Coreldraw is one of Adobe illustrators competitor in drawing software market ,but it is easy enough for home users to get to grips with. We looked at Coreldraw X4 in with a Wacom Graphire graphics tablet (not supplied).As the software is designed for illustration rather than photo editing, you need to be fairly comfortable with drawing. Using the tablet rather than a mouse to draw was an excellent way to interact with the program. There are several tutorials on the DVD along with step-by-step PDFs that are installed with the program. They’re easy enough to follow and We were able to produce reasonable looking results within a few minutes. Corel draw’s strength has been that it can also be used for page design, so if you’re making a newsletter, you can do it all in the one program. This is more fiddly than using a proper desktop publishing program but the features are there. The suite includes Photo paint for working with digital photos. If you’re not tied to a photo-editing program, this would make a good bundle.
Corel draw X4 is very expensive for home users, but it is primarily designed for professional users. However, it’s very easy to use, and if you have an older version of certain Corel software, you may qualify for a cheaper upgrade. In addition, students qualify for a much cheaper version ,so this could be a particularly useful package if you’re setting off for university and will need to design things.
The three of the world largest computer manufacturer try take advantage of loopholes from Microsoft licensing terms for them to continue supplying Windows XP beyond the official cut off of 30June. Dell, HP and Lenovo have found ways of prolonging XP’s lifespan, despite Microsoft’s efforts to phase out the operating system in favor of Windows Vista. Dell and HP are exploiting a clause in the downgrade rights that come with Vista Ultimate and Business. Dell said on its website:“Dell has the ability to exercise ‘Vista downgrade rights ’on your behalf in the factory if… you would prefer to have Windows XP Professional preinstalled on your PC.”
The loophole has allowed Dell to install Windows XP Professional free on selected Latitude , Optiplex and Precision systems, although it can’t offer this to users who buy a PC with Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium –these cannot be downgraded to XP. However, Dell will continue to offer XP Pro at a fee for consumers and small businesses buying Vostro and XPS computers. HP is also using the downgrade loophole to sell XP-based systems until 30July2009. Meanwhile, Lenovo is including an XP recovery disk with some Vista computers allowing users to revert back to the old OS.
Looking for laptop that very light in weight but still can perform basic task as their sibling the bigger and heavyweight laptop. Your prayers have been answered, thanks Asus for create a devices that are shrinking in size but retaining at least some of the horsepower of their larger brethren. It’s for this reason that Asus’ Eee PC (eeepc.asus.com) met with success upon its release last year, as it appeared to hit the sweet spot for a small, affordable device that delivers plenty of computing power.
Much of the Eee PC’s allure comes from its simplicity. Asus markets the Eee PC as a device that has no technical manual and works directly out of the box. Further, it’s compatible with a variety of lifestyles— particularly mobile-minded ones, because the Eee PC uses a solid-state drive that can withstand shocks and helps to conserve power. Of course, thanks to a form factor that’s roughly half the size of a standard notebook, the Eee PC is pretty darn portable.
Now, the Eee PC is moving into new territory, but that move is prompting some to question whether Asus is pushing its luck. The 4GB SSD (solid-state disk) version of the Eee PC—the 4G—sells for about $350, but now Asus is launching the Eee PC 900 in Linux and Windows XP versions at a much higher price: $549. So why the higher price tag? Whereas the first-generation Eee PC includes a 7-inch display with a resolution of 800 x 480, the Eee PC 900 has an 8.9-inch display with a 1,024 x 600 resolution. Furthermore, most models of the original Eee PC come with just 512MB of DDR2 (double-data-rate 2) RAM, but the new model increases that amount to 1GB. The Eee PC 900 also includes a new multitouch trackpad that allows two fingers to be used simultaneously on the trackpad to zoom in or out.
Also included is a 900MHz Intel Celeron-M ULV (ultra-low voltage) processor (this processor also appears in some versions of the first Eee, but it runs at a lower megahertz level) and a 1.3MP (megapixel) camera, up from the 0.3MP camera included with some versions of the first Eee. Aside from those upgrades, the 900 retains essentially the same features of the first Eee iteration, including three USB 2.0 ports, integrated802.11b/g wireless, MMC/SD (MultiMedia Card/Secure Digital) card reader, and a VGA (Video Graphics Array) port.
Despite the still-small size, it’s undeniable that Asus is slowly pushing the Eee PC into territory currently occupied by larger notebooks, particularly when considering the larger screen and more powerful components. Tack on the larger price tag,mand the allure once boasted by the Eee begins to wear away. While consumers might be willing to shell out a few hundred bucks for a small, relatively underpowered device, the Eee PC 900 could have them seriously considering larger, far more powerful notebooks at roughly the same price.
You try to imagine if you can copy an entire High Definition video in PC and laptop in justa minute.How about copy the MP3 files of music in seconds? Sounds good right.
Developers of the next generation of USB technology are hoping to deliver on that promise when they release the spec for USB 3.0 or also known as SuperSpeed USB- inthe fourth quarter of this year. In August, Intel released the larger part of the spec for the Extensible Host controller Interface (xHCI) for USB 3.0 . The company is part of the USB Implementer Forum, a group of tech giants including HP, Intel, Microsoft and Texas Instrument who create the USB protocols. The xHCI interface is 90 percent of what manufacturers need to build silicon compatible with the new standard.
Once the standard is released, Intel says, the result will be dramatic. Jeff Ravencraft, president and chair of the USB-IF and a technology strategies’ at Intel, boast, “It going to have over ten times the performance (of USB 2.0).” With USB 3.0’s dedicated lines going in and out, communication between host and device will be simultaneous. Also, the data-transfer rate will jump from 480 megabits per second to a whopping 5 gigabits per second.
Because the spec has been on the table for over a year, many are wondering what’s holding up its release. Intel competitors AMD and nVidia complained that Intel was unfairly delaying release of the spec to give itself an advantage. To counter, Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer points out that Intel was absorbing the cost of developing the spec, thus saving AMD and nVidia the cost of developing one themselves.”This is the same way we’ve done it with USB 2.0,” Knupffer says.
Some manufacturers are expected to release USB 3.0 in the first round in late 2009. So be a good boy or girl and wait for this breakthrough of speed in uploading and downloading.
This PC contains smaller footprint anda slimmer profile than the average laptop and yet It’s designed to sit on your desk. The Eee Box start at just $350, making it a bargain as basic home PC. But the machine’sperformance is unimpressive
The Eee Box –the desktop computer sibling of Asus’s Eee PC notebook-comes with a 1.6-GHz N270 Atom processor,1GB of RAM, and a 5400 rpm, 80GB, 2.5 inch SATA 150 hard drive. It also has an integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chip that relies on shared video memory.
Though the Eee Box will do fine for browsingonline and for word processing, it is hardly a robust unit, scoring just 36 in a lab test. In some ways,though, performance is not the point. The system is designed to be a basic, power saving network attached device. Asus says that the box draw just 15 to 20 watts of power- a smaller amount than most laptop use.
The lab test show that this PC came with Window XP Home; Asus says that a Linux version should ship later this year. The Eee Box starts up into ExpressGate, a pre-Window interface that allowyou to boot into Window, enter the BIOS, or used a simplified Linux-based environment that comes arrayed with Web browse, an instant messaging client and Skype. The Eee Box is a great value that geared toward students, as well as home and small office users. The system comes with Window s XP Home, Microsoft Works, and Sun StarOffice only sweetens the deal.
Google known by their search engine dominant came along with new productand I must say a good one. The day after labor day, the search giant unleashed the open source Chrome in over 40 languages and complex with a five part, 38 page comic book detailing Chrome’s reason for existence. Built on Apple’s WebKit rendering engine (Safari and Android that is) and using new JavaScript V8 virtual machine and “multiprocess design”.
Chrome runs tabs as isolated process, meaning if one tab circles the drain, it won’t take the rest with it. Chrome also sports Omnibox, a URL auto suggester similar to Firefox’s Awesome Bar, and private browsing courtesy of Incognito, similar to InPrivate in Microsoft’s IE8 beta.
According to online reports and leaked images, the company will dub its upcoming high-end netbook the N10. The 10.2-inch N10 will pack a dual core intel Atom 330, Windows Vista, 320GB hard drive, Altec Lansing speakers, card reader, fingerprint scanner, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, three USB ports, and HDMI and will be sell for around $600. Dell, meanwhile officially entered the netbook fray in early September with the long rumored Mini 9 ($349 to $504) in Window XP and Ubuntu Linux . Beyond an 8.9 inch screen (1024x600), the Mini 9 has an Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, up to 16GB drive, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and 2GB free online storage.
Dell XPS M1730 is the newest gaming piece of technological that ever best yet came fromgiant computermanufacturer Dell.Easily written than done but oneeasily warranted by this masterfully designedgaming laptop, despite its size and heft.
Weight is, in fact , this rig’s only limitation. With its gigantic AC adapter, the weight of the 17-inch widescreen M1730 jumps almost 14pounds. Nonetheless, the M1730 is a terrific example of where technology is heading. Led lights shine out through the grilles of the front speakers and from underneath the keyboard, the numeric keypad , and the center of the lid. You can also customize the light with Dell’s Quickset software. If you’ re more interested in conserving power or battery life, the intensity f these light can be lowered or turned off.
The feature set is solid, for the most part, except for the aging DVI-out connector. The 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 represent the M1730’s move to a “Penyrn” core. The M1730 also includes a built-in PhysX card from Ageia- a first for a laptop, as well as dual nVidia GeForce8800M GTX graphics cards.
The M1730’s SYSmark 2007 preview overall score was slightly behind certain people comparison system, the Alienware Area-51 m15x(by 6 percent ). The system’s video encoding score also came up short. Scores on CineBench R10 and Photoshop tests, on the other hand, were as impressive as those of the Alienware laptop. Results on the World in Conflict and Crysis gaming test were 1.7 times and 7.2 times as high respectively, as those of the Alienware. As for battery life, the Dell laptop’s score of 1 hour 30 minutes on MobileMark 2007 sentences it to a life near a power outlet. But for serious gamers, the game experience is what count the most. Here the M1730easily takes first prize. If you’re looking for an all-around laptop that is still strong on gaming, however, I’d recommend going for the Alienware system-shahirnana
