Product Reviews – Page 6 – Not Content to Crawl

Bath & Body Works & The Olive Garden

Posted onDecember 4, 2011

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Bath & Body Works because their merchandise is overpriced and their staff relentlessly bug you whenever you enter a store. That being said, yesterday I figured I might as well redeem the coupon I found through Slickdeals for some free lotion.

Not entirely surprising, no one was aware of the promotion and they didn’t have the 2 oz. lotions in stock. Luckily they gave me a 5 oz. bottle for free instead which is better than many other people who tried and were turned away and told “no substitutions”. It’s really unfortunately when a company runs a promotion and fails to communicate it to their staff or have supply on hand. It’s just bad customer service and can also be seen as bait and switch.

As for the scent, I do like it, but not enough to buy any more. I find all their scents get a bit annoying after repeated exposure. Plus I STILL have lotions and body washes I purchased well over five years ago. They tend to last forever since I can’t tolerate them for long before going back to a regular lotion you can buy at Target.

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Another place that’s low on my list of places I frequent is The Olive Garden. I’ve never disliked their food, I’m just not big on Italian food in general and prefer to make my own. For some reason I got a taste for them this weekend, however, so after Bath & Body Works we had an early dinner at the St. Charles Olive Garden. Joe ordered the stuffed chicken marsala and I had the 5 cheese ziti. I’ve had it before and really like it. Their salad is good too, but the breadsticks are just ok. I’ve heard people rave about them but I just don’t get it. If you’re looking for really good bread sticks try Gino’s East instead.

Dinner was relatively inexpensive thanks to a $5 coupon and some left over credit on a gift card we originally bought to be used at Red Lobster. I really didn’t need the extra calories but I’ve got two seafood meals and a chicken salad planned for this week’s dinners so it should all balance out.

iPhone 4S Review

Posted onOctober 19, 2011October 20, 20111 Comment

Now that I’ve had my new iPhone for five days I feel confident saying I totally love it! It’s so much faster than my old phone; it responds instantly to my commands instead of taking a moment to think about it. I noticed the auto-correct works much better now too which is a relief since I suck at typing on the virtual keyboard. The retina display is amazing too. I even love the feel of the phone in my hand and I was a bit worried about that. Oh and the battery life seems pretty decent too. Not amazing, but then again, what smartphone battery is?

The only thing I’m not happy with is that it’s still hard to hear calls through the phone’s earpiece. The sound level is fine on speaker or through the headphones but the earpiece never seems loud enough and I can’t hear well if there’s any background noise. I’m surprised no one else has complained about this. I have excellent hearing (verified at the doctor office this year when I had water trapped behind my eardrum) so I don’t think it’s me nor do I think I have a faulty phone since I had the same complaint with my 3GS. Luckily I don’t use the phone part of my device as much as all the other features.

The only complaint I have seen online is regarding yellow screens. I compared my new phone to the 3GS and while it does have a warmer look to it I don’t think it’s excessive. I’m guessing it must have been done intentionally to make viewing the screen easier on the eyes.

In any case, if anyone reading this is contemplating getting the iPhone 4S I highly recommend it. Coupled with the awesome features of iOS5 (hello notification center), it’s even better than I was expecting. I’m totally becoming an Apple whore. It’s just a matter of time before I cave and buy an iPad.

Bonus: I highly recommend WhatsApp for SMS-free texting if you don’t have an unlimited texting plan. It works much better than any of the other texting-replacement apps I’ve tried over the past two years.

Acer Iconia Tab A500

Posted onAugust 22, 2011August 22, 2011

This is our new toy. I’ve been wanting a tablet for awhile but wasn’t willing to spend $500 for something I didn’t really need. When this tablet went on sale at Target ($399 with a $100 gift card) we decided to get it to share until I was ready to buy one for myself since it wasn’t my first (or second) choice but Joe would be fine keeping it as his own.

Since we’ve had it for over a week now I can safely grade my Android tablet experience.

Pros

It’s pretty easy to use.
The screen quality is quite nice with a crisp, bright resolution.
There’s lots of apps to choose from between the Android Market and Amazon’s App Store.
I can view Flash content (although not as completely as I had hoped).
Angry Birds is more fun to play on a bigger screen.
It’s great for watching podcasts or listening to music while working out on my elliptical machine.

Cons

I can’t type worth a damn on it. It took me five minutes to type out the first sentence in this post and then I got fed up and turned on my desktop. I can type faster on my iPhone! Plus there’s a noticeable lag between the time I type a letter and it appears on the screen which is super annoying.
Certain apps, like Words With Friends, don’t update on Android properly. Joe was having a hard time with WWF on his phone too yet it updates flawlessly on my iPhone.
Rearranging apps on the personal screens is a big pain in the arse.
Most apps aren’t designed to take advantage of the tablet screen size. Even YouTube shows up tiny compared to the overall screen size (it does the same thing on my 42″ plasma through the PS3).
Flash content doesn’t necessarily work properly. I couldn’t get my cat in Sushi Cat 2 to move around so it was pointless trying to play on the tablet and that’s reason #1 I even considered Android besides the price – I wanted to access Flash!
You really cannot properly share a tablet with the rest of the family unless you enjoy constantly having to log in and out of various apps and websites because you cannot define different users. For some things like Facebook, which doesn’t have a dedicated tablet app anyway, I just installed Opera so I can log on through there while Joe logs on via the native web browser. Tablets are being treated as personal devices much like phones but I think the developers should consider the fact that if you have a few people in a family they cannot afford to buy a tablet for each person.

Overall I think this tablet is ok but not really worth spending more than a few hundred dollars on. I’ve been spoiled by my iPhone and miss the iOS experience. The only thing Android currently does better than Apple is handle notifications (when they work – ahem – Words With Friends) and background downloading of apps, both of which should be improved with iOS 5.

I’m holding out to see what Amazon has up their sleeve as I’ve heard rumors of a tablet coming out this Fall, although the chances that it will be better than an iPad are slim to none as far as I’m concerned. I really want an iPad 3 when it comes out if I can stomach the cost. I could handle $400 but that’s as much as I’m willing to pay so I doubt we’ll be getting another tablet anytime soon.

Awesome iPhone Apps

Posted onMarch 24, 2011March 24, 20111 Comment

One of the many things I love about the iPhone is all the apps that speak to my obsessive need to keep track of the stuff I do, would like to do, am doing, or own. Below are some of my recent discoveries:

Home Library – It’s not just for books, and in fact I use it for everything except books since I don’t own enough to care tracking them. It’s pretty good at scanning items in; much more so than other apps I’ve tried that do the same thing. The interface is simple, and you can log into the website and download your media collection to Excel or PDF. It’s also great because it estimates the value of your media collection if you ever lose it. I spent about two days obsessively scanning all my DVDs, games, and CDs into the app and it turns out right now I own 388 CDs, 190 DVDs, and 82 games estimated to be worth about $10,000. It seems like a lot, but when I look around, it doesn’t look like much because everything is confined to a relatively small area. POther features of the app include being able to search your collection, keeping track of loans, maintaining a wish-list, and tracking what you’ve borrowed from others. Things I’d like to see added to the app – better sorting capabilities as well as a field to define the gaming platform for the games, otherwise you don’t know unless you are looking at the cover art which is not part of the downloaded PDF or Excel file and is only shown in the app or on the website.

Time Flies – There are tons of apps that remind you to do things in the future, but this simple little app lets you track the last time you did something and a history of how many times you’ve done it (provided you remember to log it). It’s very handy for tracking the last time I changed my contact lenses or got my hair cut, or even took my vitamin D. I would like to have it remind me to do these things at preset intervals and hopefully that will be an enhancement to the app in the future.

Goodreads – I just discovered this one yesterday right before I was going to opt to buy a subscription to LibraryThing. I thought I should see what other book tracking services were available and found the website where I learned there was a free iPhone app to compliment it. Score! It took about an hour messing around with the export file from LibraryThing to get GoodReads to recognize certain fields correctly. Goodreads claims the export file from LibraryThing is automatically supported but I found that it really only used the ISBN number and discarded most of the other information including the date I read the book and my rating – only THE two most important pieces of data, IMHO. They show a sample import file, though, so I manipulated the file I exported from LibraryThing a few times to match the column headings and data formatting and after a few tries was able to successfully port all my information over to the new system. Now I can track the books I’ve read on my iPhone easily which is great because I’ve read 14 books since getting my Kindle which is way more than I was reading last year. I prefer Goodreads’ interface to LibraryThing as well. The app is a bit buggy when it comes to sorting the books by date read, but it’s tolerable and still a heck of a lot better than going to LibraryThing’s non-mobile supported site to add new books.

I’ve become quite spoiled since buying my iPhone – I expect most websites to support it. In addition, any site that claims to offer functionality that will make my life better best have an app in the appstore or I’m not interested. Maybe I’m becoming one of those dreadful Apple fangirls or something, I don’t know.

Other iPhone apps I highly recommend, and use on a daily basis:

Dropbox – To the cloud!
Evernote – To your other cloud!
FeeddlerRSS – Best free Google RSS reader I could find
Firefox Home – Your bookmarks everywhere you go
Momento – Simple diary app for those non-blog-worthy thoughts/feelings
ToDo – Get it done!

Skins & Cases

Posted onJanuary 15, 2011

Earlier in the week I received the Kindle case I ordered off Etsy. I had bought an ugly boring case at Borders the week before but I started feeling like it didn’t do my cool device any justice, so I took it back and ordered this awesome case instead. It’s really beautiful, well-made, and the perfect size, plus it cost only slightly more than the case from Borders.

Why do companies use finishes on their devices that show fingerprints so easily? The front of the Kindle is great, but the back leaves much to be desired. Luckily Joe bought a skin I wanted for my birthday, from DecalGirl, so it’s not as bad, although it does still show some fingerprints, but they are easier to wipe off the skin. I only used the back skin because I’m not sure I’d like the feel or look of one on the front. And you have to be very careful applying the back skin because if you’re just a little off it affects how the page buttons react when pushed.

Apple has always been a big offender when it comes to fingerprints on the back of their devices, so I always keep my iPhone in a case. I’ve been using the iFrogz Luxe Original cases (I have them in three different color schemes – magenta/black, neon green/black, and purple/black), but lately I’ve been using the Big Bang Theory case Joe got me from ThinkGeek for Christmas. The nice thing about it is there’s a bit of wrap-around onto the front of the device whereas the iFrogz cases don’t feature that, plus it’s easy to grip. The negative is it can be tougher to put in and out of the Golla carrying case I use because it’s so rubbery.

I’ve been using the same Belkin carrying case for my iPod Classic since I got it three years ago (and the device is still going strong with no issues despite daily use), but about a year ago I bought a skin for it from GelaSkins. I like it because it has a Cure-like look to it.

One thing I’ll note – I never use a screen protector on any of my devices, with the exception of my Canon Powershot SD870. I just don’t like them, and I’m careful to keep them face-up or in their respective carrying cases when not in use, so it’s never been a problem. I hope I don’t jinx myself by bragging about the lack of scratches on their screens!