Chrome OS review (version 19)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/29/chrome-os-review-version-19/
It seems like yesterday that we reviewed the inaugural Samsung Series 5 Chromebook running Google's Chrome OS, an operating system for laptops based on Chrome. It was, from the start, a world in which everything from music playback to document creation happened in browser tabs. Since we last checked in a year ago, Google has addressed some early complaints -- the browser can actually stream Netflix now! -- but it's only just getting around to ticking off some other long-standing grievances, like multitasking.
The company just announced two new Chrome OS devices -- the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 and Chromebox Series 3 -- and both run a spanking-new build of the OS that ushers in a simplified desktop with customizable wallpaper and the ability to minimize, maximize and close windows -- oh my! More importantly, you can now view multiple windows onscreen, edit docs offline and pin shortcuts to the bottom of the screen -- a combination that promises some seriously improved multitasking. Other goodies: built-in Google Music, Google+ and Hangouts, along with a basic photo editor, redesigned music player and enhanced remote desktop app. So does all this add up to an upgrade meaty enough to make the skeptics give Chrome OS a second look? Could it be time for you to get the low-tech person in your life a Chromebook? Let's see.
Continue reading Chrome OS review (version 19)
Chrome OS review (version 19) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 May 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
You ever notice why some of your pictures look like they've been stained yellow or red while others look swamped with green or blue? It's because of your camera's white balance setting! The easiest way to take better pictures is to fix your white balance and this chart tells you how.
Learn the numbers! [
You've seen the kinds of monster photos the Nokia 808 PureView can snap, and read how it's got a digital zoom that doesn't turn everything into a pixelated mess. But how does it actually perform these miracles, and what the hell is Nokia doing shoving a colossal 41-megapixel sensor in a phone anyway?
5MP is the ideal image size according to Nokia, so to zoom three-fold on a 5MP image you have to have a much higher resolution sensor. Doing the maths, it works out that you need a 41MP image sensor to get a 3x zoom without having to stretch and expand pixels, destroying the quality of the image in the process. What Nokia decided was the best approach was to use "oversampling".
Producing razor sharp images is all well and good, but having that massive sensor (as you can see above compared to regular camera phone sensors) allows lossless digital zoom too. It works by essentially zooming in on a 5MP patch on the image sensor. As you zoom the oversampling is decreased until you're seeing actual pixels - you never go beyond real pixel information. You gradually lose oversampling, but it's not the kind of interpolation that digital zoom is marred with. The result is quite impressive, and certainly adds to the utility of a phone camera without the extra bulk of a moving optical zoom lens assembly.
That doesn't mean Nokia will skimp on imaging prowess though - any PureView-packing phone will supposedly be the "best possible camera phone" in its class. That should give hope to anyone with skinny jeans looking for the next step in the camera phone revolution. Nokia's not done optimising the current 41MP form from the 808 either - the next implementation should be smaller, although Carl Zeiss admits that there are physical limits to how small you can make a lens to fit the size of sensor due to the pure physics of optics.
Posts
