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Building up a network can be made easier by using existing facilities in the home in conjunction with Homeplug technology.
Time to put on your planners hat as Alawar offers you the opportunity to visit the American Old West and build a township.
Back in the early days of growing up (some would say it is still an on-going process for me), Saturday mornings were a time to look forward to as the local cinema put on a special show for the younger generation. With a clear distinction between good and evil, a staple diet of these shows were the popular cowboy films set in various shanty towns and churned out by the truck load.
A waterproof camera that can by the aid of GPS tell you where you were when you took the image or movie. I did not get a chance to test if the two features worked together; in fact the only waterproof tests were in my bath.
he Pentax WG1-GPS measures 12x6x2cm, these are maximum figures the zoom works on the periscope principle required for a waterproof offering. It is also quite sculptured with either end being 6cm tall but the middle only 5cm, it weights 165grams. The right side has a substantial wrist strap which is useful if you take it underwater. The base has a slide door behind which is the solid battery and any SD card you insert.
Media content can arrive in different formats which are not always compatible with all your devices. Helping cope with this problem is the stated aim of a product released by Binary Distribution.
Binary Distribution, a traditional software publisher and distributor, has released the mediAvatar Media Toolkit in theUK. This product concentrates its main functionality on the conversation between different video and audio formats with a range of pre-set and customisable settings. Currently available as a download (DownloadBuyer.com) or physical boxed offering (Amazon.co.
If you only listen to Internet Radio then this could be for you. It also means providing you have a decent Broadband connection almost any station anywhere in the world is available to you even if normal radio reception is naff.
The Stream 105 from Roberts measures 26x8x15cm and weights 700 grams (without batteries). There is a 2cm difference between back and front and the whole unit is a stretched oval, with the carrying handle raised the height is increased from 15 to 21cm. The rear has a battery bay should you wish to run it on 6x‘C’ cell batteries. Above this are USB (for upgrading only) headphone socket, auxiliary input and the DC input, the supplied lead 1.85 metres long, just adequate.
With the wrist watch seeming to go the way of the pocket watch nearly a century ago most people now seem to check the time on their phone a new offering needs something different about it to raise more than a glance.
This is different, very different. The one sent to me was lime green with a light grey strap fixed tightly so the watch can stand vertically even when not attached to your wrist. It is slightly wider than it is tall and still reasonably thin. It weights 60 grams and the face is 4x3.7x1cm, however the moulded strap is so thick and tight near the watch that the 3.7 becomes a lot nearer 6cm. I suspect it could become a fashion accessory if worn by a few models/pop stars.
While better known for its DAB radio products, PURE offers an Internet-based service called the Lounge that you can inspect.
Owners of one of the more recent PURE DAB radio models with Wi-Fi and Internet radio capability will have already encountered the Lounge. For those unfamiliar with this feature, I should explain that the Lounge is PURE’s online portal providing a gateway to an environment of Internet radio and on-demand content made up of podcasts, listen again programmes and a collection of ambient sounds captured from natural phenomena.
Nokia have recently jumped off the Simbian bandwagon and joined forces with Microsoft. Here is their first offering together Nokias phone expertise and Microsofts mobile operating system when Windows 8 arrives on the PC it is rumoured to lot a lot like this.
My first surprise is that it uses a Micro SIM and so many phone providers think it is only Blackberry and Apple that use this smaller SIM. My own opinion is that it is fiddly to fit, but another journalist friend of mind thinks it is the way all phones will go. Still once in, it need not move. Technically I am told it is possible to cut a full size SIM.
Continuing my look at various Epson multifunction devices, it is the turn of a model smaller than the other units seen recently.
Rather than the usual “All-in-One” classification, the Epson Stylus SX235W is described as a “Small-in-One” device. The reason for this slight change is that this particular Epson multifunction unit is smaller than some other print, copy and scan devices that are currently available from the company. The SX235W has dimensions of 390 x 300 x 145mm (W x D x H).
As its full title indicates, Lonely Dream is the third offering in the Specialbit Studios Haunted Hotel series. I missed out on the first two episodes and so came to Lonely Dream without any preconceptions as to what to expect from this Hidden Object Adventure game originally published by Big Fish Games and now part of the Focus Multimedia catalogue.
Like most games, Lonely Dreams has various options, including the volume level for background music and sound effects plus screen brightness, which can be adjusted to suit your taste. There is also an option to play in either Casual or Advanced mode. In the former you get a quicker refresh of the Hint feature plus the opportunity to skip some of the puzzles with less of a delay.
Very few DAB radios have the ability to record (in MP2) to SD card, the original Bug by another manufacturer was one and here from Roberts their RecordR offers this extremely useful feature both for timed and instant recording.
While this is a perfectly acceptable DAB and FM radio the main selling point is its ability to save (pause) or save for replay later anything broadcast on any DAB or FM radio station so if you are a fan of a regular program that you always seem to arrive home just as its ending never fear you can set it to record it and then listen whenever suits you.
Helping bring together your collection of digital photos, music tracks and album plus videos so that they can be directed towards an appropriate output medium, such as a television, is the role ideally suited for a multimedia player. These types of devices tend to come in a range of shapes and sizes with some variety in their feature set. The latest such device to make its presence felt on my desktop is the ACME Portable Media Centre (MPO1).
With its dimensions of 142.5 x 85 x 23mm (L x W x H), the ACME Portable Media Centre (MPO1) could easily be mistaken for a small portable hard drive. This mistaken is easy to understand when you realise that it is possible to insert a 2.5-inch SATA drive, of up to 1TB capacity, into the body of this brushed metallic silver multimedia player. However this particular feature does not form part of this review which will concentrate on other aspects of this product.
Netbooks continue to be a useful solution; however this one nearly did not get reviewed. It was slow to boot almost as slow to shut down and as for opening any applications, luckily I am known for my determination so read on.
As always these come in preconfigured to a point, in theory all you need to do is enter your passcode for your wireless router activate the Norton trial and off you go. One thing I do first is to switch off and then time the boot. At this point I knew things were not right. The boot took 90seconds and shutdown from desktop took 45seconds. During the next three days I did just short of 100 updates as soon as I thought I had done them all more arrived.
Another product that is certainly mature once they got beyond 12 they started using roman numerals, most people thought that was to avoid 13 but a year so later X4 comes so what does a mature product have to offer that is new?
Paintshop Pro X4 comes on two discs, the first will install various updated Microsoft bits like Direct X etc and then the program this took 12 minutes on a reasonably fast Windows 7 PC and took 381MB of hard disc. Disc two is a range of bonus features (something Corel have always given even when the product was on floppy discs) and this took another 3 minutes and a further 310MB of hard disc space, so 691MB and 15 minutes to do the install.
As one of the major anti-virus companies, Kaspersky has created a product that enables the user to protect different devices.
Rather than stick with a single device, we are becoming users who regularly call upon a number of devices to satisfy our computing and communication needs. In some cases we might rely on a Windows computer, smartphone and an Android Tablet without giving it a moment’s thought. As each of these devices is capable of communicating with the Internet, some form of security should be in place to ensure you are protected from malware and other anti-social attacks.
With all the coverage given today to inkjet solutions it is often forgotten what a good job a laser can do. Until quite recently a colour laser was very expensive, very large and very heavy, none of those things apply to this unit.
It is 39x40x22 with the detachable A4 input tray in place. Paper is laid face up in the input tray at the base of the unit and delivered face down onto the top of it. The on/off button is near the base of the front to the right of the input tray and the other button and five well marked LED’s on the right of the output tray on the top. The power lead and USB lead are both on the back of the unit near the left side. This completes all the units’ controls.
It is that time of the year when Adobe reveals the latest version of its graphics package for those on a limited budget.
While Adobe Photoshop is the market leading graphics package, its price point puts it out of the reach of many users. For those that fall into this category, Adobe offers its Photoshop Elements product with the latest version being number 10. The product is available for either the Windows or Mac platform and comes as a standalone product or as part of a bundle with Adobe Premiere Elements. This review is based on the Windows standalone version.
More Adventure than Hidden Object style of play, a new game from Alawar takes you to an abandoned amusement part to solve a mystery.
What is it with journalists? Some of them seem incapable of researching a good story without getting into a whole heap of trouble. For instance take the case of John Flatter who set out to investigate an abandoned amusement park that has a pretty gory history with disappearances and deaths. Before you know it, Flatter has disappeared, adding to the mystery of the place.
This is a DAB, FM and Internet radio; however believe it or not that is just part of what this can do. Pure have their Lounge and with this service now improved and enhanced it enables your radio to do much more.
The Pure One Flow DAB radio measures 20.5x14.5x7cm this excludes the 77cm added to the middle figure the height by the eight piece rod aerial. It weights 730grams without batteries. Mine was black and covered in a sort of rubberised material that might give some protection if it were to be dropped. The back behind a flip down door is where batteries (or a charge PAK) are inserted it is also where the DC is inserted.
When buying any computer kit one wants to plan ahead to give oneself a degree of future-proofing without going to the too expensive extreme. The Netgear N600 wireless dual-band gigabit ADSL2+ modem router model DGND3700 will provide more than adequate performance today while, at the same time, has enough facilities and performance to meet needs for the next year or two which is, after all, as far as it is reasonable to plan -- even if one switches from ADSL to cable or fibre.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this ADSL modem router does not directly support cable or fibre; it has a WAN (wide area network) gigabit Ethernet port to connect to a cable or fibre modem. Thus, a user can make the transition without having to disturb any of their LAN connections or having to make any additional purchases. The DGND3700 is a vertically mounted unit which is roughly 23 x 16 x 7.5cm overall including the stand even though the body of the unit itself is only 3.5cm wide.
As I say goodbye to one Epson multifunction device, so another model takes its place. This time it is the Epson Stylus SX535WD.
Following the pattern established by the previous Epson Stylus multifunction units I have looked, the Epson Stylus SX535WD is a box shaped unit with rounded corners to give it just a touch of style. Predominately black in colour, combining matte and areas of reflective black that tend not to show up finger smears (do I hear a shout of “hurray”), this model has dimensions of 445 x 367 x 169mm making it slightly smaller than the BX635FWD that I looked at recently.
If you are in the market for a large flat panel then certainly this offering from Samsung should be on a very short list. It is described as a 27inch monitor but for something so big it is not heavy or in any way really bulky.
The screen is 64.5x39x2.5cm. The base it stands on is oval at 28.5x23cm and it raises the screen by 9cm from your desk. The screen has a few degrees of forward movement and around 15degrees of backward tilt, there is no side to side movement. The viewable area of the screen is 60x33cm giving the diagonal imperial measurement of 27inches. I used this attached to several PC’s of varying vintages running XP, Vista and Windows 7 at up to 1920x1080 and all worked correctly.
Few if any of us can afford a Ferrari so this red and black offering with the Ferrari logo might be the closest we come. Second Go Mini not a car reference refers to a small corded mouse for those who cannot get on with trackpads.
Many – in fact probably most – or us would love to own a Ferrari, most of us could not even afford the insurance, here however is something with the Ferrari log we can afford their wireless laser mouse, it is of course predominately red. It is 10.5x6x3cm, the edges are black as is the scroll wheel and button areas back to the prancing horse logo under your palm. Described as high precision it can be up to 2000dpi.
Adding to its range of handsets, Samsung has released its Galaxy S II handset to tempt you to part with your hard earned cash.
Have you ever wondered what happens to all those mobile handsets that are now considered to be no longer the favour of the moment? Judging by the rate at which new models are appearing, there must be a vast army of handsets, sitting on retailers’ shelves or clogging up various warehouses, which have been replaced by the must-have model.
If you say BlackBerry to any one under forty they probably thing smartphone. If over sixty they thing of a berry growing wild picked in late summer. Here for all its the BlackBerry offering into the very crowded Tablet market place.
Think Tablet and PC, Android and Apple come to mind, so does another have a chance even one with such a wide user base as BlackBerry. Shortly before I got this Tablet a great number of people in the BlackBerry area were hit by several outages and realised how much they relied on a single small object to control their working lives. It is 19x13x1cm and while it will just about fit in a large pocket it is more a bag sort or tool. It weights a little over 400grams.
Bringing together video, music and pictures is the role of a media player such as the hdMEDIA RT3
Newly arrived from our Dutch friends at Eminent is the EM7280 HD Media Player otherwise known as the hdMEDIA RT . This black box device is considered to be the successor to the company’s EM7180 HD Media Player that gave you control over the various aspects of your media content stored on various devices. Slab-shaped with dimensions of 222 x 155 x 55mm (W x D x H), this product comes with a collection of leads and a full size remote control unit.
All you can see is not all that is available in a game that has you looking up and down as well as left and right in search of hidden objects.
Separation is the title of Chapter 1 of The Fall Trilogy. Spread over five chapters, this is an adventure game with more than a sprinkling of Hidden Object searches, puzzle solving and mini-game action to keep you occupied. You will quickly discover that this game takes a more all-round view of its world as you can direct your viewpoint to the left and right plus up and down as you move around an environment based around a hexagon layout.
This is a slimmer, faster and better specified version of the original Packard Bell oneTwo. It is a full featured Windows PC with Touch Screen working out of the box but it is also a Windows Media Centre unit with remote.
The screen is 51.5x32x5.5cm with only the sprung stand increasing the width to a figure of your choice between 22 and 30cm dependant on the amount of back tilt you require to suit you. The diagonal imperial screen size is 21.5inches. This shows 1920x1080 in a clear crisp sharp screen. The left side has headphone and microphone sockets, two USB3 sockets and a multi card port. The top centre of the screen surround has a web cam and beside it a pinhole microphone.
STM has introduced a vertical laptop shoulder bag in which the computer is stowed vertically rather than the normal horizontal. This turns out to be a remarkably comfortable way to carry a machine together with its basic accessories, possibly an iPad, and some paperwork and so many people may consider it a viable alternative to the conventional ones.
Designed to accommodate the majority of 15inch laptops it weighs just 0.9kg and is constructed, mainly, out of 300D water-resistant micro rip-stop polyester. As well as the padded grab handle there is a removable shoulder strap that can be adjusted over a wide range to suit user needs. My preference was to have a very short strap so that my elbow stopped the bag swinging around. Others may choose to have a far longer strap going diagonally over the shoulder.
Recently I have been able to give my Brother mono laser printer a break from its day-to-day activity as I replaced it with a product from Samsung.
Offering a choice of USB 2.0 or Wi-Fi connectivity, the ML-1865W is a mono laser printer from the Samsung stable. Combining glossy and matt black with its plastic casing, this box shaped unit with rounded corners has an appealing look and a footprint that is smaller than other inkjet and laser printers I have seen. With its front and top flaps closed, the ML-1865W has dimensions of 341 x 224 x 184mm (W x D x H).
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