The Nikon S1000pj projector camera: a gimmick with a future [updated]

Monday, October 5th, 2009

A little while back, when the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj compact camera was announced, we discussed it on the PC Pro podcast. This, it must be said, was the day after the announcement of its existence and so we hadn’t seen one. But the big news was this camera, rather bizarrely we thought, had a projector in it.

The general consensus at the time was that it was probably, maybe, possibly a good idea in the long run, but a gimmick as it stood. We reckoned it was your typical early-adopter-only product.

Well, I’m eating our collective words now that I’ve spent the weekend playing with one. (more…)

The digital camera that makes babies happy

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Those clever camera manufacturers will stop at nothing to enhance our lives, and increase the already near-unbearable mirth of the everyday, by means of clever electronics. And so to London’s Imagination Gallery this afternoon, where Samsung was showing off its latest round of cameras. The most interesting of which sports not one screen, but quite literally double that number. Yes that’s right, two screens! One on the back (soooo last season) and one implausibly positioned (hold on to your seats) at the front. And look how happy it seems! (more…)

Those Intel wags!

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Perhaps it’s because it’s (relatively) early in the morning, but Intel appears to be making light of its €1 billion fine, levied for not playing fair with AMD. Or am I just reading too much into a feeble marketing line?

The recession, as measured in Canon cams

Friday, May 1st, 2009

We’ve got awfully used to technology getting cheaper by the year over the past decade. But the party’s over. I got my hands on Canon’s newest EOS DSLR camera this week, in the form of the EOS 500D (we’ll have a full review next week).

It’s a nice enough addition to the legendary DSLR range that began with the 300D in 2004, but the price is flabbergasting. (more…)

All your computer are belong to us

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

To London’s Charlotte Street Hotel this morning, and the official UK launch event for Intel’s new Xeon 5500 series CPUs – the ones with that ever-so-fast Nehalem architecture in them. (No, it wasn’t a joke. Real things do happen on April 1st.)

It wasn’t the most surprising launch of a server processor ever, but server events aren’t usually renowned for thrills and spills.

Some interesting figures emerged though. They show in just two slides the market reality behind Sun being swallowed up by IBM a few weeks ago, and the sheer dominance of Intel when it comes to processors in everything from enterprise servers to netbooks. (more…)

Full HD – not all it’s cracked up to be

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Being embroiled in a digital compact cameras group test at the moment, I’ve noticed an insidious little logo starting to appear on boxes and the little tags attached to new cameras. The logo says, “Full HD”. Nothing wrong with that of course, except it often refers to still-image resolution.

It’s not wrong but it’s certainly surprising, if you do the maths. (more…)

How to connect your PC to your hi-fi

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

It appears there’s some confusion, even among a few of my colleagues, about audio and PC speakers and amplifiers and stuff like that. Specifically, whether you can plug a PC into normal stereo speakers, whether it will work if you do and how to do it. We’ll start with a few simple facts in handy question-and-answer format.

Can I use normal living-room stereo speakers with my PC?

Probably not directly, but essentially yes. There’s no fundamental difference between PC speakers and normal speakers, except that PC speakers have a built-in amplifier. To use standard hi-fi stereo speakers you just need an amplifier to drive them. So, either get yourself a separate hi-fi amp and speakers, or take the cheap option and plug your PC into the stereo in the living room.

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Microsoft Live Mesh: Gateway to Paradise

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

And so regular listeners to the PC Pro podcast, and anyone who read our Ten Techs to Watch in 2009 feature, will know that we really rather like Microsoft’s Live Mesh utility. But we haven’t actually written anything specifically about it yet, so I’m going to tell you why Microsoft has, for the first time ever, produced a piece of software that I would call brilliant. Honestly, genuinely brilliant. It’s currently in beta but that doesn’t mean you should waste any time in installing it. (more…)

The £250 Challenge: Vote for the High Street

Monday, March 16th, 2009

To recap: after quite a lot of legwork up and down Tottenham Court Rd and copious use of the magic phrase (“What’s your best price on this?”) it soon became obvious that getting a desktop PC with a monitor, as required by the £250 Challenge – wasn’t possible for £250. I could have managed £280, but not £250. So in the end I went for an Acer Aspire laptop. Alas, it wasn’t brand new, but reconditioned by Acer and on offer for £250 on the dot. Given that the original selling price was £399, I was pretty chuffed with the deal. The picture above is the actual laptop – isn’t it pretty?

So how does it measure up to the other machines in the challenge? Well I don’t want to be negative about my lovely colleagues, but this is a contest so the gloves are off: frankly the competition is a bit feeble.
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Green IT looking pale at CeBIT

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

One of the primary themes of CeBIT this year was supposed to be Green IT. Interest in the subject is “overwhelming” according to the CeBIT website.
And indeed there’s an entire hall dedicated to it this year, albeit one of the smaller ones. But still hall 8 – “Green IT World” – is sparsely occupied. The subdued ambience is a long way from the heaving mass of bodies in hall 21, where the likes of MSI and Gigabyte are showing off their shiny stuff amid loud music and pneumatic young ladies wearing shirts which appear, very regrettably, to have shrunk in the wash.

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