After getting the new iPad, one of the first things I wanted to do was to get a carrying bag so that I could take it with me. I didn’t want to get one that was too big but I needed space for other items other than the iPad. The STM Stash Shoulder Bag looked pretty good and I found it on ebags.com for $38.50 as shown below:

Unfortunately, I looked at the price more recently and it has gone up to $44 on ebags.com but you might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere.

As usual, I digress.

This bag has a padded compartment for the iPad with a zipper, and 2 other zippered compartments in front, as shown in the STM promo picture of their product below.

The larger of the 2 compartments have smaller pockets for pens, thumb drives, and a clip for your keys. The zipper for this pocket goes all the way down so you can open it wider than the front pocket which is smaller. It’s supposed to be used for your iPhone (according to STM) but I think having to unzip the pocket to get your phone is inconvenient at best.

The shoulder straps rotate so they don’t get tangled and the padding is nice, although the iPad is not so heavy that you need padding. You can remove the shoulder straps and use the handles or tuck the handles away if you don’t want to use them.

Here is STM’s promo video for this bag:

The quality is very high with this bag and so far, I’ve been very happy with it. However, it is very thin and the pockets do not expand. With my thick wallet on the inside pocket, it restricts items in the outside pocket to very thin items. If I try to put anything in there that’s thicker than an iPhone, it does not fit properly. I wish they made the pockets expand like some bags that I’ve owned in the past.

If you have a thin wallet, and don’t plan on carrying around anything thick, this is a good way to carry around your iPad.

Next time: My solution to carrying my phone with this bag

Have you ever had an errand to run or task to do, but you knew that you didn’t have enough time to do it? If you don’t have a spouse or friend to do it for you, you end up not being able to fulfill your duties.

That’s where TaskRabbit comes to the rescue. They have fully vetted “taskers” that will bid on your task or errand and you can pick the lowest bidder or whichever one you prefer. I haven’t used the service yet but I love this idea. They have people that will do delivery, house chores, shopping, moving, and even skilled labor like construction and auto work.

On the flip side of the coin, if you have some free time, you can sign up to be a TaskRabbit and bid on tasks and errands that are posted on the service. Might be a good way to make some quick cash. Payment is done through the website so you know you will get paid for your service.

Paypal has announced a new service called “Paypal Here” which is basically the same as the Square Up service. It’s not available yet but soon, small business owners will be able to accept credit cards for payment to their Paypal account simply by swiping the customers credit card.

Paypal will provide a free encrypted card reader that will allow the credit card information to be read by your iPhone or Android device. Notice that the card reader is encrypted. Since there was a lot of talk about the problem with the unencrypted reader from Square Up, I’m sure Paypal will make a big deal about it when it comes out.

Other than the transaction free being very slightly less for Paypal, they also have a feature in their app that will allow the user to take a picture of the credit card. The app will also allow the user to create a menu of choices to choose items from, like shopping on a website and paying the shopping cart at the end.

Since Paypal is owned by the powerful eBay.com, Square Up will be looking at some very serious competition. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to justify why somebody would use Square Up when they could use the Paypal Here.

Last Wednesday, Apple announced the “new” iPad. In case you’re living under a rock, this one has a better camera, higher resolution (2048 x 1536), and most importantly, a retina display. I was impressed with the retina display on the iPhone 4, so this large screen should be fabulous.

After years of pretending the tablet market was a fad, and seeing the new features on the iPad, I’ve decided to get one like everyone else. I’ve justified the purchase by creating an excuse of needing an iPad to test the compatibility of my websites. On top of it, just like the eBay commercial, I’m getting sick of being the only person at work that doesn’t have one. Do I really need one? I’m not sure. I’ll find out after I get one. There are a few iOS apps that I used to like on my old iPhone that would be nice to have again. Don’t ask which ones. It’s just another excuse I’m using to get one.

This new iPad also comes with the option of 4G LTE from AT&T or Verison. There’s a rumor that one is coming later to Sprint, but that’s down the line. Do I really want yet another carrier to send me a monthly bill? I decided I’ll re-activate my Sprint hotspot on my phone and use the WiFi on the iPad to connect to the Internet via my phone. I’ll keep you posted on how well this works.

The Wi-Fi models come in 3 sizes: 16G ($499), 32G ($599) and 64G ($699). Since I don’t plan on carrying around all my music and videos, and will be mostly using my iPad to access websites, I decided to get the 16G model.

After pre-ordering from the Apple website, I got an email with my UPS tracking number. According to the UPS website, my iPad should arrive on Friday, March 16 (the official release date of the new iPad) from EPZ, China. Where is EPZ? Apparently, EPS stands for Export Processing Zone. And how do they time the delivery down to the day? I guess they know what they’re doing.

There are some news reports that if you try to pre-order your iPad at this point, you will not get it by the March 16th date. Glad I got on the bandwagon early on this one.

Next time: First Impressions.

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.