I reluctantly purchased the Apple TV (160GB model) shortly after Steve Jobs keynote, only to find out the update wasn’t quite ready yet. Waiting patiently for weeks wondering if the Apple TV could really live up to the hype Steve Jobs created. In retrospect my only regret was that I didn’t purchase the 40GB model instead of the 160GB model.

You can’t beat instant
Movie rentals, movie rentals, movie rentals, did I mention movie rentals? We either drop by a brick and mortar store like Blockbuster or rent our movies by mail through Netflix. Driving out to a store or waiting for your movie in the mail isn’t so bad when you have no other alternatives, but what if I told you there was a better way? What if I said you could choose a movie and start watching it in under 30 seconds? If living in America for 25 years has taught me anything, it’s that we love instant gratification and convenience, which nicely sums up Apple TV movie rentals.

Essentially Apple TV is a set-top-box that uses your home Internet connection to deliver movies. It’s also important to know that Apple TV is not the first to attempt movie rental service via Internet. There are also notable competitors in this emerging online movie rental market, namely, Amazon Unbox and Netflix video downloads.

What’s in the box?

• Apple TV
• Power Adapter
• Remote
• Manual

As for dimensions the Apple TV has a very small footprint, 7.7 by 7.7 inches, and 1.1 inches thin. Apple TV doesn’t have any fans inside, it’s all passively cooled, so you can expect perfect silence.

Apple doesn’t provide video/audio cables, so you’ll need to do some cable hunting. I can’t really blame them, it wouldn’t make much sense to provide cables for every conceivable home theater setup. Before you go off buying the most expensive video cables on the market, I’d highly recommend checking out this news post over at consumerist, Coat Hangers vs Monster Cables.

The Apple TV remote
The Apple TV remote is the same remotes used for Macbooks and iMacs, so if your Apple TV is located in close proximity to your Macbook or iMac you could end up sending remote commands to both devices, to resolve this issue follow Apple’s guide on pairing your remote with your Macbook/iMac.

Complete movie rental library
Not too long ago there was the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, which thankfully is over, but as some of you could recall, we were all torn about what player to buy and seeing our favorite movies being sold only in one of the two formats. Now that the format war is over, all the movie studios are supporting Blu-ray, and the question of if your favorite movie will be coming out on Blu-ray is now just a matter of time.

Having full support from movie studios brings peace of mind that the technology you invested in will be worthwhile. The whole Blu-ray vs HD-DVD debacle just comes to show us just how important full movie studio support is. Of course the online movie rental service is still young, iTunes movie library is still small at the time of this writing, expect the library to increase in size significantly over the next few months.

What interested me the most about Apple TV is it’s strong support from movie studios, Steve Jobs managed to garner support from all major movie studios, which is an amazing feat in itself, other online movie rental services have tried and failed. It’s important for consumers to have access to all the major movie studios library of films and not just a select few.

Broadband Internet is key
Not all broadband is created equal, so before you go out and purchase an Apple TV, make sure your broadband Internet is up to the task.

Use the chart below as a guideline for performance you can expect from your broadband Internet connection. To check how fast your connection is, try visiting speedtest.net, you’ll want to focus on the download rather than the upload speed results.

You’ll thank yourself later for checking your broadband Internet speeds, I’d be pretty grouchy too if I dropped $330 dollars on an Apple TV only to wait 8 hours for each movie rental.

From my personal experience, I’ve found the guidelines to be quite accurate, according to speedtest.net my download speed is roughly 5,897 Kbps, which is just a hair off from 6 Mbps. I was impressed to find that standard definition movies started in under 30 seconds as advertised and high definition movies began at just about 1 minute in most cases.

It’s also good to keep in mind that your Internet connection is shared among the household, meaning little Timmy watching YouTube videos in the next room could put a dent in your Apple TV movie rental experience.

Should I rent Standard or High Definition?
I was surprised when I learned my friends were actually renting HD movies on their SD TV’s, I guess I can’t blame them, most people automatically assume HD is better in any case. If you have a SD TV you should save your money and skip HD movie rentals, as there are no visual advantages.

Even if you do own a HD TV you may still want to rent SD movies instead. The main benefit HD provides over SD is closer viewing distance, but if you sit far enough the advantage diminishes. When you are able to see individual pixels on the screen then you are sitting too close.

You could get really detailed about viewing distance and start looking up equations online, but I’d rather not rely on those, I prefer to rely on the only pair of eyes that really matter, mine.

Trust your own eyes and forget what the experts say. To find out if HD movies are worth renting, try renting a SD movie, if you can’t see individual pixels you have your answer, no, it’s that simple.

If you do want to take advantage of HD movie rentals, you could adjust your sitting distance, moving closer and closer, just before you are able to see individual pixels, that would be the sweet spot in terms of sitting distance.

So what’s the catch?
When renting a movie keep in mind you’ll have 30 days to start watching the movie, and once you do start watching it you’ll have 24 hours to finish it. I’m not too fond of the 24 hour viewing period, life does happen, sometimes you just can’t get back to it in 24 hours. It seems like a hassle we’ll have to accept for the time being, as other online movie rental services have similar restrictions.

I mentioned earlier about the full major movie studio support for Apple TV, which is true, all the movies from major movie studios will make their way onto the Apple TV eventually, meaning one month after the DVD release then the movie be available on Apple TV for rental.

Why is Apple TV only 720p, isn’t true HD 1080p?
It’s true, Apple TV HD movie rentals are only 720p, it’s better than DVD but not as sharp as Blu-ray. It makes sense that Apple TV wouldn’t provide movies at 1080p resolution, since the average broadband speed in the US is only 4.8Mbps, in order to stream movies effectively the broadband Internet speed should be close to the movie’s bit rate to keep buffering time to a minimum.

For example, if the broadband speed is 5Mbps and the movie is 5Mbps, this means you could stream the movie to the Apple TV almost instantly with just a few seconds of buffering, however if the broadband speed is less than the movie’s bit rate then there will be a delay before you could start watching the movie, how long the delay will depend on how large the gap is between broadband speed and movie, bit rate wise, and length of movie.

It’s not uncommon for a Blu-ray movie to have a bit rate of 20Mbps, which is significantly higher than the average broadband speed in the US, ruling out the possibility of 1080p HD movie rentals on Apple TV, or for any other Internet based movie rental service for that matter. Designing a set-top-box capable of streaming 1080p isn’t the problem, the real bottle neck in this situation is the Internet infrastructure in the US, ranking among the lowest world wide in terms of speed.

Conclusion
Apple TV is a great start in the right direction with their instant movie rentals, providing us with a real alternative to renting from local stores or through mail. The price of convenience is always high, and Apple TV is no exception, costing $230 to $330 depending on the model you choose. Apple TV isn’t for everyone, although the pricing may be on par with the brick and mortar stores like Blockbuster, Apple TV doesn’t really compare to movie rental services such as Netflix in terms of pricing. For 10 movies you would pay $30 to $40 dollars with Apple TV or you could pay just $17 with Netflix assuming you could finish them in one month. In a way Apple TV and Netflix are on opposing ends of the spectrum, it’s basically cost vs time.

The Apple TV could use some improvements, it would be great to see a DVR feature included in the next iteration of Apple TV and hopefully Apple adds enough graphics power to… dare I say it, add games to the Apple TV. I can’t see Apple TV turning into a full fledged gaming console, most likely Apple will stick to the sales pitch, instant movie rentals with casual gaming as an added bonus.

Guest review written by Alex Duong.

So I purchased the Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, the newest edition in Dell’s lineup of business laptops since I own an older Inspiron laptop model and it never failed me. I looked around for all different brands before choosing Dell again just to see if I could do better with the same or even $200 dollars more on the price, but I just can’t find anything cheaper with such a great host of features and excellent specs.

Upon ordering my dell laptop, I heard some people say Dell told them the Vostro laptop shipments are postponed until late August; I had ordered mine on the 12th of July. Of course I didn’t want it to be delayed, so I called them. It ended up that it is delayed due to the 800 MHz FSB processors that are only on the Vostros. Earliest shipment is August 1st. So I waited a couple of weeks, determined to get my laptop, after two weeks they called me telling me my laptop is in production and won’t ship till the 13th of August! I immediately called Dell only to be transferred 4 times before reaching someone knowledgeable about the process. I complained about the long wait, he assured me that it will be shipped on the 30th of July and that he had called the manufacturing plant to confirm. On top of that he upgraded my shipping to 2nd day for free! Now that’s great service! Even though it took a couple of transferring to reach someone knowledgeable, once I did and got his personal extension, it was easy to reach him. So my advice when ordering with Dell, make sure you find someone that knows the stuff and keep their extension just in case you want to get some questions answered, or else prepare for the wait.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way and you have been warned about the customer service issues with Dell, let’s move on to the computer. I received my order from DHL, the laptop was nicely wrapped in a huge box, and then inside was another box holding a foam box that was holding the laptop with a plastic bag covering the laptop making sure no damage was to occur. Pretty great packaging.

Pictures of the Vostro:

The laptop is nothing different from the picture on Dell, sleek matte black finish on the outside with a brushed aluminum Dell logo in the middle make it look classy and professional. The laptop looks exactly like the new Inspirons without the color options to choose from. Open it up and you’re greeted with a metallic black layout, the screen has very little flex if any at all compared to the older Inspirons. The keys felt solid and everything in the laptop is incased in mylar for spill prevention. The laptop is shock proof and the entire casing is magnesium alloy. Now it’s not a light laptop so don’t think you’ll be running the 800yard dash with it in your arms. It comes weighing in at 6.5lbs! A heavy weight compared to Sony and HPs, but no feat for my muscular biceps…hahaha. The noise level on my Vostro is no different than the Inspirons, so quiet you won’t notice it. There are a total of 4 USB ports, 2 on the right side, 2 in the back. The DVD is situated on the right side along with the firewire, VGA port, ENET port and 8-in-1 media slot. On the left is the express card slot, headphone and microphone plugs, vent and WiFi Catcher. The back consists of the Phone Jack, AC Power, USB ports and S-Video ports. No HDMI ports here for those of you that want the super crisp big screen conversions. In the front panel is located the media buttons and underneath them sits the Infrared Red receiver.

You’ll find that the touchpad is a bit smaller, but detects your finger much better compared to the older Inspiron, the two touchpad buttons are softer and doesn’t make the annoying cheap clicking sounds. The power button at the top center is easy to the touch and requires minimal pressure and beside that on the left is the Media Direct button from Dell which allows you to access your media without booting the operation system. Everything else is self explanatory. One gripe I do have about the new Dell laptops is, and this includes the Inspirons as well is the memory slot locations. There is one below the keyboard; yes below the keyboard…why they put it there I have no freaking clue. The other one is located underneath the computer along with the CMOS battery. I didn’t have a problem upgrading my 1GB to 4GB, but removing the keyboard is not for the faint of heart. However, if you follow the instructions on Dell’s manual, there shouldn’t be any problems, took me about 5 mins to change both the memory slots.

My configuration consists of:

VOSTRO

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 1.6 GHz
• Nvidia GeForce 8600m GT w/256mb and up to 1GB with Turbocache
• 15.4inch UltraSharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 120GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Basic
• Standard 1 year warranty
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at PC4200 533 MHz

INSPIRON 1520

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0 GHz
• ATI Radeon 1400x w/256mb
• 15inch Ultrasharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 160GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Premium
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at PC5300 667 MHz

INSPIRON 6000

• Pentium M 1.7 GHz
• ATI Radeon X300 w/128mb
• 15inch Ultrasharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 120GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Premium
• 2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC5300 667 MHz

STARTING UP:
Turn the power on and you’ll be greeted with the sexy blue leds on everything from the HDD lights to the battery light. (It’s a refreshing look from the last year’s dull green leds on the Inspirons). The computer was of decent speed when I first started running it on Vista Basic, but I wanted everything so I quickly upgraded with Vista Ultimate which I purchased from my University at $35! It quickly became slow due to the inefficient memory that came with my laptop, knowing that this was going to happen I had already purchased a 4GB OCZ DDR2 PC5400 memory sticks (2×2GB). Yes my ram is overclocked from the factory. It cost me an addition $250, but is well worth it for the trusted brand and the speed. My ass immediately noticed the improvement in speed. Windows started up without hesitation, LostPlanet played decently, while still not able to conjure up a decent 60fps I was able to play the graphics intensive game at low settings. I then tested Transformers, which ran perfectly at Ultrasetting and Quake 4 Arena again ran perfectly at High Setting, but slowed down a bit at Ultra setting. Now remember that Vista can only take up 3.5GB of RAM max, but since I have turbocache on my graphics card, 768mb of my ram filled that up to 1GB of graphics memory, which worked out perfectly. Well enough of my opinion on the laptop, let’s see some benchmarks right? Below are several benchmarks that I composed from various programs compared to several other machines.

PERFORMANCE TESTS:

As you can see the Vostro with 4GB ram is pretty darn fast in 3dMarks with the 2 GHz Core2Duo slightly ahead. Processor speed makes a huge difference here.

Here the 2 GHz zooms past the Vostro and the Pentium M. The 4GB ram didn’t make a big difference in this test. So processor speed is what you want if you want a great future proof PC (bundled with an excellent graphics card of course).

GAME TESTS:

I won’t be doing any timedemos as I was hoping to since the commands specified by the websites I found seem to work only for the full game, I was unable to use those commands to my advantage. However, I did play Doom 3 and Quake 4 Arena and it did run very smooth at High Quality 1024×768 res. So don’t worry, you won’t have any problems running either of those games. I also play Warcraft 3 at Max settings consistently without any hesitations so no worries there either. The only thing you’d have to worry about is the 60hz refresh rate on laptop monitors while playing FPS games.

CONCLUSION:

While the Vostro doesn’t come with HD or BluRay DVD players, it is really the exact same thing as an Inspiron if not better. The tests that I did only proves that the Vostro is identical to the Inspirons be it each of my system configuration is different; the performance on all three is exactly what you would see when compared to an Inspiron. At a $100 price difference between an equally built Inspiron and Vostro, I’d definitely pick the Vostro over the Inspiron any day. Pros and Cons of the Vostro compared to the Inspiron of the same specs are listed below:

Pros of Vostro:

• Spill Proof Keyboard (Entire system overlayed with Mylar)
• Shock Proof HDD
• Full Magnesium Alloy Casing
• No Trialware
• Black Casing

Pros of Inspiron:

• HD or BluRay DVD Rom option
• Personal Cover Color Choices
• HD Screen
• Trialware

As some of you that want the colorful laptops that bring out your personality, then the Inspiron is the way to go as the Vostro only comes in black. For me, I prefer the black because I think it looks sexy and professional. The Inspirons’ silver paint fades in time anyway. =P The choice is yours, if you want to pay 700 more for BluRay drives, go for the Inspiron, but until I see the difference between BluRay and DVDs with my own eyes, I’ll love my Vostro just the way it is.

When I first got wind of Logitech’s latest notebook mouse, I couldn’t help but be excited. The VX Nano sports the smallest USB receiver I’ve ever seen, finally a receiver I could just leave in and forget about. With such a small receiver I had my doubts about performance. So I dropped by a local electronics store and shelled out the $70 premium.

After spending two weeks with the VX Nano I’m ready to share my impressions. The build quality is excellent, shaking the mouse I hear some slight movement inside, but not enough to raise any concerns, for the most part, the construction is solid. I’ve used plenty of mice that have a rattle to them, which drives me crazy, especially when playing a first person shooter, where quick mouse movements are a common thing.

The VX Nano comes with a carrying case, made of a spongy cloth mesh and USB dock, which acts as an USB extension cord for desktop users.

I liked the rubber grips located on both sides of the VX Nano, it has a good texture to it, reducing the chance of slips. Although I do miss the sunken thumb grip of the VX Revolution, the VX Nano’s thumb grip is just slightly sunken. The rear of the VX Nano is rather flat in comparison to the VX Revolution, depending on your hand size, most likely you’ll be holding the VX Nano with your finger tips. If a comfortable palm rest is important to you, you may want to forgo the Nano for the Revolution, I found the Revolution more comfortable to use over long periods of time.

On the bright side the VX Nano’s low profile and over all smaller size makes it easier to slip into notebook carrying cases.

VX Nano and Revolution USB receivers compared.

Not all USB slots are created equal, some make the Nano Receiver stick out…

The scroll wheel can be used in two modes, free-scroll and notched, free-scroll allows the mouse wheel to spin with little friction, while notched is what we regularly use. I used free-scroll most on long documents and notched for everything else. When I first used free-scroll it wasn’t all that useful to me, I’d fly straight to the end of long documents, which I could have easily done by simply pressing the End key. I found using free-scroll takes some practice, over time you will able to skim large documents and stop the wheel just at the right spots.

right behind the scroll wheel is the search button, pressing it will open up your default browser, you can also customize it to use your favorite search engine. Another neat feature I found was the ability to search highlighted text. For example if I found a word I didn’t understand or wanted know more about, instead of typing it into the search box, I’d simply highlight the text and press the search button and magically the search results appear! Ok maybe I’m getting a little too excited about this feature, I just thought it was clever of Logitech to add this.

Besides the standard left and right mouse buttons, there is also a pair of forward/back buttons located on the left of the left mouse button.

Even though you could easily leave the VX Nano receiver plugged in due to it’s miniature size, Logitech designed the mouse with a slot to house the USB receiver.

I could detect no movement lag, the mouse performed like a superstar. I could definitely see myself using this mouse on a daily basis, which is what I have been doing for the past two weeks, it’s very comfortable to use in my opinion. If you plan to game, I’d still prefer a higher DPI mouse. Logitech doesn’t state the actual DPI of this mouse, but I did notice some pixel skipping when playing first person shooters.

Some may argue, what’s the point of having a small receiver when you could have no receiver at all and just use Bluetooth. I have to agree with this statement, but in all fairness, the VX Nano does provide lag-free response, something we’ve come to expect from RF mice, BT mice on the other hand I’ve had poor experiences in terms of responsiveness, I’ve always noticed a bit of lag. So if mouse responsiveness is important to you, the VX Nano may just be what the doctor ordered.

I definitely recommend this mouse to any notebook owners willing to put up with the $70 price tag. As always if you have any questions, please fill out the comment form, thank you for reading.

Advertisements of LocationFree Base Station say “Watch TV and all your home entertainment anywhere in the world.” It sounds far fetched, but there is some truth to the statement. Practically anywhere in the world where you have Internet access, and a LocationFree compatible device for viewing, you should in theory have access to your home entertainment; live TV, Cable, Satellite, DVD player, DVR and so on. There are some limitations to place-shifting, which I’ll discuss throughout this review, but for the most part their statement holds true, and an exciting statement it is.

How Place-Shifting Works

Besides the actual Sony LocationFree Base Station (LF-B20) itself you’ll need a few other pieces before the puzzle is complete.

What is needed

• Video Source (DVD player, DVR, Set-Top-Box[Cable or Satelite])
• Broadband Internet (Ex. Cable or DSL)
• Router (wireless preferred)
• Client Device (Desktop, Laptop, Sony PSP, Windows Mobile Handset)
• Cables (A/V composite, S-Video, Ethernet)

As you can see from the diagram above, the LocationFree Base Station receives it’s video source from the STB or DVR device to it’s left. Once the video signal from the STB or DVR reaches the LocationFree Base Station, the video is transcoded into a streamable format and sent directly to a client device or router then client device (client device requires LocationFree software for viewing). If the router is connected to a broadband Internet connection, the video stream can be sent over the Internet to a client device. The location of the client device is irrelevant as long as the client device has access to the Internet. So essentially the LocationFree Base Station is a device that allows us to stream our home entertainment over the Internet.

In this next section we’ll take a closer look at the LocationFree Base Station LF-B20 and also see an example of wiring setup.

LF-B20 Physical Aspects

Example Wire Setup

General Limitations of Place-Shifting

Upload Speed - As great as the idea of Place-Shifting sounds there are some rather severe limiting factors all consumers should be aware of before purchasing a LocationFree Base Station LF-B20. The biggest influence on video streaming quality is your personal home Internet connection, more specifically the speed and quality of the connection. Normally when we look at Internet connections we are usually concerned with download speed, but in this situation your upload speed will make or break your Place-Shifting experience. The LF-B20 can only send as much video streaming data as the upload speed of your connection allows, the faster your upload speed, the more video data is sent, the better the video quality you will experience.

So how much upload speed do I need Cook?

Sony recommends at least 300Kbit/s upload speed , based on what I saw in my testing, I’d have to agree. To see if your Internet connection meets this minimum requirement please visit Speedtest.net

Internet Access at Remote Location - Another potential bottleneck in this setup is the client connection. The client connection refers to the Internet connection used outside of your home to access your LocationFree Base Station LF-B20’s video stream. I tested the the LocationFree client at multiple public locations such as colleges, restaurants and local businesses. At the college I used a student login to gain access to the Internet, but I quickly learned that since I had minimum privileges to the Internet this made it impossible to access my LocationFree Base Station. At a business location I tried accessing the LocationFree Base Station through their open wireless Internet connection. I successfully connected to the LocationFree Base Station, but the speed of the connection was very low. I did a quick test on the connection and found that the download speed was capped at 160Kbit/s, about half of the minimum requirement, which resulted in poor video quality.I tried using the Internet connection at a local Starbucks and the video streaming was just fantastic, this proved to me you could achieve decent video streaming quality at remote locations.In short, the home Internet upload speed and the remote location’s Internet download speed are what will have the greatest impact on video streaming quality, both need to have at least 300Kbit/s.

Oink Oink - You may need to be one if you have others living in your home that share the TV and Internet connection with you. Scenario A, you are on vacation, far away from home and you feel like watching the latest episode of Lost which is about to air in 2 mins. You open your laptop and open the LocationFree client to connect to your LocationFree Base Station at home, which happens to be connected to the Cable STB located in the living room. Your kids are still home and they are also watching TV in the living room, you change the channel to Lost, awww yes just in time, the show intro begins to play. All of the sudden the channel changes multiple times. One of your kids is channel surfing, you attempt to return to the channel showing Lost, but the kid at home doesn’t give up so easily he too is repeatedly changing the channels. Morale of the story, have your LocationFree Base Station connected to a STB or DVR you know no one else will be using when you are out of the home. Remote control wars usually end in telephone shouting matches, don’t let it go that far, plan ahead 8).

Depending on what the people at home are using the Internet connection for, it’s possible for the connection to be so heavily clogged with download/upload traffic that getting a decent video stream from your LocationFree won’t be possible.

The limiting factors mentioned above are problems faced by all current Place-Shifting technologies.

Video Compression Basics 101

Before we dive into the visual benchmarks we need to understand a little about video compression, so the benchmarks become more meaningful.

Download/Upload Difference - We discussed in the previous page about the importance of achieving a minimal home Internet upload speed of 300Kbit/s, this is rather small in contrast to your download speed, which can be on average 10 times faster than your upload speed. Some may wonder why the gross difference in download/upload speeds. Well it boils down to how the average person uses their Internet connection. Every time you visit a web page, watch videos on Youtube, listen to Internet radio, transfer e-mails to your desktop, all of these task use mainly your download speed and very little of your upload speed. Uploading is the act of sending data from your computer to another computer, in most cases the receiving computer will be at a remote location, examples of this would be sending e-mail attachments to an associate, sending vacation pictures to your family members, or sending documents to your work office computer, these are just some examples of tasks which use primarily your upload speed. As you can see on a daily basis we rely more on our download speed than our upload speed. So it’s not surprising to learn that most broadband Internet providers focus mainly on download speed.

Uncompressed Video - It’s easy to take video compression for granted, but imagine for a moment if there was none. Take an uncompressed DVD video as an example, in order to stream it over the net, we’d need an upload speed of roughly 185,000Kbit/s, that’s 578 times more than what the average home Internet connection can do! It’s quite an amazing feat to stream video on something as low as a 300Kbit/s connection. This is all made possible because of excellent video compression technology currently available to us, which will only improve in the future.

So how did they manage to get a watchable video stream with only 300Kbit/s Internet connection?

The data rate for a decent video stream using 300Kbit/s connection can be obtained by adjusting certain video attributes such as FPS (Frames Per Second), resolution, audio quality and frame prediction.The LocationFree client has an options page that will allow you to adjust FPS, resolution and audio quality. What we’ll be focusing on is the frame prediction. A video is nothing more than a series of images shown in sequential order at a rapid rate, to give the illusion of motion. Frame prediction uses one reference image, which is a complete full image of the scene, the following images played after the reference image only contains the changes in each frame.

For example, lets say you were watching a host of a talk show, he stands completely still, the background does not move, the only motion we see in the scene is his mouth movement. Instead of displaying the whole scene in each frame, you could simply have frames that only show his mouth and the rest of the background can be copied from the reference frame to save data. Now it would save more space if the whole video only had one reference image, but if you were to rewind the video it would always go back to the very beginning of the video, regardless of video length, since there is only one reference image. That’s why a reference image is used every 24 to 30 frames typically, so you can easily rewind to previous points. You still get 23-29 predicted frames for every second, so that’s still great savings in terms of data.

In the upcoming pages the visual benchmarks will show you this compression technique at work, and it will also show you some of it’s glaring weaknesses.

A lot of buzz was created when Microsoft introduced the WiFi capable Zune, but the usefulness of the WiFi was never realized, because of it’s crippled state, which only allowed users to share songs. Perhaps the Archos 604 WiFi can make better use of it’s WiFi capability and possibly start a new trend among PMPs (portable media player).

I see the Archos 604 WiFi mainly as the joining of web browser and portable video player, I won’t devote much time to the PVR (portable video recorder) feature of the device, since it’s an accessory. So the question becomes, how well can the Archos perform in regards to web browsing and video playback? The answers you find in this review may not be what you expected.

Physical Aspects

Construction - The Archos 604 WiFi’s construction material consist of 2/3 brushed metal and 1/3 plastic. The layer of plastic is sandwiched between two layers of metal. The Archos 604 WiFi overall was very rigid due to it’s metal construction. I did notice the battery was a little loose, not enough to cause any issues though. In operation the Archos 604 WiFi did get a little warm on the back side, which made me wonder if the metal construction actually had a functional purpose and not just for appearance, possibly for heat dissipation, much like a heat sink.

Size - From the card image below we can tell the width and length of the Archos 604 WiFi seems reasonable, 5.2 x 3.1 inches (133 x 78 mm). I found the thickness, 0.7 inches (18 mm), of the Archos 604 WiFi a tad uncomfortable for my pants pocket, as it creates a noticeable bulge. It didn’t take long before my co-workers would notice the Archos 604 WiFi in my pants pocket, comments such as “What’s with the brick in your pants?” was a common question I received throughout the day. Because of the metal construction the Archos 604 WiFi weighs quite a bit, 290 grams, for reference sake, that’s 3 times the weight of the average mobile handset (100g). Archos 604 WiFi you are sooo going on the Atkins diet, you chubby bastard…

Display - Looking at the specs, 4.3” TFT (480X272 pixels) 16/9, over 16 million colors, I was pretty excited about testing some videos on the Archos 604 WiFi, but it seems my hopes were dashed by an unforeseen display flaw. More on this later in the review.

Controls - Each button (plastic) is actually two, the button can be pressed on the left or right edge. The first button is forward for the web browser and up, left / right, back in web browser and down, close window / OK, Switch between tabs and Menu. On the top is the Power and TV/LCD button. The TV/LCD button toggles between TV and LCD display, so when the Archos 604 WiFi is connected to a TV you may choose to display it on either display.

The confusion is understandable, since Nokia is best known as a cellphone manufacturer. The Nokia N800 is by no means a replacement for cellphones, rather they were intended to complement them. The Nokia N800 is actually apart of a new breed of gadgets, called Internet appliances, which are designed to perform Internet related task. The term appliance is fitting, like a toaster or blender, these devices serve a single purpose. The Nokia N800’s sole purpose is to provide easy access to Internet related features, such as web browsing, instant messenger, Internet calling, Internet radio, e-mail and so on. Perhaps new isn’t the best way to describe Internet appliances, the concept was first introduced in the 1990’s but never gained traction.

The Internet landscape has changed greatly since the 1990’s, with the advent of online video streaming such as YouTube, Internet radio, social websites, blogs, podcast, web applications, the list just keeps going, there’s just so much more to do online. If the Nokia N800 is able to capitalize on the growth of the Internet by providing an easy way to access most of these Internet features we could have a real winner on our hands.

Package Contents

• Nokia N800 unit
• Stylus
• BP-5L Li-Polymer 1500 mAh Battery
• 128MB MiniSD memory stick
• SD memory stick adapter
• Headphones 3.5mm jack
• USB cable (File transfers only, not PC synchronization)
• Power Adapter

Physical Aspects

The Nokia N800’s construction mainly consist of various grades of plastic, with a metallic lining along the front edge. The Nokia N800 feels quite rigid, with enough force you can make it creak slightly, in daily use I’m confident this will not be an issue. The only surface area of the Nokia N800 that attracts finger prints besides the display is the metallic frame. Only when the display is off do finger prints become visible. Currently, the Nokia N800 only comes in one color solution, a combination of silver and black. I have to admit when I first laid eyes on the Nokia N800 I fell in love with the physical appearance. It’s the simple and clean design that won me over, there’s no clutter of buttons, just a few buttons on the left side and a nice large display.

Speakers - The stereo speakers are located on both sides of the display. Nokia put a lot of love into these speakers, they are ridiculously good. Having handled many portable devices in the past, I’ve always felt less than satisfied with the speaker performance. The problems were always the same, either the volume was too faint or the speaker would crackle at high volume levels. I am pleased to report the Nokia N800 does not have either of these problems, good job Nokia!

Display - With a display size of 4.1-inches at a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, the display is among one of the sharpest in the portable device category. The color range is another story, it only displays 65K colors, which is rather low for today’s standards. The low color range will only become noticeable when viewing photos or movies where there is a gradual change in color, such as an image of a sky, where there is many shades of blue, see tiling effect for a great example.

Size - When I first saw the Nokia N800 in the press photos, I really expected it to be roughly the same size as the Sony PSP. With that assumption, I wasn’t really looking forward to pocketing this gadget. The PSP isn’t exactly the most comfortable gadget to carry in one’s pants pocket. Thankfully the press photos were misleading, the Nokia N800 is significantly smaller than the PSP, especially in thickness. I wouldn’t say the Nokia N800 is the most pocketable device, but it sure beats the PSP. The actual dimensions of the Nokia N800 are 2.95 x 5.67 x 0.51 inches (75 x 144 x 13 mm) and weighs 7.27 ounces (206 g).

The key to the iPod’s dominance wasn’t simply due to superior design or functionality, the iTunes store was at the heart of the success. For the first time iTunes provided a way for consumers to easily find, purchase and download music to their iPods, the whole process takes a matter of minutes. Before iTunes came along, consumers would purchase the music in CD format, rip the tracks from the CD, then transfer them to their digital player of choice. Sounds like a big hassle doesn’t it? Not to mention, time consuming as well.

Why other digital player manufacturers haven’t followed in Apple’s footsteps is still a mystery to me. That’s where the Microsoft Zune comes into play, they are the first company I’ve seen able to match the iTunes store in ease of use and pricing of music.

Package Contents

• 30GB Zune unit
• 3.5mm earphones
• USB cable (for synchronization and charging)
• User Manual
• Zune Software CD
• Cloth case
• 14-day Zune pass

Physical Aspects

The Zune is available in Black, White and Brown. The model in this review is black, covered by a blue tinted transparent layer of plastic (try saying that 3 times fast, yeshh…) this is referred to as the “double-shot effect” by Microsoft, it does add a nice touch to the Zune’s appearance. The screen is a 3-inch QVGA (320×240) display, half an inch larger than the 5G iPod Video’s display. The construction of the Zune feels solid, creaking isn’t a word in the Zune’s dictionary. The surface is not glossy like the iPod, instead the Zune has a matte finish. The Zune’s surface laughs in the face of finger prints, unlike the iPod… The display however does attract finger prints, no real surprise there.

There isn’t much to the back, just the Zune logo and a circular indention. The purpose of the circular indention is solely cosmetic.

Port used for charging and transferring music via USB cable. When connected, the USB connection is quite stable no jiggling to report.

The hold switch is located on the top as well as the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Controls - The mid circular control is somewhat misleading, many would assume it works similiar to the iPod’s touch sensitive click-wheel, where one can control the volume by simply gliding their thumb in a circular motion over the click-wheel. The circular button on the Zune is actually a 5-way D-pad. The only gripe I had with the 5-way D-pad was the inability to scrub through lengthy tracks, I usually listen to trance mixes on a daily basis, which are typically 60 minutes or more in duration. The key difference between the Zune’s D-pad and the iPod’s click-wheel is the iPod has the advantage of accelerated track scrubbing. This advantage grows greater as the track increases in duration. On the bright side, this issue won’t affect many people, since the majority listen to tracks of 3-5 mins duration on average.

The back button is located on the left and the play / pause button on the right, the play / pause button also acts as the power button when held.

This isn’t the best control scheme I’ve seen, but it’s also not the worst. Microsoft made the right move by keeping the controls simple, as opposed to some companies that make their digital player appear to be a television remote.

Size - The size of the Zune is it’s greatest weakness, I should save Microsoft some time and just stamp ACME on it, it’s a brick. When compared to the Video iPod 5G, it’s noticeably thicker and taller. For the added thickness you get a larger display, Wifi (rather useless at this point) and FM radio. In my opinion the added functionality doesn’t justify the larger size.

Storage - The Zune is capable of storing up to 30GB of media. For this larger storage capacity there are some weaknesses you should be aware of. The hard drive is platter-based, an easy way to picture a platter-based hard drive is to think of the platter as a vinyl record and the hard drive container as the vinyl record player. Imagine the vinyl record spinning with the needle placed in one of the grooves, this works great in a stable situation. Now imagine lifting the vinyl record player 2 inches off the surface and then dropping it, most likely there will be some damage done to the vinyl record when the needle hits the record with additional force from the drop. This is analogous to what happens when the Zune is dropped.

Engineers prefer to design products with as few moving parts as possible, the belief is, the less moving parts a device has the fewer points of possible failure. It only takes one failure at a single point to make the device inoperatable. Additionally, since platter-based hard drives require movement to function, this consumes more battery life than a SSD (solid state drive).

The benefits of platter-based hard drives is the cost of capacity, it’s much cheaper than SSD and the greater storage capacity, which is much higher than what SSD is currently capable of.

Headphones - The headphones are average in terms of audio output, as with most headphones, don’t expect it to provide deep bass. I did find the wires to be a tad thin, makes me wonder just how durable the wire will be over time. My iPod headphone wires lasted for 3 years until the internal metal wire broke, I have a feeling the longevity of the headphone wire was due to the extra thickness of the protective plastic coating.

1. Battery Memory - When I first got my new cellphone, my friend recommended to fully drain the battery before recharging it. His reasoning was connected to the idea of battery memory. Allowing the battery to fully discharge then recharging to max, supposedly gives you the complete battery capacity. Otherwise, if you simply charged from the half way point to max battery capacity, the battery would treat the half way point as the empty point, thus cutting your battery capacity in half.

Problem is battery memory doesn’t apply to Lithium batteries, this advice was meant for Nickel based batteries. Fully discharging your Lithium battery frequently can actually be quite harmful to your battery’s health, possibly rendering it completely unusable if energy levels go too low.

The good news is today’s lithium batteries have a safety circuit in place to insure the battery doesn’t reach the point of no return. The safety circuit isn’t fool proof of course, if you leave your battery completely drained for a few days, even the circuit’s protective measures won’t save it.

2. Battery Calibrating - There is some benefits to fully discharging your lithium battery periodically, for laptops this can be especially important. If you start to notice your battery meter is becoming more and more inaccurate, it may be time for some battery calibration. By allowing your lithium battery to fully drain, this will help the battery recalibrate allowing for more accurate measurements of battery life. This should be done once every 30 charges or when you notice battery readings are off.

3. Consequences of Heat - Another enemy of Lithium battery life is heat. If you were to leave your laptop plugged in and running for a year, you should expect the lithium battery capacity to be anywhere between 60% to 80% of it’s original max capacity. This is why people that use their laptops as desktop replacements will notice greatly reduced battery life performance after one year of use. This issue can be resolved by removing the battery while using a corded power source. Now you may want to check with your manufacturer ahead of time to check for safety concerns, some manufacturers have mentioned problems such as moisture and dust collecting in the battery casing.

4. Battery Storage - If you plan on not using the Lithium battery for prolonged periods of time, then you’ll want to have the charge level at 40% and place the battery in the fridge (not freezer). Storing the battery at 100% charge level applies unnecessary stress and can cause internal corrosion. On the other hand, if the charge is too low, the battery can become permanently unusable, due to battery self discharge. This is why manufacturers recommend storing your Lithium battery at 40% charge, rather than either extreme.

Quick Overview

• Try to avoid frequent full discharging of the Lithium battery.
• For lithium battery meter calibration, periodically do a full battery discharge, every 30 charges, to increase meter accuracy.
• Avoid heat, heat is the Lithium battery’s enemy, the temperature in a car can easily rise 50F in a single hour, in some cases reaching 140F.
• If you plan to place your lithium battery in storage, be sure to have the charge at 40% and stored in the fridge (not freezer) for maximum battery longevity.

For additional information concerning batteries in general, I strongly recommend visiting Battery University.

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The general consensus believes cell phone cameras lack quality and are only toys, nothing more. This was true in the past, when cell phone cameras were taking sub 1MP shots filled with noise, lacking auto-focus and true flash, but times have changed and technology has made great strides. The K790 will not replace a professional photographer’s $1,000 SLR, however the K790 does have the advantage of convenience. Out and about, we don’t always have a camera to capture precious moments in our lives, but in most cases we do have our cell phones, so if your cell phone was also your camera… Well, you get the picture.

Many wonder if the K790 could replace their camera, which is definitely a good question, as with many things in life, there is no clear cut answer. It’s a balancing act, between photo quality and convenience, preferences differ from one person to the next. Hopefully by the end of this review you’ll have all the information you need to decide for yourself.

Before we begin I’d like to point out the key differences between the K800 and the K790. The K800 supports 900/1800/1900MHz frequencies and UMTS for data, while the K790(a) supports 850/1800/1900MHz and EDGE for data. The K790 also lacks the front camera found on the K800.

Package Contents

• K790 Handset
• Charger
• BST-33 lithium polymer battery
• Handsfree Stereo Headset
• User Manual
• Software CD
• USB Data Cable
• 64MB M2 Memory Stick Micro
• M2 Memory Stick Micro Adapter
• Wrist Strap

Available Colors

• Velvet Black
• Silver (Casino Royale Limited Edition)

Physical Aspects

As a form of mockery, Google has decided to take Blogger out of Beta after I finished recording the video, lovely timing, so please ignore the comments about Blogger Beta.

Accessories - The Handsfree headset does not have a 3.5mm adapter, so we’ll be stuck with the default head phones. Listening to music through the head phones didn’t strike me as anything special, it performed like any other head phone. The Walkman application has a Mega Bass option, but the bass didn’t carry through so well to the head phones. I tested the bass with the song Angel by Massive Attack, if any of your heard that song, you probably already know how deep the bass is in Angel. I prefer these head phone over the ones that come with the Sony Ericsson Walkman lineup. The Walkman head phones are inserted in your ear and act as a sound plug, I had some difficulty keeping them in my ears while running. Now in the K790’s case this was a non-issue, due to the shape of the head phones.

This is the first handset from Sony Ericsson to support M2 Memory Stick Micro. As you can see from the pictures below, the micro does live up to it’s name. The default capacity that comes with the K790 is 64MB, adding the internal memory of 64MB, you’ll have roughly 128MB at your disposal. High-quality photos taken with the K790 usually take 800KB, with the given capacity should allow for 160 shots, I think most users will find this capacity acceptable for their photography needs. When the M2 was first introduced, the prices for the memory stick were rather high, nearly a year has passed, as of lately I’ve seen the prices steadily fall for the M2. The maximum size currently available is 1GB, priced at $49.99 at Sony Style, which brings it pretty close to it’s older brother, Memory Stick Pro Duo, 1GB capacity cost $34.99.

Size - The K790 is tad larger than the previous model, K750, the main difference being the additional height and thickness, width wise the K790 has become slimmer. The added thickness is mainly attributed to the camera lens on the back, forming a slight hump. The dimensions of the K790 are 4.1 x 1.8 x 0.9 inches (105 x 47 x 22 mm). For all intensive purposes the change in size isn’t really significant in the ergonomic aspect, although it is enough to make the K790 incompatible with K750 cases.

Construction - I personally find the K790’s design to be beautiful, it gives me a sense of elegance and class. Typically mobile handsets are constructed with a variety of plastics, in the K790’s case, Sony Ericsson decided to take a slightly different approach. The front frame that surrounds the keypad, softkeys and display, is actually made of brushed metal. The metal frame gives the K790 a more stable feel, I didn’t detect any creaking in the handset. I’ve had a bad experience with the Sony Ericsson W810 in this regard, the creaking was ridiculous, every time I pressed any buttons I could hear creaking. There’s nothing like a creaky handset to kill the mobile experience. I’d like to see more manufacturers use a mixture of metal/plastic in handset construction, as I feel it would help reduce creaking in handsets.

Weight - The K790 is more on the heavy side (115g/4.1oz) in comparison to other mobile handsets, but then again metal isn’t commonly used in handsets either. I can’t say I’m surprised by the weight of the K790, glancing over the capabilities of this handset, it seems they tried to cram in as much technological goodness as possible in the limited space allowed. This is definitely one of the K790’s strong points, successfully incorporating many of the latest technologies of today into such a small package. Of course the K790 is no Motorola RAZR when it comes to size, but we should also keep in mind the RAZR was never impressive in the functionality department. Sony Ericsson did an excellent job of balancing size and functionality in the K790.

Keypad - The keypad is made of a rubbery material, the keys aren’t stiff, they have some leeway. The keys are slightly sloped, when pressing a key, your thumb will make contact with the top half of the key first. This design feature did help reduce the chances of hitting multiple keys. The keypad is tightly packed together, very little spacing between the keys, I frequently hit multiple keys by accident during my initial trial of the K790. I grew accustomed to the keypad after a few days of use, I found the keypad to be acceptable. I recommend users with larger fingers to test the K790 at a local Sony Style store personally before purchasing.

The keypad has good tactile feedback as expected, when pressed, the user will also hear a soft click.

Softkeys - The softkey configuration has remained the same. For the unfamiliar, on the left side the key with the globe accesses the Netfront web browser, below that is the back key, symbolized by the U turn arrow, returns users to the previous menu screen and if held will return to the network service screen regardless of where the user is in the menu. On the right we have the C key and multitasking key, the C key is used to delete menu items. The multitasking key, illustrated by the over lapping squares, displays four window tabs, New Events, Running Applications, My Shortcuts, Internet. Received SMS/MMS/E-Mails, Organizer reminders and so on appear in the New Events tab. Running Applications tab, allows you to shift between different applications, surprise surprise, I know, hehe. Shortcuts tab, displays a list of commonly used applications, if the list of applications do not suit your needs, Sony Ericsson has made it possible to customize this list of shortcuts. The Internet tab contains a list of bookmarked web pages from the net front browser.

Another feature that makes the W950 unique to the Walkman lineup is it’s touchscreen capability, which will undoubtedly come in handy for convenient web browsing at 3G speed. The storage space of 4GB in the W950 seems decent compared to dedicated MP3 players, but when compared to competing cellphones, it’s quite amazing, very few competitors can match this, with the exception of a few, such as the Nokia N91.

Physical Aspects

The W950 comes in one color scheme, black and orange, or should I say, mystic purple and orange. Mystic purple is a fancy way of saying black, nice try Sony Ericsson. I’m not a huge fan of orange, but I believe it was used in a tasteful manner in this case. The purpose of this handset is made clear by it’s Walkman Logo under the screen and the dedicated Walkman button on the left side. The W950 is much wider than previous SE Walkman handsets, in order to facilitate one-handed operation. The seamless design gives the W950 a nice feel to it, it gives the handset a stylish look.

The keypads are only visible by their labels, it appears that the buttons are covered by the W950’s skin, there is small bumps to help users locate keys. I wasn’t too happy with the keypad myself, I felt a sense of confusion as I tried to input text, normally keys are easily differentiated by the gaps between keys. Perhaps overtime I could grow used to the keypad, but those were my initial impressions.

People accustomed to previous SE handsets have probably already noticed the two missing soft keys usually found directly under the display. The soft keys have been replaced with music controls under the Walkman logo, it’s barely visible in this photo, the music controls light up when the Walkman application is active. As pointed out earlier the dedicated Walkman key is located on the left and the delete key, represented by the C, located on the right.

The power button is joined with the infrared port and the stylus holder can be found on the top.

The JogDial is 3-way, meaning it can scroll up/down and pressed as a button. Next to the JogDial is the back key, this key will return you to the previous menu screen and if held down will return you to the network service provider screen.

On the right side is a play/stop button for music, this button works with either Walkman or FM Radio, depending on what you used last. The volume button can be found below the play/stop button, which is also used to display basic handset information.

On the bottom is the microphone and multipurpose port. The multipurpose port can be used to charge the phone through a power outlet, USB file transfers and headphone adapter. I’m just as down as you guys are about the lack of headphone jack. It’s a real drag carrying around additional wires, I’d like to see Sony Ericsson implement a solution similar to the PSP. The PSP uses a normal headphone jack with a data slot beside it, so if one wishes to use a wired headset for calling, that would be possible still and people that don’t care for wired headset calling can carry just the headphones they want to use. None of this may matter in the near future, it seems the industry is moving towards Bluetooth stereo headphones anyhow, so the missing headphone jack wouldn’t pose much of an issue.