http://www.viewpoints.com/aboutme/matthewdfleming Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:39:35 GMT Reviews by matthewdfleming http://www.viewpoints.com/Apple-Wireless-Keyboard-review-049d I own a macbook pro (mbp) laptop. The laptop gets pretty hot when it is sitting on my lap so I wanted to try out a wireless keyboard and mouse combination. Being a big fan of bluetooth accessories, I picked up a wireless mighty mouse and keyboard. Well let's say that I was able to instantly pick up a mighty mouse but had to wait for a while to receive the keyboard. I ordered the keyboard on August 19, 2007 and received it on October 1, 2007. This doesn't seem to be an issue now though; the apple website says they ship in 3-5 days. — — The keyboard is exactly the same size as the keyboard that comes on my 15" mbp. There are a couple of differences though: the keys are white, there are spaces between the keys. On the mbp the edges of the keys are silver and have a bevel on them, on the wireless keyboard there is no bevel and the key edge is at a right angle to the face. I only mention this because at first glance I thought the keys were smaller than on my laptop... Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:39:35 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Apple-Wireless-Keyboard-review-049d matthewdfleming 4 http://www.viewpoints.com/Apple-Airport-Extreme-Router-review-1c56 My linksys WRT54GX started flaking out on me; the wireless connection started to drop enough for me to notice. At first I thought that maybe the card in my PC was to blame but after all PCs on our little network started doing it, I decided to replace the router. I personally can't stand it when equipment half-works... either fail 100% or work! I guess I'm a do or do not, there is no try type... — Linksys WRT54GX — I decided not to get a Linksys for a replacement. I'd only had the router for a year, it didn't even last long enough to become obsolete. In the technology world that is really saying something. It also didn't really work when WPA security was used.. certain sites (usually https) wouldn't work properly (e.g. hotmail). This meant that I was running an open network with the only security being MAC address filtering. Our whole house gets work done wirelessly, and I was starting to receive complaints (well one really-- from Jolie). It was one of the first really... Mon, 07 May 2007 06:00:18 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Apple-Airport-Extreme-Router-review-1c56 matthewdfleming 5 http://www.viewpoints.com/AudioSource-100-2-Channel-Power-Amplifier-review-45a2 I bought the AudioSource Amp 100 2-Channel Power Amplifier at Amazon(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00026BQJ6/104-9011503-1260704) for $95 USD.  I needed it to drive a couple of speakers that were going to be used for my new squeezebox network music player.  It was challenging to find a simple, single-task, inexpensive amplifier. The amp was perfect for what I needed.  — There was one thing that was confusing; the signal-sensing auto-on/off switching feature.  Based upon other reviews I wasn't the only one who ran into this. There are two inputs into the device: input 1 and input 2 (duh).  Input 1 is the auto-switching input.  It is intended for something that isn't going to be on all of the time (e.g. a portable cd player) and should override whatever is plugged in to Input 2.  Input 2 is the dedicated always-on default that gets overridden when something is sending a signal to Input 1. — So... when I plugged my player into... Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:02:34 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/AudioSource-100-2-Channel-Power-Amplifier-review-45a2 matthewdfleming 5 http://www.viewpoints.com/A-O-Smith-ProMax-Water-Heater-review-d089 Rationale — Our hot water heater decided to die last Friday night. I went to go light the pilot and found a bunch of water leaking on the pilot light.. no way I was going to get another second out of that heater. Since it was the weekend, the local plumber was going to charge me an extra arm for the install so we decided to wait it out until Monday. On-demand Heater — The nice part about the wait was that it gave me time to research what kind of hot water heater I wanted to purchase. In our old condo, we installed a tank-less hot water heater and loved it (Takagi TK-1). The only problem we had with it was in the winter. The water pressure got noticeable lower and we could only run one thing at a time.. showering when you need the sink? lukewarm in both. For Chicago style winters I was looking for something that did 4 gallons per minute (GPM) with a 100°F rise. The inlet water temperature is really cold in the winter like 38°F and an ok shower is like 120°F,... Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:07:59 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/A-O-Smith-ProMax-Water-Heater-review-d089 matthewdfleming 4 http://www.viewpoints.com/Slim-Devices-squeezebox-review-f3de After getting my Infrant Ready NAS NV+, I promptly transferred all of my digital media to it (e.g. music, home video, etc).  Having the NAS also gave me enough energy to finish ripping our entire music collection.  After that was all done, I wanted to actually listen to the music that I just painstakingly collected.  The Ready NAS has a built in slimserver which is some software which catalogues your music and allows for playback.  — The devices which connect to the slimserver are called squeezeboxes.  There are software versions of the squeezebox and a hardware version.  The software version is great for listening to my music at work.  After I opened a port in my firewall, I was able to point iTunes or Winamp to the slimserver running at home and listen to all of my music at work!  Pretty nice.  After about a week of this, I wanted this at home also... — Enter the squeezebox... Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:48:01 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Slim-Devices-squeezebox-review-f3de matthewdfleming 5 http://www.viewpoints.com/Hewlett-Packard-OfficeJet-6310-All-In-One-review-e8dc I purchased this combo unit at office max for about $170 US.  I was on a "get my home network totally solid" kick and was tired of USB connections to printers.  Now that I was using wireless all over the place, walking down to the printer and attaching a cable started to annoy me.  I went to office max and thought why not get a printer/fax/scanner combo deal?  — I'm happy with my decision.  I have used all of the features of the unit and have had to change ink once.  We mainly use the printer for documents as our photo printing has been outsourced to Yahoo! Photos but it does a good job with color and the speed is just fine.  Importing photos from the card reader is a snap.   There isn't anything really super sexy about the printer.. everything works like you'd expect it to.  The network capabilities are pretty good though.. definitely plug and play. — As with most HP printers the ink is pretty... Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:58:39 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Hewlett-Packard-OfficeJet-6310-All-In-One-review-e8dc matthewdfleming 4 http://www.viewpoints.com/Mucinex-DM-review-d7ac I picked up some Mucinex on the recommendation from a co-worker.  I had a really stuffy head, chest congestion and a cough.  I had lots of sinus pressure and the fun that goes along with that (e.g. headache, swelling).  — The Good After taking a pill it took about 20 minutes for the pressure in my head to subside and for the coughing to stop.  This was pretty nice, I felt like I had coughed out a lung and pulled a back muscle before taking the pill.  The 24 hour nature of the pill is true; the symptoms didn't really return until the next day. — The Wierd — It is difficult to put this into words.  I have taken the pill like 10 times now and each time I feel this way until the pill wears off.  This is where 24 hours gets a bit long.  I didn't feel spacy or out-of-bodyish, things just weren't right.  For example, the sinus pressure goes away but was replaced with a stiffening of the passages.. things... Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:30:03 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Mucinex-DM-review-d7ac matthewdfleming 4 http://www.viewpoints.com/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-RNV2-S2-0000-Network-Storage-Server-review-11d7 I purchased this device because I was running out of storage space at home. I bought it with four 250 GB drives (which turns into about 675 GB under the expandable raid setup). The setup was super easy if you know what you are doing. If you don't, I'd get the tech geek that you know (we all know at least one) to help you set it up. — For me the hardest part was figuring out which protocol (AFP, NFS, SMB, FTP, HTTP, RSYNC) to use for each share. The performance is good enough to edit a movie (in iMovie) over a 100 mbit line and is supposedly really good over a 1000 mbit line. I didn't feel like upgrading my network and thankfully didn't have to. — If you want more detail, check out: http://mattfleming.com/node/187 —... Wed, 21 Feb 2007 01:23:35 GMT http://www.viewpoints.com/Infrant-ReadyNAS-NV-RNV2-S2-0000-Network-Storage-Server-review-11d7 matthewdfleming 5