Logitech Launches N200 Cooling Pad in India

Logitech have launched the successor to their N100 cooling pad, the N200, for a retail price of Rs.1,595 with a two year warranty which will be available starting this month. The N200 features a similar padded base so you can comfortably use it on your lap, as well.

Comfortable to use

The Logitech N200 features variable fan speeds (two settings) and a larger fan for more silent operations. The cooler is powered by USB and features rear and side grills for air intake. The front portion is curved a bit, so the laptop doesn’t just slide off when you move. You will be losing one USB port, though and there isn’t any USB hub to compensate that.

App Shortens Text for Mobile Twitter or SMS

Twitter only allows you 140 characters, and even though no one really pays attention to it anymore, SMS limits you to 160 characters. There are of course ways to get around at least the Twitter limit on the web, however, you're a little stuck on the phone. Trimit is an iOS app, which works on shortening text so you're easily able to tweet longer thoughts. The app costs $0.99 (approx Rs. 44), and it allows you to shake your phone or iPod touch and your text will be shortened. The app is developed by Frimby Limited, who have also developed another app, FaceMood, which reads your Facebook friends' status updates and analyzes their moods from certain word algorithms.

Trim your text

Based on a similar word algorithms principle, Trimit 'reads' your text and decides how important sentences are based on their structure. The most important thoughts are then pieced together in a way that is cohesive. The app also looks at facts like dates, proper nouns, facts and figures and gives them special importance. Users also have the option to omit vowels in text (like vwls) and/or abbreviate ("forget" becomes 4get). Once you paste your text in the editor or it imports it from a URL, you choose whether you want to shorten for Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS and then give it a shake and voila! Your text is shortened. It's obviously not the best version of English, but the job gets done.

Acer Aspire One 522 Netbook Review

Today, we have Acer’s new Aspire One based on the AMD Fusion platform - the Aspire One 522. This 10.1-inch budget series netbook is targeted towards anyone looking for a trendy and compact netbook under 20K. The recently reviewed Asus 1015PX also falls in the same category so let’s see how well the Acer 522 fares against it.

Design and Build Quality
I quite like Acer’s minimalistic design of the 522, it gives the appearance of a slim netbook without any extra fluff. It’s stylish as well, with a lacquer gloss finish on the lid. It will certainly appeal to the younger generation. Despite its slim profile, it doesn't feel very light weight at 1.3kg. There are a total of three USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, VGA port, LAN jack, microphone and headphone jack and finally the card reader. The battery protrudes a little from the back giving the netbook a slight elevation. It’s not too much to cause an ugly bulge though.

Good paint job

Opening up the lid, we have a glossy 10.1-inch screen with a rather high resolution of 1280x720, not a common occurrence in netbooks of this size. The glossy effect does introduce reflections but it’s not too bad since the brightness is sufficiently high to cancel most of it. The chiclet keyboard packs in slightly larger than normal keys for a netbook which is good for those with fat fingers. There’s just a power button up top with a blue LED light around it. The Acer bundles a carry pouch and charger along with some instruction booklets and the warranty card.

Overall, I really liked the build and finish of the 522. It’s crafted well from good quality plastics and you wont find any creaks even if you press it.

Features
At the heart of the Aspire One 522, we have AMD’s Fusion APU, the C-50, which is a dual-core running at 1GHz. Rest of the specifications include 2GB DDR3 RAM and a 320GB hard drive, good enough for a budget netbook. The OS is Windows 7 Starter which offers all the basic options you’ll ever need on this machine.

Looks smart!

Acer also throws in some bundled software like McAfee Antivirus (Trial) and Office Starter Edition. They also have some of their own software like Crystal Eye Webcam which lets you capture and record videos and Acer Game Zone which is a collection of mini games. The 522 is also “AMD HD Internet” certified which means the netbook should handle HD media streaming and playback with ease. Finally we have Bluetooth and WiFi ‘n’ built-in as well. Next let’s see how it performs.

Performance PCMark Vantage gave us a score of 1572 PCMarks which is standard for a netbook. The rest of the scores are in the table below. In SiSOFT SANDRA, the C-50 is not able to keep up with the Atom N570 which runs at a faster speed. The same is reflected in our video encoding tests, it took a whole 4 minutes longer compared to the Asus. POVRay fared better since the on-board GPU of the Fusion chip is superior to Intel’s HD graphics. Good GPU performance but can't say the same about the CPU General and Multimedia Windows 7 feels really  sluggish due to the lower powered C-50 APU. When it comes to rendering graphics, the GPU is more than capable but sadly the CPU lacks the raw processing power which is why even navigating through Windows Explorer feels slow and there is a noticeable lag. Applications take longer than usual to open and doing multiple tasks tends to bog the netbook down. Although it may be a dual-core, it doesn't feel like it - in fact the first generation Atom felt snappier. I also noticed the bottom left portion warms up pretty quickly even if the netbook is sitting idle. The problem appears to be the lack of proper ventilation on the side. Coming to the screen, the vertical viewing angles are pretty poor as well although the horizontal ones are slightly better. Chiclet keyboard makes typing easier I set out to test the “HD Internet” certification that the 522 flaunts. After installing the latest version of Flash  for IE, I fired up a 1080p YouTube video . The playback was smooth although at times I noticed a slight stutter in the video. Non-flash based HD videos fare much better though. A quick install of K-Lite Codec pack and I was able to play a 1080p MKV with just 40% of CPU usage. This time playback was smooth with out any skipping of frames and there wasn’t any lag jumping back and forth in the movie. The high resolution screen makes watching movies a real treat, however the sound is weak with the built-in speakers so you might want to use external speakers or headphones. Battery life With Battery Eater Pro, the Aspire One 522 lasted 3 hours, which is lower than the Asus1015PX which managed 30 minutes more. Under normal use, you should expect around 4-5hrs of back up time. This is very average for a netbook and I expected a lot more from it especially since the APU is clocked at a lower speed. Verdict The end user price of the Acer Aspire One is Rs.16994, which is fairly decent for a netbook capable of playing back 1080p videos. If that’s all you care about and don’t mind the overall sluggish performance of Windows, then I’d recommend it. However, if you’re ok with just playing 720p and want a snappier performing netbook then the Asus 1015PX offers better value and is quite a bit cheaper as well. The Acer 522 has some good things going for it like the HD screen, 1080p video playback, HDMI-out and great design and build quality. However, it runs unnecessarily warm, has an average battery life and worst of all, the APU is too weak to handle Windows 7 smoothly

Plextor PX-256M2S 256GB SSD

Solid State Drives were said to get popular and it appears, that’s happening. A majority of people though are still clueless as to what an SSD is. There are those who think of them as external drives or larger capacity flash drives. In India, SSDs are not mainstream or as well known as hard disk drives. We don't blame them for not being aware as SSDs are a fairly recent form of storage as compared to hard disk drives.

SSDs use memory chips instead of a moving platter like the ones found in HDDs, thus they are less susceptible to shocks, are virtually silent, and have lower access time and latency. In addition to this, solid state drives are normally found in a 2.5-inch form factor and are extremely light weight and can also fit into your notebook.

Silent and cool

Plextor is a company we haven’t heard about in a while. They were last known for their optical drives, but have dipped in the SSD market and launched a 2.5-inch SSD in three different capacities. We have the largest capacity model, the Plextor PX-256M2S 256 GB SSD for review.

Design and Features
Internal drives are rarely good to look at, but we were surprised by the design of the PX-256M2S, with its stylish brushed metal exterior. The Plextor PX-256M2S 256GB falls under the M2 Series of SSDs, as the latter half of the model number suggests. You can also find 128GB and 64GB models in this series. The drive features a SATA 6 GB/s interface. With hard drives, there’s little worry of SATA2 being a bottleneck, but with an SSD, there’s a good chance that the drive could be faster. Having SATA3 support is a good thing in this case.

Furthermore, the drive features a Marvell 88SS9174 controller chip, and Plextor boasts of sequential read rates up to 480MB/s and sequential write rate up to 330MB/s with this drive. Read on to see if these real world test scores actually live up to the company’s claims.

The drive also features TRIM command which is basically a command that allows an operating system to inform an SSD which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally.

256 GB with incredible speed at a cost!

Test Rig Specifications
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte P67A-UD3R
Memory: Corsair Dominator GT 4 GB DDR3 (2 x 2 GB)
Hard drive: WD Velociraptor  300 GB
GPU: Palit GTX560 Ti
PSU: Cooler Master 1000W

Performance The Plextor PX-256M2S solid state drive was put through the regular tests undertaken in our labs, which included synthetic tests, as well as real world file transfer speed tests. To start off, after running each test, the entire rig was completely shut down and restarted, so as to prevent any kind of caching. In addition to this, no application was running in the background and our system was isolated from the network. In the synthetic benchmark tests, we ran SiSoft Sandra and the average write speed recorded was 417 MB/s, which is expected from a high-performance SSD such as this. The random access time noted through the same synthetic test was 60ms. Real world scores were recorded by running a file transfer test from our Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB to the Plextor SSD. We copied test data sets from the WD drive to the SSD and back. There was also a copy test between partitions in the Plextor SSD. In this case, we noticed that the WD Velociraptor tends to be a bottleneck while transferring data, so we used a software to generate a data set and directly dump it on the SSD. The write speed noticed on to the Plextor 256GB SSD was 261MB/s for a single file transfer and the assorted file transfer recorded a speed of 334MB/s. The inter partition file transfer tests were done using a real world data transfer test. For the single 4GB, we recorded an average speed of 146MB/s, while the multiple file transfer test notched an average score of 132MB/s. We tried writing data from the SSD back to the Velociraptor, and noticed a major drop in performance due to the bottleneck. Write tests from the drive were undertaken using the same real world file transfer test and the average speed for a single 4G file transfer seen was 109 MB/s. The multiple 4 GB file transfer came off a little worse with the average speed recorded was 81 MB/s. Slim and light weight Verdict It’s clear that the Plextor PX-256M2S is an impressive performer. The read, write and copy tests were all way higher than any drive we’ve tested, so far. The inter-copy drive testifies that. Usually, even the fastest of hard drives crawl at 40 - 60 MB/s in inter-partition copy tests, but a score of 146 MB/s takes the SSD to a completely new level An MRP of Rs. 27,500 makes it an extremely expensive storage solution. It’s definitely not value for money, even if you consider its scorching transfer rates. Anyone building an extreme high-end performance rig wanting the absolute best of performance and reasonable storage capacity should buy this. The only other way to get this kind of performance might be by using RAID on two or more very fast hard drives.

Acer Launches Happy 2 Netbook Series in India

Acer has launched a new netbook series in India called the Aspire One Happy 2. The new range starting from Rs.15,749, will be available shortly across the country. Acer is targeting the youth, in general with the Happy 2 series, and with good reason, too. The netbooks will come in four fruity colors with a candy gloss finish, so if you are an attention hog, then it will go well with your personality. This will certainly appeal to young girls, college kids and probably Pee-wee Herman.

Available in different flavors

But, underneath all that candy coating lies some serious horse-power. The Happy 2 is powered by an Intel N570 Atom dual core processor that powers Windows 7 Starter and Android. The netbook can dual boot between the two operating systems depending on your needs. Other features include a 10.1-inch screen, 1GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. It’s quite light as well weighing in at just 1.25kg. Finally, the bundled battery promises 8hrs of battery life, which is fairly good (if true) for a days worth of work.

Nvidia Launches World’s Fastest Notebook GPU – GTX 580M

If you live on the bleeding edge of technology, then you might want to take another look at Alienware’s new M18x which is the first notebook infused with Nvidia’s latest GTX 580M graphics card. Oh wait, make that two GTX 580M’s in SLI, how’s that for high end? While we wont be seeing this in India anytime soon (come on Dell, prove me wrong), the good news is that the M17x will also be refreshed with a single GTX 580M along with Nvidia's Optimus technology which claims 5 hours of battery life.

Update: We've got word from Nvidia that Dell's M17x will be getting this refresh somewhere around mid-July, so I'd say hold off your purchace till then. Sadly, the M18x won't be arriving any time soon.

Bring it on!

The GTX 580M officially claims the title of world’s fastest notebook GPU which is capable of running even the most demanding DX11 games. Crysis 2 with the DX11 patch should be a real treat on this monster. Along with this, Nvidia launched the GTX 570M which should make it to the smaller M15x very soon. The following are the features offered by the latest Fermi GPU:

•    Support for NVIDIA 3D Vision technology.
•    Support for NVIDIA 3DTV Play software, for connecting 3D Vision-based notebooks to 3D TVs.
•    NVIDIA SLI technology, which links two GTX GPUs for up to double your gaming performance.
•    NVIDIA Optimus technology, which enables extra-long battery life by automatically switching on and off the GPU so that it runs only when needed.
•    NVIDIA PhysX engine support.
•    NVIDIA CUDA architecture support, for GPU computing applications.
•    NVIDIA Verde notebook drivers, for frequent performance improvements and stability.


What's unfortunate is that the M18x won't be getting the Optimus treatment, which means battery life is going to suffer badly. Even if Nvidia manages to underclock the cards to a great extent, there's still two of them so I would estimate a backup time of not more than 2 hours even with a 9-cell battery.

Notion Ink Adam Faces Serious Backlash from Irate Customers

The tablet wars are heating up with the likes of Apple, Samsung and now HTC’s entry into the fray, with their rather high-priced Flyer. So while these brands are flaunting their wares, one manufacturer, Notion Ink, is still making the news from time to time, but seemingly with nothing positive being said about it. Their Adam appears to be once again plagued with issues and this time, members of the tablet toting community are demanding that somthing be done and be done quick.

More broken promises

As most people know, Notion Ink, the India (Bangalore) based company announced their tablet called the Adam way back in early 2010, and from the specs released at the time and the initial hype, this was the iPad killer that was supposed to blow away the competition. With the ability to feature 1080p video output, standard sized USB and HDMI ports the Adam was all set to thrill audiences and even more so with their Pixel Qi display technology. However, after failing to meet the expected launch date, bad global reviews, issues with damaged shipments and other problems, the Adam was finally shipped and made it to households. But the issues for this ill-fated product didn’t seem to end there; some consumers who received the device are now up in arms regarding the quality of the device received.

According to a website – NotionInkScam, started by one annoyed customer, many others like him are calling to action for their voices to be heard by the global community. The owner of the site is calling all unsatisfied customers to voice their concerns through NotionInkScam. Max Power, the founder of the website says - “Just to clarify, I am now on a personal venture to take Notion Ink down. I have been waiting 4 months for a return of what’s rightfully mine, the $470 it cost me to buy an Adam tablet PC that broke down within 24 hours with less than 1 hour of usage.” He goes on to say that he wishes to see the owner of the Notion Ink i.e. Rohan Shravan, handle the issue with the utmost importance and seriousness. Power also mentions that he knows of 15 other people who have concerns and are being ignored by the company and he urges them to mail in.

Notion Ink it seems has more downs than ups and to rub salt to the company’s wounds, according to a source, the present Honeycomb version on the Adam seems to have glitches with the GPS and camera functionality. Tabletroms and other members of the Notion Ink community seem to have gathered that the current Rom is just ’semi-working’ and they intend to do something about it by starting a contest to create a stable ROM for the device where the winner stands to win $100 – “If a developer creates a bootable Honeycomb ROM for the Adam before Notion Ink, based off of a port I will issue $100.00 via PayPal for that user, as a community thank you.” is what was posted on thier site.

Buying Guide: How to Choose a Notebook

Notebooks have evolved from being computers for businessmen to mainstream computing machines. There are those who continue using notebooks on the move, while some others use notebooks as their everyday computers. In the midst of all the upgrades and updates being made by notebook manufacturers, marketing jargons and competition between brands, the consumer is left confused as to which notebook to buy. There are quite literally hundreds of models you can find in the market today. By the end of this guide, we hope to leave you with a clear picture of what a good notebook ought to have.

 

Choosing the correct type of notebook

Like we mentioned earlier, each person has different needs from the technology he or she buys. The needs differ from person to person and it’s important to choose a notebook that fits your needs. It’s important to set budgets for the purchase accordingly, as well. For example, don’t expect to find a high-end gaming notebook for anything less than 80,000 or so and don’t expect a Rs. 40,000 notebook to play high-end games.

Plenty of notebook types to choose from

The cheapest of notebooks in the market start from around the Rs. 23,000 range. Netbooks start at prices closer to Rs. 13,000. Broadly, there are four segments of notebooks that most people look at. Most people spend between Rs. 23,000 and Rs. 40,000 on a notebook. Many of these users are going to use these notebooks as their primary computer at home and maybe at work. These notebooks won't offer excellent performance for gaming and content generation purposes, but they will do just fine for desktop applications. Although cheap, they cover most of the needs that majority of the people have.

The slightly more power hungry user will want more performance than these notebooks can offer. While the feature set of costlier notebooks doesn’t change a whole lot, notebooks priced above Rs. 40,000 have faster processors and even entry-level discrete graphics solutions. Screen sizes also drop at this point. While most mainstream notebooks that we talked about earlier have 14 and 15-inch screens, notebooks above Rs. 50,000 or so can be found with smaller 13-inch screens.

Compact and portable, but might not offer excellent performance

Gaming notebooks are more expensive and way more powerful than the cheaper notebooks that we’ve been talking about. Prices of gaming notebooks start roughly from Rs. 80,000 and go on well over a lakh. These notebooks come with powerful graphics solutions and have large screens, as well. They offer poor battery life in comparison and carrying them around is a pain. On the other hand, there are ultraportable notebooks that are designed for people who travel a lot. They aren’t as powerful as the gaming notebooks but will offer way better performance than netbooks.

Processor

The processor is one of the key components of a notebook. An entry-level Intel Core i3 i380M might be sufficient for most purposes, but when you start using more CPU intensive software and multitask with a number of browser windows open, CPU performance is essential and a faster processor can come handy. Majority of all the notebooks sold around the world come with Intel’s processors, so although AMD too has solutions in the market, you’re more likely to come across a wider range of Intel processor-based notebooks. A decent speed Core i5 such as the 480M processor is a good start. Also look for one of the newer Sandy Bridge processors from Intel.

HDMI connectivity

HDMI connectivity is handy when at home you want to connect a notebook to an external display.

HDMI connectivity is handy if you own a LCD or Plasma display

Most notebooks these days that come with an HDMI port are also capable of playing full HD content smoothly. You can watch movies on your TV or use it as a primary display and use the notebook like a desktop PC. Simply connect a USB keyboard and mouse, disable the notebook display and you’re good to go.

Graphics solution
A discrete graphics solution is always a good idea. It allows you to play games on the notebook. The integrated graphics solution on the notebooks these days allow users to run HD content without any problems. If you’re looking at some gaming, or some 3D modelling on the notebook, then a discrete graphics solution is necessary. Obviously, the budget for the notebook should be above Rs. 50,000 to get a decent solution. A GT540M graphics solution on a notebook should offer decent graphics performance for playing most of the recent games at a normal graphics setting. The downside of using a discrete graphics solution is usually a somewhat lower battery life.

Screen and speakers
For a good entertainment experience, it’s important to have a large enough screen. The downside of this unfortunately, is that the laptop gets bulky. If you’re looking for a notebook that is a desktop replacement or is going to be used only in one place, then a 15 or a 17-inch can be a good thing to have. If you are going in for a smaller screen, try and find a notebook that offers higher resolutions. A resolution of 1366x768 is sufficient but having a high-density 1920x1080 does add a lot to the experience and offers you a lot of workspace.

A large screen and good speakers means you compromise on the size of the notebook

Most notebooks also have poor speakers that sound horrible and tinny. Before you buy the notebook, it’s a good idea to play some music or movies on it to ensure you get a good sound, but don't expect much. Speakers that are placed facing downwards often sound muddy so look for notebooks that have speakers at the front near the screen. If you’re particular about your audio quality, it makes sense to buy a pair of portable speakers, or good headphones as well.

Keyboard and trackpad
Cheaper notebooks have cramped keyboard layouts. Look for notebooks with isolated, chiclet-style keys. They are somewhat easier to type on.

A good chiclet-style keyboard makes typing a little easier

In the hunt of finding a large spacious keyboard, don’t ignore the trackpad. If you’re using the notebook on the move, you’re very unlikely to be using an external mouse, so you’ll have to depend on the trackpad to get the job done. Make sure that it’s large and has two separate buttons.

A good trackpad eliminates the need for an external mouse

The feel of the buttons should be sturdy, but have a soft feel to themselves, as well. Many notebooks these days have multi-touch support, so you can use gestures to complete simple functions quickly.

Bundled operating system
While looking for a really cheap notebook, you’re likely to find deals that might sound unbelievable. Manufacturers also offer notebooks without any operating system preinstalled or they might come bundled with Linux, which is free. If you’re specifically going to be using Windows applications, you might want to look out for a notebook with an operating system preinstalled, so you’ll have to spend additionally for the OS. If you get a really good deal on a notebook without an operating system installed and you don’t absolutely require Windows, you can choose to install a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu.

Battery life
Battery capacity is extremely important when it comes to notebooks. Most notebooks will only last around two hours on moderate use. Before you go out and buy a notebook, make sure you do your homework on the capacity of the battery. Some manufacturers will give you the option of choosing a larger battery with the notebook. If the price difference isn’t much, then take the higher capacity battery over the smaller one from the get-go.

Armed with that bit of information, you should be able to able to find the best notebooks deal by skipping all the jargon that the shopkeepers hurl at you. Happy hunting!