MSI Wind U100 Review

MSI Wind U100 Netbook

The MSI Wind U100 is considered by many as the best choice netbook for the holiday season. It has a larger 10-inch LCD screen that makes things more readable compared to other small screened netbooks. Even though it add at least one diagonal inch, the overall size doesn’t suffer because MSI did a great job of keeping things tight. Unfortunately that means they used a small 3-cell battery that to keep it small. If you can afford it, buy an extra, larger battery.

The keyboard is among the best designed available and is about as comfortable as you can get when using is such a small piece of hardware.

The disk hard drive gives it more space than competing solid state netbooks.

But one of the best things in the Wind U100 though is the v1.09 BIOS that makes it easy to overclock the hardware.

Windows XP is the operating system loaded which computer users will find familiar.

It is a very good purchase for those looking for a nice little gift to people who fit the netbook category.

Source – About

Logitech V550 Nano Cordless Laser Mouse Review

The Logitech V550 Nano’s a decent (cordless) laser mouse that installs as simple as it gets. Just plug the small wireless receiver into a USB port, put 2 AA batteries in the mouse and turn it on, then you are up and running: that simple.

The batteries supposedly last 18 months for average use according to Logitech. Probably does since it shut off after a minute of inactivity which definitely save power. Just a slight bump is needed to power it back up.

The shape of the V550 Nano is closer to a rectangle than typical mice and the two main buttons are extensions of the body so style is to opinion, but the buttons are easy to click. The response from both moving and clicking is very quick and accurate (what do expect from Logitech?) And of course the middle scroll wheel works 4 ways.

Then there is the docking station which is a simple square of metal with a round peg in the middle. Basically the stick it on whatever (bottom has sticker) and you can lock the mouse on it so it doesn’t get lost.

They also give you a small tin case for your tiny USB receiver, a extra “docking station”, and a tool to remove the sticky, one-time-use dock.

Overall, the Logitech V550 Nano is solidly built and a nice buy if you absolutely need a mouse.

Preview: Nokia N97 Touchscreen Phone

In the first half of 2009, Nokia will be releasing a touchscreen phone, N97, in the United States. It will have 3.5-inch screen, a widgetized home (OS is Symbian S60), a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard (comes from underneath and angles to about 30 degrees), and a pretty pricey price tag to round it off.

On the spec, expect 3G HSDPA data access, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth (including a stereo (Bluetooth 2.0) profile), and a gigantic 32GB of on-board flash memory and of course a microSD memory slot that can add another 16GB of storage.

Due to the physical keyboard, the size is bulkier than most modern touchscreen (such as the iPhone, but smaller than the G1 Google Android phone.

Nokia’s “Ovi” suite of online tools is included and Nokia is looking into fitting N-Gage Gaming on it too. POP, IMAP, and Exchange e-mail access; Nokia HTML browser.

Multimedia-wise, expect 30 frames-per-second video playback, a 3.5mm headset jack (YES!, any standard headset will work!), a TV out, and a 5-megapixel camera with VGA-quality video recording.

-Source: Yahoo Tech

Today’s CYBER MONDAY!!!

Hi all, in case anybody is living in a hole, today is Cyber Monday. What that means is super discounts + cheap or free shipping within the Continintal US. What we are talking about some things by 40%, 50%, even 70% off their normal price.

The term Cyber Monday comes from the fact that “they” noticed many people bought things online the Monday following “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving). Since they want to pump up sales, a lot of store are doing promotions. So far it has proven to be much safer than Black Fridays (a store employee was trampled, and died, this past Friday do to the store rush) and many more people will be able to participate.

If you haven’t gone shopping yet and you want to get some things for Christmas (or for yourself), get over to www.CyberMonday.com to find out what you can still get.

BlackBerry Bold Review

The BlackBerry Bold is a smartphone with a physical (miniature) keyboard that is currently on sell for $299. Besides a keyboard for interaction, there is also a trackball to go through the screen options. The trackball is a fast way to get around and proves effective and the keyboard feels solid. On the downside, the keyboard is a bit slick.

Bold also proves to be a nice media phone. It does music, photos, and videos. The on-board camera captures at 2M pixels, and you can record videos.

Generic e-mail setup is very simple. Webmail isn’t terribly hard either.

The phone sits nice in your palm, and one-handed typing is a easy. It able to use the 3G network and WiFi networks.

The new BlackBerry Bold is a excellent offering for interested smartphone buyers. Old BlackBerry users will be very comfortable in using it and quickly grasp the hardware and software.

Website Review: ForiSearch – Foreign Image Search

ForiSearch is website designed so users can quickly search for images that have their descriptions and names in another language. Currently, the ForiSearch supports 35 languages which you can begin or end your search with.

To explain, the process goes like this:

1. You type a word or phrase in your language (default setting is English).
2. You select the language you want to search and click the “Translate & Search” button.
3. The system will automatically translate your word and give you image results.

You will notice that it’s not just the language you search that is customizable. You can also choose which search engine you want to look at (either Google (default), Yahoo, MSN, or Youtube (for videos). This is very robust, flexible and useful for many reasons.

For a list of supported languages, you can find the following currently: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

[http://forisearch.com/]

Samsung X460-44P Review

The Samsung X460-44P proves to be a good start for make laptops for the US market. It is 4.2lbs, has 14-inch LED wide-screen panel, a duel layer DVD-RW drive, and a decent design. Other aspects are highly customizable.

It operates pretty good for its class and sets a standard for future Samsung laptops. Its design is unique and stands out against other competitors (pending on opinion). As far as purchasing, this is for users that are looking for a middle of the road offering and like the Samsung style. It punch no less than its weight and customers should be satisfied with the hardware.

HP HDX18 laptop review: Powerful Multimedia Laptop

If you want a laptop that is a suitable desktop replacement, the HDX18 is an excellent proformer with many multimedia options. The HP HDX series is geared for multimedia. It has a full keyboard (including a number pad) and is slightly bigger (in more than one way) to its smaller brother the HDX16.

It can contain a 2.8-GHz Core2 Duo CPU (T9600), 4GB of RAM, nVidia’s 512MB GeForce 9600M GT GPU which does excellent on almost any heavy software.

The HDX18 is very big: 8.9-pounds with a 17×11.26×1.72 inch casing with a 18.4-inch display (glossy, the new style, not the matted look) able to show fullsize HD video.

The keyboard has a  metallic feel to it because it’s coated and it has engraved letters on each key. There are some extra multimedia buttons that line up on the top of the keyboard which you can tweak. The touch pad is very shiny (like a mirror) and smooth. The mouse buttons are long and sturdy metallic buttons.

Ports available:

• eSATA
• HDMI
• 4 USB 2.0 ports
• 1 4-pin FireWire port
• Multi-format flashcard reader
• PC Express external-card slot
• BD-ROM drive
• HD or coax cable tuner.

The battery life lasts 2H 42Min with an 8-cell battery. With a 6-cell battery, the time will be closer to 2 hours.

The baseline model costs about $1400.

Source: PC Mag

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