Monthly Archives: January 2007
Oxygen – PDC World Championship Darts
Darts on the computer is a weird concept. What’s really the idea here – darts for lazy people? Because you could hardly call the beer-gutted monsters that wobble up to the oche every year “athletes” in the traditional sense of the word. Exactly how unfit do you have to be not to be able to…
Oki – C8600n
The cost of colour laser printing rises drastically if you need to print pages larger than A4. While you can buy a colour A4 printer for around £160 – though OKI’s cheapest A4 colour laser is about £280 – this company’s A3 colour laser, the C8600n, comes in at a whopping £1,400. So how is…
Sierra – Caesar IV
When it comes to city-building games, it’s hardly surprising that ancient Rome has often been the prime source of inspiration. It had probably the most impressive empire in history, had stunning buildings and also knew how to make roads straight and chariots run on time. Last year alone saw the release of CivCity Rome and…
ImTOO – DVD Ripper Platinum
DVD ripping (the conversion of films from DVD format into another format) is a popular topic, but it’s bit of a grey area. Lawyers for film companies will tell you that it’s copyright theft, plain and simple, but common sense says that if you own a DVD of a film, converting that film into another…
G-tech – Wireless Fabric Keyboard
In a ‘Top 10′ list of how stupid you can look on a train when surrounding yourself with technology, typing away at a portable keyboard while squinting at a PDA crudely propped up by a plastic support must come somewhere near the top. However, if you absolutely must reply to a dozen or so e-mails…
Laplink – Everywhere 4
Laplink made its name with a single piece of software that connected two PCs together so you could copy files between them. In a way, Laplink Everywhere 4 still does exactly the same thing. The difference is that it connects any computer on the Internet to the PC it’s run on, securely and uniquely, so…
2K Games – Stronghold Legends
They say an Englishman’s home is his castle, but just tell that to this reviewer’s neighbours, who churlishly denied planning permission to add a turret extension to the side of his house. It wasn’t “in keeping” with the neighbourhood, apparently, and neither was the portcullis or roof-mounted vat of boiling oil. And so the Jehovah’s…
VLC – Media Player
We have a lot to thank the open source software community for, including Linux, the GIMP and now VLC Media Player. VideoLAN started as a student project at the École Centrale Paris, with the goal of developing a general-purpose media player that could handle audio, video and streamed content. The main result of this project…
Samsung – CLP-300
Although prices of colour laser printers have been dropping over recent months, £140 (plus VAT) is still relatively inexpensive. This isn’t a heavyweight model sold cheaply in the hope of making up income on consumables, either. The CLP-300 has been designed from the ground up as a personal colour laser. The CLP-300 is styled simply,…
Rare – Viva Pinata
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the game with which Microsoft tries to take the Xbox 360 more mainstream. Freed from the shackles of launch year, where the gaming line-up traditionally targets the hardened gamer, for its second Christmas the firm pinned many hopes on this bizarre diversion from the house of Rare. Rare, you may…