Go-Vibe USB DAC Review

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

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
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

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.