liGo NEWS

Rugged Radios Keep up with Dad — and Keep Him in Touch

June’s coming up, any idea’s for a Father’s Day present? Here’s a great idea for this Father’s Day for the adventurous dad—the Motorola Talkabout T5622. Loaded with an array of features, the Motorola Talkabout T5622 enables him to do the outdoor activities he enjoys, and at the same time helps keep him in touch with the people he loves.

The affordable T5622 two-way radios come with a variety of features to help keep dad in-touch and informed during expeditions and other outdoor activities. Lightweight and robust with rugged side grips, the compact T5622 radios are designed to support a range of up to 3 kilometres, offering dependable communication even in remote areas not covered by mobile phones. The radios are also equipped with Push To Talk (PTT) technology which helps conserve battery life.

When in quiet environments, dad will appreciate the VibraCall feature, which silently alerts him to incoming transmissions by vibrating. When used with Motorola’s optional PTT earbuds (an additional purchase, though) dad can communicate in the outdoors without disturbing wildlife.

The Doro WT89 fulfills your secret agent fantasies

The Doro WT89 is a walkie-talkie. It does what any other two-way radio does–transmit signals to another radio within the range of a particular frequency, and receive similar signals.

So, what’s the fuss all about?

Well, the Doro WT89 is definitely not your ordinary walkie-talkie. Although it performs like one (with exceptionally clair audio, one must add) it doesn’t look like one. In fact, it looks rather like a rugged sports watch–the kind of watch one would wear while skiing or while doing some other similar outdoor activity. It doesn’t give any visual clues as to its real identity as a two-way radio until it starts crackling.

And that’s what hooks you into the WT89–the almost James Bond-like feeling you get when you wear it and use it, fulfilling all little boys’ (and for that matter, grown boys, too) fantasies of being a secret agent.

Don’t worry, though, after you get over the secret thrill, the Doro WT89 still delivers in the features department, with an advertised range of up to 3 kilometres, making it ideal for a variety of outdoor pursuits–running, skiing, hiking, sky diving, you name it.

On testing we managed to get 2km range out of the watches with a good reception, which is a lot more than we’ve seen in the past from similar models. Communication is free, and no licence is needed. The 8 selectable channels and 38 sub codes to each channel increases privacy through channel selection which gives over 300 different channel combinations. Definitely a piece of electronics good enough even for James Bond.

The Netgear SPH200D: How does it measure up?

It’s hard to believe there was a time when phones were simply devices that plugged into proprietary sockets in order to make circuit-switched phone conversations. There are still plenty of such handsets around, or course, but if you can stand a bit more complexity, there are telephones out there attempting to break the barriers of conventional telephony–not to mention cutting down the costs of making calls.

Netgear’s smart SPH200D is one such phone. It plugs into a standard telephone socket in order to make calls using the PSTN as would any other DECT-based cordless handset. At the same time, it comes with a base station which has an Ethernet port, allowing it to be plugged into the Internet to automatically access Skype, the revolutionary internet telephony company. It can also be used with alternative VoIP services, though this feature depends on having the required access box and subscription from that company.

Perhaps seeing it as a landline+ type of proposition is looking at it the wrong way around. Nobody would seriously buy this handset to make ‘landline calls’, as they are still sometimes called. The Netgear is an Internet, VoIP phone first that lets the user integrate this manner of communicating with the old-style PSTN for convenience. It integrates two very different worlds into one so that the differences in underlying technology don’t need to be thought about. To the home or small business user, it is just a phone.

The point about using this phone with Skype/SkypeOut is that it frees the user from using a PC (i.e Skype run on a PC with a microphone or USB phone plugged in); the software to set up and manage the Skype connection is built into the phone itself. Once the account user name and password has been plugged into the handset, the phone does the rest on its own, a process that is transparent to the user. The only slight inconvenience is that when dialling, the user must manually choose whether to route the call over a landline connection or Skype, something that can be mildly confusing at first. One can be preferred over the other.

The Netgear SPH200D also integrates with one of Skype’s cleverest features, the ability to see when other Skype contacts are online and available to receive calls. If any of a user’s trusted contacts have their Skype fired up, the phone displays these on its colour LCD screen, ready to be ‘phoned’ at a single button click. It’ll even note the SkypeOut call credit available to phone contacts where the end-point is a PSTN line.

An unexpected bonus that eventually worked; anyone picking up the phone who happens not to have an existing Skype account set up on a PC can plug in a user name and password, and sign up for the service using the handset itself. Normally, this would be set up online, but that means having a computer on hand.

The phone itself is unusually well made by the standards of consumer DECT handsets, but is pretty much identical in every other way. The major difference is the menus to set up the Skype service, and some additional network settings that might be required on some sites (setting DHCP or a static IP address for instance).

About the only thing we’d question is the price – at a street price of just over £100, the Netgear is more expensive that buying the rival Philips dual-mode handset, and you also get a spare handset with the Philips. The Netgear is better made than the average DECT handset, which is worth bearing in mind for the long term.

GN 9120: Agreeable Performance

Do you have a bone to pick with wireless headsets that fulfill monolateral roles in your life? That is, with headsets that only let you do just one task? Or if you do happen to have a wireless headset that you use for a number of office communication tasks, do you find yourself giving your head a rub or two at times, in sheer exasperation at the absence of more helpful features in the device?
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GN 9120: Fitting Form and Function

There are wireless headsets we give high marks to for exceptional qualities and there are those we give high marks to for scoring high on the aggravation score. Indeed, there are a number of headsets on the market that seem to have been produced with no apparent reason other than to offer mediocre listening experiences. And consumers, average consumers, have no choice but to suffer through the natty sonic space these headsets put them through. Why is that in the first place, you may ask?
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BT DIVERSE 6450: Brimming with Excellent Features

Once in a while, there come twin cordless phones that simply alter commonplace notions about how a cordless telephone should be, on how its features must run, on how many functions it has to be able to pull off. The BT Diverse 6450 Twin SMS is among such rare digital innovations.
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Netgear SPH200D Power

The Netgear SPH200D is one cordless phone that has the qualities of a uniquely capable communication device for Skype. Those who are not on familiar terms with Skype may be compelled to ask what advantages do Skype features in a cordless telephone entail, exactly. If you are among them, you’ll be in for quite a surprise.
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Polycom 500 Conference Phone: Ideal Conference Technology

At first glance, the Polycom Voicestation 500 Conference Phone may seem reminiscent of any science-fiction gadget but closer inspections on its countenance—on the features it has, the functions it is capable of—will prove that this conference phone from Polycom achieves more than visual amusement. With its compact build and Bluetooth support, this conference phone is an apt digital telephone accoutrement to have around the office, on desktops as well as on any other location that seems to suffer from a wee bit of space constraints.
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SPH200D: Talented in Skype

With the emergence of cordless telephones like the SPH200D, it seems Skype communications is set to grow faster than critics and pundits in the digital tech field have generally presupposed. Is that a good thing? For those who have an intimate acquaintance with Skype, it is. Those who know what it can achieve, what it can accomplish, will be more than glad to welcome such cordless phones into their lives.

For those who remain largely unaware of them and of the limitless potential the technology phones of this kind employ, the answer has yet to matter.
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The Philips PhotoFrame is Best in Class

Compared to its competitors, the Philips PhotoFrame seems almost too simple. One competitor boasts Wi-Fi capabilities; another competitor can play MP3s; while yet another competitor plays .avi videos. The PhotoFrame has none of these fancy bells and whistles. Then again, though all those special features are all well and good, none of the competition can beat the Philips PhotoFrame what it’s meant to do: display your digital photos.

The PhotoFrame has a bright seven-inch LCD (800 x 480 pixels), surrounded by a matte-silver border. It supports SD, MMC, MS, CF, and xD Cards. We loaded our photos with an SD Card and were very impressed with how vibrant they looked on the frame. The PhotoFrame automatically detects the orientation of an image and rotates it accordingly. A built-in PhotoEffect Wizard lets you crop, zoom, and create collages. The PhotoFrame can also display the time and date along with your photos.

In contrast, Competitor 1 has a comparably good LCD screen, but has a great number of hidden costs–such as for the Wi-Fi feature–that are nearly superfluous. Competitor 2 is ok, but has problems reading certain file formats. Competitor 3’s LCD display is dark, the colors come out dull and lifeless, and is smaller than the advertised 7-inches.

The Philips Photoframe doesn’t skimp on the small details, either. With its controls hidden at the back, the frame itself looks sleek and lovely. The PhotoFrame is made from materials of the best quality, so one needn’t worry about buying a short-lived home electronic product that was merely a waste of money. The interface and controls are intuitive and thus easy to operate, which adds even more value to an already great product.

The Philips PhotoFrame is certainly the best digital photo display available today. There’s something great to be said about simplicity, after all.