Toshiba mini NB550D review: first look

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

The big news about the Toshiba mini NB550D netbook is the processor inside: no Intel Atom here, but AMD’s all new C-50 – a dual-core chip running at 1GHz.

And AMD is very enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, describing the combination of processor, chipset and graphics chip as an APU: accelerated processing unit.

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Would someone remove the CES elephant from the room, please?

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

I’m worried. CES hasn’t even started yet, and the looming presence of Apple is already lurking in the wings. And I mean presence in the most non-physical of ways, for heaven forbid that Apple would condescend to appear at a mere trade show.

But it’s here, make no mistake about that. As Barry Collins reported, more than 100 tablets are likely to be announced at this year’s event. And I really don’t need to spell out whose tablet they’re all trying to beat.

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The ten worst products of 2010

Thursday, December 30th, 2010

We’ve seen some absolutely brilliant kit this year. Stand-outs include the obvious (think the Apple iPad) and the less obvious (why hello there, Sony VAIO Z13), but this blog is to celebrate the rubbish. The stuff that, with any luck, may already have been pulled off the shelves due to its sheer stupidity.

In a very particular order, here goes:

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The ten best spam comments left on PC Pro

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Every morning the likes of me, Barry Collins and Nicole Kobie spend several minutes wading through spam on our blogs. We attract it like flies to, um, other flies.

It sounds like a chore – it is a chore – but just sometimes I’m tempted to leave the spam on because they’re so ridiculous. So here, in no great order, are my top ten spam comments left on PC Pro.

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£100 Amazon voucher for the best LITS session idea!

Friday, October 15th, 2010

As keen readers of PC Pro will already be aware, next year we’re teaming up with all the other Dennis Technology brands – including Bit-Tech, MacUser, Expert Reviews, Know Your Mobile and (a newcomer to Dennis) Web User – to produce the UK’s largest technology show: LITS 2011.

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Gap logo: a PR stunt gone right?

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will, but can it really be true that Gap was actually planning to use its new, terrible logo?

I don’t think so. I think its PR gurus headed off to a retreat to work out how to generate free publicity with the minimum of effort, downed a few double-strength lattés and gazed at the blue sky. And someone came up with a quite ingenious solution.

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The top fallacy in statistics: sample size

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

In my foolishness, I signed up for a ten-week module on statistics whilst studying for my Maths degree. And I hated it with a vengeance. It soon became crystal clear that I found 99 out of 100 topics exceptionally dull.

However, with the spiralling number of surveys appearing in the media with each passing year, having a certain amount of knowledge about statistics has come to my aid on numerous occasions. Because it turns out that even intelligent people don’t really understand statistics at all.

Here, I’d simply like to address the number one, burning misunderstanding people have about statistics: the sample size has to be similar in number to the total population in a study.

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The fallacy of unique visitors

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

We all do it: measure the success of a website by the number of monthly unique visitors that come to the site. But as year passes year, I’m becoming increasingly cynical about the figure, and increasingly amazed that uniques are still considered the instant measure of a website.

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Come on Microsoft, bring back the Windows 7 Family Pack

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Remember this? It was the rather fabulous Windows 7 Family Pack, offering three licences in one friendly bundle. And how very sensible: if you wanted to upgrade a household’s worth of machines to take advantage of features such as Homegroup, then you could.

At launch it cost £150 inc VAT, offering a massive £90 saving compared to 3 x £80 inc VAT for a standard upgrade. Street prices went even lower, down to around £120 inc VAT. So you could upgrade all three machines in your house for a tasty £40 each.

Two weeks ago I received an email from one of our readers, Daniel Cramer. “We, like many other families in the UK, have more than one computer in our household running on a Windows operating system,” he wrote. “We have three, including a laptop. Two run on XP and one, for our sins, on Vista.

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Guide to the Dell Streak in screenshots

Friday, July 16th, 2010

As we mentioned in our Dell Streak review, this isn’t yet a perfect machine – but there’s also a lot to like, particularly when it comes to the way Dell has taken advantage of the larger screen. In this guide, I’ll quickly run through all the major screens (and a few apps for luck) to give an insight into what you’ll get if you do choose to buy the Streak.

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