Monthly Archives: February 2001
AMD Athlon Socket A Motherboards group test
AOpen has made great inroads into the European marketplace in the last few years and is now supplying everything from CD-writers to computer cases. The AK73 Pro is the company’s latest motherboard and is aimed at the high-end user. Compared with entry-level boards, it adds more advanced features, like an UltraDMA/ATA-100 interface and the ability…
Compaq – Armada E500 P3850
The Armada E500 is Compaq’s most powerful corporate notebook, following an update which now puts an 850MHz PIII SpeedStep in the driving seat. Being beefy, Compaq and corporate means a correspondingly inflated price, but let’s face it, this is hardly unusual for brand-name corporate kit. The look of the thing is stripped down, angular and…
Extensis – Suitcase 9
Some computer users, particularly those involved in design and publishing work, can have hundreds or even thousands of different fonts installed on their PCs. Fonts can place a significant drain on resources, because each one is loaded when the system boots up, taking up memory and slowing down applications. How do you get around this?…
Eidos – Championship Manager Season 00/01
Asking whether the latest Championship Manager game is any good is much like enquiring whether Manchester United might have a chance at the Premiership title this year. Conclusions just don’t get any more foregone than this… although I suppose we had better take a closer look under the bonnet just in case. Season 00/01 (hereafter…
Pentax – PocketJet II
If you are a road warrior or a frequent flyer, and you need to produce print-outs of your work ‘on the hoof’, the range of convenient, lightweight and compact printers to choose from is not too great. But if colour output is not essential, you can choose smaller and lighter solutions. One example is the…
Network Associates – McAfee Office 3.0
Software utility packages are very popular in the consumer market, providing as they do a wealth of additional tools and features that could collectively be grouped under the heading ‘the features that Windows forgot’. McAfee Office 3.0 is just about as integrated a utility package as you could wish for, and will set the hearts…
NEC Direct – NEC Direction SM-1200A+
Nothing serves so well to illustrate the progress AMD has made against its arch-rival Intel than something like the NEC Direction SM-1200A+. One of the first of its kind, the Direction features the new double data rate (DDR) memory technology supported by AMD’s latest Athlon processors, and combines 1.2GHz of engine room power with a…
A-Max – Napa DAV-310 MP3/CD/VideoCD player
Most MP3 players rely on expensive flash memory to store files, so you’ll need a lot of money to upgrade to 64MB or higher and to be able to listen to more than about an hour of music at a time. For a little over a hundred pounds, you can buy an entry level 32MB…
Lego – Lego Creator: Knights’ Kingdom
Lego may be just plastic blocks of colour but it has the power to keep children and adults entertained for hours, and has a timeless appeal. So how does virtual Lego compare to the original? One of the latest titles to be released in the Lego Creator range is Knights’ Kingdom. This is a virtual…
Adaptec – 19160 Ultra160 SCSI controller
Think of SCSI and the name ‘Adaptec’ springs immediately to mind. The company has been involved with SCSI controllers from day one, and produces one of the largest range of adapters and associated equipment. With many SCSI hard drives now (at least technically) capable of working at speeds of up to 160MB per second, Adaptec…