Technology Grange-over-Sands
Technology has become a huge part of our daily lives and if you want to keep up with what's new, read on. The following articles will tell you all about how to be savvy so you can keep up with the rapidly changing world of technology.
Netbooks have exploded onto the market. And apparently it was a surprise to everyone in the computing industry that Joe Public fell in love with them. Oddly, it seemed we weren't interested in investing the monetary equivalent of a luxury Mauritius holiday in buying a steel box of components that connects to the internet and goes beep occasionally.
The Goodmans GDB9 proves itself to be a very competent picture provider, even making tripe such as The Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV1 look good. It's a whizz with colours, delivering the bold, bright hues of Alan's pukeworthy sets with no banding or edge bleed, and the image looks fairly detailed to boot.
Although they take the hassle out of juggling several zappers at once the cleverer universal remotes are, the more expensive they tend to be.
The distinctive blue lights of Gamut CD3 are a perfect aesthetic match for the excellent DI 150 integrated amp. This article tells serves as an introduction to the product from construction and performance.
Plasma pioneer Fujitsu is the brand of choice for most of the custom install industry. By positioning itself away from the hurly-burly of most TV high-street action, it's managed to protect itself from the chaos of falling prices. But a consequence is that it's probably not the first brand most of us think of when we think PDP.
When compiling your essential Windows XP or Vista toolkit, it makes sense to source as many free tools as you possibly can. So check out this list of ten of our favourite free system tools and plug some gaps in your software collection.
The AL8 available in Grange-over-Sands is packed with good features, in particular the decent on-board sound and support for next-generation hard drives and processors. If you're eyeing up a Pentium D then the AL8 is certainly worth considering.
The AW8-MAX gets off to a flying start, with layout that's neat, tidy and uncluttered. The use of passive cooling for the high-end Intel 955X Northbridge helps to achieve this, and instead of a chunky fan, there's simply a thin heatpipe that shifts heat directly to a radiator situated on the back panel.
If you want decent performance from your Socket 939 Athlon 64 then the Fatal1ty AN8 is a reasonable choice. But if you're hoping that the OTES and RAMFlow will aid overclocking then you'll be disappointed.
In terms of performance and overclockability, the Abit does nothing to distinguish itself from the other nForce4 SLI boards available in Grange-over-Sands. However, the Abit does have distinguishing features, particularly the Guru Panel, and it also looks great and has some good BIOS features. If these factors are important to you then the Abit would provide a solid foundation for a powerful Athlon 64 PC.
Acer is one of the most aggressive laptop manufacturers at the moment, and is constantly offering competitive specifications at good prices. The Acer Aspire 7520-6A1G08Mi (399 inc VAT) is a great example, as this machine not only packs in a dual-core processor, but is also a very feature-rich laptop.
Bluetooth and Infrared can be used to wirelessly sync external peripherals. 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi also allows connection to wireless hotspots in any country.
Almost two years ago, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the web design community, Adobe acquired multimedia software developer and rival Macromedia. Flash was the pinnacle of its portfolio but now it has the Adobe badge on the box.
PC World produces its own in-house brand of laptops that come under the Advent name. While lacking the same brand awareness as a Sony or Toshiba, they are intended to offer the best specication for the price.
The Altec Lansing inMotion iM7 works with bottomdock iPods and iPod minis (an adaptor for minis is included). The panel you slot your iPod into has a clever soft-eject mechanism. The iPod doesn't fit that snugly in the slot, though.
While most manufacturers of 2.5in portable hard drives are concentrating on making them as small and robust as possible while adding ever more capacious disks, Amacom's ezSecure is a bulky, 160GB device that looks less than stylish.
The X2 4800+'s superb performance in single-threaded applications makes it much more flexible than the 840, which only really shines in a multithreaded environment. Arguably, it's this flexibility, and its killer game performance, that will make the X2 4800+ more attractive to enthusiasts in Grange-over-Sands.
The Titan is a sleek and understated beast of a case, and it's extremely sturdy and very well designed. It's not as flexible as the Cooler Master Stacke for water cooling but, as a case for a high-end PC, it certainly gives the SilverStone TJ05 Temjin a run for its money.
Having S-Video and HDTV-compatible component video outputs means the card is ideal for a media PC connected to a TV, projector or plasma display. And for people in Grange-over-Sands who want to play games on a media PC, the AOpen provides more than enough power, provided you stick to low resolutions.
The Nouveau available in Grange-over-Sands might have a shortsighted name, but it's actually a good case that will be able to take upgrades for a few years to come. There are plenty of drive bays for additional storage, and the cooling is good, although a 120mm fan at the front would have been preferable to the 92mm mount.
To date, the iMac remains our favourite desktop Mac, just because it's so versatile. The 24- inch display on this model is a little freakish, admittedly, but the upgraded graphics card and processor power it well enough.
There's little doubt the iPhone has been the gadget of the past year, but the iPod touch comes a close second. It's an astonishing piece of hardware that is dominated by the bright and vibrant 3.5-inch screen and the touch interface is an absolute revelation compared to the clunky control systems used by other manufacturers.
Apple has announced a final build of its version 3 Safari web browser for Mac and PC. But is it worth you even looking at it? The question, of course, is whether it offers anything over and above the well-worn alternatives.
It's a good size standmount, deeper than most and finished in black or white high gloss as standard, with nicely radiused edges, but there's no grille provision. Other high-gloss automotive finishes are available and as the paints come from the same catalogue, you can also order a pair to match the Porsche parked in your drive!
This particular model avialble in Grange-over-Sands is a mid-range water-cooling kit, comprising a CPU waterblock, pump, reservoir and a radiator fitted with a variable-speed 120mm fan, all connected by 10mm ID tubing. Read on the following article to learn more information.
Like the Deluxe version, the A8N-SLI Premium is based on the Nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset and, like its illustrious ancestor, the A8N-SLI Premium is well laid out. It has the same wide spacing between the two high-speed PCI-E slots, which enables better airflow to a pair of graphics cards and allows more room for oversized HSFs or waterblocks.
Designed purely and simply as a gaming board, the Asus Rampage II Extreme falls under the Republic of Gamers branding, the ethos of which is to bring the best engineering, fastest performance and innovation to gaming enthusiasts.
Slip the UX30 available in Grange-over-Sands from its packaging and the first pleasant surprise is the absence of a black, glossy lid. More and more manufacturers are adopting the glossy design cliche, but while it looks good box-fresh, it soon loses its lustre thanks to grubby fingers.
Apple fans love to lord it over PC users when it comes to computer design, but while we'll grudgingly admit that we've yet to see a desktop PC that looks as lovely as a Mac, the same isn't true for laptops.
Intel's Core i7 (formerly known by its codename Nehalem) is a month away from official release; but when it does arrive it'll bring with it a completely new range of motherboards. The Core i7 architecture demands a new type of CPU socket and a new chipset known as X58.
In the good old days an HSF was something you bought if you couldn't afford a water-cooling kit or phase-change system. And most HSFs weren't much more than a lump of crudely-shaped aluminium with an unpleasantly loud fan whooshing away on top.
The HD 4730 available on the market in Grange-over-Sands has an enticing list of specifications for a supposed mid-range release. The core clock speed of 750MHz is higher than both the HD 4830 and HD 4850 and is equal to the HD 4870. Its 512MB of memory may be clocked at the same level as the HD 4830 - 900MHz - but it's GDDR5 RAM, better than the GDDR3 memory used in the older card.
In this Masterclass, we look at how you can make better use of your sequencer's compressor plug-in. We're going to use the compressor built-in to Cubase SX, but almost all compressor plug-ins work in the same way, so you will find the tips will work equally well on other sequencer platforms.
We've seen plenty of chunky mains cables over the years, but few rival this one for sheer bulk. Encased within an attractive three-colour nylon-braid sleeve, AudioQuest NRG-3 measures a whopping 13mm in diameter.
Aurousal is a relatively new operation. It started out with a smart-looking standmount speaker called the A1, based on a solitary port-loaded 'full range' Jordan drive unit with a 90mm metal foil diaphragm (that's claimed to flex progressively towards higher frequencies). As is usually the way with such systems, this crossover-less system had fine coherence, but delivered limited performance as one moved towards the top and bottom extremes of the audio band.
Building the infrastructure for a digital home can involve an incredible number of disparate boxes piled up in a corner of your living room together with all of their requisite cabling.
Performance PCs are at the mercy of their components. A system that defines the cutting edge one month can find its components in the bargain bins the next, reducing your purchase to an expensive extravagance.
This is the full fat version of the Belkin G+MIMO reviewed opposite. Both the G+MIMO and this straight MIMO modem router are interim models that feature some wireless tech that's better than 802.11g. These units can't be upgraded to 802.11n in the future.
The 22-inch BenQ G2200WT stands out because it is one of the few displays that offers more adjustment than a few degrees of tilt, providing swivel, height and pivot. Unfortunately, the pivot doesn't have an auto switch and there is no pivot software in the package, so we had to rely on the nVidia graphics drivers to rotate the image.
For the picture quality and the inclusion of that USB port and speaker we're willing to pay the premium. The BenQ Joybee GP1 has its flaws but it's the best pico-projector in Grange-over-Sands yet.
The BenQ W100 projects a widescreen image at native resolution of 854 x 480. That's definitely not high definition, but the BenQ can still accept 480p, 720p and 1080i high-definition signals and downscale them, accordingly.
Four years on since FXpansion first launched its drum-sample plug-in BFD to great acclaim, drum-hungry musicians are spoilt for choice. With its BFD2 though, FXpansion has undoubtedly upped the ante.
The GeForce 7800 GTX replaces Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra. We got in early on the act last month with a review of Gigabyte's card, the GV-NX78X256V-B. The initial GeForce 7800 GTX cards are based on the reference design, but while the BFG looks like every other GeForce 7800 GTX, it runs at higher clock speeds.
When you choose to Autoview a programme the Personal Planner takes the Digibox's VCR Scart pin 8 to high, which tells the Phantom to turn on the VCR and start a recording.
The drive for power efficiency is bringing up some innovative solutions, and Boston's GP 230 looks to hit the mark squarely since this is one of the first Intel Atom-based servers to market in Grange-over-Sands. It targets the three key areas of power consumption, noise levels and cost
