REVIEW OF MAGICJACK PHONE

The MagicJack phone is a simple device which is specifically designed to connect your regular [and current] land-line phone to the internet for Voice Over IP calling.

I ran into one of the project managers of MagicJack from a different business deal and he sent a phone for review. I’ve mentioned the MagicJack phone before, but this is my first experience using the product.

OVERVIEW

The MagicJack is a small device [2.5″ x 1.5″] and works as a USB dongle which connects to your computer via USB port. The MagicJack phone does not require a Hi-Speed USB connection and thus will work on your front USB connection of a PC tower or the slower ports off your laptop docking station.

The USB MagicJack costs about $35-$40 depending on where you get it. You then pay $19 [the year after you buy it] for unlimited calling in the United States, Canada and parts of central America. Calls outside this region are then chargeable, but very reasonable. I looked up rates to the UK at it was $0.02 per minute. Not bad at all.

WHY IT’S UNIQUE

The MagicJack phone is unique because it has a regular phone jack connected to the dongle. This means ANY phone can be plugged into the device and used for VoIP calling (more…)

Review: BFG 9800 GTX Video Card

Luigi had some of his clan review the BFG 9800 GTX Video Card over at i4u gadgets and I wanted to pass along their findings:

The BFG 9800 GTX runs on the NVIDIA 9800 GTX GPU. The core clock of the card runs at 675 MHz, the shader clock is 1688 MHz and the memory clock is 2200 MHz. the card has a 256-bit memory interface and a memory bandwidth of 70.4GB/sec. the BFG 9800 GTX has 128 stream processors. The card features 512MB of GDDR3 RAM and the card is PCI Express 2.0 compliant. Other features include HDMI capable with adapter and HDCP capable for protected HD content. Read the entire review: (more…)

Luigi of I4U had some time yesterday to review the PNY IronKey USB 4GB UFD. In short it’s a great security device but you give up performance for such security.

The PNY IronKey uses AES encryption which is always on and keys generated by the on-board cryptochip uses FIPS 140-2 true compliant random number generation. Since the IronKey uses the cryptochip the keys used to generate access never leave the UFD (and onto computer).

The PNY IronKey has an on board stealth browser via Firefox and is entirely incased with a water tight sealant which sits underneath the rugged, outside enclosure. (more…)

Several weeks ago I picked up a 1 penny (yes 0.01) card reader for microSD cards from USB Fever. Today, I set aside some time to see how well the little bugger performs…and to my surprise, very well.

Introduction:

The microSD USB Card Reader is very compact and comes with mini lanyard and plastic case. The device is unique in that all components for the card reader sit inside the USB Type-A connector. It makes for an extremely small and portable reader, and can be, at times, difficult to pull out from a stubborn USB port. However, given the idea of what this product is all about - compact, portable performer - it didn’t bother me too much.

I compared the performance of a direct connect of the microSD card through the USB card reader to the microSD adapter provided to me from SanDisk when I purchased the flash memory. When using the SanDisk adapter, I did need a USB card reader which could contribute to (more…)

Review of Tendon 6 foot DVI cable.

I had the opportunity to test one of Tendon’s 6 foot DVI cables. Video is critical to what I do for a living as I’m on Photoshop all day with a 24 inch Dell monitor and 20 inch Dell monitor next to that.

I’m very happy with the quality of the video image and the physical cable. The video is crisp with no ghosting or artifacts running at 1900×1200 resolution. The physical cable is distinguished from other makers by the fact that it has (more…)

hField Wi-Fire Review

hField sent GetUSB.info their latest WiFi signal boost device the USB Wi-Fire for product review. Below are the details from our Wi-Fire review.

Wireless Local Area Networks are by far the least expensive and most convenient way to stay connected. However, using WiFi technology means we live with limitations. The biggest limitation, and most obvious from the term “wireless local area network” is the distance between access point and receiver. To that end, hField develops WiFi extenders to boost signal strength, increase connection speed and improve reception.

The hField Wi-Fire is a directional antenna with a highly sensitive receiver designed to increase signal strength and connection speed. hField includes their proprietary software which also aids in the optimization effort. It’s important to understand the Wi-Fire is not a wireless router, but rather an add-on device to boost signal strength on a laptop or workstation which is receiving a wireless router signal.

The Review: (more…)

It would be nice to have $250,000 and about 5 years to review every iPod speaker system available in the market. Since that’s not going to happen we did have the chance to review one of the top models, the Klipsch iGroove HG.

The original model was released in late 2004 with an updated version, the iGroove HG (black) released in 2006. The look, feel and design of the HG model is fantastic. It’s black lacquer shinny look, solid weight and well built speaker system make it a top choice for anyone in the market looking for an iPod speaker system.

Most iPod speaker systems are more into jumping onto the band-wagon of “iPod” than producing a quality product. The iGroove HG does not fall into this category. First off, the iGroove HG comes with a real (more…)