My wife got an 8 gigabyte iPod Nano for Christmas. Of course I added a $50 iTunes gift card, a belt-clip case, and an alarm clock/dock for it. She seems to enjoy waking up to music. I was so enamored of the dock/clock that I picked up an iHome 2Go for myself and my iPod Touch.
iHome 2Go
$79.99 at Target and comes with a nice padded vinyl case, an AC power adapter, an 1/8" stereo patch cord, and a few dock adapters for various ipod models. There was no adapter for my Touch, but the adapter that came with my Touch does work. Other adapters are available through an 800 number included in the literature. I am extremely dissappointed that the 2Go didn't come with a remote control. The box contained a "special" offer for the optional remote for "only" $19.99. I can get a great universal remote with learning ability for less. The markup on the remote for the 2Go is extortion. The 2Go itself only has simple controls for the ipod on it. You can play or pause and control the volume up or down. The remote would add mute, next and previous song, scan forward and back, and control over the snooze function and alarm reset of the 2Go itself. Speakers fold up to face forward and fold down flat to let the 2Go fit in it's portable case. The 2Go will run on 4 AA batteries, with an additional small watch cell to maintain the clock setting. Sound is pretty good, although the small speakers don't do bass frequencies at all. Packaging advertises an SRS sound feature. It can be activated with the remote control or by pressing a button on the right side of the unit. SRS adds a little depth to the sound, but the effect is more a gimic than a useful feature. Small speakers are small speakers. You get only what they are capable of. There is an audio/video output and an auxiliary audio input jack on the back. The A/V jack can be used for just audio output using the included patch cable, but a special cable will be required for outputting a Video iPod's video and audio to a TV. It also appears this iHome 2Go doesn't support my Touch's video output.
As an alarm clock the 2G0 has a seperate play/wake-up volume setting. You can have the music at a louder or softer level when waking up than you do when the 2Go is in sleep mode. It's not hard to set, although the buttons have more functions than they are labelled for. The user manual does provide fairly clear instructions. There is no radio or other option. If no iPod is attached the iHome 2Go will buzz like any ordinary alarm clock. Other media sources can be played through the auxiliary input, but not if an ipod is attached as the ipod uses the same amplifier channel.
I'll give the iHome 2Go a 7 out of 10 points. It loses 2 points for not including a remote control, and another point for not having onboard buttons for the functions available on the remote. The 2Go appears to come with the remote if you buy it from iHomeAudio.com. Of course it will be $20 more expensive. I suspect Target negotiated for a lower price and iHome responded by removing the remote control from the boxes Target sells.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Technology in an Ice Storm
Kansas got hit with an Ice Storm on Monday night December 10th 2007. It took out the electricity from more than 80,000 homes, and by the date of this entry this author did not have electricity in his home. This was written at his place of employment where power was restored within 24 hours of the storm.
The obvious dilemma when power is out is that almost all the technology we come to depend on doesn't work. I woke up on the morning after the storm to no lights, no PC, no Satellite TV, and no heat. Fortunately of the gadgets I own one was a Zune. With it's FM radio I could listen to local stations for closings and weather reports. I suppose I've got a radio somewhere in the house, but none have kept me distracted enough with simple radio to have me keep them running with fresh batteries. The Zune entertains me with music and videos and as such gets charged every night. The radio feature is a bonus that proves invaluable during power outages.
The second gadget I've come to rely on is an ancient Casio Pocket TV. I bought the Casio several years ago to use as a monitor for a video camera. I was still using it as a monitor for the DVD player I use to play music on my deck. It had fresh batteries in it since it had been running off it's power adapter. Built in UHF/VHF tuners and telecoping antenna allow it to receive local analog TV broadcasts. Fortunately my local stations are still broadcasting in analog. On a normal day the little Casio doesn't get very good reception from the main TV towers 40 miles away or so. With the ice storm shutting down all electric devices, the lack of interference made for surprisingly good reception. The screen is tiny, but I've been able to keep up with my local TV programming with it. It uses three AA batteries, and fortunately in this crisis AAs are still easy to find. My D cell flashlights are worthless as D cell batteries are sold out everywhere.
My Ipod Touch didn't prove as worthwhile. With my wireless router not working, it's just another media player. I've got more music and videos stored on the Zune's 80 gig hard drive than I do on the iPod's 8 gigs. The Zune wins when power is out. Both media players have to be recharged from either a wall adapter or a PC's USB port. I could fortunately take both to work and charge them from my work PC, but the inability to use standard batteries makes both less useful when resources are limited. As such I'm looking for a media player with FM radio that can run on AA batteries.
The gadget I realize I'll need to find now is a portable TV with a digital TV (ATSC) tuner. Within a year or two those analog broadcasts will be turned off. When that happens my little Casio TV will be demoted to monitor again.
The obvious dilemma when power is out is that almost all the technology we come to depend on doesn't work. I woke up on the morning after the storm to no lights, no PC, no Satellite TV, and no heat. Fortunately of the gadgets I own one was a Zune. With it's FM radio I could listen to local stations for closings and weather reports. I suppose I've got a radio somewhere in the house, but none have kept me distracted enough with simple radio to have me keep them running with fresh batteries. The Zune entertains me with music and videos and as such gets charged every night. The radio feature is a bonus that proves invaluable during power outages.
The second gadget I've come to rely on is an ancient Casio Pocket TV. I bought the Casio several years ago to use as a monitor for a video camera. I was still using it as a monitor for the DVD player I use to play music on my deck. It had fresh batteries in it since it had been running off it's power adapter. Built in UHF/VHF tuners and telecoping antenna allow it to receive local analog TV broadcasts. Fortunately my local stations are still broadcasting in analog. On a normal day the little Casio doesn't get very good reception from the main TV towers 40 miles away or so. With the ice storm shutting down all electric devices, the lack of interference made for surprisingly good reception. The screen is tiny, but I've been able to keep up with my local TV programming with it. It uses three AA batteries, and fortunately in this crisis AAs are still easy to find. My D cell flashlights are worthless as D cell batteries are sold out everywhere.
My Ipod Touch didn't prove as worthwhile. With my wireless router not working, it's just another media player. I've got more music and videos stored on the Zune's 80 gig hard drive than I do on the iPod's 8 gigs. The Zune wins when power is out. Both media players have to be recharged from either a wall adapter or a PC's USB port. I could fortunately take both to work and charge them from my work PC, but the inability to use standard batteries makes both less useful when resources are limited. As such I'm looking for a media player with FM radio that can run on AA batteries.
The gadget I realize I'll need to find now is a portable TV with a digital TV (ATSC) tuner. Within a year or two those analog broadcasts will be turned off. When that happens my little Casio TV will be demoted to monitor again.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
ZUNE 80 Versus iPod Touch
Is a Zune better than an iPod Touch?
I've now owned both media players for more than a week. I started with the Touch and added the Zune 80 as soon as I could find one locally. My Touch is an 8 gig version. Obviously the Zune has more media capacity. Ten times more to be precise. So are the added capacity and unique features enough to make the Zune a better device? I'll answer that question eventually. For now I want to concentrate on how easy and how well each device plays media.
Music:
The Touch with it's touch screen has direct access to each function. The Zune may require scrolling up as many as 6 items before you can click on MUSIC. The touch pad on the second generation Zune allows an upward swipe to move the selection all the way to the top, so two actions at most are all that are required to open the music application. The iPod Touch wins but only by a hair with it's one-tap access.
Each player has sorting categories within the MUSIC application. On the Touch you can one-tap select from Playlists, Artists, Songs, Albums, and More. Selecting More brings up Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, Genres, and Podcasts to choose from. Seven Explicit Music categories.
The Zune has Playlists, Songs, Genres, Albums, and Artists you can select from by clicking right or left within music app. There is a seperate application on the main menu for Podcasts. The Zune also has an FM Radio option that the Touch doesn't have. Five Explicit Music catagories.
Considering just the songs you have on either device, the Touch with it's Composer and Compilation sort option has the edge on finding your song by category. I've got three Christmas albums on both devices. Using Genres to find them, the Touch took 5 taps to display just Christmas albums from the Home screen. The Zune took as few as 3 clicks from the main menu, but took up to 7 clicks if the Zune was not already on the Music/Genres options when starting the search. To play a specific song from a specific Christmas album took two taps on the Touch. On the Zune it took four clicks at minimum assuming your were polished at scrolling with the Zune's touch pad. The Touch wins again as a quicker way to get a song to play.
Finding a song from the alphabetical song list is much easier on the Touch. Only 8 songs are visible on the Touch at one time. The Zune shows 12. The Touch has the complete alphabet along the right side of the screen. Tap on any letter and you are instantly moved to the songs beginning with that letter. One more tap is all it takes to begin playing any song listed on the screen. The Zune has no direct way to jump to a beginning letter group, and as such may take several swipes of the touch pad to just get close to the song you want. The Touch wins here again, thanks to the touch interface.
Once a song has been selected to play on either device, the large screens both show the cover art. The Touch has a Volume slider on the screen that you can slide with a finger. The Zune lets you control volume with upward or downward swipes across it's touch pad. The Touch has a software PLAY arrow on the screen you touch to pause and again to play. The Zune has a dedicated hard Play/Pause button. Both players will shut off their screens to save energy while still playing a song. You have to wake the Touch up with a button press and unlock it with a slide to get to the controls. The Zune wins this comparison with it's hard button controls that don't need the screen on for access.
Videos:
The Zune seperates video into Music Videos and All Videos categories. The Touch seperates Video Podcasts from Movies. Within iTunes you can add cover art to DVD movies you've converted to sync to the Touch. The Zune software found and synced the same movies to my Zune, but there was no option I could find to add cover art. As such, movies are easier to spot on the Touch. The Zune grabs a video frame to use as art, and depending on the frame chosen does not always make it easy to spot the movie you want to select from it's artwork. Both players play videos horizontally. The Zune screen is a 4:3 ratio and the Touch screen is a 16:9 ratio. Playing the full screen movie Borat, the Touch appears to stretch the image a bit to fill the screen. The Movie looks great on both devices, though. The Zune screen is brighter, with what appears to be a higher contrast ratio than the Touch. The Touch screen has a higher native resolution, and is easier to see fine movie detail on. The wide screen movies Duets appears full screen on the Touch but with bars top on bottom on the Zune. Wide screen movies are 20-25% smaller on the Zune screen than they are on the Touch. Ouch! Titles/credits on the Zune screen are too small to resolve. The same can be easily read on the Touch. I'll call the Touch the winner for resolution and detail, but the Zune wins, especially with 4:3 movies, on contrast, brightness, and black blacks. Black colors on the Touch appear a little brown/gray, but it will play both 4:3 movies and 16:9 movies full screen.
Pictures:
The Zune has the brighter display. The Zune software also puts demo pictures on the Zune by default, and as they are the only photos I've got on the Zune I added them to my PC's collection using the Zune software, then copied them onto my Touch using the iTunes application. Both devices let you select individual photos to display and also let you play a slideshow of all the photos in a group. The default time between photos seems to be about 4 seconds on both devices. The Touch and it's multitouch screen moves ahead at this point. Any photo on it's screen can be zoomed in on and panned around on to bring small detail up close and centered on the screen. An icon tap on the photo screen brings up an option to select "Use As Wallpaper" and "Assign To Contact". Photos on the Touch also rotate as you rotate the Touch itself. Photos that don't fit the screen ratio in one orientation will rotate and enlarge to fill the screen in another. The Touch makes a more versatile little photo viewer than any Photo picture frame I've yet seen. Photos on the Zune have a limited zoom and pan with a click on the touchpad. A picture can also be selected to be the background image, but a portion of a picture cannot. The Touch wins this category thanks to it's more versatile ability to manipulate the photos. When full screen on either machine the photos appear more vivid on the Zune. So I'll give the Zune a 1/2 win here.
The iPod Touch steps away from the Music player pack now, mainly thanks to it's wireless internet access. It also has some PDA functionality with Calendar, Clock, Contacts, and Calculator. Apple will soon release the software development kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and once that happens there will arrive all sorts of 3rd party applications that can be added to either device. Given theses added features, the Touch wins this overall comparison easily. When you ignore them and consider only the common media playing features, the Touch still wins 6 to 2.5.
Both devices have wireless capabilities. The Zune's wireless is limited to syncing and limited sharing of songs to nearby Zunes. The Touch's wireless with network and internet access opens up far more potential. Internet applicatons like Seeqpod.com and Tversity on your PC mean you don't have to put every song you own on your Touch, yet you can stream nearly any song out there including your own songs that are shared on your home server. You can play any MP3 or quicktime file you can find on the internet without needing it physically installed on your device. The 80 Gigabyte advantage of the Zune melts away when a Touch is within range of a wireless internet access point.
So is a Zune 80 a better media player than an 8 Gig iPod Touch? Perhaps it's a little better at video. The bright and high contrast screen of the Zune looks better and the hard drive space will store considerably more videos. But for music, even with it's limited storage space, the Touch wins hands down.
I've now owned both media players for more than a week. I started with the Touch and added the Zune 80 as soon as I could find one locally. My Touch is an 8 gig version. Obviously the Zune has more media capacity. Ten times more to be precise. So are the added capacity and unique features enough to make the Zune a better device? I'll answer that question eventually. For now I want to concentrate on how easy and how well each device plays media.
Music:
The Touch with it's touch screen has direct access to each function. The Zune may require scrolling up as many as 6 items before you can click on MUSIC. The touch pad on the second generation Zune allows an upward swipe to move the selection all the way to the top, so two actions at most are all that are required to open the music application. The iPod Touch wins but only by a hair with it's one-tap access.
Each player has sorting categories within the MUSIC application. On the Touch you can one-tap select from Playlists, Artists, Songs, Albums, and More. Selecting More brings up Audiobooks, Compilations, Composers, Genres, and Podcasts to choose from. Seven Explicit Music categories.
The Zune has Playlists, Songs, Genres, Albums, and Artists you can select from by clicking right or left within music app. There is a seperate application on the main menu for Podcasts. The Zune also has an FM Radio option that the Touch doesn't have. Five Explicit Music catagories.
Considering just the songs you have on either device, the Touch with it's Composer and Compilation sort option has the edge on finding your song by category. I've got three Christmas albums on both devices. Using Genres to find them, the Touch took 5 taps to display just Christmas albums from the Home screen. The Zune took as few as 3 clicks from the main menu, but took up to 7 clicks if the Zune was not already on the Music/Genres options when starting the search. To play a specific song from a specific Christmas album took two taps on the Touch. On the Zune it took four clicks at minimum assuming your were polished at scrolling with the Zune's touch pad. The Touch wins again as a quicker way to get a song to play.
Finding a song from the alphabetical song list is much easier on the Touch. Only 8 songs are visible on the Touch at one time. The Zune shows 12. The Touch has the complete alphabet along the right side of the screen. Tap on any letter and you are instantly moved to the songs beginning with that letter. One more tap is all it takes to begin playing any song listed on the screen. The Zune has no direct way to jump to a beginning letter group, and as such may take several swipes of the touch pad to just get close to the song you want. The Touch wins here again, thanks to the touch interface.
Once a song has been selected to play on either device, the large screens both show the cover art. The Touch has a Volume slider on the screen that you can slide with a finger. The Zune lets you control volume with upward or downward swipes across it's touch pad. The Touch has a software PLAY arrow on the screen you touch to pause and again to play. The Zune has a dedicated hard Play/Pause button. Both players will shut off their screens to save energy while still playing a song. You have to wake the Touch up with a button press and unlock it with a slide to get to the controls. The Zune wins this comparison with it's hard button controls that don't need the screen on for access.
Videos:
The Zune seperates video into Music Videos and All Videos categories. The Touch seperates Video Podcasts from Movies. Within iTunes you can add cover art to DVD movies you've converted to sync to the Touch. The Zune software found and synced the same movies to my Zune, but there was no option I could find to add cover art. As such, movies are easier to spot on the Touch. The Zune grabs a video frame to use as art, and depending on the frame chosen does not always make it easy to spot the movie you want to select from it's artwork. Both players play videos horizontally. The Zune screen is a 4:3 ratio and the Touch screen is a 16:9 ratio. Playing the full screen movie Borat, the Touch appears to stretch the image a bit to fill the screen. The Movie looks great on both devices, though. The Zune screen is brighter, with what appears to be a higher contrast ratio than the Touch. The Touch screen has a higher native resolution, and is easier to see fine movie detail on. The wide screen movies Duets appears full screen on the Touch but with bars top on bottom on the Zune. Wide screen movies are 20-25% smaller on the Zune screen than they are on the Touch. Ouch! Titles/credits on the Zune screen are too small to resolve. The same can be easily read on the Touch. I'll call the Touch the winner for resolution and detail, but the Zune wins, especially with 4:3 movies, on contrast, brightness, and black blacks. Black colors on the Touch appear a little brown/gray, but it will play both 4:3 movies and 16:9 movies full screen.
Pictures:
The Zune has the brighter display. The Zune software also puts demo pictures on the Zune by default, and as they are the only photos I've got on the Zune I added them to my PC's collection using the Zune software, then copied them onto my Touch using the iTunes application. Both devices let you select individual photos to display and also let you play a slideshow of all the photos in a group. The default time between photos seems to be about 4 seconds on both devices. The Touch and it's multitouch screen moves ahead at this point. Any photo on it's screen can be zoomed in on and panned around on to bring small detail up close and centered on the screen. An icon tap on the photo screen brings up an option to select "Use As Wallpaper" and "Assign To Contact". Photos on the Touch also rotate as you rotate the Touch itself. Photos that don't fit the screen ratio in one orientation will rotate and enlarge to fill the screen in another. The Touch makes a more versatile little photo viewer than any Photo picture frame I've yet seen. Photos on the Zune have a limited zoom and pan with a click on the touchpad. A picture can also be selected to be the background image, but a portion of a picture cannot. The Touch wins this category thanks to it's more versatile ability to manipulate the photos. When full screen on either machine the photos appear more vivid on the Zune. So I'll give the Zune a 1/2 win here.
The iPod Touch steps away from the Music player pack now, mainly thanks to it's wireless internet access. It also has some PDA functionality with Calendar, Clock, Contacts, and Calculator. Apple will soon release the software development kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and once that happens there will arrive all sorts of 3rd party applications that can be added to either device. Given theses added features, the Touch wins this overall comparison easily. When you ignore them and consider only the common media playing features, the Touch still wins 6 to 2.5.
Both devices have wireless capabilities. The Zune's wireless is limited to syncing and limited sharing of songs to nearby Zunes. The Touch's wireless with network and internet access opens up far more potential. Internet applicatons like Seeqpod.com and Tversity on your PC mean you don't have to put every song you own on your Touch, yet you can stream nearly any song out there including your own songs that are shared on your home server. You can play any MP3 or quicktime file you can find on the internet without needing it physically installed on your device. The 80 Gigabyte advantage of the Zune melts away when a Touch is within range of a wireless internet access point.
So is a Zune 80 a better media player than an 8 Gig iPod Touch? Perhaps it's a little better at video. The bright and high contrast screen of the Zune looks better and the hard drive space will store considerably more videos. But for music, even with it's limited storage space, the Touch wins hands down.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Kindle Review
I couldn't resist. My wife was threatening to buy another book, so I broke down and let her open up the Amazon Kindle I'd bought her for Christmas.
Nice box! Very bookish. The packaging looks very well thought out. Inside we found the Kindle on one side and the cables (USB and Power adapter). The leatherish cover was wrapped in paper and also included.
There have been several reviews stating that the cover is poorly designed and that the Kindle falls out/off of it easily. I think those reviewers failed to look closely. There is a stretchy strap attached to the back of the cover, and many have shown it being used to hold the Kindle to the cover. If the user manual is examined, you see a picture showing the strap is there to hold the cover closed around the Kindle, and not hold the Kindle itself. The cover has a stiff plastic tab that engages the slight recess in the Kindle back plate. With the Kindle inserted thoroughly this tab prevents it from sliding back out easily. The cover is not really ideal as a way to hold the Kindle while reading it, but is perfect for protecting the Kindle when you're carrying it. I'll give the cover an A.
The Kindle itself was smaller and thinner than I had expected. It fits nicely into the cover and together they make a very easy-to-carry package. Form factor? A.
Setting it up proved very frustrating. As it turns out the wireless service used by the Kindle does not reach into my house very well. The Kindle has to be registered at Amazon, which you can do on the device itself using it's wireless connection. That of course assumes the Kindle can connect. Since my Kindle could not connect well, my initial impression was soured with unexplained freezes and "Cannot connect, try again later" messages. I'd like to point out that I had tried to determine if my house would be within the network service coverage area Kindle uses, and could not. Obviously the network does not reach everywhere. I sent off an angry email to Kindle technical support and went to bed.
It is amazing what a night's sleep can do for technology. This morning I woke up with the suspicion that the computer and cabling nightmare in my office may not have created the best environment for cell phone service reception. I took the Kindle into the living room where very little technology lives, and found that the Kindle would connect.
Within a few minutes I was checking out the "experimental" web browser. There is a basic and an advanced version, and JAVA is supported with the advanced version. Web pages would not load as they would on your computer's browser. The Kindle browser does something with the text on any page it goes to to try and optimize it for it's screen. There are several default bookmarks already listed, and most of them look fairly decent. I'm guessing they were included as defaults primarily because of how well they looked using e-ink.
The Kindle Store is well executed. I'm not much of a book reader or buyer, but it appears that anyone who would be should be happy here.
My wife is the book reader, and she was primarily interested in getting books on the Kindle. Within a few minutes she had found, ordered, and was reading one of two books she had bought. Ecstatic would be an understatement for the joy she was experiencing. The great price of the books impressed here. Although they have been advertising top-selling books for $9.99, there are hundreds of books available for less than that. My wife found a book printed in 2000 for $6.99, that was still $17.99 for the hardcover.
I love the concept, the technology, the product design, the networking. My wife sees immediately how great it is to have several books with her, with the near-instant ability to order and read any new one whenever she feels like it. She bought a new purse solely to have a way to carry her Kindle with her all the time. That purse, of course, has a pocket perfectly sized for a Kindle.
Conclusion? If you have a decent connection, the Kindle is an amazing product. With no or little connection it will become very tedious very quickly. The Kindle concept makes perfect sense to me, and I'm not a book reader. The Kindle itself makes perfect sense to my non-technical wife who IS a book reader. Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF)= 10/10.
I say the Kindle, this version AND the next one, will be/is a success. Get one if you can. If you really love a book reader, you have to.
4D
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