3,145,728 pixels That’s the number of pixels that can be displayed on IBM’s T210. The resolution is 2048 x 1536. The term QXGA refers to Quad XGA and that means you can display four windows with a 1024 x 768 (XGA) resolution in a 2×2 matrix. Awesome if you need to have multiple windows open at once. If you tend to work in portrait mode, you can have two windows side-by-side with a 1024 x 1536 resolution. Back in the day, in mid-2002, the T210 went for a cool US$5929 (MSRP).
The T210 sports a 20.8-inch TFT LCD that is enclosed in a heavy black metal base. The monitor is 23-lbs: very heavy. The monitor itself is about 3-inches thick: very thick. The base itself has height adjustment, tilt and swivel. The only thing it lacks is a pivoting feature. Of course you can get rid of the base and use a more versatile mount.
Connections Galore S-Video, Composite Video, DVI, VGA–these are the connections that are built into the T210. So you can use the 20.8-inch monitor to do work and to watch video.
User Unfriendly I hope you only need to plug in the power cord and the connections once. Because the T210 is designed so that connecting the cables require a lot of patience. Most likely the connections panel on the back was designed by an engineer for an engineer–both you don’t give a hoot as to user friendliness. Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that there is a fan inside the monitor. The fan is to keep the LCD cool. I need a monitor that needs to be absolutely silent, if you’re like me, you’ll need to keep that in mind.
Trader Geared According to Tom Martin, director of marketing for IBM monitors back in 2001: “Financial institutions are located on very expensive real estate. In the heart of New York, London, and Tokyo, they’re always trying to fit more traders into their trading environments.” Larry Tabb, VP of Securities and Investments at Tower Group back in 2001 explains further: “The typical setup includes at least four, if not six or even eight monitors and a big computing box. They really need a tremendous amount of information at their fingertips.” Instead of having four XGA (1024 x 768) monitors you can have just one T210.
Old But Solid Now bear in mind that this T210 monitor is about 8 years old. So the brightness has decreased a bit though it is still quite bright and 100-percent usable. There are a few nibbles on the display but nothing that should get in the way of doing actual work: there is a small spot that is about 1/8-inch in diameter where it is a bit darker and there are two half-circles with a slight green tinge at the edge of the top bezel probably due to the driver ICs getting a bit hot. Despite these slight abnormalities you’re getting a near $6000 monitor for free…
FREE Now why am I giving out this awesome IBM T210 for free? Well, it’s not completely free. The way this works is simple: comment on this blog post (you’ll need to register) and I will pick just one person who provides the most compelling reason why I should send the T210 to them. I am sure there are a lot of folks who could use a decent monitor during these troubling times. You have until noon (Pacific Time) Friday August 14, 2009 to post a comment and I will announce the winner on Monday, August 17. Don’t worry about shipping and handling, I’ll take care of that. If you’re local to San Jose, I’ll even hand-deliver it for you. If you know of someone who could use a T210, let them know!
Privacy When you register, you’ll need to use an email address that you actually use. I will not sell the email address and will not use it for anything else other than to inform you that you have won. The only other times I will use the email address are for when I want to send you important information about displays. Rarely will I do that.
Specifications:
For more information:
Sony has two new ebook readers: Pocket or PRS-300 and Touch or PRS-600. Names can get so confusing. I’ll be focusing on the Touch, or PRS-600, which has a 6-inch electronic paper display. The Touch is so named because you can actually touch it. The touch technology used is resistive so the display depresses a bit when you’re using the stylus. One thing right off the bat:
Resistive It is old technology. Sure there are some companies that are reinventing resistive technology to do some amazing things, but the real touch technology is capacitive, the touch technology on the iPod touch and iPhone. Capacitive is smooth as silk; resistive is not as smooth as far as I know.
Design As far as product design goes, the Touch looks quite nice. I’m not too fond of this particular color for an ebook reader (white or off-white looks best in my opinion) but it doesn’t look too bad. Other colors include black and silver. Guess I’m out of luck. The UI or user interface looks a bit better compared to the last version where you had a dozen buttons to choose from.
No WiFi Sigh. When will Sony really get this ebook reader business? No WiFi connectivity. What a shame! 3G connectivity? Not a chance! A USB 2.0 connection is what you’ll need to sync your ebooks from the PC (and Mac!) to the PRS-600. You can also use a Memory Stick or a SD card. Because there is a 3G-toting Kindle to compare this to, the non-connecting PRS-600′s success seems to be already quite limited.
US$299 The price is pretty decent but think of it this way: what are you really buying? An ebook reader is as good as the store that it can buy from. If you want to load just public domain books, then the best thing to do is to get the cheapest ebook reader. But a lot of Kindle users actually buy books from Amazon. Sony has announced that it will slash the price of bestsellers from $11.99 to $9.99–a good thing, but you still need to first buy it from your PC or Mac and then sync it. Back-assed, in my opinion. Sony’s ebook store versus Amazon. A touch-enabled PRS-600 versus the 3G-connected Kindle. The choice isn’t as easy as before since the Kindle lacks touch capability but still Kindle connected to combined with the world’s largest online bookstore is hard to beat.
Source: Engadget
The Palm Pre is available at Amazon for US99.99
I was just looking around on Amazon and it seems you can get a Palm Pre contract-free for just $430
No Big Deal HannStar is a tiny player in the overall TFT LCD panel industry with a 2.19-percent share in terms of revenues according to DisplaySearch’s PanelTrack June 2009 results. And that’s large-area and small/medium LCD panels combined. When it comes to just large-area HannStar’s share is even smaller at 1.85-percent. HannStar’s president David Joe stated that the company expects all of its LCD monitor panels to feature LED backlight technology in 2010. Yes, the shift from CCFL to LED is happening–in notebook PC LCD panels and LCD TV panels. But LCD monitor panels will take a good long while. Read my post dated just a few days ago on this subject “100-percent LED Backlights in 2012 for Notebook PCs“. (more…)
OLED Nikon introduced its COOLPIX S70 digital compact camera on August 4, 2009. Since I’m most interested in display-related features, let’s start with that: the COOLPIX S70 sports a 3.5-inch OLED display. An OLED display can be considered a high-end feature on a digital camera since this technology does cost quite a bit more than LCD.
288K For some very odd reason, camera manufacturers list the total number of pixels of the display instead of the x by y that we are used to for almost all other displays. Nikon states a “288k-dot resolution”. Is that suppose to help me in any way shape or form as to how nice the OLED display is? The resolution should be around 640 x 450 (I’m not sure), which is quite high for a compact digital. That’s almost VGA class–stuff you see on DSLRs.
Capacitive There are generally two types of touch technologies: resistive and capacitive. Usually, resistive is the older and less responsive technology while capacitive is the newer more responsive one. Apple chose capacitive touch technology for its iconic iPhone smartphone. The fact that Nikon makes use of capacitive touch on its digital camera display is another indication that the company is serious about making the user experience on the COOLPIX S70 a good one–at least when it comes to the display. I wonder if it is multitouch…
High-End In my opinion, combining a high-resolution 3.5-inch OLED display and capacitive touch technology on the COOLPIX S70 points to Nikon placing more importance to the user experiencing around the display. And that’s an important focus for several reasons: the touch display is the viewfinder and allows for selective autofocusing, the display is the menu system, and at times the display becomes a limited canvas where you make changes to the pictures and/or videos like cropping and clipping. Finally, the display becomes well the display where you review your pictures and video. Making the display better makes the experience better. Good move Nikon. Eventually the display will become the digital camera with the exception of the lens, memory and battery.
Source: Nikon
NEC‘s MultiSync EA231WMi is a 23-inch 1080p LCD monitor that sports an IPS LCD panel. That ought to sell you something: the image quality on this monitor will be spectacular. But we already know with an IPS panel comes a wallet-hurting price. Not so with the EA231WMi! It will be available in August 2009 (that’s sometime this month) for an estimated street price of US$379. With that you get a three-year parts and labor warranty that includes the backlight. I’m guessing this 23-incher is making use of LG Display’s e-IPS panel to get to that affordable price. NEC makes some of the best LCD monitors based on IPS panels so I expect the EA231WMi to be quite popular with those who value image quality.
There are some other interesting features: Ambient light sensor (automatic brightness), real-time image quality optimization (I don’t know how they do this), and a built-in carrying handle. And some specs:
Source: BusinessWire via Engadget
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