Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page D02

D2 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2009 THE HARTFORD COURANT MONEY LIFE THE ELECTRONIC JUNGLE Sonos S5: Sound Entry In Music Wars 11 CONSUMER REPORTS EXPERTINDEPENDENTNONPROFIT Why Are So Many Packages Half-Empty? Ever wonder why some packaged products in the grocery store have so much empty space in them? Consumer Reports' recent investigation turned up several products with packages that are as much as half-empty Those include One A Day Men's 50 Advantage vitamins, where the plastic 50-tablet bottle looks about 40 percent empty, and Lay's Potato chip bags, which are half-filled. Relying mostly on nominations from readers, CR rounded up a handful of products and asked the companies behind them for an explanation of all that air-to-spare. Packages CR looked at are examples of what is likely to be found on store shelves and don't necessarily represent the worst offenders. Post Shredded Wheat. A Post customer-relations representative said the company can't overfill because cereal can get caught near the top of the bag, resulting in an improper seal.

Post also allows for settling, which varies with size, shape and sugar content. Uncle Ben's Whole Grain Rice. "Rice needs to breathe," said a customer rep for Mars Food US. She noted that holes in the bag help with respiration. That's fine, CR answered, but the bags it bought weren't very holey In any case, the plastic pouch could accommodate far more grains.

Ocean Nasal Spray. Why the cardboard partition and extra space? According to a customer rep for Ocean's maker, Fleming Pharmaceuticals, the company uses the same box for its periodic buy-one-get-one-free promotions, which include a second, smaller bottle. If the company used different-size boxes, she said, it could create problems in stores, where shelf space is planned and paid for based on a standard package size. Mrs. Paul's Lightly Breaded Tilapia Fillets.

Manufacturer Pinnacle Foods declined to provide an explanation, but a customer rep said the extra space helps maintain "product integrity" Bayer One A Day Pill. The plastic 50-tablet bottle looks about 40 percent empty One customer rep said that maker Bayer Healthcare sometimes gives customers 10 or 15 free tablets. Another cited a need to fit "a lot of information" on the bottle. Pasta Roni Garlic Olive Oil Vermicelli. A customer rep from maker Golden Grain said the company uses the same-size box for all of its Pasta Roni products to help keep costs down.

He also pointed out that the width of the box matches the length of the vermicelli, cradling the noodles and minimizing breakage. CR was still left wondering why the noodles aren't stacked higher. Pepperidge Farm Texas Toast. This frozen toast was about two-thirds bread and one-third box. A customer rep for the company speculated that the extra space might have to do with "shock absorption and air circulation." She also mentioned that the product will soon be sold in a reclosable stay-fresh package and said she presumed the new package would be more efficient.

Quaker Oatmeal To Go Brown Sugar Cinnamon Bars. Stripped of their plastic wrappers and stacked, the six 2.1-ounce bars leave about half the box empty One Quaker Oats customer rep called the extra space "crush room" and said the bags fit loosely to add cushioning and make tearing easier. Another rep told CR that the microwaveable bags need room for ventilation. It was easy to tell that some of the products in CR's investigation were far from full. To file a complaint, contact an FDA district complaint coordinator.

In Connecticut, call 800-891-8295. The editors of Consumer Reports FAQ MAN WHEN MEETS ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN Gloves That Work With iPhone Screen My iPhone's touchscreen doesn't work when I wear my gloves. Do I have any options to frozen fingers? The screens on iPhones and other smartphones, like the click-wheel controls on iPods, use a capacitive design that relies on your fingertip's ability to conduct electricity Regular gloves interrupt that circuit, so you'd either need a pair that lets you temporarily expose a fingertip or a set that incorporates conductive material. Gloves by Freehands (above, $18 and up at freehands.com) represents the first category The ends of each glove's index finger and thumb flip open, then magnetically attach to the nearest knuckle. That allows the same control as with bare hands, at the cost of cold fingertips.

Two more expensive and effective gloves have silvery conductive fabric sewn into the tips of the forefingers and thumbs. Echo Touch's sport glove ($30 at echodesign.com) kept my hand warm, but their somewhat loose fit made it tricky to select smaller onscreen items. North Face's E-Tip men's gloves ($40) have a more snug fit that allows finer control. But the stylized circuit-board pattern across each palm and the power-on symbol adorning each thumb give them a Borg Nouveau look that some might see as a turnoff. Comcast raised its modem-rental charge to $5.

Is it worthwhile to buy my own modem? Sure. Cable modems start at around $60 in stores, and you can probably beat those prices online. Just make sure whatever you buy appears on Comcast's list of approved modems (customer.comcast.com). One listed as "DOCSIS 3.0" compatible will support faster speeds that Comcast is now deploying. Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post mm KEVIN HUNT khu ntcou ra nt.com Sonos pulled a fast one with its new ZonePlayer S5, an all-in-one wireless music system that looks like a gelded iPod speaker dock.

It is not, as one might innocently presume, merely an effort to lower the cost of entry into Sonos' otherwise expensive ($1,000 and up) music systems using wireless mesh networks, a peer-to-peer technology that piggybacks on a established home network's router but is both more stable and more secure than a basic Wi-Fi network. No, the S5 is an in-your-face challenge to the Evil Empire of iPod speaker-dock makers. "We focused pretty hard on the sound," says Sonos senior engineering manager Chris Kallai, who presided over the S5 project. "For our first sound system, we wanted to outdo Bose that's the company goal." With the S5, Sonos might have produced the most technologically advanced one-piece, music system in the world. Apple-like in appearance (snow white with a gray mesh-metal grille) and simplicity (only two on-board controls: mute and volume), the S5 has no iPod dock, no display and no remote.

Instead, it streams music from a computer, either PC or Mac, loading your music library onto its Sonos Controller software or accessing Internet radio stations, free music services Pandora and Last.fm or pay services Napster, Rhapsody and Sirius Internet Radio. For a remote control, Sonos offers its own Sonos Controller 200 ($349) or, more practically, a free Sonos Controller application for the iPhone or iPod Touch. For brains, Sonos endowed the S5 with a 330-megahertz processor a computer within a speaker system that directs the incoming signal to five digital amplifiers, one for each of the system's five speakers. Sonos' software designers preserved the digital signal through every step, from the computer to the S5's processors to the digital amplifiers to the speakers, where it is for the first and only time converted to an analog signal detectable by the human ear. "We never bring it into the analog domain like Squeezebox and Bose," Kallai says, "which move sound from digital to analog to digital to analog.

That creates a lot of artifacts." The software crew at Sonos knew the importance of preserving the digital signal but was less certain about the S5's actual sonic signature. What does it take to actually sound better than Bose, or Logitech? To find out, they packed up an S5 and brought it to George Lucas' Sky walker Ranch, a property in Marin County, where soundtracks to "Star Wars" movies (and many others) came to life. Sonos consulted with the THX sound experts THX, a nod to Lucas' first film, "1138," is a set of sound standard for theaters, whether movie or home and found they were slightly off track. No problem. Where adjusting a component's digital signal processing, or DSP, usually requires a hardware change, Sonos had developed a software program that would allow adjustments immediately through a Web interface.

The Sonos crew pulled out a laptop, made the adjustments and the S5 sound was born. No software can make two tweeters, two 3-inch mid-range drivers and one 3.5-inch lower-range driver crammed into a chassis 14 inches wide, 8 inches tall and 5 deep sound like true stereo with distinct left and right channels. But the S5, when it streams the highest-quality digital signal (from music files like Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV or FLAC), is a remarkable little music box with natural timbre, coherent bass (when the loudness feature is turned off) and a broad soundstage. Sonos' wireless mesh network, indeed, proved much more reliant than the pint-size Squeezebox Radio, which streams music store on a PC or the Internet using traditional Wi-Fi as a carrier. It's also more reliable, though not necessarily better, than a computer streaming music to an Airport Express base station, which then feeds a surround system or other device, like a Bose Wave.

It comes with this asterisk, however: A single S5 is not wireless. It must be connected to the router in a home network. But that single, connected S5 can send signals, wirelessly to other S5s using the mesh network's radio nodes. To set a single S5 free, one must add a Zone Bridge an Airport Express stand-in that connects to a router and delivers a signal to any S5 in the house. So let's call this the $500 Bose challenge.

The S5 is a thoroughly researched, sophisticated device that might only hint at where Sonos is heading with this technology Next time, it could make something smaller and less expensive to challenge the Squeezebox Radio, or it could go bigger, and broader, add a dock and take on mighty Zeppelin. Wherever it's headed, Sonos is now a player in the one-piece music system business. Classic THE DIGITAL LIFE AN ANALOG MIND An Alarm Clock You Can Talk To Product: Moshi voice control alarm clock Features: This hands-free alarm clock is set by your spoken commands. Some functions also are activated by touching the screen. Say "Hello Moshi," and it will respond with, "command please." Follow up by saying a command, such as time, set time, alarm, set alarm, alarm sound, sleep sound, play sleep sound, today's date, temperature, night light or help.

It's AC-powered with three AAA batteries as a backup. Has three alarm sounds, three sleep sounds, a multicolored night light, tells the temperature in the room and has a snooze function. Screen is 7.5 inches wide and 3.25 inches tall. Price: $39.99 Ups: It's really cute, and does a good job understanding what you say most of the time. The alarm sounds gradually get louder.

No need to fumble for a button just press on the screen to have it snooze for nine minutes or hit it twice to turn off the alarm. Downs: The voice controls do have their quirks. Sometimes Moshi will ask for your command if you didn't even say its name. (One time it randomly went off while I was having a conversation in my I'M room.) And the opposite also happens sometimes it won't respond when you're saying "Hello, Moshi," but you can always just tap the screen and CAR TALK CLICK AND CLACK LOOK UNDER THE HOOD Cuba's Old Cars: How Do They Do It? DEAR TOM AND RAY: I have often wondered, when I see a street scene in Havana, how they've managed to keep those '50s vintage cars operating all these years. Of course, we are conditioned to replace a car because of a full ashtray or if a bird defecates on the hood.

But still, wouldn't 50-plus-year-old cars be increasingly expensive to maintain? I would think the majority of those cars would be not only mechanically challenged but unsound structurally And how do they obtain replacement parts? TOM: They go to Pepe Boys: Fidel, Raul and Hugo. Actually, they just get very creative. RAY: The structural stuff is pretty easy That's mostly welding, which is old technology TOM: Yeah, and I doubt they have annual safety inspections, like we do. So the definition of "structurally sound" may be "the seat doesn't fall through the floor onto the street while I'm driving." RAY: But structural things, like floors and frames, are pretty easy to fix. TOM: And for all the mechanical stuff, they have machine shops.

Remember, there were no electronics in cars in those days. There were no electronic ignitions, no emissions systems, no computers. So almost everything is some form of bent, lathed or poured metal. Their machine shops can do that. RAY: And I suspect they've gotten very good at rebuilding engines and transmissions.

Remember, they've been rebuilding the same engines and transmissions for 50 years (literally, the same engines and TOM: I suspect they make the simpler repairs themselves, like we used to fix exhaust pipes with empty cans of frozen orange juice concentrate. RAY: Probably the hardest thing to make is something like spark plugs, which require special tooling. But even if they don't make those on the island, they have trading partners that make cars. TOM: Yes, the global "rum for spark plug" trade is very hot these days. Tom and Ray Magliozzi with Doug Berman it'll be ready for your command.

Very rarely it would misunderstand me, but it did happen. I told it to set the alarm for 5 p.m., and it responded, "Alarm set for 10 a.m." Wait, what? No, Moshi! When the alarm is going off, you can shut it off by saying, "Turn off the alarm," but it doesn't always hear your groggy voice over the sound of the alarm. If you are someone who always wants to be able to just glance over at the time, you won't be able to in the dark unless you set the whole screen to stay lit overnight or tap the screen to light it up. (Not exactly a downer, depending on your alarm clock preferences.) Bottom line: It's a real fun alarm clock and especially handy for the blind. But if you want more features, keep an eye out in stores for different Moshi clocks in the future.

The maker's website promises more accessories and features on the way, like a voice-activated clock that can play your MP3s. Bridget Carey, Miami Herald.