Asus Eee PC 1004DN - Now you can watch DVDs

I like the fact that the Eee PC 1004DN is a netbook that comes with a DVD drive. Sometimes when I get sensitive data or holiday videos from someone, they usually burn it onto a DVD.

The only problem with the Asus range is that although models such as the 101's and 1008HA are slim and sexy, open it up and it looks pretty uninspiring. It's good to see the gorgeous Sony Vaio P(but slow as a scooter) and HP Mini 1000 liven up the netbook market.

Touchscreen Desktop Galore! MSI Wind Top

Desktops used to be big and noisy. But now with the new slim line desktops that take little space and look darn sexy, it's a good time to ditch the notebook and get a nice big desktop. Especially the ones that come with touch screen capability.

The Wind Top AE1900 looks deceptively like the Eee Top 1602. Great, but don't care features include the ultra low power 45W operation. Great fun, but non-essential feature include the touch screen.

Runs on the Atom processor so you can do just about everything except games and your photoshop fantasies.

ASUS Eee PC 1008HA - Thin is boring?

The Macbook Air was just absolutely stunning when closed and looked from the side. But when you open it up, it looks bland and uninspiring. Apple fanatics or tech users who just about managed to afford it, would probably have kept looking at the side just to feel good about the purchase. People with money would just be content that it's expensive and leave it at that.

The same goes with the netbooks. With so many netbooks crowding the ever growing selection, most will probably choose the one that is the most stylish.

If you are serious user who does actual work on the go then style is absolutely unimportant, you'll go for the one with the longest battery.

But what if you could combine both?

Like the Eee PC 1008HA. Looks good from the side, but open it up and your probably going groan and look away when it boots into the green and blue windows XP.

In fact, does anybody care about netbook specs anymore? It'll have the same Atom chip and the same 1Gb ram and the same windows XP. It'll probably have the same battery life.

Privacy Hood for BlackBerry- Who Needs This?

There could be countless reasons why foreign phones are not doing well in Japan. Maybe it's because they prefer their privacy features to be a little discrete.

With their cell phones packed with so many features, one feature that stands out is their privacy screen. With a flip of switch, the screen becomes unreadable unless looking directly in front of the screen. No snooping from the side.

Where as the Blackberry.....

iPhone Japan - Just Games?

So the iPhone is not selling as well as expected. In fact, they are apparently limiting the stocks of the iPod Touch so people are encouraged to buy an iPhone.

With recent price cuts from iPhone's main carrier, ad campaigns that the Japanese public just don't seem to get and the current recession, they probably won't know about the iPhone 3.0 update, or even that cut and paste had been missing from the start.

New 17 inch iMac - Still Available?

After the recent price and spec revision of the 20inch and 24 inch iMacs, there is said to a 17 inch model.

Apparently it's only available to educational institutions. This would be so cool if they released that to the general public,  at a lower price so that everyone could afford to buy a mac.

But since it's for educational institutions only, it's probably going to be the old white version rather than the aluminum version.

Much like the budget entry macbooks which is white and not aluminum.

It makes sense really. Though, I wouldn't mind buying the original cheaper white iMac. It still looks really nice.

Dell Adamo - 'Thinnest Notebook Available' in case no one is convinced.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the Dell Adamo.

The Adamo is actually a really good name and it does have that special foreign meaning. But the Macbook Air makes the Dell Adamo look ordinary.

The Dell Adamo could be thinner than the Air, but does it look it? Not at all. What a shame. It's good to know it is the thinnest, otherwise I would never have known.

Anything Core 2 Duo bores the knickers off me, but when it starts with 1.2 Ghz, it just begs the questions why? Maybe they know Windows 7 will run just fine, but until then it's a Vista machine.

The weight is something I'm not happy with at all. 4 pounds is really quite heavy. A few years ago I would probably never have known, but having been used to travel light netbooks, this is heavy.

It's rated for over 5 hours, but frustrating, you'll never get that. Unless you want to go blind by dimming the LCD to h*ll.

I'm not bothered about the price tag. The price is not an issue. If you are looking for a luxury item, price is not something that you give a hoot about. In fact, secretly the more expensive it is, the better, less middle class students or dads are able to buy it.

iPhone 3.0 - Bloaty?

If your a developer you will find the 3.0 update something to munch over.

For the rest of us, it's utterly boring and most of it feels really bloaty.

Push Feature.

Underwhelmed and not interested. There will be a useful program that utilizes this feature, but all I can think about is Ads. Which reminds of their new app features which allow paid content and subscriptions within the app.

Google Maps inside the app.

Nice. I do use it and it is very useful. But only once in a blue moon.

3rd Party Peripheral Support.

Great for developers, but at the moment for users, the equalizer feature demo was uninspiring and the glucose monitor was mostly irrelevant.

Peer-to-peer support - Games?

Not impressed with games on the iPhone at the moment. Really not impressed. In fact they're rubbish.

Copy Paste.

I got by without cut and paste earlier one. I liked was the gimmicky shake to undo feature. I'm not over the moon. Mainly because it should have been there in the first place.

Landscape Typing.

Good news for those with fat fingers. Great for those who like typing novels using their thumbs. It's amazing that people are willing to push themselves to the limit on a music device with limited input capabilities.

MMS

Should have been here in the first place, but I got by.

Voice Memo App.

This is a great app if you have any device that doesn't have a good keyboard. The tap tap input on the iPhone is fun but not great, and it's only good for tap tap notes. But to be honest, voice recorders are horrible when you have to review them. It takes such a long time to go through them.

Spotlight

It's such a great feature on the OSX. Such a great feature on the iPhone. Such a great shame I hardly use it. Maybe because I've gotten by for years without it.

If your into product development you can forgive the fact that it makes sense to hold certain features back. But for users, it just makes them violated and underwhelmed.

Dell All in One Studio One 19 - Sexier and More Expensive

All in one computing is once again the king of desktop style.

Why people always relegate anything all in one and stylish into the 'kitchen pc' is just bemusing and then complain it's missing firewire this and that.

Just look at the Dell Studio One 19. It's multi touch with a bigger 18.5 inch screen than the Eee Top PC and this one has the DVD player.

The keyboard design and the clever stylish like floating glass panel just looks pretty awesome.

It does comes with the usual boring specs from Celeron to Core 2 Quad configurations.

The mouse is severely ugly though.

Creative Zen Stone Plus with Speakers - Did the New Shuffle Turn You Off?

The new iPod Shuffle has got me thinking. It's got me thinking about other mp3 alternatives.

It is because of the remote on the cord thing and while looking through the other mp3 players, I noticed that the Creative Zen Stone Plus had built in speakers. This is not new, but the fact that the Zen Stone is tiny and to have tiny speakers is a great novelty.

Just playing it in the car, the shower, the.... well it's pretty neat. That was until I realized I already have the equipment. The player in the car already plays mp3, the showerproof CD player can play mp3 and so there is no real reason to use the Zen Stone speakers.

Aside from the speakers, it did have one thing that I found cute and missing on the shuffle. The tiny screen.

The screen has always been missing on the iPod shuffles, but the latest one made me wonder about other features it's missing, but available on other players. Radio, stopwatches, games and voice recording. They aren't must have, but they are nice to have and people will use them if they are built in.

Apple has done a good job in trying to lock everyone into iTunes so people will buy their great mp3 players. But for me and because of the new iPod Shuffle, I'm looking at alternatives to Apple.

It's a refreshing change.