Jul 28th, 2009 - To be honest, these days it takes a new iPhone or maybe the latest Android-powered beast to get my smartphone pulse racing even if BlackBerry is the top of the smartphone pops in raw number terms. So news of a new BlackBerry, the Curve 8520 which was also know as Gemini during the many months of... (Read More)

Dec 9th, 2008 - Asus pretty much invented the whole netbook concept as we understand it today with the Eee PC, and for the longest time it sat pretty at the top of the netbook sales charts. The more astute reader might have noticed the past tense here, because Asus no longer rules the netbook roost it would seem.... (Read More)

Jun 16th, 2009 - There is little doubt that when it comes to consumer satellite navigation devices, TomTom pretty much rules the roost. There is equally little doubt that in the past it has made some pretty serious mistakes, such as introducing the world to the first virus infection distributed by a satnav device.... (Read More)

Jun 11th, 2009 - Everyone knows that China is not exactly the most Internet friendly country, in fact the Chinese government pretty much hates it. Despite being a truly connected superpower, the Chinese government has already declared war on Internet porn. Of course, the Internet is a cool tool when used as a... (Read More)

Apr 29th, 2009 - I hope I am not the only person who has occasionally thought that his mobile phone bears more than a passing resemblance to something straight out of Star Trek. Not being a Trekkie myself I cannot say whether it is a communicator or one of those handheld medical scanners, a tricorder is it? Anyway,... (Read More)

Feb 12th, 2009 - Sometimes you kind of know a gadget is going to fail, simply because it launches at the wrong time. A great example would be the Microsoft SPOT watch which was essentially an expensive and ungainly data-casting wristwatch that could show very small amounts of news and weather data while you walked.... (Read More)

Jan 7th, 2009 - Asus might have lost the netbook war to Acer, but it is fighting back as far as the keyboard PC wars are concerned. With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still a day away in Vegas, the geeky and gadgetry announcements are coming thick and fast. We've already got a taster of the new AMD Yukon... (Read More)

Oct 27th, 2008 - Dell has been pretty busy of late in the netbook market, what with the high profile launch of the shiny little Inspiron Mini 9 that caught the attention of media and public alike. About six weeks ago I was writing about how Tesco, the British supermarket giant, had slipped up and put details of... (Read More)

Aug 16th, 2008 - According to reports, Intel has decided that there will be no more Centrino Atom chipsets. Fear not, mobile Internet device loving gadget fans, for this does not mean the same thing as there being no more of the chipsets that are helping to power the ultra-low-cost mobile PC market. All it... (Read More)

Aug 12th, 2008 - VIA has a pretty long and glorious record when it comes to producing low budget but high performance motherboard chipsets. Indeed, for many shoestring performance PC enthusiasts VIA has achieved something nearing saintly status. Unfortunately, like all other saints, it seems that as far as the... (Read More)

Aug 2nd, 2008 - Wow! That's a lot of e-book reader hardware units. I mean, everyone knew these things were popular after selling out so quickly straight off the bat. But 240,000 units? Who would have thought there would be such a huge demand for this kind of technology. Especially since every e-book reader I have... (Read More)

Jul 9th, 2008 - Yes, I know it sounds pretty daft, but MIO has confirmed that it will be releasing a satnav built entirely around a Knight Rider theme next month in the US. Fans who want to experience that genuine eighties retro feel, but in a totally modern way, will just love KITT greeting them with "Hello... (Read More)

Jul 11th, 2008 - According to the Consumer Electronics Association the global revenue for consumer electronics will jump 10 percent this year, reaching a staggering $700 billion by next year. In its Worldwide Consumer Electronics Sales & Forecast report, the CEA says that consumers will spend $42 billion more in... (Read More)

Jul 2nd, 2008 - Matrox has announced what it claims to be the first true QuadHead GPU, the Matrox M-Series. Which begs the question, just how many monitors do you need? With 512 MB of memory, native PCIe x16 performance and a fanless design for quiet operation you might think Matrox has done enough with the new... (Read More)

May 12th, 2008 - News is breaking that Microsoft is preparing a 65nm GPU for the next Xbox 360, codename Jasper and due in August. The most recent updates to the ever popular games console, namely the Falcon revision, seem to have helped a lot with RRoD failure: also known as Red Ring of Death. This occurs when the... (Read More)

May 3rd, 2008 - Rather aptly located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Computer History Museum will open its doors to the Charles Babbage Difference Engine Number 2 on May 10th. One of only two such working devices in existence, the first being housed within the Science Museum in London, the Babbage Engine holds... (Read More)

Apr 27th, 2008 - Can it really be 4 years back that Microsoft produced that always destined to fail product the datacasting SPOT watch? Yep, apparently it can, and apparently it has finally been killed off once and for all. Heck, how could it have succeeded? Cast your mind back to 2004 and think of the exciting new... (Read More)

Jul 26th, 2007 - In what could prove to be of major importance to the future of motherboard and component data transfer rates, the Photonics Technology Lab at Intel has announced a silicon laser modulator that can encode data at 40Gb/sec. According to Dr. Ansheng Liu, Principal Engineer with the Intel Corporate... (Read More)

Jul 2nd, 2007 - It has always been something of a running joke here in England, where you have to buy a license from the government in order to watch TV (I kid you not, it helps fund the good old BBC), that blind people get a 50 percent reduction on the annual £135 ($271) fee. Some might say that not being... (Read More)

May 10th, 2007 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced the world’s highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive and it will feature in Dell and Alienware systems. The 2.5”, 200Gb, 7200rpm, Travelstar 7K200 brings twice the capacity of its predecessor as well as a 22 percent performance... (Read More)

Dec 9th, 2006 - Just as the games console which has the honor of being at once both one of the most innovative entertainment devices to arrive in our homes and the most stupidly named, the Nintendo Wii, arrives on the market so a lawsuit starts that attacks the very heart of that innovation: the remote control. ... (Read More)

Feb 15th, 2009 - Has the world gone mad? Sony is getting set to launch a cellphone with, wait for it, no less than a 12.1 megapixel camera built in. To put that in to some perspective, I take photographs for publication as part of my day to day working life as a jobbing journalist. The digital camera I use has 8... (Read More)

Feb 8th, 2009 - A week ago I was reporting how 'leaked' documents were suggesting that the PlayStation 4 would build upon existing CELL processor architecture with the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE). At the time I said that this was good news, not bad, in that it meant costs should be kept down and that will be... (Read More)

Dec 1st, 2008 - Now that, if you are a hardcore PC gamer, is cool. ASUS has announced the availability of what it claims is the world's first quad core gaming notebook. The G71 series is powered by the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor, and has had 'overspeed protection' removed to push it through the... (Read More)

Oct 29th, 2008 - At the risk of being sexist, does anyone really fall for this 'computers for the ladies' hard sell? I am assuming that the answer must be yes, otherwise companies would not keep pumping out the pink gadgets and Hewlett Packard would not have come up with the special edition ladies 'clutch' netbook.... (Read More)

Sep 21st, 2008 - "It’s Harvard or Yale, Harpic or Domestos, AA or RAC, PC or Mac. Binary tribalism: Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a song about it" writes Stephen Fry as he explains that when it comes to the world of serious digital photography that choice is pretty much narrowed down to Canon or Nikon. Stephen Fry,... (Read More)

Aug 14th, 2008 - It seems that the draft spec for USB 3.0 has been released by Intel following much online speculation over exactly what the technology would and would not be able to do. To be precise, what Intel has released is the 'Extensible Host Controller Interface draft specification revision 0.9' for... (Read More)

Jun 24th, 2008 - Zotac has today announced the availability of what it claims is the fastest core clock speed for a graphics card straight out of the box. The GTX 280 AMP! Edition overclocks the NVIDIA GTX 280 card to top, are you ready for this, 700 MHz. OK, so it adds about £30 ($60) to the cost of a standard... (Read More)

Jun 20th, 2008 - Those clever boffins at the University of Bath, England have managed to develop a machine called RepRap which can, effectively, replicate itself. The boffins themselves describe it as being a 3D printer which can print, or rather produce, real mechanical parts. Perhaps most interesting is the claim... (Read More)

Jun 12th, 2008 - Do any of the following sound familiar? Intel is not only driving but actually creating the USB 3 specification, while at the same time refusing to share the full spec with the industry, oh and don't forget that it has 'borrowed heavily' from the PCI Special Interests Group. They all do to... (Read More)

May 15th, 2008 - PC Pro is reporting that Intel hopes that its Chinese manufacturing plant is back in production by next week, but following the earthquake disaster has to admit that the situation could best be described as being 'dynamic.' The chip packaging plant in Chengdu, some 60 miles away from the... (Read More)

Apr 23rd, 2008 - According to Fujitsu Siemens Computers the days of simply upgrading to faster processors in order to squeeze extra performance out of legacy applications are rapidly coming to an end. In a press release distributed today the company warns that the increasing use of multi-core processors, and the... (Read More)

Apr 12th, 2008 - New Scientist magazine has compiled a pretty darn interesting list of what it says are the top ten weirdest computers ever. Some are weirder than others, like the chap at the University of Illinois who has developed a method of creating 3D optical waveguides out of photonic crystals, with the... (Read More)

Mar 12th, 2008 - Remember those X-Ray Specs you could order as a kid from the newspaper classifieds that promised the ability to see through clothes to the undergarments below? I do, and I can report that they most certainly did not work - much to my disappointment as a 10 year old kid. Well it appears that now... (Read More)

Mar 8th, 2008 - Epson is making a play for the green printer market by launching a laser toner cartridge return and recycle programme as part of a long term commitment to be more environmentally friendly in its dealings with customers regarding printing solutions. The new scheme, here in the UK at any rate, pretty... (Read More)

Feb 18th, 2008 - So it would appear that the long and bloody war between the next-generation of high definition DVD formats is coming to a close, with word on the grapevine suggesting that the HD DVD commander-in-chief Toshiba is ready to surrender. While there will be the inevitable continuation of small... (Read More)

Jul 12th, 2007 - Is Blu-Ray dead in the European water? Independent pan-European research by GfK has today revealed that Blu-Ray may not be winning the high definition race after all, despite much brouhaha. In fact, according to the report on the state of the standalone high definition player market in Europe,... (Read More)

May 22nd, 2007 - Sapphire Technology has announced a new addition to the HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics accelerator families scheduled for a July release, the completely passively cooled HD 2600 XT Ultimate Edition. As fans of the Sapphire Ultimate Edition family will already be aware, these are renowned for not only... (Read More)

Jun 3rd, 2008 - It's unsurprising that a report in the UK says that there are gross variations in the speed picked up by broadband customers in different areas of the UK. I have no doubt this is the same in the US and elsewhere. The major population centres get the faster broadband, if you hadn't guessed as much.... (Read More)

Apr 16th, 2007 - As Intel and AMD continue to war for control of the desktop microprocessor market, a recent announcement made by HP shows that a third company, VIA, is still a contender. HP has chosen VIA microprocessors for new Compaq thin-client PCs for sale in China. They're cheaper and more energy efficient... (Read More)