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  [...]

The audio of this one was decent enough to be heard in a small room. There was some echo kind of an effect which surely was because of the bulky interiors. The VGA webcam was efficient enough during voice calls made through Skype with a bit of blurring while waving of hands. Otherwise the images were pretty much clear. This meets the MIL-STD-810F which means that this one can be dropped from heights of  48 inches, withstand 5.8 inches of water blown at 70 miles per hour for 30 minutes; and operate in temperatures from -20 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Its got a Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M graphics chip which is more than enough for the kind of graphics that you would want to use on a rugged laptop. Anyways this isn’t a gaming laptop. The XFR was a bit noisy, like the fan was turning constantly. The system was pretty much cool at about 90 degree Fahrenheit. Powered with a 2.66-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9600 processor and 4GB of RAM this one did pretty well in our overall system test surpassing  [...]

Let me start with the highlight of this one… the touchscreen display. I must say that this one is a highly responsive one, and there was hardly any hindrance in registering the touches. At times however it failed to recognize the nail presses. This one comes loaded with Windows 7 touch applications and trust me it’s a whole lot of fun to use them. Scrolling through the browser can be done by just swiping the finger up and down, pictures can be rotated by just turning the finger. Coming to the glitches I sincerely wish that either Microsoft or Lenovo does something about the Operating systems widgets or buttons because frankly its easier to use a mouse on those tiny shortcuts in the start menu but its kind of difficult to be doing that using the fingers. The speakers of this one are pretty decent as well. The sound was absolutely distortion free while playing ‘hysteria’ by Muse and was also pretty much balanced. Though it isn’t that loud, I would still recommend turning the  [...]

The audio quality was pretty decent enough displaying comfortable amounts of highs and lows and the audio had a very deep feeling to it. Although I guess the speakers could benefit if they had a higher maximum volume range. The inbuilt 1.3 megapixel webcam offers some good visuals and video qualities. Using it while chatting with friends, they said that the visuals were pretty much clear but they complained about some slight motion distortion when we moved. The videos and the images can be edited and enhanced by using the LifeFrame software. Thanks to its 2.1-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 CPU this one performed quite decently in our overall system performance test. It loaded Windows and the other menus within no seconds but it took some time to for the media player menus to open. ‘zombie’ by Cranberries almost took like 9.1 secs to load fully. The 5,400-rpm, 320GB hard drive managed to duplicate a 4.7 GB media folder at a rate of almost 19.1 MBps. It took like 1 min and 2 secs  [...]