Platforms

Targus 14 in 1 USB Card Reader Review (78%)
Summary
Works without a problem, doing all you’d expect – 78%
US Street Price $25
Review
As your collection of digital devices grows, you’ll probably find it near-impossible to stick with just the one memory card format as the pesky things keep on changing.
Looking around our office workspace we can see a depressingly long list of electronic gizmos all using different cards, including SD cards ( Pure DMX-50 DAB/CD system and iMate JAM smartphone), Sony Memory sticks (Sony V3 camera and Sony PDA), XD picture card (Fuji F10 camera) and compact flash (Nikon D70).
Getting data off these various cards usually means a trip to the back of the PC to install the various cables that came with all your camera/smartphone etc (when will they standardise all the ruddy USB connecters?!).
Things get more complicated away from home when filling your holiday bag with a lasso’s worth of different cables isn’t an attractive option.
So here’s where a USB Multi-card reader comes in handy.
With most memory card readers offering support for a huge variety of memory cards, all you need to take on the road is a single USB lead to connect the card reader to your laptop and you’re sorted!
Moreover, if you forget your camera’s battery charger while you’re away, you’ll be able to save precious battery life by using the card reader, instead of having to turn the camera on to transfer pics.
We were sadly guilty of leaving the charger for our Nikon N70 back in Blighty during out recent jaunt to NYC, and after seeing the battery levels accelerating downwards as we transferred zillions of images to our laptop, we shelled out for a cheap’n’cheerful Targus card reader, the TG-CRD14 ($25 street price).
As its name suggests, this compact little feller (9.4cm x 5.5cm x 1.9cm) can read and write to 14 different formats, including CF I&II, IBM Micro Drive, SM, SD, MMC, MS, XD and MS Pro.
Installation was a breeze – just plug in and go, with no drivers or power sources needed. Simple. And there’s even a pretty flashing LED to look at when the reader is being accessed!
The USB 2.0 interface guaranteed that files flew across to our desktop, and the reader’s multi card support, backwards USB 1.1 compatibility and Windows XP & Mac OSXM support should see us in good stead for the future.
Summary
Works without a problem, doing all you’d expect – 78%
US Street Price $25
Targus
16 December, 2005
Samsung Launch Petite Projectors
It wasn’t that long ago that lugging around a projector was the first step on the painful route to a guaranteed hernia, but thanks to the wizardry of boffins and the onward march of technology, projectors are no longer the size of small houses.
If proof were needed of these amazing shrinking devices, Toshiba have announced the launch date of their TDP-FF1A Pocket LED Projector, first reported here in September.
The bijou little fella measures up at just 140x102x57mm and weighs in at a backpack-untroubling 565g – around 115g lighter than their Pocket Imager SP-300M (see below).
The contrast ratio is 1500:1, with the projector revealing the limitations of its diminutive proportions by only supporting resolutions up to 800×600.
The TDP-FF1A (try saying that with a mouthful of tea) also comes with a handy USB port to let photographers directly display their photos straight off the camera.
For added portability, the device takes a 250g battery pack which delivers a claimed battery life of 2 hours.
The TDP-FF1A will go on sale January 2006, priced around €700 (£475, $842) – noticeably €300 down from its original announced price.
Samsung Pocket Imager SP-P300M projector.
Also shown off at the September IFA 2005 in Berlin was Samsung’s neat Pocket Imager SP-P300M projector.
Even smaller than the TDP-FF1A, the SP-P300M (P300) measures 128x85x53 mm, weighs a lightweight 680g and looks well cool.
The attractive LED projector sports a contrast ratio is 1000:1 with an impressively high claimed bulb life of 10,000 hours.
An optional battery can keep the Pocket Imager doing its projecting thing for a claimed for 2.5 hours.
Samsung will be showing off the P300 at CES 2006 in Las Vegas, 5th-8th of January 2006 and the unit is expected to retail for about $1,060 (£507, €899).
These so-called “pocket sized” projectors look set to be all the rage in the new year, with both Epson and Mitsubishi also developing rival models.
Samsung
15 December, 2005
Intel Napa: Dual-Core Laptop Chips
Intel has been bigging up its next-generation laptop technology, claiming they will use 25 percent less power while retaining class-leading performance.
Encouraged by a fast-growing laptop market, the boffins at Intel have been busily overhauling their popular Centrino technology, proudly unveiling ‘Napa’, a new Centrino featuring Intel’s new Yonah microprocessor – the first mobile chip to boast two cores.
The chip is the result of the latest whiz bang technology which is capable of etching circuitry more than 100 times thinner than a strand of Bobby Charlton’s comb-over.
According to Intel’s marketing chief for mobile platforms, Keith Kressin, this process means that the Napa system (which includes the Yonah processor, its attendant chipset and a new wireless chip) will soak up 28 percent less power than its predecessor while managing to perform 68 percent better
“There are benefits to corporate users, there are benefits to consumers,” he added, probably before going on about the benefits to the birds and the bees too.
Twin core machines are growing in popularity (we’ll be getting one shortly), with the technology letting users perform several tasks at the same time without the machine grinding to a halt.
For example, one core could be busying itself by updating a complex spreadsheet, while the other core could be taking care of some heavy duty Photoshop work.
Intel are hoping that the improved battery life will prove attractive to customers too,
The tough challenge for Intel’s engineers is shoehorning ever more powerful processors into ever-slimmer laptops while improving battery life and managing to dissipate the processor’s heat.
In the last quarter, Intel scooped up an estimated $2.3 billion from sales of laptop processors, with laptop chip revenue providing a growing slice of Intel’s business.
Sales accounted for a third for a third of total processor sales in the third quarter, up from around 27 percent a year earlier.
Centrino
14 December, 2005
Mio A201 GPS PDA Out For Chrimbo
Out just in time for overgrown boys to stick it on their Santa wish list, Mio Technology have announced their new Mio A201 integrated GPS model.
In an increasingly crowded marketplace the Mio A201 aims to stand out from the pack by offering a rotating GPS antenna, letting users navigate in both portrait and landscape mode.
Screen modes can be automatically switched by rotating the antenna or tapping a button, with the addition of the latest 20-channel SirfStar III GPS Chipset enhancing GPS satellite signal pick up and reception.
Mio are promoting the device as a ‘go anywhere’ portable sat-nav device which can be used for drivers, mountain bikes or walkers ambling through the countryside.
The Mio A201 is fully compatible with the TMC (Traffic Message Channel) which provides constant updates and routing options on nearby traffic problems, automatically calculating alternative routes through problem areas.
That all sounds great except users have to fork out extra for the required TMC receiver and even then the service doesn’t work in the UK and France. But thanks for telling us what we can’t use Mio!
The Mio A201 will, however, support the latest version of the Mio Map software, version 2 for Pocket PC, now sporting what the makers call a “fresh new interface.”
There’s the usual Outlook synchronisation options available, and we rather liked the new Compass Mode designed for navigating off road on foot or on a bicycle.
The onboard Points of Interest (POI) database has also been updated to include restaurant telephone numbers, with the ability to download new or customised point of interest lists from a Web-based subscription service.
Running on Windows Mobile 5, the Sat Nav PDA sports a 320 x 240 pixel, colour LCD touch-screen and purrs along on a 312Mhz Intel Bulverde processor supported by 64MB of RAM.
Bundled software includes Outlook Mobile Contacts and Calendar, Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile, games and Windows Media Player.
There’s Bluetooth connectivity onboard with the swappable lithium-ion 1200 mAh battery delivering a claimed 4.5 hours of operation.
The Mio A201 will be available mid- December priced at £239, with the stingy fellows not including any mapping software.
Mio
13 December, 2005
Pocket PCs Are For Blokes Survey Finds
Pocket PC software company SPB ran a survey of its users during November 2005, and discovered that a staggering 96% of those taking part were blokes.
Proof indeed that women have got far better things to do with their time than fill in long, geek-tastic surveys, the research also revealed that the majority of those responding were (surprise, surprise!) in a computer related occupation (18%), followed by students and engineers at 9% and sales/marketing/advertising coming in fourth with 5%.
The Dell Axim x50v came out as the most popular handheld (12%), followed by the iPaq 4700 (8%) and the Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 718/720 (5%).
The majority of users (22%) said that they had been using Pocket PCs for between 1-2 years, with 20% owning the devices for between 6 to 12 months.Just 11% claimed to be Pocket PC old-timers, with 4-5 years of use on the clock.
As for accessories, memory cards, unsurprisingly, were the essential purchase for 85% of respondents, with 69% forking out for screen protectors.
Cases were the next most popular purchase (63%) followed by styluses (40%), GPS (36%), extra batteries (30%), keyboards (23%) and wi-fi cards (18%).
SD (SecureDigital Card) memory cards were the most popular format at 88%, followed by CF (CompactFlash Card) 40%, MMC (MultiMedia Card) 11% and Mini SD with 10%.
With Pocket PCs increasingly becoming multimedia devices, storage requirements are going up, with over half of respondents owning 1 gig memory cards, followed by 512, 256 and 128 meg cards respectively.
The vast majority of Pocket PC users (85%) connect to the internet with their machines, with 72% browsing the web, 65% checking email and 35% using instant messaging.
We must point out that the results of this self-selecting survey, although interesting, should be taken with a Matterhorn-sized slab of Saxa as the SPB website comes loaded with a crateload of caveats.But it’s worth a look: SPB Software
12 December, 2005
65.9% of UK Households Watching Digital TV
Ofcom has published its Digital Television Update for the third quarter of 2005, revealing that two thirds of UK households now watch digital television.
The figures show that digital television was viewed in 65.9% of UK households (up from 63.0% in the previous quarter), with 2.6% of households receiving television services via analogue cable, bringing the total receiving some form of multi-channel television to around 68.5%.
By the end of September 2005, the total number of households viewing digital television swelled by more than 760,000 to around 16.5 million, with more than 6.3 million free-to-view digital households (Freeview/free-to-view satellite).
The number of households with Freeview as their only source of digital television viewing was estimated at 5,775,000 – up by 600,000 homes during the quarter.
Sales of Freeview (Digital Terrestrial Television or DTT) set-top boxes and televisions with integrated DTT tuners are booming, with more than one million sales registered during the quarter – a whopping 55% increase against the same quarter last year.
During the same period, BSkyB notched up another 48,000 subscribers, bringing its total number of UK subscribers to 7,472,000, with Ofcom estimating that there are also around 545,000 free-to-view digital satellite homes (this includes viewers who no longer fork out for a BSkyB subscription but still use the box for the freebie channels).
Digital cable subscribers now account for more than 2.6 million of the total cable television homes, increasing by more than 43,300 in the quarter, while subscriptions to analogue and digital cable television decreased slightly to just below 3.3 million in the quarter (due to a fall in analogue cable subscribers outweighing the increase in digital cable subscriptions).
This healthy take-up of digital television will be encouraging news for the government who are committed to a digital switchover between 2008 and 2012.
Ofcom Digital Television Update – 2005 Q3 [pdf]
12 December, 2005
MSI StarCam 370i Review: OK Webcam (72%)
When we saw MSI’s feature packed StarCam 370i knocking out for a mere £15 online ($26, €22), we thought it would make an ideal replacement for our elderly (and somewhat battle-weary) Sony cam, currently gazing out over the delights of Brixton.
The camera comes on a long bendy stalk with a metal foot which makes it easy to get the perfect camera angle, although it’s clearly not much use if you’re looking to hook it on to your laptop screen.
Unusually, the camera comes with two sets of LEDs – the first (activated by a switch on the side of the webcam) turns on three white lights which are strong enough to illuminate the user, and the second produces an infra red beam to allow video chats in low light.
Getting the USB camera up and running was easy enough – just install the software, plug in and go.
A rudimentary software control panel lets users fiddle about with image/video parameters (gamma, brightness, contrast etc), and budding Jean-Luc Godard’s can select the black and white option for arty scenes.
Video rates can be set from a default 15 fps right up to 640×480 at 30fps. Image quality was fairly smooth, apart from small wobbling horizontal lines which constantly flickered all over the display.
The stills camera lets users capture images from VGA (640 x 480), interpolating up to SXGA (1280 x 1024) with the quality best being described as adequate.
Sadly, the horizontal interference remained our constant companion throughout the review and we soon discovered that placing the capture switch on the actual cam itself, also increased the chance of camera shake.
The cam also features a built in microphone which was, as you might expect, fairly basic and lo-fi, but good enough for Internet calls.
We initially tested the camera on our Webcam but quickly realised its limitations, with the software proving incapable of handling major changes in lighting.
Setting the camera to ‘auto’ meant that images would start off perfectly exposed at the start of the day but as conditions changed, we’d often be left with wildly under/over exposed images.
It was all the more frustrating because the actual image quality (horizontal lines notwithstanding) was significantly better than our Sony device, but as such we can’t recommend the StarCam as an unattended Webcam.
We can, however, recommend it for anyone looking for a basic, cheap as chips Webcam for video chats with friends and relatives.
The built-in lights and infrared features aren’t particularly compelling, but they contribute to a fun Webcam package that helps the camera stand out from the pack.
Features:7/10
Ease of use: 7/10
Stills quality: 3/10
Video quality: 5/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 72%
Specifications
Camera Lens 1/4″ CMOS sensor 5G Glass Lens
Pixel VGA Format 640×480
Resolution 640×480, 352×288, 320×240, 176×144, 160×120
Frame per sec Up to 30fbs@(640×480)
Capture Resolution Up to 640×480 (interpolated 1280×1024)
Focus Distance 3cm~infinity
Operation System Windows98/2000/Me/XP
MSI StarCam 370i Webcam
9 December, 2005
LG-SB130: Pause Live TV On Your Mobile Phone
Say hello to the LG SB130-KB1300 handset, a clever-clogs, do-it-all device that can do play and pause live TV as well as deal with every multimedia-type task you can lob at it.
The LG LG-SB130 claims to be the first in the world to be able to pause a live television broadcast playing on its screen so that users could, for example, take an incoming call, and then pick up where they left off once the call is finished.
This piece of technical jiggery-pokery is achieved courtesy of LG’s ‘Time Machine’ feature, which can record live TV transmissions to the phone’s 80Mb internal flash memory.
This memory can apparently fit up to an hour’s worth of broadcasting before it starts writing over the oldest bits with new content.
The all-in-one device (also known as the KB1300 ) can also can play back video (DMB), play back music (MP3) and snap two megapixel pictures courtesy of its built in AutoFocus camera.
But no amount of technical prowess and enthusiastic grinning from obliging Korean models can detract from the fact that’s the phone’s a bit of an ugly fella.
Looking like a mutant Transformer, you half expect the thing to cunningly fold up into a robot shape, but there is a method to its madness, with the oddball swivelling screen making it ideal for holding the phone and watching TV.
The aerial’s a bit of a beefy affair too, but we doubt if the geeky market the phone’s aimed at are going to mind.
Naturally, we’ve haven’t the faintest idea when – or even if – this weird looking gizmo is ever going to be released in Europe, but we definitely like the idea of watching – and pausing – live TV on the go.
Babelfish afficiandos can find out more about the phone at LG’s Korean site.
7 December, 2005
Creative Zen Vision Goes On Sale In Japan
Creative are set to take on Apple’s video-enabled fifth-generation iPod with their new Zen Vision:M player, due to be announced tomorrow.
Christened the Zen Vision:M, the new player packs a 30GB hard drive and a large 2.5in, 262k-colour, 320 x 240 LCD into its diminutive 10.4 x 6.2 x 1.9cm proportions.
The Vision:M can play back MPEG 1, 2 and 4, WMV 9, Motion JPEG, DivX 4 and 5 and XviD video files, and display photos saved in the JPEG format only (so tough luck to RAW photographers looking for a handy all-in-one storage device.)
Creative claim that the rechargeable battery can keep punters entertained for four hours in video-playback mode – twice as long as the iPod’s two hours.
Music formats supported include MP3, WMA with DRM and WAV and there’s a handy built in recordable. Creative claim music can be played back for fourteen hours on a single charge.
The attractive looking unit weighs in at 166g, 30g more than the 30GB iPod’s 136g and share similar proportions (and design) – although the Zen is substantially deeper than the iPod.
The Vision:M sports a slim connector which suggests that there’s a raft of compatible accessories on the horizon, both from Creative and third parties.
It’s a shame seeing a company as, err, creative as Creative coming up with a design so obviously ‘inspired’ by the iPod, but perhaps it’s a sign that they’re signing up to a philosophy of, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
The Vision:M goes on sale in Japan in mid-December for about a trillion Yen (well, OK, 39,800) which converts into a reasonable £190 ($329, €280) and it’ll be available in not-at-all-copying-iPod pure white, definitely-not-Nano-esque black and a rather jaunty green which we like best. It launches in London tomorrow.
Creative
7 December, 2005
Funky SH902i FOMA Handset Launched By Sharp Japan/NTT
Japan Sharp and NTT DoCoMo will be launching the SH902i FOMA, their funky new 3G clamshell phone in Japan this week.
The sleek swivel-flip phone is dominated by a hefty 2.4-inch, QVGA (240×320) screen which incorporates Advance Super View (ASV) technology.
This limits the viewing angle of the screen to keep nosey Parkers from getting an eyeful of your personal SMS or emails – handy if you like to plot the premature death of your boss in the staff canteen.
As ever, there’s a veritable feast o’multimedia bolted on board, with the all-swivellin’, all-flippin’, shiny handset coming with an impressive 3.16 megapixel autofocus camera, an MP3 Player and the highly rated NetFront Web browser.
For expansion, there’s a miniSD slot available that can read cards up to 1GB.
Because the phone is aimed at the hip’n’groovy crowd, it comes in a range of colours with the usual daft names (Carbon Red, Leather Black, Shell Blue and Glass White).
The phone goes on sale in Japan on December 9th with no date set for us technology-starved folks in Britland.
If multimedia-tastic whirring Flash animations in Japanese are your thing, you can find out more about the phone – and spin it around to your heart’s content – on the 902i Website
6 December, 2005