Jon L. Jacobi - Author - Good Gear Guide

Stories by Jon L. Jacobi

Article | 17/01/2013 Acer Iconia W510: Wide-screen tablet with a clever dock

Acer's Iconia W510 is a 16:9, widescreen Windows 8 tablet with a nicely-designed keyboard dock. When sidled down and locked into said dock, the W5 app...

Article | 22/10/2012 Hybrid hard drives: How they work and why they matter

An SSD can read and write data many times faster than the best mechanical hard drive. On the downside, flash memory is many times more expensive than ...

Article | 30/03/2012 Synology DiskStation DS212+ NAS device

Synology's two-bay, DiskStation DS212+ provides great performance and state-of-the-art connectivity, but it lacks the expandability and physical secur...

Article | 21/02/2012 HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One multifunction inkjet printer

The first thing you'll notice about the $169 HP Photosmart 6510 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction printer is that it looks better than the compe...

Article | 12/12/2011 HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus inkjet multifunction printer

In a world filled with cheap but underpowered inkjet multifunction printers (MFPs), using the HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus is a pleasant departure. One ...

Article | 28/09/2011 Use Linux-like virtual deskops with VirtuaWin

Anyone familiar with Linux is probably familiar with virtual desktops. If you're not, download VirtuaWin and take a look. This utility takes your Wind...

Article | 3/09/2011 Dell Vostro V131 ultraportable business laptop

Dell's Vostro V131 is sedately handsome and a good performer, but has little else to distinguish it from the corporate-targeted ultraportable crowd. U...

Article | 6/07/2011 Oki MC561 colour laser multifunction printer

Oki Printing Solutions' MC561 colour laser multifunction printer is well equipped for a busy workgroup, with full print/copy/scan/fax features, outsta...

Article | 19/04/2011 Able utility O&O DiskRecovery finds, restores lost data

Recovering data is no small deal -- as anyone who's lost some will attest. But with so many programs out there, it's had to choose. The latest version...

Article | 26/03/2011 Lenovo Thinkpad X220

Lenovo's Thinkpad X220 ultraportable, replacing the X201, is sure to be a hit with ThinkPad fans -- as well as most everyone else. It's fast, light, h...

Article | 21/03/2011 TestDisk, PhotoRec fix disks, recover files

If you're a fan of character-based interfaces -- such as DOS -- and free data recovery, you're going to love TestDisk and its companion utility, Photo...

Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your movies

Analog movies can be the easiest--or the hardest--medium to digitize, depending on the format you're working with. While older camcorder and video for...

Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your documents

The space required to store paper documents can be a problem. Digitizing your documents renders them exquisitely portable--you can store an entire lib...

Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your pictures

Today the digital camera is ubiquitous, but photos used to be taken by momentarily exposing something called "film" to light. Yes, film--the ode to ph...

Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your music

In my lifetime, music has been delivered on vinyl, cassettes, eight-track tapes, CDs, and audio DVDs. How do I listen to it now? Usually with a PC or ...