• 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 Processor
• 320GB Hard Disk Drive
• 3GB DDR2 Memory
• 512MB nVidia GeForce 9300m GS
• 15.4” WXGA (2800×800 pixels) LED screen
• 2x Blu-Ray player
• 802.11n, Bluetooth, HDMI, VGA, eSATA, Line in, Line out, Firewire 400, card reader, 3xUSB, webcam, biometric finger print scanner, air ioniser

Two things really stick out from this roundup, and they have to be the 2x Blu-Ray Player and the Air Ioniser; so let’s look at what these bring to the machine.

Blu-Ray has been around for a couple of years now, and anyone who has a PS3 has been able to play them since they took them out of the box, but until recently Blu-Ray drives in laptops were a commodity only a few could afford (often adding over £300 to the retail price). The N50 sits in the new class of mid spec machines that bring you High Definition entertainment on the move. But there is one big problem with the blu-ray on this machine: the screen is only capable of 720p, not the full fledged 1080p that we have come to expect from new HD televisions. Although this is slightly overcome by the presence of an HDMI port, is does mean you can’t enjoy the full benefits of high definition on the move.

The next is the Air Ioniser, and even I am confused as to its presence on the machine. This is a slight oddity in the computer world, fitting something designed to improve the air quality around the machine. I can only assume that it is designed to improve your work area, but we will wait to see how it stands up to a lecture hall on a hot day. Ah, there is one very special thing I forgot about: this machine uses facial recognition.

Yep, you heard me right, this machine can use facial recognition to log you in to your account. It uses the camera in the top bezel of the screen, and we do have to say that we have had mixed results. Whilst we have had it work, we have more often had it ignore our faces and need us to type in a password or swipe our finger.

But enough of the specs and features of the N50, what I think we all want to know is how it performs in the real world.

If I am to be frank with you, the N50 took what seemed to be an age to boot. At times I thought that it would be a good opportunity to make a cup of tea, whilst waiting for it to boot. It could be that the sample we received was clogged up by lots of other people using it, or it could just be it takes half a lifetime to boot.

Once booted the machine is quite nippy, loading applications with respectable speed. Making the use of it as a primary machine more bearable. However, this quickness was hindered at times by the touch sensitive controls, which would sometimes require 3 or 4 presses to get to work (a pain when trying to mute the music when the phone rings).

Gaming performance with the machine is what I would expect from the spec, it could run mid-specced games (such as Dawn of War 2, Supreme Commander, etc) quite well at medium graphics quality. Although this rules the machine out as a true gaming rig, this is not where it is aimed. More being thrust at the mainstream user, and people who work on the go.

This meaning to its existence can be seen in the battery life stats, with the N50 being able to last just over 3 hours on battery power. For a machine like this, this is brilliant, as it makes it useable on a long train journey, during a lecture, or even in a car. Mix this with the blu-ray drive and you have a good candidate for a machine that will keep you entertained when travelling, or away from the mains.

Unfortunately, we were unable to benchmark the machine, as we spent far too much time trying out the facial recognition if we are honest. So these figures are not here for this machine, but we are quite willing to tell you that they can be seen over here at Register Hardware.

In conclusion, the N50 represents the main stream branch of ASUS’s notebook computers. IT brings you the sort of spec and speed you expect for this price, with the added bonus of a Blu-ray drive and Air ioniser (if it is a bonus). Although this is hindered at times by long boot times, and unresponsive touch controls. It leads to a good all round machine that will be perfect for those who need to work on the go.

All in all, bitcolumns give the Asus N50 a score of 3/5.

Sex on-anodised-aluminium leg.

In my honest opinion (and I have to clearly state it’s my opinion else it will be a lashing) Mac is just so much easier, not to mention sexier and I grant them full credit for pricing the iMac and Macbook ranges how they have over the years. I went Mac in 2008 and never looked back. I love the simplicity, the style, and not a single blue-screen-of-death EVER again.  Being a web-designer and illustrator, the huge iMac screen is a major benefit, too. I no longer have to scroll to view a design fully; but best of all I don’t have to fork out for a 24”LCD separately.
I was fortunate enough to get a Macbook at a hugely discounted price at launch. Back then; the average retail was well over £1000. The Core 2 duo spec would not be anything new, either. But despite Apple being quite last week to bring out dual core in their laptops, they still floored the competition with the style and design, as always. I will be buying myself a new iMac ASAP.

“But you can just install OSX on a PC!”

All seems peachy until you hear or read this old chestnut from an anti-macboy/girl. While this is true, it really doesn’t have much weight. For a start, it’s not all about the operating system. You could put a Ferrari Enzo body kit on a Ford Fiesta; it would still be a Ford Fiesta. Ok ok I admit I am a fanboy to a certain extent. But I can see the flipside of the argument of “Why would I pay 50% more for a Mac when I can get  a desktop just as powerful for half the price? You pretentious ^@!£”$!” and to answer it in a simple way without any bias, no one is forcing you to,  are they? The reason designer things are more expensive is because they look better on you. The reason iMac is more expensive than the latest desktop belter is because it is powerful, simple, full of capabilities straight out of the box and doesn’t look like what it is. I encourage anyone to look at the latest iMac design and tell me it looks like a computer with a straight face.

As of, well.. now, you can pick up a brand spanking new 20” 2.66GHz iMac straight from Apple.com for £949. Seriously. Even the top of the range 24” 3.06Ghz version is a mere-in-comparison £1,799. It seems Apple have responded in the midst of a worldwide eco crunch, and have became a little more competitive with prices.

I guess in a way, people with my opinion (and it seems Apple, too) have given in to all the million billion trillion bleating lambs moaning that they don’t want to pay so much for a Mac, have won. The choice really is yours, but now has never been a better time to come over to Mac for quality, power, simplicity and style; and you can buy one without starving for a month between paydays, so you can’t complain any more.

Unless you want to play games of course, as Mac’s are still about as useful as chocolate teapot’s in that department.

Get used to it, it's not going anywhere.

Founded as an intelligent little search engine by two students at the Stanford University in California in 1998; US$150+ billion corporation in 2009. Sergey Brin and Larry Page certainly made their parents proud. With the days when ‘the internet’ was something nerdy kids talked about at school now a distant memory, everyone has used, or at least heard of Google. It’s presence is undoubtedly the biggest on the Internet when it comes to, well, anything. Search engine, advertising, satellite maps, software, email, videos (youtube.com, Google owned) and many others; Google really knows how to multi-task.  Want something? “Google it.” Indeed.

So how did two students go from bedroom coding to billion-dollar-business in such a relatively small amount of time? Well, simply put, Google gets around 90% of their revenue from advertising and most of their capital from investors. In 2008, Google was worth US$157 billion; only US$3 Billion short of consumer electronics giant Apple’s worth. Now, to put that into perspective for you, Apple have been around for over 40 years making powerful yet simplistic and stylish computers, laptops that fit in envelopes, CD-killing culture phenomenon’s (and in recent years, ones with phones built inside of them that DON’T look like bricks) and much, MUCH ground breaking and innovative stuff. Google has been around for 1/4 of that time. I’ll bet Forrest Gump wishes he waited a couple of years to invest his money in Google instead.

Another way the lads at Google like to earn the pocket money is by buying up fellow Internet Behemoth’s. As most will already be aware, Google bought Youtube.com in 2006 for US$1.6 billion after its exploding popularity; It seems they don’t like it when other websites steal their headline limelight. I would like to predict that Twitter, due to its current booming success will be the next to wear the “Google owned“ tag.

If not, they could always buy bitcolumns in a few years!

The Eee Box specifications:

1.6 GHZ Intel Atom Processor N270
Windows XP Home Operating System
Intel Chipset Motherboard
WLAN WiFi 802.11b/g/n and 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
1GB DDR2 RAM
WLAN: 802.11 b/g/n
80GB or 160GB HDD (Hard Drive)
SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro Storage Slots
DVI-Out/USB×4 (2 in front, 2 in rear) (Input/Output)
223×178×26 mm (Dimensions without stand)
Comes complete with ASUS wired mouse and keyboard
N.B. This system does not come with an optical drive (CD or DVD reader/writer) and an external one must be bought separately if needed.

The Eee Box will retail at around £200. BitColumns best price offer has so far been found at http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148886 for the Black Eee Box, and http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149899 for the White Eee Box.

The Eee Box is an innovative little desktop system. It’s mostly been created for the light PC user, someone who won’t intensively use their desktop system or doesn’t need to do anything intensive with their desktop. It itself is very small, about the size of 2 DVD cases stacked next to each other. This for a desktop PC is astonishing. It is also whisper quiet in operation. You would struggle to hear it even while using it to its maximum potential, despite this fact it doesn’t get very warm either.

The looks: It’s visually very appealing. Our particular test model was the black version which looked very nice and would fit well into any room in the house while looking stylish. The stand that attaches to the bottom of the Eee Box also has a designer look to it, and perhaps even makes the Eee Box look a little bit like a piece of art, but that’s a matter of opinion. Other than this the Eee Box is very minimalistic in looks. It’s just the box, a stylish stand and the WLAN aerial at the back. On the front is the on button, illuminated blue, and a front panel. This panel folds out to reveal the on button, the reset button, the HDD activity light, 2 USB ports and the card reader. The card reader takes a range of formats including SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro so can be useful for permanent or temporary storage. And another last nifty little feature is that if you don’t want the Eee Box to be seen (and I don’t know why you wouldn’t, it looks quite cool) is that it comes complete with an attachment so that it can be attached to the back of a TV or monitor thus turning your TV or monitor into an all-in-one PC. And with the Eee Box being so small and light it becomes essentially invisible and can easily be taken with the TV wherever it goes.

What’s inside: Inside the processor is the same as the processor from the Eee PC 901, saying that it is a very good processor, it handles running programs, games, and the OS very well. The 1GB of RAM is also plenty of memory to keep the system running smoothly and efficiently. The Hard Drive at 80GB or 160GB is plenty of room for a home PC, for a light user. In any case the 160 GB hard drive is sufficient enough for any user. In any case 16GB SD cards are becoming very cheap nowadays and to buy and insert one into your machine as extra permanent data wouldn’t be very expensive. The wireless aerial isn’t too noticeable and is very good. It provides very good wireless connection, found in our testing, and finds connections, connects to them and stays connected very well. Some of the best wireless connections I’ve seen in a while. 4 USB ports is sufficient enough, 1 for a keyboard, 1 for a mouse and 2 others left for other USB devices, such as a printer or a USB flash drive etc. By now everyone should know what Windows XP is like, and it runs very nicely on this machine, having no problems at all. Having said that though any distribution of Linux would have run very much better and would’ve used the resources much more efficiently, which is why I favour the Eee PC with the Linux on. Also if it had Linux on instead the price would probably be less as ASUS would not have to pay for the Software License for Microsoft’s Windows XP (compare the prices of the Eee PC with Windows XP to those with Linux on). Having said that…

The Express Gate: The Eee Box features a feature called the Express Gate. This is where the Eee Box boots in 7 seconds (that’s right 7 seconds!) to a splash screen where the user can then access a few basic features very quickly, such as web browser, instant messenger client and some others. This will then load the user into a VERY basic Linux operating system which has the basic features such as web browser, messaging client, system options etc. available, if the suer just wants to use these basic features. However if the suer wants a word processor or any other features they must then go to boot to OS in the options menu. This Linux operating system is very basic keep in mind. Very basic options are available. It is quite easy to use, because it is so basic, however we did have problems with the wireless configuration to begin with, though these were eventually solved. It works quite well, but as we said it’s very simple so very hard to flaw. Windows can then be booted from here without having to restart the PC and can be found under the options menu.

Performance: We ran a few tests on the Eee Box to test the performance of it and we can say it performs quite well. The hardware inside isn’t top specced hardware, as can be seen from the price, however it is sufficient and works very well for what it is. It runs the word processor included with the OS (OpenOffice) very well and loads it up quite quickly. This goes for all the OpenOffice software. All other applications such as web browsers, file manager and media players all ran very well on the hardware and the system didn’t struggle with any of it. It even handled running multiple applications quite well for the hardware it was using. We then tested out a well know MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) called Guild Wars. We installed this on the system and ran it with minimum graphics. The game worked perfectly. SO we decided to up-step the graphics, it ran fine. Eventually we ran the game at top graphical mode, with the shadows and shaders turned down as they take up a lot of system resources and the game was working very well at high graphics mode (with the shadows and shaders turned down) with minimal (if any) lag. So the graphics and performance of this system are very adequate for playing mid-level PC games. We at bitcolumns were very impressed by these results.

So in conclusion we thought the Eee Box is a bargain! A very good catch for the money you pay for it. Only £200 for a very small, stylish, whisper-quiet and all-rounder PC that can be used for any day to day task and, as we found out from our tests, can play some mid-range games very competently. This would be recommended to: those of you who don’t use a desktop very much, for example you use a laptop mostly, and just need one as a base unit, to those of you who are very casual PC users and so don’t want to dish our £500+ for a PC, this is perfect and to parents for a child’s first computer, or for a teenagers computer as they are cheap, good build, small and have a decent specification. Overall another satisfying product from ASUS, cheap, stylish and small but best of all simplistic!

Score: 4.5/5

2G network
2.4″TFT Display (240x320px)
350mb Built in Memory
MicroSD card slot
Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/i)
Bluetooth
SMS, MMS, Email, IM
Games

But with some nice extras:

Linux Operating System
5MP Kodak Camera (autofocus, xenon flash, 15fps video)
TV Out
Direct upload to Kodak Gallery, over Wi-Fi

First impressions of the phone were great, with a sleek and stylish design with a great mix of black and purple. The camera has a very useful shutter, protecting the lense and used to activate the camera software.

The menu is well laid out, in the traditional Grid found on most Motorola phones. The icons are high quality, and much better than those seen on the recent Razr phones, with all features easy to find and use.

The most time was spent, as expected, with the camera. The pictures we took (which can be seen at the bottom of this page) were very clear, and with good colour depth. The camera uses an autofocus feature to get the best possible picture with point and click. Afterwards, you can apply Kodak processing to improve the picture, with the choice of either saving or cancelling depending on which you prefer.

Unfortunately, we were unable to get the full feel for the phone, but from what we have seen so far it is definitely a competent device.

Model: Motorola Motozine ZN5
Carrier: O2
Typical Price: £250

Apple have released new 13 inch Macbooks and 15 inch Macbook Pros at their release event today. The update brings the design of the notebooks in line with the iMac, as well as adding some groundbreaking new features.

These features include:

• Etched Glass Touchpad (which also acts as mouse button)
• Side mounted LED Battery level indicator
• Mini Displayport
• Removeable Battery and Hard Drive
• Macbook Pro Only: Dual Graphics Cards (on board Nvidia 9400 + Discrete Nivdia 9600)

Both are available for ordering today (Tuesday 14th October), with the following pricepoints:

Macbook starts at £929.00

Macbook Pro starts at £1,369.00

Well there’s the list of bitcolumns’ 10 most essential gadgets for students. If you own/purchase any of the items on this list why not leave a comment and share your views? We’re always happy to see what you think.

Thanks for reading

Based entirely on open source code, the premise of Chrome is to make a more secure and accessible browser for a new generation of the web.

Features include:

• Incognito Mode (No history, cookies, or traces are saved)
• Seperate process per tab (if one tab crashes, the program does not)

But one problem has appeared in the End User Licence Agreement, which states that any content youy create using the Chrome browser can be used by Google.

If you are interested in downloading the Beta, it is available here.

With there being several different versions of this laptop, the features vary, but this particular model includes these:
Windows Vista Home Basic operating system
3.2 hours of battery life (Bapco MobileMark 2007 battery)
8-in-1 media card reader
Intel X3100 Integrated Graphics card
4 USB 2.0 ports
DVD RW drive
Built-In 802.11b/g wireless

Speaking as someone who has been using Window’s XP up until now, the laptop’s operating system does take some getting used to. As a whole it’s a very competent system and even the Basic package comes with everything you’ll need for student life – including the full Microsoft Works, giving you the word processor for those 10,000 word dissertations and spreadsheets for keeping that budget up-to-date! Furthermore, Vista’s ‘Welcome Centre’ is an invaluable help in so far as getting started on your new laptop – walking you through the easy transfer of files from an old computer and getting you connected to the net quickly and efficiently. You can even customise the side-bar to host a whole range of gadgets specific to your own needs. However Vista does have its downsides. It isn’t always the most user-friendly system. One odd quirk I’ve found is that the process of saving documents has been changed considerably since XP and, in my opinion, overcomplicated. On the other hand this is just one of a few small quirks which don’t really affect the laptop’s performance, but just take a little getting used to. On other problem which has been reported with Vista (although I’m yet to experience this problem for myself) is that the operating system takes such considerable effort for laptops to run, that it can severely impact the computer’s performance in terms of speed and the use of multiple applications.

In so far as the graphics go on the Inspiron 1525, opinions are mixed. The 15.4 inch screen and X3100 Integrated graphics card combine to really do justice to those stunning holiday photos and make for excellent viewing if you’re watching films on the laptop. So from what I’ve personally seen the graphics on this computer are excellent. However, I’m no gamer – and reviews of the X3100 graphics card itself in relation to gaming potential aren’t so enthusiastic. It seems that this card isn’t up to the challenge when it comes to games with seriously in-depth graphics and can produce a very slow frame rate. It seems that this graphics card has more to show for itself when used in conjunction with XP than with Vista – so if you’re a gamer, it might be worth looking into something with a different graphics card or operating system.

As for the sound, its nothing extra special, but its not bad either. The speaker is one long strip located above the keyboard / below the screen and its output can be controlled by the touchpad beneath it. The touchpad allows the user to change the volume and mute as well as controlling the media player, with options to change track (or scenes, if you’re watching a movie), play/pause and stop. At first this can be odd to get a feel for, as you can find yourself constantly reaching for the turning dial on the side of the laptop to change the volume, only to find it isn’t there – however, it doesn’t take long before you can enjoy the novelty of your shiny new touchpad! As for the sound itself, it is of a very good quality. Although, like most laptops, not very loud, it does have very good clarity and I’m more than happy to listen to music and watch films without having to plug in external speakers. Furthermore, the laptop does also have a built-in microphone – the quality of sound produced by which I was happily surprised by!

Other features of the Inspiron 1525 include a very reasonable battery life. At 3.2 hours it outstrips many other laptops within its price range, most of which seem only to last for up to 2-2.5 hours. As with most computers it is also possible to change the power settings so as to consume less energy and make that battery life stretch even further. The 8-in-1 media card reader is an excellent little space-saver, conveniently located at the bottom of the laptop’s front and supports several of those commonly used media cards such as SD camera cards. Plus it comes with a card-shaped piece of plastic that slots into place when the reader is not in-use to help keep out the dust and such. The laptop also comes with 4 USB ports (which I find particularly useful and convenient!) and a DVD re-write drive, as is standard for the majority of products on the market today.  The drive is not capable of supporting HD, but considering the youth of HD technology, most (sensible) people won’t consider that to be a serious flaw in a £339 laptop!

All-in-all I’m very happy with the Dell Inspiron 1525. It does have a few small drawbacks, for example certain usability issues, but these just take some getting used to, and some graphics issues – but those are only really drawbacks depending on what you’ll be using your laptop for. It is also worth noting that you can buy this laptop with Window’s Vista Home Premium, and with a higher-power processor and a greater capacity memory through Dell’s own website, although this is perhaps not for most of us ‘financially challenged’ students as it does, of course, mean paying more. I, however, am more than happy with the lower spec version: its still a fantastic little laptop with a good memory and processor, decent sound and graphics, a great battery life and a sleek, stylish look. Gamers; this laptop probably isn’t for you if you’re hung up on mind-blowing graphics – but for anyone else the Dell Inspiron 1525 is not only an excellent laptop, but also great value for money!

Score: 4/5

There were four main complaints against the original iPhone. These were:

• No 3G
• No GPS
• No MMS
• No Copy and Paste

With the iPhone 3G, Apple have remedied two of these problems. The most obvious of these is the inclusion of 3G and HSDPA (High Speed Data Packet Access – lets just say its mega fast, allowing up to 7.2Mb mobile broadband). These technologies allow the iPhone to browse the internet at blistering speeds, and even download videos such as the now famous, 6-minute-long ‘Evolution of Dance’ from Youtube in under 20 seconds!

The second new inclusion is that of GPS. The location information from this can be used in many ways. The first is with Google Maps, which can now ‘lock-on’ to your current position, and then tell you how close you are to your search. Futhermore, the camera application can now geo-tag pictures – telling you exactly where you were when you took the picture. Other uses include social networking applications, which show you how close your friends are, and how close you are to their homes, etc.

Apple made another major change this time round, the price. In a massive drop from the £269 price of the original 8GB phone, the most you will now pay for an iPhone is £159 (excluding contract) – and thats for a 16GB device.

So, what exactly do you get for this new, lower price? Surprisingly, quite a lot:

• 3.5″ Touchscreen
• 8 or 16GB of Memory
• GPRS, 3G, Wi-Fi connectivity
• GPS
• Bluetooth (Voice only)
• Loudspeaker
• iPod
• 2 megapixel camera
• iTunes, App Store
• e-mail, internet browsing

and much more…

One new feature we have yet to mention is the App Store. This has been introduced in the iPhone 2.0 software and allows you to purchase and download applications for the iPhone wirelessly. The best bit is, if the App is less than 10 Megabytes in size, you can download it whilst on the move, even without a Wi-fi connection. Popular apps include:

• iPint (FREE!)
• Facebook (FREE!)
• WordPress (FREE!)
• Palringo (Instant Messaging Software. Includes: Aim, Yahoo!, MSN) (FREE!)
• Phit (Game produced by Armor Games) (£1.59)

Many more are available, from games to learning aids, and music to utilities.

So the pros include a clear, responsive screen; quick and easy 3G connection; GPS; good sound quality when making calls; and a brilliant spellcheck on the software keyboard.

But as with all phones, there are the downsides.

The phone only houses a 2.0 Megapixel camera, which produces pictures which, while they are of a good quality when viewed on the iPhone screen, will degrade quickly if enlarged. And with no MMS or Bluetooth File Transfer, you can only really share the pictures via e-mail or facebook.

Furthermore, some apps are US only. This is no more noticeable than with the eBay application. Although advertised throughout the UK site as a Top App for some time, it transpires that the App is only availabe in the USA, which has lead to some major dissappointment.

The extreme shine on the back, as well as looking brilliant, does a lot to attract scratches and marks. Within weeks of owning the phone, we have noticed an accummulation of small scratches. Though they do not affect the functionality of the phone, it can be a frustration on such an asthetically pleasing device.

One major reported problem seems to be with the 3G reception of the phone. Although we have not experienced any difficulties that match the description, it is reported that the phone can drop out of 3G signal with no warning, and will say there is no 3G signal where other phones are fast to connect. We are unsure if this is a problem only in other countires, or if many are finding this true in the UK as well. (If you experience this, please let us know).

Overall the iPhone 3G continues Apple’s tradition of bringing a different and refreshing approach to a standard product, but with the bugs that are currently present only time can tell if the iPhone will prove itself. Apple hopes that all major bugs will be removed with the release of iPhone 2.1 software in September. We will keep you posted on any changes or improvements as the iPhone evolves.

Score: 4/5