If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve had bad luck with HP for years, including my current computer’s hard drive blowing up only weeks after I bought it.  Well, about a year ago, I bought a 2TB removable hard drive for my HP desktop. Well, not surprisingly, it has been making strange sounds for the last few weeks, and a few days ago, it died. Boy, HP sure makes good stuff.

Not to worry. I know HP’s excellent customer service will help me with expert help. In case you didn’t catch that, I’m being sarcastic.

First, I Google the drive I bought a year ago, only to find out that HP no longer makes it. To rub salt in the wound, about 6 months ago, HP had a blow out for this drive for $118 (after promo code) on their website, which still comes up in the Google searches.

The closest thing HP has left on their website is a different 2TB external drive. From the picture, I cannot tell if it will fit inside my HP Pavilion m9450f.

HP USB 3.0 2TB Personal Media External Drive

So before I order my drive, I sent out this email to HP’s wonderful customer service, pre-sale department, shown below:

“I previously (9/2010) bought the HP 2TB Personal Media Drive (Product #BK229AA#ABA) that fits inside my HP Pavilion m9450f desktop.The drive broke after only 1 year so now I want to replace it. I do not see the same drive online. Is the HP USB 3.0 2TB Personal Media External Drive (part # BR389AA#ABA) the same and more importantly, will it fit inside my desktop?“

The yellow highlighting was not in the email I sent. It’s just to show that I was concerned about how it would fit inside my computer. HP customer service sent back this following email:

“Please know that, the HP USB 3.0 2TB Personal Media External Drive is designed to work with any PC through USB 2.0 and the new USB 3.0 interface. It is compatible with any USB-enabled PC; backward-compatible with PCs that have USB 2.0 operating on Windows XP 32, Windows Vista 32, Windows 7 32/64. And yes, it will fit with your HP Pavilion m9450f desktop pc.“

Notice the wording in their email:  “fit with” and not “fit inside.” I should have red flagged this and asked again for clarification. But being the trusting person that I am, and the fact that I’ve had such good luck with HP customer service, I just went ahead and bought the drive.

There seems to be some type of language barrier here. This kind of reminds me of the excellent customer service I got from Hell, I mean Dell… where I almost had to kill somebody and the level of incompetence made me wonder how they can survive.

But I digress.

To make the story short (too late), when I got the unit in a few days, while I was opening the package, I already realized that this drive would NOT fit in my HP computer. Big surprise. Oh no. Now I have to return this thing.

Instead of being a dummy like when I called Dell and was on the phone from 4:30pm to almost 7pm, I used the live chat online to talk to HP via the Internet. I got somebody on there within 2 minutes and in a “mere” 14 minutes, got the RMA# and instructions on how to return the unwanted drive. They certainly are very good at taking care of returns. They are going to refund me the entire amount, even including the overnight FedEx charge. At least they’re good at something.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve my problem. I still need this discontinued drive from somewhere. Ebay here I come.

There was a girl with a strange looking purse so I tried to get a picture of it really fast. As you can see, I wasn’t able to get a full picture because I was doing it quickly.

Looking at the picture, you can see that it’s a purse with keyboard keys glued to it. Windows keyboard, no less. Yes, notice the “Print Screen” key.

Most people probably would think it looks like crap, but to geeks like me, this is a girl after my heart.

It’s amazing how ThinkGeek has used rapid prototyping to bring a prototype to life so quickly.

I want a version of Siri running on my computer interfaced to my home control system and this Hal 9000 box. Or not.

Brookstone has a new cool gadget that a friend of mine bought. It’s a remote control wireless tank with a built in camera. They are calling it the “Rover Spy Tank.” Nothing new about a remote control tank but this one is controlled by your iPod, iPhone or iPad and you can see what the tank is seeing on the screen. Very cool.

Rover in action

When they call it “spy,” they aren’t kidding. Not only does it have video, it has audio, can take still pictures and has IR for night vision. Why didn’t they have this thing when I was a kid, or even in college? I would have had so much fun with it. It’s like something out of one of those “Nerd” movies. Of course, I’d probably would have been expelled from school.

Unfortunately, the app on the iPhone seemed to get locked up sometimes and I would have to close the app and re-start it to get it work again. I’m sure they’ll have an update soon for that. You wouldn’t want your Spy Tank to get stuck in the girls’ locker room.

There was a Best Buy check in my mailbox yesterday for $1.98.  Apparently, this is another one of those class action lawsuits where Best Buy was forced to return the tax that was charged for their “Ask an Agent” service. I guess they forgot services don’t have sales tax.

What’s interesting is the check date of 7/05/2011. Either the post office is in bigger financial trouble than I thought or Best Buy was earning interest on all this money for months.

With direct deposit, paypal and other high-tech electronic non-paper methods, I rarely have to actually go to the physical bank. Is my time to go to the bank branch worth $1.98? Oh wait. Let me try that cool Chase mobile app.

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been trying to get rid of body hair without much success. Since the laser was too painful for me, I’ve decided to go back to the old fashioned methods of shaving.

In trying to find the best body shaver for me, I picked 2 popular ones. Shown below are the contenders: Norelco Bodygroom Men’s Total Body Grooming System (left – $40 at Best Buy) and Braun Cruzer 5 Body Cruzer 5 Body Shaver (right – $60, $50 on Amazon). Both can be used in the shower and on your body.

Norelco (left) and Braun (right)

As you can see below, the Norelco has 2 trimmers with a flat shaver in the middle. The trimmers are okay but the flat shaver really works well and is the best part of this shaver.

Top of Norelco

Shown below is the top of the Braun shaver. As you can see, the bottom is the trimmer and the top is a traditional multi-blade razor that can be adjusted up or down. The razor is actually the Gillette Fusion, which sells for about $15 on Amazon. In the down position, it does not get used. In the middle position, both the trimmer and the razor are used simultaneously, saving time. In the up position, you can just use the razor without the trimmer.

For body hair of short length, using the trimmer and razor together works best.

Top of Braun

Shown below is the Braun power button and the LED indicating when it’s being charged. The Norelco does not have an indicator when being charged.

Braun - LED

As you can see below, the Norelco’s charger is much larger and has metal contacts, whereas the Braun’s charger is tiny in comparison and uses induction without any contacts. Also, the Norelco is super light and falls over a lot and the cord is unnecessarily long. The Braun is heavy and will not fall over and the cord is the right length.

Chargers - Norelco (left), Braun (right)

After a few months of testing, I’ve come to the following conclusion. Generally, the Braun is a much better designed product. The Norelco retains water inside the head and will leak out and would not be good for traveling, along with all the other design flaws this has.

Basically, it’s a no-brainer in picking which is better. The Braun wins except for one small difference. The flat shaver on the Norelco does work well. This is no different from any other regular flat electric shaver but the Braun does not have it. It only has the trimmer and a traditional razor.

So for now, I’m using the Braun but sometimes I’ll use the Norelco if I really need to be smooth. But if I had to choose only one, the Braun wins hands down.

At the Century City Mall parking, they are getting ready to open up electric car charging spaces soon. Apparently, it’s to promote these Coda cars which they are showing in the mall. I’m assuming any electric car can park there but I’m not sure.

Parking spaces for Coda electric cars

As everyone that reads this blog knows by now, I’m a victim of advertising and infomercials. One night, I was watching one and saw a home laser hair removal system from Tria. Now you’re asking yourselves right now, why does this guy need this?

Well, really I don’t. But sometimes things get bushy down there and being the porno watcher that I am, sometimes I feel like things need to be hairless. Yes, I know. Too much information.

But I digress.

Anyway, I was getting tired of shaving, for the same reason many women get tired of it, and saw this product and thought I’d give it a try.

They actually have a newer version that’s only $395 and is just one unit. The one I got a while ago, was more expensive and as you can see from the picture above, it’s two units.

On this version, you first use the little unit to determine if your skin color/hair color is acceptable. Your skin color has to be light and your hair color has to be dark for the computer to be able to “see” your hair location. Once the smaller unit accepts your condition, you put it against the larger unit and the smaller unit tells the larger unit to allow the laser to function.

The actual laser is fairly big and heavy. But keep in mind what is really in there. There’s a real laser that zaps hair follicles and a computer that controls the aim of the laser. If you think about it, it’s some high tech sci-fi-ish stuff here.

I don’t want to waste any more of your time reading this article because I tried using it and it was too painful for a wimp like me. The FAQ says that it feels like a rubber band hitting you. That’s true. The only problem is, it “hits” you many times for each tiny area. Then you move the laser and it does it again.  Even though there are different settings, even at the lowest setting, it was too painful for me. After only a couple of minutes, I was done.

It’s pretty clear that women do other things like waxing that are as painful, or perhaps more painful than this laser, so for them, it’s probably nothing. For a wimp like me, there’s no way I can use this because you have to do it multiple times before the hair starts to go away. I couldn’t even do it once.

So this really isn’t a review, since I never got to the point where I can tell if hair was going away. Instead, it’s more like a warning to some people that this is very painful. If you have a low threshold for pain like me, don’t get this laser.

Sony has opened a brand new Sony Store in the Century City mall. According to workers there, this is the first Sony Store (as opposed to SonyStyle store) and the other stores will eventually all be converted.

Sony sells HDTV

I’m not really sure what the difference is between the stores but it’s interesting that this store is just a few stores away from the Apple Store. It’s obvious that Sony has styled the store after the Apple store in terms of looks and the way the employees try to interact with you.

Digital cameras, laptops, headphones and more

According to an employee there, all the new Sony products will be available first at this store in Century City before they are available at Best Buy or any other retail store. The employee seemed very knowledgeable about the Sony products and showed me the 2 laptops with keyboards with backlighting, and was even able to show the backlighting by covering the ambient light sensor.

Since I like this mall, I will be returning here a lot.

As you may have read, I cannot get used to the on-screen keyboard on the iPhone 4. In a last ditch effort to use the iPhone, I decided to try an external physical keyboard called iPazzPort from a website China for $40.

As you can see below, this is a credit card sized bluetooth keyboard that recharges via the USB port. The keyboard is about the same thickness as the iPhone 4, but does not lay flat like the new iPhone which makes it hard to type when placed on a flat surface.

iPazzPort charging via USB

Pairing with the iPhone was a snap as shown below. I just followed the instructions and the keyboard was connected to the iPhone. This keyboard will also work with other devices like the PS3 and laptops, but I did not test that out.

Keyboard pairing with iPhone

This keyboard also has backlighting so you can use it in dark environments as shown below. One of my biggest gripes with this keyboard is the placement of the backspace key which is located in the lower right corner instead of the normal upper right. The backspace is also small, and is a regular sized key, instead of the normal double sized key.

iPazzPort with iPhone 4

The feel of the keyboard is a little mushy and not crisp and hard to determine if you have actually typed a character. Another gripe I have is the keyboard does not seem to have any debouncing of any kind and I kept getting repeating characters very often. In fact, sometimes I would get more than one repeating character when typing just one letter.

It’s bad enough that I have to carry this extra piece of hardware with my iPhone, but the keyboard doesn’t feel good, has debouncing problems, and a strange layout, makes this keyboard a big pass. What a big waste of time and money.

Update:
One other problem is that you cannot use it while walking or standing because you have to hold your iPhone in one hand and it’s very hard to use this keyboard with  one hand.