Archive for January, 2010
January 30th, 2010 | 
Author: Forget about over-the-top aesthetics and loud color schemes, MSI is having no part of it, at least not with the latest entries to its Classic series notebooks. Instead, MSI’s new CX420 and CR420 keep it relatively simple with an “exclusive Cross-Hatch Color Film Print patterning” the company claims gives them a “fashionable appearance.”
Looks aside, it’s what’s on the inside of these 14-inch notebooks that count, and it all begins with Intel’s Core i5 platform. The CX420 also sports up to 4GB of DDR3 800 or 1066 memory, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics with a 1GB frame buffer, up to 500GB of HDD storage, a 4-in-1 card reader, 1.3MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN, 6- or 9-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium
The CR420 boasts an almost identical spec sheet, except the built-in graphics share the frame buffer with system memory, and the onboard Ethernet LAN tops out at 10/100.
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Here we go again: Western Digital has launched yet another line of portable USB hard drives. The four drives in the My Passport Elite series don’t vary by size, just color. You’re free to select a capacity of 250GB or 320GB in gunmetal gray, old-shoe brown, a soft blue finish, or a sandy red. And as far as we can tell, that’s one of the few differences between this line of devices and Western Digital’s “normal” My Passport Essential drives—the latter having 11 different colors and four different capacity points to choose from.
The 320GB My Passport Elite drive performs nearly identically to its 250GB My Passport Essential cousin. The two are so neck-and-neck in Read the rest of this entry »
Google and Neustar UltraDNS have teamed up in an effort to make global DNS resolution a much speedier and accurate process than it is today.
DNS resolution, the process of looking up a common name, such as maximumpc.com, to find an IP address of a server associated with that name, does not take into account the geo-location of the computer making the request. Without this information, a DNS server may deliver the address to a server across the country (or the globe) resulting in a much slower internet experience.
However, Google and Neustar UltraDNS made a proposition called “Client IP Information in DNS requests.” Obviously from its name, the client IP making the DNS request sends along the first three quarters of their IP address to the DNS server, along with the query. With the first parts of the IP, the DNS server can geographically guess which servers to send back more accurately.
The evaluation of the proposal is underway, and undoubtedly will take a bit of time. Also expect the privacy advocates to pipe up to make sure client information isn’t compromised by this new process.
Give Dell a few more months and it will ensure that its Adamo ultraportable range is ultra-inexpensive too. It has already affected two price cuts in the 10 months following the Adamo’s launch. The latest price cut means that the Adamo is now treading irresistible waters.
The Adamo range of ultraportables now starts at $999 as opposed to $1,499 just before the latest price cut. The $999 Admire features a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, Windows 7 Home (64-bit), 2GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128GB SSD. Its current price is half its launch price.
Even the top-end model, Adamo Desire, could not escape Dell’s price-cutting ritual unscathed. A substantial part of its price tag had to be amputated. It now costs $1,799 after a $500 price reduction.
Regardless of how you feel about the newly announced iPad, it’s probably going to do a few things very well. But will it be the reading device we’ve all been waiting for? Steve Jobs pushed the iBook store in the keynote, and discussed how the Kindle pioneered ebooks. Jobs then said Apple would “stand on [Amazon’s] shoulders”. Can it work?
The obvious benefit of the iPad is that it has a color screen. There will be more options for text size, search, and Read the rest of this entry »
The first part of a typical Apple product launch is out of the way now. During the second leg, skeptics will grudgingly make one final attempt at understanding the device just as fanboys get better at pretending that they know pretty much everything they need to know. Both sides can now also factor in the newfangled prospect of making VoIP calls over the iPad’s 3G connection when making their case.
Apple today updated the iPhone developer SDK to accommodate VoIP apps. The move was accompanied by the launch of iCall, the first and Read the rest of this entry »
Symantec’s Norton Ghost 15 ($60 as of January 11, 2010) substantially improves one of the most capable disk-imaging programs on the market. Some of the new features are of interest only to business IT managers, while others will appeal to consumers. And all of the enhancements make this a powerful tool for anyone serious about backup and recovery.
For the average user, Windows 7 support, Blu-ray disc burning, and a feature Symantec has dubbed “cold imaging” are the most intriguing new features.
Though most imaging products have offered cold imaging–the ability to create a backup image using the recovery CD–for years, it’s certainly a welcome addition to Ghost. (I’ve complained for ages about the feature’s absence from Ghost and other Symantec imaging products.) Ghost 15’s version of the feature, which copies only entire partitions, performed quickly and perfectly in my tests. A notable annoyance: You must enter the program serial number each time you use the feature. Recovery doesn’t require a serial number.