After a long wait, ordering on 8/27/08 and finally receiving it 9/25/08 (wow, almost as bad as the Dell XPS M1330!), I finally have the wonderful machine that is the Lenovo IdeaPad U330.  Preliminary thoughts after using it for about 2 hours?  Neat features, very responsive, I hate the placement of the Fn key, and awesome screen. 1 day? Great screen, very cool facial recognition webcam, awesome screen, bad battery life, nice keyboard, quite responsive, quiet, and I don’t like vista.  Seeing as how I just received this laptop, this will be a somewhat simple, initial review.  It will take a few days to do full battery testing, performance metrics, etc etc, but I will post updates to this page as I go along, and post a final review in a new post once it’s complete!

Continue reading ‘Lenovo IdeaPad U330 Initial Hands On Review’ »

So no sooner had I bought and brought home my Acer Aspire One,  I was able to get in on an order for some Dell Inspiron Mini 9’s!  Well, the other night they finally arrived and here I am to give you my review!  What do I think in a one liner?  Compared to the other netbooks currently available, it’s about the same as the rest except it gets a BIT better battery life, I don’t like the keyboard, but love the easy access for upgrades. 

Lets start off with the specs of the system reviewed:

• Intel Atom processor N270, 1.6GHz, 533Mhz512K L2 Cache
• 512MB,DDR2,533MHZ,1 DIMM
• 8.9 inch Wide Screen WSVGA (1024×600) LED Backlit - Glossy
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
• 16GB Solid State Drive (mini-card Module/PATA)
• Windows XP Home Edition
• Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 32WHr 4-cell Battery
• Bluetooth 2.1 module
• Memory card slot (SD, MS/Pro, MMC)
• 3 x USB
• Weight:  2lbs 5oz (with 4 cell)

Continue reading ‘Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Usage Review’ »

I recently moved to the Baltimore/Washington area and have opted to use the trains to get to and from work, so I was looking for a ultra portable laptop to take with me on my commute.  At the time, I had a Dell Latitude D630 and though it’s weighs about 5 pounds, I wanted something much lighter - which is when I came across the Acer Aspire One.   I just started a new job, so money was tight, and this was the cheapest ‘netbook’ available that had the new Atom processor and XP (plus it was carried locally by Best Buy, so not having to wait for shipping), so I decided to give it a go:

Here are the specs of the machine reviewed:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6Ghz 533mhz fsb 512mb cache
• 1gb ddr2-667 (512mb soldiered, 512mb removable/upgradeable, though difficult)
• 8.9" WSVGA (1024×600), CrystalBrite (glossy), LED Backlit screen
• 120GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive (1.8")
• Intel integrated 950 graphics
• Built in 0.3mp (vga) webcam with mic
• 2 Memory card slots
  • 1 SDHC
  • 1 5-in-1 (SD, MMC, Reduced Size MMC, MS/MS Pro, & xD)
• 3 usb 2.0 ports
• Built in 802.11b/g wifi (atheros invilink)
• 2.2 pounds, 1.1" thick
• Windows XP Home

Continue reading ‘Acer Aspire One - Actual Usage Review (XP, 120gb, 3 cell)’ »

Having the ATT Tilt now for a few months, I was getting a bit anxious for HTC’s new devices to come out and the other day I finally got one — the HTC Touch Diamond!   The HTC Diamond is among HTC’s newest lines of pocket pc phone devices (along with the Touch Pro coming out later this summer) and these phones just keep getting better.   At a quick glance, here are some of it’s ‘major’ features and specs:

• 2.8" Touch Screen
• 528 MHz Processor (qualcomm msm7201a)
• VGA (640×480) Resolution
• 3.2 Auto focus camera and VGA Front facing camera
• 4gb Internal Storage (but no external memory card slot)
• Integrated GPS
• Tri-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (900/1800/1900 MHz)
• HSDPA/WCDMA 900/2100MHz
• 256mb Rom, 192mb DDR SDRAM
• Bluetooth 2.0 w/EDR and 802.11b/g Wifi
• FM Radio (with RDS)

Update 7/21/08 — Looks like those who have US that have the diamond are able to get the 850mhz band working (gsm/edge) — perhaps, soon, even US 3g!  check out more at:  http://www.wmexperts.com/articles/new_diamond_rom_enables_850_ed.html .

Continue reading ‘HTC Touch Diamond - Actual Usage Review’ »

WinPlay.com just released Guitar Hero Mobile (direct link) for mobile phones, so, being the Guitar Hero fan I am, I had to buy it and try it out!  What did I think? — It’s definitely worth the money ($15 one time purchase, $5/mo subscription)!  I chose to go with the one time buy because I could easily see my self playing this after 3 months, assuming it’s good, and I hate to waste money, haha.   

The game play is very similar to that of the “non mobile” versions, such as on playstation or xbox, other than it’s only 3 keys instead of 5.  At first I thought it would be way too easy with three keys, but when playing expert it was hard enough to be fun.  You start out with 15 songs, 4 to begin with, and like the real game, you have to play through career mode to unlock the other 11.  Here is a list of differences from the mobile version to the console version:

• 3 keys instead of 5
• Songs are not nearly as long and fade out in the middle of the song when done
• Fewer characters and guitars
• No vs gameplay
• No ‘buying’ songs

Other than those items listed, the game is pretty much the same as full blown guitar hero!  You have the note streak count, star power, rock meter, different venues, requirement to beat career mode to unlock songs, etc.  Playback was not completely smooth, but I do not know if that is an issue with the video drivers on my HTC phone or what, but it’s good enough to play and enjoyable.  It comes with a good variety of songs, game play is intuitive and hard enough to be fun, and works in portrait or landscape.

One thing that bugs me is that each time you play a different song, it has to download it and then delete the song you just played…  To get around that, at least in windows mobile, is browse to your guitar hero directory and make that song read only!

Conclusion?  Go buy and download it!!  Check out my youtube review here which has gameplay, side-by-side comparison for easy, medium, and hard, and more:

Pros:

• Just like the console version
• Hard enough difficulty to be fun
• 3 new downloadable songs every month
• Landscape and Portrait support

Cons:

• Not free (haha)
• Playback is a LITTLE choppy
• Cannot assign buttons

Just saw this posted on lifehacker, tried it out, and had to spread the word!  This freeware smartphone app will turn your wifi enabled smartphone into a wifi router (ad-hoc, aka: computer-to-computer) — in other words, you can take your windows mobile phone, and if you have a data plan and wifi, you can have any other wifi device connect to it as if it were a router!  I could definitely see this as being useful when my Comcast connection goes down and my roommates and I all need to have simple access to email and such until it goes back up!  Not just that, but also if you have a laptop (or any device) that doesn’t have bluetooth to utilize the bluetooth internet sharing in wm6, you can just use this as devices are more likely to have Wifi than bluetooth. 

Continue reading ‘WMWifiRouter, turn your wifi smartphone into a router’ »

I just got an HDHomeRun (product home page) for Christmas and this is one of the greatest things since the internet! — now if only there were more HD (high definition) channels broadcast in clear QAM (cable) or OTA (over the air / antenna)!  I’ve been using it for about a week now, and love it — I’m able to watch live HD on all my networked (wired) computers, while only paying for standard cable!  Just make sure you have good cable signal (or antenna reception)!

Continue reading ‘Review: HDHomeRun, a networked (QAM and OTA) dual HD tuner’ »

Ever since I read the first posting about the Eee PC, I’ve been wanting to get one and try it out, and today, mine finally came in the mail.  I read a few reviews about how small it was, but I can never appreciate the size of a device through most people’s pictures, so I figured I’d write a little about it here with some of my initial thoughts while including some size comparisons and unboxing pictures! 

My initial thoughts after using it for a few minutes?  — It would be GREAT for traveling with, even though it doesn’t have a very long battery life, at 2.5 (or upto 3.5 w/the more expensive model), it would be good enough for basic travel usage.  It’s small and light enough to not really notice it in a backpack or simply just carrying it around in any kind of bag. And with enough software and power to do your basic web browsing, music listening, word processing, etc you’re set for basically anything you’d probably do while not at home (in other words, not playing games, video editing, or doing hard core document handling/manipulating).  Yes, the screen size is small, but it’s still large enough to do such basic tasks - however, with the most common screen resolution recently being bumped up to 1024×768 (up from 800×600), many websites will have horizontal scroll bars on this size screen (see pictures below).  If that doesn’t bother you too much, then you are golden (and if it does, perhaps you could try seeing if those sites have a mobile version made for pda’s).  

Continue reading ‘Review - ASUS Eee PC’ »

This is my review of the new att Tilt Phone (also known as the HTC 8925 / Kaiser / Tytn II, etc).   I impatiently waited a long time for this phone to come out with it’s bulit in gps, tilting screen, 3.0mp camera, and all the other features it shares with it’s older HTC Hermes / Cingular 8525, and last week I finally went out and bought it and found that it’s a great device, but not without flaws!    In this review, I’ll show a bunch of pictures (from unboxing to actually using) and describe usage of the keyboard, screen, tilting feature, GPS (with data maps), and more!  Lets start out with some basic information about the phone first:

Continue reading ‘Review - att Tilt (HTC / ATT 8925)’ »

The Fujitsu p7120 is a tiny laptop that sticks with a removable optical drive and great battery life.   Weighing in at only 3.2 pounds (with the extended battery) and a 10.6″ screen, this is a very comfortable laptop to carry around throughout the day, while providing enough battery life to leave the charger at home.   I realize this laptop has been out for quite some time (I’ve actually owned this laptop once before), but I figured now that vista has come out, it may be useful to know if it’s still usable (in other words, make sure it’s not painfully slow). 

Continue reading ‘Review - Fujitsu P7120 Ultraportable Laptop (with Vista)’ »