Someone requested me to recommend a laptop for casual computing (surfing, word processing, etc), and I immediately fired up the browser and navigated to Dell, my favorite laptop manufacturer. When I checked out the laptop deals on offer in conjunction with the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration, I was amazed!

One offer I found irresistable was the Dell Vostro 1400 Notebook, configured with the following specifications:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5270 (1.4GHz, 2MB Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
• Windows XP Home Edition
• 14.1″ Widescreen WXGA Display (1280×800)
• 2GB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
• 80GB SATA HDD
• 8X DVD+/-RW Combo Drive (Dual Layer)
• Intel Graphics Accelerator X3100
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 54Mbps Wireless Mini Card
• 1 Year NBD Warranty
• 6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery
• Dell Lightweight Nylon Case
• Microsoft Works 8.5

Belive it or not, a brand new Dell Vostro 1400 with the above specifications can be yours for only RM 2317.00. As with any Dell system, you are free to tweak the specifications to your preference and the new price will be calculated automatically on-the-fly. But hurry! This unbelievable offer is only available until 01/02/2008.

To check out this and other Dell laptop offers, visit : http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/notebooks_better?c=my&cs=mybsd1&l=en&s=bsd&~ck=ticker&~lt=popup

If you are like most people, you have a digital camera and constantly download your pictures from the camera into the My Pictures folder in your computer. Depending on how organized you are, you either save your pictures according to date or title; or do not bother with organizing them at all.

No matter how you currently organize your photographs, Picasa, a free photo management software from Google is set to revolutionize the way you manage your photographs on your computer. In a nutshell, Picasa allows you to locate and organize all the photos on your computer, edit and add effects to your photographs with a few simple clicks, and share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web. If you have a PC running Windows 2000/Windows XP, with at least Internet Explorer 5.0, you are all set to start using Picasa!

The very first time you run Picasa, its powerful indexing system scans each and every image on your computer, and automatically sorts them by date. You may even discover photographs you had long forgotten about. The next time you run Picasa, it will intelligently and quickly find and add newly added photographs to its collection.

Picasa makes it easy to rename photograps one at a time, or all at once. This is a useful feature and allows users to assign more meaningful names to their photographs. These photos can then be organized into albums, much like traditional printed photographs. One major difference though, is that Picasa allows users to place a photograph into multiple albums. It does this without actually making multiple copies of the photos, only by adding new references to the same photograph. This feature is not only powerful, its intelligent implementation reduces hard disk space utilization as well.

If that’s not enough, Picasa also includes fun photo effects which can turn ordinary photographs into works of art at the click of button. Some of these include sepia-tone, black and white, warmify, or even more advanced effects which let you vary the degree with which the effects are applied.

Download Picasa today and you will discover why its really the only photo management software you will ever need on your desktop computer. To read even more about this amazing software, head over to the Picasa Product Tour.

If you are like me, each time you format a PC and reinstall Windows on it, there seems to be a fixed set of programs which are absolutely necessary to be installed next. I thought it could be useful for me to document these programs in this post for the benefit of all. If you have other useful programs which you simply must install after having performed a clean install of Windows, please feel free to drop a comment.

The very first thing would be to install the various drivers, including the display, network, sound and other device drivers. If you are having a standard desktop PC built in recent times, you will realize that most of the components within your CPU are built-in to your motherboard. In this case, all you will need to look for will be the motherboard setup CD which will contain the drivers you need.

Next would be to install a productivity suite, such as Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite or even an Open-Source suite, such as Open Office. This will provide you with basic functionality to perform tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet-related work and some record keeping. Many versions of today’s productivity suites come with a host of other applications to complement these basic tasks, which may include desktop publishing applications, diagramming applications and web development tools.

Perhaps the two most important programs no one can do without on a PC today is an anti-virus program as well as anti-spyware program. Personally, I use AVG Free Edition, which suits my needs perfectly. It is absolutely free, updated regularly and does not hog my computer’s resources when it runs. Granted, it may miss a virus now and then compared to other more popular anti-virus programs in the market, but it is usually able to catch up within a couple of definition updates.

As for anti-spyware, I would highly recommend using Spybot Search and Destroy, in combination with Lavasoft’s AdAware Free Edition. When used together, I have found that these programs are able to detect and clean practically any kind of spyware, malware or trojan ever created. The effectiveness of these two programs even rivals some of the commercial anti-virus programs. However, for these programs to be effective, you will need to regularly update the definitions and perform a full system scan at least once a week, especially if you actively surf the Internet.

There are other software which I have found to be very useful and I routinely install them after installation of Windows. Adobe Reader is an absolute necessity that you cannot do without nowadays. It lets you view documents in PDF format, which has become the ubiquitous format for downloading documents on the Web such as product manuals, research papers,and a wide variety of other kinds of documents. Another essential software is a file compression and decompression utility. Personally, I favor WinZip, despite Windows’ built-in support for compressed files and folders. There are other compression formats as well, including TAR, RAR and GZIP, but WinZip handles most compression formats extremely well and I have personally developed a preference for it.

If you have a DVD or CD burner installed in your desktop or laptop, I would personally recommend Nero which comes with a whole range of other useful applications such as Nero Wave Editor and Nero Cover Designer within the Enterprise Edition. Many DVD and CD burners also come pre-bundled with a cut-down version of Nero, called Nero XPress which is very easy to use and allows users to burn files and make copies of CDs or DVDs easily.

Finally, another piece of software which I recommend you to get is XP Codec Pack. Essentially it is one of the most complete codec packs on the Internet which will let you view audio and video files encoded with practically any codec in the market. This is especially useful if you do not have a DVD decoder installed on your computer, since Windows XP does not come with a DVD decoder. This is a much better alternative than having to fork out money unncessarily for a standalone DVD player such as WinDVD or PowerDVD when in fact, all you need is a simple codec, and Windows Media Player or any other media player you use will be able to play your audio and video content perfectly.

So that wraps up this post and I hope that you found the information I shared here useful. If there is any other software which you find useful and are sure to install whenever you set up a fresh installation of Windows, feel free to share with all of us.

In recent times, I have got several people asking me about the viability of getting an unlocked Apple iPhone in Malaysia.

For the uninitiated, we shall quickly go through the basic facts first. At this point in time, the iPhone is only available officially from Apple either in the United States with a plan from Cingular/AT&T, in the United Kingdom with a plan from O2, in Spain with a plan from Telefonica, in Germany with a plan from T-Mobile, and most recently in France from Orange.

In other words, the iPhones which are on sale officially from Apple are locked to these mobile operators, as Apple requires these operators to enter into a revenue sharing agreement, with Apple not being content with just selling a device, and wanting a piece of the telco pie.

The natural consequence to this marketing strategy has been a cat and mouse game between various groups of mobile phone hackers/enthusiasts around the world and Apple; with the former releasing software to ‘unlock’ these iPhones to enable them to be used with practically any sim card. As can be expected, Apple has been ferociously fighting attempts to unlock its iPhone to protect its revenue sharing model and exclusivity agreements with mobile operators.

Besides issuing warnings, Apple has also released a couple of firmware updates to the iPhone which will automatically revert the device back to its ‘locked’ state, and can render the device inoperable in certain circumstances. Since the firmware updates are installed automatically through the iTunes software interface, users with unlocked iPhones need to be extra vigilant to ensure that they do not inadvertently allow the update(s) to take place.

In Malaysia, many people have been using the iPhone for a while now, and have learnt to overlook some of the issues with the device, which have stemmed either from the device’s lack of maturity or from the unlocking process itself. One of the biggest gripes is that Maxis users have been unable to receive incoming calls to their iPhones, due to a technical incompatibility with the iPhone and Maxis’s network. However, Maxis has taken heed of its users’ complaints and has managed to resolve this issue in certain areas around the country. There are other issues as well, ranging from intermittent reception problems to occassional undelivered text messages.

So the question is, is it worth getting an unlocked iPhone in Malaysia now or to wait for an official launch sometime this year?

A parallel can be drawn with the pirated DVDs we Malaysians often see being sold just days after a movie is released, and sometimes even before an official release. More often than not such movies are just recorded off private screenings and do not do justice to the movie itself. However, there are still people who still buy these movies, despite the poor quality, just to be able to be among the first to have watched the movie.

So, if you just can’t wait and need to be among the first to use the device, and are willing to overlook many features which may not work as intended, then there are plenty of online merchants and stores from which you can source an iPhone locally in Malaysia. Otherwise, my bet would be to rather wait for its official release, so that I am able to fully enjoy the device, and every feature in it as intended by the manufacturer.