The Toshiba P105 front is thin and thickens towards the rear where the bulk of the components such as hard drive, CPU, GPU, and respective heatsink/fans are located. This gives it the illusion that it’s thinner than it actually is, which is great. The top cover features an Onyx Blue metallic look that’s very stylish I must say. From a distance it may appear black. The downside to the shiny lid is that it will [...]

Gateway bills this machine as a home entertainment notebook but they’re over-egging it a little, as you won’t really find anything other than the inclusion of Windows XP Media Centre Edition installed to back this claim up. No TV tuner, no remote control and there is also no DVI out port for connecting to digital displays, but analogue connections are possible via VGA out and S Video ports. The graphics are integrated so you can’t [...]

The W5fe’s primary 12.1 inch widescreen display, featuring a standard 1280 x 800 native resolution, delivers bright, crisp images and passable DVD video quality. There’s enough screen real estate for most productivity tasks, including editing documents side by side and working in multiple windows. The SideShow concept shows promise. The secondary display, with a 320 x 240 resolution, is more than adequate for checking your calendar, reading e-mail (Windows Mail only, a new feature that [...]

The Toshiba Satellite U200 series notebook is a consumer version of their Tecra M6 series. This model is also sold under the U205 nomenclature in the USA. The model that is under review is a Canadian model that was pre-built and specified by Toshiba Canada. Unfortunately, Toshiba does not offer a customized to order (CTO) option for us. Through my research the only difference between the M6 and U200/U205 series is the fact that the [...]

A quick look at the five-pound CF-19 reveals that it is made for tough environments. The industrial-design magnesium-alloy top panel with black hard rubber bumpers looks like it yearns for a dusty, dirty factory or warehouse floor. All of the ports on the back and sides are protected behind hinged plastic doors. An ingeniously placed clasp on the front panel can clamp down the screen in either Tablet or notebook mode and can be hidden [...]

The case is very rigid. It is made from Magnesium Alloy which is black with a roughened finish and is very pleasant to touch and affords good grip while carrying. All joints on the case meet flush with no gaps and joints do not have relative movement at all no matter how the notebook is lifted. Every door and compartment, even the optical drive sits securely in its location and with no play whatsoever. There [...]

We have to admit that we like Acer notebooks. They have a no frills approach to their design but what they lack in overall looks they make up for in value for money and general quality. Take the Aspire 9423WSMi, the build quality is robust and solid and you get the feeling that the 3.5kg will certainly stand up to the occasional knock. Pre-loaded with Windows Media Centre, this machine could quite easily be used [...]

The Fujitsu P7230 is available in either all black or white, personally I like the all black look of the review model that I have. Mostly because I believe it hides dirt better and looks somewhat more professional, but I like the fact Fujitsu has the choice as obviously we each have our reasons and preferences when it comes to color choice. Outside of color the look is great. While there’s nothing ground-breaking regarding looks, [...]

Mac OS X runs on a different file system (HFS, as opposed to Window’s NTFS) that automatically defragments and optimizes itself. So if you’re a Mac user, chances are you would never need to defragment your hard disk, thanks to Apple. However fragmentation is only one of the many problems we face regarding system optimization.Mac OS X is quite different from Windows. Installing programs for instance, only requires a simple drag-and-drop of the application from [...]

Here is a quick tutorial on how to download files from Rapidshare simultaneously using Firefox. It is a simple operation; one must use a different proxy per download. Although it seems impossible to do on Internet Explorer, it is extremely simple with Firefox. Although this tip works, the downloads do slow down significantly when one downloads more than two files. Here are the quick steps: Using the FireFox browser, download and install the SwitchProxy plug-in [...]