Retail: Reviews

Dell's Streak 7 tablet runs on Google's Android 2.2, and is powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 dual-core processor. The tablet will be upgradeable to Google's Android 3.0 OS, code-named Honeycomb, soon after its launch, said Michael Tatelman, vice president at Dell, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As the economy slowly improves, things are finally looking up for laptops.

As you probably already know by now, Apple is holding a product event in later this month. The big question on everyone's mind: Are tablets on the table?

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.

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.

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.

We didn't hesitate to compare this to the iPod nano; arguably the flagship flash-based MP3 player on the market. Small, compact, light, thin and boasting a colour screen as well as a touchpad, the Samsung Z5 is the closest thing we've seen in terms of looks, features and functions. But does it stack up? We definitely think so.

3G Phones have long been a hit and miss affair. Unlike their 2.5G counterparts, 3G handsets are generally regarded as big, bulky and slow - among many other issues. Only recently have we seen a change in this and Nokia has joined the party, this time offering the classy 6280. It's quite simply excellent in most areas.

There's usually a huge difference between a high end LCD television and a lesser-known brand, so when we got the MediaStar MD32AS into the test centre, we prepared for the worst. Imagine our elation when we fired up the panel to discover a high quality display with excellent colour reproduction and a contrast ratio that, from a visual standpoint, stood toe to toe with units over $500 more in price.

Wireless peripherals are all the rage these days. The last few generations of mice have been released in both wired and wireless versions, helping to foster the growing wireless consumer base for the time the shift to complete wireless technology is eventually completed. Logitech have been at the forefront of this change, and their MX5000 Bluetooth keyboard is the latest in their wireless keyboard range.

When Samsung Electronics said last year that it was developing a cell phone capable of receiving satellite TV broadcasts it seemed almost too futuristic to be true.

You don't need to edit and print your photos on a PC: Sony's new DPP-FP50 Digital Photo Printer lets you do the work on a TV. The new dye-sublimation snapshot printer also permits you to print your images directly from a memory card or from a PictBridge-compatible digital camera.

Have you noticed the surge in new Tablet PC products in recent months? They're just like normal notebooks, but with screens that can swivel around and fold over the keyboard. This lets you navigate Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 with a stylus pen and use built-in functions for handwriting and speech recognition.