If you remember, a week or so ago, I posted a huge rant on how Microsoft released buggy and problematic SP’s in both Vista SP1 and XP SP3.  In that post, I promisd to post an update when the Symantec Registry Cleaner was released.  Well, it has been released, and it does in fact, work.

I ran it on 2 of the 3 PC’s in my house that have been upgraded to SP3. It removed almost 5000 bad registry keys on my Gateway 700GR desktop, 0 on my daughter’s Dell Latitude C610; and I have yet to run it on my older Sony Digital Studio PC (don’t ever buy one of these… ICK!)

Anyway; the free registry cleaner can be found here.  The installation and execution instructions are pretty simple and easy to follow, so everyone should be ok in running it. If you have XP SP3 installed, I would download it, run it, and see if there are bad keys in your registry REGARDLESS if you’re experiencing problems or not.

There it was.  At last!  Writ large upon the outer wrapping of the new Sony NWZ-A828K Digital Media Player (which most of you will know as a Walkman).  There were the words I have longed to hear from a media player for so many years.  The box read:

WIRELESS.

Enjoy music wirelessly with the supplied Bluetooth stereo headset.

Yes, that is right folks.  This will be my first media player review without the patented Bluetooth rant.  And really, having found a media player with Bluetooth, I might as well end the review right here.  Nice job, Sony!  But no, as long as I have the media player, I suppose we should take a closer look and see what else this thing can do…besides transmitting music, “wirelessly with the supplied Bluetooth stereo headset,” that is.

Continue Reading

Q.: Judie,

Hope this note finds you well. I need some gadget advice, if you have the time.  I have a birthday coming up in two weeks, and my wife wants a suggestion from me for a present. I am thinking about a new phone.  I have a Samsung Blackjack for work which runs Mobile 5.0 and I like it a lot.  Works very well with our Outlook Exchange server.  I also have a Motorola RAZR2 for weekends, which I also like, but I’d like a weekend phone that has a little more functionality.

I have looked at the N95, but if I am going to put that kind of dent in my wallet, I wanted to see if you have a favorite fun phone that you like and would recommend for a GSM system (I am AT&T).  Anything that really makes you smile?

Thanks for your time!!

Bill

Continue Reading

**Update: The contest is now closed, and the winner is dckiwi!!

The list of correct devices is as follows:
1. Dolce & Gabbana Motorola RAZR V3i
2. Sidekick 3
3. Blackberry 7700 series
4. LG K800 “Chocolate”
5. Sony Ericsson p910
6. Pink RAZR
7. iPod 5G Video
8. BB 8700r
9. Sidekick 3
10. Treo 650

Thank you for participating! We’ll do it again soon…

I had a lot of fun with the last celebrity’s & their devices guessing game (I learned a lot about BlackBerrys, too), so I have decided to do it again! This time, the winner will be chosen from the entries that have at least seven of the correct celebrity’s devices named, and the winner will pick up a set of Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pro earphones (worth $250!!). Jenneth from Girls Gone Mobile, Matt from The Mobile Gadgeteer, and Mike from Smartphone Thoughts will help me judge the results, and as always - the list we have agreed upon is the final list from which we will judge.

Where possible I have included links that will show larger or additional pictures.

This time, I think things should be a little bit easier - I purposely tried to not pick so many BBs! I’ll leave this contest open until 3:30 US Central Standard Time on Saturday, November 25th; at that time the winner will be selected from the entries with seven or more correct guesses.

Update 11/21:Mike Dietz from Ultimate Ears has made the very generous offer to “drop ship the prize to the winner along with some UE swag.” So…to be clear - this is a brand new set of UE super.fi 5 Pro earphones, not the set I reviewed, which had been my original plan. Thanks Mike!

Ready? Here we go…

1. Hilary Duff gets money from an ATM while talking on her _______edition _______.

(source I Don’t Like You in That Way)

Continue Reading

G-A from Akihabara News has just posted details on a new Sony Walkman NW-S600 & NW-S700 as well as the new NetJuke NAS-D50HD, M70HD & M90HD.

Continue Reading

Okay…can someone please tell me what happened to the rest of this digital music player?

Continue Reading

Last night the world got a little bit cozier, thanks to the power of Instant Messaging…and a couple of truly nice guys.

It was around midnight my time and I was on Windows Live Messenger talking to Larry Liaw about UMPCs. Knowing how interested I am in them, Larry mentioned that Chiang had recently posted pictorial comparisons of the Asus and the Sony.

Larry then said that Chiang was online, and he would like to bring him into our conversation. Now here’s the thing: Chiang speaks little to no English, and I know just two words in Chinese (hello & good-bye, for those of you keeping score); Larry was kind enough to serve as our interpreter.

Larry set up a three-way chat, and Chiang proceeded to walk me through the registration process on his site while Larry translated. This was done so that I could see the Chiang’s pictures without the “inconvenience” of having to click on the file icons. I had no problem looking at his pictures the unregistered way, but Chiang wouldn’t hear of it. He even gave me a VIP membership to his board! Thanks guys!

Continue Reading

Doug Moran reminded me last night that I have been severely slacking in my DualCor cPC updates since returning from San Francisco over a month ago. Wow time has flown, and he is absolutely right!

He said and I quote: “So anyway, aside from the stuff below, and my interest in how you’re doing with the Hermes, I’m also interested in how you’re doing with the cPC, which you haven’t written about since you got back from San Francisco. Ahem. Not that I’m eager to find out what you think of it. No, nope, not me.”

Well, regardless of the fact that neither of the screen protector vendors I’ve talked to (and taken detailed measurements for) have yet sent me a protector for the device, and I have therefore had to continue using a piteously small JasJar protector which makes the cPC look cheap and ugly, here is the device in question…

(shown next to a Treo)

Continue Reading

I’ve been using the HTC Universal (branded as an i-mate JasJar) for almost a year. This in itself has been a bit out of the norm, because many of the PDAs I’ve owned haven’t lasted near as long.

Let’s go tripping down memory lane, shall we?

The first pen-based (or stylus entry) Personal Digital Assistant that I remember buying was the Casio Zoomer, sometime in 1993. Beyond the contacts, calendar and Pocket Quicken that came loaded on the device, there was also a version of Pyramid that I could literally waste hours playing. The resulting scratches and scribbles on the screen would eventually help shape my firm belief in the value of screen protectors.

I bought my first Pilot from the Franklin catalog; Franklin as in the day planner company! This was in late 1996, and I can’t even remember what the cost of a brand new Pilot was, but a little known fact was that if you looked in the paper insert in the middle of their catalog - Franklin also sold refurbs. I wasn’t sure if I would like the blocky little monochrome device, so I reasoned that buying a slightly used one would be prudent. Up until then I had been using various keyboard-input clamshell devices, including my longtime favorite the HP-95LX and several of its upgraded future generations.

Once I got that first Pilot, I was hooked. I mastered Graffiti very quickly, and used to amuse family and friends with the way that I would obsessively jot everything down in the device.

Remember the days before rechargeable batteries? I can remember always keeping a supply in my desk drawer and in my bag. It was completely wasteful, really; when my battery bar hit a certain level I would change the batteries. I was so afraid of losing my data that I got quite proficient at changing the batteries quickly. Even so, I still managed to lose my data a few times because I took an extra second or two too long to complete the process…thank goodness for Palm Desktop and hot-sync’d data!

Ah, those were the good old days.

Continue Reading