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Monday, March 21, 2011

CISCO - LINKSYS E-1000

GO WIRELESS AND EASILY PUT THE SPEED AND POWER OF WIRELESS-N TECHNOLOGY IN YOUR HOME…..

PRESENTING LINKSYS E-1000 WIRELESS N ROUTER……..

image

BEST FOR   : - 

STANDARD, QUICK TO INSTALL, WIRELESS – N CONNECTIVITY FOR SURFING THE WEB, SENDING EMAIL AND FILE SHARING….

BENEFITS : -

Ø WIRELESSLY SURF THE WEB AND SEND E MAIL.

Ø SHARE FILES AND PRINTERS

Ø QUICK SET UP

PASSWORD PROTECTED GUEST ACCESS, PARENTAL CONTROLS, ADVANCED SETTING

HOW WE DO IT :-

Ø WIRELESS N TECHNOLOGY WITH 2 INTERNAL ANTENNAS

Ø 2.4 GHz BAND OPERATION

Ø CISCO CONNECT SOFTWARE

Ø ADVANCED SECURITY AND FIREWALL PROTECTION

Specifications

Ø Standards                              :               802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11b, 802.3, 802.3u

Ø Ports                                      :               Power, Internet, and Ethernet (1-4)

Ø Buttons                                   :               Reset, Wi-Fi Protected Setup

Ø LEDs                                    :               Ethernet (1-4), Wi-Fi Protected Setup, Wireless, Internet, Power

Ø Cabling Type                           :               CAT 5e

Ø RF Pwr (EIRP) in dBm                :               17.5 dBm

Ø Antenna Gain in dBi                 :               1.5 dBi

Ø UPnP able/cert                       :               Able

Ø Security Features                  :               WEP, WPA, WPA2

Ø Security Key Bits                   :               Up to 128-Bit Encryption

Environmental

Ø Dimensions                           :               7.95" x 1.34" x 6.3" (202 x 34 x 160 mm)

Ø Weight                                   :               9.81 oz (280 g)

Ø Power                                    :               12V, 0.5A

Ø Certification                            :               FCC, CE, IC-03, Wi-Fi, Windows 7

Ø Operating Temperature             :               32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C)

Ø Storage Temperature               :               -4 to 140°F (-20 to 60°C)

Ø Operating Humidity                  :               10 to 85% Noncondensing

Ø Storage Humidity                    :               5 to 90% Noncondensing

Please call for any support or inquiry….

Sunday, March 13, 2011

ViewSonic ViewPad 10 tablet review

The first dual-boot tablet is surely worth a look, but needs a price cut. 

There are a lot of tablets that have been launched in India within the past few months and more are on the verge of being launched. Most tablet manufacturers have chosen to go with Android as the operating system, whereas few others have chosen Windows 7. However, ViewSonic comes with a tablet that dual boots both operating system, that almost provides the user best of both sides.

Looks & Ergonomics
The ViewPad 10 is not the slimmest or the sexiest tablet out there, but its got a vibrant 10.1” display. There are three touch sensitive buttons on the matte finish bezel that extends below the glossy bezel and perform different functions under the two OS. There is a 1.3MP front camera present as well. The tablet has two full size USB2.0 port, mini VGA port, microSD card slot and 3.5mm audio jack and microphone on the side.  The back has a brushed metal finish with the ViewSonic logo printed in the centre with speakers and heat vent at corners.

 image

The tablet weighs just under 1kg and was easy to use with two hands. Using the tablet in vertical as well as horizontal position did not pose any problem. The brushed metal back and the matte finish bezel provide excellent grip.

Display
The tablet has a 10.1” capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. We loved the touch response on the tablet and multi-touch worked superbly across windows and android. Of course, like every other tablet out there, the large display is a fingerprint magnet and requires cleaning every now and then.

Hardware & Software
The ViewPad 10 is powered by an Intel Atom processor running at 1.66GHz with 1GB of DDR 3 RAM along with 16GB SSD storage. The SSD provides quick boot up and thought the hardware is more than enough for Android, 1GB RAM makes the overall windows experience slightly sluggish. It comes with WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, 3G and assisted GPS.  The tablet also has a G-sensor, E-compass sensor and an ambient light sensor.

The tablet comes loaded with Windows 7 Home premium and Android OS v1.6 as operating systems, which can be selected, on start-up. We loved the fact that Windows on the tablet performed the same way on a laptop. In fact, when we tried connecting to the Internet using a Reliance Netconnect USB modem, it worked flawlessly. We installed various windows application and other than the slight sluggishness due to low RAM we faced no issues.

It comes with Android is v1.6 and ViewSonic has no plans to upgrade it on the tablet. The performance on Android is fantastic, though due to the older version the number of apps is limited across categories.

Multimedia
Thanks to Windows 7 and the full size USB 2.0 port, the ViewPad tablet provides for the easiest access to multimedia. Like a standard desktop, various codecs and multimedia player could be loaded allowing the user to play any format of video as well as audio. Watching videos on the tablet was superb due to the large sized display. The sound output from the tablet is not too loud, but is higher than that for personal listening. The sound output in the earphones is great though with excellent clarity.

User Interface
ViewSonic has not done any modification across either of the interface than the standard wallpaper change to Viewsonic’s logo. Windows 7 interface is like a standard laptop, instead of physical mouse and keyboard; the user gets an onscreen keyboard and the multi-touch display to work with. In Android, it’s the same basic android interface that was in phones around a year back.

Conclusion
Although, the tablet has excellent hardware with a great touch-screen display, it’s the dual-boot operating system that is the major advantage over competitors here. However, we barely used the Android operating system over windows as it provided more options. The battery backup of the device lasted us just over a day, which is impressive considering we constantly worked on it and it was connected through WiFi constantly.

The ViewPad 10 is priced at Rs 38,000, which is too steep for an average consumer who now has options in terms of the MSI Windpad at 35,000 and the Apple iPad starting from Rs 28,000 in the same screen size.

Specifications

10.1" LCD screen with Capacitive multi-touch screen

1024x600 with LED backlight

220 cd/m2 Brightness

700:1 Contrast Ratio    

Intel Pine Trail N455 1.66GHz processor

DDR3 1GB SDRAM 667MHz

16GB SSD SATA

Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1 (optional 3G module) + EDR, 3G and assisted GPS
Windows 7 Home Premium

Android 1.6

0.875 kg

1.3 megapixel camera (front)

G-Sensor, E-Compass sensor and ambient light sensor

Ports-3.5mm audio jack for stereo headset, 2 USB 2.0 ports, mini VGA port, Micro SD card slot

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HP Dreamscreen Review

A fancy desktop with lots of eye candy, but very limited use

HP Dreamscreen
Touchscreen tablets are expected to be the top selling gadget this year. With around 100 tablets announced at CES, touchscreen devices seem to be the direction to go. Looking at all the hype, HP has tried to go a step ahead and instead of providing a portable tablet; they incorporated touch-screen into their new desktop offering called the DreamScreen.

The DreamScreen is pure eye candy in terms of looks. This All-in-one desktop has a large 18.5” display with 1366 x 768 resolution. The display has a clear plastic bezel around the display frame that adds to the looks of the system. There is a large indicator right at the front bottom that looks like a power button, but works only as a power indicator. Other controls are placed on the right hand side. All the connectivity ports for USB and card reader, headphones are placed neatly on the left hand side with additional ports at the back. There is also a slot load DVD drive on the right hand side just above the control buttons. All in all, the Dreamscreen looks very good and can easily add to the décor of a room. The only issue is that it takes a wire with an adapter for power that is clearly visible behind the monitor.

The HP Dreamscreen is powered by an Intel processor and comes with a 250GB hard-drive. There is very little information about the hardware that has been shared by HP. It comes with a mouse and keyboard as well even though the onscreen keyboard of the PC is very responsive and easy to use. It has inbuilt WiFi for connectivity and also comes with an Ethernet port at the back.

The desktop runs on a Linux based operating system, which has been heavily customized.  The interface has been tweaked to be touch-interface friendly. The good thing is that HP has provided large icons to use on the desktop for various activities. You can either log in as the administrator or as an student. The student account has limited privileges in terms of installing and purchasing content. HP has tied up with various vendors to provide content on their machine across categories such as News, music, videos etc. Some content is paid, while other is free. Video streaming is free from various channels, whereas to use application for astrology, you need to subscribed etc. The User interface overall is very easy to use and quick to respond.

What we didn’t like was the operating system is too limited and restricted. It will play media of very few formats, does not remember your last sites/applications and does not even remember you WiFi connection password on restart. Moreover, a user cannot install additional applications, which is a major downer.

The HP dreamscreen is priced at Rs 19,999 and is aimed at the mid-level consumer who wants to have a good looking desktop with internet and multimedia capabilities.
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Whats Hot

- Looks
- Easy to use
- price
- touchscreen
-
Whats Not

- restricted OS
- paid subscription model
- limited media support

Estimated Street Price

Rs 19,990/-

BELKIN Play Max wireless router

One of the best routers available today with just one flaw. The name ‘Play Max’ raised our expectation before we actually tested this IEEE 802.11n based router and when we did it we were not at all disappointed, in fact disappointment came from other features.  image

Once out of box what you have in hand is a compact clean looking router with hidden antennas and single indicator light and WPS button in front for hassle free secure connection setup. Number of connection ports at back is where Play Max has edge when compared with other similar products; there are 5 gigabit ports (1xWAN, 4xLAN) which would be ample for any wired connection plus being gigabit would mean faster data transfer speeds.  2 USB 2.0 ports are also present at the back for connecting external USB based storage devices with FAT 16/32 and NTFS file system, USB printers are also supported by Play Max giving you ability to convert your USB based printer to network one.

Setting up this router was the simplest of jobs and a mere 3 step process with initial configuration provided in small booklet attached to box. To use most of the features of this router including using USB storage/printer you have to install router management software that would sit in task bar and add to CPU usage, which as per us is a major con of Play Max. The main issue we faced with the router was that it does not support plugging in a 3G USB modem.

To test the performance of this router which supports true dual band in 2.5 Ghz and 5 GHz  band respectively, we carried out two tests. First we used Qucheck 3.0 to test throughput, we connected one machine with wire to router and other wirelessly to N based laptop (both laptop and machine were running Windows 7) and then checked throughput over TCP protocol. Play Max was able to transfer 1000 Kb payload at 64 mbps which is one of the best scores we have seen. In second test we transferred 40 MB of mixed data from machine to laptop; Play Max was able to complete this transfer in 4 seconds which is again very high when compared to other products. We also tried using the router to stream HD videos from a windows media center to an Xbox 360 over WiFi, and it worked great.

Besides performance and features there are number of bundled utilities for different purposes like torrent gene for downloading files to external storage, bit boost for traffic prioritization, music mover for wireless music play from external storage. All in all, a high performing router with not so user friendly bundled software.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

XPRSS – easy to use feed reader for BlackBerry

XPRSS is a fast, clean and easy to use feed reader for BlackBerry smartphone users. There are very few feed readers available in the market which can come anyway near XPRSS.

XPRSS comes preloaded with variety of feed categories. You can easily add new feeds of your choice. Variety of options are available for the user to choose from. One can add feeds to the reader directly using the feed url or just by giving the main website address and it will automatically find the feed location.

The most useful feature of it is it also allows the user to import feeds using OPML. So if you are an existing google feed reader user or using some other software to manage your feeds, you can simply export your feeds and import it into XPRSS.

If you like sharing what you discover then again XPRSS comes handy. It allows you to share articles directly from the post page to almost all popular social booknarking and social media sites. So if you are a BB geek and love to stay updated all the time then XPRSS is a must have app for you.

Download XPRSS for blackberry (Freeware)