Asus crams 4K resolution into a 31.5-inch Ultra HD monitor!!!

Just in time for the Windows 8.1 debut and its hinted-at 4K resolution support, Asus is announcing a professional-grade (read: not cheap) Ultra HD LCD monitor.


The company will show the PQ321 Ultra HD, a 31.5-inch 4K Ultra HD monitor featuring a maximum resolution of 3840 by 2160 at Computex in Taipei, which starts Tuesday. The unit has a 16:9 aspect ratio, 176-degreee wide viewing angle, DisplayPort, dual HDMI inputs, and built-in 2W stereo speakers.


More pixels (per inch)


Asus said it used Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) for the active layer of the PQ321’s LCD panel instead of the standard amorphous silicon for LCD displays. Because IGZO panels can work with smaller transistors, Asus could cram smaller pixels onto the screen. That’s a good thing considering this panel has four times as many pixels as a standard 1080p monitor. 


The PQ321’s 140 pixels per inch may not sound great in an era when the iPad and other tablets have 264 ppi or more. But keep in mind a standard 1080p monitor with the same dimensions as the PQ321 would have exactly half the pixels per inch of Asus’ Ultra HD monitor.


Asus did not announce pricing or an official release date for the PQ321, but Hexus and Engadget both report that the monitor will debut in North America at the end of June.


Once you can buy Asus’ snazzy new monitor, however, what puts it to best use? Both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will support 4K resolutions, and with the PQ321’s built-in speakers, using this monitor as a TV replacement should be a snap.


If you’re looking to do some PC gaming at 4K resolution, you’d better be prepared to shell out some serious dough—Not only for the monitor, but high end specs for your gaming box as well. A good start would be a high-powered graphics card like AMD’s $999 Radeon 7990.


Movies emerge


Gaming may be the first, best use for a 4K monitor. The next obvious choice is movies, but since 4K resolution has yet to go mainstream, finding 4K titles could be difficult. In late 2012, Sony released a hard drive containing ten 4K movies to buyers of its $25,000 84-inch 4K UHDTV. The company is also releasing classic movies remastered in 4K such as Glory, Taxi Driver, and Ghostbusters. 



Sony calls them "mastered in 4K" and ships the films on standard Blu-ray discs, but they're not really 4K technology. For starters, current Blu-ray discs max out at 1080p resolutions. So what you’re really getting are movies that were mastered at 4K in the editing suite, but play back at home at 1080p. That said, you may notice a small bump in picture quality such as color, detail, and contrast compared to standard Blu-ray discs. The labeling clarifies that they are "optimized for 4K Ultra HD TVs." 



An Ultra HD monitor sounds great, but there probably isn’t a ton of use for it yet unless you’re a serious gamer or looking to do graphics or video editing. But if Asus pushes the price low enough—which is reeeeeeeeally unlikely right now—you could pick up a PQ321 as an investment in the seemingly inevitable 4K future.
 

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How to reduce your office printing costs!!!

HP's ultra-fast 60ppm inkjet has low running costs of 2.0p and 5.3p for ISO black and colour pages

Get any two business people talking about printing and within minutes they'll be bemoaning ink and paper costs. The price of the printer is a one-off and soon slips into the mists of office history, but constant replenishment of consumables keeps reminding you of the true cost of printing.


It's a cost you can't avoid completely and is directly proportional to the number of documents you print. But there are things you can do to mitigate the costs, some of which are free and others cost little.


There are a number of features built into virtually every printer that can be used to reduce running costs. Which ones you choose to use are up to you, but all will control the use of one of two things: ink or toner and paper.
 

Ink/toner


The largest savings are in reducing ink/toner use, and the most obvious step is to use draft print mode wherever possible. This is a setting in the print driver, which can be accessed, for example, through the small Print Properties link on the Print page of recent versions of Word.


Draft mode works by printing selected dots from the full matrix that's printed in normal print mode. This gives a lighter and dottier appearance to text, but in most cases, it's still perfectly readable and is fine for day-to-day office use.


It usually increases print speed too, so there's a double gain.


Some printers offer an 'ink-saver' or 'toner-saver' mode instead of a true draft, which isn't normally quicker than normal print and some, particularly older Epsons, use a different default font for draft text print, which may make slight changes to the layout of pages.


You can save money by using third party inks and toners, although printer manufacturers try to deter this by voiding warranties and linking their cartridges to their machines electronically. From our testing, we consistently see better quality print using manufacturer's cartridges than with third parties, but some third party products, like those from www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk, come close.
 

Paper


If you print a lot of documents, paper costs will also mount up, with a ream of paper typically costing between £3 and £5. But paper savings are also easy to achieve on most printers.


More and more machines offer duplex print, where pages are printed on both sides of the paper. Each time you print duplex, you save close to half your paper costs, between 0.5p and 1.0p per page, depending on paper.


For internal office documents, you can also print more than one page per sheet. Most printers have facilities to do this automatically and printing even two pages per sheet, where for instance you print two A5 page images on an A4 page, is a useful saving, over time.


Multiple pages per sheet require original text at a reasonable size, otherwise it can be hard to read.


Combining duplex and multiple pages can also work well. A long, single-side A4 document can be reduced to a two-sided A5 booklet, saving 75% of the paper in the process.


It may be obvious, but you can always save money by looking at the cost when selection papers. Don't feel you have to use specialist inkjet or laser paper for day-to-day work; many cheaper papers work well, including multi-use types, designed to work in both types of printer.


Buying one paper for all your office printing can provide extra economies of scale.
 

Better draft

 
If you want to use draft print but your printer's draft output is particularly dotty or poorly formed, you could use EcoPrint 2. This is a commercial program, costing $40 (£26.50), or $60 (£40) for the Pro version, which provides a good quality draft print for which you can select the amount of ink/toner saving you want.


With savings of between 10% and 50% it gives lighter prints, but with very little degradation in the quality of text and graphics.


If you have sufficient funds, it's always worth buying the high capacity XL versions of cartridges. Although these can be up to double the cost of the regular consumables, they give back more than this in extra pages printed.
 


Before buying


As well as checking that any new printer you're considering supports features like duplex print and multiple pages per sheet, you should do a little calculation. In general, the higher the asking price of the printer, the lower the running costs per page.


What you need to know is how many pages you'll have to print to make back the extra cost of a more expensive printer.


Here's an example: say you print about 1,500 pages a year, made up of 1,000 black and 500 colour. You're considering two printers (we'll use inkjets in this example): one costs £130, with page costs of 3.7p black and 11.9p colour, including 1p paper; the other costs £190, with pages costs of 2.1p and 5.3p.


Over the three years life of your printer, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the first will be £420, while the second will have a TCO of £333, nearly £90 less.


If you keep your printer more than three years, or print more than 1,500 pages per year, the difference will be even greater.


Using these few, simple ideas, you can make significant savings to your overall printing costs. You needn't feel so much at the mercy of suppliers who know the real money is not in the printer, but in its inks or toners.

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Panasonic Toughbook CF-19 business laptops! -10

Panasonic Toughbook CF-19


From £2,400


The Panasonic ToughBook is a bit of an anomaly on this list. It's not sleek or light, doesn't boast an HD display and still runs Windows 7, albeit the professional version. But it's tough as the proverbial coffin nail and if your work involves spending any considerable amount of time outside, it's the only logical choice.


The 10.1-inch display will rotate and fold down creating, effectively, a tablet that measures 51mm thick and weighs 2.3kg.


Panasonic hasn't changed the ToughBook's chassis since it revealed the machine back in 2007 and it remains water and dust proof as well as shock resistant. Rubber flaps cover all the vital ports to keep the dust and debris of the outside world away from the internals.


Specs-wise, Panasonic has included an Intel Core i5-3320 processor and 4GB RAM and a battery capable, it says, of 10 hours of usage. Certain new features have been added, such as a USB 3.0 port and the CF-19 also has the option of 3G broadband if you don't have Wi-Fi or a hard wired internet connection.


Admittedly, this is a niche product with an exceptionally high price point and won't be suitable for the majority of scenarios. But if you're looking for a rugged work laptop to survive overseas fieldwork or life on a building site, then this is the machine.

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Asus VivoBook S400C business laptops! - 9

Asus VivoBook S400C


From £454


It was a difficult choice to include the VivoBook S400Cover Asus' more powerful Zenbook U500 but ultimately the former's balance of performance and price won out. The 14.1-inch S400C features a full capacitive touchscreen, albeit with only a 1,366 x 7.68 resolution.


The dual-core Intel Core i3 processor and 4GB RAM don't offer much in performance terms and other machines on this list will easily outstrip the S400C when it comes to raw power. However, you get a generous 500GB of hard drive storage and all the requisite ports including USB, VGA, Ethernet, HDMI and an SD Card reader.


What's more, the VivoBook S400C is actually a very well made and attractive laptop. The chassis is just 20mm thick and has a black, brushed aluminium lid that compliments the silver elsewhere on the laptop. There's a chiclit keyboard that's comfortable for typing and the three and a half hour battery life is pretty reasonable as well.


At this price, you can't expect much but extra features in the form of Asus' SonicMaster audio technology and, of course, the touchscreen help to make this a good choice. If you're after an all-rounder that looks nice and won't break the bank, the VivoBook S400C could be worth a look.

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Toshiba Satellite U940 business laptops!- 8

Toshiba Satellite U940


£599


The Toshiba Satellite U940 is one of the few business laptops on this list that doesn't feature a touchscreen. That helps to keep the price down to sub-£600 and means that if you don't particularly want or need a touchscreen in a new laptop, it could be worth exploring.


It's also worth pointing out that at 1,366 x 768, the 14-inch screen will only manage 720p HD playback. However, what you do get is some pretty reasonable performance considering the price. The Satellite U940 comes with an Intel Core i5 processor (which can be scaled down to an i3 if you want to keep costs down further) with 6GB RAM. There's a 750GB hard drive and a 32GB SSD which means this has the benefit of both fast boot-up and plenty of storage.


There are plenty of ports and connections on the 1.79kg frame including two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, HDMI and Ethernet connections and an SD card reader.


The Satellite picks up points for having a comfortable, well-sized keyboard and trackpad, making it good for prolonged typing. Unfortunately, it loses some of those points because, although the plasticky, industrial blue chassis feels solid enough, it hardly looks attractive.

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