Dollar Shave Club: My review and a cheaper alternative

I recently signed up for the Dollar Shave Club (DSC), which is a site that lets you paying $6 every 1 or 2 months for 4 razors by mail (and you can pause your subscription at any time). It turns out that you can get the exact same razors for much cheaper with no monthly subscription so long as you're willing to buy in bulk. Apparently DSC gets its razors from Dorco USA, which you can buy directly from on-line. In fact, you can buy retail handles with trial razors from Dorco too. For example, for $6, you can try out a Dorco handle and two razors, and then you can buy 36 replacement cartridges for less than $1/razor.

I tried my "4X" DSC (or Dorco USA) razor for the first time this weekend. It was an OK razor. It had a nice heavy handle, but the angle of the pivoting head was not as steep as I'd like, and the moisturizing strip was far too thick. Consequently, it was very awkward to get into small nooks -- like under the nose. The "4X" razor doesn't have a trimming edge either (the more expensive 6-blade "Executive" model does), which would really improve matters. But after the shave, my face felt pretty good. It just took a lot longer to get through a full shave. So I'm not sure I can fully recommend these razors over, say, Schick Quattro Titanium disposable razors, which actually have a trimming edge and are pretty cheap from local stores or from Amazon (around $7/3 razors).

DSC also sent me a tester of their "Dr. Carver's Easy Shave Butter," which actually burned my face a bit as it went on (but I have sensitive skin). My face was fine afterward. But using Nivea For Men Active3 Body Wash for Body, Hair & Shave worked just as well without the sting. So I'm not sure I can recommend the Shave Butter either.

So I'm torn. It's possible that the 6-blade+edging "Executive" unit will be better. Either way, in the long run, it's cheaper to buy from Dorco USA directly, and I like the idea of dropping the subscription service. Dorco USA also sells other razor models and even disposable models. They also sell razors designed for women, whereas DSC just tells women to buy the 4X. The 4X has a handle which is somewhere between what you'd want for the face and the leg, but I think it's biased toward face shaving. So the lady's models at Dorco USA are definitely recommended if you need to shave legs.

So that's my brief review. tl;dr -- Check out DORCO if you like DSC's blades but don't like the subscription service.

References:

• Dollar Shave Club
• LifeHacker: "Forget Dollar Shave Club; Buy the Same High Quality Razors for a Third of the Price" 
• Dorco USA Razors

Printing from your Android device (tablet or phone)

I know someone who recently purchased an Asus Transformer TF300T from MicroCenter in the store for a cool $350, which means that after tax it was still cheaper than it was selling for at Amazon ($384). Strangely, I can find no mention of the TF300T on MicroCenter's website (maybe local store was just clearing inventory and they don't plan on selling them in the long term?). Anyway, this is the first Android tablet this person has ever used, and they were interested in getting the ability to print from it to the printers in their home. Here's how I responded (text copied from an e-mail and then marked up a bit).

    Here are some tablet printing options that I've tried that appear to still be popular. I've put some footnotes at the bottom of this message that are tangential topics that may still be interesting to you. For example, the first footnote [*] is about a way to pick printers in the future that allow for cloud printing without the aid of a PC being on.

    The first two apps I currently have installed on my phone and am happy with. You would probably only need one of them. The third app is one I tried, but I gave up on because I thought the first two apps were just as good or better. I have not used the fourth app, but you should know it exists as it would be handy if on the go and you need a hard copy of something.

1. First, here's "Cloud Print," which is a free app with no limitations but will display ads unless you donate to it:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pauloslf.cloudprint
   
   To give it the ability to print, you have to also install Google Chrome (Google's web browser) on one or all of your machines. You can get Google Chrome web browser [**] from:
   
   https://www.google.com/chrome/
   
   After you install it, complete these steps to connect your PC's printers to the web where "Cloud Print" can access them:
   
   http://support.google.com/cloudprint/bin/answer.py?answer=1686197
   
   Note that if Chrome is already installed on another computer in the house, and if that person has shared her printers with you, you should already be able to print to printers connected to her computer even if your computer isn't on (but hers has to be on). Once printers are connected to your Google account's Cloud Print, then you can use the "Share" button (it looks a little like a tree with two branches, typically) from any app to export whatever you're looking at to the "Cloud Print" app. That document will then get printed to the Cloud Print printer you choose. Note that "Print to PDF" is always available (and it will store that PDF on your Google Drive, I think, which you can access using the "Google Drive" app I just e-mailed you about). There are competing Android apps to Cloud Print, like "Easy Print:"
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipdog.easyprint
   
   but I don't think they're as well developed as Cloud Print.
   
   
2. Next, there's "PrinterShare," which has limited printing for free, but unlimited printing if you're willing to buy their premium key for a pricey $12.95:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dynamixsoftware.printershare
   
   PrinterShare's features largely overlap with Cloud Print. That is, Cloud Print does a couple of things PrinterShare doesn't, and PrinterShare does a couple of things that Cloud Print doesn't. For example, you can use Google Cloud Print with PrinterShare, and so any printer that you can use with Cloud Print, you can also use with PrinterShare. One major difference is that PrinterShare also supports WiFi printing to network-enabled printers (e.g., the HP LaserJet 2055dn) and some print servers. Initially, the support was spotty. However, I'm noticing more and more printers start to pop up on my WiFi list when I check. It's a solid app, but it's a little annoying that if you switch printers frequently, it has to re-download print drivers nearly every time. Downloading print drivers is very fast, and it's not much of an annoyance, but it's a little confusing why it can't keep these installed. Otherwise, it's a solid application that's a tough competitor, which is why it maintains such a high price for it's premium key.
   
   
3. I have also used the "PrintBot" app, which allows for 3 printouts a month unless you pay $4.50 for the full version (which is unlimited). It supports printing directly to a print server (no Google Cloud Print required), but it is not as easy to setup as PrinterShare. So unless they've improved things a bit since I used it last, I don't recommend it. In theory, it may be the only tool that can print to the print server connected to the HP LaserJet 5 upstairs without using Google Cloud Print; however, PrinterShare may have improved to be able to do that natively anyway:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jsecurity.printbot
   
   
4. Alternatively, HP and others(?) have apps like this one:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.eprint.ppl.client
   
   that allow you to print to public printing locations, like FedEx Office stores, UPS Office stores, Walmart photo kiosks, hotels, and others. This is a neat idea if you're on the go and need a paper copy of something. The downside is that although the app is free, the place that prints your document may charge you per page.
   
   

    In summary, if you're OK with having a computer on and connecting your legacy printers to the Google "cloud print" service, then give the first free app ("Cloud Print") a shot. If you want the ability to print over WiFi directly without computers being on, then consider the second app ("PrinterShare", which is pretty expensive for an app if you want to print more than 3 things a month). Note that the WiFi option only works if you're on the same network as the printer. You cannot print from remote with PrinterShare unless you're using Google's cloud print service (and thus have a PC turned on).

    --Ted


Footnotes:

[*]: If you find yourself buying a new printer in the near future (not likely), you can choose a "Cloud Ready" printer:

http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/printers.html

These printers connect to servers at HP, Kodak, Epson, or Canon that allow access to them from remote provided the correct username and password. Google Cloud print can print directly to these without the aid of a computer being on.

In general, any network-enabled printer will probably have good Android support even if it's not "cloud ready." In fact, some vendors release their own apps to make it simpler to print to them from Android, like Lexmark (but I think generic network printer apps will connect to these too, in most cases):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexmark.print


[**]: If you like Google Chrome as a web browser, you can use it instead of Firefox. If you have Firefox bookmarks, Chrome will import them. Also (and this might be interesting to you), you can share your Chrome bookmarks and tabs to your tablet and so you can easily go from one to the other. If you don't like Chrome but like the idea of getting your same bookmarks and tabs on your tablet as is on your Desktop, that's possible with Firefox too. Either way, we should probably install the "Chrome to Phone" app

The Sony SMP-N200 (or SMP-N100) is the only streaming player you need; eschew the Roku!

After much searching, buying, and evaluating, I'm convinced that the Sony SMP-N200 (or maybe the older SMP-N100 if you can find it) is probably the best streaming device you can buy. Well, it's at least the best value streaming device you can buy (under US$80). It does everything that a Roku device does plus a little more and is substantially cheaper when you compare apples to apples. The only thing you really lose is the ability to watch trailers in the Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand application. However, trailers are available in basically every other movie app plus a Flixster application with plenty of trailers.

For US$66.99 on Amazon (and US$69.99 on Best Buy) at the time of this post, you get:

• HDMI output for full 1080p video and 5.1 channel audio
• Optical audio output (if your receiver doesn't do HDMI audio)
• Analog audio output (via RCA connectors)
• Composite video output
• Component video output
• Wired ethernet support
• Wireless 802.11b/g/n support built-in
• USB port (videos, pictures, music)
• DLNA client (and maybe server for that USB?)
• HDMI wake-up (i.e., device turns on and off automatically based on HDMI signal; moreover, this behavior is configurable if you don't like it)
• Very thin and simple remote control powered by a watch battery

  People say this remote is an improvement over the one that came with the old SMP-N100 model, but I disagree. For one, the "Home" button is too close to the down arrow. More importantly, the old remote control was quasi-universal in that you could program it to your TV and it would control your TV's volume, power, and video input. So I basically only need one remote with the SMP-N100 to do everything.

• Android phone and tablet remote control apps
• iOS remote control app
• ...probably more that I overlooked because I personally didn't care

With all of that hardware support, the device is great for a wide variety of home theater systems (e.g., with old TV's or old receivers). You can contrast this with the more expensive Roku that has an HDMI output and a composite output. Those people with older receivers and/or older TV's are not going to enjoy all of the advanced features of modern streaming content on a Roku. This is not as much the case with the Sony players.

And the applications that come on board the Sony SMP-N200 include:

• Hulu Plus (and free Hulu via PlayOn over DLNA, but see CAVEAT below)
• Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand (although the app doesn't play trailers)
• Vudu (albeit without "Vudu Apps" but with full "Vudu Movies" support, including trailers and promotional credit)

  FYI, the current US$5.99 promotion for signing up a device works even if you've already signed up other devices; so you can keep adding promotion credit to your account... even if you end up returning the device

• Netflix
• YouTube
• CinemaNow (which looks to be a similar selection as Blockbuster On-Demand) – Note that the application is included but currently it tells you that it's "coming soon" when you start it up
• Pandora
• Slacker
• Sony Entertainment Network's Video Unlimited (yet another on-demand streaming service)
• Sony Entertainment Network's Music Unlimited
• Flixster
• DLNA sources (e.g., PlayOn and everything it supports, including free Hulu; CAVEAT: I own a Sony SMP-N100, and I haven't had trouble using PlayOn the few times I've tried. When I tested an Sony SMP-N200, PlayOn worked at least for the few minutes I tested (if I recall correctly), but I've heard that people are having issues with PlayOn now.)
• ...plus a lot more that I just don't care much about (e.g., streaming from Berliner Philharmoniker)

For some reason, Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand was not advertised anywhere on the box or on the Sony website like it used to be. However, the application still exists on the device. Despite it being the same application that is used to access Sony's own "Video Unlimited" service that supports movie trailers, the Amazon app has no trailer support. That's frustrating and makes me think that Sony has been given financial incentive to de-emphasize Amazon over its other providers. One of those providers includes Vudu, which is provided by the full-featured Vudu application you get on every other streaming device (minus the "Vudu apps" support you might see on a Blu-ray player). Regardless, if you're OK with getting your trailers elsewhere, this is a fine selection of applications. UPDATE: As of a recent software update on my Sony SMP-N100 (and so also likely on the Sony SMP-N200), trailers are available now in the Amazon VoD app. So it is much nicer now to browse for movies within the single app.

And if that's piqued your interest, you should also take a look at the previous model, the Sony SMP-N100. It is nearly identical to the SMP-N100 except that it lacks support for a few providers, of which the only one you should care about is Vudu. It still has Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand (no trailers though), DLNA (which means PlayOn too), Crackle, YouTube (but no movie rental support), Pandora, and much more. However, it sells for at least US$20 less (so US$49.99 on Amazon (same price at Best Buy) at the time of this post) because the new version exists.

So if you're looking for a nice streaming player for a good value, I think most people will point you at the Roku. However, the Sony players (both the SMP-N200 and SMP-N100) are cheaper and do more. The interface is not as clean and cozy as Roku though. Moreover, it might be annoying to you that you cannot play Amazon video trailers. However, trailers are available through lots of other services, and there's a lot of value to having them all on one device (as opposed to having, say, Vudu on your Blu-ray player and Amazon VOD on your Roku).

Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Player? My choice is probably Google Music Beta

Between Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Drive/Player, I have had the most fun with Google Music Beta.

So Spotify is weird and uncomfortable. It’s cool that I can get easy access to lots of music that I don’t actually own, and it’s easy to make playlists. However, it is ugly to be able to both shuffle your whole library and put songs in multiple playlists without risking over-representing them in your shuffle. Over-representation is generally a major problem if you create artist playlists because one artist might have a whole bunch more songs in the Spotify database than others. It would be nice to “shuffle artists” where you’re guaranteed a balanced selection of artists (e.g., in every set of 30 songs)… What’s worse on Spotify is that playlists are static. You might be able to create an artist playlist, but you have to watch out for new songs to add to that playlist. Be careful though – songs get duplicated in a playlist if you drag them over. Having said all of that, I certainly have had fun discovering new music with Spotify. The interface is ugly though, and it sucks to have to pay $10/month just to have Linux access (yes, I know I can use Spotify through wine for free now (and $5/month later when the free accounts become limited), but I hate dealing with the headache of local MP3’s and the wine codec). Moreover, if I want Android access, I’m stuck with $10/month too. Boo.

Google Music Beta had an easy upload process. It took a while, but not that long. It was strange that it bogged down my entire Internet connection (while Amazon’s uploader didn’t affect my downstream at all), which makes me wonder what else Google is doing. However, I could select all of my songs on my Linux machine (no fancy Windows uploader needed) and they all got uploaded. Unfortunately, I cannot download them (unless I make them available offline on my phone and then figure out where and how Google stores them, which may not be tractable). Also, I cannot figure out how to buy new music (certainly a feature for the future, right?). However, Google randomly adds free music to my library, and that’s cool. What’s coolest is the Instant Playlist feature (which is similar to features in iTunes and other players/services) that builds a good-sized playlist from a single song. I’ve enjoyed its picks – even when the song I seeded lists with came from a local artist that it couldn’t have known much of anything about. Best of all, Google Music Beta gives me all of this for free (up to 20,000 songs) on all of my systems (including Android). I never need to worry about keeping a Windows machine.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive/Player is cool that it gives you 5GB for free and then $1/year/GB up to 1TB after that (starting at $20/year for 20GB). For the moment, if you pay for any storage, you get music storage for free. Any Amazon MP3 purchases can be placed directly in your library. Any song in your library can be downloaded. So Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a nice archival and music management solution. Almost all of the cool features of the player work on all systems. The only downside is that the MP3 Uploader (which re-organizes your music into Artist/Album/Song and will allow you to select a batch of thousands of songs to upload at once) is only available in Windows (and Mac?). On a Linux machine, you can use the web uploader from Amazon’s Cloud Drive, but you can only upload contents of one folder at a time (with no subfolders) and you have to organize everything manually. No one has figured out how to automate this through a script as far as I can tell. The Windows uploader does a pretty good job sitting in the background, and it’s safe to interrupt it in the middle of an upload (however, it may take a while building your upload list when you re-start it). The Amazon Cloud Player is fine. You can build playlists of your music, which is fine. You can shuffle. You can’t discover new music, but you can easily grow your library at 50 to 99 cents a song.

[ Oh, and all three will scrobble to Last.FM. It’s supported natively in Spotify (with no support for “Love”), and it’s supported with 3rd-party Greasemonkey scripts (for Firefox and Chrome (and Safari?)) for Google Music and Amazon MP3 Player. ]

An hour with MIUI Android on my OG DROID

Last night, I installed the MIUI Android build from on my OG DROID. This is my first experience with MIUI, and it was mixed. I think the build was great (major h/t to Trey Motes), and I think the MIUI devs have done a terrific job showing me that my phone can look drastically different than I'm used to. I've posted links to MIUI Android (where
you can download a ROM for your phone) as well as MIUI.us (where you can also download a ROM for your phone) as well as MIUI (where you can read about the official project and their own MIUI phone that recently hit the news).

Things I liked:

• Clean theme made GMail look so much nicer
• Notifications pull-down included toggles for everything I'd want to toggle (WiFi/Bluetooth/etc.)
• Lots of customizability (starting from lock-screen backgrounds and going all the way down to lots of other stuff that you usually only see in 3rd-party launchers and such)
• Trey Motes has bundled lots of useful apps with his distro (ROM Manager, WiFi Tether, etc.) out of the "box"

Things I didn't like:

• The iOS-style launcher – All of your apps are on the pages of the launcher. You can then create folders to group them together. There's no "app drawer" that shows you all of your apps so that you can only put a select few on your desktop screens. Some people might like this (iOS users sure do), but I've gotten used to Android-y things like using *FolderOrganizer* to tag apps (possibly with multiple tags), and so it's a major departure to go to an iOS-like organization style.
• The iOS-style dialer and contacts list – I'm not sure what's smart about the "smart dialer" (but I didn't play too much, and it was too late to call anyone). The contacts list (and other lists on the system) displays the iOS-like letters down the right where you can click on the tiny letter you want. Android's typical way of doing this is displaying a pull-tab on the right that you can drag (opposite semantics as flicking; so more like a Desktop scroll). I like the way Android does it better than iOS.
• Android Wizard doesn't run and Market didn't sync apps – The wizard that usually runs the first time you boot most ROMs didn't run, and so I had to add my accounts via the settings menu. What was probably worse was that the Market didn't automatically start downloadiing my apps, which is something I've come to appreciate (I know there are 3rd-party ways of backing up and restoring apps, but I don't use them if I don't have to).
• The Music app didn't integrate with Google Music – The music app follows a bit of the style of the iTunes app in iOS, but it looks markedly different. In fact, it looks different than the stock Android music app too. So it has lots of features, but it's not like anything you're going to expect. It also didn't sync with Google Music, which really sucks after spending so much time uploading songs to the service.
• General lack of integration with Google services – The MIUI tries not to be so Google-dependent... Some may find that a strength, and some may find that a weakness.

So I really don't have any complaints about the build or the dev's, but I'm just not sure I'm the intended demographic for the new look and feature set. I really think it's cool, but I just don't think it's something I want to use day to day. So I'm looking forward to whatever else Peter Alfonso tells me I need (he's like my new Steve Jobs).

I hear that next week Trey Motes will release a MIUIAndroid release for the OG DROID using a version of Peter Alfonso's kernel that is newer than anything you can get pre-built from him on his distro sites (I wonder if it's a 0.4 kernel? If so, I wonder if it has the same bugs that has been concerned about). So I imagine that performance of MIUIAndroid will be much nicer. It was fine when I tried it, but I didn't install many apps.

So give it a shot. When I tried it, I downloaded the ROM from MIUIAndroid.com (ROM Manger's version was a 1.7.x version; I used the 1.8.12 version from MIUIAndroid.com; note that it has a 1.8.12.1 HOTFIX (you'll see it in the forums that it links you too)) and used ROM Manager to backup my existing setup and install MIUIAndroid (you could try MIUI.us, but I got the feeling that Trey Motes does a fantastic job customizing MIUIAndroid for OG DROID, just like Peter Alfonso does with Android/AOSP). When I decided I didn't like it, I used ROM Manager (which comes bundled with MIUIAndroid) to restore my old setup. That was my hour-ish with MIUI.

Links:

• MIUI Android (from inside UK): http://miuiandroid.com
• MIUI.us (alternate English-translation, from inside the US): http://miui.us/
• MIUI (English version of MIUI's official site): http://en.miui.com/
• @TreyMotes Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TreyMotes
• MIUIAndroid Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/MIUIAndroid

Someone asked me for some references on LaTeX today...

I got an e-mail today asking for some recommended references on LaTeX. Here is my response, which is a marked-up paste of an e-mail.

[ This post can also be found on my web page. ]

The reference that I keep handy is:

The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition by Mittelbach and Goosens

That reference, often called TLC2, is a standard one. You really can't
go wrong with it. It's dense, includes lots of examples, and is pretty
easy to use. One other book that came in handy when I started drawing
graphics in LaTeX is:

The LaTeX Graphics Companion by Goosens, Rahtz, and Mittelbach

That introduced me to things like picture environments and PSTricks. I
use PSTricks a lot now, and the book really is only meant to be an
introduction (albeit a nice one) to PSTricks as well as other competing
(and complementary) tools. Now I typically use the PSTricks
documentation on the PSTricks home page at TUG (you can google for
"PStricks" to find the web page).

A nice small reference to LaTeX is:

LaTeX: A Document Preparation System by Lamport

A very complete but also intimidating reference for TeX is:

The TeXbook by Knuth

Three other notable and popular books on TeX (that are far less
intimidating) are:

• TeX for the Impatient by Abrahams, Berry, and Hargreaves
• A Beginner's Book of TeX by Seroul and Levy
• TeX by Topic: A TeXnician's Reference by Eijkhout

You can still get that last book in print from some sources that print
out of print books (lulu.com), but I believe it has been released for free as a PDF as well. Yes, see:

http://eijkhout.net/texbytopic/texbytopic.html

for the free download link (released under GNU FDL).

[ If you really don't want to get into the nitty gritty details, I would
recommend sticking to the LaTeX references. ]

Otherwise, I've just done a lot of learning by doing. It helped to
learn about typesetting in general. A good reference for both things is
the documentation that comes with the memoir package:

• Package: http://ctan.org/pkg/memoir
• Documentation: http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/memoir/memman.pdf

That documentation link (memman.pdf) is an excellent introduction to all
of the basic typographical elements of a book... and memoir is a nice
LaTeX package in general.

After that, see comp.text.tex (available as a Google group) which is
known simply as "CTT" to insiders...

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/

LaTeX and TeX experts watch that group and will answer your questions
about how to do things. You can also search the group for some previous
answers to similar questions. You can also see announcements of new
versions of packages that do cool things. It's a great resource.

Finally, seeing the LaTeX 2e source (implemented in TeX) can be helpful
to understand exactly what goes on when you do things like a \section.
"source2e.pdf" is included with the LaTeX distribution. You can also
view it on-line here:

http://www.tug.org/texlive/devsrc/Master/texmf-dist/doc/latex/base/source2e.pdf

That includes all of the TeX implementations for the LaTeX macros and
gives you some idea of what goes on when you build a LaTeX document.

Off the top of my head, that's all I can think of. Just go into things
thinking that LaTeX probably *CAN* do whatever you want it to (including
solving and plotting differential equations, which pure LaTeX (as
opposed to PDFLaTeX) can do). Like a sculptor, you just have to figure
out what to chip away to get it to do it. Keep trying things until
something is qualitatively similar to what you want, and then tune
(perhaps with the help of CTT) after that. Eventually you'll come up
with better and better implementations. If you come up with something
especially novel, post it on-line. In fact, contributing to CTAN
directly is usually recommended.

Another thing that helps me is to remember that TeX is really is just a
giant machine that tokenizes, parses, and expands. It's not a
"programming language" so much as it is a text "filter" in that a single
run of LaTeX doesn't necessarily result in what you want. Keeping this
in the back of my head helps me anticipate the problems I might have
with certain approaches, and it further helps me figure out how to
approach LaTeX in order to succeed.

How much is good coffee worth?

Today I decided to try getting McDonald's coffee on the way to work. The small black coffee that I purchased:

• was $1.00 (I thought it would be $0.99 or less)
• was burnt
• was just slightly above tepid
• had room for cream (even though I asked for no room).
• had a fancy plastic lid that forced the coffee up into my lip rather than my mouth, which would have hurt me if the coffee was actually hot

Additionally, I had to wait in a line of cars to get said coffee.

If I had gone to Starbucks or Brennan's or one of many other coffee places that the media refers to as selling "$4 coffee," I could have had the same drink, but

• It would have been $1.25.
• It would have been fresh and tasty.
• It would have been hot.
• It would have been filled to the brim.

If the McD's coffee was $0.50, then I might have been able to overlook this... but for only $0.25 more, I think the "designer" coffee is much better.

You have to work HARD to buy $4 coffee at a place like Starbucks. Usually your drink has to involve milk and froth and lots of other ingredients that make it stop being a "coffee." That's why those drinks are NOT called "coffees." A coffee can be served to you in a few seconds, while a more exotic drink takes time to prepare. That's why those other drinks cost more.

So good coffee is a quarter more than bad coffee. Now that I know the value of good coffee, I hope I won't make the mistake of buying bad coffee again.

Great 2-port USB KVM switch: IOGEAR GCS632U MiniView Micro USB Plus

A while ago I made a couple of posts about KVM switches [i.e., 1, 2]. In that case, I was searching for a PS/2 KVM switch that supported 5-button mice. Several KVM switches failed me, including a switch from Belkin that looked great on paper but was awful in practice. In the end, it was the cheapest switch that worked like a charm. Well, here's how things went this time.

• Again, Belkin makes crap: Last week I went through virtually the same process with 2-port USB KVM switches. This time I needed a USB switch to go back and forth between my Apple PowerBook and my Dell Workstation (I'm spanning the PowerBook's second monitor onto the Windows machine). Because it looked to be the cheapest, I tried the Belkin F1DK102U 2-Port USB KVM Switch with Built-In Cabling first. It said it supported OS X and XP. Strangely, it also required software to be installed in order to use it. This should have been my first clue that I was wasting my time and money with this awful Belkin product. I don't remember the last time I was pleased with a Belkin product (I suppose I had some UPS's from them that weren't that bad). Despite being OS X compatible, booting with the product connected caused the PowerBook to crash pretty bad. It gave me that little black window of death on bootup. Again, because it required software in order to use, that made uninstalling it (while the monitor was still connected to it) was a pain. PLUS, when it was connected, it wasn't able to emulate my monitor and mouse and keyboard, and so Windows and OS X weren't convinced that I was using the monitor, mouse, and keyboard that I was using. Oh, and on TOP of that, one of its attached cables (you can see this in the picture) is only about a foot long, and it's the DEFAULT PORT! This was a lousy product.


• IOGEAR is lovely as always: Luckily, I had to go back to the store for a different reason, and I noticed that they had four IOGEAR GCS632U MiniView Micro USB Plus 2-port KVM switches, and two of those switches were marked at a price CHEAPER than the Belkin piece of crap. I had someone check, and the correct price was the low price. So I took the Belkin back and got the IOGEAR instead. This switch said it was Mac compatible (Mac mini compatible, even). Heck, it even said it was SUN compatible! It also had ANALOG AUDIO support, which is kinda nice. Finally, right on the box it said, "USB sniffing technology allows complete USB mouse and keyboard emulation for error-free boot-up." This feature was one of the major things I LOVED about the old QVS PS/2 switch. Plus, I figured this meant that it would crash my PowerBook like the Belkin thing did. Both of its cables were the same length (6'), and it would choose a "default" port based on what was powered on. Oh, and did I mention it didn't require software?

The result? The IOGEAR GCS632U, the cheapest 2-port USB KVM switch that was available to me, worked EXACTLY as I wanted it to. It's beautiful. It's slick. I love it. I love IOGEAR.

NOTE: IOGEAR also has a PS/2 version of this switch that I'm guessing works as superbly as the QVS KVM-12CK (the PS/2 switch from the previous posts) that is still working great today.

I found my KVM!!

After a long search, one of the cheapest damn KVM's ended up being the one that worked!

The QVS KVM-12CK was the one that did the trick. It's great! It supports ALL the features of my Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical (all of the 5 buttons plus the scroll wheel) plus all of the features of my Logitech Media Keyboard Elite. I BET it would work with the cordless keyboard and mouse I was using earlier with a crappy Belkin OmniView (DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM BELKIN EVER!! EVER!! BOYCOTT THIS AWFUL COMPANY!! BOYCOTT!!).

However, I do have a gripe or two about this new KVM switch. My biggest gripe is that its connectors come out the back (console) and two sides (each computer) and it's a square meant to sit flat, so it looks a little ugly and is a little inconvenient. I might rig up some sort of holder for it to hold it vertical attached to the hutch going around the monitor. It also has a single toggle button rather than a button for each PC, but since it's only 2-port then that's not so bad (it might even be preferable).

So this is exciting. It works. I'm pretty happy about it.

NOTE: IOGEAR also has a PS/2 version of this switch that I'm guessing works as superbly as the QVS KVM-12CK that is still working great today.