I’ve been building up the perfect desktop lately and I really feel like it’s come together lately so I wanted to mention a few of the final toys that pulled it all together.
I have always liked having multiple full sized monitors, and right now I have two, a pair of widescreen (24″ and a 22″) panels, but I just added a tiny little 7″ monitor (800×480 resolution) from ThinkGeek. It’s totally USB, both in terms of the interface (so it doesn’t need a display card) and where it gets its power, and right now I’m using it for desktop gadgets like weather, clock, RSS feeds, and a photo gallery that pulls images from my Facebook friends, but also anticipate it being quite handy for tools and palettes (Photoshop, Maya, etc.), notes, and other small items that will allow me to work fullscreen on one of the big monitors if I can find a place to stash them. I figure I’ll also use this with my laptop as needed.
The other new toy that I got is a SnapScan, a tiny little USB-powered scanner. The reason that I like it is that it’s duplex, meaning that it scans both sides of a piece of paper simultaneously. So now when I get a piece of mail, I put it in (up to ten sheets at a time), and push the scan button. It’s very fast, taking just a few seconds to do a double-sided full colour scan and transfer the two sides to the computer, where they are converted into PDF files and OCR’d, meaning that I can quickly text-search all my documents. Given what a mess of paper I’ve historically had, this is a massive, massive improvement. I also picked up a cross-cut shredder for $25 today, which seemed like a great deal and a great match.
I’ve also really been liking my Wacom drawing tablet, my Flip Ultra HD mini-camcorder, my Beats by Dr. Dre sound-cancelling headphones, and my Kindle DX wireless ebook reader. In the past I’ve had sort of mixed results buying gadgets, but I feel like I’ve made good decisions on this latest batch (and I’ve had most of these long enough to give a review with real perspective — I’m not still in awe of the new-car smell). If anyone has questions about any of these recommendations I’m happy to oblige.
8 Comments
Awesome set up. I’m really considering a mini monitor for all the same reasons. I am really liking the snapscan too.
That seems like a pretty cool little monitor – how is it on system resources? Power consumption?
I’ve got it hooked up to a 4/8-CPU machine so I don’t notice any load at all really. That said, the drivers are definitely doing something, as I’ve noticed that photoshop is a little more unstable and seems to be a little more desiring of memory for some reason.
I got to play with the Beats for a few minutes, and I don’t know if it was because it was an abused display model, but they felt very chinsy, especially compared to other headphones in that price range. Are they fairly solid?
Yeah, the Beats are not very well build and crack easily.. But I like the sound.
Sorry to keep pressing the issue, but I’m torn between purchasing the Beats and Bose QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones.
The Bose sound good and feel extremely solid, but the Beats sounded just fantastic. Do you have any feelings about/experience with the Bose?
I haven’t tried them. The only others that I have lots of experience with are sennheisers (which I really like).
I am a HUGE advocate for Bose. My “out and about” headphones are their earbuds, and sweet jesus I’ve never heard any other set of earbuds come even close to these. They feel horrid, but as soon as I bought them I heard things (like entire two-part harmonies) that I’d never heard before. I can safely say that they’ve changed my life. Best $100 I’ve ever spent.
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