Technophile: MESH Cute X215 HD home theatre PC review
It's attractive and well connected but Mesh's Cute X215 HD PC is noisy and has limited expansion options London-based Mesh has just launched a Cute home theatre PC that is easy to fit into a living room or even a bedroom. The £399 price includes a Blu-ray drive, DVB-T digital TV card with remote control, and 7.1 surround sound. It doesn't include a monitor or speakers, but to get the best out of it you'll need a high-definition screen (1920 x 1080) and a set of speakers. The Cute's front is 200mm across and 166mm high, though the "cube" is comparatively deep at 303mm (7.9 x 6.7 x 12.2 in). I tried a glossy red one but it's also available in blue, black, or white. The Cute is the sort of thing hobbyists and movie enthusiasts have been building from barebones cases (the Cute looks like an A8989-Series from Chyang Fun) and mini-ITX motherboards. Mesh has done it for the rest of us, with a range of machines at prices from £299 to £599 . The £399 X215 HD version has a 2.7GHz dual-core AMD Athlon processor, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium, and Cyberlink's Blu-ray Disc Suite. (It also qualifies for a free copy of Windows 7.) Given that you pay a premium for small, it's good value. On set up, I was far from being the first person to struggle to get the Logitech cordless keyboard and optical mouse working. Eventually I found a tip in the documentation – push the connect buttons in with a pen – after which everything worked, instantly. If you're using it in a living room and/or at a movie-viewing distance, having cordless peripherals is important. The Cute is reasonably nippy, with the processor scoring 5.5 on the Windows Experience Index . However, the overall score is brought down to 4.0 by the 3D graphics from the integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 chip. Drawbacks?
See the original post:
Technophile: MESH Cute X215 HD home theatre PC review
Windows 7 laptops: how to choose | Jack Schofield
With the Windows market so large, the trick is to decide on a category of laptop before you start shopping Research suggests that Windows 7 is not going to give the PC market much of a lift when it makes its retail appearance on 22 October. My contrary opinion is based on a survey of only one user, but I get the impression from Ask Jack emails that I won't be the only person shopping for a new laptop when Windows 7 appears. Buying a portable Windows machine can be a bit of a challenge, because there is so much choice. There are hundreds if not thousands of suppliers, and some of them offer two dozen different models. The trick is to know what sort of laptop you want. To simplify things a bit, there are roughly six classes of portable PC: netbooks, "value" systems, mainstream notebooks, ultraportables, desktop replacements and gaming systems. Most netbooks today have Intel Atom processors with 1GB of memory, a 10in screen and Windows XP. Some will appear running the cheaper Windows 7 Starter Edition, which you can't buy in the shops
See the original post:
Windows 7 laptops: how to choose | Jack Schofield
Tools of the trade: the pico projector
As thoughts start to turn from August holidays to autumn work, I'm thinking of ideas that would be good on a break and also handy in the boardroom.
Read more from the original source:
Tools of the trade: the pico projector
Will 2010 finally be the year of the tablet PC?
Rumours of a 10in Apple tablet PC revive dreams of a form factor tried many previous times Yes. To resurrect an old industry joke about Unix: "Next year will be the year of the tablet PC, and always will be." That has been true of tablets since 1989, when GRiD Systems launched its pen-operated GridPad running Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system. The question now is whether Apple can make a success of this hoary old form factor, and take it from its industrial and commercial heartland into the world's living rooms. The rumour mill has been grinding out Apple tablet stories for months, based on the tiniest bits of grist. But things have been hotting up recently. On Monday, Barron's, the financial news service, even reported: "One veteran analyst who has seen first-hand a prototype slate-style computer from Apple says the device could be announced in September for release in November ." It sounds plausible that a tablet with a 10in screen exploiting multi-touch features in the forthcoming Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X might arrive in time for Christmas. Indeed, Microsoft has been touting the multi-touch features in Windows 7 for a couple of years, and with the new OS scheduled for its public appearance on 22 October, Apple has the perfect opportunity to rain on Microsoft's parade
See original here:
Will 2010 finally be the year of the tablet PC?
Nikon’s new camera: point, shoot… and project?
Cameras in your phones; phones in your iPods; iPods with Wi-Fi; Wi-Fi in your cameras. This, ladies and gentlemen, is called convergence. Sticking the features of one gizmo inside another seems to be the continuing trend in modern life, as we veer speedily towards a world where we all tote around one single, enormous gadget that handles all our entertainment, communication and probably even teleportation. Except, it seems, that even this is not enough convergence for the Japanese camera giant Nikon . To whit: the Nikon Coolpix S1000pj, which boasts among its coterie of assets a 12 megapixel sensor for still images, the ability to capture standard def video, and a built-in projector. Yes; instead of showing your granny those family photos on a tiny LCD screen, you will be able to throw your snaps onto a nearby wall using the patented pico-projector. Handy, perhaps, but I can't but feel it's a step too far along convergence road. What's next? Washing machines with built-in iPod docks? Oh. Gadgets Photography guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
View original here:
Nikon's new camera: point, shoot... and project?
Response: The NHS computer system can still provide joined-up healthcare
Expenditure so far is less than expected, and the benefits for patients are already clear Andy Beckett's article on the NHS's £12.7bn IT programme was too negative ( Systems failure? , 9 July). "The National Programme for IT is five years behind schedule," he says. "As the delays have built up, so has the impression of a government IT scheme, like many before it, gradually sinking into a swamp of technical difficulties, ethical disputes, incompetent contractors and Whitehall over-ambition and careless spending." The project has a number of key systems, for example a system for patients to book their first appointment to see a hospital consultant; a system to transfer prescription details between GP, pharmacist and paying agency; a broadband network; and an x-ray archiving system for different healthcare staff to see. To install the above in one business location would be straightforward, but in any huge geographically dispersed organisation, it is difficult and many say impossible. The NPfIT project is being implemented in 330 NHS trusts across England, including hundreds of hospitals and clinics. Consequently, there are hundreds of separate projects. As Beckett says, it's "probably the biggest and most controversial civilian computer project in the world". This project is too big for the NHS to do. Therefore it was outsourced to four world-class organisations; Accenture, BT, CSC and Fujitsu. It is wrong to say that the entire programme is five years behind schedule. The four systems described above are making good progress, and many elements were completed on or ahead of schedule. A fifth system – the electronic patient record (EPR) system – is years late. To be fair, such systems in acute hospitals have caused problems all over the world. But the EPR system is crucial, and it may have put confidence in the whole NHS project at risk. "Careless spending" is not an issue. Richard Granger, the former leading executive on the NHS project, instituted a hard but sensible procedure: payment only for systems that work. At the public accounts committee in 2006, MP Edward Leigh asked: "Were the four main suppliers showing strain because of these arrangements?" and conjectured that when Accenture withdrew from the project, it had spent perhaps $450m on systems for which it could not charge because this work was incomplete. Granger replied: "Better they [the suppliers] are feeling the strain, than the taxpayers." Expenditure to date is significantly less than was expected.
Originally posted here:
Response: The NHS computer system can still provide joined-up healthcare
Science Weekly podcast: Secrets of the cell
Adam Rutherford tells Alok Jha about his forthcoming BBC Four documentary Cell which traces the story of cells, from their discovery by a Dutch textile merchant in the 17th century to the present, with cells being engineered to order by scientists.
Read the rest here:
Science Weekly podcast: Secrets of the cell
Science Weekly podcast: Secrets of the cell
Adam Rutherford tells Alok Jha about his forthcoming BBC Four documentary Cell which traces the story of cells, from their discovery by a Dutch textile merchant in the 17th century to the present, with cells being engineered to order by scientists. "We're entering the era of the cell," predicts Rutherford. Also, in the first of our interviews with speakers at the recent TED global conference , Bertrand Piccard explains why he wants to build a solar-powered plane. All that plus the "correct" answers for the Rorschach ink-blot test exposed on Wikipedia , why we swing our arms when we walk, and the return of an ancient clockwork computer .
Read more here:
Science Weekly podcast: Secrets of the cell
Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems
Biologists have created a living computer from E. coli bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems Computers are evolving – literally. While the tech world argues netbooks vs notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of US scientists have engineered bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon. The research, published today in the Journal of Biological Engineering , proves that bacteria can be used to solve a puzzle known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem . Imagine you want to tour the 10 biggest cities in the UK, starting in London (number 1) and finishing in Bristol (number 10). The solution to the Hamiltonian Path Problem is the the shortest possible route you can take. This simple problem is surprisingly difficult to solve. There are over 3.5 million possible routes to choose from, and a regular computer must try them out one at a time to find the shortest.
Read more from the original source:
Bacterial computers can crack mathematical problems
What are the most and least useful kitchen gadgets?
Which food gadgets are indispensable works of creative genius, and which are useless, cupboard-cluttering tosh?
Read the original:
What are the most and least useful kitchen gadgets?