A LAPTOP FOR WORK AND PLAY $2,999 list

The Acer TravelMate 8210-6038 is both. We’re not convinced, though, that its Blu-ray drive is much of a benefit. At 7.7 pounds, this TravelMate isn’t too travel-friendly. Much of this weight resides in the matte-finished 15.4-inch wide screen, which is useful for viewing documents side by side. The 8210 comes with a drive that lets you both play and burn Blu-ray discs. The system uses CyberLink’s PowerDVD BD, a fine program for HD playback. This desktop replacement laptop ships with Windows XP Professional, so it lacks Vista’s Media Center features. It has neither a remote nor physical playback buttons, so you’re stuck with the mouse or touchpad for controlling the video. These factors, combined with the price hike to the system caused by the Blu-ray drive, make the drive’s inclusion suspect. Despite our concerns about the drive, the 8210 is a powerful notebook for business or multimedia. Thanks to a 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo T7400 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and discrete graphics, its performance equals that of a powerful desktop. That’s fitting, because at its weight you won’t want to lug it around.

PROS: Decent battery performance. Battery life.

CONS: Blu-ray drive doesn’t belong in this configuration. Really expensive.

computers

Exercise 3. Look at the scheme “Computers in our life” and discuss it.

Here are some opposing arguments:

· keep young people from reading/studying and adults from working;

· unemployment increases when workers are replaced;

· impersonal contact, dependence on computer screens;

· computerized art becomes mechanical and impersonal;

· too much money/time spent on developing computers.

Exercise 4. Look through the following abstracts and discuss each of them.

1. Three of the four best times of the year to purchase a laptop or desktop computer come around like clockwork. The first three are the holiday shopping season, the back-to-school period in August and September, and inventory clearance time in late January and February. The fourth time is variable from year to year. When a new technology is introduced, the channel tries to flush the older stuff. That's not predictable as a time of year, but has to do with when products are launched.

2. The CPU determines how quickly a notebook runs applications and performs on-screen tasks. Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors are good choices for speedy processing.

3. The more installed memory your notebook has, the more applications you can run at once, and the better your notebook will perform. Ease of access aside, upgrading memory in a notebook is a bit trickier than with a desktop, so buy as much memory preinstalled as you can afford.

4. The specified size of a notebook's LCD screen represents a diagonal measurement. The larger the screen, the higher the maximum resolution and the more information you can view at once.

5. The larger the hard drive, the more data you can keep on your notebook. If you plan to work with databases, spreadsheets, or digital photo or video files, opt for a large drive.

6. The more expansion bays, the more options you have for switching in new optical drives or other storage drives; but switching drives takes time. Though high-end ultraportables typically have no extra bays, you can purchase external drives for them.

Exercise 5. Choose the topic you want to speak about.

1. Advantages of laptop/notebook over the desktop PC.

2. Tablet PC was designed for military purpose.

3. Most wearable computers are created by Japanese.

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