Monthly Archives: February 2010
Cloud Engines – Pogoplug
When a product arrives with no instruction manual or software disc, our first reaction is to pick up the phone and harangue the manufacturer’s hapless PR department. This almost happened with the Pogoplug, a novel device that lets you share the contents of USB drives over the web. But we eventually found the tiny Getting…
Ashampoo – Snap 3
Ashampoo is an odd name for a software company. You’d think they’d be more likely to be involved in the hair care industry, really. However, Ashampoo Snap 3 won’t do anything for your roots, split-ends, or general bounce and control. But it might well help if your mission is to capture screen shots on your…
NetGear – ProSafe 8-Port Gigabit VPN Firewall
Home and small office networks are getting more complex, and eventually the basic routers supplied by ISPs as part of broadband bundles simply run out of steam. This is when models like the Netgear ProSafe FVS318G VPN Firewall start to look attractive, offering industrial-strength security plus more and faster LAN ports at a reasonable price….
Corel – PaintShop Photo Pro X3
PaintShop Photo Pro has, for this reviewer at least, had a bumpy ride over the past few years. The streamlined, lightning-fast imaging application of old had been overtaken by a far more bloated beast. Granted, it was packed with features, and granted it made image editing really quite straightforward. But the amount of system resource…
HP – StorageWorks X510 Data Vault
Question: Take an HP MediaSmart server running Windows Home Server, change the badge to read HP Data Vault, and what do you get? Answer: An affordable small business storage appliance for companies looking for file sharing plus automated PC backup and recovery. The motives here are pretty obvious. Despite the best efforts of HP, Microsoft…
Bookeen – Cybook Opus
Ereaders are, apparently, going to be one of the hit technologies of 2010. There are certainly more to choose from today than there were a year ago, and in the UK you can even buy them in bookshops. Sony may have started the whole trend off here, but there are many companies jostling for a…
HTC – HD2
There are so many smartphones around these days that they can be characterised as entry level, mid-range and high-end. Right at the top of the tree is HTC’s HD2. It is not small, but it packs in the features and for sheer glitzy capability it is superb. The HD2 has a massive 4.3-inch screen that…
EA Games – Dante’s Inferno
There aren’t too many videogames that take inspiration from a 14th century poem, so right from the off, Dante’s Inferno has a distinctiveness about it. It’s loosely based around the first book of Dante Alighieri’s poem The Divine Comedy, although literature scholars are best not trying to find too much of a faithful crossover. Instead,…
Dell – Inspiron 15z
Those who don’t place portability at a premium can find some pretty good deals in the notebook market these days, and Dell is one of the most high-profile companies to have focused a great deal on value for money for the modern consumer. Its Inspiron 15z offers a range of impressive features, not least of…
MSI – H55M-ED55
The MSI H55M-ED55 uses the new Intel H55 chipset in a smart, Micro-ATX, LGA1156 motherboard with graphics outputs on the I/O panel that support HDMI, DVI-D and VGA. The graphics outputs have the potential to cause some confusion, as the graphics core isn’t part of the chipset but is housed within your new Core i3…