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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2010-05b
News you'll choose to use
In this issue:
If you want to feel powerless, don't choose Antec... Speed
mystery meat meets its meter in Fixmo... PC handholds handheld
unabridged Franklin... False positives for diabetics a reason to
own BACtrack... Now Tiffen desensitizes IR... Special Report: 3D
reality... Reviews: Office 2010, Snap-N-Store DVD Storage Box,
Behringer UCA222, Cyber Power 4-port USB2 hub, NaturallySpeaking
Preferred 10... plus our commentary on talk to me
If you want to feel powerless, don't choose Antec
According to an independent outside review of PSU (PC power
supply) return rates, Antec is, at around 0.8%, the brand least
likely to be DOA (dead on arrival); most competitors scored 1.3%
to 4.5%. For those folks you reach who still build or maintain
their own PCs, this kind of data is good reason to suggest that a
sales floor recommendation may be based more on a current spiff
program than on a better product. Ask Veronica. Contact: Veronica
Feldmeier, Antec Inc. (Fremont, CA) 510-770-2150
vfeldmeier@antec.com http://antec.com
Speed mystery meat meets its meter in Fixmo
If the TV spots aren't enough to confuse you about the carriers
transfer speeds (in ideal conditions), watching them change as
you & your handset change locations can leave you wondering what
speeds to expect. One of the newest apps in the new 1.1 version
of Fixmo Tools BlackBerry Edition ($20 with a year of updates)
lets you measure the real-world/right now upload & download
speeds of your 3G, EDGE & WiFi networks. Ask Rick. Contact: Rick
Segal, Fixmo (Toronto, ON) 416-414-9726 rick@Fixmo.com
http://Fixmo.com
PC handholds handheld unabridged Franklin
Fitting the unabridged Webster's Third World New International
Dictionary & other references into the size of a (retro
reference) cigarette case is clever, but don't miss what else is
in the box. A USB cord & a disc add the Franklin PC Desktop,
letting you view & work with this or other Franklin handhelds on
your PC. It also loads Audible (for handhelds with audio, not
this one) & the Mobipocket Reader so you can read other eBooks
right there. Did we mention the SD slot? Ask Aline for hands-on.
Contact: Aline Boutin, Franklin Electronic Publishers
(Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434 aline_boutin@franklin.com
http://franklin.com
False positives for diabetics a reason to own BACtrack
With the growing number of companies imposing & enforcing
zero-tolerance programs anent alcohol consumption, diabetics &
others with high blood sugar levels may want to arm themselves
against the false positive readings that can show on
semiconductor-based meters. The upper-end (still under $200)
BACtrack breathalyzer models don't get those false positive
because they use fuel cell sensors. Contact: Keith Nothacker, KHN
SOLUTIONS (San Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
mailto:keith.nothacker@bactrack.com http://bactrack.com
Now Tiffen desensitizes IR
Most cameras are supposed to see what we see but digital cameras
use sensors that see more deeply into the infrared than we do.
Now the filter wizards at Tiffen have a new T1 IR filter in 6
standard sizes that let some deep reds come through but prevent
the muddiness & hue shifts that can result from intense IR
contamination. Ask Hilary. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company
(Hauppauge, NY) 631-609-3216 haraujo@tiffen.com
http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: 3D reality
You probably had a View-Master; the question is, did you look at
more pictures through it or without it? 3D is an interesting
novelty but is it a necessity? At the movies, Cinerama was never
3D but we kept hoping it might feel like that. Meanwhile our
colored cardboard glasses gave us 3D peeks at everything from
comic books to horror movies. Those became polarized so we could
watch 3D movies in full color at theme parks & special
presentations. Since, CGI let computers paint movie frames,
first from the perspective of a single eye & more recently in
stereoptic 3D. The past little while brought us more 3D movies
than ever before, debuts of TV sets that can display in 3D, a few
broadcasts that originated in 3D & so much "make it feel
inevitable" hype that a lot of us are ready to upgrade our home
theater stack to a Holodeck. By now, we should be able to
recognize a fad as a fad. The Hula Hoop was a fad; people still
buy them, but not in the numbers of its panacea days; ditto
coonskin caps, CB radio & those in-dash 8-track players. 3D TV is
fun the first time you see it & a lot of impulse buying will come
from that first look, but like marrying a spouse who was tons of
fun when you were both drunk, the fun may not long survive. When
color TV first emerged, only peak viewing hours were broadcast in
color; as the programming hours expanded & prices dropped, more
people bought those premium sets. The percentage of us with 3D
sets this year or next is miniscule, the amount of available
program hours minimal & the long-term value-add of that 3D depth
effect is questionable. For now, we recommend regarding 3D as
more novelty than necessity.
Special Report Bonus Review: Office 2010
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 will (like every previous
version) take some getting used to, but so far there seems to be
one way or another to get everything done that we want to get
done. Access did lose some of its references (OCX & DLL files)
that, fortunately, we were able to snag from our backup drive &
copy into places that let Access relink them. The ribbon bar
shrinks out of the way on command; with the dashboards retracted,
the workspace feels open & generous. Outlook has a new People
Pane to link to social sites but so far the big improvement there
is smoother running with fewer resource clogs. These are first
impressions, of course. Bottom line: Microsoft Office
Professional Plus 2010 manages to balance familiar functionality
with improvements we've seen & some we have yet to discover.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Snap-N-Store DVD Storage Box
If the gripper (some call them snaps) on a pair of jeans can hold
us in, could a n octet of that same size snap hold together the
fold-up sides of a sturdy cardboard box? We discovered the
Snap-N-Store DVD Storage Box almost by accident during our spring
cleaning research & it seemed like a great concept so we got in a
few for review. The long sides fold up & over the short ends &
snap in place, high & low, left & right, front & back. The lid
has reinforced corners. The shoebox-like result handily houses
more than 2 dozen DVDs & the design includes a card frame at one
end to help you ID the contents. Bottom line: the economical
Snap-N-Store DVD Storage Box lets us hold more discs in less
space with easier access.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: Behringer UCA222
We used to transition our analog mixing console into the PC
through a Behringer Firewire interface until we went 64-bit &
they didn't. We've been searching for a low-price alternative
ever since & left the recommendation up to a savvy Sam Ash sales
guy. His $35 answer is the Behringer UCA222 USB/Audio Interface.
It's USB powered, offering RCA phono jacks for analog left &
right input & output connections plus an optical output & a
volume-controlled 3.5mm stereo headphone jack for monitoring.
Notably, the 48 KHz converters offer great audio quality & the
monitoring has ultra-low latency. Bottom line: the Behringer
UCA222 USB/Audio interface rewarded us with great audio quality
at a great price.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Cyber Power 4-port USB2 hub
Between USB audio feeds for our 3 phone lines & a USB modem for
dialing, we didn't want to end up port-short so we looked for the
least expensive powered hub we could find. We found a 4-port hub
with a 2.5A power supply (20% more than full spec at 4 ports) &
port status telltales for $15. Bottom line: the Cyber Power
CP-H420-P 4-port powered USB2 hub rocks.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: NaturallySpeaking Preferred 10
The box for Dragon NaturallySpeaking has a slug that compares the
time it takes to produce a 3-page 900-word letter by typing (22
minutes) versus dictating (6 minutes). If only that were true! So
far, we find it rare for a sentence to show exactly the words we
spoke, but that may just be beginner's luck. Also, we spend much
more time correcting its misinterpretations than we do typing;
add to that a bundled headset that's actually painful to wear.
These gripes aside, the accuracy is somewhat better than the
Microsoft speech engine in Windows 7. It also makes sense that
our earliest experiences are absent the benefit of training it to
our needs over time. The Preferred version also lets us bring in
recorded audio to transcribe. Once we learn to speak in whole
sentences, dictation may indeed prove better than typing. Is it
worth the mutual learning curve? That's up to you to decide.
Bottom line: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred 10 is the best
speech recognition engine we've used so far, though we are far
from expert at dictation & it will need more training before it
becomes more satisfyingly clairvoyant.
Note for phone diddlers
If any of you are pursuing phone line audio monitoring as we've
described in recent issues, we have some experimental results to
share involving the simple homebrew tap circuit we described last
time & the C-Media USB stereo dongles we reviewed in the "phone
slam". In control panel, under sound, then recording devices, we
set the microphone level of each dongle to 20 & turned off AGC;
there's always some level of hum & clicking on a phone line but
this minimizes their effect. For the moment, we have the
automatic recording threshold on our audio logging software set
to -24dB. We modified our circuit (a PDF is available for the
asking) by shunting a cap (0.1) across the output jack to cut
back on clicks & adding a second cap (0.015) off the MOV to
better balance the primary & reduce hum.
Talk to me
Look who's the last of the great dictators! Random events led us
to try Microsoft Speech Recognition for Windows. It's writing
this item. It's proving a useful alternative when we tire of
hunching over our keyboard. We since switched to Dragon Naturally
Speaking. If you use either, drop Marty a line & share what you
think of the experience. Contact: Martin Winston, Newstips
(Novelty, OH) 440-338-8400; marty@Newstips.com
http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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