Dell Mini 10

DELL Mini 10

You may not be aware that the Dell Mini 1o is available in 1366×768 resolution! Visit the DELL site and you can customize the screen size to 1366×768 which only costs an additional $35. As the screen size is only 10 inch, this may not be  a very good choice if your eye sight is not that great.

HP Mini 110

HP Mini 110

Similar to the Dell Mini, the HP Mini can also be ordered with a 10″ panel of 1366×768 resolution for an additional $30. While you are at it, you can also order the netbook to include the Broadcom HD Video accelerator, which will offload HD video decoding from the CPU, turning your netbook into a multimedia powerhouse. Beware of the awkward touchpad.

Acer Aspire One 751

Acer Aspire One 751

Acer Aspire One 751 is a netbook based on the Intel GMA 500 (Poulsbo) chipset, same as the one found on many Sony Vaio P models. The 751 comes with a 11.6 inch screen which is ideal for the enhanced 1366×768 resolution. Interestingly, the Atom processor found on 751 runs only at 1.2 GHz, so you may not like the performance. The poulsbo chipset is also not supported well in Linux. Many users report that this 11.6″ netbook works very well with Windows 7 and the latest set of GMA 500 drivers. Note that the GMA 500 has built in HD decoding, so you will get smoother 720p playback on this device with the right set of drivers. This netbook also looks great with the chiclet keyboard and a thin bezel.

Samsung NC20

Samsung NC20

The Samsung NC20 is a 12″ netbook sporting 1280×800 resolution. It is one of the few other netbooks that does not use the Intel Atom processor. Running at 1.3GHz speed, the VIA Nano processor is known to give similar processing power as the 1.6 GHz Atom. The NC20 is not small and looks more like a traditional laptop. As of today, it is not yet widely available in the US of A. Comes with a full size keyboard.

HP DV2z

HP Pavilion dv2

This is my favorite ultra portable model. While not as cheap as others, the HP DV2z sports a 12″ screen with 1280×800 resolution, an AMD Neo 64 processor running at 1.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 320 GB hard disk and a discrete ATI graphics processor. Other bells and whistles include a HDMI port and a full size keyboard. When compared to the Atom, the AMD Neo is known to be a better performer in terms of every day chores. The proof is that this tiny beast runs Windows Vista 64 bit!

Sony Viao W series

Sony Vaio W Series

Sony’s second fray into the netbook market with the W series makes a lot more sense than the amazingly useless P series. With a chiclet keyboard (Was not as comfortable as the Toshiba NB205 when I tried) and a 10″ 1366×768 display, the Sony Vaio looks like a winner. Available also in pink, if you are interested. Being a Sony, it is expensive at $500 for an Atom based netbook. Wish it included a HD accelerator for this price.

Gateway LT3103u

Gateway LT3103u

Gateway’s new netbook sports an AMD Athlon 64 bit processor running at 1.2GHz. While sharing some components like the screen and the excellent keyboard from Acer Aspire One 751, this netbook is the best compromise in terms of price, screen size and processing power. The AMD processor performs as well as an 1.6 Atom. The netbook also comes with a discrete ATI X1200 discrete graphics card. There is no HD acceleration though. You cannot go wrong at $379 – available at a best buy near you.

Summary

Those are some of the options you have if you are looking at a netbook or a cheap ultra portable with a better resolution than the default 1024×600. My current recommendation is the Gateway LT3103u, as it is much cheaper and arguably more powerful than some of the other netbooks. Also, it comes with Vista Basic, which runs very well on this computer.

Samsung i8910

Surprisingly, this cool smartphone is now available at Indian retailers for only INR 27k, which is about US$ 575, much cheaper than the US price of about $700. If you are looking for a keyboardless alternative for the N97, this is the phone you need.

The two popular tech blogs are tech2 and techtree. Most of the time the content on these sites are rehashed 2 day old stories from Engadget. Original content, if any, are always poorly researched and badly written. Here is a sample of the standards of blogging:

Engadget recently published a story about Macbook Micro – a student hobby project where someone created a tiny Macbook out of salvaged parts. Here is the original Engadget post. Read the Tech2 rehash here. Yes folks, that’s the state of current tech journalism in this country. These people also run a TV show on a popular news channel.

Zune HD

1. OLED Screen. Instead of an LCD display, the Zune HD uses OLED. OLED displays are superior to LCDs in that they exhibit better brightness & contrast and draw less power, which results in longer battery life. OLEDs also have much lesser response times which results in smoother video playback.
2. NVIDIA Tegra Processor. The Zune HD is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra processor – an SoC (System-On-Chip) which integrates the CPU, GPU and memory controllers into one unit. The Tegra is capable of decoding HD video at 720p and supports advanced graphics, which can make the Zune HD a potentially powerful portable gaming machine too.
3. 16:9 Screen aspect ratio. Most movies are encoded in this aspect ratio, so your movies will occupy the full screen without any annoying borders on the small display. In comparison, the iPod Touch comes with an odd 3:2 aspect ratio.
4. Zune Pass Music Service. If you purchase a lot of music every month, you will love the Zune Pass. For about the price of an album ($14.99 per month), you can download unlimited music from the Zune Marketplace. Though you have to continue the subscription forever to keep the music you download, for avid music fans this will work out to be a much cheaper option than outright purchase.
5. Multi-touch. Everyone loves multi-touch. First made popular by Apple on its iPhone, the multi-touch ability provides a great browsing and gaming experience. The browser on Zune supports multi-touch on its capacitive touchscreen.
6. HD Radio. The Zune HD is the first PMP to support HD Radio. HD Radio is a new technology which allows local radio stations to broadcast their programs in digital format, thus dramatically improving the reception quality. FM stations will be indistinguishable from CDs. You will be pleased to know that there are hundreds of stations which have already started broadcasting in HD. Even if your Zune is empty, you will have plenty of music to listen to!
7. HD capable Zune dock. The Zune dock (which unfortunately has to be bought separately), comes with a HDMI port which allows you to play 720p media content on your HDTV. HD content can be purchased from the Zune Marketplace.
8. Better Sound Quality. If you have used the earlier versions of Zune, you will appreciate the sound quality over other PMPs, thanks to the Wolfson chip. Zune HD uses the same audio processor too.
9. Zune Software & XBOX Live integration. Contrary to the popular belief of anything-from-microsoft-is-useless, the Zune Marketplace indeed has a great interface than some of the well known jukebox applications. Use it for yourself and then judge. As an added bonus, XBOX 360 users can get XBOX live on their Zune HD.
10. Price. I saved the best reason for the last point. According to this Amazon pre-order page, the Zune HD 16GB will be available for $219 while the 32GB version will be available for $299. These are significantly cheaper than equivalent capacity iPod Touch players.

So finally, the iPod Touch got an worthy competitor in the Zune HD. This holiday season will show us how much the Zune HD can eat into the iPod Touch’s huge market share.

Also read my other post: Zune HD vs iPod Touch

Zune HD

While iPod Touch (and its big brother, the iPhone) remain the Kings of the portable media player world, there is a big challenge coming from Microsoft in the form of the Zune HD. Even though the original Zune went almost unnoticed as a rival to the iPods, things are set to change with the introduction of HD. Purely from the hardware point of view, the Zune HD is miles ahead of the current generation of the iPod Touch. What about the software, services and other aspects? Here is a table of comparison of these two portable media power houses.

iPod Touch

Zune HD vs iPod Touch: Comparison of specifications

Note: As of now, Zune HD specifications are not completely published by Microsoft. The above specifications are based on protoype models. There may be slight differences to the final product. The post will be updated once the device is out in the market.

As you can see, the Tegra processor, HD Capability, OLED screen, HD Radio and HDMI interface make the Zune HD a superior device in terms of hardware, while the iPod Touch shines with the associated services – iTunes, extensive third party app support and the integrated MobileMe. Choose the iPod Touch if you have plenty of iTunes purchased content already. If not, get the Zune HD and use it with a better DRM-Free music service like Amazon MP3.

Update-  New Post:  10 reasons why you will love the Zune HD

Also read: Nokia N810 vs iPod Touch vs Sony Mylo

Iron is a great alternative to Firefox Portable

I stumbled upon Iron when I was searching for an alternative for Firefox Portable. While Firefox portable is great to carry on a pen drive, it is excruciatingly slow because of its continuous flash drive access. Iron developers Srware also provide a portable edition of Iron, which in my experience is miles ahead of Firefox Portable in terms of speed.

The following comparison is taken from Srware website to show how Iron is different from Google Chrome in terms of privacy:

Some of the above are not some alarming issues, but still a little bit of additionally privacy is always better. Iron is highly recommended as a browser for a portable USB drive. You can also use Iron in case administrator rights issues do not allow you to install alternative web browsers at school or at work.

If you are on PC, you can use the MobiPocket Creator for converting your PDFs to Kindle format. Mac users can use an application called Stanza.

While the above two tools do a good job, they have one major drawback. They covert the documents with Header and Footer text intact, which means you will find lot of junk thrown all over your document. These headers and footers will appear in random places since the page size on a Kindle will differ from the page size of the PDF document (Typically A4 or Letter). This reduces the readability of the document dramatically.

The solution? Use Amazon’s conversion itself. It costs a little bit of money (at 10 cents per document), but it is really worth it since it does an intelligent conversion by stripping off headers/footers and also the images do appear in correct places unlike the desktop converters. You can also get the same service free by emailing the document to your kindle address with a ‘free’ prefix, in which case, the document is returned to your email address from where you have to copy to your Kindle 2 device manually. This email address is <yourkindleemail>@free.kindle.com.

If anyone knows a desktop converter (Mac or PC)  which can strip off headers and footers from office or PDF documents, please leave a comment below. Thanks!

Its not your primary computer

This is the most important thing to remember. A netbook with its puny processing power can never replace a fully powered desktop or laptop. You will feel this very often. If you are a college student, banish the thought of using the netbook as a primary computer. Keep an iMac at your dorm and then carry a netbook to class. The netbook excels if you are using it only for emails and web browsing. When you use it for anything other than this, it shows its shortcomings. Typical netbooks have a resolution of 1280×600 which is incompatible with many websites, so you will have a lot of trouble with webmail sites. Yahoo’s new interface is downright unusable and the gmail’s mail composer keeps jumping up and down. Text entry is associated with lot of vertical scrolling. Be prepared for this. On the other hand, Office 2007 works brilliantly even though the ribbon occupies a significant amount of screen real estate. If you are a Gmail user with a low resolution netbook, configure Gmail on Outlook or Thunderbird.

The sweet spot for a netbook screen size is 10”. Don’t buy anything less than that. Also check for the screen resolution. Many 10” netbooks still come with 1280×600 resolution – stay away from them. Make sure that it has atleast 1280×720 pixels. My dream netbook will have a 12” screen. (Hint: A best netbook to consider in this regard is the new Lenovo IdeaPad S12.)

Multimedia sucks

Plain and simple. Keep all the media files except perhaps your MP3 files away from the netbook. Don’t even think of HD on a netbook with Intel graphics.

But hold on a second. A big relief are the new batch of netbooks that are coming with NVIDIA Ion chipsets. They are capable of smooth 1080p HD playback and can play any type of media files with ease. You will have no regrets in the media department if you get a netbook with Ion. Most graphics work is offloaded to the GPU, so your Atom processor is free to do your main tasks.

The Keyboards are a Pain

Yes, this is another major pain area of the netbooks. It is not possible to incorporate a full size keyboard in netbooks because of obvious reasons, so don’t carry them to a typing competition. A 12” netbook can be a savior if you plan to churn out plenty of docs from your tiny laptop.

Battery Life Rocks

This is where netbooks excel. Though last year’s models are not known to be so good in terms of battery life, the new ones come with clever battery design which helps in incorporating a bigger battery and  correspondingly a much longer battery life – 7 hours is common on many new ultra portables.

Get one with at least a 6 cell battery and you will have juice for all day without searching for a power point.

Get Windows XP or Windows 7

I am sorry to say this – but please stay away from Linux on your netbook. You can dual boot with Linux if you need it, but don’t try to save that 50 dollars. You need Windows XP on your netbook. Period. (Hint: To save money, get a Linux laptop and then install Windows 7 RC on that. It just rocks and you can use it for a while before you need to get the final copy off the shelf. Stay away from Vista. It just doesn’t run so well on a netbook)

Nerds please excuse the above tip. I have a special post coming for you on the best Linux distros for netbooks. (Hint: A certain African distribution still rocks)

In summary

Get a netbook with:

• Resolution of 1280×720 or above
• 11 to 12 inch screen size
• NVIDIA Ion if you want good media capabilities
• 6 Cell battery or more
• Windows XP (or 7)

Get one which satisfies the above requirements and you should be happy for the next 2 years and 15 days.

When you enable the Turbo mode in Opera 10, it uses a proxy where all your browser requests are sent. The proxy downloads the web pages on your behalf, compresses them and sends it to your browser. Since the size of compressed data is much smaller, you get a better browsing speed. It also detects your current connection speed and increases or decreases the amount of compression accordingly. Some image quality is lost as the jpegs are re-encoded in order to reduce the size but then again it depends on your connection speed. Once you switch back to a faster connection, Opera reminds you to turn the Turbo mode off!

It appears like Opera are using the same proxy infrastructure that they are utilizing for the Opera Mini browser – which is very popular product on Java enabled handsets that do not have or have a poor quality web browser. Take Opera 10 for a spin – the other features apart from the “Turbo” are also worth having a good look at.

The first book I purchased is Susan Jane Gilman’s Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven – a wonderful travelogue on China! This is one book you should not miss if you like reading about China and its people.