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Now we’re done with it, rather than leave it under a desk until it’s outdated and worthless we thought we’d find it a home out there in the real world.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!

Would anyone miss the Break and SysRq keys?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

If there’s one PC peripheral that’s seen about as much change as the Queen’s hairdo over the past 20 years, it’s the keyboard. Sure there have been attempts to jazz it up with ergonomic layouts, wireless transmitters and models with flashy shortcut buttons, but by and large, if someone plugged a 1989 model keyboard into your PC you’d barely notice the difference.

The deathly pace of keyboard evolution is actually a barrier to progress, according to HP vice president Phil McKinley, who I met last week. “The keyboard is still a hugely intimidating factor for users,” he told me, referring especially to users in developing countries who haven’t grown up with computers. “It still has a System Request and Break key on the keyboard. When was the last time you touched the Break key?” he asked.

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5% of printed documents never collected

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

I heard this thoroughly depressing stat at a HP briefing this morning: one in 20 office printouts are simply left in the printer’s output tray, never to be seen by the eyes of the thoughtless drone who pressed Ctrl + P in the first place. 

I’m not a tree-hugging, environmental doom monger, but even my green-weary soul was alarmed at the amount of wasted paper, ink and energy such needless printing consumes. Let alone the money. 

HP has a solution to curb the printer fly-tippers called Pool Printing, which ensures the document doesn’t actually print until the person physically goes to the machine to collect it. They have to swipe a card or punch in a pin number before the printer spews out the goods.

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All the week’s reviews

Friday, February 13th, 2009

The big launch of the week was AMD’s move to its AM3 platform. Finally allowing the use of DDR3 with its CPUs, we received a motherboard and several new triple and quad-core processor models, which we promptly fired through our intensive benchmark suite with pretty impressive results.

At the more budget end of the scale we saw HP’s Compaq CQ2000, a beautifully designed small-form-factor PC with a 20in TFT for a mouth-watering price of just £286 exc VAT. We’ve seen cheap mini-PCs and nettops before, but this is the first we’d really want in our living room.

We also reviewed Toshiba’s latest business model, the Tecra R110-112, which came in bright white with a vast array of security features and reasonable power too. (more…)

Does your printer really need internet access?

Friday, February 13th, 2009

I should say from the outset that all the words of wisdom below don’t belong to me, but to Rob Nichols from Hydro-Logic who was kind enough to write in after reading one of the bizarrer articles to appear on the website: HP warns LaserJet owners to patch their printers. Over to Rob.

Your article highlights an important security issue ignored by many people when setting up network equipment. That is “does this piece of equipment need to access the internet?”. (more…)

HP’s new Firebird 803: a revolution waiting to happen?

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Rahul Sood is an influential man: he’s the founder of boutique system-builder VoodooPC and now head of HP’s Global Gaming business. So when he posts a couple of blogs about how the gaming PC as we know it is history – an initial rant and then a follow-up answering the deluge of comments and clarifying some of his original points – you know that he means business.

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First look: HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

HP’s latest consumer netbook is the 1000 Mini Vivienne Tam Edition, and once you see it in the flesh it’s clear that this is a very different netbook – at least in terms of design. Striking is an understatement: a bright red finish that stretches to the inside is only outshone by the oriental, floral pattern on the back. “Inspired” by a Vivienne Tam design, this is the reason for its name.

It’s clearly aimed at the more female of the world’s population, so I gauged the reaction of two ladies who happened to be passing the HP stand. And very positive it was too. “It’s gorgeous,” one replied, and when I asked whether she could see herself with one the answer was again a definite yes. (more…)

All the week’s reviews

Friday, November 28th, 2008

In a week dominated by laptops, we also saw ATI launch its latest dual-GPU monster, Getac earn an award for another rugged wonder, and a rather niche new addition to the Sling family.

Laptop frenzy

We were intrigued by the Packard Bell EasyNote BG45-U-300, a portable laptop to take on the netbooks at less than £300 exc VAT – just £50 more than our A-Listed Samsung NC10. Matt reckons it’s perfect “if you’re after a little more oomph and a higher-resolution screen” than a netbook.

If your budget is significantly higher the UK’s first review of Toshiba’s brand new Portégé R600 ultraportable may be more your bag. Tim reckons it can trounce the Macbook Air on most specs – and he’s the editor so we can’t argue. It’s not the prettiest but “its price, integrated 3G modem and low weight all work in its favour.”

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First Look: HP Blackbird 002

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

When a system arrives in the PC Pro Labs, we don’t often hear rambling tales about its birth and development – instead, the machine arrives in the back of a large van in a big box and normally leaves the same way. It was refreshing, then, to hear about the protracted development of the Blackbird 002 – the new high-end gaming system from HP.

The Blackbird began life as the brainchild of an HP engineer by the name of Tom Szolyga. A games enthusiast stifled in the more sedate entertainment division after the comparative failure of a range of Compaq gaming machines, he began work on the Blackbird, keeping it in a box under his desk – in much the same way that Google engineers can work on their own products 20% of the time.

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When is a laptop not a laptop?

Monday, August 11th, 2008

You may have noticed the latest review up on the PC Pro homepage, of HP’s Pavilion HDX9320EA laptop. A gloriously over the top machine, with oodles of style and a price tag that’s certainly not as high as we expected when it was crane-lifted out of the box.

But is it actually a laptop? Could it feasibly be argued that this leviathan will comfortably sit on the average lap? At some point a desktop replacement becomes, well, just a desktop by another name. (more…)