3ds max6
The world's most popular professional 3D animation package, 3ds max by discreet, just got an upgrade. Rather than being a major overhaul, this seems an effort to bridge gaps between 3ds max and some of the industry's leading 3d applications in several areas. However, 3ds max6 is not just upward expansion reaching higher in 3D visual effects, it is also broadening to encompass a wider scope of different industry disciplines.
ACDSee 6.0 Power Pack
Once you have bought your digital camera it is easy to spend several hundred more dollars on photo editing software, but unless you are going to use a lot of time creating digital master pieces there are better ways of spending your money.
ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE
After the launch of the latest Acrobat a few months ago, everything went quiet on the Adobe front. It's now clear what the company was working on, with the simultaneous launch of each of its main creative design packages -- Photoshop/ImageReady, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. (Please see individual reviews of all of these packages on this month's cover CD.)
ASTONE M3700
Looking quite a lot like what I imagined the son of Apple's Titanium and Powerbook lines of notebooks would turn out, the AStone notebook features both the Titanium's solid matte silver magnesium-alloy body with the Powerbook's white limned styling. From the very outset this makes the AStone one visually appealing notebook.
Canon EOS 300D
Rarely has a new camera received as much attention as the EOS 300D, released amid a flurry of excitement among photographers and a massive marketing campaign. Why the fuss? Because it's a true 6.3-megapixel digital SLR for under $2,000 including lens. It sounds expensive in the context of the cameras in this month's digital cameras Labs, but the previous generation of several models in that test were nudging a grand when they were released.
Canon PowerShot G5
The PowerShot G series has earned Canon a good reputation and, thankfully, the G5 does nothing to dent it. Not that it will win awards for styling, as the G5 remains slightly boxy for our liking and the casing has more plastic than the G3. It also feels every gram of its 487g weight; the similarly heavy Fuji S5000 is more comfortable to hold and use.
Casio QV-5700
Using a Canon lens and sharing a chunky, rectangular design, the 5-megapixel QV-5700 bears more than a passing resemblance to the PowerShot G5. The G5 has a 4x optical zoom against Casio’s 3x, though, and several other features, such as time-lapse shooting, are missing.
CMV CT-723A
Marketed clearly towards the gamer and entertainment user, this unit is not that different the CMV CT-722A (October 2003, page 59) both with a single D-Sub input and a excellent 16 millisecond pixel response time.
Combustion 3
In conjunction with several of their other top-of-the-line software application upgrades, discreet have released the long-awaited combustion 3. Unique in some of its features and price point, combustion seems to have been searching for its market-place slot. Sharing the code, tools and quality of its bigger siblings, flame, inferno and smoke, combustion has, in the last two years, pulled its price down from 10 thousand dollars to around two thousand.
Emagen Media Centre
Housed in a fairly attractive albeit plain chassis, this machine comes shipped with performance where it counts as well as plenty of potential for the tweakers and serial upgraders. A Pentium 4 3.0GHz processor is impressive enough for a system with a price tag under $2,500, but to also include a DVD burner, TFT display, good quality 2.1 speaker set up and wireless keyboard and mouse combo is previously unheard of.
Fujifilm FinePix S5000 Zoom
The S5000 is one of the best-looking SLR-style digital cameras we’ve seen and comes from the same lines at the S602 Zoom. The plastic casing is solidly built but feels much lighter than the 448g our scales declared. This is mostly down to the excellent ergonomics – the hand grip is perfectly designed for one-handed shooting.
GameForce Warrior
The only PC in our mini roundup this month to feature a rather boring beige case, it more than makes up for its looks with blistering performance at a very reasonable price. Inclusion of thumb screws will allow you to get at your hardware quickly and without the need for tools. Always handy for those of us that like to fiddle frequently.
HP PHOTOSMART 945
Hewlett Packard's new digital camera takes many steps in the right direction to introduce professional-level features for the consumer photographer, yet suffers from a few, minor flaws that detract from its overall polished design.
KODAK EASYSHARE DX6490
The compact EasyShare DX6490 is one of Kodak's latest in their DX high performance, consumer range of cameras. Featuring a 4.23MP CCD (with 4MP effective), the camera is capable of capturing images at up to 2,304 x 1,728 resolution, which places it at the higher end of the consumer digital camera spectrum.
LOTUS DOMINO 6.5
Being enterprise software, one usually needs considerable expertise and time to obtain optimal performance and functionality. This is especially true for a product as comprehensive and feature rich as Lotus Domino 6.5 which is fully programmable and can provide workflow, knowledge management, document management, archiving, database and collaboration services via a client-server or browser based thin client model.
MICROSOFT DIGITAL IMAGE SUITE 9.0
There is little doubt that digital photography will take over from film, and it will happen sooner rather than later. As more people buy and start to use digital cameras there is an ever increasing demand for simple-to-use photo editing software that will allow them to get the best out of their photographs.
Mitsubishi Diamond View DV175
This is the first display in a fresh new line of TFT monitors to come from Mitsubishi this year, and from this early glimpse things are looking good. The unit we received was a very early pre-production model -- it had missing panels, the occasional loose wire and a completely different colour scheme (the TFT pictured is the final shipping version), but as a look to where Mitsubishi is headed it was perfect for our needs.
Nikon Coolpix 5400
The Nikon Coolpix 5400 is the descendent of the Coolpix 5000. In the revamp, it has gained a new 1/1.8in CCD and 4x optical zoom but also loses a couple of useful features, like the LCD status panel and RAW file mode. True, there is a TIFF option, but this is a backwards move in our view.
Olympus Camedia C-750 Ultra Zoom
Undoubtedly the key feature of the Olympus C-750 is the huge 10x optical zoom lens. This is ideal for sports photography or getting close to camera-shy subjects. We’d expect a lens of this size to introduce severe chromatic aberrations, but Olympus has used extra-dispersion lenses, which make sure light is evenly distributed across the CCD.
PCQUEST Ariadne
Physically similar to the Scorpion Z-Box system with its black anodised midi tower, this unit also features a pair of both front-mounted audio 3.5mm sockets and USB ports, perfect for quick plug and play of both bus and externally powered devices such as keyboards, printers, joysticks and removable USB pen drives.
Pentax Optio 550
The Optio 550 is the first Pentax camera we’ve reviewed in the Labs. It’s the cheapest 5-megapixel device here and, despite the slim dimensions, crams in a 5x optical zoom.
QDI Valeo CP10
This tiny notebook, measuring a mere 26.5 x 22 x 2.1cm looks quite ordinary on the outside, yet comes with quite an interesting processor inside. The Valeo CP10 is not powered by Intel or AMD, nor even Transmeta, but instead has one of the first VIA Antaur CPUs we've come across.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F717
Sony’s high-end cameras have consistently impressed us at PC Authority, but just recently they’ve fallen short of Labs Winner status. The DSC-F717 changes all that, with its heady mix of image quality, features and design propelling it to the top of the pile.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-V1
The 5-megapixel DSC-V1 offers a great combination of features and performance in a relatively small body. While it’s smaller than its prime competitors – the Canon G5 and the Nikon 5400 – there are even smaller models in this month’s company.
TREND MICRO PC CILLIN INTERNET SECURITY 2004
With the prevalence of Net connections and all the good things a connected society brings such as community, the ability to share ideas and the openness of information, comes the flipside of digital life -- hackers, spyware, viruses and spam.
Ulead StudioQuartet
There is a growing demand for a decent all-in-one digital imaging pack that covers everything from organising your photographs to editing your videos and eventually burning them onto DVD. Ulead has attempted to provide it by bundling four of its core programs into a single package and there are few more comprehensive digital imaging suites than StudioQuartet. While the price tag is out of the range of many home users, the enthusiast will save up for it and provide themselves with everything they need to create multimedia projects.
Ultimate Broadband Planner
Confused by the many broadband plans out there? Nirmal Chandrasena and David Kidd cut through the choice-overload and bring you a comprehensive guide to Australia's top ISPs.
Ultimate Broadband Planner - Recommendations
To help you find the best plan for your needs, we've split up users into the following common profiles and provided recommended plans for each. Note that many ISPs have more plans than we could list in the table. We chose to only include the plans from each ISP that were the most competitive compared to the rest of the industry. This means there might be a more suitable plan for you that we didn't list, so be sure to check out the complete range of plans from an ISP if you don't find a good fit.
Z-Box
The processor struggle continues between AMD and Intel as the war rages on for the top ranking of the market share table. Interestingly enough, of the four machines this month under the $2,500 price tag, Scorpion Technology's Z-Box was the only unit to feature an AMD Althon XP processor. Also interesting was the marginal gains achieved by Intel given their obvious clock speed advantages over this unit.