Here’s the scenario…….
You’re planning planning ahead for a consolidation of your business phone systems including a potential move of your headquarters to a new building.
Currently your company has 300 employees and operates in 15 locations:
- 6 warehouse locations with business offices (~30 - 50 employees each)
- 1 small warehouse (5 employees)
- 2 business offices (~10 [...]
VOIP stand for Voice-over-Internet protocol. At a very basic level it is the idea of using a data network to transfer voice between two points. Although voip has become a buzz word in recent years has it origins as far back as the early 1970s. The pioneering work of Danny Cohen at the University of [...]
We are regularly reading and experiencing the importance and advantages of a fiber network and the reasons behind the popularity it is gaining by each passing day. GEPON is also a part of this increasingly popular network architecture. Before getting on with GEPON, an introduction would do just fine, as where it came from. EPON [...]
Fasten your seatbelt and get set for the ultimate entertainment explosion!
Playstation-3 is a gaming experience that is beyond anything known today. It is a computer entertainment system that unleashes a brilliant, high-definition entertainment experience which is incomparable. It delivers the next generation of interactive entertainment.
Playstation-3 is the third home video game console produced by Sony [...]
If a compact digital camera is no longer doing the job and you don’t want to go as far as a digital SLR, then the Coolpix P6000 could fit the bill. This is a top of the line super compact, choc full of features and functionality that you don’t normally find in a compact.
For instance, this is a 13.5 megapixel (MP) snapper with a 4x optically stabilised zoom, built-in GPS, a pop-up flash, optical viewfinder for easy composition, Ethernet port and a new RAW file format which will be compatible with Nikon ViewNX Software. GPS means you can geotag your photos with the location they were shot - just in case you were too drunk to remember and need to look it up later on Google Maps.
Picturetown support means that users can upload their shots directly from the camera via an Ethernet cable to the ’secure’ Picture Bank on Nikon’s free Picturetown online site.
Bill Giordano, general manager marketing, Coolpix for Nikon said:
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I’ve now tried five of the new mini-notebooks, and the Acer Aspire One is one of the best. It offers good quality at a low price. But the Linpus Linux Lite version 0.5 that came preinstalled almost drove me batty, so I’d go for Windows XP instead. The Aspire One is very similar to the Asus PC Eee 900, with its 8.9in screen, but the case is almost an inch wider. This is enough to transform the keyboard from being very hard to use to one big enough for fast touch-typing - though it’s quite not as good as the one on HP Mini-Note.
The Aspire One feels much nicer than the Asus machines, with rounded corners and a glossy top. It has plenty of connections, including three USB ports, two SD card slots, an Ethernet port and an external monitor port. It also has an 8GB Flash drive and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, though not Bluetooth. But at 249 x 170 x 29mm, the Aspire One is still small and, at just under 1kg, light.
I was apprehensive about the performance, given its skimpy fixed 512MB of memory, 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and built-in Intel 945 graphics. However, I found it worked very well for the sort of tasks subnotebooks are aimed at, such as word processing, email and browsing. It had no problems playing videos, including .wmv, DivX and YouTube.
Acer’s Linux has a simple front end for instant access to a dozen applications including the Firefox 2 browser and the OpenOffice.org word processor and spreadsheet. Several other applications are sourced from Acer, including the media player, messenger program, calendar, contacts and Aspire OneMail. The simple file manager is horrible. I’d much rather have had Thunderbird, VLC etc but there is no obvious way to change them, and I couldn’t find any help on Acer’s website.
My main problem was that hovering the cursor over things activated them very quickly. It should be easy to fix, but I could find no way to slow it down or stop it. Constantly worrying about the cursor position was no fun at all. Also, the Aspire One didn’t suspend/hibernate on closing the lid.
At Amazon.co.uk prices, this base version looks very good value at £219.99. The more attractive top-of-the-range model has 1GB of memory, a 120GB hard drive, and the more familiar, more capable, Windows XP Home for £299.99. There are several options in between.
Pros: Small, attractive design, good screen and keyboard, light, cheap
Cons: Short battery life, 0.3MP webcam, hard to change
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There’s a growing pile of subnotebooks by the side of my desk, and so far, Hewlett-Packard’s HP2133 Mini-Note is the biggest and the best.
It’s a full-spec ultramobile with a lovely brushed aluminium casing, excellent screen and a keyboard that you can actually touch-type on. As a Wired blog headline put it, it’s “what we really wanted the MacBook Air to be”.
But it’s quite a lot wider and chunkier than an Asus Eee PC900, it’s heavier (from 1.3kg), and it tends to be slow - at least with the Windows Vista running on the version loaned for review. (SuSE Linux is a cheaper option.)
The Mini-Note’s Achilles heel is the 1.2GHz Via C7-M processor, which rates a 1.7 on the Vista Experience Index. In other respects, the machine fares well, with graphics rated 2.9 and the 120GB hard disk scoring 5.2. With the new Via Nano processor, it would be a great machine. An Intel Atom would at least be competitive for its class.
HP knows this, of course. But it’s pitching the machine for educational use (RM is selling it, downgraded to XP), and it had to make deadlines for evaluation purposes.
Waiting for Atom might have meant missing a school year. However, HP may offer an upgraded version when new chips arrive in volume. The Mini-Note is very slow to boot and slow to load programs, but once up and running, the performance is good for its intended uses: word processing, email and web browsing. Vista’s Aero graphics system worked well in 2GB of memory.
The scratch-resistant 8.9 inch screen (same size as the Asus Eee PC900) shows 1280 x 769 pixels, which is in effect the same as the 1280 x 800 you get on the 13.3 inch Dell M1330 or MacBook Air. Everything’s smaller, but that’s fine for younger eyes. The keyboard is a big improvement on rival machines, but should be even better. The Mini-Note keyboard measures 10 x 4 inches, which is only slightly smaller than my IBM ThinkPad X31 (10.2 x 4.2 inches), which has a 12-inch screen. It is far better than the Asus’s 8.3 x 3.1 inch keyboard, but it should be as good as the ThinkPad.
The selection of ports includes ExpressCard (useful for 3G) and SD slots, two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and an external monitor port. The Mini-Note also sports Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi .
HP’s website lists the starting prices as £299 plus VAT for the Linux version, and £349 plus VAT for the Vista Business version tested. Judging by appearances, you’d expect it to cost a lot more.
Pros: High-res screen; good keyboard; big hard drive; well made
Cons: Slow processor; big power brick
View the HP2133 Mini-Note here
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The final details and pricing for the Asus Eee Box PC have just been confirmed and we’re happy to report that this little stunner will set you back just £199.
Available in black and white [no pink yet] it measures just 22.2 x 17.8 x 2.7cm and is powered by Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N270 chip. It will come with Windows XP to start but a Linux version is planned for later this year. Under the hood, you get an 80GB hard disk drive, 1GB of DDR2 Dram, Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 5-in-1 card reader, 2 or 3 USB 2.0 ports and DVI out. Asus are even throwing in a mouse and keyboard.
One very cool trick for this mini-PC though….
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The UK can expect to see 4 new Blu-ray players from Pioneer start landing from September.
The company is planning a stylish line-up, ranging from entry level to ‘reference’, but sadly, and somewhat stupidly, only the most expensive [the BDP-LX91] will offer support for BD Live, the interactive feature found on newer Blu-ray discs. BD Live support is needed for using online interactive features on movie discs and requires players to have an Ethernet port and 1GB of Flash.
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Philips has beefed up its Streamium family of wireless audio products with the addition of a new flagship, the WACS7500, which comprises the WAC7500 main unit and WAS7500 satellite units.
The replacement for the WACS7000 is 20mm thinner and finally adds Internet radio support via a wireless network. Philips has hooked up with BlueBeat, Live365 [...]