Verdict: An interesting concept, but the PocketSurfer2 can’t compete with other, more capable, devices on the market.The PocketSurfer2 is touted as a mobile browsing device, which can serve up the ‘real web’ from anywhere with mobile phone reception. Essentially it’s a widescreen mobile phone which can’t make calls or send SMS messages - its built in SIM card is used only to connect to the GPRS network and serve web pages.

Included in the price is a year of network connection, allowing 20 hours of surfing per month. A �40 payment is necessary 12 months after purchase if you want to keep using the service, which is almost compulsory, as the device will only work with the assistance of Datawind’s servers. Unlimited surfing is an additional extra, costing an extra �6 per month.

The hardware

The hardware itself is a very solid device, but its hard plastic does feel quite brittle - and we suspect a drop onto a hard surface could prove catastrophic. It’s attractive and minimally designed, bar the bright blue, green and red LEDs on the lid, which serve no purpose.

The only actual buttons are all positioned on the QWERTY keypad, which should be familiar to anyone who has ever used a Motorola RAZR. However, the width makes it hard to reach the centre keys with your thumbs when holding the device by its sides.

Read more »

Don’t worry about whether the iPods of the future will have enough storage to keep up with your mobile entertainment needs. Samsung said it has fabricated the world’s first 30nm 64GB NAND lash memory chips. A set of 16 such chips could be used to make a 128 GB flash memory storage card. That’s enough storage for 80 DVD-resolution movies or 32,000 MP3 music files, the company said. The chip depends on manufacturing technology that can create circuits on chips with a width of just 30nm. It was only seven years ago that Samsung made its fist 1GB NAND chip with 100nm manufacturing technology. Samsung said it used a new process called “self-aligned double patterning technology,” which it called a pivotal advance beyond the charge trap flash that Samsung developed for NAND flash last year when it introduced a new material, silicon nitride, in the chip-making process. Samsung expects to begin shipping the chips in 2009, and it has applied for 30 patents on it.

Source: CPU Mag

Power consumption has been one of the big hold-ups for putting Wi-Fi wireless networking into a wide range of mobile devices. But Atheros Communications hopes to change that with its new Atheros AR6002 family of Wi-Fi chips. Atheros says the AR6002 family uses 70% less power than the best chips on the market today. The company says a device could download 200GB of data before depleting a 3.7-volt battery in a gadget that uses the AR6002. That means that gadget designers may start putting Wi-Fi into more smartphones, personal media players, digital still cameras, gaming handhelds, and other devices. The company will ship several versions of the chips using different versions of Wi-Fi in the first quarter of 2008.

Source: CPU Mag

So much for IDE, Seagate leaves the parallel interface behind, along with longitudinal recording, in its latest generation of PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) terabyte drives.

Seagate’s latest, the Barracuda 7200.11 is available in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB capacities, all with a choice of a 3Gbps or 1.5Gbps SATA interface with NCQ. There’s Seagate’s Enhanced G-Force Protection against off-duty knocks, dynamic head fly height adjustment, and a full stroke disk calibration feature called Clean Sweep.

I compared the 7200.11, singly and in a RAID 0, to its ES.2 SATA enterprise version ($419). The ES.2 offers improved resistance to the vibrations found in multidrive servers and uses about 20% less power than the previous generation of ES, according to Seagate. For contrast, I added benchmarks from my review of Hitachi’s vaunted Deskstar 7K1000 1TB drive in the June 2007 issue of CPU. (See pages 18-22.) Take the latter for what they’re worth, as they were gathered from a different test system. 

Even without a direct comparison, it’s clear that the newest generation of PMR drives have vaulted 7,200rpm performance into a new tier. Breaking the terabyte barrier makes for nice headlines, too. You really can’t lose with any o these drives, although Seagate wins on prices (for the 7200.11, at least) and warranty. In the real world, however, either brand will give you superb speed and awesome capacity.

Software Updates

Azureus 3.0.3.4

The latest version of this torrent client adds an All Peers view to the interface. It also squashes multiple bugs when dealing with some UPnp routers and the MacOS. azureus.sourceforge.net

Defraggler 1.00.031 Beta
A free, recently released file defragmentation tool from the makers of CCleaner adds a debug mode and an option to save a list of dfrragged files. Better error messages and a fix for crashes involving 4GB files on FAT32 files come to this version, as well. www.dfraggler.com

Easy Media Creator 10
The mega-suite of multimedia editors from Roxio now lets ou capture and edit HD video, upload video to YouTube with one click, and convert multiple songs into a new format simultaneously. This update also gives you more control over iPods and lets you creat custom profiles for your mobile phone.www.roxio.com

FileZilla for Windows v3 3.0.2.1
The ubiquitous FTP client fixes a problem with the message log.

filezilla-project.org

  Read more »

Internet blogging, online marketing, online gaming, making money online are among the jobs making me busy this last few months. Engaged in these activities since I joined the second seo contest here in the Paradise Philippines, the ituloy angsulong contest where I joined my first blogspot site now with niche of technology matters and some site reviews. It was ranked 3rd at MSN search engine. Since then, related jobs and activities online made a part in my life, I was thankful because I am working in public school which engaged online, the e-library of my school, the Pangasinan State University.

Trying to accomplish all those things tick tasks to me a difficult one. For I cannot acquire yet an online connection to my place, seeking for a home based one. Bad ISP’s I got.

Meanwhile, I had set up my article site for a free article submission and a link web directory. Website reviews made me so much busy through my SEO blog. At present, I joined the 3rd Bayanihan SEO Contest for the keyword Paradise Philippines trying to compete to come out at SERP. Find some relevant free articles in my free article submission site. And lastly, I setup my free flash games site, a gadgets blog and another technology blog a few weeks ago, and I’m still into some configuration of it.

Learning all these things and still trying to discover more techniques in an online community giving me hope to conquer more relevant strategy in improving and developing more trusted websites in the future.