louie tran spot – daily gadget blog

Last time I posted the Current Gear that I use on a day to day basis. That was about seven months ago and I’ve practically upgraded everything that I got from my desktop replacement notebook to my smartphone. I’m a gadget addict and I can’t seem to stay with a device for longer than six months. This is what’s currently what I can’t live without:

1. HP Pavilion DV2-1030US – If I was to asked to describe this with three words, I would say “Netbook on Steroids!” This is what replaced my TX2500 tablet because it’s even lighter and is more practical for my needs. I didn’t really need the DVD drive at all times and didn’t utilize the tablet feature as much as I thought so the DV2 was the best way to go for me. This little warrior outperforms every single netbook currently in the market in terms of performance and the size isn’t really that much bigger. It’s only one inch thick and weighs 3.95lbs so you can easily throw it in a backpack and carry it with you especially when you want to travel light. It also comes with an external USB powered DL-DVDRW drive so you can use it just in case. I take this with me when I go traveling and leave the heavier MacBook Pro at home but it runs every application that I need, plays any video file I throw at it, and runs a lot of games just fine. The only issue that I have is the batter will last on average about 3 hours so it won’t last through a long plane ride.

2. HTC Touch Pro 2 - I just recently replaced my THIRD Touch Pro and upgraded to the Touch Pro 2 and have been amazed by it since day one. Without any ROM customizations, this phone performs like a champ right out of the box and the TouchFlo 3D 2 interface is very responsive and beautifully designed. Many reviews claim that this is the BEST Windows Mobile Device in the US market right now and I couldn’t agree more. This device is an incarnation of everything that people wished was on the original Touch Pro and then some. It’s about the same size, screen size, shape, and weight as an iPhone but it has a keyboard and a tilt-able display. I use this phone on the weekdays for work (iPhone for weekends) to send e-mails and text messages back and forth and absolutely love how easy it is to type on the keyboard. A nice addition to this is the ability to link your contacts with their FaceBook profiles so all your friends or contacts will have their FaceBook pictures and info synced to the phone. The Sprint GPS Navigation software comes in very handy to get directions since I’m on the road a lot and the standard sized headphone jack is a nice addition for the Sprint version so I can listen to streaming music, or media from the memory card or YouTube videos without disturbing anyone. I can’t wait for them to come out with a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade for this. Overall, an awesome gadget for the mobile executive.

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I’ve been curious about MobileMe for quite some time and have never bothered taking advantage of the free 60 day trial until I bought and installed an AirPort Extreme router and hooked up my 1TB drive to share it across the network. I read that with a MobileMe account, you can access that hard drive online without having to continuously adjust the IP settings. I’ve been reading about it and saw the mixed reviews and finally decided to take the plunge and try it out… and boy was I disappointed and even more baffled on why people would pay $99 a year for this (even $65 is expensive if you buy it on Amazon).

Going through the trial registration was easy, except that it asks for a credit card but they won’t charge you until day 61 of using this. I’ve set a calendar reminder to cancel it on day 59… I don’t want to take any risks. On the Mac and on the PC, it looks pretty simple using the web interface where you can access your e-mail, photos, calendar, contacts, and idisk. Nothing too really special especially from someone who’s been using Gmail and Windows Live for years. E-mail interface is very simple and matches the OS X interface, but I still prefer Gmail’s because it’s much more intuitive and customizable. Then there’s the contact list and calendar which which is clean looking but no use to me because I use an Exchange server to sync with my iPhone and Touch Pro.

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Sound issue I was complaining about earlier (volume goes to 0 after reboot) has been fixed! I found this solution on the MacTalk forums!

In ” Macintosh HD / Library / Preferences / Audio ” there are two audio setting files. Delete them. Set your sound to the desired setting. Restart.

You may have trouble logging on after a restart, if this happens… just power off your Mac for 10 seconds, then turn it back on. Your sound issue should now be fixed!!

Thanks for the post mattnotley2004!

For a couple of days, I couldn’t get my Bluetooth mouse to work in Windows XP with the BootCamp 3.0 drivers which was quite frustrating since I am dependent on the mouse when running my Windows applications on MacBook Pro. I searched all over Google and found the solution below. However, before starting the process stated below, I uninstalled the Bluetooth device in Device Manager along with the HID Compliant Mouse to get this solution to work.

Quote http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2001613&tstart=0

1 – Load the ‘Add a device’ dialog for bluetooth

7 – When done, your device should disappear from the list and should now have functionality (although from my experience not exactly perfectly consistent pairing).

This works on my MacBook Pro (late 2008 unibody)