[Preview + Feedback] Digit October 2006

[s18000rpm]

@fatbeing, man i was so surprised when you PUT the The Three Stooges Episodes, but after watching it, it was a bit dissapointing. the video was very low in qyality.
You guys can provide high quality videos.
& most importantly Next time if you put the Three Stooges Episodes, Please & pretty please include ONLY the ones which FEATURE CURLY & not Shemp. (one of the three stooges)

 

[aryayush]

First and foremost, why weren't Apple MacBooks and MacBook Pros included in the laptop shootout? And why was there absolutely no news about the launch of the new iMac lineup with Intel Core 2 Duo processors? You haven't reported anything about Mac OS X Leopard and you haven't covered the launch of the new range of iPods. It would have been fine and dandy had you been ignoring Apple completely but you are always quick to report whom Apple is blaming for copying their features or whom they are suing. I know you have always favoured Microsoft and do not pay much attention to Apple (except for the iPods), but this is just too much. You could at least have taken the trouble of pitting the Apple notebooks against the competition to see how they fared.
This issue was a total waste of money anyway. The only articles I found worth reading were: Editorial, War for search, The Best Yahoo! Widgets, The Ultimate Home Jukebox, Agent 001, Notable Portables, Of Brands and Brawn, Game On: Prey, Tabloid Tech and the Regulars. It did not even take me twenty minutes to finish the magazine. And this time I did not even have the Fast Track to look forward to. I know it is pretty subjective but I really don't care about Digital Video (and most average people don't either). The DVD/CD were useless too. I did not even break open the seal. You should provide us with full Linux distros and the like, things that take a long time to download.
I have always bought the mag from newsstands without even looking at the cover for the past two years but after the huge disappointment of this issue, I have to be selective in the future. After all, a hundred and twenty five bucks is a lot of money if it buys you just twenty minutes of reading pleasure.

 

[rajivnedungadi]

The magazine contents look ok, but the Disc contents are not as good as that of previous months

 

[Sourabh]

but i was dissapointed because u havent done ur research well on the laptop shootout & more info on post-production cud b given,

first u failed to mention the following things

1-dell is the only company in india which allows laptop customization and lets u build with ur own configuration to suit ur needs and budget and also provied complete cover and replaces the whole laptop incase of water spills, drops ,etc.

2-dell is the only company providing core2duo laptops in the series, which no other laptop companies are doing at the moment and the inspiron 9400 with nvidia go7900GS

It has a lot to do with the fact that products are reviewed which the manufacturers provide for shoot-out and not the other way around to the best I know. Dell probably wanted a more 'powerful' feature packed laptop and hence they provided a fairly hi-end T2600. The shootout must have been done quite a while ago, and considering meroms have just made their way in the past month - you can forgive digit for that.

I liked the laptop shootout. It was fairly comprehensive and covered most brands in different form factors.

 

[soham]

None of the laptops had a core 2 duo processor not even the Sony blu-ray one. This shows the tests are already outdated. The core 2 duo must have permformed much better than the core duo ones.

 

[hafees]

I liked the contents of magazine but DVD is not very useful. i think you should upgrade your dvd to dual layer. and hopefully it should packed with free online videos, pictures, mobile themes, ring tones, etc etc

 

[Tapomay]

Another disappointing issue........

No good software accompaning with Fast Track (Latest ver. of Ulead Video Studio, Pinnacle Video Studio were released a long ago),/ Wrong version of 'Beyond TV4' included. Included version is for networked PCs./ Old ver. softwares are provided (New ver. of Nero was released on 18th Sept. but the DVD has a older ver. Please provide the new one next month with .chm help files.

Description:
Language: English
Filename: Nero-7.5.1.1_eng.exe
Release Date: September 18th, 2006
Installable Until: November 30th, 2006
Trial Period: 30 Days after installation
Filesize: 189,16 MB ( 198.350.040 bytes )
MD5 checksum: 2739cb62ccd4aed3cca2285525a2456c
Link: ftp://209.170.95.40/software/nero7/Nero-7.5.1.1_eng.exe )

 

[blackpearl]

I liked the article "Of Brands and Brawn". People need to understand this very thing that the most popular brands isn't always the best. Companys spend millions of rupees each year on ads just because people are so easily fooled by what is shown in the TV. Not very long ago some MNC paid Sachin Tendulkar Rs 180 crores for endorsing their product. What the heck!! 180 crores!! Obviously a company can afford to spend such an obscene amount because they know that the return will be much higher. As long as consumers continue to buy products just because Sachin Tendulakar or Shah Rukh Khan (the king of over-acting) tells them to buy it, we are going to see more such wastage of money through such star-contracts. Hell!! its our money that the companys are wasting on ads.

I wish more such articles were published in more magazines to increase consumer awareness.

 

[Lucifer]

Soham....here are the reasons for all your burning questions...

1. 1600 x 1200 is the perfect resolution for high end testing (unless multi GPU is being used) simply because games stutter at anything higher.. The objective of any test is relativity of performance, not to measure the minimum fps that a card can churn out.

2. Also try running a 19 inch monitor at 1600x1200. Sure the monitor supports it, but you'll need to disable most of the eyecandy in games like FEAR (by eye candy I'm talking AA and AF, HDR, soft shadows etc) simply because the card won't be able to handle them. Once again we test at settings which achieve the best compromise between fps and visuals which is the eternal dilemma faced by all gamers. A game looks better at 1280x1024 with 4x AA and 8x AF than at 1600x1200 with all these settings off. I hope you get my drift here....

3. HDR has been used for farcry, splinter cell and FEAR.... DOOM 3 doesn't support HDR with SM3. I hope you realise that SM3 is a direct X effect while DOOM 3 is Open GL

4. Widescreen - well most games that we tested don't support widescreen natively, if at all. Farcry does support widescreen, but well let me ask you, how many widescreen gamers exist among our audience? Yes the numbers are on the rise, with widescreen TFT's, but a major chunk of people still opt for CRT's (no widescreen there) or regular TFT's. Maybe a couple of years down the line widescreen resolutions would make more sense, when a majority of gamers and games are using them.

5. Quake 4 is a very CPU bound game. i.e. it doesn't really scale well. I hope you realise we don't just wake up one day and go "ooh lets test graphics cards this month", we tried at least 10 games before finalising on the 4-5 most feasible ones. To further clarify, our initial tests on Quake 4 got nearly similar scores across cards in similar categories (with the usual Nvidia - ati differences of course). Additionally DOOM 3, Quake 4 and Prey use the same DOOM 3 engine, which has been optimised on the latter two games.

 

[eggman]

I hate to say it but Digit Sucks
They've rated Dell Inspiron 6400 as the best noebook.
But see the configuration for the same laptop in the Magazine and in Dell's Website(*www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks_in?c=in&l=en&s=bsd). Different configuration for same laptop?????????????
Now don't say that Website is wrong.....
This shows how detailed Digit reviews are.... they just copy paste the config(wrong ones too...) and rate it..... Shame on u digit

 

[Com Warrior]

Fedora Core 6 Plz.....
__________

I hate to say it but Digit Sucks
They've rated Dell Inspiron 6400 as the best noebook.
But see the configuration for the same laptop in the Magazine and in Dell's Website(*www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks_in?c=in&l=en&s=bsd). Different configuration for same laptop?????????????
Now don't say that Website is wrong.....
This shows how detailed Digit reviews are.... they just copy paste the config(wrong ones too...) and rate it..... Shame on u digit

Hey Mind your words Buddy --- There' re some real Digit Patron's around.....

"WHY DON'T U CHECK THE LINK U POSTED FIRST"

Not Workin --- *www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks_in?c=in&l=en&s=bsd

 

[amit67]

Digit October 2006

Hello

Dell inspiron 6400 price what u have listed is wrong.


Thanks

Amit

 

[kumargautam2003]

I ordered a dell core 2 duo inspiron 6400 from the dell website on 16th october
It came in my home on 3rd november,
Everything in place and all the configuration and stuff as customized on the website.
The engg from dell came and did the honors, of openening the package.

The config is
Dell Inspiron 6400 Code-N541006
1. Intel (R) Core (TM) 2 Duo Processor 2 GHZ, 4MB Cache, 667 MHZ FSB (Originaly it was 1.66 GHz 2 MB Cache Core Duo)
2. 512 MB (1 x 512 MB) DDR2 SDRAM
3. 80 GB SATA Hard Drive (Originaly it was 60 GB)
4. 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive dual layer write capabilities (Originaly it was 24x DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive)
5. 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon (R) X1300 Hypermemory
6. Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
7. Wireless Network Intel (R) PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 54 MBPS
8. 15.4" WXGA TFT Display (1280 x 800 res)
9. Windows(R) XP Home Edition with CD Media
10. Carry case nylon case


Cost was exactly 63,485

Thank you digit!!

 

[manishji]

I bought the magazine for two reasons
1. The movie Escape from sobibor-i remember it watching it long back and it was worth every penny for a second dekko
2. the laptop surview-i have finalised the dell lappy
however a question remains. why no Lenovo laptops were checked Fatbeing?
thanks for the help

 

[FatBeing]

We did approach Lenovo for their contenders, but as a policy, they don't send laptops for comparison tests.

 

[Apollo]

I found this month's FT to Open Source Software an informative read. If not a comprehensive one, it's still a good basic guide to some of the popular OSS alternatives available out there.

Much appreciation!

 

[Kiran.dks]

I am a subscriber to Digit. I need a clarification regarding delivery of my copies. Should I pay extra bucks for the December Issue?

 

[$atya]

october 06 issue was simply great !! but.....i hav lost my oct 06 cd ?? where can i get all the cd contents ???????
__________
buttttttt....... !! i hav lost my oct 06 cd !!

 

[toofan]

Digit October 2008

I got my copy today(oct/2008 '). So thanks for your superb magazine. I liked specially the hardware shootout section and the Game reviews. They were awesome.

And special thanks for your DVD. Its greatest of all time.

look at the title of this post.

 

[darkknight]

Worst Digit Contents till date. U have already given most of the things, i never wanted to compare but the standards of digit are falling. Just Take a look at Chip's contents. I know many ppl dont have net connection so they cant download programs but at least u cud have given some decent contents. Wud have to buy the other magazine this month