While Philips "Sense & Simplicity" event held towards the end of last year was more concerned with technology aimed at the future, there was a sprinkling of current products on show.  One of them was the latest in Philips range of Sonicare rechargeable toothbrushes.  This was the Sonicare FlexCare, the third Sonicare generation toothbrush, which combines teeth and brush head cleaning features.

My music collection spreads over vinyl, tapes, compact disks and MP3 tracks with the latter consisting of duplicates from the compact disks.  Recently I have been looking at a way of converting the first two categories into MP3 tracks that can then be burned on to optical media.  The product under test is SnapMusic Studio 715 from KWORLD.

When taking delivery of a new scanner or multi-function device you will often find that some bonus software will be provided and this will include OCR (Optical Character Recognition) functionality.  In many cases the OCR capability will be provided by a copy of FineReader Sprint.  This is a basic edition of ABBYY's flagship FineReader product which currently stands at version 9 in its Professional guise.

In this case the old friend is a software package entitled Diskeeper.  I have been using this software product over a number of years to ensure that the files on my hard disk are stored contiguously rather than being scattered in bits and pieces in the various locations that were available during the initial writing of the data.

Let me take you back nearly 20 years.  It was in 1989 that Will Wright developed a title that helped introduce Maxis to the computer gaming community.  This title was , the forerunner of numerous other Sim offerings that took over numerous hours of game playing sessions for many.  Following in the footsteps of this seminal game is City Life with the latest version being the 2008 edition.

Having spent a large wedge of your disposal cash (perhaps in the region of £80 or even more) on your Creative ZEN V mobile music player ( ), you could be forgiven for feeling rather peeved that your new purchase does not include a carry case for your new device.

There has been a great deal written about RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) and the effect it can have on those tied to a computer for most of their working life.  Even the average computer user is estimated to type more than two million keystrokes in a year.

Adding to its range of video capture and archiving devices, Pinnacle has released the Dazzle DVD Recorder (DVC100).  This product acts as a conduit between a video source and whatever is your designated DVD destination.  Adopting the same tear shape used by the other Dazzle products, the DVC100 is easily identified by its bright red colour.

I can remember my paternal grandfather shaving with a cut-throat razor. This was not a task that I ever contemplated undertaking myself. That is using a cut-throat razor and not the actual shaving part which occurred naturally with the passing of time. Starting with a safety razor (sometimes referred to as a "wet shave"), I have progressed through several electric shavers from various manufacturers.

While Windows and many of its applications have the facility to keep records of your activities either through a recent document list feature or presented in a History Log neither method allows easy access to the relevant data.  This is especially true when your current location is the desktop rather than the relevant application.  In this case you will be required to fire up the application to get at the data.

Website X5 is available either as the Evolution or Compact version.  Both titles offer WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) functionality but the latter version does not provide access to the HTML code that is created by the software.  This review is based on the Compact version which is aimed at the home user.

The popularity of various portable music players, whether of the iPod or different MP3 models, has resulted in an increase in the range of accessories developed for such products.  Normally developers of these accessories tend to produce items specifically for the iPod range or those suitable for use with any MP3 player whatever the brand.

I have to admit that puzzle games, especially those that involve some form of colour matching, are among my favourite types of relaxing activities on the computer.  Although if you could see the look of concentration on my face and some of the words being emitted when mistakes made, you might doubt the relaxing aspect but never the challenge faced or the enjoyment gained.

The new offerings feature digital photo frames; digital cameras for all ages; LCD TVs; a portable photo printer; and a PMP (Portable Media Player). First up are a couple of digital photo frames that both feature a black bezel. The XSU-0770S is a 7-inch model with a contrast ratio of 250:1, brightness of 300cd/m and a 480 x 234-pixel resolution.

Whether approaching document creation from either the spoken word or existing paper documents, Nuance has tools that could help when it comes to producing editable text.

I can still remember the product's original incarnation as a one-trick CD-burning application.  However technology, processor speeds and hard disk storage capacity have moved on greatly since those days that we tend to look at through rose-tinted glasses.  Now Easy Media Creator Suite sets out to tackle every task you could possibly conceive regarding your digital music, images and video content.

click to enlarge Pirates are sometimes portrayed as romantic or comic characters (Pirates of the immediately springs to mind) when the reality was that murder, looting and rape were the orders of the day with these scavengers of the high seas.  Pirates of the offers to let you "Rule the oceans, seize the land, and forge a legend" in a multiplayer online game that is set in the of 1720.

The times, according to Bob Dylan, are "a-changing"  This 60's observation by the American folk singing currently rings true with the one-eyed monster that has taken up residence in most living rooms.  I am referring, of course, to the television set and the changes that are being brought about by the combination of LCD technology and the forth-coming switch-over to digital rather than analogue broadcasting.

As a market leading manufacturer of various types of hard disk drives, you do tend to sit up and take particular notice when Fujitsu Europe announces the availability of the world's highest capacity 2.5-inch external hard disk drive.  This travel-ready device is appropriately named the HandyDrive.  I say appropriately not only because of its size (22 x 82 x 141.

Prisons are becoming over-crowded.  As a result those convicted of various crimes and offences are being released before their sentences have run their course.  Perhaps this is the appropriate time to hone up your skills at prison construction and management just in case you are called in to help.  To this end you could use a title such as Prison Tycoon 3 from GSP.

Anybody visiting the BitDefender stand during a computer exhibition will have no trouble realising that the company (Softwin) behind the product lives and breathes protection.  Whether it is its give-aways, such as sun block and prophylactics, or its various products, protection is the name of the game.  The Softwin has recently released new versions of its BitDefender software including BitDefender Antivirus 2008.

As part of its new product line-up, Kensington has released its SlimBlade Presenter Mouse.  As you might suppose from its title, this mouse looks as if it has been on a diet to achieve its slim-line figure.  However the cut-back in size has not resulted in any reduction in the functionality of this mouse as will become clear a little later. Apart from its height, this almost flat mouse is fairly standard with its other dimensions as it measures 92 x 57 x 14mm.

Click image to enlarge! The Nokia N81 mobile phone has a rather chunky appearance and adopts the slider style of unit.  Measuring 102 x 50 x 17.9mm (L x W x D) and weighing 140g, this phone is predominately black with a matt silver band running round the sides.  Supplied with 8GB of internal flash memory, the phone features an active matrix 2.4-inch QVGA 320 x 240 colour display capable of showing up to 16.

Like numerous other devices that I have seen recently, those delivering DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) radio facilities are now adopting a multifunction approach to tempt users into making a purchase.  One example of this trend to broaden the scope of a DAB device is that seen with the Chronos product from PURE Digital.  This piece of kit brings together iPod dock functionality with standard DAB radio facilities in a product entitled PURE Chronos iDock.

Salvation is the name of the game as you are placed in the position of controlling your own helicopter carrying out user-specified missions.  Developed by Bladez Toys Ltd, this indoor helicopter is available in four models appropriately numbered 1, 2, 3 and 9.  I have been honing my piloting skills on the Salvation 1 which has already distinguished itself by being the winning product from ITV 1's Tycoon and one of the top ten boys' toys listed by STUFF Magazine.

Generally a review product's involvement in the actual writing process of a piece, such as this, is minimal especially when that product is a peripheral device rather than a system box or word processing package.  All the testing and use of the product will have been conduced prior to the writing stage.  Of course there are some exceptions.

Archos has a long establish presence within the area of PMP (Personal Media Player) devices that have the capacity to provide a range of entertainment features.  Forming part of the company's latest range of PMPs is the Archos 605 WIFI.  As its title implies, this PMP has built in support for WiFi 802.11g connectivity to add to the provision of music, video and still image playback and viewing.

Developed by Aliph and designed by Yves Behar, this latest version of the Jawbone headset makes use of Bluetooth for connecting to your mobile phone.  Totally agnostic in its support, the Jawbone Bluetooth headset works with any Bluetooth enabled phone.  For the purpose of this review I have been using the Nokia 6125 and Nokia N81-1 models.

Not all games require high-powered systems and complicated commands and controls to grab the interest of players.  Falling into this friendly approachable category is Arcade Lines from Lobstersoft.  This game is based on the old, but popular, concept of creating lines of balls that are of the same colour in order to clear the playing area and improve your score. The game's interface could hardly be more straightforward in its appearance.

Judging by recent experiences Digital Photo Frames have taken on an attribute normally associated with buses.  You do not see one for ages but then two or three turn up in close proximity. Following the Polaroid 10-inch model reviewed not so long ago, it is now the turn of a 7-inch Digital Photo Viewer from Parrot to take centre stage.