Monthly Archives: April 2006
Acer – Aspire 1692WLMi
The laptop computing boom has, we suspect, come as rather good news for Acer. Few manufacturers have come up with quite as comprehensive a line, and few have managed, at the affordable end of the range, to pack quite so much into such a lightweight portable computer. The Aspire 1692WLMi isn’t one of the company’s…
Gainward – BLISS 6800GS Goes Like Hell
When Nvidia brought out the G70 core (7800 GTX/GT) it came as no surprise to see the once-mighty 6800 series start to dwindle away. But this left ATI with a market segment to itself, which it more than adequately filled with the Radeon X1600XT. Needless to say, this left Nvidia a bit miffed, so it…
Eidos – Commandos: Strike Force
Changes have certainly been afoot since we met the Commandos franchise last. Traditionally an isometric-perspective, strategy-come-puzzle game, the franchise has made the switch to first-person, and it’s made a far better fist of it than we’d anticipated. Certainly those who shudder at the mere mention of the first-person Command & Conquer: Renegade have little to…
Logitech – Z5450
Could this be it? Could the Logitech Z5450 package finally be the moment where a set of wireless 5.1 speakers leaps off the drawing board and becomes reality? Could this be the moment that audiophiles across the country, fed up with a streaming spaghetti of speaker cables, get a proper, rounded wireless solution? No. But…
Plantronics – Pulsar 590A
At first glance the Pulsar 590A seems to be a chunky stereo headset which sits on a rather stylish stand, but looks a bit over-designed. After a fair amount of use, this impression remains, but the headgear has shown itself to be quite adaptable and a pretty good performer, with a range of uses both…
Activision – World Series of Poker
Why is poker called poker? A quick Google (it’s now officially in the dictionary as a verb, surely?) will throw up the theory that it derives from the German word “pochen”, meaning to bluff. We subscribe to the alternate view that it’s called poker because that’s what the wife will brain you with when you…
Canon – i9950
A4 ink-jet printers are commodity items and are priced as such, but as soon as you want to print larger than A4, you’re into specialist equipment that can cost a lot of money. Large format printers can easily break the £1,000 barrier, but Canon has split the difference with the A3+ i9950. A3+ is big…
ViewSonic – PJ458D
The ViewSonic PJ458D is a digital light projector (DLP), so you could reasonably expect it to be rather expensive. But you’d be 100 percent wrong, as it sells for significantly less than the psychological price point of £999. The XGA resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels is a good compromise as it doesn’t cost much…
Sold Out Software – Championship Manager 4, Hitman 2, Project IGI 2, Republic: The Revolution
While in no way a precursor to the drab argument over which format is best to play games on, there is one particularly strong factor in the PC’s favour. In spite of the varying problems you get by opting for a computer over a console, you do get access to some superb, original games that…
HP – Scanjet 4890
In these days of all-in-one printers that are capable of scanning, photocopying and printing high quality photo images, finding a decent stand-alone scanner that can successfully compete and appeal to camera enthusiasts is a tall order, especially in the lower end price sector. Hewlett-Packard’s current answer to the challenge is the Scanjet 4890, which comes…