Kongtechnology.com

An interesting new niche in the PC laptop market, is the “MacBook Air Killer“. The latest, in a recent rash of these computers, is the Toshiba Portégé, R500. The top of the line model boasts a 128GB solid state hard drive, 2GB of RAM and a dual core Intel processor. Really driving home the value, the Toshiba also features a built in DVD Burner (the DVD SuperMulti Drive), fingerprint scanner and Transflective 1280×800 wide screen.

For comparison, we’ve lined up the top-of-the-line MacBook Air and Portégé side by side:

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The music festival season at Glastonbury may have already started, and no doubt there were many festival goers who had found themselves without an ounce of charge in the mobile phones. This can be really annoying.

But how do you charge your mobile phone or MP4 player, when you are camped out in the middle of a field? Well the mobile telecoms company, Orange has been thinking about this and will be making available at the main festival the Orange ReCharge Tent.

The tent stands seven meters tall and when the 500 watt solar panels and 500 watt wind turbine are in full power they will be able to charge up to over a hundred phones or personal music players each day. Or 100 devices per hour.

If this proves to be a success then, Orange says that they may consider making more of these tents which could be taken to other events. Of course it has a good spin on it for Orange, for when people are charging up their phones, the staff can be telling them about their new deals and packages.

The concept has been around for decades now, in fact ever since the very birth of the Internet itself. One day online web services would take over from OS-bound conventional desktop software and we would have access to all our data from anywhere and at anytime.

As of yet no application has successfully bridged the gap between power and performance and connectivity and synchronization. Office Live makes some attempt at this but I personally find it far too slow and buggy to use. The biggest downside for Office Live is that most end users simply don’t need the high end features that it provides. I love the new Office Interface, but when will I ever use mail merge or functions like it?

For many of us we just need simple tools, and I’ll show you the best online services currently available which you can use in conjunction with, or as a replacement for Microsoft Office.

1. Google Docs

   Word Processor | Presentations | Spreadsheets

   

   I think Google Docs is an amazing service, I love the fact that in many ways it really isn’t an Office alternative and doesn’t try to be. You’ll see the other services here are trying to provide a complete Office replacement in terms of features and power but Google has just created a service which just provides the features most users will need and makes it incredibly simple to share and collaborate with other users.

   In fact in many cases I just Docs it as a glorified note-taker, but who cares? It’s free, fast and perfect for working on documents with someone else. It also supports Office file formats as well as Open Documents and can import and export to the desktop.

   You’ll need a Gmail account, an Open ID (includes Yahoo ID) in order to use Google Docs, but since most people should have either a Gmail account or Yahoo address already this shouldn’t be a problem. If not, you’ll just have to register for one, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right?

   Features are added regularly based upon user feedback. I have found myself using it more and more lately as I move between places like work, home and university and need to quickly keep documents accessible from all locations.

   If you worry about not being able to access your files when not connected to the Internet then you can use Google Gears to access Docs from the desktop when you are offline. The official Gear site supports Firefox and Internet Explorer, but you will need to go here to get a modified plugin for Flock.

   Daniel did a great article recently where he shows how you can use CSS to style your documents, Google Docs doesn’t have many formatting options so it might be worthwhile to give this a go.

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Playstation 3 was once known as the most expensive, over-priced next generation games console. This lasted for a while, before people started to find out the real potential of Playstation 3. This is not only a game console, it’s a computer, an entertainment center (and a high-def too!) and with the firmware upgrades Sony has launched, has boost Playstation 3 console sales figure through the roof! Playstation 3 is packed with quite some serious punches and features that, once known, will make the price tag seems a lot more reasonable. I know so because in the past, I wasn’t interested to buy a Playstation 3, but now, I’m a proud owner of one. Read on why.

1. Yellow Dog Linux
No, this doesn’t involve a yellow colored dog and putting it beside, or worse, on top of your Playstation 3. Yellow Dog Linux by Terra Soft Solutions is a well-known, PS3 approved Linux distribution. So what’s the big deal? Well, first, Linux is free, so while installing another OS into your Playstation 3 is not officially recommended (although it is legal), combined with a USB keyboard, and a USB mouse, and voila! you’ve got yourself an ultra-cool, sleek looking “PC” to do your day-to-day activities such as browsing, chatting, and office works.

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Mozilla has officially announced the release date for the latest and greatest edition of their popular Firefox browser. June 17th, 2008 is the official Firefox Download Day. To make things more interesting than a typical software release, Mozilla is attempting to organize a Guinness World Record Breaking attempt for the most software downloads in 24 hours. Head on over to the site and pledge your support… and then follow through by downloading on the 17th.

In addition to a chance to be part of the excitement, Firefox 3 will also improve your browsing experience with many new features:

• Smart Location Bar - Besides letting you type in a web site, as always, the location bar in Firefox 3 will also dynamically search your browsing history and provide you with a list of sites that match what you’ve currently typed. Both URLs and page titles from your history are searched, making for a very intuitive interface.
• Enhanced Security - In coordination with Google, Firefox 3 will warn you if you are about to visit a site which is know to supply malware and viruses.
• Faster and More Efficient - A key focus of this release has been increasing the speed at which you see your web pages, and decreasing the memory footprint of the browser. In a browser face-off, run by builder.au, Firefox 3 came out on top for efficiency.
• Easier Add-On Management - The new add-ons interface includes a search and browse system, directly inside the add-ons tab, instead of requiring the you to navigate to an external site.

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