Computers Archives

Best Laptops Under $400 Dollars

ASUS Eee PC 1005HA - This 10.1″ inch PC which is best laptops for college students is priced at $356.97. With a battery life of 10.5 hours and the 1.66Hz processor Intel Atom, this is indeed a best laptop for college students.

Further specifications of these laptops for students are as explained below:

  • RAM 1GB DDR2
  • 1 x SODIMM Slot for a max of 2GB Max;
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • The Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n;
  • 160GB SATA (5400 RPM) Hard Drive
  • Operating System Windows XP Home,
  • 10GB Free Eee Storage
  • 10.1-inch WSVGA with 1024×600 LCD Display
  • 2.9 pounds
  • 10.3 x 7 x 1 inches

Acer Aspire AS1410-8913 - This is one of the best laptops under 400 dollars, priced at $399.97. It is 11.6″ in size and has the best components integrated within it. Following are the technical specifications of these laptops for students:

  • Processor is Intel Core2 Solo 1.4GHz ULV SU3500
  • 250GB of SATA Hard Drive
  • 2048MB DDR2 with 667MHz Memory,
  • Crystal Eye Webcam from Acer
  • 5100 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N from the Intel WiFi Link, 1 HDMI port
  • Home Premium Windows Vista (SP 1) Operating system, 6-cell (4400 mAh) Li-ion Battery
  • Acer CrystalBrite 11.6″ HD WXGA LED-backlit Display
  • 3.1 pounds
  • Media Accelerator 4500MHD Intel Graphics
  • Dimensions are 8 x 11.2 x 1.2 inches

Dell Inspiron Mini 1011 - The Dell Inspiron is one of the best series of laptops and it is wonderful that these laptops under $400 are quite affordable. They are priced at $329.99 and they come with exceptional characters and their specifications are explained below:

  • Processor is Intel N270 1.6GHz Atom
  • 1GB Memory OS
  • Windows 7 Starter
  • Hard Drive is 160GB 5400RPM
  • 10.1″ Display and the Integrated Media Accelerator Graphics from Intel
  • 5 pounds
  • Battery life is around 8 Hours 8 Minutes
  • Dimensions are 9.4 x 3.7 x 14.4 inches

Acer AOD250 - These are perfect laptops for students and this comes in affordable price at $342.99. This laptop under $400 has the following specifications:

  • 1.66GHz Processor Intel N280 Atom
  • Single Channel Memory 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM
  • Hard Drive (5400RPM) 250GB SATA
  • Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Acer InviLink 802.11b/g/Draft-N
  • Operating System is Windows 7 Starter
  • 6-cell (5800 mAh) Li-ion Battery
  • 10.1″ WSVGA with LED Display by Acer CrystalBrite
  • Media Accelerator 950 which is Integrated Intel Graphics
  • 2.8 pounds
  • 8 x 10.2 x 1 inches in dimension

Folio 100 Android Tablet by Toshiba

folio 100

The Toshiba Folio 100 media tablet offers a rich multimedia experience by including support for Flash 10.1, WLAN and Bluetooth.

Toshiba Europe GmbH presented its new media tablet – FOLIO 100 based on the Android OS. The 10.1-inch personal media tablet is for people looking for a 100% portable and versatile device that is always with them as part of their digital life. The FOLIO 100 comes with a wide range of applications and services for media, web browsing and social networking and offers a rich multimedia experience. Easy and fun to use, the FOLIO 100 has a high quality graphic interface developed by Toshiba for Android 2.2 (Froyo). The tablet PC will be released in the last quarter of 2010 in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Offering a range of connectivity options, the FOLIO 100 is equipped with an SD card slot, HDMI connector, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a Mobile Broadband (3G) version will follow soon. It has many useful preinstalled applications such as: Opera Mobile (web browser), FBReader (e-book reader), Document To Go (office suite), Evernote (notes), Adobe Flash 10.1 and Fring (an application which allows video calls to family and friends with the built-in webcam).

Toshiba Market Place

The media tablet also contains the Toshiba Market Place, a service that offers access to various download options for multimedia content, services, and applications. The Music Place of 7Digital offers access to one of the most comprehensive music libraries and allows synchronization with different devices. The Radio Place provides access to IP radio services. Through App Place, users can also download applications compatible with Folio 100.

Being 14mm thin and weighing 760g, the FOLIO 100 has a powerful processor (Nvidia Tegra 2) which provides the ideal balance between high performance and low battery. Its battery with over seven hours of operating time, allows the tablet to work nearly for a whole day without recharging. The instant-on mode allows the tablet to be able to boot up and be ready for use within 30 seconds. With storage capacity of up to 16GB, users can store music, videos, photos, e-mails and other data or to expand the storage capacity with an SD card.

Toshiba has already created a one-stop destination (www.toshibatouch.eu) for developers where they can find support for FOLIO100 application development.

Cisco Cius Tablet PC

Cisco Systems has recently announced its new tablet PC, thereby targeting the market that Apple’s iPad dominates for the moment. The Cisco Cius, will use the Android operating system from Google, while its battery life will be able to last for eight hours.

According to the company, Cisco Cius testing will begin in 2010, and the device will be available to consumers in 2011. The tablet weighs a little more than a pound, while its screen is seven inches, in contrast to the 9.7-inch screen of iPad. Moreover, Cius will have two cameras, a high resolution in front and a 5 Megapixels camera at the back.

Cius will provide email, instant messaging, internet access with Wi-Fi and 4G. Cisco said that the device is designed to provide professionals the ability to create and share content from any location. “This platform can change the way health professionals treat their patients, merchants provide services to their customers or how universities provide education to their students” said Tony Bates, Senior Vice President of Cisco.

Last month, Dell announced the upcoming release of its own tablet PC called Streak, which will also use Android as operating system. It seems that competition for the Apple’s iPad is heating up in the tablet PC market.

New all-in-one Apple iMac computers

Apple has renewed its all-in-one iMac computer series by introducing the new Magic Trackpad mouse, the new 27″ LED Cinema Display and the 12-core processor on Mac Pro.

The new iMac computers are now equipped with Intel processors Core i3, Core i5 Dual Core and the four-core i7. All processors have an integrated controller of memory for immediate access to the system memory, allowing the new iMac to take full advantage of the faster 1333 Mhz RAM.

The new and discrete ATI Radeon HD graphics card gives high quality graphics to satisfy the demands of 3D gaming and professional applications. The new iMac’s display, based on IPS technology, gives a broad picture angle of 178 degrees. The SD card slot now supports the standard SDXC utilizing the latest high-capacity storage cards. Those who prefer the 27-inch iMac have the choice of getting the SSD storage media with capacity of 256GB as a primary or secondary storage medium. The iMac SSD supports up to 215 MB/s data transfer rate for faster booting of the computer and its applications. All new iMac are available with built-in Mac OS X Snow Leopard advanced operating system, and include the iLife software suite, which offers the ability to manage photos, create movies and music composition and learning.

The new Magic Trackpad consists of a glass multi-touch surface and aluminium body and offers the users of Desktop Mac systems the same interactive experience that users of portable Macs experience. It is wireless and allows the user a series of innovative moves such as smooth scrolling, easy zoom-in or zoom-out on images, image rotation option with two fingers, etc.

For business users, Apple announced its new generation of Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro is now equipped with up to 12 core processors, incorporating the latest generation of quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors resulting in up to 50% greater performance than the previous generation. They have the brand new ATI graphics cards, the choice of up to 4 SSD storage media with capacity 512GB each, thereby achieving a great performance and great expandability that will satisfy the most demanding users.

Finally, Apple has recently presented the new 27-inch LED Cinema Display with outstanding resolution 2560 X 1440. With the built-in iSight video camera, built-in 49W speaker, microphone as well as a Mag Safe connector for charging the laptop, the new Led Cinema Display is the perfect companion for any laptop and Desktop Mac system.

Note also that all Apple iMac computers are manufactured almost entirely from recyclable materials that are environmentally friendly.

How to make Firefox Faster

If Mozilla Firefox is your favorite web browser, read the following tips on how to speed it up.

There are a lot of advantages of using Firefox. Its supporters argue that it is the safer and most versatile from all browsers that are currently operating on the Internet. Of course, even if many people are fanatic of the “fox”, the truth is that sometimes it’s a  little slow especially if someone has 4 windows opened simultaneously with 20 tabs each. Yet there is a way to make your favorite browser really fast. To do so you would have to tweak a few values found in Firefox config.

Older and more experienced users are certainly familiar with the process, but even if you are a novice user, you need not worry as the instructions we will give below are simple and you can follow them without any problem. All you have to remember is to note the changes you have made (in case something goes wrong and you want to reset) and also to restart Firefox when finished.

Reduce the size of RAM used by Firefox for the cache.

1. Type “about: config” (without the quotation marks) in the address bar of the browser.
2. Find the value “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer
3. Change the number to “0″ (zero)

Reduce significantly the time needed for the Firefox to “load” a page.

1. Type “about: config” (without quotation marks) in the address bar of the browser.
2. Find and change the following:

Find the “network.http.pipelining” and change it from “false” to “true”.
Find the “network.http.proxy.pipelining” and change it from “false” to “true”
Find the “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” and change the number to 10.

In this way, Firefox will make 10 “load requests” at each site thus significantly reducing the time it takes for each page to open.

3. Finally, right-click anywhere in the “config” page and select New-> Integer. Name the value “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and put the value to “0″ (zero).

If you are using an ADSL connection, you will see how your pages ‘load’ a lot faster now.

Reduce the size of RAM used by Firefox at 10MB when it is minimized.

1. Type about: config in the address bar and press Enter.
2. Right Click anywhere on the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that appears enter “config.trim_on_minimize“. And press Enter.
4. Now select True and press Enter.
5. Now Restart Firefox.

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