Do you like nude school? Quite wild? Do you know your Heelflip 360 from your No Comply? If these words don’t make sense to you, chances are you won’t need the Belkin SportCommand. You see, this is really geared towards outdoor, extreme sports enthusiasts who are likely to break iPods left to right and center due to a combination of total bail rejection and/or alcohol-related tomfoolery. If you’re just listening to your iPod on the train, this is not for you. Get back to your boring life, sucker.

If, however, the average weekend for you consists of a lot of trails and even more, you should seriously consider looking at this. What is SportCommand? Well, it’s a remote control for your iPod. A small white key attaches to the bottom of your iPod (any device with a 4th generation dock connector or higher) and you can hide it in your backpack or pocket to avoid harm. The main cushion of the SportCommand is a soft fabric lining that can be fastened with Velcro to the arm or thigh. You can use its large control buttons to easily change tracks and volume on your iPod, knowing that any painful accidents caused by your extreme skills won’t result in a painful credit card bill.

There are five buttons on the main panel – next/previous track, volume up/down and a central play/pause button. You can’t do any complex iPod navigation here, so don’t expect to filter songs by genre with this thing. However, you can happily navigate through playlists and albums, skipping the ones you don’t like and turning the volume down when you want to hear someone trying to yell at you from the other side of the hill.

Soft, flexible and fabric-like, the SportCommand has matching chunky buttons that can be pressed with gloved hands. We found that with our winter gloves, the operation went as expected. It is water resistant but not waterproof. However, if you do not like to exercise underwater, you will be fine in the snow and in the rain. The white segment on the front is the battery/receiver unit and is claimed to be more waterproof. We immersed it in water and didn’t find any side effects, so it’s safe to assume that this is the case. Unlike Apple’s own product, you can unscrew the front and get to the battery, replacing it as needed. Belkin doesn’t list an expiration date on the product, but we expect it to last a year or so before you need to consider replacing the battery.

In the box you will find a pair of Velcro loops – a small one that will attach it to smaller arms, and a second loop that attaches to the first so you can attach it to coated arms or legs. They attach to metal loops on the back of the SportCommand and have a super-secure velcro that once you attach it, this thing won’t go anywhere. You also get a carabiner to attach to a belt, loop or some description. It looks a bit flimsy, but the job will get done.

In practice, SportCommand works exactly as you would expect. However, on some level, his point of view must be questioned. You can’t do complex navigation with it, which means you’ll need to set up some sort of playlist to get started. Couldn’t you just turn up the volume on the iPod before putting it away and not add the tracks you don’t like to the playlist so you don’t have to skip? Because the iPod is a thing with a headphone jack, you need to make sure you have headphones with a cable long enough to run it to your backpack or wherever you decide to stow your iPod, which can be inconvenient.

Then we come to meaning. £46 is simply too much for this product – hell, it’s not that far off the cost of an iPod Shuffle that can be attached to your clothes and gives you the same level of control over your music, and borders on disposable given the price differential. We all know that extreme sports equipment is expensive, and I suspect Belkin thinks this should be no exception. But, competing with products that just mount your iPod on your arm, or even the ability to just hit the play button and toss your iPod into your backpack, it’s really hard to justify the SportCommand’s price tag.

“Sentence”

All in all, the SportCommand is clearly a product that does what it says on the box. If you immediately look at it and think – “Yes, finally!” Then you won’t be disappointed. That said, it’s hard not to assume that anyone riding the slopes won’t save a few pounds by cutting back on a couple of beers and spending the extra on an iPod Shuffle instead.

Netgear was one of the first companies to release a Skype phone with the SPH101D that offered a reasonable range of features, although we felt it had a few minor issues and was also quite expensive. Since then, a number of other vendors have launched remarkably similar products, but to date these have had some difficulty finding household acceptance. Netgear’s latest SPH200D aims to remove that reluctance by offering a dual-mode phone that can make and receive calls over both standard landlines and Skype.

Netgear has achieved this remarkable feat by combining a cordless DECT mobile phone with a dual-mode base station. The latter has an RJ-45 Ethernet port to connect to your home network and an RJ-11 port to connect to a standard landline. You can place the handset anywhere as long as it can receive a signal from the base station. The kit includes a handset, but the base station supports three other SPH150D models, although these were not yet commercially available at the time of review.

Setup is extremely easy as all you have to do is make sure the base station is on the same network as your internet router so it can get an IP address from its DHCP server. After initially charging the handset for the required number of hours, you turn it on, add details like your country code and preferred language, and then you’re ready to enter details about your Skype account. It only took a few minutes and then we were ready to start making calls over the internet.

The base station also has a web browser management interface and you can find the handset’s IP address by selecting ‘DHCP’ from the ‘Settings’ menu. Point a browser to this address and you can log into the base station, where you will be presented with a simple but informative interface. The home page provides general information about the system with details of your uptime, firmware version, and network addresses. The base station supports three types of Internet access and by default accepts a dynamic IP address, but you can use PPPoE or enter a static address if required. Note that you can access and change all of these settings directly from the handset.

Access to the Skype service is available through the web interface and you can create a new account from here, enter the credentials of an existing account and see if you are currently signed in. Again, the handset’s main page also provides information on the Skype sign-in status as well as showing how much credit you have in your account. The system page offers tools for updating the base station’s firmware, although it would have been nice if Netgear had provided an automatic checking feature, as they do with their draft 802.11n wireless routers. Last but not least comes the administration screen, where you can change the access password and reset the base station to factory settings.

Making calls with the handset couldn’t be easier as you enter your number using the chunky keypad and press the call button. The phone gives you a choice of Skype or landline, and once you’ve selected one, the call is made as usual. During testing, we found the SPH200D’s call quality to be good, with receivers not reporting any discernible difference between calls over Skype or landline. Curiously, from the caller’s perspective, we found that landline quality was superior, while Skype calls suffered from minor distortion.

On the SPH101, the choice of ringtones was just awkward, prompting us to turn them off and use vibrate mode. The latter isn’t supported here, but you can play with sixteen notes now, and while they’re not much better, at least you won’t be using the SPH200D in public. Conveniently, different tones can be set for incoming Skype and landline calls, the intercom function for multiple handsets and a confirmation tone when the handset is placed in the charging cradle.

To test what happens when Internet access goes down, we unplugged the Ethernet cable from the base station and the handset immediately confirmed that Skype access was down. However, provided there is electricity, you can still make landline calls.

As is usual with Skype services, contacts can be organized in the phone for quick access, and the history option provides a full view of incoming and outgoing calls, missed calls and voicemails. Searches for Skype users can be performed and, if allowed, added to your contact list. The Services option shows your credit status and remaining time and if you have purchased SkypeIn you can view your dialed number and subscription status.

“‘Verdict”‘

NETGEAR delivers an innovative communications product that seamlessly integrates Skype and PSTN functionality into a single solution. We were impressed with how easy it was to install and use, making it ideal for home users and small businesses who want the cost benefits of Skype plus access to landline calls from the same handset.

The web interface for the base station is pretty basic but offers a lot of network information.

—-

Three types of Internet connections are supported, with DHCP being the easiest to use.

—-

You can set up and monitor your Skype account from both the handset and this page.

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The System page only provides options to update the system firmware.

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You can protect the management interface with a password and reset the base station to factory settings.

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In the middle of last year I reviewed the M600i, Sony Ericsson’s attempt to take the UIQ platform out of its clunky “P” series smartphone shell and into something for a wider audience.

Now I have the tri-band, 3G W950i in my hands. Like the M600i, this is a slimline phone. It’s 106mm high, 54mm wide, 15mm thick and weighs 112g and packs quite well in your pocket. Its deep purple finish, which Sony Ericsson calls Mystic Purple, looks brown under certain conditions. It’s distinctive, although I’m not sure I like it.

Again it’s an attempt to widen the audience for UIQ, this time for music lovers, and its standout feature alongside the Walkman branding and music playback capability is that it offers no less than 4GB of flash memory.

That’s a lot of storage for a phone, and as much as you get on the mid-range iPod nano. Unusually for a mobile phone, however, there is no option to expand the internal memory with flash memory cards. If you’re using Sony Ericsson’s included Disc2Phone software or simple file transfer to transfer tracks to the handset, then that’s good for you. But in my world neither is as convenient as using memory cards to put music on a phone.

Battery life is very important for a phone that doubles as a music player. The M600i did fairly well here, delivering more than ten hours of music from its own speaker, forcing the screen to stay on.

Unfortunately, the W950i fared less well, giving me a minute less than seven hours of music, again with the screen on. That’s disappointing compared to what you get from standalone players.

Volume and quality through the speaker were also quite good and loud. You can view album art and assign a “mood” to tunes. The choices are happy, sad, energetic, relaxed, and no mood. I like this idea a lot. There’s an FM radio that can set its twenty presets automatically, or you can set them manually.

The headset comes in two parts. The part that connects to the phone contains the FM radio antenna, microphone for voice calls, and a diamond with controls for playback and system volume. In addition, there is a 3.5mm jack that allows you to plug in the included earphones or your own headphones.

Unfortunately, the bottom part uses the same slot on the phone as the power jack. So you can’t listen to music while charging the battery.

I said right at the start of this review that the W950i is 3G, so you might expect video calls to be part of the deal. Not correct. There is no front camera and by the way there is also none on the back. No video calls, no still image capture. At least 3G users will find the web browser capable. I particularly like the fact that you can switch to widescreen to see webpages better.

Overall the screen is very good. It measures 2.6 inches from corner to corner, delivers 240 x 320 pixels and 262,000 colors. It’s bright, clear and alive. It is touch sensitive as UIQ demands.

UIQ itself is a solid and capable smartphone platform. Diary and to-do list management with PC synchronization, notes, mobile email, sound recorder, the aforementioned web browser and RSS reader are all included. They sit alongside features like a stopwatch, calculator, unit converter, and timer. In addition, there are more entertainment-focused things like TrackID. This captures snippets of songs from the radio or other source and compares them to the Gracenote database, which tells you what you’re listening to in a text message.

There’s certainly plenty to lure, but the day-to-day use ergonomics aren’t the best. The W950i has a flat number pad. Small knobs in the middle of each “button” area make it easier to use than some, but it’s not as comfortable or as quick to use as real buttons. Texting was certainly a slower business than usual. On-screen handwriting recognition and a typable keyboard help a little, but you’ll need to use the W950i with two hands to reap these benefits and work with the included stylus. Both are not as quick to use as a good number pad.

When you use the music player, three orange control buttons light up between the number pad and the screen. One plays and pauses tracks, one lets you skip forward between tracks or within tracks if you hold it down, the third does the same job of going backwards. These disappear when you exit the music player. There’s also a dedicated Walkman “button” that’s always visible and launches the Walkman software, and another play/pause button – a real one this time – on the right edge of the case, next to a volume rocker.

A wheel on the left edge of the case offers vertical scrolling and pressing to select a function. Movement through on-screen lists (e.g. lists of options or applications) registered a little later than expected, and there’s an irritating aspect of freewheeling, so when scrolling the wheel quickly it kept rattling after a list item or two after I it had stopped moving it. Slow scrolling was the only way around this, and it took a bit of self-discipline to accomplish the otherwise simple task of making the right choice from a menu every time.

Below the scroll wheel is an excellent back button. Short presses scroll back through the screens, long presses take you straight back to the home screen.

Icons that can be tapped on the screen are often simply too small for your finger to hit them accurately. Just one example are the three buttons for quick access to the repeat, shuffle and equalizer functions on the music player’s main screen. You’ll need fingernail precision or the included stylus to get them spot on. The real annoyance is that there’s room in the screen design to make all three much larger.

Some icons are tucked so far into the corners of the screen that I almost wonder if Sony Ericsson is joking at my expense or, less paranoid, if they’ve done a lot of usability testing.

I haven’t come across a phone that can replace my Sansa e280 (Gordon has reviewed the very similar but lower spec e260) and was wondering if the W950i could be it. It is not.

I also don’t think it will appeal to existing fans of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones. This leaves smartphone fans who want good music playback as a possible target. Smartphone fans can be demanding customers, and the difficult user interface, poor battery life for music playback, and fiddly number pad can’t do the W950i any favors to meet their needs.

It’s all a bit unfortunate. I am sure that UIQ is a strong operating system. If you’re willing to put in the effort and learn how all the little tricks work, then the W950i is a capable, competent, and ultimately useful phone. However, there are a lot of irritations and I just don’t think many people will be willing to bother.

“‘Verdict”‘

The W950i’s 4GB hard drive is a decoy, but it’s overly complicated by a poor user interface that won’t satisfy either music or smartphone fans.

How we test phones

We put every cell phone we test through its paces. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the phone as our main device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as our main phone during the period

Verified against respected industry benchmarks and real-world tests

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

points in detail

• Ease of use 6

• value 7

• functions 8

General

battery

camp

Just like buses, photo viewers seem to come in pairs. Barely a week has passed since I checked out the 9-inch Philips photo frame and while I admired the features and quality, you had to pay a premium to enjoy them.

Today we’re showing a 7-inch Bluetooth photo viewer from Parrot, and late last year Benny tested the original Parrot Bluetooth photo viewer. It was a commendable effort at the time, but it came at a prohibitively high price and lacked a number of fundamental features. Has Parrot learned from its mistakes?

First impressions are that the 7-inch version is very close to the original aesthetically. It may be considerably larger – the original had a tiny 3.5-inch screen – but for all intents and purposes it looks exactly the same. Parrot sells the viewer in a number of finishes including: Natural Oak, Alezan, Black Salamander, Brown Salamander, Black Ivory, Cardinal Red and, for the absolutely tasteless, Zebra.

Our test sample has the Black Ivory finish, which seems to be the least offensive of all the paint finishes. It’s by no means as stylish as the Philips, but the white stitching on black leather has a homely feel that’s not uncomfortable. In terms of looks, I’d still go with Philips every time – and that goes for all the different styles available too.

Dimensionally, this 7-inch version is certainly larger, although the screen isn’t quite as big as advertised, as it’s actually 6.5-inches diagonal. The overall dimensions are 222 x 176 x 22mm and the device weighs 490g.

The Parrot has a screen with a resolution of 720 x 480 and can display up to 262,144 colors. There’s also a motion sensor internally, and the viewer automatically adjusts the images to portrait or landscape orientation.

Viewing angles, which are certainly important in these types of products, aren’t too much to write home about. Horizontal viewing angles are acceptable in landscape mode, but they are particularly poor vertically, which is a problem in portrait mode.

Fortunately, average viewing angles aside, it’s a fairly decent screen that looks bright and sharp even when sitting next to the Philips photo frame.

Unlike the Philips, which has a built-in stand that rotates, the Parrot Photo Viewer relies on a metal rod that screws into the back of the device. As this is tactically placed in a corner, it can be set up in both landscape and portrait modes, but it’s not a particularly stable solution and the viewer is easily knocked over by a slight bump or hit.

Just like its predecessor, this is a Bluetooth-enabled photo viewer, and it’s certainly a feature worth praising. Like many others, I enjoy taking photos with my mobile phone – often snagging amusing headlines from newspapers while buying lunch at Sainsbury’s – and transferring photos to the Photo Viewer is a very simple process.

After finding the photo viewer, all you need to do is enter 0000 as your PIN and you can start sending pictures to the device. The Photo Viewer uses Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and has a range of ten meters, so you shouldn’t have too many range issues.

Of course, you can transfer photos with almost any Bluetooth-enabled device, regardless of whether it is a mobile phone, PDA, notebook or PC. Unfortunately, Parrot didn’t have the foresight to include a USB Bluetooth module for those with PCs or notebooks without built-in Bluetooth, and this would certainly benefit PC users who are less likely to have Bluetooth.

Of course, you could buy one separately – and Parrot is just one company that makes things like that – but a bundled Bluetooth adapter wouldn’t have increased the cost all that much, and it would add a lot of value right out of the box.

This isn’t the only oversight either, as Parrot has – once again – decided not to include memory card slots. Its dedication to all things Bluetooth is admirable, but there are several very strong arguments for having memory card slots on a device like this.

It’s not hard to imagine that the vast majority of people would simply want to snap photos from their camera’s memory card and place them straight onto a photo viewer. Since Bluetooth is the only available connection, you have no choice but to transfer photos to another device first. an unnecessary impertinence.

It’s not all bad for the Parrot Photo Viewer, however, and it has at least addressed one problem common in this market – stingy internal storage. There is 128MB of internal memory that can store about 500 photos at a time.

This is a significant improvement over the Philips Photo Frame range, which only has 18MB of internal storage – although the Philips memory card reader certainly mitigates this problem considerably.

For most purposes, however, 128MB is probably sufficient, so you don’t have to worry too much about running out of space for your photos.

However, the Parrot Photo Viewer’s main saving grace is its user interface. There are three navigation buttons on the back, including two triangular movement buttons and a circular menu button. These are nicely located and it’s very easy to tell each button apart just by touching it.

The menu button displays a series of icons at the bottom of the screen that you can use to rotate and select images, adjust slideshow options, arrange and delete images, or make other settings.

It’s not as feature-rich as the Philips, but that makes it easy to use and is certainly a factor worth considering. Unfortunately, one very useful feature is missing: albums. While you can arrange the order your photos appear in, you can’t organize them into albums, and that’s a disappointing flaw.

It retains a few more features you’d normally expect, with a standby mode to turn the device on and off automatically – of course there’s a clock for this feature to work, too.

With all this ease of use, however, it’s hard to resist the fact that you can get the 7-inch version of the Philips Photo Frame for £120 – only slightly more than this 7-inch Parrot Photo Viewer. And for that money you get all the features of the 9-inch photo frame, including the memory card reader, which the Parrot lacks.

“‘Verdict”‘

While the Parrot Bluetooth Photo Frame has its perks, the lack of a memory card reader and less appealing design pale in comparison to the more stylish, better-equipped Philips Photo Frame. Bluetooth is a fun handy feature, but you’ll have to want a photo viewer specifically with Bluetooth to pick this over the Philips.

While Lexmark may be known for cheap and cheerful inkjets in the domestic market, it has a very different reputation in the business arena. The company’s range of black-and-white and color laser printers for workgroups and SMBs is highly regarded. The C532dn is designed for use in the network and has a built-in duplexer, which saves paper.

There seems to be a trend in the color laser market to build printers with smaller footprints but more height. Lexmark certainly took this into account and produced a monolithic machine with the inline printing mechanism housed vertically within it. It’s even higher when you add the optional second 550-sheet paper tray.

A standard 250-sheet paper tray slides in the bottom in the traditional way, but the front of the tray folds down to form a single-sheet multipurpose feeder, which is rather unusual. The paper exits into a large tray that hangs out at the top rear of the machine. This is reflected in the paper feed tray below, which also protrudes from the rear.

The printer’s control panel contains a four-line, 16-character LCD display that could use some lighting and a less reflective front panel. There’s also a five button control ring and three more buttons on the left for entering the menu, exiting a menu option and stopping a current print job. USB 2.0 and Ethernet ports are located in a notch on the left side of the printer, making them more accessible but a bit unsightly.

The C532dn is not an easy printer to set up. It is crammed with tape, pieces of packaging and spacer sheets, all of which must be removed before it will function satisfactorily. It even has power-on diagnostics that will verify that you’ve removed everything.

The printer uses an in-line laser mechanism with separate toner and photoconductor cartridges for each color – you slide each toner cartridge into the machine’s body and insert a photoconductor drum into a corresponding assembly inside the swing-down front cover. All consumables are pre-installed in a new machine, which is why so many covers and spacers have to be removed.

The automatic software setup only installs the PostScript 3 emulation, not that of PCL 6. This seems like an odd choice as PCL is almost always faster than PostScript and there is little discernible difference in print quality between the two.

Lexmark specifies print speeds of 22 pages per minute and 21 pages per minute for black and white and color printing. Our five-page text print was completed in 24 seconds, giving a real non-draft mode black print speed of 12.5 pages per minute, and the color text and graphics job, also five pages, took 27 seconds, which is 11.1 pages per minute results. The ratio is about right, although as usual we see about half of the claimed numbers.

The print quality of this machine is very high. Text output is sharp and clear with very little spatter and good clean diagonals and curves. Color graphics are also rendered well with bright, solid colors and good text overlay, showing no text splatter or misalignment with the underlying colors.

The photo reproduction, which is usually not a strength of laser printers, is better than usual. Of the two print modes available, Normal and Best Quality, there are some slight improvements in the color palette when using the best print quality. Neither image looks particularly natural and there is slight banding in the sky portion of the image, but the overall results were impressive for a color laser.

When printing in duplex mode, the C532dn prints the first side of two sheets on both sides of the paper at the same time and pulls each one out of the output tray to print on the second side. The device is fast and efficient at duplex printing, but it’s quite noisy with all types of printing. Lexmark claims a noise level of 53 dBA, but we’ve measured it consistently at around 60 dBA, an intrusive noise level.

This printer contains two sets of consumables: photoconductor drums and toner cartridges. Black toner is only available in 4,000-sheet capacities, but the three color cartridges can be bought in 3,000-sheet and 5,000-sheet versions. You can also purchase the 20,000-sheet photoconductor drums individually or in packs of four.

Using the consistently cheapest options, we get a 5 percent black text page cost of 2.02 pence and a 20 percent color page cost of 7.92 pence. Text-page costs are slightly higher than some of the printer’s main competitors, but this is offset by color costs, which are on the lower end of the scale.

“‘Verdict”‘

This is a good color workhorse for a small office or workgroup within a larger organization. Black and color output is well above average and while a little cumbersome to maintain, it’s quick and relatively inexpensive to run.

points in detail

• print speed 8

• functions 7

• value 8

• print quality 9

characteristics

To press

The market for NAS devices has grown significantly in recent years as more and more people use them as a means of distributing multimedia content in their homes and small businesses using them as an alternative to a full fledged file server. However, there is a big gap between the most basic versions, which lack any form of redundancy or use proprietary software to interface to the device, and the much more expensive versions, which act as truly independent file servers with redundancy and extras like print servers. Well, today I’m looking at a device that’s trying to fill that gap, the HP Media Vault.

The HP Media Vault comes in two variants, mv2010 and mv2020, with capacities of 300GB and 500GB and RRPs of £249 and £349 respectively. Both versions share the same extensive list of features, including space for an additional SATA hard drive, print server support, Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, SMB/FTP/http access, and RAID-1 and JBOD.

Physically, the Media Vault is larger than most NAS devices of similar capacity and resembles a slim desktop case more than an external hard drive. This seems to make sense as it squeezes in room for a second disc and an expansion card, an integrated power supply, and the motherboard and CPU that controls everything. However, opening it revealed a less than optimal use of space and where the slot for the expansion card should be was just the solder pads on the board, so it’s really just a waste of space.

The styling left a lot to be desired too, with a fairly thin coat of silver-grey paint covering the steel case and a thin plastic panel adorning the front. Of course, none of this matters since you’re probably hiding the box under the stairs or behind a desk.

The front bezel features a flap for accessing the additional drive bay, a USB 2.0 port, a power button, and a row of status LEDs. On the back you’ll find a power outlet, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 2.0 ports, a reset button, and a cover plate for the aforementioned phantom expansion card.

After adding an additional hard drive (if required) and turning on the device, you can run the Windows-only configuration program to find the device on your network and set up default folders on your computer for you. Or, if you know what IP your network has assigned the device to, you can simply access the web interface directly – by typing the device’s IP into your browser – and start the setup from there.

After installing and launching the software, you will be greeted with the following screen.

The Start Explore option simply opens your Media Vault folder in Explorer. The second option opens a custom interface that lets you assign a drive letter (aka drive mapping) to your network folders. The third option opens the web interface configuration utility.

When you go to the Backup tab, you have the option to back up individual files, your entire hard drive, or restore your entire hard drive. The first option only opens the NTI Shadow backup utility, which is separate software that you can access from the Start menu. Likewise, the other two options simply open the NTI DriveBackup software.

NTI DriveBackup takes full backups of an entire hard drive and allows you to create a boot disk so you can recover your system drive in the event of a disaster. The data is saved as a single file that you can compress – this saves space, of course, but the compression process takes some time. NTI Shadow handles files rather than entire discs and includes a previous versions option that allows you to specify up to nine previous versions of a file to keep in your backup. Both pieces of software are very easy and intuitive to use and offer extensive scheduling options, so once set up you don’t have to touch anything – at least until you need to perform a restore.

The Help & Support tab does exactly what it says on the tin; provides access to the user guide, an online support page, a registration page, and the HP website.

Most users are happy to let the various wizards and applications do the work, but if you need to do more in-depth configuration, you’ll need to use the web-based configuration utility. This allows you to fully configure your NAS box, from changing the IP address to creating a RAID. It’s too much to go into detail about the options in this review, but I’ll give you a quick overview.

Under Shared Folders you can create/delete/modify your various shared folders. You can add password protection and set FTP, web browser, or standard network (SMB) access, assigning read-only or full access to each.

The print server function is very easy to use, just connect the printer, wait for the printer to appear in the Shared Printer section, and then add the printer through the usual procedure of your operating system. There are no settings in this section, just a list of printers and their network names.

If you have a digital media adapter, you’ll be happy to know that you can enable media streaming for each of your folders. Streaming is done using the UPnP A/V streaming protocol, so currently only unprotected files are supported. This is not to be confused with Microsoft’s Digital Media Connect, the protocol used to connect your Xbox 360 to Windows Media Player, and in fact your 360 does not recognize your shared folders on this computer.

In the hard drive settings, you can partition, format and resize your hard drives, create a RAID or JBOD. If you connect external hard drives, you can also configure them in the same way.

Network settings include changing the device name on the network, defining workgroup or user based access, and switching from DHCP IP assignment to manual settings.

If the device is running in workgroup access mode, you can only add or remove an administrator password in the user settings. If you use user-based access, you can add/remove additional users and assign individual access levels to each user as well as control their access to the configuration utility.

Finally we come to the system settings. From here you can change date/time settings, energy saving settings and perform a firmware update.

Because the Media Vault is essentially a PC running a stripped-down version of Linux, you can access the embedded Linux distribution and extend its capabilities to set up a telnet server or run a bit torrent client . However, I am not a Linux fan, so I did not test this aspect of the appliance.

I tested the drive for raw speed by running IOMeter and then transferring a 1.07GB file and folder containing 1,943 photos, totaling 497MB, to and from the NAS. IOMeter returned numbers of 23 MB/s read and 16 MB/s write speeds, while transferring large files was slower with 14 MB/s read and 10 MB/s write speeds. Finally, the many small photos were even slower at 4.8 MB/s writing and 3.7 MB/s reading. These numbers compare well to the Maxtor Shared Storage II 1TB and Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV, which write at 12.3MB/s and 14.4MB/s, and 25MB/s and 19.2MB/s, respectively. s delivered when reading.

“‘Verdict”‘

The MediaVault is a very successful NAS appliance that combines a first-class range of functions with excellent performance and flexibility. The bundled software is great – at least for Windows users – and the ability to customize the embedded Linux distribution makes this a true one-box-dos-all network storage solution.

As for price, I don’t think the extra 200GB that the 500GB version offers is worth the £100 premium and I’d go for the 300GB version along with a massive second drive with 750 GB decide.

However, it’s worth noting that no UK version appears to be available at the time of writing. However, customers in the US appear to be well catered for, as several stores, including HP’s online store, stock it.

Edit: This morning I received an email saying that the 300GB version is indeed available from PC World.

You may not have guessed it, but Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Mahatmah Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Mozart and the good me have something in common. Yes, like these famous people, I’m left-handed and like them, I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of a computer mouse designed specifically for the way we work. Leonardo, Albert and I always had to look with envy at the carefully sculpted, beautifully contoured mice that right-handed people have always had, while we left-handers either had to live with boring, unsculpted mice or suffer crooked hands.

It’s been taking a hell of a long time, but Logitech has finally made an effort to remedy the situation. Maybe that’s because Logitech’s CEO is left-handed himself. So if he made sure I greet him with my left hand.

The MX610 Left-Hand Laser Cordless was first announced at CeBIT in 2006, but it took me so long to actually get one from Logitech. The left mouse is an exact mirror image of the right-hand version of the MX610, which debuted in early 2006, which we never actually got to see, so aside from being left-handed, it’s worth checking out here.

The mouse is a pretty good looking device with a silver, gray and black finish and most exciting for left-handers, it has plenty of sexy curves, something we’ve been starving for when it comes to mouse movements. There are seven buttons on its surface, all of which fall neatly under the reach of the index finger and thumb.

At the heart of the MX610 is a laser rather than an optical LED sensor first introduced by Logitech on the MX1000. This means the mouse doesn’t have the red light that optical mice have at the base, but more importantly the laser is much more sensitive than LEDs, potentially allowing it to work on more surfaces than optical mice. I used it primarily on my mouse pad, but it seemed perfectly happy on my desk’s wood grain. The mouse has a resolution of 800 dpi, which is good, but not as good as the 2,000 dpi that some dedicated gaming mice offer.

The mouse communicates with the small dongle over the crowded 2.4GHz frequency, and some users have complained that the mouse is prone to communication issues as a result. I plugged the dongle straight into my monitor’s USB port, so there was very little distance between the two and actually a line of location. So it’s hardly surprising that I haven’t had any problems like this. If your USB ports are only on the back of the PC and you’re having trouble, a USB extension cable could be the solution. It doesn’t come with one, but there is a PS/2 to USB converter so you can use the mouse without occupying a USB port if you don’t have an spare.

The 2.4 GHz frequency also allows the mouse to receive and send information from the PC – Logitech speaks of a smart mouse. It knows when the PC is on standby or off and can shut itself down, which is very useful for saving energy. This is important as Logitech only claims a three month lifespan and the MX610 runs on regular AA batteries rather than a built in rechargeable battery with stand. So you need a spare set of AA in case the battery runs out. However, you have enough warning to buy a new set if you don’t, as there’s a light on top of the mouse that shows when the power is low and the SetPoint software will let you know as well. If you leave your PC on all the time, you can manually turn off the mouse with a button and power indicator on the bottom of the device.

The mouse can not only detect the state of the PC, but also when you have received an email or a message from a chat client, with the former slowly blinking amber and the latter blue. The lights are also buttons, so you can just press them to bring up the respective application. This functionality is available through Logitech’s SetPoint software, but the downside is that it’s limited to Outlook Express, Outlook and MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger. This was fine with me as I use Outlook and MSN on my work computer and I found it very useful to be able to use the mouse to launch the messenger without having to go to the taskbar. However, I also use Thunderbird for my personal email and it just isn’t supported, which is a shame. If you’re using another chat client like AOL IM or Trillian, this feature doesn’t work either, which is disappointing.

If you don’t want the light flashing on every spam that hits your inbox, you can use SetPoint software to manually filter messages to the messages you want. SetPoint also allows you to map the function of each key to your liking. You can do this on an application basis, so you can customize how the mouse works in your apps, which is a good thing. If you don’t see an installed app in the list, you can add it by selecting Manage programs. What I don’t understand is why the software doesn’t have an option that lets you apply the same settings globally. I wanted to map cut and paste to the side buttons in all apps, but had to go into each program and do it manually – a real chore.

The top two buttons are also set fairly high on the bulbous part of the mouse, requiring you to remove your thumb to reach them, which is a bit awkward. There are volume up/down and mute buttons on the front of the mouse. Being able to control the volume in this way without having to switch to the keyboard is great, although I found I had to reach down a bit to reach the volume up button on the front. The side buttons, which default to forward and back, are conveniently within thumb reach. Of course it all depends on hand size, but in general I found the feel to be good, if not quite as good as the MX Revolution (although of course the limitation with this mouse is that it’s right-handed, so I couldn’t use it ).

Besides the usual scrolling and clicking, the mouse wheel can also be moved from side to side, which is useful for web pages and Excel. I found that it didn’t click as easily as my regular Logitech wired mouse, and I’m working harder to get it to do that. I also had to change the setting in the SetPoint software that defaults the middle button to a zoom function, which I found a bit strange – clicking is much more useful (e.g. wheel-clicking links in Firefox to get a link to start in a new tab).

Of course, many people will wonder how good the mouse was in games. I tested with short sessions in Day of Defeat: Source, Counter-Strike: Source and a bit of Half-Life 2 single player. I found that most of the time I needed some practice, but I was content that the mouse wasn’t really the problem with my lack of success. I still feel that die-hard Twitch gamers are better served with a faster dpi mouse, which means left-handed users are wired. However, if you’re more of a casual gamer, the MX610 is acceptable.

Actually, a contoured mouse felt a bit unusual to me, but I quickly got used to it. Although I use mine on the left side of the keyboard, I’ve always kept the left and right click keys around in the normal way. With this mouse, however, I felt comfortable actually toggling it since the index finger is faster for those left clicks.

“‘Verdict”‘

It might not be perfect, but having not had the luxury of using a contoured mouse before, I have to say that I’ve been very happy with the left-handed MX610. Economies of scale inevitably dictate that the left-handed version will be more expensive than the right-hand one, but luckily it only costs a few pounds more. I can happily recommend the MX610 for left-handers, and not just because there is no other way.

I think we all owe the crackdown an apology.

First of all, it was branded as a basic GTA clone, albeit one with interesting cel-shaded graphics. Then it was seen as the kind of lightweight expense that needed bundled access to a Halo 3 beta to ensure it flew off the shelves. Well, it turns out we were wrong on both counts.

The first is just nonsense. Unlike, say, Saint’s Row or Scarface, Crackdown has none of the usual gang banging, pimping, dealing tosh. It’s played in third person, involves cars, and takes place in an urban open-world setting, but that’s where the comparisons end. And while the Halo 3 beta is a definite bonus, Crackdown doesn’t need it to grab our attention. This is a game that can proudly stand on its own two feet.

Maybe one day we can play an open world game without mentioning GTA, just as we don’t necessarily mention Command and Conquer or Doom now when a new RTS or FPS comes out. For now, instead of thinking about GTA, you could consider two more sensible points of comparison. First, last year’s Just Cause, both for its assassinations and the way you get around was part of the fun, and second, 2005’s Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Why the latter? Because it’s probably the most successful game to include superpowers in an open world, and because those superpowers help make that open world fun. All of this applies to Crackdown.

Confused? Here is the facility. You are a genetically engineered super cop unleashed on a city teetering on the brink of social collapse. Three gangs roam the streets, each claiming a certain part of the city. Eliminate the gang leaders and you can restore peace, but it won’t be easy. To stand any chance of bringing down the three kingpins, you must attack their lieutenants one by one, tracking each one to his or her hideout and making sure you incapacitate them permanently.

And that’s basically it. There’s no storyline, no cutscenes to wade through, and no missions as such, just gameplay. You won’t even know who and where your targets are until an up-close intelligence briefing appears. This means that you are basically free to wipe out the twenty-one key villains in any order and however you want. The catch is that while you can try whoever you want, when you want, your odds won’t always be that good. On your first try, the game’s excellent commentary – a mix of online help and cutting observation – will show you your predicted odds, and the game will cheerfully recommend you come back later if you need to, when you’re better equipped to tackle.

In other games, that might mean heavier weapons or armor, but here it means enhanced abilities. You start out with skills in five categories – Agility, Strength, Driving, Explosives, and Marksmanship – and by attacking the gangs in appropriate ways or collecting specific markers, you’ll collect upgrade orbs that will eventually enhance that power. As the game progresses, you will become better at targeting and locking on to enemies at a distance or on the move. make enormous leaps and scale the sides of the tallest buildings, leaping from ledge to ledge; Pick up blocks, containers and even cars and throw them at attackers and much more. In the beginning you can wade into a group of enemies and bang out their lights, but five hours later you’ll be beating them halfway down the street before their freshly hewn butt hits the pavement.

Not only is that an excuse to show off the game’s Havok-based physics – although it certainly does a fantastic job – it really opens up the whole experience. Once you win the first upgrade for your acrobatics, the whole city turns into one giant platform game. The buildings are not only meant to look impressive and give a sense of massive size, although they certainly do; The entire cityscape has been cleverly designed to challenge your jumping skills. You’ll soon be scanning the rooftops for more Agility Upgrade Orbs, knowing that if you can’t quite make it there, it’s only a matter of time.

In addition, there are many side missions to help you level up, such as: B. Driving challenges and daredevil rooftop races where you dash from point to point with breathtaking abandon. If you thought Just Cause had any thrills left, Crackdown makes it look coy. Cleverly, you might also notice that this all means that the game rewards you for doing what you love to do most. As you wade into the gangster headquarters, throwing grenades and spitting bullets, you’ll soon fill up the upgrade meter in the Marksmanship and Explosives categories and get better at them. If you’d rather acrobaticly find your way back, you’ll earn upgrade points for doing so.

It might not have worked if these ideas weren’t executed so brilliantly, but they are. The controls are smooth, with responsive, quick movement, and melee and aiming capabilities that put other open-world games to shame. In a way, it’s a compliment that driving is probably the least compelling aspect of the game. The handling model is fantastic and there’s an excellent choice of vehicles, but why bother with something as prosaic as driving when you can leap over tall buildings with just a few jumps?

Over time, the game boils down to figuring out the locations of the various bosses and sub-bosses, working out a logical order, and then trying to find a weak point. Along the way, you’ll also snag supply points, which are handy places to drop off weapons, move around instantly, and — most importantly — respawn if large numbers of gang members beat you into submission.

Now it has to be said that the actual encounters sometimes lack drama – the bosses are almost always lurking on a rooftop or in a compound surrounded by gang members, and while the AI ​​isn’t bad, it’s hardly the stuff of FEAR, which the game encourages to create your own set pieces. One minute you might be dizzyingly climbing a lighthouse, the next you’re single-handedly storming an island hideout. With bullets and bodies flying everywhere, fuel barrels and grenades exploding in every direction, and you hurtling headlong through the middle, games just don’t get any better.

Of course, not everyone will agree. The look, for example, is firmly against the current trend towards photorealism, although I think the combination of cel shading and applied detail – reminiscent of a dark sci-fi graphic novel – suits the style of overpowering action much better than that Gears of War approach. Some don’t like the lack of structure, find the plot repetitive, or complain that it doesn’t last long enough. Well, maybe this isn’t an epic of GTA proportions, but I can only imagine that those who cracked Crackdown in less than eight hours a) really blew it and b) missed a lot of fun in the process. The action only repeats if you do the same thing on each boss. Take your time exploring your skills and the game will constantly surprise you by catering to almost every whim. This isn’t the kind of game that propels you from climax to climax like a symphony. It’s a game where you improvise, play – just want to have fun.

And in that respect, it’s arguably better than any game I’ve played this year. If you want proof of how well it handles everything, all you have to do is look at how it integrates live games. A smaller game would have built in a lazy collection of deathmatch or capture-the-flag modes, but Crackdown implements a drop-in drop-out co-op mode where you can decide to play your single player game with friends or even leaving strangers open to join or request participation in another player’s game. That kind of generous spirit sums up the game as a whole. It’s like saying, “You’re having fun, why not share it?”. Needless to say, any game with this much auto-throwing, acrobatic, high-explosive action is a must-play with a mate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheer silly joy of blowing things to pieces keeps that playground open at some point .

So let’s give Crackdown a big pity and thank the heavens that it’s out. It’s not deep, particularly deep, or overly revolutionary, but it never fails to entertain in the most wonderful, big-hearted way. That makes it the first must-have 360 ​​game of the year for me.

“‘Verdict”‘

A whirlwind mix of superhero and open-world gameplay, it’s a 360 must-play, even without the Halo 3 Beta invite. cracking stuff.

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