The BlackBerry typo that landed a man in jail

Friday, September 28th, 2012

There are quite a few stories on the Daily Mail website that are genuinely jaw-dropping, but none more so than the one that was brought to my attention by @allpointsnorth last night.

It concerns the case of 24-year-old swimming coach, Craig Evans, who was this week freed on appeal from an 18-month jail sentence for seemingly doing nothing more than accidentally sending an intimate text message to his entire address book.

Evans intended to send the message to his girlfriend, in which he reportedly asked her to have sex with him “skin on skin”, and asking whether she would prefer it to be “fast or slow”.  Nothing particularly explicit, although certainly not a message you’d want children to see.

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Barnes & Noble Nook HD and HD+ review: first look

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Amazon’s Kindles have ruled the roost for the past couple of years in the UK ebook reader market. But over the next couple of months, its position looks set to be assailed as never before. One of the new challengers is Barnes & Noble, which announced yesterday it would be launching two Nook HD tablets in the UK in November, to rival Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD models. We’ve had some hands-on time with them.

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AMD Trinity review: first look

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

This blog has now been updated with additional benchmarks and pricing details. See below for our verdict on AMD Trinity.

We’ve heaped praise on AMD’s Accelerated Processing Units in the past, and it’s clear that the firm is onto a winner by cramming a processor and a Radeon graphics core into the same package – its A8-3870K took home a Recommended award in our last processor Labs.

The next generation of desktop parts is here, and the new chips, codenamed Trinity, are set to offer a better balance of application performance, gaming power and price. AMD’s hoping its APUs take more of a fight to Intel thanks to the inclusion of Bulldozer cores – the same technology that’s currently on show in its FX processors. (more…)

Dell Latitude 6430u review: first look

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

If you’ve been trying in vain to sneak an Ultrabook through on expenses, Dell’s first business-centric Ultrabook, the Latitude 6430u, could be just the ticket. With enterprise-class security features and a chassis built to withstand the rigorous MIL-STD-810G military testing specifications, this is set to be the toughest, most practical Ultrabook yet.

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Dell Latitude 10 review: first look

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

We knew it was coming, but Dell has finally unveiled its business-friendly Windows 8 tablet, the Latitude 10. With a full-fat version of Windows 8 Pro, and Intel’s Clover Trail Atom processors at the helm, this 10.1in tablet could be just what many businesses have been waiting for.

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Motorola Razr i review: first look

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

There was a time when it was considered commercial suicide to launch any device, let alone another smartphone, at the same time as an Apple iPhone. Yet as Android has matured, rival manufacturers have steadily become bolder with the timing, and with the razzmatazz surrounding their announcements.

The latest to attempt to give Apple a black eye is Motorola with a new addition to its Razr family of smartphones. The Razr i will be available in the UK from the beginning of October.

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Intel NUC mini-PC review: first look

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

It’s not just transistors that are shrinking at Intel. In an unobtrusive corner of IDF, the company has been demonstrating its new “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) mini-PC, based on a 4in square motherboard and a tasteful moulded plastic case.

Internally, the NUC is powered by a 17-watt Core i3-3217U processor soldered to the underside of the motherboard. It’s a dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Ivy Bridge part clocked at 1.8GHz with no Turbo Boost – not exactly a powerhouse, but considerably more capable than the Atoms we’ve come to associate with tiny PCs.

The motherboard offers two SO-DIMM slots, supporting up to 16GB of DDR3, an mSATA slot for storage and a mini PCI-E slot for adding a wireless or other card as required. (more…)

Was Fujitsu just making up the numbers for BDUK?

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

Broadband officials were so desperate for a second company on the procurement framework for nationwide broadband projects that they had to beg a company since blacklisted by the government to get onboard the scheme.

BDUK is the official body responsible for handling the rollout of the UK’s partly public-funded broadband projects, but the framework put in place has been widely criticised as being too unwieldy and slow to attract operators.

According to a report in yesterday’s Financial Times, Fujitsu – along with BT one of only two companies cleared to bid for BDUK projects – has been blacklisted by the Cabinet Office for being too “high risk” to win future government contracts.

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Apple iPod nano review: first look

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

The new iPod nano got a bit lost among the larger devices launched by Apple on Wednesday, but it’s actually the most dramatic redesign of the three. Whether the small touchscreen of the old model was deemed too fiddly, or Apple just fancied doing something different, the new nano now has a 2.5in multitouch display that occupies most of the length of the device – all but for a new Home button at one end.

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Apple iPod Touch review: first look

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

The attention is all on the iPhone 5, but the new iPods deserve some love too. The new iPod Touch is lengthened just like the iPhone, and in fact uses the exact same screen, which means it’s 4in across and has a resolution of 1,136 x 640. And it’s bright. Very bright.

The Touch is thin and very light, with a curvier look and feel than the iPhone 5. (more…)