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By leo.flor, October 19, 2012 11:40

Since I typically write about some product about a month or two after I acquire it, I don’t often comment about durability or ownership over an extended period of time; that is what I’d like to do with this post.  Here are a couple of products I’ve written about in the past and some quick comments about how I feel about them now.

Recently I explored upgrading to an iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S3 but didn’t feel either offered enough value to jump to without a full phone upgrade credit from my provider (Telus).  The maps issue I find disconcerting on iOS while the Android phone just didn’t inspire me to part with my money.  Anyway the longer you wait for technology the more you get.  It’s rather amazing to me how the smartphone market has evolved into such a state where people treat these expensive, sophisticated devices as so disposable.

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By leo.flor, September 5, 2011 15:00

I needed a new vehicle to deliver audio from various music players to my brain after I lost my Skullcandy earbuds; decided to take it to the next level since I wasn’t fully happy with them anyway.  Like most headphones, the wire eventually weakens on the connection so over time you lose hearing in one and then both ears.  These were already replaced once through their great warranty but I was reluctant to go through the process again; it was a sign.   Plus I had a gift card that was collecting dust so I decided to check out these Dr. Dre headphones that seem to be increasing in popularity.   I would gladly rock the bigger, badder over-ear models but  I was going for small, light and easy to put away.

These are definitely next-level headphones.  Whether you’re listening to classical or rock or hip-hop you can hear everything on the track very crisply.  The bass is nice and deep; it will move you.  The microphone is quite good, I used it with Dragon Dictation to record this blog post.

The on-cord remote for controlling volume and playback is pretty solid albeit biased to Apple products; it easily controls my iPod nano, my iPad and even my MacBook.  It works splendidly answering calls and controlling music play on iPhone (4).  I say biased because it doesn’t control my BlackBerry Torch very well (known issue).  In fact I can’t even use it as just a normal headset for talking on the phone, there seems to be some incompatibility (works with my wife’s Blackberry Curve 8900 though).  Monster and Research In Motion better work this out because it’s ridiculous for this not to work.  On Android (Motorola Xoom) the remote is only good for starting and stopping playback, all three buttons do the same thing.

It comes with all of these accessories that you see in the picture.   There are earbud attachments of different sizes as well as this adjustable over-ear wire which is handy if you want to be active while using them.  The case is very durable although bigger than I want it to be; I suppose they need to be big enough to house the entire unit.

All in all it is a solid product.  My research indicates the squarish, rubber-like wire (patent pending) is more durable than regular headphone wires.  They are expensive headphones, hopefully the cost is mitigated by them lasting a long time.

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By leo.flor, June 22, 2011 10:31

After my laptop committed suicide (a contributing factor to why I haven’t blogged in a while!), I had decisions to make as to what I was going to replace that decrepit, obsolete piece of junk with.  I started my process in the same logical way I evaluate most devices: examining my interface with said equipment, namely the keyboard and screen.

A disturbing trend that I’ve noticed with laptops in Canada is the need to want to support French on the keyboard.  Frankly I don’t utilize enough French to make it worth it for one of my primary interfaces to be compromised.  (My problem with the multilingual keyboard is the placement of the enter and shift keys (as Peter so eloquently points out on his blog), among the MOST USED keys on a keyboard!)

It is crucial to your laptop experience to have a worthy screen and video card.  Your eyes will gaze upon this thing for countless hours, you want it to be pretty.

Lastly, your machine has to be fast and stable.  Nothing worse than your computer crashing constantly or it taking forever to open Windows Explorer (*cough* Vista *cough*).

After weighing all of these factors, I bought myself a refurbished Macbook Pro 15″ with anti-glare screen (support for 1680×1050 resolution, perfect for my eagle eyes). Refurbished on the advice of a friend who always buys refurbished Mac machines for his business, also Apple has a great warranty and they test the heck out of the refurbs, I’m told.  Most of these are just open-box returns anyway, good way to save a couple of hundred bucks.

At first I wanted to stick with PC but none of the laptops I looked at really did it for me.  Perhaps I was soured by my recent experiences with Microsoft OSs but something told me it was time to look at Apple. After all, my iPad has proven to be a useful, elegant tool, why not give their laptops a look.  I figure if I wanted to get nostalgic, I could always install Windows with Boot Camp or run Parallels.

Likes:
I splurged on the screen upgrade because I want to see a lot of screen real estate.  And call me spoiled but since I’ve been working from home much more frequently, I wanted to be able to sit in the sun and stay connected (it’s summer, get outside!).  Also, Spaces (virtual desktop) is beautiful, reminds me of the Unix machines I worked and played with for Computer Science courses at the University of Waterloo and my first programming job (I had an SGI on my desk).

Speaking of nerding out, I love that Terminal allows me to truly relive those Unix glory days.  I may have to break out a shell programming textbook!

LOVING Apple shortcut keys and gestures on the Multi-Touch Trackpad.  As I anticipated, I easily adapted to new shortcuts.

Dislikes:
Price – Time will tell whether I got what I paid for.  So far, so good.