New Honda City :

Ever since its introduction,the honda city has completely dominated its position in its range.Now after a long gap the new version is to hit the streets next month.

So far the honda city has not opted to give features like ABS,airbags and many other useful features.The Maruti SX4 intended to fulfill these features and give the city a run for its money.Now Honda is replying with some serious answers.

The exterior seems to be very sporty following the trend seen in Civic first.The rear also looks good.The new version is said to offer a vtec engine with 120 bhp in petrol.

The dynamic styling along with the powerful engine and the well known Honda reliability seem to be a run away success.However a lack of diesel engine from Honda may be exploited by some other manufacturer.

Big TV DTH service from Reliance :

This is the third DTH offer for India and it will be four soon with Airtel launching its own DTH very soon.Reliance has just launched this service throughout India.

Obviously the most important improvement from tatasky and dish TV is the inclusion of MPEG-4 technology whereas the others are using MPEG-2 tech.Its essentially a better compression technology where more data can be sent in the same bandwidth.It may be used to launch HD channels or just more channels in comparatively lesser bandwidth.The down side of this tech is that it takes higher processing power(high cost of instrument).

The initial offer for south Indians is that for Rs.1990 they offer free installation along with 12 months subscription.A slighty better offer is for Rs.2190 which includes additional sports,radio and movie channels.

Customers have already reported on DVD quality video and audio and comparatively cheaper price.

The important negative is that the logo for big tv is shown at a very large size along side the channels logo.This may interrupt the pleasant viewing of channels.Another thing is that Reliance is yet to provide better service and customer care support.

With still a majority of people on local cable,many are yet to transition to DTH.However the safe bet is to wait for Airtel to launch their own DTH service and then decide which is the best DTH provider.

My Ubuntu experience part II :

Later I felt that i was fine working in the new OS though it was only a few hours working in it.Although it was upto the windows experience and even surpassed it in some things,the only thing that i felt the need was in gaming.All the latest games were made only for windows and so i had no option rather than to play the builtin games or do nothing at all while i download stuffs or for time pass.

Then was the time when i stumbled upon wine.It was a windows emulation tool.I installed some of my favourite windows apps in it.Unfortunately the games that i tried would not work.

Then i found virtual box which is a virtualization software and installed XP in it.It was just ok for me working in windows inside linux.For some reason i dint like it - the main thing being taking up my precious RAM.

In the mean time,my friend had been using Open SUSE (remembered its name now),and he too had been having some great time.He said about the YAST thing that can control all the things in OS.I wanted to try that linux distro too but i was unwilling to start all over again.I had been using GNOME while he prefered using KDE.

I had mixed opinions about having to type the password for each and every system access.While it offered security,it was not convenient.

Then i thought about updating my OS through automatic updates as i dont do it for windows.It had about 300 MB worth downlaods ready for me.I downloaded only those things that i would use.

My experience with Ubuntu :

As I got tired of windows XP and Windows was very good for my taste but costs additional money also,i decided to spend my free time messing around with linux distros.I went through many distros and ultimately decided on 2 of them - Ubuntu and ....oops i forgot its name..it was in version 11.My friend and I decided to try one each.I tried Ubuntu probably because of its lesser size download.

So i booted up the CD.Installation was quite simple except for the partitioning stage.The default option was to erase all hard disk partitions and install ubuntu which is very bad indeed.I then tried manual partitioning and created a linux ext 3 partition.But it said that some root partition was missing or something.So the only way i could try it was to delete a partition and choose 'continuous free space' option.So installation was successful.

Then I was simply amazed by the desktop experience it provided.For a free OS,it was indeed great.I had some problems installing ATi video drivers but then got it working and turned on compiz fusion.The eye candy provided was exceptional.

Then i thought of installing some softwares.It had almost a ton of free apps that corresponds to all the softwares that i use in windows.I had a great time using legal stuffs rather than pirating softwares in windows.The synaptic install manager was very useful in installation purposes.

In no time i was up and working.Using all of the OS features was a breeze.

Corolla Altis

The next generation Corolla from Toyota is all set to launch on the 5th of september in India.

This gen looks a lot like a mini camry which is not bad at all,as i personally loved the camry.It looks quite executive and deviats from the Civic which is more sporty in nature,which should infact appeal to a lot of professionals and managers.

The interiors are expected to be quite spiced up and the gadgets to be offered are expected to be more than that of Civic.

I think Toyota decided to offer a diesel variant,it would out run the Civic completely as Honda still has to get a diesel engine into the market.

But as usual i think i will be disappointed with the pricing just like the new camry was priced outrageously and i dont think Toyota will offer a diesel version.

Any way will update after its launch on 5th next month

Too much hype ?



It all started with the apple campaign about the iPod integration with the iPhone and the fabulous interface with awesome transition effects.Many people were just attracted towards the wonderful touch screen and its interface.

While macboys do argue that its the best phone in the market,many others are put off by the basic things that it cant do things like video recording,MMS,forwarding SMS,etc.

But the iPhone has indeed brought a fresh product in the mobile phone market.With its awesome 3.5" screen and multi-touch feedback,mobile browsing with its safari browser has been revolutionary.The sexy looking phone and its interface transition effects add to the already unique device.

Recently the price for iphone has been announced in India to be Rs.31000 for 8GB version and that too along with monthly higher plans.This could mean that those who dreamed of owning the device would most be disappointed.However this could reserve the exclusivity of the device,as not every one will be able to afford it.

Going just by the exclusivity factor also has its risks.There are already a bunch of iPhone clones in the market and the impending launch by many mobile phone makers also pose a serious threat to Apple's gadget.

Everything will depend on how other manufacturers place their touch screen phones in the market to decide who wins this market.

Integrated graphics update :

While a majority of the PCs being sold are used only with integrated graphics,the integrated graphics market hasnt been living upto its expectations.They can indeed handle web browsing,word,etc but they suck really great when it comes to gaming and some 3D stuffs.

Intel has been commenting on its next big IGP ever since the Extreme graphics days.But till now upto the G45 they havent yet delivered upto the performance level of AMD/ATi and nvidia IGPs.AMD has made great strides recently with its 780G chipset and recently released 790GX one.These can atleast play any latest game at low details.

Thigs change a lot when it comes to the future.AMD is planning on its fusion processors where the graphic chip is integrated into the processor itself.Intel on the ohter hand is working on the Larrabee graphics chipset to compete with stand alone graphic cards.

While many may argue that going to graphic card is the way to go for 3D stuffs,IGPs do offer minimal power consumption and heat production that cant even be matched by stand alone ones.

So the future of graphics may unfold a major turn with fusion or something from intel.

The start of the core race :



Earlier the processors from both Intel and AMD used to be rated based on the clock speeds.The higher the clock speed,the better.While this strategy has been very simple both on hardware and software terms,the heat,energy and size factors have been a major impact on the increase on the clock speeds.

This has started with dual cores and now the quads and octals in the near future.And some intermediate ones such as tri cores have also been launched.This approach requires the software side to support multiple threads so as to scale accordingly with the number of cores and make efficient use of the available resources.

But even now the number of applications that make use of 2 cores is negligible,let alone quad and octal cores.While AMD had spoke about reverse hyperthreading where many cores appear as a single core,it hasnt implemented much in this field.

We are seeing a similar scenario in the GPU market where games fail to utilize more than one GPU efficiently.So this is where the software market has to make up for the performance enhancements.

Back after a long time

Sorry guys for the really long delay.i am back again to post more reviews and my views on the latest technology items in news.Hope that you will all like my blog.