. It feels like a cheep toy in the hand. And even worse is that the silvery finish is starting to come off on the left trackpad button and on edges in general, looks tacky like no other.

Time for the keyboard, the feel of it is quite solid, no problems with keys not registering when pushed or the like. What still bothers me after several months use is the key layout, with del, home, pg up, pg down and end all lined up to most right edge of the keyboard. I prefer to have the backspace and return key on the right most edge.

Trackpad. What a waste of money, they better could have left it out altogether. If you can, use an external pointing device. The trackpad is a nightmare to use, the response can be choppy at times and occasionally it stops responding totally for a few seconds. Extremely annoying.

Battery life is a joke, I get approx. one hour of normal use (surfing, emailing, listening to music etc.).

Final words:
Stay as far away as you possibly can from this laptop, do NOT get one if you have a choice.

I am using Skype like everybody else, but I always wanted to get better video quality, quess what, I didn´t get it…

Here´s the deal, the logitech quickcam pro 9000 is great, it easily beats all other web cams I have used, which are of varying quality. From the integrated half bad webcam in the asus eee pc 1000H to the sufficient one in the apple macbook pro. But, since you don’t see your own video you don’t get much pleasure from the greatly improved video quality with the quickcam pro 9000…

The first thing you will notice however, is that you will no longer hear things like this from the person you are talking to: “the picture is so dark, can you turn the lights on?”, “Is the video supposed to be this bad?” which is nice, now you can rest assured that the video quality you are sending is of good quality.

Things I like with the cam:

* Great video, even in low light
* Fast shutter speeds, eliminates most of the motion trails when you move around quickly (the shutter speed can be left at auto or be set manually according to the available ambient light)

Things I dont like:

* The mounting mechanism is not the best, hard to mount on a laptop screen
* Can only rotate the cam up/down, not left/right

Global is a well known Japanese chef knives manufacturer.  Many of the worlds top chefs prefer knives from Global, which would imply that they are of good, if not superior quality.

I have used my Globals for a few years now and they are still going strong. You obviously have to sharpen them now and then to keep them in good working condition.

They are extremely (razor-like) sharp coming from the factory, it´s almost scary to handle them when brand new. Surgical scalpels is a good way of describing the feeling.

With a good knife sharpener designed specifically for Global knifes it is an easy task to keep them (almost) as sharp as when they were new. I actually prefer the not so extremely sharp edges that I get with my sharpener over the factory sharpened edges.

The steel “CHROMOVA 18″ is somewhat “soft” and is easily scratched if you clean them with the green side of a scotch brite. They can also develop small stains of surface rust if you often let them lie to dry on the side of the kitchen sink, it is better to wipe them dry with a towel. These stains however, can easily be removed by polishing with a little glass ceramic stove top cleaner, I’m using a product called “MP52 Hällrengöring” and it works beautifully.

So, do I recommend them? Are they worth the premium price tag?

Yes indeed,  go ahead and buy them if you can afford it! You will be very pleased.

Danish speaker designer Tangent Audio may not be too well known in the world of HiFi, but lately they have received good marks in many reviews. Especially the EVO range has been said to give a lot “bang for the buck”. Since I’m all about getting the most bang for the buck and was searching for a good 2.1 speaker system I decided to try them out. The choice fell on a pair of E4’s and a E8 subwoofer.

When unboxing them I was astound by the great finish in high glossy white, and also the weight made them feel really solid.  A word of caution, do not throw away the packaging material, it sounds weird, but Tangent will not honour the warranty if you don’t have the original packaging. Your supplier may however have a different warranty policy…

One disappointing thing I found with the sub is that it has only got push terminals for high level connection to the amplifier. There is also a RCA connector for low level input. The E4’s have nice screw terminals, Tangent also included basic wall mounts for  them.
After playing them in for a few weeks and adjusting the phase on the sub the system now sounds good. The sound is clear and the speakers can handle high volume levels with ease. Although the sound is clear it is also somewhat flat making then a little bit “uninspiring” to listen too. Soundwise I actually prefer my old pair of $60 SONY floor speakers, but the Tangent EVO system is much easier on the eyes and the tradeoff in sound quality is acceptable.

The weakest part of this system is the subwoofer, it does what it is meant to do, play the base notes, but besides its looks there is absolutely nothing making this a better sub than the competitors $100 cheaper models.

So can I recommend the Tangent EVO system? It depends… If you want a stylish 2.1 speaker system and don’t care too much about the sound, definitely yes, I think you will be pleased. But if you want high fidelity sound no matter what, I can not recommend them.