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This fail picture or video was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2011 at 9:00 am

DAY ONE

For me, travel is about more than just taking a vacation. It’s about seeing new places, new faces, and of course, getting some exercise! And since the best trip is a safe trip, I always make sure to follow my “Four Essentials” checklist.
· Wool hat – did you know that 50% of body heat is lost through the head? Well, maybe not that much, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot! Crazy, right? Fortunately, winter hats are never out of style!
· Sweater – layering is important; try to use an outer wrap with bright colors or patterns, something eye catching! And it never hurts if it’s* a little bit festive!*
· Glasses – What good is all the beauty of nature if you can’t see it? Not much, I’d say. And since I’m legally blind, I guess I’ll be taking my trusty specs along with me!
· Cane – You might not know this about ol’ Waldo, but I’ve walked with a limp ever since I was pulled under a thresher on Pa’s farm. Fortunately my cane is sturdy, reliable, and fashionable too!
Well, I’m off! Be sure to check back for updates from my trip!

DAY TWO

I swear, one of the real joys of travel is the people watching! Today I strolled through rich countryside filled with farmers, peasants and other simple folk. It seemed like there was something going on everywhere, and something to look at every few feet. Some places had so many people they were practically right on top of each other! So great to see so many friendly faces. I had been a bit worried, since I forgot my Fifth Essential: tell someone where I’m going. But seeing how populated this area is, it’s not like anyone would have any trouble finding me if I got into trouble!

DAY THREE

I’m in trouble: while strolling along this morning, my stupid cane slipped on a rock and I went skidding down the side of a hill. As I did, my freaking sweater became caught, dislodging a large rock, which rolled onto my arm, pinning me to the spot. Lacking any food or water, I’m in a bit of a tough situation, and in desperate need of rescue. Fortunately, I’ve spotted a large group of brightly-dressed travelers approaching, and I feel that salvation is imminent. Whew! Better lucky than smart, I reckon!

DAY FOUR

I don’t understand what’s happening here. Yesterday I was passed by a group of what seemed to be close to a hundred people. Strangely, they all appeared to be pirates, most dressed in red and white patterns similar to my own. But even more strangely, they passed by me as if I was invisible! *Some looked directly at me, with *no recognition. I screamed at them, inches away: nothing. One even ran his finger right over my face without seeming to notice me. How can this be? Can heat, dehydration, and hunger have driven me mad? I’ve already eaten my hat, which did very little to help my thirst. The sweater may be the next to go, forcing me to expose my surprising surplus of body hair and thresher scars to the world. Though I hardly need to be embarrassed; if this trend continues, no one will even be able to see my shame!

DAY FIVE

Thank heaven for the four essentials! By snapping my glasses in half, I have fashioned a crude blade out of the lenses, which I am now using to saw off my arm at the elbow. It’s a chancy proposition, but something that has to be done, as the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Last night, a helicopter flew directly overhead and shone a searchlight right on me for almost a minute before moving on as if I wasn’t there! Has the whole world gone blind? Lord knows I have, at least without my glasses. I am also hallucinating from lack of sleep, and sporadically vomiting red and white chunks of sweater mixed with blood and bile…*Father?* Father no…I don’t understand…*why does Mr. Piggles have to die?* But…NO! DON’T TAKE ME BEHIND THE BARN AGAIN!!!

I can feel it happening. I am slowly losing my grip on reality. God willing I’ll make it out of here, and find someone who can freaking see me before the blood-loss causes me to lose consciousness. I’ll live an amputee, unable to clap, or play Red Rover, but at least I’ll live…

NOTE: The manuscript for Waldo’s Travel Tips was discovered in the middle of a massive pirate camp, covered in blood and small pieces of sweater. No body was ever found.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—The University of Virginia published the results of an extensive 18-month study Wednesday revealing that 96 percent of human beings across the planet would strongly prefer to be a singing, dancing animatronic bear.

The UVA researchers, who conducted thousands of surveys with residents of 196 different countries, discovered that despite belonging to diverse socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and age groups, nearly all respondents said their ideal existence would involve being an animatronic bear wearing comfy overalls and a big floppy hat.

“While analyzing the collected data, we found that an overwhelming number of participants claimed the carefree, down-home life of a robotic bear was far more appealing than their own lives,” said Professor Daniel Vaughn, who led the study. “Most expressed a conviction that nothing would be more enjoyable than sitting on a plastic log, strumming a banjo, and singing songs on stage with their goofy animatronic bear friends.”

Vaughn also noted that many people were attracted to the prospect of an animatronic bear’s brief workday, insisting that performing songs for several minutes and then being allowed to power down and sleep for long stretches of time would be superior to a regular job.

In addition, study participants said receiving the adoration of young children, attending birthday parties every day, and working in a place that always smelled like fresh-baked pizza had greatly influenced their preference to be an electromechanical bear.

“Imagine a life in which there’s always a jamboree, it’s always a sunny day, and no one ever troubles you for anything,” said 46-year-old Cleveland native Charley Hale. “You never have to pay taxes, and all you really have to do is blow in a jug a few times, sing some dumb words, and happily smile away with your pretty animatronic girl bear at your side.”

“God, why can’t that be my life?” Hale added.

According to the 320-page study, 96 percent of respondents believe that performing a maximum of six programmed body movements and speaking in a limited number of prerecorded sounds must provide a comforting routine for robot bears, who can relax instead of worrying about what do with their arms and legs, or what to say and think.

“You wouldn’t even have to open the door to your little bear house, because it’s fully automated and pops open by itself,” said Mishkat Zia, 34, a resident of Rangpur, Bangladesh. “You just slide out on a rail and don’t have to stress out about which way you’re going. Plus, you don’t need to learn any of the songs, because they put all of that on a computer chip. And they have the air- conditioning blasting all the time.”

After interviewing thousands of participants, researchers learned that many people envied animatronic bears because they lack brains and are able to lead tranquil lives without ever experiencing doubt, sadness, or pain. The study also found that most people would rather have an animatronic bear’s single, smiling facial expression, which seems to indicate constant happiness.

Sociologist Diana Norris, who examined and analyzed the data from the survey, found that every person in the study expressed concerns about the frailty of the human body, which they felt was inferior to the animatronic bear’s mechanical anatomy.

“Participants were very worried about larger human issues like injuries, illnesses, and aging, but also things like sweating too much, getting fat, smelling bad, and feeling sore,” said Norris, adding that survey respondents liked the idea of being very soft like a bear. “In addition, most noted that if an animatronic bear did have a problem, a technician would repair it right away. A small percentage said even if they stopped working entirely, they would still rather be a nonfunctioning animatronic bear than a human.”

Despite such widespread consensus on robotic bears, 4 percent of participants disagreed, saying they would prefer to be a life-sized wax replica of actor Harrison Ford.

What you said in June: It’s so nice out. I’m definitely going to start jogging every day. It was the cold weather that was holding me back before. Beach body, here I come!

What you said in July: Sweet Jesus it’s hot. I definitely can’t go running now. I’m not being lazy. It’s just a health hazard to run in temperatures above 82 degrees. I have to be mindful of my health.

What you you’re saying now: Ok, maybe jogging isn’t for me. I mean, I went that one time and it was really boring. If not for the excruciating cramps and the need to stop every minute to pretend to tie my shoe, I probably would have died of boredom. Maybe I’ll join a gym in the fall. Yeah. I’ll definitely do that.

What you said in June: Yes! We HAVE to go to a water park this summer. They are SO fun. Remember that time like 10 years ago? Greg was insane. Man, that was the best. We HAVE to go.

What you said in July: There’s still time. It’s crazy that the summer’s already half way done though. But I called Greg. He’s IN. We’ll probably go in a couple weekends, or the weekend after.

What you’re saying now: F*cking Greg! He screwed this up. I was ready to go. Now it’s probably too late. I mean, we’re both free this weekend, but, ugh, I think I need something a bit more low-key.

What you said in June: Christmas was five months ago. I’m going to toss this bad boy on the tracks if “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” comes up on shuffle again while I’m waiting for the train. Right after the saxophone solo.

What you said in July: I guess I forgot to take “All I Want For Christmas Is You” off here, but that’s all right. Some songs are just too good to keep pent up in an external hard drive until December 1st. I don’t care what that gal next to me on the bus thinks. She’s probably just jealous of Mariah’s pipes.

What you’re saying now: Christmas is five months away. Time to bust out the second best Wham! song I’ll deny listening to in public.

What you said in June: I’m tired of looking like an over-sized fifth grader in these cargo shorts. I’ll head over to that store my ex-girlfriend used to talk so much about once it gets too hot for these slacks she bought me right before we broke up.

What you said in July: There’s no way I’m paying full trouser price for only half the material. Especially when I have no idea how much higher or lower than my knee they’re supposed to be. Plus, what kind of self-respecting professional would even consider wearing shorts to work?

What you’re saying now: What’s the easiest way to reattach legs to pants?

What you said in June: This is a great idea. We’re grown-ups now. I think we can get this together. Greg says he has a buddy who does something related to vacation rentals, so he’s going to hook it up.

What you said in July: You don’t want to use up your beach weekend too early in the summer. Obviously. You have to save it till regular summer stuff gets boring. And drinking while leaning my upper body on my fire escape is still pretty fun.

What you’re saying now: Fucking Greg! He said he’d be able to hook this up no problem, but now he says he can only get us a Tuesday-Thursday rental at peak rates. Who wants to do that? No one.

All of the combat in The 3rd Birthday involves guns, but this isn’t a shooter. With most weapons, you can lock on to targets automatically, so defeating enemies is often a matter of holding down the lock-on button and then pressing or tapping the fire button. The trick isn’t hitting them so much as it is staying alive long enough to do enough damage to kill them. It’s not just the many nasty, tentacled varieties of Twisted and other creatures you encounter that make surviving tricky; it’s also the rigid controls. You move Aya in third person, and her casual jogging speed doesn’t befit the life-and-death situations in which she finds herself, nor is it sufficient for dodging enemy projectiles and keeping you away from danger. Taking cover behind barricades shields you from some attacks and slowly restores your health, but most attacks destroy these barricades quickly, so you can’t rely on cover for long. Aya can perform quick dodge rolls, though performing three in a row leaves her winded and vulnerable to attack. Controlling a character whose slow, limited movements make her extremely vulnerable often thwarts the thrills the gameplay is striving to provide.

The ability to leap from soldier to soldier is Aya’s saving grace, and it’s essential to survival. Aya can transfer instantly from body to body, so the death of the soldier you possess doesn’t necessarily spell death for you. You can use soldiers up and abandon their husks in the final moments of their lives, provided there’s another fighter on the field. Hopping around from person to person and from position to position is a fun and flashy mechanic that gives the combat a distinctive feel. This ability also has an offensive component: If you sustain an assault on an enemy for a period of time, a triangle icon will indicate that you can perform an overdive attack, sending your psyche inside it for an instant and doing significant damage. You can more effectively create openings for overdive attacks by directing any nearby soldiers to concentrate their fire at your target for a brief period. To trigger this coordinated assault, which the game calls crossfire, you need to lock on to an enemy without firing for a short while as a gauge fills. Attacking enemies fills up another gauge that, when full, enables you to enter a state called liberation. In liberation, Aya’s movements are blindingly swift, and true to the state’s name, it makes for a liberating departure from her normally stiff actions. Unfortunately, this state is so short lived that you barely have time to enjoy it before Aya returns to normal.

6304662NoneAnother typical day on the New York City subway.

The 3rd Birthday sometimes succeeds at generating a great deal of tension. In one battle, for instance, the enemy onslaught seems overwhelming and circumstances seem hopeless. Your desperate attempts to survive are exciting, and the tension that builds up is ultimately released in an immensely satisfying way when an armored vehicle arrives, enabling you to take control of its gunner and turn the tide, making short work of the creatures that just shortly before were slaughtering soldiers left and right. It’s an exhilarating moment. But often, the tension can boil over into full-blown frustration. For instance, in most situations, a steady stream of reinforcements means that even if the soldier you’re currently occupying is in bad shape, surviving long enough will let you leap to another, brand new body with full health (though surviving that long is often easier said than done). But one difficult battle in a location where reinforcements can’t reach you can become infuriating. The monsters you face, like many you encounter throughout the game, have a good deal of health that your attacks slowly chip away. They also have attacks that can wipe out all your health with a few hits, and your stiff movements make attempting to evade some of those attacks a frustrating endeavor. You might repeatedly find yourself nearing victory only to fail and then be faced with the prospect of starting the long, slow process of fighting them all over again. This battle, and others like it, highlight the limitations of Aya’s movement and can drain all the momentum from the game. Success in these situations brings with it a sense of relief in knowing that a painful step of your journey is over, rather than a rewarding sense of victory.

As you advance from mission to mission, you earn experience and level up, increasing Aya’s health and the power of her overdive attack. Additionally, frequent use of a specific type of weapon–handguns, assault rifles, or shotguns, for instance–gives you access to better weapons and weapon components of that type. You can purchase and equip components that improve a weapon’s accuracy and capacity, as well as choose between ammo that does more damage but triggers overdive attack opportunities less frequently and ammo with the opposite characteristics. You also collect items called OE chips, which you can equip to grant Aya various benefits, such as increased defense and stronger crossfire attacks. These customization options aren’t very deep or involving, but tinkering with Aya’s weapons and attributes makes for a pleasant little diversion between missions.

Most of what you find on the protective gear menu sure doesn’t look very protective.

Like its protagonist, The 3rd Birthday is beautiful and troubled, flawed and fascinating and frustrating. In addition, it’s short; the irritating difficulty of some sections means that its six episodes may take a while to complete, but that issue aside, the adventure is roughly five hours long. Cheat codes that unlock as you finish the game and accomplish certain tasks let you replay the game with enhanced abilities, though this certainly isn’t enough of an incentive to complete the game the whopping 10 times you’d need to unlock one of the cheat codes. The 3rd Birthday has an intriguing story with an annoying heroine and unusual gameplay that makes for an occasionally thrilling experience, which is often undermined by stiff controls and frustrating difficulty. Some will find enduring the flaws a tolerable price to pay to experience Aya Brea’s strange journey, but she has some serious growing up to do before her next birthday rolls around.

Previous page

The Nikon Coolpix P500, the manufacturer’s latest full-size megazoom, is packing a 36x f3.4-5.7 21.5-800mm lens (35mm equivalent). That blows away its predecessor, the P100, which had a 26x, f2.8-5 26-678mm lens and narrowly beats Canon’s PowerShot SX30 IS and its 35x, f2.7-5.8, 24-840mm (35mm equivalent). At least in magnification, since the Nikon starts wider; it doesn’t surpass the Canon, though really when it comes to specsmanship the “36x” is all that matters.

The camera is more than just its lens, however. It has a gorgeous 3-inch vari-angle LCD and an electronic viewfinder; excellent image stabilization to back up that lens (though keeping your subject in your shot is a whole other issue); shooting options that take advantage of its high-speed CMOS sensor; and it’s got a comfortable, easy-to-figure-out control layout and menu system. It’s also got great shooting performance including almost no shutter lag and short shot-to-shot times.

On the short list of notably absent features is raw support and automatic picture orientation, something that can be found on cameras at a fraction of the P500′s cost and abilities. It also lacks direct controls for settings like ISO and white balance, though, so maybe the P500 is a good fit for those looking for a point-and-shoot with a long lens and room to experiment, whereas something like the Panasonic Lumix FZ100 is for more serious hobbyists and enthusiasts.

In general, the P500′s photo quality is good, but photos are just really soft and lack fine detail. They basically didn’t improve from the P100; they’re just higher resolution. However, the extra megapixels don’t give you any more room to crop or enlarge. Put simply, the P500′s photo quality, though decent for a point-and-shoot camera, is no doubt going to let down anyone expecting higher-caliber photos because of its price and design. The lowest ISO is 160, and things aren’t really sharp there; start adding in more noise reduction as you go up in ISO and subjects only get softer. Photos are OK at ISO 400, but colors get somewhat muddy and desaturated. The P500 can be locked to use ISO 160 to 200 or ISO 160 to 400; I strongly recommend using the former when you’re in bright conditions. The results above ISO 400 just aren’t good for much beyond small prints and Web use. Every user is different, though, and seeing what this camera is capable of, some people will just be thrilled with what they are able to capture and more forgiving of the results.

Sample photos:
Nikon Coolpix P500

Nikon does a great job correcting for lens distortion at both ends. There’s no sign of barrel distortion or pincushioning. The lens isn’t sharp in the center, but it is consistent from side to side with just some slight softening at the edges and in the corners. Though it’s bad with most megazoom cameras, the fringing in high-contrast areas of photos is terrible with the P500, especially when the lens is fully extended. Lens flare was also an issue.

Up through ISO 400, color performance is very good from the P500. Everything turned out vivid and bright without looking artificial. Exposure is generally very good, plus there are plenty of options for adjusting and improving the results. Auto white balance looks overly warm under incandescent light; it performed well under natural light, though. The cameras presets work fine, too, and there’s a manual option.

Video quality is on par with a basic HD pocket video camera: good enough for Web use and nondiscriminating TV viewing. Panning the camera will create judder that’s typical of the video from most compact cameras. Low-light video suffers from the same problems that the photos do; they’re very soft, bordering on looking like a living watercolor. The audio quality was good, though, and the zoom does work, and both it and the autofocus are fairly quiet so you’ll only really hear them in scenes with little background sound.

The P500′s shooting modes are mostly for point-and-shoot users, but you do get Program, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, and Manual options and a spot for a set of custom settings on the mode dial. The largest aperture is f3.4 (the P100 started at f2.8) and is enough to create some depth of field. The smallest aperture is f8. Shutter speeds go from 1/1,500 second to 8 seconds.

There are two Auto modes on this camera. One is Nikon’s Scene Auto Selector located in with the other Scene modes. It adjusts settings appropriately based on six common scene types. If the scene doesn’t match any of those, it defaults to a general-use Auto. Then there is an Auto mode, which shuts off all photo settings except for image quality and size.

Outside of the Scene Auto Selector there are 15 other scene modes like Landscape and Portrait as well as a new Pet Portrait mode and two panorama modes: Easy and Panorama Assist. The latter uses a ghost image on the screen to help you line up your successive photos. The former just requires you to press the shutter and pan the camera left, right, up, or down to create a panorama in camera. These modes never handle movement well, so they’re best used on scenery without movement in it.

Like most cameras with BSI CMOS sensors, the P500 has multishot modes for improving low-light photos of landscapes and portraits. At a single press of the shutter release, the camera takes several photos and then combines them to improve blur from hand shake and reduce noise and correct exposure. In general, the Night Landscape mode is successful, but not as good as others I’ve tested. The Night Portrait mode takes shots with and without flash and combines them into nicely exposed shots. However, because of the nature of how these images are produced, these modes cannot be used with moving subjects.

If you like to shoot close-ups, the P500 has a few ways to enter Macro mode. It will automatically switch to it if you’re using the Scene Auto Selector mode. You can also select a Close-up mode from the camera’s Scene options. And if you’re in PSAM, you can switch to macro focus via the control pad. You can focus as close as 0.4 inch from your subject if you extend the lens some (there’s an onscreen marker to let you know where to stop zooming), but at the lens’ widest position, it focuses 4 inches from a subject.

The high-speed performance of the CMOS sensor gets put to use in burst modes, too. The best one is the Continuous H setting, which lets you shoot at up to 8 frames per second (fps) for five photos. The Continuous L mode drops to approximately 1.8fps, but can capture up to 24 photos. The camera also has 60fps and 120fps burst options for capturing up to 25, 2-megapixel or 50, 1-megapxiel photos, respectively, at a press of the shutter release. Similarly, there’s a preshooting cache setting that will start capturing images once you half-press the shutter release. Once you fully press the shutter, it will store the five photos before you press and up to 20 after (2-megapixel resolution). There’s a substantial wait while the camera stores all those photos, but if you’re trying to capture a specific moment in time, these are your best bet with this camera. At the other end of the speed spectrum is an interval shooting option that will continuously shoot every 30 seconds or 1, 5, or 10 minutes.

Overall shooting performance is excellent. It goes from off to first shot in just over 1 second with a typical shot-to-shot time of 1.4 seconds. Using the flash adds about a second to that time. Shutter lag is low in both bright and dim lighting, at 0.3 and 0.6 second, respectively. Its full-resolution high-speed continuous mode is capable of 10fps, but again only for five shots.

The body design barely changes from its predecessor. The look and feel is still nice and amazingly compact considering the lens. The grip is deep and comfortable with a textured rubber piece on front, the body is well-balanced, and the lens barrel gives you ample space to hold and steady the camera with your left hand. The controls are comfortably placed and responsive.

There’s a decent electronic viewfinder (EVF) and a vari-angle LCD for framing up your shots. The LCD pulls out from the body and can be tilted up or down, but it does not swing out horizontally from the body and rotate. Like all LCDs and EVFs, the screen blanks out for a second once you’ve taken a shot, but it’s reasonably fast to recover. To the left of the EVF is a button for switching between the LCD and EVF, as well as a diopter adjustment dial. To its right is a Display button for changing what info is viewed on the displays and a movie record button with a switch for picking what type of video you want to shoot (regular or high speed).

The rest of the controls don’t change from the P100 (i.e., a pretty standard digital camera control layout) with two exceptions. There is now a rocker switch on the lens barrel for controlling the lens. It can be used to zoom in and out (handy when shooting movies), snap the lens back a bit in telephoto, should your subject move out of frame, or for manual focus. (Its function is changed in the settings menu; this is a nuisance while testing, but otherwise fine, as I don’t imagine changing it often in regular use.) The only other change is a button just behind the shutter release for changing continuous-shooting modes.

The menu systems are sharp and easy to read, helped, no doubt, by the bright, high-resolution LCD. My one gripe is that there are no shortcuts for changing ISO, white balance, autofocus mode or area mode, or metering. Almost everything’s done through the Menu button. Even exposure bracketing, which I expected to find under the continuous-shooting modes, is in the main menu system. If you want fast, easy control over those settings, this might be a deal breaker for you.

The battery compartment and card slot are under a door on the bottom. The battery life isn’t great for this camera, and using the wall adapter takes nearly 5 hours to fully charge the battery from zero. If a typical day of shooting will include the high-speed burst modes and movie capture and using the 3-inch LCD and the zoom a lot, you’ll want a backup battery.

Outputs are under a cover on the body’s left side. There’s a Mini-HDMI and a Micro-USB/AV port. There’s no accessory shoe for an add-on flash, limiting you to the onboard pop-up one. It doesn’t automatically rise when needed; it remains off until you push a button on the left side of the camera. It’s adequately powerful and there are flash exposure compensation settings available.

Conclusions
Like I said about the P100, the Nikon Coolpix P500 is one of those cameras that consumers will either love for all that it can do or hate because one of those things isn’t taking superb photos. For those interested mainly in having a very wide, very long lens on a point-and-shoot with room for experimentation and a lot of settings to play with, the P500 is exactly that.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Find out more about how we test digital cameras. Hide Review

The Nikon Coolpix P500, the manufacturer’s latest full-size megazoom, is packing a 36x f3.4-5.7 21.5-800mm lens (35mm equivalent). That blows away its predecessor, the P100, which had a 26x, f2.8-5 26-678mm lens and narrowly beats Canon’s PowerShot SX30 IS and its 35x, f2.7-5.8, 24-840mm (35mm equivalent). At least in magnification, since the Nikon starts wider; it doesn’t surpass the Canon, though really when it comes to specsmanship the “36x” is all that matters.

The camera is more than just its lens, however. It has a gorgeous 3-inch vari-angle LCD and an electronic viewfinder; excellent image stabilization to back up that lens (though keeping your subject in your shot is a whole other issue); shooting options that take advantage of its high-speed CMOS sensor; and it’s got a comfortable, easy-to-figure-out control layout and menu system. It’s also got great shooting performance including almost no shutter lag and short shot-to-shot times.

On the short list of notably absent features is raw support and automatic picture orientation, something that can be found on cameras at a fraction of the P500′s cost and abilities. It also lacks direct controls for settings like ISO and white balance, though, so maybe the P500 is a good fit for those looking for a point-and-shoot with a long lens and room to experiment, whereas something like the Panasonic Lumix FZ100 is for more serious hobbyists and enthusiasts.

In general, the P500′s photo quality is good, but photos are just really soft and lack fine detail. They basically didn’t improve from the P100; they’re just higher resolution. However, the extra megapixels don’t give you any more room to crop or enlarge. Put simply, the P500′s photo quality, though decent for a point-and-shoot camera, is no doubt going to let down anyone expecting higher-caliber photos because of its price and design. The lowest ISO is 160, and things aren’t really sharp there; start adding in more noise reduction as you go up in ISO and subjects only get softer. Photos are OK at ISO 400, but colors get somewhat muddy and desaturated. The P500 can be locked to use ISO 160 to 200 or ISO 160 to 400; I strongly recommend using the former when you’re in bright conditions. The results above ISO 400 just aren’t good for much beyond small prints and Web use. Every user is different, though, and seeing what this camera is capable of, some people will just be thrilled with what they are able to capture and more forgiving of the results.

Sample photos:
Nikon Coolpix P500

Nikon does a great job correcting for lens distortion at both ends. There’s no sign of barrel distortion or pincushioning. The lens isn’t sharp in the center, but it is consistent from side to side with just some slight softening at the edges and in the corners. Though it’s bad with most megazoom cameras, the fringing in high-contrast areas of photos is terrible with the P500, especially when the lens is fully extended. Lens flare was also an issue.

Up through ISO 400, color performance is very good from the P500. Everything turned out vivid and bright without looking artificial. Exposure is generally very good, plus there are plenty of options for adjusting and improving the results. Auto white balance looks overly warm under incandescent light; it performed well under natural light, though. The cameras presets work fine, too, and there’s a manual option.

Video quality is on par with a basic HD pocket video camera: good enough for Web use and nondiscriminating TV viewing. Panning the camera will create judder that’s typical of the video from most compact cameras. Low-light video suffers from the same problems that the photos do; they’re very soft, bordering on looking like a living watercolor. The audio quality was good, though, and the zoom does work, and both it and the autofocus are fairly quiet so you’ll only really hear them in scenes with little background sound.

The P500′s shooting modes are mostly for point-and-shoot users, but you do get Program, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, and Manual options and a spot for a set of custom settings on the mode dial. The largest aperture is f3.4 (the P100 started at f2.8) and is enough to create some depth of field. The smallest aperture is f8. Shutter speeds go from 1/1,500 second to 8 seconds.

There are two Auto modes on this camera. One is Nikon’s Scene Auto Selector located in with the other Scene modes. It adjusts settings appropriately based on six common scene types. If the scene doesn’t match any of those, it defaults to a general-use Auto. Then there is an Auto mode, which shuts off all photo settings except for image quality and size.

Outside of the Scene Auto Selector there are 15 other scene modes like Landscape and Portrait as well as a new Pet Portrait mode and two panorama modes: Easy and Panorama Assist. The latter uses a ghost image on the screen to help you line up your successive photos. The former just requires you to press the shutter and pan the camera left, right, up, or down to create a panorama in camera. These modes never handle movement well, so they’re best used on scenery without movement in it.

Like most cameras with BSI CMOS sensors, the P500 has multishot modes for improving low-light photos of landscapes and portraits. At a single press of the shutter release, the camera takes several photos and then combines them to improve blur from hand shake and reduce noise and correct exposure. In general, the Night Landscape mode is successful, but not as good as others I’ve tested. The Night Portrait mode takes shots with and without flash and combines them into nicely exposed shots. However, because of the nature of how these images are produced, these modes cannot be used with moving subjects.

If you like to shoot close-ups, the P500 has a few ways to enter Macro mode. It will automatically switch to it if you’re using the Scene Auto Selector mode. You can also select a Close-up mode from the camera’s Scene options. And if you’re in PSAM, you can switch to macro focus via the control pad. You can focus as close as 0.4 inch from your subject if you extend the lens some (there’s an onscreen marker to let you know where to stop zooming), but at the lens’ widest position, it focuses 4 inches from a subject.

The high-speed performance of the CMOS sensor gets put to use in burst modes, too. The best one is the Continuous H setting, which lets you shoot at up to 8 frames per second (fps) for five photos. The Continuous L mode drops to approximately 1.8fps, but can capture up to 24 photos. The camera also has 60fps and 120fps burst options for capturing up to 25, 2-megapixel or 50, 1-megapxiel photos, respectively, at a press of the shutter release. Similarly, there’s a preshooting cache setting that will start capturing images once you half-press the shutter release. Once you fully press the shutter, it will store the five photos before you press and up to 20 after (2-megapixel resolution). There’s a substantial wait while the camera stores all those photos, but if you’re trying to capture a specific moment in time, these are your best bet with this camera. At the other end of the speed spectrum is an interval shooting option that will continuously shoot every 30 seconds or 1, 5, or 10 minutes.

Overall shooting performance is excellent. It goes from off to first shot in just over 1 second with a typical shot-to-shot time of 1.4 seconds. Using the flash adds about a second to that time. Shutter lag is low in both bright and dim lighting, at 0.3 and 0.6 second, respectively. Its full-resolution high-speed continuous mode is capable of 10fps, but again only for five shots.

The body design barely changes from its predecessor. The look and feel is still nice and amazingly compact considering the lens. The grip is deep and comfortable with a textured rubber piece on front, the body is well-balanced, and the lens barrel gives you ample space to hold and steady the camera with your left hand. The controls are comfortably placed and responsive.

There’s a decent electronic viewfinder (EVF) and a vari-angle LCD for framing up your shots. The LCD pulls out from the body and can be tilted up or down, but it does not swing out horizontally from the body and rotate. Like all LCDs and EVFs, the screen blanks out for a second once you’ve taken a shot, but it’s reasonably fast to recover. To the left of the EVF is a button for switching between the LCD and EVF, as well as a diopter adjustment dial. To its right is a Display button for changing what info is viewed on the displays and a movie record button with a switch for picking what type of video you want to shoot (regular or high speed).

The rest of the controls don’t change from the P100 (i.e., a pretty standard digital camera control layout) with two exceptions. There is now a rocker switch on the lens barrel for controlling the lens. It can be used to zoom in and out (handy when shooting movies), snap the lens back a bit in telephoto, should your subject move out of frame, or for manual focus. (Its function is changed in the settings menu; this is a nuisance while testing, but otherwise fine, as I don’t imagine changing it often in regular use.) The only other change is a button just behind the shutter release for changing continuous-shooting modes.

The menu systems are sharp and easy to read, helped, no doubt, by the bright, high-resolution LCD. My one gripe is that there are no shortcuts for changing ISO, white balance, autofocus mode or area mode, or metering. Almost everything’s done through the Menu button. Even exposure bracketing, which I expected to find under the continuous-shooting modes, is in the main menu system. If you want fast, easy control over those settings, this might be a deal breaker for you.

The battery compartment and card slot are under a door on the bottom. The battery life isn’t great for this camera, and using the wall adapter takes nearly 5 hours to fully charge the battery from zero. If a typical day of shooting will include the high-speed burst modes and movie capture and using the 3-inch LCD and the zoom a lot, you’ll want a backup battery.

Outputs are under a cover on the body’s left side. There’s a Mini-HDMI and a Micro-USB/AV port. There’s no accessory shoe for an add-on flash, limiting you to the onboard pop-up one. It doesn’t automatically rise when needed; it remains off until you push a button on the left side of the camera. It’s adequately powerful and there are flash exposure compensation settings available.

Conclusions
Like I said about the P100, the Nikon Coolpix P500 is one of those cameras that consumers will either love for all that it can do or hate because one of those things isn’t taking superb photos. For those interested mainly in having a very wide, very long lens on a point-and-shoot with room for experimentation and a lot of settings to play with, the P500 is exactly that.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Find out more about how we test digital cameras. Hide Review

   It’s probably not a good idea to keep a body in the house, even if you aren’t bothered by the rats and other assorted filth that might pile up.

   But Uncle Sam, who may not care much about housekeeping, gets real interested when he discovers that Social Security payments are still going to a dead person.

   So Gail Andrews, 62, of Fort Myers has pleaded not guilty to Social Security fraud after the government accused her of intentionally concealing her mother’s death for 14 months, news-press.com reports. She says she hid the death because she was afraid she’d lose the house she has lived in for 35 years. The government wants its $52,308.70 back.

Photo gallery:
Canon EOS Rebel T3i

If you didn’t think the 60D was overpriced when it shipped, you will now. The Canon EOS Rebel T3i (aka the EOS 600D), the 60D’s younger and cheaper sibling, offers the same basic camera with some corners cut–most notably a slightly less well-constructed body and a (purposely?) stunted burst shooting speed. You can also think of it as a slightly more expensive T2i, with the addition of an articulated LCD and a few features for the auto-always crowd. Either way, the T3i remains a solid if unexciting follow-up to its predecessor, although one that seems to cater more to videophiles than still shooters.

That’s not to say it compromises on still photo quality. Overall, the T3i has an excellent noise profile, unsurprisingly similar to that of the 60D’s. JPEGs look very clean up through ISO 400, and even at ISO 800 you really have to scrutinize to see the beginnings of detail degradation; at ISO 1600 the noise becomes more obvious but still isn’t too bad.

Canon EOS Rebel T3i photo samples

ISO 400 is sort of my tipping-point sensitivity; to shoot action outdoors, I generally have to bump up the setting to at least ISO 400 in order to reach a sufficiently fast shutter speed. And because few consumer cameras are fast enough at shooting burst raw+JPEG, the in-camera JPEG processing has to be decent as well. The T3i fared pretty well under these conditions. Overall, I consider shots at this setting good enough to use, but I still wish I would have been able to shoot raw to clean them up.

Canon’s JPEG processing remains very good. Even at ISO 1600 I couldn’t obtain unambiguously better results processing the raw–Canon seems to optimize for exposure at the expense of sharpness, and I couldn’t get sharper results without losing some shadow detail (you may do better). At ISO 3200 I was able to achieve a significant reduction in color noise without losing too much shadow detail. And by ISO 6400, I started to see hot pixels as a side-effect of the in-camera noise reduction (those white spots) in the JPEGs.

On all other counts the photos looked good on the default settings, though my favored setting with Canon models is Neutral with sharpening bumped up a few notches. Colors look both relatively accurate and saturated; metering and exposures are consistent and predictable; and the dynamic range is broad enough to allow a reasonable amount of highlight and shadow recovery.

As usual, the video looks very good. There’s some moiré, but not a lot of rolling shutter, and moving edges look surprisingly sharp. At its highest quality, it seems to deliver an average bit rate of roughly 45Mbps. It offers the same great set of frame rates and manual exposure controls as the 60D, including highlight tone priority for fine-tuning high-key exposures. Though the built-in microphone is mono, it sounds surprisingly good, and there’s a wind filter along with the same 64-level sound controls. Canon also incorporates the Video Snapshot feature from its camcorders–it lets you snap up to 8-second clips–and some in-camera special-effects filters, too.

 
Canon EOS Rebel T1i
Canon EOS Rebel T2i
Canon EOS Rebel T3i
Canon EOS 60D
Sensor (effective resolution)
15.1-megapixel CMOS
18-megapixel CMOS
18-megapixel CMOS
18-megapixel CMOS
22.3 x 14.9mm 22.3 x 14.9mm 22.3 x 14.9mm 22.3 mm x 14.9mm Image processor version Digic 4 Digic 4 Digic 4 Digic 4
Sensitivity range
ISO 100 – ISO 3200/12,800 (expanded)
ISO 100 – ISO 6400/ 12,800 (expanded)
ISO 100 – ISO 6400/ 12,800 (expanded)
ISO 100 – ISO 6400/ 12,800 (expanded)
Continuous shooting 3.5 fps
6 raw/53 JPEG
3.7 fps
6 raw/34 JPEG
3.7 fps
6 raw/34 JPEG
5.3fps
16 raw/58 JPEG
Viewfinder (mag/ effective mag)
95% coverage
0.87x/0.54x
95% coverage
0.87x/0.54x
95% coverage
0.85x/0.53x
96% coverage
0.95x/0.59x
Autofocus
9-pt AF
center cross-type

9-pt AF
center cross-type to f2.8
9-pt AF
center cross-type to f2.8
9-pt AF all cross-type; center cross to f2.8
Shutter Speed 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/160 x-sync 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/160 x-sync 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/200 x-sync 1/8000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/250 sec x-sync Metering 35 zones 63-zone iFCL 63-zone iFCL 63-zone iFCL Video H.264 QuickTime MOV 1080/20p; 720/30p H.264 QuickTime MOV 1080/24p/ 25p/30p; 720/50p/ 60p H.264 QuickTime MOV 1080/24p/ 25p/30p; 720/50p/ 60p H.264 QuickTime MOV 1080/30p/25p/24p; 720/60p/50p
Manual aperture and shutter in video No Yes Yes Yes
Audio Mono Mono; mic input Mono; mic input Mono; mic input
Maximum best-quality recording time 4GB/12m 4GB/12m 4GB/11m 4GB/12m
Image stabilization Optical Optical Optical Optical LCD size
3 inches fixed
920,000 pixels
3 inches fixed
1.04 megapixels
3 inches articulated
1.04 megapixels
3 inches articulated
1.04 megapixels
Memory slots 1 x SDHC 1 x SDXC 1 x SDXC 1 x SDXC Wireless flash No No Yes Yes Battery life (CIPA rating)
400 shots
550 shots
470 shots
1100 shots
Dimensions (WHD, inches)
5.1 x 3.8 x 2.4
5.1 x 3.8 x 3.0
5.1 x 3.8 x 3.0
5.7 x 4.1 x 3.1
Body operating weight (ounces)
18.6
18.6
20
27
Mfr. Price $549 (est; body only) $699.99 (est; body only) $799.99 (body only) $1,099.99 (body only) $799.99 (with 18-55mm IS lens) $899.99 (with 18-55mm IS lens) $899.99 (with 18-55mm IS II lens)
$1,399.99 (with 18-135mm lens) n/a
$980 (est; with 18-135mm IS lens)
$1,099.99 (with 18-135mm IS lens)
n/a
Release date April 2009 March 2010 March 2011 November 2010

I’m not as fond of the new 18-55mm IS II lens as the old kit lens; unfortunately, I didn’t have the old lens available to do direct comparisons, but the new lens seemed to have more issues with fringing than the old. The new lens claims an extra stop of image stabilization, but I didn’t find it more effective (of course, it’s always possible that I’m a year shakier.) The 18-55mm kit lens displays visible but not terrible asymmetric barrel distortion at its widest. In shots with the previous version of the lens the distortion looks more symmetrical, but I don’t have exact comparison shots–they put up scaffolding months ago which prevents me from replicating my test shot.

The camera’s performance remains fast, but, surprisingly, in some cases not quite as fast as its predecessor’s. It powers on, focuses, and shoots in about 0.3 second, with a fast 0.3-second shot lag in good lighting and solid 0.6-second in dim (a tad slower than the T2i). JPEG shot-to-shot time is also good at about 0.4 second; raw takes a little longer at about 0.5 second. Adding flash bumps that up by another couple tenths of a second. Its burst rate is essentially equal to the T2i’s, but both are at what I consider the slowest acceptable continuous-shooting speed for a dSLR and slower than less-expensive competitors like the Nikon D5000 or the Pentax K-x.

With a few exceptions, the T3i’s body and interface are almost identical to the T2i’s. It’s slightly heavier (but not larger) thanks to the bright, flip-and-twist LCD. It feels sturdy, and though the texture rubberized grip feels kind of cheap, the camera is comfortable to hold and shoot single-handed, and can stand up to the weight of a good lens. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Rebel series’ viewfinder, and this one is actually a slightly lower magnification than previous models. I don’t know that I noticed the difference, but there are better ones out there. Also, I don’t like the tiny, too-briefly-flashing AF points.

Canon carries over the control layout and user interface from the T2i, although it has moved the Display button to the top and replaced it with Info. Camera operation is straightforward. On the back there are direct-access controls for Live View/video recording, exposure compensation, white balance, autofocus method (single, AI focus and AI servo), drive mode, Picture Style, AE/AF lock, and focus area (single-point manual or all-points auto). You can also change these settings, plus metering, flash, image quality, and a few others, via the typical Quick Control screen. My one quibble here is that the buttons all feel a bit too flat.

The mode dial includes the usual set of manual, semimanual, automatic, and scene modes. It doesn’t lock, which may bother some folks (though not me). As with the 60D, however, I find the placement of the movie mode–at the opposite side of the dial from the advanced modes–insanely frustrating. I’ve actually missed video opportunities by having to scroll around from shutter-priority mode to video. Ironically, this design is more suited to pros who plan to use the camera as a cheap video dSLR and never take it off the video setting than to the consumers at whom it’s ostensibly targeted.

 
Canon EOS Rebel T3i
Pentax K-r

Sony Alpha SLT-A55

Sony Alpha DSLR-A580

Sensor (effective resolution)
18-megapixel CMOS
12.4-megapixel CMOS
16.2-megapixel Exmor HD CMOS
16.2-megapixel Exmor HD CMOS
22.3 x 14.9mm 23.6 x 15.8mm 23.5 x 15.6mm 23.5 x 15.6mm Focal-length multiplier 1.6x 1.5x 1.5x 1.5x Sensitivity range
ISO 100 – ISO 6400/12,800 (expanded)
ISO 100 (expanded)/200 – ISO 6400/25,600 (expanded)
ISO 100 – ISO 1600/12,800 (expanded)
ISO 100 – ISO 12,800/25,600 (expanded)
Continuous shooting 3.7 fps
6 raw/34 JPEG
6 fps
n/a raw/25 JPEG
6 fps (10fps with auto exposure)
20 raw/35 JPEG
5 fps (7fps with auto exposure)
22 raw/45 JPEG
Viewfinder (magnification/ effective magnification)
Optical
95% coverage
0.85x/0.53x
Optical
96% coverage
0.85x/0.57x
Electronic
0.46 inches/1.2 million dots
100% coverage
1.1x/0.73x
Optical
n/a
95% coverage
0.80x/0.53x
Autofocus
9-pt AF
center cross-type to f2.8
11-pt AF
9 cross-type
(SAFOX IX)
15-pt phase-detection AF
3 cross-type
15-pt phase-detection AF
3 cross-type
Shutter Speed 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/200 x-sync 1/6000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/180 sec x-sync 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/160 x-sync 1/4000 to 30 secs; bulb; 1/160 x-sync Metering 63-zone iFCL 16 segment 1200 zone 1200 zone Video H.264 QuickTime MOV 1080/24p/25p/30p; 720/50p/60p 720/25p Motion JPEG AVI
AVCHD 1080/60i @ 17Mbps; H.264 MPEG-4 1440×1080/30p @ 12Mbps AVCHD 1080/60i @ 17Mbps; H.264 MPEG-4 1440×1080/30p @ 12Mbps Audio Mono; mic input Mono Stereo; mic input Stereo; mic input Manual aperture and shutter in video Yes n/a Yes Yes
Maximum best-quality recording time 4GB/12 minutes 4GB/25 minutes 2GB/9 minutes 2GB/14 minutes
Image stabilization Optical Sensor shift Sensor shift Sensor shift LCD size
3 inches articulated
1.04 megapixels
3 inches fixed
921,000 dots
3 inches articulated
921,600 dots
3 inches articulated
921,600 dots
Memory slots 1 x SDXC 1 x SDXC/SDHC
(SDXC requires firmware upgrade) 1 x SDXC 1 x SDXC Wireless flash Yes Yes Yes Yes Battery life (CIPA rating)
470 shots
560 shots (NiMH batteries)
330 shots
1050 shots
Dimensions (WHD, inches)
5.1 x 3.8 x 3.0
4.8 x 3.6 x 2.7
4.9 x 3.6 x 3.3
5.4 x 4.1 x 3.3
Body operating weight (ounces)
20
20.4 (est)
17.8
24 (est)
Mfr. Price $799.99 (body only) n/a $749.99 (body only) $799.99 (body only)
$899.99 (with 18-55mm IS II lens)
$749.95 (with 18-55mm lens) $849.99 (with 18-55mm lens) $899.99 (with 18-55mm lens) $1,099.99 (with 18-135mm IS lens)
n/a
n/a
n/a
Release date March 2011 October 2010 September 2010 November 2010

Canon’s version of an easy mode, Creative Auto, operates via what it calls “ambience selection”–Standard, Vivid, Soft, Warm, Intense, Cool, Brighter, Darker, and Monochrome–for which you can set it to one of three levels. The scene modes also utilize the ambience selection options, making them a little more flexible.

While Canon offers quite a few options for video shooters, it doesn’t have much beyond the basics to inspire or streamline shooting for still photographers. The T3i supplies basic Eye-Fi wireless integration–you can enable or disable the card and the camera provides connection strength information. For bracketing, you’re still limited to a three-shot bracket and a range of two stops around the center, though the complete range goes up to seven stops in either direction. And it supports wireless flash. But there’s no way to save custom settings, no creative features like time-lapse or multiple-exposure shooting or filters (only a handful of postprocessing effects). Furthermore, with increasing resolutions, the ability to shoot raw plus small or medium JPEG–as opposed to full size–isn’t just a pro necessity anymore, especially if you plan to transmit wirelessly. For a complete account of the T3i’s features and operation, you can download the PDF manual.

Conclusion
For the money, the T3i is a great choice for dSLR videographers–though the cheaper T2i can still suffice if you don’t need the articulated LCD–and is a solid choice for creative still shooters. But while the image quality and general shooting performance are top-notch, if you’re upgrading to shoot sports, kids, or pets, the T3i may not be able to keep up.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Raw shot-to-shot time  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim light)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

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We don’t like cheap laptops, but we love inexpensive ones. The difference is one of degree–a cheap laptop looks and feels shoddy, and woefully underperforms. An inexpensive laptop uses its budget wisely, offering a reasonable mix of components at a reasonable price, and doesn’t try to unfairly raise consumer expectations. AMD’s Fusion platform, which packs a CPU and discrete GPU together, has been a hit on inexpensive 11-inch ultraportables, but translating it to a larger 15-inch laptop is another story. At that size, user expectations are quite different, and the handful of attempts we’ve seen at using an Intel Atom or other low-power chip in a midsize laptop have all been failures.

The Toshiba Satellite C655D, for example, was an AMD Fusion 15-inch laptop that did not offer satisfactory performance. However, that system used the very low-end E-240 version of AMD’s CPU. In contrast, the Gateway NV51B05u uses the same E-350 AMD CPU found in the HP dm1 and Lenovo ThinkPad X120e. Those examples are excellent 11-inch laptops for around $400, but that CPU can also feel sluggish, especially while multitasking, when packed into a 15-inch shell.

But for $469, the Gateway NV51B05u is a solid choice for a midsize laptop under $500 (where the options can be thin). For most Web surfing and casual use, it works well, and the graphics capabilities, while basic, are good enough for casual gaming and online video viewing.

The Gateway NV51B05u looks like a standard inexpensive laptop from a few feet away. It’s not until you get up close that you see the plastic body has been stamped with an unusual wood-grain pattern that covers the wrist rest and back of the lid. It’s at least different from the usual, but it also emphasizes the plastic nature of the materials. In the end, we’d chalk it up as an aesthetic choice, and let you decide if it’s a deal breaker.

On the positive side, the system looks and feels slim, especially for a budget 15-incher, and the power brick, while heavy, is compact enough to fit in most laptop bags.

The keyboard will be familiar to anyone who has used a laptop from the past few generations of Gateway systems. Closely spaced flat-topped keys go from nearly one end of the body to the other, although the keys are actually large flat tops sitting on top of narrower spokes, so the edges of each key can wobble a bit. The wider 16:9 aspect ratio allows for a full number pad on the right side.

The touch pad, however, is another story. It’s centered under the QWERTY keyboard, but because of the right-side number pad, that means the touch pad sits more toward the left side of the chassis, which can feel awkward at times. A bigger problem is that the pad is too small for a 15-inch laptop. It gets lost in the same-color wrist rest, and there’s clearly plenty of room for a bigger touch pad. Also bugging us is that there’s a single rocker bar instead of separate left and right mouse buttons–a longtime pet peeve.

The 15.6-inch display has a native resolution of 1,366×768 pixels, which is common for most 11-inch to 15-inch laptops (more expensive midsize models may trade up to a 1,440×900-pixel display). The screen gets more than bright enough, but an overly glossy coating picks up glare from any nearby light source. Off-axis viewing, however, was excellent.

You miss out on obvious extras such as Bluetooth or USB 3.0 here, but a more glaring drawback is the single monaural speaker–however, budget laptops are known for their tinny sound, so you may not be missing much. Still, it’s a rare bit of cost-cutting we usually only see in the cheapest Netbooks.

You do at least get a big 500GB hard drive to go with the AMD E-350 CPU. In our benchmark tests, it performed about as well as other E-350 laptops, all of which have been 11-inch systems so far. It was particularly slow at our multitasking test, especially compared with Intel’s new generation of mainstream Core i-series CPUs, which have really set a new performance bar–but we have yet to see one of those chips in a system in this price range. Note that the Gateway seriously outperformed the Toshiba Satellite C655D, which tried to get away with a slower E-250 AMD CPU in a 15-inch body.

The AMD Radeon HD 6310 GPU, which is the graphics part of the Fusion platform, is a definite step up from the integrated graphics found in last year’s sub-$500 laptops. It won’t play the latest high-end games at high resolutions, but for casual gaming it should suffice, and we were able to easily stream full-screen HD video. In Street Fighter IV, we got 21.4 frames per second at 1,366×768-pixel resolution, and 23.5fps in Unreal Tournament 3 at the same resolution.

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