The Test Bed

Remote voice recording kit

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:14:46 GMT

A new wireless device allows you to record meetings and make audio notes onto your PC frpm up to 30 metres away, says vendor Lindy.The £69.99 (inc Vat) Wireless Voice Recorder package consists of a wireless handset, a USB dongle...

Office subs could woo people to Microsoft Live

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:51:34 GMT

Interesting news from the US today that Microsoft is offering to lease the Student version of Office with its One Care security suite and Live web services for around $70 (£35) a year. The offer has been announced only for...

Apple Garage hits right note

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:18:34 GMT

Just to put in a good word about Apple, after hammering it in two recent blogs. I've just been setting up an old Evolution MK-149 midi keyboard for a nephew to use, via an Edirol UA-20 interface, with the Garage...

Beating ARM will take years, says Intel's Gelsinger

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:12:19 GMT

Intel has a battle on its hands competing with ARM in the handheld arena, the company's star technologist Pat Gelsinger told yesterday's press teleconference at which he admitted that multicore performance was being hampered by the difficulties of parallel programming....

Leo and the lion of Lyons

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:23:53 GMT

Obituaries of David Caminer, who has died at the age of 92, have focussed on the fact that he was the world's first systems analyst. But his death also revives memories of Leo, the world's first proper business computer. Leo...

MSI Wind available in UK

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:42:03 GMT

It looks as though at least two UK outlets are now taking orders for the MSI Wind 10in Atom-powered mini-notebook (or netbook or nettop or whatever term takes your fancy). Morgan Computers and play.com have the product listed, Morgan noting...

More on the Quicktime hijack and the Atlantic divide

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:14:04 GMT

Some respondents to my blog about Apple's Quicktime seem to have missed the point: Windows without QT opens .tifs and allows you to save them; it will not save them with QT loaded, unless you pay extra as prompted or...

Apple's Quicktime holds Windows users to ransom

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:52:47 GMT

It can come as a shock to we Brits sometimes when we meet Americans and realise that, despite having a broadly overlapping culture and speaking more or less the same language, they are easily as different from us as the...

Bluetooth headsets: to be seen or not be seen#

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:48:16 GMT

Bluetooth headsets are odd things. Too big and you look an utter fool, too small and it looks like you're talking to yourself. Still, with countless models filling the aisles in mobile phone stores, they appear to be big...

Bluetooth headsets: to be seen or not be seen?

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:48:16 GMT

Express Hotmail access saved

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:31:50 GMT

Microsoft has backtracked on a decision to prevent people from accessing their Hotmail accounts though Outlook Express.It said in a letter to users that they should instead download the Windows Live email client, which "has the familiarity of Outlook Express...

One in the Phi for the fascinating memristor

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:21:55 GMT

Apologies for a typo in our article on memristors in our latest print edition, but it does illustrate the peril of using exotic characters. The Greek letter Φ (Phi), representing magnetic flux, came up fine in our proofs but we...

Safer with sat nav?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:28:36 GMT

I had to chuckle when I saw a report on how sat nav has a positive effect on driving safety popped into my inbox. Unsurprisingly, the report was commissioned by a sat nav manufacturer - TomTom. I've used plenty of...

RM puts Eee PCs to schools

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:07:58 GMT

RM has announced its version of the 8.9in Eee PC for schools. RM expects to sell 50,000 Eee PCs in 2008 and reckons schools which kit their pupils out with the little laptop see SAT scores go up by an...

Historic ICT 1301 on show

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:17:37 GMT

Computer history enthusiasts will be heading on July 13 to a car rally at a Kent farm where the only working ICT 1301 mainframe computer from 1962 will be on display. The machine, nicknamed Flossie, has...

Win a Shuttle 'Alone in the Dark' PC

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:24:50 GMT

View imageWho says Friday the 13th is unlucky? Visitors to Shuttle's European website can tempt fate and enter a competition to win a special edition Shuttle PC. Clebrating the launch of the fifth instalment of Atari's 'Alone in the...

3D Pandas, true-colour screens, and why local storage is here to stay

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:06:11 GMT

The most impressive act at HP's big Berlin event today came not from the company itself but from film company Dreamworks, which showed off three-dimensional versions of scenes from its new feature Kung-Fu Panda. HP has been heavily involved in...

Voodoo Omen turned PC innards upside down

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:35:50 GMT

View imageVoodoo has completely rethought the classic PC layout for its new desktop machine, the Omen, unveiled at HP's launchfest in Berlin today. The motherboard has been turned upside down and hangs from the top of the machine, with the...

Extreme hype works for Apple

Clive Akass — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:13:01 GMT

Regulars readers may have noticed that attitudes towards Apple at PCW Towers tend to be a mix of admiration and intense irritation. The cause of the latter reaction is usually Apple luminary Steve Jobs and his big mouth. Typical was...

RSI rates soar 30 per cent, but is it just ambulance chasing?

Emil Larsen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:57:17 GMT

The number of reported RSI incidents shot up 30 per cent last year, according to a 1003-person study commissioned by Microsoft. Eight per cent of office workers now struggle with the painful digits and sharp pains shooting through their bodies...

New chip could make satnav standard on Bluetooth devices

Clive Akass — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:07:11 GMT

This is a block diagram of the new BlueCore 7 chip from CSR, which packs satnav, Bluetooth and FM send/seceive onto a piece of silicon just 3.6mm by 3.2mm. John Halksworth, head of product management, says the extra functionality...

Arm's new GPU

Clive Akass — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:07:48 GMT

This is a block diagram of Arm's Mali-400 MP multicore graphics processing unit, unveiled today, showing the shared level 2 cache, the "console class" vertex processor, and the maximum four fragment processors able to fill a billion pixels a...

Asus offers Eee battery upgrade for a tenner

Fri, 30 May 2008 17:29:33 GMT

For UK consumers to get a worse deal than the rest of the world on electrical goods' pricing is a given - we are a difficult to access island after all - but for us to receive inferior products isn't...

Asus offers Eee battery upgrade for a tenner

Emil Larsen — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:29:33 GMT

Traxdata media player

Clive Akass — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:56:12 GMT

Traxdata has announced a product that sounds rather similar too Iomega's Screenplay, which we described a few days back.The £149 MultiMediaDrive packs a 500Gbyte disk and a multimedia player than can play movies, songs or photos directly to you television...