Personal Computer World Latest updates

Lenovo unveils ultra-slim ThinkPad T400s

Ian Williams — 2009-06-23T11:44:00.000Z

Ian Williams, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 11:44:00

Thin and light notebook aimed at corporate users

Lenovo has unveiled the latest addition to its ThinkPad line, promising a full notebook experience in an ultra-slim chassis.

The T400s measures 0.83in at its thinnest point and weighs just under 1.8Kgs, making it significantly lighter than its 2.2Kg predecessor the T400.

"We have created products like our ThinkPad T400s laptop to bring thin and light computing to mainstream corporate users," said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president of ThinkPad at Lenovo.

The T400s is 50 per cent heavier than Lenovo's S10e netbook, but boasts a 14.1in screen, a six-cell battery promising up to six hours of life, and a carbon fibre chassis.

As well as all the usual notebook features, customers will have a choice of Intel Core2 Duo processors and graphics options, as well as a selection of 128GB or 250GB solid state storage and a DVD burner or Blu-ray player.

The T400s has an Express Card slot or 5-in-1 multimedia card reader, and optional support for WiMax, 3G data, Bluetooth or Ultra Wide Band.

Lenovo claimed that the keyboard and touchpad have been improved to make life easier for users, and several features have been added to make VoIP calling easier, including better speakers, a 2-megapixel webcam, dual digital microphones and dedicated speaker and mute buttons with LED indicators.

The T400s is available now starting at around £1,760 excluding VAT.

HP announces web-connected home printer

Daniel Robinson — 2009-06-23T09:00:00.000Z

Daniel Robinson, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 09:00:00

New Photosmart links to photo sharing sites and lets users print custom news direct from the web

HP has unveiled a web-connected printer designed to let consumers access and print content directly from the web without the need to turn on their PC.

The HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web is claimed as the world's first web-connected home printer. The inkjet device features a 4.3in touch-screen display, through which users can connect to content available on the web.

According to HP, the device will allow consumers to print customised content from news sites, search for movies showing in their local area and book and print tickets in advance, as well as print photos directly from the web.

Inside the device is a new web-based printing platform using custom applications to access content. Buyers will receive some apps ready loaded on the printer, and will be able to download new ones published on an HP Apps Studio site.

"By giving people access to the content they want at the touch of a finger, the ability to customise their printing experience and create their own apps, and enabling easy 'one touch' wireless setup, we are driving a significant shift in how people will be printing in the future," said HP's vice president of imaging and printing, Vyomesh Joshi.

The initial partners providing content are mostly US-based, including Google (Google Maps), USA Today, Coupons Inc, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku and Weathernews Inc.

HP said that users of its Snapfish photo sharing service will be able to print photos directly from their account, and also from the HP Creative Studio web site for custom greetings cards, calendars and stationary.

The HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web has print, fax, copy and scan capabilities, and wired and wireless connectivity options. Users can print directly from Wi-Fi-enabled PCs, Bluetooth-enabled devices and Apple's iPhone an d iPod touch, according to HP.

The device is expected to go on sale in the autumn in the US for about $399 (£244). UK availability and pricing was not available at the time of writing.

£99 box gives you online Windows

Clive Akass — 2009-06-17T15:43:00.000Z

Clive Akass, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 17 June 2009 at 15:43:00

Thn client offers direct access to rent-an-app site

Online Windows desktop site Nivio is launching a neat little box a little smaller than a paperback that access its services directly and appears to the user as a standard PC.

The £99 Nivio Companion can be bolted to the back of a VESA-standard monitor, but founder Sachin Duggal says: "Most people thinks it looks too good to hide away."

Nivio is offering a 15in LCD monitor for £50 extra. The company says it offers homes and businesses an alternative to purchasing software such as Microsoft Office and running a expensive PC. Users can instead use a Windows desktop and applications running on a remote server.

The basic service, which includes 10GB of storage, costs £4.66 a month and Microsoft Office (home edition) costs £2.50 a month. You can also rent other applications by the month – if you don't use them in a month you do not get charged.

Duggal says the advantages are that users, including those that buy the Companion, can access the service from any computer running Windows, MacOS, Linux or Unix. And they do not need to bother about extra costs such as virus protection and software upgrades.

The Companion is a thin client, with minimal local capability, though it can play audio files from a USB drive.

T-Mobile debuts myTouch 3G Android handset

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco — 2009-06-23T02:21:00.000Z

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 02:21:00

Operator touts 'boundless possibilities for personalisation'

T-Mobile has formally unveiled its second Android-powered handset. The myTouch 3G sports a 3.5in touch screen along with a 3.5-megapixel camera and a pre-installed 4GB microSD memory card.

Like the G1, the myTouch will use Google's Android mobile platform. The handset will also be equipped with a new preference tool called Sherpa which automatically suggests locations, sites and applications based on user interests.

The company hopes that the new handset will help it push into the consumer market by offering a device which can be more easily personalised.

"T-Mobile myTouch 3G puts you first, so you can create a mobile experience that is truly your own," said T-Mobile US chief marketing officer Denny Marie Post.

"There's no cookie-cutter approach to myTouch. Inside and out, there are boundless possibilities for personalisation so you can put your touch on the phone and make it uniquely yours."

The myTouch 3G is the latest product to be announced in what has been a busy summer for T-Mobile. Along with rolling out a major software update for the G1 handset, the company is said to be working on a number of new Android-based devices.

The news of T-Mobile's new device comes on the same day that Apple is celebrating a milestone for its latest iPhone model.

In announcing that the iPhone 3G S had sold one million units in its first three days, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs declared that "customers are voting and the iPhone is winning".

Mozilla unveils Firefox 3.5 release candidate

Ian Williams — 2009-06-22T10:56:00.000Z

Ian Williams, V3.co.uk, Monday 22 June 2009 at 10:56:00

Browser firm promises fastest internet experience ever

Mozilla has published the latest release candidate of Firefox 3.5, the new version of the popular open-source web browser.

Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, said that, barring any critical bugs, this version will be the one that gets rolled out to users.

Firefox 3.5 is available in over 70 languages, and includes more than 5,000 enhancements to Firefox 3, ranging from simple text changes in a dialogue box, to major modifications to the JavaScript engine and support for HTML 5.

Shaver highlighted the huge performance improvements, quoting Sunspider benchmarks showing the new release to be more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2.

The developers had split the focus into five areas: speed; user experience; security and privacy; customisation; and developer tools.

Firefox 3.5 includes a private browsing mode, which prevents any information from that session being recorded, and Mozilla has introduced several features which can do the same thing retroactively. So, rather than having to delete the entire history, cache and cookies, users have the option of 'forgetting' a single site, or clearing all data from the past hour or several hours.

Other major features include location-aware browsing, better video embedding, improved session restoring, basic image enhancement from within the browser and greater customisation options.

There are more than 6,000 add-ons currently available for Firefox, and the company has improved the categorisation and search tools to help users find the applications they want.

Mozilla also announced the launch of 'Collections', which allows users to group certain add-ons together, and find associated applications with ease.

Full details of the new features and improvements can be found on the Mozilla developer blog.

Those already running the beta version of Firefox 3.5 should receive the update automatically, or can upgrade manually by checking for updates within the browser.

Firefox 3.5 RC is available for download from the Mozilla site but does warn that, although very nearly ready for general use, this is still a release candidate and is intended for developer testing and community feedback.

Kodak kills off iconic Kodachrome film

Paul Allen — 2009-06-22T14:48:00.000Z

Paul Allen, Computeractive, Monday 22 June 2009 at 14:48:00

Camera giant 'retires' iconic stock

Kodak released a statement today confirming that it is discontinuing Kodachrome, the first commercially successful colour film when it was first introduced in 1935.

"Sales of Kodachrome film have declined dramatically in recent years as photographers turned to other, newer Kodak films or to the digital imaging technologies that Kodak pioneered,' says the statement.

"Today, Kodachrome film represents just a fraction of one percent of Kodak’s total sales of still-picture films.

"Kodachrome is an iconic product and a testament to Kodak’s long and continuing leadership in imaging technology,' says Mary Jane Hellyar, president of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group. 'It was certainly a difficult decision to retire it, given its rich history.

"However, the majority of today's photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology – both film and digital. Kodak remains committed to providing the highest-performing products – both film and digital – to meet those needs."

The statement adds: "For all of its magic, Kodachrome is a complex film to manufacture and an even more complex film to process. There is only one remaining photofinishing lab in the world – Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas – that processes Kodachrome film, precisely because of the difficulty of processing.

"This lack of widespread processing availability, as well as the features of newer films introduced by Kodak over the years, has accelerated the decline of demand for Kodachrome film."

Kodak estimates that current supplies of Kodachromewill last until early this autumn. Dwayne’s Photo has indicated it will continue to offer processing for the film through 2010.

"While Kodak now derives about 70 per cent of its revenues from commercial and consumer digital businesses, it is the global leader in the film business,' says the statement. 'Kodak has continued to bring innovative new film products to market, including seven new professional still films and several new Vision2 and Vision3 motion picture films in the last three years. These new still film products are among those that have become the dominant choice for those professional and advanced amateur photographers who use Kodak films."

Kodak says it is planning to celebrate the film's 74-year legacy with an online gallery, and by donating the last few rolls available to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in the US. Magnum Photos shooter Steve McCurry will shoot one of those last rolls and the images will be donated to Eastman House.

The online gallery will feature further Steve McCurry images, including his iconic Afghan Girl.

This article on the end of Kodak Kodachrome film first appeared in Computeractive's sister title, The British Journal of Photography.

Ispa internet heroes and villains shortlist announced

Dinah Greek — 2009-06-19T15:58:00.000Z

Dinah Greek, Computeractive, Friday 19 June 2009 at 15:58:00

Brickbats and bouquets

Internet service provider's trade body Ispa has announced the shortlist for its Internet Villain and Internet Hero awards.

The Hero award is given to an organisation or individual who has made a significant contribution to the internet industry in the past year. The title of Villain recognises those that Ispa feels have had a negative impact upon the sector.

Shortlisted for the hero awards is the Featured Artists Coalition: “For recognising publicly that the focus of music companies should be the development of new business models for distributing content online rather than attempting to pass responsibility to ISPs to take action against users."

Also in line for the prize is the Community Broadband Network: "For their relentless pursuit and support for next generation access at grass roots level. "

Even the European Parliament gets a look in: "For adopting by a significant majority amendment 138/46 to the Telecom Package which states that internet users cannot be disconnected or restricted from the internet without a court order."

And while his broadband tax of £6 a year may not be too popular with consumers, Lord Carter has been shortlisted: “For his attempt to bring a holistic view to government policy across the communications spectrum."

And a name probably not that familiar with many in the UK is Thomas Gensemer: “For showcasing the enormous power of the internet in leading Barack Obama's online presidential campaign."

Four candidates who have not pleased Ispa this year have been put forward for the Internet Villain award and this year’s shortlist shows how truly global the internet is.

Step forward President Nicolas Sarkozy who has been nominated: “For his continued commitment to the Ha dopi law, which advocates a system of graduated response, despite repeated arguments suggesting the law is disproportionate from a number of important groups including the European Parliament."

Also included on the shortlist are Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government: “For continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition."

The European Parliament appears again but this time cast as the villain: “For supporting amendment 84 to the Telecom Package demanding an opt-in for cookies which could yet bring the Internet to a standstill."

And our own home-grown Baroness Vadera makes an appearance: "For excluding a number of ISPs and Rights Holders in agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding that was exclusive and ineffective in progressing relations between the two industries."

Nicholas Lansman, Ispa secretary general, said: "The announcement of the Internet Hero and Internet Villain are always eagerly anticipated and give the awards night a great sense of occasion."

The winners will be selected from the finalists based on votes by members of the Ispa Council and announced, along with the winners of the 12 main awards, at a ceremony hosted at the London Marriott Hotel, London, on Thursday 9 July.

New malware threat targets Twitter users

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco — 2009-06-19T03:38:00.000Z

Shaun Nichols in San Francisco, vnunet.com, Friday 19 June 2009 at 03:38:00

Malicious email attachment masquerades as message notification

A new spammed malware attack is impersonating messages from micro-blogging site Twitter.

Researchers at Symantec said that the attack poses as an invitation to join Twitter with the message: 'Your friend has invited you to Twitter.' The message also contains images of the Twitter logo and front pages.

Rather than send the user to Twitter by way of a URL, however, the message asks the user to open an attachment under the name 'InvitationCard.zip'. On launching the attached file, the user is infected with a malicious worm that attempts to send out mass email messages.

Users are advised not to open the invitation attachments or any other unsolicited or suspicious email attachments.

"As Twitter continues to gain popularity among social networking users, people are regularly receiving invitations and email updates from fellow users, " wrote Symantec researcher Sammy Chu in a blog post.

"We expect that spammers will continue to use Twitter and other popular social networks as bait in their attacks."

The practice of disguising malware as email attachments and greeting cards is not new. Attacks such as the infamous Storm worm were routinely spread under the guise of greeting card attachments.

Attacks targeting Twitter have also become more common in recent months as the site has seen its popularity soar. Attacks have ranged from account-stealing hacking attempts to cross-site scripting attacks and malware distribution attacks.

OpenOffice for Mac 3.2

Lee Collins — 2010-02-09T15:17:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 15:17:00

Mac version of the comprehensive office suite

OpenOffice is a free fully fledged office application suite, complete with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation graphics program.

OpenOffice is a suite of office software, including a fully featured word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation graphics program that are all compatible with Microsoft Office, along with an HTML editor, a maths and a drawing package. You can also export as the free open office document format, which is compatible with other office suites such as Lotus Symphony Suite.

This is the official release of OpenOffice 3. The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3 is the new "Start Centre" , new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. Other highlights include Notable Calc improvements, including a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

The download here is for the Mac version. The latest OpenOffice 3.1 contains a wide number of new features and improvements, including improved support for the rendering of graphical images using anti-aliasing.

OpenOffice for Windows 3.2

Chris Wiles — 2010-02-09T14:48:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 14:48:00

Minor update to the comprehensive office suite

OpenOffice is a free fully fledged office application suite, complete with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation graphics program.

This is the official release of OpenOffice 3. The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new "Start Centre" , new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. Other highlights include Notable Calc improvements, including a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

The download here is for the Windows version. The latest OpenOffice 3.1 contains a wide number of new features and improvements, including improved support for the rendering of graphical images using anti-aliasing.

Ashampoo Snap 3.31

Lee Collins — 2010-02-09T11:03:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 11:03:00

Take a screengrab from your desktop

This is the software publisher's description.

The new Ashampoo Snap 3 can capture and store anything on your computer screen, including video. If you can see it on your screen, Ashampoo Snap 3 can turn it into a snapshot or movie and save it to a file. And with its amazingly simple editing functions you can produce results that you will be proud to share in no time.

The new motion capture tool has two different modes: Video mode for full-motion movies and Application mode for capturing Windows programs - for example for demos and walk-through tutorials showing how to use a new application. You can also add your own voice with a microphone to comment on or explain what is being displayed.

Ashampoo Snap 3`s integrated graphics editing tools are powerful and easy to use. Add arrows, drop shadows, text and text bubbles, highlight areas in different ways and much more to turn simple screenshots into great-looking images in seconds.

Uniblue SpeedUpMyPC 2010

Paul Rowlingson — 2010-02-09T00:00:00.000Z

Paul Rowlingson, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 00:00:00

Boost, optimise & tweak your PC

SpeedUpMyPC is designed to optimise a PC's performance by reallocating and freeing resources where possible.

Initially you are presented with an overview, informing you of such details as the OS, memory, CPU type and clock frequency. A few simple actions are recommended which will immediately improve your PC's performance.

The CPU usage of your PC can be monitored, with time/usage assigned to specific applications. Physical memory usage can be viewed, and Ram freed at the click of a button. Automatically free Ram when usage exceeds a specified percentage. Monitor your bandwidth usage, and optimise both internet and browser settings for faster browsing. Remove background tasks and applications from Startup for improved performance.

Its automatic options make it ideal for the beginner, yet its flexibility will satisfy the experienced user.

This is a relatively major update to SpeedUpMyPC. The latest 2010 ships with a brand new user-interface, support for Windows 7 (inc 64-bit), an improved quicker optimisation engine and much more!

WindowBlinds 7.01

Chris Wiles — 2010-02-09T00:00:00.000Z

Chris Wiles, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 00:00:00

Customise your Windows desktop

This is the software publisher's description.

Customise the look and feel of Windows XP or Vista with WindowBlinds. It's a Windows utility that enables users to personalise nearly every aspect of the Windows graphical user interface.

It can 'skin' your title bars, push buttons, Start bar, radio buttons, and nearly every other part of Windows.

There are thousands of freely available skins to choose from. Use WindowBlinds to make Windows look like another operating system (Mac, Linux, etc.) or give it your own unique look and feel. You can also create your own skins using the freely available SkinStudio.

WindowBlinds eliminates the need for any stay-resident program making it use virtually no extra memory. It also makes use of hardware acceleration found on most nVidia and ATI cards resulting in an overall performance increase.

The latest v7 now supports Windows 7.

UltraISO 9.3.6

Lee Collins — 2010-02-09T00:00:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 00:00:00

Manage ISO distribution files

This is the software publisher's description.

UltraISO is an ISO CD/DVD image file creating/editing/converting tool and a bootable CD/DVD maker, that can directly edit the CD/DVD image file and extract files and folders as well as directly make ISO files from your CD/DVD-ROM or hard disk. At the same time, you can maintain the ISO bootable information, thus creating your own bootable CD/DVDs. You now have the power to make and edit your own ISO files, and then burn them to CD/DVD for your own needs.

UltraISO is in sole possession of the intellectualized ISO document format analyzer, it can process at the present time almost all types of image files, including ISO and BIN, it may even support new image files which are yet to be created. UltraISO can extract files and folders, edit and convert other image files to the standard ISO format.

UltraISO uses the double window unification user contact interface, you have the choice to only use the quick buttons and/or the mouse Drag & Drops, and you can handle any CD/DVD image file easily.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 7.31

Lee Collins — 2010-02-09T00:00:00.000Z

Lee Collins, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 at 00:00:00

Organise, edit and share your photos

This is a software publisher's description.

Perfect example of a new generation of programs that are genuinely intuitive easy to use. It makes organizing your pictures and getting them to look great as simple as pressing the button on your camera. You’ll save time, have a barrel of fun and your friends and family will be really impressed.

Almost everything is done with a couple of clicks – adding picture frames, correcting your photos, making greeting cards, collages and slide shows, sharing your pictures on CDs/DVDs or your website and much more.

Ashampoo Photo Commander is a one-stop solution. You organize and view your photo collection, edit and enhance your photos and use creative editing and project tools all in a single program. And it also manages your audio.

Viewsonic VX2433wm widescreen monitor

Paul Monkton — 2009-07-07T09:00:00.000Z

Paul Monkton, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 7 July 2009 at 09:00:00

24in widescreen monitor with HDMI

The VX2433wm is a smart-looking display. Its 1,080p resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio matches the shape of a widescreen TV and is ideal for displaying HD content. Finished in a glossy piano black, it has a single silver power button at the front. The remaining controls are tucked out of sight on the right-hand side, keeping the appearance neat and tidy and retaining minimalistic good looks.

Viewsonic’s menu system is not the easiest to navigate. This is partly because the design precludes the use of unsightly button legends.

The menu contains some useful functions, including control over aspect ratio and the ability to turn the dynamic contrast system on or off we prefer to leave it disabled. While this boosts the specified contrast ratio from 1,000:1 to 20,000:1, it’s unhelpful for most applications other than watching video. It also lacks any one-button display presets, such as text, movie or photo modes. This means you’ll have to tweak the individual functions manually.

If you do want to watch video, the display will cope admirably with a variety of sources, thanks to its built-in HDMI connector, which will allow you to hook up a Blu-ray player or games console with a single cable and enjoy 1,080p HD video and sound through a pair of built-in 2W speakers.

You also get DVI and analogue VGA ports, so you can connect up to three devices at once and switch between them from the front panel.

In use, the VX2433wm delivers a bold, sharp picture, thanks to its excellent contrast. However, colour reproduction was less vivid than some of the competition as revealed by our test results.

Overall this is a smart, good-looking display with excellent connectivity and better-than-average performance. Look online for discounted prices of around £200 inc Vat.

Hauppauge WinTV Ministick HD

Paul Lester — 2009-07-03T09:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Friday 3 July 2009 at 09:00:00

Watch free-to-view TV but a rooftop aerial is a must

Hauppauge has expanded its range of portable TV tuners to include the WinTV-Ministick HD, a portable USB-based tuner capable of picking up local free-to-view TV channels, including those in HD.

The device is no bigger than a thumb drive, with an RF port at one end to connect to an aerial. A portable mini-aerial is supplied as is the latest version of WinTV for accessing and recording channels.

Setup is straightforward, provided you have access to a strong signal. During our tests we found the supplied aerial to be all but useless, very occasionally picking up a few channels only to lose them after reconnecting, so we’d strongly advise anyone considering a purchase to use a rooftop aerial.

This restricts its versatility somewhat, but isn’t the only factor that can affect playback.

After successfully scanning for and detecting a range of channels using the setup wizard, we discovered our test notebook was severely under-powered and had to resort to carting a desktop machine to a location close enough to an aerial wall socket.

Reception and picture quality improved dramatically, but the listed system requirements are only a bare minimum, and might not be enough for consistently smooth playback.

WinTV is a basic application that provides all you might need from a TV tuner, such as the ability to pause, time-shift and record programmes. It includes a seven-day electronic programme guide (EPG) and the ability to set up and schedule recordings, show subtitles and Teletext.

Generally we were impressed by the image quality, portability and operation of the Ministick HD, but only in an optimum environment. The potential signal issues are a problem, but this is also true of many other TV tuners. If you have a powerful PC, this is an effective way to access digital television and HD.

Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH wireless router

Will Stapley — 2009-07-03T09:00:00.000Z

Will Stapley, Personal Computer World, Friday 3 July 2009 at 09:00:00

Fast speeds when channel bonding, but no 5GHz mode

Buffalo’s latest router is a sleek-looking device, aimed at cable broadband users, since it has no built-in ADSL modem.

It is surprising that the WZR-HP-G300NH doesn’t feature a 5GHz 802.11n mode, relying on the more congested 2.4GHz spectrum only. But we still experienced some decent speeds during testing.

When using the router with Buffalo’s Wireless-N USB adapter, we transferred a 349MB file in 63 seconds, giving a throughput of 44Mbits/sec.

Switching the channel bonding mode on, the same file transferred in just 33 seconds (an impressive 85Mbits/sec), however your neighbours won’t thank you for hogging two wireless channels. These speeds were achieved at close range, and when we moved to around 30m away speeds dropped to under 15Mbits/sec, which is still respectable.

Buffalo has furnished the WZR-HP-G300NH with a few useful extras, including a Bittorrent client that allows for peer-to-peer downloads requiring a PC to be switched on. To use this feature, you will need to attach some form of storage to the USB port at the rear of the router. Once attached, the router will also function as a basic network-attached server (Nas) device.

A switch on the front of the router lets you turn the Movie Engine mode on. Essentially a quality of service (QoS) feature, this prioritises media traffic to reduce the likelihood of video stuttering. However, we had no trouble streaming HD video through the router, whether the setting was enabled or not.

There’s plenty to like about Buffalo’s latest router, but it’s rather disappointing it can’t manage 802.11n on the less-cluttered 5GHz spectrum.

Powertraveller Solar Gorilla portable power charger

Orestis Bastounis — 2009-07-02T10:41:00.000Z

Orestis Bastounis, Personal Computer World, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:41:00

An eco-friendly way to charge mobile devices

The Solar Gorilla is a portable solar panel that can charge an MP3 player, mobile phone, or even a laptop.

It’s quite a bulky unit that comprises two photovoltaic panels that open like a clamshell to capture energy from direct sunlight.

You plug a device into either the 5V USB or 20V laptop power using one of the supplied adapters. There are plenty of these for all the shapes and sizes of power connector used by different manufacturers, so you can charge most notebooks, including those from Asus, Acer, Compaq, Gateway, Epson, Samsung, Sony, E-machines, Viewsonic, Dell, Panasonic, but an Apple Macbook needs an adapter.

It doesn’t store any energy, so you can’t rely on the Solar Gorilla as an alternative battery. Instead, to charge a device, you have to leave it plugged in while the Solar Gorilla is in direct sunlight, which restricts when it can be used.

Powertraveller sells another product, the Power Gorilla, a portable battery that can be charged by the Solar Gorilla, although this costs another £130.

If you spend time camping or hiking, the Solar Gorilla could be exactly what you need if you have to be certain your laptop or mobile phone will work away from a power source.

The surface of the Solar Gorilla is covered in rubber, so it can survive a few knocks and scratches if you’re on the move. It’s quite thin, so will easily slip into a laptop bag or a rucksack, but be aware it weighs 700g.

It’s a free source of energy, but it might take a while before the savings to your electricity bill match the initial cost of the device.

The Solar Gorilla is an excellent solar-powered charger, but aside from giving you a warm feeling that your laptop is being powered from a source of eco-friendly energy, it’s only useful in limited situations, most of them travel-related.

Genius G-Shot HD520 HD camcorder

Orestis Bastounis — 2009-07-02T10:25:00.000Z

Orestis Bastounis, Personal Computer World, Thursday 2 July 2009 at 10:25:00

A portable HD camcorder for less than £100

Like the Flip Mino HD, the G-Shot HD520 is a pocket-sized camcorder that can record 720p resolution video. However, the G-Shot can also capture still images, function as a webcam, MP3 player and ebook reader, has a 2.5in rotatable flip-out LCD and its internal storage can be expanded with SD cards. And, incredibly, it’s much cheaper than the Flip Mino HD.

When recording video the G-Shot is meant to be held with your arm outstretched, pointed like a gun. It isn’t as light or portable as the Flip, measuring 4cm deep at its widest point.

On the right-hand side is a control for 5x digital zoom, along with a button to manually turn the flash on or off when taking still images.

Four buttons sit under your thumb for going through menus, selecting options and deleting files. A switch on the top lets you switch focus settings between normal and macro recording.

Regardless of which macro setting you use, the G-Shot won’t produce brilliant-quality video, thanks to its low-quality lens.

We spent time recording indoors and outside, and both times the results were mediocre. Video was either grainy or blurry, with artefacts obscuring small details, which negates the benefit of recording in high definition. It isn’t terrible though and is perfectly suitable for recording video for the web.

The G-Shot’s other features range from good to useless. The MP3 player works well as expected, but the small 2.5in screen isn’t suited for reading ebooks. Its still images are reasonable, although most dedicated compact cameras produce far better quality.

Still, you’d be hard pressed to find another HD camcorder less than £100. The G-Shot isn’t nearly in the same league as the Everio, and falls short of the Flip Mino HD. However, it’s perfectly suited for recording while on holiday, or for anyone who likes to share online video.

E-Pens Mobile Notes

Paul Lester — 2009-07-01T16:22:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 1 July 2009 at 16:22:00

A quick and easy way to transcribe handwritten notes

Anyone who has attempted to convert a series of handwritten notes to text on a computer knows that transcription can often be a painstaking and time-consuming process, so automating this with a device such as E-pens Mobile Notes could save a lot of hassle.

The package consists of a digital stylus that acts as a regular pen, a receiver unit and conversion software. It can either be used on the move or as a mouse for tablet PCs, or for handwritten text entry into various applications.

Setup is straightforward and, once charged, the receiver can be clipped to the top of a pad of paper, picking up pen strokes to store as one of up to 50 virtual pages.

Once connected to a computer, these can be imported using the supplied software and converted to digital text using optical character recognition, with a range of settings available to denote language, writing style and end-format.

In addition to this, switching to mouse mode means that pen movements control the pointer on screen, with a tap on the page or click of the control button on the pen, activating left and right click.

We were very impressed by the responsiveness of the stylus and receiver and, though you have to write quite neatly to achieve 100 per cent accuracy, it does an admirable job of converting scrawl into text.

If you are unable or unwilling to write neatly, there is a recognition trainer provided to help the software interpret your style of writing, although you will need to proofread and alter text after writing to correct inevitable mistakes.

A bigger issue is that the pen doesn’t feel solid or well-built and is prone to slipping in the hand slightly after extended use. For normal writing, a premium fountain or ballpoint pen is much more satisfying.

However, the Mobile Notes package is still an effective product for saving time when transferring handwritten notes onto a PC.

D-Link NetDefend DFL-260

Alan Stevens — 2009-06-26T10:00:00.000Z

Alan Stevens, Personal Computer World, Friday 26 June 2009 at 10:00:00

All in one threat protection for the small business

D-Link’s NetDefend DFL-260 is a UTM (Unified Threat Management) appliance which, at first glance, offers the same firewall/VPN facilities as the cheaper DFL-210 we reviewed back in the September 2007 issue. However, whereas the DFL-210 is very much an entry level product, the new DFL-260 adds anti-virus and more sophisticated intrusion protection options, together with hardware accelerators to cope with much larger networks.

From the outside there’s very little difference, with four 10/100Mbits/sec Ethernet ports for Lan connectivity plus two for the internet. Traffic shaping and failover options are available across the two Wan ports, added to which the second can be used to create a so-called De-Militarized Zone (DMZ), to protect public facing servers.

In terms of the firewall there’s not much difference either, implemented in the NetDefendOS software. To this is then added a VPN server able to support up to 100 tunnels with a maximum throughput overall of 25Mbits/sec. Support for site-to-site and client-based VPN setups is available using a mix of tunnelling IPSec, PPTP and L2TP technologies, but software clients aren’t included.

The “real” UTM options then start with what D-Link calls “stream-based” anti-virus scanning. By this it means the ability to inspect files for viruses as they pass through the gateway, without having to be cached. Kaspersky technology is behind the D-Link anti-virus scanner, added to which there’s an advanced Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) which employs a technology called component-based signature recognition to identify a wide range of potential threats. This, in turn, uses information collected from a number of sites including the US National Vulnerability Database.

The IPS and anti-virus options also benefit from hardware accelerators. D-Link claims the accelerators enable these options to be run simultaneously without degrading firewall/VPN performance and so deliver sufficient throughput to handle networks of 50 users or more.

Web content filtering is yet another option, with 90-days of free updates for this and the other services included. Thereafter, however, annual subscriptions are required which, together, can cost almost as much again as the hardware.

In terms of what it has to offer, then, the DFL-260 looks like it ought to be an effective UTM appliance, well suited to the small business. As with the DFL-210, however, management is something of an Achilles heel

The basics are fine, with a console port for local management via a command line interface plus SNMP support if needed. It’s also possible to connect to the DFL-260 via a browser both for initial deployment and day to day management.

We found the Web interface easy navigate, and there’s a startup wizard to, where for example, you can assign addresses to the various interfaces, set the clock and so on. That done, however, and all you’re left with is a fairly basic firewall. Everything else has to be configured manually, and it’s not easy

Policy-based management is the order of the day, which is good, and once you get to grips with how it all works it’s not hugely difficult. However, you’re presented with a seemingly endless list of options and a high degree of technical knowledge is assumed throughout. Such knowledge is likely to be in short supply in the kind of small businesses at which the product is aimed. The documentation helps, but only a little, leaving the DFL-260 very much the kind of product you’d want a specialist reseller to both install and maintain.

Violet Mir:ror

Kelvyn Taylor — 2009-06-24T11:15:00.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 24 June 2009 at 11:15:00

An RFID kit for home that’s charmingly loopy

The French are experts at creating quirky technology and they don’t come quirkier than Violet’s Mir:ror RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader.

The Mir:ror starter kit ships with a Mir:ror USB RFID reader, two nano:ztag miniature RFID rabbits and three RFID ztamp:s adhesive tags to stick on everyday objects. The Mir:ror itself is a small white circular reader with an LED-illuminated rim that glows in several different colours depending on its status. There’s also a small audio beeper in it.

To get started, you create a user account at Violet’s website and download the Mirware application. Once your Mir:ror is connected, you need to assign actions to your RFID-enabled objects by placing one on the reader then registering and naming it either using the Mirware application or directly using your account area on the website.

Each tagged object gets its own unique email address, allowing you to do surreal things such as send emails to your umbrella. It will recognise any ISO-compliant RFID chip, so we could register both an Oyster card and an RFID-enabled Barclaycard as triggers to launch applications.

You can associate any number of applications with each object. There are several general-purpose apps such as ‘launch a program’ or ‘open a URL’ so you don’t need to do any programming to get started.

Available applications include launching a Youtube video, podcasts or RSS news services using text-to-speech conversions. The quality of text-to-speech isn’t brilliant, though. Applications can be chained together. There’s no easy way to create your own applications, but you can use a tag to send metadata to any web-based application.

Mir:ror has some good novelty value and is simple to use, although it’s not yet a must-have product. But as a technology demo, it’s impressive.

Myfax fax software

Paul Lester — 2009-07-06T09:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Monday 6 July 2009 at 09:00:00

Send and receive faxes from a regular email account

Now that email is the preferred way to transmit documents, fax machines are a bulky relic of a less efficient and less environmentally friendly age. However, they’re still in common use in many offices. Thankfully, if you need to send or receive faxes, you no longer need to buy a physical fax machine if you have software such as Myfax.

After quick registration, you’re sent a confirmation email, fax number and account setup details. This involves following a simple step-by-step procedure to send a test fax, set up a password and view an (optional) demonstration video. An online account is created that shows current usage and allows you to send and receive faxes, but the service also integrates with pre-installed email applications.

To send a fax, the fax number and country code must be entered into the To field, appended with ‘@myfax.com’, with the subject line carrying the name of the recipient and any body text forming the cover sheet. Up to eight attached documents will then form the fax message itself.

Received faxes take the form of attached PDF documents and are delivered directly to an Inbox, where files can be saved, printed or sent on. If you have trouble at any stage of the process there’s full documentation, a quick-start guide and freephone support number, alongside the demonstration video.

We were impressed by the straightforward setup and operation of the service and, although it can take a little while for faxes to arrive (between 30 seconds and one minute per attached page), this is still going to be more convenient than dealing with reams of paper.

A free trial is available to test out Myfax, but at just £5 per month for up to 100 sent and 200 received pages, this is a cheap and convenient method of remaining fax-capable without investing in dedicated hardware.

PC Tools iAntivirus For Macintosh

Cliff Joseph — 2009-06-25T15:45:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Thursday 25 June 2009 at 15:45:00

A simple and affordable anti-virus program for Mac users

We recently heard reports about the first ever Trojan to attack the Mac. The offending malware, known as iServices.A, was present in pirated versions of Apple’s iWork software suite that had been downloaded using Bittorrent. There’s also a variant called iServices.B that was linked to pirated copies of Photoshop.

The moral of this story, of course, is not to download pirated software. But if you’d rather be safe than sorry, you could take a look at iAntivirus from PC Tools. Unlike its two main rivals Norton Antivirus for Macintosh and Intego’s Virus Barrier iAntivirus is available in both free and paid-for versions.

The two versions are identical, but if you pay the full $29.95 price for the program, you get online technical support with guaranteed 24-hour response times as well.

The program is extremely easy to use. Its main window provides just two options Scan and Protect. You will want to run a scan the first time you install the program, and the ‘Quick Scan’ option took less than 30 seconds to work through our Macbook’s 120GB hard disk, while a more thorough scan took about 24 minutes.

You can then leave the program running in the background in order to provide constant protection, or just run it occasionally in order to perform a quick virus check as required. You can schedule additional scans whenever you like, as well as downloading regular updates for no additional charge.

Admittedly, most Mac users happily get by without any anti-virus software at all, but the ability to download iAntivirus for free and then upgrade at a later date if you want the full technical support package makes it a good choice for Mac users who want to keep their options open.

Panoweaver 6

Ken McMahon — 2009-06-25T10:15:00.000Z

Ken McMahon, Personal Computer World, Thursday 25 June 2009 at 10:15:00

Create 2D and 360º panoramic images easily

Stitching together a panoramic image to give web users a virtual tour of a location is usually time-consuming and fiddly. Panoweaver 6 makes the process a lot easier, and can be used to create both 2D and 360º immersive panoramas, which can be exported to Flash, Quicktime or Java player formats.

We’ve reviewed the standard version, which is the cheapest at £87, but there are also Professional and Batch editions that cost £439 and £791 respectively.

Version 6 adds plenty of tweaks, such as automatic recognition of the lens used, cylindrical panorama production, dual-core CPU support and improved Flash player export options.

The major new feature is support for ‘normal’ and wide-angle lenses. Previous versions of Panoweaver concentrated on producing panoramas from images shot with fisheye lenses. That makes sense because you can cover a 360-degree field of view in only four shots with a fisheye lens (including the overlap).

According to Easypano the Standard edition is restricted to non-fisheye images, but using the trial version, we managed to stitch a 360º spherical image from four images shot with a Sigma 8mm fisheye lens. Another limitation is that it doesn’t include the Smartblend algorithm, which does a superb job of seamlessly blending stitched images together.

The really impressive thing about Panoweaver is ease of use. The interface isn’t pretty, but it’s very effective. Within a few minutes of importing our photos we had a fully stitched panorama ready for export to a Flash, Quicktime or Java player format.

Panoweaver’s autostitching engine did a good job, though it was necessary to add control points between two of the images to indicate matching overlapping detail. After we added these, the result was perfect.

For applications such as estate agency tours and for amateur panographers, Panoweaver 6 could save you a lot of time.

Zonealarm Extreme Security

Paul Lester — 2009-06-23T12:00:00.000Z

Paul Lester, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 23 June 2009 at 12:00:00

PC tune-up tools have been added to the security suite

Zonealarm Extreme is Checkpoint’s answer to Norton 360, adding backup and tune-up tools along with its impressive Forcefield online protection to the Internet Security core engine.

After a rather lengthy installation that requires a combination of scans and updates, it becomes apparent that the ‘headline’ additions, namely backup and tune-up, must be installed separately and behave as standalone tools.

These are both fairly rudimentary, as backup includes encryption and useful options such as multiple file-version support and live monitoring, but it can only be used to save files to the 2GB of online space provided.

The tune-up tool is focused around scanning, backing up and repairing the Registry and is hardly comprehensive, so we were a little disappointed not to see a level of integration comparable to Norton 360.

The Forcefield component works well though, protecting Internet Explorer and Firefox against a range of threats using a virtual browser, which also allows you to prevent any traces of a current session from being recorded.

The security-related aspect of the suite is typically effective and Zonealarm maintains its excellent and well-deserved reputation with a powerful firewall and comprehensive threat detection. Scan times are reasonable, at around six minutes for a quick scan and just under an hour for a normal scan and, as with Norton 360, these decrease as the software gets to know your system.

There’s little to criticise when it comes to core components but we were disappointed by the limited additional tools and poor integration. There’s still a commendable collection of security and protection on offer but we’d question the value in paying extra for the new additions to this particular version.

Serif Photoplus X3

Ken McMahon — 2009-06-20T11:00:00.000Z

Ken McMahon, Personal Computer World, Saturday 20 June 2009 at 11:00:00

Plenty of tools for both novice and advanced photographers

Serif has christened version 11 of its image-editing software Photoplus X3.

This could be an effort to go one better than Corel’s Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, or perhaps Serif simply felt it sounded less prosaic.

The name is not the only change, of course. This release adds support for Camera Raw images, High Dynamic Range (HDR) merging, support for 16-bit-per-channel images and some new effects.

These additions expand on an already comprehensive suite of existing tools and features that places Photoplus X3 squarely in the realm of the serious photographer.

The Layers palette often provides a good indication of a photo editor’s capabilities and this one allows you to add new layers and organise them into groups, independently lock their transparency, pixels and position, adjust their opacity and blend modes plus add adjustment layers, layer masks, layer effects and depth maps (otherwise known as displacement maps).

In a tabbed group within the Layers palette you’ll also find a Channels palette, vector paths and a macros palette X3 supports recording and playback of macros as well as batch processing.

X3 does a good job of making these advanced features and other editing tools accessible to beginners or anyone unfamiliar with the program. There’s a Quickfix Studio window that provides a range of image adjustments and effects including white balance, brightness and contrast, cropping, red-eye and blemish removal, noise reduction and sharpen tools, in a single location. The only complaint here was that it didn’t seem to work with 16-bit images.

There’s also a How To panel, which provides guided help for a range of editing activities broadly categorised into Getting Started, Image Adjustments, Retouching, Makeover Studio, Black and White Studio, Creative Effects and Photo Finishing. This has been well thought out and implemented.

Any editing application that aims to attract serious hobbyists has to offer support for Camera Raw formats. The Photoplus X3 documentation doesn’t say which Raw formats are supported, though the open dialogue box now specifies CRW, CR2, ORF and NEF, that includes Canon, Olympus and Nikon and we were also able to open Adobe DNG files.

The Raw Studio importer provides a good set of conversion controls including white balance, exposure, highlight recovery, noise reduction and chromatic aberration. You can export files with either eight or 16 bits per channel, tagged with a colour space profile. It doesn’t offer the sophistication of more expensive Raw converters but nonetheless does a great job.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) tools, which produce a composite image from a set of bracketed exposures, are becoming common in photo applications, but both ease of use and quality of results have been lacking; X3 manages to score well in both these areas.

Using HDR Merge we imported six 16-bit TIFFs and produced an excellent tone-mapped composite image in a matter of seconds. The HDR merge controls include a local contrast radius slider, which helps to overcome the flatness problem typical in HDR images, and colour temperature and saturation controls to save you having to make these adjustments subsequently. You can then save images as eight- or 16-bit tone-mapped files or in EXR or HDP formats.

Photoplus X3 is up there with Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 in its ability to cater for digital photographers of all levels.

Plants vs. Zombies

Daniel Griffin — 2009-06-18T16:15:00.000Z

Daniel Griffin, Personal Computer World, Thursday 18 June 2009 at 16:15:00

Defending your home from the undead horde

Zombies: the cannon fodder of choice for gamers and publishers alike. If a zombie isn’t already cast as the main enemy in a game these days they can usually be found festering in a bonus level such as WW2 shooter Call of Duty.

With Plants vs. Zombies, the scenario is a little different. Essentially a tower-defence game, your goal is to halt the encroaching zombies and prevent them from reaching your base by using strategically placed towers or in this case, plants. Although Plants vs. Zombies may sound utterly silly (and it is), we think you will be completely hooked after playing it for five minutes.

You decide from a varied selection what offensive and defensive plants you will use to stop the undead in their tracks (such as pea-shooting pods or exploding cherry bombs). But you also need to regenerate your resources in the form of sunlight to keep your plant defences growing and save your brains from the hungry horde.

Different seeds have different growing times so you have to continually estimate what to plant and when, while contending with the Zombies themselves, which also come in a wide variety of guises and abilities. It is a case of forward planning as well as experimenting with your arsenal to find the best way of coping with the onslaught.

Despite the simple concept of Plants vs. Zombies, the strategic demands and learning curve are pitched just right and the effect is a very polished and crucially, fun experience. With an excellent sense of humour, well-balanced controls and catchy tunes, we felt smitten with what PopCap (producers of Peggle and Bejeweled) have created.

Mini games add to the longevity, as does the opportunity to buy a stack of new equipment once you have built up enough in-game credit. So while the waves of zombies never seem to end, there is also enough variety in the game play between levels to keep you interested as well as challenged.

Plants vs. Zombies gave us a welcome reminder that first and foremost a great game must be fun and this one does it in spades.

Acebit Password Depot 4

Alan Stevens — 2009-06-18T10:00:00.000Z

Alan Stevens, Personal Computer World, Thursday 18 June 2009 at 10:00:00

Store user names and passwords securely on your PC

There are lots of ways to keep track of passwords, such as jotting them down on paper or in a spreadsheet or another computer file.

However, none of these can be considered properly secure, and finding and using the information when needed can be an issue.

If that is the case you might want to consider a custom password organiser, such as Password Depot from Acebit.

Password Depot is designed solely to manage passwords. Now in its fourth release, it lets you store and organise all your account names, passwords and other login information in a set of lists.

The software automatically applies 256-bit AES encryption to protect the data both on disk and in computer memory. It also provides active protection against keyloggers and ensures sensitive user and password information is cleared from both the Windows clipboard and system memory when not needed.

Other benefits of the Acebit software include its ability to rate the strength of your passwords as you type them or it will create them for you using a random password generator.

The latest version also lets you attach files, such as product keys, to passwords and synchronise the contents of multiple password lists. Plus it lets you track password histories, encrypt/decrypt other files on the host PC and store the application and password lists on USB memory keys, enabling you to carry your credentials around and use them on any PC.

Written for use with any version of Windows from 98 onwards, we tested Password Depot in conjunction with the optional Password Deport Server. Available free for up to three users (for six users licences start at £129 ex Vat), this add-on package enables passwords to be centrally stored and shared rather than kept on user PCs.

The Password Depot Server installs as a Windows service on either a server or desktop PC, with a separate control panel for management which can be run on the same host or remotely.

The server does little beyond sharing centrally stored password lists and users interact with the application via the same interface, whether using it standalone or in conjunction with the server program. We found this reasonably easy to follow and there is an option to minimise the GUI to a small toolbar to reduce the amount of on-screen space it needs. However, you are presented with lots of tools beyond simple password management, many of which you may never need and it takes a while to get to grips with what’s on offer.

There are wizards to help with some of the more common tasks, such as capturing login information and passwords when you sign on so you don’t have to type everything into the program from scratch. Likewise, you can get Password Depot to auto-fill login screens on the fly rather than you having to look up the information and enter it manually.

It all works and a few tutorials are included but we did have a few concerns over the level of training likely to be needed simply to secure user passwords. We would also like to see more supporting documentation beyond the rather basic user guide supplied. Otherwise Password Depot does what it’s supposed to and is a huge improvement over jotting down passwords on bits of paper.