GPSlim 236

Holux GPSlim 236 Slim Bluetooth GPS Sirf III laptop PDA PALM IPAQ PC Receiver
The Holux GPSlim236 Wireless GPS Receiver with SiRF-Star-III high sensitivity built-in chipset is an easy-to-use trip-guiding tool. You are able to enjoy brand-new experience in driving with Bluetooth technology of GPS Receiver, and have GPS connection without a cable. It's more convenient and flexible. Enjoy the GPS life!
Failure of Bluetooth means poor choice
Such a promising device. Worked great with Google Maps on my Blackberry right until the Bluetooth stopped working. Many people seem to have this problem and Holux support is non existent.
Still great almost two years after purchase
I purchased the Holux GPSlim 236 almost two years ago and it still works perfectly. I use it [along with iNav iGuidance software] daily and have never had a moments problem. It sits on the dash of my car all day, every day and continues to amaze me with its performance. It initializes quickly and always has enough satellite coverage to find my location. This poor gps receiver has been ABUSED and never gives up. It has been thrown from my dash more than once [during spirited driving] and it still didn't lose its signal. All in all, one of the better tech purchases I have made.

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HTC Wizard Windows Mobile 5.0 Device Review

Recently we were able to acquire a Qtek 9100, a European version of the soon to be released Cingular 8125. The HTC Wizard is a Windows Mobile 5.0 cellular phone with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and a great little form factor. For more information on the Wizard, and our full review, read on.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
The HTC Wizard immediately impresses any user right out of the box. It’s much smaller than you would think for a device packing the functionality it does and easily fits into a pocket. It’s slightly smaller than the highly popular Treo 650, and due to its internal antenna feels much smaller in a pocket or bag. The easy access form factor and well placed hardware buttons make the device easy to use as a phone single handed, and with both hands as a road warriors dream mobile communications device. The screen is bright and crisp, and the speakers provide very clear audio.

THE HARDWARE
As far as the form factor and hardware goes, we couldn’t be more impressed with the HTC Wizard. The sliding form factor, roomy keyboard, and strategically placed buttons make for a slick device. The screen slides up to reveal the keyboard, and then the operating system automatically rotates the on screen UI to match the orientation of the device. The Wizard is a solidly built device. Initially there was some concern that a slider form factor might lead to a weak hinge that was easily breakable, however, after a weeks use those fears were put to rest. The hard plastic used on the Wizard feels tough and able to resist scratches and dents.

The built in antenna is well designed and gets a good signal strength for both GSM communications as well as Bluetooth and WiFi. The antenna is actually on the underside of the screen so the Wizard gets the best reception when opened for use.

The QWERTY keyboard on the HTC Wizard is really the shining crown of the device. It’s roomy, easy to use, and after a weeks adjustment I was able to type an easy 30 words per minute. They individual keys have good feedback and a decent backlighting. On the Qtek 9100 the symbols are difficult to see in the dark because they have weak backlighting compared to the normal letters - this is a minor flaw that the Cingular 8125 promises to fix.

The 200 megahertz OMAP 850 processor in the Wizard is more impressive than we were expecting. It has a number of on-chip features to help process audio, networking, and other commonly used processes which helps speed things up. Unfortunately even with the added speed bonus of the on chip processors the Wizard is a little slow. When using multiple applications the device can seem sluggish or unresponsive.

THE SOFTWARE
Windows Mobile 5.0 has made some significant improvements to previous Pocket PC operating systems from Microsoft. WiFi and Bluetooth are much better integrated, and the operating system has been made much more keyboard accessible. Significant improvements have been made to the Messaging and Pocket IE applications. Pocket IE has a new full screen mode, and more options for how to display normal web pages on a small screened device. The browser still lacks Javascript, but is both easier to use and more functional that it’s competitors on the market (such as the Blazer browser on the Treo 650.)

The Messaging application really shines for business users wanting to connect it to a corporate Exchange server. The new Activesync over-the-air functionality means that you can synchronize your calendar, contacts, and exchange email either on a set schedule, or at the push of a button. The IMAP support unfortunately has not been improved since previous versions of the Windows Mobile operating system, but does provide adequate functionality for most users to keep up on their mail, and keep in contact with their friends.

For some strange reason, as improved as the keyboard support in Windows Mobile 5.0 is, there are still some things that require the use of a stylus or fingertip. The Messaging application requires the stylus to change the active folder being viewed within a mail account, and Pocket IE requires a stylus to put the focus on the address bar to input a new website to view.

THE VERDICT
The HTC Wizard is a great, well-designed device. There are some minor flaws with the operating system, but for the most part it has been a fun and powerful device to review. Although the HTC Wizard is aimed at the enterprise market some of the more tech-savvy power users out there are going to love this device. We hope that Microsoft continues to improve the usability of their operating systems to help make their devices more consumer friendly. We proudly give the HTC Wizard an 8/10 rating and are enthusiastic to see it’s US launch. Hopefully devices like this will become more prevalent and continue to improve the mobile communications paradigm that has begun and make push-email, IM, SMS, and video conferencing technologies within the reach of the entire world.


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‘The Bush Tragedy’ By JACOB WEISBERG

George Walker Bush is the product of two family traditions, the Bushes and the Walkers. On one side is the familiar patriarch Prescott Bush (1895–1972), the decorous Republican senator from Connecticut, the New England WASP, the pennant-waving Yale man. On the other side of his father’s family stands a lesser-known patriarch, George Herbert Walker (1875–1953), the St. Louis buccaneer and raucous playboy.

The Bushes as we know them today are the product of a combination of — one might say the combustion between — the two very different families arrayed around these two dominant men. Because the family is private to the point of being obsessively secretive, its basic internal struggle has been largely obscured in favor of a familiar cliché: the old American upper class. But this isn’t the story of a happy, unified family. Drilling into the history of the Walkers and the Bushes, one hits layer upon sedimentary layer of conflict among brothers, cousins, uncles, and grandparents. The buried drama and forgotten ancestors are the beginning point for understanding George W. Bush, the roots of whose temperament are not as shallow as they appear.

Superficially, the Walkers and Bushes had much in common when they came together just after the First World War. Both families represented industrial fortunes from the Midwest transplanted into East Coast finance. Both were fanatical about sports and ferociously competitive, sharing a passion for baseball, golf, and tennis. Both came to worship side by side at Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and at St. Ann’s in Kennebunkport, Maine, where George H. W. Bush’s parents, Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker (1901–1992), were married in 1921. Endless connections to Yale, Skull and Bones, and the Harriman banking enterprises run through both families.

Yet an enormous amount is papered over by the simplification that George H. W. Bush was raised a Connecticut Yankee. The union of Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker represented less a merger of equals than a crossing of lines: old fortune and new, Protestant and Catholic, Republican and Democrat. Prescott Bush descended from New England abolitionists. Dorothy Walker came from a Maryland family that owned slaves — a family secret that has been previously reported only in a small paper published in Springfield, Illinois. The more noticeable differences were resolved with relative ease. Both families soon became thoroughly Episcopal and Republican, and money ages quickly in America. But there endured a less visible conflict over attitudes, beliefs, and principles.

To put it simply, the value system of the original patriarch, George W.’s great-grandfather George Herbert Walker, was based on the pursuit of wealth. The one embodied by George W.’s grandfather Prescott Bush was an ethical ideal. The ramifications of this divergence were infinite and insurmountable. The Walkers behaved like the worst nouveaux riches: they were grand, greedy, extravagant, and focused on class distinctions. Prescott Bush’s clan was pointedly modest, frugal, and egalitarian. George Herbert Walker’s world was one of yachts, racehorses, estates, and servants. Prescott Bush couldn’t abide a yacht, was uncomfortable at clubs, and hated formal dinners, preferring the modestly genteel lifestyle of a suburban commuter. His social life was the Whiffenpoofs, the Greenwich town council, and golf.

The Walkers were gamblers; the Bushes conservators. The Walkers pursued winning and success; the Bushes sought to serve and lead. The Walkers viewed wealth as an end; the Bushes as a means. The Bushes embodied the old WASP embarrassment about being rich; they pretended they really weren’t, and treated the help as “family.” As Richard Ben Cramer puts it in What It Takes, whose early chapters contain the most insightful writing about them, the Bushes were known in Greenwich as being “not like that” — not the sort of people who lorded their wealth or station over their social and economic inferiors. Biographers find no shortage of tales of the early George H. W. Bush’s egalitarian decency; how he stood up for a Jewish kid being bullied at Andover, how he bonded with the enlisted men on his boat during World War II, how in Congress he wrote personal letters to crotchety constituents, turning them into devoted friends.

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Kyra by Carol Gilligan

Kyra is an architect who moves between her work at Harvard and her design of a utopian city on a private island. Originally from Cyprus, she fled after her husband's murder and finds her time on the island to be a private refuge. She meets and falls for a Hungarian theater director named Andreas who is putting on a non-traditional staging of Tosca. When his betrayal ends the relationship, Kyra seeks help from a therapist named Greta. In re-enacting her relationship with Andreas, Kyra must deal with the sense of betrayal all over again. This debut novel from Carol Gilligan (who wrote the 1982 nonfiction bestseller In a Different Voice has received mostly positive reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle saying, "With her first novel, she achieves both a closely observed voice and a captivating perspective. Kyra is a rare thing: an engrossing, deeply emotional, thinking person's love story."
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