November 18th, 2009

Gallery: Unboxing Chumby One

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 12:41 pm

Categories: Appliance, Gadget, Internet, Review, Unboxing, WiFi

Tags: Successor, RSS, Internet, Jason D. O'Grady

Chumby Industries just released the successor to their widget-based Internet appliance, the Chumby One. The $99 device, is essentially a small touchscreen computer that grabs data from your WiFi connection and displays purpose-built widgets in a rotation.

Some liken Chumby to a Web-enabled alarm clock, but I prefer to keep one in my kitchen and bathroom to catch up on my RSS feeds while cooking and yes, brushing my teeth. (Chefs: do yourself a favor and check out the Big Oven widget).

Chumby does much more than display RSS and recipes however. Although I use mine mostly as a glorified RSS client, there are widgets for weather, time, horoscopes, Twitter, Facebook, music and games.

I previously reviewed the Chumby Classic in May 2008 and the latest model looks like a worthy successor. At only $99 it’s half the price of the original and features a hardware volume knob, snooze bar and a more, ahem, professional looking form factor that would complement any workspace.

I’ve only had it for an hour, so I’ll reserve my judgment for a future installment in these pages, but so far, it’s a worthy successor to the original, ground-breaking device.

I’ve posted some unboxing photos in this gallery, including some photos comparing Chumby One to the “classic” beanbag version.

May 21st, 2009

Gallery: Dell Vostro A90 unboxing

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 12:21 pm

Categories: Dell, Gallery, Hackintosh, Hardware, Netbook, Unboxing

Tags: Dell Computer Corp., Netbook, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, Hardware, Jason D. O'Grady

It’s here!

Exactly one month ago I wrote about The $200 ‘Mac’ — a new all-black, business-oriented version of the eminently-hackable Dell Mini 9 netbook called the Vostro A90. After writing about the new hackintoshable netbook I placed an order for one of the little black beauties and it arrived this week. Yes, it takes a solid month to get a netbook from Dell (a stock configuration, mind you). What’s up with that?

I posted a gallery of 13 pictures of the new Vostro A90, including some comparison shots between it and the Dell Mini 9 and some internal shots of the SSD and RAM slots as part of the migration process. Captions at 11…

Note: It looks like Dell has raised the price of the Vostro A90 significantly, with prices now starting at $294 (after a $30 instant rebate). I hope that you grabbed one when they were $200! Lower prices can be found or returned/refurbed netbooks at the Dell Outlet.

May 6th, 2008

Gallery: Psystar unboxing, innards, maiden boot

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:16 pm

Categories: Clone, Hardware, Psystar, Unboxing

Tags: Card, Wireless LANs, Modems, Cable, Wi-Fi, Wireless, Hardware, Components, Telecommunications, Personal Technology

I posted a gallery of 23 pictures of the Psystar Open Computer unboxing. Pictures include the shipping box, the innards and the maiden boot.

Some notes:

• The fan is quiet. Much quieter than is heard initial video of the Psystar someone posted. I think that that guy was vacuuming in the background.
• I didn’t order the $90 WiFi option. Big mistake. My office is a long haul from my Airport base station and cable modem. I’ve heard that the D-Link DWA-556 draft-n WiFi card is recognized as an Apple Airport card and am going to try it over the weekend. It’s available for about US$75 on eBay.
• I tried to launch the Boot Camp assistant but got a funny error message. I’ll post the screen shots in another gallery.
• When you buy a Psystar, frequent the OSX86 Project Wiki and Insanely Mac forums. They’re immensely helpful.

	Image Gallery: Psystar Open Computer Unboxing, innards and maiden boot.

Post any questions or things that you want me to test in the TalkBack below.

April 30th, 2008

Unboxing Psystar's Open Computer

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 10:58 am

Categories: Clone, Psystar, Unboxing

Tags: Engadget, Computer, E, Desktops, Productivity, Hardware, Jason D. O'Grady

Someone had to do it. And that someone is Engadget. The big E is first to unbox the new Open Computer.

Engadget NYC might have gotten to play with Apple’s latest and greatest iMac yesterday, but we keep it dirty in the Chi — yep, we’ve got the first Psystar Open Computer shipped out for review. We’re just getting it set up, but check out the unboxing below, and hit us up with anything you want to know in comments — you know we’re going to put this thing through its paces.

16 more photos are in the Engadget gallery.

Now where’e mine Psystar? Pfft.

March 3rd, 2008

Time Capsule ships; quickly unboxed and dissected (updated)

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 5:54 am

Categories: Hardware, Take Apart, Time Capsule, Unboxing

Tags: PowerPager Chuck Freedman, Backups, Jason D. O'Grady

PowerPager Chuck Freedman has posted a complete unboxing and first impressions of the long-awaited Time-Capsule 1TB model. Although it’s a spitting image of the venerable (albeit crippled) Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) Freedman notes “the unit is about two inches larger square than its Airport Extreme base station cousin.”

NakedMac did a Time Capsule takeapart on Flickr (Thanks Engadget) Spoiler: it features a Hitachi Deskstar HDS721010KLA330 (PN 0A36881) 7200 RPM hard drive – hardly “server-grade.”

Update: According to Hitachi the Deskstar 7K1000 series HDD features a seek time of 8.5 ms (read), 9.2 ms (write), 4.17 ms latency. The error rate (non-recoverable) is 1 per 1.0 E15 bits transferred, Load/unload cycles (at 40°C) is 50,000. Full specs are in the PDF datasheet.

Macworld’s Glenn Fleishman posted a hands-on report on TC and confirms that “you can also perform Time Machine backups to drives attached to the Time Capsule via USB.”

Dear Apple: when can we expect ane AEBS firmware update enabling Time Machine backups to Airport Disk? After TC sales plateau?

What have you noticed about Time Capsule now that it’s shipping?

February 1st, 2008

Gallery: MacBook Air Unboxing

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 4:34 am

Categories: Hardware, MacBook Air, Unboxing

Tags: Apple MacBook, Federal Express, E-mail, Notebooks, Online Communications, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Jason D. O'Grady

Yesterday was a very happy day for me.

I ordered a MacBook Air (stock 1.6GHz configuration) about 30 minutes after the Macworld Expo keynote address wrapped up. I received an email confirmation gave me a “ship by” date of February 6 and an “delivers by” date of Feb. 11. So much for two weeks I thought.

Much to my surprise I receive an email notification on January 29th informing me that my shipment Date was January 29, and that it would deliver by February 01. Oh, the joy!

Apple also provided a FedEx tracking number which I used to follow its progress on FedEx.com, setting up the requesite email notification at every step of the way (of course). The path went like this:

Jan 29, 2008 Picked up SHANGHAI CN
Jan 30, 2008 Arrived/Departed ANCHORAGE, AK
Jan 31, 2008 Arrived at FedEx INDIANAPOLIS, IN
Jan 31, 2008 Delivered at 12:17 PM

Fully expecting to get it on Friday, I refreshed the tracking page Thursday morning to find out that my MacBook Air was on the truck for delivery yesterday (Thursday) - a day early. Another example of Apple under-promsing and over-delivering.

Last night I took a bunch of shots of the unboxing experience which you can enjoy in this gallery. (Captions will be coming soon, after I get some sleep…)

September 7th, 2007

New iPods unboxed and dissected

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 5:59 am

Categories: Apple, Take Apart, Unboxing, iPod

Tags: Apple iPod, Photograph, iLounge, iFixit, Jason D. O'Grady

You knew this was coming.

It has become a ritual with new Apple products. Upon arrival, copious photographs are taken of the new product’s packaging and invariably someone throws their warranty to the wind and cracks the case to take even more photographs of the innards.

It’s didn’t take long, but Wednesday’s iPods are the latest victims.

iLounge has posted pictures of the 2007 iPod’s packaging and their hidden diagnostic menus. (To enter diagnostic mode hold Menu and Action buttons together to restart iPod, then quickly hold Action and Back.)

iFixit has posted the first internal photos of the new iPod nano 3G and iPod Classic.

The photos and accompanying commentary for the new models focus on major changes and enhancements in the new iPod models, and includes several close-up images of their updated logic boards and other components. iFixit will provide replacement parts and complete repair guides for these models in the coming weeks.

We’re just missing the teardown analysis and component costs from iSuppli.

June 29th, 2007

iPhone unboxing gallery

Posted by Jason D. O'Grady @ 4:16 pm

Categories: AT&T, Unboxing, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Jason D. O'Grady

I’ve posted a gallery of the iPhone unboxing photos. Go get ‘em!