Product review: Flexzilla Garden Lead-in Hose, 5/8 in. x 3 ft.

I bought the Flexzilla 3-foot lead-in house in the spring, so it had been in use for three months. It formed a water tight connection without teflon tape and I like the sleeves that protect the connection from kinking. As a lead-in hose into a four way switch it is always under pressure and has not any leaks so far.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: Meking 300w Bulb , 20"x28" Softbox , 29.5"x9.8"x11.4" Photography Zipper Bag,78.7" Lighting Stands Photo Video Studio Light Kit

There are many things about these studio lights that I like, but they have one serious flaw. They come with Type C electrical plugs common in Asia and South America (two round prongs, not two flat prongs known as Type A we use in USA). I happen to have plug converters from when I used to travel a lot so I am able to use them, but I wanted to start my review by drawing attention to this requirement.

- These studio lights generate nice natural light. In attached photos I set them up in complete darkness and the lights filled the room with a non-harsh light. The lights use Tri-phosphor light bulb 150w 5500K 110V E27.

- The umbrellas and the diffuser shields are nice. They collapse and pop up easily. The diffuser shields have fitted corners so they go on easily and stay on well, they also have Velcro to grab on to umbrella better.

- The electrical cords have in-line on/off switch. My old lights had a switch next to the light and it would always get ultra-hot. This is a much better design.

- Everything is pretty easy to set up and disassemble. When the lights are not in use they fits into the carrying case included in the package. The bulbs (if you want to keep them in the cartons like I do) do not fit into the carrying case, but everything else does. The bag has handles lengthwise as well as at the top end of the case. I use the handle on the top to hang the bag from a ceiling hook in the basement and the case does not take up much space while being easily accessible.

- The stand is collapsible. The screws and the stand are metal, but the fittings are plastic. This is likely to be the weak point of the system over time. However, no problems so far.

Here are a couple of minor cons:

- The stands are okay but they are a little top heavy when fully assembled. The legs could have been made to spread wider to provide more stability.

- The electric cord of each stand is only a little longer than the stand itself. I need to use an extension cord to plug in the lights. I would have liked each cord to be 5-6 feet longer so it could be used without an extension cord.

So what's the bottom line? The light kit is not aimed at the American market, so even though I am able to use them with two converters and the light the lights generates nice light I am not able to rank the kit as good. If it is re-wired to have type A plugs that work with American outlets I would rank it as a 4 star product. I notified the seller of the problem and he said he will address it.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆

Product review: HP LaserJet Pro M477fdn Multifunction Color Laser Printer with Built-in Ethernet & Duplex Printing (CF378A)

I am using this laser printer in a home office with Linux, win10, and win XP computers. All three operating systems connected without trouble.

1. Linux - I had to install HPLIP from repository, support for the driver is built into the Linux OS. I was able to connect the printer both as USB printer and network printer.

2. Windows 10 - the driver for win10 is included on the CD ROM that came with the printer, searching for the network printer during configuration found the printer and configured it.

3. Windows XP - the driver for XP is not included on the on the CD ROM but it is available from the HP website.

The quality of the print is nice and crisp. The black color is not as bold as the old laser printer, but very clear. The colors are bright and clear. Both the scan and the print are fast (the first scan/print has a short pause for the printer to warm up, but the rest of the pages are very quick.) The FAX (the sending part) is fairly slow, but that's the FAX limitation not the printer. What is nice is that HP provides a test FAX number on their web site (search for test FAX number HP), so I was able to send a test FAX to confirm everything is working.

When not in use the laser printer goes into sleep mode. When I start to scan or print it wakes up automatically, but there is an extra pause to warm up a printer after sleep.

To activate the warranty one needs to find the serial number. It is printed on the box, it is also easy to get it the driver once the printer is installed (this information is available from device info). After I registered my printer I checked the status of the warranty and saw that it says 10 months remaining rather then 12. I had to contact support to have this corrected. Perhaps this is the date HP shipped to Amazon warehouse? The printer did NOT look like a returned product that was registered by someone else. The support told me they will correct the warranty period after processing my Amazon receipt. This is heads up to check your warranty period to avoid problems down the line.

The printer is pretty heavy. In its packaging is about 60 pounds long. It does have handles on the side of the carton to get a grip. The front is 18.5" wide, the depth is 16.5", the height with the cover closed is 16". How much clearance is needed to use it? To open the cover to slide a document into a crack the minimum you need is 19". If you need to totally open it to scan a book you would need a minimal clearance of 25".

Overall, I like the printer. There are, however, a few small things I do not like:

1. Not all cables were included in the packaging. When I pay $400 for a printer I expect the package to include all the cables I need. However, this printer did not have either the USB cable nor the Ethernet cable. The package included a power cord and a telephone cord for the FAX.

2. Multi-page tray does not always feed documents straight. Sometimes the output of the scanner is slightly askew.

3. The warranty issue I mentioned earlier is a concern. It would have been very easy for me not to check the status of the warranty and lose two months of coverage.

4. The on/off button blinks brightly, quickly, and continuously when the printer is not in use (sleeping). The button is solidly on when the printer is in use. The fast blinking is in my field of view when I sit in front of the computer and found it distracting enough that I had to put a black sticker over it. I can still see faint light around it so I know when it is on. This is a poor design, a solid light when not in use and blinking when working would have been a much better design (my old laser printer worked this way).


You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

Product review: Silicone Skins for Arlo Smart Security

I have been using the Arlo security system for over 1 year without a jacket and now a couple of years with Wasserstein jacket.  Looking at the stock photo I was a bit worried that the jacket will make the magnetic hold weaker and I was not sure if I would like it.

Turns out the jacket has three holes (stock photos do not show this, but my video does) - one for the camera lens, one for the magnetic hold, and one for the battery door. The camera jacket is easy to put on and it fits well.

I selected the brown color that matches my trim and I think the camera is less noticeable and looks better in the jacket. The camera is waterproof so I don't think the jacket is needed to protect from rain, but it seems to provide a little bit of insulation for cold weather and prolongs the battery life in the winter.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

Product review: RecorderGear FD50 USB Flash Drive Voice Recorder 8GB

At the time I am writing this review the price of this recorder is around $90 and for the price I expected a better all purposes recorder. It did a reasonable job recording human voice, but did a very poor job recording music. The recorded music is clipped and sounds distorted. When I held the recorder in my hand the recording picked up a lot of crackling. I did not purposely do anything to generate that noise but as you hear in attached audio the difference between me holding the recorder and having it put down is dramatic.

The recorder looks like a regular flash memory stick. To make it discrete looking the interface that makes it work is not obvious. The recording switch looks like a loop for hanging the recorder on a key chain. The switch has three positions left, center, right. The center position is off, and left/right are the two modes. The two modes are "continuous recording" and "voice activated recording". They are indicated by a small dash and two small dots on the front of the recorder. The markings are black on black and are barely visible. The dash indicates continuous recording and the two dots indicate voice activated recording. The charge level indicator is barely visible as it points down when you plug the recorder to be charged. When it is charging you see an occasionally shadow of a red flash. I took about a dozen photos and on one of them I managed to time my photo and captured this flash of red light, so you would know where to look to see it.

To set the time and to see the recorded files you need to use a Windows computer. Normally fat32 flash drives can be read by Linux desktop, but this flash drive is not seen by my Linux computer so it is doing something non-standard. My Windows laptop has no problem accessing the memory stick.

I included several audio clips in my video so you can judge the quality of the recording for yourself.

My video includes four types of clips under different situations:
(1) Two clips with human voice
The recording has some echo, but not bad.
(2) Classical music
Clipped and distorted, not acceptable
(3) Pop song
Clipped and distorted, not acceptable

The recorder can be re-charged in any USB outlet. It runs on built-in 180mA rechargeable Lithium. Documentation states that battery lasts da day on stand-by. The recordings are produced in MP3 audio file format.

RecorderGear provided this voice recorder for an honest review be it good or bad. What is the bottom line? I thought it did a decent job for human voice in a quiet environment. The microphone is pretty sensitive so in a noisy environment it picks up a lot of surrounding sounds. It works for recording lectures and presentations where is one clear source of sound. It did a terrible job recording music. If it was priced in the $20-30 range I would have rated it as 3 star - ok for lecture recording. For $90 (the price at the time I am writing this review) I expected a more general purpose recorder which produced better results.
You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★☆☆☆

Product review: Astonish Cleaning Paste

Astonish paste did a pretty decent job.  In the attached video you see me cleaning the stove top and the bottom of a skillet.  The results are pretty good, although not perfect and not instant. Overall, it did a job better than other things I have tried.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.

Ali Julia review ★★★★☆

Product review: Window bird feeder

We have a large number of bird feeders including four different window bird feeders. This bird feeder one key feature that our feathered friends like. The birds love the little perch. In my video you can see how they use it to crack the seeds. We have another window bird feeder with a different style which does not have a perch and it was less popular until we glued a perch made out of a twig. As soon as we added this twig the bird feeder became more popular.

This a pretty large (wide) bird feeder. Several birds can visit it at the same time. Many birds do not mind sharing. Some do, and it is fun to watch the bully birds that make other birds leave - I captured one of these episodes in the attached video.

The big size of the bird feeder makes it very comfortable for squirrels to feed from it as well. As you see in attached video, it is big enough to hold two squirrels. The suction cups hold really well, as they are able to hold not only two birds but two squirrels. Squirrels are very clever they manage to get food out any bird feeders even the ones that are designed to keep them out, they always find a way. The one that close under their weight, for example, the learned to shake to get the seeds out. These window birders are very easy for them to get into. We just accepted this and feed all creatures that visit us. Spoiler: watch out for the squirrel jumping from the bird feeder onto the camera, she will be coming straight at you. Those little surprises are always fun to find in the video!

This bird feeder is 12" wide, 5.5" tall, and 4" front to back. The bird feeder is held by three suction cups. They provide sufficient suction power to hold the feeder, the seeds, and the birds. The installation instruction recommend cleaning the window and rubbing the suction cups with your fingers to deposit some oil on the cups for a better hold. Our old bird feeders of similar style have not fallen off once (in more than one year) even when squirrels visit it. The feeding tray of this birder is removable, which is useful for cleaning. It also has a little water tray, which does not seem to get used for drinking, I have not seen any of the birds drinking from it in the video. At the end of the day it gets filled with seeds - these guys are messy eaters.

Does the rain get into it? Yes. But the birds do not seem to mind. They are used to wet seeds on the trees.

What fun to see the birds so up close! If this is your first bird feeder it will likely that the birds will take a week to find it. For the first window bird feeder nothing happened for entire week, and then after a week my husband spread some seeds under the bird feeder and that seemed to help the birds find it. Now that we have a couple of window bird feeders it did not take them long to find the new one. The bird's favorite seeds are sunflower seeds. We spoiled the local bird population with sunflower seeds and if we put out the mixed seeds it barely gets touched where as the sunflower seeds disappear very quickly.

It looks to me that both the birds and the squirrels are giving it 5 stars as we need to refill it every day.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★