In the store and in pictures the shape of the Kensington does not appear or feel natural, with there seemingly being a lack of hand / wrist support, however, the box does contain additional wrist support making the trackball much larger than in photos (the additional attachment supports the wrist and slightly lifts it – the Logitech on the other hand, does not support the wrist, but instead supports the palm of your hand, whereas the Kensington does not with or without the additional wrist support). However, saying that, even with the additional (included) wrist support, the Kensington does not necessarily feel as natural to use as the Logitech, the buttons feel overly distanced, making it feel as though you need to stretch your fingers further apart than at “natural rest”, and the ball seems slightly higher than natural / and higher than the Logitech.

logitech vs kensington circles - click to embiggen

The Kensington is roughly twice as sensitive as the Logitech, which should theoretically mean much less movement. I say theoretically, as I found the Logitech much more easy to control in a more precise manner, although it should be possible to configure the Kensington’s cursor speed to match the Logitech. The Kensington also seems to require more effort when (left) double clicking, and has a louder clicking noise than the Logitech, right clicking takes more effort, and is slightly difficult if you are used to right clicking with your little finger. The trackball is shiney, glittery blue, like a posh bowling ball you might see on TV, and if you have kids you’ll be pleased to know that the ball is quite difficult to remove from the mouse. The scroll wheel… is very smooth, very easy to use, your fingers fall very naturally onto it, however, so far it’s not been used accidentally – although the alternative with a trackball that doesn’t feature a scroll wheel is to simply click and hold the left button on the scroll bar and move the ball, often it works just as well, and once you get used to it, doesn’t require much thought. A 5 year warranty is included.

Pros: Scroll wheel. It’s got a scroll wheel. It’s a trackball, AND it’s got a scroll wheel. Wrist support.
Cons: Loud clicks. Buttons need a firm press. Lacks hand support. Only two buttons. Takes up more deskspace that the Logitech when using the wrist support. Does not glow blue (instead there are red LEDs under the ball that don’t really show up unless you remove the ball)

Here is how it looks:

I’ve read a lot about the Streak online and it tends to be the same everywhere. Those who’ve never seen it don’t get it, those who see it like it, those who own it are always being asked about it.

For a phone it’s big, almost comedy size, but despite the ability to make calls on it the Streak is sold as a tablet. The interface is set up in landscape mode and you can buy a data-only tariff.  I bought it  outright and got a 30 day rolling data contract. Other options are available, including 18/24 month deals or SIM free from Dell. Keep reading below…

It ships with Android 1.6. Despite my love of Android I have to say that this is farcical. With 3.0 being tested and 2.2 rolled out on most high end phones Dell have really put their foot in it here, and I still don’t know why they did it. The stock answer is that when the promised 2.2 upgrade comes they want it to be just right. I think that’s baloney. since it is open source there is no cost incurred by using 2.2 so I don’t get it. It’s just another one of those barking mad things that makes Apple’s lead easier for Jobs to maintain.  Luckily a2.1 O2 update was leaked online and I promptly installed it. The Streak was great on 1.6 but 2.1 is a quantum leap ahead, and it makes the device faster, more stable and better in every way.

So what do we get? The only real differences between 1.6 ad 2.1, aside from the OS itself are a couple of bespoke widgets for Twitter and Facebook. These are not in the 2.1 leak, but they are not really missed as they were not apps, they just displayed the news feed. Any tap on the widget took you to thewebsites so they were essentially RSS feeds. With 2.1 you get the Facebook and Twitter apps and they are fine, but I use something else that I will talk about later.

In the box is the unit, a drawstring case – replace immediately with a proper leather case – wall charger and lead. The Lead is USB out and the Streak itself has a proprietary charging port which looks to my amateur eye like an 18 pin. This is annoying and the reason they did it becomes clear when you try to buy a spare lead and find they are £19.99. Irritating but to be fair, Apple are as guilty, if not more of pulling this crap on users. When you hold the unit it is reassuringly weighted, solid and balanced and it is only 10 mm thick. It just feels right. Boot it up and you see that the screen is beautiful. This is why people who haven’t seen it don’t get it. The quality of the screen and the extra couple of inches really do make in instant impact. This device is different, and it feels great, pleasing the eye immensely. Pixel density is 800 x 480. Not quite iPhone’s retina, but it looks great. Pin sharp with vibrant, rich colours. Wallpapers look great, live wallpapers (animated scenes) look brilliant – further down you can see my aquarium wallpaper on a video demo.

As with all Android phones, you sign in to your Google account and all your data for contacts, calendar, app downloads and anything else stored on the cloud is pulled down to the unit. Apple’s Mobile Me is £59.99, Google do this for free. Strike one Google. I also think the Google method of having the cloud is better than plugging in to sync all the time. Apple is way off the pace there and wired sync only is, in 2010, not acceptable to my mind. Once accounts are done you can then sign in with other accounts like Facebook and Twitter, although multiple Google accounts only works on 2.1. That isn’t a big deal, but it is for me personally as I use a Google Apps account for my company, and the Google Market has some apps that need a personal account to work, one notable one being Google’s podcast client, Listen. I made do with Acast until I got 2.1, but no other client comes close to Listen so that irked me a bit.

Dell bundles a few apps with the Streak. Documents To Go comes with it, although editing needs a paid upgrade. With Google Docs I don’t see the point personally, but there we go. Also bundled is Touchdown, a business calendar app. Again, with Google Calendar it seems pointless. The only thing I can think is that 1.6 only allows one calendar, but multiple accounts on 2.1 allows as many as you like, and the beauty is that the data streams stay separate, but show up on the same screen, meaning that you can schedule your life properly but still not mix the two. I think this is a real bonus, especially if your boss is a dick, as they so often are. There is the usual music player, gallery, mail, basically all the things that make smartphones smart.

So on to the performance. This has a 1 Ghz processor, and boy do you feel it. Heavy use, multitasking, application switching. None of these fazed it. It st smiled and asked for more. I frequently have music playing, six screens full of widgets, live wallpaper, 10 or 11 applications running in the background. This unit did it with ease, No lag, no delay in functions, nothing. Everything is snappy, smooth and it NEVER crashes. The screen is very sensitive. It requires the gentlest of taps to function but seems to ignore brushes from cuffs etc. Very good indeed. The keyboard is great and I recommend you go one better and install either Swift Key or Swype. They improve the device significantly. There are three soft keys for back, menu and home.

Check out the voice controls here:

MOV02469

Pretty good eh? Also here, I picked the two silliest words I can think of:

MOV02470

I can’t even fool Google’s neural algorithms with ‘transubstantiation discombobulation’! It struggles a little with proper names, but that is not  a surprise to me. As you can see, commands to navigate go immediately to the (excellent) navigation application. Nice touches there include street view when you arrive so you can see what you need to find, and it also automatically switches to night mode in darkness. Slick touches. Google Maps looks amazing on the 5 inch screen too.

The unit has 2GB onboard for applications. That is a hell of a lot – I haven’t come anywhere near it. It came with a 16 GB memory card and supports up to 32 GB. Since I use Spotify I don’t use the card to store music so 16 GB is plenty. Right now I have 4 films and the series’ Wonder of the Solar System, BBC Space and Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets loaded on the card so the storage is pretty big. Android only supports MP4, however, Rockplayer is an app that plays all the regular codecs, it’s free with ads or paid. The speaker is okay on the Streak and the bundled headphones are okay unless you’re a purist. The phones are also a hands free kit. The answer button also pauses and restarts playback. A simple addition that makes such a pleasing difference.

Live wallpapers look great on the display. I switch between the aquarium you can see above, and galactic core. Both are free in the Market, along with loads more.

Web browsing on the Streak is brilliant. The standard browser is great and the screen is large enough for full site browsing. With 2.1 you get tap and pinch zooming and the websites look great, colourful and vibrant. Panning and zooming are smooth and navigation is easy to the point of being addictive.

Despite Twitter and Facebook being in the Android build, I don’t use them as I I have discovered Tweetdeck beta. This is a brilliant app that combines your Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Foursquare feeds in to one timeline. It makes using all four a breeze and they can be used together and updates sent to one, several or all of them as you see fit. As it is stil in beta you’ll have to get it from their site and install it manually, but it won’t be long before it appears in the market. Perfect.

Streak has two cameras. One five megapixel snapper with a twin LED flash and a front facing VGA for video calling. As yet it’s no use as Skype or Vonage haven’t got their finger out and built a video chat client. You can’t blame Dell. The hype surrounding the release of Streak has been substantial, so why the VOIP companies haven’t got an app ready to go is beyond me. With the arrival of more Android tablets imminent it’s hardly a risk to release software for Streak so I can only assume they don’t want to capitalise on the most profitable and fastest growing telecoms market, mobile tech.

The 2.1 update brought 720 pi HD video recording so the camcorder is top notch, and pictures from the camera look good, although it is very easy to blur them. Here is a Picase stream I snapped at the Edinburgh Fringe recently:

Edinburgh Fringe

Pretty good I’d say.

Dell give you 6 screens to customise. I have one screen full of buttons for my frequent use apps. Two full of photo widgets so I can always be close to my family, and three with application widgets, with things like calendar, weather, tasks list, Spotify, Last FM, power control, Scoreboard, YouTube, Engadget, Taskiller and more. Sorry iFanboys, having used both iPhone and Android, I prefer widgets and customisation all day long.

Media sharing is pretty extensive. Photos can be sent to Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Mail. Add to that any media app you install, just tap menu in the photo and you get your sharing option. Videos go to YouTube, although installing the free Qik app lets you share videos to the usual sites, Facebook, Twitter etc and Pixelpipe, also free, lets you share any media with just about every social network known to man, over 350 listed in the application. 2.1 brings a much improved gallery function to Streak too, smooth and easy to use rather than the raw functionality of 1.6. The navbar at the top consists of buttons rather than pull down menus. Left to right: applications, network status which doubles as recently used apps, notifications, then phone status which lets you switch flight mode and various connections on and off and gives battery status and the time and date too.

Battery lasts easily all day provided you have a task manager installed and use it to kill apps you’re not using. This is highly recommended as you can lose hours running programs you aren’t using – I am not exaggerating. Notifications can be customised not only phone-wide, but for each app, meaning you can have emails only vibrate, or just texts etc. Very useful.

There are also several e-book apps available, including Kindle. Naturally the screen is no match for e-ink, but it is good enough and sufficiently sized to make reading pleasurable. The Flixster application delivers movie trailers that look great, as does YouTube. YouTube allows you to turn high quality on or off. Unless you’re very worried about your data limit then go hi-def as lo-def looks truly atrocious. Blogging is a breeze with the keyboard size and sharing options, although epic posts such as this one are still best done on a PC. I have never found a phone that is up to that.

If you fancy gaming on this it will work very well, but you’ll need to learn a soft touch as it is easy to overload the screen – a sign of which is the colour blur on LCD screens. It’s easily done on the Streak.

The one thing people have been trying to do is decide what Streak is. I think that’s a bad idea. Just use it. It comes in to it’s own when the user is allowed to define it. I have used it heavily, and as soon as my contract on my other phone is up I’ll likely use it as my phone too. I have used it for media, films and music etc, social networking, emailing, navigation (an absolute life saver at the Edinburgh Fringe), blogging tool, camera, web browser, for shopping, eBaying, light gaming. It’s location awareness will become more and more useful. Location aware software will come of age over the next couple of years. The potential is obvious to current users. Maps, Navigation and suchlike are the beginning. Apps like Foursquare let you ‘check in’ at places and gie you discounts at places you regularly go to. Your favourite Costa Coffee or cinema probably does this now. Apps like Locale, which set your phone settings and state based on time and location are really useful and Google places, Flixster, Whereto and similar apps expose you to a world of places you never knew were there. I’ve already eaten great food and listened to great music and comedy as a direct result of using these apps, and the Gigbox app has sent me to various gigs by using my Last FM history to tell me when my favourite bands are in town.

To appreciate Streak you have to see it. On paper it’s odd and people don’t know what to do with it. Go and hold one, see the screen. It sits seemingly awkwardly between smartphones and iPad, and I confess I will be  buying a full sized tablet running either Android or Chrome for home. That way I can keep my netbook for work. I think Streak is a surprise package. I love it and it’s easily the most useful phone I have used, ironically I don’t have a voice tariff either. It won’t convert iFanboys, but nothing would. If a person is willing to pay Apple’s price for a tablet lacking a camera, GPS, phone capability, which is locked, aggressively closed source and which is basically a massive iPhone that doesn’t phone then nothing will win them over. There is a reason that Android recently usurped Apple at number 2 in the smartphone OS market. Despite the hype, it’s better. It’s faster, cheaper, more suable, more customisable and the hardware is better. Apple likes to portray itself as the conquering hero of the market but it really isn’t, and picking up the Streak was the perfect antidote to my irritation at the iPad and it’s crap spec sheet and absurd price. I’m a mac user, and I like Apple, but I don’t like them that much. Streak is a winner. Plug in the hands free and you’re on the phone as usual. Hold it and the world comes to life.

The Toshiba Portege R500 – a couple of years ago – before the netbook world took off – the ultra compact Toshiba Portege R500 was a premium £1600+ laptop – it features a 1.2ghz (or 1.33ghz) core 2 duo processor, built in DVDRW, 12.1″ screen, wireless, 2gb ram, 160gb hd, and even the option of solid state hard drive, before these even were heard of. So it was a fully featured mini laptop rather than a stripped down large netbook. And what’s even more important, and relevant today, is that it is available for around £300 second hand on ebay, which is the price you will pay for a new mid-range netbook. But instead of minimal features, memory, and built to a budget price and build quality you get a premium ultra compact laptop, with premium features.

However, is it any good? Or would you be better off with a “modern” netbook with low power and efficiency built in? Or perhaps even a small laptop with a 12 or 13 inch screen? Continue reading below to find out…

The keyboard is a standard laptop layout without anything obviously wrong (unlike the Vostro 1510), although when you do compare it to normal laptop keyboards it is roughly 1cm smaller, so this does seem to effect touch typing speed.

The speakers are missing – and instead there is only one speaker that seems strained when the volume is at a reasonable level.

The screen seems to have a very poor viewing angle – blacks are grey – the range between white and black (dynamice range) doesn’t seem very good. The resolution is very good though with the same resolution at normal laptops with 15.6″ widescreens. You have to sit in front of the laptop at a very specific viewing angle otherwise it’s difficult to view.

The “power” – the CPUs offer 1.2ghz or 1.33ghz dual core (Core 2). This should be adequate and better than most netbooks.

The Windows score is: 2.2 Overall (the overall number uses the lowest score and not an average – the average would be 3.66 if Windows used this)

CPU calculations: 3.8
Memory (RAM): 4.2
Aero (Desktop) Graphics: 2.2
Gaming graphics: 3.0
Disk performance: 5.1

Noise? The cpu fan is quite noisy when watching BBC iplayer – I wouldn’t really expect a laptop to be strained when watching iplayer and should be able to cope without making noise – not so with this one unfortunately. Most modern laptops are optimised to make minimal noise, even budget laptops such as the Dell Vostro range.

Battery life – says you should get 4 hours out of it. Although this will depend on usage. I got about 4 and a half hours out of it with very light use.

It has wifi, bluetooth, VGA connection, 3 USB (1 powered), firewire (mini), mic / headphone sockets, analog volume control, fingerprint reader, LAN, wifi switch, DVDRW, SD slot, built in microphone? (no webcam), Tested running Windows 7 Professional 32bit.

Size, and weight? It’s small – shorter than an A4 piece of paper in length, but wider than the width of an A4 piece of paper. It’s light as well, with an ultra thin (and fairly wobbly) screen. The screen is roughly half a cm thick, and the whole laptop when the screen is closed is less than an inch thick.

Overall – it could be worth considering. However the screen makes it quite difficult to recommend for anyone who does photography or web design. In fact it’s not great for watching TV or films either. There is a lot of backlight bleeding, and viewing angles are very poor. The fan noise is quite disruptive to watching online tv (especially with the placement of the speaker on the left near to where the fan is) and the volume doesn’t really get loud enough to counter the fan speed at times, especially when the internal speaker distorts above a certain volume.

Finding a similarly high specification netbook could turn out to be quite a lot more expensive. The Samsung NC20 with 12.1″ screen is £349 and uses a VIA Nano processor (1.3ghz), and the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is £399 and uses an Intel Atom cpu at 1.6ghz, however very few, or probably no netbook actually features an optical drive… making DVD playback somewhat difficult. And when you are looking at spending £350 – £400 you are also in the same price range as normal “entry level” laptops with full size screens, DVDRW, and all the other features you’d want in a laptop such as dual core processor.

However – if you’re looking at spending £350 – £400 on a laptop, you are now able to afford most entry level 15.6″ laptops, or even 12.1″ and 13.3″ Dell Vostro laptops, which are available with 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo processors, and full size keyboards etc. The Dell Vostro v13 – with aluminium body is also quite a stylish laptop available for under £400 – and with low power CPUs and a 1 year warranty this could be a good option. Click the pictures to embiggen.

Samsung T220 22-inch Widescreen LCD TFT Monitor, 2ms Response Time, Rose Black, 20000:1 Contrast Ratio DVI / VGA

Why buy one? (or two) It’s one of the cheapest 22″ TFT monitors available with both DVI and VGA (most of the cheaper ones only have VGA) – and you want DVI for the highest picture quality possible. It doesn’t have HDMI input or speakers – but you’ll probably need to spend another £30 or £40 if you want these features (see the Samsung SyncMaster 2494HS or newer for these features).

It’s got 84 reviews on Amazon UK, with an overall score of 4.5 / 5, even by Amazon standards – that’s pretty high! There’s more reviews on Ebuyer.com where the overall score is 5/5! Plus it’s only £129 from Amazon UK inc vat and free postage!

Specs and Features:
Ports: VGA / DVI / Power
Speakers: No
Touch buttons: 1 for power only
Real buttons: Yes, on the side: Menu, Brightness, Up / Down, Source, Auto
Power light: Red (fades in and out heartbeat style when in power saving)
Warranty: 3 year warranty as standard
Panel: TN TFT Active Matrix, Dot Pitch / Pixel Pitch: 0.282 mm
Image Brightness 300 cd/m2
Image Contrast Ratio 20000:1 (dynamic)
Response Time 2 ms
Power AC 120/230 V ( 50/60 Hz )
Power Consumption Operational 45 Watt
Environmental Standards EPA Energy Star , EPEAT Silver
Display Positions Adjustments Tilt
Low Power Consumption (0.3W Power Off, Energy Saving Mode)
Contrast Ratio: DC 20,000:1(1000:1)(Typ.)
Resolution: 1680×1050 (WSXGA+)
Response Time: 2ms (GTG)
Viewing Angle (Horizontal/Vertical): 170˚/160˚ (CR>10)

Dead pixels? No. Check yours with DeadPixelBuddy, but you do get a very nice screen cleaning cloth with the monitor.

Screen finish: Matte – this means very low reflection, and even on bright days the screen is bright and easily viewable.

Quality: Crisp – pixels are very crisp, sharp, clear. Colour appears to be very good, bright colourful, not TOO bright, not luminous. Black appears to be good. Will check colour performance more fully when I calibrate the monitor. After calibration – there was little difference – the pre-calibrated image was perhaps a little too bright, with a slightly magenta / blue cast.

Looks: Did I mention it looks AWESOME? Has a very stylish glass effect surround – that’s perhaps a bit too reflective – but looks very cool.

Tilting base. The screens a bit wobbly – not sure why? It’s like the metal plate doesn’t clip in properly into the monitor. Seems a shame that this is not more sturdy.

Energy saving – the labelling on the monitor is quite subtle and barely noticeable in dim lighting. The monitor comes with all needed cables: power, VGA, and DVI.

Back – things it says on the box: “Samsung Design that performs, 20000:1 Dynamic Contrast, Vivid Moving Picture. 2ms Fast Response Time. 0.3W softPower OFF, lowest Stand by Power.” and “SyncMaster T220 22″ Wide TFT – LCD Monitor, Up to 1680 x 1050 (WSXGA+) Windows Vista Premium Certification”

Neat cable cover clips onto the back. Really there is very little to dislike about this monitor – maybe speakers would be nice to have – but it would add to the price, and you get better sound quality from headphones or dedicated speakers anyway. It’s a great monitor, at a great price. Highly Recommended!

Pros:
Excellent price
Video Playback looks great
All cables included
Screen cleaning cloth included – nice unexpected bonus
Very good colour
Very good image quality
Looks very good / stylish
Good viewing angle
No dead pixels

Cons:
Wobbly base

Only £129 from Amazon UK inc vat and free postage!
View larger pictures and photos of the Samsung SyncMaster T220 in the Gallery

Samsung SyncMaster T220 (Left) next to Samsung SyncMaster 2494HS (Right):

What does it need? USB2 socket, video inputs: Composite video (RCA) and S-Video (mini-DIN), audio inputs: stereo audio (RCA x 2).

In the box you’ll find: a USB dongle, a USB extension cable, USB audio / s-video / composite lead, software CD rom (with cd key), instruction manual, and warning card telling you to plug to dongle in first before installing the software.

PC minimum requirements: Windows Vista / XP with 1ghz CPU, 512mb ram, DX9 gfx card, sound card, DVD-rom drive, 2gb free HD space for install, Windows media player 10 or higher, CD writer for VCD, SVCD and DVD writer for DVD, IE7, one available USB2 socket.

Install: 15 minutes to install. Seems to go very slowly and seems like it’s crashed during the install – patience is a virtue as they say.

Problems: Plugging in the USB dongle AFTER installing the software CD will cause problems. The USB dongle should be plugged in BEFORE installing the software. If you do it the wrong way round and the computer says “Driver not found”, then go to http://www.roxio.com/go/videousb and download the usb dongle driver – installing this should fix it.

Another potential problem you may get is the “Signal protected” error message even though the signal is not copy-protected. There is a fix for this from roxio available here (although so far I have not had to use this).

And some more problems I left the capture running, came back to find the video out of line, unplugging the usb dongle and reconnecting crashed the PC completely and it rebooted. Later I recaptured some more video went to close Roxio Media Import, and it crashed.

Using the software The program starts with a friendly wizard with the following options: Capture video, plug and burn, digitize lps and tapes, burn audio cds, burn mp3 cds, capture audio from soundcard. You can also select additional menus from the left – the one I’ve been using is the Video – Movies menu. The program comes with a software manager that will let you know when any critical or important updates are available.

Capturing video using Roxio Media Import – Capture settings – You have various options – DV 720×576 (AVI), DVD HQ (720×576, MPEG2 8mbps), DVD SP (352×576, MPEG2 4mbps), DVD LP (352×288, MPEG1, 1.7mbps), VCD (352×288, MPEG1, 1.12mbps) – none of them say “VHS-PAL” which you would think would be the most suitable option so that you are using the most accurate and efficient capture method. This would also enable the most efficient use of hard drive space. Why encode it as DVD quality or higher?

Making DVDs: After capturing the video you can: Edit the video using Roxio VideoWave and / or then turn it into a DVD using Roxio MyDVD. This is fairly straightforward, however, as soon as you start a new project in MyDVD, it automatically adds hideous buttons, background pictures, and music, and then everytime you add a video file to it, it uses the same horrible buttons, similar to “WordArt”. Changing it is thankfully quite straightforward – and results can turn out quit well (as can be seen above). After it re-encodes the video to fit the DVD, and writes it to the DVD, you can then use “Create labels” to create the DVD label, and print out a Lightscribe label.

Additional features / thoughts The dongle also lets you capture audio “LPs and Audio Tapes” according to the box. (Although your sound card probably already lets you do this, but I guess it’s a nice marketing sticker they can put on the box). You may already have S-video on your graphics card, which may have let you capture VHS / video without having to buy this dongle, assuming you have the right card / cable and software.

Overall: Roxio Easy VHS to DVD does what it says on the box, assuming you can get past the potentially numerous problems, or assuming you don’t have as many problems as me! Reviews on Amazon UK are mixed with some people having success, others much less. The price, at £39, is reasonable, with other solutions (Magix Rescue Your Videotapes also comes with a USB dongle) priced almost identically. It’s difficult to come to a succinct conclusion, it worked for me, but the number of problems myself and many others have faced make it difficult to recommend. I tested this with a high performance PC (Quad core, 4gb ram, 500gb hard drive etc), running Windows XP SP2, and would have expected slightly better performance.

What is it? A full HD 16:9 1920 X 1080 (aka 1080p) 24″ TFT computer monitor with DVI / VGA and HDMI inputs and built in speakers for £195 including VAT from ebuyer.com. It’s sold as a 24″ monitor, but it’s actually 23.6 inches.

Is it any good? Yes – image quality is good with crisp clear pixels, and calibration using a Spyder 3 Pro (shown above in the first photo) made a slight change (making the image warmer, and slightly darker). It’s got a matte screen so there is minimal reflections from lights etc.

Why choose this over other monitors? I personally chose this one because I wanted 1080p for a PS3 using HDMI, plus the speakers are rated at a MASSIVE 6w (2x 3w) – whereas some other similar (Iiyama) monitors deliver even less power from their speakers – the monitor has an audio jack in (for sound from the PC) plus a speaker / headphone socket (all the ports are at the back). Plus this was one of the cheapest TFT monitors with HDMI input.

Design / Looks: The black plastic casing is almost entirely matt – apart from a loop that runs all the way around the monitor including along the bottom where the touch sensitive “buttons” are. The speaker location is a little bit poor in that they point directly down, so in order to get the sound to your ears you’d really need to mount some deflectors or something to bounce the sound towards you, although saying that, I don’t know where else they could have mounted them without making the monitor appear more bulky.

Positives? Value for money, ability to take 3 inputs (including HMDI blu-ray, ps3, or xbox360), good screen. 5ms response and 50,000:1 dynamic contrast according to the specs. Comes with VGA / DVI and audio cables but no HDMI cable.

Any negatives? Quite a thick border around the screen compared to most Dell TFTs. The speakers seems adequate at best – poor for listening to music and probably not loud enough to be used in a living room. The touch sensitive buttons are practially invisible in low light – and difficult to use as there is no feedback when compared to normal buttons. Fairly small viewing angle. It would be nice if black was a little blacker – there is a tiny amount of backlight bleed. Base is a little small.

Overall: This is one of the cheapest 24″ TFT 1080p monitors available with speakers and HDMI built in. Not only that, but it offers excellent image quality, with zero dead / hot pixels. If you want a 16:9 aspect ratio then this would make an excellent choice.

More info and links: Gallery photos, ebuyer.com, Photos at ybnews.com, Dead Pixel Buddy (useful for testing TFT monitors), Forum Discussion (Whirlpool.net), HotUKDeals.

Update Nov 09: looks like the Samsung 2494HS is getting rarer to find (discontinued? / replaced by newer model?) – so you might want to look at the ASUS 24″ VH242H Wide Gaming LCD TFT Monitor (5ms, Full HD, HDMI, Black).

Installation attempt 1 failed at 2% with Nero installer crashing, and a reboot was required. (Although it did manage to install a Lightscribe control panel that now lives in the taskbar).

Installation attempt 2 was successful using the typical installation settings (although it appears you need to perform a custom install to get all the Movie templates – which are useful if you use Nero Vision). This seemed a little slow – taking around 20 minutes on my PC which has 2 500GB hard drives, a Quad Core processor, and 4GB of ram, so I dread to think how slow it would be on older machines! Installation did not require a restart of the PC at the end of installation, which was an unexpected bonus.

The installation put two icons on the desktop – one of them a Lightscribe icon – the other a Nero StartSmart icon, it also put the Nero and Lightscribe icons in the taskbar (the Lightscribe icon can be easily removed). Opening StartSmart gave me a wizard making it easy to choose what I wanted to do, and I was quickly and quite easily able to burn an audio CD from MP3s on my hard drive, and anyone familiar with StartSmart should be familiar with the way Nero 9 works. I also had no problems making a DVD from files on my hard drive – Nero Vision worked well and let me arrange the menu, and then Lightscribe let me print the disc label. Overall, apart from the slow install and initial glitches which seem to have been caused by me not restarting my PC, Nero 9 seems fine and does the job well. I installed this on Windows XP SP2. (from joshwaller.co.uk)

The Vostro 1510 from Dell.com/uk – £316 including VAT and Postage (with £50 off, plus a further 10% off). It’s very dark in colour, and not very shiney from this angle. After the faulty advent I think I’ve finally got a bargain of a laptop to replace the Inspiron 1300.

The laptop scores well in Vista, although is let down slightly by the graphics, and 3D graphics scores. Aero is supported, but scores would be higher if a dedicated graphics card was chosen. The Vista experience scores are: CPU: 4.8, RAM: 4.8, GFX: 3.5, 3D GFX: 3.5, HD: 5.1 – giving an overall score of 3.5.

The Dell Vostro 1510 features a 1.8ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD (WD), Vista Home Premium, DVDRW (slot loading TEAC), 15.4″ widescreen, SD/MMC/MS/Pro memory card reader, 4 USB ports, WIFI (plus physical on/off switch), Firewire, a shiney sparkly black lid, a catchless closing mechanism (magnets? weighted shut?), a nice blue circuit board with easy access to the CPU and memory.

Some pros and cons, starting with the pros:
+ EXCELLENT price!
+ Good screen, clear, bright
+ Good sound (quite loud for a budget laptop)
+ Little installed software (Google gadgets, toolbar easily removed)
+ Very easy to access memory, CPU etc
+ Quiet – very little fan noise (as far as I can tell)
+ Plays Spore

Negatives:
- \backslash key is next to the forward slash key on the right!
- Mouse buttons are too deep – it’s like pressing a key (I prefer a firmer click)
- Drivers out of date according to Windows update.
- lacks a scroll wheel (some games require this)

originally posted Sep 2008 (on another site)