All the week’s reviews

Friday, February 6th, 2009

A week heavy on peripherals saw a video camera with an ultra-slow-motion mode, Dell’s entry into the fledgling pico-projector market, a mouse which reads your palm and one of the cheapest PC and monitor bundles we’ve ever seen.

Jumping killer whales and pico blues

Sanyo’s HD2000 pistol-grip camcorder has a special trick – it can record 1080p video at 60fps, and can even reach 600fps for those Planet Earth-style animal action shots if you don’t mind sub-YouTube resolutions. Its video quality may not quite reach excellence but its all-in-one ability to take good video and stills makes it a strong choice at a good price.

Another strong choice, but at a more premium price, was the superb LaCie 324 monitor. The 24in panel displays 92% of the NTSC gamut, and during our tests it had cooing crowds gathered around it as the ultimate endorsement. Bringing images alive in a way standard monitors just can’t match, it earned a deserved recommendation for professionals.

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Ten brilliant things the internet has done

Monday, January 19th, 2009

The news this morning that Belkin has been paying people to write positive reviews on Amazon will inevitably undermine “user reviews” on websites, but for me they’re still a valuable resource – especially for areas where there aren’t any “professional” reviews to fall back on.

The thing is, you need to look out for the pattern of a real review as opposed to the one someone’s churned out for the sake of a few pence (or cents, in Belkin’s case) or – in the case of book reviews on Amazon – where the author, publisher or friend of either has posted the review themselves.

Anyway, to fight back against the inevitable backlash I thought I’d quickly write about ten brilliant things the internet has done. (more…)