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In: Tech
With: 0 Comments

I received a class action law suit notice a couple of weeks ago for my Palm Treo 650. Long story short: the settlement is worthless to the cosnumer and benefits only Palm and the Lawyers. Here’s a link to the official settlement site, here is my summary: You must provide proof that you sent your Treo 600 or 650 to Palm for repair and fill-out the claim forms. You wait for the settlement to be finalized. You then purchase a new Palm phone. You return your old Treo to Palm along with proof of purchase. You receive a $75 rebate. Here are the reason IRead More →

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In: Tech
With: 496 Comments

I recently needed to removed the drive from a Western Digital My Book External USB/eSATA drive enclosure. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an obvious process and this excellent article by Scott Cramer didn’t apply to the newer version (1 TB drive) enclosure I have. So here you go, the steps required to disassemble a new-style Western Digital My Book drive enclosure. 1. Locate the two rubber pads on the bottom of the enclosure near the front, curved surface. Remove these two pads. Depress the two tabs below using a small flat-head screwdriver. 1a. With a couple of credit cards, pry the back edge of the casing apartRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 2 Comments

I was very excited to get my new TiVo HD DVRs due to the fact that I didn’t have to hack them, add a network adapter, and install MFS_FTP to pull shows (which was a ton of work for my DirecTV TiVos.)  Unfortunately, TiVoToGo show downloads fail on almost all of the programs I’ve tried to pull.  For example, for a 1 hour show, I can only download the first 1 minute (68 MB). At first I tried using TiVo Desktop (free download from TiVo.com) to download the programs and experienced the problem.  I figured it was an issue with that software, so I searchedRead More →

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In: Entertainment, Reviews
With: 7 Comments

I received my “private beta invitation” from hulu.com a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thoroughly impressed from day one. It has a great selection of shows, a near-perfect user interface, and fast, high-quality video. For those not familiar with Hulu, it started out as a joint venture between NBC and Fox to showcase their primetime shows and has grown beyond that. Here’s what I like about Hulu: Great show selection. Simple, easy-to-use, uncluttered user interafce Automatically resume playing a show right where you left off (even recovers from browser crashes) Full-screen viewing option Descent video quality: you will notice macro-blocking and the lowerRead More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 8 Comments

I’ve had two different home theaters; one with with a screen that cost about $50 and one with a screen that cost, well, much more than that. Here is a high-level overview of four options for a fixed, wall-mounted projector screen for any budget. Just add a front projector and you’re ready for a real home theater experience. Option 1: A Black Frame on a Painted Wall You could just point your projector at a blank wall, but having a border makes a huge difference and doesn’t cost all that much. This is what I did with my first home theater. The frame is simplyRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 23 Comments

I’ve been unimpressed with Windows Vista on my new Thinkpad T61 so I decided to give Ubuntu Linux a try, despite the fact that there are a few programs I would be missing (Slysoft AnyDVD HD for DVD decryption, TiVo Desktop for extracting files from TiVo HDs, Philips Pronto Edit for updating my Pronto, etc.) I pre-read this excellent wiki article atThinkWiki.com. As the article mentioned, I did have problems with a blank screen when the CD booted, but the optional Safe Graphics boot option solved that. The installation was very easy. For the first time in the 20 or so times I’ve installed Linux,Read More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 8 Comments

After 5 years as a loyal DirecTV subscriber, I’m canceling my account and switching to TiVo HDs using *gasp* an over-the-air antenna! I never would have guessed I’d be doing this; I remember when I was a kid in rural Kentucky and all we received were 4 grainy stations out of Louisville. Cable TV, and later Satellite, made the poor reception and selection a thing of the past. But several things have changed since then and digital makes all the difference. Here’s why I’m switching and my thoughts on my new TiVo HD. Network Programming This year, I noticed how high the quality of primeRead More →

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In: Reviews
With: 10 Comments

I’ve tried several different Amazon S3 file managers and had settled on the free S3 Firefox Organizer. But then I tried Bucket Explorer. Not only did it do everything I needed it to do, it introduced to me new features I didn’t know Amazon S3 supported. If you’re like me, you love free and open source software. Bucket Explorer, once out of beta, will be a commercial program. I’m not sure what the final price will be, but assuming it costs less than $40, it is a program worth purchasing. Here’s why I’m recommending it. Bucket Explorer is a Java-based GUI for managing, uploading to,Read More →

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In: Home Theater
With: 4 Comments

If you want the ultimate subwoofer for your home theater, this is probably it: the JL Audio Gotham. JL Audio, long known for their car stereo subwoofers, started to make a move into home theater a few years ago. I had the opportunity to hear this subwoofer a couple of years ago at CEDIA. Let me tell you, the bass from demo room sounded awesome outside of the demo room, and even better within. The sound was low, solid, and hard-hitting. I was impressed by how unbelievably smooth the sustained bass passages were (but I’m sure that’s in no small part due to a veryRead More →

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In: Wordpress
With: 3 Comments

I happened upon the site WebSiteOptimization.com and started testing the performance of my site. I was astounded by how long it would take to load the front page of my site over a 14.4 kbps modem connection. True, not many people use a modem connection anymore, but still, 130 seconds is a long time to wait! Now this the time required to load every last image, not the the time required before the page starts to render and become readable, but still there is room for improvement. So I started playing around with performance settings and quickly made some substantial gains. First of all, IRead More →