Now don't get me wrong, I love the flexibility and ease of use of MP3s and CDs but to an old school HiFi fan, they do all sound a little too clinical, lacking in personality. It's a constant disappointment every time I buy a new CD or collection of MP3s only to find the mastering has left the thing sounding totally uninvolving. To be honest, I'd pretty much given up on ever really enjoying music again.
Then one day, I was browsing the HiFi forum on CIX and someone mentioned some high end piece of wunder kit they'd been playing with and somewhere along the line, DFX Audio got mentioned as the savior of good music.
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Trust produce a broad range of budget priced products. This time round we're looking at their new mouse pad which unusually sports a 4 port USB hub and sells for a mere £12 or so.
The mouse pad area measures 215 x 200mm and is covered in a durable but slightly textured microfibre material that should prove to be a good surface for most mouse types. We tried it with ball as well as optical types and it worked very well with both.
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Here at Practical PC we are always harping on about the need to use secure passwords. If you use easily guessed passwords then you have only yourself to blame if someone hacks into your account. Best practice is to have different passwords for different accounts, but it's easy to see how the number of passwords will build up beyond what you can remember.
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Most people will be familiar with Wacom, a company that seems to monopolise the graphics tablet market. Its latest models combine pen and multi-touch input, much like the overpriced iPhone, and they're called Bamboo Fun.
The name might suggest a, well, 'fun' device rather than a serious piece of equipment but that would be misleading. You can use the tablets for controlling your computer instead of or as well as the mouse, and they are seriously useful - yes, and fun! - when used with drawing and photo editing software.
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Over the past year or so, an increasing number of computer tutorial books have been published, supposedly aimed at the 'older generation', in recognition of the fact that not everyone was born with a laptop in their cot. We've reviewed several here and, in truth, most would be suitable for anyone wanting to learn about computing, not just Silver Surfers.
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MailWasher is a spam filter. It works, quite simply, by reading your emails from the server and displaying their content and information. It identifies ones it thinks are spam and ones it thinks are from friends. You can check the list and delete the spammy one from the server so when you fire up your email program you only get the good emails. It's simple, it's easy and it works.
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Over the years I've used a great many languages on a great many platforms but one which I've managed to avoid until now has been Java. Whilst it's not quite as hot as it once was, it's still used a lot in a large number of organisations so I figured it was time to give it a go.
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Antec are best known for their fine range of enclosures and power supplies. They do also produce a number of specialised cooling solutions such as the hard driver cooler we reviewed a while back. This time however, we are looking at the Notebook Cooler 200 designed to help with laptops with a tendency to overheat.
The Antec Notebook Cooler 200 is so named because of the huge 200mm Antec Big Boy cooling fan that dominates the middle of it. Whilst we're on the subject, someone, please tell Antec that 'Big Boy' sounds, well, just a bit suspect!
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The chances of your laptop or netbook’s battery charger cum power supply unit lasting as long as the computer it serves are pretty good – it’s generally the mobile PC itself that fails, most often at the fragile power input point. However, there are other reasons you might want a separate unit, and these multi-purpose kits from Belkin can do the job, provided they are aimed at your particular brand of computer.
We looked at the netbook kit, F5L065uk, and this catered for netbooks from Toshiba, ACER, Samsung, HP Mini, and ASUS. It did this by supplying changeable tips to suit the power input design of your computer, but it could do other things besides this.
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Portable disk drives abound these days, and their cost has tumbled to suit their popularity, but one problem has always been that of data security. The loss of huge amounts of data, much of it related to personal databases obtained by various government departments, has lead to much unrest among the populace.
What was needed was an encrypted drive so that the thief could not read the contents. That copy of the data would be lost, it's true, but at least it was 'safely' lost, and a new copy could normally be extracted from the original. Add password access as a second layer of security and the job would be complete.
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PHP is a server-side scripting language which means it works on the server holding a web site, for example, before passing the results to a browser. A client-side language such as CSS or JavaScript is executed by your browser to format web pages or create animations.
The benefit of server-side scripting is that it's harder to interfere with making it more suitable for handling sensitive information, making changes to database information and so on.
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When someone says “laptop”, the picture that comes to mind is a clamshell device with a screen panel fixed to a keyboard panel. But there are a few laptops that have put their toe out of the line. Yes. Innovation has driven the makers to create laptops that look different. They serve different purposes too. While some of them have actually come into being, some others are still in their conceptual stage. Have a look…
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After the ubiquitous keyboard, surely the most popular means of communicating with a personal computer is via the humble mouse? Except that, these days, your typical mouse isn’t likely to be very ‘humble’; it’s most probably busting with modern technological developments. We’ve been browsing Microsoft’s and other offerings, and handling a few of them, to check out the current state of play. The range of technology on offer is, to say the least, awesome!
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Most of us have probably bought goods on the internet. Amazon is undoubtedly a popular favourite and every high street retailer now has a web presence.
But if you're looking to buy something a bit more specialised, you may have to look further afield. So how do you know if the company you are about to deal with is legitimate or not? And even if they are, how do you know if your money will be protected and the goods safely delivered?
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Given that computers can be constructed from so many disparate parts, it's a wonder they work at all. However, as anyone who has built their own PC will know, there are still many parts that won't work together. They simply aren't compatible.
You might think that the world of batteries would be more immune to incompatibilities but that's not the case. Try this – look at the model number of your laptop's battery. Now type it into Google. You'll probably get several thousand results.
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If you use PayPal to buy on eBay, you get some guarantees. We won't go into that here but rather look at purchases made via PayPal outside of eBay.
You might come across two problems with an order - the goods might not arrive, or they may not be what you ordered.
Outside of eBay, PayPal says it offers protection only for physical goods and only for goods that have not been delivered. However, that protection is suspect.
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The world is awash with card readers. They come in all shapes and sizes. The Mini Card Reader from Trust is probably one of the smallest though.
With support for MMC, Memory Stick and Secure Digital plus all the variations thereof, this device is aimed mainly at digital camera or mobile phone users where these sort of cards are most prevalent.
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Strange as it sounds, sometimes an illuminated keyboard is something I really hanker after. When working into the night, it's not always convenient to have so many lights on, especially if they're in danger of disturbing others. When you find yourself picking at the keys to the dim light of the monitor, you know you need a keyboard that glows in the dark. There's a few around but most are quite pricey. Luckily, Trust have one that's a bit more reasonably priced.
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DFX Audio 
Trust Mouse Pad with 4 Port USB Hub
Roboform Pro 
Wacom Bamboo Fun
MailWasher Pro 6.5
Antec Notebook Cooler 200
Belkin Netbook Power Adapter Kit for Travel
iStorage diskGenie
Laptops That Defied the Norms…
The Modern Power Mouse
Who Are You Buying From? - Who Are You Dealing With Online?
The Great Battery Swindle - And Other Horror Stories And Cautionary Tales
When Buyer Protection Isn't - When You Shouldn't Use PayPal
Trust Mini Card Reader
Trust Illuminated Keyboard 
