The Gadgets Page

The stock stereo system in my car is probably the most proprietary system on earth. It was used for only a few years in only a few makes of German cars, and there are literally no 3rd party components or options that can be added to the system. It uses a fiber-optic loop, so there’s no way to adapt typical audio components to it without creating a custom fiber-optic bus adapter. This is exactly what Dension did when they came out with their ICELink Plus I2O adapter for the iPod.

I had an iPod (or rather, my wife had an iPod) and I am a geek, so I had to get it connected to my car.

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Amazon is running a promotion saying that they’re offering the Apple 20GB iPod at “a price so low, we can’t show it to you.” I’m pretty sure their contract with Apple doesn’t apply to me, so I’ll tell you the price is $239, quite a bit less than my ancient 5GB model cost a few years back.

Considering that the 20GB model is still $299 at the Apple Store, this is a pretty good deal. Apparently all of the competition from other MP3 players is finally catching up with Apple’s prices.

DVDs have rapidly replaced videocassettes as the format of choice for home video. But making your own DVDs with video from a camcorder is far from easy. Understanding the process helps.

Ways to make a DVD

There are basically three methods you can use to create DVDs of your home movies. Each method has its advantages and drawbacks, and none of the methods has a clear lead in the market. The three methods are:

1. Using a component DVD recorder
2. Using a DVD Camcorder
3. Using a computer

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I’m considering a new digital camera, and my current favorite is the Panasonic DMC-FZ30, which just started shipping in the US. It has a 12X Leica zoom lens, 8 MP sensor, and an anti-shake system—my compact Panasonic has the same system, and I can take great pictures despite shaky hands.

From the early indications, this looks like a great camera. The only potential concern is noise—this review at DCResource includes some examples of noisy photographs, but they don’t look unacceptable to me. More importantly, there are some much better photos out there.

The noise issue comes down to the difference between consumer (or “prosumer”) digital cameras and digital SLRs. Since the SLRs are getting cheaper, cameras like the FZ-30—which costs about the same as a bottom-end SLR—are being scrutinized more closely. I’ll write more about these issues soon.

Since this camera is my current obsession, I’ll be posting more details and links as I continue researching it. (Last week I called that “wasting time”, but now that I’m writing here I get to call it “research”.)

Welcome to the all-new (but two years old) Gadgets Page. This site launched in October 2003, but we haven’t had as much time to update it as we hoped. We’ve relaunched the site with a new design, new software, and a new focus.

We will now be posting shorter items more frequently, covering topics like these:

• Reviews of gadgets
• Descriptions of new and upcoming gadgets
• Getting the most from your gadgets
• Updates on our long-term experience with the gadgets we own and review
• Questions and answers
• Our thoughts on the industries behind the gadgets

We’re aware there are some other gadget sites out there—we read and enjoy them. But we plan to make this one different in a few ways:

• We have our own style and interests, and we’re trying to create a site for gadget users, not just gadget geeks.
• We’re going to focus on products that are available now (or soon) in the U.S. No offense to those outside the states, but we can’t write about what we can’t see or buy.
• We’ll talk about both old and new gadgets, and encourage you to get the most out of your gadgets rather than replacing them with the hottest new thing every few months.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions, or if there are gadgets or aspects you’d like us to cover. As with all sites, this one will evolve in style and substance as time goes by, and we hope you enjoy it!

—Your authors: Matthew Strebe, Michael Moncur, and Laura Moncur

In my continuing quest to find the perfect digital watch, my interest was piqued by CNET’s look at Microsoft and Fossil’s new SPOT Watches. A few issues prevented the older edition of the SPOT watches from being the right watch for me:

• They were big and chunky.
• They required recharging every day or two.
• Like most people with a cell phone, I had no use for the MSN Direct data feeds that display news, weather, traffic, and other information on the watch face.
• While the watch lets you switch faces to try different looks, none of the options looked good to me—I just want a nice, readable, information-packed display like you’d find on a Timex and instead they’re mostly cheesy show-off faces that serve only to highlight how poor the display resolution is.

I really wanted to like these watches, especially since the new version is one of the best looking digital watches I’ve seen. The new model does address one of my problems: it’s smaller and lighter. It also has six additional faces, but they’re equally silly, as you can see in the pictures at right.

The biggest problem is that the battery requires recharging. CNET says the watch lasted “up to six days” between charges, but that’s still unacceptable to me. I want a watch that lasts a year or two on a battery, and I never want to be without my timepiece because I forgot to charge it.

Once again, Microsoft and Fossil have created an elegant but confused entry into a target market that presumably consists of busy executives who need to keep up with news, traffic, and sports scores but don’t carry a cell phone (which would offer the same data on a much bigger display without the yearly fee) and don’t mind recharging their watch once a week.

The MSN Direct Watch is a bulky digital watch that looks a bit like a sports watch (because of its size and the rubber strap). It has a digital display similar to a cellular phone that can display just about anything, which is utilized to create a number of reasonably interesting watch faces. The faces include various analog or digital displays.

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While CDs can survive minor damage far better than the vinyl records they replaced, they are still vulnerable to scratches. DVDs are even more vulnerable, since they store more data in the same space.

Since the 1980s, various devices have been marketed to repair scratched CDs, many of them completely worthless. In this review, we’ll take a look at some modern contenders and see if they live up to their hype–and their price tags.

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Microsoft spent much of 2003 evangelizing its Tablet PC platform. While pen computing still hasn’t made keyboards obsolete, one of the tools Microsoft created for that platform, OneNote 2003, is a surprisingly useful program even for those with old-fashioned desktop PCs.

OneNote is an information manager of the casual variety. Rather than storing records with exact fields like a contact manager or database, it allows you to create simple outline notes and organize them in a variety of ways. This simple idea combines with multimedia and Web features, along with handwriting features for those with Tablet PCs, to create a useful program with a minimal learning curve.

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In the early days, using a cordless mouse meant settling for poor tracking compared to a corded model, and dealing with new issues like interference and frequent battery replacement. The Logitech MX700 is the first mouse to offer great cordless performance without compromise.

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