Not so long ago, broadband meant a landline and sitting at your desktop PC or laptop at home. Increasingly, however, mobile broadband speeds, caps and prices are looking like an affordable alternative to the old fixed-line approach. It’s not for everyone, of course, but we outline whether fixed or mobile is right for you in our feature in April PC Authority.
Mobile internet is a killer app for consumer smartphones. This month, a new rival to the iPhone, the HTC Dream, has excited the whole office. If you’re already a subscriber to the world of Google in its many guises, then read our review in this issue.
If you’re on the lookout for a good graphics card deal, we recently put 22 of the latest and greatest GPU’s through their paces. It’s a huge comparison of the current options and all you need to do is look check your local retailer for a great bundle.
If you’re a visitor to our website, you may have noticed that we’ve introduced a business section. Check it out at
PCA BusinessWe’ll be including business-related how-to’s, features and reviews in the magazine over the next few months, and we hope you like them – check out our business security roundup in this issue.
Last but not least, we’ve uncovered the ugly side of software – the terms and conditions. If you’ve run into some horrors of your own, let us know your experiences
• Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5
• F.E.A.R. 2 Demo
• Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal SE
The same excellent software under a new interface, but worth the price only if you didn’t buy it last year.
AMD’s next generation of CPUs brings 45nm technology and higher clock speeds - but is that enough to compete with Intel’s latest and greatest?
Smells like green spirit, and offers performance at a budget price. The ASUS F6V Green is a laptop with something a little different
Impressive Blu-ray performance from the cheapest card on test.
Not particulary quick, but a resonably priced media card.
A cheap card, with the bonus of reasonable gaming ability.
A capable card – decent performance without a high price.
A powerful card at a competitive price – a deserved victory to cap ATI’s remarkable turnaround
Easy to use, logical and powerful. This is a security solution that will work for most small businesses
Excellent value for so many features, though BitDefender Small Office Security could be easier to use
Could you really replace your home or business broadband with a mobile dongle? Our broadband buyer's guide names the best plans, the most attractive deals and the best value for money.
The Coolermaster NotePal Color Infinite comes in a finite range of colours – six to be exact.
D-Link offers a well-built desktop NAS appliance that looks good value, but for business users it’s short of features
Looks and feels great, but a hefty price – once you’ve tweaked its specs – means that rivals offer better value
The power and flexibility of an enterprise product, but F-Secure Anti-Virus Small Business Suite 8 also comes with a good deal of the complexity of one.
Script triggering and interface changes headline an upgrade that’s good for developers and users alike
The HP Mini 2140 injects a little prestige back into netbooks, blending style with decent performance and respectable specs.
Dubbed the 'Facebook phone', this small and stylish social-networking phone will connect to you to your favourite net apps including MySpace and MSN.
The Sony HDR-XR200VE mini cam uses gyros to provide image stabilisation, and has an inbuilt GPS receiver
A couple of nifty gimmicks and an extended warranty help give this netbook the boost that its ergonomics don’t.
A standard-issue corporate laptop with suspect ergonomics.
Existing export capabilities and new support for dynamic components make this a must for professional users
A wonderful high-end projector, with support for DisplayLink technology
Solid client security applications, though lack of centralised management puts Kaspersky Small Office Security in a different league.
It’s something we use all the time, but compared with the hours we spend deliberating over the merits of different processors, memory, graphics cards and monitors, the time we devote to picking a keyboard is minimal.
Great gaming performance has never been so affordable. We test 22 current cards from Nvidia and ATI to find what works and what doesn't
The Maxtor Blackarmor has one thing that other USB hard drives don’t - military grade data security in a very stylish package
McAfee actually hosts the Web management for its security package, making it perfect for small businesses that don't run their own servers.
A personal movie theatre projector with astonishing quality, though we wished for audio outputs
A convenient all-in-one media package, but many of the applications can be had for nothing elsewhere
Not the perfect value card it once was, but still worth a look.
Hard to find, and not worth the typical price at all.
Decent power, but bigger, dearer and noisier than the HD 4850.
Nvidia’s card is fast, but ATI’s is still faster.
A step behind ATI’s HD 4870 on price and performance.
A minor performance boost isn’t enough to fend off its rivals.
It’s fast, but not quite fast enough for the huge price.
The fastest card we’ve seen, but the performance boost doesn’t justify the price.
Big screen HDTVs are beautiful, but if you’re looking for an upgrade at the moment, you will have come across the killer question: LCD or plasma?
When you're a small business without an IT department you need easy-to-install, easy-to-manage security. We've reviewed eight small business security packages.
Unlike most business security solutions, you don't need to be running a server to set up Sophos Security Suite SBE 2.5.
Powerful and flexible, but also a little complicated for small business.
An eBay seller who has his eBay account suspended after a dispute over Direct Debited fees, and finds that contacting someone on the phone to get things fixed isn't easy
Easy to setup, easy to use, and very powerful - perfect for small business
The Xerox Phaser 3125N isn’t much to look at, with a design not unlike business lasers from the early nineties. Unlike its ancestors, however, it’s only a fraction of the size and significantly more powerful.
