Firefox vs iTunes

Surely the most interesting release of the week was from Mozilla. Although its been in development for a few years, Songbird finally saw an official release, with a media player and browser in one. Darien was hopeful it could finally give him an alternative to iTunes: “Since it’s open source, freely extensible and unfettered by corporate interests, Songbird’s future looks bright.” Try it and let us know what you think.

Not just for christmas

Fujitsu stole the headlines with its offer of a free laptop every three years forever, and Jon reckons “if you’re a cheapskate and don’t mind being tied to one brand for the rest of your life it’s got to be worth looking into”. If the best you can get is the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S7720, however, you’ll probably be turning them down on their kind offer.

Dell’s Inspiron 1318 is a much more tempting proposition, with a price tag of just £383 exc VAT putting it dangerously close to netbook territory. Sasha was impressed by the ”portable chassis with great ergonomics and fine battery life – a potent combination”, and more than enough to earn it an award. 

Sideshow 2?

Sideshow never caught on, largely because it was rubbish. But the concept of a smaller screen by your main display has merit if it’s actually an extension of your desktop. Samsung’s 2263DX comes with a 7in supplemental screen that clips anywhere on its frame, and you can drag anything you like onto it. It’s certainly a novel twist, and we can see it catching on – but only if the price drops.

The Navigon 1210 doesn’t have the same stumbling block, as it’s a satnav that costs just £85. But far from being a cheap and cheerful bargain, Jon found plenty of advanced features and solid navigation, and called it “a very good deal indeed.”

Another short throw projector arrived in the Labs, and the Acer S1200 proved every bit as good as – if not better than – the BenQ from a few weeks back. A huge 82in picture from just a metre away is phenomenal, and apart form a few focus issues the Acer came through our tests with a Recommended award that was well deserved.

Best of the rest

Toshiba finally entered the crowded netbook market with the NB100-11R but while Tim liked the screen and the light weight, he reckons it’s a missed opportunity for the laptop giant.

Lenovo’s T500 did much better, with Jon delivering a Recommended award, calling it a solid buy “if you don’t mind sacrificing sex appeal for comfort and reassurance”.

And the EasyNote RS65-M-700 had Matt gushing about it being “by far the most attractive Packard Bell laptop we’ve seen”, even if it wasn’t quite enough to gloss over a few other weaknesses.

In the business world, Dell’s PowerEdge T100 pedestal server walked off with a Recommended award, the iQStor iQ2850 iSCSI Storage System came mighty close, while Cyberoam launched its CR250i web filtering utility.

If, like me, you despise iTunes with a passion, this could be the player for you. It’s called Songbird, and it’s an open source alternative to the big, bloated media players that dominate the market. Powered by Mozilla, it’s could soon be the Firefox of media software.

It works with iPods and your existing iTunes library, and integrates with YouTube, ShoutCast, Last.fm and other media-related apps. It links to concert tickets for artists in your library, supports FairPlay tracks, works on Windows or Macs and even has an integrated web browser.

All sorts of extra features are in beta, as the Songbird website details, and you can also download add-ons in the same way as you currently do with Firefox – so the possibilities for expansion are immense.

Version 1.0.0 was officially launched yesterday, and I’ve downloaded it to see how it puts up with my terrible music taste, so look out for a full review soon.

UPDATE: Read the full review of songbird 1.0 here.