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.

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.

Side Note

As of a few days ago (1/11/2010) all four buttons had fell off my phone. I pulled my phone out of my jeans and those buttons got snagged and fell off.  Verizon Wireless is sending me a replacement device, however I have yet to receive it.  This seems pretty common as seen here,  ”BlackBerry Support Forums“

Edit: (1/16/2010):  Verizon Shipped me my replacement phone yesterday, I got it set back up.  I took a picture from my new storm of the old storm’s keys.  I super glued the send key in place so I could make phone calls during the week.

As many of you know the iMac line was refreshed on Monday, April 28. For about 6 months I had been wanting to purchase a new computer, but I kept holding off for some reason. When I heard the rumors about the iMac update, I made up my mind that I would finally purchase one.

By the way, this is not my first Apple computer. I have had a 14” (1.33ghz) iBook for years now. I knew what to expect in terms of the initial setup of the iMac based off of my previous experience with Apple products. And I also knew my way around OSX pretty well.

I ordered the iMac the day it was updated. I don’t game on my computer anymore (I have a 360, Wii, and PS3) so I figured I would go with the lower end of the 24” models. I selected the free shipping so I wasn’t expecting to receive the iMac for about a week, but to my surprise it was delivered to my house on Wednesday, April 30…not even 2 full days after I placed my order. I was pretty happy with that to say the least.

My initial thought when I saw the box was, wow that’s going to be huge. And believe me, I was right with my initial assessment.

I figured a 24” monitor wouldn’t seem much different from the 20” monitor I was used to using with my Dell computer. I was completely wrong. The screen on the 24” iMac is totally amazing. I have never seen a display with a brighter screen. Even my 32” Samsung LCD television looks pale in comparison to the screen of this iMac. The glossy screen has a lot to do with that though. But anyways, the hardest thing to get used to, for me at least, is the resolution of the screen. 1920×1200 is amazing to work with. So much can be done on the screen at once. It is a great upgrade over the 1680×1050 resolution I am used to working with.

As for the computer itself, it came with a 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo and 2gb of 800mhz ram which I upgraded to 4gb (more on that later). This was a nice upgrade for me considering the pc I use at home is a 3.6ghz P4. My computer at work is a 1.83ghz Core 2 Duo though, so when I talk about responsiveness I will be comparing the iMac to that.

For me, this computer is extremely quick. I almost forgot how much quicker OSX in general is at launching applications. In terms of overall responsiveness there is no comparison between the iMac and my computer at work. Safari opens instantly…iTunes, even with a 10,000 song library opens in a fraction of the time that it does on my other computers. It takes a little under 2 seconds to be exact. Photoshop launches quicker than I have ever seen. I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the general idea.

As for the ram upgrade, it really couldn’t be any easier. It took maybe 2 minutes total to replace the ram with 2 new sticks. As far as I can tell, it is definitely best to max out the ram if you have the money to do so. At one point yesterday I saw I had a little over 800mb of ram free. I would have definitely noticed a performance hit if I had only been using 2gb.

This is my first time using Leopard for an extended period of time. A couple of my friends have iMacs (I talked them into buying them) so I have used it before, but not to the same extent as I have the past few days. I like the changes they have made for the most part. But just like anything else, there are a few default settings here and there that don’t make much sense to me. For example the Mighty Mouse doesn’t have right clicking enabled by default. Photo booth doesn’t have the auto flip image setting enabled. Simple things like that can be slightly annoying to have to change, but like I said, it’s impossible to please everyone completely. And the things I mentioned are very minor.

I ran xbench to include some figures in the review.
Please note though that I did not run the program right after a reboot, only because I haven’t restarted the computer since I initially set it up and downloaded all the updates.
So here are the scores…
All tests enabled: 176.11
HDD test disabled: 228.84

Overall, I am very happy with my purchase. I hope this iMac lasts me a long time.
The only thing I dislike about the whole package is the Mighty Mouse. I just don’t like it at all.

So here are some overall ratings.

iMac screen: 9.5/10
iMac performance: 9/10 (there is always something faster)
Overall look: 9/10 (people are amazed at this thing sitting on my desk)
Initial Leopard Impression: 9/10
Mighty Mouse: 6/10
Apple Keyboard: 8/10 (it takes some time to get used to)

Please ask any/all questions you may have about it and I will go into more detail.

A quick run down of the phone:

Phone Type: Slider
Storage: ~128mb internal, and support for up to 8gb MicroSD.
Screen sizes: 240×320 and 240×176
Audio Support: AAC, MP3, WMA
Video Support: 3G2, 3GP, WMV, MP4
Most notable feature(s): Touch screen, Battery Life

Appearance
At a quick glance the phone looks great…much better than my old phone, a V3C Razr. The front of the phone is 2 screens basically covered by what seems to be glass. But after using the phone for a while I noticed that the bottom (touch) screen seems to have some give to it, almost feeling squishy so to speak. As you look close you will see that some parts of the phone aren’t black, but a dark blue color. It’s slightly annoying to the overall appearance, but in certain light you really can’t tell.

Features
This phone has many of the same features as just about all of the newest phones on the market. It has a 2mp camera that takes decent photos and up to 1 hour of video. It has a MicroSD slot that can take up to an 8gb card. I am currently using a 4gb card. Right now I have about 500 mp3 files on it and there is still more space available. I have the phone set to save my photos directly to the card to make it easier to transfer photos to and from the device. The most unique feature to this phone though is the (partial) touch screen on the front. The touch screen basically controls everything. It changes in context with what you are trying to do. The battery life so far is almost unbelievable. It is rated for over 4 hours of talk time and 20 days standby. I have talked multiple times over an hour straight and the battery meter still shows as full. I’m sure after time it will become much shorter, but it is easily replaceable. I haven’t had a chance to test mp3 playback for long periods of time so I can’t comment on that right now. One other thing worth mentioning is the user interface. You actually have the ability to choose multiple interfaces including some which are much different than the usual red interface on most Verizon phones.

Sound Quality
The sound quality of this phone is above average. It is definately much better than my Razr. At all volume levels though there is a faint, but constant, hiss or static sound. By no means does it interfere with the conversation, but it is there. Everyone I have talked to says I sound great on their end also.

The Touch Screen
Since the touch screen is the main selling point of this phone I’ll talk about it in more detail. By default the phone will make a sound and vibrate when you touch the screen. It is helpful at first, but as you become used to the controls you will most likely turn it off…I know I did. Until you know exactly how hard to touch the screen things might seem a little unresponsive, but the more you mess around with it the easier things get. As I said before, the touch controls change all the time to control whatever it is you are doing.

Multimedia Functions
The audio and video playback actually surprised me. MP3’s sound great and can be played various ways; though the internal speaker, or via the 2.5mm jack. The amount of music you can store on the phone is only ~64mb internally, but as I said before can be up to 8gb via the MicroSD slot. One thing that bothers me though is the ability the phone has to read some of my ID3 tags. On my PC my music has all of the corresponding ID3 tags, but not all of them show up on the phone for some reason. Video playback is also very good. I used super to encode clips of various shows into 3GP format. I encoded them at 320×240 which play great because you can turn the phone sideways and watch them in their full resolution.

Conclusion
Overall, this phone is pretty good if you know what to expect from it. It doesn’t have any mind blowing features, but it does deviate from the standard type of phone we have all come to expect from Verizon.

As I just mentioned, overall this is a decent phone. I am happy with my purchase. If I had to rate it I’d probably say it’s about an 8 out of 10. Like I said before, nothing included is mind blowing, but it does everything it is trying to do well.

Even after losing Bret their former lead singer, and Kevin their former drummer, this album actually sounds like Fuel…well, sort of.

Like I just said, it sounds like Fuel. But my only complaint is even though Toryn (new vocalist) sounds somewhat like to Bret, I can’t help but listen to these songs and imagine Bret singing them. Perhaps if I get past that I will like the album even more, but the hard part is that Toryn seems to be trying to sound like Bret.

Overall this album is pretty good. It deviates from what I am used to hearing from Fuel, for obvious reasons, but it is still good. It doesn’t feel as over produced as Natural Selection felt, but I don’t think they will ever release an album with songs as good as Shimmer, or Bittersweet, which were off their Sunburn album.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Original Release Date: August 7, 2007

Tracklist:

1. Gone
2. I Should Have Told You
3. Forever
4. Wasted Time
5. Leave the Memories Alone
6. Mess
7. Not This Time
8. Scars in the Making
9. Hanging Round
10. Again
11. Halos of the Son
12. Angels Take a Soul

I’ll get straight to the point with this one…I like it.

I have listened to this album a few times through now and the first thing that came to mind when I got it was they sounded a lot like Chevelle.

Overall this album has some great sounding melodies, and good lyrics. Almost every song has a catchy chorus, which is a good thing because it’s easy to remember the songs that way.

I’m not too sure this is the type of album I will listen to straight through all the time, but it is definately a good modern rock album.

My favorite songs on the album are In a Red Dress And Alone and The Pursuit.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Original Release Date: July 24, 2007

Tracklist:

1. In a Red Dress And Alone
2. Shine Your Cadillac
3. Q (The Best One Of Our Lives)
4. Kiss the Flag
5. My Damsel: A Confession To an Adversary
6. Pin-Up
7. Caught a Lite Sneeze
8. Fear
9. Dear Lucid, Our Time Is Right Now
10. Painted
11. The Pursuit

What do you get when you mix Metallica, Skynard, and 3 Doors Down together? A good album titled Temptation Come My Way…

Up until recently I never even heard of The Showdown. Thanks to Sirius Sattelite Radio I heard one of their singles and decided to give the whole album a listen. And I have to say, it’s pretty good.

This is a very classic rock sounding album. The guitars, the riffs, and the occasional cowbell make this a overall good listen.

Just about every song has a really good guitar solo, plus the fact they did a cover of Carry on Wayward Son made me like them just a little more.

This has turned out to be a really short review, but if you happen to give this album a listen just expect a classic southern rock album that is above average in overall quality.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Original Release Date: February 20, 2007

Tracklist:

1. Fanatics And Whores
2. Head Down
3. Six Feet Under
4. We Die Young
5. Breath Of The Swamp
6. It Drinks From Me
7. Temptation Come My Way
8. Forget My Name
9. Spitting In The Wind
10. I, Victim (Here’s To The Year)
11. Carry On Wayward Son
12. Death Finds Us Breathing

Hmm, I wonder what section of the store this album is in…Adult Contemporary or Easy listening? Chris, buddy, what have you done?

I listened closely to this album because I was really interested in doing a review. And all I can say is, Wow…I can’t believe I didn’t fall asleep.

Chris Cornell is one of the best vocalists ever, but this album is lacking in so many ways to me. His voice seems higher pitched than normal and very flat sounding compared to anything else I have heard him sing. From a production standpoint this entire album sounds like garbage. At some points it doesn’t even sound like they are using a real drum, and the guitar is also lacking any sort of character.

The first 3 songs started off the album by having a chorus of the track title, repeated about 3 times. Safe and Sound is so soft and slow that it is almost gospel sounding, except for the warbled sounding guitar at the beginning. Another thing I noticed during this song, and continued to notice in later songs, is that he not only sings the lead vocals but it sounds like he is the back up vocals also. She’ll Never Be Your Man started the trend again of the chorus having the song title repeated over and over again. The song Killing Birds is probably the worst vocals I have ever heard from Chris Cornell. He tries to sing too high at some points and sounds like he is almost shrieking. After that comes the cover of Billie Jean. I never could have imagined a cover this slow of the song, but it actually seems to fit the song somewhat. I don’t really have anything to say about the next few songs so I’ll say a bit about Disappearing Act…Am I the only person who has no idea what he is even saying at some points in the song?

I really tried to enjoy this album, but I don’t think I will ever listen to the whole thing again. One or 2 tracks I may listen to on occasion if they come on in shuffle or something, but I’m just not feeling this album at all.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Tracklist:

1. No Such Thing
2. Poison Eye
3. Arms Around Your Love
4. Safe And Sound
5. She’ll Never Be Your Man
6. Ghosts
7. Killing Birds
8. Billie Jean
9. Scar On The Sky
10. Your Soul Today
11. Finally Forever
12. Silence The Voices
13. Disappearing Act
14. You Know My Name

Sophomore slump? No chance…Thank you Scott Weiland for staying sober and releasing one hell of a good album. Of course I can’t forget the band also…

I don’t know where to even start with this review. Libertad is a great Hard Rock album. Their first album Contraband was an huge success in the US selling over 2 million copies and comparing this to their debut I don’t see reaching those numbers again being a problem.

Overall, this album sounds much better from a production standpoint and also lyrically compared their first album. The song She Builds Quick Machines definitely has a classic STP sound to it which I really enjoy still. It has some great guitar solos also. One that sticks out is in their cover of Can’t Get It Out Of My Head. The songs The Last Fight and Gravedancer, although much softer than the rest of the album, seem to fit in perfect giving the entire album a nice flow.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Tracklist:

1. Let It Roll
2. She Mine
3. Get Out The Door
4. She Builds Quick Machines
5. The Last Fight
6. Pills, Demons & Etc.
7. American Man
8. Mary Mary
9. Just Sixteen
10. Can’t Get It Out Of My Head
11. For A Brother
12. Spay
13. Gravedancer