Articles / Devices

The market of consumer sound cards is declining rapidly. It is caused both by falling of sales of desktop computers, and improvement of quality of onboard chips motherboards sound, including those from laptop. However, there is a category of users who are not willing to pay crazy money for unnecessary professional sound, but who still want to get a high quality sound. For them Creative company continues to produce its famous series of Sound Blaster. The Sound Blaster Z is the latest and the most affordable solution in the line.

The Samsung Company is on up-grade today. It is swiftly working up the market of mobile phones and smartphones, and its profits enable it to create unique and high-quality products as well as to experiment with new technologies. Pico-projectors are one of the relatively new trends of the South Korean manufacturer. A pico-projector is a miniature of a regular projector. This device is notable for its small size and can be compared to a packet of cigarettes. It is able to display an image of 100" in diagonal, though. There appears a question: whether it’s going to be of a good quality? This article answers it and tells what else the pico-projector Samsung SP-H03 is capable of.

HTPC is the most topical issue when it comes to discussing the home theatre system. Let’s assume that a DVD payer that costs about $60 doesn’t satisfy everyone even though it can play back a score or two of formats. It’s much better to connect a computer to an LCD TV, which enables to gain greater independence in case new codecs appear and to improve the quality of the displayed image. And it’s a lot easier to update hardware stuff. But a full-fledged computer costs a lot even if you cut down on some “extras”. A single-purpose player is cheaper and more compact. And the price depends on its functionality. A device that provides the basic scope of playing back digital content and doesn’t cost much at the same time is at issue in this article. We are happy to introduce Apacer AL460.

In the middle of 2008 AMD presented a new mobile platform Puma. Among its plural innovations technology was meant ATI XGP, which allowed connecting external videocards to the notebooks. By the end of 2008 the first products began to appear on retail sale. A company differed in particular Fujitsu Siemens Computers, producing a notebook AMILO Sa 3650, to which it is possible to connect AMILO GraphicBooster external accelerator. We’ve got both of these products and now we are glad to present their review, combined with the detailed description of ATI XGP technology.