I think one of the first games I ever played on a personal computer back in the very early 80's was a driving simulation game. The road was a couple of white vectors and it was, naturally, night-time. All you had to do was stay on the road. Well times have changed, and with each new generation the thrill gets greater and the adrenaline pumps that little bit harder.

There are a very large number of portable speaker systems available on the market right now, a sector buoyed up by the popularity of MP3 players in general and the Apple iPod in particular. Many of the available units however are either dedicated to a specific type of player or are limited to a 3.5mm jack/phone auxiliary-in type solution.

The DocuPen is intended to be dragged down something flat that you want to scan. The device is intended for use on the move, scanning images and storing them for later retrieval by your computer. Internal standard memory is 8Mbytes, which is fine for storing a few black and white pages of text, but is insufficient for much in the way of colour.

La Fontera and Hawkings Antenna Email is one of those services that we take for granted - almost everyone uses it. On the road though if you want to access email you either have to find an Internet Cafe or pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege, either using a WiFi hot spot or (slowly) via your mobile phone.

In this case I'm reviewing a product the Sharp . The box boasts "Plays and Charges your iPod with ". I think it's the playing that is high-fidelity rather than the charging! We've given it a road test. i-Elegance High Fidelity Sound First of all a summary. From the picture you'll see the box looks a lot like a traditional portable stereo.

The specific machine I'm reviewing today is the DeLonghi Lattissima EN660, designed for Nespresso by the Italian design house DeLonghi. At a recommended price of £249 this is a budget product and is aimed squarely at the coffee lover. Available in two finishes, silver (brushed aluminium) or 'creamy white' with dimensions of approximately 20cm wide by 26cm tall and 34cm deep and a good weight at a full 5Kg. The design is basically symmetrical split into three roughly equal areas.

For one thing you're periodically looking from the world to the controls to click on rotate, or zoom or move or whatever. SpaceNavigator, from 3Dconnexion (part of Logitech) can help with this. It gives you a single control that allows you to manipulate all the various aspects of navigating in three dimensions : pan, zoom, tilt, spin, roll, move. That's a lot from one control.

As with all phones now - this is much more than just a device for ordering a pizza. All the usual culprits are here : MP3 player, camera, FM radio, voice recorder and PIM (Personal Information Manager) functions. Even as a messaging device it isn't limited to voice. You also have video calls across 3G (dedicated camera for this), SMS and MMS. You're almost spoilt for choice when it comes to connecting with other devices.

Internet based game worlds are fairly popular these days. My daughter is often to be found travelling various make believe worlds on the Internet, her favourite being Habbo World where she wanders round, buying 'furni' and chatting with friends. Funkeys inhabit a slightly different kind of world.

It was with some trepidation that I plugged my very old TV aerial into the back of this Humax FreeView PVR. Having been on cable for the last 5 years with the aerial dangling in the garden I was expecting the worst! Luckily though the box sprang to life and discovered a good range of digital channels. The Humax PVR9200T provides everything you need to receive and record FreeView programmes onto it's internal hard-disk drive (HDD).

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, was in fine fettle delivering his 90 minute keynote speech to the Apple faithful this week as he rattled through product after product and feature after feature. All members of the range have been revamped, and a brand new product has been added to bring the iPhone interface to the media player family.

The is an all-in-one DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) radio, available in either glossy black or white depending on your preference. Size is 27cm by 13cm, with a depth of 7cm and weighs in at around 1Kg. The unit comes complete with a mains adaptor. If you prefer to run from battery then you'll need 6x'C' cells, which will add a reasonable amount to the weight.

Before even opening the box, you're struct by to things. Firstly - this thing is . Secondly the packaging is tiny. At about 4cm by 2.5cm the is around the same size as commemorative postage stamps. It's a little thicker of course at around 1cm, and weights in at a hefty 15 grammes. That really is tiny and potentially very easy to loose. You don't really want to put something that small into a protective cover - because that would probably double the size.

The unit is very well built - weighing an impressive 1Kg without batteries certainly gives a very solid feel to the product. Opening the box gives a couple of surprises. Firstly, although it can be powered from a 3V mains adaptor, no adaptor is in fact supplied. It is very clearly and seriously aimed at poolside use on battery power. Secondly the radio doesn't have built in batteries - instead it takes two 'D' sized cells.

Luckily those days have long gone with the advent of mobile entertainment revolution, with of course the phone at its heart.

Rather than the current fashion for jug format the kettle seems to hark back to an earlier age. The base is wider than a jug and the sides vertical. The main body is clear perspex allowing a clear view of the water as it boils and removing the need for floats or other devices to show how much water you have in the tank. My initial visual reaction was 'wow - something different - I like that'. My wife's was a little different - being not so keen.

Microsoft continue to develop and deliver keyboard and mice products optimised to support their operating systems. In this case I'm reviewing a wireless combination - mouse and keyboard. Keyboard : Wireless Multimedia Keyboard 1.1 First of all the keyboard. This has a standard QWERTY layout and numeric keypad.

Keen to encourage others to adopt his metal detecting hobby, and particularly children and schools, Bill has now put his name to a simple to use detector from : The 'Bill Wyman Signature metal detector'. C.Scope Bill's requirement for the product were ease of use and light weight so that it could be used by anyone. The result is both of these. The detector has two rotary controls and a 'Retune' button.

JanSport, a producer of backpacks and other luggage items, has taken the opportunity to add support for music 'on the go' to their new 'Recourse' range. Taking advantage of the wide-spread availability of MP3 players, JanSport have not tried to re-invent the wheel by building a music player into a backpack. Instead they have provided support for your current music machine - leaving the choice of iPod, Zen, MP3 or standard CD to you.

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.

Of course lime-scale isn't the only impurity in your average tap-water, and in fact is probably one of the least unpleasant substances you'll find there. Other contaminants can include pesticides, chlorine and heavy metals like lead and aluminium. You can see the lime scale when you boil the water, the others - well, they are invisible.

I've just upgraded (painfully) my venerable . I've had it for over 4 years now and unfortunately the battery is now giving up the ghost. It's cheaper to get a new phone than a new battery - crazy? Probably. My choice this time round is the . I wanted a phone that did everything and was likely to last another four years. This phone meets the former requirement - only time will tell on the latter! Physically the phone is smaller than my old Nokia at 105x47x22mm and a little lighter at 115g.

Sony PlayStation on the move Is it a games console, a music player or a movie player? Yep - all of these, and probably a whole lot more. The (PSP) is quite a remarkable, to the extent that I wasn't even sure how to approach this review.

My wife has been using my hand-me-down Toshiba notebook for a couple of years now. I tend to give notebooks a pretty hard time so it wasn't in the best of states when she got it. It is now 6 years old, and the kids have managed to break the key-top from the letter 'I'. I really had little choice but to find a replacement! Having had a less than happy experience with my last purchase of a laptop from Dell I wanted to try out someone else.

The is a lamp, with a bit of a difference. Accoding to the booklet that comes with the product the Laserpod 'brings science and nature together to create ever-changing organic lifeforms of profound beauty'. That's quite some claim so let's investigate what it actually is and does. Laserpod The Laserpod comes in a nice clean 'modern' package.

My on using for my office phone service covered my experience actually getting a phone equivalent without forking out for a new BT line! The result of that investigation lead me to become a happy Skype customer, despite initially trying to go with a standards based solution! previous article Skype Having got my combined SkypeIn/Out service I needed to decide how to use it.

I've recently vacated the 'third bedroom' office to take up the kind offer of a desk with a local company I know on very reasonable terms and to the delight of my 8 year old daughter who *finally* gets her own room! The only snag was they had no spare phone lines, but were more than happy to share their broadband access.

According to the manufacturers blurb, this is a compact and powerful mixing console. Compact is of course a relative measure and for a generation getting to grips with iPods and 60Gbyte hard-disks that will fit in the palm of your hand, this is no compact device. To my mind it resembles the getto-blasters of my youth.

Sony uncharacteristically have been very late to the hard-disk based music  player. While they touted their proprietary mini-disk format in various forms, with and without compression, the rest of the world followed a more open route.