Monthly Archives: April 2011
HTC Desire S
The HTC Desire S has a very hard act to follow. Its predecessor, the Desire, won many awards and even today remains the smartphone of choice for many people. So has HTC done enough to bring the Desire up to date? Tweaks, not transformationArguably, HTC has played it safe with the Desire S. Most of…
Plextor PX-L611U
Plextor has a solid reputation for CD/DVD writers, Blu-ray drives and portable HDD – but while much of the industry is loading the dice in favour of recordable Blu-ray, Plextor still sees a role for slim. lightweight external DVD writers like the PX-L611U. Measuring just 137mm square, a slender 22mm thick and weighing a featherlight…
Brother MFC-7860DW
Waiting for a new Brother printer to arrive is similar to waiting for a bus – nothing for ages, and then a host appear at the same time. We’ve already looked at one of the lower-end models from the latest batch, the MFC-7460DN. Now it’s the turn of the MFC-7860DW mono multifunction laser printer –…
Olympus SZ-20
The Olympus SZ series of compact digital cameras is primarily intended to provide guaranteed high-quality images that remain blur-free, even when making use of a so-called ‘super zoom’. The SZ-10 was the prototype, and this has now been superseded by the SZ-20 and the SZ-30MR. While the SZ-30MR has the headline-grabbing ability to capture Full…
Acer beTouch E210
Acer has a strong range of smartphones, and devotes most of its attention to Android. The beTouch E210 takes a novel approach to its Android operating system, though, offering a full Qwerty keyboard and smallish screen. The idea, no doubt, is to appeal to younger BlackBerry fans – but can Android really manage this? Build…
Creative ZEN Touch 2
Personal music players are nothing new. But long-time maker Creative’s new ZEN Touch 2 is something a bit different. It runs Android, the operating system that has set the smartphone sector alight – and it’s a far cry from the blocky, black-and-white-screened original ZEN Touch. The Creative ZEN Touch 2 comes in three versions. The…
Fight Night Champion by EA
Fight Night Champion is the fifth outing for EA’s boxing franchise, and it introduces another major change to the controls. Gone is the total punch control system from Fight Night Round 4, which involved swivelling the right stick around to throw punches, and gave us a liberal scattering of thumb blisters. The new contender offers…
HIS HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X
There’s a predictable rhythm to the launch of each new generation of graphics chipset. The launch of AMD’s Radeon HD 6850/6870 and 6950/6970 in February followed a familiar pattern. The initial crop of graphics cards followed the reference design very closely: the cooler came straight out of AMD’s parts bin, and the clock speeds were…
Corsair 256GB Performance 3 SSD
Solid state drives are one of the biggest things to happen to the PC industry in a decade. If you analyse how far processors have come in the past ten years, you’d be looking at a near 50-fold increase in performance. Today’s 7,200rpm hard drives, on the other hand, are only around twice as fast…