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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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