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Using military grade laptop in an urban setting for simple day to day computing is a bit of overkill and to be quite blunt, borders on being paranoid. If your daily routine doesn’t involve a hazard pay, a hard hat, laptop piñata, and bungee jumping – a netbook robust enough to stay alive in an urban jungle would fit the bill perfectly. For those who were unable to attend the last Mobile World Congress (MWC 2010), here’s the breaking news for you. Samsung just unveiled the new NB30. This 10.1-inch non-gloss and LED backlit netbook has enough finesse and pizzazz to fit your urban lifestyle and yet tough enough to survive the bumps and scratches of city living. The exterior of the Samsung NB30 is made of a stylish and robust casing layered with a protective scratch, smudge and fingerprint resistant texturized matte black finish. The surface of this netbook is also protected by a water-tight seal technology, it can withstand up to 50 ml of accidental liquid spills if cleaned in 10 seconds.

For added data security, the NB30 features a shock resistant 5,400RPM 160GB SATA hard disk that has a built in free fall sensor that instantly turns away the read/write heads from the HDD during accidental drop. This fail safe mechanism protects the hard disk from being inadvertently scratched and damaged by the drive heads after falling.

The Samsung NB30 is run by the latest Intel ATOM N450 processor on a Windows 7 platform and has a battery life of 6.5 hours courtesy of the 6 cell battery.

The Samsung R620 also sports a new cooling system with improved performances for less noise. If you are interested in more detailed facts about this laptop then you should know that the Samsung R620 full name is R620 63 G, and its part number is NP R620 FS 02 US. Samsung R620 brings almost a full package of communication to its user. It lacks modem and mobile internet, but it sports a Wired Ethernet LAN with 10 / 100 / 1000 Base TX, Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g/n profile, 1.3 megapixel web camera, and Bluetooth version 2.1 with enhanced data rate. The connectivity department is very good featured in the R620. You get a total of four USB 2.0 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, can easily be used, while the forth has a double function as an eSATA port.

Also one of these ports can still charge devices connected to it even when the laptop is turned off. You also get a 54 mm Express Card, VGA port, HDMI port, three in one memory card slot for compatible memory cards (such as SD memory card, Multimedia memory card, SDHC memory card), microphone in jack, headphone in jack, and Ethernet port. It might lack the second audio out jack but that should not worry, R620 come packed with excellent audio technology and speakers. Samsung R620 includes High Definition audio, Mic noise suppression SRS sound effect with two speakers with a total of 3 W (1.5 W x 2). The R620 keyboard boasts an excellent layout. Samsung names this keyboard, Magic keyboard, because it includes a full number pad, and because of the Fn function keys (they provide easy access to volume controls
and brightness settings).

The keys work well, no flex when pressed. Overall, the keypad is not only excellent designed but also built. This is a great keyboard for everyone that types more than two hours daily, because it makes the overall experience with the R620 unique. Samsung ships the R620 with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor T6500 with the maximum CPU clock speed 2.10 GHz, CPU front side bus speed of 800 MHz, with 2 MB L2 cache. You also get an Intel PM 45 Express Chipset, up to 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 (2 x 2048 MB). The maximum hard drive storage is about 320 GB with 5400 rotations per minute. A nice feature in this laptop is the Blu-ray ROM and DVD + / – RW Combo Drive.

Samsung included in the R620 the ATI Mobility Radeon High Definition 4330 graphic processor with 512 MB GDDR3. Even if you can find a better graphic processor, the HD 4330 performs good, allowing users to smoothly play games (at medium settings) such as World of War craft, The Sims 2, and even The Sims 3.

The R620 offers an excellent display for this price range, a 16 inches High Definition display with a resolution of 1366 x 769 pixels, aspect rotation of 16 to 9, up to 16 million colors. However this is not the best display on the market, since it lacks the full high definition experience at 1080p. Samsung ships the R620 with Windows Vista Home Premium, but you can upgrade to Windows 7.

Review
Coming in a sleek black casing this laptop will shine from the moment you pull it out of the box. It’s not until you open the lid and see the two-tone colour that you might think you’ve entered a race track at your local boy racer hangout, but rather than making it out like the laptop looks like a pimped out Nova it pulls it off surprisingly well and offers a sense of class and refinement to what is in all respects a budget laptop.

To top this off it comes with a 15.4? screen and not only do you have a laptop that looks like it has been on an improved version of ‘pimp my laptop’ but it also gives you a display that is a nice halfway between too big and too small.

The full sized keyboard comes with silver-nano bacterial protection which to me gives the keys a pleasantly strokeable finish. This supposedly kills around 99.99% of bacteria (…see never say that I don’t do my research) which will give you piece of mind when the Domestos ads come on the tele whilst you’re on this laptop – just don’t start shouting ‘Die bugs, die’ when you press the keys as that might get you some funny looks, if not a white jacket with never ending sleeves.

Under the bonnet

This laptop comes with a nice Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5750 and runs at around 2Ghz but remember its dual core so times that by 2 and we get the actually clock speed of this laptop and with more and more applications starting to use dual core you will soon be getting this times 2 speed all the time.

Throw in the 4GB of Ram this laptop comes with into the mix and Ta Da…you got one fast machine that will plough through Office applications and even design packages with ease. Plus with the 160GB of hard disk space this laptop proves you can easily store your entire MP3, movie clips while leaving you enough space to do some actual work on it.

For all you travellers out there you will be pleased to read that this laptop will handle around four and a half hours whilst its idle which means that if your tapping away and putting it under heavy strain then this laptop will last around an hour and ten minutes, but if you’re watching movies or listening to movies on the train then this laptop should last you a long time.

Now for the bad news, I suppose all us gamers out there were licking your lips when reading about this laptop and if you did a quote on this before you read up to this point then you will even be more disappointed, as this laptop only comes with a Intel GMA X4500MHD graphics chipset. Although this may be the latest model it is still integrated which means a no no to all those latest games such as Crysis which by all reports will only run at 4.9 frames per second on the lowest specs.

The Gaj-It Verdict

We Say

Technical Specs:-

Samsung NP Q45A00c Entertainment Laptop is an optimal balance of mobility and performance, including an impressive multimedia capability that will enhance the productivity of even the most demanding and agile business users, it is super light weight and the design is very sleek. It weighs 1.9 Kg and its dimensions are 29.9 x 21.7 x 3.6 cm (W x D x H), the notebook is available in black and silver colours.

Processor and RAM:
Samsung NP Q45A00c is powered with Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 processor with a speed of 2 GHz and it features ultra-low voltage technology which means it consumes very less power to operate. Also to support the processor an L2 cache memory is provided with a memory of 2 MB. The RAM supplied with the ultra-portable is 1 GB and is of type DDR2 SDRAM with a speed of 667 MHz and the RAM can be extended to a maximum of 4 GB.

Media Bay Options:
Samsung NP Q45A00c is only supplied with a SATA-150 Hard disk with 160 GB disk capacity and it can operate at a speed of 7200 RPM. The notebook comes along with a storage controller of type DVD±RW (+R double layer) / DVD-RAM with DVD writing speed of 8x and 24x speed for CD. Samsung NP Q45 includes a 5 in 1 card reader and is capable of reading and writing data from SD Memory Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard, MMCplus.

Screen and Graphics:
Samsung NP Q45A00c Multimedia Laptop is supplied with 12.1 inch TFT screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 dpi of type WXGA. The graphics enhancement is provided by Intel GMA 3100 integrated card and the card features Dynamic Video Memory Technology 4.0 and video memeory of 128 MB.

External Interface:
The external ports available with the Samsung NP Q45A00c are:
1 x display / video – VGA – 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15)
2 x Hi-Speed USB – 4 PIN USB Type A
1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) – 4 PIN FireWire
1 x microphone – input – mini-phone 3.5mm
1 x headphones – output – mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm
1 x network – Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX – RJ-45
1 x modem – phone line – RJ-11

Input devices:
The Input devices available with the Samsung NP Q45A00c are Touchpad and keyboard.

Networking options:
Samsung NP Q45A00c has the following options for networking:
v.92 56kbps data/fax Modem.
Standard Ethernet Adapter
Integrated Wireless LAN card with support to protocols like Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR

Operating System:
Samsung NP Q45A00c comes with Windows Vista home premium edition and also has the following software’s:
Drivers & Utilities
McAfee VirusScan
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Samsung Update Plus
Cyberlink DVD Solution
Magic Doctor
Microsoft Office 2007 (Trial)
Microsoft Windows Media Player 11
Samsung Easy Battery Manager
Samsung Easy Network Manager
Samsung Easy Display Manager
Samsung Play AV Station
Samsung Play Camera
Samsung Easy Speed Up Manager
Samsung Easy Partition Manager

Battery capacity and Warranty:
The notebook comes with a re-chargeable 6 cell Lithium-ion battery that can last up to 6 hours and the product comes with a 2 year warranty

Two latest Samsung laptops debuting in the UK are incredibly cool-looking. The M70 has a removable 19-inch widescreen LCD display (Samsung says it’s the first of its type, though I can’t be totally sure), so you can just take the body of the laptop if you’re leaving anywhere that you can plug in the unit’s corpse to one more display. That’ll help with portability. And of course, on the other hand, you can also fasten the 19-inch display to a home PC as well. Other hide of the M70 include a nVidia Geforce Go 6600 graphics subsystem, LCD docking cradle, four USB ports, full-sized keyboard and the hottest Intel Centrino cell phone processor chip.

The X1 is also new and extremely light and thin. It’s got a top-loading optical disc drive, and the keyboard site makes it easier to tote around with its 14-inch widescreen LCD display. It weighs about 4 pounds and includes includes DVI-out as well as a SRS Sound structure, ‘Wide Speakers’ and PC Card-sized remote control.