Gadling gear review – Gateway LT3103u 11.6″ Netbook

by Scott Carmichael on

Strange things happen when you walk into a Bestbuy store. More often than not, observant gadget hounds will find the newest, often unreleased products sitting on a shelf. Tonight was such a night – when looking through their assortment of overpriced laptops, I noticed the brand new Gateway LT3103u Netbook locked away in a cage.

A brief introduction about this machine – it is the first Netbook style machine sold by Gateway in the US, and is equipped with an AMD Athlon L110 64 bit, 1.2GHz processor. The version sold at Bestbuy comes with a 250GB hard drive and 2GB of ram.

As is often the case with Bestbuy, it took me longer to find a sales rep than it took for me to decide to buy this machine. I picked this machine for one simple reason – I am tired of the low resolution on most other Netbook size machines. HP was the only one offering a Netbook with a higher resolution screen, but when added to their Mini 2140, the price popped up to over $700.

The only other machine that was recently released that would fit my needs is the new 11.6″ Acer Aspire One AO751h, but its horribly slow Intel Atom processor made it unsuitable for anything more than some basic web work.

The Gateway LT3103u has the usual shiny plastic case, and even just pulling it out of the box covered the poor thing in my greasy fingerprints. The machine uses a low power AMD Athlon chip, capable of running 64 bit Windows, though as delivered, it comes with Vista Basic 32bit. What makes the LT3103u interesting is its dedicated ATI Radeon X1270 graphics chip. As sold by Bestbuy, the LT3103u comes with a 6 cell Lithium-Ion battery pack (which sticks out the back a little), 802.11b/g WiFi, a webcam and microphone in the screen bezel, 3 USB ports and an 11.6″ LED backlit display capable of 1366×768. The machine has a 3-in-1 card reader, a D-SUB VGA port, audio in/out and 10/100 Ethernet. There is no HDMI, no Bluetooth and no E-SATA as found on some high-end Netbooks.

As I mentioned earlier – it comes with Vista Basic, which also means it is ineligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. Like with all Gateway machines, it comes with a supply of bloatware; Norton Internet Security Trial. Microsoft Works, Microsoft Office (trial), Google Desktop, Gateway Games, Windows Live, Money Essentials and a bunch of revenue generating icons on the desktop. I’ll be installing Windows 7 (64 bit) on it, so none of that bloat is going to bother me one bit.

The keyboard on the LT3103u is good – not great, but certainly a step above using the tiny keys on the first generation Asus Eee PC. There is a very small amount of flex on the keyboard. Keys are well spaced and you get a decent size space bar and dedicated arrow buttons.

The trackpad on the machine supports multi-gesture, and is wide enough for normal use. The 2 mouse buttons are under a single silver pad on the bottom, and its response is very good.

You’ll be happy to know that all parts of the machine can be easily accessed – the covers for ram, HDD and network card are all under user removable ports. The machine comes with a single 2GB Samsung module. The second MiniPCI slot does not have its port installed, but the open space means they might be planning a 3G enabled version (WWAN is specifically mentioned on the box as an option).

Performance is something I haven’t spent too much time looking at – but one of the first things I wanted to test was video playback. I’m pleased to report that this little machine had no problems at all with a 720p MKV file played back in full screen. For the fun of it, I also tried a 1080P file (also in MKV) though that really did not work well (no surprise there).

Update: after some playing around with the video playback settings, I can happily reply that the Gateway has zero issues with 1080p video! Files from the WMV HD showcase play in full screen without a single frame dropped or stutter. The MKV file I originally tried was encoded in 1980×1080, which is still a little too much for the machine, the WMV files are 1440×1080.

Booting from power-off to the Windows Vista login screen takes 53 seconds and a shutdown to power off takes 19 seconds.

There are one or two minor annoyances on the machine – there is a really annoying WiFi indicator located at the front of the machine, which flashes with all wireless activity. The hard drive is also quite noisy, and produces more clicking than I’d like to hear. Finally – there are 2 small rubber bumpers located on either side of the machine, these are quite annoying when you have your palms resting while typing.

Other than those minor issues, I’m surprisingly impressed with the Gateway LT3103u. Its performance is quite decent, the screen is crisp and bright, battery life should be good (Vista reports 6 hours on a full charge) and its specifications are not bad at all for its price.

At $399, it is a mere $20 more than the retail price of the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which comes with 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive (though its battery and CPU are better).

Time (and a plane trip) will tell whether the LT3103u is a winner, and whether it really is the Netbook I’ve been looking for, but so far I’m quite impressed with what Gateway produced.

UPDATE: Windows 7 installed nicely, I posted my experience with the 2 minor driver issues here.

Gadling gear review – Altec Lansing BackBeat PRO noise isolating headphones

by Scott Carmichael on

In this product review, you’ll get to read about the newest headphones from audio specialists Altec Lansing. The BackBeat PRO headphones are the top of the line product in their BackBeat lineup, and with that of course comes a responsibility to deliver some really good audio.

The BackBeat PRO headphones are passive noise isolating, which means they reduce noise by isolating it from your ears. They do this simply by creating a good seal between the outside, and your ear canal. Unlike active noise canceling headphones, the BackBeat PRO’s do no require batteries or electronics to reduce outside noise.

The headphones themselves are rather impressive looking – made from black and gold plastic, they are extremely light and clearly show the L and R for a correct fit. The plug is angled and is compatible with the original iPhone and its annoying recessed headphone jack.

The cord is made of “oxygen-free” copper and is treated with a low friction PVC coating which is designed to reduce the kind of tangle that will keep you occupied for the first 10 minutes of your flight. In reality, this actually works quite well. It won’t completely prevent the cord from being tangled, but it does make it much easier to untangle when you dig the headphones from out of the bottom of your bag.

Included with the BackBeat PRO is a soft shell carrying case and a 6 piece “fit kit” consisting of large and small neoprene earpieces and a pair of double flanged earpieces for extra isolation.

When you install the earpiece that fits you best, you may experience what I did – I forgot I was wearing them. Of the three sizes, I found the flanged earpieces fit me best, and provided the best noise isolation. Seriously, this is the kind of noise isolation that means you’ll hear your own heart beat when you pause your music.

Audiophiles will be disappointed to know that I am not a member of your club – I’d love to give you a long description of the high and low tone reproduction from the BackBeat PRO headphones, but I really can’t tell you much more than “they sound absolutely fantastic”.

I tested them with several MP3 files on a portable player, and plugged them into a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Notebook to listen to a Mike Oldfield track (in FLAC). Two things stand out with the headphones – they really do sound great, and they really do isolate an astounding amount of noise. Best of all, since a lot of background noise is isolated, you won’t need to turn the volume up to 11 to enjoy your music.

The noise isolation is actually so good, that I found them to perform better than most active noise isolating headphones I have tested. Anyone who has used active noise isolating headphones also knows the the isolation process adds some “hiss” to the music – which is of course something you won’t suffer from with the BackBeat PRO headphones. Being small also means you can wear them and take a nap on the plane without your big headphones getting in the way.

The BackBeat PRO’s cost just $99.95, which is about a third of what a good pair of active noise canceling headphones can cost, and a quarter of what some high-end noise isolating headphones run.

Gadling gear review – HTC Touch Diamond2 Windows Mobile smartphone

by Scott Carmichael on

It has been several months since we last reviewed a Windows Mobile smartphone, and in this review, I’m going to give you a close look at what could very well be the best Windows powered phone ever made.

The HTC Touch Diamond2, is as the name implies, the second version of the HTC Touch Diamond.

The Diamond series phones are thin devices, with no hardware keyboard. The Diamond2 hardware specifications are spectacular – 528MHz processor, 512MB rom, 288MB ram, quadband GSM, triband 3G, a 5 Megapixel auto-focus camera, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, MicroSD expansion slot, FM Radio and best of all – an 800×480 display.
The outside of the phone is stunning – and in my opinion the best looking HTC phone ever made. The phone combines a smooth plastic cover on the back, with sleek stainless steel trim on the front.

On the left side is the volume control, on the right is a slot for the stylus. The front only has 4 buttons, and no “D-Pad” like found on most other Windows devices. Removing the D-Pad also means the entire front of the phone can be used for the screen, and oh boy what a joy that screen is

The Touch Diamond2 runs Windows Mobile 6.1 but it runs it with a twist – HTC included the latest version of their TouchFlo interface on the device , and I have to say – this is the best thing to ever happen to Windows Mobile. The reason? Windows Mobile is 90% hidden from view when TouchFLO 3D is running.

Every single annoying part of Windows Mobile is hidden. Everything from the program manager to the settings screen has been replaced by the TouchFLO 3D interface. This also means all the components are extremely finger friendly, and I rarely needed the stylus.

Until Windows Mobile 7 arrives on mobile devices, I’d say HTC TouchFLO 3D has finally put Windows Mobile on par with the iPhone and Google’s Android operating system. I am not exaggerating when I say that the OS is an absolute dream to use. Even parts of Windows that used to be a pain in the backside to use (like the Windows WiFi setup screen) have been completely replaced with TouchFLO and its finger friendly interface.

The TouchFLO 3D home screen displays a large clock, and allows you to scroll between the various features included on the main page; weather, stocks, programs, people, messages, email, music and settings. Being able to access all these things on the front page, means you’ll waste less time digging in the programs list, and that everything is finger friendly.

If you showed someone the TouchFLO 3D home screen, program manager and browser, you’d probably be able to convince them that your phone was running some kind of new operating system – Windows is that well hidden.

Now, back to that screen – seriously, this is the best screen I have ever seen in a smartphone. It is crisp, bright and extremely easy to read. In sunshine, it is less effective, but still usable. The screen has an auto brightness feature, using the front facing camera. Just below the screen is the new HTC Zoom-bar, which is a touch sensitive scroll control, perfect for scrolling up/down in the RSS reader, or for controlling the zoom in the browser.

As I mentioned earlier – there is no hardware keyboard on the Touch Diamond2, which would normally be a major inconvenience for me. As it turns out, it actually made me rethink devices without a keyboard, as text entry on the Diamond2 works surprisingly well.

The screen is extremely responsive, and one of (if not – THE) best touch screens on any Windows device. It lacks the multitouch features found on the iPhone and the G1, but the upside is that you can still use the stylus if you want to. The photo on the right shows the Diamond2 next to an HTC Touch Pro and the T-Mobile G1 (also an HTC device).

The 5 Megapixel camera finally looks and feels like a real camera – the interface is snappy, and shots are made immediately when you press the button, something many other phones are not capable of. The resulting photos look awesome.

Since there is no flash (or LED flash light), photos made in the dark don’t look very good, but anything made outside or indoors with enough light looks like it was made on a normal 5MP camera. Videos are equally impressive, and are shot in MPEG4 at 640×480.

Performance of the phone itself is great for a Windows Mobile device – there is seldom any lag, and even memory hungry apps like Opera Mobile open virtually instantly. Surprisingly, even the EDGE transfer speed is quite snappy (I tested the phone on T-Mobile). During my 2 weeks playing with the Touch Diamond2, I did not have to press the reset button once.

The version of the Touch Diamond2 I tested included a fairly basic lineup of applications. The most common Windows Mobile apps are of course on the device (Media Player, Pocket Word/Excel/Powerpoint) as well as a couple of Games. Additional apps made by HTC are the addictive Teeter game, which uses the accelerometer, their FM radio program and a version of the Opera Browser optimized for HTC phones.

The browser is a treat to use, and makes the Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer look even worse than it is. Opera renders pages very fast, and they actually look like they were intended.



The Opera Browser looks amazing on the high resolution screen of the Touch Diamond2 – this is an actual screenshot.

The browser may not be completely on par with the excellent abilities of the iPhone or the G1, but it comes very close, and finally makes browsing the web on a Windows Device very pleasing. One extra feature of the browser is the ability to save “push pages”. These pages are bookmarks you can add to TouchFLO 3D on the main screen, offering quick access to a page that is always updated in the background. This is ideal for news, traffic or other dynamic pages.

There are one or two things that bugged me on the Touch Diamond2 – there is still no normal 3.5mm headphone jack, something HTC seem to do to all their phones (even their Android powered G1 lacks a normal headphone port). Headphones are included (and are required to use the FM radio) and normal headphones can only be used with an optional adapter. My only other minor annoyance is that the power button sticks up a tiny bit, which means the phone tends to turn itself on if the top is pressed.

You’ll notice that these 2 “annoyances” really are very minor – there simply isn’t anything on this phone that I “hated”. Seriously – everything on the phone, from its camera to its GPS is perfect. For the first time, I think it is safe to say that we finally have a Windows Mobile powered alternative to
the iPhone. Anyone who wants to stay away from Android, the Palm Pre or the iPhone, or who has a specific need for a Windows Mobile device should take a long hard look at this phone, and try to justify its purchase price.

Yeah – the purchase price brings me to the only real downside to the Touch Diamond2 at the moment. Currently, no US operator is selling the phone. The only way to purchase one, is through an unlocked phone reseller. The downside to this is of course the price – it currently sells for about $600. The other downside? Those phones lack the 3G frequency support required to use in the USA.

Still, I found the device to work surprisingly well on EDGE, and you can always switch over to WiFi when required.

PROS

  • Fantastic design
  • Amazing screen
  • Speedy processor
  • Windows Mobile mostly hidden underneath the brilliant TouchFlo 3D interface
  • Very impressive camera

CONS

  • No regular headphone jack
  • No 3G availability in the US (until the phone launches on a US operator)
  • Price is steep

Bottom line – this is the best Windows Powered phone I have ever used, and as a Windows fan, I’d even say that the hardware is better than the current iPhone (yes, even the 3GS). No US mobile carrier is confirmed to be on board with their own version, but rumors all point to a Q3/Q4 launch on several operators.

HP unveils the Mini 5101 – makes the Netbook look all grown up

by Scott Carmichael on

HP is on a roll this month – just 2 weeks after adding 3 new machines to their Mini PC lineup, they just announced the Mini 5101.

The new Mini 5101 weighs in at just 2.6 pounds, and comes with the usual Intel Atom processor. The machine features the awesome 95% full keyboard found on their other popular Netbook sized machines, though they have moved to a “chiclet” style keyboard – something I really like.

The base model ships with a 7200rpm hard drive, but 80 and 128GB SSD drives are available as optional extras.

Since this machine is aimed at business users, you’ll get the HP 3D DriveGuard protection system and their DuraKeys keyboard coating. These technologies also make the Mini 5101 perfect for travelers who need a durable machine capable of being dragged around the world.

Battery life depends on the choice of either a 4-cell pack or a larger 6-cell pack. The 6 cell battery will keep the Mini 5101 going for up to 8 hours.

The Mini 5101 is available with either a standard WSGA screen, or a high-definition screen. Other options include Bluetooth and mobile broadband wireless interfaces as well as a new lineup of portable accessories.

Expect to find the machine available for orders towards the end of July, the expected retail price is $449.

Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds digital camera – part 2 – the basics

by Scott Carmichael on

I just spent the past 2 days playing with the new Olympus E-P1 digital camera. Before I continue, let me quickly describe what kind of photographer I am – 95% of the time, I’ll have my camera set to “auto” and the remaining 5%, it is set to manual by mistake. As a geek, I got in on the whole DSLR craze very early, and got out of the craze after just 2 weeks.

I’ve always found DSLR’s to be too big, too complicated and too overwhelming. So, when I initially read about the new Olympus E-P1 camera, I was very interested, as it appeared to be everything I like in a camera, but still able to offer me the features and quality of a large digital SLR.

Now on the camera itself – anyone who knows a thing or two about photography will know what the Olympus Pen was. The Pen was the first half-frame camera produced in Japan, and one of the smallest to take regular 35mm film. The entire Pen line was a massive success, but the last one was developed way back in 1981. The first Pen hit the market in 1959, which just so happens to be 50 years ago, which is of course the perfect time to relaunch the Pen using current technologies.

The basics

Inside the camera is the same large sensor that you’ll find in a DSLR camera, capable of shooting in 12.3 megapixels. The unit features in-camera image stabilization and an ultrasonic lens cleaning technology called “Super Sonic Wave Filter” – how cool is that?

Having image stabilization inside the camera means lenses won’t need the technology in them, which should keep the price of lenses to a minimum. Some of the highlights built into the camera are:

  • 720p HD video recording
  • Audio recording in PCM Stereo
  • Multiple art shooting modes (pop art, soft focus, pale&light color, light tone, grainy film and pin hole)
  • Interchangeable lenses using the Micro Four Thirds system
  • Stainless steel body available in metal/chrome and white
  • 3″ LCD
  • Digital leveler built in (this is way cooler than it sounds)

Tomorrow I’ll start showing some of the features up close, in the meantime, enjoy some of these photos I took using the camera. I uploaded all the images in their original, unedited format, just click “hi res” in the top to see the full size photo, and remember; I am not a professional photographer by any means, so go easy on me!

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