IN THIS ISSUE
- Dyson Root 6 Hand Vacuum
- Vantec EZ-Swap Removable Hard Drive Rack
- Generac 05251 7 Kilowatt Standby Generator
- Mio Technologies C520 Digital Navigation System
- Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens
- Motorola motoKRZR K1 Cell Phone
- DVD: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
- DVD: Lost: Season 3
- DVD: Mr. Bean’s Holiday
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Dyson Root 6 Hand Vacuum
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One of the drawbacks to living somewhere quiet and rural is that dust, not confined by asphalt and poor urban planning, is everywhere. It gets everywhere, too. Dust measurably shortens the life of technology, and we have a lot of technology.
One of the drawbacks to living somewhere quiet and rural with a hundred and fifty pound Newfoundland dog is that huge tumbleweeds of shedded black dog hair make the issue of dust immaterial by comparison.
Hand vacuums have long been as much a part of our technology as computers, and until our last move – when several boxes of hand vacuum pre-history went to the technology recyclers – we could trace their origins back to the original “dust busters.”
One of the constant qualities of hand vacuums throughout recorded history is that none of them have worked very well. Beset with ineffectual motors, lackadaisical batteries and dust collection systems that were prone to respiratory seizure after a few minutes of exertion, they were typically at their best when they were scaring the dog into another part of the building.
The Dyson Root 6 hand vacuum is notable for having a great deal more marketing behind it than its antecedents, and a truly impressive price tag. To its credit, however, it looks like a death ray from a bad science fiction film and comes with some attachments, which is more than could be said for its immediate predecessor. We sprang for a Dyson when its immediate predecessor’s ineffectual motor erupted in blue smoke one day, and thereafter worked even less well.
The first thing that must be said of the Dyson Root 6 is that it largely lives up to its expensive marketing. It summons forth a great deal of suction, and it lacks a perforated paper filter to clog with dust. Whatever gets ingested into its transparent plastic dust chamber swirls happily in free-fall, but it doesn’t get involved in the inner workings of the machine.
This being the case, the suction provided by the Dyson Root 6 remains at maximum suck until its batteries finally snuff it, and it needs to be recharged.
The fact that it actually works, and keeps working, arguably makes the Dyson Root 6 worth what its costs – this being about three times the price of a conventional hand vacuum.
While easily the most effective hand vacuum we’ve tried to date, the Dyson Root 6 isn’t without its issues. Its impressive suction is wrought by a considerable motor, which makes substantial demands upon its lithium-ion battery. We experienced about five minutes of vacuuming before the battery closed its tired little eyes and wanted a snooze in its charger. The charger required three hours to recharge the Dyson’s battery.
I’m reluctant to complain about the battery life in the Root 6, in that it’s a hand vacuum, not a shop-vac. If it’s used as we use it – to clean up a few clumps of dog hair and send the odd dust bunny to the seventh level of hell – its battery life never really becomes an issue. It can be back in its charger before it starts wheezing. Should you require a vacuum cleaner to handle your entire house, we recommend the Beam central vacuum system, which doesn’t use a battery.
The plastic used to encase the Dyson Root 6, however, was a genuine disappointment. It’s very soft, and easily scratched. Considering what it cost, we would have liked to have seen it built of somewhat sterner stuff.
The documentation included with the Dyson Root 6 is arguably the worst manual we’ve ever seen in any device costing more than a dollar ninety five. The warrantee and legal disclaimers are explained in considerable detail, and in three languages. The operation of the machine itself is left to a two-page cartoon with almost no text, and periodic ambiguities. In attempting to decrypt the instructions, one can’t help thinking that Dyson imagines the bulk of its customers to be illiterate.
Finally, it’s worth noting that while Dyson’s television advertising makes a great deal of noise about their vacuum cleaners operating without filters, the Root 6 does have one. It needs to be washed every few months. While it doesn’t appear to exhibit the clogging problems of traditional paper dust filters, it is a minor maintenance issue.
Despite its shortcomings, the Dyson Root 6 hand vacuum has proven a worthwhile addition to our collection of toys. It does what it claims to do, does it well, and doesn’t frighten the dog. It looks cool, too.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Vantec EZ-Swap MRK-102FD / MRK-200ST Removable Hard Drive Rack
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The hard drive in your computer is arguably its most valuable component. While remarkably affordable, installing Windows and the other applications and data you use is typically a time-consuming undertaking. We usually allow several days to get a new computer up and running.
If you keep sensitive files on your system – customer records, personal information, trade secrets or just embarrassing photographs involving feather boas – your hard drive is also your computer’s greatest liability. Should someone make off with your computer, they’ll have all your files as well.
Password protecting your computer will typically deter a good data thief by as much as fifteen minutes.
The best way to prevent your hard drive from being stolen – or your data from being destroyed by a fire or other disaster – is to put it somewhere else when you’re not using it. The ideal “somewhere else” would be a fire-resistant, burglar-proof safe.
Unwiring your computer and stashing it in a safe every time you leave the building arguably isn’t a workable solution.
The Vantec EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack looks a lot more like a workable solution. It will allow you to remove your hard drive from your computer and store it somewhere out of harm’s way, far from the madding crowd and beyond the reach of the unenlightened, unwashed and unthinkable. It’s easily the best such product we’ve seen to date.
Sadly, this shouldn’t be regarded as an unqualified endorsement.
The EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack consists of a cage that resides in one of the otherwise unused drive bays of your computer – you’ll need a free drive bay to house it – and a box that slides into it, wherein lurks your hard drive. The EZ-Swap system will work with pretty much any 3.5 inch hard drive. You can use the one that came with your computer.
The EZ-Swap drive rack comes in two flavors – the MRK-102FD for older IDE drives and the MRK-200ST for current SATA drives. If your PC was built in the past few years, it probably uses the latter. You can determine which drive type you have with a screwdriver and a flashlight – IDE drives use ribbon cables about an inch and a half wide to interface them to their host computers. SATA drives interface through a much narrower cable.
SATA Version
The MRK-200ST version of the EZ-Swap drive rack is considerably easier to install than the IDE version, to be discussed below – largely, I suspect, because SATA drives have fewer options and variables to contend with. There’s only one jumper to set, to determine whether the drive will be a master or a slave.
One oddity of the SATA drive rack is that it uses a SATA data connector, but an old-style four-pin nylon power connector. SATA drives use a smaller custom power connector. In newer PCs with few spare old-style power connectors, this could be an issue, as it was in one of our installations. We found a power splitter at the back of a desk drawer to resolve it.
The SATA data connector was also a minor issue – if the intended host computer for this device uses an angled data connector at the drive end, it will probably just fit in the EZ-Swap rack, as the back of the electronics cover is a few millimeters deeper than it should be. Ours was left at a slight angle.
The instructions for the SATA drive rack were somewhat more professional and comprehensible than the ones for the IDE version, to be robustly flamed in a moment, but they still presuppose a reasonable familiarity with the inner workings of personal computers.
If you’ve never had the cover off a PC, installing an EZ-Swap drive rack might not be the best place to start. Users with reasonable eye-hand coordination and detectable success in answering questions like “which of these objects is a hard drive” should have little difficulty.
IDE Version
Mounting the MRK-102FD IDE EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack in a desktop PC could be almost effortless, although it wasn’t for any of the systems we installed these things in. Most devices intended for use a PC drive bay are designed with bolt holes for mounting them both in the sides of the case and underneath. In theory, only the ones in the sides should be required – in practice, many commercial PCs use the bottom mounting holes to allow their drive bay retaining systems to work like a drawer.
The EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack case is slightly smaller than, for example, a conventional CD-ROM drive, making its side mounting holes a bit tricky to use for computers that hold their drive bay devices in with slides. It has no bottom mounting holes at all.
Not to put too fine a point on it, securing EZ-Swap racks in the PCs we bought them for was a pig. We ultimately resorted to hot-melt glue for some of them, which is about as far from an elegant solution as solutions can possibly get without involving one or more dancing hippopotamuses.
A lesser concern to be aware of in installing one of these things is that the drive case is unusually long. We were able to fit them into all the machines they were intended for, but in several cases, with millimeters to spare.
Installing and configuring the MRK-102FD EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack was made somewhat more difficult than it probably had to be by the inclusion of one of the most deplorable instruction sheets we’ve encountered in any piece of technology made later than 1985. The whole works was a single sheet of paper. Half of the instructions had to do with configuring the remarkably sophisticated monitoring firmware in the drive rack. The leftover steps that dealt with installing the hard drive and setting its jumpers were decidedly terse.
The first issue you’re likely to encounter in reading the instructions for the IDE version of the drive rack is that they only deal with IBM and Seagate hard drives. Safely buried at Vantec’s web page are jumper settings for Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate and Hitachi drives as well, but you’d need to go looking for them.
Once the hot-melt glue dried and we’d figured out how to set up the EZ-Swap’s jumpers, the whole works went together reasonably easily. All of ours worked first time out of the box. The plastic construction of the drive bay lock seemed somewhat flimsy, and its insistence on the use of its mechanical key lock to disengage the drive for removal remains inconvenient. Those little tubular keys aren’t going to slow down any potential thief with more than two working fingers.
As I noted earlier, the EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack includes internal logic to monitor the temperature of the hard drive stored in it, and a small auxiliary fan to keep it at something reasonable. The temperature and the state of the fan are displayed on a front-panel LCD screen. The screen will also show you when the drive is accessing data.
It’s probably worth noting that even with an EZ-Swap rack around it, your IDE hard drive will not be hot-swappable. You’ll need to power down your computer to remove it.
In one sense, the EZ-Swap removable hard drive rack does what it says on the box – it will make your system’s hard drive removable, and allow you to lock it up when it’s not in use. Once it’s installed, it works well. Installing it, however, is not for the faint of heart. In that its installation issues are the result of somewhat questionable design elements and sloppy instructions, this is a toy that could have been a lot more fun to play with had its creators sent it back through the CAD software one more time.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Generac 05251 7 Kilowatt Standby Generator
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Life’s possible without electricity, but it’s not a lot of fun. The sudden failure of the power grid can turn your refrigerator into the domain of squishy purple mutants; your business into a nuclear winter; and your days into an endless wait for a utility that only cares about you at the end of a billing cycle. Especially in rural areas, where the electric infrastructure is often increasingly aged and under-maintained, power failures are becoming common, protracted and more than merely annoying.
You can address the problem of faltering power with a portable gasoline generator and a box of extension cords – while workable in theory, this is a troublesome way to get the lights back on in practice. Traditional generators require periodic maintenance to keep them ready for action, a supply of reasonably fresh gasoline and considerable effort to get them up and running and connected to your essential technology when things go dark. Finding the beast and getting it on line by flashlight at two in the morning is an adventure.
The Generac 05251 standby generator is a cost-effective, convenient alternative to a gasoline generator. It runs on propane or natural gas, starts automatically when the lights go out, performs a weekly exercise cycle to keep itself ready for action and is permanently wired into your home or business, replacing your conventional electricity supply when your conventional electricity supply leaps off a cliff. While it’s usually structured to address specific electric circuits in your home or business, for a slight increase in installation costs it can be fitted with a transfer switch to handle the entire structure.
A Generac 05251 standby generator has been keeping Alchemy Mindworks on line for almost three years as for this writing. Located as we are in northern Ontario, where the power only works when it feels like it, the generator’s been busy.
Having researched a number of alternatives, it must be said that Generac 05251 is arguably the best such device currently available. This isn’t to say that it’s flawless – nothing with this many moving parts can be expected to wholly behave itself. Ours came with a few teething issues.
Our Generac generator is powered by propane from the tank used to heat the building. Installing it required that it be connected to the propane supply and switched over to propane operation, an undertaking that entailed the coordination of a surprising number of disparate tradesmen. This was also our first introduction to the multiple level of skill sets surrounding these devices.
One of the important considerations in running a Generac generator is that, while it’s based on an internal combustion engine, it’s sufficiently unlike the one powering your car as to make everything you know about spark plugs, carburetors and hand tools virtually useless. Generac maintains a network of technicians, but not all of them are a whole lot more knowledgeable.
The one who set up our generator, for example, failed to completely convert it to propane. It ran rough, used a lot more fuel than it had to and produced fluctuating, erratic power. Not having owned a Generac generator previously, it wasn’t immediately apparent what was amiss.
This problem was resolved by accident. The only shop in town that sold Generac consumables – the air filter, oil filter and other tune-up items required to maintain the beast are unique to it – was presided over by a fellow who actually knew how to fix them.
Keeping a Generac generator generating is an ongoing undertaking, no less so than performing routine maintenance for a car. It requires an annual service to change its oil, adjust its valves and check its voltage. Ours has also called for a few visits by men in overalls to address a frozen gas regulator, a cracked starter motor and so on. It’s probably no less reliable than a car, but it likes to keep its problems to itself until it’s suddenly needed and it proves reluctant to start.
While it’s clearly intended to require no intervention by its owner, a Generac generator arguably wants a weekly inspection – unlock its case and peek therein to make sure its status lights are as they should be. If it tries to start itself and fails, it will shut itself down to protect its inner workings and do nothing more until someone comes by to see to it. As it will start itself once a week to exercise its engine, its fail-safe mode can go undetected for a considerable time.
You can perform the annual service for a Generac generator yourself. Changing its oil, air filter and spark plug are all agreeably easy – checking its value clearance is a bit tricky. This having been said, if you can find a local Generac service person who really knows his stuff, a hundred dollar service call once a year is a well worth it.
While a Generac generator will run on natural gas, you might want to give some thought about having it do so. In many areas, natural gas is pumped by electric motors. If the power’s off for a protracted period, the natural gas can go away as well.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that while a Generac generator starts up automatically, it takes almost a minute to do so – it waits about 45 seconds to make sure that it’s really looking at a power failure, rather than a minor disturbance in the force, and then it takes another ten seconds to get up to speed before it instructs its transfer case to switch it into your building’s electric supply. It’s not a replacement for uninterruptible power supplies for technology that you need to keep on line.
Properly adjusted, the power produced by a Generac generator is almost as clean as that provided by your local power grid when it’s working. The occasional flicker isn’t unheard of, and a building-wide surge and spike protector is a worthwhile addition when you get a generator installed.
While a Generac seven kilowatt generator costs about $2500, by the time you add a transfer case to switch your home or business into its circuit, and professional installation of the generator and its attendant hardware, you’ll have spent about twice this. It certainly feels worth it, however, when the rest of the world’s in darkness and you’re still having a nice day.
Generac standby generators are available in several larger sizes as well – the basic seven kilowatt generator is more than adequate for a medium-sized home unless to insist on arc welding during power disruptions. Larger generators consume more fuel even if you don’t use all their capacity.
Despite its service issues and middling ongoing expenses, the Generac 05251 standby generator is an excellent box, and increasingly, a necessity for anyone who needs reliable electric power. The certainty of having to endure no blackout longer than sixty seconds can make one decidedly smug.
The edition of Storm Gods you're reading was assembled entirely by the power of our Generac geneator, the local electric grid having gone on vacation the day this page was created.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Mio Technologies C520 Digital Navigation System
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People who buy satellite navigation systems to drive around the suburbs might be deluding themselves. Out in the frozen wastes of rural Ontario, a good GPS receiver is almost as important as a good coat.
A good GPS receiver that can tell you where the nearest gas station is defies description.
The Mio C520 is one the nicest of the current generation of satellite navigation devices. It features a large, bright touch panel, an intuitive user interface and – perhaps most importantly – an immense map and location database. It appears to know about every highway, street, road, alley and rutted goat track in North America, with optional maps of Europe to be available shortly.
It can also tell you where things are – lots of things. It can locate gas stations, major shops by name, hospitals, restaurants… there’s every possibility that a list of elephant grooming facilities resides in there somewhere, if you look hard enough.
Based on Windows CE, the user interface of the Mio C520 is unusually easy to work with – the screen is touch sensitive, and you can navigate it with a fingertip. The material the touch screen is made of is particularly well chosen – it’s resistant to scratches, and slightly matted so as not to make the inevitable fingerprints littering its surface too apparent.
The Mio C520 has one moving part – its power switch. Turn the beast on, touch the MioMap icon and it’s good to go. It can display its maps in either two-dimensional or three-dimensional views.
Select where you are and where you want to go and the Mio C520 will find a route to get you there. It will display a list of turns to take, update your location on its map as you proceed and provide you with verbal directions as you drive. It features a better-than-average electronic voice.
The GPS receiver in the Mio C520 is excellent – unlike earlier generations of GPS receivers, which really had to be outside to establish a satellite lock, the Mio C520 can get by with being near a window. It includes a screen to display the number and quality of navigation satellites it has acquired.
The list of features available in the Mio C520 is impressive, and I’m not going to get too deeply into all of them here. Among my favorites are:
- Points of interest: The Find POI screen will let you search for shops and services which exist around your current location. It’s very specific – you can have it locate a nearby Sears or a Best Western hotel, for example. The database of locations that arrived with my Mio C520 appears to be about two years old.
- Speed: The Mio C520 will display your current speed and optionally warn you if you exceed the local speed limits. If you live in an area where the government regards dogmatic traffic policing as a handy adjunct to its other forms of taxation, this could save you more than the price of the GPS receiver the first time you use it. It also maintains a database of traffic cameras.
- Traffic Message Channel support: If you drive in a city with TMC support, you can subscribe to TMC broadcasts to have the Mio C520 guide you around traffic jams and other obstructions. I’ve not had occasion to try this, as the TMC service doesn’t address issues like moose on the road.
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth connectivity allows the Mio C520 to interact with other Bluetooth-enabled devices.
- Music player: The Mio C520 can store MP3 files and play music, replacing a dedicated MP3 player. I have no idea why you’d want it to do this.
- Pictures and videos: You can also store and display still photographs and videos with the Mio C520 – once again, I couldn’t find a reason to do this, although it’s a nice feature to play with if you’re stuck in traffic and you get tired of trying to find the nearest Sears.
- Memory card: The Mio C520 has an SD memory card port in the side, just in case the music and picture features really appeal to you.
The Mio C520 features an internal battery, although it doesn’t run the device for terribly long – a fully charged battery will keep the lights on for about four hours. It’s powered through a USB connector, and can be plugged into an automobile cigarette lighter or a laptop for extended journeys. It comes with a mountable cradle to permanently install it in your ride – I leave mine in one of the cup holders, as it gets used in several vehicles.
If the Mio C520 has any shortcomings, they’re all in its manual. Provided as two PDF files on a CD-ROM rather than a paper reference – based, perhaps, on the assumption that everyone drives around with a laptop in the passenger seat – its instructions were clearly written by someone who knows the device well and can’t imagine its users being less familiar with it. Somewhat poorly organized and difficult to get into, the manuals for the Mio C520 will confront new owners with a steeper learning curve than this otherwise excellent bit of technology deserves.
Despite its deficient instructions, I found the Mio C520 to be among the best of the current GPS systems – to some extent, its largely intuitive user interface makes its documentation superfluous. It has a rich palette of features, and an architecture that will allow you to use as many or as few of them as you like. Its graphics are excellent, and it’s genuinely fun to drive with.
The subtle distinction between an electronic voice that says “turn right in one kilometer” and a passenger who observes “I think you just missed the exit” hardly requires elaboration.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens
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Those little digital cameras that look like they arrived as prizes in a box of Cap’n Crunch are wonderful for capturing slightly blurry images of next door’s drooling children attempting to bath a cat, but serious photography demands something with a lens having a diameter in excess of that of a pencil eraser. Photographers carry huge, bulky cameras around with them for a reason – the reason having nothing to do with the usefulness of a large brass object on a long strap for defense against bears.
Canon’s latest generation of digital SLR cameras – as touched upon in Storm Gods 2 – is complimented by a new generation of AF lenses which include internal image stabilization. Breathtakingly sneaky, they employ tiny gyroscopes and servomotors to wiggle the lens elements, that they might compensate for minor camera movements at the moment of exposure.
You have to wonder who thinks this stuff up.
As vaguely preposterous as the Canon image stabilization technology may sound, it actually works, and works very well. Short of clamping your hand in a paint shaker, it’s pretty well impossible to make a camera equipped with one of these things exhibit any visual effects of camera vibration.
The EF 28-135mm lens is a really nice bit of glass. It has a comfortable zoom range for the sorts of photography that don’t involve lots of optics and trench coats, and it embodies decades of experience in making weird little numbers and concentric rings fall naturally under your fingers. Using it is so effortless as to obviate the need for description.
One of the aspects of the image stabilization technology in this lens that probably won’t be immediately apparent is how it grants whatever camera it’s attached to the capacity to shoot in hitherto unheard-of low light levels. It can cheat its way to clear pictures even at shutter speeds that would have resulted in abstract art with a conventional lens. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that it only compensates for camera shake in this capacity – it can’t repair the damage wrought by a moving subject.
The less exotic aspects of this lens are easily as well implemented as its image stabilization. It offers quick autofocus and laser-sharp image quality right to the edges of its pictures at all its zoom settings. It’s ruggedly constructed, light as SLR lenses go and quite compact, considering everything that’s squeezed into it.
The EF 28-135mm lens should be workable with any Canon autofocus SLR – it worked with all our digital Canon cameras, and I’m pretty sure it would have been equally comfortable with one of our old EOS film cameras, had any of them still found themselves possessed of working batteries.
While modestly expensive as compared to some of the non-image stabilized aftermarket Canon-compatible lenses, this is unquestionably a toy worth having. Having sprung for a camera that can read your mind, you should unquestionably have one that holds your hand as well.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Motorola motoKRZR K1 Cell Phone
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This is easily the coolest cell phone on earth – albeit, with one of the highest price tags on earth. Ignore this... the phone will be cool long after you’ve paid off the plastic you dented to buy it.
Cell phones that do a lot of stuff are pretty common – if you have half an hour to kill in a mall one afternoon, try finding one that doesn’t have a camera and an MP3 player. This having been said, cell phones that do a lot of stuff really well are pretty scarce, and it’s hard not to wonder if all the bad ones are part of a conspiracy to soften you up for a phone that costs a week’s pay.
The Motorola KRZR, the latest generation of RAZR phones, is small, elegant and beautifully engineered. It weighs under four ounces. It’s so intuitive as to hardly need a manual – actually, a worthwhile consideration, as mine doesn't appear to have come with one. It’s packed with features, and you can subscribe to still more.
To begin with, the KRZR is actually a remarkable telephone. It has landline-quality sound, and more to the point – at least, for those of us who live in the hinterlands – it manages to maintain its remarkable sound quality with the merest whiff of signal strength, when lesser phones would have degenerated into blasts of solar wind and static. I’ve yet to encounter it actually dropping a call.
In shopping around for a new phone, my final short list consisted of the KRZR and the LG Chocolate. The latter phone, while equally cool, couldn’t touch the KRZR for a clear conversation on one bar of signal.
All the usual adjuncts to placing calls are included with the KRZR – it has a phone directory and speed dial, and they’re all easy to find and actually make sense when you try to use them. You don’t have to hold down the upper volume control button, tilt the screen to 32 degrees and rub your right kneecap to access the phone book, a common condition among many contemporary phones.
The KRZR also has a rich selection of the things that will make people breathe heavily when they see what you’ve got clamped to your ear, including:
- Bluetooth connectivity: If you have a Bluetooth adapter dangling from one of the USB ports of your computer, you can have the KRZR talk to your PC to update its phone book and other internal resources. The KRZR comes with Windows software to manage this for you – it will set up your Bluetooth connection, and thereafter obviate the need to enter the names of your phone contacts using only a numeric keypad. The Bluetooth functionality of the KRZR can also connect to other Bluetooth devices, such as wireless headsets.
- A music player: You can make the KRZR think it’s a really big iPod. It comes with a USB headset to complete the illusion.
- Camera: It wouldn’t be a cell phone without a camera – at least, not in the new millennium – and the one in the KRZR is pretty slick as phone cameras go. Featuring 1.3 megapixels of resolution and an 8X zoom, it’s not likely to replace a serious digital SLR, but it’s superb for snapshots of friends, images of your dog doing something clever and proof that there really was a UFO in your back yard last week.
- Videos: There’s a digital video camera in there too. It only shoots 15 frames per second at moderate resolution, but again, it’s respectable for a cell phone.
- Speech recognition: You can have the phone respond to spoken commands if you find yourself in a situation wherein playing with its buttons might be distracting. While I can’t help feeling that people who use cell phones while driving need to be dangled over a cliff by their heels for a couple of hours, a hands-free phone is probably a workable compromise.
- Streaming content: Depending upon your cell phone provider, the KRZR can access all manner of additional content, including music and television – albeit typically with a considerably enhanced monthly bill. I didn’t go there.
You can add up to two gigabytes of memory to the KRZR with a micro-SD memory card, which should unquestionably be the first accessory you purchase if you plan to use the camera or music player features. The 20 megabytes of internal memory in the phone gets full pretty quickly.
Every port and button of the KRZR seems to have been well thought-out. It uses a USB port to charge its battery, which means it can be charged by a variety of USB power sources, or by connecting it to a computer. Its screen is huge, and it lacks the flat appearance and ghost-trail images of earlier color display panels. Its buttons, while membrane switches, have a positive feel and are large enough to be operated by real human fingers. Its battery seems to run forever, with about 200 minutes of talk time and at least 200 hours on standby.
Oh yes... and it supports MP3 ringtones, although in the interest of the KRZR remaining really cool, you might want to ignore this feature.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
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While it goes nowhere and takes a very long time – 169 minutes – not getting there, the last dubloon in the treasure chest of Pirates is fun to watch as it resolutely fails to arrive. A tangle of oblique references to nautical folklore, state of the art CGI and no detectable plot, At World’s End offers a final evening with Cap’n Jack Sparrow and a cast of rogues, villains and damned souls.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Lost: Season 3
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I can’t imagine trying to watch Lost one episode a week, stuffed in between the commercials of broadcast television. Experienced on DVD, its convoluted, quirky plots, maddening flashbacks and textured characters flow into a long, layered movie viewed over several nights. The third season is a treat, hinting at a resolution to the story but drawing no closer to it. The extra features – a whole other DVD’s worth of deleted scenes, documentaries and out-takes – will prove a welcome nightcap for anyone who gets to the end and still wants another peek at the mystery before waiting for season four. It will come as no surprise that the bonus DVD is fairly thick with easter eggs.
LINK TO THE FOLLOWING REVIEW
Mr. Bean’s Holiday
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The very definition of a strange little flick done perfectly, this latest glimpse into the life of Mr. Bean arguably deserves a place at Cannes, rather than merely being filmed there. Evolved from a UK television comedy, it follows the almost entirely non-vocal Mr. Bean through a tangle of misadventures as he attempts to weasel his way to a vacation in the south of France. Make sure you have access to a Pause button – you’ll want an intermission to let your face stop hurting.
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