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This 15x10cm printer can also be used to charge your camera and to transfer images to the PC. However with the optional battery it can print when away from mains power.
Unlike the other recent mini printers that I have reviewed from Canon, Epson and HP this can only print direct from the camera, the PC or via Pict Bridge, so no card slots. It is 20x18x10cm without the paper tray inserted this adds another 15cm to the 18cm depth. You will also need around 12cm clear at the rear when printing as the 15x10cm sheets are pulled from the tray and then out of the rear to prepare for the four pass Dye Sub printing.
Adding a new design concept to a travel mouse results in a device that looses its hump and is flat.
I doubt whether any research has been conducted on the subject but, from my personal observations, it does appear that many laptop users seem to prefer a mouse to the touchpad that forms an integral part of the portable computer. Where ever I go, even locations such as exhibitions where space is at a premium, laptops that are demonstrating the various software offerings and services, generally have a mouse attached.
This is a KVM switch and in this case not only links two computers together using only one keyboard, monitor/panel, mouse but also a single set of speakers.
A KVM switch has long linked my two computers that sit either end of my desk, now I can dispense with speakers as well. The long term test Acer panel has excellent speakers built in and now the set of speakers that were used for the other PC are redundant so the office now has that little bit more space and the eight gang surge strip even has a spare plug.
I have used Paint Shop Pro since its very early days of being a shareware product. It has come a long way since then, it is now owned by Corel and also has a slight name change.
Of course being Corel they have to 'add value' and they have done so here by including a 'light' copy of Snapfire Plus called 'SE' and two hours worth of training videos from a company called Lynda.com, in case you are worried they might not be suitable for the children they cover people using . As for Snapfire it is possible to download a copy of Snapfire for free.
Always on the look-out for more storage space, Michael Fereday discovers a new Seagate initiative.
Following its take-over of Maxtor, Seagate has not been sitting back admiring its new acquisition nor has it been contemplating a cull of its enlarged product portfolio. That is not to say there won't be any casualties but, for the record, Seagate will be continuing with the Maxtor brand.
This is a 15x10cm photo printer, however it is very unlikely to be confused with any other manufacturers product on looks as it is certainly very distinctive in appearance.
Perhaps if I called the ruggedised that would best describe the look, it is gun metal grey and looks exactly like a solid metal box and because of this it weights around 2.6kilos. This would increase if you had the optional battery pack to allow you to print images away from mains electricity.
It is time for some play as we take a look at a new entry in the Breakout/Arkanoid genre.
This is small and can be used as a standard PC or with the supplied remote control as a Media Centre PC. If space is at a premium then this offering from Evesham could be the answer.
It is 16x16x5cm but once normal leads such as for a monitor and USB are added the depth increases by around another 5cm. It can be used in Media Centre mode but then I found that the back of the unit needs to face you as the remote control sensor is on the rear of the unit. If used in PC mode moving the mouse brings up the ability to get to the standard XP desktop.
As a prime target for break-in merchants, it does help if your Sat Nav device can be placed in your pocket when away from the car. The Mio P350 certainly qualifies.
Sat Nav products tend to fall into one of two main categories. There are devices that have been purposely built to provide just the functionality of satellite navigation whether based in a car or used in pedestrian mode. While a second approach, used by certain companies, involves adding satellite navigation capabilities to a third-party device.
This looks rather like a 35mm offering and it has functionality. It is very useable as a basic digital camera coming with internal memory but it can support an SD card.
It is 8x9x7.5cm when closed and weights just over 300grams. It has 10x optical zoom and while this is becoming more normal now not long ago this would have been a very high specification as around '3x' would have been the norm. Like a lot of other reasonable digital cameras it has 'modes' if fact 14 different modes for capturing the shot to the best of the cameras ability.
Every so often I tell you about my passion not X certificate its jazz. One of the best double bass players around is Charlie Haden, and, here are two CDs of his.
Another year brings another batch of mobile phones from that hot bed of design and technological development we know as Sony Ericsson.
Sony Ericcson J110i
The early months of the year were once again Sony Ericsson's chosen time period to
call together members of the UK press to hear about the latest developments regarding
the company's new phone models that will be demanding market share. As is its
normal practice, Sony Ericsson has several new product announcements due to make an
appearance over the coming months.
The worst weather snow wise for some time in the London area marked the launch of fourteen new cameras from Samsung, some so new they did not even make the press pack as authority to mention them only came overnight.
Samsung S630 I have spoken with a number of well informed people who did not even know Samsung made cameras! Indeed in 2004 they only had 2% of the market. Last year it was 12% and the aim by 2009 is to have 20%. In fact in the compact digital market they were - in one table - number one in 2006 and their NV 10 was named product of the year. Face recognition is a feature creeping in and some of the offerings shown support this.
My trusty laptop has recently been wearing a new suit of clothes as I check out a new carry case.
Although marketed as a portable piece of kit, your average laptop or notebook rarely comes with the appropriate means to make transporting it easy. While you could tuck it under your arm as you move from location to location, it is hardly a practical solution to the problem.
A small 15x10cm photo printer with a limited range of features, however should you just want to print images direct from a camera card it gives acceptable results.
It is 22x12x12cm when closed, when in use the front opens down to provide a tray for printed images and the top of the back opens at an angle to allow a few sheets of 15x10cm photo paper to be inserted ready to print. For a single cartridge - three ink - printer the produced images are good. However I note the claimed print speed of 1 minute for a 15x10cm image.
While route planning software is ideal for vehicles, walkers and ramblers require a different category of software.
How well do you know your local area? Probably well enough to get around as long as you do not venture too far a field in an attempt to explore the history and natural delights of this country. One way to expand your geographical knowledge could be to make use of a mapping product such as Anquet Maps.
I have reviewed several Canon small photo printers over the years, hear this one is perhaps the smallest ever, however this does not mean everything is perfect.
Visiting my brother over Christmas is always an opportunity to take photos. This year this small Canon Selphy printer went with me. It happily printed images I took then he suggested I print some of his images he took on a recent trip. Now the problems started. He has an Olympus camera and the Selphy does not support XD cards. The cards it does support are SD, Compact Flash/Micro Drive and Memory Stick.
A new Washington-based company is selling kit hovercrafts of unique design. The new hovercraft design fixes a few problems that have plauged the industry for years, and opens the door for families and students to build an amazing friction-free craft.
A new kit hovercraft is now available from Father Son Projects, LLC. Hovercrafts have been around since the 1950s,
but kit builders have been plagued with three major problems that have kept hovercrafts mostly out of sight for the past
half century. Father Son Projects (FSP) has tackled these problems and is now selling their easy-to-build kit at
. www.fsplimited.com Hovercrafts are famous for being virtually friction free.
As a leading UK developer of graphics software, Xara continues to impress with its latest graphics package.
While Adobe and Corel occupy the high profile positions in the arena of computer graphics, there are other developers producing creative software that deserves consideration. Flying the flag as a leading UK developer of graphics software is Xara.
You tend to remember a product that was very good or very bad, my last Fujitsu Siemens notebook was definitely the former, so when another arrives it is met with much enthusiasm.
The previous notebook was in fact an excellent dual product being both notebook and tablet PC (Lifebook 1510 tablet notebook 5 April 2006) it was perfect in four out of the five smiley category's. th I tend to think of a notebook as something to travel with, travel to me does not mean lugging everything into a car. To me it means public transport and walking.
No matter how careful you are problems can occur and a back-up program can come to your rescue.
Having set up your computer to suit your own individual style of working before storing all those important documents, images, videos and audio tracks, it does make practical sense to take precautions, such as a backup, in the event of problems occurring. While Windows has its own backup facility, it is not the most feature-rich utility currently available. A well respected alternative is .
These two groups of products have had millions of words written about them, yesterday in London they were finally launched as retail products and Bill Gates and I were among those there.
The setting was the rather new and impressive British Library. Although Office 2007 is stated to work with Windows XP the first proviso is all the new features will only work with documents opened using the new extension. Should you need backward compatibility then it can open documents using the 'doc' extension and more importantly save them in the same way but of course none of the new features will be available.
Along with taking over a couple of software developers, Corel has recently released a new title.
As the first offering from its next-generation modular digital imaging platform, code-named "Alta", Corel has released Snapfire. This product is available as a free download ( ) in its vanilla flavour or as a boxed Corel Snapfire Plus version. This review is based on the commercial Plus edition of the product. www.snapfire.
The first is something that will probably be appreciated by others and the second is something to possibly save you money or maybe an accident.
Wireless Audio If you want to listen to music in another room to your stereo you could turn up the volume and perhaps annoy the family - or the neighbours - or don a wireless headset such as this one supplied by Gizoo. The whole thing is amazingly simple to use. Basically turn on the Bluetooth headset and it flashes - would you believe it - blue, then turn on the sender unit initially it flashes green but when it links with the headset it flashes blue.
Winter finally arrived to coincide with the press day for 2007 Toy Fair. Unlike Dream Toys the Toy Fair is a trade and press event to display items available for the sale period up to next Christmas.
The headlines will be made by a £250 Dinosaur called Pleo that devolves over a three hour period it can tell when it reaches a table edge - built in camera - and according to how it's treated it can be nice or nasty. I looked at a number of items in a more affordable price range and hope to bring you individual reviews of them in the coming months. First something certainly not for the kids, a drinking game, based on a round of golf.
I must admit that my mouse and hand/eye coordination has been put under considerable pressure recently. The cause of all this activity is a new game.
Following on from its Jewel of Atlantis title, Enkord has now turned its attention to a period of history even further back in the mists of time. Instead of ancient artefacts, it is prehistoric animals that form the centre of attention of the company's latest puzzle game. Entitled Jurassic Realms, this game is built around tiles embellished with distinctive icons.
Probably something to appeal to ladies as it is pink. This unit looks like a portable radio of a generation ago with the exception of the LCD display on the top.
It is 29x15x8cm it is pink and silver so as stated probably suitable for only 50% of the population. It can be run from 6x 'C' cell batteries but this would substantially add to the weight and of course the cost. Unlike some other DAB offerings it cannot be run from a battery pack that can be charged in situ. So mains use will be the main use. It can be used as an Alarm Clock (when run from mains) and there are a number of other useful features.
Now I must admit that exercise is not one of my favourite subjects but Im not averse to taking my mobile phone for a walk.
Mobile phones come in a variety of styles with collections of specific features that are designed to appeal to a particular market sector. For example the Nokia 5500 model, also known as Sport, is aimed at the more energetic and health conscious members of society by the addition of some exercise based features. That is not to say that the other types of features associated with mobile phones have been neglected.
I would call it a personal navigation unit as not only can it be fitted in a car but it has a pedestrian mode that lasts a reasonable time between charges.
The unit is small at 10x6x2cm and weights only around 120grams, it easily fits in the palm on my hand. Doing basic things is easy, however making changes to the defaults is not, the PDF manual may be helpful for those wanting to use it as an MP3 player, Photo viewer or even viewing your Contacts. However for changing settings when in Navigation mode it is not good.
One reason for an underperforming system could be the result of file fragmentation. The solution is to defrag.
In the normal course of events, Windows writes data to the first available space it finds. As a result files will be broken up into parts that will fit into whatever spaces there are. This fragmentation of files can, over time, seriously affect the performance of your system as it will need to access the fragmented files from different locations before loading them into memory for your use.
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