Eero vs Luma - Surround Wifi

August 28, 2016 by Omar Shahine in computers and internet, newsletter

Wifi has been with us for a very long time now. I'm fortunate that my house is wired for ethernet, which means I have generally had a glorious blanket of high speed internet everywhere... well almost.

For my family though, that's another matter. Wifi is infuriating to get everywhere in the house. These days with printers, and tablets and Alexa, Sonos and other devices, it's really critical that you have Wifi signal everywhere in your house.

However, the standard tech out there does not solve for this. I have tried every kind of wifi range extender and other things to solve this problem over the years and only been frustrated by the results.

Being away from their homes, and being "tech support" further complicated this.

To make matters worse, my own wifi needs have grown to require wifi to blanket the outside of my house to power things like my Ring Doorbell, Outdoor Dropcams and Sprinkler System. Heck, I also needed wifi in my garage for the Tesla! In addition, wifi has gotten faster over the years, and I also wanted the best / fastest Wifi everywhere. 802.11ac is the newest wifi standard, and with my 120 MBps internet service, I want all that data speed to get to my devices.

To date, the gold standard in simplicity, reliability and ease of use (manage from your phone) is Apple's Airport devices. But no more. Enter the new kids on the block, eero and luma.

Amazon Echo - 5 stars

November 01, 2015 by Omar Shahine in newsletter, computers and internet

Amazon has been on a tear the last few years with hardware (I’m choosing to ignore their phone). When I first saw the Amazon Echo I wanted it right away, but then cancelled my order as I could not figure out what to do with it. Well a few months later (after playing with them at 2 Amazon peeps houses) I got one and it’s been a huge hit in the household.

Not all Amazon hardware is a hit with me. I still love the Fire TV for example, but the kid’s 2 year old Fire HDX tablets are about to get replaced with iPad Mini 2 as the Fire HDX has turned into a hot mess for us (Prime Video / Kid’s Time / Offline Videos / Parental Controls / Profiles have just become too complex). That’s a post for another day.

Amazon Echo is like Siri for the kitchen. The feature that sold me was setting kitchen timers. For example, when I am grilling from across the room I can yell “Alexa, set a timer for 4 minutes” and then I will know when to flip my steaks. I have an infrared gril, so cooking steaks is searing 3 min on each side followed by 3 min on med heat. I need a timer to keep the thing from turning the steak into charcoal. You can set as many timers as you want. It's oddly simple, but way easier than using my phone as I need both hands when cooking. My other kitchen timer, the one on the oven, well, it’s not as convenient. So, oddly enough this is what sold me.

But the minute I plugged Alexa in, she has belonged to the kids. Miles and Sarah ask her questions multiple times a day. “What’s the weather?”. “Can you play Michael Jackson Beat It”. It turns out Alexa has a ton of features. It’s like Siri except a bit more useful in my opinion.

Alexa is connected to my Wink, which means she can respond to commands to turn off all the lights when I am leaving the house. She is connected to Pandora and Amazon Prime Music which means she is my kid’s DJ. She can also play 5 min NPR news clips and connects to lots of apps.

Alexa can also place items in your Amazon Shopping cart, like the Amazon Dash. She looks at your previous orders as a way to put the right things in your cart.

I’m surprised at the utility of the Echo. I’m really surprised at how normal my kids think this is, and how much they use Alexa each day. They really like to know the weather forecast and play music impromptu. Recently Miles has gotten into the habit of playing Enter Sandman by Metallica each day. It’s pretty cute to see them discover music and play their favorite tunes of the week.

As a platform, I expect the Echo will continue to do more and be an integral part of the Amazon eco-system as well as your connected home. In fact, I wish Amazon would be more aggressive here and acquire one of the connected home integrators like Wink as Amazon strikes me as one of the best platforms for selling and running your connected home appliances.

Amazon Echo is $179.99.

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Bose QuietComfort 20i Noise Cancelling Headphones - 5 stars

October 18, 2015 by Omar Shahine in newsletter, computers and internet

It doesn't happen often, but I had to make an emergency gadget purchase (pair of Bose QuietComfort 20i Headphones) on a recent trip to Nova Scotia. You see, Air Canada has a rather bizarre rule that you cannot use any kind of bluetooth headphone on their flights. Their flight attendants don't seem to know why, insisting that bluetooth could take down the flight. Never mind the Gogo inflight Wifi. I feel safer already knowing airlines all have these bizarre and inconsistent rules.

Anyway, they were quite insistent on this. That made my other Bose headphones, the SoundLink rather useless (they have a cord one can use that I did not bring). I have some of those huge Bose QuietComfort QC15 headphones too, but I never travel with them any more as they take up too much space and I usually want the Bluetooth Bose headphones to use on vacation, beach, in bed etc.

Anyway, this is the part where there I was standing in front of one of those Best Buy vending machines in Canada looking at the solution.

The headphones were on sale, and Canada is also on sale with everything 25% off (US dollar is strong). I also learned that my good friend Doug, who keeps me on the bleeding edge of camera technology, already had these headphones. Why he keeps things like this a surprise I'll never know.

I really don't much like in-ear headphones and was concerned about how comfortable they are. Bose has these silicon gel ear tips (cleverly named Stay Hear) that don't so much go in your ear, but sit just outside creating a low pressure seal.

They felt perfect, so in my no foreign transaction fee credit card went, and out came my new headphones.

The headphones come with a nice case, a battery (usb chargeable) and an inline remote, that lets you disable noise cancellation temporarily.

The noise cancellation seemed at least as good as the QC15's that I own. What they have though is a very compact package. This will ensure they come along for every trip I go on as there won't be any space compromises. Also you can sleep with these on. Not so easy with ear cans.

I have a hard time knowing if they are really better or worse than the newer Bose QC25s, but I'm going to sell my QC15s and just travel with these and my other Bluetooth Bose headphones which I still love for the beach, pool and everywhere else.

Bose has really upped their game the past few years. So I have no hesitation giving this 5 stars. If you purchase, be aware there are two models. the "i" designation means they work with Apple devices. The non "i" model means they may work with your Android phone/tablet.

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.