Category: Thoughts

  • Kindle reviews by folks who actually have seen one

    Amidst all the misinformation about Amazon’s new Kindle electronic book reader, particularly coming from people who have never touched or used it, here’s a list of reviews from the fact-based segment of techdom: Gizmodo checks Kindle in the bedroom, on an airplane and atop the porcelain throne. Not quite a home run, just a triple,…

  • Ignore the static: Kindle is great for reading

    Wow, the new electronic book reader from Amazon, Kindle, sure is getting a lot of absurdly misguided and factually incorrect criticism. My fingers are getting sore from responding to such a tide of disinformation in comment boxes scattered across a zillion web sites. Just this morning, I’ve been writing a lengthy comment to a Kindle…

  • Test bed Leopard upgrade reveals some issues

    Well, the UPS man finally brought my family pack upgrade copy of Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard. As I mentioned the other day, I have no immediate plans to install it on either of my main systems, the 24″ iMac or 15″ MacBook Pro, known respectively as “Gigantico” and “Lunar Excursion Module” or LEM…

  • Leopard upgrade? Not today, baby

    Excited about Apple’s new Leopard OS X upgrade? Me, too. It’s got plenty of desirable new features, great and small. Did the Fed-Ex guy just drop it off and you’ve ripped open the box and got the shiny disk right in your hands? You’re drooling as you read the back of the package and start…

  • Verizon FIOS – wowie, wow, wow

    Umm, wow. Verizon arrived yesterday to switch our television, Internet and telephone service to their spiffy, new fiber optic system called FIOS. The tech, who was amazing, spent the entire day at our house installing all the various bits. When he was done, we had super-fast Internet, many channel cable with high definition channels and…

  • Back in the New York Groove thanks to HBO

    One of the wireless phone companies, I think it was, some years back concocted a crazy service to help identify random songs by calling them in to some all-knowing, tune-analyzing super computer. You know — hear a great tune on the radio, dial up the supercomputer, hold your phone up to the speakers, and find…

  • Can the web solve the BOOK omnivore’s dilemma?

    Always looking for new things to read for those Internet-inclined among us means always looking at new web services that may offer help. Today I stumbled across GoodReads.com, which lets you list, rate and review books you’ve read. There’s obviously going to be some kind of behind-the-scenes suggestion engine voodoo but it seems I need…

  • Netgear’s nearly identical powerline adapters

    After my recent whiny post about Netgear’s confusing line of networking adapters which run over your electrical wiring, a friend this week volunteered to take my medium-speed powerline adapters off my hands. So it’s on to the grown-up stuff: the supposedly 200 megabit per second bad boys. Annoyingly, the faster version has no model with…

  • Anyone wanna buy a used Airport Extreme?

    Had to expect this but, still… “Two peripherals also reached the Apple Store on Tuesday without a separate announcement. AirPort Extreme revision The AirPort Extreme Base Station introduced in January now adds gigabit Ethernet without a price hike ($179).” (via AppleInsider)

  • Blogoshpere’s Vista verdict? Blech. VmWare Fusion? Yum.

    Apparently I’m not alone in finding Windows Vista a less than compelling upgrade over XP. Bloggers all over, including more than a few on my daily or weekly reading list like Philip Greenspun and Joe Wilcox, seem to be finding the same irritating flaws. Those pro reviewer reviews that come out on the first day…