Desktop Reviews

This was a great fan. It cliped onto anything and supplied a great cooling breeze. I bought the small white one for some of my co-workers in a local resturaunt kitchen. But the dishwashers were wreckless with it, and oh yeah, they busted the hell out of it. I got mad and told them you have to be careful with that stuff. They did the same thing to a larger Windmere fan I gave to them last summer. They said the blade broke off and smoke came out of the back of it. Yeah Right. I've owned many of fans and that's never happened to me. People just need to know that you have to be careful with fans. They're very delicate and you can get hurt.

I love this fan! I've had several of them, over the years, which I've used extensively.
My only problem with the fan is that the clip breaks easily, so if you plan on moving it often, be aware that the plastic clamp on the bottom will eventually crack.
On the other hand -- I have one, on which the clip broke quite some time ago, that I've clamped to a shelf by other means, and after more than eight years of daily use the motor is still going strong.
The front is easy enough to take off for cleaning purposes, just take care not to dislodge the motor while cleaning the fan blades, or it won't run properly afteward.
All in all -- a great little fan. I couldn't live without mine! Just take care in how you handle it, and it will last you for years.

Buyers please note:

You will not be able to use both the keyboard AND mouse at the same time with this wireless system. For example, should you need to hold down the SHIFT key and drag (selecting multiple objects, constrained selection, etc.), you will not be able to do so. The following comes from a Kensington Support Rep:

Dear Kensington Customer,

The mouse and the keyboard communicate with a single receiver. When perfoming such functions both the devices send signals to the receiver. The receiver cannot identify the signals and send it back to both devices at a time. To avoid conflicts it is advisable to use one wireless device at a time rather than both at the same time.

Regards,

Kensington Technical Support.

< END QUOTE>

I found this to be a significant enough design flaw that I asked Amazon to take the product back as a return. Again, you will not be able to use the COMMAND, SHIFT, or other modifier keys in combination with mouse movements.

If this is not a concern for you, then disregard.

At first glance you know you made the right choice in purchasing this keyboard/mouse combination.

It fits very well into the astethics of all Apple systems. The plug-n-play is great, and downloading the most up to date software is a breeze on the Kensington website. All hotkeys work flawlessly with Mac programs, opening/controlling iTunes and Safari/Mail, and you even have the option to program 3 keys to your liking.

The transmitter is also a battery charger and they give you 2 extra batteries so that you can switch them out with the mouse or keyboard when necessary, very nice option!

The only downside, use caution when removing the orange warning sticker off the keyboard, it leaves a residue behind.

I would recommend this product to anyone running an Apple system. Fits in well with my 12" PowerBook and 19" LCD monitor combination, and it allows the PB to sleep while running off the external montior, very cool to say the least.

As a side note, Kensington support is top notch as well. I have owned several of their products and if any of them have any problems they will replace it and allow you to keep the original, instead of requiring you to have "down-time" sending it back to them.

Also don't bother checking around, it ain't getting any cheaper then it is here! Great value, great product, great support, great looks.....what more do you need out of a purchase?!

First and foremost you need to know my background. I'm an Illustrator and I've been working with color and images a very long time. I'm also extremely adept at computers having my A+, Network+, MCSE, MCSA and CCNA certifications. I've always relied on Adobe Gammma to do the job but my Dell 5100 Laptop needed a lot of help.

Ok, so I've been trying to get my color calibrated correctly for a while now. The main problem has been my Dell 5100 Laptop showing colors a tad bit too dark. So I went out and bought this Spyder with PhotoCal software.

Installation was a breeze. The software booted up great onto Windows Xp Pro and Home and it instantly recognized the Colorimeter tool (the plastic attachment that measures the color on your screen).

The calibration is only Wizard-based (which kinda sucked). It guides you step-by-step with the following questions...
1) Is this a CRT or LCD
2) Would you like 1.8 or 2.2 Gamma?
3) Would you like 5000 or 6500 color temperature.
4) Can you adjust the color settings? Yes, No and Presets are options.

If you select No, then it starts the calibration immediately by scanning all gradations of RGB, White, Black and Grey.

If you select Yes, then it quickly scans normal RGB and then asks you to adjust the colors through your monitor until they all meet inside a thin rectangular box (I thought the calibrator was supposed to do this!). Once you calilbrate your own monitor, it starts running through all the gradations of RGB, White Grey and Black as mentioned above.

Finally...it asks you to save your ICC profile and it creates a nifty Startup program similar to Adobe Gamma that boots with Windows.

First was my 19" Dell 1901FP LCD monitor. The love of my life. Color on this monitor is quite nice but I decided to give it a go and test it out anyways. I deleted Adobe Gamma from my startup folder and away we went.

Once done, I was somewhat happy. The white, however, seemed rather blueish. All the other colors seemed ok. I was semi-content and moved on to my notebook. This was trickier since I can't adjust color settings and I had to completely rely on the Spyder to do the job. It finished and looked semi-decent. So being in a hurry I packed everything away and left to work.

At work...things got bad quick. I booted up my Dell 5100 Laptop and immediately noticed the colors were quite dark. As a matter of fact, my gamma was screwed. I was looking at a picture of some black Rollerblades I was selling on eBay and I couldn't differentiate the blacks from the midtones. It was just a congestion of really dark mids and highlight.

So I did some research and found out I was supposed to calibrate without any ambient light sources. This was buried in the PhotoCal CD and was never mentioned in the Wizard. At the time I had daylight and tungsten lights (Reveal lightbulbs) so I guessed that's what I did wrong. So tonight, in complete and total darkness I once again calibrated both the LCD and Notebook monitor and I achieved the same results. The notebook was deathly dark and although the colors were much better off, I simply couldn't adjust the gamma. The whites on the Dell 1901FP 19" display were still blue-toned.

This product did not calibrate my Notebook as promised and it left my LCD's colors questionable. In my line of work, there can't be any questions. This product is going back.

If the image on your monitor doesn't match what comes out of the printer, this gizmo will fix the problem. It works with both CRTs and LCD's. It takes 15 minutes and when youre done the monitor will use a custom profile that sets the mix of red, green and blue correctly, along with the brightness. You have to know in advance what kind of controls your monitor has -- no color controls -- common on laptops, or user-set RGB and color temperature controls. But the insructions tell you how to find out, and the product works with either type. Hint #1: To see the monitor controls and the calibration pattern simultaneuously, open the PhotoCal software, drag it over to one side of the screen and then open the monitor controls and drag them over to the other side. #2: Re-run the calibration after you adjust the monitor to check the results -- the software doesn't cycle back by itself.

I love the design. The keys feel great. The printouts are crisp. The display is easy to read. It has a small footprint.

But its _so slow_! It's like it's trying to strike every character, even blanks, across the tape. The 2.1 lines per second that it quotes must be when you hit the linefeed button.

I hit one digit and struck the Plus key five times in rapid succession (it _does_ cache your keystrokes fortunately). It took five seconds for that one number to be added five times. It took seven seconds to hit Plus five times followed by the Total key.

I use this for my home record keeping. I tend to be fast on data entry - 12,000 kpm - so this is slow on the print mode, but it keeps up with me...eventually. It took me awhile to get used to it clacking away while I was done - this was just the tape printing, I'd have my total in the digital part of the machine. I use it constantly - I have a huge Texas Instruments one at work that cost 5 times what this one cost and it's print speed is not much faster. The key positioning is awesome, I don't even need to look at it while I'm entering numbers. I highly recommend it.

This system runs HOT, make it unsatble.
Also the Overclocking is not working.
buyers look for diffrent Computer, AMD Athlon makes more stable computers.
Also the CD burner freezes once in a while, and makes the system to restart.
If you are a begiiner don't buy this computer.

Man it's fast, fun, and no troubles so far. It is night and day over my old Pentium II. I bought a lot of new software to go with it and so far it hasn't blinked. It flies and is hassle free. I wish it came in some different colors, but I guess you can't have everything.

I have had my RZ24G desktop for 7 months and recently the dial up modem got a problem:it became so slow that it would take approx 15 min or much longer or sometimes wouldnot login due to 18kbps or under .My other PC works well using the same phone line(HP desktop).
I tried with all of my know-how but was unable to solve this problem,I called Sony and was shocked when The on line Agent told me that if I needed any warranteed work on my computer,I would have to somehow send it to San Diego,CA (I am not sure who would pay for shipping cost).I live in Bay Area,about 400 miles away fr San Diego.I am quite dissappointed after I found out how Sony warranties its products .
If I ever buy Sony Products again,I would certainly look into purchasing an In-store-warranty ,which I know this means an additional cost of 10 to 20% to the purchased price and this is probably good for 3 years.

I bought this computer from a store a little less than a year ago. The computer runs very well (there were slight problems at the beginning when we paid the store to have a tech guy set it up to enhance and maximize performance, needless to say he wasn't very bright). Occassionally I have some problems with the DVD program PowerDVD that is installed, but mostly the computer runs fantastic. I have burned around 100 DVDs and CDs with the drive and it still runs. The programs that are provided by Sony for this computer are very good for beginners, but anyone that wants more out of them knows which programs they should be using anyway. All in all, I spent around $1200 for the tower and that is still a good price for a comparable computer. I would by another VAIO if I ever had to (which I doubt I will).

It is easy to set up and when it works, the connection is excellent, but a couple of times per day it has to be rebooted.

I've used this unit for 2 years and have been very satisfied with its performance. Another reviewer mentioned the need to reboot it "a couple of times per day". That has NOT been my experience. In two years of use, I have rebooted only once every six to nine months and even then I suspect the problem was with the DSL service.

I use this unit to connect 5 computers to the Internet and even with all five systems online at once, the performance is impressive.

Well, it was a solid computer for the length of the warranty. Which is 1 year. A couple months after the warranty expired, BAM! The Hard Drive fried. Customer support is a drag when you run out of the warranty 3 hours waiting to hear that repairing it will cost 311$.... For that, I say spend your money else where, your better off without Sony.

I bought a Sony PCV-RX series computer 6 months ago and it has performed nicely. My systems is a RX 463 model, with a 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 Processor, 400 Mhz Front Side Bus, 128 MB RDRAM, 40 GB Hard Drive Storage, Dual CD-RW, DVD-ROM drives and Win ME stage. The computer is very stable: I have had ZERO system program since I purchased it. And for the price, I think it is very hard to beat it. Computers of comparable price, do not deliver the kind of performance, hardware, and software that this little VIAO machines deliver.

The computer is lightning fast... the machine can be loud at times, but do not let that deter you. Most computers have some level of noise. The Hard Drive is great: I beat the crap out of my Hard Drives, saving, deleting, moving, downloading, etc, etc, and NO problems! So it is the perfect computer for you if you want a digital video/audio editing workshop. My model is actually on the lower end of the series and is still better than most PCs in my experience. If you are a gamer, then this is an excellent choice as well. The GeForce 2 graphics card is powerful!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Superior.

I just bought this unit about a month ago. The instructions to set up the unit were simple to follow. The tower is one good looking unit, and the neon blue light on the front gives an expensive look. The system came feature packed with a whole bunch of software that is geared towards the home user. It came with Corel draw, SonicStage, PhotoShop, etc. The hardware components are also configured with the home user in mind. Start-up and Shut-down times are lightning fast (but then again, my previous computer was a 166MHz). The audio card is good, and I enjoy listening to music on this computer. The speakers are good, but I don't think audiophiles would be impressed by them. The DVD player works smoothly with the 32MB graphics card. It's a satisfying combination. The CDR-W is fast and it burns cd's at 16X, just 4-5 minutes to copy a CD! However, the CDR-W doesn't read certain cds sometimes. I think it may be a problem with Sony, since other owners have had similar experiences as well. Also, this is a noisy unit. It gets loud sometimes, especially when the cooling fan kicks in or one of the CD drives is used. I didn't buy a monitor with the unit; I think Sony monitors are very expensive for the performance they offer. I am still shopping around for monitors. Overall, I like my Sony Vaio computer and am satisfied with the performance and features. I would recommend this computer.

This is a really nice keyboard and mouse combo.. when it works. Being a top of the line product and the high price, you would expect that Logitech would place a big emphasis on quality control. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case as I've had to return my keyboard after only two weeks. During the first week, two of the keys stopped working, then they became stuck on permanently and finally stopped working again.

The keyboard is also very battery hungry. The media pad range was diminished by about half after only two weeks of using it so you better keep a healthy supply of AA batteries on hand. The mouse runs flat after 2-3 days if you don't remember to put it in the recharge docking station at night. I also had reoccurring problems with connectivity whereby the software would prompt for a blue-tooth connection code.

Although Logitech claims full pre-boot support, I couldn't get into the windows pre-boot menu, only the BIOS.

All of this may sound like doom and gloom, but in reality it still is an awesome keyboard, especially the media pad with the LCD display. You'd put up with most of the problems if the whole combo was a lot cheaper, but given the top of the line cost, you should get top of the line product, which unfortunately you don't.

I am actually using diNovo keyboard to type this review, and it is a bit of a struggle due to malfunctioning spacebar. :(

I did a bit of research on diNovo before buying it. Most online magazines (PCMag, CNet, etc.) highly recommend this product, noting its high price as the only drawback.

I got this keyboard/mouse combo a week ago, and I must say it looks and feels great. Separate keyboard and touchpad save you desk space. Mouse runs all day without a need for recharging.

I didn't experience any connection issues. It was only one time that I had to press the "connect" buttons on BlueTooth hub and mouse to have it re-detected because it stopped functioning all of the sudden.

The initial installation was smooth. I downloaded the latest drivers, got everything connected and everything went well from there... until yesterday.

All of the sudden the space bar (probably the most useable key on any keyboard) started losing response. I had to hit it harder to move the cursor and even then, at times, it would not respond. As I type this, I often have to hit the spacebar 4-5 times in order to make a single space between the words.

Another problem surfaced early this morning. The lower "fast scroll" mouse button would sometimes result in a "locked" fast scroll. This could be a software issue, I am not sure.

One thing is for certain, the assembly quality seems to be on the lower side. I reached this conclusion based not only on personal experience, but by reading other customer reviews and comments. Given the high price of this product, I am extremely disappointed, if not angry. This is probably the most expensive keyboard/mouse combo on the market, and one thing Logitech should have made sure is that it is of solid build quality. The product is produced by a Logitech plant in China, by the way.

As far as support goes, here is the story so far...

I made a big mistake by not saving the original packaging, so I am not sure if I'll be able to exchange it at local store.

I called up Logitech support (you can find their contact information at logitech.com), and had a live person on the line after a short wait. I told them about the problem, and the tech. support rep said that I have to exchange it at local store where I bought the product since it's been less than 90 days since the purchase.
I told him that I didn't keep the original box and that the retail store may have problem with that. He said that they will make an exception and handle the exchange themselves if the retailer won't accept the exchange.

I e-mailed the store where I got diNovo, and, at this point, I am waiting for their reply. I will post a follow-up review and tell how this thing plays out and if the replacement keyboard is any better than the original.

As a Mac user, this is the keyboard I expected to see come out of Cupertino. Since Apple has decided to not move to a 'more than one button' set-up (at this point it is just ego) I decided to snag one of these guys from Ebay on the cheap. Instantly, I loved it. Five minutes later I was ticked off to find that it does not work with OS X... well it does it you rig it up but th numerical keyboard does not work AT ALL. It is just a really expensive calculator at this point. What really gets me is how simple it would be for Logitech to write a simple driver so that Mac users, who are notoriou for over spending for great design, could use their product. Talk about a swing and a miss... shame on you Logitech. Same.

Without a picture I can't be sure we are all talking about the same thing. I have a Belkin USB Bluetooth Adapter (Model #F8T001). I've used the adapter on both my laptop and PC with good results. The laptop went much more smoothly because I ran the installation CD first before inserting the USB. If you plug and play, Windows recongnizes something, but cannot find the drivers easily. The 100m range seems optimistic, but I have been able to access my Sony Ericsson t68i phone while it is sitting in my bag, in the corner of the office.

i picked this up for the same reason several other readers did: i wanted to be able to move pictures, sound, and my phonebook from my phone to my laptop and back. i use a thinkpad x31 using windows xp for this task.

use the supplid drivers from the cd, they're much better than anything windows will attempt to do. and it will just work, unlike what windows may create.

browsing with the supplied belkin software is clunky and ackward, not nearly as fluid as it could be. it's most definitely not as smooth as it is under Mac OS X, but hey, that's what you get. it works, i get to move pictures around on my phone and my contact list without a cable. but it's prone to fits of delays and ackwardness.

i'm wishing there was better integration with windows xp right now, xp sp2 supposedly has smoother bluetooth software and browsing. i wish the belkin sofware worked as nicely. as it stands, this isn't the convenient device i hoped it would be, but i'll keep using it.

I was an early adapter of the version-1 of this product which was unstable and lacked many of the bluetooth functionality, but was adequate to sync my T68i. However, when I upgraded my phone to T610, along with a bluetooth headset, I realized I am missing a lot of functionality with the old adapter and learned that the V1 model can't be even upgraded to Bluetooth 1.1. So, instead of throwing it away, I just thought of checking with their customer service about a possible exchange, and they were very kind to agree immediately (I should say I am impressed with the customer service). So I got a free upgrade to the version-2 of this model and I am glad I did that. So far the product has been very stable and installation and setting up was a breeze. I was able to successfully synchronize T610 (I use an old verion of PDASync for that as the built-in sync doesn't support PalmDT), copy images from and to the phone, dial-up to ISP through it, and even used it as a headset for the phone (could occassionally substitute the the missing speaker phone functionality in T610). I could also successfully use the Jabra BT200 headset with this adapter, very useful to do voice chats at home.

The range seemed good, however I couldn't verify the claimed 100m, as I need another device which gives that much range. Over all I am impressed and recommend it. However, I have no knowledge of other adapters so I am not really comparing with other adapters (except the V1 of itself). To comment about the size, I would say it is average (a little longer but slimmer than V1). The DLink adapter does seem smaller, but the highly rated Linksys adapter seemed much fattier than this one. If size is important, I recommend checking it out and compare with others in a local store.

PS: I am pretty sure that all the -ve comments about this product actually belong to the version-1 of this product. Since Amazon didn't put up any image for some time, many must have mistaken this for the version-1 and must have rated it based on that. You should really ignore all the old reviews.