Measuring 4 by 2 inches, and just over a half inch thick, the Blue Earth is one of the smaller touchscreen phones available. The 3-inch touchscreen takes up most of the face. Below the screen are three keys: a green confirm button, a red power/cancel button, and a royal-blue home button that matches the hue of the rest of the device. A quad-band phone, the Blue Earth uses the EDGE/GPRS network but does not support U.S. 3G networks. It weighs 4 ounces and unobtrusively fits in a pocket.

The touchscreen is nice and responsive. When touched, the Blue Earth vibrates, but it also emits a corresponding beep. As annoying as the noise could be, it creates a kind of certainty for the user; pressing a number prompts one type of beep, starting a program produces another, and so on.

The real selling point here, of course, is the environment-oriented design. The phone is made from post-consumer materials, more specifically recycled water bottles. The box is also made of recyclable materials. Finally, on the back of the phone is a solar panel that will slowly charge the battery.

Even Earth-sensitive techies will be surprised at the lack of support inside the box, however. The Blue Earth comes with no instructions and no mini-USB connector. A wall plug and headphones are included, but learning how to use the smartphone requires a trip online. The package offers nothing to highlight the Blue Earth Web page for further information, and the site doesn′t provide a downloadable manual. We′re hoping that Samsung will correct this shortcoming in the very near future.

The main Blue Earth screen, divided into three areas, uses Samsung′s TouchWiz widget user interface (as seen on the Impression, the Omnia, and other Samsung phones). With TouchWiz, you slide a widget to a particular area, and, within that spot, you can have the program running. Along the bottom are keypad, phone book, and menu icons. Tap a little tab in the bottom-left corner, and a thin column shows all of your multimedia information and programs. Filled with time-zone indicators, social networking services, and other items, the program list is overwhelming and terribly crowded–especially on such a small screen.

Music on the Blue Earth is below average, for a few reasons. The music player supports all major formats, such as AAC, MP3, and WMA; but, as mentioned earlier, Samsung doesn′t include a mini-USB cord for you to transfer your own tunes. If you want to play music immediately, you′ll need to use the built-in FM player or get songs from the proprietary service. The player itself is basic and easy to use, though the sound is heavy on the treble and rather tinny.

The most impressive Blue Earth multimedia functions are the Web browsing, the video playback, and the camera/camcorder. Surfing the Web is butter smooth, even on more complex sites, and the Blue Earth′s accelerometer makes reading horizontally or vertically easy. YouTube and other video sites load up quickly, and look and sound great. I also liked the videos and pictures captured with the 3.2-megapixel camera. In camera mode, the lens area is surrounded with self-explanatory icons to help you improve the shot. The camcorder records at 15 frames per second and, surprisingly, replays at a higher sound quality than the music player.

In light of the impressive online setup, it is unfortunate that the Samsung Blue Earth doesn′t support a full virtual QWERTY keyboard–even in horizontal mode. Instead, users must perform classic cell phone tapping, with “abc” on key 2 and so forth. With a 3-inch touch display, it seems so unnecessary.

Call quality and reception, on the other hand, are great. My only criticism is that voices tended to sound high-pitched–again, that′s mostly an issue with Blue Earth′s treble-heavy sound system. Expect to turn conversation volume down, lower than normal.

The Samsung Blue Earth proves that a solid, ecofriendly touchscreen phone can work. Ironically, the problems with the phone, such as the limited music player, the lack of support, and the puzzling on-screen keyboard, have nothing to do with being green.

This monitor hosts a multitude of ports on the rear, including HDMI, DVI, VGA, and audio-in, plus an S/PDIF jack. All are clearly labeled and easy to access, so plugging in cables is a breeze. The VH236H comes with a built-in speaker, which is adequate for basic office tasks but not for music or movies. Another noticeable shortcoming is the absence of any USB ports.

Five buttons on the front of the monitor manage the on-screen display, which is fairly easy to navigate. The OSD includes an array of brightness modes, such as scenery, standard, theater, and night view. A separate brightness control enables you to make more-minute adjustments. The display tilts but cannot swivel.

The VH236H has a 1920-by-1080-pixel native 1080p high-definition resolution; and its admirable performance in our motion tests suits it for movies and other forms of entertainment. Its $239 price tag makes it an even more appealing option in the current new monitor marketplace.

The display′s glossy coating creates an annoying reflection of yourself whenever a scene goes dark, and it makes the darker contrasts of a movie or game less rich than you would otherwise see. You also lose detail in darker scenes, as the screen itself has a kind of gray quality to it if you′re setting up the system in a room with average lighting. The AE2010′s saturation is good, but not great–scenes are colorful enough to appear fine; however, competing all-in-one systems offer more vibrant looks. The AE2010′s built-in speakers are a bit worse than those found on your average laptop–not exactly a strong point when you′re looking to bust out the movies and the popcorn.

But at least the display is touch-enabled, albeit single-touch. A number of recent budget all-in-one PCs have nixed the touchscreen, and we miss it given Windows 7′s touch-control features. MSI′s own touch software isn′t all that great: The Webcam effects, note-taking applications, and a children′s picture-matching game are, frankly, not the best demonstration of how useful touch control can be.

The AE2010′s WorldBench 6 score of 60 is practically the same as the 59 returned by the $600 HP Pavilion MS214. The cheaper HP has a smaller 18.5-inch screen that also lacks touch input. If you′re on a budget, but want an all-in-one with flat-out speed, consider spending a little extra on the $900 Acer Aspire Z5610 (a 23-inch multitouch) or the $944 Dell Studio One 19 (a 19-inch multi-touch). They scored 101 and 93 in WorldBench 6, respectively.

As with most all-in-one PCs, the AE2010 comes ill-equipped for modern gaming. Its ATI Radeon 3200 graphics delivers a lackluster 13.6 frames per second on a stripped-down version of our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark (1024-by-768 resolution, high quality).

The AE2010 packs 320GB of storage. That′s pretty much the new standard at this price level, but it′s worth mentioning that the $550 Lenovo C300 all-in-one offers twice as much (one of that model′s few redeeming features). Like the Lenovo, the AE2010 uses a 32-bit operating system (Windows 7 Home Premium, in this case) that can′t fully use all 4GB of installed memory. Crazy, right?

At least networking connectivity is top-notch: the AE2010 has both 802.11n Wi-Fi and gigabit networking. You′ll be hitting the fastest connection speeds possible whether you prefer a wired or wireless setup at home.

Alongside the six USB ports and the multiformat card reader on the system′s front and rear is one extra connection: an eSATA port. It′s an odd, yet enjoyable inclusion–I would have expected to see some kind of new display connector instead of eSATA. The generic keyboard and mouse bundled with this all-in-one are both corded, so expect to lose two of these USB ports just to be able to work with your machine–unless, that is, you feel like pounding the screen with your finger a lot. As the system contains no help in the manual for upgrading, you′re on your own should you wish to attempt any kind of operation on the insides.

MSI′s Wind Top AE2010 does a great job of filling the gap between budget all-in-one systems and flashier big-screen all-in-one PCs (over 20 inches) that we′ve tested. Minus the slightly questionable picture quality, it′s hard to find many faults with the AE2010 that wouldn′t exist on any comparable all-in-one desktop. That′s just the nature of the game for inexpensive AIOs, and the AE2010 is one of the better examples that doesn′t trade away too much for what it delivers.

–David Murphy

If you are an individual looking to but that special power cord and are not able to locate the same on ebay or other shopping websites, try Americord.com. Americord is a specialist producer of computer power cords, heavy-duty power cords, extension cords, electronic power adapters, and portable lighting.

If you are a supplier, manufacturer or an OEM firm there is lot for you to choose and do bulk orders. The website caters to everyone who is in need of computer or general use cables, wires etc. This UL/CSA approved company accepts custom orders as well, if the components you are looking for is not listed, they can manufacture required components within 3-5 working days.

The americord.com website has online web store for you to purchase or orders items through internet. They always are running lot of discounted and clearance sale, where you can get lot of items in discounted cheap prices.

Apart from doing mass production for regularly used computer cords and power cables, Americord also features the capability for special orders. At their manufacturing plant, they can create new moulds and dies to make the perfect size, fit, and specifications for anything you need.

Americord is the right place to order special cables for your requirement. You can buy the products online. They also accept order though phone between Monday to Friday during business hours. All the stock items are shipped within 24 hours, the communication that includes order and shipping details from their support department is reliable.

Technorati: computer cables • power cables • power cords

Looking at the two applications the same old question arises “The chicken or the egg? ” There is so much similarity in both these applications that the lost partition search mode takes exactly the same time in both the applications. The user interface of both the applications seems to be from a common UI factory.

[More:]

So I felt, it would be better if I proceeded ahead and review Active @ Undelete only. I could remember Active that is Lsoft technologies a.k.a. NTFS.com should be treated as a father of both the applications.

Interface: To me it is the best interface amongst all data recovery applications. However, Arax’s inheritance is more confusing for the first time users. The physical and logical drives are presented with no technical fuss unlike R-tt’s R-Studio. This enables easy recovery either on a physical disk or a logical drive. There are several benefits to it for example when we select a physical drive it is quite clear that there could be these data loss scenarios:

• Lost partition search
• Repartitioned drives, suppose we had two partitions and we created new three partitions and we are trying to locate the older two partitions
• I also would like to create complete image of a hard drive

When we select a logical drive, it is these cases which we are referring to:

• Deleted files recovery
• Formatted drive recovery
• Re-Formatted drive recovery i.e. supposing we had a partition formatted as NTFS and we reformatted the drive as FAT
• Creation of image of a logical drive as well

Cloning of a physical drive or a logical drive is also possible from one drive to another instead of creating an image file of a disk or partition. However, this option was missing from this application.

Part 2 Continued…

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In key detection tests, Kaspersky′s suite picked out 95.6 percent of the samples in AV-Test.org′s zoo of 654,914 pieces of malware. While that wasn′t a terrible showing, most other suites we tested did better, with the top tier reaching around 99 percent. Kaspersky′s performance made it sixth in this crucial category.

The suite did somewhat better in tests that measure how well security apps identify new malware. Kaspersky pulled in at fourth place, both in heuristic tests that used two-week-old signature files (with a 52 percent success rate), and in a test of the ability to warn about some aspect of a malware infection based solely on its behavior (60 percent). (Among the nine tested suites, the top scores for heuristic tests came in at 55.3 percent, while the best behavioral result was 80 percent.)

Kaspersky says it rewrote its core antivirus engine this year to produce a boost in scan speed, but both the Avira security suite and the Panda security suite beat it in on-access scan speed tests, which determine how quickly a suite can scan a file when your PC opens or accesses it. Only the Symantec Norton package topped Kaspersky for on-demand scans, which you kick off manually or set as a scheduled task.

This Russian-made suite proved better at adware blocking than it did at blocking more harmful malicious software, and its 98.1 percent detection rate earned it a third-place rank in the adware-detection category. But to realize that kind of performance, you may have to dig into the program and change some settings.

During our tests using default settings, Kaspersky was the only suite of the group that didn′t block or warn us when we attempted to download a screen saver from Zango that contains well-known adware most people wouldn′t want on their PCs. After asking Kaspersky, we discovered that to block it we would have had to enable checking for â€Ë� “other′ adware, which isn′t on by default. But it should be.

Other aspects of the suite could use a tweak, as well. When you enable parental controls, it sets every Windows user account–including yours–to use the â€Ë� “child′ filter by default. And figuring out how to change that isn′t intuitive by any means.

Also unintuitive is the Security Analyzer. For example, under the â€Ë� “Strongly recommended actions′ heading, it displayed â€Ë� “Autorun from hard drives is allowed.′ No other information described what that meant, or what changing the setting might do to your PC.

We give Kaspersky credit for attempting to use information from Secunia, a partner security company, to identify unsafe system settings, as well as software and operating system patches whose absence can create major security holes. After all, one of the best ways to keep your PC safe is to close holes and never allow malware to access your machine in the first place. But the Analyzer will leave you scratching your head with its system recommendations.

You′ll also feel less than informed when you encounter program options such as â€Ë� “limit fragment buffering time′, with a help description of â€Ë� “used to impose a restriction on the web object caching time′. Sure, most people wouldn′t bother digging in to find such an option, let alone consider changing it–but if you do, good luck.

Kaspersky′s suite includes an antispam feature that integrates with e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, and The Bat. But it doesn′t have any options for backups.

Despite an attractive program interface, in the end Kaspersky′s package comes across as somewhat unfinished: It needs better default settings and much better descriptions and help, and it could also use improved malware detection. Factor in the steep price, and Kaspersky′s suite has little left that distinguishes it from competitors.

The 1230c′s speed is nothing special, but at least Dell is up front about it. The 1230c′s plain-text printing speed of 16.9 pages per minute (ppm) essentially matches what Dell claims it can do (17 ppm). The 1230c′s top graphics speed of 2.4 ppm comes closer than most to the vendor′s claim (in this case, 4 ppm).

If the speed is reliable, the print quality is not. Any laser can print crisp text, as the 1230c does. But a color laser should be able to print graphics and maybe a photo. In the 1230c′s case, even simple images like a pie chart showed distracting background patterns (called moiré). Anything more complex, like a photo, suffered even more, looking grainy and sometimes mottled.

The 1230c′s design has its own problems. The control panel is inscrutable. A cluster of LEDs are labeled with icons whose meaning is not obvious. The LEDs light or flash in combinations understandable only through the documentation–which is unclear: For instance, two adjacent LEDs are both called the Status LED. If you figure out which one really is which, you still have to determine whether it′s blinking slowly or quickly (each means something different). If other LEDs join in, it gets more complicated. The primary function of the printer′s single button is to stop or cancel, but sometimes it also functions as “continue” or “go.” Its icon label (a triangle within a circle) will not clarify matters. The printer′s input tray takes all media types (such as 150 sheets of plain paper), but it gets flimsier (and sticks out the front more) as you extend it to accommodate, say, legal-size media.

The panel looming above the 100-sheet top output tray also is unusual. It actually opens up the paper path in case of a jam. Dell says space constraints prevented this piece from fitting within the printer′s shell, so it was designed more like a shelf, with a shiny, textured surface to ward off scratches if you put something on it. While thoughtful, I′m not sure it′s a good idea to encourage users to stack things on top of their printer.

The 1230c′s final and worst extreme is its toner pricing. The machine ships with starter-size supplies: a 1000-page black (K) cartridge, and 700-page cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y) cartridges. Replacements are expensive: A 1500-page black cartridge costs $55 or about 4 cents per page, while each 1000-page color cartridge costs $50 (5 cents per page). A page with all four colors would cost 19 cents.

Dell′s 1230c puts a color laser within reach of most budgets. But for the same amount of money, you could buy an awfully nice inkjet printer that would probably please you more (and be no more expensive to supply).

–Melissa Riofrio

The head-turning Xperia X1 is well-built and sleek. A brilliant 3-inch VGA touchscreen display takes up the majority of the handset′s face; six keys (two soft keys, Talk, End, Panels, OK) and an optical mouse lie below it. I didn′t like these buttons, though: They′re flat and a bit small, and not very clicky. Additionally, the small touch pad that you use as a mouse (Sony Ericsson calls this an “optical mouse”) is tiny, making it difficult to use. I can′t imagine someone with larger fingers using these controls very easily; my fingers are fairly small and I still had trouble.

The X1 has a reasonably slim profile for a handset with a slide-out keyboard. Measuring 4.4 by 2.1 by 0.7 inches, the X1 is about the same size as the T-Mobile Android-based G1. The X1 weighs 5.6 ounces, the same weight as the G1, but is about an ounce heavier than the iPhone.

The full QWERTY keyboard feels sturdy (some slide-out keyboards can feel flimsy, like they are about to detach at any second) and slides out easily. The keyboard is spacious, with large keys, though a little too flat for my liking. The X1 is ergonomically designed with a slight curve, making it comfortable to hold in your hand for long periods of time.

Call quality was consistently good over AT&T′s 3G network. I experienced no dropped calls and heard a faint hiss on only a few calls. Parties on the other end were very pleased with the call quality, reporting clear sound and little to no background noise.

Sony Ericsson states that the X1 has a talk time battery life of six hours, which is slightly better than the iPhone 3G. We′ll update this review with a final rating once the PC World Test Center completes its battery life tests. The X1′s Windows Mobile 6.1 overlay allows a wide range of customization options. You can choose from nine different “panels,” which are meant to represent the different facets of your life. You can use any of them as your Today screen, depending on what you prefer that day. The handset comes with seven preloaded panels: Microsoft Today, Sony Ericsson (two versions), Google, 3D Fish, Xperia Radio and Media Xperience.

My favorite panel is the 3D Fish, which looks a lot like the iPhone Koi Pond app. The panel shows you the date and time, while three or four fish swim around it. The fish represent some kind of notification, depending on their color. You can download more panel themes from the Sony Ericsson Web site for free, though the options are a bit limited. The only one I saw worth downloading was the Facebook panel, which would allow you quick access to your profile and your friends.

The biggest issue I had with the X1′s interface was its sluggishness — a common problem with Windows Mobile devices (although this was an improvement over vanilla Windows Mobile). Moving among panels could be slow and sometimes the touchscreen wasn′t as responsive as it should be. At times, it took multiple taps to get an application to open. The phone never froze up or crashed in my hands-on tests, however.

In my experience, many manufacturers that try to pack business and entertainment functions into one device often skimp in certain areas. The X1, however, is brimming with features. The X1 comes with the Microsoft Mobile Office Suite and support for Microsoft′s Direct Push Technology for real-time message delivery and synchronization with your Outlook calendar via the Exchange Server. It also supports POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts; and it comes with a PDF reader, a notepad, and a task list.

The X1 also bundles Internet Explorer and Opera Mobile. You can access Google features such as search, Gmail, and Google Maps easily through the Google panel. I browsed the Web over AT&T′s 3G network and via the integrated Wi-Fi and was pleased with the X1′s speed over both connections. I′m not a big fan of Opera Mobile, but I found surfing the Web easy enough.

The X1′s multimedia player impressed me. The touch-friendly player has a similar interface to the PlayStation and the PSP. The player is fairly basic, but has a playlist function and supports album art. I was disappointed that there was no equalizer, however. The media player supports MP3, MP4, AAC(+), WMA, WMV, MIDI, MPEG-4, WMV and many other video and music formats. It also has podcast support, an FM radio, a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack (which many handsets, like the G1, lack), and a streaming media player.

The 3.2-megapixel camera has a few advanced features such as auto focus, 3x digital zoom, three quality settings and five picture sizes. Image quality was good, with fairly accurate colors and clear details. But on a handset this expensive, I expected better specs and features, like Nokia′s 5-megapixel N97 (similarly priced, and sold unlocked, too).

The Xperia X1 is a solid, feature-packed handset, but unfortunately, it is not worth its $800 (unlocked) price tag. It doesn′t have the beefy multimedia specs to compete with other smart phones on the market with subsidized prices. If an X2 is in the works, I hope Sony Ericsson will find a carrier to offer it at a more reasonable price. In the meantime, consumers looking for an affordable touch screen Windows Mobile phone should consider the Samsung Omnia from Verizon, ranked third on PC World′s Top 10 Cell Phones.

The TL34HD′s 3-inch touchscreen makes the camera a cinch to operate, and the icons that border the screen give an instant view of all your settings. Tapping each icon with your finger pops up a menu of alternatives. If you can′t remember what each icon means, holding your finger on it for a moment brings up a written description.

The screen itself is a beauty, too. Though 230,000-pixel displays are now common on digital cameras, the TL34HD ups the ante with a beautiful 460,000-pixel LCD. It renders images sharply, offers plenty of contrast in bright light, and lends a sophisticated look to the icons, text, and user-interface animations. The camera has just a few physical buttons–power, shutter release, zoom control, menu, and playback–plus a mode-selector dial.

While the touchscreen is a major draw, the TL34HD doesn′t skimp on photographic features, either. The 3.6X-optical-zoom lens has a 28mm wide angle that works perfectly for expansive landscape shots, and the camera′s optical stabilization reduces the effects of shaky hands. Automatic face detection sets the focus and optimizes the exposure for portraits, and the additional smile and blink modes delay the shutter until your subjects look their best.

The single manual mode is a bit limited, but it′s nice to have: You can set the exposure time, and you have a choice of two aperture settings at each zoom level. The TL34HD′s built-in flash pops up from the top of the camera, giving it a little extra distance from the lens and reducing the chance of red-eye in your portraits. Should you catch the dreaded red-eye anyway, the camera′s automatic red-eye removal function works well, too.

I took the camera to the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to put it through its paces. For most shots, the camera performed with no discernable shutter lag. Sometimes, however, I saw ′capturing′ and ′processing′ messages on the screen for tough low-light and macro shots of small plants and animals, so in such cases the shot-to-shot times could suffer. I loved the ability to touch the screen to select the focus point, but my experiments with the manual mode often led me to set the depth of field too narrow. Fortunately, the high-resolution screen made zooming into the image and spotting my mistakes easy.

In my hands-on, informal tests, photos looked sharp with accurate colors. The densely packed sensor produced some noise in my low-light shots, but it has enough resolution that you′re less likely to blow your photos up so much that you′ll notice.

The camera scored well across the board in the more-formal PC World Test Center jury evaluations. It earned especially high marks for its low levels of distortion, which indicates a good match between the optics and the resolution of the sensor. On the other hand, it performed poorly in our battery tests, requiring a recharge of its lithium ion cell on average after just 195 shots–well short of the counts of 400-plus shots per charge that we′ve seen from many other point-and-shoots.

The camera′s 14.7-megapixel resolution may seem like overkill, but if you′re starting to use the HDTV in your living room for more than just watching TV, it could make sense. In addition to offering plenty of resolution for editing, cropped shots, and big prints, the 10-megapixel widescreen mode captures images that fit an HDTV just right.

If you don′t have an SD Card media slot on your TV, Samsung′s optional docking cradle may appeal to you, despite its $70 price tag. It comes with a tiny remote control (recent Samsung HDTV remotes also operate the docking cradle) for browsing your images, setting up slide shows, and watching videos directly from the camera. The cradle also charges the battery, and the dock′s included HDMI cable means you′ll get a top-quality connection. The TL34HD captures 720p video at up to 30 frames per second, which is plenty for most home movies. Unfortunately, automatic face detection isn′t an option during video capture.

The Samsung TL34HD has a sturdy metal body that comes in your choice of all-black, silver and black, or an eye-catching silver and red. The touchscreen controls make it a good choice for anyone who wants to adjust quickly for each shot. It′s also a good complement to your HDTV if you elect to fork over the $70 for the docking cradle.

Not surprisingly, the $149 (as of 3/3/09) Photosmart D7560 excelled at printing color output on HP-brand photo paper, showing natural, though slightly yellow, images. On plain paper, the same photos and graphics exhibited some graininess and dark colors, but text samples looked nicely black and uncommonly crisp. Print speeds were average or better for all but one test.

The Photosmart D7560 is packed with features and easy to use. We particularly liked the 3.5-inch, tiltable, color touchscreen LCD. Menus and instructions display on screen in easily readable text and vibrant colors. The three main, self-explanatory control buttons (Home, Print Photos, and Cancel) are arranged horizontally below the touchscreen.

The media slots accept Memory Stick, SD Card, XD Picture Card, and CompactFlash; the unit supports PictBridge, too. The main paper tray holds up to 125 pages of letter-size sheets; a piggybacked photo-paper tray takes up to 20 sheets of up to 5-by-7-inch photo paper. The most notable feature is the CD/DVD labeler for printing on specially coated media. The disc caddy stores discreetly under the printer, for use with the special input tray nestled inside the printer′s open front bay. You press a labeled lever to lower the tray; a menu pops up on both the LCD and your PC to guide you through the process. One high-end feature the D7560 lacks is networking–it has neither ethernet nor Wi-Fi.

The Photosmart D7560′s ink costs (at the time of this review) are mostly good. It ships with standard-size supplies: a 250-page black cartridge, plus four colors– cyan, magenta, yellow, and a special photo black for greater image depth–with yields of 130 to 170 pages. Same-size replacements cost $12 for black (a respectable 4.7 cents per page) and $10 each for the others, resulting in a rather steep 22.4 cents total for a four-color page (excluding photo black). As for high-yield cartridges, the prices drop to 4.4 cents per page for a $35, 800-page black cartridge and 11.6 cents total for a four-color page (each color costs $17 and lasts 750 pages). In short, buying high-yield cartridges will cut the price of color prints in half.

The HP Photosmart D7560 won us over with its feature-packed design and strikingly good print quality. If you don′t need to print on CDs or DVDs, check out its lower-priced, higher-ranked cousin, the HP Photosmart D5460.