Nate's Gadgets, Tips and Reviews

At our house, I've finally made the move to VOIP. After trying several different solutions out, including Skype as a possible VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solution, I've found a solution that seems to offer the quality of service I am looking for at the price I was willing to pay. I'm a landline snob. I enjoy the portability and convenience of cell phones, but frankly, I can't stand the spotty coverage and lower voice quality of cell phones, especially on long phone calls. And with the band my wife and I play in, we have radio interviews from time to time over the phone -- we always do those with a land line phone. I can't image how annoying that would be to conduct a radio interview with someone on a cell phone .... "can you hear me now?" We migrated from AT&T's traditional POTS (plain old telephone service) line to a Comcast converged internet and voice service about 4 years ago. Comcast's voice service was just as advertised - super h...

About 6 months ago one of my clients gave me an iPhone 2G (the original, first generation iPhone) when he upgraded to a 3GS. Prior to that time, I didn't really toy around with the iPhone much, but this gave me a great chance to experience the iPhone and understand how it works. I had been using Windows Mobile as my primary phone, but definitely leaning towards a switch to either an Android or iPhone platform. My wife has had the Motorola Droid on Verizon's network for 6 months, and I've gotten to play with that as well ... it certainly has it's advantages. Three of my friends got the iPhone 4 on the very first day it was available. I got to play with it quite a bit (including discovering the "death grip" problem with the external antenna without 5 minutes of using the phone). I remember seeing a news item about a prototype of the iPhone 4 being discovered in a bar, and it was in a case that made it look like an iPhone 3G. I wonder if all of the prototypes wer...

A few years ago we picked up an HP Laserjet 2605DN printer at Costco for a great price. Our previous color laser was having color image quality problems, so we decided to pass that on to a friend who 0nly needed black and white printing, and we started using our brand new HP. At first, all was well, and the print quality was great. 2 years later, 3,769 pages later, we have replaced the black toner cartridge once, and we just finally ran out of toner on the original color toner that came with the printer (per the official toner readings ... although there appears to be plenty of toner left once we turned on the over-ride - more below on that). Several observations over the years. 1) The default RAM included with the printer proved to not be enough when we were printing images from Photoshop - so I upgraded the RAM to 320MB by adding a 256MB memory card. That seemed to solve the out of memory issues we had. Cost: $50. 2) The printer sometimes fails to respond when printing, even with the...

Well now I have lived with the Macbook Pro for 9 months or so, I've come to admire the good parts of the design, and to reluctantly live with the bad parts. The good: Speakers are great Screen Brightness and Clarity Hotkeys to easily change volume, tracks, brightness Glowing keyboard at night Quiet when using the 9400M video card I love the Expose feature for switching between Apps. The Dashboard widgets are great - very useful and fun Smooth scrolling, multi-touch trackpad rocks! The screen zoom in any application works very smoothly, and I've used it a lot - Windows 7 has a zoom (windows Key +) but it doesn't work nearly as nicely The built-in screen shot utility is great, although Windows 7 has the snipping tool which works fine as well The bad: Boot camp on Windows 7 64 Bit -- it runs nice and fast, but the battery lasts 1.5 hours - come on! I upgraded my Thinkpad from XP to Windows 7 and got an additional hour of battery life - now I get 4 hours on a 3 year old battery...

I recently purchased (on Craiglist) a Macbook Pro (late 2008) Unibody 15.4". I've been using Windows PCs for the last 15 years, but I started with Mac for several years before that, so I thought I would give the Mac a try again, especially considering the Mac can now run PC applications with Boot Camp and in virtual machines using Parallels and VMware Fusion. So I am going to do a series of blogs on my experiences attempting to switch to the Mac, and in the end, whether I decide to keep it or sell it . The first thing I did after getting the laptop was upgrading the Ram to 4GB, and upgrading the 250GB hard disk to 500GB. It was relatively painless, and there are plenty of YouTube videos available to guide you through the upgrade. Screen My previous laptop (which I'm going to hold on to for a while still) was a Thinkpad, 15.4" non-glare high resolution screen (1680 x 1050 - aka WSXGA+). That has been the perfect resolution for me for about 5 years now -- it has a very...

I recently purchased the AT&T Fuze at my local AT&T store, and thought I would share my thoughts on the phone. Pros: Great screen – love how things look with VGA resolution, way better in sunlight! Screen has much wider viewing angle – watching videos in landscape is way better than previous PPCs Like the feel of the keyboard that slides out Like where the USB charger port is, with little beveled edge to guide cable in when plugging it in while in the dark Like the G-sensor – seems accurate Like the touch screen with dialing – the buttons are more responsive when dialing than the Tilt LED light for camera is very bright – with torch application makes a great flashlight (I missed the LED light when I upgraded from Tytn (8525) to Tytn II/Tilt) Microsoft Voice Command works with Bluetooth headset right out of the box, and actually really well Smaller and a bit lighter than the Tilt Built in FM radio if you install the app Bluetooth Range is great Camera is pretty good – better tha...

For anyone out there contemplating buying a smartphone, and thinking about an iPhone versus buying a Windows Mobile based phone, I'd thought I'd give you some of my decision factors: The iPhone has no physical keyboard. Once you type a text message with a real keyboard, you can't go back. Can't cut and paste on the iPhone with built in software - and I like cutting and pasting. No GPS software that can give voice guidance. I use GPS software that gives me voice prompts on my phone, and it works great (Currently using iNAV 4.02). No Voice Command. Nothing beats being able to just say what you want when you're driving, and not worry about voice tags to record, etc. Microsoft Voice Command actually works. Most of the useful apps that aren't toys require money with the iPhone. There is an incredible library of free, useful applications for Windows Mobile (mainly found at XDA Developers website). No Video built-in. My camera can take videos as well as still picture...