Samsung Series 7 LapTop Review!

Samsung's Series 7 Chronos 700Z5A-S03 is the closest Windows equivalent to a MacBook Pro in terms of specs, power, and design and even nearly matches on battery life, but it's $500 less expensive than an entry-level Apple 15-incher.
Review:

First came the Series 9, then the Series 3; Samsung, an increasingly impressive manufacturer of laptops, has chosen to make 2011 the year to debut a variety of notebooks delineated by series numbers. The Series 7 line falls between the high-end Ultrabook-style Series 9 and budget-targeted Series 3, and includes both a 15-inch laptop and a Windows slate. The $1,299, 15-inch Series 7 Chronos NP700Z5A-S03 resembles, in terms of price and specs, a Windows version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

To some it may seem like a lazy comparison, but it's far more apt than you may realize: ... Expand full review

First came the Series 9, then the Series 3; Samsung, an increasingly impressive manufacturer of laptops, has chosen to make 2011 the year to debut a variety of notebooks delineated by series numbers. The Series 7 line falls between the high-end Ultrabook-style Series 9 and budget-targeted Series 3, and includes both a 15-inch laptop and a Windows slate. The $1,299, 15-inch Series 7 Chronos NP700Z5A-S03 resembles, in terms of price and specs, a Windows version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

To some it may seem like a lazy comparison, but it's far more apt than you may realize: this Series 7 has a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, a 1GB AMD Radeon graphics card, a backlit keyboard, a sharp aluminum design, a slot-loading DVD drive, and a gigantic multitouch click pad, all similar to the 15-inch MacBook Pro. While $1,299 is at the top end of the mainstream Windows laptop spectrum, it's $500 less than the entry-level 15-inch MacBook Pro, with equivalent performance and then some. Particularly impressive? A battery life of more than 6 hours and a higher-resolution 1,600x900-pixel display.

This isn't a slam-dunk killer laptop--not having Blu-ray is odd, and the touch pad isn't as silky-smooth as a MacBook's--but the Series 7 is, overall, a pretty excellent product at a price that's not terrible when you consider the components.

Price as reviewed $1,299
Processor 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-2675QM
Memory 8GB, 1,333MHz DDR3
Hard drive 750GB 7,200rpm
Chipset Intel HM67
Graphics AMD Radeon 6750M / Intel HD 3000
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Dimensions (WD) 14.3x9.4 inches
Height 0.9 inches
Screen size (diagonal) 15.6 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter 5.3 pounds / 6.3 pounds
Category Midsize


A sleek, clean aluminum design. Magnetic hasp. Center hinge. Tremendous click pad. Where have we seen this before? The easy comparison--and the one most people will make--when they see the Series 7 will be the Apple MacBook Pro, a design that's been around since 2008. The deeper similarities are to Samsung's own product lines, including the QX series, and the clean metal looks of some Asus laptops and Sony Vaios. The industrial-style design is very appealing--even more so when you get up close to appreciate the details.

It's not all roses; despite seeming like a unibody design, the edges reveal the seams. There's a slight amount of flex to those edge connections, and to the palm rest and back lid. The Series 7 Chronos doesn't feel honed from a single slab of metal, or anywhere near that, but its dimensions are very similar to those of the 15-inch MacBook Pro, while having a slightly shallower footprint between the back of the laptop and the front of the palm rest. At 5.3 pounds, it's a little lighter than both the Pro and the slim Sony Vaio SE.

This Samsung makes efficient use of its edge-to-edge real estate, both with its keyboard and screen. A very thin bezel surrounds the 15.6-inch display, with practically no wasted space. The raised island-style keyboard and number pad also span the crisp edges, recessed below the palm rest so the keys come up flush. It's not often that keyboard keys are striking, but these are: the squared edge-lit keys have glowing letters and glowing blue-white sides. They're also among the cleanest-feeling Samsung keys I've ever used.

A large click pad below has the right idea, but the wrong execution. The click pad is off-center because of the number pad, creating a narrow palm-rest area on the left. Also, the pad itself simply isn't as responsive as the equivalent Apple version. My fingers sometimes grazed the surface with little response, and two-finger gestures like scrolling got a little jumpy. It's closer than the Asus Zenbook's pad, but it's still subpar.

Controls such as volume and screen brightness are function-key-activated, meaning you'll have to fumble for the Fn button. I was expecting function-reversed keys on a high-end laptop like this. A large circular power button on the top right is all the Series 7 offers outside of the keyboard.

The big, bright 15.6-inch display offers two surprises: it's matte, a virtual rarity in laptops nowadays, and it has a larger-than-average 1,600x900 resolution. The former helps to reduce glare, obviously. For photos, videos, or games, I'd argue that matte seems to dull the picture down ever so slightly, but overall the end result here is that the Series 7 is better off for the matte finish. Viewing angles for movies, games, and documents deteriorated once the screen was tilted even a little bit: view this display head-on only.

Stereo speakers with grilles tucked away inside the center lid hinge provide ample volume and clarity for Web videos and even casual music. They're equivalent to the quality of those found on other slim laptops like the Vaio SE and MacBook Pro.

An HD 1,280x1,024 Webcam comes bundled with CyberLink YouCam software. The camera quality is good, better than the average, but not quite as excellent as recent HD Webcams I've seen on $1,000-plus laptops such as Dell's XPS series.


Contribution: Scott Stein

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Nokia, MicroSoft Tied to Focus on Negative Reviews!

Microsoft and Nokia have been linked to the posting of astroturfing comments on a negative Nokia Lumia review.

The review of the Nokia Lumia 800, posted on the Indian Web site Moneylife.in, was based on the technical specifications rather than hands-on experience with the Windows Phone device. The review concluded that "Although Nokia sees its Lumia 800 to be a competitor to Apple iPhone [sic], it is nowhere near the niche product. In fact compared with iPhone, the Lumia 800 can be termed as 'noPhone'."

Many commenters were unhappy with the review. However, the tenor of the comments attracted the attention of Yogesh Sapkale, the review's author, who described what he saw as "orchestrated pile of comments."

The first comment came from someone named "Harish":

"What an crap review!! it's one of the best phone available, iphone is so dumb compared to this.... Guess some one is paying you lumpsum, congrats.."

Sapkale said the IP address associated with the comment was 192.100.117.41, which is assigned to Nokia.

Another comment, from someone named Aditya Agrawa, addresses a question of RAM:

"dude, gone are the times when actual consumers just use to care about the technical specificiations of mobiles. today, people want devices which are beauitful, fast and easy-to-use. for most of the consumers, it does not matter if the phone has 512mb or 1gb ram. if the 512mb performs better in real-life, that't the one customers are gonna prefer. just a small advice , go to a store and use windows phone 7.5 for 10 mins, the last thing you will care is whether the phone has a single or a dual core."

Sapkale said Agrawa's comment originated from 207.46.55.31, an IP address assigned to Microsoft.

Nokia and Microsoft representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Taken altogether, the whole episode is a disaster. Two companies are accused--by the author of a product review who never touched the device--of efforts to boost the profile of their product without acknowledging their association to it.

But more troubling is the fact that the author of the review thought so little of his readers' privacy that he looked up and published their e-mail and IP addresses to satisfy his own curiosity and need for vindication.

Who Were more wrong?

Contribution: Steven Musil

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Apple wins, HTC losts Finally the Lawsuit Issue on Looming Import Ban!

In a high-profile but strikingly limited legal victory for Apple, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled today that HTC has violated only one of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company's patents.

The ITC--a quasi-judicial body that opponents of a Hollywood-backed copyright bill have proposed as a home for a new piracy court--said it would impose an import ban on some of HTC's products. But that won't take effect until April 19, 2012, giving HTC, Google, and other partners time to remove certain features or figure out technical work-arounds that don't infringe on the patent.

Taiwan-based HTC said today it will remove that feature from "all of our phones" soon, meaning the ITC's ruling (PDF) will have little practical effect.


Apple claims HTC's phones illegally use patented features found in the iPhone. The ruling is hardly a complete victory for Apple: in March 2010, the company filed a complaint saying HTC violated 10 of its patents. In a preliminary ruling in June, an ITC administrative law judge found only two violations, and today's ruling narrows the violation to only one of the original 10 patents.

Pierre Ferragu, a senior analyst at the London-based Sanford C. Bernstein research firm, said "this ruling will represent absolutely no disruption at all to HTC's business in the U.S."

In a statement to CNET, HTC general counsel Grace Lei said: "We are gratified that the commission affirmed the judge's initial determination on the '721 and '983 patents, and reversed its decision on the '263 patent and partially on the '647 patent. We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it. However, the '647 patent is a small UI experience and HTC will completely remove it from all of our phones soon."

Another option for HTC would be to create a technical work-around that doesn't run afoul of the patent in question, which deals with "data tapping" techniques that automatically format documents to allow, for instance, a dialer program to pop up when a phone number appears.

In a post on the FOSS Patents blog, Florian Mueller, who is critical of software patents, notes:

The import ban won't relate to HTC Android products that don't implement that feature, or that implement it in ways not covered by those patent claims. If Google can implement this popular feature, which users of modern-day smartphones really expect, without infringing on the two patent claims found infringed, this import ban won't have any effect whatsoever.

The patent in question, 5,946,647 was granted in 1999 and covers identifying data "having recognizable structures," such as a "phone number, post-office address, e-mail address, and name." Then, the patent says, a "parsing process" will allow "appropriate actions" to be taken.

The latest development is nevertheless a blow to HTC, which has made strides in building market share and a brand with its line of Android-powered smartphones, many of which feature the company's own Sense user interface. HTC was the first Android supporter that Apple chose to target, signaling the growing threat of Google's software to iOS and the iPhone franchise.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement made when the complaint was originally filed, then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died this fall, said: "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

Technology companies in recent years have increasingly used the ITC to settle their disputes because the process is seen as more efficient than the federal courts. In addition, the threat of an embargo on products typically forces companies to settle more quickly.

HTC is considered the most vulnerable legally of the Android partners because it lacks a robust portfolio of patents that act as a potential shield. HTC this year purchased S3 Graphics, largely because of a collection of patents that could be used against Apple.

In September, HTC launched its legal counterattack against Apple in Delaware federal district court, using nine patents that originally came from Palm, Motorola, and Openwave Systems. Google transferred the rights to HTC on September 1. (A separate, earlier effort before the ITC was unsuccessful, according to an initial ruling in October.)

HTC created the first Android smartphone, the G1, and has seen its profile rise over the past few years. The company was also the first target of an Apple lawsuit related to Android, and is among the most deeply entrenched in litigation over the topic.

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Mozilla Firefox9 Faster All New Browser Version For PCs and Tab's

Mozilla is laying claim to big performance improvements for Firefox 9, while Firefox for Android goes in for a shave and a haircut as it gets an entirely different look. Both desktop and Android updates are being released today.

Firefox 9 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux | Android) continues the browser's rapid-release development oscillation, where feature enhancements and performance improvements take the lead in alternating months.

The JavaScript improvement called Type Inference, which Mozilla spent more than a year developing, debuts on the PC version of Firefox. The short version is that sites that heavily rely on JavaScript--like Web apps or sites that render games, video, and 3D graphics--will render much, much faster.

What actually changed is this: A feature in Firefox's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine, Type Inference creates type information by both monitoring the types of values as the program runs and analyzing the program's code. The type information then gets used during "just-in-time" compilation to generate more efficient code, and Mozilla says that major benchmarks like its own Kraken test and Google's V8 show the browser running around 30 percent faster.

On Macs, OS X Lion users will finally see support for two-finger swipe gestures, which sounds more offensive than it is. This simply means that if you've got the latest Mac OS, it'll be easier for you to jump from site to site. The Mac interface has also been tweaked to match the slight visual changes that arrived in Lion, and multiple monitor support in the browser has been improved.

Firefox 9 Android debuts a new way to interact with tabs, and ports the browser's signature bigger Back button to the mobile operating system. These screenshots are from the Aurora release of Firefox 9, so there might be slight changes in the stable version.

Web developers get some attention in Firefox 9, too. The most important developer changes in Firefox 9 are that sites that run Ajax or download large data sets will load faster, and sites can now display content as it's being downloaded thanks to new support to chunking XHR requests. While a technical term, the upshot of chunking XHR requests is that developers can build Web sites to receive large amounts of data faster, and thus making the site itself faster to load. JavaScript can also be used to detect a browser's Do Not Track preference, the option that tells Web sites not to use cookies to track a person's browsing behavior. A longer list of Web developer changes in Firefox 9 is available.

Firefox's new Android tablet interface makes it to the stable version of the browser, and the interface changes are drastic. As I noted when the new look arrived in the Aurora channel in September, the Back button has moved to the location bar, which has been stretched to the right edge of the screen to put Refresh and Bookmark buttons closer at hand. Tabs have been moved to a hidden menu when in portrait mode, and appear much larger than they have before when they're exposed. There have been some performance gains, too, as Mozilla says that people ought to see faster app load times.

This new look won't be around long, though. Mozilla plans to rebuild its app using native Android code, and the mock-ups show even more changes to the interface. One change that does look like it'll stick around is a new sidebar approach to the Awesome Bar, so that when you tap the location bar, tabs for Bookmarks, Open tabs, History, and Sync appear on the side while you scroll in the middle of the window.

There have also been two big improvements to HTML5 support in Firefox for Android. The browser now supports the Input Tag for cameras, which means that developers can build mobile sites and apps that will take pictures and scan bar codes without leaving Firefox. Mozilla created a demo of the Input Tag here.

The second change supports the HTML5 Form Validation API, for automatic form-field validation. Basically, it will be easier to get the browser to validate typed text.

While the future of Firefox for Android lies in abandoning the current interface for the predicted massive speed gains from native Android code, the PC version of Firefox looks to address ongoing add-on compatibility issues, and give the browser a more seamless automatic update experience.

Contribution: Seth Rosenbalt

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Samsung Galaxy S II White edition Mobile available for $99 via T-Mobile!

As part of a web-only offer from T-Mobile, the white edition Samsung Galaxy S II is up for sale at a discounted price of $99.99. Interested users can avail of the holiday offer to grab a piece of this white beauty that binges on Gingerbread.

The pasty version on sale for a lower price, was spotted by Unwired View. Similar to its black variant, it is also powered by a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor that clocks in a speed of 1.5GHz to facilitate multitasking on the device. The front panel of the smartphone is dominated by a Super AMOLED Plus WVGA capacitive multi-touch screen of 800 x 480p resolutions, spanning 4.5 inches.

Besides 1GB RAM, the Galaxy S II offers onboard memory of 16GB, which can be expanded using a microSD card of up to 32GB capacity. Its back panel is graced by an 8MP camera featuring flash, which captures high definition videos of 1080p resolutions. Additionally, the front facing 2MP HD webcam lets users keep in touch with loved ones by means of video conferencing over the internet.

The sleek handset comes with communication options such as Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi and facilitates connections to systems or peripherals via the USB port, HDMI connector and 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. The DLNA certified smartphone also offers DLNA functionality. It draws power from a 1,850mAh lithium-ion battery and can be charged via USB.

The white edition Samsung Galaxy S II price tag reads $99.99 (approx. Rs. 5,250) after a $50 mail-in rebate and it is available along with a two-year customer agreement.

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Dell Aero smartphone Now Available in India!

With more and more people opting for smartphones over other handsets, all leading companies are trying to put their best foot forward to suffice the escalating demand. The desktop/notebook manufacturer Dell is one such company to enter the smartphone region. The company’s Aero smartphone is now available through LetsBuy in India.

The 3G-enabled smartphone is powered by Android 2.1 and Marvell PXA310 624MHz processor. Its 3.5-inch screen with Gorilla Glass display has a resolution of 640 x 360. The handset incorporates a 5MP camera along with handwriting recognition. It can be connected to other devices using the USB port or via Bluetooth.

The Dell Aero with 58mm x 122mm x 11.7mm dimensions and 104 grams weight is compatible with Google services like Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube. It is embedded with tools like Document viewer, Microsoft Exchange and Geo-Tagging along with support for Wi-Fi, EDGE, GPRS and GPS.

The Dell Aero smartphone is priced at Rs. 11,999 in India and is available for order at LetsBuy.

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Long-Tail Keywords Increase Search Rankings By SEO On Page Optimization

On-page optimization for long-tail keywords can result in ranking more than a page higher in search results, compared to half a page optimizing with head terms, according to a study by New York-based SEO & SaaS company Conductor. They also found that long-tail keywords converted 2.5 times better than head terms.

You may remember the uproar from last fall, when SEOMoz purported there was a higher correlation between LDA scores and high rankings than any other factor. Some took this to mean that on-page optimization didn’t matter. It’s a topic that still pops up now and again; my on-page optimization isn’t working, I don’t know if it’s worth it... on-page optimization must be dead.

Not so, says Conductor. In their research study The Long Tail of Search, Conductor examined the effects of on-page auditing and optimization for long-tail keywords, versus optimizing for head terms or failing to optimize on-page at all. Not surprisingly, they saw a downward movement of more than two positions for keywords with no on-page optimization.

“Even in 2011 – often at executive prodding – many marketers are still singularly focused on the most searched terms in their industry that are also the most competitive and difficult to move up the search rankings," Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik told Search Engine Watch. "As our study shows, we think there is huge opportunity in the long tail of search for the savvy search marketer to move up the search rankings more rapidly and convert at a rate that is 2.5 times greater than for head terms.”

Conductor’s research involved thousands of keywords studied over a period of nine months, using the data collection and on-page recommendations of their SEO platform, Searchlight. They first segmented keywords into three groups:

1. Keywords with shrinking on-page issues (being resolved by SEO).
2. Keywords with growing on-page issues (not being resolved by SEO).
3. Keywords with no on-page issues.


On-Page Optimization Crucial for SEO:

Optimizing on-page elements for the keywords marketers want to rank for is critical, according to Conductor's research. On-page optimization for keywords identified by Searchlight as having on-page issues consistently resulted in rankings increases, by an average of 11.24 positions.

Websites with identified issues but no on-page optimization saw a two position drop. Keywords with no identified issues saw a less than one position increase.
Long-Tail Keywords Show Greatest Rankings Increases. Recognizing that there are two ways marketers commonly use the word “long-tail,” they looked at query volumes and the number of keywords in a phrase as separate issues and tested twice.

First, they excluded medium-volume keywords for the purpose of this study, focusing on those with either high (head) or low (long-tail) query volumes. In this breakdown, they found that long-tail terms were “significantly” more impacted by on-page optimization, with an 11 position increase, compared to six positions for higher volume, head keywords. For the second part, they separated keywords according to the number of words in the term; head keywords were one to two word queries, while long-tail terms had three or more words. Again, they found that on-page optimization increased long-term rankings more, but by a smaller margin. With this segmentation, long-tail terms rose an average of six positions and head terms an average of four.
Long-Tail Terms Convert 2.5 Times More

The final part of their study looked at conversion rates, examining more than 7 million visits to three major retailers. Long-tail terms – those with three words or more – converted two and a half times more than head terms. Conductor said this is a great opportunity for marketers who may be disproportionately focusing on higher volume, one- to two-word search terms. On-page optimization is one of many strategies SEOs and marketers can use to increase rankings and conversions. It’s also just good practice to make sure your page addresses the issues that brought visitors to the site in the first place.

Contribution: Miranda Miller

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