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In terms of features and versatility, Samsung’s DVD recorders have always played second fiddle to competing decks like Panasonic and Sony, but the Korean brand makes up for it in one key area – price. No matter what the quality of the competition, you can rest assured that Samsung will come out with something that works almost as well for less money – and that’s the bottom line for most consumers.

The DVD-SR150M is a good example of this. You can find it online for under £100 – cheaper than the esteemed Panasonic DMR-EZ27 – but a look at the SR150M’s features shows it shares some of the Panny’s capabilities, the most notable of which is DVD-RAM recording.

It gives any DVD recorder using this flexible format the ability to behave as if there was a hard drive inside, with non-linear editing and simultaneous recording and playback. On the downside, only a handful of DVD players support it, which might limit you to just watching RAM recordings on that deck – a real bummer if you’re recording something downstairs and want to watch it later in the bedroom.

The solution, of course, is to use one of the other supported formats, in this case DVD-RW, DVD-R or DVD-R Dual Layer, the latter doubling the maximum recording time of a normal single-layer DVD-R. There’s no DVD+RW or DVD+R support, which belies its true “multi-format” status, but overall these four formats should do the trick.

Samsung gets it right when it comes to looks, giving the sleek SR150M the perfect blend of high-tech chic and down-to-earth practicality. The slanted bezel protected by an overhanging “hood” is an unusual but effective touch, while the sleek black color scheme and bright blue lights are guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser. The minimal arrangement of buttons shifts the user burden to the remote control but leaves the bezel refreshingly uncluttered, while a number of AV inputs and a DV connection have been sensibly hidden under a flap.

The rear, however, reveals a disappointing – no, shocking – omission: there’s no HDMI output. Yes, the SR150M is part of last year’s range, but that’s no excuse – even the most basic of TVs have had HDMI inputs for a while. That means you don’t get the picture quality benefits that this all-digital connection offers, and it also means you miss out on the Hi-Def upscaling that HD Ready or Full HD TV owners tend to do could look elsewhere.

Instead you have a choice of progressive scan capable component video output and RGB SCART, both of which can deliver strong picture quality. There are also S-video and composite video outputs as well as a second RGB-capable SCART socket, which is used to connect an external TV receiver (e.g. a Sky box) for high-quality recordings or to loop through the signal Your TV.

On the audio side, you’ll find optical and coaxial digital audio outputs, used to feed Dolby Digital, DTS and PCM into an AV amplifier, as well as a stereo audio output for good measure.

The deck partially makes up for its lack of HDMI with a Freeview tuner, allowing shows to be recorded straight from the built-in 7-day EPG. If your Freeview reception isn’t up to scratch yet, there’s also an analogue tuner to fall back on. The digital tuner offers the usual MHEG-related features (digital text, interactive services) and favorites lists, but don’t expect any frills like daisy-chaining or infrared control of external digital TV receivers.

Before you click on the recording, you can select one of four quality modes – XP, SP, LP and EP. XP uses the highest bitrate of 8.5Mbps, which means you can only cram an hour’s worth of recordings onto a single-layer disc, but it offers the best picture quality. In SP, LP and EP modes, the bitrates drop to 4.5Mbps, 2Mbps and 1.6Mbps respectively, allowing you to pack two, four or six hours onto a disc – but the picture quality drops every time. In addition, there is an eight-hour EP mode (1.2 Mbit/s) and flexible recording, which selects the appropriate mode according to the space left on the disc.

After you’ve made a recording, it can be tweaked using the deck’s editing features. At the most basic level, you can rename the recording, protect it from accidental deletion, or define your own chapter points. But if you use DVD-RAM, you can create a playlist with selected scenes without affecting the original recordings. It’s a nice feature, especially for camcorder owners who want to piece together a montage from footage they’ve shot themselves, and it’s easy to do – an intuitive screen lets you enter start and stop points as you play back the recording.

In fact, the rest of the interface is impressively designed. The setup menu offers neatly arranged options supported by eye-catching graphics, while the EPG somehow fits the program list, program summary and a box playing live TV on one screen, but makes the whole thing look logical and uncluttered. Digital TV performance is generally good too, although changing channels is slower than we’d normally expect. The only other operational disappointment is the remote, which looks good but has too many small, indistinguishable buttons for our liking.

As for performance, and the SR150M takes an unusual approach to recording Freeview programmes. You can only record from the digital tuner in flexible recording mode, which means that when you press the record button, the appropriate mode (XP, SP, LP or EP) is automatically selected according to the quality of the incoming signal. For example, it chose SP for a BBC One recording but LP for a Channel 4 broadcast.

The idea is to keep you from taking up more disk space than necessary by choosing a bitrate that’s too high for the source, which is all very helpful, but to be honest we’d prefer to decide for ourselves Thanks. The only way around this is to set the timer, but it’s a bit of a hassle.

However, we don’t let this limitation detract from the deck’s strong visual quality. Freeview footage in XP and SP modes looks sharp and colourful, with pleasingly low noise, and in LP the results are superb to see. The images in Soft EP mode raised a few eyebrows, but that’s par for the course at such a low bitrate.

Luckily you can change the quality setting manually when recording from an external source via SCART. XP footage from a Sky+ box is superb, which is great news for those hoping to archive footage stored on a hard drive PVR.

Playback of store-bought DVDs via the component or SCART outputs benefits from the deck’s impressive color and detail reproduction, but HDMI might have eliminated the hint of punctual noise at the edge of some objects. The deck will also play DivX, MP3 and JPEG, all of which will look and sound great on a good TV or sound system.

“‘Verdict”‘

That might not worry the big Japanese guns, but overall the DVD-SR150M puts in a respectable performance. It looks great, recorded picture quality is strong and DVD-RAM recording and a Freeview tuner offer the stunning combination of flexibility and convenience.

Ultimately, however, the lack of HDMI output – and the HD upscaling that usually comes with it – makes it feel antiquated, and while the sub-£100 price point is tempting, we’d encourage you to spend a little more on an HDMI-equipped models like the Panasonic DMR-EZ27 or even the Toshiba D-R17DT.

points in detail

• performance 8

• functions 6

• value 7

Any of you who use PCs every day should be all too familiar with the constant struggle to keep at bay the latest viruses, trojans and all the other pieces of malicious software – collectively known as malware – that attack our workhorses. The daily deluge of updates and security alerts, combined with the overwhelming knowledge that the battle to rid your PC of these threats can never truly be won, is enough to depress even the brightest of us.

Of course, that wasn’t always the case in the past. You used to be fine as long as you protected your computer from unpredictable floppy disks. The real problems came with the arrival of the Internet and since then, attacks on our PCs have just skyrocketed. From the simple “click-me” virus attachments in emails to the most aggressive trojans that sneak their way through an unpatched hole in your operating system, they come at you from all angles to put them all at bay Keep in mind, the list of programs you need to protect everything has also mushroomed.

It’s not uncommon these days to have anti-virus and anti-spyware software, a decent firewall (either hardware or software), spam filters, and a browser that detects phishing websites. Given the already significant storage space and processing power of all these programs, there are probably two ways you’ll see the launch of Trustware’s Bufferzone software. The first is a skeptical mindset that thinks “I already have enough anti-this and the other programs to worry about, why would I want another” or the alternative is to be more positive about it, i.e. ” you can never have enough protection, so give me, give me, give me!’

Before I delve too much into the semantics though, let’s take a look at what Bufferzone actually does, and then we’ll see if it’s worth recommending, regardless of which of the above reactions you had.

First things first, BufferZone is Windows XP only, so you might want to stop reading unless you’ve been doggedly stuck with XP on your home computer, or are in control of one of the majority of corporate networks that still use XP now. However, since you know that a Vista version is in the works – there’s no release schedule yet – you might also want to read on to find out what’s in store for you.

BufferZone then takes a whole new approach to protecting your computer. Rather than using the retroactive method of most antivirus software, which involves manually identifying malicious software and then adding it to the antivirus software’s threat list through an update, BufferZone proactively protects your PC by hiding the actual operating system behind a wall and ensuring that all untrusted software is kept safe on the other side.

This wall of protection is created through a process called virtualization, in which software running on your actual PC creates a software environment that behaves as if it were your actual PC – it creates a virtual PC, or buffer zone. The trick is that the software running in this virtual PC is completely isolated from your actual PC, so if it tries to do something unwanted, it doesn’t actually damage your real PC. All that is required to get rid of the malicious software is to delete the Virtual PC and reboot.

Well, virtualization software has been around for a while and there are many solutions that allow you to run software this way. However, none has ever been as easy to use as this one. Setting up BufferZone is as easy as running an installer and restarting your PC. That’s it, you’re protected.

By default, the BufferZone protects Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger, so anything downloaded through these programs stays in this pseudo-quarantine. In addition, any script or hack that exploits security holes in these programs will also be blocked by the virtual PC’s invisible wall.

You can also assign any other program to run in the BufferZone, such as your favorite web browser, peer-to-peer applications, IRC client, and email clients (in the case of email clients, the client itself will not be included in the BufferZone, but any attachments or other saved files are). It is also possible to run all software from other locations – such as CD-ROMs and USB drives – in the BufferZone. So barring a direct attack on your operating system, your computer has the potential to be completely safe.

Best of all, the buffer zone can not only run programs, but entire programs can be installed there. So if you want to test some software that you think is dodgy, you can download and install it (registration keys and all) in BufferZone and see if something bad happens. If everything is ok, just uninstall it from the BufferZone, move the installer to the safe zone and install it again.

The icons and windows of programs, files, and folders in the BufferZone are surrounded by a red line, so you always know whether you are working in a safe or unsafe environment. However, if you find this annoying, you can disable it in the configuration menu.

We started testing the effectiveness of all these protections by downloading and installing programs that our usual virus scanners found infected, and we were happy that our PC remained completely uninfected. Depending on the malware involved, we saw one or the other error message as the virus or trojan obviously fell over trying to cross the BufferZone. But a quick flush of the BufferZone later and we had a completely clean machine again.

We then tried different combinations of running and installing programs inside and outside the BufferZone to see if they worked properly. And in all the programs we tried, none came up short. The only oddity we noticed was that due to the way BufferZone actually stores programs in its virtual machine, links in certain menus, namely the quick launch section at the top of the start menu, could become broken. However, normal shortcuts worked as expected.

Overall, the experience of using BufferZone is simple and largely unobtrusive. Yes, due to the fact that it essentially doubles the workload when running certain programs, it can cause clogging with prolonged use. However, quickly deleting the BufferZone will quickly remedy the situation.

In fact, there are only two reasons why we can think of not recommending this software and neither of them is a technical issue. Rather, it addresses our original question of whether it’s worth adding another string to your guard bow. You see, while BufferZone protects the sensitive parts of your PC from a lot of malicious software running from web browsers or floppy disks, it can’t really prevent a direct attack on your operating system from a remote source. To counter this, you still need to stay up to date with OS patches and make sure you’re using a good hardware or software firewall. If your system gets infected in any other way, BufferZone cannot detect this either, so you still need a regular antivirus to guard against this possibility.

So if you don’t mind having yet another essentially third-party software to protect your PC, then we wholeheartedly recommend TrustWare’s BufferZone Pro – especially since you can try it free for 30 days. However, if all that software is getting a bit overwhelming, we’d advise you to maybe skip this and instead pay attention to where you browse and make sure you scan any software from external sources with your regular antivirus before running it . Oh, and always make backups!

“‘Verdict”‘

TrustWare’s BufferZone is a brilliant new weapon in the ongoing fight to keep your PC free of malicious software. It may not replace any of your existing solutions, but like any good weapon, it plays its part, and it plays it well. And at around £15 for a perpetual single-user license, it’s an absolute bargain.

Prada phones, diamond-encrusted phones, and fashion phones are a regular sight in the atmospheric glass-fronted shops of the average high street. Yet this glamor rarely casts its golden glow on the world of smartphones.

The iPhone was a rare bright spark, and there were the odd flares of light from HTC, E-TEN, Samsung, and Blackberry, but other than that, smartphones have largely adapted to the dull business model over the last year or two. Unfortunately, the latest handset from HP doesn’t change that.

The iPAQ 614c Business Navigator is a big and ugly phone made entirely of drab black and gray plastic, with no brushed aluminum accents or chrome trim to make it stand out. With piggy dimensions of 60 x 117 x 18mm, it’s also pretty chunky. And in other respects it’s hardly a design masterpiece – its integrated number pad has a rather cheap-looking glossy finish and is topped by a pair of “soft”, context-sensitive keys that look like a pair of malicious eyes grinning at you as you type Text or surf the web.

It at least tries to make up for its design flaws with a few clever tricks. The first of these is the touch ring controls (don’t laugh). Embossed in glossy relief at the top of the numeric keypad keys, it allows you to move a thumb or finger clockwise or counterclockwise to navigate through lists and the like. An innovative addition, for sure.

The phone supports the latest high-speed HSDPA mobile data networks with up to 7.2 Mbit/s. It also has a built-in GPS receiver… but this is no ordinary satellite receiver. It uses new Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) technology, designed to combine location information derived from the phone’s cell position with data from the satellites themselves to speed up the initial satellite connection. The phone unfortunately only comes with Google Maps – no navigation software to speak of – but it did a good job of locking on to satellites around central London, taking a fairly quick minute to lock on to five satellites and one provide position.

Inside, it has a very fast processor that uses a 520MHz Marvell part to power things along. This is one of the most responsive Windows Mobile smartphones I’ve ever used, keeping crashes, pauses, and hourglass fatigue to a merciful minimum, even with a handful of applications open at once. And it complements this with a whole range of high-quality smartphone hardware: Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and 802.11b/g wireless for data connections in Wi-Fi hotspots.

But as soon as I started using the 614c angrily, I found that these innovative, and one might say luxurious touches can’t compensate for a design that has more than just a flawed look. This touch ring control, for example, works well, but only in isolation. Once you reach the option you want, you’ll quickly realize that choosing isn’t that easy. The most natural would be to press the center button to select, but that has no effect; Instead, you have to crawl your thumb to the side of the keyboard to press Enter. It’s hardly what you would call great ergonomic design, and I found that I mostly operated the device with two hands – with my left thumb constantly resting on the OK button on the left edge of the 614c.

Another problem with the Touch Ring is that since it sits on top of the number pad, you’ll inadvertently activate it when you’re trying to type texts and emails. It’s annoying to find that when you look at the screen, after hopping onto the keyboard for a second or two, your cursor has mysteriously moved from the body of the email to the address field — and that’s where most of your text is landed . There also doesn’t seem to be any way to move the cursor left and right in text other than typing with a fingernail or the 614c’s telescopic stylus – the touch ring simply moves the cursor up and down.

Elsewhere it’s less of a disaster, but still not enough to lift the 614c out of smartphone mediocrity. The phone has a pretty decent three-megapixel rear camera with light and portrait mirror. It’s quad-band and can be used pretty much anywhere you can get a signal, although that’s nothing fancy these days. The screen is pretty standard – a 2.8-inch transflective touchscreen with 240 x 340 pixels. Battery life is unremarkable too: despite the seemingly high 1,590mAh capacity, I only managed to extract a couple of days of relatively low consumption – although that seems to be the sort of standard we’re sticking to now – at least until phones with more efficient ones 3G and HSDPA chips are built.

Even HP’s usual well thought-out range of software extras cannot fully compensate for the shortcomings. It’s nice to see that Remote Desktop is preinstalled, a decent PDF viewer is welcome, and HP’s Photosmart Mobile application is a nicer application than Microsoft’s default image and video tool. This also has the added benefit of integration with HP’s SnapFish online photo development service.

“‘Verdict”‘

The 614c is certainly a well-equipped handset. It’s not the first to pack so much into a pocket-sized body, but there are a few notable features, like A-GPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, and a very fast processor. Merely the non-VGA display could definitely be described as backwards.

What really leaves scoffers reeling, however, is the fact that it’s not only a rather ugly and bulky phone – especially for one without a sliding keyboard – but also one that boasts awkward ergonomics. Its innovative touch ring control simply does not deliver what it promises and turns out to be more of an obstacle than a useful addition.

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

• draft 5

• Ease of use 5

• value 7

• functions 8

Linksys has traditionally had a very low profile in the desktop NAS market, making the NAS200 its very first and only true appliance. Offered diskless only, it’s a compact little device that can house up to two SATA hard drives of your choice. The base unit is available for less than £100, making it very competitive compared to D-Link’s DNS-323.

When empty, the NAS200 is a featherweight, but it has a nice design and will look great on your desk. Adding hard drives is a breeze as you detach and slide in the back covers to ensure the release ribbon for each hard drive is accessible. No tools are required and you can choose one drive and add another later if you wish. For testing, we installed a pair of 150GB Western Digital Raptor SATA drives, which accepted without issue.

Network connectivity will be the Achilles heel of this appliance as you only get a Fast Ethernet port. As you’ll see in our performance tests, overall file copy speeds are well below those of Gigabit Ethernet devices, making this a poor choice for impatient users. Storage can be further expanded as the two USB ports can be used to add external drives which are automatically released when plugged in. The button on the front is more interesting as it links to the included NTI Shadow backup software and pressing this button launches pre-configured jobs on the PC running the software.

Installation doesn’t take long with the Linksys setup wizard, gently guiding you through every step of the way. Next, switch to the browser interface, which we found easy to use but frustratingly sluggish at times. The status screen provides an overview of the installed drives, total and used storage capacity, and details of all USB drives. With two hard drives in the house, you can opt for spanned, striped, or mirrored RAID arrays, or leave them as two separate drives. Access controls are limited to local usernames and passwords, but you can assign quotas to each to limit available disk space.

The NAS200 is designed for Windows users as it only supports CIFS/SMB protocol but also acts as an FTP server. Shared folders are easy to set up and you can view them all in a list and decide on read and write permissions for each user. Linksys provides a useful shared folder mapping utility that resides in the system tray and also allows you to shut down USB devices for safe removal. Usefully, we found that Windows PnP-X worked fine, so the default public disk share was automatically mapped to our Windows Vista system.

The appliance also provides a download manager feature that allows files to be downloaded in the background via HTTP or FTP. If users are allowed to use this, they can create their own jobs, but only individual files can be selected on the remote system and jobs cannot be scheduled. We had no problems creating jobs that copied files from a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ to the NAS200 via FTP. Multimedia is the order of the day, as the device offers UPnP media services for streaming to suitable media players, but not the ubiquitous iTunes server.

The performance tests confirmed our concerns, as copying a 690 MB video clip from a Boston Supermicro 3.2 GHz Pentium D system with Vista achieved read and write speeds of 3.9 MB/s and 3.8 MB/s resulted. FTP performance was marginally better as the FileZilla utility reported read and write speeds of 5MB/s and 4.5MB/s. We also connected an external USB Maxtor hard drive and copied a 300MB collection of music files onto the device, which was a modest speed of 1.4MB/s. To put those speeds in perspective, D-Link’s DNS-323 returned up to 23 MB/s over Gigabit Ethernet, while QNAP’s TS-209 returned up to 15 MB/s. We also configured the two drives in the NAS200 as a RAID 0 stripe, so the performance for the NAS200 is no better either.

(middle)”The ‘Linksys’ setup wizard makes appliance installation and drive configuration a breeze.”‘(/middle)

We like the NFI Shadow utility as it offers a good range of backup tools and, as the name suggests, can be set up to run permanently in the background, where it saves new files and changes as they occur. Alternatively, you can use it to run scheduled jobs at regular intervals and also specify how many file revisions you want to keep. The backup button on the device worked perfectly, as pressing it started our test job almost immediately. Remember that if NTI Shadow is installed on more than one PC and each instance has multiple backup jobs, this procedure will start everything together. Performance was comparable to Fast Ethernet speeds, with a backup of 1GB of test data returning just 3MB/s.

“‘Verdict”‘

The NAS200 is a nice little NAS device with a reasonable range of features for the price and a smart backup software package. However, it’s really a shame that it only has one Fast Ethernet port, as it severely impacts performance.

”'(middle)The web interface is quite simple but easy to use.”’

—-

”'(middle)User access to each network share can be easily sorted from this screen.

—-

(middle) No order scheduling, but the download manager works well enough.

—-

(Middle) NTI Shadow is an intelligent backup package and all jobs can be started via the button on the appliance.

—-

With so many companies making cell phones, one has to wonder why any network operator would want to launch a private label cell phone. But we’ve seen O2 do this on a number of occasions, most recently with its idiosyncratic Cocoon.

Orange has decided to try its hand at branded telephony and has developed two handsets in quick succession with the prospect of more to come. They are named after cities and the two announced so far are Berlin and Tokyo. I’ll look at Dual-Band Tokyo first and come to Berlin later.

Tokyo is a tiny phone that I suspect is aimed at those who want to look rather snazzy but don’t necessarily need a ton of impressive features. The phone certainly does the trick in the looks department, with silver and black the paintwork of choice and a rather nice brushed metal finish for the battery case on the back.

Weighing just 68g, this phone is barely noticeable in your pocket, and it’s also really small in your hand at just 92mm high, 35mm wide and 14mm thick. Holding it in your hand feels like it’s meant to be a little slider, but it’s actually a standard candy bar handset.

The screen and number pad are a mixed bag. The former is pretty disappointing. It’s very, very small, measuring about 1.3 inches from corner to corner, 21mm wide and 26mm high. It delivers 128 x 160 pixels in this space and runs at 65,000 colors. To be fair, the screen couldn’t be much bigger and still fit in this tiny phone, and it’s sharp and clear enough to read indoors. However, it is difficult to read from the outside, which is particularly annoying when handling the camera.

However, I’m happier about the number pad and other front buttons. The number keys are as large as the front of the phone allows, individually shaped and beautifully backlit. The call and end buttons, as well as two soft menu buttons, are relatively large and very clearly labeled, making them well defined.

The navigation pad isn’t the biggest in the world, but I had no problem using it with my flat thumb, and its center selection button is slightly rounded and raised. All of these design features make the keys easy to find and hit. However, I have fairly small hands, so if you have big hands you might not find it that comfortable to use.

When it comes to amenities, the Tokyo is adequate, but quality is generally below mid-range. The phone does support mobile email, but the screen really is too small to do it seriously. You can browse WAP sites and I even managed to get onto a few websites, but the screen size makes the whole exercise a little pointless – you just can’t see enough information to make browsing useful.

Bluetooth is built in and there’s also a calendar, to-do list manager, alarm and world clock, calculator, currency converter, unit converter, sound recorder, stopwatch and three games. You can also create your own ringtones.

The composition software is pretty clever. You use the number keys to place notes on an on-screen staff. The “0” key inserts a pause, the “8” key generates a vibration, and the “9” key flashes the alarm light.

You can choose between three playback speeds: fast, normal and slow. You can choose a variety of instruments: piano, guitar, violin, saxophone, steel drums, flute, harmonica, trumpet, music box and xylophone. And no, none of them sound like the real instrument, but they are all noticeably different from each other.

On the storage front is a 512MB microSD card that comes with the phone to expand internal storage and its slot is on the left edge of the case. You can use Cards to store music played by the phone, photos taken with the camera, and other files.

And so I come to the camera. It has a 1.3-megapixel sensor (1280 x 1024 pixels), which is below average for any phone these days. There’s a self-portrait mirror, but no flash, and not much good to say about it.

When in use, the screen doesn’t quite frame the entire photo area, so you can’t see the edges of a shot. You also have to keep the phone still for quite a while to avoid blurry or mis-framed photos due to the shutter lag.

As for image quality, my photo of the colored dish, taken indoors and under normal household lighting conditions, is grainy, dull, and unevenly lit. Outdoors, the camera never did well with naturally lit subjects, as evidenced by the smeared yellow flowers. The resolution is poor and the exposure varies greatly.

The bowl of chili peppers is a better photo, but the background should be black and white and not contain those loud pinks and blues, especially since it was shot at ISO-100 sensitivity. Even the chilies themselves are grainy and lack clarity. Compare this photo to the one I took of the same subject with the Nokia N95 8B’s 5 megapixel camera.

“‘Verdict”‘

When the Tokyo came out of the box I really wanted to like it. It is small and delicate in the hand and has a beautiful design. But for £160 it just doesn’t deliver what it’s supposed to.

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 7

• value 6

• functions 6

Lexmark has added wireless connectivity to many of its new printers and all-in-ones, and the Z1520 is at the top of its printer lineup, with automatic duplex printing and photo printing. It’s also available at a price well below the RRP.

Long and low are the best adjectives for the Z1520. Housed in a blocky white and silver body, it has a black panel highlight at the top and a smoke black flip-up input tray that can hold a hundred sheets. A gray plastic output tray slides out of the front of the printer, and a gray bulge on the back houses the built-in duplexer.

Onboard controls are minimal, with buttons for two-sided printing, paper handling, and power. Next to the small Wi-Fi antenna on the back is a USB 2.0 socket that offers two standard connections to the outside world.

A USB installation of the printer is straightforward; Just run the setup software and you’ll end up with a reasonable set of Lexmark applets, including a driver that supports page imposition and the built-in duplexer.

Installation for wireless, a key reason to buy this model, isn’t much more difficult, although you do need to temporarily connect the printer via the included USB installation cable, so you’ll need to have it near a PC during installation. You can then move it to a cheaper location if needed. The setup software automatically detects networks and all you have to do is confirm which one you want to connect the printer to.

Lexmark inkjet printers have never been staggeringly fast, and as always, manufacturers’ speed claims don’t bear much resemblance to typical, everyday printing. Lexmark states 10ppm for black and white printing and 4ppm for colour, while we saw 4.7ppm and 1.8ppm, respectively. Speeds over the Wi-Fi connection were slightly faster than with a USB cable, which is unusual.

Since the printer comes standard with a duplexer, we also ran our 20-page duplex document test, which took 4:49 minutes and showed a speed of 4:15 pages per minute. That’s about twice as fast as Canon’s PIXMA MP610, mainly due to the much shorter drying time between printing the first and second page.

The other speed anomaly occurs when printing PictBridge from a digital camera. This took around 35 seconds longer per 15 x 10 cm print than printing directly from an SD card, which was itself 18 seconds slower than printing from a PC. We tried two different digital cameras and experienced the same slow PictBridge speeds.

Print quality is very similar to Lexmark all-in-ones we’ve recently tested. Black text print shows some ink bleed into the paper and in one or two places where registration from one print pass to the next is not optimal.

Color printing is better, with spot colors and good black overprints. Color tones are also fairly accurate, making this a reasonable device for home office use. While the photo prints offer smooth gradations of tones and well-chosen foregrounds, they lack much detail in the shadows and are marred by scuffing from the pickup rollers, suggesting an over-rush to keep print times down.

Interestingly, not to say annoyingly, the driver software halted our print run and prompted us to replace the color cartridge, even though the color output showed no sign of degrading. It allowed black printing to continue until obvious ink depletion occurred. That kind of protection is adequate in a printer with permanent printheads, but the Z1520 has Lexmark’s heads built into each cartridge, so you won’t damage anything important while printing until the ink is really gone.

Comparing the page numbers we’ve seen with Lexmark’s claimed ISO page yields shows that their estimates are fairly accurate, so we used the company’s numbers. This gives a cost per page of black text of 3.73p and a cost of color of 8.68p. These numbers are reasonable and roughly mid-range for printers in this price range. They rely on the use of high-yield ink cartridges, even though lower-capacity, standard-yield consumables ship with the printer

“‘Verdict”‘

There are many features in the Z1520 that make the spec sheet look good, but once again it’s the core technology that lets the printer down. Black text on multipurpose paper isn’t as sharp as it should be, and photo prints suffer from overcolor. It’s time Lexmark updated its inkjet technology if it wants to compete with the likes of Canon and HP.

On the other hand, the wireless connection works well and increases the printer’s flexibility, and the duplexer performs better than its competitors when it comes to printing double-sided pages at reasonable speeds. If you’re happy with decent print quality and are on a budget, check out this device.

points in detail

• print speed 7

• functions 9

• value 8

• print quality 6

“‘Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 – Xbox 360 version verified.”‘

When I watched Clive Barker’s Jericho in August, my main concern wasn’t that the game felt like another “me too” shooter (it wasn’t) or that the game was lacking in promises (it had plenty of them). No, my biggest concern was whether it had a chance to stand out in what was already looking like the best year for a 3D shooter in a long time. Could it live up to its potential, or would it fall short of the mark and lie flat on the face?

After playing the final product, the answer isn’t as simple as I expected. In some ways, Jericho surpasses my first impressions. In others, it’s a much worse game than I feared. There is real evidence of innovative thinking and artistic and technical prowess here, but there is also plenty of evidence of shoddy design, poor execution and cliched or just generic work. In a way, that actually makes me sadder than if Jericho were just your average wet squib.

If you read the preview, you already know that the game is a squad-based shooter, but with the usual military babble exchanged for a dark, gory horror theme. The seven-strong Jericho Squad – a secret military unit of psychic warriors – are sent on a mission to close a dimensional rift before a terrifying Elder entity can be unleashed upon humanity. The rift is enclosed in what the characters describe as “the box”; some kind of transdimensional prison that protects it. The rift has indeed opened multiple times during humanity’s lifetime, and each time it has crated a distorted version of the local architecture and population. Therefore, the Jericho Squad’s journey is divided into four thematic acts, the Barker versions of World War II, covering Crusades, Roman and Sumerian locales.

Funnily enough, the game’s real USP doesn’t turn out to be Barker’s story, which – frankly – doesn’t seem a million miles removed from the X-Files meets Doom meets Cthulu meets Aliens nonsense we’ve seen a million times before. Nor are the characters who similarly fit well-established sci-fi and horror stereotypes. Instead, the USP turns out to be what the characters can do. As mentioned in the preview, each member of Jericho Squad has their own specific weapons and powers. For example, in Gears of War mode, Delgado is a huge guy armed with a massive chain gun and can unleash a fiery spirit that can seek out and destroy enemies in sight. Black is a sniper, but she’s also gifted with telekinetic powers that allow her to push down barriers and guide bullets to their target in slow motion. Cole can slow time, while Church can perform blood rites that anchor enemies in place or set them ablaze. You’ll get along with everyone as your initially playable character finishes early but – awesomely – survives by owning his squadmates. You can switch to another member of Jericho by simply aiming at that character and pressing X, or by pressing X and then selecting with the D-Pad.

What the preview didn’t reveal was how complex and well developed these special abilities are, or how important they are to the game. Play Jericho as a pure 3D shooter and you won’t last five minutes; Your enemies are too tough and too numerous. Meanwhile, the simple d-pad based command system and poor squad AI (much more on that topic later) also make it impossible to play as a squad-based strategic shooter. The trick, then, is to quickly switch between characters and use their powers as needed to clear out the hundreds of skull-faced zombies and grisly metallo mutants coming your way.

Faced with a gang of grinning boneheads hauling exploding crossbow bolts? Black can take them out one by one from afar using her psychically enhanced sniper skills. Flame-throwing enemies along the way? Use Delgado to take some of the heat, then have the rest of the squad wipe them out. Why not see if Jones, your friendly seer, can possess a monster and use something nearby to cause disruption? Or maybe Church can hold this flying demon in place with a blood rite so the rest of the team can fill the agile little jerk with lead.

Jericho also makes a bit of an effort to incorporate these powers into other aspects of the gameplay, although these mostly boil down to lever-pulling or a little solo run. At times, the game also deliberately divides the team, forcing you to deal with certain characters and abilities that you would normally ignore. Let’s be clear right away: there’s some fun, imaginative stuff lurking here, and it has to be said that Jericho really doesn’t play or feel like your average FPS.

And while we’re giving praise, let’s also say that the guys at MercurySteam have much of their visual work to be proud of. Their custom engine is capable of some stunning results, and when the monsters, colors, and architecture come together like they do in the Crusade section of the game, Jericho reaches Gears of War greatness. Add in some huge monsters, generally a great creature design from the Clive Barker school with flayed skin and gory organs, and you have a game that always looks good, and often looks great – with one major caveat I’ll get to later will come back.

You see, with all the good stuff, it’s impossible to ignore that Jericho just isn’t that enjoyable a game.

Problem number one: AI. Your enemies don’t seem to have one, or at least none that has evolved significantly since the days of Quake II. It’s good. We don’t expect zombies to behave cleverly, and the game would probably be impossible if they did. What’s a problem is that your squadmates are clueless as well. I’ve seen them stand with their backs to a hail of bullets as they contemplate their next move. I groaned as they took turns going into the target zone of a encamped jerk with explosive projectiles, apparently because they wanted to join their comrades who had already been knocked down in the same spot. From the start you’ll be attacked by explosive zombie enemies, but even hours on your troops haven’t learned that a crashed exploder always detonates a second or two after it collapses. They also don’t seem able to attack the yellow weak spot pustules on the beasts. These guys are supposed to be seasoned veterans? Then why are they so fat?

To mitigate this, Jericho throws in a Gears of War healing system where downed buddies can be revived by approaching and pressing X. However, combine this with Jericho’s tendency to throw an endless stream of enemies at you, and at times the game becomes an absurd heal-em-up where you run around like a headless chicken trying to kill as many fighters from the Jericho- Keeping your squad as fit as possible – just because it’s the best and only way to avoid tripping to the reload screen again.

And sometimes you’ll fail, partly due to the sheer volume and ridiculous bullet resistance of even the simplest baddies, and partly due to your squad’s lemming-like tendencies. To make this really annoying, checkpointing is often very poorly done, meaning you’re faced with a 10-minute hike through the same four battles every time your team goes down. To add insult to injury, you have to go through a yes/no prompt every time you reload, and Jericho even throws in annoying in-game cinematics right after a few checkpoints, meaning you’ll end up with the same weak lines of dialogue many times to be able to enjoy.

Worse still, this is a game that doesn’t need to get any more repetitive. The only major criticism of the art design is that each zone of the “box” uses a similar architecture over and over again, and that the game as a whole uses a very limited color palette. It’s all very dark and gothic, but after a while the black, red and brown become stale. Worse, the game is also structurally repetitive. It’s dumbly linear, and basically boils down to “Squad enters a new area, squad fights back hordes of baddies, repeat until level ends.” It’s no coincidence that the times the game picks up speed, the Times are when it’s daring enough to abandon the formula and have a more interesting encounter or fight with big bosses. It’s as if all the imagination went into the powers, leaving too little for what could and should be done with them.

And, please, please, please, please – can we stop having games ruined by quick time event sequences? Jericho has one within the first five minutes that will make your teeth jittery, and then sporadically throws in more to keep you trying to wear them down as the game progresses. The speed at which the button icon toggles on and off and the responsiveness required makes each one a nightmare. Most annoyingly, at one point you’re forced to kill a creature you’ve already knocked down twice by other means with a QTE sequence just because the developers wanted to throw in a cinematic payoff. Grrr…..

Well, I could probably live with some of those irritations, but the final issue Jericho has is the atmosphere – it just doesn’t have enough of it. You should clearly be intrigued by the game’s mythos and horrified by its dark visions, but after a while all that blood and guts melts into the background and you focus on the mechanics to progress from one fight to the next. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare it to survival horror titles when it’s always turned out to be a thriller rather than a chiller, but Jericho never pulls you into its strange underworld like a Silent Hill or Project Zero would. As an FPS, on the other hand, it’s not nearly as nerve-racking as Bioshock, Half-Life 2 or – ironically – Clive Barker’s previous game project Undying.

So the end result is a game full of good ideas and impressive graphics, but ruined by poor execution and design. If you’re a huge fan of scary movies and the Liverpudlian horror author and you absolutely have to have it, my only advice is to persevere; The game gets better the longer it goes. My real advice right now, though, would be to just not bother. If you look at what’s coming or coming out in the FPS genre, we’ve never had it so good. Good for us, hard for Jericho. But even without games like Bioshock, The Darkness, and The Orange Box, I would have a hard time recommending this game wholeheartedly.

“‘Verdict”‘

The design documentation was probably a great piece of work, but the Jericho minute-by-minute experience is a disappointment. While the game improves over time, it’s too buggy and annoying to be worth your money.

characteristics

Once Creative’s Vision M digital media player was the envy of all, and the rest of the music player lineup was impressive enough to rival even the most prolific rivals. However, things have been quiet lately. Only the low-end Zen Stone and Zen Stone Plus have broken the eerie silence in recent months, and in the meantime the Vision M has been quietly phased out. With Creative now lacking a mid-range hard drive player to rival the iPod Classic and a line in dire need of an update, can the new Flash-based Zen begin to reclaim lost ground?

When Riyad played with a back for the first time at IFA in early September he was quite impressed and I have to say that initial impressions are positive in that regard too. The design is unpretentious but chic – unlike the cheap looking Stone and the mighty gorgeous Vision W – with a polished black plastic front and a beautifully finished matte black back. It’s not as thin as the iPod nano at a relatively chubby 12mm, or quite as colorful – it only comes in black, but in a fun way that’s not a handicap. It actually feels a little more comfortable – and less soapy in the hand.

But despite its small dimensions, the Zen looks extremely well equipped on closer inspection. Its 2.5-inch screen is not only larger than the Nano’s 2-inch screen, it’s also the same size as the larger, hard drive-based iPod Classic. And it’s also a very nice screen. At a full 16.7 million colors – which, as Riyad pointed out in his preview, is impressive for a PC LCD panel, let alone one in a tiny media player like this; Video looks sharp, clean and vibrant, and 30fps playback capability means fast action is smooth and viewable.

The Zen also seems to have pretty good video format support: it plays DivX 4 and 5 and XviD formats natively, plus WMV9, MJPEG and MPEG4-SP formats. But before you get too excited, this isn’t as good as it sounds. The Zen isn’t DivX Certified and won’t downscale videos at a higher resolution than the screen, meaning you can’t just drag an old file onto it – you’ll still have to re-encode most downloaded videos to 320×240 first. This becomes a relatively easy task thanks to the Zen’s excellent management and browsing software, which integrates with the Windows Explorer tree and allows you to convert, sync and transfer music and videos without launching a separate application need, but it’s still an unnecessary hassle. However, it does not differ from the Nano in this respect.

The Zen outperforms the iPod nano in other ways, too. Firstly, it is available in larger capacities. I was sent the 4GB version to review, but it’s also available in 8GB and 16GB capacities – the Nano stops at 8GB where the much larger Touch takes over – and there’s an SD card expansion slot too , so you could theoretically take the storage and add up to an impressive 12GB, which is on par with some lower-capacity HDD-based players.

Other reasons to buy the Zen before the Nano include an FM tuner, the ability to charge and transfer files with a standard USB-to-mini-USB cable rather than a proprietary one, and the fact that you can charge for file transfer are not tied to iTunes and device management. You can use the included Creative Media Explorer or Windows Media Player if you want to listen to DRM tracks; or any other music management software you might want to mention if you had the sense to just buy CDs and rip them yourself. You can also just drag and drop files onto the player if you want – it will even warn you if the files you’re trying to copy aren’t supported by the Zen.

Battery life is also slightly better than the Nano at 25 hours for audio and five hours for video. Note, however, that you only get the former if you play 128kbps MP3s continuously without skipping tracks or other navigation. There’s no search function, though, which is one of the few advantages the Nano has over the Zen.

Once you have your music and video on the Zen, navigating the attractive looking menu system is very easy. The four-way directional pad isn’t as pleasant to use as the Nano’s click wheel, and the rest of the buttons aren’t immediately intuitive either, as they contain fairly ambiguous symbols. Before long, however, you’ll be flipping from screen to screen and creating playlists on the fly without even thinking about it. An excellent feature shared by this and other creative players is index navigation: right-click on the device’s directional pad and you can then navigate by the first letter. This makes it a breeze to navigate through long lists quickly. Another nice touch is the album-of-the-day feature, which selects and plays a random selection of tracks from a random album with the click of a button. It’s an excellent idea and feature to have in your pocket, allowing for quick subject changes without having to look at the screen.

How does the Zen fare in terms of audio quality? It’s not a good start, with disappointingly limited file format support. Despite the fact that the player supports AAC without DRM in addition to the usual WMA and MP3 formats, there is no support for lossless codecs or OGG Vorbis.

The lack of audiophile options is a disappointment, not just from a features perspective, but because the Zen is good enough in terms of performance to take full advantage of the increased quality. To test it out, I hooked up my high-end Grado SR325i reference headphones – if these can’t reveal a source’s weaknesses, it won’t do anything – and found the Zen to be a very capable player.

The first thing to point out is that it doesn’t have the loudest volume in the world. It’s fine if you’re listening with noise-isolating in-ear headphones, but some people just can’t handle putting things in their ears, and it doesn’t get larger headphones to the same levels as, say, the Trekstor I tested Vibez player a few months back.

However, this was soon forgotten once I started listening to a few sample tracks. Creative players have always been pretty good sounding machines and the Zen continues that tradition. In back-to-back tests against the Trekstor Vibez, which I currently use as my reference player, I found the Zen just as good, but in a different way. When listening to a piece of dinner jazz by Swedish singer Lisa Ekdahl, the zen doesn’t quite have the same openness as the vibez. But the rest of the sound spectrum is cleaner and a little mellower, with plucked double-bass notes in the background that are more pleasing to the ear.

That strength comes through when you hear something less civilized. Biffy Clyro’s “Puzzle” is a current favorite of mine, and the Ayrshire formation’s unorthodox guitar rock gets to the zen with an energy, power, and punch that many other players lack. Its dynamics and clean, tight bass are simply excellent and even a class ahead of the excellent Trekstor Vibez.

Next I fed the Zen a few tracks from a new band I discovered. Sowena plays an intriguing mix of acoustic guitars and reggae beats, and her well-produced and recorded music is the perfect test of Zen skill. It excelled here, making the music ring out with cheerful abandon.

Finally, I fed the Zen with my usual selection of challenging classical works, from Mozart’s “Requiem” to the dramatic prelude to Mahler’s “5. Symphony”. And here it coped just as well, dispatching complex choral refrains and the tremendous dynamics of orchestral hits with realism, impact and subtlety.

So all in all, a pretty impressive feat. It’s a little disappointing that you can’t delete video files with higher resolutions than the player’s screen, and I’d also have liked to see support for lossless codecs, but the player’s big, clean sound makes up for that and then some. If you’re looking for an alternative to the iPod nano, that alone should put the Zen at the top of your shortlist and make it worthy of the recommended award.

“‘Verdict”‘

Creative has come up trumps with its new Flash-based mini media player. As a direct competitor to the iPod nano, it beats it on most fronts, with the one exception being that its physical controls aren’t quite as pleasant to use. It’s available in a larger capacity range, has a larger screen and, most importantly, isn’t tied to iTunes or a proprietary cable for syncing and charging. It also comes at around the same price, the 4GB version selling for just under £100.