A lot of good things happen when you get down to the essentials. Clean out your clutter, and you get more work done. Take out the non-functional fins and extravagant, swoopy bodywork of earlier cars, and you get modern vehicular design that’s sleek and sexy. Distill barley, or hops, or some other boring grain – and you get the best liquid consumable ever invented. And when it comes to cellphones, the same thing applies many times over – as demonstrated by the LG KC910 Renoir.

We tech editors are sometimes so easy to impress. The first thing we noticed when we received the Epson TX600FW for review was the neat tilting control panel / LCD display planted right on the front of the device. “Oohs” and “aahs” greeted the printer when it tilted up its button-laden control panel ala’ some movie prop from the main deck of the Starship Enterprise. Adding to the amazement factor were the buttons of course – the more buttons there are, the happier we tech-happy editors can be.

The relentless advance of convergence makes this LCD-toting All-in-One a viable and affordable purchase.

Leave it to HP to produce an event even more boisterous than most US presidential inaugurations. HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, commonly shortened to IPG, held their first ever “Big Bang” event locally following the regional success of said event. Befitting the title of the occasion, a total of 19 different imaging machines were present to wow and titillate the assembled guests, one of which is the very first wireless HP printer in the Philippines. “Big Bang” indeed.

Not expecting much from a printer launch, we were nonetheless pleasantly surprised.

It’s sometimes hard to retaliate when your opponent is tongue-in-cheek in its opposition, coupling its activities with a large measure of humor. Or so it seems with the intrepid manufacturers on the Chinese mainland. We don’t know who they’re trying to bamboozle with their newest “Sumsang Omnia”, but one thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t put it past a tech geek to crack a grin upon reading or hearing this product’s name.

Spot the difference! Winner gets to take home a smaller dose of sarcasm on your way to the end of this article.

Relatively fresh from the purchase of an Omnia smartphone just 3 months previously, I felt I had enough of an education in high-end phones in general and touch-screen phones in particular to be able to tell whether a cellphone had some enterprising and iinovative stuff to offer a common cellphone consumer. Thus once I got my hands on Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic and browsed through some of its capabilities, I could immediately tell that this phone was going to be a hit, regardless of the many negative nitpicks you could skim off the net regarding its features.

Attachments and upgrades are part and parcel of the serious photographer’s experience, and these additional gear can range from the simple (UV light filter for additional lens protection) to the extreme (400mm “wildlife” long-range zoom lens anyone?). In between there are the countless useful add-ons that nonetheless are extreme in their own way – one example is Nikon’s Fabre Photo EX Stereoscopic Microscope attachment.

DDR3 RAM modules have been enjoying moderate success and acceptance in the desktop field, primarily due to the release of the new X58 chipset and Core i7 platform. Other than this platform however, DDR3 is still less common than its DDR2 counterpart. Same goes for laptops and portable, though the divide is more indistinct here, with Centrino 2 laptops proving popular with consumers and thus pushing more and more DDR3 SO-DIMM modules out into the mainstream. While hardly the newest example of its kind, one of these DDR3 modules is Kingston’s HyperX DDR3 SO-DIMM 4GB memory kit – and it looks to be the most accomplished of the memory brands we’ve seen locally available.

Asus has a hit with their light and essentials-only Eee PC line, but Asus can do heavy and capable too, as seen very clearly with their rendition of the mid-high range multi-use 15” laptop – the Asus N50V. Specifically, the Asus N50V has a 15.4 WXGA LED-backed LCD screen, the LEDs being only one of many technologically advanced features that can be found in the N50V. We look at the rest of the goodies next.

As someone who came from the retail side of the computer business, it’s easy to forget that Epson isn’t just dot-matrix printers and entry-level inkjets. Truly, Epson is one of the most visible brands in our DIY-enamored local PC market, and its most popular products are the entry-level and the utilitarian imaging products. The launch held on January 30, ’09 at the Robinson’s Crowne Plaza Hotel was centered on something very much unlike those printers available for a few thousand bucks at Greenhills. The Epson Stylus Pro 7900 and 9900 were the stars of the show, and they display a totally different side of Epson we rarely get to see.

Large format for the large business - the majority of the attendees were from large companies.

SSD technology continues to improve beyond recognition – from the early SLC (Single Level Cell) drives exhibiting very poor capacity to cost ratios and the tendency of early Jmicron controller-equipped drives to stutter and pause, to current SSD technology as represented by the Silicon Power 64GB SSD showing off performance that exceeds regular mechanical hard drives’ in certain situations, while improving on the cost to capacity ratio.

There's not much to say about a plain black box - all the action is inside.                        

Yesterday, Sony Philippines opened their office doors to the media to introduce the latest addition to their popular, fashion-friendly VAIO PC line. Dubbed the VAIO P, the 2009 CES showstopper weighs just around 600 grams and can potentially slip into one of your pockets. But no, it’s not a netbook, at least according to Sony.

The sexy Sony VAIO PC line goes even sexier with the addition of the new P series.

Keen on mixing up performance with what’s supposed to be “green” cars, many car manufacturers have turned to electric power to build performance vehicles that can give regular petrol-powered cars a run for their money. For the buyer’s money as well, seeing how stratospheric the prices are for these electric exotics.

Asus wasted no time in greeting the new year with two new products – namely the Asus Eee Top and the Eee PC Model S101. Rumors have swirled around the internets for a long time regarding these products, with some hoping that these latest “Eee’s” will have something better up their sleeves than specification changes and an added feature here and there to differentiate them from the rest of their Eee brothers. Not to worry, as the Eee Top and the S101 both bring something very new to the computing paradigm, while still maintaining the major tenets of the Eee line – especially Ease of use.

                                              Asus is putting the letter "E" to good use - for new releases, a new "Emphasis" on fashion and ease of use.

Once upon a time a launch event centered around printers wouldn’t have gotten a lot of interest from this editor, but times change, and people learn. The recent Brother launch event was a double-punch knockout consisting of brand-spanking new digs at the Marajo Tower at the Bonifacio Global City, and the release of a handful of new multi-function copiers with A3-sized printing capability.

                                             Brother's brand-new showroom located at the Marajo Tower, Bonifacio Global City.

The usual impression we get from HP is that of quality and a certain level of “premium-ness” – be it when discussing features or price. Rightly so, as HP has spent years building up their reputation to the point that most customers will choose HP over other products, even if price premiums are somewhat of a burden. This is however not particularly true when it comes to expensive consumables, and the Philippines have long been a hotbed of vendors hawking “refill” and fake cartridges that proliferate among cost-conscious yet uninformed customers.