January 18, 2008 by rfhicks.

Well I made the trip to the SonyStyle store in Fashion Valley today to see Sony’s little 11” OLED television. I kindly struck up a conversation with the young man at the store’s concierge asking permission to take pictures of the television with my Olympus digital camera. He told me that he couldn’t let me take pictures in the store. I then asked him if it would be okay to take a few pictures with my cell phone camera. He said that he thought that would be okay. I snapped about 6 or 8 pictures of the television and then he changed his mind and said that was enough. I then touched the television and commented on how rich the picture was and said that the television was anoxeric compared to most of the LCD televisions on the market. I walked around the store afterwards looking at all the other highly priced merchandise that Sony had to offer. Just before I left the store to go to the food court and grab some pizza I was approached by an older man that appeared to be a senior sales clerk sporting a blue tooth dongle and an earring in his ear. He gruffly announced to me that it was Sony’s policy that no pictures were allowed in the store. I hated to break his heart and tell him that I had already snagged 6 or 8 with my Motorola Razr.

When I had returned from the food court gorging on Sbarro’s pizza and feeding some grateful red wing blackbirds I was walking past the SonyStyle store once again where I brazenly snapped a picture of two sales clerks that were standing at the concierge. I guess I can say that the mission was accomplished.

Posted in OLED | No Comments »

September 22, 2007 by rfhicks.

It has been about five months now since I have built my computer now and have been patiently waiting for Creative Labs to write the software drivers that will support their X-1 Fatality series sound card. Creative Labs continues to be silent on the issue. There a lot of people at the Creative Labs forum that are frowning over the lack of support this corporation has refused to offer. There are many users like myself that have built a Duo Core machine with 4Gb of Ram and Windows Vista and unwittingly have invested in one of the many different versions of Soundblaster sound cards that Creative Labs manufactures only to find out that the devices have a plethora of issues with Windows Vista or simply don’t work at all.

I have spent the last couple of months checking the Creative Labs web site three or four times a week only to find scores of dissatisified users seeking out some sort of solution or updated drivers that will make their shiny new sound cards work. Many users are vowing that this will be the last piece of hardware they will ever purchase from Creative Labs. I am considering boycotting Creative Labs also.

Meanwhile I have found a way to accomplish what I set out to do, that is, record five or ten minutes of my acoustic guitar and transfer the audio to my computer and incorporate this into some video projects that I have in mind.

My solution is the Edirol R-09 made by Roland. I have spent about twenty minutes here recently with the device and recorded about 7 minutes of my acoustic guitar. The device accepts SD memory cards and has two internal stereo microphones. It is powered by two AA batteries and has a OLED display that is easy to read. I believe this little device will have me recording my acoustic guitar much more often since I am able to quickly accomplish the small tasks that I had intended to do in the first place. I would recommend this to any amateur musician such as myself and at the same time warn him away from the things that Creative Labs manufactures.

Posted in OLED, Computers | No Comments »