• Visually impressive
• Customisable dragons
• Good musical score

• Dragon fights get repetitive
• Simplistic controls

The bottom line: younger gamers who are also obsessed with fire-breathing lizards will get a real kick out of Combat Of Giants: Dragons, but Nintendo doesn't need to worry about its Pokemon cash cow just yet.

Combat Of Giants: Dragons is, as the name suggests, a combat game featuring dragons. It's a somewhat Pokemon-style game, in that you selectively upgrade a fighting critter and then go into one-on-one combat with other similar critters - and naturally they're all dragons - but it's not quite as deep as Pokemon, although for kids highly endeared of dragons that might not matter much. It's also available in a lighter DSiWare form as Combat Of Giants: Dragons Bronze Edition in a cut down form.

The plot is, frankly speaking, ludicrous and somewhat superfluous, although annoyingly you can't actually skip it or speed up the text when it's on screen in order to get to the bits where the big lizards beat seven shades of heck out of each other faster.

It's like the game designers took a basic RPG plot - and Combat Of Giants: Dragon's plot isn't much more than "There are bad dragons. Kill them." - and decided to spice it up with lots of polysyllabic words with missing vowels. Technically speaking, you're a noble Ebebu Dragon, guided by the lord of all dragons, Ninnurtu, and opposing the foul Salmu dragons. The fate of Tammabukku itself is in your hands. Well, it's in your claws, we guess.

Or, to present the plot in a more straightforward manner, there are bad dragons. Kill them.

Past the game's brief combat tutorial, you'll choose a race for your dragon. These are based around the four elements, which gives you a choice of Ice, Earth, Wind or Fire dragons. Each subspecies has their own special powers which give them slightly different combat abilities. This does give the game some replay value, as the powers for each race differ enough to change some basic strategies. You can also customise your dragon's appearance within some pretty limited parameters, which is surprisingly endearing.

Action in Combat Of Giants: Dragons involves lots of screen stabbing and strokes. Hitting another dragon involves swiping up the screen and then combining strokes in a join-the-dots fashion for harder attacks. There is a slight element of timing, as you can dodge and block attacks, and choosing when to attack and use your powers does play a role in how well you do. Having said that, it can be a bit arbitrary, and the fact that everything you do is stylus controlled can lead to some combat sequences being a little off-tempo.

This is a pity, as Combat Of Giants: Dragons is a superb looking title for a DS game. The game has some very nice animation, at least within the limits of what the DS/DSi can manage in a polygon pushing sense. All the dragons are rather pointy in that somewhat endearing mid-90's way, but they're animated with a decent amount of fluidity, especially when flying, which gives them a certain amount of character. The score is nicely epic, although in-game sounds are a little repetitive, and you will tire of the grunting sounds of your mentor dragon Ninnurtu pretty quickly.

There's an element of grind in Combat Of Giants: Dragons that can't be ignored. Your dragon does gain power as you move through the elemental realms defeating other lizards - and a few surprise combatants as well - but the battle strategies themselves never change, and even the inclusion of multiplayer, either from a single DS card or multiple cards - doesn't add much to the combat engine.

In an odd little move, Combat of Giants: Dragons also comes with a pack of trading cards. Some of the cards have codes on them that can be used to unlock in-game goodies, but the idea is also that you can also use the cards to play a very simplified Magic: the Gathering style card game. There are 62 cards in all, but as far as we can tell the only way to get more cards would be to buy more copies of Combat Of Giants: Dragons, making it one of the most expensive collectible card games on the marketplace. Somehow, we don't think too many gamers will bother.

• Dragon Age: Origins
• Wet
• Pokemon Platinum
• The World Ends With You

TomTom's iPhone cradle is unique amongst its kind (for the moment) in that it features a built-in GPS receiver - this will hopefully nix the awful GPS positioning that's been a trait of all iPhone nav apps thus far. The cradle also includes a built-in speaker and microphone, as well as an in-car charging cable.

How much is it?

In Australia it will retail for AU$160, but this doesn't include TomTom's iPhone nav app, which is currently going for AU$100 on the App Store.

Is it worth it?

We can't say yet - we're still waiting for our review unit to arrive. When it does, we'll let you know.

• TomTom for iPhone
• TomTom iPhone car kit now in US, UK, EU
• Portable or in-dash GPS?
• GPS navigators for Father's Day

• Slimmer design
• Lighter chassis

• Ugly, protruding battery pack
• No ExpressCard slot

Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 netbook was one of the most popular budget mini-notebooks for good reasons: its business-friendly tools, ExpressCard slot and reasonable price all made it a great option for consumers or corporate users.

When we last visited the S10 in May, the addition of a six-cell battery fixed our gripe about the short battery life of the previous version. Now, another revision is available that effectively replaces the S10 - the S10-2. This new model has some physical changes - most good, a couple bad - but keeps the same general components at a reduced price. It's a better deal than previous models, but you'll have to live without one key feature.

As far as the main body goes, the S10-2 is thin: so thin, in fact, that we'd be hard-pressed to want anything thinner. However, while the netbook closes up into a neat package, the six-cell battery protrudes out the back and hangs off the rear hinge like a laptop riser that can't be put away. Maybe it's the netbook's new thinness, but the dangling battery seems more intrusive here. We'd love to see that battery folded into the chassis, somehow, in future versions - it's just plain unsightly and also gets in the way of packing the netbook flat into sleeves or cases. It does, however, make for a nice stand on a desk.

With a matte-black interior and keyboard, a glossy 10.2-inch screen, and a smudge-collecting glossy black exterior with a black-on-black polka-dot pattern, the design feels a bit lost between business and consumer. It also looks a little more like an Acer or Asus than a "pro model" netbook, if we can use such a term.

The keyboard is comfortably responsive and has good travel, but the feel is still shrunken-down from a full-size keyboard experience. The multi-touch Synaptics trackpad is adequate and has average buttons beneath it, but getting finger-scrolling to work is a frustrating exercise. While the keyboard has been improved with full-size shift keys and a larger, wider set of tapered keys, it still doesn't approach the comfort of a ThinkPad keyboard, or even the HP Mini 110's fuller-size keys.

A quick-start button above the keyboard launches a Splashtop Linux-based instant-on OS if pressed when the power's off. The functionally limited web browser, music player, photo viewer, Flash-based game player and Skype/chat options are decent, but still take time to boot up (although less than booting XP). We'd prefer to put XP in standby and just resume when needed. When not running Splashtop, the QS button can be customised as a hot key to launch apps within Windows XP.

The 10.2-inch widescreen display has a 1024x600-pixel native resolution, which is standard for 10-inch netbooks. The new glossy screen looks stylish, but attracts light much more than the S10's. Video, including 720p clips, look clean and bright, though. Stereo speakers are positioned on the bottom of the S10-2, projecting sound but sounding muffled because of their positioning. They'll suffice for basic listening, but we recommend headphones.

One thing that made the S10 a standout was the inclusion of an ExpressCard/34 slot. It's sadly omitted from the S10-2's connection options. Maybe space had to be made to account for the thinner size, but taking away extra connectivity is never a good thing. Three USB 2.0 ports are your only options for connectivity without it. This means it'll be harder to connect a 3G modem, for instance. The rest of the S10-2 port options are netbook standard, though nothing to write home about. We hope in the future Lenovo turns things around by adding connectivity instead of taking it away.

The Lenovo S10-2's performance was average on our benchmark tests, mainly because it has the same N270 Atom that nearly all netbooks do. Some processors, such as the AMD Neo, perform faster, but the S10-2 doesn't under-perform for its category. For email, chatting, office documents and basic media playback, the S10-2 works perfectly well. Facial-recognition security software and OneKey data backup add some business-friendly applications to the package.

Compared to the IdeaPad S10's six-cell battery, which lasted four hours and one minute on our video playback test, the S10-2 gets four hours and 17 minutes on the same number of cells. While that's good battery life (actual battery life will be even longer with basic netbook use), laptops like the Asus Eee PC 1005HA outperform it by a considerable margin.

System configurations:

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Western Digital 5400rpm

Asus Eee PC 1005HA
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 224MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Hitachi 5400rpm

Acer Aspire One AOD250
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 224MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Seagate 5400rpm

HP Mini 110
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Seagate 5400rpm

Toshiba Mini NB205
Windows XP Home Edition SP3; 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270; 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 128MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 950; 160GB Toshiba 5400rpm

• HP Mini 110
• Asus Eee PC 1101HA Seashell
• Fujitsu M2010
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10

• Great sound and vision
• Easy to use
• Set-up is a no-brainer
• Wireless
• Designed for wall-mounting
• YouTube access

• iPod integration isn't the best
• Stand is fairly flimsy

Design

Samsung's designers have modified the disc tray slightly from last year - apparently, wall mounting was a problem with the old model because the disc would eject vertically and hit the bottom of the TV if mounted too closely. This time, the tray drops out elegantly and the disc comes out at an angle. The soundbar comes with a clear plastic stand, and despite the four rubber stoppers on the bottom it isn't particularly stable. Though it won't fall over with use, you can easily knock it accidentally while changing a disc or plugging in cables - we would have liked a sturdier stand. Of course, this isn't a problem if you do plan to wall-mount it.

The sub itself is fairly unspectacular looking, though prettied up in a piano-black suit. It's self-sufficient, and so can be placed anywhere in the room you like.

The remote control is one of the better Samsung home theatre models, and is powerful yet easy to use.

Features

The HT-BD8200 is a 2.1 "soundbar" system which includes a wireless subwoofer. The main unit and sub are paired in the factory, so there's nothing you need to do apart from plug them into the power. Unlike some competing units it's not designed to physically simulate surround sound, though it does include a software "Virtual Surround" mode.

The HT-BD8200 is a BD-Live compliant player which means you'll have access to all of the latest interactive features. The player will also upscale DVDs and due to the latest firmware update you can browse YouTube. Streaming media from your network and iPod playback are also included. Meanwhile, Bluetooth compatibility is not available.

At the rear of the unit you'll find a USB port for the optional wireless LAN module, an FM antenna, optical input and an Ethernet port. To handle video duties is an HDMI port and a composite connector. On the side of the unit you'll find a further USB input, an aux in, iPod connector (for the bundled dock) and a headphone jack.

Performance

Samsung seems to have taken all of the successful elements of last year's HT-X810 - easy set-up, great vision and wireless integration - and improved on it. For the price, a Blu-ray player is a great addition and we were glad to see that it actually performed well.

The player put in a sterling effort with both DVDs and Blu-rays, and while the DVD upscaler wasn't as good as something like the Oppo BDP-83, this was to be expected for the money and DVDs still looked good. Black levels on standard-definition content were deep, and while detail was hampered by a little bit of noise the picture was still clear.

As we'd expected from the maker of several excellent Blu-ray players, HD playback was very fine. The unit passed all of the synthetic HD tests - an excellent result - and a disc like Mission Impossible III was detailed and not overly noisy. Jarring "judder" effects were also kept to a minimum.

Like last year's model, the subwoofer can only be altered by +/- 6dB which is way too little. As a result, the subwoofer was still too loud for music listening, and a little overpowering for home theatre as well. However, when combined, the main unit sound was incredibly well integrated, with none of the directional problems of a system like the Sony DAV-IS10 - everything sounds like it is coming from your television. There may be a lack of low-end warmth when listening to music, but in the majority sound was detailed and well-balanced.

Like most modern cinema systems the Samsung includes a set-up system, though it's manual and not automated. Just a place to input the seating positions distance from the TV and a test tone generator. One thing we noticed when using this was the subwoofer sounded like it was shaking itself apart during the test tone - not good.

We tried the Virtual Sound mode and found that the effect gave more width to the soundstage, and sounds did seem like they were coming from the sides of the room, but there was no real "surround" effect. The company seems to have learned its lesson from last year and limited the volume on the unit to prevent it shaking itself apart at really high volumes. As a result you won't get ear-splitting volumes from the HT-BD8200, but you're also less likely to damage it.

However, we did find that the top end did get a little too nasty on Battles' Atlas at high volume, and the subwoofer seemed to find it hard to keep up. At a more reasonable volume the parts fell back into line.

Samsung home theatre products of late have been all about packing in plenty of features for the money, and in this case some of them don't work as successfully. The iPod integration worked and playback was decent, but any semblance of folder structure was lost. The unit chose to bundle all of the songs by one artist into a single folder in alphabetical order. Units that order songs by alphabetical rather than track order are one of our pet hates.

Samsung updated the unit's firmware during our testing period adding something that's been very popular on other units: YouTube access. Unfortunately, as the update occurred at the the eleventh hour we were unable to get the feature to work, but trust that further updates should fix the problem.

• Samsung HT-BD1255
• Samsung HT-BD2
• Philips SoundBar HTS8140
• Samsung HT-X810

Not since Jane Fonda and her leotards and leg warmers ruled DVD workouts have so many folks got up to sweat in front of their TV screens. If you want to employ a game console as your new personal trainer, here are some of the best titles to pick from.

• EA Sports Active Personal Trainer
• My Fitness Coach
• NewU: Fitness First Personal Trainer
• Wii Fit

See what's new in our video and photo gallery below.
(Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

The Microsoft Office 2010 beta was released this week and though there aren't many major changes from the Technical Preview from July, there are some new features and enhancements worthy of note. This post will focus on the changes to the beta, but if you want a larger overview of new features across all the applications, check out our rundown of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview.

Outlook is the cornerstone of many companies' communications and daily schedules, and as such received a lot of enhancements in Office 2010. In the beta version, Microsoft has added even more ways to connect with co-workers and contacts. The new Outlook Social Connector is an added information pane that gives you more info about everyday contacts. Once set up, you'll be able to view pictures of contacts (even in large cc lists), previous conversations, attachments shared, meetings attended and much more. Though not complete in the beta, Microsoft says the Outlook Social Connector will soon be able to connect with social websites like Facebook and Twitter, so you can follow status updates and more all in one location.

The Office 2010 Technical Preview introduced the Back Stage view, an enhanced File menu (accessed from the Office Icon tab) that lets you manage your documents, set permissions, and share your projects with colleagues. In the beta version Microsoft has decided to return to calling it the File menu, but with all the functionality and flexibility of Back Stage. It has also made it possible to access all the other tabs in the Ribbon, which were previously inaccessible in the Technical Preview, so you can get to the information you want quickly without the added step of exiting Back Stage.

Also added to the File menu is the capability to save to SkyDrive, a cloud-based storage system with 25GB of space for your documents, so you can access your projects anywhere. Simply log in with your Windows Live ID and you'll be able to manage documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and more, and also be able to edit them using feature-complete web apps through SkyDrive. According to Microsoft, only a couple of the web app implementations are available now, but as the Office suite moves closer to a final version, more will become available.

Another new feature that's more technical in nature is Office 2010's new PowerPivot functionality. With PowerPivot you'll be able to pull in data from a huge external source. So let's say you have an enormous database of movie information, for example, sitting on a separate server. With PowerPivot you'll be able to pull in (or stream) the information straight to an Excel Spreadsheet without having to Download all the data. While this might not be useful for all users, those who need to access external databases will appreciate not having to store everything locally. It's also much quicker than transferring all that data to your computer.

Clearly, Office 2010 has big shoes to fill as the communications lifeline for most companies, and the changes we've seen in the 2010 Technical Preview and beta versions definitely put them on the right track. With several interface enhancements for better workflow, inclusion of the Ribbon across all applications in the suite and the capability to manage and access documents on your desktop, the web and even your Windows Mobile handset, Office 2010 is taking advantage of today's technologies to help you do your work anywhere. Check back for more information about Microsoft Office 2010 as we near the release of the product in the first half of 2010.

Via Download.com

• Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview: Screenshots
• Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview
• Office 2010 Technical Preview: Screenshots
• Microsoft Office Web Apps: Hands on

• Included dock
• Colour variety
• Capacity lights

• Fitting to the dock is tricky
• Drive speeds still limited by USB 2.0 interface

Design

There's only so much you can do with a pocket-sized hard drive, beyond making it pocket sized in the first place. Western Digital's pretty much tried every design trick possible by now, and to look at it by itself, the My Passport Elite isn't much different. Our 500GB review sample was bright red, but it's also available in blue or black. Or if you like marketing speak, the My Passport Elite comes in "Anodized Red", "Anodized Blue" or "Charcoal Metallic" colours. As we said, Red, Blue or Black.

Where Western Digital applies the "elite" moniker is in a few key differentiating features. For a start, the drive itself has a small LED light that runs up one side indicating available capacity. It's a very simple trick, and one that even Western Digital's pulled out before in other external hard drive lines, but we're still somewhat impressed with it from a pure "here's some happy lights to show off your cool tech" kind of way.

The My Passport Elite also comes with a dedicated desktop dock. It's not that fancy to look at, but it does make it a more pleasant drive to use for desktop users, as you can safely install it to a rear-mounted USB port on your PC and not have to worry about freeing up ports or scrabbling around under desks to plug and unplug USB cables.

Features

Western Digital sells the My Passport Elite in five different size variants according to the Western Digital website, although only three different sizes are being offered to the Australian marketplace - 320GB (AU$149.99), 500GB (AU$199.99) and 640GB (AU$239.99) according to the official local press release.

The My Passport Elite comes with Western Digital's SmartWare software solution which it also offers on other drives such as the My Passport Essential SE. SmartWare is one part backup, one part data encryption and one part data display software. Once installed and running it scans the drives attached to your system and gives you a visual interface broken down by file types. This gives you an at-a-glance view of how much space your pictures, music, movies and documents are taking up, and how much space on the drive you're already using.

Performance

Western Digital's SmartWare suite won't appeal to everybody, and if you've already got a backup solution in mind it's not going to appeal per se. Still, as included backup suites go, SmartWare is smart enough to do its thing and get out of the way while still being clear and obvious enough for users to configure it and retrieve files when needed. It's one of those universal truths that nobody has enough backups, so any extras are well worth doing.

We're a bit split on whether the My Passport Elite's dock is a good thing or not. You're not tied into using it - a USB cable is provided for direct connection - and while it's useful, it also has a rather snug fit. This makes really quickly docking the drive a tad on the fiddly side. It's not so hard to remove the drive, but if you needed to quickly and accurately place the drive in the dock, you basically can't.

As with other USB 2.0 connected drives, there's only so fast you can pump out data, and while you'll lose some portability in the bargain speed freaks may still do better with a pricier FireWire or eSATA connected drive. We managed an average read/write speed of 35.3/26.9MB/s copying a single large video file, and a slightly slower 26.06/19.6MB/s with a folder of files.

• Western Digital My Passport Elite (320GB)
• WD My Passport Essential SE 1TB
• WD My Book Home Edition 500GB
• Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive

This week, we look at the new CNET Christmas Gift Guide and concentrate on two of the most popular categories: gaming and GPS.

Plus, we discuss one of our readers who has "taken things all the way to the top", and tell you how the year's two most controversial games are like to actually PLAY.

Your companions this week are Ty Pendlebury, Derek Fung and Alexandra Savvides.

Did you know we have a Facebook page? There you'll find photos and other associated news from our Digital Life podcasts.

Full links to what we talked about are below - don't forget to leave us your comments below or in the forums.

Welcome to our Christmas gift guide!

Google translate gives phonetic text/pronunciation guide

Star Trek/I Love You Man TV and DVD Pack winners

I unfriend you

Best party games

Best budget GPS

Digital Life gets a mention on CNET Mailbag with Molly Wood

Left 4 Dead 2 banned

Total time: 24 min 12 sec

• Digital Life #34: I wuv my Chumby wumby
• Last-minute quirky gadget gifts
• Digital Life #24: A rainbow of fruit flavours
• Digital Life #37: Fight for your right to browse me

LG showed off a 15-inch OLED at CES 2009 (Credit: Ty Pendlebury/CNET Australia)

Warren Kim, LG's TV category manager, said it is "highly likely" that Australia will see at least one new OLED screen from the Korean company next year, but added that at the moment there was "no market for it, there's no competition".

However, he was unable to elaborate on which models would be released here, with a 15-inch shown at CES 2009 and a 20-inch heavily rumoured, saying that the company won't be making a decision until the new year.

Earlier this week, a Sony document leaked onto the web outlining that the new KDL-ZX Series OLEDs would be making an appearance in overseas markets.

Japanese manufacturer Sony released the first OLED in the Australian market in May this year, and is still the only manufacturer to make one available.

Jan Ergen, TV product manager at Sony Electronics Australia, said OLED was still a niche item because "high manufacturing costs means it's hard to make OLED a mass-market product". He was unable to commit to whether Sony would release a new model in 2010.

Until OLED can be made cheaply and reliably, LCD is expected to continue selling strongly. The latest technology advancement in LCD televisions is LED-backlighting, and Sony, Samsung and Sharp have released new models onto the market this year. Last week, LG released its SL90 series which features an "edge-lit" LED system which means the TV can be made ultra-thin.

"We're going to call it LED LCD for convenience sake. The LED LCD market has been well accepted by the consumers. As a manufacturer of TVs we are coming out with models with LED technologies. I think LED, though it's still accepted, is still in its growing stage and still needs further education and recognition by consumers," Kim said.

• LCD and features rule LG's roost
• Is Sony stuck in neutral with OLED?
• CES 2009 preview: Televisions
• What's hot (and not) in televisions 2009

• JPEG and RAW capture
• Good image quality
• Built like a tank

• Built like a tank that's incredibly heavy
• No HD video

Design and features

So you want an SLR shooting experience, but without the hassle of changing lenses? You'll probably be tempted by something like the Fujifilm FinePix S200EXR then, with a 30-436mm (14.3x optical) fixed lens attached to a dSLR-style body.

The design of this thing looks very similar to an SLR and it certainly feels like one when you pick it up. At 820g even some prosumer digital SLRs are lighter than this camera. It's also built like a tank, and has enough metal-tipped grips and lens barrel coatings to make you think twice if you met it in a dark alley late at night. The movement of the lens certainly gives this intimidating impression as well - lock and load, boys and girls.

A manual focus ring is located at the back of the lens element, and all the focal lengths are written on the barrel itself (note that the lens movement is all mechanical rather than via a dedicated zoom rocker like on many superzooms). The lens is optically stabilised and has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at the wide end (30.5mm). Lifting the camera up is certainly a tricky task, as it's easy to knock the flash open if you lift the camera via the lens barrel rather than the hand grip. Oh, and did we mention it's pretty heavy?

The top of the camera continues the dSLR styling, with a mode dial providing the standard PASM shooting options, as well as custom modes, movie mode, EXR, FSB and SP modes.

In FSB mode, the S200EXR will automatically take the same shot, three times, and apply a different film filter to each image. At the top is the standard (Provia), middle is vivid (Velvia) and the bottom is softer (Astia). As you can see each mode is quite subtle but it gives a nice consistency between Fuji's film and digital lines. (Credit: Alexandra Savvides/CNET Australia)

On the left side (looking face-on) is the slot that lifts up to reveal the SD/SDHC card slot, and on the right you're presented with a myriad of buttons and switches. There's a focus selector, continuous shooting button, white balance adjustment button, and a plastic flap that covers the USB ports, power connection and AV out. They're all actually pretty clever ideas, as you don't need to delve into the menu system to find common tweaks.

On the top of the camera is a pop-up flash and we're heartened to see a hotshoe included as well. The viewfinder is electronic and reasonably easy to see. For photographers looking for a more point-and-shoot experience, never fear, the 2.7-inch LCD screen is available as well. Unfortunately, there's no sensor that automatically switches between the viewfinder and the LCD screen, it has to be switched on or off via the dedicated EVF/LCD button to the right of the screen. This is a little counter-intuitive, only because the form factor of the S200EXR makes your own actions automatically switch into dSLR shooting mode.

Inside the camera, the main calling card is the 12-megapixel Super CCD sensor. Fujifilm claims that sensor, which is designed differently to conventional digital camera CCD sensors, offers lower noise at high sensitivities and a wider dynamic range. Unfortunately, there is no HD video provided on the S200EXR.

In the shooting menu, you'll come across the Film Simulator option to choose the look of your images in the style of Fuji films - so there's Velvia, Provia, Astia, black and white, and sepia. The S200EXR can shoot in JPEG and RAW but you'll need to do a bit of hunting around in the menus to find the option to switch on RAW shooting, plus download an update to the included software (which, surprisingly, can't read the camera's RAW files). At the time of writing, the software update to allow the FinePix viewer to read RAW files was available from Fujifilm's website and Windows 7 compatible updates were stated as being available "From November 2009".

Performance

Starting up the camera takes a fair while thanks to the graphical displays. It takes 2.8 seconds for the camera to initialise and be ready to shoot which is fairly slow, shutter lag follows suit at a leisurely 0.6 second, and burst speed in "Top 6 (RAW 3) mode" gives a shot about every 0.7 second until the camera has taken six shots.

The menu system is reasonably intuitive for a first-time Fuji shooter, and although there may be an overwhelming number of buttons and dials for beginner photographers, keen hobbyists will have a field day.

One annoying quirk is how the camera powers off after a period of inactivity - but instead of pressing a button to wake the beast from its slumber, you need to turn the camera off and on again. Given that the start-up time is so slow, it does get annoying, quickly.

Image quality

The Fujifilm is capable of delivering some great images, and they stand up to the all-important test of being scrutinised at full magnification. Overall, greens and blues were particularly punchy but without excessive saturation (we put this down to the design of the Super CCD sensor) and the lens is quite sharp across focal lengths.

The lens exhibits some barrel distortion at the wide end and slight pincushion at the telephoto end, and chromatic aberration is noticeable and exhibits itself along high contrast areas in a purple guise as you can see from the picture below.

Chromatic aberration is an issue with the S200EXR's lens. (Credit: Alexandra Savvides/CNET Australia)

At higher sensitivities like ISO 800 and 1600, the image quality did begin to degrade at full magnification, with blurring and smearing of detail particularly evident at 1600.

Conclusion

It's hard to compare the S200EXR to any other camera - it's not quite a digital SLR and it's not a superzoom in the conventional guise either thanks to its size and increased controls. This is a very niche camera that will appeal to those looking for the flexibility of different focal lengths in an SLR-sized package at a slightly cheaper price. The pictures the S200EXR delivers are very good - just be prepared to develop some sweet biceps as you take your images.

• Fujifilm FinePix S100FS
• Fujifilm FinePix S8000fd
• Fujifilm FinePix J100
• Little cameras, big zoom

• Fun and satisfying challenges
• Good use of PlayStation Eye
• Plenty of content
• Effective motion-sensing interactions

• Lack of instruction and feedback
• No evolution of virtual pet
• Limited online functionality
• Slow loading times

It's hard not to fall in love with Sony's EyePet. This weird little amalgam of puppy, monkey and kitten is an expert at furry cuteness and wide-eyed wonder, but sadly, the love doesn't stick around for long. While the game successfully uses the motion-sensing capabilities of the PlayStation Eye camera to create an immersive experience, it's ultimately short-lived. The virtual pet, while creating a very good illusion of being real, shows no signs of growth and, perhaps most disappointingly, lacks individuality.

The first thing you'll be taught is how to correctly position your PlayStation Eye - knee height and pointing at the ground - before being introduced to the magic card, a rectangular plastic aide that is read by the camera to produce all sorts of in-game objects. Your EyePet will appear in front of you in the shape of a large egg; to hatch it, you must hold the magic card upright, let the camera read it, and use the heater that appears to heat the egg. Once the egg cracks, you must use your hands to rock it back and forth - this is the first instance where you'll directly interact with the on-screen environment without a controller, which takes some getting used to, particularly because there's nothing to guide your hands to the right place. Reaching out and touching an object that doesn't exist is, predictably, a bit strange, but the lack of helpful reference points means you'll go through a lot of trial and error.

Once the EyePet appears, things become a little easier: you'll be asked to tickle, push and chase your EyePet around the room; stick out your hand and watch it jump; or playfully push it over and give it affection. This is a fun and engaging experience - it's definitely exciting to interact with a virtual being on such a close and personal level. You'll then be guided through a series of pet care activities that include feeding, washing, styling and keeping your pet healthy. However, there's no real incentive to feed, wash or exercise your pet; if you leave it without food or a bath for more than a day - or, as we did, for up to a year by putting the date forward on the PlayStation 3 - the only visible change will be a swarm of flies buzzing around its head and the occasional impulse of the pet to drag its food bowl into view and stare at it. While these signs may be an obvious indication of what you should do, you will not be reprimanded in any way if you don't, nor will your EyePet get sad, sick or stop participating in the challenges.

The main component of the game is the Pet Program, composed of 60 challenges split evenly between 15 "days" (however, you can play through about three days' worth of content in one session before the game stops you). The challenges start off rudimentary. For example, you must use your magic card to create a trampoline on which your pet will bounce until it reaches the goal set by the game. There is also a good mix of challenges that use the camera, magic card and the console's controller, including challenges that are one-off and some that you can come back to for a high score. One of the most intuitive and immersive of these is a simple game of Snap: you and your EyePet will match off against each other with a deck of face-down cards. You use your hand to pick up a card, and your EyePet will do the same by nudging the deck with its nose. Once you see a matching card, you beat the pet to the deck by literally snapping it with your hand. Simple and elegant, this challenge is as real as it gets, and it's hard to shake the feeling that it's just like playing a real game of Snap, only with a furry little thing inside a video game. There are also photo challenges, where you take a picture of your pet by activating the in-game camera, as well as outdoor challenges that involve planting flowers in a makeshift garden or helping your pet run on a treadmill by clapping your hands whenever he comes to an obstacle to make him jump over it. Once completed, challenges win you prizes - mostly new clothes, hats and outfits for your pet.

Smashing melons with the help of the EyePet proves more challenging than it looks. (Credit: GameSpot)

While it's intuitive to expect that challenges will progress in difficulty as the game does, a lack of instruction and feedback makes some challenges impossible to complete. Each challenge begins with a one-sentence instruction that in most cases doesn't tell you what you have to do but rather gives you an overall objective. For example, in one of the challenges, you take control of a small toy robot to smash watermelons with the aid of a toy baseball bat. The instructions are simple: "Use the robot to smash all the melons before the time runs out." That's all very well, but how do you smash the melons? You are left alone to work that out. Using the baseball bat doesn't seem to work, because the melons don't smash when you hit them. Running into the melons at full speed doesn't work either; nor does spinning around really fast and trying to ricochet the melons off each other. With no further feedback or instruction to go on, no melons are smashed, and that challenge is left uncompleted. The singing challenge, which uses the PlayStation Eye's microphone, is equally troublesome. Here, you must sing a note and hold it until a wine glass on the screen breaks. Besides the fact that the game is picky about which octave you're singing in (telling you to sing lower or higher if you don't get it right), you must hold the note for what seems to be a very long time, making it hard to imagine how younger players will cope.

EyePet's customisation options, while varied, don't have an impact on gameplay - if you feel like dressing up your pet in a bee, pirate, jester or pilot costume, then you can. While this is certainly very cute, and a bit of fun, the excitement is short-lived. The game continues to go awry with the realisation that your EyePet will not grow, evolve or change as you complete the challenges, nor will it learn anything that will make one day different from the last. There's nothing to make your EyePet your own, nothing to tie that furry ball to you other than a name. As far as the virtual pet genre goes, this is a pretty big disappointment: while not all interactions with virtual pets have to be goal-oriented, it feels like the EyePet is not living up to its potential by excluding this aspect. The lack of character and individuality present here means there is no way to build a relationship with the virtual pet, and the interactions become less and less enjoyable over time for this reason.

No matter how many clothes or hairstyles you give it, the EyePet lacks individuality. (Credit: GameSpot)

There is also a big gap in online functionality, which isn't particularly fleshed out. Online activities boil down to either purchasing items from the EyePet store or visiting an online gallery where you and other EyePet owners can post videos and photos of your EyePet taken in-game. This could have been stretched out to include some sort of system where friends can swap EyePets or even play together in an online area specifically decked out with challenges and games designed for more than one player.

There's no doubt that the EyePet can fill a good number of hours with creative and enjoyable gameplay, most of which makes excellent use of the PlayStation Eye camera and creates a very immersive experience. However, the lack of instruction and feedback make some of the 60 challenges frustrating and confusing, and because your pet doesn't grow or change, the playful fun eventually loses its lustre. The experience ends up being fun but altogether unrewarding.

• Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli
• Punch-Out!!
• Burnout Paradise
• Gran Turismo 5 Prologue

Like in the first game, Assassin's Creed II occurs across two timelines: a modern-day chronology starring bartender Desmond Miles and another featuring one of Desmond's ancestors. When you start the game, you'll catch up with Desmond right where the original left him, though as fans of the original can guess, the Abstergo labs are no longer a safe haven. You'll spend a bit of time with Desmond during the course of the game, though the shoes you most frequently fill are those of Ezio Auditore di Firenze, the charmingly impetuous son of a 15th-century Italian banker. Ezio is an instantly likeable firebrand, as passionate about family and honour as he is about wine and women. When you first meet him, Ezio is living a carefree life and has not yet donned his assassin's robe, nor is he familiar with the creed. However, Ezio's devil-may-care freedom is soon cut short by murder and betrayal instigated by the assassins' greatest threat: the Templars.

Assassin's Creed's Altair was an interesting character, but only for the stealthy order he represented, not because you ever got to know the man under the white hood. Ezio is far more appealing, for he's not just quick with a secret blade, but he's a fully realised protagonist. He isn't at the mercy of the plot, but rather, the narrative evolves from his need to uncover the truth behind his sorrows. It's the personal nature of the narrative that makes Assassin's Creed II's story more compelling than its predecessor's. The few modern-day segments featuring Desmond pack a lot more punch this time around as well and the conspiracies driving that story arc become a lot clearer and, as a result, more provocative. While the original ended on a vague and unsatisfying note, the latest chapter's climax is downright electrifying.

Ezio isn't Assassin's Creed II's only headliner. The Italy he inhabits is a character in and of itself, filled with visual and sonic details that infuse the world with life and elegance. The cities you explore - Florence, Venice and more - are larger and more detailed than the environs of the first game. Citizens go about their daily lives, and they look authentic doing so. Merchants sweep the street in front of their shops; small groups stroll along, making conversation with each other; and courtesans smirk and cajole as you pass by. These folks aren't cookie-cutter character models. They are dressed differently enough from each other and are animated so expressively that it's as if the population would go about its business with or without your presence. More impressive are the cityscapes themselves as they unfold in front of you, inviting you to take in their splendour. This is an incredibly good-looking game: the lighting is sumptuous, the draw distance is vast and textures are crisp. The PlayStation 3 version does suffer from some frame rate jitters, more frequent texture fade-in and lesser colour saturation. Both versions are still attractive though, and apart from a few small flaws, you rarely get the feeling that visual compromises were made to make the game's open world run smoothly.

Make the leap of faith. You'll be glad you did. (Credit: GameSpot)

Assassin's Creed II's sense of place and time isn't due just to its visuals, however. Its high-quality sound design is equally responsible, delivering a busy-sounding Florence while still allowing the little quips of citizens commenting on your acrobatics to shine through. There's a good variety of such dialogue now, so you won't tire of repeated lines, and because the citizen rescues of the original Assassin's Creed have been excised, you won't hear the monotonous whines of complaining peasants. Two aspects of the sound design are particularly noteworthy: the music and the voice acting. The game's splendid orchestral score is subtle and soothing when it needs to be, never intruding on the exploration and never manipulating your emotions with inappropriate musical melodrama. The simple but effective cello and double bass motif you hear when climbing to a perch and synchronising your map is the perfect example of this smart melodic restraint. As for the voice acting, it is uniformly excellent. Not only is Ezio voiced with charm and energy, but the surrounding cast is mostly superb - though one particular line delivered by Ezio's uncle Mario might make you cringe.

The greatest beauty of Assassin's Creed II's exquisitely detailed environments is that you can run and jump across the rooftops with ease and climb the tallest towers to get a bird's-eye view of the game's glorious vistas. You control Ezio much as you did Altair, though movement feels a bit tighter and even more fluid than before. The game strikes an excellent middle ground between responding to player input and automating actions like leaping from one surface to the next, so it's simple to leap about the city smoothly without worrying that you're going to plummet to your death on the next hop. You'll still encounter a few awkward moments here and there: simply walking off a ledge onto a rooftop a few feet below can still be a bit clumsy, for example. But these moments are few, and in fact, you'll pull off some awesome-looking moves without even trying. One of the many wonders of Assassin's Creed II is that the cities look so natural that they don't seem as if they were created for you to jump around in. Yet you might leap onto a wooden outcropping and find yourself skipping across a series of them, swinging and jumping with fluidity and style. Not only are there more opportunities for organic platforming sequences like these than in the original, but there are entire closed environments called tombs tailored to this kind of jumping.

Ezio interrogates his victim. Bonus: death soliloquies are much shorter now. (Credit: GameSpot)

Tombs are more intricate levels in which you must retrieve an important artefact (and if you collect all of them, you are in for a special treat). Some of them are platforming puzzles of the best kind, in which you must figure out how to get from your starting point to the destination, in the manner of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Ezio can't run on walls like the Persian prince, but he's incredibly agile nonetheless, and swinging and hopping about rafters and chandeliers within the tombs is great fun. A few tombs throw some additional challenges at you, such as a time limit in which to reach your goal. The best tombs, however, are those in which you pursue an enemy but run into obstacles that force you to give chase using an alternate route. The chases are excellent, and they require quick reactions, but not so quick as to be unreasonable. Flawlessly keeping up with your target without breaking your momentum is one of Assassin's Creed II's greatest thrills, and as long as you are paying close attention, you can pull it off on the first attempt.

The climbing and jumping wouldn't be as rewarding if Ezio weren't so graceful, but he is one of the best-animated characters yet seen in a game. You'll admire his footwork early in the game in particular, when his assassin's garb does not veil the incredible animations of his legs and feet. When Ezio climbs, his hands are grabbing something and his feet are resting on something. Except on rare occasions, you won't see him pulling himself up using an invisible handle or stepping on a non-existent ledge. It's a small touch, but it goes a long way toward making these acrobatics look believable. Ezio seems even more nimble than Altair; his legs move inward and cross a bit differently during a climb, and moves connect even more slickly. The only imperfection you are likely to notice is the lack of a transition animation when you bend to loot a body or treasure chest (more on this to come).

Of course, Ezio is more than just a talented gymnast without a fear of heights. He's not afraid to shed blood when the time is right, and he's got a number of ways to exact revenge. The dual hidden blades are his best deadly toy in this regard. You can still stealthily pull off a low-profile assassination (sneak up behind a guard and stab him in the neck) or conduct a high-profile kill (pounce on your target and plunge your blade into him in a single, dramatic move). But the best addition to hidden blade kills are double assassinations: walk between two unsuspecting guards, sink a blade into each of them, watch them crumple to the ground, and keep walking as if you were none the wiser. If you get really enamoured with the dual blades, you can hang from a ledge and wait for an enemy to walk above you, stab him and toss him to the ground below. It's particularly satisfying to do so above the Venetian canals, because the body will splash into the water and then float to the top. Or if you'd rather conduct your bloody business from above rather than below, you can wait for your target to walk below and then assassinate him in one spectacular move.

Courtesans possess many talents, not the least of which is distracting guards while you glide past. (Credit: GameSpot)

If you want to take the direct approach instead, you've got more to unsheathe than a basic sword. One of your brand-new combat moves is the ability to disarm an opponent and take his weapon. For a treat, try taking a giant axe from one of the heavily armoured guards and planting it in his head, or skewering another with a stolen spear. If you like, though, you can stick with what you've got and simply pick up your fallen foe's weapon off the ground once the skirmish is done. As before, you can toss throwing knives at pesky archers, but Assassin's Creed II also gifts you with a special ranged powerhouse late in the game. Or perhaps you like to play with your victim before it's time to recite the requiem. If so, stab him with your poison blade and watch him stumble about as he tries to gain his bearings before you slice his throat. If that weren't enough, you can purchase improved weapons and armour pieces from blacksmiths scattered around the cities. By the time you are finished, Ezio may be decked out in some impressive-looking gear - and sporting some highly effective weaponry. The essentials of combat remain the same throughout, however: when battle is initiated, you lock onto targets, dance about each other looking for an opening, and time counter moves to pull off a bloody and satisfying kill. Combat isn't difficult, but the addition of larger-scale battles makes it more exciting in this outing. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that enemies still dutifully wait their turn to attack.

Blacksmiths aren't the only vendors willing to take your cash. Assassin's Creed II sports an entire economy. You earn florins by completing missions, looting treasure chests, pickpocketing strangers or stealing from dead bodies and covered Venetian gondolas. Your main source of income, however, will likely be your uncle's villa, which serves as your base of operations and is a tourist destination. The adage "You have to spend money to make money" is true. You can spend florins on villa upgrades, such as purchasing a brothel or a church, and in turn, the villa will earn more florins from tourists, and you can take the profits from a chest inside the living quarters. You can then use your florins to dye your garb, purchase treasure maps to point out the locations of all those glowing chests, or buy a new pouch to hold more throwing knives. Most importantly, you'll want to visit a doctor, who not only will inform you that a weekly bleeding is part of a healthy lifestyle (yuck), but will keep you stocked in health packs. That's right: your health does not replenish on its own any longer, so you'll need to make occasional visits to the doctor to replenish your inventory.

A deadly assassination can look like a harmless hug to the untrained eye. (Credit: GameSpot)

If you'd rather just avoid physical damage altogether, you can still keep a low profile, and there are many improvements in this regard as well. You've still got a few old tricks to rely on: benches to sit on and haystacks to hide in, for example. But contrivances of the original (remember Assassin's Creed's scholars, and walking at a snail's pace in prayer?) have been replaced by more natural and sensible mechanics. If you want to blend with the crowds, you can walk into a group of citizens and be automatically hidden. It's fun to move smoothly from one roving group to another and avoid the watchful eye of nearby guards, though there are sadly few occasions when doing so is essential. Or you can slink past guards by hiring a group of courtesans to distract them with their feminine wiles, or by hiring a group of thieves to engage them. You can even throw smoke bombs and use the resulting cover to sneak past. You can still fight your way through most situations, but there's something uniquely satisfying about taking the stealthy approach.

Yet even if you don't often need to be sneaky if you don't wish to be, you'll still need to stay out of the public eye if you can by keeping your notoriety levels low. Notoriety works much as it does in the Hitman games: the more bad deeds you're caught doing, the higher your notoriety levels rise, and the more likely it is that guards will recognise you. If you want to roam the city without worrying about being chased by every group of guards you pass, you can reduce or eliminate your level of notoriety by bribing town criers or by assassinating key guards. The easiest way to reduce your notoriety, though, is to remove the "Wanted" posters that appear whenever your notoriety meter begins to fill. This is one of Assassin's Creed II's more artificial elements, simply because "Wanted" posters appear in places that no guard would ever see. Nevertheless, "Wanted" posters give you another reason to clamber to the rooftops, which is never a bad thing.

The story missions tying all of this exploration and combat together are vastly improved over those of the original, often stringing multiple objectives together and usually making good use of Ezio's skills. Eavesdropping missions are gone completely, and beat-'em-up tasks are mostly optional. Instead, you will be rescuing prisoners, tailing important targets from the rooftops, assassinating wrongdoers, and plenty more. Some of the best missions act as set pieces and often involve Ezio's ever-positive friend, the resourceful Leonardo da Vinci, who will not only upgrade your synchronisation (health) bar, but provide you with a few amusing gadgets, like your poison blade and smoke bombs. In one exciting scene featuring your talented comrade, you drive a horse-drawn carriage at a breakneck pace. In another, you take to the skies in one of da Vinci's flying contraptions, using the heat rising from the city's chimneys to stay aloft while kicking archers out of the way. If you thought Assassin's Creed lacked variety, you'll find plenty in the sequel.

Solve every glyph puzzle to reveal one of the game's many secrets. (Credit: GameSpot)

Optional tasks are compelling as well. You can still climb to the tops of towers and make a leap of faith into a bale of hay or autumn leaves beneath, and doing so is just as unrealistic and awesome as it ever was. The flags of the original have been replaced by feathers, which tie in to story events early in the game. New missions include assassination assignments retrieved from messenger pigeons and timed rooftop races, which are always enjoyable in a game that makes the simple act of moving from one location to the next such a pleasure. You also run the risk of being pickpocketed, in which case you can chase after the perpetrator and tackle him, pilfering not just your stolen funds, but the florins of other victims as well. Another intriguing addition is the hidden glyphs you locate on certain buildings by activating your eagle vision. These glyphs tie the story's dual timelines together in an intriguing way and initiate puzzle sequences that in turn unlock short video snippets. The puzzles aren't that great, but the snippets are so weirdly fascinating that you'll want to collect all of them so that you can watch them in sequence. There are enough historical and religious conspiracy tidbits in here to keep you interested, and they're just outrageous enough to delight Dan Brown devotees.

At first, Assassin's Creed II might seem as if it has added more than its foundation was meant to handle, but once all the new features are completely introduced, it develops that magic that so few games can cast. This is the rare sequel that offers fans of the original the basics they would expect, while adding and changing so many other aspects that even those who didn't appreciate the first should take the plunge, without hesitation. A few more contrivances notwithstanding, Assassin's Creed II is a better game than its forebear and is a beautiful and memorable experience on its own terms. But it's more than just a game - it's an escape to a place and a time that feels so welcoming, you'll be making return trips even after your initial adventure is over.

• Ninja Blade
• Mini Ninjas
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Prince of Persia

(Credit: Canon)

If you've ever wanted to get some of your iPhoneography immortalised onto paper, here's the easiest way to do it. We've gathered together applications from printer manufacturers that interface directly with their particular models, though there are plenty of third-party apps that will do the job as well. All these apps are available through the Australian iTunes Store.

If you're a Canon, Lexmark or HP owner, and you have bought a new printer recently - happy days! Epson owners will have to sit tight for the time being, though you can use a third-party app which we've also listed here.

• HP makes printing from your iPhone a snap
• Optus midnight iPhone 3GS party
• Lexmark Prestige Pro805
• Canon Selphy CP770

• Simple backup software included
• Who couldn't use 1TB of extra storage space?

• Design is bland
• Pricey compared to a couple of 500GB drives

Design

Pocket hard drives are by their nature not the most design heavy of creatures. They need to be small - to fit the pocket designation - and they need to contain hard drives. We've seen a few interesting designs built around tiny lights in drives, or interesting case colours.

And then there's the Passport Essential SE. It's black, or at least our review sample was. Black and almost entirely visual feature free in a rather 2001 monolith style. A single micro-USB connector on one end and a very subtle WD logo are the only adornments on its glossy black plastic case. Being glossy black plastic, fingerprints quickly show up on it, as do any scratches or knocks. To a certain extent, with a design this basic you really won't care, as they'll give the drive character if nothing else.

Features

The fancy visuals aren't the point with a portable hard drive, though. The point is having lots of tasty storage to hand whenever you want or need it. Western Digital sells the My Passport Essential SE in 750GB and 1TB sizes. Our review sample was the very tasty 1TB variant. You do pay quite a bit for a 1TB portable drive in this size though, as the sweet spot for cheap deals at the time of writing continues to be in the 320/500GB sizes.

The My Passport Essential SE comes with Western Digital's SmartWare software solution, which is one part backup, one part data encryption and one part data display software. On our test Windows 7 system it didn't install immediately, but once up and running it scans the drives attached to your system and gives you a visual interface broken down by file types. This gives you an at-a-glance view of how much space your pictures, music, movies and documents are taking up, and how much space on the My Passport Essential SE you're already using.

Performance

Western Digital's so-called SmartWare does for the most part live up to its name. Backup is one of those dry topics that tends to make people yawn a lot whenever you mention it. Chances are, you're yawning as you read this. In any case, anything that makes backup easier to manage has to be a good thing, and SmartWare's solution is nicely hands off and for the most part pretty quick too. There's no in-built data redundancy on the drive, so if it does die it'll take the data with it, but any backup is almost infinitely better than no backup at all.

From a straight file copy read/write speed viewpoint, the obvious bottleneck in the My Passport Essential SE is the use of USB 2.0 rather than eSATA, which might match a 1TB-sized drive a little better. We managed an average of 32.6MB/s read and 29.1MB/s write speeds with single large files on the My Passport Essential SE, which is fair but not great for a USB hard drive. Switching over to a folder of files saw read/write speeds dip slightly to 28.3/20.9MB/s, which is still within what expect from a USB 2.0 connected drive.

A 1TB small external drive at the time of writing carries with it a certain price penalty. You could almost certainly score a couple of 500GB drives for less than the asking price of the My Passport Essential SE if physical carrying constraints weren't a factor. That price should drop over time, however, making the My Passport Essential SE a more compelling buy.

• WD My Passport Elite 500GB
• Western Digital My Passport Elite (320GB)
• Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
• HP SimpleSave Portable 320GB

• Provides weight, BMI
• Wi-Fi integration is easy
• Website provides lots of information
• iPhone compatible
• Supports up to eight weight profiles

• Can't delete Twitter accounts
• Automatic user detection is a bit wonky
• BMI is still a contested metric
• Can't weigh pets or very small humans
• Expensive for a set of scales

When we first received the press release for the Withings WifiScale - distributed locally by PC Range, better known as being the local face of Billion routers - jaws dropped in the CNET offices. Surely somebody, somewhere, was having a laugh at our expense?

But no - the Withings WifiScale is a real product. It is, as the name suggests, a weight scale with integrated Wi-Fi compatibility.

Design

We can't say that we're genuinely au fait with the latest and greatest in design chic when it comes to bathroom scales per se. That having been said, the glass and steel design of the Withings Scale is pretty nice as these things go. The scale comes with four tiny optional feet to stick on if you're going to be using it on carpet. Otherwise, it just floats on four tiny stubs on your bathroom floor. It runs from four AAA batteries inserted on the base of the unit, right next to the unit's USB port. The top of the scale has a small greyscale LCD display and a four-way cross pattern to allow you to evenly place your feet with ease.

At a purely aesthetic level, the glass surface of the Withings Scale makes it not only a magnet for the same kind of fingerprint muck that befouls any "piano black" TV frame, but also the crud that may or may not accumulate on your feet on a daily basis. It's easy enough to wipe clean - but it isn't all that pleasant a reminder of the cruft that can accumulate on your feet on a daily basis, especially if you're sharing the scale with others.

Features

It's a scale. It weighs things, but that should be pretty obvious. Beyond impressive industrial design, however, any scale's going to have to work pretty hard if it's going to justify an AU$249 price tag, or even its "$225 until Christmas 2009" introductory price tag.

The Withings Scale certainly tries. Yes, it'll measure your weight, and the weight of up to eight other people, albeit not all at the same time. It'll also deduce your lean mass, fat mass and BMI based on the figures you provide to it. All this data is stored on a secure website and graphed over time for up to eight users, so you can see how your weight's fluctuating on a by-the-minute basis if you really felt the need. You can set weight goals and see where your weight sits on a normalised curve based on your height and gender.

There's even a free iPhone App, so if you desperately wanted to see your weight graph on the go you could do so. Not content with appeasing the iPhone owning masses, it's also possible to get the Withings Scale to automatically tweet your weight, either weekly, daily or every single time you weigh yourself. There's all sorts of interesting social factors at play with that particular bit of technology integration. Would you be happy telling the world how heavy you actually are?

Performance

Many Wi-Fi products can be a bit obtuse when it comes to the amount of time it takes for installation. The Withings Scale isn't one of them. Installation involves popping in four AAA batteries and optionally the four feet if you're going to use the scale on carpeted surfaces. You've then got to create a user account at www.withings.com, which will also allow you to download client software for your PC or Mac. We were somewhat concerned that we might have to tap in our wireless network's WPA key with our feet, but this is what the client is for. Connect the scale up to a spare USB port on your PC and it'll handle Wi-Fi account details for you, prompting you to select a network and enter the security details from the comfort of your keyboard.

Once installed the scale itself is very simple to use. Stepping on it switches it on, and it'll start weighing you. A full weigh-in takes about 25 seconds, and at the end of it the scale switches itself off and quickly transmits the information to Withings web portal.

For what it's worth, we discovered almost by accident that the Withings weight scale isn't precise below certain weights, as it totally failed to detect a house cat sitting on its cool glass surface on a hot day. Those with a pressing need to monitor their pet's weight will have to look elsewhere. We tried to adjust for that minor flaw by having one user pick up the cat and weigh both, but the difference between the user's weight and the cat was enough for the scale to incorrectly identify the user as a much heavier legitimate user, who then had that weight added to their graph and, as it turns out, tweeted out to the world. More on that shortly.

The Withings portal itself is well laid out, and the more you weigh yourself the more information you'll have to hand. This can be important as the average person's measured weight can fluctuate quite a bit depending on the time of day, stress factors, meals and even the way they stand on the scale. You can easily see your calculated BMI, lean and fat mass against an "advised" scale of what you should be aiming for. This is a little more contentious, as other factors, including body shape, ethnicity and muscle mass can lead to quite varying measurements of what is or isn't "healthy" weight. The arguments around that debate are long and varied, and to its credit Withings does note that the ideals it presents are merely guidelines, not hard and fast rules.

It's also possible in this social media age to set up your Twitter account to automatically tell your social media circle exactly how chubby you are. We set this up and discovered pretty quickly that while it does work, there's a few little quirks in its implementation that we wish were better handled. For a start, each tweet includes a mandatory link to the Withings product page, which is pretty sneaky stealth marketing. More worrying was that we found it actively difficult to switch it off properly, and thus told the world repeatedly how heavy we were. There's no way to delete Twitter account details once they've been entered. You can update them by overwriting with another Twitter account, but you can't just enter gibberish, as it only saves these details if it verifies they're correct. After much fiddling, we eventually set up a dummy Twitter account to bypass the problem.

The Withings Scale does an awful lot to try to justify itself, and on the interesting gimmicks scale, it scores well. We can see how you could use it to track weight, keep yourself on target and ultimately improve your health. At the same time, however, we can't ignore the fact that with a little self discipline, a $20 analog scale and a notepad, you could do exactly the same thing but a whole lot cheaper.

• Wii Fit
• ASUS EeePC 1000H
• Study: Twitter is 40% 'pointless babble'
• Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds

You don't need to settle for what comes pre-installed, there are plenty of good free applications that will handle the basic tasks that every user needs - security, anti-spyware, internet browsing, instant messaging, office productivity, entertainment and graphics editing. Here are our pick of the best on offer.

• Tech support for your parents
• Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
• Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix
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• LED backlighting
• Deep black levels
• Detailed pictures
• Bargain price
• Great sound

• Occasional ghosting
• Some backlight clouding

It will be some time before we will be able to buy roll-uppable televisions or T-shirts with screens in them, and though OLED is theoretically capable of doing this it is so expensive it's out of the reach of most of us. Until OLED gets cheaper, the LED-backlit TVs are about as advanced as you can get right now. The Sharp LC40LE700X is the Japanese company's first attempt.

Design

The LE700X is Sharp's most stylish television yet: it features a two-tone bezel with a gun metal and piano black finish. The centrepiece, both literally and figuratively, is the striking blue power light - very stylish. From afar the TV looks quite austere, but up close we were less enamoured by it. We found the plastic bezel to be quite flimsy and it came off all too easily, exposing the panel underneath. From the back and side, the design is also a little boxy though we were impressed by the side-mounted ports - too many place them close to the edge meaning that you have a great hulking cable visible at all times. The Sharp sensibly recesses the ports just enough so that with a bit of tucking you won't see the wires.

By contrast, the remote control is the grey one they've had for seemingly yonks. While functional, it's drab and not in keeping with the design of the TV. Rivals Samsung and Panasonic put more thought into their remotes.

Features

What's in the box? Well, you get a 40-inch New "X-Gen Panel" with a 1920x1080 resolution, and a claimed "3,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio". In feature terms, LED backlighting is the star here. Unlike competing solutions, the Sharp features an RGB backlight (not edge) which should give the screen a broader colour palette than white LED models. If you're concerned that LEDs will "burn out" after a while then you'll be happy to know that the backlight on this screen is rated at 100,000 hours - or 11 years if left on all the time.

The screen is pretty light-on for fancy extras, though like competitors the Sharp features its version of 100Hz called Fine Motion Advanced which is designed to reduce motion blur - and not judder as everyone else tries to.

For all your connectivity needs the Sharp includes three HDMI ports with "Instaport", which automatically detects and switches to HDMI sources. Other connections include two components, three AV inputs, S-Video, VGA, and an optical digital output.

Performance

In use, the Sharp was a fairly consistent performer and we found that the majority of sources were shown to their full potential. However, we did notice that the TV was a little soft at default settings, and we had to tweak it a little. By adjusting the sharpness by a single step we found that detail levels improved significantly. We found this unusual as many TVs these days ship with hyperactive over-sharp pictures, so a little cautiousness is probably a good thing.

With the screen calibrated, we fired up the on-board HD tuner. Images were bright and detailed, and when viewing sport on One HD we found the TV was able to keep a handle on fast-moving action with little ghosting or blurring - though these problems did show up from time to time with other sources.

The television is capable of high black levels in normal lighting conditions and this was well demonstrated with the King Kong DVD. The climactic scene above the streets of Manhattan begins with a shot of the sunrise and the creature's fur blowing softly in the wind (it's breezy on top of the Empire State Building). The Sharp was able to discern the detail in Kong's pelt with deep black levels, and display it as black, and not dark green as some other TVs do. The sunrise was also painted realistically and movement and image quality received high marks.

The television performed well with our HD synthetic tests which gauge the screen's ability to handle mosquito noise, "jaggies" and different source types. Over the past year, we've found most manufacturers are capable of high-quality image processing and the Sharp proved itself as well. Though, like some others, the Sharp did fail the Film Resolution test, which means that its support for 24p is not as finely tuned as it could be.

This 24p wonkiness was also on display when we played the Mission Impossible III disc, with a strange jerkiness appearing during the Bridge Scene fly-over. However, with a little tweaking of the Film Mode settings - ie, changing this to "Standard mode - we were able to make movement behave less erratically. As a result, the rooftop scene in the same movie was also rendered without judder. Black levels were as proficient as before and colour was natural.

Despite a generally good showing the TV isn't without a couple of minor problems, and they're ones shared by other TVs in the same price bracket. Despite a superior lighting system, the panel is still subject to a loss of contrast when viewed off-axis. Also, the TV's gloss coating can also be a little distracting - especially on dark discs like Batman Begins. You'll also find in discs like these that backlight "clouding" (where blacks aren't consistent but dark grey in some patches) is still an issue in the corners. But the biggest issue we found was with some occasional ghosting regardless of the source - while it was mostly "blink and you'll miss it" stuff it detracted from scenes with a lot of movement making them seem less "real".

Barring one notable example, sound quality has been one area that Sharp televisions have always been strong in. We found there wasn't much difference in volume levels between 50 per cent and maximum - at least the television didn't rattle. The speakers had a good grip on stereo effects, though the sound was lacking in bass a little.

Conclusion

Having spent some time with the LC40LE700X we were left with a generally favourable impression. Image quality was very good, and the sound was a lot better than we had any right to expect - particularly after the execrable Sharp home cinema we saw recently. However, something niggles at us. While the price is good and the technology is cutting edge, we just didn't get the pay-off in terms of performance we were expecting. Perhaps our expectations were too high, but we think that in the end Samsung is just doing it better.

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