Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

This router set up beautifully.    Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in my eye if it sets up without biting me in the butt I am happy.    This did. I followed the quick installation guide and surprise, surprise it was actually quick.    My Amazon Fire, my laptop and my phone all attached easily.   The signal was stronger than my current Linksys router.    I have a meter ap on my phone and this puppy was pumping out a much stronger signal.     It has two USB ports that supposedly will allow you to plug in a drive and a printer for sharing.    That is not as simple as the bare bones installation and I will have to update this when I have time to test that.    I did not see any increase in performance on the hard wire end but I don’t have any gigabit network cards in my systems either. First glance, this installed easily and pumps out a very strong signal.    I recommend it.    If reviewing a product, it may have been received free of charge. T

The Thirty Three Days of Christmas eBook GiveAway  Starting the day after Thanksgiving there are thirty three days until Christmas.   Each day I will give away three Kindle eBook for a total of ninety nine in thirty three days.   To win a copy all that is needed is to request a copy by email at wbentrim@hotmail.com or to comment on one of my blogs or website and mention the Big33 and which book you would like.   The daily winner will be chosen by time stamp as to who requested first.   If there are simultaneous time stamps, the winners will be chosen by a random number generator.    If you do win a copy if you would be so kind as to review the book on Amazon I would be appreciative.    Winners will be announced weekly. The books are in .mobi or pdf, please note which format works for you.    The   books I currently have on Kindle are: Ø       The Christmas Knot Ø       A Quirky Christmas Ø       The Wicked Good Stepmother Ø       Hardy Belch And

Even in periods of recession, people continue to seek the American dream. Some are filled with hope, but others fall into despair as each goes daily to provide for his or her own needs. The fortunate find their lives filled with abundance, but the less fortunate many remain cold and hungry through the dark nights. Entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and other professionals are successful and appear to have the best that life offers. Some of the less fortunate attribute their success to luck, and accuse them of not caring for the poor, but they are wrong. Any less fortunate person needing medical attention can find it in almost every community because doctors and nurses volunteer their time and services. Many attorneys provide pro bono services for those who cannot afford legal fees. Professionals and tradesmen in all fields find time to help their fellow man. Although busy entrepreneurs spend most of their time planning and overseeing their businesses, they do tak

Like many of us, I have found myself increasingly dependent on my phone.   I get positively paranoid if I forget my phone on my desk.   My palms get sweaty when I find my self evaluating the time left on my phone battery.   I feel the remaining time in excruciating detail as I wait for my life to go black!   Reading his over, I am increasingly despondent on how fixated I have become on cellular reception.   It isn’t just to chit chat, Oh No!, nothing as simple as chit chat. I want to find the best price on gasoline with GasBuddy.    I want to check on Roethlisberger’s condition.    Arrghh! I want to check the stock market or ball game score and I can’t do any with a DEAD battery.    There is hope and it isn’t expensive.   This is the perfect item when you find yourself charger-less.    Those of you who have never, ever left your charger someplace you wish you hadn’t may cast the first stone. Otherwise, button up and be aware there is a simple solution.    This

I plugged this into my Win7 system and it was seen and functional in about 60 seconds.    For whatever reason my old reader was incompatible with Win7 so it was nice to have that flexibility of use again.   Of course my machine has a SD card slot that worked just fine until one of those overnight Microsoft auto-updates and now it doesn’t work.   Microsoft states stoutly that it must be some other issue since their auto update couldn’t have done anything damaging.     I know it didn’t hurt the hardware but as far as the driver is concerned there is a problem and I have the most recent driver from ACER.    So I bought this tiny little reader for a whopping $8.00 on Amazon rather than waste any more time trying to fix a MS generated problem.   Description from IOGears site: IOGEAR's 12-in-1 Pocket Card Reader / Writer is an ideal solution for hi-speed, bi-directional image and data file transfer between your computer and multimedia devices. Images and data can be downlo

Some of my product reviews or recommendations are thinly disguised rants.   I’m afraid this one is less than disguised.   I have used Glide Pro-Health Deep Clean floss for years.   The last three packs I have gotten have had dismal strength.    By strength I mean that it breaks before the cleaning is done.   I end up using 6 or 7 feet of floss because I can only get a couple of teeth before the floss breaks.    I don’t know what happened to this product but the quality has gone down hill in a large way.   I have switched to Oral-B Complete which is made by the same company, Oral-B. It gets through my teeth without breaking and does a nice job.    Ironically it is cheaper and works better.   Incidentally I got the best price at Giant Supermarket, better than any online store I found.     If reviewing a product, it may have been received free of charge. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

Image from http://www.steelernation.com/forums/content.php After a recent visit to Pittsburgh I was once again reminded that the Steeler Nation is a truly vibrant and lively community that encompasses a large chunk of the world that does NOT live in Pittsburgh.    I happen to sit through the miserable conditions of the Monday night game on November 12 th , 2012 at Heinz field.   I can deal with dry and cold or warm and wet but cold, wet and windy was pretty darn uncomfortable.    The Steelers beat Kansas City but it wasn’t pretty but hey, a W is a W.    The next day driving back to eastern Pennsylvania I ran into two guys from Jersey wearing Steelers gear.    Noting my hat, they asked if I had been to the game.    We commiserated over the lousy weather and expressed concern for Roethlisberger.   Another gentleman stopped to ask if we had been at the game and wondered what the heck happened.   At another rest stop, the guy pumping gas on the other side of my

No Nifty Blue cord like on th e P793. The P4000 is very similar to the P793.   They both fit the following criteria below.   I could not get the mAh out of Motorola chat to know specifically why the P4000 is considered more “beefy” than the P793.    It is larger, the same size as my DroidX as opposed to the P793 which fits on the screen of the Droid.    The “chat” person said it has greater charging capacity.   Motorola claims you can even charge your tablet with the P4000.    It does NOT come with an AC charger.   You can use your AC phone charger to charge it or the included USB cable.    It will charge your phone much quicker than the P793.    I guess I can’t give it a raving review because I can’t accurately determine how much better it is than the P793.    If it is more than twice as quick or will charge more devices, it may be worth the double and some price tag of $79.99 at Amazon.    Frankly I haven’t seen a huge difference between the two units.    If you ne

WE ARE WATCHING! I’m still in my pjs as I write this.   You seldom see me writing about politics or religion but frustration can motivate changes in behavior.   I’m annoyed and cranky!   The election is really not even over and already some &%$#@)(&**  politicians are stating there will be no compromise.  Frankly the Presidential election was moot.   Unless our do nothing Congress can start to compromise and cooperate, nothing will change.  We are not red and blue, we are all red-white and blue.  Any idiot knows if we run a sack race, we tie two legs together and run in the same direction.  Apparently our Congressional leaders missed the memo, both runners have to go in the same direction or they go in circles and get no where.   It is up to us, the voters, to get cranky and let our representatives know that doing nothing is not acceptable.  If we can’t break these bozos to the harness then we need a new team.   It doesn’t matter if you like the results o

This a pretty cool puzzle.    It is more like a Lego set than a puzzle.   The big difference is you can’t build anything besides the lighthouse.   It is more complex than the ball type puzzle that Ravesburger also has.    This puzzle was challenging for my 3 year old puzzle crazy grandson however with help he was able to do it.   The age on the box suggests 10 and up, I think a manually dexterous 8 year old would be fine.    This is a lot more fun than a flat puzzle.  I did receive the puzzle for free for evaluation purposes and absolutely has no bearing on my review. If reviewing a product, it may have been received free of charge. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

This review is going to be a basic rerun of the TP-Link N750.   I even went to the TP-Link site to try and determine what the difference is between these two routers besides price.    This router was $66 at Amazon and the N750 was $83.00.    Oh, the N600 only has two antennas instead of three.   I emailed the sales department at TP-Link since I wasn’t willing to incur a long distance charge to Australia on my phone.   I will post back here whenever they respond.   This router set up beautifully.    Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in my eye if it sets up without biting me in the butt I am happy.    This did. I followed the quick installation guide and surprise, surprise it was actually quick.    My Amazon Fire, my laptop and my phone all attached easily.   The signal was stronger than my current Linksys router.    I have a meter ap on my phone and this puppy was pumping out a much stronger signal.     It has two USB ports that supposedly will al

I recently blogged about a grossly disappointing dental jet, the Interplak Dental Water Jet. It is a delight to post a highly positive review on the Waterpik Ultra. It is by far the best dental jet I have owned. It has a quality feel to it. You can turn it off and on without the thing sliding all over the counter. It has multiple pressure settings and a workable pause control. The piks easily insert and remove. That sounds picayune but the Interplak Dental Water Jet was a major effort to remove or insert the pik. If you are sharing a unit you will want to insert and remove the piks easily. My only criticism of the unit is that I wish they would have included 4 regular water piks instead of two. My compulsive personality would like to have a backup pik for myself and my spouse. This is a five star unit and worth every penny. I got mine at Amazon .  I have linked to it because I think it is a great product and I realize that sometimes my posts seem hypercritical.

First BE AWARE this is not a game in and of itself.    This is merely a holder for your iPhone or select Android phones.   It does not do anything by itself.   The box claims there is a free app at the Apple store of Android store.    Since I don’t have an iPhone I have no idea if there is an app at the Apple store.   I did not find any free app at the Google Android Store.    There was one called 2XL MX Offroad that once loaded immediately brought up a screen requesting a $4.99 payment.   Oddly enough I don’t find that FREE.    I uninstalled the app and put the AppDrive back in the box.   Admittedly $4.99 is very inexpensive for a computer game but not so much for a phone app.    This AppDrive retails for $38.00.   I guess if   you have money to burn you might want to try it and maybe iPhones have readily accessible apps but Android certainly does not.    On the bright side the steering wheel has a nice feel to it and the levers that push your phone screen seem well mad