Hardware Reviews

Lenovo C300 Review

2009-12-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

It is difficult for a computer shop when you call do not know how I did. Lenovo cost all-in-one is a part of the consumer desktop line, so that it would IdeaCentre the C300, but only $ 450 it is also part of the company's value line, which would give it the designation of Lenovo 3000 C300. Lenovo part number 3012-1AU? Forget it. We'll just stick with the C300, even if it switched to a Google search for the computer to Mercedes ... and although the use of the $ 450 model makes us wish Lenovo had the $ 549-configuration instead sent. We can not say, without hands on testing, but we could call this machine is something entirely different. Desktop of the year, maybe.

The C300 is a nettop, such as the eMachines EZ1601 and Asus Eee Top ET1602 - the Intel Atom CPU, 802.11b / g WiFi, and other components of a Netbook in integrated desktop LCD monitor. The latter is not a touch screen like the Eee Top's, but it is bigger than both ASUS 'and shows eMachines' at 20 inches with 1600 x 900 resolution.

In fact, the screen is so large and sharp it's a shame the silicon behind is no better than the notoriously lame GMA 950 integrated graphics chipset of the Intel 945G Netbook - ideal for blackjack and Bejeweled, but not fast-moving games (although DVDs and 720p QuickTime video smoothly saw), or for minor touch-ups, but not detailed image editing, let alone video editing.

Two buttons right below the front panel brightness. Like the eMachines, we found ourselves want for a further notch or really light on a white background to fade, but it was a small gripe in the worst case.

Two USB 2.0 ports and an SD / MMC / MS Flash Memory Card slot is drive on the left side of the screen, with DVD ± RW on the right side. Four more USB ports, an Ethernet port and a lonely PS / 2 connector for the keyboard (the included mouse is a USB model) are on the back, as well as microphone and headphone jacks and a FireWire port.

There is also a user-accessible panel for the C300 Single DDR2 memory module, with the RAM upgrade option that's missing from the sealed envelope eMachines. (The default 1GB is that Microsoft will allow street vendors to sell Windows XP Home Edition, Lenovo offers 3 GB and 4 GB configurations with 32-bit Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium, respectively.)

The one piece pc measures 14.1 by 19.1 by 3.3 inches. Props an easel to display at an adjustable angle from 12 to 40 degree slope, during a recess in the lower bezel provides a pass-through cable or a carrying handle when moving the 14-pound system. While most of the C300, the glossy black, we will have grown used on dozens of PCs, is the base with a kind of Ye Olde paisley wallpaper pattern that a kicky touch has set up.

HP ProBook 5310m Review

2009-12-13T07:05:00.000-08:00

Looks are not everything. There is also money.

That sounds pretty flat from us, but appearance and price are the two issues for IT managers and buyers in the 13.3-inch ultraportable notebook segment. There are plenty of slim, under-four-pound symbols are available, but wear the most sexy slimline designer price tag - starting at $ 1499 for Adamo Dell or Apple MacBook Air, for example, or $ 1889 for the Lenovo ThinkPad X301.

The 3.8-pound HP ProBook 5310m changes in the math. These thin black plate has an anodized aluminum cover and palm rest and magnesium-based alloy, a sunny LED-backlit screen, a comfortable, MacBook-style keyboard gum, brilliant instant-on browser and contact manager software , and plenty of power thanks to an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (HP calls it the thinnest notebook with a standard rather than low-voltage CPU).

It costs $ 899 - low enough to spread not only an executive, but cheerfully to implement or to employees. To be happy, style-conscious people, they say.
Three (Super) Models

Actually, the ProBook starts at an even lower $ 699 with a low-voltage processor, Intel's 10-watt, SU2300 Celeron 1.2 GHz, 2 GB of DDR2 memory and a 160 GB hard drive.

For a satisfactory performance over the life of several years, HP recommends the $ 899-model and its 25-watt Intel Core 2 Duo SP9300 - a 2.26 GHz dual-core with a powerful 6 MB Level 2 cache and 1066 MHz front Side Bus. That the configuration also comes with a 320GB, 7,200 rpm hard drive. Stepping up to $ 999 adds Bluetooth and mobile broadband.

Each member of the trio ProBook measures 8.7 by 12.9 by 0.9 inches and shines with a beautiful metal rather than plastic chassis, and three-axis accelerometer protection, the system parks the hard drive when a shock or drop is detected. Like other micro-light aircraft is the 5310m has no built-in optical drive, a USB plug-in DVD ± RW burner with a $ 99 option.

The particularly slender shape dictated a smaller battery. HP rates the unit unplugged life with up to six and a half hours, but our real world of work behind the meetings, that an average of three hours and 40 minutes of word processing and web browsing with screen brightness rejected three or four notches from maximum. This is not unusual, but it is a compact notebook sufficient.

The chiclet or island has an excellent keyboard layout (using Ctrl and Delete keys at the right lower left and upper right corner, respectively) and feel good entry, although our test unit space required rather than a company just type the brush of a thumb, if we type occurs at high speed.

The touchpad works smoothly, although the glossy surface collects a lot of fingerprints and stains. The Synaptics driver allows you to a handful of two-finger gestures such as scrolling, rotate photos or other objects, or sliding doors and pinching fingers together or apart to zoom. These take a little practice, but to grow or become comfortable, albeit at the risk of longing for a larger touchpad.

The 13.3-inch screen packs 1366 x 768 pixels and bright LED backlight. Proved to be a clear and vivid colors, and text was sharp, but got the pull-down menu text was a little too small.

A two-megapixel webcam is centered above the display. Two USB 2.0 ports are on the right side and third on the left side of the system, the latter next to an Ethernet port and DisplayPort video interface (user-adapter for older VGA, DVI or HDMI monitors need). An SD / MMC flash card slot sits next to a combination of headphone and microphone jack on the right side of the HP.
Easy Application Access

The 32-bit version of Windows 7 Professional is preinstalled with McAfee security software, WinZip, Skype, Roxio Creator, and utilities, and the trial version of Microsoft Office 2007. More interesting are HP QuickLook 3 and QuickWeb and programs through special buttons on the right side of the keyboard that will work when Windows is shutting down: This used to start a mini-Linux environment to run in less than 20 seconds without booting Windows, for quick access to contact and calendar data, and a Web browser.

Quick Look 3 builds your Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007 information, letting you see a contact, add an appointment or e-mail sent is that when you next log into Outlook and the network. QuickWeb works with a hard-wired or Wi-Fi Internet connection to call a browser with full functionality, including history, bookmarks, and a read-only mode for guest access or browsing suspicious websites. It also offers a screen brightness control and a battery-averting measure energy to unexpected couplings.

The HP Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics to keep it at an all-work-and-no-play rate; laptop's 3DMark06 benchmark result of 918 is in its native resolution 1366 x 768, south of a capable gaming machine. But his PCMark Vantage Cinebench R10 and scores of 4715 and 3960, respectively, while trying to make something more than three minutes to Cinebench scene are not so bad, and the system feels bold and respond in everyday applications.

We are impressed very satisfied with the ProBook 5310m. He draws the admiring glances of the executive branch status-offs in performance notebook buyers whose budgets are determined to stick to three rather than four digits, and provides a very good mix of productivity, size, weight and battery life. Shoppers put this in a very short list.

Epson Perfection V500 Office Color Scanner Review

2009-12-13T07:02:00.000-08:00

With the rise in popularity of multi-function printer / scanner / fax machines in recent years could be a standalone desktop scanners seem to be an endangered species, especially around the office. Make no mistake. The standalone scanner is still alive and well and with good reason - MFP's have their place, but they have their drawbacks.

Firstly, an MFP a large and bulky equipment tends to confiscate a lot of space on your desk. Also need if you or your staff to run print jobs and scan jobs at the same time, an MFP is quickly becoming a bottleneck, because they can not do both simultaneously. If either the printer or scanner components of an MFP require downtime for repairs, you have both devices. On top of all that built into the scanner MFP's do not offer the same quality and function as a standalone scanner, such as film set negative scanning.

Enter the Epson Perfection V500 ($ 349.99), which offers an inexpensive office scanner and then some of the objectives from a range of scanning features an automatic document feeder 2400-dpi color negative scans. Epson has tried the old V500 on both the document comfortably serious office environment and the restoration and touch-up photos home environment.

The V500 Office Unwrapped
The sleek black V500 office is located in a footprint less than 11x19 cm (slightly larger lid with automatic document feeder in place). With close to 5 cm (8 inches with ADF) scanner is not the smallest unit on the market, but is still reasonably slim.

Two separate covers are included with the V500 Office. The TPU (transparency unit) cover is when scanning 35mm film negatives or slides. The "ADF" lid takes a stack of up to 30 sheets of paper up to 8.5 x 14 inches for batch scans. Either with a lid, you can create documents directly on the flatbed glass, how to scan the pages, placing photos, and books.

FileMaker Task 2.0
The Epson Perfection V500 Color Scanner Office using the supplied 30-page ADF lid.

Both covers are floating hinges so that they can rest flat on heavy or bulky items such as a book. That is, the hinge not only offers a few inches of travel - for very large objects, you can simply position the cover at right angles, making it out of his way.

On the back of the scanner has a power port, a USB 2.0 "B"-style connector, and a round multi-pin connector for the lid. Each cover has to be connected a short cable that must be in the socket - the cable into the ADF cover is in everything connected quite short and slightly more difficult.

The front of the scanner features a number of quick-access buttons: PDF, e-mail, copying and scanning. The exact behavior of each of these keys, as the applications that can run it to be configured using the supplied Epson Event Manager.

Finally, there is a rocker-style power switch on the right side of the scanner. Note that this scanner does not contain a network socket - you must use the USB port directly to a host computer. Although it may be possible to release the scanner over a network, you need the operating system or third-use functions on the host computer to do so.

Software for Macs and Windows (Windows 7, Too)

Epson includes a CD with drivers and software for Windows (2000 and later, including Windows 7) and Mac OS X Epson's own "Epson Scan" software is the heart of this suite that allows you to preview, configure and run each scan.

Epson Scan itself offers four modes, each with a slightly different interface: Full Auto, home, office and professional. Each mode presents increasing amounts of features and options, although there may be a little confusing, between modes to find the easiest way to set a specific scan button.

Depending on which mode you are in, you can scan some interesting improvements in image quality for your. "Text Enhancement" will darken the text in a document so that it can be easier to analyze, through OCR (Optical Character) Recognition software. The Auto Area Segmentation "mode will attempt to automatically between text and image different areas of a document to scan the text in black and white (also for optimal OCR performance) and the images in greyscale () for quality.

You can also click "Exit" either red, green or blue - for example, if you scan a text document with a background color that you want to remove. Additional modifiers include image sharpening, de-screening, brightness and contrast.

For photos, you can "dust" and / or Epson "Digital ICE" filter. Digital ICE is a technology), infrared (for film or remove multiple lamps (for printing) to detect and dust, scratches and other so-called "surface defect" is used.

Also included with the V500's Office ABBYY FineReader, a basic OCR application and Adobe Photoshop Elements, a stripped down, but still very powerful version of Photoshop.

Let There Be Light - LED Inside
The V500 is an office of the newer scanners use an LED lamp, instead of the previous CCFL. This new mercury-free light source used to age about 10-20 percent less energy than older scanners and do not experience color shift while.

Best of all, LED lamps light instantly and require no warm-up time, so that the scanner start scanning with minimal delay, even from a cold start.

Xerox Phaser 6140 Review

2009-12-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

It's too loud, to put on the desk next to the phone, but otherwise the Xerox Phaser 6140 is a fast, capable, and - especially with the optional duplex unit - convenient color laser printer, a significant improvement on the model of the 6130 it replaces. At $ 399, it's just like ... But Xerox is buy a little difficult, at least until next year.

You see, as we've written before, Xerox has a habit of discounting older, full featured printer until they collide with newer models with lower prices. This is now with the new Phaser 6140 and Phaser has happened to the 6280, introduced in February: The 6140 amounts to $ 399 plus the double-sided printing for $ 149 to $ 548, while a 100-dollar deal from well until 31 December 2009 has reduced the duplexer fitted Phaser 6280/DN to $ 549th

This means that an extra U.S. dollars to buy a printer that is faster (with 26 color and 31 monochrome pages per minute, compared with 19 and 21 ppm, measured), holds more paper (400 versus 250 sheets), has a higher occupancy rate (70,000) compared to 40,000 pages per month, and provides lower cost per page (2.7 versus 3.5 cents for black and 13.9 versus 17 cents for a color page, each of the figures published by Xerox) .

That is a win-the-board for the 6280/DN, even for single-or three-or four-person office, which tend normally would, the 6140 and allow the 6280 to larger workgroups. How much do we want the Phaser 6140 - and we do - we can not recommend buying it until either the discount agreement on its older sibling beefier running on New Year's Eve, or the newer model, get a price its own.

Tall, light and Handsome

The 6140 is a white upright iceberg of a printer, some standing 16.5 cm tall and less than 16 by 18 inches of space on the desk. When you wrestle a 41-pound device from its box, setup is free to draw a dozen bands and streamers of the band, and locking the pre-black, cyan, magenta and yellow toner cartridges into place.

The latter, located behind a door on the right side of the printer that are compact, such as TV remote modules sized to slip into carriers that swivel range in the correct position and lock into place by a plastic latch. It is one of the easiest cartridge handling setups we have seen either laser or inkjet printer in the world.

In the tradition of base printer manufacturers everywhere, Xerox offers 1,000-page starter cartridges instead of one full in the box. Replacement yellow, magenta and cyan cartridges are rated for 2,000 pages and $ 90 per unit price, the black cartridge is rated for 2,600 pages and the price the same. The 6140 operating costs of three and a half cents per black and an average of 17 cents per color page and a little steep, respectively.

The pull-out tray to hold up to 250 letter-or A4-sheet (it is too short for legal paper), it can be coupled to a second 250-sheet input tray for 199th A slot in the front of the drawer, you can feed single sheets or envelopes manually. Printed pages exit face down on top of the printer, supported by a pull-out tray.

A button at the top right to reveal the hinged front of the printer pivot to the pre-imaging unit. The optional duplex unit into place inside the front door in seconds without tools. Interestingly, in contrast to other double-sided set-ups we've seen, treated it leaves in pairs - it prints page 2, remove the foil, pulls prints page 4, the leaf, then there and throws sheet 1 (pages 1 and 2); then Part 2 (pages 3 a.m. to 4 p.m.), and so on - but it worked without any problems or jams in our test.

An Energy Star sticker on the drawer shows the Xerox economical 8-watt power consumption in sleep, by default, kicks in after 30 minutes in standby mode (50 watts) or print (280 watts). Set-up changes such as setting up any other time in idle or turning off the status pages normally printed on power, or to cancel a print job is underway, are pretty much the only reason for using the front mounted LCD menu and buttons; Printing options such as N-up (multiple pages per sheet) will be issued by the included driver PostScript 3 treated. PCL-shops you will find a PCL 6 driver on the installation CD. The 6140 works with Windows 2000 and later, Mac OS 10.3 and higher, SUSE and Red Hat Linux.

Both USB 2.0 and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet interfaces are on the back of the printer found. A WiFi adapter for an expensive $ 219 available, and a 512 upgrade for the Phaser 256 is standard memory for a coronary artery causing $ 719 are available.

Terrific throughput

Xerox provides that the 6140's 600 x 600 dpi with 4-pressure module (4 bits of color per pixel), vivid colors and smoother color transitions and provides a lesser lasers. We consider the four-color pictures-to-be a little less grainy and lifelike than six or more ink jet printer prints, but newsletter or flyer-sized pix looked quite nice.

And everyday text and charts were so small in order, with clear, bold text, such as 4 or 5 points, and smooth-colored surfaces. The Phaser do not think you waiting, either in print: Our one page business letter with spot-color company logo in 15 seconds. Twenty-spaced pages monochrome text has only 1 minutes and 11 seconds, and a 55-page PDF document mixing black text, colorful headlines, and a variety of images in 3 minutes and 7 seconds done.

We are always quickly hung on the tree-saving, office-space-saving advantages of double-sided printing, at least for in-house materials. So we were glad to see that the duplex Xerox does not provide too much pressure slowly, the 20-page Word document in 1 minute and 36 seconds and the 55-page Acrobat in four and a half minutes.

If you do not want duplex, the Phaser 6140 at $ 399 is half a C-note in the discounted Phaser 6280 to $ 449. This is a wider gap than the mere dollars between duplex versions, but we think the 6280 make the higher speed and lower cost per page, the better buy - as we did 6140, the additional speed and PostScript had support under a contest between him and the company pick up entry-level, host-based Phaser 6125 ($ 349). There is, we give the 6140 a thumbs up, but Xerox discount on the 6280 steal the thunder of the new printer.

HP Pavilion All-in-One MS214 Review

2009-11-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

We've all done it, walked out of a shop who hopes for more than we expected walking in. HP that consumers spent from walking under $ 600 - that instead of just buying a software upgrade for an aging system, they will take the opportunity offered by the arrival of Windows 7 to the treatment, a stylish new all-in-one PC.

The pavilion MS214 has not only Windows 7 Home Basic preinstalled, it has the classic one-piece design of a more expensive Apple iMac or HP TouchSmart (although) not on its touch screen. The 18.5-inch LCD screen is bigger than the old 15 - or 17-inch CRT, it will probably be replaced. The environment is as easy as plugging in the mouse, keyboard and power cord. It comes with smooth HP MediaSmart software for managing photos, videos and music, as well as a webcam and WiFi. And while $ 600 is not exactly an impulse buy, it's only a few hundred dollars more than a cheap generic PCs - an offer that the "simple, elegant, and tower-free desktop" touted by the advertising sticker on the HP front panel.

On the other hand, that gambling HP Smart Shopper (supported by smart sellers or buyers) is not the fault of the MS214 for only nettop like the Asus Eee Top 1602 and eMachines EZ1601. Instead of a nettop is modest, single-core Intel Atom processor and 1 GB of RAM, the Pavilion has an AMD Athlon X2 3250e - a 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU with two times 512 KB Level 2 cache - and 2 GB of DDR2 memory and a 320GB hard drive and a DVD ± RW burner. And although there is no fire-breathing gamers, the HP ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics easily surpass the shameful Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics of nettops and netbooks.

No obvious omissions

The all-in-one would be a natural complement for a wireless keyboard and mouse, but apparently the economy dictates a keyboard and mouse, which take two of the four USB 2.0 ports on the back of the machine. The two input devices are generic pieces, an optical mouse with scroll wheel and a keyboard with audio volume control and a medium-sized, moderately clunky typing. The four USB ports occupy the back next to the power outlet for laptop, the HP-style power supply and audio and Ethernet ports. Families with a WiFi router at home can ignore the Ethernet port and hook to the Internet via 802.11b / g wireless.

Two more USB ports, headphone and microphone jacks and a six-in-one (SD / SDHC / MMC / xD / MS / MS Pro) flash card readers are available on the left side of the display there, and the right holds DOWN buttons for the brightness of the screen and the eject button for the DVD ± RW drive. The power switch is on the bottom right of the front panel.

The system is approximately 15.5 by 18.5 by 8 inches. There is no tilt adjustment for the display, but a good selection, and it is easy to rotate to the unit from side to side. The ad follows today's HD 16:9 screen ratio mode, albeit at a lowish resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels, it is enough for 720p video, but. More importantly, the screen is bright and sharp, with vivid colors and crisp text and symbols. The built-in speakers are not a threat to the Bose or Bang & Olufsen, but perfectly OK for the enjoyment of audio and on-line CDs or DVDs.

We have already mentioned MediaSmart, which a friendly mini-menu of music, photo, video offers a webcam, and DVD-adapted tools from HP TouchSmart stylish desktop software. This top Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, by organizing search a wide variety of possibilities, and to enjoy CDs, MP3s, images and video. Other bundled software includes CyberLink suite of CD and DVD burning and backup tools, Microsoft Works, and a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security.

Ambling Right Along

The HP is not for benchmark speed tests built (the Windows Experience Index, dragged himself through sub-Aero-value is a graphic one) wimpy 2.9 to 7.9 of the operating-point scale. But we were curious, so we can report that the sample MS214 Cinebench R10-scene rendered in five and a half minutes. That is slow for the two minutes required by a deluxe quad-core desktop in comparison, but it's like lightning in addition to the 17 minutes taken a nettop like the eMachines EZ1601 - whose Sysmark 2007 Preview guests and Quake III Arena game frames per second, HP nearly doubled at 63 and 103, respectively.

Of course, Quake III is 10 years old, the latest modern games like Crysis will not run on the MS214, but the 3DMark06 value of 1,021 (compared with the eMachines '83 show), it's like a puzzle or strategy games viable platform if not a first-person shooter. Performance applications in everyday life is bold enough to appear some dialog boxes to a moment, rather than show up immediately, but we never felt we had to wait.

We like the idea of the pavilion, all-in-one very well. There is no reason that the majority of PC users who do not take care of expansion slots and free drive bays can not be satisfied with a stylish desktop (though it reminds us of drive bays, one eSATA port for the next time you ask). And there is no reason to put up a piece of desktops, high price premiums. Three or four gigabytes of memory would be better than two, but the MS214 avoids the weaknesses of nettops and provides a solid computing experience.

We do not give higher praise because it has competition: When we reviewed the Lenovo C300, we found the availability of $ 549 configuration with a dual-core Atom CPU, 4 GB of RAM and a 20-inch LCD display. That's more memory and a bigger screen for $ 50 less. HP have to hope that customers do not get lost Lenovo gear.

HP Photosmart Plus Review

2009-11-19T17:53:00.000-08:00

Printer-hunting the consumer will be satisfied by new push HP's for simplicity: The company has a $ 150 printer / scanner / copier only synchronize the Photosmart Plus, under the Photosmart Premium ($ 200), positioned with no model number or alphanumeric nickname as 2459W or complicate THX1138 introduced to either name. Once they get it home and install the software, the buyers will find the multi-function inkjet printers have a number after all (B209), and we can not help you, ask what HP is doing in six months if there other models complements the product line (Photosmart Plus Plus? Almost Photosmart Premium?). But we welcome the concept of buying product names clearer and simpler.

Of course everything is relative. Someone who will outfit a small office this could be a printer Photosmart Minus call for what they do not have - a fax, automatic document feeder for multipage copying or scanning, duplex printing. But we believe the plus earned its place among the affordable three-in-One with a good performance, print quality and especially user-friendly, thanks to the dual paper trays - for a letter-size and has a devoted to 5 of 7 inches or smaller Photo paper - and a 2.4-inch color LCD touch screen that the usual front-controls and switches replaced.

The screen display shows the most important symbols of the three main functions Photosmart, Photo, copy and scan. Pressing an arrow icon on one side provides a submenu of Quick Forms - low expression of graph paper, as well as stationery and calendars, checklists and Sudoku puzzles and mazes for - and setup to check ink level, and Wireless status screens .

No PC is needed for most of the features of the HP for viewing and printing photos on a USB flash drive or a digital camera flash card (front-mounted slots needed space for SD, MMC, MS and xD cards). The LCD is used to preview and select images and converting simple edits such as cropping and adjusting brightness, as well as more home project for options such as adding a decorative frame or sepia, or arrange for photos and album pages and print wallet or passport.

The development of the LCD raised translated in the number of black or color a picture or a page on the 1,200-dpi scanner glass, along with copier settings, such as size, quality, contrast, and improvements for text, photos, or both . Ditto for scanning a paper document or image on a memory card or USB drive.

Decisions for the scan to your PC include saving a photo in a file and adds them to an e-mail, creating a PDF file, making a PDF e-mail attachment and save a document as a TIFF image. Unlike most office-oriented all-in-one that comes Photosmart without optical character recognition (OCR) or document management software, and the touch-screen method works only for the creation of a PDF - Scanning multiple pages into a PDF document is a job provided HP Solution Center software, let alone to raise and close the scanner lid and outsourcing in the absence of ADF.

High-Quality Hard Copy

The touch screen replaces all the buttons and switches except the power button, the Photosmart Plus is a very clean and elegant appearance - a black box measuring approximately 18 by 16 by 8 cm and weighing a solid 16 pounds. The 125-sheet input tray and main 20-sheet photo tray are stacked in front, with printed pages, leaving the tip of the latter.

Wi-Fi (802.11b / g) printing and scanning is standard, as is a USB 2.0 interface - there's even a USB cable in the box shortly, what with a simple wireless setup, we encountered used. The business card-sized holder of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink cartridges snap easily into place, too.

The standard HP 564 cartridges are rated at 300 pages, yellow, cyan, and magenta ($ 10 per person) and 250 pages for black ($ 12). If the originals run out, they want to be thrifty users with higher capacity ink tanks 564XL, 800 pages for black ($ 35 rated) and) 750 for the color ($ 18 apiece. The shares at 4.4 cents per black and 11.6 cents per color page highlights the position of the Photosmart as a graphic and less everyday printer - it's cheaper than many inkjet printers for color pages, but relatively expensive for black and white.

If you print mostly black text, you can be in a hurry by the printer design mode - it gives a little pale, dot-patterned graphics, but pretty good, dark enough text, taking only 47 seconds for a 10 - page Word document and 13 seconds for a one-sided business letter with spot-color company logo.

Stepping up to normal mode easily print the letter to 16 seconds and the 10-pager to 65, and took just under eight minutes for a 55-page Adobe Acrobat PDF document slowed. A copy of Standard for Walk-up, normal mode also supplied five copies of a black page in 46 seconds and five color copies of a magazine cover in 1 minute and 50 seconds.

Normal mode delivers sharp text and beautiful color illustrations and headlines stung, and saw also surprisingly good for photos (4 by 6-inch prints, on average, exactly one minute), but showed some banding in dark-colored surfaces. To eliminate the latter and to bring a little more detail and less grain in photos, you can opt for best quality mode, in which about half again took so long to our stopwatch tests.

SimpleTough USB 2.0 Portable Drive Review

2009-11-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

Shockproof portable USB 2.0 hard drives are not a new idea. In the past year led the Iomega eGo Blackbelt, which we reviewed. But SimpleTech, a Hitachi company has a new wrinkle with the Hitachi SimpleTough added product.

SimpleTough, about the size and weight of the Blackbelt, and other portable devices that are available in three capacities: 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB (a 640 GB version comes in). U.S. prices range between $ 100 and $ 150, but the 500 GB model is available online for less than $ 125. We have the 500 GB version.

Based on Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-inch hard disk technology that is widely used in laptops, the SimpleTough "run to provide a three-meter (9.8 ft. drop) to." This limit is falling more than seven of the Blackbelt foot. SimpleTough is "waterproof" even though the company did not say what exactly that means.

Another nice innovation: an integrated USB cable. It's a tough rubberized strips about five inches long, which neatly wraps around one end of the moldings drive enclosure, and lies out of the way when not in use. You will never lose more.

Through the rubber shock absorbers on the rigid but lightweight carbon-fiber casing, SimpleTough is a little thicker than a few portable drives with 4.8-x 3.26-x 0.87-inches. This is slightly larger than Blackbelt and not quite small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. But the device is small enough to fit neatly in a jacket pocket or handbag, and it weighs only 5.9 ounces.
Let the ratings release
Our out-of-the-box experience with SimpleTough was good but not perfect. The opening of the packaging can be a little confusing for experienced technology dogs. Did they leave something by mistake? Where are all the accessories and instructions?

The package includes: 1) a SimpleTough a drive, and 2) a small Read Me First "brochure. Period. One result of the simplicity.
USB Power Only
SimpleTough pulls out all the necessary power - in theory - through the integrated USB cable. Some portable drives are equipped with a two-headed cable, so you drag them into the two USB ports connector for additional power when needed. With SimpleTough if she can not draw enough power from one port, you have a problem.

There is a connector for an external power supply - a 1.0-volt-amp 5 (5VDC) adapter, which finds little help in the brochure is "given." SimpleTech is no indication where to get, one. Radio Shack does not seem to sell such a product.

But we had no problems running the Smart Tough by a USB port, either on our main test computer, a one-year ZTPC tower model with Windows 7, nor a Dell XPS M1330 laptop, an updated model that runs Vista .

Sometimes, the five-inch cable is not long enough. If we SimpleTough properly with the tower PC, it would not be wide enough to sit up and would have hung over the ground. But it works well with a laptop on the table.

If the drive is connected, the driver software installs itself automatically and SimpleTough appears as a drive in My Computer. Was the product splash screen will automatically pop up at this time? It did not take in our facility. And the "Read Me First" brochure is strangely silent on the question to do what next.

In fact, you have the drive in My Computer folder and double-click the file Get_started_for_windows.exe open. The main menu appears and shows the top five ways: Register, formatting, backup now Joggle (a SimpleTech-hosted social media site that helps you organize and search for media and provide an option available to others online), tips & Help.

Can you ignore the option "formatting. The drive is preformatted as FAT32, which means it is ready to be used on almost any PC, Mac or Linux computer.