Category Archives: Hardware

Hardware reviews

Pointless Tab

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware

What do you do when you are trying to keep symmetry in your device, but only have 2 speakers and a volume rocker to fill the spaces? If you’re HP, you’ll hide the serial number barcode on a popout tab in this fourth space.

Naturally, they could have done something useful with the space. Placing a SD (or micro SD) card slot in this location comes to mind. Possibly, this was going to hold the SIM for the 3G version that was never released. Regardless, it is still odd.

-John Havlik

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Cisco Valet Connector (Model No: AM10)

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It seems like whenever Woot is selling a very cheap, or somewhat decent USB WiFi adapter I’ll end up picking one up. In the past I’ve picked up two Netgear WPN111 USB WiFi adapters, and a Netgear WG111t. I’ve never been a fan of either model, but they did the job and were super cheap. A few weeks back, Woot had the CISCO valet connector (Model No: AM10), in new condition, for a decent price (almost went for 2).

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Thoughts on the HP TouchPad

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Two weeks ago, HP managed to create intense interest in a device that was more or less ignored by consumers. Slickdeals redefined the SD effect, taking down every merchant that offered the fire sale price. Several oversold their stock. One in particular, way oversold through Amazon. I attempted to purchase one from this vendor. Like the many other slickdealers, my order was cancelled. Unlike the others, I was only trying to purchase one tablet.

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Canon S90

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware
S90's image is on the left, the SD850's is to the right

After several years of trusty service (the first few months were a battle, but that’s besides the point), I’m replacing my PowerShot SD850 IS with something a little more advanced. Since I’m not ready to take the plunge into the world of DSLR, and didn’t want something terribly large, the S90 fit the bill. Simply put, there are too many things to love about the S90. It’s small (though slightly larger than the SD850), has a fast lens, has a large (for a ‘point and shoot’) sensor, and has a control right around the lens.

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January Already

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Well, the ongoing web coding/design implementation project is taking a little more time than initially expected (well, not necessarily true, but things are going along nicely now). The new HP LP2475w helps with coding and debugging, the extra screen real estate is nice–I’m literally surrounded by screen now. It is too bad that currently no two screens show the same color in my setup. By far my ancient Dell 1702FP shows the truest colors, though the HP LP2475w should be able to match it once calibrated properly. Only one stuck subpixel, naturally it had to be the green one, so on darker colors it sticks out, but on lighter ones is is not noticeable. Thanks to the small size of the pixels, one stuck subpixel is not really a problem. Gaming wise, my system is too weak to push the full resolution to the monitor on any modern games. However, Worms Armageddon supports the 1920×1200 resolution just fine, most maps fit within the screen, which is awesome.

The previously mentioned new plugin will be delayed slightly as, once again, it will use jQuery. Originally it was going to use jQuery, I could not get it to work correctly so I rewrote the JavaScript using MooTools, but I think I can get it to work in jQuery. That is all I will say about that plugin for now.

An update to Breadcrumb NavXT will come out late next week. This is a feature adding release, and so far three things have been improved. I’ll be looking into paged archive/post/page pages for this release, and probably qtranslate support as well (through a wrapper of sorts).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]