Category Archives: Mobile Computing

The Toshiba NB 305 Mini Series: Product Review

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With its attractive and sturdy build, amazing battery lifetime, full size keyboard and its 3 pound ultra light weight, the Toshiba NB 305 Mini still hold a place in the hearts as the most versatile netbook out there.

The display may be the best we’ll ever get on a netbook.The wide screen is nice for watching online streaming video and the colors are crisp and vibrant. The brightly colorful 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen looks great from any viewing angles. You don’t’ have to make any adjustments to share the screen with a friend.

The battery life is phenomenal. On the heaviest days of usage, you can usually get 7-8 hours from the six-cell battery and about eight hours during your typical routine of web surfing, chatting and writing.

The keyboard is impressive to say the least. The Toshiba NB 305 offers a real full keyboard with raised keys that respond well with tactile feedback and are spaced far enough apart to prevent typos due to minor finger slippage.

The Toshiba NB 305 is a great travel companion. Not only it is easy to pack and carry, but the small size (10 inch) fits well in airplane seat back fold down trays, a venue which makes the larger laptops unusable.

When it comes to performance, shoppers are usually reluctant to pick a netbook. Not anymore, for anyone that may have been on the fence about getting a netbook because they were concerned it might not perform, hop right off that fence and get the NB 305. The Toshiba NB 305 Mini holds up well to heavy work especially with you upgrade the memory to 2 GB of RAM.

To safeguard your hard drive data, the Toshiba NB 305 automatically senses a falling netbook and safeguards your data by “parking” the hard drive heads. A really useful add-on is its sleep and charge USB port that allows you to charge your mobile when the netbook is asleep or off. The NB 305 ultra light weight is simply amazing, you can put it in a backpack without adding any more weight than a small textbook.

Straight Up: Excellent product, comfortable, very compact, light, and portable. It’s probably the best of breed at the moment with the great looks, the exceptional battery life and flawless functioning. Overall, this netbook lives up to its top consumers report rating.

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Gateway NV5929u Laptop Review

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Gateway has admittedly had a hard decade. They have had some very poorly executed strategies, designs, and hardware. I was very hesitant to pick up a Gateway laptop because of that. However, the incredible sticker price lured me in, as well as the positive word of mouth about the Gateway NV5929u. There are just a few things that I don’t like on this computer, but for the money, it was a steal.

Appearance

The NV5929u is really attractive. The reflective top cover case is an eye catcher. The clam shell design is also nice and the round pivot hinge that runs on the back adds a really nice touch. They keyboard is large and the touch pads at the top don’t clutter the look and feel. The speaker slats near the screen definitely aren’t my favorite look, but they do the job. The off-center touch button is a little strange looking, with the off-center mouse pad. The 15 inch LED screen is really nice. I don’t love glossy screens, but it looks amazing. If you are going to be working in a highly lit area, this is something to consider.

Performance

Wow. This laptop includes an i5 Intel processor that really works stuff over. If your computer is a few years old, you will be amazed at the performance. Having Windows 7 doesn’t hurt either, as its performance is very good. It ships with 4GB of ram and a 320 GB hard drive. Again, nothing to complain about here. Start time is really fast too. Unfortunately, now all my other computers seem extremely slow.

I did non scientific tests utilizing graphic editing and video viewing. Both were extremely nimble and I was surprised how this laptop just sliced through these tasks. I have also utilized the HDMI out port (which is very convenient) to stream video onto my TV. The picture is incredible and the laptop doesn’t miss a beat.

Usability

The offset mouse and mouse button are my biggest complaints on this unit. The button is way too small and annoying. Use touch click where possible. Aside from that, it is highly usable with long (4.5 hours) battery life. This laptop weighs in at about 6 pounds and feels very nice in the hand. It wouldn’t be hard to tote this thing around. The integrated webcam works very well. I didn’t care for the floating webcam app, however. It gets annoying, even if you have it on pop up.

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Factors Affecting Android Application Development

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Unlike iPhone which has exclusive manufacturer of phone, Android has got large number of phone manufacturer. Large variety of hand-held is available with Android. The driving force for association of this entire mobile brand is due to its open environment. Its app development is very easy as compared to any other platform. Lots of sources and tools are available to help apps development. Very strong supporting community is there to help in the programming.

Google’s Android provides Software Development Kit (SDK) for the creation of Application. With the release of every new version of operating system for mobile Google releases their updated SDK kit for respective OS. Google’s OS SDK helps programmer to write code for application.

SDK is use for programming of application for android framework. It is up to the programmer’s imagination and ability to customize application for phone. It gives facility to develop program on computer and test it before installing on phone.

API of Core application of Android OS is same as that are used for its application development process. That gives flexibility to programmer’s to pick any existing apps program and make changes in its functionality or add functionality to it to develop complete new application. Its gives large permutations and combination of option to create unique program as per programmer imagination. Re-usability of existing apps program code gives developer to think beyond the concept which is already in use and help in completing task quickly. A large collection of library support is there for Android Mobile OS. These libraries extend the capability of application development. This mobile OS also give support to vast range of media file format for image, audio, video etc. Google’s Operating system development is based on the Linux in its core. Linux in its core manage the hardware resource and its driver. So while writing code for Android application it is important to consider the effect of Linux in mind.

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Let’s Know More About Your iPhone 4

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As the name suggests iPhone 4 belongs to the fourth generation of iPhone. It also runs on the same operating system like its descendants i.e. Apple’s iOS. It has decked with some spectacular features like video calling, media consumption, retina and multi touch display etc. The new splendid design includes an uninsulated stainless steel frame that act as the device’s antenna. Furthermore, the latest release of iOS 4.2.1 operating system offer added functionalities such as AirPlay and AirPrint. Following are the noticeable features of iPhone 4:

  1. Retina Display: The iPhone 4 has a 3.5 inch display with a basic resolution of 960 by 640 pixels making the text extremely sharp and graphics incredibly vibrant. Brilliant color and contrast is IPS technology usage.
  2. Video Calling: The front-facing camera is specially installed for serving video calls enabling video conferencing anywhere and anytime.
  3. Engineered Glass: In iPhone 4, two shiny panels of aluminosilicate glass contains all the advanced technology between them. The Aluminosilicate glass is the same type of glass used in the windshields of helicopters and high-speed trains. And the best thing; it is recyclable.
  4. Stainless Steel Band: iPhone 4 also has a Stainless Steel band which is five times stronger than standard steel providing amazingly thin refined design and extraordinary structural rigidity.
  5. Apple A4 Chip: The A4 chip developed by its engineers can easily perform various complex jobs such as multitasking, editing videos, and placing FaceTime calls.
  6. Gyroscope & Accelerometer: iPhone 4 consists of an integral three-axis gyroscope; which when joined with the accelerometer, makes iPhone 4 competent enough to offer advance motion sensing features for an enhanced gaming experience.
  7. Camera LED & iMovie: The iPhone 4 camera with a backside-illuminated sensor shoots lovely 5-megapixel photos and astonishing HD videos even in low-light settings. The en suite LED flash not only works as a flash during picture capturing but also stay on to light up the scene while shooting a video. Moreover, it is ideal for making FaceTime calls and shooting self-portraits.
  8. Search Engine Bing: Though Google will still be the iPhone’s default search engine but Yahoo and Bing-powered searches will also be available as options.
  9. iBooks for iPhone: Apple enables its users to start reading an iBook on an iPhone. They can now download purchased books to all their supported devices without any extra charge.
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