ComputerDumb.com

Posts Tagged ‘gadget’

The NY Times will flip the switch on its digital paywall next Monday, and the Grey Lady don’t come cheap: $15/month for the website and the phone app, $20/month for the website and the iPad app, or a wallet-singeing $35 for web, phone, and iPad. But there are loopholes! And they are generous. Here’s your game plan.

Read For Free

As much as a paywall might get your hackles up, the folks running the Times understand that no amount of digital subscription revenue would make up for the sting an page view exodus. That’s why—in addition to 20 free articles … [Read More...]

Here at Wired, we take things very seriously. Correction — we take protecting our desks and planning sneak attacks on our coworkers very seriously. We put some different office warfare gadgets to the test.

First on our list was the USB Thunder Missile Launcher ($36). Download the free controller software, plug in the launcher to your Windows laptop or PC via USB (a Mac update is in the works), and use your mouse or arrow keys to aim and shoot. Since the launcher doesn’t include a webcam, ballistics are a trial-and-error affair. But it’s surprisingly easy — my first shot … [Read More...]

It’s official: 2011 is the year of incremental progress. Mobile handsets have settled into a groove featurewise and are now gently nudging their way upward in speed, power and capabilities.

If we’re going to be stuck in a climate of baby steps, at least Samsung’s Galaxy S 4G is an example of baby steps done right.

From the moment I got my mitts on the S 4G, something felt eerily familiar. I’d seen many of its elements before — the unsettlingly light chassis, the glass and faux-chrome accents, and even the flashless 5-MP camera. As it turns out, the feeling of … [Read More...]

Everybody wishes the iPad 2 had a higher-resolution display like the iPhone 4, but Apple didn’t even have to go there yet.

All Apple did was put the iPad on a treadmill. The tablet shed some weight and gained some speed to become the iPad 2, and it’s incredible what a difference that makes. It feels like a brand-new product.

Most important of all is the iPad 2’s thinness. The iPad 2 is 0.34 inches thick, about 33 percent thinner than its predecessor. Now, reaching your fingers across the screen to swipe and tap is far easier than it was … [Read More...]

Pop quiz: How do you find the volume of a cube?

If you said, “Multiply the length of one side by itself twice, duh!” you’re technically correct, but also wrong.

In the case of TDK’s 10″x10″x10″ Sound Cube, here’s the answer: Locate the knob that goes to 11.

This is not a joke. This boombox’s volume control maxes out at 11 (yes, that’s a reference to This Is Spinal Tap). But all kidding aside, this sleek speaker cube puts out some serious sound. It’s not just that the two 5.25-inch coaxial drivers really crank. Or that there’s crisp quality … [Read More...]

Thunderbolt to compete with USB 4.0 rather than USB 3.0

A Thunderbolt chip inside Apple’s newest Mac Book Pro (image courtesy ifixit.com)

If Intel thought that launching Light Peak would help tamp down the nervousness over its new I/O technology, it certainly isn’t playing out that way.

Light Peak, now dubbed Thunderbolt, was never without controversy but now that it’s finally here, the critics aren’t ready to put away the slings. After its launch, the New York Times opined: Is Thunderbolt Really a Thunderbolt? and questioned its consumer value. Slate wondered if it was a worthless grasp at the past? … [Read More...]

Ultralights aren’t for everyone, but with the ThinkPad X220, Lenovo sure is doing its best to make the case that they can be.

This latest version of its super-slim executive standby is ThinkPad doing everything it does best. Still impossibly portable — at 3.3 pounds despite the bumped-up 12.1-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel display — Lenovo packs in everything a traveling professional (or just about anyone else) is likely to need.

The centerpiece is a new Core i5 “Sandy Bridge” processor, which upends the middling performance usually expected from an ultralight. Benchmarks trounce just about everything we’ve tested of late — … [Read More...]

Spring is near! The sun is shining, the weather is warming and holy what the mothercakes, gas is four dollars a gallon right now?! And what mister newscaster? It’s going to get more expensive? Geez! This is getting out of hand. We all would appreciate saving some money on gas. Here’s how.

Fill Up at Cheaper Gas Stations

Filed in: duh. But, seriously, filling up at cheaper gas stations, no matter how minuscule the difference, saves you money in the long run. And it’s not hard to find the cheap stations! Start with GasBuddy, a free app on both Android … [Read More...]

Yes, it looks like something out of a ’50s sci-fi flick. But its sound is the aural equivalent of a swimming pool filled with French vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate-dipped diamonds.

Go ahead and snort at the price — $600 is a lot of cheese for an iPhone dock — but the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air is simply the best set of multimedia speakers in its class. The quality and clarity of the audio that comes out of this monolithic oval is jaw-dropping, and anyone who’s serious about hi-fi gear will see this price tag as a bargain, … [Read More...]

Yes, it looks like something out of a ’50s sci-fi flick. But its sound is the aural equivalent of a swimming pool filled with French vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate-dipped diamonds.

Go ahead and snort at the price — $600 is a lot of cheese for an iPhone dock — but the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Air is simply the best set of multimedia speakers in its class. The quality and clarity of the audio that comes out of this monolithic oval is jaw-dropping, and anyone who’s serious about hi-fi gear will see this price tag as a bargain, … [Read More...]

As Sly Stone said, the nicer the nice, the higher the price.

The question is, is the more expensive Xoom nicer than the comparable iPad?

The experience is markedly different, that’s for sure. Anyone familiar with Apple’s market-leading tablet — and the Xoom invites the comparison — will face a few moments of disorientation when picking up the Xoom for the first time. A few details are unsettling to iPad users, such as the location of the power button (on the rear of the device), the lack of front-facing command buttons, and the unfamiliar location of the volume rocker.

Those … [Read More...]

I’m not always sure where HTC draws its inspiration from. But the new Inspire, the latest top-tier Android phone offered by AT&T, definitely filled me with a sense of déjà vu.

Like HTC’s EVO 4G and HD2 before it, the Inspire is a hefty, slate-style smartphone. Below the huge 4.3-inch 480 x 800 WVGA touchscreen lies the usual strip of capacitive navigation keys. Centered on the upper portion of the phone’s back is the standard protruding camera lens. Everything else — from the brushed aluminum body to the recessed volume and power buttons — follows the same pragmatically drab … [Read More...]

The security screening procedure at the airport typically provides about as much enjoyment as a graduate-level macroeconomics lecture, so it was comforting to know I had one less hassle when I approached the conveyor belt at the TSA checkpoint the last time I flew: I didn’t have to remove my 15-inch MacBook from my backpack.

My notebook was stowed inside a Big Ben backpack, which is made by Victorinox Swiss Army, the same folks who make the knives, watches and other assorted travel gear. The Big Ben has a separate Security Fast Pass sleeve — basically, a laptop compartment inside … [Read More...]

The first thing you’ll notice about the Moshi Moshi 04 is its 1960s-inspired Eero Saarinen styling. So cool-looking is the brushed aluminum and high-impact plastic hunk of eye candy, it almost makes the handset’s impressive functionality seem secondary.

But as seductive as the design is, the Moshi Moshi 04 knows too many tricks to be considered just a pretty curio. In fact, it does triple duty on your desktop — it’s a handset you can use to make phone calls, a speaker phone for conference calls and a … [Read More...]

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say it will end in ice. I hope it’s the latter. Finding a good ice cube to chill your cocktail is hell enough as it is.

Being serious about drinking means being serious about ice. And at a good bar, this is rarely a problem, as top bartenders have an easy shortcut: Kold-Draft icemakers. Kold-Draft’s perfect 1¼-inch cubes are legendary in the mixology scene, but the equipment isn’t remotely approachable for the home user: The company’s smallest unit ($2,500 street) produces 321 pounds of ice a day and … [Read More...]