Monthly Archives: March 2011
HP TouchSmart 300-1230
The latest edition of HP’s TouchSmart 300 is a solidly built all-in-one desktop PC with a 20in, 16:9 widescreen touch-sensitive display. Just under three inches thick, it sits on two stubby legs, with a third leg that folds out backwards. Depending on how far that stand is extended, the screen can be tilted back at…
ViewSonic VG2436wm-LED
The ViewSonic VG2436wm-LED widescreen monitor’s twin headline features are support for a Full HD resolution of 1,920×1,080, and its use of LED backlighting. Mainstream appealIf you’ve window shopped for a monitor in the past year or two, you may have come to the conclusion that you’d have to travel a long way to buy a…
HTC Gratia
HTC’s Gratia is designed to fit in the space between high-end Android smartphones such as the HTC Desire HD, and entry-level models such as the Orange San Francisco, a rebranding of ZTE’s Blade handset. But to call it ‘mid-range’ is to inadequately describe that part of the smartphone sector that hovers between these two bookends….
Samsung FX2490HD
The Samsung FX2490HD very definitely wants to be the display that makes the most of all that high-def content out there. From the front, it looks like a conventional 24-inch display – albeit one that sits on four shiny chromed feet that might have been borrowed from an office chair. The stand offers the usual…
Panasonic – Toughbook CF-C1
Computer fashions are fickle, like clothing. Remember when owning a PDA was the height of cool, followed by mini-notebooks and netbooks? Now suddenly we’re in the age of the tablet, when you’re no-one if you don’t have an iPad or Galaxy Tab. Also, if you’re really hard, you have to make your digital camera or…
Bulletstorm by EA Games
Appearances can most certainly be deceptive. Bulletstorm looks, at first glance, like a natural successor to Serious Sam, a game that requires you to indiscriminately dispatch all manner of enemies who come flocking towards you at speed. But as we battled through it, it was clear it had a lot more in the tank. A…
Android app round-up: Google Maps 5, Memory Trainer, Words With Friends, BBC iPlayer, Google Translate, Androidify
This month has been another busy one for us, exploring the world of Android apps. We’ve been busy trying to get our brain at peak performance, playing word games, watching TV, translating foreign words, having a bit of mindless fun – and finally getting around to upgrading our old favourite, Google Maps. Google Maps 5Everyone…
Sanyo – Xacti ICR-XPS01M
The Xacti ICR-XPS01M is, according to Sanyo, “the world’s slimmest and lightest linear PCM sound recorder”. And it’s easy to believe it. With a device like this, measuring a pocket-sized 39x96x9mm (wdh) and weighing just 46g, it’s hard to remember a time when if you wanted to record a celebrity interview, you had to lug…
HP – Deskjet 3050
The Deskjet 3050 is a small-format, entry-level all-in-one intended for the home market. One step up from the cheaper DeskJet 1050, it includes a mono LCD display with three soft buttons beside it that are used to select the printer’s menu options. Paper feeds from a 60-sheet rear tray to another at the front and…
Sapphire – Radeon HD6990 4GB
When AMD launched its ‘Northern Island’ series of GPUs, first with the HD6870 and HD6850 cores (code-named ‘Bart’), and more recently the ‘Cayman’ cores (HD6970 and HD6950), the one everyone really wanted to see was the dual-cored flagship Antilles, now released as the Radeon HD6990. With the wait over, we leapt at the chance to…