New and Improved TL, TSX Highlight Acura for 2010
It's a darn shame that Acura/Honda seems to have fired its exterior designers because they make some really nice cars.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I realize, and even though the TL was never the most attractive vehicle in the stable it was never worse than bland before this new version came along. It's darn ugly now, in my never humble opinion, and that's too bad, because it remains a wonderful car.
Maybe it'll grow on me like the TSX has. I was disappointed in the smaller sedan's styling when the second generation came out, but now think that it's just fine. more...
Universal's Flipper Discs Bourne to Spin
Universal Studios wants you to flip for the Blu-ray format. Literally. In an attempt to help wean consumers from DVD's and encourage them to adopt the far superior Blu-ray high definition format, Universal has introduced "flipper" discs that contain DVD and Blu-ray versions of a title on a single, two sided disc.
It isn't a new idea, but it's new for DVD and Blu-ray and could be a convenient way for DVD owners to move into the high definition disc world, building a Blu-ray library even before picking up an increasingly affordable Blu-ray player.
The first flipper discs are of the Bourne trilogy – the Robert Ludlum spy thrillers starring Matt Damon as the amnesiac agent who it seems nearly everyone wants dead. more...
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Honda Accord Crosses Over
When is a Honda Accord not an Accord?
Well, if you smashed in the front and rear ends you might call it an "Accordion," but perhaps more relevant is the new Accord Crosstour, a crossover/SUV-type beastie that raises Honda's immensely popular car to new heights.
The rather bulbous-looking Accord Crosstour may be an answer to a question few have asked: How do you make a highly functional, if stylistically-challenged, vehicle even more functional – and stylistically-challenged? Honda has done this by creating a vehicle that works well, is nice to drive and which lets you haul more stuff than you can in a garden variety Accord. more...
Belkin Shares Printers and Hard Drives, Family Tracker Lets You Be Big Brother
If you have multiple computers but only one printer and/or external hard drive, it can be a real chore getting data to and/or from the various devices if you don't "have an in" with someone who can set up your network for you.
Sure, you can drag the drive around with you, plugging it into each computer as needed, or bring your portable PC's down to the printer when you need to use it – but wouldn't it be so much more convenient if you could leave the drive and printer in a central location and connect to them remotely?
That's the idea behind the Belkin Home Base, a product designed to let wireless network users print, share, and back up files over the network. more...
Porsche Boxster PDK – Fun Even in a Blizzard
Sports cars are a blast during good weather, and it might surprise you to learn they can even be a hoot after Old Person Winter has come a-calling.
That fact was driven (no pun intended) home to me during a wintry week I spent recently with a Porsche Boxster, a pretty basic model of Porsche's entry level sports car on which the only real options of substance were Bi-xenon headlights (which should be standard) and the seven speed PDK double clutch auto/manual transmission I've grown to appreciate greatly. more...
USB KVM Services Servers; Blue Slime Saves Humanity
IT pros in charge of multiple servers have a nifty new tool in StarTech's Laptop KVM Adapter, while slobs like me can now clean some of the crud off our gadgets with Cyber Clean. Isn't life grand?
Startech's laptop KVM adapter is a USB 2.0 device that can turn a portable computer into a portable KVM/Server console, which could make life easier for IT folk who work with servers that don't have keyboards and monitors of their own. Cyber Clean cleans stuff merely by pressing it onto whatever you want cleaned, then pulling it off again – like Silly Putty picks up the image from a comic. more....
Ford's Hot Taurus Sedan – It's SHO Time!
Ford's new Taurus SHO is another welcome sign the company may be making a comeback, product-wise at least, avoiding the government takeover to which its domestic competitors succumbed.
It deserves to sell. I spent a week in a loaded SHO (as opposed to "loaded in an SHO") and liked it a lot – much more than I thought I would. Even its exterior, which had seemed bland, even frumpy, in my brief glances previously, grew on me.
While the exterior may be the car's weakest link, the interior is top notch and, at least in its upgraded SHO configuration, the car's performance is exhilarating. more....
New 3D Technologies Try to Make Your HDTV Obsolete
Now that you've shelled out for a high definition TV and perhaps a Blu-ray player, the electronics industry and its Hollywood partners are working to make them obsolete already. And doesn't that just figure? Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it would be nice if we had a few years to enjoy our supposedly state-of-the-art toys before getting back on the Merry-go-round.
The latest and supposedly greatest technological marching onward is the current push for 3D in the home, cashing in on recent successes for 3D movies, whether in IMAX or otherwise. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the media reported 3D technology as one of the star attractions thanks to the abundance of manufacturers who showcased the 3D stuff they want you to buy next. more...
Chevy Camaro and Lexus HS 250h – Retro Meets 21st Century Green
You might say the duo of the reborn Chevy Camaro muscle car and Lexus' new hybrid luxury sedan are a case of "something old, something new, something borrowed, and something green."
The something old – the Camaro – is now something new, for better or for worse. The something new – the Lexus HS 250h – is also something green, since it's a hybrid. As for something borrowed, well they both lean on their respective companies' heritage to create new vehicles that will probably do well in their respective niches. more...
Bose SoundDock a Real Life Rocker, While SIRIUS Comes to iPhones/iPods
Bose's SoundDock 10 iPod/iPhone speaker dock system impressed me at its introduction but I wanted to try it in my own environment, with my own music sources. Bose was kind enough to facilitate this and it impressed me even more under those "real world conditions" than I'd thought it would.
Making speaker systems like the SoundDock 10 even more valuable is SIRIUS satellite radio's iPhone app, which is free and available from Apple’s App Store. It brings most of the satellite provider's offerings to the iPhone, which is very handy indeed: people whose SIRIUS account is for a car-based system can use their iPhones to bring the satellite service into the home, and home-based SIRIUS subscribers with iPhones and data plans can take the service on the road if their vehicle has an auxiliary interface. more...
TechnoFile's Most (and Least) Interesting Automotive Adventures for 2009
It's getting hard to find a bad vehicle these days, an era which is a legitimate golden age for the automotive industry, technologically if not financially.
That makes it difficult to decide what, in my never humble opinion, were the best vehicles of calendar year 2009. Coming up with the worst was easy, but I drove so many great vehicles this year that narrowing a list down to a top few without excluding some fine wheels, is impossible.
Nevertheless, here are a few words about the vehicles I found, if not the best, then the most interesting over the past 12 months. more...
The TechnoFile Awards for 2009's Most Interesting Technology
One of the great things about my job is that I get to play with a wide variety of things – from cars to computers to phones, home theater and assorted gadgets. It's the greatest job in the world, except for the Top Gear guys, and I'm lucky enough to get a perspective on a lot of different, er, toys. I try to stay away from things that either don't interest me or which I think for whatever reason may not be worth my (and your) time. It usually works out well, though the occasional stinker manages to slip through.
Fortunately, most of the stuff is interesting, at least, while some is innovative and some is merely okay. That's cool; not every product has to be the proverbial better mousetrap to be worthwhile. more...
Subaru Forester Remains Tree-mendous for 2010
The Subaru Forester is a nice blend of wagon and SUV, a vehicle that's comfortable and attractive and which does its job well.
Now in its third generation, the Forester received a major makeover for 2009, and the minor tweaking it receives for '10 should help it remain competitive in a rather crowded market niche. Tweaks for the new model year include the addition of a PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle) version, a standard set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), and it's awarded to vehicles that comply with their "Super Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV) standard, which calls for the elimination of "fuel-system evaporative emissions". more...
Oppo Blu-ray Player Offers Superb Video, Audio
There are Blu-ray players that excel at playing high def movies, and others – like Sony's PlayStation 3 – that up the ante by adding gaming, networking, and the like.Then there's Oppo's BDP-83, which doesn’t offer gaming or media streaming, but which outputs incredible sound and video quality, with the added bonus of being virtually a universal player that handles a wide variety of disc and file formats with aplomb.
Oppo made its name thanks to a series of excellent up converting DVD players that also handled DVD-Audio and SACD (Super Audio CD) discs. The BDP-83 is Oppo's first Blu-ray player and, like the DVD players that preceded it, it's a very flexible beauty. more...
Passport Defends Drivers From Cash-grabbing Communities
Do you get the feeling that speed traps are more about revenue generation than safety? Me, too. I don't believe excessive speed causes nearly as many collisions as does driver stupidity or lack of skill.
Which brings me to Escort's Passport 9500ix, one of, if not the, most advanced weapons to date in the war against money hungry politicians who'd rather see cops shoot fish in a barrel than hunt down real criminals. The GPS-equipped 9500ix not only warns you about radar and laser traps, it has a built in – and updatable – database of known red light and speed camera locations. more...
ChiliPad Warms, Cools Bed From Below
Welcome to the world of the "smart" mattress pad. It's the ChiliPad, which you could also think of as something like an electric blanket that also cools, but which does its work from under you rather than on top of you. If your bed is too cold, it'll warm it. If it's too warm, it'll cool it, the manufacturer says, and I can certainly vouch for the warming part. The ChiliPad has been warming our bed very well each night before we head up the wooden hill. I don't think I'd want to be without it.
Our bedroom gets a tad, well, "Chili" at this time of year, causing my lovely wife and I to have used an electric blanket to warm our mattress before we hit the hay in the days before the ChiliPad. I never liked the electric blanket, though, especially since we have three "very kneady" cats with full sets of claws. more...
Nissan cube a Square Deal
It may be a little funny-looking, in a kind of cute way, but Nissan's new cube "van-like object" is a pretty nifty vehicle overall.
And while it does tend to perform somewhat like the brick on wheels that it resembles, it actually acquitted itself better than I'd expected, especially when I took it onto a handling course set up on a regional airport a few weeks ago. It was no Porsche Panamera, of course, but it was pretty good. more....
Rotel's Two-Channel Tour de Force a Slam Dunk for Stereophiles
Rotel's 15 Series of audio components continues the company's long history of making high quality equipment that offers great sound and good value.
Which brings us to the RB-1572 "classic stereo" stereo power amplifier and matching RC-1580 stereo pre-amp. This is audiophile stuff that eschews home theater completely, for better or for worse. It's old fashioned audio for the modern age, featuring more of Rotel's great Class D power - maximum oomph from minimal size. more....
Porsche Boxster and Cayman S PDK's – "Pretty Darn Kool"!
How can you have a real sports car without a manual transmission? There's a revolution brewing personified by new generations of automatic transmissions that offer so much efficiency and, yes, driving enjoyment that you can almost forgive the fact that your left foot might atrophy from lack of use.
Prime among these is Porsche's Doppelkupplung (PDK), which gives you the benefits of both a manual gearshift and an automatic transmission. And be danged if it hasn't won me over! more...
Duracell a Real Power Player with new Product line
They call it "smart power," but it's nothing like the type of "smart power" president Obama seems to think he's advancing on the international stage.
Instead, it's Duracell's "Smart Power initiative", an attempt by the company to expand its product portfolio beyond the traditional battery in a marketplace that's growing and broadening every year. Duracell's initiative, which will eventually include a "drop-and-go myGrid charging pad" that sounds kind of nifty, currently covers a selection of "personal power solutions" for a variety of needs and, according to the company, signifies its commitment to "keeping today’s consumers connected to the devices they need the most at all times." more...
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