Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
Lauren in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida calling in via the iPhone App asked: “I’m an up and coming DJ and I have Stanton headphones, But I was wondering of Dr. Dre’s Beats would be better or if I should have Pioneers. Thank you, have a good day.”
It depends on what you’re looking to get form the headphones. If you’re looking at Beats, in your line of work you’re gonna be looking at the Beats Pro, not the regular models, and those deliver good quality in every way, but they are as much a fashion item as the regular beats are, so you will be paying a very steep, and probably not justified premium.
For example, a set of Beats Pro will cost you around $450, the top of the line Pioneer HDJ-2000s will cost you $250, they won’t be as flashy, and won’t make as much of a fashion statement, but you can’t fault them from a technical point of view, and they will cost you $200 less, you can almost get a second pair for the same price. Your Stantons are the same story, they’re considerably cheaper than the Beats.
Now, as far as we can tell, the audio quality you will get from Beats headphones will be good, and if you get the Pros you won’t have to pay for batteries for them for the rest of their life, but the downside of them is that a large portion of what you’re paying for is not audio quality, or even build quality, but image, you can get comparable quality from other brands for far less money.
So, are you looking strictly for quality? are you looking for image too? and, how much are you willing to pay for that extra image? depending on what your answer is, you should be able to tell whether the Pioneers or the Beats are for you.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Larry in Newbern, Tennessee listening online asked: “I’m a truck driver and I wanted to get one of the 7-inch GPS units. A lot of them say they have electronic logging and truck routes. I was wondering if there were any that had specifically hazmat routing, since I drive a tanker.”
There are several GPS units that include HazMat routing, they’re all obviously geared towards professional drivers, so none of them are particularly cheap.
You can look at the Cobra 7-inch GPS Navigator for Truck Drivers 7750 Platinum. The unit features 10 levels of HazMat routing, and takes into account the truck’s size and weight when suggesting routes. It’s not cheap though, you’ll be paying around $400 for it.
The Garmin Nuvi 465T will also offer routes taking HazMat restrictions and truck dimensions into account. This one will cost you considerably less. You can find it for closer to $200.
The Magellan RoadMate Commercial 9270T-LM will get you back to around the $400 mark, but it will also include dimension-based routing and HazMat routing, so it may also be an option for you. A feature you may find useful on this model is the lifetime free traffic alerts.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast
| HOUR 2 GUESTS | ||
 |
 |
 |
| Steve Koenig, Director of Industry Analysis – CEA | Dean Kamen, Inventor & Founder of DEKA Research & Development/FIRST | |
 |
 |
 |
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Dane-Elec: Several 8GB USB Flash Drives from Marvel’s The Avengers Collection
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle — This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
iolo Technologies: Copies of System Mechanic 11 – PC Tune-up Software