Category: Gear

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Classroom Swiss Knife

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Classroom Swiss Knife
EdTech, Gear, General Technology

Imagine an ultra-portable hand held device for the classroom that could do all of the following: take digital pictures record digital video record digital audio (for podcasting, etc.) ability to upload images and media to a variety of websites act as a media player for MP3 files and video e-mail collaboration calculator organizer/calendar type text … Read More “Classroom Swiss Knife” »

Dueling GPSs

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Dueling GPSs
Gear, Geocaching and Maps

New GPSs

While on our trip to Florida over the holidays my trusty Garmin eTrex Legend GPS unit decided to become less trusty.  I had been having trouble with it prior to the trip.  Any power cable I got for it never seemed to work correctly, and now I was getting weird lines on the display.  It had served me well for five years, but it was now time to replace it.

I had gotten some Best Buy gift cards as well as some cash for Christmas.  I had enough so that I could either get a really nice handheld unit or a really nice unit for my car.  I decided to split the funds and get two GPSs, a handheld Garmin eTrex Venture HC for geocaching, geotagging, and hiking, and a Garmin Nuvi 205 for car navigation.  Here’s a quick review of both units, and my reasons for going this route instead of buying a single higher grade unit.

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Flip Mino – Some Final Thoughts

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Flip Mino – Some Final Thoughts
Gear

Don’t bother. Seriously. If you’re purchasing this thing for personal use, you can do much, much better. I’ve had several weeks to work with the Flip Mino, and the results have been consistently disappointing.  It never seems to be in focus, or, more correctly, it focuses on something other than my main subject.  Camera shake … Read More “Flip Mino – Some Final Thoughts” »

Photo Navigation

Posted on By Tom 6 Comments on Photo Navigation
Gear, Geocaching and Maps, Photography

First a caveat – I try not to review or discuss specific gadgets here at RandomConnections unless I actually have the device in hand and have played with it, either having purchased it for myself, for work, or having swiped it from a friend for a test run. I don’t like to speculate on a device’s capabilities unless I’ve seen them myself. Also, especially this close to Christmas a favorable review might be taken as a “wish list”, and that’s not necessarily the case. So, I tend to stick with what I’ve actually seen.

Today I’m going to break with that policy somewhat. My intent was to discuss a capability rather than a specific device or brand, but it turns out that only one brand has this feature (so far.) I’m talking about photo navigation, the ability to navigate to a geotagged photo via GPS as an inherent capability of the device.

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The Battle of the Minis

Posted on By Tom 5 Comments on The Battle of the Minis
EdTech, Gear

Wednesday Ginger walked into my office with a small box with a Dell logo on it and promptly asked, “Well, what did you win this time?” I wasn’t quite sure. The box had my name on it, but I hadn’t ordered anything from Dell. It had to be a part for something, because it wasn’t big enough to hold a computer. Boy, was I wrong. The box had the new Dell Inspiron Mini inside, one of the tiniest notebook computers I’ve ever seen.

At the SC EdTech conference last week the Dell rep had mentioned these things and said I should really take a look. I’m guessing he was serious and sent me one to try out, so I decided to put it through its paces.

As mentioned, this thing is tiny. Here’s a shot of the unit sitting on top of my HP full-sized laptop, with my hand thrown in for good measure…

Dell Inspiron Mini Size Comparison

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Working with the Flip Mino

Posted on By Tom 1 Comment on Working with the Flip Mino
EdTech, Gear, Photography

Flip Mino

One of the perks of my job is that I get to try to try out lots of new tech toys. One of our curriculum coordinators had requested one of the little Flip Mino video cameras. She graciously let me give it a whirl before giving it back to her.

Even though this device (or some version of it) has been out for about a year now, I hadn’t gotten very excited about it. High-quality video cameras are now very reasonably priced, and now even point-n-shoot cameras come with a video mode. The question was – Is the Flip redundant? Would you be better off applying the cost of the Flip toward a better point-n-shoot? I really needed to find out because I’ve got several others requesting these, and needed to know how best to spend our equipment funds.

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Test Drive with the HP 2133 Subcompact

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Test Drive with the HP 2133 Subcompact
EdTech, Gear


Several weeks ago one of my principals inquired about creating a mobile computer lab using something other than full-sized laptops. At the time, the only thing available was one of the AlphaSmart labs. However, those tend to have very limited capabilities. I knew that there would be a whole bunch of OLPC imitators hitting the market soon that would have full-computer capabilities for a similar price point to the AlphaSmart solution.

So, we waited and watched as new laptops were released into the wild for around $500 that might fit the bill. Asus has some units in its EEPC line, but the one that really caught my eye was the new HP 2133 subcompact unit. It was this one that I decided to test drive. It arrived Monday, and I’ve been putting it through its paces.

The unit I got has 2 GB RAM and 120 GB hard disk space. It sports a VIA C7-M processor running at 1.6 GHz. I wouldn’t try to do Photoshop or any heavy graphics processing, but for general web surfing and most everything else it should be fine. It has WiFi, Bluetooth, as well as two USB ports and SVGA out. It doesn’t have a CD or DVD drive, but it does have an SD slot. It has a built-in webcam. Mine came with Vista Basic, but the unit is available with LInux.

Usually, the size of the computer is inversely proportional to its cost. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, especially with this new crop of laptops. As configured, this unit sells for about $750 – more expensive than the Asus products, but still cheaper than a full laptop.

Those are the official specs – now for the hands-on…

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