I admit it, I have an iPhone, and I love it, but I hate the ear buds that come with it.   So the other day I was talking to the great Shane Lowry and he had mentioned that he picked up some z.buds.   I was in the market really for a new blue tooth head set since I have been doing a lot of driving, I have been using the Apple ear buds with the built-in mic, and they have been at best “ok”.    So going on the advice of Shane, and a 35% coupon, I picked up the z.buds.  I’ve had them officially 2 days, they are noise canceling and the sound out of them is A-W-E-S-O-M-E, don’t go spending $99 on the Bose earbuds, when you can get a better sound, with a mic, for much less. 

ZAGG

Now your getting confused.  A couple weeks ago I bought a Tomtom 720, I even write a review on it, now today I’m writing a review on the Garmin Nuiv?  That’s right!  As I had mentioned in my review of the Tomtom 720, we where going on a trip up to Michigan.   A driving trip with two small kids, requires a few more stops than the norm.  So we needed a GPS.  

I had first purchased the Tomtom 720 because of the feature set it has over the Garmin Nuvi 750.  The tomtom has bluetooth, is very customizable, and your able to apply user modified maps. (error corrections) So on the day we where leaving the MI, I applied updates, added some fun points of interest, synced my iPhone phonebook, added route and was ready to hit the road.  The tomtom took a few minutes to grab satellite positions, and off we where, well just the kids and I to AAA to get our paper maps and state books. (With Hotel info and such)   On the way, the tomtom put us about 20 feet off the road,   I decided it was an update I applied, so on the way, I reset the unit to factory defaults, this took about 5 minutes, it acquired the satellites again, and had it positioned correctly on the road.    I stop, get my stuff from AAA and return, turn the unit back on, and we are again miss positioned on the map again.  So on the way out, we where passing SamsClub, where I bought the unit, and I decided to take the tomtom back. 

Welcome the Garmin Nuvi 750, I traded in my tomtom 720 for the Garmin Nuvi 750, and so far could not be happier.   Yeah, the nuvi does not have bluetooth, or lacks some of the features of the tomtom, and was $15 more expensive.   But it’s a solid GPS.  Has tons of features, and works like a champ.  Spot on addresses, and updated maps.  Both tomtom 720 and Garmin Nuvi 750 are about the same size. 

So we had the Garmin Nuvi 750 on the trip and it performed like a champ. On the way up we stopped to get Pizza for the kids, salads for us, so we wanted a Pizza place, and no not Pizza Hut or anything common, we wanted a good local place and we did not want to eat in, it was a beautiful day out and the kids had been in the car all day, we wanted to our dinner at a park so we could run around and play in the swings, the garmin helped us find both, (and both with in 1.5 miles of each other ) As a treat the park was next to the local high school and it was home coming weekend, and the band was outside practicing. 

A GPS greatly improves a long driving trip.   I highly recommend one for those long trips, granted, they are not cheap, this was around $300, and they help you spend money, where are the Starbucks on the route?  :-)

This weekend we went out shopping for a GPS Navigational unit for our car.  We are about to go on a small road trip to Michigan to see my grandmother and we wanted to a device to help us on the way.  Our wants in a GPS is, something with exceptional mapping, get me from point A to point B in the best way possible, we wanted something loaded down with POI (points of interest), we want to know where all the Starbucks are, and on a lessor note, something that is easy to sync up, to get new maps, updated POI, and such.

Well as the title suggest, we went with the TomTom GO 720.  I took my daughter out to Best Buy and found it there for $399.99, I thought that seemed a tad higher than I wanted to pay for a GPS, so we waited and went to SamsClub the next day.  I found the same unit for $284.00 (and I bought the bumper to bumper 3 year warranty for $39.00)

The unit itself is a great size, not so small that everything is cramped, and not so big that you can’t see out of your windshield.   The screen is 4.3 inches big. It has great options, like Bluetooth, iPod connector (uses built in FM transmitter to play though car stereo), has a 3 hour battery life (or car adaptor), docking station for your desk. 

One of the other options I really wanted in a GPS unit would be that it would work natively on OSX.  TomTom does this.   They have software for the OSX and it works great.   I was pleasantly surprised at how well it works. 

So far I give this unit high ratings, until I take a trip and really test it out, I won’t know for sure. (I can tell you the speaker phone through my bluetooth work great)

So we finally broke down and bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner.  I do like to help around the house when I can (though my wife might say otherwise), one thing I’m good at doing is vacuuming, it’s like second nature to me, why you may ask, cause I love to mow the lawn, yes I really do, and pushing a vacuum as about as close to indoor mowing as you can get. ( nothing better to do on a rainy day when you can’t mow the lawn then to break out your trust vacuum and put it to the test.)  Speaking of test, since we got this Dyson, and everyone talked it up to be the best thing, I decided to completely clean out our old (by old I mean 2 years) Kenmore vacuum and pick a room a run both vacuums in, here is my test run. 

•  clean the Kenmore
•  vacuum with the Kenmore 
•  unpack the Dyson
•  vacuum with the Dyson

(more…)

Usually number 1’s at McDonalds are the perfect combo.  Ooops…  Did I say that. In this health conscience world we live in.  We are not aloud to enjoy the simple stuff. (actually if you look at what’s all included in that bigmac combo, you might not consider it. 

Over the past year I have picked up running, biking, best put Life at Full Speed, again. It got hard after the first kid to manage a good work out program. It’s actually harder for me with the with weather change, I LOVE to work out in the summer time, and keep my gym membership for the winter time, where I can at least break a sweat (maybe I’m more motivated when it’s hot out).  For anyone knows me, I do enjoy playing many sports.  I could go on with excuses if I wanted too, but will leave it at that. 

The real point of this post is to talk about Nike+, my new workout buddy.  (I’ve actually had one for a couple years now) Nike deserves a post here, what a cool gadget.  My Nike+ unit hooks up to my iPod nano and a sensor goes into my shoe, as I run, it clocks me, and gives me updates on my run, I can also pick power songs, but the coolest part, is when I’m done with the run, and I sync my iPod up, my run information is sent to nikes website and I now have a chart of my runs. For kicks, I can even challenge a friend to a run.  For gadget owners, this is worth the buy, it’s a win win. 

Another good tech idea is to blog your workouts, keeps you on motivated! (and lets you look back at what you have done).  I do.