Blackberry Tout 9630 Sprint - First Looks - Good

We got this Blackberry Tour from Sprint. First looks are good, feels better than HTC Touch Pro Windows Mobile. Awesome customer service.

No ramp up time needed to move away from HTC touch screen to scroll ball on Blackberry, because the touch screen doesn't do what you want to do, the scroll ball puts you in full control, does what you want.

Sprint customer service was the best experience so far. We received the phone in mail and we had to call customer service to activate it. It was a friendly experience, forthright in explaining that Browser may not be enabled yet, they kept calling us back until everything is configured, over couple of days.

We haven't yet missed the features of Windows Mobile.

HP Mini 311 - Not so Good

Got this HP Mini 311 1000NR from amazon. It is light weight, small and shows below average performance. May be this was my first hands-on experience on a Net book, even with my low expectations, I was not satisfied.

The claim for HD video doest work out as I can not play YouTube HD videos. If you are not planning to watch high quality videos and will be doing only pure browsing - and a smart phone is too small and a regular laptop is too big - this is for you.

Packaged well, bit glossy screen.

Aspire Revo - NetTop PC - Good One

I was in Frys and saw the Aspire Revo nettop PC. I have read about it a while back and the small form factor made me interested in it - at that time of reading I was probably looking for a compact CarPC(which I ended up with an old laptop, which is now a project of past - another blog, another time).

The model I bought has dual core Atom processor, NVIDEA ION and optical audio out, among other things. I particularly chose to pay few extra bucks for the optical audio out, because I might (!) need it when I want to connect to the Onkyo audio receiver which has many optical inputs but only one co-axial.

I have to say, I am impressed with the performance of Aspire Revo. I had bought a HP Mini netbook for my brother that had single core Atom processor - performance of HP Mini that I got was not that good. Contrast to that I like the performance of Aspire Revo. It is very sleek, fits in a small space, works great for my use.

We use it as a secondary PC, to browse, to connect to remote desktops, play music from media center PC etc. I would recommend it for the same kind of use.