Logitech MX Air

• S$ 279

• Available from major IT Retailers

User interface norm has been turning on its head since the arrival of the Wii controller. For those who loves the Wii controller and wish that it could be used along with the Windows XP Media Center Edition PC sitting in the living room, the Logitech MX Air is the perfect answer to the prayer.

The wireless MX Air comes in elegant black and silver that oozes style from every angle. The design would not look out of place in the Zen inspired living room with flush buttons, flowing design with no sharp edges; just like a smooth stone.

First and foremost the MX Air is a mouse for the common desktop. Armed with a laser tracking system, the feedback on mouse position is more precise and faster. Thus it performs really well for First Person Shooting (FPS) games that is reliant on precise aiming such as Battlefield 2142. The accompanied Logitech Setpoint software can also sense that a game is starting up and will configure the mouse for games so that users need not to change their mouse sensitivity level for games and work.

Scrolling through the web pages with the MX Air is also very different as it does not come with a scroll wheel. What replaces it is the cool touch sensitive scroll panel that can sense the touch of the finger and scroll the page effortlessly.

Unlike the Wii Controller that makes use of the sensor bar to sense its position relative to the TV screen, Logitech's Freespace technology allows users to just pick up the mouse and control the cursor on the screen without any other devices except for a USB plug to connect the mouse to the PC. A welcome relief for users whose TV console is filled to the brim.

What caught me by surprise is the relative ease of pointing the cursor, controlling volume and skipping tracks just by using hand gestures. For example, when lowering the volume, I just need to hold the volume key, wait for the volume bar to appear and then swing the mouse to the left. How about forwarding a track? Simple. Just hold the 'play' button, draw a clockwise circle in the air and the next music track is played.

For all its beauty in form and function, the MX Air is a fingerprint magnet that requires constant cleaning if one's hand is sweaty. And to maintain its pebble like form, it may not have the same comfort level as those ergonomically designed mouse. For someone that scroll pages quite frequently, the scroll panel may also see more wear and tear and thus tarnish the smooth facade.

At $279 the MX Air is an expensive mouse that may not appeal to most desktop bound PC users except for those who has hooked up a PC to the living room's Flat screen TV. It is really indispensable once you get the hang of it. A truly innovative product.

Samsung Ultra II 9.6 SGH-U300

Sleekness seems to be the order of the day for the latest iteration of Sumsung's line of slim phone. This time round the Ultra Edition II 9.6 clam shell phone is carrying the torch for no frills phone for the Korean chaebo.

As the model number suggest this thin, slim calling machine is just a mere 9.6 mm thick and it is easy to slot it into pockets and handbags. Size wise, the phone measured 100 by 51 mm is also easy to hold and more so when the phone is flipped up. Access to the buttons and keys is easy enough so no dramas there.

Samsung phone's brilliant 2.2" TFT-LCD makes reading and looking at text, graphics and pictures that much enjoyable thanks to its 262K colour screen. It also comes with a secondary OLED screen on the cover for a quick check whenever there's a call.

As mentioned, since this is a no frills phone, the SGH-U300 does not have 3G connectivity. This phone will be perfect for those who do not need to access the Internet frequently.

For such a thin phone, the Samsung is armed with a 3.2 mega pixel camera on the cover. The picture quality is quite good even for its lack of flash and lens thanks to the phone's good control of image noise.

The most talked about feature of the phone should be its cool metallic keypad. What distinguished it from other phones, most notably the Motorola Razr, is the seamless keypad that has no apparent demarcation for individual buttons as it is presented as one piece of metal sheet. That adds the cool factor to the phone.

That said, what irks most was the lack of sensitivity of the buttons as some strength has to be utilised when pressing the button for the phone to register the key press. The inability to feel individual keys also hinders fast SMS messaging.

There are also other kinks to its sleek armour no thanks to its non-changeable batteries, lack of and the lack of a memory slot to increase its meagre 70 megabyte built-in memory. The use of a proprietary data cum power cable did not endear itself to frequent business travellers either as power adaptor and data cable has to be brought along.

ACER: Windows Vista Did Nothing for the PC Industry

Ha! Never in the history of the PC industry has put so much hope into something that has taken so long to grow and yet did nothing for anything useful for the PC user.

Face it! HP/Dell/ACER + other brands of PC not mentioned here. The PC companies are starting to become white good producers. No amount of Operating System power can change the fact that the pinnacle of what PC can do has somehow shown in the windows XP...perhaps even, I dare do say, Windows 98 SE if not for FAT32.

Windows XP as I have said when Windows ME came along a long time ago that a consumer based OS that uses the NTFS would prove to be much more robust and the prediction is a dead ringer as I have experienced much lesser problems for the PC and 5 years later it is going strong.

Now back to Windows Vista. For all it is worth mentioning countless times, it is the numerous versions that kills the cash cow. Honestly why deprive so many consumers from getting the best of vista especially the hard disk encryption? Ultimate version is still the best but it costs a bomb...and the best is not necessary what people need. This is more acute when applied to a Singaporean mind: If I want to spend, might as well get the best.

Pity that the best is expensive and gives nothing more than 'better' security and eye candy; when comparing with the reliability of XP that works well with virtually anything thrown at it, it is really a no brainer to choose XP that is cheaper robust and has lesser problems when one get the service pack and the necessary FREE software to plug security holes.

All in all, the collective effort plus cost in putting up Windows XP is much much lower than using Vista. Need I say about the countless complains about Vista incompatibility issues?

And I do have another analogy. Imagine your car is the Operating System and windows XP is a everyday japanese sedan car that is light yet zippy and Vista is one of those continental cars that is sturdy but much heavier. So the engine is the processor. I guess I need not to go deeper into which scenario will give better mileage.

So I put my Core2Duo with 2GB RAM with my Windows XP. Yes the RAM would not be fully utilised that I myself would know well. But at least I am using an OS that will be running the computer at full speed with a lot of resources to spare. The same rig would no doubt cut the performance down. To me it is a no brainer.

Right now MS says they are coming with OS 7 or SEVEN. I wonder what is up their sleeves but if they are going to use AERO as the selling point again, it ain't going anywhere.

Let me tell you what is the selling point I want to see: Hassle free, crash free and junk free PC with easy parts installation with out the installation process. Sounds tough? Yes it is but the lesser the user has to be asked to install something the simpler. That would be the OS to look for....oh yeah...it already existed....in a MAC.

Better buck up...Apple is doing everything right at the moment.

iPAQ 512

Hewlett Packard's latest candidate to enter the smartphone market is the iPaq 512 that uses the new Windows Mobile version 6 operating system. The iPaq would definitely would not win any awards in outstanding visual design as it comes with the dreaded PC box grey and black accents. It really reminds me of my HP desktop sitting on the floor.

Fortunately it has very good build quality that is sturdy and yet everything fits nicely in the palm. Given its 107mm x 48.6mm x 16.3mm stature, it will not win slimming competition but at 102g it is light to carry about and fits snugly in one's palm.

The phone's screen, a two-inch micro-reflective TFT has just 176 x 220 pixels resolution, with LED backlight but is clear enough to read without squinting.

One compliment I must give is the well-designed microSD card cover: It fits neatly into the card slot and it is made of a rubber material that seems more durable and yet could be pried open with relative ease. This is one design aspect where most other phones have missed the mark badly.

The keypad and button have a nice tactile feel but HP could do better by maximising the space afforded to the keypad area by making the keys slightly bigger. It is always my opinion that using the keypad to access the Internet is not always as easy unless the site is designed for phone access so a better bet is always to go for phones that has a qwerty keyboard if online access is paramount to the user.

Setting the phone's Wi-Fi connection went along without much drama. And what sets this iPaq apart from the other Windows Mobile-based devices is its battery longevity — the battery survived four days with normal phone usage and a 30-minute dose of Wi-Fi connection over the weekend.

The 512 is armed with Texas Instrument's Omap 850 200Mhz processor that some might say is really lacking in terms of computing power especially when pairing with the latest Windows Mobile version 6operating system. What was surprising then was that the phone worked fine with minimum fuss except during the times when I had to restart the phone and update my music library.

As for making calls, there were no dropped calls and the phone was able to receive good signals in most places — even inside a lift! What bugs me was the numerous button punching I had to do in order to start writing an SMS note or replying to one.

That leads to what HP calls it “HP Voice Reply” feature. What it does is to record a voice reply to the SMS received. Useful for when you are driving, for instance, and for the person who’s not agile in texting.

The other less conspicuous feature would be the 512's ability to connect to the office's IP-PBX based phone system using the phone's VoIP — a cheaper way of making calls, which could save corporate phone charges.

Music playback is done via an A2DP Bluetooth support that allows stereo playback using bluetooth technology. The quality, while clear, is passable at best with barely discernable bass and slightly high treble setting. Something made worse because Windows Mobile's media player does not come with a sound equaliser feature which allows you to tweak these settings.
The inclusion of the 1.3-megapixel camera, USB 1.1 client, Office Mobile and the price tag of $699 would not do much to improve 512's appeal. Also, accessing the Internet using keypad is really tiring as it is not as intuitive as a full qwerty keyboard like a Blackberry. For those who are not fans of numeric keypad would be better served with a PDA, especially those that comes with a qwerty keyboard.

Carbonite

Ever had the PC just give up the ghost on you when you needed some important data real bad? Carbonite’s Online PC Backup Online PC Backup — always on back-up allays the fears from such nightmares. Installing the software is easy enough. I just popped in the installation disk, created an account, and answered some security questions.

Carbonite started to upload my files located under “Documents and Settings” folder to the Carbonite server located in the United States — this it does using a secure tunneling protocol to ensure data privacy of the user. To add other folders for back-up, I just have to right-click a folder I want to protect and choose “back up” under the Carbonite sub-menu. It’s that simple.

But beware the slow process: The initial archiving of the 2.5GB worth of data files I had residing on my PC took about 26 hours to get zipped across to Carbonite’s server. That said, the speed of the backup process depends on the upload speed of the Internet connection. Good thing the process didn’t slow down my PC’s performance to a crawl. Fortunately, subsequent back-ups by the program were very fast.

Still, what if my PC had crashed? I would just have had to go to Carbonite's website — using a new PC because that would not be stuffed with files — and logged into their system. From there, it would have been a simple case of follow the instructions to restore all the data.
And even if I had accidentally deleted my files and the recycle bin had been cleared, all I would have had to do was double click the Carbonite Back-Up icon, searched for the file I needed, and right clicked to restore.

That’s it, I would be back in business. It goes without saying that the fastidious among us, who
diligently park copies of our files to the office network or to an external hard disk, with the help of synchronisation programs, would not find this solution very useful. However, given the fact that the program protects files automatically and the fact that it allows me to restore my files anywhere in the world via an Internet connection, gives it some merit. Having unlimited archival room or capacity online with Carbonite is the icing on the cake. But note that this is not a file-sharing facility, and users would not be able to swap files between a laptop and a desktop. That takes some shine off the service as each subscription can be used only by one PC at any one time.