Monday, October 15, 2007

 

Review of the Sony PlayStation 3

The Sony PlayStation 3 is available in two versions. The version being reviewed here is the step-up deluxe model which features the brand new Cell processor, a built-in Blu-ray disc player, and HDMI video output. This PS3 model boasts of a 60GB hard drive, built-in Wi-Fi, a multi-format memory card reader and costing only $100 more than the baseline model.

At the heart of this pricey PlayStation 3 lies a powerful multicore CPU, jointly developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, running at an incredible speed of 3.2 GHz. A Reality Synthesizer graphics engine, based on NVidia's G70 architecture, delivers the graphics. Working alongside these powerful chips are 256MB of high-performance XDR main memory and 256MB of GDDR3 video memory. All these specifications are surely going to impress the most hard-core PC gamer.

The best price for the Sony Playstation 3 is here on Amazon.com.

Strengths:

Drawbacks:

Specifications:

Summary:

Sony's PlayStation 3 may be the most expensive next-gen game console, and its launch titles are not all that impressive, but by combining a great gaming platform, its posh design and horde of features, including a Blu-ray drive, powerful cell processor, make it hard to resist.


Read more and see price on Amazon.com.

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

 

What is Blu-ray and How is it Different than DVD

A Blu-ray Disc (BD) is the name of a next generation optical disc format for the storage of digital information including high definition (HD) video. This disc format has been jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), which is a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers, that include Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and TDK to name a few.

The format also has broad support from seven of the major eight movie studios such as Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM, as a successor to today's DVD format. Five of these major studios have agreed on releasing their movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format.

The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of HD video, as well as for storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc.


Difference between Blu Ray and DVD


Blu-ray Disc represents an increase over DVD capacity by five to 10 times. This is due, among other reasons, to the usage of a blue laser rays instead of red laser rays used by DVDs. BD also has improved lens specifications compared to DVDs, allowing for a much smaller focus laser beam which enables the recording of much smaller and higher density pits on the disc.

In Blu-ray Discs there is less distortion because of the data layer being closer to the laser lens which is not a case in DVDs. This feature gives Blu-ray Disc significantly improved tolerances, more precision and ultra-high storage densities than DVDs.

Currently Blu-ray disc’s holds 25 gigabytes to 50 gigabytes of data with a maximum possible capacity of 200 gigabytes, while DVD’s or HD DVD’s hold 15 gigabytes to 30 gigabytes with a maximum of 60 gigabytes. A Blu-ray Disc can hold HD Video capacity of 5 hours while HD DVDs can hold only 3 hours of HD Video.

Blu-ray has found favor Blu-ray from many consumer electronics, computer companies and major movie studios while DVD has a few backing it namely Universal Pictures, Intel and Toshiba. There are a few companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Paramount and Warner Bros., who have pledged their support to both formats.


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Sunday, October 7, 2007

 

Expert Review of the New Dell Vostro 1400 Notebook

The Vostro 1400, part of a new Dell notebook line, is designed right from the base level to appeal to the specific needs of small-business customers. The Vostro 1400 weighing 2.45 kilograms has its power from a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, enabling the system to provide impressive performance. From tune-up and network-assistant tools to an easy online-backup solution using Dell DataSafe, using the Vostro 1400 is like having a 24X7 IT guy inside your system. Plus, you also get all of the multimedia amenities like a 2.0 megapixel webcam (optional), multimedia controls, 8-in-1 card reader that bogs down other brands. The notebook is very business looking and has some tough features which include a magnesium alloy chassis, spill proof keyboard, and shock resistant hard drive.


Pros:


Cons:


Specifications:

Summary

The Dell Vostro 1400 is an excellent choice for the price targeting the small business group. It offers a wide variety of special features and also provides impressive battery life for its size and price. The Vostro 1400 is tailor-made for its audience and worthy of its own sub-brand. It's a powerful laptop that's as easy to use as it is to maintain.



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Expert Review of the New Mac Mini

As the lowest-cost personal computer ever sold by Apple, the Mini also represents a big change in Apple's business model. The Mac Mini, built in Taiwan to Apple's specifications, has the potential to boost Apple's business again, just as the iMac had done earlier in the 1990's. The New Mac Mini comes as a great offer with 1.83 GHz processor, 160 GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, modem and combination analog/digital video port, which enables to switch in many big, beautiful monitors through 32 MB of devoted video memory driven by an ATI Radeon 9200 chipset and the bundled software package. It is available in 2 configurations and the package consists of applications like Mail, Address Book and iCal along with the basic components.


Strengths:



Drawbacks:



Specifications:

1.83GHz or 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor

Intel GMA 950 Graphics Processor

Apple Remote with Front Row

160GB Hard Drive

Up to 2GB memory

DVI connector, VGA adapter

Slot-loading Optical Drive

Analog and Digital audio

Built-in Gigabit Ethernet

Wireless 802.11g and Bluetooth 2.0

Expansion via USB and FireWire

iLife ’08, Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger


Summary:

Mac mini makes it easy and affordable to work with digital photos, movies, music, and the web, it all happens with the blazing speed of the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Apple Mac Mini is a well designed, superbly useful option at a very attractive price. It is a great selection for a broad range of applications and requirement, but for its success amidst competition, Apple needs to deal with the two most noteworthy issues: inferior analog video output and the lack of FireWire 800 support. If your goal is saving space, the Mac Mini is a winner. If you'd rather get the best deal, there are better options like Dell and HP.



Great Deals

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Tuesday, October 2, 2007

 

Expert Review of the New Toshiba Portege R500 Notebook PC Series

The Toshiba Portege R500 is the world’s thinnest notebook series and the first notebook to include a 7mm optical drive and a 12.1 inch widescreen with trans-reflective backlit LED screen. Toshiba claims that the Portege R500 has the world’s longest battery life amongst all other notebook class with a 12.1 inch widescreen.

The Toshiba Portege R500 is built with a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 ultra-low voltage processor with a clock speed of 1.20GHz, 2MB L2 cache, and 533MHz FSB. The ultra-portable R500 is based on Mobile Intel 945 GMS Express chipset with integrated 950 Chipset Graphic Media Accelerator to manage the 12.1 inch 1280×800 LED backlight display. The R500 supports up to 2GB of DDR2 system memory and comes with 120GB 5400rpm SATA hard disk drive and an ultra-thin 7mm optical drive as a DVD burner.


Features that make the R500 impressive:


Drawbacks:


Specifications:


Summary:

The performance of Toshiba Portege R500 is very positive, while there are some minor concerns with build quality, absence of mobile broadband yet the R500 is remarkably well built for such a small ultra-portable notebook. There is no doubt that one can expect the R500 to provide solid business performance.




Deals of Interest


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Sunday, September 30, 2007

 

The Current Status of Ultra-Mobile PCs

The Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) is a fully functional computer running Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. The UMPC has all the functionality of Microsoft Windows XP Professional with additional functionality of the Tablet PC Future versions of the UMPC will run Windows Vista in continuation with the use of the Tablet PC features.

From a user point of view this means that there is no need of extra learning. The UMPC is portable, mobile and does anything that desktop, laptops and notebook PCs can do. Apart from accomplishing what many portable devices do today, everything you could do on large computers because it runs the full Windows XP operating system. Users work on the same operating system as well as use the same applications which were previously available only on desktop PCs, laptops and notebook computers. Beyond these features, the ultra-portable size; lower cost; inbuilt Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet Ports and support for technologies like GPS, makes the UMPC suitable to a wider range of compelling mobile PC experiences.


Some important features of the UMPC which is helping it in gradually capturing a sizeable share in the market are:



The benefits available to users are endless. Some of them are:



Current Base Specification of a UMPC


While the exact specifications varies between Original Equipment Manufacturers’ (OEM), but the baseline specifications for UMPC are:



Despite issues with a short battery life, In the near future Ultra-mobile PCs will eventually become essential and omnipresent as mobile phones are today.


Deals of Interest

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Expert Review of the New HP Pavilion IQ770

The new HP Pavilion TouchSmart IQ770 incorporates a PC, a 19 inch touch screen, a wireless keyboard and a mouse. The IQ770 is a HP’s new venture in home computing. The system is loaded with genuine Windows Vista Home Premium. The PC has an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52 dual-core processor, large and impressive 2GB of memory and a 320GB hard disk for storing lots of data, music, videos and digital photos. The HP IQ770 has a built-in DVD burner with LightScribe, a TV turner card and a built-in 1.3 megapixel camera.


The IQ770 runs the new Media Center Interface with the new HP SmartCenter front page. HP SmartCenter leverages the touchscreen, making the IQ770 a centralized information appliance. It displays information on the local weather, TV programs, music, games and many more. This is truly an all-in-one media center.


Pros:



Cons:


Specifications:

Processor: AMD Turion 64 X 2 Dual Core TL52 with AMD LIVE! Technology

Memory: 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive: 320 GB 7200 rpm SATA

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium

Network Communication: 802.11 a/b/g and Gigabit Ethernet

Monitor: 19” LCD Touch Enabled

TV Tuner: NTSC and HDTV Tuner

Sound: Integrated Audio with 6 speakers and 2 built-in 12W speakers

Optical Drive: Multi drive DVD Burner

Web Camera: 1.3 megapixel

Ports: 2 USB and 1 IEEE 1394

Media Card: 8-in-1 media card reader


Summary:

HP Pavilion TouchSmart IQ770 is a great all in one system and uses the new technologies in Windows Vista quite effectively. It is suitable for those looking for a home PC to organize family schedules, or to have some entertainment media served up in the kitchen or another small room.



Deals of Interest

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Expert Review of the New Mac Pro

The New Mac Pro is the world’s first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based workstation. Based on Intel's 64-bit Xeon CPU, the Mac Pro has two dual-core processors. The new Mac Pro is the final Macintosh in Apple's line-up to make the shift from PowerPC processors to Intel processors. The standard configuration of the New Mac Pro consists of 2.66-GHz Xeon processors, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a single 16x SuperDrive and the Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphics card with 256MB of video RAM. The Mac Pro not only runs Mac OS X and OS X applications at absolutely blazing speeds, but also Windows XP via Apple’s Boot Camp, the Mac Pro makes a better Windows workstation than almost any other Windows desktop.


Pros:


Cons:


Specifications:


Summary:

Apple’s Mac Pro consists of really awesome hardware features which provides great performance at a reasonable price. Particularly for 3D design, there is requirement of special configuration options but otherwise the Mac Pro can be considered as a professional class PC. With the new Mac Pro your imaginations finally meets its match.


Deals of Interest

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Expert Review of the New Apple MacBook Pro

The new Apple MacBook Pro gets easily placed in the elite class of laptops, with its high-end performance, features and built on Intel’s new attempt of dominating the notebooks market segment with its Core 2 Duo processor. The MacBook Pro is available in two models of 15.4 inches and 17 inch, at a starting price tag of US$1,999. The solid and well-built similarity with its aluminum-clad precursor versions and its thin frame makes it easily stuffed onto smaller laptop bags. It is provided with the minimalist layout characteristic feature with single power button, a full-scale keyboard, a considerably sized touchpad with the only mouse button, stereo speakers and built-in iSight camera.


Strengths:


Drawbacks:


Specifications of the two MacBook Pro Models:



15.4 Inch MacBook Pro

17 inch MacBook Pro

Processor

2.2GHz or 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory

2 GB

2 GB

Hard Drive

Up to 200 GB

Up to 250 GB

Weight

5.4 Pounds

6.8 Pounds

USB Ports

2 - USB 2.0 Ports

3 – USB 2.0 Ports

Network Support

Gigabit Ethernet

Wi-Fi 802.11n

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

Gigabit Ethernet

Wi-Fi 802.11n

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR

Optical Drive

8x double-layer-burning SuperDrive

8x double-layer-burning SuperDrive

Video Card

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

Keyboard

Illuminated Keyboard

Illuminated Keyboard

TrackPad

Scrolling

Scrolling


Summary:

The MacBook Pro conveys ultimate fashion, comes with an exclusive set of features and software, 802.11n Wi-Fi delivers up to five times the performance and two times the range compared to the 802.11g standard.. But a few transitional performance concerns prevents it from being amongst the most powerful laptops. It is one of the most suited laptop for power users but doesn’t come cheap.



Deals of Interest

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

 

Review of the Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is the most compact of all the Next-Gen gaming consoles. The Wii is easily the smallest and lightest of the new generation of game machines, measuring 1.75 x 6.25 x 8.5 inches (Height x Width x Breadth)

The Nintendo Wii is powered by the IBM PowerPC processor and includes 512MB of internal memory for storing saved games, downloaded Virtual Console titles, and other data. The system has an onboard standard digital card slot for additional storage.

The Nintendo Wii accepts only the Wii discs (full-size 12cm) and older GameCube discs (mini 8cm), without the need for an extra adapter. To play games the Wii uses a controller which looks more like a remote of a TV than a gamepad. The Wii has a sensor bar which is a wired receiver unit that allows the console to communicate wirelessly (via Bluetooth) with up to four Wii Remotes at a time within a radius of 30 feet.

The Wii’s online capabilities works through a series of pages called Wii Channels which take advantage of WiiConnect24’s always-on features. The default Wii channels are:

There is also an Internet Channel is an Opera based Web browser for the Wii. The Internet Channel is currently available for free as a beta version, but when Opera releases the final version of the Internet Channel software, it will be available as a paid channel. URLs are entered via the Wii's onscreen keyboard, and favorite web pages can be stored in the browser's bookmarks.

The Nintendo Wii offers a surprise for sports fans. The system comes with Wii Sports, a simple but infectious sports game that lets users get a feel for the Wii's capabilities without investing in additional games.

Pros:

Cons:

Specifications:

Summary:

The Nintendo Wii lacks the graphical capability and rich media features found in other game consoles like the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but the Nintendo Wii's affordable price, combination of unique controllers and prominence on fun game play makes this console hard to resist.

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Includes Game System with Wii Sports and 4 Hot Games!
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Deals of Interest


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Take advantage of online coupon savings at Office Depot.
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