Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

DVR by the numbers: How much does owning a DVR really cost?

during the process of sorting-out if I’m going to keep TiVo or ditch it for Moxi, or even a Vista CableCard Home Theater PC, I ran some numbers and came to some interesting conclusions. I compared the overall cost of ownership of different digital cable-ready HD DVRs, including a TiVo HD with and without expanded storage and 3rd party upgrades, the TiVo XL HD, the newly launched Moxi DVR with and without expanded storage, the average cost of CableCard equipped HTPCs, and a service provider rental DVR. The total cost of ownership was figured at 1, 2, 3 and 5 years, with both prepaid and monthly service plans calculated. I also took a look at multi-room DVR solutions.

Dash Express GPS Post-Mortem

When I last took a look at the Dash Express GPS unit, I was hopeful. The unit had its problems, but the company seemed headed in the right direction. That was a while ago. Since then, I had to trade in two (2) defective units, and the company announced they would switch to being a software provider only and would no longer be making their own hardware. Oh, and they played the CEO shuffle and laid-off 50 employees.

What happened?

Guess I’m going to have to buy Aliens again…

Black Friday last week was kind to me, as I was able to acquire a Sony BDP-S350 Blu-Ray player greatly discounted.  I was quite unimpressed with my first shopping experience at Conn’s, however, which is like an electronics store staffed entirely with the pathetic salesmen from Glengarry Glenn Ross.  A trip to Fry’s netted me [...]

Good times on the Web

I’ve gushed before about my web browser preferences, but these are exciting times for web surfers. Since the world-wide-web came into existence, web browsers have been like Sith – there are only two…two that count, anyway. And just like Sith, they may play nice while secretly desiring to destroy the other and rule [...]

Thoughts on big breasted women with swords and the importance of data backups

Warning: incomprehensible nerdish ahead.  Translation follows after the next two paragraphs.
While browsing Digg just the other day, my monitor started to display all sorts of strange artifacts.  Being the sensible, computer-literate type, I decided to reboot to attempt to fix the problem.  Not only was I greeted with more strange dots and artifacts upon boot [...]

Dash Express GPS review pt. 3 – Almost there…but not quite yet

I covered a couple of problems with the Dash Express GPS receiver in part 1 and part 2 of my review, but there’s a growing list of frustration with the Dash that make it feel like I’m more of a beta tester instead of a paying customer.

Routing Issues – The primary function of a GPS [...]

Firefox, Schmirefox

Apparently, Firefox 3.0 was released this week, which is like some kind of big deal or something.  I wouldn’t know.  Opera 9.5 making it out of beta, now that’s a big deal.  Opera runs circles around Firefox, is more customizable, and more attractive (especially with the new version).  It also displays pages better (although, I’m [...]