Hands-on review: The new iPad

Specification of Affordable Superzooms SLR Cameras

Nikon Coolpix P500 :

The price of bridge cameras are usually on the higher side and the main feature of these types of cameras are their superzoom capabilities. The Nikon P500 had to definitely feature in this list, as it was possibly one of the best superzoom cameras to be launched. It has a massive 36x optical zoom lens and features a 12.1MP, backside-illuminated CMOS sensor. The sensor also has dual image processors and Nikon’s Expeed C2 image processing engine, which helps in shooting detailed images with minimal noise. The camera has manual and semi manual shooting modes, allowing one to fine tune the settings, before capturing an image. The flip-out screen at the back aids in capturing images from either high or low angles. 1080p full HD video recording is also available on this bridge camera, making it quite an ideal solution for photography and videography. Available in two colour options, black or red, this camera is suitable for either gender.

Retail Price : Rs 18,000/- (Including Tax)

Sony Cyber-shot HX100V :

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V is a superzoom camera that features a 16.2MP CMOS sensor, along with a 30x optical zoom. This camera is one of the best superzooms that have been launched. It boasts of an extensive feature list that includes manual controls, where settings can be tweaked to get the best possible images. The lens type featured on this camera is Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T featuring a 30x optical zoom. This translates to a focal length of 27 - 810mm, which is really good for a camera of its size. The camera comes with a flip-out display that can be adjusted, allowing one to capture the perfect shot from either high or low angles. The camera records video at 1080p, allowing this camera to stack up as one of the top cameras to feature in this price range.

Retail Price : Rs 20,000/- (Including Tax)

Olympus SZ-30MR :

Olympus launched their stylish SZ-30MR camera, a travel compact with a 24x lens that has a focal range that can compete with superzoom cameras. With the focal length of 25 – 600mm, one can conveniently capture images of subjects that are far off, with ease, without the excess weight that comes with bridge cameras. The SZ-30MR features a 16MP CMOS sensor that shoots images at a resolution of up to 4608 x 3456. The iAuto mode is more than sufficient for capturing images in most light settings, so people who do not want to play around with any settings can just capture images on the fly. The camera also has a 3D mode, a Magic mode with 8 filters, a panorama mode and the ability to record videos in full HD 1080p.

Retail Price : Rs 20,000/- (Including Tax)

Review of Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1TB

Seagate Expansion 2.5 Inch is a plug and play portable external hard drive with 1TB storage capacity and comes in a sleek glossy finished casing. It supports USB 2.0 interface that ensures quick transfer of data. This hard drive can store upto 1,000 hours of videos, 25000 hours of digital music, 250 DVD movies of 2-hour and 320,000 numbers of digital photos. It requires no external power supply and comes integrated with Built-in power management feature for efficient energy operation. It is compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP, or Mac OSX 10.4.8 or higher.

Specification :

• Brand : Seagate
• Color : Black
• Capacity : 1 TB
• Connectivity : USB 2.0
• Dimensions : 80.01 x 17.6 x 141.29 mm
• Form Factor : Portable
• Model : ST910004EXM101-RK
• OS Supported: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X v10.4.8 or higher
• External Power Required : No
• RPM : 5400
• Size : 2.5 inch
• Warranty : 3-Year Limited Warranty
• Weight: 160 g
• Retail Price : Rs 6,200/- (Including Tax)

Most USB 2.0 external hard drives still use Mini USB connections and cables for connecting up to compatible devices and GoFlex seems no different.  Seagate sells a variety of different connection adapters for the GoFlex line. So it might start life as a USB 2.0 drive, but you can change that up for eSATA, USB 3.0 or FireWire as you need it, and changing the drive is as simple as pulling off the unwanted connector and popping on the new one.

Seagate supplies a small suite of software add-ons including backup and encryption for the drive, none of which are necessary for standard file operation. The drive itself is formatted by default as NTFS.

Performance Test :

Its read speed, tested with HDTach came out as a average 36.4Mb/s, and its write scores (with a 499Mb AVI file and 1.6GB folder) of 21.97Mb/s and 17.47Mb/s were much low for any USB 2.0 drive.

Switching out the USB 2.0 connector for a USB 3.0 connector, read speed jumped from 36.4Mb/s to 68.2Mb/s. The write speed for the AVI file went up from 21.97Mb/s to 60.12Mb/s, although the the folder of files only increased in speed from 17.47Mb/s to 27.66Mb/s.

Conclusions :

The FreeAgent Goflex HDD feels a bit heavy in the hands. It gets slightly warmer in USB 3.0 interface. We like the idea of being able to interchange the connections at will, but it's a missed opportunity for Seagate not to have made USB 3.0 the default. The drive itself certainly performs well, and for those who regularly interface with systems with better-than-USB 2.0 connections it's well worth considering. The drive performed swimmingly. Less platters and the greater aerial density seemed to help out a bit. 

Review of WD My Passport Essential SE 1TB

WB My Passport Essential SE 2.5 Inch is a simple plug and play portable external hard drive with 1TB storage capacity. It supports USB 3.0 interface which is 3 times faster than USB 2.0, thereby ensuring super speed. It features automatic and continuous backup of your files and password protection and encryption for the security of data. It is compatible with Windows and Mac OS and requires no external power supply. The Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB portable hard disk drive gives competition a very good run for money. With USB 3.0 support out-of-the-box, the strategy of Western Digital cannot be faulted. Granted, not too many existing desktops/laptops support this faster USB interface, but most current-generation PCs and new laptops do come with this feature, so it is a good thing.

Specification :

• Brand : WD
• Capacity : 1 TB
• Connectivity : USB 3.0
• Dimensions : 110 x 83 x 18 mm
• Form Factor : Portable
• Model : WDBACX0010BBL
• OS Supported : Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Mac OS X v10.5
• External Power Required : No
• Size : 2.5 inch
• Transfer Speed : 5 Gb/s (USB 3.0), 480 Mb/s (USB 2.0)
• Warranty : 3 years
• Weight : 200 g
• Retail Price : Rs 6,500/- (Including Tax)

Review : 

For the My Passport Essential SE, Western Digital bypassed the standard SATA II circuitry and built a USB connection directly into the 2.5 inch internal hard drive, making it shorter than other external hard drives. Unfortunately, the company chose to integrate a micro-USB connection instead of the more common mini-USB port found on external hard drives and digital cameras. While the connection is supposed to be more durable, the cable is also harder to replace if lost.

The My Passport Essential SE has four 250GB platters, making the drive slightly fatter than its 320GB and 500GB counterparts. However, it's still extremely portable and light. It incorporates 256-bit AES hardware encryption, but lacks any form of password recovery. The average read speed is 74.4Mb/s and the average write speed is 56.6Mb/s.

Features :

The main feature of the drive apart from it being a USB 3.0 drive lies in its utility – WD SmartWare. The drive comes bundled with this utility and it allows you to password protect your data and backup important files. On installation of the software, it will scan your system and segregate the data into System, Pictures, Music, Movies, Documents and Others. You get to see this is a graphical manner with each category represented by a colour code. Later you can backup entire categories or pick and choose folders, the next time you connect your drive and Run Backup. 

You can choose from colours such as black, red, blue, silver based on your preferences.

Design :

The WD My Passport Essential SE drive looks identical to any other My Passport series of drives. The 2.5-inch drive is housed within a glossy black plastic cover. There is only one USB 3.0 interface port on the drive. The plastic covering does bend if pressed hard onto. There is a single status indicator that glows white when the drive is on.

Performance :

The drive gives unformatted space of 931.48 GB. It gave a Read Burst speed of 142.9 MB/s which was slower than that of Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex which gives 184 MB/s. In the real world testing which involved transferring 4GB sequential and assorted files from the WD drive to the RAID array and back we got the following scores. Read / Write (sequential file) in MB/s – 78.11 / 52.23 and Read / Write (Assorted) in MB/s – 78.22 / 71.96. This performance was slower than the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5TB drive which scored higher in the sequential file transfer tests. It took 43.12 secs to open a 1 GB PSD file when used as a scratch disk.

Conclusion :

Western Digital includes some excellent utilities with its My Passport Essential external hard drive. When compared to other portable external hard drives, the Western Digital My Passport SE seems a little sluggish when writing small files. However, that is still only a relative term since the speed of all external hard drives that connect to the PC over USB 2.0 are limited by the port itself. The Seagate GoFlex 1TB Portable uses a 5400rpm hard drive while My Passport Essential SE has 5200rpm as result, it give poor transfer times of data than other portable drives.

Pricing details of other capacities of WD Portable Harddisk :

• My Passport Essential 500 GB - Rs 4,400/-
• My Passport Essential SE 750 GB -  Rs 5,500/-
• My Passport Essential SE 750 1 TB -  Rs 6,500/-
• My Book Essential  1 TB – R. 5,000/-
• My Book Essential  2 TB – Rs 7,500/-
• My Book Essential  3 TB – Rs 11,000/-

Asus Transformer Pad Prime lunched in India

Asus has recently changed the name of its series of tablets, which was known as Eeepad Transformer. These will be known as “Asus Transformer Pad,” which means that the Prime will be called Asus Transformer Pad Prime.

Even though the Transformer Pad Prime will be delivered with Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system at launch, Asus confirmed that customers will receive the Ice Cream Sandwich update soon.

Asus will only launch the 64Gb model in India, but the 32Gb might be released in the country as well, at a later date. When it becomes popular among Indian customers, Asus will try to drop the price of the 64GB version too. 

The Transformer Pad Prime comes with an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor clocked at 1.3 Ghz, and packs 1GB of RAM and 64Gb of internal memory. The slate boasts an impressive 8-megapixel camera on the back side, as well as a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats.

The 10.1-inch LED backlit with Super IPS+ (1280 x 800 pixels) resolution features Corning Gorilla Glass coating. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity is included as well, along with HDMI and microUSB ports.

The first tablet to be equipped with a quad-core processor, Asus Transformer Prime has just been officially introduced in India. The slate will soon be available for purchase for a price of Rs 50,000.

For the time being, the tablet will be shipped along with the keyboard dock, but it might be available without this dock at a lower price. 

Software-wise, the tablet comes bundled with a slew of applications and services, including Asus launcher, Asus WebStorage, Polaris Office, File manager, SuperNote, App Backup and TegraZone.

Specification :

• Model No - Asus Transformer Pad Prime
• Operating System - Android 3.2 Honeycomb (Upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich) 
• Processor - Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-Core   ( 1.3 GHz)
• Memory -  1 GB 
• HDD - 64 GB 
• Screen Size -  10.1-inch LED backlit with Super IPS 
• Maximum Display Resolution (dpi) - 1280 x 800 pixels with Corning Gorilla Glass 
• Wireless LAN - 802.11 b/g/n Standard Wireless LAN
• Bluetooth - Yes
• Input Devices - Keyboard Dock
• Ports - HDMI and microUSB ports
• Retail Price - Rs 50000/- (Including Tax)