Archive for October 27, 2014

Hey IT Nerd! Should I Buy An Aftermarket Stereo To Get CarPlay Or Buy A New Car To Get It?

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2014 by itnerd

Here’s a question that just hit my inbox:

Good afternoon IT Nerd. My question is if I should buy an aftermarket stereo from Pioneer to get CarPlay, or should I either wait for more options or just get a newer car and have it come with CarPlay installed? What would you do? Any advice that you have is welcome. 

Thanks!

Thanks for the question. Let’s look at your two options:

  1. Aftermarket units: Simply put, there’s not a lot of choice right now. Pioneer has a handful of options, none of which are cheap. Plus Alpine just released their offering in this space that is not really all that cheap either. Lack of choice means high prices. So I suspect that if you wait, you’ll have more to choose from at a lower price point. Though you might be waiting into 2015 for more choices to appear.
  2. Getting a newer car is only an option if you were planning to get a new car anyway. If that’s the case with you, there still isn’t a lot of choice as most car companies are saying that CarPlay is coming “real soon now.” Thus, you may be waiting well into 2015 before you actually see CarPlay in a showroom near you for the brand or brands that you’re interested in.

So in either case, it looks like you’ll have to wait for CarPlay to appear. In my case my car is paid for and in good shape. So I would wait for more aftermarket options to appear and go that route. But you have to decide based on what is right for you.

Good luck!

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Microsoft Aims To Dominate Cloud Storage By Offering Unlimited Storage

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2014 by itnerd

Are you an Office 365 user? If so, you can get unlimited storage with one exception that I will get to. Here’s the details from Microsoft:

Today, storage limits just became a thing of the past with Office 365.  OneDrive and OneDrive for Business will now offer unlimited storage—at no additional cost—to our Office 365 consumer and business customers.

A trip to the One Drive Blog has more details:

For OneDrive for Business customers, unlimited storage will be listed on the Office 365 roadmap in the coming days and we will begin updating the First Release customers in 2015, aligned with our promise to provide ample notification for significant service changes. In the meantime, get started using your 1 TB of storage today by backing up all those work files kicking around on your PC – with the knowledge that even more storage is on its way!

So if you’re a Office 365 Home, Personal and University customer, the joy of having unlimited storage starts today. Business customers will have to wait for a bit. But they get 1TB now so I don’t think that will be too much of a hardship. The bottom line is that Microsoft has pretty much given you a great reason not to use Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or iDrive.

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Review: Kobo Aura H20

Posted in Products with tags on October 27, 2014 by itnerd

With the advent of tablets and “phablets”, the stand alone eBook reader would seem to be the last choice for those who want to read a book electronically. But that would be an incorrect statement. One of the companies who is on the leading edge of eBook readers is Kobo. And they have a very intriguing eBook reader called the Aura H20. As the name implies, it’s waterproof. It’s certified to be IP67 certified waterproof. That means you can keep it underwater (no more than 1 meter) for up to 30 minutes. To test this, I completely submerged it in water while it was on with no ill effects. That gives you the ability to read a book while you’re in the bath or in the hot tub among other places. One thing that I did notice is that the touchscreen functions get disabled if you get the screen wet which stops accidental input. That’s clever.

The Aura H20 is very easy to hold as it feels rubbery which allows you to keep a good grip on it. It also seems fingerprint resistant which is very nice. Though one thing that I would like to point out is that you can’t read with one hand which isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it is worth mentioning. What’s also nice is the screen. It sports a 6.8-inch touchscreen with Carta E Ink technology in a resolution of 1430 x 1080 pixels with 265ppi which to makes text clear and easy to read regardless of the lighting conditions.

Under the hood, the Aura H20 is powered by a 1GHz processor and has 4GB of internal storage expandable to 32GB via a MicroSD card. That means that you can store something in the area of 3,000 ebooks on the Aura H20 out of the box and ten times that with a MicroSD card. Speaking of eBooks, it does support a variety of formats including

  • EPUB
  • EPUB3
  • PDF
  • MOBI
  • TXT
  • HTML
  • RFT
  • CBZ
  • CBR

In terms of filling up the Aura with content, that will not be a problem for you. Kobo’s eBookstore allows you to access over 4 million eBooks, comics and kids’ titles. All you need is WiFi access and you’re good to go.

Two things really stood out to me when I tested the Aura H20. One was the ease of use. It has a very intuitive user interface and I was able to take it out of the box, get it on my WiFi network and start reading in a minute. Plus all the gestures for actually reading a book were natural. And to add to all of that, You can tap on words to get definitions, select sections of text to highlight, or add annotations. You also get a wide variety of stats about your reading habits that may or may not interest you. Another thing that stood out to me was the battery life. It is rated for 2 months of battery life and I believe it as during my week of testing the battery gauge barely moved. Impressive!

The Aura H20 is $179.99 and as far as I am concerned, this is an easy buy for anyone who likes to read. And that includes anyone who already owns a tablet. Kobo really has a winner with the Aura H20 and if you’re considering anything else, I would highly advise cross shopping whatever you’re considering with the Aura H20. I really think that once you have a look at the Aura H20, it will be going home with you.

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