Oct 31
Color laser printer prices have never been this low, and the downward slide continues. The LBP 5300 from canon is an economical printer for highvolume priting.
Build quality is very good, and the printer is more than suited for daily office work. At 22 Kg, it is preety heavy. It is also a bit bulky-a bit wider than a 19 inch CRT and taller than an average PC cabinet, but this size is to be expected of a colour laser printer.
The standard input paper tray has a gapacity of 350 sheets, while the optional paper tray can accommodate up to 500 sheets. Duplex printing is supported. The device connects to the PC via the USB 2.0 interface, and also features a network interface-10Base-T/100Base-TX. The bundled Netspot Device Installer makes installing this printer on a network straightforward. The optical printing resolution is 600*600dpi, and whan we tested the devic, both mono and colour prints are fairly sharp.
Text was legible at all point sizes, and colour graphics were from the artefacts typical of laser printers. A mono text document at normal quality took us 11.6 seconds to print, while a complex colour document took 14. seconds-pretty good by any standard. We lohhed a sustained pages per minute rate at a good 17. This isn’t really meant for photo printing, but we tried priting an A4 size photo; it took 16.8 seconds, which again is very good.The warm-up time is about 43 seconds. The LBP 5300 comes with software for windows, Mac,and Linux. It consumes 415 W during operation and 45 W during standby, and just 13 W in energy save mode.
Specification :
- Printer Resolution: 600×600 dpi (optical), 9600×600 dpi (enhanced)
- Printer Language: Canon Advanced printing Technology (CAPT)
- Input Tray Capacity: 350 (standard), 500 (optional)
- Interface: USB 2.0, 10/100, MAC, Linux
- Memory: 16 MB SD-RAM
- Weight: 22 Kg
- Dimensions: 412mm x 453mm x 437.7mm (WxDxH)
Oct 31
USB capacity wars are raging hot. Now memory giant Kingston has upped the ante, introducing the 8 GB Data Traveler secure privacy Edition. The drive is dark gray with black rubber piping for grip; it will weather dusty Indian condition with ease. The cap fits snugly-no surprise, since the drive is supposed to be waterproof up to a depth of 4 meters. It comes with a detachable mii lanyard (the threaded string) to be fastened to a key-ring , but Kingston does not provide a key-ring or anchor.
This is essentially a high speed Flash drive for the extremely security conscious; this is evident when you plug it in for the first time. You are greeted with a screen where you set a username, password, and password reminder, and password reminder hint.
Kingston seems to be little too paranoid here: only after setting a very “strong” (as in complex) password can you access the drive.
The DataTraveler supports 256-bit AES encryption on the fly, that is, data is encrypted as it is being transferred to the drive. Considering this, the drive is quite speedy in its class of drives. When we tested it, it took just 57 seconds to write a 700 MB sequential file to the drive, and a much lower 30 seconds to read the same file form the drive. Assorted files of the same capacity take much longer, though: over 2:30 minutes to write to the drive while rwading them takes 1:15 minutes. You’ll find Windows’ vista ReadyBoost feature supported; this lets the OS use the drive as cache or virtual memory to enhance system performance.
In case you’re toally taken in by the 8 GB figure, bear in mind that the drive only supports FAT32, thereby limiting the maximum individual fily size to 4 GB. This means you can’t carry around files such as DVD images, which are generally larger.
price? A premium Rs 12,000. We’d suggest waiting for a few months; it is probably too early to buy this one.
Specifications :
- Capacity: 8 GB
- Interface: USB 2.0
- Password Protection: Lanyard
Oct 29
Sitting along with one it’s buddies on the bottom of shelf at Best buy it screamed buy me Steve buy me I’m a hundred dollars, but I’m worth every penny. Well I do have a weak spot for this sort of stuff I suppose, but don’t call me an impulse shopper. I did however have a genuine excuse and it’s the old version was very large put a fin on the bottom and it’s a surf board.
First impressions
The packaging is standard fare Logitech with a feature list, glitzy product images, and a place to open it good enough for myself. I will however make note that while the box was a great deal smaller than the previous version its weight seemed to be about the same which to me is good don’t want that sucker sliding around.
It’s Halloween!!
While most won’t agree with Logitech going with orange i find it very pleasing to the eye. The effect isn’t in your eyes it’s subtle. When I first turned my machine on with the keyboard plugged in the first thing that caught my eye was the blood red indicators for the caps lock, num lock, and scroll look it’s eye catching to say least. Blue is nice, but it’s overdone these days it’s very refreshing that a different color was chosen for the keyboard.
The obvious thing most people will notice is the board is much smaller about 1 1/2 smaller from my guestimations. The width decrease comes at a cost though the “g keys” take a serious hit down to just six physical keys. I guess the reasoning is that with some tricky key combinations you can make it seems as though their are still fifteen of them still there.
Round is out and angular is in the G15 Keyboard features larger buttons for the mute, back light, and windows key disabler. The buttons themselves now seem to walk slightly in their sockets, but it doesn’t do anything to detract from the usage of them they work just fine. While on the subject of buttons the key themselves remain largely untouched the only difference visually is the use of the round Windows flag. The touch of the keys remains the same for touch typists or other users a laptop style key would probably be better than this. The key travel and feel still feel good a bit mushy at times, but it suits my typing style.
I was in the pool!!!
Good or bad the LCD is smaller than before, but with its shrinkage it also to me looks more crisper the text is easier to read it’s either the module itself or the backlight color choice. Surrounding the LCD are the multimedia buttons play/pause, volume up and down, stop, and track forward & back these controls are all backlit as well. The controls for the LCD aren’t much different you get a button to switch applets, and four buttons to control the applet.
The good the bad the slightly ugly
The thing some love to hate is the quality of Logitech’s software and I’d have to agree somewhat. Although with version two they are at the very least working on fixing some of the concerns most had with version 1.00 through 1.04.
Some issues that I have run into already is something that I had before with my previous keyboard was the tendency for iTunes to crash the Logitech media display plugin. The software does make recovering from crashes easier than unplugging or rebooting the Game Panel control panel applet allows you to start a plugin that either hasn’t started or just crashed.
The problem I had in spades with my version one board was the blanking LCD I can happily say I have yet to experience it with my version two board.
The keyboard ships with version 2.00 of the Game panel software this appears to be version 2.00 not the previously released 2.01 beta by the Wingman team. The software itself looks exactly the same as 2.01 with the exception of the profiler showing image of a version two G15.
The software has come a long way, but it still needs to cook longer.
Some things to point out
- The two usb ports on the front are still USB 1.1 and complain if a device is sucking too much juice.
- The list of support games out of the box is still minute the G11 is still an attractive alternative because of this.
- Needs slightly more grippy feet it often slides in heated battles.
- Software still buggy, but is improving.
- Smaller in width
- Smaller, but easier to read LCD
- Cost right now it’s 99.99 though I’m sure it will reach 79.99 or lower in a matter of months.
