Electronic Vibes Mussin' With Our Gear!

To follow up on the last post about the poor iPod, it turns out our laptop has suffered a death of sorts. We bought this Compaq as part of a summer assignment when Mandy and I worked for Hewlitt Packard out of a hotel conference room. They required we have our own computers since we would be working on folding tables and from our homes, they wouldn't be providing computers. We only had one laptop at the time and we didn't think it was up to the task, so we bought a new Compaq Presario from Circuit City for around $1,500. Since purchasing it in April '05 we've had to return it 4 times. The first two were within a week of purchasing it, and those were due to pixel burnouts, which really isn't that uncommon for laptops and they were very accommodating. Incidentally, Circuit City has a great return policy when it comes to laptops--which is why we bought it from them. We returned last winter because it kept randomly rebooting and eventually stopped booting altogether.

When it was returned the work ticket read, "Reinstalled Operating System." We had done that, of course, and it didn't help. Yet, the laptop booted up just fine and worked great until early last week when it completely died again. It showed no symptoms... It had been in perfect working condition three hours before when Mandy was using it. The cause for the death: A dead hard drive. We have a pretty robust back-up policy, so nothing too serious was lost in the crash, but now we have to pack it up again and get, now, our fifth laptop back from the repair shop.

Adding on top of that nonsense, the replaced iPod (twice replaced) from the last post randomly reboots while playing music, so it's back to the shop with that fucker too. Man. I think being at such a high elevation has something to do with our devices dying. It's our closeness to the ionosphere, or something.


PS This is post was written on a our old laptop: Another used Compaq Presario Mandy and I bought from a coworker's friend about four years ago, running Ubuntu Linux, and it works great. Just goes to show... something.

iPod Come and Gone

For a while now I've been singing the praises of Apple, Inc. I love my Mac. It's stable and lovely. And, until recently, I've loved my iPod. They do what I need them to do.

This spring, the left channel of my iPod started going all fuzzy. The channel would come and go, and as time went by it got worse. Keep in mind, this began to happen after nearly two years of continuous use. And by continuous use, I mean nearly every hour of every day the iPod was playing or charging. I figure, on average, it was playing music 8 hours per day. Also, I'm not the most gentle person when it comes to the treatment of gizmos (electronic or otherwise).

With the impending schooner trip coming up, I wanted to have my iPod fully functioning by the time I leave. So, I sent it in for repairs. These repairs are covered under the AppleCare program (read: extended warranty). I sent the iPod in, and today received a brand new one as a replacement.

I had just begun to sing further praises of Apple when I tried to boot up the brand new iPod. The silver apple of death appeared against a black background and would not budge. I tried all manor of tricks to get it to boot, to no avail. I called Apple again to tell them my replacement needed to be replaced. Mandy, the slueth she is, discovered a Mac store near our apartment. I told the person that I wanted to bring the iPod to the store instead of waiting for the return box to arrive, send it back, then wait for another possible lemon to arrive.

In short, we drove to the store, showed the iPod to a Mac Genius (how arrogant is that?) and got a replacement that actually works.

I'm still singing the praises of Apple because I love the iPod and its reliability. I hope that them sending out broken iPods as replacements for broken iPods is rare and isolated incident. Either way, my music is playing out of both speakers and I'm happy as can be.

Product Review: V-MODA Earbuds for iPod

If you own an iPod (really, any portable MP3 player) and find the stock earbuds that come packaged with it lacking, I have a great alternative.

'The V-MODA Bass Freq' earbuds. I picked up a pair of these babies for $35 from Amazon about two months ago and they're so far above the listening experience of the stock iPod earbuds it's hard to describe.

If you listen to your iPod with a pair of unpowered earbuds, you'll find these little guys to be the single best investment of $35 you can make to improve your listening experience.

(Sexy earbuds)

I listen to my iPod, through earbuds, for about 6 hours everyday at work. Anyone that has worked with me knows this isn't an exaggeration. I listen to a wide range of music, podcasts, vidcasts, and everything in between. I basically got tired of getting headaches from listening with the stock headphones, not to mention the sound is atrocious, and started doing some research into a better set. I found out about these via this review on CNet. While they may not be up there with the Sonhiser or Sharp in terms of sound clarity, they'll only set you back $35 compared to the $100 - $200 you'd have to spend to get a really good set. Again, if you listen to portable music devices often, do your ears a favor a buy a pair.

Pros:

• Good sound insulation
• They come with three ear canal adapters to fit various sized ears holes
• Non-fatiguing sound: I can leave them in for hours at a time without them bothering me
• Comfortable, ergonomic design
• Sound quality is amazing for a set of earbuds

Cons:

• They are biased towards being bass heavy, due to how little SPL the drivers can pump out
• The cord is really short
• I know it's nitpicky, but it's really hard to read the tiny 'R' and 'L' indicators on the cans

Yeah Marvin, what is really going on?

I was sitting at work, watching my scripts crawl like digital cats across the application, seeking out bugs to snack on, when I heard something amusing on my iPod.

I had been listening to a collection of Marvin Gaye tunes (I’ve been on a Motown kick for some reason) when the golden standard, “What’s Going On?” came on. The song begins with ambient sounds of the beginnings of a party which ends up being the foundation for the song. For about 15 seconds, the listener can only hear a clamoring of saying things like, “This is a groovy party, man.”, “Everything is everything.”, and, “I dig it.” Alone, this is worth a grin because of how dated the phrases are, but something oddly coincidental is said just as the music kicks in.

Once the beat starts, and mid-way through the first Saxophone note, you can distinctly hear my friend Esquire in the background answering the question, “Hey man, what’s your name?” with “It’s Dennis.” The voice sounds just like Esquire and the fact that it’s saying its name is ‘Dennis’ at a party at Marvin Gaye’s crib c. 1972 is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. If Dennis existed in some alternate dimension, this is where he’d hang out. If you know, or are, Esquire, you’ll understand and smile knowingly.

It's hard to hear, but if you turn it up and listen to the right speaker, you can make it out.

(Click on Marvin to listen to / download the clip)