Last week, there was a power outage in my area.  Although I did have a UPS (Uninterruptible power supply), it’s pretty old and there was just enough time for me to turn everything off.  That was my wake-up call to get a new UPS.

After looking around, the price range was from about $50-$200 ($500 for professional units).  Not wanting to go crazy, I decided to get one in the middle range of the APC line and got the XS 900 (MSRP $129.99).

This unit is rated at 540 Watts @ 900 VA so this is more than enough power for my computer and monitor. For a tad more money, I could have gotten a display on the unit but since it’s connected via USB to my computer, I didn’t see a need for that data right on the unit itself.

The picture below shows the front of the unit with LED indicators for the various stats.  The replace battery is a nice touch compared to my old unit which had no indicators except for on and off.

The back of the UPS is shown below with 6 battery backup plugs and 2 surge protected plugs. There’s also I/O for a modem and cable, as well as the USB2.0 connection to your computer.  This last bit turns out to be a great feature as you’ll see below.

The image below (click to see larger version) shows the status screen of the APC monitor program that comes with the UPS.  It gets the information via the USB directly from the UPS.  The bar graph below shows that after connecting my computer, monitor and Buffalo NAS RAID, it still has plenty of juice left and tells me that I have about 25 minutes of power.

I saved the best for last.  Using the APC monitor program, you can also configure your UPS alarm, which makes a loud high pitched beeping sound when the power has gone down.  Of course, normally, this is a great feature to let you know that you need to save all your data and turn off your computer.

The feature I love here is you can disable the alarm sound between specific hours (see image below and click for larger version).

As you can see above, there’s a setting to disable the alarm between specific hours of the day.  I wish I had this exact same option on my cell phone so that it would automatically turn off the ringer during the hours when I’m sleeping.  This option alone on this UPS makes this a big thumbs up from me.  Bravo!

My old HP Media Center PC with just 250MB of RAM felt super slow compared to my new Toshiba Qosmio with 2GB of RAM. So, I decided I’d add some RAM to my old computer.  Although I haven’t done a RAM upgrade in probably 10 years, I’ve built computers from scratch in my previous life so there should be no problems.

Fast forward to me slapping myself for blowing up my motherboard without even backing up my hard drive.

Maybe I subconsciously wanted to blow up my computer so I can buy a new one.

But I digress.

In need of a new computer, I quickly checked my options. The Dell looked good but I didn’t have time to order something online. I needed a computer today. Right now. Best Buy didn’t have what I wanted in stock so off to my good old stand-by Fry’s I go.  I called ahead and had them put my HP Pavilion aside for me, but I knew I had to get a bunch of other stuff as well.

As you can see from the picture above, basically, this unit looks like my old Media Center.  But inside, the specs are a little different:

• Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.5GHz (5.9 Windows Experience Index)
• 8GB DDR2-800MHz dual channel SDRAM (4×2048)
• 750GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive (686GB usable, 12.3G used by restore partition)
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, 2 DVI (VGA and HDMI adapters)
• LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64bit
• Built in WiFi
• 6 USB2.0 (4 in the back, 2 in the front)
• 2 FireWire (IEEE 1394) (1 in the back, 1 in the front)

As you can see, this baby is fully loaded.  But as per usual, I’ve got some complaints.

The first thing I noticed was that they changed the keyboard.  Now, the weird function keys are on the left side.  I’m used to having the CTRL key in the lower left corner of the keyboard and this bothered me enough to switch back to my old keyboard.  Why do they insist on changing stuff that works?

I totally understand laptops coming with built-in WiFi these days, and that’s great.  But if you don’t have a hard wired Ethernet coming to your desktop, maybe you need to move your desk.  For me, the built in WiFi is a total waste.  I’ll never use it.

The 2 DVI outputs is great.  I wish I had the money and space for 2 monitors.  However, they don’t give you even one DVI cable.  I had to use my old analog cable.

No eSATA port.  Even my Toshiba laptop has a eSATA port.  WTF?

Unlike my old HP desktop, the doors on the front open like doors, instead of sliding to the side.  It’s not horrible but it kind of gets in the way of the cables a little.  Another example of changing what worked before to something else that doesn’t work as well.  But I have to admit, it does look better.

There’s an “Easy Backup” button on the front to start your backup.  Really?  Do we really need a button dedicated to this?  How about just using the scheduler to backup your drive automatically without even pushing a button.  Isn’t that easier?  How dumb do they think we are?  Never mind.  Don’t answer that.

The 64bit version of Vista does have compatibility problems.  Most of these can be solved by running the application in Windows XP SP3 mode.  However, a couple of programs I use do not work properly.  Even after upgrading to the current version, Multiplicity does not work completely. To make matters worse after my crash, the Memeo backup (and restore) doesn’t work in 64bit mode.  I contacted them and they confirmed that it currently does not work with Vista 64bit.

Alright.  Enough complaints.  What do I like about this puppy?

They put a “technology pad” on top of the computer.  Sounds stupid but it works great.  It’s a lowered area on top with some type of anti-slip covering as well as a guide for the cables so everything from your iPhone, MP3 player, digital camera and camcorder can rest easy and clean on top.  This is the opposite of the PS3 which is round on top so everything slips off.

Coming from my old HP with 250MB of RAM, this computer screams.  As fast as I can open up windows, they open.  I rarely have to wait for the computer.  It’s usually waiting for me, or an external device.  But the speed can really spoil you.

Unlike the old HP which had the motherboard on the right side, this one has the motherboard on the left. No biggie.  It’s actually better for me since the left side is against the wall.  The inside looks clean and well organized.  I’ve seen better designed cases but this one is up there.

All in all, I’m happy with my new desktop. It’s fast, and I’m finally getting used to Vista.  It’s not so bad.  I’m starting to like it.  Just in time for Microsoft to come out with Windows 7.

Once you’ve explored your Playstation 3, one of the next things you’ll want to do is play music from your computer on your HDTV via the PS3. To do so, you’ll need to use Windows Media Player 11. If you don’t have that version, you’ll have to upgrade from Microsoft’s website.

If you are using Windows XP Media Center 2004 or earlier, you will not be able to upgrade your Media Player without upgrading your Media Center to 2005. There is no easy way to upgrade (paid or free) without installing a new version of Windows XP from what I can figure out. This is the problem people with Netflix accounts are having.

But I digress.

Once you have Media Player 11, go to “Tools”, then “Options” to open the window shown below.  If you don’t see the menus at the top, right-click in the area with “Now Playing” listed, then click on “Show Classic Menus.”  Optionally, you can just right-click that area, click on “Tools”, then “Options” directly from the right-click menu.

Windows Media Player 11 options window

First, click on the “Library” tab.  Next, click on “Configure Sharing…” as shown above.

Next, you will get the window shown below.

Now, turn on “Share my media to:”, then click on the “Unknown Device” as shown above.  The PS3 comes up as this unknown device.  You’d think the PS3 would come up as “PS3″ or at least “Sony.”  Now, click on “Allow”, then “OK”, then “OK” on the previous window to close the options.

Now, go back to your PS3 and you’ll see a new icon that says, “Windows Media Player 11″ under the music section.

You’re done!  Enjoy.

As you may have read, I purchased a new Toshiba Qosmio laptop, which came with the “dreaded” Windows Vista operating system.

The first thing I wanted to do was make my version of Vista as close to what I was used to doing on my old XP systems.

One of the things that I like to do is put WordPad in my “SendTo” folder so that I can easily open any weird file using WordPad to look at it quickly by right-clicking on an item, then using the “Send To” option.

For the life of me, I could not find the SendTo folder in Vista.  After searching the “Interwebs,” I finally found out that all you have to do is type “shell:sendto” in the “Start Search” box from the Start Menu and you will get to the folder as shown below.  No wonder I couldn’t find the folder.

Next, create a shortcut to WordPad on the desktop, then drag-and-drop it right into the “SendTo” folder.  Now, anytime I want to open a file, I right-click, then “Send To.”  Nice.

Next, I had a strange problem with my Firefox3 where every time I exited the program, my history would get erased.  I looked at the Options page and found the “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox” box checked on.

Red check box indicates this option being turned on automatically

Even when I turned this option off, the next time I would use Firefox, the option was turned on again.  Weird. The Toshiba came with Norton360 installed so I decided to take a look at it closer.

Red check box indicates option that needs to be turned off

When I went to the “Setting” page in Norton360, sure enough, at the bottom right corner, there is a “Firefox Privacy Cleanup” option that was turned on by default.  Huh?  Why are they so paranoid about the history in Firefox over there in Norton land?

All I had to do was turn this option off, then everything was working fine.

Another step closer to making Vista like my old XP.

As you may have read, I purchased a new Toshiba Qosmio laptop, which came with the dreaded Windows Vista operating system.

The first thing I wanted to do was make my version of Vista as close to what I was used to doing on my old XP systems.

After setting the Desktop background, and putting some shortcuts on the desktop, I noticed that the icons of the shortcuts seemed to be bigger in Vista than XP.  Upon right-clicking on the desktop, and going to “View,” I noticed “Medium Icons” was the default size of the icons.  I set it to “Classic Icons” and they turned back to the smaller size that I was used to.

However, the vertical spacing on the icons seemed to be too large and I needed to reduce it to make the icons closer together.  After playing around a bit, I figured out how to do this as follows:

First, right-click on the desktop, then click on “Personalize,” which is at the bottom.  You will get the following window.

Highlight shows where to click

Click on the “Window Color and Appearance” option.  You will then get another window as shown below.

Click on the highlighted button

Now, click on the “Advanced” button and get the next window.

Click on the highlighted pull-down menu

Now click on the highlighted bar and select “Icon Spacing (Vertical)” and change the size to the desired number, then press OK.

Done!  If I keep working at it, I’m pretty sure I can get Vista to look exactly like XP.

When you have a laptop that you move around a lot, and like using a mouse (instead of the built in Touchpad) it becomes a pain to have to plug the receiver in and out of the USB port.  After a while, you can feel the USB port starting to feel like it’s getting loose.

Enter the Logitech V540 Nano cordless mouse shown below.

Logitech V540 Nano Close-up looks like a Batman mouse

The mouse comes in Batman black and costs $34.99 at Best Buy online ($37.88 with tax). I noticed that the price has gone up to $49.99 for some reason.  I guess I got lucky.

But I digress.

What’s cool about this mouse is what Logitech calls the “Plug-and-forget nano-receiver.”

Receiver size comparison with VX Revolution (left) V450 Nano (right)

The picture above shows the Logitech VX Revolution on the left, and the V450 nano on the right.  The VX scrolls faster and uses only one AA battery, instead of 2 for the nano (see picture below).

Battery compartment and receiver storage spot in front

The VX also has a bunch of other buttons that I never use.  The manual for the Nano says that the 2 AA batteries will last 12 months.  I haven’t used it that long yet but that’s a real plus if true.  I hate having to replace batteries.  There’s also a battery low LED indicator.  That’s a nice touch.

"Nano" receiver plugged into back of Toshiba

The picture above shows how small the receiver is plugged into a USB port on my Toshiba laptop. As planned, I’ve left the receiver plugged in to my laptop with no problems.  Plug-it-and-forget-it.

Logitech claims that the 2.4GHz cordless connection is very reliable signal and to put it to the test, I connected my Toshiba’s HDMI output to my HDTV and controlled the laptop with the Nano mouse from across the room.  Everything worked as advertised.

I’ve only been using it for a few weeks but I love the plug-and-forget it reveiver.  But this tiny revceiver has made me think why the laptops don’t just come with this built into the unit.  They have the Wi-Fi built in. Why not this?  I guess there’s no good standard.  Standards are good for something.  This would be one case of that.

For me, this is a no-brainer.  Anybody with a laptop, using a wireless mouse, should get this mouse.  There’s no downside, and it works great.  I highly recommend it.

After using my Toshiba Satellite M45-S165 for several years, I decided I needed to upgrade my laptop. The 2 main factors stopping me from doing this was the Blu-ray format wars and Vista.  It seems that cheap Blu-ray writing drives are not yet around the corner and Vista isn’t going away anytime soon.

My criteria was something fast but I didn’t want to go crazy and spend thousands of dollars on a laptop.  Looking around, I came upon the Toshiba Qosmio F55-Q502 for $1,399.99 at Best Buy.  This will be my 4th Toshiba laptop and so far, I’ve been very happy with Toshiba, unlike my HP laptop.

So, I decided to check it out at my local Best Buy but I saw the Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q701 on sale for $1,399.99 (normally $1,549.99), which is a good deal.  However, the F55 has 320GB HD versus 200GB (but faster HD) on the X305.  The X305 has a 17″ LCD screen (vs. 15.4″) and 4GB SDRAM.  However, you can’t use the entire 4GB unless you use Vista in 64bit mode, which is not compatible to a lot of programs.

After a lot of soul searching, I decided the smaller screen was good enough and the bigger hard drive was the “driving” factor because you can never have too much hard drive space.

So what did I get for $1,400?

• Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 (2 cores) @ 2GHz
• 3GB SDRAM (expandable to 4GB)
• 320GB SATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
  287GB free out of the box
• NVIDIA GeForce 9700M graphics
• 15.4″ TruBrite LCD screen
  1440 x 900 maximum resolution
• Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with Labelflash technology
• Integrated webcam and microphone
• Harman/Kardon stereo speakers and subwoofer
• FM tuner with antenna (Huh?)
• HDMI output (Yes!)
• 5-in-1 bridge media reader
  Read/write Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard and xD-Picture Card formats
• CD/DVD launch and control buttons
  Buttons for mute, play/pause, stop, previous track and next track
• IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
• 2 USB 2.0 ports and 1 eSATA/USB combo port
• Atheros high-speed wireless LAN (802.11b/g/n)
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connector
• Weighs 6.4 lbs
• PC Card (PCMCIA) ExpressCard/34/54
• Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1
  5.0 Windows Experience Index and can be setup for 32 bit or 64 bit upon first time power up. The guy at Best Buy told me it was pre-configured for 64 bit but he lied

From the list above, you can see that you get your money’s worth in terms of features and speed.  There’s enough juice here to run Vista and more.

The picture below shows the back of the unit and the plugs back there.  Left to right: Power, eSATA/USB combo, USB2.0, Monitor, and Ethernet.

Unlike my old Satellite, the power button is much smaller, hard to find, and hard to press.  Why do these companies insist on changing things that work great.  I used to love the big power button because I could turn it on without even looking at my computer.  Now, I really have to hunt for the power button.  I bet you can’t even find the power button in the picture below.  It’s the tiny button above the F1 key.  No, not the big speaker.  It’s below that.

For some strange reason, they decided to move the touchpad a smidgen to the left.  This makes it a smidgen more likely that your left thumb touches the touchpad while you’re typing.  After having this happen a few times, I decided to just turn off the touchpad and use an external mouse.  It’s a lot easier to operate with a mouse anyway.  Touchpads just don’t work well, in my opinion.  I’m sure there are tons of Macbook users that would disagree.

Speaking of moving things, the Sattellite had the headphone jack in front, which I loved, but now it’s on the left side.  I can see arguments for both.  Maybe one day, the laptop makers will put it in both places on one unit.  One great change is the big volume control (the big round thing in the lower left corner of the picture above) that’s backlit.  It’s a nice change from the usual tiny micro thumb wheel hidden on the side somewhere that you can never find.  Speaking of which, the speakers are great on this unit.  Perfect for games and watching movies.

Something that I wasn’t expecting is that the ExpressCard/34/54 slot is not downward compatible to the old PC Card (PCMCIA) cards.  I didn’t even know there was a new standard.  So my old Echo sound card no longer fits into my new Toshiba.  Time to wake up and smell the hardware.  In any case, how can I blame Toshiba for going with the new standard?

While I’m complaining, let me add to the list with the touch sensitive buttons above the Function keys for CD/DVD play/stop, mute, webcam and music player app (see them in the picture above). It’s so easy to accidentally “touch” one of these buttons, it’s annoying.  Thank goodness the computer is so fast, it doesn’t really matter that the webcam application comes popping up because it doesn’t slow anything down. Otherwise, it would be a real nightmare.  If I listened to CDs on my laptop, I’m sure I’d be touting these as great features instead of knocking it.

There was also a strange clicking sound coming out of my Traktor DJ software which went away when I downloaded the newest version of the BIOS from the Toshiba website.  Although some posters have stated that their new BIOS did not work as well, I found the new BIOS has taken care of all my problems.

Another small complaint I have is that the nice glossy black finish shows a lot of dust and fingerprints.  You can see how easy it is to see the dust on the black finish.  Perhaps if I didn’t live in LA with the dirty air, I wouldn’t have the dust problem, but the fingerprint smudging problem would still exist.  It’s not a big deal and I’m getting used to it.  I just carry around a Shami™ for my new laptop.

Speaking of dust, Toshiba is one of the few companies that provide a keyboard cover as an accessory that you can purchase from their website.  It protects your keyboard from dust and dirty fingers, especially if you have kids (or adults that act like kids) using your laptop.

Other than those small complaints, I’m very happy with my new Toshiba.  It’s fast.  Very fast.  Also, it’s taking a while, but Vista is starting to grow on me too.

Why do we need yet another browser? That’s what I was thinking when I heard that google was coming out with another browser.  It’s called Chrome, and is the browser that will be running on their Android mobile OS.

Google has released a “beta” version for Windows Vista/XP (SP3) so I decided to take a quick look.  It automatically imports IE and Firefox bookmarks, cookies, passwords, etc.  That’s all nice and good but I need more.

As I started to browse, I noticed their super clean UI and the speed of rendering the pages.  I thought Firefox was fast (compared to IE) but this thing really screams.  Nice so far.

Other than the regular stuff we all expect, some of the “new” features are:

• UI
  Clean and minimalistic.  Less clutter equals more space for websites.
• New Tab Page
  When you open a new tab, it shows thumbnail images of your 9 most visited websites.  Cute.
  Tabs are also dynamic and you can move them around and even out of the current window.
• Incognito Mode
  You can open a window in this mode and the browser will not keep the history and when you close it, everything is gone.  Great for surfing pr0n at work or hiding your myspace page from your girlfriend.
• Crash Control
  Each tab has it’s own separate “sandbox” or memory that does not crash the entire browser. If one tab crashes, it only crashes that tab.  So far, I haven’t been able to crash a tab yet.  Wish I could say the same for Firefox 3.

But those features are for everybody. Chrome comes with stuff for us geeks and nerds.  If you’re not a programmer or at least a web designer, you can skip the rest of this article.

Geek features:

• Javascript native compiler
  According to google, instead of using p-code, they compile the Javascript to real native code. If true, and I read that correctly, this should make the code run 10 times faster in my rough estimation. 
• Fast garbage collection
  They keep data separated from pointers so they are able to keep track of every single allocated memory for removal later.  This eliminates those full second freeze of the browser during garbage collection.
• Javascript debugger
  More on this later.
• Source code viewer
  Not only do they show the line numbers, type CNTL-F to open the search and start typing. Not only does it show all occurances, there’s a yellow bar in the scroll bar area to indicate where in the document the match is located.  This works when searching regular web pages as well.  Nice touch. 

So to look at some of these geek features, click on the “page” icon to the right of the URL line in the upper right corner to get the following pull down menu.

Near the bottom, you see “Developer.”  How many other browsers have this option?  Zero.  Now open “Task manager” or press Shift+Esc to get the window below.

This window shows you information about each tab, as well as the browser itself, and plug-ins that are running.  Now you can see what page is hogging all the memeory.  You can highlight an item and end the process just like the Windows’ task manager.  Click on “Stats for nerds” at the bottom and you’ll see a bigger version of the page above with even more information, including information on any other browsers that maybe running.

Now, back at the pull down menu, select “Javascript console” and get the window below.

This is a full blown Javascript debugger showing errors and warnings. See the numbers at the bottom right of the screen.  The red shows 2 errors, and yellow shows 1 warning.  Checkout the Javascript errors on some of your favorite websites. The right panel shows the CSS properties and the bottom panel shows the error messages from the compiler (I assume).

If you click on “Resources” at the top left, you can see the JPG, GIF and other resources the page uses, including a timeline, which I assume is showing when the resource was loaded.  There’s so much stuff in here, I haven’t figured everything out yet.

So far, the only website that seems to not like Chrome has been hotmail.com which gives you the following message below:

Microsoft pretending they don't know about Chrome

I realize Chrome is brand new but I thought it was interesting that Microsoft is very slow to update their website to recognize Chrome.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with Google being their arch rival and it’s just because Microsoft is super busy with other projects.

After much anticipation (by me), I got my new 80GB Sony Playstation 3 by mail from Best Buy ($399 + $9.99 shipping + $33 tax = $442.98).

According to Gizmodo, this model is CECHK01 and the main difference with some previous units are:

1. 80GB HD
   Sony has announced a 160GB unit (model CECHP01 coming 11/2008) so this model is now the “smaller” unit and the 20GB and 40GB models are no longer available.
2. No Playstation 2 backward compatibility
   Since I sold my Playstation 2 and all my games, it doesn’t really matter to me.  Might matter to people who still have PS2 games.
3. 2 USB ports instead of 4
   I’m not expecting to hook up a lot of stuff to my PS3 so hopefully, this won’t matter.
4. No flash card reader
   This might matter to people without computers (more later).
5. Dualshock 3 wireless controller
   The older Sixaxis controller didn’t have “rumble.”  This new controller has both (more later).
6. Lower power consumption
   There’s speculation that this model has the new 65nm RSX GPU (graphics processing unit) but this has not been confirmed. The lower power consumption is negligible but every little bit helps.

Power and Blu-ray eject touch areas

As you can see from the picture above, the Blu-ray eject and power “buttons” are touch sensitive.  It’s cool and maybe I’m just paranoid but I’ve always liked “real” power buttons in case the software completely crashes (or decides to take over the world).  There is a “real” power switch in the back of the unit so I guess it’s safe.

Below the power “button” are 2 LED indicators.  The one on the left is blue and is on when a Blu-ray disk is in the drive.  The one on the right is red when the unit is “off” and green when the unit is “on.”  It blinks when it the PS3 is in the process of powering down.

Under this top area is the lower area shown below.

Front of unit with 2 USB ports and HD/Wi-Fi LED indicators

You can see the 2 USB 2.0 ports and LED indicators.  The HD indicator LED is yellow and the Wi-Fi is green so that you can tell what’s going on from far away.

Plugging a USB flash drive worked flawlessly and I was able to copy some MP3 files onto the PS3.

For me, the main attraction was the Blu-ray disc player so that I can finally watch Blu-ray movies on my HDTV in full 1080p resolution.  Here, the PS3 delivers the goods and more.  Basically, for the price, you get a Blu-ray player with a free game console.

On this topic, the PS3 also upconverts your old DVDs to 1080p and the image does look better than what comes out of my old DVD player connected as 480i to my HDTV.  Of course, the PS3 also plays CDs so you can get rid of your DVD and CD players from your entertainment center.

Back with AV out, Digital out, HDMI and LAN

The back of the unit (shown above) shows the single HDMI output (no HDMI cable provided) and the LAN plug.  Since my PS3 is far from my computer, I am using the built in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi to connect to my wireless router.  It’s slower but more convenient.

Once I was connected to the Internet, I signed up for the free PlayStation Network membership.  Yes, free.  Did you hear that Microsoft?  Then, I downloaded a new version of the PS3 firmware, and for fun, downloaded HD movie and game trailers, free demo games, and themes for the PS3.  For most downloads, you can do it in the background while you do other things.  The Wi-Fi connection also allows you to access your favorite MP3 music, pictures or videos from any Windows Media Center compatible PC.  More on this in another post.

The proof that the PS3 runs a real OS (and GUI called XMB) is the ability to multi-task.  For example, you can play music and use the Internet browser.  However, there are limitations.  For example, if you try to look at pictures, it will ask to close the browser. Of course, if you start a video, the music will stop automatically.

Dualshock 3 user POV (top), front with mini USB plug (bottom)

Included with this model is the Dualshock 3 wireless (Bluetooth) controller.  Reports are that the Dualshock 3 has weaker rumble than the older PS2 Dualshock 2 to save battery power because it runs on battery.  However, there’s 2 separate vibrators which allows for “stereo” vibrations in this new controller.  I was able to play for 6 hours without running out of juice so the battery is not that weak.

The Bluetooth connection is great because it’s wireless but you don’t have to worry about distance or direction.  As a matter of fact, you can be so far away from your TV, you can’t even see what’s written on the screen, and it still works.

Now for some small negatives.

One complaint I have is that the controller does not charge (using the included USB cable) when the PS3 is off.  Therefore, either you have to leave your PS3 on, or charge it while you are playing.  Charging it while playing using the included USB cable it not an option because it’s too short.  Alternately, you can buy a controller charger from a 3rd party, or use any USB port on a computer to charge the controller.

Another small complaint is if you store the PS3 sideways (that is flat instead of tower style), the top is round so you really can’t put anything on the unit (e.g. Game controllers, DVD cases, etc).  Yes, the styling is cool but it would be nice to have room there for your stuff.  Maybe they just don’t want you to put your drink on there and spill it.

One other thing I noticed is the browser runs out of memory easily.  It’s nice that you can open up multiple windows and browse several websites simultaneously, but you can quickly run out of memory.  It’s odd that this box can run games faster than most PCs, but runs out of memory browsing myspace pages.

All in all, I’ve been very happy with this game console.  I’ll have more on Blu-ray movie quality in another post but I’ll just say that it’s great.  One thing is for sure.  Between playing next-gen games and watching Blu-ray movies, I don’t think I’m going to have much time to write any reviews.

So after weeks of waiting, my port of the Vonage number to my ooma account finally went though.  There was some type of problem verifying that I was who I said I was and I had to send them a FAX of my electricity bill, which is rediculous because with Vonage, I am able to use it anywhere I take their box.

But I digress.

So, I go online to vonage.com to close my account.  As per usual (for closing accounts at any big company), they want you to call a live person, but they are not open on weekends or holidays.  So I wait through the Labor day weekend and call them on Tuesday.  For some reason, the first 2 times I called, I got disconnected after getting to the initial person on the line who said they’d transfer me.  The first one was definitely in India somewhere.

On the 3rd call, I got an American (maybe) who did not have to transfer me.  He apologized for the slow service because the Vonage computer system was down and it was difficult for him to access my account.  As a matter of fact, I wasn’t able to log into my Vonage account before calling.  More reason to close my account.

Then the customer service rep told me that if I stayed, I could get 2 months free service. Eventually, he did close my account for me.  Finally.  But he reminded me that there is a charge to close my account.  I “forgot” to read the fine print in the Vonage contract which says they’ll charge me $39.99 to close my account.  Damn it!

If I knew they were going to offer me 2 free months, I could have called them 2 months before I switched over to ooma, and saved enough from that to cover the cost of closing my account.  Oh well.

Now, it’s going to take me 2 more extra months to break even on switching to ooma.  I sure hope ooma stays in business that long.  (Crossing fingers and knocking on wood.)