April 06, 2005

Bissell ProHeat ProTech Steam Cleaner — Mini Review

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Spring is here! To celebrate, I borrowed a friend’s Bissell ProHeat ProTech Steam Cleaner that he picked up at Costco for just under $200. The ProHeat is pretty impressive. You load it up with hot tap water in one chamber and carpet cleaner (available at most major supermarkets) in another. Plug it in, turn on the heater and suction, and you’re off. It’s well balanced, so pushing it around is really easy. A trigger on the handle turns on the water/cleaner which you can see getting sucked back up into the dirty-water reservoir (and I mean dirty).

My friend said that he had hired a professional to clean his carpets before he purchased the Bissell. He really didn’t like the job the “pro” did, so he picked up the Bissell which he said did a much better job.

The Bissell did a great job on my carpet which had several food stains here and there. I don’t think that I’d buy one for myself, since I don’t have own a house, but it’s great to borrow. If I did own a house that had a lot of carpet, it’d probably be worth it.

March 23, 2005

Microsoft Smartphone Bitch — More on the Audiovox SMT5600

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Ugh! I just found out that my Audiovox SMT5600 (that I did a mini review on here does not mount as a normal drive). You know, something that any USB drive does these days. Instead it appears as a special Mobile Device thingy mounted to My Computer in the Windows Explorer. WTF?

Now I can’t use my cool photo-downloading application (Downloader Pro from Breeze Systems). It can’t “see” that special Mobile Device thingy.

You know what I think? I think this smells like some sort of DRM fiasco. Smells like someone is trying to protect some lame-ass ringtone downloads from being copied or some such thing. Either that or Microsoft’s Smartphone Product Marketing Managers don’t know what they are doing.

I can help if it’s the latter.

  • The Smartphone when connected to the user’s PC shall mount as a drive accessible to applications such as, by way of example, a photo downloading application.

Cut-and-paste that into the damn product marketing requirements document. Either that or stop screwing us with DRM.

March 15, 2005

Audiovox SMT5600 Smartphone Mini Review

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I’ve been thinking a long time about upgrading my old Nokia 8265 mobile to something a little more modern. The 8265 is a TDMA phone that runs on AT&T Wireless Service’s network (now part of Cingular). Cingular is moving to an all GSM network, so folks with TDMA phones will be orphaned at some point. That point for me was a couple of months ago when the TDMA service in my area began acting really flaky… dropping calls all the time, service disappearing from areas, etc. This finally convinced me to upgrade both my phone and service.

My criteria for the new phone included: a “candy bar” form factor (as opposed to a flip phone), no external antenna (ruling out Verizon), internet capability and a size approximately equal to the 8265. My preference would have been to stick with Nokia, since my 8265 has served me well over the past four years or so (including numerous hard drops onto hard surfaces). However, all of the current Nokia phones are either two large and/or just plain ugly. Pretty much the only phone that met my criteria was the Audiovox SMT5600.

Size and Design
This SMT5600 is a great size easily fitting in your pocket. It looks great too. Hey, a female friend of mine told me the phone looked “cool” completely unprompted. But like most phones, it’s very slippery so hold on tight or you’ll see it bouncing across the floor. Hum… I might have to invest in some egrips.

Sound, Network and Phone UI Features
The sound and call quality are acceptable as is the network coverage (but being “acceptable” in the US is a very low standard). One thing that could be improved is the speaker. You have to place your ear directly over the little speaker hole to hear anything.

The phone UI features verge on awesome — mostly very ergonomic and quickly accessible. For example, you can quickly lock the keypad by holding down the large, red “hang up” button. Another clever UI feature is the unlock function. Instead of pushing the unlock softbutton once followed by the “#” key to unlock the phone, you have to push the unlock button twice followed by the # key. Originally, I didn’t like this (why push a button twice?), but I have found that it makes sense. You can quickly access the homescreen of the phone (which displays the time and other useful information) with the first push, while the second push displays a message to hit the # key to unlock the phone. One nit about the unlocking feature is that it is a hard thumb movement. That is, it is a natural thumb movement to move down the keypad to the from the unlock key to the * key (as on my old Nokia), but very unnatural to move down and across the keypad to the # key. Details count in something you use ALL THE TIME.

Other functions like contacts can be quickly accessed through the contacts softkey. Call history can be filter to display only missed calls, made calls, etc.

The supplied stereo headset is very uncomfortable in the ear, and not really loud enough. Sometimes I have to risk a ticket by using both of the ear buds just to hear the caller — it’s illegal in California to wear a stereo headset while driving. In addition, even though my old Nokia headset is compatible with the phone (since the phone uses a standard 2.5 mm jack not a proprietary jack like the new Nokias), the sound level is just too low for me to use it.

Texting
Texting on the SMT5600 is a bit of a mess. The menu structure of the texting application really needs to be changed. I commonly get into situations while texting where I don’t know what button to hit next. Overall, the texting application feels very uneven and amateur.

On the good side, T9 is supplied with the phone, which makes text messaging more rapid. The * button acts as toggle between T9, numeric and “normal” entry modes. It’s also easy to access the symbols menu by holding down the * key.

Keypad
The feel of the keypad is good. Button sizes in general are acceptable, but the # and * keys could be a bit larger. These keys are rounded off to make them look better. However, the five-way navigation button (the big, silver button in the middle of the phone) is flawed. The up, down, left and right functions are fine, but the middle push (pushing down the entire button) is terrible. Even after a couple of months of using the phone, I still activate a direction click instead of the desired middle click about half the time. Unfortunately, you use the middle click button a lot.

A Quick Bit About the Software/Operating System
The SMT5600 run Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition which doesn’t have a large install base (compared to Windows Mobile PocketPC version), so software for the phone is somewhat limited but growing. The default software supplied with the phone is very Microsoft centric, so most of it I don’t use. For example, you can only synchronize your contacts through Outlook. Since I don’t have Outlook bloatware loaded on my machine, I’m not about to install it just to synchronize contacts. This forced me to manually input my contacts into the phone — a pain, but not that big a deal.

Also included is a phone version of Windows Media Player which is something I’ll probably play around with once I get a miniSD memory card for the phone.

Camera
The camera on the phone is fine — about as good as the first Sony MVC-FD73 Mavica floppy disk based digital camera I purchased in 1998ish. To qualify, when I say “fine,” I really mean “not entirely useless” as I had expected it to be. It’s pretty convenient to have a camera with you all the time. You can take pictures to remind yourself of things such as cool designs or products that you want to look up later on the web. For those things the camera works well. For great pictures however, use a real camera.

Stability
I’d rate the SMT5600, or more generally the Windows Mobile OS, as somewhere between Windows 98 (crash-o-matic) and Windows XP (rarely crashes). That is, I have been able to crash the phone numerous times, but most of the time this occurs when using the more advanced features of the phone. General reliability is pretty good, but not up to the 8265’s standard — which to be fair is a very simple phone. And to be even more fair, my friend experiences similar stability problems with his Symbian-based Nokia 6600. But not to let Microsoft off the hook (bad pun), they really need to make the OS at least as bomber as Windows XP.

Internet Access
I can’t say much about this. Currently, Cingular charges so much for data that I haven’t used the internet capability of the phone. Once Cingular gets a clue and lowers the prices, I’m really to start surfing.

Battery Life
It seems like I need to charge the phone every couple of days or so. Battery life could be better, but I don’t think that it’s going to be a problem.

Settings
I found the settings, and there are a lot of them, for the phone to be complicated to find. It seems like they are randomly scatter about the phone’s menu structure. Simple things like turning on the ring/vibrate mode is a chore. Plan on spending several hours finding them and becoming familiar with their locations.

Overall
I really like the SMT5600. There are a few small nits like the unlock feature, settings menus and lack of software and some larger problems like the texting application and stability, but overall it’s a great phone which meets my needs.

February 08, 2005

Skype Out — Mini Review

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I’ve been using Skype a fair bit lately. More precisely, I’ve been using Skype Out a fair bit lately. Skype Out allows you to make calls using Skype’s interface to pretty much anywhere in the world. It’s a prepaid service where you purchase a minimum of 10 Euros worth of talk time which is deducted per their rates (calls within the US are €0.017, a little over 2 cents/minute). The international rates are great (it’s €0.017 to a UK landline, but calls to UK mobile phones are €0.205). This is a handy service for me right now, because I keep running over my minutes on my cell phone plan (I’m switching plans soon).

The call quality has ranged from excellent to almost walkie-talkie-ish, but almost all calls are pretty clear. And my set-up is not very sophisticated… just an old boom mike and headset that didn’t cost very much.

The two disadvantages of the service I can think of are the lack of DTFM tone support (being able to send touch tones for voice systems) and the lack of an address book for contacts that don’t have a Skype account (this may exist, but I looked for it twice).

January 20, 2005

Samsung YP-T5V Portable MP3 Player

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Samsung_yeppI picked up a Samsung YP-T5V MP3 player for just over $100 a few weeks ago, and I really like it. I picked the Samsung after Adam Curry (aka, "The Prince of Pod) mentioned that he liked his during one of his Daily Source Code podcasts. It comes with 256MB of memory and is very, very tiny. The user interface on the device is pretty intuitive, and offers all sorts of ways to customize the device. For example, you can choose the color on the backlight from blue, red or green, change the default sound level and a bunch of other stuff. The only major issue I have with the UI is the lack of a dedicated file-browser button. Currently, to get to the file browser, you have to press and hold the four way button (pictured next to the LCD in the product shot to the right). This works ok, but if you don't hold the button long enough, you toggle into the customization menu. It's a little hard to get the timing right.

Pros

  • Very small - So small it is very wearable even when exercising.

  • Ability to record from a line-in directly to MP3

  • Acts like a USB drive. No software on the PC needed.

  • Fairly good UI

Cons

  • Voice recorder is not a quality recorder, but it does work

  • I'd like a dedicated file-browser button

  • It could have better battery life (I think it goes through a AAA battery in about 8-10 hours)

  • Weird sub-mini line in, but it does come with an adapter cable that steps it up to a more standard mini plug

  • Headphones are just ok... but that's pretty much the same with other MP3 players (see my Sony headphone review below to see how I solved this problem).

  • USB 1.0 slows file transfers

  • No variable-speed for fast forward and rewind

Overall, I'd recommend this MP3 player. It only comes with 256MB of memory, but that's fine for listening to about 4 albums (recorded at a high bit rate) and quite a few podcasts (which are typically recorded at 64Kbs).

January 14, 2005

Sony MDR-EX51LP Headphone Review

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Sony_mdrex51lp_1I recently picked up a pair of Sony MDR-EX51LP earbud headphones at Fry's "Home of all of your best buys." At $39.99 at Fry's, they where definitely not a "best buy," since Amazon has them for $25.

Whatever price I paid, I can say that I really like them. They are tiny - really tiny - and very light. They are the "in-the-ear" type of headphones, and come with three different, interchangeable sizes of the rubber doobers for your sizing pleasure. The sound quality if fine, but probably not the best you can get (since they are so cheap). I highly recommend them.

Pros

  • Tiny

  • Light

  • Three sizes of rubber doobers

  • Cheap

Cons

  • Don't really know if it is a "con," but the wire running between the headphones is longer on one side than the other. This is intentional. Not really a "con," but just weird I guess.