Semi Annual Unofficial Gadget/Cool Tool Review

Since sometime last year when I talked about WinDirStat (a pretty cool tool), I have been busy acquiring other cool things, so I thought I would post about them, in case anyone cares. Here are my reviews, in no particular order:

1. RoboForm. For anyone who may be trying to manage several online sites with several different user ids and passwords, this should be considered essential. You simply choose one master password (which you absolutely must keep secret), and it manages all the rest. With a simple click it can generate a random password, so you can have a different password for each site. Of course you can edit and manage the list. It also attaches to your web browser (it works with both IE and Firefox quite well) and permits one-click login to any site. I have RoboForm2Go (as well as the regular version on my home PC) which runs entirely from my 5GB Seagate pocket drive. Perfect for work.
2. Seagate 5GB (and 6GB) portable hard drive. It's physically bigger than a flash drive, (it's about 2 1/2" in diameter) but it's a real (and really small) hard drive that runs off a USB connection. Has a cool blue drive light that flashes when the drive is accessed. I have used it every day for the past 15 months.
   
3. OCZ 4GB flash drive. Very small, appears ruggedly made. Cool orange drive light. It's only $35 after the rebate, too. Just got this thing. We'll see how well it performs over time.
   
4. eVGA GeForce 7950GT KO 512MB graphics adapter. This puppy is (at least) 10x faster than my previous GeForce 7300GS, particularly when generating shadowed, final renderings with Home Designer Pro 7.0 CAD software. Last night I generated a 4-light shadowed night view in about 5 minutes (314 seconds, or so). With the old adapter, it might have taken an hour--I had never tried even using 4 lights to cast shadows, before. I did have problems with the enclosed CD (it wouldn't read on my system), but I downloaded the latest drivers from the eVGA web site and they installed without any problems. It's a tad noisy--you can hear the fan pretty plainly, but I have no complaint. It also supports 2 DVI monitors simultaneously, though I only have a single flat panel.
   
5. Home Designer Pro 7.0. I upgraded last fall from the 6.0 version, and the changes/improvements are significant. There's a completely new rendering engine, and they've opened up the program for all the many 3D object add-ins (some are free, and some are $$ purchasable). It costs about $450 from Amazon.com, which is a lot to pay unless you want/need a program with this amount of power and flexibility.
6. Dell Wireless Printer Adapter 3300. I don't recommend this device. It works most of the time (from my home PC), but isn't reliable when accessed from my wife's PC (which is less than 1 foot away). They also don't tell you that the device has its own status web server built in, which can be quite helpful when it comes time to troubleshoot the damn thing. Which is far too often, IMHO. When it hangs--you must reboot everything. Yes, you heard me right!
   
7. Dell AIO 924 printer. It's one of those "all in one" devices that has a scanner, copier, fax, and color inkjet printer all in one box. Prints fast and with good quality, too. The scanner and copier also seem adequate. Not too sure it scans colors very accurately, though. No experience with the fax. The "low ink" light comes on when the cartridge reaches 25% full. What? Do they think everyone will swap out the cartridge when there's still 50 pages left in it? (Obviously, yes.)
8. TigerColor ColorImpact. This is a cool program that makes color manipulation easy. (Ever need a good complimentary color when creating a web site layout?) I use it all the time when working with color schemes in my house designs. It's not free (or necessarily cheap), but for anyone working with color for the web, for art projects (well, computer art projects, anyway), etc., it's a really powerful tool.
9. Intuit Turbo Tax. It's the program I use to file my taxes. Pretty convenient, too, particularly if you file electronically. Buy it; don't buy it--I could care. However, I consider my time to have some value, and the $50 you spend (plus $19.95 per return filed) probably comes back to you in saved effort. It certainly gets your refund more quickly than paper filing.
10. Firefox 2.0, and Firefox Portable. Overall, these are an improvement over version(s) 1.5.x. Certain things, such as managing add-ins, are simpler and easier. I really like the add-in dictionary that puts red lines under misspelled words. Yeah, it works almost like MS Word. The portable version runs entirely from a USB drive. No polluting of the registry or saving of voluminous cached copies of pages (unless you really want it to).
11. Samsung LN-S4095D 1080p HDTV. This is a great TV, though I see I paid a few hundred $$ more than the current going price. Oh well, such is the cost of opportunity. Regardless, I am quite happy with the TV.
12. Cable HDTV DVR. Good god, man! How did I live without this thing? Once you can watch your favorite shows on your schedule, and once you can pause the Big Game so you can tinkle in peace ... *sigh* I don't care whose you buy/rent, just do it. You will be glad you did.
    

Well, that's all I can think of, for the time being. I know I have at least one more gadget sitting at home, waiting to be opened and installed, but since it requires I actually drag my PC and printer downstairs to be with the wireless router on a wired-and-up-close basis ... it will probably wait for that Saturday or Sunday when there's absolutely nothing to watch on TV.