Review: Plantronics .Audio 480

I’ve always wanted earbuds with a boom mic. I’ve wished for years that they make one. Finally, Plantronics got around to it with the Plantronics .Audio 480.

I saw the package at BestBuy, and didn’t hesitate to pick it up. When I opened the package, however, I got a nice little surprise. The buds have two plugs at the end (mic and headphones), as expected. But, the nice thing is, it also came with a USB adapter. No more too-short cords… Just get a USB hub however close you might need, and you’re all set.

Also included are a stylish leather(ish?) case with magnetic clasp, a few different size support tabs, and additional sizes and styles for the buds themselves.

Because these are earbuds, there’s no discomfort while wearing glasses or a hat. If you’ve worn either for extended periods of time while wearing over-the-head headphones, you know what I mean. The left earbud is the one with the boom mic attached, so it weighs a tiny bit more, but it’s still extremely light.

Audio quality is excellent using the USB adapter or not. With XP Pro SP2, there were no drivers to install, it just worked moments after I plugged it in. I recently wore them at a LAN party, off and on for about 12 hours, with only mild discomfort at the event, and no problems the following day.

Rating:

A+

Price:
$100

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Neat cooking website for those who don’t know how

I “cook”

I “cook” things like Mac & Cheese, and I’ve started to dabble into baking from baking mixes. I want to cook more, but I just don’t know how.

Today, thanks to Digg, I came across startcooking.com. After just a quick glance, I can see they’ve overcome the hurtle of most cookbooks… they actually explain and demonstrate how to do things. No more reading a cookbook and wondering things like “what the hell does fluff with a fork really mean? When do I know it’s been properly fluffed?”

I think I’m going to have to make a trip to the grocery store.

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StringList updated to 1.1

Yeah, two days old, and a new version is released. Yesterday my co-workers at Webapper suggested a few additions to the library. So there was one tiny little bug fix, in addition to a bunch of new methods and constants. I also updated the ASDocs to include examples.

So, check out the project page for a full list of the revisions and the latest download.

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New blog design

The standard BlogCFC layout was too boring, so I went searching for a new one. I found this neat-o one for WordPress, and thus began the long and painful process of converting it over to BlogCFC.

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Deleting development folders

Just before Christmas, I came across this neat post about deleting SVN folders. It’s just this little registry entry that appears when you right-click a directory, and will recursively go through and delete the .svn folders.

I took that, and created another little script to delete Dreamweaver’s “_notes” folders in the same manner.

Downloads:
http://www.iotashan.com/downloads/DeleteDreamweaverNotes.zip
http://www.iotashan.com/downloads/DeleteSVN.zip

Just unzip the files, and double-click it to import it into your registry. You can use the features immediately, without restarting (at least with XP).

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