Craig's Musings

Motorola just announced the Motorola Q. This is KICK BUTT device - 115 grams or so, pretty much the weight of my iMate SP3, and is way way better. From Motorola's web site:

• Thinnest QWERTY device in the world - 11.5mm
• Full, ergonomic QWERTY keyboard, 5-way navigation button and thumb wheel
• Video clip capture and playback
• Connectivity via Bluetooth, IrDA and mini-USB; compatible with Motorola's line of Bluetooth-enabled wireless headsets
• Multi-Media Messaging (MMS)
• Dual, stereo-quality speakers
• Audio formats supported: iMelody, MIDI, MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, WAX, QCELP
• Image formats supported: GIF87a, GIF89a, JPEG, WBMP, BMP, PNG
• Video formats supported: H.263, MPEG-4, GSM-AMR, AAC, WMV
• Mini-SD removable memory card slot
• Large, high-resolution display (320 x 240 pixels, 65K TFT)
• 1.3 mega pixel camera with photo lighting
• PIM functionality with Picture Caller ID
• Advanced speech recognition and speakerphone

Sign me up!

Posted by Craig at 8:01 PM | Permalink

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I stumbled across this today - the Optimus keyboard. Every single key will be a little OLED screen and will be completely programable (and can be color). So the keyboard can be reconfigured in real time to ANYTHING - Russian, Photoshop controls, Quake controls, English, you name it. Supposed to be out in 2006 (although it is currently just a concept) - I'm in!

Posted by Craig at 10:26 AM | Permalink

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Okay, this is one WAY COOL phone. I got it for K.T. this week, and it is a slick device. It's loaded with all the cool stuff you'd expect in a phone - like a VGA camera, bluetooth, a boatload of memory (50+mb), and a XHTML browser. It is nice and small (3 ounces, 4.53 inches long x 1.26 inches wide x 0.75 inch thick). It has decent talk time (4 hours) .

Now, let's get to the cool & whacky - no keypad! You just move your finger over the spinner, and off you go. It is pretty slow going to dial numbers, but once everything is in (and you can easily sych all your Outlook contacts into the phone over bluetooth), it isn't bad at all. It definitely isn't a phone for sending text messages - one might get homicidal about 2 messages into an exchange.

One other added bonus of the thing - the display has a mirror finish, so when the backlight goes out, you can use the display as a mirror.

K.T. totally digs it. Good job, Nokia, turning a phone into such a stylin' fashion accessory. I haven't been able to convince her to upgrade to a new phone in 2 years.

Note on 7/17/05 6:30am: on date night last night, I got to see the full impact of this phone on someone who hasn't seen it before. You would not believe how people oooo and ahhhhh and grab their friends to show them. Freaky.

Posted by Craig at 9:41 AM | Permalink

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So I was surfing to find if any of the websites I like to buy from had the new 500gb drives from Hitachi, when I found a Western Digital 320GB drive for $151.99.

I spent $400 on my first harddrive back in 19901989. It was a 40 megabyte drive for my new PS/2 Model 25 that I had won in some IBM drawing.

Price per gigabyte of harddrive in 19901989: $10,000.00
Price per gigabyte of harddrive in 2005: $0.475

Damn!!

Update on September 2nd, 2005:
The drive is now $139. Price per gigabyte $0.434.

Update on October 30th, 2005:
The drive is now $128.90. Price per gigabyte $0.403.

Update on April 21st, 2006:
The drive is now $116.90. Price per gigabyte $0.365.

Update on May 20th, 2007:
The drive is now $98.90. Price per gigabyte $0.301.

Posted by Craig at 9:36 PM | Permalink

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I just got my new Sony T-370P laptop tonight. I had the predecessor to this laptop - the TR series. I got it in March of 2004, and what is impressive about Moore's law is that it is already discontinued. I loved my Sony TR - the xbrite screen kicks some serious a**, and the form factor ROCKS for constant travel (even when the person in front of you tips their seat all the way back, you can still use it). I had an extended battery on the thing, and so I could do 4-5 hours of DVD playback - enough to cover me coast to coast no matter what.

So why upgrade? Well, aside from the fact that it had had the holy snot beaten out of it over the past 15 months, the new one looked very appealing.

1. 60gb harddrive vs 40gb - I was out of disk space constantly on my TR as I like to keep a bunch of my boys' photos on it, plus I have a truckload of software
2. 1.2ghz processor vs 1.0ghz - hey, 20% faster is 20% faster. Centrino processors are too darned slow no matter how you slice it. What we really need is a low power, low cost, dual core 4.0ghz extreme edition P4. But since that doesn't appear on the Intel roadmap (dammit!), I'll live with my 20% improvement.
3. Built in bluetooth - don't have to carry the darned bluetooth USB dongle any more!
4. 802.11G vs 802.11b - 5 times faster access to the network. While 54mbps on wireless is nowhere near as fast as 54mbps on wireline, it is still 5 times faster than 11mbps on wireless - and so copying all those pictures is way faster.
>Built in GPRS+EDGE network for when no wifi is available - of course, you have to pay $50 a month to Cingular to get it, but that isn't a bad deal at all if you want to be always online.
5. DVD+R dual layer burner vs CD burner - well heck, might as well be able to burn 8.5gb DVDs if you are going to have a media drive.
6. 3.1 vs 3.5 pounds. That is 0.4 pounds lighter for the same battery life - why, that's over 10% lighter. Since my ideal travel scenario is teleporting with luggage floating in a zero gravity field, 10% lighter is at least a step in the right direction.
7. Usabilty improvements. both USB ports are on the same side now, and the DVD/CD drive is on the side instead of the front so you can't eject by accident nearly as easily

So in short, my T-370P from Sony kicks butt. If you travel a lot, need long battery life, decent performance, and light weight, you will be hard pressed to do a better.

Posted by Craig at 10:52 PM | Permalink

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I found this camera/phone/computer while trolling for info on ATI's site for how to get an Apple Cinema Display 30" monitor to work with their video cards. This phone is SWEEET - a 5 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom and flash on one side, and on the other, a phone with a 240x320 pixel 262,000 color 2.2 " TFT display & stereo speakers. It is currently only in Korea, dammit, but I will hunt it down - I must hunt it down!!

Posted by Craig at 3:02 PM | Permalink

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I was in CompUSA today and I saw one of these, and it is unbelievable. These Apple guys really get design. You can configure this teeny thing (6.5"x6.5"x2") with a gig of ram,a 1.4ghz PPC G4 processer, bluetooth, 802.11, an 80 gig harddrive, and a DVD/CD burner. Fully decked out it is $1049.

Posted by Craig at 2:27 PM | Permalink

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When I first set up a blog back in November, I didn't know how I'd blog or what would drive blogging behavior. Turns out I have no interest in writing about random things in my life, so my blog languished. But after a month of blogging about my boys, I realized that writing about things you are passionate about is what drives blogging behavior (at least for me). So this blog will be dedicated to my unending quest to find the next cool gadget! Let's see if I keep this one up.

Posted by Craig at 8:21 AM | Permalink

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