COMPUTER REPAIRS BOURNEMOUTH

Watch out for the gotchas

Group Test  With so many netbooks vying for your attention, choosing which model to go for isn?t the easiest of decisions to make. In contrast with most other technology purchases, performance is one of the least important factors. Almost all netboooks use Intel?s Atom processor, and although there are a range of Atoms available you?re very unlikely to notice any difference between them in day-to-day use.?

Apple flavoured?

More laptops have been announced at the IFA show by Samsung. This time it's the "premium" QX series - given a "airfoil design exterior" that's aluminium clad like as certain fruit-branded manufacturer's notebooks.?

AMD's Athlon II Neo gets a mini-laptop outing

Review  Computer manufacturers are well known for hyping up their products - "magical", indeed - but few actually fib. Samsung isn't telling porkies, but the sticker on its new X125 overstates with the best of them.?

Let your fingers do the working

Review  You've got to hand it to Apple. While it may not be the innovator it likes to think it is, it does have a knack for re-inventing old ideas and coming up with something better. Music players, small form-factor computers, tablet PCs - it's taken existing concepts and given them a major makeover.?

A great-value option

Review  Acer has churned out some impressive models in its Aspire One series, and the D260 is its latest creation. At 1.21kg, it?s one of the lightest 10.1in netbooks available, and throughout testing it remained impressively cool with no significant hotspots on the keyboard or wrist rest.?

The typist's favourite?

Review  With its curved chassis, HP?s Mini 210 has a slightly different look to most netbooks. Usability is good and the keyboard stretches right to the very edges. And with responsive, well-spaced keys, it has one of the best netbook keyboards I?ve ever typed on. The only anomaly is arrow key section ? the up and down keys are shrunk and sandwiched between the left and right ones, which takes some getting used to.?

Small box, lots of storage

LaCie has upgraded its compact, metal-clad Rikiki Go external hard drive to 1TB.?

Beyond the A4

Apple has filed a patent application that supports the stacked-component design of its A4 chip used in the iPad and iPhone 4, and points to further future integration of multiple system components on the same die.?

The long runner

Review  With the majority of netbooks - and indeed laptops - sporting glossy displays, Samsung is sticking its neck out by giving the N230?s 10.1in panel a matte coating. While this minimises reflections from overhead lighting, windows and other light sources, it also means it?s not quite as vibrant as netbooks with a glossy screen coating ? for some, though, this trade-off will be more than acceptable.?

One with a proper, mobile CPU, this time

Asus has outed its first netbook based on the just-announced dual-core Atom N550 processor.?

Take the tablet approach

Review  The Eee PC T101MT differs from the majority of netbooks in a number of ways, with the flip-and-twist touchscreen display being the most obvious.?

Serious computer for serious tasks

We're nowhere near the end of 2010, but Fujitsu has already roadmapped what it hopes will be the killer mobile office computer of 2011.?

Impervious to chip fat, vinegar?

LG's display developing subsidiary will begin mass-producing 9.7in colour e-paper panels and 19in monochrome but flexible e-paper screens by the end of the year.?

Worldwide recall of ball burners

Toshiba and US and Canadian consumer watchdogs are recalling three laptop models after receiving reports that people have been burned by the AC adapters.?

But no Gigabit performance just yet

Netgear has announced what may well be the world's first consumer networking products based on the as-yet-unratified IEEE P1910 next-gen powerline Ethernet standard.?

The ThinkPad of netbooks?

Review  With a chequered design on the lid, Lenovo?s S10-3 certainly stands out from the crowd. It has a few differences inside too, and this model - the M33DDUK - benefits from a built-in 3G module. Slip in a Sim card and the internet will follow you on your travels. The S10-3 isn?t picky as to which mobile operator you?re with, and it?s a great feature to have on a netbook.?

EasyStore gets faster, more power hungry CPU

Acer has said it'll update its EasyStore four-drive Nas box later this month with a new Intel Atom processor.?

Not just a tablet, it's a phone too

Viewsonic has introduced its 7in Android 2.2-based tablet, as expected. It claimed the gadget is a world first - thanks to the device's "phone functionality".?

Why wasn't the new Apple TV like this?

Toshiba has at long last launched the TV-connected hard drive it showed us in a backroom way back in February.?

Network your mains cabling

Review  I use a couple of Devolo dLAN AVplus powerline Ethernet adaptors at home, to hook up my wired-only Sony Bravia connected telly to my router. They're great adaptors, but with a pass-through three-pin power socket, they're bulky. D-Link's latest adaptor, the DHP-306AV, offers a more compact alternative.?

Sports the latest Atom chippery

Review  With a very plasticy shell and a rather odd rough texture both inside and out, the NB250 has a rather cheap feel to it.?

The secret is in the tilt

Could this mouse reduce your risk of developing repetitive strain injury? Creator SmartFish thinks so.?

The key products, the top stories

Uh, will H.264 even be relevant in 4 years?

Update: This story has been updated to show that the MPEG-LA's license change applies to free video broadcasts, not applications that encode and decode video.?

'Too fat to text' no longer excuse

The gloriously corpulent cadre of Japanese ring warriors known in the West as sumo wrestlers and in their home country as rikishi have a new tool to help them communicate among themselves: the iPad.?

At least 50 quid off your old (working) computer

Want a new notebook, netbook or desktop? Dixons stores PC World and Currys are both offering a "guaranteed" £50 off any new machine when you hand over your old one.?

'The best equipment available'

A Scottish independent Christian school has forsworn books, pencils, pens, and paper, and will now educate its young charges solely via Apple's iPad.?

New netbooks and notebooks in-bound

Samsung has introduced the NF netbook family it plans to bring to market here in October. The new machines sports Intel's new dual-core Atom N550 chip.?

'Magical' gadget could be yours

Competition  Apple's iPad is undoubtedly 2010's hottest product and, thanks to the guys and gals at mobile tech superstore eXpansys, one top-of-the-range model could be yours.?

Big ones, small ones

Archos will release a raft of Android-based tablets later this month, with more following in October.?

Need Apple worry? Nah

Acer's chairman JT Wang may believe Apple's share of the tablet market may shortly plunge to between 20 and 30 per cent, but market watcher iSuppli doesn't see it falling below 60 per cent, for the next few years at least.?

One known joker to be shuffled out of pack

Apple slung out a third beta of Mac OS X 10.6.5 yesterday for coders to tinker with.?

Coming clean on capacity

Review  Verbatim's InSight external hard drive is an unusual-looking offering, but that odd wave-like curve at the front is home to the unit's status readout screen.?

Mini 5103 inbound

HP is preparing a netbook based on Intel's new dual-core Atom chip, the 1.5GHz N550, and has posted a service manual on its website ahead of the as-yet-unannounced machine's release.?

'Failio' spec?

Do computer companies never learn from history? Clearly not, if Toshiba is anything to go by. Today, it launched its Android tablet, revealing the gadget is called Folio.?

Honest, guv

Virgin Media is attempting to gain the moral high ground by publishing what it claims are the real speeds its broadband customers experience.?

Tegra 2 in its tank

Hot on the heels of Viewsonic's ViewPad 7 Android tablet comes an altogether more exciting - we have more of the spec, in other words - 10in model from Chinese electronics maker Hannspree.?

Vodafone to sell it

Samsung has posted the spec for its upcoming Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab. And Vodafone has announced availability.?

Soon: AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro

The ATI brand is about to disappear, AMD announced Monday.?

For OS fence-sitters

Here is ViewSonic's other Android-based tablet, though here the Google OS is secondary to Windows 7.?

Hammer time

Mozilla pumped out a release candidate version of Firefox 3.6.9 yesterday.?

iPods, Apple TV, cloudy tunes?

Fanbois, mark your calendars: Apple has sent out invitations to a music-themed event to take place in San Francisco next Wednesday morning.?

Touchscreens across the range

Sony has updated its line of E Ink e-book readers, adding brighter screens, touch technology and reducing the devices' physical sizes.?

At least 6 critical vulns squished

Apple has punched out a security update for some major bugs found in its Mac OS X operating system.?

Mains networking to the max

Are your one-port powerline Ethernet adaptors proving insufficient for hooking up all the gadgets you want to connect to your network? Western Digital has the answer.?

Which machines score top marks?

Group Test  The summer hols are over, and it's back to school for the kids. Or to college, for the older ones. Whatever their age, though, your offspring - perhaps even you yourself - are likely to have their eye on a new computer for the new term.?

MosKeyto flies in

Ordinary USB Flash drives to darn big for you? LaCie's new MosKeyto protrudes a mere 6mm from the USB port it's connected to.?

The pick of the pack

Group Test  So which netbooks get the thumbs up? As far as performance goes, they?re all essentially in the same boat, so the judgement comes down to usability, features, battery life and price.?

Big and beautiful?

Review  Samsung?s R780 has clearly been designed to get noticed. The glossy, deep-red chassis and slightly nauseating swirly line motif won?t appeal to those who like their laptops to be subtle, but it does make it stand out from the crowd. Personally speaking, I quite like it. That said, I also quite liked the design of Acer?s Ethos, and it appears there were a few of you who thought I had a screw loose for saying that.?

VoiceChatTalk VoIP

Google is testing a service that lets you make phone calls from Gmail, according to a report that includes a screen shot of the test.?