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Review: The Sansa Clip Plus

Sansa Clip+ Front
Image by Touzeen Hussain via Flickr

[asa]B002MAPRYU[/asa]

We love the Sansa Clip. We bought a 1GB Clip refurbished a while back, and it replaced a slightly more sophisticated player with video playback capabilities. Sometimes, simplicity is more useful. Now, we’ve replaced our 1GB Sansa Clip with a new Sansa Clip Plus(or Clip+).

The Plus offers a slightly sturdier construction, the buttons have been reorganized, and one big new feature…a microSDHC slot for expansion. It also contains the features that we loved about the Clip.

  • It can play FLAC and OGG files.
  • It has good Podcast and Audiobook support.
  • The sound quality is good.
  • It is REALLY small
  • It has a screen, something the Shuffle lacks
  • It has a built in FM radio

We commented on the Clip+ when it first came out. Sandisk advertises the expansion slot as a slotMusic slot. slotMusic and slotRadio were Sandisk’s attempt at selling preloaded microSD cards, which we still insist, on the face of it, is not a bad idea, but never took off. Sandisk’s implementation was not quite what we thought would work. We’d like to see an on-demand kiosk that would allow you to buy files, load them onto the little card, and that could be available in airports and music stores.

That aside, the Clip form factor is the perfect size for sticking into a bag. Everyone we’ve shown it to, even iPod lovers, have agreed that if you are looking for a simple, utilitarian, good quality music player, the Clip is superior to the iPod shuffle and to many other players on the market in similiar price ranges. For those who are Linux users, or like a simple interface, the Clip offers easy loading of new music by copying it over a USB cable. The jack built-in is a standard Mini-USB jack, as opposed to any proprietary plug.

It relies on ID3 tagging to allow you to browse for files to play, but offers Playlist(created on your computer not the device, although this may change), and an folder browse mode to allow you to select by the directories you have put on the device. When we bought it, there was already a new firmware we could load on, which gives us hope Sandisk will continue to maintain it. AnythinButiPod has a list of possible firmware improvements.

They also show how you can get a microSD to SD converter to, with a corresponding increase in size, get cheaper SD as opposed to microSD memory for the Clip.

Elsewhere, the Clip V1 has unstable support for the Rockbox alternative music firmware and other versions may come someday.

The only complaint we could see having about it is that it is so small, it is easy to lose. We’ve narrowly avoided misplacing it a few times for that reason. But a device being too portable is the sort of complaint we can live with.

Update: There is a newer version of the Sansa Clip, called the Sansa Clip Zip. Have not tried it, but the link appears below.

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Published on January 24, 2010
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Didn’t Buy an Ebook Reader – But We Were Alone

The front of the Kindle 1 (Left) and Kindle 2 ...
Image via Wikipedia

For a long time, we wavered on the issue of whether to buy an e-book reader. However, after we got a lot of money this holiday season in Amazon gift cards, we wavered and considered reversing ourselves, even though we have major issues with the Kindle.

This holiday season, for the first time, Kindle books outsold traditional books on Amazon, the Kindle itself was the site’s bestselling product.

But even after this, we don’t think the technology is open enough. We didn’t get into music downloading until Amazon released a DRM-free store. It is all about the freedom.

Our latest contemplation, with the delay of purchasing an e-book reader, is to replace our physical classics with free books from the Google Books project, as they are now available in EPUB format, which can be read using the free and open FBReader. What do you think?

Update: Since this post, we have now purchased a Kindle. The price is now manageable. See below link to current Kindle offering.

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Published on January 3, 2010
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Review: WD TV Mini Player

Western Digital WD TV Mini Media Player Model WDBAAL0000NBK-NESN

Recently, for a limited time, Newegg offered the Western Digital TV Mini Media Player for $40 including shipping. It is currently listed for $59.99.

The Mini is the little brother of the WD TV and the WD TV Live. The basic differences between the three is that the Mini is SD, and the WD TV Live includes networking capability.

The device has its pros and cons. It is very small, and can playback media from any USB drive formatted to FAT, FAT32, NTFS, or HFS. This makes it useful as a portable device, although the slightly larger WD TV and TV Live have much more functionality. The maximum resolution is 720 x 480 for most files. It doesn’t support MKV or H264 either. But it does support XviD, OGG, etc and a variety of other common formats.

It can playback not only video, but music and pictures.

This weekend, we field-tested it. It was able to playback everything within its defined parameters that we threw at it, including two movies, several Revision3 shows, and some audio podcasts.

Ultimately, this device is not something we’d have in our house. Quite franky we don’t need it. But it is a great device, for the price we paid, to stick in a bag and use to playback your digital media at whatever place you happen to be with a minimum of fuss. Reading reviews, two popular uses are to playback ripped movies and to hook into a car entertainment system.

We hope, however, that firmware updates bring additional features to this device in the future. Although we are not holding our breath.

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Published on December 15, 2009
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Thinking about Online Backup

Image representing Dropbox as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Earlier, we were reading LifeHacker‘s Five Best Online Backup Tools. We’ve been in the market for an Online Backup solution. Right now, we use Dropbox.

Dropbox offers a free 2GB account that syncs a directory on your computer to their server. It offers a paid option for a monthly charge of $9.99/50GB or $19.99/100GB, which is a bit too much for our needs. It is a great tool that we use every day, but is, in our opinion, for our most used files…ones often changed. It offers clients for every operating system, which is important.

We need a solution that will work with Linux…our primary operating system. Thus, Mozy or Carbonite is not an option. Assuming we’re keeping to the Lifehacker list, that leaves CrashPlan and Jungle Disk.

Jungle Disk will be changing its pricing scheme this week, according to its blog.

  • Jungle Disk Simply Backup: $2/month, with 5GB of free storage
  • Jungle Disk Desktop Edition: $3/month, with 5GB of free storage
  • Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition: $4/month, with 10GB of free storage
  • Jungle Disk Server Edition: $5/month, with 10GB of free storage

The new plan includes a minimum 5GB of storage. Beyond that, you have your choice of cloud storage providers, either Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files. Both charge 15 cents per GB used, but S3 charges for bandwidth as well.

CrashPlan offers unlimited storage, either an individual unlimited plan for $3.50 a month if you purchase 3 years worth, or a family plan for $5.00 a month if you purchase 3 years worth. It is $4.50 or $8.33 if you buy a single year plan.

At the moment, while we like the idea of online backup, everything we have that is critical fits into the 2GB Dropbox partition and beyond that may not be worth it. Everything else…well, try encrypting it and sending it somewhere safe. Like a safety deposit box…the house of a friend in a different state, or even have your parents store it for you in your childhood home. Mom is certainly a cheap option.

If your friend/relative is willing to trade with you, you can store their emergency backups too.

But what do you think? Should we go for online backup?

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Published on November 16, 2009
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We’re Going to be Trying Epix HD

Image representing Epix as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Over the weekend, Epix HD launched. The network is a joint project of MGM, Paramount, and Lionsgate and offers some of their not-yet-on-DVD movies. One of the nice things is their website will offer on-demand 720p streaming to all subscribers.

Of course, Verizon FIOS is the only network offering the channel, which will cost $9.99 a month. Epix had hoped the channel would be on the standard tier. Meanwhile, to try to find out how many people are interested, Epix is offering 72-hour passes to anyone.

We don’t have FIOS. It would be a serious consideration if we could, considering our issues with our current provider. However, we can try out the service, as can you. We’ll be giving it a shot this week and will keep you posted.

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Published on November 2, 2009
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Review: Wolverine F2D100 35mm Film and Slide Scanner

[asa]B002TKMG92[/asa]

Update: The below review was of the F2D100, since discontinued. The link above is to the Wolverine F2D, a newer version of same. Wolverine offers several less expensive models as well.

Recently, a relative of ours discovered a box of old slides in his garage that had been sitting, untouched, for many years. The logical thing to do with untouched media is to digitize it. then, not only will it last forever, but it is suddenly accessible. New prints can be made at any drug store without problem, it can be added to digital photo frames, displayed online, shared with relatives, etc.

As a side note, we love the idea of loading decades of photos onto a digital photo frame. It allows your entire album to be visible to you, as opposed to just a select group of pictures using conventional means.

The cheapest professional slide scanning we could find was 27 cents a slide. With several thousand, that would turn out to over $500. Even though it would require work on our part, a slide scanner seemed a more economical option. We never expected professional quality results, but we aren’t blowing up our slides to poster size. For digital photo frames and prints 8×10 or less, it seemed good enough. And sometimes, good enough just is.

We read the reviews of many different slides scanners and decided on the Wolverine Data F2D100 scanner for many reasons. One, it does not require a computer, which allowed it to be set up on a table very easily. Slides are viewed on a tiny screen, then saved to a Secure Digital Card.

Specifications

  • 6(H) x 3(W) x 3(D) dimensions in inches
  • 5 megapixel CMOS sensor
  • Scan Quality: 1,800 DPI – 2520×1680 pixels
  • USB powered

Now, we have a simple system for the cleaning of slides prior to scanning. The scanner includes a small brush to clean dust off the backlight in between scans, and you can get slide cleaning supplies. We went with a homebrew solution. A bottle of canned air to blow the dust off the slide and a cheap brush used to clean LCD monitors without scratching them to wipe it off. It isn’t perfect, but both were sitting around our office already.

Below, you can see a sample slide, taken in San Francisco nearly 40 years ago. Click to see full-sized images. You can spot a little dirt still left over, but that could be fixed with a more thorough cleaning of the slides. The first image is exactly as it was when loaded from the scanner. The second is with the picture crapped, and an automatic white balance and color enhance function run on it(as opposed to manual fiddling, which might produce even better results).

Ultimately, the hardest part of the process is the insertion of slides into the slide tray so they can be slid into the scanner. However, Wolverine has replaced the existing tray with one that makes this easier, with a new magnetic lock, as of last month. Unfortunately, we got the old one. We may purchase extra trays anyway, as this would speed the loading process.

Otherwise, this is the perfect item for someone who wants a reasonably decent quality slide scanner.

Slide exactly as Uploaded from Scanner
Slide exactly as Uploaded from Scanner
Slide Cropped and Color Balanced
Slide Cropped and Color Balanced
Published on October 25, 2009
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MythTV 0.22 Release Candidate 1

Component video cable with RCA connections.
Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, MythTV unveiled its version 0.22 Release Candidate 1. It has been almost two years since version 0.21 was released, and the change brings a great deal of welcome changes.

  • Support for the HD-PVR 1212 – The Hauppauge HD-PVR captures analog HD video and digital audio from component video inputs and outputs them over USB using the H264 codec. Since cable companies are encrypting almost all of their content, this device ensures the analog loophole can be exploited. We’ve been using the development version of 0.22 for this reason ever since our cable company shut off our other alternative.
  • VDPAU Support – VDPAU is a feature of certain Nvidia graphics cards that permits offload of processor intensive video decoding, include the H264 codec the HD-PVR uses, from the system processor to the graphics card. Thus a slow system can play back HD content without problem.
  • The User Interface has been ported to a new standard, MythUI. It allows for inheritance and menu animation, and takes layout and behavior away from the program and puts it under the control of the theme. And surprisingly, that simplifies things.
  • Automatic Prioritization, which keeps track of what you watch and uses it to increase the priority of shows watched closer to their recording times over shows that are not.
  • A New Channel Scanner – This is a big one, as instead of adding channels when found, it allows you to decide which channels to select, dividing them into New channels, Old Channels, and several different channel types. For example, every time we scan we find a variety of foreign-language channels. Since we don’t speak those languages, it is pointless to add them. This allows us to tell the system to ignore them on scan.
  • HDHomeRun Multi-Rec Support – Multi-Rec has been supported under MythTV for DVB devices for a while. This extends it to the popular HDHomeRun, which we also happen to have. Digital TV, both cable and broadcast, allows for multiple subchannels to be embedded on the same channel frequency. Multirec allows two subchannels from the same channel to be recorded at once, instead of discarding all but the one you are watching. It means that if your cable system puts the local NBC and CBS affiliate on the same channel, you can record them simultaneously on the same tuner.
  • A score of bug fixes and general handling improvements too numerous to list, but can be checked in the Release Notes.
  • MythBrowser now has support for flash and javascript, which means it could be used for Hulu and other Streaming sites(We have yet to test this feature).
  • MythNews, the RSS reader, now has podcast support(We have yet to test this feature).
  • MythVideo now supports videos stored on the backend. Previously, this required adding the videos as NFS shares. New video metadata grabber scripts are now part of the package, and several other features. The networked option is still in its infancy, and is considered beta till the next version.

There are some additional features that you can review, but essentially, MythTV 0.22 is everything we hoped for after all these months. It can only get better from here. And for US residents, the only possible way this software would not be a great addition to your tech offerings is if the cable company locks down their system so much as to prevent you from using it.

Published on October 15, 2009
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Eee-book on Its Way

Image representing Asus as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Asus, the creator of the EeePC, which launched the netbook craze, wants to break into the E-Book market with a product that could be at least $100 less expensive than current offerings. A proposed model would have two screens, more closely resembling a regular book, as well as many more features than the current offerings, including Skype and such.

This isn’t really outside of the realm of possibility. Take the EeePC versus the proposed Eee-book a step further. Picture a device the size of the original netbook at 7 inches, or even the 10 inch size, turn it on its side, replace the keyboard with a second screen, add in an orientation sensor, a few buttons, possibly a touchscreen, and the ability to plug in a USB keyboard, and it would become a small system that could double as a nettop device. Give it a Linux-based OS, with SD expansion, and 3G or Wi-FI options, and it can do anything.

Technology continues to advance. We’ll see what happens.

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Published on September 7, 2009
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Sansa Clip+: Is slotMusic such a bad idea?

Sansa Clip
Image by barron via Flickr

For the record, we’ve never tried slotMusic. But the idea Sandisk tried to push was the selling of microSD cards preloaded with music. These cards, aside from being preloaded, had nothing special about them. The idea of purchasing quick-load music in a pinch at retail outlets had potential. Of course, it would be better if that could be customized at a kiosk, rather than sold in bundle packaging.

Engadget is a bit unfair to claim that the adding of a microSDHC in the new Sansa Clip+ is merely an attempt to get rid of old inventory. We love the original Clip(pictured right). The size is small…small enough we’ve had trouble finding it. It plays OGG, FLAC, etc. Which allows us a better range of playback options. And it is great for quick on the go music enjoyment.

The addition of an expansion slot makes it even more useful. Aside from that, it incorporates a few stylistic changes. A square instead of round control pad, etc.

The Clip, + or not, is superior to the iPod shuffle in every way. It offers a good screen, configurable options, a built-in radio, etc. The one complaint some people have is the 15 hour battery life. But it is rechargeable, and how long do you need or expect for a player this size?

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Published on September 1, 2009
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We Still Want a Kindle – But We Don’t Want To Want It

Amazon Kindle
Image by davidking via Flickr

Last week, Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle to $299, a reduction of $60. We want a Kindle, but we don’t want to want a Kindle. It is still a bit pricey for its limitations.

What does that mean? Well, the Kindle is the greatest e-book reader out there…not because of its hardware, but because of the sheer amount of titles Amazon offers and the ease of getting them through the Kindle. The smartest thing Amazon could do is license the Kindle source to anyone, and we still await that.

Reports indicate that Amazon is exploring ad-supported Kindle books for additional revenue. Publishers are afraid Amazon will force them to lower their profit margins on e-books. Publishers hope new players like PlasticLogic, FirstPaper, ScrollMotion, and Google‘s e-publishing service could help turn the tables in their favor. But so far, Amazon has an early lead.

We are hoping competition does come along. Google plans to sell readers online access to digital versions of various books, and the books would be cached in their browser when offline. This seems like an improved system. A simple browser plugin could handle this. They appear, for their early copyright-free public domain books, to be working with the ePub format, which is an official open standard.

Our fondest dream is to use the Kindle to free up space. We have so many shelves of books. Some of them could be digitized. We’ve done this when we rid ourselves of most of our VHS cassettes and started to replace audio cassettes with CDs.

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Published on July 13, 2009
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