Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Which You Choose Between Corded and Cordless Power Tools
Being a crafter inside the woodworking and also strength tooling market sectors, it will always be imperative to keep prior to the blackberry curve and also prior to the opposition. To help keep this kind of leg-up, a single must hold the proper strength equipment with all the proper high-quality kind comments with their certain wants and also types. Realizing merely which usually strength equipment do this kind of even though, can easily current any challenge almost all a unique. As an example, which will you decide on among any corded plus a cord less power tool? Which will give you the most effective efficiency as well as the many smooth performance around the jobsite? In the end, a better solution, since almost all crucial responses carry out, knobs after an individual, your own personal wants, along with your certain careers and also specifications.
In the same way equally sorts have got specific positive aspects, equally corded and also cord less strength equipment have got specific down sides at the same time. And also, due to the fact I do believe a lot of people choose to manage to get thier negative media initial, I’ll start out with the particular down sides of each and every sort and also shift about the very good news when we’ve almost all grow to be carefully dejected.
Without the punches taken or perhaps glucose sprayed, cord less equipment haven't any continual strength resource. Their particular strength and also efficiency knobs totally over a Dewalt DW9072 battery power whoever efficiency, subsequently, knobs totally around the robustness regarding the demand. Furthermore, apart from Lithium Ion DEWALT DC9096 battery packs, any cord less application Makita 1434 battery power will drop strength continually when you perform; because the demand dons straight down, the particular tool’s out-put strength furthermore decreases manifestation the application, along with your act as properly, susceptible to any continually dwindling strength resource. In addition, cord less equipment are likely, basically, being a smaller amount potent. They may be more substantial, and also power packs usually are pricey to exchange.
Ok, a lot more negative media: corded strength equipment are usually fundamentally immobile. They may be tied to the positioning of these strength resource in terms of the size of their particular cable, and also due to the fact extension cords must typically become earmarked regarding unexpected emergency just use, your are fundamentally tethered to be able to the size of the cable. Needless to say, mentioned cable isn't only constraining, yet this is a hazardous power threat, plus a villainous tripping threat at the same time; a power and also tripping threat which is comparatively fragile and also typically agonizing to exchange. In addition, strength cables can be any «mood threat, » in the event you can. The truth is, they may be basically undesirable. They’re difficult and also difficult, and will ponder straight down the functioning energy.
.. As well as the dissatisfaction momentarily overwhelms right up until specifically today, the state of mind elevate, only if a bit, and also My partner and i start relationship regarding very good news!
Cord less equipment offer you excellent portability and also lightweight ergonomics face to face. In addition, since MAKITA 1834 battery engineering is growing and also move forward, thus carry out some great benefits of functioning cord less. The truth is, cord less strength equipment have become better, longer-lasting, and also light fat than previously. They may be constantly an easy task to retailer and also carry and so they enable crafters never to simply shift concerning face to face, yet to truly transfer coming from jobsite to be able to jobsite and also venture to be able to venture together with no anxiety about cable programs or perhaps the particular (low)presence regarding power retailers. Consequently, cord less equipment are usually perfect for home-users, regarding out of doors utilize, regarding used in busier locations in which a cable may well push any person entirely crazy, and so are necessary about a lot more standard or perhaps original perform web sites who have not necessarily but recently been born regarding power program.
Corded equipment, about one more content palm, use a continual, non-dwindling strength resource. Because of this, they feature a lot more total strength plus a heavier-duty efficiency for your living with the application and also per personal utilize at the same time. Corded equipment likewise have any really extended life and will take pleasure in a long time regarding health and also satisfying efficiency when properly preserved. In addition they enable craftsmen to be effective with out prevents (so long as you continue to be plugged-in for the identical store) thus each minute you may spend face to face will be better put in. In addition, cord less equipment usually are not simply better, nevertheless they are usually light, less costly, and also supernaturally trustworthy. Since they're also, possibly even supernaturally once more, resilient and also strong for the humps and also bruises regarding jobsite dwelling, the particular corded power tool series is best suited regarding heavy-duty, high-power careers that want brute professional durability plus a steady method of getting huge strength.
In the end, the far better know very well what the anticipations are usually of one's strength equipment just before investment. Realizing specifically things you need, what you should carry out from it, and also just how usually you have to do in which, will allow you to identify the particular application that may finest go with your unique work-load and also functioning type.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Our first Ivy Bridge laptops: How do they perform?
Laptops updated with Intel's latest Ivy Bridge processors are finally here, but is there as much to be excited about compared with last year's Sandy Bridge CPUs?
Intel hasn't made such dramatic claims this time around as far as pure processor speed, but there are plenty of other improvements including eight-way hyperthreading, Turbo Boost 2.0, integrated USB 3.0, and native Thunderbolt support. The only two parts any mainstream consumer's likely to care about are the CPU gains and new Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, which promise to greatly boost gaming performance without dedicated graphics.
Soon enough our CNET Labs will be flooded with Ivy Bridge laptops, and we'll have more real-life examples of Ivy Bridge products than you can shake a stick at. Until then, we've tested two early examples of high-end quad-core Ivy Bridge Core i7 processors that Origin and Intel have sent us.
Unlike the truly generic integrated graphics-only product last year, the Asus N56V that Intel sent to us looks more like an actual retail unit, albeit one that may not ever match an actual production model. It has a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-3720QM processor, along with discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 630 graphics. Last year's "white box" only had integrated graphics. We were able to disable the Nvidia GPU and run Intel's HD 4000 integrated graphics exclusively, to see what the performance gains were.
The Origin EON17-S, which we formally reviewed, featured a faster 2.9GHz Core i7-3920XM processor.
The Asus N56V is a 15.6-inch laptop weighing in at 6 pounds, a middleweight system approaching the "desktop replacement" category. The slightly bronzed notebook has a 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution display, 8GB of RAM, a 750GB, 7,200rpm hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce GT 630M graphics. The speakers above the keyboard fired off loud and crisp sound, but I wasn't as concerned with system design in this case; I focused chiefly on Ivy Bridge CPU performance.
For comparison purposes, we looked at an extremely recent and somewhat similar Asus N53, a laptop with a Sandy Bridge-generation quad-core 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM and the same Nvidia dedicated graphics. We also compared these systems with a couple of equivalent Sandy Bridge laptops with midrange Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics. After running all our benchmarks, here's what our Labs editor Julie Rivera found.
CPU performance
The performance leap between Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs, even by Intel's claims, is supposed to be subtle. That's reflected on our benchmark comparisons across some equivalent systems from last year.
The Ivy Bridge-based Origin EON17-S and Asus N56V handled our benchmark tests faster than any previous Windows laptops. Obviously, these quad-core systems represent the highest end of the performance spectrum: I'm more curious how middle-range dual-core processors and ultrabook-oriented lower-voltage CPUs will fare when they emerge. However, this bodes well for Ivy Bridge laptops in general.
Graphics and gaming
Intel claims that Ivy Bridge's Intel HD 4000 graphics offer up to double the performance compared with last year's Sandy Bridge integrated graphics. The results varied by game, but it did seem to hold true that the Intel HD 4000 graphics were markedly improved. Even more impressively, they held their own against Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics. Read more here on the gaming power of Ivy Bridge's integrated HD 4000 graphics.
One note, however: next-gen Nvidia and AMD discrete graphics will provide graphics potential of a much higher order, especially on top-end gaming laptops. People who want to see the future of PC gaming are still best off shopping for high-end graphics, but the average laptop buyer should be really happy about how Ivy Bridge laptops will game.
The Asus N56V also has next-gen Nvidia graphics in the form of a GeForce GT 630M GPU. The Nvidia graphics performed admirably, but both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge laptops feature these GPUs. That mirrors what you'll see in stores over the next few weeks:
Battery life
Battery life shows off only a subtle gain between our two tested Asus systems: 226 minutes with the Ivy Bridge N56V versus 214 minutes with the Sandy Bridge N53. It's hard to tell what the laptop battery life and power efficiency story is here, especially on a select pair of high-end systems. We'll have to wait for dual-core and ultrabook versions of Ivy Bridge processors to compare results down the road.
What does this mean for you?
What the average person will care about is: slightly faster processors on average, perhaps a more widespread use of Turbo Boost in mainstream laptops, and, hey, the average laptop will be better at playing games. Thunderbolt is also intriguing, but until laptops start actually having Thunderbolt ports -- and affordable peripherals become the norm -- no one will really care.
More-mainstream Ivy Bridge systems will be arriving over the next few months, and these will really show what Intel's new processors can do.
Many laptop manufacturers will, in fact, be selling new products with new designs and even new Nvidia and AMD graphics, but not necessarily new Intel Ivy Bridge processors. They'll be subtly swapped out when CPUs become available, but for many shoppers, the Moment of Ivy Bridge may get lost in the shuffle and be hard to identify. (To know if your laptop has a newer Intel processor, make sure the four-digit number at the end of your CPU starts with a "3"; for example, Core i7-3720QM vs i7-2670QM.)
The takeaway I've gleaned from early time with these laptops is that the CPU gains are small, while the integrated graphics on mainstream laptops could finally be good enough for most people to use for their everyday gaming. However, these early systems show off fast quad-core CPUs that don't really mirror what the average user will buy. Apples to apples comparisons show some modest gains, but nothing like last year's dramatic Sandy Bridge leap. That being said, if you're shopping for a laptop now, you're probably better off waiting for an Ivy Bridge version of your system to appear.
read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417957-1/our-first-ivy-bridge-laptops-how-do-they-perform/
Low price ASUS netbook batteries: ASUS AL31-1005 Battery , ASUS AL32-1005 Battery .
Intel hasn't made such dramatic claims this time around as far as pure processor speed, but there are plenty of other improvements including eight-way hyperthreading, Turbo Boost 2.0, integrated USB 3.0, and native Thunderbolt support. The only two parts any mainstream consumer's likely to care about are the CPU gains and new Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics, which promise to greatly boost gaming performance without dedicated graphics.
Soon enough our CNET Labs will be flooded with Ivy Bridge laptops, and we'll have more real-life examples of Ivy Bridge products than you can shake a stick at. Until then, we've tested two early examples of high-end quad-core Ivy Bridge Core i7 processors that Origin and Intel have sent us.
Unlike the truly generic integrated graphics-only product last year, the Asus N56V that Intel sent to us looks more like an actual retail unit, albeit one that may not ever match an actual production model. It has a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-3720QM processor, along with discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 630 graphics. Last year's "white box" only had integrated graphics. We were able to disable the Nvidia GPU and run Intel's HD 4000 integrated graphics exclusively, to see what the performance gains were.
The Origin EON17-S, which we formally reviewed, featured a faster 2.9GHz Core i7-3920XM processor.
The Asus N56V is a 15.6-inch laptop weighing in at 6 pounds, a middleweight system approaching the "desktop replacement" category. The slightly bronzed notebook has a 1,920x1,080-pixel-resolution display, 8GB of RAM, a 750GB, 7,200rpm hard drive, and Nvidia GeForce GT 630M graphics. The speakers above the keyboard fired off loud and crisp sound, but I wasn't as concerned with system design in this case; I focused chiefly on Ivy Bridge CPU performance.
For comparison purposes, we looked at an extremely recent and somewhat similar Asus N53, a laptop with a Sandy Bridge-generation quad-core 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM and the same Nvidia dedicated graphics. We also compared these systems with a couple of equivalent Sandy Bridge laptops with midrange Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics. After running all our benchmarks, here's what our Labs editor Julie Rivera found.
CPU performance
The performance leap between Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs, even by Intel's claims, is supposed to be subtle. That's reflected on our benchmark comparisons across some equivalent systems from last year.
The Ivy Bridge-based Origin EON17-S and Asus N56V handled our benchmark tests faster than any previous Windows laptops. Obviously, these quad-core systems represent the highest end of the performance spectrum: I'm more curious how middle-range dual-core processors and ultrabook-oriented lower-voltage CPUs will fare when they emerge. However, this bodes well for Ivy Bridge laptops in general.
Graphics and gaming
Intel claims that Ivy Bridge's Intel HD 4000 graphics offer up to double the performance compared with last year's Sandy Bridge integrated graphics. The results varied by game, but it did seem to hold true that the Intel HD 4000 graphics were markedly improved. Even more impressively, they held their own against Nvidia GeForce 540M graphics. Read more here on the gaming power of Ivy Bridge's integrated HD 4000 graphics.
One note, however: next-gen Nvidia and AMD discrete graphics will provide graphics potential of a much higher order, especially on top-end gaming laptops. People who want to see the future of PC gaming are still best off shopping for high-end graphics, but the average laptop buyer should be really happy about how Ivy Bridge laptops will game.
The Asus N56V also has next-gen Nvidia graphics in the form of a GeForce GT 630M GPU. The Nvidia graphics performed admirably, but both Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge laptops feature these GPUs. That mirrors what you'll see in stores over the next few weeks:
Battery life
Battery life shows off only a subtle gain between our two tested Asus systems: 226 minutes with the Ivy Bridge N56V versus 214 minutes with the Sandy Bridge N53. It's hard to tell what the laptop battery life and power efficiency story is here, especially on a select pair of high-end systems. We'll have to wait for dual-core and ultrabook versions of Ivy Bridge processors to compare results down the road.
What does this mean for you?
What the average person will care about is: slightly faster processors on average, perhaps a more widespread use of Turbo Boost in mainstream laptops, and, hey, the average laptop will be better at playing games. Thunderbolt is also intriguing, but until laptops start actually having Thunderbolt ports -- and affordable peripherals become the norm -- no one will really care.
More-mainstream Ivy Bridge systems will be arriving over the next few months, and these will really show what Intel's new processors can do.
Many laptop manufacturers will, in fact, be selling new products with new designs and even new Nvidia and AMD graphics, but not necessarily new Intel Ivy Bridge processors. They'll be subtly swapped out when CPUs become available, but for many shoppers, the Moment of Ivy Bridge may get lost in the shuffle and be hard to identify. (To know if your laptop has a newer Intel processor, make sure the four-digit number at the end of your CPU starts with a "3"; for example, Core i7-3720QM vs i7-2670QM.)
The takeaway I've gleaned from early time with these laptops is that the CPU gains are small, while the integrated graphics on mainstream laptops could finally be good enough for most people to use for their everyday gaming. However, these early systems show off fast quad-core CPUs that don't really mirror what the average user will buy. Apples to apples comparisons show some modest gains, but nothing like last year's dramatic Sandy Bridge leap. That being said, if you're shopping for a laptop now, you're probably better off waiting for an Ivy Bridge version of your system to appear.
read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57417957-1/our-first-ivy-bridge-laptops-how-do-they-perform/
Low price ASUS netbook batteries: ASUS AL31-1005 Battery , ASUS AL32-1005 Battery .
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
GM: Explosion at battery research facility ‘unrelated to the Chevrolet Volt’
An explosion during "extreme battery testing" Wednesday morning of a prototype energy cell at a General Motors battery research facility in Warren, Mich., injured one person and did major structural damage to the building.
At the heart of the explosion was a lithium-ion battery, according to a fire department official cited in local news reports. The morning blast did not, however, involve batteries that power the Chevrolet Volt, the new plug-in hybrid car whose batteries caught fire weeks after a crash test, General Motors said in a statement.
But the flap over the Volt battery fire has left some insiders feeling more than a little peeved and defensive at the amount of news media attention being devoted to what they say is an almost inevitable, if not routine, event in the business of battery research and extreme testing.
"The whole reason they have these labs is precisely to do this kind of aggressive testing – anticipating the worst thing a consumer could do with this product," says one expert with direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the explosion, who asked not to be named. "This is going to turn out to be a mountain out of a mole hill. Yeah, we're doing a lot of testing. That's what we have to do. Sometimes things explode."
“The incident is still under investigation by GM and the Warren authorities," the GM statement said. "Any information or discussion of the nature of the work in the lab or cause of the incident is entirely speculative and cannot be confirmed at this time. The incident was unrelated to the Chevrolet Volt or any other production vehicle. The incident was related to extreme testing on a prototype battery.”
Despite criticism of the Volt by conservative pundits, a follow-up investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration concluded the new car was no more prone to fire than any other vehicle.
"The debate over batteries recently really hasn't been about safety so much as about their longevity," says Tom Turrentine, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. "I think we are mostly over the hump with battery safety. But there's no question that battery labs are notorious for explosions when they're testing."
Lithium-ion batteries are attractive to automakers because they can hold so much power – about four times the amount of energy a conventional lead-acid battery. Even so, earlier lithium-ion batteries used in other commercial applications burst into flame on occasion. Laptop computer manufacturer Dell Computer recalled millions of batteries after a handful of its laptops burst into flames several years ago.
t's a peril automakers were well aware of. Automakers now building the Volt and other first generation plug-in vehicles that run primarily or exclusively on advanced lithium ion batteries have selected less-volatile battery chemistries – and added engineering safety features as well, industry experts say.
Robert Kruse, GM's then-executive director of global vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicles, and batteries, explained his thoughts on emerging plug-in hybrid vehicle battery technology in a 2009 interview with the Monitor. On safety, cell chemistry, and to avoid "thermal runaway" in which lithium ion batteries have been known to burst into flames, "many layers of safety built into the Volt," Mr. Kruse said.
"We have adopted [independent] safety standards and have employed those requirements into our cell and pack designs. I can assure you we've met those standards with what we've designed."
Vehicle makers like GM are now on the hunt for new battery chemistries that hold a lot more energy than today's lithium ion battery, but are also less volatile. But it's a hunt fraught with occasional explosions.
"The challenge of the battery designer is to come up with a high voltage battery, but one that doesn't suffer from instability," says Donald Sadoway, professor of chemistry and an authority on new battery technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If you have a high energy battery, that means you've got a lot of energy inside that case and you can, in an unabated release, end up with thermal events or, in an extreme case – an explosion."
Ann Marie Sastry is CEO of Sakti3, a next generation company that GM has invested in to produce a cutting-edge source of power for future vehicles that would far exceed conventional lithium ion batteries.
"Intensive testing is required right now to validate the technology for use by consumers," Dr. Sastry writes in an e-mail interview. "But, there are disruptive technologies coming down the pike which will obviate some of these challenges. So the today solution is to test, and the tomorrow solution is to productize the next generation technology, and that's why we are partnered with GM – they're taking the right approach."
Though not discounting the seriousness of any battery explosion, Dr. Sadoway says it's still much more dangerous to be near a gasoline explosion of equivalent energy value. Indeed, there were 184,000 vehicle fires in 2010 involving conventional gasoline-powered vehicles that killed 285 people and cost $1 billion in property damage, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
"If I had to choose," he says, "I would rather be present when a battery that explodes – rather than a car whose gas tank explodes."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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At the heart of the explosion was a lithium-ion battery, according to a fire department official cited in local news reports. The morning blast did not, however, involve batteries that power the Chevrolet Volt, the new plug-in hybrid car whose batteries caught fire weeks after a crash test, General Motors said in a statement.
But the flap over the Volt battery fire has left some insiders feeling more than a little peeved and defensive at the amount of news media attention being devoted to what they say is an almost inevitable, if not routine, event in the business of battery research and extreme testing.
"The whole reason they have these labs is precisely to do this kind of aggressive testing – anticipating the worst thing a consumer could do with this product," says one expert with direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the explosion, who asked not to be named. "This is going to turn out to be a mountain out of a mole hill. Yeah, we're doing a lot of testing. That's what we have to do. Sometimes things explode."
“The incident is still under investigation by GM and the Warren authorities," the GM statement said. "Any information or discussion of the nature of the work in the lab or cause of the incident is entirely speculative and cannot be confirmed at this time. The incident was unrelated to the Chevrolet Volt or any other production vehicle. The incident was related to extreme testing on a prototype battery.”
Despite criticism of the Volt by conservative pundits, a follow-up investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration concluded the new car was no more prone to fire than any other vehicle.
"The debate over batteries recently really hasn't been about safety so much as about their longevity," says Tom Turrentine, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. "I think we are mostly over the hump with battery safety. But there's no question that battery labs are notorious for explosions when they're testing."
Lithium-ion batteries are attractive to automakers because they can hold so much power – about four times the amount of energy a conventional lead-acid battery. Even so, earlier lithium-ion batteries used in other commercial applications burst into flame on occasion. Laptop computer manufacturer Dell Computer recalled millions of batteries after a handful of its laptops burst into flames several years ago.
t's a peril automakers were well aware of. Automakers now building the Volt and other first generation plug-in vehicles that run primarily or exclusively on advanced lithium ion batteries have selected less-volatile battery chemistries – and added engineering safety features as well, industry experts say.
Robert Kruse, GM's then-executive director of global vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicles, and batteries, explained his thoughts on emerging plug-in hybrid vehicle battery technology in a 2009 interview with the Monitor. On safety, cell chemistry, and to avoid "thermal runaway" in which lithium ion batteries have been known to burst into flames, "many layers of safety built into the Volt," Mr. Kruse said.
"We have adopted [independent] safety standards and have employed those requirements into our cell and pack designs. I can assure you we've met those standards with what we've designed."
Vehicle makers like GM are now on the hunt for new battery chemistries that hold a lot more energy than today's lithium ion battery, but are also less volatile. But it's a hunt fraught with occasional explosions.
"The challenge of the battery designer is to come up with a high voltage battery, but one that doesn't suffer from instability," says Donald Sadoway, professor of chemistry and an authority on new battery technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If you have a high energy battery, that means you've got a lot of energy inside that case and you can, in an unabated release, end up with thermal events or, in an extreme case – an explosion."
Ann Marie Sastry is CEO of Sakti3, a next generation company that GM has invested in to produce a cutting-edge source of power for future vehicles that would far exceed conventional lithium ion batteries.
"Intensive testing is required right now to validate the technology for use by consumers," Dr. Sastry writes in an e-mail interview. "But, there are disruptive technologies coming down the pike which will obviate some of these challenges. So the today solution is to test, and the tomorrow solution is to productize the next generation technology, and that's why we are partnered with GM – they're taking the right approach."
Though not discounting the seriousness of any battery explosion, Dr. Sadoway says it's still much more dangerous to be near a gasoline explosion of equivalent energy value. Indeed, there were 184,000 vehicle fires in 2010 involving conventional gasoline-powered vehicles that killed 285 people and cost $1 billion in property damage, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
"If I had to choose," he says, "I would rather be present when a battery that explodes – rather than a car whose gas tank explodes."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Monday, April 2, 2012
The Reasons You should Spend More Money on Next Laptop
These days, you can purchase a passable laptop for little more than the cost of an iPad. As of February, the average Windows notebook cost just $513 and, for less than that, you can find a strong system that comes with modern specs like a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. But just because you can grab a low-rent laptop for $399 at Best Buy doesn't mean you should. Our friends at Laptop Magazine explain.
Whether you're buying a notebook that's made to order or choosing between different ready-made models, you need to pay a little extra to be happier and more productive. Here are five laptop features worth the splurge:
1. High-Resolution Screens
You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many pixels, but unfortunately most notebooks today come with lame 1366 x 768 screens that show even less of your favorite Web pages above the fold than their 1280 x 800 counterparts from 2007. When it comes to surfing the Web, editing documents, sending email or viewing photos, it's all about vertical real screen estate. Having 900 vertical pixels instead of 768 can allow you to see an additional paragraph or more of text without scrolling. When you're not scrolling all day, you can read more and get more work done.
If you're purchasing a MacBook, make sure to buy one with at least a 1440 x 900 resolution (MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Pro 15-inch or higher). If you're buying a PC notebook, spend the extra money to get a screen that's at least 1600 x 900. And if your notebook is 15.6-inches or larger, try going for a 1920 x 1080 resolution display.
On sites that provide configure-to-order notebooks, the cost delta between a 1366 x 768 screen and a 1600 x 900 screen is anywhere from $50 to $100. For example, HP.com charges $100 to upgrade the $579 Pavilion dm4t's screen to the higher resolution, while Dell charges $50 to up the $499 Latitude E5420′s screen to 1600 x 900 and $150 to move the XPS 15′s screen from 1366 to 1920 x 1080. The one caveat is that many of the systems that come with a higher-res screen option are marketed as business notebooks, but that's no reason a consumer couldn't buy and enjoy them.
Solid State Drives
Every second you sit there waiting for your computer to boot or Photoshop to load is bringing you a second closer to the end of your life. Why not use those seconds to do something more rewarding, like opening more applications?
The speed delta between using a traditional hard drive and an SSD is greater than the difference between riding a Big Wheels on a cobblestone road and racing down the Autobahn in a Porsche 911. In our tests, our favorite SSD, the Samsung 830 Series, took less than half the time of a 7,200-rpm hard drive to open a 500-page PDF in Adobe Reader X (3.8 vs 7.1 seconds), and less than a third of the time to open a Excel 2010 to a large spreadsheet (4.2 vs 14 seconds) and to launch Photoshop CS 5.1 with a 400MB TIF (8.4 vs 25.9 seconds).
What can you do with the extra 17.5 seconds you won't be waiting for Photoshop to open? How about opening 17 more browser windows (at less than 1 second each), reading five more tweets from your friends or observing 1.7 billion particle collisions?
Unfortunately, the price delta between buying a notebook with an SSD and a hard drive is significant, but anything around $200 for 128GB of storage should be considered good. For example, Lenovo charges a reasonable $180 premium to upgrade a ThinkPad Edge E420s to SSD while Dell charges $230 to bump the Latitude E6420 to SSD. In those cases where the premium is unreasonably high, look for preconfigured models with an SSD built-in like the $849 Toshiba Portege Z835. Bottom line: SSDs are worth the money because you're buying time.
Longer Battery Life
Unless you're buying an 8-pound notebook you plan to leave on your desk as if it were a desktop, you need as much endurance as you can get. Most low-cost notebooks don't come with enough to juice to last more than 3 or 4 hours on a charge, which is barely enough time to watch a single "Lord of the Rings" movie, let alone write a detailed report for work or school.
Whether you're hopping from conference room to conference room in the office, heading from one classroom to another or walking around the show floor at CES all day, you don't want to worry about finding an outlet. Even when you're just lying in bed using your notebook, it can be a real pain to be tethered to the wall or stop to charge every few hours.
Save yourself from laptop battery panic by choosing a notebook that gets a bare minimum of 6 hours on a charge, with 8 to 10 hours preferable. High-endurance notebooks like the ASUS U31 series cost a little more than the $500 average notebook price, but when you can get 9+ hours of battery life, spend the money.Long battery life review:aspire 4730z battery, AS09A61 battery.
If a notebook is available with different battery choices, such as Acer laptop battery,always go for the higher-capacity battery, even if it adds a little bit of weight or sticks out the back. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 lasts a strong 7 hours and 51 minutes on a charge with its standard 6-cell battery. However, when you pay an extra $30 to upgrade to the 9-cell unit, it lasts an incredible 12 hours and 39 minutes while only adding 0.2 pounds to the laptop's weight and 1 inch to its depth. If you don't mind another 1.5 pounds of weight and another 0.6-inches of thickness, an optional battery slice takes the battery life up to 20 hours and 18 minutes, enough time to fly from New York to Taipei with a 3-hour stopover in Tokyo.
More: 11 Ways to Increase your Windows Laptop's Battery Life
More Powerful Processors
When you invest in a new notebook, you want to hold onto it for a good three years, without feeling like it's too slow to run today's apps, let alone tomorrow's updates. The lowest-priced notebooks on the market use sluggish Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon chips, while many average-priced systems sport modest Intel Core i3 chips.
Spring for a system with an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor to give yourself enough oomph to crunch videos and spreadsheets today while future-proofing you against the next couple of years of innovation. Core i5/i7 CPUs can turbo boost up to a higher frequency while performing processor-intensive tasks, so your 2.5-GHz laptop can actually overclock itself up to 3.1-GHz while you're playing a game.
he cost delta between Core i3 and Core i5 is fairly minimal in most cases. The price difference between a Dell Inspiron 14R configuration with Core i5 and one without is just $70 on Dell.com. However, when you jump up from a bargain basement Intel Pentium CPU, you pay a larger premium. For example, HP.com charges $170 to upgrade its Pavilion G6t from Pentium to Core i5. Spend the money.
Discrete Graphics
While the integrated HD 3000 chip on Intel's 2nd Generation Core Series processors offers decent graphics performance for everyday tasks and video playback, many applications benefit from discrete graphics. Though we're able to run "World of Warcraft" at modest settings on integrated graphics, we don't even bother to test out serious titles like "Crysis" or "Batman: Arkham City" without a dedicated Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon chip on board, because those games won't be playable at even low settings.
When you have a discrete chip, you can also achieve significantly better performance in photo and video editing apps, as many are optimized to run filters, compress files and show previews more quickly by using the GPU. More importantly, the latest Web browsers have hardware-accelerated graphics capability that affects the playback of next-gen Internet applications. More and more sites are adding 3D elements and animations that run so much smoother with discrete graphics. Check out Microsoft's Beauty of the Web site to see some great examples.
The cost of upgrading from integrated to discrete graphics is usually in the $75to $150 range for vendors that sell configure-to-order or sell notebook configurations with this feature. For example, HP.com charges just $75 to upgrade from integrated Intel HD Graphics to an AMD Radeon HD 7470M GPU when you buy the Pavilion dv6t.
Whether you're buying a notebook that's made to order or choosing between different ready-made models, you need to pay a little extra to be happier and more productive. Here are five laptop features worth the splurge:
1. High-Resolution Screens
You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many pixels, but unfortunately most notebooks today come with lame 1366 x 768 screens that show even less of your favorite Web pages above the fold than their 1280 x 800 counterparts from 2007. When it comes to surfing the Web, editing documents, sending email or viewing photos, it's all about vertical real screen estate. Having 900 vertical pixels instead of 768 can allow you to see an additional paragraph or more of text without scrolling. When you're not scrolling all day, you can read more and get more work done.
If you're purchasing a MacBook, make sure to buy one with at least a 1440 x 900 resolution (MacBook Air 13-inch, MacBook Pro 15-inch or higher). If you're buying a PC notebook, spend the extra money to get a screen that's at least 1600 x 900. And if your notebook is 15.6-inches or larger, try going for a 1920 x 1080 resolution display.
On sites that provide configure-to-order notebooks, the cost delta between a 1366 x 768 screen and a 1600 x 900 screen is anywhere from $50 to $100. For example, HP.com charges $100 to upgrade the $579 Pavilion dm4t's screen to the higher resolution, while Dell charges $50 to up the $499 Latitude E5420′s screen to 1600 x 900 and $150 to move the XPS 15′s screen from 1366 to 1920 x 1080. The one caveat is that many of the systems that come with a higher-res screen option are marketed as business notebooks, but that's no reason a consumer couldn't buy and enjoy them.
Solid State Drives
Every second you sit there waiting for your computer to boot or Photoshop to load is bringing you a second closer to the end of your life. Why not use those seconds to do something more rewarding, like opening more applications?
The speed delta between using a traditional hard drive and an SSD is greater than the difference between riding a Big Wheels on a cobblestone road and racing down the Autobahn in a Porsche 911. In our tests, our favorite SSD, the Samsung 830 Series, took less than half the time of a 7,200-rpm hard drive to open a 500-page PDF in Adobe Reader X (3.8 vs 7.1 seconds), and less than a third of the time to open a Excel 2010 to a large spreadsheet (4.2 vs 14 seconds) and to launch Photoshop CS 5.1 with a 400MB TIF (8.4 vs 25.9 seconds).
What can you do with the extra 17.5 seconds you won't be waiting for Photoshop to open? How about opening 17 more browser windows (at less than 1 second each), reading five more tweets from your friends or observing 1.7 billion particle collisions?
Unfortunately, the price delta between buying a notebook with an SSD and a hard drive is significant, but anything around $200 for 128GB of storage should be considered good. For example, Lenovo charges a reasonable $180 premium to upgrade a ThinkPad Edge E420s to SSD while Dell charges $230 to bump the Latitude E6420 to SSD. In those cases where the premium is unreasonably high, look for preconfigured models with an SSD built-in like the $849 Toshiba Portege Z835. Bottom line: SSDs are worth the money because you're buying time.
Longer Battery Life
Unless you're buying an 8-pound notebook you plan to leave on your desk as if it were a desktop, you need as much endurance as you can get. Most low-cost notebooks don't come with enough to juice to last more than 3 or 4 hours on a charge, which is barely enough time to watch a single "Lord of the Rings" movie, let alone write a detailed report for work or school.
Whether you're hopping from conference room to conference room in the office, heading from one classroom to another or walking around the show floor at CES all day, you don't want to worry about finding an outlet. Even when you're just lying in bed using your notebook, it can be a real pain to be tethered to the wall or stop to charge every few hours.
Save yourself from laptop battery panic by choosing a notebook that gets a bare minimum of 6 hours on a charge, with 8 to 10 hours preferable. High-endurance notebooks like the ASUS U31 series cost a little more than the $500 average notebook price, but when you can get 9+ hours of battery life, spend the money.Long battery life review:aspire 4730z battery, AS09A61 battery.
If a notebook is available with different battery choices, such as Acer laptop battery,always go for the higher-capacity battery, even if it adds a little bit of weight or sticks out the back. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 lasts a strong 7 hours and 51 minutes on a charge with its standard 6-cell battery. However, when you pay an extra $30 to upgrade to the 9-cell unit, it lasts an incredible 12 hours and 39 minutes while only adding 0.2 pounds to the laptop's weight and 1 inch to its depth. If you don't mind another 1.5 pounds of weight and another 0.6-inches of thickness, an optional battery slice takes the battery life up to 20 hours and 18 minutes, enough time to fly from New York to Taipei with a 3-hour stopover in Tokyo.
More: 11 Ways to Increase your Windows Laptop's Battery Life
More Powerful Processors
When you invest in a new notebook, you want to hold onto it for a good three years, without feeling like it's too slow to run today's apps, let alone tomorrow's updates. The lowest-priced notebooks on the market use sluggish Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon chips, while many average-priced systems sport modest Intel Core i3 chips.
Spring for a system with an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor to give yourself enough oomph to crunch videos and spreadsheets today while future-proofing you against the next couple of years of innovation. Core i5/i7 CPUs can turbo boost up to a higher frequency while performing processor-intensive tasks, so your 2.5-GHz laptop can actually overclock itself up to 3.1-GHz while you're playing a game.
he cost delta between Core i3 and Core i5 is fairly minimal in most cases. The price difference between a Dell Inspiron 14R configuration with Core i5 and one without is just $70 on Dell.com. However, when you jump up from a bargain basement Intel Pentium CPU, you pay a larger premium. For example, HP.com charges $170 to upgrade its Pavilion G6t from Pentium to Core i5. Spend the money.
Discrete Graphics
While the integrated HD 3000 chip on Intel's 2nd Generation Core Series processors offers decent graphics performance for everyday tasks and video playback, many applications benefit from discrete graphics. Though we're able to run "World of Warcraft" at modest settings on integrated graphics, we don't even bother to test out serious titles like "Crysis" or "Batman: Arkham City" without a dedicated Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon chip on board, because those games won't be playable at even low settings.
When you have a discrete chip, you can also achieve significantly better performance in photo and video editing apps, as many are optimized to run filters, compress files and show previews more quickly by using the GPU. More importantly, the latest Web browsers have hardware-accelerated graphics capability that affects the playback of next-gen Internet applications. More and more sites are adding 3D elements and animations that run so much smoother with discrete graphics. Check out Microsoft's Beauty of the Web site to see some great examples.
The cost of upgrading from integrated to discrete graphics is usually in the $75to $150 range for vendors that sell configure-to-order or sell notebook configurations with this feature. For example, HP.com charges just $75 to upgrade from integrated Intel HD Graphics to an AMD Radeon HD 7470M GPU when you buy the Pavilion dv6t.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Apple Claims New iPad's Battery Charging is Perfectly Normal
The new iPad's battery performs within the normal parameters of an iOS-based device, thank you very much. At least that's the story Apple is telling in the face of criticism of the way the company's latest tablet deals with battery charging.
Apple told All Things D on Tuesday that there's been some "confusion" about the way the new iPad charges up its battery when users plug it into a wall socket.
When the tablet reaches a nearly 100 percent charged state, the new iPad displays the battery as being fully charged, Apple's Michael Tchao told the tech site. When that happens, the battery actually continues to charge all the way to 100 percent—but if it remains plugged in, it decharges a little, then charges back up fully, then back down again, and so on until the user unplugs the tablet.Laptop batteryies tipe:TOSHIBA SATELLITE L45-S7XXX SERIES battery , fpcbp80 battery.
Tchao billed that process as a boon to new iPad owners.
"That circuitry is designed so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like," he told All Things D said. "It's a great feature that's always been in iOS."
Apparently, Apple has been doing the same thing to manage the battery charging of several iOS-based devices, including iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, for several product generations. It just hadn't gone noticed by many folks until a DisplayMate analyst grokked that his new iPad wasn't fully charged even though the display indicated that it was, according to All Things D.
So basically, plugged-in iOS devices cycle between a completely charged state and a slightly decharged state, but Apple doesn't reflect this in the battery status on its devices because it could "distract or confuse users," according to Tchao.
DisplayMate's Ray Soneira may have noticed the discrepancy between his new iPad's actual battery charge and what the display was telling him it was, because the device takes a lot longer to power up its much bigger battery(such as ACER as07b61 battery) when plugged in than its predecessor, the iPad 2.
As PCMag lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan noted last week, "the new iPad appears to charge very slowly," even though it's actually charging just as fast as the iPad 2—naturally, because it uses the same power adapter. But as Segan points out:
The iPad's 42.5 watt-hour battery is unusually large for a tablet. It's more like a laptop battery. Both the 11-inch MacBook Air and Asus's Zenbook UX21 have 35 watt-hour batteries. The previous iPad and the Asus Transformer Prime, the two major competing tablets, both have 25 watt-hour batteries.
But the new iPad comes with the same power adapter as the previous model, putting out 10 watts of power. That's much less than the standard MacBook Air power adapter, which puts out 45 watts to charge a smaller battery.
The result is that the new iPad appears to charge very slowly. It's charging just as fast as the previous iPad (it uses the same power adapter), but it's filling a bucket almost twice as big with the same trickle of water.
What that could mean is that the amount of battery charge that a plugged in, fully charged new iPad decharges itself by per its design would be quite a bit more noticeable to users than with earlier iPads (and iPhones and iPod Touches), because the amount of time it takes to cycle back to a fully charged state is just that much longer.
Of course, Apple has been taking some flak related to the new iPad's battery life that extends beyond just the way the third-generation tablet charges up. As Segan also noted last week, the new iPad's promised battery life of ten hours (actually ten hours, 54 minutes in PCMag testing) is possible—if you cut the screen brightness to 50 percent. At full brightness, the new iPad's glorious and pixel-loaded Retina display burns through the tablet's extra-large battery twice as fast.
Apple told All Things D on Tuesday that there's been some "confusion" about the way the new iPad charges up its battery when users plug it into a wall socket.
When the tablet reaches a nearly 100 percent charged state, the new iPad displays the battery as being fully charged, Apple's Michael Tchao told the tech site. When that happens, the battery actually continues to charge all the way to 100 percent—but if it remains plugged in, it decharges a little, then charges back up fully, then back down again, and so on until the user unplugs the tablet.Laptop batteryies tipe:TOSHIBA SATELLITE L45-S7XXX SERIES battery , fpcbp80 battery.
Tchao billed that process as a boon to new iPad owners.
"That circuitry is designed so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like," he told All Things D said. "It's a great feature that's always been in iOS."
Apparently, Apple has been doing the same thing to manage the battery charging of several iOS-based devices, including iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, for several product generations. It just hadn't gone noticed by many folks until a DisplayMate analyst grokked that his new iPad wasn't fully charged even though the display indicated that it was, according to All Things D.
So basically, plugged-in iOS devices cycle between a completely charged state and a slightly decharged state, but Apple doesn't reflect this in the battery status on its devices because it could "distract or confuse users," according to Tchao.
DisplayMate's Ray Soneira may have noticed the discrepancy between his new iPad's actual battery charge and what the display was telling him it was, because the device takes a lot longer to power up its much bigger battery(such as ACER as07b61 battery) when plugged in than its predecessor, the iPad 2.
As PCMag lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan noted last week, "the new iPad appears to charge very slowly," even though it's actually charging just as fast as the iPad 2—naturally, because it uses the same power adapter. But as Segan points out:
The iPad's 42.5 watt-hour battery is unusually large for a tablet. It's more like a laptop battery. Both the 11-inch MacBook Air and Asus's Zenbook UX21 have 35 watt-hour batteries. The previous iPad and the Asus Transformer Prime, the two major competing tablets, both have 25 watt-hour batteries.
But the new iPad comes with the same power adapter as the previous model, putting out 10 watts of power. That's much less than the standard MacBook Air power adapter, which puts out 45 watts to charge a smaller battery.
The result is that the new iPad appears to charge very slowly. It's charging just as fast as the previous iPad (it uses the same power adapter), but it's filling a bucket almost twice as big with the same trickle of water.
What that could mean is that the amount of battery charge that a plugged in, fully charged new iPad decharges itself by per its design would be quite a bit more noticeable to users than with earlier iPads (and iPhones and iPod Touches), because the amount of time it takes to cycle back to a fully charged state is just that much longer.
Of course, Apple has been taking some flak related to the new iPad's battery life that extends beyond just the way the third-generation tablet charges up. As Segan also noted last week, the new iPad's promised battery life of ten hours (actually ten hours, 54 minutes in PCMag testing) is possible—if you cut the screen brightness to 50 percent. At full brightness, the new iPad's glorious and pixel-loaded Retina display burns through the tablet's extra-large battery twice as fast.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
New iPad screen is eye-opening upgrade
Beware the new iPad, not because it's an inferior product, but because it's a superior one. Using one is like living the life of a millionaire for a day, then getting dumped back in your regular life. Your eyes are now opened to how miserable your existence is.
The big culprit here is its stunner screen. It has four times the resolution of the previous models. That's a big, big jump, which makes text and high-resolution images look amazingly sharp and clear. High-definition movies look amazingly detailed.
At first, I wasn't that excited about the prospect of a high-resolution screen. For the past year and a half, I've read scores of books and more newspaper articles than I can count on the original iPad and the iPad 2. I've never felt that the screen wasn't sharp enough.
But after only a few hours with the third version, which went on sale last week and is known only as "the new iPad," it's like my eyes got really, really picky. Suddenly, I saw how clumsy and blurry text looked on the older models and how straight lines sawtoothed their way across the screen.
Color reproduction is also improved greatly over the previous models. I've never been unhappy with the way the iPad 2 displayed colors, but you can tell at a glance that the colors are more vibrant and nuanced on the new screen. On the old iPad, the Facebook icon looks blue; on the new one, you can see that it's more of a purple tone. Useful? Maybe not. But once you've used it, you won't want to go back to a less-colorful screen.
The new iPad's "Retina" screen, with its resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels, is far better than the competition can muster, and I have no doubt it will set a new standard for portable devices. In fact, I wonder why we haven't had screens this good before. Why don't we have laptops like that? How about desktop monitors? We deserve better!
Now, the improved screen does come with a significant drawback: It draws a lot more power.
One reason is that the graphics chip now has four times as many pixels to handle. When a chip has more work to do, it draws more power.
Another reason: Smaller pixels let through less light, so even though there are more of them, the image-forming layer is darker than on a standard screen, sort of the way a denser mesh screen blocks more light. To counter this effect, Apple boosted the number of light-emitting diodes that shine through the screen from 36 to 84, according to research firm IHS iSuppli, which took a unit apart. More LEDs mean the screen's brightness ends up being the same, at the cost of higher power consumption.
Still, Apple has managed to keep Apple battery life nearly the same. The company rates it at 10 hours of use, the same as the iPad 2, and my testing indicates that the figure holds up. But it did so by making the battery a lot bigger. That means the new iPad is heavier and thicker than the iPad 2. In each case, the increase is less than 10 percent -- noticeable, but hardly a deal breaker.
The bigger battery also takes more time to charge. In my tests, I found it took about 50 percent longer to charge the new iPad than the iPad 2. It took just under seven hours for a full charge instead of four hours and 45 minutes. The new iPad needs to spend more time plugged in, and quick "top-up" charges are less effective.
The higher power consumption of the new tablet probably accounts for customers' observations that the new iPad runs hotter than the old one. It did for me, but it was never hot enough to be uncomfortable.
Another annoying thing is that for some applications, the text looks worse on the new iPad. This has to do with the mechanisms programmers chose in presenting text.
Applications that have been updated for the Retina screen look great, such as The New York Times app. But head over to a PDF-viewing program called GoodReader, which hasn't been updated, and it's another story: Letters are more blurry and smeared. One can only hope that the developers update their applications quickly.
Did I say the new iPad costs the same as the old one? I did, but that's not the whole story. An indirect price increase has snuck in.
For $499, you get an iPad with 16 gigabytes of storage memory. That's the same amount you got in the original iPad for $499. In the two intervening years, the price of memory chips used in the iPad have fallen by about 70 percent, according to IHS iSuppli. So Apple could have given us an additional 8 gigabytes of memory, if it kept spending the same amount on chips. Instead, it's cut the amount of money it puts into memory chips and shifted spending toward the screen and cameras.
That would be fine, except that the Retina screen eats memory space. Many applications that have been upgraded for the display use more memory than before, presumably because their icons and pictures need to be that much more detailed. So those 16 gigabytes won't go as far as they did. After you've loaded your apps, you'll have less space for movies and photos.
Unfortunately, the "app bloat" effect isn't limited to the new iPad. The new, bigger apps will be delivered to older iPads as well, and in some cases iPhones, even though they can't take advantage of the upgrade.
In the past, I've recommended most iPad buyers get the cheapest version, with 16 gigabytes of memory. The 32-gigabyte version might be the better buy this time around. It galls me, though, that this model costs $100 more, for an additional memory chip that costs Apple about $17.
A couple of other upgrades in the new iPad are good to have, but not as revolutionary as the screen.
The processor is faster. Again, I've never actually wished for a faster processor in my iPad, but once you have one, it's welcome. In particular, there's less of a delay when firing up programs.
The camera on the rear is improved, now matching the one on the iPhone 4, with 5 megapixels of resolution. I use the iPad cameras for videoconferencing, not for photography, so this doesn't mean much to me. The lower-resolution camera on the front is unchanged from the iPad 2.
As before, there are step-up models with cellular broadband modems available for an additional $130. In the new iPad, these modems can access AT&T's and Verizon Wireless' faster "4G LTE" networks, which in many cases are faster than wired broadband. They come with added monthly fees, of course.
Another welcome change: You can dim the screen much further than you could on the iPad 2. That's a good thing if you like to use the tablet in bed before going to sleep. Staring at a bright screen in a dark room is hard on the eyes and might make it more difficult to fall sleep afterward.
When I first learned that Apple had boosted the battery capacity of the new iPad by 70 percent, I thought it was a pity that it didn't just dispense with the screen upgrade and extend the battery life to 17 hours. But the screen has won me over.
Once again, Apple has come up with a feature we didn't know we needed, but we actually do.
The big culprit here is its stunner screen. It has four times the resolution of the previous models. That's a big, big jump, which makes text and high-resolution images look amazingly sharp and clear. High-definition movies look amazingly detailed.
At first, I wasn't that excited about the prospect of a high-resolution screen. For the past year and a half, I've read scores of books and more newspaper articles than I can count on the original iPad and the iPad 2. I've never felt that the screen wasn't sharp enough.
But after only a few hours with the third version, which went on sale last week and is known only as "the new iPad," it's like my eyes got really, really picky. Suddenly, I saw how clumsy and blurry text looked on the older models and how straight lines sawtoothed their way across the screen.
Color reproduction is also improved greatly over the previous models. I've never been unhappy with the way the iPad 2 displayed colors, but you can tell at a glance that the colors are more vibrant and nuanced on the new screen. On the old iPad, the Facebook icon looks blue; on the new one, you can see that it's more of a purple tone. Useful? Maybe not. But once you've used it, you won't want to go back to a less-colorful screen.
The new iPad's "Retina" screen, with its resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels, is far better than the competition can muster, and I have no doubt it will set a new standard for portable devices. In fact, I wonder why we haven't had screens this good before. Why don't we have laptops like that? How about desktop monitors? We deserve better!
Now, the improved screen does come with a significant drawback: It draws a lot more power.
One reason is that the graphics chip now has four times as many pixels to handle. When a chip has more work to do, it draws more power.
Another reason: Smaller pixels let through less light, so even though there are more of them, the image-forming layer is darker than on a standard screen, sort of the way a denser mesh screen blocks more light. To counter this effect, Apple boosted the number of light-emitting diodes that shine through the screen from 36 to 84, according to research firm IHS iSuppli, which took a unit apart. More LEDs mean the screen's brightness ends up being the same, at the cost of higher power consumption.
Still, Apple has managed to keep Apple battery life nearly the same. The company rates it at 10 hours of use, the same as the iPad 2, and my testing indicates that the figure holds up. But it did so by making the battery a lot bigger. That means the new iPad is heavier and thicker than the iPad 2. In each case, the increase is less than 10 percent -- noticeable, but hardly a deal breaker.
The bigger battery also takes more time to charge. In my tests, I found it took about 50 percent longer to charge the new iPad than the iPad 2. It took just under seven hours for a full charge instead of four hours and 45 minutes. The new iPad needs to spend more time plugged in, and quick "top-up" charges are less effective.
The higher power consumption of the new tablet probably accounts for customers' observations that the new iPad runs hotter than the old one. It did for me, but it was never hot enough to be uncomfortable.
Another annoying thing is that for some applications, the text looks worse on the new iPad. This has to do with the mechanisms programmers chose in presenting text.
Applications that have been updated for the Retina screen look great, such as The New York Times app. But head over to a PDF-viewing program called GoodReader, which hasn't been updated, and it's another story: Letters are more blurry and smeared. One can only hope that the developers update their applications quickly.
Did I say the new iPad costs the same as the old one? I did, but that's not the whole story. An indirect price increase has snuck in.
For $499, you get an iPad with 16 gigabytes of storage memory. That's the same amount you got in the original iPad for $499. In the two intervening years, the price of memory chips used in the iPad have fallen by about 70 percent, according to IHS iSuppli. So Apple could have given us an additional 8 gigabytes of memory, if it kept spending the same amount on chips. Instead, it's cut the amount of money it puts into memory chips and shifted spending toward the screen and cameras.
That would be fine, except that the Retina screen eats memory space. Many applications that have been upgraded for the display use more memory than before, presumably because their icons and pictures need to be that much more detailed. So those 16 gigabytes won't go as far as they did. After you've loaded your apps, you'll have less space for movies and photos.
Unfortunately, the "app bloat" effect isn't limited to the new iPad. The new, bigger apps will be delivered to older iPads as well, and in some cases iPhones, even though they can't take advantage of the upgrade.
In the past, I've recommended most iPad buyers get the cheapest version, with 16 gigabytes of memory. The 32-gigabyte version might be the better buy this time around. It galls me, though, that this model costs $100 more, for an additional memory chip that costs Apple about $17.
A couple of other upgrades in the new iPad are good to have, but not as revolutionary as the screen.
The processor is faster. Again, I've never actually wished for a faster processor in my iPad, but once you have one, it's welcome. In particular, there's less of a delay when firing up programs.
The camera on the rear is improved, now matching the one on the iPhone 4, with 5 megapixels of resolution. I use the iPad cameras for videoconferencing, not for photography, so this doesn't mean much to me. The lower-resolution camera on the front is unchanged from the iPad 2.
As before, there are step-up models with cellular broadband modems available for an additional $130. In the new iPad, these modems can access AT&T's and Verizon Wireless' faster "4G LTE" networks, which in many cases are faster than wired broadband. They come with added monthly fees, of course.
Another welcome change: You can dim the screen much further than you could on the iPad 2. That's a good thing if you like to use the tablet in bed before going to sleep. Staring at a bright screen in a dark room is hard on the eyes and might make it more difficult to fall sleep afterward.
When I first learned that Apple had boosted the battery capacity of the new iPad by 70 percent, I thought it was a pity that it didn't just dispense with the screen upgrade and extend the battery life to 17 hours. But the screen has won me over.
Once again, Apple has come up with a feature we didn't know we needed, but we actually do.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Apple Sells Record 3 Million New IPads
Apple Inc. (AAPL) said it sold more than 3 million iPads during the debut weekend for the latest model of the market-leading tablet computer.
The tally is a record for opening weekend iPad sales, Cupertino, California-based Apple said in a statement. AT&T Inc. (T) said earlier today that it had also set a single-day record for iPad sales when it was made available on March 16.
The iPad, first introduced in 2010, is Apple’s second- biggest source of revenue, behind the iPhone. The new version features a high-definition screen and a faster processor. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has said he thinks purchases of tablet computers such as the iPad will eventually surpass those of personal computers.
Apple sold a record 15.4 million iPads in the fiscal first quarter, which ended Dec. 31. The new device initially went on sale in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.K., U.S. Virgin Islands and Hong Kong. On March 23, it goes on sale in 24 additional countries.
The iPad sales figure is Apple’s second major announcement today. The world’s most valuable company said earlier it will use some of its $97.6 billion in cash and investments to institute a dividend and begin buying back $10 billion worth of shares.
Apple rose 2.7 percent to a record $601.10 at the close in New York. The shares have surged 48 percent this year.
The tally is a record for opening weekend iPad sales, Cupertino, California-based Apple said in a statement. AT&T Inc. (T) said earlier today that it had also set a single-day record for iPad sales when it was made available on March 16.
The iPad, first introduced in 2010, is Apple’s second- biggest source of revenue, behind the iPhone. The new version features a high-definition screen and a faster processor. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has said he thinks purchases of tablet computers such as the iPad will eventually surpass those of personal computers.
Apple sold a record 15.4 million iPads in the fiscal first quarter, which ended Dec. 31. The new device initially went on sale in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, the U.K., U.S. Virgin Islands and Hong Kong. On March 23, it goes on sale in 24 additional countries.
The iPad sales figure is Apple’s second major announcement today. The world’s most valuable company said earlier it will use some of its $97.6 billion in cash and investments to institute a dividend and begin buying back $10 billion worth of shares.
Apple rose 2.7 percent to a record $601.10 at the close in New York. The shares have surged 48 percent this year.
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