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Adding a face-to-face capability to Skype calls requires a web cam such as the one from US Robotics.
Following the release of its USB telephone adapter that allows Skype calls to be made from a normal telephone, US Robotics has now ventured into the field of Internet video with its Mini Cam for Skype product. Now, not only can you make free or reduced rate calls using the popular Skype service, you can also view the person at the other end of the connection in all their glory or otherwise as the case may be.
This is a stylish looking multi function unit, however despite the neat outward appearance doing things other than copying without the PC is not that easy.
It is 45x34x16cm you need to double the last figure the height when paper is stored waiting to be used. The USB lead goes in back left and the power lead towards the right on the rear. The controls are on the top all together in a line to the left of the flatbed scanner lid that opens landscape. A total of twenty four buttons and a one line LED display. This is fixed so you need to adjust yourself to be able to read it.
Adding an optical media burner to your system has never been easier when the device is external and uses USB connectivity.
At one time adding an additional optical drive to your computer involved a degree of surgery. You would have needed to open up your system box; find an empty bay; remove the face plate from the bay; insert and screw the drive into place; and attach both a power and data ribbon lead to the appropriate sockets before closing the case and completing the process. If a laptop was involved then the problems could be multiplied.
While this name may be new to you I have followed their introduction to the UK a few years ago, now they are firmly here in the camera, projector and flat panel aeras.
This is a small - shirt pocket - but quite powerful digital camera. It is 8.5x5x2cm and the weight is only just over 100grams. It is a 6MP offering with the standard 3x zoom. It has a Pentax lens 6.2 to 18.6mm. The unit is brushed silver and grey, the front has the lens and the flash and although they are fairly close it does not seem to suffer to much from Red Eye.
This product has the kiss of death attached to it by being called Educational. A few years ago there was a movement to call such things Edutainment, that, also seems to be no more.
This product comes on two CD's and to run it the CD always needs to be in the ROM. The install therefore is very quick (around a minute) and it takes only 40MB of hard disc space. You are met by a bewildering front screen shaped a little like a brain however despite a total of 20 items that look to be clickable most at this stage do nothing and only a small proportion flash red to mean they are part of a trail. To load a talk click once on a title.
Strap yourself in as we take off in our spaceship to protect the planet from waves of alien attacks in a new game from Enkord.
The anticipation you can feel when coming face to face with a follow-up title can be both worrying and exciting. You can never be sure whether the developers have expanded and improved the original theme or are merely trying to cash in with a mish-mash of ideas that demean the original product.
A laser printer is often the best and nearly always the quickest for those requiring monochrome textural printout. This offering from Dell can be a USB or network printer.
Image Courtesy of Dell Inc. Should this come with a PC from Dell then they may well have already installed the required software. However it is one of the simplest software installs I have done. First however the packaging in the printer needs to be removed. It is supplied with the toner cartridge already inserted, however you need to remove it to remove the various bits of packing around it.
Although developed as a personal listening device, the iPod can act as a community device with the aid of an appropriate add-on piece of kit.
While the various flavours of the iPod continue to dominate the personal listening arena, the product is also to make inroads into home and group listening circles. The impetus for this incursion is being driven by several third-party companies who have developed different add-ons to take advantage of the iPod phenomena. One such offering is the mm50 from Logitech.
This PC has taken longer to review than normal simply because not only did I have a PC to review but also the operating system it was installed with. Yes Vista is supplied with Eveshams Solar MX100.
Having recently now with thanks to Evesham for their patience lets look at this rather nice PC. Firstly mine came with some quite meaty Creative speakers, a wireless keyboard and mouse set from Logitech, and a 19inch panel that gives a rather good image all within a small total screen surround size of 44x30cm the name on it was new to me Cibox. It is however only an Analogue offering but you can pay extra for a digital model. The maximum screen display is 1440x900.
It does seem that new printers are arriving quicker than ever. We take a look at a new Canon budget offering.
PIXMA is Canon-speak for inkjet printers. Joining this range of Canon printers is the model. This rectangular box shaped unit, decked out in highly reflective black (giving you a mirror in an emergency and a repository for occasional fingerprints), measures 442 x 237 x 152mm and weighs in at 3.3kg.
This is small about the size of the pocket offerings that were MW/LW radios in my youth, the difference the battery is rechargeable and of course the sound quality is far superior.
It is 15x8x2.5cm with the rod aerial collapsed this when fully extended (six piece) adds another 40cm to the 8cm height. The weight is a little under 300grams. The face is silver with the sides and back a black rubberised material. There is a small 15x10cm manual of 10 pages but once you have located the on/off switch most will be able to work out at least the basic functions.
A lot is made of the benefits of support from your pillow especially if like me you suffer from back problems. So never one to lie down on a job for no reason I have tested two such offerings.
Tempur Traditional Pillow Each year I visit the Ideal Home show and I manage normally to find something of interest to readers this time it was the Tempur pillow. Firstly if you like a soft pillow this will not be for you. If you like a light pillow this will not be for you. If you like the cool crisp feel of linen on your face this will not be for you.
Rather than force the user into making a choice, LG takes the approach that two formats will fit into a single box.
There have been several instances of so-called "wars" between competing technologies in the past. A couple of examples are those between Betamax and the VHS video tape format and the short-lived contest between the GEM and Windows GUI software packages.
Several people I know say Samsung is a good make so after a long while trying I have succeeded to get one to review and you know what they are not wrong.
The outer screen dimensions are 81x51x10cm, there is a 4cm high base (but you can fit it on a wall) and the bases footprint is 24x47cm. The actual size of the wide angle screen is 70x40cm giving the diagonal 32inch measurement. As with most recent TV's the routine is much the same, remove from box, fit the base, plug in aerial and any other boxes (Sky, Cable etc), plug into mains and switch on.
As an inveterate labeller, I am always on the look-out for the means to improve on the basic pen and paper method. Could Brother help?
Brother, that's the printer company rather than a relative, covers a wide gamut of devices dealing with different aspects of printing. Laser printers, inject printers, all-in-one devices and label printers are all featured in the Brother portfolio of available products. Within the latter category, the various label printers tend to form the P-touch series of electronic devices.
This printer has an extra that is becoming slowly more common, the ability to print onto CDs and DVDs. I do not mean on a piece of paper that you then stick onto the CD but direct onto the CD.
The is not small at 40x45x24cm the first and last figures need to increase slightly when paper is inserted in the vertical back position and the space behind needs to increase when CD's are printed as the tray is taken out the rear of the printer before printing. So the figures I give are really the desk footprint of the unit. It weights around 6.5kilos.
No longer satisfied with just controlling your cursor, the modern mouse has designs on your search and zoom facilities
I'm tempted to say that we are about to undergo a revolution with regards to mouse technology. However it is probably more correct to use the term "evolution" despite this mouse bearing the title of VX Revolution. Designed and developed by Logitech, this product is described as a cordless laser mouse for notebooks which is not to say that this particular device will not perform equally well when attached to a desktop system.
Certainly the most talked about new operating system I can remember. I have been using it on a PC for a few weeks now and the learning curve seems to be decreasing.
Let's assume you have 1GB of memory and a graphics card (not an onboard graphics chip) then your system can probably run Vista and also the Aero glass graphics engine. I have been testing such a system and for good measure my tests have been conducted with a 2GB Ready Boost pen/stick drive for additional support. Using such a stick/pen drive is cheaper than additional conventional memory. Only Vista can take advantage of this extra memory.
Jet engine construction is typically left for professional engineers, but Father Son Projects, LLC has designed a simple engine that is safe, fun, and relatively easy to build.
Father Son Projects (FSP) has done it again with their new homebuilt jet kit. Jets typically have a row of compressor blades in their front that force pressurized air into a combustion chamber. Here fuel is added and ignited. The rapidly expanding gasses flow past a turbine that is connected by a rotating shaft to the compressors up front. The gasses spin the turbine, which is turn spins the compressors. Then the gasses shoot out of the back of the jet, producing thrust.
Having just printed an image that should last for 120 years, let me tell you about the device I used while waiting to see if the claim is true.
As part of its new batch of products, . This is a device that provides print, scan and copy facilities. Basically it is an with an A4 flatbed scanner positioned on the top.
The last couple of weeks have extended me, to be precise the time spent with Samsungs latest DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera has enabled me to take some superb images.
I get to see a range of digital cameras from a variety of manufacturers but few SLR offerings. So the latest Samsung offering was eagerly anticipated. I am told that most resellers will sell this with two lenses so it was a little disappointing to receive it with only one, however should you have any Pentax lenses from whatever vintage of camera they should fit and a trawl round some boot fairs could provide a rich harvest.
Normally recycling goods just encourages a feel-good effect but there is a way it could increase your bank balance.
So what do you do with the gear you no longer want? Maybe, like many others, you point your browser at eBay and put the various pieces of kit up for sale. However if these items are mobile phones then there is an alternative method that you could take to dispose of unwanted items while swelling your bank balance and possibly benefiting third-world countries plus doing your bit for recycling.
Blu-ray is one of two new DVD formats giving better sound and vision quality, of course to use it you will need an HD ready TV.
The black box of the Samsung BD-P1000 blu-ray player has a silver strip along the bottom half of the front, it is much the same size as a standard video recorder at 43x32x7cm. You will need to add around another 3cm to the 32cm depth for insertion of any cables in the rear of the unit. The front has some buttons but everything - apart from insertion of the DVD's - is possible from your armchair via the 49key remote control.
Recently I have been carrying a camera; PIM; MP3 player; data link to my home computer; television; and phone all within a single device that doesnt cause a bulge in my pocket.
Coming across one of my original mobile phones recently (I had thought all my old models had been dispatched to a charity) helped to re-enforce the strides such devices had made over a relatively short period. Developed initially as a means of voice communication when on the move, mobile phones are now so feature-rich that you could almost forget about the aspect of making and receiving voice calls.
A comfortable headset, a wireless headset, a headset that connects to any 3.5mm jack plug and thus not only is your MP3 player able to be connected without wires but anything else that has a 3.5mm jack.
My first personal joy was that you can remove the headset from the plastic container without an industrial pair of scissors and therefore the packaging, instruction book and charger can be replaced and kept together. So what do you get in the box? A small 3.5x3.5x1.3cm black box with a 3.5mm jack plug on the end that can fit into your MP3 or audio player. You also get six small plastic plates to provide a custom fit for a range of iPods.
Have you lots of LPs and cassettes you no longer play but still love the music they contain? Then one solution could be Music Clean 4 that allows you to transfer it to CD or MP3 amongst other formats.
There is a 68 page A5 manual and unless you are an expect in music manipulation you will be well advised to read it. There are other - far simpler - products out there to do the jobs this does but this can do most of them within one package. I myself have a stack of LP's waiting to be transferred to CD's and currently I use three different products to do what Music Clean 4 can do. Mind you they all do their bits easily and without fuss.
Data in your pocket use to mean a floppy disk but now we have USB flash devices larger than my original hard drive.
Do you remember your first USB memory device? In my case it was an 8MB unit. At the time this device was being promoted as being suitable for all your personal needs when on the move from location to location. Today most users would be embarrassed to be seen with a USB device of such a low capacity and would consign it to the back of a drawer while making use of one of the higher capacity devices that are currently available.
This is far more like what I would expect from Epson than the DX4000 I reviewed recently. The look, the output quality in fact the whole experience was lots better.
This is a four colour four cartridge offering. The software - as with most printers/all in ones is partially installed before you attach the unit. Unlike this came back to me after the initial install with options to install the rest of the software that includes some nice printing and OCR software. The total install time - two parts - was around 30 minutes and afterwards my hard disc had 1.1GB less space but I did install everything.
Enhancing your home videos requires specialist software such as that on offer from Adobe for the budget-conscious discerner user.
As processing power increases and hard disk storage costs decrease so more and more people are becoming involved in the creation of home videos. While the professional fraternity are able to afford the premium price of around £700 for a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro, for many this cost makes the product too expensive especially when you consider you could buy a new system for less.
The market is awash with 'video capable gadgets' - but without video they are just that - capable. Here we review a product aimed at helping you fill the memory on your mobile device with something to watch.
The advent of cheap memory, improved battery technology and high-quality color LCD screens on devices such as mobile phones and game machines, the opportunity for 'video on the go' has become a reality. Whether you have the latest mobile phone a or a video iPod, you now have the opportunity to take more than just music with you.
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