Compare Panasonic plasma TVs of 2007

Source : http://www2.panasonic.com

Penryn processor Technical Features to Improve Performance

New Penryn processor from Intel Going to introduce several feature which will help to improve performace.

Microarchitecture Optimizations -- Increases the overall performance and energy efficiency of the already leading Intel Core microarchitecture to deliver more instruction executions per clock cycle, which results in more performance and quicker PC responsiveness.

Enhanced Intel® Virtualization Technology -- Penryn speeds up virtual machine transition (entry/exit) times by an average of 25 to 75 percent. This is all done through microarchitecture improvements and requires no virtual machine software changes. Virtualization partitions or compartmentalizes a single computer so that it can run separate operating systems and software, which can better leverage multicore processing power, increase efficiency and cut costs by letting a single machine act as many virtual "mini" computers.

Higher Frequencies -- Penryn family of products will deliver higher overall clock frequencies within existing power and thermal envelopes to further increase performance. Desktop and server products will introduce speeds at greater than 3GHz.

Fast Division of Numbers – Penryn-based processors provide fast divider performance, roughly doubling the divider speed over previous generations for computations used in nearly all applications through the inclusion of a new, faster divide technique called Radix 16. The ability to divide instructions and commands faster increases a computer's performance.

Larger Caches -- Penryn processors include up to a 50 percent larger L2 cache with a higher degree of associativity to further improve the hit rate and maximize its utilization. Dual-core Penryn processors will feature up to a 6MB L2 cache and quad-core processors up to a 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. Larger and faster cache sizes speed a computer's performance and response time.

Unique Super Shuffle Engine -- By implementing a full-width, single-pass shuffle unit that is 128-bits wide, Penryn processors can perform full-width shuffles in a single cycle. This significantly improves performance for SSE2, SSE3 and SSE4 instructions that have shuffle-like operations such as pack, unpack and wider packed shifts. This feature will increase performance for content creation, imaging, video and high-performance computing.

Source:Intel Press release.

Nikon D40X SLR In-Camera image Editing

Nikon D40X provides several Image editing function with in the camera

D-Lighting : Automatically balances light and brings out detail to enhance result and add creative touch to your image, all while achieving overall exposure balance.

Image Trim: This feature allows photographer to trim images with in the camera. In this way if you don't need the whole image, trim it with in the camera and save the image with smaller file size.

Red-eye Correction : This is common feteare in all high end cameras. With this, camera can detect annoying red-eyes caused by flash.

Image Overlay: You can merge pair of JPG file and can make a composite image. This feature is really good and with your imagination you can give a new look to your photos.

Monochrome setting : Give any in-camera image monochrome effects such as black and white or sephia tone(like antique look).

Filter Effect: You can add effect like skylight, warmtone or Color balance in your image.

Source : http://www.nikonusa.com/

SAMSUNG Develops High-resolution LCD Mobile Display

Samsung Electronics Co. has developed a 2.1” LCD panel for high-end mobile devices that will provide qVGA resolution and comes equipped with sensors designed to adjust brightness to optimize ambient lighting. Screen brightness is automatically adjusted to enhance readability under any lighting condition.

Designed for use in high-end mobile phones, PDAs and portable media players, the new panel also has a temperature compensation sensor embedded in its LCD driver IC that maintains a steady operational mode regardless of any temperature change in the surrounding environment.

The Samsung panel consumes 20-30 percent less electric power than other displays with the same size and resolution.

To enable extremely slim mobile designs, the new LCD mobile display makes use of a proprietary technology called Adaptive Brightness Control (ABC) that is designed with an ultra-slim black matrix embedded within the display’s structure that measures no more than a single millimeter. The ABC is part of a unique, cost-saving architecture that consists of tiny, highly responsive circuit sensors built into the display panel, which eliminates the need for photo-sensors and complex signal processing circuits.

The signal processing function within the display driver IC converts ambient light measurements from the sensors into pulse-width modulation signals.

Those PWM signals then automatically signal the LED controller in the LCD backlight unit to adjust the screen brightness to provide optimal readability as outside lighting conditions change.

Samsung’s LCD Business is planning to produce the new 2.1” qVGA LCD with ABC capability in the second half of this year.
Source : http://www.samsung.com

Premier Line Of microSD Mobile Cards launched by Sandisk

SanDisk Corporation today introduced a new line of performance-oriented microSD^™ memory cards specifically for mobile phones. The cards will give you the option to quickly transfer content to and from your mobile phones, also you can have more space to store videos, music, ring tones, digital images and other files. Also, SanDisk Mobile Premier cards have additional feature TrustedFlash^™ technology, using this network operators can give option to share premium content that can be downloaded directly to mobile phones, stored on the cards and played on other TrustedFlash-enabled devices authorized by the network provider.

SanDisk going to produce two version of Mobile Premier microSD card with 1- and 2-gigabyte capacities, suggested retail price will be $44.99 and $69.99, respectively. This fingernail-size cards comes with an adapter to fit standard SD^™ card slots.

Key advantages of SanDisk Mobile Premier cards:

• Using a card reader or cable attached to a PC, consumers can side-load music tracks, images and videos to/from a SanDisk Mobile Premier card more rapidly than with a standard card. Read/write speeds are 10 and 9 megabytes (MB) per second, respectively².
• Since most mobile phones have limited on-board memory, the SanDisk Mobile Premier card will allow users to store more songs, still images, videos and other content on their handsets. For example, a 2GB Mobile Premier card can store 500 MP3 songs for about 32 hours of playback time³.

For more info visit http://www.sandisk.com

Hitachi going to bring HDTVs With Removable Drives

Hitachi announced they are going to bring in the market High-Definition TVs that come with removable hard drives that can record and store high-def programming. According to a news from Reuters, Users can expand high-definition recording capacity with the new hard drives . According to them Japan's biggest electronics conglomerate will equip plasma TVs and liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs with 250-gigabyte internal hard drives and removable 80-GB or 160-GB drives starting on April 20 in Japan. Hitachi is pricing the larger 160-GB removable drive at around 35,000 yen ($300) and the 80-GB hard drive at around 20,000 yen. The 160-GB drive can record 32 hours of programmes.

Pen-enabled P1610 Lifebbok

Fujitsu introduced pen - enabled notebook p1610 and B6210. The feature I like most in this note book is the option to take hand written notes. This notebook comes with EverNote^® Plus 1.1. which can help you to take handwritten notes and draw directly on the screen just like you did using pen and paper. Back at the office, simply flip the screen, to transform the system into a traditional notebook to compose emails, reports, and presentations. The ultra-portable LifeBook P1610 notebook combines the familiarity of a notebook with the versatility of a tablet.

Source : http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com

Some Information About GSM mobile bands

GSM is the most popular standard for mobile phone service in the world. In more then 200 countries in the world people using GSM mobile service. However, different countries use different GSM Radio frequency for their mobile networks. Worldwide four frequencies are widely used for GSM mobile services. They are 850MHz, 900 MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz

Although 850, 900 and 1800, 1900 frequency are very close, normally mobile phones can’t receive more then one frequency at-a-time, a phone that works with one band, can not receive signals of other bands. So if you want your mobile to work with multiple bands, you need to have multi band mobiles. Based on your need, you can go for dual, tri or quad band mobile set.

As a whole, both high and low frequency bands have some advantage and disadvantages. For high frequency service, the network is less effected by the influences of the weather. And you can have more clear and un-interrupted connection. Another advantage of a high frequency is that you only need small antenna. Main disadvantage of higher frequency band is its lower reach. These bands are good for cities where density of mobile users is more. Where as, lower frequency bands are good for rural areas because of their large area reach.

850 MHz is the lowest frequency used for GSM mobile service. As a result of this, 850 MHz network has a bigger and more penetrating reach then the 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz network. Apart from that, the difference between the 850 MHz and the 900 MHz network hardly noticeable. Lower frequency services are good in big building because of their more penetrating reach. A disadvantage of a low frequency network is its low capacity.

900 MHz networks are quite old networks. Like 850 MHz, 900MHz also has a bigger and more penetrating reach then the 1800 and 1900 MHz network.

1800 MHz is a relatively high frequency for cellular phones. Because of this, 1800 MHz networks have a smaller and less penetrating reach compare to 900 and 850 MHz networks. By this the reach in big buildings is low. An advantage of 1800 MHz networks is that the capacity is bigger. This band is idle for cities where density of mobile users high.

1900 MHz available only in North America, some networks in Canada and South Africa. This band is not available in Europe or Asia. 1900 MHz quite similar to 1800MHz. Because of high frequency 1900 MHz band network isn’t interrupted by the influences of the weather and you can have a crystal clear connection most of the times. For this network, GSM provider needs to use more mini antennas. An advantage of 1900 MHz networks is that the capacity is bigger.

Windows Vista feature to avoid power misuse

One of the significant features Microsoft introduced in Vista is new power saving mode. Windows XP has two power saving mode, Standby and Hibernate. Windows Vista replaced them by Sleep mode. Hibernate is still available as an advanced power setting, but the Sleep mode is the default one and has more advanced features.

While in sleep, computer uses very less power for internal use. In notebooks, with the minimum power used during sleep mode, system goes to stand by mode and the state of the system is saved in the memory. If battery power goes down to critically low level, the system wakes for a very short time to save the needed information onto the hard drive, and immediately goes to hibernate state.

In Desktop systems, the process is little different. Here Microsoft Vista uses "hybrid sleep". In hybrid sleep, the state of the system is stored both in RAM and on disk, so that system can recover it’s state in case the power is lost. After saving the state of the system, it goes to sleep mode from where computer can easily bring back to working state.

Top goal of introducing this mode is enabling easy and first ‘on’ and ‘off’ of the computer. While making sure computer can save all data when the system is turned off, and brings in same state while you turn back on. In order to ensure that "off" worked effectively with this new model, instead of waiting for green signal from each application in the computer, Windows Vista sending notice to each application, services and devices about the power saving state and wait for maximum 2 seconds for them to finish up their current job and put themselves into a state from where they can continue when the system wakes up. Similarly Windows vista is very fast to come back from the sleep state. When you open the lid of your laptop, you will find your system becomes instantly on, sometime you may wonder if it was on whole time.

Another goal is to reduce the power consumption when the system is idle. Normally we want to avoid long boot process of the computer, so we prefer to keep the system up 24X7. This may be nice to keep your system always ready to work but in this way we are wasting huge amount of power. Windows Vista’s sleep mode made dramatic change to reduce computer’s idle power consumption. While a typical Pentium 4 system uses 102.6 watts of power, same PC while in sleep consumes only 5.6 watts. Vista provides API for the application developers so that application can get notifications about the power scheme being used on the system and then adapt their behavior for the power scheme.

Using Microsoft group policy IT administrator of a Business organization can decide that all machines will go to sleep after specified time of inactivity. Normally in large organization tons of computers sitting idle and because of that huge power gets wasted. This feature must help them to reduce power wastage.