I think it’s fair to say that Microsoft has a much better reputation for its hardware than its software products. And I admit I’ve been a fan of Microsoft mice and keyboards for years now.
Being wireless, the Laser Mouse 7000 comes with a single AAA-sized NiMH battery and a cradle where you attach the supplied AC adaptor so you can charge the mouse.
Computer mice have come a long way since its introduction a couple of decade back. No one would have thought that the unexciting mouse will evolve until what we have here this month, the Microsoft Arc Mouse.
This month we see more red, because we have the RX3850 on review and it is the 256MB plus overclocked version of the card. As usual the card sports a red PCB that is a signature of ATI cards. There isn’t any enclosure really, just the cyborg themed sticker with a rather large fan with an equally large heatsink. The cooling system seems no different from the that of the reference card though. It works though since heat doesn’t get trapped so it’s cooler and the design of the cooling system will ensure that fan noises are kept to a minimum.
We saw the impressive GTX 280 take the stage last month with power beyond what we imagined. But being the best card in the world has its limitations, such as the high pricing that NVIDIA has placed on it. ATI has been improving largely in the performance area as well as competitive pricing, which according to DailyTech recently, has given NVIDIA some pressure as people are starting to fix their attention on ATI’s 4800 series. As a counterattack, NVIDIA has slashed its prices on the GTX 200 cards, one of which is the subject of review this month – the GTX 260.
All the while, gamers were only concerned about whether a graphics card could deliver the power they needed for the latest games. But after one need is satisfied, another comes up. It wasn’t just performance that gamers were bothered with, now there was the issue of overheating, design, noise, etc. Come today, people are now more inclined to tweak their own cards to boost performance. It was this that gave birth to the Republic of Gamers by ASUS. This month we get our hands on the 9600GT Matrix from the ROG series!
Apple’s effort looks slicker than an oiled up Italian on a Maldives beach, but is less likely to steal your girlfriend. The only thing putting a banana skin under its swagger is a puny 40GB hard drive, which holds 50 hours of a video - a 160-gigger costs an extra dollar.
The new HP Compaq DC7800 Ultra-slim Desktop is an impressive 46 percent smaller than the previous generation of HP DC7700 Ultra-slim Desktop, shrinking its footprint while at the same time providing more power for demanding applications users.
The NEC Powermate P5000 is another not-your-average-PC we tested this month. Unlike the living room VAIO, the Powermate P5000 is destined for a more up close and personal usage model. This could be in the bedroom (on your bedside table), in the study or even the kitchen. The main selling point of the Powermate P5000 is its lack of messy cables; all it needs is a single power cable. In countries like Japan where space in the home (or the lack thereof) is a major issue, PCs like the Powermate P5000 make good sense. Users can just unplug it and move it to another location within the home.
ASUS has unveiled the new ASUS Mini PC Nova Lite PX24 . At only 2L in size, this world’s smallest mini PC is equipped with a built-in independent graphics card to seamlessly combine high quality audio/visual experiences with a tiny footprint. It is also equipped with built-in Hi-Fi speakers for superb audio enjoyment, and provides great energy-savings and ultra quiet operations.
Take the innards of an Atom-based Asus Eee PC and fit it into a desktop machine, and essentially that’s what you get with the Asus Eee Box.
However, before you dismiss it as a severely underpowered desktop PC, think of it in this way — the Asus Eee Box has the potential to be a very cheap, small, low-powered multimedia device to stream to your HDTV.
The Asus Eee Box’s aspirations to be a part of your home theatre system is clear from its slim black (or white) design that looks a lot like a Nintento Wii, with it’s upright standing design.
When you’re a seasoned gamer, you know exactly what to expect in games and what hardware you need…. or want for that matter. It’s not such a surprise then that most gamers tend to assemble their own PCs because they want to have control of the specs of their system. Pre-assembled desktops however, don’t really offer that flexibility. The price might be affordable, but the items inside may not be what you want. And more often than not, these desktops come with more unwanted components than outstanding ones. But here we have something that may change that general perception. Acer sent in the Aspire G7700, otherwise known as the Predator.
For those of you who read our blog regularly, you would know that the products we usually get from ASUS are motherboard, graphics card and occasional notebooks. That all changed when we received the Triton 75 CPU cooler for this month’s review.
ASUS has announced its latest CPU cooler, the Lion Square, which features a double-sided aluminum wave fin design and dynamic fan speed control. The Lion Square’s four copper heat pipes help deliver high performance heat dissipation and is compatible with Intel Core 2 Extreme or Intel Core 2 Quad processors and AMD Athlon 64 FX or AMD X2 Dual-Core processors.
On the inside, a 9cm fan automatically modulates fan speeds according to the CPU temperature.
The Lion Square is also designed for easy installation as it comes with specially designed spring screws and clips to install the CPU cooler without having to remove the motherboard from the system.
If high performance computing is your game, you will need some serious cooling solutions. Gigabyte’s new G-Cooler 2 Pro is a CPU fan designed to keep your CPU cool during intensive loads or overclocking.
The full name for the Triton 79, according to ASUS, is the ASUS Triton 79 ‘Amazing’ CPU Cooler. Other than being a mouthful, this Triton 79 is a limited edition run with custom graphics and a unique serialized ID card in each package. Designed to keep your PC both cool and quite, the Triton 79 runs at only 18db and is specially designed with a tool-free push-pin design for ease of installation.
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Make Your Instant Messaging Live! With High Quality Video and Audio Creative Webcam Live! Makes your instant messaging come alive with high quality video and audio. Designed with a high quality VGA (640x480) resolution CMOS sensor, the Creative Webcam Live! Provides superior video quality and sharp still pictures at 1024x768 resolutions*. Enjoy voice and sound capture clarity through the external microphone which is uniquely designed. Besides flat surfaces, the flexible and versatile three-way base allows Creative Webcam Live! To fit snugly atop monitors, flat panel displays and notebooks. With a handy snapshot button located at the tip of the Creative Webcam Live!, just click to take photos instantly. To top it all off, Creative Webcam Live! Comes bundled with 3 exciting and easy-to-use software that include useful features like turning instant snapshots into multimedia post cards, remote capturing and monitoring, motion detection and much more!
Considered to be one of the most basic external connections to a computer, the serial port has been an integral part of most computers for more than 20 years. Although many of the newer systems have done away with the serial port completely in favor of USB connections, most modems still use the serial port, as do some printers, PDAs and digital cameras. Few computers have more than two serial ports.
 Two serial ports on the back of a PC |
Essentially, serial ports provide a standard connector and protocol to let you attach devices, such as modems, to your computer. In this edition of How Stuff Works, you will learn about the difference between a parallel port and a serial port, what each pin does and what flow control is.
No matter what you do with your computer, storage is an important part of your system. In fact, most personal computers have one or more of the following storage devices:
Usually, these devices connect to the computer through an Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. Essentially, an IDE interface is a standard way for a storage device to connect to a computer. IDE is actually not the true technical name for the interface standard. The original name, AT Attachment (ATA), signified that the interface was initially developed for the IBM AT computer. In this article, you will learn about the evolution of IDE/ATA, what the pinouts are and exactly what "slave" and "master" mean in IDE.
But PCI has some shortcomings. As processors, video cards, sound cards and networks have gotten faster and more powerful, PCI has stayed the same. It has a fixed width of 32 bits and can handle only 5 devices at a time. The newer, 64-bit PCI-X bus provides more bandwidth, but its greater width compounds some of PCI's other issues.
A new protocol called PCI Express (PCIe) eliminates a lot of these shortcomings, provides more bandwidth and is compatible with existing operating systems. In this article, we'll examine what makes PCIe different from PCI. We'll also look at how PCI Express makes a computer faster, can potentially add graphics performance, and can replace the AGP slot.
 Photo courtesy Consumer Guide Products |
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High-Speed Serial Connection
In the early days of computing, a vast amount of data moved over serial connections. Computers separated data into packets and then moved the packets from one place to another one at a time. Serial connections were reliable but slow, so manufacturers began using parallel connections to send multiple pieces of data simultaneously.
It turns out that parallel connections have their own problems as speeds get higher and higher -- for example, wires can interfere with each other electromagnetically -- so now the pendulum is swinging back toward highly-optimized serial connections. Improvements to hardware and to the process of dividing, labeling and reassembling packets have led to much faster serial connections, such as USB 2.0 and FireWire.
PCI Express is a serial connection that operates more like a network than a bus. Instead of one bus that handles data from multiple sources, PCIe has a switch that controls several point-to-point serial connections. (See How LAN Switches Work for details.) These connections fan out from the switch, leading directly to the devices where the data needs to go. Every device has its own dedicated connection, so devices no longer share bandwidth like they do on a normal bus. We'll look at how this happens in the next section.
Just about every peripheral made now comes in a USB version. Here's a list of some of the USB devices that you can buy today:
The easy solution to the problem is to buy an inexpensive USB hub. The USB standard supports up to 127 devices, and USB hubs are a part of the standard.
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 A typical USB 4-port hub accepts 4 "A" connections |
A hub typically has four new ports, but may have many more. You plug the hub into your computer, and then plug your devices (or other hubs) into the hub. By chaining hubs together, you can build up dozens of available USB ports on a single computer.
Hubs can be powered or unpowered. As you learn in How USB Ports Work, the USB standard allows for devices to draw their power from their USB connection (all USB cables contain two wires -- for +5 volts and ground). A high-power device like a printer or scanner will have its own power supply, but low-power devices like mice and digital cameras get their power from the bus. The power (up to 500 milliamps at 5 volts) comes from the computer. If you have lots of self-powered devices (like printers and scanners), then your hub does not need to be powered -- none of the devices connecting to the hub need additional power, so the computer can handle it. If you have lots of unpowered devices like mice and cameras, you probably need a powered hub. The hub has its own transformer, and it supplies power to the devices that connect to the hub so the devices do not overload the computer's power supply.
The Universal Serial Bus can easily handle both a scanner and a printer, even if you are scanning and printing at the same time. The original USB supports up to 12 megabits per second, and USB 2.0 supports up to 480 megabits per second -- considering that most devices consume only 6 megabits per second, you can definitely run more than one device at a time.
The power and speed of computer components has increased at a steady rate since desktop computers were first developed decades ago. Software makers create new applications capable of utilizing the latest advances in processor speed and hard drive capacity, while hardware makers rush to improve components and design new technologies to keep up with the demands of high-end software.
There's one element, however, that often escapes notice - the bus. Essentially, a bus is a channel or path between the components in a computer. Having a high-speed bus is as important as having a good transmission in a car. If you have a 700-horsepower engine combined with a cheap transmission, you can't get all that power to the road. There are many different types of buses.
The idea of a bus is simple -- it lets you connect components to the computer's processor. Some of the components that you might want to connect include hard disks, memory, sound systems, video systems and so on. For example, to see what your computer is doing, you normally use a CRT or LCD screen. You need special hardware to drive the screen, so the screen is driven by a graphics card. A graphics card is a small printed circuit board designed to plug into the bus. The graphics card talks to the processor using the computer's bus as a communication path.
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The advantage of a bus is that it makes parts more interchangeable. If you want to get a better graphics card, you simply unplug the old card from the bus and plug in a new one. If you want two monitors on your computer, you plug two graphics cards into the bus. And so on.
In this article, you will learn about some of those buses. We will concentrate on the bus known as the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI). We'll talk about what PCI is, how it operates and how it is used, and we'll look into the future of bus technology.
Just about any computer that you buy today comes with one or more Universal Serial Bus connectors on the back. These USB connectors let you attach everything from mice to printers to your computer quickly and easily. The operating system supports USB as well, so the installation of the device drivers is quick and easy, too. Compared to other ways of connecting devices to your computer (including parallel ports, serial ports and special cards that you install inside the computer's case), USB devices are incredibly simple!
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In this article, we will look at USB ports from both a user and a technical standpoint. You will learn why the USB system is so flexible and how it is able to support so many devices so easily -- it's truly an amazing system!
Anyone who has been around computers for more than two or three years knows the problem that the Universal Serial Bus is trying to solve -- in the past, connecting devices to computers has been a real headache!
The goal of USB is to end all of these headaches. The Universal Serial Bus gives you a single, standardized, easy-to-use way to connect up to 127 devices to a computer.
Just about every peripheral made now comes in a USB version. A sample list of USB devices that you can buy today includes:
It appears that the venerable wheeled mouse is in danger of extinction. The now-preferred device for pointing and clicking is the optical mouse.
Developed by Agilent Technologies and introduced to the world in late 1999, the optical mouse actually uses a tiny camera to take 1,500 pictures every second. Able to work on almost any surface, the mouse has a small, red light-emitting diode (LED) that bounces light off that surface onto a complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor.
The CMOS sensor sends each image to a digital signal processor (DSP) for analysis. The DSP, operating at 18 MIPS (million instructions per second), is able to detect patterns in the images and see how those patterns have moved since the previous image. Based on the change in patterns over a sequence of images, the DSP determines how far the mouse has moved and sends the corresponding coordinates to the computer. The computer moves the cursor on the screen based on the coordinates received from the mouse. This happens hundreds of times each second, making the cursor appear to move very smoothly.
Optical mice have several benefits over wheeled mice:
Although LED-based optical mice are fairly recent, another type of optical mouse has been around for over a decade. The original optical-mouse technology bounced a focused beam of light off a highly-reflective mouse pad onto a sensor. The mouse pad had a grid of dark lines. Each time the mouse was moved, the beam of light was interrupted by the grid. Whenever the light was interrupted, the sensor sent a signal to the computer and the cursor moved a corresponding amount. This kind of optical mouse was difficult to use, requiring that you hold it at precisely the right angle to ensure that the light beam and sensor aligned. Also, damage to or loss of the mouse pad rendered the mouse useless until a replacement pad was purchased. Today's LED-based optical mice are far more user-friendly and reliable.
See the next page for more information.
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If you're a city employee working on the city's server, and you're reading this, then that's a good sign.We are consistently bombarded by the latest gadgetry out there, and with each new launch and purchase, there is a corresponding gadget that needs to be discarded. Nowadays, that in itself is a challenge in environmental responsibility, as most technology-related products are not as easily recyclable as, for instance, paper or PET bottles. Recycling is also largely determined by the condition of the product that needs to be recycled. The options are wide, but they are all definitely more difficult than simply leaving your tech products by the garbage dump.
If, however, your computer or printer is still good enough to use, then you may choose to donate them to schools, charities or non-profit organizations. You don’t spend a dime, you get to help someone else, and you end up getting a deduction come tax time. Everybody wins! Smaller mobile gadgets, such as phones and PDAs that are still in relatively good condition may be passed on to relatives who are willing to inherit them. Kids are especially the likely recipients of these hand-me-downs; for all you know, they have long been eyeing those cool things in your hand for a long time and would be more than happy to accept them.
An important thing to remember, though, when passing on gadgets is to clean out the memory and remove any personal data saved into the gadget. This is not only for your protection but serves as a courtesy to the person you are giving the gadget to.
If looking to buying a laptop or desktop computer from Craigslist.org, visit the website. Once there, select your state and the nearest city. The best way to find computers is to use the search box on the left-hand side of the page. Search with relevant words, such as computer, laptop, or desktop. You will then get a list of for sale products that meet your search standards.
Right away, you will like the cheap computer prices, but don't get too excited. Before buying on Craigslist, you must read the full product descriptions and then ask even more questions. Why? Some of the computers offered for cheap are damaged or in need of repairs. These repairs can turn an otherwise affordable computer purchase into an expensive one.
What are the common issues a laptop or desktop computer may have? For desktops, the biggest issue to look for is computers sold without the monitors. A monitor can easily cost $200. It is best to buy a desktop computer in one whole set, monitor included. As for laptop computers, you may find computer that have battery or power cord issues. A battery may no longer hold a charge or a power cord is ruined and no longer works. A new laptop battery can cost upward of $150, but a new power cord is much cheaper.
Most computer sellers on Craigslist will outline any problems or damage to their computers right in their for sale listings, but others won't say a word. Protect yourself and ask. Before agreeing to purchase a laptop or desktop computer used, ask if there are any problems with the computer, when it was last used, and how old the system is. Just because it is priced to move, it doesn't mean you are getting the best deal.
As previously stated, you can perform a search on Craigslist.org to find used computers for sale. When doing so, you select your city and state. If you don't mind traveling to find a good deal, look at other city websites too. Right now, Craigslist does not allow you to perform multi-city searches, but you can download the free Craigslist Reader, offered by Motion Technologies, to do so with ease.
Processor and chipset | Intel® Centrino® 2 / Centrino® processor technology / Centrino® processor technology - Intel® Core™2 Duo ultra low voltage processor SU9400 or Intel® Core™2 Solo ultra low voltage processor SU3500 - Mobile Intel® GS45 Express Chipset - Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100 (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection, or - Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5150 Wi-Fi®/WiMAX™ dual-mode module, |
Operating system | Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium |
Memory | Dual-channel DDR3 SDRAM support, Up to 4 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, upgradeable to 8 GB using two soDIMM modules (requires 64 bit Operating System) |
HDD | hard disk drive up to 320GB |
Storage | 160/250/320/500 GB or larger hard disk drive or 80 GB SSD drive, 5-in-1 card reader, supporting Secure Digital™ (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick™ (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD) |
Optical Media driver | 8X DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive (except model 3810T) |
Display | -15.6" HD 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD, 16:9 aspect ratio, Super-slim design (model 5810T) -14" HD 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD, 16:9 aspect ratio, Super-slim design (model 4810T) - 13.3" HD 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, high-brightness (200-nit) Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD, 16:9 aspect ratio, Super-slim design (model 3810T) |
Graphics | Mobile Intel® GS45 Express Chipset with integrated 3D graphics, featuring Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (Intel® GMA 4500MHD) with up to 1759 MB of Intel® Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 (64 MB of dedicated video memory, Microsoft® DirectX® 10 |
Audio | Optimized 2nd Generation Dolby Sound Room® audio enhancement, featuring Dolby® Headphone, Dolby® Natural Bass and Dolby® Sound Space Expander, S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) support for digital speakers, MS-Sound compatible, built-in microphone |
Communication | • Acer Video Conference: Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam supporting enhanced Acer PrimaLite™ technology • WLAN: Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5100 (dual-band quad-mode 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N) Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection, featuring MIMO technology, supporting Acer SignalUp™ with Nplify™ wireless technology or - Wi-Fi®/WiMAX™* Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 5150 Wi-Fi®/WiMAX™ dual-mode module, supporting Acer SignalUp™ with Nplify™ wireless technology * depending on network availability - WWAN GTM382E module: UMTS/HSPA at 900 MHz/2100 MHz and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) upgradeable to 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.7 Mbps HSUPA (for 3G models) • WPAN: Bluetooth® 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) - on selected models - • LAN: Gigabit Ethernet, Wake-on-LAN ready |
I/O ports | 5-in-1 card reader (SD™, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD), Three (Four on AS5810T) USB 2.0 ports, HDMI™ port with HDCP support, External display (VGA) port, Headphone/speaker/line-out jack with S/PDIF support, Microphone-in jack |
Security | BIOS user, supervisor, HDD passwords, Kensington lock slot |
Power | ACPI 3.0 CPU power management standard: supports Standby and Hibernation power-saving modes, 62.16 W 5600 mAh 6-cell Li-ion battery pack: Acer PowerSmart 3-pin 65 W AC adapter, ENERGY STAR® 5.0 |
Special keys and controls | 103-/104-/107-key keyboard, with inverted "T" cursor layout (model 5810T) - 86-/87-/91-key keyboard,, with inverted "T" cursor layout (model 3810T & 4810T), Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting: • Circular-motion scrolling • Pinch-action zoom • Page flip 10 function keys, four cursor keys, two Windows® keys, hotkey controls, independent standard numeric keypad (only on AS5810T) , international language support Acer PowerSmart key, Easy-launch keys: Acer Backup, Communication®, touchpad lock, Media control keys (printed on keyboard): play/pause, stop, previous, next |
Dimensions and weight | - 322 (W) x 228 (D) x 23.4/28.9 (H) mm - 1.6 kg ( 3.5 lbs.) with 6-cell battery pack (model 3810T) - 338.4 (W) x 240 (D) x 24/28.9 (H) mm - 1.9 kg ( 4.2 lbs.) with 6-cell battery pack (model 4810T) - 378 (W) x 259 (D) x 24.8/29.7 (H) mm - 2.4 kg ( 5.3 lbs.) with 6-cell battery pack (model 5810T) |
Software | Acer Crystal Eye, Acer GridVista™, Acer GameZone, Acer Game Console, Acer Backup Manager, Acer PowerSmart Manager, Acer eRecovery Management, Adobe® Reader®, Adobe Flash Player, Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Cyberlink® Power DVD, CyberLink® PowerDirector® trial version, McAfee® Internet Security Suite, NTI Media Maker™, Microsoft® Works 9.0 with Office Home and Student 2007 SP1 Trial, Acer 3G Connection Manager (for 3G SKU only) |
Optional items | 1 GB / 2 GB DDR3 1066 MHz soDIMM module, 6-cell Li-ion battery pack, Acer PowerSmart 3-pin 65 W AC adapter, External USB floppy disk drive, External USB 56K modem |
Warranty | 1* Year Carry In (International travellers warranty - ITW) |
