PC & Tech Authority Magazine Issue: April, 2005
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Issue: 89 | April, 2005

About PC & Tech Authority Magazine:

Australia's premier computer magazine, PC Authority gives you the facts, opinions and insight to make informed PC and tech purchasing decisions. Every issue is packed with the latest products, reviewed by an expert team of technical writers and guarantees more Aussie exclusives and first looks than any other Australian PC magazine.

Trusted for its reliable & objective product reviews, the foundation of the magazine is the comprehensive and thorough evaluations of every product tested by the tech team in our Labs. Its readers are both PC enthsusiasts at home and small-medium business decision makers at work.

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Ubuntu Linux
See for yourself why Ubuntu is PC Authority's recommended high performance alternative to Windows XP.

Articles in this issue

Alexander

The movie's flop obviously hasn't helped, but developer GSC seems to have cut a few unexpected corners in the latter stages of developing Alexander, with the result that what promised to be a stirring title turns out to be fairly average after all.

ASUS EN6800 Ultra

We love hardware. As users ourselves we feel your pangs of wanting the newest, fastest rig and components. Unfortunately it's hard to justify the cost of bleeding-edge hardware at the best of times - more so with the cost of single graphics cards at times exceeding the $1000 price barrier. This is as much as some users would spend on a total system upgrade.

ASUS M6000

For such a high specification machine with a large display, we didn’t have high expectations of battery life. We were wrong. Not only is this one of the best looking and functional notebooks we’ve played with in some time, but this notebook managed to stay operating at full load with a looping productivity test for well over three and a half hours – enough for students, road warriors and home users.

CSI: Miami

It works for the various TV versions, so Ubisoft has clearly decided not to mess with a proven formula when it comes to the CSI computer games. CSI: Miami sticks so close to the moderately successful CSI: Dark Motives that you can't see the gap, but fans will still be pleased enough with the result.

Dell Inspiron 9300

The 9300 is reminiscent of its predecessor, the Inspiron 9100, which was pitched squarely at power users and gamers looking for plenty of grunt. This product refresh takes it one step further by using a mobile processor rather than the desktop CPU found in the 9100.

Dell W1900 LCD TV

19in widescreen LCD TV which shows much promise and is Dell’s first consumer offering in Australia. Spec-wise it looks quite good on paper, with 450cd/m2 brightness, 600:1 contrast ratio and 1280 x 768 widescreen resolution, and it doesn’t disappoint when fired up.

Everquest II

The game affectionately known as "EverCrack" is back. Now it's deeper and even more addictive.

Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile

Although its billing as a 'next generation' city-building game might be a little over the top, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile is a well designed and pleasantly addictive title that comes with a nice sense of history.

Iomega Mini Hard Drive

Offering 40GB of storage, the Iomega drive is very small for its capacity, measuring a mere 8.89 x 7.37 x 1.27cm. It weighs just over 99 grams, which means it's unnoticeable in your pocket. The internal drive is a 40GB Hitachi TravelStar C4K40 -- a new form-factor hard drive, measuring a mere 1.8 inches across (a normal notebook hard drive is 2.5in, a desktop drive 3.5) -- and only about 7mm thick.

Kloss KL-I915B

This is one nice looking white plastic and aluminium barebones system, with smooth lines and compact minimalism. Being a SFF PC makes ventilation vital, and the Kloss is built from the new BTX standard, which was designed with thermal effectiveness in mind.

Mac mini

Like clowns piling out of the other kind of Mini, you’ll be similarly surprised at how much Apple has managed to squeeze into the Mac mini.

PalmOne Treo 650

The 650 really picks up where the 600 left off, and while it doesn't look too different to the eye, many of the changes are under the hood or subtle manipulations of the 600's design. It runs the new Palm OS 5.4 and has a much faster 312MHz Intel PXA270 processor, but the most immediate difference is the screen: it's now double the resolution at 320 x 320.

PC troubleshooting guide

Is your PC the stable, error-free platform you need? We didn't think so. Leigh Dyer, David Kidd and Ty Pendlebury present the essential guide to fixing your PC.

Shuttle SB95P

Shuttle's SB95P is a small form factor (SFF) aimed at the enthusiast/gamer market, and it takes advantage of the i925 iteration of PCI-E. Though Shuttle are known for their XPC’s striking looks, in this case the colour scheme is nothing to write home about: is gun-metal anyone's favourite colour?

Sonoma notebooks - portable power

Notebooks have been an essential tool for the workforce for years and are becoming a popular entertainment platform. While it’s rare that you’ll find a portable workstation that provides enough grunt for gaming, Intel may just have the answer with its new breed of mobile technolgy – Sonoma.

Todaytech D900T

The D900T has to be one the most impressively kitted out notebooks we've ever reviewed. Now, before you go running off with a fist full of readies, this notebook isn't available as such to the general public. Rather, resellers of Todaytech's notebooks can order them in whatever configuration you want. Or if you'd rather -- and we quite like this option -- you can order the notebook stripped of most options, and configure your own from spare parts or cheaper parts if you think you can do better on pricing.

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