List of Smartphones - Android Jelly Bean Devices

It’s been a month since the latest version of Android was announced. Dubbed “Jelly Bean”  keeping with the tradition of naming successive versions after desserts alphabetically, version 4.1 of the world’s most popular mobile operating system was met with positive reactions. You can read about the new features here. However, the one thing on everyone’s mind is, when is it finally going to be available widely and what are the Android Jelly Bean Devices? Considering the track record of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, not everyone is hopeful about a smooth deployment. After all, Ice Cream Sandwich was released way back in October 2011 and it still isn’t available on most devices.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to be hopeful does it? Google has been rather tight lipped about when and how many devices will get Jelly Bean. So here are the devices we know will get an upgrade to Jelly Bean or come with it out of the box. They are categorized manufacturer wise:

Android Jelly Bean Devices – Samsung:

Samsung seems to give the most confirmation about it’s devices getting Jelly Bean, with a device or two still in the pipeline, we’re pretty sure they’ll be upgradeable to Android 4.1.

Confirmed Devices:

• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus S
• Samsung Galaxy S3

Prospective/Rumored Devices:

• Samsung Galaxy S2
• Samsung Galaxy Note
• Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Android Jelly Bean Devices – HTC:

The Taiwanese manufacturer has been quite clear about the devices slated to get Jelly Bean, but hasn’t really named previous generation devices.

Confirmed Devices:

• HTC One X
• HTC One XL
• HTC One S

Rumored/Prospective Devices:

• HTC EVO 3D
• HTC Droid Incredible
• HTC Sensation XL

Android Jelly Bean Devices – Sony

Sony hasn’t revealed any plans for upgrades to Jelly Bean just yet but a post on the official Facebook page states that no 2011 devices will get the upgrade. Not even the mighty Xperia Arc S will be get an official upgrade, at least that’s what the current announcement says.

Update (2/08/2012): The Facebook comment regarding 2011 Xperia devices not getting Android Jelly Bean has been retracted and an official blog post says 2011 Xperia devices may yet get the Jelly Bean upgrade!

Rumored/Prospective devices:

• Sony Xperia S
• Sony Xperia U
• Sony Xperia P
• Sony Xperia Sola
• Sony Xperia Arc S
• Sony Xperia Mini Pro

Android Jelly Bean Devices – Motorola

Motorola is in a good position right now, after being bought out by Google, we can expect it to get the latest Android updates pretty soon. As of now only one device is confirmed to get the upgrade. Curiously, the Xoom gets the upgrade but the newer Xoom 2 does not.

Confirmed Devices:

• Motorola Xoom Tablet (Wi-Fi variant only)

Rumored/Prospective Devices:

• Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX
• Motorola Atrix 2
• Motorola Atrix HD

Android Jelly Bean Devices – LG:

Although not a very popular smartphone brand, LG has announced that all compatible phones from its 2012 range and beyond will get the upgrade to Jelly Bean. However, the updates are slated to roll out in Q4 2012 or Q1 2013.

Rumored/Prospective Devices:

• LG Optimus 4X HD
• LG Optimus 3D Max
• LG Optimus L7

That’s all we know for now, we’ll be updating this list as and when more information is released, stay tuned to this space for more! You can also check out the official Android website to find out more. Be sure to leave us your comments or queries below.

Recover Your Forgotten Windows XP Password Very Simple

Can’t get into your user account?  Its very easy to recover windows XP password.  I’m gonna explain how the default Administrator account can come to the rescue. With so many passwords to remember, your yahoo, Google, AIM, blogger, etc. It gets a little nosy to remember all the passwords.You may recover the passwords for the Yahoo, Gmail whatever through your email address.But what happens when you forget your own Windows password, you’d be left out in the no man’s land feeling helpless? And thankfully there are ways to recover your windows XP password.

Recover Windows XP Password In 4 Steps :

Lets have a look at how we canrecover our windows passwords.But sadly for the windows Vista and 7 users, this method is not applicable.

1) Firstly to recover your windows XP password, you need to boot your computer into safe mode. To do this, just reboot your computer and keep tapping the F8 key until you are redirected to the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Here, select the Safe Mode option and hit the return key.

2) Windows will now boot into Safe Mode. It might take a little longer than that of the usual boot-up. It’s alright. After a while you’ll be presented with the User Account logon screen.If you click on your account, it will still ask you for the password which you do not know. There is another Administrator account which has no password by default. Click on the Administrator account to load windows.

3) Once Windows has finished loading, a pop-up box will appear, this is a simple warning that some of your devices may not work properly. This is due to the safe mode boot up, it disables all your multimedia and networking devices and drivers. Click on the yes button to confirm you are happy using Windows in Safe Mode.

4) A basic looking version of windows desktop will appear, click on the start button, then go to control panel.Locate the User Accounts Icon and open it. You will now see a list of user accounts, choose the account of which you have forgotten he password of.From the list of options, click change password. Now a window will appear, since you do not require the old password to change it, you can simply enter the new password and get yourself a new Windows password. You are done and you can now reboot your computer normally and access your desktop like you used to.

5) That’s all. Just take a look at the above screenshot to get a clear idea. If you have any queries, just let me know. I think now you can easily recover windows XP password when lost.

Windows 8 RTM Complete!

The long awaited Windows 8 has finally gone gold! For those who don’t know, “going gold” is an expression that comes from the fact that the final reference copy from which commercial copies are made is molded in gold. Therefore in simple terms, “going gold” means the final version that will be released to consumers is complete. This version is Windows 8 RTM. Before it actually appears on shelves on the official release date, a final version called RTM is sent to developers and manufacturers beforehand so they can start assembling devices and computers in time for retail release. RTM stands for “Release to Manufacturing”.

So basically, RTM is the final version us common folk will be able to grab off shelves on October 26th, 2012 which is the retail release date. Also, Windows 8 computers and tablets will be available to purchase on that day and yes that includes the Microsoft Surface. For those curious, the final build of Windows 8 RTM is 9200 and not 8888 as previously expected, although that would have been fitting. The complete build is 9200.16384.WIN8_RTM.120725-1247. Reportedly, there have been leaks of the RTM version and more new features not in the release preview are present. For now, we know that there are more customization options than previously known, which includes themes, wallpapers, color schemes and the like.

Now, even though Windows 8 RTM is complete, the availability for developers and manufacturers still varies. Other than release schedule, we also know of the editions Windows 8 will be released in, Curiously, other than the 15$ upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 for PC’s bought since June there have been no announcements on pricing. If you have a new Windows 7 computer, check for your Windows 8 upgrade here. Here’s the release schedule:

Windows 8 RTM Release Schedule

• August 15: MSDN and Technet subscribers can download Windows 8 RTM.
• August 16: Microsoft Partner Network and Software Assurance members get access to Windows 8 RTM.
• August 20: Microsoft Action Pack developers will be able to access Windows 8 RTM.
• September 1: Volume license customers that are not Software Assurance members can purchase Windows 8 licenses.
• October 26: Retail release of Windows 8 and Windows 8 PC’s/devices.

Apart from Windows 8, even Windows Server 2012 has reached the RTM milestone. We’re pretty excited about the Windows 8 release and can’t wait to sample Microsoft’s new operating system. Now that it’s almost final, what do you think about the complete reinvention of Windows? Let us know by dropping a comment below!

How To Rebuild Icon Cache In Windows 7 – Fix Corrupted Icons

Incorrectly displayed icons are some of the most common yet annoying problems a Windows user can face and the fix is simple, rebuild icon cache. Users who frequently apply transformation packs/themes and the like run into this problem. What usually happens is, icons displayed on any part of the GUI, be it the start menu or desktop are corrupted or show entirely wrong icons meant for other files. This happens because Windows messes up the icon cache. To speed up performance, Windows caches all icons at a single place. If icons are repeatedly modified, this cache can get corrupted and files are assigned incorrect or corrupted icons.

The fix for this problem is quite simple and doesn’t require too much effort, however it’s good if you have a system restore point ready just in case. So here’s what you have to do to rebuild icon cache.

Steps to rebuild icon cache:

Step 1 – Open “Computer” or anything in Windows Explorer.

Step 2 – Click “Organize”, then navigate to “Folder and search options”.

Step 3 – Under the “View” tab, set it to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” as given below and click Apply.

Step 4 - Now navigate to “C:\Users\*Username*\AppData\Local”. delete the file named “IconCache.db”. Here *Username* is whatever user account you are using currently.

Step 5 – Delete the file named “IconCache.db”.

Step 6 – Reboot your computer and all icons will be displayed correctly if all steps were followed.

Instead of rebooting you can also simply stop and restart the “explorer.exe” service from the task manager. After everything is done I recommend that you set the folder view to default where hidden files, folders and drives are not shown for safety’s sake. It can be quite a bit of headache if that all important Windows file is deleted by mistake or someone fiddles around with files and folders they shouldn’t be seeing. Alternately, if you’re uncomfortable with doing this manually, you can get a little tool that will do all the work, not that there’s much anyway. You can get the icon cache rebuilder tool from here.

That’s how to fix corrupted icons and rebuild your icon cache. Please leave us your comments, suggestions or any questions below!

How to Recover the Data From a Desktop PC which Doesn’t Boot Knoppix

Have you ever faced a problem where you Desktop PC is ruined and it doesn’t boot? Usually there are so many instances in our daily computing lives, where we might screw up our computer unnecessarily. May be it was unintentional, but what can we do to retrieve the most important data which is lost? Well, in this guide, we will show you how to recover your most valuable data from a Desktop PC, which doesn’t boot. This is a pretty common trouble in most of the computers around the world. Let us discuss the solutions that might prove handy if you ever lost data and your computer wont boot. Its pretty obvious you wont be reading this post if your computer isn’t booting. However it is, we are assuming that you are reading this post to fix the problem back to its original state so you can retrieve your data.

Firstly, Windows may not boot in normal state, or worse, even the safe mode state. There are a few technical reasons as to why this happens. Let us understand why this happens.

1) Your file system or your hard drive is corrupted or damaged.
2) Hardware problems.
3) One or more boot files are corrupted or damaged.

How to approach and fix this problem

Firstly let us assume your data isn’t backed up. So you basically have two approaches to retrieve your data safely.

1) Remove your hard disk and connect it to a working computer by using a SATA, PCI or maybe even a USB and copy the data back to a working HDD to recover the data. And the second one is,

2) Boot your computer from a CD or a flash drive, you might be able to recover files from your computer while it is still in the hard drive. or you can use “Knoppix“, which is a rescue media software that can be used to boot up your computer.Its a GNU/Linux bootable live CD/ DVD which can be used to access your computer even when it doesn’t boot. Firstly, Knoppix is a variant in Linux operating system. By using Knoppix, you can simply plug in your USB pen drive or a hard disk and simply copy paste your files and recover them easily.

You can get Knoppix from here. and Let us discuss the steps in detail to use knoppix.

1) Download the Knoppix software.
2) Burn it on to a CD in .ISO format.
3) Choose Boot from CD/USB at startup.
4) Wait till the Knoppix desktop appears.
5) Click the start button, just like in Windows.
6) Look for “Install Knoppix to flash drive” under Preferences and System Tools.

Now you can access all your system files and folders just like how you access your data in normal instances. So now you just plug in your Hard Disk or USB drive and just go to the path of the files that you stored them in. Select the files which you would like to recover and copy paste them on to your USB. And that’s pretty much it. You’re done. You have backed up your data successfully and now your data is safe. Hope this post has helped you in some way or the other. So if you ever come across such a problem where you can’t access your files. Knoppix is the way to go.

Top 5 Universal 3G Data Card Dongles – Use With Any SIM Card

3G Data Card dongles let you connect to the internet anywhere, provided there’s networks available, of course. Usually the 3G dongles available in the market are tied to a single network operator, as we documented here. However, it’s pretty obvious that no single operator has optimum networks everywhere. A frequent traveler will know that each city/state has different “best” operators, so to speak. In state A, operator X might be the best, while in state B, operator Y might be the best and operator X might actually be considered as a bad service provider. It’s also quite common for people to use more than one SIM card and SIM cards are pretty cheap anyway. So your best bet is to get a universal 3G data card dongle, that lets you put in your own SIM card and choose your network operator of choice! They aren’t too expensive either, so here are the top 5 universal 3G data card dongles:

Alcatel One Touch X220

Alcatel is one of the oldest and most respected companies in the field of communications. Although not well known in India, it remains popular worldwide and is now called Alcatel-Lucent. Their 3G universal data card dongle series called One Touch features a lot of products, but the One Touch X220 is probably the best balance of features and price. The One Touch X220 supports download speeds upto 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, upload speeds of 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, incoming and outgoing calls and features expandable memory support upto 16 GB. As promised, all SIM cards are supported as well. It is available for Rs. 1600.

Micromax MMX 353G

Our very own desi Micromax, well known for it’s budget phones jump into the fray with the MMX 353G. It also supports download speeds of upto 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, upload speeds of 5.76 Mbps HSUPA, incoming and outgoing calls and expandable memory upto 16 GB. The installation is quick and easy and call quality is pretty good too. It also includes a Google Chromeinstallation on it. Balance can be checked directly and text messages (SMS) are viewable directly as well. The MMX 353G is slightly pricier compared to the competition at Rs. 1850.

Beetel MF190

Although branded as Beetel, the MF190 is actually a ZTE device. Like its rivals, it also supports upto 7.2 Mbps HSDPA download and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA upload rates,  incoming/outgoing calls and SMS. But the MF190 supports upto 32 GB expandable memory. Unfortunately though, the software is slightly tacky and it doesn’t support balance checking directly either. The good part is that it takes very less time to recognize networks upon SIM change and is generally quite fast. The Beetel (Or ZTE!) MF190 is available for Rs. 1800.

Huawei E303C HiLink

Huawei is the second largest communication equipment manufacturer in the world (after Ericsson). This experience is quite visible in the great E303C HiLink 3G data card dongle. It supports upto 7.2 Mbps download speeds, upto 5.76 Mbps upload speeds, text messaging, inbuilt balance checking and upto 32 GB expandable memory. What sets it apart from the competition, however, is the claim of plug n’ surf in 15 seconds. There’s no installation, dialing or any cumbersome processes before you can access the internet. The user interface is also pretty good looking but there’s no calling facility. It is available for Rs. 1900.

Lava 730G

Last but not the least is the Lava 730G. It’s the most affordable and feature loaded of the bunch. It has almost all features as the competition like upto 7.2 Mbps HSDPA download speeds, upto 5.76 Mbps HSUPA upload speeds, incoming/outgoing calls, text messaging, inbuilt balance checking and of course, expandable memory support upto 32 GB. It doesn’t hurt that the finish and build is pretty sweet too! You can grab the Lava 730G for just Rs. 1600.

High End Universal 3G Data Card Dongles with Wi-Fi:

The 5 universal 3G data card dongles mentioned above are quite affordable but they provide internet access to just a single device. There are also more dongles that can actually be used as portable Wi-Fi routers. They basically have all features as the above dongles, but also include LED displays that give you complete information like number of devices connected, upload/download rate, battery status, call status and network. Both the devices mentioned below support upto 5 computers connected simultaneously.

Which is Better Among SSD and HDD?

When building a new computer, hard disk drives are often the most overlooked components. The most common parts upgraded are the processor, RAM and graphics card. But a fast disk drive can also significantly improve performance. Typical HDDs these days are basically stacks of large rotating discs (called platters) coated with a ferromagnetic material and magnetic heads separately attached to read and write data. Data is stored in sequential form, in magnetized bits over the platter. The data transfer rate depends on many factors like physical placing of relevant data bits, seek time and rotational speed of the platter. Most HDDs now run at about 7200RPM (revolutions per minute), high performance HDD’s run at 10000RPM and some server HDD’s run at 15000RPM. HDD’s started out in the 1950′s and were as large as 2 refrigerators! Also, their capacities were in a couple hundred MB’s. Fast forward to now and a HDD few inches across can hold terabytes! That’s quite an improvement in just about 50 years.

Conventional HDD’s are now quite inexpensive and you can find a pretty good branded 1TB HDD for around 100$ or slightly more. It makes sense to buy a large, high performance HDD for around 200$, but if you’re looking for the absolute fastest data transfer rates, you need to get yourself an SSD. SSD stands for Solid State Drive. They are the next generation of non-volatile storage and in a few years all PC’s will sport large SSD’s. However, as of now, SSD’s are still rather expensive and not very common.

Solid state drives, unlike hard disk drives, have no moving parts. While conventional HDD’s employ a platter and a movable read/write head, SSD’s are basically just a solid block of materials. There are 2 types of SSD’s, ones that use NAND type flash based memory and ones that are DRAM-based. Commercially available and useable SSD’s are all flash based. Similar to USB flash drives, SSD’s use semiconductors and microchips to read and write data. On the other hand, HDD’s use magnetism and motorized parts for the same. So in a broad sense, SSD’s are electrical devices and HDD’s are magnetic devices.

As mentioned earlier, HDD’s read and write data over a circular disk called a platter. What this means is that data is stored sequentially and fragments of data are accessible only when the platter and read/write head get aligned. In practice, there is always a slight delay before data can be accessed. It’s unidirectional and naturally slows down data access rates to the order of a few milliseconds. However, with SSD’s, data is stored and accessed randomly and does not need to “wait” before it can be written or read. This means that data access times are almost 4-5 times faster than HDD’s.

But all this comes for a price, SSD’s are quite expensive as of now. Even high end PC’s come with a 128GB or so SSD for Windows and important programs; and a conventional 1TB or so HDD for regular storage. This setup boosts performance for the OS and critical software while keeping the price in check. A branded 64GB SSD costs about 100$ and a 256GB SSD costs around 300$. Clearly it’s not practical if you need to store a huge collection of games, movies or music. As of now SSD’s are basically just used to store very important software.

But then again, with passing years SSD’s are sure to get cheaper and pretty soon they will be affordable. They really should be too, because they offer a very large number of advantages over the conventional HDD’s. Let’s have a look at the advantages:

1) Unlike HDD’s, they don’t need initialization time and offer instantaneous data access the second they’re started.
2) Data can be accessed much faster as there’s no need to “wait” for a read/write head. General transfer rate is around 4 times faster than HDD’s.
3) Since they don’t have any moving parts, they are very resistant to shock and vibrations and can withstand higher temperatures than HDD’s.
4) They are noiseless even under load.
5) SSD’s are lighter and smaller than HDD’s and consume far less power.
6) They aren’t affected by magnetic fields, whereas data in HDD’s could be damaged in fields.
7) Defragmentation done on HDD’s to reorder data fragments closer together for faster access becomes completely redundant in the case of SSD’s, data transfer rates remain the same at every point.

There are a few disadvantages as well:

1) Data cannot be overwritten as easily as on HDD’s, just like normal USB flash drives.
2) As of now SSD’s are very expensive and it might be a while before SSD’s with the capacities of todays HDD’s become affordable.
3) There are a limited amount of read/write cycles.
4) Not all SSD’s have the same fast read and write times, usually write time is higher.
5) High capacity SSD’s are not easy to find.

In conclusion, SSD’s are the future, but they’re still an emerging technology. It’s up to you if you want to be an early adopter, there sure are a lot of benefits. The only downside is, you might have to compromise on a few factors. What would you do? Drop us a line and let us know!

Simple Hack to Instantly Send your Gmail Attachments to Google Drive

Have you ever tried sending your gmail attachments to Google drive automatically ? If not, then try this simple hack.  I think everyone is familiar with new Google Drive which is one such amazing drive to store all your data in it. You can access your data from any part of the world if you upload some data into your Google Drive. With Google Drive, you are on the web, in your home, at the office and on the go. So wherever you are, your stuff is just there. You can share you data with your friends in any part of the world. Google Drive offers you 5 GB free drive to store all your data. Google Drive launched with one missing feature in it. Its the ability to save your Gmail attachments directly to your Google Drive account. Which means, when ever you have any attachment in your Gmail account, the attachments getting transferred to your Google Drive automatically.

This is not possible with the default Google Drive options, But still you can hack it with a small code give by Amit Agarwal who blogs at Labnol.org. Thanks to him for this amazing trick where your gmail attachments will automatically be saved to your Google Drive. So when ever you have any important attachment, you no need to save to your Desktop PC/Laptop or any other external device to keep it safe. You can actually save it in your free 5GB online Google Drive account. Imagine if you reading a Gmail message on your mobile accessing a mail. It had an attachment which has to be saved immediately. Well, this is really easy now, you have to just apply a Google Drive label to your message and it will appear in your Google Drive account. Google Drive will automatically synchronize with your desktop folders and save the attachments in your local disk in just few minutes. Later you can access the file either online or offline from any part of the world.

Image credit : Labnol.org

So, going into the details of this hack, you have to just create a small document in your Google Drive which can save all your attachments from Gmail account. You no need to install any extensions or addons. Just follow this simple technique which will work fine in the web and mobile version of Gmail. Including any of your Gmail apps that support labels.

Initializing and Running the Script to Send Gmail Attachments to Google Drive:

So, if you want to have a similar setup for your Gmail account and Google Drive, all you have to do is to follow these simple steps given below.

1) Login to your Google Account, and create a copy of this sheet in your Google Docs (Google Drive). As soon as your open that document, You will be asked to Make a new Copy of this document ? Click on Yes, make a copy. Then you can see a interface like below screenshot.

2) Now click on Initialize and grant the necessary permissions. You can check out the below screenshot.

3)  If you feel your account is not secured and don’t want to take a risk of someone’s else code, Here is the actual code used in the sheet. You usually wont share your Google credentials or data with anyone else. But for your satisfaction, we have just mentioned the source code of the above script.

4) Next go to the Gmail menu again and select Run. As shown the above screenshot with a red mark arrow. After running the script, close your Google sheet and you are done.

Gmail Attachments to Google Drive: Behind the Scene

Its very simple, The program works very logically, The Google sheet will monitor your Gmail mailbox in the background for every 2 minutes and as soon as it finds any message that has a label Google Drive, it will automatically save all the attachments int hat message to the Gmail folder on your actual Google Drive.

So, when all the above setup is ready, you have to just apply the label Google Drive to any of your email messages in Gmail. The attached files will be available in your drive (both online and offline) in the next few seconds. And if you get any errors like  “Service invoked too many times,”  just increase the trigger duration. You can open the same sheet in Google Docs, go to Tools –> Script Editor and then choose Resources –> Current Script Triggers. Now change the value of  minutes timer from “Every 5 minutes” to “Every 15 minutes”. If you would like to stop the script from running in the background, go to the same trigger screen and simple delete the “SendToGoogleDrive” time trigger.

HOW TO LABEL YOUR GMAIL MESSAGES:

1) Login to your Google Account and go to Gmail and go to your inbox. Click on any mail which have a attachments to save those attachments in your Google drive.

2) So. whenever you label your mails as Google Drive, the attachments(if any) will be automatically synchronized into your Google Drive account. Check out the below screenshot to check the file thememin (730 kb) in Google Drive (which you can see in the above screenshot).

With this simple hack, you can all your attachments into your drive automatically. Your attachments will be more secured and no need to upload them specifically. You can always leave a comment below if you any queries on this simple hack on how to add Gmail attachments to Google Drive automatically.

Laptops vs Netbooks vs Ultrabooks – What’s the main difference?

Portable computers are usually referred to as laptop computers or simply, laptops. In reality, there are many types of laptop computers. There’s basically the default laptops, which have slightly less capabilities than a full desktop PC, there’s the desktop replacement laptop, there’s ultrabooks and finally netbooks. In the strictest sense, classifications like these are usually done based on a set of conditions the portable computer in question fulfills.

Laptops, their average capabilities and price range is already well known. They are portable, quiet and have all components integrated. However, the sub categories of laptops are still not very well known. It’s quite important to known exactly what type of laptop to buy because there’s not much sense in buying a full featured laptop when all you need is to edit a few word document or browse the web, is there? So lets break down the types of laptop computers on offer so you can choose one exactly according to your requirements. The categories are:

Desktop Replacement laptops:

These laptops are exactly what their name suggest, they are desktop replacements. They are often also called gaming laptops or media center laptops. Desktop replacements are basically large, bulky laptops with everything you can find in a desktop computer. They have large screens, powerful graphics cards,  high storage capacities and basically all the bells and whistles. The only downside is, they don’t offer much in the way of battery backup. Then again, they’re not exactly meant to be taken around everywhere, they’re just a portable version of your desktop. With all this power in a portable package, needless to say, desktop replacements are rather expensive.

For example, the MSI GT783R offers a 2nd generation Core i7 processor, 6GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce GTX580M graphics card with 2GB VRAM, 1TB HDD and a Blu-Ray drive! Similarly, Dell, Razer and Alienware offer such high powered laptops with amazing performance. They retail for around 2000$ and above. So if you’re looking for the highest computing power in portable form and aren’t concerned with battery backup, then grab one of these!

Ultrabooks:

Ultrabooks are Intel architecture only superlight laptops that sport good performance while not compromising on battery life. These category of laptops usually don’t have much storage capacity or expansion slots. They usually sport only SSD’s or an SSD in tandem with a small regular HDD. To minimize power consumption, size and weight, power efficient processors and RAM modules are used that offer good, but not blazing fast performance like the desktop replacements. The term “ultrabook” was basically coined by Intel and all ultrabooks run on Intel processors. Intel has applied for a trademark and dictates certain minimum specification a laptop computer must have before it can be classified as an ultrabook. The first set of specifications were stated in October 2011 and the second and current set will be effective minimum from June 2012. The minimum specifications are:

Release date	October, 2011	June, 2012 (expected)
Processor	Sandy Bridge microarchitecture Intel Core models CULV (17 W TDP)	Ivy Bridge microarchitecture Intel Core models CULV (17 W TDP)
Height (maximum)	18 mm for 13.3″ and smaller displays 21 mm for 14.0″ and larger displays	18 mm for 13.3″ and smaller displays 21 mm for 14.0″ and larger displays 23 mm for convertible tablets
Battery life (minimum)	5 hours	5 hours
Resume from hibernation(maximum)	7 seconds from S4	7 seconds from S4
Storage	no requirements	80 MB/s transfer rate (minimum) 16 GB capacity (minimum)
Ports	no requirements	USB 3.0
Software and firmware	Intel Management Engine 7.1 (or higher) Intel Anti-Theft Technology Intel Identity Protection Technology	Intel Management Engine 8.0 (or higher) Intel Anti-Theft Technology Intel Identity Protection Technology

(Table courtesy Wikipedia)

Although the ultrabook classification is basically Intel’s, the Apple MacBook Air also comes under the ultrabook classification as it satisfies the specifications albeit running on Mac OS X. An example for an ultrabook is the Dell XPS 13, which has an Intel Core i5 processor running at 1.6GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD and Intel integrated graphics. It weighs around 1.3kg, has a claimed battery backup of 8 hours and costs about 1000$. So if you want portability and battery life at the cost of a little less performance, then get yourself an ultrabook!

Netbooks:

The last and smallest versions of laptops are called netbooks. They are sometimes also called mini-laptops. Netbooks feature small screens, low powered processors and less storage capacity. They often also come without optical drives, with small keypads and weigh 1kg or less. However, netbooks have a long battery life and are frequently used in educational environments. Netbooks usually run on the Intel Atom platform or the AMD Fusion platform. Although most modern netbooks run on Windows 7 Starter, netbooks running on higher versions of Windows 7 are available as well.

One of the best and most popular netbook series is the Asus Eee PC series. The Asus Eee 1016P offers a single core Intel Atom N455 processor running at 1.6GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Intel Integrated graphics, 250GB HDD and features a 10inch screen. It runs on Windows 7 Professional. Asus offers 500GB of cloud storage for customers of the Eee 1016P, so you effectively have 750GB of storage space, which should be quite enough for most people. It’s worth noting that the 1016P is a very basic model and the newer Eee 1215B features a AMD Fusion processor running at 1.6GHz, 2-4GB DDR3 RAM, 250-500GB HDD and an AMD Radeon 6 series graphics card with a 12inch screen and Windows 7. This fair bit of performance comes at a higher price, but still offers around 8 hours of battery life.

While the specs don’t seem like much, it does everything it’s meant to do, you can surf the web, watch movies, listen to music and do most things, just not very system intensive things like video editing, gaming or heavy multi-tasking. Then again, netbooks aren’t meant for system intensive tasks. The biggest draw is battery life, the Asus Eee 1016P claims a whopping 13 hours of battery life! Most netbooks have a battery life of around 8-10 hours. For people on the go who just need the basic functions of a computer but need more flexibility than a tablet, get yourself a netbook. They are also quite affordable at around 500-600$.

So these were the types of laptop computers available, what would you prefer?

Stop Youtube Video To Restart On Fullscreen

Youtube is very popular video database site. If you are a regular user of youtube, you would have observed some bugs from the youtube interface. It might be either the full screen error, Or Restarting the Videos, Flash Videos hanging always, Slow Streaming of videos even with a good connection and so on.. But for every problem, we gotta find a solution. Today i want to talk something which is really annoying with Youtube videos. This problem will make your youtube videos to restart when you click on full screen option. You can see that the video is really loading pretty fast, You can able to see it running fast while playing the video. But when you click on the full screen video, BANG. All the streaming which has been done before will be gone in seconds. Its really very annoying each and every time when you do this. You might also observed that this happens only some times with some videos.

The reason for this problem is that you are changing the screen resolution each and every time when you click on the full-screen. Confused? Okay let me explain you clearly. Whenever you are seeing some videos in youtube, you can observe a small icon left from full screen option. where it says 240p, 360p, 460p, 720p and 1024p. These are the screen resolutions of that video. Files upto 460p are FLV files, and Files from 720p are MP4 files. Each of these files are different in size and different in clarity. Ever since YouTube has changed its interface to a new one, we found some bugs which are being resolved as soon as possible. Now to over this annoying problem of restarting the video all you have to do is to make some some small changes in your youtube account settings. I hope you all are using Gmail account, which can also be accessible to other services like youtube without separate account. Now just login and follow my instructions given below.

1. First Login to your YouTube account.
2. Click on your name above which is your login id, and click on Account.
3. Go to Playback setup.
4. Now look for Video Playback Quality option.
5. You can find two options, and you can observe that the default option has been set as Always choose the best option for me based on my player size. and also Always play HD when switching to fullscreen (when available) is Checked.
6. Now select the I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video option and save changes.
7. That’s it.

Now you can stop youtube videos to restart whenever you click on a full screen option. Each and every time when you load a video, the default will be 360p resolution. Even after you have clicked on full screen, it will be 360p. Earlier it was a bit annoying, like for example if we have a video in 2 different formats, like one is 350p and other is 720p, then whenever you click a 360p video to watch in full screen option, it will be shifted from 350p to 720p resolution automatically. This make the video to load again from beginning and start annoying us. With this simple trick you can enjoy your streaming very easily and happily.

One more simple trick to make your flash youtube videos a bit faster is to change the Adobe Flash Player 10 Settings. All you have to do is to simply change a small setting. Just go to the video which you are streaming right now and right click on it to see a option called Settings. If you click on that you can see a small option called Enable Hardware Acceleration. Uncheck that option and continue with your video. You can find that video has been a bit faster than it was earlier before.

That’s for today.Please leave a comment if you are lost some where.

How to Use Your Own Custom Images as Emoticons in Facebook Chat

Well for most of us, facebook chat emoticons are just unavoidable while having conversations. But there is a different way out in the facebook chat system. We can actually use our own pictures to make facebook custom emoticons and use them in facebook chat. Mostly you can use this pictures while chatting with your friends. This article will briefly explain to you how you can make your own facebook custom emoticons. Not rocket science really, just a bit of understanding how facebook servers and engines work. Its really very simple to understand and try your own custom emoticons.

Making your Own Facebook Custom Emoticons:

Let us surf through basics and understand facebook better. Visit your friend’s (or your) profile and observe the address bar. It’s gonna look something like this www.facebook.com/issna.ibuk  (One of my friend’s actual profile, visit him just in-case you wanna troll him). Anyway, what you need to know here is that “sarthak.raj1″ is the profile ID. Copy this and paste it in your friends chat window to see how it displays your friend’s display picture.

Now that we know the profile ID, just place the id in between “[[" and "]]”  like this [[sarthak.raj1]]. And press enter.

Now the image automatically changes to the present display picture the profile ID is holding. Hope you understood how this actually works, now lets move forward and customize our very own image for chat. Now the bad thing is that, the picture is too small and isn’t actually clear, we need multiple pictures that cluster together to form a single picture. For this you’ll need to read on. My friend Sarthak was very kind to accept and allow me to use his profile picture in this article, now that we have his personal details, its time to troll him.

Here’s a picture of my friend that we are gonna use as a chat image.

Moving on, we are gonna need certain tools, let us split the picture into 2X4 format so that it will be easy for us to upload on facebook and use it as a chat image. In this post, I’m gonna use Photoshop CS 4 for cutting the picture into 4 X 2 format. And of course temporary facebook page to upload my files in parts.

We’ve made some guidelines and gonna cut off these into pieces and save them as different pictures. You can use this method as it is the simplest, if you do know Photoshop, We suggest you to use this method. Well if you don’t you can do it in paint too. So its up to you again. Now that the splitting the image into 8 different images is complete. Just upload them on the temporary facebook page we have created earlier. You can make your own page here in 3 steps.

Now here’s the tricky part. Take a look at the URL now : http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=217701121664596&set=a.217700784997963.35675.211768728924502&type=3&theater . Now we copy the Id’s of the all 8 pictures, in this case its 217701121664596, and create a sequence like..

[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]

Remember that we have uploaded 8 parts of these above pictures in our facebook page. You have to collect all these picture id’s from all 8 pictures and make them in the following sequence mentioned below.  Just paste all the codes of these pictures in order to make it look like a complete picture. Take a look at the pictures and album in facebook we made.

[[217701121664596]] [[217701158331259]]
[[217701188331256]] [[217701214997920]]
[[217701238331251]] [[217701268331248]]
[[217701291664579]] [[217701314997910]]

That’s it, just paste the whole code in your friend’s chat box and surprise them. If you have any queries on this article and need some help, we are always ready to help you. Just leave a comment or mail from the contact us page. We are eagerly waiting for your comments. Hope you will have fun with your own facebook custom emoticons.