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Apple Magic Mouse Review

// November 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews, Technology

Apple Magic Mouse with Razer Pro|Pad

The world’s first Multi-Touch mouse is here! Is it really that good?

Pros

Being an iPhone user, the use of gestures for the mouse is most welcome. The ability to do momentum scrolling like the iPhone and iPod Touch makes scrolling up and down a lengthy webpage effortlessly.
No more irritating wheel sound doing up/down scrolling with normal mouse.
The powerful laser tracking is higly sensitive and responsive.
The design of the Magic Mouse makes it suitable for both left and right handed mouse users.
Easy to clean as there’s no buttons or scroll ball found on the mighty mouse

Cons

Tracking speed is still relatively slow even though tracking speed has been set to the maximum. My Razer Pro|Click 1.6 wired mouse with tracking speed set to 50% moves way faster.
The mouse skates beneath the Magic Mouse do not move that smoothly on a smooth wooden surface table
Gestures do not allow access to Expose

Overall rating: 6/10

Nike+ SportBand with SwitchEasy RunAway Review

// October 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews, Technology

Bought the Nike+ Sportband (available in Pink & Yellow) from Nike Wheellock Place in Singapore and the SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter from Epicentre which is just opposite the same Nike store.

Test setup:
iMac 24″ (Snow Leopard)
Asics Gel-Kayano 14
Nike+ Sportband
Nike+ iPod Sensor
SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter

After installing the Nike+ Utility. Connect the Nike+ SportBand Link to the USB Port on the iMac to customize settings as well as charging the battery.

Charge the Nike+ SportBand Link by connecting it to a USB port

After charging and customization of your user settings on the Nike+ SportBand Link, connect the SportBand Link back into the band.

Connect the SportBand Link back into the band

The back of the SportBand Link being secured to the band by a strap pin

The back of the SportBand Link is also being secured to the band by a strap pin

SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter

Nike+ SportBand, iPod Sensor with SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter

Using the SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter with non Nike+ shoes

SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter tilt, lift and slide locking pin into groove

Slip the SwitchEasy RunAway adapter under the first 2 of the crossed shoelaces

Sensor secured, ready to go!

Conclusion – Pros

The Nike+ SportBand material is very comfortable to the wrist
Nike+ iPod Sensor works well with the SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter. Out of box calibration is very accurate with the Nike+ SportBand over a 600 meters test run
SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter is firmly secure and does not move around if correctly installed amongst the shoelaces
Toggle button (on the side) of the SportBand Link allows easy cycling through your distance, pace, time and calories burned
Be part of the biggest online running community, the Nike+ website allows you to upload your runs, share and communicate with your friends who are also on the Nike+ community and lots more.
SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter is cheap to replace

Conclusion – Cons

Out of box calibration is slightly off for walks. Accuracy for a 600 meters walk incurs additional 5 to 10 meters. If you want spot-on accuracy, perform the calibration in a stadium (walk and run of the same distance) and adjust it against the Nike+ utility.
Plastic locking pin of the SwitchEasy RunAway Adapter looks fragile, might break when you are running amongst packed runners
Due to curve design of the Nike+ SportBand Link, upon inserting into the USB slots at the back of the iMac, it’s physical build took up 2 x USB slots
Nike+ SportBand Link do not have backlight feature. Not suitable for running in limited light conditions.

Overall combined usage rating: 8.5/10

Shi Ning RM668 HDMI Full HD Media Player Review

// October 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews, Technology

Shi Ning RM668 HDMI is a multi video file format HDMI player that supports full HD playback.
Currently Bizgram is selling it at a stock clearance price of $139 SGD with a free HDMI cable.

03 x KORG Nano Series Controllers at $205!

// September 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Get all 3 Nano Controllers (nanoKEY, nanoKONTROL, nanoPAD), carrying case and USB hub for only $205 SGD! More great deals available at citymusic.com.sg!

KORG nano Series

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 (10A432)

// August 15th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Technology

Performing an upgrade from Mac OS X 10.5.8 to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Build 10A432 on a MacBook Unibody 2.0GHz. Overall Snow Leopard looks exactly the same as Leopard.

However, the disk capacity clearly benefited with an improved filesystem.
Users will have close to the disk capacity they paid for.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 (10A432)

PhotoForge for iPhone

// August 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews

The Photoshop equivalent on the iPhone. PhotoForge provides most of the essential tools you will need to fine tune/edit photos on your iPhone. Available at the App Store for USD$2.99.

Opening an existing photo, choose the required filters.

Adjusting the Curves to improve the highlights & exposure.

Go-Vibe USB DAC Review

// July 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews, Technology

Bought the Go-Vibe USB DAC from jaben today and give it a try on my Apple iMac with Etymotic Research ER6.
It’s plug-n-play, detecting the USB device as “Burr-Brown Japan PCM2702″.
Sound output through the DAC sounds much crisp and cleaner compared to using the default iMac audio jack output.

System Preferences showing Go-Vibe DAC as Burr-Brown Japan PCM2702

Mini DVI to HDMI Adapter Review

// July 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Reviews, Technology

The retail Mini DVI to DVI cable purchase from Apple store did not work properly with my iMac 24″ 2.8ghz Core2Extreme and the BenQ G2400W 24″ LCD monitor. Using the Mini DVI to DVI cable, the secondary display (BenQ G2400W) cannot run at 1920×1200 resolution but only at a maximum of 1600×1200.

Aiming to solve the limitation to the display resolution on the BenQ, I’ve ordered the Mini DVI to HDMI cable from monoprice.com to give it a try.

Monoprice.com Mini DVI to HDMI Adapter

Surprisingly, the Mini DVI to HDMI adapter works very well and has no problem displaying 1920×1200 @ 60khz on the BenQ monitor!

Picture quality output via HDMI on the BenQ is amazing as always. Build quality of the adapter is great, definitely worth the USD$7.75!

G.ho.st Virtual Computer Public Alpha

// July 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

G.ho.st offers every person in the world a free Virtual Computer (VC). G.ho.st is simply pronounced “ghost”, an acronym of Global hosted operating system (written G.ho.st with two dots because a URL (web address) must have dots!). The G.ho.st Virtual Computer includes almost everything you would have in a physical computer – a desktop, file storage (like a disk drive) and applications (apps).

A test to create an excel sheet using Zoho Sheet failed while inputting the data into the spreadsheet cells. The error “The server has encountered a problem. Reopen the spreadsheet and try again” occurs time and time again. Thus even though the spreadsheet is created, data within it cannot be saved.

Accessing public files folder to search for a media file to perform a playback test.
Playing back a media file using the mediaplayer built within G.ho.st is fairly quick with my 8Mbps ADSL2+ line. Video & audio playback is perfect (it’s like playing back a local file) but you do have to wait a few seconds for video buffering prior to the video autoplay.

As the service is still in it’s public alpha stage, it does have a lot of bugs to resolve.
It’s definitely a product to look forward to in the near future when it’s at it’s beta stage.
The overall Virtual Computer speed and access is highly responsive, just like your local virtual machines.