I had some people take a Dremel and hollow out the 2G doc to accommodate the 3G and decided to try this myself even though I have an Incase rubber case on it.

That did not work.

I ended up cutting away the majority of the doc and my iPhone with its case would still not fit. From there I decided to take the innards out of the doc and raid my 5 year old’s Legos. The result is the doc that can be viewed below. Also included are the photos of the steps that I took in building if someone is as daring as I to build one.

This mouse is similar in shape to the previous Microsoft Blue mouse but has the following additional functions:

• 1000dpi  laser
• Tilt Wheel for scrolling up/down/front/back
• Instant Viewer software

I bought this mouse specifically for the price and the fact that the scroll wheel gives you side-to-side scrolling which is pretty cool. It also has a side button that you can program to do various tasks. I reluctantly installed the software that was included with the mouse but I am really glad that I did.

The included software gives you an additional tab in the mouse applet (under control panel in Windows XP) that allows you to select what type of functions that you want the buttons on the mouse to have. By default the middle button when clicked activates “Instant Viewer” which is an program that tiles all of your open windows similar to Expose in OS X. I set my thumb button to activate it and am loving it. I use Expose in OS X all the time and always wished to have similar functionality in Windows.

In my opinion there are a couple of things that Microsoft does really well. The first is the creation of Windows Live writer which is the best Desktop Blogging Application I have ever used. The second is Microsoft Exchange which I consider to be the best email server that I have ever used. The last are Microsoft mice. I have always like their mice and will be a user of them for years to come (literally!).

Initially I was concerned about getting the speed control and servos out but these were actually pretty easy. The servos had double stick tape on the bottom of them and there was a little cubbyhole that they fit snugly in to. The motor was also very simple to remove via 4 screws and fit nicely on the new fuselage. I would have to say that the stickers were probably the hardest to put on but they were actually pretty easy as well.  All-in-all it took me about an hour to get the electronics in the new assembled airplane.

Unfortunately my initial flights did not go so great as I kept loosing power to the airplane and it would just glide blindly back to earth. After nearly missing a stop sign and a group of kids I decided to figure out what was happening. I was concerned that I had somehow pulled on a wire in the speed control to hard or something and now had a short. After a little fiddling around with it I found that the red wire in the molex connect for the battery wasn’t pushed all the way in. The battery was being disconnected if the plane banked at a certain angle. I pushed the connector in all the way and took it to the street again to see her fly.

This time around she flew great but unfortunately the wind had picked up and the sun was now officially down so I had to bring it in for the night. The next day I took my newly rebuilt Super Cub up and it flew great. I had to do a couple of adjustment with the rudder and elevators but nothing that you wouldn’t have to do on a new plane. With its new airframe my Super Cub looks band spanking new again.

As much as I enjoy flying the Super Club as soon as I was done with its first full flight I landed it and put it on the shelf in my office. I did have my eye on the new ParkZone F4U Corsair and the Super Cub was up on Craigslist (from where it came) so that I could purchase the Corsair. After a day I pulled the listing as I realized that I need more time with the Super Cub so that I don’t kill the Corsair on my first flight. Christmas is coming up so maybe I can score a Corsair then.

The rebuilding of the HobbyZone Super Cub is no where near as difficult as I would have thought it was. The electronics have held up to my abuse just fine and I am sure that I will have many hours of fun with it.

What the laser battle set is are 2 of the Air Hogs Havoc Heli’s with infared lasers attached to the front that you can dog fight with. When one Havoc Heli shoots and “hits” the one the engine cuts and the heli spins out of control.

These babies are really fun. How do I know? I have a set! I just got them today and they are really fun. They fly as well if not better then the original Havoc Heli from Air Hogs but have a slightly different body.

Here are some pictures of the heli’s:

Here is the packaging the that Laser Tag Set comes in:

This Laser Tag set from Air Hogs are going to be all the rage this Christmas so you should get yours while they are still in stock.

You can buy them from Amazon.com and ships FREE with Super Saver Shipping.

Get your Air Hogs Havoc Heli Laser Battle set today!

Technorati: Air Hogs Havoc Heli, Air Hogs Havoc Heli Laser Battle, Dog Fight, Battle, Games, RC, RC Airplanes, RC Helicopters

Having been an avid Air Hogs Havoc Heli pilot I did crave a little more excitement in my life so I set my sites on the Air Hogs Reflex. Air Hogs advertised that it had the ability to go forward, backwards, left and right. This was accomplished with the two sets of vertical propellers that were near the main rotor.

I had noticed that the price had recently dropped for the Reflex about a month ago from $79 to $59 so it was now in a more realistic price range for me. While at Toys-R-Us this past weekend I picked one up.

Visual Differences

There are three major differences between the Air Hogs Havoc Heli and the Reflex. The first is that the Reflex is a little larger then the Havoc. The second is that the Reflex comes with a wall charger instead of being charged from the controller. The final major difference is on the controller. On the Reflex you have right/left and forward/back controls on the right joystick as opposed to just the right/left on the Havoc’s controller.

After discovering all of these differences I plugged in the charger and waited to fly my new toy.

Flight Differences

The first thing that I noticed about the Reflex was that it hovers in place instead of wanting to go forward and to the right (after trimming it of course). Right and left rudder movements on the Reflex are much more precise then the Havoc Heli and can be done while hovering also. The biggest difference is that the Reflex only goes forward when you want it to – the Havoc Heli is always going forward.

Pushing the stick forward gives you forward movement while releasing the stick will cause the Reflex to go back to hovering. Pushing back on the stick gives you reverse movement while again releasing it goes back to hover. The default is to hover straight as long as it has enough throttle applied.

With these types of controls it is much easier to get the Reflex to go where you want it to in comparison to the Havoc. With the Havoc it is always moving so any little mistake can send you into a wall or a light fixture. The Reflex stays put until you tell it to go somewhere.

Cost Differences

At time of writing the the going price for the Reflex is about $49 while the Havoc Heli has recently been dropped to around $24. While the Reflex costs more you the batteries in the controller are only used to control the Heli, with the Havoc they are used to charge the Heli as well as control it.

Conclusion

The Havoc Heli is a great beginning helicopter that is durable and inexpensive. The Reflex is a more advanced heli and gives you more control and longer battery life.

Which is better? They are both good and will provide hours of fun. Pick up one of each and make your own determination .

Technorati tags: Air Hogs, Havoc Heli, PiccoZ, PicooZ, PicoZ, Helicopter, RC Helicopter, Micro X Copter, Air Hogs Reflex

UPDATE: Amazon sells these direct for $29.99 but there are other vendors that cell the Air Hogs Havoc Heli for $24.95 on the Amazon site. Just click on the link to the right that says ‘Best Price $22.95″ and you will see the other vendors. Happy flying!

I popped in the required 6 AA batteries and let my new toy charge up. As soon as the charge light went out I had the copter in the air for the next 10 minutes of pure fun.

The heli was extremely stable in the air and hovered in place with excellence. After the initial flight I was so excited that I added the included weights to the nose to try and get some of the forward momentum to move around the room. The weights worked awesome and now I was able to take the copter around the room and started to buzz the heads of my kids – Great Fun!

Anyway, the Havoc Heli is an awesome little Helicopter and I truly recommend it. I will post video soon of the flight. This little thing makes me wish that I would have started with an Air Hog instead of the plane from Harbor Freight. Air Hogs seem to be built to last!

Technorati tags: Air Hogs, Havoc Heli, PiccoZ, PicooZ, PicoZ, Helicopter, RC Helicopter, Micro X Copter

The Air Hogs Havoc Heli is so easy to fly that my 3 year old can do it!

I made the video below of both him and I flying it (he is at about the 3 minute mark).

The Havoc Heli can be pretty difficult to find but I found a few different people on Amazon.com that sell them. You can click their link to the right.

Enjoy the video!

Note: The music in the video is Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus and Never Let me Down Again mixes from their “Remixes 81-04″ album.

Technorati tags: Air Hogs, Havoc Heli, PiccoZ, PicooZ, PicoZ, Helicopter, RC Helicopter, Micro X Copter, Video

The main reason for wanting to get rid of the 512mb MP3 player was that I could only get about 5 full albums on it. The e250r had 2GB of space so I expected to get about 20 albums on there.

To my disappointment I was only able to get about twice as much on the e250r. The reason for this was that it was preloaded with almost a gigabyte of music that they wanted you to subscribe to Rhapsody music service to continue to listen to. Some of the music was cool but not 1GBs cool.

This is where it was hiding – \system\music\

There are 275 .rax files in this locationby default from the factory.

UPDATE: You will also need to delete the PP500.DAT file under the System\data directory. This will delete the entries from your database. I had deleted the songs but they wee still showing up in my Album, Artist, and Song lists.

Now that I have more space I have some ripping to do to fill my Sansa back up again.

Technorati: MP3, MP3 Player, Sansa e250r, iPod

The C417 is an awesome phone and the camera on it is actually usable to take pictures. My wife and I are snapping photos of our kids all the time now which I think is great.

I had a belt clip pouch that I had left over from the LG phone that I tried using for the Samsung. Unfortunately the elastic on the sides was stretched out so the phone kept on falling out. Because of this I decided to get one that had a magnetic cover to keep the phone in place (picture on the left).

This case did a great job of keeping the phone in place but after a while I started to notice some weird things happening.

The first thing was that every time that I got a call and attempted to take the phone out of the case the phone would say that I had rejected the call. At first I thought that maybe the case was too tight and was causing the screen to press the end button when I was taking it out. I tried to be careful getting the phone out every time but the calls would keep being rejected.

The other thing that I noticed was that there were a lot of “blank” or black pictures in my phone – 40 of the them to be exact. I again attributed this to the photo button being pushed because the case was too tight.

I searched high and low on the internet but it did not seem that anyone else was having similar issues so I decided to investigate it closer myself.

I took the case from my belt clip and watched the screen of the the phone as I moved it out of the case. At on particular point each time the screen would change from the date and time to saying “Cingular”. The point at which this happened was when the very center of the phone passed over the magnet of the case. To test it even further I took the phone completely out of the case and rubbed it over the magnet – same thing.

Therefore, for some weird reason, getting a magnet close to the center of your C417 will cause it reject calls and take a picture at the same time.

Talk about weird.

If you have a Samsung phone and it is rejecting calls all on it’s own – check to make sure you don’t have a magnet in close proximity.

I have been with them all, Verizon, Nextel (before it was with Sprint), Sprint (before it was with Nextel), and now Cingular. Up until this week I had elected Cingular the worst cell company out of them all.

The main reason was even though I would have full bar on my phone the reception was terrible and I could hardly hear. Also, their customer service did not seem to be that great. I had vowed that once my Cingular contract was over that I was going back to Sprint.

That all changed yesterday though when I received the the Samsung C417 replacement phones that Cingular had sent out to replace my LG C2000s.

First of all the phones came in one day instead of their quoted 2 days. Second, when I opened the box the first thing that came out was a Cingular packaged car charger – something that I did not have for my other phones. Next out of the box was a brand new boxed Samsung C417 – it was brand new! I was expecting a refurb but they sent a new phone.

The phone of course is a million times better then the LG but the fact that it is also brand new just really wowed me. This was a level of customer service that I was not expecting and has now caused me to have a lot of respect for Cingular. At this point I have no intention of getting a different phone and am looking forward to renewing with Cingular when my contract is up.

It is amazing how a simple little thing like that can make all the difference in the world.

Thanks Cingular! I am now a happy customer!