Warid LBC: 1000 Free Minutes & 10 Paisa per Min With New SIM: ProPakistani

Warid LBC: 1000 Free Minutes & 10 Paisa per Min With New SIM
Our Bad, DNS Misconfiguration Caused ProPakistani to Redirect to an Unknown URL
Blackberry Playbook [Review]
Dell Mini 1012 [Laptop Preview]

Warid LBC: 1000 Free Minutes & 10 Paisa per Min With New SIM

Posted: 26 May 2011 11:15 PM PDT

Warid LBC: 1000 Free Minutes & 10 Paisa per Min With New SIM is a post from: ProPakistani

Warid had earlier jumped into location based charging (LBC) with the launch of it’s LBC service in three regions, Faisalabad, Multan and Gujranwala.

This time Warid seems to be interested in attracting more customers in these regions in dozens of cities by giving them a bundle!

Bundle:

New SIM in just Rs. 60 preloaded with Rs. 25 balance and a bundle of 1000 free minutes.

For complete list of cities coming under above mentioned regions, click here.

Free Minutes:

With each new SIM you get 1000 free minutes
Free minutes will be given as 100 minutes per month, on first monthly recharge, for a period of 10 months

Ten Paisa per Minute:

Here comes the LBC part, customers residing in Gujranwala, Multan, Faisalabad region (check detailed city list) can call on-net numbers at 10 paisa per minute.

Offer has a daily charges of Rs. 5 plus tax.

Terms and Conditions:

Pre-loaded Rs. 25 balance can only be used for on-net calls
Free minutes are applicable for on-net calls only
On the first recharge of any amount, every month, you will receive 100 free on-net minutes
You do not have to subscribe to this offer. Just insert a new Warid Prepaid SIM, activate it by dialling 789 and enjoy your free minutes with your monthly recharge

Our Bad, DNS Misconfiguration Caused ProPakistani to Redirect to an Unknown URL

Posted: 26 May 2011 09:56 PM PDT

Our Bad, DNS Misconfiguration Caused ProPakistani to Redirect to an Unknown URL is a post from: ProPakistani

First thing first, it was my mistake, and I accept it – I shouldn't had played with core DNS settings of our server, but it happened and ProPakistani.PK started redirecting to www.techlighter.com (an unknown blog for you – which is being operated by one of our writers).

No, we were not hacked.

Our Primary IP for base URL is 173.199.131.188, which somehow (by mistake obviously) got altered to 173.199.131.189 – and all this started happening.

We had reverted back to the original IP as soon as it was changed, but that was too late.

While we apologize for the inconvenience, we are trying hard to speed up the process of getting back live. Thanks for all those emails, DMs, SMSes, calls – this truly made us realize how badly you missed us.

Blackberry Playbook [Review]

Posted: 26 May 2011 09:29 PM PDT

Blackberry Playbook [Review] is a post from: ProPakistani

The BlackBerry PlayBook is RIM's first attempt to enter into the tablet market, which is already dominated by the iPad and Android tablets.

In this review we will go through some of the major aspects of RIM's BlackBerry OS powered debut tablet and tell our readers whether it's a smart choice to buy one, and best of all: Should you buy the PlayBook over what the competition is offering? Let's get to it!

First of all, special thanks to our friends over at HomeShopping.pk for hooking us up with a review unit. The PlayBook that we got for review is the plain 16GB Wifi version without any support for cellular connectivity, which is the base model available in the market.

Specifications

Processor: 1GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CUP, PowerVR SGX540 GPU, TI OMAP 4430 chipset
Display: TFT Capacitive touchscreen display, 1024×600 resolution, 7.0 inches with multitouch support. Accelerometer for auto screen rotation.
Memory: 1GB RAM, 16/32/64 GB internal storage with no expansion slot for adding more memory.
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR and A2DP support.
Operating System: BlackBerry Tablet OS.
Battery: 5300 mAh Lithium Polymer.
Weight: 425 grams.
Dimensions: 194 x 130 x 10 mm

Unboxing

The PlayBook comes in a rather huge box, considering it's a small device. You get all the regular goodies which you'd expect:

BlackBerry PlayBook
Data Cable
Charging Adapter
Manuals

unboxing Blackberry Playbook [Review]

Hardware

The moment you look at the device, it looks slick! The design is typical of any RIM product you might have seen before, nothing overdone. There are no buttons on the front of the device, not even capacitive buttons.

On the top of the 7 inch screen is the light sensor which adjusts the screen brightness automatically depending on the lighting conditions and it works really well. Also at the front is a 3MP camera which is a lot for a device of this kind! And on the front left and right are two stereo speakers.

On the top is the power button which also acts as the lock/unlock key. The volume controls and the play/pause buttons are also at the top.

Quite frankly, all the buttons were a nuisance to use right out of the box, you can't tell whether you've pressed the button or not, there's no click to it and the buttons are flushed deep inside the body which forces you to use your nails to make the buttons work.

On the corner is a 3.5 mm headphone jack which fits your favorite headphones perfectly.

On the back there's a 5MP camera with no flash. Now the interesting thing about the PlayBook's cameras, front and back both, they can shoot 1080p full HD video! Yes, you read that right 1080p of HD goodness.

On the bottom is the micro-HDMI, the micro-USB port and the docking connector.

Hardware Design Photos

hardware 2 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

hardware 3 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

hardware 4 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

hardware 5 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

hardware 6 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

Software

Let me make one thing very clear about the PlayBook's software, and I'll be quite honest about it. If you're the type of person who loves to just dig right into your new gadget without reading the manuals, thinking that you'll figure out things on the fly, then things are going to be a hell lot different when you get your hands on the PlayBook.

As soon as you take your new gadget out of the box, it's natural for you to launch an app or just do something to make you get the feel of the device. I launched the browser and it took me a good 15 minutes to figure out how to close it, in fact it's the same with any app you're going to use on the PlayBook.

RIM has decided to use gestures to close or switch between apps, there are no "x" icons which you're going to tap inside the app to simply close it. Swiping from the bottom outside of the screen towards the center of it would minimize the app and bring the multitasking menu, and swiping from top outside of the screen down towards the center would bring down the extra menus of the app where you're in or the settings menu if you're on the homescreen.

Swiping from left to right or vice versa from outside the screen will switch between the apps, a really cool concept which I totally love about the PlayBook, you can switch between apps in a snap!

The UI looks quite plain and changing the wallpaper is probably the biggest piece of customization you'll ever manage to do on the PlayBook. Since I'm fine with not being able to customize the PlayBook hence I wasn't bothered.

Overall, the OS will prove to be a nice experience for you, but if you're switching over to BlackBerry OS from iOS or Android then good luck, you're going to have a tough time developing love for it.

Display

The display of the PlayBook is actually quite nice; I would compare it with others to be as one of the best displays I've ever seen. For a screen of this size, the content you're viewing surely gets justified, or rather the screen does the content justice!

But there's one thing I didn't like about the display, it's a fingerprint magnet, if you have greasy fingers then you might want to spend a few extra bucks on a cleaning cloth too.

The screen in outdoor lighting conditions/bright lighting conditions remains quite readable, provided you bump up the brightness all the way to maximum, which will also kill battery much faster.

Overall, I would give the display a good rating because of the color reproduction and the amount of detail it reproduces. 1024 x 600 resolution for a device of this size is more than enough.

Onscreen Keyboard

Instead of just explaining how the keyboard behaves when you use it, it's better you see a couple of photos of the PlayBook's onscreen keyboard.

keyboard landscape Blackberry Playbook [Review]

keyboard portrait Blackberry Playbook [Review]

The portrait keyboard is comfortable to type with both of your thumbs whilst the landscape keyboard is a mystery to use, you can't use it in a natural keyboard position for typing because of its small size and you would have to stretch your thumbs to the limit if you're going to type while holding the PlayBook in your hand. I would vote for the portrait keyboard here.

Overall it's a nice keyboard to type on, once you get the hang of it, you'll be typing quite fast in a matter of few days.

Apps

The PlayBook comes with a variety of apps pre-installed for productivity. Some of them are Adobe Reader, kobo Books, Slideshow To Go which is a PowerPoint alternative, Sheet To Go which is an Excel alternative and Word To Go which is a Word alternative.

software 1 Blackberry Playbook [Review]

Viewing documents or just creating them is a breeze, you won't feel any sort of difficulty figuring out what app does what, its straight forward. And here comes the best part if you're an app lover, when you try to download an app from AppWorld, which is BlackBerry's portal for downloading apps then you'll get this message:

So yeah, we couldn't try any app on the PlayBook due to its lack of support in our region, I would consider it a huge disappointment keeping in mind the fact that the PlayBook is readily available here but still no app support.

In case you didn't notice, that was sarcasm.

Connectivity

Wifi works flawlessly on the PlayBook, I didn't witness dropped signals or unexpected interruptions of any kind. Here comes one of the best things of the PlayBook, it's the internet browser!

Its one of the best browsers I've ever seen, not the fastest though. It handles HTML5 or Flash content without any problem, and thanks to its mighty dual core processor, everything runs very smoothly.

The browser is somewhat intuitive, it handles tabs very well. Swiping down the screen brings up the browser's menu from which you can do a variety of tasks on the fly like switching tabs etc. Overall a good browsing experience even on a small 7 inch screen, but it gets mediocre is you're looking at a website in portrait mode since text in that orientation becomes quite hard to read.

Camera

The camera is very minimal when it comes to setting it up to your liking. There's no option to select image resolution. The only options you can play around with are

Stabilization
Image Ratio (16:9 widescreen or standard 4:3)
Pre-defined ISO settings (Auto, Sports, Whiteboard)

Same goes for the front facing camera. But surprisingly, both cameras perform quite well under bright light. In low light, however, images come out really grainy.

The video recording feature of the PlayBook is awesome! 1080p video recording on a device like this is a stunner. But again, it's only great in bright day light conditions, in low light conditions the videos look quite grainy. If you're planning to use the PlayBook as an alternative for your aging handycam then it might just prove to be a good replacement.

Audio Quality

The audio aspect of the PlayBook is somewhat impressive. With stereo speakers located on the front of the device, the audio experience is quite noteworthy.

Listening to songs or watching videos on YouTube, the audio quality of the PlayBook will not disappoint you and the volume of the speakers is loud enough to be heard in a mildly crowded environment.

Battery Life

Let me get this straight, RIM has advertised the battery capacity of the PlayBook to be 5,300 mAh which seems to be quite a lot to get you through one day. I used the PlayBook quite extensively, and during that time I was playing videos on YouTube, listening to songs, doing random tasks and that too on WiFi, and the PlayBook didn't last for more than 4 hours 45 minutes.

This is probably the biggest disappointment of the device. I see a tablet as a device which would easily get me through one whole day on WiFi, or at least 9 hours but the PlayBook fails quite miserably in this aspect.

Going through different forums on the internet I found out that the battery drain issue is related to the OS itself and an expected firmware update would fix it, but right out of the box it leaves a bad taste on the user's part.

Downsides Of The PlayBook

Great cameras, great browser, dual core processor etc. But what's the downside of the PlayBook? A lot of things!

If you've been an avid user of iOS and Android, the moment you pick up the PlayBook, you'll feel that tons of features are missing. For instance, there's no mail support, nor is there a dedicated Email client, if you want to check your Email then open your Email inbox in the browser. You won't get notifications about Emails ever.

There is no contacts app, meaning you won't be able to create or save contact information, something so simple which should be there in a device like this. The story ends with the lack of apps, no AppWorld access in this region which is a huge let down.

The unreasonably hefty price tag is perhaps the greatest downside after the aforementioned low battery capacity. The device obviously does not offer enough functionality to threaten the likes of iPad or prominent Android tablets and for it to sport a price that roughly matches the two is well, just a tad unreasonable.

Still, in our brief and casual outdoor survey, we found that the tablet's niftiness, or rather, "cuteness" seemed to score quite a few points with non-geeks and the ladies (RIM's possible primary target user base?).

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

I am going to be really honest about the BlackBerry PlayBook overall, if you're really looking for a tablet and you have more than RS. 44,990 to spare, I would never ever recommend the PlayBook.

RIM's target user base is mostly the corporate folks, and keeping that in mind, the PlayBook is missing the most general features such as Email, which is a huge requirement for all the travelling business folks.

If I'm running a huge business or always travelling then I expect my tablet to pull in Email from the corporate servers or our plain old Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo Email all the time, and that's something which the PlayBook can't do.

It's hard to imagine how RIM forgot to add this one to the PlayBook, it's more like a blunder. But they are trying to level it through a scheduled OTA release of email client in some 60 days or less, that's what RIM has claimed.

And to top it off, you don't have access to AppWorld in this region, hence no apps, you're stuck with what the PlayBook has preinstalled.

We're quite sure there are other means to side load apps on the PlayBook but we didn't bother to go through that hassle, I wanted to stick with first hand user experience rather than working around the bugs.

If you're a traveller and couldn't care less about Email and just want a device which swiftly browses the internet then the PlayBook is your best bet. It's a one of a kind tablet and it really does stand out from the rest in very minor ways, such as a slick multitasking UI which is a blessing and "done the right way", the camera, a perfect eBook reader, creating office documents on the fly etc.

Should You Buy The PlayBook?

The answer is a straight forward no. The price point of Rs. 44,990 doesn't justify the features RIM is offering in the form of the PlayBook. I'm not being biased towards the PlayBook.

It's just that you can get a better tablet in this price, for instance the iPad 2, for just Rs. 10,000 more. If you're looking for some serious productivity, mail, contacts and apps then just buy the iPad 2 or any other Android tablet.

If you're being very specific about features such as the camera then the PlayBook is for you. But again, the price doesn't do justice to it. You should rather buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab if you're lurking in the price point of Rs. 49,990, the Galaxy Tab will also give you wireless connectivity on the go and heck, it's a phone too and that too at a very fair price of just Rs. 39,990!

If you still plan on getting the PlayBook, then head over to HomeShopping.pk and they have a really good deal going on at the moment and they constantly beat other online retailers in terms of price.

Dell Mini 1012 [Laptop Preview]

Posted: 26 May 2011 09:25 PM PDT

Dell Mini 1012 [Laptop Preview] is a post from: ProPakistani

clip image0021 Dell Mini 1012 [Laptop Preview]

Manufacturers: Dell

Class: Dell Inspiron Mini

Model: Dell iM1012-6870Bk

Price: Rs. 29,000-31,000

Speculations :

Processor 1.6GHz Intel Atom N450
Memory 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz
Hard drive 160GB 5,400rpm
Chipset Intel NM10
Graphics Intel GMA 3150 (integrated)
Operating System Windows 7 Starter
Dimensions (WD) 1012.6 x 7.7 inches
Height 0.9-1.3 inches
Screen size (diagonal) 1012.1 inches
System Weight 3.0/3.4 pounds
Netbook Category
Video VGA
Audio Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Data 3 USB 2.0, SD card reader
Networking Ethernet, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi

Gentle and friendly looks:

The design of the recent Dell mini 1012 is made to feel very user friendly. It has Gentle and Sophisticated looks and distinct in its style.

This mini netbook is designed for private as well as for business use, actually its small and delicate size allows you to take it along with you, where ever you go.

It consumes a very small place in your luggage as all mini laptops do. Those aspects which make it different and attractive are that, the keyboard tray and wrist rest have smooth texture that looks better than flat and glossy plastic, and the system’s gently rounded corners give it a relaxed, consumer-friendly style.

The other mini laptops are made with many gaps between the keys which acquire a large area but Dell mini 1012 has a closely packed set of keys which sets easily on a small place. Along with the touch pad on the left and right side, the portions work as left and right click of mouse; this also contributes to the elegant looks of Dell mini 1012.

On the other side if we talk about the other end of the coin, this Dell mini 1012 is experiencing a tough time in market because of other in-expensive netbooks placed on display with them, having bigger hard drives.

If we compare Dell mini 1012 with those in-expensive net books, it is much better in style, functioning, processing etc as compared to them. That is the reason why it is not acquiring its actual position in market.

Windows 7:

Windows 7 ultimate is the most versatile and efficient edition among all other editions of windows seven.

It provides your computer with remarkable features of games and multimedia for home use and for business capabilities it gives many more professional features.

Windows seven when in Dell mini 1012 , gives many advanced features for home premium and business uses to the user.

Functioning:

One of my colleague has got this Dell mini 1012 with windows 7 starter, he really had a good time with it but after 4-5 months he wanted to get rid of windows 7 from his laptop.

As he used to download heavy material from internet daily as a part of his business, he got a problem with his USB Dial up modem because of this window. We searched a lot for the easy solution but he wanted to replace it with windows Xp professional. Then somebody advised us to carry on with windows seven by upgrading its edition, he upgraded the edition to the latest windows 7 and finally got DONE with his requirements.

The Wi-Fi system in Dell mini 1012 is impressive, it catches Wi-Fi signals from really an ideal range and one enjoys this facility completely.

Another thing which didn't satisfied me and my colleague was that the working of the system of Dell mini 1012 after some specific period went really weird, CPU went a little slower so shutting the computer down or booting it up started to take little longer.

Some times opening programs was slower too. But this wasn't the fault in the system itself , the reason was the use of huge programs on the system which lessened the immunity of the system. so I advise you not to use huge programs on it or else it will lag.

Battery life:

Dell mini 1012 has a great battery life. This mini netbook is specially designed for long journeys in cars and planes. The company claimed battery life of Dell mini 1012 is approximately 3-4 hours by using continuously with continuous internet buffering but through experiments by us it lasted for two and half hours easily which is really close to the advertised timings.

Though this Dell mini 1012 with great battery timing and elegant looks is a true companion of one.

Customer Rating:

4.0/5.0

Dell Inpiron mini 1012 Underline:

This Dell Inspiron mini 1012 netbook is a stylish and elegant looking laptop with a great battery life advanced functions and lots and lots of multimedia options. It provides one to use it for business, for home premium uses , for schooling purposes and one can also use it for high quality gaming as a VGA card option is also given by this .

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