The Gadgetier

There are lots of myths surrounding Windows Vista floating around the net, most of which have come from people who haven’t actually used the operating system. When news of this reached Microsoft, they setup the ‘Mojave Experiment’. The idea was to disguise Vista with different looks and then let people who had a ‘low perception’ of Vista use it. They had all been told that this was the next version of Windows.

The contestants had given Windows Vista an average rating of 4.4 out of 10, before actually using it. After they had used the disguised Vista, they gave an average rating of 8.5 out of 10. You can view the results for yourself, at The ‘Mojave Experiment’.

With every large computer manufacturer launching netbooks or sub-notebooks these days, choosing the right one can be a little tricky. So, you’ve got to choose from Asus’s Eee PC, MSI’s Wind, Acer’s Aspire One and Advent’s less attractively named 4211. They all look stunning, and you know you want one, but which one?

Asus’s Eee PC (901) - The 901 is, in our opinion, the best of the Eee PC netbooks from Asus. It combines the robust nature of a solid state drive with the power of Intel’s Atom CPU and a solid shell. Being the first netbook on the market also means Asus is on the 3rd incarnation of their mini laptop, pushing them ahead in terms of experience.

The Eee packs in an Intel Atom clocked at 1.6GHz, but automatically overclocks it when you’re plugged in for better performance. It also houses 1GB DDR2 RAM, as well as a dependable solid state drive, a 20GB model with Linux or a 12GB model with Windows XP. You’ll also get wireless n, with speeds up to 300Mbps with a compatible router, something you won’t find on any other netbook around today.

Asus also say the Eee has an 8 hour battery, although we’ve found it to me more like 5 hours. However, that’s still the best battery life from a netbook we’ve seen. Then there’s all the other little things that make it a pleasure to use, such as the card reader, 3 USB ports and Ethernet port. Also in the Eee’s shell is an 8.9 inch display that uses the standard 1024×600 resolution display we’ve seen on nearly all the netbooks.

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Royal Mail is a UK postage company, for those of you who are not in the UK. Now, they really are great, they deliver to any address within the UK for the same low price. They deliver daily (except Sundays) and most items get there fairly quickly.

But when we are shipping across countries, we tend to use DHL, who are one of the biggest couriers. Now, DHL may be more expensive, but the thing that startled us was that a parcel with DHL could get from China to the UK, including being collected and delivered to our address, in a day! Yes, that’s around 24 hours (excluding the change in time zones) to get from China to the UK. Now if we were to post an item with Royal Mail at 11 in the morning, even to a house down the road, you’d have to use an expensive Next Day service service to get it there in 24 hours.

Come on Royal Mail, sort it out.

At Component Warehouse, we’ve got several gifts that are ideal for father’s day presents. You can check out some of our selected father’s day gifts on our website, here [link removed, too late to order for Father's Day 2008!].

Remember, that’s just a small selection of our items, that we think would be ideal for father’s day. All items are currently in stock (they’ll go fast though!) and can will be dispatched within 24 hours.