Review: Maxview Contour Plus C3006
From the same stable as the Truvision C3010, the Contour Plus C3006 heralds from Maxview's Platinum Quality Range with a 'Stylish, Modern Design and Silver Finish' according to the packaging.
Certainly the solid, slab-like nature does not tally with the traditional spokes or fin usually associated with indoor aerials and the curved edges tapering down to a wider base help give the C3006 stability on a horizontal surface.
Assuming one can get a decent signal from a relay transmitter the aerial could be mounted on a wall courtesy of its flat back and recesses that are ready to slide on to a couple of screws. There's even a handy template on the side of the box for marking drill holes.
There's no assembling required aside from the need to insert two (unsupplied) AA batteries that power the internal booster amp. Excellent instructions and diagrams are printed on the back of the box.
Push the on/off button on the front of the aerial and a blue LED flashes every five seconds to indicate the booster is on. Forget to turn it off and you'll get around 1,000 hours before the juice runs out.
Signal reception
Performance was fine with all the BBC channels, Sky News and curiously ITV but not Sky 3 or any other channels.
Overall, good potential with the caveat of an excellent signal required.
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Review: Maxview Truvision C3010
The Truvision C3010 indoor aerial is in Maxview's Platinum Quality Range. Assembling the aerial is simplicity itself, it comes flat-packed and all you have to do is hold the base firmly and swivel the aerial arm.
The antennae can be rotated through 90° for horizontal or vertical positioning (the former is for main transmitters and the latter for relay transmitters). As the instructions helpfully point out, you can see from rooftop aerials in your locality which way to position it.
The instructions and accompanying diagrams on the rear of the box are very well laid out and probably the least ambiguous in this group.
The aerial cable is a generous 210cm, which could be very useful when the TV set is positioned some distance from a window sill, which can often be the best place to site an indoor aerial to pick up maximum signal reception.
Performance
Build quality is very high, despite being silver-coloured plastic it feels strong and sturdy and has suffi cient weight to sit stably on a shelf or ledge.
The aerial picked up BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three and BBC News but we couldn't get any other channels. To be fair, it does advise on the box that you need a strong signal.
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In Depth: Inside the world's first 3D satellite broadcaster
Satellite broadcaster Sky has made no secret of its 3D ambitions. Using the Sky+HD platform, it will introduce a 3D service next month.
It goes without saying that this puts Sky at the forefront of broadcasting technology. But in Japan, a much smaller satcaster has already been paving the way with its own innovative 3D broadcasts.
BS11 is a relative minnow in the competitive seas of Japan's commercial broadcasting. Yet for a number of years it's been setting the global pace when it comes to over-the-air 3D.
Tokyo bound
Home Cinema Choice Editor Steve May paid a visit to its HQ in Tokyo for a look at its plucky operation and a taste of 3D things to come.
BS11 first began broadcasting back in December 2007, and – amazingly – 3D was part of the schedule even at that early point. The station has a reputation for being tech-friendly, and is part-funded by some big names in consumer electronics.
The largest shareholder in the company is Bic Camera, a giant electronics retail chain in Japan. It's from here that viewers can track down the Hyundai 3D screens required for the service.
The channel itself is free-to-air, with no subscription required. A look through the station's programme guide is predictably eclectic. In amongst the anime shows (.hack//SIGN and Hime being two examples) and Ultraman reruns are classic samurai movies, American Idol (!) and local sitcoms.
Sandwiched amongst these are the 3D segments that have brought HCC to town. These are broadcast daily in five-minute chunks made up of a mix of computer animation and short films, including a paraglider ride over the Japanese countryside. The latter is provided to BS11 by the government as part of an agricultural promotion ('mutual PR' I was told). Coming soon is Golf Yoga (!) and a guide to Hawaiian hula.
Hiroshi Endo is the general manager of the engineering department in BS11's programming division. It's his job to oversee the 3D transmissions, leading a team of 20 engineers in total. When I visited, the satcaster was considering the formation of a 3D-specific group. Given that the entire company only numbers 50, the proportion turned over to the technical side is considerable.
Endo tells me: 'When more people begin watching 3D next year, we plan on increasing our coverage, as well as offering advertisers the ability to produce 3D commercials. We have the know-how to develop that side of the market.'
As with Sky's proposal, BS11 uses an HD platform to deliver side-by-side/half resolution 3D images. The end result is a convincing 3D illusion when viewed with active shutter glasses. The paraglider ride conveys a good sense of depth, even if the resolution is lacking when compared to a hi-def 2D broadcast.
Endo explains that his R&D team are currently looking at using upscaling technology to address the shortfall in image resolution. 'That will make our broadcasts a better match for 3D from 1080p sources,' he reveals. 'We think we can increase the detail.'
When not broadcasting 3D, BS11 offers viewers a mix of HD and SD content. Despite transmitting 3D segments for several years, there's still the sense that the operation is experimental ('3D is a brand-new market – nobody knows the correct way to do things just yet'). And the number of viewers is undeniably low.
As a free-to-air station, BS11 isn't exactly sure how many viewers it has tuning in to its 3D transmissions, but admits the current lack of 3D-compatible screens is restricting its reach. 'Hyundai is only manufacturing around 200 3D TVs a month,' reveals Endo. 'These come in 32 and 46in sizes, but availability is poor.'
Your own private 3D world
An alternate route to 3D is via personal 3D-viewing glasses. These are currently made and sold by Vuzix. The company has a range of video glasses, some for consumer use (wearing them, the viewer has the equivalent of a 50in screen suspended in front of him) and some for pro/military use.
3D is supported by a number of glasses in the company's range, including the iWear AV920, which creates a display roughly equivalent to watching a 62in 3D display from a distance of nine feet. Keiichiro Fujii, from Vuzix Japan, told me that while the 3D-compatible glasses are popular, more programming and improvements in image quality are required to really drive the market.
The quality issue should be resolved by new software, he says. 'The mobile TV market in Japan, called One-seg TV, was originally transmitted at 15fps, with the result that images stuttered. But upscaling software now found in higher-end phone brands like Sony and Panasonic increases this to 30fps, giving a much smoother image. Similar developments will aid 3D TV. The human eye is very sensitive to vertical resolution, and it's this that can be improved.'
According to Endo, being an early pioneer in 3D TV came at a high price. 'When BS11 began, hardware was in short supply and very expensive, but things are changing now. We believe that there will be an explosion in 3D technology and editing software during 2010 and prices will really come down.
Soon anyone will be able to make a 3D movie.' He adds: 'We've found that it takes around two to three years to train operatives how to shoot in 3D. The interesting thing is that 2D professionals tend to come to 3D with preconceptions about programme making. We actually find it easier to educate new people. No experience is actually better when it comes to 3D programme making.'
Ultimately, the 3D revolution is a question of 'when' rather than 'if'. It's all about exposure, says the man from BS11: 'The World Cup and the next Olympics will prove very important for 3D. These will be the main opportunity for the public to experience 3D TV. When that happens there's no turning back'.
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Review: Telecam TCE2001
The Telecam TCE2001 is a fin-style table-top directional indoor aerial in the traditional style.
Assembly is a simple three-step process, aided by some helpful diagrams that illustrate how to connect the stem to the base.
There's a separate amplifier that can be wall-mounted using the supplied fixing plate, but it must be fixed within 90cm of a power point.
The aerial is a touch rickety, but steady enough on a flat surface and the angle can be adjusted through 90° between horizontal and vertical.
How it fares
Performance was good with the main BBC channels but some re-adjusting was required to pick up BBC News and BBC3 suffered bad glitches. Sky 3 tuned in perfectly, but Sky News suffered occasional glitches.
No other channels were picked up. Switching the amplifier on and off made no difference to the performance, indicating that the non-amplifier version, the TCE2000, which is available for under £10, would be the better bet.
Overall, this is a decently built model that should work perfectly in areas with good to excellent reception. If you live in an area with marginal reception it will be a matter of trying and seeing whether it works or not.
Our advice is to only invest in the TCE2001 if returning it is not going to be a problem.
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In Depth: 6 handy tools to tune up your PC
A rolling stone gathers no moss, or so the saying goes. It must be going down a really big hill, or a mountain. Or just be rolling on some kind of rock treadmill. I am actually going somewhere with this: your PC is like a stone that gathers moss. Horrible digital moss that stops your PC rolling.
Each time you add a new game, or delete a file, your PC gets clogged with irrelevant and orphaned files. And then there's the registry, from which Windows loads up all manner of driver links and other gubbins. But many of the entries in the Registry aren't used by Windows, and loading them up slows down your PC.
Registry cleaners are said to remove irrelevant entries, and thus speed up the boot process. Not everyone thinks Registry cleaners are a good idea. We can say without hesitation that Luis hates them. They can potentially do more harm than good: shaving a couple of seconds off your boot-up time and freeing a couple of kilobytes of RAM is worthless if your PC is going to crash every 12 seconds.
Registry cleaners also tend to come with an awful lot of extra features to 'boost' your system, including spyware removal tools, antivirus programs and internet speed optimisers. They promise to make your PC as good as new, and this must be pretty appealing to stupid people. It's like painting a 1986 Ford Escort a different colour in the belief that it'll make it faster.
They can make a difference
Of course, it's not all bad: if you uninstall a program incorrectly, it can leave Registry entries which could cause your PC to get confused and crash. If you're regularly installing and uninstalling stuff, it might be worth using a cleaner, but we'd recommend that you create a restore point first.
Do they work? Not dramatically, but through our tests we found that they could make a difference to boot-up times, but – bizarrely – some of them made it worse.
System optimisers and Registry editors aren't as essential as people make them out to be, ranking way below antivirus and firewall software. We've plucked six cleaners from the Registry tree and put them through their paces.
After running each one, we timed the boot process until Steam started, and then we ran Mass Effect 2 to see how memory performance and general speediness had been affected. The apps vary from completely free simple programs to paid-for software that promises to transform your PC into an uber-rig. The key word here is promises: a lot failed to do what they said on the tin.
1. Ccleaner - Free
Ccleaner has become ubiquitous as a free alternative to the paid-for system optimisers, and it's not hard to see why: it's a small, free download that promises to wipe all the crap out of your computer.
Not only does it fully scrub up your registry, it will also go through your whole PC and remove temporary internet files, cookies and unused documents. Perfect if you want to cover your dodgy online tracks.
In terms of results, Ccleaner didn't deliver much of an improvement. It shaved 20 seconds off our boot time, but other products in our test resulted in better performance. It's a shame because Ccleaner didn't use the cloak-and-dagger approach to optimisation, and showed us exactly what it was doing, and what was wrong.
Great if you're paranoid about your internet use (you dirty, dirty boy), not great if want to fix your Registry. It will also scour your system for useless files and empty your recycle bin, which is great for freeing up precious hard drive space. And it's free.
2. All In One System Suite 9 - £40
According to All in One System Suite's packaging, it includes 60 plus powerful tools to keep your PC safe and healthy.
Unfortunately, these powerful tools aren't packaged in any logical or understandable way. A 'One-Click Optimise' actually involved two clicks, it insisted on updating itself every time we started it, and it looks horrific.
Results were great though: it boosted our start-up time by almost a minute. But then it insisted on starting a load of services, and asking us if we'd changed our hard disk drives recently. We hadn't.
By the time it had finished asking us questions, our boot up time was about four minutes, which is ridiculous by anyone's standards.
3. JV16 PowerTools - £19
JV16 Powertools has quite possibly the most aggressive sales website we've ever seen: "You must act now and make a copy of JV16 PowerTools your own. There is no other sensible choice.' It's the only way to be sure.
It is one of the better optimisers, though, and its beauty lies in its incredible depth: it allows you to tweak your Registry to your liking, and tells you what each entry is responsible for.
It also includes a Registry compactor, which attempts to reduce the loading time of the registry by compressing it to a size that's manageable by your computer and runs in the background to keep things ticking over.
But being in-depth is a double-edged sword, and it's not the easiest software in the world to get your head around, and it doesn't have a one (or two)-click optimisation system. It also didn't make a huge difference to our boot times.
We'd recommend this for people who like to get their hands dirty with their PCs, but it's not for grandads or simple people.
4. Iolo System Mechanic 9 - £25
We've looked at System Mechanic before, and we were rather impressed with the sheer amount of stuff it packs in its slender box. Not only does it clean up your Registry, it will also remove Startup programs, speed up your internet and defrag your hard drive and memory. Too good to be true?
Possibly. In spite of Iolo's claims that it can make Windows up to eight times faster, it actually increased our start up time, and the difference in Mass Effect 2's bootup speed was negligible.
It also proved problematic when we tried to do a system restore: for some reason it had removed our backup, which is massively intrusive and actually quite dangerous. We dread to think what else System Mechanic 9 did inside our machine. It probably emailed our personal details to the KGB or something.
You're far better off investing in a dedicated registry editor – like JV16 PowerTools – than this jack of all trades.
5. PC Tune-Up 2.0 - £25
PC Tune-Up is undoubtedly the most polished piece of software in our test, and it's easy to use. What's more it sports a lovely interface so you can see exactly what's going on thanks to the giant icons.
It went through all the bits of the PC, making tweaks and adjustments and then… it just stopped. The PC completely crashed, and we were forced to reboot.
PC Tune-Up had obviously done something right, though: it was the fastest boot time of all the products we looked at, and it didn't bombard us with information and pop-ups upon booting.
It's nice and simple, and definitely does the job, but we can't comfortably recommend a program that mysteriously crashes whenever you use it. It does seem to be the best of a bad bunch though, for those that don't mind paying.
6. Free Registry Cleaner - Free
The other Free Registry Cleaner in our roundup is by far the simplest – offering little more than a Registry tidy up – but it is rather brilliant for exactly that reason, and it's completely free.
It's not quite as polished as other efforts, but what do you expect from something you don't have to pay for? It even packs in a couple of nice features, such as being able to see which programs fire up when you boot your PC, with the ability to turn them on and off.
We were stunned by its performance, too: it outranked all but one of the paid-for softwares. It's a little low on other features, such as deleting files, but we reckon if you use it in conjunction with the similarly free Ccleaner you'll have a completely optimised PC.
Best of all, it's a nice small package and it doesn't wreck your computer, crash or load up lots of annoying extras on start-up. It's ironic that the only pieces of software in this test we want to pay for are free.
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Review: Grundig GUFSDTR500HD
For over a year Humax's superb FOXSAT-HDR has been the only Freesat PVR on the market, but other brands are now providing a bit of healthy competition. Among them is the Grundig GUFSDTR500HD, which offers an alternative way of watching and recording Freesat's growing number of free HD and standard-def channels.
Features
Inside this gorgeously styled unit sits a 500GB hard disk, which enables you to record up to 125hrs of hi-def or 312hrs of standard-def broadcasting, which is a lot more than the Humax's 320GB hard disk can hold.
The key to the Grundig's flexibility lies in the inclusion of twin DVB S2 tuners, which enables you to record one channel while watching another – surely the most important capability of any PVR – or record two simultaneously. You can even watch a recording from the hard disk while two channels are being recorded, but you can't watch a third live channel.
The unit's most exciting socket is the Ethernet port, which until now has always been designated 'for future use' on all Freesat products. But thanks to the recent launch of the BBC's iPlayer on the Freesat platform (albeit in beta trial form) this socket will soon enable you to watch BBC programmes online.
The beta is currently only available on the Humax FOXSAT-HD and HDR, but when it's rolled out this box is also ready.
A USB port on the back is available for uploading software updates, but sadly, multimedia playback from Flash drives is off limits on this model.
Also on board is a full set of 'Freesat+' features, including Series Link, Split Recording and a system of excellent dialogue boxes that warn you when recordings clash and suggests alternative broadcasts.
Ease of use
Grundig has provided a no-nonsense, intuitive user interface, which makes operation a breeze. Neither overly fussy nor flash, the various menu screens are clean and accessible, with judicious use of colourful graphics and large text.
The structure keeps submenus to a minimum and it's quick to respond to remote commands. Channel tuning is over in a flash and you get a useful summary of all the TV and radio stations it's found.
There's a non-Freesat mode, which searches for other free-to-air channels available on the Astra satellite, but these only appear in the channel list and not the EPG. The latter keeps faith with the grid structure familiar to Sky+ users, showing eight channels at a time.
The genre tabs, programme synopses and colour-coded instructions are tidily arranged around it without feeling cluttered, but it doesn't leave room for a mini screen showing live TV.
Setting Series Link should have been easier. After setting the programme to record from the EPG, you have to move to the Recording Library and apply the Series Link option there. Not a deal-breaker perhaps, but a pity given the attention to detail elsewhere.
Managing your recordings is a breeze thanks to the terrific Library menu. Live TV plays in a small screen at the top and all the recordings are listed by name below. Hitting the Preview key plays the recording in the small screen, which is a useful function for checking your recordings. This screen also acts as the timer schedule, listing upcoming recordings at the bottom.
It's also pleasing to note that the unit is speedy in operation and the entire array of functions are still available when two recordings are in progress.
The only operational sour note is the bizarrely laid out remote, whose channel change, EPG and Library keys are placed far too low for comfort.
Picture
The Grundig's picture quality is hard to fault. Standard-def channels such as BBC One and ITV1 have plenty of depth and detail in the pictures, but most importantly the machine keeps a lid on mosquito and block noise, which can be distracting. In fact, the picture seems a little cleaner and fractionally less twitchy than the Humax's.
The Grundig's recording quality is equally impressive: we couldn't see any difference in quality between the live broadcast and the recording.
Moving to HD pictures, the leap in quality is immediate and striking. There's a depth, crispness and lucidity to high-definition material (particularly on BBC HD) that still gives us goose bumps despite having seen the broadcast format in action a million times, and the Grundig's pristine pictures perfectly preserve that sense of wonder.
Sound
It doesn't matter whether you're listening to TV programmes through your TV or piping the signal digitally to your AV receiver, the sound on offer is eminently enjoyable.
Speech is clear and prominent during news and chat shows, for example, but more exciting content such as movies or dramas are powerfully relayed.
Your average Freeview PVR typically sets you back around £150, which makes the Grundig seem rather expensive. Even the Humax FOXSAT-HDR, with its superior feature list can now be found for less, making this unit look dear.
This can be partially explained by the Grundig's bigger 500GB hard disk, but that's still not enough to stop the Humax looking like the better-value option.
That said, if you do opt for the Grundig you won't be disappointed: it's smart, user-friendly and delivers excellent picture quality.
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In Depth: 8 of the best free Twitter clients for Linux
Who would have thought microblogging would be so popular? 2009 was probably the 'crossover' year for microblogging and Twitter in particular, as high-profile people started to massage their egos with some online idolatry.
Some actual important stuff happened too – who can forget the picture of the plane in the Hudson (that's the river we're talking about here) or the neat circumvention of English libel law in the row over that company the lawyers said we couldn't mention? To-wit to-woo!
As well as becoming more popular, Twitter has become more complex. You might only have 140 characters, but there's a lot you can pack into those bytes if you try – URL shortening has found another niche market, as well as plenty of web services offering picture hosting. So, for what seems a simple premise, there is a lot of additional functionality you may want from a microblogging tool.
We only had room for eight candidates in our test, so we had to draw up some guidelines. We ignored the command-line clients (bti is probably the best if you want this), web browsers and their add-ons, and other software that can interface with Twitter but whose main purpose is not microblogging.
There are also plenty of crossplatform tools, many written in Adobe Air, which we simply didn't have space for. In this case we chose the most popular ones, as defined by Twitstats. What we are left with are, dedicated microblogging tools for normal desktop use. Let the twittering begin!
1. Spaz - an Air-powered client that shows promise
Given that they are both powered by Adobe Air, you might be tempted to align Spaz more with TweetDeck than with some of the Linux-only clients included in this Roundup. However, it probably has more in common with something like Gwibber than TweetDeck.
Admittedly, installing Spaz isn't as straightforward and trouble-free as a standard Linux package, but that is more a problem of the Air platform than anything wrong with the software. Spaz is almost open source (released under a BSD-like licence) and if you don't mind downloading the Air SDK, you can therefore make your own builds.
A simple single-column interface packs in all the things you're likely to need for ordinary tweeting. A row of icons across the top give quick access to features like searching, global feed and your friends list with a menu for other options such as changing the settings or uploading an image.
The messages themselves are accompanied by avatars and a mouse over will reveal the user's profile. Context-driven icons follow the message, allowing retweets, replies and messaging, though by default these just follow the test rather than being arranged in a consistent place.
Spaz supports an impressive range of URL shortening services depending on your preference and the three most popular image uploading sites too. It does lack any means of filtering tweets into groups, and there's nothing for the Recent Lists feature either, though the software is pretty regularly updated.
The downside, again, mostly to do with Air, is that the user interface is sometimes unresponsive and less clean than it really ought to be. The default font looks rather spindly on our display, though you can change themes and even mangle the CSS (yes, the whole interface is HTML/JavaScript) yourself if you want to change it – there are some very inventive user themes on the application wiki.
Version: 0.8.3
Website: http://getspaz.com
Price: Free under BSD-style licence
Verdict: A promising understudy to the main players in the tweeting arena.
Rating: 5/10
2. DestroyTwitter - stylishly dark and with plenty of power features
It's easy to see why DestroyTwitter is popular. It has features by the bucketload, and looks stylish into the bargain. In terms of design it seems to have been heavily inspired by TweetDeck, with the same dark backgrounds and vaguely Apple-like interface touches.
It would be easy to put DestroyTwitter's occasional problems all down to Air itself, but there's probably more to it than that, because these issues don't seem to trouble all the Air-powered clients. All the transition and smooth scrolling effects seem to work fine, but moving the window itself can cause problems.
As for features, this is certainly a middleweight. All the usual things you might expect are here, and most are well implemented – it has the neatest slide-up conversation viewer of all the apps, even if the button to activate it is almost sub-pixel small.
Multiple shorteners and picture services are supported (though not TwitPic for some reason), and practically everything you might want to click on is clickable, though in most cases this just enables you to send links to a browser.
The most annoying thing about configuring this app is that most of the changes require you to restart, which makes the initial experimentation phase of using it rather annoying. Unlike TweetDeck, the multi-column view is not configurable – you get a standard view of timlines, replies and messages or groups.searches and saved (starred) messages.
Lacking some of TweetDeck's features, DestroyTwitter is marginally easier to understand and not half as commercially oriented.
Version: 1.7.2beta
Website: https://destroytwitter.com
Price: Free, closed licence
Verdict: Neat, configurable and with plenty of well executed features.
Rating: 8/10
3. Twitux - no frills GTK desktop twitter client
Twitux has been around since before Stephen Fry knew what Twitter was, but for all that development time it hasn't changed a great deal. The original purpose of the software was to create a small, lightweight and simple Twitter client for the desktop, and that's exactly what it does.
Built on the GTK libraries for Gnome, the user interface is sensible and easy to understand, but that's mostly due to it not doing that much. There are no bells and whistles here. Well, actually, audio notification is one of the features it does manage, but there are no metaphorical bells and whistles.
Never mind lists, groups, photo uploads, multiple accounts, URL shortening, translations, conversation tracking or any of that, Twitux doesn't even stretch to retweets. You can reply to your friends, you can follow new ones if you happen to know their username and want to type it in manually. There's no searching, no filtering – in fact, whatever life-savingly useful feature you can think of, it isn't here, OK?
You do get a pleasant and readable Twitter feed. You can read and send direct messages. That's pretty much about it though.
Are new features being added? In short, no. Development continues on this app, but really only in the area of bugfixes and a few tweaks. There have only been a few minor releases in the last year, so if you're expecting lists and such to be coming soon, forget it.
The big upside to all this is that Twitux is very light on resources. If you're running Linux on some kind of mobile device, an old laptop or similarly resource-constrained environment, this is one client you can afford to keep running in the background – it pretty much runs on nothing, takes up no space and very nearly isn't there at all.
Version: 0.69
Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/twitux
Price: Free under GPL
Verdict: Small, lightweight and simple, but not for power users.
Rating: 4/10
4. Gwibber - a reader for all services, but can it write too?
Another client written in a mixture of Python and GTK, Gwibber is a project of long standing that has long aimed to straddle the world of microblogging in all its forms.
The main feature of Gwibber – the fact that it copes with a Babel's Tower of protocols and messaging services, is also in some ways its downfall. Homogenising all that information into one stream of messages means that, inevitably, some of the particulars get lost. Consequently, although it is possible to easily retweet, reply or like/ save a message, any advanced functionality is lost. There's no inline image viewing, and you can forget groups and lists.
It isn't all doom and gloom though. Clicking on an avatar will quickly open a new tab with a list of that user's posts. Perhaps because the interface is simpler and more direct than the Air-based clients, things do seem to happen almost instantaneously (assuming a good network connection).
Tabbed displays can show the results of searches or individual timelines for users (just click on the username). Although you'll have to use a tiny, feature-free textline to make your posts, Gwibber does at least give you the option to auto-shorten URLs using several different services.
Gwibber is simple to set up and configure, and if you merely want to keep up to date with a wide range of information sources, it's pretty much ideal. Attach all the accounts you can think of and watch the world go scrolling by – though if you have a lot of accounts, you might want to turn the notification off, or your screen will be constantly full of little black windows.
Version: 1.20
Website: https://launchpad.net/gwibber
Price: Free under GPL
Verdict: Functional and fast, Gwibber is suitable for keeping tabs on things.
Rating: 6/10
5. Choqok The one that uses KDE
You might balk at trying to pronounce the name, but Choqok is the rising star of microblogging clients in the Linux space. Making good use of the KDE toolkit, this tabbed-view multi-account micro marvel looks straightforward and simple but also packs a lot of useful features into its uncluttered design.
Some of them almost slip by unnoticed, like the automatic deciphering of all those URL-shortened gobbets of text – Just hover the mouse over them and a tooltip will appear with the full pathname of the site.
Choqok also gets points simply for being a native Linux application. Its menus, fonts, buttons and general behaviour are all familiar (well, if you run any KDE apps anyway), which in many ways makes it easier to use, and certainly makes it fit well into a Linux desktop.
Being published under a proper open source licence helps immensely too – although it doesn't affect the functionality, it is reassuringly transparent and open when it comes to the handling of your own personal data.
But Choqok doesn't need sympathy points. It has a well-rounded feature set, it's stable, performs well and gets the job done. The tabbed arrangement saves space and is faster than a multicolumn view. It also supports Identica, which few of the non-Linux specific clients bother to do.
It's not all roses though. Although managing different accounts is easy with tabs, it doesn't support other services, such as Facebook, so if you're looking for a more general client, you'll have to consider something like Gwibber or TweetDeck.
Although a lot of functionality is available, it is sometimes not so easy to use – uploading an image by clicking on a button and using the file requester may seem OK, but why doesn't it implement drag and drop? There's still plenty of room for improvement, but Choqok is already a great all-rounder.
Version: 0.6.6
Website: http://choqok.gnufolks.org
Price: Free under GPL
Verdict: Neat, configurable and with plenty of well executed features.
Rating: 9/10
6. TweetDeck - the popular cross-platform champion of Twitter clients
TweetDeck is second only to the standard web browser as the most popular way to update your status on the web, which means that it must have something going for it.
It appears on the Linux platform courtesy of the Adobe Air platform, which may take some of the gloss off it, both figuratively and literally for Linux users. The popularity, we can easily deduce, is down to the sheer number of features and ease of use.
TweetDeck not only posts images for you, for example, but it includes a drag-and-drop interface to do so. It will auto-shorten URLs with your service of choice, and automatically shrink your tweets as you enter them. Switch between multi-column or single-column view and add custom columns to deal with searches, groups or other accounts like Facebook.
For all that, there are things it doesn't do. There is no theming to speak of, both styles of the update notification are large and obtrusive, the icons are often just a little on the small side, and if you use Identica or Laconica, there's no way to add these servers.
There are other annoyances. One is that TweetDeck requires you to create an account on its website to enable the saved groups feature. This seems like a thinly veiled attempt to garner user data. There seems to be no indication of what data transfer occurs between the client or the website, and no EULA for the software either – the terms all refer to the website. Maybe this isn't a major consideration to most users.
All in all though, it has the best featureset of the clients on test here, by some margin. If you use Twitter a great deal, this is probably the best choice.
Version: 0.32.5
Website: www.tweetdeck.com
Price: Free, closed licence
Verdict: The most popular desktop client for good reason.
Rating: 9/10
7. Mitter - Python and GTK join forces to take on the Twitter world
This is another client that's flying the flag for lightweight and easy to use apps, and as such bears no small resemblance to Twitux. Also using GTK, though this time through the medium of Python, it's a multiplatform app (as long as you install a proper version of Python on OS X or Windows) which possibly accounts for some of its increased popularity.
Mitter currently eschews the more complex features demanded by the frequent-posting twitterati, but isn't quite as pared to the bone as other clients. While you don't get a choice in the service it uses, it does support URL shortening, for instance.
There is no transparent decoding of short URLs, nor are they directly clickable, but right-clicking on a tweet does give the option to follow any links, which will open in your default browser.
As for customisation, well, there isn't any. The settings menu allows you to enter your Twitter account details, and that's it – no changing the font, no theming, no nothing. All this makes it a little less understandable that it requires so much memory to run, though this is mostly from the libraries it loads.
Disappointingly, and for whatever reason, it also appeared to be the most likely, among those tested, to go into random freezes, failed uploads and general misbehaviour. The version on test is, as always unless otherwise stated, the last stable release version, though there are test versions that address some of these issues.
Mitter doesn't have quite the same lightweight credentials as Twitux. After all, you'll still need to have Python and various libraries installed to use it. It does a similar job though, and at least has the prospect of features being added as time goes by.
Version: 0.4.5
Website: http://mitter.googlecode.com
Price: Free under GPL
Verdict: Mitter could do with trying just a little harder.
Rating: 4/10
8. Mixero - slightly quirky Adobe Air app
For some reason (chance? Magic? Good programming?) Mixero seems to suffer less from the Adobe Air effect. It seems at least to be more responsive and less prone to graphical glitches than the other Air apps on test. And it achieves all this without actually even claiming to support Linux at all!
A side-by-side view with controls in the middle is certainly a little quirky for Twitter clients, and yet after a few hours of use it seems quite natural. The left hand side shows the timeline, while the right is for user management and groups.
Mixero implements lists well, in a sort of directory tree structure inside the tabbed view, and it's really easy to amend them. These groups or lists can be managed separately by the application, or synchronised with your Twitter account. Twitter currently only allows 15 lists per user, so if you need more groups than that, you won't be able to sync them.
Although it doesn't explicitly support Identica, you can change the server address and therefore support any Twitter-compatible server. It's also possible to add multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, although it becomes a little difficult to manage them effectively.
One neat solution to the growing amount of timeline noise is the ability to detach a new timeline window. As windows can be filtered, this means you can set up Mixero to scan for particular tags or whatever while still enjoying the normal timeline view.
Like Choqok, you'll get a decoded URL address if you hover over any shortened URL in the timeline, and it also sports some nifty translation features.
The interface might be a little fussy for some, and there isn't much available in the way of customisation, but it becomes deceptively easy to use after a short while. Definitely one to try before you make a final decision.
Version: 0.53.4
Website: www.mixero.com
Price: Free, closed licence
Verdict: The Twitter client for those who march to their own funky drum.
Rating: 8/10
Not everybody uses Twitter in the same way. Some people seem to bleat on about every mundane aspect of their existence. Others like to post links and snippets of info they think will be useful to others. Some people seem content with reading and following others, and some people just like to exchange banter with their mates. Some users are apparently 'social media gurus', and therefore should probably be avoided.
Whatever the reason you decide to use Twitter, a great piece of client software should be able to cope with all these usage scenarios. TweetDeck is the software with the greatest number of features crammed into it. It's been designed well enough to offer all this functionality without being too difficult to use, but it is a bit of a screen hog – to get the best out of it you'll need to dedicate a desktop to it, which might be a bit much for any but the most dedicated Tweeters.
We also have a funny taste in our mouth over having to register to get some of the functionality, as well as the general un-Linuxyness of it all. For that reason we have to give the overall thumbs-up to Choqok. It isn't perfect, and could do with extending its abilities, particularly in some of the areas of general helpfulness, but it's deeply wonderful and scores just as highly as TweetDeck.
Spaz also deserves a mention. Since it's driven by CSS styles it is themable, so if none of the other clients suit you, a few hours' work could bring forth the client of your dreams. Mixero has most of the features of TweetDeck, but is a lot more compact and seemingly more responsive too.
As all the clients are free to use though, you can test drive the ones you like the sound of – don't run them all at once though – that way leads to madness!
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