Electron Hut: Kyle Bedell’s Blog

A special thanks to Noah at Kanguru for providing a drive for review!

Flash drives are mostly commodity items at this point; the cost per megabyte on these portable storage devices has plummeted in recent years. I can remember paying $79 for a 16 megabyte USB key around 1999/2000. Now, you can buy a 16 gigabyte key for $39 if you shop around. In a world full of similar products, how do you differentiate yourself? As it turns out, there’s a sizable demand for secure flash drives, especially in the government sector. Armed with 256-bit AES hardware encryption, a built-in antivirus scanner (BitDefender with a year of updates included), and a durable case, the Defender Elite fits the bill. For government security buffs, the drive meets FIPS 140-2 standards.

The first thing you notice about the Defender Elite is its construction. Made out of anodized aluminum, its build quality is tier above the myriad plastic drives out there. In addition, the drive has been filled with epoxy to make it more difficult to access the flash memory chips inside. If yellow isn’t your style, you can also get the drive in green, red, blue, and tan.

The Defender Elite’s key differentiator is its software bundle: a combination authorization/authentication/antivirus app called Kanguru Defender Manager. When you first plug the drive in to a machine, the Kanguru Defender Manager automatically launches. A few quick setup steps later (including setting a password and configuring the update schedule for the built-in antivirus), and you’re ready to go.

Anytime the Defender Elite is plugged in after the initial setup, you’ll be asked to input your password before the drive’s data can be accessed. Before the password is entered, only a separate, unencrypted partition containing the Defender Manager software is available:

After entering your password, the secure partition is decrypted and this tray icon appears in the system tray:

A right click brings up a menu you can use to configure various features of the drive:

By default, the antivirus is configured to scan everything on the drive in real time; each time a file is added, the Defender Elite automatically scans it for viruses and malware. Definition updates are painless and handled automatically. Actual Defender updates are a breeze as well, although the process is a manual one. When an update was available during this review, the Defender Elite downloaded and launched an Update Wizard. I just clicked Next on the two pages of the Wizard, allowed the update to run, then un/replugged the drive. The whole process took less than a minute.

For those who are curious, the included software is 64-bit compatible (I tested on Windows 7 Ultimate) and DPI-aware. This was an unexpected bonus — I run my machine at 125% DPI (the resolution of my screen doesn’t change, but everything is approximately 25% larger). Many applications with fixed windows sizes that aren’t DPI-aware have buttons that are cut off. The Defender Manager, however, worked perfectly with no UI issues in that regard.

Ah, but what about performance? What good is an encrypted flash drive if it takes forever to read and write data? While far from the fastest drive I’ve ever seen (that honor goes to Patriot’s Xporter series, which I’ve seen read and write around 30Mb/sec), the Defender Elite 1Gb turned in decent numbers for an encrypted drive when I benched it with USBDeview. With write speeds around 6Mb/sec and read speeds around 20Mb/sec, the Defender is an average performer. Still, the write speeds are much better than any bargain bin USB drive (I know of a popular brand with a swiveling metal clip that gets 2Mb/sec), and the read speeds are up there with many 5400RPM notebook drives.

The Bottom Line: if you’re looking for a solid performer in the arena of encrypted flash drives, the Kanguru Defender Elite won’t let you down. With an easy-to-use software package, built-in antivirus, and solid construction, it stands up to physical and digital security requirements. The read and write speeds won’t blow you away, but they’re acceptable considering the overhead of the virus scanner and encryption. Available now directly from Kanguru with a starting price of $49 for a 1Gb drive.

A finalist at TechCrunch’s TC50 2008, the Fitbit has been a long time coming. A year after its debut, the wireless pedometer is finally shipping to the public! A few days ago, I received mine in the mail courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. So, what makes the Fitbit different from a $10 pedometer you can buy at the store, you ask?

• Improved step and activity tracking (courtesy of a gyroscopic motion sensor, the same one in the Nintendo Wii’s controller)
• Sleep tracking (measures when you fall asleep, how many times you wake up, etc.)
• Wireless uploading to Fitbit.com through the included base station
• Rechargable battery (the Fitbit clips on to the supplied base station)

The uploaded data is sent to your personal Dashboard at Fitbit.com, which takes your information and turns it in to this (click to enlarge):

In addition, the Fitbit.com site also offers a  meal tracking system with a user-maintained database and the ability to manually record activities that the pedometer isn’t particularly good at figuring out (lifting weights, for example). You can sign up and use all of the manual features for free, even if you don’t buy a Fitbit tracker. For the more competitive folks, there’s even a friends-based Leaderboard for comparing statistics.

Speaking of the tracker, the build quality is excellent. Good plastics and a bit of metal for structural integrity. If you pry open the clip a bit, you’ll see a set of electrical contacts (for charging, initial setup, and firmware updates) lining both ends. One of the nifty things about this is that you can just push the clip over the top of the base station for charging, no need to worry about orientation. As far as buttons go, there’s just one on the back! It serves two purposes: flipping between the various trackable statistics (calories, steps, miles walked, and the fitness flower)…

…and toggling Activity Mode on and off (which allows you to track specific step/calorie/distance counts for a span of time and track sleep). The first three statistics will reset at midnight every day, but the flower shrinks and grows based on your recent activity level. It you’ve been sitting in your office chair for 4 hours, it will resemble a small weed. Climb to the summit of Everest and you’ll see a flower that fills the tracker’s screen.

So is it worth it? There’s a lot of subjectivity in reviewing a gadget like this. The Fitbit is only as useful as you make it. If you wear it all the time, keep it charged (mine’s been running for four days and it still has a 90% full battery), and make use of the information you get on your Dashboard, $99 is a steal for insight in to your exercise habits and sleep quality. If you leave it at home all the time, it’s a waste of money. My honest opinion? The automatic data uploading and “put it on and forget about it” usage model is perfect for me. It’s like I say:

The best technology is the kind you don’t realize you’re using.

If you’re interested in learning more about your sleep and activity levels, and the idea of automated data collection seems cool to you, the Fitbit comes with my highest recommendation.

I suppose it’s impossible to talk about Microsoft’s latest personal media player, the Zune HD, without first talking Apple. I’ve been an iPod user for around 10 years now; I bought an iPod 3G back in April 2003 and never considered another music player until the iPod Touch was released in September 2007. The players were easy to operate, the sound quality from the iTunes Store was decent, and (for me, anyway) everything just worked.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when the iPod Touch (3G) and iTunes 9 were released. I sat down and started researching some possible upgrades to my first generation iPod Touch, now pretty much filled to the brim with pictures and music. 16GB wasn’t going to cut it. iTunes, which I used for music management ever since it became available on Windows, seemed to be getting more and more bloated every time the version number went up. I had heard of Microsoft’s Zune line before, but everything I had read pointed to a lukewarm response from the general public. I have never met another Zune user, but I see iPods of all sorts every day.

Just before I was about to grab another iPod Touch, I started reading about a new generation of Microsoft’s Zune player, the Zune HD. 32GB of capacity? Plays my existing music? OLED screen? HD Radio (something I’ve always wanted to try listening to)? The feature list read like something out of a media player dream. I said to myself “Kyle, you never know until you try.” A quick trip to Amazon.com and a day later, I had one in my hands.

Hardware and Build Quality

In a word: fantastic. The Zune HD’s body is made of aluminum (the back is brushed so scratches won’t show as easily) and the capacitive touch organic LED screen is made of optical-grade glass (hard to scratch). As far as weight goes, the Zune HD is surprisingly light (2.6oz), especially in comparison to the iPod Touch 1G (4.05oz). The quality of the construction keeps the unit feeling solid in spite of its light weight.

As far as buttons go, there aren’t many. A thin horizontal button on the face of the Zune HD acts as a “Back/Home” button, the one of the left hand side pulls up a playback and volume overlay, and the power button sits on top. I’m eagerly awaiting the day where manufacturers of touch based media players realize that many of us would appreciate hardware volume controls.

The screen is a 3.3 inch 480×272 affair (that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio) with capacitive touch. Despite having a lower resolution display than the Touch (which runs at 480×320), the Zune HD’s aspect ratio matches that of most HD content, so you can watch video without those telltale black bars running across the top and bottom of the screen. The real benefit to the Zune’s screen is that it’s an Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display. That means each pixel emits its own light (no backlight required). This allows for much deeper blacks and vivid colors. It’s really quite amazing to look at, especially in comparison to screens I thought looked “great” beforehand. The Zune’s OLED screen also improves its battery life, which Microsoft rates at 33 hours (music) and 8.5 hours (video). In my admittedly limited experience in draining the Zune’s battery, that estimation is pretty accurate!

I’m not much of an audio professional, but the Zune HD’s sound quality is on par with my old iPod Touch’s when listened to on my Astro A40 headphones.

Software and User Experience

The Zune’s home screen takes a cue from Windows Mobile 6.5, albeit with super-responsive hardware (thanks to the NVIDIA Tegra SoC). The right half of the screen acts as your top-level navigation. There are links for your music, video, and photo libraries, the HD Radio tuner, the on-device Zune Marketplace (much like the iTunes Store on the iPods), your Friends list (shared with your Xbox 360), podcasts, a decent web browser, apps (more on those in a bit), and finally settings.

The right side shows your recent history (what you’ve been playing), pinned (sticky) content, and the latest content to make its way on to your Zune. You can tap the Back/Home button on the home screen to swap between sides or just tap the side you want to view.

Before I forget and dive into all of the things I like about the Zune’s interface, I wanted to mention two parts of the UI that I’m not thrilled with: jumping to alphabetical listings and (this may be a dealbreaker for some), the decision to “hide” common playback controls like volume, play/pause, and skip behind a hardware button. To start, here’s how the Zune handles alphabetical navigation:

I think I prefer the ‘alphabetical strip’ that you see on Windows Mobile phones and the iPod line. There’s something about a cluster of letters that isn’t as intuitive. As for the playback controls:

The default playback view is pretty shiny from a graphical perspective. The background is a photo of the current artist/band. then the band name, album name, and album cover are displayed. The current song and (in the tiny font) upcoming tracks come after that. The three bottom buttons from left to right are toggle shuffle mode, loop, and like/don’t like (used to tweak the shuffle algorithm). If you notice something missing, you’re not alone. Where are the volume and playback controls? Well, if you tap the screen or press the button on the left side of the device you’ll see this pop up:

Behold, our missing skip, volume, and play/pause controls! As it turns out, you can skip forward and backwards by swiping the album cover on the playback screen, so I’m not as bothered by Microsoft’s decision to hide the playback controls as I was initially. The lack of hardware volume controls or a volume slider on the playback screen is still annoying though.

I really like the album browser. You get each artist’s albums ordered chronologically, complete with artwork. A small (barely legible) chunk of text under each title shows you the songs in the album. Tapping on a cover starts playback. What’s really nice about this view though it its integration with the Zune Marketplace. If you have WiFi turned on and scroll down to the bottom of your collection of albums for a particular artist, there’s a collapsible section called Marketplace Discography. Expanding that section shows you all of the albums available for that artist (including, annoyingly, ones that aren’t for sale on the Marketplace). If you have a Zune Pass ($14/month), you can download songs on the spot (particularly useful if you just stumbled upon an artist you like)!

Having WiFi turned on while you listen also gives you access to some nifty extras like artist biographies and photos.

In addition to its musical capabilities, the Zune HD also has a few other tricks up its sleeve. From left to right, there’s the Social, HD Radio, and Photo sections of the player. The Social section is connected to your Xbox 360 friends list (if you have one). People who have Zunes and have elected to publish their playback history will show up here. Tapping on a friend brings up their most recent playlist, which you can then listen to yourself if you have a Zune Pass. The HD Radio uses your headphone cable as an antenna (and, predictably, works better outdoors). If it can’t find an HD stream of your favorite station, it flips back over to FM. Maybe it’s my antenna, but I can’t hear a huge difference between 100.7 WZLX’s HD and FM broadcasts. The only useful thing is that HD Radio allows stations to have sub-channels that you can’t tune in to with an FM tuner. WZLX, for example, has an HD-2 channel called Radio Mojo (24/7 blues). HD-1 is the digital stream of the FM station. The Photo section is pretty standard; you can browse synced pictures by folder structure or date.

Video playback is fantastic thanks to the OLED screen (but sadly I don’t have a video camera to show you). Despite its resolution (480×272), the Zune HD’s screen has a 16:9 aspect ratio. This fits most HD content out of the box without any letterboxing. If you’re worried about the amount of space videos would take up on a device with 32GB of space, don’t worry. The Zune desktop software automatically converts WMV, H.264, or MPEG-4 videos when it syncs with your device. If you own a Zune High Definition Media Dock (overpriced in my opinion at $79), you can put the full-sized version of said videos on the Zune and output them at 1080p via HDMI.

So it the Zune HD a worthy competitor to the iPod touch? I certainly think so! Despite some usability issues when it comes to playback, the Zune is a breath of fresh air in an iPod-dominated, “do everything” media player market. I don’t need a bunch of apps on my media player, I just want it to play music, videos, and check out what’s on the radio every so often. The Zune HD definitely delivers with a fantastic screen, solid audio and video playback, and great industrial design.

My desk at home is a bit cluttered (not shown: the router and gigabit switch now stuffed behind the display and the DVD burner perched on top of the server).

After reading Jeff Atwood’s review of a set of Ergotron LX Desk Mount monitor arms, I figured that ditching my monitor stand would be a good way to reclaim some desk space. The pivot and rotation enhancements provided by the arms would allow me to push the display back to the wall if I needed to do any non-computer work at my desk.

All the bits and pieces were a bit daunting at first. There are actually two different ways to install the mount; you can use the pre-attached C-clamp or opt for the more stable gromet mount (which involved a bit of drilling). In the interest of stability, I opted for the gromet mount. I have a rather large (and heavy) HP LP2475w display, and I didn’t want my investment suddenly slamming in to my desk because the C-clamp failed. It was fairly easy to get the hole drilled and the panel mounted on to the supplied frame. The Ergotron comes with VESA standard 75×75 and 100×100 mounting plates that should fit just about every monitor out there. From there, I just attached the arm base, extender, and the arm itself and slipped the panel frame on to the whole assembly.

At first, the arm just sunk down to the top of the desk. Then (having not previously read the manual), I noticed that there was a hex screw on the arm to tweak the amount of tension in the spring that holds the panel up. Two or three minutes of adjusting gave me a good balance between stability and ease-of-maneuvering.

The end result looks something like this (apologies for the terrible lighting):

Now I can push the display back to the wall and slide my keyboard underneath; perfect for doing non-computer work! I found that the rotation features have been the most useful for me so far; I can put the panel in to portrait mode for reading long PDFs and documents, then put it back to landscape for gaming. All in all, a good investment. I can see the arms being even more useful if I had two displays…(is it time for a bigger desk?)