Gamers Enthusiasts who are looking for good deal of gaming notebooks, with full HD screen, Great specs with Intel Core i7 processors, High RAM and HDD space, Great integrated Graphics, Dell XPS M1645 is the answer. Available in three different colors of black, white and red. The review unit we have here is Black.

Here is the full specification before going futher to the unboxing and review.

Intel Core i7 740QM ( 1.73Ghz, 6MB L2 cache ) / 4GB / 640GB 5400RPM / 15.6″ Full HD 1080p/ Blueray / 1GB ATI HD5730 / Bluetooth / Win 7 Premium / 12Mths Parts Exchange / McAfee 15 months / Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy / WebCam / 9-cell / Ethernet 10/100 / Targus Synergy Case

Awesome isn’t it? Cost about USD 1660, its a great machine with great specs. Only its bigger in size at 15.6″, and quite heavy. Of course it is heavy, what you can expect from such a big machine, with powerful specifications that is not heavy. But the main point is, this is for portable gaming.

The box itself is very big.

Opening the box, we got the plastic protector cover, and the unit beneath.

Lets look one by one at what’s in the box. dell thin power adaptor, which I find its quite convenient to slip in the bag.

The notebook is packed inside a microfiber cloth which at the same time you can use to wipe your notebook.

Below the unit, there are the DVDs that came along, such as the McAfee DVD, Windows 7 DVD, Driver DVD, and many more.

Dell is always known to be providing complete DVD for certain high end range. Like it.

The unit itself. I like this design of having separate two layers, one glossy, one leather covered, separated with steel like design bar.

A leather touch on the notebook, elegant isn’t it?

The glossy case with Chrome Dell logo.

The back of the unit with lots of ventilation holes, and the popped out battery. Its 9 cells of course.

A closer look at the ventilation holes at the base of the XPS M1645.

Side bezel, with XPS model name printed. Notice the circle surrounding the XPS name, its LED Backlit when powered on.

Looking at the connectors available, on the right, there are Express Card Slot, SD Card Reader, Mini Firewire 1394 port…

One USB 2.0 Port and the power plug socket.

On the left, there are two Headphones Jack, One Microphone Jack, 2 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI Port….

eSata port I think, Ethernet Jack, VGA Out port and Kensington Lock socket.

There is another ventilation holes at the back, at the LCD junction. Its great to have it on the back, so that we are not interrupted with heat from the inside when using it.

Powered by Windows 7 on Intel Core i7 processors.

Keyboard is not chicklet, but LED Backlit. Controllable using the Fn key combination to switched it on and off. Although, some of you might not be using this in-built keyboard for gaming, and attaching an external USB Keyboards for more convenient gaming.

standard touchpad

LEDs indicators at the front base.

Two Dolby 5.1 speakers, one on each side.

Touch sensitive quick access panel with LED Backlit. By looking at few pictures above, we can say that there are plenty of White LEDs in this notebook.

LCD is full frame with glossy mirror like screen. Hold down together with two metal plate on each corner. very strong built.

Finally, here are few more shots of the notebook for your references.

Overall, the specifications is highly powerful with Core i7, 4 GB of DDR3 (although some of you might be looking at 8 GB), 640 GB HDD more than enough for gaming, 1 GB of ATI Radeon 5730 Graphics, very strong for heavy game, plus the Full HD 1080p LCD Screen Resolution. What you can expect? The strongest in the range. There are some other considerations for the similar specifications on other brands like Acer and Asus, but Dell is superior in bringing full HD Screen and Dolby 5.1 speakers.

From my experience with plenty of Dell latest notebooks, I would say Dell’s speakers are always the best and most solid. Even their basic speakers are great too. Of course it is comparable to Harman Kardon Speakers in Toshiba’s premier notebooks.

Worth the buy? Yes if you have some extra cash, and you wanted a portable gaming machine and at the same time for portable multimedia need. Watching Full HD movies in this machine is very nice I can say. Don’t forget about the speaker quality as well. So, preferably, Dell XPS M1645 CF is all rounder, and specifically suited for gaming and multimedia experience.

Lately we’ve heard or watched lots of natural disasters happening around the world resulted from extreme weather condition, and in our place itself, it almost rain everyday when its not a raining season. Global warming is severe now, lets go green to save the world we are living in and take our part in this move. Seriously, do you feel insecure looking at the way the nature is behaving lately? I do, and I try to imagine. Its nightmare.

So, lets save the world by going Green. Sony has brought to you netbook lovers, in their VAIO Mini range, the Vaio W21E that uses recycled materials and saves up some packaging. Want to know more? Check them out futher down.

Lets take a look at the hardware unit first, then we come back to the Go Green features. Only comes in Mint White color (Outer white, inner green). Great combination. I like this color, feel so cool.

The inner case is in light green, silver chicklet keyboard (thinner keys), and silver touch pad. Awesome.

Front part, we got the Slider Power Button with LED, Battery and HDD LED Indicator

To the left of it, we got the Sony Proprietary MicroStick reader, then we got the SD reader, and Wireless On/Off Button with LED too.

The left side of the netbook, we got Headset and Microphone Jack, VGA Out port and ventilation holes. I like the VAIO Mini’s round edges. They just looked so cute.

On the right side, there are 2 USB 2.0 Ports, Ethernet Jack and Kensington Lock socket. Too bad only two USB ports available.

So the full code for this series is VPC-W21E-AG. Look at the green dot textured case. Nice right?

Touchpad is in silver color, with some pattern. Smooth surface, not sticky.

Above the touchpad, there are 3 LEDs for Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock. I purposely switched all On to show it.

Towards the lower left corner of the keyboard, we got VAIO logo engraved within.

Accompanying it are the Official Warranty sticker, Windows 7 Sticker, Intel Atom Sticker, and the Energy Saving sticker.

Keyboards are chicklet, and thinner. Not good for users with long fingernails. Damn I need mine trimmed soon.

Webcam which is enclosed in a bigger rounded glass cover, this makes it a selling point too, showing that they have nicer webcam.

Resolution of the screen is larger, @ 1366 x 768 pixels, icons are smaller and just nice for such netbook. So far, no other netbooks has this resolution from what I have encountered. If there are others apart from VAIO’s, do notify me.

Lets take a look a few more shots of the VAIO W21E from different perspective.

Now we are back to the Green Feature. VAIO W21E does not come with a BOX. It is all packed inside the mini bag provided. Nice bag I would say, can fit in everything from the User guides, Adaptor, 3 different power cable, the notebook itself and the battery which is secured at the bottom of the bag.

The case of VAIO W21 is made of recycled plastic. That is one world saving move.

User manuals are in CD form, reduce printing and paper use.

Packed in a bag, which is also partially made of recycled plastic. Nice.

Minimalist Bag. I love it, and if it is available for sales openly, I would purchase 10 for resell. Perhaps some other brands like HP, Acer and Toshiba shall take the same move like this as well. Provide a nicer bag with the Netbook, and save the environment.

The basic specifications of Sony VAIO W21E

Here is a top shot showing the inner side of the bag from Sony. Lots of compartments, and everything is secured nicely inside.

Overall, this netbook is better than any out there due to one thing, the RESOLUTION. Its bigger and thats what some of us been wanting to have in netbook all this while. 1024 x 600 is not nice at all for long hours work. 1366 x 768 is nicer.

Price wise, it cost about USD 540 and of course the Official Warranty Unit, not the Black Market / Parallel Import unit. Support the Official Warranty! I would recommend this netbook for everyone who have some budget and looking for bigger screen resolution, quality, elegancy, and of course taking part in saving the World from Global Warming.

Recently Twitter added their official Tweet Button (look at the top right of this post). Looks cool when its official huh? I like it. Removed my old plugin, installed this new plugin, and positioned it on the right. Very nice.

If you like to give it a try, check out the plugin source at WordPress Plugin directory, or go to this Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-tweet-button/

The Features of this plugin as quoted from the WordPress Plugin Page:

Features

• Custom recommendations per post entry for relevancy.
• Option for tweeting the entry title, page title, blog name or a custom text.
• Each post can have custom tweet texts.
• Custom text for tweets can be made using tags (%POSTTITLE%, %BLOGTITLE%).
• Tweet Button can be positioned at the top, bottom or both.
• Can be set to be positioned by the [tweetbutton] shortcode.
• Can be set to be positioned manually.
• Styling options for the button.
• Styling options for the div that surrounds the button.
• Can be set to vertical, horizontal or no counter.
• Option to switch between ‘{text} {link} via {@user}’ and ‘RT {@user} {text} {link}’ formats.
• Referral can be turned off by removing the username.
• Authors can configure their own Twitter accounts on their profile pages. (WP3.x only)
• Tweet button language can be set to Twitter’s supported languages.
• Tweet Button can be generated manually using the tweetbutton(); function.
• Supports WordPress 3 shortener functions.
• Initial URL shrinking with 3rd party services (b2l.me, bit.ly, cli.gs, sl.ly, snipr, su.pr, tinyarro.ws, tinyurl)
• Initial URL shrinking with the Twitter Friendly Links Plugin
• Initial URL shrinking with the YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter Plugin
• WPTouch Support
• counturl support for consistent url counts across URL shorteners

Latest addition to Dell Inspiron series, the Inspiron 14 n4030 which features Intel’s latest processor Pentium P6000 running @ speed of 1.86 GHz, with higher L2 Cache. This seems to be replacing the Intel Dual Core family soon in notebooks. First move we saw here was on Acer that discontinued their Aspire 4732Z line, and add on Aspire 4741Z with Intel Pentium P6000 processor as well.

Dell Inspiron 14 n4030 comes with textured black design. Round texture with metallic effect. Very unique and special I would say. At some angle, it seems like honeycomb design.

The power adaptor as usual, has LED indicator at the tip of it. Very cool feature.

When you look closer, all you see is round textures placed in certain manner.

Another look at the case.

Okay, enough on the new feature. Lets look further at the machine. The Palm rest is also design with same texture for your information.

Notebook Power @ Netbook Price. True? Not so if you are looking at Indonesia’s price tag of Rp. 5.290.000. But it brings good specs though, and still reasonable, with ATI Radeon HD530V Graphics up to 1 GB of Memory, 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, and 320 GB of Fair Harddisk Space. For that price, it comes with No-OS configuration though.

Touchpad is simply black.

Keyboards are slightly bigger and packed together. Of all notebooks, I still prefer chicklet keyboard though, more comfy.

Lets look at the ports available on this n4030. On the right, we got Headphone and Microphone Jack, 2 USB 2.0 ports, VGA Out port.

To the left side, we got the power socket, 1 USB 2.0 Port, Ethernet port and DVD-RW drive.

Going to the front, there are few LEDs indicators like the Power, HDD and Battery. To the right of it, there is a SD Card Reader with dummy installed.

Ventilation holes are through the back, so it won’t disturb your gadgets which you normally put on the side of the notebook.

Performance wise, its acceptable, slightly lower than Core i3 processor, and great enough for starters and medium usage.

Only one colors available for now. Check out further pictures from different angles below. Design wise, its cool and unique. Specifications wise, its complete and good enough for daily use. Price wise, slightly higher. Maybe will drop few months later, we don’t know.

Enjoy. Will be back with more reviews. Please do drop your comments below.

Replacing Toshiba Satellite M500 Premier Series, the Satellite M645 delivered with lots of improvements in design and features. And price wise, its lower than previous M500 series. So, its more affordable now. Two configurations available, the M645-1001X with Core i3 Processor, and M645-1003X with Core i5 Processor.

Designed in metallish like case, it makes it more solid looking and even premier than any other.

A close look at the edges, showing some part glossy, some part are textured. Resembling a stainless steel plate covering the notebook.

Toshiba logo is in chrome of course.

Top view

On the right side of the notebook, we got Power socket, and ventilation holes.

Also, VGA port, ESata+USB Combo, HDMI, Microphone and headphone jack, and Express Card Slot On top.

On the left, we got Kensington Lock, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, Ethernet Port, and the SLOT-IN DVD-RW. Yeah Slot In. You got it. Nice?

Front part, there are few LEDs indicator like Power Plug, Power, Battery, Harddisk, Memory Card, Wireless, Wireless Signal.

Below them is the SD Card Reader.

Front left, we got the Satellite logo LED Backlited. Elegant.

Touch Pad area has one bar of LED indicator too, to indicates that it is active. Between the click buttons, there lies the Fingerprint Reader for extra security.

Front view

The keyboard case is also designed in metallish like.

And a slight curved up when reaching the speaker area.

Speaker powered by Harman Kardon. Execellent. Perfect sound quality for notebook. The best of all notebooks.

There is a touch sensitive control bar with LED Backlit between the two speakers.

Power button is LED backlit too.

Keyboards are LED Backlit as well. So, everything is backlit here. Comfortable for night use, especially if you are working in a dark room or when your roommate is already sleeping.

And here are the rest of the pictures from different angles. Specification wise, please check at pc.toshiba-asia.com. Thank you.

If you wanted a powerful machine, M645-1003X which is powered by Intel Core i5 with 4 GB of DDR3 RAM is your choice. With only About Rp. 2.000.000 more than M645-1001X, M645-1003x is more worth it from my point of view. Provided you have the budget for such machine.

Additional info, this machine uses two graphics card, 1 Intel HD Graphics, and Nvidia GeForce GT330M. By default, it will run on Intel HD, and when the performance required so, Nvidia GeForce GT330M will take over to fulfill the requirements. This is to save energy and prolong the battery life.

Overall, this is a great machine, with great specs and great design. Might seems quite thick though, but its still within the comfortable region.

Acer has recently, well not recent, its actually two to three months past, their new series of Aspire on 4741 and 4745G. As per this article publishing time, there are quite a few specs available for Acer Aspire 4741, 4741Z and 4745G. Acer Aspire 4741Z is said to replace Acer 4732Z with new Intel Pentium P6000 processors. Design wise, both are almost similar, and for Aspire 4745G its glossy and more elegant than 4741.

Acer 4745G came with Core i5 powered processor, and ATI Radeon HD5470 up to 1211 MB memory. Large harddisk, 2 GB of RAM, and powered by Windows 7 Home Premium. It would be superior for such specs and enough for gaming and graphics editing.

Lets take a quick look at the unboxing. Opening the box you are presented with the installation guide.

The notebook is wrapped nicely in a cloth like sleeve to protect it from scratches.

Then we got the battery, power adaptor, Warranty card and manuals.

Acer 4745G surface is glossy and has some light black lining pattern.

Looking at the ports available, on the left there are Headphone, microphone jack, USB port, Ethernet jack, HDMI, VGA out and some ventilation holes.

On the right, there are power plug socket, DVD-RW DL, and three more USB ports. It has up to 4 USB 2.0 ports in total.

As with most of the new notebooks nowadays, all have LED backlit display, and multitouch touchpad.

There is a memory card slot in front, covered with a dummy card.

Touchpad is nicely designed and laced with chrome finish. Very smooth feel and nice to use.

A closer look at the touchpad.

Below the touchpad, there are LEDs indicator like power, battery and wireless.

Some stickers on the palm rest.

keyboards that has been the same since Acer 4935 era. Which is quite comfortable, but prone to dust particles below it.

Power button is designed with solid look, and LED backlit. Beside it, there are more LED indicators for the HDD, Numeric Pad and Capslock.

Speakers are dolby home theater like, but might not be the loudest in the market so far. I still prefer Dell Inspiron 14R speaker which is more solid and louder.

On the top right, there are two buttons, 1 for power saving, 1 to eject the DVD-RW. Notice that there are no eject button on the DVD-RW drive. With this button available, perhaps slot-in DVD-RW drive would be more precise.

Acer logo is always there below the LCD panel.

Side view, slimmer design.

Simple minimalist edges design.

And here are the rest of the overall look on the Acer Aspire 4745G from different angles.

If you find working on a netbook resolution of 1024 x 600 is frustrating and too small for you, then Sony Vaio W216 is the one for you. It is having 1366 x 768 resolution on a 10.1″ LCD screen.

Not only the screen resolution is good, it also packed with 2 GB RAM straight away, so all you need in a netbook is there. All settled for you in this one machine.

Lets take a look at few unboxing pictures below. Opening the box, you got the power adaptor, battery and warranty card.

Below this, we got the machine itself, packed nicely.

The one I got is brown. There are other colors available such as pink, white, and blue.

A big VAIO logo is covered with chrome finish that makes it more elegant now.

Keyboard wise, its chicklet which is way so comfortable to type on. Just like the Macbook’s keyboard. Once you get used to this keyboard, you wouldn’t want to come back to the normal one.

Touchpad is nicely decorated.

For the base, its rounded on all the edges. Two USB 2.0 ports on the right, Ethernet jack and kensington lock.

On the front part, there are two LEDs indicator for HDD and Battery, and the power slide button.

To the left of it, we got the Wireless On Off Switch and Card Reader slot.

On the left side of the netbook, there are Microphone jack, Headphone Jack, VGA Out Port, Ventilation holes and the power cord port.

A closer look at the keyboard. The side of it were covered in textured pattern case.

And here are the rest of the pictures…

Overall, this VAIO W netbook is performing good, with comfortable keyboard, great resolution, and elegant design. Worth the price. Last time it cost about Rp. 5.500.000 here.

Happy weekend people. Its been a busy weeks, and tiring one too, or maybe I am just slacking off here. We gonna take a look at my trusty iPod + Radio + Alarm Clock Speaker by Altec Lansing here.

Altec Lansing Moondance Glow iM-402 cost about Rp. 1.600.000 or USD 175 at the posting time. Pretty worth it for such featured speaker. Stereo Speaker, Alarm Clock, Remote, Snooze button, Mood Lights, 4 presets Radio Channels, and more we are going to share below.

Lets start with the unboxing. Opening up the box, brings you the user guide and warranty card.

Multiple power head for different countries, which might not get to used unless you travel a lot. Apparently, I only used one of it, which is for Asia.

It also comes with multiple ipod dock sizes to suit your iPod sizes.

Radio antenna cable.

The tiny remote controller, which is nice looking, but I wish it is LED backlit though, so I can see the remote in the dark, prolly with the lights out, and the mood lights on.

Here is the power adapter, with the special head connector to facilitates different power head.

And finally, the speaker it self. From the picture, it might seems a little big and hard to imagine how big it is. But when you got your hands on it, its quite small, but POWERFUL. You know what I mean.

Two drivers, one at each side, which is big enough, and covered with mesh grills. Pretty solid looking.

On the top right, we got the Clock, Alarm indicator, and also served as the track display.

The iPod dock is nicely placed in the middle, and can be hid inside and pushed out when going to be use.

It sits nicely to my iPod Nano, and looks good isn’t it?

On top of it, there lies all the buttons, which is touch sensitive and LED backlit. It need some manual reading in order to understand how to use each button. Some requires holding and pressing for few seconds to trigger some functions. Reading the Manual and trying it out for few times, got me used to it.

The side panel is covered with stainless like bezel. Make it even more solid looking.

At the back of it, there lies the FM antenna port, Aux Port for connecting to external devices, DC In Port to the adapter, Snooze Remote port which I didnt get it in my purchase, perhaps different parts for different countries, and the Clock Button to set the Clock and the others.

And here’s more pics of the speakers from different angles. Amazed?

Sound Quality? Its great, loud enough for the room or even a hall, and bass is compromised here, no lacking behind. The mood lighting is nice, with lots of colors to choose from depending on your mood. Its best located on the corner of the room. Its Worth It!

Okay folks, its been sometimes again since I last blogged. Been really busy at life, and so stressed up sometimes that I don’t have the mood to blog and update the works. Anyway, its Friday and TGIF!! Gonna share with you one nice thing I like to go while in Malacca now. Well, not in Malacca only perhaps, as this Coffee Shop / Cafe is available in other towns in Malaysia too.

Its the Old Town Coffee @ Dataran Pahlawan Malacca. Place is at the roof top, quite neat, and its crowded sometimes. But I prefer it in the evening when not that crowded. Its a coffee shop, but this time around, I opted for their new drinks: Teh Tarik. Lets see how nice it is. Well, its perfectly mixed and taste awesome. Just look at it, how smooth the blend is.

For this tea time, we go for French toast and the Kaya Toast. Nice. Thick and fluffy.

With butter on top melting away…. slrpp..

The Kaya toast…

The result after the husband and wife had it….

Clean. Left a piece which I then finished it off. :p Another cup of Teh Tarik for you. Cheers.

Got myself this very elegant leather pouch from Capdase, which they called it Smart Pocket. There is another one for iPhone too, but lets just stick to Blackberry for this, since I got it. Capdase has been known to produce lots of simple cases and pouch, and their prices are reasonably cheaper than others. Its quite famous here in Indonesia too.

So, I got mine from a guy in MacClub’s forum after found out the model somewhere while web hopping. On the box, it says it is for Curve 8900 too.

What’s great about this Smart Pocket from CapDase? Molded Fit, scratchproof inside of the pouch, and it fits my Blackberry Bold 9700 nicely. Pull-n-take mechanism which is to assist you taking out the phone from the pocket. Its very convenient and reduce the chances of spoiling our LCD due to pulling the phone’s top too hard sometimes.

Outer part is solid looking, with a small popped out red square, probably one of the trademark from Capdase.

On the other side, Capdase logo is embosed into it.

and take a look at this pic below, this is when the phone is taken out trough pull mechanism. the whole string that holds the phone is out. When the phone is in, everything is pushed in.

Look at how fitting the phone into the pocket. Its ELEGANT! only one word can describe it.

the inside part is in red, and built of carpet like surface.

So, when the phone is totally in, as you can see, the string left a little on the back which is then used when you wanted to pull out the phone.

I purposely bought this on top of my other Melkco Leather Pouch for Blackberry Bold 9700, so that I can use this Capdase Smart Pocket for special occasions or some party to looked more elegant. Lets take a look further shots of the Capdase Smart Pocket from different angles below.

Just a short post to fill the time. Been busy with exhibition lately, and lots of things to take care of for my company. Going to be a Pte. Ltd. this coming new year and hope everything is a good learning progress for me. Just really have to grow fast and keep up with the technology advancement.