I was invited to join iPad experts Nick Robinson (@ratkat) and Kevin Wright (@kevwright) for a chat about the iPad2 on their Tech Talk UK podcast (formerly the iPad Chat Show) a few days ago and although I was still reeling from the ‘Jobs Attitude,’ I enjoyed it and come out of the podcast thinking I really should get an iPad 2 for further testing (and music, movie making etc. etc.) We discuss it in the light of early Xoom and Honeycomb reviews, talk about apps and the the ‘post-PC’ […]

Update. Live session finished –  Live Review report and recordings are now available here. I’ve had the Acer Aspire One 522 for 24 hours now so it’s time to go live and open up the video cams and chat session to allow you to take a look, ask questions and work out if this is the netbook for you. It’s also the first time we’ve had the AMD Fusion C-50 APU for detailed testing so we’ll learn something about that too. The Acer Aspire One 522 specifications are available here […]

Update: Live Review report and recordings are now available here. Sometimes gadget purchases go from zero to ‘own’ in a very short time. That’s how it was today as I assessed devices for the Ultra Mobile Video Editing series and checked out the Acer Aspire One 522. It’s an AMD Fusion device running on the C-50 APU at 1Ghz. CPU performance, as we’ve already determined, is lower than the dual-core Atom N550 CPU but there’s a trick or two up its sleeve when it comes to video playback and 3D […]

In Part 1 of this series I covered three strategies for ultra mobile video editing and decided that the traditional, PC-based solution was the only real choice for today. I also set out some parameters. The solution comes in three parts. 1 The Camera 2 The PC 3 The Editing Software The parameters I’ve set for the project are: PC and software to cost less than 600 Euros PC to be less than 1.5KG with 12 inch screen or less. Total camera + PC solution to weigh less than 2KG […]

Microsoft wants to get in on the modern mobile OS action, and after the inevitable fall of their previous version of Windows Mobile, Microsoft has sought to restart their mobile offering, thus Windows Phone 7 was born. The HTC Surround pairs WP7 with well-built hardware and an interesting approach to phone audio, but will Windows Phone 7 be able to catch on, or is it too little too late from Microsoft?

If you’re looking at the top end of the netbook sector for an upgrade on your 2-year old netbook and thinking about stepping out of the Intel netbook restrictions for screen res, memory and operating system you’ve probably heard about the AMD Fusion-based EeePCs which we saw and tested at CeBIT last week. The Eee PC 1015b offers a single or dual-core C-series (C-30 or C-50) processor while the Eee PC 1215b offers the C-50 or the 1.6Ghz 18W TDP version, the E-350 which should blow away all Intel Atom […]

I’m ready to consider an 11.6 or even a 12 inch screen now and its based on my requirement to run some more complex software on a device that has a higher resolution. The problem is, while I can bear a bigger footprint, I can’t bear much more weight. My Gigabyte Touchnote with its Runcore SSD and 2GB upgrade has served me well for 2 years but with the extended battery I’m down to 4hrs so it really is time to think about something new. The Touchnote weighs 1.45KG in […]

Thanks to Notebook Italia and Netbook News who gave me a chance to get some private hands-on with the new Samsung NC210 at CeBIT last week. It’s very much the Samsung N350 with the badly needed 6-cell battery. Unfortunately, the silver finishing on the back of the screen is one of the cheapest I’ve ever seen from Samsung. It’s difficult to position the NC210 in the Samsung range. On one hand the engineering on platform in terms of efficiency is just stunning. on the other hand, the quality of the […]