gadget: September 2004 Archives

We are pretty pleased with our choice of a new car. We also test drove Chrysler's PT Cruiser and the new Scion xB, but ultimately it was the great reviews, the standard options and Honda's reputation that swayed our opinion.

It's funny because a year or so ago when I saw the first Element on the highway, and thought it was about the ugliest vehicle I had ever seen, if you had told me that one day I would not only own one, but be enthusiastic about that ownership, I would have said you were crazy.

So far so good. Stay tuned to this space for more...

The latest addition to the Gadget Department is Creative's Muvo Slim MP3 player. It rocks! My Rhomba shot craps on me after about 6 months of use, and I was pleasantly surprised that the vendor, newegg.com, was willing to replace it. They are no longer carrying the Rhomba (since apparently they've had a lot of returns of that model), but they offered to replace it with a comparable unit.

I can't really say that it's comparable -- since the Muvo Slim is far and away better than the Rhomba was -- it feels like an upgrade. The Rhomba always claimed to also function as a thumb drive but that was really impossible with its proprietary USB dongle. The Muvo Slim uses the industry standard small USB connector, so it is at least usable as a thumb drive. The Muvo Slim's battery (Li Ion) is removable, and therefore replaceable when it finally gives up the ghost, unlike the Rhomba, and it also seems to last longer on a charge.

The controls seem to be a little more intuitive, and the menus are more extensive but less cumbersome to navigate than the Rhomba was. The desktop software (Creative's MediaSource) is identical, so no learning curve, or annoying conversion of files to suffer through. Combine all of this with the sleek 7mm thick profile, and the snug-fitting case with the cool magnetic closure, and this baby is quite a bit better than the Rhomba.