Operation Gadget

Month: April 2004

  • Forbes Columnist Says It’s Time to Trash Your VCR

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteStephen Manes writes the Digital Tools column for Forbes Magazine. In the April 19 issue he strongly suggests that it’s time to trade in VCRs for DVD recorders. Manes says: A dusty shelf of home videotapes of your child’s early years sparks an idea: If you transferred them to DVD, you…

  • “Linux for Non-Geeks” Recommended by Mr. Roboto

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteMartin O’Donnell has been getting a first-hand account of my foray into Fedora and has suggested that he too would like to break away from Microsoft Windows. I’ve warned him, repeatedly, that it’s not for everyone and may not be most people for a while yet. In my travels today, I…

  • Dell Cuts Dell DJ Prices

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteMartin O’Donnell points out a CNET News.com report that Dell has cut prices on its Dell DJ line of digital audio players by up to $50. The 15-Gigabyte model is now priced at $199, down from $249. The 20-Gigabyte model is reduced to $279, but a temporary rebate brings the price…

  • Idokorro Mobile SSH Lets Blackberry and Nokia 6800-Series Users Remotely Administer Servers

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn our continuing quest to identify SSH clients for mobile devices, I want to point out Idokorro Mobile SSH. This is a $195 product allows Blackberry users to administer servers that support SSH-2 and Telnet. Apparently, users on the Nextel network are able to connect directly to the servers that they…

  • Home Theater Sale on at Amazon.com Through April 11, 2004

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteAmazon.com is running sales in its home theater-related departments until April 11, 2004. The deals include: up to $500 off flat panel and tube TVs, and up to $100 off DVD players, recorders, and combo units. Now might be the time to spring for the upgrade you’ve been thinking about.

  • Amazon.com Running a Good Sale on PDAs

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteAmazon.com is currently offering a $50 gift card with the purchase of a PDA valued at $299.99 or more. The offer expires on April 11, 2004. When you combine this with free shipping on all of these devices, it adds up to quite a good sale.

  • Movie and TV Industry Fight to Limit Usefulness of Settop DVD Burners

    Reading Time: 2 minutesPVRblog points out that the movie and television industry are fighting against deployment of DVD burners in cable and satellite settop boxes. Since they have already decided that resistance to any sort of DVD recording capability in settop boxes is futile, they are working to cripple any DVD burner that is ultimately…

  • Smartphone Thoughts Documents Carrier Switch to T-Mobile with an MPx200

    Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn one of the more interesting articles I’ve seen recently, David McNamee of Smartphone Thoughts recounts his switch-over to T-Mobile with an MPx200 originally put in service on AT&T Wireless. T-Mobile currently doesn’t sell the MPx200 for use on its network, but since it’s an 1800/1900 GSM/GPRS phone, it definitely works.…

  • Nearly Back to Normal

    Reading Time: 2 minutesI spent my free time this weekend converting fully adopting Fedora Core 1 as my laptop’s operating system. I did this for a number of reasons: I had to rebuild my laptop last week because my hard disk was dying, I’d rather run a modern, up-to-date Linux distribution than Windows XP, I…