Well, even though my sample Skooba Skreener didn’t come before my business trip last November, it did come in time for the various holiday nonsense, so I was able to give it a good workout.

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I am continually surprised at the lack of external portable speaker gizmos for the iPhone. Plenty of them out there for the various iPods, of course, but the iPhone? There’s kind of a shortage.

DLO thinks they have the answer with their new portable iPhone speakers.

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Speaking of winning an iPhone, whether I win one or not, I’m going to get one when they come out, and do my durndest to have a a review in here for you Gear Diary folks.

Okay, yes, I’m jumping the guy a bit. And yes, I’m obsessed, I admit it. Forgive me. But I’m sick of Widows Mobile, I’m weary of the lack of development in the Palm hardware arena, and my birthday’s this month and I want a new toy, durn it!

So in anticipation of spending waaaay too much money and getting an iPhone, I’ve been creating a list of questions to ask Apple (if I get get hold of anyone there!) and things to review on the iPhone for Gear Diary readers. But it occurred to me (as I was suffering from yet another bout of insomnia) that maybe you folks might be able to help by providing me with some questions of your own.

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So I installed these games in Windows Mobile that I wanted to try out, see? And they didn’t work quite right, so I wanted to delete them. So first, I went into ActiveSync on my desktop, clicked the check-box, and clicked okay. They didn’t get deleted.

So next, I selected them in ActiveSync and clicked the “Remove” button. They still didn’t get deleted. Next I went into my Start menu in Windows and deleted them from there. Now there were deleted as far as ActiveSync was concerned, but there were still there on my O2.

So okay, I went onto my O2 and used the “Remove Programs” tool. It told me, “I couldn’t remove everything,” and though the icons for the programs were removed, they still showed up in the list of games (although nothing launched now, of course), only with the “generic” icon. So I searched through the folders on the device to find all the files associated with the apps so that I could delete them by hand, and did so.

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I’m just waiting on an iPhone.  (With apologies to Mick, Keith, and the boys.)

Okay, I’m a gadget junkie; I admit it.  That’s why I’m a contributor on this here Web ‘zine.  I bought the PalmPilot 1000.  I have spent hours and hours pouring over specs for PDAs, and personal media players, and “Origami” devices, and tested eBooks and convergent devices (like the O2 XDA Exec device-of-a-thousand-names).  So bear that in mind.  But I am not–not Not NOT–an Apple acolyte.  I like their products, and I admire them, but I’ve never owned them.  Never.  So bear that in mind, too.

But I’m waiting on an iPhone.  And I have gadget lust bad.

For one thing, I need a new cell phone.  I’m limping along on a Motorola v180.  It’s okay; I like flip phones, personally, and it’s small, and light, and pretty battle-hardened, but it’s showing its age.  It’s time for an upgrade.  And now here comes the iPhone, just in time for ol’ Doug to upgrade.

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Rounding off my list of the three personal media players (PMPs) that I plan to review–I’ve already done the Cowon A2 and the Creative Zen Vision W–it’s time for the Archos 604 WiFi. (I didn’t do an unboxing on this one, kids; sorry, I’ve just been too durn busy with “real” work.)

The Archos has specs very similar to that of the Zen Vision and the Cowon A2:

• 10.23 oz (290g)
• 4.3″, 480×272 screen
• 133mm (wide) x 78mm (high) x 18mm (thick)
• 30 GB hard disk space
• 5 hours rated of battery time
• built-in mic
• built-in external speaker
• A/V port
• standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack
• WiFi (802.11g) connection

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If you read my intro to eBooks, you’ll know that I’m a big eBook fan. So I was really excited to get a look at the new Sony Reader, a dedicated eBook reader that uses the (new! revolutionary!) e-ink technology.

Look, I don’t know how revolutionary the e-ink technology is, honestly. I’ve been in the online doc game for a long time, and I’ve heard proselytizers try to sell me on e-ink, and I’ve never been very convinced. Maybe sometime, when they’ve got it working in color, and they’ve gotten it to be a little brighter, and you can use it to display moving images, then I’ll get worked up. But in the meantime, I have to admit that I’m in favor of regular screens. Sorry, e-ink aficionados; best to know my prejudices up front.

But still, I was excited when I opened that Sony Reader box. Here’s the specs of the Sony Reader:

• 6.9″ x 4.9″ x 0.5″ (175.6mm x 123.6mm x 13.8mm)
• 8.8 oz (250g) without the leatherette cover
• 6″, 800×600 SVGA display (4-level grey-scale)
• 64MB internal memory
• SD card slot
• USB plug
• 3.5mm headphone jack

Here’s the reader inside it’s leatherette “case” with the cover closed:

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Soon I will be lucky enough to review Sony’s Reader, an eBook reader by Sony.� But before I do and give y’all a review, I thought it might be nice to give folks a brief overview of eBooks, both on devoted devices and PDAs.

I’ve been in the online documentation game for a long time.� A long time.� I was writing online doc back in 1991, before the Web even got going, back when Acrobat wasn’t even a twinkle in Adobe’s eye.� So I have some pretty (ahem) strong views on online doc, eBooks, eBook readers, and what makes for a happy online reading experience.� And before I foist my opinions of the Sony Reader on you (and hopefully other eReaders, like the upcoming WordsGear, by Panasonic–sorry; Panasonic doesn’t have an English version out yet), I thought you might like a brief overview of the whole eBook/eReader deal.

Or maybe not.� In which case, move along!
I love eBooks. For one thing, while I don’t do a lot of travelling, I do enough so that it’s nice to have a big ol’ library of books handy on a pocketable gizmo that’s the size of (or smaller than) a paperback that I can take on a plane. If it can double as a game platform and/or a PDA, hey, so much the better. For another thing, being able to read in bed without having to juggle a booklight is a wonderful thing.

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Computer busted, and you don’t know what to do? Need to transfer 10GB of data to your new computer from your old one, and that external hard disk isn’t being recognized by your old system any more? Support contract expired and you need help? Hey, no problem! Call the Geek Squad!

Yeah, yeah, I know; I sound like a commercial. Sorry about that.

But seriously; I had exactly one of the problems I just described: I had a shiny new desktop system, and wanted to move all my old data over from my old system before it died completely. (And from the noises it was making, that wasn’t going to be long.) I had been making regular backups on my old system on an external Fantom hard disk, but now my old system wasn’t recognizing the Fantom drive. I hadn’t backed-up all my email files yet, and believe me, I had a lot of email to move over. So it was either burn a dozen CD ROMs, or figure out a different scenario.

That different scenario turned out to be calling the Geek Squad.

Gateway tech support was unable to help me. (And before anyone grouses, I have generally had good luck with Gateway tech support.) I was hoping, since I’m moving data from an old to a new Gateway system, that they would have some magic for me. As an old system administrator myself, I should have know better. What they did have was the phone number of the Geek Squad. One phone call later, I had an appointment for one of their service techs to come over and help.

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After my recent, somewhat disappointing experience with the Cowon A2 –and yup, I did in fact return the device–it was time to move on and try another of the available personal media players (PMPs) out on the market. This time, it’s the Creative Zen Vision W. (If you’re into unboxings, take a look at my unboxing on the Vision W.)

I’ve been very much looking forward to trying out the Vision W, as in addition to having the standard movie/music/document viewer software, the underlying OS is based on Windows (rather than, say, the modified and proprietary version of Linux that Archos uses for their PMPs). This allows Creative to provide you with the capability to have some personal information management (PIM) capability on the device, in addition to playing media. “Could be cool,” thought I. Is it? Well, I’ve been playing with it for a couple of weeks now, so read on.

NOTE: For reasons I explain later, I only tested two of the major pieces of the Zen Vision functionality: the movie viewer, and the PIM management.

Here’s the Vision W all by his lonesome:

The Zen Vision, like the Cowon A2, has a very clean design. I like it better than the A2, honestly, because I’m a geek, and a guy, and it’s flat black. Guys like flat black; what can I say? The buttons and switches are well laid-out and intuitive; there are not too many buttons cluttering the face of the device; it’s a nice job all around, design-wise. Good job by the Creative team.

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