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Nero started life as a method of burning CDs. Now it is far more than that as not only does it work with CDs and DVDs but also Blu-rays. In fact it is a one stop shop for all your music, photos and videos in one box.
Like a lot of software today this can be purchased as a download, but as long as box products are easily available that is what I review. There are two versions of Nero 11 the basic where things not covered by the basic product can be purchased – should you need them – as add-on or as here included in this the Platinum version. Briefly Nero 11 Platinum can Burn, Play, Sync, Manage, Create, Share, Convert, Restore, Edit, Backup for your Photos, Music and Video in SD, HD and Blu-ray.
Adding to its range of router products, Cisco has released the X3000 which provides modem and wireless functionality.
While looks may not be everything (as I tell myself every time I look in the mirror), they can give you a reassuring feeling as you unpack a new product such as the subject of this next review which is the modem router sitting on my workspace. This is the Linksys X300 which provides ADSL 2+ modem capability and a 2.4GHz wireless connectivity with support for 802.11b/g/n WiFi. The X3000 certainly does have an attractive appearance with its founded corners.
Microsoft OneNote, which is an integrated part of Microsoft Office 2010, is arguably the forgotten application. Even though a great many MS Office users probably know that it exists, and that they installed it as part of the suite, quite a proportion dont take advantage of it. The Plain & Simple book Microsoft OneNote 2010 by Peter Weverka, and which was published last October, will enable the uninitiated to get to grips with this most useful program as well as enabling existing users to make the most of its features both as a standalone application or as a cooperative tool.
OneNote is a digital notebook that, once you have learned how to use it, is able to provide a single place where you can gather all of your notes and information. These notes can be moved, arranged and re-arranged as needed and even quickly searched. Furthermore, the search facilities enable one to find what one is looking for as well as bringing together related items.
This is probably the largest DAB radio I have reviewed, but to be fair it is also FM, Internet, Media Player, Wi-Fi and has an iPod and iPhone dock. However as yet it has stubbornly refused to do the washing up or the ironing.
Moving this around is something you think about before you do it, not simply because its not light but also because it has no handle and so unless you are a skilled waiter you will need two hands as there are no grip points. Recently –around four weeks ago - I reviewed the more normal size Pure One Flow that does much the same as the Contour. However the larger size means that of course you have larger speakers and of course a fuller sound.
Kingston produce a slightly oversize memory stick and this can easily be 32GB, they also produce one that the cap is bigger than the memory module think tiny USB receivers for keyboards and mice and these can be 8 or 16GB.
With cap in place it is 7.5x2.2x1.5cm and weights 20grams. Doing a range of tests data was transferred to it nearly six times faster than with the USB2 below. Same machine and same data and even using the same USB port. The only difference was that this was a 16GB unit and the USB2 one is 8GB, the data was a range of MP3 and video files totalling just over 5GB.
The portable computer family continues to expand. First we has laptops/notebooks, then came
netbooks closely followed by tablets.
Now Ultrabooks join the party.
Originally coined by Intel, the term "Ultrabook" refers to a notebook-style computer that conforms to certain specifications. The unit needs to be no more than 20mm (0.8-inch) in thickness and be powered by an Intel Core i5 or better processor. Storage can be in SSD format with battery life giving at least 5 hours rising to over 8 hours in some circumstances. The unit’s graphics should be capable of delivering HD quality.
I had to find my long lost feminine side to review this and endured many a ribbing while reviewing it, mind you there were certain parts of London I avoided as a man of mature years with a very pink digital camera could cause problems.
Of course if you are female it will be more than acceptable not least for the fact that it is unlikely to be nicked by most men. The Nikon Coolpix S6200 measures 9x5.5x2.5cm the last figure can increase by up to another 4cm when the lens is fully zoomed out to its 10x maximum. This is a 16MP offering but you can of course take perfectly respectable images at far less than that figure.
Depending upon your view point, a hero could be a mythical character of old, a comic book creation with super powers, a member of the armed forces or just an ordinary person with special qualities.
In the case of Kodak, a hero is one of the company’s new range of multifunction devices designed for the home or small office. One of the models in this new series is the Office Hero 6.1 product. This particular model certainly catches the eye with its bulky appearance and dimensions of 465 x 420 x 255mm (W x D x H). The Office Hero 6.
If it is not vampires providing the threat in computer games
then it is zombies who take centre stage as being creatures to avoid. However in this next case both branches of
the living dead fraternity take the leading role in a new game developed by
Five.bn and published by Alawar. The
game, appropriate enough, is entitled Vampires vs. Zombies.
Set in the immediate future, the current year of 2012 actually, a local dictator named Boombata has plans to conquer the world from his base in the Limpopo Province in South Africa. His plan involves televisions as the delivery medium for a combination of voodoo and tam-tams that will have the effect of turning populations into zombies under his control.
My 32inch TV is light in compassion to my previous offering, at 28inches this is only slightly smaller but is so much lighter again. Going back still further my TV before was also 32inch but a CRT and this far heavier again.
It is of course HD a scan finds 112 channels. So providing 1080p is what you want or need this certainly has things to recommend it, however the built in Freeview is not Freeview HD. It is 66.5x45cm with the stand raising it by 5cm from whatever you place it on. The stand is 35x21cm and provides the stabilizing weight. The viewable screen is 60x36cm giving the notional imperial diagonal measurement of 27.5inches.
Brother has recently added new functionality to some of its multifunction devices. One of these models is the DC-J525W.
The DCP-J525W is a multifunction device from Brother. This product provides scan, print and copy functions from a single unit. There is a choice of USB or wireless connectivity when setting up this device with the host computer. With the A4 flatbed scanner mounted on top of an inkjet printer with 40MB of RAM, the DCP-J525W is predominately black in colour with dimensions of 405 x 160 x 378mm (W x H x D).
Anyone who tends to want fresh juice really should have a juicer as they tend to get far more from items than the manual alternative. This unit claims to get 10% more juice out than other such products; I have tested this over Christmas.
In fact even though I trained for two years as a chef it was over 50 years ago and although the various kitchens had huge mixers I do not remember any with juicing ability. Certainly at that time the only things that got juiced were oranges and lemons. While recent years have allowed the juicing of almost any fruit, vegetables still seem to be more of a novelty.
Solid State Drives (SSDs), which have been talked about for a long time as alternatives to hard drives, are now starting to become a reality so that users are increasing able to take advantage of the their higher effective speed, robustness and low power consumption. Although this is mainly in netbooks and high end laptops, an SSD can also often be used to rejuvenate a machine which is not in the first flush of youth and make it the ideal tool for carrying around. Crucial makes this task relatively straightforward.
Despite SSDs being available with a fast SATA interface, and the process of upgrading from a hard disc to an SSD is very similar to a hard disc upgrade, it is important not to jump in without an understanding of what is involved. In principle, the upgrade is straightforward. Using an adapter cable, one connects the new drive to a USB port on the machine and then transfers a disc image to it. Then, disconnect the existing hard drive and replace it with the, now imaged, SSD.
Here I am looking at two rather different USB hubs. The first is branded with the Highstar name and not only is a hub but also a memo pad and has a clock and temperature sensor. The second is far more normal both come from Brando in Hong Kong.
Not only is this a hub but also a clock a temperature gauge an alarm clock and an erasable illuminated memo pad. It is 14x7x12cm overall size. Where the hub is at the back of the unit it is 9x2cm, at the front where the clock is 10.5x5cm. The illuminated Perspex is 14x10cm set 1.5cm behind the clock, a pen to write on the Perspex is included. This is a USB2 hub and unless you set the clock at 90degrees to yourself then the ports will always have the Perspex between you and the ports.
Now up to version 16, Serif has released the latest edition of its PagePlus software for those wanting to create different types of documents containing images and text.
This box connects to your TV via an HDMI lead. Then the box connects to your network. The box itself can also have a hard disc or just stream content. It can also attach other hard discs with content or USB sticks to play music or video.
The box is 22x16x6cm but you need to allow up to another 5cm to the 16cm depth for the attachment of various cables. The top, sides and base are all smooth while the face has one small blue LED when the unit is on. All the connections are at the back. These are in a line, DC input, USB2 (host), USB3 (client), HDMI, Ethernet, Coaxial, Audio out left, Video, Audio out right (these last four in two rows of two) and finally Optical.
Building up a network can be made easier by using existing facilities in the home in conjunction with Homeplug technology.
Time to put on your planners hat as Alawar offers you the opportunity to visit the American Old West and build a township.
Back in the early days of growing up (some would say it is still an on-going process for me), Saturday mornings were a time to look forward to as the local cinema put on a special show for the younger generation. With a clear distinction between good and evil, a staple diet of these shows were the popular cowboy films set in various shanty towns and churned out by the truck load.
A waterproof camera that can by the aid of GPS tell you where you were when you took the image or movie. I did not get a chance to test if the two features worked together; in fact the only waterproof tests were in my bath.
he Pentax WG1-GPS measures 12x6x2cm, these are maximum figures the zoom works on the periscope principle required for a waterproof offering. It is also quite sculptured with either end being 6cm tall but the middle only 5cm, it weights 165grams. The right side has a substantial wrist strap which is useful if you take it underwater. The base has a slide door behind which is the solid battery and any SD card you insert.
Media content can arrive in different formats which are not always compatible with all your devices. Helping cope with this problem is the stated aim of a product released by Binary Distribution.
Binary Distribution, a traditional software publisher and distributor, has released the mediAvatar Media Toolkit in theUK. This product concentrates its main functionality on the conversation between different video and audio formats with a range of pre-set and customisable settings. Currently available as a download (DownloadBuyer.com) or physical boxed offering (Amazon.co.
If you only listen to Internet Radio then this could be for you. It also means providing you have a decent Broadband connection almost any station anywhere in the world is available to you even if normal radio reception is naff.
The Stream 105 from Roberts measures 26x8x15cm and weights 700 grams (without batteries). There is a 2cm difference between back and front and the whole unit is a stretched oval, with the carrying handle raised the height is increased from 15 to 21cm. The rear has a battery bay should you wish to run it on 6x‘C’ cell batteries. Above this are USB (for upgrading only) headphone socket, auxiliary input and the DC input, the supplied lead 1.85 metres long, just adequate.
With the wrist watch seeming to go the way of the pocket watch nearly a century ago most people now seem to check the time on their phone a new offering needs something different about it to raise more than a glance.
This is different, very different. The one sent to me was lime green with a light grey strap fixed tightly so the watch can stand vertically even when not attached to your wrist. It is slightly wider than it is tall and still reasonably thin. It weights 60 grams and the face is 4x3.7x1cm, however the moulded strap is so thick and tight near the watch that the 3.7 becomes a lot nearer 6cm. I suspect it could become a fashion accessory if worn by a few models/pop stars.
While better known for its DAB radio products, PURE offers an Internet-based service called the Lounge that you can inspect.
Owners of one of the more recent PURE DAB radio models with Wi-Fi and Internet radio capability will have already encountered the Lounge. For those unfamiliar with this feature, I should explain that the Lounge is PURE’s online portal providing a gateway to an environment of Internet radio and on-demand content made up of podcasts, listen again programmes and a collection of ambient sounds captured from natural phenomena.
Nokia have recently jumped off the Simbian bandwagon and joined forces with Microsoft. Here is their first offering together Nokias phone expertise and Microsofts mobile operating system when Windows 8 arrives on the PC it is rumoured to lot a lot like this.
My first surprise is that it uses a Micro SIM and so many phone providers think it is only Blackberry and Apple that use this smaller SIM. My own opinion is that it is fiddly to fit, but another journalist friend of mind thinks it is the way all phones will go. Still once in, it need not move. Technically I am told it is possible to cut a full size SIM.
Continuing my look at various Epson multifunction devices, it is the turn of a model smaller than the other units seen recently.
Rather than the usual “All-in-One” classification, the Epson Stylus SX235W is described as a “Small-in-One” device. The reason for this slight change is that this particular Epson multifunction unit is smaller than some other print, copy and scan devices that are currently available from the company. The SX235W has dimensions of 390 x 300 x 145mm (W x D x H).
As its full title indicates, Lonely Dream is the third offering in the Specialbit Studios Haunted Hotel series. I missed out on the first two episodes and so came to Lonely Dream without any preconceptions as to what to expect from this Hidden Object Adventure game originally published by Big Fish Games and now part of the Focus Multimedia catalogue.
Like most games, Lonely Dreams has various options, including the volume level for background music and sound effects plus screen brightness, which can be adjusted to suit your taste. There is also an option to play in either Casual or Advanced mode. In the former you get a quicker refresh of the Hint feature plus the opportunity to skip some of the puzzles with less of a delay.
Very few DAB radios have the ability to record (in MP2) to SD card, the original Bug by another manufacturer was one and here from Roberts their RecordR offers this extremely useful feature both for timed and instant recording.
While this is a perfectly acceptable DAB and FM radio the main selling point is its ability to save (pause) or save for replay later anything broadcast on any DAB or FM radio station so if you are a fan of a regular program that you always seem to arrive home just as its ending never fear you can set it to record it and then listen whenever suits you.
Helping bring together your collection of digital photos, music tracks and album plus videos so that they can be directed towards an appropriate output medium, such as a television, is the role ideally suited for a multimedia player. These types of devices tend to come in a range of shapes and sizes with some variety in their feature set. The latest such device to make its presence felt on my desktop is the ACME Portable Media Centre (MPO1).
With its dimensions of 142.5 x 85 x 23mm (L x W x H), the ACME Portable Media Centre (MPO1) could easily be mistaken for a small portable hard drive. This mistaken is easy to understand when you realise that it is possible to insert a 2.5-inch SATA drive, of up to 1TB capacity, into the body of this brushed metallic silver multimedia player. However this particular feature does not form part of this review which will concentrate on other aspects of this product.
Netbooks continue to be a useful solution; however this one nearly did not get reviewed. It was slow to boot almost as slow to shut down and as for opening any applications, luckily I am known for my determination so read on.
As always these come in preconfigured to a point, in theory all you need to do is enter your passcode for your wireless router activate the Norton trial and off you go. One thing I do first is to switch off and then time the boot. At this point I knew things were not right. The boot took 90seconds and shutdown from desktop took 45seconds. During the next three days I did just short of 100 updates as soon as I thought I had done them all more arrived.
Another product that is certainly mature once they got beyond 12 they started using roman numerals, most people thought that was to avoid 13 but a year so later X4 comes so what does a mature product have to offer that is new?
Paintshop Pro X4 comes on two discs, the first will install various updated Microsoft bits like Direct X etc and then the program this took 12 minutes on a reasonably fast Windows 7 PC and took 381MB of hard disc. Disc two is a range of bonus features (something Corel have always given even when the product was on floppy discs) and this took another 3 minutes and a further 310MB of hard disc space, so 691MB and 15 minutes to do the install.
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