7.9

Asia chatter predicts increase in cost of Retina iPad Mini

Chatter in Asia has it that the total cost of the iPad Mini could increase by almost a third -- though no word on whether that would impact price.

Commentary in Digitimes, which is close to the chain of component suppliers in Asia, said the jump to a Retina screen means adding costly display components.

If iPad mini adopts the Retina display, the dots per inch (DPI) will be higher and the brightness of the backlight modules will have to improve. This also means the number of LEDs used will...[increase the total cost] by more than 30% if it … Read more

The iPad Mini design explained

So, why did Apple go with an unremarkable display for its iPad Mini and how is this related to the overall design? An IHS iSuppli analyst explains.

The iPad Mini sports an average-resolution display that falls short of the super-high-resolution Retina displays on most of Apple's other mobile products like the 9.7-inch iPad, iPhone, and iPod.

I asked Vinita Jakhanwal, a display analyst at IHS iSuppli, to give me her thoughts about Apple's design decisions.

"I think there are a lot of other issues involved in creating a new form factor device," Jakhanwal said.

"… Read more

Google Chrome Auto-Reload

If you find yourself constantly needing to refresh a Web page you're working on or viewing, this tool could be a time saver for you. JeanLou Dupont has released Auto-Reload, a Google Chrome extension built to automate the reloading of a Web page.

This free tool, once installed, adds a single button to your Chrome address bar. You won't find any unnecessary bells or whistles, just a few options that you can set and forget. It's easy to choose the refresh intervals, and the button changes color depending on whether it's active or not, a simple … Read more

System slow? Try Memory Booster

When computers run short of memory, the best solution is to add more RAM. But if your PC is already maxed out on memory modules, you can use software to free up resources and improve your system's performance. There are several ways to free up system memory. Rizone Memory Booster uses the simple but effective technique of making regular Windows API calls to tell the operating system to clean up running processes, freeing up system memory in the process. Its automatic mode cleans your system memory at regular intervals determined by the software, but you can configure the program'… Read more

Customize your desktop with Gizmo Toolbar

When you see the word "toolbar" in something other than Windows, do you tend to look on it with suspicion? Unasked-for, ad-supported toolbars that are difficult to remove are common annoyances, so Gizmo Toolbar raised flags at first. However, it's actually a surprisingly flexible and easy-to-use desktop customization utility. You can use it to create multiple customized toolbars that you can access quickly from the system tray, customize the look of your layout and themes, add plug-ins, and more. It's free and works in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows from XP to 7. For Windows … Read more

Apps locked

WinGuard Pro 2010 Lite is a free app that lets you disable and enable certain Windows features via a password without completely preventing access to your PC. It keeps snoops away from your personal data and programs without having to shut down or lock your computer, which lets you keep programs running and files open even as you're locking down your data.

We opened WinGuard Pro, which appeared in our system tray. We clicked the padlock icon, and a small password entry box appeared along with a notice that we needed to set a password. Although there's a … Read more

Links master

Linkman Lite from Outertech is a free tool for collecting, centralizing, and managing bookmarks from 10 different browsers. It integrates with Firefox and Internet Explorer as well as the interesting Maxthon. But it's capable of much more, such as the ability to organize and sort bookmarks by keywords, comments, folders, paths, and other filters; synchronize bookmarks and links between two programs or two separate computers; automatically check and update links and delete duplicates; and import and export saved files. You can also color-code bookmarks, protect your bookmark files with a password, set hot keys, save all the links on … Read more

Celebrate Odd Day in style

I've got some news that might make you feel odd, quite literally (or maybe I should say, mathematically).

Today is 5/7/09, one of a few instances when three consecutive odd numbers make up the date. As a matter of fact, it's one of only six times this will happen in the century. Today is the third this century.

If you think Pi Day (March 14) is special, note that it happens 100 times in a century. So, mathematically, today is about 16.66 times more special than Pi Day.

For this reason, folks at Oddday.net … Read more

Unintuitive encryption program

CryptoExpert Profressional is another entry in the saturated file encryption market. Despite several visits to its Help file, we still had problems navigating its confusing user interface.

The program can be accessed from a Taskbar icon. The user interface has large command buttons at the top of the window that appeared easy enough to understand, but after further inspection, we found them unhelpful in telling us what to do next. A tree-menu containing all of your folders resides on the far left. But the function of the other two panels was a little unclear. We visited the Help file, but … Read more