June 2004 Archives

As the recent frequency of postings here at GearBits might have hinted at, we're taking a break. Until further notice, there will be no new content on this site.

The combination of various technical issues (comment spam, most specifically) and an increasing sense that the web just doesn't need another tech-oriented blog has convinced us that our time is better spent with our families, at our jobs, and just consuming other people's content for a while.

GearBits will likely come back at some point, as I'm a serial hobbyist (if I made money at every endeavor, I could claim being a serial entrepreneur). When it does reappear, however, it will be something a bit different.

I thank my co-authors for their time and creativity. These past 15 months with the site have been enjoyable (mostly) and interesting (always), and I expect we'll all be keeping our eyes peeled for the next new opportunity.

In the meantime, if you hear of anything nifty or have questions about us or this site, feel free to drop me a line at craig at memoware dot com.

Best wishes, and thanks for stopping by.

Update: Jerome asked me to offer up some other tech news sources I'd recommend. The following can individually more than make up for GearBits, so enjoy:
• Brighthand -- pure handheld news
• Engadget -- Peter's land of gadgety goodness
• The Gadgeteer -- great tech reviews
• ExtremeTech -- lots of great personal computing info
• TeleRead -- ebook news
• Lost Remote -- TV and media news
• Lockergnome Tech News -- all-purpose tech news site
• Wired -- but of course!
• Slashdot -- all that and karma, too
• Boing Boing -- general society & strangeness
• Gizmodo -- great gadgets & gear blog
• PalmInfocenter -- happenings in the Palm OS community
• Phonescoop -- THE place for phone news
• infoSync World -- my source for a European perspective on tech
• Watchster -- great tech blog aggregator

There are many, many other great sites, of course, but these are the larger ones I visit regularly.

Update #2 (11/8/04): I've started a personal blog where I can wax philosophic on a variety of topics likely to be of interest to no one but myself. If you want to check it out, it's at http://craigfroehle.com/blog

In a world where plain-Jane USB flash drives are given out as trade show tchotchkes, the KanguruMicro Drive+ Expandable USB Flash Drive deserves some additional attention. Beyond having a name that is arguably larger than the device itself, the KanguruMicro Drive+ differentiates itself by allowing the owner to use it in two different ways.

First, by virtue of its internal flash RAM, the Drive+ can be used as a stand-alone USB flash drive. The one sent to me held 64 MB, but they are available in capacities up to 512MB.

Second, since the MicroDrive+ has a Secure Digital/Multi-Media Card (SD/MMC) slot, one is able to use it as a flash card reader and expand the available storage almost indefinitely (by using additional cards). The 256 MB SD card I tested with the Drive+ worked just fine.

When inserted into a USB port, the Drive+ shows up as two new items: one fixed volume (the internal flash memory) and one removable disk (the SD card slot). SD/MMC cards can be inserted and removed from the Drive+ while it is inserted in the USB port. There is also a "lock" switch on the side that will render the internal memory unwritable (but still readable).

The unit itself weighs 20g and is reasonably small, but certainly not among the smallest USB flash drives available. The two photos below show the Drive+ as compared to a Treo 600 (top) and to US quarter, British pound, and 1 Euro coins (bottom).

The drive seems sturdily made, as it passed all our normal GearBits tests:

Creak test (a.k.a. the Gadgeteer test): No creakage

Drop test: Survived a 5-foot drop onto hardwood floor with no ill effect.

Bite test: Survived minor gnawing resulting in zero damage (below)

Spray test: Getting spattered with water (not submerged) and then toweled off, the unit still worked flawlessly

In terms of usability, the device gets mixed marks. The Drive+ interfaces well with Windows XP and is dead-simple to operate. However, there are many instances where the unit is simply too big. When plugging into a USB hub where the ports are side-by-side lengthwise, the Drive+ is simply too wide; it ends up taking up 2 or 3 ports just due to its girth. This problem is exacerbated if an SD card is inserted into the Drive+, since the SD card protrudes from the side of the Drive+ by roughly half an inch.

Similarly, the device is too thick to be used in a place where, as is typical on most PCs, the pairs of USB ports are stacked next to each other with only a small space between. The thickness of the Drive+ makes it unable to be plugged in if the other port is already in use (see below).

The Drive+ does come with a 3' USB cable that will remove these obstacles, but I really don't want to have to carry around a cable just for my USB flash drive. A lanyard is also included in the package.

Overall, the concept is really appealing and its Plug-and-Play functionality works quite well. The fact that it is such a space hog when it comes to tightly packed USB slots, and doesn't actually fit in some situations, is a bit irritating. In terms of value, it's a tough call. While a 128 MB Drive+ can be had for under $70 online, it would be very easy to get a similarly sized flash drive and an SD card reader as separate devices for significantly less than $70. Add to that the fact that it is only USB1.1, and not the much faster USB2.0 that many flash drives and card readers are today, and the value for the money becomes fairly questionable.

In the end, I'd give the KanguruMicro Drive+ a 3.5 out of 5. The concept is really good, but the pricing, slowness of USB1.1, and the physical size of the unit leave me somewhat unsatisfied.

Sorry for the lapse...I was out of the country and I guess my co-authors have not much to say at the moment. Here are a few tidbits of recent note:

Treo 270 in for Repair
My wife's Treo 270 died while she was in Ireland this past week. Actually, just the screen and backlight died; the rest of it seems OK. Apparently, palmOne is charging me $179 for an advance exchange for this beast. Not a great deal, but not terribly bad, IMO.

Treo 600 Battery Life Redux
Like the idiot I am, I left my Treo 600 in my car when I left for my trip Thursday afternoon. I got back to my car around midnight last night -- that's about 4.5 days or 108 hours later -- fully expecting the unit to be deader than a doornail. Much to my surprise, it still had 36% charge left. I finally dropped the unit in the charger today at noon just out of habit; it still had 28% battery left. So, over the course of 5 full days (120 hours), the phone (a) remained in standby (phone on), (b) supported nighly back-ups of its RAM to SD card, and (c) was used for about 20 minutes worth of phone calls and about 15 minutes of PDA activity. Given that it probably could have gone 6 full days had I pushed it, I'm still very, very impressed by the Treo 600's battery life.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves
While on the flight from Dublin to O'Hare, I read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Fabulous read. I'm quite sure I still have solidly entrenched mispunctuation habits, but I'm trying hard to overcome them. The attractiveness of joining a militant punctuation society is such that if you see someone with a Sharpie correcting a sign offering "Half Price Drink's", that's quite possibly me.

Sony Puts Handhelds on Hiatus in US
Sony has suspended selling its Clie line of Palm OS-powered PDAs in the US until further notice. It seems likely that the rapid rise in popularity of palmOne's recent Zire and Tungsten models and the forthcoming release of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) both made Sony reconsider whether trying to sell PDAs in North America made much sense. Brighthand has a short article on the announcement -- feel free to engage in wild speculation at your leisure.