Monthly Main Meeting Highlights
Welcome to the October 2014 Main Meeting
Tonight Alex took the stage to give us a run down on five major products he was reviewing.
The iPad Air 2, Ollie, the Sony Xperia ™ Z3 waterproof phone, the Plantronics Back Beats Pro and the Acer Switch 10.
Unfortunately the iPad was sent to his old address the day he went to pick it up, however we still got a good idea of the major improvements in the new iPads. The Air is 20% thinner 7% lighter at 434 g and 56% to 63% less reflective which means much better visibility in daylight.
The iPad Air 2 site
We also had a look at the new iMac 27” all in one. The monitor has a huge 5k display with full HDMI display. A TV or monitor with only 4K retails at $4000 so the iMac at around $3000 is a great buy. Alex showed us a demonstration of the monitor’s resolution. The screen starts with a man standing in front of a water fall and expands out to its full resolution to shown him as a speck against the water.
Alex showed the back describing how thin it is, even with a bulge to accommodate the mother board. We had a look at the connections and how the power lead is fed through the stand.
It has three USBs, two thunderbolts and an Ethernet port, sd card slot and headphone jack.
Details of the iMac 27 inch with 5K retina display
Then we meet Ollie.
We have had some great toys presented to the group, cars, tanks, helicopters, and the magnificent ARC Drone but Ollie would have to be the most unusual. It’s a cylinder with tyres on both ends.
We had a look at a video of what it can do,
then Alex demonstrated it by driving it off the stage and under the first two rows of seats.
and learn more at gosphero.com
The Xperia Z3 by Sony is a tough phone. You may not want to do this if you get one but Alex was not afraid to drown it.
The Xperia is waterproof up to 1.5 metres for 30 minutes.
It has front facing 2.2 megapixel and rear 20 megapixel camera, it has long battery life and being a Sony it can run your PS4 remotely. It comes in two flavours, a 5.2 inch and a 4.6 inch.
Here is Alex’s article on the Z3 at Smarthouse.com.
Plantronics has just released the Backbeat Pro. Plantronics made the headsets used by Buzz Aldren and Neil Armstrong on the Apollo missions.
They are noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones. All the controls are on the headset. There are also dialup volume controls and a switch to turn off the noise cancellation so you can converse without needing to remove the headset.
Here Alex is showing the soft case it comes in. Notice how the head phones are laid back on his shoulders. Using that unique feature not only makes them more comfortable to hold but sends a signal which automatically pauses the device.
The headset’s Bluetooth has a range of 100 metres. It will pair with any Android, Windows or Apple devise so it becomes a single headset you can use on all your Bluetooth audio visual devices.
Alex wrote an article on them at Smarthouse
All the product details are available on the Plantronic’s web site
And here is a link to the video we saw.
The price $349 at Officeworks.
The tablet verses laptop contest continues with the new Acer Switch 10 trying to give us the best of both worlds. We had a brief look at the Acers latest offering in this hybrid computing category. The Acer Snap Hinge ™ has a magnetic lock which allows the Switch 10 to be versatile in its positioning.
Alex demonstrated how it can be configured into four different poses.
The Switch 10 has an Intel Atom quad core processor, a 10” high definition screen, 2 GB RAM and 64 GB Flash Memory. It has a Gorilla Glass screen and with “Zero Air Gap” which allows for much less reflection from the screen.
We all had a good chance to inspect the Switch 10.
We also had a look at the Acer Video Here is the Acer Switch 10 site.RRP $699 Au
The Raffle
Alex had a whole trove of prizes for us.
Here are a few of the winners
