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World betas...Vista and Office 2007 in usable working order
Quick update on my Vista and Office 2007 Beta 2 test setup. I described yesterday how I installed Vista on a cheapo E-Systems PC in basic display mode because the onboard graphics did not support Vista’s high-end Aero mode. I’ve now installed ATI graphics in the form of a Crucial X300SE card with 128Mbytes of graphics memory and conforming to the Windows Driver Display Model (WDDM) spec required for the new operating system.
Amusing Ebay abuse!
Well I suppose that it was only a matter of time before someone took Ebay abuse to the next level. A user from the UK is selling positive Ebay feedback!
Given the whole chicken-egg scenario that persists within Ebay (not being trusted to buy stuff unless you've already bought stuff) it could attract some bidders.
Currently bidding is at only 6p - we'll wait and see if the canny Liverpudlian seller cashes in or if the authorities will catch on and close it down.
8Mb broadband for under a tenner! (just as long as you only download 50MB/month)
Plusnet is the latest ISP to launch an 'under a tenner' broadband offer in the form of its new 8Mb Broadband 'Basic' pay as you go service.
50MB is included in the price (and will be eaten up with just a few Windows updates), with each extra MB costing 0.024p.
If true, this would make an extra 1GB of downloading just 24p - either Plusnet is feeling very generous or its press release is suffering from a typo.
All the evidence points to the latter (common sense and the information detailed on Plusnet's site indicates 0.224p per MB).
Assuming it is 0.224p per MB, downloading 3GB in a month (which is extremely easy to do, especially when tempted with a fast 8Mb connection) would cost just over £16.50 including the £9.99 standard fee. Not exactly 8Mb for under a tenner in our book.
Plusnet will no doubt argue it's simply offering high-speed broadband to low-usage customers at an affordable price.
But the fact is, if you're going to be using the connection almost exclusively for browsing and email instead of downloading large files, what's the point in having an 8Mb service?
Sony LocationFree twice the price of Slingbox
We've just got back from Sony's launch of LocationFree.
The device lets you stream your home TV across the Internet in a very similar fashion to the Slingbox (read the Slingbox review).
Interestingly, it will also stream direct to a PSP.
There are, however, two major initial disappointments with Sony's offering.
The first is that the software is only licensed to be used on one PC. If you want to watch it on other PCs you'll need to purchase extra copies of the software.
UK pricing for the software isn't available at the moment, but in the US it costs $29.99 for each license. However, if you have a Sony PSP (software version 2.70 upwards) the LocationFree utility is preinstalled.
Our other gripe is with the price. Sony is asking a staggering £350 for LocationFree - almost double that of the Slingbox.
On the plus side, it has two video inputs so you can hook up both a Sky/cable box and a DVD player.
It's also able to stream wirelessly to a PC or PSP without having to be hooked up to a router. However, you will have to wire it up to your router if you want to stream over the Internet.
It's also far smaller and more stylish than the rather plasticky Slingbox.
We're expecting a review sample of LocationFree TV later this week. As it stands, it's certainly got its work cut out.
Vista loads easily - and never mind the blank screens
Spent most of last week talking Vista at Winhec in Seattle but only last night did I finally find time to load the Beta 2 code of the next-generation operating system. Part of the delay was due to the fact that I did not know what machine to put it on. My wife, who has bitter experience of my use of beta code, baulked at the idea of it going on my main workhorse which is also her preferred machine.
PCW Product of the Week: Apple MacBook
Our latest PCW Product of the Week podcast has just gone live.
In this episode, we discuss Apple's new MacBook - the long-awaited iBook successor.
It suffers from poor 3D performance and having to pay £130 extra for the ultra-stylish black chassis seems a little off, but there's no doubting the improved performance and comprehensive set of features.
Listen to the podcast, then read the full Apple MacBook review.
Microsoft's World Cup widget
We've seen a lot of companies jumping on the world cup bandwagon recently so we were a little bit skeptical when Microsoft told us about its Soccer Scoreboard widget.
We've taken a look at it and it's actually quite good. There's no scores for it to report as yet but the program looks well laid out with tables, results and fixtures. It's pretty intuitive to use and it can even hover over your workspace with varying levels of transparency.
When you select English (United Kingdom) at install time the title 'Soccer Scoreboard' gets replaced with 'Football Scoreboard': proper order.
The catch, well there was always going to be one, wasn't there? You have to validate your copy of Windows prior to download. Not that the PCW office has dodgy copies of XP or anything ...
No ultra mobile PCs for 'axis of evil'
Don't expect to see any ultra mobile PCs running the Via chip legally turn up in North Korea or Iran any time soon.
The company is banned by the US government from selling its chips, which contain strong encryption algorithms, to any country that is part of the 'Axis of Evil'.
Origami PCs - great concept but hold off buying
Microsoft has heavily pushed the ultra mobile PC (often called Origami), but although impressed with the overall concept, we have had doubts about battery life, power and cost.
Speaking with Via yesterday, whose C7-M ULV chip is being used in one of the first UMPCs to hit the UK, its representative didn't deny some areas need more work. He pointed to the smooth running of Windows Tablet edition, and in the few minutes we were able to try out the Pace Blade Easy Book E7, that couldn't be denied.
But Via's claimed battery life is three hours tops (as is the rival Samsung Q1), which just isn't good enough, a point the company's Colin Blix couldn't deny.
We like the idea of the UMPC, but have said all along it will take time to bed in and find its uses.
Blix thought business sectors such as healthcare and education would be early users of the concept. Plus Casinos are looking at them, because they can encourage people to gamble wirelessly even when not at the tables.
But the next generation – which we should start seeing in a few months – should be far better. Apart from poor batteries, there is a question mark over how well these low-powered devices will run Microsoft Vista when it is released.
Hopefully we'll get the Easy Book E7 in our labs pretty soon, which will give us a chance to give the device as good a test as we gave the Samsung Q1, but our current advice would be unless you are the early-adopter type with money to spare, hold back on UMPCs. There's a future for these devices, but we expect to see more variations pretty soon, and for battery life and power in both Intel and Via based UMPCs to improve, while weight and price will drop.
Dell to ship with Google software
Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced yesterday that Dell is to begin shipping PCs with Google software pre-installed.
Dell haven't commented yet but it's safe bet that the software bundled with its machines will closely resemble the Google Pack which is currently available for download. Schmidt also said that Dell PCs will come with a co-branded Dell-Google homepage as default.
Most of Google's software is free, but considering that the announcement was made at a Goldman Sachs internet conference (for investors) you can be sure that serious money is involved.
Microsoft is certainly under threat as Google further extends its reach into the desktop market, promoting both their own software (Google Desktop, Google Earth, Picasa) and free independent programs (Firefox, Ad-aware).
Seek on a hybrid drive and ye shall find a massive performance boost
More details on Samsung's solid-state drive (SSD) and hybrid drives, which promise a massive performance increase at minimal cost if the company is to be believed. It had two SSDs on show at Winhec, one 16GByte and the other 32Gbyte, both available as 1.8in or 2.5in packages. Capacities go down to 4Gyte.
Prices will be in line with standalone flash prices, currently $20-25 a gig, according to the man on Samsung's Winhec booth.
That makes a complete solid-state mobile well affordable at the high-end of the market. But Otto Berkes, general manager of Microsoft's Ultra-Mobile PC division, (of whom I'll write more later today), said the software is not quite ready for them yet.
He explained: 'We have some work to do to optimise the operating system for flash because the read and write characteristics are very different from those of a hard disk.'
Samsung says its SSDs can be read at 57MByte/sec and written at 32MByte/sec.
The Samsung hybrid drives, pictured above left, come in capacities of 80Gbyte, 120Gyte and 160Gbyte. Samsung says their average power consumption is 0.24W compared with an average 1.2W of a hard disk, promising an average 14percent improvement in battery life. The drives uses a Serial ATA 1.5G interface.
The performance boost is greatest with 'seek intensive' activities, when there are a lot of disk accesses, according to the man on Samsung's stand. Boot-ups are seek intensive, so we should be able to get into our machines a lot quicker.
Microsoft takes on JPEG with new WMP format
Microsoft wants to replace the ubiquitous JPEG file format with its own newly specified Windows Media Photo.
Although WMPhoto's current specification is still in the preliminary stage we cannot underestimate the ability of Microsoft to corner this market.
Microsoft could promote the format in Vista desktop applications by giving it great prominence in the software development suite Visual Studio .NET.
WMPhoto taking hold on the web is a different kettle of fish altogether given the traditional antipathy towards using Microsoft software online.
How WMPhoto will be licenced will surely prove critical to its success.
AMD's latest offering may fall short
AMD launched its AM2 CPU socket yesterday and while it's a welcome improvement there's nothing earth-shattering about it.
Granted, when the Athlon 64 FX-62 or Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is combined with the AM2 in a Nforce chipset AMD provides a powerful setup.
However, given that Intel's Core 2 Duo performed so well in testing we believe that when it ships in July, AMD's marketing department will have a tough time on their hands.
How will we ever get away from work?
Many of the new features in Vista and Office 2007 are designed for a world remote from that of most users today.
It is a world in which dispersed groups of people talk in Powerpoints and collaborate on spreadsheets, Word documents and presentations in ‘workspaces’ over the network, all with carefully logged version control.
These groups no longer need to waste their time chatting, dozing, or reading a book in airports, railway stations or cafes.
If two or more people are gathered together within Wifi range, a new Vista feature called Windows Meeting Place allows them to set up an instant ad hoc network and buckle down to their Powerpoints there and then.
We’ve been through all this before with notebooks, of course. Vendors are always proclaiming how these push up productivity, without mentioning that this involves working in places the Office previously never reached, like trains, planes and the toilet.
Intel even boasted of putting a notebook in a surfboard, presumably so surfers could work away while they waited for the next big wave.
But like notebooks, virtual meetings have their plus sides too. I’d rather take a briefing over a conference call with an on-screen presentation than have to traipse over town to meet someone when I’m busy – though to be sure I prefer face-to-face meetings if I have the time.
The collaborative features in Microsoft’s next generation software, of which Meeting Place is just one, go much further and it is hard at the moment to predict when and to what extent these will trickle down to the mainstream from those enterprise spaces where this sort of thing is already routine.
It is beginning to happen with the burgeoning features of instant messaging. But this stuff has to watched carefully or we will never be able to get away from work.
Win a high-end graphics card each year - for life
Powercolor has just launched a competition (World Cup based, naturally) to win a high-end graphics card each year, for life.
It’s a competition that will no doubt appeal to those who are fed up having to shell out hundreds of pounds every time a new card is released. However, since Powercolor are ATI-only, Nvidia devotees won’t be so impressed.
All you have to do is predict which country will win the World Cup.
The first card to be given away will be the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX, which we reviewed back in January.
To enter the competition, visit Powercolor’s site.
Oh, and if you’re lucky enough to win, you can forget about setting up your own Ebay graphics card stall – Powercolor will require you to return the old card in order to receive the new model.
On the face of it: the new look of Vista and Office 2007
The latest build of Vista feels like a big advance over XP, judging from the few minutes I have had a chance to play with it, and if it turns out to be stable enough I plan to use it as my working platform.
The flashy new ways of seeing your files and multiple windows are more than just a gimmick – they really do help you see what you are doing. And the joy is in the detail, little usability features that you will quickly come to take for granted.
For instance features once buried in Control Panel, accessible via the Start button only by those in the know, can now be found via the My Computer window, which makes far more sense.
It turns out that some of the more exotic features will be available only to the professional builds of Vista. There will be two graphics modes: Basic, which is still an advance of XP, and Aero in which you get the 3D visualisations and thumbnail views of files.
Aero will be available only on PCs with graphics cards supporting technology called Windows Driver Display Model (WDDM). Incidentally the 64bit version of Vista will refuse to load uncertified hardware drivers, which are tolerated by the 32bit version and XP. Microsoft says dodgy drivers cause something like 30 percent of system crashes, but why they are treated different by the two versions of Vista remains obscure.
Vista’s search facilities could hardly fail to be better than those in XP, in which they are one of the worst-implemented features. Vista’s are not just friendlier and much, much faster: they are central to the way you use the operating system. Everything is indexed on the fly, and you can easily added metadata tags to files to make them even simpler to find and organise.
The search facility can also be used to launch programs: if you type Notepad, you either launch the text-editor or it is listed among files containing the name. Power users may scoff at this but it will feel more natural to people who do not use computers much – many already use Search rather than folder listings to find files.
Intel's quad-core chip: Kentsfield
While we were taking a look at the new Core 2 Duo processor (Conroe) today in Munich, Intel were good enough to show us a system running the quad-core Kentsfield processor.
It's due for shipping in 2007 and although it was in a rough pre-production state it did run cool (no noisy fan). We can't comment on the performance since Intel are keeping it under wraps as far as benchmarking is concerned.
We are, however, happy to report that it's stable and powerful enough to handle even the most taxing of Powerpoint presentations ... but then that's a FarCry from the stress that gamers are going to put it under.
Intel Insight
Microsoft isn't the only one with a big launch on the cards as Intel is gearing up for a July shipping date for its Core 2 Duo processors. We're over in Munich today benchmarking the desktop version (codenamed Conroe).
Intel was even so kind as to provide some (well-tuned) AMD machines for comparison. However the comments directed towards its competitors latest offering (AM2 socket) weren't so kind ...
Now while Intel won't let us publish specific details of the benchmarking we can say that we were quite impressed. Watch this space.
Waiting for Gates to open up
Seattle, Monday, May 22. IT journalists from all over the world have come here ready for Winhec, the biggest Microsoft event of the year, which starts tomorrow.
This year it is all the more interesting for being the last before the biggest software rollout for more than a decade - the biggest ever, in fact, in terms of the volume of code.
We've been at briefings all day on condition that we should not write anything until 9am local time tomorrow (mid afternoon UK time) when Bill Gates is expected to give more details.
But it is no secret that the launch of Windows Vista, successor to XP, and the new Office 12, is fast approaching, with the code going to enterprises late this year and to consumers early in 2007.
We've been hard at work all day, so it's been a bit short on amusement, unless you count last night when someone tried to goad our Microsoft guide by proclaiming that Apple will soon break the company's hold on the consumer market.
He refused to rise to the bait, which itself is a sign of the times. Microsoft seems to have lost some of the cockiness it had a throughout the eighties and nineties. This may be prelaunch edginess, but it could also be a recognition of the fact that its days of absolute dominance have past.
But it is still a considerable power to be reckoned with, and in its way is one of the marvels of America.
HP Cannes do stylish
HP held their latest PSG (Personal Systems Group) press briefing in the madness that is the Cannes Film Festival, announcing a new marketing campaign and launching three new products; a notebook, a slim-pc and a blade workstation.
The global marketing campaign is the first ever for the PSG and HP are backing it with an investment of several hundred million dollars.
Under the title ‘The Computer is Personal Again’ HP are focusing on the highly individual relationships people build with their PC’s, be it desktop, notebook or handheld and are planning to launch a range of products that offer more style and usability than any previous HP systems including a range of customising ‘skins’ to make your PC unique to you.
Pavilion dv2000
HP’s latest addition to the Pavilion notebook range is a bit of a shock; it’s a HP notebook you would actually be proud to show off! Gone is the corporate grey brick of previous models, the dv2000 has a slim-line shiny black chassis complimented by the silver keyboard and wrist pads. The finish is what HP 
are calling Imprint finish, a hard coated, high gloss finish which HP claim to be scratch resistant, and try as we might we couldn’t scratch it with a fingernail (which is all we could try under the eagle eyes of various HP product managers). It comes with a 14.1 widescreen display using HP’s BrightView technology and is HD ready and is ready to play music or films at a touch of a button with HP QuickPlay – you also get two headphone jacks to share the experience.
Pavilion Slimline s7500 Series
A very small (24.5cm high, 11cm wide) PC using AMD’s Turion CPU with integrated graphics and just one free PCI-E slot, ideal for adding a TV card etc to create a small media centre PC.
BT DSL MAX broadband trial in progress
We're currently in the process of trialing BT's DSL MAX 8Mb broadband service.
Our router is now syncing at 8.1Mb, but our speeds are the same as they were on the previous 2Mb service, which provided pretty constant download speeds of 1.8Mb.
It looks like we'll have to wait a few more days before we start to experience any significant increase in speed - part of the DSL MAX upgrade process involves automated line testing for a minimum of 10 days.
As soon as our service is fully upgraded, we'll be reporting back with the new speeds as well as the overall level of BT's service and a review of BT's latest broadband hardware.
Radio gears up for ultra-mobiles
Wireless shows are not the best places to demonstrate the likes of Bluetooth and Wifi because just about every stand is using radio of some kind, so everyone is fighting for airspace.
So it was brave of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) to invite us to the Wireless Event show in London's Olympia yesterday to show us how its new improved technology allows WiFi and Bluetooth to coexist in the same device. And it was not surprising that the signal did break up a little.
But it worked, which is a big advance on the first Bluetooth devices which at close range could kill a Wifi link stone dead. Technology allowing Wifi 11b/g and Bluetooth, which both use unlicensed 2.4GHz spectrum, to coexist in the same device has been around for a long time. But CSR says its modules can now allow a device to cope simultaneously with two real-time streams: a Wifi voice-over-IP call and a Bluetooth stereo feed to a headset.
Simon Finch, vice president of CSR's Wifi strategic business unit, points out that this is quite a feat, as the packets in both data streams have to be 'interleaved in the air' so that the received signal keeps pace with how it was transmitted. 'You cannot get away with dropping a packet,' Finch says.
The chips that do these things are tiny, the size of your little finger nail, though they have to be because they are designed for mobile phones. A new version of CSR's Bluecore 5 chip packs FM radio - a minute analogue front end mixes the signal down to an intermediate frequency, which is pushed through an analogue-digital converter.
For me the most exciting aspect of CSR's stand was that it showed the wireless technology coming together to realise the potential of ultra-mobile PCs. But also on show was a very smart Plantronics stereo headset (right) that I haven't seen before. This is the type that allows you to make phone calls and listen to music tracks. We'll try to get one in for review.
See also 11n Wifi will have two versions
Apple iMac Vista Ready
Following on from our earlier post about Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor we tried it out on an iMac running Windows XP.
Watch out though, you'll need to have the .NET 1.1 Framework installed to run it (doesn't come with XP Service Pack 2 or boot camp).
It gave us the thumbs up, save for a few driver warnings. So the iMac's ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card will have no problems rendering Aero, the new Windows graphics engine.
Find out if your PC can run Vista
Microsoft has released a nifty little tool to check if your PC is capable of running Vista. It tests if your raw hardware is up to the challenge and whether or not you'll need to upgrade your drivers.
The cool thing about the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor download is that it allows you to select what Vista features you want to test for.
My PC passed with flying colours so I'm a happy camper, how about yours?
Off to the labs now to try this out on an iMac running WinXP via Boot Camp.
More info on the switch to Vista.
Review: Canon DC40 DVD camcorder
Back in January, we reviewed Canon’s DC20 DVD camcorder. Due to its poor image quality, we weren’t overly impressed.
Now Canon has released DC40 – an updated version of the DC20 with, amongst other things, a bigger CCD and a huge range of features.
As you’ll find out by reading the full Canon DC40 review, it’s well worth the extra money.
Sky HD - first looks review
Our first looks review of the new Sky HD set top box has just gone live.
When provided with true HD content it's capable out outputting truly amazing image quality, but since not all programs are filmed in HD, many will have to be upscaled first.
The box costs £299 and you'll need to pay an extra tenner a month on top of the normal Sky+ subscription.
Read the full first looks review.
AMD says: stop wasting money!
We took a look at the new AMD processor, the Turion 64 X2 yesterday - it incorporates their new Energy Efficiency technology.
There seems to be a big push on this front from AMD. They claim that if "the world" used their Opteron server chips that we'd see savings to the tune of $1.1 billion over three years.
We find figures like this pretty spurious - let's see some realistic energy saving comparison tables (for, say, small businesses and organisations) rather than the notional figure they display on their site.
Leave saving the world to Bono, he does it better ...
How market research proved the web would flop
A few years back, when the web was very young, a group of market researchers threw a press lunch to announce that they had proved conclusively that no-one was going to use the new medium. What they had done, at vast expense, was to go and ask people about their attitudes to it.
This was at a time when most people had heard of the web, but comparatively few had used it, which meant there was no way they could have any more than the haziest idea of what it was all about. The research was therefore little short of balderdash.
The story is a reminder, if one is needed, that you always need your bullshit detector on hand when dealing with surveys of attitudes to emerging technologies. There are some interesting figures in Continental Research's new Convergence Report Spring 2006 but they should be read with care.
It asks questions like: 'Are you likely to use Video on Demand (VoD)in the next 12 months?'
Roughly two in three replied negatively. Yet the VoD landscape will go through vast changes in the coming months. Bandwidths are rising almost by an order of magnitude and every man and his uncle is talking of offering video online. So how meaningful are those survey responses?
Operators and content providers will take comfort from the fact that even today, with a relatively immature infrastructure, one in three people expects top use VoD in the coming year. The figures rises to 50 percent among cable users who already have the service.
But the negative responses, though they may indicate that VoD will take time to achieve its potential, should surely be taken with a pinch of salt.
Adobe unfazed by Office 2007's native pdf support
We met up with folks from Adobe yesterday - they organised a spot of Go-Karting. The Adobe guys were pretty confident, eventually finishing the race in first place. Their confidence spilled over into the bar later when they dismissed the possibility of Microsoft Office 2007's native PDF support posing any significant challenge to Adobe Acrobat's dominance of the PDF generation market.
Adobe reckons that the PDF generating ability of future releases of the Office suite will be so basic as to perhaps sound the death knell for the likes of Jaws PDF Creator but not sophisticated enough to lure power users away from Acrobat.
On the record, and for the record, we managed a creditable podium finish ...
Review: Dual core Apple Macbook - in black!
We managed to get hold of the new Core Duo Apple Macbook, which came out today.
We've looked at the black version - a change from Apple's usual white chassis. It looks good, but you pay an extra £130 for the privilege, and the only extra is an additional 20GB of hard disk, which seems pretty expensive for so little.
Otherwise, the big story around this notebook is its use of Intel's dual core processor, which gives it plenty of extra performance over previous models.
UPDATE: Our in-depth review is now online, or alternatively you can read our first impressions of the new Apple Macbook.
Sony releases details on its Blu-ray notebook
Following on from our blog earlier this week, Sony has released details about its forthcoming Blu-ray VAIO notebooks.
Labelled the AR series, each model will sport a 200GB hard drive, 17in screen (1,920 x 1,200), HDMI interface and, of course, a Blu-ray optical drive.
They will be powered by Core Duo Intel processors and Nvidia's Geforce Go graphics, while running Windows XP Media Center Edition.
A hybrid (analogue and digital) TV tuner is included, but since it's not a dual-tuner you won't be able to record two channels at the same time.
Sony is being particularly vague about the release date and will only commit to saying the AR series will be in the shops "late June". We won't be at all suprised if this stretches well into July.
World Cup Profiteer Watch: Flybook's England World Cup song
Our second installment in the World Cup Profiteer Watch is notebook manufacturer Flybook, which has come out with its own England World Cup song.
Set to the soundtrack of the Stranglers' Peaches (are they allowed to destroy a classic?), you can listen to its unofficial World Cup Wild Card song, which comes complete with classic clips from Motty.
Sadly, it's actually better than the Football Association's official England World Cup song by Embrace.
See also: World Cup Profiteer Watch: The Samsung E370 from T-Mobile
Ronaldinho kicks Lenovo as it releases two new notebooks
Following our review of Lenovo's Thinkpad X60, the company has come out with two more laptops in the range, and possibly scored a bit of an own goal.
The Thinkpad notebooks are the Z61 and R60, and both use Intel's Core Duo processor.
The Lenovo Z61 is a widescreen model with an integrated webcam and stereo mic for videconferencing or voice over IP calls. The Thinkpad R60 is a lower-cost range, with a 1.6GHz CPU, although the R60e has from 256MB of Ram - which is generally considered too low for machines running Windows XP.
Prices start from £840.
Lenovo, which recently made Barcelona's Ronaldinho its brand ambassador (a move that won't endear it to Arsenal fans on the eve of the Champion's League final) has also kicked off its marketing campaign using the star.
"Ronaldinho’s strengths in mobility, speed and his ability to connect with his team-mates perfectly reflect the strengths of the Lenovo 3000 series," said the company in a stunning piece of marketing guff.
Photo credit: FCBarcelona.com
Hitachi launch 2.5" PMR hard drive
The Travelstar 5K160 represents Hitachi's first foray into the perpendicular magenetic recording (PMR) hard drive market. It's a 2.5" drive for laptops and at 160GB is quite sizeable indeed.
PMR enables manufacturers to cram more bits into each disk by aligning the bits in a perpendicular, as opposed to longitudinal, fashion.
We're looking forward to getting this drive into our labs and putting it through its paces.
Product of the Week podcast: Lenovo Thinkpad X60
Our latest Product of the Week podcast has just gone live.
We discuss the new Thinkpad X60 from Lenovo (the company that took over IBM's notebook division last year).
It's no stunner in terms of looks, but the battery life is excellent.
Listen to the podcast, read the full review and, if you're quick, enter our podcast competition to win a Shuttle XPC worth around £1,300.
Guy Kewney is a cabbie, not a technology expert
Regular PCW freelance correspondant Guy Kewney is currently getting his 15 minutes of fame after another Guy was mistakenly interviewed live in a BBC studio instead of him.
Guy K is a slim, bearded 50 something man known in the industry for his sandals. Guy Goma (widely reported as a cab driver, but actually there for a job interview) is not. Guy knows a lot about technology. Guy 2.0, well watching his performance, we were impressed, considering he clearly doesn't know a lot about technology.
If you know him, then the video clip of Guy Kewney the 'cabbie' is really funny.
If you don't know Guy, well it's still worth watching just for the look on Guy Goma's face as the interview begins, the way he muddles through, and the way the BBC correspondant hangs on his every word - while struggling to understand his French accent.
Plus, you can watch the BBC News 24's apology and follow up interview, this time without mixing up their Guys.
Ultra slim laptop looks ultra cool
Surpassing Samsung's X11 as the thinnest laptop on the market, LG's XNote T1 measures a mere 21mm and weighs in at just over 1.9kg. Wow! Despite being so thin and light LG have still managed to endow the XNote T1 with a 14" widescreen capable of resolutions up to 1440x900. This laptop doesn't appear short on features either with a built-in memory card reader, fingerprint sensor, dvd burner, wifi and bluetooth with a Centrino Duo under the hood. No pricing details or release date available yet. You can get a feel for it (and practise your Korean at the same time!) by taking a look at the XNote T1 promotional video.
Sony readies Blu-ray notebook
According to the Inquirer, Sony is to launch a Blu-ray notebook in July.
The AR11S, as it's rather oddly been named, is expected to cost around £2,000 and, thanks to a 17in screen, weighs in at 3.8Kg.
Despite Toshiba unveiling an HD-DVD notebook in early March, more than two months on it's still yet to hit the stores.
Whether Sony's Blu-ray HD alternative manages to pip Tosh's HD-DVD to the post remains to be seen.
Review: Terratec's new audio streaming device
The Noxon 2 is a new audio device which lets you stream
both your digital music and Internet
radiostations direct to your home entertainment system. Its quirky design belies a device which is a breeze to use. Check out our full review of the Noxon 2 for the low-down.
World Cup Profiteer Watch: The Samsung E370 from T-Mobile
To us, the World Cup is about football, football and a bit more football.
To marketing types its all about splashing the words 'World' and 'Cup' over their existing product range in a hope to boost sales.
With this in mind, we've started up the World Cup Profiteer Watch to name and shame those trying to earn a quick buck off the beautiful game.
First up is T-Mobile with its new Samsung E370 Three Lions Special Edition - apparently the official handset of the England team.
So what makes this a phone any different to the standard E370? A few England wallpaper photos, some animations and a couple of pre-installed World Cup video clips.
As you can see from the photo, poor old Crouchy seems about as impressed as we are.
If you want to find out more about the Samsung E370, which also sports a 1.3 megapixel camera and is available on monthly and pay-as-you-go, check out T-Mobile's web site.
Review: Family Historian 3 genealogy software
If you're into your genealogy, our latest review will be right up your street.
Family Historian 3 might not have a glossy interface, in fact it looks positively dated, but it's easy to use and loaded with features to liven up your family tree.
The Gedcom file format is used by default, which makes sharing your findings with other researchers a piece of cake, and it can also produce customisable reports.
Read the full Family Historian 3 review.