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Mechanic's digital organizer

Garage Organizer offers to help coordinate all of the various chores that make running a garage difficult. With simple options and great results, this program is sure to win a few fans.

Garage Organizer boasts its strengths immediately by showcasing a well-organized interface that never leaves you in the dark. Large command buttons clearly point the way toward several boxes for data that are easy to quickly fill. The program offers a Help file, but we are confident it will need to be consulted only for the program's more complicated tasks. This versatile management system operates primarily from a … Read more

Crowded personal organizer

4ASoft Agenda offers to help users get organized in their busy lives. While it covers a lot of ground, this program's design will prevent most users from feeling comfortable and truly utilizing it.

The program's interface may overwhelm users with its abundance of command icons. The biggest hurdles are data entry fields which are small and unmarked. Users should reserve time for several experimental runs and a long, hard look at the online Help file. Users are presented with three separate organizational tools: Agenda organizer, Address Book and Jobs organizer. The Jobs Organizer is a helpful tool similar … Read more

Dell Mini 9: I'm baaack...

We always want what we can't have, and when Dell canned its Inspiron Mini 9, I beat myself up for not buying one earlier.

But lo and behold, Dell has brought back its itty-bitty Netbook for $199 until July 27. The price gives you bare necessities: the Ubuntu Linux OS, a 4G SSD, a Webcam, and other basic features.

There's also a $269 option that upgrades the Netbook to Windows XP and an 8GB SSD.

The Mini 9 had a few words to say regarding her retirement and limited-time return:

A few months ago Anne C. was kind … Read more

Cowon S9 wants you back, updates wardrobe

Long before the Sony X-Series stole the OLED portable media player spotlight, 2008's Cowon S9 blew us away with its gorgeous 3.3-inch touch-screen display, Bluetooth audio, and extensive audio and video codec support. But the gadget's fanatic attention span can only last so long before a perfectly good MP3 player just feels like yesterday's news.

In an effort to rekindle our collective fascination with the S9, Cowon has announced a new "ceramic white" color option, currently available only in Korea. To be fair, Cowon has also released a steady stream of firmware updates for … Read more

Do you use all seven channels on your home theater receiver?

An industry insider recently admitted to me that only 30 percent of AV receiver buyers ever bother to hook up all seven channels to their receivers. That guesstimate seems a little high to me; the standard 5.1 channel setup: Left, center, right speakers upfront, and a pair of surround speakers to the sides of the main listening position can supply a truly immersive sound experience.

Seven-channel home theater adds two more speakers, placed behind the main listening position. That's tough to accomplish in rooms where the couch or chairs are up against the rear wall. There's no "rear" there, so some folks mount the rear speakers up high, or bounce the sound off the ceiling.

Still, the rear surrounds typically contribute little, so it's pretty hard to justify the added expense and hassle of running the extra wires for a marginal sonic improvement. The one exception might apply to very large rooms where the side and rear surround speakers are further apart from each other. The extra coverage may produce a more complete sense of surround envelopment. … Read more

Make your own batteries (out of other batteries)

Our product manager Justin sent me a link to Kipkay's YouTube video on hacking apart a 9-volt battery into six AAA replacements. So, I had to try it for myself.

A 9-volt battery is actually made up of six 1.5-volt cells. Those cells are actually quadruple size, but you can make them work in AAA compartments.

Watch this video to see how. With some needle-nosed pliers, pry apart the casing of the 9-volt battery. As long as you're careful not to puncture the cells themselves, there's nothing harmful inside. Once you get it open, pull off … Read more

Media player meets Netbook in the Archos 9PCtablet

The line between portable media devices and traditional Netbooks just got a little more blurred, thanks to this morning's announcement of the Archos 9PCtablet. According to the company, this is a 9-inch touchscreen Atom-powered PC, in a form factor much closer to Archos' line of portable media players (or older UMPCs) than, say, an Eee PC.

Using a touchscreen interface and an optical trackball, the Archos 9PCtablet looks at first glance like a Netbook that's had its screen and keyboard halves forcibly separated. Probably the closest thing we've seen recently is the import-only Viliv S5, which also had an Atom processor and a touch screen -- but that display was only 4.8 inches.

The Archos 9 won't be out until fall, so the company is wisely sticking with Windows 7 as its operating system choice. Taking a look at the rest of the specs, it seems very Netbook-like, although it has the new 1.2GHz Z515 version of Intel's Atom processer, specifically designed for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). We'll have to wait and see how that stacks up against the much more common 1.6GHz N270 version of that chip found in the vast majority of Netbooks.

Here are some specs, courtesy of Archos:… Read more

Acer's sleek-looking 23-incher coming soon

For the most part, I'm really loving this era of 16:9 LCD computer monitors. The fact that we can get a 21.5- or 23-inch monitor with a resolution of 1,920x1,080, can't be a bad thing since previously monitors of those sizes would have topped out at 1,680x1,050 in 16:10. While I have a little something to say about 20-inchers with 16:9, for the most part I'm happy.

Today, Acer continues the trend of giving us more pixels by announcing the Acer H235H. It's a 23-inch LCD computer monitor … Read more