Computer Reviews

I have found the CD sleaves very useful, but although the manufacturer claims that each holder will store two cd's, it is nearly impossible to get two cd's into each sleave. I suggest storing only one cd per sleave, otherwise scratches to the cd's may occurr.

These sleeves maximize my storage space while not compromising the safety of the CD. I will not use any other CD sleeve! I have been hooked since I discovered them.

These sleeves are light flexible and hold 2 cd's per while protecting them.they are durable enough to throw without worry of breaking your cd. (i have done it, did crumple the corner a bit). there is no better value. they save space and if i didn't already have 200 of them i'd buy more.

A truly fun piece of glass and I use it as both a toy and a tool. I love to shoot people and objects with it and see what the distortion does to the image, but it's also incredibly useful when you have no room to work or back up. I found it especially useful in the confined spaces of aircraft cockpits. But that fine thread to mount it on the camera drives me nuts! Especially when I'm in the confined space of something like an aircraft cockpit. But I always put it in my kit when on the road.

* Best, Simple, High Quality Lens
* Not expensive
* Don't set F1/F2 lens, and you can get more effects, and more funny pictures
* Requires more light -> use bracketing, manual exposure or exposure correction

Slipped right on the CoolPix 995. Almost slipped onto the floor as well - the lens cover is nice, but held on by friction between a felt strip inside the cover and the side of the lens. It's second nature to pick it up by the lens cover. And the lens falls right out. Be warned! I caught mine just in time and spend 5 minutes cleaning off finger prints. This is a common complaint from people I know who own this lens. The rear lens cover is a pain - not fully threaded and a pain to get on. Enough of the 'bitchin.

The lens itself is great. I had a Tiffen wide angle on my old Kodak DC290 - this Nikon is far superior. The camera has two Fisheye lens presets that adjusts and locks the camera's settings for optimum results. The resulting photo can be dark if taken indoors (the flash is automatically disabled) - but a few seconds in PhotoShop increasing the contrast and brightness fixed it right up (try that with a film camera!)

For [this price] you can't beat this lens. If you plan on doing panoramic or full room shots, get it. Example: I stood my tripod in a corner facing the center of a room. It captured EVERYTHING, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, except what was directly behind the camera. I then import the resulting image into a panoramic editor, output a Quicktime VR file (takes under 20 minutes total), and have a virtual view of the room. Cool. Plus everyone who sees it asks "is that a lens?!?!"

I just purchased this product and had some concern because of a couple of the ratings given. After a couple of days rerunning wires from my DVD, VCR, Audio System and of course the most important thing of all my HD cable box, I was in a New World of TV enjoyment. The key is that everything from TV is not HD compatible yet, but there are channels out there to get you through the night. This product provides you with great bravado. I'm not going to go through a lot of tech stuff to justify what I see, but if you want what you see and hear about in adds about really feeling like you are looking through a window, this is the way to go. Hay dudes go for this one and stop wasting your time looking.

PS
Yes I did research which included a number of testimonials.

OK, OK, it's spendy.. but this is clearly not a must-have item for any household, it's a luxury! As far as luxuries go, this is one of the best and most affordable considering what you get.

I love the fact that this TV only weighs 60ish pounds. I've had to move it a number of times as I've been hooking up peripheral devices, and the light weight of the TV is appreciated!

Also love the fact that, unlike other widescreen projection TV's, the DLP technology assures there will never be tube or burn-in issues. Since much of the TV we all watch is not broadcast in widescreen, viewing in 4:3 is required if you don't want to add 20 pounds to every actor/actress (well, that might not be all that bad these days..) or stretch scenery to where it looks unnatural.

DVD's look AMAZING, especially if you have a DVD player with a DVI output. Samsung makes and Amazon sells one and I can't recommend it enough.

Long story short - this is an expensive TV but the light weight and the outstanding picture quality (esp from a distance of ~10 feet) make it worth the purchase. You won't be disappointed!

To get the best from this TV you MUST feed it a good quality signal. The best way to connect this set to any source is via the DVI connector. An HD signal from DirecTV or a DVD played on a HTPC (Home Theater PC) looks absolutely stunning. On some of the standard definition channels that have a lot of compression, you will see flaws in the picture because the TV is quite revealing (almost ruthlessly so). Also, the picture is spectacularly bright, so viewing in a well lit room is no problem.

[...]

A great progressive-scan DVD player that also plays the customary assortment of CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs. It is also a multichannel SACD player. NO DIGITAL OUTPUT FOR SACD section ! You can use only the analog RCA connection!!

I used digital coaxial cable for the DVD/CD connection to my receiver, for instance, and an assortment of analog cables for the SACD connection via the six-channel analog input.
enjoy!

I'll defer to the other reviews of the video quality, since I bought this unit for it's audio capabilities.
I've collected a number of titles in various surround formats - from DVDs with Dolby Digital, DTS & PCM soundtracks to SACDs & the older, DTS CDs. The built in decoder makes playing this hodgepodge of formats incredibly simple. Just put it in & hit play. There are playback options if you want to exercise them, but you don't HAVE to. All players should work this simply. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 2-ch output even downmixes titles with no stereo track - specifically DTS CDs.
The only format this player doesn't specifically handle is DVD-A with it's high-res multichannel tracks, but since every DVD-A I've bought has a Dolby Digital or DTS track, the discs have still been playable, and sound very good on my syetem.
This player lets the user focus on the TITLE not the FORMAT... Dark Side of the Moon on SACD, American Beauty in Dolby Digital on DVD, or Abraxas on DTS-CD all sound great through this deck. All players should do this - but as far as I can tell, this is the only one that does!
That it also plays DVDs & home-burned VCDs is just icing on the cake.

The SONY DVP-NS755V is an outstanding disc player for the price. I have owned several DVD players in the past, beginning about 4 years ago (since I got into DVDs), but they have all been PANASONICs, this is my first experience with a SONY. First of all, the hook-up was easy and straight forward. Although this is a combination DVD player and SACD player, with multiple outputs, the hook-uo and set up was quick and went off without a hitch. Secondly, the picture quality is great, bar none. The sound on DVDs and CDs are excellent, I can not find any faults to list.Now for the real low down on this player. Although the hook-up options are numerous, you will need to use six high-quality RCA style analog jacks in order to listen to multi-channel SACD sound. Also, this player does have a pair of RCA jacks for devoted CD playback as well as analog DVD output. Then there is the fiber optic Toslink output in order to play the DVDs using an interna digital to analog decoder. All of these jacks cost a lot of money, and I found myself using about $240 worth of jacks to hook this DVD player up to my system. That $240 does include a high quality MONSTER CABLE componet video jact to transfer the video signals to the television. One could forego a set of devoted CD cables, and possibly buy a lower quaility video cable, but no matter how you hook this player up to your system, expect to spend at least $200 for cables.Having said all that, once this bad boy is all hooked up with the fiber optic cable and the multi channel cables, you will have a variety of options of decoding your precious CDs upon playback. Using some audiophile CDs of my favorite bands, I found that this player has extremely quick response times, great sonic quality, and a very wide dynamic range, (all the better to play JIMI HENDRIX). Now for the multichannel low down. The only reason why I even bought this player was to listen to PINK FLOYD DARK SIDE OF THE MOON in glorious multi-channel sound. Let me tell you, the experience of listening to multi-channel SACD is amazing, I can not even find the words to describe the experience. If for no other reason, you should consider this player for the multi-channel SACD playback capability alone. All of the other features are just icing on the cake.As a little footnote. It has to be remembered that to play multi-channel SACDs, you must have a receiver with at least six channel analog input, as well as six discreet amplifiers. For this purpose I used a SONY STR-DE895 (which I will rate in a separate review.)

The backup works great. Getting to the backup software is not ther easiest.

Easy enough to use. The fact that this product comes with NO user manual whatsoever is a testament to that.

Although there ARE cheaper backup solutions to your Palm, the only one I can think of at the top of my head being using a normal expansion card and specific software like BackupMan or BackupBuddyVFS ($10 to $15 compared to this product for $40 - $50), this product still has >some< practicality.

Many people consider a backup card for Palm PDAs for the case that BOTH their PC AND Palm dies on them. Here are some things to consider:
-If you have only one expansion card and you lose it with your PDA, you just lost all info on your handheld and card. In the rare case that you lose info backed to your PC, you're out of luck
-hearing as how software only backup solutions work well, it may be worth your while to pursue a better deal if u can on this.

When my Palm 515 stopped sync'ing with everything (serial, USB, and infrared), I bought this as a last chance to save my data. Plug and Play! Worked beautifully. Pops up offering either Backup or Restore. Select backup and off it goes. Backed up everything including the apps. Now to get the Palm repaired. Oh to be without my Palm for weeks. Arrrgh....

All the characteristics of this camera are great. The still digitals to mpegs, but I had to buy a Canon for this particular camera to be compatible with my G4 Mac. I bought the camera before I bought my G4.

This is a very nice camcorder for the money. I love the larger view screen, and the battery lasts quite a long time. The picture quality is very good, but there is considerable noise from the motor that gets recorded on the tape. If you're taping a birthday party or sporting event, the noise isn't too bad, but if you're using it to record the birds chirping on a quiet morning, forget it; the noise from the motor will drown out anything you'd be able to hear, it's that loud. Lastly, I have had several old 8mm tapes from my old camcorder that will not play on this camcorder. They will play on my neighbor's 8mm Samsung camcorder, but not on this Sony. I was a little upset by this.

This is a great camera! It is very easy to use. It takes very clear digital video, and for 1 megapixel CCD takes good digital pictures. It has many neat features. It has a large LCD screen for easy reviewing.

It records Mpeg files on the memorystick for display on computers. This is a great feature although the files recorded are a little grainy. This is great for e-mailing vacation movies back to family members.

The quality of the digital video is great. The bad thing is that you don't get much recording time on one tape. It uses 2 hour analog tapes, but when you record in digital mode you only get 1 hour on each tape.

The picture taking feature is wonderful for vacation. You don't have to carry both a still camera and a video camera around with you. The pictures are only 1 megapixel, but they show up on a computer screen great. We were very pleased with the results of the pictures.

The battery life is very long. We purchased a separate quick charger for our batteries which was a great addition. It doesn't take much time to charge and they last quite a while compared to our old Minolta camcorder.

The product is fine. The shipper (Office Depot) charges a shipping rate that is nearly 50% of the price of the discs. That is outrageously high and makes the product, as offered here, not worth the money.

The 3-pack Memorex DVD-R version 2.0 I purchased at Staples for $12.98, $4.03 MORE than Amazon.com is charging. Of course the key to ordering them from Amazon.com is to order in bulk, or add them on to one of your regular orders so you aren't paying any extra freight.
I use these in my flat panel I-Mac for making DVDs: they work well with the I-Mac, and with the newer DVD players.
Not all DVD players will play the newer technology burned-at-home discs, if you are going shopping for one, take one of your discs with you to put in the floor samples to make sure they work. Luckily I took one of my discs with me to Circuit City; I was considering a player that said it would play the discs, but could not read the homemade one I put in.

The case seems to be a deluxe CD-size case. The inside part of the holder is not thin and boxy but round and smooth. Since we all make the occasional coaster, these are the only CD cases which I keep when it happens. I use them for other disks I burn.

I wished Memorex supplied these cases for their DVD+R and +RW disks as well, since I use these in addition to the -R.

Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included.

but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash).

As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem.

As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference.

Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?"

Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better.

But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice.

I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.

I searched and searched for a burner that would fit my budget and also have some of the bells and whistles I wanted in a DVD Burner. As far as $$$ goes this thing is a great deal, at this time I don't think you can find a better deal on a Multi-format name brand DVD Burner.

I use it in conjuction with DVD Xcopy (non rf version) and DVD Shrink and it works great. I only have two complaints

1) Slow CD Writing Speeds 24X
2) Only comes in black so it doensn't match my Beige PC case.

Problem #1 is easy enough to fix. For a small price around $50 you can pick up a 52X CD Burner DVD player combo. This will allow you to have a fast CD Burner on your system and a DVD player so you won't have to switch out the DVD your copying. You can just put the DVD in one drive and the Blank in your burner and walk away. No need to watch and wait then switch.

Also works well with all DVD-R Media I've used. Memorex 4X disks, Imation 2X Disks and Verbatim Digital Movie 4X Disks.

For the price, you can't beat it. I really could care less about the speed. I just want dependability, and this inboard unit delivers. Easy to install, just take the face off your pc, slide it in, plug in the IDE and power, two screws, and that's it. (...)

I like the AVLS because my kids will use this. The sound is pretty good, and the price is fairly good since I can make MP3's for this player. It is not perfect, but I like the weight. I wish it had a clip though.

I bought one of these last month on recommendations and am very pleased with it. I have an NE510 I purchased last year, which was nice, but I needed a second player. This one has better features and better sound. The battery life is as good or better than indicated on the package.

Instead of just presets and bass boost, it has a parametric equalizer. Bass, mid, and treble can each be adjusted up or down three, each in high, mid, or low positions, for a total of 21 possible adjustments in each range. Bass may not boom, but it isn't boomy or muddy, either. The setting is saved as custom. There are also presets (I have used "Heavy" for some rock, but off otherwise).

Although I have used SonicStage software, I don't recommend it (not because I dislike Atrac3, but because I don't like the program). MP3s made by any program, burned to cd by any program, can be used on this player. I have used CDs with LAME MP3s (VBR) burned by MusicMatch and Nero with no problem. Nested directories also weren't a problem. MP3 CDs do take longer to load up when they are first put in (less than 30 seconds for a 700MB CD with 7 directories, 81 tracks, 625MB; less than 15 for commercial audio CD). Titles scroll and you can change the display options.

There are several playback options, including 10 most frequently played (also shuffle), and by group and m3u playlists on MP3 CDs among others.

The one problem with this player is the physical feel. The plastic is very light and thin so it seems a bit flimsy. The hold button on the bottom doesn't have as solid a feel as the ones on my Sony MD player or Clie, but the same as the NE510 so maybe that is just the CD player style. For the price, this isn't unexpected therefore I did not give it 4 stars.

this is one of sonys finest. as far as sound is conserned. they got the four band eq.off! im using a pair of the best koss headphones. with this player.the koss and sony are great together. its the best of all discmans.sony is in the lead.

I bought this DVD Player almost a year ago. I bought it to replace the Panasonic 5 Disc changer that I put in my basement. The Panasonic did not have the picture quality that I need given my 55" high definition TV so I thought I'd try a Sony. It worked great for the entire year, but now it won't play any DVDs. About two weeks ago, I started having trouble playing a DVD in one or two of the five disc spots, but if I switched them around, I could get it to work. Now I can't play any DVDs on it. I was very happy with the player and I do use it several times a week, but it should last more than a year.

Great DVD image quality and sound. Love the changer. I was replacing a 1999 Sony player that finally died.

The exciting new feature for me was SACD 5.1 support. Unfortunately it did not work. SACD is not supported through the digital out of this player. Since my Bose Lifestyle supports 5.1 through digtal only I have to play SACD through my tv.

I'm a little upset because I felt this issue was hidden deep in the manual and never would have expected such a limitation.

I bought the unit recently and cds sound better than they ever did before. For the price, imho this unit is hard to beat. And you get all of the advantages of a carousel holding five discs.

DVD picture is also very good.