Ok, here's another deal to sign up for and get something free. I've done this before to get a free ipod with a different deal. This time I'm going for a free nintendo wii.
Here's the link
http://www.xpango.com?ref=90804070
Sign up, get something fun for yourself or give it as a gift.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Audiovox PPC 6600 Review
Here's a picture of someone's broken ppc 6600, luckily mine isn't this broken.
I like this phone. It is a pocket PC, which allows it to all kinds of crazy things. I use a freeware VNC called .NET VNC viewer to view my ubuntu machine. I also use logmein.com to see my PC desktop. Both are free, and both work pretty sort of ok. I've found it's actually much faster to do some kind of remote desktop thing and open a complicated webpage remotely and view it over a cellphone connection than to try to open it directly with the phones browser. When I so open web pages directly, I use the opera browser.
There are also lots of instant messenger apps that you can get, but they cost way too much money and don't work that well. I've tried im+, agile messenger, and some others. They usually cause lockups and cause me to miss calls. This could be more the phone than the software, but I don't' have any way to tell.
The last part of the puzzle with this phone is the sprint service. It's CDMA service, which is pretty widespread. I've had some trouble in the mountains, but you can roam and use Verizon. Of course when you roam data service doesn't work. The good thing about sprint is the internet service is unlimited, and you can easily talk a sprint representative into giving you the vision service for $10 a month. The bad thing is this phone can't do data and get calls at the same time very well. It's also not as fast as the new services I suppose.
This phone can also use Bluetooth to work with a Bluetooth GPS and you can load tomtom on it. That is cool, but it does weird things to the phone, like load up whenever it feels like it. It takes a LONG time to load up too.
One real headache is to try this phone as a dial up networking device. You're pretty much limited to using Bluetooth, especially if you use a Mac or Linux as the phone isn't recognized on those devices. If you use a PC you have to disable activesync, but I haven't bothered to try it since my PC is connected to a much faster internet route and isn't portable. On the Mac using OS X you can setup a Bluetooth wireless DUN connection, but I couldn't find any way to make it reliable, and have had to recreate the connection each time I wanted to use it. I also had to make the phone less secure so I could easily pair it, but I'm not too worried about Bluetooth attacks due to its limited range. I haven't been able to get ubuntu to work with it, but I have read of some success from others. I might also be experiencing issues due to my cheap USB Bluetooth dongle, in addition to any quirks the phone has. So to sum it up, DUN on this phone is way more difficult than a normal phone but it is possible. It seems even slower than my old TMobile phone that worked fine with a USB cable, but that's what you get I guess.
This phone is capable of so many many things, but this may also be a weakness. The camera is crap, although can shoot crappy video. The keyboard is tiny and is on the wrong side, although the sliding is cool. For some reason my phone won't "turn off" when pressing the off button anymore, the case is separating, and it got some snow in it in the recent Denver blizzard. It still does work though. Oh, it also has a habit of losing all its data so you have to restore it from a SD card or a computer. Backing up to an SD card takes hours for some reason too. But it was cheap, and it works often.
I like this phone. It is a pocket PC, which allows it to all kinds of crazy things. I use a freeware VNC called .NET VNC viewer to view my ubuntu machine. I also use logmein.com to see my PC desktop. Both are free, and both work pretty sort of ok. I've found it's actually much faster to do some kind of remote desktop thing and open a complicated webpage remotely and view it over a cellphone connection than to try to open it directly with the phones browser. When I so open web pages directly, I use the opera browser.
There are also lots of instant messenger apps that you can get, but they cost way too much money and don't work that well. I've tried im+, agile messenger, and some others. They usually cause lockups and cause me to miss calls. This could be more the phone than the software, but I don't' have any way to tell.
The last part of the puzzle with this phone is the sprint service. It's CDMA service, which is pretty widespread. I've had some trouble in the mountains, but you can roam and use Verizon. Of course when you roam data service doesn't work. The good thing about sprint is the internet service is unlimited, and you can easily talk a sprint representative into giving you the vision service for $10 a month. The bad thing is this phone can't do data and get calls at the same time very well. It's also not as fast as the new services I suppose.
This phone can also use Bluetooth to work with a Bluetooth GPS and you can load tomtom on it. That is cool, but it does weird things to the phone, like load up whenever it feels like it. It takes a LONG time to load up too.
One real headache is to try this phone as a dial up networking device. You're pretty much limited to using Bluetooth, especially if you use a Mac or Linux as the phone isn't recognized on those devices. If you use a PC you have to disable activesync, but I haven't bothered to try it since my PC is connected to a much faster internet route and isn't portable. On the Mac using OS X you can setup a Bluetooth wireless DUN connection, but I couldn't find any way to make it reliable, and have had to recreate the connection each time I wanted to use it. I also had to make the phone less secure so I could easily pair it, but I'm not too worried about Bluetooth attacks due to its limited range. I haven't been able to get ubuntu to work with it, but I have read of some success from others. I might also be experiencing issues due to my cheap USB Bluetooth dongle, in addition to any quirks the phone has. So to sum it up, DUN on this phone is way more difficult than a normal phone but it is possible. It seems even slower than my old TMobile phone that worked fine with a USB cable, but that's what you get I guess.
This phone is capable of so many many things, but this may also be a weakness. The camera is crap, although can shoot crappy video. The keyboard is tiny and is on the wrong side, although the sliding is cool. For some reason my phone won't "turn off" when pressing the off button anymore, the case is separating, and it got some snow in it in the recent Denver blizzard. It still does work though. Oh, it also has a habit of losing all its data so you have to restore it from a SD card or a computer. Backing up to an SD card takes hours for some reason too. But it was cheap, and it works often.
LCD Topgun lightgun review
So I like light gun games, a lot. Even if I suck at them. So I heard about this new lightgun thing, I like. Of course by the time I found out about it it can't be found through the previously reported means. This is because the company violated some law and Sony or some game company the manufacturer shut down. Anywho, I found the gun for sale at Play-Asia.com and ordered it.
The neat thing about this gun is that it doesn't work the same way earlier lightguns did. Instead of getting a signal from the tv screen, it has infrared lightbars that go on the sides of the screen to figure out where it's pointing. This allows it to work with projectors, LCD screens, etc. Theoretically this should also make it more accurate. It also means it has to be calibrated if anything moves. Since I have the 100 inch screen this seems like a good idea.
Unfortunately the 100 inch screen is too much for the included lightbars. So I ordered the "blaze stands" to accommodate the larger screen. I haven't received these yet, but perhaps I'll update this review when I get them.
As it is I've been able to use the gun with my much much smaller computer monitor. It did work, although I had to stand as far away from my desk as possible to make it work, which is about 4 1/2 feet (I have a small apartment). It did work pretty well, and it was configurable with included computer software. The gun comes with two USB plugs, one of which is purely to make the recoil function work. It doesn't seem to work well with a 15 foot USB extension chord, probably loses signal, so I'm not sure how to use it with the 100 inch screen anyway.
It also has a laser, which is cool. All in all, its the only gun I know of that works with PC's, ps2's, xboxes and projection screens. I'm not sure if you can use two guns with a PC. It has lots of chords hanging around for all the lightbars. It looks cool. That's about it.
The neat thing about this gun is that it doesn't work the same way earlier lightguns did. Instead of getting a signal from the tv screen, it has infrared lightbars that go on the sides of the screen to figure out where it's pointing. This allows it to work with projectors, LCD screens, etc. Theoretically this should also make it more accurate. It also means it has to be calibrated if anything moves. Since I have the 100 inch screen this seems like a good idea.
Unfortunately the 100 inch screen is too much for the included lightbars. So I ordered the "blaze stands" to accommodate the larger screen. I haven't received these yet, but perhaps I'll update this review when I get them.As it is I've been able to use the gun with my much much smaller computer monitor. It did work, although I had to stand as far away from my desk as possible to make it work, which is about 4 1/2 feet (I have a small apartment). It did work pretty well, and it was configurable with included computer software. The gun comes with two USB plugs, one of which is purely to make the recoil function work. It doesn't seem to work well with a 15 foot USB extension chord, probably loses signal, so I'm not sure how to use it with the 100 inch screen anyway.
It also has a laser, which is cool. All in all, its the only gun I know of that works with PC's, ps2's, xboxes and projection screens. I'm not sure if you can use two guns with a PC. It has lots of chords hanging around for all the lightbars. It looks cool. That's about it.
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