So you want an mp3 player, but you don’t want an Apple for whatever reason.  Might i suggest the Sansa line of mp3 players. 

For the most part the Sansa line of products, by Sandisk (the flash drive guys), are competitively priced, or cheaper than the comparable Apple player.  They usually have more options to boot! 

Lets take the big 3: 

1. Sansa Clip.  This does battle with either the Apple Shuffle, or Nano.  It comes in 1,2, or 4 GB sizes and includes a FM tuner, small screen, and plays mp3 and wma files.
2. Sansa Fuze.  This does battle with either the Apple Nano, or Ipod classic.  It comes in 2,4, or 8 GB flavors. The Fuze has a very nice 1.9″ color screen.  The Fuze also includes a FM tuner, but also comes with a voice recorder and the ability to view photos.  The Fuze even allows for expansion via a microSD card slot!  The Fuze plays mp3, wma, and mpeg4.
3. Sansa View.  This goes head to head with the apple ipod.  it comes in 8,16, or 32 GB sizes.  It has all the features of the fuze, with a larger 2.4″ screen.  it also plays mp3, wma, wmv, h264, and non-drm AAC.

A bonus for the kids:  The Sansa Shaker: A simple mp3 player that you shake to change songs.  no screen, but it has 2 headphone jacks for shareing and a built in speaker.

All the Sansa players play Audible files, and are easily sync’ed with most major music subscription services.   It has to be pointed out though that they will not sync with itunes, nor will they play apple-drm protected files.  It is nice to have an option besides the apple ipod line of mp3 players.  the Sansa line is usually cheaper or the same price as the apple products, with more features.  If you don’t have too many apple itunes downloads, look into the Sansa line.

Leave a comment for what you want to hear about next, or drop me a line at thetechchip@gmail.com

Should i start a twitter for this blog?

Drobo is touted as the “World’s first storage robot.” While pricey it appears to be pretty much as advertised. 

Drobo is the little black box you see in the picture to the right.  For just under $500 you get the box, add whatever SATA drives you want and you can get going.  What DROBO does is automatically back up all you data, seamlessly.  DROBO does not care whether or not the drives are the same; it creates one giant drive from all the available drives.  What happens if a drive goes bad you say?  DROBO alerts you to the fact that the drive is bad and moves all data that was on that drive to another one.  Pull your bad drive and slap in another drive and your good to go.  Connect DROBO to a DroboShare and you have all the same automatic backup via GigaBit Ethernet connection.

The beauty of this system is that you do not need to know anything about backup, RAID, etc. just plug in DROBO and the little robot takes care of it all!

Check out Drobo, it isn’t cheap – but it has easy and convenient down pat.

TheTechChip   www.thetechchip@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Hey there everybody.

I have not forgotten about this blog… its just been really quiet in the tech world recently – i think everyone is recovering from the one-two punch of CES followed by Macworld.

So here is today’s brief post – a link to an older article explaining how the BioHazard symbol came to be:

”We tested the sample symbols across the country — the marketing department
had survey groups to test different labels for Dow products. There were half
a
dozen of our original symbols in this survey of 24 different symbols. The
rest
were recognizable, like the peanut man for Planter’s peanuts, the
Texaco star,
the Shell Oil symbol, the Red Cross and the swastika. They were
asked to look at
them and then asked to guess at what each one meant. The
biohazard symbol got
the fewest guesses. Then we went back one week later to
the same set of people
and the same set of symbols, plus 36 more common
ones, and asked them which of
these did they remember the best. And they
picked out the biohazard symbol.

The Full article can be read after the link.

http://www.hms.harvard.edu/orsp/coms/BiosafetyResources/History-of-Biohazard-Symbol.htm

Have a nice day, and stay tuned for more fun!
TheTechChip – Contact: TheTechChip@gmail.com

Hi there. My name is Chip, hence the play on words in the name of this blog – The Tech Chip.

My hope is to bring you all the interesting, exciting, or at least intriguing aspects of the tech world. Things are changing daily, so there should be a lot to talk about. I am hoping to cover the gamut of stuff, from household gadgets to the newest supercomputers, to the coolest toys your kids (and even YOU) will want. All this while also providing my feelings on the gadgets usefulness and practicality.

Some background on me, I am 34 years old and I have worked at Channel 3 for 15 years as a video editor. Its my job to take the video and sound from around the world, and around Connecticut, and condense it down to what you see on the evening news each day. Beyond working with all the fun toys that Channel 3 lets me play with, I have been extremely interested in computers since the early Commodore 64 days. I remember vividly going to my friend’s house to use his computer to program games, it took forever for the programs to run because the computer had to search the cassette tape to find the right spots to pull the information from.

Fast forward to my first computer, an IBM PCjr. Not a great computer (no hard drive, just a 5 1/4 inch floppy and 2 cartridge slots) but it was mine! I spent hours programming in basic, making spreadsheets, and playing games. Eventually I was able to buy my first laptop (a 486 Pentium ThinkPad with a screaming 128k phone modem!) and have progressed to the point of having 5 computers (3 homebuilt) running in my house on a home network. Add in a love for gadgets and pretty much all cutting edge technology, and you get me: a self proclaimed techno-geek.

This brings me to today’s big tech news. If you follow tech at all, you know that today was the start of MacWorld 2008. Kicking off with Steve Jobs keynote address delivered around 12:15 our time. I am not a Mac Fan boy, as you can tell by my computer history, but I do love my ipod! So I spent my lunchtime glued to the web tracking what is new from Cupertino. Here are the bullet points:

1. Time capsule: this is basically an apple airport combined with a hard drive, and running time machine. If you have Macs in your house this seems like a nice way to backup all your computers automatically and wirelessly. Not really useful if your running pc’s though.
2. A minor software upgrade to the I-phone. And the ipod-touch gets a lot of the same abilities as the I-phone without the phone: catch is you have to pay an additional $20 and connect via wi-fi.
3. Movie Rentals. You will now be able to rent a movie instead of only buy a movie from the itunes store. Rentals will cost $2.99 for older, $3.99 for new releases. You will have 30 days to start your movie, and 24hrs to view it in once started. During the 24hrs you can watch it as many times as you please.
4. Apple TV: take 2. This appears to be the same old Apple TV hardware with newer software and they knocked the price down to $229.
5. And finally the showstopper: the Mac book Air. It’s basically a really tiny, light Mac book. Besides the super lightweight, and super small form factor. Nice features of the Mac book Air are, multi touch-gesture support just like the iphone and I-touch. Choice of 80gb hard drive or 64gb solid-state drive (think thumb drive). All that with a 5hr battery life is pretty impressive. One question I have, with such a small form factor: how rugged will it be?

Anyways, that brings you up to speed with me, and the big goings on of the day in the tech world. Talk to you soon!

Chip

Contact me via email anytime: TheTechChip@gmail.com