For almost two and a half years I have been using my iPhone each and every day. The improvements from the first generation iPhone with OS iPhone 1.0 until now, when my iPhone 3GS runs iPhone OS 3.0 has been significant. But it has also been gradual enough that it is easy to take the incredible functionality it offers for granted. I mean, who can even remember using an iPhone that was entirely dependent on **gasp** web apps??

Yes, using my iPhone for everything from browsing the web to writing posts on the go has become as natural as putting on my shoes in the morning. Yet every now and then there is some small thing that happens where my iPhone is so useful that I am reminded just how amazing this device is. In fact, just today I was twice reminded that…

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I’ve carried smartphones for years, starting with the Palm Treo 650. While it has never been for business, nor has it been a dealbreaker if I couldn’t use one, I’ve always liked the convenience of having what amounts to a small computer in my pocket. Yesterday, I discovered just how helpful having one can be when plans change on the fly. Continue Reading

Welcome to another edition of “How it’s changed over the years.”

The firefighter’s SCBA (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) is as important a piece of equipment as his/her helmet.  The device, which consists today of a high pressure tank, face mask and pressure regulator allows firefighters to breath air in the hostile environments they face.

So how has the SCBA changed over the years?

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I’m cross-platform in my smartphone use and… later today… I will be cross-platform in my notebook use too.

Here’s why…

I do a good deal of writing using voice recognition, in fact the ability to use Jott and Vlingo to respond to individual emails by voice was a big reason I began using a Blackberry. I find it fast and convenient. In addition, I struggle with Rheumatoid Arthritis, and on bad days the pain in my hands and wrists can become a big problem. Using voice recognition to write a first draft of something and then manually clean it up saves a lot of wear and tear on already aching/painful joints.

As much as MacSpeech 1.5 is an improvement over the original version, thanks to the decision to begin using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s voice recognition engine, it still falls far behind Dragon’s Version 10 Windows software. This has been a particularly rough few weeks, and I have been relying more on speech recognition than usual; MacSpeech just wasn’t cutting it.

That got me looking for a small, light, portable Windows machine that would, primarily, be used for writing and for responding to email by voice. So began my search. Little did I know it would bring me back to the current version of one of my favorite Tablet PCs. Continue Reading

If you see a friend with a gadget fetish carrying something different, chances are it is something new and trendy. Gadget-heads are seen as fickle and trendy, and bitterly loyal … for about 30 seconds until the next bright & shiny object comes along. But I have typically held on to the stuff I loved the most, and recently I’ve been alternating between 4 PDA/handhelds – my Axim x51v, iPod Touch, Psion Revo and HP200LX. Made me wonder – what sorts of ‘old school’ stuff does the rest of the Gear Diary staff use?

So I asked the question – and looked for them not to talk about stuff like the old Kitchen Aid, the ancient clock in the spare bedroom, or even something like my ancient HP Omnibook I use perhaps three times a year. I was talking about regular use. Read on to find out what they had to say! Continue Reading

Day in, day out, Gear Diary writers scour the web tirelessly, bringing you the latest and greatest technologies and gadgets. With all of the new gadgets that come out and are reviewed, there is always temptation to stay on the cutting edge. Want to know what the writers carry with them daily to work (at least today)? Read on to find out. You’ll be surprised at what some of us carry.

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Growing up my family was somewhat religious.  We celebrated all of the Jewish holidays, went to temple, I became Bar Mitzvah and was Confirmed.  We did most of the things a typical Jewish American family does.

Like many young adults, I suspect, once I moved away from home I became less observant. I didn’t belong to a synagogue and lived far enough away from my parents that coming home for the holidays wasn’t always possible.

Once I got married and started a family of my own though, my wife and I decided it would be important for both ourselves and our children to reconnect.  We joined a local synagogue and began to bring it back into our lives.

My kids started in Sunday school and we began going to services as a family.

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There is a new kind of switcher on the rise these days, and whiles its numbers are limited, they are nonetheless notable. No, we aren’t talking about people who make the move from Windows to Mac; we are talking about people who dropped one device for the iPhone, but now find themselves making the move back again- most of the time to a Blackberry it seems.

The latest victim to succumb to this switcher-mania is CNET’s Adam Richardson. Continue Reading

I’ve been greatly enjoying the HP dv6 that I recently upgraded to Windows 7, and that got me wondering about Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6). Dan was evil kind enough to send me a link to the latest Apple refurb sales last week, and I couldn’t help myself…after perusing the wares, I bit.

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all pictures are thumbnails; click them to enlarge

Right before I finished up the HP Pavilion dv2 laptop review, I was sent a couple of boxes containing an HP Pavilion dv6z-1299lx and an HP Mini 110-1036NR. Even though I knew the purpose of the experiment which was about to happen, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone in the world would need two laptops?

The answer to that question is actually quite simple…

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A funny thing has occurred since owning an iPhone 3GS.  I am in no way an expert, but have become the iPhone guy.  How many of you are known among your friends and co-workers for your gear?

I live in a small, rural South Texas town.  Yes, we have electricity and plumbing!  We even have high speed internet.  Being a ranching community, most people here are not technology geeks like I am.  There are iPhones and laptops and gadgets, but most are light users.  Since much of my spare time is spent reading or writing for tech blogs, listening to podcasts and playing with gadgets, many of my friends and co-workers have decided I know everything about all of this gear.  (Again, I am in no way an expert, but a wanna-be geek!) Continue Reading

Last week we found Elana’s Palm Centro lying buried in a leaf pile down the road from where she had dropped it last winter – over 7 months ago!

We were able to power it on immediately, but the biggest surprise came a week later…

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photo credit: Nightlife1970

I bought my first modern Mac in February, 2008, a 15″ MacBook Pro. At the time I was frustrated with the laptop I owned – a 17″ Toshiba X205 – which was running Windows Vista Ultimate in what seemed like a most underpowered way. I was tired of being told that there were no drivers yet available for my gear, I was tired of seeing notifications pop up asking me constantly if I was sure that I wanted to do something, and I was basically ready for a change. It didn’t help that I had already seen Mitchell and Vincent’s MacBook Pros, and I was swooning over the hardware.

In all honesty I also felt a bit left out, because I didn’t know anything about the Mac OS other that what I had experienced in the late 80s (which hardly counted), and I certainly wasn’t immune to the praise heaped on it by friends who had been converted. In other words, I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

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Here’s my gadget story for the week, maybe the year…

The setting- a wintry day at the end of December 2008 in northern New Jersey. It is snowing quite a bit and the snow plow ridge had grown high.
The backdrop – I had just undergone serious surgery to fuse my wrist after arthritis had all but destroyed every bit of cartilage. Drugged out of my mind on anesthesia, I still remembered to ask my wife Elana to stop at the bottom of the driveway and get the mail. Who knows, maybe I figured something good to review had come… there are priorities! Elana was driving my car, so instead of having her Palm Centro between the seats where she usually keeps it, she had it on her lap. Of course you can guess what happened — she got out of the car to check the mail, helped me wobble into the house to the couch and a short time later, discovered she could not find her Palm Centro. She looked everywhere for it and eventually came to the sad realization that it had been on her lap and was now buried in a snow bank in front of the house. She went outside to look but to no avail — it was gone.

To humor me she tried an iPhone for a few weeks. She hated it. And before too long she replaced her Palm Centro with — a Palm Centro. (Why she wanted to use old technology I can’t understand, but it’s her phone, not mine.)

Fast forward to this morning. Continue Reading

I don’t remember exactly which of Wayne’s articles it was, whether it was something on the Palm Pre or the iPhone 3G S or something entirely different … but wherever it came from, it started me thinking about that bane of the mobile gadget junkie’s existence: battery life. More specifically: mobile phone battery life. Similar to what has happened with PDA’s, laptops, digital cameras and so on, mobile phone makers have constantly struggled to maintain the balance between features and battery life. Because, after all, a dead mobile phone can’t make a call, regardless of how many cool features are listed on the box. So I asked around the crew of Gear Diary, and here is what they said: Continue Reading