Monthly Archives: July 1998
Creative Labs – PC-DVD Encore Dxr2
Creative Labs spear-headed the PC’s progress from near-mute, bleeping thing to multi-voiced musical instrument, with its Sound Blaster range of sound cards. The company was also instrumental (sorry) in pushing CDROM as the medium of choice for high volume data storage on the PC. Now the spotlight is on DVD which, after years of legal…
Microsoft – Office 97 Small Business Edition 2.0
Not one of our more timely reviews, this, since IT Reviews didn’t even exist when Office 97 SBE2.0 was launched. But we’ve got a copy now, and it’s worth a look because this is the second edition of Microsoft’s office suite aimed, quite obviously, at small businesses. These are the sort of businesses that don’t…
FastTrak – Dance eJay / Rave eJay
Dance music is everywhere. Clubs, bars, restaurants, van drivers’ open windows; it was even being piped into the hospitality tent at this year’s Royal Ascot (name drop). The following is an excerpt from the NME*. Some of the most irritatingly catchy dance tunes originate from the personal computers of semi-skilled musicians locked in dingy bedrooms….
Canon – BJC-50
If the Godzilla marketing machine is anything to go by, size is important. Not only for computer-rendered simulated monsters, but also for portable colour inkjet printers such as this. According to Canon, the BJC-50 is the smallest printer of its type in the world, and certainly we’ve seen nothing quite as dinky as this. It’s…
Miro – Hiscore2 3D
Sometimes, owning a PC can be a frustrating experience. You buy the newest, shiniest, most expensive and fastest computer that you can find, and then six months later it’s almost obsolete. Not for business applications, but for games, which seem to double in complexity and graphical prettiness every few months. Short of gritting your teeth…
Novatech – 12.1-inch LCD monitor
When the first LCD monitors appeared on the market a couple of years ago, industry pundits confidently predicted that we would soon have displays mounted on walls like pictures, saving space in the office and at home. Good old pundits. That hasn’t happened, partly because LCD displays aren’t generally as good visually as conventional CRT…
Matrox – Mystique G200
If you’re into gaming on your PC, you’ll need a 3D graphics card. There are other types of game available, of course, but it’s the 3D action titles such as Quake II, Forsaken and Unreal that are proving the most popular. And as games like this become ever more realistic – assuming that your concept…
Lexmark – Optra Color 40
Today’s inkjet printers are not the most intelligent of computer peripherals. In fact, they’re getting more stupid as time progresses. With one or two exceptions, the inkjet printers for sale today can only cope with Windows-based printing, with the host PC doing all the data interpretation work. That’s fine for home users who only want…
Pace – Colour Video Camera USB
A decade or so ago, there was a concerted attempt to introduce the idea of video-conferencing for the home, with telephones which could also send image data to each other. They were expensive and, since you needed one at each end of the line, not a lot of people bought them. In the Internet age,…
Elonex – PTX 6300/AX K6-2
AMD, one of the processor manufacturing companies that, like a badly-trained puppy, regularly bites Intel’s ankles to ensure that the latter’s virtual monopoly doesn’t become a real one, has recently launched a new chip. Although ‘only’ clocking at 300 or 333MHz, this processor, called the K6-2 with 3DNow! (unfortunately the exclamation mark is obligatory) is…