Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Important Note: This giveaway is only available for residents of the United States.

This is the one and only hardware item that we have up for grabs in our birthday giveaway, and we’ve been able to play around with it for about a month now. It’s a USB Docking Station by StarTech that also happens to support a VGA input. How does it work? You can basically plug in several USB devices, a VGA monitor, ethernet cable, and more into this slim little dock. The dock then plugs into your Windows computer via a single USB cable.

Now I bet you’re wondering the same thing that I was in regards to the monitor support. With this dock you can essentially plug in an external monitor into your machine without needing an extra VGA port on your graphics card. How well can the single USB cable manage the monitor and other devices/cables plugged into it?

Not surprisingly it has some troubles playing videos or games that require a constantly refreshing screen. The USB cable just can’t provide the same bandwidth that a VGA cable can, plus it is also sharing the bandwidth with any other devices plugged into the dock. If you are able to set the color depth down to 16-bit instead of 32-bit you’ll notice a significant improvement, but you probably still won’t want to watch any videos or anything. If you’re just doing some word processing, web surfing, and other casual work this should suit your needs perfectly.

Here are some of the specs for the USB Docking Station by StarTech:

• Works with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista
• Supports resolutions up to 1600×1200 @ 32-bits & 1920×1200 @ 16-bits
• (4) USB 2.0 ports
• (1) VGA port
• (1) 10/100 Mbps RJ45 LAN port
• (1) 3.5mm speaker output
• (1) 3.5mm Mic input
• Dimensions: 7.99″ x 2.75″ x 0.75″
• Weight: 7.6oz

StarTech USB Docking Station Homepage

–The Giveaway–

We have (1) USB Docking Station (valued at $129.99) to giveaway today! All you have to do is drop a comment below providing both your name and email address in the appropriate fields. We obviously need your email address for contacting you in the event that you should win. Believe it or not we’ve actually had winners in previous giveaways get randomly selected, but since they didn’t provide an email address we had to pick someone else.

Just as with all of our giveaways we will be using a random number generator to determine the winners. For this round here is how we’re going to give out the licenses:

• 1 winner will be picked from comment numbers 1 through however many comments there are.

The winner of the USB Docking Station must be a resident of the United States.

Entries for the giveaway will be accepted up until December 11th at 7:00PM Central Time.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

April was a big month for us. Some of you may recall that it was then that we took the plunge and bought MacBook Pros. Thinking back, our first week was a bit painful. It took time to “re-train” our brains to think differently. Both Ryan and I are keyboard shortcut aficionados, meaning that we’re big fans and use them often. When switching between a Mac and PC, keyboard shortcuts are definitely different, and caused us some frustration.

By the end of May my brain had just about fully adjusted to the changes in operating systems and my fingers naturally seemed to do what they were supposed to do on a Mac. When I needed to copy something, I automatically pressed command + c instead of pressing ctrl + c out of habit. Life as far as computers was concerned, was going pretty well.

This all changed for me when I started my new job. The laptop I was issued has Vista installed and while I am excited that it is Vista and not XP (nothing against XP, I just enjoy Vista), it sure causes some brain confusion! Some of you probably know what I’m talking about if you have a Mac at home and a PC at work or visa versa. It gets confusing, doesn’t it? I can easily remember the shortcuts for each, it’s just that my brain can’t seem to remember which computer I’m on and allow my fingers to press the appropriate keys.

Even as I write this article (on a Mac) I have found myself with “brain confusion,” pressing fn + c to copy something instead of command + c (the fn key is in the same location as the ctrl key is). Other examples include pressing the Windows key and the spacebar on my Vista laptop expecting that the Start menu will appear and I’ll be able to start searching (Spotlight on a Mac – Command + Spacebar) .

Oh, and then there’s the issue of differences between applications. I use Office 2007 on the Vista laptop and Office 2008 on the Mac. They are very different from one another. Yet another example is with my screenshot software. On the Vista laptop I use SnagIt which uses completely different shortcuts than Skitch which I use on my Mac. I find myself trying to drag images from SnagIt, into applications like I do with Skitch, and of course, it doesn’t work.

To those of you who switch daily between a Mac and Windows, do you find yourself confused? Please tell me I’m not alone.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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It’s an iPhone 4… but not the original iPhone 4. Verizon Wireless became the first CDMA carrier in the States to call an Apple smartphone one of its own, and the resulting handset is eerily similar to the AT&T variant in most regards. That said, we’re sure that a few of you folks would have done things differently if given the design credentials needed to do so, and this is place for you to vent. Would you have added any features to this guy not already found on the GSM iPhone 4? Offered a Big Red-exclusive color? Thrown an LTE radio in there? Changed up the antenna layout? Included a secondary display, Echo-style? Go on and get creative in comments below — you never know what suggestions may shape the shape of the iPhone 5! (Or something like that.)

How would you change the Verizon iPhone? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A combination of good hardware and software features makes Samsung’s Galaxy Prevail Boost Mobile’s best phone.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Looking forward to April 19th? If you just so happen to hold a Windows Phone 7 device on AT&T, you are now. According to a leaked memo posted up over at Winrumors, Ma Bell has just wrapped up its testing of the famed NoDo update, and if all goes well, it’ll be pushed to end users on Tuesday. Owners of the LG Quantum and Samsung Focus will see it first, while HTC Surround owners will need to watch this video on loop until “mid-May.” Just think — next week, you’ll be copying and pasting this very article as often as you please. Huzzah!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

AT&T’s Windows Phone 7 NoDo update coming April 19th? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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