Review

Benq 2400W

The Benq V2400w is a 24-inch monitor, but it’s not just any 24-inch monitor. Benq claims that this is the slimmest LCD monitor around, and we’d be hard pressed to disagree. The minute we took it out of the box, the sheer beauty of this monitor left us awestruck. It’s definitely one of the best looking monitors we’ve tested so far.

Design and Features
The V2400w has an unusual design. Unlike most monitors that have a central base and a support bar going straight up the center, the V2400w has an asymmetrical base that is attached slightly right of center. The base looks sculpted out of metal, but it’s actually plastic. The screen has a thin, glossy bezel around it, with a couple of discreet logos on the bottom right. The control buttons are on the left hand side, and unlike a lot of monitors that try to hide them, Benq has made the buttons an integral part of the design. They look like physical buttons, but are actually touch sensitive— not our preferred control system. straight on, the monitor looks good, but not spectacular. It’s when you look at it sideways that the extreme thin ness strikes you.

It is indeed really, really thin, and looks fantastic sitting on your desk. There’s a slight bulge at the back that tapers to a thin edge on all sides. Unfortunately, due to the integrated stand, this monitor lacks all adjustments except tilt. This is a trade off that the company has made, in the belief that most people will be well served by the default height the monitor comes at.

The monitor supports a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1200, so high-definition video can be played at full resolution. It has support for HDMI (with HDCP), DVI, and VGA. There’s also a small headphone jack on the left edge, but this can only be used with the HDMI input—there’s no way to just plug in a standardline in cable.

Performance
The panel inside this monitor is of the TN variety, so viewing angles are low and response times fast. However, the color quality is a couple of notches higher than other TN panels we’ve tested. In our color tests, the V2400w scored perfect scores for accurate reds, greens, and blues. The contrast ratio was very good as well; we tested it at 700:1. The matte finish helps here. Color temperatures were slightly off, but for almost all home user applications, this is an excellent monitor. Gaming was especially fun, thanks to the excellent contrast ratios. Blacks were nice and deep, while subtle shadows weren’t lost.

The only thing that detracted from the overall experience was the blue power LeD. In dark scenes, this is the most prominent thing on the monitor. There’s no way to turn this off, and Benq should choose a more muted LeD. We also noticed a slight amount of backlight bleed from the bottom of the monitor. Being a TN panel, the viewing angles are not very good. Head on, it’s fine, but view it at an angle and colors start to change. This is a limitation of all TN panels,so it’s not fair to say that Benq fails the test, but it’s
something to keep in mind, especially if you intend to use this as a replacement for your TV.

Conclusion
This monitor is a good buy for the home user. Professionals may not like it too much, but if you’re searching for a monitor that’s good at gaming and movie viewing, and looks like a work of art, this is what you should get.

Dell Inspiron

Every one known for some time that Dell was working on a Netbook-style laptop--the same kind of small, low-power, inexpensive system made popular by Asus and the Eee PC line. And even though there are not many surprises in the new Inspiron Mini 9, it's still an excellent example of the form, without any of the deal-breakers (older CPU, not enough storage space, hard-to-use touch pad) that have kept other Netbooks from being more universally useful.

While component-wise, the Mini 9 is similar to other recent Netbooks, such as the Eee PC 901 and the Acer Aspire One (which all use Intel's Atom CPU), in typical Dell fashion, there are more customization options than we've seen other Netbooks.

Our test unit arrived with 1GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state hard drive, and Windows XP. That configuration costs $514 and comes very close to hitting the benchmarks we set out in our "Building the Perfect Netbook" feature, which asked for similar components, but maybe a slightly bigger SSD hard drive and an impulse-purchase Rs. 18000 price tag.

You can get the Inspiron Mini 9 down to as low as Rs. 15000 by opting for a smaller hard drive (4GB or 8GB), 512MB of RAM, an Ubuntu Linux OS, or knocking down the Webcam to a lower-resolution option. Or, add few bucks for the option internal Bluetooth antenna, which wasn't in our build (but is useful for tethering a cell phone for mobile broadband access). As an interesting note, the Mini 9 apparently includes an inactive internal mobile broadband antenna. According to Dell, it will be announcing the carrier and coverage details in the coming weeks.

In person, the Mini 9 is similar in design to Asus' 9-inch Eee PC. It's slightly thinner, at about 1.25 inches at the back, tapering slightly toward the front. Our system had a glossy black finish (which is very fingerprint prone), and white is also available. Interestingly, most of the leaked product shots we've seen up to now show a red model.

The challenge for any Netbook is to squeeze as much keyboard as possible into a very tiny space, and the Mini 9 does a good job with it. The Dell letter keys are larger than on the 9-inch Eee PC, but certain keys--Tab, Caps Lock, and so on--are reduced to small slivers. In addition, the entire function key row has been removed. F1 through F10 are now alternate keys of the A to L row. It's an interesting compromise to get the most surface area for everyday typing, but makes some tasks, such as jumping between Web page fields with the Tab key, somewhat awkward.

Opening the lid, the 8.9-inch 1,024x600-pixel screen shares space with a Webcam above and two small speaker grilles below. The display offers just enough space for displaying Web pages and Word documents, and we think the 9-inch size is the perfect fit for Netbooks, rather than the smaller 7-inch or larger 10-inch screens on other systems.

The Inspiron Mini 9 has three USB ports, headphone and mic jacks, a VGA out, SD card slot, and an Ethernet jack--a fairly standard set of connections in the Netbook world. Integrated Bluetooth is a Rs. 900 option, and Dell is expected to announce a mobile broadband plan soon. We'd love to see mobile broadband in more Netbooks, but it's typically prohibitively expensive as an option on a sub-Rs. 22000 system.

With Intel's new 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, specifically designed for low-power Netbooks, you're not going to find the same level of performance you'd get from even an inexpensive Core 2 Duo laptop. Still, the Intel Atom processor performed about as expected, closely matching the Asus Eee PC 901 and MSI Wind in our iTunes performance test.

In anecdotal testing, we found the Mini 9 to be highly usable for Web surfing, e-mailing, and even playing music files (its speakers were surprisingly loud, if predictably thin-sounding). The combo of Intel's Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, and Windows XP found in almost every current Netbook works well for basic tasks, as long as you keep expectations modest and don't mind occasional slowdown if you try and open too many browser windows at once.

The Mini 9 ran for 3 hours and 21 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included 4-cell battery. That's second only to the 6-cell battery in the Asus Eee PC 901, and easily beats the Asus Aspire One and MSI Wind.

Dell includes an industry-standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty with the system, with mail-in service. Upgrading to a two-year plan will cost an extra Rs. 6300. Support is accessible through a 24-7 toll-free phone line, an online knowledge base and driver downloads.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 64MB Mobile Intel 945 Express; STEC 16GB SSD.

Acer Aspire One
Linpus Linux Lite v1.0.2.E; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; Mobile Intel 945GME Express; 8GB solid-state drive.

Asus Eee PC 901
Windows XP Home Edition SP2; 1.6GHz Intel Atom; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 945 Express; 12GB Phison solid-state drive.

MSI Wind U100-002LA
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel 945 Express; 80GB Western Digital 5,400rpm.

Sylvania G Netbook
Linux; 1.2GHz VIA C7-M; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; VIA UniChrome Pro IGP; 30GB hard disk drive.

Credit: www.cnet.com

Samsung SyncMaster 2232GW

The good: Stellar image quality across a variety of tasks; great-looking design.

The bad: Sparse feature set; costs more than other 22-inch LCDs.

The bottom line: The Samsung 2232GW delivers where it counts with excellent image quality, but Dell has a 22-inch LCD that delivers the same level of performance and more features for less money.

The Samsung 2232GW looks like an entertainment-minded LCD upon first glance, with its piano-black bezel and stand, its glossy screen coating that results in rich colors and smooth edges in movies and games, and its fast 2-millisecond pixel response time. The 22-inch wide-screen LCD performed well in testing, too, delivering a solid image across a variety of tasks. However, it ultimately falls short of the Dell SP2208WFP because it lacks many of the features found on Dell's 22-inch consumer-friendly LCD while costing roughly $60 more. There's nothing wrong with the Samsung 2232GW, but we prefer the Dell SP2208WFP for its lower price, equally stunning image, and added features such as an HDMI connection, USB ports, and integrated Webcam.

Design
The Samsung 2232GW looks more like an HDTV than desktop display, with its rounded corners and glossy black bezel. The only button to grace the front is a round power button highlighted by a ring of blue light. The five onscreen menu buttons are hidden underneath the bottom edge, but they are easily accessed and marked with subtle gray icons. The thin 0.75-inch bezel widens along the bottom to where it's 2-inches thick at the center beneath the screen.

You'll need some muscle to connect the stand to the display upon setup. The ball-and-socket connection requires a bit of force to fit the two pieces together. The wordless installation sheet features vague illustrations to guide you. Once connected, you'll find that the only adjustment offered is tilt, and not much at that. The oval stand is relatively sturdy, but the monitor is more prone to wobble than the Dell SP2208WFP and its rectangular base.

Manufacturer's specs:
Resolution: 1680x1050
Pixel-response rate: 2ms
Contrast ratio: 3000:1
Connectivity: DVI, VGA
HDCP compliant? Yes
Included video cables? DVI

Features
There's not much to report in the features department. Your video connection options are the standard VGA and DVI--no HDMI or component here. Also absent are added bonuses found on other LCDs, including the Editors' Choice award-winning Dell SP2208WFP, such as USB ports, an integrated Webcam, or an optional speaker bar.

The DVI port does provide HDCP, so you can view Hollywood's high-definition copyrighted material. As with any 22-inch display, the native resolution of 1,680x1,050 means you won't be able to display 1080p video without scaling. Like the Dell SP2208WFP, the Samsung 2232GW boasts a fast 2ms (gray-to-gray) pixel response time, which means the monitor handles moving images--movies, TV, games--with ease. Also like the Dell, the 2232GW features a glossy screen coating--Samsung calls it MagicClear--that helps smooth edges and brighten colors, but can also lead to distracting reflections in a brightly lit room. Given the sparse feature set, this Samsung monitor might be a better offer with a matte finish for use as a basic productivity display.

Performance
Although we found the features lacking, the Samsung 2232GW's performance is excellent. It put up a composite score of 89 on our DisplayMate suite of tests, which is ahead of the pack and trails only the 90 that the Dell SP2208WFPT scored. We're happy if a display breaks 80, which means an 89 thrills us. It also proved itself to be very bright, but despite claims of a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, it finished in the middle of the pack at 863:1. In anecdotal testing, it excelled with movies and games, which wasn't surprising given its glossy coating and fast 2ms response time. As opposed to the Dell SP2208WFP, whose image appeared a touch too warm at its default settings, the Samsung 2232GW was slightly too cool at its default levels. It was a simple fix to lower the blue level, however. The display offers a number of presets, which are easily accessed without even needing to use the onscreen menu. Simply pressing one of the menu buttons below the display lets you cycle through presets for Text, Internet, Game, Sport, Movie, and Dynamic Contract, and Custom. The Movie preset worked well, resulting in accurate skin tones for the Tenenbaum clan in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Credit: http://review.zdnet.com

PNY XLR8 GeForce 9800 GTX OC Review

If you’re like us, you’re probably still recovering from the latest round of VGA price cuts. NVIDIA’s entire GeForce lineup has seen a complete price makeover, with the GeForce 9800 GTX going from $299.99 to $199.99. Even the GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 have seen their prices reduced. As a result, gamers looking to upgrade this summer who may have had their eye on the GeForce 8800 GT can now upgrade to a faster card like the 9800 GTX or Radeon HD 4850 and save money in the process.

All these price adjustments have had a significant effect on NVIDIA’s board partners as well. Not only have they been forced to slash their prices, many of them will also have to take a hard look at their distinct offerings for each GPU: with just $50 separating the GeForce 9600 GT from the GeForce 9800 GTX, some board partners may want to axe certain SKUs. Picking and choosing isn’t going to be an easy task either, there are literally dozens of combinations of factory OC’ed versus stock GeForce 9600 GT and 8800 GT cards out there, and dozens more combinations of cards with different types of dual-slot and single-slot cooling. And don’t forget that there are still plenty of GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB cards still floating around in the market even though production of the card has officially ended!

With so many different choices out there, keeping up with all the different cards can be a daunting task. The scary part is things could potentially get even more confusing shortly. GeForce 9800 GTX+ cards will be hitting retail shelves in the next two weeks, and NVIDIA is expected to debut additional 55-nm G94b and G96 GPUs by the end of this quarter. These GPUs will reportedly be sold as GeForce 9500 GT and 9800 GT cards.

For right now though, we’re going to worry about the GeForce 9800s. Specifically, the GeForce 9800 GTX versus GeForce 9800 GTX+ dilemma. If you’re set on getting a 9800 GTX specifically, hopefully this article will answer some of your upgrade questions.

Spicing up the 9800 GTX

At launch, the GeForce 9800 GTX was a definite disappointment. The GPU offered very little over the existing GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, in fact, some factory OC’ed 8800 GTS 512MB cards were faster, and all the cards were stuck at the same stock speeds and relied on the same stock NVIDIA cooling.

Things have changed now though. Today you can find several factory OC’ed 9800 GTX cards that are great performers. In fact, some of them are even clocked just a few MHz shy of the GeForce 9800 GTX+. XFX’s 9800 GTX Black is actually clocked higher than the 9800 GTX+, but it currently sells for more than a 9800 GTX+ also. What if you don’t want to spend that kind of money, but still want a factory OC’ed 9800 GTX card?

PNY was the first NVIDIA board partner to send us a factory OC’ed GeForce 9800 GTX, and it currently sells for less than the 9800 GTX+. In fact, Newegg sells the board for just $10 more than PNY’s bone stock $199.99 GeForce 9800 GTX card. What does that $10 buy you, and how does the board compare to 9800 GTX+? Let’s find out!

D-Link Xtreme N Duo Media Router DIR-855 - wireless router Editors' rating Very good7.6out of 10

True dual-band; great throughput performance; intuitive and responsive browser interface; gigabit LAN and WAN; easy to set up; supports separate wireless networks for guests; network activity display offers quick access to a variety of network information; convenient preset settings.

The bad: Middling range; confusing network activity display; expensive; bulky design; no print-serving or NAS functionality.

The bottom line: The D-Link Xtreme N Duo Media Router DIR-855 is a stable performer with excellent Web interface. But because it comes in a bulky, old-school design, has a relatively short range, and carries a hefty price tag, consider waiting for the price to drop before investing in this router.

Design and setup
Out of the box, the D-Link DIR-855 looks like a differently colored D-Link DGL-4500 . (The DIR-855 is white, while the DGL-4500 is dark blue.) The DIR-855 has three antennas attached to the back of the router--not a good design, as they crowd the network ports. The antennae are, however, removable, in case you need to install an external high-power antenna for longer range. Like most D-Link routers, the DIR-855 is wall-mountable and also comes with a vertical mount base. Similar to the DGL-4500, the DIR-855 has a top-mounted, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) Network Activity Display (ONAD) that shows more than just the network's connection status--the two navigation buttons display WAN, LAN, and wireless information via the little blue screen. However, in our tests, the screen timed out after a minute or two. The ONAD is fun to play around with at first, and is indeed useful in a number of situations, such as checking on the Internet connection, number of wireless clients, and so on, but in the long term, you might miss the regular LED status light found on most routers.

The D-Link DIR-855 includes four LAN gigabit ports and one WAN gigabit port, as well as a USB port that's designed only for Windows Connect Now technology (WCN). WCN is a feature that lets you transfer the wireless encryption key to a WCN-enabled client, such as the HP Deskjet 6840 or a Windows PC, via a USB thumb drive. This saves you from having to remember and manually enter the often cryptic encryption code. We found this feature a bit redundant, since the router also supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), another popular method to quickly and conveniently add wireless clients to the network. Instead, we wish the USB port were for either print serving or network storage support, as in the Linksys WRT610N.

It's easy to set up the D-Link DIR-855. The router comes with a CD that contains the D-Link Router Quick Setup desktop software, which walks you though a few simple steps, including hooking up the hardware, creating an SSID, and setting up the encryption. The software, however, doesn't work if your computer has more than one wired network port, including FireWire ports. If this is the case, you will need to temporally disable ports except the one connected to the router. Alternatively, you can use the Web-based interface, which is well thought-out, responsive, and more comprehensive than the desktop application. Sadly, unlike the Linksys WRT610N, the D-Link DIR-855 doesn't come with a Mac version of its desktop setup software.

Features
Like the name suggests, the D-Link DIR-855 comes with two Draft N 2.0 access points. One of them uses the ubiquitous 2.4Ghz frequency, while the other works in the new 5Ghz frequency; the two can run simultaneously. This is the first router from D-Link that offers true dual-band operation.

The D-Link DIR-855 offers numerous network features that you can manage via a well-organized Web interface. You can set up manual port forwarding--where you map to a specific computer in the network all the information that comes to a certain port--or use the router's preset settings for different applications and services, such as instant messengers, BitTorrent, IP phone software, virtual servers, and so on. It also offers a comprehensive set of parental control tools, including Network Filter, Access Control, Website Filter and Inbound Control. These tools allow you to control the network and limit access to the Internet by specific criteria, such as limiting Johnny's computer's access to adult Web sites, or only allowing Johnny to use instant messengers during certain periods of time. The router also lets you customize its firewall to allow some services but not others.

The DIR-855 also comes with an interesting and useful feature called Guest Zone. Guest Zone lets you create up to two separate wireless networks (one in 2.4Ghz, one in 5Ghz) to be used either by guests or the open public. Any wireless client connected to these guest networks get access to the Internet, but not your local LAN resources.

Performance
The DIR-855 gave a mixed performance in our tests. On our maximum throughput test, the router registered 101.7Mbps and 77Mbps for the 5Ghz frequency and 2.4Ghz frequency, respectively--both high, though not perfect, scores that bested the LinksysWRT610N, which came in at 101Mbps and 53.3Mbps.

Even better, the D-Link DIR-855 topped our charts on its range test, where we tested the device's broadcasting signal at 200 feet. Its 2.4Ghz frequency throughput, 66.5Mbps, performed second only to its own 5Ghz frequency throughput, which came in at a whopping 85.7Mbps--the highest in Draft N 2.0 range throughput performance we've seen by far.

In our mixed-mode test, in which the router supported both Draft N 2.0 and legacy 802.11b/g clients at the same time in 2.4Ghz frequency, the D-Link DIR-855 finished about average, at 58.5Mbps.

All in all, the DIR-855 is a great performer, unless you need broad range. In our test environment (which is not the best for range), the router was only able to maintain a stable connection within about a 250-foot radius--20 feet shorter than the Linksys WRT610N's range. Credit: http://review.zdnet.com

ATI Radeon HD 4850/4870 Performance

Today is a pretty exciting time if you’re in the business of following 3D graphics. Not only are we seeing DirectX 10 games that are capable of dishing out graphics that put the latest consoles to shame, we are also reaching a point where graphics cards are being tasked to handle duties beyond conventional graphics such as video encoding in the consumer space, and financial analysis for businesses. But as positive as all this is, there’s something even more exciting that’s got us absolutely giddy right now -- the competition between ATI and NVIDIA is hotter now than it has been in well over a year.

If you’re skeptical of this last statement, just look at what happened last week as proof. As a result of the Radeon HD 4850’s tremendous price/performance ratio, NVIDIA was forced to slash prices on their entire family of GeForce 8/9 graphics cards. The GeForce 9800 GTX went from being a $300 card on Thursday, to selling for $199.99 on Friday! NVIDIA also cooked up a brand new GeForce 9800 GTX+ SKU to take on the new Radeons that will arrive in July. This is all wonderful news if you’re a gamer who is in the market looking to upgrade: building a powerful rig for gaming just got much cheaper as a result.

So how did we get here? Let’s rewind a bit shall we?

After experiencing repeated delays with each next-generation architecture (first R520, then R600) ATI began to realize that designing these massive, cutting-edge GPUs that were needed to service the high-end market was becoming less practical. They came to the conclusion that they were reaching a point of diminishing returns where the resources that were being thrown into these high-end GPUs weren’t being fully realized: by the time software came out that really exploited the capabilities of the hardware, the GPU was outdated. In addition, there were cases where functional units inside these pricey GPUs had to be disabled and/or clock speeds reduced in order to bring lower-priced SKUs to market at specific price points. Examples of this include the Radeon X1800 XL and ATI’s Radeon 2900 Pro/GT, which were based on ATI’s R520 and R600 GPUs respectively.

Rather than devote the hundreds of millions in R&D required to bring another large GPU to market, they decided to take the opposite approach for RV770; they would start with a much smaller, more cost effective midrange GPU design, and scale it up and down to meet the needs of different markets. Their belief was that a less complicated GPU design could be brought to market faster than a large GPU, and at price points that a wider group of people actually want. ATI’s engineers were given very specific transistor and die size budgets to shoot for, while at the same time they were still tasked to achieve certain levels of performance: at least double the performance of R600 was the goal.

But did they accomplish this goal? If you saw the Radeon HD 4850 benchmarks last week, you already know the answer is a resounding YES! In this article, we’re going to take a quick look at the new architecture, and then a deep dive into some benchmarks. We’re not only going to examine 4xAA performance (one of R600’s weak points), but also 8xMSAA and ATI’s custom filter AA modes as well

MSI Wind U100

With its pearl-white finish, the much-awaited MSI Wind is like a breath of fresh air and this mini-laptop may just emerge a strong contender to challenge the Asus Eee PC's claim to fame.

Features and Specifications
The MSI Wind is powered by the latest Intel Atom processor clocked at a speed of 1.6 GHz. It has 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 2GB), an 80 GB hard drive spinning at 5400 RPM. The graphics engine is driven by Intel GMA 950, and the 10-inch non-glossy screen, which is larger than the Eee PC 900's 8.9-inch display, supports a maximum resolution of 1024x600 pixels. On the connectivity front, it bundles in 802.11b/g standard Wi-Fi, three USB ports, 4-in-1 card reader, mic and headphone jacks, VGA port, and Ethernet. The build quality of the chassis is good, and it also has an integrated 1.3MP web camera for taking snapshots and recording video. The microphone carved into the front chassis, a little right of the webcam; comes handy during video chats. Watching movies and listening to songs is still good, given the laptop's dimensions. The speakers are situated beneath the keyboard, and we liked the sound pumped out at full volume, and listening to streaming music over the Wi-Fi was a breeze as well.

Design and Usability
Our lab sample came with a base install of Windows XP. It weighed in at a minuscule 1.25 kg thus offering truly impressive ultra-portability. Slightly larger than a hardcover book, it can be easily tucked away in an office desk drawer. Its standard 6-cell battery provides an extensive battery life which easily lasted over 5 hours with standard usage. The Wind didn't buckle under the strain of surfing the Internet on Firefox 3.0, with multiple tabs open and multitasking with MS Office applications - which is what its intended usage is. For a mini-laptop, the Wind's keyboard isn't bad at all. Typing on it takes getting used to, but the keyboard's tapering design simplifies that, and it takes little time before your fingers move seamlessly on the keypad. There is a discernible key flex but not enough to spoil the party as every key is well-defined. Keyboards become even more of an issue with mini-laptops as they're small in size. Chunky fingers notwithstanding, all of us in the lab were satisfied and felt the overall tactile feedback of the Wind's keyboard was good. The touchpad is fairly responsive, too.

Verdict
Battery-life, performance, screen-size and the size of the keypad were our biggest concerns, and the Wind scored high in each of those categories. But for all it offers, it still lacks an optical drive, Gigabit LAN and doesn't support the latest Draft-N wireless connectivity standard, which the Eee PC 1000 does. It is hard to understand the omission of the Draft-N standard as it offers much higher data transfer speeds as compared to the wireless b/g standard.

Comparing mini-laptops to normal laptops is fair when the prices are at par, but overall the trimmed down, low-cost versions aren't really designed to compete with normal notebook PCs. These are small laptops aimed at people who want small, light devices that are easy to carry around and surf the Internet with. If you want a small device that weighs about 1 kg, connects to the Internet and multitasks with simple software, the Wind is pretty nifty at Rs. 22,000. With Windows XP it is approximately priced at Rs. 25,000.

Credit: www.pcworld.in

CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4

As the centerpiece of Corel’s Graphics Suite X4, CorelDraw X4 ships with significant new features that, while not flashy, are practical, and substantial enough for professionals to find the upgrade worthwhile. Even the interface has been redesigned to present a clean, intuitive workspace.

CorelDraw is the well-established “other” vector drawing program, covering the same ground as Adobe Illustrator does. You can use it to create illustrations for signs, logos, and technical and industrial designs, and for specialized printing like engraving. Draw also works for designing multipage publications.

The growing ranks of people who double as the designated designer in multitasking work environments will appreciate the extensive set of easy-to-modify templates and the intuitive help screens. Draw X4 ships with a substantial library of royalty-free artwork, including 1000 high-resolution photos suitable for commercial projects. And Draw X4 meshes smoothly with Windows Vista Instant Search to sort quickly through images on your computer or network from within Draw’s Open Drawing dialog box.


More Improvements
Among the more substantial enhancements is a connection to the WhatTheFont website: Within the app, you can paste in bitmap captures of type to identify fonts—helpful, for example, for a designer who is asked to duplicate a print brochure’s unidentified fonts. Also, you can now preview type flow around images instantly. Publishers who generate data-driven output can use the print/merge features to generate customized publications--so a product press kit, say, could have customized fields that generate a personalized kit for each reviewer. Draw has always had an advantage over products in Adobe’s design suite in that it is both a full-fledged vector drawing program (like Illustrator) and a solid desktop publishing package (like InDesign).

Desktop publishing features in X4 now let you create and edit independent layers on each page of multipage documents, as well as implement master layers throughout a publication for repeating elements (such as page numbers or headers). Illustrators who convert bitmap files to Draw’s vector format will spot changes in the bitmap trace feature that allow, for example, combining of colors to simplify trace results. Users who found the trace feature in CorelDraw X3 unpredictable will notice improvements here.

CorelDraw also comes with a collaboration tool, ConceptShare that can be used for sharing designs and ideas online. It lets you create multiple workspaces, upload your designs, and invite others to post comments. The other significant application in Corel’s Graphics Suite X4 is Photo-Paint. Almost abandoned in version X3 of the suite, this bitmap-editing application has some new features, including support for the RAW camera format and interactive histograms for previewing image adjustments. But while CorelDraw is a professional alternative to Adobe Illustrator, Photo-Paint is not a professional photo editing app.

Illustrators and designers who don’t use Adobe products (a niche community) will find the improvements in CorelDraw Graphics Suite X4 worth the upgrade.

Credit: www.pcworld.in

Lenovo ThinkPad X300

The Lenovo X300 is not your average laptop. It is a no-holds-barred, extremely expensive, thin and light machine aimed at those with very deep pockets. Priced at Rs.1,45,000, this is not something the standard college student will be looking at.

Lenovo does give you a lot for your money. The internals are pretty powerful — an Intel Core 2 Duo L7100 running at 1.2 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, Intel’s GMA X3100 video chip, and the pièce de résistance: A 64 GB Samsung Solid State Drive. Besides this, it also comes with Draft-N wireless networking in addition to the older B and G protocols that are standard today, a DVD-Writer, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, three USB ports, and Gigabit Ethernet.

The X300 is very thin and light, a mere12.5 inches wide, 9 inches long, and 0.7 inches thick. This makes it slightly larger than a sheet of A4 paper and the thinness makes it very easy to hold and carry around. It’s very light as well tipping the scales at 1.54 kg, with the 6-cell battery and DVD-writer. The looks are classic ThinkPad; you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black. The carbon-fiber reinforced casing feels very sturdy, and like most ThinkPads, it should age well.

Performance
The low voltage Core 2 Duo isn’t exactly a speed demon, and this is reflected in a WorldBench score of 65. Compared to a bigger, faster laptop, this is slightly slow, but it’s more than capable of handling normal office work. Don’t expect to play games on this though. Both Doom 3 and F.EA.R barely limped about at 10 fps on medium settings. The SSD also helps a lot in making the laptop feel faster. Windows Vista boots up in 37 seconds, and Word and Excel start up practically instantaneously. Everything feels faster: Navigating folders, loading up songs in a playlist, and opening a lot of tabs in Firefox.

The battery life is quite good as well. The included 6-cell battery lasted for four hours under moderate usage. We watched a movie on it and ran MobileMark 07, and got similar times. Four hours is very good, and if you don’t use the machine extensively, you’ll probably get closer to five.

Design
The keyboard is the best part of this laptop. ThinkPads have long been renowned for having the best laptop keyboards, and this one is no exception. It’s difficult to describe how good it is, but each key feels just right. The layout is very good, with the Insert, Home and Page-Up keys in the proper locations, and the arrow keys have little indents below them to help your finger slide into position.

The X300 comes with a touchpad and a track-point. Both are comfortable to use. The audio is surprisingly good for such a tiny laptop. The speakers are located on the palm rest, at either edge of the laptop. They are quite clear, and reasonably loud. The screen does not have a glossy finish, and is very bright. There is a bit of backlight bleed, and slight unevenness across the screen, but under normal conditions this is not noticeable. The laptop is very easy to carry about, thanks to its light weight, and it has a high feel-good factor associated with it.

Verdict
This is a very futuristic laptop. It even has options for GPS, Wireless USB, and a Wireless Wide Area Network, but these aren’t available in India yet. The Solid State Drive is very fast, albeit not very roomy. The price is very high, and Lenovo is obviously aiming this machine at a niche audience. If you are in that niche and are able to afford this, you won’t be making a mistake.

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Dell XPS M1530

The Dell XPS M1330 was a fantastic machine, and now we have with us its larger sibling, the XPS M1530. This looks exactly like the M1330, except that it’s larger in every dimension. The 15.4 inch screen is housed in a very good looking chassis, especially when compared to the pedestrian looking Inspiron series. The steel satin finish on the inside, the tubular hinge, slot-loading DVD drive, and colorful lid all come together pleasingly. The internals are pretty well looked aft eras well. A 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor beats at the heart, and it’s adequately taken care of by 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB HDD, and a Nvidia 8600M GT with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory.

On the outside, you have three USB ports, a FireWire port, S-Video and VGA, and surprisingly, HDMI. The PC Card slot has been taken out and replaced with a single Express Card slot. There are touch sensitive buttons for controlling media playback and ejecting a DVD. It also has a multi-format memory card reader. It keeps the same wedge shaped design as the M1330 and is quite slim, measuring 23.7mm at the thinnest point and 35.1mm at the back. It’s quite light; Dell quotes a “starting weight” of 2.6kg, but our sample weighed in at 3kg with the supplied nine-cell battery.

In our performance tests, the M1530 did very well. The discrete graphics chip really helped in the gaming tests, and this is a laptop that you can actually play a few games on. In World-Bench, our in-house benchmark, it garnered an overall score of 87. This is really high for a laptop. 3D Mark 2006 showed the effect of the 8600GT, with 3877 3D Marks. In PC Mark 05, it got a respectable 4570. F.E.A.R was completely playable at 1024x768 with 4x AA and high quality settings. We recorded an average of 45 fps. Doom 3 at 1024x768 and Ultra high settings was blazingly fast at 101 fps.

We used MobileMark 2005 to test battery life. With the screen brightness set to one notch below full, and the processor set to high performance, the nine-cell battery lasted for 3 hours and 4 minutes, which is very good. If you set a more reasonable power profile, it’ll last even longer. The battery juts out at the bottom and makes the laptop slope a bit, but it’s actually easier to type on than with a normal battery. The keyboard is firm and offers good feedback. The keys don’t feel mushy, and there is no sign of keyboard flex. The touchpad is easy to use, though it could have been slightly bigger. There’s plenty of space.

Sadly though, the M1530 lacks gigabit networking. This is a surprising omission, given the premium nature of this product, and in any case, every laptop should have gigabit these days. You do have an option to get draft -N Wi-Fi, but there’s no option for gigabit ethernet. It lost a couple of points here. The slot-loading DVD writer may look cool, but it’s pretty noisy when you load a DVD into it. Also, it’s difficult to use small CDs.

This machine offers you very good value for money. It looks good, is easy to carry about, and has a powerful configuration that can be further customized at point of sale, and comes in three colors. Apart from the curious lack of gigabit ethernet, it’s got all you need. At this price, finding a comparable laptop is tough, and once again, Dell has delivered a winner.

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Asus EN9600GT

The graphics card market has been heating up in the recent past. After a succession of wins for Nvidia, ATI was finally able to put together a competitive answer in the form of the HD3850 and 3870. Not to be
left behind, Nvidia has launched the first of the 9000 series. And it's not a high-end, extremely expensive part. Rather, it's the 9600GT, the successor to the 8600GT. We tested the Asus EN9600GT. The
GeForce 9600GT is fabbed on a 65nm process and sports a 256-bit memory bus. The core runs at 650MHz, while the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory runs at 1.8 Ghz. 64 Stream Processors are rather less than the 112 found in the 8800GT.

The card looks very similar to the 8800GT, with the same physical dimensions. The single slot design and sole PCIe power connector make it easy to plug into mid-range systems. The card draws about 95 watts under load, which is not too much. A 400 watt SMPS is good enough. Heat and noise levels are quite low, and the improvements made to the  PureVideo HD feature mean that this might make a nice card for a powerful HTPC. A nice touch is the inclusion of an S/PDIF connector on the card. Asus supplies the little wire that you need to hook this up to the S/PDIF connector on your motherboard. ATI's solution of putting a audio chip on the graphics card for HDMI is perhaps more elegant, but this works as well.

We tested this card on our upgraded test rig. We used a Intel Q6600 Quad Core processor on the new Intel DX38BT motherboard, paired with 4 GB of DDR-3 RAM, and a 150 GB Raptor. Since this card is intended to compete with the Radeon 3850, we tested against that. The 3850 is hampered a little, since it only has 256 MB of RAM. We also tested it against the 8800GTX and the Radeon 3870X2, but since those cards are not directly comparable, we've kept them out of the ratings. The 9600GT did quite well in 3D Mark 2006, getting a score of 10211 3D Marks, as compared to 9945 for the 3850. In our gaming tests, the 9600 GT maintained a healthy lead over the 3850, averaging between 20 - 40 % faster. We tested Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, Supreme Commander, and our old stalwarts: Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. We tested at 1680x1050 for the most part, except for Crysis - 1024 x 768, Doom 3 - 1280x1024, and F.E.A.R - 1024x768.

Crysis was quite playable at 1024x768 with settings set to High and 8X Anti-Aliasing. If you switch AA off, then the frame rates rise to 36, which is eminently playable. The 3850 managed 20 and 29 frames under
the same conditions. Unreal Tournament 3 was very smooth, running at 54 frames with all graphics sliders set to maximum. The 3850 lagged behind with 54 frames. In the rest of the games a similar story
unfolded.

We were pleased with the performance of the 9600GT. In the wake of the 8800GT and GTS launch, Nvidia has followed up with another solid product. ATI is not giving up though, and the graphics card market is heating up again.

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Gigabyte 3D Aurora

The Gigabyte 3D Aurora Case is a product aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts - with one small caveat. A full tower, all-aluminum cabinet, it comes with a bunch of extra features for system modders and overclockers. Let’s get the basic specifications out of the way first. The all-aluminum construction means that the case weighs only 7 kgs; this is much lighter than a steel case of comparable size. The case is available in two colors - black and silver. We got the black version, and it definitely looks like it means business. The front of the case is divided into two sections. A massive door covers the external drive bays and power and reset buttons. Crafted out of aluminum, it feels solid and the silver groove running down the middle adds a touch of class.

The door is fastened magnetically, and can be locked as well. The lower half of the front is taken up by a large perforated grille. Behind this spins a 120mm fan, the first of three in this case. A blue LED illuminates this area, and you have a nifty little logo projected onto your desk surface. Usefully, Gigabyte has included a blank template for you to create your own logo. This easy bit of customization will appeal to a certain audience. Two USB ports, one FireWire 400 port, audio I/O, and the case LEDs lie nestled on the right hand side. This can be a little irritating if you normally place the case on the floor, since they are all but unreachable. Given the sheer size of this case, it’s likely to be placed on the floor, and Gigabyte could have rethought the placement of the ports.

The left panel has a big acrylic panel for you to keep an eye on things inside the case. And it’s the insides that make this case stand out from the others. Two 120mm fans, complete with glowing blue LEDs, keep things cool. Add the front intake fan, and you know that this case will keep the air moving. And since the large fans spin only at 1000rpm, they don’t make much noise. With the side panels on, you can barely hear them in a quiet room. The case also boasts a completely tool-less design. The only time you need to use a screwdriver is while fastening the motherboard and power supply to the case. Everything else - adding expansion cards, hard drives, DVD drives, and so on - is totally tool free.

Gigabyte has included intake and outlet ports for those who are into water-cooling. This is pretty useless to the vast majority of us, but those who need it will be very thankful indeed. Cables are neatly tucked away and the general fit and finish is of a high quality. The case has only one glaring flaw - the largest video cards simply will not fit. We tried plugging in an Nvidia 8800 GTX, and realized that there is no room. This is because this cabinet was released way back in 2005, when the world was simpler and graphics cards were not the all-consuming behemoths they are today. Smaller cards such as the Nvidia 8800 GT or the ATI HD 3850 fit easily, but don’t buy this case if you intend to plug in the latest and greatest video cards.

Due to this small flaw, the cabinet narrowly misses getting a Very Good rating. In every other department, the 3D Aurora delivers the goods, and it’s a very good case for the price.

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Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is Apple's first major operating system upgrade since Tiger more than two years ago. The changes include more than 300 new features, which, while not earth-shattering, further streamline the experience of using a Mac.

Should you pay for Leopard? If you're happy with the way Tiger works, then maybe not. If you need Bootcamp, however, then you must have Leopard. And if you're considering the purchase of a new computer, Leopard makes Macs more enticing than Tiger did. Plus, Leopard makes it far easier to find documents and applications than Windows Vista . Leopard's interface niceties made the daily mechanics of using the computer more pleasurable. Mundane chores, such as finding files and backing up data, become a visual treat (See our photo gallery of screenshots .)

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard costs $129 out of the box, or $199 for up to five users. Those who bought Macs after October 1 must pay $9.95 to have Leopard shipped to them.

Setup and installation
It took us about 40 minutes to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on an Intel-based MacBook. That's a bit longer than it took to install than Windows Vista, but not by much. However, installation didn't run so smoothly on some systems. Leopard took a painfully long hour or so to install on an iBook G4, the 933 Mhz processor just grazing the minimum requirements.

You should proceed carefully when migrating the files and applications you'll need. Apple steps you through the process, but take your time to avoid overwriting valuable data. Leopard changed the personal desktop image during one migration from Tiger, while leaving the desktop photo alone in other cases. After installing Leopard on MacBook Pro 2.33 Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, there were problems with various applications, including Parallels and GroupCal.

Leopard ran bug-free on a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook. Some users, however, reported the fabled " blue screen of death " historically associated with Microsoft Windows; Apple addressed the issue .

To run Leopard, you'll need an Intel or PowerPC G5 Mac. A PowerPC-based G4 Mac with an 867MHz or better processor will work, as well. Apple suggests having 512MB of RAM. Additionally, you'll need a USB or FireWire external backup drive (or a file-sharing volume on a network) to use Time Machine. Features on iChat require a Webcam.

Interface
The new look and feel of Leopard is different without demanding that you relearn the layout. The Dock organizing applications and files becomes a bit more transparent. Bump it over to one side, and the Dock looks a bit flatter. A drop shadow now highlights the active window, and all windows share a unified visual design.

Click on an icon on the Dock and related items fan out in the order you last accessed them. New Stacks help to unclutter your desktop by showing icons of items in the order they were last accessed. This is especially helpful for keeping downloads in one place, although you can't resize the icons. If the Stack is packed with items, you can display them as a grid.

The souped-up Finder introduces a sidebar that allows you to rearrange items in the Places section, while Search For submenus can locate files based on type and when you last worked on them. Click on Today, for instance, and you'll see everything you've touched lately in chronological order. If you work on a network, checking out another person's desktop starts with the simple Share Screen option.

Spotlight scours through files in shared folders on a network, as well as within Safari's Web History (which you should regularly dump to fend off snoops). It gets smarter, reading "Not" and "Or," dates and phrases, and even serving as a calculator for trig equations.

Many new design elements reflect what you've already seen in iTunes and iPhone. Cover Flow, for instance, shuffles through folders as you hold down an arrow key. This makes perfect sense for browsing files. Plus, you can peek at most documents instantly. Quick Look provides previews that can pop up files from iWork, iLife, Microsoft Office, PDFs, as well as popular image and video formats. In each instance appear relevant options, such as Full Screen view or Add to iPhoto. Select several files, double-click them, and you've got a custom slide show.

In addition to making it easier to find your work, interface additions are intended to make multitasking less stressful. Virtual desktops, called Spaces, cluster open windows into categories or boxes. This can cut the number of windows you may otherwise stack around your desktop, especially helpful for tiny monitors. For example, you could move everything you need to edit a vacation video into one space, and in another Space place the files and apps needed to write a dissertation. Spaces were a cinch to set up (such as drawing a chart in a word processor), but a tad awkward for us to master until we learned the keyboard shortcuts. You can also use the mouse to drag items between Spaces, and to drag the Spaces themselves around.

Time Machine immediately detected our external hard drive via two USB ports and we started backing up within a few minutes. You cannot back up to your Mac's hard drive. You can check out the drives of fellow Leopard users with Time Machine, too. However, Apple doesn't offer password-protection and encryption options upfront showing you how to lock that drive from curious outsiders. Only longtime Mac users are likely to know to explore such options within Leopard's Security settings.

iChat lets you and Leopard-using buddies share files and control each others' desktops, expanding the tool's potential professional use. And you can record iChat sessions as AAC audio or MPEG video files ready for an iPod, which is a great feature for podcasters.

iChat Theater's silly effects can distort your face like you're looking in a fun-house mirror. Green-screen backgrounds within iChat Theater let your talking head appear in a video conference in front of, say, included images of the moon or your own pictures. (We still wish the "Star Wars R2D2" theme were included.) Other chat buddies can see these, whether they're using an older iteration of OS X or they're using AIM on a Windows PC. iChat enables you to share files as you gab via video, so you and a friend can watch the same movie clip or flip through the same PowerPoint presentation. Photo Booth integrates with iChat, letting you record videos and show off full-screen slide shows.

Mac's new Mail application integrates rich note-taking into e-mail. These notes can serve as scrapbooks containing images. Some 32 e-mail templates enable you to drop in pictures and resize them with a built-in photo browser. Mail's RSS feeds tie into those in Safari. The e-mail application also detects addresses for mapping via Google, as well as contacts for a quick save. Natural language capabilities, similar to those within Gmail, recognize phrases such as "next Saturday" for scheduling. Changes are synchronized between Mail and iCal. Setting up Mail is less complicated than Outlook, and it works with accounts from 27 services, including Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail.

However, we wish we could access RSS feeds from Mail without signing into our e-mail account. We encountered delays with several different Gmail accounts. In one case, the most current Gmail message that loaded in Mail--15 minutes after we had logged in--was from December 2006. We kept leaning on the Get Mail button for an unsatisfactory, slow and incomplete refresh.

Finally, the Safari browser default is tabbed without making you turn on the feature. Safari's cool new Web Clips tool lets you turn any snippet from a Web page into a widget for your Dashboard. Potential plug-ins from third parties that would be nice to have already include the Web Clips feature for the popular Mozilla Firefox browser.

Leopard offers many tie-ins to Web-based content (see the Webware video ). Among them is Wikipedia as a new companion to the Dictionary. Although you can access the open-source encyclopedia from the Desktop, no entries are saved locally.

Geotagging is a cool addition to Leopard, enabling you to tie photos to latitude and longitude through built-in GPS on digital cameras so you can put picture galleries on a map.

Leopard offers 17 new features . There's support for Braille output devices as well as contracted and non-contracted Braille. It's the first operating system that can use a Braille display during installation. VoiceOver makes it easier to jump to sections on a Web page, and its preferences can be transported to other Macs. However, for people with repetitive stress injuries, Leopard supports voice-activated commands only--not dictation. There are updates to less glamorous elements such as Automator and Dashcode, and Network Preferences has been streamlined. Developers can enjoy full 64-bit support, and get to tinker with fun extras, which we wish were integrated already within iChat Theater. ColorSync reads EXIF sRGB data from cameras, and there's support for connecting more cameras via cable or Wi-Fi, and for other gadgets via Bluetooth.

Security
More firewall controls are among several security enhancements to Leopard. Yet the firewall isn't turned on by default , and we consider it vulnerable to outside threats. To fend off Trojans and spoofing attempts, you'll be grilled more when downloading materials. A mechanism called Sandboxing is supposed to prevent potential external threats from hijacking your applications. Parental controls are now featured more prominently in the System and offer content filters, time limits, and Internet activity loggers to keep tabs on young Web surfers.

Performance
We saw only a 1 percent to 3 percent improvement with Leopard over Tiger on our performance tests. As this falls within our typical margin of error (5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when moving from Tiger to Leopard.

We were unable to complete our Photoshop CS3 test because our automation routine tests, which typically run fine under Tiger, had problems with Leopard. Adobe's Web site indicates that Photoshop CS3 should be compatible with Leopard--other than the automation snafu, Photoshop CS3 appears to operate normally.

This underlies the point that some applications might not be 100 percent compatible yet with Leopard. For instance, Adobe is rolling out updates to various CS3 image, video and audio editing applications within the next four months. FileMaker is warning users of FileMaker Pro 9 that there are some compatibility problems with Leopard . However, FileMaker expects to have an update available by November 19.

Service and support
Support options remain the same as in the Tiger version. You get 90 days of help free by telephone, as with other products from Apple. Phone support thereafter costs $49 per incident. AppleCare support lasts a year after you buy Leopard. For extra peace of mind, you should consider extended warranties.

Apple also tweaked the Help menus within OS X 10.5. These are arranged well, although they didn't always provide an instant answer. Many items are better explained on Apple's Web site via message boards, user forums, and a well-organized knowledge base.

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SGI Visual Supercomputing

• Users accomplish more work with less cost, reduced complexity, and optimized workflow
• Delivers top performance by offering hybrid solutions optimally built from best of breed technologies
• Reduces workflow complexity through a data-centric architecture and technologies that seamlessly integrate
• Manages diverse workloads by offering a software stack that supports visualization technology choices
• Enhances SGI® Altix® XE and SGI® Altix® ICE compute platforms with closely coupled CPU/GPU visualization nodes

SGI Visual Supercomputing is a complete portfolio of innovative high performance visualization technologies, services, and solutions that enable our customers to effectively solve their greatest supercomputing challenges. Visualization challenges include the ability to process increasingly larger and more complex data sets that continue to expand in scope and detail; the ability to explore multiple "what if" scenarios tight deadlines; and the need to display and interact with visual data in remote locations.

By fully integrating high performance visualization with its supercomputing and data management systems, SGI delivers a complete compute/visualize/data management solution that optimizes workflow and productivity, reduces system complexity, and delivers dramatically reduced time-to-results.

The SGI Visual Supercomputer is integrated into our industry-leading hybrid compute-visualization-data systems that deliver a seamless and highly productive supercomputing environment. The SGI Visual Supercomputer includes high performance visualization blades featuring the latest CPUs and GPUs, a comprehensive visualization-enabled software stack that reduces system complexity, and remote visualization capabilities. Every SGI Visual Supercomputer is engineered to match the unique global workflow requirements of each of our clients.

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Gateway One GZ7220

If Apple's iMac is the best all-around, all-in-one PC (if not one of the best all-around desktops), and Sony's VAIO LT19U succeeds in a very specific, high-end niche, where does that leave the new Gateway One? It's certainly attractive, but our fully loaded, $1,799 review unit has slower performance and a smaller screen than the less expensive, equally pretty iMac. The Gateway One has a few clever design elements, and the best upgradeability we've seen in an enclosed system. We can also imagine the OS X-shy might be interested in a visually pleasing, Vista-based all-in-one. But for confident, platform-agnostic users, we'll continue to recommend Apple, mostly due to its price and performance lead.

The sleek, glossy black Gateway One is not the first all-in-one from Gateway, but it's definitely the best looking. At 17.5 inches tall, 18.3 inches wide, and 3.5 inches from front to back, it takes up less space than the 7.25-inch-deep iMac. The trimmer footprint is due to an unexpectedly sturdy support on the back of the Gateway One, that actually recalls the design of Apple's old Cinema Displays . As with those bygone LCDs, you can stand the Gateway One up at an almost a 90-degree angle or tilt it back by roughly 45 degrees.

The Gateway One also does a better job than the iMac of preserving its aura of wireless techno-calm. In addition to the obligatory RF wireless mouse and keyboard, the single cable coming from the rear of the system goes down to a power brick. But on that brick you'll also find a collection of USB, digital audio, networking, and other inputs. Gateway includes USB and headphone ports on the side of the system as well, but the beauty of placing the ports on the brick is that it lets you keep the wires to things you don't normally disconnect under the desk and out of sight. Apple has its wireless mice and keyboards as well, but any other hard inputs go directly into the rear of the iMac, disturbing the cable-free aesthetic.

The ports on the Gateway One's power brick let you keep your wires out of sight under your desk.

Also in the Gateway One's favor, it allows for more customer upgradeability than either the iMac or the Sony VAIO LT19U. You slide two latches on the bottom of the system to pop the rear panel up like the hood of a car. Inside, you get access to the memory slots as well the two PCI Express MiniCard slots and the spare hard drive bay. Apple offers only memory access. Sony lets you get at both the memory and the hard drives of its all-in-one, but to add or remove the drives you need to wrangle with cables and an annoyingly complicated removable drive sled. The Gateway simply has two plastic bays that line the drives up directly with their fixed data and power inputs. No screws, no cables.

It couldn't be easier to add a second hard drive to the Gateway One.

While Gateway has done a good job designing the body of its new all-in-one, its soul needs some work. Consider the following specs comparison:

We should point out that the iMac we reviewed is a nonstandard config that has upgrades to its memory and its hard drive. And even after those add-ins, the Gateway One still has more memory and more storage space, not to mention a TV tuner. But counterbalancing those features are the Gateway's higher price, its smaller screen and slower processor, and its lack of Bluetooth capability. You can add Bluetooth via the Gateway's spare MiniCard port, so you can at least do that as an option, but if you were hoping to for wireless syncing between the Gateway and a smart phone or another device, you're out of luck to start.

It might be fair to argue that the Gateway's TV tuner and the iMac's Bluetooth capability cancel each other out (although we wish the tuner was internal, as on the Sony). What's plain, though, is that the Gateway is a performance laggard. Considering its higher price, its slowness hurts it the most. Of the three all-in-ones we've reviewed recently, as well as a standard HP desktop of similar price and capability for good measure, the Gateway One finished last or second to last on every test. Especially compared to the iMac, the Gateway is slower at editing photos, encoding audio and video files, playing games, and multitasking. PC vendors are sometimes keen to argue that all-in-ones can sacrifice performance as long as the features are there and the thing can serve as a standard-definition multimedia box. We don't expect any all-in-one to set records, but it's clear that Apple takes the iMac's performance as an actual computer far more seriously than Gateway does.

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