Mike's Picks

Well I needed a mouse to go along with my ASUS Transformer and keyboard dock. I wanted something that would fit in my neoprene tablet case and not take up too much room. I look at the credit card style mice but they were recharged via a pcmcia card slot which the tablet does no have. I happened t see a ad from Amazon for the Microsoft Arc Touch mouse and it piqued my interest. I saw TigerDirect had it for $25.00 so I took a leap of faith. When it arrived I was impressed. It is light weight and the transmitter nub was attached to the bottom by a magnet. Nice. To turn it on you jst bend the mouse to its curved shape and low and behold a blue light came on. It feels comfortable and does what I wanted it for.

Here is a Review of it from PcMag

Although Microsoft’s BlueTrack sensor technology has generated a lot of buzz, the Microsoft Arc Mouse ($59.95 list), also recently announced, deserves props as well. Its unique folding aesthetics should appeal to notebook travelers who want the comfort of a fuller-size mouse without the weight. The Arc Mouse, available in black or red, raises the bar for portable mice.

On seeing the Arc Mouse for the first time, you might wonder if Microsoft really designed it. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Microsoft’s previous mouse designs, but the Arc Mouse is refreshingly different. It’s a real looker—a simple, well-defined curve molded into a sleek, stylish form factor. The top portion of the Arc has a textured grip-surface surrounded by a shiny plastic border. Its underbelly is a different tone, which varies depending on the mouse’s color. (The black version’s bottom is silver; the red version has a brighter red.) An LED battery indicator changes from green to red when the batteries are running low.

As its name implies, the Arc Mouse is bowed like a crescent, which feels comfortable against your palms. The design works whether you’re a lefty or righty, thanks to uniform ergonomics, and the mouse feels virtually weightless to the touch. It looks as if Microsoft took a scoop out of the mouse, but in reality, the mouse comprises two parts held together by a metal hinge that can accommodate up to 25 pounds of pressure. When not in use, the palm-rest area can be folded underneath the mouse buttons, shrinking the mouse to 60 percent of its unfolded size—perfect for when you’re on the go. It’s a four-button mouse (left and right click, scroll wheel, and an extra, programmable button on the left-hand side). The Arc comes with a tiny transceiver for wireless infrared connectivity, at 2.4-GHz frequency, which worked, as Microsoft claims, at a 30-foot range. The micro-transceiver can be stored underneath the mouse’s hinge (even when closed) via a magnet. When plugged into the computer’s USB port, the transceiver sticks out exactly one centimeter.

The Arc is not bundled with any software, but you can download the IntelliPoint software (from Microsoft’s hardware downloads page) to assign definitions to any of the mouse buttons. When used with Windows Vista’s Aero 3D interface (which is supported by all Vista versions except Basic), the Arc will automatically configure itself for Flip 3D. This lets you quickly navigate between multiple windows and applications. Flip 3D is normally accessed in Vista by pressing Alt-Tab, but you can assign one of the Arc mouse buttons to bring up the Flip 3D function and scroll through the windows with the scroll wheel. The Arc doesn’t use Microsoft’s BlueTrack technology, but its laser precision is spot-on. It also works well with Apple computers. The black Arc Mouse is a nice complement to a black MacBook.

I have a few minor quibbles with the Arc. For one, it’s powered solely via 2 AAA batteries (said to last 6 months). A rechargeable option would suit this peripheral much better. Although I found the Arc Mouse perfectly suitable for gaming (desktop or laptop), other gamers might be turned off by its weightless feel. None of this is significant enough to outweigh its assets, however.

Overall, the Microsoft Arc Mouse is a high-quality, elegant, and innovative product, and it jumps to the head of the pack of travel mice. It’s big enough to be used on a desktop but folds smaller than most notebook mice. The Arc Mouse’s portability, sharp precision, and comfortable ergonomics earn it our Editors’ Choice.

ProfitAlertMachine Review

ProfitAlertMachine is the latest 4X Business Tool. This is basically a Forex Trader Copier that uses unique methods for copying trades

The creator of Profit Alert Machine are Forex Traders with years of experience and has already sold tons of Forex Products in the past

Detailed Review of ProfitAlertMachine can be found at Profit Alert Machine Review

Read the rest of this entry »

Well all this week I pondered on which tablet to buy. It was between the ASUS TF101 Transformer, the Motorola XOOM, Samsung Galaxy 10.1, Toshiba Thrive and (shudder) The Apple Ipad2. All the tablets have their pros and cons. I read user reviews on all the forums and magazine reviews and here is what I came up with.
The Apple Ipad2 is a beautifully designed tablet, ligt weight and a trendsetter. It was fast and has a large numbe of applications but it did not do flash (which is needed to run Practice Fusion), no SD slot so you can’t expand the storage, closed operating system so your at their mercy and you have to by a dongle to output to HDMI. So that shot down Apple (plus a personal dislike for Steve Jobs (and yes I have met him)).
The Samsung Galaxy 10.1 is another beautifully designed tablet that is even slimmer and lighter then the Apple Ipad2 (Kudos Samsung). It is faster then the Ipad2 and according to the reviews better resolution on the screen. It runs Android honeycomb 3.1 and flash 10.3 (these were a requirement for me) but the only problem is it had no SD slot so you could not expand the memory so Samsung was out (I was tempted though).
Next was the Toshiba Thrive. This was just released to the public. It was the bulkiest tablet of the group but had some great features. It has a full size USB port, SD slot and HDMI slot along with a removable battery. It had good speed and nice display. But on the Thrive it was the weight/bulk factor that helped me decide to pass on this one.
Then came the Motorola Xoom. This tablet came out around april and was a very sturdily built tablet. It has a great display and is as of today one of only 2 tablets running Honeycomb 3.2 (the latest and greatest). This update activated the SD slot that was not working until now. I have a Motorola Droid X pone and am impressed with the build quality that Motorola puts into their products. The Xoom comes with 32gb on board and is a quick little tablet. So this was in the running.
Lastly came the ASUS Transformer. This tablet really caught my eye because you can get a optional keyboard docking station that turns the tablet into a Netbook (nice feature). The Transformer is a light slim tablet with a bronze colored textured back. I read that people thought the tablet felt plastic-like and cheap. After using it for a couple of hours I thought it was a sturdy well built tablet. I was impressed with the ability to use the new SDXC micro cards so you can expand it to 128gb+. It was the second tablet to get the Honeycomb 3.2 update and in my opinion made it the perfect tablet. It has a mini HDMI port, Micro SD slot and great sound. The display is crisp and do like the quick bootup. Today I left (forgot) the charger at home so I will get to see how the battery life is on it. It is supposed to be about 9 hours. I was able to run practice fusion on it with no problems at all. On my apps I fund that about all my ones I use work great. I will eventually get the keyboard dock for it but after all my research I did I love the Transformer. (BTW I still love my Nook Color just as much).
Now down to start developing some apps for this tablet and other 10.1 tabs. Fun times.

Editorial: Netflix was too cheap before, but now it’s just wrong

By Tim Stevens posted Jul 13th 2011 12:00PM

Editorial

Yesterday Netflix did something pretty big: it cut the umbilical cord on its streaming video offerings. What was once a funny little niche offering, a rag-tag collection of canceled TV shows you never watched and ’80s movies you never rented, had grown into something big, something that still wasn’t quite great but was legitimately very good. As such, that service deserved its own plan, to stand tall and apart from the red envelopes that made the company famous.

But there’s one problem: after cutting Instant loose, creating a new $7.99 streaming-only plan, Netflix stuck the dagger right in its own side by not re-thinking its disc-based rentals — plans that looked a lot more valuable before than they do now. Netflix has succeeded in making its on-demand offerings so good that those unlimited snail mail samplings can’t quite stand up on their own two feet anymore. At least, they can’t stand up tall enough to support their $7.99 and up prices. Maybe, Netflix, it’s time to go back to the fundamentals.

I won’t fully recount the nearly miraculous growth and development of Netflix from its beginnings as a niche rental service, but here’s a quick overview just to make sure we’re all on the same page. The company’s website went live back in 1998, charging $4 per rental plus $2 shipping on each — an almost laughably high cost that, at the time, was quite comparable with what aging rental stores were asking of their card-carrying members. That only lasted until 2000, when the now famous unlimited rentals without due dates program began.

The company that once got the US Postal Service all flustered is now a major reason why netizens everywhere are up in arms about network neutrality.

Since then Netflix has gone on to send nearly every traditional video rental store into bankruptcy, becoming the single largest source of traffic on the internet. The company that once got the US Postal Service all flustered is now a major reason why netizens everywhere are up in arms about network neutrality, and — until yesterday — it looked poised to only go up from there.

Now, though, I’m not sure what’s going to happen. If previously you had the “1 DVD out at-a-time” plan with unlimited streaming, you’d be paying $9.99 monthly. That was, quite simply, an incredibly good deal. A really, really good deal. Under the new scheme that plan drops to $7.99 ($9.99 if you want access to Blu-ray movies), but if you want streaming you’ll have to pay another $7.99. Now you’re looking at $15.98 a month for the pair, which is still a damned fine deal — but there are a few problems.

For one thing, Netflix isn’t adding any new content to go along with this price hike. To say “our service today is worth 50 percent more than it cost yesterday” is awfully brash when that service hasn’t changed a lick over that 24-hour period. Sure, there was that Star Trek deal from a few weeks ago, but the ability to revisit the Kirk vs. Picard vs. Archer vs. Sisko vs. Janeway debate (again) doesn’t make up for such a big hike.

More importantly, the very notion of receiving a disc in the mail suddenly feels a lot more quaint than it did back in 2007, when users got one hour of “Watch Now” streaming for every dollar they spent on disc-based delivery. There was nothing to watch back then, but these days there’s enough for me to spend way more time streaming stuff than spinning discs — enough that I’ll easily go a week or two without peeking to see what’s in the latest crimson Tyvek pouch.

These days I’ll easily go a week without peeking to see what’s in the latest crimson Tyvek pouch.

Why is Netflix doing this? Because that streaming content isn’t cheap and, as more people watch, those licensing fees are only going to get higher. And that’s just the beginning: if Netflix is hustling more data than anybody else on the planet, just try and calculate the company’s hosting costs. This extra money coming in will help Netflix to go after more and better content, and to get it earlier — but with this big price hike the company runs a real risk of alienating its subscribers, a sentiment that many of you have shared with us.

For me, as a subscriber myself, it’s decision time. Will I keep my Netflix account? Yes — at least partially. I like Netflix’s streaming options more than what’s on offer from the identically priced Hulu Plus service and, while I think Amazon Prime Instant Video will be a contender in the future, right now the lack of console support makes it a non-starter for me.

I’m going to think long and hard about canceling my disc services, or at least dropping back to the twice-monthly DVD plan. But, I’d really like for Netflix to take a cue from Redbox (and, indeed, from its original pricing scheme) and let me pay per-disc. More and more often I’m happy to wait for the random selection of decidedly non-new releases to pop up on the company’s Instant service before I watch them. It’s only the hot, high-impact, exciting new releases that I really want on disc. You know, the kind of movie you thought about going to see in the theater and totally planned to, but then one of your friends flaked or you got lazy or you called ahead for ticket prices and you decided “Yeah, I’ll just wait for Netflix and put that money toward my college loans.” Those are the movies that I want on disc.

Netflix should make a new plan: $2 monthly to keep the lights on and then $2 for each DVD I rent.

Instead of the minimum $4.99 a month plan for two discs (a buck more for Blu-ray), Netflix should make a new one: $2 monthly to keep the lights on and then $2 for each DVD I rent — $3 per Blu-ray. Subscriber of the streaming plan already? Knock off that $2 monthly fee and just charge me for the individual things that need shipped my way. With that I could still get the odd disc when I’m particularly hot for a new release but not be stuck paying $8 a month for the privilege of having a red envelope sit unopened on my coffee table.

Sure, it’s almost anti-American to want to step away from the fully-inclusive offer, but this new plan would be like having full access to an all-you-can-eat buffet while also selecting an a la carte menu for those particular treats not found beneath a sneeze guard. That’s the best of both worlds, enough to sate a content glutton who has a taste for the finer things, and the kind of exclusive garnish that might keep Netflix looking tastier than its rapidly improving, streaming-only competition.

This article was posted on Engadget.