Laptops/PCs/Apple

Certainly not a small and light offering, ideal for a tower/desktop replacement, the native resolution is 1920x1080 just like what a standard panel will display. The advantage it can travel with you when required to do so.

I always hesitate to be hard on review units, however the RangerX tablet is one that is designed to take more vigorous day to day use than standard products not survive. Here an Android device designed for the harder life.

First a multi card reader that works via USB 3, this is designed for USB 3 ports but will work with most USB 2 ports. Second a large capacity SD Card, so this can transfer large amounts of data via the card reader above and it is 64GB.

Perhaps the name gives a clue to the screen size if not its 8inches. This is an Android Tablet that is ideal to use over Wi-Fi. Of course its touch and with the creamy white surround to the screen it does not show your fingermarks, joy.

I saw this at a recent event which was itself ‘In The Cloud’ as 27 floors up on a misty damp day is certainly in the clouds. However while this storage and backup package lives in your home or office, not as ‘The Cloud’ often means far away.

This is a nice sharp panel, it has the ability to be used as one of a multiple panel display and can also be rotated 90degrees to be used as portrait which for those writing long items or viewing endless web pages saves a lot of scrolling.

This is a small and light Windows 8 notebook with touch. On a unit of this size touch makes sense as it will be within reach of a finger, so if Windows 9 is for you then this latest offering from Samsung may have everything you need.

A small Tower PC but with everything you need apart from a Panel and speakers and if you connect via HDMI you do not even require speakers. While they are no longer fashionable this is small and has far more connectivity than a notebook.

The Samsung S27C750P is a 27-inch LED Monitor that forms part of the company’s Series 7 family of products. This particular model is of the type that can be viewed in either landscape or portrait orientation depending upon your needs.

A somewhat unusual flat panel that requires just one connection, USB, no other power is required and it will configure itself as a second display. This is an ideal accompaniment to any Desktop or Notebook where a second display is required.

For anyone not using touch I feel that Windows 7 is where you should be. However as most new machines now come with Windows 8 I gave up a night’s sleep to go through the long and torturous process of upgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.

A silvery bronze colour is a good start as it looks far better than a shiny black offering. This notebook is rapid in response and if you do want Windows 8 then it must surely be with ‘Touch’ so this could be exactly what is required.

If one is upgrading from an older 4 x 3 monitor, or even a smaller wide screen display, it pays to consider the current generation of LED backlit larger screen units which will provide an improved user experience. With its 1920 x 1080 (HD) resolution the 23 inch AOC i2360 fits the bill both in size and performance.

Gigibyte are best known for making motherboards for both desktop and notebook computers. They also make rather good notebooks as the motherboard is itself perhaps the single most important component in the notebook.

This is an Android device the screen size you might guess from the title is 9.7 inches. The colour is creamy white rather like those of another manufacturer whose name is taken from a popular fruit.

This is a rather nice book reader however it can be far more as it is Android based, so you can surf the WWW and collect your emails however for some reason not quite all the content of the Android Play Store is currently available.

This is a large 1920x1080 panel. In fact the 27inch size is larger than most TVs were not that long ago, however the newer LED technology means that’s displays stay crisper and blacks stay clearer whatever the display size.

This is a thin and light Windows 8 notebook that boots very quickly and for me anyway cures the problem of fingermarks around the screen by making the whole thing in silver grey rather than the standard shiny black finish.

Now that virtually all of us have either a smartphone or a tablet computer – or possibly both – we are increasing finding that our fingers are really too large when it comes to accurately keying in all types of text. The STM Tracer DeLuxe Stylus + Pen, provides a useful all round tool for paper as well as those devices which use capacitive sensor technology for input.

It almost crossed my mind that I had been forgotten by Acer with regards to review products when an offer arrived to check out an Aspire model. I was reasonably impressed.

Earlier this year I had a look at a Chromebook from Samsung, here what at first glance looks a fairly similar offering from HP. Could a Chromebook be a real alternative to using a notebook with the Microsoft Windows operating system?

Finally manufacturers seem to be releasing a good range of touch notebooks. As far as my tests are concerned this is the only real reason to ‘upgrade’ to Windows 8. While I have reviewed large panels with touch why would you sit so close as to be able to use it.

The PCTV T2 290e Nanostick supports both ordinary Freeview and Freeview HD. Connected via a USB2 port it is a convenient way of adding TV and PVR facilities to a PC. Being both small and light it is ideal for those with limited space who would like their PC to double up as a TV and as a PVR.

Kingston are a large supplier of memory, here I am looking at a large capacity micro SD card, but first a card reader for a range of cards. A lot of people do not know that certain versions of Windows will not read USB3 card devices.

The most recent notebook I reviewed had Windows 8 – sadly without touch – it also had a Gigabyte motherboard. This is an All in One PC from HP with Windows 8, touch and it has a Gigabyte motherboard and even a TV tuner.

Duplicating a drive is something that can normally only be done by specialist software and certainly not from within Windows. Here a piece of hardware that can duplicate two bare drives or a single bare drive and one connected via eSATA or USB2.

My first flat panel was 1600x1200 and had a 4:3 display. When I moved to 1920x1080 and 16:9 – where I have been since it initially looked strange – now Philips have a 16:10 and at 1920x1080 this is weird but install the software and view at 1920x1200 its good.

A name I know for powerful PCs, here a notebook running Windows 8, it does however not have ‘touch’. So is it a desirable thing to have a fast powerful notebook that runs an operating system that uses a front end that restricts it?

While I saw a prototype unit a couple of years ago at Google, earlier versions of Chromebooks have passed me by. Rather different to a PC notebook and also different from a Google Tablet a Chromebook is a category of its own.

This is another quality panel from a company in Holland who produce excellent panels but as they do not sell them under a well-known name you the user get the benefit without the added price that a known name carries in a premium.