Blackberry arrives in the Philippines

Research in Motion (RIM) announced today the availability of the new touchscreen Blackberry Storm. The Storm is RIM’s first foray into touchscreen handsets, obviously aimed at the iPhone 3G market.
RIM announced the Blackberry Storm and partnered with Smart Communications and Globe Telecom on postpaid plans.
The Storm is expected to be available from Smart in June. Pricing information and pre-orders are available through the respective Relationship Managers and Account Managers of the Corporate Business and Small and Medium Enterprise Groups, starting from free with the Plan 3500.
This will also be made available for personal subscriptions through the Wireless Consumer and Infinity Groups.
On the other hand, Globe Telecom also announced new Blackberry Personal Postpaid Plans starting today, including the Blackberry Storm handset:
Globe’s Personal BlackBerry Plans are available at Plan 700 for 5 MB of data, which is approximately 55 emails per day. The Plan 850 gives subscriber 8 MB of data for approximately 90 emails per day. The Plan 1100 allows 10 MB of data so its user gets approximately 115 emails per day. Number of emails per day is based on estimated emails using a BlackBerry handset. egular mobile Internet browsing rates of P0.15 per KB apply in excess of the plan.

Antivirus for the Mac

A couple of days ago, I got an email from PR of Symantec Corp. about the availability of Norton Internet Security for Mac which includes a firewall and anti-virus.
While there’s been some word from Apple that Mac users are recommended to use anti-virus, this has been downplayed because Macs have been marketed as free from any sort of virus.
I guess the need for anti-virus for the Mac has become more important now that the newer Intel machines are able to run Windows (via BootCamp, etc). Besides, most exploits seems to be targeted towards the Safari browser.
Even Mac owners are susceptible to online threats, and when it comes to phishing, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re using,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Business Unit, Symantec. “The data we are seeing from Symantec’s Security Response is showing that Macs can be a target for viruses and malware. Norton Internet Security for Mac now helps safeguard users from phishing threats, malware and hackers, without compromising system performance.
The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security for Mac is PHP4,890, which includes a one-year subscription to Symantec protection updates. The suggested retail price for Norton Internet Security for Mac Dual Protection is PHP5,510, which includes a one-year subscription to Symantec protection updates

Vivienne Tam special edition laptop

HP and world-renowned fashion designer Vivienne Tam announced their partnership on a special edition HP Mini 1000 last September 2008 but that model has yet to land in the Philippines. It was out in other countries by December last year but HP will only launch it here in the Philippines this week.
The HP Mini Vivienne Tam Edition is mostly just a special paint job of the Mini 1000. The specs are still the old one — Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, GMA950, WiFi and optional Bluetooth. The 10.1 inch screen only supports a native resolution of 1024×576 pixels. There’s a 2-in-1 card reader and the battery is just 3-cell with no upgrade options (according to the HP site).
The price listed on the site is $700 (~Php35,000) so don’t expect this fashionable netbook to be within competition’s range. Besides, I think this one’s more like in the category of the Sony Vaio P.
HP Philippines will also be announcing two other netbooks (my hunch is the HP Mini Mi and the Mini 2140). More on this by the end of the week.
Update: Olyver Digg sent in the flyer from HP below. SRP is Php27,950.

Laptops

While most of the current netbooks are in the Php20k to Php30k range, some people will still opt for a decently spec’ed notebook within that price range for obvious reasons. Here are my recommended full-featured laptops under Php30,000.

Compaq Presario CQ40-340TUIntel Pentium Dual Core T4200, 2.0GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSBMobile Intel GL40 Express Chipset, GMA 4500M1GB DDR2 RAM250GB SATA HDD14.1” display screen (1280×800)SuperMulti 8X Double Layer DVD±RW DriveWiFi 802.11 b/g5-in-1 card readerWebcam3x USB 2.0, HDMI portAltec Lansing Speakers6-cell batteryPrice: Php29,940

Asus X80-LEIntel Pentium Dual Core T2390, 1.86GHz, 1Mb L2, 533MHz FSBMobile Intel 965GM Express Chipset, Intel X3100 384MB shared14.1″ display screen2GB DDR2 533MHz RAM120GB SATA HDDDVD-RW4-in-1 card readerExpressCard SlotWebcamIntel PRO WiFi b/g/nGigabit LAN / 56Kb modem1x firewire, 4x USB 2.0Price: Php 24,999

Dell Vostro A840Intel Pentium Dual Core T2390 1.86GHz14.1″ display screen1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM120GB SATA HDDWiFI 802.11 b/g56Kb Modem, LANDVD+RWPrice: 27,999
MSI MegaBook PR400Intel Pentium Dual Core T3400 2.16GHz, 1MB L2, 667MHzIntel

GMA965 / Intel X31002.0GB DDR2 667MHz RAM160GB SATA HDDDVD+RW14.1″ WXGA / Biometric + camera 1.3MPWiFi 802.11 b/gGigaBit LANPhp 24,999
Lenovo G430Intel Pentium Dual Core T3400 2.16GHz, 1MB L2, 667MHz14.1 inch screenIntel

GMA4500m2.0GB DDR2 667MHz RAM250GB SATA HDDDVD Dual LayerWiFi 802.11 b/gPhp 27,995

Acer Aspire AS4730Z-342G16MnIntel Pentium Dual Core T3400 2.16GHz14.1″ LCD display screenIntel GMA 450MHD (64MB Dedicated, up to 1659MB Shared)2GB DDR2 RAM160GB

SATA HDDDVD Super Multi DriveGigabit LANWebcam5 in 1 Card ReaderBluetoothPrice: Php 28,500

For differences in memory, just factor in 1GB of RAM at Php750 or 2GB at Php1,100. So, if it’s still within budget, you can upgrade it. Some of these don’t have Windows pre-installed though so you might also need to factor them in (there’s always Ubuntu).

The next time you look at a netbook, think if you really need the portability. Otherwise, a regular laptop with the same price could be well worth it. At least you know that a Pentium Dual Core are still way faster than the Intel Atom.

2 Power supplies in one PC

Was having some issues with my current set of power supplies in my PC at home. None of them are able to support the GeForce GTX 280 that was lent to me by Asus a couple of weeks ago.
I got an extra Dynamo Pro 600w and a CoolerMaster 550w Real Power SLI but none of the two are able to carry the juice needed by the Asus GTX 280 on the system.
My idea is to combine the two PSUs to effectively harness about 1,000w of power for the rig (instead of buying another Gigabyte Odin 1200w, which costs pretty expensive). Anybody here has done that? One power supply will run the motherboard and the peripherals while the other PSU will solely power the graphics card.
My concern now is voltage fluctuations between the two PSU might fry the board or some other parts.

Incidentally, I found this Power Supply Calculator from eXtreme. I plugged in my rig specifications and it says I only need 377watts. Now that’s odd.

ZX2300 All-in-One desktop PC

Gateway is gunning at the all-in-one PC market and wants to out-spec the Asus Eee Top with its own 18.5″ ZX2300 All-in-One desktop PC.
With a retail price of Php27,995 (PCCorner), the 18.5″ Gateway ZX2300 is cheaper than the 15.6″ Asus Eee Top ET16 (Php32,800).
18.5″ 16:9 LCD display screen (1366xx768 pixel)AMD Athlon 2650 1.6GHz1GB DDR2 SDRAM160 GB 7200rpm HDD16X DVD+RW SuperMulti-DriveATI X1200 graphics10-in-1 card readerVGA webcam10/100 LAN,WiFi 802.11b/g5x USB 2.0 ports

Comes with Windows XP Home as basic OS. I wonder how the 1.6GHz Athlon 2650e fares against the regular Atom N270 with the same clock speed.

Dell Mini 9 Laptop

It’s actually nothing new, but looks like the Dell Mini 9 that’s been repainted all black.
Intel Atom N270 1.66GHz8.9 inch (1024×600 pixel) display screen512MB and 1GB DDR2 RAM8GB and 16GB SSDIntel 945GSE graphicsWiFi 802.11 b/gLANs, Bluetooth 2.03x USB 2.03-in-1 card reader SD/SDIO/MMC
Weighs about 2.36lbs with the 4-cell battery. Price starts at $349 for the basic RAM/HDD and goes up to $424 with the upgrades.

AMD’s Phenom II

Ever since AMD’s Phenom II was announced I have been looking around for a unit to test on but very not a lot of stores have them on stock. Good thing AMD’s PR contacted me for a review unit and these arrived last week, just before the long Holy Week vacation.
Actually, it’s not one but 3 different CPUs of the AMD Phenom 2.
AMD Phenom II X3 720Codename: Propus2.8GHz, 3 cores, 7.5 MB total cache
AMD Phenom II X4 810Codename: Deneb2.6GHz, 4 cores, 6MB total cache
AMD Phenom II X4 940Codename: Deneb3.0GHz, 4 cores, 8MB total cache
The 940 has an unlocked multiplier so that should be easy to overclock anytime. These 3, plus the X2 7750 I got earlier should be out on a head to head benchmark soon.
Incidentally, AMD’s X4 900 series has a similar naming convention to that of Intel’s Core i7 series. That could get confusing with regular consumers.

Zune HD processor

Looks like the upcoming Zune HD will have the new NVidia Tegra capable of 1080p HD video with 800 MHz ARM CPU.

3.6 inchish OLED full touch screen
NVIDIA Tegra
4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 120GB versions
HDMI Connection to stream straight to your TV
HD Radio
Web Browser (IE)
WiFi compatible, with wireless marketplace
Home AV packs, Car packs, Charge packs

Not the full list of specs but the fast processor and HD capability is alredy good news

Cignal Digital TV

Cignal Digital TV is a new service provided by MediaQuest (same company who introduced Smart myTV in the Philippines) is set to offer hi-def TV this coming June.
According to PhilStar, Cignal TV was launched last February 2009. It will directly compete with Dream Satellite TV.
Cignal subscribers will have crystal-clear access to free-to-air channels ABS-CBN 2, TV5, NBN 4, GMA, CS9, QTV, IBC 13, Studio 23, 2nd Avenue, ETC, and NET 25, and high-rating premium channels HBO, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, CNN, PBO, Viva Cinema, AXN, BIO, and RHTV (dzRH Television).
The price for all these channels — Php390/month. There’s a Php5,500 installation fee and a one-year lock-up period.

DB Cache or Super Caches which is which

Most bloggers are familiar with WP SuperCache, a WordPress plugin that dynamically caches WP by converting them into static pages, thereby avoiding repeated database queries. While it’s very effective, this approach though has had several drawbacks. Then, there’s the newer one called WP DB Cache.
Let me break down some of the advantages and dis-advantages of WP-SuperCache and DB-Cache so you can see which of the two plugins is better for your blog.

WP SuperCache
Creates static version of each cached pages so it can easily eat up a lot of web space though that will depend how many pages your blog has (remember that tags, archives, and paged comments are also separate pages). I’ve seen WP-SuperCache easily eat up 300+MB of webspace for larger blogs.
Very effective for blogs that experience high surge in traffic for a single page (like being Dugg, SlashDot or Stumbled Upon) as the target page is automatically cached for a given period of time. That page basically serves static HTML sparing all database queries (unless of course visitors on that page comment a lot).
Additional features like Lock Down adds a layer of protection for high-trafficked pages that keeps on getting updated by visitor comments. This feature delays the display of new comments so it can just serve a single static page for that period.
Has some page delivery problems when enabled with WP-Mobile. The mobile version of the blog homepage is sometimes cached and served as the static page.
Leaves some stale pages. The cache does not refresh unless content on a page is edited. That leaves the Sidebar stale when new contents are added to it.

WP DB Cache
Caches DB queries instead of entirely making the page static. Reduces the number of DB queries on all pages but not all.
Does not save individual pages as static files so it doesn’t use a lot of web space for caching.
Might not be able to handle a sudden surge of traffic on a single page (in case of Digg or Slashdot flood).
Blog elements stay fresh (sidebar, widgets, etc.)
Effective for blogs that have hundreds or thousands of actively viewed pages.
I think the main difference between WP SuperCache and WP DB Cache is that the latter’s caches are re-used on all pages of the blog while WP-SuperCache only serves cache on a per page basis.
Best caching benefit for WP DB Cache: 1,000 pages of a blog are visited just once but all at the same time.
Best caching benefit for WP SuperCache: 1,000 visitors view a single page of a blog all at the same time.
Depending on which of the two scenarios best fit your blog, you can choose between the two caching plugins.

40+ inch LCD Monitors

Was looking around from some good deals on 40+ inch LCD TVs and Anson’s Appliance Store seems to be doing a sale this summer. Check out some of the good deals I saw on HDTVs after the jump.
The target LCD size is between 40″ and 46″ with a maximum budget of Php80k (the same amount I paid for a 32″ Samsung HDTV about 2 years ago).

The likely candidates are the ff.
Samsung Series 5 LCD TV (40″)Php89,990 (Php9,000 discount for cash/straight CC)Free P181K DVD Player
Toshiba Regza (42″ 10-bit)Php79,990 (Php8,000 discount for cash/straight CC)Free Toshiba SD-580 DVD Player
Sanyo Vizon (42″)Php59,995 (Php6,000 discount for cash/straight CC )
The units from Sharp and Sony are just beyond the Php100k mark for the same sizes so they’re out of the list. The Sanyo Vizon seems to be the best deal of the lot, unless you’re very particular about the brand. All three feature a 1080p (1920×1080 pixel) LCD screen.
There are so many other entrants in the 32″ category, mostly coming from China and they’re priced very low compared to the other name brands (TCL, for example, offers a 32″ LCD TV at sub-30k prices).

Ultraslim mouse SAMSUNG

Spotted this ultraslim mouse by Samsung the other day and I thought it would be perfect for a netbook. At just 8mm thin, this could probably be the slimmest optical mouse I’ve seen ever.

The mouse has simple yet unique design, especially the rotating wheel around the center button. Rotating it clockwise scrolls the page down and counter-clockwise scrolls the page up. The center button represents left click while the right-click is enabled on the right side of the outer wheel (much like the clickwheel of the old iPods).

The USB cable is fastened at the front side with a small lever at the other end allows you to retract the cables back inside the device. There’s a blue light from inside the mouse the leaks out thru the openings (it somewhat glows in the dark).
Being too slim has its drawbacks — the mouse isn’t ergonomic so you may find it a little tiring after prolonged use. Comes with a leather pouch and costs a bit pricey at Php1,350.

Handycam HDR-XR100

Sony sent in one of their newer entry-level HD camcorder () just in time for my planned road-trip this Holy Week. While I’m still testing it out on the road, check out the first few photos of Sony Handycam HDR-XR100 after the jump.

Quick specs: 1920×1080 HD video recording, 4MP still image capture, 2.7-inch touch panel, 10x Optical and 120x Digital Zoom.

Saw this at the shelves in Abensons it was selling for Php52,995.

Laptop price does matter

Recent research revealed that there’s a slow growth in sales of notebooks and desktop PCs in the last quarter. But thanks to netbooks, the numbers aren’t too drastic. Microsoft is banking on the idea that it all goes down to price.
Like Lauren in the first Microsoft ad, the second ad features Giampaulo who was given a budget of $1,500.
It becomes pretty obvious where this series of ads is leading to. Most people, when they buy a new laptop, will have the ff. considerations in mind:
Price. I believe 90+% of all individuals who buy a new laptop will have a set price in mind before anything else. We all have our own budget and I think only those who have tons of moolah can truly be budget-free.
Specs. We don’t often settle with just the basic specs. As much as possible, we want to bump up the RAM, the HDD, CPU and other optional stuff we can add (like a higher-capacity battery).
Brand. For the same specs, some brands are more expensive than others. HP and Sony laptops are typically more expensive than MSI or Lenovo (and to think the people in the two ads still ended up with HP means they can still get a better bargain with other brands).

Media accelerator

I’ve tried playing WarCraft 3 on several netbooks and the graphics wasn’t any good but what can you expect from an Intel GMA 950 chip?
GMA Booster though is promising up to 2.4x better performance by overclocking the embedded graphics chip. Though they say that the GMA950 is actually underclocked what they’re doing is just bumping it up to normal speeds.
Anyway, I tried it on one of my netbooks and there was some improvements with the benchmarks. FPS on fullscreen texture rendering went up 11.5% which isn’t much. Will need to try other benchmarking tools and run a round of DOTA again

Atom Z515

Intel made official their new Atom processors for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) — the Atom Z515 which clocks at 1.2GHz and the Atom Z550 which is rated at 2.0GHz.
Although the Atom Z5xx series are more targeted to MIDs, it won’t be uncommon to see them being used for netbooks like in the case of the Sony Vaio P.
The Atom Z515 can very well be included in future smartphones too (runs as fast as the SnapDragon platform featured in Toshiba’s TG01).

Latest from iPod

The new iPod Shuffle 3G is the smallest music player from Apple. The biggest change to this model is the absence of playback controls, a functionality that drew a lot of flak when it was announced.

The new 3rd-gen iPod Shuffle is surprisingly small (about a half to two-thirds of the size of its predecessor) you’d easily mistaken it as a paper or money clip. The only controls embedded in the device is the On/Off switch situated at the top end together with the 3.5mm jack and a small needle-point light to indicate device activity.

Since iPod Shuffle’s don’t have a display screen of any sort, the new version made use of Voice Over that enables a user to know to the name of the song and the artist that is being played. The Voice Over also functions as a status indicator for the Shuffle (talks back and tells you if battery is low and needs recharging). The male voice though reminds me of those text-to-speech voice quality.The 3.5mm audio jack also serves as the charging port via USB.
The playback controls are found on the right earbud cable which includes play/pause, forward to next song, and volume up and down (tried using it on my iPhone 3G and it partially worked, minus the volume controls). The headphones have been slightly improved with the cables a little more rubbery (to keep it tangle-free) and while the earbuds are practically the same, sound quality is better compared to the old ones.

After a couple of weeks using the Shuffle, I realized that the playback controls on the earphones make sense especially when I’m using it while jogging or in the gym. I’ve also noticed people who are using their cellphones as music players are already with having the controls in the earphone cables so in terms of usability, I don’t think this is an issue.

Apple has been known to make their customers adapt to their products, not the other way around. That’s why you don’t see people clamoring about being able to hook up a Logitech/Genius keyboard and mouse onto their Macs. As such, it was no surprise to me that Apple shifted the playback controls from the device itself to the headphones.

Sure, iPod headphones are not the best out there so this move on the Shuffle didn’t help address that issue (and the ability to be able to use any other headphones along with it). Despite that I don’t think this will hugely affect sales of the new model (SRP Php4,190 for 4GB). If you’re not into it, Apple is still selling the second generation Shuffle at a much lower price (SRP Php2,590 for 1GB). And if you’re very particular about headphones, Klipsch and Scosche will be releasing their own version of headphones that’s compatible with the new Shuffle.

Acer 11.6"

Acer made official its new 11.6-inch model of the Aspire One line. Aside from a thinner form factor and the Dolby Pro Logic Sound, there isn’t much difference with this one compared to the earlier models.
That means you still get the usual Intel Atom processor, a 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth and the elusive 3G SIM card slot.