Innergie mCube 90

Product summary


The good: The Innergie mCube 90 has solid construction and can power two devices at once.

The bad: The Innergie mCube 90's design is a tad baffling. You must pay extra for phone-charging tips.

The bottom line: If you can afford it, the Innergie mCube 90 is a convenient way to consolidate charging cables for your gadgets.

CNET editors' review

* Reviewed by:
Kent German
* Reviewed on: 07/27/2009

Innergie's mCube 90 isn't quite what you expect at first. Though you might think that it's an emergency charger in the style of the Callpod Fueltank, it's actually a universal charging adapter for powering multiple gadgets at once. You can use it with your cell phone, of course, but it also supports laptops and Netbooks. On the whole, it's a quality product with solid construction. The design is a little perplexing, and we don't like that we have to pay extra for phone-charging tips, but it does its job well. The mCube is $99.99, which is rather expensive.

The mCube 90 and its various parts come in attractive packaging that includes a soft zippered case. The power adapter is a white rectangle that measures 5.07 inches by 2.76 inches by 0.93 inch and weighs 9.28 ounces. Innergie claims that the mCube 90 is the smallest universal power adapter. While that might very well be the case, the mCube 90 isn't exactly featherweight. On the exterior, you'll find a plug for the AC power cord, a USB port and a DC output port for notebooks. There's also a LED indicator.

The adapter actually consists of two parts that separate near one end. The smaller part (the subunit) is used as the conduit for powering your Netbook or phone while in a car or on an airplane. On one end is a proprietary connection that accommodates the DC cable for your car's cigarette lighter. That cable measures almost 2 feet, so it should fit most environments. On the other end of the subunit are the aforementioned ports for the USB phone cables and the DC cable for notebooks. You'll need top purchase the airplane cable separately.

The laptop cable also measures about 5 feet. One end connects with the adapter while the other end has a connection for the various laptop tips. Fortunately, you get seven tips in the box; that should be enough to accommodate most laptops from Acer, Asus, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba. The fit between the tips and the cable is tight, but the tips come in a small cloth bag.

To use the mCube 90 to power your phone or laptop from a wall charger, you must reconnect the sub unit with the main part of the adapter. The AC power cable uses a proprietary connection, but it measures a convenient five feet. We're not sure why the Innergie designed the mCube 90 in this way--we think it would be easier if you kept the adapter in piece no matter what you were charging. Also, we'd prefer if the various cable ports were consolidated.

Unfortunately, the mCube 90 doesn't come with any phone tips in the box. You must purchase them separately for $7.99 per manufacturer. Each package includes a retractable cable and the various tips for that manufacturer. The Motorola kit, for example, comes with mini-USB and micro-USB tips. Other kits are available for LG, HTC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, RIM and Samsung phones. That leaves a few manufacturers--Apple, PCD, Kyocera, Pantech and Palm--out in the cold.

The phone cable uses the USB port next to the DC power cable jack. The cable stretches to 2.5 feet with the phone tips connecting neatly at one end. We tried powering a Samsung SGH-T349 and a Samsung SGH-A177. Both handsets and an IBM laptop charged in the normal manner. One particularly nice feature of the mCube 90 is that it can power a phone and a laptop simultaneously.

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Gyration Air Mouse

Mouse doesn't require a mousing surface

by Blair Hanley Frank, Macworld.com



Gyration Air Mouse
Product:
Air Mouse
Rating (Scale) 5 - Superior
4 - Very Good
3 - Good
2 - Fair
1 - Poor
Pros
Easy, intuitive use in air; long range; can be used by left- or right-handers.
Cons
No Mac drivers; mouse feels cramped when used on a table.
Company
Gyration
Price as rated
$80

MacWorld- Gyration’s Air Mouse feels like the product of a fly-by-night relationship between a Wii Remote controller and a traditional mouse. The Air Mouse sports an internal gyroscope that allows you to hold the mouse like a remote control and direct the cursor by moving your wrist—there’s no need to place the Air Mouse on a surface. It’s a novel idea, and one that’s implemented well. But when you actually use the Air Mouse on a table, the small and portable design makes for a cramped experience.

The Air Mouse is wonderfully designed to fit in either hand. When using the Air Mouse, my hand didn’t so much rest on the mouse as engulf it. My hands fit in men’s medium-sized gloves, and the mouse felt small and uncomfortable when I was using it on a desk.

However, there was no discomfort when I picked up the Air Mouse and waved it in the air. It’s easy to see how the Air Mouse can be handy in a meeting while using PowerPoint, Keynote, OmniDazzle, or some other mouse-intensive program. The presenter has the freedom to stand and work a room, instead of sitting down in order to use a surface for the mouse.

Gyration doesn’t have Mac software drivers for the Air Mouse, so the three auxiliary buttons sitting directly behind the scroll wheel are completely unrecognized by OS X and are useless. If you’ve used Apple's Mighty Mouse ([Image]) before, the Air Mouse will use the behavior you assigned to the scroll wheel and right button on your Mighty Mouse. WIthout the Mighty Mouse software, the Air Mouse will switch to Dashboard when clicking the scroll wheel, and the right button defaults to the same action as the left button.

When setting up the Air Mouse for the first time, I was greeted by Apple’s Keyboard Setup Assistant, and despite the mouse being on and the USB dongle plugged in to my Mac (the dongle is a 2.4GHz RF receiver), the cursor refused to move. I checked the manual and followed the directions to press the “connect” button on the underside of the mouse as well as on the USB dongle itself. I then ignored the setup assistant, and went along my merry, mousing way.

Comfortable with the Air Mouse, I decided to test it with Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer mode, armed only with my keyboard and the Air Mouse. To say that my initial performance was horrendous would be a massive understatement. But, after about a half-hour, I was performing much better. The mouse seemed a decent extension of my body-not nearly as familiar as a typical desk-based implement, but still accommodating. While not as accurate at higher sensitivity levels as a traditional mouse,

My Call of Duty test emphasized that the Air Mouse isn’t really a gaming mouse, but a mouse for general purpose. In order to move the cursor, you have to depress a trigger on the underside of the mouse. When dealing with documents, spreadsheets, or other general tasks, this works fine. However, when playing a first-person shooter, I was squeezing that bottom trigger for several minutes at a time. After a while, the work my index finger and wrist were doing began to wear on me. By the end of my game session, my wrist ached.
Macworld’s buying advice

The Air Mouse is a solid product. Although it’s cramped for on-table use, it’s surprisingly comfortable when used in mid-air. The learning curve is also relatively gentle, and it’s easy to get your mind and muscles around this peripheral.

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Garmin nuvi 885T

LaptopMag.com
Garmin’s latest premium GPS navigator offers plenty of bells and whistles, including voice commands and free lifetime traffic.
by Troy Dreier on May 6, 2009



While some GPS devices feel like the developers have crammed in as many features as possible, market leader Garmin keeps things relatively simple with its high-end nüvi 885T ($599). This navigator delivers voice commands and lifetime traffic, but like other Garmin navigators, it’s well made and perfectly easy to use. However, for a high-end unit, it doesn’t push the envelope enough.

Design and Interface

The Garmin nüvi 885T has a 4.3-inch, 480 x 272-pixel touchscreen and a rounded silver case. It comes with an attractively small ball-and-socket window mount, as well as a remote that straps onto your steering wheel to call up the voice command system.

Start up the 885T and you’ll get the same simple two-icon interface as on lower-priced Garmin models: Where To? and View Map. Smaller icons let you access volume controls, settings, and, if you’ve connected a Bluetooth-capable phone, hands-free calling.

Maps and Navigation

The map view on the 885T is boldly colored and easy to follow, although we expect more detail and less of a cartoony look from a high-end device. While the map shows you your speed, next street, and time of arrival, we’d like to see more detail on the map view. Current street name, distance to destination, and volume controls were all missing.

While GPS startup time seemed especially fast, the 885T took 5 to 6 seconds to reroute after a missed turn, which is average. However, we like that Garmin includes two American English text-to-speech voices, both of which sounded excellent (there are also two Australian and two British voices, for a total of six). While the documentation promises lane guidance screens, we only saw one during many miles of highway testing. The leading competitor for this feature, Navigon, offers photorealistic lane guidance images far more often than Garmin does.

Entering an address with the 885T couldn’t be easier. The Garmin interface is simple enough for anyone to grasp. You can quickly enter an address, call up favorites, or look up a point-of-interest from the 6 million–POI database. The 885T seemed to freeze once when we searched the database and other times the search was quite slow. Also, the database could be more current; In our testing, the map didn’t know about a section of Newark Avenue in Jersey City that’s been closed to traffic for more than a year, or the local Staples and Starbucks that have been around for some time.

Extra Features

You get a few welcome perks for the high price tag, including MSN Direct services (the first three months are free; afterwards, the service costs $49.95 annually, or $129 for a lifetime plan). We like that the 885T includes lifetime MSN traffic, but the traffic map—which is so zoomed out that it looks like a plate of multicolored spaghetti—wasn’t all that helpful. Also, getting MSN services, such as local theater listings, weather forecast, and events, to work properly took some effort. At first, we thought that the 885T simply didn’t have any listings for our area, but after contacting MSN to reactivate the service on our unit, the navigator displayed a similar number of local events as we’ve seen on other GPS units with this feature.

We had better luck with the voice command system. The steering wheel remote called up the voice system perfectly every time, and the command system could hear us well if the radio was off and we spoke clearly. You can speak any on-screen menu commands, which is easy to remember.

The 885T also comes with a music player, Audible book player, and photo viewer. You can load Panoramio photos with embedded GPS data through the Garmin site, then navigate to them. It’s a bit tedious, though, since you need to create an account first and then download a helper application. Other extras include an FM transmitter, three free games (and eight purchasable demos), a currency converter, and a world clock.
Verdict

For $599, the Garmin nüvi 885T is worth the splurge if you like the idea of barking voice commands instead of digging through menus. However, for this amount of money, we prefer the Navigon 8100T (also $599), which, despite some faults of its own, offers a classier brushed-metal bezel, free traffic updates, and a 3D Panorama view.

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