ianhulme.net
Web Design & Photography
(Cheshire, UK)

Dell’s XPS range are the top of the range £1000+ gaming machines, but is the M2010 Notebook the best choice for people on the move?

Simple answer Yes, if you don’t mind the fact that it weighs the same as a 7 month year old baby, starting at 8.2kg.

That said, it does boast a 20.1inch screen, full size rechargeable wireless keyboard, eight built-in speakers and subwoofer, Integrated 1.3 mega pixel web cam and array microphone, upto 400gb hard, the list goes on.

If your Laptop is your main machine/TV/Games machine and you don’t mind the £1,849 price tag, this would be the one to get.

Dell XPS M2010 Notebook

Using a near field communications (NFC), a short-range wireless technology like RFID tags (which are used to track stock by retailers).

The “Tags” could possibly hold personal information so they could act as car keys, credit cards, or even driving licenses. Think of the possibilities, when you get that speeding ticket you get a text saying how fast, 3 points have been added to your license and £60 taken from your bank (or possibly used for good things, you decide).

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Have you ever bought something off the internet and sent it back because it wasn’t what you thought….?

Dabs.com launches Dabs.tv where you can view a video review of the product, then make your decision on whether to buy, or not.

Google’s Shares have breached the $500 mark.

Not bad for a company that started with two students in their dorm room.

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Click here to read more about Google’s HIstory.

“If there is one thing that can really help applications on Windows Vista run better, it’s memory.” - Jim Allchin, Microsoft Vista Blog Team.

When running XP and Vista on identical machine, you would have thought that Vista would win hands down being newer and all that. You’d be wrong to think that. XP will generally outperform Vista on machines with less memory as Vista uses a bit more memory to do the things that make it so good, like indexing your data, keeping the fancier AERO UI running using the desktop window manager (DWM), etc. Vista Begins to shine when you say put a gig or more of memory in it, especially once you have been using the machine for some time, because Windows Vista learns what you do the most often and optimizes for this (nice).

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With “Affordable” HD-DVD and BluRay-DVD just coming out in the forms of XBox 360 HD-DVD add on and the PLAYSTATION 3, will Hitachi-Maxell’s upcoming announcement about their 300GB holographic CD’s become a problem.

Not for the moment as the cost of these Holographic discs would be between $100 and $125, and the optical drive somewhere in the region of $15,000. But with plans of second-generation 800GB rewritable optical disc with data transfer rates of about 80MBbps, and more plans to expand its capacity to 1.6TB by 2010 could this be the media our children will be using.

My money is on larger hard disc drive for the moment and larger internet bandwidth, although this would be the best media of when it comes to backing up all your data, rather than hundreds of DVDs.

Sometimes PenDrives just don’t cut it, and for those people who need large amounts of space on the move Western Digital’s 6GB Pocket Drive could be the answer.

Able to work with both PC and Mac, and with its 6GB capasity (1700 digital photos, 1500 songs (MP3), 100 songs (Uncompressed CD quality), 2 hours of DVD quality video) it really can hold anything from a few Word Documents, to a backup of your system. It is powered by your computer, so it doesn’t need a power supply.

Only costing £54.99 inc vat, Western Digital’s 6GB pocket drive is a good buy for those needing that sort of storage on the go.

Microsoft have said it may be a challenge to convince some customers to upgrade to Office 12 (2007).

“One of the biggest challenges… is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,” said Microsoft’s Chris Capossela.

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As with all things, the price goes down on electronics.
The question is, “How long do you wait until you make that purchase?”.

Most online shops have eshots that go out each week/month telling its customers about the special deals, new releases and must buys they have. You can actually see the prices going down on items that are regularly on the e-shot, for example dabs.com sell a value 4GB USB pen drive which was £38.29 ex VAT, then 4 days later it was £34.03 ex VAT.

From

to

in 4 days, Shame it doesn’t fall that quickly all the time.

The XBox 360 HD-DVDROM was released in the states not to long ago, and will be making an appearance in the UK very soon.

The HD-DVD Rom add-on for the 360 is connected through USB, meaning it possible to connect to a PC, all that is needed is the right Drivers and HD Player software, and there you have it, HD on your PC for around £130.

Click here to learn more.