Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth Headset

I just picked up the Plantronics Voyager 520 Bluetooth headset and I got to say that I like it a lot. I was looking for a cheap bluetooth headset as the one I had, the Motorola H500, was not behaving and was dropping calls all the time. I don't know if it was old age or what but it wasn't performing up to par. Now as I looked around I found at Buy.com this unit selling for $49.99. Wasn't a bad price and was about $20 more than I was thinking. However for what I would get I realized it was a bargain. The thing can handle 2 phones. Interestingly enough I have 2 cellphones. One I had always had and another from my wife's plan. She was not in a contract for quite a while with AT&T formerly Cingular and they gave her 2 Motorola Razr phones to tie her down. Great thing is that we have mobile to mobile free calls so I use that phone to call her 99% of the time. With this uint, I can receive calls from both of my phones. That convenience is astounding as for a lot of times, I may have both phones in my pocket and have to reach out to get them. By the time I did, she would hang up and I would have to face the music answering questions like where I was and why couldn't I answer the phone. Since I got this, my availability has shot up more than 75%. Whether that's good or bad is another topic not for this blog.

The unit features a one touch button instead of the multiples you find on many sets that can make it hard to control. On the H500, there were 3 buttons. One to turn the thing on and off as well as set the status, another to turn the volume up and another to turn it down. With the voyager, its all in the motion. You can press the button as well as move it back and forth which accomplishes exactly the same thing.

One of the biggest benefits to it is the call quality. The manufacturer's claims of noise cancelling are true as folks I talk to don't complain anymore that they can't hear me or that I'm sounding muffled or choppy. I hear them crystal clear and they do the same.

Now for the cons. For me, the Plantronics voyager 520 is not the most comfortable. You have to make sure its properly seated in your ear since this can bring discomfort so much so that it hurts your ear when you press the button. Worse yet for me, I wear glasses which means the over the ear hook has to share my spectacles frame. This takes some extra time to adjust which I didn't have to do with the H500. However it doesn't fall off as often.

The other con I have is its inability to switch phones. If I'm on one of the phones and someone calls the other, I can't temporarily switch to the other phone and get back to the one I'm listening to. I am alerted that someone is calling the phone but I can talk to them and have to let the call go to voice mail.

Overall this is a great headset and I would recommend it to anyone looking to buy a low to medium priced bluetooth headset even if you don't want to use 2 phones at the same time, the capability of which makes this a great bargain.

Iain

Slow Computer problem Solved. Blame the Video!

Probably one of the most frustrating things about computers is how they don't communicate to you properly about their problems. I guess I am expecting more from this machine than I ought to but afterall its supposed to be smart. Software and hardware developers are trying to add functionality to this entity to make it smarter and responsive but all too often we get the same results.

For some time now, my machine was slowing to a crawl. Try as I may, I couldn't find out what was wrong with it. In my house are 2 laptops and 2 desktops which are shared by 6 people. My wife, my four kids and myself. Fortunately one of the laptops is for work so its off limits. The others are left to fend for themselves with the others for homework, Facebooking, Myspacing etc. I thought about shelling out money for another computer but ruled out against that. Afterall, we have other things to deal with. This all started to change when pressure to use my job laptop started to rise. I started hearing things about how selfish I am and how useless I am that the main computer is broken and I can't fix it. No need to say where that came from. Anyawy in trying to fix the computer, I downloaded the latest drivers, downloaded all the various combinations of anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The problem only kept getting worse.

I had began thinking that I would need to build a newer box and was going over in my mind what I'll need when I thought of the video card. I had recalled that the video card made lots of noise because of the fan built in. It dawned on my that it had gone silent. Normally I would touch it and would feel the wind of it but this time there was none. I looked and could see its blades not moving so I turned them. There was much resistance and I soon realized that the fan was stuck. I felt the video board and it was hot. I felt the fan and it was very hot. Of course at this time everything was at a crawl so I initiated a shutdown of the machine and walked away.

Now what to do next was the question. Replacing the video card was the first thing that came to mind and I even went online and got one. But when I saw the problem I had the thought that maybe if I could actually buy a fan instead of the whole thing I can at least give it a try. Well I got down to the good old computer store and saw a fan kit which I promptly bought. It cost about 10 bucks and was pretty cool in that it had colored LEDs that made the fan glow in the dark. I was delighted since if it went bad I would know immediately. Replacing the fan was very easy. Unlike the older one, this required its own power supply which was readily available. The cool thing was that the position of the screws fit perfectly.