Nokia 6210 Navigator

GPS handsets are catching the fancy of consumers due to convenience they offer when you get lost in middle of nowhere. Nokia has stepped up to the task and brought out a series of cellphones under the “Navigator” brand name. Nokia 6210 Navigator is the latest cell phone to join the bandwagon. Apart from GPA, Nokia 6210 has good specifications as mentioned below.

Nokia 6210 Navigator specifications :

• Dimensions : 103 x 49 x 14.9 mm
• Weight : 117 g
• Display : 2.4″ TFT display with 240 x 320 resolution
• Camera : 3.2 megapixel with autofocus
• GPS : Built-in GPS receiver
• Radio : Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Card slot : MicroSD
• Connectivity : GPRS, HSCSD, 3G.
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• USB : v2.0 miniUSB
• OS : Symbian OS 9.3, Series 60 UI
• Approx. price : $400

Nokia 6210 Navigator is an upgrade to the Nokia 6110 Navigator which was released last year. Nokia 6110 Navigator is still quite popular among the people and it has a decent specifications and a great GPS navigation solution. Nokia 6210 Navigator has upgrades ranging from accelerometer to latest symbian OS.

The box contents do not lend any surprises with the standard accessories lined up inside the box. USB cable, DC charger, wired handsfree, manual, CD and a 1GB microSD card. An in-car charger should have been there in the box considering the nature of the device.

The design of the phone is much similar to its predecessor but it slimmer. The keys have also got a rejig but apart from that there is not much noticeable difference, although I preferred the overall looks of the Nokia 6110 navigator more. The phone is light weight and the sliding mechanism is sturdy and smooth.

You can find the video call camera at the top right used for making video calls over 3G networks. Just adjacent to it is the ambient light sensor. The D-pad is quite big and is flanked by soft keys on either side. You also get a dedicated key for launching the GPS navigation software which is in the form of a star.

The keypad has aptly sized keys which offer tactile feedback and a boon for SMS junkies. The phone has a 2.5 mm jack instead of a 3.5 mm one, leaving you to the mercy of the adapter. Right side has the volume rocker and the dedicated camera key. Left side which is usually bare has the mircoUSB and the card slot.

The display is a 2.4″ TFT with QVGA resolution. The display clarity is great and so is the visibility under sunlight. The auto-rotate sensor turns the screen to landscape mode automatically. The call quality of Nokia 6210 is crystal clear and no disturbance at all. The speakerphone is quite loud and you would not face any problem hearing the ringtone even in noisy environments.

The music player has become a standard on almost all Nokia Symbian 60 devices. It supports a wide variety of formats such as WMA, MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and also M3U playlists. Songs can be added directly via USB or using Nokia PC Suite and they reflect when you refresh the music library. You can sort songs by albums, artists, genre, composer, podcasts and playlists. With the A2DP profile, you can play songs wirelessly over a stereo bluetooth headset. The audio quality is good and comparable to what is offered in Nokia N series.

Real player is the default video player and works in both portrait and landscape mode. You are better off with installing a third party video player which supports more formats and offers better functionality. FM radio is also available in the form of Visual Radio. It also has RDS support and can automatically scan for channels. The interface is simple, clean and functional.

Nokia 6210 comes equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus. and LED flash. No lens protection leads to fingerprint smudges all over the lens. The image quality of the camera is great and comparable to Nokia N73. The images produced are well saturated, have low noise and good amount of detail. Geo-tagigng surprisingly isn’t available putting the inbuilt GPS functionality to shame. Video recording is possible at VGA resolution but the frame rate is limited to 15fps.

Web browsing on the Nokia 6210 is a pleasure due to the great inbuilt browser. Nokia browser has almost all the features that you desire and auto-rotation of the screen is the cherry on the cake. The web page fits perfectly both in portrait and landscape modes. A mini map of the web page is also generated which leads to quicker navigation around web pages. Search function also comes in-built into the browser allowing you to search for text, phone numbers, email addresses and VoIP address. Page zoom levels can also be adjusted but sadly the browser does not support full screen view mode.

Coming to the main features of this cell phone : GPS! The software included by Nokia to control the GPS is Nokia Maps 2.0 which is a surprise as the Route 66 application that came bundled with Nokia 6110 Navigator was brilliant. There is also an inbuilt compass which does come in handy sometimes. The dedicated GPS key illuminates as soon as you get a satellite lock. You have the option of loading maps on the go like Google Maps or download the whole map on your PC and then transfer it on to the mobile saving you the GPRS charges. Sadly auto rotation does not work in Nokia Maps 2.0 as there is no landscape mode to view the maps. The GPS receiver is sensitive and gets satellite lock even among tall buildings. In-car navigation provides turn-by-turn directions and visual guidance. There are four different modes to view the map : Hybrid, Satellite, Map, Map 3D. Points of interest are also mentioned on the maps, a great asset and are divided into categories neatly. Overall the GPS experience was great and it lived up to the expectation.

Pros :

• Good keypad
• Great display
• Loudspeaker volume high
• Music quality good
• Great camera
• Excellent GPS
• Amazing web browser

Cons :

• Small display
• No Wi-Fi connectivity
• No lens cover
• No geotagging
• VGA recording at 15fps

Final Thoughts

The Nokia 6210 Navigator is a good handset to invest in to put it straight. It has a great camera, good music quality, excellent GPS functionality and amazing web browser which will please a lot of people. Small display and no Wi-FI connectivity are its two major shortcomings. Overall if you are want great GPS functionality then this cell phone is a great investment.

My Rating: 3.75/5

Sony Ericsson C902

The Sony Ericsson C902 is the latest Cybershot from Sony Ericsson and the first of the ‘C’ series Cybershot phones. It is, in a way, the forerunner to the much awaited C905 - The first 8.1 MP camera phone from Sony Ericsson. Yet it does manage to hold out its own and has created a decent fan following. It takes over from the K850i which was moderately successful but was dogged down by many controversies and finally defeated by the Nokia N82 which reigned supreme in the 5 MP category. It aims to compete with the Samsung G600 and the Nokia N82 and the upcoming Nokia N96 and Motorola Zine ZN5. It is slim, sleek and light and has a very simple yet stylish design. It is officially, the slimmest 5 MP cam phone to date. In this review, we check out its features, its pros and cons, and whether it does manage to please its targetted audience - the cam junkies.

Sony Ericsson C902 Specifications:

• Dimensions : 108 x 49 x 10.5 mm
• Weight : 107 gms
• Display : 2.0″ TFT, 256K Colors, QVGA 240 x 320 px.
• Camera : 5 MP Cam (2592 x 1944 px) with LED Flash, Auto Focus, Image Stabilizer, Secondary
• videocall cam
• Memory : 160 MB Internal memory
• Connectivity : GPRS Class 32, EDGE Class 10, 3G HSDPA, USB 2.0
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• Price : $480 (Approx)

Other Key Features:
8 camera touch keys, Java MIDP 2.0, FM radio with RDS, MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player, TrackID music recognition

Design and Display

The Sony Ericsson C902 scores rather high on the design front. At dimensions of 108 x 49 x 10.5 mm, it is a sleek, slim and stylish phone. It does weigh slightly more relative to its dimensions - about 107 gms. It has a normal candybar form factor and is encased in a metal body. It has a glossy finish in the front faces which adds to its style.

The display is a characteristic Sony Ericsson - 2.0″ TFT, 256K colors with a resolution of 240 x 320 px. Sony Ericsson desperately needs to improve it’s device displays and add bigger, better displays with more colors. Coming back to the C902, the display is nothing impressive, just the normal type. What does impress, are the 8 touch sensitive camera keys add to the sides of the display. They can be used to switch between and adjust many settings like gallery, autofocus, shoot modes, timers and flash mode. The display is good with optimum brightness and contrast, nice vibrant colors and good sunlight legibility.

The keypad feels a bit crowded with the keys thrown in very close to each other. It is a standard Sony Ericsson keypad, with a D Pad, soft keys, ‘Call’ and ‘End’ keys. THe keypad has rather subtle backlighting which makes the corner keys slightly illegible, but that shouldn’t matter much as you get used to the keypad. On the left side of the phone is the Universal port, while the right side sports the dedicated Camera key and the Volume rocker. On the back, there is the 5 MP camera with flash hiding beneath the sliding cover.

OS and Interface features

The C902 sports the usual Sony Ericsson Firmware based OS with the familiar, simple yet effective interface found in all Sony Ericsson phones, spiced up with some new features. It sports a changed menu structure which can be changed to three layouts - Grid, Rotating and Single Icon views. The interface has had quite a few visual improvements with new animations and effects. It has cooler menu transitions and icon effects, overall a much refined and responsive interface. It also sports a highly improved camera interface with 8 new touch sensitive camera buttons to access advanced camera settings.

Camera and Multimedia

It is commendable as to how Sony Ericsson fitted a 5 MP cam in that 10.5 mm slim body, even after doing away with the Xenon flash that is a must in all camera phones. The highlight of the C902 - the camera performs well with awesome shots, low noise levels and nice crisp images with accurate color reproduction. It has many advanced features like face detection, image and video stabilizer, BestPic, auto-rotate, macro mode and more. All of these can be adjusted using the 8 new touch sensitive camera buttons which are active only in camera mode. They are also useful for accessing the photo gallery and adjusting the autofocus mode, shoot mode, scenes, timer and flash mode.

It can record video at QVGA resolutions at 30 FPS, which is a bit of a letdown considering that the N82 and many other new phones can easily do VGA at 30 FPS. The PhotoFlash LED performs good, but nowhere near a Xenon Flash. The addition of the LED flash also helps in conserving the battery life considerably. The C902 sports the new improved Cybershot v2.0 interface which is quite efficient and provides access to almost all of the camera features. The bulit-in accelerometer automatically auto rotates the images when the phone is tilted. The face detection works as expected. It is a capable camera phone, the presence of a Xenon Flash would only have added to its list of features. The BestPic feature automatically takes 9 pics in quick succession so you can choose the best among them. The image stabilizer prevents blurred pics in low light conditions.

Photos, Music and Videos can be accessed from the Media Center menu. The flash based interface simply rocks. It has a new addition though, a Games section. You get the NFS Pro Street game bundled with the phone. It can be controlled using both the D Pad and the accelerometer. Sony Ericsson is trying to sell it as a complete entertainment device. The C902 also supports TV out. It also has a standard FM Radio with RDS support and Auto Scan to automatically search and save radio stations. The Music player supports the standard TrackID feature allowing you to identify songs and download them. The gallery includes a Picture editor and blogging support. The Music Interface can be set to Auto Rotate, Portrait or Landscape.

Other Features

The C902 features many connectivity options like Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0. It also has GPRS, EDGE, 3G but no WLAN. However we are not complaining as it isn’t expected in media centric phones anyways but again most of its competitors do have Wi-Fi. It has a 930 mAh Li-ion battery which delivers about 8 hrs of talktime and lasts about 2 days or more with moderate usage.

It comes bundled with a charger, earphones, a USB data cable, a connectivity CD, the use manual and a 2 GB M2 card.

Pros

• Great Design and Build Quality
• Good Battery
• Great Cam & Music playback

Cons

• Rather Expensive
• No Xenon Flash
• No Wi-Fi

Final Words

The Sony Ericsson C905 is a good buy for those looking for a great camera phone with similar music capabilities all packed together in a small footprint. But it isn’t able to better the Nokia N82 which we still consider a better option to any other 5 MP phone. It maybe lose out a bit in features but makes up for it in style and design. It is a decent buy, though if you already have a K850, we wouldn’t advise you to upgrade.

Rating : 3.9 / 5.

Nokia E66

The Nokia E66 is the newest addition to the Nokia E Series family. The E Series family is reputed to have feature packed, value for money, high end business phones and the E66 is no exception. It was launched alongwith the other heavy weight from the E Series stable, the E71 which was quite a good phone, . The E66 has specifications largely similar to the E71. In fact, there is little difference between both phones except the design, form factor and the lack of the QWERTY keypad in the E66.

It is primarily aimed at business users who would like a smart phone packed with features, a superb design with a dash of style, and can do without a QWERTY keypad. It does have good multimedia capabilities as well, which make it versatile in function. It can handle almost anything you can throw on it easily as it is powered with a fast processor and loads of RAM. Being a Symbian OS v9.2 FP1 phone, it has a large repository of applications and games which add to its functionality and make it an all rounder.

Nokia E66 Specifications:

• Dimensions: 107.5 x 49.5 x 13.6 mm
• Weight: 121 gms
• Display: 2.4″ TFT, 16M Colors, QVGA 240 x 320 px.
• Camera: 3.15 MP Cam with Autofocus, Flash, secondary videocall cam
• Chipset: ARM 11 369 MHZ Processor
• Memory: 110 MB Internal memory, 128 MB RAM
• Connectivity: GPRS Class 32, HSCSD, EDGE Class 32, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, USB 2.0, Infrared
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• OS: Symbian OS v9.2 rel 3.1 with FP1

Other Key features:
FM Radio, VoIP, GPS Receiver with A-GPS

Design and Display:

The Nokia E66 is a very sleek, slim slider with a superb finish and great design. It looks very cool in black and is amongst the best looking and slimmest sliders currently available. With dimensions of 107.5 x 49.5 x 13.6 mm, it isn’t exactly small but is just about the average size for a smartphone. It is moderately heavy at 121 gms but doesn’t feel bulky. It has a great build quality, as expected of all Nokia phones and can withstand rough usage coupled with light drops. Its looks are in total contrast to its business image, which is a nice and welcome change. It is available in two colors, grey and white complete with a metallic finish. The slider is solidly built and won’t loosen up or creaky over extended usage. The design is clean, with keys blending in with the design.

On the front panel, you find the earpiece, video call camera, ambient light sensor, 2.4″ TFT display, standard key controls, Call, End, Left and Right select keys, Cancel key and 4 other shortcut keys - Home, Contacts, Messaging, Calendar, with a D Pad in the center. The slider at the bottom includes the keypad and the mouthpiece. On the right, you find the two volume control button, a voice command button and a dedicated camera shutter button. The left side houses the 2.5 mm audio jack, the Infrared port and the microUSB port. The top sports the Power button while bottom has the standard Nokia 2 mm charger port.

The display is a superb 16 M color 2.4″ TFT display supporting the standard resolution of 240 x 320 px. The display has superb brightness and contrast levels and vibrant colors. It has decent sunlight legibility as well. Overall, the phone has a great design with a good display with nothing much to complain about.

OS and Interface features

The Nokia E66 is powered by Symbian OS v9.2 rel 3.1 with Feature Pack 1. FP 1 packs a lot of features over the original OS v9.1 and noticeably improves performance. It is surprising why Nokia didn’t include OS v9.3 with FP2 with the E66 and E71, as that would have made the phone much more irresistible. The E66 however, does have a lot of FP 2 features bundled in. Underneath the hood of the Nokia E66 lies a blazing ARM 11 369 MHZ processor supplemented by 128 MB of SD RAM. This combo is more than enough to run scores of resource hungry applications and games easily without any lag. Multitasking is a breeze on the E66, thanks to the powerful hardware. It has 110 MB internal memory which can be extended further by 8 GB through the micro SD slot.

The E66, like all other E Series phones, comes with Office applications pre installed. Document editing isn’t supported out of the box though, which is a let down considering it is a business phone. It also supports the vast library of Symbian Applications - Office Applications, Email clients, Chat clients, Imaging Apps, Audio and Video players, File Explorers etc so you can easily download all the applications you need. Web browsing is a pleasure, as on all other Nokia OS 9 phones. The built in OSS browser based on Webkit is excellent and renders even heavy and detailed web pages exactly as they would on a PC. You seldom feel any lag, thanks to the huge amount of RAM in the E66. The E66 has an accelerometer which automatically changes the screen orientation with a tilt in the position, accompanied with nice animations. It features the Active Standby screen with some improvements which make it all the more desirable to use. Most of the OS features are much the same what you have seen already in older phones.

Multimedia and Camera

The Nokia E66 has much better music capabilities than other business minded phones. It has good sound quality with a nice frequency response. It does lack a bit in the volume department though. It supports a wide range of formats like MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. The Music Player supports 5 equaliser presets and effects like stereo widening. It also supports the A2DP profile which allows you to listen to your music on a stereo bluetooth headset. The video playback is great on the superb 2.4″ TFT display supporting 16M colors. You can view videos in portrait, landscape or fullscreen mode in the default Real player. There are no delays in opening and viewing media files, all thanks to the fast processor and ample RAM.

The Nokia E66 has a 3.15 MP camera with autofocus and a LED flash. It shoots pics at a standard resolution of 2048×1536 px. The picture quality isn’t much to speak of, though the camera performs quite decently considering it is primarily a business phone. The Camera UI is great and offers a range of advanced options like sharpness, contrast, ISO, white balance. The camera does QVGA video recording at 15 FPS with rather mediocre quality. It also has a standard FM Radio with good reception, but without RDS.

Connectivity and Accessories

The E66 offers almost all the standard connectivity options like GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, Infrared. It also offers Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP profile support. It doesn’t miss out on any feature you would expect. It also has a GPS receiver built in with A-GPS support. GPS reception is quite good with a short lock in period and works flawlessly with the bundled Nokia Maps 2.0.

Along with the Nokia E66, you get a spacious 2 GB MicroSD card, a hands free, a charger, a data cable and a leather case. You also get the regular manuals, guides and a PC Suite CD. It has a relatively weak 1000 mAh BL-4U battery, compared to the E71, which offers about 6.5 hours of talktime and lasts about 2 days with standard usage. With Wi-Fi or any data connection on, the battery drains quickly.

Pros:

• Superb Design
• Sturdy Build quality

Cons:

• No QWERTY keypad
• Mediocre camera
• No Document editing
• No RDS with FM

Final Words

The Nokia E66 is a very stylish business phone packed with a load of features. It is almost at the top when it comes to business phones. It offers decent multimedia performance as well which makes it a good buy for anyone who wants a business phone with a mix of style, usability, entertainment and performance.

Rating : 3.7 / 5

Asus P320

The Asus P320 is the latest Windows Mobile offering by Asus. It is one of the most stylish smartphones ever made by Asus. It is very light weight at just 105 gms. The Asus P320 is amongst the cheapest Windows Mobile smartphones and does miss out on a lot of features. It has slightly better hardware specs compared to other smart phones in the same range. But it still is a good buy considering its price. In this short review, we check out whether it is worth its salt or not.

Asus P320 Specifications:

• Dimensions: 99 x 55 x 13 mm
• Weight: 105 gms
• Display: 240 x 320 px, 2.6“ TFT, 65K Colors
• Camera: 2 MP (1600 x 1200 px) Cam with AF
• Chipset: TI OMAP 850 (201MHz) processor
• Memory: 64 MB RAM, 128 MB ROM
• Connectivity: GPRS Class 10, EDGE Class 10, WLAN 802.11 b/g, USB v2.0
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
• GPS: Built in GPS Receiver
• OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• Battery: Li-ion 1100 mAh
• Price (Approx): $299

Design:

The Asus P320 is a very stylish and sleek phone. It is one of the lightest Windows Mobile powered smartphones at 105 gms. The build quality is good with rounded edges and glossy colors and the phone feels compact at 99 x 55 x 13 mm. It has a normal candybar form factor. It is available in three colors - black, white and pink. To add to it, it has a whole lot of features packed in that small body. The design is beautiful with buttons added aesthetically and cleanly to such a small form factor without any cramming. It has the Call, End, Windows, Ok and two Menu buttons and a 5 way thumb control pad on the front face along with the screen. It also has a lock-unlock slider on the right side, which is a novelty when it comes to Windows mobile phones. There is also a Micro SD slot on the left, to add additional memory. The display is good with decent brightness levels. The tiny dimensions do prove to be a bit of a problem though. It is slightly difficult to work on such a small screen on Windows Mobile as Windows Mobile displays are generally jam packed with information, the scroll bars, the buttons, the menus all appear a bit small for comfort.

OS Features:

The Asus P320 features the latest version of Microsoft Windows Mobile : Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It is a bit underpowered to run it though. It has just a sluggish 201 MHZ TI OMAP processor and a measly 64 MB RAM. It isn’t very good at multitasking either but can manage about 2 apps easily. With it, comes the huge Windows Mobile Application library which give it enough power and makes it smart enough to live up to its name. It comes with Microsoft’s Mobile Office suite and can view, edit and save all type of office documents. The P320 comes with the new Asus Launcher and it own new customized Today screen with missed calls, messages alerts, email alerts, calendar appointments, to do lists, weather information and a large clock. One other disadvantage of the Asus P320 is the lack of a QWERTY keypad which is understandable considering its slim form factor.

Multimedia:

The Asus P320 is basically an Office phone, but performs the multimedia playback part rather well too. IT has a good 2.6″ screen supporting resolutions of 240 * 320 px and 65k colors. Video playback is good and the audio quality is decent. You can play a whole load of formats using 3rd party players. It also has a 2 MP camera with autofocus and captures images at resolutions of 1600 x 1200 px. It doesnt have flash though. The picture quality is decent, one wouldn’t expect more from a 2 MP cam. It doesn’t have a FM radio receiver.

Connectivity:

It features lots of connectivity options like GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, USB 2.0, but misses out on 3G and Infrared. the absence of 3G is one of the biggest drawback in this phone considering it is the standard for high speed data transfer all over the world now. It does have a GPS receiver but again doesn’t support A-GPS which is a drawback. The GPS receiver is decent and has a small lock in period.

It has a powerful little 1100 mAh Li Ion battery which provides about 4-5 hrs of talktime and a standby time of about 200 hrs. It lasts about 1.5 days with normal usage.

Pros:

• Small size
• Stylish Design
• Good Build quality
• Inexpensive

Cons:

• Low RAM, Processor
• Bad Camera
• No 3G
• No FM radio
• No A-GPS

Conclusion:

The Asus P320 is a stylish new phone and is packed with many features However it also does miss out on some important ones like 3G, A-GPS and FM radio. It also is plagued by performance problems due to its low processor speed and low RAM. Nevertheless, considering its price, it is a good deal for many who are looking for a decent smartphone with sleek looks and a small footprint and with regular Office goodies, applications, games and good multimedia capabilities.

Rating: 3.3/5.

Gateway P-7811FX

Gateway has impressed with their gaming laptops as they offer excellent price to performance ratio which is hard to find in this category. Slowly gaming laptops are approaching the bar where they can be termed as true desktop replacements. Gateway recently introduced their P-7811FX gaming laptop that closes the margin further. It is an excellent offering from the manufacturer at an amazing price.

Gateway P-7811FX specifications :

• Dimensions : 15.7″ x 11.7″ x 1.7″
• Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 / 2.26 GHz
• Chipset : Mobile Intel PM45 Express
• Display : 17″ TFT active matrix 1920×200
• RAM : 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066 MHz
• Graphics card : Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTS
• Hard Disk : 200GB SATA-300 7200 rpm
• Optical drive : DVD Burner
• Webcam : 1.3 megapixel
• Battery : 9-cell lithium ion
• OS : Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
• Approx. price : $1500

The Gateway P-7811FX laptop is based on the latest Centrino 2 platform. It has a bumped up processor, graphics card compared to the older gaming laptops produced by Gateway. The price for the configuration is a steal and probably the best you can expect right now in the market.

The chassis of the laptop is made of glossy black plastic and also has brushed aluminum detailing and copper accents. Looks are very subtle on Gateway laptops and so is the case with this one. The body is a magnet to fingerprints though which can get annoying at times. It features a full blown keyboard which includes a numeric keypad. Media control buttons can be found on top of the keyboard but sadly they are not touch sensitive apart from the volume slider.

The display is a 17″ beauty and has a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1200. This is great for viewing HD movies at full resolution and multi-tasking becomes a breeze. The display quality is great and offers crisp picture quality. Ports are selective and it has only 3 USB ports to go along with an eSATA port.

The laptop has a high-end graphics card in the form of Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTS which offers strong gaming performance. A 7200 rpm hard disk ensures faster performance along with the P8400 processor. It comes with 64-bit OS as the laptop has 4GB of RAM. Missing Blu-ray drive is probably the only downside.

The performance of the laptop as expected is top notch and manages to pull impressive frame rates in Unreal Tournament 3. It scores 117 fps at 1280 x 800 and 58fps at 1920 x 1200 resolutions. This is by far the highest scores you can expect on gaming laptops in this price range. The battery life is also good at close to 3 hours when viewing a DVD movie.

Pros :

• Great specifications
• Highly aggressive pricing
• Full HD display
• Excellent gaming performance
• Fast hard drive

Cons :

• No Blu-ray drive
• Fewer ports

Final Thoughts

The Gateway P-7811FX is an excellent laptop and probably the best one to invest your money in right now. It has everything perfect about it and the price makes it a killer deal. You can hardly go wrong with this one.

My Rating : 4.5/5

Lenovo IdeaPad U110

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is the latest addition to the IdeaPad ultra portable family, soon to be joined by the IdeaPad S10 and S9. In this review, we check out whether the Lenovo IdeaPad is worth the rather high price it demands, especially since the ultra portable has been revolutionized by many low cost entrants like the Asus EEE PC and the MSI Wind, which are priced much lower than the IdeaPad U110. It competes more with the likes of the Macbook Air, Sony Vaio TZ and the Lenovo Think Pad X300 at a slightly lower price and smaller form factor.

Lenovo IdeaPad U110 Specifications:

• Processor: 1.60GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 (800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache)
• Graphics: Intel GMA X3100
• Screen: 11.1-inch WXGA (1366 x 768 px) display
• Memory: 2GB
• Storage: 120GB Parallel ATA HDD (4200rpm)
• Optical Drive: None (External Dual layer CD/DVD recordable drive)
• Wireless and Communications: Intel 4965AGN (802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi), BlueTooth 2.0 with EDR
• Battery: 4-cell Li-Ion and 7-cell extended life Li-Ion batteries included
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports, IEEE 1394 Firewire, 5-in-1 card reader, ExpressCard/34, VGA monitor out port, AC adapter, headphone/line-out, microphone/line-in, Gigabit Ethernet

• Dimensions: 10.8″ x 7.7″ x 0.72″ - 0.88″
• Weight: 2.42lbs with 4-cell battery and 2.92lbs with 7-cell battery
• Price: $1899 (Approx)

Design

The design of the IdeaPad U110 is a refreshing change from the boxy designs of Lenovo’s classic ThinkPad line. It looks sleek, slim and small. It also has a great build quality and feels sturdy. It should easily withstand a few accidental drops without worries. It inherits the build quality from the ThinkPad line we suppose, while leaving out their average design and looks. The aluminium chassis and cover make it strong and sturdy, yet light in weight. It sports a new “Tendril” pattern on the display cover, and on the back of the notebook, which looks elegant. All of the components are styled superbly giving it a great design with superb build quality allowing it to withstand rough handling with ease.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 features a wide range of ports - 3 USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, ExpressCard/34 slot, Gigabit Ethernet, 5-in-1 multi-card reader, Audio out, Mic in, VGA out and a standard Kensington lock slot. They are much more than the minimal ports provided by both the Macbook Air and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300. It does miss out on the HDMI port though and a standard Express Card slot, but you can’t actually ask for more in such a small form factor. It maintains an excellent balance between the available space and the essential ports provided.

Display and Sound

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 comes with a 11.1-inch WXGA display supporting standard resolutions of 1366 x 768 px. It looks good with good brightness and contrast levels, but it is a bit too glossy. The display quality is also a wee bit grainy. Due to the high glossiness, it is difficult to read anything on the display without straining your eyes. There is a bit too reflection even under standard lighting conditions. Other than these, the display performance is quite good with accurate color reproduction and vibrant colors. The vertical viewing angles are quite good, and the horizontal viewing angles aren’t too bad either.

The IdeaPad U110 comes with stereo speakers which are quite good and loud. Obviously, it won’t please the audiophiles but then they can always connect their headphones to the Ideapad U110 for better results. There isn’t any distortion and the volume is rather good for a short movie or some music. As usual, the speakers suck at bass.

Performance

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is powered by a Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 clocked at 1.6 GHZ with 4 MB L2 cache, operating at 800 MHZ FSB. Like in most ultraportable notebooks, it uses the low voltage Intel L7500 processors, which consume very less power and dissipate much less heat than conventional notebook processors. It is powerful enough to run standard Office and Multimedia applications and normal web surfing. You should not expect the performance you would from a Desktop Quadcore and you will be blissful. The Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics are good enough to run Vista with Aero on, and some light games at low settings. If you intend to play Crysis at high resolutions with AA, AF turned fully on, you should look elsewhere (read: Alienware Area 51 m17x).

The IdeaPad U110 comes with a 120 GB 4200 rpm hard drive which is low on performance but generates much less heat and consumes less power. Portability comes at the price of performance after all. But you wont feel the lag much in daily usage.
Overall, the performance is just as much as you would expect from a laptop of its size and portability. It doesn’t disappoint at all.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 features a great little keyboard which is slightly smaller than a standard laptop keyboard. It offers adequate key spacing and great key travel making it a breeze to type. The keys offer decent tactile feedback and dont make much noise. The keys sport a glossy finish and the media buttons on the top feature a cool design which add to the style factor. Regular typists can get used to the keyboard in just a matter of time. There is nothing much to complain about in the IdeaPad U110’s keyboard.

The touchpad is standard with good sensitivity and a very smooth finish. The touchpad buttons are quite good too, with just the right amount of force needed to click them. Lenovo has done away with the fingerprint reader and replaced it with its nice new face recognition technology called Veriface which performs great. It uses the built in webcam to scan your face and checks whether you are authorized to access the computer.

Battery Life

Lenovo bundles both the 4 cell and the extended 7 cell battery with the IdeaPad U110. The 4 cell battery has a rated battery life of about 2 hours while the 7 cell battery can juice it up for about 6 hours, exactly as much as Lenovo claims. The above battery life was obtained with the Power management settings turned to Laptop / Portable. You can squeeze out even more by turning off Wi-Fi and lowering the display brightness. Surprisingly, the 7 cell battery is just slightly bigger and heavier than the 4 cell battery inspite of the huge power increase it supplies. The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 completely pleases in terms of battery life and its very nice of Lenovo to include both the 4 cell and 7 cell battery at no extra charge.

Pros

• Clean Design
• Great Build Quality
• Ultra portable
• Good Battery life

Cons

• Expensive
• Extra Glossy & Grainy Display

Conclusion

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is a good notebook with a very stylish mix of decent power and great portability. It can be called one of the best in its range and is a much better buy than the Macbook Air. Except for the mediocre display, it doesn’t actually have any shortcomings. The bundled 7 cell battery and the external DVD drive are great additions. If you are on the lookout of a stylish notebook with a small footprint, adequate power and maximum style, we would definitely recommend the IdeaPad U110.

HP Pavilion dv5t

Its been a rather long time since HP updated the popular dv6000 series. Dell has been quick with its updates which have given them advantage over HP in the current market. But things could change rapidly with the introduction of HP Pavilion dv5t which is based on the latest Intel Montevina Centrino 2 technology. The chipset has many advantages over its predecessor such as powerful dedicated graphics.

HP Pavilion dv5t specifications :

• Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor 2.26GHz

• Display : 15.4-inch WSXGA+ Infinity display
• RAM : 2GB DDR2-800 RAM (2x 1GB)
• Hard Disk : 160GB 5400RPM hard drive
• Graphics : Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT 512MB DDR2 RAM
  
• Battery : High-capacity 6-cell Li-ion battery
• OS : Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
• Approx. price : $1300

Design has got a major overhaul and if the dv6000 had stylish looks, this one has killer looks. HP has put a lot of effort and thought into the design and added a futuristic look to it. The notebook is streamlined and has rounded corners. The display rests only on one large hinge instead of two. The surfaces are glossy and reflective pretty much similar to dv6000 series. The palm rest and base is metallic rather than plastic leading to a much better build quality.

The touch buttons are now a bit farther off from the keyboard but that does not affect their functionality a bit. The HP logo on the lid is backlit now, which adds a whole lot of class to this new notebook. The build quality which was not great in dv6000 series, has been looked after and dv5t has a compact and strong build.

The display resolution has also got a bump from the standard 1280 x 800. It now supports a resolution of 1680 x 1050 which is great for viewing movies especially HD ones. Also it leads to more viewable area and hence less scrolling is needed for large documents. There are two types to displays to choose from : standard BrightView and BrightView Infinity with the latter making the display borderless. Display quality is a strong point of HP notebooks and that goes for dv5t too. It produces clear and perfectly saturated images.

The speakers on the dv5t are the branded Altec Lansing ones which offer decent sound quality. There are standard stereo speakers without any subwoofer. Volume is high but not necessarily the sound quality. The media remote is the same that came with dv6000 series having good functionality to control the PC from a distance. The webcam produces clear images and handles video conferences smoothly.

Heat and noise are two issues that have also been addressed with the dv5t. The earlier series used to idle above 40 degrees even when idle and touching 70 degrees on full load. But the dv5t idles at around 30 degress and goes upto 65 degrees on full load. The graphic card though runs very hot under full load. The fan does not produce whirly sound even when running at full speed, although you can hear it running. The fan positions remain unchanged which means you need to have a solid base when running the notebook under load for optimal cooling.

Keyboard wasn’t of good build quality with the dv6000 and the keys felt wobbly. This has vanished with the dv5t as it uses a high build quality keyboard which offers tactile feedback. The feel of the keys is smoother and glossier. Overall a much better keyboard than dv6000. The touchpad is pretty much the same. It has a glossy finish and inlaid into the palm rest area. I have never been found of touchpads and this one is no exception.

The notebook has Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, e-SATA, IEEE 1394 mini-Firewire, ExpressCard slots. The right side has the optical drive with USB ports and TV tuner/modem fillers. At the front is IR Receiver along with couple of headphone jacks. Addition of eSATA is refreshing as eSATA devices are slowly making their presence felt in the market.On the wireless front, you can customise to upgarde to a wireless card having N band capability. Otherwise you get the standard 802.11b/g Broadcom card. You can also upgrade to High-capacity 6-cell from standard 6-cell battery. Battery life is low at about 2 hours when watching a movie.

You can choose not to add a graphics and use the onboard Intel X4500 Integrated graphics, good enough for casual gaming and running Vista with full effects. HP offers both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. The performance of the notebook is great with DDR-800 memory and Nvidia 9600GT graphics card. The processor is also top notch and performs well. The graphics card ensures you can play games at latest games at medium settings. Overall the dv5t is a great performer.

Pros :

• Great configuration
• Affordable price
• Good build quality
• Excellent display
• Excellent keyboard
• Runs cool and quiet
• Great performance
• eSATA, HDMI port included

Cons :

• High graphics card temperature
• Low battery life
• Average touchpad

Final Thoughts

The HP Pavilion dv5t is a excellent upgrade from the dv6000 series and manages to address most of the issues. Apart from the battery life, this laptop is a perfect blend of style and performance. It offers great performance at an affordable price.

Rating : 4.25/5

Limited Edition Asus Eee to be Released

Limited Edition Asus Eee to be Released

Two special edition Eee PCs are being released in Korea.

Asus is preparing to launch a special edition of the Eee 901 and the 1000H.

The special edition, at least for now, will be confined to Korea. There are a few different, unnamed versions.

The first has a blood-red lid, and is covered in small flower designs (or maybe snowflakes), which likely reduces the number of male customers who will purchase it.

The next sports a bright green lid, and has a small leaf pattern covering the lower half of the lid and the keyboard.

The pre-release mentions a pink version, but it seems that pink actually means "red".

The special editions are available for pre-order through August 22nd. These will probably start hitting eBay around the end of the month.

Acer Aspire One

Acer is the latest entrant to the ultraportable ‘Netbook’ segment dominated by heavy weights like Asus, HP and MSI currently. Asus revolutionized the notebook market in 2007 with its ultraportable offering - the Asus EEE PC 701. It was soon followed by many other manufacturers offering their own versions of ultraportables with more or less similar configurations. Asus, however did win the first round of the “War of the Ultra Portables” by a landslide. Now comes the second generation of Ultraportables, more commonly known as ‘Netbooks’ now.

The new generation of netbooks comes with a whole new load of features including more powerful processors, better displays, higher storage capacities and much powerful batteries. Almost all of the new entrants sport Intel Atom processors, SSD storage ranging from 8 GB to 32 GB and better batteries. They have almost similar configurations, with slight changes in the designs and other features. Their prices are also very much in the same range, starting at around $500 to $700. The competition has fiercely hottened up with the launch of the MSI Wind U100 and the Asus EEE PC 1000H in the previous month. Lenovo and Dell are expected to jump in soon with the Ideapad S10 and E Slim respectively.

Of all these next generation ultra portables, Acer’s Aspire One is one of the cheapest, with the Linux version at just $379. It is loaded with decent features and a good design. It is a bit underpowered compared to its competitors in terms RAM, SSD capacity, battery life but can be upgraded. Besides it is at such a good price point, that it seems possible to neglect its shortcomings. Let’s have a closer look at the Acer Aspire One.

Acer Aspire One Specifications :

• CPU: 1.6 GHZ Intel Atom N270
• RAM: 512MB (Upgradable to 1.5 GB)
• SSD: 8 GB
• Display: 8.9″ WSVGA LCD @ 1024 x 600
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Operating System: Linpus Linux Lite
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0, Ethernet, Headphone & Microphone jack, VGA
• Other: 5 in 1 card reader (SD, xD, MMC, MS, MS Pro), 0.3 MP VGA Webcam
• Size: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Price (Approx): $379
• Warranty: One year limited

Design

The Acer Aspire One is a beautifully built machine. It looks sleek and has a metallic feel to it. It is available in 4 colors- pearl white, black, pink and navy blue. On the face of it, it never feels or looks like a cheap notebook. Instead it looks quite regal and expensive. The Pearl White Aspire One sports a glossy finish on the lid and exteriors which further accentuates its great design.

The Aspire One is both slimmer and lighter than the other 8.9″ers - Asus EEE PC 901 and the HP Mininote 2133. It weighs just 2.2 pounds which makes it one of the lightest ultraportables, and a joy to carry around. It scores slightly above the EEE PC 901 and HP Mininote in terms of looks and portability. The Build quality is good too and feels robust.

The port configuration of the Aspire One is very similar to the EEE PC 901 or the MSI Wind. On the left, it has the VGA port, Ethernet, a USB port and a SD card reader. On the right is the 5 in 1 card reader, 2 USB ports and headphone and mic jacks. Above the keyboard are the various status indicators.

Display and Sound

The Acer Aspire One sports a 8.9″ LCD display supporting resolutions of 1024 x 600 px which is the standard for 8.9″ and 10″ netbooks these days. It is brighter than the EEE PC 901 and MSI Wind displays and has good contrast levels with solid colors. The horizontal and vertical viewing angles are decent. The 1024 x 600 px wide screen resolution is optimum for watching movies and surfing through webpages. You can also connect your Aspire One to any external CRT / LCD monitor or projector using the VGA port.

It also comes with a 0.3 MP webcam and mic above the display. It performs decently with slightly grainy quality while the mic is good and clear. The speakers are loud enough to be heard around a small room but the sound quality isn’t much to speak of. The EEE PC’s Dolby certified speakers can easily trump these. You can plug in standard earphones of your choice using the 3.5mm audio jack.

Performance

The Acer Aspire One is powered by the Intel Atom N270 clocked at 1.6 GHZ and with 512 KB L2 cache, the same as in Asus EEE PC 901 and the MSI Wind and many other upcoming netbooks . It is very power eficient and has a very low TDP of 2.5W. The Aspire One comes with a rather low 512 MB of RAM which can be upgraded to 1.5 GB. It comes with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 onboard graphics which is capable of running low end games and multimedia playback. It also has a 8 GB SSD for storage which is a bit less compared to other netbooks. One interesting addition is the second only SD card reader which seems to be there only for expanding the storage of the Aspire One through SD cards.

The Aspire One is loaded with Linpus Linux Lite but is fully compatible with Windows XP as well. The Linux Linpus Lite OS runs quite fast and is very responsive despite having just 512 MB RAM at its disposal. It is inspired slightly by Asus’s Xandros OS and sports a very minimal interface with four sections - Connect, Work, Fun and Files. Under ‘Connect’, you’ll find Firefox, an IM client with AIM, GTalk, MSN, and support, an RSS reader, Skype, Wikipedia links, Google Maps etc. ‘Work’ houses OpenOffice, Contacts, Calculator, Notes, and Calendar. ‘Fun’ has Media Master, Photo Master, KolourPaint, a webcam, and some games. ‘Files’ has the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, My Downloads, and My Files folders.You can easily multitask 3-4 apps without any lags or delays. The SSD contributes a lot to the speed of the Aspire One. It also adds to the durability of the Aspire One and consumes less power.

The Wi-Fi reception is great with rare disconnections. It offers about 90% signal strength about 20 feet around the access point. Pages load quickly with no lag and even video / audio streaming works great on a decent connection.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Keyboard is around 86% of a normal QWERTY keyboard and is quite good to type on. It has ample key spacing and travel. The keys are responsive and offer good feedback. Typing shouldn’t at all be a problem on the Aspire One. It is quite suitable for touch typing.

The touchpad is very similar to the one on the HP Mininote 2133. It has the left and right mouse buttons on the sides instead of the bottom which is quite an annoyance for normal users. The touchpad is also a bit small vertically, making it difficult to traverse the whole screen at a time. The buttons are a bit hard to press but that is workable.

Battery Life

The Aspire One comes with a 3 cell battery but falls short when it comes to battery life even with the Atom processor and SSD. It offers just about 2 hours with normal usage. There is an optional 6 cell battery upgrade available in case you want more juice of of your Aspire One.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Good design & Build quality

Cons

• Low RAM
• Low SSD capacity
• No Bluetooth

Conclusion

The Acer Aspire One misses out on a lot of features but it also comes with a whole lot of upgrade options. The base price - $379 is sweet. Though if you can afford to, the EEE PC 901 or the MSI Wind would be a better option as the upgrades are a bit too costly. On the other hand, it is a much better option than the $399 EEE PC 4G 701. All in all, its a good buy for the budget conscious. If you can wait, the upcoming Lenove Ideapad S10 is priced the same as the Aspire One and promises to be better.

Rating: 3.5 / 5

MSI Introduces Ultra-Portable Wind 'Love Edition'

MSI has started a global charity program to help poor children learn essential computing skills.

MSI has introduced a special edition line of their ultra-portable notebook, the Wind, that will be used to help poor children in several different countries.

The special edition Wind is dubbed the 'Love' edition, and comes in white only, and features a series of gray and tan/yellow hearts.

The donations from this charity drive will go to help poverty-stricken children in China, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Korea, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

Unfortunately, it is not clear if individuals purchase a laptop that will get sent overseas, or if the consumer gets the laptop and the proceeds go to the charity.

Judging by the wording of the press release - that these notebooks will be used to teach children essential computer skills - it seems the purchased laptop will be sent to one of the countries listed above.

Nokia 5320 Xpress Music

The Nokia 5320 is the newest Xpress Music branded music phone from Nokia. It is way ahead of its older Xpress Music siblings in terms of features and even pure music. It is powered by the new Symbian S60 OS 9.3 with FP2. It is small, sleek and very light. It has excellent sound quality and above all, it is not very expensive. In fact, it is one of the cheapest S60 smartphones. It is fully packed with most standard connectivity options as well, which makes us wonder whether it should be marketed as a music phone or a smart phone.

It is one of the few phones that possess almost everything a phone should and at a very reasonable price. It does lack out at some points like the absence of Wi-Fi and GPS. We attempt to review this device and try to showcase its weak and strong points. Finally, we check out whether this phone emerges out a winner or turns out to be just another damp squib.

Nokia 5320 Specifications:

• Dimensions : 108 x 46 x 15 mm
• Weight : 90 g
• Display : 2.0″ TFT, 16M Colors, QVGA 240 x 320 px.
• Camera : 2 MP Cam with LED Flash, secondary videocall cam
• Chipset : ARM 11 369 MHZ Processor
• Memory : 140 MB Internal memory
• Connectivity : GPRS Class 32, HSCSD, EDGE Class 32, 3G HSDPA, USB 2.0
• Bluetooth : Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• OS : Symbian OS v9.3 rel 3.2 with FP2

Other Key Features :
8 way Navi key, FM Radio with RDS, Nokia Say and Play, Java MIDP 2.1, 3.5 mm audio jack.

Design and Display:

The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music is a very compact phone and has dimensions of 108 x 46 x 15 mm which are very small compared to other smartphones with similar features. It weighs just 90 gms which is light compared to smartphone standards. It has a normal candy bar form factor and features a cute new design with rounded edges. It is fully made of plastic and has quite a good build quality. It is sturdy enough, conforming to Nokia’s famous durability standards meaning that it can easily withstand some light drops. The design was meant to appeal to the younger generation and it seems to do quite a good job at that. The alphanumeric keypad is standard and ergonomic with large keys that are easy to press. It has good backlighting making it easy to operate in the dark. The D Pad is comfortable and gels in with the keypad.

Coming to the design details, the front face of the 5320 consists of the 2.0″ screen and the keypad. On the top of the front face are the earpiece, the videocall camera and a “My Own” key which can be used to set personalized shortcuts to any application or function. The right side sports the camera key and the volume rocker while the left face houses three dedicated music control keys. On the top is just the Power key in the middle. The bottom sports the Micro USB slot, the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the charger slot. The back of the phone houses the 2 MP camera with dual LED flash.

The display is a 2.0″ TFT supporting 16 M colors and resolutions of the standard 240 x 320 px. The screen size is a bit of a letdown as it isnt very easy to read it at such resolutions. The display quality is good with decent brightness and contrast levels and vibrant colors. It has good sunlight legibility as well.

OS and Interface features :

The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music is powered by Symbian OS v9.3 rel 3.2 with Feature Pack 2. It is the latest edition of the very popular Symbian OS. It is one of the few phones to sport the new features including the N78 and the E71. Feature Pack 2 adds in a host of new functionality and visual and performance improvements. As the 5320 has a powerful 369 MHZ ARM 11 processor and a good amount of RAM - about 80 MB at bootup, the OS feels very fast and responsive. There are no lags or delays when multitasking about apps.

The 5320 never slows down even with quite a few apps active. FP2 comes with a lot of cool new animations added to the User Interface. The 5320 supports the vast library of Symbian Apps - Office Applications, Email clients, Chat clients, Imaging Apps, Audio and Video players, File Explorers and much more. It has the standard Symbian Contacts and Messaging apps with slight improvements. It does have a few quirks but those can easily be fixed with firmware updates.

Web browsing is a pleasure, as on all other Nokia OS 9 phones. The built in OSS browser based on Webkit is excellent and renders even heavy and detailed web pages exactly as they would on a PC. You seldom feel any lag, thanks to the huge amount of RAM in the 5320. The only thing you can complain about is the small screen.

It is rumored that the 5320 will support Ngage 2.0 games with a future firmware update as soon as all bugs related to the Ngage 2.0 app on FP2 are ironed out.

Multimedia playback :

The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music doesn’t quite live up to expectations of being the latest Xpress Music phone.The sound quality is definitely better than most phones but nothing spectacular. The loudspeaker quality is great and is very loud too. It supports many audio formats like MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA natively. The new Music Player is simple and easy to use. It has 5 default equalizer preset settings you can choose from. You can also create more if you wish to. The 5320 XM also supports A2DP which enables you to hear streaming music wirelessly on your stereo Bluetooth headset. The three dedicated music keys on the side are a great addition allowing you to control your music with a click. You can also plug in your own headphones directly to the 3.5 mm jack without the need of any adapters.

The video playback is great on the superb 16 M color screen. You can view videos in fullscreen mode in the default Real player. You can also install many other video players like Smartmovie player, DivX player or Core Player. However, a bigger screen would definitely have added to the video watching experience. the 2″ screen is not very suitable for watching videos. Other than that, there are absolutely no negatives when it comes to video playback. There are no delays in opening and viewing media files, all thanks to FP 2.

Camera and FM :

The Nokia 5320 XM has a sub standard 2.0 MP (1600 x 1200 px) camera with a dual LED Flash. The camera interface is good but it doesn’t feature many customizable options. It doesn’t have autofocus. It comes as a shocker as almost all new phones these days sport atleast a 3.2 MP camera. It takes average pics that have slightly washed out colors. It shoots video at 15 FPS at QVGA (320 x 240) resolution. The video quality isn’t much to speak of either. Overall, if you want a decent camera phone, this isn’t where you should be looking at.

It also features a FM Radio with RDS and comes a nice, easy to use interface which can auto scan all the available stations and store them. It comes with RDS support and the Visual Radio app.

Connectivity :

The 5320 carries a host of connectivity options like GPRS, EDGE, 3G, Bluetooth, USB 2.0 which is a bit surprising considering that is is essentially a Xpress Music phone. However it does miss out on Wi-Fi which shouldn’t be much of a problem as it wasn’t intended to be an office phone anyways. It doesn’t have IR support also but that standard is almost dead now. It also doesnt support GPS which means that you will have to use an external GPS receiver. But that is understandable considering the other features it packs, and its price.

Accessories :

Along with the Nokia 5320 XM, you get a 1 GB MicroSD card, the Xpress Music handsfree, a charger and a Micro USB data cable. You also get the regular manuals and a PC Suite CD. It has a weak 890 mAh BL-5B battery powering it which provides about 3.5 hrs of talktime and lasts for more than a day with standard usage.

Pros :

• Sturdy build quality
• Relatively Inexpensive
• Fast processor and High RAM
• Good audio quality

Cons :

• Small screen
• Substandard 2.0 MP cam with no AF
• No Wi-Fi
• No GPS
• Poor battery life

Final Words :

The Nokia 5320 Xpress Music is a great phone and offers the best of both worlds. It is a potent mix of features and multimedia capabilities at a relatively low price. However it does have its shortcomings but that do not make it a bad buy. Apart from the mediocre cam, absence of GPS and Wi-Fi and the small screen size, there is nothing that this phone lacks in.
It should become a great hit and connect with its target audience easily.

Rating : 3.8 / 5

Creative Zen X-Fi

The Creative Zen X-Fi is Creative’s latest addition to its MP3 Player family. The new Zen X-Fi is believed to be the replacement to the Creative Zen PMP. It is almost similar to the Zen with respect to the dimensions, weight etc and sports a much more stylish design. It is available in capacities of 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. It competes directly with Apple’s iPod Nano and offers much more in terms of features. We review the Zen X-Fi and check whether it makes the cut.

Creative Zen X-Fi Specs

• Capacity: 16GB / 32GB
• Dimensions: 83mm x 55mm x 12.8mm
• Weight: 68.75gm
• Display: 2.5″ 16.7 M colors TFT LCD, 320 x 240 pixels
• Battery Life: 36 hrs Audio playback, 5 hrs Video playback
• Video Formats: MJPEG, WMV9, MPED4-SP, DivX 4/5 and XviD
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC4 (.m4a), WAV (ADPCM), Audible 4
• Image Formats: JPEG / BMP/ GIF / PNG / TIFF
• Battery: Built-in Li-ion battery
• FM Radio: 32 preset stations
• EQ Settings: 8 presets and 5 band custom EQ
• Organizer: Calendar, Contact, Task List
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with WEP, WPA, WPA2
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, SD connection

Other features: Power Charging, Album Art, Voice Recording

Price: 16 GB - $199, 32 GB - $279.

Design and Interface:

The Creative Zen X-Fi is a very sleek and stylish DAP with dimensions of just 83mm x 55mm x 12.8mm and weighs in at just around 70 gms. This makes it very portable and easy to carry. It has superb build quality and feels sturdy and tough. It is fully built of plastic but has a metallic look and feel about it. The black version looks fully metallic and is good to handle. The 2.5″ 16 M color screen is slightly better than that of the Creative Zen and supports resolutions of 320 x 240 px. It is bright and vibrant with great viewing angles.

The user interface is the same old Zen’s with some new features integrated into it. It is one of the most intuitive and easy to use interfaces you will come across. You can also configure the menus to your liking and edit Menu items. The controls are very good, but there are too many buttons. It feels a bit cramped and it would have been better had Creative included a 5 way DPad as in the Zen. But its still very much usable and you can get used to it easily.

It supports Windows XP and Vista out of the box but doesn’t support Linux or Mac unless you install some hacks. You can simply drag and drop your music and video files into your Creative Zen or use any Media Player like Windows Media player or Winamp. It also comes with the new “Creative Centrale” software to manage your multimedia collection and sync data and update the firmware. It also includes a video converter for the Zen X-Fi.

The Creative Zen X-Fi supports expandable memory by way of SD card support but the memory card integration is not at all good. You can just access the files in the SD card but without any of the gallery or extra features just like in the Zen. The internal memory and external memory are clearly separated with the files in internal memory getting all the good treatment and features while the files in the external memory get neglected.

Audio and Video playback:

The Creative Zen X-Fi has superb sound quality and lives up to its family name. It is one of the best DAPs in the market when it comes to sound quality and can easily satisfy the hungry ears of most audiophiles. It does lag behind the Cowon’s but easily trumps out all of the iPods. What adds to the music playback is the inclusion of the Creative EP 830 earphones which are better than most other bundled earphones out there.

It also includes X-Fi which is Creative’s proprietary sound enhancing technology that improves the overall sound quality to a great extent by reshaping waveforms from lossless music. It comes with two settings - Crystallize and Expand. The music does sound a bit artificial and synthetic but X-Fi is a great feature, no doubt. The Creative Zen X-Fi also comes with a built in speaker which has a good volume and sound quality with nearly zero distortion.

The Video experience on the Zen X-Fi is very similar to Zen. It offers smooth video playback with no lag. It supports almost the same video codecs and formats as the old Zen - MJPEG, WMV9, MPED4-SP, DivX 4/5 and XviD. All other formats must be transcoded to the following formats at the 320 x 240 px resolution. The best tool for the conversion would be Creative Centrale. The 2.5″ 16 M color screen has good brightness and contrast levels, wider viewing angles.

Other Features:

The Creative Zen X-Fi also has Wi-Fi support and can connect to other wireless networks easily. You can share media content with other computers over the Wi-Fi network. Creative has also included a Chat feature in the Zen X-Fi usoing which you can chat with your friends over the Creative Chat network. It doesn’t include support for multitasking which means that you can’t do anything else while you are online. The Zen X-Fi also has very rudimentary texting support with no predictive text feature. It also includes no support for the major chat protocols like Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN etc which makes the Chat feature pretty unusable at this time.

The Creative Zen also includes other features like FM Radio, Voice recording, Photo Viewer and Organiser. Most of them are almost the same as the old Zen’s. The FM radio has decent reception and has the auto scan feature to automatically scan and store radio stations. You can view JPEG images in various modes like lists, thumbnails etc in the inbuilt Photo Viewer. You can also create slideshows with your images. The Voice recording feature can record audio and save recorded files as low bitrate WAV files. It also has shortcuts to start recording fast. The Organiser includes Contacts, calendar and to-do lists all of which can be synced with Creative Centrale.

The battery life of the Creative Zen X-Fi is officially rated at 35 hrs for audio and 5 hrs for video. It lasts about 2 days with medium usage with about 12 to 14 hrs of music and about 2.5 hrs of video. The battery drains off much quickly when Wi-Fi is in use.

Pros

• Nice bundled headphones
• Great build quality
• Superb sound quality with X-Fi
• Wi-Fi, FM radio, Organizer

Cons

• No Linux, Mac support
• Poor SD implementation
• Poor Chat software
• Primitive Text input

Conclusion:

The Creative Zen X-Fi is a great buy at just $199 for the 16 GB version and $279 for the 32 GB version. It includes a whole new array of features, some of which may be poorly implemented but are great to have, nevertheless. Most of them can be improved easily by a firmware update. It is a great replacement to the Zen with some glitches.

Rating: 3.75 / 5

Asus EEE PC 901

Asus was the pioneer of the ultraportable notebooks, more commonly known as “Netbooks” now. It revolutionized the notebook market in 2007 with its ultraportable offering - the Asus EEE PC 701, a 7″ sub notebook with enough power to run basic applications and became the ultraportable of choice. It was the winner of the first round of the “War of the ultraportables”, mainly because there wasn’t much competition in that segment then. However now, the competition has heated up with loads of sub notebooks with similar features and form factors entering the market, the MSI Wind and the HP MiniNote 2133 being the main competitors.

There are many more yet to come, like the Dell 500, ACi Ultra Mini and Acer Aspire One. The main USP of the EEE PC was the small form factor offering maximum portability while the major shortcomings were its small, low resolution screen and low SSD capacity. Asus is back with the new iterations of the EEE PC, the EEE PC 900 and the EEE PC 901 with a higher resolution 8.9″ LCD display and larger SSD capacities. Both of them have exactly the same configuration with a some changes, the EEE PC 901 is powered by an Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHZ processor while the EEE PC 900 still has the older Intel Celeron M ULV 900 MHZ. Both the EEE PC 900 and EEE PC 901 are available in Windows XP and Linux flavors, with the Windows XP version having only a 12 GB SSD compared to the Linux version’s 20 GB.

In this review we check out the EEE PC 901 and see whether it is a viable option and whether it can beat the other competitors like the MSI Wind and the HP Mininote 2133.

Asus EEE PC 901 Specifications:

• Processor: Intel Atom 1.6 GHz N270
• Storage: 12GB / 20 GB SSD (4GB onboard + 8GB / 16 GB PCI-E mini SSD card)
• RAM: 1GB of DDR2 RAM (667MHz)
• OS: Windows XP operating system
• Display: 8.9-inch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution
• Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n Atheros, Bluetooth 2.0
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0, 1 VGA monitor out, headphone jack, mic input, SD card reader, Ethernet 10/100
• Webcam: 1.3 MP
• Battery: 6600 mAh 7.2V Li-Ion
• Input: Keyboard and Multi-touch touchpad
• Dimensions: 1.6″ x 9.0″ x 6.9″
• Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Price: $599

Design:

The Asus EEE PC 901 is very different from the original EEE PC 701 and the EEE PC 900 which was just a rehash of the EEE PC 701. It has a much more smoother design with a nice glossy finish and rounded edges. The Asus EEE PC 901 is only slightly bigger than the EEE PC 900. The Asus branding has been replaced by an EEE logo. The build quality is superb and the EEE PC 901 feels sturdy and can easily withstand a light drop. It has a new circular hinge which is stronger than the old EEE 701’s. The EEE PC 901 has dimensions of 1.6″ x 9.0″ x 6.9″ and a weight of around 2.5 pounds which make it the ideal ultra portable computer.

The port configuration is pretty much the same as the older EEE PC’s. It houses an Ethernet port, USB 2.0 port and headphone and mic jacks on the left while there is the card reader, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA out on the right. It also has the shiny new activity and status LEDs on the front near the Touchpad.

Display and Sound:

The Asus EEE PC 901 has a 8.9″ LCD screen which supports resolutions of 1024 x 600 px natively and is almost the same as the display of the EEE PC 900. It has good brightness and contrast levels with solid colors. It has decent viewing angles and good visibility under sunlight. The 1024 x 600 px wide screen resolution is a relief after using the default 800 x 480 resolution on the EEE PC 701. Most webpages don’t need horizontal scrolling at all. You can also plug it to any external CRT / LCD monitor or projector using the VGA port. It also comes with a good quality 1.3 MP webcam above the display.

The Dolby certified speakers add to the overall experience of the EEE as a multimedia device with their great sound quality. The volume is louder than most laptops with amazing clarity. You can also plug in headphones of your choice through the standard 3.5 mm audio jack.

Performance:

The Asus EEE PC 901 is powered by the latest Intel Atom N270 which is clocked at 1.6 GHZ with 512KB L2 cache. It is very power eficient and has a very low TDP of 2.5W. It comes with 1 GB of DDR2 667 MHZ RAM, upgradable to 2 GB. It has the Intel GMA 950 onboard graphics which can manage low end games and multimedia playback easily. It comes with two Operating System options - Windows XP and Linux, with the XP version priced at $50 more than the Linux version having the same configuration. It boots Windows XP in lesser time than most notebooks and can handle 4-5 applications without any lag. The difference between the Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHZ and the Intel Celeron M ULV 900 MHZ is noticeable both in terms of performance and efficiency. It is capable of running all the basic Media, Office and Web applications easily. The configuration of the Asus EEE 901 is very similar to that of the MSI WInd except that the EEE PC 901 sports a 12 GB / 20 GB SSD while the MSI Wind sports a 80 GB 2.5″ HDD. Due to this, the EEE is more responsive and fast and consumes less power. It can also absorb shocks easily due to no moving parts. Overall, the performance of the EEE 901 is great and it is very power efficient due to the use of the new Intel Atom processors and the SSD.

Keyboard & Touchpad:

The keyboard on the EEE PC 901 is the same as the one on the EEE PC 900 with minor differences if any. It feels cramped and the key spacing is a bit less. The MSI Wind and HP MiniNote 2133 have much better keyboards than the EEE PC 901. On the other hand, the EEE PC 901 features a bigger multitouch enabled trackpad. It is far more roomier than its previous versions and feels good to work with. You can use multitouch gestures with the trackpad to perform certain functions like zooming in and out of pictures. The functionality of the trackpad is limited but it is surely going to improve with some updates. The EEE PC 901 now has two separate mouse buttons instead of the single clicker in the older versions which is a welcome change.

Adding to all this, the EEE PC 901 also features 4 new buttons on the top of the keyboard which allow you to turn off the monitor, switch between screen resolutions, change between power saving modes. The 4th button is a user definable launcher. There is also a Power button to the extreme right. You can switch between the following resolutions - 800 x 600, 1024 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1024 x 768 compressed. There are 3 power saving modes, running the CPU at a clock speed of 1.2 GHZ, 1.6 GHZ and 1.8 GHZ respectively to increase battery life. You can also lower the display brightness and turn off Wi-Fi to increase battery life.

Battery life:

The Asus EEE PC 901 comes with an awesome 6 cell 6600 mAh 7.2V Li-Ion battery which is very powerful and can easily keep the EEE PC 901 juiced up for 4.5-5 hrs. This is partly due to the new low power Atom processors being used and the use of an SSD. To extract more juice out of the battery, you can turn off Wi-Fi, use the power saving mode to underclock the processor and lower the display brightness. The battery life comes up to be one of the strongest plus points of the EEE PC 901.

Pros:

• Bigger, Better Display
• Light and Portable
• Multitouch Trackpad
• Great battery

Cons:

• Cramped Keyboard
• Slightly Expensive

Conclusion:

The Asus EEE PC 901 comes out to be an ideal ultra portable, offering a great blend of portability, power and style. It scores nearly the same as the MSI Wind in most criterias and does better it in some like battery life, less weight, smaller dimensions, better trackpad etc. However it is priced higher than the MSI Wind which can account for all the added features. It has some really cool new features like the multitouch trackpad which make it a great buy. However, new customers may want to wait for the upcoming EEE PC 1000 series.

Rating: 4.20 / 5.

Lenovo ThinkPad SL400

The Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 is the latest addition to the ThinkPad family and promises to offer features and performance at a fraction of the cost of other ThinkPads. Lenovo's new IdeaPad line of notebooks might give consumers plenty of attractive options, but The new SL series is the first line of small business notebooks designed with ThinkPad styling at an affordable price. Is there more here than just traditional ThinkPad shape and a low price? Our full review of the SL400 shows why this laptop might (or might not) be perfect for you.

Our ThinkPad SL400 has the following specifications:

• Processor: 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (1066MHz FSB, 3MB Cache)
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS 256MB
• Screen: 14.1" WXGA, Anti-glare (1280x800, 200nit)
• Memory: 2GB(up to 4GB configurable)
• Storage: 160GB SATA HDD (5400rpm)
• Optical Drive: Dual layer CD/DVD recordable drive
• Wireless and Communications: Intel 4965AGN (802.11 a/b/g/n wi-fi), BlueTooth 2.0 EDR
• Battery: 6-cell Li-Ion
• Dimensions: 13.2" x 9.7" x 1.3"-1.5")
• Weight: 5.5lbs with battery
• Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
• Warranty: 1-year

The pricing on the SL400 starts at around $799. As configured, the price of our review unit of the ThinkPad SL400 is $1,119. While that puts it above the range of most "budget" laptops, this configuration does offer a new Intel "Montevina" processor, and dedicated graphics card at a reasonable price. Needless to say, this is one of the more budget-friendly ThinkPads on the market. More to the point, Lenovo has gone out of its way to give you multiple reasons to consider the SL series over the competition.

Build and Design

The ThinkPad SL400 is quite solid in terms of build quality, though the plastics used in the chassis construction do give in to some case flex when squeezed. The entire chassis exterior is plastic and while the appearance is nice, the "feel" of the notebook is a little less rugged than we've come to expect from ThinkPads. Unlike with the other ThinkPads, you don't get a double latch mechanism with button release to make sure the screen is held down when it is closed and being carried. Instead, the SL400 uses hinge tension to hold the screen in place.

Speaking of the tension hinge, the hinge on our review unit didn't provide nearly as much tension/resistance as we would have liked. Specifically, if you pick up the base of the SL400 and lightly shake the base of the notebook forward and back the screen will "flap" forward and back as you shake the notebook.

The glossy black plastic display cover is probably the most interesting design element on the SL400. Lenovo also decided to modify the traditional ThinkPad logo by adding a small red LED to the dot above the "i" in ThinkPad. I suppose someone still thinks "bling is the thing" in the world of small business. In any case, this certainly isn't a boring ThinkPad.

Expandability and expansion are pretty simple with this chassis design. The two access panels on the bottom of the notebook provide access to the wireless cards, RAM, processor and graphics. The side panel on the opposite side of the optical drives allows you to swap out the hard drive for a replacement drive.

Input and Output Ports

The number of ports the SL400 has is fairly good and certainly much better than the average budget notebook designed for small business. Here's a run down of the ports:

• 4 USB 2.0 ports
• Firewire
• ExpressCard slot
• Gigabit Ethernet and modem
• 5-in-1 multi-card reader
• Audio out, microphone in
• VGA monitor out
• HDMI (video and audio)
• Kensington lock slot

About the only thing you might consider "missing" on this notebook is an eSATA port. Since eSATA is rapidly becoming a new standard for external data storage, it would have been nice to see an eSATA port on the side of the SL400. On the other hand, it may only be a matter of time before we see USB 3.0 ports that surpass the performance of eSATA.

There's also no option for a docking station, you have to go with a USB-based port replicator (or ExpressCard/34) to get the additional ports you would want at a desk. Obviously engineers had to make design trade offs and you can't have it all on a notebook in this price range. Personally, I feel like the SL400 provides an excellent balance of ports for its size and cost.

Left view.	Right view.
Front view.	Rear view.

Performance and Benchmarks

Although it's nice that Lenovo is bringing a small business solution to the market for less than $800, the price wouldn't matter if the SL400 can't provide great performance for your dollar.

The Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor in our review unit provided ample processing power and never presented any problems when running applications or encoding video and audio files. The synthetic benchmarks below suggest the P8400 processor is one of the more capable processors from Intel and should satisfy the needs of any business professional.

Likewise, the NVIDIA 9300M GS dedicated graphics card with 256MB of RAM allows you to play most average games at a reasonable frame rate. This certainly isn't the laptop designed to play Crysis, but you'll have enough power to handle 1080p Blu-ray movies and some games (during non-work hours, of course).

Screen

The 14.1" WXGA, Anti-glare (1280 x 800) is nice and reasonably bright at 200nit brightness, color, contrast, and viewing angles are all good. More importantly, the display on our review unit uses a anti-glare matte finish ... something important to many business professionals and something we're glad to see.

Like most budget laptop displays, the screen on the SL400 does suffer from some minor color inversion at the lower vertical viewing angles ... but this is rarely a problem unless your laptop is resting on a desk and you're looking at the screen from down on the floor.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the ThinkPad SL400 has zero flex and excellent key travel with quiet presses. The keyboard is remarkably similar to the keyboards on the older ThinkPad R-series notebooks. There's little to complain about here from a functional standpoint. Sure, it's not the most attractive keyboard on the market ... but it works great. Of course, the SL400 wouldn't dream of calling itself a ThinkPad if it didn't include the iconic red Trackpoint pointing stick in addition to the standard touchpad.

The palm rest area is pretty plain: it has a matte black finish so it both feels and looks nice. It's very smooth and the touchpad is nicely textured with a responsive surface. Lenovo also decided to include the standard fingerprint reader for those businesses concerned with security.

Speakers and Audio

The built-in speakers are ... well ... average built-in speakers. In short, the speakers are small, underpowered, and produce tiny sound with plenty of highs and acceptable mid range but almost no bass. This is similar to what we've seen from other laptops in this class such as the Dell Vostro 1510 and Toshiba Satellite Pro L300. In other words, this ThinkPad is designed for small business and consumers who want a laptop that isn't flashy. Don't expect amazing speakers in this type of notebook.

On the bright side, the headphone jack produced distortion-free audio and works perfectly for earphones or external speakers.

Heat and Noise

The ThinkPad SL400 does a good job keeping heat under control. Even when the system was under stress during the performance benchmarking tests the SL400 remained relatively cool. Most users certainly won't have any trouble using this as a "laptop" since the these low heat levels won't cause any discomfort to your lap. Below are the external temperature readings listed in degrees Fahrenheit:

Noise was never an issue with the SL400, and this is one of the quietest notebooks we've seen (or rather heard) in this class. The system fan is extremely quiet, the hard drive rarely makes a peep even when it's actively writing data, and the DVD drive is fairly quiet (though not as quiet as some tray-loading DVD drives we've seen. In other words, the ThinkPad SL400 won't disturb your coworkers or the person seated next to you on a long flight.

Battery Life

With the notebook power settings in "balanced" mode, wireless on and the screen brightness set to 50 percent, the SL400 drained it's full battery after 3 hours and 13 minutes. Interestingly, Lenovo's proprietary Power Manager software accurately monitored the power consumption during the course of the battery test as the estimated battery time remaining changed depending on the level of activity. The battery life estimate jumped between a little more than four hours (when the notebook was left idle) to a little less than two hours when I was typing Word document and opening several applications at the same time.

While road warriors will cerrtainly want more battery life than what the SL400 has to offer, the notebook does a reasonable job in terms of travel power and provides battery life similar to the competition in this class.

Conclusion

Overall, there is a lot we can say in favor of the ThinkPad SL400. Lenovo is offering a solid budget ThinkPad for only $799 and also offering pre-configured models with better performance and features for $1,249 or less. That said, like most notebooks in the small business class, the SL400 suffers from cheap plastics used in the chassis construction, weak built-in speakers, and an overall build that is slightly thicker and heaver than needed.

As it stands now, there are a number of reasons you might want to pick up an SL400 rather than a similar notebook from the Dell Vostro lineup or Toshiba Satellite Pro line. That said, diehard ThinkPad owners might criticize the glossy lid, lack of lid latch, and the type of plastics used in some places. The performance of our test configuration suggests the SL400 packs enough raw power to satisfy most small business owners, but it's clear that the new SL series isn't the same ThinkPad we've seen before.

Pros:

• Affordable price

• ThinkPad quality keyboard and trackpoint

• Good screen (matte option is great)

• Solid performance

• Nice pre-configured options

• Stays cool and quiet
  

Cons:

• Thick and boxy overall

• Weak speakers

• Glossy lid is a magnet for fingerprints and dirt

• Plastics are thin and weak in some places

• Weak hinge tension on display lid

MSI Wind U100

The MSI Wind is the latest entrant to the already overflowing ultra portable notebook market with the Asus EEE PC 700 / 900 / 1000, HP 2133 Mini Note, ACi Ultra Mini, Everex Cloudbook, HCL MiLeap fighting for market share and the Acer Aspire One and Dell 500 just about to enter. This promises to be a savage competition and is currently being led by the Asus EEE PC’s having the first mover’s advantage. The Asus EEE PC 701 was a runaway hit following its launch in 2007 and grabbed many awards including the “The most wanted Christmas Gift”. It was a favorite everywhere and created a new low cost, ultra portable notebook or “Netbook” category with many other manufacturers jumping in to offer their creations. Of these, the new MSI Wind seems to be the most promising one with its good balance of price, features and portability. It seems to be the only viable option to the EEE PC’s. The new range of EEE PCs namely the 900 / 1000 are priced a bit high, competing more with normal notebooks in terms of price. They aren’t very portable either like the EEE PC 701’s. In this review we look at the MSI Wind and check whether it manages to grab the crown from the ruling EEE PC’s.

MSI Wind U100 Specifications

• Processor: Intel Atom N270 1.6 GHZ
• Display: 10″ WSVGA (1024 x 600) LCD
• OS: Linux / Windows XP Home Operating System
• Graphics: Intel GMA 950 Integrated
• RAM: 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 Memory
• HDD: 80 GB 2.5″ SATA
• Connectivity: Wifi-802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
• Battery: 3 Cell 11.1v 2200mAh Battery / 6 Cell
• Size: 10.2″ x 7″ x 1.3″
• Weight: 1.3 KG
• Price: $549.99

Design

The MSI Wind has a nice clean design and looks very similar to the white EEE PC with an almost similar layout and battery position. It has a glossy look and soft rounded edges which make it great to look at and work with. In all, it has a nice sombre look that looks great and likeable. It has an excellent build quality which is inspired from the Asus EEE PC and the HP Mini Note 2133. The build materials used are top quality which makes working with the MSI Wind U100 a pleasure. The MSI Wind has dimensions of 10.2″ x 7″ x 1.3″ and is slightly bigger than the EEE PC due to its larger 10″ screen. It is light and very portable at just 1.3 KG.

The MSI Wind houses a USB 2.0 port, a 4 in 1 memory card reader, mic and headphone jacks, a VGA port, and an Ethernet jack on the right side. On the left, you find 2 more USB 2.0 ports and the power jack and the fan exhaust. On the rear is the battery and the front is graced by cute little activity LEDs.

Display and Sound

The MSI Wind features a LED backlit, 10″ LCD with a default resolution of 1024 x 600 px (WSVGA). It is good with vibrant colors and great brightness and contrast levels. It has good wide viewing angles both horizontally and vertically. The horizontal viewing angles are less then the vertical though. The visibility is good under direct sunlight too so it might be your perfect companion on that camping trip. The 1024 x 600 resolution is optimum and requires almost no horizontal scrolling when surfing the internet. It also has a 1.3 MP webcam and a mic seated right next to it.

The speakers are quite decent but not very loud. They suffice for casual users - the MSI Wind wasn’t meant to be a media powerhouse anyways. The volume levels are good but a bit low while the clarity is good. You can always plug in your headphones if you need to.

Performance

The MSI Wind is powered by the latest Intel Atom N270 which is clocked at 1.6 GHZ and offers 512KB L2 cache. It is very power eficient and has a very low TDP of 2.5W. The Wind can be operated in 2 modes - Normal and Eco, to switch between powersaving and performance mode. In the normal mode, the Wind runs at full power - 1.6 GHZ clock while in the Eco mode it is underclocked to 800 MHZ increasing the battery life and decreasing the heat. It comes with 1 GB of DDR2 667 MHZ RAM, upgradable to 2 GB. It has the Intel GMA 950 onboard graphics which can easily manage low end games and almost all non-HD video playback. It comes with two Operating System options - Windows XP and Linux, with the XP version priced more than the Linux version having the same configuration. It boots Windows XP in less time and can handle 4-5 applications without any lag. It is capable of running all the basic Media, Office and Web applications easily. It has a 2.5″ 5400 RPM SATA HDD which means that it is slower and heavier than the SSD counterparts in the EEE PC. But it does have a great space advantage. The overall performance is great just as expected from an ultraportable.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The MSI Wind U100 features one of the best keyboards we have seen in ultra portables. It is close to a full size laptop keyboard with good key spacing and travel and offer good feedback. The keys are covered with some protective material increasing their life. It has a slightly changed key layout but that takes very little time to get used to. It is a great keyboard and should be comfortable enough for most users.

The touchpad on the MSI Wind is a bit too small to scroll the whole screen at once but is good and sensitive. It features a bar at the bottom for the left and right mouse buttons. The buttons require a firm click which is a bit of a problem. It could have been more responsive. However it is perfectly usable and features no other significant problems that could hamper its usability.

Battery life

The MSI Wind comes with a measly 3 cell 2200 mAh battery which offers just about 2 hrs 40 mins of battery life under normal usage. However it comes with a 6 cell battery upgrade at an extra cost which boosts the battery life greatly offering about 5 hrs. You can also switch to the ECO mode to increase battery life at the cost of performance. It runs absolutely cool with minimal fan noise and temperatures peaking out at about 48 C after about 2-3 hours of usage.

Pros:

• Nice clean design
• Light and Portable
• Great Display
• Runs cool

Cons:

• Low battery life

Conclusion:

The MSI Wind U100 is a great little notebook, offering the right mix of portability, features and price. It is priced slightly lower than the EEE PC 1000 with similar specs and seems to be a good alternative to it. It doesn’t have any major shortcomings. You can’t get more features than the MSI Wind’s at $550. It works great for casual and outdoor usage and isn’t a replacement for your desktop. We like this notebook and definitely recommend it.

Our Rating: 4.25 / 5.