Exclusive: Microsoft: Kinect is competitively priced
Microsoft's Brett Siddons believes that Kinect for the Xbox 360 is very competitively priced, pointing out that you only need to buy one thing to get the complete experience. The Xbox 360 Kinect price point, which is a penny under £130 (there's also an Xbox console bundle priced at £250) has raised eyebrows.
But group marketing manager Siddons, speaking at the Kinect stand at an Amazon event, told TechRadar that people should 'do the maths' when it came to counting exactly how much people fork out for the various devices to play similar games on the likes of the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation's Move.
Perspectives
"The price thing itself depends on how you look at it," said Siddons "It's £129.99 RRP but it comes with a game within that price – so Adventures will be packed in with the camera.
"If you buy it with the console which normally costs £149.99, [the package price is] £249.99 with the Kinect and the games – another 100 pound on top.
"The camera tracks six people – with two active gamers – you don't have to buy anything else.
You do the maths
"I'll let you do the maths but when you say Nintendo Wii or PlayStation Move you buy this and this, even for a two player games.
"What do you need and what do actually have to spend for a two player game for this device versus that device. You actually find that [Kinect] is very competitively priced."
We do the maths - PlayStation Move
When you look at the RRPs, Sony's pricing for Move is a basic pack for £49.99 consisting of the PlayStation Eye Camera, move controller and a demo disc with various games.
Should you want two Move controllers and two of the nunchuk-like Navigation controllers then you would have to fork out £39.99 for the former and £29.99 for each of the latter.
That's a total cost of £150 – which does at least bear out what Microsoft is saying – although Sony might well be offering as yet unannounced packages at a later date.
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Review: Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Rev.2
Intel's LGA1366 socket is the highest performing PC platform, period. With motherboards typically costing over £200, it's also pretty pricey. In that context, the recently revised Gigabyte X58A-UD3R is a bit of a bargain at just £159.Like all LGA1366 desktop boards, the X58A-UD3R is based on Intel's X58 chipset and designed to play ball with Intel's finest quad and hexa-core CPUs, namely Bloomfield and Gulftown.
Admittedly, the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R isn't literally the cheapest LGA1366 board you can buy, but it does come with several features you won't find on the likes of MSI's £140 X58 PRO, while at the same time as being around the same price as its arch nemesis, the Asus P6X58D-E.
For starters, you get both SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 and therefore bags of bandwidth.
Of course, these features are not natively supported by the Intel X58 chipset, so you only get a pair of ports for each.
For revision 2.0, Gigabyte has also tweaked the X58A-UD3R's power management with a view to improved overclocking headroom.
On paper, this board ticks all our boxes.
With ever more features integrated into modern CPUs, including the memory controller, motherboards have become less critical for performance.
Consequently, you'll find little to choose between various Intel X58 boards in terms of stock-clocked application performance.
However, when it comes to overclocking, the quality of features such as power phases can have a big impact. Likewise, in future SATA and USB bandwidth will be increasingly critical. SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 are now essential on any high end board.
HD video encoding performance
3D rendering performance
Memory bandwidth
Gaming performance
Overclocking performance
If there's a single word that sums up the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R, it's loaded.
Features wise, this board has all the things we care about. Even better, where it does drop a few features compared to more expensive Intel X58 motherboards, they tend to be frivolous frills.
In terms of expansion, you get fully four PCIE16 slots. OK, only two of them run at the full 16-lane spec in terms of electricals, but the remaining pair are still x8 slots.
Of course, you also get an NEC chip for USB 3.0 support and a discrete Marvell controller delivering SATA 6Gbps. The lack of native chipset support for these features means you only get a pair of ports for each.
But that's not Gigabyte's fault. An update to the X58 chipset is long, long overdue.
As for overclocking, Gigabyte looks to have all the bases covered.
The chipset is well cooled thanks to a heatsink and heatpipe arrangement covering the X58 chip, the southbridge and the MOSFETs. Gigabyte has also upped the X58A-UD3R's power phases from an eight phase setup to 12 phases.
Finally, there's a clear-CMOS switch on the back panel. It's a handy feature that saves you cracking open the case if you overcook the settings.
What you don't get, however, is a BIOS-based auto-overclocking utility. Instead, Gigabyte's Windows-based EasyTune6 application provides three levels of quick and easy overclocking. It's just a shame a reboot is required.
One final feature worth noting is that this new 2.0 revision of the X58A-UD3R supports quick-charging via USB for devices such as iPads and iPhones.
Gigabyte claims 40% faster charging times along with the ability to charge when your system is in sleep mode or even fully powered down.
Anyway, stock clocked performance is pretty much what you'd expect. There's little between the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R and its older GA-EX58-UD4P sibling unless storage performance is a factor. Where things get a little more interesting is overclocking.
EasyTune6 is more aggressive than expected, taking our Core i7 975 right up to 4.15GHz. However, a maximum base clock of 200MHz when overclocking manually is less spectacular.
The limiter here could well be related to the BIOS settings Gigabyte offers for the QPI ratio. The lowest ratio offered is x36. That means a baseclock of 200MHz pushes the QPI link right up to 7.2GHz.
We liked:
Intel's LGA1366 processors are expensive enough on their own, so any money you can save on a compatible motherboard is very welcome.The Gigabyte X58A-UD3R does just that by undercutting most X58 boards at the same time as delivering the latest features including SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0.
We disliked:
Intel's X58 chipset is getting on and shouldn't need the assistance of add-in chips for features such as SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0.While that is hardly Gigabyte's fault, we would like to see more QPI ratio options in the BIOS menu, the better to clock the twangers off our precious Core i7 chips.
Final word:
Gigabyte's affordable X58 board brings Intel top chipset up to date with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps. With a BIOS tweak it might approach perfection.Specifications:
Manufacturer: GigabyteChipset: Intel X58
Socket: LGA 1366
Form factor: ATX
Storage: 2x SATA 6Gbps, 6x SATA 3Gbps
USB: 2x USB 3.0, 6x USB 2.0
Expansion: 4x PCI-E x16 (2x PCI-E x16 and 2x PCI-E x8 electrical)
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Hands on: Apple Magic Trackpad review
We've got to have a play with Apple's new £59 Magic Trackpad this afternoon. So what are our first impressions?Firstly, despite appearances, this is a surprisingly weighty peripheral, manufactured from stainless steel and backed with the same non-slip material as the new-style Apple Bluetooth keyboards.
The surface of the Magic Trackpad is glass, just like the MacBook Pro trackpad - but the surface area is 80 per cent larger than the trackpad on a MacBook Pro .
The Magic Trackpad's pitch, as well as the front-to-back measurement, is exactly the same as the Apple keyboard – it matches up quite nicely should you want to put them end-to-end.
The Magic Trackpad isn't designed to replace the mouse - says Apple - but is designed as a complement to it for those who are used to the multi-touch gestures of their Mac laptop. You could, theoretically even plug in two! It also adds to the abilities of the a new gesture, which we'll come onto in a minute.
You can almost put your whole hand onto the trackpad. Apple's gesture range only goes up to four fingers, so there's plenty of room. Apple also says you're able to rest the palm of your hand on the bottom half of the trackpad without any ill effects in terms of control.
Ideal for the fun stuff
The Magic Trackpad is definitely at its best in apps like iPhoto or Preview – it's certainly not something you'll be using to work on fiddly jobs in Photoshop or laboriously processing video with Final Cut Pro. Apple says it's great for web browsing, but we're not so sure about that, we'd rather stick with a mouse, especially for a large screen.
We also had a few issues with rotating pictures – the gesture that twists two forefingers around in a circle motion. In Preview, the iMac often thought we were trying to select an object area rather than rotate.
We found performance is better if you do the gesture towards the top of the trackpad, rather than the middle or bottom. It is, however, easier to perform gestures on the Magic Trackpad than it is on a MacBook Pro. We didn't, however, find it as easy to click with the Magic Trackpad – there's no tactile click-down like there is on the laptop.
The new gesture (which will also be rolled out to the MacBook Pro via a software update) is three-fingered. Placing three fingers on the trackpad enables you to drag a window around the screen. Not exactly headline-grabbing, while you'll still need to use the title bar to hold onto to make it work – you can't just move a window from anywhere.
You are able to plug the Magic Trackpad into a Windows-based machine, though it will only act as a basic mouse-type device so none of the gestures are supported.
The Magic Trackpad won't replace the mouse and you'll still need the age-old peripheral to perform a lot of everyday tasks.
However, there's certainly potential with the Magic Trackpad to be used in situations where a mouse isn't so practical – such as if you're on a sofa controlling your Mac from your lap.
But for most, the Magic Trackpad is a luxury – and when most multi-touch gestures can be performed using the Magic Mouse anyway, you may find yourself perplexed as to exactly what the point of the Magic Trackpad actually is.
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Review: Samsung Galaxy Apollo i5800
The version of the Samsung Galaxy Apollo we had to review is the Galaxy Apollo i5801 model – which is exclusive to Orange in the UK. Don't confuse this with the regular Galaxy Apollo i5800 – the i5800 version doesn't feature the i5801's fancy silver bezel, but apart from that, they're the same phone, internally speaking.The newly resurgent Samsung, fresh from the rampant global success of its Galaxy S Android phone, is now scaling down its touchscreen ambitions for those who can't quite stretch to the top-of-the-range phone's tariff demands.
Externally, the Samsung Galaxy Apollo is what you might call a phone of two halves. The back of the handset is a depressingly cheap, contoured slab of unkempt black plastic, with a single hole for the camera (SPOILER: no flash) and an Orange logo. It is not a sexy back.
Thankfully, the front of the Apollo is very stylish indeed, with the entire surface of the phone formed from one piece of glass. There's no plastic bezel here, with the only break in the glass being the hole for the Home button.
The other two buttons on the front face of the Apollo are the Android standard Back and Menu options, and they're not physical buttons – Samsung has made them touch-sensitive icons that beam out through the silvery surround beneath the glass front.
Thankfully there's a bit of haptic feedback attached to them both, so your presses are acknowledged in a physical manner.
Sadly, the Home button does not function as an optical or physical trackpad – there's no tracker option for gamers here, much like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini and Mini Pro.
If you want to navigate through your text messages to correct typos, that has to be done through ultra-precise cursor placement with the touchscreen alone.
But what a touchscreen it is. The Galaxy Apollo's capacitive screen is amazingly sensitive – in fact it's one of the most responsive we've yet used. A tiny, gentle touch is all you need to register your input, meaning you can be super-precise when required for touch-typing.
There's a slight downer for us in that the screen surround is backed by a mirrored silver finish, meaning you often catch a glimpse of yourself in the reflection.
But if you don't mind seeing your crumpled face staring back at you when doing your first tweets of the day from bed, it's not a deal breaker. You will spend a lot of time polishing it, though – that finish is a smudge and fingerprint magnet.
Elsewhere, it's a very simple exterior – the USB socket, power button/screen lock and 3.5mm headphone jack sit on the top edge, the volume toggle switch on the left and… nothing else.
There's no physical camera button, with the only other blemishes on the Galaxy Apollo's all-glass front panel being a tiny proximity sensor near the earphone.
It's a classy exterior, as long as you always keep it facing up.
For some bizarre (and no-doubt extremely tense) political reason, the Samsung Galaxy Apollo ships with two entirely separate Android launchers, along with a custom app that lets you switch between the pair of Android skins at will.
There's the Orange Home screen design, which presents the phone's Android 2.1 OS skinned in a general Orange way complete with some rather clunky widgets, plus there's an alternate Samsung Home screen layout option, which gives users a totally different skin that incorporates many of the TouchWiz 3.0 features that helped win the Samsung Galaxy S its high-scoring review.
This move will surely utterly bewilder Android newcomers, who will find themselves greeted with the option to switch launchers – and the entire look and feel of the phone – each time they navigate from an app back to the phone's Home screen, should they fiddle with the launcher selection tool at any time.
We favour the Samsung OS skin option, which brings across the same icon tray system found in the Galaxy S, also putting four quick launch icons – phone, contacts, messaging and apps – along the bottom of every screen in a convenient and stylish floating dock.
It's much cleaner and brighter than the darker, orange-coloured Orange skin.
The Samsung version of the Apollo's desktop system also gives you seven separate Home screens to place your icons and widgets on, while the Orange one only sports five – two of which arrive pre-filled with massive and rather ugly picture and messaging widgets.
So we'll stick with the Samsung TouchWiz launcher. Its two most impressive features are its extra large widgets, which offer you a social network aggregator in the form of its Feeds & Update toy, which pulls in status updates from (and only from) Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, presenting them all in one unified mega-timeline just like Sony Ericsson's Timescape feature found in the Xperia X10 range.
There's also a large "Buddies Now" widget which offers you a visual, flickable interface for quick access to selected contacts.
Sadly these data-hungry apps are a bit of a hindrance to the phone's operation, with the Home screens often crunching up a little when you swipe your way from screen to screen past these complex widgets.
It's a shame, because using the Apollo is usually a pretty glitch- and slowdown-free experience. Bin the few fancy widgets and the phone operates just fine.
Many of the OS features and widgets are shared across both the Orange and Samsung skins, with the Orange widgets available for installation on the Samsung-themed Home pages and vice versa. You can create your own little mash-up combo of TouchWiz and Orange's Android 2.1 skin if you so wish.
But we can't help but worry about the poor average consumer, though, who's going to be utterly confused about the way his phone comes with two wildly different visual styles.
It seems like a very, very silly way of doing things, but it presumably kept the pen-pushers at Samsung and Orange happy.
The Contacts system is basically the default Android option and is therefore a little bland. There's a big list of everyone, complete with a photo if you can be bothered to assign one from the Gallery, with Samsung-specific options to break this list down into more manageable chunks.
You're able to allocate users to Family, Friends and Work sub-groups for easy access, plus there's the option to create your own custom collections of contacts if you want to make this simple thing needlessly more complex.
Text messaging has been given a bit of a visual overhaul, with messages now appearing in threaded speech bubbles, making it a little easier to keep track of unfolding conversations, and this system is used in both the Orange and Samsung implementations of the OS.
Email is another area where the Galaxy Apollo suffers from there being too many cooks (developers) involved – the phone comes with three separate ways to set up external email accounts.
As well as the standard Gmail app that you're pretty much forced to use on Android – at least, if you want to access the Android Market – the Galaxy Apollo features the standard Android POP email tool which automatically sets you up to read your other accounts with only your email address and password required.
The way the Android email app automatically sets up accounts is impressive, but its handling of email is less so.
Messages with attachments take an age to draw on screen, and copying text from mails is impossible. As a simple sending and replying tool its fine, but it's no match for desktop email clients.
Finally, Samsung has put on its own Samsung Email tool, which sits on the phone under the icon "Mail" and handles Exchange support if you'd like to keep certain work-based emails separate from all your other internet identities.
If you're not keen on using Google's Gmail syncing options for whatever reason, Orange has provided its own Contacts syncing tool in the form of Contacts Backup, plus there's the same Write and Go app that featured on the Samsung Galaxy S.
It's a clever little memo app that, once you've written a note, lets you hit the Update Status button and automatically post it to several social networks at once.
The dialler is the model of simplicity, popping up a huge keypad with your call log, favourites and contacts placed in tabs along the top. After hanging up a call, you're able to add the number you've just called straight to the contacts, which is handy.
Call quality was good, with a nice loud reception, good handsfree speakerphone volume and nothing in the way of digital crunchiness. It's always nice when one of these pocket internet machines also works as a telephone.
The Galaxy Apollo's browser is the regular Android 2.1 device, which features many, many usability tweaks and updates over past WebKit browsers. And past WebKit browsers have been great, the perfect model of simplicity ideally suited to mobile use.
The screen layout is uncluttered, giving you maximum browsing real estate, with only an address bar and icon to bring up your bookmarks and history beside it visible on the browser window. Everything else is shuffled out to the Menu screens.
The copying and pasting tools, which were so complex as to be virtually non-existent in previous Android versions, are updated and very welcome here, with the option to copy text to the clipboard, share URLs via email or social tools.
Long-pressing on a URL in a web page enables you to bookmark it, open it in a new tab, share it or copy the URL to the clipboard for later use.
The browser also integrates RSS support, with any sites that offer a feed pinging up an icon and "Add RSS feeds" menu option, which will automatically copy across RSS data to your Google Reader account for easy aggregation.
Oh, and there's multi-touch for page zooming, just as there was in the Samsung Galaxy S. Scrolling and resizing isn't lighting fast and can grind to a halt occasionally, but slowdown is a rare enough event not to put you of the idea.
Switching screen orientation for portrait to landscape is quick, with pages redrawing themselves virtually instantly.
To add a bit more usability to the browser, you're able to select the default text size and page zoom, turn off image loading if you're worried about sailing through this month's data allowance, disable JavaScript, and, of course, delete all your internet history and cookies to cover any tracks you may have left.
Despite all the popular and well-reported alternate browsers out there, the standard Android WebKit one remains the best. And that's what you get on the Apollo.
The camera is the same advanced tool found in the Samsung Galaxy S. Options are everywhere, with users able to select the brightness balance and pick from numerous scene shooting modes and setups. Hours of fun.
You're even able to stitch together your own panorama shots through the handset, with the phone popping up a guide square over the image on screen that tells you where to take the next picture.
Panorama shots come out as disappointingly small super-super-widescreen images, but they are at least stitched together quite seamlessly.
(Click here to see full-res version)PANORAMA: Tiny end results, but you do get a good 180-degree composition of your surroundings
There's a Continuous Shooting option that fires off nine (massively reduced size and resolution) shots in quick succession, plus Smile Detection, a Night Mode, a Sports option for fast-moving things and much more. There's even a digital zoom on here, although picture quality suffers as a result.
It's a proper camera, basically, albeit one with only a 3.2-megapixel sensor.
(Click here to see full-res image)
MAGIC: Macro mode isn't the greatest, but image results are remarkably sharp for a 3.2-megapixel mobile camera
General photo quality is good, with much less in the way of blotchiness than you find on the images produced by other entry level Android phones like the Vodafone 845.
Sadly there's no flash, and the macro mode auto-focusing is rather slow and doesn't let you get particularly close to your target, but it's still an impressively well-featured camera for a smartphone.
Video files emerge from the camera as 3GP files in a slightly disappointing 324 x 240 resolution, which is nothing like the awesome 720p recording offered by the all-powerful Samsung Galaxy S, but at least picture quality is acceptable.
The Galaxy Apollo is no HD movie production powerhouse, but the resulting video footage is bright and sharp, it copes well with movement, and faces aren't reduced to a pixellated mess. It'll do.
Our first call, as ever, is the YouTube app to watch a few Kylie Minogue videos. As you'd expect, the app is a rock-solid experience. Skipping through to our favourite costume moments and camera shots was easy, with nothing in the way of clunkiness or glitching.
The music player in both the Samsung and Orange versions of the OS skin is the very nice TouchWiz player, which is a big improvement on the stock Android music tool.
As well as looking great, the TouchWiz player has a nice little on-the-fly playlist editor, which enables you to click on track names and add them to a simple playlist called the Quick List, with extra auto-generated menus full of your most played, recently added and recently played tracks, helping you get to what you want with minimum fuss.
The cleverest feature by far is another TouchWiz enhancement that also features on the Galaxy S – the extremely cool Lock screen music playback icon.
Even when your Apollo's on its Lock screen, you're able to press the Home button and pull down a little CD to skip through music tracks without bothering the main app. It's a great touch.
The Galaxy Apollo's video playback app also clones that of the Galaxy S. We threw a 720 x 400 Xvid-encoded AVI file at it and it played perfectly, plus the player itself is fully DivX-compatible according to Samsung.
The player was a little slow to skip through the file, but that's not really a deal breaker in a phone in this low price bracket.
The fact you can thrown pretty much any video file at it and expect the Galaxy Apollo to just work, is a rather marvellous and reassuring feature. Plus it's slightly wider/longer than average 400 x 240 screen, making it ideally suited to widescreen material.
As well as headline-grabbing mobile apps like Layar and Google Maps, the Galaxy Apollo i5801 features a rather odd collection of software stuck on by its exclusive network friend Orange.
So you get Orange Maps on here, plus Orange also provides its own custom App Shop for browsing apps, although the latter has been spectacularly hobbled by only working when the phone's connected via a mobile network – it refuses to let you give Orange money when connected via Wi-Fi. That's just madness.
Work-based "productivity" is taken care of via the ThinkFree Office suite, which is compatible with Microsoft Office documents if you need to pretend you're going to be using this phone for work in order to swing the deal and monthly expenditure.
Orange and Samsung also provide a crushingly boring weather and news widget called Daily Briefing, plus there's a custom photo display widget simply called Photography.
It's a handy way to share and leaf through your pics from the Home screen, but its rather ugly styling is hardly the sort of aspirational feature that should be beaming out of a new Android phone in 2010.
Your first 30 minutes with this phone will be spent binning the uninspiring Orange apps and installing some smarter alternatives from the Android Market.
As for the physical act of writing your tweets and texts, the Galaxy Apollo is another handset to benefit from third-party keyboard Swype – the odd, line-drawing typing tool that speeds up text input. As long as you're prepared to put in the groundwork to learn how to use it.
The Apollo also features Samsung's own keyboards, enabling users to select a numeric keypad or handwriting recognition tool, but Swype's by far the best and quickest option – even if you only use it in standard pressing-the-letters mode.
Google Maps is here and in its usual fine form, with the Galaxy Apollo having more than enough processing power to whizz maps around with ease.
Elsewhere you get Voice Recorder, which outputs yours memos-to-self as AMR files which are sharable through email or apps using the regular Android social menu.
Orange has also grafted in a simple file manager tool it calls My Files, the Orange Wednesdays film promotion app, a few game demos and that's about it.
Basically, the Orange apps are rather rubbish – but you're not forced to use any, since the splendid Google alternatives are all on here as well.
The Samsung Galaxy Apollo features a large 1500mAh battery, and we found it to be a very long-lasting performer. The Apollo easily achieved a full two days of uptime under heavy reviewing use, with moderate (once an hour) email syncing and a good hour or two of Wi-Fi use each day.
Obviously battery life depends heavily on how much browsing you do and whether you've got the GPS radio enabled so you can tell everyone which shop you're currently standing in – but with a little care the Apollo will stay active for longer than most Android phones. Very welcome, that.
The Notification area provides shortcuts to a few of the usual power strip options where you can enable or disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, or stick the phone into silent mode.
On the hardware side of things, the phone comes with Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n for connectivity, and we had no problems keeping it connected via home Wi-Fi without any drops at all during our time with the phone.
Samsung's main customisation here is the inclusion of AllShare, its DLNA sharing tool that lets you share any compatible media you may have on your PC with your mobile. If you can be bothered with any of that.
There's also an FM radio onboard, plus all the usual set-in-stone Android hardware features – GPS and Bluetooth 3.0, along with a microSD slot that supports cards of up to 32GB capacity. GPS connections were relatively fast, although, as ever, there's a good long wait while getting your initial fix.
There's a heck of a lot of power, style and performance in the Samsung Galaxy Apollo, a phone that's supposedly aimed at the cheaper end of the market.
It has great battery life, a very good screen and is powerful enough to cope with apps and browsing easily. But how does it stack up against the vast number of competing Android phones in its price range?
We liked
The touchscreen is extremely sensitive and smooth to the touch. Navigating menus and typing is a joy thanks to its superb responsiveness, plus the processor flings menus around without any chugging at all.
The idea of capacitive front buttons is initially quite a worry – but they actually work. The addition of a touch of vibration feedback each time you press one makes them feel like… buttons.
Many of the great features of Samsung's Galaxy S have made it across through the TouchWiz user interface. The camera's great, the music player a joy and the video player handles most popular types of media. It's also a great PMP.
We disliked
Why on Earth would Orange and Samsung not have a meeting and decide on one OS skin for the phone, rather than squeezing in two? Newcomers to Android are going to be utterly bewildered by having two differing skins to work with at first.
The custom suite of Orange apps is disappointing, with some ugly widgets and bizarre shopping tools that don't work via Wi-Fi. The Samsung skin and widgets are much, much better and really should've been the only option.
That said, the phone struggles to display Samsung's feature social widgets – its Feeds widget and the Buddies visual Contacts app often bring the Home screen to a shuddering halt, so you're best sticking with a Home screen free of complex widgets.
Verdict
The Galaxy Apollo is currently available on Orange contracts starting from £20 a month, and at that price its classy (Samsung) UI and superb capacitive touchscreen obliterate the competition.
The phone's 400 x 240 display offers a better resolution than that of the competing HTC Wildfire, while the capacitive touchscreen is a massive enhancement over the resistive screen of the Vodafone 845.
If you're after a new, cheap Android phone that runs Android 2.1 with ease, the Galaxy Apollo's the best there is at the affordable end of the market.
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Apple adds Extensions to Safari 5
Apple has announced the addition of extensions to Safari 5, which add extra functionality to the company's web browser.The update, which goes under the official banner of Safari 5.0.1, allows users to download extensions that devs have been working on since June.
The extensions have been created with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards.
Although you could already access some of the extensions by drilling into Safari 5's advanced settings, this new update makes it easier for the average user to find the extra functionality which is on offer.
The Safari Extensions Gallery has already attracted a number of big names, including Amazon (who has adapted its wish-list app for Safari) and Microsoft who have now integrated Bing search into Safari with its web extension. Other names who have created extensions include the New York Times and Twitter.
Playing in the sand box
Explaining the Extensions, Apple notes: "Every Safari Extension is signed with a digital certificate from Apple to prevent tampering and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer."
When it comes to privacy, the release is quick to explain: "Safari Extensions are sandboxed, so they can't access information on a user's system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer. For increased stability, Safari Extensions run solely in the browser."
To check out the extensions, go to extensions.apple.com.
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Review: Sapphire Pure Mini 785G
We're big fans of small, and motherboards don't come much smaller than Sapphire's Pure Mini 785G.The Mac mini, the Shuttle XPC, ASUS' EeeBox and Dell's Zino have all helped to prove that for nine-tenths of what we do, a server class chassis just isn't necessary and made the pint sized popular.
But while all these have captured the public imagination the original small form factor, Mini ITX, has remained in a niche.
Most will never have heard of it, and those who have will associate it with under-performing Atom or C3 CPUs.
That's where Sapphire's Pure Mini 785G comes in.
Like Zotac's H55-ITX, the Pure Mini couples the cut-down form factor with a full power processor. It's a socket AM3 board which supports AMD's dual core Athlon or Phenom CPUs, and it comes with built in ATI 4200 graphics and Via VT1708S audio.
There's even room for a PCI-Express graphics card, if you so wish.
That's a lot of power packed into a mere 17cm square of PCB. Is Sapphire's Pure Mini the most densely packed performer around?
We tested Sapphire's Pure Mini with a low power Athlon X2 255 and, as you can see, the difference in performance between running the CPU in this and a full size AMD 790 equipped motherboard is negligible.
What's more, the power usage is much lower too.
You can also bung a decent GPU in there thanks to the PCI-E lane so a mini gaming rig isn't beyond the realms of possibility.
Video encoding performance
3D rendering performance
Memory bandwidth
Gaming performance (800x600, v.low graphics settings)
You can't really complain that the layout of the motherboard is cramped, given that so much is packed onto the surface of the Pure Mini. It is worth pointing out that you're likely to want any system based on it to be as audibly unobintrusive as it is physically.
That's going to mean using a decently large heatsink for your CPU, which could be a problem.
The bigger issue, however, is that although the Pure Mini has an AM3 socket, it doesn't support any AMD processor with a TDP higher than 65W.
There's no way of getting enough power to the board to run a three or four core CPU, as it only accepts a 20-pin PSU connector rather than the more common 24-pin plug. Similarly, the auxiliary CPU power is through a four pin adaptor, not the eight pin one required for a decently powered Phenom II.
That's not a problem if you're planning on building a low-power, small footprint desktop machine for office use or day-today tasks.
Stick in a decent graphics card and you'll even have a respectable gaming rig to be proud of.
What it does mean, however, is that as a media centre there's little reason to choose the Pure ITX over, say, a dual core Atom board like the Asus AT3N7A-I which comes with NVIDIA's ION graphics with a lower overall cost.
Both will serve your purpose for watching videos or listening to music, but neither are particularly good at encoding video.
Great if you just want to consume media, but forget about DVD ripping or editing movies unless you have a lot of patience.
For a small but serious all-rounder you're best off either moving up to a larger micro-ATX size or looking at Zotac's Core i5 supporting H55-ITX or the same company's Core 2 quad capable GeForce 9300-ITX-I-E instead.
We liked:
A Mini-ITX board with a 'real' processor socket, DX10.1 capable graphics, digital audio out and an HDMI connector looks a lot better on paper than, say, an ION-based Atom system if you're thinking of building a media centre.We disliked:
Building a small form factor system is always going to involve some sort of compromise.There are limitations, though, which aren't alluded to on the company's website or the packaging. Only low power and energy efficient CPUs meet the maximum 65W overhead.
That's fine for watching films or general desktop use, but far from the best choice if you plan on video editing with your new PC.
Final word:
Lots of cool features on a tiny PCB, but CPU restrictions hamper its potential.Specifications:
Manufacturer: SapphireSocket: AMD AM3
Form factor: Mini-ITX
RAM: DDR3 up to 8GB
Graphics: AMD Radeon 4200
Audio: Realtek ALC662HD (6 channel) w/digital out
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Android 3.0: what you need to know
Even though most Android users are still waiting for Android 2.2, details about the next version – Android 3.0, or Gingerbread – are starting to emerge.Android 3.0 release date is looking like Q4 of this year, possibly around October. And Gingerbread may already be in some testers' hands - Phandroid has shown an unverified photo of a test build of Android 3.0 running in the wild.
As we reported earlier this month, a Russian podcast details how Android 3.0 will only restricted to high-end handsets (and tablets). The podcast explained that Android 3.0 phones will require at least a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 3.5-inch or larger displays.
Confirmed Android 3.0 features include improved copy and paste and support for WebM video playback. The WebM Project confirmed that "WebM support in Android is expected in the Gingerbread release". WebM files are compressed with the VP8 video codec, which Google purchased and open-sourced earlier this year.
It's also rumoured that Android 3.0 will feature a new user interface. TechCrunch reported that "Google is focusing the bulk of its efforts on the user experience for the upcoming Gingerbread release."
This, Google apparently hopes, will deter handset manufacturers from adding in their own Android 3.0 customizations (such as HTC's Sense).
One of the first Android 3.0 handsets could be the Samsung Galaxy S2 if another rumour is to be believed. The leaked details of the Galaxy S I9200 claim a 4.3-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x720.
We'll bring you more Android 3.0 details as they emerge.
In the meantime, check out Android 3.0: 10 things Google should change.
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Gary Marshall: Apple's secret iOS strategy
Apple's Magic Trackpad confirms what many of us already suspected: iOS, or something very like it, is coming to the Mac.It's not just the Mac, either. I'm willing to bet that it's coming to the Apple TV, too.
Apps would make Steve Jobs' hobby much more appealing, and it would mean that all of Apple's consumer products - iPod, iPhone, iMac, iPad and Apple TV - would share the same interface, the same apps and the same data.
That data will be stored centrally, either via the cloud or on a shared network storage device such as a Time Capsule. Remember Apple's enormous, billion-dollar data centre? That's for the cloud bit.
Don't believe me? Ask the developers. When Ars Technica put together a panel of Apple devs, they were unanimous: Mac OS X will eventually be subsumed by iOS. "Developers are seeing iOS influencing Mac OS X instead of the other way around", Chris Foresman reports.
Cabel Sasser from Panic's prediction rings true: "I could see a gradual, slow merger between iOS and Mac OS X styles and approaches," he says. "It doesn't make sense for them to be developing two of everything, one good, one not as good - two calendars, two address books. It's got to merge somehow."
This isn't going to happen overnight, but it's going to happen. The reason it's going to happen is that for very many things, iOS is better than OS X, let alone Windows or desktop Linux.
Unlike traditional operating systems, iOS is immediate. Every iPhone or iPad owner with young children has watched their kids pick up the device, launch a few apps, delete all of Daddy's data and run up enormous credit card bills: there's no learning curve whatsoever, no time spent learning the operating system before you can actually do something. It's an operating system that gets out of the way.
You might call it "computing for the rest of us".
The vision is this: iPods, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV for everyday stuff; iMacs for editing and other tasks that need proper horsepower; Mac Pros for content creation.
Steve Jobs recently spoke about cars and trucks. In the near future, i-devices and Apple TV are the cars, and Mac Pros are the trucks.
By bringing out the Magic Trackpad, Apple has given the mouse its marching orders: don't be entirely surprised if there's a Magic Trackpad Pro to offer pen-based input for artists and anyone else who'll miss the precision of mouse input.
But for the rest of us, Apple clearly thinks fat-fingered fun is the future. I think it's right.
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Review: Dell Inspiron 17R
Dell's Inspiron range has long been one of the better consumer lines we've seen, offering a string of high-quality machines at low prices. The Inspiron 17R is its latest big-screen media centre and, despite its poor battery life, is an impressive laptop for the price. With its 17.3-inch screen, this is a machine built for desktop use. At 3.2kg you won't want to carry it far and its 165-minute battery life is quite poor. This drops to just 118 minutes when watching a DVD – barely enough time to finish most movies.
The stylish chassis will look great on your desk. The plastic lid and interior use a faux brushed-aluminium finish to create a high-quality look.
Build quality is equally pleasing with all panels feeling firmly fixed and suitably resilient throughout, making it ideal for family use.
Excellent usability
The user interface ably continues this quality with the spacious and responsive keyboard being a pleasure to work with. All keys respond quietly and accurately, while the numeric keypad allows fast data entry.
The stand-out feature of this laptop, however, is its glorious 1600x900 pixel resolution 17.3-inch screen. The 16:9 aspect ratio is perfect for watching widescreen movies, while its stunning brightness and colours bring images to vivid life. Deep black levels add to the package for a striking contrast.
The use of a dedicated ATi HD 5470 graphics card ensures ample power for media editing tasks and basic gaming. While the Apple MacBook and Samsung R580 prove slightly more powerful, this is a capable multimedia machine for such a low price.
Yet more impressive at this price is the use of a cutting-edge Intel Core i5 430M processor and 4096MB of DDR3 memory. Performance is among the best we've seen from a mid-level consumer machine, although the Samsung R580 is slightly more powerful overall.
802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet allow high speed wireless and fixed networking. Bluetooth is also in place for wirelessly synchronising and sharing data with devices such as your mobile phone.
Finally, this is also the only machine in this group to include Microsoft Works software, providing a range of basic home office tools to let you get to work immediately. A six-month subscription to McAfee SecurityCenter software is also included for online security.
If it weren't for its poor battery, the Inspiron 17R would have been a clear candidate for an award this month. Its stunning screen and cutting-edge power make it a great choice, but the improved mobility of the Apple and Samsung push it into third place this time around.
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Panasonic debuts 3D consumer camcorder
Panasonic continues its mission for 3D supremacy, with the unveiling of its first-ever 3D consumer camcorder – the HDC-SDT750.This is not the first time Panasonic has developed a 3D shooting rig – it unveiled a professional video camera earlier in the year – but this one is aimed squarely at consumers, shooting Full HD footage to both eyes.
The camcorder uses the same 3D conversion lens as the one announced for the company's G-series range of cameras and is compatible with Panasonic's 3D-capable 3D TVs.
3D ready
Actually it is compatible with all 3D capable TVs, but Panasonic obviously want you to keep your 3D watching within its eco-system.
The camcorder shoots HD on AVCHD at 17Mbps and has a 3-inch flip out screen and is capable of 5.1 surround sound audio recording.
Although no UK release date has been set, the Panasonic HDC-SDT750 should arrive some time in October with pricing to be confirmed.
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Panasonic: 3D content drought is coming to an end
The head of Panasonic Europe says that the content shortage which has bedevilled the nascent 3D TV industry will only be short lived. Speaking exclusively to TechRadar at the launch of the brand's first consumer 3D camcorder, the HDC-SDT750, CEO Laurent Abadie says that the 3D floodgates are about to open.
"This year you will see a lot more 3D movies released," he said.
"The movie industry is rushing after the success of James Cameron's Avatar and the gaming and broadcast industries are close behind."
Pornography adoption
And there is another industry which he says could have a dramatic effect on the 3D market: pornography.
"The adult industry will be very important for 3D," he predicts. "It's already a key player for the internet and Pay TV.
"I know that many in the porn business are rushing to produce 3D product.
"As much as 30 per cent of the business on the internet is porno. Whether we like it or not, it's important."
He goes on to say that adult studios are already placing orders for the brand's 18,000 euro AG-3DA1 pro-3D camera (last used in Europe to shoot games from the 2010 Roland Garros tennis tournament), and the new HDC-SDT750 is certain to be on their wishlist as well.
Exclusivity
The more legitimate side of the movie-making business has been slow to release content, preferring instead to sell exclusivity deals on 3D movies to hardware suppliers.
Samsung was the first to sign an exclusivity deal with Dreamworks for Monsters Vs aliens, and Panasonic followed by pocketing Coraline and Ice Age 3 from Fox.
Only Sony Pictures has placed a 3D movie into retail, with the 3D Blu-ray release of Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
"This is always what is done with new technology, new media," says Abadie.
"This is just for the launch and it will not last long once we have a wider range of 3D Blu-rays.
"By the end of this year, we expect something like 40 3D Blu-ray titles to become available."
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Review: Mesh Discovery Slim 15.6"
Mesh is a UK company that has been around for over twenty years. As well as building their own machines, they re-brand other manufacturers' laptops and the Discovery Slim 15.6-inch is an example of this rebranding. The result of this process, is in fact an MSI X600 with a Mesh sticker on it – and a rather cheap looking sticker at that. Also bear in mind that if you're going to buy the laptop, it will arrive in an MSI box.
Nevertheless, the large 15.6-inch screen boasts a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution which is bright, crisp and clear, making it great for everyday use. Due to the panel's size, it isn't quite as sharp as the Samsung X420, which boasts the same resolution in a smaller screen size, but if you regularly work with multiple windows open this is the better choice.
Also of note is the exceptionally shiny Super-TFT screen coating, meaning there are plenty of reflections to battle with in bright light.
The keyboard is one of the worst we have used in a while. True, the keys are large, but the action is incredibly spongy and isn't half as responsive as the Sony VAIO VPC-EB1S0E/WI or Lenovo ThinkPad Edge.
Much more infuriating is the proximity of the touchpad to the board and we regularly brushed it while typing, irritatingly causing the cursor to jump around to lines other than the one we were typing on. As a result, this isn't a machine for those who plan to do a lot of typing.
Thin chassis
On a more positive note the chassis is incredibly thin at only 27mm and is easy to slip into a bag or laptop case. It also weighs only 2.1kg, making it easy to carry around all day.
A Consumer Ultra Low Voltage (CULV) Intel Pentium SU7100 processor has been employed. Designed to be resource-light on the laptop's battery, the downside is low performance and the laptop only provides roughly double the power of a netbook. Office programs will run fine, but anything more resource-intensive – including light multi-tasking – and the laptop will struggle to keep up.
The inclusion of an entry-level dedicated ATi HD 4330 graphics card is a pleasant surprise, offering more than enough graphical power to edit HD video and photos and even play relatively recent gaming titles. This level of power is still a rarity in laptops this thin and affordable.
A low-powered CULV processor normally means a decent battery life; unfortunately that's not the case here and the 189 minutes on offer is fairly dismal. As a result, the Mesh Discovery Slim 15.6 is a disappointing machine.
Poor performance is normally countered by excellent portability, as with the Samsung X420, but that's not the case here. Add the bad usability and this is a laptop unfortunately best avoided.
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In Depth: Fedora 13: what you need to know
Corporate backing and a large supportive community – almost all Linux distributions can boast of at least one half of that. Fedora, since its inception in late 2003 as Red Hat's community distribution, has nurtured around itself a devoted community. It has achieved this after providing, release after release, an innovative and complete distribution that demands attention and respect.
Being a rather large distribution (the number of DVD distributions now pales in comparison to single CD variants), Fedora 13 has something for just about every variety of Linux user.
With Fedora 13 fresh out of the oven let's see what it has to offer.
Revelations
According to Paul W Frields, Fedora Project Leader, Fedora's feature process and diverse community of developers and contributors enables it to include a wide range of features in each release.
"Fedora 13 sports an array of desktop features that will help any computer user make better use of their hardware – from 3D support for their graphics card, to colour management for their input and output devices, to automatic installation of printer drivers.
"But this release also brings advanced functionality for developers, such as better monitoring tools that allow a Python developer to measure activity on his system to find bottlenecks in Python code he's developing. And system administrators will be excited about the redesigned authentication tool in Fedora 13 using the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) to allow managed domain logins, even for laptop users who are away from the network".
Virtualisation leader
Fedora has provided a stable home for virtualisation technologies for some time now, and Fedora 13 continues the trend. In fact, on offer are leading-edge virtualisation improvements, according to Frields.
"As always, Fedora continues to lead the pack in virtualisation features, since our community developers are actually heavily involved in upstream areas like the kernel and the KVM hypervisor".
VIRTUAL MACHINES: Carefully select the OS type and the Version when creating a new virtual machine
Although Fedora persisted with Xen for a few years, the amount of time and energy needed to get it to work with the Linux kernel was a drawback. Support for KVM stable PCI addressing and Virt Shared Network Interface are two major KVM offerings in Fedora 13. The shared network interface technology enables virtual machines to use the same physical network interface cards (NICs) as the host OS.
All virtual machines under your Fedora 13 installation are managed by the Virtual Machine Manager tool under Applications > System Tools. You can create or restore existing virtual machines in a matter of minutes, as the interface is very easy to use.
Many recent distribution releases require at least 1 GB RAM, so if you don't allocate that much when creating your virtual machine, you will probably not be able to run a graphical installation in the newly created virtual machine.
Polished installation
Fedora has never been an overtly difficult distribution to install. Still, Fedora 13 comes with a smarter version of the Anaconda installer that makes installation even simpler, thanks to improvements in how it handles storage media and partitioning.
Also available now is the option to install Fedora over the internet. The boot images are available for a variety of media including USB and CD from boot.fedoraproject.org. These boot images allow the system to connect to a remote server to launch the installer, doing away the need for 700MB disks or 4GB DVDs as the installation media of choice.
LIVE USB: The LiveUSB Creator makes it even simpler to create installations on flash drives
Hardware support
A long standing argument against Linux adoption has been that Linux doesn't have the same level of hardware support as proprietary operating systems. To that end, Fedora 13 offers the Nouveau drivers with experimental 3D support for Nvidia cards, so users don't have to rely on untrustworthy proprietary drivers that can't be debugged or improved upon.
The real prize, however, is the Automatic Printer Driver Installation feature. All printers, whether they connect via USB, parallel ports or over the network, identify themselves using a Device ID string containing information such as manufacturer, model name, supported command sets and suchlike.
Historically, configuring a printer has been bothersome for most users – more often than not because they don't know the correct driver for their printer. Imagine, however, if printer drivers contained tags associating them with certain manufacturers and model numbers, such that when Fedora detects your attached printer, it immediately looks up the drivers that carry matching manufacturer and model tags and automatically installs the driver. This is now possible in Fedora 13, hence the very suggestive feature name.
Programmer's playmate
By providing parallel-installable Python 3, which means that Python 3.1.2 can now be installed in parallel with Python 2.6.4, Fedora 13 is marketing itself as the ideal platform of choice for developers. Python 3 solves many of the long-standing issues in Python 2, but in doing so it has mutated into an almost entirely new language.
The 2to3 tool provided by Python can be used to automatically convert much of Python 2 code to Python 3, but there's a catch. When we say Python, there are three intertwined components at play: the core runtime, the standard library, and a host of other third-party modules on top. The trouble is that not all modules (which number in the hundreds) have been completely ported to Python 3.
Fedora 13 thus provides both Python 2 and Python 3 stacks to provide developers the means to continue their work and also prepare to make the transition to Python 3.
The second Python-related feature enables developers to measure activity on their system to find bottlenecks in Python code they're developing. SystemTap is a tracing/probing/monitoring tool which enables users and developers to observe their system beyond the kernel. In effect, you can see what's happening inside your application and language runtimes like Python, etc.
AUTOMATIC BUG REPORTING TOOL: Even non-power users are now able to file bug reports. You can access it from the Applications > System Tools menu
Since Python code is easy to mix with code written in other languages (for example, C), the third Python-related feature, an extended GDB (GNU debugger), reports mixed C and Python-level information on what such processes are doing. You don't need to be an expert GDB user to debug code wrapped in Python, as the improved GDB makes it convenient for even Python newbies to take advantage of this feature.
Btrfs filesystem snapshot
Have you ever feared doing something adventurous on your system only to end up with an unusable machine? Btrfs can create lightweight bootable filesystem snapshots. System rollback using btrfs enables administrators and users to revert to a previous snapshot should the system become unusable.
Since btrfs creates entire filesystem snapshots that can be created automatically or manually at the user's demand, the entire filesystem will revert to its previous state when you revert to a snapshot.
For example, if you make a snapshot each time you delete or install new packages, reverting to an older snapshot wouldn't just affect the state of those packages – it would also affect your home directory if it too is on the btrfs partition. ext4 is the default filesystem on Fedora 13 but you can easily choose btrfs during the installation process.
A history of innovation
An important aspect of the Fedora release cycle is the continuing development of key features across releases. We've seen this with the faster startup times: Fedora 10 had a 30-second startup and it was down to 20 seconds in Fedora 11. This is one of those features that will continued to be worked upon into and beyond Fedora 14.
Similarly, Archer, a GDB development branch with better C++ support and Python scripting capabilities, made its debut with Fedora 11 and now in Fedora 13 we have a smarter GDB that every Python programmer should celebrate.
"Over many releases we build on a solid base of engineering expertise and work to extend the functionality of a completely free and open source software platform", Paul Frields explains.
"Take free video drivers for instance. In Fedora 10 we introduced kernel modesetting to speed up the boot process on a few ATI video cards. In Fedora 11 we extended this function to lots of video cards, and began a process of extending support for 3D acceleration in totally free video drivers with Intel graphics cards. In Fedora 12 we built on that platform with experimental 3D support for ATI cards using the 'radeon' driver, and Fedora 13 included not only stabilising the ATI support, but extending 3D to Nvidia cards using the 'nouveau' driver".
Network Manager
An example of a far longer-term project is the Network Manager, which was introduced way back in 2007 as part of Fedora 7. By the time Fedora 12 came, it had become the de facto network configuration solution for just about all distributions.
NETWORK MANAGEMENT: nmclie, the CLI tool for controlling Network Manager, is still not quite comparable with its graphical sibling
With Fedora 12, Network Manager introduced mobile broadband support and finally in Fedora 13 we get support for dial-up modems for older Bluetooth-equipped phones. It also provides a command line interface, enabling users who run a text-only system to still take advantage of this brilliant tool.
Another new feature courtesy of Fedora 13 is the colour management. This enables users to create unique colour profiles for different hardware devices such as printers, scanners and monitors, enabling artists, photographers, designers, produce better work using free software.
According to Frields, the advances in free video were created in large part by engineers employed by Red Hat to extend the possibility of free software on the desktop. "The free video driver story is just one example of how the Fedora Project and Red Hat have worked together not just to integrate but to improve the state of free and open source software."
Virtualisation tools
KVM now also finds its way into the upcoming RHEL 6 and, as Frields explains, this is how the two distributions often team up.
"Fedora is a free distribution, community project and upstream for Red Hat Enterprise Linux… [it] serves as the community R&D lab. Fedora is a general-purpose system that gives Red Hat and the rest of its contributor community the chance to innovate rapidly with new technologies".
People will clearly see a reflection of the very recent and past Fedora releases in RHEL 6. In a sense, looking at Fedora releases, you can make a fairly accurate prediction of some of the technologies and features that the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux release will offer.
Tim Burke, vice president of Linux engineering at Red Hat, further clarifies that individuals and businesses are often willing to participate in Fedora to see some features make their way into RHEL. "We are increasingly seeing customers who have specific use case needs who are willing to contribute with us in Fedora in the interest of having the feature productised in Red Hat Enterprise Linux".
And since everybody from home makers to hardware manufacturers are interested in energy efficient systems, Burke continues with this example: "Many people, ranging from end users, to hardware vendors, to government customers have an interest in energy efficiency. Users from these diverse points of view worked with us in Fedora 12 and Fedora 13 to audit and improve many of the default system services to be much more power efficient. This type of work will be directly applicable on a supported basis in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6".
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Microsoft announces Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000v2
Microsoft has announced the arrival of the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000v2 – billing it as the 'perfect accessory to any notebook, laptop or PC'.Although not as headline drawing as Apple's Magic TrackPad – announced yesterday – Microsoft hardware's latest offering is somewhat cheaper at just under £20.
Like up to 20 Mbps?
The budget mouse has 'up to' 10 months of battery life (which technically of course could mean anything) and a range of 'up to' 30 feet.
There are three buttons, a scroll wheel and the mouse offers 1,000dpi, and uses the 2.4GHz wireless connection.
The mouse is available now, and has been given a price of £19.99.
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Review: Lenovo ThinkPad Edge (Core i5 430M)
Many were surprised when business-centric Lenovo announced the more consumer-focused ThinkPad Edge, and this is a laptop just as suited to the everyday buyer as the business person. The design is a far cry from the rest of the ThinkPad range. Instead of a plain black-box approach, Lenovo has painted the lid an attractive shiny red and included silver trimming to the chassis, and the result is a very desirable laptop.
The machine is as durable as it is attractive and the solid plastics give it a robust feel with the strengthened metal lid hinges only adding to this.
Minimal reflections
The 15.6-inch screen features a detailed 1366 x 768-pixel resolution and is ideal for creating word documents and spreadsheets. Like the Sony Vaio VPC-EB1S0E/WI, it isn't particularly bright, but the lack of a shiny Super-TFT finish means there are virtually no reflections to contend with.
This laptop also boasts a lid which folds open 180 degrees, making it easy to get a comfortable viewing angle wherever you are sat.
This is the first Lenovo laptop to feature an isolation-style keyboard. It provides a fantastic typing experience and is equally as firm as the Sony, the only difference being the Lenovo's keys travel a little further. If we had to choose between the two, we would opt for the Sony, however, as the lack of a dedicated numeric keypad here is a little disappointing.
The Intel Core i5 430M chip used here provides the excellent performance. This means those after uncompromised power for either work or play will find plenty to like here and you'll have no problems running both office and multimedia applications.
The inclusion of an integrated graphics card means you'll be able to play only the most basic of games, but older (and internet) games should run fine. Likewise, basic photo editing won't be a problem.
Portability is the cornerstone of any business laptop and, although there are much lighter options available, the Lenovo's 266-minute battery life is impressive – for the price at least.
A whole raft of Lenovo software is included to help you manage your power consumption and connect to available networks. The programs are intuitive, allowing you to connect to your router at home with ease, while balancing your battery life and performance requirements, for example.
Ultimately, the ThinkPad Edge impresses and the power and usability on offer make this is a great choice for both the business person and average consumer.
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Panasonic brings 3D shooting to its camera range
Panasonic has announced the arrival of its first-ever 3D lens for its Lumix G Micro System. The lens which brings 3D shooting to the company's high-end G-series camera range is part of a massive push into the 3D space for Panasonic, which includes 3D-capable Viera televisions and 3D Blu-ray players.
Although Panasonic is being a little cagey about what 3D magic has gone into making the lens work, it has revealed that it "features two optical systems installed within the diameter of the lens mount, creating stereo images from the left and right lenses, to be processed with a 3D image processing system."
Micro managing
And, as it is for its Micro Four Thirds cameras, like the Lumix G2, the lenses are still pretty compact in comparison to normal DSLR lenses.
To view the 3D images, you will have to own a 3D ready Viera TV and don the active specs.
UK pricing and availability of the lens is still to be confirmed but we're hoping to get more details from the company at IFA in September.
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ARM chief: Buyout as likely as a tornado in London
ARM chief executive Warren East has suggested that a company buying the British chip experts out would be as likely as a tornado in London. ARM has been linked with a multitude of companies – including Apple – and with high-profile deals with giants like Microsoft, and rivals like Intel and AMD, talk is likely to continue.
However, in an interview with PC Pro, East insisted that a takeover was unlikely.
"It's one of those things that's always there as a theoretical possibility," East said. "You know, tornadoes could strike London at some stage.
Independent thinkers
"We believe that the business model of ARM is tailored around ARM being independent, and that's what creates most value for the semiconductor industry and therefore for our shareholders," he added.
"We are a public company and therefore subject to same risks of being taken over as anybody else and we just have to live with that, just as Londoners have to live with the risk of a tornado at some stage."
ARM is officially UK's largest technology company by market value, and their latest financial results broke all market expectations.
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Review: Asus K70IO-TY014V
Asus is renowned for producing a wide range of high-quality machines at all price points, with its K701O-TY014V proving a great choice for those after an entry-level multimedia laptop. To be clear from the outset, this isn't a machine for frequent travel use. The laptop weighs 3.3kg and we squeezed just 145 minutes from the battery. Those after a laptop for the commute into work or school would do better to check out the Samsung X420.
Criticising the Asus too strongly for this would be counter-productive, however, as it's primarily designed as a large and comfortable desktop replacement system. It is a very comfortable laptop to use.
The 17.3-inch screen is bright and provides an absorbing experience for watching DVDs on. It boasts a 1600x900 pixel resolution, which means that images are very detailed, while colour and contrast also impress.
The very spacious keyboard exhibits quite a bit of flex, but you're unlikely to notice it unless you have a very firm typing action. A dedicated numeric keypad is included, which is great for left-handed gamers, while the touchpad has a comfortable mottled texture.
The use of an ageing Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor can't provide the cutting-edge performance of the Sony Vaio VPC-EB1S0E/WI and Packard Bell EasyNote TM86's Core i3 chips, but there's plenty of power for running office applications, meaning you'll have no problem browsing the internet and word processing.
Graphical power
This laptop features a powerful Nvidia GeForce GT 120M graphics card, helped along by a group-leading 1024MB of dedicated video memory. This means editing your family photos won't be a problem.
In fact, you'll have no problem running the latest games, although you'll have to turn the graphical settings down a little, making this laptop the only option in this group for gamers.
The 320GB hard drive provides plenty of storage space for all your files, folders and multimedia libraries, while the DVD rewriter optical drive offers you an alternative back-up solution if you don't want to use an external hard drive to backup your data.
The laptop doesn't feature an eSATA port, which the majority of new machines now do, but an HDMI out port allows you to connect your laptop to a high-definition (HD) external display, such as your TV or projector, to show off your photos or even play games on the big screen.
Overall, we enjoyed our time with the K701O-TY014V a lot. It isn't as powerful as some of its rivals when it comes to everyday use, but it's very comfortable to use and provides more graphical punch than most other laptops at this price.
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Google rolls out more rigorous Android market protection
Google has announced a more rigorous protection for Android developers, with the company announcing licensing service for Android application and provides a secure mechanism to keep the apps out of greedy hands. Android developers have long complained that anyone with a modicum of knowledge can use their apps with out authorisation.
However, Google is keen to remedy that, and acknowledges the need for protection.
Better protection
"In my conversations with Android developers, I often hear that you'd like better protection against unauthorized use of your applications, blogged Android's Eric Chu.
"So today, I'm pleased to announce the release of a licensing service for applications in Android Market.
"This simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications targeting Android 1.5 or higher.
"At run time, with the inclusion of a set of libraries provided by us, your application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users.
"It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.
Google says that the new system will replace the current Android protection system in the coming months, adding: "This licensing service operating real time over the network provides more flexibility in choosing license-enforcement strategies, and a more secure approach in protecting your applications from unauthorized use, than copy protection.
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