The Sony VAIO VGN-AR61ZU is a good desktop replacement notebook with great performance and entertainment capabilities.

This VAIO is an impressive notebook sporting a large 17in display while clocking in at high speeds with one of the new Intel’s Penryn processors - a Core 2 Duo T8300 running at 2.4 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.. But on the downside, it’s a bit expensive, heavy (4kg), and has a short battery life.

In terms of entertainment, this notebook is enough to keep you satisfied. Turning out 29fps, its GeForce 8600M chip will support the needs of most gamers as well. It also comes equipped with an internal TV tuner that allows the user to watch and record programmes with the Media Center PVR applications which is standard with the Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Not to mention the internal Blue-ray DVD drive combined with the 1920 x 1200 high resolution display make a perfect combination for watching high-definition films.

The weakest point of this Vaio is a battery that lasts approximately 71 minutes. Seeing as it cannot be far from a power supply for long, it is not the most appropriate notebook for traveling. A larger touchpad would also have made it much easier to use. In fact, it’s hard to understand why Sony installed such a small touchpad on a notebook with so much space

Sony VAIOs have always been a bit spendy, and the VGN-AR61ZU is no different – priced at ₤1799. Nevertheless, it does offer reasonable performance and reliability for the price.

The Samsung R60+ 15.4in Notebook is a great bargain as far as costs go for laptops these days. It is priced at less than £450 (including VAT and delivery). However, the competition for 15.4in screens is pretty tough in terms of design, customization, features as well as prices that match these excellent standards. Consequently, the Samsung R60+ lags behind compared to manufacturers offering 15.4in screens such as Toshiba and HP, for examples.

The exterior and internals look aesthetically pleasing and are a glossy black which is typical of the Samsung style seen on its TVs, monitors, printers, MP3 players, etc… The downside is that one will never be able to avoid the scratches and fingerprints on the lid that are inevitable with regular use.

The larger chassis is amazingly thin and portable with a thickness varying from 31.1mm at the front and 35.8mm at the back rendering it quite sleek for its size. It’s weight isn’t too bad either - at approximately 2.68kg.

Suited especially for general word processing, web surfing and email, the Samsung R60+ makes a good office machine including a 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2310 chip accompanied with 1 GB of RAM.

The battery life is approximately 107 minutes and the hard drive is 80GB which, again, is reasonable for the price.

Not only are the ports and connectors are a bit sparse (containing only 3 USB ports available), but they’re also inconveniently located - with two at the rear and one on the left.

It’s 256MB ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 graphics processor doesn’t really measure up to gaming as it only managed to achieve 7 fps (frames per second) in a grueling games test.

The best feature for this budget notebook has to be the 250 GB SATA HDD which is providing a lot of storage and space for plenty of videos, photos and music.

You can do pretty much do everything on the internet these days. You don’t have to go to the grocery store anymore and you can order pretty much everything you need to survive and have it delivered. Now for those of us who like to gaze off into the night sky and ponder the vastness of the universe, there’s no need to leave the comfort of the computer screen. And better yet, we don’t have to wait until it gets dark.  This new convenience was heralded with the launch of Google sky in august 2007. Similar to Google earth (a tool for visual exploration of the earths surface) but pointed in the opposite direction. The project was undertaken in coordination with the Space Telescope Scientist Institute and Hubble Space Telescope.

In response, Microsoft will be launching its own version of a virtual telescope called WorldWide Telescope by the end of May. Microsoft hopes to win some loyal Google Skiers with its attractive extra features. For instance the WorldWide Telescope offers relevant audio and video presentations so the user can get further information about the part of space that is currently being viewed.  In his announcement speech, Bill Gates alluded to the possible application of this kind of software to something like the genome project – it will be interesting to see how that turns out.

In terms of electronic devices, hard-disks have been the slowest to evolve. Relatively speaking, they are still in the stone-age in terms of technological development While Processors and Flash-drives are getting smaller and faster, hard-drives are still spinning disks like an old record player. Flash-drives are to hard-disks what mp3 players are to record players.

The new generation of hard disks, called Solid State Drives (SSD), is based on flash memory like that of USB memory drives. By utilizing this technology, data access speeds are dramatically increased while power usage, and operating temperatures can be kept to a minimum. This is great news especially for laptop users, because it means much quicker loading of programs while it can significantly extend the battery life. But the only drawback is the price. As of now a 32GB Flash SSD from Samsung runs a lofty £261.00.

High definition camcorders are also now coming equip with flash-memory storage as well. The new canon HF10 has dual memory capabilities – besides the expandable memory card it comes built in with16 GB of flash memory. That’s enough space fro six hours of footage on the longest play setting.

AMD began to market its triple core as a sort of middle way for consumers. It seemed to provide a hopeful alternative for people who wanted more than a dual but couldn’t afford a quad. But now that Intel slashed the prices on their quads, AMD’s triple has little to offer.

One tends to wonder whether the triple cores came to be as a result of factory defects.  Anyone will admit it’s a little suspicious that AMD’s triple core is technically identical with a quad core except with one core disabled. Whether it’s disabled or defected, it’s reasonable to assume that in the production of quad cores, one of the cores malfunctioned and they decided to market it rather than trash it. In any case, you’re better off spending a little more to buy a quad. When tested, the triples just don’t perform worth a recommendation.

It’s difficult to find a new computer that uses a single processor anymore. Dual core has become the industry standard. But things have started to change since the release of triple and quad cores. A hefty price tag was the only thing weighing down the quad core, but now that it has become more affordable it’s sure to eclipse all competitors.

Since first introducing the quad core in late 2006, Intel has sold over 10 million. But keep in mind that quad cores represent only 3% of total CPU sales in that time period. Beware that some of Intel’s quad cores are actually dual dual-cores and perform more poorly than a proper quad core. Recent price cuts make the quad cores a little more worthy of consideration - you can get an Intel Q6700 quad-core @ 2.66GHz for $266. Nevertheless, the pricing is still a bit unreasonable, seeing as the cheapest quad costs more than twice that of a dual yet performs significantly less than twice as well. As is always true for processors, time will eventually bring the price down.

Power is limiting factor when it comes to smart-hand-held technologies. Everyone would love not having to worry about recharging their phone for a week, or being able to run their laptop off the battery for a whole working day. Fuel cells may be the panacea for portables, since they have a capacity 10 times greater than they types of batteries currently in use. In terms of raw power output, methanol fuel cells produce 40 times more wattage per liter than lithium-ion batteries.

In Sony’s latest prototype, 10ml of methanol sustained 14 hours of cell phone video play. But it’s a bit bulky and only a hybrid prototype - the new fuel cells aren’t stable enough to stand alone yet. That seems to be what’s got the FAA nervous as well. Although the Department of Transportation will allow the fuel cells to be taken on planes, the FAA is currently conducting multi-scenario ‘flammability-tests’ before giving the final approval.

Interestingly, methanol is environmentally friendly, also called bio-fuel since it can be made from organic waste products. A favorable alternative to the volatile lithium-ion batteries. On the other hand, researchers are looking for an alternative to methanol because it requires an expensive catalyst such as platinum. Such a limitation would keep the cost of production too high to integrate with modern devices, and lack of alternative materials has slowed research. Bringing fuels cells down to the nano-scale may be another solution to this problem since it can greatly increase the surface area of the catalyst exposed. Improved methods of manufacturing are bringing these nano-scale fuel cells closer to production.

The recent developments in fuel-cell technology seem to be the first step towards running things off water. In fact, Samsung is planning to have a cell phone that runs off of water by 2010.

Environmentally friendly laptops have made their way to the shelves. In Japan, Fujitsu is taking the Kyoto treaty one step further with the production of two new eco-laptops.

The concept of a ‘green’ notebook was first released with the WoodShell, which was showcased by Fujitsu at the Japan Design Innovation 2008 convention in Milan. Since then, the wooden FMV-Biblo (pictured above) has made it to the shelves and is being bought up in a storm by environmentally conscious consumers. The FMV-Biblo is sheathed in a cedar case and the interior parts are made mostly of bio-plastics. Thus the amount of hydro-carbons released into the environment during production is significantly reduced.

Asus has followed the green trend with a new production concept ‘DIGIvision’. They aim to bring an environmentally sound balance to both the design as well as the hardware within. Asus is now showcasing their version of a wooden laptop, but it is not yet available for purchase. Time has yet to tell whether these sustainable designs will compromise their durability.

Copyright © Florian Dobson

My friend bought a IP camera with pan and tilt the other day and I agreed to help him set it up.. turned in to a real nightmare.

This camera connects via a network cable and allows you to log in from anywhere in the world via the internet and view the camera, allowing you to pan and tile and to zoom, great security device.  Trouble is that the instructions supplied are hopeless!

I wasted a whole afternoon, when I try to log in to the camera I just get the admin panel of the router, I decided it was because they both use port 80 so I changed it but it still doesn’t work.

In the end I found UK company on the ‘net selling the same camera, cheaper than it was in Thailand and the UK site has a set-up guide in clear English that explains it all, but it’s still more complicated than it should be!  It turns out that the gateway IP on the camera was wrong, I’m convinced that without the manual downloaded from the UK site I would never have got to the bottom of it.

Cheap Chinese electronics can be a bargain, but they never ever have a manual that makes sense, if you are buying a IP camera and you need to access it via the net then better to buy a brand name that offers support, I see the D-Link do a nice one.

I have been playing with the ASUS Eee now for a couple of days, and I have formed the opinion that whilst it’s far from perfect it is unique and represents the future of notebook computers.

Let’s start with the physical size. It’s as small as a notebook could really be without making the keyboard difficult to use. The Eee keyboard is good, better than many machines that cost 8x as much.

The machine could easily support a screen of about 9″ with a resolution of 1024 x 768 and that would be about perfect (of course that would cost more). The 800 x 400 resolution if the current screen is fine for email, writing text and for general internet browsing, but it’s very tricky if you want to have two windows open at the same time.

The OS is very good, it has all the applications that most users need, however it’s a bit tricky to add new ones compared with a machine running Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX. I do not feel that it’s a good idea to switch to XP on the Eee as it works so well with Linux. It would be interesting to try and install Windows 2000 though!

The power adaptor is great! It’s so small and easy to carry, I wish more notebooks came with smaller power adaptors.

The Eee is quick to start up and quick to shut down, this is very important for me on a portable machine as sometimes I just want to check my email or look something up on the move, it’s annoying to wait whilst an OS loads just to check some email.

The choice to use a SSD drive instead of a Hard Drive is really what makes this machine shine, it the way of the future.

The CPU ( a 900 mhz Celeron) is more than powerful enough for everyday use, enough said.

The price is what attracts most users to the Eee, and given the price any like for like comparisons are impossible. I’m sure that we will see lots of imitators, it would not surprise me at all if Apple produce a similar sized notebook that uses SSD memory very soon.

I’m continuing to use my Eee and it’s going to come into a class of it’s own when I’m travelling.