Consumeroo

Logitech MX Revolution by Tim on April 29, 2007

A few days ago the ball on my Apple Mighty Mouse crapped out on me and I decided it was time to jump ship. This was actually the second time it’s happened to me. As much as I love the ease of use and elegance of design in the Mighty Mouse, it’s just not built for long-term use.

I’ve always found it rather ironic that we took the time to remove the ball from the bottom of the mouse, and then put it up top where it gets touched all the time.

As a replacement I decided to go with the new Logitech MX Revolution cordless mouse. I was bothered by the built-in rechargeable battery, but only because my last charging mouse (also Logitech) had a problem with the cradle and would often flash all night long, leaving the batteries dead in the morning. The new cradle has a plate to stop this from happening, and better designed contacts. The internal battery also makes the mouse extremely light, which I’ve found I actually like more than the heavier 2-AA battery models that I’ve been using up until now.

The scroll-wheel on this mouse still lacks the extreme intuitiveness of the Mighty Mouse ball, it pretty much makes up for it with the flashy free-spin wheel. A flick of the finger sends lengthy scrolling documents gliding along, oftentimes even beyond the rendering rate of some apps. Another flick stops the wheel’s spin and brakes the scrolling document right where you’d expect. It’s a thing of beauty.

Being the die-hard Mac geek that I am, I have to confess that I’m still in love with my Mighty Mouse, and I do missing the horizontal scrolling that I’ve grown so used to, but until the ball is easy to clean or just plain made of tougher stuff (with regards to gunk) I’ll have to send them to the bench. Although it’s worth noting that the free-spin wheel is a much more complicated mechanism and likely won’t be any easier to open up and clean.

Flip a Bird from Oddica by Tim on March 24, 2007

I’ve been a long-time shopper at Threadless; I recently tallied all of my past purchases and I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of money there. I think their business model is fantastic and love the mix of designs that appear with each printing, and as a result I haven’t strayed too far from their storefront when I’m in need of some new threads.

The office I’ve been working at for the last year is packed with designers, and not surprisingly a lot of them shop at Threadless and other design-heavy t-shirt vendors; suddenly my apparel isn’t so unique or defining. Then I saw a link on Daring Fireball to this t-shirt by Oddica and figured it was time to shop around a little. Up until now I’d never ordered a thing from Oddica. Up until now I never realized just how boring the shipping from Threadless was. Typically my shirts come jammed (too many at a time, usually) into their paper shipping bag and occasionally they are accompanied by a sticker.

Oddica is royal treatment by comparison. Just look at all the stuff that came with my shirt! A stack of postcards, a couple mini-cards, stickers, some sort of authentication card and a button! Oh yeah, and a beautiful t-shirt. But it doesn’t stop there, the shirt itself was lightly packed inside a sealed, clear bag, which was inside a special, zip-lock bag along with the rest of the goodies! Un-freaking-believable.

This doesn’t mean I won’t shop at Threadless anymore, they’ve still got lots of great designs –but I’ve learned that there tons of great shops and they are definitely worth checking out. A few others that I like are:

• 70 * 7, donate proceeds from each shirt to a charity.
• Glarkware, former makers of fracking cool shirts.
• Wrong Clothes, making some very excellent, inappropriate shirts.

Apple TV by Travis on March 23, 2007

Earlier this week, Apple finally released the Apple TV. Being a pretty hardcore media center user and enthusiast, I have been keeping a pretty keen on eye on the product. As a pretty average user however, I’d lik to compare a few things and outline my general thoughts.

First of all, the Apple TV looks to be a simple and elegant solution if you’re interested in watching/streaming digital media. Knowing that it’s made by Apple means it’s probably well thought out, actually works and well supported. There are a few drawbacks though, and to be honest I am surprised Apple didn’t look at this stuff more seriously.

1. The Apple TV has next to zero content available for download (legal or otherwise) here in Canada. Keep in mind, the iTunes TV shows and movies are not currently available here.
2. The Apple TV does not play anything but H.264 video. No MPEG2 (DVD or otherwise), or Divx/Xvid video. This makes close to 90% of all video online useless to the Apple TV. Is it just me that thinks this is crazy? A fair example would be back when Apple released the original iPod and deciding to not support MP3.
3. At $349.00, it’s close to being in the range of some fully functioning PC’s.

I’d like to focus in on my last point since it is the real “deal breaker” here. I recently went out and bought a Shuttle XPS for $350.00. I added a CPU, hard disk and graphics card and the whole thing cost me less then $550.00. Not only can I play any kind of file I want on it, but I can also install any one of the many choices of media center software available today. Windows Media Center, SageTV, MythTV, Beyond TV, or maybe even Media Portal.

Let me guess, you’re saying to yourself, “I’ll pass on the loud, ugly PC in my family room thanks!” That would be where you are wrong. The particular Shuttle I bought has exactly 2 fans in it and it is truly, virtually, silent. My MacBook is louder most of the time—I am not kidding. Plus, it’s decent looking to boot. Fits right in with the rest of my family room electronics. For $200.00 more, I get a truly extendable and flexible system that can play anything. Xvid’s, Divx, H.264, x264, WMV’s, MPEG2’s, ripped DVD’s, whatever I want.

Don’t mistake the particular point I making here for hatred of the product. The Apple TV is great if you are a person who watches his/her TV shows from iTunes, and even buys movies from it too. Here in Canada, I have to seriously ask, why is it even for sale? I love the tagline,

If it’s on iTunes, it’s on your widescreen TV.

Wrong.

In any case, maybe with a few versions and upgrades this little guy will play everything I am used to watching but until then, it’s pretty useless to me.