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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Netbook rivals battle it out at CeBIT

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

The big netbook guns are out in the halls of CeBIT this year, with MSI, Asus and now Gigabyte showing a raft of new low-cost models. Here’s a round-up of what’s new.

MSI
On the MSI stand, the Wind U100 series has blossomed into the U110, U115 and U123 series. The U110 Eco promises to bring the Wind’s Achilles Heel – its battery life – up to snuff, with a claimed 12 hours on the standard battery. MSI says this is possible with the use of the new Intel Menlow mobile platform, originally intended for Intel’s pet MID (mobile internet device) product category but now half-inched for netbooks.

The U115 is, MSI claims, the first hybrid netbook with both SSD and hard disk storage, but aside from that looks the same as the U110, and both share the same styling as the original Wind U100:

The Wind U123 is slightly higher-end, with a posher, more angular look and aimed at business users, and it brings an integrated 3G broadband adapter to the Wind range:

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Robot servants in sight!

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

In the field of technology prediction, “twenty years” is a strange Neverland. How many times have you heard an expert confidently predict a brilliant new technology will arrive in about twenty years? And how many times has any two-decades-away tech ever actually materialised?

Fortunately, the cynicism in my tone won’t stop researchers trying to develop brilliant things that will change our lives but are forever just about twenty years over the horizon.

One of those things is the good old domestic robot. An impressive stand at the Future Parc hall here at CeBit in Germany – a hall dedicated to research projects and the like – is showing off some of the state-of-the-art robotics happening in academia.
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(Literally) hands-on with Microsoft Surface

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

On the back of news that Microsoft is to bring Surface to the UK, it’s been showing off the device at this year’s CeBIT. PC Pro got a private hands-on demo with Surface’s director of product management, the superbly named Matt Champagne.

Sitting idle in the darkened demonstration room, the 30in Surface screen showed a screensaver-style pond animation, with rippling water. Just sitting beside it, our fingers were itching to try. Touching the tabletop produced water ripples around each fingertip; swishing a hand across the water gave an effect eerily identical to swishing your hand through real liquid.

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Microsoft summed up, in one tortuous sentence.

Friday, February 13th, 2009

After news of Microsoft retail stores, a quote:

“We’re also working hard to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that it’s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere.”

That little gem was from chief operating officer Mike Turner. Try reading it out loud, and see if you can stop yourself chuckling when you reach the part about it being clear and simple. For added effect, you might want to have a list of the six versions of Windows 7 to hand.

Video: £250 challenge on the High Street

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

While my colleagues were comfortably ensconsed in front of their computers for the £250 challenge, I had to get off my bum and do some good old-fashioned legwork. Here’s what happened. You can read more about the laptop itself here. (more…)