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This is a very good Internet radio that can work wired or wireless, stereo not mono as some are and the first plus is that it can also be used to play the content from your iPod. The second plus you will need to read on to find out about.
This WiFi Internet radio from Goodmans is 25x11x14cm and shiny black with a matt black front grill that has the 6x4cm four line LCD display sunk into it. The top has two rows of six push buttons with a large touch wheel at either end. All are clearly labelled and unless you are a total novice setting up will be simple. The other connections are on the back outputs for earbuds and a stereo along with the Ethernet input.
No matter how many USB ports you may have, there will probably be occasions when none are available to connect a new device.
On a recent surfing expedition, I was checking out Belkin's various products and noted that the company currently had 29 different USB hubs as part of its product portfolio. Admittedly in some cases the only difference was the colour of the hub but there was certainly enough choice to satisfy the discerning user. Among the newer models were a clip-on hub and a flex hub which are the subjects of this review.
This is a music player and not as you might think a phone. In shape and size you could easily mistake it for a phone. To be precise it is a digital media player as it will play video as well as audio and of course it will display .jpg still images.
click to enlarge The new Sony Walkman NWZ-A829 is 9.5x5x1cm and weights around 80grams. It has a TFT screen of 5x3.8cm. It has two buttons below the TFT screen as well as the ubiquitous five position joystick arrangement between them. The base has input for earbuds and the proprietary USB lead. The left side, the top and the back are all clear apart from a small indentation in the rear for a stand (not provided in my sample).
Rechargeable batteries have huge advantages over their disposable counterparts, but you
do need to be able to charge them!
Uniross are now a very well known brand both for NiMh batteries and for the chargers you need to keep them operating. The range of chargers available from Uniross itself can be fairly bewildering. In this review I'm looking at their latest fast charger. The charger is packaged with 4x2700mAh AA size batteries - the highest capacity we've seen available.
Two games from Drumond Park, the first Bubble Buster aimed at 4+ and the second Lyric aimed at teenagers and adults, so I suppose the latter should not be called a game!
Bubble Buster It is the old blow a bubble and try to burst it. The difference here is that the bubbles are blown by a machine and you have to burst them with a wand that has two rounded prongs on the end. It's not just shoving the wand at a bubble it's how you do it as you need to make the wand ping and it will only do so if you connect in the correct way. The object is to get 20 pings, each ping becomes slightly higher.
Nomophobia, the fear of having no mobile connectivity, is not a complaint that should affect those with the WP-SI device (hereafter referred to as the Skype phone) from 3.
This product brings together Skype capabilities with those of a 3G mobile phone in a single unit. While the white and blue colour scheme adopted by this device might not be to everybody's taste, other aspects of this mobile phone are more appealing. Measuring 100 x 44 x 13.6mm and weighing 86g, this Skype phone is of the candy bar style.
This is the first of the cameras from the GE camera launch in January. A new name in cameras so how will the units work out in practice, especially as they are the only manufacturer to promise one manual for all the models.
click to enlarge The General Electric E840s digital camera is 10.5x5.5x2cm the width the last figure can increase by another 2.5cm when it is fully zoomed. It weights 130grams. My unit was black and silver. This is described as an 8megapixel unit and it 4x optical zoom. In macro mode you can focus as close as 6cm and in normal (wide angle) 60cm and with telephoto 80cm. Going round the controls the from has the lens 6.05-24.
A look at a complete wireless system from Sonos for wirelessly piping music digital audio
anywhere and everywhere in your home - including several places at the same time.
click to enlarge If like me you've taken the trouble over the years to rip the bulk of your
CD collection onto your PC you can be left with wondering how to then play that
music.
No matter how careful you are, your computer could benefit from an encounter with software designed to provide spring cleaning facilities.
Now up to version 8, System Suite Professional brings together a collection of utilities developed to maintain, protect and enhance your computer's performance. Following the entry of a 29-character serial number, the product's installation process gives you a range of choices as you decide whether to include the Firewall and antivirus/spyware options or not.
If you thought life was hard then maybe you should consider the role of a character from a Russian science-fiction novel.
click to enlarge Hard to Be a God is not another take on the God genre made popular by such titles as Civilisation. Instead this game is a mixture of Hack & Slash with RPG overtones that aims to please followers of both types of game play. The storyline of the game is claimed to be based on a 1964 sci-fi book by the Russian Strugatsky brothers.
A 15x10cm photo printer with a tiny footprint. It does not use conventional printer ink so the output is always dry when it emerges, it also prints onto postcards remember them so ideal to send from your holidays.
It is 19x13x8cm when closed up. There is a 5x3.5cm TFT on top of the unit and this can be at any angle from horizontal (when it takes no space sitting on top of the unit) to vertical.
With the familiar orange W logo, there is no mistaking the W910i handset as being anything but another member of the Sony Ericsson family of Walkman phones.
Tastefully decked out in Noble Black or Heart Red (who thinks up these colours), the W910i is a slider-type phone. It has a display that certainly grabbed your attention. Taking over most of the front area, this 2.4 inch TFT screen is capable of showing 262K colours in 240 x 320 resolution presenting a clear and sharp display. Located just below the screen are a series of control and navigation options.
Kensington have added to their range of audio accessories with this set of travel speakers, suitable for
any media player with a standard jack socket but very obviously aimed at the iPod market.
The Kensington FX500 "speaker to go" is a slightly bigger than an A5 sheet of paper at around 150x200mm, around 35mm thick and weighing 400g. The unit has a soft finish that should be fairly robust and is reminiscent of a small zip-up folio case. From the front the product has a central clear window through which you'll be able to access front-mounted controls on your favourite MP3 player. A power switch is situated to the lower right.
This camcorder is one of the latest versions that record to an internal hard drive, thus increasing the capacity vastly over other storage methods. It can of course also record still images onto an SD card.
The total weight of the Canon HG10 is 570grams. The dimensions are 12.5x7.5x7cm. The middle figure the width can increase by another 8.5cm should you choose to use the TFT screen while capturing images and have it at 90degrees to the unit.
As with a lot of these gadgets they (or something like them) were first shown in films like various inventions developed by Q in the James Bond films. However I doubt at that time they ever actually worked.
The box contains a pair of Freetalkie XFD-008 wrist watches. They are chunky and you need to wear one for awhile before you get used to it. Yes it does tell the time but the main point is that the watch is a walkie talkie. After a couple of days of wear you get to the bulk. The weight of each unit is 80grams so it's not that heavy just bulky. The stated range is 'about 1.
Making use of a lift that travels at 22mph, a visit to the top of BT Tower was rewarded with ice cream and news of an addition to BT Broadband portfolio.
As one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions and services, BT has recently expanded its range of broadband services with the launch of its BT Total Broadband Anywhere product. Not surprisingly, due to the way service providers attempt to ring-fence their customer base; this product is securely tied to the various BT Broadband service options currently available.
In the coming weeks and months you will get a real alternative to Sky or Virgin that has only a one off payment to buy the box and fitting for your own satellite disk to view -at launch- 80 TV/Radio channels. In the coming months this will rise initially to 232 including (with the correct box) HD offerings from both BBC and ITV (the ITV is exclusive) and others as they become available.
Freeview has opened the market and with the immanent turning off of the Analogue spectrum we all have to find a way of getting digital TV. If you live in a good reception area this may just involve upgrading your loft/roof aerial. However there is a solution that is stated to work for 98.5% of the country and that is Freesat. Not only do you get all the free channels currently on Freeview but a lot more.
A neat and compact smoothie maker that comes complete with two travel jugs.
I've never met a Kenwood product I didn't like (not so far anyway). The latest product we've tried is the Kenwood Smoothie 2Go. We've tried Kenwood smoothie makers before and this one is just as easy and effective to use. So what is the difference? Well mainly it's down to size and a few neat little features which make the smoothie easy to take out with you on picnics.
Bacon is not the only product from Denmark that has been feeding my interest as I take a look at a television receiver from that country.
In the past I have looked at a number of television receiver products from various manufacturers. These have ranged from cards that need to be inserted into an internal slot to USB devices covering analogue and digital channels. However this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to look at a television receiver from a company based in .
Time to step back into history and join in the Napoleonic Wars for this game from AGE Studio.
Born in on , Napoleon Bonaparte (or the little Corsican as he was sometimes referred to) is regarded by many as the greatest strategist the world has ever known as he attempted spreading his control throughout and surrounding areas. Rising through the ranks of the French army, this charismatic individual reached the exalted rank of Napoleon 1, Emperor of France when he crowed himself in 1804.
This is far more than a standard photo frame in a body not that much bigger. It is also a wide angle frame so images taken in the newer formats display full screen, however standard images can be enlarged.
The Polaroid frame itself is black and 25x18x3.5cm. The screen itself is 15.5x8.5cm this gives the 7inch diagonal measurement. Under the screen is an LCD display 15.5x1.5cm that displays indoor temperature and humidity as well as outdoor temperature and the likely weather. I found the latter was not that believable but the outdoor temperature was correct as this was sent by the provided wireless sensor that you place somewhere outside.
Where Adobe led the way with the PDF standard, other companies have produced more economical ways to create documents in this format.
I'm willing to bet that most of us will have a number of PDF (Portable Document File) documents located in various folders on our hard disk. This lingua franca of the electronic document world was developed by Adobe and is well served by its Acrobat product for creating such documents and a Reader which enables the content to be portrayed on a computer screen in all its original glory.
This is a small All In One unit, meaning it can scan, copy and print. It has a small TFT screen so it is possible to print images direct from either of the two card slots or even from a USB stick.
This review has not been without it's problems. Initially I got a lot of paper jams, I thought I could see the reason as when the paper was stacked in the paper tray it was very slightly convex, the paper guides however seemed to be fully open. I eventually managed to get another few millimetres and from then on no more jams.
Never the one to indulge in half measures and with a strong preference for world firsts, Archos has taken the opportunity recently to announce some new products and additions to the companys current range of service offerings.
I'm sure whether to classify the first announcement making up this report as multi-functional or more of a convergence in technology as Archos enhances one of its existing products. That product is the Archos 605 WiFi Media Player which featured in an earlier review ( ). Basically the announcement covered a new GPS In-Car Holder that turns the 605 WiFi portable media player (PMP) into a GPS navigation device without compromising the device's original multifunctional capabilities.
I am a lucky chap because just occasionally I get the chance to combine my job, my hobby and my passion all together as I do here while telling you about the latest CD from Georgia Mancio whose voice is a joy.
Twice recently I have had the great pleasure of hearing this young lady sing live, once with a quintet very like the sextet on offer on this CD and the second occasion with four of the five in a quartet. Both occasions were amazing and although artists usually supplement their wages by selling their latest CD's Georgia was having more success than most and what you will hear here on a live gig a true representation of what you hear on the CD.
While hardly rating as one of my favourite tasks, it could be said that I have been having a ball recently when vacuuming my home.
The original computer mouse featured a ball that allowed it to be moved smoothly in any directly without the need for additional adjustments by the user. Believing this same principle could be adapted for use with a vacuum cleaner, especially considering the trend towards smaller homes with the UK leading the rest of Europe in this respect, James Dyson and his team of engineers set about designing a new vacuum, cleaner based on the ball principle.
Can you imagine frying chips in less than a teaspoon of oil and getting lovely crisp chips? Well with the Tefal Actifry you can and you do.
I was to say the least sceptical deep fried chips to be crispy require double frying and that requires them to be cooked at a lower temperature and then recooked at a higher temperature to crisp them. So following the instructions I picked a medium sized potato which if it is 250 grams is stated to be a single portion. I weighed a few and found one at 260 grams. 13x13mm and up to 9cm long. I know we have been metric for umpty six years but to me that is still ½inch.
While SatNav devices will direct you to a location, Loc8tor can perform a similar task when searching for an item.
Memory is transient. I am not referring to computer memory but that of my own flaky ability to remember where I last placed certain articles that I use on a regular basis. Those afflicted with a similar short term memory loss will know how frustrating these "senior moments" can be especially when you are in a hurry as is often the case. Loc8tor Ltd believes it has a solution with its location device technology.
Having taken back the Ashes, Australia sends us one of their animals to help us get over the loss
The Koala Bear, Kangaroo, Dingo, Platypus, Wombat, Wallaroo and Tasmanian Devil are just some of the animals that are native to . Now news has reached us that there is a new addition to this menagerie - namely the Tumblebug. Actually this is not the first sighting of this strange creature with its overwhelming desire to save members of its extended family from destruction.
Photo frames that can view content from SD cards are not uncommon however this offering from Parrot does not only that but it can also -via Bluetooth- view images on your phone, PDA or other such device.
It is 20.5x16.5x2.2cm. The unit I had was white with a couple of blue horizontal stripes across the front. The centre part of the front is the display screen and this is 13x8.5cm and this gives by my mathematics a diagonal measurement of 6.2inches so I am not sure where the stated 7inches comes from. In another of life's situations if you told a lady to expect 7inches and you delivered 6.2inches she would almost certainly notice the difference.
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