Archive for the ‘review’ Category

In the last couple months, we have been talking about online backup through Mozy.com. It is a great way to take your pictures and audio off-site. That way if you have a fire or theft, you do not loose your data.

It’s not the fastest thing in the world – but the more data you have, the longer the initial backup will take. Also, it is dependant on your internet connection – The initial upload took 4 days for me.

Mozy Home Configuration Screen

They counter it by compressing the file before uploading. It encodes, then uploads the file using 128 bit Encryption. The Data Centers are SAS70 and ISO certified. You can change how fast or slow the update can take by moving the slider during backup.

One thing I would love to see on the program would be a “Pause” button. While I can move the slider to the lowest part, the pause button would be more for those times I don’t want to have the backup start. I can then pause, do higher bandwidth tasks, then unpause. It could even unpause after 20 minutes.

Once again, don’t be discouraged about it’s possibly long upload. Once that is done, it gets a lot faster. Of course, if you have a faster connection, you might not have that problem. To have your pictures backed up, to have your audio files backed up and to have your valuable documents backed up is well worth it.

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Apparently there is a new iPhone application out there that lets me monitor my sleep cycle by simply sleeping with the iPhone at the corner of the bed. The application is called Sleep Cycle by Lexware Labs. It is currently a $0.99 app in the iTunes store as an introductory offer.

This is my sleep cycle for Feb 15

The application is simple: Set the alarm for your wake time. For me, I don’t usually set an alarm – When I want to get up, I wake up. Nonetheless, I did setup the alarm for testing sake.

I set the iPhone on the corner of the bed. They say you need to plug in the device to maintain power, but I am not ready to sleep with 115 Volts sitting by my head just yet. I had the phone charged up, so I left the cable on the computer. It did go through about 50-60% of battery life during the evening. They say you could drain your battery and the alarm won’t go off, but they do suggest that if you don’t want to keep it plugged in, you might want to set another alarm so you don’t miss your wake up time.

Where to put the iPhone while sleeping

I suppose if you also have one of those foam beds that don’t transfer motion, you will not be able to use the application – It would be cool to try, though. I should ask a friend who does have one of those beds to try out.

The program uses the accelerometer to judge when you move on your bed. The phone will then determine what part of sleep you are in. I know when I wake up in the middle of night, the first thing I will do is flip sides.

This also means you have to sleep alone – or in a King Bed with 2 spring mattresses for this to work properly.

There are some other limitations – You cannot play any other music while this program is running. If you only have an iPod, you won’t be able to use this app. It’s a limitation of iPod – when the device turns off, the accelerometer does, too. I don’t know if it will work with iPad, but I would guess the same thing goes with the accelerometer.

So I used no cable, I did get about 8 hours, although it got tougher around 8 A.M. to sleep. I just don’t sleep that much. I also left my case on, which could change the numbers. You have to put the phone face-down, in which I placed it right on the spring of the bed for best use.

It was the first night of sleep, so I will try this for the next few nights. Will see what my sleep cycle says.

Editors Disclaimer: This StorageWorks x510 Data Vault is a review unit sent to me from HP. They asked me to test and report my findings. Although the Data Vault is a review model, my review is based on honest observations. Any questions – please refer to the review policy page for more information

When I first pulled this device out of the box, I thought to myself – Wow. It’s not like my last Data Storage device. The last one was 3x the size, held 5 SCSI drives that didn’t even go to 100 GB, had two power supplies and weighed about 100 lbs. I looked like one of those guys in the Worlds Strongest Man Competition trying to haul that puppy up and downstairs when I moved it.

All right — Let’s start with the basics. The X510 case doesn’t even stand on 1 foot high, therefore it can be put in any corner of the room. The front display –four blue lights — can be turned on or off through the LED settings in the software. Inside is a Pentium dual core CPU running at 2.49 GHz with with 2 GB of RAM.the X510 also comes with two — 1 TB Seagate hard drives, ready for any data that you can throw at it, but if you want to fill the other two bays, or put in higher capacity hard drives, then the X5 10 is flexible for your data needs.

The data vault also comes with an eSATA port and four USB ports. Three discs come with the X510 — the setup disk, the PC restore disk, and the Server recovery disk. The main setup disk is probably the most important piece out of the three — for now. Since there is no video or CD ROM on the Data Vault, you will have to rely on setting it up through another PC or Mac running Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, XP, MCE, or Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Other requirements:a router with DHCP enabled and a broadband connection to get out into the Internet. Also included in the Data Vault is an ethernet cable, a power cable and all documentation needed to connect the device and get started.

Setup is pretty straightforward. Plug the data vault into the wall,  or your favorite surge protector, then connect the data vault to your network. Insert the CD into your PC or Mac and run through the setup. The data vault software will guide you through setting up your data vault.

The X510 Data Vault runs the Windows Home Server operating system. Turn the data vault on, and you will see two solid blue lights, and one flashing light toward the bottom. This third light is important, for it will tell you if there is any problems with your Data Vault. Once the third light turns in solid blue, you know you are ready to use the device.

The Windows home server console is the main interface. From here you can set up new machines, install applications such as antivirus software, set up your home media server or iTunes server, or set up a Data Vault to be accessed from the Internet.Web an iPhone streaming allow you to get your content mobile and even global.

The media server uses HP media collector, HP video converter, and HP photo publisher to organize and play your media. You can easily set up user accounts and folders for those users to access. You can make photos and videos private, or public.

You can add more software to the data vault at any time. Keep in mind that this is a server version of the OS, and standard software may not run on this computer. For example, I attempted to set up a live stream from this machine using the free uStream producer.the program was unable to start due to the direct 3-D hardware accelerator not being able to work through a remote desktop connection.  Other software simply would error out – For example, I attempted to use the DisplayLink dongle I recieved at CES to access the Data Vault  without remote desktop. The Fujitsu Software was not supported on the OS, with no update. Therefore, i still needed another machine to drive the Data Vault.

HP has a collection of free trials that you can load onto your home server. Programs like PerfectDisk 10 and Diskeeper — which are both hard drive defragmentation software, Adobe Photoshop elements — where you can edit and create photos, and Rhapsody music service.  TwonkyMedia is already pre-installed on the X510. With this program, you can set what you want to share, who you want to share it for,and metrics — setting up logging files to see who listens to what or watches what.

Meat and Potatoes of the Data Vault

The first thing you want to do after setup, is back up your main machine. With the software installed, open up the Windows Home Server Console, choose computers and backup, then configure a backup of your machine. You can set it to backup at specific times, or backup right now.

*One note about this area — by setting a schedule, your computer will turn on. This may cause confusion, especially if you turn your computer off when you leave. I have my desktop and my laptop both set up with the Windows home server console, and they would both mysteriously turn back on, even when the notebook wasn’t in range of the home server to backup. You must go into the settings — right-click on the home server icon– an unselect “Wake this computer for backup”.

A couple months back, I did a Techpodcasts Roundtable on how to set up the data vault as a podcaster streaming device. This makes a great alternate device for any podcaster or video caster and their media — although you don’t want to make it your primary source. I also wrote an article on how to set it up as an Apache server — which could cause some problems with the IIS server that is set up for the Data Vault and Web access. Therefore, you will have to know a little bit about IIS and Apache to make the two work together.

Since the drives are not in a RAID configuration, your backup may take a little longer than usual. HP doesn’t set these drives to RAID, but they do claim to write data to both drives simultaneously — creating a mirror effect  for the drives. That way, if one drive errors out, you haven’t lost your data. In a two drive configuration, mirroring the drive is actually the best solution.

I did crash my Data Vault a couple times intentionally. I wanted to see how the restore software functioned. The first thing I did was restore the data vault so I wouldn’t lose any data. Unfortunately, something happened during the process and although I didn’t lose any data, I couldn’t access it — I didn’t know the passwords that it reset to. Now keep in mind; this was my fault. I went through the process without watching all the screens. However, when I got to a critical point, it errored out and I couldn’t go back to correct my mistakes.

The second crash, I decided to do a full restore. The process is pretty straightforward — first of all, find a paperclip. Unbend the paperclip, and then turn on the data vault. In the front, there is an inverted button which you must hold down using the paperclip to get it ready for reinstall. Insert the server recovery disk and go through the process. Once again, make sure you read all the prompts or else you may be doing this again.

What I found very interesting, was the PC restore disk. Usually I use Acronis to back up my machines. I would turn them on, insert the disc, then set the drives I want to back up and where I want to back him up to. With the PC restore disk, all I have to do is set up the one machine, back it up, then reboot the computer with the PC restore disk inserted and go through the process to restore the hard drive. Both methods work very well.

One addition I would love to see in the data vault, is the option for a one-time backup. That way, if I’m backing up — let’s say my mother’s PC — then I can set it up for one-time backup, and it doesn’t have to be on the network. Once you backup the machine, the data vault will want to reconnect with that machine and will complain if it doesn’t see it in a while.

It is also important if I have a mobile USB drive. I want to back that up just as much — if not more — than my computer itself. However, if I connected to a machine and set it up for backup, it configures it with the rest of that machines’ backup. When the drive is gone, the data vault complains.

Accessing from the Internet

The Data Vault sets up a URL for you to connect to. Mine was geekazine.hpshare.net. You would have an interface in where you can access files, show off photos and videos or Remote Access. One problem I had with the access is that the settings on the Data Vault console would not connect to the router properly. The Remote Access Repair Wizard would only say that “A local web server or firewall issue may have occurred.” There was no additional instruction to this error. I had set up the router to accept the Data Vault for remote access and even checked with my ISP to make sure I could do this on my system.

Summary

First of all, I believe this is a great device for Intermediate to Advanced computer users. If you don’t work on your own machines, then you might need some help setting up the Data Vault to function properly. Especially if you have any network issues. For instance, upon reload of the Data Vault, my PC came up with a Certificate issue when trying to Remote Desktop into the device.

The X510 is a great machine to hold backups of a handful of computers. If you have more than 10 machines backing up to the system, you might want to add more hard drives to the X510. Of course if you have 5 machines that hold tons of data, you may also want to upgrade the drives on the Data Vault.

The X510 is also perfect for media distribution. As an iTunes server, you will be able to collectively keep your music in one area. The media organizer and iPhone converter allow you to not only watch movies and other video from the Data Vault, but also watch them on your mobile device. The websites are easy to navigate and pull media from a remote location.

While I would love to see a little more flexibility with how you back up systems, what it can do is keep your PC or Mac properly backed up. The PC restore option is also a great addition – no need to image your drive on a weekly basis. The incremental backup can get your system functional again with little to no data loss.

I did have problems with a couple of the error messages, for they didn’t really direct me properly. Nonetheless, I was able to figure the issues out and go from there. Still, most of the errors I saw were from extreme testing and the average user probably won’t see those.

Final conclusion: The HP X510 Data Vault is perfect for those who need a backup solution or media sharing solution. The $699 price tag is not that shabby either. Home or office, the Data Vault is a great addition to your computer network. And you don’t have to be the World’s Strongest Man to haul it around, either.

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The world of Bluetooth headsets has evolved. My first headset seemed like a monster compared to today. Still, there is a level of geekiness that supersedes the functionality the headset can give. That is why Jabra put out the Jabra Stone – a fashion – oriented earpiece for those who don’t like having a microphone stick from their face.

The stone touts one big feature – no visible microphone. The headset is designed for fashion over functionality. All black with no visible buttons.

The stone is Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR compliant. It works with Bluetooth 1.1 or better. Once charged, the device has an 8 hour talk and 12 day standby time. The headset can answer calls, do voice dialing and last number redial and can change in volume.

Jabra Stone

In the review section, I go through and talk about the functionality of this headset. Unfortunately, I can not mark this headset high. There are a lot of limitations that cause this to not be a great headset. One limitation is the $139 ($99 on Amazon) price tag. We talk about it’s charging ability, use in the ear, how carrying it around can be a hassle and if it’s “Rain Shower Proof”.

The headset does have Fashion, so those interested may want to get it. However, this headset is not that great on functionality. In this video, we talk more about the headset by Jabra.

Specifications:

• Wearing Style:
  • Designed for right ear wearing
• Bluetooth® compliance:
  • Bluetooth® 2.1+EDR specification.
• Supported Bluetooth® profiles:
  • Bluetooth® Headset (version 1.1) and Hands-free profiles (version 1.5).
  • Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
• Compatibility:
  • Jabra STONE is compatible with other Bluetooth® devices with Bluetooth® 1.1 (or higher) specifications.
• Operating range:
  • 10 meters (33 feet).
• Multiuse™:
  • Up to 8 devices – connected to 2 at the same time (Multiuse™).
  • Talk time: Up to 8 hours (up to 2h for headset alone).
  • Standby time: Up to 12 days (up to 2.5 days for headset alone).
  • Charging time: Approximately 2 hours.
• Weight:
  • STONE headset 7 grams (0.25 oz), Stone charger 26 grams (0.67 oz), total 33 grams (0.92 oz).
• Microphones:
  • SLR = 14 dB +/- 3 dB 2 pcs Omni-directional MEMS microphones.
• Operating temperature:
  • -20° C to 60° C (-4 F to 140 F).
• Storage temperature:
  • -20° C to 45° C (-4 F to 113 F).
• Jabra STONE materials:
  • Polycarbonate/Acryl Butadien Styren (PC/ABS), Polycarbonate (PC), Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE).
• Features:
  • Answer call, end call, reject call, voice dialing, last number redial, call waiting, put call on hold, volume control (Some features are device dependent)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (359.6MB)

We pull out and set up the Epson Artisan 810 All in one Printer. This is a fully functional copier / printer / scanner / Fax. We set up the printer to the network and make a couple print samples.

**Before we start, I have to say that this device was sent to me by Epson and does not influence my review of the product. It is part of the giveaway on Podcast Madness this month.

The Epson Artisan 810 has a few great features to it. The 3.5″ LCD touch panel allows you to move around easily. The 700 didn’t have the touch screen, which was frustrating. This one is a lot easier to handle.

The Artisan 810 runs on the Claria ink system. That means the six toners give high-quality reproductions. The ink system is said to help reduce fading – 200 years in photo albums. I probably won’t be able to test that claim…

Epson Artisan 810 sheet of 8

The built in USB and card reader allows you to print without a computer. You can print pictures, proof sheets, documents and other items through the system. You can even plug in your iPhone to charge, but unfortunately, it will not read and print out your pictures from the phone**. I had a sheet of 8 pictures printed, which seemed to take a while to print (about 60 seconds a page). However, I liked the quality – even for the fact that I printed on standard paper.

**EDITORS NOTE** Although the Artisan 810 cannot read the pictures from an iPhone, you can get a program called “We Print” by Eurosmartz . This is a program that will install and turn a computer into an iPhone print server to the Artisan 810. The App is available on iTunes for $4.99 and $6.99.

The speed of the printer otherwise is pretty good for an ink jet. The warm up process takes longer than the print itself. A regular page will print in about 11 seconds. With scanning, it will be about 15 seconds a page. Scanning is at 4800 dpi as shown in the picture to the right.

The 810 has one big feature that the 800 didn’t – the duplexer is included. Now you can print double-sided sheets within seconds. The top feeder allows for scanning of multiple documents, in which you can print out, or create a PDF for a paperless office. I scanned 4 pages in about 50 seconds, which then was saved to 1 PDF file on a USB drive (1.6 MB).

The printer can be controlled at the computer through a web page interface. However, the tasks are simplistic – change settings or check toner levels. An “Install Printer” option would be nice. That way I press the button and within a few minutes I have the printer set on applicable machines.

In the end, not a bad printer. Like I said in the unboxing video – could use a larger black toner to the smaller 6- part Claria ink. The printer retails for $299, but I have seen prices as low as $199 online.  As for the ink – well, you might want to check your wallet. The highest price ink is the black on Epson’s online store at $17.09. However, if you need to purchase all 6 toners then you will be shelling out $97. They do have a pack for $79.99, but you can get the toner cheaper at a place like Amazon.com for $63. Best part for me is the ink from the Artisan 700 I had can be used in the 810.

In the end, this is a decent ink based printer. The quality to print is surpurb, the setup is easy and the scanning is high. Add to it the network capabilities and possible fax options – although I don’t have a phone line anymore. In the end, a good low business solution someone who doesn’t print as much and wants to start a paperless office.

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Not too many movies can get away with rewriting the franchises’ history without people grumbling left and right. JJ Abrams did just that. And best part – it made sense.

I didn’t go to the IMAX . I decided that it was best just to see it in the theater. I wasn’t dissapointed. Yeah, at first I was getting a little preturbed as to how they were trompling over the timeline like a mad rush to a 50% off sale. Once the story started to unfold, it all made sense. It also made sense why Leonard Nimoy was in this movie and William Shatner was not.

Story was about the beginnings of the crew – Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov. In the first 5 minutes we witness the birth of James Tiberius Kirk and introduce the Romulan “Nero”. The Romulans were in search for Spock (ironic, eh?) because Romulus was blown up and they felt he was the key. Figured they would exact revenge on Vulcan and Earth.

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This week’s review is for the CastGrabber – an internet appliance that takes valid RSS feeds and uploads podcasts to your MP3 player. This video shows you a little about how the CastGrabber works. I also talk about the good and the bad – well, more of a wishlist to this Standalone Podcast downloader.

One great feature of the CastGrabber is the fact you can connect most any type of MP3 player and get your podcasts. I connected an iPod, then a couple different generic MP3 players. Even my 64 Meg Creative MP3 player from 2002 worked like a champ!

Price tag may be a bit much and I wished it had not only wireless, but some other items I talk about in the video. Nonetheless, it’s a great “Set it and forget it” type of item.

Here is the video review for the Cast Grabber.

I got to play with a Developer Android G1 on Sunday (Thanks Abraham!). It was an interesting experience and something totally different from the iPhone. Here is what I saw:

Layout – Slider screen The phone only slides the screen to reveal the keyboard. That leaves the button layout on the right side (in landscape mode) in the way. I was able to palm a button while working on it, which ultimately took me out of what I was doing.
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I know. I should use Quicken. My friends use it and it’s a great program to keep financial in line. Anything that can help me with my finances would be a big help – Then again, winning the lottery would do that, too.

Intuit today announced that they have a free online service called “Quicken Online”. The idea of this site is simple: To anticipate your bills.

When you sign up, you put in all your financial information. I was able to put in my bank info and my PayPal account. It then created a transaction history between the two. I could add more accounts like a second bank account, AlertPay account and a lot more.

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In the 2nd installment of the Video Review, we take a look at the XShot – a cool little telescoping arm that allows you to take a picture of yourself or you and your friends. The Xshot is a small item so it can fit in a camera bag easily. It extends out 37 inches – Over 3 feet!

To find out more about this item, check out the Video Review:

Sometimes it’s cool if you can work the 7-10 split. That is what we are doing tonight with the review of the WarmMe Mouse. It’s a mouse that warms up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. However, I also wanted to review some of the Video streaming sites out there. Therefore, I took the review of the WarmMe mouse and did 4 different versions. I took 1 take on each site and will be reviewing the results of:

1. Stickam
2. YouTube
3. Mogulus
4. uStream

We will start with Stickam’s video:

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