Brief reviews of new products, plus updates on items we've already featured.
Belkin CushTop and PocketTop
Belkin reckons that 40 percent of laptops are carried from room to room at home rather than between buildings and so has produced a range of household laptop carriers and holders. Available in jazzy colours, like orange, lime green and er... grey they are all designed to rest on your lap, allowing underside-mounted laptop fans to cool their components rather than toasting your unmentionables. The PocketTop acts as a protective oversized case which ‘fits in’ with living room surroundings. The large lid lets you store your unsightly cables too. In practice it is useful and seems to have stopped The Wife yelling about laptops and wires, but the CushTop is a little harder to justify. While we like the fact you can rotate it to suit your natural typing position, it’s tricky to store cables in the tight gap in the middle and The Wife thought it was ‘just more clutter’. You’ve got to type a lot on your lap to need it.
Cushtop: 3/6
Pockettop: 5/6
Price Cushtop, $44; PocketTop $50. Supplier: www.midinet.com.au Internet: www.belkin.com/au
Toshiba Qosmio G30
Toshiba has updated its multimedia flagship notebook, the Qosmio G30, by moving up to a Core 2 processor (a 2.16GHz T7400), boosting RAM from 1GB to 2GB and using two 160GB hard disks (instead of two 100GB models) in RAID0. This all boosts performance by 32 percent as shown by a benchmark score of 1.33 – very fast for a notebook. The optical drive still reads HD-DVDs so you can make full use of the brilliant 1920 x 1200 17in screen. However, 3D performance is relatively mediocre – the 7600 GS averaged 36fps in our low-setting (1024 x 768) Far Cry test and 40fps in Call of Duty 2. Battery life is down a little but still impressive for a power notebook, scoring 1hr 20mins in our intensive test and 2hrs 44mins in light use. At 4.8kg it’s no lighter.
It amounts to a great multimedia-rich desktop replacement and enhanced by the decent Harmon Kardon speakers. But Dell’s XPS M1710 is now available with Core 2, Blu-Ray support, superior 3D power and a three-year onsite NBD warranty (Toshiba’s is 1yr RTB) for less money, which makes it worth considering, too.
Overall: 5/6
Price $5499. Internet www.toshiba.com.au
NoiseMagic NoVibes III
If you have a generally quiet PC, but are annoyed by the noise your hard disk makes while loading or searching, it’s well worth investing in a NoVibes III cage. It only costs $49, and it cleverly isolates any 3.5in hard disk from the chassis using thick rubber bands. You need to install your disk in a 5.25in drive bay, but the NoVibes won’t cause your disk to run any hotter or impede airflow. The rubber bands hold the hard disk firmly in place, so it won’t become damaged should you knock or move the PC. We took a Western Digital Caviar SE16 and installed it with the NoVibes III, which reduced previously audible noise from the disk to an almost imperceptible level.
Overall: 6/6
Price $49. Supplier www.lownoisepc.com. Internet www.noisemagic.co.uk