Computers and technology continue to fascinate me. I find it absolutely amazing how fast how fast things the computer world has evolved in such a short time! No doubt about it – technology has become my chief passion. I’ve made it my mandate to highlight the technology available now and keep a keen eye on future.
Acer Aspire AS5251-1805 is Fast & Efficient
We’re digging through Amazon.com’s top laptops. The first one we looked at (the eMachines eME527-2537) was a $279 priced budget laptop. Let’s move on down to the second laptop in their top ten list.
Here’s the #2 Laptop on Amazon.com
Acer Aspire AS5251-1805. This $379.00 priced Acer will handle basic functions as well as some games. It’s got a 15.6” LCD, AMD (2.2 Single Core) processor, 3GB of (DD3) RAM, and 250GB hard drive. The ATI (Radeon HD 4250) graphics card has just enough power to handle multitasking, everyday computing, and only the basic games. Don’t buy this laptop if you’re into any modern games as it won’t handle it. One of the most notable features is the Multi-Gesture Touchpad that allows you to pinch, flick and swirl while browsing. DVD drive, Wireless N, 3 USB ports. Weighs 5.74 pounds and gets about 3.5 hours battery life from the 6 cell battery. (more…)
eMachines eME527-2537: Amazon’s Top Laptop
One things for sure, Amazon.com is certainly doing a lot of things right. They officially launched in 1994, initially turned a profit in 2001, and have grown so fast they they’re now America ’s largest online retailer. This wikipedia article indicates that Amazon has three times the revenue of the 2nd running up – Staples, Inc. Most everyone knows that Amazon originally started an online bookstore, but later diversified into CD’s & DVD’s, MP3’s, video games, and all type types of computer hardware and electronics. Of course, Amazon doesn’t only ship throughout the States; a 2009 survey found that Amazon was the UK ’s favorite music and video retailer, and third overall retailer. (more…)
Email is dead. Long Live Email!
I had a pretty interesting conversation with someone yesterday with a middle aged gentleman by the name of Bill. Bill explained to me that in his profession he consistently uses email throughout the day to communicate. He uses email frequently because is the easiest way to stay in touch with clients, associates, and friends. No surprise there. I use email during the day as well. I’ve actually noticed that in the last year people in my progression (I’m a recruiter in the transportation industry) use email more than they did last year. I’ve found that if I leave a voicemail for a client and shoot an email they chances that they’ll respond are at least 50% greater than if I just left a voicemail. Voicemail is, more or less, becoming obsolete. It seems to be that people sort of despise voicemail. Email is where it’s at!
“Dad. Email is dead.” Bill’s son told him two weeks ago.
Bill’s son is 25 and works as an internet marketing guru. From our conversation, it sounds like this son uses everything but email to communicate: Text Messages, Twitter, Skype, IM, etc. Since he rarely uses email to communicate, he considers it a dead communication medium. To this son, email is old school, old fashioned, obsolete. He probably thinks that we all should get a life and start using everything else but email. To him, email is the equivalent of today’s snail mail.
This son can think whatever he wants. Let me tell you the truth. Email is not dead.
Email is alive and kicking. I’ve been sitting behind my desk all morning shooting emails to clients and candidates. In my world (and in most businesses), email is still the preferred communication medium. People prefer to answer emails long before they (gasp) attempt to call people. Email is the bread and butter of our business lives. Without it, we’d all be forced to (gasp!) leave voicemails.
Email is dead? Not really. Long live email (until we all start using Skype).
Cutting Back on Cable & Satellite TV
I just heard this article on NPR explaining that, for the first time, Americans are cutting back on Cable and Satellite paid TV services. Pretty interesting story. During the article they interview Andre Reynolds, a guy who’s just about to pull the plug. His contract is up and he’s considering his options. It’s a choice between either A) Paying $72 for cable TV and B) Paying $9.99 for Hulu Plus. The fact that unemployment is still high, homes are still foreclosing, and, let’s just admit it…this Great Recession is still going on!!! All these things are causing people to cut back in every way possible. Who wants to pay $72 if can you get the same quality on Hulu Plus for $10? (more…)
The Fight is On With Craigslist
Most everybody knows about and uses Craiglist. What a lot people don’t know is that they have a very profitable adult services section. In this NPR story Several state attorneys general are calling on Craigslist to get rid of its adult services section. They say the company isn’t doing enough to screen out ads that promote prostitution and child trafficking. NPR’s Melissa Block talks to Chris Koster, state attorney general for Missouri.
It’s a pretty huge deal. I’m the kind of guy who avoids this kind of stuff since I think it poisons the mind. Hopefully the case will case Craiglist will change their tune. It would certainly lessen the filth on the internet.
ASUS G Series G73JH-A1: Great for the Traveling Gamer
It seems like the most popular gaming laptops are one that have large LCD’s. Take a jaunt over Amazon.com and you’ll find the ASUS G Series G73JH-A1; a popular beast of a gaming/media editing machine. Gamers agree that it’s got lot power to play with – it easily handles any games at the highest settings. The laptop also packs plenty of power to handle intense media editing, do high resolution renderings, and fly with anything else you throw at it.
Everybody says the 17.3” LCD screen is absolutely beautiful. It’s 1920 x 1080 resolution plays games and movies at full high def / blue ray making everything look fabulous. The Intel Core i7 720QM CPU is quad-core, but each core has two threads so it’s like having 8 cores in the CPU. The high end ATI HD 5870 video card is pushes games to their absolute max. The video card itself has a 128 bit memory bus and uses 1G of GDDR5 memory…so you know that can pretty much handle any sort of beating you can dish out.
The ASUS G Series G73JH-A1 comes with 8GB of memory, 500GB (7200rpm) hard drive. On the connectivity side it’s got Gigabit LAN, WLAN, wireless N. Ports: 4 USB (2.0), HDMI and VGA port. 8-in-1 media card reader and 2.0 megapixel webcam. Overall weight is 8 pounds. The 8 cell battery lasts about 1 to 1.5 hours.
You can buy the ASUS G73JH-A1 at Amazon.com for $1,639.70.
User Opinions
The ASUS G73JH-A1 now has 55 reviews with a 4 star rating at Amazon.com. Here’s a summary of the pros and cons:
Positives > Most Amazon buyers love this laptop. Skimming through the reviews section, you’ll find many comments like “This is personally the fastest laptop that I’ve ever used,” “overall an excellent laptop,” and “this is a beast of a laptop.” Most reviewers are pleasantly surprised as the fast speed of applications and games. The feel of the laptop is exceptional, and speed and abilities exceed any other most reviewers have used. Asus is a maker of high quality components and the ASUS G73JH-A1 is no expectation!
No doubt, the ASUS G73JH-A1 produces some formidable gaming performance. It runs Crysis on very high settings 1920×1080 with 4x anti aliasing very well. It runs Crysis on very high settings 1920×1080 with 4x anti aliasing very well. Runs all my games amazing. Gamers indicate that it plays CODWAW, CODMW2, BioShock, FS10, Call Of Juarez, and LFD2 at very playable frame rates with settings and resolut8ion set high. Other games like EVE Online, D&D Online, Everquest 2, and Mass Effect 2 play at ultra high settings. For those who play World of Warcraft, it runs decently on max settings at 1920 x 1080 resolution.
Some reviewers indicate that the ASUS G73JH-A1 is truly a desktop replacement. Besides stellar gaming performance, it’s high end components (Intel Core i7 720QM CPU, 8 GB of RAM, ATI’s 5870 GPU) create very quick high resolution renderings in AutoDesk, RhinoCEROS, and SolidWorks.
For what this laptop has inside, the ASUS G73JH-A1 is has a cooling system that keep it remarkably cool. The intake and the two huge exhaust vents out the back make for a very cool user experience when the laptop is on a desk. Even when playing games like Crysis, TF2, HL2, L4D2, ect, for hours on end, the heat is barely noticeable as the user, and certainly doesn’t overheat the thing.
The ASUS G73JH-A1 has a clean and simple design. The rubberized coating feels great, so much better than the glossy finger print magnets. The speakers are crisp, and loud. The on-board speaker is loud and great for watching movies or listening to music on the go. No need to buy speakers. The screen is clear and bright, the backlit keyboard is nice and produces solid keystrokes, and the multitouch trackpad is nice and functions well. The backlit keys are really nice when using late at night. It works as advertised out of the box, all the devices, I/O ports, keyboard, etc. works with no issues. The outer chassis has a nice feel to it and resists finger prints.
Negatives > There aren’t too many negatives with the ASUS G73JH-A1. The main issues are that the manual is basically non-existent, the hard drive can sometimes be the bottleneck of the system, and the left/right trackpad buttons are somewhat stiff unless you push on the very outer edge.
You will get about 2 hours of battery life if you use the power-saving settings…that’s not too much. However, this is a high performance 17” laptop, what did you really expect?
The screen is great but on a completely black screen you can see the light is brighter around the edges. The laptop comes with two drive bays, but only one drive caddy. If you want to install a second drive you will need to engineer your own caddy, since it appears Asus is not yet selling them.
The laptop comes with way too much stuff installed that you don’t need. Once I got it I just re-installed the OS to clear everything off. Keep in mind, they don’t provide you with a Windows 7 disk. If you don’t have adequate cooling the video card can random crash during games. One reviewer had this issue and solved it when he bought an active cooling pad. It’s overall largeness is somewhat of a negative. It can be hard to find a bag big enough to hold it.
How We’re Browsing the Web Differently
Just read an interesting post from Wired entitled: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet. The authors of the article (Chris Anderson and Michael Worlf) explains that these days we use the internet much differently than we did in 1990. When the internet was in its infancy we spent most our time using browsers to surf the web. It was simple: you just opened Google (or whatever search engine you liked), searched for a term, and immediately get results. Back then it was amazing to quickly get huge qualities of information with a single click. (more…)
HP’s Envy 14 is Vastly Improved
Joanna Stern (from Engadget) posted an interesting review of the HP Envy 14. This new version of the HP Envy is vastly improved from the the original Envy systems that HP introduced back in 2009. What you’ve got here in a 14.5” LCD machine that weighs 5.2 pounds, has a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-450M processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. It’s video card is the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 GPU with 1GB of VRAM. It’s got two USB ports, an eSATA / USB combo port, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and two headphone jacks, one of which double as a mic jack as well. (more…)
Lenovo Y550P is Newegg’s Second Most Popular Laptop
Let’s take another dip into the Newegg.com pool just to see what we can see. Just a quick swim on over to their Laptops / Notebook’s section reveals that the ASUS N61JQ-X1 is still their top-selling Laptop. No surprise there. We were pretty impressed at that machine in our review back in April. (more…)
Wow! A Mini Pocket Sized PC!
Checkout this little baby! It’s actually a pocket sized 
tiny PCs called the Stealth LPC-100. The thing has about the same size and thickness of a thick paperback book (4.0″ x 6.1″ x 1.45″) and weighs about 1.2 pounds. Inside you get a choice of processors (either Core 2 Duo or Dual Core Celeron), Intel GM45 mobile chipset with integrated graphics, up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a hard drive up to 500GB. The whole thing is eveloped in a rugged aluminum case that should last a long time. (more…)
