The iPad 2: looks nice, plays ugly

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

The dust has begun to settle on the announcement of the new iPad 2 and first reaction has generally been positive. Not everyone’s persuaded, however. Darien Graham-Smith’s objection – The iPad 2: yes, but still, what’s it for? – is that it’s still just a cross between a glorified smartphone and cut-down netbook, so what’s the fuss?

Darien’s right: tablets are just another form of existing computers, but I think that they are as revolutionary as Apple claims. In particular I think they will come to provide our main platform for consuming web-based content. Key to this is the tablet’s new, book-like, handheld form factor which allows computers to become truly personal and enables their users to move on from merely browsing content to actively and immersively engaging with it (the activity previously known as “reading”).

Apple, as well as pioneering the tablet format, currently produces the best implementation of it and the iPad 2 will raise the bar even higher. Moreover, by providing a superior system for the same price, end users will clearly be getting more for their money.

However, I won’t be buying an iPad for the foreseeable future. And I don’t think that you should either…

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Should Microsoft buy Adobe?

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Now this is interesting. The New York Times has just reported talks between Microsoft and Adobe and possible discussions of a takeover. There’s certainly an apparent logic at work. The PC Pro news story quotes analyst Toan Tran saying “It may be a case of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and both Microsoft and Adobe have a common enemy in Apple.” With both companies suffering under the current Apple surge, perhaps such consolidation makes sense.

On the other hand there are lot of arguments against.

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PC Pro printer giveaway

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

We get a lot of kit in the PC Pro Labs and, despite what many people assume, it all goes straight back to PR companies and manufacturers when we’re done with our testing. But on very rare occasions there’s a hitch in the supply line.

If you buy this month’s issue of PC Pro (in all good newsagents from today) you’ll find an extensive all-in-one printers Labs on p60, with eight home and seven business devices put through their paces.

Unfortunately, HP could only supply us with two of the three printers we wanted, and after much deliberation we decided the Home section wouldn’t be complete without this major name present – so we went online and bought the Photosmart C7280 ourselves.

Now we’re done with it, rather than leave it under a desk until it’s outdated and worthless we thought we’d find it a home out there in the real world. Obviously, it wouldn’t be right to give it away as an official Competition item in the magazine – after all, the packaging is open and we’ve been through a few sets of cartridges so it doesn’t have a full tank of ink. But aside from that it’s in perfect working order.

*** COMPETITION NOW CLOSED ***

So all you have to do is email your name and address to me at davidb@pcpro.co.uk before 5pm on Monday 17th August and I’ll pick a winner at random. Good luck!