The size is perfect for reading books and magazines look great on the color screen, but i personally think it’s a little small for viewing them. Article view helps out a lot though, which I will talk about more later.

On the initial startup you are greeted by a welcome video. The quality of the video is perfect. Seriously, I don’t really think it could look any better. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only video that I can get to even play on the device, but more about that later. It takes little time to setup. You just set up your WIFI, timezone and log into your account and that is about it.

The performance of the Nook Color is great. There is an occasional hiccup with an animation, but it is very minimal. Unless you are sitting there searching for a problem you will most likely not even notice.

The device itself only has 4 physical buttons: power, volume up, volume down, and the “n” home button. Pressing the power button locks the screen. If you hold it for 5 seconds it will pop up an option to turn of the device completely. I have been doing this at night because I don’t really have a reason to keep it on. I figured it would be a good addition to the review to time the fresh boot up. It takes 31 seconds to load up all the initial wording and animations. At that point you are on the home screen. So turning the device off completely isn’t really a big time killer.

The Nook Color really shines as an ebook reader. I have absolutely no eye strain while using it even though it has an LCD screen. My eyes are totally used to LCD screens though, as I have been using them for the last 10 years regularly. You have many options while reading books or newspapers on the device. You can change the colors, margins, font, line spacing and text size that it displays. It has enough options available that you should be able to find a combination that suits you perfectly.

The entire screen is touch enabled. But there are 3 key locations you want to touch while reading. About 1/2 inch on each side of the screen is for page turns. You can just tap on the left side to go back or tap on the right to go ahead. If you don’t like the single tap function, you can also swipe your finger to “move” to the next page. By tapping in the middle of the page, it will bring up an option menu where you can see the content of whatever you are reading along with your bookmarks, search through the text, share (recommend via email, Twitter or Facebook along with posting the % complete as a status update), change the text attributes, and adjust the screen brightness. There is also a slider to go to a specific page. I have tried all of these functions and haven’t come across any problems yet.

Where the device begins to have some problems is with media functions. Various sites including YouTube are bookmarked by default in the web browser. I tried a few videos via the home page of YouTube and none of them worked. Each popped up the same “unable to play media” message. To test this further I put a few videos on to my microSD card. I tried 3 videos, all encoded via mp4 as stated on the Nook specs as necessary and none of them worked. There seems to be a major issue with the video codecs on the device. But as I stated earlier, the demo video looks incredible. So I hope an update is released soon that adds more functionality to the video playback portion of the device because as of right now it serves little purpose. I put about 100 mp3 files onto my microSD card also. They played without any problem. I have seen other reviews where mp3 files did not play. But I had no issues, though I didn’t try to play any VBR mp3 files. If any could be a problem I would think those would have the greatest chance of failure.

Now back to Article view in magazines. This function makes magazines actually readable. Article view, which works in regular or landscape, pulls the text from within the articles and displays it in the center of the screen. It makes it much easier to scroll through and read the text this way. Magazines would not be very functional if this option was not available. You would be forced to zoom in and out on the magazine, moving it around the screen to view the different columns of text.

The web browser works well. It lacks Flash like most other mobile devices. One thing to point out though is the fact that the mobile versions of sites don’t load by default. Every site I visit treats the browser in the Nook as a “desktop” device rather than mobile. I don’t mind though because over WIFI pages load fairly quickly. I did notice that .gif animations don’t actually animate. But that is a very minor issue, and once again could be fixed in an update easily if the developers think it is necessary.

Overall the device is great as an ereader. As of right now it lacks in the tablet department. Once some issues are worked out with video playback, and the app store is available in January, I can see getting a lot more use from the device as a whole and not just as an ereader.

I left out some aspects of the device in the review because it is already fairly long. If you have any questions about anything not mentioned here feel free to ask below. I will respond as soon as I can.

Also, all photos in this post were taken with my phone so they are very low quality.

The new device is much different from the older models. It no longer has the e-ink screen but a full touch screen powered by Android. The new device is not just an ereader, it’s a tablet.

Listed below are the features of the new Nook Color.

The Ultimate Reading Experience:

• Stunning 7-inch color touchscreen
• Magazines & newspapers in rich color
• Kids’ books come alive
• Over 2 million titles at your fingertips
• Get social, surf the web, play games, even listen to music

I am an avid Netflix user and streaming video to my laptop is nice but watching movies on a television is a much nicer experience all around.

My Roku arrived this week and, unbelievably, I installed it on my lunch hour after I ate my lunch and I was not late returning to work! In less than thirty minutes I connected it to my television and the internet, registered my device with Roku, Netflix, and Amazon Video On Demand. It was an amazingly simple process.

I had been told that I would need to manage my Netflix queue via the internet to add movies for streaming, however Netflix has made some upgrades that allow you to search for movies via your Roku device making adding and deleting from the device is very user friendly. Download speeds are fast and I have not had any issues with any movies needing to buffer as I watched them. The only thing I found a bit awkward was scrolling through a video I just wanted to watch parts of, however if you pause during a movie and come back later to resume watching, it immediately goes to the point where you left off.

There are many options of channels you can add to your Roku device from podcasts to videos to photo sharing. Thus far I have added Mediafly, PodTV, woot!, Roku Newscaster, EZTakes, and USTREAM.tv.

I have found each of these applications to be very easy to navigate and use.

I have not found Amazon video on demand as simple to use though. I found their application to be a bit cumbersome and outside of a few current television show offerings, all of their content is available on Netflix, so paying for Amazon rentals is not going to be something I will do with any regularity.

For those interested in MMA, there are a couple of channels for viewing UFC which offers LIVE events and archived PPV events and classic fights and Midwest Cage Fighting.

It also has some internet radio channels, family channels with kid friendly content, some independent film channels, and several classic movie channels. In addition, in the few days since I have installed my Roku device, there have been several new channels added to the lineup, so I will be checking back often to see what else is new.

If you have been considering purchasing a Roku device, I would definitely recommend it.

They had various “hold music devices” that were fairly expensive. If I remember correctly, the cheapest one they sold was over $250. I thought about it for a few minutes and said, “can’t we just use an MP3 player?”

Obviously the man on the phone didn’t care for my idea very much because they didn’t sell MP3 players for this function. But surprisingly he said he didn’t see it being a problem. We all questioned the reliability of a relatively inexpensive MP3 playing device, but now I can say that reliability has not been an issue at all.

I went to Best Buy in February of 2009 and saw a Sandisk Sansa Clip on sale for $34. I figured even if it only lasted a few months we would get our money’s worth. We purchased legal MP3 files to serve the function of hold music, which also includes overlays of words such as “please stay on the line, your call is important to us” that fades in over the music on occasion.

It is now August 18, 2010 and the MP3 player has never stopped playing. It has been running continuously for nearly 600 days straight. Just in case something happens to the device, we have 3 extra ones purchased during a special on Woot.com for $20 a piece.

Here is a photo taken today of the MP3 player in action. The battery inside even acts as a backup if we have power issues. Which reminds me to point out that the battery still keeps a charge.

Needless to say, flash storage based MP3 players can apparently last a very long time. I would not hesitate to purchase a Sandisk MP3 player if my need for one ever arises.  They are built great and can’t be beat for the price.

For those interested, here is a link to the updated Sansa Clip+. It is less than $50 for 8gb of storage and is expandable with a microSD slot.

Around February of 2005 I bought a G4 iBook. I loved it, and still do except for the screen resolution. It has always worked very well. I could easily take it to class and use it all day on a single battery charge. It is quiet and never overheats. As far as I’m concerned it has worked flawlessly, and I’d like to point out, it still does. The battery still keeps a great charge. The screen has zero dead pixels. It has held up perfectly. As I stated before it’s main downfall for “modern” times is the low screen resolution of 1024×768. It has a 1.33ghz G4 Processor, 1.25gb of RAM and runs the Leopard operating system. It isn’t fast compared to new laptops, but it is great for general internet usage, even still today.

In May of 2008 I purchased a 24″ iMac. At that point I became a full time Mac user at home. I loved it. And for $1800 I hoped it would last a long time. Fast forward to 2010 and now I know I was totally mistaken. The iMac, along with every other piece of Apple hardware over the last couple of years, has various flaws that Apple refuses to do anything about and they just don’t last as long as they should.

For one, they overheat. Apple seems to think that the more silent a computer is the better… No, that’s not the case. If I let the fans on my iMac run at stock speed, not only does the whole computer get ridiculously hot, but even the LCD screen burns in. In order to make my screen viewable after a few hours I finally figured out that I needed to remove the glass covering on my screen (it’s simply held in place with a few magnets) and use a program to control my fan speeds. Without the glass my iMac looks fairly bad, but if it helps the issue it is the only option I have. There have been various topics on the Apple forums regarding this issue and absolutely no solutions have been posted. Why? Because there are none. It’s a major design flaw. Nothing can be done to fix it other than what I have done, if you even consider that a fix. On a side note, other things have failed on my iMac also, including the Super Drive and the line-in jack.

Another problem is their operating system support. Snow Leopard is great, don’t get me wrong. But I am unable to upgrade past 10.6.2 on my iMac. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can if I want to have a completely unstable and unusable computer.

Starting with 10.6.3 and even in the current build 10.6.4, there is a major issue that causes the entire computer to lock up. The screen either gets lines all over it, or goes completely black, and the computer is unresponsive to all input. The only possible thing to do is to press the power button on the back of the iMac until you can restart it. This issue started all the way back in April of this year. It is now mid August. Once again, there is no response from Apple about the issue and they have no idea what to do. They released a so called “fix” for something but it had no effect on my computer. I am not the only one with this problem either. There are plenty of threads on the Apple forums regarding the same issue. I was forced to reinstall Snow Leopard and only upgrade back up to 10.6.2 to have a working computer.

Because I initially liked my iMac so much, I bought a first gen iPod Touch for a whopping $379. I absolutely loved it. It basically convinced me to cancel my Verizon contract and switch to AT&T to buy an iPhone 3g.

My phone has always worked fairly well. As a matter of fact, I still use the iPhone 3g. I have it jailbroken of course. But once again, Apple released their next great thing iOS 4. iOS 4 is totally useless on the iPhone 3g. My phone is already nearly 2 years old so the battery doesn’t hold a charge nearly as well as it did early on. iOS 4 absolutely destroys it, not to mention the fact that the useful features such as “background” apps aren’t officially supported on it. Needless to say, I am using the 3.1.3 OS, and I will never upgrade any higher. They don’t even support a wallpaper on the iPhone 3g. Amazingly, I have no issues with full themes while it is jailbroken.

I’m sure you can imagine where I am heading now with this, the iPhone 4 “antennagate” issue… I would love to buy a new phone. AT&T was even nice enough to allow me to do so early if I wanted to upgrade. Why would anyone even consider doing this? Yeah I know, plenty of people say they don’t have an issue. I guess Apple just decided to fire Mark Papermaster for no reason, right?

This entire umm, “made up problem” has made me totally rethink my entire stance on Apple as a whole.  I am about 95% certain that I will not buy another Apple computer. I am also about 75% sure that I will not purchase another iPhone, and the only reason I even say 75% is the fact that I have spent a good bit of money on applications for my current iPhone 3g. I don’t really want all of that money to go to waste and honestly it is the only reason why I would even consider staying with the iPhone.

I am starting to ramble now so I will finish off by discussing my main issue with Apple products, their price. As time goes by and technology is getting better and better, and the “computer user” is becoming more mainstream, prices have dropped drastically. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to care about this trend. Apple computers flat out are overpriced, more so than ever I think.

I recently purchased an HP Pavilion dv7t Select Edition laptop. I can admit it, I love Windows 7 and it is basically what will end my time as a primary Mac user. Here is a comparison between the HP laptop I ordered for $1150 and the 17″ MBP that costs $2350 (upgraded the HDD to 7200rpm to match the HP):

HP: Intel Core i5 2.40GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 2.66 GHz
MBP: 2.53GHz Intel Core i5
HP: 6GB DDR3 System Memory
MBP: 4GB DDR3 System Memory
HP: 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
MBP: 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
HP: 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 switchable graphics [HDMI, VGA]
MBP: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory and Intel HD Graphics with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
HP: 17.3″ diagonal HD+ High-Definition HP LED BrightView Infinity Widescreen Display (1600 x 900)
MBP: MacBook Pro 17-inch Hi-Resolution Glossy Widescreen Display
HP: Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
MBP: SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
HP: One 6 Cell (standard) and One 9 Cell (over-sized) Lithium Ion Battery
MBP: Built-in 95-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery

It is totally unbelievable that you can buy 2 of the HP laptops instead of a single Macbook Pro. When you can buy literally 2 other computers for the price of one Mac then there is something drastically wrong. I could see if it was a far superior product then maybe it would be worth it. But the bottom line is Apple products are not superior at all to other manufacturers.

I could go on and on with this post, but I am going to end it here. To summarize, I used to love Apple products. Over the last couple of years many factors have swayed me away from their products. The most recent iPhone 4 disaster coupled with their inability to price their products competitively along with the drastic drop in overall quality are the main factors in my decision to no longer support the company as I once did.

So yeah, I finally made another blog post.

2.4GHz : 250GB (Updates Highlighted in Red)

• 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB DDR3 memory
• 250GB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
• Built-in 10-hour battery
• Polycarbonate unibody enclosure

• Ships: Within 24hrs
• Free Shipping
• $999.00

Buy Now:  Apple Store

I’ve made it no secret on how much I love my Mac, and I do think the build and quality of OS X is fantastic.  If this qualifies me as being a Apple Fanboy, then so be it.

But lately, with the launch of the iPad, and announcement of the iPhone 4.0 OS, it seems like Apple is starting to leave behind the part of the business that started the company, “the Mac.”  On top of this, the company’s behavior seemed to have changed as it now is in two legal issues that I am aware of, the huge debate with Flash and fighting with Adobe, and its recent controversy on how applications must be written and approved in the new development agreement.  As ironic as it sounds, it no longer feels that Apple is the “cool / hip” Apple as they once had been, but more like Microsoft.

I can understand to a point Apple’s stand on their new application clause.  To guarantee that all of the applications are written the same, and to ensure their performance of the apps run at their peak, I think having all future apps written in object C makes sense.

In regards to the Flash debate, this needs to end.  Think about 4-5 years ago, you could not even get the rich content on your mobile phone that you can now.  There have been times where I’ve hit a site on my iPhone that has Flash content that I cannot play, and it was annoying but not the end of the world. Most people don’t tend to notice, but Flash is a CPU and Memory hog.  The next time you play something Flash intense on your PC or Mac check out your CPU monitor.  On top of all of this, Flash ads / and applications had been written for keyboard and mouse interaction, thus requires a rewrite to take advantage of the touch interface.  With that being said, why not use HTML5 as the standard?

Next month is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, and I’m hoping that some attention will be given back to the Mac and to OS X.  I understand if Apple has shifted focus on to the iPhone, iPad, and iPods however it seems like Apple is starting to forget their roots.  I hope that the company’s behavior is just a “phase”, and they will turn return to the Apple we all knew and loved.

I should have checked online before installing the update, because soon after I started having problems I did a simple search and found that I was not the only one. Basically, there is something wrong with the 10.6.3 update that causes the computer to become completely unresponsive. The screen goes completely blank then fills with vertical lines. When this happens, the computer as I said before, is completely unresponsive to mouse and keyboard input. The only thing to do is turn off the computer with the power button.

I found this topic on the Apple Forum which shows that this is happening to many others also. As of writing this blog post, the forum topic has been open for 2 weeks with no response from Apple.

This is a MAJOR problem. The 10.6.3 update makes the iMac totally unusable. Like always, I didn’t want to sit around and wait for a solution. I was going to get my computer working again, hopefully in fairly quick way. That is when a day long fight with my computer started…

First off, I knew I couldn’t just roll back to 10.6.2. So I was trying to think of a simple way to “make” the computer let me. I thought to myself, what if I just change the version number in the .plist file? That seemed like a great idea…

I changed the OS X version back to 10.6.1 so then I could reinstall the 10.6.2 update and hope for the best. Well, hoping wasn’t good enough in this instance. I installed 10.6.2 with no problem, until my iMac had to restart. Upon restart it instantly got a kernel panic. A never ending reboot loop…

At this point, I sat for a few minutes and thought logically about what to do. Upon each restart, button commands on the keyboard weren’t even working to be able to boot from the Snow Leopard disk. I decided to turn it off for good and unplug the power, hoping to clear out the ram. Once I did that, the computer would then allow me to hold down the “option” key to bring up the boot menu. I was then able to boot from the Snow Leopard disk.

Once  the Snow Leopard installation began, I let it run through the whole install. It never gave any options as to what type of install I wanted. I just selected the drive that I already had Snow Leopard on and away it went. About 45 minutes later it was done. My iMac was back down to 10.6. All of my data was still there, and it seemed to be working alright.

At that point I realized my Bluetooth Apple Wireless Keyboard was being recognized as generic, so none of the special keys were working such as volume and screen brightness. I didn’t think that was a huge problem so I decided to install the 10.6.1 update.

Upon installing the 10.6.1 update, my iMac no longer recognized that it had bluetooth at all. Yes, bluetooth was completely gone from my system. At this point I thought I would install 10.6.2 and once again hope for the best, but I wasn’t able to type my password to start the install. So then I figured I would just restart the computer and hope that bluetooth decided to show up again. To my surprise, it was back.

I now installed the 10.6.2 update. On the initial restart, all functions seemed to be back to normal. Bluetooth was working, and my keyboard was now recognized as an Apple Wireless Keyboard. I did a Time Machine backup right away and ran no other updates. My computer surprisingly seems to be running faster after doing the reinstall and updates.

I will not be updating my version of OS X any time soon. I can’t believe Apple would put out an OS update that would make one of their own products completely unstable. With such limited hardware configurations, I can’t believe the update wasn’t tested enough before the release to ensure something like this wouldn’t happen.

Every day I am more and more disapointed with Apple products. They really are in it just for the money now. Gone are the days of better hardware and a nicer user experience. I really don’t know if I will purchase another Apple computer again, or even another iPhone. Especially after the latest 4.0 Firmware announcement, which states that the most requested feature of the update won’t even work on my 3g version of the phone. (Which I would like to point out is now jailbroken from the second they made the announcement.)

The iPad specs page states the ability to charge with USB, but Apple has also provided a support document disclosing that “some USB 2.0 ports and accessories do not provide enough power to charge iPad.”

Features

I will begin first discussing some of the features of the Playsport.
It is capable of 4 video modes, WVGA, 720p, 720p 60fps and 1080p. It is also capable of one still photo setting of 5mp.

I am sure the 1080p quality level of recording is a huge selling point, but I tend to use 720p for the most part. The size/quality ratio just seems to be better for 720p. I feel that if I use 1080p for most videos, it is basically overkill and will just fill my card much faster than necessary. The 720p 60fps mode uses the same storage space as a 1080p video, but when there is a lot of motion this mode is clearly the best. It is very smooth with little to no motion blur when recording at 60fps. It is great. Truely.

Unlike the Kodak Zi8, the Playsport does not have an external mic jack or a macro mode. But, the focusing distance on the Playsport is fairly short so the macro mode isn’t really a big deal. Also, like many other pocket video cameras the Playsport does not have an optical zoom, only digital. Digital zoom in my opinion is practically useless, but others might care to use it.

Build Quality

The best part about this pocket video camera is the build quality. As soon as I originally took it out of the box I knew it was built well. It has a nice weight to it and is very sturdy. It has a rubberized coating to make it very easy to grip. The rubber grip is needed for easy handling while the camera is wet, because after all the Playsport is completely waterproof up to 10ft.

Video/Photo quality

The video quality of the Playsport is great considering it’s price tag and general size. In low light, still photos and videos are fairly grainy, but I totally expected that to be honest. The video filesizes are fairly large, but once again, it’s expected when you are dealing with high resolution video files.

Below is one short sample video I recorded in daylight. This is not the best sample, because Flickr reencodes the videos, but it gives you a general idea of the clarity, and the EIS (electronic image stabilization). Also are 2 sample still photos. One was taken in sunlight, the other at night.

Sound Quality

The sound quality on the Playsport is average. It contains a built in mono condenser microphone. It picks up sound from a fairly decent distance, but if you are in any sort of wind forget about getting usable audio. Indoors it works fairly well because there shouldn’t be much wind, at least we hope so right?

Other Comments and Issues

Getting the files off of the Playsport on my iMac is fairly simple. All you do is connect the device via the included USB cable and it mounts just like an SD card reader would. There is one major bug though. When you remove the files from the device, it starts using the same filenames over again. This is a major problem if you want to put all of your videos and photos in the same folders, you might accidentally overwrite one of your older files. I hope a firmware update is released to fix this issue quickly.

Conclusion

Overall I am happy with my purchase of the Playsport. I also purchased an 8gb class 6 SDHC card to go with it. 8gb will get about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours of recording time depending on the quality setting you are using. If you need more storage, it supports up to a 32gb SDHC card, but remember the battery will most likely die before you run out of storage if you have larger than an 8gb card. Fortunately, the battery is easily replaceable, so you can buy extra one for about $20 if you need more recording time.