7th February 2008 Archive

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PC World cuts £250 off the price of Apple's MacBook Air

Yes, there's a catch...

Want a MacBook Air for £949? Pop over to PC World's website and order the skinny Apple and an HSDPA wireless broadband package from carrier 3 and the retailer will knock £250 off the price of the Air. Catches? Well, to get £250 off, you have to pay 3 £35 a month for the next 18 months - a total of £630. There's also a data- …

Mac 7 Feb 07:02
Orange France iPhone total hits 90,000

Could do better?

Orange has sold 90,000 iPhones since releasing the handset to French buyers in November 2007, the carrier's parent, France Telecom, told reporters yesterday. It said half of that total were customers who'd come to Orange from other networks. Yet, the France Telecom president Didier Lombard did admit that he'd have preferred …

Phones 7 Feb 10:51
Palm to bring latest Palm OS smartphone to UK

Centro due this month

Palm is to bring its Palm OS-based Centro smartphone to Europe, the company announced today. The Centro has a design that largely matches that of the Windows Mobile 6-based Treo 500. It too has a Qwerty microkeyboard, but the Centro is thinner and taller than the more squat Treo. Palm's Centro: coming to the UK The Palm OS …

Phones 7 Feb 11:16
Samsung launches black U600 to tickle your fingers

Now with vibrating keys

Samsung’s U600 handset has several similar-looking stablemates, including the G600. So the South Korean manufacturer has decided to set it aside from the rest by re-launching the U600 in a sultry black shade and adding in fingertip vibration. Samsung's black U600: now with a vibrating keypad Dubbed... well... the Black U600 …

Phones 7 Feb 11:24
Add-on maker punts Wii-styled speaker set

Console gets suitably styled speaker system

Console peripherals specialist 4Gamers has created a speaker system for the Wii. 4Gamers' Wii speaker system The manufacturer claims its 2.1-channel sound system is officially licensed by Nintendo, and a very sleek design it is too. The sub-woofer looks like a fat Wii, with a vertical blue strip down one side to mimic the …

Consoles 7 Feb 11:31
Flash makers tout near-term speed, capacity boosts

Major developments afoot

The world's Flash memory makers have been busy this week talking up the technology's immediate future: essentially, higher capacity, higher speed chips. Toshiba and SanDisk together showed off what they claimed is the first multi-level NAND Flash chip fabricated using a 43nm process. The part show to 2008 International Solid …

Bits 'n' Chips 7 Feb 12:18
Oscar nominees win ROKR E8 first refusal

Hollywood glam meets handset beauty

If you see someone ordinary carrying Motorola’s upcoming ROKR E8 handset later this month, then call the police, because they’ve probably mugged a superstar. Motorola’s planning to award ROKR E8 handsets to Oscar nominees, before letting the huddled masses know when the phone goes on sale. Motorola's ROKR E8 Oscar boxes The …

Phones 7 Feb 12:32
Sony Ericsson Walkman W960i music phone

Review It's a phone. It's Walkman. It's a robot. Well, maybe not a robot...

The new W960i may sit atop the Sony Ericsson music phone tree but is it supposed to be a smartphone or a music phone? Maybe a bit of both. The problem with the phrase 'a bit of both' is that it's seldom the harbinger of anything other than compromise or muddled thinking. If we had to describe the aesthetics of the W960i in one …

Phones 7 Feb 13:25
Boy burned in PSP trouser blaze

Scorcher

A 12-year-old boy was yesterday treated in hospital for second-degree burns after his Sony PlayStation Portable apparently spontaneously combusted in his trouser pocket. Young Harold Clay was at school - Warner Middle in Farmington Hills, Michigan - when the incident took place. At 9am yesterday morning, the strides-stowed …

Consoles 7 Feb 14:43
Nasty JavaScript code can zap new iPhone, iPod Touch

Kernel bogey

Security researchers have discovered you can crash an iPhone through the medium of a cleverly crafted webpage. The exploit, dubbed a "memory exhaustion remote denial of service vulnerability" by the SecurityFocus website, affects Apple's Mobile Safari web browser, a key component of both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Code up …

Media players 7 Feb 15:33
HTC Vista UMPC to hit the UK within weeks

Credit cards at the ready...

HTC’s long-awaited Shift UMPC is set to arrive in the UK later this month and, rumour has it, you’ll also be able to buy it from Orange. HTC's Shift: runs Vista, connects to 3G The Shift, which first appeared almost a year ago and was due to go on sale in November 2007, will be available from online retailer Expansys on 19 …

PCs 7 Feb 16:16
Best way to stream Sky HD content to multiple TVs?

Q&A

I'm looking to take a single SkyHD source and distribute it to three TV's in my house. I've heard this can be done over CAT 5/6. Can anyone advise to how this could be done? And could I network these TVs to make them become monitors for an internet feed?

Q&A 7 Feb 16:51