Product update: Logitech Bluetooth Headphones (Bah!)

Several weeks ago, I mentioned buying a set of Logitech Bluetooth headphones. I described how handy they were in the gym because they eliminated wires. Although this is true, I cannot recommend that anyone buy either the Logitech MP3 Bluetooth headphones or the Logitech iPod Bluetooth headphones because they break in approximately 3 weeks.

These headphones are made in China. I wore mine for about an hour per day and, after 3 weeks, they broke in half. I paid about $35 for them from woot.com, but they're still widely available at prices north of $100. If yours break, you can call Logitech and they'll refund what you paid for them (less the shipping and what you pay to ship the broken headphones to them). Or so they say. I still haven't received my refund.

It's too bad because the sound quality was acceptable (for use in a gym) and the lack of wires was a real plus. Logitech claims to have stopped selling the headphones (wise choice, that) but apparently there are lots of them out there in the marketplace. The smartest thing Logitech could do would be to recall all of them from users, stores, and warehouses. Probably that would be too expensive because the company knows that some people will never complain because they'll assume they misused the headphones.

If you have a set, complain when they break. If you don't have a set, don't get one.

A big thumb drive

When I got my first thumb drive (an amazing 16MB), that's all it was. Now manufacturers install "U3 Smart" applications that include a useless Tray icon and applications I don't want or need. Maybe these "preview" applications allow them to sell the devices for less -- my new 2GB Kingston device cost less than $50, which was the price of the original 16MB thumb drive. When I plug it in, I get 2 icons -- a phantom CD with applications and the storage space. Not acceptable.

Look, guys: All I want is the storage. I don't want a phantom CD drive. I don't want applications that duplicate what I already have. I don't want a new icon in the Tray. And I don't want the damn drive to take 30 seconds to mount because it has to load the phantom CD drive and run an application every time I plug it in.

Fortunately, if you have a U3 device from any of the manufacturers that include this lameware on their devices, you can probably get rid of it and convert the thumb drive to being just a thumb drive. Find a copy of U3_Uninstaller.exe and run it. In at least some cases, the thumb drive must be the only USB storage device connected to your computer. If you have other USB devices, it's probably a good idea to remove them when you run the application so that it doesn't become confused.

And remember to copy all the data on the thumb drive to your computer first. The application warns that it will delete any information on the thumb drive. It's an easy 3-step process and you're told to remove and re-insert the thumb drive at the conclusion. No more S3 junk!

If the providers of the software samples subsidize the price of the thumb drive -- less than $50 for 2GB is still a bargain for a name-brand device -- Kingston should say so in the advertising or packaging.

From W2K to WXP

This week I heard from someone who is migrating from Windows 2000 to Windows XP and is concerned about USB hard drives: "Is the new setup going to want to format the external drives when installing them? (I hope not.)"

In a word, no. If you have formatted the drives as FAT32, they will be recognized as FAT32. If you have formatted them as NTFS, they will be recognized as NTFS. WinXP has all the USB drivers you'll need. If they're assigned a drive letter you don't care for, go to the management console and re-assign them.

Migrating from W2K to WXP is really fairly easy. I think I might have been running betas of XP before it was released (memory fades). XP offers the compatibility of W9x and the reliability of NT/2K, so it's the best of both worlds. I have been generally happy with the way XP works. In other words, it shouldn't be a big deal to switch.

One recommendation, though: Turn off the "pretty" stuff. Use the Classic interface for the Start Menu and disable all the junk settings in Explorer. By default, the Explorer will hide extensions (one of Microsoft's dumbest moves ever*), but this (and other shortcomings) can be fixed.

*Hello, Microsoft! It's a Windows machine, not a Mac. We need to see the extensions. (Sheesh! I sincerely hope that the genius who thought this was a great idea is no longer with the company.)

Nerdly News

Apple says its Chinese factories will adhere to a standard 60-hour week

No, that's not a typo. Sixty-hour work weeks are apparently the norm in China, where most Apple hardware is made. Apple has released a report that says workers at its Ipod assembly plant worked more than 60 hours per week about one third of the time and that they worked more than 6 consecutive days one quarter of the time.

Apple, however, says that it found no evidence of forced labor or child labor. According to Apple, "Our investigation found that our top iPod manufacturing partner, Foxconn, complies with our supplier code of conduct in most areas and is taking steps to correct the violations we found."

The assembly facility has 200,000 employees. Some 32,000 live at the plant. About 30,000 work to assemble Apple products. The investigators interviewed just 100 of them. That small number of interviews, the fact that the report was paid for by Apple, and a lack of independent verification have caused questions to be raised about the report's validity.

At least half of the workers were paid more than the minimum wage, but the minimum wage for the area is about $50 per month. If the average work week is 60 hours and the average work month is about 22 days, that means the Chinese workers assembling your shiny new Ipod are making about 18.9 cents per hour. That might have something to do with Apple's $4.37 billion profit in the last quarter.

Think different.

Dell recalls batteries

Unless you've been off the planet for the past couple of weeks, you know that Dell plans to recall more than 4 million batteries because a small number of them might overheat. In some cases, the batteries have actually caught fire. Dell isn't the first company to recall batteries. And others may join this recall. The batteries involved are made by Sony and are used in computers made by other manufacturers, including Apple.

Dell senior vice president Alex Gruzen says there have been only a few incidents of overheating batteries, so "it would have been easy to justify them as anomalies," but the company puts safety first. And then there's the fact that Sony will help pay to replace the batteries. Sony will suffer most of the financial consequences -- perhaps $225 million.

The recall covers about 14% of the Latitude, Inspiron, XPS, and Precision notebooks sold between April 1, 2004, and July 18, 2006. If you have a faulty battery, you return it to Dell and Dell ships a replacement. During the time you're waiting for the replacement, your portable computer will have a range limited by the length of its power cord. Dell has already received at least 10,000 batteries from affected consumers and the replacement batteries won't be arriving until sometime in September.

To find out if you have a Dell computer with a battery that's included in the recall, visit Dell's battery program site.

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