Although Blu-ray drives are the flavor of the season but their adoption has been slow due to high costs. This has forced consumers to look out for DVD burners for now and wait till prices of Blu-ray drives drop to reasonable levels. SATA drives have taken over their IDE counterparts for better bandwidth. Plextor makes great burners and hopefully PX-810SA is no exception.

Plextor PX-810SA DVD Writer specifications :

• Dimensions : 5.7´´ x 7.1´´ x 1.6´´
• Type : DVD/RW, DVD-RAM
• Read speed : 40x(CD), 16x(DVD)
• Write speed : 40x(CD), 18x(DVD-R), 10x(DVD-R DL)
• Buffer size : 2MB
• Buffer underrun protection : BURN-Proof
• Approx. price : $80

The Plextor PX-180SA DVD Writer are known for their quality and this one is no exception and has good build quality. The drive comes with a SATA connector, an upgrade over IDE connectors which were used in older drives. This allows the drive to use higher bandwidth which translates to greater data throughput. The drive comes bundled with Roxio Easy Media Creator 9, MyDVD Video Authoring, CinePlayer DVD-Video Playback, BackUP MyPC Archive and backup softwares. That is a great software bundle, rarely seen with any DVD burners. The drive supports almost all CD/DVD formats for both reading and writing apart from the HD formats. The drive unfortunately is not region free and hence you are bound to face problem while viewing movies from a different region. The region can only be changes upto a maximum of five times. Another downside with the drive is the inability to set read speed, although most of you won't even bother to do that. The performance of the drive is good but leaves room for improvement. The time taken by the drive to burn a dual layer disc was around 21.5 minutes. The time to rip a dual layer DVD was exactly half of that. Burning a single layer DVD took around 8 minutes which is on the slower side. Ripping a CD took close to 2.5 minutes. Hence it does not offer top class performance but good enough for daily use. Pros :

• Great software bundle
• Good performer
• SATA compatible

Cons :

• Not region free
• Fixed read speed
• Slightly expensive

Final Thoughts The Plextor PX-810SA DVD Writer is a reliable and a decent performing DVD writer. The great software bundle also adds to the cost of the burner. This is a good DVD burner to invest in if you are looking for reliability and good performance. My Rating : 3.25/5

Large LCD monitors can be tough to find due to relatively fewer number of manufacturers that are interested in this category. The main reason to it being the high costs and hence fewer buyers. Gateway did not care about all that when it released its XHD3000 LCD monitor which bears an expensive price tag.

Gateway XHD3000 specifications :

• Display type : Flat panel display / TFT active matrix
• Dimensions : 27.5´´ x 9.5´´ x 22.2´´
• Diagonal size : 30´´
• Maximum resolution : 2560 x 1600
• Color support : 24-bit
• Response time : 6ms
• Contrast ratio : 1000 : 1
• Signal Input : HDMI, DVI-D, VGA
• HDCP, PIP, ExtremeHD, Gateway DXP Audio
• Remote control
• Approx. price : $1500

The Gateway XHD3000 is a widescreen 30´´ LCD monitor that has loads of features especially connectivity options. The price is very steep and should only be considered by those who need its extra features.

The design of the XHD3000 is pretty slim and sleek and has a dark grey one inch thick bezel. The screen can be rotated by 30 degrees to either the left or right or back. But there is no option to adjust the height or swivel the screen. It comes with inbuilt speakers to be able to listen to audio from any device connected to it. The speakers are detachable and the image on right shows the display when they are attached at the bottom. The stand feels sturdy and solid.

There are few controls to play around with on the display. You can change the brightness and the audio from the OSD controls. The display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 which is great for viewing HD movies but text appears very tiny. Now come the plethora of connectivity options that you will not find on any other display. It has almost all the ports you can think of. VGA, DVI, HDMI, S-Video, optical audio it has it all.

To be able to run the display at such high resolution, you will need to invest in a high-end graphics card else your resolution will be capped at 1920 x 1200. Performance is absolutely amazing with the display. It has highly accurate levels of color and sharpness. The speakers are also good and produce decent sound. The high resolution is a boon when watching movies and can also run multiple windows side by side with ease.

Pros :

• High resolution
• Huge number of connectivity options
• Great performance
• Good enough speakers

Cons :

• Expensive

Final Thoughts

The Gateway XHD3000 LCD Monitor is one of the best LCD displays in the market but it comes with a hefty price. Although the display can not be termed overpriced as it has huge number of ports and excellent performance but it surely isn't one that will appeal to the masses. If you want such high resolution or the connectivity options it offers, then this one surely makes the cut.

My Rating : 3.5/5

Large LCD monitors can be tough to find due to relatively fewer number of manufacturers that are interested in this category. The main reason to it being the high costs and hence fewer buyers. Gateway did not care about all that when it released its XHD3000 LCD monitor which bears an expensive price tag.

Gateway XHD3000 specifications :

• Display type : Flat panel display / TFT active matrix
• Dimensions : 27.5´´ x 9.5´´ x 22.2´´
• Diagonal size : 30´´
• Maximum resolution : 2560 x 1600
• Color support : 24-bit
• Response time : 6ms
• Contrast ratio : 1000 : 1
• Signal Input : HDMI, DVI-D, VGA
• HDCP, PIP, ExtremeHD, Gateway DXP Audio
• Remote control
• Approx. price : $1500

The Gateway XHD3000 is a widescreen 30´´ LCD monitor that has loads of features especially connectivity options. The price is very steep and should only be considered by those who need its extra features. The design of the XHD3000 is pretty slim and sleek and has a dark grey one inch thick bezel. The screen can be rotated by 30 degrees to either the left or right or back. But there is no option to adjust the height or swivel the screen. It comes with inbuilt speakers to be able to listen to audio from any device connected to it. The speakers are detachable and the image on right shows the display when they are attached at the bottom. The stand feels sturdy and solid. There are few controls to play around with on the display. You can change the brightness and the audio from the OSD controls. The display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 which is great for viewing HD movies but text appears very tiny. Now come the plethora of connectivity options that you will not find on any other display. It has almost all the ports you can think of. VGA, DVI, HDMI, S-Video, optical audio it has it all. To be able to run the display at such high resolution, you will need to invest in a high-end graphics card else your resolution will be capped at 1920 x 1200. Performance is absolutely amazing with the display. It has highly accurate levels of color and sharpness. The speakers are also good and produce decent sound. The high resolution is a boon when watching movies and can also run multiple windows side by side with ease. Pros :

• High resolution
• Huge number of connectivity options
• Great performance
• Good enough speakers

Cons :

• Expensive

Final Thoughts The Gateway XHD3000 LCD Monitor is one of the best LCD displays in the market but it comes with a hefty price. Although the display can not be termed overpriced as it has huge number of ports and excellent performance but it surely isn't one that will appeal to the masses. If you want such high resolution or the connectivity options it offers, then this one surely makes the cut. My Rating : 3.5/5

The Creative Zen X-Fi is Creative's latest addition to its MP3 Player family. The new Zen X-Fi is believed to be the replacement to the Creative Zen PMP. It is almost similar to the Zen with respect to the dimensions, weight etc and sports a much more stylish design. It is available in capacities of 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. It competes directly with Apple's iPod Nano and offers much more in terms of features. We review the Zen X-Fi and check whether it makes the cut.

Creative Zen X-Fi Specs

• Capacity: 16GB / 32GB
• Dimensions: 83mm x 55mm x 12.8mm
• Weight: 68.75gm
• Display: 2.5´´ 16.7 M colors TFT LCD, 320 x 240 pixels
• Battery Life: 36 hrs Audio playback, 5 hrs Video playback
• Video Formats: MJPEG, WMV9, MPED4-SP, DivX 4/5 and XviD
• Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, AAC4 (.m4a), WAV (ADPCM), Audible 4
• Image Formats: JPEG / BMP/ GIF / PNG / TIFF
• Battery: Built-in Li-ion battery
• FM Radio: 32 preset stations
• EQ Settings: 8 presets and 5 band custom EQ
• Organizer: Calendar, Contact, Task List
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with WEP, WPA, WPA2
• Connectivity: USB 2.0, SD connection

Other features: Power Charging, Album Art, Voice Recording

Price: 16 GB - $199, 32 GB - $279.

Design and Interface:

The Creative Zen X-Fi is a very sleek and stylish DAP with dimensions of just 83mm x 55mm x 12.8mm and weighs in at just around 70 gms. This makes it very portable and easy to carry. It has superb build quality and feels sturdy and tough. It is fully built of plastic but has a metallic look and feel about it. The black version looks fully metallic and is good to handle. The 2.5´´ 16 M color screen is slightly better than that of the Creative Zen and supports resolutions of 320 x 240 px. It is bright and vibrant with great viewing angles.

The user interface is the same old Zen's with some new features integrated into it. It is one of the most intuitive and easy to use interfaces you will come across. You can also configure the menus to your liking and edit Menu items. The controls are very good, but there are too many buttons. It feels a bit cramped and it would have been better had Creative included a 5 way DPad as in the Zen. But its still very much usable and you can get used to it easily.

It supports Windows XP and Vista out of the box but doesn't support Linux or Mac unless you install some hacks. You can simply drag and drop your music and video files into your Creative Zen or use any Media Player like Windows Media player or Winamp. It also comes with the new "Creative Centrale" software to manage your multimedia collection and sync data and update the firmware. It also includes a video converter for the Zen X-Fi.

The Creative Zen X-Fi supports expandable memory by way of SD card support but the memory card integration is not at all good. You can just access the files in the SD card but without any of the gallery or extra features just like in the Zen. The internal memory and external memory are clearly separated with the files in internal memory getting all the good treatment and features while the files in the external memory get neglected.

Audio and Video playback:

The Creative Zen X-Fi has superb sound quality and lives up to its family name. It is one of the best DAPs in the market when it comes to sound quality and can easily satisfy the hungry ears of most audiophiles. It does lag behind the Cowon's but easily trumps out all of the iPods. What adds to the music playback is the inclusion of the Creative EP 830 earphones which are better than most other bundled earphones out there.

It also includes X-Fi which is Creative's proprietary sound enhancing technology that improves the overall sound quality to a great extent by reshaping waveforms from lossless music. It comes with two settings - Crystallize and Expand. The music does sound a bit artificial and synthetic but X-Fi is a great feature, no doubt. The Creative Zen X-Fi also comes with a built in speaker which has a good volume and sound quality with nearly zero distortion.

The Video experience on the Zen X-Fi is very similar to Zen. It offers smooth video playback with no lag. It supports almost the same video codecs and formats as the old Zen - MJPEG, WMV9, MPED4-SP, DivX 4/5 and XviD. All other formats must be transcoded to the following formats at the 320 x 240 px resolution. The best tool for the conversion would be Creative Centrale. The 2.5´´ 16 M color screen has good brightness and contrast levels, wider viewing angles.

Other Features:

The Creative Zen X-Fi also has Wi-Fi support and can connect to other wireless networks easily. You can share media content with other computers over the Wi-Fi network. Creative has also included a Chat feature in the Zen X-Fi usoing which you can chat with your friends over the Creative Chat network. It doesn't include support for multitasking which means that you can't do anything else while you are online. The Zen X-Fi also has very rudimentary texting support with no predictive text feature. It also includes no support for the major chat protocols like Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN etc which makes the Chat feature pretty unusable at this time.

The Creative Zen also includes other features like FM Radio, Voice recording, Photo Viewer and Organiser. Most of them are almost the same as the old Zen's. The FM radio has decent reception and has the auto scan feature to automatically scan and store radio stations. You can view JPEG images in various modes like lists, thumbnails etc in the inbuilt Photo Viewer. You can also create slideshows with your images. The Voice recording feature can record audio and save recorded files as low bitrate WAV files. It also has shortcuts to start recording fast. The Organiser includes Contacts, calendar and to-do lists all of which can be synced with Creative Centrale.

The battery life of the Creative Zen X-Fi is officially rated at 35 hrs for audio and 5 hrs for video. It lasts about 2 days with medium usage with about 12 to 14 hrs of music and about 2.5 hrs of video. The battery drains off much quickly when Wi-Fi is in use.

Pros

• Nice bundled headphones
• Great build quality
• Superb sound quality with X-Fi
• Wi-Fi, FM radio, Organizer

Cons

• No Linux, Mac support
• Poor SD implementation
• Poor Chat software
• Primitive Text input

Conclusion:

The Creative Zen X-Fi is a great buy at just $199 for the 16 GB version and $279 for the 32 GB version. It includes a whole new array of features, some of which may be poorly implemented but are great to have, nevertheless. Most of them can be improved easily by a firmware update. It is a great replacement to the Zen with some glitches.

My Rating: 3.75 / 5

Acer is the latest entrant to the ultraportable 'Netbook' segment dominated by heavy weights like Asus, HP and MSI currently. Asus revolutionized the notebook market in 2007 with its ultraportable offering - the Asus EEE PC 701. It was soon followed by many other manufacturers offering their own versions of ultraportables with more or less similar configurations. Asus, however did win the first round of the "War of the Ultra Portables" by a landslide. Now comes the second generation of Ultraportables, more commonly known as 'Netbooks' now.

The new generation of netbooks comes with a whole new load of features including more powerful processors, better displays, higher storage capacities and much powerful batteries. Almost all of the new entrants sport Intel Atom processors, SSD storage ranging from 8 GB to 32 GB and better batteries. They have almost similar configurations, with slight changes in the designs and other features. Their prices are also very much in the same range, starting at around $500 to $700. The competition has fiercely hottened up with the launch of the MSI Wind U100 and the Asus EEE PC 1000H in the previous month. Lenovo and Dell are expected to jump in soon with the Ideapad S10 and E Slim respectively.

Of all these next generation ultra portables, Acer's Aspire One is one of the cheapest, with the Linux version at just $379. It is loaded with decent features and a good design. It is a bit underpowered compared to its competitors in terms RAM, SSD capacity, battery life but can be upgraded. Besides it is at such a good price point, that it seems possible to neglect its shortcomings. Let's have a closer look at the Acer Aspire One.

Acer Aspire One Specifications :

• CPU: 1.6 GHZ Intel Atom N270
• RAM: 512MB (Upgradable to 1.5 GB)
• SSD: 8 GB
• Display: 8.9´´ WSVGA LCD @ 1024 x 600
• Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Operating System: Linpus Linux Lite
• Ports: 3 USB 2.0, Ethernet, Headphone & Microphone jack, VGA
• Other: 5 in 1 card reader (SD, xD, MMC, MS, MS Pro), 0.3 MP VGA Webcam
• Size: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.1 inches
• Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Price (Approx): $379
• Warranty: One year limited

Design

The Acer Aspire One is a beautifully built machine. It looks sleek and has a metallic feel to it. It is available in 4 colors- pearl white, black, pink and navy blue. On the face of it, it never feels or looks like a cheap notebook. Instead it looks quite regal and expensive. The Pearl White Aspire One sports a glossy finish on the lid and exteriors which further accentuates its great design.

The Aspire One is both slimmer and lighter than the other 8.9´´ers - Asus EEE PC 901 and the HP Mininote 2133. It weighs just 2.2 pounds which makes it one of the lightest ultraportables, and a joy to carry around. It scores slightly above the EEE PC 901 and HP Mininote in terms of looks and portability. The Build quality is good too and feels robust.

The port configuration of the Aspire One is very similar to the EEE PC 901 or the MSI Wind. On the left, it has the VGA port, Ethernet, a USB port and a SD card reader. On the right is the 5 in 1 card reader, 2 USB ports and headphone and mic jacks. Above the keyboard are the various status indicators.

Display and Sound

The Acer Aspire One sports a 8.9´´ LCD display supporting resolutions of 1024 x 600 px which is the standard for 8.9´´ and 10´´ netbooks these days. It is brighter than the EEE PC 901 and MSI Wind displays and has good contrast levels with solid colors. The horizontal and vertical viewing angles are decent. The 1024 x 600 px wide screen resolution is optimum for watching movies and surfing through webpages. You can also connect your Aspire One to any external CRT / LCD monitor or projector using the VGA port.

It also comes with a 0.3 MP webcam and mic above the display. It performs decently with slightly grainy quality while the mic is good and clear. The speakers are loud enough to be heard around a small room but the sound quality isn't much to speak of. The EEE PC's Dolby certified speakers can easily trump these. You can plug in standard earphones of your choice using the 3.5mm audio jack.

Performance

The Acer Aspire One is powered by the Intel Atom N270 clocked at 1.6 GHZ and with 512 KB L2 cache, the same as in Asus EEE PC 901 and the MSI Wind and many other upcoming netbooks . It is very power eficient and has a very low TDP of 2.5W. The Aspire One comes with a rather low 512 MB of RAM which can be upgraded to 1.5 GB. It comes with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 onboard graphics which is capable of running low end games and multimedia playback. It also has a 8 GB SSD for storage which is a bit less compared to other netbooks. One interesting addition is the second only SD card reader which seems to be there only for expanding the storage of the Aspire One through SD cards.

The Aspire One is loaded with Linpus Linux Lite but is fully compatible with Windows XP as well. The Linux Linpus Lite OS runs quite fast and is very responsive despite having just 512 MB RAM at its disposal. It is inspired slightly by Asus's Xandros OS and sports a very minimal interface with four sections - Connect, Work, Fun and Files. Under 'Connect', you'll find Firefox, an IM client with AIM, GTalk, MSN, and support, an RSS reader, Skype, Wikipedia links, Google Maps etc. 'Work' houses OpenOffice, Contacts, Calculator, Notes, and Calendar. 'Fun' has Media Master, Photo Master, KolourPaint, a webcam, and some games. 'Files' has the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, My Downloads, and My Files folders.You can easily multitask 3-4 apps without any lags or delays. The SSD contributes a lot to the speed of the Aspire One. It also adds to the durability of the Aspire One and consumes less power.

The Wi-Fi reception is great with rare disconnections. It offers about 90% signal strength about 20 feet around the access point. Pages load quickly with no lag and even video / audio streaming works great on a decent connection.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Keyboard is around 86% of a normal QWERTY keyboard and is quite good to type on. It has ample key spacing and travel. The keys are responsive and offer good feedback. Typing shouldn't at all be a problem on the Aspire One. It is quite suitable for touch typing.

The touchpad is very similar to the one on the HP Mininote 2133. It has the left and right mouse buttons on the sides instead of the bottom which is quite an annoyance for normal users. The touchpad is also a bit small vertically, making it difficult to traverse the whole screen at a time. The buttons are a bit hard to press but that is workable.

Battery Life

The Aspire One comes with a 3 cell battery but falls short when it comes to battery life even with the Atom processor and SSD. It offers just about 2 hours with normal usage. There is an optional 6 cell battery upgrade available in case you want more juice of of your Aspire One.

Pros

• Inexpensive
• Good design & Build quality

Cons

• Low RAM
• Low SSD capacity
• No Bluetooth

Conclusion

The Acer Aspire One misses out on a lot of features but it also comes with a whole lot of upgrade options. The base price - $379 is sweet. Though if you can afford to, the EEE PC 901 or the MSI Wind would be a better option as the upgrades are a bit too costly. On the other hand, it is a much better option than the $399 EEE PC 4G 701. All in all, its a good buy for the budget conscious. If you can wait, the upcoming Lenove Ideapad S10 is priced the same as the Aspire One and promises to be better.

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5