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Matias iRizer Portable Laptop Stand Review

If you’ve ever been in a hotel room, conference hall or school classroom and thought to yourself, “this sure is uncomfortable” - then Matias knows your pain. The iRizer portable laptop stand is designed to create an ergonomic workspace for a laptop, no matter where you are. Its slim enough to fit into the smallest of laptop bags and light enough to carry without any serious consideration, so it sounds like an excellent companion to the road warrior.

So how does it work? Very simply. The iRizer is made up of two pieces of thick, shiny black plastic. Using angled slots, you can adjust the angle at which it elevates your laptop without any time or effort. It is very easy to assemble and the simple design works to its advantage. The material used is very high quality and had no trouble holding the test notebooks, an Apple Macbook and a Lenovo Thinkpad. If you type while using the iRizer in a more steeply angled position, it does have a little bit of flex and bounce, but it is well controlled when considering the portable nature.  If you’re using an external keyboard and mouse, then the flex is not worth thinking about, as it won’t be evident.

There is not a whole lot more that can be said about the iRizer, because its a pretty straightforward (and somewhat ingenious) product that works as advertised and does so for a reasonable price. When you consider the fact that the MiniRizer is included (basically a tiny version of the iRizer for iPods and cell phones), its something of a bargain - especially if its saving you from years of carpal tunnel or arthritis.

A little bonus for the non-Mac users among us is that if you use a Tablet, this is an excellent way to display the screen-only when it is sitting on your desk. I greatly prefer using my Thinkpad swiveled around on the iRizer than when using it flat on the desk.

Tags: laptop stands, matias irizer, reviews   Posted in Hardware, Testing

DLO Surface Shield iPhone 3G Review

If you’re looking for a bargain on a screen cover for your iPhone 3G and you have 4 friends who want in, its darn near impossible to beat the deal that DLO is offering on their Surface Shield screen protectors.

For a grand total of $14.99, you get a 5 pack of anti-glare screen protectors. A little mathematics brings us to the conclusion that you’re going to be running $3 per screen if you break the pack up. Money isn’t the only factor in play though, its just the beginning - the Surface Shield is actually an excellent product - even if it cost $15 for just one. The application process is very easy (comes with adhesive backing so you just place it on) and if you’re not quite on with the screen positioning, you can pull it off and adjust it without any consequence - it stays sticky. Just make sure your screen is clean and you don’t get any dust or hairs while you’re putting it on and it goes on great.

They’re anti glare shields - and they live up to their name. In direct window light, they cut down on bright shiny reflections, big time.

Some people prefer the unskinned, glossy surface of the naked iPhone but I personally love the texture and look that the anti-glare skin gives. It cuts down on the saturation a tiny bit, but it still looks great and in most cases, better than without the shield because you can actually see it when you’ve got sun or bright light overhead.

I recommend the DLO Surface Shield on the basis of cost and quality. Price to performance relationship is unbeatable and its an excellent product to begin with. If you can round up a couple buddies to split the bulk pack up with, it costs almost nothing but even if you’re just keeping them as spares, its an excellent value.

Tags: dlo surface shield, iphone 3g screen protector, iphone 3g shield, iphone 3g skin   Posted in Photography, Testing, iPhone

NLU Bodyguardz iPhone 3G Skin Review

When it comes to iPhone 3G skins, there is a veritable sea of choices. Pretty much every company that makes protective skins has thrown its hat into the ring, and it takes something special to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Some, like BestSkinsEver, compete on price. Others, like InvisibleShield, rely on market share and retail store availability. That brings us to the most recent skin I’ve tried, the NLU Bodyguardz.

The Bodyguardz name first came up in a discussion about another skin product, and I was surprised by the number of positive remarks. My curiosity piqued, I decided to see what the hubbub was about.

When the skin arrived, my first reaction was to the attention in the packaging. BestSkinsEver cuts costs by shipping in a plain letter envelope with no packaging or instructions whatsoever, but that is not the case here. Similar to the more elaborate InvisibleShield, the Bodyguardz comes in a full size box with application solution in a spray bottle and a small plastic square for squeegeeing excess spray from under the skin.

Application is fairly straightforward. It comes in two pieces, front and back, with 4 folds to cover the chrome edges, top and bottom. The application solution (spray bottle) appears to be the same or similar to the InvisibleShield equivalent and works well enough. One thing I noticed is that while the BestSkinsEver shield slid around easily, allowing for precise positioning, the BodyGuardz was very quick to grip and required a removal and re-spraying on my first attempt. Technique is everything, make sure it is well moistened and apply from bottom to top (or top to bottom, your choice), squeegeeing as you go to remove bubbles and liquid pockets.

When you’ve finished applying it, you’ll be disappointing. Lots of little imperfections, bubbles and such that you couldn’t remove. Don’t fret! This is the nature of these products. I’ve had the same experience with the rest of the shields. Be sure to allocate at least 12, preferably 24 hours or more before you start using the iPhone again. The quality of the application improves with time and after a few weeks, it should look perfect as long as you lined it up reasonably well.

(Right after application)

(24 hours later)

As you can see, just one day really improves the quality of the application. Don’t freak out and reapply if it doesn’t look great. Give it a day, if it still has huge bubbles then try the second one.

Like usual, I will try to keep my conclusion fairly straightforward. The Bodyguardz is a fine product and definitely high quality. While they can’t quite beat the price of the super-cheap and no frills BestSkinsEver, they are definitely a cut above in simplicity and ease of application (less tabs and folds, included application spray). The clarity also looks slightly better in a direct comparison. If you find a friend who needs a skin and is willing to split the cost, you’re looking at about $13 for the Bodyguardz full package. This is only $5 more than the BestSkinsEver, but the double pack’s $25 price tag is enough to make a difference if you aren’t splitting up.

The comparison most are probably looking for is Bodyguardz vs. InvisibleShield, as they are comparable in price and product, and competing for the same marketshare. I can say without hesitation that I recommend the Bodyguardz shield. Zagg has shown themselves as a very poor company in my, and the experiences of others, so I try to avoid them where possible. I removed my iPhone invisibleshield already so I couldn’t judge relative clarity, but I believe them to be negligible in difference. The application process is almost identical and I can’t give a nod in either direction. The clincher? Bodyguardz includes two skins in their $24.99 purchase price, so you’re getting twice the value for the same money.

Tags: bodyguardz iphone 3g review, bodyguardz iphone 3g skin review, bodyguardz iphone review, bodyguardz iphone skin review, iphone 3g skin, iphone 3g skin review, iphone 3g skins review   Posted in Testing, iPhone

OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard Preview

Now that we’ve had a chance to really sit down and experience Apple’s newest cat, its time to share our initial reactions to OSX 10.6 - Snow Leopard. Right off the bat, its fast. Very fast. A clean installation took about 13 minutes from start to finish, which is a world of difference from the hour or so that a clean 10.5 Leopard install takes. This has been potentially attributed to the significant reduction in the size of core applications (Snow Leopard’s Mail application is under 100mb, whereas 10.5’s was nearly 300mb). Other theories involve a removal of PowerPC support freeing up space and speeding up the install time. Other than the actual time involved, there are very few differences between the 10.5 and 10.6 installation processes in the current build.

Once you’re up and running, it feels very similar to Leopard. I don’t know how much this will change through Snow Leopard’s development, but don’t expect a terribly different interface. The subtle changes to the current Aqua definitely look good though. The biggest changes are under the hood. Snow Leopard is fast. Very fast. Like, surprisingly fast. From boot times to general application usage, Snow Leopard was noticeably quicker than Leopard when using the same system. Apple and 3rd party applications alike, they all launched faster and performed smoother. I’m sure this can be attributed to the new 64-bit architecture, but its amazing how much of a difference it really is.

But I digress, as I’m sure you’re bored of all this text - lets go on to the good stuff! The pictures:

About This Mac:

Nothing to see here, just the standard “About This Mac” screen. Click for full screen.

Install Weight

This was very interesting, though probably evident by the quick install. By default, the System folder of Snow Leopard is nearly 1 gigabyte smaller than that of Leopard (10.5). Optimizations have clearly been made.

Now on to the software changes. Right off the bat, there were new (unreleased) versions of many of Apple’s “staple” softwares. Quicktime, Bootcamp, Mail, even the Address Book have seen updates. Address Book’s most notable feature is the Exchange Server integration so happily boasted by Apple at WWDC.

Software Update

By replacing the in-your-face popup window that was Leopard’s software update with the preferences panel, they took everything I hated and made it into a cleaner, friendlier interface. Bravo!

Boot Camp 3 Beta

This one was an “expected surprise”. I haven’t had a chance to play with the new drivers, but the current version 2 is already so polished that I doubt any major changes have been made.

32 Bit Mode

This is most likely a developer mode “feature” rather than a poor interface decision, but many of the system preference options require “restarting” into 32 bit mode. This is instantaneous (it simply closes system preferences 64 bit and opens 32 bit) but annoying.

Exchange Integration

Highly trumpeted, but nice to see anyways. Lacking a live Exchange Server, this feature went untested.

Quicktime 7.6

I was expecting to see the highly anticipated Quicktime X, but was instead greeted with the unreleased Quicktime 7.6

Thanks for looking! This post will be updated continually as our experience with Snow Leopard progresses. As of June 25th, we have experienced 0 crashes.

Tags: mac os x 10.6, mac os x snow leopard, mac osx snow leopard, mac osx snow leopard review, os x snow leopard review, osx 10.6, osx snow leopard   Posted in Software, Testing

Aperture 2 vs Lightroom 2 Beta

The two biggest players in the photo management game for OSX are Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom products. Both take RAW files in and make it easy to do basic editing and processing to greatly reduce the time required to process your images. Today, we will be testing the speed of imports, as well as their respective processing outputs, with sample images and 100% crops.

We used the latest versions of Aperture 2 and Lightroom 2 private beta (available to owners of Lightroom and by invitation). To test import speed, a Sandisk Ultra 2 card was filled with 21 RAW images, taking up 144.6MB space. It was placed in a Digital Concepts USB 2.0 CompactFlash Card Reader and connected via USB to an Apple Macbook Pro laptop with a 5400RPM hard drive. We used a clean install of Mac OSX 10.5.3 Leopard and new installations of Aperture and Lightroom. The camera used for testing was a Canon 30D.

First up - the import speed test. This was fairly self explanatory: both immediately recognized the CF card when it was inserted and were ready to roll.

Aperture was by far the big winner here, clocking in at 20.5 seconds to import our 21 RAW files.

Lightroom had a much poorer showing, though it is currently a beta version. It took 35.5 seconds to import our test files.

But what do measly seconds mean when the greater issue is image quality? We did a comparison test using the automatic tools built into Aperture and Lightroom to compare the final image quality. Thought you will always get the best results out of an individually processed file in Photoshop, Canon DPP or Nikon Capture NX, a photographer trying to process thousands of RAW files on a deadline doesn’t have time to edit each file. These presets and automatic adjustments are huge timesavers if the end result is acceptable. We used factory default settings and clicked Auto Adjust for both programs.

Lightroom

Full size (resized for web)

100% Crop (resized for web)

Aperture

Full size (resized for web)

100% Crop (resized for web)

In my opinion, Lightroom is the winner in terms of image quality using the automatic settings. Quality is completely subjective and I encourage readers to voice their opinions using the comment form as to which they feel is the better result, but the Lightroom sample is more pleasing to my eye then the Aperture sample. It may be due to more aggressive sharpening or higher contrast, but the Aperture version looks softer. Again, no sliders or settings were manually adjusted; only auto tools were used. It does appear that the Lightroom crop has more digital noise then the Aperture crop, perhaps a byproduct of the sharpening (or a lack of noise reduction, which can make an image less sharp).

Like any test, please take this with a grain of salt. Hopefully this has helped shed a bit of light on the best options for photo cataloguing and processing.

Tags: adobe, aperture, aperture 2, apple, beta, editing, lightroom, lightroom 2, photo, Photography, raw, Software, test   Posted in Photography, Software, Testing

The Fastest Browsers for Mac

Mac Web Browser Showdown

There are a number of free alternatives to Apple’s bundled Safari web browser, and to get a better idea of which of these are worth your time, we have put together a brief comparison.
We took 5 popular browsers and tested them for loading speeds, memory usage and interface. Without further ado, the contenders are:

Mozilla Firefox 3 (RC3)
Camino 1.6
Opera 9.5
Safari 3
Shiira 2

We tested using a clean install of OSX 10.5.3 Leopard with all updates installed on an Intel Macbook Pro 2.4ghz with 4gb RAM and a 200gb 5400rpm hard drive (current base-end model with an additional 2 gigabytes of RAM).

If you would prefer to cut to the chase, we have cliffs notes: Shiira was the fastest browser we tested, but also the quirkiest. It would not be recommended to someone who was only familiar with Internet Explorer or Safari. We also determined that the Apple-supplied Safari browser held its own against the third parties and is not a bad choice if you are already comfortable with it.

We downloaded the latest available version of the browsers from their respective websites and placed each application on the desktop. Each was run to set homepages, disable prompts for “Default Browser” and finished the initial configuration/setup stages for each. Then, the test computer was restarted and had its permissions/pram cleared for the cleanest testing with the least variables.
Our first test was raw speed, from click to page loaded. We set each browser to load Google.com as their homepage (though one was unable to do so), cleared all preferences.

One problem we encountered right off the bat was the Shiira, no mater how hard we tried, would not allow a home page. Even when it was entered in the home page field, when the browser was re-opened, it defaults to a blank page. This may be part of the reason that Shiira’s speed was faster then others, so please take that result with a grain of salt.

Initial Boot Speed

In this test, lower is better. As we mentioned, Shiira (the current fastest) did not account for page load times. Google was cached by each browser so the impact is not tremendous but it is a factor.
The Winner: Shiira (with an asterisk by its record)

Javascript Test Speed

In this test, lower is better. Safari came out the champion of the Javascript test, blowing away the competition. Camino was far behind the rest, with Shiira placing a respectable second.
The Winner: Safari

Idle Memory Usage

In this test, lower is better. We conducted the memory usage test by opening each browser to Google.com and leaving it alone. Safari was by far the worst offender here, with Camino taking the prize for lowest idle memory usage.
The Winner: Camino

Load Memory Usage

In this test, lower is better. We conducted the load memory usage test by opening each browser to a Youtube video and played halfway through before testing. Safari made up for its poor idle memory with a very low load usage and won by a large margin.
The Winner: Safari

Shiira was the fastest browser we tested, but also the quirkiest. It would not be recommended to someone who was only familiar with Internet Explorer or Safari. We also determined that the Apple-supplied Safari browser held its own against the third parties and is not a bad choice if you are already comfortable with it. Often touted alt-browser Opera failed to impress in any categories, and fan-favorite Firefox was not exceptional, but its immense community support and extensive plugin library make it a very viable option.

I personally use Firefox, but after this testing, I’ve begun to use Shiira for daily browsing and found it to be a very comfortable interface. Any of these browsers are an excellent choice, hopefully we’ve helped provide some options!

Tags: best, browser, camino, fastest, firefox, mac, memory, opera, shiira, speed, test   Posted in Software, Testing