The Droid Eris touchscreen handset (a CDMA version of the HTC Hero) has dimensions similar to, and much of the same functionality as, the T-Mobile myTouch 3G GSM unit, also made by HTC. Side by side, the first thing that jumps out is the Eris′s brighter, sharper-looking display. While both handsets have a 3.2-inch, 480-by-320 pixel screen, the Droid Eris supports 262,000 colors while the myTouch 3G has just 65,000 colors.

Unlike the myTouch 3G, which has six hardware keys on the front plus a roller mouse button, the Eris replaces the top four buttons (Home, Menu, Back, and Search) with embedded softkeys. In practice, the four software keys were usable, but not as easy to activate as their hardware counterparts. I′ve found the myTouch 3G′s real Send and End buttons and roller mouse (which glows if you have an incoming text message or other notification) more useful than the Droid Eris′s softkeys when fumbling around in the dark. (The Motorola Droid lacks any front-panel hardware buttons.)

The Droid Eris has a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM 7600 CPU, while the myTouch 3G has a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM 7201A chip. The Eris has a 5.0-megapixel camera (up from a 3.2-megapixel camera), Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0; includes a GPS receiver; and supports the 800MHz and 1900MHz bands on the Verizon Wireless network. It also has a standard headset jack, something the myTouch 3G lacks.

Under the hood is the Android 1.5 operating system, not the Android 1.6 (Donut) update or Android 2.0 (on the Motorola Droid). (T-Mobile has already pushed out the Donut update to its G1 and myTouch 3G customers.) However, some of the improvements tossed in with Donut are in the Eris anyway. For example, the updated Google Maps application, which includes transit directions, comes with the phone; and the video and still cameras are accessible through the same interface, as is the case with Android 1.6. Not present here is the Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn application that comes with Android 2.0.

Android Marketplace, from which you can find hundreds of independently developed applications for the phone, uses the Android 1.5 version in the Droid Eris. This version unfortunately doesn′t support thumbnail images of the apps. A Verizon Wireless spokesman says the Droid Eris phone will be receiving Android updates at some point in the future.

What sets the Droid Eris apart is how it caters to business users. For example, it allows direct calendar and contact synchronization with Microsoft Outlook. This means that, unlike Google-branded Android phones, you don′t have to sync your data with your online Google account first before downloading it to the phone–a boon for users. Also, Verizon has preinstalled an Adobe PDF file viewer, a link to Verizon′s Visual Voicemail, a “Stocks” link to financial market information from Yahoo Finance, and support for Microsoft Exchange corporate e-mail.

Also preinstalled: A Peep application for Twitter and Footprint, which allows you to capture an image, attach comments, and use the phone′s GPS capabilities to log its location and create a map, all of which can be shared.

Interestingly, the Droid Eris has the now-familiar pull-down Android notification screen, but the home screen behaves differently. Instead of having a pull-up menu containing all of the applications, the home screen instead offers a link to the application menu display.

While the unit can′t match the Motorola Droid′s 420-by-854-pixel display, the HTC Droid Eris performed well with standard and high-definition YouTube videos, depending on the quality of the data connection.

The 5-megapixel camera lacks a flash but performed adequately, capturing reasonable images under adequate ambient light. The virtual keyboard, which offers haptic feedback if desired, worked well in portrait or landscape mode. At just 4.2 ounces and measuring 4.5-by-2.2-by-0.5-inches, the unit fits comfortably in a shirt pocket.

If you want a cheaper Android-based alternative to the Droid and can live without a hardware keyboard, the Droid Eris is a good choice at $100.

–Robert S. Anthony

But on a legacy analog set or an HDTV with a good scaler for standard-def content, the lower resolution doesn′t have to be a deal breaker, especially if you can hook up the Roku SD through its ethernet port. In my tests on a 42-inch HDTV, I had problems only when I used the Wi-Fi connection to watch episodes of Heroes streamed from Netflix–the Roku periodically had to pause and adjust video quality to accommodate reduced bandwidth, and when it did, the image would noticeably deteriorate, displaying artifacts and pixilation.

Such issues pretty much went away when I used a HomePlug AV powerline ethernet adapter for my network connection, and while the lower-resolution image quality wasn′t as good as with the high-def model, it was certainly watchable. You do have to settle for plain stereo audio, as opposed to the 5.1 digital audio available on high-def Roku models.

The Roku SD looks like the other Roku models–a small black box about the size of a frozen-food lunch–but with a lot fewer ports; it has just those required for a composite video/stereo audio hookup, ethernet connection, and AC adapter. The device comes with a composite video cable and an AC adapter, but you′re on your own for the ethernet cable.

The Roku SD has the same simple and intuitive interface as its pricier cousins–and the same simple remote for controlling it. The remote, only a few inches tall, has a Home button on top, four arrow-wheel keys around a select button for navigation, and, for controlling video playback, a pause/play button flanked by fast-forward and rewind buttons.

Pressing the Home button brings up the main menu, which shows icons for settings, the services you can access through the Roku, and the new, free Roku Channel Store, where you can add services to (or remove them from) the main menu. You must set up a free account with Roku to use this feature, though–without it, you can only access content on Netflix, Amazon, and MLB.TV (Major League Baseball′s premium service), since they′re the only services preloaded on the main menu. (On new units, Roku says, you′ll have to create a Roku account during setup to access any services, including the ones preloaded on older boxes.)

At launch, the Channel Store lets you add up to ten more channels, but some of them don′t offer video at all: Pandora, for example, is an Internet radio site, while Flickr and Facebook Photos let you view still images on those popular sites. The other services are generally less well known: blip.tv, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Revision3, and TWiT. Roku still doesn′t work with such major sites as YouTube, Vudu, and Hulu, but the company doesn′t rule out adding more services to the Channel Store.

You must have accounts with services you use, and you must link these accounts to your Roku by typing in a code–either generated by the Roku for entry on the service′s Web site, or vice versa (if you must enter a code on the Roku, a primitive software keyboard appears). In my tests, account setup was nearly instantaneous.

The Roku SD, in short, delivers what you′d expect from a standard-definition media streamer. I wouldn′t recommend it for use with a Wi-Fi network in a city or other location where competing older 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks will inevitably make smooth video streaming difficult, but if you can use the ethernet adapter and want to save the $30 to $50 you′d have to pay for a high-def model, it′s a respectable alternative.

On looks alone, the Omnia II is quite alluring and fits in nicely with Verizon′s line of premium smartphones like the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Eris, and the BlackBerry Storm II. Measuring 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches thick and weighing 4.8 ounces, the Omnia II is just slightly larger and heavier than the original (which was 4.4 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches and weighed 4.3 ounces). Still, the phone remains quite slim. With its rounded corners, brushed metal details, and smooth red-and-black back cover it is much more aesthetically pleasing than its predecessor.

The 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display dominates its face with a piano-black border surrounding it. Hardware keys on the face are minimal: Talk and End/Power keys flank a large Main Menu key that looks deceptively like an optical mouse (which the first Omnia had). The left spine houses the 3.5mm headphone jack (a welcome upgrade–the original lacked one), an easy-to-press volume rocker, a microSD card slot, and the OK key (pressing it once closes an app; holding it down returns you to the home screen). On the right spine is the stylus (at the top), a USB port, a lock key (for locking the screen), and the camera/camcorder key.

The Omnia II has 8GB of built-in internal memory and 16GB of expandable memory with a microSD card (sold separately).

Call quality was consistently good over Verizon′s 3G network, though I did notice a faint hiss on one call. The vast majority of my calls sounded loud and clear with very little background noise or distortion.

The Omnia II has no physical QWERTY keyboard, so you′ll have to rely on its touchscreen keyboard. This keyboard is a bit cramped in portrait mode, but gives you plenty of room to type in landscape mode. Unfortunately, I encountered a few issues when using it. First, the spacebar is small, and oddly placed on the right side rather than at the bottom center, where you′d expect it. Second, the delay between what I typed and what appeared on screen was distracting. Finally, haptic touch (light, vibrating feedback when you press a touch key) is disabled for some reason in keyboard mode.

The Omnia II also comes with Swype technology, which lets you type faster and more easily with one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard. Swype takes some practice, but is pretty nifty once you get the hang of it. Be sure to watch the how-to Swype video preloaded on the device.

Like the Samsung Behold II (Android-based), the Omnia runs TouchWiz 2.0, a touch-friendly user interface, over Windows Mobile 6.5. You get three home pages that you can customize with widgets and shortcuts to your favorite apps. To add a widget, you simply press the pull-out Widget Tray tab on the left of your screen, and drag one from the list onto your home screen. To remove a widget, you press down on it, and drag it back to the Widget Tray. You can also manage your widgets via the Widget Manager. And you can get more widgets for free via the Widget Store.

While it is nice to have some customization options, arranging widgets on your various home screens can be a tedious process; the screen simply isn′t all that responsive. You have to press down pretty hard to move a widget, but sometimes that causes the widget to open–which is quite annoying.

Along the bottom of every home screen are shortcuts to your text messages, your e-mail, the dialer, and your contacts. At the top of the screen is the familiar Windows Mobile Start menu. But instead of the drop-down menu we′re used to, pressing Start takes you to four Main Menus loaded with shortcuts to various applications and settings.

Here′s where things get confusing: The interface also has an entirely separate menu for multimedia applications, called the Cube Navigation Menu. So that′s four main menus, one widget menu, the Cube menu, and your three home screens–all with overlapping content.

You can access the Cube from a shortcut on one of your home pages. The menu provides access to photos, music, videos, the Web, the V Cast store, and Games. Though the 3D-like Cube visualization is kind of cool-looking, it feels a bit unnecessary, since you can reach the same applications through other menus. You can roll it around with your finger or shake the phone to move through the different menus. Unlike your home screens, the Cube is not customizable.

Unfortunately, in one of my hands-on tests I experienced a crash. I tried to close the messaging application after sending a text, but nothing happened. I tried to close it again, but got a screen that was halfway between my Main Menu screen and my home screen. I left the phone idle; it went into lock mode. I unlocked it and again tried returning to my home screen, but nothing happened. After some time, the phone went to my contacts screen. I tried closing out of that, but the phone froze and went into lock mode again. I eventually had to shut down and restart the phone to get it to work properly.

While this didn′t happen again in my tests, it was disturbing. One of the great things about Windows Mobile is that you can multitask, meaning you can have multiple applications running at once. In this case, I only had one application–and a light one at that–running when it crashed. You might consider using the Omnia without TouchWiz 2.0 running over Windows Mobile 6.5 if you encounter this issue. (See PC World′s review of the HTC Pure for more on Windows Mobile 6.5.)

The Omnia II ships with two browsers: the new Internet Explorer Mobile and Opera Mobile 9.7. To zoom into a page on Internet Explorer Mobile, you tap twice on the area that you want to enlarge. Scrolling through pages on Internet Explorer Mobile isn′t as smooth as the iPhone′s Safari, but browsing is adequate overall. The Opera 9.7 system of displaying open pages isn′t ideal (it shrinks them to thumbnails and tiles them side by side), but it does load pages quicker than IE.

For music playback, you get two interface choices: the standard Windows Media Player and the more aesthetically pleasing TouchWiz player. With the latter, your library is displayed as touch-friendly “cards,” which you can flip through to find what you want–sort of imitating the feeling of flipping through physical albums. If you want to tweak the audio, however, you′ll have to do it from Windows Media Player. You can jump from the TouchWiz player to WMP by pressing “Library” in the lower left corner. But as far as I could tell, you can′t go from WMP to the TouchWiz player. The phone doesn′t come bundled with headphones, so you′ll have to use your own. Music piped through my high-quality Skullcandy FMJ headphones sounded very good, though a bit flat from the external speakers.

The Omnia II comes with an FM antenna/mic adapter that you can plug your headphones into, so if you get bored with your collection, you can see what′s on the radio. You can also buy music via Rhapsody through V Cast Music on the Omnia II.

Video quality, as to be expected, looked great on the Omnia II′s large AMOLED display. One of the best things about AMOLED is its wide viewing angle. You can place the Omnia II on a flat surface and watch video without any distortion or color change. Colors were bright and accurate, motions were smooth, and I saw only a bit of blurriness in some clips.

Camera quality, for the most part, was quite good. Colors looked bright and accurate both indoors and out. The camera also managed to capture detail quite well, handling some close-up shots of action figures without any blurring or pixelation. One design flaw: The shutter button′s placement on the top right edge mirrors the OK button on the phone′s bottom right edge. When you′re gripping the phone, you may accidentally hit the OK button and close the camera app midshot.

The Omnia II is an excellent upgrade from the original Omnia and definitely one of the best Windows Mobile phones available. The crash I experienced was disturbing, however, even though it happened only once. I was also disappointed with both the phone′s sluggishness and the unresponsiveness of the touchscreen–issues we had with the previous version, as well. Most Verizon customers will probably pick the Motorola Droid over the Omnia II, but Windows Mobile loyalists will find a lot to like about this multimedia powerhouse.

–Ginny Mies

The software crackers usually crack software for one simple purpose: dishonor. They crack any software to prove a point and to show, how smart they are then the creator of the software. What they do not know is that any copy protection system has holes in them and no software protection is 100% crack proof, so there is nothing, which they have proven. Instead, the company creates or implements better protection. Cracking software has several merits to Software Company in the form of viral marketing and much wanted traffic, but has various risk factors included for the user who is going to use these cracked applications.

Risks involved

Primarily, there is a real risk to your lost data and the hardware involved when using pirated software. If you do not know exactly what you are doing and you do not know exactly where the crack came from, you are putting yourself at risk for viruses and adware as a fair number of software patches and key generators come with embedded viruses and adware! Yes it is a fact even cracks are not free . Therefore, by using pirated software, you may be giving access to back door programs to access your system for even more serious crimes like data theft or even identify theft!

Another bona fide risk associated with using pirated software is that the software you are using may only be partially functional. To make piracy trickier, some companies insert “phantom” code that may affect certain functions when a crack is applied. The software instead of recovering your lost data might start filling binary digits on your drive like 0’s and 1’s and this might cause permanent deletion.

Pirated copy of the software also leaves you with little or no support for the software since you do not have a legitimate copy.

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The BDX2000′s image quality was fantastic in five of the six Blu-ray titles we tried on it. In chapter 1 of Cars, the color red popped out without looking garish. In a low-contrast, day-for-night scene from The Searchers (chapter 20), John Wayne′s suspenders stood out from his shirt with an almost three-dimensional look. And the opening of Good Night and Good Luck demonstrated that the BDX2000 can handle black-and-white beautifully.

It was less impressive dealing with the washed-out sunlight and constantly moving camera of Mission: Impossible III (chapter 7). Though we spotted no obvious flaws, colors looked duller and less vivid than in the other tests.

The BDX2000 did excellent work upscaling DVDs. It showed incredible detail–by DVD standards –in our Lord of the Rings: Return of the King test (chapter 22).

The slim-line unit looks sleek and compact, with fairly large, easy-to-hit buttons–but it′s not especially well designed. A flap that covers the entire front of the player opens when you eject the tray–and stays open even after the tray closes, inviting scraped shins or bumped elbows.

The boxy remote control can be clumsy to use. The front part is dominated by 24 tactically identical buttons laid out in a grid–which makes it confusing to use. The essential Pause button is small and to the side; you can easily miss it and hit the Stop button by mistake. The buttons all glow in the dark, but not all of their labels do, so you may see a button but not know what it does. This remote isn′t programmable.

The onscreen menus are easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye, though some explanations would be useful. If you don′t know what “HDMI Multi(Normal)” means, you′ll have to look it up in the manual. (It means that Dolby and DTS audio will be output as a bitstream.)

The BDX2000 took 69 seconds to load the Independence Day Blu-ray disc. That′s not the worst loading speed I′ve seen, by a long shot, but it′s on the slower side of normal.

The BDX2000 comes with an SD Card slot in front, which doubles as extra BD-Live memory and multimedia. You can use it to view JPG photos, listen to MP3 and unprotected WMA music, and watch AVCHD videos. There is no USB port, however. The ethernet connection is strictly for BD-Live; you can′t even use it to update the player′s firmware.

When you consider its details, the BDX2000 seems like nothing special in comparison with (for example) the Samsung BD-P3600 or the LG BD390. But when you look at the gorgeous picture on your HDTV, you′ll know it′s a real bargain.

Dell built a lot of user-friendliness into the 2130cn. For instance, easy-to-read labels aid you in replacing the cartridges (which are nestled in a compartment on the right side of the printer). The extensive documentation includes a printed manual covering operation and maintenance, as well as HTML-based user and troubleshooting guides that go into even greater detail and extras like a library of videos showing how to install options (such as duplexer or wireless printer adapter) and how to troubleshoot problems such as finding and fixing an improperly installed toner cartridge. There′s also a Web-based configuration utility that lets you check printer status and ink levels without ever touching the printer.

The 2130cn′s solid performance in our tests is another plus. Plain-text printouts looked crisp, and they came out at a rate of 16.5 pages per minute (ppm)–average overall, but pretty close to the vendor′s specified engine speed of 20 ppm. Its graphics speed–just 4.9 ppm–falls shorter of its spec, but that′s actually one of the faster times among color lasers we′ve tested. Photos we printed displayed sharp detail and depth. Colors, even tough flesh tones, appeared to be well within the natural range.

The 2130cn′s standard configuration is pretty basic, but it has some room to grow. Its 250-sheet input tray feels sturdy and has helpful markings. You can purchase a second 250-sheet input tray or an optional duplexer for $150 each. A manual feed slot above the main tray lets you feed one envelope or other thick media at a time. I′d have liked to see a beefier multipurpose tray, but what I really missed was Mac drivers–the 2130cn doesn′t support that platform.

The 2130cn ships with a high-yield, 2500-page black (K) cartridge, and standard-size, 1000-page cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y) cartridges. Unfortunately, replacing any of these supplies may induce sticker shock. At the time of our review, the high-yield black cost $70, or 2.8 cents per plain-text page, and high-yield color supplies cost $95 apiece–making a page with all four colors cost 14 cents total. These prices are marginally acceptable compared with the high-yield supplies offered by other color lasers we′ve tested, but the standard-size supplies are significantly worse: 5 cents per plain-text page, and 23 cents total for a four-color page.

I liked a lot of things about the 2130cn, but the pricey consumables should make any budget-conscious office pause. HP′s Color LaserJet CP2025n may have a higher price tag up front, but its toner costs are far more reasonable (and it has Mac drivers).

–Susan Silvius

Clad in an unassuming black shell reminiscent of classic business-centric Dell laptops, the Phantom-X won′t win any beauty pageants. This laptop measures 15.9 by 11.9 by 2.4 inches and weighs 12 pounds, so it′s likely to stay firmly rooted on a desk or table unless you plan to incorporate it into your weight-lifting regimen. And you′ll want to have a power outlet nearby, as the Phantom-X clocks in a paltry 1 hour, 19 minutes when freed from its ingot-like power brick.

But desktop replacements are about performance, not portability or battery life, and the Phantom-X delivers power in spades. The model we tested sports a 3GHz Xeon Quad Core X3370 processor, 8GB of RAM, and two 80GB solid-state drives hosting Windows Vista (meanwhile a 7200-rpm 320GB hard-disk drive provides file storage space). Add to those components a pair of nVidia GeForce Go 9800M GTX graphics processors running in SLI, and you have a devastating combo. It posted a tantalizing score of 133 on our WorldBench 6 performance test suite. That alone makes it a speed king.

Meanwhile, on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Unreal Tournament III, this desktop replacement dominated. At high settings and a resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels, the Phantom-X delivered frame rates of 48 frames per second and 87 fps, respectively. For perspective, consider the Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708, which earned a scored of 100 on WorldBench 6, but notched frame rates of 52 fps and 75 fps on the two game tests. Eurocomm′s machine can also run at an even higher resolution. Adjusted to its native setting of 1900 by 1200 pixels, it drove Unreal Tournament III at a respectable 50 fps. Its 17.1-inch screen is bright and clear under typical fluorescent lighting–more than adequate for extended gaming sessions.

The Phantom-X offers DVI and VGA ports, a 7-in-1 card reader, a combination Blu-Ray drive and DVD burner, a Webcam, S-Video input and output jacks, and a TV tuner, in addition to the standard modem, ethernet, Express Card, USB, and bluetooth options. Line-in, S/PDIF-Out, Mic and Headphone Jacks are lined up along the front of the case, which you′ll likely be utilizing to supplement the two built-in speakers: these adequately play CDs and MP3s, but if you′re looking for a bit of bass or hoping to capture the dulcet subtleties of weapons fire, you′ll want to bring in your own set of speakers or headphones. For audio quality, Toshiba′s Qosmio X305-Q708 still rules the roost.

The laptop stands on four stubby legs, and four fans run along the bottom of the frame, cycling out warm air. Even after extended use, the whirring of the fans remained reasonably quiet–louder than a whisper, but not bad. Though the machine runs fairly warm, it never gets uncomfortably hot: Park it on your lap, and you′ll cut off the circulation to your legs long before you risk scorching yourself.

The Phantom-X′s trackpad is adequate, but most gamers will want to swap in a proper gaming mouse anyway. In contrast, the machine′s keyboard–a vital, permanent fixture–feels cramped. Though the full, proper number pad is a welcome addition, it leaves little breathing room for the rest of the system′s keys, many of which–including the arrows and the all-important (for gaming) Function row–are undersize.

The Phantom-X lacks dedicated media shortcuts, forcing users to rely on function-button combinations. Another issue is questionable key placement, which can wreak havoc on the unwary. Take the Sleep hotkey, which lies sandwiched between hotkeys for lowering the volume and muting the sound. Tap the wrong key as you answer your phone, and you′ve suddenly suspended your laptop and dropped out of the World of Warcraft raid that was the centerpiece of your day. The Phantom-X sports a pair of programmable ′Game Keys′ for setting up short macro commands, but programming them entails consulting the manual and finding an arcane (but essential) applet.

If your chief concerns are power and versatility, and you aren′t fazed by the hefty price tag($5950) and the strictly utilitarian design, the Eurocom Phantom-X is worth a look. If you′re a little more price-conscious, however, you might do better with an alternative such as the HP HDX18, the Gateway P-7811FX, or the Alienware m17, each of which delivers fairly good gaming performance at a fraction of the Phantom-X′s cost.

The PS3′s movie playback experience is best if you start from scratch, inserting a disc into the front-loading slot as soon as you power up the unit. It took just 3 seconds for a test disc to physically load into the unit itself, followed almost immediately by the PlayStation 3 startup music. The screen then blacked out, and the movie came up. Total elapsed time from disc insertion to the start of the film: a respectable 24 seconds.

The PS3 doesn′t come with a separate remote control for video playback, so I had to use the game controller to navigate through movies, and that required two hands. (Sony does sell a dedicated remote control, for an extra $25; with this remote, the Blu-ray playback experience should be exponentially smoother.)

You′ll want to buy the remote: Using two hands to control basic functions such as play, fast-forward, and rewind is both ungainly and imprecise. I missed not having dedicated buttons for such common features.

To navigate up, down, left, or right within the disc menus, you can use either the PS3 controller′s directional pad or the left analog stick controller. You press X to select options and to activate play. The O button lets you exit the Blu-ray player, the square button brings up the disc′s pop-up menu, and the triangle button gives you a handy, transparent-overlay on-screen menu that pops up on the left side of the screen. This menu provides quick access to certain settings, and awkward access to dedicated, software-based playback controls (buttons for fast-forward, rewind, play, and stop, for example)–which you need, since the game controller lacks such dedicated controls.

Trying to perform certain operations, such as precise fast-forwarding, was particularly frustrating. The fast-forward steps ahead at 1.5X, 10X, 30X, and 120X, and you must press the X button to cease moving forward. Stepping forward frame by frame is even more awkward: No option clearly exists for this, but you can press the controller′s X button to pause playback and then use the analog stick or the right and left arrows on the directional pad to advance a frame at a time.

Unfortunately, you′ll have to experiment to figure all this out: The manual included with PC World′s PlayStation 3 test unit provided no clues on how to use the controller′s buttons for movie navigation. I had to dope out the responses via trial and error, and frequently found several paths to the same operation. This could be either confusing or convenient, depending on your perspective and on how comfortable you are using the controller to navigate the interface.

I found the pop-up info display elegantly designed–unobtrusive, yet easily readable. (The easiest path to this display is to press the Select button in the middle of the controller.) It′s a good thing that the display is a pleasure to read, because you′ll be invoking it a lot: The pop-up is the only way to figure out where you are in the disc, since the PlayStation 3 console lacks an LCD screen such as those commonly found on DVD and dedicated Blu-ray Disc players.

In our jury evaluation of image quality, we found image quality to be good, but not as good as what you′ll see from the standalone players. Images routinely appear a bit more crushed, and a bit less vibrant, as compared to our top standalone players, which rendered rendering sharper images with superior color and contrast. The differences are especially clear in content like our Good Night and Good Luck test. On this black and white film, the PS3 has difficulty achieving true black and white, settling instead for unsatisfactory gray tones.

Nevertheless, the PS3 remains quite a deal if you want to play high-def Blu-ray movies and aren′t wedded to getting a stand-alone home-theater-style device. Even factoring in the cost of the remote, you′re getting a versatile, reasonably priced Blu-ray Disc player that can handle all of the latest Bonus View and BD-Live content. Plus, you can use the machine to play games, browse pictures, and surf the Web, too.

The ThinkPad T400 unit we tested scored a 92 on our WorldBench 6 test suite, slightly outperforming the Acer TravelMate 6293 among top-of-the-line all-purpose laptops. Applications load swiftly on the 7200-rpm, 160GB hard drive, which uses an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz T9400 processor with 2GB of RAM and a 256MB ATI Radeon Mobility HD 3400 GPU. Regarding the GPU, however, it′s best to keep your graphics expectations low: In our tests, game graphics fell flat, as indicated by the T400′s frame rate of 16 frames per second on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars run at 1024 by 768 resolution. But that result isn′t a huge shock; this notebook is strictly business.

Armed with a resolution of 1440 by 900 pixels, the 14.1-inch screen provides adequate real estate for multitasking. The LED-backlight display is easy on the eyes under standard flourescent lighting; and if you crank the brightness up, visibility is adequate in sunlight, in a pinch. The nine-cell battery protrudes uncomfortably from the rear of the case, but after you enjoy 8 hours of battery life on a single charge, you′ll be inclined to forgive it.

The keyboard is typical Lenovo fare–excellent for hammering out lengthy prose, with ample room between the quiet keys. There are some notable shortcut keys, too. A magnifier mapped to the space bar lets you toggle the resolution to make small text readable; and a ThinkLight shortcut fires up an LED light on the top edge of the display′s frame to help you spot keys in low-light conditions. The standard ThinkPad pointer nub is present, too, and the laptop′s touchpad (for people who don′t like the nub) rests right below it. Having both options is nice, but the dual sets of pointer-buttons can result in accidental button presses, if you′re not familiar with the layout.

The T400 provides few extras (for instance, the only productivity software you get is a 60-day trial for Microsoft Office), but all of the essentials are in place, including a Webcam, a DVD/CD burner, VGA-out, and an Express Card slot. You′ll also find the standard 802.11 Wireless LAN, and Bluetooth connectivity options. And the model we tested packed two much-anticipated new security features (Intel′s Anti-Theft Protection and Absolute Software′s Computrace technology), along with an optional fingerprint reader, for an extra digit of protection. The machine′s three USB slots–two on the left, and one on the right–are perpendicular to the case, allowing USB cables and peripherals to park alongside one another with relative ease. A four-pin FireWire port resides on the front of the chassis, along with the microphone and headphone jacks. You′ll likely want to keep a pair of headphones handy: The speakers are loud enough, but sound quality is middling.

The ThinkVantage application suite offers access to many useful resources at the touch of a button. Common tasks such as setting up wireless connections and managing power consumption settings are readily available, and power users will appreciate being able to back up data or configure security settings on the fly. The ThinkVantage suite largely serves as a front-end for faculties that Windows handles natively, but it does a lot to improve overall user efficiency.

Some common-sense features are useful, too. For example, if you ever do run low on battery power, you can prolong your laptop time with Battery Stretch. A single click dims the screen and switches from the ATI GPU to the integrated Intel graphics, so you can eke out a bit more battery life when you need it most, without interrupting your workflow.

Some advanced features, like the Active Protection System, may escape most users′ attention altogether. The shock-mounted hard drive is designed to protect your data from damage if you′re working in especially turbulent conditions. You′ll find this most useful if you′re prone to dropping expensive hardware; but whatever your level of eptitude, it′s a well-conceived feature that prevents the hard drive from spinning when it detects an excessive amount of vibration. The system adapts to the user′s usage patterns and ignores steady, persistent vibrations–while you′re working in a car or on a bumpy express train, for example.

Though Lenovo′s ThinkPad T400 costs more than Acer′s TravelMate 6293, this all-purpose laptop is a pretty compelling package. At $1419 (as of March 9, 2009), the Thinkpad T400 gives you sturdy construction, great battery life, smart design, and some useful special features–all in all, a good deal.

Though the unit ships with a remote, it conveniently has a full complement of controls on the unit itself that allow you to control playback as well as to navigate the on-screen menu. It′s not all that uncomfortable to actually hold the drive in the palm of your hand like a remote and press the buttons. Just be careful not to drop it–the case has a spinning hard drive inside that will almost certainly sustain damage in a fall.

The Iogear played all its supported files types (including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Xvid, DivX, MP3, WAV, and JPEG) without any glitches. The one on-screen error message we received was when we tried to play a 1080p DivX file whose resolution exceeds the Iogear′s 720p output capability.

One inconvenience: The onboard video electronics apparently takes a fair amount of power, so the drive requires its AC adapter to operate, even when plugged into a PC′s powered USB port.

–Jon L. Jacobi and Melissa J. Perenson