Etymotic Research: Kickass Customer Service
I purchased a set of ER 6i Isolator Earphones back in the summer of 2007 from Amazon after hearing Leo Laporte rave about them on TWiT and other TWiT Network shows. First of all, for someone who works in downtown Washington, DC and rides the very noisy Metro every day, these Earphones are fantastic. Their rubber grips go down inside your ear canal blocking out 80%+ of any exterior noise. They produce high fidelity sound for their size, and albeit a bit pricey, are very nice. They have an extra-long chord for reach into a messenger bag or a backpack if you do not wish to store your iPod in your pocket and feature a nifty little clip to latch the chord onto your clothing so as to not allow it to get caught on objects as you walk by.
Now all of this is very well, except that I am very rough on my equipment. Within about 8 months of my owning these, the left earphone began to cut out. The connection of the earbuds to the mini-jack began to become stretched or frayed (I'm guessing). I was kind of frustrated but found out they came with a 1 year warranty. I called up Etymotics and to my surprise, did not hear a phone tree when the line picked up, but instead, a nice woman on the other end who promptly diagnosed my problem. She happily told me that it was covered under the warranty and told me that Etymotic Research would replace them for me. After getting an RMA number I shipped these back to Etymotic the next day, and within a week, had my replacement set back.
Fast forward to this last week. I now have an iPhone (as of December 2008) and purchased a set of Hf2 high-fidelity hands-free headset + earphones. These have even better sound quality than the ER6i's, but are made specifically for the iPhone, duplicating the functionality of the microphone built into the chord along with the single button for controlling the answering of calls or flipping through music when in iPod-mode. I love this set of Earphone, or at least I did until I took them out of my bag last Friday to discover one of the plastic housings around the base of the left earbud had become cracked. I SUSPECT it was my fault in that they were crushed inside my bag up against something. I called Etymotic Research and once again, a very cheerful customer service rep who answered gladly told me they would replace them, gave me an RMA number and told me they would ship a replacement as soon as their recieved my damaged ones. As of right now, it is the Friday after that call, and my UPS tracking number says that UPS will be delivering my replacement set today.
Etymotic Research is awesome.
Motherboard Hell: Part 2
Last time, on Motherboard Hell....
So the GPU arrived today via UPS, fresh from the EVGA HQ in Brea, CA. I promptly opened it once getting home, popped it from its packaging and connected it to the motherboard. It booted just fine WITH VIDEO, detected ram as dual channel and booted off of the Windows XP CD just fine. As of right now - I have XP installed, all the drivers loaded and everything is running swimmingly. I'm now installing games (WoW, Eve Online, and Empire Total War). So it was the graphics card after all. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Motherboard Hell
This week I've been going through what can only be described as Motherboard Hell. Let me first say that I've been building my own systems since the mid-90s. I've build about 10 systems in my lifetime, however, I went to the dark side about 2 years ago and got a MacBook Pro as my main machine. I have been using my older AMD 64 Box that I build in 2005 as my gaming computer since. Well....it died a month ago, and I started buying parts to build a new computer.
I bought the following:
Antec 300 Case
Antec 650W PS
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 GHz 6M L2 Cache 1333MHz FSB LGA775
Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5D Dominator 2 X 2GB PC2-8500 1066MHz DDR2 CL5 Dual Channel
EVGA 512-P3-N879-AR GeForce 9800 GTX + 512 MB DDR3 PCI-Express 2.0
I am using an SATA Segate 250GB HD I already had and an older ATA/133 IDE Pioneer DVD+DL Burner that pulled out of my previous system.
I've been getting the parts in slowly over the past 2 weeks as I was able to afford to do so. Case & PS first, then Mobo, then RAM, then Processor and finally, cooler and GPU on Wednesday.
I installed both of the final two components - hooked everything up - and booted the machine. On the first boot it posted just fine, although I didn't hear a beep, and got to the point where it should try to load an OS off of the HD or attempt to boot from a CD. It just hung on the "loading VMI information" or something of that nature.
I rebooted and went into BIOS. I went through each menu of the bios, setting things like the bus from 266 to 333 so it would run correctly at 3.0 ghz. I made sure the boot order was CDROM -> HD although I noticed that there is a seperate HD boot order menu in which it was picking up the Pioneer DVD drive on the IDE channel. I switched that to be before the HD.
At this point I could get it to display "NO OPERATING SYSTEM LOADED" or something of that nature when no CD was present. I tried to put in an ISO i got from microsoft of the new Windows 7 Beta and it would not boot from it. It simply would seem to load the DVD drive endlessly but would not get past the "LOADING VMI INFO" msg.
At this point, during one of my reboots, I noticed something that I had overlooked. After the RAM checked, it said "Running in Single Channel Mode". After opening my case I saw that I had, in my haste, accidentally put my ram in slots 1 and 2, instead of 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 for dual channel. I powered down the system and removed the chip from slot 2, and put it in slot 3.
The computer booted up, all the fans kicked on and the noises emanating from the case were identical to all other times it booted. I could head the HD working and the DVD drive eventually starting to spin up the Windows disc but....no video.
Also. I wondered why I wasn't hearing any beeping from the internal speaker when, after doing some research and looking around in the case, I realized that the Antec 300 case doesn't have an internal speaker. Wonderful.
The only thing I could think of was to disconnect the internal speaker from my old system and try to hook it up to the new one to see if I can get some type of beeping feedback from the mobo as to what is wrong.
I pulled the internal speaker out of the other case I had and hooked it up to the new system.
I then removed all of the components except CPU. Having powered it off, I cleared the CMOS and then powered it on. It gave me 3 short beeps, which is indicated in the manual to mean RAM problems. I powered down and replaced the ram in slots 1 and 3. Powered up with no video in. It began emitting a long beep for the video card. I powered down and put the video card in the PCIE slot. I powered up - still a long beep. I then powered down and switched the video card to PCE slot 2 since this is an SLI mobo. I still got the long beep.
I called the EVGA Tech support folks and ran down with them on the phone everything I did. They recommend that I RMA the GPU, which I've now done.
All indications are that, as of now, the GPU has failed but frankly, I don't trust the motherboard. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the new GPU doesn't work either and I'm going to have to end up RMAing the board.
As of right now, I should get the replacement GPU in Tuesday or Wednesday hopefully and will post an update when I have one.
Top 10 Macworld rumors for 2009
Apple’s (AAPL) last Macworld Conference and Expo opens Monday at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, but the real action starts Tuesday at 9 a.m. PT (12 noon ET) with senior vice president Phil Schiller’s opening remarks — the first Macworld keynote not delivered by Steve Jobs since 1997.
Nobody’s expecting breakthrough products that rise to the level of the iMac (Macworld 1998), the iBook (1999), iTunes (2001) or the iPhone (2007), but this Expo is not without its drama, speculation and hype.
Our top 10 favorite Macworld rumors:
10. Snow Leopard release date. We know a lot about Mac OS X 10.6, thanks to Jobs’ June 2008 announcement that it was coming, Apple’s official description of the product and a steady stream of leaks from the developer community. What we don’t know is when it will ship.9. Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro. By several accounts, this machine was supposed to be released in October, along with the new unibody 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro. But display issues and problems with the optical drive reportedly pushed its release back “several months” — which brings us to next week’s Expo. UPDATE: Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac adds this twist: the new 17-inch Pro will sport a superslim longer-lasting nonremovable battery pack.
8. Revamped iWork. The big news on New Year’s Eve was the “truckload” of information dumped on various rumor sites about iWork — Apple’s homegrown answer to Microsoft (MSFT) Office. The thrust of it was that what’s now a suite of desktop applications — Pages, Numbers and Keynote — is about to be transformed into a collection of Web-based apps like the .Mac Web Gallery, suitable for cloud computing.
7. 32 GB iPhone. Whispers that Apple was set to double the memory of the top-end iPhone have been floating around since September, but AT&T’s (T) post-Christmas $99 iPhone sale and word that Apple had sewed up the lion’s share Samsung’s flash memory production all point to a January release.
6. 64 GB iPod touch. Rumors of this memory upgrade go back even further. It was supposed to happen in August, then in September, and then before Christmas. With memory prices falling, time is more than ripe.
5. New Mac mini. Rumors of the most affordable Mac’s imminent demise have given way to a flood of new specs, among them 2.0 or 2.3 GHz Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA graphics platform, dual display outputs and dual drives that can be configured every which way.
4. New iMac. Some inspired sleuthing in the extension files that shipped with the new MacBooks found references to NVIDIA chipsets for both a Mac mini and a new iMac — along with hints that the reconfigured all-in-one desktop was supposed to ship in November but got pushed into 2009 by unexpected delays. DigiTimes now reports that Apple has ordered shipments of 800,000 per month.
3. New iPod shuffle. FBR Capital Markets’ Craig Berger, whose track record AppleInsider describes as “questionable,” expects Apple to release a new and smaller version of the iPod shuffle sometime in the first calendar quarter — which started on Thursday. AppleInsider adds that it has picked up chatter of a new shuffle that would be flat as a credit card but thick enough at one end to fit a headphone jack.
2. New Apple TV/Time Capsule. This one also comes from an analyst. Shaw Wu, a veteran Apple watcher newly ensconsed at Kaufman Bros., wrote last week about the possibility that Apple will introduce a new consumer device — “an enhanced version of Apple TV and/or Time Capsule” — that would give users access to their media content, SlingBox style, from anywhere on the Internet.
1. Steve Jobs. Show or no-show, Apple’s CEO is both Macworld 2009’s No. 1 rumor and No. 1 source of rumors — whether it be that he’s stepping down, that his health is failing, that he doesn’t feel there’s enough news in Nos. 1-9 to justify a Steve Jobs keynote, or that he just doesn’t feel like playing in Macworld’s sandbox anymore. We favor the theory that he’s set the stage brilliantly for a surprise cameo appearance.
Below the line:
- iPhone nano. Despite all the chatter — and spy photos — not this Macworld. Maybe later this year.
- iPod tablet. Maybe later this year. Maybe never.
Is there truth to any of this? We’ll be flying to San Francisco Monday to find out. Tune in to this space early Tuesday for our Macworld 2009 live blog.
[Photo courtesy of setteB.IT.]
Below the fold: How Phil Schiller could hit a home run next Tuesday, as imagined on The Mac Observer’s Apple Finance Board by one of the regulars, retired Air Force pilot Pat Smellie.
From AFB:
Mr Schiller will do great. He is being coached by one of the best presenters in the business and whether SJ shows or not he will have been over every inch of the presentation.
Start with Itunes Over 6B songs sold., 400M Applications, 300M TV shows WOW. Bring up the Music execs and announce release of Itunes Plus for all tracks same great price.
Back to Schiller Mac sales growth over 10M new MACs in 2008. Demo new IMac, MAC Mini, Mac Pro in Feb with Intel I7 and Mac Book Pro 17’ Quad Core.
Switch to Snow Leopard speed comparison of the new hardware on Leopard vs Snow Leopard. Wow! Free upgrade to Snow Leopard with new Mac purchase. Available in June
Software demo of new ILife/Iwork Suite on mobile me. Free to all Mobile Me subscribers.
On to Iphone 20M sold to date. Joined on stage by China Mobile CEO. Announce new Iphone for China/Korea GSM/TD-SCDMA $99 price also available US non 3G via Walmart. Demo couple new software features.
One More Thing
Finally lights dim and SJ appears on stage with a NetBook and Tablet. He says he can’t decide which to build so he will let America decide. Call in numbers or text Netbook/Tablet. Voting will continue until end of Mac WorldLights come up curtain opens SJ on stage with Sir Paul singing Let It Be announcing the release of the Beatles catalog
It great to dream big. Reality is its a show as much as anything. Apple will deliver many great things this year but probably a lot of them will not be announced at Mac World. — pats
Evernote Teams Up with Eye-Fi for Wireless Photo Uploads
Previously highlighted Eye-Fi—the SD card that wirelessly uploads images to your computer or the internet—has teamed up with popular note-taking application Evernote, allowing users to upload digital camera photos directly to Evernote without plugging in their camera. With Evernote's ability to recognize text in photos, it's an obvious win—and one more way you can expand your brain with Evernote. [Press Release]
(Via Lifehacker.)
Firefox Adds Multitouch Gestures for Macs
The latest beta version of Mozilla's Firefox browser brings built-in support for the multi-touch trackpads on modern Mac notebooks. Back in October, Mozilla's Eddie Lee produced an experimental version of Firefox which allowed Mac users to control the browser with multi-fingered gestures (no, not that kind). In v3.2 Beta 2, those gestures have been made official.
I gave it a try, and the gestures are even better than those in Apple's own browser, Safari. Here's the list of what you can do, provided by MacRumors. 'Swipe' means a three fingered sweep:
Swipe Left: Go back in history (hold Cmd to open it in a tab)
Swipe Right: Go forward in history
Swipe Up: Go to the top of the page
Swipe Down: Go to the end of the page
Pinch Together: Zoom out
Pinch Apart: Zoom in
Twist Right: Next tab
Twist Left: Previous tab
On my old (multibody?) MacBook Pro, the gestures are all supported. The 'pinch-to-zoom' differs from Safari's in that it will keep zooming as you move your fingers -- in Safari, each pinch motion only gives one level of zoom meaning you need to repeat the gesture to zoom more than one level.
The twist-to-switch-tabs gesture works a lot better than you'd think, including wrap-around so that once you get to the last tab, another clockwise tweak brings you to the first tab.
All in all, its very useful. It means that you can control almost every aspect of browsing with just one hand. Combined with the new 'Private Browsing' mode, this makes Firefox the go-to browser for XXX browsing.
Product page [Mozilla via MacRumors]
Original photo: Armangi/Flickr
(Via Wired: Gadget Lab.)
Sneaky fake lens lets you take photos at right angle to direction you point the camera
Sneaky fake lens lets you take photos at right angle to direction you point the camera: "
From Like Cool:
The Super-Secret Spy Lens ($50) is basically a periscope that attaches your SLR's zoom lens... you can shoot left, right, up, or down, all while appearing to shoot straight ahead.(Via Boing Boing.)