Toshiba Satellite Laptops – Which One?

by: J Zuniga

The first decision you have to make is whether or not you will buy a satellite laptop or a traditional one. Once you have decided to purchase a satellite laptop, then you have to decide which one.

You can purchase Toshiba satellite laptops for as little as $600 and as much as $2,500. There are several models to choose from including the A100 Series, A105 Series, L20 Series, M45, M50, M55, M60, and M65 Series, and R10 and R15 Series. Each of them is unique in their own respect. Once you clearly document what you will use your new computer for, then, and only then should you begin shopping through the different models.

Most home users can get by with the M50, the beginning price Toshiba. It starts at $799.20 and goes up from there if you decide to further customize. However it does not come with Microsoft Office software. It’s inexpensive partly because it comes with an Intel Celeron M Processor 370 and 40 GB of HD. The rest of the M series is more costly. The M45 starts at $949.00, but only has the battery life of an hour. The M55 starts at $1,149.99 and is getting vastly better reviews if you look around, the M60 starts at $1034.10, and the M65 starts at $1,299.99.

The A100 series uses an Intel Pentium M780, wireless LAN, and Bluetooth capabilities, although it doesn’t come with Microsoft Office either. The A105 series is known for its light weight.

The L20 series is marketed as its value buy. It features Intel Cetrino Mobile Technology; an Intel Pentium M Processor 730 has 40GB and 256MB RAM.

The R series is a bit higher end. The R10 Tablet PC is known for its hinge design allowing the screen to swivel and lock into ‘tablet’ position easily. The R15 combines advanced notebook power with the comfort of simple pen and paper. In a few seconds, you can use a pen with very precise digital ink to write down anything you want. Very cool stuff.

Some swear by these laptops, while others haven’t noticed any big difference between a satellite laptop and a regular one. My experience has been very good, I have and R series and it's unique design is perfect for me. I also like the digital ink pen, very cool. Even though you haven’t heard much about these laptops, the buzz is picking up.

About The Author

J Zuniga is a senior editor of http://www.cheaper-satellite-laptops.com an informative site about satellite laptops. For more specific information go to

Your Ad Here

Canon Digital Camera Guide

by: Steve Gargin

Canon digital camera innovations have always been at the forefront of photographic innovations and their compact digital cameras package a variety of functions into a deceptively small Canon digital camera body. These are particularly attractive to a wide range of users because of their light weight, ease of use, high image quality and high functionality. Canon digital camera experts are highly experienced in camera manufacturer, leading-edge optical technology, ultra high-precision mounting technology, electronic device technology and color management technology amongst others. All of this experience and expertise is combined to produce the Canon digital camera PowerShot series and the PowerShot DIGITAL ELPH/DIGITAL IXUS series.

Throughout their continuing research, the Canon digital camera development team has collected a large amount of photographic data and also made broad statistical analyses of the frequency involved in taking photographs. This data led to the creation of the Canon digital camera Photographic Space which is a graphical database of information relating to the relationship between surrounding brightness and distance between a Canon digital camera and the subject relative to the focal length and position of the zoom lens when pictures are taken.

The Canon digital camera Photographic Space led to the development of a new scene-recognition technology called "iSAPS" (intelligent Scene Analysis based on Photographic Space) Technology. Canon digital camera iSAPS Technology analyses the scene to be photographed and makes optimal adjustments of a number of key functions, including auto-focus, before the shutter is pressed.

The Canon digital camera iSAPS Technology closely estimates the camera-to-subject distance based on the lens focal length, zoom position and surrounding brightness which guarantees the most accurate exposure and white balance settings for the overall conditions.

At the high end of the Canon digital camera range are their single-lens reflex, or SLR, cameras. The Canon digital camera company has created ultra-high-precision imaging elements and high-performance digital imaging engines so that their digital SLR cameras possess the same ease of operation as their 35mm film counterparts but produce exceptionally high-quality images.

The Canon digital camera imaging engine, or DIGIC II, creates image data from signals output from a CMOS, or complementary metal oxide semiconductor, sensor. The CMOS sensor is really the brain of any digital camera. Canon developed the Canon digital camera DIGIC II high-performance imaging engine directly due to the increasingly high resolution CMOS sensors. With the help of a high-capacity DDRS DRAM (double data rate SDRAM) as the buffer memory, the Canon digital camera DIGIC II processes high-resolution images at ultra-high speeds.

About The Author

Steve Gargin is the administrator of http://digital-camera-reviews.helper-guru.com/camera-digital-finepix-fuji-review/index.html which is a great website dedicated to giving free advice on Digital Cameras.

Your Ad Here

No Such Thing As an HDTV Antenna!

by: Eric Gov

Over-the-air (OTA) HDTV becomes more and more popular. For someone who is used to noisy analog TV pictures, it is hard to believe how amazing a quality of HDTV broadcasts can be. In fact, HDTV channels received over the air free of charge often have better quality than the same channels received through a paid satellite HDTV subscription. All you need to enjoy OTA HDTV is a HD television with a built-in HDTV tuner and an HDTV antenna.

Huh? Which kind of antenna?! If you have Ph.D in Electrical Engineering and have never heard about the antenna type called "HDTV antenna", it's not because you were a bad student. HDTV antenna has nothing to do with physics and engineering. It was invented in marketing departments. Marketing found an effective trick to boost TV antenna sales. HDTV is a hot thing these days. Call essentially the same device HDTV antenna, and it sells better. It makes people to believe they must buy an HDTV model or HDTV optimized antenna to watch HDTV broadcasts. This is very far from truth.

HDTV antenna hype created a huge misconception with regard to TV antennas used for HDTV reception. This article is an attempt to clarify this issue.

Do you know what a regular antenna is? Antenna is a piece of metal designed to resonate at a specific frequency and to be responsive over a certain range of frequencies. TV antennas are designed to work either in the range of Ultra High Frequencies (UHF), Very High Frequencies (VHF) or both. Any station transmitting in the VHF/UHF frequency bands, can be picked up by a VHF/UHF antenna and transferred to the TV set.

All television broadcasts, digital and analog, are in the VHF and UHF bands. Over 90% of the HDTV broadcasts are in the UHF, and less than 10% in the VHF band. What is important from the antenna perspective is that HDTV falls in the bandwidth of a regular VHF/UHF antenna. Not HDTV antenna, not HDTV optimized antenna, just a normal regular TV antenna. What makes a signal to be HD is its content, the way a signal is modulated, and not the carrier frequency it is transmitted on. On the contrary, the antenna knows nothing about the signal modulation and content. Hence, you don't need an HDTV antenna to pick up the HD signal. An antenna has absolutely no idea what the signal resolution is. It can be HDTV, SDTV, NTSC, whatever. It is the job of a HDTV tuner and HD television set to demodulate the signal and to present the actual content on the screen.

Well, the antenna bandwidth and frequency response are not the only parameters that are important for clear TV reception. An antenna has other important electrical and spatial properties, such as antenna gain (directivity) and high front-to-back (F/B) ratio. One might assume that an HDTV antenna should be more powerful in terms of F/B and gain parameters. Does HDTV reception impose more stringent requirements on antenna gain and F/B ratio?

There is a wrong, yet widespread belief that you need more antenna gain to receive digital television. I don't know where the hell this belief comes from, cause the situation is exactly the opposite. HDTV has much better noise and interference immunity than the analog television and can produce high quality video at significantly lower signal-to-noise ratios.

Another important specification, F/B ratio, has to do with the antenna ability to cope with a multi-path signal propagation from the towers to the receiving antenna. The higher F/B ratio is, the better is multi-path rejection (also known as ghost suppression). Without going into technical details, we must say that HDTV signal is a bit more sensitive to multi-path cause it has slightly larger bandwidth. Multi-path causes dips in the signal spectrum, whereas we want to keep the spectrum as flat as possible. When signal content is spread over a larger portion of spectrum it is more likely to be distorted by multi-path. Basically, what TV equipment manufacturers are trying to do in the so called HDTV optimization is to keep the spectrum flat in the whole frequency band. It is important for HDTV antenna to have a high F/B ratio in some areas where ghosts may be a problem. The point is, however, that most directional, old fashioned and cheap TV antennas have F/B ratio good enough to handle multi-path propagation of HDTV signal and keep spectrum distortion at minimum. If an antenna can handle an analog signal, it can handle a digital signal as well.

There is nothing specific about a TV antenna that is used to receive HDTV. When choosing an HDTV antenna, check the really important parameters such as directivity, gain, F/B ratio. These specifications are important for reception of both, digital and analog broadcasts. The HDTV optimization is probably the least important factor you should take into account.

About The Author

Eric Gov is with HDTV Antenna Labs.

HDTV Antenna Labs features antenna reviews and selection guide.

For more information visit http://www.HDTvAntennaLabs.com