Retail: Reviews

Amazon says its new e-reader will allow college students to easily carry and access textbooks, and says the Amazon Kindle DX is ideal for larger-format periodicals such as newspapers and magazines.

January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a great place to see new gadgets but they're not always available right away. A couple of the coolest gadgets from this year's CES, Sony's OLED-based Walkman and Samsung's slim Blu-ray Disk player, are now on their way with availability from April.

Residual effects of the 2008 netbook craze are now popping up, with users complaining of cramped keyboards, missing DVD drives and limited functionality. Those are just some of trade-offs for a laptop that is dirt cheap and small in size. Some small accessories designed with netbooks in mind can ease those discomforts. The devices, which include portable keyboards, external storage devices and DVD drives, are small and draw less power. However, some devices can be pricey, so watch your wallet.

Samsung has announced three new LED-backlit television series.

In sports, successful athletes narrow their focus during crunch time. They may concentrate on footwork, technique or increase their margin for error. Technology providers must do the same thing during tough economic times. You must focus on your customer and nothing but your customer, whether the customer is a consumer, another business, or internal departments needing technology and support.

How much would you pay for a portable hard drive that lets you tote around 160GB in a shirt pocket -- with no need for a power brick? Apricorn is betting you'll be willing to spring for upward of US$260 for its 160GB Aegis Mini. However, it remains to be seen how many are willing to pay that price for portability.

AOC Jenio 919Pwz and 2219P2

Few video producers have the budget for a custom musical score, or the time, equipment and musical skill to create one. With that in mind, so Sony has released Cinescore 1.0.

It's not often that a lower priced model can match or even exceed the features of its more expensive brethren - but this is just what the TomTom One achieves. We've reviewed - and loved - the Go 300 and Go 500. We found them easy to use, packed with useful features and, most importantly, they got us exactly where we wanted to go. The TomTom One retains many of these features but also includes some key improvements.

So far, DLP rear projection models we have reviewed were largely disappointing. We have seen future models that looked spectacular and the Toshiba 62CM9UA comes very close. In our tests, it passed everything with flying colours across all AV modes, possessing only a few viewing problems.