Gonzo Gadgets

Acer Aspire AS1551-5448 Review

BrettC — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:06:32 +0000

Acer Aspire AS-1551

The Acer Aspire 1551 is a thin-and-light notebook, or a revved-up netbook and hits a sweet spot that many are looking for. With discrete ATI Radeon graphics and plenty of processor muscle, the AS1551 promises a valuable compromise between netbook portability (weighing only 3 lbs) and notebook performance (AMD Turion II Neo Dual-Core processor). Acer offers the Aspire 1551 in in two models – the AS1551-5448 and AS1551-4755. Here are the key differences:

	AS1551-5448	AS1551-4755
Processor	AMD K625 (1.5 GHz)	AMD K325 (1.3 GHz)
Memory	4GB RAM	3GB RAM
Storage	320 GB HDD	250 GB HDD
Retail	$549.99	$479.99

For a modest price bump, the AS1551-5448 offers a number of important benefits over the AS1551-4755, and we recommend customers strongly consider the AS1551-5448 to enjoy the best balance of the netbook & notebook worlds.

Gonzo Gadgets Take

There is nothing else in the market quite like the Aspire AS1551 and we believe Acer has a winner on its hands, at least until competitors catch up. The price matches the specifications – it’s not bargain basement but by no means top of market. For a truly thin-and-light notebook computer that can do real work, the price seems fair.

Pro’s:

Generous screen resolution (1366×768 on an 11″ screen)
Plenty of video muscle for full-screen HD movies & some gaming
Great processor capability for serious application use, given the incredibly light weight
Chiclet keyboard with good feel
Truly thin & light – a great traveller
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Con’s:

Too much bloatware installed by Acer (either reinstall Windows or simply uninstall 1-by-1)
Limited vertical viewing angle
Glossy screen may be difficult in sunlight conditions
Screen can present a washed-out appearance at default setting
Build quality not the highest – some flex in the keyboard, speakers are weak
Battery won’t last the listed 5 hours (3 more likely) with full video- and processor- usage.

Again Acer has taken a risk and developed the Acer Aspire AS1551 for a gap in the market. Are there enough people excited by a portable that delivers near-laptop performance at netbook size & weight? We think so. We believe Acer has found an untapped market and the AS1551 (especially the AS1551-5448) really delivers the goods. You’ll find an excellent traveler here that can do real work on a desk or lap, provided you don’t need CAD and extreme gamer performance. The Aspire AS1551 offers an enticing blend of ultra-portability with good-enough punch that most will not be frustrated by its limitations. This is a great choice for students, business travelers, and those on the go but frustrated with the poor performance of netbooks and the huge price tags of the MacBook Air and its PC equivalents.

What Customers Are Saying

User reviews were limited at the time of this writing (July 11, 2010).

NewEgg – 5/5 Stars
Acer Aspire AS1551-5448 11.6″ Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit NoteBook

Amazon – 3/5 Stars

Mari Winsor Slimming Pilates System Information

BrettC — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:23:53 +0000

Pilates is popular. We know lots of Pilates fans, and many do or have used Winsor Pilates workouts from long-time pilates advocate Mari Winsor.

No surprise then to find Mari Winsor on TV alongside the lovely Marisa Tomei – promoting a new fitness/weight-loss gadget called the Accelerator. Like P90X and 1,000’s of other fitness products in infomercials, you get a wide range of items along with the weighted bar, including several DVD’s with workouts that target different areas of the body. They even thoughtfully included a tape measure, though that surely couldn’t have cost them much to throw in.

For $60 this looks like it could be a good workout-at-home product for pilates fans, and certainly could be much cheaper alternative to studio sessions (often $10 and up each time). We have not yet gotten a review unit to put through its paces. For now, check Mari Winsor Slimming Pilates Reviews or find more information on the official website, WinsorSlim.com.

Aside: Folks love As Seen On TV products and a quick look at Gonzo Gadgets statistics confirms it. For instance, our review of the Xpress Redi Set Go was one of our most-popular pages of 2009. We promise to bring you more infomercial goodness in 2010! Do you have any particular As Seen On TV products you’d like us to review? Send us a note.

Bloom Box – Energy from (Free) Oxygen

BrettC — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:39:24 +0000

Not ready to install a personal nuclear reactor in your backyard? Listen up. A new hope for living off-grid may be around the corner, called Bloom Box. [More recently the company has been calling the large units "energy servers"].

Bloom Boxes look un-remarkable – large silver enclosures that resemble supercomputers from a few years ago. Despite the lack of style they can boast a NASA pedigree. Some of the underlying Bloom Box technology was developed to support a proposed NASA manned mission to Mars. The mission was later scrapped but from the ashes has risen an interesting gadget.

Each Bloom Box contains specially manufactured discs that convert common elements in the air, principally oxygen, into power once the box is fully warmed up (to a sultry 1,000 degrees C).

Corporate-sized units sell for $700,000 – $800,000 USD, and founder/CEO K.R. Sridhars claims these are in use today at major corporations, including FedEx, Walmart, Staples, Google, Coca Cola, Bank of America, Cox and eBay.

The fuel may be free but there are downsides to consider. First, the energy-producing process produces carbon emissions. Carbon neutral power generation however can be achieved by choosing to use bio-gas from landfill waste (as eBay is doing). Second, the fuel savings must be weighed against the high price of the generators. eBay claims to have saved $100,000 in energy costs over 9 months, but that is with 5 Bloom Boxes installed at a total investment of roughly $4M USD. It will take eBay 30 years to recoup that investment, and it’s unclear what maintenance will cost or what life expectency these units will demonstrate.

Smaller Bloom Box units may be on the way – adequate to power a typical American household, and presumably at a price much, much lower than the corporate-sized giants. Sridhar, likely speaking idealistically, would like to see household units cost as little as $3,000.

CBS News has an extensive interview with K.R. Sridhars, for those interested in more information.

Kempler & Strauss W Phone Watch

BrettC — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:33:47 +0000

The Kempler & Strauss W Phone Watch has made tech blogger news since October and continues to intrigue tech folks and turn heads.

Wired’s Gadget Lab now has more photos and a decent rundown of the W Phone Watch features. We still are still looking for a detailed hands-on review, but it’s certainly looks like a fun attention-getting gadget for technophiles.

Note the W is not a smartphone and does not browse the internet. It is however a nicely designed unlocked phone suitable for AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Likely you’ll find yourself still wanting your BlackBerry or iPhone near at hand too for their smart-phone features.

Sungale ID800WT Digital Photo Frame Review

BrettC — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:12:09 +0000

Sungale ID800WT Digital Photo Frame

Sungale’s ID800WT do-everything photo frame has a spec sheet designed to please the most discerning photo lover. For that reason, it has moved right into the same neighborhood with one of our favorite frames – the iGala Wireless Digital Picture Frame. The ID800WT, like the iGala, is priced around $250 and offers features well beyond the norm – including internet connectivity, improved screen, touchscreen interface, streaming media playback and more. The ID800WT is certainly not cheap, but the promise of so many features demands attention even in a crowded market.

Read on to see if the ID800WT capitalizes on the big ambitions of Sungale’s engineers.

The Hardware

Sungale’s announcement of the ID800WT recently garnered interest among technophiles.

The highlights of the hardware are a generous 800×600 resolution, high-quality screen, touchscreen interface, built-in Wi-Fi, a multi-format card reader and a capacious 512MB of internal memory. The ID800WT is right at the top in terms of hardware in this price range.

The look of the frame is classic, understated but pleasing. The back panel reveals two easy-to-use thumbscrews to remove the stock frame and replace with another frame., at least in theory. At this time, Sungale has published no information on where to obtain additional frames.

One other oddity – the unit has an infrared receiver centered just beneath the bottom edge of the screen. Sungale however includes no remote and again does not advertise how to make use of this feature.

In all the hardware is well designed and of high quality. The eventual availability of replacement frames could bump up the “style” factor, but even so we find it suitable for nearly any desk – home office or executive penthouse.

Features & Software

As excited as we were with the hardware specifications, it was the long list of internal applications that really got our attention.

The feature list – copied from Sungale’s ID800WT page:

Youtube: Top ten YouTube programs for your entertainment
RSS news: Google &Yahoo
IP Radio: Thousands of stations for your selection
Picasa: View and download your photos
Stock: Real-time stock quotes and market news
Gmail: Watch your email without a PC
Weather: Real time weather report in your area
Video: AVI
Music: WMA
Photo: JPG, TIF, PNG, BMP
Calendar: Digital Calendar
Clock: Analogue Clock display
Touch Screen: Touch screen to do your operation

Sounds great, but how did it perform?

Unfortunately, we found the actual operation of this feature list to be a mixed bag.

Features: The Good

Displaying photos, it’s no surprise that the ID800WT does quite well. The screen is bright and crisp – not the very best we’ve used but well above average. The 512MB internal memory is more than adequate for storing oodles of your favorite photos. The transitions between photos are snappy.

Connecting to the wireless network is simple and smart and painless.

Most of the software features (but not all – read the next section) work as advertised. RSS reading, video & music playback, internet radio streaming, weather, Gmail, etc all operated properly.

Features: The Bad

Unfortunately we encountered a fair share of problems, or at least annoyances, during our time with the ID800WT photo frame.

We crashed the unit on several occasions attempting to play “Top 10″ videos from YouTube. Not all Top 10 videos seem to cause this, but the ones that do do so consistently. The entire frame became unresponsive and our only recourse was to power cycle the unit. Very frustrating.

Despite trying on multiple WiFi networks, verifying our login many times, and patiently typing and retyping the login information, we were unable to connect to Picasa. This was disappointing as Picasa is a great photo service and we were excited to see how Sungale’s product enhanced it. This may work great for others, but we were unable to enjoy this feature.

Beyond these errors, we were perplexed at the rough edges and inconsistency of the interface. Each application seemingly was designed in a vacuum (possibly each by a different designer & programmer?), making individual features feel like stand-alones rather than part of a well-planned whole. In too many cases, small icons without accompanying labels served important purposes, but only trips to the manual would reveal them.

In another example, we could not get the stock application to recognize popular stocks symbols such as Apple (“AAPL”). This was not a major drawback to us but again, a case where things don’t work quite as you would hope, gimping the effective feature list. No onscreen help pointed us in the right direction.

The Gmail application does indeed read email, but be forewarned that email content is displayed in a test-only, bare-bones and is needlessly cramped on-screen. As a result reading Gmail on the ID800WT requires lots of sifting through technical headers, scrolling and patience. We doubt many this application will replace customer’s home computer or iPhone for reading email.

The difficulty of typing accurately on the touchscreen was our final frustration. The Sungale is not alone in this respect among photo frames, but typing passwords especially was troublesome. Happily you won’t find yourself typing too often on it – once you’ve got your favorite applications configured you shouldn’t need to reenter text again.

The Verdict

We came in hoping that the Sungale ID800WT and it’s amazing feature list would unseat our reigning photo frame champ, the iGala Digital Picture Frame. Sungale’s hardware specs are up to the task but ultimately the ID800WT is let down by the implementation of its myriad software features. The frame that looks unbeatable on paper but after spending hours with it, a surprising number of rough edges appeared. With a little more thought to a cohesive interface design, improvements to some of the functionality and some overall polish, we believe the ID800WT could be a winner.

At a price of just under $250 however, we continue to recommend the iGala Frame. It doesn’t have quite as many features listed on the spec sheet but what it does do – and it’s plenty – it does slickly and we found the iGala’s apps to all be fully usable. Sadly we did not find the same to be true of the Sungale.

There is a niche market out there for the Sungale ID800WT because it does offers unique features. It has a great physical screen, attractive design and some may find that one or two of its software applications are compelling enough to warrant the purchase. Overall we are left feeling that the ID800WT is a major software update or two away from being the product we know it can be. At an asking price of $250, that’s tough to swallow. If Sungale releases updates to the ID800WT we will revisit this review with updated impressions to share with you.

iPhone 3G S Recall Pending?

BrettC — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:26:17 +0000

The Apple iPhone 3G S has sold over 1 million units, making the subject of a possible recall very big news indeed. Numerous news outlets have covered the subject of complaints but as of yet no firm picture has formed as to the validity or extent of these issues.

US Recall News is covering user experiences regarding iPhone 3G S overheating, read more and share your thoughts there.

In other 3G S news, at least one user – a heavy gamer by the looks of it – is reporting that his oleophobic coating began to wear off after repeated finger swipes. While the heavy use implied here may not be a typical use case, how many gestures does the average iPhone user make in a year? Yeah, a lot.

Interesting stuff is afoot in the land of Jobs.

[via US Recall News]

One Pound Unmanned Aircraft Perches Like a Bird

BrettC — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:28:54 +0000

The US army must have some serious gadget fans on staff, as evidenced by the news that they just greenlit for production of a 1 pound reconnaissance aircraft that will -they hope – soon be able to not only follow targets, but perch like a bird and perform additional tracking and targeting duties.

The Persistent, Perch and Stare Air Vehicle System (SP2S) is being built upon AeroVironment’s Wasp platform. A similar UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) kicked off the movie Eagle Eye, and was featured in our article <>Top 10 Movie Gadgets of 2008.

What price tag can you put on fun? Apparently $10 million Washingtons.

If tests pan out the program will be refined and expanded. Why do spies get all the cool toys?

Read the full Wasp SP2S Summary.

Gonzo Code-Monkey Challenge: Low-Cost Internet Baby Monitor

BrettC — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:52:03 +0000

The world needs a better baby monitor – and so the gauntlet is tossed at the feet of code monkeys everywhere. The potential market is huge and technology is here to deliver the promise. All it will take is a little grit and some creative thinking. The proliferation of iPhones and other internet-capable devices calls for the end of the venerable, over-priced and under-delivering RF-based baby monitors.

Truth be told some “baby steps” have already been made. Smart developers have built iPhone apps like the CodeGoo Baby Monitor for iPhone. Great for iPhone owners but even for them it requires a PC or laptop w/ webcam whirring away in your toddler’s bedroom. And therein lies the rub. A client-only solutions is only half the solution. It ties up a useful PC/Mac. And in many cases parents will be forced to monitor the monitor – we don’t want a sleep-walking child anywhere near my valuable laptop!

Enter the SheevaPlug plug-in PC , a fully featured computer so small you simply plug the hand-sized device right into a wall jack. SheevaPlug seems the perfect platform to extend parent’s freedom beyond the poor range and interference frustrations of RF baby monitors. Several hardware vendors already offer implementations of this plug-in-and-play platform with prices ranging between a modest $80 – and $99. Plug a SheevaPlug device into the wall and the system has power. Add internet connection and USB webcam and you have a permanent, unobstrusive

What the world (and SheevaPlug Platform) needs is a low-cost end-to-end solution. And the key to this is software.

Features we’d like to see:

1. Streaming Audio and/or Video
2. Still-capture history
3. Security
4. Default Web Interface (Mobile Browser-friendly)
5. iPhone & BlackBerry Client Apps
6. Audio histogram w/ ability to replay “spikes”
7. Alert feature that can email/sms/phone/etc. in response to customizable criteria
8. Long-Term History (Geek Moms and Dads love metrics right? How about a “sleep quality index” based on analyzing and storing audio trends each evening. How about a way to measure trends of average length of sleep sessions?)

You up for the challenge? If interested, email us: Brett -at- GonzoGadgets.com

Zen Alarm Clock Puts an End to Jarring Buzzers

BrettC — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:55:17 +0000

What is the sound of one Tibetan bell chiming? It is significantly louder than one hand clapping, but much more soothing than one hotel-issue buzzer buzzing.

The Zen Alarm Clock rouses you from slumber with a Tibetan bell which resonating like a Buddhist monk in the key of E. From that moment on your day can’t help but be centered and on the right track.

This Zen Alarm Clock is digital, but uses the bell inside to produce a very soothing and natural sound. It can also be used as a countdown timer for meditation. Not being a meditation buff myself, I use the countdown feature to alert me when my allotted time for a specific task is over. This helps keep me on track, relaxed and organized throughout the day when time is in short supply.

This little gadget costs $136. Takes AA batteries or can be plugged with the included AC adapter.

April Fools 2009 – The Index

BrettC — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:36:08 +0000

Every year the April 1st jokes, pranks and hoaxes get bigger and better. This is simply our effort to catalog some of the better humor for your enjoyment and for posterity. Please share others you find and I’ll list them here.

(Last entry added 2:30 PM ET April 1st)

Technology & Geek Culture

AutoPilot takes the work – all work – out of reading/responding to emails – Google

Slashdot launches User Achievements – Slashdot

Google Brain Search – Google

Warner Bros. Acquires Pirate Bay – TorrentFreak

Lynx browser sees huge surge in popularity due to rival’s security woes – Netcraft

$99 Flights to Mars (save 3 trillion!) – Expedia

Quake Live launches as MMORPG – Quake Live

Razorfish TweetDoubler – Amazing Twitter tool that allows twice the character count – Razorfish

Face the Future: Face Gestures for Opera Browser – Opera

Is Conficker REALLY a virus? – Techware Labs