Large brands have taken to Facebook like a fish to water, but
small-to-medium size B2B and B2C companies have a tougher row to hoe.
While multi-nationals like Coca-cola or Apple can attract millions of
followers overnight with give-aways, discounts and promotional
campaigns, smaller firms feel like the proverbial tree falling in the
forest.
Google’s fall harvest of new products includes some new Chromebooks, including an adorable and pugnacious little whippersnapper in the HP Chromebook 11. With its smooth, unmarked white plastic lid, you could mistake it for the white polycarbonate MacBook’s younger brother – but HP’s cute little Chrome OS notebook doesn’t quite fill those mighty big boots.
The HP Chromebook 11 shares similar design roots with the Chromebook Pixel, which is a good thing. That means it’s spare, with an outside case that opts for minimalism, showing only the now-signature Chromebook thin band of light, which uses Google’s trademark color palette. One of those colors is also used to accent the device, with a border around the keyboard and four rubber pads on the underside of the machine used for grip.
Of course, unlike the Pixel, the case is plastic, and it feels cheaper accordingly. I also noticed some give in the bottom panel, and the glossy white surface picks up fingerprints like crazy. But the rounded edges, slim, low-profile design and absurdly low weight (just over 2 lbs) combine to make the HP Chromebook 11 a pretty impressively designed machine for $279. Besides the Pixel, this is definitely the most attractive and ergonomically appealing Chromebook.
While on the surface, the Chromebook 11 is great, inside, it’s basically packing the guts of a mid-tier smartphone. And it shows. The Chromebook 11 is snappy to start up, wake from sleep and resume thanks to its flash memory, but it’s sluggish with image-heavy websites, with a fair amount of load/scroll lag, and it plays back 1080p streaming videos decently, but not with the polish you’re used to from even top-tier smartphones.
Of course, the ARM processor means that it can get around 5 or so hours of battery life on a full charge, despite its lightness/small size. And it also means it can charge via microUSB, which is pretty cool since if you’re an Android phone user you can just carry one charger around. But the five hours of battery life is actually just okay when you consider that the new Acer C720 is rated at 8.5 hours of use, and even the notoriously piggish Chromebook Pixel gets about the same.
Overall, the Chromebook 11 is a myriad of compromises: its behind-the-keyboard speakers are pretty decent, and save space in the chassis, but also sound weird when you’re doing something like typing while listening to music, since your hands are constantly blocking different parts of the speaker. And while the streamlined case with its four ports (microUSB, 2x USB 2.0 and one headphone jack) adds to its minimalist design appeal, you find yourself wishing there was at least an SD card slot thrown into the mix. Likewise, the low-quality front-facing webcam is nice-to-have, but it feels like you’ve hopped in a time machine to when USB cameras were just invented.
That 11.6-inch display, while loads better than the one on, say the Samsung Chromebook (overall construction is better, too), it’s still probably not as high-res in the one you’re currently carrying in your pocket. It does have good color rendering and good viewing angles, however, which again is impressive at this price point.
The aspect ratio makes this a great notebook for watching movies, and it’s the best I’ve seen so far on a computer this cheap, Chromebook or otherwise. If the screen’s a priority, you can’t go wrong with the HP.
The Chromebook 11 is supposed to get around five hours of battery life, and with conservative but acceptable normal use, I found that to be the case. It’s not terrible, but it is disappointing, because with a longer-lived power source, the Chromebook 11 would make a very excellent back-up machine for professionals who need to make sure they’re constantly connected, with a full desktop browser.
At $279, it’s hard to fault the HP Chromebook 11 too much for what it manages to deliver, but with Google really stepping up its low-cost Chromebook lineup, just being a good-enough machine at that price isn’t going to cut it for much longer. That said, if you’re looking for a second device that essentially replicates what a docked smartphone could offer, but with a little more flexibility with web apps thanks to Chrome OS, this is a great throw-in-the-bag-and-forget-it option thanks to its size, weight and remarkable screen.
Halloween costumes for babies are their first initiation into the one
holiday of the year that requires them to be someone else. Yes, even though
your baby don’t even ‘what’ they are, let alone ‘who’ they are, this
doesn’t stop parents from wanting to confuse them even more, by dressing them up in a
clever disguise.
Nintendo has a rhythm that’s predictable when it comes to product releases: Create a new console, then create different iterations of those consoles with upgrades aimed at expanding market share in clever ways. The new Nintendo 2DS is no exception to that rule, but it is remarkable in that it’s a bit of a backtrack for the company, which takes the marquee feature out of its 3DS generation of portable gaming devices. It may be a backtrack on the surface, but the 2DS is an admirable step forward for Nintendo underneath it all.
Nintendo’s design for the 2DS at first appears somewhat lazy and strange. They’ve taken the trademark two screens of the traditional clamshell DS and 3DS hardware and simply stacked them one on top of the other vertically on a single plane. It’s like a 3DS without a hinge in the middle, and without seeing or touching the thing, I was expecting something unwieldy and awkward.
What I actually found was that the Nintendo 2DS is cleverly designed, and fits nicely in the hands. It’s highly plastic design doesn’t feel necessarily all that refined, and my 3DS XL definitely comes off as a more “premium” device, but the 2DS feels durable and well-built. It feels, in fact, like the kind of gadget you can probably spill some Kraft Dinner on without much adverse effect, which I suspect is exactly the point.
The hand positioning in terms of the controls fit my grip perfectly, but your mileage may vary. And it’s not all roses: the lack of a Wi-Fi physical toggle seems somewhat arbitrary given the rather thick bezel on the side of the device. But the sleep switch ensures you wont’ burn through battery too quickly in the absence of a clamshell sleep trigger, and the light/durable feeling of the overall package makes it seem like an ideal choice for rugrats who might not be completely neat, or for travellers who just want something they can throw in the duffel on the way out the door.
The 2DS performs like its more expensive predecessor, in most respects except for the absence of a 3D display. That’s where the perceived backslide comes into play; Nintendo made much of the 3DS’ ability to provide glasses-free 3D visuals when it launched. Taking it out of the picture with the 2DS seems a pretty clear admission that the feature was little more than a gimmick.
Regardless of what you think of Nintendo’s 3D efforts, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find an instance where you truly miss that feature on the 2DS. I have yet to wish it was there, and that’s the really impressive part about this hardware – Nintendo has been humble enough to scrap their marquee 3D for users who don’t need it, and offer up a significant dollar savings in exchange. It’s not the type of reverse-course move you’ll often see from big companies mid product cycle.
The only other aspect of the 2DS’ performance that differs from Nintendo’s other handhelds is in terms of battery life. The 2DS is rated at 3.5 to 5.5 hours of play time on 3DS titles, or 5 to 9 hours for DS games. That’s just slightly better than the 3DS, and just slightly worse than the 3DS XL. In a world where people are used to 8 to 10 hours of play time on iOS and Android tablets, those figures aren’t great, but in practice, and given the three days of standby energy time, it actually doesn’t feel inadequate.
The 2DS doesn’t have 3D, as mentioned above, but its displays are worth drawing attention to if only to note that they’re the same as the ones in the 3DS in all other respects. The lack of 3D will be a feature to some, as it does seem to minimize somewhat any annoying visual artifacts left by the physical changes needed to make 3D possible on a display without glasses. And so long as your eyesight is good, the 2DS has better pixel density and therefore sharper resolution than the big-screened 3DS XL.
Does that mean they 2DS screens are great? No, and the low resolution relative to today’s modern smartphones and tablets is really beginning to show. Plus, that bottom touchscreen is still resistive, which means that even though it’s tempting to want to tap buttons with your fingers, especially in settings menus, you’ll still need to break out that stylus to get good, consistent results in terms of registering taps.
The 2DS plays all the games I want it to play, costs a decent amount less than a 3DS, does away with needless 3D, and despite weighing slightly more, actually feels like a more durable travel companion (fewer moving parts definitely helps with that). It’d be nice if they’d left out the 3D cameras on the back and included a hardware Wi-Fi toggle, but that’s splitting hairs – the 2DS is, ultimately, a clever re-imagining of Nintendo’s current generation mobile hardware that should convince casual fans and fence-sitters it’s finally time to take the plunge.
Nintendo unveiled its Nintendo 2DS in late August as a version of its popular 3DS video game handheld that would be targeted towards “very young kids.” When Nintendo originally made their announcement, many gamers didn’t believe it to be an actual product, but seeing how we were able to get our hands on the Nintendo 2DS this weekend at the New York Comic Con, we can tell you that indeed is a product and it’s not as bad as you think it is.
One of the biggest differences of the Nintendo 2DS when compared with the Nintendo 3DS is the fact the 2DS doesn’t have a hinge, making it easier for you to toss into your backpack or for your little ones to throw around the room. The frame of the NIntendo 2DS isn’t any more durable than the 3DS, but going with a hingeless design makes it slightly more durable for the fact the hinge is the part of the 3DS most people broke during heavy use. (more…)
Hands-on: Nintendo 2DS Review original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Capitalizing on their success with the 840 series, Samsung released their new SSD TLC based drives named EVO. With this new line, Samsung broadens their offer with five drives ranging from 120GB up to 1TB.
The first generation of Samsung TLC SSD stacked up with MLC drives on the read I/O but lagged behind in term of writes I/O. Looking at the data-sheets from Samsung for the 840 EVO, it appeared that Samsung has closed the gap between MLC and TLC. It shows that performance is not solely based on NAND architecture but other components are almost equally important. Let’s check the specifications then I will dive into the review with the Amazon “SSD best seller”, the EVO 250GB and the EVO 750GB. (more…)
Samsung SSD EVO 250GB And 750GB Review original content from Ubergizmo. 
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In an age of enormous sound and unprecedented connectivity, leave it to a small mono speaker to be a low-cost leader in audio gear.
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It was once said that history is written by the victors, but that changed when something called the internet came along and put endless information at everyone’s fingertips, letting each of us come to our own conclusions. And this idea of uncensored, unfettered access to information was taken to its most extreme with Julian Assange’s website WikiLeaks; a place where secrets didn’t exist.
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When Amazon first trotted out the Kindle Paperwhite, it was the first two-tone ereader in a long time (possibly ever) to have wow factor. And that front-lit screen turned out to be just as beautiful as promised
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
