Name: Kunal, aka "Kunal"

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Review of Sony Vaio Eco VPC-W212AX Netbook

February 9th, 2010

In today’s world eco-friendly tech is something that has become one of the extensively product promotion strategies for any and all companies. And rightly so, with the amount of electronic waste being generated every year, disposal is becoming a huge problem. This realization has finally dawned on companies and joining the green band-wagon today is none other than Sony with the Sony Vaio Eco VPC-W212AX. Now although this is the same Vaio W laptop, there are quite a few eco-friendly changes done by the Japanese Giant.



Major Features Include:

Look & Feel: The overall structure of this Netbook is strong. The new and unconventional shiny white exterior with silvery-green color scheme around the interior only adds to its charm. But this version of the Vaio looses out when it comes to the keyboard. The keys are a pain to be used everyday. The wide margins of the Vaio W have not been used to expand the keys and many of them such as the Tab key, Function keys, Right Shift keys are especially small and hard to locate for those habituated to touch-typing.

Processor: The new Intel Atom N450 processor is pretty fast and gets the job done very well for a Netbook. But at the price it is being offered for, you might want to look at other cheaper options. That is only if you choose to ignore the eco-friendly factors of this one. The performance of these Netbooks is seriously limited to web-browsing and basic media functions. Everything else takes a toll on them.

Display & Graphics: The graphics and video viewing is truly sad in the W212AX. HD videos get very choppy when viewed in full-screen resolution. This is thanks to the N450 processor. Lack of HDMI-out is also an issue. Though I must add, the Netflix movies are quite viewable in full-screen. Also, the screen resolution and has been improved from the earlier 1024X1600 a better 1366×768, which is a welcome change. And that too without compromising on the text and icon sizes.

Sound: The sound quality of the Vaio W is truly bad and even when the speakers are on full-blast, they can barely be heard in an average living room. Headphones thus become mandatory.

Add-on software: Sony has bundled its standard Media Plus software meant for playing and organizing media files. This application is seen on Sony PS3’s and is easy-to-use.

Network Connectivity: The Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth features are unique to the Vaio W and are not seen in lower priced Netbooks.

Other Features: The Operating System provided is Windows 7 Starter Edition. This is a serious shortcoming as most others come with the Premium Edition. But this is somewhat compensated by the fact that the new Vaio comes with a bigger 250 gig hard disk replacing the earlier 160GB one.

What’s New?

Keeping aside all the negative sides of it, the Sony Vaio Eco VPC-W212AX comes with many new features that make it different from others. Here are some of the features that are new in this particular model;

• Chassis: The chassis of this model is manufactured out of 20% recycled CD/DVD cases, which is indeed a new concept.
• Carrying Case: The carrying case is manufactured out of recycled PET plastic soda bottles, sounds really amazing.
• Delivery Case/Laptop Case: No cardboard boxes are used in this case . Instead free shrink-wrapped laptop case!
• User Manual: Fully Digitized user manual comes with the device along with a single quick-start pamphlet in case.

Main Technical Specifications At A Glance:

Processor:	Intel Atom N450, 1.6GHz
Memory	1GB DDR2 (800MHz)
Hard Disk	250GB, 5,400 rpm
Graphics	Intel GMA 3150
Chipset	NM10
Operating System (OS)	Windows 7 Starter Edition
Dimensions (WD)Height	10.5 x 7.0 inches1.0-2.0 inches
Screen	10.1 inches
Weight (With/Without  Power Adapter)	3.3/2.8 Pounds
Video/Audio	VGA-out/ Speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Other Jacks/Slots	3 USB 2.0, SD card reader, memory stick reader
Expandability	None
Optical Drive	None
Network Connectivity	Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Price (As reviewed)	$480

The Vaio W212AX stands out in terms of battery-consumption keeping in line with its eco-friendliness. The annual electricity cost is just around $2.6! Although the New Eco-friendly Vaio W is priced $20 less than its predecessor, there are many cheaper options available in the market. The ASUS EeePC 1201N comes with a Dual core processor and NVIDIA Ion Integrated Graphics for nearly the same price.

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Review of ZBang.it

December 29th, 2009

Zbang.it is a new free platform that simplifies & integrates a large plethora of platforms and programs ranging from Social Networking Websites like Facebook & Twitter to online Remote Cloud Storage Services like Zoho & Google Docs. Also, it allows multiple reply methods for integration of different platforms. This means, when the user receives a mail on yahoo, he can decide whether to reply on Facebook, Gmail or twitter, without navigating to that particular website.

The document and music & video transfer application allows users to send the files in mail attachments and on the desktop to be sent to other mail inboxes or to upload them to Remote Cloud Storage services like or Drop.io or Google Docs.


The (+) Points

Hassle-Free User-Friendly

The overall window, and icons arte very user friendly and anyone with basic knowledge of mailing & internet can easily use the program. What’s more the video tour on the Zbang website (www.Zbang.it) is very helpful to understand the basic of the software.

Small Electronic Footprint means High Portability & Scalability

Thanks to the small Metadata (electronic foot print) size of Zbang, one can store all the links be either on the desktop or even on a USB flash drive/pen drive, making the application truly portable

The (-) Points

No SMS Integration Yet

If you are on the move a lot and don’t have a cell phone with packet data support, then this software is not for you as it does not have SMS support as of now. Although Zbang does plan to introduce it soon, there is no confirmed date announced for the same

No support for Orkut, MySpace and other websites.

Although the makers of Zbang have done a commendable job by making such a platform, it’s still in a very nascent stage and it only has support for Facebook and Twitter as of now.

Summing it up

Overall, Zbang is a truly innovative & revolutionary platform and the best part is that it’s Free. The first one that integrates so many platforms into one simplified and easy-to-use application; there are still small issues that need to be resolved. Though on a scale of 1 to 5 I’d give it 4.7.

So the next time you need to upload a file to Google Docs or chat with another on Facebook, don’t waste time flipping through all the web pages, Just ZBANG IT!

 



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