So you’ve got to go somewhere this Labor Day weekend, huh? Looking for the right GPS to take you there? But you want one with some sweet swag? Easy to use? Maybe even something the “other guys” don’t have? But, its got to be a good brand. Well, the TomTom GO 930 may be your catch. With address voice input, Bluetooth speakerphone, Advanced Lane Guidance, traffic updates, and Mr. T to tell you where to turn, we couldn’t think of another GPS to suggest (until our next review, maybe.)
Before you shove off to your long weekend, we suggest reading the long and full-of-meat review of the TomTom GO 930. If you don’t have too much time, like all of our reviews, you can read The Bottom Line and the Overview for the quickie. But do at least print it out and read it sometime this weekend. It took us a long time to write. 
Well, this iPhone lovin’ guy took a hold of the latest BlackBerry and gave it a spin. Yes, yes, I kept thinking, ‘How does this compare to the iPhone,’ in nearly every thing I did with it and funny to say, in some things, it faired better than the Apple-made phone. Granted, in others it didn’t (man, that web browser is plain horrible,) but truth is, not everyone wants an iPhone. Some people want Cut-n-Paste on their smartphone.
So I trekked with the Curve for a couple of weeks, used it, played with it, snapped photos with it, let it guide me to destinations, and even talked on it. Many things surprised me about it and I must say, I was really impressed with it. It is without a doubt a definite replacement for all my Windows Mobile phones I used in the past, but my iPhone? Mmm, you’ll have to read the review for that answer.
One of the first things I had hoped to see come the iPhone accessory line was a boombox. It mattered not to me, just as long as something would play the music from my iPhone while avoiding any artifacts from the GSM phone radio in the iPhone. You know, that really annoying buzz sound that happens when near any speaker. Sadly, it took nearly a year for that to happen. Happily, Altec Lansing was the first one to do it. Read our joy.
Just a quick note. We’ve applied the same skin to the reviews section and as such, the section is now live again. You may note the Navigate section to the left now. There is only two items in it currently, but we’ll flesh that out in the coming weeks.
Check out the Alpine iAD-X001 iPod head unit review that just went up yesterday!
Update: Why go to bed when you can just finish all the sub-sections? 
Everything but the “accident” section is back, including Contact. I’ll be rounding that out and adding an advertise area soon, too. The accident section make take longer as it has sub-sections and pictures that will need reformatting. In fact, I may just bump it off my site and put it elsewhere. Don’t know yet. But, if you look hard and play with the location bar with some guesses, you may find the old version.
After a long weekend, our servers are back up. Our provider upgraded to a new data center and thus, the switch over took a bit longer than your standard server upgrade. With the new data center, we are told that our web sites, such as this one, will be quicker and server more pages in a more efficient manner. Always good stuff when you’re database driven as SvenOnTech is.
Thank you for your patience and we hope to be back on a regular posting schedule in the coming weeks. Look for our review of the Alpiine iPod head unit as well as some iMetal headphones. Keep it here.
Ya, ya, ya. We like SanDisk stuff. We’re not going to hide it. Hey, when you make killer stuff, you make killer stuff. When you make crappy stuff, then you make crappy stuff. Either way, we tell you which way it is.
SanDisk is always making the kill and we think you’ll like its newest and Ferrari-like sleek Contour. But you may be surprised by our recommendation. UFD needing folks, read on…
Surprise, surprise. David Pogue of the New York Times got an iPhone and has released this wonderfully entertaining iPhone review and gives us great insight on the iPhone just days before its release. The bomb that we said was going to be a tough impact on users has now been confirmed by Pogue. “EDGE is slow and horrible.” (Walt agrees, too.) Got that folks? When you’re not near a hotspot and you have to rely on AT&T’s dated EDGE network, that Google map trick ain’t going to work half a bean for you. You may find that four star restaurant faster on foot than by the iPhones EDGE connection! Or how about those inline photos in your E-mail? Hope you don’t have friends that don’t understand how to resize large photos before hitting that send button to you. Basically, the only time you’re ever going to want to use the iPhone data features is when you’re in a hotspot. Just like Steve did at Macworld.
Just something to think about while in line and waiting to plop $500 down for a phone with a slow data connection (with that required monthly data plan). Oh ya, don’t forget, all third-party apps are, yup, Internet driven.
Get ready for some really sweet earbuds for your iPod, baby. V-MODA sent SvenOnTech some sweet Red Roxx, probably the earbuds of choice for Sammy Hagar, and dude, were we impressed. I mean we really liked these puppies.
No more cruddy Apple earbuds or those descent Phillips ones we’ve been using for months. Nope, now we’ve got some really good things to stuff into our ears and enjoy the tunes coming from our 80 GB iPod 5.5G unit. Now, if you need the dets, then slap yourself over to the review and get ‘em!
We’ve been playing with the Ojo PVP-900, or Shadow, for the past three months and dude, we’re impressed. We’ve got to admit, we thought this was just another Skype client kinda thing slapped into a stand-alone unit but it really isn’t. It’s a great, and we mean great, videophone that is as easy as Ojo says it is. We even made a grandma (Nana) test the set-up out and she passed with flying colors! Give the review a read and maybe pick one up yourself.
If you have the older Windows version on your computer (XP and earlier,) and you desire to do some TV recording, then you may want to check out our review on SageTV version 6.1. We played with 6.x for a good month and then dove into the beta for 6.1. We found this beta more stable than some gold code out there! Overall, we loved the features and just how many tuner cards you could pack into this bad boy. Heck, I don’t think we ever had this thing crash on us once!