Monthly Archives: April 2002
Panasonic – LS-240 Superdisk drive
The original LS-120 Superdisk drive (reviewed here), which could read, write and format 120MB disks using its optical tracking technology, was a minor success, overshadowed in its heyday by Iomega’s Zip. The Superdisk’s main strength was its compatibility with standard 1.44MB floppies and this is carried forward to Panasonic’s replacement device, the LS-240 Superdisk. Now,…
Konami – Silent Hill 2
A new addition to the ever popular survival horror genre (for X-Box users, that is; it’s been around for a while on the PS2), Silent Hill 2 sticks faithfully to the tried and tested formula that keeps gore-hungry gamers coming back for more. The plot, as revealed through a series of excruciatingly tedious cut-scenes, involves…
Compact desktop PCs group test
The Dell GX240 system came with a 2.2GHz ‘Northwood’ P4 (the latest version of the P4 with 512KB of L2 cache), backed disappointingly by Intel’s 845 chipset using PC133 SDRAM and not the 845D and DDR, which would have given it stunning performance. The Dell GX240 comes housed in the now standard black and grey…
Casio – QV-4000
Top of Casio’s current range of digital cameras, the QV-4000 features a 4.13-million pixel Sony CCD imager, a Canon lens and highly usable interface with an excellent set of features. All this comes with a reasonable price tag too. The Canon lens fitted to the QV-4000 is a standard 3x zoom item with aperture settings…
Plextor – PlexWriter 24/10/40U
Some external CD-RW drives are portable, but this one definitely isn’t. It’s a conventional 5.25-inch ATAPI CD-RW drive contained within a robust metal and rubber case. But what makes it particularly interesting is that it connects to the host PC via the USB 2.0 interface, so newer PCs can take advantage of its maximum performance;…
SoundpaX – Cardboard Speakers
Speakers need to be big and heavy with substantial cones and strong magnets to pump them in and out, don’t they? Well, yes and no. Yes, if they use a conventional design with separate speakers unit for different frequencies all fitted into a permanent box. But almost none of this description fits the SoundpaX speakers….
Odixion – Uno Premium DigiCopier
The Odixion Uno Premium DigiCopier is a stand-alone CD copier. It consists of a 16-speed BURN-proof CD-RW drive and a Plextor UltraPlex 40-speed CD-ROM drive, housed in a metal case that has an LCD display and a selection of buttons. It can copy up to 12 CDs per hour with no connection to a host…
Microsoft – Rallisport Challenge
Power meetings. Power lunches. Power creeps in the shadows and corners of today’s world like a small, creepy thing that shuffles its feet softly yet makes its presence felt everywhere. Power can be fun too of course, particularly when combined with the word ‘slide’. For this conjures up images of muddied Audi Quattros ripping round…
Brother – MFC-9160
Brother has decided to add an All-in-One device to its range of laser printers and photocopiers. Unlike most other devices of this type, from the likes of Hewlett Packard and Lexmark, Brother’s MFC-9160 is based on a monochrome laser engine rather than a colour inkjet. Like most devices of the type, the Brother Multi-Function Centre…
Gigabyte – GA-7VRXP
Following on from the successful KT266 chipset, VIA has launched another high performance chipset; the KT333. This is VIA’s first chipset to offer support for DDR333 (PC2700) as well as DDR200/266 memory and is compatible with the complete 200/266MHz AMD Athlon XP and Duron range of CPUs. To achieve this, it uses an asynchronous memory…