Today I unboxed and set up my recently received iRobot Roomba 560 evaluation unit. I figured it might be fun for those of you who are curious to see what’s involved…and then we could send it on a test run together. Consider this part one of its review, because I will be posting initial impressions tonight and final impressions after having used it for a good bit longer.

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I’ve been quite the busy little Windows Mobile bee over the last couple of days. Inspired by Aura Mae’s comment that she used the HTC Advantage as something of a computer replacement, I set out to see whether I could achieve the same. Any boy, was I blown away by the results!

The Advantage’s 5inch screen (which is the same size as some UMPCs) and VGA resolution means you can cram more into the screen - especially when you use the RealVGA utility to run it as its native 640 x 480 resolution. This, combined with a big helping of third party software, turns the Advantage into a capable notebook replacement.

Is that an awesome-looking Today screen or what?

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A huge shortcoming of Blackberry devices is they can’t natively display html email. Instead the Blackberry presents you with a bunch of urls and html code. Ugly, Ugly, Ugly. Recently rumor sites have reported that native html email capabilities will be coming “soon” from RIM. For those who can’t wait , I noticed that Empower Your Blackberry launched their email HTML Viewer last week. I’ve been testing it for a solid week - and it’s the best and most stable HTML viewer I’ve ever seen on a Blackberry. More thoughts, screen shots and a fat 50% off discount code (only good through 12/31/07) are on the next page.

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My name is Judie and I have never owned a Nokia mobile phone; I’m not exactly sure why I haven’t, it just never happened. It’s not that I haven’t been curious, especially with the release of some of Nokia’s newer models - such as the N81, the N92, N93, and yes - the N95, but I just never took the plunge.

Why is it that I feel like I should be admitting this glaring error of my gadget repertoire in the confines of a 12-step program meeting? Probably because until today I was one of, oh…maybe fifteen people in the world that hadn’t used a Nokia, and it was almost shameful.

Today I received an N95 through the Nokia Blogger Program, and I am looking forward to learning about a new (to me, anyway) platform and delving into a device which is so feature-rich that Jenneth ultimately dubbed it her “JesusPhone.”

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You know what I do whenever I have gadget envy? I give an existing gadget that’s close enough to the one I’m lusting over a nice little makeover, and then I try and convince myself that what I have is good enough - if not better - than what I was originally making eyes at. It works for the most part… until I drunkenly smash the thing. But that’s only happened to me a couple of times in my entire gadget history, so I’m not going to beat myself up about it

Right now my gadget envy is focussed on the iPod touch. All the journos I know that have one are thinking about buying one. I suspect that the courier tried to deliver my iPod touch review unit on Friday, but given that I wasn’t home, I was unable to take receipt of this wondrous new toy.

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Well, turns out my adventures with the JASJAR were embarrassingly short-lived. I’ll spare you the gory details, suffice to say that drinking on an empty stomach and being literally blind drunk does not go well with fumbling with an oversized phone and trying to call various people to come and rescue you from wherever you’ve drunkenly stumbled to.

The damage (busted hinge):

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Dear Artie

You and I got off to a great start. We had some wonderful times, sitting in the sun together, my hand gently stroking your chassis. Granted, you were a bit slow at first, but as I got to know you, I realised that you were just waiting for that special someone to come along and unlock your potential. So I put in the hard yards and made a lot of compromises. I did all I could to make our relationship work.

And we were almost there, when you dropped the bombshell. You had a faulty touchscreen. Not a hardware issue per se - more like a driver problem in Vista. Worse, I did a Google search, and to my horror I discovered that other people had posted about your “little problem” and were awaiting a solution.

Artie, I hope you realise that, if not resolved, this touchscreen problem will amount to an irreconcilable difference, and I will have no choice but to part ways with you. I refuse to let my emotions cloud my judgment. This has got to be fixed, or I’m leaving. I’m only being this frank with you because I truly care about you and want you to change for the better.

Yours sincerely

Jenneth

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One of my favourite gadget blogs is jkOnTheRun, and in James’ latest post, he discusses one of the quandaries of being a gadget reviewer: which one(s) do I take with me today?

Once I decided to bring a full-sized Tablet PC with me I had to decide between the Fujitsu P1610, the Lenovo x61 and the HP 2710p. The P1610 was my first choice being smaller and lighter than the other two but since my work was going to be writing I felt the smaller keyboard of the P1610 might not be the best choice. I can touch type fine on the Fuji but for extended touch typing sessions the small keyboard can get a little uncomfortable so I decided a bigger device would better serve me this time. I thought about bringing the Lenovo with me because it’s such a sweet, fast device but it’s also the biggest of all these devices and I’d have to bring a bigger gear bag than I wanted. That would entail having to transfer anything in my smaller gear bag to the larger one and that’s a hassle for a simple trip to the coffee shop. The HP 2710p is a fast and smaller Tablet so I decided to take that one for this trip.

My dilemma’s actually a different one - not so much which device I bring (as I tend to standardise on one particular device of each type for weeks - even months - at a time), but how many. If I could get away with it, I’d bring them all with me, in which case I’d need a small shopping trolley to carry them all! My iPod and/or Zune for listening to music, Artie for writing, surfing the Net and playing Scrabulous, my Nokia N95, my Canon EOS 40D for taking photos, my Panasonic HDC-SD1 for shooting video, my Canon M80 for backing up my camera’s memory card, my Nintendo DS Lite for playing games and - of course - my Battery Geek Portable Power Station to keep everything charged.

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Yesterday, I found out about the Beatmix Bumblebee while browsing Amazon.com. The bot was shown under the “New For You” section on the main page. Since I love robots and Transformers, I clicked on the picture to find out more.

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I’ve been using the HTC Advantage for five days, which is definitely not long enough time to pass true judgement on the device, but it is enough time�to talk about some of my likes and dislikes.

Ready?

The screen is glorious…absolutely fabulous. 5″ of diagonal goodness that is clearer, and easier to read from, than any other available Windows Mobile Device. If a lot of screen isn’t important to you because you aren’t reading eBooks, editing documents or entering data in a spreadsheet, then you will most likely be turned off by the overall size of the device.

With the keyboard covering the screen�and wrapped in its included brown leather case, the Advantage measures exactly 5.5″ tall x 4.1″ wide x 1.2″ thick and weighs one pound 0.4 ounces. Yeah…I said one pound!

Frankly, it doesn’t bother me. I carry it in my bag and�I don’t see this as a mobile phone replacement; I see it as a mini-laptop with wireless capabilities. I could make a call from it in a pinch with a BT headset…but is that very likely? Not so much.

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