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Sony VGN-TXN15P/B

The featherlight Sony VGN-TXN15P/B supports broadband and lasts a long time on one battery charge. Roving professionals who need to write short notes and answer e-mail in the field might enjoy this 2.9-pound unit with a built-in DVD drive and a gorgeous little LED-backlit screen. But mainstream users will find its snail-like performance and cramped keyboard a compromise.
The VGN-TXN15P/B is impressively feature-rich for a laptop that measures 10.7 by 7.7 by 1.2 inches (width by depth by height). It includes the standard connections--such as network and modem jacks, a monitor port, two USB ports, and a PC Card slot--plus welcome extras, such as a fingerprint reader and a FireWire port. Our test unit's instant-on AV button saved time and battery life by bypassing the Windows Vista Business operating system, allowing us to view thumbnails of photos on a Memory Stick or SD Card or to play a CD or DVD. For the latter activity, however, you'll need headphones, as the stereo speakers are shrill.
Icons are tiny on the 11.1-inch WXGA screen, but text and graphics are bright and easy to read and see, thanks to an antireflective coating. A combination keystroke lowers and raises screen brightness; unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to disable the annoying high-pitched beep that sounded each time I used it.
The VGN-TXN15P/B offers excellent battery life but slow speed. Our test unit's 7800-mAh battery lasted a little over 6.5 hours on one charge in our battery performance tests. Its 1.2-GHz Core Solo U1400 processor combined with 1GB of DDR2-400 SDRAM produced a relatively low WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 32. (That score, however, matched the mark of a Fujitsu LifeBook P7230 equipped with the same processor.) The VGN-TXN15P/B seemed zippy enough to handle e-mail, word processing, and surfing the Internet, but not much more.
A couple of design problems also prevent a wholehearted recommendation. The keyboard is very small, with Chiclets-size keys that are flat and slippery. My petite hands partially covered the touchpad, repositioning the cursor repeatedly as a result. The VGN-TXN15P/B might have the world's tiniest optical drive eject button, too: It's so small, I had to use my fingernail or the end of a pencil to press it.
While you might be able to overcome these annoyances with practice, the VGN-TXN15P/B should not be your first choice if you need to do heavy-duty word processing. For anyone looking for a no-wires, all-day-battery laptop, though, the freedom this $2300 unit (as of 6/6/07) offers is attractive.Technorati Profile

MOTORAZR2

Motorola's much anticipated Motorazr2, even sleeker than it's predecessor, is set to make it's US debut. The Razr2 series sports a new level of sophistication, functions, and features packed into a sleek stainless steel frame.
The phone features a larger internal screen for full HTML Web browsing, and a 2-inch external screen with on-screen buttons that enable viewing of media, listening to music, and messaging, without having to flip the phone open. The buttons vibrate giving users touch feedback using 'haptic' key technology. According to Stu Reed, executive vice president for Motorola, "With smart features like blazing-fast 3G wireless broadband and modern style that is slimmer and stronger than the original, the Motorola Razr2 is the ultimate iconic feature phone." Additionally, the phone integrates Motorola CrystalTalk for better voice quality, a 2-megapixel camera, up to 2GB of on-board memory, real-time point-to-point video, and ultra-fast menu navigation. With built-in stereo Bluetooth, Razr2 allows users enjoy a wire-free music experience, paired with lightweight Rokr S9 Bluetooth stereo headphones.

The Razr2 series includes the Motorazr V9 (3G HSDPA), the V9m (3G EVDO CDMA), and the V8 (GSM). Razr2 will be available in the US from Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless, within a fortnight. The Sprint version will come with a price tag of $250 (Rs 10,173) along with a two-year contract, while the AT&T version will cost $300 (Rs 12,208).

FoxyTunes 2.9.6

Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

FoxyTunes is an Extension for Mozilla Firefox that supports the Mozilla Suite and Mozilla Thunderbird. It allows you to control your favorite media player without leaving the browser. The controls are positioned on the status bar or one of the toolbars, so no extra space is wasted. FoxyTunes has several nice features. You can control the playback, adjust the volume, and see what's playing. Many more features are in development, among them advanced music-related searches. Version 2.9.6 adds support for VLC Media Player as well as Signature for Thunderbird.

Basic features

* Tiny, unobtrusive and customizable

* Multiplatform - works on MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS X

* Supports more than 30 media players, will support more players in future versions

* Also supports Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Flock

* Position anywhere in the browser - on the status bar or on one of the toolbars

* Volume controls

* Seek Slider

* Configurable keyboard shortcuts

* Currently playing track information

* Customizable and collapsible

* Auto-hide

* Skinnable and localizable.

* Automatically launch your player when needed

* Pop up and hide the player window with a click

* Correctly shows track information encoded in any language, supports Unicode

* Alarm Clock and Sleep Timer

* No third-party controller applications and plugins - everything is done efficiently by the FoxyTunes extension Advanced features

* Built-in Signatunes - music signatures for email, blog and forums

* Automatically finds and displays album covers

* Music Web searches - lyrics, images, info, video and much more

* FoxyTunes Mini desktop widget with its own tabbed mini browser

* Shows recently played song history

* Stream podcasts directly from the Web to your media player

* Subscribe to podcasts (only with supporting players)

* Stream media files (mp3's, m3u's etc.) directly from the Web to your media player .

* Optional extra - TwittyTunes - post your currently playing songs to Twitter with a click .

If you love music but hate jumping from Firefox to music player and back whenever you want to adjust your tunes, FoxyTunes is the plug-in for you. FoxyTunes gives you control of your favorite music player from within Firefox, so there's no more switching windows to skip that Barry Manilow ditty you forgot to delete. The interface is easy to use and is highly customizable. When opened, it shows a navigation array with buttons for Play, Pause, Mute, Next Track, Last Track, Volume, and the useful Show Player, which unhides your music player. There's also a Hide Player button, as well as a music Search tool, keyboard shortcuts, skins, and a mini player that places the app controls on your desktop. Supported players include iTunes, Winamp, RealPlayer, XMPlay and Last.fm, as well as nearly two dozen others and a "custom player" option. The lyric and album art searches have been expanded with FoxyTunes' new music portal, which provides feeds from Google, YouTube, Amazon.com, Last.fm, Wikipedia, and several online radio stations to make music discovery easier. FoxyTunes' strengths are in the depth of available features plus the level of customization. Weaknesses? Only that you'll wish all Firefox add-ons were this good.

Lenovo Thinkpad

The Lenovo ThinkPad T60 series is the first ThinkPad to be released with the new Intel Core Duo processor. The ThinkPad T-series can be thought of as the flagship of the ThinkPad brand, it's squarely targeted towards business users and professionals. Durability, security, usability and performance are all important characteristics of the ThinkPad T-series. The T60 carries on these traditions with a jump in performance from the most recent T43 and some changes to configuration options available and the port and keyboard layout

An important thing to note regarding the ThinkPad T60 is the fact it comes in two flavors: a 14" screen variety and 15" screen variety. The 14" type offers lighter weight and longer battery life at the expense of a smaller screen. The 15" type T60 offers higher end performance configurations and also the option of a FlexView screen, but at the cost of a higher weight and less power life per battery cell. Under review here is a high end configuration of the T60 15" variety. Following are the specs.

Specs of the ThinkPad T60 Being Reviewed:
Model #: 2623-D3U
Processor: Intel T2500 2.0GHz Core Duo
Motherboard Chipset: Intel Calistoga i945GM/PM
Hard Drive: 100GB 5400RPM SATA (Hitachi Travelstar HTS541010G9SA00)
Memory/RAM: 1GB (1,024MB) (configurable up to 4GB)
Screen: 15.0" 1400 x 1050 SXGA+ (LG Philips LP150E05 - A2)
Graphics: ATI X1400 128MB
Optical Drive: Multi-Burner DVD recordable
Battery: 9-cell (extended life, protrudes from back of notebook)
Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11 a/b/g), Bluetooth 2.0, InfraRed
User Input: Touchpad, Pointing Stick, UltraNav buttons, Fingerpring Scanner
Warranty: 3-years parts and labor, 1-year battery
Dimensions: 14.1" screen config: 12.2" x 10.0" x 1.0-1.2" (width x depth x thickness)15" screen config: 13" x 10.6" x 1.2-1.4" (width x depth x thickness)
Weight: 6.4lbs (14" T60 is about 5.2 lbs with a 6-cell battery and optical drive)
Ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports
dock/port replicator
Display-out
AC adapter port
RJ-11 (Modem)
RJ-45 (Ethernet LAN)
Audio line out for headphone/speakers
Microphone
Slots: 1 Type II PC card slot
1 ExpressCard 54 slot
Buttons: Power on/off
Volume up/down/mute (3 buttons)
Wireless on/off
ThinkVantage shortcut button (shortcut to system support, security and diagnostics suite)
Battery lock and release
Price: $2,799 (as of 2/13/2006 at Lenovo.com)