Who does not like free stuff? ASUS is giving away 4 mystery EEE PCs for free. Winning is simple. Simple visit EEE PC group in Facebook and leave a valuable feedback on the four products. To know about these four products, you will have to visit their YouTube channel, Facebook profile and Myspace page. The products will continue to appear till April 10, 2009.
Please note that this contest is open for only those who are living in the US.
[via]
Plethora of Taiwanese LCD manufactures are readying themselves for the Windows 7’s multi-touch feature. Young Fast Optoelectronics, a Taiwanese company has already started manufacturing capacitive screens for the notebooks and will soon start manufacturing for the netbooks. Resistive touch screen makers like Mildex Optical will also start production to give some competition to the capacitive screen manufactures.
Windows 7 will probably be launched later this year (or early next year) and most of the netbook manufactures will FINALLY make switch from Windows XP to Windows 7. The reason is simple: Windows 7 offers some great multi-touch features which can change the way we use our devices and it will result in bump in demand of touch panels in netbooks/UMPCs.
[via fudzilla]
HTC TOUCH HD sports a huge 3.8-inch WVGA screen which is simply amazing to look at. Now, HTC and EA are bringing together Need For Speed Undercover for the racing enthusiasts. The gamer will be able to change the directions of the car with the G-Sensor of the Touch HD.
Also, Monopoly will be coming to windows mobile. Wait. Windows Mobile already has monopoly (made by handmark). But need for speed finally coming to Windows Mobile is a great news. I hope the HTC cooperates with Qualcomm to make the video drivers availble to the NFS team so that they can use the unused hardware acceleration present in Touch HD.
Here is the official press release:
Double Bonanza for Gamers! ! !
EA Mobile’s Need for Speed Undercover
and MONOPOLY HERE & NOW on HTC Touch HD
Fancy going undercover in the world of street racing or building a real estate empire on your mobile phone? Look no further to engage these gaming actions with EA Mobile’s Need For Speed Undercover and MONOPOLY HERE AND NOW* that NOW come bundled together for the first time on the Windows Mobile platform in Asia on the HTC Touch HD.
Get into your racing gear and rule the streets with the number 1 car racing franchise, Need For Speed Undercover. Racing enthusiasts get to experience gaming like never before with the vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface on the HTC Touch HD while they race against ruthless gangs running an international crime ring and test their racing skills in bounty challenges. What’s more, the G-Sensor on HTC Touch HD will auto-detect your movement of directions and even change into the landscape mode to provide a wider view when drifting through every tight corner of the streets.
With MONOPOLY HERE AND NOW, aspiring property moguls can buy and sell assets around the world. With unique player icons, sound effects, graphics and easy-to-use controls, the modern makeover of the world’s most popular board game will be more enjoyable with the HTC Touch HD, which comes with a pixel-packed 3.8” WVGA.
There is no better time to get started on your gaming adventures with such irresistible double bonanza on gaming treats, all packed into the HTC Touch HD!
OCZ has made the DIY Neutrino netbook official. This is not just another netbook. OCZ believes that the customer should be allowed to choose the memory, storage and the choice of OS that they want on their netbook. Every DIY netbook comes with:
10.1-inch screenThe user has the choice to configure their DIY netbook with upto 2GB RAM and upto 250GB HDD/SSD. I hope they make the battery also configurable as it is not much when compared to the competitors.
This is a good move by OCZ as this will allow them to get the netbooks according to the configuration they desire. The name is also apt. DIY = DO IT YOURSELF. Should not it be CIY = CONFIGURE IT YOURSELF?
Remember the Seeqpod that released a Windows Mobile application for searching and playing music online? Well, Seeqpod has been sued by a number of companies like Warner, EMI, and Capitol Records. Here is the statement from Warner Bros,
unlawful music service that directly engages in, encourages, and facilitates the mass infringement of Plaintiffs
We knew from the very beginning that it is very hard for a company like Seeqpod to stay in the market as it makes no efforts to filter the illegal content. This is going to be lesson for similar websites who distribute illegal content.
[via techcrunch]
Following the immense success of the original 8.9-inch Acer Aspire One, Acer’s new Aspire One AKA D150 comes with a bigger 10.1-inch display; slicker casing and an array of improvements over the immensely popular 8.9″ Aspire One. Can the new D150 be the top selling netbook just like the original one? Read the review to find out!
Design
The new Aspire One is built along the design of its older model. That said, there are some (welcome) design changes in the D150. For example: the shiny palm rest is now brushed metal finishing. The hinge has also undergone design change. We will cover these changes and other improvements one-by-one in the review
On the right side of the netbook, you will find that the rings on the side of the hinge are gone. They are now replaced by teardrop-shaped hinge, which looks great. On this side, you will find the Kensington lock, power port and 2 USB ports.
On the left side, you will find VGA port, LAN port, a USB port, earphone, microphone jack and multi-card reader.
On the front, you will find the WiFi toggle switch.
The Aspire One D150 is much less chunky than the other 10.1-inch netbooks like EEE 1000H and looks better too.
Display
The Acer Aspire One D150 is equipped with a 10.1-inch display which has 1024 x 600 resolution. Unlike most of the netbooks in the market, it has a glossy display. The colors are rich and images look vibrant.
Just over the display, you will find the 0.3MP camera, which I found decent enough for Skype video calls.
Keyboard
Most of the people go for the 10-inch netbooks for two reasons:
The bigger display allows the netbook manufactures to fit-in for the bigger ‘almost’ full-size keyboards. The keyboard of D150 is great to type on. Although, Acer could have fit in a bigger keyboard as there is some empty space on the sides. That said, the keyboard is a joy to use. I’d no problems in typing a document in the wordpad. With the EEE 1000H, I get nearly 90-100WPM and with the D150, I got 85WPM. May be I will improve with the usage.
I also appreciate the full size shift key and dedicated page-up and page-down buttons. In all the ASUS EEEs, you have to use the fn+up arrow combo to use the page-up function. Since, we use page-up and page-down functions quite a lot when browsing through long documents and web-pages, the dedicated keys improve the user-experience.
Another improvement is that the Acer has made the touchpad bigger and the vertical buttons previously found on the sides of the touchpad are now replaced by a single bar which is placed below the touchpad.
Speakers
The speakers are located at the bottom of the unit. They are loud enough for skype calls.
Memory
The Acer Aspire One D150 comes with a 160GB HDD and 1GB RAM. How do the HDD performs? Let’s see that in the benchmark test.
Benchmarks
Here are the results obtained by Crystal Disk Mark test:
..and for comparison, here are the results of EEE 1000H followed by EEE 1002HA (both use HDD):
As it can be easily observed, most of them performed similarly in the Crystal Disk Mark test. Here are Crytal Mark benchmark result:
Upgrading
Upgrading HDD and RAM in the older Aspire One was not an easy job. Acer listened to the complaints of the users and have made upgrading HDD and RAM extremely easy in the new D150 Aspire One. The RAM is upgradable to 2GB.
Connectivity
The D150 comes with all the latest connectivity radios that you would expect from a modern netbook. This include WiFi and BT (older aspire one did not have BT). However, the Aspire One D150 that I reviewed came with something extra: WiMax slot. Yes, if your network supports WiMax, just put in your SIM and boom! You can now enjoy mobile broadband.
Battery Life
Gone are the days, when the users cared less about the battery life. People expect to carry these netbooks everywhere they go and nobody wants to carry the charger with them as it just kills the point of mobility.
The D150 ships with 6-cell 5200mAh as standard in most of the countries, which simply gives mind-boggling battery life. In casual wifi surfing, it crossed 6 hours with ease and still had some juice left. This is better than the most of the 6-cell netbooks like EEE 1000H and MSI WIND U100.
It protrudes out from back though.
Charger
Charger should be as compact as possible in the netbooks. Older Aspire One came with a huge power brick. Acer has made the power brick smaller for the D150, which looks a lot like the one which is supplied with the latest EEE PCs.
Addons
The ACER bundles a nice neoprene case which does a much better job than the pathetic case that the ACER bundled with the older verison of the Acer Aspire one.
Acer has bundled eRecovery software for easy restore and backup of the HDD image. It lets you:
It also comes with eSobi, Google Desktop, trial of office 2007 and McAfee Security Center.
Some comparison pictures with the other popular netbooks
Final Verdict
The new Aspire One D150 offers a elegant and stylish design along with enough power to satisfy for your daily as-well-as mobile computing needs. And with the 6 hours-plus battery life and extremely affordable price ($350-$400 for 6-cell battery), it is a great bang for a buck. We recommend it.
—
Pros:
Cons:
Resco has updated their software, Resco Keyboard to version 5.20. Here are the list of features that are new in this release:
Resco Keyboard Pro 7-days trial can be found here
Here is the actual press release:
Resco, a supplier of Windows phone applications, releases a new version of Resco Keyboard Pro, a highly popular application removing all the limits of standard built-in keyboard.
Since version 5.0, Resco Keyboard Pro is literally a handy multi-skin and according to statistics the most popular keyboard application for Windows Mobile devices. It supports more than 20 language layouts with option to use 2 languages simultaneously.
The Touch technology made enormous break-through into mobility. The touch supported mobile device control is natural, comfortable, and trendy. Besides, it makes the overall device control much easier. Resco Keyboard Pro design was based on these facts. Therefore, Resco tends to utilize the strengths of touch technology as much as possible and this software is no exception.
iriver D50N handheld/mid/e-dictionary/(whatever you may want to call it) is soon going to land in Korea. It comes with a respectable 800×480 resolution 4.8-inch display and 16GB internal memory. For connectivity, it comes with built in WiFi and for expansion, a microSD slot. Battery life is also pretty good with 16 hours of music playback or 8 hours of video.
The price of the D50N is going to be around $370 although its release date for US is not yet known.
[iriver D50N official webpage]
[via]
Spb TV is unique in its approach to the mobile TV experience, offering the unexpectedly natural simplicity of watching live TV on a phone. Spb TV goes a long way to support the genuine TV watching behavior on a handset: quick TV guide check-up and channel hopping, on-screen controls for volume and backlight, neat integration of TV functionality with other mobile features (such as messages, calls, and battery life monitoring).
Features:
Here are some screenshots of it:
SONY VAIO P look-alikes are on fire now. The Wistron Firstbook is a Linux based netbook, which looks a lot like the VAIO P. It is a powerful machine with built-in 3G and 11.1-inch widescreen with Bluetooth and WiFi. It is running on the Snapdragon platform, which is also being used by Toshiba’s TG01, a windows mobile device. The Snapgradon consumes much less power as compared to the Atom processor, but it is also less capable than the Atom.
