Technical Reviews and Geek Toys

I have been using Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth earpiece for a year and a half or so and it is pretty much a part of me all day long.  I put it on first thing in the morning and don't take it off until I am done for the day.  It is comfortable and works very well.  My wife also has one although she doesn't wear it all of the time.  When we are talking she ususally starts out on her phone and when she switches over to the earpiece I can always tell because she sounds louder and clearer.

The Discovery 925 comes in five different colors: Black, Gold, Cerise, Royal Blush, and Majestic Purple.  It is a fashion accessory as well as a Bluetooth earpiece.  It is extremely lightweight - only 0.3 ozs and comes with three uniquely shaped gel eartips – small, medium and large – that allow you to find the most comfortable fit for you. The eartips are designed to conform snugly to the contours of your ear without the need for an earloop, so it won't interfere with earrings or eyewear.  It should be noted that the gel eartip is what holds the earpiece in place.  The only time I have had the earpiece fall out of my ear when I bumped it and knocked it out of my ear.

One of the features incorporated into the Discovery 925 is AudioIQ technology, a smart and adaptive noise-canceling technology that not only automatically maximizes call clarity in the speaker, but also reduces background noise in the microphone.  I havew found it doesn't handle wind noise very well however.  I find I have to cup my hand over the earpiece when out in a breeze.

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As I shared in Sharing My New 3G Internet Connection With The Rest Of The Office I switched to using a Alltel 3G Internet connection when we moved as there really was no other option.  Initially it seemed like it was going to work but after a while reality set in.  Ok, due to the difference in latency, the 3G card seemed faster than the Wildblue satellite connection that I had used for several years.  However, I consistently had a 1.5MB connection with the satellite connection and I rarely achieved more than 800Kbps with the 3G.  For just messing around it worked fine but when it came time to download iso images it just took forever.  I know, I need to have more patience.

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I recently attended a webinar on the Kingston SSDNow V series solid state drive.  As an incentive to watch the webinar they were giving away a five 64GB Notebook Upgrade kits as a door prize. I maybe have won two things in my entire life so I was really surprized when they called my name.  I have been waiting like a kid waiting for Christmas for this to come in the mail (it's a geek thing) and finally it arrived.

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Since installing Linux Mint on my Acer One I have moved all of my desktop machines from Kubuntu to Linux Mint. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and offers "enhancements" to the desktop although the only enhancement that I can think of that I like is the way the menu works.

Anyway, I have to say I have been chomping at the bit ever since the release of Ubuntu 9.10. I guess that is a minor disadvantage of Linux Mint. Since LM is based on Ubuntu, the new release of LM has to come after a new release of Ubuntu. I happened to visit the Linux Mint site today and saw an article on "How to upgrade Linux Mint 8 RC1 to Linux Mint 8 (stable)". My heart leaped a little with excitement until I went to the Downloads page and discovered it was "Still In Development". Going back to the home page and looking more closely it looks like LM 8 RC1 is so close to being stable it is time to go for it.

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I am working on a new network for a customer who has some special needs. Their bandwidth will be provided via DSL and they are going to have several appliances that need public IP addresses: the 3Com V3001 VoIP phone system, the 3Com OfficeConnect WL-537 Wireless DSL Router, and a PC which will control the building and perimeter lighting. The DSL router is an Actiontech M1000 which is a pretty basic router with one LAN port. I set it up as a Transparent Bridge with a block of IP addresses on it. Of course, I would like to set up all of the public IP address appliances with a static address. As it turns out, the router sets itself up as DHCP server which can't be turned off or modified.

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