The NOOKcolor is the latest eReading device from Barnes & Noble. It features a seven-inch full color VividView touchscreen display, 8GB of memory plus up to 32GB more with a microSD card, Wi-Fi wireless networking, and support for ePub, plain text, and Microsoft Office files in addition to MP3 and AAC audio.
It is now available for $249 from Barnes & Noble, and will be available from Books-A-Million as that company's exclusive hardware book reader starting in December.
BUILD & DESIGN
The NOOKcolor is very similar in size to the original Nook reading device that was released last year. The newer device is the same width, though slightly longer and thinner, but that's where the comparison ends. The new NOOKcolor is much sleeker, even though it's a bit heavier than the Nook, thanks to an all black design that looks very sharp.
The exterior casing is dark gray/black plastic, with a smooth touch coating on the back of the device for extra grip. The entire device feels extremely solid; it's obviously well made and designed to stand up to a lot of daily use.
There's a small cutout at the bottom left corner of the device that I don't quite understand. The NOOKcolor is too big to dangle comfortably from a lanyard, and the cutout is too small to use as a true handle. Perhaps it's just there for aesthetic purposes, or perhaps it has a function of which I am not yet aware.
Display
The VividView LCD display is absolutely gorgeous, and after just a short time of use my fears were put to rest. It does provide a great reading experience in a variety of lighting conditions, from reading in bed at night to outside on a park bench on a sunny day. When I'm inside, I turn the brightness far down to conserve battery life and due to my personal preference.
I didn't encounter any eyestrain at all, but then again I've been reading eBooks on LCD screens for the past several years, on a variety of devices. I like eInk screens and have used my original Nook extensively, but I don't consider any particular screen to be the "ideal" for reading eBooks -- I believe it comes down to personal preference.
That said, I am impressed with the screen on the NOOKcolor. At full brightness, it is visible outside in full sunlight, though with a bit of glare. I have already ordered the anti-glare screen protector set offered by B&N, and will report on that product for the full review. They promise to reduce glare on the screen, but I was able to alleviate the problem without them by simply angling the screen toward my face rather than straight up toward the sky.
In all respects, I found the screen to be extremely responsive to my taps, and accurate as well, though there was no calibration process when I first started up the device.
Colors are rich and illustrations in my books look great, especially the bright paintings in the sample children’s books that were included with the device.
Keyboard
The NOOKcolor has a virtual onscreen keyboard that pops up when necessary. It works extremely well since the touchscreen is just sensitive enough to register my intentional taps but not so sensitive that I have a hard time hitting the wrong letter.
Other Buttons & Controls
There are no immediately discernable buttons on the NOOKcolor. That makes it look fabulous, of course, but that can also be a bit confusing until you get used to it. The power button is flush with the device on the upper left side; you have to press in just the right place to activate it. That's great when you want to make sure the device doesn't turn itself on accidentally, of course, but it does take a little training to hit it every time. You can also find the button without looking if you run your finger slowly down the side of the NOOKcolor, since it has a small imprinted power icon.
The volume control buttons are exactly the same in style, flush with the upper right edge of the device. I'm glad they're hidden in that way, since you're not likely to use them all that often. That also avoids the rattling button problem that was such a distraction on the Kindle DX.
The small Nook logo at the bottom of the screen is actually a button that brings up the home screen of the device when you press it. The only other features are a headphone jack at the top of the device and a microUSB charge/sync port centered on the bottom edge.
The reason why most of us buy a laptop is due to its portability. It gives us convenience that a desktop computer cannot provide. However, it is sometime frustrating to use a laptop because of battery life. So here are some tips on how you can extend your laptop's battery life.
GENERAL USAGE OF LAPTOP
1. Reduce the brightness of your screen.
2. Minimize processes in the computer. Try not to open multiple application at the same time as this consumes more power. Also, close applications that are running in background.
4. Make use of the power saving buttons.
5. Avoid using the CD/DVD drive if possible.
6. Defrag. Less power is consumed when your hard drive works efficiently. Defragment often so your hard drive will work as fast and efficiently as it can.
PROPER USE AND MAINTENANCE OF BATTERIES
1. Charge/discharge your laptop's batteries according to specifications by the manufacturer. Most laptops needed their batteries to be fully drained before recharging, then fully charging it.
2. Clean the contacts of your laptop's batteries. Use alcohol for cleaning and follow the procedure on your laptop's manual regarding the cleaning of batteries.
3. Don't let your batteries overheat. Overheating of your laptop's batteries can easily end its life.Use cooling pad and avoid placing your laptop on any surface that may block the cooling fans.
Like most of the low-cost companion PCs obtainable in stores, the mini NB205 helps you stay connected with a straightforward laptop that merely fits in a purse or backpack.
DESIGN
The Toshiba mini NB205 is the initial netbook (low-price, low-performance, ultraportable laptop) from Toshiba, but the design is undoubtedly one of the most attractive we've seen within the netbook category. Toshiba offers the NB205 in multiple colors, but the silver and "Sable Brown" color combination in our review unit looks quite nice. The screen lid is made of thin textured plastic with the Toshiba logo front and center in silver metalic plastic. Toshiba engineers made the interesting choice of placing the power button within the middle of the screen hinge where it is exposed even when the netbook is closed. At first I was concerned this could not be the really very best position since it means the power button could be accidentally triggered inside a backpack or laptop case, but the button is disabled if the screen lid is closed.
KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD
The NB205 uses a new full-size keyboard that is fairly massive for a 10-inch netbook. At initial glance the NB205 looks to have one of the really very best keyboards on any of the current-generation netbooks. Unfortunately, that opinion rapidly changes once you start typing. Although the keys are nice and huge with excellent spacing to prevent typos, the keyboard falls victim to the same thin and flexible plastics used inside the construction of the chassis. If you apply anything a lot a lot more than light typing pressure you will feel the keyboard "bouncing" under your fingertips as the plastic keyboard frame bends under the weight of your hands. If Toshiba engineers places a support frame under the keyboard this problem could merely be fixed. On a a great deal happier note, the mini NB205 features the single really very best touchpad we've utilized on any netbook to date. The touchpad measures roughly 3.2 inches wide by 1.8 inches tall with standard-sized touchpad buttons that go all the way to the front edge of the netbook. In short, Toshiba made perfect use of the readily obtainable space and gives users a "real" touchpad rather than the half-sized touchpads utilized on most netbooks. The touchpad itself is an ALPS model with excellent sensitivity and only minor lag. The scroll zones required a bit of adjustment in our review unit, but once we increased the scroll speed everything seemed fine.
DISPLAY
The Toshiba NB205 uses a nice and bright 10.1-inch widescreen LED-backlit display panel with a 1024 x 600 native resolution. I wish Toshiba offered the mini NB205 with a higher resolution screen for example the ones obtainable from Dell, HP, and Sony, but considering the $400 price point we can't complain too a great deal. Vertical viewing angles are average, with obvious color inversion when viewing from below and some over-exposed colors when viewed from above. Horizontal viewing angles are really good with colors only starting to shift at extreme wide viewing angles.
PERFORMANCE
The Toshiba mini NB205 offers similar performance to most netbooks, but that shouldn't be a surprise to most of our readers. The performance section of a netbook review is generally extremely boring compared to a full-featured notebook because most netbook have virtually identical specs. All Intel Atom-based netbooks have almost identical performance in terms of actual real-world use. Overall performance with the Intel Atom platform is really reasonable for daily activities like Web browsing, email, using Microsoft Office, listening to music, and watching DVD-quality movies. If you're in a bind you can even use Photo Editing Software like Photoshop or GIMP for fundamental image editing. The one and only performance-related issue that we encountered during our testing of the NB205 was related to bloatware. Toshiba decided to include some "helpful" applications for the webcam, battery monitoring, wireless controls and Norton antivirus ... all of which strain the netbook's limited resources and make the NB205 slower than it should be. While most netbooks finish booting into Windows XP (including launching all startup applications) in less than 45 seconds, the NB205 takes a great deal more than 70 seconds to finish loading all the bloatware during Windows startup.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/laptops-articles/toshibas-mini-nb205-3750651.html
About the AuthorRead more Notebook Review & Guide
Financial services, at 36.8%, dominates the deployments in Good's numbers. The high tech industry lands in second place with 11.4%, followed closely by health care at 10.5%. The legal market at 8.8%, and government at 8.3%, also both consume rather large slices in Good's pie chart.
Industries where the iPad is showing lesser amounts of early use include wholesale/retail, entertainment/media, business professional services, energy/utilities, communications, and manufacturing.
Good Technology, however, is a provider of enterprise mobility applications, and its results are based on activations with its own user base, which consists of 4,000 enterprise customers. Results of Good's survey could be skewed on several scores.
For one thing, Good's statistics don't take into account the use of iPads by SMBs and entrepreneurs. Anecdotally, news reports have been cropping up about the use of iPads by small real estate firms, mom-and-pop stores, and even musical recording artists. Good's study also leaves out industries that aren't commonly regarded as "businesses," such as education, where iPads are also growing strong.
Even if you consider enterprises only, it's quite possible that Good has disproportionate numbers of customers in certain industries, in comparison to others.
With all that said, there's certainly some evidence to support the notion that the three fields pinpointed by Good Technology -- financial services, high tech, and health care – are showing plenty of action in early adoption of the iPad, among businesses of various sizes. Yet this doesn't necessarily mean Apple won't face some obstacles ahead, even in those three arenas.
Financial Services
Unitus Community Credit Union is one relatively small financial services firm now using the iPad. According to a report in Credit Union Times, Unitus' business development manager, Bret Wooden, is visiting potential customers with an iPad in hand. Instead of urging businesses to go into a branch to open up an account, he takes the iPad to their work places and signs them up on the spot.
On the other side of the size spectrum, financial giant JP Morgan this month unveiled an iPad app aimed at giving investment customers instant mobile access to its stock market research and analysis services.
Still, Apple is heading toward more competition in financial services and other business markets from new tablets, particularly with the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook now on the horizon. Reportedly, ManuLife Financial Corp. is already testing the PlayBook. Meanwhile, insurer SunLife has signed on to buy as many as 1,000 PlayBooks. Likewise, the Canadian banking unit of ING Groep NV says it is committed to buying RIM's tablet.
According to Bloomberg, RIM is banking on security features such as the PlayBook's e-mail encryption to win out over Apple among financial services pros.
High Tech
Despite the results of Good's survey, wide-scale deployments of iPads at high tech companies are still hard to locate. Like smartphones before it, though, the iPad is now turning into a ubiquitous device at technology shows -- even at conferences about enterprise databases, CRM (customer relationship management), and other topics not directly related to either Apple or mobile devices.
Computer pros are often among the first to sport the latest and greatest, partly because they're generally keenly interested in technology, anyway. Yet folks such as systems integrators and VARs certainly wouldn't mind making some money off of new devices, either.
Forrester Research has already released a report highlighting three sorts of business opportunities high tech companies might pursue with iPads: "Displace" (where a laptop is used rather than a laptop); "Replace" (where an iPad replaces a clipboard); and "New Place" (where a tablet is used in situations where "nothing" has been used so far).
Yet users in high tech industries can be fickle. Could the iPhone lose favor among high tech customers if it fails to generate enough new business, or if better tablet technology comes along? The iPad does seem very well suited to many purposes, such as delivering sales presentations, taking notes in a classroom, and glancing at medical images, to name a few.
But many in the high tech industry might readily admit that an iPad can't really replace a laptop PC, due to its lack of a hard keyboard and the absence of Adobe Flash. However, the recent release of iOS 4.2 has brought multitasking to the iPad, along with a host of features to aid in enterprise integration, including security measures like remote wipe abilities.
Health Care
Speaking of medical images, the health care field is one area where pilot tests and large deployments of the iPad are particularly visible. iPads are also getting put to use as portable medical workstations for doctors and nurses, and as rehabilitative tools for hospital-bound patients in need of apps such as text-to-speech (TSS).
According to an article in the Chicago Sun Times, Loyola University Medical Center has now given iPads to all of its orthopedic residents as part of a pilot program. Meanwhile, the University of Chicago Medical Center is expanding on an earlier pilot by providing iPads to all of its internal medicine residents.
Many doctors are discovering the iPad to be a convenient way of accessing medical electronic records, because it is lighter than a laptop and it's good on long battery life.
The iPad carries limitations, though, in health care, too. By some accounts, the 1024-by-768 resolution of the iPad screen is adequate for showing CT scans to patients, but not for "primary diagnostic x-ray review."
Moreover, patients might find out that, while some rehabilitative equipment is covered by insurance plans, the iPad is not among them.
Some doctors still tend to the conservative side, and not all of them are tech enthusiasts. In one recent poll conducted by Epocrates, 20 percent of physicians said they planned to buy an iPad. On the other hand, 38% expressed interest, but said they wanted to get more information before making up their minds for sure.
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