TekPr0n

The Kodak zi6 has had plenty of rave and rant on YouTube as being a superior mini camcorder. I bought one of these ti find out what my experience would be like and I was actually going to throw the towel in on my MinoHD.

The Pros:

I like that the camera has the room for growth that I need. With the ability to put up to 32 GB of additional storage in thsi device via an SDHC card, it gives you the feeling that you can record a lot more. As well with the use of AA rechargeable batteries you can record for a longer time, wihtout haveing to be near a computer to sync/charge your camera.

If you are more into recording fast paced car videos, motorcycle videos, or even fast moving skateboarders, bicycling, or other quick moving footage you also have the ability to record in 60 FPS (frames per second) which is nice, considering the vast majority of mini camcorders typically will hold the bar at 30 FPS.

I liked the form factor, even though it is not as small and light-weight as the MinoHD or even the Vado, it does its job as a "mini."

The Cons:

Everything I listed above has come to be a complete at total con, as I found after using the Kodak Zi6, well other than the storage capabilities. But, you will never make it that far, or you will fill your additional storage up so quickly, that it will not matter.

As far as the battery life goes, I wanted to test the camera out, os I set it up to record my puppies while I was in the other room, I do this from time to time to make sure they stay out of trouble while I am out of the room. I put in a fresh pair of AA batteries, set it up on the shelf, and then came back to the room about 1.5 hours later. Previous to this I had gone out and gotten an 8 GB SDHC, while I was waiting for my 16 GB to show from Amazon. So, I was thinking in comparison to the 1 hour of footage you can shoot with the Mino at 4GB, this should be well within range.

When I picked up the camera to see how long a single reel would be I looked and noticed it was about 25 minutes long. Hmm, I have noticed that in another camera I have, the ActionCam from SharperImage. When I put a 2 GB card in this camera it would only record 45 minute segments at a time. Thinking this was the case, I brought it back to the man cave to pull the video off it. While setting up the USB and turning the camera back on to sync with the computer I noticed an OMFG. The camera had sucked those new batteries dry over a 25 minute span. Yippy, so glad I can change these out, you would have to do it at least twice to get the footage a MinoHD can offer.

As well, I noticed a couple other things while I ws using the camera. When you film in HD-60, or 60 FPS, you can use about 16MB, for 9 seconds or recording. This does not make for an export friendly framerate...so, kill another great feature to one that would never be used because I dont like sitting down for 40 minutes to pull a 15 minute video.

All in all, I can say I returned this to Amazon within about 4 hours of owning, it, I am hoping that my battery problem was a fluke but when it comes down to it, I guess I cant replace my MinoHD just yet.

~Atom6

I ordered up a Corsair 32 GB USB flash drive and love it. the drive is made out of a hardned rubber housing and seems to be very durable. Also, because of its rubberized housing it makes it harder for the little guy to fall out of my pockets, considering the "hang it around your neck so you dont lose it" is not for me. 

The transfer rates are top-notch and I have no problem with formatting it sveral times over and filling it up again. 

The only change I would make, that is really not possible with a stick of this capacity is to have a "switchblade style" USB blade, similar to the SanDisk drives. I know it is only a matter of time before I lose the end cover.

I would recommend this puppy as the primo 32 GB model to run with.

Well, for the better part of last year I would cringe anytime I was instructed to buy equipment for a new employee to the company, IdentityMine, Inc. For the designers it was always, "get me a new Apple Cinema Display." For the developers it was, "get me a new Apple monitor like the designers get."

I was growing tired of killing my IT budget so people could have a back lit display, I mean it is nice if you are working with direct sunlight at your back because it cuts the glare quite a bit. It is nice because all of the colors are true and it helps when dealing with $50,000.00 and up projects, but I found a replacement and at half the cost, I made my budget happy.

The Samsung Syncmaster 2493HM, is pretty much all I could ever want in a monitor. I give it a 5-star rating and I am sticking with it. 

Overall I think a 24 inch LCD is a perfect size for any application from people that are rolling data to designers that need rich colors and good contrast. It offers a 10000:1 dynamic contrast for god's sake. The shell of the LCD is sleek, offering a nice shiny surface which can be cleaned easily. The back of the LCD also has a pull pin, which, like me if you like to use a monitor at a 90 degree rotation to setup as a news reader will work. It pivots cleanly because of its ability to be raised up to 5 inches higher. I found this extremely helpful when it came time to match it up on my desk with other monitors of varying height.

As for the inputs, with this LCD they are pretty much all covered. I can hook up an older PC or laptop to this monitor via VGA, bump it up to a newer PC or laptop with DVI or I can even throw down a PS3 for fun with HDMI. All of the inputs are there and I have a wide usability without having to connect a single dongle to this LCD. 

On top of this if I am using the HDMi with the monitor and letss say a PS3, it will also offer audio, because it has built-in speakers. Ugh, can you say all in one, beautiful, well developed piece of display land bliss? 

All in all I think this is a perfect choice if you are looking for a LCD monitor in this size range, currently however I believe this is being phased out for a bigger brother in the same series, the 2693HM. For the foreseeable future I will be stocking the 2693HM in my company, since I can buy two of these for a tad over the cost of an Apple Cinema it is definitely my choice for an awesome screen.

The Seagate Free Agent 500 GB hard drive. Awesome!

It is hard to say anymore than that. When dealing with a hard drive that is very lightweight and ultra portable, I look for something that can fit in a pocket and this will work just fine for that. I picked this up because prior to the Seagate Free Agent I had a 250 GB Maxtor 4 desktop hard drive and it was just too big. 

The FreeAgent 500 GB offers all the space I will need for mobile files, videos, audio and photos, but it is very easy to move around. 

The FreeAgent I bought comes with a sleek leather covered case, with a small elastic band on the other side, where I keep the 1 foot length of USB cable it requires to plug in and use. The FreeAgent doesnt need a seperate power supply like I have needed in the bigger desktop drives so keeping it a single cable connection was great. 

The FreeAgent transfers data at speeds approximately 480/Mb second. With a spindle speed of 5400 RPM. It is great when transferring large files. 

I would recommend this hard drive over others of the same category because I have had nothing but good experiences with this device. 

I would recommend that you check around however and see if you can find the deals that retailers like bestbuy.com have from time to time on recieving the cradle for this device when you purchase the hard drive. I just came in a bit late when getting mine, but I think having a cradle would be very nice to have.

I rate this 8 out of 10. The only thing that would puch this to a 10, is if it was packaged with the cradle for a bit more money.

The ARKVIEW USB to DVI adapter is sweet!

So, we had an issue at work. We are developers for the software industry and we were building out an HP Touchsmart PC for a client that we were working with. The unfortunate part about the Touchsmart is that it doesnt have a video output because the screen for this PC is all in one. When attempting to use a secondary screen there is nothing we could do.

This is until we found the ARKVIEW adapter. This makes it easy to connect an additional monitor to anything, only using a USB cable. The software that is backing this device is also ran by a company that looks to the future, way ahead of the rest of the pack, meaning, it supports Windows 7 already. 

The installation process takes about 10 minutes at the most and afterward you have a completely seperate monitor to use just as if you had an additional video card in your machine. It does have a few milliseconds of delay but it is so unnoticeable that you couldnt tell the difference between a PC with or without this device.

I find this to also be an exceptional idea if you wanted to expand your netbook. Considering most netbooks on the market do not offer a video out via VGA or DVI it would be an excellent tool to have at your disposal. The kit comes with connectors for DVI, VGA, and even HDMI. This means that in addition to expanding to a monitor you could display to a TV as well. 

Look this puppy up, when I get my netbook I will defintely have one of these in my backpack as well.