You might know that I’m looking for a PDA or similar device that will allow me to comfortably check and write emails, write blog posts and visit websites while on the road. I do have a Toshiba notebook but I don’t like to use it on the road. It is fine in hotels and on conventions where I can use it stationary but it really is to big to work comfortably with while walking around.

A friend of mine told me about the Asus EEE PC which is a subnotebook with an 7 inch screen, a 900 Mhz Intel Celeron M cpu, 512 Megabyte of Ram and a 4 Gigabyte Solid State Disk. This is not a notebook that you can use to play games or big applications but it could be ideal for my situation for several reasons.

It comes with a keyboard which is definitely a plus over those PDAs that I looked at. Sure there are external keyboards for those PDAs but it would mean that I would have to carry that around as well. A 7 inch screen is much nicer than the screens that the PDAs use.

continue reading "Asus EEE PC"

Nec announced the Lavie C series of notebooks recently which are basically standard notebooks with one features that makes them stick out from the rest. The new feature is called ‘Face Pass’ which is a biometric system that uses face recognition instead of passwords to grant access to the notebook.

This surely sounds nice because it increases user-friendliness. Most users do not like passwords at all because they have to memorize them to make them effective. With face recognition this would not be a problem anymore because they would only have to smile into the webcam to start the operating system of their notebook.

It remains to be seen how secure the system is. It would not be a great system if someone would for instance get access by using a high quality picture of the person who uses his face to access the notebook. I don’t think that this technology will become mainstream one day.

continue reading "Nec replaces passwords with face recognition"

I bought a Toshiba Notebook soon after Windows Vista was released and was wondering about the huge battery drain whenever I was using the Notebook without a power source. The battery drain is apparently caused by the Aero theme and the power settings for the wireless adapter. I was not even sure at the beginning if I was running Windows Aero or just a different interface but soon found out that the Aero interface, one of the few new things in Windows Vista, was active and draining battery life like crazy. I decided to disable the Aero interface because I could not see the use of it after all. Sure, it offers some nice looking effects but that is not the main purpose that I’m using the notebook after all.

To disable the Aero theme do the following:

Right-click on your desktop and select Personalize from the menu. Choose Windows Color and Appearance and click on Open Classic Appearance Properties for more color options. Select a different theme from the list (non Aero) and click on Apply.

continue reading "Extend Windows Vista Battery Live for Notebooks"

I always thought that the Windows Vista sidebar was nice to look at but not very useful. It uses system resources to display a clock or some other gadgets that have pretty much no value at all in my daily routine. I did not want to just remove the sidebar without researching if there were gadgets that were actually that useful that I decided to keep the sidebar and use at least some of the gadgets all the time. Space is limited and I run some all of the time and some only if I need that information.

While browsing the Windows Live Gallery website I noticed that the best rated gadgets hat only a rating of 3 stars out of 5 possilbe which is a little bit strange to say the least. I’m using the Ebay sidebar tool, the Gmail gadget, the run gadget and the app launcher all the time while I use the battery monitor only if I’m using the notebook on the road.

continue reading "6 Vista Sidebar Gadgets that are useful"