COMPUTER REPAIRS BOURNEMOUTH

Set for relaunch as 11.6in mini-laptop?

Wonder why Apple hasn't yet updated the MacBook Air the way it has with all its other notebooks? Because the skinny laptop is about to shrunk even further, it has been claimed.?

Steve Jobs ain't gonna like it

HP has filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office to protect what may very well be the name of its upcoming webOS-based tablet: Palmpad ... or PalmPad. Who knows, since the application simply reads all-caps PALMPAD.?

LePad to run Android 3.0?

The status of Lenovo's rather cute'n'skinny Skylight netbook may be uncertain, but the Chinese computer maker has at least committed itself to release an iPad alternative by the end of the year.?

Reality now less than half as good

The gap between the marketing and reality of broadband speeds has grown even wider, according to figures released today by Ofcom.?

Still no sign of a key accessory, though

Apple's iPad will arrive in nine more countries this coming Friday.?

Basic box

Review  Lexmark?s Home Office range of all-in-ones, like Kodak?s, share the same print engine and are distinguished, one from another, by their feature sets and price. Although it has an SRP of £150, the S505 is closer to the bottom than the top of the range and you can find it heavily discounted.?

Probably better than last effort

HMV has a new music download site and lots of offers to tempt punters away from iTunes.?

The pick of the printers

Group Test  Before I announce which printers have won Reg Hardware awards, let's first see how they measure up against each other.?

Instant broadband

Do you live in the Welsh village of Crumlin, Caerphilly? Then you may well be getting fast broadband next month, delivered via the town's many power poles.?

Elonex signs HMV to sell colour e-book reader

We're not sure we'd agree with HMV's claim that Elonex is "world renowned for their e-book readers", not least because the UK company only released its first one a year ago, and that appears to have faded away with Elonex's bookshop partner of the time, Borders UK, which went into administration in November 2009.?

Better CPUs, more Ram, ATI graphics, SDXC card support

Apple has indeed updated its iMac line, as anticipated, beefing up the line's speeds'n'feeds and adding support for the new SDXC memory card format.?

Help for the tone deaf

Been a while since I received an ANGRY EMAIL ? and been never since I sent one in return. I do my SHOUTING in person.?

Full HD desktop replacement with plenty of poke

Review  Stylish and powerful, the new 18.4in Aspire Ethos 8943G will appeal to those looking for a desktop replacement that doesn?t hold back on performance. Each of the four cores on the Core i7-720QM purr along at 1.6GHz, while ATI?s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is on hand should you want to indulge in a bit of gaming. Throw in a Blu-ray drive, and the cost of the components starts to rise, pushing the laptop?s price well over the £1,000 mark.?

Cheap and fast - cheerful too?

Review  Lite-On is certainly pushing the boundaries of optical disc burning at aggressive prices. The iHBS112 is an internal drive that goes beyond the combo by letting you read and write Blu-ray, DVD and CD media in one unit. Its Blu-ray writing speed, 12x, matches the current fastest on the market.?

Post mortem remains - or sign of revival?

Claims that HP may have killed of its Windows 7-based 9in tablet, the Slate 500, may have been wrong.?

East beats West

The world's personal computer makers experienced recession busting growth during Q2, with shipments up 20.7 per cent on the same period in 2009.?

Seeking international publishing partners, 'pparently

Sharp is to enter the e-book reader market.?

The lepidopterist's laptop?

Review  Where does the dividing line between netbooks and notebooks lie? Is an 11.6in screen small enough to dismiss any ideas of true notebook status? Conversely, does having a DVD rewriter lift a portable forever out of netbookdom??

32nm CPUs at last

Apple hasn't - contrary to expectations - updated the Mac Pro, but it did today promise to do so soon.?

Cold blooded tablet

Apple's iPad can shut down if it gets too hot, and Jacob Baltazar, Claudia Keller, and John Browning are as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore.?

Home backup goes large

Review  Beyond the entry level market for NAS (network attached storage) there is the kind of buyer who has big server requirements within a small operation, and thinks they might get a great deal bigger later on. That's who HP's MediaSmart Server EX490 is aimed at.?

Beaut

And now Toshiba's in on the act. Yes, the Japanese laptop pioneer has an iPad-style tablet in the works, set to debut in a few months' time and running Android and/or Windows 7.?

Operators will collect the money instead

VoIP operator Skype has shelved plans to charge users for 3G calling, claiming that operator plans to bill by the byte make such charges redundant.?

Platform emerging?

Motorola is the latest company to have its name associated with an upcoming - well, Q4 at the earliest - Android-based tablet computer.?

Back soon, apparently

The Apple Store is offline ahead of - it now seems reasonable to assume - new desktop Macs.?

WebOS tablets, netbooks for consumers

HP has confirmed that its Windows 7-based Slate 500 tablet hasn't been canned and will be pitched at big biz customers this coming autumn.?

Eco battery packs too

Apple has introduced the much-rumoured and Federal Communications Commission-approved Magic Trackpad, a wireless touchpad for all you fanboys who hate mice.?

OK. webOS. And this time we mean it

HP's Android tablet will not ship before the end of the year as originally planned, according to a report citing "sources in position to know."?

Jobsian wave sweeps Asia

Amid all the ballyhoo and whoop-de-doo about Apple's resurgence being a result of the consecutive successes of the iPod and iPhone ? and the promise of the iPad ? one Cupertinian money-maker has been flying under the radar: Mac sales have tripled in the past five years.?

Windows CE out, hurrah

Asus' upcoming Eee Pad tablet will no longer feature Windows CE but will use Google's Android instead.?

Only Boot Campers need apply

Windows users keen to make use of Apple's Magic Trackpad, announced yesterday, can now do so - possibly.?

No crash safeguards

Seagate has introduced GoFlex Home as a home networked storage system. It is a single drive product with no protection against it crashing.?

Budget point and prod PC

Review  Although best known for its low cost PCs and laptops, Advent does occasionally produce slightly more interesting models. Its new MT22 all-in-one PC is a case in point, and follows on from previous attempts such as the AIO-100 and AIO-156.?

Talks up specs not specs

LG will release its first 3D notebook next month.?

The value-for-money option?

Review  Looking like somebody?s given a pair of compasses to a penguin and told it to design an all-in-one, the Officejet 6500?s black and white body is all wide-radius curves. From the cheeky quiff at the end of its 35-sheet ADF feed tray to its double-size, 250-sheet paper tray, it?s unexpected in looks and function.?

Judas Phone's 'self-made debacle'

Steve Jobs may have calmed some of the Antennagate ruckus with his spirited defense of the iPhone 4 on Friday, but he also stirred up a hornet's nest of response from other phone manufacturers, including RIM, Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, and HTC.?

And the best multifunction machines are...

Group Test  Much like the trend for mobile phones to have cameras, inkjet printers with scanners seems to be the norm these days. With all the models on test producing photo quality prints yet costing less than £150, you might think you?re getting something for nothing. Of course, along with the scanner doubling as a colour photocopier ? and with some models you get a fax too ? it?s all a ruse to get you to use more ink.?

State-of-the-art kit could be yours

Giveaway  Belkin's latest line of broadband modems and wireless network gadgets are finally shipping, and Reg Hardware has one to give away.?

But will the surge last?

Market watcher Gartner this week presented further evidence that early adopter enthusiasm for netbooks has peaked.?

10% rise hits home phone customers

BT will lean on its home phone customers as it staggers out of the recession with a 10 per cent rise in daytime call rates.?

SuperSpeed drives and cards compared

Review  In an age where the latest SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface has yet to be officially supported by Intel, storage vendors in particular, are keen to build the best add-on PCI Express adapter card to take advantage of this fast connectivity.?

Interpad inbound

German company Interpad will be showing off an interesting tablet at the upcoming IFA show in Berlin: a 10in boy running Android 2.1 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.?

MessagePad 120 ? it didn't suck

This Old Box  If any old-tech devotees are more rabid than Amiga amigos, the Newtonians are. So, for those lovers of Apple's pioneering handheld, here's an up-close-and-personal visual caressing of the Newton MessagePad 120, circa 1995.?

Quantity and quality - together at last

Google plans to release new stable versions of Chrome every six weeks as it continues to try and smash through as many builds as possible of its increasingly popular browser.?

External add-on

Optical drive specialist Plextor has unwrapped a USB-powered external Blu-ray box designed for folk who want to embrace the 3D "revolution" more cheaply.?

Opens Kindle store

Amazon UK's front page is dominated today by a letter to its customers, introducing the "third generation of Kindles".?

Vendor Number Five

Fellow market watchers may not include the iPad in Apple's computer sales figures, but Canalys does, and it reckons doing so puts the Mac maker into world's top five.?

Can't make 'em fast enough

Apple will sell 12.9 million iPads before the end of this year, according to the market watchers at iSuppli, upping their earlier estimate of 7.1 million "magical and revolutionary" devices.?

Rumour mill churns furiously

Rumours are doing the rounds that Apple is about to refresh its two key desktop lines: the iMac and the Mac Pro.?

Too many corners cut?

Review  Although a late arrival at the inkjet printer ball, Kodak?s wealth of photographic and imaging knowledge has helped carve it a clever niche in the market. Its current advertising run, stressing the low cost of running its machines, shows where it?s aiming.?