Windows Middle East - August 2010 by ITP Business Publishing

08 VOL 15

THE REGION’S FAVOURITE PC & CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY GUIDE An ITP Technology Publication AUGUST 2010

www.itp.net

AUGUST 2010

DESKTOP REPLACEMENT GROUPTEST SSD RAID FEATURE PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE FORGOTTEN SANDS REVIEW

Six power packed machines battle for supremacy

REVIEWS:

ATHLETIC GAMING Prince of Persia: a a: The Forgotten Sandss

HP Pavilion dm3 3M pocket projector Asus GTX 480 GPU Kworld media player and more tested... DHS15 • SR15 • LE12 • JD2 • KD1.5 • QR15 • LL7,000

600MB OF FREE SOFTWARE

Packed with games, productivity apps, utilities and much, much more... Licensed by Dubai Media City

The Samsung R580. Looks better. Runs faster.

Buy any Samsung Laptop with an Intel® Core™ i3, i5 or i7 processor and get a chance to win a trip to one of the 7 wonders of the world!*

www.samsung.com/ae

Samsung Mobile Computers

Insist on Intel Inside.®

*Conditions apply. (www.intel.com/ae/TnC) Offer valid from 23rd June to 24th July 2010. Product features differ from model to model. Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

ABU DHABI: Hamdan Street: Eros: 02 6817129, Jumbo: 02 6327001, Marina Mall: Plugins: 02 6815509. Al Wahda Mall: E-City: 02 4437986, Jumbo: 02 4437143. SHARJAH: King Faisal Street: EMAX Big Box: 06 5551112, Jumbo: 06 5534270, Sahara Center: Jackys: 06 5316061, Jumbo: 06 5300859, Sharjah City Center: E-City: 06 5390099, Eros: 06 5333133. Jacky’s, Jumbo: 06 5322811. Switch. DUBAI: New Computer Trading: 04 3933554, Achiever Computers LLC: 04 3527888, Computer Care Group: 04 3595010, Lucky Star Computers LLC: 04 3514445, Super Speed Computers LLC: 04 3591166, Bur Dubai: Jumbo, Opp. Ramada Hotel: 04 3523555, Al Ain Plaza: Computronics: 04 3517337, Computer Depot: 04 3551515, Nasser Square, Jackys: 04 2236344, Deira City Center, Jackys: 04 2949480, Jumbo: 04 2953915, Sharaf DG: 04 2948483, Eros: 04 2958885, Times Square Centre: Sharaf DG: 04 3418060: Dubai Festival City: Plugins: 04 2066752, Eros: 04 23298, Dubai Mall: Eros: 04 3399504, Plugins: 04 4340800, Jackys Electronics: 04 4340499, Jumbo: 04 3398296, Sharf DG: 04 3398656, Mall of the Emirates: E-City: 043996970, E-Max, Jackys Express: 04 3415117, Jumbo: 04 3410101, Eros: 04 3413141, CompuMe: 04 3414442, Ibn Battuta Mall: Geant: 04 3685858, Sharaf DG: 04 3685115, Jackys: 04 3685080, Oasis Center: Emax: 04515444, Lulu Hypermarkets.

www.itp.net

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

CONTENTS 1

CONTENTS WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST

10 COMMENT 10 COMMENT More than 26,000 people across the globe have decided to quit Facebook over various privacy concerns. Should you do the same or are these people being just a tad bit hasty in their decision? We discuss the issue from top to bottom.

DESKTOP REPLACEMENT SHOOT OUT

14 PERFORMANCE 14 SPECTACULAR STORAGE There are many ways to boost your machine's overall performance. Adding a high performance SSD is one such way but what happens when you put two, four and even six of these drives together in a performance-aimed RAID 0 array?

18 GROUP TEST 18 ROBUST REPLACEMENTS

PERFORMANCE: SSD RAID

If you want the performance of a mid-range or high-end desktop machine in a form factor that won't occupy as much space, a desktop replacement notebook is the answer. Today's monster machines can be had with dual- and quad-core processors, massive hard drives and gobs of memory. In this grouptest we put the latest high-end machines from Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, HP, Sony and Toshiba to the test to see what they've got under the hood. As always, two winners were picked; one that offers outstanding performance and one that offers superb value-for-money. Beyond this we also looked at each machine in terms of everyday usability, the quality of their construction and any extra features that they offer.

WIN W I FANTASTIC TECH PRIZES

www.itp.net

2 CONTENTS 6 6 7

NEWS

MICR S OF OT F OFICE 0 210 A LN UCH ES IN TH E GU F L IPH N OE APPL ICATIO N A LN UCH EDFO RM.E PR P OER TY SEAR CH

31 HOT KIT REVIEWS 34 35 36 36 37 37

P H PAVIL IN OM D 3-1340EV VEGAS MO VIE STU ID O D H 10 3M MPR 1 O0 5 PR E JOCTO R ASU S ENGTX48 0ID 2 /13 56MD 5 KWO D L R MED IA PL AYERM102 TAC O Z GTX 47 0 AMP!ED ITIO N

39 BUYER'S GUIDE THE BIGGEST TECH REFERENCE GUIDE 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

CO MPO NENTS E DSKTO PS ID GITALIMAGING A HND E HS D L MO NITO S R NO TEBO K OS PER IPH EA RS L PR INTER S SO FTWAR E STO A RGE

51 GAME ON 51 54

GAME O N NEWS PR INCE F O PER SIA:TH E FO G RT OTEN SAND S

60 REGULARS 60 62 64

CO MPETITIO NS CDCO NTENTS G OGING F L OF

36 66 37

2010 Sony Creative Software New Consumer and Professional Products

Home Studio and Professional solutions for video, DVD, audio, and music production

Ofﬁcial Distributor in the Middle East– Al

Hosani Computer LLC

1703 BelResheed Tower, Buhaira Corniche, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates Tel. +9716-575-444-3, Fax +9716-575-444-9 www.alhosanime.com, email: sales@alhosanime.com

www.itp.net

4 REGULARS

Editor’s letter An ITP Technology Publication

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

LOGGING ON Visit WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST online and read

Registered at Dubai Media City PO Box 500024, Dubai, UAE Tel: 0097 1 (0)4 210 8000 Fax: 0097 1 (0)4 210 8080 Web: www.itp.com Offices in Dubai & London

this content and much more at www.itp.net

ITP Technology Publishing CEO Walid Akawi Managing Director Karam Awad General Manager Peter Conmy Publisher Natasha Pendleton

GOOD TIME TO BE A GAMER

EDITORIAL Group Editor Mark Sutton Tel: +971 4 210 8225 e-mail: mark.sutton@itp.com Editor Jason Saundalkar Tel: +971 4 210 8635 e-mail: jason.saundalkar@itp.com

It has been a crazy couple of months. Both Computex Taipei and the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) have come and gone and while I’m a techie at heart, I found myself more in awe of E3 this year. While there were a lot of new games that interested me, Microsoft’s Kinect (formerly Project Natal) was the star of the show. For those not in the know Kinect is, as Microsoft puts it, a “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience”. In simple English this means a gamer can interact with games and the actual Xbox 360 console via gestures, spoken commands and object recognition. The project set out to broaden the Xbox 360’s audience beyond the typical gamer and judging by the success Nintendo has already experienced with its Wii, I reckon Kinect will certainly live up to Microsoft’s expectations. Kinect uses skeletal mapping technology and is capable of tracking up to four users simultaneously. The technology is apparently also sophisticated enough to track individual finger movement depending on how far the user is from the camera. Based on the demos and E3 videos I've watched Kinect actually seems to works quite well in the real world. Comparing it to Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation Move (also shown at E3), I reckon Kinect is the best motion-sensing solution. You see whereas the Wii and Move need the user to hold a physical motion sensing controller, Kinect uses a sophisticated camera to get the job done. That’s right, you don’t have to hold anything in hand so you can just move around naturally. From a cost perspective Kinect should also work out to be the cheapest motion sensing platform given that you only need one camera for four people. With the Wii and Move however, each player has to have a seperate controller in hand. A bunch of developers and Microsoft itself showed games working with Kinect and perhaps the prettiest of the lot was the upcoming racer, Forza Motorsport 4. With this game a person was driving his car simply by holding his hands at the 10 and two position and steering as he would a normal car’s steering wheel. Very cool but I expect hardened gamers and driving enthusiasts will, for the time being at least, stick to their Xbox 360 controllers for this game, and for other specific game types. Why you ask? Well, Kinect doesn’t give you force feedback so you won't actually be able to feel what's going on as you're tearing up the roads. Games that Kinect will definitely excel at however are sports titles such as boxing, bowling or tennis, fitness titles and perhaps even some first person shooters. Kinect is scheduled for release later in the year and with tons of games already being developed for it, gamers, myself included, have loads to look forward to. Enjoy the magazine.

ADVERTISING Group Advertising Manager Brett Pearson Tel: +971 4 2108345 e-mail: rami.akawi@itp.com Advertising Executive Rami Akawi Tel: +971 4 210 8158 e-mail: brett.pearson@itp.com STUDIO Senior Designer Michel Al Asmar PHOTOGRAPHY Director of Photography Sevag Davidian Chief Photographer Khatuna Khutsishvili Senior Photographers Efraim Evidor, Thanos Lazopoulos, G-nie Arambulo Staff Photographers Jovana Obradovic, Isidora Bojovic, Rajesh Raghav, Ruel Pableo, Lyubov Galushko, George Dipin PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION Group Production Manager Kyle Smith Deputy Production Manager Ali Fahmi Production Co-ordinator Basel Al Kassem Managing Picture Editor Patrick Littlejohn Image Retoucher Emmalyan Robles Distribution Manager Karima Ashwell Distribution Executive Nada Al Alami CIRCULATION Head of Circulation & Database Gaurav Gulati MARKETING Event Manager Preeta Panicker ITP DIGITAL Assitant Editor Vineetha Menon Tel: +971 4 210 8579 e-mail: vineetha.menon@itp.com Group Sales Manager ITP Digital Business Websites, Ahmad Bashour Tel: +971 4 210 8549 e-mail: ahmad.bashour@itp.com Senior Sales Manager, ITP.net, Nathalie Akl Tel: +971 4 210 8520 e-mail: nathalie.akl@itp.com Internet Development Manager Mohammed Affan Content Manager Asad Azizi Web Advertising Manager Meghna Jalnawalla Creative Director Craig Willers ITP GROUP Chairman Andrew Neil Managing Director Robert Serafin Finance Director Toby Jay Spencer-Davies Board of Directors K M Jamieson, Mike Bayman, Walid Akawi, Neil Davies, Rob Corder, Mary Serafin Circulation Customer Service Tel: +971 4 286 8559 Printed by Emirates Printing Press L.L.C.Dubai. Controlled Distribution by Blue Truck Subscribe online at www.itp.com/subscriptions Certain images in this issue are available for purchase. Please contact itp images@itp.com for further details www.itpimages.com The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for error or omissions contained in this publication, however caused. The opinions and views contained in this publication are not necessarily those of the publishers. Readers are advised to seek specialist advice before acting on information contained in this publication which is provided for general use and may not be appropriate for the reader's particular circumstances. The ownership of trademarks is acknowledged. No part of this publication or any part of the contents thereof may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form without the permission of the publishers in writing. An exemption is hereby granted for extracts used for the purpose of fair review.

www.itp.net/news

6 NEWS

NEWS

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010 LAUNCHES Microsoft launched Office 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010 in the Gulf region late last month. “Microsoft’s commitment to innovation has empowered people to be more productive and creative and has helped transform the way they work. As more and more people across the Gulf region embrace mobile applications and social networking tools to share information and stay connected, Office 2010 offers them greater buying choice, making it easier than ever before to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs,” said Elias Tabet, Business and Marketing Director at Microsoft Gulf. “Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta and the success of Windows 7, we predict this will be the biggest release of Office, ever,” Tabet added. There are multiple versions of Office 2010 including Office Home, Student 2010, Office Home & Business 2010 and Office Professional 2010. Microsoft is also offering Office Mobile 2010 from its Windows Phone Marketplace; this software suite is compatible with Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Microsoft is also working with handheld giant Nokia and is set to offer its Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Sharepoint applications and services on Nokia’s E series business phones. The applications could later be made available on other Nokia devices. The latest addition to Microsoft’s long running ‘Office’ software suite boasts a number of new features, which aim to help consumers ‘create great looking documents and presentations, connect and work together more simply and get things done from anywhere’. Microsoft says Office 2010 is the most stable version of its productivity suite thanks to an extensive beta testing program. The software giant says the Office 2010 beta was downloaded over nine million times, six times more than the Office 2007 beta. Microsoft Office 2010 is available in 10 languages, including Arabic and will expand to 94 languages. Office 2010 can also be purchased along with new desktops and laptops from PC makers including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.

www.itp.net/news

NEWS 7 KEEP UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LATEST TECH STORIES, OPINIONS AND REVIEWS IN OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER To subscribe, go to ITP.net/index. php?option=com_newsletter

IPHONE APPLICATION LAUNCHED FOR MIDDLE EAST PROPERTY SEARCH

Kaspersky Lab is offering free smartphone protection during the 2010 World Cup. The security company is offering a free download of its Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 solution, which will be active for the duration of the tournament. Kaspersky says its smartphone security software will help protect smartphones that might be lost or stolen while attending venues to watch World Cup matches. Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 allows the user to send a pre-defined SMS to their handset, which then blocks the phone, to prevent anyone from using it, while still displaying the contact details of the owner. The location of a lost smartphone can also be pinpointed using its built-in GPS module (where fitted), and if the SIM card is replaced, the owner will receive immediate notification of the phone's new number. For additional security, the user can also choose to remotely wipe data from the handset. The free trial version of the software can be downloaded from Kaspersky's website: http://www.kaspersky.COM/ secure-mobile-championship

NOKIA A UNVEILS S AED2000 DUA AL SIM M PHONEE Nokia's affordable new dual SIM phone will hit various markets in the Middle East region towards the end of this year ITP.net has learnt. The Nokia C2, priced at an estimated EUR 45 (AED 197), keeps both SIM cards active so calls and messages can come to either number while the phone is switched on. It supports micro-SD cards of up to 32GB and features an MP3 player, FM radio with radio recording, a VGA camera and Bluetooth connectivity.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

KASPERSKY OFFERS FREE SMARTPHONE PROTECTION DURING 2010 WORLD CUP

Property services company Hamptons International launched what is claimed as the first property search iPhone application for the Middle East. The application allows users to search Hampton's portfolio of local and international property, with support from multiple currencies and options to save search preferences; shortlist properties and email preferences to friends or family. Search results include full descriptions and images, with higher resolution images available for the iPad. "Today's customers are tech-savvy and it is important to be innovative to reach out to them. The new iPhone application is aimed at enhancing their ease of access to our global property portfolio. The application will enable customers to locate their preferred property, go through prices and make an informed decision, wherever they are," said a company spokesperson. The application is free from the iPhone App store.

Al Hosani Computer LLC OfďŹ cial Distributor in the Middle East and West Asia 1703 BelResheed Tower, Buhaira Corniche,Sharjah, UAE Tel. +9716-575-444-3, aFx +9716-575-444-9 www.alhosanime.com, Email:sales@ alhosanime.com

www.itp.net/news

NEWS 9

LG’S ‘PREMIUM’ NETBOOK COSTS AED 4,200 LG's brand new ‘premium mobile PC’ will be available in stores across the United Arab Emirates this month. The notebook is expected to cost of AED 4,199. Weighing only 970g and at just 17.5mm thick, the LG X300 is being touted as the ultimate in portability. The device runs Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system and is fitted with the 2.0GHz Intel Menlow platform. The netbook's other features include a built-in 1.3-megapixel lid-mounted webcam and ‘SmartOn’ quick-boot option that gives people access to e-mails and other frequently used functions in a claimed five seconds. “Given how demanding and discerning consumers are nowadays, we were delighted to receive such acclaim from the public and the media at CES for our new mobile PC,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company when the X300 was launched in March. “It’s a vindication of LG’s efforts to maintain the very highest standards in design without any sacrifices in technology or functionality, and ensure our consumers’ experiences with LG PCs just keep getting better,” Ahn added. At the time the company revealed the LG X300 would be available in Asia in March, followed by launches in the Middle East and South America, with prices varying in each country.

BLACKBERRY BOLD 9700 PRICE DROPS TO AED 999 Etisalat has reduced the price of the businessaimed BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone from AED 2,299 to just AED 999 for its customers in the United Arab Emirates. The offer is available to both business and individual customers if they subscribe to Etisalat’s Global or Domestic Unlimited postpaid plans for a year. Rivals Du had introduced a similar offer in March, also dropping the 9700 price to AED 999 but only for business customers. Etisalat subscribers can also choose to upgrade by paying an additional AED 100 to get a 050 series mobile number, 100 minutes of free local talk time and 100 free SMS text messages. Existing postpaid BlackBerry customers haven’t been left out and can choose to switch their current plan to the new offer, which will expire on the 24th of July or until stocks last. “This new package reaffirms our commitment to providing the best of technology at the most affordable prices, combined with our reliable and robust services,” said Abdulla Hashim, senior VP of Business Solutions at Etisalat.

Jacky’s Electronics General Manager Jimmy Patel says that strong interest surrounding 3D TVs in the country doesn’t equate to high customer demand for the products in stores. “The World Cup fever has given a boost to the TV category including 3D which is the latest technology after LCD & LED. This coupled with the HD/3D broadcast on certain TV channels has generated considerable interest but not necessarily a huge demand for 3D TVs,” Patel told itp.net. Presently Samsung 3D TVs are leading in sales across Jacky’s Electronics stores. LG, Panasonic and Sony have all introduced 3D TV models to their portfolio, with Philips taking a different approach by instead selling a separate kit that can make their latest range of LCD TVs 3D-enabled. “Since the regional launch of LED TVs in 2009, we have experienced a strong response in this segment, constituting 10% to the total TV sales,” Patel added, with larger screen sizes such as those in the 40”+ segment seeing greater demand. Last month, Jack’s Electronics revealed it sold “several” Samsung 3D LED TVs following their local launch. “By the end of this year we anticipate that LED and 3D TVs will constitute approximately 18-20% of our TV sales,” Patel concluded.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

JACKY’S SAYS MORE INTEREST IN 3D TVS THAN DEMAND

www.itp.net/news

NEWS 11

Kaspersky Lab has launched the latest versions of its flagship consumer security software, Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011. “By releasing the new 2011 versions, our company has improved an already great product range still further, bringing the user a host of effective new technologies designed to protect their computers,” said Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab. “It’s nice to see we have achieved our goals. Now, thanks to such modules as System Watcher, Safe Surf and our fully redesigned Safe Run module, our customers will be provided with an unprecedented level of control over the processes running on their computers, providing them with the security they need while working with important personal data.” Kaspersky says the new products ‘take full advantage of the most innovative cutting-edge technologies to provide more accurate detection and an even faster response to any IT threats’. The software is said to provide real-time proactive protection that constantly monitors the system to detect any number of potential threats. One of the new features is known as ‘System Watcher’. The technology monitors all system events in full – creation and modification of files, system calls and changes to the system registry etc. Thanks to this constant monitoring of a program’s behavior, the company says the latest versions of its software can detect any type of malicious programs, both known and new. The firm also says that the majority of unwanted changes to the system made by malicious programs can be rolled back with just a few mouse clicks. Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 and Kaspersky AntiVirus 2011 are compatible with the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, from XP up to Windows 7. More details about the new versions of Kaspersky Lab’s consumer products are available on the company's website at www.kaspersky.com/homeuser.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

INTERNET SECURITY 2011 AND ANTI-VIRUS 2011 LAUNCHED

www.itp.net

12 COMMENT

VIEWS ARE YOU QUITTING FACEBOOK?

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

More than 26,000 people have decided to quit Facebook over privacy concerns. Vineetha Menon discusses this and more Today is ‘Quit Facebook Day’ with nearly 27,000 people promising to delete their profiles off the social networking site because of its seemingly arrogant attitude towards user privacy. QuitFacebookDay.com set up by Toronto-based tech enthusiasts Joseph Dee and Matthew Milan, insists Facebook doesn't have the user’s best intentions at heart or offer fair choices. “We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future,” the site adds. In other words, they think Facebook is a company that is out to make a buck or two billion using less than stellar methods. Very unheard of in today’s corporate world... I doubt Zuckerberg will be losing any sleep over Quit Facebook Day. When you’ve got more than 400 million active ‘customers’, the odd 25,000 or so leaving your store in a huff really isn’t a big deal, right? To a certain extent, yes. But this group of people won’t be taking that stand completely in vain because the movement has singlehandedly managed to generate debate, increasing awareness about privacy and social networking. While I’m all for privacy online and agree that it’s getting increasingly harder to hide those embarrassing moments from surfacing on the WWW, I think we need to judge ourselves and Facebook with equal measure. Facebook will keep revising its privacy policies – that’s a given in my eyes. Its latest effort is doing little to placate angry users because it basically just

organises and presents privacy controls more effectively, but still doesn’t address the messy default option that sees user information shared with third-party websites and applications for that ‘instant personalisation’ effect. It should be opt-out by default, not the other way round. Is it enough to stop me from using Facebook though? Nope. I just went in there and changed the settings to what I was comfortable with. If online privacy is that important, let’s aim to stay two steps ahead. It’s easy to blame Facebook but it’s not the only corporate apple with a worm we’ll ever come across. How many times have you found random newsletters in your e-mail from a site you visited months ago and care nothing about? Or how about the personal details you shared as part of that amazing online

competition to travel around Europe? You have every right to stop using Facebook. But if the only reason you’re doing so is because you value your privacy and don’t want to be monetised, I think you’re being hasty. Do you really believe all your other online experiences are not tainted by the same sword? Facebook is being sneaky by tuning all its users to automatically agree to its instant personalisation feature unless they go into their settings and choose to have nothing to do with it. So let’s do that. If even a million people keep rejecting every unwelcome decision forced on us - whether by Facebook or some other service online - it will drive change over time in a far more influential way. The new world order online will see us making a choice...or having someone else make it for us.

We thought of a way to make our comprehensive protection even more comprehensive

ESET Smart Security 4 - now protecting 3 computers for the price of 1 Only smart protection can protect more computers without increasing costs. ESET Smart Security now keeps up to 3 computers proactively secured from internet threats without slowing down your system using our revolutionary ThreatSense速 technology.

Visit www.esetme.com for a 30-day trial version Integrated components:

ESET NOD32 Antivirus | ESET NOD32 Antispyware | ESET Personal Firewall | ESET Antispam

Dubai: +971 4 3754052

www.itp.net/features

14 FEATURE

SSD RAID

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

SPECTACULAR STORAGE

www.itp.net/features

SSD RAID

FEATURE 15

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Today's SSD drives offer excellent read, write and seek performance but if you want to take your PC's storage performance or data redundancy to the next level, you can combine multiple SSDs in a purpose-built RAID array. If you're curious about SSDs, RAID and the results when you combine the two, read on as WINDOWS explores the world of SSD RAID...

www.itp.net/features

16 FEATURE

SSD RAID

The origins of today's solid state drives (SSDs) dates back to the 1950s, though it was only by the year 1978 that the first real solid state drive was introduced by Texas Memory Systems. The company developed these 16KB RAM-based SSDs for oil companies to use in the capture of seismic data. Over the years the technology continued to evolve and today SSD drives have finally reached a price point and form factor that consumers can digest.

A QUICKER BREED OF STORAGE DRIVE SSD drives differ from hard drives on a number of levels. The key difference is that whereas hard drives rely on moving parts such as a spindle motor, read/write heads and moving platters (driven by the spindle motor) to function, SSD drives operate with no moving parts, instead they use ultra-quick flash-memory. Because of this fact SSDs are less prone to failing due to shocks or movement or because a motorised components fails after years of use. This important advantage makes SSD drives a better choice in laptops and other devices that may be used in tough conditions. Another benefit that SSDs reap from their lack of moving parts is extraordinary read, write and access performance. Because there are no moving parts that are required to 'seek' a particular area of the drive, SSDs can read or write data almost instantly. Thanks to this important property SSDs are ideal in scenarios where high performance is a necessity. SSDs are also able to deliver more consistent performance because the physical location of the data is irrelevant and this also means that SSDs drives are not affected by file fragmentation. In contrast, a hard driveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s read and write performance varies as the heads move across the platters and, if data is fragmented and spread across the drive's platters, performance is adversely affected. SSD drives also start quicker than hard drives because whereas the latter has to first spin-up to operational speed (rotating the platters from zero to the drive's regular rotation speed i.e. 5,400rpm etc), SSD drives are useable from the second power is supplied to them. Due to their lack of moving internal components solid state drives are also silent and DON'T DO IT! consume a lower amount of Don't defragment your SSD. Ever. SSD storage drives operate in a power than hard drives. These completely different fashion to hard drives and this makes them immune properties have seen laptop to file fragmentation. Therefore, if you defragment your SSD you won't see manufacturers include SSD any performance benefit but you will have used a number of your SSD's drives as an optional upgrade precious program/erase cycles for no reason. When you have a SSD it's or even as the sole option on also worth disabling the Windows swap file or setting it up on a standard ultra-portable machines that are hard drive because again, a swap file on a SSD will eat up precious required to provide long battery program/erase cycles for no real benefit. Consider investing in some more life. SSDs also run cooler as a memory if you're operating system is flashing 'Out of memory' messages result of their lack of moving at you and you don't have a hard drive in the same system. components and this is another factor that makes them less likely to fail.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

THE CONS Although SSDs offer many advantages over hard drives they also have a few disadvantages. Perhaps the biggest disadvantage at the moment is that the flash-memory used by SSD drives is limited in terms of the number of times it can be programmed and erased (both functions are essentially write operations). SSD drives that rely on MLC flash memory may offer program/erase cycles of between 1,000,000 to 2,000,000, while higher-end SSDs using SLC flash memory could be limited to program/erase cycles of up to 5,000,000 cycles. Once a SSD has exceeded its rated program/erase cycles the drive becomes read only, so while data is not lost (until the drive completely fails), the SSD cannot be used to store any new data. Certain file systems and manufacturer 'wear-leveling' technology can prolong a SSD's life by spreading write operations across all the memory cells the SSD has, rather than focusing on a limited few. Wear leveling does, however, have drawbacks in

www.itp.net/features

18 FEATURE

SSD RAID

A MODERN SSD DRIVE This is an Intel X25-M, a modern SSD that can be purchased with either 80GB or 160GB of storage capacity. 160GB X25-M drives can offer sequential read speeds of up to 250MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 100MB/sec. The same drive boasts read and write latencies of just 65- and 85-microseconds (less than 1-millisecond). These figures make the X25-M one of the fastest storage drives on the market. The drive also offers a 1.2million hour Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

terms of security; it is impossible to securely wipe files by overwriting the sector where the data previously was, since wear-leveling will simply perform the write operation to another sector. SSDs are also limited with regard to the amount of storage capacity they offer. Whereas hard drives can be had with 2TB of storage capacity most consumer-aimed SSDs top out at 512GB. (On the enterprise level manufacturers have released SSD drives with 1TB of storage capacity.) Price per gigabyte is also another concern with these high speed drives; whereas a 2.5-inch hard drive will typically cost US $0.15 (or less) per gigabyte a 2.5-inch SSD will likely cost $2.5 or more. That said SSD drives have dropped in price considerably when compared to the late 90s and early 2000s. SSDs that are based on DRAM memory also consume more power than hard drives because DRAM-based SSDs have to be powered constantly (even when the machine is off), or else they will lose all their data. These SSDs use memory that isn't programmable. This is not true for flash-based SSDs however as the memory used by this type of SSD can be programmed and thus these SSDs can be powered down when they are not needed.

Term

What it means

Cache memory

A small amount of memory on a storage drive that helps to improve performance

Form factor

This defines the external physical dimensions of a storage device. Common storage form factors are 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch

Hard drive

A storage device that relies on internal moving components to store its data

Head crash

A form of hard drive failure that occurs when the read/write heads make contact with the spinning data platters

Latency

It is the delay between when a command is given to when it is executed by the storage drive

Mean time between failure (MTBF)

This refers to the amount of time (in hours) a storage drive will likely function without failure. Depending on the quality of the drive failure could occur before or after the specified MTBF

Read/write head

These are found within hard drives and are responsible for reading and writing data on the drives' storage platters

Serial ATA (SATA)

A modern storage interface that connects storage devices to the motherboard

Solid state drive (SSD)

A device that stores data on flash or DRAM memory rather than storage platters. An electronic device rather than electromechanical

Spindle motor

A compact, high-speed motor used by hard drives to spin their data platters

Storage platter

These are the circular magnetic platters that hard drives use to store their data

Single-level cell (SLC)

Flash memory that stores data in individual memory cells that are made of floating-gate transistors. SSDs relying on SLC flash memory are generally more reliable and offer faster performance than MLC drives

Multi-level cell (MLC)

Flash memory that stores more than a single bit of data in an individual memory cell. SSDs based on MLC flash memory are cheaper than SLC SSD drives of the same size but aren't as reliable or as fast

www.itp.net/features

SSD RAID

FEATURE 19

TIME TO GO ON A RAID RAID is an acronym for redundant array of independent disks (sometimes also referred to as redundant array of inexpensive disks). This technology is limited to storage devices and provides improved performance and/or reliability by combining multiple drives into a single logical unit. RAID is similar to multi-GPU technology in that the latter also aims to improve performance by combining multiple graphics cards. Unlike ATI’s CrossFireX or nVidia’s SLI multi-GPU technologies however RAID has a number of different standards, each providing a unique benefit (see table).

RAID type Function RAID 0

Also known as ‘striping’. This standard provides enhanced performance by combining multiple disks into one large logical unit. Data is spread across all the drives in this array, so read/write operations occur in parallel across all the disks thus providing better performance. A minimum of two disks are required for this standard

RAID 1

This RAID standard is designed to provide basic fault tolerance. It works by mirroring or duplicating every bit of data from the primary drive onto the secondary unit. In the event of a disk failure all the data is safe and secure on the second disk. Like RAID 0 a minimum of two drives are necessary in this type of array

RAID 2

No less than three disks are mandatory for a RAID 2 array. This standard provides fault tolerance by striping data so that each sequential bit of data is stored on an alternate disk. This standard also uses ‘Hamming code’ a linear error correcting code to provide fault tolerance

RAID 3

RAID 3 is similar to RAID 2 in that this standard too relies on striping data across multiple disks to provide fault tolerance. In this case however the standard stripes bytes across alternate disks rather than bits. Three disks are required at minimum

RAID 4

This standard is similar to RAID 5 with the exception of where it stores its parity information. RAID 4 limits all its parity information to a single disk in the array though chunks of data files are split across multiple disks. Three drives are needed for a RAID 4 array

RAID 5

RAID 5 provides fault tolerance by employing block-level striping with distributed parity. So unlike RAID 4, this RAID standard stripes parity information across multiple drives. Like RAID 4 three drives are necessary for this array to function

RAID 6

This RAID standard builds on the strengths of RAID 5 by using double distributed parity. Four drives are mandatory here and the array provides fault tolerance even if two of the four drives fail

Beyond the RAID standards mentioned above modern RAID controllers are also able to create ‘Nested RAID levels’ or ‘Hybrid RAID’ arrays. Here the controller essentially combines two or more RAID standards to give additional performance or data redundancy. In most cases Nested RAID arrays comprise two different RAID standards though it is possible to combine three, if necessary. Common Nested RAID arrays are RAID 0+1, RAID 1+0 and RAID 5+1.

RAID arrays consist of different components; the storage devices and a RAID controller. RAID controllers have been included as standard on most mid- and high-end consumer motherboards sold in the last five years. These controllers aren’t fully-fledged hardware RAID solutions however; most offer support for RAID 0, 1 and 5 but offer less reliable operation and performance when compared to a dedicated PCI or PCI-E hardware RAID controller (see picture). Most hardware RAID controllers feature their own processor and some, mostly midand high-end controllers, also have a certain amount of onboard memory to act as a buffer. Because the controller has a CPU of its own the RAID array rarely depends on the computer’s CPU to function thus overall system performance is never negatively impacted. High-end RAID cards can also be upgraded memory-wise if top performance is a key concern. RAID controllers generally retail for between $200 to well over $2000 when it comes to high-end hardware.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

THE INGREDIENTS

www.itp.net/features

20 FEATURE

SSD RAID

PURE PERFORMANCE RAID 0 is an interesting proposition for consumers because with two or more drives read/write performance could improve considerably, cutting boot times as well as load times. The lack of data redundancy isn’t too much of a worry here because data can be backed up on an external hard drive or optical media and restored later at leisure. Given that a single high-end SSD already offers tremendous read/write speeds we were keen to study the difference in performance a RAID 0 array would make. Thus we tested a lone Kingston SSDNow V+ drive, then built a RAID 0 array using two, four and finally, six identical 128GB SSD drives. The PC running the drives sports an Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition processor, a Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme motherboard, 6GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 memory and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition. We used the board's Serial ATA controller (Intel ICH10R) to build and test the RAID arrays. We ran a variety of benchmarks in order to get a comprehensive look at performance. HD Tune is a disk utility that can give you detailed information on your drive. It is a synthetic benchmark and while the utility tests drives for their minimum, maximum, average and burst speeds, we only noted the burst, average read and write speeds in the table below. Here higher numbers signify better performance. Moving to real world testing we first timed how long it took the RAID array to boot into Windows 7. Next, we timed how long it took to complete loading the first level (after selecting ‘New game) in Crysis Warhead. With these two real world tests, lower times are better. Before we move ahead it’s worth noting that the RAID controller itself and its drivers affect performance heavily. The ICH10R Southbridge that our EX58-Extreme motherboard uses for its RAID functionality can be iffy in terms of performance. Number of drives

HD Tune (average read/write speed)

HD Tune (burst speed)

Windows 7 boot time

Crysis Warhead level load

Single SSDNow V+

207.0MB/sec 165.1MB/sec

210.1MB/sec

60 seconds

30 seconds

RAID 0 (2 drives)

439.9MB/sec 232.4MB/sec

1210.9MB/sec

49 seconds

26 seconds

RAID 0 (4 drives)

626.9MB/sec 320.5MB/sec

2229.1MB/sec

45 seconds

26 seconds

RAID 0 (6 drives)

660.1MB/sec 370.8MB/sec

2218.3MB/sec

45 seconds

26 seconds

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Looking over the results it’s obvious that two SSDs running in RAID 0 provide the biggest improvement over a single drive. This also represents good value as you only need to buy an additional SSD. With the four- and six-SSD drive RAID 0 arrays performance improves over a single drive and two disk array but the performance differences are hardly worth the additional expenses. At the same time a RAID 0 array using four or six drives has a higher chance of failure simply because there are more SSDs involved. A single drive failure would destroy the entire array. Had we used an add-on RAID controller equipped with its own processor and memory, we reckon performance would have improved considerably. But given that most people will use their board’s RAID controller, we thought it made more sense to just use the onboard controller.

THANKS Windows Middle East would like to thank Kingston Technology for providing six of their sterling 128GB SSDNow V+ SSD drives for use in this feature. Without their support the benchmark results you see here just wouldn’t have been possible.

www.itp.net/grouptests

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

22 GROUPTEST

Desktop replacements

ROBUST REPLACEMENTS

If you want the power of a high-end desktop machine in a frame that offers some portability, desktop replacement notebooks are the answer. WINDOWS puts six to the test and tells you what’s hot and what’s not…

www.itp.net/grouptests

GROUPTEST 23

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Desktop replacements

www.itp.net/grouptests

24 GROUPTEST

Desktop replacements

ACER ASPIRE 8943G

Easy on the environment and your wallet

PRICE $1,999 CONTACT +9714 881 3111 WEB www.acer.ae

PRICE $1,635 CONTACT +9714 299 3873 WEB www.asus.com

✪✪✪✪✪

ith its mammoth dimensions, 3.91kg weight and large 18.4-inch screen, the Aspire 8943G falls firmly into the desktop replacement category. Unfortunately under the hood there’s a surprising lack of power because the Acer packs an entry-level dualcore 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 330M processor and only 2GB of DDR3 RAM. With these two core components the Acer falls behind every other notebook here. In our benchmarks these components restricted the 8943G’s performance; its PCMark Vantage Suite, TV & Movies and Productivity scores of 5511, 3446 and 4619 are the lowest results here. Thankfully Acer saw fit to use ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 GPU with 1GB of memory and this gives the Aspire reasonable graphics credentials. It returned figures of 49fps and 17fps in

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

ASUS U53JC BAMBOO COLLECTION

Never judge a notebook by its size

✪✪✪✪✪

Street Fighter IV and World in Conflict at 1920 x 1080 pixels with both games running in high detail. Reducing some of the detail brought the World in Conflict figure up to 32fps. In terms of build quality the 8943G inspires confidence; the notebook exhibits little keyboard flex, both keyboard and trackpad are great to work on and the 18.4-inch LCD produces fantastic visuals. The Acer also has a clever trick up its sleeve; pressing the silver button situated in between the left and right trackpad buttons causes multimedia controls to appear on the trackpad itself. Very cool and functional too. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUE FOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT While the Aspire 8943G has a few decent features its high asking price and imbalanced overall performance restrict its appeal.

sus’ U53JC Bamboo Collection sets itself apart from the competition here for many reasons but the most prominent is because it is partly covered in bamboo. The notebook’s lid, trackpad (including buttons) and palm rest are covered in bamboo and give this rig a distinctive and striking appearance. The bamboo also feels great to touch and from an environmental standpoint, using the material has allowed Asus to reduce its plastic use per notebook by 20%. Working on the U53JC is a stress-free experience thanks to its large keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard is responsive and feels fairly solid though we noticed a little bit of flex at the centre. The trackpad offers a fair amount of tracking space and despite being covered in bamboo is very responsive. Running our benchmarks

on the machine it became obvious the Asus was more of an application machine rather than a gaming monster; while its PCMark Vantage scores were strong and competitive with the other machines in this test, its gaming figures of 38fps and 13fps in Street Fighter IV and World in Conflict were basic. As an everyday machine the notebook has plenty of oomph thanks to its swift 7200rpm hard drive, fast CPU and healthy 4GB of system memory. The notebook also packs a Blu-ray combo drive and USB3.0 support and given that it’s priced at just US $1,635, it offers fantastic value-for-money. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUE FOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT While gaming isn’t its forte this notebook packs plenty of value thanks to its aggressive price, features and strong application performance.

www.itp.net/grouptests

Desktop replacements

FUJITSU LIFEBOOK NH570

HP PAVILION DV8-1190EE

All aboard the application express

Almost the full deal

PRICE $1,350 CONTACT +9714 501 5704 WEB www.ts.fujitsu.com

PRICE $2,261 CONTACT +9714 391 6000 WEB www.hp.com/me

✪✪✪✪✪

Performance-wise the super fast quad-core CPU and ample memory meant the Fujitsu returned very strong PCMark Vantage test scores. The PCMark Vantage Suite, Communication and Productivity scores were the highest recorded in this test. Its gaming benchmark results were, expectedly, the lowest we recorded but given its positioning and price, this wasn’t a concern. The Fujitsu is a handsome machine and built like a tank, we noticed minimal keyboard flex and the entire machine just felt solid. The NH570 also proved to be the best in terms of its trackpad in terms of responsiveness and feel. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUE FOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT Strong app performance, bank-vault-build-quality, superb trackpad and sensible pricing, a proper desktop replacement workhorse.

t a cost of US $2,261 the Pavilion dv81190ee is the second most expensive notebook in this test after Toshiba’s Qosmio X500-11G. The Pavilion packs a 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 Q720 processor, 6GB of DDR3 memory and a nVidia GeForce GT 230M with 1GB of memory. The notebook also packs two 500GB hard drives, a 18.4-inch LCD and a Blu-ray combo drive. These specifications put the HP in the same league as the $218 more expensive Toshiba. That said the Toshiba has a better GPU, packs an additional 2GB of RAM and a Blu-ray writer. On the application front, the HP held its own against the Toshiba quite well in our application tests. Its PCMark Suite, Memories, TV & Movies, Gaming, Music, Communication, Productivity and HDD scores of 6026, 3913, 4175, 6111, 6374,

4128, 4848 and 4204 meant that the dv8 is actually the faster overall application machine. Moving on to gaming however the HP’s GT 230M GPU was no match for the Toshiba's GTS 360M; the former managed Street Fighter IV and World in Conflict figures of 31fps and 15fps to the latter’s 90fps and 30fps. Like most of HP’s Pavilion notebooks the dv8 boasts handsome good looks and decent build quality. It certainly feels its price and on the usability front we had no complaints with the machine’s keyboard and 18.4-inch LCD. The feel of the trackpad wasn’t ideal however. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUE FOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT The HP Pavilion dv8-1190ee is a fast applications machine for a fair price. It can also handle games but isn't quite the best in the business.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST A AUGUST 2010

ike all the desktop replacements here Fujitsu’s LifeBook NH570 is available in different configurations. Retailing for US $1,350 our test sample NH570 is an entry-level rig targeting users that are after an application and multimedia machine. In line with this the notebook packs a fast 2.67GHz Intel Core i7 M620 dual-core CPU and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Solid components to start with but because the machine isn’t targeting gamers it uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator that’s part of the Intel HM55 chipset. This makes the Fujitsu unique as every other notebook here features a dedicated GPU. That said the LifeBook is fairly priced at US $1,350 considering its offers the aforementioned components, a 18.4-inch LCD screen and a 320GB hard drive.

GROUPTEST 25

www.itp.net/grouptests

26 GROUPTEST

Desktop replacements

SONY VAIO VPCF116FG

our Y gaming champion

PRICE $1,906 CONTACT +9714 881 5488 WEB www.sony-mea.com

PRICE $2,479 CONTACT +9714 881 7789 WEB www.toshibame.com

✪✪✪✪✪

ony’s VAIO F Series VPCF116FG threw us a curve ball right from the off because it simply broke with tradition. While we’ve always found that Sony’s VAIOs have boasted distinctive exteriors the VPCF116FG is actually quite plain as far as looks and design are concerned. It’s a suave machine but in this round up it seems almost bland, the only characteristic that stuck with us was its ‘Premium Black’ colour finish. Beyond its looks the notebook has plenty to offer. Like the HP and Toshiba desktop replacements in this grouptest the VAIO F packs a quad-core mobile processor and uses Intel’s PM55 core-logic chipset. Memory-wise the Sony falls behind its competitors in that it only offers 4GB of DDR3 memory. The Sony’s trump card, at least over HP’s Pavilion dv8, is that it

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

TOSHIBA QOSMIO X500-11G

Is this really a VAIO notebook?

✪✪✪✪✪

packs a powerful nVidia GeForce GT 330M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory. Putting the machine through our benchmark gauntlet the GPU made its presence felt; it pushed the notebook to framerate figures of 51fps and 16fps in Street Fighter IV and World in Conflict. The former score is the second highest we recorded in this grouptest, whilst the latter is just 1fps slower than the 17fps posted by the slightly more expensive Acer Aspire 8943G. On the application front however the notebook faltered, it fell behind the HP and Toshiba notebooks overall in our PCMark Vantage benchmark test. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUEFOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT Thanks to its GPU the VAIO F offers decent gaming punch at a competitive price. It’s also covered by a two-year warranty.

inished in what Toshiba describes as ‘precious black’ with some tasteful red accents the Qosmio X500-11G makes a very strong style statement. Moving beyond its finish the machine makes no apologies for what it is; with a weight of 4.86kg the X500-11G is a desktop replacement in every sense. It is 800g heavier that the second heaviest machine in this grouptest (HP’s Pavilion dv8-1190ee), so unless you’re built like a tank, forget about lugging this machine around for extended periods of time. Once you get past the Toshiba’s size and weight however there’s plenty to celebrate. The X500 packs a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a nVidia GeForce GTS 360M GPU with 1GB of memory. These impressive parts give the machine serious punch. Running our Street Fighter

IV and World in Conflict benchmarks at the LCD’s native 1920 x 1080 pixels the machine spat out framerates of 90fps and 30fps respectively. These scores make the Toshiba the only desktop replacement notebook here to manage playable framerates in both of our benchmarks without reducing graphics quality. And, thanks to the Core i7 Q720 processor the Toshiba also returned very strong application numbers. That said they weren’t the highest owing to the fact that the Asus and Fujitsu notebooks feature newer, faster Intel TurboBoost enabled Core i7 dual-core processors. PERFORMANCE ✪✪✪✪✪ FEATURES ✪✪✪✪✪ VALUEFOR MONEY ✪✪✪✪✪ VERDICT If you want a fully-fledged desktop replacement that packs serious performance and features the Qosmio X500-11G is for you.

www.itp.net/grouptests

Desktop replacements

GROUPTEST 27

DESKTOP REPLACEMENTS

MANUFACTURER Product Price Telephone Web

ACER

ASUS

FUJITSU

Aspire 8943G

U53JC Bamboo Collection

LifeBook NH570

$1,999

$1,635

$1,350

+9714 881 3111

+9714 299 3873

+9714 501 5704

www.acer.ae

www.asus.com

www.ts.fujitsu.com

2.13GHz Intel Core i3 330M (Dual w/HT)

2.67GHz Intel Core i7 M620 (Dual w/HT)

Intel HM55

MAIN SPECS

Processor Chipset Memory Graphics Card LCD Size

2GB DDR3 RAM

4GB DDR3 RAM

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB memory

nVidia GeForce 310M with 1GB memory

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator

18.4-inch

15.6-inch

18.4-inch

1920 x 1080 pixels

1366 x 768 pixels

1680 x 945 pixels

1x 320GB 1x 250GB Serial ATA

500GB Serial ATA

320GB Serial ATA

DVD writer

Blu-ray combo

DVD writer

USB Ports

Firewire Ports

Native resolution Hard Drive Optical Drive

eSATA

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

3.91kg

2.87kg

3.40kg

One-year

Two-year

One-year

PCMark Vantage Suite

5511

6817

6824

PCMark Memories

3596

3816

3475

PCMark TV & Movies

3446

4165

3831

PCMark Gaming

4836

3874

3621

PCMark Music

5027

7385

6639

PCMark Communication

3952

5737

8115

Operating System Weight Warranty

PCMark Productivity

4619

6485

5600

PCMark HDD

3142

4425

2884

Street Fighter IV

49fps

38fps

12fps

World in Conflict

17fps

13fps

6fps

----

SCORES Performance

-----

----

---

Value

---

-----

----

Overall

---

----

Features

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

BENCHMARK TESTS

www.itp.net/grouptests

28 GROUPTEST

Desktop replacements

DESKTOP REPLACEMENTS

MANUFACTURER Product

SONY

TOSHIBA

Pavilion dv8-1190ee

VAIO F Series VPCF116FG

Qosmio X500-11G

$2,261

$1,906

$2,479

Telephone

+9714 391 6000

+9714 881 5488

+9714 881 7789

Web

www.hp.com/me

www.sony-mea.com

www.toshibame.com

1.6GHz Intel Core i7 Q720 (Quad w/HT)

Intel PM55

Price

MAIN SPECS

Processor Chipset Memory Graphics Card LCD Size

6GB DDR3 RAM

4GB DDR3 RAM

8GB DDR3 RAM

nVidia GeForce GT 230M with 1GB memory

nVidia GeForce GT 330M with 1GB memory

nVidia GeForce GTS 360M with 1GB memory

18.4-inch

16.4-inch

18.4-inch

1920 x 1080 pixels

2x 500GB Serial ATA

500GB Serial ATA

2x 500GB Serial ATA

Blu-ray combo

Blu-ray writer

USB Ports

Firewire Ports

Native resolution Hard Drive Optical Drive

eSATA

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

4.04kg

3.10kg

4.86kg

One-year

Two-year

Three-year

PCMark Vantage Suite

6026

5896

5900

PCMark Memories

3913

3784

4130

PCMark TV & Movies

4175

4105

3821

PCMark Gaming

6111

5182

5374

PCMark Music

6374

5891

5925

PCMark Communication

4128

4225

4341

Operating System Weight Warranty

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

BENCHMARK TESTS

PCMark Productivity

4848

4832

4700

PCMark HDD

4204

3193

2897

Street Fighter IV

31fps

51fps

90fps

World in Conflict

15fps

16fps

30fps

Performance

----

---

-----

Features

----

-----

Value

----

Overall

----

SCORES

www.itp.net/grouptests

Desktop replacements

GROUPTEST 29

EDITOR'S CHOICE TOSHIBA QOSMIO X500-11G

ASUS U53JC BAMBOO COLLECTION

oshiba's Qosmio X500-11G has the dubious honour of being the biggest desktop replacement notebook in this grouptest and along with this, it is also the heaviest. At a cost of US $2,479 this desktop replacement was also the most expensive contender here. Thankfully, the notebook also happened to produce some sky high benchmark numbers, particularly when it came to high-resolution gaming. The X500's framerates of 90fps and

30fps were unmatched and coupled with decent application numbers this machine walked away with our Best Performance award fair and square. Beyond its high performance core components the Toshiba also packs brilliant storage systems; two 500GB hard drives and a Blu-ray writer. And, despite its high price tag the Qosmio gives you long term peace of mind because it is covered by a three-year warranty period. No other notebook in this round-up offers this.

fter very careful consideration Asus' U53JC Bamboo Collection grabbed our Best Value award thanks to its decent overall performance, strong features and aggressive end user price. The Asus is outfitted with a nVidia GeForce 310M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory, a dualcore 2.67GHz Core i7 processor and 4GB of system memory. Running our benchmarks on the notebook these core components pushed the

machine to healthy results; some of its application figures outpaced the three quad-core desktop replacement notebooks in this grouptest. Its gaming numbers were reasonable too; it was 7fps faster in World in Conflict than the more expensive HP Pavilion dv8-1190ee. The Asus has unique features too, USB3.0 support being the biggest. It's also an environmentally friendly machine thanks to its partial use of environmentally-friendly bamboo rather than plastic.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

HOW WE TESTED We tested each desktop replacement notebook in this grouptest from an objective and subjective perspective. We spent four days with each machine before moving on to the next one. The objective testing involved running benchmarks on the machine in an effort to gauge performance. To test a notebookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s application performance we relied on our tried and tested PCMark Vantage benchmarking suite. This benchmark runs different tests and reports scores for each. Higher numbers are indicative of better performance. From a gaming standpoint we ran our Street Fighter IV and World in Conflict benchmark tests. In both cases the tests were run at the LCDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s native resolution and in high detail. As before higher figures indicate better performance. Framerates above 30fps indicate a smooth and fluid gaming experience. The subjective test involved us using the notebook on a day-to-day basis as if it was our standard work desktop. This allowed us to see how comfortable a machine was to work on, study the visual quality of its LCD and more.

www.itp.net/reviews

Reviews

HOT KIT 31

34 PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Awarded to outstanding Awarded to the most products that have excelled in outstanding product we've both value and performance. encountered during the month.

CONTENTS 34

HP Pavilion dm3-1340ev

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10

3M MPro150 Pocket Projector

Asus ENGTX480/2DI/1536MD5

Kworld Media Player M102

Zotac GeForce GTX 470 AMP! Edition

37 WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Reviews

www.itp.net/reviews

32 HOT KIT

Reviews

HOTKIT

WINLABS

TESTING EX PLAINED when dealing with old and new game titles. As all three tests involve playable games, they are real world tests rather than synthetic and thus provide an accurate view of a graphics card’s performance. Each graphics card is tested at three different test resolutions; 1024 x 768 pixels, 1600 x 1200 pixels and, ﬁnally, 1920 x 1200 pixels. All of the games are run on the maximum settings with the exception of full screen anti aliasing, which we leave at 4x setting. Then, depending on the price and positioning of the graphics card, performance scores are awarded based on how well, or not, it has performed at a speciﬁc resolution. For example, low end or entry level graphics cards are graded mostly on their performance at 1024 x 768 pixels whereas expensive, ultra-high-end cards are graded based on their performance across all three resolutions.

HARD DISK TESTING

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

WINDOWS MID MIDDLE EAST is the definitive for PC and consumer electronics Buyers’ Guide fo products in the region. We strenuously test products in our dedicated Dubai WinLab in order to highlight the very best models for our readers. Here we explain just how we test new kit in order orde or derr to ooffer ffer ff er ttruly ru authoritative and objective recommendations, helping us keep WINDOWS recommendatio most relevant technology magazine. the region’s mos

CPU TESTING

GRAPHIC CARD TESTING

Testing processors is a time consuming process because there are a number of different tests that we employ. Depending on the CPU that has to be tested, we construct a testbed using a compatible motherboard. However, the 2Gbytes of OCZ memory, Gigabyte GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1Tbyte hard drive and optical drive remain as standard components. All benchmarks are run at 1024 x 768 pixels and we employ the following benchmark tests; Cinebench 9.5, PCMark 2005 CPU and memory tests, 3DMark 2003 and 2005 CPU tests and POV-Ray to test raw processing performance. To test multimedia performance, we run a Lame 3.97 WAV to MP3 encode test, a TMPGENC video encode, MPEG to DivX conversion test in addition to running F.E.A.R and World in Conﬂict. With the exception of POV-Ray and all the encode tests, higher numbers mean a faster processor and thus a higher performance score.

Our graphics card testbed comprises an Intel Core 2 Q6700 quad-core processor that runs at 3GHz, an Asus Maximum Extreme motherboard, 2Gbytes of Corsair DDR2 RAM, Western Digital’s 300Gbyte Raptor X SATA drive, a Serial ATA optical drive and a 750-watt PC Power and Cooling power supply. All of these components are housed in Thermaltake’s Armour+ chassis and we use Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. To test a graphics card, we hook it up to this machine and this is then connected to our Viewsonic VX2835wm 28-inch LCD screen. The screen offers a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, which means it allows us to test graphics cards at all the major resolutions. To test graphics cards, we use three specific benchmarks; F.E.A.R, Company of Heroes and World in Conflict. The first benchmark uses older DirectX 9 rendering technology whilst the latter two game titles use DirectX 10. This enables us to gauge a graphics card’s performance

To test hard drives, we use our graphics card testbed. The drive in question is hooked up to the motherboard’s Serial ATA II controller (or USB or Firewire port if it’s an external hard drive) and tested using a combination of real world and synthetic benchmark tests. For internal hard drives, we rely on a copy test to ascertain real world performance. The test folder is stored on a SSD drive, ensuring that this drive won’t bottleneck the drive being tested and, to gauge write performance, we time how long it takes for the 4Gbyte folder to be transferred from the SSD drive to the test drive. To test read performance, we do the opposite and time how long it takes for the test drive to transfer the data to the SSD drive. Lower times in both cases equate to better performance. Next we call into action HD Tach3, a synthetic benchmark. This tests a drive in terms of its access time, average read and write performance, burst speed and CPU utilisation. In terms of access time and CPU usage, lower numbers are better. With external drives we use the same real world read/write test methodology but instead of using a 4Gbyte folder only, we also test the drive with a single 238Mbyte test ﬁle. Again, lower times give a drive higher performance scores.

OTHER PRODUCTS Products such as MP3 players, PMPs, mobile phone etc are tested for a period of one or two weeks. During this time we use the products as someone who purchased it would and this helps us gauge performance, features and value for money. In most cases the brunt of the testing is subjective and the testing always focuses on real world usefulness.

www.itp.net/reviews

HOT KIT 33

HP PAVILION DM3-1340EV Go mobile on a budget

PRICE $600 CONTACT +9714 391 6000 WEB www.skyelectronics.com

-----

P has a wide range of notebooks on offer with the Pavilion dm31340ev falling into the thin and light category. The dm3 also targets cash strapped buyers rather than road warriors with deep pockets. The dm3’s body is a mix of brushed aluminum and glossy-piano-black and this combination gives the notebook a premium look that completely hides its budget positioning; in coffee shops the Pavilion drew a number of interested and curious onlookers. Beyond its good looks the machine proved its mobile mastery as it delivered four hours and 45 minutes of battery life under mixed use. This combined with its sleek dimensions and 1.9kg weight makes it an ideal traveling companion. Studying the machine’s components it was easy to see why the notebook is such a champ in the battery life department. For starters it uses a dualcore 1.3GHz Pentium SU4100 processor and while this CPU isn’t a speed demon it offers decent performance and, more importantly, a TDP of just 10-watts. The latter means that it is incredibly frugal in terms of power consumption (a dual-core 2.26GHz Intel Core i3-350M processor in comparison has a higher

TDP of 35-watts). Beyond the batteryfriendly processor the HP also relies on a LCD with a LED backlight. LED powered LCDs require less power while delivering the same or better color vibrancy. The LCD measures 13.3-inches (diagonally) and runs at a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The screen is well suited to the laptop in terms of size and thanks to its native resolution the screen is actually capable of displaying 720 content without downscaling. That said the CPU and graphics card struggled to maintain a smooth frame rate when watching 720p videos. Given that this notebook is designed for mobility on a budget however this isn’t too big of an issue. On the storage front the machine packs a 320GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA drive and this is something of a surprise because most notebooks, especially thin and light models, use 5,400rpm hard drives by default. Thanks to this fast hard drive and the 4GB of installed DDR3 memory the Pavilion offered very lively everyday performance; multi-tasking was smooth, loading Microsoft’s Outlook and a 1GB PST file was reasonably quick and we could still work without tearing our hair out when the included Norton

Internet Security was performing a full disk scan. The only thing missing here is an integrated optical drive. Running our benchmarks on the dm31340ev the HP produced decent figures; it scored 3018, 1930, 2090, 1746, 3326, 3085, 2612 and 3819 in the PCMark, Memories, TV and Movie, Gaming, Music, Communications, Productivity and HDD Test suites. The scores make the HP a much faster machine than LG’s US $80 more expensive Haier R450 (reviewed last issue).

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

-------------

SPECIFICATIONS 1.3GHz Intel Pentium SU4100 dual-core processor, Intel GS45 chipset, 4GB DDR3 memory, 13.3-inch LED HD screen running at a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, 320GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive, 5-in-1 memory card reader, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, four USB2.0 ports, one HDMI port, built-in webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 1.9kg, one-year warranty. PROS Premium looks, aggressively priced, great disk performance, long battery life. CONS No optical drive. VERDICT If the lack of an optical drive isn’t a deal breaker, the dm3-1340ev is a fantastic notebook to travel with. Considering its $600 asking price it is exceptional value-for-money.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

ULTRA-PORTABLE NOTEBOOK

Reviews

IL21LIUE312.412!386y316!7034021!23;24!QN!เกฒ!3!

CY CMY

www.itp.net/reviews

HOT KIT 35

SONY VEGAS MOVIE STUDIO HD PLATINUM 10 Simple but effective

PRICE $81 CONTACT +9716 556 0933 WEB www.sonycreativesoftware.com

-----

f you’re in the market for video-editing apps there are a number of options to consider such as Adobe’s recently released Premiere Pro CS5, Core VideoStudio X3 and, more recently Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10. The software is easy-to-install and fairly quick though it, annoyingly, will only function once you’ve registered it online. This process is painless but we still feel that forcing users to register software after they’ve entered an original serial number is unnecessary. Firing up Movie Studio HD long time Vegas users will feel at home since the interface hasn’t changed very much compared to its predecessor. This is a good thing for long time users considering that one of Vegas’ strengths has always been its simple and streamlined interface; whereas other video editing apps would force you to jump through hoops to perform a wide range of tasks, Vegas allows you to do almost everything directly on the timeline itself. Because of this you can get busy editing complex, multi-layer videos as quickly and as easily as if you were simply cropping basic video clips. Unfortunately if you’ve just recently made the jump over to Vegas after

having worked on other editing software the basic interface might be off-putting and complicated to learn, at least at first. One of the strengths of Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 is that it features an efficient and effective preview system. The engine allows you to preview your edited content as soon as you’ve made changes such as adding or removing special effects. However, because HD content is taxing and can result in dropped frames (depending on the system configuration) Vegas allows you to tweak the preview so you can opt for resolution over smoothness or vice versa. Thanks to this you can preview in high resolution when a scene is fairly basic and effect free or, when there are many effects in play, dial down the resolution. Very useful. We tested Movie Studio Platinum on a PC with a 2.67GHz quad-core Core i7 920 processor, 6GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 memory, a Radeon HD 5870 graphics card and a 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive. On this rig the preview engine was able to run four AVCHD streams simultaneously. Had the software packed a native 64-bit rendering engine we reckon it would have been able to run six streams

simultaneously. Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS5 managed ten streams on this same PC though that features a fully-fledged 64-bit preview engine. Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 also scores high marks for its built-in tools. If you’ve got unsteady hands or you’ve got footage with a lot of shaking the application’s stabilisation effect will prove extremely useful. It was able to sort out shaky video without mistaking intentional movement for unwanted shakes.

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

-------------

REQUIREMENTS 1GHz processor (dual/quadcore recommended for HD), 1GB RAM (2GB recommended for HD), 200MB hard-disk space, OHCI-compatible i.LINK connector/IEEE-1394DV card (for DV capture and print-to-tape), USB 2.0 connection (for importing from AVCHD™ or DVD camcorders), Apple QuickTime 7.1.6 or later, Internet Connection (for Gracenote MusicID Service), DVD-ROM drive (for installation from a DVD only). PROS Interface is quick-to-use if you know what you’re doing, competent preview engine, well priced. CONS Steep learning curve, effects library is limited. VERDICT While Vegas can be difficult to work with if you’re a new user, you’ll find its interface is very quick to work with once you’ve grown used to it.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE

Reviews

www.itp.net/reviews

PORTABLE PROJECTOR

36 HOT KIT

3M MPro150 Pocket

Projector

A proper pocket-sized all-in-one? PRICE $463 CONTACT +9714 3670 777 WEB www.3m.com

-----

PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Reviews

-------------

SPECIFICATIONS LED projection engine, 15 Lumens brightness, 20,000 hours lamp life, eight- to 50-inch

ASUS ENGTX480 A GTX 480 for less

PRICE $550 CONTACT +9714 299 3873 WEB www.asus.com

-----

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

-------------

SPECIFICATIONS PCI-E interface, nVidia GeForce GTX 480 GPU running at 700MHz, 1536MB of GDDR5

he MPro150 is 3M’s top pocket projector at the moment and the company claims it’s suitable for business applications, movies and, oddly, even music. Compared with the less expensive MPro120 the MPro150 supports several different file formats, features an on-screen menu system, 1GB of storage and a microSD card slot. Beyond this the projectors share the same LED engine that offers a brightness of 15 Lumens. The non-replaceable LED in the meanwhile is rated for 20,000 hours of operation and can create projections ranging from eight- to 50-inches (diagonally). The projector is VGA, SVGA, XGA and WXGA compatible. Testing the MPro150’s

movie capabilities we were left underwhelmed. While it accepted different video file formats we were unable to modify the aspect ratio and, perhaps more annoyingly, couldn’t navigate within the video. The only functions available are pause, play and skip to the next file. Feeding the projector Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and more in a dark room, the 3M created crisp, legible projections. Unfortunately even a little light will wash out the display so you’ll have to pick your projection spots well. Moving to music, the 3M's two half-watt speakers created reasonably loud audio though it lacked bass. The quality of sound was also spoilt a little by the high-speed whine of the cooling fan.

screen size, microSD memory card support, two half-watt speakers, 1GB internal memory, one-year warranty.

VERDICT Best used as a business projector but given its high price, its lower-cost sibling is a better option.

he Asus ENGTX480 is the second GTX 480 graphics card we’ve reviewed. Priced at US $550 it is $104 less expensive than Zotac’s GeForce GTX 480 (reviewed last month). Like the Zotac GTX 480 card the Asus follows nVidia’s reference specs to the letter. As a result the card’s GPU runs at the recommend frequency of 700MHz, while its 1536MB of GDDR5 is clocked at 3696MHz. The card also uses a reference design cooler and so looks exactly like Zotac’s GTX 480. Putting the Asus through our performance gauntlet the card proved slower than the more expensive Zotac offering. In Heaven v2.0 for instance the ENGTX480

memory running at 3696MHz, DirectX 11 API support, two DVI ports, one HDMI port, threeyear warranty.

scored 78.7fps, 58.1fps and 49.9fps at 1024 x 768, 1680 x 1050 and 1920 x 1200 pixels. The Zotac on the other hand produced higher scores of 87.5fps, 58.9fps and 50fps, making it the faster card. Similarly in our H.A.W.X tests the Asus scored 166fps, 117fps and 99fps to the Zotac’s 167fps, 119fps and 100fps respectively. While the Asus is the slower card overall, it’s worth remembering that it also retails for a significant amount less than Zotac’s GTX 480 offering. If you’re looking for a GTX 480 and cash is a concern this card actually represents great value. At this price it is also cheaper than Gigabyte’s GV-N470D5-13I-B GTX 470 card (reviewed last month). VERDICT Though not a performance monster the ENGTX480 is a worthwhile buy because of its sensible price tag.

www.itp.net/reviews

KWORLD Media

Player M102

Cheap but is it cheerful?

PRICE $42 WEB www.kworld-global.com

-----

PCI-E GRAPHICS CARD

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

-------------

SPECIFICATIONS USB2.0 connector, SD/SDHC/MS memory card compatible, PAL/NTSC TV mode, FAT32/

ZOTAC GeForce

GTX 470 AMP! Higher performance at a higher price PRICE $510 CONTACT +9714 886 3300 WEB www.zotac.com

-----

PERFORMANCE FEATURES VALUE FOR MONEY

-------------

SPECIFICATIONS PCI-E interface, nVidia GeForce GTX 470 GPU running at 656MHz, 1280MB of GDDR5

world produces a range of products with the Media Player M102 coming from the firm’s ‘Home Media Centre’ line. Out of the box the M102 resembles an old, external modem though finished in glossy black, it didn’t look out of place in our living room. As you’d expect the device ships with a remote control and while there are plenty of buttons to aid functionality, the remote’s range can be a bit of an issue. In terms of connectivity the Media Player M102 is quite versatile; you can hook it up to your TV via Component or HDMI. Going the Component route you’ll have to use RCA cables to pump audio across to your TV or amplifier. Kworld supplies the Component and RCA

NTFS file system support, HDMI/Component/ RCA output ports, infrared remote control, one-year warranty.

hen we reviewed the standard Zotac GeForce GTX 470 in the last issue of Windows, we said that Zotac would be releasing a factoryoverclocked GTX 470 AMP! Edition card and surprise, surprise, that’s exactly what we have on test this month. Fitting the card into our test rig we loaded GPU-Z and found the AMP! Edition’s GPU and memory purring along at the frequencies quoted on Zotac’s website; the GPU runs at 656MHz while the 1280MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 3402MHz. nVidia’s reference specifications in comparison call for the GPU and memory to run at 607MHz and 3348MHz respectively. As the GTX 470 GPU is a

memory running at 3402MHz, DirectX 11 support, two DVI ports, one mini-HDMI port, five-year warranty.

HOT KIT 37 cables as part of the package and while this adds value, we would have liked to have seen a HDMI cable thrown in as well. The media player can access content via USB drive and memory card media only, so if you’re looking for network functionality, you’ll need to look elsewhere. The onboard interface is easy to use and breaks down content into categories; photo, music, movie, text and files. This is useful if you have a drive packed full of content and you only want to look for music or movies say. The M102 has reasonable file format support though one glaring omission in .MKV file support. Besides this however we were able to play all the content we threw at it. VERDICT Lack of Matroska support aside the M102 works out of the box. It’s easy to setup and easy-to-use.

hot customer at its default frequency Zotac has fitted a beefy heatpipe cooling solution to keep the card’s thermals in check. The cooler proved silent in use but you lose the use of the two slots beneath the PCI-E slot that the card sits in. Thanks to the pumped up GPU and memory the card, expectedly, outran its standard counterpart though the differences weren’t huge. Whereas the standard card managed 81fps, 58fps and 39.8fps at 1920 x 1200 pixels in our H.A.W.X, World in Conflict and Heaven v2.0 tests, the AMP! Edition scored 85fps, 60fps and 44.2fps. Better numbers but given the higher cost it’s perhaps not the best value for users on a strict budget. VERDICT A swift and silent GTX 470 card at a high price. Worth considering only if every frame counts.

WINDOWS MIDDL MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

EXTERNAL MEDIA PLAYER

Reviews

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 39

BUYERSGUIDE HOW TO USE THE GUIDE The Buyers’ Guide is a fully comprehensive guide to the best products that WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST has reviewed, and is intended to act as an effective resource for buyers of such products in the Middle East market. The Buyer's Guide is updated with new products each month, and out of date products removed.

Each of our ten product categories contains ten recommended product buys. For each product we’ve included vendor (or local distributor) contact details, our Windows Middle East overall rating, our verdict on the product and details of which issue we reviewed it in (alternatively you can find all our product reviews - in full - on www.itp.net). Each of the products shown scored either 4/5 or 5/5 in its respective review, so instead of listing products in score order we have arranaged these by price, with the most expensive at the top of the page. This makes it quick and easy for you to find the product you can best afford. We also offer advice on how to go about buying products within each particular product category. This gives you, the reader, the ability to make a better-informed judgment about what kit is suitable for your needs.

RATINGS EXPLAINED

Awarded to products that offer you the most bang for your buck.

Awarded to products that offer impressive amounts of power and speed.

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Awarded to products that offer impressive amounts of power and speed.

COMPONENTS DESKTOPS DIGITAL IMAGING HANDHELDS MONITORS NOTEBOOKS PERIPHERALS PRINTERS SOFTWARE STORAGE

AWARDS are basically presented to products for their outstanding performance and value. A Performance or Value winner must have received five stars in that particular category. An Editor’s Choice award goes to outstanding products that have excelled in both value and performance.

FEATURES: What value-add features are included? Do they benefit the user? Are they innovative? PERFORMANCE: Does the product perform well? Is it quick? EASE OF USE: How user-friendly is the interface? Does it require expertise? VALUE FOR MONEY: Does the price represent a fair return on performance? DESIGN: Is the product well designed? Are buttons easy-to-access? Are ports and connections well-placed?

EXCELLENT VERY GOOD GOOD AVERAGE POOR

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Awarded to outstanding products that have excelled in both value and performance.

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

---------------------

www.itp.net/reviews

40 BUYERS GUIDE Components RATING WEB REVIEWED

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++ www.kingston.com June 2010

+++++ +9714 886 3300 www.giga-byte.com April 2009

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

+9714 369 2666 www.intel.com May 2010

+9714 397 8035 www.xfxforce.com November 2009

Kingston HyperX LoVo KHX1866C9D3LK2 Dual-channel DDR3memory kit

$200

Kingston’s fantastic LoVo HyperX memory kit offers tremendous performance at an unbelievably low operating voltage.

Gigabyte EX58-Extreme High-end G L A136motherboard

$512

If you’ve got a Core i7 processor and want the best performance or you intend on overclocking, this motherboard offers all you’ll ever need.

Intel Core i7 980X LGA136six-core processor

$999

This super-chip features six 3.33GHz processing cores and a ton of cache memory. There’s simply no better choice for multi-threaded software.

XFX Radeon HD 5870 Ready to dance with DirectX11

$470

The XFX Radeon HD 5870 offers excellent gaming performance, brilliant multi-screen technology and is ready for next generation DirectX titles.

GIGABYTE GV-R577D5-1GD-B PCI-E Graphics Card If you want to run the latest and greatest games in full splendor and you’re on a budget, then this is the card for you. At 1920 x 1200 the card returned framerates of 41fps, 31fps and 53fps in our Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, World in Conflict and Company of Heroes tests.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+9714 886 3330 www.giga-byte.com January 2010

$235 Desktops

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) Before you buy a motherboard you should first decide on what processor you’re going with. AMD and Intel use entirely different CPU socket types and within each company’s processor ranks, there are different sockets for different chips. If you want a B ‘ loomfield’ Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor, you’ll need a motherboard with a G L A 136CPU socket. On the other hand if you want a yL‘ nnfield’ Core i7 processor, you’ll need a G L A 1156board. On the flip side, with AMD, you’ll need a Socket AM3 motherboard if you’re going to buy a Phenom II processor. 2) Depending on what you expect your machine to do, you should consider a motherboard’s chipset and its accompanying features carefully. If you want to play games at very high resolutions consider a board that packs multi-GPU technology. This will allow you to run two or more GPUs in parallel for better gaming performance. On the other hand if you’re interested in building a high-end machine on a budget, consider an overclocking friendly motherboard that will let you squeeze the most out of your processor, memory and other components.

ING Y BU IPSNTS T PONE COM

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 41 Desktops YOYOTECH FI7EPOWER MK3 High-end gaming PC

$8,175

Yoyotech’s PC has oddles of character and packs some serious performance under its distinctive hood. The only real issue is its price tag.

BenQ nScreen i91 All-in-one PC

$517

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

$1,200

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

While the nScreen i91 isn’t able to seamlessly playback Full HD content it is ideal for browsing the web, dealing with e-mails and working on office applications.

International Computer Company ZAI Mid-range gaming PC An attractive machine that can tackle apps and games with ease thanks to a balanced set of internal components.

Sky Electronics Expeditor EXP - X980/6/80SSD/1TB/480X2/RV2 High-end gaming PC

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 800 344357 WEB www.yoyotech.co.uk REVIEWED June 2010

$4,688

If you want butter smooth gaming framerates and wait-free application performance the Expeditor is the rig for you. It’s also very reasonably priced considering its high-spec components.

+9714 299 1000 www.benq.com November 2009

+9662 664 446 www.zai.com.sa June 2009

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 266 3774 WEB www.skyelectronics.com REVIEWED July 2010

ZOTAC MAG HD-ND01 I0N NETTOP The MAG (short for ‘Mini All-In-One-Giant’) is a complete package that offers attractive pricing, a sleek frame and full HD video playback. This mini-PC is incredibly compact and with a black and silver finish, it is quite a looker. You can bolt it to the back of your PC’s LCD or even a Plasma or LCD TV.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+9714 266 3774 www.zotac.com January 2010

$299

2) If content creation is your concern, make sure you buy a desktop machine with a triple- or quad-core processor. Most content creation software is heavily multi-threaded so they can take advantage of multiple processing cores and return better performance. At the same time make sure you have ample memory as content creation work is generally quite memory intensive. Aim for at least 4GB of memory if you’re working with images and page layouts and over G 6 B if video editing and effects make up the brunt of your work.

G N I Y BU IPSS T OP KT DES

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) Buying a desktop PC off the shelf can be tricky. To get the most bangs for your buck you’ll have to pick a machine that satisfies all of your requirements. If you want to play games at a high resolution, with all the details turned on and with a smooth framerate look closely at the machine’s processor and graphics card; if money is no object opt for a high-end rig that packs a top-end CPU and GPU. On the other hand if you’re on a constrained budget consider buying a machine that has a mid-range CPU but a high-end GPU.

www.itp.net/reviews

42 BUYERS GUIDE Digital imaging RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 391 8400 WEB www.sony-mea.com REVIEWED January 2010

Sony Bravia VPL-VW85 Full HD projector

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 391 5050 WEB www.canon-me.com REVIEWED June 2010

Canon Legria HFM306 Full HD camcorder

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 364 8600 WEB www.samsungmea.com REVIEWED November 2009

Samsung ST550 12.2-megapixel digital camera

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 391 5050 WEB www.canon-me.com REVIEWED February 2009

Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera

$7,357

While the Sony isn’t exactly cheap at US $7,357 it actually offers a cost-effective solution if you’re looking for a way to go Full HD with a massive screen size.

$817

The Legria HFM306 offers high quality capture performance and ease-of-use. The only thing it lacks is a long life battery.

$354

The ST550 is an easy-to-use touchscreen digital camera that offers highly-detailed and colour accurate photographs. It also makes it very easy to take self portrait shots.

$3,133

An aggressively priced full-frame SLR camera that excels at producing high resolution images with little or no visible noise.

OPTOMA ES526 Multimedia Projector The ES526 doesn’t put a foot wrong as far as its projection performance and value are concerned. The projector offers a ‘Bright mode’, which boosts brightness noticeably, whilst the lamp will last for 3000 hours. We were also impressed by the sharpness and crispness of fonts projected through this device.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+4419 236 91800 www.optoma.com January 2009

$531

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) There are thousands of digital cameras on the market and each of these models belongs to either the point-and-shoot or SLR camera categories. If you’re just getting started with photography you’re better off trying a standard point-and -shoot model first. However, if you’re a confident photographer and want full control over the images you take, a SLR camera is the way to go. 2) Going the SLR route the first thing you should do is invest in a high quality lens and a high capacity memory card. SLRs can be purchased with a standard kit lens or as b‘ ody only’ where the former is a little more expensive as you get a starter lens to begin with. While this lens will take basic photos, you’ll want higher quality g‘ lass’ for the best image results. )3 Consider buying a tripod for your camera. These relatively inexpensive accessories help you stabilise your camera and are particularly useful for taking photos of distant subjects. The lesser the camera moves the better the photographs.

G N I Y BU IPS T ITAL DIG GING IMA

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 43 Handhelds BlackBerry Curve 8900 Business smartphone

$512

RATING +++++ WEB www.blackberry.com REVIEWED October 2009

$700

RATING +++++ WEB www.garminasus.com REVIEWED June 2010

$653

RATING WEB REVIEWED

The Curve 8900 offers excellent features in a package that’s aggressively priced and intuitive to work with.

Garmin-Asus Nuvifone M10 Touchscreen smartphone The Nuvifone M10 boasts sharp, if unoriginal looks and some very useful GPS features. Great for on the go users.

LG KM900 Arena Touchscreen smartphone While the KM900 Arena offers solid features and a great looking interface, its touchscreen hinders overall usability.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Touchscreen smartphone

$816

If you’re looking for an alternative to the typical Apple iPhone or RIM BlackBerry device, this phone’s features and interface make it worthy of consideration.

+++++ http://ae.lge.com October 2009

RATING +++++ WEB www.sonyericsson.com REVIEWED June 2010

LG CHOCOLATE BL40 Smartphone Distinctive looks, great features and intuitive usability are the BL40s strong points. The phone sports a minimalistic design, so the front only shows a speaker, a camera, the 4-inch LCD and LG’s logo. It also features a standard 3.5mm audio jack so you can use most headphones without worry.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+9714 800 54 http://ae.lge.com January 2010

$735

2) Pay attention to the size, resolution and colour capabilities of your handheld’s screen. If you’re buying a handheld with the intention of watching videos, make sure the C L D’s colour palette supports up to 16million colours as these give the best playback quality. oL wer end C L Ds are limited to colour palettes of only 46,00colours and thus don’t produce the best video or photo outputs. In terms of screen size, just pick one that you’re happy with and in terms of resolution, opt for a screen that offers no less than 230x 240pixels. )3 Today’s mobile phones, PDAs and Smartphones allow you to install additional software that you can download off the Internet. To store all this extra data however your handheld will need to have storage. Most handhelds offer between 46MB and 1GB as standard but, if you want more to store additional software or even music or photos, check if the handheld has a memory card expansion slot.

G N I Y BU IPSS T EDL DH HAN

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) iLke fully-fledged notebooks, handheld devices fall into one of a number of different product categories; you can get standard mobile phones or data centric devices such as PDAs and Smartphones. If you’re after a device solely to make phone calls and perform text messaging, a standard mobile will do. These sometimes offer extras such as digital camera and MP3functionality.

www.itp.net/reviews

44 BUYERS GUIDE

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 362 7500 WEB www.samsung.com/ae REVIEWED June 2009 RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++ +9714 335 3666 www.phillips.com December 2009

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

+9714 881 2191 www.lge.com September 2009

+9714 299 1000 www.benq.ae September 2009

Samsung Series 6 UN40B6000 40-inch EL D C LD

TBC

Although the initial outlay is high, this Series 6 model will ultimately prove less expensive in the long term due to its lower power consumption. It also packs killer visual punch.

Philips Cinema 21:9 56-inch C L D TV

$5,449

Although 21:9 content isn’t widely available as yet, the Philips is still worth having because of its impressive video-scaling.

LG Flatron W2261V 22-inch wide-screen C LD

$217

The Flatron W2261V offers killer visuals, an elegant and attractive design and won’t necessarily break the bank. A great buy.

BENQ E2200HD 22-inch wide-screen C LD

$195

BenQ’S E2200HD has aged very gracefully and is now an even better value buy than when it was originally launched.

LG M2294A 22”lFat-screen wonder LG’s latest 22-inch screen is flexible in every sense of the word as it can function as a TV screen or as a computer monitor. It offers great visuals on the whole and, as we’ve come to expect from LG, looks the part too. The included remote will also make sure you never have to get off the couch again.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+9714 881 2191 www.lge.com August 2009

$326

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) There are two types of HD display types on the market; HD and uF ll HD. If a screen is marked as H ‘D Ready’, it will support the 720p and 108i0HD resolutions. A uF ll HD screen however supports both 720p and 108p0 . HD screens are generally cheaper than uF ll HD screens but, if you’re after the best possible quality, opt for a uF ll HD screen as 108p0 content is far superior to 720p and 108i0content. 2) Keep an eye out for a screen’s response time. Response time is measured in milliseconds (ms) and in this case, lower numbers are better. Screens with response times under 5ms are less likely to blur when displaying quick moving content. Slow screens will show tearing or picture breakup and any screen with a response time above 8ms should be avoided. )3 The most popular display technologies for wide-screen HD TVs today are iLquid Crystal Display (LCD) and Plasma. Of the two technology types, Plasma screens still offer slightly better colour richness and deeper, more accurate looking black colours, are less susceptible to motion blur and are cheaper when compared to an identically-sized C L D model. C L D-based TVs on the other hand don’t suffer from screen burn-in, are less power hungry, lighter and feature more compact cabinet designs.

G N I Y BU IPSRS T O IT MON

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 45 Notebooks HP HDX18 X18-1070EE Blu-ray desktop replacement

TBC

A heavy-duty desktop replacement that does most things right. A high-end GPU plus a better trackpad would make it perfect.

FTS M2010 Netbook

$408

A handsome netbook that boasts quick performance and lengthy battery life. The M2010 is competitively priced too.

Dell Adamo Ultra-portable notebook

$2,043

The Adamo is a classy ultra-portable that’s great to travel with. It’s also reasonably swift when dealing with everyday applications and is covered by a strong warranty package.

Toshiba Qosmio X300-130 High-end desktop replacement

$2,178

If you’ve got the cash, this desktop replacement monster can tackle applications and games without breaking a sweat.

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++ +9714 391 6000 www.hp.com/me November 2009

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 501 5716 WEB http://ts.fujitsu.com/ REVIEWED November 2009 RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++ +9714 391 1860 www.dell.com November 2009

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 351 3771 WEB www.toshiba-gulf.com REVIEWED May 2009

APPLE MACBOOK PRO Desktop replacement notebook CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

TBA www.apple.com May 2009

$3351

1) There are a number of different laptop types available; desktop replacement, portable, ultra-portable, tablet PCs and netbooks. So, depending on your needs, you should pick an appropriate laptop. • Desktop replacements are exactly what their name implies; they are designed to act as a fully-fledged replacement for a desktop computer. As a result they focus more on providing high performance rather than portability, which generally makes these laptops the heaviest type (2.5kg and heavier). They are also the worst in terms of battery life, as a result of their high performance components. These laptops can be configured however with components and features that other notebooks just wouldn’t be able to accommodate such (as 17-inch wide-screen displays). • Portable laptops are designed to balance performance and portability. These laptops generally sit in a weight class between 1.9kg and 2.4kg, which makes them lighter than their desktop replacement counterparts. Along with this, these notebooks also offer greater battery life. • Ultra-portable notebooks are, as you can imagine, designed for portability exclusively. This laptop type generally offers the longest amount of battery life though they are normally equipped with entry- or mid-level components, particularly in terms of the processor, graphics processor and hard disk. These notebooks generally weigh under 1.8kg with the lightest models weighing as little as 1kg. S • Tablet PCs are similar to ultra-portables except for one difference; these laptops offer a OOK B E touch-sensitive screen. This screen can normally swivel and sit flush against the laptop’s NOT body so the user can write (using a stylus) as if the PC were a notebook. • Netbooks are the newest member of the portable PC market. They are designed for budget mobile computing. The focus of these devices is primarily light application use such as word processing and web browsing. Size and weight wise, they mirror ultra-portables.

G N I Y BU IPS T

2) Once you’ve decided on which type of laptop you want, consider its specifications. Make sure it has at least 1GB of RAM but, if it offers any flavor of Windows Vista as standard, rd, opt for 2GB at the very least. You should also ask if the laptop offers a CD or DVD writer as this will enable you to share data.

WINDOWS NDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

The MacBook Pro boasts a large 17-inch LED backlit LCD and despite its large, desktop replacement dimensions, it weighs less than 3kg. The LCD is a stunner when it comes to visual quality; videos look superb and photos are vivid and look very accurate when compared to the original subject.

www.itp.net/reviews

46 BUYERS GUIDE Peripherals RATING WEB REVIEWED

Wii +++++ Nintendo Gaming console www.wii.com April 2007

RATING +++++ CONTACT +9714 883 6244 WEB www.microautomation.ae REVIEWED December 2008

$559

This console transforms gaming from being a geek's pastime into a fun engaging activity for all the family. Ingenious.

Powermatic PE4G-25 Power protection strip The PE4G-25 offers a cost-effective way to protect your electricial hardware from all types of electricial damage.

RATING WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++ Belkin Washable Mouse

www.apple.com February 2010

+9714 391 7000 www.belkin.com March 2009

$23

Apple iPod Touch 64GB Media player

$477

An improvement over its predecessor but while it’s great to use every day, it isn’t quite perfect just yet.

$32

Waterproof mouse Belkin’s Washable Mouse works as claimed, so you needn’t ever worry about buying a new mouse when the next liquid-disaster strikes.

SANDISK SANSA FUZ E2GB Slick and efficient It’s sleek design and surface means it is one of the best looking players out there that works like a dream. Better still, it can be expanded into a player with a formidable storage space with the purchase of a microSD card.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) Two of the most important peripherals you can buy for your desktop PC - or even your laptop - are the keyboard and mouse. It’s these two devices that you rely on to physically interact with your PC, sometimes for very long periods at a stretch. It’s wise then to invest in quality devices that sport ergonomic designs so you can work without aches and pains. If you’re a hardcore gamer and want every possible advantage consider looking for devices that are designed specifically for gaming. These peripherals will likely offer a number of extra buttons, enhanced responsiveness and more.

+9714 217 0741 www.sandisk.com October 2008

$125

G N I Y BU IPSALS T R IPHE R E P

2) If you want an immersive experience when you’re gaming, watching movies or even listening to music, a fully-fledged surround sound system is a must have. A 5.1 system that’s compatible with the Dolby Digital and/or DTS audio standards is a great starting point that provides six different audio channels (five for the speakers and one for the subwoofer). Depending on the size of the room you should pick a system with an appropriate amount of power, so you don’t have e to crank the volume up to maximum. Even high quality sound systems will suffer from reduced quality when running at their top volume setting.

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 47 Printers Brother HL-3070CW LED-Colour printer

$360

Lively performance, compact dimensions and flexible connectivity make the HL-3070CW a worthwhile buy.

Lexmark x544dn Multi-function printer

$773

When you take into account the X544dn’s many features and super quick printing, it is seriously good value.

OKI B430dn Monochrome laser printer

$323

The B430dn is a reasonably priced printer that packs tremendous performance and functionality into a compact package.

Xerox Phaser 6280N Colour laser printer

$495

A well-priced workgroup colour laser printer that offers high print speeds, top-notch quality and features that adapt to your demands.

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

+9714 883 5878 www.brother.ae May 2010

+9714 427 6302 www.lexmark.com April 2009

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

+9714 204 5810 www.oki.com June 2009

+9714 883 8838 www.xerox.com September 2009

X O R E X PHASE R6130N Ready to serve

1) When you’re in the market for a printing device and performance is a concern, don’t base your decision solely on manufacturer quoted ‘ppm’ (pages per minute) figures. Each manufacturer uses a different testing methodology to produce their ppm figures so you can’t compare one brand’s figures to another. 2) If you want to save paper without hurting productivity consider a printing device with a built-in automatic duplexer. A duplexer is able to automatically flip pages, so you can take advantage of double-sided printing without any manual labour. 3) Printing devices can have a number of different connectivity options such as USB, parallel, Ethernet or even WiFi. If the printer is only going to be used by a single machine, opt for a printer that features USB connectivity. If however you want to share the printer amongst multiple users, consider going the WiFi or standard Ethernet route.

CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+9714 883 8838 www.xerox.com March 2008

$424

G N I Y BU IPSS T ER T PRIN

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST UST 2010

Xerox says its Phaser 6130N is an ideal solution for workgroups of up to seven people that deal with small but frequent print jobs - and it’s right; the printer offers snappy performance. We also found text to be sharp and free of any anomalies. Overall, a well priced colour laser that performs well and also packs in solid features.

www.itp.net/reviews

48 BUYERS GUIDE Software RATING WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING WEB REVIEWED

+++++

www.abbyy.com

August 2009

www.adaox.com March 2010

Abbyy PDF Transformer 3.0 PDF conversion software

$96

A feature-packed PDF tool that does it all with minimal fuss. It’ll run well on low end machines as well.

ESET Smart Security Security suite

$69

While Smart Security lacks a very strong antispyware component it is very easy-to-use, packs a decent scan engine and a tough firewall.

RATING +++++ WEB www.symantec.com REVIEWED March 2010

Norton Internet Security 2010 Security suite

RATING +++++ WEB www.kaspersky.com REVIEWED March 2010

Kaspersky Internet Security Security suite

$77

A fast, slick and good-looking internet security platform that does a good job of protecting your PC with its wide-variety of features.

$60

With its vast number of features, brilliant performance and US $60 price tag, Kaspersky Internet Security is excellent value-for-money.

APPLEILIFE09 Apple’s iLife suite is a multimedia package that is designed to help you organise and manipulate content such as photos, movies, music, DVD and web-based content. A new feature is one known as ‘Faces’ and is part of the iPhoto 09 application. This is essentially designed to help you organise photos without burdening you with sifting through hundreds of pictures.

$106 WEB REVIEWED

www.apple.com April 2009

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

1) If your PC is connected to the Internet, is part of a network or you connect flash drives that have been attached to other machines, it’s worth investing in a fully-fledged security suite. Most security suites offer anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall protection, so they can keep your machine and its data free from harm. Avoid standalone anti-virus products unless you’re prepared to manually ensure your machine is safe from hackers, spam etc. 2) If you’re keen on upgrading to a newer operating system (OS) and your PC has 4GB of system memory (or more), make sure you buy a 64-bit OS rather than a 32-bit variant. A 64-bit OS can address much more memory than a 32-bit OS (32bit operating systems are limited to around 3GB), so your OS and software can actually take full advantage of all your memory. Running a 32-bit OS with 4GB of memory, the OS and all your software would only be able to use 3.5GB.

G N I Y BU IPSRE T A TW SOF

www.itp.net/reviews

BUYERS GUIDE 49 Storage Kingston DataTraveler HyperX USB memory stick

$104

A massive USB stick that offers slick performance and good value-for-money.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 750GB Notebook SATA hard disk

$149

Western Digital’s Scorpio Blue is a quick performer that’s free from noise and vibrations. It also boasts a very attractive price tag.

Intel 160GB X25-M SSD Internal SSD drive

$440

Although performance hasn’t sky-rocketed compared to its predecessor, the second generation Intel X25-M SSD offers better value and reliability.

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX Internal SATA hard disk

$329

The latest update to Western Digital’s VelociRaptor range brings higher storage capacities and better performance. It is the fastest Serial ATA spindle-based drive you can buy.

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+4401 932 738888 www.kingston.com July 2009

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING WEB REVIEWED

+++++

RATING CONTACT WEB REVIEWED

+++++

+9714 881 3234 www.wdc.com June 2010

www.intel.com October 2009

+9714 881 3234 www.wdc.com July 2010

HP SIMPLE SAV ESD 320A Portable USB Hard Drive

1) There are many different types of storage devices but the most common is the internal hard drive. There are a wide variety of drives available; some target performance seekers, some are designed for low noise and lower power and some aim to offer a mix of performance and price. Thus you should buy a drive that fits your specific needs; if you’re after top performance, opt for a drive that features a spindle speed of 7200rpm or even 10,000rpm.

+9714 391 6000 www.hp.com/me January 2010

G N I Y BU IPS T GE RA STO

2) If you’re after super-quick read and write performance and money is no object consider buying a solid state drive (SSD). These drives use high speed memory to store data – rather than rotating storage platters - and because there are no moving parts they are extremely quick and, should prove more reliable as well. The only downside with these drives, apart from their high cost, is that they are only available in limited capacities. 512GB B is the largest SSD available on the market today. 3) When buying a flash drive look beyond just how much capacity the drive offers. Today it’s possible to buy flash drives that feature password protection, hidden secure partitions and much more. You can also buy flash drives that are designed for rugged use, are water proof and even dust proof.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST T AUGUST 2010

The sd320a is a no-brainer for novice users interested in data backups. The SimpleSave CONTACT software is aptly named because it makes data backups supremely simple. The software WEB is also able to perform incremental backups, so you don’t need to worry about selecting REVIEWED new files after the first backup process completes.

The iPhone app Dubai has been waiting for has arrived…

Search 1000’s of restaurants, bars, gigs, clubs and ﬁlms

Eat Out Hungry? Find the restaurants closest to you in seconds

Send events to friends and bookmark your favourites

Download your FREE application today

timeoutdubai.com/iphone

www.itp.net/news

News

GAME ON 51

GAME ON NEWS NEW XBOX 360, KINECT GAMES SHOWN AT E3 Microsoft has released a new version of its Xbox 360 gaming console. The new model includes WiFi, an expanded 250GB hard drive and quieter operation. The console went on sale in the United States last month. The console was a surprise announcement at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, where Microsoft had already revealed its Kinect (formerly codenamed Project Natal) controller-free gaming system. The new version doubles the size of the existing 120GB drive, although the drive is not the same as the removable hard drive on existing consoles. Users will be able to switch data to the new console using USB flash storage, a function added by software upgrade to existing Xbox consoles earlier this year, and supported from launch with the new console. The console also features quieter operation than before after the older versions of the Xbox attracted criticism for being too noisy. The console includes a new 45nm processor with less heat output and one large fan instead of two. Other features include 2.4GHz 802.11n WiFi, five USB ports, a HDMI port and a custom Kinect port. In the US the new console is priced at US $299, with a launch date of July 16th set for Europe. No Middle East release details were available at time of writing. Microsoft has said that it has stopped producing the existing Xbox model and will sell out stocks of the old model. The company also released more details on its new Kinect controller and the lineup of games that will be available at launch. Kinect is officially set for a November 4th launch in the US. Microsoft said Kinect will enable users to access menus and other features on the Xbox console, just by waving at the television screen, while Kinect's facial recognition capabilities will recognise the user and access their preferences. Users can then access menus, entertainment and so on, using either gestures or voice commands. Fifteen Kinect-compatible titles are planned for the launch, including four from Microsoft itself, including Kinectimals virtual pets, Kinect Sports sports sim, Kinect Joyride racing game and Kinect Adventure, an arcade style action game. Other launches will include LucasArts Kinect Star Wars, EA Sports Active 2 and Sega Sonic Riders, and several other dance, fitness and sports titles. While Microsoft did not mention official pricing, some US retailers are offering a pre-order for Kinect for $150.

Polyphony Digital has poured over US $60 million into the development of its forthcoming racing game Gran Turismo 5 (GT5). The highly-anticipated PlayStation 3 exclusive racing title is dated for release in November of this year. In an interview in April 2008 Game designer Kazunori Yamauchi said that 150 people had worked on GT5 for four years. He also stated that the game was 50 times more expensive to develop than the 1997 version of Gran Turismo. The developers claim that GT5 covers even the most minor details such as sparks from collisions, kicked up debris and even track graffiti. When released the game will feature over 1000 cars split into two categories: Standard and Premium. Premium cars will have fully modeled interiors and exteriors and will feature panel separation effects. Standard cars on the other hand wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have very detailed interiors though there will be some exceptions on iconic cars such as the Ford Mustang and Lamborghini Countach.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

OVER US $60 MILLION SPENT ON GT5 DEVELOPMENT OVERUS$60MILLIONSPENTONGT5DEVELOPMENT

www.itp.net/news

52 GAME ON

News

THE GAMES OF E3

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

E3 is the biggest gaming exhibition on the planet and game companies showed hundreds of their upcoming games. Here’s a selection of what was shown.

Forza Motorsport 4 was one of the games Microsoft showed working in tandem with its new Kinect advanced camera tracking system. Using Kinect gamers can walk around their virtual cars, open doors and even take a seat and examine some of the finer details up close. This gorgeous game is likely to be released sometime in 2011. It is the fourth installment in the Microsoft Xbox exclusive racing series.

Scheduled for a September 2010 release F1 2010 is based on the actual 2010 season of the Formula One motor racing series. The game is a multi-platform release and will be available on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 gaming platforms. The game is said to have one of the ‘most complicated weather systems ever seen in a racing game’. The developer claims this weather system will make races more challenging and realistic.

Originally confirmed to be in production in April of this year, developer Treyarch released a number of images of its forthcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops at E3. Black Ops is the seventh installment in the Call of Duty series and will be set during the Cold War. Missions will take players to a variety of locations such as the Ural Mountains and Vietnam. The game is scheduled for release on November 9th of this year.

Dead Rising 2 takes place five years after the events of the original and is scheduled for release on August 31st. The game will take place in the fictional city of Fortune, which is modeled to look like Las Vegas, Nevada. Whereas the original was released only on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, the sequel will be available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game will feature cooperative gameplay and is set to have fully-fledged multiplayer support.

www.itp.net/news

GAME ON 53

Killzone 3 is set to hit store shelves in February 2011. This game will be the first in the series to feature 3D presentation and gamers can play using Sony’s PlayStation Move motion-sensing game controller. Gameplay is said to resemble that of Killzone 2 though the developers claim there will be numerous tweaks and changes. One key difference is that unlike its predecessors, this game will take place in a number of environments such as Arctic landscapes, nuclear wastelands and more.

Lego Universe is a forthcoming massively multiplayer online game. The game will be released in two stages; October 12th for “Founders” who purchase the game through official Lego channels (Lego shops etc) and a global launch on October 26th. The game takes place in an alternate universe populated by – surprise, surprise – Lego mini-figures. The game features a full-fledged storyline and will offer gameplay that’s similar to Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.

Developer Crytek showed its upcoming first person shooter Crysis 2 at the gaming exhibition. The game is the sequel to Crysis and its parallel sequel Crysis Warhead, This time around the game will take place in New York City. Crysis 2 will offer weapon customisation and players will be given the chance to dawn a new and improved Nanosuit, known as the Nanosuit 2. The game is scheduled for launch on November 18th of this year.

Star Wars: The Old Republic made a huge appearance at E3. The game is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game that’s destined for release in Spring 2011. The Old Republic is a PC-only title and takes place 300 years after the events of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games. Players will have the chance to play as a number of different character classes and can visit planets such as Alderan, Hoth, Taris and many more.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

News

05 VOL 13

www.itp.net

MAY 2010

2010

An ITP Technology Publication

270

USB 3.0

• Bamboo CTH460 WACOM • Benq V2220 • Brother HL-3070CW • LG C ki POP GD510BK

VOIP

CEBIT 2010

www.itp.net/reviews

POP: The Forgotten Sands

GAME ON 55

XBOX

✪✪✪✪✪ Price: $76 Controller: Xbox 360 controller Best Bit: The new elemental powers add a new twist to gameplay, it's brilliant. Verdict: The Forgotten Sands is a fun and challenging platform game that's worthy of carrying the Prince of Persia name. rince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is the latest Prince of Persia (POP) title produced by Ubisoft and actually fits in the time between POP: The Sands of Time and POP: The Warrior Within. Though released alongside Disney's film adaption: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the game is not an adaption of the movie. The game kicks off with the Prince riding to his brother Malik's kingdom so that he can learn about leadership from him. Unfortunately, when the Prince arrives he finds Malik's kingdom under heavy attack and upon meeting with Malik in the city's treasure vaults, the Prince learns that his brother intends to unleash Solomon's Army using a magical seal. Doing so Malik and the Prince learn that the army is uncontrollable, and seemingly unstoppable. The Prince then is ultimately tasked with stopping Solomon's Army with the help of a Djinn named Razia. Ubisoft claims its latest game "features many of the fan-favourite elements from the original series as well as new gameplay innovations". Playing the game this reviewer found both statements true as there are a number of elements that link this game to its

predecessors. As before the Prince has awesome acrobatic skills and, very early in the game, gains the ability to rewind time. Playing the game using the Xbox 360 controller we found the default controls worked very well and became natural within 30 minutes of gameplay. One slight annoyance is that you don't have a lot of control over the camera and this can, on occasion, make solving environmental puzzles difficult, and quite annoying. Beyond his ability to perform deathdefying moves and control time, the Prince now has elemental powers that allow him to wield the power of fire, ice and water. During different combat situations these powers can be used in various interesting ways though the Prince can also use them to solve puzzles in certain areas of the game. The

Prince can also purchase and enhance his abilities further by defeating foes as the game progresses. You'll need all the help you can get too because The Forgotten Sands can throw as many as 50 enemies at the Prince all at once. And, unlike past games, the Prince can't block and counter attacks this time. On the normal difficulty level the game presents a solid challenge and while you will undoubtedly fall in battle or take a misstep when tackling the platform puzzles, the game never gets annoying simply because you can skip the cutscene that appears before. This may sound like a rather insignificant feature but it really helps reduce frustration when you get stuck in a particular area over and over again. The game also allows you to reduce difficulty without having to restart the game; another useful feature. That said while the game allows you to reduce difficulty it doesn't allow you to go back and increase it again, once you've overcome whatever was stopping you from moving forward.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

www.itp.net

EXPERT SPEAK 57

HOW TO MAKE THAT BATTERY ATTERY LAST Antoine Harb, Business Development Manager at Kingston Technology Middle East dispenses tips on how to maximize battery life.

GENERAL GENIUS • Limit power-hungry activities like watching a DVD movie or playing games, which sap precious power. • Dim your screen! Just by adjusting the brightness of your device's screen you can eke out some extra battery life. Fiddle with time-outs on your phone, bin flash screensavers and cut annoying ringtones too. • Disable your laptop or phone’s wireless connection to save battery. Take out your computer’s wireless card or disable your WiFi/Bluetooth by using the manual control button. • Don’t flick! Multitasking is extra hard work for machines so close any unneeded programmes and cull any USB gadgets.

• Check for software updates. Ensuring your machine has the latest software helps it fix quirks and improve battery life.

LAPTOP-SPECIFIC • Optimise your battery life by using the ‘Max Battery’ option in Windows' Power Management. • Choose to hibernate your rig instead of leaving it in standby. Standby preserves battery life but hibernation saves the PC’s state as it is then shuts the computer down. If you have a Mac choose ‘Sleep’ mode, which turns the notebook off but saves your work and powers up pronto. • Clean your machine. Defrag your computer regularly to help your hard drive work efficiently. Your machine also operates at its best when it is kept cool, so unclog its air vents to keep the air flow free and easy.

GET SMARTPHONE SAVVY • Cut your Bluetooth and cull the 3G connection on your phone. 3G, WiFi

and Bluetooth can drain battery life in no time so disable these where possible. If you have an ‘airplane mode’ flick this on as it stops your phone searching for connection in low coverage areas, which wastes battery. • A constant stream of calendar reminders and emails delivered in realtime eat battery life. Be brave and shut them down. • Keep your mobile friend out of the sunshine. Release it from the thermal prison of your pocket (away from body heat) and your battery will actually last much longer.

MAXIMISE YOUR MUSIC • To get more music from your MP3 player don’t let the battery die completely. Fully charge your MP3 player every three weeks to stop it from running flat. • Play your music by album or playlist instead of hopping from one track to the next to help your hard drive (where fitted) work more efficiently, thus saving battery.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

There’s nothing worse than your laptop or phone's battery running out while you’re on the move. Unfortunately even the best battery in the world is going to run out of charge at some point and while you can’t change this fact, you can make it last longer.

www.itp.net

58 EXPERT SPEAK

TIPS TO GO GREEN

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Fujitsu Technology Solutions’ Product Manager Chandan Mehta dispenses tips that will help you cut your electric bill and go green. Despite steep energy prices many firms still underestimate the expenses caused by their hardware, particularly when it comes to workplaces furnished with PCs. The less energyefficient devices are, the higher the running costs. The industry is working on technology that helps companies reduce their costs and Fujitsu is playing a leading role. But saving energy is about much more than discussing costs, it is about helping to protect the environment. With a little effort everybody can contribute to the green attitude. Here are some useful, straightforward tips:

TURN OFF YOUR MACHINE AND MONITOR At the end of the working day PCs and monitors should be switched off at the main switch or, where appropriate, at the power bar or plug connector. This prevents standby switches from needlessly consuming energy.

ADJUST YOUR POWER MANAGEMENT SETTINGS Studies in Canada revealed that PCs are only used for 12% of the time that they are running. And they often remain switched on overnight or during the weekend even when not in use. To save some power and reduce your electric bills try these power management settings: set your screen and hard drive to switch off after 10- and 15-minutes respectively. You should also set your PC to go into standby or hibernation in 20 minutes and one hour respectively. If you’re using a notebook and want to prolong battery life, adjust the aforementioned settings to 5-, 10-, 15- and 30-minutes.

RESTRICT UPGRADES Another common power wasting phenomenon is the use of desktops that are far more powerful than necessary. Many apps in the office would benefit more from additional

RAM rather than a high-performance CPU. In such cases older machines with more “frugal” processors could be upgraded and remain in service. Consider switching over to a modern laptop as well, these use newer components that make them very power efficient.

IF YOU ARE BUYING A NEW PC - CHECK THE LABEL If you are going to buy a new PC think green and check the labeling to see what standards it conforms to. The European Commission offers detailed information about the ‘ENERGY STAR’ eco-label as well as the power consumption of modern office computers at www.eu-energystar.org. The site features an energy calculator for PCs, monitors and imaging equipment at companies and public sector operations, as well as for consumers. Just pick and choose the most frugal gear.

www.itp.net

EXPERT SPEAK 59

HOW HO H OW TO TO BUY BUY AN AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE Before you buy an external hard drive think about what basic features matter to you the most. Is it the physical size of the drive, the capacity, the color or the bundled data backup and protection software? All the criteria I just mentioned is important however, you must remember that at some point it’s no longer just the physical size and capacity of the drive that makes the difference. At Iomega for example almost all our external 3.5-inch drives are available in capacities up to 2TB and in a range of colors. With our 2.5-inch portable drives, again, almost all the drives offer a variety of colours and have maximum capacities up to 1TB. It’s at this point then that you have to consider what other features a drive has to offer. At Iomega we believe in providing our users with total solutions which include hardware and software. The Iomega Protection Suite that is bundled with nearly all of Iomega’s external drives includes a free 12

month anti-virus subscription. The Iomega Protection Suite also includes 2GB of online storage for free, as well as professional backup software from Retrospect, which has been customised to match consumer needs. Moving forward it’s also good to identify what you need your drive to do? Will it be just a backup drive? Will it be used to share data with friends and family? What are the surroundings that the drive has to work in? Do you need a rugged drive? Generally, if you want your external drive to be mobile a 2.5-inch portable hard drive is a good choice. If the drive will just sit in your office or home however an external 3.5-inch desktop HDD will do. Let’s say you are a construction engineer and your laptop and external portable hard drive must deal with the occasional knocks and shakes. In this scenario you’ll want a portable drive with increased shock protection such as the Iomega’s BlackBelt Drive.

This has been designed so that it can withstand drops of up to 2.1meters without losing data. If you are looking for just a backup drive you need to get one that has great software, so the process of backing up and securing your information is easy and efficient. You don’t want to end up manually copying and pasting files because it’s a time waster and not incredibly useful. You want your software to work for you, not the other way round. When you are looking for an external drive to connect to your TV, it’s best you consider a multimedia player, which is compatible with most well known movie formats. If possible, check the interface this drive offers, it should be clear and easy to understand and the drive should also give you the latest in connectivity such as HDMI. Having HDMI support means you can connect to most modern HDTVs and enjoy HD and Full HD content.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Cizar Abughazaleh, Iomega's Regional Sales Manager for the Middle East, Africa & Turkey dispenses important external hard drive buying tips.

www.itp.net/competitions

60 REGULARS

Competitions

COMPETITIONS… As always the Windows team has worked to ensure you have the chance to win some killer, high-tech kit. For your chance to win, just follow the instructions below...

GET GAMING ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX 470 AMP!

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

Some of today’s games will blow you away with their photo-realistic visuals but you’ll only enjoy these titles if your machine has some serious graphics firepower on offer. If not, don’t fret, your ever helpful friends at Windows Middle East have just the thing you’re looking for. This month we’ve partnered with the generous guys from Zotac to offer you, our faithful readers, the chance to win a kick-ass Zotac GeForce GTX 470 AMP! graphics card. The GeForce GTX 470 is one of nVidia’s newest GPUs and although it was six months late hitting the market, it offers serious gaming muscle. This Zotac card takes things a step further however because unlike its reference design counterpart, which we reviewed in our grouptest last month, the GeForce GTX 470 AMP! ships with a factory-overclocked GPU. So rather than running at nVidia’s recommend speed of 607MHz, Zotac’s tech wizards have cranked this card’s GPU up to a frequency of 656MHz, giving the card even better performance credentials (read our full review in the Hot Kit section this month). Besides its super quick GPU the card ships with 1280MB of high-speed GDDR5 memory; more than enough to handle large highresolution textures that most of today’s games use. The card is also compatible with Mirosoft’s DirectX 11 API so you can expect games to look their very best. For a chance to win this brilliant competition prize point your web browser to www.itp.net/ competitions and answer this simple question: What is the GPU

frequency of the Zotac GeForce GTX 470 AMP! graphics card? a)607MHz b)656MHz c)700MHz

A GREA T GPU

www.itp.net/competitions

Competitions

REGULARS 61

COOL CARD READER KINGSTON MOBILELITE G2 If flash-based memory cards are the storage medium you use to store and share data this competition will interest you. We’ve partnered with the memory masters at Kingston and we’re giving two lucky readers the chance to bag a Kingston MobileLite G2 multifunctional memory card reader. Despite its compact dimensions the MobileLite G2 is packed with functionality; it is compatible with SD/SDHC, MMC, microSD/ SDHC, MSPD, MS PRO-HG Duo and M2 flash memory cards. Thanks to its broad memory compatibility you won’t have to worry about carrying multiple card readers when you want to share data with friends or family. It’s convenient to travel with as well; the device draws all the power it needs from the USB port so you needn’t worry about an external power source. The G2 is built for rugged use too; it features a retractable USB connector and has an operating temperature range of between zero- and 60-degrees Celsius. The latter certainly makes it Middle East proof.

MEMORY MASTER

Visit our website at www.itp.net/competitions and answer this simple poser for a chance to take home one of these handy devices: What interface

does the MobileLite G2 use to connect to a PC? a)Firewire b)USB c)Cat 5 cable

TIME TO GAME The music video game genre is filled with long running gaming series with Green Day: Rock Band being the latest in the Rock Band line. Like its predecessors this game allows players to simulate playing rock music by using controllers that are shaped like musical instruments. Green Day: Rock Band’s soundtrack consists of songs created by, you guessed it, punk rock group ‘Green Day’. Four players can indulge in music mastery and beyond the music already built-into the game, this title allows you to ROCK S TAR download additional music tracks. This Rock Band title also features a ‘Career mode’ that’s similar to The Beatles: Rock Band. However, whereas The Beatles forced players to go through certain music sets before gaining access to all the available music, Green Day allows the player to immediately select any of the songs to play. Another bonus is the fact that this game is also compatible with all existing Rock Band gaming g peripherals and is even compatible with certain controllers that were developed for the Guitar Hero ero games. To win a copy point your web browser to www.itp.net/competitions and answer thiss easy question: Which punk rock group’s music does Green Day: Rock Band feature?

a)Green Day b)Rise Against c)Blink-182

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

GREEN DAY: ROCK BAND

www.itp.net

62 REGULARS

CD Contents

OUR PICK OF WINDOWS CD

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

NERO MULTIMEDIA SUITE 10 In its early days ‘Nero’ only offered disc burning abilities with minimal extra features. Flash forward to present day however and the latest version of Nero Multimedia Suite is a collection of three products in one. The latest suite offers advanced video editing features, a media organiser and player, superior burning abilities, reliable backup technology, and special multimedia tools. The newest addition to the suite is ‘MediaHub’ which is designed to help you organise your media, edit your photographs, includes a fully-fledged media player and even packs a slideshow creation utility. This useful utility bears a striking resemblance to one of Nero’s other applications; ‘Only BackItUp and Burn’. As its name suggests this application’s primary focus is backup and recovery and it is comprehensive in its abilities; you can schedule automatic backups, employ disc spanning technology to backup all your data and if/when disaster strikes, you can rely on a single click restore service. Nero Vision 10 will also reward you if you have a machine with a nVidia GPU because it supports nVidia’s CUDA technology. As a result the software can use your GPU to decode AVC/.264 content, so you don’t necessarily need a fast processor just to watch certain video content. If you want an all-in-one solution for your data needs this awesome suite is worth a try. Read the full review in our previous (July) issue.

www.itp.net

REGULARS 63

CD Contents

P TOCK PI

HOW TO USE CD BROWSER Place your CD in your PC’s CD-ROM drive. If you have disabled autoplay, double-click ‘CDBrowser’ on the CD instead. When CD Browser starts, six buttons will appear listing software categories. Click a category and the software titles will appear in the left window. Simply choose which title you wish to view and click its name. Program details will appear along with three buttons: Install runs the installation program, Website takes you to the vendor’s site, and Screen displays a larger image of the software in action. In the middle of the window is also an option to change the CD browser’s skin.

CD 160: SUPERB SOFTWARE

LAUNCHY If Windows’ Start Menu, Desktop Icons and File Manager are too much trouble or too slow for your liking ‘Launchy’ is the application for you. This completely-free cross-platform utility is designed to index documents, project files, folders and more so you can launch these with just a few quick keystrokes. The program works invisibly in the background and only makes its presence felt when summoned (holding the ‘Alt’ key and then pressing the ‘Space’ key). Old-school users who grew up around command line interface (CLI) operating systems such as good ole ‘DOS’ will simply love this neat application. Windows Editor Jason Saundalkar certainly did.

UTILITIES

GAMES

LAUNCHY RADIO DOWNLOADER OPEN VIRTUAL MACHINE TOOLS TODO MANAGER KEEPASS PASSWORD SAFE PDF SPLIT AND MERGE

DARK WORLD

ESSENTIAL FILES DIRECTX 9C DOT NET FRAMEWORK 3.0 JAVA RUNTIME

MULTIMEDIA XINE FREEVO GOOGLE VIDEO DOWNLOADER COVER JUKE TUBEMASTER ++

INTERNET JETROGET BLEACHBIT POWERFOLDER XPILOT

PRODUCTIVITY DIMDIM WEB MEETING OPENSIGNATURE NERO 10

UTILITIES Launchy Radio Downloader ToDo Manager KeePass Password Safe PDF Split and Merge MULTIMEDIA Freevo r Google Video Downloade Cover Juke TubeMaster ++ INTERNET BleachBit PowerFolder PRODUCTIVITY Dimdim web meeting Opensignature ExtCalendar 2 GAMES Dark World

ITE DIA SUwith MULTIME a NERO multimedia capabilities edia Suite 10 extends your advanced video

It has Nero Multim ts bundled into one suite. r burning software, collection of three produc organiser and player, superio to enhance your editing features, a media edia tools logy, and special multim reliable backup techno music, photos and videos

Sponsored By www.itp.net tion | August 2010 An ITP Technology Publica

With ‘PowerFolder’ two immediate advantages it offers are that it will save time and money. This application synchronizes files across computers, so you can find files as soon as possible. It’s a far simpler solution that checking multiple machines for that one annoying file and because it’s intelligent, it will even update files that you make changes to. The free version of this software is limited to 1GB of data when performing a direct sync and 1GB of online space. PowerFolder is compatible with Microsoft’s Windows 7, Vista, XP and Windows Sever 2003 onwards.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Windows Middle East free CD, which contains programs and applications, is provided as a free service to readers of Windows Middle East magazine for personal use. You may not rent, lease, assign, re-sell or otherwise transfer the rights to anyone for any product contained on this CD. The contents of the CD-ROM are provided as is, and although every effort has been taken to ensure the disk and contents are virus and defect free, Windows Middle East, nor The Information & Technology Publishing Co. Ltd., accept liability for any loss or damage resulting from the use of this CD-ROM or the programs on it. We recommend that you make a back-up of all your data before installing any of the software on this CD. Windows Magazine does not provide technical support for this CD-ROM or the programs on it. If your CD-ROM is physically defective, please return it to Reader Services, P.O. Box. 500024, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, so we may issue a replacement.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

POWERFOLDER

160

www.itp.net

64 REGULARS

Logging off

LOGGINGOFF RESTAURANT SWAPS MENUS FOR IPADS There seems to be no stopping Apple’s recently launched iPad. The cool device, already well on its way to being a consumer success, is also moving into the business arena, most recently the Pearl restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. The restaurant is in the process of deploying iPads in place of its existing menu and wine lists. “The thirst for knowledge from consumers these days is massive,” says Chris Lucas, Proprietor of the Pearl restaurant. “It doesn't matter whether it is ingredients, origins of produce or wine, and particularly old world wine, this platform can provide as little, or as much, information as each customer wants.” Lucas has already introduced four iPads in the restaurant with a further 11 on the way. The accompanying software is to be deployed next month after five months of development and an investment of US $40,000. Chris says that patrons who find the iPad too flash or futuristic can request older hard copies, at least for the immediate future. The Pearl is the second restaurant in Australia to employ Apple’s iPad, the honour of being the first goes to ‘Global Mundo Tapas’, in Sydney. While the Windows team is all for Apple’s iPad in terms of reading ebooks, browsing the web etc we think restaurants employing the iPad is simply a case of trying too hard to be different. We want better food, not a mass of information but maybe that’s just us?

WICKEDLASERS UNVEILS FIRST CONSUMER LASER While not as elegant as the ‘Lightsaber’ from George Lucas’ Star Wars films, WickedLasers’ Spyder III Pro Arctic laser is a US $200 laser that can actually burn or blind people. The device (pictured) users a laser powered by a diode from Casio’s new mercury-free Green Slim projectors and packs a power rating of 1-watt. While its power rating might not sound like much the company claims the blue laser can actually set things on fire and cause blindness. The company provides the following warning: ‘Warning: Extremely dangerous is an understatement to the power of 1W of laser power. It will blind permanently - and instantly - and set fire quickly to skin and other body parts, use with extreme caution and only when using the included eye protection. Customers will be required to completely read and agree to our Class IV Laser Hazard Acknowledgment Form.’ Wickled Lasers says the Spyder III is 20 times more powerful than its previous best model, known as ‘Sonar’. When launched the Sonar also carried a much higher retail price of US $2,000. The Windows team can only hope that there’s a strict screening process of some sort before buyers are allowed to take home this deadly weapon.

WINDOWS MIDDLE EAST AUGUST 2010

CHINA SHOWS HIGH SPEED TRAIN MUSCLE High speed rail systems featuring powerful electric trains could potentially transform society in the 21st century and China is showing its full commitment to the technology. Whereas the United States under President Barack Obama has allocated an impressive US $13 billion to high speed rail investment, China has already spent a colossal US $259 billion. Taking things a step, or 10, further the country has announced plans to spend $1 trillion on high speed rail, in an effort to install 16,000 miles of track by the year 2020. Besides the massive money

commitments China also showed off its new flagship high speed train last month. Known as the 380A, the train is capable of cruising at a speed of 236 miles per hour, making it the world’s fastest. The 380 name comes from the fact that the train’s 236 miles per hour cruise speed actually translates into 380 kilometres per hour. The train is said to offer a four hour travel time between Shanghai and Beijing. In comparison driving from one state to the other - now one of the more common ways to travel – takes between 12 to 13 hours. The Windows team is all for high speed rail because besides cutting travel times it could also potentially help cut emissions as fewer people rely on fuel-based air and road transportation.