Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

28127FE1 28101

Product Category: Phones

Manufacturer: GE (Thompson Consumer Electronics)

Where to Buy: Amazon

Price: $59.99

System Requirements: Standard landline phone or Bluetooth enabled cell phone (comes with two handsets.)

Specifications: 120Vac/ 60Hz; Cell Unit 4.772x2.1122x5.2717;Handset in cradle 3.945x5.0449x5.5709; Ni-MH batteries; headset optional

Pros:

• Easy set up;

• Great features;

• Inexpensive;

• Great coverage.

Cons:

• Bright charging lights;

• Cannot use handset while charging;

• No digital answering capability (GE 28128EE2 has digital answering).

Summary:

The Cell Fusion phone system is a great way to stay in touch when at home while your mobiles are charging. You can also add a landline to the base unit. It is a great way to intercom from room to room as well as monitor a room if you need to track a sleeping child. Like all DECT 6.0 solutions I have seen, up to 6 handsets can be added. The design is clean and fits into most decors.

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"I have a feeling Auto Rip n Compress is going to be everyone’s next “must-have” add-in for Windows Media Center. The add-in allows you to easily rip DVD or Blu-ray movies from your couch using only your remote."

By now, most people should have already converted their video library, but for those of you that have not, or are just starting building your digital library, you might want to consider Auto Rip n Compress. The program does not give you anything new that other programs such as Handbrake, already do, but it does make things really simple, and easy to do from within Windows Media Center itself. In truth, it actually uses Handbrake to do transcoding. The only part which I feel slightly apprehensive about is in order to pull metadata, like the movie description and cover art, you need to register an account with GD3. There are various free online sources for movie data that do not require registration, so why expose yourself when you do not have to? Still, it is great to have another option to archive your DVDs and BluRays.

Skooba Design was a bit slow to catch on to this whole "netbook" thing, but now that they have, they've come out with two products aimed specifically at netbook owners. The first is the Netbook Neo-Sleeve ($19.95 USD), a simple sleeve for netbooks, and the second is the Netbook Messenger, a full-on messenger bag for netbooks which I'll be reviewing later.

The Netbook Neo-Sleeve is made of neoprene, a soft, water-resistant material that's exactly the kind of protection you want for your netbook without it getting bulky. The Neo-Sleeve measures 12"L x 7.5"H x .75"D in size, and can carry a netbook up to 10.1 inches in screen size (or 11" x 7.5" x 1.5" in overall dimensions). This makes it perfect for netbooks such as the HP Mini 1000, HP Mini 110, Acer Apsire One, etc.

However, it doesn't handle the the larger HP Mini 311 or similar netbooks, including the new Dell Mini 10 that has a deeper chassis than the older Dell Mini 10. Just because your netbook has a 10.1" screen doesn't mean it will fit - make sure you check the measurements. I'd love to see Skooba Design release a slightly bigger version of this sleeve, built for 12" netbooks/notebooks. Read more...

"I can't open some of the musical scores I prepared for Broadway shows in the 1980's, because the sheet-music software company went out of business. I know a film editor who can't see the first movie she ever made, because it uses a Sony videotape format that disappeared ages ago. And I routinely hear from readers who can't open their Microsoft Word documents from the early days, because, incredibly, today's Word can't open those early-version files."

Image courtesy of Toms Hardware

David Pogue of The New York Times has blogged about the dliemna he faced with media becoming obsolete. As an example he talks about a film editor who can no longer view a film she made years ago because the Sony videotape format has disappeared. No doubt many of us have experienced this issue with the loss of media such as floppy discs over the years. This leads on to David discussing why we even keep home movies, if the media we save them to now, will be obsolete by the time our children grow up. Will our children even care about those movies when they are adults, will their children care? It's a nice thought provoking article that really raises the issue of how to keep media we treasure as the formats continue to evolve and progress.

"The MSI Wind U135 fell short compared to the competition in terms of software support and battery life. Out of the box the U135 was missing any sort of touchpad software--including on the restore partition--greatly reducing the features. We later found the drivers included on the MSI support website, which brought multi-touch options, as well as simple features like scrolling. Another huge downside to this particular netbook is the battery life, having half the battery life of the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE with the same hardware and only a slightly larger battery. This massive difference in battery life comes from the increased power consumption: The U135 draws almost 8 watts at idle and the 1005PE uses less than 5 watts. Overall the MSI Wind U135 lacked a great deal of polish, but with improvements in power consumption and software out of the box, it would be a great little netbook."

Kind of shocking that the battery performance is so poor compared to a relatively similar machine. Hopefully this is something they can fix rather quickly or else I can't imagine these will sell too well.5

"It's rare to see a rumor -- hell, even a roadmap -- pinpoint the timing of new releases quite so accurately, but our earlier report of ATI refreshing the middle and lower parts of its lineup turned out to be bang on. Following in the footsteps of the HD 5670, we have the Radeon HD 5450, which drags the entry price for DirectX 11 and Eyefinity multi-monitor support all the way down to $50."

It's rare that a graphics manufacturer releases a card aimed purely at multimedia and not gaming, but this is exactly what ATI are doing. Say hello to the HD 5450 which is aimed at people requiring a silent, yet powerful enough card to handle the multimedia requirements we now demand of our Media Center PCs. If that's not good enough news for you, then then price will be - $50.

Skooba Design, the company formerly known as RoadWired, continues to crank out new bag designs and as usual, I'm keen to review them being the bag fanatic that I am. They were among the first companies to release a line of airport security checkpoint-friendly bags, which caught my attention. As someone who always travels with a laptop, I was curious to see if this really would make things easier going through security, so I requested one of their Checkthrough Brief bags, a $139.95 USD bag that comes only in black. I knew it was a sizable bag (17"L x 13"H x 7.5"D, 48 ounces) based on the number of pockets and pouches, so when I traveled to Seattle in November of 2009 for Mobius, I had it crammed full of gadgets. How did the bag work for me? Keep reading - especially since there's a special 20% off coupon for Digital Home Thoughts readers. Read more...

"Unlike its higher priced Japanese counterpart, the LOOX U/G90, the 5.6" multitouch-screened UH900 is available in just a single configuration that includes a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 2GB of RAM, 62GB SSD, Windows 7 Home Premium, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Carrying an MSRP of $999, the 1.1-pound computer is currently being offered as part of a special that gets buyers $150 off with a coupon code and mail-in rebate, free shipping, and either a 160GB Edge DiskGo portable hard drive or a Lexmark X2670 all-in-one printer."

I like the form factor, but I'd like to see a larger screen in the same device. Also, those USB ports on the front seem like they would get in the way of trying to type. Fix that, and make it convert into a tablet at the same price point, and you'd have a total winner. Otherwise, as cool as it is most consumers will select a slightly larger netbook at less than half the price.

"We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen. Longer term, some point to HTML as eventually supplanting the need for Flash, particularly with the more recent developments coming in HTML with version 5. I don't see this as one replacing the other, certainly not today nor even in the foreseeable future."

I will gladly argue, and have argued that Flash is a ciritcal component to getting the whole "web" experience at present. With its pervasiveness at hundreds of major sites, I consider Flash as much a part of the everday web as I consider PDFs a sad reality of government website forms. That being said, Flash definitely needs to be concerned, and it hopefully will be replaced in the future, despite the confidence that Kevin Lynch exudes. Developers will be pushed by management to develop on what will get the most penetration and presumably, costs the least. Right now, Flash is a great, cheap way to get neato dynamic content online. However, there is a growing population, largely driven by smartphones with the iPhone as the leader, that are accessing online that do not have decent Flash support. With the shrinking userbase, companies are going to look to alternative solutions like HTML5, which can serve the whole market. Well, that is unless they buy into this whole "app" thing, and hire developers to make an iPhone app, other developers for an Android app, even more developers for a Maemo app and even some developers for a WinMo app, if it still exists in a few months. Apple is betting that their base of iPhone users, soon to be bolstered with iPad users, is enough to push companies to go an alternate route than deal with Flash. Had the iPad come before the iPhone, it probably would be a different story, but Flash's days may very well be numbered!

"Mississauga, ON, February 2, 2010 - Nikon Canada today introduced eight new COOLPIX cameras to its popular line-up of compact digital cameras, including one Performance-series, four Style-series and three Life-series cameras. Nikon continues to lead innovation in the ever-evolving categories of compact digital cameras as demonstrated with the introduction of a CMOS sensor and 26x optical zoom lens into its flagship Performance-series COOLPIX P100. Nikon has also equipped five of its new COOLPIX cameras across all three series with HD movie capabilities, making creating and sharing memories fun and easy. Elegantly designed compact cameras in vibrant must-have colours to suit personal style are a hallmark of the COOLPIX line, including the new COOLPIX S8000, COOLPIX S6000, COOLPIX S4000, COOLPIX S3000, COOLPIX L22 and COOLPIX L21. Additionally, the new COOLPIX L110 offers 15x super zoom and HD video recording with stereo sound and easy shooting versatility."

Nikon has kicked out a boatload of new cameras, and they've done it at 11pm Eastern Time. It's time for me to head to bed you see, so rather than giving you analysis of what Nikon has released, I'm going to say that the most noteworthy thing I see here is that Nikon is finally offering point and shoot cameras with 720p video - meaning they've caught up to what Panasonic and others were doing in 2008. I'm a huge fan of Nikon DSLRs, but when it comes to their point and shoot cameras, historically they haven't been on the cutting edge. This group of new cameras looks like it's competitive with what's out there now. What do you think? Am I missing anything? Do any of these cameras stand out to you?

The remainder of the press release is after the break, along with a couple of other images. Read more...