Nintendo Wii

Finally I got my Nintendo Wii. A friend lined up outside a Target store and bought one for me. Well, I have always been a computer game fan and had never own a game console before. What set Wii apart from other game consoles like the PS3 & Xbox360 is how Wii keeps the player's whole body involved. Instead of just exercising my fingers, I can exercise my whole body while having fun. My job requires me to sit in front of the computer all day and most my after work entertainment is sitting in front of my computer at home again, either surfing the web or play computer games. With the Wii, I can at least get my butt off the chair to play "tennis", "baseball", "bowling", "golf" or "boxing". The Wii comes with the "Wii Sports" game which includes the games mentioned above. What makes the Wii unique is the Wii Remote and the Remote sensor. You use the remote just like a tennis racket when you are playing tennis or your swing it like the baseball bat when play the baseball game. The Will also has the built-in WiFi capability. Connecting the Wii to my home Wi-Fi Internet access is easy. I can check world wide weather and news and other fun activity with other Wii channels. In all, I love my Wii a lot, instead of playing video games passively in the couch, I now can get some exercise as well. Below are some pictures I took right after I had the chance to open the box and setting it up when I returned from work late at night, sorry about the picture quality.

My favorite Wii sport - Bowling:

Strike!

Gateway FPD2275W 22-inch Widescreen HD-LCD Flat-Panel Display

I have been looking for a 22-inch widescreen LCD diplay to replace my 17-in LCD display for a while and finally I bought the Gateway FPD2275W 22-inch Widescreen HD-LCD Flat-Panel Display .

I must say that I am pretty happy with the display. It has the most input options which you can't find in other 22-inch LCD display: VGA, S-Video, Composite video inputs and DVI-D with HDCP input. on the back left hand side of the monitor, there is a integrated powered 4-port USB 2.0 hub. This is a definite plus for me, I have so many gadgets which require a usb port for connecting to my PC.

Like me, if you didn't own a widescreen monitor before, you might be a little frustrated in setting the monitor up. The image may be stretched, but after I set it to the max resolution of 1680x1050 and a little of fine tuning on the brightness & contrast, the image & color looked very impressive, no more text, image distortion on the screen. The only complain I had is the bleeding of brightness on the corners of the display as some reviewers pointed out on the product page on amazon.com. But an reviewer said that if a DVI cable is used, the bleeding will disappear. But for now I can live with that. I also found a single dead pixel close to the left hand side of the display, but I hardly notice it, only when there is no video signal or that part of the screen is displaying dark color.

Besides the great functionality, this monitor looks very stylish too. The menu controls are built inside the right hand side of the panel and it's very sensitive to touching. If you install the include EzTune software and purchase an optional stand, you can rotate the monitor from landscape to portrait. You can also set up a PIN to protect the monitor from theft. Without the valid PIN, the monitor will not work with other computers.

In all, I will give this monitor a 4.5 out of 5 rating just because of the bleeding issue and the single dead pixel.

Sansa e260 4GB MP3 Player

I love electronic gadgets, so natually I own a few of them, for examples, the Sansa e260 MP3 player, Sony W810i cell phone and recently a Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS...etc. Well, today I like to talk about the Sansa e260 MP3 player.

I was in the market for a mp3 player, after doing some research on the Internet and at the local electronic stores such as Circuit City & Best Buys, I decided to purchase the Sansa e260 MP3 player from Sandisk. I have heard rave review on the ipod series from Apple, but somehow I have never been the Apple product fan, just like the PCs vs the Macs, I have never own a Mac. Sorry, Apple fans, I have to admit, I am on the cheap side of spending money on electronics when there are perfectly good alternatives.

Actually I have bought & used the Sansa mp3 player for serveral months, and I must say I am very happy about it. It has all the features I expected from an mp3 player & more. It's stylish & compact. It plays music files in mp3, wma format; dispaly pictures & play videos. It also has a built-in FM tuner; you can also use it as voice recorder. It comes with 4GB of intergrated flash memory with a micro SD memory expansion slot, so there is a lot of room to store more musics & vidoes.

Product Features :

Audio Player
Video Player
Photo Viewer
FM TunerFM
RecorderVoice Recorder

Playback Duration 64 Hour(s) 960 Song(s) @ 128Kbps MP3128 Hour(s) 1920 Song(s) @ 64Kbps WMAAudio Formats

Flash Memory (Integrated)
Display Screen

1.8" TFT Color LCD
Interfaces/Ports

1 x USB1 x Audio Line Out
Storage Capacity

4GB Flash Memory

Still Image Formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP,TIFF

Video Formats: DAT, WMV, MPEG, AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VOB, QuickTime MOV

Where to get it:

Unfortunatly, it doesn't come with an auto charger for in car use. If you car stereo has a buit-in aux jack like I do, you can plug it in with an audio cable which you can buy from Radio Shack or other electronic stores. Or you can buy a FM trasmitter with the charger, that way, you don't have to worry about running out of battery charge on a long trip.