Monthly Archives: November 2004
Relic – Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Who would have thought that a desktop war game would have been as popular as Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000? Based on a futuristic scenario where several galactic races play out an unending war for domination, the game’s appeal was largely due to the strong sense of characterisation and the colourful war machines, allied to scenes…
Focus – Driving Test Success Deluxe Edition 2004/5
So you’ve got your driving test coming up? The best advice we can give, apart from obvious nuggets of wisdom like “Don’t mow the lollipop lady down at 50mph” and “No handbrake turns”, is to stay calm if things go awry. If you stall the car, even a few times, it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically…
Atari – Trivial Pursuit Unhinged
In the olden days, we spoke Latin. In the really olden days, grunts sufficed. Nowadays, we’ve regressed back towards the latter in our obsession with the text message, or rather, txt msg. Hence Trivial Pursuit becomes ‘Triv’ and impossible to say without sounding like a 21 year old Oxbridge graduate (add a slight lisp to…
Jasc – Paint Shop Pro 9
There has never been any dispute about which is the best of the photo manipulation packages available for professionals – Adobe Photoshop is the acknowledged king. But professionals and amateurs have been warming to Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro as both a vastly more affordable option and one that offers almost as many facilities. It is…
Brother – P-touch QL-550
If you need to print address labels, or any other kind of label for that matter, the usual method is to run an A4-size sheet of blank labels through a printer. This is fine if you need to print off lots of labels in one go, but if you only need to print one or…
Planon – DocuPen R700
A scanner is an A4-sized gadget which sits on your desk and breaks the spine of any book you try to scan pages from, right? It’s permanently connected to your PC and is too bulky to take with you to the library, to customers’ offices or on the road, right? Well, no… not any more….
Codemasters – Colin McRae Rally 2005
Let’s get the good news over with first. Colin McRae Rally 2005 is an exceptional rallying game, and certainly the finest in the genre ever to grace a PC. Its graphical prowess is undisputed, it’s extremely challenging and it’s a contemporary testament to just how well PCs can shift this kind of thing around. So…
Canon – Digital IXUS 40
Before we go anywhere with this review let’s be quite clear that this reviewer is a big fan of Canon’s digital cameras, and a long term user of the IXUS series, currently being an IXUS 500 owner. This new IXUS 40 offers 4.0-megapixels and looks a treat with its polished metal casing. Plus it is…
Symantec – Norton Antivirus 2005
This is a bluff, we thought to ourselves, as the familiar yellow-and-white Symantec anti-virus package plopped through our letterbox. The package looks the same, but that’s surely just those cunning virus-beating boffins toying with us. Upon firing it up, there’ll doubtless be some radical changes. Like instead of watching the file numbers count up on…
Panasonic – NV-GS120
These days a £700 camcorder is quite a luxury, as you can get a very competent entry-level model with a decent list of features for less than £500, but the Panasonic NV-GS120 offers you plenty for your money. The stand-out feature is the triple-CCD system, with one CCD for each of the primary colours (red,…