Eneloop Ni-MH Rechargeable AA Batteries Review

Panasonic has entered a new generation of rechargeable Nickel Metal Hydride batteries with the new Eneloop AA batteries. According to the label, they now provide 1900 milliAmp hours. I used to use alkaline AAs for my Canon Powershot SX120 IS, but they lasted only an hour or so the way I take pictures. So I bought some of these Eneloop batteries. They come pre-charged for immediate use, and they recharge fairly fast. But the best thing is that I can shoot a whole day or nearly a whole day on one set with my SX120,

Having just returned from a 12-day trip where I shot 2400 pictures with these batteries, I can recommend them warmly.

I ordered a set of four with the Panasonic BQ-CC17 charger and never looked back.  Great batteries, great performance, great price.

Recommended.

Gear Head Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard for Android KB7500AND Review

I needed a compact keyboard for portability and use with my Samsung Galaxy tablet. After a bit of research, I was interested in a small keyboard by Inland, but after looking it over, together with the other wireless Bluetooth offerings at the computer store, I decided on the Gear Head KB7500AND.

Connecting it to the tablet was fairly easy. When I turned the keyboard and tablet on, the tablet could not find the keyboard. Reselecting the "find Bluetooth devices" didn't help. But after exiting the settings and coming back in, the tablet found the keyboard immediately. Then the instructions worked fine (press the Connect button for two seconds, then enter the code number displayed on the tablet).

I downloaded the WPS office application and started using the keyboard right away. Typing is a bit awkward, but functional even for my large and somewhat clumsy hands.

Pros:
+ The keys have an excellent tactile feel to them, making typing easier and giving a confident feel to the typing.
+ The keys are spaced apart much better than on the other keyboards I looked at.
+ The overall size is about 10.5 inches by 5 inches (about 27 by 13 cm), allowing it to fit handily inside the "personal bag" that airlines allow in addition to a carry on bag.

Neutrals
+ The keyboard is powered by two AAA batteries rather than rechargeable Li-ion batteries.
+ The batteries are included.
+ While typing does have that nice tactile feel, for a man's hands, the keyboard is a bit small. But then, that is the deliberate choice to get a compact item for travel and use with a tablet.

Cons
- My main complaint is that if you hold down a key too long, the keyboard pops up a menu of choices for special characters (such as accented vowels) that you have to wait for to close if you don't want one of the choices. My awkward typing is always popping up the menu for the letter a. So I'm having to type  more carefully.
- The documentation supplied with the keyboard is minimal. There is no information on the specialty keys. Instead, there is the cryptic line, "Note: Functions of the shortcut keys might vary on different tablets."
- Worse, the Gear Head web site (www.pcgearhead.com) does not list the keyboard as one of the company's products.

Conclusion
For a travel or vacation keyboard for your Android tablet, this is a good choice. I haven't tried it at 30 feet away yet, but at practical distances it's fine. Include this as a consideration if you need the solution it offers.

Maytag, Whirlpool Dryer Won't Tumble DE412 Repair

The symptoms were that the clothes didn't tumble even though the motor ran and the heating elements got hot. It didn't require Sherlock Holmes to conclude that we were faced with The Case of the Broken Dryer Belt.

Naturally, I watched a few YouTube videos about how to take apart the dryer and how to replace a broken belt. And then, having determined by visual inspection that the belt was indeed broken, I ordered a new one from Appliance Parts Pros.(This company's site, by the way, features many "how to repair it" videos. Very helpful.)

The videos showed how to put the new belt on by looping it around the drum and then fitting it around the motor pulley and the idler pulley--by reaching from the front of the machine. When the new belt came, it had similar instructions, with steps such as, "With your left hand, reach around near the fan and loop the belt over the motor pulley.  Then with your right hand, fit the belt around the idler pulley, etc. etc." These aren't exact words, but the task was impossible for my reach. And even if I could have reached, looping the belt around the set up by feel (you can't see back there) would have been a nightmare. I tried it. Worse, the diagram showing the belt path around the pulleys was a rear view, not a front view.

So after a few futile attempts at installing the belt per instructions. I decided to change solution paths. I looked in the back of the dryer, and, yes, it is true, there is a removable panel about 8" by 8" right where the motor and pulleys are. Removing this panel gave me access to the pulleys and made installing the belt very easy.

The test worked and now the dryer is in business again. Apparently, many Maytag and Whirlpool dryers, gas and electric, use this same belt and  have the same or similar belt paths around the motor and idler pulleys.

So, if  you have a broken belt, take a look at the back of the dryer for an access panel.

Maytag series 88, Model DE412 electric dryer broken belt repair.

EforTek NP-FW50 Replacement Battery (2-Pack) and Charger Kit for Sony NP-FW50 Review

The EforTek NP-FW50 Replacement Battery (2-Pack) and Charger Kit for Sony NP-FW50 is a great way to get replacement batteries for the Sony A7II mirrorless camera and other Sony cameras that use the NP-FW50 battery. The original battery that comes with the camera has 1020 milliamphours of capacity. The Sony store offered to sell me a replacement battery for $80. On Amazon.com I found the EforTek bundle that includes two batteries of 1500 milliamphours each, a wall charger, an adaptor for European style plugs, and a car "cigarette lighter style" plug in for the charger. The cost was under $25 for the whole thing.

I'm currently running the camera on one of the replacement batteries, and it works fine.

It is said that the A7II is a battery hog, and so far this is indeed the case. So I highly recommend getting two or more spare batteries with charger if you own this camera. The batteries charge up pretty fast, too.

Netgear Wi Fi Range Extender N300 A3 Review

IF you have  WiFi items (TVs, Blu-Ray players, smart phones) throughout your house, but your cable company's WiFi router emits a weak signal, then the Netgear N300 WiFi range extender is for you. I have a cable company WiFi router in my upstairs office. In the office it puts out a great signal, but downstairs in the family room the signal is one iffy bar or less. So when we got a Blu-ray player with WiFi and tried to watch Netflix, is was Buffer city. Constant messages about not being connected to the Internet and so on.

So, after some research, I found this extender. Do note that there are three versions, all designated N300. The A1 version has a different packaging, The Best Buy nearest my house was selling the A1 l when I asked. Amazon is selling the A3, which is what I bought.

Wow. I plugged it into the wall outlet at the entrance to the family room, configured it, and presto, Netflix in the family room. Then I got a new Blu-ray player with WiFi also, so I moved the old player to the garage (next to the tv at the treadmill), and presto again, we now can watch Netflix while exercising. Then, finally, semi-forced by the cable company to get rid of the old analog TV in the upstairs bedroom, we got a new TV with built-in WiFi. Presto, even still yet once more again, we now can watch Netflix in the bedroom.

All this was made possible by this little signal amplifier. If you want to strengthen your WiFi service, this is the device.

There is even an app for measuring signal strength in various areas of your house Here are the results for the Netgear 300 measured along with the cable company's WiFi router in my office:

Office
Cable WiFi:100%
N300 86%

Bedroom
Cable 62%
N300 88%

Family Room
Cable 22%
N300 100%

Garage
Cable 22%
N300 95%

Living Room
Cable 95%
N300 95%

Bedroom  2 (directly under office)
Cable 100%
N300 100%

Kitchen
Cable 35%
N300 95%

Library
Cable 42%
N300 95%

Backyard
Cable 35%
N300 75%

Setup was easy. The N300 creates a new WiFi hotspot named the same as your original, with the extension EXT added, making it easy to find and easy to distinguish from the WiFi system it is amplifying. So, for example, if your WiFi router network name is "NSA_Black_Ops," the N300 creates one named "NSA_Black_Ops_EXT." Use the same password that you use for your original WiFi setup.

I recommend this product highly. It's economical, unobtrusive (plugs into a wall outlet like a fragrance bottle), and powerfully effective.

Prosoft Engineering Data Rescue PC3

The external hard drive of a friend of mine fell off a shelf and the connecting cable broke off the connecting plug on the drive. We tried mounting the drive in a new case, buying an identical model of the drive and swapping the drive electronics. But, even though the Windows 8 (and also 7) operating system said the drive was operating normally, it would not mount onto the PC as a regular drive, such as Drive F:. We concluded that we needed data rescue services.

I contacted Gibson  Research and asked by email whether their product Spin Rite would be able to recover the data. They said no, but in a lengthy, helpful email they sent me the contact information for a number of companies and software applications that do what we needed. I looked at several data rescue applications, free and for sale, but most of the free ones had a limited 1 GB of data recovery. For a 1 TB, that's not enough. So, I researched the paid applications, using reviews from Top Ten and PC Magazine Editor's choice and came up with Data Rescue PC3.

Even though this is a $100 program, it's saving grace is that you can run it in demo mode to find out whether or not it will save your bacon.  We did and it could. So we purchased it and it worked.

If you need this program, be sure to turn off the sleep mode of your computer before you start. Data recovery for a terabyte requires 8 to 20 hours, and if your PC goes to sleep in 30 minutes, data recovery will stop.

My friend is very happy to get his 125,000 files in 7,500 folders back, and considers the cost well worth it. The user interface is fairly straightforward, making the software easy to use.

And a gold star goes to technical support. I called them three times to ask a question before I had purchased the product. Help came quickly  (on the phone waiting for less than a minute each time) and got the answers I needed. I emailed support once after registering and got an unhelpful answer, but they did respond promptly.

In a word, this is an effective product with great technical support. You can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars rescuing your "lost" data with this program. It's non invasive, too, meaning that it doesn't change any data on the drive you want to rescue.

Spa Leaking, Spa Pumps, Wet Ends, Seals, and Thinking Things Through

Recently, during a lunchtime conversation, a friend mentioned that his spa was leaking. He told me the repairman had quoted him $1000 to fix it because "both pumps were leaking." Since I had some experience with spas and pumps, I told him not only that "spa repairmen tend to charge a lot" but that pumps could be bought online for a lot less than $500 each. I did a quick look via Google and found some examples ranging from $180 to $280 each. (He didn't know the brand or complete specs of the pumps at the time.)

Now, here is the first lesson. The repairman had said the pumps needed to be replaced, and I didn't even question that at first. I just shopped for pumps.

Lesson #1: Think through someone else's diagnosis and proposed solution before you accept it.

When I did some more thinking, I realized that a leaking pump means that the shaft seal in the wet end has failed and that the pump motor itself is still fine, as long as it runs as it should. So, I did  some more research online and found some new wet ends for the pumps for about $70 each. I remembered replacing the wet end of a water pump once for about $50.

Lesson #2: Keep thinking and analyzing, even after you have apparently solved the problem.

While I was looking for a better deal on wet ends, it occurred to me that the real problem is that the shaft seal in the wet end was leaking, and that most likely the only thing that needed to be replaced was the shaft seal in each pump. A bit of research turned up prices for shaft seals in his brand of pump/wet end for about $8 to $16 each.

So, with plenty of You Tube how-to videos showing how doable the replacement of seals is, together with the free labor of a friend, we has reduced the cost of the repair from $1000 to under $40, even with tax and shipping--all by thinking things through.

But, you will say, what if you have no idea how spa pumps are constructed, so that you can think this problem down to a seal?

Lesson #3: Research the problem and get the knowledge that will allow you to think things through.

Rely on the experience of others who are familiar with the task you want to do. Check books (repair manuals) and web sites, of course, but why not go first to YouTube to see if someone has videoed the repair? I learned the technique of using two putty knives to free a sliding glass door from its rails that way. (The putty knives hold up the rollers so the bottom of the door can be pulled forward and out.)

Replacing the entire pump/wet end assembly would, of course, have solved the leaking problem, but that would be like replacing the entire car to solve a leaking radiator problem. Think granular; think down to the bottom. And save money.