I agree with your 2/5 rating. My Ring Pro has been a pain in the ass. I had to get rid of my mechanical doorbell chime because the power kit that comes with the Ring just wouldn't work. Now the Ring Chime that I had to buy to replace the mechanical chime isn't responding to motion or doorbell activity. But it works if you test the various sound options in the app.
That doesn't surprise me as the Ring Pro itself stops working every month or so. It just dies. The fix is to flip the circuit breaker, which brings it back to life until next time. I replaced my transformer with a more powerful one, that has reviews on Amazon stating it works great with the Ring Pro. The app shows the voltage rating as 'Very Good'.
I will say that I haven't had any packages stolen from my front porch since installing it . My neighbors without a camera at their front door can't say the same. But overall the Ring Pro has been headache after headache. I'm going to check out Nest's offering, which I think is out in March. Maybe Amazon can help, but I think they made a mistake.
I've just started playing. So far, I've been using bootcamp. I posted a link to a Linux/OS X launcher in a previous reply. That (https://launchpad.net/pylotro) plus Crossover appears to be working for some. Instructions at http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=200985.
Wow. Someone is selling a DVD that you can download for free. Check out the plasma/lcd forum at htt://www.avsforum.com and download the image for free.
I recently upgraded my 2 year old Panasonic 42" plasma to a Panasonic 50" plasma. Even though I play lots of console games, I've never seen any sign of burn-in or image retention on either one. I followed the advice posted at avsforum, lowering my brightness and contrast (which matched my Video Essentials calibration results anyway) and just used common sense. Not only have the static images not burnt in 'very fast', they haven't burnt in at all.
My Wii arrived from Amazon yesterday (that still sounds weird, I know the Wii jokes were old months ago, but that still sounds weird). Setting up the wireless was simple and quick. Getting the updates from Nintendo took a while though. My first 2 attempts resulted in the dreaded '110213' error. I just tried again. On the third attempt (a couple of hours after the first) it worked.
But I have a feeling that the perception is going to be that if you get a 110213 error, your Wii is hosed.
Current numbers for Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD sales are available here.
I have no idea which of the two will survive (or if either will). It will probably be Blu-ray since I bought the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 this past weekend. I have a Panasonic 50" plasma (not 1080p, it's scaling to 720p/768p) but HD-DVD movies still look MUCH better than standard DVD. If it does die out, at least it was only $200. I'll enjoy Netflix HD-DVD rentals and a few purchases in the meantime.
I've been doing some research the last few days. My understanding of the history is that HD-DVD was released first. Blu-ray (commonly referred to as 'BD' which is short for Blu-ray disc I suppose) has more storage capacity and everyone expected the picture quality to be better. But that didn't happen. The initial BD releases were very disappointing and many people felt that HD-DVD looked better. New releases are apparently equal in picture quality. I think a lot of this has to do with the available drives as well as the mastering process. HD-DVD jumped out to a pretty big lead (not that either has sold a lot) but with the PS3 coming out tomorrow, there will be a lot more Blu-ray owners.
I'm curious to know how many 360 HD-DVD drives have already been sold and how it will continue to sell.
I have the same setup in my '06 Touareg. It has it's limitations (as the parent pointed out), but it's not too bad. I like that the iPod is hidden in the glove box, but don't like not being able to navigate to anything I want to listen to. I've learned to use my iTunes playlists more. I just rename my playlists to change what's available in the car. I prefix the 6 I want with the numbers 1 through 6. That forces them to the top of the playlist menu and makes those 6 available in the car.
I've also found that if you start playing something, pause it and then connect the iPod in the car, you can continue to listen to what was paused. It's not much, but it helps when you have a specific artist or album in mind while on the go.
I thought that the "on the go" playlist was going to save me. My plan was to just add stuff to the OTG list in an effort to gain more flexibility. Unfortunately the OTG playlist always becomes the last playlist on my 4th gen iPod. I even tried prefixing everything else with a 'z' but OTG is always at the bottom.
Panasonic says their displays will go to half-brightness in 60,000 hours. I had to turn the brightness WAY down as part of calibrating it (it was too bright). So if I'm still using this thing in 27.4 years (6 hours a day, every day), I guess I'll have to bump up the brightness a bit.
Although I can type faster than I can write, I prefer to take notes in meetings on my Motion TabletPC vs. pecking away on the keyboard of my laptop.
Others may not be able to, but I can read my handwriting just fine, and my TabletPC does a great job of recognizing it too. I can create new tasks and appointments in Outlook using the pen and Outlook converts it to text. The accuracy is VERY good. Most of my notes stay in my handwriting though and OneNote can search those notes just fine. 2+ years of notes and I can find anything in seconds.
I find that the reason for a lack of TabletPC popularity isn't the pen input, it's that people just don't know about them. I don't know how many times I've had to explain what my tablet is. Most of the time, people think it's a great idea. Obviously they aren't buying them though.:)
Everyone can thank me. I bought Flip4Mac a week or so ago after trying the trial version for several weeks so of course that triggered this announcement. At least it was only $10.
"When in tablet mode, the screen for some reason is not a touch screen, but works if we point the stylus at it."
Yeah, that's kind of the point. The idea is that you rest your wrist on the screen and write like you would on a piece of paper. If it was touch sensitive, that would be a little messy (virtual ink everywhere).
I guess this is Microsoft's problem: No one knows enough about TabletPCs to consider the benefits. Even the "reviews" seem to miss the point on some features. My Motion M1200 is almost 3 years old now and I still love it.
What are these hundreds of files you're searching? Enter your search, click the green arrow and ALL of your notes are searched very quickly. Are you using OneNote? I don't see how you've made this difficult.
Exactly. His experience is the exact opposite of mine. I have more than a year's worth of notes in OneNote. I can find anything within seconds. I recommend OneNote to anyone with a Windows machine. A TabletPC is not required, but it sure is nice to have.
I hope the manufacturers are being honest but I guess we do have to take their claims lightly when it comes to expected lifespans of displays.
From my own personal experience, I don't think I'm just fooling myself to justify my purchase. The first thing I did is calibrate with Video Essentials and my brightness setting is 3 bars out of 32. It's been that way for the 13 months I've had the display. I guess I could use VE again to see if the brightness needs to be tweaked but to my eye, it still looks great.
It's a personal preference thing. I'm glad you like your DLP and I'm even more glad that we have a lot of options when it comes to display technologies. I've had the opposite experience, DLP doesn't look as good to me as LCD or plasma. Judging by what's on display at stores isn't a fair comparison though, so I'm sure I would like DLP better if I saw a calibrated display.
I've been gaming a LOT on my plasma for 13+ months now. No sign of burn-in or fading at all. I haven't noticed an excessive amount of heat either.
I needed something to hang over a fireplace. At the time, LCD wasn't that impressive although I think LCD has come a long way since I was seriously shopping (13-15 months ago).
IMHO, my HD plasma looks incredible. What does look good to you?
What's the durability concern? Panasonic states that a current display will reach half brightness in 60,000 hours. That's 20+ years if you watch 7 hours a day, every day and it's *half* brightness.
I bought a PSP on Thursday (launch day) at Wal-Mart. No one was camped out and I was the first person to buy one at that location. No dead pixels, but I think I'm going to exchange it as the left d-pad button is sticking when I play Lumines every once in a while (typically during "oh crap, I need this block way over THERE moments).
After a few days of playing, I love it. Is it worth $250? That's very subjective, but I think so. I almost wish I had daily commute time that didn't involve driving because the PSP would be a no-brainer if you have an hour or so to kill on a train each day.
I have 3 games, including the 2 which seem to be the 'hot' titles, Lumines, and Ridge Racer. I wanted to trade in some old games for Ridge Racer at EB Games or Gamestop, simply because I felt guilty for spending so much money on the PSP and 2 other games, but it was so hard to find that I jumped on the opportunity to pick it up at Target tonight.
While shopping for other things with my wife this weekend, I came to the conclusion that it's safe to say that people who bought multiple PSPs with the intent to make a buck on eBay wasted their time and money. I've seen multiple PSPs for sale at Gamestop, Wal-Mart, Target and BJ's. Maybe the demand just isn't there, or maybe we can thank Sony for shipping a million of these things at launch to prevent eBay hoarders from ruining it for the rest of us.
I have an iPod so music on the PSP wasn't that compelling to me. However, I did want to see how it handled music files, so I downloaded iPSP for the Mac and created a 'PSP' playlist in iTunes, consisting of an iTunes purchased song along with a regular mp3 file. I had added an album cover image to the mp3 by dragging an image from amazon.com to the song via iTunes. The DRM protected iTunes song wasn't even transferred over when I synced. At least it didn't show up in the PSP's music/memory card menu. The mp3 was there along with the album art. Sound quality was acceptable to me, but I didn't put too much thought into it as I knew I wouldn't be using the PSP for music anyway.
While I probably won't use my PSP for viewing picture slideshows that often, it's a feature I'll use more than music playback. Much like music, iPSP uses iPhoto albums to transfer pics over to the PSP (you can't transfer individual photos over as far as I can tell). So, I transferred over a 'vacation favorites' album via iPSP. Along with video playback, viewing pictures on the PSP is where the LCD display really shines. Displayed pictures look incredible, although the widescreen format of the PSP means you'll have bars on the side unless you zoom the image. That's no fault of the PSP though.
I only have the 32 meg memory stick that comes with the PSP, but I had to see what video looks like, so I downloaded a Star Wars Episode III trailer. Much like viewing pictures, the PSP display does not disappoint. Even more impressive is the Spider-Man 2 full-length movie that is bundled with the PSP. I can't see myself buying UMD movies, but the image quality is breathtaking. It looks as good as DVDs on my plasma although obviously in a smaller form (which might help hide any image quality issues). My wife, who doesn't care about this stuff but tolerates my gadget obesssion, commented about how she can't believe how good the image quality is.
That leaves games. As I mentioned earlier, I guess I'm lucky to have found Lumines and Ridge Racer on release weekend. While the PSP is easy to find, these 2 titles seem to be somewhat hard to track down.
I'm not a big fan of puzzle games. Tetris always seems to blow my mind once the pace picks up a bit and I can't think quick enough to move pieces into the appropriate place. The only 'puzzle' game that I really like is Bejeweled, probably because I can stop to think of what my next move is. I couldn't dismiss Lumines however after reading all of the great reviews. My first couple of games were frustrating, my brain refusing to think in terms of which way to f
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I agree with your 2/5 rating. My Ring Pro has been a pain in the ass. I had to get rid of my mechanical doorbell chime because the power kit that comes with the Ring just wouldn't work. Now the Ring Chime that I had to buy to replace the mechanical chime isn't responding to motion or doorbell activity. But it works if you test the various sound options in the app.
That doesn't surprise me as the Ring Pro itself stops working every month or so. It just dies. The fix is to flip the circuit breaker, which brings it back to life until next time. I replaced my transformer with a more powerful one, that has reviews on Amazon stating it works great with the Ring Pro. The app shows the voltage rating as 'Very Good'.
I will say that I haven't had any packages stolen from my front porch since installing it . My neighbors without a camera at their front door can't say the same. But overall the Ring Pro has been headache after headache. I'm going to check out Nest's offering, which I think is out in March. Maybe Amazon can help, but I think they made a mistake.
I've just started playing. So far, I've been using bootcamp. I posted a link to a Linux/OS X launcher in a previous reply. That (https://launchpad.net/pylotro) plus Crossover appears to be working for some. Instructions at http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=200985.
Linux/OS X launcher:
https://launchpad.net/pylotro
Wow. Someone is selling a DVD that you can download for free. Check out the plasma/lcd forum at htt://www.avsforum.com and download the image for free.
I recently upgraded my 2 year old Panasonic 42" plasma to a Panasonic 50" plasma. Even though I play lots of console games, I've never seen any sign of burn-in or image retention on either one. I followed the advice posted at avsforum, lowering my brightness and contrast (which matched my Video Essentials calibration results anyway) and just used common sense. Not only have the static images not burnt in 'very fast', they haven't burnt in at all.
I'm on my second plasma and I've yet to see ANY sign of burn-in. I even play a lot of games (Xbox, 360, PS2, Wii).
...at least not in all cases.
My Wii arrived from Amazon yesterday (that still sounds weird, I know the Wii jokes were old months ago, but that still sounds weird). Setting up the wireless was simple and quick. Getting the updates from Nintendo took a while though. My first 2 attempts resulted in the dreaded '110213' error. I just tried again. On the third attempt (a couple of hours after the first) it worked.
But I have a feeling that the perception is going to be that if you get a 110213 error, your Wii is hosed.
Current numbers for Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD sales are available here.
I have no idea which of the two will survive (or if either will). It will probably be Blu-ray since I bought the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 this past weekend. I have a Panasonic 50" plasma (not 1080p, it's scaling to 720p/768p) but HD-DVD movies still look MUCH better than standard DVD. If it does die out, at least it was only $200. I'll enjoy Netflix HD-DVD rentals and a few purchases in the meantime.
I've been doing some research the last few days. My understanding of the history is that HD-DVD was released first. Blu-ray (commonly referred to as 'BD' which is short for Blu-ray disc I suppose) has more storage capacity and everyone expected the picture quality to be better. But that didn't happen. The initial BD releases were very disappointing and many people felt that HD-DVD looked better. New releases are apparently equal in picture quality. I think a lot of this has to do with the available drives as well as the mastering process. HD-DVD jumped out to a pretty big lead (not that either has sold a lot) but with the PS3 coming out tomorrow, there will be a lot more Blu-ray owners.
I'm curious to know how many 360 HD-DVD drives have already been sold and how it will continue to sell.
I have the same setup in my '06 Touareg. It has it's limitations (as the parent pointed out), but it's not too bad. I like that the iPod is hidden in the glove box, but don't like not being able to navigate to anything I want to listen to. I've learned to use my iTunes playlists more. I just rename my playlists to change what's available in the car. I prefix the 6 I want with the numbers 1 through 6. That forces them to the top of the playlist menu and makes those 6 available in the car.
I've also found that if you start playing something, pause it and then connect the iPod in the car, you can continue to listen to what was paused. It's not much, but it helps when you have a specific artist or album in mind while on the go.
I thought that the "on the go" playlist was going to save me. My plan was to just add stuff to the OTG list in an effort to gain more flexibility. Unfortunately the OTG playlist always becomes the last playlist on my 4th gen iPod. I even tried prefixing everything else with a 'z' but OTG is always at the bottom.
Panasonic says their displays will go to half-brightness in 60,000 hours. I had to turn the brightness WAY down as part of calibrating it (it was too bright). So if I'm still using this thing in 27.4 years (6 hours a day, every day), I guess I'll have to bump up the brightness a bit.
e t/PlasmaFAQ?storeId=15001&catalogId=13401&langId=- 1&catGroupId=24973#tv6
http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servl
I've been playing video games on my 42" Panasonic HD plasma for 2+ years now. Absoutely no sign of burn-in at all. The 360 looks incredible. :)
I'm about to upgrade to a 50" display. It looks like there isn't an LCD alternative that's 50" or bigger. I'll get another Panasonic plasma.
Although I can type faster than I can write, I prefer to take notes in meetings on my Motion TabletPC vs. pecking away on the keyboard of my laptop.
:)
Others may not be able to, but I can read my handwriting just fine, and my TabletPC does a great job of recognizing it too. I can create new tasks and appointments in Outlook using the pen and Outlook converts it to text. The accuracy is VERY good. Most of my notes stay in my handwriting though and OneNote can search those notes just fine. 2+ years of notes and I can find anything in seconds.
I find that the reason for a lack of TabletPC popularity isn't the pen input, it's that people just don't know about them. I don't know how many times I've had to explain what my tablet is. Most of the time, people think it's a great idea. Obviously they aren't buying them though.
Not all TabletPC's have swivel screens. There are 'slates' available with no keyboard. I prefer the slate.
Where's the XP discussion? I thought we were talking about WoW.
Everyone can thank me. I bought Flip4Mac a week or so ago after trying the trial version for several weeks so of course that triggered this announcement. At least it was only $10.
"When in tablet mode, the screen for some reason is not a touch screen, but works if we point the stylus at it."
Yeah, that's kind of the point. The idea is that you rest your wrist on the screen and write like you would on a piece of paper. If it was touch sensitive, that would be a little messy (virtual ink everywhere).
I guess this is Microsoft's problem: No one knows enough about TabletPCs to consider the benefits. Even the "reviews" seem to miss the point on some features. My Motion M1200 is almost 3 years old now and I still love it.
What are these hundreds of files you're searching? Enter your search, click the green arrow and ALL of your notes are searched very quickly. Are you using OneNote? I don't see how you've made this difficult.
Exactly. His experience is the exact opposite of mine. I have more than a year's worth of notes in OneNote. I can find anything within seconds. I recommend OneNote to anyone with a Windows machine. A TabletPC is not required, but it sure is nice to have.
I hope the manufacturers are being honest but I guess we do have to take their claims lightly when it comes to expected lifespans of displays.
From my own personal experience, I don't think I'm just fooling myself to justify my purchase. The first thing I did is calibrate with Video Essentials and my brightness setting is 3 bars out of 32. It's been that way for the 13 months I've had the display. I guess I could use VE again to see if the brightness needs to be tweaked but to my eye, it still looks great.
http://www.plasma-vs-lcd.com/
Seems like you can't really go wrong with either one. Could be frustrating if you're looking for the 'one true winner' though.
It's a personal preference thing. I'm glad you like your DLP and I'm even more glad that we have a lot of options when it comes to display technologies. I've had the opposite experience, DLP doesn't look as good to me as LCD or plasma. Judging by what's on display at stores isn't a fair comparison though, so I'm sure I would like DLP better if I saw a calibrated display.
I've been gaming a LOT on my plasma for 13+ months now. No sign of burn-in or fading at all. I haven't noticed an excessive amount of heat either.
I needed something to hang over a fireplace. At the time, LCD wasn't that impressive although I think LCD has come a long way since I was seriously shopping (13-15 months ago).
IMHO, my HD plasma looks incredible. What does look good to you?
s ma_microsite_05/flash.asp
What's the durability concern? Panasonic states that a current display will reach half brightness in 60,000 hours. That's 20+ years if you watch 7 hours a day, every day and it's *half* brightness.
http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/pla
I love my Motion M1200, but *if* Apple makes a tablet running OS X, my wife gets the Tablet PC.
A PSP keyboard has been announced, but I don't think a release date has been set.
e 6he5x223r/
http://www.gameseek.co.uk/productdetail/PSPfhyaqc
There are rumors of a new battery release by Sony.
http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000590032020/
I bought a PSP on Thursday (launch day) at Wal-Mart. No one was camped out and I was the first person to buy one at that location. No dead pixels, but I think I'm going to exchange it as the left d-pad button is sticking when I play Lumines every once in a while (typically during "oh crap, I need this block way over THERE moments).
After a few days of playing, I love it. Is it worth $250? That's very subjective, but I think so. I almost wish I had daily commute time that didn't involve driving because the PSP would be a no-brainer if you have an hour or so to kill on a train each day.
I have 3 games, including the 2 which seem to be the 'hot' titles, Lumines, and Ridge Racer. I wanted to trade in some old games for Ridge Racer at EB Games or Gamestop, simply because I felt guilty for spending so much money on the PSP and 2 other games, but it was so hard to find that I jumped on the opportunity to pick it up at Target tonight.
While shopping for other things with my wife this weekend, I came to the conclusion that it's safe to say that people who bought multiple PSPs with the intent to make a buck on eBay wasted their time and money. I've seen multiple PSPs for sale at Gamestop, Wal-Mart, Target and BJ's. Maybe the demand just isn't there, or maybe we can thank Sony for shipping a million of these things at launch to prevent eBay hoarders from ruining it for the rest of us.
I have an iPod so music on the PSP wasn't that compelling to me. However, I did want to see how it handled music files, so I downloaded iPSP for the Mac and created a 'PSP' playlist in iTunes, consisting of an iTunes purchased song along with a regular mp3 file. I had added an album cover image to the mp3 by dragging an image from amazon.com to the song via iTunes. The DRM protected iTunes song wasn't even transferred over when I synced. At least it didn't show up in the PSP's music/memory card menu. The mp3 was there along with the album art. Sound quality was acceptable to me, but I didn't put too much thought into it as I knew I wouldn't be using the PSP for music anyway.
While I probably won't use my PSP for viewing picture slideshows that often, it's a feature I'll use more than music playback. Much like music, iPSP uses iPhoto albums to transfer pics over to the PSP (you can't transfer individual photos over as far as I can tell). So, I transferred over a 'vacation favorites' album via iPSP. Along with video playback, viewing pictures on the PSP is where the LCD display really shines. Displayed pictures look incredible, although the widescreen format of the PSP means you'll have bars on the side unless you zoom the image. That's no fault of the PSP though.
I only have the 32 meg memory stick that comes with the PSP, but I had to see what video looks like, so I downloaded a Star Wars Episode III trailer. Much like viewing pictures, the PSP display does not disappoint. Even more impressive is the Spider-Man 2 full-length movie that is bundled with the PSP. I can't see myself buying UMD movies, but the image quality is breathtaking. It looks as good as DVDs on my plasma although obviously in a smaller form (which might help hide any image quality issues). My wife, who doesn't care about this stuff but tolerates my gadget obesssion, commented about how she can't believe how good the image quality is.
That leaves games. As I mentioned earlier, I guess I'm lucky to have found Lumines and Ridge Racer on release weekend. While the PSP is easy to find, these 2 titles seem to be somewhat hard to track down.
I'm not a big fan of puzzle games. Tetris always seems to blow my mind once the pace picks up a bit and I can't think quick enough to move pieces into the appropriate place. The only 'puzzle' game that I really like is Bejeweled, probably because I can stop to think of what my next move is. I couldn't dismiss Lumines however after reading all of the great reviews. My first couple of games were frustrating, my brain refusing to think in terms of which way to f