Notebook Reviews

When it was time to go wireless, this was the card I bought for one main reason, it is compatible with both A and B systems. At the time of purchase (some time in late 2002) B was the dominant and widely avaialble protocol. However, A was on it's way out with the promise of a much higher transfer speed and frequency.

The bonus of a higher speed is obvious...more data, less time. The bonus of a higher frequency is less obvious. B systems operate on a 2.4 GHz frequency while A systems work off of 5.4 GHz. The problem with B networks is that many other wireless devices, such as chordless phones, use this same frequency. This sometimes causes interference and therefore, can prevent the system from working. At this point in time, there are very few devices running at 5.4 GHz so there is a less crowded area.

Keep in mind that A and B systems are NOT compatible. That's what makes this card so great, it can use both. You do not need to carry around an A card and B card anymore. Just this one.

In terms of setup, it was a snap. Pre-install some drivers, restart your computer, insert the card and everything is good to go. This was the install process for Windows XP which is the simplest one, but flawless none the less.

Please note that another standard is also available. The G system is supposed to be compatible with B systems and capable of transferring data at the same speed as A systems. However, they are also operating on 2.4 GHz so the same interference problems exist.

This is all information that you as a buyer have to take into consideration. Figure out which protocol works best for you, and get a compatible card.

I bought this card to replace a Netgear 802.11B card (which also works well, but only in B mode). Software loaded easily, card seems to work well, has better sensitivity (able to pick up distant APs) than the Netgear card.

I just picked up a 12" iBook and needed a bag more suited to carrying a laptop. This bag is perfect. My iBook slides into the laptop pouch perfectly. Very snug and completely surrounded by padding. (Larger laptops can fit by sliding in edge-first with part of the laptop sticking up out of the pouch.) The main compartment is big enough to accommodate my flatbed scanner (the relatively small Canon Lide) next to the laptop and there's still an entire section of the bag left to carry peripherals. I can fit my entire computer setup in this bag with room to spare.

There are plenty of internal and external pockets to store cords, power supplies, mouse, cell phone, PDA, etc. There's plenty of padding on the "user" side of the backpack and even extra strips of mesh padding added on either side of the spine. Very comfortable. For moving around the house/office, there's a large, padded handle on the top of the bag which is a nice touch.

All in all, a great bargain.

i don't know how many backpacks and satchels i've gone through since purchasing a laptop. the LOWEPRO EX1300 is the best thing i've come across. smart pockets, awesome construction and very comfortable. what more do you need? a good price of course! compared to the higher priced bags out there, this backpack smoke them in the dust. a very good and wise investment. you won't be disappointed!

For the money, this is the best computer case available. You could spend more, but you won't get any additional features. It's not leather, but who needs leather anyway?

It's not overly thick, yet there's plenty of space for accessories. The padded shoulder strap is the best for distributing the weight.

I've tried many cases over the past 15 years, but Port must have listened to us road warriors, because this case is simply the best.

This case is great. It is simply the sturdiest, most user friendly case with the best erogonomic straps around. I don't know why, but their shoulder strap lightens even the heaviest of loads. It is tough, but it is truly the most comfortable case around. No straps that dig into your shoulder here! The soft neoprin shoulder strap is the most comfortable one I have used. I use it daily and it is always jammed packed with files, it works great. Trust me I have tried them all, this is the best!!...

Spent time looking at http://www.DPReview.com and this card was rated at the top of consumer flash cards along with Viking's "high speed" cards. As shown in the technical details, it is guaranteed to 26x write speed, but it actually benchmarks higher on the DPReview in a variety of read/write tests. There are professional compactflash cards on the market that offer 40 and 50x write speeds but they are generally cost prohibitive. For my Canon S230, I get excellent speed and much longer battery life than the PNY card i originally used. The only slow-down I experienced was with movie mode, it took about 10 seconds to write a 640x480 movie to the card. And with sequential shoooting (~2 pictures/sec) the camera would have to recover after 10 pictures (another 10 second delay).

I have a Canon Powershot G3 & this card works MUCH faster than the included 32MB card. I would recommend this card, especially since it helps extend battery life.

Yes, there are cheaper SD cards. But read their fine print: they (the cheaper ones) are slow - and often unreliable. Don't cripple your investment in a digital camera by going cheap on the SD memory card.

Get this one. It rocks.

WOW! SD just keeps getting better. I heard the capacity will be 1GB this year and it works in everything from my Palm to my HP printer to my Panasonic camera! And the SDIO stuff they were showing at CES was cool!

Executive summary: 1.44 floppies are just not cutting it. I work with clients and don't want to lug around a CD burner to move files from my laptop to/from their network. I also don't always want to lug my laptop home. Enter Simpletech's Bonzai USB mini drive. It is awesome. If you are looking for high capacity and expandable computer storage in a small, portable, USB-based, no install hassle package, buy the Bonzai USB mini-drive now.

A few details . . .

Insert it into a USB port, wait about 2 seconds and WIN2K and WinXP (home and professional) pop up an acknowledgement of a new removable disk that it found. You use the USB drive just like a hard drive (drag and drop, etc.).

Here are some factoids I wish the product description (or picture) would have told me:
1) A 4 foot USB extension cable is included, which in my book eliminates any negative dealing with the fact that the USB ports on some computers are close together or very tight. (BTW I have a Compaq Presario with 2 USB's on the front and although it is tight the Bonzai works fine there without the extension, even with my mouse plugged in right beside it). Having to carrying a small cable is just not that big of deal folks.
2) It is very small. 2 1/2" long including the USB plug. 1 1/4" wide. 1/2" deep.
3) It is very light. About the weight of one Oreo Double Stuff cookie :)
4) The USB plug has a cap.
5) The case is heavy plastic.
6) A lanyard (i.e big shoestring looking thing that goes around your neck like a Referee's whistle) is included.
7) I have a 60MB zip file on my Bonzai right now which unzips faster than those on my hard drive. Did I mention the Bonzai is fast?
8) The whole thing seems solid and well made.

BTW, a guy I work with and I did some research. We both concluded that Bonzai is the answer to our goal of a slick way to quickly move files between computers, with zero install requirements (at least on Win2K and WinXP). He is very envious of me right now since he opted for the Sandisk Cruzer instead of the Bonzai (because Best Buy didn't have the Bonzai). I picked Bonzai and was delighted to find that amazon.com has it. The Cruzer is about 4-5 times bigger, and doesn't feel nearly as solid in my view.

I opted for the 128MB model instead of the 256MB or 512MB models for two simple reasons: 1) 128MB is enough for me for now (equal to 88 diskettes), 2) the price of Secure Disk (SD) is bound to keep tumbling so I'll pick up a 256 and/or 512 once the 1GB (and beyond) SD's come out and drive down their cost of their little brother and sister :)

Enjoy your Bonzai!

Executive summary: 1.44 floppies are just not cutting it. I work with clients and don't want to lug around a CD burner to move files from my laptop to/from their network. I also don't always want to lug my laptop home. Enter Simpletech's Bonzai USB mini drive. It is awesome. If you are looking for high capacity and expandable computer storage in a small, portable, USB-based, no install hassle package, buy the Bonzai USB mini-drive now.

A few details . . .

Insert it into a USB port, wait about 2 seconds and WIN2K and WinXP (home and professional) pop up an acknowledgement of a new removable disk that it found. You use the USB drive just like a hard drive (drag and drop, etc.).

Here are some factoids I wish the product description (or picture) would have told me:
1) A 4 foot USB extension cable is included, which in my book eliminates any negative dealing with the fact that the USB ports on some computers are close together or very tight. (BTW I have a Compaq Presario with 2 USB's on the front and although it is tight the Bonzai works fine there without the extension, even with my mouse plugged in right beside it). Having to carrying a small cable is just not that big of deal folks.
2) It is very small. 2 1/2" long including the USB plug. 1 1/4" wide. 1/2" deep.
3) It is very light. About the weight of one Oreo Double Stuff cookie :)
4) The USB plug has a cap.
5) The case is heavy plastic.
6) A lanyard (i.e big shoestring looking thing that goes around your neck like a Referee's whistle) is included.
7) I have a 60MB zip file on my Bonzai right now which unzips faster than those on my hard drive. Did I mention the Bonzai is fast?
8) The whole thing seems solid and well made.

BTW, a guy I work with and I did some research. We both concluded that Bonzai is the answer to our goal of a slick way to quickly move files between computers, with zero install requirements (at least on Win2K and WinXP). He is very envious of me right now since he opted for the Sandisk Cruzer instead of the Bonzai (because Best Buy didn't have the Bonzai). I picked Bonzai and was delighted to find that amazon.com has it. The Cruzer is about 4-5 times bigger, and doesn't feel nearly as solid in my view.

I opted for the 128MB model instead of the 256MB or 512MB models for two simple reasons: 1) 128MB is enough for me for now (equal to 88 diskettes), 2) the price of Secure Disk (SD) is bound to keep tumbling so I'll pick up a 256 and/or 512 once the 1GB (and beyond) SD's come out and drive down their cost of their little brother and sister :)

Enjoy your Bonzai!

The perfect stick of SODIMM for a wonderful price. I bought two of these and now my laptop is screaming fast with 1 GB of RAM. If you haven't purchased a RAM upgrade for your Toshiba, what are you waiting for? This is a night and day difference!

This RAM is wonderful! I would recommend it highly for your Toshiba notebook.

Since December 2002, I have expanded my hobby list with PHOTOGRAPHY. I have to admit, that the manual IS very USEFUL, because of all the options the camera has to offer. After we mastered all the features with my husband, we were absolutely amazed with the ability of our camera. (All kind of settings are possible!)4 megapixels are ENOUGH to achieve a crispy clear pictures of any size. And frankly, there is still more to master! ENJOY!

This is a nice leather case that fits my Sony DSC-S75 camera perfect. What is really nice is you can use the strap and carry the case over your shoulder or use the belt clip. It has a seperate pocket for the memory sticks and any other small items you may want to carry. The only limitation is that if you have extra lens for your camera there is no place to carry them.

To bring home the first notebook of my life, I have looked at Dell I 8200, IBM thinkpads A31, Compaqs and Gateways and I ended up getting VAIO GRX 670. ... after rebates there are not too many notebooks out there with a 16.1 inch display and DVD RW drive. The VAIO looks cool and display is awesome for watching movies or playing games. For running applications as a programmer there is plenty of oomph provided with P4-M 2G processor and 512 MB ram. Another important thing is we can upgrade this to 1GB RAM if it is not good enough for running a memory intensive application such as an Application Server for example. The only negative point is the video card is not the latest ATI 9000 but it has the older leader ATI 7500 with 32 MB which should meet all the video demands unless you are a real intensive gamer who plays games that are written using the features enhanced by the ATI 9000 card which costs another 140 dollars more.

I have heard that SONY's warranty does not cover the screen so to be on the safe side I have bought the extended warranty. By the way Sony has provided a lot of cool software for buring DVD's and making movies and the memory stick is a plus if you own other SONY products. The performance has been great when watching a movie or running multiple applications simultaneously. I do not see any need to ugprade the memory to 1GB.

Overall there are so many choices out there but I could not find one that has everything I am looking for in the price range. In the end after looking at this VAIO I I have fallen for it :-) I think this is a good long term desktop replacement.

I've had this machine since Saturday and I can't keep my hands off of it. This is a truly amazing laptop with the combination of beautiful screen, 2 gigahertz P4 processor and writable DVD drive. I have had various Sony desktops in the past, but this is my first laptop. The screen is beautiful, very bright and sharp. I was looking for a machine to play around with making DVDs of MPEGs from my digital camera and analog VHS tapes that I have all over the place. The new Sony Click-to-DVD software is very easy and reliable. My only negative comment on it is that it hides some of the statistics and error results from you. If there is a problem, it doesn't tell you much, although I realize that it is meant to be very consumer friendly and part of this depends on NOT telling the user all the technical details of codec used etc. The new Toshiba DVD-RW drive is a bit slower than other DVD writers out there (only 1x write speed for DVD compared to 2.4 for most others and 4x for the newest ones), but, it is the only game in town for a laptop machine. It too, is very reliable. I have sucessfully burned data and DVD-video onto Memorex DVD-RW, Memorex DVD-R and Panasonic DVD-R media over the weekend. I am very happy with the 2 gigahertz P4. High processor speed is almost essential for video processing where it can take hours to encode a DVD. Last night I was writing to a DVD-RW (data), surfing and encoding another DVD with Adobe Premiere LE (included with the machine) and still performance was workable, given that the CPU was working over 90%. I was thinking about upgrading from the included 512 meg ram to a full gig, but I don't even think I need to do that. Sony's new Drag'n Drop cd/dvd writing software works very well for writing data to DVD-R and DVD-RW disks (works for CD-R and CD-RW, although I haven't tried that yet.)

I looked at several different cases for the Palm VII. This case is well constructed and holds everything secure. The zipper keeps things from falling out. Very satisfied with this item. Would recommend purchase of this item.

Bought it for the Palm VIIx and it fits great with room to spare. The construction is very sturdy, genuine leather, solid zipper. The elastic strap on the inside can be used to hold memory cards, but not applicable with the Palm VIIx. To attach your Palm, use the provided self-adhesive velcro pads. The pads easily come off later (adhesive does not stick to the Palm... I could take them off and on several times). The antenna is able to extend easily. The pen holder holds the stylus firmly in place. The pockets on the left easily hold credit cards, business cards, etc. Bigger pockets hold money, etc. I'm very pleased. The picture Amazon provided was exactly what I received.

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