Garmin has produced some amazing devices in the Nuvi series. Garmin Nuvi 880 is the latest device in the Nuvi series to hit the market. The device was first showcased at CES 2008 where it caught the fancy of the users. Sleek design, solid performance, speech recognition etc are just some of the aspects of this device. Speech recognition has although been implemented in other GPS devices but it hasn't been much successful. Garmin Nuvi 880 hopes to change all that and more.

Garmin Nuvi 880 specifications :

• Dimensions : 4.9? x 0.7? x 3.1?
• Weight : 6.2 oz
• Connectivity : USB
• Antenna : Built-in
• Display : 4.3? TFT touchscreen with 480 x 272 resolution
• Features : 2D / 3D map perspective, Built-in FM modulator,
  Built-in speaker, Custom POIs, JPEG photo playback,
  Hands-free calling via Bluetooth, Calculator, Automatic routing,
  
• Navigation : Waypoints - 50, Routes - 10
  Garmin Lock, Clock
• Digital Player : Yes, JPEG,MP3
• Card Slot : microSD
• Battery : Lithium ion
• Approx. price : $799

Design

Garmin Nuvi 880 has a sleek and compact design making it easy to carry. It manages to accommodate a large display in its small size. The display is a 4.3? touchscreen with 420 x 320 resolution. It has high levels of brightness making text clearly visible and maps look great. The brightness can be adjusted and there is also an automatic mode for viewing maps. The display has a QWERTY keyboard and the responsiveness of the screen is very good.

The user interface is intuitive and hence easy to navigate. The menu structure has been well laid out combining both basic and advanced tasks together. The device also has an microSD slot along with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Vehicle mount is included in the accessories that come with the package. The speech recognition function is controlled by a separate remote control. Vehicle mount is also bundled in the package, and can be self mounted without much difficulty.

Features

The maps loaded on the device are provided by City Navigator NT which are of North America with loads of points of interests (POIs). Speech recognition function is very well implemented in this device. A total of 30 functions can be controlled using the speech recognition feature which includes entering address, adjusting volume, media functions of player, activating handsfree speaker, accessing MSN Direct services etc.

Trip planning can also be started using speech recognition or the touch screen. There are a lot of ways to plan your trip. You can start by entering the address, a POI or select a location from recently browsed stuff. Detours can also be configured if you plan to take one. The Navi 880 is smart to find out deviations from route and automatically recalculate the directions.

The POIs include almost all the places that you are likely to visit and are sorted in categories for easy access. It also supports addition of custom POIs through its interface. Three months of free subscription of MSN Direct services comes with the device. MSN Direct services give you access to live traffic conditions, movie timings and fuel prices in nearby gas stations. The regular price for MSN Direct service is $49.95 for an year or $129.95 one time payment. Not too expensive if you ask me for the kind of services it provides.

Coming on to the maps, both 2D and 3D views are supported in both day and night colors. Direction of the map can it set to the direction you are driving in or set it to fix north at the top. You can zoom in or out of the map using the plus and minus buttons provided. A trip information page displays your speed, direction, trip time etc. Voice aided turn by turn navigation is present alongwith text-to-speech functionality. It also packs in a FM transmitter which allows you to route device audio to car audio for better clarity in noisy conditions.

There is a cool feature on the device called "Where Am I?" which provides you with the co-ordinates of your current location, the nearest intersection or an intersection. But it doesn't end there, it also provides you with nearest POIs such as hospitals, gas stations, police stations to help you locate in unknown location. These services can be reached through a simple call which is triggered by the device itself as it has a bluetooth.  Your phone book, call history seamlessly syncs with the device so that you can launch a call from Nuvi 880 itself.

We haven't touched upon some of the other functions of the device. A Travel Kit is included that contains a MP3 player, an Audible book player, a JPEG picture viewer with slideshow, converters, world clock, calculator.

Performance

The device takes a little under two minutes to get a satellite lock from cold start in optimal conditions. Subsequent starts reduce the time to under a minute and many a times a few seconds is all it takes. The tracking accuracy is precise even when vehicle is moving at high speeds. The trip advisor feature is easy to use and helps you get to your destination quickly. Voice assisted turn by turn navigation is fast to guide you to follow directions. The instructions

Speech recognition capabilities of the device are far superior to those found on other devices. It is highly accurate and works without any quirks. External noise isn't an hindrance to the device for getting it to recognise our voice, which makes it amazing. The voice feature scores over the touch screen due to obvious reason when you are driving. Overall the device works beautifully harnessing all its power and utilising it to the maximum.

Pros :

• Sleek and compact design
• Excellent feature set
• Free 3-months MSN Direct services
• Integrated bluetooth
• Excellent speech recognition
• Good performance

Cons :

• Expensive
• Slow startup
• Route calculation takes time

Final Thoughts

The Garmin Nuvi 880 is an excellent product with loads of features and solid performance. The speech recognition feature is the best feature of the device as it works flawlessly. MSN Direct services come in handy a lot of times. The startup time is a bit slow and also the route calculations take a fair bit of time. Apart from this, the Nuvi 880 does its job perfectly but comes at a heavy price tag.

My Rating : 4/5

Although Blu-ray drives are the flavor of the season but their adoption has been slow due to high costs. This has forced consumers to look out for DVD burners for now and wait till prices of Blu-ray drives drop to reasonable levels. SATA drives have taken over their IDE counterparts for better bandwidth. Plextor makes great burners and hopefully PX-810SA is no exception.

Plextor PX-810SA DVD Writer specifications :

• Dimensions : 5.7? x 7.1? x 1.6?
• Type : DVD/RW, DVD-RAM
• Read speed : 40x(CD), 16x(DVD)
• Write speed : 40x(CD), 18x(DVD-R), 10x(DVD-R DL)
• Buffer size : 2MB
• Buffer underrun protection : BURN-Proof
• Approx. price : $80

The Plextor PX-180SA DVD Writer are known for their quality and this one is no exception and has good build quality. The drive comes with a SATA connector, an upgrade over IDE connectors which were used in older drives. This allows the drive to use higher bandwidth which translates to greater data throughput. The drive comes bundled with Roxio Easy Media Creator 9, MyDVD Video Authoring, CinePlayer DVD-Video Playback, BackUP MyPC Archive and backup softwares. That is a great software bundle, rarely seen with any DVD burners. The drive supports almost all CD/DVD formats for both reading and writing apart from the HD formats. The drive unfortunately is not region free and hence you are bound to face problem while viewing movies from a different region. The region can only be changes upto a maximum of five times. Another downside with the drive is the inability to set read speed, although most of you won't even bother to do that. The performance of the drive is good but leaves room for improvement. The time taken by the drive to burn a dual layer disc was around 21.5 minutes. The time to rip a dual layer DVD was exactly half of that. Burning a single layer DVD took around 8 minutes which is on the slower side. Ripping a CD took close to 2.5 minutes. Hence it does not offer top class performance but good enough for daily use. Pros :

• Great software bundle
• Good performer
• SATA compatible

Cons :

• Not region free
• Fixed read speed
• Slightly expensive

Final Thoughts The Plextor PX-810SA DVD Writer is a reliable and a decent performing DVD writer. The great software bundle also adds to the cost of the burner. This is a good DVD burner to invest in if you are looking for reliability and good performance. My Rating : 3.25/5

Storage space is never enough and the thirst for more never dies! So to quench the thirst, GBs have turned into TBs. Drobo has come out with storage arrays that give you storage space upto 4TB! This is their second generation hard drives, with first ones setting a new standards.

Drobo 2TB Storage Array specifications :

• Dimensions : 6? x 10.7? x 6.3?
• Capacity : 2TB
• Interface type : SATA-I, SATA-II
• Connectivity : Firewire 800, Hi-Speed USB
• Beyond RAID technology, Drive reordering
• Self healing, Status lights, storage virtualization
• Power adapter : AC 120/230 V
• Warranty : 1-year limited
• Approx. price : $899

Not much has changed with the hard drive from its previous generation except for Firewire support and enhanced capacity. That does make its price look very steep. It would have made sense to include an eSATA port and or networking capability to make it worth the upgrade.

The Drobo can house upto four internal SATA drives of any capacity to achieve safe and secure data storage solution. It can also predict which hard drive is likely to fail, so that you can replace it immediately. If one of the hard drives fails, there is no data loss, seems cool. But this has strings attached to it. As you might have guessed it, data redundancy is why you do not lose data but this comes at the cost of reduced combined storage space. Also if Drobo fails, then data can be recovered only by using another Drobo unit.

The ventilation system has been improved and fan noise levels have gone down due to reduced rotation rate. Setting up Drobo is quite easy, you just have to put all the hard drives in the bay and launch the Drobo Dashboard software to get the setup running. The Drobo firmware is a bit buggy at the moment and an update should fix things.

EDIT: There were some misconceptions about Drobo's performance. The actual performance of the drive is great. The write and read speeds are close to 400mbps and 280mbps respectively.

Pros :

• Data protection
• Expandable storage
• Firewire support
• Faster processor
• Great performance

Cons :

• No eSATA port
• No networking support

Final Thoughts

Drobo 2TB storage array is a unique external storage solution. Data protection is its biggest feature, but it lacks fast performance. Firewire should have improved things but that isn't the case. Its storage can also be expanded by plugging in upto four SATA drives. Overall if data protection is your primary aim, then this is perfect solution for you.

My Rating : 4/5

Sometimes in an Office setup or even for personal use, you may need to connect two or more computers to a single monitor. This kind of setup is usually preferable if both the computers are to be used alternately or if purchasing an additional monitor is not feasible. In such a case you can use a KVM switch to connect two or more computers to a single monitor and control both of them using a single interface. To create such a setup, you will need 1. A KVM Switch 2. A Monitor, a Keyboard and a Mouse. 3. Two complete Computers with everything in place other than the Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse. The KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch has Monitor (VGA / DVI), Keyboard and Mouse inputs from both the Computers. The output from a KVM switch are single Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse outputs which connect to your Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse respectively. To switch between the active computer you just need to change a setting on the KVM switch. This will be specified on the KVM switch manual. You also get Local remote KVM switches which give you a larger range of control. In these type of KVM switches, CAT5 cables are used to transmit the Input and Output signals. THe KVM switch provides the interface to convert the Video and Input signals to a format suitable for transmission over CAT5 cables. Reverse KVM switches are also available to connect a single Computer to many monitors. Recommended Vendors: D-Link and IOGear. KVM switches are available for as low as $30. Note: If your monitor supports dual VGA / DVI input, you can directly connect both the PCs to the inputs of the monitor and switch the active workspace using Monitor controls. Check your Monitor manual for more info.