Electric shavers!
 

More expensive than that in my experience (Gillette Mach 3, which works well for me); I should probably see if I can get a better deal on line.

My experience from long, long ago, coupled with what others who have switched tell me, suggests that electric is quicker. Hell, in a pinch, you can shave in the car.

Electric shavers!
 

If you haven't found it yet, it was on this forum. Start with Ollie's post and keep going.
shaver thread
eta, enh - don't bother - it's not much more help than you got today.

Electric shavers!
 

Costco has 'em for about a buck a blade.

In a pinch, you can shave with a blade in a car too. Either way, I wouldn't do it. I prefer to read the paper instead.

U
 

We have the 32" AQUOS and I concur in the rec. However, any flat panel HD will put you over your $3K budget once you add the Tivo and the DVD player. If you can put up with anything not hung on a wall, you're a good candidate for LCD projection, which keeps you under budget.

Don't spend more than $120 on a DVD player. With very rare exceptions, no player over $120 has exceptional picture quality. Just look for anything with progressive scan and component outputs, and wait for an HD DVD standard to emerge. Until then, any DVD player will seem low quality compared with true HD anyway. It's 480p, for chrissake.

The real question is whether to get the DirecTV HD Tivo. I have it and am only moderately satisfied with it. It's as expensive as fuuuuuck and probably due for price reductions soon, now that DirecTV will be competing with Tivo in the DVR arena. If you get it, go to Circuit City or Best Buy and pay for the extended warranty, because these things are flaky as shit. The HDMI output on mine went kaput within a month, and now I'm using component outputs. Ah, well. It's still pretty much the only way to timeshift HD, so you gotta suck it up. If that doesn't sound like a ringing recommendation, it's 'cause it isn't.

When there is a CableCard HD Tivo, I will consider switching back to cable. A satellite company making me put up an antenna for local channels in HD is boo-shit.

Electric shavers!
 

I switched from a norelco reflex action to a Braun synchro (the self-cleaning ones) and I have been very happy. The only maintenance needed is replenishing the cleaning liquid every 2 months or so and replacing the foil every coupld of years. Not bad at all, in my view.

U
 

There is an alternative, though NFH will want to kick my ass. If you have comcast in your area, their DVR (built into their cable boxes) does HD just fine. It is only 40 hrs SD/20 hrs HD, but it suits our purposes. Oh, and it's free (as opposed to $1000).

U
 

First of all, you're smoking crack. But that's a discussion for another day.
Second of all, if you're not getting local channels in HD dude, you're just not trying hard enough.
Third, yeah about the HDTivo - our first one came out of the box bad. Our second one is good. Our only problem recently has been poor reception due to Mr. Owl sitting on the dish and throwing off the alignment. Easily solved though.
Seriously about the local channels. Smart guy like you can figure out how to lie to DirecTV and get them. Desperate Housewives in HD is the only way.

Ipod shuffle
 

Is a fucking winner. Small as shit. The 1gig version holds 180 songs at 192 kbps. Simple to use. Sounds great. Slays that RIO piece of shite I used on and off between returns and being broke.

Motorola v551
 

I just got one the other day. It came out the same day as the razor and has the same features internally, in the standard clamshell size. It's a great phone, especially if you aren't in the mood to drop 5 hondos on a relatively disposable item like a cell phone.

Electric shavers!
 

My 7 year old needs to change his razor more than once every 10 days. I can shave about 4 times before I feel the difference and swap out the blade (I also periodically shave with a straight razor just for the hell of it)

U
 

Um, there is a difference between "local channels" and "ABC/CBS/NBC affiliates from LA/NY." Weren't you just bitching about not getting the Superbowl in HD because DTV doesn't carry a national HD feed of FOX?

Other "local channels" will be permanent problems for DTV. Such as PBS, which is important to me (duh). Comcast carries some (not all) of KQED digital subchannels; what are the chances DTV can put up enough birds to give people their local channels in HD?

U
 

BTW, are you quibbling with the advice that anyone paying over $120 for a DVD player is wasting their money? If so, put up or shut up. 480p is 480p is 480p. Unless you're paying for a separate component interlacer, in which case you're fucking recockulous.

Until there's an HD DVD standard, consider all standard def DVD players a fungible commodity, i.e., don't pay extra for the Sony.

U
 

Don't get me started. There's more to a dvd player than just the fucking number of scan lines. Think computer and filters and why in the fuck would anyone even put more money into the technology if there was no fucking difference. You need to step away from the crack pipe.

U
 

Have you priced DVD players recently? I'm siding with Atticus on this one. I spent around $200 for a combo DVD player/VCR for my mom this year (her first DVD player). $200 is basically top of the market. Including DVD burner for her to use for all her old VHS tapes. It has features that will never be used by my mom with her 15 year old tv.

HD isn't there yet. Hell, they're all still arguing over format for that. So until that is available and it is clear who wins that pissing match, spending more than $120 on a DVD player is fucking burning money. If you really have that much to waste, I'll send you my address and you can send me a check.

U
 

Forgive me. My dvd player doubles as an audiophile CD player as well. And way over $120.

U
 

Methinks Atticus has been reading this:

DVD Info

For the record--I recently bought a Cyberhome progressive dvd player for $29.99 from Best Buy. Works great on the plasma tv. No paying 10000 for an upscaler. Porky's still looks just as good.

U
 

Dude, you got ripped. My Desay player was $19.99 from Radio Shack after rebate.

U
 

Fuck.

U
 

Comcast sucks. Part of what is so wonderful about satellite TV is that they are reasonably innovative.* The picture and sound are still much better, and the hardware is much easier to use and has better capability. My parents have fucking adds all over the screens when you try to use the guide.

I'm still happy to pay a bit of a premium for dealing with a satellite provider, too. Cable companies know that you are a captive customer. If you haven't switched by now, you won't. So they treat you accordingly, run a scare commercial about satellite tv ("Gee, Maude, we got satellite tv, and now we can't watch Andy Rooney because it's snowing. I wish we still had cable.") every once in a while, and they keep an uninformed or otherwise unable customer, and that's their business.

Say what you want about satellite tv and their customer services, but, they're the REASON the cable companies have innovated at all and tried to come up with the stuff the satellite companies are doing or actually realized how poor their customer service was. Sure, DirecTV is Rupert, but it's among his least distasteful ventures. I also had Dish Network for a while, and they were impressive, too.

Is Comcast still AT&T? Is SBC buying that, too? Will it even close?

40 SD, 20 HD makes no sense, the multiple of recording space needed for HD is something like 7.

I don't know of anyone who has gone from satellite to cable. Period. Once you make the leap, you never look back.

* Sure, I am annoyed a bunch of the stuff that the HDTivo and others have the hardware to do is disabled, but they're still much better than the cable company.

U
 

I'm on my third HDTiVO, and they're getting better. Forget the Best Buy stuff. For $8/month, you can get the full DirecTV coverage where they deal with all that stuff. I knew it was going to be worth it, and I was right. It is cheaper, and I think that they take better care of you, than the Best Buy plan. Make sure to check on the terms, though. It seemed to me to be too good a deal with the number of problems I have been hearing about, so they may be taking a loss on it for customer goodwill.

There are significant technical reasons that so had to use an antenna for a long time. It generally required new satellites and all sorts of technical work that I can't begin to understand. It was also related to disagreements they've had with the networks. My HDTiVO does the display and recording seamlessly.

The cable card stuff is cool, but I will have always have components (amp, receiver, music source, etc.), so I don't really care if I have one extra one. The only reason it would be worth it to go back to cable would be to get old-school, cable-tuner-in-tv-style switching. The drawback on the digital signal is that it has to train and that you hae to wait a second when you switch channels. Makes old school flipping worthless, and I miss that sometimes.

U
 

I agree that comcast sucks, but I have to say that their HD DVR product works very well. Would I like to go to HDTiVo and DirecTV? Sure. Do I watch enough TV to make $1,000 (for a box that doesn't work well, from the comments here and elsewhere) sound at all tempting? Hell no. I'll take my free Comcast DVR and go put my $1,000 to better use.

Oh and as for the ATT comcast thing, COmcast was never ATT here (Philadelphia, COmcast's home city).

U
 

Fair enough. Despite the problems, I love my HDTiVo. Sure, $1000 is a lot, but being an early adopter is expensive. It's far better (and TiVos are in generally far better) than the similar devices provided by other vendors and cable companies. It was worth it for me, and the recording time is much longer than the other devices and it's easy to upgrade. The greatest benefit is that the digital signal is saved directly to disk without being decoded, which retains all the information and results in, from what I have read and in my opinion, much higher audio and video quality.

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

So, I am in love with my Blackberry integration in Outlook, and I have been very diligent about putting all my contacts, calendar appoinments, tasks, etc. in there, and then I always have them with me. I also use the phone function of my Blackberry, and, after a few 7100t hurdles and problems, it's really nice to get caller ID (with name as provided from contacts) for most of my calls.

However, I want to move all my personal calendar appointments, contacts and tasks to a personal version of Outlook on a home machine, which is synced up to a personal e-mail account. So, a few questions:

Is there any way I can have my BB sync with two different sets of data in Outlook and keep them totally separate?

How have others resolved this problem? I may just keep everything in my work Outlook, but I don't like the idea of all that information being accesible to my firm's IT personal, e.g. Task --> Rock dtb's world next time I am in NYC.

Any suggestions?

U
 

Frankly, I have no idea how the Comcast DVR stores the HD signals, but, to my eyes (and I will admit I'm not an extreme videophile) the HD produced by the DVR is pretty much indistinguishable from HD broadcasts in real time (720p). Is it perfect? No.I just can't justify the $1000 price difference given how little I use it.

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

Interesting problem. I've never tried keeping separate outlook files, but I would imagine you could simply create a new outlook tasks/contacts/whatever file, select not to share them on the network at work (i.e. keep them in Personal Folders, as opposed to your main mailbox) then select how you want to sync with Outlook at home.

I sync my BB at home with my Mac and have a similar setup, syncing my BB at work with my work-related outlook folders, and at home with my home stuff.

Comcast Sucks
 

Ohmygod, I have a sock.

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

Interesting. How do you tell it which files to sync?

Blackberry/Outlook Integration
 

You can configure the sync engines (Intellisync on the PC, PocketMac BB on the Mac) which files to sync.

I Left My Wallet in El Segundo.
 

You make a pretty good case for the defense, but you're fighting an uphill battle making this point the week DTV announced rate increases.

U
 

Of all the verbal tics you might have picked up from the Administration, you pick this one? Knock. It. Off.

U
 

Me and McClellan are like *that*.

I Left My Wallet in El Segundo.
 

Fair enough. For my expenses in that price range (say $30-75/month) for somewhat commodified but not completely fungible services, price is not the most important driver for me. Maybe I should be more concerned, but, as far as I can tell, the costs of my local cable options, DirecTV and Dish network are all in the same ballpark. The only hardware I have ever paid much for (maybe $100 for a couple extra old school receivers back in the day, I can't remember) was the HDTiVo, which cost me $1000. But it was worth it. Time-shifting HD is amazing. I am scared to put in a bigger drive, though, because of all the problems with the hard drives.

When I had it, I always had problems with cable service and picture, and their customer service is a nightmare. And digital cable sucks, I can't stand a system that has slow channel-to-channel switching without the ability to record programs automatically, which makes up for it in my mind. Maybe a modern digital cable DVR would change my mind.

Except for (a) unplugging a receiver I haven't been using for a while and having to use their automated system to reactive it and (b) my current problems with the HD TiVo (which I can accept because of the nature of the hardware, even though the cost is a drag), I have never had any problems with DirecTV or Dish Network (which I had from 2000-2002 and only left because I wanted an integrated TiVO receiver, and I wasn't super-happy with the Dish DVR*). I've been a satellite TV guy for five years. Hell, I even had one in NYC, and that was rare indeed. My building's cable service sucked, though, and I was glad that I was able to do it.

* Although apparently others do, as I was able to sell it on eBay for $100 more than I paid for it more than 18 months after I got it.

I just ordered a pair of Shure e3c's. I haven't received them yet but wil report back once I've listened to them for a while. FYI, I found them for significantly less that the $179 MSRP, and from an authorized dealer. PM me if you are interested.

On a related note, if you really want to geek out on headphone audiophile nonesense, check out headfi.org.

Headphones
 

I bought those as well. My only complaint is that all of the ear plug devices (plastic and sponge) are a little too big for my ears and they become uncomfortable after about 1/2 hour. They sound good and block out almost all external noise. Which can be bad if you're walking in traffic, or someone is trying to talk to you.

2.5mm
 

A while ago somebody asked about 2.5mm phone headsets for the plug that is standard for a lot of cell phones these days.

I recommended the one below, but didn't have a link. Mine has lasted a long time for me and still sounds great on both ends, I am told. It is the "RIM BlackBerry Headset" available on this page:

http://www.t-mobile.com/products/acc...ackBerry_7100t

I have used it with other cell phones, and it works great. $23.95 is pricey, but I previously had a bunch of $15 ones sound like crap and quit working, so I think that it's worth it.

Wireless speakers
 

Can anyone recommend a good wireless speaker system to add in to a home network? We'll want to add at least two and maybe three nodes and have the ability to control each separately.

Wireless speakers
 

Take with a grain of salt, but I know Sony has the Dream systems at the high end of their offerings. Tweeter and Best Buy don't carry the wireless systems, and their salesmen uniformly disparaged them due to operational (i.e,. failuure to operate if the line-of-sight is blocked, and failure to synchronize adequately) very recently. Basically, go to any store anywhere and, even though the store would make the most money from selling the most expensive product (at least I think they would), salesmen very recently (two weeks ago) were disparaging the systems.


Hello

Wireless speakers
 

They only make money if it stays in your house. The 2 worst ideas in the last 10 years have been wireless headphones and wireless speakers. It's easy to disparage something that is so so susceptible to any kind of RF in your house at all. Especially when you spend 20 minutes trying to explain how they work, only to have them come back 2 days later because they buzz when your refrigerator comes on, or the cut out when you turn your head, or they buzz when your cell phone is on, or they buzz when your computer's on, or they buzz when your dog walks in the room. There are very few environments where these things work at all. And even when they do, they sound like crap for the price because they're transmitting on a radio frequency.

Wireless speakers
 

Most Chicago stores don't even sell them due to potential interference. If you live in a big city, I would recommend against wireless.

Wireless speakers
 

I'd say more that it's the two most poorly executed ideas. The idea is great; the technology and/or clear spectrum prevents its realization.

That said, surely by the time you're investing heavily in wireless speakers and what not, you're better off just paying tweeter or their subcontractor to come wire your house with speaker wire and install some in-wall speakers.