Image Courtesy T-Mobile Today is a good day for T-Mobile customers. This morning the FCC listed the filing for a $1 billion transfer of Spectrum from AT&T to T-Mobile. This pretty much means to the common consumer that T-Mobile will be getting some more bandwidth to grow their GSM network. If you followed the deal last year, you know that AT&T promised a few billion in cash as well as some spectrum to Deutsche Telekom as payment if the takeover did not occur. As we all know late last year AT&T pulled their bid for the #4 US mobile provider leaving them responsible to pay the German based company reparations for a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  realtime throughput of their prototype AC routers on a large flat screen TV I really don’t know many (if any) people these days NOT running a WiFi network at home. Most Internet Service Providers (ISP) now provide a WiFi router or router/modem combo when you sign up for service. WiFi-N has pretty much become the standard over the past few years, with speeds capable of up to 150Mb/s and in almost all current electronics. The next standards have been announced and are called 802.11ac, which pretty much more than doubles WiFi-N on it’s best day. If you have no idea what I’m talking about then pretty much what I am saying is… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image Courtesy of Mimoco (yes, this wallpaper is included) Everyone has a few flash drives lying around these days but unless you have a Han Solo mimobot with a Carbonite case key chain then you have no shot at defeating the Dark Side. One of my favorite stops at CES was the mimobot booth and certainly for good reason. If you are a fan of Star Wars or any comic book heroes then mimobot probably has something for you. Thomas an I had a nice conversation with Evan who was working the booth that day and he hooked us up with a review unit of the Han Solo 4GB flash drive. There were plenty… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  I simply could not leave CES without getting some hands-on with the new Sony PlayStation Vita. Having abandoned Sony’s PSP after the original device, I was hoping to get a feel of what the Vita had to offer. Gaming on a mobile device is coming along quite well, but I still feel the need to have a dedicated portable gaming device rather than a smartphone with gaming capabilities. We found a representative to give us a short demo of the device which highlights some of the features of the Vita and the new OS Sony put together. Sony Rep Demo     Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This past week I did not see too much earth shattering news regarding USB flash drives at CES. I had a chance to swing by the Victorinox booth to check out their 2012 product offerings. The only real highlight on their storage front was their Swiss Army-inspired USB stick. This was the first USB 3.0 flash device that I’ve seen built into a small thumb stick form factor, and who better to build it than Victorinox. They had a few prototypes on display with a “later this year” promised release date and price. The build quality,  high capacity, and speed put this drive right on my 2012 “want list”. In usual Victorinox Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you don’t know what Dropbox is by now, you probably don’t need any free cloud storage space. Just in case, it’s a great free service that lets you store files, music, pictures, or whatever you want up to the “cloud” with the ability to view, download, share, retrieve from almost any computer or mobile device. Today some of us in the beta test program got an email with a link to the new beta. The current stable app is available on the market but since it has been officially release, little has been done to improve the UI or overall user experience. I promptly downloaded the new app to my Android phone and was… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It takes a certain type of laptop to stand up to certain jobs. Most laptops find comfort on a desk, in a padded bag, or possibly in the local coffee shop around the corner. Gammatech sent me a laptop suited perfectly for all those tasks and a whole lot more. Usually the worst that happens to most laptops is polished keys and touchpad, where your fingers have rubbed the finish off. Possibly it could fall victim of a flight off of your bed or the table after you happen to trip over your power cord. Luckily for those accident prone geeks and tech abusers we have companies like Gammatech that fill that void and produce… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image Courtesy of Tokyoflash Tis the season to start the holiday shopping. With Black Friday and Holidays sales popping up everywhere Tokyoflash decided to make things a little easier on your wallet this year. Their site now has a nice breakdown of the current specials including the under $100 category, a buy one get one 50% off, as well as some sale prices on regularly priced watches and gadgets. As an added bonus to the sale every watch purchased between the dates of November 16th and December 25th will give you an entry to win a new Playstation Vita + 1 game, an Apple iPad (no specs listed), or 3 watches from the 2012 lineup… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Yes, the world is simply full of Android crap tablets. The Cruz fit’s along those lines but for $74.99 shipped it offers a few features that just may get your impulse purchase juices flowing. Yes, I know this is a refurb, but look past that as just a capacitive touchscreen tablet running Android 2.2 with some expandability options. Not ever using a Cruz myself I can’t tell you what the Cruz Market has to offer but I do know that if this device surfs the web, plays music and movies, then it could easily double as a child attention magnet or some entertainment at lunch. The specs are somewhat decent but the content may be the biggest… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

    Image courtesy of Free Republic Happy Veterans Day! But what does that really mean? Does it mean that everyone in uniform is a Veteran? Does it just mean another day off of work for some or some killer deals at the local Home Depot and Best Buy? The short of it is, that it’s a day to honor all those who have served. In my opinion there simply aren’t enough of those days in the year. Some may question what the criteria is to be an actual veteran, and I’m not fully sure myself what officially qualifies you in the eyes of the government. The way I see it, if someone has served or are still serving, then in my book they are qualified as one of our nation’s Veterans. The best was to thank a Veteran is simply to let them know you appreciate that sacrifices they made (or will make) for their country. So find yourself a Veteran today and let them know that their service is appreciated.  Veterans day for me is more a sense of pride and a day the think about some of my past experience in the military. I reserve Memorial Day to remember [...]

A few items we acquired at the BBQ A little over a month ago I trekked down to Austin for the Big Android BBQ. I took two friends along with and met up with some of my fellow Gear Diary geeks for a weekend filled with fun, food, geeks, and the little green robot. The event was bigger and better than last years; there were lot more people, vendors, developers, and of course fantastic giveaways. We had a great time sitting in on the developer forums, meeting new people, and talking with all the vendors about the latest and great Android products and accessories. Samsung was on hand showing off some Galaxy S II models as well as a few tablets, LG had a nice little display and sit down session, as well as many more vendors, developers, and accessory manufacturers. We were lucky enough to have one of our crew members score a new Galaxy Tab 10.1 from a Samsung giveaway, but that does not mean we left empty-handed. Seidio was on site with some really cool reps, and a truckload of cases. They were happy to give away one case to each and every person who attended — [...]

Now that the carnage from HP’s “firesale” has finally settled, HP announced that the Touchpad is officially out of stock never to be heard from again. We can go on about our normal lives of hoping for better tablets while paying a premium price for a good product. The fact that the  hardware is no longer being made basically makes it impossible to to score one unless you stuble upon some old stock leftovers somewhere. Otherwise you can try your chances on Ebay or Craigslist. There have been a fair share of crappy tablets released in the past few years, mostly third-party resistive screen tablets with some resemblance of Android as the OS… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Tokyoflash Fresh out of the Tokyoflash workshop comes the Kisai Seven. Yet another watch from their concept to reality blog, the Seven joins the limited edition club and launches at the low-cost of only $99 shipped. Breaking off slightly from the standard Kisai style and material, this “Tron” inspired watch has an “identity disc” like watch face that glows either white or blue depending on the model you purchase. New to this watch is a seamless polyurethane band and hard plastic encased face instead of the matte or polished bands we are used to seeing with other models. The large rings on darken in spots to show the hours and minutes… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  Original Image courtesy of RPAD.tv There is no better way to rain on a geeks parade than to dangle a worthy gadget out there at an unbelievable price, then to quickly slam the door in your face and tell you “it was a mistake.” After seeing news this morning that the HTC Flyer has dropped down to a single Benjamin, I quickly started to get my plan of action together. After my meeting at work, I ran to the local BestBuy Mobile at the closest mall and started a makeshift line so I could ensure that I was walking out of there with a shiny new white Flyer. I showed up at 9:30 and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Synology You can’t be too cautious these days about backing up your data. Time and time again friends, family and co-workers come to me about trying to recover pictures, music and documents on a failed or virus ridden drive. Some even have their small business data lost when the main computer goes down. My first advice to anyone is that they should get themselves some sort of backup device, whether it be Desktop Attached Storage or Network Attached Storage and some good software to automate the backups. I have wanted to upgrade my 2TB external drive to a Network Attached Storage Device, but had a really hard time deciding which one to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …