I purchased a Logitech Harmony One remote about 5 months ago, and I am finally ready to give my review of it. The retail on this bad boy is $249.00. Amazon currently has the Harmony One for $179.99. I really wanted to give myself plenty of time with the remote before I reviewed it so I can give a thorough and accurate review.
Design
The design of the Harmony One is amazing. It is designed to fit very comfortably in the palm of you hand. Along with great ergonomics, but also has a rubber back for easy gripping. Another great design aspect of the Harmony One is a motion sensor inside so when you pick it up it lights up, but if you have it sitting on a table, the lights shutoff to conserve battery. I find this very useful when channel surfing late at night with the lights off. The button design is good. After just a few short days I found myself very easily finding the buttons with out having to look at the remote. One issue I have with the design, is the hard plastic buttons that make a very minor click noise when pushed. I have always been a fan of the Tivo controller with rubber buttons, but this is more a personal preference then a design flaw.
San Francisco and Las Vegas, here I come. I have booked my summer vacation. I will be arriving at SFO on Monday, July 14th. I am so incredibly excited to go to San Francisco, I have never been out west, so this is a big deal for me. I am staying in the Fisherman’s Warf area of town. I look forward to taking some great photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. I am also very excited to visit Alcatraz Island, which has been a interest of mine from when I was a little kid.
I stay in San Francisco for 3 days, then I am taking a Virgin America jumper flight out to Las Vegas where I am meeting 6 other friends of mine for a Bachelor Party Vegas Style. I am not sure what I will get to see because this is most likely going to be a drunkfest. I am hoping to check out the different theme hotels, some of the lavish nightclubs, and of course a strip club, I mean come on it is a Bachelor Party!
I have some friends in San Francisco, so I am hoping I will get to visit some web 2.0 offices, but I don’t have any specific plans yet. If you live in SF and want to meet up with me, leave me a comment. I will be alone in SF so I would like to meet up with some of my West Coast friends. Have any suggestions of stuff I should see on my trip, please let me know. I only have 3 days in each city so I will be trying to fit a much in as I can.
Any comments, tips, recommendations, … would be very much appreciated.
A few days ago, I reviewed my first ever purchased program, Media Link, for my new Macbook Pro. Well today I am going to review another product I decided to purchase; it is called Awaken from Embraceware. Ultimately it is an alarm clock and sleep timer for any Mac and iTunes. It is very customizable in that it has many options to set from volume, to playlist, and more.
I have mainly been using the program as a sleep timer so my Macbook Pro will sleep after a specific amount of time. This allows me to fall asleep with my iTunes playing but not worry about running my laptop all night long. I created a custom playlist called sleep, set the timer to 1 hour and that is it! 1 hour later my MBP goes to sleep!
I use a real alarm clock to wake me up so I have not played with the wake functions, but I know it will wake up a Mac from sleep to activate the alarm clock. It also allows you to set a different alarm for each day, and you can completely customize each day!
It is a very beautify written application. The style is at par with Mac standards, and it is very tough with customization options and advanced functionality. I have only touched on all this program has to offer, for more information please browse over to http://www.embraceware.com/software/awaken/. It is a messily $12.95 and comes with updates for life! For many years I looked for something like this on Windows, but never had any luck. Awaken works on both Intel and Power Macs, but sorry no Windows!
About 2 weeks ago I purchased a brand new Macbook Pro. I am totally new to OS X so I am discovering all kinds of new goodies. One of which is called MediaLink by NullRiver Inc. MediaLink bridges the gap between the PlayStation 3 and Apple’s OS X.
The PlayStation 3 doubles as a media server, with Windows this is done very easily using Window’s Media Player, but with Mac, this is a problem. MediaLink turns your Mac into a media server that your PS3 can see. It is very easy to setup, and runs hidden in the background.
One of the greatest functions of it is how well it organizes your files, if you want to watch a episode of Diggnation a video podcast you have in iTunes, then you just select iTunes > Podcast > Diggnation just like in iTunes, it even provides a Quick Look like preview!
MediaLink is available for $20.00 from NullRiver.com. A trial is available but it is limited to 30 minutes of continuous use. I downloaded the trial and ended up purchasing the product with in 20 minutes! It works great, it might even work better then Windows Media Player did!
The only negative I have found is that sometimes the PlayStation 3 has a issue seeing the MediaLink server. This is solved in 2 seconds by opening the MediaLink preferance panel, and stopping the server then restarting it!
So of you might have heard from my tweets, or my status updates on various sites, that I recently bought a Macbook Pro. Below is a list of the specs in the model I purchased:
15.4 inch Matte Screen
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB Memory
200GB Hard Drive
Double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB
I purchased it from the Apple Store at Lenox Mall in Atlanta, Georgia. I originally went into the store expecting to buy a 2.5GHz/250GB/Glossy model, but the lady in the store talked some sense into me! I decided to go for the smaller processor because of the $400.00 difference, I just didn’t see it being justified, and also I was coming for a 1.8GHz windows machine, so I figured 2.4GHz was plenty of an upgrade. I also changed my mind on the Glossy/Matte because of the need for real colors in my designs and photography. I am very surprised at how well I like the Matte, because my old laptop was Glossy.
A couple of weeks ago, I dropped the ball and entered the world of DSLR photography. My weapon of choice, the Nikon D40, a reasonably priced professional grade camera. I did not want to post a review right when I got it, so I opted to use the crap out of it for a few weeks then review it. Below is my unboxing video which I posted to my YouTube account, but never posted on the site:
I have had the camera for 13 days and I have taken over 1200 pictures. Let me first offer this disclaimer, I am a BEGINNER when it comes to photography. I am not offering photography advice just yet. This is a review of the camera!
I shopped around pretty good looking at Nikon and Canon models. I choose the Nikon D40 for 2 main reasons:
I could not find a bad review about this product. I read probably close to 100 reviews and all of them were positive. Professionals and amateurs all said it is an amazing camera.
The second reason was price! This camera was about $100 to $200 cheaper then any other DSLR camera on the market.
My name is Chris Lentz. I started ATLChris.com in July 2008. I am not a journalist; blogging is just something I enjoy doing.
I operate out of Atlanta, Georgia. My goal with this site is to blog about interesteding technology and internet news and some personal stuff too!. I also do product and
software reviews.