Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

When I saw the announcement for the Acer Ferrari One netbook I knew in my heart that this one is going to be special.  I have been very impressed with the Acer netbooks ever since I purchased my Acer One.  When I decided my wife needed a netbook we looked at every model I could get my hands on and still decided Acer was the one I was going to go with.  I have to say after looking at this new model from Acer.... I want one!

As you can see from the picture, the Acer Farrari One stands out from the crowd from the first glance sporting a red case which proudly displays the Scudetto Ferrari that has dominated Formula One since the very first race.  This little machine is more than looks though.  As I scrolled through the specifications I started to drool.  Netbooks are suppose to be slightly under powered aren't they?  I mean isn't there a price to pay for being ultra portable and light?  Not in this case. The Farrari One sports an AMD Athlon 64 Dual core processor (L310) with 1MB L2 cache zooming along at 1.2GHZ.  It comes with 4GB of RAM and 250GB (5400RPM) of hard drive space.

Read more »

My wife, Bella has been such a trooper.... it seems like every new toy we get is mine.   I went out of town for a week recently and it became obvious she needed her own machine when we received a call from a customer and she had to respond and didn't have a machine to use.  We looked around at the different netbooks available through the local stores and again decided the Acer was the one to get.  I have been so pleased with my Acer One that it wasn't hard to choose after looking at the different brands I could get my hands on.  Bella wanted Windows XP instead of Windows 7 so we choose the AOD250-1424.

The specifications for the AOD250-1424 are: Windows^® XP Home Edition; SP3 version; Intel® Atom™ Processor N280 [512KB L2 cache, 1.66GHz, 667MHz FSB]; 1GB DDR2 667 SDRAM; 160GB hard drive, multi-in-one card reader; 10.1" WSVGA (1024 x 600) TFT display, Acer® CrystalBrite Technology; Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950; 802.11b/g WLAN, 10/100 LAN, webcam; diamond black chassis; 5800mAh six-cell battery; one-year limited warranty

The most noticeable difference between hers and mine is the size.  Mine is the 8.9" model and hers has a 10.1" display which turns out to be around 1" wider and 1/2" taller screen size.  The second thing that I noticed is her's weighs more.  With the six cell battery, it weights 2.95 lbs while mine has a 3 cell battery and weighs 2.19 lbs.  The extra weight might be worth the extra 4 hours of use.  I've been thinking about getting a six-cell battery for my machine.

I was interested in comparing the boot-up time.  Her's has a 160GB hard drive in it and mine has a 8GB SSD.  Her's also has Windows XP on it and mine runs Linux Mint.  Pressing the power button on both machines at the same time hers brought up the desktop at around 45 seconds, just a few seconds before my login screen came up.  Her processor is a little faster at 1.66 GHz while mine is 1.6 GHz and her front side bus is faster at 667 MHz compared to my 533 MHz.  I think the biggest thing that slows my machine down is the SSD drive.

Anyway, she is tickled with it and that is what really matters.  Her first comment though was that she wished it had multiple desktops like Linux has.  There is a desktop manager PowerToy for XP that gives 4 desktops.  I played with it a little a few years ago and wasn't real impressed with it, but I installed it on hers and will see if she likes it or not.

By the way, the one thing I don't like about her new Acer is it requires an external CDRW to create a restore CD.  It would be nice if Acer would give the option to create ISO images that could be transfered to another machine to burn the Recovery CDs.

I have been wanting to get a projector for some time now and when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas I did a little research.  I came accross the 3M MPro Pocket Projector and thought it looked like it might work pretty well for what I need.  (Wouldn't you know it.... they now have a MPro 150.)

Well, I have had my MPro120 for a month or so now and the only thing that would be better is if it was a little brighter.  The MPro 120 puts out 12 lumens in high brightness mode and really requires dim lighting in order to be visible.  I immediately purchased a small (41") projection screen to try to make use of every bit of light it projected.  It projects an image from 8" to 50" and obviously, the larger the projected image, the less light is available.  I have used it in a small room to give a presentation to a small audience and I have used it in my office as a second monitor when setting up a dual monitor PC.  It worked very well for both.  The projector has two 1/2 watt speakers built in which came in handy as the PC I was setting up didn't have a built in speaker.

The projector has a built in lithium polymer battery that is suppose to offer 240 + minutes of use in normal mode and 120 + minutes in high brightness mode.  The projector is able to be used when on the charger which seems like a given to me but that must not be the case.

The projector supports VGA, SVGA, XVGA, and WXGA and comes with two cables, an AV cable to input video from camcorders, digital cameras, DBD players and digital media players, and a VGA cable.  It also comes with this really cute little tripod that is perfect for setting the projector up on a desktop.  It also fits on a standard camera tripod which I found works very well when using the projector with the screen.  The projector needs to be at most 4' from the screen that I purchased which produces an image of readable brightness in a semi-darkened room.

The projector is a very convient 2.4" X 4.7" X .9" and weighs 5.4 ozs.  It will truly fit in one's pocket, or better yet in the small bag that comes with it.

So how does the MPro 150 compare to the MPro 120?  Well,  the 150 seems to be almost identical to the 120 except that it puts out 15 lumens which should help.  The increase in brightness decreases the usability to 120+ minutes in normal mode and 90+ minutes in high brightness mode.  But the biggest improvement found in the 150 is the inclusion of a Internal 1GB micro SD card as well as a MicroSD card slot and a USB Mini 2.0 port for transfering files into the projector.  See, the MPro 150 is able to open and project Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel as well as TXT and Adobe PDF files.  Just load them up and go.  There is no need to haul along a PC to give a presentation.  Pretty cool.

The 3M MPro 150 lists for $435 but is available on Amazon for $385 at the present time.  The MPro 120 on the other hand lists for $385 and is available on Amazon for $296 at the present time.  Even with the improvements offered in the 150 I probably would have still purchased the 120 due to the cost difference.  I'm not sure how much of an improvement 3 lumens would give and at this time I need to use the projector with my laptop.

I was recently checking out the products on the Lenovo website and came across what I would like for my next machine.  While visiting the IT department at a local school I was blown away by the speed of one of their machines.  I made a comment and was told it had a Xeon processor in it.  So it has been in the back of my mind.

Read more »

I have been using the Plantronics Discovery 925 earpiece for a year and a half or so.  In fact we have sold quite a few with good results.  A friend just asked me to order her one and I discovered Plantronics has come out with a new model, the Discovery 975.  I just received it and with my friends permission have opened it up to see how it compares with the Discovery 925.

Physically, the two earpieces are pretty much identical in size.  The buttons are similar in function and are located in the same positions.  I think the buttons on the 975 are not as easy to use as those on the 925.  The volume control button on the 975 doesn't stick up as much so it is a little harder to feel. The call control button on the 975 is also not as big as the one on the 925.  This actually is probably a good thing as I have accidently hung up when putting the 925 in my ear and I can see that wouldn't be a problem with the 975.  The carrying case for the 975 appears to be slightly larger and feels a little lighter.  It also has a really cool charging indicator built into the side.  With the earpiece in the case I plugged the case into the wall charger and the charge indicator display turned on indicating that both the earpiece and the case was charging and both were 1/3 to 2/3 full.  After using the earpiece for awhile I plugged it into the case and could immediately see how much of a charge the earpiece had.  Sweet....

Read more »