3D printers: five things I’ve learnt

Friday, April 19th, 2013

 
This week, I’ve been playing with a 3D printer. The Afinia H-Series – also known as the Up! Plus – arrived on Monday, and I’ve been fiddling with it more or less non-stop since then. There will be a full dissection of the technology in a future issue of PC Pro, but here are some of my initial impressions from my first few days of tinkering.
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Raspberry Pi Fuze enclosure revives 1980s micros

Saturday, April 13th, 2013

This post was updated on 13 May 2013 to add information about the Fuze’s project cards and final hardware design.

It’s fair to say the Raspberry Pi is a hit with at least two constituencies. Without a doubt it’s captured the imaginations of youngsters attracted to its simple versatility. To those of us from an older generation, it also has a certain nostalgia value, harking back to the days when bare circuit boards were de rigueur and writing your own software was all part of the fun.

It’s appropriate then that the Fuze enclosure – made by Aylesbury-based Binary Distribution – looks like something that itself fell out of the eighties. Following consciously in the footsteps of the BBC Micro, Binary Distribution has aimed the Fuze at schools – a fact which explains its tough, aluminium casing. Each unit comes with a deck of 16 colourful and jovially written project cards (aimed at key stages one to four) that guide students through the fundamentals of BASIC programming, starting with a classic Hello World program and moving on to more advanced concepts such as variables and loops.

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Is Apple rattled by Samsung? Let’s hope so

Monday, March 18th, 2013

Defensive, prickly and occasionally flat-out disingenuous, Apple’s attempt to swing undecided buyers to the iPhone is great news. For Android users, it confirms that the long wait for an alternative mobile platform that you can bring home to your parents is almost over. Apple’s anti-Android potshots are an indication that Android has finally come of age for consumers.

That’s good news for everyone. If Apple now sees Android as a real threat, it will have to find ways to stop users drifting away. In the long run, Apple on the back foot should mean nicer, better-value products. In the short term it means snippy, linkbait anti-Android marketing barely worth the HTML it’s written on – but still, Apple’s rattled. That can only be a good thing.

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BlackBerry Z10 review: first look

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

The BlackBerry Z10, launched alongside the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, has been a hell of long time in the making. Finally, the company looks to have a smartphone to compete with the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III.

The specifications only tell part of the story, but notably they do bring RIM’s new baby – sorry, make that BlackBerry’s new baby – level with the competition. As expected, the Z10 has a 4.2in, 1,280 x 768, 356ppi touchscreen, and a quick perusal of the rest of its vital statistics reveals few areas of significant weakness. The phone measures 130 x 65.6 x 9mm, and inside there’s a dual-core, 1.5GHz processor, with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage to back it up. The rear camera is an 8-megapixel unit capable of shooting 1080p, and the front-facing camera is 2mp capable of shooting 720p.

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Samsung Series 7 Chronos review: first look

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

Don’t be fooled by their similar names: the Samsung Series 7 Chronos couldn’t be more different to its much smaller sibling, the Series 7 Ultra. This is a 15.6in behemoth designed for the heaviest of duties – Samsung uses the phrase “ultimate performance for professional creation” – and that’s obvious from the moment you pick it up.

That said, compared to other 15.6in laptops, the Chronos is quite light: Samsung claims it weighs 2.35kg. Mind you, it also claims that it’s just 20.9mm thick – we’ll have to measure it with the office callipers when the final sample arrives in the office, but we suspect it’s closer to 30mm at its fattest point.

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Intel’s NUC arrives – in a box that plays the Intel Inside jingle

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

A couple of intriguing boxes turned up this morning which, when unwrapped revealed a couple of very nice surprises. Intel had, after months of nagging, finally sent us review samples of its tiny barebones PC – the NUC – which Darien first caught sight of at IDF last year.

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A week with 4G: our verdict

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

Mobile network EE is pleased as punch to have 4G all to itself for six months, and last week it celebrated that fact by sending out a pile of 4G-enabled handsets to us tech journalists for testing.

You’ve already heard about the high prices, and the rather ridiculous 500MB data cap on the cheapest £36 per month tariff. But what is it like to use, and does it meet all of EE’s speed claims? I’ve been using a 4G HTC One XL LTE for a week to find out.

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Acer Aspire S7-391 review: first look

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

At today’s Build 2012 opening keynote, Steve Ballmer used several devices to show off Windows 8, but there was one that stood out. The Acer Aspire S7, said Ballmer, was the one device that was turning all the heads within Microsoft – but even from the second row of the auditorium it was tough to make out what was so special about this little laptop.

It took no more than three seconds with the device in the demo hall to work it out. (more…)

Microsoft Windows Phone 8 Data Sense: hands-on video

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Microsoft managed to hold some key features back for the launch of Windows Phone 8, among the most intriguing of which is Data Sense.

It offers users an overview of mobile data use, showing which apps have been using most data, and allowing users to set a data limit so the app can sound the alarm when you’re about to breach the cap. And the app has a Live Tile you can pin to the phone’s homescreen, displaying a running total of data consumed over the past month.

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Windows Phone 8 Kid’s Corner: hands-on video

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Microsoft might not have announced anything groundbreaking at its grand unveiling of Windows Phone 8, but that’s not to say we were completely underwhelmed. Indeed, for anyone who has children, the official confirmation of the new Kid’s Corner feature will come as a breath of fresh air.

And while the demo involving Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore’s own children appearing on stage was undeniably cheesy, it will have struck a chord with smartphone-owning parents across the world. It certainly did with me, for whom the wheedling question “can I play a game on your phone, daddy?” has become a tiresomely regular refrain of late.

You can see a short demo of the feature in the short video at the top of this blog post, but the idea is really good. Set up involves ticking a few boxes in the Kid’s Corner settings, applying a lock so your kids don’t unlock the main phone and send your boss a text by accident, or purchase a small fortune’s worth of apps and music.

Then all your little devils need to do to get to their protected area is swipe a finger from right to left on the lock screen, and up pops a bright, kiddy-friendly interface, complete with live-tile-equipped home screen, but with only access to the apps you specified earlier.

There’s just one potential pitfall: it’s all lovely and safe and cuddly, but giving the kids their own “phone within a phone”, as Belfiore put it, seems likely to give even them an over-inflated sense of ownership over your pride and joy, making it more difficult than ever to prise their sticky fingers from it when you need it most.