Technology Gadget Reviews

Scanners are usually bulky, hence the Plustek OpticSlim M12 is a surprise—weighing a mere 330 grams (only the scanner), the M12 is actually portable. It is an A4 size sheet-feed scanner capable of a hardware resolution of 600 dpi. Just two buttons adorn the sleek M12, a scan button and a custom button that can be assigned any of a number of functions. The M12 is decently fast—in our test, it scanned an A4 size photograph in two minutes 15 seconds flat. Colour reproduction and clarity were good for a scanner of this size. The greyscale quality was good, too. The sore point was the really poor quality of text in black-and-white mode: the M12 took under 20 seconds to scan our document, but the text was barely readable. The only option would be to scan documents in greyscale mode. The M12 comes bundled with a soft carry case, and can be wall mounted with the bundled kit. It retails at Rs 4,510 More By Technology Gadget Reviews

If you’re overly concerned about the security of data on your thumb drive, the A-DATA FP1 USB 2.0 Flash drive is just the device for you. This 512 MB drive has biometric security features as well as password protection. The core job of securing the data is performed by the utility software that comes with the FP1, without which it is an ordinary USB drive. Install the software, swipe your index finger over the sensor to register your fingerprint, enter a password, and you’re ready to store your data. You disconnect the drive using the software. When it’s connected to another PC, you are aga in prompted to swipe your finger, or enter a password. If there’s a fingerprint mismatch, the set password overrides the biometric security. The drive is compatible with versions of Windows 2000 SP4 and above. The A-DATA FP1 USB 2.0 comes for Rs 1,300, which is decent considering the fact that it lets you sleep peacefully—if you’re habitually paranoid, that is! More By Technology Gadget Reviews

The Canon IXUS is an ultra-compact digicam available in four funky colours. It’s big on features, incorporating a 5-mega-pixel sensor, 2.4x optical / 4x digital zoom, integrated flash, and auto-focus. It features 16 shooting modes, PictBridge, and a one- touch print/share button. Video recording is possible at 640 x 480 at up to 10 fps. The excellent 1.8-inch TFT is crystal-clear, the interface is intuitive and the photographs crisp. The IXUS features a docking station that works as a charger for the inbuilt Lithium-ion battery, and also connects to the PC via USB 2.0. The inbuilt flash is good enough, but the effective range is only about two metres. Shutter lag makes shooting moving objects a problem. The IXUS has no internal memory, and comes with a paltry 16 MB MMC card. We recommend at least 256 MB, so add that to the camera’s price if you want to buy it. More By Technology Godget Reviews

MSI has just launched a Flash-based MP3 (and WMA) player—the MEGA PLAYER 533 SD. The clincher is the SD (Secure Digital) card reader—you only need to insert the card to start playing songs from it! It has its own 256 MB of internal memory, accessible from a PC via USB. The player can also be used as a portable USB device; it can also function as an SD card reader for your PC! You can record FM—or a speech—directly to memory! There is also a graphic equaliser. The build quality of the casing is a let-down, and the earphones seemed a little uncomfortable and oversized. The AAA alkaline cell lasted for about eight hours, as claimed. For the price, this is not a bad buy at all! More By Technology Gadget Reviews

The ASUS EAX1800XT TOP is based on ATI’s new-gun-in-town—the X1800XT chip. This Shader Model 3.0-compliant card brings a new degree of realism to games due to its support for HDR. It comes equipped with a core clocked at 700 MHz and 512 MB of DDR3 memory at 1.6 GHz—both of which are higher than the stock speeds. The card is quite large, and occupies two slots on your motherboard. Its higher power requirements are taken care of by the bundled external power supply. The card is a remarkably silent performer. The EAX1800XT proved its worth by scoring 10,330 and 4926 in 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 respectively—the best we have seen so far. Extreme performance was also noticeable in graphics-heavy games such as Doom 3 and Half-life 2 even when played at the highest graphics settings. ASUS has bundled a force-feedback game controller as well as some good software, along with games such as King Kong. The ASUS EAX1800XT is a great performer, and not too expensive for hardcore gamers with a price tag

The X-Fi is Creative’s latest offering. X-Fi stands for eXtreme Fidelity sound, and this is made possible by the use of a Cirrus Logic 24-bit DAC and an audiophile-grade SNR ratio of 116 db. Its USP is a really fast audio processor with 51 million transistors capable of delivering over 30,000 MIPS of processing speed, making it 24 times more powerful than its predecessor from the Audigy series. This power is harnessed in Creative’s proprietary 24-bit Crystallizer, which essentially up-samples audio to 24-bit/ 96 kHz to improve sound quality. This is a godsend for MP3, and while we were testing, we found that the card fished out more details from our test MP3 collection than did the Audigy 2 card. The X-Fi Elite Pro we received for preview was fully-loaded with a well-designed ergonomic remote and an external I/O module, housing every possible interconnect any audiophile would wish for. This is interfaced with the sound card using a special 26-pin cable called the AD link. The component

Finally, a hard drive for gaming enthusiasts—combining pure performance and innovative looks that will drive PC modders crazy. Western Digital’s Raptor X WD1500ADFD has a clear top—allowing you to peek inside the drive while it toils. At 10000 rpm, this is the world’s fastest SATA 150 drive. NCQ enables high data transfer speeds in multi-processor, multi-threaded environments. RAFF technology prevents the drive’s performance suffering due to vibrations. This drive performs very silently. 75 MBps in the sequential data transfer test makes this drive the fastest we have tested so far—this means games loading faster. The cost of Rs 17,500 is not a surprise for such high performance devices, but that is still too much for just 150 GB. More By Technology Gadget Reviews

The Motorola L6, a tri-band phone, is the slimmest candybar phone to have hit the shelves. At 11.3 x 4.9 x 1.0 cm, the L6 is slim; however, it’s a little too long, and this might hamper its pocketability. Though the body panels are metallic, the L6 feels fragile, and dropping it could prove fatal. The ergonomics is spot on—the keys have an excellent feel. But the user interface is typical Motorola—unintuitive! Also, the display screen is not as vibrant as those on the latest phones from other manufacturers. The phone has only a VGA camera, and can shoot video, but the anaemic camera ruins the fun. Features and the software bundle have taken a backseat to style, but surprisingly, the L6 is Bluetooth-enabled. A mini USB port on the side allows wired data transfer, and also doubles up as the power jack. The L6 has about 10 MB of onboard memory, and there’s no memory card support. Performance-wise, signal reception was pretty good, and the battery kept the phone alive for two days. At Rs 8

The successor to Samsung’s D500, the D600 quad-band GPRS phone retains the slider form factor. It’s a little more elegant, and has upgraded features in addition to a few new ones. The colour combination is a shiny black and dark grey, and the matte finish makes for easy grip. Featured here is a vibrant 240 x 320 pixel, 262K-colour TFT (QVGA) screen. The camera gets an upgrade to 2 megapixels; there’s no auto- focus, but picture quality is still good at higher settings—it’s not so good at 800 x 600, though. The camera has a flash and a self-portrait mode, along with some software features such as multi-shot and mosaic. The quality of recorded video with sound is simply outstanding; however, the quality of the sound from the stereo speakers isn’t extraordinary. The inbuilt MP3 player is easy to use, but the phone doesn’t feature radio. It does feature Bluetooth, though. Using the not-so-common TV-out feature, the phone can be interfaced with a TV via the bundled A/V cable. Once connected

The Zebronics GeForce Case 2 a.k.a. the ZEB-GF2 is a gamer’s PC cabinet. It’s got an alienish look, replete with two eyes that glow when it’s powered up! It’s an ATX cabinet with two 3.5 inch bays and four 5.25 inch bays. Zebronics has implemented a screw- less fitting design for easy and convenient assembly of drives in the drive bays. Airflow and cooling considerations have been taken into account in this spacious cabinet—it provides a 12 cm fan at the rear in addition to a Prescott duct and PCI vent on the side panel. The USB and audio ports are on the front of the cabinet for easy access. The cabinet, made from SECC material has a rugged build quality, which complements its good looks. Zebronics has also provided a 400 W 24-pin power supply that is enough for a non-SLI gaming machine. Since Zebronics is the official SLI Partner of nVidia, the cabinet bears an nVidia logo which—you guessed it—glows when the cabinet is powered on! All taken into account, we liked this product. More B

The Planon Docupen looks like a pen—it’s just a little larger, but is, in fact, a portable scanner. It is built on a line scanner element. You can scan full pages of text and graphics at a rate of 4 or 8 seconds per page in Standard and High- Resolution mode respectively. To scan, you need to press the button on the scanner and swipe it across the page—simple enough! The onboard red LED glows when the scanning speed is too high. It does require a bit of practice to obtain scans of acceptable quality. The inbuilt 2 MB of Flash memory can store about 100 pages of text, and its LEDs indicate the available memory. The accompanying ScanSoft PaperPort software allows you to download scanned images to the PC. The Docupen weighs just over 50 gm, and comes in a leather pouch. What we didn’t like about the Docupen is that it has a maximum scan resolution of only 200 dpi. Besides, being hand-held, the scans are never as accurate as you’d want them to be. Also, the scans are only in black and whit

The first ThinkPads to feature widescreen LCDs, the Z series from Lenovo moves away from their strictly business styling for notebooks. The Z60t is a thin and light model in the range, and weighs a little less than 2 kg. Featuring a 14-inch widescreen LCD, the Z60t comes with an option of covers— black or titanium. The titanium special-edition cover provides added durability and a scratch-resistant finish. Powered by an Intel Pentium M 760J processor running at 2 GHz on a 915GM chipset and complemented by 512MB of DDR2 memory, the Z60t runs most standard applications with ease. An 80 GB 5400 rpm SATA hard drive provides ample storage space. Other features include an integrated DVD-RAM drive, keyboard light and SD card reader. Connectivity options include gigabit LAN, a 56K modem, Wi-Fi, Infrared and Bluetooth. Available ports include 3 x USB, FireWire, PC card slot, VGA, S-Video and audio jacks. The full-sized keyboard features new multimedia keys, along with touchpad and pointing stic

Part of the gaming series from Logitech, the G5 is a corded laser mouse sporting Logitech’s new colour combination—a mixture of brick-red, silver and smoke black. The rugged feel and rough texture makes for perfect grip. The mouse is designed to neatly fit into the palm of a right-hander, with a nice groove on the left for the thumb—but we do think it may be a little too big for those with smaller palms. The G5 is very light, and speaking of weight, it comes with eight little weights—of 4.5 gm and 1.7 gm—which you can add to a small removable tray at the base to attain the right weight for your gaming comfort! Installing drivers for the mouse is not essential, as almost all the buttons function as they should even without driver installation.If you install the drivers, a lot of features can be controlled via the Logitech SetPoint utility that comes with the drivers. Apart from the usual buttons, the scroll wheel can also be used as a button—you could, for instance, use the button to e

The Asus W1S00 laptop is the first laptop featuring a TV-Tuner to have arrived at our Test Centre. Specifications include an Intel Pentium M 1700 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive, and a Combo drive. The vibrant 15.4-inch 16:9 wide screen has a WXGA+ resolution of 1680 x 1050 and good viewing angles. The 64 MB ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics card makes for a good gaming laptop. Almost all the connections are on the left - USB 2.0, LAN, phone jack, PCMCIA, FireWire, and the input to the TV-Tuner. There’s also a multi-card reader that reads SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro cards, as well as Wi-Fi and IR. The remote control is tucked inside the PCMCIA slot, where its Li-Ion battery charges; it can be pulled out when needed. The remote works with the bundled Asus Mobile Theatre, a media centre application. The sound system consists of two speakers and a subwoofer hidden on the bottom surface. The bundled earphones help realise the 4.1 sound mode, and the sound quality is commendably good

The MSI MegaView 588 is a great personal entertainer. The 3.5-inch, wide view angle QVGA LCD provides vivid video playback. It supports WMV, WMA, MPEG-4, DivX, WAV, MP3, JPEG and GIF. MSI has also provided a transcoding utility to convert videos into formats playable on the player. The device sports a 20 GB hard disk, a recorder function that allows you to record videos in MPEG-4, a microphone to record short memos, and an FM tuner. It is also equipped with USB 2.0 On-The-Go, and an SD/MMC card reader. The Li-Ion rechargeable battery lasted us 3.5 hours with video and six hours with audio playback. The audio quality of the earphones is acceptable, and sound from the inbuilt speaker is exceptionally clear. More By Technology Gadget Reviews

Yet another 7600GS-based card! This Xtreme Edition card comes with 256 MB of VRAM, and is XFX’s latest offering to the mid-range market. The core has been factory- tweaked—hence the “Xtreme” tag—to 500 MHz, making it identical to the faster but architecturally similar 7600GT. This is one cool looking card: the PCB has a matte black finish, and both DVI connectors are a fluorescent green, matching XFX’s brand colours (green and black). The black heat-sink is powder coated, with nothing getting in the way of cooling. It managed a good job at cooling, and we never saw the temperature climb beyond the late 50s. The heat sink itself, however, gets much hotter than the two cards reviewed earlier. Owing to the faster core, this card was expected to perform better than the other 7600GS cards, and it didn’t disappoint: it led the other two cards by a minimum of 10 fps in our tests. The card also handled Far Cry beautifully with HDR off. At a resolution of 1600 x 1200 with 8x AF and 8x AA, the c

Aslim form factor and an easy clip-on mounting makes this a practical Webcam to carry around with laptops. The Quickcam is very touchy on the lighting front. Normal room lighting simply won’t do! You need to have light focused on you to get rid of the “dots” that mar the image. Increasing the brightness does not help either. Thankfully, the driver comes with an option to optimise capture for low-light conditions—and this works well, brightening up the image to acceptable levels without adding dots. The downside is that this option drops frame rates, making even slow movements appear blurred. This will not concern most users though, as real-time relay via Webcams is near-impossible with the Internet speeds we have here in India. On the upside, the camera has a 1.3-megapixel still image capture (with a dedicated button), and quality is good when the lighting is strong enough. The focus adjustment can help you attain clarity for anywhere between half a foot and 10 feet. Specifications: 12

It’s a pen, it’s a pen-knife, with a nail file and screwdriver all bundled into one! And it’s from the same world- renowned manufacturer (Victorinox) of Swiss Army knives. The Victorinox pen drive is excellently built, and the fit and finish is top-of-the-line. Not only is the pen drive extremely well built, the other accessories retain their utility, and are not just part of the show. The knife, for example is very sharp, and it is quite suitable for minor cutting jobs. The screwdriver is sturdily built, well integrated with the device, and can be used even on the most stubborn of screws. This pen drive also has a small red LED that can be activated by pressing on the Victorinox logo embossed on the body. Even swapping of batteries is easily achieved—all you need to do it insert a clip from one side into the small orifice on the side, and the battery slides out from the opposite side. In order to clean the device, you can remove the pen drive and battery components, and then dip the r

Here’s another card based on NVIDIA’s 7600GS chipset, with 256 megabytes of video memory onboard. The Gigabyte GV-NX76G256D- RH is clearly positioned at the discerning buyer who wants a clear combination of value and performance without compromise. The graphics core and memory modules are passively cooled, that is, with only a heat sink, no fan, and a metal plate on the back to aid cooling. The heat sink has a heat pipe attachment, and the heat sink is buff-finished, which aids in dissipation— unlike powder-coated heat sinks, which trap heat instead. Needless to say, we didn’t find any stability issues due to heat through our barrage of tests. The Gigabyte 7600GS turned out to be a good performer, and returned scores that were either on par or slightly better than those of other 7600GS- based cards. This card comes with a three-year warranty, costs Rs 10,000, and comes bundled with Serious Sam 2 and Power DVD 6—very nice. You will also find all the connectors you need, and good-quality

Anew name in the graphics card market in India, Forsa’s 7600GS is based around NVIDIA’s mid-level 7 series chipset, the 7600GS. Like the mighty 7900 GTX, this chip, too, is manufactured using NVIDIA’s latest 90 nm fabrication process. The core is clocked at a sedate 400 MHz, while the 256 MB of GDDR2 memory is clocked at 800 MHz. The 7600GS is an underclocked variant of the 7600 GT core, the successor of the much-acclaimed 6600 GT. This, coupled with the 12 pixel shader / 5 vertex shader architecture, means that this card is reasonably well equipped to run all but the most demanding games (such as F.E.A.R and Oblivion), and at all but the most demanding resolutions. The 7600GS chipset fully supports Shader model 3.0, coupled with NVIDIA’s Cine FX 4.0. All this means you won’t miss out on the eye candy, and can crank up the visuals to high settings in most games. The card is nicely laid out with a decent cooler and silent fan combo, which keeps temperatures in check efficiently. The For

eConceal Firewall is a software firewall from MicroWorld, the makers of eScan Antivirus. Whenever an application tries to access the Internet, eConceal prompts you with options as to whether that application is to be permitted to do so. You can create a rule to allow this application to always access the Internet, or block it permanently. eConceal can be configured for packet-level filtering as well. In addition to the powerful user-defined rules, you can choose from preset rules created for different applications such as e-mail, FTP, chat clients, etc. The software supports port monitoring and alerts you in case of unauthorised intrusion attempts. The attacker’s IP is automatically banned, and he can no longer attack using that port. You can surf invisibly— eConceal can be configured to only let in that content from the Web that you request. Other features include a pop-up blocker, parental controls to block porn sites (which can also be used by enterprises to block non-business Web

Creative’s DiViCAM 525D can moonlight as a video camera, a still camera, an MP3 player, a video player, a sound recorder, and even as a Web cam. All this in a package that fits perfectly in your palm. The screen neatly folds into the side, and turns on the camera when opened. This “multi-cam” has a 5 MP CCD. The 2.5-inch LCD screen is bright and has good colour reproduction. A proprietary motion stabiliser means jerk-free video. With a Kingston 1 GB SD card in the bay, the Creative 525D promises 1 hr 27 minutes of video, or 415 photos at the highest resolution settings. Video quality is amazing, considering that this is an all-in-one solution, even under artificial light, and audio quality was equally good. A true camcorder will give you better results though. Photo quality was average, both indoors and outdoors. The flash is powerful enough to give you clear shots in the dark. As a media player, it was brilliant, and played videos and MP3s without any distortion. This gadget is well-

The mighty 8MP Kodak EasyShare P880 boasts of a fantastic mix of features. The sensor apart, the P880 has a superb wide-angle 24-140 mm lens. This allows taking close-ups and zoom shoots equally well. Fitted with optics from Schneider-Kreuznach, it offers manual zoom as well as a mechanically-linked focus ring. The ergonomics is spot on. Holding the camera is a little difficult, though. The body is completely made of plastic, but the P880 exudes a sturdy feel. The five-way joystick is just fantastic, and so is the mode dial—both of them can be easily operated via a simple flick of the thumb. The large 2.5-inch LCD is a crisp display, though the resolution could have been a little better. The 1700 mAH Li-ion battery lasts long enough for over 200 shots. The P880 comes with 32 MB of onboard memory, which can be expanded using the SD slot. What’s really special about the pseudo-SLR P880 is the sheer number of features Kodak has cramped in, most of which are traditionally found on SLRs. A

The Aiptek mini PocketDV 8900 is a compact, pocket-able DV camera. The body is made of plastic, and does not appear very rugged. The 2-inch swivel LCD is of no use on outdoor shoots—it is almost impossible to view in daylight. Video capture resolution is only 640 x 480 at 30 fps, so forget about capturing DVD-quality movies. But the videos weren’t that bad, after all. It can capture still photos at up to 5 MP, which can be interpolated to 10 MP— but the quality was nowhere near even what a 3 MP camera delivers: too much noise. There is no optical zoom, but thankfully, the autofocus works very well. The PocketDV can also play MP3 and WAV, ASF video, and can display JPEG photos. You can even record voice and use the voice-canceling feature to turn it into a Karaoke machine. It can also be used as a Web cam. The 22 MB of inbuilt Flash memory is insufficient, but an SD/MMC card slot is provided to augment storage capacity. The 8900 comes bundled with loads of accessories. A remote is prov

How thoughful of Philips to include a 6 channel speaker setup with their new HTS3105 DVD player. Yes! its another bundle product, meaning you have a surround sound setup to watch those DVD’s right out of the box. Supporting multiple video and audio formats this sturdy looking player is suitably feature rich (remote control, FM radio). The 500W RMS speakers distort slightly at higher volumes (above 75 per cent). The subwoofer is decent, but lacks the depth necessary to go really low. The satellites deliver decent reproduction throughout the spectrum, but can’t handle high volumes at all. The overall sound experience was, to sum it up, a touch weak considering the on-paper specifications. Our test DVD movies did sound good, but only at lower volumes. Overall a mediocre product, simply because at 14,999, (its price), you can easily buy a DVD player and good set of 5.1 speakers. Even the inclusion of FM doesn’t do too much to sweeten the deal. Go for this only if you want the convenience

With Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS), the anti-virus pioneer now offers a complete security solution for your PC. KIS consists of the trusty anti- virus, anti-spyware, anti- spam, firewall, and a proactive defence system. It has a very simple and neat interface that lets you tweak it to your satisfaction. The powerful file scanner is highly customisable. It skips files that have remained unchanged since the last scan, speeding up scanning. The e-mail scanner supports most popular POP3 and IMAP e-mail clients. E-mail scanning is excellent, and in our test, it eliminated all suspicious attachments. The anti- spam feature is also good; identification of false positives can be reduced to a great extent by training the spam filter. Anti-hacker, the firewall, blocks attacking IPs and bans the address for a certain period of time. Anti-Hacker puts all system ports into stealth mode, in effect making the PC invisible to the outside world. Virus definitions are updated very fast, almost once

Pinnacle-to-go is an external TV-Tuner that sports a flashy, diamond- shaped look. Picture quality is very good, with little noise. Thanks to the S-Video input, Pinnacle-to-go makes it easy to capture, preserve and enhance AV content from analogue and digital camcorders, digital cameras, and even TV. With the bundled Pinnacle Studio QuickStart, video editing is easy. The Pinnacle MediaCenter PVR software turns your ordinary PC into a Media Center PC, complete with a full-function remote control. Convert analogue video footage, photos, and TV shows to digital. You can also edit videos and add exciting effects and music. To top it all, you can encode video to a variety of formats to be able to watch it on a DVD Player, Apple iPod, Sony PSP, or TV. Creating DVDs from home videos to give your friends and family has never been easier. The high- speed USB interface provides for easy connectivity to the PC. The only feature missing is the ability to connect directly to a CRT, but we’re not c

The new iPod nano features a vivid LCD screen—useful for viewing photos. Its good looks are backed up by the superbly intuitive interface, driven by the ergonomic click-wheel. It is Flash memory-based, which means skip-free music and a tremendous saving on battery power—it played for almost 15 hours, which is actually better than the claimed battery life. The bundled earphones need serious looking into— though the treble is crisp, the bass is disappointing even with the bass booster on. Also, there is no FM radio or voice recorder. It appears as a USB mass storage device when you connect it to your PC, so you can carry around your data. The rated capacity is 4 GB, but it only gives you 3.7 GB—the rest is for the firmware. You need iTunes to transfer songs to the playlist. Frills include Outlook address book synching, games, and a stopwatch. Get a good set of earphones and you won’t regret having bought this one. Specifications: 4 GB Flash memory; audio format: AAC; 1.5-inch colour LCD

A-DATA is a well-known name in computer memory and Flash drives. The Oriental Elite is a family of fast Flash drives with an artistic touch and customisable design. As the name suggests, the design of the drive is very “oriental,” and you can slide the plastic casing out and change the faceplate to your liking—it comes with two different faceplates you can use. This drive comes bundled with a USB extension cable and a mini- CD with utilities that let you format the drive, allocate partitions, and set a password for security. This is the fastest Flash drive we have tested thus far! It took just 8 seconds to copy a 100 MB file using the USB 2.0 interface. At a price of $21 (Rs 990), this is a perfect gift for tech-savvy art fans. Specifications: 512 MB capacity; USB 2.0 interface...

The NVIDIA G80 (8800GTX), with 128 Shader units, is the first DirectX 10 compatible graphics card ever. The card sports an attractive-looking cooling solution well in keeping with such a large card (it’s 11 inches long). Testing saw the card running a bit hotter than the G70 and G71 series. It ran at 80 degrees under load; the G71 had rarely crossed the 60 degree mark! The G80 has 768 MB of GDDR3 memory (1.8 GHz). F.E.A.R. saw a staggering 150 fps at 1024 x 768 with 4x Antialiasing (AA) and Anisotropic Filtering (AF) enabled. Similarly, Prey saw just over 202 fps at 1280 x 1024, at the highest settings. For now, this is the fastest DirectX 9 card ever! Did we mention it supports SLI as well as Quad SLI? ATI’s response— the R600 is highly anticipated, and if it’s anywhere in the performance region of the G80, we should be getting a lot more realism in our games a whole lot sooner than we could’ve imagined Specifications: 681 million transistors; 128 shader units (Unified Shader Archite

The need for a PDF Editor usually means you end up buying a copy of Adobe Acrobat. There are a few paid applications to do the same task. CAD-KAS’s PDF Editor 2.4 is one such application among a few other emerging ones. The interface is modular; it allows you to add and remove or even move panels around. It is a little cluttered, with the top end of the window taken up by the two toolbars and the tab bar, which are used to do the majority of the tasks—opening, editing, exporting, etc. Although looks aren’t a priority in software such as this, six menu colour schemes have been included as a way to improve the cluttered UI. One can change pretty much everything in an existing PDF file. Text, images, and even complete pages can be edited and moved about. New additions can be made easily in the same manner. Images in PDFs can be edited using the inbuilt image editor— which looks like MS Paint, but is a lot more advanced in features. A scanner can be used to add new pages. Bookmarks can be

Kaspersky is another one of the many anti-virus makers that’s gone the complete Internet security system way—not a bad thing. It’s known to be a resource hog, so we checked if anything had improved with this edition. The suite takes care of all your security worries—files, mail, system network security, etc. All the basic controls for the components can be accessed from the main two-pane layout window. Modifying settings means you go to another window which houses all the settings for the components, and there are plenty of them. The core anti-virus feature is standard and allows you to scan files and folders along with boot sectors, Registry, memory, startup programs, etc. The Anti-spam has a nifty training feature that learns by looking at mails in your mailbox through a Wizard to provide more accurate spam protection. The firewall monitors for incoming and outgoing threats and notifies you immediately. Any attacks targeted at your computer can be set to have the attacker’s machine

Print, scan, fax, copy and get photo prints all at a great price—seem impossible? Well, the Brother MFC-5460CN seems to be what you are looking for—at least at first look. Like all Brother MFDs, this one sports a no-nonsense, office look, with rugged build. It is quite small. At the front is a two-line, backlit LCD indicator that reports a lot of data and also lets you access the control panel menu. The input paper tray can accommodate 100 pages—just enough for a small to medium office—and the 35-page ADF tray is foldable. The printer sports a resolution of 6000 x 1200 dpi—fairly high. There are four colour cartridges, and access to these is made easy by means of a door at the front of the unit. The flatbed scanner can scan legal-size documents. The printer supports most popular memory formats and it even has PictBridge. Connectivity is via USB and a network interface, but you will need to weave the wires through the provided channel into the heart of the device. The advantage: no acci

The PXC 450 is the latest from Sennheiser’s travel line of headphones. “Portable” and “circumaural” generally don’t see eye to eye due to bulk and issues with anchoring them to your head. To remedy this, the PXC 450 has a very firm headband; thankfully, it’s padded and well-designed enough to not squash your ears. The patented active noise cancellation technology called NoiseGard 2.0 makes its presence felt. This uses a combination of improved circuitry (over the previous version of NoiseGard), and better microphones (that detect unwanted outside noise). Their noise elimination algorithms have also seen an overhaul. Using NoiseGard will require a single AAA battery. Remove the battery and the PXC 450 can function as a regular,wired headphone set. There’s a talk-through function inbuilt. According to Sennheiser, two microphones (one on each cup) pick up external sounds in the immediate vicinity such as someone trying to talk to you. We tested this feature, but it didn’t work too well, a

The WinFast DTV1800 H is a hybrid PCI TV Tuner capable of receiving analogue as well as terrestrial digital (DVB-T) transmissions, which are currently available only in a few metros. The Conexant CX23880-39 + Zarlink 10353 chipset enables t to decode stereo audio. The audio cable connects internally to the PC-audio solutions, so no more looping cables collecting cobwebs at the back of your PC. The front-end is provided by the excellent WinFast PVR2 that features Scheduling and TimeShifting, as well as recording in WMV, Transport Stream, as well as MPEG-1/2 (and no additional activation or purchase is required for its use). It remains perched quietly in the system tray and springs into action when launched using the icon or the full-function remote. The PVR2 even lets you use two TV-Tuners simultaneously, so you can either watch two TV channels, watch one and record the other, or watch TV and use the second TV-Tuner for surveillance. It detects even the weakest of cable TV and FM radio

Designed from a pure usability point-of-view, this little baby is built like a tank. The construction is rugged in general, and we liked the sturdiness of the hinges in particular. It’s not as flashy-looking as its competitors, but it’s sleek, and weighs just 1.29 kg. With an Intel dual-core processor and a decent amount of RAM, while running Windows Vista Business, this laptop packs in enough power to cater to business needs. The proc-essor’s and hard drive’s focus is on increased battery life. The 2510p sports a widescreen (WXGA). An ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness. The keyboard is very comfortable to type on, but the touchpad is a little too smooth. There’s also a highly responsive pointer-stick. The keyboard layout is good, and just above the function keys is a line of touch- sensitive cool-blue backlit buttons for functions such s Turning On/Off wireless, Volume control, etc. The 2510p features connectivity in the form of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as w

The Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS is the top-of-the-line high-capacity (750 GB) drive from WD.The drive uses a four- platter design with 16 MB of buffer, which is the norm in this segment. Like other Western Digital drives, the WD7500AAKS implements SecurePark and ItelliSeek for improved shock tolerance in powered-off mode and improved power management respectively. The graph below is a comparison between this drive and the 750 GB Seagate Barracuda ST3750640AS we’d received for our internal hard drive test in June 2007. After this, and an assortment of other tests, neither drive emerges a clear winner. The cost per GB comes to about Rs 15—good enough. The price of Rs 11,500 is a little high for those looking to update to a spacious secondary drive, though it’s a decent purchase as a primary hard drive. Specifications : 750 GB; 7200 rpm; Buffer: 16 MB; Weight: 0.63 kg; Dimensions: 147 x 101.6 x 25.4 (W x D x H) mm; SATA 2...

Colour laser printer prices have never been this low, and the downward slide continues. The LBP 5300 from Canon is an economical printer for high- volume printing. Build quality is very good, and the printer is more than suited for daily office work. At 22 kg, it is pretty heavy. It is also a bit bulky—a bit wider than a 19- inch CRT and taller than an average PC cabinet, but this size is to be expected of a colour laser printer. The standard input paper tray has a capacity of 350 sheets, while the optional paper tray can accommodate up to 500 sheets. Duplex printing is supported. The device connects to the PC via the USB 2.0 interface, and also features a network interface—10Base-T / 100Base- TX. The bundled NetSpot Device Installer makes installing this printer on a network straightforward.The optical printing resolution is 600 x 600 dpi, and when we tested the device, both mono and colour prints are fairly sharp. Text was legible at all point sizes, and colour graphics were free fr

With the Inspiron 1720, Dell ups the ante in the super-performance notebook category. A 17-incher, the Inspiron 1720 is quite bulky, but the good design hides this. You get to choose from eight colours for the lid—jet black and seven other satin finishes. The custom paint job, however, is modest, and will not last too long. The 17-inch glossy widescreen (1920 x 1200) panel is beautiful; colour reproduction is vibrant, and it has a wide viewing angle. The full-sized keyboard is a delight to type on—silent and great tactile response. The Matshita BD-RE UJ-220 Blu-ray drive means you won’t need to upgrade the optical drive in a long, long time! However, DVI as well as HDMI connectivity has been left out— criminal. 500 GB of storage should be enough for most users, and 4 GB of RAM is adequate for most applications, games, and for the bundled Microsoft Vista Home Premium. The NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB powers the graphics subsystem; a score of 5318 in 3D Mark 05 is very good indeed. Thi

The Aspire 3684NWXCi laptop is for value-conscious buyers. With a silver-and-black exterior, it looks quite presentable. Though slim in design, the Acer 3684 weighs in at 2.4 kg—moderately heavy. Ergonomically speaking, the keyboard is well laid-out; however, the keystrokes are bit hard—touch typists should try it before deciding to buy it. An Intel Celeron M 440 at 1.86 GHz runs the laptop, and that’s partly responsible for the low price. The Aspire 3684 has 512 MB of DDR2 RAM— we’re all praise for Acer for being so generous! Having an 80 GB hard drive with a Combo DVD / CD drive is praiseworthy, considering the price. In PC Mark 05—a synthetic test that measures overall system performance—performance was decent; the score was 2121, good for a budget-category laptop. 388 points in 3D Mark 06 means the laptop is good enough for games like Quake 3, Counterstrike: Source, and Call of Duty. Our real- world tests revealed enough power to multi-task between regular applications such as me

Sony’s Sound Forge 9 is the latest version of the highly-acclaimed sound editing software. There isn’t much competition left in this space, but new releases and updates still keep pouring in. The interface hasn’t changed much since the previous releases. It is still easy to use for intermediate- and expert-level users. To start with, Sound Forge allows you to import from a wide range of formats—including video formats that contain more audio streams than stereo. Let your imagination run wild with the number of effects Sound Forge gives you—flange, chorus, and reverb are just a few of them. The overwhelming number of effects and tools is what makes Sound Forge unique. Setting up parameters for each of the effects is easy. Windows pop up for every effect you apply where parameters can be changed, and real-time previews are played back instantaneously. It’s not all fun and games either. The Detect Clipping feature finds instances of c lipping in a track and marks them so they can be treat

Listening to music on mobile phones while travelling has become one of people’s favourite pastimes all across India. The sudden blossoming of radio stations everywhere has contributed to this trend. The creators of Mundu Radio believe streaming music from Internet radio stations could be the Next Big Thing. (Geodesic is the company that makes software for mobile devices with the “Mundu” name; we tested one of their other products—Mundu IM—a while ago.) We tried out the Symbian OS version on a Nokia N70. The interface is colorful and elegant. Stations are stored by genre. There are some preset stations, and you can add more manually through their site, www.radio.mundu. com. Also, the default playlist, which contains all the stations, can be updated from your account on the Mundu Radio site. Recently- played stations can be viewed quickly from a list that updates itself when you play a new station. We must say it would be nice to able to add stations directly through the software interfa

The T91W is the latest LCD offering from the BenQ stables. It can be tilted up to 20° up and 5° down verti- cally, but it can’t be tilted horizontally. The three but-tons on the monitor take care of all the functions, but they are placed behind the monitor—inconvenient. Furthermore, the buttons seem tacky, and are unre- sponsive at times. This 19-incher is sleek, and weighs just 4.8 kg. It has a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:10, and supports a native resolution of 1440 x 900— something movie buffs will love. With a fast response time of just 5 ms (millisec-onds) for grey-to-grey, this one will not disappoint gamers either; it is just as good for fast-paced gaming as your CRT. The T91W has an excel-lent contrast ratio of 700:1. The 300 cd/m2 brightness spec is more than enough. The backlight is placed evenly, so there are no bright / dark spots along the border. Colours are vibrant. It should be mentioned, though, that the LCD could not pro- duce the darkest regions as pure black, but

The AV series drives have been tailored to deliver optimised AV performance, and is targeted at the CE segment (HDD Recorders, Video Surveillance Recorders, etc.) and digital video professionals. According to WD, a lot of research has gone into engineering these drives to incorporate enhanced features. These drives are touted to be very reliable with an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1 million hours, and are rugged enough to survive high-temperature, always-on environments. SilkStream technology provides continuous smooth playback of up to 12 HD streams with an assumed transfer block size of 2 MB per stream. Its compatibility with the ATA streaming command set also enables CE customers to use standard stream management and error recovery options. IntelliSeek is another technology incorporated here; it calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption and vibration. Indeed, we found this to be a silent performer. The recording heads are parked off the disk surface during