The Normal-Guy Tech Review

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

ATI HDTV Wonder

I had the card, and it worked ok. It was glitchy, as I expected it would be. The main problem was that in Provo, UT, I could only get one channel in HD, and that was ABC.

Otherwise it was ok. I sold it on ebay.

HDTV service Provo, UT

84606 and 84604

Comcast versus Veracity (iProvo)

Comcast gives you network channels plus HDTV 1 and 2, and TNT and ESPN 1 and 2.
I miss 2 ESPN channels.

Now I live with roommates that had Veracity. I get free utilities, so I'm not complaining. Now I get HDNET and HDNET Movies. I also get Discovery and National Geographic Channel in HD. So I guess I'm getting more HD channels, but I feel ripped b/c TNT and ESPN 2 were pretty awesome.

Hopefully Veracity gets TNT by the NBA playoff time. And ESPN 2 is pretty much a digital emergency.

Ipaq h6315

I always thought it was nice back when I had it.

It had bluetooth 1.0, wifi-b, and a GSM cellphone radio.

I replaced it when WinMob 5.0 came out. It was faster than the Qtek s200, it's replacement. So I have good memories and feelings about it.

Dell Dimension 8400

It was insanely cheap so I have nothing to complain about.

The CD-ROM stopped working after about 9 months, and Dell sent a guy to my house to fix it after I informed them. The guy they contracted was an idiot. He replaced the wrong drive, so I had 2 CD-ROMs for a few days until he returned. I'm surprised he didn't offer to upgrade me to a DVD-ROM or DVD-RW, but whatever.

My vital specs are:
3.0 GHz
512 MB RAM

The graphics card is the 128 MB Radeon x300 pci-express. It leaves something to be desired if you play games like F.E.A.R., Company of Heroes, or Half-Life 2. I had to play on the lowest settings. I wonder how beautiful those games could have been.

Qtek s200

pro: small, had wifi and bluetooth, and WinMob 5.0
cons: insanely slow to do basic PIM. The calendar shouldn't take that long to load. I'm not even one of those guys that loads his PDA with tons of 3rd party apps. I was running it pretty much virgin--and it was SLOW.

coming soon

Philips HDTV

I hook the TV up to many things: to fiber optic cable tv set-top-box with component video cable, to the DVD player via s-video, and to my computer via a DVI-YPbPr adaptor (the adaptor goes between DVI on the PC to component video on the TV.) The video seems to be high quality, but to be honest I haven't had another HDTV, nor do any of my friends have HDTVs.

So take my opinion for what it's worth.

Treo 700wx

I picked one up in mid-September from the Sprint store. Here are my impressions after 1 month:

A fast pda phone--much faster than the qtek s200 and a little faster than the iPaq h6315. It is a little bigger and heavier than the s200, but the trade-off is very worth it for me. Can you say Cubis?

Obviously I have Sprint service, which required a 2-year contract. I should've argued for a shorter contract, but I just didn't care to negotiate that day. Sprint has been ok, thus far. The best thing about Sprint is that the unlimited high-speed data option is only $15 per month. That's significantly cheaper than any other provider in my area (I believe verizon was charging $44 per month, and T-mob was charging $25). So that is pretty awesome.

The phone doesn't have WIFI, which isn't great, but if you have EDGE unlimited then who cares. Unless you work in a bunker with WIFI, you won't. But then again, most bunker-housed employers wouldn't allow you to bring in camera phones anyway.

The phone can be operated fairly easily one handed. That is a huge bonus. Stylus and thumbboard input... the holy grail of PDA input is still a ways off. I don't really like using any of them. The good thing about stylus is that it is the fastest method for me when intensely computing. The negative thing about stylus usage is that it takes a toll on the screen. If you have good screen polishes then you can get rid of those inevitable scratches, so I don't worry too much. But I do like using the thumbboard for small input needs. The P key on my phone sucks, though. I can't tell if it's pressed until I have about 30 p's streaming across the text box. You know I love that.

My BIGGEST pet peeve is the absence of the one-touch voice record button. (WHY ISN'T THERE ONE? I've had one on every other PDA I've had, since the Jornada 525. Maybe I didn't have one on the Handspring Edge, but I also didn't keep that one for longer than maybe 30 days.) So anyway, I had to get a third-party application to do help me do what all my other PDAs did for me out-of-the-box. Blast!

Also, thw square resolution doesn't work that great for some programs. You get forced to scroll the extra dozen pixels on the edges to see these hidden soft buttons, which is lame.

Also, the mini-headphone jack? Why can't I fit normal sized headphones in there? Luckily I still have my s200 headphones plus the hands-free earphones that came with the phone. Otherwise, I'd be havin' be a little sit-down with the local sprint folks.

Another plus is that the phone uses a normal size SD card. That's weird--normal size card, but weirdo headphone jack. I know, I should get over it--but if they are using the weird proprietary headphone jack to make extra accessory sales, then couldn't they do it also with the mini SD card slot? I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to understand.