Dubai Hotels on line Booking allows you to browse hotels in Dubai by star , rate or location and ability to search by map with Sepcial discount lodging features we have Just added The atlantis hotel in plam Jumeirah which shall be most in demand for Dubai Holiday makers...
Located on the doorsteps of the famous Burj Dubai, touted as the tallest building in the world, stands the 63 story hotel known as The Address. This 5-Star Flagship Hotel, offers state-of-the-art facilities along with quality customer service. This hotel’s central location in the city, allows guests easy access to many of Dubai’s fine attractions. Situated near the hotel, is the Dubai Mall. Upon its opening in Nov 2008, the Dubai Mall will be the largest in the world, housing the world’s largest aquarium and the world’s largest Gold Souk. Also, nearby guests will find the famous Burj Al Arab, with its iconic structure that represents the Spirit of Dubai, and the world-renown Palm Jumeirah, the first of the Palm Trilogy man-made islands, and home to the new Atlantis Hotel with its renowned AquaVenture Waterpark where you can experience a swim with the dolphins. For additional shopping venues, guests can visit the nearby Souk Al Bahar with its many unique boutique shops; the Madinat Jumeirah with its beautiful waterways, and designer shops in a Souk Style setting; and the popular Mall of the Emirates with its own Indoor Ski Resort, Ski Dubai. For those interested in a top-notch golf facility, the Emirates Golf Club, home of the Dubai Dessert Classic is just a short drive. After enjoying a pleasant day out visiting the sites of Dubai, guests can return to The Address, Downtown Burj Dubai to enjoy a relaxing treatment at The Spa. The Spa with vast menu of massages and treatments is sure to fix “what’s ailing you.”
The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s (the "s" could stand for "small," or maybe even "surprising") is an evolutionary step up from the ThinkPad T400, which is itself a good all-purpose business laptop. In fact, the T400s looks as if it were a T400 that someone had left in the dryer for too long. So how did Lenovo improve on a laptop that already offered a great balance of features? For starters, it slimmed down the profile (big time), beefed up the ports, and integrated GOBI (for Wireless WAN access).
Measuring 0.8 inches thick and sporting a starting weight of 4 pounds, the T400s is one of the lighter all-purpose laptops around. It makes the old T400 (at 1.5 inches thick and around 6.5 pounds) look downright big-boned. What's even more impressive is that the T400s still manages to squeeze in a lot of the extras that business users require. This model is literally lined with ports. Whether it's the five-in-one flash card reader or the space allotted for a 9.5mm DVD-ROM burner (or Blu-ray option), this machine has you covered. It even has stuff that might seem like overkill, such as VGA and a DisplayPort option, but even that gives you the opportunity to plug in two monitors. I'm personally a big fan of the built-in USB/eSATA port, which is perfect for high-speed data jockeys. (What I'd love to see in the next iteration is more than one pass-through USB charge port for powering USB devices while the laptop is off; for anyone with too many gadgets and power supplies, this feature is incredibly handy.)
The ThinkPad T400s earned a sound mark of 112 in our WorldBench 6 test suite, smoking the trim Acer TravelMate 6293 (and many of the other all-purpose laptops in our Top 10, for that matter) and coming in about 20 points faster than the T400. Applications loaded swiftly on the 128GB SSD hard drive, which uses an Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600 processor with 2GB of RAM. To help cut down the size of the system, however, the company dropped the discrete graphics card. That downshift to Intel's integrated graphics will prevent you from using the T400s for games. But this is a business box, after all.
The nine-cell battery that gave the T400 its incredible longevity is gone. Our test unit came with a six-cell battery as standard, with no word of larger batteries on the way. As a result, this laptop managed to survive only 5 hours in our battery tests. Not a horrible result, just something to keep in mind when you're preparing for your next cross-country flight.
Showing off a bright 1440 by 900 pixels, the 14.1-inch, LED-backlit screen is an eye-catcher indoors and out. Like the T400, the T400s uses a matte coating, as opposed to a flashy, glossy surface that looks good only indoors. Examining the two side by side, I found that the T400s's screen was sharper; sky blues, for example, popped more and looked richer on the T400s. One mechanical quirk I noticed, though, is that the hinge of the T400s is a little loosey-goosey. If you're sitting at a desk, that's not much of a problem--but if you encounter any turbulence midflight, the screen can flop back.
The keyboard is typical Lenovo fare--excellent. But that doesn't mean Lenovo coasted. For instance, two of the keys I use a little more often that I should admit--Esc and Del--doubled in size. The designers also managed to retain all the buttons from the larger, thicker T400 and still make room for a handy microphone-mute button (more on that in a minute).
The trademark ThinkPad pointer nub is present in addition to a touchpad. Having both options is nice, but the dual sets of pointer buttons can result in accidental presses if you're not familiar with the layout. That said, a tip of the cap to Lenovo: The tiny T400s has a larger, more satisfying textured touchpad compared with its big brother.
Wireless gets a major upgrade. Beyond the standard 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN (and optional Bluetooth), you get WiMAX3, integrated WWAN, and ultrawideband connectivity options.
Despite all the progressive tech on board, in a laptop of this size some shrinkage was inevitable. Gone is the PC Card slot (a 34mm ExpressCard remains). Say so long to FireWire. And the headphone/microphone jacks merged into a single plug. That's a thoughtful design decision for the perpetually mobile, as you can plug in your wired cell phone headset (from, say, an iPhone or a Palm Pre) and it'll work just fine.
Speaking of...well...speaking, the T400s has been tweaked with Web chats in mind, and I'm not talking only about the built-in Webcam. The tiny, tinny speakers of the T400 got a boost--the speakers of the T400s are better in just about every sense. The sound, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over audio from the average laptop. And it can reach a reasonably high volume--perfect for when you want to talk to your coworkers back at the office via Skype. The microphone-jack mute button, parked just above the keyboard, is convenient for those times when you want to give the silent treatment.
Then there's the software that business users have come to know and love: the ThinkVantage application suite. Common tasks such as setting up wireless connections and managing power-consumption settings are readily available, and power users will appreciate being able to back up data or configure security settings on the fly. The ThinkVantage suite largely serves as a front end for functions that Windows can handle, but it does a lot to improve overall user efficiency.
Some advanced features, like the Active Protection System, may escape most users' attention altogether. The laptop's shock-mounted hard drive is designed to protect your data from damage if you're working in especially turbulent conditions. You'll find that most useful if you're prone to dropping expensive hardware; but even if you're the careful sort, it's a well-conceived feature that prevents the hard drive from spinning when it detects an excessive amount of vibration. The system adapts to your usage patterns and ignores steady, persistent vibrations, such as when you're working in a car or on a bumpy express train.
Starting at $1599, the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s can be a compelling little laptop. Of course, once you start adding all the bells and whistles, the price kicks up significantly (our model, as reviewed, sells for $2130). Still, thanks to sturdy construction and great performance packed inside a slim profile, the T400s is a winner, and great for the jet-setter who wants a little more out of their mobile machine.
Everyone talks about the Apple tax - the premium you're paying for an Apple product. The same could technically be said for some of Sony's more uniquely designed notebooks, like the Sony VAIO VGN-Z598U. This ultraportable class starts at $1,499, but our review unit balloons up to the eye-bulgingly-high price tag of $4,450. If money is no object (yeah, as ifthat's the case these days), then by all means, scoop up this overstuffed, lightweight beauty.
Primary responsibility for the sticker shock goes to a pair of 128GB solid-state drives, which jacked up the original price by roughly two grand. But our test unit also jams a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a dedicated nVidia GeForce 9300M GS GPU into its tiny 12.4- by 1.3- by 8.3-inch frame.
The twin SSDs probably contributed to the VGN-Z598U's eye-opening WorldBench 6 score of 107, the highest we've seen from an ultraportable. The next-fastest competitor in this class is the Asus U6V, with a mark of 93. And yet despite its powerful configuration, the VGN-Z598U weighs only about 3.3 pounds (4.2 pounds including the power brick).
In stamina mode, the VGN-Z598U switches from its nVidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics to its integrated Intel GPU), to prolong its battery life. Working with the integrated GPU, the laptop runs for 4 hours, 46 minutes--not bad, but far below the figure of almost 9 hours for the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. And unlike with a certain Mac-flavored machine, you can toggle between modes without either enduring a full system reboot or having to log out first.
The first thing you'll notice upon lifting the lid of this VAIO is its beautifully backlit 13.1-inch wide-screen display. Even in direct sunlight, the LED image at its native 1600-by-900-pixel native resolution is crisp and clear. And the wide-screen design is great for positioning documents side-by-side and for watching movies at a 16:10 aspect ratio. Not coincidentally, the VGN-Z598U also houses an optional Blu-ray drive.
As on other high-end Sony models, the VGN-Z598U incorporates a cutout keyboard, in which the keys pop out through holes in the case. The design creates good key spacing between buttons and promotes solid tactile feedback. The only extra buttons on the keyboard are a large disc-eject button, a couple of programmable shortcut buttons that by default launch a presentation mode and Windows Meeting Space, and a performance toggle for switching between the integrated Intel GPU and the GeForce 9300GS chip. The mouse is suitably large and sensitive, but its two slim mouse buttons (with a fingerprint scanner between them) are like two landing strips for gnats. At least the buttons are firm and well-built.
The laptop's layout is clean and simple, though some of its features are just a tad skimpy. Among the positives are two USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire jack, and a PC Express card slot. High-end A/V-heads will appreciate the unit's HDMI output, too. Though a Blu-ray drive is a configuration option, the base model comes with a modest VGA port.
Sony's suffers from the same problem Like most ultraportables, the VGN-Z598U has a rather puny sound system consisting of two tiny, tinny speakers and no subwoofer. On the bright side, it does get loud enough to distract cubicle neighbors (sorry, mate!) or fill up a small room. Of course, most of the time you'll want to use headphones anyway.
Preloaded software includes Microsoft Works, a video content exporter, a basic video-editing program, and the VAIO Control Center (which quickly breaks down all of the vital chores you're likely to need instant access to on your computer.
High-flying businessfolk will have little to complain about with the VGN-Z598U in its fanciest configuration--except its price. And you can trim $2000 off that scary number ($4450) by opting for a platter-based hard drive in place of the dual SSDs. Or you might want to cast your eye toward Samsung's tweener (part ultraportable, part all-purpose notebook), the X460.
Better than a budget all-in-one, but not quite high-end either, the Studio One 19 could be a good fit if your needs are somewhere in the middle.
You'll either love or hate the Dell Studio One 19. It's by far the fastest 19-inch or smallerall-in-one PC we've tested; and like the HP TouchSmart IQ816 and TouchSmart IQ500TPCs, it boasts a dual-touch display. But its screen wasn't as responsive to gestures as we had hoped, and its design...well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I could do without the fabric trim around the display (no matter which of the colors--white, navy blue, gray, pink, or red--you choose). But maybe you, or your family, will feel differently. If you're after a more-refined look from Dell, take a look at its 20- and 24-inch XPS One all-in-one PCs.
A lush display, unmatched upgradability, and extras such as an HDTV tuner, a four-in-one remote, and a 2-megapixel Webcam make the A600 all-in-one hard to resist.
No question about it: Lenovo's IdeaCentre A600 looks unique. The combination of a sharp and angular design, an ultrathin chassis, and a 21.5-inch display definitely stands out against the more traditional "one big flat panel" look that competing all-in-one desktops offer. And at $1149 (as of 7/2/09), the A600 is seriously competitive, especially since it's the most upgradable all-in-one PC we've seen.
The Lenovo's 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 processor has one of the slower clock speeds for all-in-ones larger than 20 inches. Surprisingly, that doesn't have as big of an impact on overall performance as you would think when comparing it with, say, the 3.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor of the 24-inch Sony VAIO VGC-LV180J. As for its other main components, the Lenovo's 4GB of DDR3-1066 memory is a step above the DDR2-800 average in PCs of this class, while the 1TB hard drive is among the best you'll find in an all-in-one, matched here only by the 22-inch HP TouchSmart IQ500t and the 24-inch Apple iMac.
The A600's score of 87 in our WorldBench 6 test suite isn't the best we've seen, but it puts the machine in fine company. It ties the IQ500t and beats the 24-inchTouchSmart IQ816 (which scored an 81), but lands 28 percent shy of our all-in-one performance leader, Apple's 24-inch iMac (which earned a mark of 111). Given that the Apple system is nearly twice the price of the A600, however, that's not a bad showing at all.
The A600's ATI Radeon HD3650 graphics helped it achieve above-average graphics scores. The A600 had a solid average of about 60 frames per second in both our Enemy Territory: Wars and Unreal Tournament 3 tests (at 1024 by 768, and at normal and medium settings, respectively). Results fell to about 35 fps in each test when we bumped up the resolution to 1680 by 1050. The A600's HDTV-centric native resolution of 1920 by 1080 prevented it from running our tests at 1920 by 1200 or higher.
The A600 lacks touchscreen functionality--perhaps, in part, to keep the price so low. The display is otherwise strong: It delivers powerful saturation and pretty good contrast levels for gaming and Blu-ray movie watching (a built-in Blu-ray player is a common feature for all-in-ones with screens of this size). In my testing, I found that other all-in-ones offer a bit more contrast and richer black levels. Darker scenes on the A600 seemed slightly brighter than they should be.
On the side of the system you get two USB ports, one FireWire 400 miniport, and a six-in-one media card reader. Four more USB ports are on the A600's rear, alongside the system's gigabit ethernet port and HDTV tuner input. I would have liked to see some kind of next-generation connectivity on the system, be it an eSATA port, an HDMI port, an optical-out, or integrated 5.1 surround sound. As it stands, you can transform the A600 into a quasitelevision, but you have no way of fully integrating this all-in-one into a fancier entertainment-center setup. At least you'll be able to stream files off your network quickly using the A600's gigabit ethernet or 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity.
Surprisingly, you can upgrade nearly every part of the A600's insides. Typical all-in-one upgradability--if any exists--is restricted to the memory or the hard drive. If you have determination and a screwdriver, and if you've read the provided upgrade guide, you can really get inside the A600 to make whatever customizations (or replacements) you desire. It's a wonderful "above and beyond" move by Lenovo, although it's not the only one.
One of the faster units we've tested to date (though it falls far short of the top engine speed Canon quotes), the Pixma MX700 pushed out text pages at a rate of 9.1 pages per minute; graphics pages averaged a swift 3.2 ppm overall. So far, only the HP OfficeJet Pro L7680 has performed faster.
Text looks nicely black. A slight unevenness to the edges makes closely spaced fonts look mushy, though. Color images have an orange cast. On plain paper, this helps enliven the palette; on photo paper, it can be overpowering, especially with flesh tones. Copy samples we made were quite crisp, while scan samples were reasonably (if not perfectly) accurate for color and precision.
Cost per page is low: 3.2 cents for a half-page of black text, or just 8.8 cents for a page with small amounts of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. (A full-color photo will use more ink.)
The Pixma MX700's design includes a clearly labeled front control panel with a mostly intuitive layout. Buttons for primary functions adjust what's shown on the small (1.8 -inch), tiltable color LCD, whose menus are navigable using the adjacent arrow buttons. The automatic document feeder, which unfolds from the machine's top, takes a generous 30 sheets of paper. Its media slots take most card types; you'll need a third-party adapter to add xD media.
The dual 150-sheet input trays are a nice bonus. The rear, vertical input takes all accepted media sizes. Use the control panel's toggle button or the printer driver to choose between it and the front input, which takes just letter, A4, and B5. But this front tray is literally overshadowed by the two-part output tray, which guides paper over the front input tray, concealing it entirely. That's more going on in a small space than I'd like. The MFP lacks automatic duplexing, but on-screen prompts step you through the manual process. Dell's 948 AIO and Lexmark's X6570 offer automated duplexing for a lower price (with other tradeoffs). Canon's Pixma MP830 features duplex printing and scanning, but we haven't tested this unit.
Canon bundles its own and third-party software to cover scanning, photo printing, OCR, and even document management. Its well-designed Solutions Menu interface centralizes most of the machine's functions for easy management through your PC. HTML-based guides cover both hardware and software. Canon printers also scored better than average overall in our recent Reliability and Service survey.
Pumpkin-colored people aside, the Pixma MX700 is, overall, one of the strongest multifunction packages I've seen to date. It stuffs a lot of functions into a fairly user-friendly package and offers scads of software to help you along.
I love it when a company sees fit to shake things up a little and cook up some crazy new design. The Acer Aspire One AOD150 is not that netbook. In fact, many of the changes made from the original Aspire One make the AOD150 seem more like everything else on the market. And that isn't necessarily a good thing.
Seem a little harsh? Let me put this in perspective: The original, 8.9-inch screen model packed a huge keyboard onto a fairly tiny frame. That keyboard was practically dripping over the sides and I was genuinely impressed for the effort. Here, with its new 10.1-inch screen (which looks great), I'd expect a little more room to work with. Instead, you get the same still-short-of-full-size keyboard. It's not tiny, but Acer could've made an effort to space out the buttons a little more.
The next big switchup is the touchpad. At first glance, I was ready to dance a jig because the left and right buttons flanking the touchpad surface were gone. Just a single, simple mouse button bar. In and of itself, not necessarily a bad thing. But then I tried using it. Exerting a shaolin monk's concentration, you need to really want to hit that button in order to get it working. With very little give, it's hard to know when you've made contact and the way that it's recessed into the wrist rest makes it a little more difficult to use than the mouse on the first Aspire One. At least the new touchpad has a multitouch functionality, so that scrolling and browsing is a little less headache-inducing.
The only other change for the (slightly) worse is the second-gen Aspire One ditches the original's second SDHC Card slot. Not a major bummer, because this machine has a reasonably large 160GB hard disk drive.
Now, back to that new 10.1-inch display: I really do love this 1024-by-600-pixel screen. It's crisp, with good color reproduction and, quite frankly, it feels like this machine was built around the gorgeous screen. Its dimensions are relatively slim (one thing that hasn't changed too much from the original) measuring 10.2 by 8.0 by 1.31 inches. That makes it slighter than comparable netbooks with a 10.1-inch screen. The Aspire One is also very solidly constructed, ready to get knocked around in a bag.
The second-generation Aspire One's performance is in line with what we'd expect from its components: 1GB of RAM and a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU. It achieved a score of 35 in our PC WorldBench 6 tests, an average score based on what we've seen with this configuration in other netbooks.
One thing that isn't quite standard is the battery that came with our machine. Our test unit arrived with a 5800mAH battery. Don't get too excited, though: This battery will not be a standard config in any of the units here in the U.S., and Acer doesn't even know when this longer-life battery will be available separately. The standard configuration usually comes with a 6-cell 4400mAH battery. Usually.
Here's where it gets goofy: According to a spokesperson, in the hurry to get units to store shelves, some of the machines shipped with higher-powered batteries, instead of the standard. It's like some kind of Willy Wonka move, but instead of a golden ticket, you have a chance you'll get a better battery and not get charged for it.
If you get lucky, you'll be thrilled: In the PC World Test Center's battery life test, the Aspire One lasted an amazing 8 hours, 34 minutes with the supercharged battery. Since the odds are more likely you'll get the 4400mAH power, though, we are scoring this machine based upon the reasonably impressive 6 hours, 38 minutes. It's funny -- last time around the Aspire One got dinged for its poor battery life and celebrated for its large keyboard. This time around it's almost the reverse. Am I in Bizzaro world?
The software on the machine is fairly minimal. The only things of note here are a 30-day trial for an online backup solution (my advice, Acer: check out what Asus is doing -- its netbook comes with 10GB of free online storage for 18 months) and eSobi, a news and RSS feed reader.
Not much else has changed, though, between the two Aspire One models. The ports are the same: Three USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, ethernet jack, webcam and microphone . . . it even has the same $350 price tag. And honestly, I think a good chunk of that money went into the screen. It shows. But at the end of the day, I feel like the Aspire One moved on, but I'm not 100 percent sold that the developers have taken these guys in the right direction.
The new Acer Aspire One has some strong points, but even better netbooks are on the market now, and more are on the way. If you want in on the battery lottery for the long-life battery, then go for it, but even the included battery will give you solid day-long performance, That said, I'd still recommend that you take a peek at what Asus offers with the Eee PC 1000HE. I'm digging that netbook a whole lot more and it only costs a few dollars more.
.jpg)
