Samsung are late entrants into the crowded netbook market with their NC-10. Sharing its Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor and 1 Gig of ram with almost all of its current generation peers, the NC-10 initially does little to set itself apart from the competition. It houses a 10.2 inch 1024×600 widescreen display, a 160 GB Hard Disk and adequate but by no means exceptional ports (3 x USB, monitor, Ethernet, multi-card reader). It is only in use that the Samsung shows potential to be the best offering in its class.

Design-wise, the chassis is sleek and streamlined on top with a rather chunky underbelly and battery compartment which can lead to less stability than I would like when balanced on the knees. The upside is that it houses a 6 cell battery and, with the promise of up to 7.5 hours of use, Samsung can be forgiven for less pleasing ergonomics. This aspirational figure is much lower in practise but, without exaggeration; with wireless on, some web browsing, several word documents open and even some light video/audio playing you could manage 5 hours out of the NC-10. This is genuinely impressive in a unit weighing just 1.33 kg.

The NC-10 has two main things going for it: its price (which I will return to) and its keyboard. At 93% of full size it is an absolute joy to type on, with none of the potentially RSI-inducing learning curve of models which compromise on keyboard size. Key action is satisfyingly solid and each key is generously separated from its neighbour. Perhaps backspace and right shift might have been a little larger but Samsung have really nailed the design here, and I hope other companies follow suit. More keyboard real estate means compromises elsewhere, and the touchpad suffers most in the reshuffling of the input devices. Initial impressions are that it is simply too small and that an external mouse is the only way to go but some work with the momentum settings and the excellent implementation of an Apple-clone multitouch gesture system on the pad means you rarely feel constrained by its size. Like with any laptop, a mouse is preferable but if you value portability, the NC-10’s touchpad is far more functional than it initially seems.

The best word I can think of to describe every aspect of the NC-10 is solid. From its functional aesthetics to its almost TARDIS-like keyboard it does everything just a little better than you expect it to and even manages to surprise from time to time (for example its impressive webcam and viewing angle). Provided you are realistic in your expectations, it will run practically anything you throw at it; from Photoshop to light gaming and even HD video. If you’ve ever had a passing interest in mobile Internet, typing on the train, even watching movies on something eminently portable but bigger than a matchbox, then there is really no reason not to own the Samsung NC-10.

And I’ve left the best part til last. With a little shopping around and perhaps taking advantage of the reeling Sterling exchange rate, the NC-10 can be yours for under € 350. ASUS may already dominate the affordable netbooks arena but Samsung have a real winner on their hands with this debut model and they deserve to make a splash in this highly competitive market.

The touchscreen takes up most of the front of the phone. Underneath are several buttons, one of which acts as a joystick, scrolling in windows and menus, it also acts as a button when pressed. It is a solid phone (145g) with a full qwerty keyboard when the screen is slid out, when this is done the screen changes to landscape format. The keyboard is very good despite my initial misgivings about the size I quickly got used to it and typing was easy. There is an onscreen keyboard that can be activated but I missed being able to write on the screen like I could with the P800 and P900 series of phones. There is a stylus with the phone and its very necessary as my fingers were too big to register a hit on some of the menus.

The initial menu is called a panel and several came with the phone. I configured mine so that I could see my calendar, tasks and some RSS feeds as well as the time and date, Bluetooth and wi-fi controls.

The camera is good in most conditions but it does take a second or two for it to finally take the picture once you have pressed the button which irked me as I missed a good shot. All the camera settings are driven from the touchscreen and you can focus on a particular area of the shot by touching it. The video recording was excellent at 30 f/s but only 640 x 480.

Its not meant as a music phone but it does come with Media Player installed which gives you basic song information but not much else. The headphones are comfortable and the sound quality from them is good. The phone has a full 3 ½” headphone socket so you can always use your own headphones instead.

The X1 does have GPS onboard via Google Maps and a trial of Wayfinder Navigator is included in the box.

I found the battery to be excellent, it got me through a weekend with no charging, despite several long phone calls via a Bluetooth headset and a good web-browsing session wi-fi.

All in all a super entry into the Windows Mobile smartphone for Sony Ericsson. 4/5 Stars.

Reviewed by guest reviewer Jonathan F

The Sony Ericsson W980 is a slick 8 gig walkman flip phone with shake control. It features a 2.2 inch bright primary display at 320×240 pixels and a secondary 176 x 176 pixels external display, it also has a 3.15 MP camera. Connectivity wise the W980 sports 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, Bluetooth and USB2 but lacks infrared and wireless lan.

With the high end walkman phones, Sony Ericsson are trying to get people to dump their Ipods and it makes a lot of sense to me to have one multifunction device instead of a bag full of electronics equipment. So does Sony Ericsson succeed? Well yes and no. The W980 doesn’t have a standard headphone jack, although you can use the cumbersome adapter cable. The phone has good format support but the interface takes a lot of getting used to, and I don’t think Ipod lovers will be impressed. The shake controlis a neat gimmick, but I’d be too conscious to use motion control to change songs in public; the buttons on the face are a nicer way to control the walkman function anyway. The audio quality is probably on par with an Ipod which is to say that it’s adequate. The 8 gigs will mean you can take a good selection of your music with you, although it may not be enough for audiophiles.

The 3.15 MP camera produces slightly disappointing image quality, but the real problem with the camera is not the quality, but the placement of the lens. Your fingers will naturally want to rest right over the lens, which means you must contort your fingers to take a photo. The video quality is very disappointing but it may by something Sony Ericsson can look into with a firmware update.

As a phone the W980 works extremely well. Navigation around the GUI is easy and the menu system is intuitive especially if you are accustomed to other Sony Ericsson products. Texting is easy and fast with the generous keypad The vibration feedback from the front mounted touchpad is very subtle and effective. The phone feels good, looks good and sounds pretty good. Good job Sony Ericsson!

The Eee 1000 weighing in at only 1.33 kg features a 1.6 ghz Intel Atom processor, a 10 inch screen, 1 gig of DDR2 ram and 40 gigs of solid state memory. The 40 gigs is made up of an 8 gig reasonable performance module and a 32 gig low performance module. Connectivity wise the Eee 1000 features 3 USB ports, a 100 m/bit ethernet port, 802.11 B/G/N wireless, a Secure digital card slot, a 1.3 mega pixel web cam and a pair of good quality microphones.

The design of the Eee 1000 is sensible and attractive although the exposed hinges may not be to everyones taste. The black model is a finger print magnet so if you can live with white it might be a wise choice. Build quality is good in general, but I found a rattle coming from the battery compartment so I ended up jammming a piece of paper in between the chassis and the battery to rectify the issue.

For me, the Eee 1000 strikes the perfect balance between portability and functionality in a netbook. I briefly owned the original Eee 701 and whilst it was defintely small and light, it was just too slow and too hard to use. I could not type on the 701’s keyboard and the touchpad was woeful. The Eee 1000 has a 92% full size keyboard which is easy to touch type on. The keyboard does flex a little which isn’t ideal but it won’t annoy most people. The touchpad is also bigger and features touch gestures like the Macbook Air. Performance wise, the Eee 1000 is far superior to the Eee 701. The Intel Atom is powerful enough to run any regular Windows XP application and to do light multi tasking. The read performance on the SSD’s is good but the write performance on both internal SSD’s is poor so installing applications is much slower than it would be on a hard drive model, but the SSD version is virtually silent and isn’t as heavy on battery life.

The Eee 1000 ships with GNU Linux, which is functional and fast but I loaded up Windows XP as this is really the operating system of choice for a netbook. You will need an external cd drive to load up windows or you could do it with a USB key, but the latter would require some technical knowledge. Windows Vista is just too resource heavy for a system like this. Out of curiosity I tried to load up Mac OSX Leopard but Apple’s OS failed to boot, no surprises there!

On Tuesday 9th September 2008 Magnet launched two new highly competitive broadband packages. “Magnet Force 10″, features 10Mbps Broadband for €29.99 per month (incl vat, excl line rental), free access to the new Magnet PC TV service & value call packages. Uniquely, this new product has a magic red button called “Turbo Boost”, which when pressed will instantly boost a customers speed to the maximum possible on their line, upto 24Mbps. This new feature is free until January 2009, but after that Magnet are planning on charging a small fee for 4 hours of maximum speed browsing! “Magnet Force Max”, is an upto 24Mbps product priced at €39.99 per month (incl vat, excl line rental). This products joins the ranks of super fast products now available in Ireland from the likes of BT, Smart and UPC. Magnet promise excellent quality of service by guaranteeing 1:1 contention, this means that even at peak times your connection speed will not degrade unlike their competitors. This “Max” product also features the new Magnet PC TV service.

The free Magnet PC TV service allows customers to watch RTE1, RTE2, TV3, TG4 and Bubble Hits on their computers. A small free application is required to decode the Mpeg4 stream which will use approximately 1Mbps of your bandwidth. More than 12 high quality radio stations are also included. Plans are in place for live pause and record features. Having seen a short demonstration, I think this could be a revolutionary step for an ISP, the convenience alone of having your broadband deliver your phone, radio and TV sounds great. An added bonus is that no tv license is required for TV through the internet in Ireland!

Magnet are one of the few internet service providers in Ireland really pushing the envelope in terms of new cutting edge products. Their fibre products in new developments (stay tuned for a detailed article coming soon) are available to 11,000 homes across the country and these new ADSL2+ products launched on Tuesday are available to 500,000 customers via their 39 unbundled exchanges in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Portlaoise. Magnet are also planning to unbundle a further 9 exchanges in the near future.

Dell’s high end M1530 is for “Individuals searching design, function, and
performance” according to Dell. The M1530 is a 15.4 inch reasonably thin high
performance laptop available in a numbers of colours.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say, but to me this laptop is an
attractive piece of kit. The high quality materials used in the construction
ooze quality, from the brushed metal around the keyboard to the high quality
plastics elsewhere. The keyboard and touch pad are well designed & ergonomic
and I found them to be a pleasure to use compared to the cheap Dell Vostro
models. The 9 cell battery offers superb performance although you can opt for
the 6 cell variant which is smaller and lighter, yet odly the same price. I managed to
get over 3 hours out of the 9 cell with varying usage from light to medium to all out 3d gaming. Connectivity wise the M1530 has 3 USB ports, HDMI, s-video & VGA for video out,
firewire gigabit ethernet, 8 in 1 card reader, dual headphone jacks & a mic jack,
and a biometric fingerprint reader. It also ships with a remote control which you can
conveniently store in the express slot & the other now standard Dell features like
slot loading DVD writer & touch sensitive controls above the keyboard.

This laptop is fast. The model I borrowed had a dual core 2 ghz cpu, 3 gigs of
ram and a 8600GT Nvidia graphics card with 256 megs of ram and a 250 gig
5400rpm hard drive. Vista home premium is fast and responsive. Productivity
applications ran flawlessly; programs feel as quick as they do on my high end
desktop. I ran 3Dmark 06 and the M1530 scored approximately 4000 marks which
is very good for a 15.4 inch portable. I also loaded up a couple of games.
Unreal Tournament 3 was perfectly playable at native resolutions at “High”
detail settings, framerates hovered around 40 fps. I also tried some Valve
Half life 2 engine games at max details and the M1530 coped easily. Don’t get
too excited though, Crysis is not going to be a silky smooth experience.
When the M1530 is under heavy load it does get a little warm & the fan spins
up to audible levels. Also, one thing did niggle me regarding the M1530, the
hard drive is mounted towards the front & I found the 250 gig model when
seeking was very noisy.

Overall the XPS M1530 is a great laptop which will handle almost any
application that you throw at it.

Call it a Blackberry clone but the HP iPaq 910 Business Messenger is a strong contender to win the hearts and minds of business people that wanted the iPhone but want more power and less gimmicks. Full tactile keyboard, Windows Mobile, good connectivity with 3G and WiFi, GPS, a proper 3 mexapixel camera with flash and focus.

For the business person that’s considering getting a blackberry styled phone they have a lot of choice nowadays with devices from Blackberry themselves, Nokia and HP using the old iPaq brand to sell these solid business phones.

iPaq 910 runs the latest version of Windows Mobile and so all the usual apps appear including Internet Explorer but you can install another browser if you so desire. GPS on this works quite well and shows you where you are on Google Maps which is installed for you. The Bluetooth is proper bluetooth so you can pair it to many devices. Being Windows you can read your office documents too and it has push corporate email.

Phone reception is great too. Yes, it’s 2008 and we are now talking about good phone reception as if that’s some kind of new feature. Thanks iPhone!

A great business phone overall and one we wouldn’t hesitate in recommending.

The Traxdata Waterproof USB Flash Drive is a well built solid memory stick which offers fast read and write speeds. I prefer Traxdata’s square build approach as it leads to a more sturdy reliable product. I’ve ended up breaking other waterproof products because they were too thin and not strong enough.

The 8 gig model provides ample storage space for most people, but Traxdata do offer larger capacities if you need to bring huge amounts of data around in your pocket. Admittedly, I haven’t tested the waterproof feature; I don’t think it would’ve gone down too well with Traxdata if I drowned this review model!

Here are some benchmark numbers for comparison purposes

Neo 8 GB                           Write  1         Read   4
OCZ 8GB Waterproof            Write  8         Read   30
Traxdata Waterproof           Write 8.5         Read  31

Speeds are in megabytes per second. Tested in Vista Ultimate 64bit.

I can’t find a single flaw with this product & it has everything going for it. So I’m happy to give the Waterproof USB Flash Drive 5 stars!

Dell have once again added to their impressive armada of flat panel monitors. The 2709W monitor is a 27inch 1900×1200 widescreen flat panel monster. I believe it offers the perfect size to resolution ratio; some argue that the dot pitch (the size of every pixel) is too large, but 5 minutes with this monitor and you will agree with me, Dell got it right!

The 2709W features every possible connection you could ever require, HDMI, DVI, VGA, component, composite, audio out and the new displayport. It also has a USB hub and a 5 in 1 card reader built into the side.  The monitor is built brilliantly. The stand is amongst the best I’ve used for height and tilt adjustments, the touch controls  are tricky at first but after a few minutes you won’t want to go back to clunky buttons. As hard as I looked, I couldn’t find a single dead or stuck pixel.

I personally don’t like being too much above 1080p because you require too much graphics card horsepower to keep the frame rates up in games.  I plugged up my Xbox 360 via the HDMI port and the games looked superb in 1080p. The resolution is also ideal for movies; I loaded up Transformers in HD and the monitor performed superbly.  The 2709W is also great for productivity; it’s so convenient to be able to work on two A4 documents side by side!

The 2709W isn’t by any means perfect. The response times are pretty bad, so if you competitively game (first person shooters particularly) then I would definitely avoid this monitor. Also, the screen ships with ridiculous contrast & brightness settings that will need to be changed immediately unless you like looking staring at the sun. Also, for ideal colour reproduction, I’d advise getting or borrowing a calibration tool!

I love this screen, I’m too old and too slow to competitively game, so the 2709W from Dell is absolutely  perfect for me!

Some bits about this open source browser:

• Google Gears built-in
• A new javascript engine called V8
• A task manager
• Web apps can run in without the address window
• Better security
• An iGoogle like start page

A browser you say? Sounds more like a WebOS that can run offline on your desktop. Any desktop. Windows, MacOS, Linux

Google’s awful open Social idea will follow next too and will probably be changed to fit into this so people can build web apps for this browser so they can run online and offline. A very clever idea. Not only getting a larger share of online but moving into offline too. Apple’s iPhone Appstore shows people will buy applications if they’re uselful. I wonder will we see the same thing happen here? Build an app for Chrome, sell it on the Google App store and use the Google Engine infrastructure to run it all.

The Music

As I mentioned the music phone is crowded and Sony Ericsson have some fantastic thin phones with nice tricks like motion sensitive features to shuffle tracks or skip them. The 5610 has specific buttons on the phone for playing music, a headset which also works as a radio antenna and with memory expansion can hold 4 gigs of songs. It plays more music formats than an iPod or iPhone (yay) but does have DRM (boo).

The Design

A practical design, nothing fresh to it to be honest. Not too thin either but it doesn’t feel brittle. No heart leap if you accidently drop it. You’ll feel assured it can take a drop and not shatter. We got the metallic red finish phone and it’s quite nice to be honest.

Calls, data and bluetooth

Good call quality even in poor coverage areas, it stays on the network unlike some *cough* iPhone *cough*, taking a few calls doesn’t sap the battery either. Data is fine too and it uses real Bluetooth so you can pair things easily and use wireless headphones to get better quality music into your airs.

Overall

A good phone that will serve you well should you buy it but not the top of its game and if you have the budget and like Nokia phones you’ll probably go for something more powerful from the same company.

Specs from Nokia:

“Designed using Micron’s multi-level cell (MLC) NAND process technology, the RealSSD C200 drives will be available in 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors. The 2.5-inch C200 will be offered in densities of up to 256GBs. And with its small form-factor, the 1.8-inch C200 will range in density from 32GBs to 128GBs offering uncompromised power and performance levels. Using a 3 Gb/s SATA interface, the C200 products provide a read speed of up to 250 MB/s and a write speed of up to 100 MB/s. The increased read and write speeds of the C200 will enable consumers to have an overall improved computing experience when compared to a notebook designed with an HDD, offering improved boot and application load times and lower power consumption for smaller form factor notebook designs.”

Taken from Micron.com

The L197 is a 19 inch widescreen LCD from Lenovo’s “Essential monitors” range. The screen features a maximum resolution of 1440×990 a sensible 1000:1 contrast ratio and it sports DVI and VGA input connections. Lenovo claim that this screen is upto 35% more energy efficient than competing products and this seems reasonably accurate; it certainly uses 40% less energy than my Dell 2001fpw and it doesn’t radiate an iota of heat like most monitors do.

This screen is ideal for business environments where high spec features and specifications aren’t required. The build quality is very good and the screen’s only real fault is the maximum height of the stand. I ended up propping it up on a book.

Overall the L197 is a decent value no frills green offering from Lenovo.

Blurb from press release:

The up to 24Mb service, which will be available from telephone exchanges serving close to 330,000 homes and businesses, costs as little as €42.50 (incl VAT) per month for consumers or €40 (ex VAT) for businesses. These prices contrast starkly with eircom’s up to 12Mb broadband service for €169 (ex VAT) per month.

This is good news. The exchanges covered as of now are:
Tallaght, Dun Laoghaire, Dolphins Barn, Dublin North Main, Terenure, Merrion, Crown Alley, Beggars Bush, Swords, Clondalkin, Summerhill, Blanchardstown, Naas, Dooradoyle, Navan and Kilkenny City.

Enabled by September 2008 will be: Douglas, Ballincollig (Cork) and Whitehall, Belcamp, and Foxrock (Dublin) and Greystones (Wicklow).

Remember these are unbundled exchanges, if you are on resold packages from eircom you’ll have to switch fully to BT, if they have their equipment on your exchange.

This is a good move and it would be nice if BT released stats on line quality to show how many are getting what speeds.

No pricing for Ireland just yet but prices are on the way. In the UK customers will get a 30 day free trial with Vodafone. Not so for Ireland, just yet.

The K660i is a well built attractive yet reasonably priced 3G phone from Sony Ericsson. It features a 320×240 screen, a 2 megapixel camera and handy horizontal web browsing like the Nokia N95 or Apple Iphone. It comes with a 256 meg memory card.

I’m very familiar with Sony Ericsson phones and found this one to be very fast and easy to use; the shape and the numeric keys in particular seem to be very ergonomic. The speaker provides very good volume with nice clarity. The screen is bright and easy to read but this may be at the cost of reduced battery life, I used the phone for 3 days solid and had to charge it twice fully. Where the K660i really excels is on the web, it is fast on a 3G network and it features a great little mouse pointer like your computer. How come my N95 doesn’t feature something so convenient Nokia?

Sony Ericsson could be a little more generous with the memory card. The camera is also a bit modest at 2 megapixels in this day and age.

Overall I’d highly recommend this pretty little phone!

]]> http://bleep.ie/reviews/sony-ericsson-k660i/feed/ http://bleep.ie/opinion/first-unboxing-of-iphone-3g-in-ireland/ http://bleep.ie/opinion/first-unboxing-of-iphone-3g-in-ireland/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:54:03 +0000 Damien Mulley http://bleep.ie/?p=149 Once again it was mobile/telco supremo Pat Phelan who got the latest iPhone and did a video of the unboxing. Pat is of course the man who gave o2 deserved grief for the first launch.

Watch the unboxing video here.

I still can’t believe Dell ship their cheap desktops with VGA ports instead of DVI. Another couple of annoying features are the old noisy 250GB hard drive shipped with my model and the range on the included intel 802.11 n wireless card, I get a far better signal from a €10 cheap usb dongle!

All of these negative points don’t really detract from the fact that the Vostro 200 offers amazing value for money. If you want a cheap basic but reasonably capable desktop, go for it!

You can configure and buy a Dell Vostro 200 here:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx?c=ie&cs=iebsdt1&id=vostrodt_200mt&l=en&s=bsd

The first thing you notice when you pick up the 6500 Slide is the weight. It’s fairly heavy compared to other phones in the same league. The brushed stainless steel finish is the real thing and the cold metal feel to the phone automatically provides assurance at the robustness of this phone. This looks like a smaller and lighter version of the N95 and thank goodness, it has a lot less buttons.

The 6500 Slide has a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens as well as a second smaller camera for making video calls. The camera also has a proper flash. It comes with 3G connectivity and has a microSD expansion slot which provides up to 4GB of additional storage. No WiFi though. There’s a handy TV-Out feature too if you want to play your videos or do a slideshow of your photos. The keypad is very easy to use, something many new phones don’t seem to have figured out.

Software and interface wise all that needs to be said is that it’s a Nokia. As usual with Nokias they get the usability right first go. The only thing that is a let down with this phone is yet again the battery life. Nokias have never had the best battery life and when using 3G it impacts even more.

All in all this is a stylish and desirable phone.

The Samsung Q45 is a black, shiny and light mobile laptop which weighs 1.86kg. It looks well and performs well. It comes preinstalled with Windows Vista which despite all the flack, works very well for the average user.

The Q45 comes with a 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory, has a 12 widescreen display. When it comes to battery life, it is meant to last 6 hours but for me it lasted on average 4-5 hours but this was working away wirelessly surfing the Internet and processing some videos.

The screen is good and bad at the same time, the resolution is good but the shinyness of the screen can become annoying and difficult to read when it’s sunny outside. Even with the cloudy Irish weather, a little brightness outside can make you squint your eyes when on the laptop.

Weight wise, this laptop is easy to use, even over 4 hours and doesn’t strain the back when carried around in carrier bag or napsack. The shiny black surface though means that it’s a fingerprint display unit and you’ll find yourself wiping off your fingerprints a lot from the laptop.

The biggest weakness of this laptop though is the keyboard. For some odd and I must say stupid reason, Samsung has swapped some of the function keys on the laptop around, meaning you are pressing the Windows and C key when you want to copy and paste. It causes you to relearn the keyboard settings which are standard on every other desktop and laptop. If you can forgive this then the Q45 does the business. Small, fast, and affordable.