Category: Electronics

Posted on

Kindle 2 Announced

The long awaited Kindle 2 by Amazon was finally announced today.  It was just as the rumors predicted in appearance.  It has several desired improvements but a few shortcomings as well.

Shape and Size

The Kindle 2 is more attractive than the original.  The new thinner design is impressive.  The tradeoff is that the device now has a bigger footprint.  In some cases the original Kindle would fit in your purse, the Kindle 2 may not.  But the same is true for the thickness giving the Kindle 2 an advantage.  With its new thinness, the Kindle 2 can probably fit more easily into some thin pockets in a bag.  Overall, the new shape is an improvement.

Battery Life

The Kindle 2 has 25% more battery life than its predecessor.  The original Kindle had a very impressive battery life already. It is a good idea to turn off your wifi when you aren’t downloading a new book to get longer battery life.  Under typical use of a heavy reader, the original Kindle would last a good week with wifi off.  More battery life is always a welcome improvement to any gadget though.

Page Turning

The page turning buttons have been redesigned.  One of the biggest complaints about the original was how easy it was to unintentionally turn a page.  The Kindle 2 buttons are smaller so they are not as easy to hit accidentally.  Another welcome improvement is pages now turn 20% faster.  The first Kindle wasn’t exactly slow at page turning but you were often left wishing the page would render just a little faster and now the Kindle 2 does.

Storage

Amazon claims “more storage” in the Kindle 2.  This is a bit inaccurate since it really just has more built-in storage.  The original Kindle had an SD card slot for extra storage which means it could hold more if you used that slot.  The Kindle 2 does have more built-in storage but has removed the SD card slot so you are stuck with just the internal memory.  That isn’t a big problem since the internal storage can hold 1,500 books now.  And if you fill it up, you can delete books but still own them.  At any point, you can have a book re-downloaded to your Kindle.  The SD card slot was probably removed to help allow the device to be thinner.  While this is technically a lost feature, it is an acceptable tradeoff for the new thinness.

Screen

The new screen is very similar to the original except that it now has 16 shades of gray.  This allows pictures to look much better.  If you just read books, this is almost pointless.  But if you read newspapers on your Kindle, this will greatly improve your reading experience.

Book Cover

The original Kindle included a leather book cover.  Unfortunately, now this is a $29.99 accessory for the Kindle 2.  To protect your expensive Kindle 2, you have to buy the book cover which makes the Kindle 2 more expensive than its predecessor.

Conclusion

Most of the changes are positive.  Overall the new Kindle isn’t a huge jump over the original, it is more of several small design improvements.  This is a device any avid reader should definitely have.  For a full description of it, check out the Amazon Kindle 2 page.

Posted on

Delay of Analog TV Shut-off

Last night the Senate passed a bill to delay the shut-off of over-the-air analog TV from February 17 to June 12, 2009. The Obama administration had urged the delay, saying that many consumers are not ready.

Nielsena said last week that more than 6.5 million U.S. households are not prepared and could see their television sets go dark next month.

The House might not immediately pass the Senate’s version of the bill, which does not specify how the costs of a delay would be covered. The House could add its own provisions, which would require further Senate action. It could also waive budget rules and seek funds in the stimulus package. Still, it looks like the House will pass some bill that will delay the shut-off until June 12.

See our previous post on Digital TV Transition to see if you might be affected by this transition. Or go to the government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) site for more info and your free $40 voucher for a digital TV converter.

UPDATE: Despite the unanimous vote by the US Senate to delay the Feb. 17 deadline to transition to digital television, the changeover will proceed as planned after a vote Wednesday by the House of Representatives.

It is unclear if this permanently kills the delay. With less than three weeks untill the planned analog shut-off, the window is almost over for a delay. The television stations need time to make preparations so unless something else happens this week, I now expect the Feb 17 transition to happen.

UPDATE 2: Today (February 4, 2009) the House of Representatives voted again and this time passed the delay of the analog shut-off until June 12, 2009. Now President Obama will sign the delay into law.

Posted on

MacBook as your Desktop

It used to be you needed both a laptop for travel and a desktop for more power. But nowadays laptops are a lot more powerful than they used to be and the cream of the crop are the MacBooks. With an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, and usb hub, you can easily switch from laptop mode to desktop mode with any MacBook by just plugging in 2 cables.

External Monitor

You can get an excellent big screen LCD for a lot cheaper than you used to.  You can hook it up to your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air with a DVI adapter and the exact adapter varies based on your model.  The original MacBook Air was nice enough to come with this adapter.  The new Airs and MacBooks do not so they’ll cost you an extra $30.  One of the best value monitors you can get is the Acer V223-WBD 22″ LCD (pictured above with MacBook Air).  Macs are smart when it comes to detecting external monitors so you can just plug in and the new monitor should almost immediately become an extended screen once powered on.  When you unplug, the Mac is similarly smart and goes back to single screen mode.

Keyboard and Mouse

Since we’re talking about Macs, the best keyboard to go with is the slim Apple Keyboard.  Pretty much any usb mouse will do but I highly recommend the Logitech MX518 Mouse. It is technically a gaming mouse but I just love it for the precision and extra buttons on the side that can be setup to quickly access expose.

USB Hub

A terrific USB hub is the D-Link 7-port USB hub.  7 ports may sound like a lot but with a keyboard, mouse, ipod/iphone cable, and external hard drive, you’re already mostly full.  With the hub, all your USB devices are plugged into this and then you just have to plug in one USB cable to your MacBook.

External Hard Drive

One area where laptops are still greatly lacking is hard drive space.  If you don’t have much in iTunes or iPhoto, you might be fine with just a 80-250GB laptop hard drive.  If you need more space, you’ll need to get an external drive such as the Western Digital 750GB My Book.  To move your iPhoto Library to your external drive, copy the “iPhoto Library” file from your Pictures directory to your external drive.  The next time you start iPhoto, hold down the option key and you’ll be given a choice to select where your iPhoto Library is.  Once you select the library on the external drive, you won’t have to hold down option again.  The only downside is you will need your external drive hooked up to see the library.  Similarly, you can copy your Music directory to the external drive and then open iTunes preferences and go to the Advanced tab.  There you can change the iTunes Music folder location to point to your external drive Music directory.  You should only do these things if you need to.  Often you might just have to move just iPhoto or just iTunes based on your usage.

Time Machine

If you plan to use Time Machine, which we recommend, you should consider partitioning your external drive into 2 partitions using Disk Utility which can be found in the Utilities directory under Applications.  Select your drive on the left of Disk Utility and then select the Partition tab.  You can slide the separator up and down to adjust the partition sizes.  We recommend giving yourself room to grow for your data such as iPhoto and iTunes and then leave whatever else for Time Machine to utilize.  When you are happy with your settings, click Apply.  You can then setup Time Machine to use 1 partition and put your iPhoto and iTunes data on the other.  The reason you need to setup 2 partitions is because Time Machine will continue to grow until it’s partition is full so you need to ensure your data has a separate area to grow.

Summary

With a little planning, you can have all the benefits of a laptop and a desktop with just one laptop.  Just plug in a USB cable to activate all your USB devices.  Plug in your external monitor to use your desktop sized LCD.  These principles can also be applied to a Linux or Windows laptop although not with such ease.  The performance of the MacBook line is what makes them ideal candidates for desktop-power uses such as photo editing.  If you have a MacBook, you likely don’t need a desktop and just buying an external LCD is a very cheap desktop solution.

Posted on

Delay to Digital TV Transition?

The incoming Obama team has written Congress asking for a delay of the planned February 17th turn off of analog over-the-air TV signals. While most people won’t notice this eventual transition, there are some hurdles.

Most People Aren’t Affected

The loss of analog over-the-air signals will not affect most people who use one of 1) cable, 2) Satellite (Dish or DirecTV), 3) digital over-the-air (still using an antenna), or 4) fiber (FIOS TV service). Most people in the D.C. area will not be affected. TVs made in the last couple of years should have digital tuners, known as ATSC tuners.

Expected Problems

In my experience setting up home theaters and TVs in the DC metro area, I have found some problems that will likely come with this transition:

  1. Analog signals travel better. While the term “digital” seems like it should mean “better”, it has a big downside. Analog tuners deal with missing data (the result of a poor signal) much better. Digital signals that do not have enough data quickly turn to jaggies and then a blank screen. This is sometimes referred to as a digital cliff effect. The same concept applies to HD Radio. Digital therefore does not travel as far as analog and it does not work as well through walls. Even in Arlington, Virginia, not far from the TV towers, a good signal usually requires an antenna to be placed in a window, on the roof, or in a high attic. People farther away will have more problems. Residents in rural Virginia might now be too far to get any over-the-air signal.
  2. Old homes in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland can not be easily wired for cable. The house walls might be made of concrete, brick, or stone that is difficult to wire through. This has caused some local residents to opt for analog over-the-air TV instead of cable or FIOS. Other people have decided to only wire their living room, and still use analog over-the-air in other rooms. The old construction can also cause problems running an antenna to a window, roof, or attic.

Possible Delay

The Obama team has requested a delay because the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is to provide education and $40 vouchers for people to buy digital TV converter boxes, ran out of money on January 4. There is also concern that many people, especially poorer and more rural areas, have not yet heard that they will need a converter and a larger antenna.

Web Resources

To find out what kind of signal you can expect and what kind of antenna you need to get digital programs, see AntennaWeb site and click Choose an antenna. Another useful site is HDTV Hub, which lists many users experiences for their particular locations. You can find out through these sites what kind of over-the-air HDTV experience that you can expect.

Posted on

“Dial a Human” to Reach a Person

Are you tired of automated call distribution (ACD) systems that force you to listen to long option trees? They start by saying “please listen to all the options because they have recently changed.” In the past, you could just press “0” repeatedly to reach an operator. Now many companies have stopped that and even created complicated trees so that fewer callers reach a person, thereby saving the company money.

This web site compiles company phone numbers and directions to reach a person:

Dial A Human