 |
My Recommendations
Check back here often as I
update this page on a regular basis
Here is my list of things
I recommend on a regular basis to my friends and clients
|
Web Hosting
APlus.net - I think APlus offers some pretty good
services. For one, lots of space. For $9.95 a month you get 1.1GB
of space! Man, that's a lot. Not only that, Aplus gets major
kudos not only from me but c|net and other major players that
review hosting services.
If you wanna throw me a bone
and gimme a credit click on the graphic below or this link and
I'll get (i think) $10 bucks.
|
Spam Filter for Outlook
Matador by MailFrontier.com
~ If you want a really cool very easy to use Spam filter software
program for Outlook, then look no further. I've tested and used
this software package myself and I like it. I'm currently writing
a review about complete with pictures and what-not but for now
just take my word for it. It'll set you back $29 but its money
well spent. |
Share your Favorite Links
Furl by Mike Giles
~ Furl was introduced to me by one of my favorite clients, Ann
Stone located in Burlingame California. Furl lets you add and
subtract your growing list of favorites, interesting articles
and what-not with your friends and family and well as the growing
list of Furl'ies. Its a really cool way to share those great
gold nuggets on the net. http://www.furl.net |
File Syncing Software
AJC Directory Synchronizer by AJC
Software ~ I have reviewed about 2 dozen file Syncing
programs out there and based on my humble opinion, this is the
best one money can buy. Read the article. |
|
 DVD
Recorders
There are lots of these babies out there right now. A few months
ago you had to mortgage the house to get one of these and they
were mostly only available to video production houses and beta
testers but now you too can drop one of these darlings into your
home PC. My favorite is the Pioneer
DVR-105. It offers the best mix of features right now
with built in formatting for all DVD & CDR & RW formats
today.
DVD Dual Layer Drives
Sony DRX700A or the OEM Equivalent
the DW-D18A
These new Double Layer DVD recorders
bring new capability to your computer. You can store up to 4
hours of high quality MPEG-2 video (or up to 8 hours of MPEG-1
video) or up to 8.5GB of stuff on a single sided disc with 2
recordable layers. DVD+R DL discs are write once discs of the
DVD “+” format, and once recorded they are playable
in standard consumer DVD players (mostly) and computer DVD-ROM
drives. The new Double Layer drives from Sony record the popular
DVD+R and DVD+RW 4.7GB standard discs and CD-R/RW discs too!
|
 Hard
Drives
Nothing but a Western
Digital will do for me. IBM sold their entire division
to Hitachi some time back because of all the trouble they had
with their drives, so stay away from anything IBM and I would
suspect that Hitachi will have low quality in these in next few
quarters as well. |
|
Computer Cases
www.antec.com
| CoolerMaster
Antec. Antec is the best most
premier computer case maker money can buy. Their cases aren't
cheap, but made like solid blocks of rock!
|
 Video
Cards
ATI is my favorite right now with the NVidia
a close second. ATI has always treated me and my few returns
with class and has never screwed me over like NVidia has... it's
a long story...I'll post it some day... the 9800
is a fab board and the 9900 (coming soon) is a monster! |
|
PDA/Handheld
Blackberry 857 or 957
 I've
had all the PDAs out there. Palm, IPAQ and Blackberry.
They all keep track of your calendar, todos, and contacts. But
for me I like the simplicity of the Blackberry. I currently own
a Blackberry
857. By using your thumb you can scroll to any function
and click the wheel using you thumb to access any function. If
you get good with it you can also type while holding it with
one hand. I won't recommend using it while driving but I have
been grabbing it to look up a quick phone number at stop lights.
The most handy feature of having a Blackberry IS the wireless
email. Hands down, the easiest thing in the world to use over
ANY other handheld. You won't get any color but you will get
about a week in battery usage without recharging! The Palm is
second to the Blackberry in this department. The IPAQ is a dead
last. 4 hours of constant use at best. You can buy lots of attachments
for the Palm and the IPAQ but for me the novelty drops off really
fast leaving you with a little box of expensive gizmos under
your desk.
Where's the best place to get
a Blackberry with email service? I think its Earthlink.
When I got mine it was $350 and $40 per month for the service.
Sony Clie SJ22
A very very close contender
is the Sony Clie SJ22. I used the Blackberry for about a year
handing is off to my wife for her use in business because I found
responding to email's, while driving, in the car, was a bit to
problematic for me...
I picked up my Sony at Best Buy
in San Carlos CA for a mear $129 (Sept. 15th 2003). It's Palm
based with a absolutely fabulous color screen with the most easy
to read text of any PDA I have ever seen. It's size, and hand
held friendliness in my humble opinion is unmatched.
|
|
 Motherboard
Asus. Day after day, install after install, these motherboards
last and last. My favorite board right now is the Asus A7V600.
This board simply rock with outstanding features.
If you're looking for a high
end motherboard look for further than Asus again. The new highly
toughted A7V8X power house sporting a new chipset. Check out
the Asus website to see more details. Also, recently announced
by my wholesaler ASI, the Intel
|
Monitor (All
Purpose)
 Samsung.
Go out and get yourself a Samsung monitor. I think Sammy has
displaced NEC for monitor quality, reliability and service. I've
purchased nothing but Sammys today for my clients and one has
yet to go bad. My favorite is the 17" model (750). Right
now I am using a 19" SyncMaster 191T that I picked up for
$650. Is got a 500:1 contrast ratio and a really nice black mat
screen. I can look at it all day, and I do. |
Laptop(s)
First place tie is Sony & HP. My third choice would be Apple.
Sony gives a lot of free preinstalled software for video making,
most of which is somewhat mediocre but for someone using a laptop
for video editing one must assume that you're a low-key video
producer yes? I'm not discounting laptops for doing video and
graphic editing, heck, I use a Sony Viao PCG-GRV680 myself to
run my business, perform onsite backups of client servers and
for everyday use. All I'm saying is laptops, although they come
a long way aren't up to snuff when it comes to serious video
editing. Only a desktop will fit that job description. |
|
|
MediaPlayer or iTunes
 Leave it to Microsoft
for picking a truly perfect name for there product. I know a
lot of you out there sneer at the thought of putting another
MS product on your computer but in the case you don't have to,
it's already there. And if you don't have it you can download
it for free. Windows Media Player lets you do more with less
than any other Media Player out there right now. I guess if you
have unlimited resources like Billy does, you can't go wrong.
Anyway, there are other really good Players out there like WinAmp,
Real Players/Real One, Apple's QuickTime 5 and others, but WMP
is the best so far in my opinion. The one thing I like about
it first of all is no popup ads asking to purchase the full version
every 30 days. That's the main problem with Real Player. I can't
stand to be nagged over and over about all the damn ads from
Real's media player everytime I load it. It also puts a icon
in my startup group and in my system tray and in my startup group
and on my desktop along with a bunch of other crap that really
does more to hurt what they are trying to do rather than help.
Huhh.. back to WMP...
I like WMP because one, you can add built in compatible players
for MP3, WMA and several others to it as easily as 123. By default
WMP lets you copy songs from your favorite CDs and store them
on your PC in their own WMA (Windows Media) format. A WMA file
is like a MP3 file just a little smaller. If you are a Compaq
iPAQ user like me, that enables you to store almost twice as
many songs on your iPAQ for music listening than a MP3 player.
Nice. Also you can turn off the music protection stuff if you
like. Another cool feature is DVD playing. With one simple to
use program, Windows Media Player lets you listen, copy, move
songs to you MP3 player or iPAQ, categorize, even purchase music
directly from the web to your PC. It's cool.
|
|
Cool Freeware
 Panorama 32
When I got my Apple G4 Duelie the first thing I liked about it
was the automatic wallpaper background changer. You know, after
a few minutes the background picture on your desktop rotates
through a folder of pictures you have to the grand kids or your
favorite race car.
Panorama 32 is an unobtrusive,
but powerful and flexible, Wallpaper Manager for Windows 95 and
Windows NT.
Support for JPEG, GIF and PNG
files! Use JPEG, GIF and PNG files as wallpaper. Change your
wallpaper at any interval--from every second up to every 24 hours.
Runs in the Explorer's Tray Notification Area (The System Tray).
If you want it to, of course. The wallpaper may be changed in
random or sequential order. You can choose to automatically tile
small bitmaps. Automatically search your hard disk for image
files. Supports MS Plus! scaling.
|
|
Networking Products
 WRT54G DSL/Cable router
Consistently, Linksys
is my favorite networking company 90% of the time. Cisco is my
second and if you've seen Cisco prices you'll know why. I only
use Cisco stuff for really advanced systems of which I only run
into about twice a year. My most used most reliable unit from
Linky is the BEFSR41 DSL/Cable Router. This coupled with a good
DSL modem like 2Wire
or a Alcatel
Speed Touch Home and you've got one heck of a good solid
network.
D-Link DI-624
 In
the past I have had a lot of trouble with D-Link stuff. I considered
them a bottom-feeder product group. As of late I had the chance
to review and play around with a D-Link DI-624 DSL/Cable (Wired/Wireless)
Router. I have completely come away with the impression that
this is a pretty good product with the exception of tech support.
Read my article about the D-Link DI-624. Anyway, I would recommend
this product. It worked a bit better than my Linksys WRV54G wireless
at the office...
|
|
Wireless networking
Don't use wireless network equipment. 802.11 is not very secure.
That doesn't matter if you have nothing worth stealing, but these
guys can piggyback on your signal and slow your connection speed
without you knowing it.
 If
you live in apartment building or wanna share you DSL/Cable connection
in your home with the kids, use PowerLine
adapters. They use the power outlets in your house. You
still need a DSL/Cable Router but you can get away with a single
port one for under $35. Plug your Powerline Master Bridge adapter
into it then another Powerline adapter where ever you want a
internet connection and that's it!
|
|
 MP3 Player
There's no question here... The Apple iPod version 2 (the new
one) is the undisputed champ here. I've seen several MP3 players
and there are basically 2 types. You have the little pocket keychain
size ones that hold about 10 or 20 songs and run on batteries
and then you have the iPod and the Nomad.
The Nomad is a cool MP3 player,
don't get me wrong, but it's cheap plastic design and kinda goofy
controls put it way behind the iPod.
The iPod is sleek, sexier, and
very functional. Heck, you can even use it as a backup device
for your personal data files!
Nice Nice Nice - Get one!
|
|
Newsletters
Fred Langa's Langa List Newsletter (www.langa.com)
have one of if not the best computer newsletters on the planet.
Check it out.
|
... |
FREE
and
SPAM-PROOF!
CLICK
to sign up for
Fred Langa's award-winning e-newsletter. You'll see how to get
LOTS more from your hardware, software, and time online! |
|
 Ink Jet Cartridges
Several of my clients have been using MyInks.com
for their Epson, Canon and HP inkjet printers. I too have just
ordered |
|
Things I Don't Like
|
Linksys is starting to creep up my back site. As of Aug
2004, I have been returning more and more of their wireless routers
and replacing them with D-Link products. Apparently, the Linkys
are not holding connections to the wireless clients/computers
that are on the local persons home network. When I recently purchased
a D-Link DI-624 to "see" if it would do any better,
I was pleasantly surprised! Not only did it get and hold a wireless
connection but it did it at a greater distance. It's now my wireless
router of choice.
IBM Hard Drives
(too many bad ones)
Anything Intel
HP Printers look cheap these days, so I've started
looking at others like Epson, Lexmark and Minolta & Canon.
|
|
