Gadgets within this big gadget even get their own headlines.

It’s like a night club/fancy restaurant with football.

Included in this craze are a variety of portable speakers that easily hook up to a headphone jack – whether it be your smartphone or your computer.

The X-mini II is a top-shelf choice. It has a great battery life, rechargeable battery, small package, great sound for it’s size and price, and an Aux In that allows you to daisy chain multiple portable speakers together. Just rolling through these features doesn’t give it enough credit:

• great battery life – so far mind has yet to die – i never run the battery out all the way, it just seems to go for hour and hours
• rechargeable battery – no need to deal with aa batteries, being able to charge on USB is great
• small package – unscrew the top and it expands
• great sound for it’s size and price – for only $30, I expected low quality sound, but I was pleasantly surprised
• Aux In – lets you to daisy chain multiple portable speakers together for bigger, better sound

I use it mainly during camping/canoeing. A great purchase and I’m sure I’ll buy a new one of these when the time comes to replace it.

Traditional analog calipers, ie. the ones with numbers printed on them, have been available on the cheap for quite a while. More recently, digital calipers have become readily available. A search on Amazon yields some basic $10 digital calipers, and you can spend more depending on your needs & desires.

So how does the basic $10 caliper hold up? Accuracy-wise it is very good, however when adjusting the width of the caliper you need to keep steady pressure and motion on the thumb wheel. If you do not, it sometimes slips a bit and you’ll get an inaccurate measurement. Because of this, it’s always a good idea to reset, zero and measure a second time. The bigger annoyance with this model is the fact that it doesn’t display fractional numbers, only decimal. This might be on purpose, since a small deviation from the exact decimal value might make figuring out the fractional number more difficult.

It’s not a fun gadget, but a very useful one. A definite toolbox necessity.

That’s actually an unfair comparison, it is very different from a switchblade, and it’s differences are exactly what make it “more legal” (not legal advice). It’s much more of a utility knife, and is not meant to be concealed – but rather utilized by a single hand.

The legal definition of an assisted open knife seems to center on features which prevent it from being easily concealable, although professional legal advice should be sought if necessary.

The assisted open knives I have used are solid in design and function. Whether it’s a generic $10 knife, or a $50 Kershaw – the assisted open feature is extremely useful when your hands are tied. Whether camping, fishing or general use – I’m sure you’ll be happy with these knives.

Let’s admit it, if you’re reading this article you probably want a way to control your TV / Computer / HTPC from your couch. You’ve also probably tried various wireless mice and keyboard, and you probably have drooled over various other wireless gadgets online.

The Logitech M515 offers a few things the others don’t. For one, it works on couches and other materials for a long time. It doesn’t just “work”, it’s actually designed to prevent lint and other particles from getting inside, and prevents snagging.

It also lasts for up to two years without recharge. That’s right – up to 2 years. I’m sure I won’t be testing that claim any time soon, but it’s nice to see those kind of numbers being thrown around.

The Logitech Unifying Receiver is a nice feature, if you haven’t used these before – it makes life much easier when using multiple Unifying devices. I highly recommend Unifying devices, read more on it here or just bite the bullet and pick up a Performance MX Mouse.

Hand detection is also a nice touch, the mouse won’t turn on until it detects your hand gripping it. Not only will it save battery life, but it will prevent common accidental mouse-move consequences, such as hidden toolbars suddenly showing up when you move the mouse (ie. using it on a computer to watching Hulu).

My #1 gripe with the “couch mouse” is the lack of Darkfield Technology. I believe that Logitech needs to stop screwing around and add Darkfield onto all mice. The main thing preventing me from ordering one of these is the lack of Darkfield. A glass coffee table is sitting just feet from my couch, so I hope you can understand my frustration. The price tag is a bit steep at $50, but I expect to see it around on sale pretty often.

Harmon Kardon has always been able to impress, from design to audio quality it should satisfy most audiophiles. From the looks, and from the price, we are fairly sure you’ll be impressed. And with a small footprint, it would be great for you boat, cabin, mistresses’ house, and more. But if you aren’t impressed, don’t blame it on Harmon Kardon, just blame it on your own audiophile obsessions.

Follow the link for more information

A few additional features of the MAS 102:

• Fully integrated entertainment center
• Slot load CD player
• Drift-free FM tuner
• USB Ports
• At least 8 auxiliary audio inputs

Me want.

We scroll a lot. The web, and computers as a whole, wouldn’t be what they are without scrolling. Almost every mouse these days has a scroll wheel,  some have horizontal scroll, some are even considered to have “4d” scrolling.

But for the average mouse, we all know that scrolling is jumpy – with only a few scroll “clicks” or “ratchet clicks”, the minimum you can scroll is sometimes 1/2 a screen.

What Logitech has done is add many more ratchet clicks to the mouse, 72 clicks total so you have a lot more control over how much you scroll. This is about 4 times as many clicks as the average scroll mouse. I think this is great, and knowing Logitech I don’t even need to test it before ordering one – I am sure it will be awesome.

The Logitech m325 includes a series of other nice features, including but not limited to:

• Popular comfort design
• Logitech Unifying Receiver
• Up to 18 months of battery life
• Available with a couple of stylish designs

The Logitech Unifying Receiver is probably one of our favorite features of all of their mice.

The Logitech Performance MX is also a great choice for power users, and in terms of scrolling is very powerful: It has a button below the scroll wheel which dis-engages the ratchet mechanism, allowing the wheel to spin freely. I absolutely love this mouse.

I do wish it had Darkfield, and I don’t think I have to explain why.

So why do we call it “fake bluetooth”. Well, look at the technical limitations of the Logitech Unifying reciever, they are very similar to bluetooth, having a limit of 6 devices as one example. Also, the size and shape of the receiver is conveniently similar to many USB Bluetooth receivers on the market.

This suggests that Logitech has basically re-branded Bluetooth as something else. This is disappointed, and I feel like Logitech is just trying to squeeze more money out of people, and when they can’t they make you use a receiver which is similar to Bluetooth.

Logitech also has some devices with other similar wireless receiver that aren’t compatible with Unifying Technology. We feel like they are throwing around so many different types of wireless receivers that the end-user cannot make good buying decisions.

One massive disappointment: Logitech and the Unifying Software: Moving your device from one computer to another is not instant, in other words un-pairing it from one computer, and pairing with a separate one is way more difficult and time-consuming than it should be. Logitech seriously needs some software adjustments in this field. For example, if you have a mouse and keyboard that are Unifying, and you have one receiver plugged into your desktop, and the other on your laptop, and you want to switch your mouse and keyboard to your laptop, it takes several steps through the software.

Our workaround for this is to only connect to a single receiver and just keep the extras around as backups if you forget it. You can literally just move the Unifying USB receiver that the devices are paired with to a different computer, and the devices will almost instantly work, even during the middle of a Windows installation.

None of these frustrations don’t mean that I don’t love my Logitech devices. My Performance MX mouse is one of my favorite devices ever, I just love it. But when the price tag is already nearing $100, Logitech shouldn’t be trying to squeeze even more money out of you, they should just cough up the Bluetooth already without raising the price to something rediculous.

Also remember that all of your “wireless” devices broadcast out a signal to communicate with your computer. Your receiver at your computer also broadcasts a signal.Both your keyboard and your USB receiver are a “broadcast+receiver” device. Just like WiFi, these signals are just going out in all directions. If someone can detect it, they are one step closer to decrypting it and then doing whatever they want – such as broadcasting a pirate WiFi signal to act like someone else, or intercepting your keystrokes.

Surely “wireless” is not a synonym for “hacked” but anything using wireless communication is extremely vulnerable to interception. These is not a surprise to me, and I’m sure it’s not a surprise to a ton of other people. It’s not a revelation, and for some reason it just spiked in media attention.

If keystroke/wireless interception is a concern to you, you either need to see a therapist, or if you have a legitimate reason to be concerned just key a USB keyboard, USB mouse and hard-wired internet connection and you’ll sleep a little bit better each night. If wireless is the only way, use good WiFi passwords, although there isn’t a whole lot you can do to make your wireless keyboard/mouse more “secure”. I can’t even believe I’m talking about this.

I wonder if it’s even possible to hack into a user’s computer via their USB wireless receiver for their mouse/keyboard. Probably. Assume the worst.

Basically, Darkfield lets you use your mouse on glass. It’s a fancy way of saying that the mouse tracks multiple “anomalies” in the background of the “image” it takes, and it’s designed to focus on very small anomalies and particles, such as dust. The angle of the laser also seems to be very important, and we are sure Logitech has quite a few secrets based on their development of this technology.

It works on almost any glass surface. I’ve had the Performance MX for quite a while and I’ve never had a surface it doesn’t work on. I have heard that if you clean glass to the point where it’s “wicked clean” and there is no dust whatsoever, the mouse won’t work for a couple of minutes, until some dust settles, because it cant focus on any dust particles.

Darkfield is definitely “where it’s at”. If Logitech can “remove-head-from-ass”, maybe we will see some more devices with Darkfield included.