Techplore.com

Samsung Syncmaster 2033SW

The Syncmaster 2033SW is a 20-inch LCD monitor from Samsung with a unique screen resolution of 1600×900 pixels. It’s a good looking monitor, with an all-black glossy exterior: screen bezel and stand. It has a stylish curved bottom bezel, with a transparent plastic stip accentuating the design, and a blue LED indicator placed at its center. Attaching the display to its stand is quite a handful. One is almost in danger of applying too much force while securing the ball-hinge stand to the panel’s socket. It isn’t the most overloaded monitor in terms of features – no USB ports or built-in speakers. Samsung has kept things simple with only VGA and DVI input support, although Iwould loved to see an HDMI port. For a 20-inch monitor, it has a unique 16:9 aspect ratio which is great for watching movies; images fill up the entire screen, and you don’t have to worry about the unnecessary horizontal black bands. The monitor’s on screen control panel is tucked away to the bottom right, with accompanying buttons along the edge, and it’s easy to work with.  In benchmarks, the monitor showed very good brightness (280 candelas) and contrast levels (973:1 ratio), coming close to what Samsung claims to provide, and reproduced  colors well without oversaturation. Continue reading…

ATi Radeon HD 4770

At the very outset, what makes the HD 4770 special is that is the world’s first card manufactures on a 40nm process. This means that the card runs on lesser power and is cheaper to manufacture. It is smaller than both the HD 4830 and the HD 4850. It has a silent-running fan over the core and copper pipes built into the card. The card still requirs and additional power input but heating and noise was hardly an issue. Like the ATi Radeon cards, HD 4770 also has dual DVI ports and a single Video-Out port and DirectX10.1 ready. In 3D Mark’06 the card produced a score of12,718, less than 1,00 marks below the HD 4850. In 3D Mark Vantage (High and Performance presets), the card managed 4,714 and 7,948 marks, less than 500 marks away from HD 4850. This performance was carrie forward even in the gaming benchmarks where the card either fell only slightly short from the HD 4850 or even managed to beat it (espicially in Far Cry 2). The HD 4770 is priced at $150 approx. (Rs. 8,750) and at first glance it looks strange, because it is a higher price-tag than what the HD 4850 commands. However, unless you are going to pick up the 4850, wait for two months because it is highly probable that this price will drop. And through its performance, the HD 4770 has proved that the wait will be worth it.

Intel X25-M 80GB SSD

The Intel X25-M-80GB drive is meant to be the mainstream drive that brings SSDs to mass market. It has a 2.5-inch form factor similar to latop hard disks. Enthuasistswould take to this drive right away considering that it makes no noise at all and doesn’t heat up. It helps conserve power too, with its rated usage of 60 mW (milliwats) at idle and 150mW during read/write operations, this is about one-hundredth of normal desktop HDDs. In synthetic benchmarks, read speeds averaged a consistent 174.4 MBps – right across the drive, without ever dip in the speed graph. Write speeds averaged a consistent 75.7 MBps with a CPU utilization of 5 percent. Random access times averaged 0.23 ms. In comparasion, most desktop drives average 75 MBps read, 60 MBps write, and 12 ms random access time.

Real world write speed while copying a single large 6.42GB onto the SSD stood at 73.86 MBps. Copying mulitiple smaller files (800 files totaling up to 6.36 GB) onto the SSD was almost the same speed, at 73.17. The reverse, copying files from the SSD onto the Velociraptor was almostchild’s play since the SSD supplied data at 216MBps and the limitation was the Velociraptor’s write speed! Continue reading…

Lenovo IdeaCenter A600

THE IDEACENTER A600 is Lenovo’s premium all-in-one desktop PC. It attempts to blur the line between your PC and TV, and has an impressive combination of features and performance with a price tag to match. It has no seperate cabinet, and the Ideacenter A600’s centerpiece is its slim screen. It’s glossy, 21.5-inch wide and supports a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels; perfect for high-definitionmovie playback. The screen is curved inwards below the bezel which is secured firmly to a stand. The extended curved bezel also houses the onboard speakers, with a sub-woofer placed on the back panel. On either side of the curved bezel there is a combination of connectivity ports and an optical drive, and touch sensitive settings button on the front. Like any other monitor, you can adjust the IdeaCenter A600’s angle by tilting it forward and back. Continue reading…

CTIA (aka the Wireless Association, aka the acronym that lost its underlying name) held its annual trade show and exhibition of wireless products in early April in Las Vegas. As usual, great looking handheld devices flooded the convention floor, and cell phones were at the center of the excitement. Here are seven of the coolest models.

Samsung Mondi

THE SAMSUNG MONDI dazzled with a 4.3 inch LCD touchscreen, 4 GB of on-board memory, a hardware QWERTY keyboard, and WiMax support. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and has a mounting kit for car use.

HTC Snap

THE HTC SNAP’s headlining option is a new e-mail management feature called Inner Circle. The device also has 3G connectivity and a 2-megapixel camera.

LG ELECTRONIC’S XENON offers threaded messaging, a 2.8 inch touch display, a 2-megapixel camera, GPS integration, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi connectivity.

Samsung Instinct S30

THE SAMSUNG INSTINCT S30 has a slightly slimmer profile than its predecessor, comes preloaded with Calender Sync and IM, and accepts 32GB of memory.

Nokia E71X

NOKIA’S E71X has a black steel finish. It supports 3G and Wi-Fi, carries a 3.2 megapixel camera and integrated A-GPS, and runs the Symbian S60 platform.

LG Neon

THE LG ELECTRONICS NEON employs a partial-touch display with a navigation toggle beneath. It incorporates a 2-megapixel camera, a microSD card slot, a music player, and stereo Bluetooth support.

Samsung Impression

THE SAMSUNG IMPRESSION conserves energy despite offering a bright, 3.2-inch screen, equipped with the first commercially available AMOLED (active-mtrix organic light-emitting diode).

GeoSetter

These days, you can document your travels by sorting your digital photos by location. Many cell phones and a few specialty cameras can geotag your location, embedding the data in your pics. If you don’t have such a camera, you can use a GPS imaging accessory, like Sony’s $150 GPS-CS3KA, to add location into after the fact. if you don’t have a GPS device, you can manually enter location details at your PC with the free GeoSetter (www.geosetter.de/en/index.html). After you do, the application shows your images as pins in a Google Maps pane built into the program. The process updates the EXIF (exchangeable image file format) details so that locations will appear in other apps. Geotag data is stored in your pictures for you to browse in GeoSetter or other in your pictures for you to browse in GeoSetter or other tools, including Flickr, SmugMug and Picasa. Continue reading…

Skype iPod Touch

You’re now able to make free phone calls via Internet on Apple’s iPhone using a new Skype application. But if you own a second-generation iPod touch, you can also make free calls, even though the Touch technically isn’t a phone. Skype’s iPhone app will function with any second-gen touch as long as you use a set of headphones with a microphone built into the earphone cord. (Unfortunately, the original Touch has no audio-in capability.) Other than that, you’ll need just a Wi-Fi network. The application allows you to make free calls to other Skype users and paid calls to non-Skype users. i like Skype’s ubiquity and audio quality, but it has competitors; if you want to experiment, you might try Truphone (www.truphone.com) instead.

Microsoft Office 2010

A famous torrent file sharing website has claimed that Pirated copies of Microsoft’s Office 2010 have leaked over the Internet with a fake label of a technical Preview. However, still unfinished Windows 7 and Visual Studios latest version was also released previously before the overhyped Microsoft’s test release. Searches on several torrent site tracks the version available for download both in 32 and 64 bit version. The total download size of the torrent file is 700.63 MB. But 32 bit version of the office 2010 suits proposed size is 1.3 GB. Not surprisingly, the torrent had already been downloaded by thousands of people. Interestingly, Microsoft has recently announced that they will begin a invitation only testing of Office’s  latest suite by the month of July. And after that they will open its testing by general public at a later date. Continue reading…

Microsoft's My Phone

With technology playing a crucial role in today’s world, the Mobile, the PC and the web have become inseparable. However, the biggest fear that perhaps haunts any mobile user today is not the loss of his hi-tech cell but the valuable data! To help solve this issue, Microsoft launched its My Phone service that enables users to automatically backup contacts, photos, video, calender, text messages and more from their phone to a password-protected Web-based service, is now an open beta. With automatic syncing and backup capabilities for all contacts, appoinments, text messages and Other information, My Phone keeps all things up-to-date and easily restores them should the user lose or upgrade their phone. Continue reading…

Chrome 2 comes with a claimed 30 percent speed boost for browsing thanks to the revised V8 Java Script engine that processes downloads from multiple pages but allocated resources to most used items. “Web applications are becoming more complex,” wrote Google software engineers Mads Ager and Kasper Lund. “An increased number of objects puts additional stress on the memory management system of the JavaScript engine, which has to scale to deal efficiently with object allocation and reclamation. If engines do not scale to handle large object heaps, performance will suffer when running large web applications.” Continue reading…

A laptop bag is a must for travelers. However, not all bags offer you protection as efficiently as this one does. The Otterbox 7030 laptop case is meant for people who want to protect their laptops from bumps and drops. Not only that, this laptop case is also waterproof. This means with your laptop in the bag you need not to worry about rains ruining your hardware. The case is made up of high impact polypropylene that provides the strength. Along with the case, Otterbox supplies shockproof corner bumpers that shields the laptop in case of bumps and falls. However, the 7030 laptop case is a tad too heavy and probably female users would not find it easy to lug around. Continue reading…

Good Looking Portable Storage For People On The Move

With prices of storage heading south, it really makes sense to invest in a portable drive to keep a safe backup of your files and multimedia needs. The Adata CH91 is a good looking 2.5in portable storage drive that is available in various colours and capacities. The one reviewd here features 250 GB of storage space. The build quality of the drive is decent. The classic CH91 is coated in a metal-like paint spray that is available in sapphire blue, sweet pink and purple white. The drive is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can be easily slipped in to your pocket for mobility. It is powered by the USB cable and supports only USB mode of connectivity. Adata also bundles a pouch along with the drive to protect it. Continue reading…

This gaming headset provides optimum comfort so that you would have no problem to wear it hour long gaming session. The FATAL1TY is the typical head-the-head style headphone with a cup design for the earpiece. The design is really comfortable to wear; each cup and the headband has a thick padding that does a good job of cushioning the ear and protecting the top of your head from the hard plastic feel. A detachable microphone is bundled, which itself is a nice piece of hardware. The Headset’s wire is preety long and it has a built in control to adjust the headset’s volume and a switch to toggle the microphone’s current status.

On the performance front, the quality is really very good while gaming. The gun/explosion noise, instructions, and turns with every effect are very detailed and really top notch. The bass and treble effects are good on the mid’s but average on the high’s. There are some distortion and scratches on the high’s while playing music but the result is the opposite on the gaming front. Altogether you will not be  happy with FATAL1TY’s performance on the music front but these are really negligible factors as this headset has been designed especially for gamers. The detachable microphone has noise cancellation capability and performs pretty well in multiplayer games. Overall, this is for the serious gamers and not for music enthusiasts.

Serious Styling, Decent Performance

The lid of the ASUS Bamboo U6V is made of bamboo, which gives this laptop a unique artistic feel. Once you open the lid, the palm rest as well as the trackpad are both made of bamboo. Though there is a slight noticeable difference between the wood used on the palm rest and the track pad. The response of this trackpad wasn’t great. Even the buttons on the trackpad are made from bamboo, but they lack feedback. A USB mouse, also made of bamboo is included. The keys on the right of this keyboard, such as the arrow keys, get squished. The layout on the Dell Studio XPS 13, for example, is better. Of course, there are no unusable keys, and the keyboard feedback is decent. Continue reading…

16 inch heavyweight

The Studio XPS 16 sports a 16 inch screen, with a Core 2 Duo T9400 processor, and an ATI HD 3670 GPU. By default this laptop comes an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600, but Dell allows you to upgrade to the T9550. The back of the lid has a strip of leather, aluminium and plastic, giving it a slick look. The e-SATA/USB combo port, optical drive, card reader slot and a USB port is located on the right side. Two headphone ports and one microphone port are located on the left side, with a display port, VGA out, HDMI out and two USB ports. There are touch buttons present above the keyboard that control certain functions such as Wi-Fi, Multimedia controls and the Eject button. The keyboard is a full QWERTY, with well spaced keysthat have a white backlight. With the exhaust at the back, it’s sad to see Dell overlook the fact that the lid, when open, blocks it. This makes for one hot laptop after few hours of use-quite a silly, and easily avoidable design flaw. Continue reading…