Logitech Revue with Google TV now on Amazon

Google and several partners, including Logitech, announced Google TV in May. Logitech has finally made their set top box available for pre-order on Amazon at $299 — Logitech Revue Companion Box with Google TV and Keyboard Controller.

The kit contains the Logitech Revue Companion Box, Keyboard Controller (integrated keyboard, remote control & touchpad), IR Mini Blaster and HDMI Cable. See Amazon listing here.

To use it with your existing set-up, just plug your cable line to the Logitech Revue and attach the device to your TV set via the HDMI cable. There’s a LAN port or you can have WiFi to connect the Revue to your home network or internet.

The Logitech Revue basically makes your TV some sort of a smart TV or internet TV by combining broadcast content and web content. You can install and run apps too.

More LED TVs (mostly from Sony) will be released soon with Google TV built into the TV itself but for the existing home entertainment systems, the Logitech Revue becomes the “brains” that extends Google TV experience. I think the whole experience will rely on how fast the internet connection is and at $299 I’m not too sure if it’s a good price point (but it’s something I look forward to trying out). 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

56″ Philips Cinema 21:9 Ultra-Wide LCD TV

Philips sent us this awesome LCD TV together with their new Blu-ray player. First seen in CES 2009 and finally released in the Philippines last May, the Philips Cinema 21:9 is an ultra-widescreen LCD TV.

The LCD TV measures 56″ across and has a resolution of 2560x1080p, a 200Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. This could also be perfect for hooking up with your PC and enjoy some big-screen gaming.

So far, I’ve been watching a couple of Blu-ray movies with it. Our friends from Tradeport sent us a batch of Blu-ray discs as they’re launching an watch-all-you-can Blu-ray rental service, ala-Netflix, in the Philippines (more on this later).

The Philips Cinema comes with 5 HDMI ports, a LAN port, USB port, WiFi 802.11 b/g, DLNA, among others. Dynamic contrast ratio is set at 80,000:1 but its got this LED wide-color Ambilight Spectra 3 which allows it to project crisp and vivid colors.

It’s not that thin compared to other LED TVs we’ve tried before but that’s not a biggie. The edge of the back panel is lined up with lights that changes color depending on the videos projected on the screen. The wooden panel you see is just some minor carpentry we did so we can hook it up via wall bracket without punching a hole in my apartment wall.

The TV isn’t cheap either. Very limited number of stocks were released in the Philippines and one of these babies will set you back a cool Php350,000. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Sony Bravia Trade-In Sale Offer

If you’re looking to upgrade your old TV set at home, Sony’s offering something interesting in exchange for a 32″ Sony Bravia LCD TV this November 19 – 21, 2010.

Here’s the catch — trade-in your old TV for a value of Php4,000 voucher you can use as a discount to get a new Sony Bravia TV.

Sony Bravia will be having a 3-day Trade-in Event from November 19 to 21, 2010. Customers are entitled to a trade-in value of Php4,000 when they swap their 21”-34” CRT TVs (of any brand) to purchase a brand new Bravia 32-inch LCD TV KLV-32BX300 with a free DVP-SR700 DVD Player.
For the Project Big Switch weekend, you can bring your 21 to 34-inch CRT TV to the Loop, ABS-CBN Compound, GF ELJ Communications Center, Eugenio Lopez St., Quezon City to get it inspected and verified as working by a Sony Service Center technician. You can then purchase a brand new 32-inch Bravia LCD TV with a free DVD player for as low as Php 20,999. This will proceed from 9 am and closing at 5 pm each day.

So how much will you be shelling out for a 32″ Sony TV and DVD Player — Php20,999 in cash (you can pay in 0% for 12 months too). Not a bad deal. Your old TVs will then be donated to the Knowledge Channel and HOM (Hands On Network). 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Toshiba intros Glasses-less 3D TV

In a regional launched yesterday at Suntec Convention Center here in Singapore, Toshiba launched a series of Regza LED TVs for the Asean market including the first glasses-less 3D TV.

Toshiba’s flagship model for 2011 is the 55ZL800, a 55-inch 3D TV to be introduced for the Japanese market. The Regza ZL800 features a CEVO Engine, mega LED panel with 2D-3D conversion. Dynamic contrast goes up to 9,000,000 is to 1. The ZL800 comes with active 3D glasses when on 3D mode.

The other model, the Regza WL700, is slimmer 3D TV that comes in 46″ and 55″ models. Designed in collaboration between Toshiba and Jacob Jensen Design, the WL700 has a minimalist design using glass and metal at just 29mm thin.

Another interesting set of TVs are the Power TV series, one of which comes with an integrated stand-by rechargeable battery that can last for 2 hours after a power runs out. Power TV series also features “Auto Signal Booster” that improves signal sensitivity in areas with weak signal strengths. It’s available in 24″ and 32″ sizes.

Toshiba also demonstrated their upcoming Glasses-less 3D TV. Two models, the 20-inch 20GL1 and the 12-inch 12GL1 designed specifically for personal use. In order to create 3D content, the GL1 series adopts a parallax system that can display optimized high quality 3D images whatever position and angle to the screen of the viewer.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

SkyCable demos TiVo-style PVR System

Earlier this week, SkyCable announced they will be offering a “TiVo box” style unit into their system to complement the HD programming they provide to customers.

The PVR (personal video recorder) give you the ability to pause live TV, instantly replay scenes just watched
while continuing to record.

In short, this is our very own local version of the popular TiVo service in the US.

The PVR comes in a box installed along the cable connection. It is supposed to have a built-in HDD but we’re not told how much the capacity is.

Reps from SkyCable could not say how much this service is going to be once it is commercially released on first quarter of next year. Hopefully, the monthly rent of the PVR isn’t more than your cable subscription.

How about we give SkyCable some suggestions? How much should the monthly rent of the PVR be? What’s a tolerable price for you — Php199, Php249, Php299? More? Less? 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

32″ KTC LCD TV going for Php13,500

A friend from college is a distributor of a number of electronic products and he recently mentioned to me he’s also into LCD TVs. They’ve been supplying stores in Gilmore for some time now with 23″ and 32″ KTC LCD TVs.

It’s your typical China-based brands that got its way into the country so it was no biggie until he told me the retail price is just Php13,500 for the 32″ model. Now that got my attention.

KTC 32T53 LCD TV
32″ display with 16:9 aspect ratio @ 1366×768 max. resolution
2 x HDMI port, VGA, S-Video, USB
MP3 & JPEG Support via USB port
140 watts max power consumption
Weight: 12.5kg

KTC 23T71 LCD TV
23″ display with 16:9 aspect ratio @ 1920×1080 max. resolution
2 x HDMI port, VGA, S-Video, USB
MP3 & JPEG Support via USB port
65 watts max power consumption
Weight: 5.5kg

The 32″, while not in full HD resolution, is still cheap at Php13.5k (my 3-year old 32″ Samsung TV has the same resolution but cost me Php70k back then). The smaller model gets full 1080p resolution though and sells for just Php7,995. They can be wall-mounted too.

You should see these models being sold in shops in Gilmore area and Greenhills although I am told they’re almost sold out. They’re still looking for a unit to send over for me to check out.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

LG LZ9700 is World’s Largest Full LED 3D TV

Looks like LG’s line of full LED 3D TV has just grown to a staggering 72-inches. Last time I saw one, it was just in the 55″. The LG LZ9700 will be revealed in next month’s CES 2011.

LG LZ9700
- Full LED-backlight LCD 3D TV
- 72-inch class
- Full HD 1080p
- TruMotion 400Hz
- 10,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
- Micro Pixel Control (Local Dimming)
- Smart TV
- Magic Motion Remote Control
- Smart Share (DLNA, Media Link, USB, etc.)
- Wireless AV Link
- DLNA ready (with optional DLNA Dongle)
- USB 2.0 (HD DivX, MP3, JPEG play, MPO)
- HDMI 1.4
- Intelligent Sensor

That’s all the details we were given now but we’ll know more once it becomes available in the Philippines next year. I remember the 55-inch LX9500 had a suggested retail price of Php269,990 so one can only imagine how much a 72-inch model would go for once it reaches the country. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Asus O!Play Mini Compact Player

Announced back in December, the Asus O!Play Mini is a smaller and more portable media player from Asus (one of four O!Play devices made by Asus).

Unlike its other siblings though, the O!play Mini lacks any network or wireless connectivity feature although it’s expected that it will be the cheapest among the O!Play line-up.

The device is relatively small and lightweight and comes with an HDMI cable in the box. The front side has the SD/MMC/MS/XD card reader and a USB 2.0 port for connecting external storage (HDD or Flash drive) while the HDMI port and an RCA, optical SPDIF ports at the back.

The media player supports Dolby TrueHD 7.1-channel surround sound and full HD 1080p videos. It also supports quite a considerable number of video and audio formats (including MKV).

Video formats: MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, RM/RMVB 720p and 1080p
Video file extensions: MP4, MOV, XVID AVI, ASF, WMV, MKV, FLV, TS, M2TS, DAT, MPG, VOB, MTS, ISO, IFO, TP,TRP, M1V, M2V, M4V, AVS 1080p
Audio formats: MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, Dolby Digital AC3, DTS 2.0+ Digital Out, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, ID3Tag, PCM/LPCM
Image formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
Subtitle formats: SRT, SUB, SMI, IDX+SUB, SSA, TXT

The UI is simple and straightforward, nothing fancy nor does it have any touch of eye-candy. The file lists has a small playback window so you get a quick preview of the selected files before you play them. There’s some noticeable lags in the UI but movie playback is smooth and crisp.

We still don’t have the retail price of the O!Play Mini but considering it’s big brother, the O!Play HD2 retails for Php7,500, I’m guessing the Mini would go for under or around Php5,000.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Fake Nokia Touch Screen TV Phone

Saw this nice little TV phone tonight, brought home by my brother. At first I thought it was one of those LG Cookie models that has a built-in TV tuner with it but upon closer inspection, turns out it’s got a Nokia logo instead.

The handset is really small and comes with a full touch screen display. The antenna is considerably longer — at least 3 times the height of the unit.

The touch screen even has that iconic “Slide to Unlock” feature that’s totally copied from the iPhone/iOS. At the back, it says the camera is rated at 12.1 megapixels which is obviously not true.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Sky Cable goes TiVo-like w/ DigiBox iRecorder

Announced back in December, SkyCable finally launched their DigiBox iRecorder today following a TiVo-like set-up that compliments your cable subscription.

SkyCable’s Digibox iRecorder is a personal video recorder (PVR) that records up to 2 TV shows at the same time and still allow you to watch another 3rd channel as well.

Recording option can be on-the-fly or scheduled regularly so you will never have to miss another episode of your favorite TV show ever again. See full press release below.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Inno3D outs affordable GeForce GTX 460

Back in April, Inno3D introduced their fastest graphics card ever — the GeForce GTX480. But the retail price of Php25k then was expensive for a lot of gamers so they’ve come up with the cheaper GeForce GTX 460.

This brand new graphics card from Inno3D carries the same “Fermi” architecture as the ones in the GTX470 and GTX480 but just in the mid-range level. There are two variations actually — a GTX 460 768MB 192-bit and GTX 460 1GB 256-bit.

GeForce GTX 460 specs:

GPU: GF104 @ 675MHz / 40nm
Shader Processors: 336 @ 1350MHz
Streaming Multiprocessors: 7
Memory: 768MB (192-bit) / 1GB (256-bit) GDDR5
ROPs: 32 (1GB version) / 24 (768MB version)
Texture units: 56
TDP: 160 watts (1GBMB) / 150 watts (768MB)

The GPU is also over-clocker friendly with some results in the 850MHz range (around 25% increase in clock-speed).

The 768MB version will retail for $199 (about Php9,400) while the 1GB model has a retail price of $229 or about Php10,800.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

StarCraft 2: The 12-Year Itch

The first StarCraft was released by Blizzard in 1998. More than 12 years later, “StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty” is here, selling over 1.5 million copies and making it one of the most popular online games in the world.

So I grabbed a copy last week and scheduled a game night. I’ve been trying to stay away from addicting games like WarCraft or StarCraft for years but this one I really had to try SC2 is like one of those games that “once you pop, you can’t stop”.

Unlike the previous game, you will need a Battle.net account to play over the network (LAN) — otherwise, you can only play in single mode (although I hear cracks are already spreading in the intarwebs to bypass this restriction).

Anybody out there who are playing SC2 or just finished the entire campaign? 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Neo outs Elan L4300 3D Laptop

Neo Philippines is among the very few laptop makers that has brought 3D laptops into the country. Earlier today, they launched the Neo Elan L4300 3D laptop running an Intel Core i7 processor.

Neo Elan L4300-3D

15.6″ HD display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core i7 740QM @ 1.73GHz (4 cores, 8 threads) up to 2.93GHz on Turbo Boost
4GB DDR3 RAM (max 8GB)
500GB SATA HDD
nVidia GeForce GTX 285M w/ 1GB GDDR3
Bluray Combo Drive (DVD+RW/CD+RW)
3 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x USB 3.0 port
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
HDMI port
eSATA port
IEEE 1394a Firewire port
DVI-I out/SPDIF out
RJ45/LAN port

That’s all the ports you can imagine you’d ever need on a PC.

The system also comes with 1 set of nVidia 3D Vision Kit (3D glasses & IR emitter). Since the system is actually on an order-basis, you can choose what flavor of Windows 7 you want with it (Win7 Home Premium by default).

As for the price, Neo says it will be in the vicinity of Php100,000 for one of these (starting configuration costs Php99,990). 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Acer Aspire 4553G Review

The Acer Aspire 4553G is probably the first locally-available laptop sporting an AMD triple-core CPU. The CPU sits somewhere between Intel’s Core i3 and Core i5 systems (not just because it has 3 cores).

The unit is fairly heavy but is expected in its category — not meant to be lugged around but, IMO, more like a desktop replacement unit. The 14.1-inch screen has a maximum resolution of 1366×768 pixels. The display is bright and crisp although I found that cranking the brightness to the highest setting makes it a bit washed out.

The dark glossy lid has those subtle striped lines but that didn’t prevent the surface to be a fingerprint-magnet. The inside surface is the same except for the dark-gray brushed-metal finish on the palm rest area.

The laptop comes with a full-sized keyboard feature that Acer-signature flat, island-type keys that maximizes the keyboard real estate. The extra-large trackpad is flushed to the left side and, although the left and right buttons are not separated, the larger-than usual size makes up for it.

The Aspire 4553G is un-assuming and what you’d expect from a workhorse laptop — a mix of good specs and an affordable price point. Check out the specs of the review unit we got (with Linpus OS pre-installed):

Acer Aspire AS4553G
14.1″ display @ 1366×768
AMD Phenom II X3 N830 2.1GHz
ATI Radeon HD5470 512MB
2.0GB DDR3 RAM
320GB HDD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth, HDMI
DVD+RW

From what I’ve read around, the triple-core Phenom II X3 is actually a quad-core X4 CPUs with one of the cores disabled. The crippling of that single core allowed AMD to offer a mid-range CPU between the dual-core X2 and the more expensive quad-core X4 CPUs (see the CPU ID screen shots below).

The CPU runs at a maximum speed of 2.1GHz for each of the 3 cores (each core has 1 thread only). The graphics is switchable between the more powerful ATI Radeon HD5470 with 512MB of DDR2 RAM and the on-board ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 used in power-saving mode.

The HD5470 is still an entry-level DirectX 11 graphics card so don’t expect this to be able to handle high-detail settings when playing games.

Since the laptop did not come with Windows OS pre-installed, I had to load it up with Windows 7 Ultimate so we can get the Experience Index scores.

The X3 N830 processor got a sub-score of 6.2 on Windows Experience Index (sits between a Core i3 330M at 5.9 and a Core i5 520M at 6.7). The graphics card (ATI HD5470) got the lowest sub-score of 5.0 but it’s still a pretty decent score nonetheless.

As for battery performance, I got split results depending on which graphics card I used in the testing. When running on the discreet graphics, I get a battery rating of just over 2 hours. However, when using the integrated graphics, battery life improved and can go close to 4 hours on a single charge (set in power-saving mode).

The Acer Aspire 4553G looks to be a good mid-range laptop considering the specs that came with it. With a retail price starting at Php29,990 (without OS), it can still hold its ground even when compared to counterparts running Core i3 CPUs.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Acer Aspire 8943G on Core i7, Radeon HD5850

Acer calls this their ultimate multi-media laptop with a large 18.4-inch 1080p display running a Core i7 and ATI Radeon 5850. The Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G comes with all the bells and whistles to make your desktop PC look like a netbook.

Specs: Acer Aspire 8943G-728G1
18.4″ Full HD Display @ 1920×1080 pixels
Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz (4 cores, 8 threads, Turbo Boost to 2.8GHz)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 w/ 1GB DDR3 VRAM
2 x 640GB HDD
8GB RAM (2 x 4GB DDR3)
Blu-ray, DVD SuperMulti Drive
Gigabit LAN
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 3.0 + HS
Fingerprint Reader
Card Reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
5 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x eSATA port
1 x IEEE 1394 port
1 x HDMI port
1 x Consumer Infrared (CIR) port
Acer Media Center Remote Control
4800mAh 8-cell Li-ion battery

Comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium and has a suggested retail price of Php120,900. Acer didn’t bother to pump the battery capacity (says only up to 3 hours) with all that juice-guzzling specs. At 10.1lbs (4.6kg), this is the heaviest laptop we’ve seen so far. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Is the local Online Gaming industry in trouble?

Just got a couple of insider info from a reliable source that might give us the impression that the Philippine Online Gaming industry is in a bit of a trouble right now. Two of the biggest online gaming companies, Level-Up & e-Games, are showing signs of it.

First stop is e-Games (IP e-Games Ventures Inc. ) which has recently finalized its initial public offering (IPO). According to a source, this was a strategic move by the company to generate fresh capital.

Apparently, the free-to-play model isn’t doing very well in the Philippines. There are a lot of subscribers but the players seemed to shy away from buying in-game items so not a lot of revenue is coming that way.

Fortunately, e-Games and PAGCOR has a partnership for online gambling (PAGCOR e-Games Cafe) which is doing well so that’s the one raking in the needed money. (Correction, the other eGames is a partnership with PhilWeb and PAGCOR, not IPVG.)

Second, Level-Up Inc. has also made some drastic “corporate restructuring” in the company that affected close to 50% of the workforce. Majority of the people affected by the recent lay-off came from the marketing department and the sales department.

Level-Up’s newer games like Hello Kitty, KOS: Secret Opertions and several others aren’t meeting the monthly quota and have to be eventually dropped from their roster.

What’s making it look worse is that in other markets like Brazil and India, Level-Up is doing good. It’s only in the Philippines that growth and sales aren’t doing well. On the other hand, the Level-Up! Live annual events still bring in a couple million pesos but that’s just a once a year affair.

Online gaming companies have shifted their revenue models from pay-to-play to free-to-play with the promise of increased user base and in-game purchases (gamers get to play for free but are enticed to buy virtual items). Looks like this model isn’t working in the Philippines. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Does AMD have a brand perception problem?

While talking to one of the computer manufacturers recently, they shared that they have a hard time selling premium laptops when it’s powered by an AMD processor. The issue might have to deal with market perception of the brand.

When the topic was raised, a lot of my friends in the media thought it was due to the decade-long perception that AMD processors heat up so fast. Actually, that’s not a problem any more (but the notion still persists up to now) but more like consumer tolerance on pricing.

The bottom line — it’s very hard to sell the Phenom brand at top tier prices, unlike the Core i5 or i7 series. And to think Intel’s new CPU brands are way younger (now we know that marketing is such a huge deal when it comes to brands). So people are willing to shell out tens of thousands of pesos for laptops with the Core i5 and Core i7 brand but would not do the same if it were an Athlon or a Phenom.

However, there’s a sweet spot — for laptops at under Php30k price tag, people have no problem with AMD processors. In fact, laptops with Athlon or Phenom processors sell like hotcakes as long as they’re cheap. There’s a segment in the market that are actually AMD fans (they say it’s the TipidPC market and it makes sense since those are people who really look for value for their money).

Here’s my question — when was the last time you bought a laptop with an AMD processor in it?

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Seagate Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive

This hybrid drive by Seagate looks interesting — it combines the large capacity of regular HDDs as well as the affordability together with the performance of fast SSDs.

The Seagate Momentus XT comes in 500GB capacity with a 4GB SSD integrated with it (that’s where the hybrid comes in).

Seagate Momentus XT 500GB (ST95005620AS)
500GB HDD
4GB solid state SLC NAND flash storage
SATA 3Gb/s
32MB cache
7200 rpm (spin speed)
300MB/s transfer speed

The drive monitors which applications or files are frequently used or accessed by the system and it stores them in the 4GB NAND flash storage for better performance. As such, I don’t think it will have any significant performance improvement if you’re transferring large files at a time.

This hybrid drive can be used in laptops or external drive enclosures and with a retail price of about Php6,500 it’s still a bit more expensive than the regular ones. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Asus CineVibe Gaming Headset

Asus sent us this regular-looking CineVibe headphones and I’ve been using it for a week now while playing Starcraft 2. Nothing too fancy — just your regular headset, although this one hooks up via the USB port and not the 3.5mm headphone port.

Installation was quick and easy you can say it’s practically plug-and-play. The USB connection means you can only use this with a PC and not your usual MP3 player.

The headphones is pretty neatly built, with the combination of the black with red accents made it look a bit stylish. It also comes with a microphone which can be used for chatting with team-mates while playing a game. It’s got a fairly small form-factor with the leather-covered soft pads just covering enough of the ear but not entirely (sits on top of the ears, not around it).

At first, I didn’t notice anything spectacular — good audio quality and very decent volume range. The in-line control is attached on the thick cord midway and contains adjustment for volume, microphone mute and a slider to activate the Rumble Feedback.

Once turned on, the bass becomes more prominent and ambient sound effects are much more noticeable (again, I was playing Starcraft 2 while using this headset so you can just imagine the type of cinematic soundtracks used here). It definitely adds more umph to the whole gaming experience. There’s really a huge difference between the rumble feedback turned on and off though sometimes it seems a bit noisy.

I’m not big on headsets so I cannot say that I like using one of these while playing games. It’s a decent pair of headsets but it’s something I don’t think I’d pick off the store shelves. Besides, the retail price of around Php2,800 seems a bit too step for me. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

MSI GX660R: The GT660 re-incarnate

NetEssentials sent us this new gaming laptop but after unboxing it, I thought I already reviewed the unit before until I saw what’s inside — this MSI GX660R is like the reincarnate of the MSI GT660.

First off, the body and design is exactly the same as the old one. The main difference between this and the GT660 is the graphics card (a Radeon HD 5870) although the CPU was also bumped up from a base of 1.6GHz to 1.73GHz. And while the RAM is now down from 6GB to 4GB, MSI configured the two 500GB HDD to become a single 1TB drive with Raid 0 which could benefit from faster file reads.

MSI GX660R specs:
15.6″ display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core i7 740QM 1.73GHz (4 Cores, 8 Threads, Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 VRAM
1TB SATA HDD (2x500GB on Raid 0)
4GB DDR3 RAM (2 x 2GB Dual Channel)
CD/DVD+RW
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
2 x USB 2.0 ports
2 x USB 3.0 ports
1 x HDMI port
1 x eSATA port
4-in-1 card reader
9-cell Li-Ion battery 7800mAh

PassMark Results:
CPU Compression: 4105.5 KB/s
CPU Encryption: 15.3 MB/s
Find Prime Number: 647.9 operations per second
CPU Integer Math: 1343.5 million operations per second
CPU Floating Point: 1638.3 million operations per second
Graphics 3D Simple: 2361.5 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Medium: 424.4 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Complex: 47.7 fps (32-bit)

CPU Mark: 3785.0
2D Graphics Mark: 251.7
3D Graphics Mark: 1351.7
Memory Mark: 898.4
Disk Mark: 903.9
Passmark Rating: 1400.2

Windows Experience Index showed the system having a base score of 5.9 due to the HDD but gave the CPU a sub-score of 7.1. The Radeon 5870HD also got a pretty high 7.2 scores on Windows Aero and 3D gaming.

To get a good overview of this gaming laptop, read our MSI GT660 review and then just take note of the benchmark/rating results above. The MSI GX660R has a suggested retail price of Php109,990. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Trackball, Trackpad or Optical Mouse?

I have to say I’ve been addicted to StarCraft 2 for the past couple of weeks and spending around 8 hours a day on the game. It’s a productivity killer really but I think it’s just a phase I have to get through and hopefully, soon enough. On a related note, was wondering which type of pointing device people prefer with their computers.

I’ve got 3 main choices you can pick from — a regular optical mouse, a trackball and a trackpad.

I personally find the trackball the most convenient and more comfortable to use. There’s no need for a mousepad for that one and you don’t frequently move your wrist around a lot.

The optical mouse, especially the laser one, is better for accuracy especially in graphics design and gaming. The trackpad, on the other hand, allows for multi-touch functions.

Reminds me, a couple months ago, I also asked people if they put a premium on the mouse and it looks like the crowd is split on the amount they budget for a mouse. 

This article originally appeared at - yugatech

Lenovo intros IdeaPad Z360, Z460, H320

Lenovo Philippines recently updates several of its multimedia notebooks — the IdeaPad Z360, IdeaPad Z460 as well as the compact Lenovo H320 desktop — all coming in with the entire flavor of Intel Core i series.

Powered by up to Intel Core i7 processor with Intel Turbo Boost Technology, a 13.3” display screen, up to NVidia GeForce 315M 1GB graphics, and 8GB of DDR3 memory plus up to 640GB HDD storage, the IdeaPad Z360 comes with a starting price of Php37,500. Of course, the full specs can push the price much higher.

Lenovo gave me one of these, the entry level I suppose, with a Core i3-370M 2.4GHz, 2GB DDR3 RAM and 500GB HDD. Will post the full review soon.

The IdeaPad Z460 is the 14.1″ equivalent of the Z360 and both models get Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11n, DVD or Blu-ray drive, USB 2.0, eSATA, HDMI, 5-in-1 card reader and web cam. The Z460 comes with a starting price of Php35,900.

The new Lenovo H320 is a compact home desktop PC with its up to Intel Core i7 CPU, up to ATI Radeon HD 5570 1GB graphics, 8GB DDR3 memory, up to 1TB HDD storage, an integrated WiFi 802.11n, DVD or Blu-ray Disc drive. Starting price is Php39,900.

This article originally appeared at - yugatech