Accessories

Plantronics Voyager PRO

April 23, 2009

The Plantronics Voyager Pro is the successor to the much-loved Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset, which goes on sale today, although, Best Buy started selling its stock a bit early. I have a review unit which I plan on testing and giving my thoughts/opinion on in the new few days. I reviewed its predecessor, the Plantronics Voyage 510, which had a cult following. I was a big fan of the Voyager 510 and have one on my desk.

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, Headsets, Mobile Phones, Reviews, Skype, VoIP, Wireless

Finally! New Windows Mobile App AudioRoute Enables Earpiece for VoIP Apps

March 26, 2009

Finally a software tool called AudioRoute that can be used to route Windows Mobile audio from the earpiece speaker to the backspeaker and vice-versa. This is especially needed for VoIP applications on Windows Mobile phones.

I've tested several VoIP apps (SIP clients, Skype, etc.) on my Windows Mobile XV6700 phone and other Windows Mobiles and from what I understand the carrier forced the hardware manufacturers to block VoIP applications from using the earpiece for listening to the remote caller. You couldn't even use speakerphone. Instead, you were forced to use the backspeaker, a tiny low-quality speaker located on the back of the phone, which made phone quality horrendous when making VoIP calls.

Posted in Accessories, Asterisk, Gadgets, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, SIP, Skype, VoIP, Wireless

String 24 SSDs together for 6TB & 2GB/s throughput!

March 10, 2009

What happens when you string together 24 256GB Samsung MLC SSDs - you get 6TB of storage and 2GB/sec throughput. Sweet mother of ---!

Discovered the news on Lucas Mearian's Computer World blog who writes:

When you've got millions of dollars at your disposal, and access to some of the industry's best hardware engineers, what do you do? Well, if you're Samsung you make a YouTube video showing the speed, capacity and reliability you can get by stringing together 24 solid state disk drives behind a RAID controller to create "the world's most powerful consumer computer".

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Memory, Microsoft, Technology and Science

ooma Telo vs. magicJack

February 23, 2009

Rich met with ooma recently to see their latest wares and hear about their current business model. Recently, ooma ditched the 'P2P voice network' idea where users actually "share" their home landline with others and instead became a traditional VoIP broadband provider. Apparently, the privacy issues were too much to overcome, since users were concerns about fraudulent activity happening on their home landline by outside ooma users. I had my own reservations about the business model as well, since they claimed it would take 2,000 strategicly placed ooma boxes in all the various local exchanges to get good local call coverage for free P2P calls.

Besides becoming a traditional VoIP broadband provider, ooma is now going to start offering high-end media phones, that according to Rich Tehrani will in the future feature a picture frame, in-house sensors and cameras.

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Technology and Science, VoIP, Wireless

Star Trek VoIP Communicator Helps you save on Intergalactic phone calls

February 6, 2009

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, VoIP

Minuteman Aims for UPS Comeback in 2009

February 3, 2009

I met with Bill Allen, Director of Marketing for Para Systems, Inc. at ITEXPO and he was very high on the prospects for Minuteman UPS products for 2009. Although Minuteman isn't as large as APC, they make very good products. He mentioned that Minuteman UPS products have new extended run-time battery packs that are "battery packs on steroids." He pointed out that competitors offer extended run-time battery packs, but they didn't seem to focusing on them and he said Minuteman's extended battery packs have longer runtimes.

He also boasted that Minuteman battery packs and the UPS itself both some with a 3 year warranty. No other UPS manufacturer offers a 3 year warranty on their batteries and always had the longest warranty.

Cost is also an important consideration when choosing a UPS.

Posted in Accessories, Computer Hardware, ITEXPO

AT&T TL7610 headset review

January 19, 2009

AT&T sent me their new TL7610 DECT 6.0 headset for review last month and I finally got around to writing up the review. My first impressions were very positive. It sported a nice sleek and ergonomic headset base with well-labeled buttons and LEDs for figuring things out without need for the manual. Like the base, the headset piece was also sleek and ergonomic with a slight curve to the microphone piece.

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, Headsets, Reviews, Wireless

Toshiba 512GB Solid State Drive

December 18, 2008

Toshiba announced
that it will showcase a 512GB solid-state drive (SSD) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month, with shipments of this large SSD in the second quarter of 2009. These NAND-flash-based solid state drives (SSD) will be the industry's first 2.5-inch 512-gigabyte SSD and features fast read/write times and reliable performance for laptops/notebooks, and other equipment.

In addition to the 2.5-inch, 512GB drive, the 43nm NAND SSD family also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drive enclosures or as SSD Flash Modules. The drives feature a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second (MBps) and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps. This should definitely result in faster boot and application loading times. The drives also offer AES data encryption to prevent unauthorized data access.

512GB soon...

Posted in Accessories, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Memory, Mobile Phones, PDAs & Handhelds, Technology and Science

Copy Paste Comes to the iPhone

December 11, 2008

Pastebud is a cool new service launching tomorrow that leverages javascript, web services, and bookmarks in mobile Safari to finally bring copy and paste to the iPhone and iPod touch. Thank the heavens! It's about time. What was Steve Jobs thinking when he didn't put copy/paste into the iPhone?

Posted in Accessories, Apple, Gadgets, News, TMCnet

Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard

December 10, 2008

Logitech today introduced what they deem a "Game-Changing Gameboard" called the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard. Hyperbole aside, the Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard is an interesting concept. It sports a naturally contoured design, on-board memory, customizable backlighting, and programmable keys. A keyboard with memory?

Posted in Accessories, Computer Hardware, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, TMCnet, Video Games & Gaming

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