Personal Computer World articles from December 2005

Personal Computer World archives from December 2005

Editorial - Usability is key in lightweight laptops. Performance is important, but ease of use is a priority in ultraportables, says Rob Jones.(Editorial)
December 1, 2005... I use a laptop every day, rather than the desktops used by most of my colleagues at PCW. I opted for a laptop because I find it easier to transport everything with me when I'm working externally, be it from home or from a conference elsewhere...

Curtain up on new Windows.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Clive Akass. Office 12 and Windows Vista, the next generation of the world's most used software products, will incorporate the biggest changes for at least a decade, Microsoft has revealed. There are new security features, as...

How cross is Microsoft's cross platform?
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Anderson. Microsoft is going cross platform with a technology called Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere that will, in theory, allow applets to run on any device. It will be implemented as a browser plug-in and will...

Glossary and special report.
December 1, 2005... Highlighted words are included in a glossary on page 22. It's part of a three page special report, starting on page 20, by Clive Akass in London and Tim Anderson in Los Angeles. Some of the report is extracted from Tim's Test Bed blogs at...

Tiny revived - for second time.(Tiny.com acquired by Watford Electronics)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rob Jones. Watford Electronics has bought the assets of Tiny.com and says it will attempt to rebuild the company's tarnished reputation. Tiny.com went into receivership this summer leaving customers without PCs and plasma TVs...

Palm makes Apple-style pact with the enemy.
December 1, 2005... Handheld pioneer Palm has followed Apple and made a pact with a company many of its users see as Satan. But while Apple decided to use Intel processors, Palm is set to launch a Treo handheld using Microsoft's Windows Mobile software next year....

Radeon X1000 boosts speed.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. ATI claims its Radeon X1000 series of graphics cards will offer better performance than equivalents from Nvidia. The family includes the high-end X1800, previewed on page 47, the X1600 for mid-range users and the budget...

Cable giants wed.
December 1, 2005... Britain's two cable giants are to do the honourable thing and tie the knot after a long and much publicised courtship. NTL paid [pounds sterling]3.3b for Telewest to create the UK's second largest telecoms company covering more than 50 per cent...

Shock and war.
December 1, 2005... Itronix was in town for an arms fair last month and showed off two models targeted at the military and other users of rugged notebooks. One was a Tablet PC in which the processor is in a sealed compartment, water-cooled with pipes leading out...

Quality move.
December 1, 2005... The IEEE has approved the publication of the 802.11e standard for quality-of-service (QoS) on Wifi links, it was announced as we went to press. The move should lead to improved media streaming and VoIP (Voice over IP) over all three Wifi...

Happy birthday.
December 1, 2005... Microsoft celebrated its 30th birthday last month with so many announcements we had no room for our usual retrospective. Clearly it is not yet in its dotage.

Networked TV is smart move.
December 1, 2005... The latest bid to bring computing to the living room is a 37in LCD high definition (HD) TV with a media gateway that can access video, still images, web radio and other audio over a home network. Acer's AT3705W TV, which costs EUR2,299...

Sliding screen a key move for Acer's new Tablet.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Acer is still backing the tablet PC with the launch of two new models, the 14in widescreen Travelmate C310, which weighs 2.89kg, and the 12.1in, 2kg C200. The C200 is notable for eschewing the usual swivel screen in favour of the neat...

Dell boosts Media Center - and Linux.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rob Jones. Dell is to sell PCs running XP Media Center Edition later this year, giving a major boost to the platform - the company rarely moves into a market until it thinks it can make money or sell large volumes. But it's not...

Net storage.
December 1, 2005... Netgear claims its [pounds sterling]99 SC101 Storage Centre is the first product to offer homes and small offices enterprise-class protected networked storage at a fraction the normal price. You can install two IDE drives and configure them...

Talking camera.
December 1, 2005... The Axis 210A network camera supports two-way audio for tasks such as monitoring doors where you may wish to speak to visitors. It also supports Power over Ethernet, simplifying the wiring. It costs [pounds sterling]349 ex Vat from distributors...

ADSL2+ router.
December 1, 2005... D-Link has launched a router with an ADSL2+ modem, four-port Ethernet switch, onboard firewall protection and 11b/g Wifi links rated at 108Mbits/sec using Mimo (multiple in, multiple out) technology. It costs [pounds sterling]94 ex Vat.

Child care.
December 1, 2005... The latest version of Child Control 2005 allows parents to tailor web access separately for each of their children and define how much time they can spend on the PC or Internet each day. It costs $59.99 ([pounds sterling]33 approx) from...

New Framemaker.
December 1, 2005... Framemaker 7.2, the latest version of Adobe's software for publishing manuals and catalogues, has enhanced XML features, including support for both DTDs and schema. The US price is $799 ([pounds sterling]443 approx).

Shopping revolution.
December 1, 2005... A 'reverse search engine' site at www.pureprofile.co.uk will revolutionise shopping, the developers say. Instead of searching, you list your needs so that vendors of products and services can approach you.

Duo compete over mesh nets.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Hype over Zigbee wireless links has obscured a cheaper and more mature technology called Z-wave that is better for home remote-control systems, developers say. Zigbee is an industrial-strength protocol designed for wireless mesh networks...

Last-minute 'bids reduce Ebay prices'.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Accelerated dial-up specialist Onspeed faces a shrinking UK market with the increasing take-up of broadband. In an attempt to broaden its range, it has launched Onbidder, a utility it claims gives you the best chance of winning an Ebay auction...

U3 drives lack programs.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Memory specialists Kingston and Sandisk have announced their first U3 drives, designed to allow you to use your favourite applications on any PC. The idea is that you keep the code zipped up on a USB flash drive that you can use on any PC....

Wifi boost.
December 1, 2005... Researchers in India have developed a protocol that is said to increase the footprint of Wifi mesh networks and support speeds up to 20 times those on current systems. Described in a paper by Bhaskaran Raman and Kameswari Chebrolu, of the...

Bluecore5.(Bluecore technology)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Bluetooth company Cambridge Silicon Radio has released a fifth generation of its flagship Bluecore technology, with one implementation including a double-speed digital-signal processing module. The Bluecore5 chips are 40 per cent smaller...

Wire outpaced.(Wireless networks)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Wireless networks will be faster than the average wired ones by the end of the year with the launch of a new chipset, says developer Airgo. The True Mimo chipset uses multiple paths and several aerials to achieve a rated speed of 240Mbits/sec,...

Glass computers.(as the substrate for logic circuits )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Techniques allowing glass to be used as the substrate for logic circuits could lead to displays incorporating the entire systems that are driving them. A 2.5in Sharp VGA panel does its own video and audio processing. It uses coarse-grained...

Handhelds to go dual-core.
December 1, 2005... Sharp is to launch dual-core processors this year to power the next generation of portable media players. They are based on the ARM architecture that dominates handheld devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. The x86 platform has already...

Switched screens could make you see double - or 3D.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Researchers who developed an LCD screen that presents different images to two users (see PCW October, page 28) are trying to work out a way to get it to switch into 3D and privacy modes. Displays supporting one or other of these modes can...

02 be in Oxford now that mobile TV is there ... Clive Akass witnesses the birth of broadcast data.
December 1, 2005... True mobile television had its first public outing in Britain last month when 02 launched a trial in Oxford using DVB-H, a version of the technology used for Freeview. First impressions are that the system works, insofar as one can judge from a...

WinFS is good but not magic.(Vista's WinFS )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... There is more to Vista's WinFS layer than fast searching: it enables data to be linked and shared across applications. For example, using drag and drop you could link your holiday snaps with address book entries to identify the people pictured....

Radical changes drive the need for Expression suite.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Anderson. The big picture is that Windows is changing, and radically. Applications built with XAML use DirectX, so for the first time your high-powered graphics card will make a difference for ordinary applications. We will see...

Inside 21st-century Windows.
December 1, 2005... New ways of managing, visualising and using information in Vista, the next generation of Windows, were demonstrated at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Particular attention has been paid to search facilities,...

Pdf move linked to lockout.
December 1, 2005... The biggest surprise of the Microsoft announcements was that Office 12 will support Adobe's portable document format (pdf). Mysteriously, this came days after the Developers Conference. Odder still, the new Office suite boasts a technology that...

VBA bows out for new toolkit.(Visual Studio Tools for Applications)(Visual Basic Application )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2005... Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) is to replace Visual Basic for Applications as a tool for customising applications. It extends .Net coding into macro languages. The Visual Basic and C# programming language will be extended with...

Office loses menus in favour of ribbons.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Anderson. Prepare for a shock. Office 12 doesn't have menus. In their place is a context-sensitive ribbon bar, with icons that change dynamically depending on what you are doing. Tiny tooltips are also out, replaced by chunky,...

New software breeds new jargon - Vista terms explained.
December 1, 2005... The amount of jargon generated by the new Windows gives some idea of the scope of the changes to come. Here is just a sample: Acrylic: Vector and bitmap graphics packages for application design. Part of the Expression suite. Aero: A...

PCW awards for excellence - Vote for the best in class.
December 1, 2005... The time has come again to vote for your top products and manufacturers from the past 12 months, as we search for the best of the best in the 2005 PCW Awards for Excellence. The Awards celebrate the innovation and inventiveness of firms in...

Interactive - Your views, our say. Send your letters to The Editor, PCW, VNU Business Publications, 32-34 Broadwick Street, London. W1A 2HG.(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2005... LETTER OF THE MONTH Caveat vendor I was interested to read your article 'Lay down the law' (October issue). This seems to have been written based on the premise that many IT retailers set out to be unhelpful and try to make life...

Interactive - Reader watchdog - the Adviser. PCW gives advice on your rights. Send details of your dispute to theadviser@pcw.co.uk. Please provide a daytime telephone number so we can contact you if necessary.
December 1, 2005... DEMON'S BONE OF CONTENTION I signed up to Demon Home broadband at the start of July for [pounds sterling]19.99 per month. Within two weeks I noticed that the speeds began to drop off at peak times to about 300-400Kbits/sec, and my pings in...

Interactive - Inside information - Gordon Laing - Lower your high definition expectations. HD provides better visual and audio quality, but Gordon Laing asks how many of us will fork out for new kit to get the benefit.
December 1, 2005... Are you excited about the arrival of high definition TV in the UK? The prospect of a picture packed with so much detail it looks lifelike even on a huge screen? Yep, high definition (HD) sure looks good, but I'll bet your feelings for it pale...

Interactive - kewney@large - Yacht race debunks a long-standing myth. Despite the belief that Apple and Sony systems are unreliable, Guy Kewney believes in some environments they are ideal.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Guy Kewney. I don't know any Mac users who are aware of the claims that nearly half the latest G5 models will overheat and die in their first year. If BMW was discovered to be selling a model of car that had to go back to the...

Interactive - Straight talking - Don't call us O2 - we won't call you. Technology advances will let you watch soaps and more on your mobile without the help of cellphone companies, says Barry Fox.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Barry Fox, barryf@pcw.co.uk. You've seen the headlines. Soaps are coming to your mobile phone. Dave Williams, O2's chief technology officer, said: 'There will be many millions of mobile TV viewers worldwide by 2010.' It's...

Reviews - Trusted tests from the UK's best Labs - What's new this month.
December 1, 2005... Everyone expected Apple to announce the Rokr phone at a recent press conference, but few anticipated the impressive new flash-memory Ipod Nano. It still refuses to play Microsoft DRM (digital rights management) tracks, but with Apple offering...

Reviews - Hardware - Gaming pc - Alienware Aurora 5500. Strong and fast gaming performance, but not for the faint hearted.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. Alienware is well known for its audaciously designed and highly effective gaming PCs. The Aurora 5500 is no different, thanks mainly to its use of the latest Nvidia graphics card - the Geforce 7800 GTX. In comparison...

Reviews - Hardware - ATI Radeon X1800 XT. The new king of the graphics card hill.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The Radeon X1800 XT is the flagship model in ATI's new X1000 family of graphics cards. It is a direct competitor to Nvidia's high-end Geforce 7800 GTX card, but has several features that set it apart. It is the...

Reviews - Hardware - Advent DHE 1000. Well priced, but you may not want it in your living room.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. If Media Centers are to be accepted into the lounge environment, they have to be stylishly designed. Thanks to the bulky design and old-fashioned green LED screen, Advent's DHE 1000 will be the ugly duckling of your...

Reviews - Hardware - Panasonic Toughbook CF-51. Positive elements, but can't outdo the competition.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The CF-51 is the latest addition to Panasonic's Toughbook range; a set of notebooks designed to cope with use in hostile environments. Despite its rather industrial appearance, the CF-51 is a semi-ruggedised model, which...

Reviews - Hardware - Evesham Quest A220. Poor graphics, but suitable as a second PC.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. With processor and graphics specifications soaring by the minute, it's easy to get lost in the hype and buy something you really don't need. Priced at [pounds sterling]699, the no-frills Evesham Quest A220 will make...

Reviews - Peripherals - Sony PSP. The PSP is finally here - find out if lives up to the hype.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. One of the most anticipated gaming devices of the year is finally with us - the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP). The slick design is unmistakably Sony, while the high-quality 4.3in widescreen display makes games,...

Reviews - Peripherals - Philips Brilliance 190B6CG. Great way to increase your desktop space, as long as you're not a perfectionist.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The 190B6CG is the newest addition to the Philips Brilliance range. It looks almost identical to the more advanced 190P, which is no bad thing. It has a thin outer bezel that doesn't distract your attention from the main...

Reviews - Peripherals - Lacie Safe Mobile Hard Drive. Keep your data safe from prying eyes.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Cliff Joseph. Lacie is the latest manufacturer to leap on the biometric bandwagon and its Safe Mobile Hard Drive could come in handy for business users who are concerned about the security of their data. Our review unit had a...

Reviews - Peripherals - Panasonic VDRM55B. You can burn footage straight to DVD, but there are compromises.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. DVD camcorders have limitations but they're very easy to use. For those who want to point, shoot and play back video footage on a DVD player without a computer, the Panasonic VDRM55B is perfect. With an 800,000 pixel...

Reviews - Peripherals - Konica Minolta Dimage X1. The world's first 8megapixel compact impresses in some, but not all, areas.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. Although people are aware that more pixels doesn't always mean better quality, it hasn't stopped Konica Minolta from releasing the first 8megapixel compact camera - the Dimage X1. The main advantage of an...

Reviews - Peripherals - Ipod Nano. Impossibly small, but by no means perfect.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Cliff Joseph. Launched last month alongside the Apple and Motorola Rokr phone (see page 57), the new Ipod Nano replaces the highly successful Ipod Mini. Available in both black and white, the Nano is even smaller than the Mini....

Reviews - Peripherals - Creative Zen Nano Plus. The Ipod's competition launches a new challenge.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. Creative's dominance of the flash digital music player market has taken a bit of a beating of late, thanks in main to the popularity of the Ipod Shuffle. In an attempt to combat this and the threat from the Ipod Nano...

Reviews - Peripherals - Western Digital Netcenter. Effortlessly share content across your network.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. Sharing files between various computers has become commonplace. Rather than using Windows' own sharing utility, the Western Digital Netcenter Nas (network-attached storage) can store and distribute data without needing...

Reviews - Peripherals - Canon Pixma MP150. The price is right, so check out the performance.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Dhanendran. Canon's latest multifunction device (MFD) is branded with the Pixma logo, indicating that, like Lexmark, Canon now sees its all-in-one models as being capable of photo printing to high quality. The Pixma MP150...

Reviews - Peripherals - Lexmark P6350. Find out if a higher price equals higher quality.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Dhanendran. Lexmark's latest entry in the world of multifunction devices (MFDs) is the P6350. It's a good-looking model and features an LCD screen on the front panel offering step-by-step instructions for printing, scanning...

Reviews - Peripherals - Motorola Rokr E1. A mobile phone that thinks it's an Ipod.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The Motorola Rokr E1 is the first mobile phone to work with Apple's Itunes music-management software. While this may sound like a match made in heaven, the Rokr E1 is let down in several areas. Its pearl-white finish is...

Reviews - Peripherals - Sony Ericsson D750i. 2megapixel photos, but no substitute for a digital camera.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rob Jones. Sony Ericsson's D750i is available exclusively on the T-mobile network, but is otherwise the same as the company's K750i phone. It is a small, light smartphone that sports an auto-focus 2megapixel camera, FM radio and...

Reviews - Components - Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLI.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Following the Fatal1ty tradition, this new Abit board comes with a red PCB, Abit's own Otes cooling technology and a multitude of overclocking options in the Bios. Red LEDs are scattered everywhere, even on the underside. It's light on...

Reviews - Components - Akasa EVO120.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Akasa has a huge range of products to help your PC keep its cool, the latest of which is the EVO120 CPU cooler. Large fans are the way to go if you want quieter cooling - they shift the same volumes of air as smaller fans but with less...

Reviews - Components - Antec Titan 550.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... The Titan 550 is primarily aimed at the server market but will also interest enthusiasts. Built from 1mm steel and sporting a black plastic fascia, it weighs a whopping 14kg. The case has plenty of space for cooling fans. It comes with a 120mm...

Reviews - Components - Aopen Aeolus PCX6600GT-DVD128 Xtreme.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... With its impressive gaming performance and reasonable price, Nvidia's Geforce 6600GT is a popular choice in the mainstream graphics card market. Aopen's latest card based on this chip has a slightly faster memory clock and memory chips than the...

Reviews - Components - Asus Extreme N6600GT Silencer.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Silent graphics cards that offer reasonable gaming performance are thin on the ground, so any addition to the ranks is always welcome. Asus already has a silent card based on Nvidia's Geforce 6600 GPU, but has now released a silent version of...

Reviews - Components - Asus X-Mars CPU fan.
December 1, 2005... At first glance, Asus's latest CPU cooler looks a chunky beast, but in fact it weighs just 385g - quite a contrast to some of the hefty coolers we've seen recently. It supports all the latest AMD CPUs (Socket 754, 939 and 940), including the...

Reviews - Components - Elan Vital Greenerger SSM.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... The SSM part of the Elan Vital Greenerger power supply stands for Super Silent Mode and, although the supply comes with a 120mm cooling fan, this is only used when the supply is outputting near its 500w maximum. At all other times, the fan...

Reviews - Components - Enermax EG285ST-BW.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... The trouble with building a small-format PC is that the run-of-the-mill Micro ATX power supplies don't pump out that much power. The result is you have to be extra cautious about which components you add. Enermax's EG285ST-BW gives you more...

Reviews - Software - Abbyy Finereader 8. A new, improved version, but its cost may diminish its appeal for some.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Smith. The paperless office is a great idea, but if you have large amounts of paper-based records needing to be converted into electronic format, things can start to get tricky. Abbyy Finereader 8 Professional can greatly...

Reviews - Software - Sonic DVDit 6. The interface may be straightforward but don't expect any hand-holding.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Jonathan Parkyn. Sonic, it seems, is one of those companies that enjoys repositioning itself in the marketplace every so often. Whereas once people might have associated the brand with the easy-to-use MyDVD application that came...

Reviews - Software - McAfee Internet Security Suite. A range of protection with very few limitations.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Tim Smith. Choosing a package such as McAfee Internet Security Suite solves a growing problem, namely being safe online without spending your time installing updates rather than getting on with the task in hand. Combining...

Reviews - Software - Redshift 5.1 Deluxe Edition.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Anna Lagerkvist. If you thought geographic applications such as Google Earth were impressive, then Redshift 5.1 Deluxe Edition, which turns your computer into a planetarium, will blow you away. It acts as your guide to the stars,...

Reviews - Software - Language Translator.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Anna Lagerkvist. Language Translator includes French, Italian and German among its 10 languages. The software translates whole emails or web pages straight from your browser without losing formatting, links or graphics. It analyses...

Reviews - Software - Acdsee 8 Photo Manager.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. This revision of ACDsee, which enables you to edit and organise large collections of digital images, features a folders pane for browsing folders on your hard drive and a calendar pane so you can view photos by month....

Reviews - Software - Coolect.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. Coolect helps you make associations between events, contacts and your digital media by creating or importing contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express, and importing digital images, movies, or music into the program. ...

Reviews - Games - Serious Sam 2. A psychedelic visual treat for trigger-happy gamers.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The original Serious Sam was a big departure from the status quo of first-person shooters, forsaking a slow-paced tactical approach for frenetic, non-stop blasting action. Serious Sam 2 continues this trend and puts...

Reviews - Games - Gary Grigsby's World at War. Send your troops into battle and plan their movements towards victory.
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. World at War is an ambitious realtime strategy (RTS) game set around the Second World War. Players can take control of Germany (with Italy), Russia, Japan, China, and the Western Allies (the USA and Great Britain). ...

Reviews - Games - MotoGP: Ultimate Racing Technology 3. Rev up your bike, accelerate and feel that adrenalin flow.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. Many agree there's nothing like having a powerful machine throbbing between your legs. Climax, the aptly named UK developer, seems to share this sentiment, as it gears up the latest instalment of MotoGP: Ultimate Racing...

Review - Inkjet cartridges group test - Think ink. Using third-party inks in your printer is tempting, especially as the original products are more expensive. Terry Relph-Knight finds out whether low-cost consumables are worth your cash.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... The global inkjet cartridge market is big business, so much so that, as well as the third-party companies selling their own-brand cartridges or refills, a substantial number of counterfeit cartridges are being sold. Genuine original...

Reviews - Ultraportable laptops group test - Notebooks for weightwatchers. Portability is key if you want to carry your laptop around for long periods of time, but a tiny device can mean usability is sacrificed. Rory Reid tests six systems weighing less than 2kg.
December 1, 2005... Most will agree there are two types of notebook PC; one aimed at users who want to replace their existing desktop computer and the other designed for those who favour portability. We looked back to the design of the first clamshell...

Reviews - Photo-editing software group test - Altered images for under [pounds sterling]100. Whatever your level of experience, there is a photo-editing package that will help you enhance your digital pictures - and it doesn't have to cost the earth. Ken McMahon puts six to the test[QQ].(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... [PP] 97 [PL] UK We've weighed up six photo-editing applications designed and priced for digital camera owners ranging from novices to ambitious amateurs and professionals. How can one application address such a wide range of users?...

Reviews - Digital SLR cameras group test - Budget digital SLRs in focus. Technology advances mean that photographers looking for high quality at a reasonable cost can buy a camera that's right for them. Paul Monckton tests six devices and explains all.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... Digital SLR cameras have until fairly recently been prohibitively expensive for amateur photographers. At prices well into the thousands of pounds, only those making a good living - probably from photography - could justify the expense. In...

Reviews - VNU labs - How we test. Performance testing is an important part of PCW's reviewing process and to obtain our authoritative results we use the UK's best PC testing resource - VNU Labs. Here we explain why you can trust our results and give you a tour of our most frequently used benchmark programs.(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2005... One of the main reasons people upgrade their PCs is because their old model seems 'too slow'. But how do you tell whether the one you're going to replace it with is any faster? At PCW we take PC testing very seriously and we have the UK's best...