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2010-03E

Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin             Issue # 2010-03e

              Last news before the April foolishness

In this issue:
  New Antec notebook bricks... Nobody loves BlackBerry jam when
  it's in the RAM ... Franklin abridging prices faster than
  vocabularies... Coming, BACtrack 1-shots... Tiffen at NAB: better
  stands for smaller cameras... Special Report: Bottlenecks & a
  response on Desk Phones... Project Yippie: wrap-up... Reviews:
  ArmorLite CFL, Lavalys Everest Ultimate, Belkin CAT6 patch cable,
  Brookstone BBQ brush, Monster screen cleaner... plus our
  commentary on crash test dummies

New notebook power gear coming from Antec
  Coming this spring, Antec has a new line of yawn-stopping
  notebook power adapters ("bricks") with new reasons not to ignore
  this category. One of them is small enough to carry in a shirt
  pocket (though we're not sure why you would), meaning it's a lot
  less weighty & bulky when you lug it around all day & is a lot
  less likely to bump you into the next weight class on an
  airplane. Others give you new reasons not to carry one at all
  most of the time because they let you have one at home & another
  at work. That's about all we're allowed to tell you until they
  ship, but Veronica may be willing to share more. Contact:
  Veronica Feldmeier, Antec Inc. (Fremont, CA) 510-770-2150
  vfeldmeier@antec.com http://antec.com

Nobody loves BlackBerry jam when it's in the RAM
  One challenge with a handset smart enough to run thousands of
  applications is that sometimes available memory space can get
  eaten alive. There's a way to keep an eye on that inside the new
  Fixmo Tools BlackBerry Edition ($20 including a year of updates).
  Memory Monitor offers detailed reporting on your handset memory
  usage & gives you a way to do a memory cleanup. It offers big,
  clear bar graph displays of both the handset's RAM & its Flash
  storage with details at the push of one button & instant cache
  clearing at the touch of another. Send Rick your e-mail address &
  handset PIN to het set up to review it now. Contact: Rick Segal,
  Fixmo (Toronto, ON) 416-414-9726 rick@Fixmo.com
  http://Fixmo.com

Franklin abridging prices faster than vocabularies
  While Franklin offers the only electronic handheld unabridged
  dictionary you're likely to see any time soon, many people are
  absolutely content with the difference between that & the
  abridged vocabularies of their significantly less expensive
  dictionaries (dozens, starting under $20). Their MWD1500 Advanced
  Merriam-Webster Dictionary & Thesaurus with Spell Correction
  ($60) is tailored for students from Junior High through college.
  Their SCD2100 Speaking Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 11th
  Edition ($100) adds out-loud word pronunciation, a translator
  (English, Spanish, French, German or Italian), a scientific
  calculator, adjustable font size & more. Franklin believes that
  when it comes to language aids, one size can't fit all, whether
  that's one size in print, in software, in-hand or online. You're
  invited to explore any or all of that collection, especially if
  you're ready to help reinforce that point. Contact: Aline Boutin,
  Franklin Electronic Publishers (Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434
  aline_boutin@franklin.com http://franklin.com

Coming, BACtrack 1-shots for when you have more than 1
  We've just seen (you can too) early production models of
  inexpensive new single-use blood alcohol content testers coming
  later this year. BACtrack SingleShot testers will offer simple
  color-change pass/fail tests for BAC levels of 0.02%, 0.05% or
  0.08%. These are small tubes, about the size of an unfiltered
  cigarette. You squeeze the middle to break the inner glass
  capsule, blow hard for 12 seconds, shake for 3 seconds & see your
  results in 2 minutes. Pricing isn't final, but we anticipate
  around $10 for one or $20 for a 2-pack. If you ask, Keith can
  send you a few to review. Contact: Keith Nothacker, KHN SOLUTIONS
  (San Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
  mailto:keith.nothacker@bactrack.com http://bactrack.com

Tiffen at NAB: better stands for smaller cameras
  We've been at TV stations when new news cameras arrive that turn
  out to be not much bigger (if any) than the butter-box consumer
  camcorders we've all seen - but when the news crew goes out, it's
  with the same heavyweight (both meanings) tripods they've always
  used. Expect the Tiffen booth to see an unprecedented degree of
  interest in their Davis & Sanford tripods, especially the ones
  with special features like air-lift center posts or grounder
  legs. Ask Hilary. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company
  (Hauppauge, NY) 631-609-3216 haraujo@tiffen.com
  http:/.tiffen.com

Special Report: Bottlenecks
  For computers (possibly elsewhere), technology progress often
  just changes where bottlenecks lie. We saw some early reviews,
  for example, of external USB3 (4.8Gbps) drives complaining that
  USB3 didn't seem all that much faster than USB2 (0.48Gbps). The
  max sustained data transfer rate for a typical 7200rpm hard drive
  is 0.84Gbps; going from USB2 to USB3 moved the bottleneck from
  the speed limit of the interface to that of the drive. A typical
  SSD today can transfer at up to 2Gbps. That's enough numbers;
  what are the visceral differences to an end user when new specs
  seem to turn a PC's old dirt roads into expressways? Research
  airlines did into ticket counter terminal response times showed
  that people notice delays but seldom notice speed-ups. When
  gamers overclock everything to up their frame rates, does the
  game itself play any better or is more of the thrill in the
  bragging rights? On the consumer side, the biggest difference in
  overkill pixel counts is in the other features that come on those
  imaging chips, not in the picture itself. (Note: a 12Mp image has
  40% more pixels than the 8.4Mp you can fit on an 8.5"x11" sheet
  at 300dpi). When vendors & their PR people try to dazzle us, you
  may need a geek to debunk their touted specs or to keep them in
  context of what they really don't mean.

Special Report Response: Desk phones
  Tom Inglesby responded to last issue's report on desk phones:
  "For recording from a land line to a PC, I use an Olympus 3100
  digital recorder connected to the RJ11 wall outlet via a Radio
  Shack module (43-228A). The module plugs into the recorder as an
  outboard mic. Olympus provides a program that allows the recorder
  to show up on the PC screen & records directly onto the PC's HD.
  I can then upload the .wav file to an FTP site where my
  transcriber (in Boston) can download it, do the transcription &
  e-mail me the results. The file remains on my PC so I can cross
  check the transcription or define any unknowns by listening again
  while following the copy." Thanks, Tom!

Project Yippie: Wrap-up
  We set out to experience what a small business would have to go
  through to bring e-mail, Web site & ftp hosting inside its walls.
  We built a small, silent server around an Intel "Clarkdale" H55
  board & Core i5 CPU, but that was the easy part. Windows Web
  Server 2008 R2 was easy enough to install but challenging to
  configure. IIS 7.5 proved much easier to configure than we had
  feared, but may still pose challenges to less geeky folks.
  Forefront proved itself an initially confusing but ultimately
  easy antimalware solution. While most users could use IIS to
  handle their e-mail hosting, we chose IMail Express for access to
  some special tweaks we favor. Our conclusion is that this is not
  yet a direction we would recommend to most small offices. The
  costs are not low enough to suggest a savings & the
  configurations are not easy enough to suggest they'll be
  successful on their own.

Special Report Bonus Review: ArmorLite CFL
  Side trip: an amalgamated company is a combination of previously
  separate companies; the term arose in the late 1630s because of
  amalgam (mid-1400s) which is an alloy of mercury with other
  metals (like silver, gold or tin) that is soft but solid. Tin
  amalgam coats mirrors; silver amalgam is popular in dental
  fillings. We took that detour because ClearLite ArmorLite CFLs
  use amalgam instead of liquid mercury, so they're a bit less of a
  hazard if broken. For their next trick, they jacket the whole
  thing in a bulb-shaped rubbery skin to contain glass or chemistry
  if a bulb should break & diffuse the light. They also boast a
  lead-free base (meaning no solder). Their 14 Watt CFL beams 800
  lumens (like a 60W incandescent) for 10,000 hours (at 3 hours per
  day) & comes in soft white (2700K) & daylight (4100K) versions.
  The box warns not to use more than 25 lamps per 20 Amp circuit;
  starting those takes a lot more current (albeit briefly) than the
  3 Amps it takes to run them & would blow a breaker.
  Aesthetically, they look more like an old-school light bulb.
  Bottom line: ArmorLite's line of ClearLite CFLs offer several
  pluses over current CFL alternatives & are well worth
  considering.

Special Report Bonus Review 2: Lavalys Everest Ultimate
  How many places do you have to go to find details about your PC &
  its configuration? Say you want to find the serial number of the
  C: volume hard drive, the firmware version of your optical drive,
  the temperatures of your components, your IP configuration, your
  motherboard BIOS version & see a list of everything plugged into
  USB; how long would all that take? Lavalys set us up with Everest
  Ultimate Edition which offers a well-organized way to look at
  thousands of hardware, software & system attributes, all in one
  window. It also offers tools for monitor diagnostics,
  benchmarking & more. Bottom line: We love how Lavalys Everest
  Ultimate gives us a broad & deep dashboard into all of the
  gnat's-lash details that we really need to keep a PC in good trim
  & lets us forget about the dozens of procedures it otherwise
  takes to get at it all.

Special Report Bonus Review 3: Belkin CAT6 patch cable
  Our recently upgraded PC now has a second Gigabit port, meaning
  we can use one to connect outside our router to the "real"
  Internet with a static IP address while the other can connect to
  the router for access to all the NAT-isolated gear here. We had
  some special characteristics in mind for the second port's cable,
  so we had Belkin send their 20-foot orange (the first port is
  red) snagless CAT6 patch cable for review. We were impressed with
  the connector strain relief; it also has dual gripping fins to
  make plugging & unplugging easier without blocking the little
  status lights in the connection they occupy. We chose CAT6 to
  assure that the cable wouldn't compromise our throughput. Bottom
  line: Belkin orange 20' CAT6 Patch Cable is proving itself a
  capable, no-compromise performer with comforting pluses in its
  design.

Special Report Bonus Review 4: Brookstone BBQ brush
  We go through a lot of grill brushes - sometimes because we press
  the plastic handled ones so hard that they crack, sometimes
  because we leave the steel ones out in the rain, but usually just
  because we wear them down. So this year, we asked Brookstone to
  send their Motorized BBQ Grill Brush for review. The heft of the
  motor in its head helps provide good downward pressure on the
  long, spinning metal brushes (which we are delighted to discover
  are removable for cleaning); a nice, thick scraper is also on the
  head to chop off any gunk build-up. The handle holds the 4 C
  cells that power it; they have enough muscle to keep the brush
  from slowing when it grinds away at the grate. It cleared through
  the winter-long corrosion in a very few minutes. Bottom line: the
  Brookstone Motorized BBQ Grill Brush does more & better cleaning
  in less time than any of the manual brushes we've used & with
  less work on our part.

Special Report Bonus Review 5: Monster screen cleaner
  While doing our spring cleaning, one nagging problem has been a
  tiny circle of crud on one of our monitors; a few stabs at
  removing it failed, so we asked to review the Monster ScreenClean
  display cleaning kit. The kit has a 1.5oz alcohol-free spray in a
  cleverly flattened bottle (packs or travels or fits a drawer
  nicely) & 2 cleaning cloths (each roughly 6" square), one
  microfiber, the other more textured, like the tech version of a
  washcloth. The kit claims Aegis Microbe Shield antibacterial
  protection permanently embedded in both cloths. We tested the kit
  on our monitor, camcorder display, camera display, eyeglasses,
  BlackBerry & even our fingerprint scanner with a perfect score
  for ridding them of junk we thought would never go away. Bottom
  Line: The Monster Digital Life ScreenClean Advanced Cleaning Kit
  for Displays works better than almost everything else we've
  tried.


  Half of us weigh more than crash test dummies
  Crash test dummies are built to represent 50th-percentile people,
  so by design, they're skinnier than (give or take) half the
  population, fatter than half, taller than half, shorter than
  half. PCs & software also tend to aim for the middle: too much,
  too hard or too confusing for about as many people as those who
  find them too slow, too stupid or inadequately sophisticated.
  Digital cameras are playing the 1980s auto industry planned
  perceived obsolescence game with diminishing success. So should
  you & we report from the middle of where we think consumers are,
  from the middle of where the vendors tell us the marketplace is
  tethered or from some other perspective? Any choice will be more
  wrong than right from any internal or external group perspective,
  yet few of us ever fret about that. Should we? Contact: Martin
  Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH) 440-338-8400; marty@Newstips.com
  http://Newstips.com

                               # # #

Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com

(c) Copyright 2007 Martin Winston and TwandaCorp - all rights reserved.

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