Introduction
“The Samsung LD190G wide screen monitors deliver enhanced productivity and expanded entertainment. Designed to fit perfectly with Laptop PCs, they offer USB access to multi-tasking on the move.”

Samsung sent me the Samsung Lapfit LD190G for review. Thank you Daniel =D

Box

There are currently 2 models/sizes available, the LD190G (RRP: SGD$239) and LD220G (RRP: SGD$339). The sizes are 18.5″ wide and 21.5″ wide respectively. For the LD220G model you are able to connect to multiple Lapfit monitors or any USB devices through the 2 extra USB ports at the back. You can connect up to a maximum of 4 monitors at a same time with a serial USB connection and 6 monitors with a parallel USB connection.

In the user manual provided, they recommend using USB cable to connect to the monitor if you need more than 1 display or multiple monitors in Plug & Play mode. On the other hand, they recommend using the VGA (D-SUB) cable if you are using a single display, playing 3D games or watching HD videos.

LD190G Specifications

• Screen Size: 18.5″ Wide
• Resolution: 1,360 x 768
• Brightness: 250cd/m²
• Contrast Ratio: DC 20,000:1 (1,000:1) (Typ.)
• Response time: 5ms
• Viewing Angle (Horizontal/Vertical): 170˚/160˚ (CR>10)
• Signal Input Connector: D-Sub / USB
• Sync. Signal: Separate H/V, Composite, SOG
• Video Signal: Analog RGB, USB
• Power Power Consumption: 20.0W (TYP); 22.0W (MAX)
• Stand By Power (DPMS): ≤ 1W
• Features Plug & Play: DDC 2B
• Multimedia Speakers: No
• Optional Accessories: No
• Special Features: Magic Clear (Glare) Easy Connection (UbiSync) Image Size Touch Button Windows Vista Basic
• Dimension Product Dimension (With stand, WxHxD): 450.2 x 295.8 x 72.0mm
• Weight Product Weight: 3.6kg
• Stand Function: Tilt

Read More (1,183 More Words, 15 More Images)

Woke up at 10am today, left my house at 10.30am to Suntec City with my brother for the IT Show 2009. I decided to park at Marina Square instead of Suntec City to avoid jam at the carpark. Reach Marina Square before 11am, and still manage to eat McDonalds Breakfast.

After breakfast, immediately went to wait outside level 6 of the Suntec exhibition center. While waiting, there is this lady from MediaCorp Radio approaches us for interview. She talked to me in English first and then ask me whether I can do a Mandarin interview, I agreed since I got nothing to do. She ask some questions like what are you buying at the IT Show, how often you come to this type of fair and how much savings you can save. I am so handicapped in Mandarin. I have no idea how to translate laser, router, switch, wirless USB adapter to Mandarin!

Exactly at 12pm, the doors are opened and the security personnel got Zerg rushed! Went to the Ban Leong booth first as my brother wanted to take a look at Razor mouse as his is dying soon. As usual the promotion for Razer is nothing fantastic, I think you can get even cheaper outside for certain Razor products (eg: Lycosa Keyboard).

Went to the D-Link booth and asked if I buy above SGD$500 got discount, the sales guy said only if I pay cash he can give me 2% which I thought it is definitely not a good promotion at all. If I pay by credit card, I get free gifts as well as points! UOB is having some promotion, I think if you spend above a certain amount, they will give you some things free. I am aiming on the sure-win lucky dip if you spend more than SGD$850.

Damage at D-Link Booth

• D-Link DIR-855: SGD$299
• D-Link DGS-1008D: SGD$100
• D-Link DWA-160: SGD$119
• Total: SGD$518

After getting my networking stuffs, went to level 4 to Samsung booth to get my multifunction color laser printer. Saw Kelvin from Fuwell and Daniel’s Samsung colleague which I met at BlogOut! 2009. Fuwell is selling Samsung LCD Monitors whereas Harvey Norman is selling the Samsung printers. Samsung printers come with trolley but pushing the trolley though the crowd is no easy task! The printer box is quite bulky whereas the printer is quite small itself. The price for the CLX-3175N is still the same but this time instead of giving Abalone (during Chinese New Year promotion), they are giving a free black toner and you are entitled to buy additional toners at 20% off. Pretty good steal I would say.

Wanted to pay by UOB for my printer and toner but it got rejected! My mom literally max out every credit card when she is in Japan as well as for the down payment of the BMW. So end up paying with HSBC and there goes my sure-win lucky dip. Instead I got a SGD$5 Starbucks voucher for spending above SGD$350 for my UOB card. I kinda like the lucky draw form in IT Show 2009, every SGD$100 spend entitled you for one lucky draw form. I don’t really make an effort to get the lucky draw forms normally so I maybe a bit noob in this area. The lucky draw is carbonized, so you just have to write on 1 and it will be carbon copied to 4 other copies! Also the forms are short and sweet, just fill in your name, NRIC and contact number!

Damage at Samsung Booth

• Samsung CLX-3175N: SGD$698
• Samsung CLT-P409C: SGD$184 (Toner Value Pack)
• Total: SGD$882

After buying all the stuffs that I set out to buy, we went home to put the stuff before my brother send me to school for my Statistics tutorial at 3pm to 4pm.

D-Link Networking Products + Samsung 3-in-1 Multifunction Color Laser Printer And Toner

After my tutorial, went to the IT Show again with Kelvin and Hong Jun. Kelvin went there and got a ViewSonic 24″ monitor with built-in speakers and he helped his girlfriend to get an iPod Nano (Black). Saw Rayman : Raving Rabbids for Xbox 360 at the PlayCraft booth and I immediately bought it! Finally there is a “family” game on my Xbox 360 besides Bomberman to play with Li Xiang. I wished that Raving Rabbids 2 will also be out on Xbox 360, but I think that will not be the case.

Rayman : Raving Rabbids For Xbox 360

Damage at Playcraft Booth

• Rayman : Raving Rabbids (Xbox 360): SGD$49.90
• Total: SGD$49.90

Saw from Hardware Zone that the Ovation booth are selling Western Digital internal harddisk, so went there to get 1TB Western Digital Green Power for Li Xiang, but it is out of stock and the stock will be coming in at about 7pm.

Instead of waiting there till 7pm, the three of us when for dinner at Marina Square food court. Hong Jun, my family and I Just love the curry noodle there! Met up with my secondary school friends there as well. When they came, Hong Jun and Kelvin went home.

After dinner, I went to the IT Show the third time within the same day and immediately went to buy Li Xiang harddisk. This time it is so crowded that I could not even make a call out when I am in the hall! It seems that the base station has been overloaded either that of my iPhone 3G sucked.

Li Xiang’s Damage at Ovation Booth

• Western Digital Green Power (1TB): SGD$165
• Total: SGD$165

I injected SGD$1,449.90, Li Xiang injected SGD$165 and Kelvin injected about SGD$600+ into Singapore’s economy!

This is the first time I was invited to a Samsung event, was invited by Daniel, the PR Manager for Samsung. Previously I did two reviews on Samsung products, one is the YP-K3 and the other is a VP-MX10. This event is called Samsung Touch Event. It is to let us have a touch and feel of those Samsung phones that are announced during MWC. The product marketing (mobile) manager, Winston said there about about 20+ phones Samsung phones that is being announced at MWC, but here in Singapore, they picked 7 to showcase to us.

The 7 phones are C3050, Ultra^B, Ultra^S, Beat^Disc, Beat^DJ, Omnia^HD and the last phone which is the flagship product is the Ultra^Touch. They also announced 2 services, Share Pix and Online Widgets. The Share Pix is similar to Nokia’s Share On Ovi but in this case, the pictures are first uploaded to Samsung servers and then in turn the server will upload the pictures to the designated service that the user choose like Facebook or Friendster. The online widget is just an improved version of the famous Samsung Widgets that can be found in some Samsung phones. The online widget will allow you to retrieve RSS feeds as welll as create shortcut to websites.

More Information About The Phones

• Samsung C3050
• Samsung Ultra^B
• Samsung Ultra^S
• Samsung Beat^Disc
• Samsung Beat^DJ
• Samsung Omnia^HD
• Samsung Ultra^Touch

Winston also briefly mention about Samsung Blue Earth. The phone is made up of materials from recycled plastic extracted from water bottles. There is also a Solar Panel on the back of the phone which charges the phone. Accordingly to Daniel, you need to put the phone for 14 hours under the light or sun in order to use it to talk for 4 hours. I wonder will the phone battery melts first before that happens.

Samsung will be launching phones on the Android as well as on Windows Mobile 6.5 sometime soon as well. The Samsung Omnia^HD and Samsung Ultra^Touch will be out in Q2 2009.

Samsung Touch Event Gallery
I wanted to upload the pictures to Nokia’s Share on Ovi, but it feels weird. I wanted to upload to my own gallery but I am too lazy to resize the pictures. End up, I decided to upload to Facebook! I hate the stupid Facebook limit of 60 photos per album!

• Samsung Touch Event – Part 1
• Samsung Touch Event – Part 2

Went to Sitex 2008 yesterday with Julian, Kelvin and Weiquan. Surprising it was not very crowded. Now I am starting to dislike exhibitions at Sitex because it is so far! This year Sitex is quite a disappointment, Ban Leong did not take part and hence no Razer products. After walking Hall 5 and 6 of Singapore Expo, it makes me feel that this exhibition is selling TV instead of computer! The prices for some of the stuffs are not that cheap at all. I got my D-Link DNS-323 at SGD$199 from Comex 2008 back in August 2008 but now they are selling at SGD$209? Prices should drop and not increase!

I think the most value for money are the memory cards, thumbdrives and portable hardisk. Kelvin and I got the SanDisk Ultra II (Class 4) 8GB SDHC for just SGD$33. Julian got the SanDisk Cruzer Micro Skin 4GB Thumbdrive for just SGD$12! I bought the exact same thumbdrive for SGD$19.90 at Giant Hypermarket a few months back!

I also got my brother a TravelPac Memory/SIM Card Reader for SGD$26.90.

I did not get for Li Xiang the Samsung 2233SW 22” widescreen LCD monitor because the images look squashed on the monitor perhaps due to the long width and short height and a weird resolution of 1920×1080 and an aspect ratio of 16:9 whereas widescreen monitors all have an aspect ratio of 16:10.

After Sitex 2008, we proceed on to Bugis to have lunch and then went to Sim Lim Square! Julian bought Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir for SGD$39.90, Weiquan bought the X-Mini Capsule Speakers for SGD$35 and Kelvin bought a memory card reader for SGD$12.

Judging from what we buy at Sim Lim Square, there is nothing much to buy at Sitex 2008 actually.

I am aiming for the D-Link DIR-655 wireless N router to upgrade my home network “infrastructure”, it is selling at SGD$139 during the special promotion but it is limited to the first 30 customers at 6.30pm yesterday. The usual price is SGD$229. Hopefully the next IT exhibition (IT Show 2009) on the 12th March 2009 will have better promotions for it.

Schedules for 2009 IT exhibitions:

• IT Show 2009: 12th March 2009 to 15th March 2009 (Suntec City)
• The PC Show 2009: 11th June 2009 to 14th June 2009 (Suntec City)
• Comex 2009: 10th September 2009 to 13th September 2009 (Suntec City)
• Sitex 2009: 26th November 2009 to 29th November 2009 (Singapore Expo)

My year 3, semester 1 exams are over! Yesterday was my last paper, CS4254 – IS Project Management. The paper was the most difficult paper for me in this semester and even most of my friends say so. We did the past year paper and it was much easier even though it is set by the same lecturer.

Will be heading down to SITEX 2008 later at 12pm to hoot the Samsung 2233SW 22” widescreen LCD monitor for SGD$239 for Li Xiang. That is really a good buy. It boost a resolution nearly of a 24″ widescreen monitor of 1920 x 1080, an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a 5ms response time. Click here for the full specifications.

I will be leaving to Taiwan on the 14th December 2008 and coming back on the 31st December 2008. The first 6 days 5 nights will be a tour package and after that we will extend free and easy till the 31st December 2008. The flight is by Singapore Airlines (SQ). This will be my 2nd time taking SQ, the last time I took was to KL at least 15 years ago or so.

I think after I come back from Taiwan, my mandarin will definitely be improved!

My mom just bought a new refrigerator for the house. It is a Samsung RT58EAMT Refrigerator and it cost about SGD$915. The gross capacity of the fridge is 580 litres which is much bigger than my previous Sanyo SR-37ZB refrigerator. There is no one refrigerator big enough for my mom to put all her baking stuffs and hence my house always have 2 refrigerators ever since my mom picked up baking.

This new refrigerator is kinda cool, it will display the temperature of both the freezer and the refrigerator on the door. Now if only it has WIFI capability and we can monitor it directly from our browser, not just the temperature but also the groceries within the refrigerator.

Better still, since refrigerator are never turned off and it is very cool inside (Freezer: -19°C, Refrigerator: 2°C), it maybe a good thing to have a built in web server within it.

Old Sanyo SR-37ZB Refrigerator

New Samsung RT58EAMT Refrigerator

Temperature Indicator

Dad’s Off To Vietnam4
My dad’s flight is 10am on Singapore Airlines to Vietnam. He will be there for 6 months and coming back on the 17th December 2008 I think. He told me that if everything is good, he may get to come back 3 months later for a short period.

Reached the airport at 8am and saw my dad check in. After a while, his colleagues came along and we parted. My mom, brother, Huimin and I then went to Swensens for breakfast. The breakfast is good and value for money. Should have that more often.

Now whenever I am at home when it comes to 6.30pm (my dad used to come home at this time), it feels a little different, much quieter. The feeling is also weird as for 24 years, my dad is mostly with us. Even though I am a guy, I am proud to say, I miss you dad! I know he will be reading my blog at some LAN cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam.

PC Show 2008
Left the airport at 8.45am and the 3 of us excluding my mom dropped by Li Xiang office to pass her, her handphone as she left it at my house. After that we proceed on to Suntec City to wait for the PC Show 2008 to open as we are too lazy to come home and then leave the house again. We waited for about 2 hours as it opens at 12pm and we are there slightly before 10am.

Meet up with the guys at Frro, David and Michael too.

Before the door opens, you can see tons of people outside gathering. Once the door opened, everyone rushed in like they are going into a gold mine. As usual, you can see parents pushing prams which personally I HATE THE MOST. Seriously they think this is some sort of family outing but they didn’t realize that their selfish act always caused inconvenience for serious buyers and buys who bought big bulky object. Bringing kids is still quite understandable as sometimes no one is there to look after them at home, but for fuck you push prams along?

I seriously think that the organizer should do something about it, like set the minimum age limit to 12 or even charging a $2 entrance fee. A simple $2 entrance fee will not deter serious buyers. Hardware Zone Forums always suggest the organizer something about it.

I always try to boost the economy by helping others to buy when it comes to such exhibitions.

• Helped my uncle wife to get a 250GB Western Digital Portal HDD (Passport Essentials) for $129.90, a 4-ports USB hub for $9.90.
• Helped my mom to get Canon ink for her office Canon printer MX700 for $52.90.
• Helped Li Xiang to get Sepom photo A4 paper, 5 packets for $28

My brother and I wanted to get the Razer Lycosa Keyboard. But as predicted by some fellow HWZers, there is no promotion to it and on top of that there are selling it more expensive. They are selling it for $129 whereas you can get at some places for just $119.

My mom bought for me a Samsung 2043BWX Monitor for $315 and asked me to give my old Sony 17 (SDM-HS73) to her to replace my brother old Philips 17″ CRT. At first I was asking her to buy a LCD monitor but end up she ask me to buy and give her the old one. Thank you mom!

The Box

2043BWX Monitor

The Monitor On My Study Table

David to himself a Samsung Monochrome Laser printer for $98 and an internal 3.5″ 320GB HDD (not sure about the price), whereas Michael did not get anything. lol.

We have just injected more than $733.7 into the Singapore Economy!

We ended our day at about 2.30pm and headed home. The usual impatient me, the moment I went home, fixed up my new monitor, swapped my old monitor with the old CRT monitor and everything works per normal. Luckily there is no dead or stuck pixel on my new monitor. Phew

Nokia @ Molly Malone
Left home at about 5.30pm and reached Molly Malone’s Irish Pub which is located at 56 Circular Road, Singapore 049411 for an informal Nokia meetup with Nokia Staffs (Angela, Annette, Cherie, Desmond, Luanne, Loretta and Wen Dee), Text100 people (Carolyn, Liyi and Supriya) and several bloggers (Mr Brown, Coleman, Sheylara, Preetam, Ben and his wife). Do forgive me if I miss out any names or the name typed is incorrect!

Cherie who is a product manager demonstrated many of the Nokia prototype phones like the N78, N96, 6220 Classic, 6210 Navigator, XpressMusic 5320 and there is one more XpressMusic phone which I can’t remember the model name, but I think that will be the first XpressMusic phone to run S60 OS, currently all XpressMusic phones are running on S40 OS.

Desmond who is also a product manager demonstrated to me the N96 and the N78 prototypes. All Nseries devices after N78 will have the NaviWheel feature, just imagine the click wheel scrolling of the iPod. There will be light emitting from the NaviWheel every now and then to show that the phone is “alive”, they called it the breathing light. It is much better than the old school blinking LED lights at the top of the phones.

I played with the N96 and I think it is quite sluggish as it is still a prototype. With all the NDAs flying around Nokia, they can’t say anything at all with regards to unannounced phones like the XpressMusic 5800 “Tube”, N79 and the N85.

There will be an upcoming event on Monday and Tuesday which I will be attending called the Nokia Connection 2008. I can’t seem to find a link to that. Nokia Connections is held every year and is a hands-on showcase of the latest Nokia devices and services including: Nokia Maps, Nokia Music Store, N-Gage and Share on Ovi.

I got a feeling they will officially announced the Nokia E71 and E66 there as definitely there will be new phones announced.

By the way, the food at Molly Malone is good especially the Fish and Chips which cost $16 and the portion is big. The spicy chicken balls and the button mushrooms are good too.

Samsung has been very kind to send me a Samsung VP-MX10 for review as well as a 4 GiB SDHC SanDisk memory card.

As this is my very first camcorder, this review may not be as in dept as I cannot compare it with any other camcorder besides the video feature of my digital camera.

Summary
Pros

• Reasonably priced
• Long battery life
• 34X optical zoom
• Compact and light weight
• Digital effects can be added

Cons

• Average video quality
• Poor LCD display in view finder
• No still image capture

Read More (1,152 More Words, 11 More Images)

Got hold of the Samsung VP-MX10 last month but did not have a chance to review it as I was rushing for assignments and preparing for exams.

Here is the brief specifications of the MX10:
Signal Type

• Signal Type: PAL

Storage Media

• Storage Media: Memory

Image Sensor

• Sensor Type: CCD
• No. of pixels: 800K

Lens

• Lens Lens: F Value 1.6-4.3
• Optical Zoom: 34x
• Digital zoom: 1200x
• Filter Diameter: 30.0mm

Display

• Size: 2.7″ wide
• No. of pixels: 112K

Dimension & Weight

• Dimension: 60 x 62.5 x 121 (mm)
• Weight: 280 grams
• Full Specifications

Here are some pictures of beautiful camcorder to keep you all occupied while I played around with it.

Box

Contents In The Box

Front View

Side View

View Finder

Back View

Holding Strap

In the review that I will be doing, I will shoot 2 one minute videos (one in the day and one in the night) and I will upload the video (uncompressed) to let my readers have a look at the quality of the video.

First time doing a review here, so please be gentle with me, my English, my photography skills and my video skills. Thank you.

It is a home made review so everything is not professional.

Summary:
Pros

• Sound equalizer is a very good feature to have
• Sound quality is definitely better than iPod
• User interface is some what similar to iPod
• It is as thin/small as iPod Nano
• Uses drag and drop via Windows Explorer instead of some crappy applications *cough* iTunes *cough* SonicStage.

Cons

• Songs are listed by file names instead of by artists/albums/songs
• I think the headphone wire is a little to long for comfort.
• For some reasons, the file browser does not detect pictures or text files whereas when I use the main menu to access them I am able to do so.
• OLED screen not as sharp but power saving

Read More (1,255 More Words, 9 More Images, 1 More Video)