Today we have the Apple Macbook Pro 15. We purchased this laptop a few months ago, so I will post a short review of why we purchased it and what it may provide the potential buyer. We were looking to purchase another notebook, and had previously only owned PC's. This is our first Mac.
Even though we were worried whether we would be able to cope with the challenges of OS X, there was always the comforting thought that we could install windows as required. With that aside we took a plunge.
Why 15 not 13? or 17? Well this was the best compromise. Already having a 13" laptop, there was no need for us to get another, and the bigger screen real estate on the 15" made it a better viewing/browsing experience.
The highlights of this unit are that is excellently streamline. We had looked at a few other competing hardware from Asus, HP, dell, but the hardware on the apple seemed solid. I suspect that was the contribution of the unibody aluminium design. It feels like a thin and light, however it is heavier than one might expect. Although still being lighter than other 15" laptops I suspect.
The other things that stand out are the lovely screen, providing nice vivid colours and I for one do not mind the gloss screen. I think its easier to keep clean? The trackpad is excellent and the most sensitive that I have used to date. Especially compared to other notebooks I have had in the past. On a scale of 1-10, the sony vaio would score a 5-6 out of 10. It is functional, and has a few tricks, however the macbook pro would get a 9/10 with its wonderfully sensitive keyboard, and multitouch gestures.
Finally battery life and the mag safe charger are nice features. The battery life is around 7-8 hrs and feels long enough that you dont feel like you are constantly looking for your charger. The magsafe is nice in that it feels like it grips solid, however should you trip over the wire, you dont have that fear that you will break the charging mechanism.
Finally a few words about my first time experience with Mac OS X.
1. The boot time is excellent. Probs takes about 10 seconds to get to a usable state.
2. The software update mechanism seems decent.
3. Installing programs is quite strange and the file structure is not what you expect coming from PC.
4. The settings do not seem as in depth as on windows.
The main bonus is the fast startup and shutdown time. I have not felt the need to install windows on this machine. Although if I didnt have a windows desktop machine, I may feel the need to do so.
Would I recommend this to you?
Yes. If you are looking for a notebook, that will do what you want it to do, with very little configuring required, then yes. If you want a notebook to casually browse casually and fast, and consume multimedia, watch videos, organise photos and webcam, then it is excellent. If you are a gamer and want to play games, and adjust heaps of different settings, then maybe a windows pc may be better for that, as more games support pc rather than mac. And I also havent tried finding many games for mac. I do know that my private online server does NOT support macs.
Overall a well built machine, that is more than enough for the casual user, with solid apple quality and design.
Today we have this lovely sony vaio Z notebook to discuss. I must say this is a bit of a departure for me. I usually go for products more in the above average but still good value for money class. However, this time I went all out, and went for the top of the line sony vaio Z. I must say I still did get a good deal, as this model was being discounted for the new Z4 series, which added slightly better CPU and RAM. One other thing I will note is that I was considering going the Z46GDU which had the shadow border lid, and this one had the "black" lid which is carbon fibre. However if you look closely at the picture, it is not really flat black which is what I had anticipated. Which I was pleased about! The pictures on the sony website I not completely accurate. Hope that gives a better idea.
I was very excited to get this notebook. I took many months of research to find that this was the one for me. I will list the main points that led to this purchase. I will try to list it in some order of importance.
- It weighs 1.5kg WITH battery. This is as light as most netbooks, but has a 13" screen!
- It has a dedicated graphics card. This helps when you want to play games and watch full HD video.
- It has a 13" LED screen. This one is mainly about size. The res is 1600x900, which is plenty of screen real estate. I had toyed with the idea of getting a netbook, but the thought of 9" or 10" screen made me realise that was a lot of scrolling. So this size is much better in the long run. Unlikely to get sick of it .
- Battery life is decent. I have the battery care function on at 80%, so I get about ~3 hrs use with wireless on, and medium brightness. Not as good as what sony claim, but enough for real world usage.
- Bluray drive. This was just a bonus, because they were clearing out this model.
So... what can I say about this notebook? Its light, keyboard is great, screen is beautiful to look at. The weight is excellent. Great styling. Hmmm. A few of the negatives that I was worried about prior to purchase.. Double typing a letter... Havent really encountered this. Battery drain when left off? Well this certainly seems to be true. Turn off at 80%. Then turn on, roughly 75%? Although I have not full tested this. Certainly doesnt seem to be a dealbreaker for me.
Would I recommend this to you?
Well, I must say as an overall package, this is one excellent notebook. Is this what all notebooks should aim to be? light and powerful? yes! Do you pay a premium? yes! Therefore, if you have the cash, take pride in your goods, and strive for quality, then yes. This is an excellent mobile companion. However, if the thought of spending almost 4k on a notebook and trying to beg your wife/partner to let you do it, makes you cringe and run for the hills, then maybe there are other options for you. Some of these would include more recent releases such as the CULV offerings like the Acer Timeline which package decent battery and weight minus the dedicated graphics and bluray. One other to look out for is the release of Nvidia Ion which promises HD playback and decent gaming performance in a netboook like formfactor. It will be interesting to see what Ion is able to deliver.
I must say, one of the devices that I am looking forward to, is the release of the palm pre and the new iphone. I must say it has been quite hard resisting the woo of the iphone's slick interface and the cool apps available (field runners and expando). I resisted this and instead went with a windows mobile 6 LG KS20 to be able to sync with outlook, and for the today screen, needing to display my appointments on the today screen, in order to keep my life organised. I must say that it is convenient just having it displayed there, rather than having to go into your calendar app. Which can sometimes defeat the purpose, because sometimes you might forget to check your calendar.
I must say, over the last year, my hands have been itching for a change, and then the palm pre was announced, and i thought wow. This surely has it over the iphone. A hardware keypad, which doesnt take up the entire screen when you need to enter text, multitasking, and online integration. I dont think you can ask for more from a touchscreen convergence smartphone. However, i believe the problem is, that with the palm pre, we kinda know what we are dealing with. However with the new iphone, at this stage we dont. Sure there are some rumours, but will Apple bring out some surprises?
I believe that there will be some people who would go with the palm pre, but as the palm pre is mainly interesting for those in the know, the iphone will still remain on top. and i suspect for many people who are keeping their eyes on the market, a lot who would go with the pre, would still wait for the release of the new iphone before going with the pre, considering how close their anticipated release times are.
Even though the release is still a few months away, I annoying find myself checking the news all to often for release details of the palm pre, and specs of the new iphone. However, I will know make any effort to just checking this once per week. The battle for the smart phone arena is heating up!
The Samsung P2 is quite a good mp3 player. At the time I got this, I was looking at something small, and with a touch screen, which was just starting to appear in mainstream devices.
As you can see, it is quite a minimalist design. As most touch screens are anyway. At the time I was considering the ipod touch which had just come out. But with the iphone just around the corner, I thought whats the point. On top of that, this is about half the size of the ipod touch, so much more pocketable.
It comes with quite a few modes. The capailities that make it stand out is excellent sound quality, even through streaming bluetooth audio. It also has the capability to connect to your mobile phone to me used as a dialer. I havent really used this feature extensively, but what its supposed to do is if you are listening to music and you have your phone in your bag, u can just answer it with your mp3 player. Kinda nifty, but never had the occasion to use it.
The touch screen is very sensitive, with an easy navigation system. It is also customisable so you can change the menu design, the background image, even the font! Other functions besides the standard music/photo/video is that it can sync to rss i think, an ebook reader and an FM radio function. There are a few games as well if super bored.
Video quality is excellent, altho i have not tried to encode a movie to watch on it. Oh also, mine came with 8gb for about $300. Its probs a bit cheaper now.
In summary these are the outstanding points.
- Solid construction.
- Has all the basic functions + some extras.
- Excellent sound quality with unusually good sound reproduction over streaming bluetooth A2DP.
- Can directly copy songs over as a usb stick. Dont need itunes or anything else.
Depends. If you are looking for a small music player. Yes. Although one thing to keep in mind, is that mobile phones these days are slowly encroaching into this space and making dedicated mp3 players less relevant. So yes it is a good mp3 player, but consider if you actually do need a mp3 player, or would that $300 be better spent on a better mobile phone?
I do concede that this probably provides better sound quality and reproduction, therefore those who enjoy their music, would be happy with this purchase.
This review is of the Philips SHB7100 premium bluetooth stereo headset. I purchased this headset when I was working at night. At the time, I had a Blueant X3 headset, but this was primarily as a handsfree for speech. And I wanted something for use with A2DP and music streaming.
What you get in the box is the headset, 3 sets of different size earbuds, neck strap with included headphones, and charger. The charger uses a propriety connector. Not mini-USB.
I had no trouble pairing this headset. I have tried it with both my mobile phone, and with my mp3 player. Firstly as a bluetooth headset, it works great. Audio is clear, with quite a good seal. Probs not as good as something as etymotic, but defs more than acceptable quality for stock headphones. Callers had no problems hearing even with the dongle hanging of the included neck strap (something which was surprising as I had my doubts as to whether it would work so far away from my mouth).
Secondly as a bluetooth A2DP headset, bluetooth streaming of music if actually surprisingly good. Initially I thought this was not so great with my mobile, but with my mp3 player it was pristine, so it seems like it kinda depends on the quality of your streaming player. I was able to stream to the headset from a distance of ~ 8 m with even a wall inbetween. After that started to get some distortion. There is a little bit of distortion at high volumes, with whats seems to be the max sound threshold, but this would only trouble audiophiles.
There is controls on the front, with a multifunction button that can answer calls and switch between devices. A standard 3.5mm headphones port is included so you can use any headphones or even plugin some speakers to stream wirelessly to that. Battery life claimed is 8 hrs music streaming, and 10 hrs talk time, and 210hrs standby.
I included a photo of the neck strap to show the adjustable positions of the earphones. It is actually quite a well thought out strap and is growing on me actually.
Overall I like this bluetooth headset. It works well with the included strap and is a good overall package. I think I only paid about $45 for this, which is also a bargain at that. So lightweight you will barely feel it.
Would I recommend this to you?
Yes
I thought the first piece of equipment I would write about, is the one that I use the most in daily life. And that would be my mobile phone.
It is the LG KS20.
I decided to go with this phone as it was simply the smallest PDA phone I could find. All the others were massive compared to this. It was even lighter than my old nokia.
Whenever it comes to phone reviews, I can only recommend www.gsmarena.com for reviews. They do a fantastic job on presenting thorough reviews.
What can I add?
Here are a few points that I think I will put up as points to consider.
Pros:
-Small form factor. Light, and easy to be used as a primary phone.
-Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional. I mainly bought this phone for the ability to display tasks/calendar on the today screen. I think no other device makes this as accessible than this.
-Easy sync with outlook calendar and contacts.
Cons:
-Windows Mobile 6.0. I have to admit, this is not a fast operating system. I look at the iphone and want to cry. Its not mega slow, as long as you dont load on too many programs, but that should be one of its strengths... being customizable. It is also not very touch friendly. I can recommend SPB phone suite, and iContact for being very handy touch programs.
-Being a touchscreen. This I think sounds better than it is. Not really that much of a joy for typing messages on. I suggest downloading a HTC touch diamond keyboard. It is the BEST keypad for Windows mobile. Very touch friendly.
-Minimal to zero sunlight legibility.
Also I can add that battery lasts 2-3 days with my level of usage, and that I have not had any hardware problems with the phone. It is well built.
Would I recommend this to you?
If you are looking for a windows mobile? Then yes. If you dont need the sync and the today screen features, then I suggest look elsewhere. The iPhone is a much better consumer/multimedia orientated phone, although this phone will do those things with tweaking.
Hello all!
My name is Chris. I recently started this blog as a place where I could put my own thoughts on consumer electronics. I am a fan of all things electronic, but am certainly not qualified in any way to do so. I am just the average consumer who enjoys and appreciates the goodness that technology has provided, and thus can only give you the unbiased perspective of what you would get from asking one of your mates.
I assure you the writing will not be indepth.
About Me
