computer and communication: gadget

hei i think u better buy this stuff than blackberry.. this review i take from pcmag.com
read this

Call it the Lingonberry. Nokia's new E71 is one of the most beautiful, luxurious-feeling phones I've ever used, and it's a direct attack on RIM's upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9000. This excellent handset is sure to take European executive suites by storm, but for it to triumph here in the U.S., Nokia needs to Americanize its software a bit more

Slim but solid at 4.49 by 2.24 by 0.4 inches and 4.4 ounces, the E71 features a grooved stainless-steel back and small, domed white keys. You'll need precise fingers to enjoy this keypad, but it's as sharp as a handmade Italian suit. Overall, this is one seriously elegant-looking device.

There are plenty of action and command buttons, including volume and quick-access controls that take you to the home screen, calendar, contacts list, and e-mail program. The number keys are overlaid on the QWERTY keyboard, which is small but has very good tactile response. Nokia did make one irksome misstep here: Rather than being below the rest of the number keys, as it is on every other phone keypad, the "0" is next to the "9." This will likely cause some misdialing while you become accustomed to the layout.

The 2.36-inch 320-by-240-pixel display isn't huge, but it's bright enough for everyday work and can be easily read in sunlight.

The E71, a quad-band EDGE, dual-band HSDPA device, will come in two versions. The U.S. handset will work on AT&T's high-speed network here and on slower EDGE networks abroad. The European version, meanwhile, will work on high-speed networks in Europe, but on AT&T and T-Mobile's EDGE networks here. T-Mobile users should buy the European version, if they can; for them, the U.S. version will work only on EDGE, and with the European version they'll have access to high-speed networks at least when they're in Europe. The phone also supports Wi-Fi; I connected it to WPA2-secured networks without a problem.

The E71 excels as a voice phone: Reception is solid, and the earpiece sounds just plain beautiful. The speakerphone's speaker is in the top of the phone pointing upward, which is a little odd, and it could be a bit louder. Transmissions through the microphone and speakerphone mic sounded a bit hollow, with some background noise getting through. The handset supports wired and Bluetooth headsets and has Nokia's usual mediocre voice dialing, which mostly-sorta-works. I got 4 hours 43 minutes of 3G talk time out of the huge 1,500-mAh battery, which is a decent result for a 3G phone.

Running the Symbian Series 60 Version 3 Feature Pack 1 OS, the E71 is the fastest, smoothest Symbian device I've ever used, likely because of its beefy 381-MHz ARM11 processor. There's about 115MB of free space to install programs and save data, or you can tuck a microSD card into a slot in the side. Our 8GB SanDisk card worked well. To connect the phone to a PC, you can use a microSD cable or a surprisingly speedy Bluetooth 2.0+EDR connection.

There's a lot going on with this high-end PDA phone, and that's not even counting the thousands of third-party Symbian programs out there. Google Maps, Gmail, Go, and Yahoo! all run on Symbian, for instance. You get support for text and picture messaging out of the box. For instant messaging, you can download the free Gizmo application, which integrates AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! IM. In testing, it worked fine. The e-mail program works automatically with POP3/IMAP accounts, and syncs e-mail, contacts, and calendars over the air with Exchange 2003 SP2 or newer servers. The IMAP client is smooth, although it doesn't feature push e-mail, as BlackBerry does. The E71 has a strange way of handling HTML e-mail. Messages are delivered in plain text, with an HTML version attached, which you can open in the Web browser.

About the browser: Nokia's WebKit based app (which uses the same core as Apple's Safari) is even better at formatting pages than the iPhone's, because it incorporates Flash. The implementation isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than no Flash at all. It worked fine with the simple games at Orisinal.com, but CNET TV's Flash videos crashed the browser.

Ultimately, though, I prefer the mobile Safari browser because the iPhone's screen features more pixels. The E71's features the same resolution (320 by 240 pixels) as most Windows Mobile devices and the BlackBerry Curve The iPhone's 320-by-480 display offers double the real estate.

Exceptionally good at viewing and editing documents, the E71 comes with QuickOffice 4.1, which opens and edits even complex Microsoft Office 2003 documents easily. To get support for Office 2007, though, you'll need to spring for a $70 upgrade to QuickOffice 5.0. The included Adobe Reader LE is the best mobile PDF viewer available. In fact, the phone's office apps do better at displaying complex documents than Microsoft's own Windows Mobile apps.

The music and video players aren't particularly noteworthy, but the E71 has intriguing podcast and FM radio clients. Both the podcast and FM radio programs have built-in connections to online podcast and radio station directories, unlike some other clients, which force you to dig up and type in URLs or frequency numbers. The handset supports Bluetooth stereo and features a 2.5mm headphone jack, so you'll need an adapter to use standard music headphones. You get support for AAC, MP3, and WMA audio files, and you can sync with either Nokia's own PC Suite software or Windows Media Player. Video support consists of MP4 and 3GP files at up to 320-by-240-pixel resolution.

Simulated outdoor and daylight shots from the 3.2-megapixel camera were red enough to worry me, and bright areas were blown out. In low light pictures looked noisy, and in very low light they were blurry. I'm hoping Nokia improves the camera before launch. The video mode, though, takes sharp 320-by-240 videos at 15 frames per second. And a built-in sharing client lets you quickly post your pictures to Flickr or Nokia's own Ovi service, right from the camera menu, which is a nice addition. There are plenty of other innovative features here, too, such as wireless keyboard and printing drivers, two different notepad programs, and a text-to-speech program that reads your messages out to you.

The E71 syncs with PCs (but not Macs) using Nokia's PC Suite software, letting you link up your contacts, calendars, and tasks with Outlook, Lotus Notes, or the built-in Windows programs. It also lets you use the E71 as a modem for your PC.

In Europe, Nokia's E-series devices are considered business-friendly when paired with solutions from Visto, Seven, or Nokia's own Intellisync unit. But since most U.S. businesses prefer Microsoft's or RIM's back-end solutions, E-series devices have more of a counterculture appeal with those who like Nokia's energetic embracing of open-source principles and community development efforts.

Nokia's one-size-fits-the-globe approach makes the E71 feel a little awkward at times. The phone is stuffed with icons for programs that simply don't work in the U.S., including push-to-talk, Internet telephony, video calling, a music store, and an app for Intranet access. Also, my E71 wasn't tuned for AT&T's network, so I got slow 3G speeds, but Nokia claims that this should be remedied with the final firmware.

The integrated GPS also felt a little unpolished. The E71 runs Nokia Maps 2.0, which has an impressive feature set. The maps are gorgeous, including outlines of individual buildings on city streets. The system provides driving and walking directions to thousands of points of interest, including restaurants, banks, and forms of transportation. But the GPS took a long time to lock onto my location. For the first half-hour, the system thought I was in Sweden, and I couldn't get it to recognize a New York City address I searched for. What's more, directions aren't free. For walking directions, you pay $7.79 per month or $39.01 a year. For driving directions (which adds voice prompts), it'll cost you $14.03/month or $109.25/year. Live traffic data is available only in Europe.

It's difficult to compare the E71 directly with the yet-to-be-released BlackBerry Bold, but this phone is far sleeker than its existing rivals, the BlackBerry Curve and Motorola Q9h and at around $500, it'll be around half the price of the Nokia E90 Communicator. The E71 is speedier and simpler to use than the Q9h, though the Q9h has a better keyboard. The Curve is less expensive, and is easier for e-mail, so it's a more mainstream choice here in the U.S, but, with its excellent looks, copious features, and maverick appeal, the E71 could easily become a viable competitor.

The Nokia E71 will go on sale later this summer direct from NokiaUSA.com for approximately $500.

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After its last release, the buggy BlackBerry Storm 9530, RIM's got its groove back. The new BlackBerry Curve 8900 juices up the already-excellent Curve form factor with a sharper screen, faster processor, and better camera, letting it jump through new multimedia hoops while still helping you get your work done. If you need to stay connected, this Curve is the simplest and most stylish way to do it on T-Mobile.

The Curve 8900 looks like a cross between the BlackBerry Curve 8320 and the BlackBerry Bold 9000. Like the Bold, it's mostly black and has an insanely high-res screen: 360 by 480 pixels on a 2.4-inch panel, which basically makes the pixels invisible. The screen is even higher-res than the iPhone's 320-by-480 touch screen. Since the iPhone's screen is much larger, though, it can fit more information than the 8900. Like the original Curve, the 8900 features a full QWERTY keyboard of slightly separated keys that are a breeze to use. The handset features Mute and Lock buttons on its top, Voice Dialing, Camera, and Volume controls on the side, and its 3.2-megapixel camera on the back.


Despite its just-average signal strength, the 8900 is an excellent voice phone, with calls sounding especially loud and clear on T-Mobile's 2G EDGE network You can even fiddle with the bass and treble controls to find the most appealing sound. Call delivery sounds terrific on the other end; in my test calls, no background noise made it through—even on the speakerphone. The phone paired with two different Bluetooth headsets without a hitch (the mono Motorola H15 and the stereo Altec Lansing Backbeat); it also works with wired headsets. Voice dialing works well. The 8900 clocked almost 9 hours of talk time—not the best we've seen on T-Mobile, but still quite good. Ringtones are loud enough, but the vibrating alert is a bit too subtle.

A major benefit: The phone works with T-Mobile's $10-per-month unlimited Wi-Fi calling plan, which lets you make calls from any Wi-Fi network you can connect to. The 8900 connected easily to wireless networks via Linksys and Apple routers. Calls were smooth, and the phone switched back and forth between the Wi-Fi and EDGE networks without a hitch.

Like most BlackBerrys, the 8900 excels at messaging. It uses BlackBerry e-mail, which can support eight accounts of almost any variety and display them with attachments, formatting, and graphics intact. You can view photos, videos and, Microsoft Office attachments with its built-in viewers. You also get clients for AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Microsoft Live Messenger, and Yahoo. The 8900 delivers e-mail, text, and picture messages all into one inbox. I was also able to quickly load and use Twibble, a third-party Twitter client. Several other third-party BlackBerry apps I tried also worked fine.

The beefy 512-MHz processor lets the phone multitask comfortably and perform some heavy lifting in the audio and video departments. The music player handles MP3, AAC, and WMA files, and the phone comes with an app to sync your playlists with iTunes (non-DRM files only). Music sounded great on both wired and Bluetooth headphones. MPEG-4 video files look gorgeous in 480-by-360-pixel, 30-frame-per-second quality, but Roxio Media Manager, which comes with the BlackBerry, is slow and crashes occasionally. I had an easier time reformatting videos with a free program called Avidemux, and there are other free options available on the Web.

Since the 8900 doesn't hit T-Mobile's 3G network, you can't really stream video successfully without Wi-Fi coverage. But within Wi-Fi range, streaming worked well: SlingPlayer ran especially smoothly while playing video in full-screen mode; FlyCast streaming music played without interruption. The phone also incorporates GPS, which works with the built-in BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps. The GPS doesn't appear to be enhanced with cell-tower triangulation—at least in BlackBerry Maps—so it works best in open areas.

The 3.2-megapixel camera takes admirably sharp photos, even in low light. But you'll need to be patient: I experienced delays of up to 2 seconds while the camera focused, and I couldn't find any way to disable autofocus. The video recorder takes smooth but slightly over-sharp-looking videos at 240 by 180 pixels and 15 frames per second. The phone has only about 120MB of available onboard memory for pictures, music, and data, but you can store your data on a microSD card, which slips into a slot under the back cover (the phone ships with a 256MB card). Fortunately, you don't have to turn the phone off or remove the battery to swap out cards.

There's only one big problem here: the Web browser.

RIM really needs to work out its Web-browsing issues. The basic principle of the 8900's browser is fine: It serves up desktop-style pages at various levels of zoom, with JavaScript but without Flash. As long as JavaScript is enabled, though, the browser is prone to stalling on scripts. This isn't just a problem with EDGE's relatively poky Internet speeds; even over Wi-Fi, pages would stall for several seconds at a time as the browser choked on a JavaScript. If you turn off JavaScript, you risk large blank chunks of pages. Opera Mini loads pages more quickly than the 8900's default browser, but, in our tests, its menus stuttered a bit. Both browsers are usable; they're just not nearly as good as the WebKit-based ones on Apple or Nokia handsets, or on HTC's G1 Android phone.

But don't let our quibble with the Web browser deter you from picking up this excellent smartphone. For a little bit more money than the Sidekick LX or the T-Mobile G1, you get a much smoother experience. The G1 has a better Web browser, but it's a clunkier piece of hardware, and the 8900 is far superior in terms of media and messaging.

With the addition of the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 to its lineup, T-Mobile now has a messaging phone for every age group: The Sidekick is the youngster; the Android-powered T-Mobile G1 is a bit of an ungainly adolescent; and the 8900 is all grown up. I'll bet it's the kind of BlackBerry President Obama wouldn't mind having. And with a recommendation like that, it's only fitting that the 8900 earn our Editors' Choice as the best smartphone in T-Mobile's lineup, ousting the aging Curve 8320. T-Mobile subscribers may also want to check out the unlocked Nokia E71, our Editors' Choice for unlocked smartphone. While the E71 is slimmer, with a better browser and more robust direct Microsoft Exchange support, the 8900 has a better camera and better media players, and can make calls over Wi-Fi.

by pcmag.com
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Dropbox is the simplest, most elegant file-synchronization tool I've ever used. Dropbox Basic provides 2GB of storage free, and Dropbox Pro gives you 50GB for $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year. The service stores files with strong encryption on multiple servers in Amazon's S3 service and works equally smoothly on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs. If you prefer to synchronize folders you already have on your system, or if you want to keep several folders fully synchronized between multiple machines, Dropbox may not be for you. It synchronizes only files stored in a single dedicated folder. But its smooth and hassle-free operation make it our Editors' Choice.

You start by signing up on Dropbox's Web site, then downloading and installing the client program. This creates a new folder called "My Dropbox" in your Documents folder (you can move it later) and a system tray icon that lets you open it with just a double click. From this same icon, you can also reach other preference settings, such as the folder's location and throttles on upload and download speeds. Another nice option on the pop-up menu is the "Forums" item, which opens a browser window on Dropbox's user support forum; you'll find the dialogue between users and developers livelier than on most competing services' sites.

Like its rival services, Dropbox stores synchronized files in the cloud so they're available at any machine on which you've installed Dropbox. You can also reach your files through a Web interface from any Internet-connected system. Dropbox's storage preserves copies of earlier versions of the files in My Dropbox, so you always have the most current copy on your computers. I liked that you can still access older versions (or files you deleted or moved) with just an Internet connection. One attractive feature (also available in SugarSync) is Dropbox's bandwidth-saving ability to upload and download only the parts of files that change during revisions. This isn't always possible, but I've made frequent changes in a 125MB file I synchronize and sometimes found that Dropbox needed to transfer only 2 to 3MB of data to update the file. That's a decent bandwidth savings.

When the installer creates the My Dropbox folder, it also creates a subfolder called Public. Files placed there aren't immediately visible to anyone, but by right-clicking on one and choosing the Copy Public Link, you create a Web address of a permanent, public link to the file that you can publish on the Web or send to friends or colleagues—even if they don't use Dropbox. (You should use this feature only for files you don't need to restrict to specific users, because there's no password protection.) I even built a small Web site in my Public folder by filling it with an HTML file and images and sending the link to friends so they could open it in their browsers. A similar feature with another subfolder called Photos lets you send a link to a Public Gallery that anyone can use to view any photos you've copied into it.

A slightly different feature uses invitation-only shared access to folders you create anywhere in My Dropbox. Right-click the icon of the folder you want to share, then choose an option to share the folder. The Dropbox Web interface opens, and you can send invitations to friends and colleagues that let them add, edit, or delete the files in the folder. They'll need a free Dropbox account, but they won't need to install the client if they're satisfied with accessing the folder over the Web. If they do install the Dropbox client, the shared folder will automatically download to their My Dropbox folder.

One major plus for Dropbox is its clean, intelligent design. When you right-click on a file in My Dropbox, you can choose the "Revisions…" option to start the Web interface and see a list of changes for that file. This is far more convenient than anything offered by SugarSync or Syncplicity, which force you to hunt down files you want in either a Web interface or a separate program and then choose to see revisions made to them.

The Web interface is clean and efficient—it looks a bit like Facebook without the clutter. At the top is a collapsible list of Recent Events listing files you've recently edited, added, or removed from Dropbox. You can even create an RSS feed of these recent changes, so you can be alerted to changes friends or colleagues make to shared files. Beneath the Recent Events is a list of your files, complete with icons for downloading earlier revisions of current files or deleted files, or removing files entirely.

I said earlier that Dropbox can sync only files in its Dropbox folder, but expert users can overcome that limitation fairly easily. On Vista (but not XP), Mac, or Linux, you can create a symbolic link inside My Dropbox to any file or folder anywhere on the system, and those files or folders will be synchronized as if they're actually in My Dropbox. Dropbox promises to add a "Watch Any Folder" feature in the future that will make it work in the same way its rival products do.

Dropbox is an example of software that gets virtually everything right—including automatic updating of itself when a new version appears. When the "Watch Any Folder" feature arrives, Dropbox will be all the more useful. Even without that ability, however, I was impressed enough to buy a year's subscription after testing it for this review. Dropbox is our Editors' Choice for file-synchronization services.
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