Category: review

  • An Aussie answer to all bag lusters

    My wife thinks it’s hilarious but it’s undeniable that we gadget guys need bags, lots and lots of pretty bags. Well, maybe not pretty — you know, sort of manly, handsome bags. A bag for the camera, a bag for the phone, a bag or two for the laptop, a bag for all the bags.…

  • Netgear’s confusing power play

    I was reading the latest issue of the excellent Mac newsletter Tidbits this morning when I came across an article comparing the performance of a wifi network to one of the new powerline networks. Ah, I thought to myself, I remember when I hoped that powerline, which runs ethernet over the electrical wiring in your…

  • Doh, hit by a MacBook Pro revision

    So after advocating avoiding the first iteration of new gadgets and programs, I finally ponied up for the latest revision of Mac laptops, the Macbook Pro with Intel’s Santa Cruz Core 2 Duo chip. It also happens to have a new generation of video controller chips, Nvidia’s GeForce 8600M GT. Ho hum…or not. One reason…

  • Don’t rush out for an iPhone (really)

    (Updated 6/21) With the release of the undeniably super-cool iPhone just around the corner, I have a plea for gadgetistas everywhere: Please don’t camp out, queue up or generally make a fool of yourself on the evening news in front of an AT&T wireless store next week. Like I’ve said over and over, there’s no…

  • Calling all comparers – time for virtual showdown

    Software developer Paul Lefebvre has a tidy comparison up on his blog between VMware’s Fusion and competitor Parallels Desktop. Both products let owners of Intel-based Macs run other operating systems like Windows XP or Linux. I’ve been messing around with Fusion for a few months now and it’s very impressive. One cool feature absent from…

  • Not all EMI content available sans DRM yet

    With one day left in the month of May, Apple and record label EMI made good on their promise to start selling higher-quality digital music without annoying copying limits (so-called digital rights management, or DRM, technology). The new files are $1.29 each although buying a whole album of these “iTunes Plus” files doesn’t cost any…

  • Refreshing our look with Mandigo

    After years with the basic WordPress default theme, I decided it was time for a spring wardrobe update at GravitationalPull.net. I wanted a new theme compatible with the latest version of WordPress as well as the plug-ins I rely on like SpamKarma and Automattic’s wicked cool sidebar widgets manager. Some of the theme preview sites…

  • A couple of better Lightroom guide books

    I’m happy to report that I’m learning a lot and getting plenty of use out of both of the books that I bought last week about Adobe’s Lightroom program, my new preferred photo manager. Martin Evening’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers, with the dark grey cover above, is a bit…

  • It’s Lightroom by a full length over Aperture

    (Updated 6/21) Some time last year, I can’t say exactly when, I crossed a threshold with Apple’s iPhoto software. The program had already slipped from the “greatest thing since sliced bread” category down a few notches to just “really useful” as my growing photo collection had slowed basic operations and made the program’s tagging deficiencies…

  • Tim Grey’s Lightroom book fails to inform

    Adobe’s wonderful new digital photo program, Lightroom, has a lot more bells and whistles than iPhoto or other typical low-end photo software. That’s exactly why I bought it. With a so-called prosumer camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XT, I’m able to do many more sophisticated things while shooting pictures and I needed a software program…