Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Top DVD Recorder – Philips DVDR3455H 160GB Hard Disk/DVD Recorder

Are you still using a VCR? Well, it may be time to switch to a DVD recorder – the perfect Christmas gift for yourself or your family. The benefits of DVD recorders are obvious. Some DVD only recorders have dropped to NZ$300 (approx) recently. Today, I’ll introduce you to a good as well as affordable option – the Philips DVDR3455H 160GB Hard Disk/DVD Recorder.

Firstly, the Philips DVDR3455H has a very stylish, sleek and super-low-profile looking. Its 160GB hard drive will let you record more than 250 hours of TV, and you can also pause the live TV and take a break. The recording quality and the remote control are great.

However, not all good - it does lack some features, such as the commercial-skip function (which usually jumps 29 or 59 seconds) and the ability of simultaneously recording one program while playing back previously recorded materials. Although it can archive from hard disk to DVD, it cannot copy video from the DVD to hard disk.

Overall, the Philips DVDR3455H 160GB Hard Disk/DVD Recorder is a stylish and ease-of-use basic DVD hard drive recorder.

For more information and pricing, please click the link - Philips DVDR3455H 160GB Hard Disk/DVD Recorder

Who are the biggest server vendors for Q3, 2006?

According to Gartner, the worldwide server sales grew by 4.4% to US$13 billion in Q3, 2006, and they’re still growing, although not quite as much as last year. Because of the virtualisation technology, people don’t have a need to buy as many servers as they used to.

IBM was still the market leader with 33.7% market share and $4.3 billion revenue. HP followed with 25.3% market share in revenue $3.2 billion. Dell ranked third with 10.8% market share and $1.4 billion revenue. Sun Microsystems ranked fourth with 10.1% market share and $1.3 billion revenue. Fujitsu Computer Systems ranked fifth, with 4.9% market share and $634 million revenue. The other vendors combined for the remaining 15.3% market share and $15.3 billion revenue.

Which MP3 Player should I buy?

As Christmas is coming, some of us may be considering buying a MP3 player for ourselves and/or families/friends. There are generally three kinds of MP3 players in the market. The first category is the pure MP3 players. They’re flash memory based, small, cheap and can only play music. The memory size is often from 512MB to 2GB, such as an iPod shuffle. The second category is also flash based, but they normally have a colour screen for playing pictures and/or videos, in addition to music. The memory size is usually from 1GB to 8GB, such as iPod nano. The third category is hard drive based. They’re much bigger in terms of storage space, physical size and screen size. They normally have 30GB, 60GB or 80GB models, such as the iPod and the new Microsoft Zune.

I personally prefer the second category of MP3 players. They have small enough bodies for carrying around and colour screens for displaying pictures and/or videos when you need them. Although the storage space is not as big as the hard drive models, it’s enough for music. Each GB of memory can normally store around 13 CDs.

Apart from iPod nano etc., here’s another very popular model in this category – the Cowon iAudio F2. It can do all the jobs you want from an iPod nano, plus some other functions which the iPod nano doesn’t have.

The Cowon iAudio F2 is a super compact flash-based player, which looks like a mobile phone. It’s one fifth shorter than iPod nano (72.9 mm vs. 90 mm), but is more than twice as thick as the nano (16.7mm vs. 6.5mm). It’s slightly narrower than the iPod nano (34.8mm vs. 40mm). The F2 has a 1.3” TFT screen with resolution of 128x160, while iPod nano’s display is 1.5” (176x132) and there are nine red-backlit buttons beneath the bright and colourful screen.

The Cowon iAudio F2 supports a variety of audio files, including MP3, OGG, WMA, ASF, FLAC and WAV. It also has a decent line-in, voice and FM recorder, which the iPod nano doesn’t have. Although the FM radio doesn’t have an auto scan option, the 24 presets work well and you can also schedule the player for FM recordings. For radio fans, this function will be a great bonus.

Same as the iPod nano, the Cowon iAudio F2 can play JPEG photos. Furthermore, it can also play video files up to 160x128. The iPod nano is lacking in video support. Your video clips do have to be converted using the bundled JetAudio VX software.

The battery life is 22 hours for audio playback, which is brilliant. The package includes the iAudio F2, earphone, USB 2.0 cable, line-in cable, simple USB connector, quick guide and installation CD.

Currently, there are three models of the Cowon iAudio F2 available.

• Cowon iAudio F2 – 1GB
• Cowon iAudio F2 – 2GB
• Cowon iAudio F2 – 4GB