I had been thinking about buying an external hard disk from a long time due to lack of space on my HP DV6516TX laptop as it has only 160GB Hard Disk and my 2 mbps MTNL Triband broadband is quick to download loads of data in a single day.After researching a lot about external hard disks I zeroed in on this one mainly because of two reasons:

• It is a 2.5″ Hard drive and hence does not need external power
• It is one of the very few 2.5″ drives that come in 250GB capacity

Portability was one of the prime factors for choosing this drive and it lives up to that reputation and more as it weighs only 104 gms which is exceptionally light and can be carried around easily in pocket as it dimensions are also small.I bought the Glossy Black color to complement my laptop Some of the downsides include the outer surface is prone to oily fingerprints very easily thus making it hard to keep it shiny and also it develops scratches pretty easily.

The bundled package didn’t have anything much to say with just a USB cable being supplied along with the drive. it didnot even include a manual A soft copy of the manual is although available on the hard disk itself. The company didnot even care to give its customers a carry bag which is an absolute necessity for a portable product.

The setup was a breeze as it is a plug-n-play drive and was recognized easily by Windows Vista in a matter of seconds. The contents on the hard drive included Acrobat Reader setup and some Google goodies like Google Desktop and Picasa other than its proprietary synchronization software WDSync which requires installation on the hard disk to function.

Coming to the most important part ie. performance of the drive! The drive comes preformatted in FAT32 partition to make it compatible with both Windows and OS X. The formatted space available on the drive is 232GB.To gauge its performance I copied a 2GB file to the passport and it took 105 seconds to copy the file giving an average write speed of 20MB/s which is very good considering that it is a 5400rpm drive and works on USB 2.0. I formatted the drive with NTFS partition and repeated the same test again and got a write speed of 22MB/s second an improvement of 10%! To sum it up , it is not one of the fastest drives that can compete with Firewire drives available in the market but certainly offers excellent performance for a USB 2.0 drive.

Conclusion: The positives of this drive outweigh the negatives by a big margin hence making a very good buy.I cared less for the scratchy surface than the portability of the drive.I cared more for its USB powered interface than the performance of the bulky 3.5″ firewire drives that need a separate AC adapter. All in all this drive is worth buying if you need high storage capacity on the move at a decent price.Its price in India that I bought it for was Rs. 6750/- only.

My Rating:

I had expected this release to pack in some more features along with a new interface which would be more refreshing and soothing. My second wish was fulfilled but only partialy as Yahoo did revamp the interface completely but to make it even worse than some of its ancient versions.The colour combination was terrible and the themes provided changed only the title bar and the color theme rather than whole look of the messenger window.

This version doesn’t add any new features I could find except for a new feature called “Forward offline PMs” which was not available in previous versions but nothing pretty significant.Also when this version is installed it resets many of your settings to default but thankfully I had my archive intact.One good thing that this version does is quicker sign-in, hence reducing the time to sign-in by a appreciable margin.

Hence not much has changed in this version except the interface which is to say the least intolerable and it forced me to uninstall this version right away and shift back to version 8.1.0.421 which seemed pretty refreshing! I would say save you time and resources and forget about this version and hope that Yahoo releases a much much better final version of 9.0.

iPhone was launched in US on 29th June with much fanfare and hype with fans queing up outside Apple Stores to get their hands on first pieces of this “dream gadget”.But was it really a dream gadget for them?Well probably yes as they didn’t care about the price nor the features that it sported.They only cared about the Multi-touch and the first ever Apple Phone.

Now coming onto the topic..I personally think that iPhone didnot live up to its hype completely.Soon after launch people realized the restrictions that had been put in the firmware.This restrictions ranged from firmware issues to hardware issues including no removable battery/memory,no 3rd Party Application support and so on.These issues along with the steep price led to the hype dying down quickly but still iPhone was a hot selling phone.

Locking of the iPhone with a single carrier contributed a major role in the hype dying down quickly.iPhone within days of its launch had been hacked and many restrictions started disappearing in the air quickly.Recently a free iPhone unlocker has been released on the web making it usable with any carrier around the world.

Reports on the net about hidden features and much better hardware than previously thought also surfaced.According to reports iPhone can manage Flash, Java and MMS. Even more interesting, the platform also has the GPS, FM tuner and 3G capabilities already built-in. But what is the good news here? All those features can be activated by a simple firmware update! If this is really true then I think that iPhone is worth it.

With Apple slashing the prices by 200$ it does seem a lot more attractive but then you wont get the warranty here in India.It has been speculated than iPhone will be launched in India within a fortnight but it seems to good to be true as it wont be easy for Apple to sign an exclusive deal for it with the Indian carriers within such a short span of time.

So is it worth a buy? According to me I would wait till the next firmware update to see what Apple has in store and also the pricing that Apple choses for India which will certainly be higher than the US. If launched at a price of below Rs. 20,000 then it does make a good buy else Nokia N95 is still the king which is certainly much better on features than iPhone.

Your bouquets and  brickbats are all welcome

Social networking sites like Orkut and Myspace have become hugely popular in the last couple of years and constitute a major part of internet traffic.New social networking sites are being launched every day but to become popular is another ballgame all together..

A social networking site named Sceneparty.com which is waiting to be launched; caught my attention as it takes social networking a step further by providing users more options like forum posting,blog posting and other features which are quite attractive.

It offers a new experience to the users with a refreshing interface.It also allows to create music community to share your experience and not the forget that you also stand a chance to Win a Sony Playstation 3 by participating in various contests that run on the site.

1. Comfortability in viewing

Plasma screen performs well even in poor lightings. If there is any light at the back your plasma TV, you will not get the glare on the screen. There is no need of turn off all the lights to view the pictures clearly as you do like ordinary projection screens.

2. Viewing Angle

The unique advantage of this TV is the comfortable viewing angle of the screen. That is you can view your TV anywhere from your living room. Most of the plasma screens have been launched with the viewing angle up to 160 degree.

3. Picture Quality

The plasma screen has the stuff to offer high quality images on the screen. It can display images with bright colours. It does not have scan lines which annoys the viewers while watching interesting programs on the TV.

4. Multi-functionality

Plasma screen has the potential to display HDTV, standard TV signals and home video. It has the ability to accept video formats. The average life span of the plasma displays has measured as 30000 hours.

The article that gets the most number of votes and highest number of diggs gets to walk away with a cool prize of 1000$!!!

And yes the entry to this competition is free as no entry fee has to paid..You don’t need to be an expert or an experienced writer to win this one.You also get to add two links of your website at the end of the article.Each person can submit a maximum of 5 articles.

Your article gets viewed by thousands of people so you gain popularity too.The deadline for the contest is Friday, May 25th, 12:00 PM MST.So hurry and submit your article now!

While browsing some of the sites related to this topic I came across Robert’s site which shares the same convictions as I do.He too was a simple guy who got interested in making online.He started with 0$ in his pocket and now earns around 1000$ per month.Seems like a fairytale but you better believe it.

He started earning from ebay by buying and selling stuff and earning some profits from that.Getting a head-start he headed into the domain selling business and managed to sell domains and making good profits from there.He managed to get hold a good site for only 40$ and then auctioned it for 125$ on another site…Thats pretty good thinking..

As you can already see,one doesn’t require the skills or a programmer to earn big bucks but just some research and you are on your way.

But this wasn’t the end of his success story…He started a website and soon it became popular and it still earning around 500$ per month from Google Adsense and also by doing other jobs.

Hence it is not a difficult task to make money but the magnitude of your earnings reflect the amount of hard work you are willing to put into it.

Information Web Directory does exactly that, without you having to crack your head over it.It is a Search Engine Friendly Directory which provides you with the option of listing your website under one of the numerous subcategories that suits your site perfectly.It helps boost your sites traffic as well as improve its ranking in various search engines.

Some of the categories that you can submit your site to include:

Health Web Directory: All the sites related to health go in her.For eg. sites related to Dentistry,Pharmaceutical,Diseases etc.

Travel Directory:If your site has information regarding Airline Tickets,Travel Guides,Theme Parks then this is what you should be looking at.Also you can submit your site related to Photography in this section!

Celebrity Directory:Add your site in here if it has contains scoops of celebs personal lives,and other interesting stuff relating to them…

and many more….

If you are ready to shell out some money then you can get your site reviewed and get it listed under regular or featured listing in the most relevant category.Hence it integrates a lot of services and makes the task a lot easier!

It is located at the top of Antariksha Bhawan on the 24th Floor and offers a magnificent picturesque view of Delhi.I had been wondering how fast the revolution would be but that was laid to rest soon as I finally managed to get a table in this highly popular restaurant.The restaurant revolves pretty slowly and the motion is imperceptible unless you observe your surroundings very carefully.

The menu had quite a number of items to choose from but we zeroed in on a couple of starters but it took around 20-25 mins. for the food to delivered..that was really slow service.The food was good but I have tasted better food elsewhere.The outside view offers good company along with the chirpy environment of the restaurant.The lighting in the restaurant was dim and it did feel a bit gloomy at times..

The service was slow throughout and it took us around one and a half hour to get through with it.In the meantime we had completed a full revolution.The restaurant has put up descriptions of various historical sites of Delhi too.

Overall  it was a different ad enjoyable experience but certainly better food and better service could have made it much more enjoyable considering the rates are too on the higher side.

These numbers clealy signify that Zen Estilo beats its competitors ie. mainly Santro Xing and Wagon R which have a mileage of around 15.5kmpl and 16kmpl respectively.The tweaking that the Maruti engineers have done with the engine has certainly helped along with improved aerodynamics.

I  also managed to experience the A/C of the car as it continues to become sultry hot here in Delhi while I write this down .The A/C works like a charm and cools the car in a matter of about 4-5 mins. The average with air conditioning on is about 17kmpl with Xtra Premium on the city roads.On highways I am pretty sure that it can go upto 18.5kmpl.

So Zen Estilo has clearly emerged the winner in both performance and economy segments in the small car or the budget car category.With Chevrolet Spark coming up and the proposed 1-Lac car by the Tatas, it remains to be seen for how long can it maintain that tag.