It looks like the boutique notebook developer Malibal is all set to see the desktop pass away. Malibal expertise’s in developing custom-made desktop replacements and with its Veda series which can be loaded with Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300, an 18.4-inch LCD, dual Nvidia GeForce GTX280M graphics cards and 8GB of DDR3 memory. The company brings a top-notch product into the market, and while the components are all superb the design we think could have used a little more help. In Malibal's defense all we can say is, that the company has taken good care of what was in its control and the complaints are about things beyond their control, like the design. The system has been designed by laptop OEM/ODM Clevo. But what can be attributed to company is the connoisseur assembly, a guarantee of admirable service and support, generous component offerings, a no-risk purchase policy and most of all its competitive pricing. Except for the power ports, all the  [...]

Dell is a famous and strong name in the Netbook market. It has a revamped design and is powered by Intel Atom CPU. We thank the Dell’s work to offer various configuration options at reasonable price. The Inspiron Mini 10 costs around $369 that is greater than the Z-series Intel Atom models. Mini 10 has small-sized 10-inch screen, Windows 7, Bluetooth and six-cell battery. Dell doesn’t offer HD display in the Mini 10. Dell has announced to offer another Mini 10 series with inbuilt HD video accelerator, which could work similarly to Nvidia Ion graphics. Acer Ferrari and Asus 1201 Netbooks has HD Displays, it comes with dual-core processor which make the device run faster. The Mini 10 has a cramped keyboard, SD display and the processor is sluggish, so there is not much in here to get excited about. But you can configure the system according to your needs. Earlier, Netbook keyboards were designed badly and troublesome for small hands. We  [...]

Sony Vaio series of notebooks are mainly aimed at multimedia users, they usually don’t make a basic entry level notebooks. So we are naturally excited every time a Sony Vaio notebook lands in our test centers. This one too doesn’t disappoint you on our features it has Blu-ray drive which makes us wish the display was full HD. But maybe we are getting too greedy. This laptop is good for light gamming but it is certainly not for high end full fledged gamming. If you push games to its highest limits and play in all its glory, it will bring this laptop to its heels. We tried a few games with the special effects all closed and we had decent game play. Sony Vaio FW560F/T is not your portable laptop, it is made as a desktop replacement for people who don’t need much clutter on the desk and want some basic mobility.  [...]

Let’s get straight down to the main attraction point of this laptop, the inclusion of Blu-Ray drive. Yes! This computer has one, so you can watch HD content on this computer. We watched a few blu ray movies on this computer and the display was quite crisp. But a bigger screen would have done more justice to the clear video quality. The screen of the computer is 15.5 big which means this is a portable laptop. The screen gives you a native resolution of 1,366X768 pixels, gives 16:9 aspect ratio, which makes it good for 720p HD video. The display is not a full HD one, which will disappoint movie bluffs. Also the resolution is quite good and tiling two windows one next to the other won’t be a problem and there will be plenty of work space for you. Below the display is the keyboard, now Sony doesn’t go with what other notebook players do in the market, Sony has its own unique keyboard and we say it rocks! The keys are not close to each other but there is adequate space in between  [...]

In 2008 Dell came up with the Latitude XT which was the first laptop to have a capacitive touchscreen. Now we have the second generation of this laptop making its appearance along with added multitouch features. Which means that like on an iPhone the user can perform multiple gestures like rotating or zooming using multiple features. Though this one comes with a added multitouch this one doesn’t look any different from its older sibling. The dimensions are pretty much identical at (11.7 x 8.6 x 1.0 inches) and weight (3.8 pounds). Its got a matte black keyboard along with brushed aluminium lid and palm rest. Below the display the convertible has four buttons i.e. power buttons, for orientation changing, settings button and one that performs the same function as ctrl+alt+delete. The screen does rotate automatically when the orientation is changed but I noticed that the screen goes dark for a second or so and then the resized picture appears. At the lower right there is a finger print  [...]

Though Toshiba made a late entry into the Netbook market, looks like it has directly jumped into with Ultra Low Voltage category with vengeance. Its got style that speaks volumes about its class. Frankly this one could send any techie drooling over it. Brilliantly styled and available in Black, Red and White, this one is definitely amongst the best designed netbooks I ve seen till date. Its got a nice subtle pattern which extends throughout the lid, the keyboard and the touchpad. Obviously the touchpad is a bit textured. Though this one has a glossy look it isn’t exatly the finger print like most others in the category. At 3.8 pounds this one is quite lightweight and can be held easily in one hand. It easily fits into the shoulder bag. The keyboard of this one could appear to be slightly cramped if we compare it with the dimensions of the netbook at 12.7 x 8.8 x 1.4 inches. The thing is the manufacturers have left around an inch on both the sides of the deck, rather they could  [...]

The quality of the speakers isn’t all that impressive but then again it’s quite typical for a laptop of this size. The sound quality of the videos on Youtube and Hulu was quite inaudible; however when we played movies and already downloaded songs the sound quality was decent enough. It comes loaded with a 5 mp webcam and the video recorder is a VGA one and it’s probably the best we ve seen till date. The videos were smooth and there was no display of motion blur most of the times. Also the ArcSoft WebCam Companion 3 software which we had seen in the previous versions is also highly improved. Technically speaking this one is a lot more than a netbook if we consider the 1.6-GHz AMD Athlon Neo CPU, 2GB of RAM and all thanks to the configurations this one fared above the category average in our overall system performance tests. This one comes along with a lot of trial software which is to be blamed for the 75 seconds that this one took to boot the Vista. However on the brighter  [...]

Nearly a year after the launch of the stupendous X200, Lenovo has hit back with the launch of the same X200 with a multi touch screen. It has taken the best in the category business convertible to an entirely new level. This one from Lenovo is small and lightweight. At  11.6 x 10.1 x 1.3 inches this one is quite sleek and can fit into any carry bag or pouch easily. This one according to Lenovo weighs somewhere around 3.5 pounds and if it’s the 8 cell battery package this one could weigh approximately 4.2 pounds. Similar in design to the other Thinkpads, this one has a matte black chassis, red trackkpoint on the keyboard and green indicator lights. Above the keyboard they are buttons for the muting and volume control of the audio along with the ThinkVantage button which helps in launching Lenovo’s management utilities. Below the keyboard we have the finger print reader, power buttons, buttons for rotating the display and a switch for locking the operating system. The keyboard  [...]

This one is yet another addition to ultraportable computing devices. I personally am a huge fan of these devices but what is to be seen in this case is whether this one would find universal appeal especially at a time when there is absolutely no dearth of smartphones and netbooks. Before the launch of the iPhones and the other in the category the UPMC’s were like the hottest thing available in the market. However the only drawback was that at that time these UPMC’s were priced anything between $1500-$2000. This one launched by Viliv has a starting price of $587. But then we get netbooks priced at around $350 so here again its universal appeal is questioned. Anyways let’s move ahead and see what this one has in store for us... This one is definitely a smasher when it comes to looks. It’s covered with gunmetal gray plastic and is accented with silver and chrome touches. It’s got a rectangular shape and with curved edges. The buttons are well spaced and are comfortable to  [...]

The speakers of this one were loud and clear quite contrary to what I expected it to be. Anyways the volume of the speakers even at 50% volume can easily fill up a small room and even when the volume was at maximum it did not create any kind of blaring sounds. This one probably is one of the very few laptops which come along with some real good speaker quality. The video quality of this one is pretty much average. Streaming a video of the famous ‘70’s show’ was not much of a problem. The video quality though not a total ace was pretty decent. Still I would advice downloading the videos and then watching them for better performance. It comes loaded with a 0.3 megapixel webcamera which again is not that efficient. During video calls there over Skype this one exhibited some video stuttering and the videos were a bit grainy and  choppy. This one produced average results in our overall system performance test and I would definitely attribute this to the underpowered 1.3-GHz Intel  [...]