I am on a search for an alternative to the vice-grip like David Clark headsets that the company gives us to use on our planes. The Dave Clarks have one thing going for them; they shut out noise from the outside very well. The price for this though, is they can get downright hot and painful after a couple of hours.

The Plantronics MS200 is my first try at something lighter.

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Jason Dunn has relaunched Digital Home Thoughts with a new look and a contest.

He has about $6500USD worth of goodies to give away. You better hurry, the contest ends tomorrow!!

Update from Jason:

I should have added that while all the individual contests will still say April 7th is the deadline (there are too many for me to change by hand), the real deadline is Friday morning, the 11th:

http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/88477

Via: Digital Home Thoughts

If you are as excited as I am about the new WM 6.1 devices (is my sarcasm showing?), then here is a peek at two new ones.

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I went down to Malibu today, to one of my favorite burger places – Malibu Mutts. I brought my 1D with me because there is always something nice to photograph in Malibu. Mutts is in an open shopping area with stores and places to eat. After I ordered I was approached by a girl who wanted me to sign a petition, for what cause I’ve already forgotten. I said “no thanks,” after which she asked if I was looking for famous people. I said no, and she said she thought I was because of my big camera. Then she asked if I had seen anyone famous lately. Now I’m not only hungry, but I’m getting annoyed! I said, “Not lately!” Finally my food was ready and I sat outside to eat.

Then it got interesting.

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I just got an iPhone. I know some of you can’t believe your eyes, but it is true. Since my purchase, I have noticed a strange phenomena. The other day I was flying with a First Officer who also had purchased an iPhone, and he was telling me how it got him so interested in Macs that he went out and bought a MacBook Air; he had been a hard core PC user until then. Our very own Judie, after having an iPhone since December, just got a MacBook Pro. I myself was in the Apple store the other day looking at MacBook’s for the first time in my life!

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I have always wondered about these devices and wanted to give one a try. Personally I have no need for something like this, but I can see where such a portable scanner could come in very handy. This is the Planon DocuPen RC800 Portable Scanner.

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PhoneDaily has some interesting shots of a Chinese iPhone. While I am personally skeptical  about the success of the real iPhone, the Chinese apparently like the design.

Click on thumbnail for a larger image

I’m not sure exactly what OS is being used here; I have not yet seen an actual iPhone.

The site itself is all in Chinese but there are more pictures there to look at. Thanks to Xavier F. Catino for the heads up on this!

Over at Smartphone Thoughts I posted about Symantec coming out with Norton like security software for Smartphones. While I think this is silly, it also made me remember how bloated and clumsy Norton had become. I have been using NOD32 on my PC’s for about a year and like it a lot. It is lean and you don’t even know it is there, until it finds something. So am am curious. What anti virus solution do you use and why do you like it? In addition, is anyone using anti virus software on a Pocket PC or a Smartphone?

I posted on this at Smartphone Thoughts as well. It seems that once again Motorola has lost its way in the mobile phone market. I say this with some sadness because Motorola always made my favorite cell phones (when we called them that). I have lost count of how many Motorola cell phones I have owned from countless StarTacs to Elites to the i60.

Each new one was different and had new features that I always appreciated. Roll the tape forward to the present day and what do we have? Pink RAZRs, black RAZRs, red RAZRs, purple RAZRs and well, you get the idea. Now they are doing the same thing with the Q. Q9, Q8, huh? How about an actual new device? What a novel idea that would be.

Is it just me or does it seem like there haven’t been a lot of new devices lately? For quite a while there were announcements of a new PDA or Smartphone every few weeks. Lately it has been eerily quiet, and the remakes of devices for different phone carriers don’t count. Perhaps we are waiting for WM6, but even in the earlier days, with new operating systems in the wings, we saw new devices coming out pretty regularly.

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I have often asked myself this question. A small attempt to define them has been made here. Even this effort has, I think, has fallen short. As I touched upon it in my Smartphone Thoughts post, I am convinced the MVP is an evil secret society trying to direct the lives of all of us geeky people. Much like Mobius, the other secret society, they use indirect methods to control and fool us. They may not have the black helicopters, but I wouldn’t take the aluminum foil off my head just yet. The robes and hoods are only the beginning. Meeting in caves and other hidden places, they plot out our destiny and fondle devices that the rest of us unwashed have to wait a few more months to see.

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I went to my computer dealer the other day to pick up a $10 CF Card to PCMCIA adaptor and left $300 later. This happens quite often; sometimes I just can’t help myself. I had been thinking about a new case for my PC for quite some time. When I upgraded my motherboard and processor a while back the wires for the front panel USB/Firewire connectors could not reach their mates on the motherboard. In addition the old case was stuffed to capacity with two CD drives and three hard drives that I could barely get to without removing the four memory sticks.

So I happened upon the Thermaltake Armor Jr. case. The case came with 2 large cooling fans, one in front and one in back. My old case had 3 of the smaller fans which were quite noisy. A larger fan can turn slower to move the same amount of air and is thus quieter; this alone cut down the noise by about half.  

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My new Treo 700wx needed the patch for the new Daylight Saving Time disaster. After going through 3 different patches (all of which claimed to be the official Microsoft patch), I finally stumbled on one that worked. Thread after thread on the blogs and boards spoke of the horrors of devices moving one or two hours ahead and appointments being missed after patching.

Now that the original DST date is approaching, or is already here, it will be interesting to see if anyone who has applied the patch experiences more trouble. If Microsoft isn’t embarrassed by this whole fiasco, nothing will embarrass them. Something which should have been a simple fix, that should have been widely published, was neither. So share your stories; in particular post if a new problem arises in the next few weeks.

I guess you could read a lot into that question but as I talk about here on my little blog, after my desktop pc hardware upgrade my Windows Vista Experience Index went from 4.8 to 5.5. This of course is a totally arbitrary and arguably meaningless number. However I thought it might be fun to see what those of you running Vista have. My Fujitsu T4215 gives me a 3.0 rating.

I was afraid of this. I knew it was coming and now the first of what is certain to be a few new Canon DSLR’s is here. Can I resist?

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