Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Wednesday 31 January 2007, 4:04 PM
New business ultraportable from Sony
G11 — no, it's not an economic grouping of nation states, it's the latest addition to Sony's range of VAIO notebooks.
A 1.13kg ultraportable with a 12.1in. screen and an integrated optical drive, the VAIO G11 is designed to appeal to business travellers with its robust carbon-fibre laminate contstruction for the case and lid, acceleration-sensing technology that locks down the hard drive before an impact, fingerprint sensor and claimed battery life of up to 9 hours.
All this we will test in due course. What's not in any doubt is the G11's (typically premium) price, starting at £1,699, and the fact that it looks like this:
Tuesday 30 January 2007, 12:04 PM
Groundhog Day, Microsoft-style
It seems only yesterday that I was posting a blog entry about Microsoft launching Windows Vista and Office 2007 — and now they're doing it all over again!
Actually it was 30 November last year, which was when Microsoft's licence customers were able to get hold of the new OS and office suite. Today the great unwashed can descend in droves upon PC World and its ilk and strip the shelves bare like a plague of locusts. Or so Microsoft hopes.
Want to know what we think of the new products? We now have full rated reviews of Vista Business and Office Standard 2007 at your service.
Monday 29 January 2007, 4:34 PM
UK to get Sony's mini-VAIO
The US and Japan have had Sony's UX series ultra-mobile PCs for a while, and now it's the UK's turn. Today the company announced that we are to get the VAIO VGN UX1XN, pictured below.
With its 4.5in. touch-screen and slide-out keyboard (see below), the UX1XN may look more like a Windows Mobile handheld, but this baby runs full-blown Windows — Vista Business no less. The rest of the spec is impressively upmarket: 1GB of RAM, an Ultra Low Voltage Intel Core Solo processor, dual digital cameras (one for videoconferencing, the other for image capture), Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11g Wi-Fi and 32GB of flash memory in place of a hard disk. You also get a fingerprint scanner and a docking unit that adds extra connectivity options.
The downside? Apart from the challenge of using Vista on a 4.5in screen, the UX1XN will cost a princely — nay, a kingly — £2,000.
Wednesday 17 January 2007, 11:52 AM
Christmas ain't over yet...
We may be well into the dark days of January, beset by financial worries, Seasonal Affective Disorder and the rest, but a little spark of the Christmas spirit still burns in the shape of ZDNet's fabulous 12 Days of Christmas competition. Five of the prizes are still up for grabs as I write — from Adaptec, Google, D-Link, Netgear and Intel. If you haven't already, try your luck. The final competition closes on Friday 26 January.
Thursday 4 January 2007, 12:13 PM
Mandriva Linux gets flashy
I've been using Mandriva's new Linux-distribution-on-a-USB-stick, Mandriva Flash, and most impressive it is too. On a small 2GB USB key, you get a fully portable Linux desktop comprising the Linux Kernel 2.6.17 plus KDE 3.5.4, Mozilla Firefox 1.5.06, OpenOffice 2.0.3, KMPlayer, Adobe Flash Player and a number of other applications and plug-ins.
I'll post a full review soon, but the main advantages over a similar Live CD distro are that there's a spare 1GB of capacity on the USB stick for downloading additional software and storing your own data, and that any CD drive on a host system will be available for use rather than occupied by the Live CD.
Not every PC has a BIOS that allows booting from a USB drive, but there is a workaround involving a small CD image on the stick that you burn onto a disc and boot from with the USB stick inserted. Stay tuned for the full report.
