This week we’ve been testing a lot of computing kit, with several Intel and AMD CPU and APUs passing through our testing lab.
We’ve also been very busy reviewing Sony’s impressive new gaming handheld, the PS Vita. Check in with TechRadar to read our full Vita review very soon.
But in the meantime, let’s recap what we’ve been up to for the past seven days!
With the Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V boasting an asking price of £269 in the UK and 9.99 in the US, it falls between the likes of a Canon PowerShot S100 and a regular point and shoot compact such as the Nikon Coolpix S6200 in cost.
Sony has packed a lot into this high-performance travel zoom that poses very serious competition for the likes of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ20, Fuji FinePix F600 EXR, plus a host of rival compact cameras that similarly incorporate a broad focal range with built-in GPS and pocket sized proportions. Though not 100% perfect in each and every regard, the Sony Cyber-Shot HX9V nonetheless comes very close in most.
The Intel Core i7 3820 performs at around the same sort of levels as the top-end standard Sandy Bridge CPUs. And we have to say, that’s a bit of a disappointment. This is supposed to be the serious enthusiast processors for Intel’s desktop faithful, but the more mainstream, soon-to-be-replaced Sandy Bridge setup is just as good at the quad-core level.
The fact that Intel has put the chip out for the same price as the top-end Sandy Bridge i7 2700K is impressive, and thoroughly welcome. It’s a decent chip, offering the extra bandwidth of the Sandy Bridge E platform for straight Sandy Bridge prices. But the vast majority of us don’t need that bandwidth.
There are two mice in Corsair’s fledgling range – the M90 caters for the MMO gamer’s needs, and as such sports fifteen programmable buttons. This M60 sets its sights square and true on the first-person shooter afficionado, for whom split seconds and DPI figures are everything.
With that said, even the grouchiest CS:S gamer will be happy with the Corsair Vengeance M60′s performance. Primarily, you want a comfortable mouse that doesn’t have a ton of buttons you’ll keep accidentally pressing at a fair price, and Corsair’s rodent ticks all those boxes with confidence. The adjustable DPI and sniper button are useful additions in a layout that otherwise shows restraint, and it feels like it could survive a nuclear blast.
AMD A8-3970K Black Edition APU review
While its flagship FX processors are failing to shine it does seem a little on unfair on AMD that at the other end of the market it has a chip which really ought be cleaning up. Its Llano Fusion APUs, which combine a multi-core CPU and a Radeon graphics part on one die, are actually rather good.
They may be based on an older processor architecture, but quad core examples like this A8-3870 hold their own against Intel’s similarly priced dual core Core i3s in CPU benchmarks. When it comes to 3D tasks like gaming, the on board HD6550D is simply in a different league to Intel’s laggardly HD Graphics 3000 cores.
Devolo dLAN 500 AVtriple+ review
The Devolo dLAN 500 AVtriple+ comes at a high price, at over £100, so is certainly at the higher end of the powerline adaptor market in terms of cost. But if you’re after a speedy network across your home and have a few devices that need to be connected, then it’s going to be money well spent.
Cameras
Hands on: Samsung WB150F review
General networking
Nextivity Cel-Fi RS2 3G review
Hard disk drives
Zalman SSD-F1 Series 240GB review
LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series 240GB SSD review
Headphones
Urbanista London Headphones review
Input devices
StarTech 2 Port USB VGA KVM Switch with File Transfer and PIP review
Keyboards
Corsair Vengeance K60 gaming keyboard review
Lenses
Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM review
Media streaming devices
Memory cards
Samsung 16GB SDHC Plus Class 10 review
SteelSeries Kinzu V2 Pro Edition review
Mobile phone accessories
Mobile phones
Network adaptors
Western Digital WD Livewire review
Scanners
Canon imageFORMULA P-215 review
Software
Hands on: iBooks Author review review
Speakers
Televisions
Web cams
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You’ve almost gotta feel bad for the tech companies who have to announce quarterly financial results in the wake of Apple’s gangbuster .33 billion fiscal first quarter. Case in point: Nokia, the onetime giant of the cell phone business, whose fortunes have gone the other way in the last quarter, with a .3 billion loss. Hang in there, Nokia… it’s almost Friday, and the weekend is sure to be kinder on you than the last three months. Meanwhile, let’s have a peek at what else is making news on this Thursday, January 26, 2012.
Just a couple of years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that cell phone giant Nokia would be playing the role of underdog. Flash forward to today, and the company is draining profit like a sieve and doesn’t have much to show for its new Windows Phone-packing Lumia line thus far. According to Engadget, Nokia racked up a mere .1 billion in net sales for last quarter, which is an improvement from the third quarter, but down 21 percent from the same period in 2010. All in all, the Finnish company had an operating loss of .3 billion for the fourth quarter — very unfortunate, considering Apple’s gangbuster revenue announced this week. On a better news front, Nokia has now sold “well over” a million Lumia devices, those being the budget-conscious Lumia 710 and its more attractive big sister the Lumia 800, which are the first fruits of Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft to produce Windows Phone devices. Nokia also plans to break even in the first quarter of this year, which has been rumored to see the launch of its new Lumia 900 here in the U.S.
Apple CEO Tim Cook held an “all hands on deck” Town Hall meeting for employees on the company’s Cupertino campus Wednesday, a day after reporting their biggest quarter ever. While no one knows for sure what was discussed there, 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple employees may soon benefit from the company’s mountain of wealth, thanks to some new corporate discounts that will kick in this June. According to an unnamed source, Apple employees “will soon be given 0 discounts on purchases of new Macs and 0 discounts on purchases of a new iPad.” The generous discount comes with a few caveats, of course: Employees have to work for Apple for at least 90 days, and the low-priced Mac mini is excluded from the deal. Hey, you can’t expect them to just give that stuff away, can you…?
Apple isn’t the only company enjoying record income during the last three months of last year. According to AT&T, the telco wrapped up 2011 with their best quarter ever for mobile broadband sales, with 9.4 million smartphones sold — and as you can imagine, most of them were iPhones. The carrier confirmed in a press release that it activated 7.6 million iPhones last quarter, a number that absolutely smokes the 4.3 million activated by competitor Verizon Wireless for the same period. AT&T also isn’t afraid to boast that it bested Verizon in iPhone activations for the entire year, with 17.5 million compared to Big Red’s mere 10.8 million. Remember all the pundits who predicted gloom and doom for Ma Bell when they finally lost iPhone exclusivity? Yeah, those were good times…
Still having battery drain issues with your iPhone 4S or other iOS 5 device? Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update fixed the problem for some users, and hopefully the forthcoming iOS 5.1 will take care of the rest. In the meantime, a new jailbreak-only tweak in Cydia called iOS 5 Battery Fix promises to squash the problem for good — except it doesn’t actually do anything. According to Cult of Mac, the .99 app is “just a complete scam to steal your cash,” as iOS hackers Dustin Howett and Sam Binger discovered after examining the app’s code. “DHowett found that all it does is replace /System/Library/CoreServes/powerd.bundle/com.apple.SystemPowerProfileDefaults.plist,” Binger writes. “I looked for any possible impact of this. While this sounds good… we’re changing the power settings right? The reality is that it does absolutely nothing.” The report notes that the tweak isn’t malicious — unless you consider being duped out of a bill for absolutely nothing malicious, that is.
It’s been nearly a year since Apple introduced Thunderbolt I/O ports to the Mac, and the promised flood of new peripherals to attach to them has been slow to arrive on the market. This week, AJA has announced the availability of one such product, the company’s new Io XT. This 95 pro video box hooks into a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac and allows complete video/audio capture and playback, supporting all of the latest codecs including Apple’s ProRes, CineForm, DVCProHD, Avid DNxHD and more. The peripheral is noteworthy as the first such solution to include dual Thunderbolt ports, which allows one for connection to the computer while the second can be used to daisy chain additional devices, including high-speed storage or even another display. AJA Io XT is now available from the company’s global network of resellers.
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