laptop Lenovo Ideapad U-450p 14-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

"Buy this product from Amazon"

"Buy this product from Amazon"

"Buy this product from Amazon"

So, I did extensive research on the ulv-class laptops from Asus, Acer, Toshiba, and Lenovo. My main goal was to buy a mid-range ($500-700) culv laptop with Windows 7 to tide me over until the release of the Asus UL80-JT (I3 CULV with automatic switchable graphic cards and 12 hours of battery life), which won't be released until later in the year.

What I got was exactly that. The reviews complained mostly about the Lenovo customer service, which I have not dealt with personally. However, I have heard that Lenovo's customer service isn't *that* bad and it is a smaller company than HP or Dell (you and your laptop will actually end up worse for the wear after dealing with their customer service). No one's customer service can ever compete with the quality Asus customer service, and I was sad that the price point on the Asus ul30 and ul80 moved back up to around $850 on Amazon and that they were sold out on most other websites, but so it goes.

So, onto the Lenovo, it has a sleek look and you will never have a fingerprint problem. The keyboard is the most ergonomically designed keyboard I have seen on a thin and light laptop and it has the greatest feel to it. The laptop does not feel flimsy at all and seems pretty sturdy all around. It comes with a CD/DVD drive, which is great, since most of the other thin and lights have eliminated an optical drive in favor of weight.

The veriface log-in is a cool added feature.

The screen has really good resolution and the laptop comes with a really decent graphics card. The one obvious drawback to this is that it takes a toll on the battery life. Now, I've moved from a normal laptop getting 2 hours of battery life at the most, so I am enjoying the added battery life. However, it is not as good as some of the other culv laptops. I get about 4 hours and 15 minutes on average depending on what I am doing. This is again, great compared to the regular lithium ion batteried-laptops, but it seems pretty average for the culv class laptops with Acer boasting 9 hours and Asus boasting 12 hours. (Asus doesn't get 12 hours but instead close to 9, but that still rates above the Lenovo). So, I ultimately find myself a bit annoyed when I have to plug the Lenovo in.

The laptop runs cool and quietly and with no real noticeable fan noise.

I think the only con on this laptop is the battery life AS COMPARED to other laptops in its class. Overall, however, I am happy with the purchase and would recommend it to people who are looking to get a less expensive culv laptop, because it ultimately has a better price point than its competitors.Lenovo Ideapad U-450p 14-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

Printer Polaroid CZA-10011B PoGo Instant Mobile (Black)

"Buy this product from Amazon"

"Buy this product from Amazon"

I purchased the Polaroid PoGo today and have done a fair bit of "playing" with this compact little printer over the past couple of hours. In fact, I have already used the first package of 10 sheets of Zink (Zero Ink) paper that come with the printer. So my first recommendation is; if you are planning on buying a PoGo, I highly recommend getting extra paper so you can get through your "testing" phase without having to purchase more paper. However, don't go crazy and buy too much, there are expiration dates on the paper which may affect your picture quality if you take to long to "expose" (print) them.

Connectivity:
I have tested the Bluetooth capabilities with my Motorola Q, Laptop Computer (Bluetooth enabled), my desk-top Windows Vista computer (with Radio Shack "Bluespoon" Bluetooth 2.0 adaptor added) and my PictBridge capable Canon Powershot A 640 camera (directly connected to PoGo via USB cable) and the printer worked like a charm in all of the above tests!

Speed of Printing:
Print time is about 1 minute per photo. There was no noticeable change in print speed with any of the tests I performed. Using the Bluetooth (wireless) connection or plugging in your USB cable directly from your camera did not seem to make any difference as to how fast the image printed.

Image Quality:
Not great...but not the worst I have seen either...The pictures I printed from my camera (via USB connection) looked better than my pictures from my cell phone, but this was likely due to the higher megapixel image created by my camera versus the 1 megapixel image from my cell phone. However, the "white balance" of both my camera and cell phone images were a little "off". The whites were extremely white (almost washed-out) and the dark (shadow areas) were very dark. So if you stay away from printing bright "beach / snow" images or dark "night" photographs you will be OK. Photos with lots of color (flowers, for example) looked pretty good when printed with the PoGo.

Cool things to do:
The adhesive on the back of the photo paper is a nice feature of this product. This makes it possible to add pictures to your hand written journals. You can stick them to business card magnets and put photos all over your refrigerator. You can make photo luggage tags, cards and much, much more.

If you don't need the highest quality image, but want to do some fun, creative stuff with photographs I would definitely recommend the PoGo. If you are a photographer hoping that the PoGo would give you a quick "proof" of what your printed images will look like, then this printer is probably not for you, since the image quality is not as good as you could get with some standard ink jet printers.

Have fun...

Inkjet Printer HP Officejet 6500 Wireless All-in-One

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"Buy this product from Amazon"

I looked and researched wireless printers and was going crazy. This one had all postive reviews so I decided to order it. I wanted an all in one printer/scanner/copy/ fax and wireless. At 149.00 dollars sale price I decided to go for it.
It came in a huge box and I thought what the heck did I order and when I took it out of the box it was bigger than my other all in one, but the double sided printing attachment adds some bulk (I have not tried this feature). It is noisier than my HP 4280 all in one, but that is not a big deal.
Set up was fairly easy, I just followed the instruction set up page. The software took a long time to install. I am familiar with printer set ups and installing software so no problem there just time consuming. It came with everything I needed including the USB cord (usually not included). The fax was easy to set up and send (I have not received a fax yet)It has speed dial too. The wireless works perfectly from my laptop. I'm familiar with HP software so the program is easy to use for scanning and it's easy to do copies too.
I am unfamiliar with printheads that you have to install yourself and I do not know if they have to be replaced periodically or not. The ink comes with a pop off top that was kind of scary but you just pop it off. Cartridges are very easy to install. It seems to have to go through a lot to get going including noise.
It took me over an hour but I wasn't in a big hurry.

The only problem I have encountered is with my new HP pavilion laptop 64bit running Vista. My desk top is a dell running XP, and I didn't have any software problems. The software installed on my laptop with no problems except it gives an error message when I shut down my laptop. My HP 4120 did the same thing, HP has not been able to give me a fix. It's a 64 bit problem.
I'm pretty impressed with all the features and I have printed out some 4 by 6 photos and had no problem using photo paper or 4 by 6 paper. The paper tray holds tons of paper which is nice when using wireless, in case I forget to check before printing.
I only gave it 4 stars because of the Vista 64 bit software glitch.
I am an intermediate to advanced computer user.