Aspire 5920G-832G32Mn

The T5750 Core Due Processor gives blistering performance, especially for this price range. 4GB of DDR2 RAM and an impressive 250GB hard drive will help ensure that the included Windows Vista Home Premium will offer users the ultimate experience.

On a laptop, monitor performance is a huge deal. If you’re not happy with the display you receive then there’s very ltitle you can do about it but fortunately the 15.4” widescreen monitor utilises Acer’s CrystalBrite technology to give clear and accurate display images.

Acer Aspire 5920g - New Design For The Aspire SeriesThe Blu-Ray combo drive is a superb addition enabling owners to watch the latest high definition movies. The Acer Aspire 5920g also includes an ATi Mobility Radeon HD3470 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated RAM so whether you want to use your laptop for multimedia or for some fairly serious PC gaming, it has the capability.

Multimedia keys can be found at the sides of the keyboard, enabling you one touch access to the Internet, your email, and the built in media player. 4 USB and 1 Firewire connections provide a good degree of connectivity for any user.

Laptop computers are the ideal machine for multi-purpose use. The convenience of the Acer Aspire 5920g ensures that users can sit down to watch high quality, High Definition Blu Ray movies, create their own multimedia, surf the web, and (if absolutely necessary) do a little work as well. For the mid price budget range, the BMW styled design and rich features make the Acer Aspire 5920 a desirable product indeed.

Platform Notebook PC with Intel Centrino Duo Technology
Processor Type Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
Processor Onboard Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300 (2.4 GHz, FSB 800, Cache 3 MB)
Chipset Intel 965PM
Standard Memory 2 GB (2x 1 GB) DDR2 SDRAM PC-5300
Max. Memory 4 GB (2 DIMMs)
Video Type NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB
Display Size 15.4" WXGA TFT
Display Max. Resolution 1280 x 800
Display Technology CrystalBrite TFT
Audio Type Integrated
Speakers Type Integrated
Floppy Drive Optional
Hard Drive Type 320 GB Serial ATA 5400 RPM
Optical Drive Type DVD±RW
Modem Optional
Networking Optional
Network Speed Optional
Wireless Network Type Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN
Wireless Network Protocol IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
Wireless Bluetooth Integrated
Keyboard Type Ergonomics 88 keys
Input Device Type Touch Pad
Slot Provided ExpressCard/ 54
Card Reader Provided SD, MMC, Memory Stick / Stick PRO, xD-Picture Card
Interface Provided 4x USB 2.0, Firewire, VGA, LAN, Audio
O/S Provided Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Battery Type Rechargeable Lithium-ion Battery
Power Supply External AC Adapter
Dimension (WHD) 364 x 43 x 270 mm
Weight 3 kg
Standard Warranty 1-year Limited Warranty by Authorized Distributor
Bundled Peripherals Carrying Case
Others Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam supporting Acer PrimaLite™ technology

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Samsung LE32A556P 32″ HD Review

The 32” HD Ready Samsung LE32A556P may not have the snappiest of names, but it does provide an extremely rich colour, dark blacks, and superb features as well as offering full HD ready capability with 1080p resolution. Because sound is as important to the viewing experience as picture quality is, the Samsung LE32 uses SRS Trusurround to provide equally excellent sound quality.

High definition television quality is usually marked by the richness of blacks as well as the crispness of colours. The Samsung delivers true deep blacks as well as crisp colours with a 15000 contrast so that pictures look and feel more realistic. It even includes Wide Colour Enhancer2 technology to provide richer colours and a better viewing experience.

Samsung LE32A556P 32Three HDMI sockets, 2 SCART, and 1 Component Cable input socket provide owners with a more than adequate range of inputs. What’s more, the Samsung LE32A556P 32” HD Ready 1080p Digital LCD TV also has a built in digital TV receiver saving you the socket that you would normally use for your freeview box.

The Samsung LE32A556P 32” HD digital TV is ideal for watching High Definition television channels, viewing Blu-Ray movies, or playing high definition next generation games.

Full Specifications:

* Picture Enhancement - DNIe Plus
* Contrast - 15000 : 1
* Sound type - SRS Trusurround
* Inputs - 3xHDMI, 2xSCART, 1x Component
* Visible Screen Size - 31.5″
* Digital TV receiver - For extra channels
* Wide Colour enhance 2 - Truer colours
* Also available in - 37,40,46,52 screen size

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Free Microsoft Prototype Prioritizes Emails

A new Microsoft prototype offered as a free download is designed to assess incoming emails and prioritize them according to their importance. The tool is a Microsoft Office Labs project set up to integrate exclusively with Office Outlook 2007. Email Prioritizer runs on Exchange Server and represents a taste of an email overload management utility. But just a taste since
it is nothing more than a prototype, not even in Beta stage.

"We understand that email overload is a challenge: today, many people get too much email and have a hard time keeping up with it. Not only do people receive a high volume of mail, the mail may arrive at inconvenient times. There are a lot of good ideas about how to help people with email overload and we’re testing a few of those ideas in Office Labs," revealed a member of Office Labs.

Email Prioritizer does bring interesting functionality to the table, enabling end users to essentially filter the most important pieces of email out of all the mundane items that end up in their box. The tool enables users to pause all incoming emails for a period of time anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours. At the same time, Microsoft has integrated a set of criteria into Email Prioritizer based on which the add-in is able to rate email. The company informed that the collection of priorities can be controlled and adjusted by the users.

Email Prioritizer features "a "Do Not Disturb" button that stops incoming mail delivery so you can work without interruptions. Email priorities are assigned to incoming mail so you can focus on the most important mail first. With a "0-3 stars" ranking system, you can focus on email messages that are most important to you. These priorities are based on algorithms from Microsoft Research," the Office Labs representative added.

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Internet TV Intel Joins Forces with Yahoo!

Internet TV represents, without a doubt, the future of television as we know it, since the WWW is turning in the world's greatest content delivery solution. However, in order to be able to enjoy the various types of content that can be delivered via the Internet, users require dedicated, specialized machines, and this is where giant chip manufacturer Intel comes into play.

Thus, at the Intel Developer Forum, the company has just announced the Intel Media Processor CE 3100, which is the first in a new family of purpose-built System on Chips (SoCs) for consumer electronics devices based on the company’s Intel Architecture (IA) blueprint. The processing unit is targeting a wide variety of products typically encountered in people's home entertainment centers, such as optical media players, connected CE devices, advanced cable set top boxes and digital TVs

Previously known by the codename "Canmore", the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 is a highly integrated solution that combines an IA processor core with multi-stream video decoding and processing hardware, while also adding a 3-channel 800 MHz DDR2 memory controller, dedicated multi-channel dual audio DSPs, a 3-D graphics engine enabling advanced UIs and EPGs, and support for multiple peripherals, including USB 2.0 and PCI Express.

Moreover, the Intel Media Processor CE 3100 also features Intel Media Play Technology, which combines hardware-based decoding for broadcast TV and optical media playback with software-based decode for Internet content. When a consumer watches broadcast TV or content on optical media players, Intel's Media Play Technology software routes the video to the on-chip hardware decoders, but when viewing Internet content, the software automatically routes the video, and audio as applicable, to a software codec running on the IA processor core.

And what's the connection with Yahoo!, you might ask? Well, it's actually quite simple. Beside announcing the CE3100 media processor, the two companies have also used this opportunity for previewing an applications framework for televisions (TV) and related CE devices that use the Intel Architecture. This framework, dubbed the Widget Channel is, as the name says it, powered by Yahoo!'s own Widget Engine (optimized to work with the CE 3100) and allows users to watch TV programs and, in the same time, view web content.

The Intel Media Processor CE 3100 is scheduled to arrive at various CE manufacturers, such as Samsung Electronics and Toshiba, at some point next month, which means that we might actually see it in action before the year's end.

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Cell-phone TV Is Great

This is one of the reasons the United States is behind several other countries when it comes to making television an attractive option for cell phones. Carrier business models are partly at fault, but choices about TV technology made long ago are largely to blame.

Most phones sold in Japan can tune in to free TV broadcasts, and there are tens of millions of viewers. Cell phones that can tune in to free broadcasts are also available in South Korea, Germany and China.

But only 3 percent of Americans regularly watched video on their cell phones late last year, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That figure includes people who watched short, downloaded clips rather than broadcast TV.

For starters, you can blame the impending shutdown of all full-power analog TV broadcasts on Feb. 17, a deadline set by the government. That Chinese handset, made by ZTE Corp., can only tune in to analog transmissions. Because most of them are going away, there's no real point in selling phones like that in the United States.

China is keeping its analog broadcasts until 2015, six years longer than the U.S., so the phones are viable there. Ironically, the TV reception chip inside comes from a U.S. company, Telegent Systems Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The analog U.S. broadcasts are being replaced by digital broadcasts, but there are no phones anywhere that can tune in to those.

When the U.S. digital TV standard was laid down in the early '90s by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, it was optimized for high-definition signals to stationary antennas, according to Mark Richter, president of the industry group.

At the time, cell phones had screens that could display eight digits and nothing else, so little thought was given making the broadcasts work with mobile gadgets.

The Europeans created their digital television standard later and made it a bit more amenable to mobile reception, Richter said. Thus, there are now phones sold in Germany that can receive local digital broadcasts intended for stationary TVs.

Weijie Yun, Telegent's chief executive, said it's theoretically possible to receive U.S. digital terrestrial broadcasts on a phone, but engineers have yet to overcome key technical challenges. For now, Telegent's chips can receive analog broadcasts in most countries of the world, and digital broadcasts in Europe and a few countries outside it.

Because U.S. phones can't receive regular broadcast TV, carriers have had to look to other solutions. Cell-phone technology company Qualcomm Inc. has created a network that broadcasts signals designed for cell phones. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless sell some handsets that can tune in to these broadcasts.

Sprint Nextel Corp. has contracted with another company, MobiTV Inc., which streams lo-fi streaming video over the phones' broadband connections. The fourth national carrier, T-Mobile USA, doesn't have a TV service.

The common denominator for the existing services is that they cost money, limiting their adoption. AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge $15 per month for 10 channels. Sprint bundles MobiTV with some high-end plans and charges $9.99 per month as standalone service.

In-Stat analyst Michelle Abraham estimates that Qualcomm's MediaFLO has 100,000 subscribers. MobiTV has done better, with about 4 million subscribers.

Research director John Barrett at analysis firm Parks Associates points to the fees as a problem, and recommends that operators provide free content.

"A free taste would go a long way in making the consumer case for mobile TV," he wrote in a recent report. "Mobile TV services have taken off in Japan and South Korea, where service is offered free of charge. In Italy, where additional fees have been the norm, usage has been limited."

This month, Toshiba Corp. announced it would end a pay-TV system for handsets because of the popularity of free TV broadcasts.

"That's one of the key barriers," Telegent's Yun said. "Once you start charging consumers, they start getting turned off."

U.S. TV broadcasters are quite eager to provide free broadcasts to cell phones, just as they do to TVs with "rabbit-ear" antennas. They've formed the Open Mobile Video Coalition, which estimates that advertising-financed TV for cell phones could be a $2 billion market.

They want to reach cell phones through another wireless standard the ATSC is creating. It will use regular TV frequencies to reach mobile gadgets, meaning TV stations will be able to broadcast from existing towers.

The goal is to complete the new standard, called ATSC-M/H, by the first quarter of next year, Richter said. That could mean broadcasts will be operational before the end of next year.

It's not completely clear that the technology would be used for free TV — the possibility to charge viewers monthly fees will be built in — but it would be natural for broadcasters to simulcast their regular advertising-financed programming on the mobile channel.

The big question then, Abraham said, is whether broadcasters will be able to persuade carriers to sell TV-capable phones.

AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said it was too early speculate.

"If the answer ends up being 'yes,'" Abraham said, "then that opens up a very large market."

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Apple iPhone

The iPhone has proven quite popular in Japan, despite the fact that many phones in the Japanese market have most of the common features that the iPhone lacks. Because of this, a former NTT DoCoMo executive blames the industry for being too insular, designing phones only to carrier specifications.

Japan, which has long had 3G networks (still in relative infancy here in the US), has been in many ways years ahead in innovations compared to other markets. Most phones can scan QR barcodes, pay for items at vending machines, and use a complex system of "emoji" for messaging, all features that the iPhone currently lacks. But data access is built around the i-mode system, developed by NTT DoCoMo in 1999 as sort of an Internet "lite" that is speedy and easily transmitted over cell networks, and Japanese handsets are built to work with the i-mode network.

The iPhone, on the other hand, was built to access the "real Internet," using standard protocols and data formats. And since it wasn't limited to any carriers' specifications, Apple was free to design a device with an innovative interface and relatively open features. "I believe the iPhone is closer to the mobile phone of the future, compared with the latest Japanese mobile phones," Tsuyoshi Natsuno—former head of the i-mode division at DoCoMo—told Nikkei's TechOn. He compared Steve Jobs' vision in developing the iPhone to that of Sony's Ken Kutaragi, responsible for the Playstation and Playstation 2, and Nintendo's Satoshi Iwata, the man behind the Gameboy DS and the Wii.

The iPhone could really shake up the handset designs in Japan. At the same time, the iPhone's popularity there could result in requests for some of the features that are missing, which could lead to the features spreading to other parts of the world. iPhone OS 2.0 already includes an innovative character input method for Chinese and Japanese originally developed in Asia, so there's hope that new developments won't just work in one direction. I'm already having dreams of swiping my iPhone to hop on the CTA or pay my bar tab.

General 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
Announced 2007, January
Status Available. Released 2007, June
Size Dimensions 115 x 61 x 11.6 mm
Weight 135 g
Display Type Touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches
- Multi-touch input method
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
Ringtones Type Polyphonic, MP3
Customization Download
Vibration Yes
- 3.5 mm headset jack
Memory Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records 100 received, dialed and missed calls
Card slot No
- 4/8/16 GB shared memory
Data GPRS Yes
HSCSD No
EDGE Yes
3G No
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0, headset support only
Infrared port No
USB Yes, v2.0
Features OS Mac OS X v10.4.8
Messaging SMS, Email
Browser HTML (Safari)
Games Downloadable (firmware 2.0)
Colors Black
Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels
- Google Maps
- iPod audio/video player
- PIM including calendar, to-do list
- TV output (firmware 1.1.1)
- Photo browser/editor
- Voice memo
- Integrated handsfree
Battery Standard battery, Li-Ion
Stand-by Up to 250 h
Talk time Up to 8 h

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Apple to Seed OS X 10.5.5

Sources are reporting that Apple is close to issuing the first pre-release build of the next maintenance update to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Mac OS X 10.5.5 is said to include support for new Mac notebooks due out later this year (autumn).

"People familiar with the matter say Apple Developer Connection members and other high-profile software makers could receive the first test builds of the software prior to the start of the weekend," AppleInsider reveals. "The first seedings will almost certainly arrive by the middle of next week," the site notes, citing the same sources.

Apple's latest maintenance update for Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.4 was released on June 30, just a month after the first beta build had been seeded to the Apple developer community. The update included a major patch that fixed some issues with Adobe's Creative Suite 3.0, but also contained references to the MobileMe service replacing .Mac. The MobileMe requirements list revealed that users would need to run Mac OS X 10.5.4 with iTunes 7.7 in order to benefit from the new features. The same requirements list also noted that 10.4.11 users would be able to use the service too, but not to the extent of Leopard users.

Recent rumors about an upcoming, touch-based Apple portable have given rise to speculation on the MacBook-hardware-upgrade front. Apple's plans for an overhaul are said to include Intel Centrino 2 chips, 16:9 screens, which come in slightly bigger sizes: 14 inch and 15. 6 inch with different resolutions, and a 45nm processor to extend battery life. However, this is the first time that speculation surfaces on OS updates occurring in parallel with hardware upgrades.

While Apple is almost certainly revamping its MacBook line, a new Leopard update is most likely in order as well. As soon as the first seed notes for Mac OS X 10.5.5 emerge, clues to a possible release date are likely to be spotted as well. Just as the AppleInsider post reveals, next week would be a good time to keep an eye out for said documentation.

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