Atom has decided to lock horns with Nvidia Ion by bringing competition in the market with their own brand of chipsets with GPUs. The three processors (which come integrated with chipset) are named N450, D510 and D410 are expected to arrive in this month itself. These three promise to deliver better graphics apart from being faster and smaller. The speed of these processors is 1.66 GHz and there will be integrated Intel NM10 Express graphics chipset. Memory controller, CPU and GPU are all integrated in one and you can expect your Netbook size to reduce by 60%. Of the three chips, the D510 and D410 are aimed at HTPCs or nettops and N450 is aimed at Netbooks. The latter has a 512 kb L2 cache and 7 W of total TDP so there will be a significant rise in the battery life too. The D410 also comes with the same 512kb L2 cache but the TDP is of 12W. Finally, the D510 is a dual-core based processor, has TDP of 15 W and has 1 MB L2 cache. Such chipsets are  [...]

When Assassin Creed I came out, the graphics engine was quite similar to Prince of Persia – The Two Thrones. But we welcomed it as we couldn’t get enough of Altair jumping seamlessly on roof toops and killing with those sexy maneuvers. Assassin’s Creed II is here and they have made it even better. The improvements made in this will make you wonder why Ubisoft didn’t do all this in first title. Ubisoft made lots of money from Assassins Creed which because it was selling like hot cakes due to the eye candy put in. Our hero in this game is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who is a spoilt 17 year old son of a wealthy banker. He spends his time and money on women and fights with local gangs in the beautiful city of Venice. However things take a turn around for the teenager when he finds out that his father isn’t just a banker. His father later on gets killed along with his sons (except Ezio, of course) and now  [...]

Headphone belong to that category of peripherals that both at dirt cheap and sky high prices. Klipsch Image S4 is a cheap set of headphones which comes at an $80 price tag and still perform like those headphones which cost more than $100. They have noise cancellation feature which make sure outside noise stays out. If you are looking for replacement for your current mp3 player headphones, we would certainly recommend you to go for this. The oval ear tips on the headphones feel really comfortable and soft on the ears. Klipsch gives you three ear tips, one of them is for really large ears. But even these three sizes may not fit every ear. We were lucky because the tips sat comfortably in our ears and didn’t come out easily. Other accessories with the Klipsch Image S4 include an tool to clean ear wax and a metallic box to keep the ear buds. We think that the box was given to protect the delicate cables. The box looks a bit old fashioned, though. Klipsch  [...]

Logitech’s Anywhere Mouse MX contains Darkfield laser technology which is the manufacturers answer to Microsoft’s BlueTrack laser tracking system. The Darkfield can work on all surfaces even on nonmirrored glass, something that BlueTrack cannot do. MX also has the Logitech’s new unifying technology, a great feature if you are a fan of Logitech’s products and don’t use anything else. It can connect up to six compatible mice and keyboard to a single USB receiver, thus you keep your USB ports free. However, Logitech has slapped an $80 price tag on it. Microsoft’s Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 costs about $40 and has similar features, so why would you spend twice on this mouse? The small size of the Logitech’s Anywhere Mouse MX makes it travel friendly; it will fit easily in to your laptop bag. The shape of the pointer is sculpted in such a way, that it can be used by a left hander and a right hander with equal comfort. However, the two buttons  [...]

Mitsubishi LT-52249 is the company’s latest offering in the high end range and the company really does it in style with the included speakers. Usually we avoid talking about speakers in TV reviews because they are pretty entry level. If you are really an audiophile you would ditch the TV speakers and invest in a separate audio system. However, this TV has a panel of speakers below the display which give mind blowing out put of 52 watts. However, the presence of the speakers ruins the look of the TV to a certain extent. One of the TV’s worst features has to be the awful remote. All the keys look the same and it is difficult to tell them apart by their feel. There is no separate aspect ratio button on the remote. The bundled remote is universal and it control four gadgets at a time but with such a poor remote we doubt if you will use it. The main menu is as poorly constructed as the remote control. It often lagged and we were staring at the screen  [...]

Corel Digital Studio 2010 is for video enthusiasts and amateur photographers for managing digital content like videos and photos. It has four applications – WinDVD, DVD Factory, Video Studio and PaintShop Photo all put it into one which makes it an ideal package for multi media enthusiasts. This software is your solution to capturing, burning, sharing, playing and editing photos and videos. For photo editing, there is PaintShop Photo with which you can do correction of digital pictures quite easily. You can apply effects such as sepia, B/W, antique to portraits. Fine tune option and Makeover tool are for color corrections. If you are a newbie and all these options are too convoluted for you, you can always use the Quick fix option or the Suggest button and the software does the rest for you. Standard options include red-eye removal, crop and straighten. If you have a large collection of photos then it will be hard to find locate what you want from  [...]

This machine from Dell is for gamming and general day-to-day activities. The hardware that has gone inside the machine makes it capable of high end usage. Dell has revamped the looks of the cabinet to make it look better than the usual boring cases. The machine is powered by 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 860 which is extremely fast and hence high end chores such as gaming or graphic development can be handled easily by this computer. A fast processor is useless unless complimented by plenty of RAM. Dell does exactly that by putting 8 GB, 1066 MHz DD3 SD RAM to make sure the computer remains fast. This computer cannot handle games in all its glory but it can certainly do well in mid range gamming. There is GeForce 240 GTS graphics card in the machine for churning out great looking graphics. We thought that Dell could have got us a better graphic card by sacrificing wireless networking card. The hardware inside is good for now but it is certainly not a  [...]

Lady Gaga perhaps made sure that this pair of headphones really looks good before she gave permission for her name to be used on the set. Some might feel that the manufacturers have tried to be too fashionable but looking at Lady Gaga’s lifestyle, we completely understand. The price of these super sexy headphones is $120 but you can get it around for $100 if purchased online. The stylish headphones are made for women and we doubt if men would buy it even if it didn’t have the name of the pop star on the set. The build of the headphone is too feminine for men, especially with the attached triangular earpieces. While the triangular blocks on the headphones look good they are not ergonomically comfortable in the ear because the edges of the triangle blocks press against the skin of the ear and hence cause discomfort. It also makes the buds come out of the ear occasionally. The manufacturer bundles three sizes of the silicone made ear tips  [...]

M-Audio speakers are used more by music producers and musicians than computer users. Maybe it is because the price is a bit high however it is accompanied by awesome sound quality. This $99 speaker set is the budget friendly version of the $150 Studiophile AV 40. This speaker set looks a lot like AV 40 and the quality also is almost the same. However this set uses a cheaper amplifier and hence the sound quality is a bit low. However all this is done in order to bring the price down. The cut down on hardware certainly won’t go well with audio enthusiasts and we would advice them to go for AV 40 if you don’t want to compromise on sound quality. This speaker also has the same silk, ferrofluid cooled, .75 inch dome tweeters that the AV 40 has. There are jacks on the left speaker for auxiliary input and headphone output. Other than this there is an illuminated knob for controlling the volume. The behind the left speaker, there is RCA inputs and  [...]

LCD and plasma TVs have been locking horn over the years and now plasma has been relinquishing and LCD seems to have won the battle when it comes to TV market. LCDs are now available in 65 and 55 inch sizes which has led to plasma screen lowering their prices (and thus, lowering the features) in order to lure customers. Panasonic is a giant in this game and has been making versatile LCDs and plasma panels time and again. We got 54-inch Panasonic TC-P54S1 and there are other sizes available for this series like 65 and 58 inch. The features are all the same and apart from the screen size, there are no differences. This TV is full HD plasma TV and is capable for 1080p resolution of videos but no 1080p/24 reproduction which is preferred by videophiles. The remote is good but we didn’t like the three buttons Viera Tools, SD Card and Viera Link which hog the surface and don’t give enough room for more important buttons like menu. We think the three  [...]