Hands-on with Office Mobile for iPhone

By now, you've no doubt heard that Microsoft Office Mobile for iPhone is now available for iPhone. (Yup, you read that right: It's iPhone-only.) The question is: Should you care?That depends largely on whether you're already a subscriber to Microsoft's Office 365 and Skydrive services, which (for personal use) cost from £79.99 annually. (If you want to give the app a test run, Microsoft offers a 30 day free trial of Office 365, which you can set up at the Office 365 website.) Because, really, Microsoft Office Mobile is a front-end to that service,...

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Dell UltraSharp U3014

A 30-inch desktop giant of a display, the Dell UltraSharp U3014 offers resolution of 2460 by 1600 pixels on a matte IPS screen with environmentally friendly LED backlighting. The U3014 boasts several nice-to-have features and a long list of on-board controls for tuning your image on screen. You might need to enlist some help in attaching the heavy monitor to its stand. But once you've done that, you can connect it to your computer using your...

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HP OfficeJet X551dw

According to HP, its new Officejet Pro X printers are the fastest inkjet printers in the world – an achievement that has been officially ratified by the Guinness Book Of Records.There are several models in the Officejet Pro X range, including multifunction models costing as much as £700. However we tested the X551dw model, which is a conventional, single-function printer priced at £480, and which claims to offer speeds of up to 70 pages per minute...

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Dell XPS 12 convertible Ultrabook

The XPS 12 isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly one of the more successful attempts to create a hybrid mobile device that can function as both a laptop and a tablet. Dell describes the XPS 12 as a ‘convertible ultrabook’. Certainly, it ticks all the right boxes on the ultrabook side of things. The smart black and silver case measures just 20mm thick and the XPS 12 weighs only 1.52kg, so it’s easy to carry around with you. It’s sturdily built,...

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HTC First Facebook phone

The HTC First has launched in the US, and is set to come to the UK on EE this summer. Here we've reviewed the HTC First and Facebook Home on an AT&T handset in the US. The HTC First is one of the more intriguing Android phones we've had the chance to review. The result of a collaboration between HTC and Facebook, the First is the first phone to ship with Facebook Home preinstalled--doing away with the traditional Android home screen in favour...

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Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D

Following on the heels of the FS-4300DN comes this slimmed down mono laser printer from Kyocera, the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D. The difference in price may be significant – at the time of writing, the FS-4300DN costs around £870 to the £270 of the FS-2100D – but in many respects these two models have much in common.For a start, there's the overall look of the two printers. Kyocera's Ecosys range have a unified design, so the various models resemble each other very closely. The casing of the Kyocera Ecosys FS-2100D is chunky and robust, but not overly...

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VMware vSphere 5.1 looms large

With the release of VMware vSphere 5.1, VMware's product line underwent some naming and positioning changes. In the past, there were two different bare-metal hypervisors, one free and one sold as part of the vSphere suite. Now there is just one. The new standard is ESXi 5.1, which still comes in a free version. However, the free version is now limited to 32GB of physical RAM.The ESXi hypervisor is required for all vSphere installations starting with version 5.0. ESXi does not use Linux, as did ESX, for the service console that executed scripts...

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Innergie mCube Slim 95 travel adaptor

Innergie’s mCube Slim 95 solves the annoying problem familiar to anyone who travels with a laptop on a regular basis; no matter how slim and light the laptop itself, the AC adaptor is probably a standard unit that along with its cabling can add surprising bulk.Compounding this, the same issue will apply to smartphones, digital cameras, tablets and camcorders, each of which will also need its own adaptor. A few devices will charge from a laptop USB...

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Xamarin 2.0 works mobile development magic

Unless you've been living on a planet far, far, away from the galactic trade routes, you know there are only two practical choices of programming languages -- Java and Objective-C -- for developing native mobile apps. If you are an experienced C# codesmith who wanted to try your hand at Android or iOS app development, you were out of luck. No longer: Xamarin 2.0, an SDK produced by Xamarin, allows you to write Android and iOS apps using C# code. Equally important, you can do this with Microsoft's Visual Studio.The Xamarin SDK is based on an open...

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Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 narrows the gap

With the release of Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V gains increased scalability in terms of both raw specs and features that make larger environments easer to manage. Hyper-V 2012 pushes the limits to 4TB of RAM per host and 64 nodes per cluster, and it adds advanced features such as a virtual switch, a virtual SAN, and live storage migration that were previously available only from VMware. It also includes native clustering capability, so you have the ability to build a highly available virtual machine cluster with commodity hardware and two OS...

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Virtualisation showdown: Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 vs. VMware vSphere 5.1

Any comparison of Microsoft's Hyper-V versus VMware's vSphere has to take into consideration a number of different factors. First, there's the target customer and the feature set for different sizes of deployments. The needs vary widely depending on the number of virtual machine instances, and these requirements should drive the architecture and configuration choices. Second, there is the topic of management, which is also tied closely to the size of the installation. Beyond these considerations are a number of other issues, including cost, performance,...

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Brother MFC-J4510DW

The Brother MFC-J4510DW surprises you from first glance, a low-slung top measuring just 185mm deep but very wide. Black and cream isn't always an attractive combination, but it works here, a broad black stripe rippling across to match the bold dark top.Wide looks betray the feature that makes this that most multifunctional of MFDs - an A3 printer. Paper is loaded sideways. This seems a touch quirky, but it's actually a brilliant twist that means...

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Connectify Dispatch - software load balances network adaptors

Beyond the Hotspot software that comprises the bulk of its business, Connectify makes another utility for laptop enthusiasts: Dispatch.Connectify Dispatch works by simultaneously leveraging the multiple network adapters and high-speed USB ports available on modern systems to boost bandwidth and reliability. Each Internet connection you add to Dispatch's list of active adapters increases potential download speeds and provides automatic failover in...

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Dell Precision T7600

We often use car metaphors to describe workstations we review – from solid reliable Volkswagons to superpowered Bugatti Veyrons. Our review model of Dell’s top-of-the-line Precision T7600 workstation is more like a customised design you’d expect someone like will.i.am to order – souped-up to ludicrous levels, but with impossible-to-figure-out configuration choices.The T7600 is probably the best-designed workstation Dell has ever produced. Looks-wise,...

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BlackBerry Q10

The second BlackBerry phone to run the BlackBerry 10 OS is the the BlackBerry Q10. Unlike the first - the BlackBerry Z10 - the Q10 will appeal to hardcore BlackBerry users with its hardware qwerty keyboard. In our BlackBerry Q10 review we look at how that keybard plays with BlackBerry's brave new world. (See also: BlackBerry Q10 price in the UK.)To accommodate the keyboard, the Q10 has a 3.1in display, which is 25 percent smaller than...

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Dell OptiPlex 9010 Review - Touchcreen Windows 8 all-in-one PC for Business

The launch of the touch-centric Windows 8 spawned a host of new all-in-one (AiO) designs, most of which leave something to be desired. But with a little patience and forethought, Dell has delivered a considerably more usable touchscreen AiO: the OptiPlex 9010. And all they had to do was to put the touchscreen within easy reach. Dell worked this minor miracle by engineering a double-jointed stand that allows you to move the display up and down...

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Output Devices Of Computer

The devices which are used to display the data to the user either in the form of hard copy or soft copy are called output devices.   SPEAKERS Speakers receive the sound in the form of electric current from the sound card & convert it to sound format. These are used for listening music, chatting , seminars for presentations etc.   VDU (Visual Display Unit) This is also called monitor. It is used to get the data in the form...

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