HP UK (TouchSmart 300, 600): Touch-enabled 23-inch BrightView TFT LCD with 1920×1080 resolution, NVIDIA GeForce 9400, 2x DDR3 SODIMM sockets, 6-in-1 memory card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 2.0 (6). The TouchSmart PC 300 has a touch-enabled 20-inch BrightView with 1600×900 resolution. A 1600×900 is really good for nothing when it comes to watching HD so if you can afford it, get the larger 23-inch version.
The art of creating a good product name is no more. A good product name would not only help identify what the product is but help customers easily distinguish one from another. What does the 300 after TouchSmart PC stand for? How about TouchSmart PC 20i? And 23i for the 23-inch version? That sounds smart. I go to HP’s site to find out more detailed information about the TouchSmart PCs and I get model numbers like these: IQ504, IQ506, IQ804, IQ816. *sigh*
Instead of reaching for your mouse, just reach out and touch the LCD. You can pinch, rotate, arc, flip, press or drag a finger across the screen. So what are some things you can do with a multitouch all-in-one? Watch movies using Hulu Desktop and/or Netflix! Isn’t it interesting that we would rather look for the lost remote control, and spend considerable time doing it, than to actually go to the TV and change channels? Well, I’m not sure that we would want to get up, go to our TouchSmart PC and use our fingers to flip channels, change volumes, etc. on Hulu Desktop or Netflix. I just don’t see it. I’d rather sit down, relax and control the thing with my remote! Maybe it’s just me. After the break: Social? Music? Cooking! Cool…
So multitouch and movie watching might not go great together. How about social networking like Twitter? Tweeting is about typing (just a little bit) so you’ll need to get on the keyboard. What’s multitouch got to do with anything?
Okay, multitouch isn’t going to revolutionize the way you tweet. How about music? I say it is the same thing with music as it is with TV. We use our remotes, even when we have our iPods, we want our remotes: the ones integrated into our earphones. When we’re using our stereo, we want to click next on our remotes to get to the next song while we’re reading our Kindles. We don’t want get up from our comfy couch, walk up to the stereo to get to the next song or change the volume. Do we want to do that on our PCs? We want a remote. So multitouch is a waste listening to music on a PC. In my opinion.
Now here is some interesting stuff. RecipeBox! Yes, aspiring chefs, this is for you! You can “discover, explore and keep track of recipes saved from multiple websites and cook with a hands-free experience via voice commands.” I’m glad they made it hands-free but then multitouch is, again, a complete waste. Voice commands don’t work 100% of the time and when you’re working with a sharp object, like a knife, and your computer keeps telling you that you’re saying something wrong or keeps responding the wrong way, something seriously wrong can happen. But even if voice commands work, having a PC close to where you cook is a bad idea, unless the TouchSmart PCs are oil-proof, water-proof, shock-proof, ding-proof, etc.
I’m sure HP’s TouchSmart PCs can be used for a variety of tasks, but multitouch on a PC as of now is without a specific purpose. I personally like to keep my PC displays fingerprint-free. How would you like to be continuously cleaning your huge 23-inch LCD? Or even your 15.4-inch notebook LCD? By the way, that 20-inch or 23-inch display can be used as a monitor for your game consoles like the PlayStation or Xbox. Now that’s a cool feature!
Confusing names. Toshiba‘s Dynabook MX/43 sports a 13.3-inch LCD while the MX/33 is equipped with a smaller 11.6-inch. Wouldn’t it be better to have named them MX/13 and MX/11? Oh well. Here are the specs to the more capable MX/43:
The ill-equipped but more portable MX/33 sports these specs:
Standard Both the MX/43 and MX/33 have some fantastic battery life. Don’t expect to do much graphics work or play on these as they are powered by Intel’s GMA 4500MHD (MX/43) and GMA 4500M (MX/33). Both have Fast Ethernet, WiFi BGN, Memory Card Reader (SD/SDHC, xD, Memory Stick–I think), USB 2.0 (3), HDMI, and VGA. I can’t read Japanese so feel free to let me know if I have some specs down incorrectly.
Source: Toshiba via “Toshiba rolls out Dynabook MX/43, MX/33 thin-and-lights for Japan” – Engadget
A couple of my friends and I are investigating which battery cases to get for our iPhones. I have an iPhone 3G and they have the iPhone 3GS. The cases should work with either. So, I went googling around and here is what I found:
The conclusion seems to be, if you’re wanting to maximize bang for your buck, Accessory Power’s EnerG Slim-Fit seems to be the way to go.
5.9mm. That’s how thick LG Display‘s 47-inch LCD TV panel is. Ditto for its 42-inch version. For the metric-challenged, that’s 0.23-inch. The company claims these are the world’s thinnest. How did LG Display do it? By improving on its LGS or Light Guide Sheet. There are no details at the moment as to how exactly it was improved. These two LCD TV panels are light too: 6.1kg for the 42-inch and 7.3kg for the larger 47-inch. Color gamut is 80% NTSC, resolution is 1920 x 1080, frequency is a motion-blur-busting 120Hz and a 8ms (MPRT) response time. Of course edge-lit LED backlight technology was used. It is a matter of time when we’ll get to see the world’s thinnest 42-inch and 47-inch LCD TV sets from LG.
Source: Korea IT Times
Cool Tool Pro-Camera is an app that brings advanced features to your iPhone: self-timer, digital zoom and image stabilization. Digital zoom is probably not going to be all that great since even in dedicated cameras it doesn’t help that much: you’d want something real–an optical zoom. The self-timer is kind of cool: you could put your iPhone on a tripod, set the self-timer, click, run to your friend and then get yourself in the picture. But the features that makes Pro-Camera true to its name are image stabilization and “Night Images”.
Image Stabilization By taking advantage of the built-in accelerometer, Pro-Camera detects your jitters and stabilizes the image. Image-stabilized images coming out of your iPhone sounds terrific. There is also a nifty option to overlay a grid so you can line up the horizon; it’s called ’tiltmeter’.
“Night Images” is a feature that cleans up low-light photos. The process isn’t documented but there is probably some algorithm to reduce noise. I’ve seen some low-light photos from the iPhone 3GS and they look pretty good. Even the iPhone 3G does a decent job with low-light photography. With just a touch of noise reduction and without eliminating too much detail the “Night Images” feature might come in real handy. Just $3 gets you Pro-Camera. I think it is quite worth it.
Source: Pro-Camera
This is probably the largest digital signage application in the world! Bayer’s former HQ in Leverkusen, Germany has been adorned by 5.6 million LEDs. ag4 media covered the entire 17,500 square meters of the building that can be used as really large advertisements and they look fantastic.
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Standard South Korea has been doing it for quite some time. In Korea when you purchase a mobile phone, whether it be Samsung, LG or some other brand, you can interchange the power plug. The government pushed all mobile phone manufacturers to a single standard and all imported mobile phones must have this standard power connection too. Now, the US is headed in the same direction.
US Too The CTIA Wireless Association has stated that micro-USB will be the power standard for all mobile phones as well as other mobile devices. Say good bye to all of those proprietary power plugs but don’t do it just yet: this standard goes into effect in January 2012. The 3.5mm audio plug is also becoming a standard for earphones.
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Dell’s Adamo XPS has an interesting hinge. I does look like it will be better balanced when the display is open. The other side sports another USB connection (for a total of three), an Ethernet port and headphone out. Oh, and another set of vents. Interesting design. Let’s hope Dell doesn’t take too long to expose the rest of it. The Adamo XPS is just 9.99-mm thick.
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Solid BenQ‘s G2320HDB is a 23-inch 1080p LCD monitor sporting a 1920 x 1080 resolution, brightness of 300 cd/m2 and a 5ms response time (on/off) and a fast 2ms GTG (grey-to-gray) response time. Dynamic contrast ratio is stated to be 40,000:1–don’t read too much into this spec but do pay attention to the static contrast ratio of 1000:1, quite good. Viewing angles are a bit limited at 170/160 thanks to the use of a TN TFT LCD panel. Connectivity is solid with VGA, DVI-D and HDMI (1.3) ports. You can only tilt the G2320HDB down (20 degrees) and up (5 degrees).
Marketing There are many marketing labels attached to the G2320HDB: Q-Pilot, Senseye+Photo Image Technology, and AMA (Advanced Motion Accelerator). The Q-Pilot is the name for BenQ’s OSD (on-screen display) and the company touts its ease-of-use. The Senseye+Photo Image Technology are five presets for optimized pictures for different content. AMA boosts response.
Regular BenQ combines a lot of style with solid functionality in the G2320HDB. Style does count for a lot these days, but aside from style and a few clever names, it looks to be a regular 23-inch LCD monitor.
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Here is what PhotographyBLOG concludes about the GF1:
… the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 takes most of the good points of its bigger brothers, the G1 and GH1, and literally squeezes them inside a smaller, more compact-camera-like body. The fantastically well-implemented Live View, lightning fast auto-focus, excellent image quality and added bonus of 720p video makes the GF1 a great camera for beginners and more serious photographers alike.
That’s some high praise. Another video after the break. (more…)
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