Archive for September, 2009

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Rechargeable battery entire Tactics

September 21st, 2009

Batteries can be divided into two categories, one category is “one cell”, and the other is “secondary battery.” “One cell” As the name suggests is the use of no value once the battery, “secondary battery” simply means that rechargeable batteries,such as laptop battery, can charge for further useing.

“A cell” includes alkaline batteries, Meng zinc batteries, such as Chongqing, a train of gold on the market batteries are alkaline batteries. Disposable batteries are cheap, easy to use, and alternative brand names. However, its disadvantages are also more lethal, first of all can not be recycled, one-time investment was low, but the cumulative use of the high cost. Another disposable battery arbitrarily discarded after use, then, will cause environmental pollution. At present, many countries have adopted a management “a cell” of the relevant laws and regulations. I personally feel that a “one cell” is not much to purchase necessary.

“secondary battery” includes the type of respect very much on the market are more common nickel-metal hydride batteries, nickel-cadmium batteries and lithium batteries(sony vgp-bps2c,vgp-bps2a). Nickel-metal hydride batteries and nickel-cadmium batteries are the same appearance, and is divided into AA and AAA. The same as the rechargeable battery. But their works are not the same, nickel-cadmium batteries are extremely nickel oxide, the negative is extremely spongy metal cadmium, mostly electrolyte, potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide alkaline solution. Ni-Cd battery compact, rugged, shock, vibration, the battery self-discharge is small, suitable for the use of high-current discharge. It is characterized by long cycle life, in theory, there are 2000-4000 times cycle life.

nickel-metal hydride batteries are low-voltage nickel-metal hydride batteries, to Ni (OH) 2 as the cathode to hydrogen storage alloy as negative electrode, potassium hydroxide alkaline aqueous solution as electrolyte. Ni-MH battery than the energy density (that is, an equal volume of batteries, Ni-MH batteries have greater capacity than the nickel-cadmium batteries), in theory, Ni-MH battery is the energy density of nickel-cadmium batteries 1.5-2 times; there is Ni-MH battery is good environmentally friendly, Ni-MH batteries do not use metal cadmium, or use of toxic substances, does not pollute the environment; there are Ni-MH battery has largely eliminated the “memory effect.” That the memory effect and battery capacity of the increasingly high demand in the civilian grade nickel-metal hydride batteries are already replaced the nickel-cadmium batteries.

Lithium batteries can be understood as digital products, special batteries, its shape according to the design of digital products can be arbitrarily changed, lithium batteries(vgp-bps2c,vgp-bps2a) almost no memory effect, and use a long time. However, lithium batteries are expensive, and between the different specifications of the lithium batteries can not be generic.

purchase items

the rechargeable batteries are printed on the surface of a similar mark, indicating this product is what type of battery. NI-MH says that nickel-metal hydride batteries, is actually very simple, NI is the chemical letters Nickel, NH, said hydrogen. By the same token NI-Cd is expressed as a nickel-cadmium batteries.

the battery rated capacity refers to a certain discharge conditions, the battery discharge to the release of electricity cut-off voltage. No. 7 currently on the market capacity of the battery 400mAh-900 mAh mostly between the 5 batteries from 1000 mAh-2500 mAh range. Of course, in a sense, the capacity is of course the bigger the better, because of large capacity means longer sony vgp-bps9 battery life.

Marketed in some of the work packages battery capacity is also very high, but I do not recommend to buy. Because the battery in the factory hours in order to A, B, C 3, B, C-class product is mainly the product capacity, most of these products is that the battery pack work available in the market. Also noteworthy is that among the different capacities of batteries do not mix. For example, three 2300 mAh of the batteries 1300 mAh battery, which emit an effective current of only 1300 mAh, from the physics can be very simple to understand this point.

Also, when buying batteries may wish to consider under the Sanyo, Panasonic and other major brands and other products made in China is also a good source of Qi. Other unknown product is best not to buy, while the purchase rechargeable batteries, they can weigh about weight. Generally heavier weight, the better its quality. Here I teach you a trick Identification of true and false Sanyo batteries, Sanyo battery cathode is not completely round, but a little bit of a square, while Haier, Sanyo batteries agent the highest only at 1850mAh.

Ordinary rechargeable batteries(pavilion dv6000 battery) are marked on the standard charge time and quick charge time, charging the speed with charger related.

Slow charge mode commonly used constant current charging, the battery is full and automatically to trickle charge state. Has the advantage of slow charge circuit design is simple and easy to implement, prices are also lower; As a result of low current constant current charging, effectively reducing the battery charging process in the heat, to extend the pavilion zv5000 battery life is very good. Drawback is the charging time is too long, especially in the case of large quantity of batteries a bit powerless.

Fast charge is generally using a large pulse current charging, but because of high current battery charging process will generate polarization response, leading to the rapid increase in battery temperature, full power on after resume a likely explosion and combustion, So, fast-charge and features a dedicated chip to control the charging process, automatically stop charging once filled so that the whole process of charging has become safe and efficient.

In the end is a standard charger or optional fast charger that can be purchased according to the needs of users. Here to remind consumers to purchase brand-name products charger must be, and if I get quick charger, be sure to understand whether the automatic power-off function.

battery maintenance

The use of rechargeable batteries users. Bought back the battery power is low in general, the first charge must be adequate. Ni-MH battery charging time are generally more than 16 hours. To achieve best results, generally more than 3 times repeated charge-discharge can. In addition, the sony vgp-bps5a battery in use after three rounds, the best place to find the opportunity to make a further charge fully recharge, so as not there is residual power in the battery when the repeated charge, or will shorten battery life.

In addition, in order to avoid the loss of electricity, use nickel-metal hydride battery user, remove the battery charge after the power end, do not let the battery positive and negative poles at the same time contact with conductors. And not to frequent deep discharge of the vgp-bps2c battery, as this will affect the battery’s chemical properties. And do not mix old and new batteries.

Reading the above article, I believe everyone will buy rechargeable batteries for some understanding, I also recommend to you a few good brands and imported products: SONY (Sony), FUJIFILM (Fuji), Kodak ( Kodak), Maxell (Maxell), Energizer (Energizer), SANYO (Sanyo), Panasonic (Matsushita).

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How to choose a charger

September 20th, 2009

How to choose a charger

Many people when buying rechargeable batteries, a look at the capacity, or look the brand. However, to know that buying a good performance of the rechargeable laptop battery is also a great school of learning.

Batteries can be divided into two categories, one category is “one cell”, and the other is “secondary battery.” “One cell” As the name suggests is the use of no value once the battery, “secondary dell laptop battery” simply means that rechargeable batteries, can charge for further use.

Lithium batteries can be understood as digital products, special batteries, its shape according to the design of digital products can be arbitrarily changed, lithium batteries almost no memory effect, and use a long time. However, lithium batteries (Sony PCGA-BP71 Sony PCGA-BP1N) are expensive, and between the different specifications of the lithium batteries can not be generic.

In the rechargeable Toshiba PA3451U-1BRS batteries are printed on the surface of a similar mark, indicating this product is what type of battery. NI-MH says that nickel-metal hydride batteries, is actually very simple, NI is the chemical letters Nickel, NH, said hydrogen. By the same token NI-Cd is expressed as a nickel-cadmium batteries.

Battery rated capacity refers to a certain discharge conditions, the Sony VGP-BPS9 battery discharge to the release of electricity cut-off voltage. No. 7 currently on the market capacity of the battery 400mAh-900 mAh mostly between the 5 batteries from 1000 mAh-2500 mAh range. Of course, in a sense, the capacity is of course the bigger the better, because of large capacity means longer battery life.

It is also noteworthy that, among the different capacities of batteries do not mix. For example, three 2300 mAh of the Dell inspiron 1526 battery batteries 1300 mAh battery, which emit an effective current of only 1300 mAh, from the physics can be very simple to understand this point.

The rechargeable Inspiron 640m battery are generally marked on the standard charge time and quick charge time, charging the speed with charger related.

Slow charge generally use constant current charging mode, and the battery is full and automatically converted to trickle charge state. Has the advantage of slow charge circuit design is simple and easy to implement, prices are also lower; As a result of low current constant current charging, effectively reducing the pavilion ZV6000 battery charging process in the heat, to extend the battery life is very good. Drawback is the charging time is too long, especially in the case of large quantity of batteries a bit powerless.

Fast charge is generally using a large pulse current charging Pavilion DV2000 battery , but because of high current battery charging process will generate polarized responses, leading to the rapid increase in battery temperature, full power on after resume a likely explosion and combustion, so fast charge also uses a special chip to control the charging process of Dell Inspiron e1505 Battery, automatically stop charging once filled so that the whole process of charging has become safe and efficient.

In the end is a standard charger or optional fast charger that can be purchased according to the needs of users. Here to remind consumers to purchase brand-name products charger must be, and if I get quick charger fot yoyr Dell Inspiron 6000 Battery,, be sure to understand whether the automatic power-off function.

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The United States to abandon the development of new battery technology allows cell phone powered by sound waves

September 18th, 2009

The United States to abandon the development of new battery technology allows cell phone powered by sound waves

According to foreign media reports, Imagine has a self-powered mobile phone that how good it will never have to charge and can keep the phones running without VGP-BPS9A/B VGP-BPS9/B. This is not fantasy, but the U.S. University of Texas professor Kim Tai Xika a recent invention. This invention allows mobile phone users to speak into the energy generated by sound waves, providing use of mobile phones, enabling mobile phones used instead of power.

Self-powered mobile phones could be sound waves into electrical energy

Cajun working on nanotechnology, through the use of the so-called piezoelectric materials, he developed a self-powered device, which does not require batteries that can replace the power supply category of Lifebook T4220 battery Fujitsu fpcbp155. In particular, card payments and a partner University of Houston have found some kind of voltage is less than a nanometer-thick body of material under the micro-size of the converted energy can be 100%. Moreover, when this material larger than this specific size or more hours, their energy conversion rate declined significantly. His findings, published in the fall of the American Institute of Physics scientific journal “Physical Review”. This discovery will develop low-power electronics products have far-reaching significance, this can be developed from I-powered mobile phones without pavilion ZV6000 battery Aspire 3000 battery, laptops, personal communication devices, and numerous other computer-related electronics products.

Many high-tech products of the components are nano-level. Although the invention of Cajun small, but significant influence. He found that will enable small and easy to extend the service life of wireless products without HP PB995A. Because, MP3 and cell phone, the laptop battery life is a major problem, if you want to expand their capabilities, then they need to have a more powerful battery to support. And convenient self-powered device will resolve this problem, which is several federal agencies interested in the reasons for such devices. In fact, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been studying the field the soldiers how to use their conversation to obtain the energy to power their portable equipment. In addition, the sensors used to detect explosives, would greatly benefit from self-powered technology, can reduce the trouble of testing and replacement of the battery.

Cajun explained that the key to this technology is the piezoelectric body. Is a class of piezoelectric crystals are very interesting, when you squeeze or stretch it, it will produce different ends of the charge of Pavilon DV9000 battery. This effect is called piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectric effect can produce a crystal is called piezoelectric crystals. Crystal quartz is a well-known piezoelectric crystals. Piezoelectric body is not a new concept, in fact, as early as in the first century BC was the French scientist discovered. Was first used in piezoelectric sonar equipment during World War.

Now, equipped with a piezoelectric crystal element of the apparatus so that technical staff research the steam engine, internal combustion engines and all kinds of chemical equipment in the pressure changes become a reality with this XPS m140 BATTERY. The use of piezoelectric crystals can be measured or even the pressure of fluids in pipes, guns, firing shells in the barrel when the pressure of the bomb exploded when the instantaneous pressure. In addition, the piezoelectric crystal is also widely used in the microphone and quartz table. Even the car ignition also has piezoelectric crystal. Click on the button will cause the ignition of piezoelectric crystals generate impact of Inspiron 640m battery, thereby generating sufficient voltage to produce sparks and ignite fuel.

On major applications, a number of European dance floors of nightclubs and dance halls was built by the piezoelectric crystal can absorb and convert XPS M1730 battery energy to generate electricity footsteps as a way to light bulbs inside the nightclub. According to reports, the Hong Kong Coliseum is an athlete using this technology to the Pavilon DV8000 battery energy conversion into electrical energy as a means of lighting and play music. Cajun said that the application of piezoelectric crystal will be a higher level, especially when the nano-scale emergence of the piezoelectric crystal, after the application of this technology will become more widespread.

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Review Of Dell XPS M1330 Laptop

September 16th, 2009

The Dell XPS M1330 is designed for those that want power on the go. If you’re also fashion conscious and like to standout in a crowd, the looks of the XPS M1330 will help you in that area too. Sleek design coupled with a portable form factor and powerful components come together to make for a compelling notebook.

Build and Design

Our pre-production XPS M1330 as equipped:

  • 13.3-inch WXGA screen with LED backlight
  • “Crimson” red paint (also available in “Tuxedo” black or “Pearl” white)
  • 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, Santa Rosa chipset (up to 2.4GHz available)
  • 2GB DDR2-667 SDRAM (up to 4GB DDR2 SDRAM available)
  • 160GB 5400 RPM SATA HDD (32GB SSD drive available)
  • Slot-loading dual-layer DVD±RW drive
  • 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS
  • WWAN option for Verizon
  • Ethernet, 802.11a/g/n (Intel 4965), Bluetooth option
  • Integrated VGA webcam
  • HDMI, VGA, 1394, two USB 2.0 ports, integrated media reader (MS, SD, xD), fingerprint reader
  • Media Center remote located in ExpressCard slot
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • Dimensions 12.5″ x 9.4″ x 0.87″ – 1.33″
  • Weight starts at 4 pounds with 6-cell battery(xps m1330 battery)

    • Unlike the bulky, unattractive 12-inch Dell XPS m1210 with li-ion xps M1210 battery , the M1330 has clearly been built with an emphasis on good looks and clean lines, ditching the earlier model’s cumbersome, rotating Web cam and thick chassis. The system is slightly wedge shaped, going from 0.87 inch in the front to 1.3 inches in the rear. At less than four pounds, it’s one of the lightest 13-inch laptops we’ve seen–nearly a full pound lighter than the popular yet hefty 13-inch Apple MacBook, and a touch lighter than the 12-inch XPS M1210 with powerful dell xps m1210 battery .

    The keyboard tray is brushed silver with black accents, while the lid is available in black, white, or red. Our review unit had the matte-red finish (Dell calls it Crimson Red), which looks great, but more color options (as with the newly revamped Inspiron line of laptops) would have been welcome.

    Dell manages to squeeze a good number of extras onto the keyboard tray, including touch-sensitive controls for volume and media playback, an eject button for the slot-loading DVD drive, and a quick-launch button for Dell’s proprietary Media Direct software. The biggest drawback we found with the M1330′s design was the tiny, 2.75-inch touchpad, which we found to be particularly frustrating given the fact that there’s plenty of room on the wrist rest for a bigger pad.

    You will love:Dell XPS M1330 has 2 megapixel camera sensor resolution which is higher in comparison with similar priced notebooks. Dell XPS M1330 has only 4-pound weight,9 cells dell xps M1330 battery. Price comes upto $715 this notebook has great features for the money.

    You will hate:Screen size 13.3-inch is somewhat smaller than some similarly priced notebooks. This notebook has a modest 2.0 GHz CPU speed. Graphics-intensive applications will certainly hinder performance on a system that relies on relies shared video RAM.

    Summary

    There are very few 13-inch laptops on the market that bring the caliber of hardware and performance of the Dell XPS M1330. We’re getting a glimpse of the future in ultraportable power with the Dell XPS M1330 battery .Its battery is as good as inspiron e1505 battery . Game-capable graphics, blazing processor speed, and a pile of RAM all packed into a lovely chassis that’s as comfortable to carry as a hardback airport romance novel. Despite the extra cash you’ll shell out, we think the Dell XPS M1330 is the clear choice over other cheaper, less powerful notebooks.

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    How to use and conservation of GPS built-in lithium battery

    September 15th, 2009

    How to use and conservation of GPS built-in lithium battery

    1. Do not deliberately GPS built-in lithium Laptop battery that will put clean in the charge, when the system prompted a time of low power can be charged, should be put before the injury for the lithium battery is not small.

    2. To use the random charging accessories for charging, do not use third-party charger.

    3. Most of the built-in lithium-car GPS, so do not be demolished or converted the laptop battery without permission.

    4, as far as possible to avoid the body exposed to extremely high or extremely low temperature environment, but also to avoid the erosion of the liquid.

    In fact, Car GPS built-in lithium Pavilion DV2000 battery is not your imagination so fragile, so long as a little heart, the conservation and reasonable, built-in lithium battery life can be maintained at three years and change bad habits, we can give built-in lithium battery with the greatest protection, let give full play to their power as a car navigation system to provide a stable life to protect.

    At present, the market most of the mainstream car GPS with built-in lithium battery power supply. Lithium-ion iBook G4 battery has a discharge stability, small size and other features relative to conventional nickel-metal hydride and nickel cadmium batteries for the obvious advantages. Many portable electronics market, digital products are used in lithium-ion battery power supply.

    But lithium-ion Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery is not perfect, the use of lithium more stringent environmental requirements, and the high cost of batteries and the discharge current is its relatively small defects can not be ignored. Then, as the use of large lithium-ion batteries: automotive GPS products, the use of lithium batteries that power supply should be careful when there. In daily for VGP-BPS2C battery conservation, and many casual habits could have built-in lithium-vehicle navigation systems cause fatal injuries. So we specialize in power from a vehicle built-in lithium use and conservation aspects of the daily summary of some experiences to share.

    Many users use the GPS when the car, regardless of the body are used to power the adequacy of the charging of plug in vehicles to use, such use would cause harm lithium batteries in serious even built-in lithium Toshiba PA3451U-1BRS battery can not be used. Plug in Car Charger for GPS because the car after the power supply will be carried out on the built-in lithium rechargeable, if the user habitually used GPS navigation, you are doing each time you use the equivalent of charging and discharging, thereby affecting the battery life. Which affect the capacity of lithium Dell Inspiron 6000 Battery life and a major factor is the need for a battery charge and discharge times, which is why many users feel less and less power-car GPS durable reason.

    The right to use is: should wait to run out of electricity, or GPS navigation instrument in itself to give low power to remind the car after the connection charge for charging to use. If your car GPS Car Charger to use the long-term connection, it is best to conduct a full-month charge and discharge, which is run out o飞Dell inspiron 6400 battery power to conduct a full volume of charge, so that the greatest degree of protection can extend the life of lithium batteries.

    The user has just purchased for GPS products, its appearance in general only 50% of capacity or less. When you first use the Apple laptop battery in I need to put power to make, and then charging an external battery charger, and charge for the first time the best more than 15 hours, the second and the third meeting such as the battery runs out after use, the charging time is best but also more than 12 hours, but it should be noted that charge no more than 24 hours, otherwise the battery will produce a surplus of energy resulting in the internal decomposition of the electrolyte inside the battery voltage increase caused by natural or explosions.

    In addition, for long-term non-use of the GPS, the Li-ion Dell laptop battery will automatically discharge the next best to the battery is full before use after use, so as to avoid over-discharge the battery caused damage. The use of GPS in the process, try to avoid exposure to the body or in a humid environment, the use of harsh external environment would cause instability in Li-ion battery discharge.

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    What Can You Do to Improve laptop battery

    September 14th, 2009

    Most people buy laptops because they want to be portable. They want to move around the house or work in coffee shops or the library. Unfortunately, you can’t always get as much done as you want to, because you can’t always find a place to plug them in.

    This isn’t as good as it sounds though. The typical laptop battery (in a 14 or 15 inch laptop) is a 6-cell battery that lasts around 2 hours. They might last a little longer than that, or a little less. It depends on what you’re doing.

    If you are pushing the laptop (watching DVDs or editing photos) the sony vgp-bps2c battery will drain faster. Just think about how you get tired faster when you run than when you walk. Luckily, you’re not stuck with that 2 hours. You have a couple of options.

    First, you can always buy a second battery. Then, when you’re about to run out of juice, just sony batteries(vgp-bps2c ,vgp-bps2a). That will give you four hours.

    Even better, you can buy a second battery that’s a larger-capacity than your original battery. As I said, most batteries that come with laptops are 6-cell batteries. You can buy bigger cell batteries that will give you longer battery life. You can buy these extended batteries(sony vgp bps2c) from the laptop manufacturer, whether that’s Apple, Dell, HP, Sony, or whoever. They are more expensive, but they’re a good way to get more work done while you’re on the road.

    Those are your main options, but there are manufacturer-specific options. For instance, Dell sells something called a modular bay battery. You pull out your optical drive (DVD or CD drive), and install this vgp-bps2a battery instead.

    Then you get longer battery life because your laptop has two batteries. The laptop uses the modular battery first, just in case you want to use your optical drive. That way you will get the most battery life possible, because the primary battery is not used until the modular bay battery is used up.

    This just proves that each manufacturer is striving to improve in this area all the time. So always check out what your manufacturer has available to help improve your sony vgp-bps5a battery life. People keep talking about a revolution in this area, but for now, you have to think creatively to get the most out of your laptop.

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    Skytone Alpha 680 netbook with Google Android reviewed – Video

    September 11th, 2009

    The Skytone Alpha 680 is one of the first netbooks to ship with the Google Android operating system preinstalled. Its pa3191u-3brs pa3284u-1brs battery is very strong to work 5-6 hours.  And to be honest, Android might not be the best choice for this netbook.  The company clearly didn’t spend a lot of time customizing the OS to play well with the hardware, and instead basically threw the version of Android used on cellphones onto a clamshell netbook. On the bright side, the netbook does feature a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display that can be folded over the keyboard for use in tablet mode, which makes the device a bit more smartphone-like.

    The folks at Rokland picked up an Alpha 680 recently to see how well Google Android works with the WiFi adapters the company sells and insert the Pavilion DV4 battery, Pavilion DV4T battery, Pavilion DV5 battery,. But since there hasn’t been much information about the 680 published since earlier this year, the company decided to go ahead and post a video overview, which you can see after the break. Rokland will post a full review on the company’s blog soon as well.

    Overall, Rokland wasn’t particularly impressed with the netbook design. It’s rather clunky looking, has an unattractive yellow finish, and doesn’t really take advantage of all Android’s features with Latitude D420 battery Latitude D430 battery. For instance, the display orientation doesn’t auto-rotate when you rotate the screen. And flicking from one window to the next with your finger is difficult.

    For a little while this summer it looked like Google Android on netbooks might be the next big thing. We even saw some machines running Android and a version of the Firefox web browser that appeared to have been ported to run on the OS. But now that Google is pushing its upcoming Chrome operating system for netbooks and Latitude D810 battery Latitude D830 battery, it seems likely that Android will remain confined to cellphones with the odd exception here and there like the Skytone Alpha 680.

    via Netbook Choice

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    sony cybershot h3 digital camera introduction

    September 9th, 2009

    If you’re reading this, then you probably already know that there are a lot of different kinds of cameras in the world. This year, we saw the birth of a new variation with the advent of superzooms that don’t have electronic viewfinders, such as the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H3 original battery code np-bg1 I’ll be writing about here. The upside is that the cameras can be smaller than their EVF-laden counterparts, and if you despise peering into a tiny hole at an LCD while framing your shots, then you’ll welcome this evolution. However, if you’ve discovered as I have that an EVF can come in handy when shooting certain subjects (I like using one when shooting baseball batters), then you might want to check out one of Sony’s other superzooms, such as the DSC-H7 or DSC-H9 , these two digital camera battery code sony np-bg1.

    While the H3′s small body design (for a superzoom) is definitely handy when trying to fit it in a bag or jacket pocket, it leaves few options for the button layout. Sony basically had to put the zoom rocker smack in the middle of where your thumb should naturally rest, which might seem good at first, but I ended up accidentally nudging it often when shooting, throwing off my zoom setting and messing up the framing of my shot. If Sony would’ve moved the shutter button a little to the left and the mode dial forward, the zoom rocker could’ve been moved farther right and given room for your thumb. However, as the body design goes, that’s the biggest flaw. The grip, though small, is effective–curl your middle finger over the top of the grip, and the rest of your fingers fall nicely into place, though it does leave your pinky dangling, which always irks me. It seems as though camera makers have begun to despise the pinky finger. Most entry-level dSLRs and almost all superzooms have grips that can’t fit a pinky.

    Dominating the front of the camera is a Carl Zeiss-branded Vario-Tessar 10x optical 38-380mm equivalent f/3.5-4.4 zoom lens, which feeds light to an 8.1-megapixel CCD sensor. Around back you’ll find a 2.5-inch, 115,000-pixel LCD. Caffeine addicts should be pleased to know that the H3 includes Sony’s Super Steady Shot optical image stabilization to help compensate for hand shake. In case the built-in lens isn’t wide or long enough for you, Sony offers both a 0.7x-wide angle converter (VCL-DH0758 bp-511) and a 1.7x telephoto converter (VCL-DH1758). The necessary adapter ships with the camera and can also accept 58mm screw-on filters. The camera also comes with a lens hood that attaches to the front of the adapter. Unfortunately, it’s so large that it obscures a large portion of the flash, which makes the use of fill flash almost useless if you use the hood. However, the adapter itself can likely provide enough shade from the sun when the lens is zoomed to its widest, which means that the hood is only really necessary when shooting telephoto shots, in which the camera’s built-in flash probably won’t be able to provide fill flash anyway.

    As is the rage these days, Sony separates the H3′s menu system into two sections. If you press the Menu button, it brings you to the shooting menu, which is home to settings you change often while shooting, such as image size, face detection, exposure and flash compensation, ISO, white balance, and more. If you press the Home button, you go to the setup menus, which let you control less-oft-changed settings, such as whether you have a lens adapter attached, or whether you want the AF assist light on or off. The menus use a new design that looks very similar to the menus on Sony’s PlayStation Portable. They look nice and are pretty intuitive, though it’s strange that there’s an option for the shooting menu in the home menu, but if you select it, it tells you to press the Menu button instead of just porting you over to that menu.

    Like a lot of superzooms, the H3 includes manual exposure controls, though there are only two apertures to choose from and these vary depending on the focal length you’re using at any given time. You won’t find aperture- or shutter-priority, but there are the usual array of scene modes, some of which are in the menu and some of which reside on the mode dial, as well as program and full auto shooting modes.

    Sony says that the H3 can output images and video to an HDTV if you buy the optional VMC-HD1 component video cable for about $40. However, since it’s not included with the camera and Sony didn’t send us one with the review sample, I can’t verify this, though I don’t really doubt them. This is a nice option, but I’d rather have seen an HDMI output on the camera instead of being forced to buy Sony’s cable. Either way, viewing images on HD has always been a better experience for me than using the regular standard-definition outputs found on most compact cameras.

    Except for a slow flash recycle time, the DSC-H3 performed well in our lab tests. The camera took 1.8 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG, no doubt slowed a bit by the fact that the lens has to extend before you can shoot. It took 1.3 seconds between JPEGs with the flash disabled, jumping to 2.6 seconds between shots with the flash turned on. Shutter lag measured an impressive 0.4 second in our high-contrast test and 1 second in our low-contrast test, which mimic bright and dim shooting conditions, respectively. In burst mode, we were able to get an average of two frames per second, regardless of image size.

    Image quality from the H3 can be quite nice if you stick with ISOs 100 and 200, though that niceness is marred a bit by the lens’ noticeable distortion, as well as some purple fringing on high-contrast edges toward the edges of images. I saw more noise than I would’ve liked at ISO 400. While images are still very usable and much of the noise is minimized during printing, there is a noticeable falloff in shadow detail and fine detail at ISO 400. Stepping up to ISO 800, noise increases only slightly, but there’s more of a falloff in shadow and fine detail. At ISO 1,600 noise becomes heavy and most shadow and fine detail is lost. The top sensitivity setting of ISO 3,200 yields extremely noisy images with completely blocked up shadows and fine details. For example, text which was crisp and clear at ISO 200 and below, becomes completely illegible at ISO 3,200. I suggest staying below ISO 1,600 when shooting with the H3 and sticking with ISO 100 or ISO 200 whenever possible.

    If you want a long zoom lens in a camera that’s smaller, if not lighter, than most superzooms, Sony’s DSC-H3 is a decent choice. Since this is a new category, it’s hard to draw comparisons, but when Canon’s Powershot SX100 hits the market in October, we should be able to get a better idea of how this Sony compares with the competition.

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    Exit Review: IBM T60p

    September 9th, 2009

    Exit Review: IBM T60p

    Keeping in line with the exit review series, I’ve written an exit review of my IBM T60p laptop, which was recently retired.

    The T60p was purchased back in March 2006, right when the first dual-core mobile chips started shipping. The IBM model number was 2623-DDU, and it featured an Intel T2500 (2GHz), 2GB RAM, 100GB 7200rpm HD, 15″ 1600×1200 LCD, 512MB ATI FireGL V5200, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, WWAN, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9 cell Li-Ion IBM Thinkpad t60 battery, and WinXP Pro. Like most of my key gadgets, the T60p followed me everywhere around the world; I spend probably 16 hours a day with it, so it got plenty of wear and tear.

    I retired my T60p because Microsoft is retiring Windows XP, and I really don’t want to downgrade to Vista (”congratulations, your new faster hardware now runs slower than ever thanks to Vista!”), so I decided to get the latest, greatest Windows XP laptop available today, and hunker down and hope it lasts me until Microsoft figures out how to get Vista right (or they realize what a terrible mistake they’ve made and bring back XP…sort of like how Intel brought out the Pentium 4 but now all the new designs are Pentium III derivatives). Or maybe before that, Linux support for all of my key apps will get so good, I can finally depart from the Windows ecosystem.

    So the reason for getting rid of the T60p 40Y6797  isn’t because it had any functional flaw; it’s actually in fair working order, and its performance is still decent.

    Here were some of my favorite features about the T60p:

  • Integrated Verizon EVDO. This was a life-changer; the availability of broadband wireless anywhere in the US in an integrated fashion has literally changed the way I work and live, and it has greatly increased my productivity, especially when traveling. No more searching for free hotspots! Less worry about people sniffing my wireless signal!
  • 1600 x 1200 screen. Can’t live without the pixels!
  • Good horsepower. Plays WoW well, although it struggled a bit with TBC expansion pack. Runs all my design software adequately.
  • Decent battery life. On a 9-cell 40Y6797 battery, I get about 3.5 hours a charge. The 6-cell battery gave me about 2 hours, which is long enough for general use; typically I go around with the 6-cell battery as it’s lighter and easier to carry.
  • Nice keyboard. I’ve always liked the Thinkpad keyboards.
  • Fingerprint sensor. There’s something sexy about stroking your laptop  Latitude D620 battery to log into it, even if it is a security gimmick.
  • TrackPoint mouse. The TrackPoint is essential for precision CAD work, and one of the reasons I can’t use a whole class of laptops that lack this feature, including Apple laptops.
  • Nice looking. I like the austere black slab look of the Thinkpads — the Dell and HP laptops look so cheesy and plasticky, I feel like I’m carrying around a Fisher-Price toy when I have one of those. I hate to say it, but the Apple laptop batterynotebooks are also getting a bit trite, and from what I’ve seen metal tends to dent, deform and scratch, whereas plastic is more resilient.
  • Good accessories. The AC/DC adapter was the best — compatible with every voltage in the world, auto DC adapters and those funky EmPower adapters found on some airplanes. Also there was a pretty good parallel/serial adapter provided by IBM laptop battery (as well as one integrated into the minidock), which is key for embedded hardware development.
  • Great thermal management system. The laptop’s fan is whisper quiet, but it pumps out a lot of heat. It’s great to be able to hold your hand about five inches away and feel the heat being quietly pumped out of the laptop — a true sign of good thermal design.
  • Great customer support. Every one of my interactions with warranty service was positive, with the exception of talking to the guy to renew my warranty service. He was pretty clueless, but it was a moot point since I got a new laptop anyways.
  • Solid construction. With the exception of a service-induced crack (more on that later), the T60p is in good condition. The clutch on the screen is still solid, and the hard drive is still in good condition (although it does operate noticeably slower, probably due to the bearings being degraded by years of operation in tough conditions, such as airplanes in turbulence and bumpy car rides in China).
  • Good uptime. My average uptime for my laptop was about two weeks without a reboot — this is through multiple sleep cycles and reconfigurations to my external dual-monitor rig, etc. The chief cause for reboots was actually windows running out of GDI resources due to application leaks.
  • Reasonably light and thin. I wish it were like the ultra-thin laptops, but hey, for the amount of performance I demand and the pixels I require on the LCD, this is probably the best compromise. I do keep a spare ultra-light laptop around for the times when I go on vacations to far-flung regions of the world and I can’t afford the weight of my primary laptop.However, I also had many, many problems with the T60p as well. Here are some of the more significant ones:
  • About a year into using the laptop, the ThinkVantage access software blew up on me, rendering my internal WiFi card useless. This was triggered when I once installed an external Wifi card for testing purposes, and the installed drivers broke some internal configuration. I tried just about everything short of wiping the OS to get my WiFi card working again, but alas, I never got it back. It’s tragic, as it’s like I had a hardware failure due to a software error. Fortunately, I have copious quantities of USB Wifi dongles laying around thanks to my work, so I just carried one of those around all the time.
  • The Verizon Access software is flaky. I had a little ritual for getting it to work — turn off the radio, start the app, let the app crash once, turn the radio on, start the app again, and then it works. If you started the app with the radio on it’d never figure out that there was signal. What a weird wart.
  • The case near the trackpad cracked. This was due actually to a flawed repair job by a technician that replaced my LCD. The technician didn’t mate one of the friction-lock connectors on the keyboard bezel exactly, which created a stress point and eventually caused the panel to crack.
  • Speaking of which, the LCD had to be replaced once. The LCD failed by having a set of horizontal lines across the bottom of the panel (I recognized that failure as stress-related failure of the COB drivers on the panel). The replacement LCD had a flaw in it too — there was a spot of blue pixels, about ten pixels on a side, that were always stuck-on, just faintly. It wasn’t annoying enough for another return but still, it’s unfortunate that the replacement LCD had a significant flaw as well.
  • One of the DRAM SO-DIMMs failed about 1.5 years into the laptop’s life. It was manifested by lots of bluescreens, and then I ran some DRAM test software and identified the problem. Spray-cooling the DRAM chips fixed the problem, so I installed some extra heat sinking in the Dell Inspiron 6000 Battery, which got around the problem for another month. Eventually, I had to call in for a replacement of the chips, which was laudably painless. The IBM service rep just sent out the replacement chips right away, no questions asked, and everything worked fine from then on (the laptop was still under its extended warranty at this time). However, it does highlight the fact that there is a thermal design flaw in the DRAM area: there is no heat piping or heat sinking around it. I think that’s because most configurations use less DRAM; I really cranked up the DRAM configuration, which meant I installed the most extreme, power-hungry devices in my laptop, pushing the thermal design margin right to the edge.
  • The trackpoint mouse was flakey sometimes; the drivers would sometimes not load properly or crash, which is annoying.
  • The ThinkVantage system update software, while a nice concept, is a bit annoying to use as it has to update itself typically before updating the system. As a general note, I don’t like vendor-specific extensions to the OS. They are never very well done, and often break: “Dear vendor, please stop trying to ‘add value’. You actually are destroying the value of your brand. Just make your good hardware and don’t get in my way, kthx bai.”
  • The FireGL V5200 graphics chipset, while very powerful, had some serious compatibility limitations. The OpenGL drivers never really worked right, and it was totally unsupported by some games, such as Second Life. Unfortunately, graphics drivers for laptops lag the main branch, since it seems every laptop requires a bit of tweaking to the drivers by the vendor.
  • The UltraBay lithium polymer battery that I purchased failed — twice. The failure was manifested in the battery going to 60% capacity within two months of use. The first time I called it into warranty service and got a replacement, and the second time it failed I just decided it was a design flaw and gave up on replacing it. The UltraBay lithium polymer is handy for situations where you’re on battery power and you want to swap out the main battery without going into hibernation. Fortunately, that situation was rare and the battery life of the main batteries was good enough, so it wasn’t really a problem in practice.
  • This is more my fault than anything else, but 100 GB was too small to live in. It didn’t help that I had multiple VMware images on my machine and my hardware design tools often chew up over 3GB per tool. The 2 GB of DRAM was also tough to live in Laptop battery; Altium DXP eats a gigabyte on its own, so starting and stopping the tool is painful as the page file starts kicking in.
  • Minor nit: the TrackPoint mouse will become uncalibrated if you lean on it lightly for too long, and the mouse will start gliding across the screen on its own. Fortunately, the driver is very intelligent and detects this condition so it’s short-lived.
  • This is a general fault of windows, but the 65k GDI resource limitation just sucks. Running out of GDI resources was the key source of reboots for me; Adobe tools and Altium DXP were notorious for leaking GDI objects, and unfortunately I use both heavily.
  • Bluescreens were rare, typically caused by either pulling out USB devices at inopportune times or problems occurring during standby, but one weirdness really got to me. Toward the end, if I walked around with the laptop, it would blue screen. This was because the hard drive shock detector would pause the drive, which would cause some application fault in windows that wasn’t expecting the pause. If I had to move around, I had to suspend the shock protection, which is sort of defeating the purpose of the protection. This wasn’t the case when I first started using my laptop. Why it developed this problem over time is a mystery to me.

    • Well, that’s my experience with the IBM T60p. I think my experience can be summarized by the fact that my new laptop is an IBM T61p — they won a repeat customer. The T61p is still settling in. I like the extra performance it brings, but it has some quirks of its own that I’m still learning to get used to. It’s funny, but every time I get a new laptop, I have to learn all of its little bugs and find ways to patch my behavior to avoid aggravating them. For example, I’ve trained myself to unplug my webcam before hitting the eject button on the minidock, because failing to do so causes a blue screen without fail. So far, none of the quirks have been so bad that I’ve given up on the machine. In addition to the webcam issue, I did have a spate of blue screens to deal with when I first got the laptop (mostly around minidock ejection and going into and out of standby), and I had to do some digging around in the Minidump logs to figure out exactly what behavior was triggering them. I wonder what other users do when this sort of thing happens to them?

    The post Via Bunnie’s Exit Review

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    Accumulator is no longer pollute the environment

    September 8th, 2009

    Accumulator is no longer pollute the environment

    Kinds of new acid-free batteries – lead-oxide laptop batteries through the national authority before testing, all targets were met or exceeded the national standard. This means that 150-year-old battery technology was a revolutionary breakthrough, making the traditional lead-acid batteries polluting industries into a zero-pollution environment-friendly industries possible.

    Lead-oxygen battery is the invention of two brothers – West Cong Zhang, Zhang Sai-wen, who under the leadership of Shaanxi and the Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd. After more than six years of research, finally reaction mechanism of electrolyte in the Dell laptop battery research breakthrough and the preparation of a compound salts out of aqueous solution of diluted sulfuric acid aqueous solution instead of the traditional.

    Was responsible for this testing is the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Institute of Chemical Physics Power Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, was recognized as authoritative testing organizations within the industry.

    According to reports, the submission of the three kinds of laptop batteries are the product under the conditions of industrial production (non-laboratory products). They are the cars to start batteries, electric bicycles and electric vehicles power battery special battery, application fields and market prospect is very broad.

    According to experts, currently used batteries generally can be divided into a dry (normal batteries), secondary HP laptop battery (rechargeable batteries, mainly used in mobile phones, computers), lead-acid batteries (mainly used in automobile, electric vehicles) the three class. With regard to the battery pollution, the masses are most concerned about reports the most ordinary Apple laptop battery. In fact, the production process is now common dry batteries without adding cadmium, lead, arsenic and other substances are no longer become a serious source of pollution. On the contrary, a large number of car battery, lead-acid batteries used in electric vehicles because they contain lead and sulfuric acid, but rather rubbish dump, one of the most dangerous items.

    It is understood that corrosion of lead-acid battery lead after the spill of heavy metals and acids will not only seriously polluted soil and water, air and the environment, ecological balance can also cause damage, but also trigger the body metabolism, reproductive and neurological aspects of the disease the Dell Inspiron e1505 Batterybattery , the body of lead Once the excessive levels, it will lead to mental decline, but also easy to induce malignant tumors of children, and even lead to death.

    Compared with the traditional lead-acid Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS batteries, lead batteries of oxygen greatly reduced pollution of the environment. Of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Dean Zhou Xing, said lead-acid batteries of the solid, gaseous pollution can be eliminated, but can not avoid the water-soluble heavy metal ions of lead pollution. Lead-oxygen IBM laptop battery although the production process and lead-acid battery production process the same, but thanks to a salt water solution instead of sulfuric acid and lead ion concentration is very low, almost no emissions, greatly reducing the risk of lead contamination.

    In addition, the lead-oxygen Latitude D620 battery for the replacement of sulfuric acid complex salts and additives can make use of iron and steel enterprises discharge waste from a coal-based chemical synthesis to obtain a simple to solve a number of steel companies can not handle the cost of treatment may need to spend a lot of pollution emissions.

    Chang brothers have been lead-oxygen Dell Inspiron 1300 battery in three Chinese national patent. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Electronic Science and Technology Information Institute points (Science and Technology Novelty Search) shows that the world there is no similar technology.

    Zhou Xing believes that the world faces an energy and environmental crisis, the advent of lead-oxygen battery of great significance and far-reaching.

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    Posted in battery