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A good example would be that they have included a "night" button that just turns the night clock on, which is great. I will write another review after I load the new beta software and use it for the next few weeks. - Setting up separate channels made it easy to group certain widgets Con's: - Control panel needs a little improvement - The volume control is a little too deep in the menus sometimes. Just make a channel with one widget, a day clock. No need to read instructions. - Pandora Radio works really well. - Some Widgets (This isn't the Chumby itself) could do with a few more buttons to control content.
When I opened up the box I just plugged it in and followed the onscreen instructions. Using ORB I managed to stream video from Australia as well. It has a lot of practical uses and I'm sure a many more will come along. This was very limited but it worked fairly well. Pro's: - Very quick delivery from Chumby - Easy to use right out of the box. Within a minute of 2 they were all on the screen of my Chumby streaming live radio from Australia.
- Easy to update from the Chumby website to your Chumby - WIFI was very easy to set up. I can see the Chumby being the next craze. I can't wait to see what new Widgets are released. The control panel could do with a little tweaking to make it more practical. I easily went in and added 10 custom radio stations from Australia to my portal on the ORB website. ORB.com software let me listen to radio stations from around the world. Just like a digital Picture frame. It worked with WEP,WPA and MAC filtering - The touch screen works well.
In some cases I would like to just see a clock during the day and there's no shortcut to that. As I'm from Australia and live in the USA I wanted to listen to Australian radio stations beside my bed. One it was up and running I very easily customized all the widgets to my needs. The list at ORB was fairly limited BUT you can add your own custom streams. - The volume itself seemed a little low BUT it was more than likely the site source and not the Chumby. It's a little quirky but over all I love the little thing.
- Video, Photo and Audio were all very clear. - It has many custom widgets you can add to personalize your Chumby with, whether it be a bed side chumby or one of your desk. It's fairly straight forward with a basic control panel. Here's a summary of Pro's and Cons that I found. The Pro's far out way the Con's so that's why I gave it a 4/5. In some way's it is, but it's a whole lot more.
- We need more Widgets (Not directly a Chumby issue)In all this is a great device.
I'll admit, I read the very minimum to get it working.
There is a work around.
So you know what's available here are some of the widgets that I loaded on my Chumby: EBAY, ORB Radio and TV, EarthCam, 12 Hour Flip Clock, The Weather Channel, SMH News, Regional Weather Radar, ABC News, Google Email, Notes, EMAIL Viewer, GPS-PLT.
- Streaming your own music via USB works well - Viewing my personal photos was easy.
I loaded on news sites, some video streaming sites and best of all I loaded on orb.com to stream internet radio stations.
I first have to say that this looks and feels just like a gadget and toy.
That being said it's a great device.
- Internet radio and TV from ORB is great.
I bought Chumby as a clock-radio that plays Internet music and it does that very well. Its ability to wake me up, entertain me with music and my friend's Facebook photos and then sound another alarm when I'm running late is exactly what I bought it for and that's exactly what it does.
I would describe it as a digital photo frame on steroids and LSD. It has web radio (good speakers)which works great, too. Unlike the other reviewers, I'm extremely happy with my Chumby purchase. I can see my pictures on Picasa, and Picwing, the photos of all my friends on Facebook, my own or family members Facebook pages, webcams of my city and other favorite cities, a webcam inside Shamu's tank at Seaworld (awesome), as well as my eBay watch lists and various news and entertainment sources in print and video.
It's wireless - great - but it's tethered to an a/c cord. It does play internet radio, like Pandora, very well but it's got to do better than being a one-trick pony. It does what it says it does, but unfortunately, that's too little. Screen's too small to read even the headlines without squinting at them.
It is mostly poor in quality, lacks content updates and is rarely useful.-The screen gets hot, which is uncomfortable when touching it.-The interface just sucks. Not only does Chumby miss at it's most basic premise, but there is no reason that higher quality components and more features could not exist at the current price point. You could be viewing a widget and it will just change widgets, even if you have a widget "pinned".I'm not at all happy with my Chumby. I was also expecting something I could play with before I go to bed, or when I wake up in the morning. With so many feature-rich PMPs on the market, I can't imagine why a device as anemic as the Chumby exists.
I was expecting something attractive that I could put on my night stand to replace my alarm clock. When comparing it to any other touch device, it fails.-The accelerometer can be frustrating and eventually does whatever it wants and not what you want.-The content does not appear to be well regulated. It is poorly designed and clumsy.-It sometimes just does whatever it wants. I get the impression that the intent is not to offer everything and the kitchen sink, but to provide a minimalist, yet useful set of features. While the concept of the Chumby has a lot of potential, I don't think it is well executed.
Unfortunately, it does a poor job at both.These are the things that fail:-The screen is not the best quality, making "night mode" either too bright or too difficult to see.-The touch aspect of the screen is very poor. I honestly believe that something like an iPhone is 100x the device, with a far better touch screen, better alarm capabilities and far more functionality.
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