By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

ONCE in a while, an electronic device manufacturer would try and compete with Apple in the portable MP3 device market. Most of the competition would try to make theirs look as simple as the iPod that they end up looking like the iPod.

Korean electronics giant Samsung has previously attempted to enter the MP3 device business with their small Yepp series. Now, the company is stretching its legs as it launched the K3 series. Not surprisingly, it looks like the iPod nano and because it is somewhat a clone of Apple’s mid-range MP3 player, the K3 admittedly looks good.

The unit is just slightly longer than the nano but is just as thick. It has a stainless frame lining while top is covered in seamless colored laminated glass with a large black-tinged LCD. The K3 comes in three colors: black, green and maroon.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

IT’S not surprising that Creative will try again to come up with innovative products that aim to outdo Apple, particularly in the MP3 player space.

Incidentally, for those who remember, Creative did revolutionize the MP3 player business and was actually one of the more prominent brands in the late 1990s and early 2000. That was until Apple decided to squeeze in with its iPod players that swept the world off its feet. Now, Creative must try to outdo Apple.

Surprisingly, it took Creative another three years before it realized that the business for minuscule MP3 players was particularly strong, especially after Apple introduced the extremely popular iPod Shuffle mini player that came with no more than the forward/backward, play/pause and volume controls. It didn’t need any LCDs. Apple then introduced the new form factor of the iPod Shuffle that was so small it could get stuffed down a drain. But the world still loved it.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

AMONG the Taiwanese laptop makers, Acer is one of the most prolific, perhaps next only to Asus. In fact, both Taiwanese products compete toe-to-toe in almost every aspect of their products and this is most noticeable when they licensed two of the most well-known luxury car brands: Asus got Lamborghini while Acer got Ferrari.

At any rate, Acer churns out model after model of notebooks, usually the TravelMate and Aspire series, and in each series at least six new models come out every year. The company was gracious enough to lend its TravelMate 3272NWXMi model that comes from the 3270 series. It targets at least two user groups: the multimedia fanatic and the casual gamer.

First of all are the innards of the TravelMate 3272NWXMi; it is among the first models in the series to use the Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.6 Ghz per core) processor running on an Intel Mobile 945GM chipset. It also has a 1 Gigabyte DDR2 memory and an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 video card with up to 256MB TurboCache.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

I HAVE a love-hate relationship with personal digital assistants that use the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system, largely because it keeps crashing and eats up battery life. Plus, there’s already an obvious sense that once you see a personal digital assistant with Microsoft Windows Mobile, everything else is just the same, with only a few minor differences in terms of software included.

However, some rare breeds of PDAs make use of Windows Mobile for what it should be… or rather compensate for some of the troubles that Windows Mobile would cause. The Dopod 838Pro is one such PDA.

First of all, the Dopod 838Pro is one of the top-of-the-line units from the Taiwanese mobile manufacturer. It is powered by a powerful Samsung 400-megahertz processor and uses the latest Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0.

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