Tar­gus is the Winner!

If you’ve been fol­low­ing along, you know I’ve been check­ing out a num­ber of styli for use with the iPad. So have many oth­ers, includ­ing Hec­tor Gomez. RecentlyI’d set­tled on the Box Wave sty­lusbecause of the rub­ber or sil­i­con tip and how that makes lay­ing down Dig­i­tal Ink feel close to doing so on a Tablet PC with a Wacom dig­i­tizer. Hec­tor recently pointed out the Tar­gus iPad Sty­lus, which is avail­able at Best Buy (listed as back ordered cur­rently). I man­aged to find one on the shelf in a Best Buy store in Rich­mond this week­end and picked it up. The verdict?

Fun­da­men­tally, the Tar­gus sty­lus presents the same feel as the Box Wave Sty­lus does. Your mileage my vary, but I see no fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between the two out­side of the cos­metic design. In fact, I’d say it is the exact same with the excep­tion of color choices and the lit­tle tether that comes with the Box Wave. Well, that’s not true. The Tar­gus iPad Sty­lus can be had at Best Buy for $14.99. The Box Wave Sty­lus has been reduced in price from $24.95 to $20.95. So, if you don’t mind wait­ing until they are back in stock at Best Buy, you can save a few bucks.

In the pic­ture, the Tar­gus Sty­lus is black and the Box Wave is blue.

UPDATE: Check the com­ments to this post. GBM reader drnkusv reports that Grif­fin is also mar­ket­ing this same sty­lus at $19.99. I guess some­one is crank­ing them out and the usual roundup of com­pa­nies that mar­ket these acces­sories are slap­ping their brand on them along with their own pric­ing. I’m guess­ing that if Apple ever got over its stance that a sty­lus is the spawn of Satan, and tried to sell one of these the price would be $39.99.

Some Like It Hot!

Have a cool lap with the iLap

If you’ve got a Mac­Book you’ll know what I mean when I say ‘Some like it hot!’. In fact any­one who uses a lap­top (it’s by no means exclu­sive to Apple) on their lap will be aware that things get hot , hot, hot! Slap two of these together and you could be crank­ing out pop tarts at vol­canic tem­per­a­tures. (George Fore­man watch out – I can see it now, the iGrill). Of course if you use your lap­top on a desk you will be unaware of this ‘hid­den bonus fea­ture’. But if you’re like me and sit watch­ing TV on the sofa and whilst surf­ing it can be a prob­lem. OK, I’ve exag­ger­ated a lit­tle for dra­matic pur­poses, but the point I am try­ing to make is that even through nor­mal every­day clothes, there is def­i­nitely a burn­ing sen­sa­tion when using your Mac­Book on your lap for any pro­longed length of time. So what are your options? Well you could try: 1. Wear­ing thicker clothes, some­thing like a NASA space suit would prob­a­bly just about do the job. 2. Only using it for incred­i­bly short peri­ods of time, I like to call it ‘Speed Surf­ing’ 3. Buy some­thing that dis­si­pates the heat away from your Mac­Book. Keep­ing you and your lap­top cooler.

iLap Lap­top Stand

Intro­duc­ing the iLap lap­top stand from Rain Design. Now this was never going to be a very long review. There are no lengthy instal­la­tion pro­ce­dures, no cal­i­bra­tion processes and def­i­nitely no soft­ware updates to run. Well, this is good to go out of the box. Well it should be, it’s a piece of bent metal with some padding! In sim­ple terms, yes that’s exactly what it is. But what a beau­ti­ful look­ing piece of bent metal!

So let me tell you a lit­tle bit more about it…

Firstly, I love the look of it. I would highly rec­om­mend vis­it­ing the Rain Design web­site and tak­ing a look at the some of the other prod­ucts they pro­duce. I get the sense prod­uct design is very impor­tant to them some­thing I appre­ci­ate. The iLap is made of alu­minium which has been sand­blasted to give it a matt sheen. The alu­minium con­struc­tion has excel­lent heat dis­si­pa­tion qual­i­ties, 13 x more effec­tive than stain­less steel! It is beau­ti­fully fin­ished off with no hard edges as you would expect on some­thing that is designed to sup­port your expen­sive lap­top. When you perch your Mac­Book on the iLap for the very first time you will notice that your Mac­Book sits approx 5mm off from the iLap. This is delib­er­ate, as it allows the air to cir­cu­late under­neath, which helps to keep you and your Mac­Book cooler. The Mac­Book is noto­ri­ous for hav­ing exces­sive heat prob­lems, but I hon­estly can’t remem­ber the last time I heard the noisy Mac­Book fan kick in.

Got an iDe­vice? Love to draw? Hate to use your fin­ger? There’s a sty­lus for that!

Unlike many other styli like the Pogo Sty­lus or Wire­less­Ground Sty­lus, DAGi’s Sty­lus has one advan­tage over them.  It allows the user to be able to see what they are writing/drawing on the screen.

These trans­par­ent accu­rate capac­i­tive styli comes in many dif­fer­ent shapes and col­ors.  I got a sam­ple of the sil­ver, blue, and black colors.

The ends of the DAGi Sty­lus are plas­tic while the body of the sty­lus is made of light alu­minum.  The plas­tic clip at the end also has a hole in it if you wish to put a lan­yard through it.

The writ­ing end is made of an angled flat clear cir­cu­lar piece with a touch sen­si­tive dot in the mid­dle.  Writ­ing with the DAGi Sty­lus is a breeze since I can see the screen under it more clearly.  Draw­ing with it is pretty good also.  I would like to give a sam­ple draw­ing but I don’t think smi­ley faces count as a draw­ing so here’s a youtube video of another user that uses the DAGi.