The Gadget Blog » Peripherals

Are New Printers Really Cheaper Than Ink?

Rico Mossesgeld — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:30:39 +0000

Recently a shopper in the US shared a shopping expedition. The objective? Find new ink for the printer! The conclusion? It makes sense to actually buy a new printer, rather than pay more for ink cartridges!

For those who can’t see the pic above, here’s a transcript:

I went to buy some black ink for my printer today…
Then I realized that it would be cheaper to just buy a new printer that already came with black and color ink… (picture of Canon PIXMA iP2600 costing $30)
Then I decided to see how much ink for the new printer would cost… (picture of black and color cartridges of aforementioned printer costing $37.94 total)
then I remembered why I have 3 other printers sitting at home without ink…
…It’s cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy new ink.

Is this true where you live, dear readers?

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Faulty Charger Obliterates Car Dashboard

Rico Mossesgeld — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:30:44 +0000

My mom (of all people) recently sent me the forwarded email shared below, which details the alleged effects of a 12V car charger failing spectacularly:

Hi All,

Sharing with you an article below… always good to get a little reminder!

Everyone take care and God bless…

As some of you may know, we had a pretty scary incident recently. Attached are pictures of what remains of our 2007 Suburban. We are all okay but I wanted to warn everyone not to make the same mistake I did.

This fire resulted from leaving an Iphone charger/docking station plugged into the car outlet. It overheated and started a fire, while parked in the garage. PLEASE unplug anything you have in your car outlet once you turn off your car!

We were VERY fortunate that we accidentally found the fire, at 11.00 pm, before going to bed and before it spread to the house. None of our garage heat detectors or house fire alarms went off.

Feel free to pass this along to anyone you want. Better safe than sorry.

Here are the attached pictures below:

Have you received this email? Personally, I don’t really think that kind of damage was caused by a faulty charger. From the fire damage it looks like a battery combusting. Or did the faulty charger cause the battery to explode? Do recent cases of exploding iPhone batteries even have something to do with this? To the electronics engineers out there, feel free to share your knowledge and comment below.

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Smartfish ErgoMotion Laser Mouse Launches

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:57 +0000

Straight from SmartFish’s PR: Pay $50, and we’ll deliver you a mouse that’s the most ergonomic yet! The basis of this promise is that the ErgoMotion Laser Mouse features a swivel mount, which adjusts automatically to your mouse hand:

The ErgoMotion Mouse is redefining what a true ergonomic product should be by actually reducing your risk of Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI). How? By adding motion! The ErgoMotion Mouse utilizes a patented motion-base that adapts to your natural hand and wrist positions while you work. The mouse will rock, swivel or pivot with your movement so your hand and wrist are never in a fixed position, creating the most comfortable and healthy mousing experience ever!

There’s also no pesky wire to trip up your mouse hand movements, as the ErgoMotion Laser Mouse is wireless and comes with a nano USB receiver. Available starting today, the mouse is available from SmartFish’s website and Amazon.com for $50.

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Easily the Cheapest Techie Item Ever

Rico Mossesgeld — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:30:05 +0000

Geekiness is quite an expensive passion, but not all gadgets and accompanying accessories require a serious look at finances before purchase. You’ve got the cheap stuff, and you have the really cheap stuff. Case in point: cables.

Whether you need an HDMI cable to hook up that player to your HDTV, or a way to make full use of your computer’s USB port, the general rule when it comes to cables is to take the time and look for the cheapest alternative. For what is a cable, but a bunch of wires providing the bridge between standard ports? Standard means mainstream, mainstream usually means mass-produced, and mass-produced usually means razor-thin margins and really low prices.

That’s why stories like a Radio Shack salesman trying to sell a $24 cable depress me. I do understand salesmen are under a lot of pressure to make as much money as possible for their employers, but what about unsuspecting buyers who eagerly pay that much for a mini USB cable that was eventually bought for $1.05 at a nearby store?

Granted, there are times when it’s worth paying good money, like for really long HDMI cables, because you are paying to retain signal strength over a significant length. And of course, some of those cheap cables are faulty, especially if they come from no-name manufacturers (literally) looking for a quick buck. But be warned, dear readers! Before buying that cable, take the time to shop around for cheaper alternatives—just like you would for any other geek-related item.

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Is Wacom’s New Touch-Only Bamboo Tablet Worth It?

Rico Mossesgeld — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:00:32 +0000

Is a tablet designed only for multi-touch gestures worth it? Technograph has specifics on four new Bamboo tablets from Wacom. All of them feature pen functionality, save for the Bamboo Touch. As made obvious by the name, it only supports touch-controls—this is the first tablet from Wacom that doesn’t work with a pen.

The Bamboo Touch is the cheapest member of the Bamboo refresh, which was all about integrating full multi-touch gestures into the drawing surface (or, in the case of the Touch, the “touching” surface?). Is it worth paying for an over-sized trackpad that mimics the touch functionality found in Apple’s laptops? Wacom by the way confirmed that they have the “appropriate licenses” for the technology.

According to Rico Sta. Cruz, who uses the latest Macbook Pro from Apple:

One thing I learned about using the MacBook pro’s enlarged trackpad is that it’s actually very, very useful. The extra size and the swipe gestures were really great. If the Bamboo Touch is even better than that, then it sounds like a very powerful mouse replacement.

I’m willing to take Rico’s word for it, as I know him to be a geek who likes to maximize the tools he uses. In any case, let’s see how those touch controls work out if and when I get a unit for review.

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Glow-in-the-Dark Stickers Illuminate Your Keyboard

Rico Mossesgeld — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:21:56 +0000

Over at Baron Bob are a set of keyboard stickers going for nearly $10. The benefits? Once the lights go out, the letters glow, a process better known as “glowing in the dark”. This should make the snottiness of those who can afford illuminated keyboards—like the fancy-shmancyLuxeed Dynamic Pixel LED keyboard—obsolete.

Really now? Personally, I think the trouble of washing a keyboard (incidentally you can actually wash many keyboards with soap and water, so long as you wait for them to dry before plugging them back in) and applying stickers to each key sounds like too much trouble. Also, pay a little bit more and you’ve got yourself an illuminated keyboard (the Luxeed mentioned above costs $35).

In any case, this would probably make a great gift for that friend who spends lots of time in front of their own computer. And who doesn’t fit that description nowadays?

Buy the Glowing Keyboard Stickers at Baron Bob ($10)

Source

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The Super-Powerful ATI Radeon HD 5870

Rico Mossesgeld — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:51:48 +0000

With Intel gaining attention for its new Lynnfield processors, AMD has fired back with its own $100 quad-core. At the same time it has also made strides in the GPU market, recently coming out with the first DirectX 11 compatible video hardware. Here’s a proclamation that:

ATI now stands unchallenged in Blu-ray audio processing, power consumption, single GPU performance, and performance per watt, DirectX 11, multi-monitor setups, anti-aliasing performance, and anisotropic accuracy. By any measure, the confluence of these qualities easily makes the Radeon HD 5000 the most significant shakeup of the GPU market in the last two years.

Pretty bold assertions, but given the detailed rundown of the HD 5000 series capabilities, it’s easy to see that this argument may have merit. Especially when you consider the benchmarks—measures of performance—pouring in from all over the net:

But your average joe will probably drool over the HD 5000 series due to its capability to run up to nine concurrent displays. Several-monitor setups have been around for years, but this newfangled “Eyefinity” technology makes linking displays to only one video card very easy.

Such performance of course comes at a cost: the ATI Radeon HD 5870 retails for $380 at NewEgg, regardless of what brand you choose.

Source

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The DIY iPhone Dock—Made Out of Paper!

Rico Mossesgeld — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:40:30 +0000

The contributions of Julien Madérou to humanity: the apparent invention of an iPhone dock made out of paper, and DIY instructions on how to make it made available for easy sharing. Now Apple fans have another way to maintain their snotty consumer-electronics superiority!

Courtesy Julien Madérou

Seriously though, Madérou is a genius! He even made provisions for the iPhone cable! The instructions are available for printing on A4 or US letter (8.5″ x 11″) sheets, and are a simple matter of cutting out the template and following the video below.

I’m assuming a iPhone dock made out of Japanese paper will crumple in an instant once it bears the full weight, and at least one commenter on Julien’s blog post says the “paper weight may need to be increased.” If I do try this out (I’ll need to get an iPhone first), I’ll probably try cutting out some illustration board and scoring the folds for better pliability.

If you’ve already have your own paper iPhone dock, feel free to share just how much paper strength is called for.

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Make That WiiMote Work With Your PC

Rico Mossesgeld — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:00:48 +0000

Turns out someone figured how to make the Nintendo Wii Remote (affectionately known as the WiiMote) interface with a PC, of the Windows, Mac, and Linux variety. You just need the following:

1 Bluetooth Dongle (Cirago, $15)
1 Nintendo Wii Remote($36, free shipping)

Then, you can follow the instructions here. Personally though, I’m not sure if there are any worthy WiiMote apps for the computer. Yes, you can at the very least use a PC-enabled Wii Remote as a mouse (on Windows your use Wiinmote). But as anyone who’s played a Wii FPS will tell you, waving around a stick is nothing compared to precision-moving a mouse on top of the table.

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Aura BluNote Bluetooth Speakers Retailing for $99

Rico Mossesgeld — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:30:00 +0000

The Aura BluNote is a speaker set that accepts music streams via the Blutooth A2DP format, making it compatible with a wide variety of devices including PCs, laptops, mobiles, gaming consoles, and portable media players. It thankfully comes with a 3.5mm input jack for devices that don’t support Bluetooth.

Courtesy Spracht

Make Spracht wants you to know that the BluNote can store up to 8 Bluetooth device profiles, runs on an AC adapter or 4 AA batteries (both are included in the package), promises good audio quality through its Stereo Widening and Bass Boost functionality. On top of that, as a speaker, the BluNote also supports hands-free, conference-type calls when hooked up to a mobile phone.

A full review to follow if and when Spracht sends in a demo unit. In the meantime you can check out the product page and buy the BluNote here for $99.

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