Asus Eee PC Review

Eee pc is a sub notebook computer designed by Asus. It is noted for its combination of lightweight, Linux based operating system, and relatively low cost. It is distributed and labeled as Asus mini book in some places. It has managed to be a satisfactory device that delivers as promised. The promise that the Asus Eee PC 901 delivers is right in the name:Easy to learn,Easy to work,Easy to play

The Asus Eee PC 901 weighs approximately 2.43 pounds, making it portable, you can easily take it with you everywhere and anywhere you go. It has an average but impressive 7.8-hour battery life which gives you almost a full day of computing. It is generally has a drop-tested, shockproof design making it perfect for almost everyone including first timers, frequent travelers, and business professionals. It includes a low-end Intel Mobile CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB solid-state flash hard drive (versions with 2GB and 8GB hard drives will also be available).

The Asus Eee is basically a smaller version of a conventional ultraportable laptop. It has a small 7-inch screen, with a resolution of 800×480, the laptop weighs 2 pounds and measures 8.8 inches wide by 6.5 inches deep by a little less than an inch thick. It can fit perfectly into a large jacket pocket. A Webcam sits above the screen and tiny speakers reside on the left and right sides of the display.

Tiny keyboards, as on ultraportable systems such as the Toshiba R500 are characteristic of the device which include Chiclet-size keys having key placement and double-mapped keys as well. The tiny touchpad measures 1.75 inches by 1.25 inches and works well on the whole, but there’s only a single mouse button–click on the left side for the left mouse button, and the right for the right mouse button. Overall, the keyboard is easier to use than any UMPC we’ve seen, but far more cramped than any other ultraportable PC.

Summary of the features of the Asus Eee PC

Processor	900MHz Intel Mobile CPU
Memory	512MB RAM
Hard drive	4GB SSD
Chipset/Graphics	Intel 910
Operating System	Linux (customized by Asus)
Dimensions (WDH)	8.8 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
Screen size (diagonal)	7.0 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter [pounds]	2.0/2.4 pounds
Category	Ultraportable

When You Want to Know Who Called Your Home Phone

If you have caller ID on your home phone, then you know this is a great feature. With caller ID, you can see that someone in your family called or one of your friends called. But, what if you see a number from a person you do not know. The phone number area code looks to be out of your area. In fact, you know the area code is not from your area. So, what do you do? How can you find out who where this phone number is from and who is the person calling you?

Well, since the advent of the Internet, it is now easy to find out where a particular phone number is from and who that person calling is. There are several ways to do, what is called a reverse phone lookup. Did you know this can be done? That is why having Internet access is amazing. There are actually companies on the Internet who, when you type in an unknown phone number, allow you to see where the number is from and who called you.

Doing a reverse phone number lookup can be done by typing into any search engine (Yahoo, Google, Fire Fox) “Reverse Phone Lookup” or “Reverse Phone Directory”. Once you find an online reverse phone number company, click on that website and type in the phone number showing on your caller ID.

Right now, there are at least five online reverse phone directories where any phone number can be typed in to begin doing a search on the number, and person calling. Just right now, I did a reverse phone lookup on a company that I contract work with and their city showed up along with the name of the company. This is good enough for me. Sometimes, if you are doing a reverse phone number lookup, you might have to pay a fee.

With everyone having cell phones these days, anyone can now do a reverse cell phone number online. That is great because sometimes, not always, unknown cell phone numbers which I did not add to my cell phone, are showing up on my LCD screen.

These days, almost any information you need, phone numbers included, can be found online. All you have to do is type in that unknown number into a reverse phone directory and right before your eyes, is the person who called you.

Nokia 8800 Mobile Phone Review

The Nokia 8800 is a mobile phone, a product of Nokia. It is light and weighs a mere 134g. It is a true personification of various artistic factors with sleek metallic body and extremely fine edges; all the right things combined leaving you breathless. The Nokia 8800 is not only about its unique astounding design, but it is a cool symbol of luxury.

The Nokia 8800 is loaded with the 256 colour TFT screen, which is protected with scratch resistant glass and it helps to retain the handset’s original physical appearance for a long time. Sliding the upper flip reveals an easy keypad with characteristically small keys. The camera lens is located at the top rear and is visible and thus can only be used when phone is open. The camera comprises of a 2.0 mega pixel camera with 8x digital zoom. To provide enough storage space, there’s a lone power button on the top of the handset, as well as two release buttons on the right and left spines to access the battery and SIM card slot. On the upside, the Nokia 8800 comes with a wired headset, a desk charger, a travel charger and suede carry pouch The 8800 comes with two BL-5X (600 mAh) batteries, with a manufacturer-specified talk time of up to 1.5-3 hours or up to 8 days standby time per battery. Nokia 8800 features a variety of functions apart from the colour screen mentioned above, that make it very convenient and efficient.

The 8800 has the usual PIM functions, such as a to-do list, a calculator, a stopwatch, a countdown timer, and a calendar. The company also throws in a couple of extras: a translator, as well as the Mobile Wallet 2.0 application, which lets you store personal information such as credit card numbers and receipts, and can be password protected. There is inclusion of integrated Bluetooth, a speakerphone, voice-memo support, and PC syncing with the Nokia PC Suite. There is also a WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser with support for EDGE speeds a connectivity feature. Perfect features for a businessman as well. The phone-book size is limited by the available memory.

The SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts, with room in each entry for five numbers; e-mail, Web, and postal addresses; and notes. You can pair a contact with an image, a group ID, or one of 64 polyphonic ring tones; the phone also supports AAC and MP3 ring tones. It is loaded with 128MB of in-built memory which allows you to store all the pictures and videos in 3GP format, without constraints communication is easier with the various types available including, text messaging, multimedia messages, as well as e-mail and instant messaging. Further entertainment is available through the FM radio and you can also download music through he internet with xHTML browsing or Bluetooth connectivity.

Deep inside the Windows 7 Public Beta: an in-depth tour

Last week's CES saw the announcement of the much anticipated public beta of Windows 7, with 2.5 million license keys promised to beta testers on Friday. Friday arrived, and as is now well-known, Microsoft's servers melted under the load. The key generation is now more or less working, and the 2.5 million limit has been scrapped, so it's time to take a look at what's on offer.

The first public sightings of Windows 7 were at Microsoft's PDC developer conference in October last year. The lead-up to PDC was unusually secretive, with Redmond giving little away about what Windows 7 would actually contain when it shipped, in contrast to the extremely public lead-up to Windows Vista's release. The covers came off at PDC, with the star of the show being Windows 7's new taskbar. Unfortunately, the build that was given out to PDC attendees lacked the new taskbar, so the one feature we all wanted to play with wasn't actually available. The public beta, build number 7000, finally gives us the new shiny taskbar. If all goes well, this will be the only beta Windows 7 gets; a Release Candidate should land some time around April, going RTM in July, and hitting retail two to three months later.

Windows Vista made a lot of changes to the driver model and the display layer, and took a much harder line on security, which was all very necessary work, but which caused a lot of teething trouble in its early days. Windows 7 doesn't undo any of that work; it does, however, build upon it to make using the OS simpler and more refined. The major focus with Windows 7 is how the user interacts with the machine, and so the major work in Windows 7 is to the user interface. Therefore I'll focus mainly on the new interface elements in this brief look. For those more interested in the system administrative perspective, our PDC Coverage would be a good place to start.

The taskbar

The taskbar is probably the defining feature of the Windows user interface. The introduction of the taskbar and Start Menu with Windows 95 was something of a landmark; it was the taskbar more than any other aspect of the Windows 95 UI that made Windows 95 feel modern, leaving Windows 3.11 far behind. While the Start Menu has undergone radical improvements (culminating in Vista's searchable Start Menu, which I can't live without), the taskbar has changed little since its introduction. Minor refinements have been made over the years—the IE4 shell update added the ability to dock special toolbars to the taskbar (most notably the Quick Launch icons), Windows XP added stacking to allow

multiple buttons to collapse if the taskbar became too full, and Vista added thumbnails when hovering the mouse

—but the basic mechanics of switching between running tasks ha

ve remained unaltered.

The new taskbar

Fire up Windows 7 for the first time and the taskbar is p

retty much what we saw back in October. No more Quick Launch toolbar, no more button text, just a

set of large icons. An icon on the taskbar doesn't necessarily mean that a program is running; programs can be pinned to the taskbar so that their i

con is persistent. Clicking the icon starts the program (if it's not running) or switches to it (if it is). If a program has multiple windows, clicking the icon shows a list of thumbnails; clicking the thumbnail switches window.

The new taskbar with multiple windows

Though the appearance is quite unlike any previous taskbar, and is liable to cause some consternation among those resistant to change, the basic operation of the taskbar is much the same as it has been in XP. In this regard, the biggest behavioral change is the conflation of running and non-running programs.

Personally, I like this. Whether a program is currently running or not is, to me, a minor detail, and so the mechanism I use to switch to an application should be the same regardless of whether the application is currently running. Forcing me to do one thing (Quick Launch or Start Menu) when the application isn't running, and a second (taskbar) when it is strikes me as unnecessary. With Windows 7, the same approach can be used in both situations; just click the icon.

There are small visual cues to indicate the state of each application; IE (left-most) isn't running, so has no box around the icon. Media Player (second from left) has a single window, so gets a single box. Chrome (third from left) and Explorer (fourth from left) have multiple windows, so they get a kind of stacked box.

The rather vociferous supporters of a certain Cupertino-based company will probably say that this aspect of the new taskbar (in conjunction with its large icons) shows that Microsoft has simply copied Apple. That may be so, but I'm not sure why anyone should care. The new taskbar works better than the old one, and that alone justifies the decisions Microsoft has taken.

More functionality New notification area

Window management Beyond the shell

UAC

How to download Windows 7 Beta Officially NOW and get an genuine activation key

Microsoft have managed to stabilize their servers and are now pushing the downloads along with activation keys without the 2.5 million key limit. However, you are required to use IE, download an Active X Control, and download a download manager to download the ISO. If you don’t want to, you can follow the tutorial below. Be sure to check out our post on 10 things you should know about before installing Windows 7 Beta.

Wait no longer. Although Microsoft is still trying to add servers and eventually post the download link on the Windows 7 website, we’ve figured out how to download the official Windows 7 Beta ISO images and acquire an activation key.

• Step 1 - Download:

The first thing you want to do is of course, download the ISO images of Windows 7 Beta.

Click here to download Windows 7 Beta (32-bit)
Click here to download Windows 7 Beta (64-bit)

Update: If your download keeps disconnecting, you must open Internet Explorer, then click on one of the following links:

Windows 7 Beta (32-bit) Download
Windows 7 Beta (64-bit) Download

• Step 2 - Get your activation key:

First login to your Microsoft Technet account using your Windows Live ID. Once you have done that, just click the links below and you should receive an activation key.

Windows 7 Beta 32-bit Activation Key:
https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-32-ww&LCID=1033

Windows 7 Beta 64-bit Activation Key:
https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-64-ww&LCID=1033

How to Unlock your iPhone 3G

The iPhone world has been clamoring for this one for awhile. And what better way to start the new year then by playing around with the Dev Team's newest creation--an official unlock for the iPhone 3G. We'll run through the basics of this wonderful little tool and show you exactly how you can jailbreak and unlock your phone. You'll be able to run as many third-party applications as you want on your device. And more importantly, you'll be able to use your iPhone on any cell phone carrier you want.

What's an Unlock?

Unlocking your phone allows you to use it on any carrier you want, not just AT&T. You'll pop out your AT&T SIM card and insert the SIM card of a different carrier. The iPhone doesn't allow you to do this normally, so a little bit of hacking is involved.

Is it safe? Will I break my iPhone?

Possibly. There's always the worry that the unlocking process will royally screw up your phone--but the only way to deal with that is to read the situations of others who have attempted the procedure before you. As long as you follow the instructions closely, you will greatly reduce your chances of bricking (screwing up) your iPhone. Beyond that, once you've unlocked your iPhone, you'll want to approach new iPhone updates with suspicion. Don't just click "update" in iTunes--wait for the various iPhone hackers to release (and safely test) new tools that will allow you to redo the same procedure on the new firmware.

Is it easy to do? Hacking an iPhone sounds difficult!

It is. It used to be difficult, but a number of one-button (or two-button) programs have emerged that greatly simplify the process of doing evil things to your iPhone. Don't worry. Even a cat could unlock an iPhone at this point.

How do I do it?

If you want a picture step-by-step, this link will walk you through the 3G unlock. But for the most part, unlocking a 3G iPhone is easy enough that we'll just need a few steps to tell you how to do it. Here we go!

1) Upgrade your iPhone to the 2.2 Firmware

This one's easy. Fire up iTunes and update your phone to the latest update, 2.2. If you've already done this, then you are one step ahead of the game. If not, you accomplish this task by clicking the "Update" button. Magic! Be sure to backup/sync your phone prior to doing so, and write down any note, programs, or settings you want to keep!

2) Pwn your Phone

Download Quickpwn. This is the application you'll use to jailbreak your phone prior to unlocking.

Connect your iPhone to your PC all USB-style and fire up Quickpwn. The program is as self-explanatory as a jailbreaking application could be. Select your phone. Select your phone's firmware (which should appear naturally, as you did the update through iTunes. If not, download it here). Install Cydia or Installer (we prefer the former). Follow the directions. Enjoy a hot cup of tea while you wait.

3) Install the application repositories

If you opted to install Cydia, fire up the application on your newly jailbroken iPhone and add the following application repository: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/

If you went for Installer, add this repository: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

If you have no idea how to add a repository, fiddle around in each application's settings and options menus. It'll be there, trust us.

4) Install yellowsn0w

Use either Cydia or Installer to install yellowsn0w. Once the server finally lets you do so (it's getting hammered right now), run the application. Then turn off your iPhone. Grab a paper-clip and follow these instructions to pop out your SIM card. Slap in the SIM card from the new carrier you want to use. Turn on your iPhone. If the carrier doesn't pop up after a bit of a wait, repeat the process to remove the SIM and try doing it again.

5) Crazy Troubleshooting

Switching to T-Mobile? Turn off 3G on your iPhone settings (under Networking) before switching SIM cards.

Turn off any PINs on your SIM card before making the switch.

Make sure you're using the latest version of yellowsn0w. It should update in the Cydia/Installer menus automatically, but you can always make sure that the available version matches the newly released version by hitting up the official Dev Team blog.

i'll be monitoring the 3G unlock all day, and i'll let you know if we come across anything else! And you can always leave comments about the success / destruction of your iPhone 3G below.

Microsoft Gives Zune Solution

Microsoft has come up with a solution for those 30GB Zune players that have mysteriously failed for no obvious reason.

Microsoft has come up with the reason – and a solution – for the mysterious failure of so many 30GB Zune players yesterday. The problem was caused by a bug in the driver of the Zune 30 that caused it to improperly handle the final day of a leap year, meaning all Zune 30 devices were potentially affected.

Yesterday the company released the following statement that explains the problem – and also the solution:

"Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you're a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device."

AMD Writes Down ATI...Again

A year ago - and last summer - AMD wrote down the value of its over $5 billion acquisition of ATI. Now, AMD is doing it again.

Back in 2006, heads turned when chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices plunked down about $5.4 billion to acquire graphics developer ATI…but things haven't quite worked out like AMD planned. A year ago, AMD was forced to write down some $1.7 billion of the "goodwill" value of ATI—essentially, admit it overpaid for the business—and back in July AMD wrote off another $880 million, citing ATI's underperforming mobile graphics and digital television technologies…which it sold to Broadcom in August for just under $193 million. All told, AMD had eaten about half the $5.4 billion it had sunk into the graphics developer…and now, in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company admits it will have to write down the value of ATI by an unspecified amount that will have a "material" impact on the company's financials.

AMD cites the long-term financial outlook for the company, given the current global economic climate, as one reason for the write-down, along with AMD's own decline in stock price and reduced market capitalization. The company says it will not have to spend any money as a result of these "goodwill impairments," but has also announced the layoffs of some 600 employes, 100 more than it announced it would cut loose last month. Those job cuts come after AMD cut 10 percent of its workforce earlier this year, eliminating some 1,600 positions.

AMD shed its CEO Hector Ruiz and other top execs earlier this year, and has recently entered a $6 billion manufacturing partnership with Abu Dhabi investors to create the Foundry Company, which will essentially convert AMD into a fabless chip designer.