Click here for review!
Samsung has just released their followup to the NC10 netbook with the N110 and N120. These 10 inch models are not radically different than their predecessors, but Samsung already had a solid basis to build upon in their netbook line. Although the specs are the same and comparable to almost all other netbooks available (1.6ghz Intel Atom, 1gbRAM, 160gb HDD), they revamped the already sleek looks of their netbooks, increased battery life to 7hrs and increased the size of the touchpad. In addition the N120 has a keyboard that is 97% the size of a standard keyboard, which is larger than the N110 and the previous NC10 netbook (and most netbooks on the market. I believe this is the largest so far). This is a great upgrade since one of the downsides of netbooks in the eyes of skeptics are the small, cramped keyboards that make it difficult to type.

These netbooks are priced slightly higher than their competition (~$470), but the larger keyboard and overall benefits of the N110/120 may outweigh the increased premium you pay. Personally I feel these prices are pushing the limits of what the public will pay for a netbook, but this does not seem to have affected sales of Samsung's previous netbooks too much.

Coffee Table Multitouch Computer

A pretty neat idea. A touch screen computer that serves as a coffee table. Move, slide, rotate your pictures with your hand, just as if you scattered your personal pictures on an actual coffee table. Cool yes, practical, I don't know. The price for this is still not known, and although it would be a lot of fun to have, would you shell out some money for one? I personally wouldn't, but maybe there are some that would.

Asus 1008HA

Asus' new netbook model, the 1008ha, is reported to be released in May for ~$500. This model is a higher end netbook, targeted towards the same audience as the Asus S101 and to a lesser extent the Asus 1002ha. It looks to come in at least 3 colors: red, white and black.

For $500 you're getting a remarkably thin, light, and sleek netbook. But it's performance is still on par with most other available netbooks. Hopefully the price will come down a bit and hit a sweet spot of ~$400 so that it can compete with other netbooks like the Samsung NC10.

Cnet Article- Netbook Processor Showdown

In a very unscientific, and almost useless feat of benchmarking, CNET tries to compare the 3 most popular CPUs found in netbooks today: Intel Atom, AMD Athlong Neo, and Via Nanao. Its useless because they tested them using 3 very different systems. However you can make some general observations about them.

Bottom line, don't get a netbook based so much on the CPU inside of it. They are not meant to be computing powerhouses. Base your decision on other factors like screen size/quality, keyboard size/layout, battery life, and size.

We've all experienced it. Our brand new computer which should be fast, seems to be bogged down a bit. Or our older machine that was fast at one time, has been slowing down overtime. But there is something you can do about it, short of buying a new machine or re-installing Windows Vista. Here are a few tips for new and old owners alike to 1) Make their computer run faster and 2) Maintain that speed. Many times for purpose #2, people give up and wipe their drive clean and do a fresh operating system install. And although that will make your system snappier, it can be a pain in the butt. Through regular maintenance you can at least prolong the amount of time in between clean installs. I've had my laptop for about a year, and with these tweaks and maintenance methods, I have not noticed a slow down on my machine.

These tips are mainly geared towards Windows Vista, but some are universal.

First, to increase the speed of your system:
1) Remove unnecessary bloatware. Remove any programs/apps that came with your system that are useless or are notorious system hogs. Norton Antivirus and other Norton products are principal offenders. Get rid of it but make sure to get other antivirus (i.e. Avast, Antivir) and firewall (ZoneAlarm) software to replace it. Not only will removing these programs increase speed by eliminating a lot of background processes, it will also free up hard-drive space.

You can remove these through the windows un-installer, or download CCleaner which has good uninstalling features.

2) Optimize Windows Vista by following the tips outlined in the first post in this thread. By following some of these optimization tips, you can increase the snappiness of your computer by eliminating unnecessary start-up programs, background apps, etc. This can lead to a faster computing experience as well as potentially decreasing windows boot times.

3) Defragment your hard-drive. This speeds up the performance of your hard-drive, especially if you've never done this before and your drive is highly fragmented. I recommend using Diskeeper, Jkdefrag, or Defraggler for good free options.

4) Defrag and re-order your bootfiles. Follow the guidelines outlined here. This optimizes your bootfiles, allowing for faster boot-up times.

Now to maintain the current speed of your system, as well as to maintain the general health of your machine:
1) Defragment using diskeeper, jkdefrag, or defraggler on a consistent basis. I try to do it once a week.

2) Use CCleaner to clean out junk files and unnecessary registry entries. This safe and effective program will clean out files like temporary internet files to free up hard-drive space, and will delete unnecessary or old registry entries. I've been using this for a while and it is completely safe. Again, try to use this ~once a week.

3) Run in the background and conduct regular system virus scans, adware/malware scans, and maintain an active firewall program. Nothing will sap your system faster than a virus, worm, or malware on your computer. The best way to prevent them from affecting your system is to prevent them from getting on their in the first place. If you get one you are usually stuck wiping your system completely. So be sure to have these programs up and running, updated, and used frequently. Here are some of my recommendations (free software). Some of these free versions have upgraded versions that you pay for. In most cases the free version is more than enough. Personally I only use the free versions:
Antivirus: Avast, Avira Antivir
Firewall: ZoneAlarm
Ad/Malware Detection: Adaware


4) Reduce the heat of your machine=increase its lifespan...this is somewhat unrelated but a good thing to do anyway for laptops. Laptops produce large amounts of heat due to the confined spaces the internal components find themselves in. If your machine runs very hot, you could be shortening the life of your machine (the extent of which is debatable, but it doesn't hurt to make your machine run cooler). Physically you can prevent this by making sure your air-vents aren't blocked and by periodically cleaning out the air-vents/fans.

On the software side you can undervolt your CPU to reduce the heat that your chips produce by using RMClock. Depending on your chip and machine, undervolting can have a dramatic or minor effect on system temperatures and energy savings. The basic premise is that your CPU is given an excess amount of voltage to account for variabilities between individual CPUs. But the voltage is in excess, and you can tune it down using RMclock to use a lower voltage that is perfectly fine for your particular chip. I have done this and shaved a few degrees off of my temperatures, and there are no ill-effects from doing this. Your chip is running at the same speed as before, just with lower heat output and voltage input. Follow the guide here for more information. It will probably be helpful to also download hwmonitor (temperature monitor) and Orthos (to stress test your CPU under new voltages).

5) Once you have tuned your machine to be running fast, is virus/malware free, and have all your windows settings/personalizations the way you like it, its a good idea to create a "original" or "baseline" backup image on an external drive, using a backup program such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. Then, all you have to do is backup your personal files over time. If your computer dramatically slows down or becomes infected, instead of doing a clean install you can just restore to that original image, and you'll be back to that original speed of your machine.

More Dell Adamo reviews are finally materializing. Here are a few more recent ones:
http://gizmodo.com/5205524/dell-adamo-full-review-macho-outside-sissy-inside

http://i.gizmodo.com/5207518/dell-adamo-dissected-its-neat-and-tidy-on-the-inside-too

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/dell-adamo/4505-3121_7-33560244.html?subj=re&tag=TOCmoreStories.0

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343975,00.asp

Engadget Review

Some "real user" (as opposed to the pros at gizmodo and cnet) reviews as well. One guy even had the guts to take his apart:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=342287&page=40

Unboxing video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WESVH-uNvsg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikio.co.uk%2Fvideo%2F1003464&feature=player_embedded

The initial impression from these few reviews indicates mostly what we knew or suspected all along. The Adamo is a great looking, super-thin, and relatively light notebook that will definitely catch people's eyes. Performance wise, it is no speed demon, but what did you expect since it comes with a ULV 1.2 or 1.4ghz core 2 duo. However it seems to be adequate for most tasks, just don't expect to be playing Crysis on it.

Other observations, it appears that the fan noise may be rather loud. Interestingly the battery is the entire base of the laptop, and is thus not user-replaceable. Battery life has been reported to be slightly disappointing , since it seems to get about 2.5hours of battery life (compared to ~5hrs advertised). In terms of upgradeability, the RAM is unfortunately not replaceable, so you are stuck with your preconfigured amount of 2gb or 4gb, depending if you got the entry level or higher end model (it's really disappointing that you have to spend $600 more to get 0.2ghz bump and 2gb more RAM). It looks as though the SSD can be replaced, but the 128gb uSATA Samsung drive that it comes with is a pretty good SSD.

Overall this is Dell's answer to the Voodoo Envy 133 and Macbook Air. It is their luxury model. It is not meant to be a powerhouse, but a classy, functional piece of hardware. You are paying a premium for a nifty looking laptop. If you are really concerned about performance you may want to wait for future versions of the Adamo that may correct this current perceived shortcoming. However, some people are willing to sacrifice some performance in order to have a beautiful, slim and light laptop. No matter what you think of this laptop or its price tag, it is definitely unique and eye-catching.

There are a large number of external drives you can purchase for adding extra storage or for data backup. But what should you buy? What factors should you look for in a good drive? In most cases speed isn't an issue since the majority of the time the drive maxes out the USB2 interface anyway. Don't worry about the included software, since all of it is terrible and usually requires you to pay extra for the full version. You're better off getting Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost, or free software solutions available online. So the most important factors you should weigh in your purchase are capacity (every brand has a wide range of sizes so this doesn't really matter either), reliability and.....LOOKS! That's right...you might as well have a nice looking box on your desk compared to a cheap plastic looking, or over-the-top looking with flashing lights everywhere external drive.

I will not talk about reliability since every other site will talk about the reliability of different hard drive brands. I want to point out the "looks" of the external drive and give you a list of the top looking external drives.

As you can tell from my other posts, I am somewhat vain. I paid extra for a fancied-up Asus netbook, and am a big fan of the over-priced Dell Adamo. So what external drive do I have? A Lacie Golden Disk. That's right, an external hard drive that is solid gold........well at least it looks like it. These pretty drives will cost a little more, but not terribly more, and at least in my case with the golden disk, perform just as well as other external drives. So here is my list of the best looking external drives.

1. Lacie Golden Disk- What can I say. I own it, its gold, and has a curvy top to it. Its definitely eye catching. Its a fingerprint magnet, but comes with a microfiber cloth so you can buff it up every day for that extra shine. Lacie makes a bunch of "artful" drives, devised by several designers. One of which resembles a Lego block. Its pretty cool stuff.

2. Lacie Design by Neil Poulton- Another Lacie Drive! A more subtle look than the golden disk. Here you have a nice black case.

3. Maxtor BlackArmor- Similar in looks to the Poulton, but seems to be smaller, more portable.

4. Seagate FreeAgent Go- Small and portable, with a nice brushed metal case that comes in a variety of colors.

5. Seagate FreeAgent Desk- Just a larger version of the Go, but no colors.

6. Western Digital My Passport Elite- Had to have this here. It is "elite" and they use "luxurious" in the product description.

7. Drives that match your system. These are good if you want a drive that is designed to look like your laptop. But sometimes they are nice enough to get even if you don't own that particular laptop
Matching drive for Dell Adamo
Matching drive for Thinkpads

So there you have it. My picks for the neatest looking external drives. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to see them. Once you get one of these, you're only part of the way there to backing up your data. Check back later for some tips/hints for backing up your data.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/08/acers-timeline-gets-its-own-splash-page-and-press-shots-like-a/

Looks like Acer's answer to the Dell Adamo. Obviously not at sleek, but is thin, light, and with similar components. It even looks pretty good, a lot less cheap looking than most Acers. Acer appears to be trying to make this their luxury model, even copying what dell did with their Adamo by coming up with a fancy java based "exploration" of the Acer timeline laptops.

Prices are supposed to be ~$699-$899, so Acer may carve a nice niche in terms of producing a more affordable thin and light notebook with amazing battery life.

The first wave of Dell Adamo's, Dell's new luxury 13 inch laptop, have made their way to customers today. Here are some user reviews and pictures on notebookreview.com:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=342287&page=40

So far it seems good, which it better be for the $2000+ it costs. The Adamo starts with a 1.2ghz low voltage core2duo, to help preserve battery life. The lower end model comes with 2gb of RAM, a 128gb SSD, and more importantly looks great and is extremely thin. It is no powerhouse, but what you are paying for is the sleek design.

Update 4/10/09: CNET just received their final shipping version of the pearl Dell Adamo. They have more pictures and a more detailed review is to follow.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10216050-1.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0

I have been trying to find more user reviews, and have only found 2 actual user reviews. This is on a very popular notebook forum, which leads me to believe that sales of the Adamo are very low. Hopefully this means a price-cut is in the near future.

Here is my list of the best looking notebooks currently available, price being no object. These machines tend to be smaller, thinner, sleeker, and just pure awesome. The downsides usually entail being pricier and having lower specs (don't expect SLI graphics in these guys).

#1. Dell Adamo (can be had for a mere $2000!) which comes in 2 colors, black and white.

#2. Voodoo Envy 133 which now only comes in black. It used to be customizable in almost any color for a hefty fee.

#3. Samsung X360. This is probably the best deal out of all of these laptops in terms of price.

#4. MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Very popular design for many people. The pro is much bigger, but more powerful. The air is freakishly small which makes it very sexy.

Feel free to post your sleekest looking notebooks. Notables that I left out are numerous Sony and Asus models, but I wanted to post only the best of the best. Are these machines worth the extra cost? That's a question you'll have to answer yourself, but these things do look damn good!

Tired of the default Windows Vista desktop? Want something that's more eye-catching, unique....something that will grab others' attention when they're looking over your shoulder (no not porn!) Then customize your desktop with several tools that you can get from the links below.

First you need a background or wallpaper. My favorite site for this is deviantart.com
They have a ton of wallpapers in a variety of resolutions to best match your screen (widescreen/standard).

Next I would recommend adding a dock (a la Mac OS). These docks look great, are highly functional (I find it much easier to find and open files/programs), and allow you to remove the clutter of tons of icons scattered about your desktop. Two good/free programs for this are
Objectdock and Rocketdock. You can tweak the way it looks by changing the dock backgrounds and icons (both programs come with a number of options but you can download a ton on the web from sites such as deviantart.com)

Other cool customizations are gadget like tools. You could use the built in Vista sidebar and download additional gadgets from Microsoft. But most of these are bland, and the positioning is limited to the location of the "sidebar". Google gadgets is another, better option. My favorite is Rainmeter and be sure to download custom skins from http://customize.org/rainmeter. Think of rainmeter as the sidebar program, and the skins as various gadgets or suites of gadgets. Some of my favorite rainmeter skins are HUD.Vision and Enigma (both of which contain multiple gadgets). You can then choose which gadgets to display such as a calendar, live weather forecasts, clocks, news RSS feeds, computer info (CPU/RAM usage), CPU/GPU temps, etc. What I like most about this is you can move the "gadgets" anywhere on your screen. If you want a more functional desktop calendar try Rainlendar, which allows you to add events/to do functions to your calendar.

One major key to keep in mind, is you want all of your desktop features (background, dock, gadgets) to blend or fit together nicely. This is easy to do since there are so many customizable options. For those who pay attention to every little detail, you can also customize Vista completely by adding themes. This can change things such as your taskbar, start button, windows, opacity of windows, etc. First you need to "unlock" windows so you install custom themes by using vistaglazz http://www.codegazer.com/vistaglazz/ (Note: I do not take any responsibility if this messes up your computer, it should be safe. I and many others have used this to install custom themes). Then you need to find custom themes on the web and from such sites as deviantart.com (this site is awesome, if you haven't already noticed). One of my favorites is Ezlo or Ezlo thin. Many of the Windows 7 themes are also popular.

So there you go, my guide on how to pimp your desktop. With a little effort and persistence you can have some eye candy and/or a desktop that reflects your personality. Feel free to post your favorite customization/wallpaper download sites and any suggestions. Or post your desktop for others to see! Finally a good forum site to get more ideas and see some more customization features is here.

So you've heard about these new, really expensive solid state drives, or SSDs. You heard they were rediculously fast but never got one because of the insanely high price. But no more! SSD prices are dropping fast, and a decent drive can be had for $100-$200 for a 30-60gb drive. But be careful. There are a lot of cheap drives out there that are enticing with their low prices and good tech specs. Unfortunately many of these cheap drives suffer the dreaded "stuttering" problem where your computer freezes for a very noticeable amount of time. So why do certain drives stutter, and more importantly which drives can you trust enough to purchase? This article from Anandtech is a GREAT read. It summarizes the recent history of SSDs, details which drives have issues, details which drives are good, and even explains why they are good or bad! Very long but well worth the read if you are going to purchase one soon.

If you can't be bothered to read, from my experience the only drives worth the money are:
All intel drives
All samsung drives except for the really old first generation SLC drives that pop up on ebay.
Mtron drives
And OCZ Vertex (and any of its variants from other manufacturers)==>although this is relatively new and a little more risky since it may be possible that there are bugs that haven't been found yet.

Be careful if you are purchasing any other OCZ drive as most of them stutter, as well as any other SSDs from other manufacturers that use the same Jmicron controller as most of the OCZ drives (but not the vertex, it uses a different, newer controller that is much better).

If you don't already know SSDs are great not only because of the blazing speed and fast application loading times that they bring to the table, but since they have no moving parts they are less prone to damage if dropped or moved around, compared to traditional mechanical hard drives. In addition, a large number of these drives require less power, thus generating less heat and resulting in longer batterylife, key for many laptop users.

Here is the anandtech article. They also have several other articles on SSDs, but this one does a great job summarizing most of what has happened and is going on in the current SSD market.

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

Got my Asus 1002HA about two weeks ago and thought I’d write a review about it. In order to avoid being redundant, I am going to review this in a somewhat different light. There are numerous written/video reviews of this unit so I’ll try not to repeat the basic information included in those. I am hoping to provide a review through the eyes of someone (me) who never thought they would purchase a puny, toylike netbook as a compliment to their core2duo powerhouse. I hope to provide information from the perspective of a doubter that is now very satisfied with his new netbook, which is possibly one of the few netbooks that could satisfy all of my wants.

First a little background. I already have a 15” core2duo laptop that is well equipped to handle almost anything thrown at it, and is very snappy at that. I was thinking of getting an additional computer to bring to and from work, as I don’t want to lug my 15” around and also don’t want to risk dropping or getting stolen my $1000+ laptop. So then enters my mind, “what about a netbook”, as I noticed prices were getting very enticing ($250-$400). But I still had doubts. Would the little atom processor be enough? Would the keyboard be large enough? Is the tiny screen going to drive me nuts? Are my co-workers going to laugh their asses off at me when they see my tiny, plastic netbook?

So first, most netbooks have similar hardware/processor specs, so that didn’t require much thought except to avoid the older models, as well as the dell mini’s that have the slower atom/Celeron processors. Since I wanted a larger keyboard (to accommodate my big hands) as well as the largest screen possible, I focused on the 10” models. I didn’t feel that this would compromise portability at all since even the biggest 10” models are still under 4lbs. So at this point I narrowed it down to all 10” netbooks with 1.6ghz atoms. I was still skeptical if this would be big or powerful enough. I’d seen 9”models in stores and they seemed ridiculously too small. I was hoping a bump to 10” would help but I wasn’t completely convinced.

Now to my last concern, the appearance of the machine. Call me vain, call me shallow…whatever. Also I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but the majority of netbooks I saw in person (mostly in Bestbuy and other electronics stores) looked terrible. Most stores only carried 9”models, and they were so small that it just looked silly with my 6foot frame squeezed behind it. Plus most of them looked “cheap”, with way too much plastic. Then I stumbled upon the asus 1002ha. This thing was gorgeous in pictures and had the same specs (minus a ginormous battery) as the asus 1000HA. I found a good deal on it and $330 later it was mine.
/
So was it worth it? So far it’s a very strong yes. With regards to looks and size, it is spot on. It has to be the best looking netbook on the market (minus maybe the high end Asus s101). It has its share of plastic (what notebook doesn’t?) but its brushed aluminum lid and wrist area, and glossy black screen make this thing look classy. The first time I brought it to work resulted in a number of people looking at it in awe of its good looks and “cute” small size. I am highly impressed with the aesthetics of this machine, as well as it sleek, thin look. It definitely looks like it is worth more than 300-400 dollars.

So if looks were my number one concern, screen and keyboard size were next on the list. The overall size is surprisingly a lot larger than the 9” netbooks I saw previously, much to my relief. I wouldn’t think 1” would make much of a difference, but its enough to give it a little more “substance”. Yet this thing is still incredibly light, due in large part to the smaller high capacity battery (which can still get 3-4hrs on a full charge). The 10” screen is small, but is more than enough for most tasks. You’re not going to have multiple spreadsheets opened side by side, but for most things it is fine. For work, I actually extend my desktop to another external monitor. The keyboard is also more than adequate. I have big hands and it did not take much of an adjustment to get used to the slightly smaller keys. At work, I just have it hooked up to an external keyboard and mouse. So overall, the keyboard, touchpad and screen are more than fine for most tasks, but for extensive use, external components are probably preferred.

The majority of my concerns about netbooks were unfounded, in large part due to the specific design of the 1002ha. But what about performance? How does is compare to a core2duo machine? Can I use it as my main work machine? I was actually pleasantly surprised. Make no mistakes, you will notice the difference between this atom netbook, and a core2duo laptop. The majority of the work I do just entails word, excel and internet use. So nothing intense, and the atom should be more than enough for these tasks. And indeed it is, but again you can tell the difference between this machine and a c2d. Is this a problem? No! Instead of the instantaneous loading, etc. I see on my full sized notebook, Microsoft office or firefox might take a few seconds longer. If I click on My computer it might take a few extra seconds to show the contents of the hard-drive. But in all honesty, these few extra seconds do not bother me. I popped out the stock Seagate 5400.5 drive (which is ridiculously slow even for a 5400rpm drive) and popped in a spare Hitachi 7k200 drive. This seemed to make the machine a bit snappier. Also, I have not upgraded the ram yet, so I’m still running on 1gig of ram. All in all performance exceeded my expectations. I can do basic office tasks, and can also watch streaming videos at a decent quality (although HD is a no-no). I also have antivirus, a firewall and adaware running in the background, as well as objectdock and rainmeter. This machine is more than up to the task of running these small footprint apps in the background. XP bootup is also very fast (probably due to Asus’ bootbooster technology).

So as a once doubter, I now love my netbook. And I think this is one of a few, if not the only netbook that I would be happy with. Funny thing is, I’ve even started using this little guy around the house a lot more, even with my bigger, better machine not 2ft away from me. Its just easier to carry around if I want to take it to bed, or to the kitchen. My gf is even asking to use it even though she has her own computer. The other funny thing is it also makes you appreciate how fast your full fledged laptop is, as well as how big a 15” screen is, lol. But all in all, this netbook is awesome. Its powerful enough for the minimal tasks I do at work, light enough to not really notice it in my backpack, long enough battery life to be away from an outlet for a while, and did I mention this thing is sexy? I have not stressed this machine by running photoshop or any intensive apps, but will report back if I do. So again, as a doubter who never thought he could use anything but a full-sized notebook, this little netbook compares well. It can faithfully carry out the majority of tasks you do on your normal laptop (in large part because most tasks require minimal computing power), and the 10” 1002HA is big enough for extended use, and is sexy enough for anyone.