TECH411.ORG

By Jon Cohen

So as you may have noticed it is SUMMER! This means from most a chance to get out of the house head to the beach or go on vaycay. Before heading to the lake or on to the airplane lets make sure you have the right gear to capture those amazing moments that you will want to live in motion beyond your memories. Today we will look at a few options for small and compact camera’s that can be used to catch all the events happening over the summer.

I will be looking at the simple “shoot and share” camcorders, these are very popular. First thing to remember is that small and portable does not mean crappy picture. With all the advances in technology over the last 5 years we have seen the most to smaller devices that can give you just as good quality as your 3 year old camcorder. Where most of these newer video recording devices fall short is when it comes to night usage. Yes some do have LCD mini lights that come built-in, but for the most part they don’t really do the job. So with that being said you will need to make sure you are in a well lit area to do pleasing night videos. Other then that these small camera’s are great. Most offer 720p HD video output. But don’t be fooled by the HD logo, they still give you the same picture you seen on your television during HD programming. In fact the philosophy that bad video capturing will bring you bad video output, this is nothing new, but now that bad video is in HD. So please remember to hold steady, don’t move the camera to fast from left to right and please, please, please remember that video only looks good one and that is horizontal so keep the camera the right direction.

Now that we got the basics out of the way lets look at brands to try out. Kodak, Flip Video, Coby and Sony each of these use the basic built-in flash memory for quick capture and each offer a quick transfer solution to bring the video to an editor or directly to the web (though the computer). After testing a few, I found that all give nice video during the day, and the Sony was the one that gave the nicest and most accurate colors during testing. By far the Flip Video was able to offer the cream of the crop with the SlideHD a touch screen based video camera, it should be noted it is also the most costly and newest to the market. While the Kodak and Coby where great value choices. None of the tested units gave great results in night or indoor use, but as stated before if you are in a well lit location you can get very pleasing video.

Regardless of which product you choose you will be able to easily share these  memories online or with friends and family by hooking the camera up to the television. Now stop surfing the web and get out their and enjoy the summer.

By Jon Cohen

As we age, we lose the ability to do some of our most enjoyed hobbies. One hobby that seniors tend to miss is reading books. At one point you may have read 3 or 4 books a month, and now struggle to be able to even read the numbers on a telephone. For most, the loss of vision has been a source of much anger, and embarrassment because reading fills a need for information in oneʼs life. Well, there is good news on the horizon; with new technology reading will once again be a possibility for most. This is due to the introduction of eBook Readers. Today’s seniors, regardless of age might be able to reignite their passion for reading. Most of these devices give the reader a choice of brightness and text size. This helps to address one of the reasons why seniors donʼt read as often as they once did.

Some of the devices that you will want to consider are the Sony eBook Reader, the Amazon Kindle, or my favorite the Apple iPad. All of these are light weight and easy to use, pricing for the eBook Reader vary from $299 up to $899 depending on which options and configurations you choose. For most, the average price will be about $499.

Regardless of which device you choose you will be impressed with how easy it is to get access to books. Both Apple and Amazon offer a book store on the device that allows you access to many books. The catalog includes best sellers, new releases, and public domain titles. This leaves readers with somewhere between 60,000 to 150,000 books to choose from, and the list is always growing. eBook Readers also offers readers 30,000 free books to choose from and new releases or a best sellers will only cost between $10 and $20 per title. The best part is that you don’t even need a computer to start accessing or buying books. The Reader uses a safe and secure integrated store that only requires a credit card if you are purchasing books.

All of these devices offer users many different ways to display text. So if you have a problem with your vision, you will be able to take advantage of the many different text configurations such as black backgrounds with white text or white backgrounds with black text. The device can even give you that authentic book feeling if you so desire to change the background to the original paper from the book. The Apple iPad will also allow for color illustrations which gives your old favorites a new look and feel.

Other key features to consider when choosing the eBook Reader for yourself or someone you love is that Apple’s iPad is more then just a single use device. It can also offer email, internet, music, and the ability to watch movies. I think this device is the overall winner in the market.

So whether you are an avid reader who has stopped reading or if you just read less because of the strain on your eye, you will want to pickup an eBook Reader and get reunited with your favorite books.

By Jon Cohen

So, the iPhone 4 has been out for over a month and no one can doubt that it is a best seller. In fact, most stores that carry Apple products are out of stock on a daily basis. I find myself being asked the question “should I upgrade or not”. This in fact is a question that I am personally asking myself. Since I have a iPhone 3GS and it has been working perfectly for me for the last 13 months, why would I upgrade now? The answer is not an easy one.  Once you set aside the hype and desire that Apple evokes we can look at features and needs. Yes the iPhone 4 has a better processor, thus making it a lot faster. It also has an amazing display (far superior to my 3GS), and yes it has a front facing camera that allows for FaceTime (video calls). With all these things being accounted for, the real question is do the new features outweigh or at least counter balance the fact that when the phone is held a certain way, it does not work?  In my opinion the answer is maybe, well I know maybe is the safe answer and certain people believe that you should not buy a product if it is not 100% perfect, while others share my opinion. The opinion that almost all manufactured products are never going to be perfect from the start is a fact of life.  In all industries we see that products go through testing and most of the time this gets rid of all and any issues, other times testing does not show a high enough error rate to warrant any action. Examples of both these outcomes can be found in the pharmaceutical and automotive industries. As well computers are never bug free; just ask Sony after they recalled millions of notebook batteries due to randomly blowing up. Microsoft Corp. who produces one of the largest consumed products in the world “Windows” has been plagued with bugs and fixes for them for 15 plus years. Regardless, Apple nor any other company is not perfect and therefore a maybe answer to the upgrade question is valid.

My end feeling is that if you can wait 3 to 4 months and let Apple continue to tweak its software and hardware then you should! If you need a new phone right away then the iPhone 4 will be a great choice as long as you remember not to use the death grip. You can also count on Apple to have great customer service and be able to resolve most of your issues for the first year after your purchase date.

By Jon Cohen

By now you have probably seen, played with, or even owned a netbook. Does the world really need them? My answer is yes for right now. The computer world is in a transition and netbooks fill the gap when needing to upgrade from your 5 year old desktop or laptop.

Netbooks are small, lower powered, and ultra-portable computers that have been a favorite choice for most consumers who don’t have high computing needs.

Over the last ten years mobile computing has morphed in many areas. From cost, screen size, speed, weight, and price to name a few. In 2000 people were prepared to buy a computer with a 15″ display that weighed in at over 8 Lbs. and was priced at around $3000.00. By 2005, we started to see the shift to light weight computers with Wifi, and screen sizes of 14″. As of 2007, the move went to better value as we saw computer start being priced between $600-$900 with a nice set of features, finally by 2009 we see the 7″ or 10″ netbooks, offering battery life and a price tag sub $500.00.

With all these changes in the market over the last 10 years, the average consumer does not know what he/she wants. While standing in a local big box electronic store recently I overheard the computer sales man ask the young female customer what she needed the computer for. Her reply; school, pictures, and the web. He walked her over to the row of netbooks and said “these would be great for you!” with a smile. Then pointed at the price tag and said “what a deal!”  I found myself amused by the fact that this girl was going to buy the computer solely on price. Granted it was a cheap price, but what never entered the saleman’s mind or the customer’s mind was why is it so cheap? I later asked the girl why she chose that model and she told me because it was cute and a good price. Never once did she stop to realize that the technology in the unit was old, low powered, and really just a band aid solution for her needs.

It is my opinion that we as consumers are waiting for the next level of computing. Whether it be tablet computing or something else, the world is needing a new way to consume the vast amount of media and content from the web. Only time will tell what the next mobile computer will look like. For now netbooks are here, they are indeed cute and cheap, they fill a gap for consumers and will be one of the best band aid solutions for the next few years.

By Jon Cohen

A quick and funny story that my prove valuable for any business computer user.

I was at a client of mine recently who was having issues with their keyboard and mouse. The computer was rendered usless to them, and had been sitting in a box in the corner for about 1 months. When I stopped in at the office they were pissed at me. See I had sold them this computer only 3 month earlier and since it had stopped working they assumed I sold them a lemon! It was posible that the computer did go bad after a month or two vecause the brand (a major brand) has had it’s share of recent issues of late. So once they let me know about the issue I stopped in to check it out.

I decided to take the unit from the corner and hook it up. I asked one of the office staff members where the mouse and keyboard was? They pointed me to another small storage room, I instantly noticed that it was a wireless keyboard and mouse, at this point guessed what their problem was, Batteries. They had not replaced the batteries on the keyboard and mouse, and thus they just assumed the computer was the problem when in fact it was the wireless keyboard and mouse. After I replaced the batteries and rebooted the machine we were back in business and this very new and very fast machine was ready to get back to work. I didn’t charge them for my visit only for the batteries.

I share this story with you is for two reasons, firstly always have additional batteries on hand at the office when dealing with a computer with a wireless mouse and keyboard. Secondly, maybe offices are better to keep using  a wired mouse and keyboard and leave wireless keyboards and mice for home users. In this case they had additional computer that they used, but if they only had 1 or 2 computers and this happends then business would fully stop for the office and that can hit the bottom line hard!