First off, the first thing you notice with the Kindle is just how nice the screen is. Amazon designed the kindle so that it would disappear in your hands as you are readying and that is certainly true. The screen is clear, crisp, and renders detail in photos exceptionally well considering it only has 16 shades of gray to work with.

Whisper net seems to deliver books as fast as I would expect it to, purchasing a book from amazon.com on my computer, then turning to my kindle a few minutes later and the book was showing in my list already. Wireless delivery is very handy as I don’t have to search for the USB cable and copy the books manually.

Starting with Version 2.3, the Kindle now supports native PDF reading without the need to convert. There is a catch however, and that is you cannot zoom the text. Most of the PDF files that I read are formatted to fit an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper, not a 6″ screen. You can rotate the PDF and hold your Kindle horizontally, but this only goes so far, as some PDF authors seem to be using 6 and 8 point font as standard text. The solution is to use an application such as “Calibre” (http://calibre-ebook.com/) which is free. Once I converted my PDF files to .mobi, I can zoom the text and read them comfortably.

Compared to the US Wireless version, web surfing is disabled, with the exception of access to Wikipedia. Given the greyscale screen, this was not a deal breaker for me, and I do enjoy getting free, 3G wireless access to wikipedia.

I wish I didn’t have to purchase the leather case/cover seperately, this I feel should have been included with the Kindle, as I would say some sort of case is a requirement to protect the unit. The leather cover is really nice and worth the extra $30 USD.

All in all, I am very happy with my Kindle 2. I was torn between the Kindle and the Sony PRS-505, but I am glad that I went with the kindle. 2GB of internal storage is a lot of storage, and once I have read a book I see no need to keep it in the device unless it is reference material.

If your in the market for an e-reader, I’d recommend the kindle.

If you havn’t sent a letter to the CRTC yet, please do so, you can use the automated form at: http://www.stopthetvtax.ca/email-the-crtc/ as it only takes a minute to voice your opinion.

As of this writing, there are only six days left to provide your feedback to the CRTC! Say no to a tax payer funded bailout of CTV and Global.

iPod/iPhone control in the stereo deck is a much safer way to control how you listen to music in the car. When I get in, I place the phone in my center console, connect the USB cable and off I go. Unless my phone rings, I don’t have to touch the device at all. When the phone does ring, it fades out the music/podcast/whatever and pauses the playback while you are on the call. This has the added benefit of allowing me to actually hear my phone ring while listening to loud music.

Sound quality is excellent with the stock speakers in my car, and the difference in dynamic range over the stock head unit was astounding. I’m not a huge audiophile, but I tend to be a stickler for audio quality. I was pleasently surprised at how good it sounded, and very happy that I didn’t need to spend any additional dollars to upgrade my speakers.

The JVC KD-R600 also has the ability to change the color of the display, including 30 pre-set colors, and the ability to change the color using the jog dial to one of 30,000 options. I haven’t played with the custom colors yet, I’ve set mine to the dark blue to match the interior dash of my car.

I have noticed a couple of minor issues, and they are mostly iPhone related, but its worth mentioning. I notice that my iPhone seems to crash and reboot about once every week or two, I notice it mainly in the car as thats where I use it the most, but I have noticed my phone rebooting while I was watching TV, so I’m not going to blame my JVC KD-R600 just yet. Podcast playback suffers from an annoying quirk, it doesn’t seem to list the episodes in the order in which they should be played back, so if I happen to fall behind, then I have to try and figure out which episode to play manually. I’ve noticed this while using the iPhone via the Aux connector as well, so its not a JVC issue, its just tedious via the jog dial control. Podcasts with chapters tend to to start the chapter over again if you pause, disconnect, and then re-connect and hit play later, this appears to be related to how the JVC detects the chapters, so this issue falls under the KD-R600.

For about $160 Canadian, I’d recommend the JVC KD-R600 to any iPhone or iPod users out there as a great way to charge and use your iPod/iPhone safely while driving.Useful Gear, JVC KD-R600 mini review

Looks promising, hopefully this will be available soon!

Rogers White HTC Dream

Android, Google’s Open Source OS for smart phones has finally come to Canada in the form of the HTC Dream (T-mobile G1 in the USA). Roger’s Android phone features some changes from the default Android 1.5 (Cupcake) OS that makes it unique to Canada, most notably, built in support for ActiveSync, allowing you to get push email from a Microsoft Exchange server.

There are some caveants, the most important being, if you want to use your Rogers HTC Dream with an Exchange Server, it must be running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 applied. In our testing, we discovered that HTC has formatted their https commands differently than the iPhone, and other ActiveSync devices causing a “Sync Protocol Error” to be displayed on the phone.

Overall, I quite like the device, and I am quite fond of its ability to run an SSH client full screen, and allowing me to use the 5 line qwerty keyboard to control servers and routers that I need access to remotely.  Web browsing is also nice and fast thanks to built in HSPA 3.5G support (7.2Mbps download, 2Mbps upload).  The built in mail client is very similar in operation to the Apple mail client that comes with the iPod touch, and iPhone.  I really like the built in Calendar’s ability to sync with Google Calendar, as well as exchange, showing the events in both calendars in different colors. This allows me to keep my personal calendar separate from my work calendar.

As expected, all of the Google apps really shine on Android, Maps, Talk, Youtube and Mail all work seamlessly with Google, and are activated with the very first setup screen when the phone is started up for the first time.

The Rogers version of the HTC Dream comes with a 2GB micro SD card already installed in the phone.

So far, I’ve only had the phone for 6 days, I’ll be posting a more detailed post on the phone after I’ve had a chance to use it for work for a month.

Post a comment if you have a question that you’d like me to answer.

You now have a HD PVR with nearly unlimited video recording storage, as you can swap drives to allow you more recording time. Please note that once data is recorded onto the drive, you cannot connect the drive to a computer; nor can you connect the drive to a different 6141 receiver. The 6141 can accept a USB drive up to 1 Terabyte in size, giving you a max recording capacity of up to 100 hours of High Def content.

If you have problems getting your USB drive to work, power cycle your 6141 and you should be good to go.

Please feel free to post your experiences in the comments.

In fact, it leads the number 2 lens by more than double the images. That’s an overwhelming win for this lens, and despite what dpreview recently said, this lens produces some of the most pleasing images, even wide open. I imaging my results are quite a bit different than theirs since I don’t photograph resolution charts

This post is my attempt at a real world impression, not a review. Reviews photographing test charts, and other scientific measurements do nothing to show weather a lens will be considered good, or useful.

More after the jump…

Since I got the Pentax FA 50mm/1.4 it has been on my camera more than any other lens. I used it a lot when I shot film, and it was the first lens that I mounted on my K100DSuper when I got it home. On a Pentax dSLR, it has an equivelent feild of view of a 75mm lens on a 35mm film body. If I had been asked 5 years ago if I would ever use a 75mm for anything other than portraits the answer would have been no.

I use my 50mm so much it leads the number 2 lens by more than twice the exposures. That’s an overwhelming win for this lens, and despite what dpreview recently said, this lens produces some of the most pleasing images, even wide open. I imaging my results are quite a bit different than theirs since I don’t photograph resolution test charts

Despite the 50mm focal length being duplicated in three of my zoom lenses(DA*16-50/2.8, DA*50-135/2.8, DA18-55/3.8-5.6), there is something about working with a prime lens that seems to force me to think differently with my camera, the extra speed helps too!

I’ve started to organize my photos on flickr into sets based on the lens that took them, you can see more of my shots from the FA50/1.4 here

Whats your most used lens?

I’ve had a couple of small hiccups with the integrated intel video and my widescreen monitor, but this is nothing new. A quick installation of ’915resolution’ and I was up and running in widescreen once again. The built in Intel graphics work very will with the integrated compiz fusion graphic features enabled by default. Hardy Heron exibits a level of polish that is on par with OSX. The extra graphical features are not of the gee-whiz variety, like OSX, they provide a pleasing and integrated level of animation into the desktop.

Aside from being an LTS (long term support) release, 8.04 boasts several updated packages and enhancements including:

• GNOME 2.22
• Firefox 3 beta
• Pulse Audio
• Policy Kit
• Transmission
• Brasero
• KVM (virtualization) now integrated into Kernel 2.6.24
• iSCSI Support
• Active Directory Integration
• Memory Protection
• Wubi
• Xorg 7.3

You can read more about these new features, and try the Beta out for your self by visiting the realse info page.

I’m very excited about seeing what the final release will look like once its available on April 24th.