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A Hela'v a Mouse for Poker
The burning question we've been asking in the office this afternoon is why would you need to wave a wireless mouse around in mid air when playing online poker?
Any answers will be gratefully received, because it's beaten us.
Hela is branding its new wireless optical mouse - the Perific Mouse - as 'the poker mouse', because it works both in mid air and on the desktop. Not a bad idea, and could be good for people with entertainment PCs when watching TV.
As you can see from the picture, it's a pretty strange shape. And at £81 inc Vat, it's pretty expensive too.
It works six feet from your PC, and can be held with two hands in your lap or as you walk about in front of your computer (something we do all the time), but it's hard to see how it is comfortable to use - we'll let you know once we've tried it out.
Pink iPod for Pink Ladies
IPod accessories are a multi-million
pound business every year, and the latest to join the ranks of questionable
add-ons for your mp3 player are Gear4’s iPod Leather jackets.
Resplendent in girly pink or manly black,
Gear4 says the jackets mean ‘hopeless romantics can give their partner the
perfect gift’. ‘Hopeless’ would be our description if given such a ‘perfect’
gift.
We won't be getting these in for review, but if dressing your iPod Nano or Video is your idea of a fashion statement, they cost £20.
Control your PC from your mobile
Version 2 of Remote Desktop for Mobiles has just been announced and we've posted a full review here.
If you’re new to the software, it lets you access any PC via your mobile phone. You can browse files, run programs and even have the entire desktop displayed on your mobile.
We’re testing it with a Nokia 6230i and a standard GPRS connection. Although the desktop display works, it’s obviously unreadable using such a small screen. However, you can magnify the screen to improve readability.
If you want to give it a go for yourself, there’s a free trial version available on the Remote Desktop for Mobiles site. And if remote access interests you, be sure to catch the next issue of PCW (on sale 16th Feb) where you’ll find a full remote access group test.
Home networks over electricity cables to support high def TV streaming
Anyone that's used the HomePlug AV standard to set up or add to their home network will already know how incredibly easy, if a little pricey, products such as the Devolo plugs are to use.
The standard uses your electricity cables to create a simple network, which runs from a device (such as an IP phone) or PC to an Internet-enabled PC or a router.
The plugs are a handy way to Internet enable devices that either don't have in-built wireless or are out of range of a wireless broadband router. If you've only got two PCs, it's also a way to get a second PC online via the main computer.
Devolo will soon be showing off its latest plugs which transfer data at up to 200MBps, and can support high definition TV streaming across your household electricity wires. They also say the new plugs support voice over IP, but the current ones do - we know because we're using a set to route an IP phone over the Internet.
As soon as they're available, we'll get them in for review.
Review: Sony VPL-HS50
Sony's HD projector has finally reached the UK. We found it a pain to set it up correctly, but the rewards are worth the effort. Read the review here.
Brrringdingadinga Skype?
Get prepared for the next onslaught of ringtones, but this time coming out of your Skype phone. According to Reuters, quoting a story in the Wall Street Journal, Warner Music Group and Skype have teamed up on licensing song snippets for use as replacement ringtones for the Skype Voip service.
Review: Vonage Wifi Phone
We’ve just posted our review of the new Vonage Wifi Phone that allows you to make wireless VoIP calls.
It’s easy to set up and use, but the phone itself looks incredibly dated. With a small mono screen and awkward controls it’s badly in need of an update.
The phone is also tied to Vonage, so it will be money down the drain if you decide to move to another VoIP provider.
Read the full review here.
Laptop insurance premiums set to rise?
According to research by Symantec, the average laptop has an estimated £500,000 of data stored on it. The security giant believes emails and confidential documents eclipse the actual value of the hardware itslef.
While this might be true for some business laptops use, we find it hard to imagine any home user being able to make a claim for anywhere near half a million pounds should the worse happen.
It’s an interesting thought though – just how much would you lose if your laptop (or even your desktop PC) was stolen?
Along with regular backups, we recommend investing in some form of network attached storage. You can then hide this away from your PC, leaving it less prone to theft.
If you’re looking for a simple network storage solution, Netgear’s SMC101 (read a review here), is worth considering.
Review: The Intel-based Apple iMac
We've just finished reviewing the eagerly awaited Intel-based Apple iMac, which has hit the streets far quicker than expected.
It looks every bit as good as you'd expect from an Apple machine, but there are some questions over software support in the short term. Also, just to upset Mac fans, we think some of its specs are weak.
But you can read the full review, and let us know what you think.
Abit asks customers to help shape its products
Abit wants to know what you think of its motherboards and is asking its customers and PC enthusiasts to take part in its online survey.
Anyone who fills it in is automatically entered into a competition with $10,000 of prizes. It is, says Abit, your chance to influence their products.
The survey comes in three sections, and for each section you complete, you'll get a raffle ticket, plus there are three additional sections, with a top prize worth $500. If you are motivated by the thought of free products, be warned the prizes range from the rubbish (ATI pens, Intel magnets) to decent stuff like Abit's motherboards.
The survey closes on 10th February, so if you're interested, get cracking.
Western Digital fishes out 500GB Caviar
Western Digital has followed up its clear
top Raptor – so that modders can see the hard disk platters – with a 500GB
Serial ATA drive.
The WD Caviar SE16 uses a four platter
design, spins at 7,200rpm, has a 300MB/s transfer rate and 16MB cache.
The company says it’s designed to run cooler and quieter, which will attract anyone that wants to use the drive in an entertainment PC. It’s available in the US now for $350, but won't be in the UK for a few weeks.
It’s also come out with a 2.5in 120GB laptop hard drive, the WD Scorpio. These have either EIDE or Sata interfaces and a spin speed of 5,400rpm.
We've got a WD Caviar SE16 coming in for review, and will post as soon as it's been tested.
Sony's hype machine goes into overdrive
We expect a PR company to big-up its client's latest product when sending out a press release, but the recent email circulated on behalf of Sony for its VGX-XL100 Media Center takes things to a new level.
For starters, the 250GB hard drive is described as “massive”. For a Media Center PC, we’d say 250GB is the bare minimum. 500MB would be massive.
It goes on to describe the PC as “a gamer’s dream machine”. Is Sony really trying to persuade us that a 2.8GHz Pentium processor and 128MB Nvidia Geforce 6600 graphics card is a gamer's dream? A 3.46 Intel Extreme processor and two Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512MB cards - now that’s something for gamers to salivate over.
Besides, Media Center, combined with Intel’s new Viiv standard, is all about watching and streaming TV, movies and music, not high-performance gaming.
Going by Sony’s past Vaios, the VGX-XL100 is probably going to be a neat Media Center that performs well (that is as well as a Media Center needs to perform) - there’s simply no need to try and hype it up in this misleading way.
We're first on the list to get a review unit, so keep an eye on www.pcw.co.uk for a full review. You can read a full news story on Sony's VGX-XL100 here.
Bang's BeoLab Beasts
Bang & Olufsen has a reputation for producing top quality audio equipment, but it's extending its reach now with PC speakers.
They're stereo speakers, so you only get the two and no sub-woofer.
This is probably fine for sitting next to a PC, although won't appeal to home entertainment fans that want surround sound when playing their games, listening to music of watching DVDs. They can also be used with your stereo, if you wish.
Called BeoLab 4, they're pyramid shaped, 20cm high and we're currently awaiting their arrival for a review. We'll let you know as soon as we've had them in the labs.
And the cost is, err, a whopping £830! They need to be seriously good before we part with that much cash for a pair of PC speakers. Especially as that's more than many PCs cost these days.
Review: Dell All in One 944 Printer
We've just finished reviewing Dell's new All in One 944 multifunction printer, which overall we thought was pretty good.
It's a bit slow and not for those that want to print high-quality photos, but will suit anyone that needs an everyday printer, scanner and fax machine (via your PC).
You can read the full review here, which includes a link to Dell's 360º view of the device.
Intel's Viiv leaves us with a sore head
OK, we don’t mind admitting that we are
feeling a little tender here at the Test Bed this morning, after Intel had
their Viiv (pronounced like five, but with a 'v' at the beginning) party last night.
Hosted by a very funny Jonathan Ross, DJd by New Order’s Peter Hook, and with cocktails and beer flowing, Intel spent a serious amount of cash.
Ross did his best to explain what Viiv is in layman’s terms - which was far too simple for many of the techies in the audience, who were left scratching their heads and asking, ‘so, what exactly is Viiv then?’.
The format aped the BBC’s Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, only with a lot more swearing. He was joined on stage by Michael Owen – who admitted the last electronic thing he could remember paying for was his helicopter, which he’d flown down in that night with his pilot – and Andy Gray from Sky Sports.
While many of us still weren’t sure what Viiv is by the end of his presentation, we had learnt that potty-mouth Ross is a master blagger, and with his endless list of free stuff (including two free Viiv PCs), we wonder if there is anything he pays for (with his own money).
Viiv, in case you are wondering, is Intel’s new platform for the digital home, similar in idea to the Centrino. So Viiv PCs have a dual core CPU, Intel Express Chipset and Quick Resume Technology Drivers for instant on/off capabilities.
The idea is that within the home, a Viiv PC is at the centre of your digital entertainment, managing your music, photos, TV programmes (so in Jonathan Ross’s case, his free PC will be linked to his free big-screen plasma or LCD) and downloads, including the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
Service provider Bulldog backs web cold turkey
Funny way to promote broadband...service provider Bulldog Communications is backing the second international 'Internet free' day this Sunday, when people are encouraged to turn their backs on cyberspace and engage with the 'real world'.
It's the idea of an organisation called the Global Ideas Bank and you can read all about it here.
Bulldog says it will encourage people with broadband connections to be efficient with their time online. Could save the company a bit in bandwidth costs, too.
Viewsonic ships three projectors - none with a decent name
Hot on the heels of the £400 pocket DLP projector from Samsung, Viewsonic has two DLPs and an LCD projector now out.
Snappily named the PJ406D, PJ458D and PJ656 (the LCD model), they cost £550, £899 and £950, so we’re starting to see prices drop pretty rapidly – although if you are on a tight budget, you can find even cheaper projectors.
They all support HDTV, have luminosity ranging from 1,900 - 2,100 Ansi lumens - so you should be able to watch TV and films in a room that is not pitch black - and can switch between widescreen or 4:3 aspect ratio. They are not as small as the Samsung, but even the biggest is A4 in size and the heaviest weighs 3kg – about the same as many laptops.
The budget PJ406D costs £550, has a native resolution of 800x600 (SVGA), its brightness is 1,900 Ansi lumens and it has a contrast ratio of 2000:1.
GPS gets streetwise for walkers
Satellite navigation gets streetwise with the latest version of the Navicore GPS system for Symbian-based phones. It includes separate modes for cyclists and pedestrians as well as cars.
Cyclists are automatically given routes that do not include motorways, and directions for pedestrians ignore one-way systems. One of the advantages Navicore claims for the system is that it is not car bound: you can take it with you as a guide after you park.
The basic Navicore system consists of a tiny GPS receiver that links with Symbian Series 60 phones that the company says predominate in Europe. They include recent Nokias, the Siemens SX1 and Panasonic's X700.
The software, including mapping information dpwn to individual streets and seven-digit postcodes, postcodes, comes on a 256MByte SD cards; the UK version leaves 106MByte free on the card for other uses.
The base price for the UK version is £199.99 inc Vat and SD card and existing users can upgrade for £54 via CD or £61 on a card.
A system covering all Western Europe costs £279.99; the software comes on a DVD and you download what you want onto the bundled 512MB SD card – though you can put it all onto a card of higher capacity. You can read our review on PCW.
£400 pocket projector
Samsung is offering what must be one of the cheapest digital projector to date, the pocket-sized P300, at just £399 excluding Vat.
The 12.7 x9.3 x 5cm device uses a Digital Light Projector chip and a Carl Zeiss lens, and weighs less than 660g.
Samsung claims a battery life of 2.5 hours, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio but the stated brightness is just 25 ANSI lumens, which looks about bright enough to stage a presentation in a cupboard.
But it could be more useful than that in practice and we will review the machine as soon as we can get our paws on one. Meanwhile you can view the full specs here.
Optoma's new EP747 by way of comparison boasts a brightness of 3000 ANSI lumens, which is good enough for a classroom, as well as XGA resolution, and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. It costs £999 plus VAT.
ATI ships superfast Radeon X1900 range
It’s been a busy morning in the labs as
we furiously finish off our tests of the new ATI graphics card, the X1900 XTX,
which we’ve tested in both a single card and Crossfire configuration.
ATI had some catching up to
do, because since announcing Crossfire last summer, it’s not had a card that
out-performed Nvidia's Geforce 7800 GTX 512MB.
In our tests, it was outperformed in synthetic bench tests only by an Asus Extreme N7800GT Dual, which has two cores on a single board. And even then, ATI's X1900 XTX was better when tested on Half-Life, Far Cry, Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 04.
There are four cards in the range, which use ATI’s R580 core.
The X1900 XTX has a 650MHz engine clock, 1.55GHz memory data rate and 512MB GDDR3 frame buffer. Both the XT and CrossFire Edition share the same base specifications, with a 625MHz engine clock, 1.45GHz memory and 512MB GDDR3.
The other card in the range is the All in Wonder X1900, which supersedes the AIW
X800. The AIW doesn’t have HDCP support, but like the X800, does include a digital
TV tuner, FM support, can pause, rewind and fast forward live TV, and supports Windows Media Center.
Tul was first out of the
blocks to announce cards in the range, although you can expect others
today, because ATI assured us that X1900s would be available from the
day of its release.
Pricing is as follows:
X1900XTX: $649
X1900XT: $549
X1900 CrossFire Edition: $599
All in Wonder X1900: $499
Lexmark closes Scottish operation
The BBC is reporting that Lexmark is to close its factory in Fife, resulting in 700 job losses.
The company has fallen behind its key rivals - HP, Epson and Canon - over the past few years, especially when it comes to photo printers.
The last time we looked at photo printers - rather than inkjets that could also be used to print photos - we didn't ask Lexmark to take part, simply because it had no products in the bracket.
It has been doing better though is with its lower end inkjets - which don't bring in much profit - and its laser and multifunction printers, although even here, it's coming under pressure.
New Blackberry available
T-Mobile is offering the new Blackberry 8700g handheld that we featured in
our CES blog.
It has a bright 320x240 colour display and a new 300MHz Intel processor that manufacturer RIM says igives a noticeable performance boost over previous models.
It has 64Mbyte of flash memory - twice that available in the Blackberry 7290 which it is expected to supersede later this year. The Blackberry system will now push email to your handheld from any Pop3 or Imap email.
The recommended price is £189.99 with Vat or £79.99 with an 18-month contract (Relax 200), which includes 12 months half price line rental.
Monthly charges start at £17.99 which includes up to 3Mbyte of email. The 8700g will be available from February
250Mbyte microstorage
Transcend has launched a high-speed 250MByte microSD card designed for the next generation of mobile phones. MicroSD, half the size of a standard SIM card, is the smallest flash form factor available.
Chinese offer some crackers
There's been a steady stream of utilities from Russia over recent years as coders and small software houses in that country try to break into the Western market. Now the Chinese are getting into the act. Beijing-based Liuxz Software is offering a useful looking Windows package called FTP Synchronizer 1.1 that synchronises files between a PC and a remote ftp server.
In addition to updating files it can be configured to remove obsolete ones from the server if they have been deleted locally. It is free for personal or non-profit use. A Pro version costs $29.95 (£17) from here.
Turn old PC into media centre
A utility from Lava Software can turn almost any old PC into a Media Centre and file server, the company claims.
Versions of PC-Mac-Net FileShare v5.5 are available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. They allow a single computer to control movie and music playback on multiple remote computers over local or wide-area networks.
The free Lite edition can be downloaded here. Prices of the full edition start at $14.95 (£8.40) per computer.
Nano-magnets promise cool instant-on computers
US researchers have created logic gates out of nano-magnets that could lead to a new era of low-drain, instant-on computers, according to MIT's Technology Review.
The polarisation of a nano-magnet can be 'flipped' by altering that of similar particles nearby by, and they maintain their state without the need for power.
Not only does this increase battery life and offer the prospect of cool processors with no need for noisy fans, but it means a computer will retain its state when turned off and simply carry on where you left off when switched back on.
Software can alter the logic functions performed by groups of nano-magnets by addressing control bits, according to researchers at Indiana's Notre Dame University.
But computers relying entirely on the technology are unlikely to appear within a decade; early versions are likely to combine magnetic logic with traditional transistors.
Mobile access to Exchange mail
Two server-based applications provide full access to Microsoft Exchange mailboxes and public folders from a PDA browser or a WAP-enabled mobile phone – devices not supported by the Outlook Web Access that comes with Exchange.
OWA For PDA and OWA For WAP cost $195 (£110) and $175 (£99) respectively per server from developer Lee Derbyshire. Free trial versions are available.
Free USB monitoring
A free utility availabe here allows you to monitor the use of potentially troublesome USB drives on networks.
Developer Smartline has also upgraded its Devicelock product with eight new features, including the ability to grant temporary access to USB devices when there is no network connection.
Time Computers is back - and under the same management
Anyone burnt by Time and Tiny's parent Granville Technology Group going into administration are going to be pretty shocked to hear that Time is relaunching in a couple of weeks.
It's owned by the same family as before, has bought back its factory from the administrators, so is trading from the same premises, and is even using the same Time brand.
With so many businesses and people left badly out of pocket financially when the company went bust, a lot of people will be asking how the family gathered the money together to buy back the factory. You won't be surprised to learn though that the family still owned the business park on which it sits - and that the land never went to the administrators.
It's going to be tough for Time to convince customer to trust them again, and rightly so in our view. Right now, we'd suggest you think very carefully before parting with your hard earned money on a Time PC or laptop.
New Wordperfect will support Office 12 formats
Microsoft will be competing with itself when it launches Office 12 with completely new OpenXML file formats at the end of the year, Corel warned today at the launch of its rival Wordperfect Office X3 suite.
Global product director Jason Larock said Microsoft would have to persuade people to switch to the OpenXML formats while 250 million users across the world were using the familiar old ones. Not only wopuld people have to learn to cope with two formats but Microsoft would also be asking them to get used to a new user interface.
Some features of the next Office interface, such as context-sensitive toolbars, had long been a feature of Wordperfact.
Larock said no product could match Wordperfect's support for a wide variety of formats and Corel would include OpenXML when Office 12 is released. "We work with Microsoft now and we will continue to work with Microsoft, which owns 90 percent of the market. We would basically cut ouirselves off if you didn't support the format."
But he admitted that X3 does not support the Open Document Format (ODF), which is being proposed as a rival standard, "because no customer that we are currently dealing with as asked us to do so."
X3 does however allow the import and export of portable document format (pdf) files, something Microsoft has promised for Office 12.
Corel's pdf implementation looked good, judging from Larock's short demonstration. Trying to extract coherent text from complex pdf files can be infuriating, and Corel appears to be taking a leaf out of OCR packages by making intelligent guesses about text flow across columns.
How to beat call centre queues
We all hate being talked at by automated voices when phoning a company, and despise it even more when we then have to sit in a queue awaiting our turn to speak with an agent.
Whilst lying around with flu yesterday, idly channel surfing the TV, a little gem on how to beat automated call centres and get to a real human being immediately, popped up. Various methods were given, including how to bypass the PC World system.
So if you need to phone the retail outlet, and want to avoid being caught in call centre hell, here's how to beat it, courtesy of ITV's 5 O'Clock Show:
"PC World - main number is 08702 420 444 – press * then the 4 digit store number (which is on the top of your receipt) i.e. 4802 for Gloucester, then #, and you will get through to your chosen store."
We tried it, and it works, and the programme makers have put a list of other cheats online as well, so it's worth taking a look at their site.
How to explain technology?
Hitachi explains how to get perpendicular....and really, it's worth seeing. We never knew storage could be so entertaining.
If you've got anymore - let us know.
Screens go flat out for new applications
The falling cost of LCD displays is enabling new applications like the Philips Entertaible displayed at CES and pictured left. A company called 3Touch demonstrated similar face-up application at the BETT IT-in-education show in the form of what looked like a very well designed electronic lectern (below right).
The Liberty lectern is designed to deliver presentations either to a hall or across a network, and packs a full-fledged Pentium 4-based PC with a 80GB hard disk and a 1280 x 1024 touch screen. 
The camera at the side can be used to display paper-based A4 documents. The list price is £7749, excluding the camera.
The device comes with a suite of programs allowing you to screen to multiple rooms, or run a conference in dispersed locations simultaneously.
3D printers at cutting edge in schools
More from BETT....cutting-edge tools at the IT-in-education show included the CNC router (right) from Trend Machinery which would set you back £15,000 excluding Vat. The model skeleton you can see on the left on the left of the picture (click thumbnail for a larger view)is the kind of thing you can make with it.
Techsoft UK, agents for Roland, showed this Dimension 3D printer (left), which lays down layer after layer of molten plastic to build up an object designed in Solidworks or another 3D CAD pckage. The show price was £18,875 ex Vat and you can download a spec sheet from here.
There were plenty of other devices at the show capable of translating 3D drawings into real objects. Most could cope only with gentler materials like wood or plastic but the MT2 combined lathe and mill (right) can cut metal. 
If you click the thumbnail for the full image you should just be able to make out the bomb-shaped that is being cut out from a slug of what looks like aluminium. This model from Boxford is specially designed for schools.
Expensive products like these are usually bought as a communal asset for a group of schools rather than a single establishment.
Video teacher helps small schools and needy kids
HP's billionaire-class video-conferencing system showed how technology can save a lot of time and polluting flights by enabling widely dispersed people to interact as if they are in the same room. But you don't need a $500,000 setup and $10,000-a-month service to get similar benefits.
Teacher Jaz Dhillon (pictured) demonstrated at the BETT educational IT show how she can teach a children remotely - and not just one class. Sometimes she teaches two or three groups of children in different schools at the same time, helping to keep small village schools viable.
'It's great for small schools with maybe 35 pupils where there may be only one or two children at a particular age. Without this system they would eiother no get the attention they need or they might have to go to a school outside the area,' she said.
The system can also be used to give children extra coaching in subjects in which they mave fallen behind. Ms Dhillon, who works for a Birmingham schools organisation called Athena, said she has no difficulty in establishing a relationship with them kids are is they are in a real classroom.
She was using a system from Polycom, market leader in mainstream business video-conferencing. Teaching systems for individual pupils can cost as little as £150.
Videoconferencing is about to become much more viable with DSL upstream speeds moving to 448KB/sec.
Gigabit switch hits consumer price level
Ozenda has launched an eight-port gigabit Ethernet switch for just £49.99 ex Vat. It is fully duplex, giving a theoretical maximum throughput of 2Gbit/ sec on a port. The Basica Gigabit Switch 8 also auto-senses links so that you can use either straight-through or crossover cables.
Chief executive Bee Parashar expects the device to be used mostly at the edges of corporate networks and in small offices. But he also believes early home adopters with gigabit-enabled desktop and notebook PCs will be interested.
"Many people need to move multimedia and other big files round the home," he said.
Parashar pointed that the product does not cost much more than a fast Ethernet switch and offers future-proofing.
This will catch em fooling around at the back of class
Another one from the IT show BETT. It's a 360-degree IP camera that leaves no corner of the room unwatched. Helps to deter mayhem if the teacher leaves the class. But you can bet your boots we haven't heard the last of the traditional kid's protest: "It wasn't me, Miss." The camera csosts around £900 from Denford.
Rather less sinister than all-seeing ceiling cameras are the two on the left from Economatics. They can double as scanners or photocopiers and can be used for presentations, and they don't fall over all the time like so many webcams. The one on the right, which has a VGA resolution, costs £239.
Alienware's optional Centrino riles Intel
Better known for its high end gaming machines rather than ultra portable notebooks, Alienware was showing its new Sentia m3400 last week at CES in Las Vegas.
Alienware is branding this as a Centrino machine, but sells it as standard without inbuilt wireless unless you pay an additional £24. In our book, this isn't a Centrino and we don't believe Alienware should brand it as such.
We contacted Intel, who weren't too pleased and said they'd look into it. We'll update this blog once we know the upshot.
Available now in the UK, there is a bit of a delay on this laptop. We put through a dummy order today and were informed it would be delivered on February 9th.
The base model costs £979 inc VAT, although that comes with a Pentium M 730 (1.6GHz), 60GB hard drive, 512MB of DDR2 memory and a CD burner/DVD reader combo. And of course, no wireless. Go for the maximum configuration of a Pentium M 760 (2GHz), 2GB of DDR2 memory, 120GB hard drive and a DVD burner and it costs £1,384. Add an extra £24 and you get wireless as well.
It also has an inbuilt 1.3megapixel webcam, 14inch widescreen LCD and a four in one card reader.
World's biggest LCD and zoom on Samsung's latest camera
Samsung is claiming the world's largest LCD screen on a digital camera for its new 8megapixel Digimax Pro815, at 3.5inches.
We saw the camera while it was mounted on a tripod in a hall, so haven't had a chance to test it yet and see how it performs in different lighting conditions, but will put a review online as soon as it has been through the labs. 
The screen dominates the back of the camera, but refreshed quickly to follow the action as we moved it around.
Samsung's latest prosumer camera also claims to have the world's longest optical zoom - at x15 it is equivalent to a 28mm to 420mm in a 35mm camera.
It has done this by having four low-dispersion glass lenses, which help minimise chromatic
aberration. This is where a lens fault or a camera's inability to register the three colour fields to its chip causes artifacts.
In this case the Pro815 uses a 2/3" CCD, and rather unusually, also has a 1.4inch preview screen mounted on the top of the camera, for those that want to take low-level shots.
At $849 (£482), it is edging towards the cost of lower end digital SLRs, and with Samsung having little pedigree in this sector, it has a bit of a battle on its hands.
Could Apple's hype backfire?
Many questions were left unanswered after Apple's launch of its new MacPCs yesterday, not least how the company plans to live up to its hype. There was wild cheering when Steve Jobs screened a new TV commercial saying the Intel processor had for years been trapped in boring old PCs and was now being given freedom to do really interesting, creative work.
When the two hardware platforms were different, and therefore hard to compare directly, it was easier to get away with this kind of clever codswallop. But how will it play beyond the ranks of Mac groupies, among people willing and able to see through cheap cracks? There seems a good chance that it could backfire on Apple.
The new Intel-based Macs are good products and provide welcome competition in the PC world (see our review). Leaving aside the issue of whether the MacOS X is better than Windows XP or its imminent successor, Vista, Apple buyers arguably get a better software package out of the box than the basic Windows package ... though it has to be said that most PCs are bundled with software that makes the comparison a little more even.
Apple is a leader in using mobile processors in desktop machines, enabling faster, sleeker and quieter designs. But it is by no means the first, and the company's new stress on performance per watt has been a mainstream concern in the PC world for five years, which is one reason Apple switched to Intel.
The new iMacs do not even offer the fastest Core Duo processor. Apple spokesman Tom Boger, flown over from the company's Cupertino headquarters to answer questions from UK journalists, said the slower versions were used to keep prices down. But you don't get the option to pay for the fastest - something unthinkable on a mainstream Windows PC
These are early days, and presumably we are going to see many more MacPCs launched over the coming months. But what will professionals, using demanding applications, think when Apple tells them they are not allowed to use the fastest processors? And when there are patently far more powerful PCs available, probably at a lower price? Where is the liberation in that?
Which raises another unanswered question: what is the difference between a MacPC and a PC? What is to stop you, or Taiwanese manufacturers, running the MacOS X on a standard Windows PC? Boger refused to say how the MacPC platform differed from Napa, the third-generation Centrino platform launched with the new Core Duo processors at CES last week. He also refused to say whether the Intel-based MacOS X and so-called universal applications - those that run on both the new and old platforms - will run on a PC; nor would he say what was stopping them if they could not.
He did say: "We have no plans to make the MacOS X available on other platforms."
But will this stance be sustainable? Either Apple will have to keep up with every advance in Intel-based hardware, which will be hard for a company of its size, or it will have to admit that it cannot offer the fastest machines. And its vaunted creative users need fast machines.
The developer editions of the Intel MacOS apparently relied on the Trusted Computing Platform (TCP) chip to tie the software to the hardware and hackers quickly claimed to have bypassed this. It seems likely that a black market will develop in unauthorised MacPCs. One theory has it that Apple actually wants this to happen, giving it an excuse to move to an open hardware platform without antagonising the Mac faithful.
The fact is that unless Apple comes up with the hardware goods it will reinforce the more negative side of its reputation: that it has more style than substance. Elegant though they are, the new machines are not the best in the world. They are certainly not, stuck as they are with a Victorian keyboard and 25-year-old interface, the most avant garde.
That crown goes to much-maligned Microsoft's Tablet PC, which is surely a precursor of the interface of the future. Models like Motion's LS800 and the Fujitsu-Siemens P1510 lack the chic of the MacBook Pro, but in their way they are years ahead of it - and have their sights still further ahead. And unlike the 5.61b MacBook Pro, which is about the weight of a brick, you can easily carry them around.
Apple unveils Intel dual-core Macbook and iMac
In his keynote speech at MacWorld, Steve Jobs announced the first Intel-based Apple products - an iMac and a Macbook Pro, both based on Intel's new Core Duo ('Yonah') processors.
The iMac comes in 17in and 20in flavours, with 1.67GHz 
or 2GHz Core Duo processors. If you've recently bought one of the previous iMacs you'll no doubt be delighted to hear that Apple only claims the new one to be 'twice as fast'. US prices start from $1,299, but the UK Apple Store is offline at the time of writing so we can't check UK pricing.
The newly-named MacBook Pro (the PowerBook name is now gone) uses 1.67GHz or 1.83GHz Core Duo processors, giving a claimed speed increase of up to four times that of the previous PowerBook G4. Although it includes Wifi, it's not badged as a Centrino Duo as it uses Apple's own wireless Airport 802.11g chipset. Prices in the US start at $1,999.
Jobs also stated during the keynote that all Apple computers would transition to the Intel platform during calendar year 2006. No doubt eBay's going to be awash with PowerPC-based Macs for some years to come.
New OneNote reads your voice and your pictures
Some very interesting new features are in the pipeline for OneNote, one of the lesser-known gems among Microsoft's applications. The main trick of the current product is to synchronise a recording of a conversation or meeting with your notes of it, so that you can go straight to a recorded passage simply by clicking on the relevant words.
It's one of those very simple ideas that can transform the way you work. You'd expect it to be popular with journalists, because it streamlines one of our most basic tasks, but it is of equal use to students and lawyers, and indeed anyone who has to take notes anywhere. It can be used with typed handwritten (on a Tablet PC) or typed notes - I use it for phone interviews, though I've yet to find a really satisfactory way to record a call on a PC.
Also useful is the ability to store and index web clippings. You drag your selection to a small OneNote window, where both the content and the address is stored. You can download a trial version here
The next version which will be launched with Office 12 and a (non-public) beta has been released. There are three major innovations, including a new OneNote client that not only provides the basic OneNote functionality on a Windows Mobile smartphone or PDA, but will sync both ways with a PC. And there is much more.
Not only you will be able to drag pictures taken with a camera phone into OneNote Mobile but the product will pack optical character recognition. This means you can snap business cards and press cuttings and then find them by searching on keywords as if they were text.
The product will also have speech recognition so that you will not even need to taken notes during recording. Provided the audio is well captured you should be able to search the recording directly for keywords.
How well all this works in practice remains to be seen and will to some extent depend on hardware quality.
Belkin gives Apple the Flip
The Mac Mini quickly built a fan base and sales, but when it was first launched it was touted as a system that could sit alongside a PC, as a second machine.
To help make that more attractive, Apple approached Belkin, which is the second largest supplier of iPod accessories, and asked it to design a switch that could allow one monitor, keyboard and mouse to be used with both the Mac Mini and a PC.
Belkin
came up with the Flip, which apes Apple's design style but is a super
slim KVM switch that sits underneath the Mac Mini.
It connects to the Mini and a PC via USB, and by touching the facia button users can instantly switch between two machines. It can also switch between two Macs or two PCs.
While in Mac mode it can also control volume and eject CDs and DVDs. In PC mode it can control volume only.
It's out now in the US for $90, and will be in the UK by spring.
Zalman looks to prove water and electricity can mix
Zalman is hoping to develop and release a water cooled power supply later this year, along with expanding other aspects of its water cooled range.
At CES it showed other several planned products that are now either working prototypes or close to be shipped, and you can read the full story here.
Otherwise, you can see photos of them in this blog.
Reserator ZM-RF1 Fan Fit
CNPS8000 Quiet VGA Cooler
HPTC HD160
Google Packs a software punch
Google has just made its Google Pack offering live, predictably in beta format. It's a free software bundle consisting of most of the well-known Google utilities such as Google Earth, Desktop, Toolbar and Picasa, but also including a couple of surprises such as a free 6-month subsctiption to Norton Anti-virus 2005 Special Edition, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Acrobat Reader 7 and Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar.
The software installer (a 256KB download) runs very smoothly, only downloading packages if you don't have them installed or if there's a newer version available. You can also pause the download process at any time and resume later.
There's also a built-in Google Updater service that can sit in your System Tray to keep the packages up to date, and gives you direct access to run the downloaded applications or uninstall them.
Given that Google now lets you find pretty well anything from web pages to books and videos, a software download service is the next logical progression. Who needs the Internet when you've got the Googlenet?
CES round-up: The most important news from Vegas
CES in Las Vegas has been packed since opening, but you can get an easy round up of events through the following links.
Sony's Location Free TV moves to the UK
Intel pushes PC into the living room
War of the Wireless World
Sanyo pushes $799 high def camcorder
CES: High def dominates day one
Intel keynote picture by picture
Dell goes for supersized at CES
Sony keynote picture by picture
Intel's new CPUs and pricing
As well as announcing the new Centrino Solo/Duo (Napa) laptop platform using Yonah CPUs, Intel has also introduced lots of other new processor varieties. Our list below shows the new products and pricing (in US$, 1000-unit quantities).
Note: Core Solo = Yonah single-core; Core Duo = Yonah dual-core
Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (2x2M L2 cache 3.46 GHz 1066 MHz FSB 65nm) $999
Pentium D 950 (2x2M L2 cache 3.40 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $637
Pentium D 940 (2x2M L2 cache 3.20 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $423
Pentium D 930 (2x2M L2 cache 3 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $316
Pentium D 920 (2x2M L2 cache 2.80 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $241
Pentium 4 661 (2M L2 cache 3.60 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $401
Pentium 4 651 (2M L2 cache 3.40 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $273
Pentium 4 641 (2M L2 cache 3.20 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $218
Pentium 4 631 (2M L2 cache 3 GHz 800 MHz FSB 65nm) $178
Celeron D 355 (256k L2 cache 3.33 GHz 533 MHz FSB 90nm) $127
Core Duo T2600 (2M L2 cache 2.16 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $637
Core Duo T2500 (2M L2 cache 2 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $423
Core Duo T2400 (2M L2 cache 1.83 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $294
Core Duo T2300 (2M L2 cache 1.66 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $241
Core Solo T1300 (2M L2 cache 1.66 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $209
Low Voltage Core Duo L2400 (2M L2 cache 1.66 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $316
Low Voltage Core Duo L2300 (2M L2 cache 1.50 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) $284
Pentium M 773 (2M L2 cache 1.30 GHz ULV 400 MHz FSB 90nm) $273
Xeon 2.80 GHz w/ 2x2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) $1,043
Xeon 3.80 GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) $851
Xeon 2.80E GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) $193
Xeon 3.20 GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) Mid Voltage $487
Xeon 3 GHz w/ 2M cache 800 MHz FSB (90nm) Low Voltage $519
Dual-core Napa notebooks announced
Intel has officially announced the latest Centrino update. Codenamed Napa, it uses a brand new Yonah mobile processor. Available in both single and dual-core flavours (Core Solo and Core Duo respectively), it marks a huge advance for mobile computing.
Acer was first off the block to get us a review sample of a Napa notebook. You can read a full review and see just how fast it is here.
For a white paper on the new Centrino platform, click here.
Western Digital updates the Raptor
Western Digital is bringing out a second version of its latest 150GB Raptor drive next month, the company said today at CES in Las Vegas.
Raptors may not have the biggest capacities on the market but they have the fastest spin speeds - 10,000 RPM compared to the more typical 7,200. Combined with its 16MB cache, this gives the drive very fast seek times.
A solid top version is already on the market, and today the company showed off a clear top version, so that you can see the platters spinning. It's aimed at hard core enthusiasts with see-through cases, and the company is working with case manufacturers to see more hit the market.
Even so, it's going to be of limited appeal - few people will care that they can see the platters spin, but it will attract a very niche market.
New Blackberry, Gates, Skype and more at CES
It's been a really busy day at CDES in Las Vegas.
For the latest, see the following:
First Edge Blackberry to hit the UK
Sony launches new Walkman phone
High defintion TVs hit 103inches
The Skype demo that couldn't
Gates at CES picture by picture
Kodak release world's first dual lens camera
Kodak announced its dual lens Easyshare V570 digital camera yesterday - a world first - and last night we got a sneak peak of the product at the CES Unveiled event in Las Vegas.
The new Kodak V570 camera itself is pretty small, similar in size to a 10 pack of cigarettes. Its LCD screen dominates the back of the camera and I was pretty impressed with its quality. It was bright and clear and refreshed very quickly as you moved the camera to a different scene.
The two lenses sit one on top of the other. It's 5x zoom lens is 23mm at its widest point. Put into film lens sizes, this is equivalent to a 39mm to 117mm zoom.
We haven't had a chance to test the camera yet, but pictures Kodak took looked decent quality. However, until we get it into our labs we'll reserve judgement.
Kodak said the camera was aimed at those that wanted a stylish, pocket sized camera with an ultra wide angle lens. It comes out at the end of the month, with a street price of $399.
It also has three more digital cameras due out. This includes the Z650, a 10x optical soom 6.1 megapixel camera costing $349. That should be available from late February. There are also two C series cameras due out - the low end C663 and C530.
Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 results
Performance results for Intel’s latest CPU, the Pentium Extreme Edition 955 are now available.
Results link
The dual core Pentium E.E 955 (codename Presler) uses Intel’s 65nm manufacturing process and has a FSB speed of 266MHz (1,066MHz effective) and a clock speed of 3.46GHz. Each core has 2MB of L2 cache giving a staggering total of 4MB which will is the reason for the whopping 376m transistor count.
The 955 also features Intel’s Virtualisation Technology. By using this combined with Intel’s Virtual Machine Monitor, you can run multiple operating systems in independent partitions on a single platform at the same time.
Intel leaps ahead with new logo
In a major rebranding exercise, Intel's familiar 'dropped-e' logo from 1991 has today joined the dinosaurs, to be replaced by a new swooshy corporate logo (left) and 'Leap ahead' tagline. According to the press release, the new brand identity represents Intel's 'evolution to a market-driving platform solutions company'.
You can see the full range of corporate and product logos here. The new logo will appear on all its processors, together with the 'Inside' tag. The new 'Centrino Duo' brand is illustrated - this is the name for the upcoming 'Napa' dual-core mobile platform. Also in the PDF above are the logos for the Core Solo (single core) and Core Duo (dual core) mobile processors that power the Napa platform - these CPUs were previously codenamed 'Yonah'.
Intel's Paul Otellini is expected to give further details about the new brands and products at CES on Thursday, including the Intel ViiV home entertainment platform.
Viva Las Vegas! The Test Bed goes to CES
Yep, we've been let off the leash and are heading to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday morning. We'll be reporting every day, starting Tuesday, plus be producing regular podcasts. You can keep up to date here, or at our dedicated CES site, www.pcw.co.uk/ces.
CES itself kicks off on Thursday, but there are loads of pre-show briefings, so you can start reading about what's going on from Tuesday.
And, if we're doing okay, we might keep a running score of how our gambling is going - until the zero figure get too large!
