thoughts.bjsintay.com

Santa delivered a curious package under the tree that I wasn’t expecting this year. It was the JBL On Stage, a 4-speaker dock for my 4th gen 20GB iPod. The device is small enough to fit on a tiny nightstand or in the corner of my desk without taking up hoards of surface area. It offers rich sound for the size and charges my iPod all at the same time. If you like, you can connect the dock to your iPod firewire or USB cable for transfering songs. It also has a 1/4″ jack for other non-iPod audio players or incompatible types such as the iPod Shuffle sans the charging ability. Good thinking JBL.

I am impressed with the overall quality of sound and equalization that are built in. I really like the small, circular waveguide in the inner edge of the “ring” which allows some marginal bass frequencies to be produced. I was unsure how much this guide contributed to the frequencies of the system, so I covered the port hole (about the size of a dime) and could instantly hear a loss in the low frequencies. I’m not sure what frequency this guide is tuned to, but it makes a big difference. It also makes a difference if you have the On Stage sitting on a box-like structure that can vibrate. You will notice a big difference in frequency bandwidth.

The only things I dislike about the On Stage are the value for the price-point and the “touch” volume buttons. The MSRP is right at $160, steep for what you actually get. I’m sure a big chunk of that is Apple’s, so I do understand that licensing “iPod” brings the price up. The device is very well engineered which helps with the sticker shock. The “touch” volume buttons allow you to change the volume (or mute) without actually depressing a button. Simply putting your finger on (or pretty much near) the button pad changes the volume. The problem is your iPod is pretty close to these buttons, so often I find after selecting a new song or CD that the volume has been cranked way up from using my hand to stablize it while pressing the click wheel. The dock is simply not substancial enough to mess with the iPod without bracing it with your hand. The touch technology is cool, but a bad spot for it. I also have never minded actually depressing a button. I kind of like the idea of knowing how many clicks up or down I’ve taken the volume.

Overall, I give this device 5 out of 5 stars for quality engineering.

Product webpage at jbl.com

Ever wade through thousands of files and folders trying to figure out what you’ve backed up and what needs to be updated in your backups?  Do you manage multiple desktops, laptops, and other portable devices but want one backup location?

My search for backup utilities a few years ago turned up Microsoft’s SyncToy, available for free download from the Microsoft website.  SyncToy is a very simple utility that manages a “left” and “right” folder where you can set the rules about what should be copied or mirrored to between left and right.  I first was interested in this sort of utility after receiving a laptop computer from Wake Forest University’s Medical School.  It became an integral part of my coursework and research, so backing up that data was crucial to me.

SyncToy allows me to open up my laptop at home, literally click one button, then have the info on my laptop backed up through the wireless network to the RAID 1 (mirroring) array on my home office desktop computer.  As a second line of defense for all of my data, I make quarterly SyncToy-managed backups of the RAID array to an external drive.  SyncToy makes it all happen.

This program is able to determine what files should be updated or removed on the backup drive, then makes all changes automatically.  The folder pair can either synchronize, echo, subscribe, contribute, or combine depending on your preferences.  It also allows folders to be network paths (such as \\Machine\Folder).

After using SyncToy for the past few years, I would say that I am very happy with this tool.  It is very easy to use, doesn’t suffer from feature creep, and best of all, it’s free.  What do you use for backups/synchronization?

SyncToy Page at Microsoft.com

Features:

• - Talking navigation with intelligent voice
• - Brighter screen (than the c330)
• - Mounting system
• - Power adapter
• - SD memory slot
• - USB port with cable

The Garmin StreetPilot c340 was my choice for GPS navigation.  I selected this particular brand and model for a few important reasons.  First and foremost Garmin makes the easiest GPS navigation interface in my opinion.  Nothing is more than a couple clicks away including nearby restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores… 6 million points of interest in fact (compare that to just thousands in TomTom).  I also particularly like Garmin’s map rendering which is miles ahead of TomTom and all of the other systems I looked at.  Moreover, I discovered that many GPS navigation systems have rendering engines that look like attention to design was not considered in the slightest.  Finally, a critical feature is its ability to read street names in navigation instructions out loud (not available on the c330).

To test my system, I plugged everything in and set off for Myrtle Beach from my home in Winston-Salem, NC.  I had to make one stop at my in-law’s in Cornelius which was clearly far off of the route.  For about 15 minutes, the Garmin system gave me routing instructions to turn around and head the other way, which I was actually impressed with.  Instead of just saying, make a u-turn now, it actually found nice places to make an easy turn around using short roads without having to pull a 3-point or a u-turn.  Having not entered the address of my in-law’s on the itinerary, the Garmin system was thoroughly confused for a long time.  When I finally got on the road in the right direction, it started to settle down a bit.  The route it took me on was the exact route I would have planned myself minus driving through Friday rush-hour traffic down Independence Blvd. in Charlotte.  That set me back a bit.  One problem I noted was that it had a hard time identifying bypass highways that skipped thick business districts.  This only occurred in the country and as soon as I didn’t turn onto to the slower route, the computer recalculated my route within seconds and approved of the new route I was on.  Using a bit of common sense can save you some time since it’s hard for a little device like this to always optimize a long drive perfectly.

I arrived exactly when the system predicted I would.  The trip computer inside of the system is really nice.  It logs time, mileage, speed, average speed, time stopped, time moving, average speed while moving, and max speed (erase this if you get pulled over by an officer with one click on “Reset Max”).

Satellite reception is no problem for me on the road, but of course I cannot pick up anything when in a garage or parking deck.  Once I noticed the system thought I was on the other side of the highway and demanded that I exit up the wrong side of the ramp and pull a u-turn.  I thought that was funny.  A cool feature of the c340 is that the woman that speaks to you actually says the road names instead of just “turn left in half of a mile”.  That helps me figure out where I need to go without having to look at the screen.  I found that the brightness of the screen is adequate even in sunny conditions while wearing my sunglasses.  The windshield mount works perfectly.

I am very pleased with this device.  It has exceeded most of my expectations and has instantly become an integral part of travel for me.  I was able to find destinations with door-to-door directions read from a soothing voice which could be heard even over relatively loud music.  I would recommend this unit to anyone looking to get a GPS navigation system.  It’s especially nice to use once you get to your travel destination as you can quickly find places that you need to get to when you’re not in familiar territory.  I give this device 5 out of 5 stars because they really couldn’t have done anything better in my opinion.  It’s simple, sleek, and fully featured.

I recently purchased a FM transmitter (Belkin TuneCast II) to connect my iPod to my Mercury Mountaineer.  This purchase came after more than a year of stalling due to all of the poor reviews I had read on the net.  I was concerned about 2 primary issues: sound quality and reception.  I finally bought one with a gift certificate since I wasn’t willing to risk hard earned cash on it.

I drove with this model in my driver-side cupholder for nearly 400 miles.  I ran the player for about 8 hours straight through 3 very large metropolitan areas and also through the country.  I used the batteries (wish they had included a power adapter in this model).  On first setup, I turned on the device by holding both tune buttons down.  I located a station range in the lower FM 90’s where I could not find a clear radio station for 0.4 or so on the FM dial.  I then tuned my TuneCast right in the middle of those.  I turned up the sound on my car and pressed play on my iPod.  I was instantly greeted with poor signal and tons of static as reported by many on the internet.  I was pretty mad, then I realized my iPod volume was turned down a bit.  I turned this up to about 95% and instantly the sound came pumping through my car’s system clear as a bell.

On my trip I had to change the station 3 times as I moved in and out of metropolitan areas.  This became evident as the signal would slowly gain static.  All I did was first locate the closest station with no or little radio broadcast signal (tons of static), then I dialed the TuneCast to that station.  It worked perfectly each time and only took seconds, so this did not bother me at all.  When I came back the same way a few days later, I didn’t have to change the station once.

With regard to battery life, I found that my TuneCast ran on the 2 AAA batteries for about 8 hours.  When the batteries died, they died instantly and my signal was lost within seconds.  I simply replaced, and was jamming again in a minute.

Possible problems people could have with this are (1) poor placement relative to your car’s antenna (good in Mercury Mountaineers), (2) small signal strength of audio player - iPod (20GB, 4th gen) at 95% is pretty loud in earphones and it’s possible not all players can go loud enough to eliminate much of the static in the FM broadcast, (3) trying to tune to a station that already has a radio broadcast in the area or has an FM band close to the one you’re using - find one to use with some room on each side for little static, (4) songs that use intense ends of the frequency spectrum like extremely low basses or high-pitched whooshes from cymbals, etc - I found that songs with a lot of bass and crashes had some static in those spectrums (a limitation of FM in general, but not really an annoyance to me; your radio station overcomes this with special compression).

Overall, I gave this device 4 out of 5 because of the power situation.  I would have liked it to come with an adapter.  Things I really like are the small size, 0.1 FM resolution on the entire range, batteries optional, auto-on/off feature (works great!).  This device may not work for everyone, but you need to understand the limitations of this technology before you go calling it a piece of junk.  Small devices like this have Federally mandated operating powers so that they don’t override your local FM stations for everyone else, otherwise I’m sure they would have a strong enough signal for anyone’s car configuration (and heck, entire neighborhood for that matter).  (adapted from my review at amazon.com)