Personal Computer World articles from March 2005

Personal Computer World archives from March 2005

Editorial - A Consumers need savvy sales staff. Rob Jones calls for PC retailers to improve training for staff selling new technologies.(Editorial)
March 1, 2005... Media Center PCs feature heavily in this issue and, whatever your view on Microsoft's latest piece of software, they are beginning to attract the attention of the general public. The last version suffered from some inbuilt weaknesses, was...

How we test. PCW uses the services of VNU Labs to perform all its hardware testing. VNU Labs' highly experienced staff use industry-standard benchmarks and methodologies to generate accurate, repeatable test results. Below you'll find the details of the most frequently used benchmarks that PCW publishes.
March 1, 2005... SYSmark 2004 Sysmark 2004 is a system productivity benchmark, designed to reflect system performance when running the most popular application software in real-world scenarios with real-world workloads. Sysmark 2004 uses 15...

All change on notebooks.
March 1, 2005... Byline: Clive Akass. A new Intel mobile platform is about to render notebooks bought at Christmas out of date. The next-generation Centrino architecture, codenamed Sonoma and originally slated to ship last year, uses a new 915GM chipset...

Latest from the greatest computing show in the US.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Opening just as we went to press was the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which has become the major computing event following the decline of Comdex - cancelled last year, possibly never to return. The shift reflects the growing...

Windows barred to Player.(Microsoft to sell XP operating systems without Windows Media Player)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Windows PCs and packaged versions of the XP operating system will be sold without Windows Media Player in Europe, following a recent court ruling. Microsoft will also have to open secret communications protocols to enable rival products to work...

Movies coming to a phone near you.(Rok Entertainment launches new technology)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Full-length feature films for viewing on a mobile phone become available this month with the launch of a new technology from UK company Rok Entertainment. They come on a [pounds sterling]14.99 Multimedia Card (MMC), which is compatible...

Talking phone.(Samsung Group debuts new mobile phones)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Samsung unveiled the p207 phone, that will convert speech into text for sending messages. Another model, the a890, allows you to write frequently used messages, such as 'call me', and then activate them simply by speaking the words. 'This...

Good wheeze?(new ringtone released)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Negative advertising has finally got to the mobile-phone market, with the release of what is described as the most annoying ringtone in the world, which is saying something. It is the sound of someone coughing and you can get it at...

Mips chips.(Advanced Micro Devices Inc. launches new mobile processor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... AMD has launched a new Au1200 mobile processor designed for portable media players and based on the Mips architecture - unlike Intel chips in this market, which have ARM-based cores. A number of manufacturers have said they will use the Au1200,...

PC piracy tax.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... PC buyers in Germany will have to pay around [pounds sterling]8 more for a PC after a court ruling that a computer is like a video blank tape in that it can be used to pirate content and is therefore liable to a levy to recompense copyright...

Spycam alert.(access of security cameras)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Thousands of security cameras are accessible through a simple Google search because their links have not been password protected, warns a search expert. For full story, see www.pcw.co.uk/news/1160289.

Gadgets galore on show at CES.
March 1, 2005... News of some exhibits at the Consumer Electronic Show (see page 16) was available before the show opened as we went to press. The DPP-TV (left) from Imagebank is basically a portable CD-RW burner with a 12-format card reader that lets you...

Play PC games to stay fit.(Powergrid Fitness develops new exercise equipment)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A US company has come up with an answer to fears that computer games are encouraging unfitness and obesity. It has developed an exercise machine that doubles as a controller for games consoles. The Kilowatt 'isometric trainer' replaces the...

Whatever happened to desktop video?(Polycom Inc. releases new software codec)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The oddest aspect of the hype around 3G is that it is plugging mobile video calls as the 'next big thing' when they have yet to take off big-time on fixed links. Videoconferencing is routine in some companies, mostly using products from...

China flexes IT's muscles.(information technology)
March 1, 2005... The sale late last year of IBM's PC division to Chinese giant Lenovo (see below) was not the only sign of an ominous shift of the IT industry's centre of gravity towards the emerging economic superpower and its neighbours. Networking giant...

IBM buyer Lenovo joins major league in PC sector.(Lenovo Group Ltd.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The [pounds sterling]900m deal to sell IBM's PC hardware business to Lenovo will make the Chinese manufacturer the third biggest PC vendor in the world, behind Dell and HP. In one sense it will make little difference because, like many other...

Linux mobiles to get Palm front end.(Palmsource)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... China Mobilesoft (CMS), the company acquired by Palmsource (see right), sells mobile-phone software based around mLinux, a version of the open-source operating system tailored for devices with low processing power. Palmsource will be able...

Anger over spam revenge.(Lycos Europe drops 'spam the spammers' scheme)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Web portal Lycos dropped a 'spam the spammers' scheme (see PCW February, page 16) shortly after launch following a barrage of criticism. Its free 'Make Love Not Spam' screensaver used PC slack time to bombard the sites of known spammers in a...

Windows in Welsh.(product information)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... There'll be a welcome on the hillsides for Microsoft's latest venture, a Welsh implementation of Windows. Not being Welsh speakers ourselves, we were bemused to discover that the venerable language had words for every menu and option except,...

Alert issued as NT4 hits buffers.(Microsoft Windows NT)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... People using Windows NT are warned that free support for all versions ended on 1 January. Some help and 'critical' security patches will be available for two years, but only to companies paying an extra flat fee. Support for NT4...

Porn spotter.(Ishield; plug-in software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A [pounds sterling]9.95 browser plug-in is said to recognise downloaded porn pictures on a PC and replace them with a 'neutral image'. Ishield is designed to give parents and people who run public-access PCs control over what can be downloaded....

Fair hypocrisy?(research on pirated software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... People who are happy to pay a premium for Fair Trade produce, to ensure growers get paid a fair price, are not so ethical with regard to pirated goods, according to a survey commissioned by Microsoft. Just over four in 10 (43 per cent) of...

Linux aid.(file transfer software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A software tool that is said to ease migration from Windows to Linux PCs has been released by Alacos. Linux Migration Agent Professional helps transfer documents, email and settings to the new environment. It costs from $29.95 ([pounds...

Rich pickings.(file format conversion software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... You can translate multiple rich-text format files into web pages at the click of a button with the aid of RTF to XHTML Converter 1.15 for Windows. It costs $34.50 ([pounds sterling]18.50) from www.sautin.com.

Web record.(internet traffic)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Traffic per second through the London Internet Exchange (Linx), the world's biggest web exchange, hit a record 50Gbits on Boxing Day and 45Gbits on Christmas Day - more than double the figures for last year. Figures for the three previous...

Type with your trousers.(Eleksen develops new fabric)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A UK company has developed a fabric that could turn your trousers into a keyboard. The five-layer material, between 0.6mm and 1mm thick, has already been used in roll-up keyboards supplied to Logitech and Vodafone for use with specific devices....

But don't get too heated about it.(usage of notebooks reduces male sperm count)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... While on the subject of trousers (see story above), you may have noted with some alarm a report last month alleging that prolonged notebook use appears to reduce male fertility. The problem stems from the fact that the machine tries to use your...

HD-DVD and Blu-ray shape up for format war.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD next-generation optical storage is becoming an all-out format war, with both sides claiming victories. No sooner had the Blu-ray camp, headed by Sony, announced the backing of Walt Disney Studios, when the...

UK in depth.(Intermap Technologies Inc. produces new digital contour map)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The Ordnance Survey used to boast that Britain was the best-mapped country in the world, though that was in the days before technology made things a little easier for cartographers. Now Intermap has produced what it claims is the most accurate...

Worm turns.(british youth arrested)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A British 16-year-old who released the Randex worm, turning infected machines into potential spam-generating 'zombies', has received a suspended six-month sentence at South Cheshire Juvenile Court in Crewe. He was arrested, along with two...

[pounds sterling]500 laptop.(Evesham Technology launches new laptop computer)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Evesham Technology has launched 15in notebook for [pounds sterling]499.99 inc Vat. The Quest Explorer is built round an AMD Sempron mobile processor and Windows XP Home Edition and has 256MB of DDR Ram, a 40GB hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW drive....

Online boom.(British Telecommunications PLC signs four million broadband customers)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... BT has signed up four million wholesale broadband customers and is connecting a new customer every 10 seconds, it announced last month.

Networks - Super Wifi hits 1Gbit/sec.(research)
March 1, 2005... Researchers have used an advanced form of the technology used in Wifi to achieve a record wireless throughput of 1Gbit/second. The range was about 5m across a lab, but researchers say it could have reached further. It used orthogonal...

Networks - Web terminal hits the Dect.(Westel Inc. to launch new web terminal in UK)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... US Wifi vendor Westel is to launch this device in the UK in 2006. It is a combined Windows CE-based web terminal, 11g-plus Wifi access point, four-port 10/100 switch that can optionally be used as a DSL modem - cable users disable this if...

New chips take the strain.(production processes)
March 1, 2005... A new way of making silicon processors will boost performance by up to 24 per cent for a given power drain - or give the same performance using less power, according to joint developers IBM and AMD. The basis of the technique has been known...

Lacie drives bypass the server.(Lacie Ethernet Drive introduced)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Lacie, which has been pushing a series of aggressively priced external drives with capacities up to 1.6TB (see review page 71), has launched a series of network-enabled models. The 800GB Lacie Ethernet Drive, which includes an embedded...

HP drops out.(Hewlett-Packard Co. ends partnership with Intel Corp.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... HP has ended its partnership with Intel over development of the Itanium processor in the latest blow to the decade-long project to build a next-generation platform for enterprise systems. The Itanium, which uses a completely new instruction...

Upright bits increase disk capacities.(Toshiba develops new recording technolgy)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Toshiba has claimed a breakthrough in commercial application of a technique called perpendicular recording to produce disks packing 206Mbits into a square millimetre - equivalent to 133Gbits per square inch. Several companies have been...

Wifi projectors.(NEC (UK) Ltd. introduces new projectors)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... NEC has launched two projectors equipped with 11g Wifi, allowing them to be linked wirelessly to a PC at speeds of up to 30Mbits/sec. www.nec.co.uk.

Dual Matrox.(Matrox releases graphics card)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Matrox has released what it says is the first single graphics card to support both dual-display and high-definition television. The PCI-Express-based Parhelia APVe features dual 400MHz Ramdacs with independent lookup tables for fully symmetric...

Fast memory.(Samsung Group)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Samsung claims a breakthrough with the fastest-yet graphics memory chip with the highest data density available. The 512MB GDDR3 synchronous D-Ram module is already shipping to graphics-card and console manufacturers.

Hush puppy.(Hush Technologies unleashes new computer)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Silent-PC specialist Hush Technologies has added a dual-TV option to its Hush Media Center PC range, allowing you to record one analogue TV program while watching another. www.hushtechnologies.net.

G-whizz.(ADS Technologies Inc. launches enhanced version of audio video receivers)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... ADS Tech has launched a new Wifi 11g-enabled version of its me2 Media-Link box that allows you to deliver digital entertainment from a PC to a TV. It costs [pounds sterling]199.99 and can be used with a wired network link. www.adstech.com....

Trojan force.(Wintasks 5 Pro)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Wintasks 5 Pro monitors which applications PCs are running to identify trojans and spyware. It also tracks why PCs start running slow. Features include a process library with virus data. It costs $49.95 ([pounds sterling]26) from...

Dual core coming soon.(processors)
March 1, 2005... Dual-core processors based on today's Prescott generation of the Pentium architecture will be available by the middle of 2005, Intel has confirmed. The new chips, codenamed Smithfield, are effectively two processors in one. They will be...

Notebooks take Napa to save power.(Yonah notebook processor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... Notebook processors will also go dual-core in 2005 with the launch of a design codenamed Yonah later in the year. It will be made using a next-generation 65nm process and will include power management resources. But battery life is...

[pounds sterling]24,000 home PC.(Vivadi Saturn )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... This system, on sale at Harrods, could qualify as the most expensive consumer system ever. The Vivadi Saturn is at heart a Media Center PC and comes with a 46in plasma screen, a 200GB hard disk and a DVD recorder. The base unit costs [pounds...

Newbee Zigbee rivals Bluetooth.(Freescale Semiconductor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... A specification for yet another wireless data technology was approved at the end of 2004. Zigbee transmits at only 250Kbits/sec, barely a tenth the data rate of the latest Blueooth spec, but it can reach further with a range of more than 100m....

Showshifter 3.10 boosts listings.(product enhancement)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2005... The latest version of Showshifter, the major rival in the UK to Microsoft's Media Center software, has a revamped showguide that populates itself with programme information obtained from the web or the TV signal. Showshifter 3.10 also has...

Reviews - Peripherals - Creative Zen Micro. First serious challenger to the Ipod Mini.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. Having failed to completely knock Apple's Ipod off the top slot, Creative is gunning for its younger sibling with the launch of the 5GB Zen Micro. The product is a direct competitor to the Ipod mini - it's even...

Reviews - Peripherals - Terratec Cinergy 400 TV. Great range of features including WinDVR.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Emilie Martin. Terratec's Cinergy 400 TV Mobile turns your notebook into a portable TV and digital video recorder, complete with a timeshifting option that lets you 'pause' live broadcasts. Setup is easy - put the card into a PC...

Reviews - Peripherals - Voice over IP routers. Six devices on test that let you use VoIP with your phone handset.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Alan Stevens. This season's must-have technology is Voice over IP (VoIP), the system that lets you make phone calls for free using spare broadband capacity. Admittedly you can only make them to similarly equipped VoIP users, but...

Reviews - Peripherals - Motorola A1000 v Sony Ericsson V800. Find out how two of the latest 3G phones compare as we put them head to head.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. With Vodafone and Three spending huge sums promoting their new 3G phone services, handset manufacturers are responding with new models designed to take full advantage of the facilities. Two of the latest to hit the...

Reviews - Peripherals - Lacie 1TB Bigger Disk Extreme.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Clive Akass. The Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme external drive has the once almost unimaginable capacity of 1TB (1,000GB) - enough to store at least 200 DVD movies, or more than 1,500 hours of VHS-quality video with CD-standard stereo...

Reviews - Peripherals - Creative Inspire T5900.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. Creative's latest Inspire speaker set is a reasonably priced 5.1 system designed to add an extra dimension to movies, music and games. The subwoofer is encased in wood, so there's no rattling plastic, and the five...

Reviews - Peripherals - Fingerprint Recognition Memory Stick.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Anna Lagerkvist. USB keys have made it much easier to move large files between PCs on a day-to-day basis, cutting down on the need to email documents back and forth or move data across a network. The latest from Cables and Stuff...

Reviews - Peripherals - Matias Tactile Pro keyboard.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Nigel Whitfield. Modern keyboards are, by and large, rubbish. Spongy affairs with membrane keys, they don't feel as positive as the original IBM or Apple keyboards. Step forward the Matias Tactilepro, based on the mechanical...

Reviews - Overclocking - Gainward Powerpack Ultra 2400 256MB.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Gainward's Golden Sample graphics cards always promise something special, and the Ultra 2400 doesn't disappoint. Based around a Geforce 6800GT, the card uses an Nvidia reference design but Gainward has gone for its own cooling system to allow...

Reviews - Overclocking - Antec Phantom 350w.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... With the ever-increasing demand for quiet components, the choice of fanless power supplies is growing on a daily basis. The 350w Phantom is the latest from Antec. As with all Antec products, build quality is second to none. Solidly...

Reviews - Overclocking - Aerocool Aeropower II +SE 450w.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Aerocool's Aeropower II +SE is the perfect power supply for PCs with a transparent side panel. Finished with blue LED-lit fans, blue acrylic windows and polished titanium, it certainly stands out from the crowd. Underneath all of the glitz...

Reviews - Overclocking - Vantec UV Cable Braid Sleeving Kit.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Another product that's great for PCs with a clear side panel, Vantec's UV Braid Cable Sleeve Kit is designed to hide any messy leads. It comes in a range of ultraviolet reactive colours and consists of the sleeving, heatshrink tubing for making...

Reviews - Overclocking - Aerocool Aeroengine (Black).(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Aerocool's Aeroengine case is definitely for those who want a PC that stands out from the crowd, and it's immediately obvious where the name comes from. Dominating the front of this steel case is a 12cm fan housed inside a silver cowling,...

Reviews - Overclocking - Nexus Prolong.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... The latest high-end power supplies come with thermal sensors that keep the system fans spinning after you've switched off the machine, until the inside of the case reaches a safe temperature. This helps to extend the lifespan of individual...

Reviews - Overclocking - Nexus Disktwin.(Brief Article)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... It's all very well fitting a quiet case and silent cooling fans, but you may still find your PC is noisy thanks to a rattling hard drive. How do you solve this problem? Well, apart from replacing the drive with a quieter model (but even then...

Reviews - Software - Pinnacle Studio Media Suite. An overwhelming amount of software for your money, but it's not all useful.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: James Morris. Software package deals can be a double-edged sword. You get lots of software for a discount price, but you may end up with loads of stuff you don't need. Pinnacle's Studio Media Suite is different. Aside from an array...

Reviews - Software - AVG Free Edition. Protect your PC from viruses for free.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Laura Jones. Grisoft lets you download a free version of its AVG anti-virus software, a fully functional, if limited, package. While it's quick to point out how much better the paid-for version is, this still offers good...

Reviews - Software - Pinnacle Studio Media Suite. A viable alternative to keyboard input.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Clive Akass. Scansoft claims Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 makes 20 per cent fewer errors than version 7, and can be up to 99 per cent accurate, which is better than most typists. DNS8 can make as few as one mistake in 100 words,...

Reviews - Software - Quark Xpress 6.5 for Windows. This is still the market leader, but for how much longer?(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: John Rennie. It's rare for a software package to completely dominate its market, but for the past decade or so, professional desktop publishing has been entirely synonymous with Quark Xpress. Go back to 1990 and the nascent DTP...

Reviews - Software - Ulead Photoimpact 10. Borrowing some features from Photoshop, Ulead's latest image editor is great value.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Ken McMahon. Following a diversion from sequential numbering with Photoimpact XL, Ulead has made a return to convention with the release of Photoimpact 10. Ulead's package has been criticised in the past for its unwieldy...

Retro News - When UK computing led the world.(Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age)(Book Review)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Clive Akass. The sale of IBM's PC division to a Chinese company seemed like a transfer of IT heritage. Yet, as a new book relates, Britain had a computer working five years before the first IBM. The impact of last year's sale...

Columns - Kewney @ large - Who cares about technical specs? Consumers put notebook style above specs, says Guy Kewney; something IBM's new owners should consider.(market research of personal computers)(Column)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Guy Kewney, guyk@pcw.co.uk. Watching a performance of The Princess Bride in widescreen DVD format on my brand new NEC I-Select notebook on holiday last year, a visitor asked what had happened to my faithful Thinkpad X31. This...

Columns - Inside information - It's intricate but worth the effort. Gordon Laing grasps the opportunity to install Media Center on his own PC, but finds it's not an easy task.(Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005)(Product/Service Evaluation)(Column)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Gordon Laing, gordonl@pcw.co.uk. I've spent the last fortnight struggling to install Windows XP Media Center 2005 on my own PC. To be fair, Microsoft never said it was going to be easy - indeed Media Center was never intended for...

Columns - Straight talking - A patently tricky source of concern. Barry Fox explains why Europe's proposed new patent laws are worrying computer programmers.(Column)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Barry Fox, barryf@pcw.co.uk. If you had walked down Victoria Street in London in mid-December you might have spotted Alan Cox, author of much of the code inside the Linux kernel, loitering outside the DTI building. Inside, our...

Columns - IT matters - Don't fall through a security loophole. Technology needs to become more secure and consumers more educated, thinks Alex Arias.(Column)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Alex Arias, alexander_arias@vnu.co.uk. The news is riddled with stories of phishing scams, premium-rate diallers and exploited security holes in Windows PCs. But to what extent is this a result of users' ignorance, lack of...

Reviews.
March 1, 2005... At PCW we've always applauded companies that go the extra mile when naming products. Until recently, it looked as if the days of such greats as the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga and Hercules Terminator Beast were long gone. This month, our...

Reviews - Media Center PC - Evesham Decimator. An impressive, but expensive, system that lives up to its name.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Dhanendran. First things first: the Evesham Decimator has the best name we've heard in quite a while. It also has the looks to match. A bit bigger than the average tower, it sports an all-over brushed-metal finish with a...

Reviews - Hardware - Mini Computers Theatrino. Plenty of features packed into a tiny case.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Anthony Dhanendran. Just missing our group test of Media Centers on page 101 by a whisker, the Theatrino is certainly a small PC. It's designed to sit under your television and take care of your viewing and listening needs, as well...

Reviews - Hardware - Mesh Fireblade SLI. The latest Nvidia chipset and graphics.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Leo Waldock. Look inside Mesh's latest PC and you'll find two Leadtek Geforce 6600GT graphics cards. The Fireblade is the first system we've seen to employ Nvidia's Nforce4 chipset and SLI (scalable link interface) technology,...

Reviews - Hardware - Advent T9420. A great performer with plenty of storage options.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. The Advent T9402 is one of two PCs this month to feature a 3.8GHz Pentium 4. Here Intel's flagship processor has been twinned with its own Grantsdale 915 chipset and a substantial 1GB of fast DDR400 memory. Given...

Reviews - Hardware - Dell Inspiron 9200. A large and stylish notebook that's comfortable to use.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Rory Reid. Dell's Inspiron 9200 is the follow-up to the 9100 desktop replacement notebook reviewed last month. The most obvious change is a new look - the system is housed in an eye-catching silver chassis, complemented by a black...

Reviews - Peripherals - Palm Tungsten T5. A great-looking device to spice up the range.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Luke Peters. If you've played with previous Palm Tungsten PDAs, the T5 will seem familiar. Physically, it combines the build and looks of the E and T3 models and offers a 320 x 480 Transflective TFT colour screen. The T5 doesn't...

Reviews - Peripherals - Pinnacle Mediacenter 300i. A good-value all-in-one PVR.(personal video recorder)(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. If you like the look of Microsoft Media Center (see our group test on p101) but don't fancy shelling out for a new PC, there are some alternatives. Pinnacle's latest offering is the PCTV Mediacenter 300i and consists...

Reviews - Peripherals - Contax U4R. Interesting design, but the price is high.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Will Stapley. Contax is renowned for developing stylish cameras and the new 4megapixel U4R, with its Carl Zeiss lens, is no different. Sporting a brushed magnesium and aluminium casing along with a tanned leather pad on the front,...

Reviews - Peripherals - Canon Ixus 30. Not cheap, but still an excellent choice.(Product/Service Evaluation)
March 1, 2005... Byline: Emilie Martin. Over the past few years, digital cameras have become increasingly compact and portable, while the number of features they offer has continued to grow. The Ixus 30 from Canon is no exception. It weighs just 115g and...