VC’s Techie CockTail

This week, I was able to spend some time with my friend’s laptop a Compaq Presario V3777TU . Nowadays the “Value for Money” of laptops has been HOT in India with all major brands competing in the price range between 32000/- to 37000/- bucks but if you can stretch it a bit you can even have a Sony VAIO starting at 40,000 bucks. Before my thoughts on the Compaq laptop here is the specs at a glance,

• Intel Core Duo 1.73 GHz processor (Oops …didn’t note the processor number)
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 14.1″ WXGA Display
• 120GB HD
• DVD Burner
• WLAN, Bluetooth, 5 in 1 Card Reader, USB, Firewire ports
• Windows Vista Basic

As my current notebook is the Lenovo Y410, I will compare it with this compaq in certain areas. First & foremost the finish of the laptop is sleek & stylish with a black glossy look with a wavelike pattern at the top of the lid. The finish is more appealing than my Ideapad but the hinge and overall solidity is better in my Ideapad. The keypad area is finished with a black matte look and sufficiently spaced but according to my friend the Y410 was bit better for typing. The 14.1″ WXGA screen was bright with good color reproduction.

The Core Duo processor was OK for all the mundane office work like e-mailing, word & spreadsheet processing and lightweight multimedia functions. The 1.3 megapixel webcamera was good with the bundled Cyberlink You Cam software pity that my Y410 doesn’t have a preloaded software for using the webcam. Even though the Y410 is supposed to have sub-woofers & all (honestly i haven’t tried it yet), the JBL speakers of the compaq was louder.

Connectivity shouldn’t be a problem as I’ve mentioned the various options available in the specs column. The DVD burner should suffice for reading / writing CD’s and DVD’s. I didn’t have enough time to test its battery strength, but at a price of 38,000 bucks (by the way 2000 bucks costlier than Iphone’s official price in India) it is worth a buy for people looking at a basic laptop with enough power to do all their regular PC stuff.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Laptop

Hello Techies !!! Hope July is off to a wonderful start for all

One of the problems in a town like mine is the dust, and for a gadget like laptop dust can be a major enemy to the laptop’s longevity and error free running. The worst time with my previous Acer Travel Mate was the TFT screen, a combination of small greasy spots, dust & finger smudges made it a mess. First of all I had a soft lint cloth, a new paint brush to wipe and brush all the dust from the laptop screen and keyboard area. Then I got this iKlear thru my friend in America…and cleaning with this made my screen better .

But as I changed to my Lenovo Y410, the first thing I did was to get a screen protector. So on my last trip to Chennai, I went to Landmark, Spencers Plaza and got me a ScratchGard screen protector for 999/- bucks (23$). The shopkeeper after a brief struggle did a good job of sticking it or people with a certain level of skill and patience can stick it by themselves. But now i dont dread about my laptop’s screen, its easy to clean and the screen maintains its brightness and clarity. So its been a worthwhile investment.

The next thing I thought of buying was a USB vacuum cleaner, but after a extensive research on the web and from people who used it I came to a conclusion that its actually doesnt serve the purpose of cleaning keyboards. But a decent alternative in the web was to use a hairdryer in cool mode to get the dirt out.

So my laptop maintenance kit now has a lint cloth, a paint brush and some laptop cleaning kits to do the job. If you have any more ideas please share your thoughts here ….

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Laptop

Just after I bought my Ideapad Y410 , my friend asked me my views on a budget laptop but that doesnt make many compromises on the performance front. I suggested acer 4710/4720 or the Dell 1525. He somehow preferred Dell to Acer and after some discussions he customized and ordered it online. I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews on the new 1525 series and this week I got to see it in his home. His configuration is closer to mine with his Inspiron powered by a slightly better Core 2 Duo T5500 processor, 2 GB DDR2 RAM and loaded with Windows Vista Premium Edition.

One of the pleasant things about the 1525 is its slim profile and the blue matte finish ( there are various color options ) . The 15″ widescreen was nice and pleasant to look at but it does make the laptop look much bigger compared to my 14.1″ Y410. But on the downside the build quality was not as robust as the lenovo Y410. And the keypad was quite spacious and nice to type. And his landing price at 35,000 Rs. (800$) was almost 200$ cheaper than my Y410 making it a nice Value for Money Buy.

I wasn’t able to check the audio quality but according to him it was OK. Even though it has no dedicated graphics card, the windows aero experience was smooth and nice, making me think whether I should upgrade my vista to the next level. And since he had stripped all the junk programs from start-up, the machine booted much faster compared to mine.

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Dell, Laptop

This week has been crazy with lots of work (& in different types too)…anyway after almost 2 months with my IdeaPad , I got the 2GB DDR2 Kingston RAM (KTL-TP667/2G) after lots of delay. Couldn’t install myself anyway my computer service engineer installed it effortlessly ..viola !!! now my Ideapad has got 2 more gigs to run Vista and all other apps I throw at it now runs more smoothly, I should say making me

And one more gadget I bought was a affordable Canon scanner priced at 2,700 (67$) called CanoScan Lide 25.What impressed me most is that its USB powered so only one cable to clutter my work area and its quite slim and light. But on the other hand it feels fragile. Anyway vista easily detected it and I installed the software CD which came along with it. Tried scanning some black & white photos, the result was good. It seems this has a document to pdf scanner but still haven’t tried it yet. But as far as the verdict goes, it seems a Good Buy.

Last but not the least i was skeptical whether my ideapad would run with 1 + 2 GB DDR2 667 Mhz RAM ..but as of now it runs perfectly. And now the Windows Experience Index base score has been bumped up from 3.0 to 3.4

written by Vignesh \\ tags: Ideapad, Laptop, Scanner