Samsung Galaxy S2 US Release on Sprint

Pakar Iklan - Samsung Galaxy S2 US Release on Sprint : Earlier today we gave news of a price and plans roundup for the Samsung Galaxy S2 (S II) Android smartphone, once again noting that there had still been no U.S release. We know how many of our U.S. readers are eager to get their hands on the Galaxy S2 and we have news of a rumor of a U.S. release on Sprint. The Galaxy S2 for Sprint has been retitled the Within, and is due for release in July.

Long ago when we first spoke of a U.S. release for the Galaxy S2 the indications were that AT&T would be the first carrier to get this phone of the moment in the States, and although that’s still possible, at least we have some further news of release. We also previously gave you the names for the Galaxy S2 on various U.S. carriers and if you want to find out more you may find our Galaxy S2 review roundup helpful, or alternatively we also gave details of how to get an unlocked Galaxy S2 for the U.S.

This impressive handset has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a big plus point in reviews was its excellent 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display. Apart from some reports of a screen issue there has been very little negative press about the Galaxy S2 and an awful lot of positive press. Over on Android Spin, Bryce Walter brings us the news of the Galaxy Within release on Sprint from an “anonymous Sprint inside source,” who confirmed that it would see a release on Sprint in late July. Besides that no precise date was given but apparently a rep has tipped a price of around $350, that’s before a mail-in rebate.

Meanwhile Raphael Labuguen of Pop Herald adds a little more to this release rumor on Sprint by saying that the changes for the Sprint version of the Galaxy S2, the Within, will be CDMA technology and also some Sprint apps as an addition. Labuguen also points out that this means the HTC Sensation 4G on T-Mobile looks likely to have at least a month on sale with no Galaxy S2 competition, that’s some headstart.

Are you waiting for the Galaxy S2 to be launched in the U.S.? Maybe you’re a Sprint customer who could be getting this handset first? Let us know your thoughts by sending us your comments.

Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530, Prices, Specs Features Performance

Pakar Iklan - Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530, Prices, Specs Features Performance : The Tecra R850 comes dressed in business black. It features a plastic chassis, but instead of using an ordinary ABS plastic enclosure, Toshiba developed a high-resin plastic for the case, which it calls a “fiberglass reinforced chassis,” that is thin and durable. On many plastic laptops, particularly larger models like this one, where there are large expanses of plastic, worrisome flex is often felt on the lid and keyboard deck. But the Tecra R850’s case feels very rigid. It’s also textured in a corduroy pattern on the lid and wrist rest, giving the laptop a unique yet still boardroom-friendly look.

Features Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530

The Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530 is based on a chip from Intel’s second-generation (Sandy Bridge) Core processors, the 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M. Other core specs include 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory and a 320GB hard drive, standard fare for a business laptop. Breaking from the basic business mold are the Tecra R850’s graphics; instead of integrated Intel graphics, the laptop features a low-end discrete graphics card, the AMD Radeon HD 6450, which brings along 1GB of dedicated video memory.

As a Toshiba business laptop, the Tecra R850 includes the company’s EasyGuard technology to help you stay protected, secure, and connected. Protection comes in the form of a spill-resistant keyboard and shock absorbers on the hard drive and display to protect those components against drops. The hard drive also features 3D sensors that can sense a rapid increase in speed and park the drive heads before impact to keep them from scratching the platter. Security features include TPM encryption and the aforementioned fingerprint reader. Connectivity is aided by the placement of the Wi-Fi antenna; Toshiba incorporates two antenna on the top of the display to increase signal strength.

The laptop also features a docking connector on the bottom, making it easy to snap the Tecra R850 into a docking station for those days when you’re not on the road but in the office. The docking station and power adapter are the same across all Tecra R840 and R850 models as well as Portégé R830 models, making it easy for large organizations to share port replicators and power cords across the various Toshiba laptops it has deployed.

Performance Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530
The Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530’s Core i5-2520M CPU is clocked at 2.5GHz, but it can scale up to 3.2GHz using Intel’s Turbo Boost feature. It also features Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology, which allows the two cores to function as four virtual cores. In labs testing, the Tecra R850-S8530 acquitted itself quite well. It scored 7,705 on PCMark Vantage, which is a good measure of a system’s overall performance. The Core i7–based HP EliteBook 8560p topped the Tecra R850 with a score of 8,487 on the same test, but the EliteBook also costs more at $1,499.

Just for your reference, the EliteBook is a workstation, so we expect especially good performance out of it. We’re choosing it for comparison because it’s the only business notebook with a Sandy Bridge processor we’ve tested, since Sandy Bridge is still relatively new. So we don’t expect the Tecra to surpass the EliteBook in performance; in fact, overall, it performs exactly as it should for its processor and price. If you’d like another point of comparison, you can read our review of the $969 Dell XPS 15, which also uses a second-generation Core i5 processor, albeit at a slower clock speed of 2.3GHz.

On Cinebench 10, which isolates the CPU while taxing all of its cores, the Tecra R850-S8530 topped the 10,000 mark with a score of 10,668. That’s less than 500 points below the HP EliteBook 8560p’s score of 11,158 and more than 1,000 points above the Dell XPS 15’s score of 9,223.

The Tecra R850-S8530 did very on our two real-world media-encoding tests—iTunes in particular. On our Windows Media Encoder test, it converted a standard 3-minute-and-15-second video clip to DVD-quality format in 3 minutes 14 seconds, which was just 31 seconds slower than the HP EliteBook 8560p. On our iTunes conversion test, the Tecra R850-S8530 took 2 minutes 19 seconds to convert 11 standard MP3 files to AAC format, which was only 8 seconds slower than the EliteBook 8560p. By comparison, the XPS 15 completed these tests in 3:53 and 3:05, respectively.

The Tecra R850-S8530 features a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics processor, which allows for a smidge of gaming and, more importantly for its target audience, a graphics boost for creative business tasks. Also, for serious multi-taskers, the Radeon HD 6450 supports up to four displays (the laptop's display plus three others through a port replicator).

To put this GPU to the test, we use 3DMark06, a synthetic DirectX 9 gaming benchmark, the Tecra R850-S8530’s score of 4,251 at its native resolution only slightly trailed the 4,283 that the EliteBook 8560p posted, though the EliteBook’s resolution of 1,600x900 is higher than the Tecra R850’s resolution of 1,366x768. For that reason, we always run this test at 1,024x768, too, and here the difference was more pronounced, with the Tecra earning 4,748 and the EliteBook earning 5,500. The EliteBook uses a higher-end AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 1GB of video memory.

We ran two 3D games, and at its native resolution, the Tecra R850-S8530 managed only 8.35 frames per second (fps) on Just Cause 2 and 18fps on Company of Heroes, an older game. When we lowered the resolution to 1,024x768 and turned off anti-aliasing, it rose to a playable 28.3fps with Company of Heroes. Stick to older games at lower resolutions with image settings dialed down, and the Tecra R850-S8530 will provide a gaming outlet for when the workday is through.

Using a standard six-cell battery, the Tecra R850-S8530 ran for an impressive 4 hours 34 minutes on our demanding DVD battery-rundown test, in which we play a DVD repeatedly until the battery dies. That outlasted the respectable 3:54 that the HP EliteBook 8560p scored on the test as well as the 3:38 from the Dell XPS 15.

Specs Toshiba Tecra R850-S8530
Processor: 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2520M (up to 3.2GHz, overclocked)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Optical Drive : DVD±RW SuperMulti
Screen: 15.6 inches (1,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6450 (1GB)
Weight: 5.4 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.2x14.9x9.9 inches
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)

New Epson Stylus SX425W multifunction printer scanner

Pakar Iklan - New Epson Stylus SX425W multifunction printer-scanner, Epson Stylus SX425W prices : We looked at Epson's SX525WD printer-scanner recently (see sidebar), and now it's the turn of the cheaper SX425W. Both can print, scan and copy, and connect to a computer over USB or a wireless network.

But the D in the earlier model's name indicates duplex or double-sided printing, which this cannot do. Otherwise it's slower and quality isn't as high: the SX425W prints fewer droplets of ink per square inch than the Epson Stylus SX425W .

It has Epson's standard rear-feeding paper tray holding, in theory, 120 sheets of plain paper, but we found that any more than 40 sheets caused it to confusingly display ‘Paper out. Load paper' on its screen.

Paper feeds out at the front and as with the 525 there's no separate input tray for photo paper. Both input and output trays telescope out so they can be folded away to save space when the printer isn't in use but can be unfolded to catch printed sheets.

The four ink cartridges slot in by lifting the whole scanner section, but it doesn't angle up very far, so we had to lean in uncomfortably to fit them. The screen was small but useful and colourful, with simple buttons around it for various functions. A single memory card slot takes SD, XD and Memory Stick Pro cards for direct printing of photos without a computer.

Copies came out well with good contrast between light and dark, and a colour A4 page took just under a minute. Scans were likewise impressive, with basic but decent scanning software supplied. If you have a photo-editing or OCR program installed you can scan straight to that instead.

Text was quick to print in draft mode, which was faint but usable for proof-reading: it produced the first page in under nine seconds, working out at 13 pages per minute (ppm) overall. In the ‘best' text mode it took 12 seconds for the first page and managed 5ppm.

In this mode there was a little ink bleed, but text looked respectable. A colour A4 photo at ‘best photo' quality took a sluggish nine minutes and 16 seconds and looked OK but not up to the standards of most £100 printers.

We also found that when we had a stack of paper in the input holder, even the slightest misalignment (if they weren't perfectly straight in the tray) would cause the printer to stop and protest about a paper jam. Correcting this entailed simply pulling the sheets undamaged out of the top of the tray but it was annoying.

In all, this cheap printer-scanner does the job, but between the poor paper handling, slow photo prints and relatively poor photo print quality, we'd recommend the more expensive SX525WD instead.

Sony Details Free PS3, PSP Games

Pakar Iklan - Sony Details Free PS3, PSP Games : Sony has revealed which games it will give away in its “Welcome Back” package as compensation for the last four weeks of PlayStation Network downtime.

Some elements of the service, including streaming media and online gameplay, were restored this weekend, while the PlayStation Store is due to open once again for business toward the end of May. When those digital doors reopen, gamers on PlayStation 3 and PSP will get to pick a handful of titles to download and keep.

On PS3, there’s patchwork creation station LittleBigPlanet, open-world superhero game inFamous, futuristic antigravity racer Wipeout HD and its Fury expansion pack, mini-adventure Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty and zombie blaster Dead Nation.

You’ll get to download two of these for free from the PlayStation Store, unless you’re in Germany, where inFamous and Dead Nation are replaced with Super Stardust HD and Hustle Kings.

For handheld console PSP, your selection is a little more limited. The four-game selection offers LittleBigPlanet, racetrack-builder ModNation Racers, cops-and-robbers sim Pursuit Force and top-down shooter Killzone Liberation.

Again, you’ll get to pick two games you fancy and, again, Germany’s stringent rating rules mean gamers in that country don’t get the violent titles (Pursuit Force and Killzone are dropped in favor of Everybody’s Golf 2 and Buzz Junior Jungle Party).

The firm will also give gamers 30 free days of its PlayStation Plus membership, and 60 free days to existing subscribers, which gives you bonus features like free and discounted games, automatic downloads and cloud storage for save files.

Existing Music Unlimited subscribers will be given 30 days’ free subscription, and there will be some gratis virtual doodads in PlayStation Home.

To account for the missed PlayStation Store updates — gamers missed out on three regularly scheduled content dumps — Sony will restock the shop “multiple times” per week to get everyone caught up.

By then, the entire service will be back to business as usual. Except in Japan, where the country’s government is blocking the service’s relaunch until Sony can prove it has significantly stepped-up the network’s security.

What do you think? Has Sony done enough to compensate you for lost Call of Duty hours, or are you disappointed with the offering? Generosity, good PR or damage control? Please let us know your views in the comments below.