Too late, too pricey?

Review The ATI Radeon X1800 XT will go down in history as one of the shortest-lived flagship 3D graphics products in history. Launched three scant months ago, in October 2005, the lengthy delay in its introduction - said to be due to production problems with the R520 graphics processor that powers it - means that it's set to be replaced this month, January 2006, by the next generation of high-end ATI GPU.…

The iPod Nano killer?

Review There's an interesting story behind the U10. Apparently, the head of River got together the whole design and engineering team in Korea and told them to that they needed to change their thinking. He told them to go back to the drawing board and come up with something new, to make a complete U-turn with their thinking. A U-Turn, or a U10, geddit?!?…

Unwired for sound?

Review Since the dawn of time three questions have preoccupied mankind. Is there a God? Are we alone in the Universe? And, how do I wear headphones without getting tangled up in the cord?…

I know Apple, and you're no Apple

Review "This is a truly historical meeting of the established and new media," said Les Moonves, the head of CBS, about his network's new video partnership with Google. Um, no, Les. So far, it's just a really crap web site.…

The best AMD consumer-oriented processor yet?

Review The Athlon 64 FX, the pinnacle of AMD's consumer processor offerings, now has two cores, to more effectively run a modern OS. There's no surprise - the mystery of whether or not the next FX would be single- or dual-core was dashed a while ago, and really it was obvious if you think about it. Once you understood that it was dual-core, then going on to figure out the target clock frequency was a piece of cake, given Athlon 64 X2 4800+.…

The Intel-powered alternative to the Mac Mini

Review It's finally arrived - the first Mac Mini clone. Our review system was supplied by Evesham, but the barebone chassis is manufactured by AOpen and has been known as the 'Pandora'. Sadly this catchy name is gone - AOpen has re-named it the Mini PC, which is just plain boring. Anyhow, name aside, this is a really cool-looking little machine - it arguably looks even better than the Mac Mini, mainly due to its aluminium case.…

Is that a 2.7in LCD in your pocket?

Review The five-megapixel, 3x optical zoom Exilim EX-Z500's silmline design - it's just 8.9 x 5.7 x 2.1cm - and 2.7in LCD are the first things you'll notice when you take a closer look at this digital camera. The bright crisp screen is noticeably bigger than the one on most digital cameras available at the moment, save the Sony T range, and the extra 0.2in means it's even bigger than the latest iPod or Creative Zen Vision:M. If you've got one of these, you won't need to worry about viewing your images on anything else.…

The best MP3 player from the big S yet - but is it an iPod killer?

Review When Apple's iPod began to take off in a big way, it left the rest of the market standing. Sony and most other 'serious' audio electronics manufacturers were either over-sceptical about computer-based music formats or were too conservative in their approach to catch the first bandwagon as it rolled on by.…

A worthy upgrade?

Review The 5600 is around 30g heavier than its predecessor, weight that's in no way a burden but arises from the larger - but still small by today's standards - 1.8in colour screen. It's bright and crisp though, so is a cinch to use and it even comes with a fast, 'LCD brighten' button for fast switching if you suddenly find yourself in the spotlight - or in bright sunshine.…

The best worst-kept secret in the graphics market right now?

Review Nvidia's GeForce 6800 GS chip is a respin of the 6800 GT. It's built on a 110nm process enabling it to offer higher clock speeds and, as such it has taken a lead over the cards based on ATI's X800 GTO. However, Sapphire is exclusively offering a part called the X800GTO². The 'squared' refers to the fact that this card's GPU has one 'quad' of pipelines that has been disabled, but that with a bit of jiggery-pockery from a BIOS flash and an overclocking tool, it can be turned from a 12-pipeline 400MHz card into a 540MHz 16-pipeline graphics card.…

Neither fish nor fowl?

Review Low-end GPS satellite navigation systems fall into two categories: PDAs with bundled route-planning kit, and dedicated navigation devices. Asus' MyPal A636 falls between the two: it's a Windows Mobile 5.0 device, incorporating Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so it has all the hallmarks of an up-to-date PDA. But the hardware has clearly been designed with GPS in mind rather than accessing personal information, so it looks like a dedicated unit.…

Watch out, Apple

First Look Creative went ahead with its Zen Vision:M launch today, despite the player's appearance on the company's Japanese website yesterday. Cock-up or conspiracy? We'll leave that to others to decide, but we can say the Vision:M itself is no cock-up - it's an impressively engineered top-of-the-line music and movie player.…

Latest and greatest?

Review The W900 is billed as the latest and greatest in the 3G Walkman phone series. Spotted at the launch in October in black and in white, the latest news is that only the white version will be released in the UK. And for the first three months, the W900 will only be available in the UK on the Vodafone network.…

How to revive a run-down iPod

Review Sonnet isn't the only company to offer iPod battery upgrades, but it's the first to bundle a video installation guide. With printed instructions typically about as basic as it's possible to get, does Sonnet's approach make battery replacement an easier task for the non-techie?…

It's here. It's impressive

Review Unless you've been living in a Buddhist Temple in the mountains of Tibet for the past few months you will be well aware that the Xbox 360 has launched in the UK. Although there has been a massive amount of coverage and speculation in the technology press regarding the 360, the general marketing has been slightly subdued. OK, so you may have seen the odd advert on TV over the past couple of weeks, but there hasn't been what I'd call a major marketing push. Perhaps Microsoft is waiting for Christmas to spend the marketing dollars, or perhaps the it knows that pretty much every 360 is going to sell on launch day whether it advertises it or not.…

Review Asus' A8N32-SLI Deluxe is one of the first motherboards with two PCI Express graphics card slots that offer the full PCI-E bandwidth of 16 lanes to each slot. Rather than releasing a new chipset altogether Nvidia made a standalone x16 lane PCI-E controller, the SPP 100.…

Review Up until the time of writing this review I believed that the only real way to block out all general noise while listening to your MP3 player was to invest in pair of noise-cancelling headphones. It seems I was wrong.…

Review There may be plenty of wireless hotspots in the UK but they're not always that well advertised, making it a real pain for mobile workers looking for a quick Internet fix. Windows XP and its zero configuration wireless features make life a lot easier but this still means firing up your notebook to see what's available. ZyXel's new AG-225H could be the answer as this little baby is a combined wireless network locator, 802.11a/b/g USB adapter and access point as well. We've heard the device being likened by some to a wireless sniffer but this isn't strictly correct as the device merely displays basic information about the networks it finds and doesn't have the ability to intercept wireless data packets.…

Review Low-cost GPS satellite navigation systems have largely kept the European PDA market afloat for the past few years. Connecting a cheap GPS receiver to a Palm OS or Windows Mobile-based handheld and bundling some route-planning code has proved a popular, inexpensive alternative to high-end, high-price dedicated navigation systems. But the market continues to evolve, and the focus is shifting once again to dedicated, but still low-cost units.…

Review There have always been TV tuner cards for PCs but it's fair to say that Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition has given them a new lease of life. So much so, in fact, that if a card isn't compatible with MCE, it's hardly worth mentioning.…

Review Sony's Bean - or the NW-W205, to give it is proper title - is a 512MB MP3 player that breaks away from the conventional flat and slim Flash player form-factor. This makes it perfect for clenching in your fist when you go for a run, but will create a curious bulge in a pair of trousers when out and about.…

Format-tastic

Review Buffalo probably isn't the first name that springs to mind when you think of DVD players, but the Link Theater is more than just a DVD player. Following in the footsteps of KiSS, Buffalo has created a DVD player that can play multiple video formats on multiple storage media. Gone are the days when consumers just needed MPEG 2 DVD playback in their living room, now MPEG 4 is as much a pre-requisite as retail DVDs.…

Real overclocking potential

Review The GeForce 6800 GT was a cracker. While Nvidia wowed everybody with the 6800 Ultra, it was the 6800 GT that most people bought, offering most of the bang without quite as much of the buck.…

Entertaining and stylish

Review Placed firmly in the musical youth market, the W550i is one of latest edition to the Sony Ericsson Walkman series: a tri-band GSM phone with music, Java, web and email capability. As with the K750i/D750i, Sony Ericsson has again introduced a cluster of phones with a common theme and brand, all based upon the same internal technology. The good news is that Sony Ericsson gets it right and has a selection of solid phones to suit the needs of media-hungry consumers.…

Slim and sweet

Review Ultra-compact digital cameras don't come much thinner than the 1.5cm-thick Sony Cyber-shot DSC T5 a supremely pocketable 5.1mp digital camera that will really turn heads towards the lens.…

Turn your Fs to Ps

Review The Avant Stellar keyboard stands as a major throwback in a PC industry that thrives on making devices smaller, sleeker and quieter. Creative VisionTechnologies has created a keyboard that's clunky, loud and heavy. And it may be exactly what you're looking for, especially if reprogramming keys is your thing.…

Too short?

Review Alienware is still fairly new to the UK market and up to now has stuck to its guns and produced only very high-end, and very expensive, PCs. But Alienware isn't only well known for its high-end, high-powered gaming systems, but also for its large, stylish cases.…

Cinema on the move?

Review Toshiba's Qosmio range is set up for entertainment and the G20 stands at its head. With a large widescreen display and running Microsoft's Windows Media Center 2005, Toshiba has pretty much thrown the kitchen sink at this thing in an effort to ensure that it can act as a full-on digital content hub.…

Gorgeous?

Review Just like Chelsea Football Club's manager, the D600 is a suave and sophisticated phone that comes across as one cool cucumber. But does the phone have the features to match or is it all style and no substance?…

Outclassed by PSP?

Review We might not like the idea, but manufacturers around the world are intent on telling us that we must and will watch movies on the go. One of the first companies to try and get you to swallow this mantra was Creative, and its latest attempt is its update to the Portable Media Center, the Zen Vision, writes Stuart Miles.…

Treo beater?

Review Much as I like i-mate's Jasjar - aka HTC's Universal - its size makes it less practical for me as a phone rather than a PDA. I'm clearly not the only one who favours a smart-phone device that operates like a PDA but is small enough to hold up to my ear and use like any other handset.…

Back in black

Review It's not so long ago that Palm launched the LifeDrive, the first PDA to include a hard drive, and Palm set itself up with a tough act to follow. Its twin autumn launches comprised one PDA designed to get newcomers interested - the £80 Z22, and one for the more serious PDA fan, the T|X, writes Sandra Vogel.…

i-mode arrives

Review I remember getting my first WAP phone. The hype surrounding the technology was massive and I was expecting an amazing experience. Unfortunately I was sorely disappointed, and WAP proved to be slow, poorly implemented and often expensive. One of the things that annoyed me most about WAP, was that I was well aware that the Japanese were enjoying the benefits of i-mode, writes Riyad Emeran.…

Could do better?

Review It seems like every other week I'm reviewing yet another tiny Pentax five megapixel compact camera. In fact a quick browse through my camera samples folder shows that this is the eighth one that I've written about this year. Come on Pentax, give my aching fingers a break, writes Cliff Smith.…

Flash player perfection?

Review Despite it's higher model number, the T30 actually sits between iRiver's T10 and T20 players (reviewed here and here). Like the T20, it's intended to be a compact fashion statement, but with space for a AAA battery, it's designed to offer a very long play duration, as per the T10.…

High class tech in a non-nerdy case

Review Yesterday Cingular announced that it is bringing Nokia's 9300 Communicator to the US market starting in November. The 9300 puts a QWERTY keyboard, and a powerful computer, into a form factor apparently designed to repel gadget geeks, such is its conservative styling.…

Films in your face

Review Many dubious products have stumbled on the rocky road to true innovation. Before the mobile phone reached mass-market saturation, yuppies lugged around lumps of plastic that were closer to army field radios than items of desirable personal technology, writes Jonathan Bray.…

Wireless wonder?

Review HTC has been tempting its fans with the Universal handset since the beginning of the year. The prospect not only of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GSM/GPRS connectivity but also 3G, and with them a landscape-oriented display and full QWERTY keyboard, not to mention Windows Mobile 5.0, has fuelled interest in the machine since T-Mobile announced in February that it would be offering the machine on its network.…

One for the road?

Review iRiver's Flash-based T10 is one of the chunkier digital music players I've seen. It's clearly pitched at a more sporty audience - it's got yellow trim, always visual shorthand for a 'sport' model - and both its size and heft are intended to appeal to folk who maintain an 'active' lifestyle, whatever that is.…

Too small?

Review You've got to hand it to iRiver. Faced with Apple's iconic iPod, the company hasn't tried to emulate its rival by devising a single, clear product identity around which to build its range. Instead, it's gone for a scattergun approach: fire off lots of different models and hope some of them stick to consumers.…

Worth the wait?

Review If you have even a passing interest in 3D graphics, you've probably been waiting for the appearance of ATI's dual-GPU solution. It seems like aeons ago that ATI announced that it would produce a platform to rival Nvidia's tremendously successful SLi, but now, finally I have a CrossFire system in front of me and it's time to see if it was worth the wait, writes Riyad Emeran.…

Too many corners cut?

Review Navman is hoping to win back business from its PDA-based GPS rivals by creating a new range of budget units that offer a scaled down version of its advanced rigs but at a fraction of the cost. One of the first, the Navman iCN 320 is for the GPS newcomer. There's no large touchscreen, and everything is controlled from buttons placed on either side of the screen. As for the screen itself, although fairly large, it looks incredibly small compared to the unit, writes Stuart Miles.…

The Captain Scarlet of mobile PCs?

Review Panasonic has been making notebooks for a long time, but you may not have come across the Toughbook brand before. The reason for this is that Toughbooks tend to attract a buyer who is more concerned with durability than design and performance. To get an idea of who the Toughbooks appeal to, next time you see a BT engineer working on a junction box in the street, take a look over his shoulder. It's a near certainty that he'll be working on a Toughbook, writes Riyad Emeran.…

We test the top LGA755 motherboards

Review Which motherboard to buy? Determining the answer to this question is, arguably, the most important of all hardware choices. The choice of motherboard defines, in part, just how future-proof a system will be. Making a bad choice can lead to problems that aren't apparent for, say, CPUs and processors. Having to replace a motherboard usually necessitates a long-winded process of reinstalling an OS, programs and data. In short, your motherboard has to be good or your system won't be.…

iPod Nano need not panic

Review In the early days of Windows Mobile smart phones Orange was the UK's leading light, launching the first UK device way back at the tail end of 2002. Since then Orange has been joined by other operators and by operator-agnostic vendors, but the company has kept its own line flowing with a steady range of new entrants. The latest of these is the SPV C550, a blatant attempt to jump on the music bandwagon, but with a few other nice plus points too, writes Sandra Vogel.…

Treo-beater?

Review Just as the great unwashed now think that all MP3 players are called an iPod, so there was a time when all handheld devices were simply known as iPaqs. This must have annoyed most vendors, especially Palm, but HP was never heard to complain, writes Stephen Patrick.…

Apple's master-stroke?

Review Unless you were hiding in a cave last week, you'll have heard about the latest changes made to Apple's iPod range. Out went the iPod Mini, which on the surface seemed like a strange decision. The Mini enjoyed a fanatical reception from the millions of style-conscious consumers who realised that they'd never fill a 20GB iPod no matter how hard they tried, while its smaller dimensions made it even cooler than the original white icon. However, when it comes to dimensions, the iPod Mini looks positively obese compared to its replacement, writes Riyad Emeran.…

Cross-platform development nirvana?

Review Since its arrival in the mid-1990s, RealBasic has been helping amateur and professional software developers create applications quickly by side-stepping most of the complexities other languages and programming environments throw at them.…

Cheap as chips?

Review If you aren't a gamer, integrated graphics may seem the best imaging option to choose for your next PC. Integrated graphics engines may be cheaper than add-in cards, but they can hit system memory performance hard, and since on-board graphics are usually only available on budget chipsets and motherboards, you may also miss out on key features such as RAID storage or dual-monitor support, writes Andrew Miller.…

Orange gets it right, second time around

Review Just under a year ago I reviewed the original 3G Orange Mobile Office Card and was decidedly unimpressed. Sub-standard hardware and poorly considered software added up to a package that, quite simply, wasn't up to the job at hand. This situation was made worse for Orange by the fact that only a few weeks earlier I had reviewed the Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G data card, and it had performed flawlessly, writes Riyad Emeran.…