Northcrosspharmacy.co.nz Review:
Northcross Pharmacy Auckland - Open until 8:00pm every night - After hours pharmacy open late every night until 8:00pm, including public holidays. The closest urgent pharmacy for many on the North Shore or Rodney.
Country: Oceania, NZ, New Zealand
- Anthony Sindoni - Best bang for your buckI bought this online with faith in the reviews I've read online.
After having poor luck with the G Grip, and being terribly underwhelmed by the mini Jawbone, and Beats Pill, I decided I'd throw the money down on this, knowing I'd be able to return it if unsatisfied. Let me say before continuing, I'm not an audiophile purist per say, but I find audio quality to be more important than say visuals in a video game. What you see is one thing, but you need to feel immersed with audio. Needless to say, I'm nitpicky about audio quality.
Pro's
-Build quality is unrivaled by anything that isnt well over 300 bucks. Definitely top notch. All at the tune of $160 at time of purchase.
-The lighted soft rubber touch buttons on the top really give it a premium feeling as much as the super sturdy chassis, and the color choice for each button, as well as the fading volume button lights is a very nice choice.
-Audio quality is stellar for a unit of this size, as well as price. The Beats Pill gets loud, but it loses depth quickly. The jawbone simply isnt as loud as either, and the audio is 'lifeless' in comparison.. From Rock, to blues, to hip hop/rap, techno, heavy metal, to country these sound great. Bass response is very nice, and the mids and highs are very full and bright in most cases. The audio is definitely room filling. I was testing it in the garage while having a smoke, playing music over the A33, and at about 75% volume I would say I could still enjoy the music from the neighbors property (standard middle class neighborhood, so not extravagantly large yards, but still) across the street.
-As I'm writing this review, I'm jamming with it sitting on a shelf. The acoustics are great with it on a table, but it really comes to life when on a shelf, in a box, or really anything that'll let the notes amplify off of the surfaces surrounding.
-USB port for charging your device while playing music, movies, games, whatever. Only a 1 amp port, but hey, unless you're doing heavy gaming or movie watching, I'm sure the charging port will keep up just fine.
-The kickstand on the bottom does help a fair bit in getting cleaner, more full audio into your ear holes.
-Bluetooth pairing is seamless and easy as can be. Havent had any issues as of yet. Quality loss from bluetooth streaming is very minimal, if even noticeable. Sometimes I get confused as to whether there's noise in the signal, or it's simply so clear that it's a detail in the song I've never noticed before. Almost all the time, it's thankfully the latter.
-Aux support is nice, but I probably plan to have it synced via bluetooth. Ya know, that was kind of the point of this device, but at least it's there if I dont have a charger for my phone and want to conserve battery life.
- Battery life is a solid 5-6 hours depending on volume level.
Cons
-Would be an even better buy if cheaper of course, but dont count this, as the price isnt unjustified, it's cheaper than the Jawbone by around 20USD, and the Pill by about 40USD.
-As good as the build quality is, the little rubber/foam pads on the bottom, that reduce vibrations as well as helping grip to surfaces, feel a bit on the cheap side, and could be 'stickier'. But it's definitely no deal breaker.
-Could have come with a nice little carry case, even if for five bucks more or something. I'd rather not simply throw it in a backpack uncovered or whatever. It's too nice to me mistreat.
-Even though I said Heavy metal sounded great in the pro's up top, I want to reiterate that some heavy metal like Dethklok in particular get a little noisy, but it might be due to EQ settings used on my phone.
-After continual use it does get fairly warm, but nothing that will burn your hand, and not even as hot as my LG Optimus G gets under heavy gaming with the quad core unleashed.
-After reading the materials enclosed in the packaging while it was charging the first time I noticed something bizarre, and a little irritating. On the warranty information slip, not even trying to hide this from anyone, it clearly says the USA gets a 1 year warranty, and that European customers get a 2 year warranty. I cant fathom the reason for this, but I dont like it. However, not a deal breaker.
Realistically, I dont find anything in the con's area to be a deal breaker, for the money, you really wont find anything better, in my opinion.
In the future if anything changes, I'll edit this review, but in the mean time I'm very satisfied with my purchase. Can definitely recommend for the money. - PD - H&R Block At Home DeluxeI have been using this product (used to be called Tax Cut) for at least 15 years and find the software very reliable - never had to amend a return, never had a audit, never crashed. It's companion Deduction Pro is a great way to itemize dozens of charitable deductions, medical bills, etc., and uploads easily to the tax program. Can't see changing to that other big seller.
- C. Adkisson - Radical by David PlattWhen I first began reading this book, I was at the eye doctor when one of the staff made a comment on what I was reading. He mentioned that he had read the book so I asked him what he thought of it. His response was two words--life changing.
I chose to read Radical because I have felt for years that American churches have made a movement toward the church (lower case "c") blending in far too much with the world rather than going into the world, teaching and making disciples as is commanded in Acts for the Church (upper case "c"). When we walk into many churches in the US, there is a beautiful sanctuary, the music has been practiced to perfection and is very performance-like, the pews or chairs are cushioned, the air conditioning and heat making us quite comfortable in our surroundings.....There is nothing wrong with comfort BUT have we also gotten away from the Word and made God into the god (lower case "g") we feel comfortable with, ignoring all 360 degrees of God and instead only accepting those attributes of Him that make us feel good? I think we, as Christians, are in danger of doing so if we have not aleady done so.
David Platt, a pastor in Birmingham Alabama, encourages us to search the scripture to see what being a Christian really means and to follow the Jesus of the Bible. To borrow some of his words, Mr. Platt says that "We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves".
If you are searching for the answers about what being a true Christ follower really means or what God intended the Church to be, I encourage you to purchase a copy of Radical and read for yourself what Mr. Platt and scripture have to say on the subject. Radical is available through your local Christian book store, on Amazon.com, or through Barnesandnoble.com. - Trey Blancher "traius" - ASus + Atheros FTW! (Linux support)I purchased this Bluetooth dongle in order to solve a problem with an older dongle. At work, my old USB dongle caused my Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 to behave as if I'd switched it off and back on again, usually mid-drag across my screen. This was highly annoying, especially because it did seem to negatively affect battery life.
I run Debian squeeze, so I suspected either the Broadcom-based dongle (don't see a brand on it, and I can't remember which online retailer I got it from), or the drivers. Since Broadcom hasn't been very good about providing drivers and firmware for Linux, I decided to go with this Asus dongle (based on an Atheros chipset). I had to modify these instructions slightly (can't remember how at the moment), but it loaded the driver and the firmware OK:
Now, I haven't had the problem occur since I installed the dongle. I had been getting it at least once a day, sometimes several times a day (and then more than once an hour for a stretch of time). It does take a moment to wake up the mouse from a long period of inactivity, but it looks like my problem is solved. I'm very happy about this, so much so that I have purchased another ASus dongle. I intend to perform the same procedure on my Mythbuntu machine at home, that has a similar problem with my Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard 4000 (and another Broadcom dongle from IOGear[I think this is it: IOGEAR USB 2.1 Bluetooth Micro Adapter GBU421]). Since it looks like the ath3k-1.fw firmware file is already on this machine, it may just work if I simply plug in the new dongle and re-pair devices. I will try to remember to post here and let you know how it goes.
As for the Windows compatibility, and the sound quality, I can't really say. I have yet to use a Bluetooth headset or Windows 7 with this Asus dongle.
[EDIT] Edited the text so the paragraph after the link to the Debian 6 instructions actually makes sense.