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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2009-09a
Summer vacation's last hurrah of news
WET rated for 17+, out 9/15 Blood, gore, intense violence, sexual content, drug references, strong language & vigilantism add up to a "Mature" rating (ages 17+) by the ESRB for WET (in stores 9/15 at $50 for Xbox 360 or Playstation 3). It also adds up to a recipe for being irresistible for gamer guys, which in turn makes it a magnet for complaints from people worried about the effects of this kind of influence on them. Bethesda officially describes this as adrenaline-pumping; we suspect there may also be some testosterone in that mix. Welcome Tracey, who can get you materials to review or a copy for review. Contact: Tracey Thompson, Bethesda Softworks (Rockville, MD) 301-354-4216 tthompson@bethsoft.com http://BethSoft.com
Intel at retail - up & at 'em with Atom When Volkswagen first brought the Beetle to America, people had a hard time believing that something so small & inexpensive could provide so useful & fun a ride; that's pretty much the ride that the Intel Atom processor is on right now. Marty already built a couple of under-$200 PCs in less than 2 hours each using Atom processors & a CPU/motherboard kit (ask Marty to send the "An Alternative PC" PDF if you're interested). Some Netbook models are Atom-based; some commercial & homebrew home theater gear is also built on a single Atom; robot experimenters are using it; IT departments are slapping together small special-purpose servers around it & the list goes on. In a tight economy, the economy of the Intel Atom makes affordable computing accessible to a lot more people. Even better, they can pick it up at the local chain or Mom & Pop store with Intel inside. Jason can get you info about the Atom (yes, review products, too) & about stores near you. Contact: Jason Saganski, Intel Americas Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) 908-837-9828 jason.saganski@intel.com http://Intel.com
Original never trashed as i-photos get flashed Fast food specialty cheeseburger pricing in the App Store doesn't mean that Tiffen Cool fx or Photo fx version 2 apps are going to treat the original photos they glam or flash up as consumable or disposable; quite the contrary, the originals remain untouched. The hundreds of treatments or dramatic effects that a user can get from these apps get saved as new photos & there's no small limit (other than memory capacity) to how many variations one photo can engender. If you want the nitty-gritty on all the variations, ask Hilary; even better, send him a few of your snapshots & let him send back some of the variations these apps can deliver. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company (Hauppauge, NY) 631-273-2500x1216 haraujo@tiffen.com http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: What Lexmark just did to printers The home & small business printer category just got a jolt from Lexmark's new line launch. The various printers all have admirable feature sets, but we think the greater consequence will prove to be how they redistributed more of their margin expectations into the printers while dramatically reducing ink costs. One black cartridge with a $4.99 msrp (no typo: that's a penny under five bucks) claims penny-a-page printing costs for mono documents. They moved from the HP-style 2-cartridge (black plus multicolor) approach to the Epson-style 4-cartridge (black plus separate cyan, magenta & yellow) approach. Some of their new cartridges hold three times the ink of their older standard (not XL) cartridges. One other bit of amazement: all of the new models use the same cartridges, dramatically reducing the number of ink SKUs a retailer has to carry for their customers & making it much more likely that any store carrying any of the new Lexmark printer line will have cartridges in stock that work in the models they don't carry. The lower cartridge pricing is also less than encouraging to the third-party cartridge clone & refill contingent. This is true across 8 new printers, of which 4 models ($99 to $199) target home office & 4 models ($169-$399) target SMB/professional users. HP is still the elephant in the room for the printer market; if this Lexmark move gets HP to respond with lower-margin ink replacement pricing, the category will see a sweeping phase change in how business is done. For the moment, it will be interesting to watch whether buyers will pay a little more for a printer (even with a new 5-year warranty thrown in) in order to drop the cost per printed page.
Special Report Bonus Review: Delkin Fat Gecko Mini Spiderman can cling to any ceiling or wall, but without his powers, that's a hard trick for ordinary people who are trying to shoot photos or videos. Delkin has had some twin suction cup rigs in the past that pros began using for mounting their cameras on car fenders, windshields, surf boards, boat hulls, helmets, etc. Now there's a single suction cup model small enough to fit in most camera bags but nimble & versatile enough to allow a ton of orientation options. The Delkin Fat Gecko Mini has a swivel-up arm attached to its press-to-seal suction cup base, an optional extension for that arm & a ball joint at the top that terminates in a standard tripod screw. They rate it for up to 40 pounds of load; that's about 10 times what our heaviest cameras weight, so all we'll say is that it does an excellent job of letting our cameras cling to any variety of smooth surfaces. Bottom line: the Delkin Fat Gecko Mini is a wall-clinging daredevil of a camera mount that adds lots of new options for shooting video or stills.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: General Tools 3-in-1 detector We were hoping to find a little bit of general-purpose tech that could fulfill a special protective role at Halloween & the General Tools & Instruments MSV350D Digital 3-in-1 Stud, Voltage & Metal Detector seems to be just that. While we're not going to suggest that it's absolutely foolproof as a safety scanner for the treats the kids bring home, it is very possible for one of these handheld gizmos to detect metallic objects within candy bars or fruit, for example; they may also be able to detect when something non-metallic but dense has been introduced. In normal usage, you would slide this device along a wall set for or metal or Voltage or in an automatic scanning mode; if it detects any of those, the display shows a curved line of bars rising from both sides (eventually completing a semicircular pattern) as a piezo beeper sounds off. The next time you need to mount something to a stud or a joist & not drill through an electrical conduit, this little tester is the next best thing to x-ray vision; that's not a bad super power to have, either, when you're out to protect your kids from the criminally minded villains whose pranks are intended to make them bleed (or worse). Bottom line: we tested the General Tools & Instruments MSV350D Digital 3-in-1 Stud, Voltage & Metal Detector in all of its modes, confirmed that it really works & recommend it for the special consideration of any parent who's at all wary of things that are truly scary for Halloween.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: Hawking USB sharing hub If you're old enough to remember the first time you used Traveling Software's Laplink to shuttle files between a pair of PCs - in those days, connected with special cables in their parallel or serial ports - this may seem like déjà vu. That's also true for anybody who's used a Tornado. The newest alternative is the Hawking Easy-Link USB Sharing Hub, at once both a 3-port USB hub & a handy way to share files by connecting a fourth USB port to a second PC. Easy-Suite software loads from the hub & provides an on-screen dual display of the local (one you're on) & remote (other one) systems; drag & drop between those to move files. Putting this facility in a hub makes sense for people who have to pipe files (especially large ones) between a desktop & a notebook several times a week; for rare to occasional needs, it's as good as but no better than other alternatives. Bottom line: the Hawking Easy-Link USB Sharing Hub offers a handy way for people with frequent machine-to-machine file-swapping needs to get that task done as a bonus facility from what is otherwise a handy little USB hub.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: First Alert Tundra You may have seen one of those fire safety demos where they blow the contents of a spray can across a flame & the aerosol does a great impersonation of a rocket burn. That's what first came to mind when we heard about a fire-fighting spray can. First Alert Tundra claims to be quickly effective against grease, cooking oil, fabric, paper, wood or electrical fires with 32 seconds of discharge (versus 13 seconds for traditional large household extinguishers, 8 seconds for small ones). Inside the can, there's a new twist on some old tech (the bladder) that keeps the flammable propellant from feeding the flame its fire fighting fluids are fending off; the propellant compresses an internal pouch of that fluid, so when you press the spray button, only the fluid (not the propellant) exits the can. The nozzle in the spray cap is designed for a widened spray pattern. We got some expert help in testing this through the Russell Township (Ohio) fire department; they report that it was effective from as far as 6-7' away in quickly putting out an oil & gasoline fire. Some standard fire extinguishers can be refilled, some can't & the Tundra is in that latter category, but that seems a fair trade for a $20 sticker price. Bottom line: the First Alert Tundra is a well-designed, smartly assembled alternative to standard fire extinguishers with some notable advantages in performance & price, field-proven effective & an item we heartily recommend for every home or office.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: Honeywell Platinum Air purifier The manufacturers call them air purifiers but we call them destinkifiers because removing odors from the air is a wonderful way to reduce workplace distractions. When we put out our call for gadgets for winter, Honeywell responded with their Enviracaire Platinum Air Model 16200 air purifier. This is a desktop model, not much bigger than a Bose tabletop stereo. It includes a washable foam first-stage filter to catch the biggest stuff, a carbon-impregnated filter to reduce odors, a 99% HEPA filter with an antimicrobial treatment & an ionization field to create static cling among smaller airborne particles & help them drop out of circulation. Topside, one switch controls the fan speed (3 speeds or off) & another turns the ionizer on & off; you can run the ionizer without the fans for silent operation with much lower/slower airflow. This size & type of purifier can be somewhat effective against allergens & some airborne germs but we don't recommend depending on it to kill or reduce flu or other viruses. That said, with the doors & windows shut & weather-stripped to seal out the cold, indoor air can become stale, so a small desktop purifier like this can be help make smaller spaces like bedrooms, dens or work areas a little easier & breezier during frightful clime times. Bottom line: the Honeywell Enviracaire Platinum Air Model 16200 air purifier offers a reasonable tabletop antidote for the stale air of winter as well as the occasional bad odors that can distract us at any time of year.
More "Fake COMDEX" replies Ted Needleman misses the chili cook-off, Silicon Northwest, Lunch at Piero's & concerts with Ray Charles, Chicago, BTO & the Fabulous Thunderbirds. David Batterson would like to see everybody's "Fake COMDEX" (a reporting focus on computer news the week of 11/16) include a Shelly Adelson narrative memoir to chronicle its serendipitously opportune sale to Softbank.
Disclosure: Marty is a candidate While it's not an area of coverage that's ever likely to involve any of our readers, we'd be remiss not to disclose that Marty is a candidate for the Russell Township (Ohio) Board of Trustees. Russell Township ("Novelty" is the name of the post office/Zip code here) is on the western edge of Geauga County, which is the county just east of Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is. These are maple sugar hills (more foothills than anything else) in an originally rural area where one of the most pressing current concerns is whether to allow only a single trash hauler in order to reduce wear & tear on the roads. If there's anything noteworthy about Marty's campaign it may be that he has pledged to have a paperless campaign during September & not to post any political signs except in his own yard. Being Trustee doesn't pay enough to make this a retirement move; you & Marty will both have to wait for the Mega Millions to get the numbers right before that can happen. 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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