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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So size first, it is 47x39x32cm - remember this is an All In One - and is easy enough for an adult to move at around 22kilos. The top has a landscape lid that you place items to be scanned under and to the right of this 15 buttons and the five position joystick as well as a 4x3cm TFT display that can either sit flat or lift up to any position to around 85 degrees meaning that the viewing angle can suit either desk or floor use.

First the size it is 10x4.5x2cm and weights less than 150grams. Silver in colour part shiny and part matt. The unit is supplied with a dock that can be used to transfer images to the PC and must be used to charge the solid battery. There is a 4x3cm TFT display on the rear that is easy to read in all but the strongest sunlight, there is - not surprisingly - no viewfinder and I can see that taking images in strong sunlight could be a problem.

This is a mass market offering from Bush but it uses the technology and chipset I first saw three years ago. It is 25x7.5x15cm it runs on mains only, however it requires a wireless connection to the Internet. This means you need a broadband connection but no PC need be turned on or even connected only the router.

The stated price of Tesco Complete Office is £19.97 and it should be available in most larger Tesco stores or online at There are four full applications and three applets within the package and all in all while there may be some things it cannot do most people only use 20% of the features of a package like Microsoft Office and unless you need something special this could fulfil your needs at a tiny percentage of the cost of Microsoft Office.

The above may sound confusing so it may become clearer when I say it's 46x40x16cm and as this includes the plugs into the back and the paper tray in the base to extra height is ever required. Many multi function unit are smaller as far as width and depth are concerned. This is a six ink unit with two shades of red and blue, a yellow and a larger black.

It is 11x8x2cm and weights only around 150grams. If you are going to use it outside a vehicle size and weight are both important. One of my first walks was perhaps my most eventful. It was raining so I of course had the unit well protected in a plastic bag and this meant that I could not use an umbrella. I ended up very wet and due to a glitch rather lost.

The main difference between a laser and an inkjet is that almost all the time the claimed print speed is met. This unit claims 22PPM and while this is for letter mode I got very close to 20PPM for A4. It matters not if you have a couple of sentences on the page or 50 plus lines of small text. I can assure you that any inkjet would produce vastly different speeds if given those two pages.

It is 10x12x8cm and weights around 450grams, there is a 5x3.8cm TFT display that dominates the rear of it. When the lens is fully out it increases the width of the unit by 3cm to 15cm. For those who prefer to take images using the viewfinder this protrudes from the rear by a centimetre meaning your nose is not jammed on the TFT.

Image courtesy Dell Inc. Unlike most modern units the connection of the USB cable is almost at the beginning of the installation process. Ten minutes later it is completed and I am 606MB of hard disc space down. As soon as it prints the on screen indication reminds me of the software used by Lexmark - this is not derogatory - as their indicators are one of the best around.

Brain Trainer The box is emblazoned with 'Winner Gift of the year 2006' Inside the box is what is designed to look like a small book. It is 11.5x9x2.5cm. Open the front cover to reveal what looks like a calculator with 14 keys under a 6.5x3.5 LCD screen. The keys and screen surround are a bright orange as is the background of the covers interior with the basic instructions standing out in black type on it.

The Maxfield Max-Sin Touch is a very small and thin unit it is 8x3x.5cm and weights well under 50grams. The only visible controls are the 'Hold' slider on the left side together with earbud socket. The right side has on/off push together with reset pin hole and rubberised bung covering the small USB socket. The top has a carry strap hole and that is it. Certainly minimalistic.

Even if you only use Skype on an occasional basis then this 'phone' is excellent. Unlike other units - both corded and cordless - the allows you to answer and make calls when not near your PC. Yes the PC needs to be on and Skype needs to be loaded but that's all.

Often I have a problem finding enough satellites here on more than one occasion I managed 11, yes eleven. You need three to triangulate and normally this unit found at least seven. I would suggest that you switch on a couple of minutes before you leave allowing it good time to seek them out after that even going through tunnels the signal is picked up again seconds after emerging.

Rubik's Sudoku I am sure the name gives a reasonable idea of what this is about. Concentrate on the second half and you are there. It is an 18x16.5x3cm box with nine section of 3x3 grids within. The basic Sudoku idea is here with each 3x3 grid column of nine and row of nine to be filled with a number, no number can be repeated in and grid, row or column.

It is 11.5x8x2.5cm and weights less than 300grams in the supplied protective case. The screen is 7x5.5cm. This is a 30GB unit so lots of space for all those pictures and MP3 files as well as any short videos you might take. It comes with a leather case and while it should be possible to use it in the case as all the controls are accessible I tended to remove it.