Laptops To Gift This Christmas

Asus VX1 Lamborghini We saved the best for last. Asus is now offering its exclusive Lamborghini laptops in India. For those who just got confused as to what does a car-maker have to do with a laptop, here is the deal. Asus has tied up with Lamborghini in a co-branding exercise for a range of laptops that have incredible performance, unmatched looks and are priced out of this world. The VX1 is a perfect ambassador to the Lamborghini name (Its body looks like the grill of a Gallardo!) with its fast Core2duo T7400 dual-core processor (2.166 GHz) and 2GB of RAM. Storage is taken care of by a 5400 RPM 160 GB hard drive and graphics is handled adequately by a GeForce Go 7400 chipset,Priced at Rs. 2,00,000 this laptop is in a different league and can’t really be compared to the others in our roundup.

iPod, iPod Nano, iPod shuffle and iTunes 7

It's been a while since the new iPods and iTunes came out, and now that we've got all of them with us, we decided to take a very honest look at the new features they bring

One of the most impressive things that the new iPods bring—according to me—is the new pair of earphones. The older ones were a little too big and like most other earphones, didn't fit my ears too well. The new ones are smaller and are much more comfortable than the previous ones. I haven't heard my entire music collection using these new earphones, but I didn't notice much of a sound difference. The new earphones sound great and along with the more comfortable size, I think they'll appeal to everyone who's had problems with the older iPod earphones. I would still ditch them and use my pair of Sony Fontopia in-ears, but you won't have to.

On the other hand, all the new iPods lack an AC charger being a part of the standard package. They all have smaller, streamlined packings because they skipped the charger in favor of a USB cable that can be used to transfer as well as charge the iPod. While you would agree that anyone who has an iPod has a PC or a Mac, there is an alarming number of users in our city who have an iPod but no computer, and some of those who have a computer have no idea how to transfer stuff to the iPod. They'd like a regular plug they can charge their iPod with (which was filled with music from a friend's computer), so this can be a small negative.

iPod

The new iPod isn't called Photo or Video anymore—it's just called the iPod. It comes with a bunch of new features, but the most interesting are the new search and gapless playback features. Instant search is useful for iPods with larger capacities like 30gb and upwards which can store a lot of music. It let's you search by letters instead of just scrolling through the never-ending list of music on your iPod. This is similar to entering your name in games on the PlayStation or the Xbox without using the keyboard. While still being no match for a full keypad or even a T9-enabled numeric keypad, the search is still a good step forward.

Gapless playback is probably the next most innovative feature in a digital audio player, after the dawn of the player itself. I listen to a ton of—actually just about all of house, trance and other electronica out there, and with most live sets and continuous mix CDs making up for most of my collection, the gap between sequential tracks is as annoying as having a Pimp My Ride-style car blare out some trash music next to you when waiting at a signal. I hate gaps between my mixes. That's why I'd usually prefer to rip the entire CD as a single track, but that makes searching for individual tracks as bad as playing cassettes. With the new iTunes, sequential tracks of a set can be tagged so they continue seamlessly into the next track. This is a little rough right now; it didn't entirely eliminate the pop and click when the track changes, but it's better than having a full 100mb MP3 file.The new iPod also lets you play new arcade games which you can buy and install. It has improved battery life that claims to be up to 75% longer, or up to 14 hours for music or 6.5 hours of video. It all depends on how much you use the iPod during playback, and most users do use a few of the features other than just playback (i.e. search), so you probably won't get the full rated batter life.The new iPod is available in 30GB (Rs. 13,000) and 80GB (Rs. 18,000) capacities.

Tracking Santa on the Web

We watched Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story recently, and it was fun to hear my kids laugh throughout one of my favorite holiday movies, a well-told story by a radio legend. Watching Ralphie listening to the radio stirred vague memories of tuning into Jean Shepherd's radio show, with my family riveted to his every word. But it also reminded me of the only time as a kid I remember being riveted to the radio instead of the TV: Christmas Eve, listening to the NORAD sightings of Santa on his marathon gift run.

NORAD's Santa tracking operation moved onto the web in 1998, and kids and parents can go to the NORAD Tracks Santa web site and track the big fella's movements in six languages. The story goes that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) got involved in Santa's movements after its predecessor, CONAD (Continental Air Defense Command), got calls about Santa's whereabouts after Sears & Roebuck mistakenly misprinted a Santa hotline telephone number in newspaper ads in 1955. The commander who answered the first child's call gave out the requested info, and a tradition was born. When CONAD became NORAD, the bi-national air defense command for the United States and Canada in 1958, it took over the duties of tracking Santa's around-the-world flight.

Kids can check out the Santa webcams that "capture images of Santa and the Reindeer as they make their journey around the world."

My kids have also liked the Santa at Claus.com web site, where they can check if they've been naughty or nice. But they have grown suspicious in the past when some of the same phrases popped up after they put in different friends' names. (As always, this is a good teachable moment to tell young kids not to put in full names or other personal information if they send an e-mail to Santa.)

Got any other favorite Santa web sites to incite even more pre-holiday frenzy in your home? Share!

BBC Offers Content on P2P Network, Zudeo

BBC Worldwide has announced that it will offer its popular, high-resolution British comedies and dramas, on a new P2P file sharing network, Zudeo.com. The BBC content, will be available on Zudeo’s’ new platform early next year.



According to the agreement with Zudeo’s parent company, Azureus, BBC Worldwide will license international television series, such as Red Dwarf, Strange and Invasion Earth, to users of Zudeo. Other titles include International Emmy award-winning, Little Britain, Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, Coupling, Keeping Up Appearances, League of Gentlemen and Ideal, among others. Additional content partnerships will be announced in the coming weeks.

Gilles BianRosa, CEO, Azureus said, "BBC Worldwide understands our commitment to providing consumers with a rich entertainment experience and our desire to offer quality content to our diverse global audience. We are thrilled to offer programming that encompasses such a robust fan base, as well as the opportunity to expose a new generation to cult favorites from BBC Worldwide catalog via our new entertainment platform."

Zudeo, a US based, legal P2P file sharing network, enables content providers to publish, showcase, and distribute high resolution, long form content, including video and games in high definition or DVD quality over the Internet, free of charge. The portal also features search, browsing, channels and tagging, as well as easier integration with firewalls. Zudeo will also have enhanced features for P2P streaming, in the near future.