sizes

While everyone and his dog is releasing tiny laptops, Samsung is still pouring its heart into mid-sized machines. One such device is the R410, which we first had a look at back in May at Samsung's South Korean headquarters.

Back then, we said it was an "absolute steal" thanks to its price tag (499 pounds, or about $977) and generous specifications. Today, little's changed apart from a slight design tweak. It still packs a 14.1-inch screen, a 1.83GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, a DVD rewriter, a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, and … Read more

OK, I admit it. I want options, even though, most of the time I don't have much use for them. Take pocket-size external hard drives, for example. I want them to be compact, light, pretty, bus-powered, and especially I want them to support USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. (I would take eSATA, too, though, that wouldn't make sense until it's bus-powered capable). However, the truth is, I've used mostly just the USB 2.0 connection for personal purposes. So today, I decided to find out if FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 are worth … Read more

More and more vendors have been joining the bandwagon of pocket-size portable external hard drives and it's interesting to see how each of them manages to make their product unique in its own right. The G-Drive mini Triple from G-Technology is one example of this.

The drive sports a very rugged, metallic look with its aluminum casing that also works as the cooling solution. Despite having metal all over, the drive is still very light, weighing only around 9 ounces. Designwise, the G-Drive is compact, however, if the Signature Mini appeals to the ladies, the G-Drive definitely screams masculine. … Read more

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Here's a new twist in the ultramobile computer concept.

The Redfly Mobile Companion from Celio is a mini notebook-size device that effectively serves as a hand- and eye-friendly shell for Windows Mobile smartphones. It has a larger, relatively standard keyboard so you don't have to thumb type and an LCD screen measuring 8 inches in diameter. Connect the Redfly to the smartphone and the data going to and from the phone shows up on the larger screen instead.

You can also type e-mails or surf the Web while talking at the same time, explains CEO Kirt Bailey. Thus, … Read more

When I bought a gaming PC for home use a little over a year ago, I bought a middle-of-the-road machine that had everything I needed with a little room to upgrade later on down the line. I got a 2.2GHz processor, a high-end (at the time) video card so I could play the latest games, 2 gigs of RAM (on the advice of a gamer friend), and I opted for a 120GB hard drive to save a little money.

At the time, it seemed like 120GB would be more than enough. After all, I can remember when a 1GB hard drive was the pinnacle of storage capacity--120GB ought to be able to hold anything right? Games these days generally take up a few gigs each so I thought I would never run out of space. I now know I was wrong. If you wait long enough, even the biggest hard drives will fill up.… Read more

On Monday I raved about one of the best small speakers around, the Sunfire CRM-2. I love the little thing because it avoids most of the classic pitfalls of wee designs, but as good as it is, it can't completely mimic large speaker sonics. Priced at $800 each, it's as expensive as many larger designs; buyers are paying a premium for the wee speaker's radical technical engineering that's required to extract maximum performance from its compact dimensions. Big speakers have an ease that little speakers never fully muster. Small drivers, no matter how good or expensive … Read more

The unfortunate thing about writing all your thoughts down in a blog is that it makes it very clear just how wrong I can be sometimes. My "code" is online, for everyone to see, analyze, and critique.

And critique you do. :-)

A case in point is my fulminations earlier Thursday on XenSource and its alleged abandonment of the Xen project. John Vigeant, a friend from my Novell days and XenSource's director of Business Development, kindly swatted me in an e-mail for errors in my post.

Witness my sackcloth and ashes (with John's permission--he must have some perverse pleasure in seeing me don this hairshirt :-):… Read more