Gadget Test Drive – Peter Framptom Plays With Gear (1)

Those of you who punch a clock and do honest work probably think being a product reviewer is a pretty sweet ride.

You get all the latest stuff and just spend your days playing with it.

To some extent, it’s true. But it does have its dark side. Sometimes, the stuff doesn’t work. Sometimes, it works but doesn’t work right. Other times, a product is just so frustrating to use that you want to run it over in your driveway. Not that you’ll find shattered bits of gear in my driveway, though. I sweep it regularly.

Not considering the possibility that I was tempting fate, I gathered a half dozen or so gadgets that we had in the office, all of which I thought were working, threw them in the trunk of my car and drove off to Nashville with my favorite photographer, my wife, Stephanie, to give our newest product reviewer a taste of what we do.

Thankfully, full-fledged rock stars like Peter Frampton understand what it’s like to have a job everyone else wants and thinks is easy. While most fans think it’s a matter of playing on stage a couple of hours and ducking whatever items of intimate apparel are flung at them, the truth is, it’s hard work—hours and hours of rehearsals and sound checks, brutal travel, grueling, high-pressure studio work and so on.

Still, when I arrived at Frampton’s office with my bundle of gear, I wasn’t planning on showing him the pain of gear reviews. What’s the old saying? “Man plans, God laughs.”

In fairness, most of the stuff worked. I brought the NeoPoint phone reviewed in our last issue, a Sharp portable DVD player reviewed in this issue, Olympus Eye-Trek goggles, a Magellan portable GPS unit, an Olympus C-2020Z digital camera and my iBook.

Except for the Eye-Trek, which was dead on arrival, everything else sort of worked.

Frampton, a notorious good sport, agreed to give some basic impressions of the products, in part because he says he loves playing with gadgets.

Things went smoothly at first. The NeoPoint Web phone worked like a champ. Frampton was able to get the hang of the graphic user interface quickly.

Within a couple of moments, he was trolling through the financial sites, getting up-to-the-minute news and stock quotes. As someone never too far from his cell phone, he seemed pretty impressed with the NeoPoint.

“This is interesting,” he said. “It’s amazing to have this much data on a cell phone.”

The real winner of the day, though, was Sharp’s portable DVD player. We loaded up a demo disc of Frampton’s new DVD, Live In Detroit, and his eyes lit up. Having just returned from a concert tour through Australia with fellow rockers Alice Cooper, Simon Townsend and others, he talked a bit about always seeing Cooper’s Panasonic portable.

“This screen looks bigger,” he said, correctly noting that Cooper’s unit only sports a 5-inch screen, while the Sharp has a 7-incher. “This is very cool. It can be plugged into a regular TV. I could really see having one of these.”

Already a confirmed DVD fan, with a full-blown home theater system in his house, Frampton was very tuned into the little DVD player.

Less successful was the Olympus Eye-Trek. Because of an unknown power problem, the goggles were slightly less useful than a pair of blindfolds. While we had power at the DC transformer, the goggles stubbornly refused to light up. Of all the products I brought, Frampton seemed the most intrigued by the combination of the Eye-Trek and the portable DVD, in theory a winning combo for anyone who travels a great deal. I explained that the goggles would simulate a 52-inch big screen TV when connected to, say, a portable DVD. While he didn’t say much, I could see a slight smile on his face as he contemplated a long flight with these goggles.

After trying every power outlet in sight, I finally gave up on getting the goggles to work.