100 Products Under $100 (Part 1)
The time for gift giving is almost upon us, and whether you celebrate Christmas or not, Australia will be shutting down over the Christmas break.
100 Products Under $100 (Part 2)
The time for gift giving is almost upon us, and whether you celebrate Christmas or not, Australia will be shutting down over the Christmas break.
Acer Pocket PC and Palm
In what is an interesting first time foray into the crowded PDA market, Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm- and Pocket PC-based PDAs. It's a curious gambit to be sure, and we're content to see which PDA branch blossoms while the other withers.
ACER TRAVELMATE C100 TABLET PC
AMD ATHLON XP 2700+ vs. INTEL PENTIUM 4 2.8GHz
The Athlon XP 2700+ represents a significant leap forward for the Athlon line – it solves a long-term problem by stepping up the default frontside bus (FSB) speed from 266MHz to 333MHz. This means that the Athlon XP can finally run in sync with 333MHz DDR RAM. While most currently available Athlon motherboards support 333MHz DDR, there is virtually no performance boost between this and 266MHz DDR when running an Athlon XP with a 266MHz FSB. The extra speed offered by the RAM quite simply goes to waste, because the CPU can't keep up with it.
ASUS A7V8X
Like the KT4 Ultra, the ASUS A7V8X is an Athlon XP board that uses the VIA KT400 chipset. It packs in a truckload of extras, such as Serial ATA, FireWire, Gigabit LAN, AGP 8X and even RAID.
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO
ATI’s new RADEON is impressive...
BENQ FP882
BenQs FP882 is an example of the new influx of TFT screens that have recently hit the streets a quality screen offering plenty of real estate to play with. At 18in it dwarfs most 19in CRTs in viewable screen space, and offers both analog and DVI inputs, plus it has built in speakers.
BRAVO DISC PUBLISHER
Primera's Bravo is designed to produce large numbers of professional quality CDs on short order: it combines a 40x IDE CD burner and a CD printer, and it also comes with a robotic arm to automate the production process.
BRITANNICA 2003 ULTIMATE REFERENCE SUITE
The Ultimate Reference Suite is the latest digital edition of the Britannica. Consisting of three encyclopaedias, numerous dictionaries, thesauri, timelines and even an atlas, it's just as exhaustive as its predecessors, covering mountains of topics in impressive detail.
Burning Desires
The appearance of affordable DVD burners has given cause to celebration among the world's digital video makers – from hobbyists to professionals. The potential of DVD Video for corporate and wedding video makers is clear, but even the ability to present holiday videos in bite-sized, episodic and easily accessible chunks can't be sniffed at.
Canon MX2i DV CAMERA
There is nothing new about digital video cameras being able to take still photos, or digital still cameras being able to take video clips. However, in the past the results have been very ordinary - stills taken on a video camera were usually 640 x 480 snaps suitable for the Web, and little else.
CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 PLATINUM AND VIDEOLOGIC SONIC XPLOSION DVD
The original Audigy brought ASIO drivers, SB1394 (IEEE 1394) and EAX Advanced HD to the masses, but it was criticised because some people felt betrayed by the 24-bit 96kHz specification, which referred to the DACs rather than the sampling rate.
DESKTOP ENLIGHTENMENT
Four years ago, I saw a picture of a very beautiful desktop interface, called 'Enlightenment', running on an Operating System called 'Linux'. I didn't know much about either, but I downloaded and installed Linux anyway in order to run that fine looking user interface. Thanks to that early interest, I now enjoy a wonderful job designing and maintaining networks in which Linux often fills an important role. There's no better way to learn something new than for it to be enjoyable. With this in mind, I'd like to present Mike's Hopefully nifty guide to having fun with Linux.
DVD burners
The DVD standards battle on, and prices continue to drop, so is it worth buying a DVD burner now? We put an assortment of DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW drives to the test to answer that very question.
Eizo FlexScan L565
Outstanding. Fantastic. Excellent. The FlexScan came top or equal top in all areas of our quality testing.
Fight fire with fire
Forgetting the hype for a moment, the Internet *is* a dangerous place. In the Internet age complacency is one of
the greatest dangers facing business. While many companies assume that viruses an
HERCULES 3D PROPHET 9700 PRO
9700 Pro
HI-GRADE NOTINO R5400-2000
Hitachi CML170SXW
This Hitachi monitor features IPS TFT, a pre-cursor to the latest Super-IPS technology used in the superb Eizo unit.
Hitachi DZ-MV270E
DVD is said to be to movies what CD was to music. Well-filmed DVD movies are better in all respects than those recorded on VHS, so the idea of a digital video camera recording direct to DVD disc would appear sound.
How To : Picture Perfect
As a PC Authority reader you probably spend an inordinate amount of time in front of a computer. For many of you it's not only a tool for working but also a source of endless hours of entertainment. But basking in the warmth of a monitor's glow will eventually lead to tired and sore eyes, not to mention the possibility of a host of other problems.
HP COMPAQ EVO TABLET PC
IBM VIAVOICE 10 PRO USB
Voice recognition is the holy grail of computing: the ability to walk around your room and dictate to your PC is an attractive one, however the real experience with voice recognition is far different.
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz
The Athlon XP 2700+ represents a significant leap forward for the Athlon line – it solves a long-term problem by stepping up the default frontside bus (FSB) speed from 266MHz to 333MHz.
LG Flatron L1810B
The LG TFT has one of the slimmest bezels of any screen this month, helped in part by the use of LG.Philips’ own 18in IPS-type TFT panel.
MSI GEFORCE4 MX440-VTD8X
NVIDIAs tweaked GeForce4 MX440 graphics card runs faster than the original
MSI KT4 ULTRA-SR
VIA's KT400 is the latest in a very long line of Athlon chipsets. While it doesn't really deliver a huge performance boost over its predecessor, the KT333, it does have support for a number of upcoming technologies, including Serial ATA, AGP 8X and PC3200 DDR RAM.
n20w Pocket PC
Acer is hedging its bets by releasing both Palm and Pocket PC-based PDAs
Panasonic e.cam NV-GS5A
Panasonic claims this to be the world's smallest palm-type DV camera, and who am I to argue?
Philips DVDR890
One of the great mysteries that confronts modern man is his inability to program a VCR, so you would have thought that it was incumbent on manufacturers to make programming a DVD recorder simpler. Unfortunately nobody told the author of the Philips DVDR890 instruction manual. It omits a vital step from the general instructions for programming the device to record a show in advance - it took three attempts to get the feature to work, and only after stumbling across the missing instructions in the section for using G-codes (though I wasn't planning to use G-codes).
Pioneer DVR-A04
As this Labs’ sole available proponent of the –RW format, Pioneer has a struggle on its hands getting the public to accept the standard over the faster and more widely used +RW format.
Primer bravo disc publisher
Primera's Bravo is designed to produce large numbers of professional quality CDs on short order: it combines a 40x IDE CD burner and a CD printer, and it also comes with a robotic arm to automate the production process.
Ricoh MP5125A-DP
The Ricoh MP5125A-DP drive is actually used by the other DVD+RW supporters, although they rebrand them as their own. AOpen and HP have both taken this route, and use the Ricoh as their base.
Samsung SM181T
The SM181T uses a panel based on Samsung’s own PVA technology. This stands for patterned vertical alignment and increases the viewing angle in the same way as MVA, although Samsung claims a viewing angle of 170 degrees – the same as Super-IPS.
SATO SS51G SYSTEM
The core of SATOs SS51G is an incredibly tiny Shuttle XPC. These bare-bones boxes have been on the market for close to six months now, and have proven effective (if not over-whelming) performers and a very popular choice for building a lounge-room PC for playing music and DVD movies.
Serves you right
The results of the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Small Business Survey were released earlier this year, and they contain some interesting facts about IT and small business in Australia. In Ju
Sony DRU-120A
The Sony offers a comprehensive bundle, although it omits such niceties as IDE and audio cables.
Sony SDM-X82
The Sony SDM-X82B was one of the most consistent performers in this Labs, gaining clean passes in 16 out of our 19 test screens.
Thin is In
It's only a matter of time before CRT monitors are committed to the history books, and when you see TFTs like these, you'll wish it'll happen sooner. The Labs team takes 10 of the best 17in and 18in TFTs, and runs them through the wringer to see which is best.
Toshiba Portege 3500 Tablet PC
As far as Tablet PCs go, the only indication that the Portege 3500 is one, and not a notebook, is the solid stainless steel and magnesium hinge centered under the display. This is the single point for rotating and flipping the screen over and down, and it locks into place with a satisfying 'snick'. It's a much better work-around than the hinge and locks used by the Acer TravelMate C100.
Ulead PhotoImpact 8
Selecting the right photo editing software can be a difficult task, given the number of capabilities offered in today's graphics packages.
XENON ATOMIC 625 MULTIMEDIA PC
Every once in a while, we receive a PC for review thats an absolute pleasure to use, offering stunning quality and bucketloads of performance. XENONs Atomic 625 is all this and more.