‘My Windows Phone’ Launches Ahead of Mango, Adds Web Marketplace
In the eyes of many, including myself, Windows Phone is well overdue an update, and it’s in line to get one pretty soon if Microsoft is to be believed. And it just got a lot more credence given the recent launch of a new site called ‘My Windows Phone’, which aims to collect the bulk of the data stored on your Windows Phone device in one easy-to-use web interface.
Dyson Unveils ‘Hot’ Fan Heater, Available Now For £269.99
When Dyson introduced the Air Multiplier – their bladeless fan – in 2009, a lot of people were impressed by the elegant design and efficient cooling methods that you couldn’t get from traditional fans. Despite the hefty price point (the fans start at £200 for the smaller models, and work their way up to £300), there’s no denying that the technology used by Dyson is really impressive.
Fast forward to an unseasonably warm September in 2011, and the result of three years research and development, based upon the design of the Air Multiplier, has resulted in a new product: Dyson Hot.
Continue reading »Swann DVR-460 Waterproof Mini Video Camera Review
Whether you’re a keen photographer or not, the chances are you’ll take some snaps or some videos once in a while, whether it be on a fully-fledged DSLR, or just the camera in your smartphone, so you can easily relive your memories. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend slipping into the sea or a swimming pool with your smartphone or camera attached to your hip, it could have disastrous consequences.
Fortunately, there are cameras designed for that very purpose, and today I have with me the Swann DVR-460 SportsCam, which claims to be able to do it. So let’s take a look, shall we?
Continue reading »TP-Link TL-WR1043ND Router Review
I’ve been in the market for a new router myself recently, and I have to say it’s an increasingly tricky decision to get right in this modern world of dual-band, gigabit and all sorts of other mind-boggling jargon. Anyway, once you’ve figured it out, you might realise that this router from TP-Link, despite being labelled ‘ultimate’, falls short of the competition as it is just a single-band. That means it’ll only operate on the 2.4GHz frequency, neglecting the 5GHz frequency that other rival routers use to gain a clearer path to half of your devices amongst other things.
Interestingly, though, unlike many of the competing entries to the market, the TL-WR1043ND features a trio of antennae fixed along the back of the router, similar to the dual antennae found in the Netgear DGN2000, which are useful for really maximising the range and strength of that single signal. It’s noticeable, too, with the range far outstripping that of my recently procured Belkin PlayMax router.
Continue reading »TruLink HDMI Over Cat5e Extender Review
We use Cat5 cabling for a number of networking related tasks, but not many people will have seen it used as a HDMI extender. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what TruLink has gone and done with this extender. They’ve taken a HDMI connection and paired it with Cat5e technology which will allow you to transmit video over a long distance in your home or workplace up to 60 metres.
TruLink 2-Port HDMI Splitter Review
Following the digital switchover here in the UK, almost every man and his dog now has a television that is at least HD ready. That means that demand for HDMI cables and accessories is going sky high. Even HDMI DVD players are available to take advantage of upscaling content and getting the most from your old discs, but what happens when you want to watch the same content on two TVs instead of just one?
TruLink’s 2-port HDMI splitter aims to solve your predicament by offering you an extra port to connect your peripheral in to, but how does it stack up when compared to the plethora of other options available out there? Let’s check it out!
Continue reading »TruLink TV To PC Converter Review
There are lots of converters and adaptors available that can take a video signal from your computer and display it on your TV or projector, but there aren’t many that work the other way around. That is, to take a signal from an external device such as a DVD player or cable box and convert it to display on a conventional computer monitor.
For many people who don’t want to use a TV, just a external input device, this could be quite useful, as computer monitors tend to be less expensive than their aerial packing counterparts.
If you want to buy a computer monitor instead of a TV, or you’re just re-purposing an old monitor that you no longer use, then you’ll want to take a look at one of TruLink’s many adaptors.
Continue reading »TruLink VGA To HDMI Converter Review
If you buy a new television now, you can guarantee that it will have at least one HDMI port available to use. Large sets will even have up to 3 or 4 ports for you to connect up all your peripherals and enjoy your media.
What happens when that media is on an older computer, though? Most laptop and desktop computers will, for the past decade, have shipped with a VGA port to connect to an external display or projector before anyone could even say ‘Digital Switchover’. If you still have an older machine that you need to hook up to a new TV, then you’ll need an adaptor like this one from Trulink.
Continue reading »PC Tools Performance Toolkit For Windows Review
I’ve always been skeptical of so called ‘tune-up’ programs for Windows. There are quite a few of them, such as Uniblue Registry Booster, around from various software companies, but how much good to they actually do?
Whether it’s worth your while purchasing a tune-up program for your PC depends on how long you’ve been using it without formatting the hard drive, and why it’s running slowly. Of course many people like to stay on top of these things and run programs such as Performance Toolkit as a preventative measure, so that there are no registry errors present to slow down your system. If you want to use a tune-up program, and you’re interested in Performance Toolkit, read on to see what we make of it!
Continue reading »Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Premium For Windows Review
This time last year at Zath, we reviewed Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 and found it to be one of the best speech recognition options available on the market despite its high resource usage. This year, we’re back with the latest version of the software, NaturallySpeaking 11.5, to see how it compares to its predecessor and whether any of the updated features can further tempt consumers to buy in to the speech recognition scene.
The new version is a free update for existing users of version 11, but it is also shipping as a boxed product for buyers who haven’t used the previous version before.
Continue reading »Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo Review
Whenever I approach a review for a phone, I try my best to do so without any pre-judgements about the device that I’m about to use. I’ll ignore the vast majority of reviews already written, and get a feel for things before loving or hating it, but for the Xperia Neo this is particularly difficult.
You see, as far as I was concerned, the Xperia Neo is simply Sony’s Xperia Play without the ‘Play’. It has a very similar look and feel to the so called Playstation Phone, with the same style chrome finished buttons beneath the screen and the same curvature around the edges. The only problem is I didn’t particularly like the Play until I used the Playstation app…
Still, I’m a firm believer in clean slates, and a clean slate is just what I gave the Xperia Neo. After all, it’s cheaper than its gaming relative and can still pack a fairly powerful punch. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Continue reading »Jamie Oliver’s Recipes For iPad App Review
The iPad is a great portable cookbook that can be placed in the kitchen whilst you’re cooking. You no longer have to keep large, heavy cookbooks with lots of recipes that you’ll never use lying around. Instead, you can mount your iPad on a stand and view only the recipes that you want to use.
That’s the idea behind ‘Recipes’, a free app from Jamie Oliver that allows you to purchase packs of recipes for just £1.49 each as an in app purchase. Each pack includes several recipes and comes with some instructional videos as well.
Continue reading »Miranda IM For Windows Review
Instant messaging clients are all ten-a-penny nowadays, whatever platform you’re using, and it’s a market that’s incredibly difficult for software producers to differentiate themselves in. After all, there’s only so much that you can do with an instant messaging client, and if you go too far when trying to introduce additional features, many people will stop using your product because it has too much bloat.
You can’t say that Miranda IM, the instant messaging client we’re looking at today, has bloat though. Quite the opposite in fact; Miranda is just a 3MB download and doesn’t even have to be installed locally in order to work. Sound like your kind of client? Let’s take a closer look!
Continue reading »Revo Uninstaller Review
Reviewing so many products across different platforms, I’m constantly installing new software on to my Windows based computers to try out new things. Sometimes, I’ll keep a product that we review on Zath, but a lot of the time I will probably uninstall it after I’ve used it. The only problem is that when you uninstall a program on Windows, a lot of crap gets left behind. Registry entries, stray folders and dead shortcuts are left scattered across your hard drive.
If you want to fully uninstall a program, along with all of its registry entries and hidden folders, you will have to use something that carries a little more weight than the Control Panel. Something like Revo Uninstaller.
Continue reading »Slim PDF Reader For Windows Review
Whenever you send or receive a read only document, the odds are that it’s sent in PDF format. Adobe’s portable document format has enjoyed a monopoly for many years now, so it’s not surprising that there are so many PDF reader applications out there to choose from.
Over the years, though, a lot of these applications have developed quite a bit of bloat. Adobe’s own application weighs in at over 26MB, and both Nuance Reader and Nitro Reader aren’t too far behind. If you’re looking for a bulk free, lightweight alternative, then you should check out Slim PDF Reader.
Continue reading »Universal Extractor For Windows Review
People are always sending files to each other over the internet. Whether it’s a set of photos, a set of documents or another form media, and the vast majority of these files tend to arrive in a compressed format. The problem is, there are so many different programs out there that offer to compress your data, you never know what file formats you’re going to have to deal with.
We’ve taken a look at a number of programs, such as Stuffit Deluxe, which can compress files, but it’s not always easy to find a program to open all of these files on the other end. Fortunately, there’s a small tool called Universal Extractor, available for free on Windows, that will take virtually any compressed file format that you care to throw at it, and extract the contents, making your life a lot easier.
Continue reading »FluffyApp For Windows Review (CloudApp Client)
We checked out CloudApp for Mac OS X on Zath all the way back in April of this year, and it hasn’t left the menu bar of my Mac ever since. It makes it really, really easy to drag an image or a file or a link to a small logo and have it immediately uploaded and ready to share with anyone that you want over the internet, without having to mess around with email attachments or become frustrated at incompatibilities between different instant messaging clients.
The only problem with CloudApp is that at the time, there was only a client available for Mac OS X, so Windows users were out of luck. Fortunately, this is no longer the case, thanks to a new, free Windows application called FluffyApp. Using your CloudApp credentials, you can upload files to CloudApp using FluffyApp in Windows just as you would in OS X!
Continue reading »Clementine Music Player For Windows, Mac And Linux Review
Are you bored of Windows Media Player? Is iTunes too bloated for you? VLC not bloated enough? Fear not! There are other options available when it comes to software for managing your music, and today we’ve got a program called Clementine which is available for free across the board on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
You can download Clementine from the developer’s website, and it weighs in at around 15MB on Windows, so it will be downloaded and ready to install in a matter of seconds on most high speed broadband connections.
Continue reading »Parallels Desktop 6 For Mac OS X Review
When it comes to virtualising Windows or Linux on your Mac, you have two main choices: Parallels or VMWare Fusion. I’ve always been more of a Parallels man myself in the past, so I was really excited to get hold of a copy of Parallels 6 to try out on the latest generation iMac, as I could really take it for a spin and test its capabilities when running more than one virtual machine at a time.
Last year, we took a look at Parallels 5 for Mac and I was left impressed at its tight Windows 7 integration when running in Coherence mode with OS X. With new features, and even a new operating system to play with, Parallels 6 is bound to set the bar that little bit higher, so let’s take a closer look!
Continue reading »FeedDemon RSS Reader For Windows Review
With so many great websites across the internet, it’s hard to keep up with all of the news that you want to read. Fortunately, there are a lot of great RSS readers available to manage all of that content for you on every platform – we took a look at 5 news readers for the iPad just last month. One such reader for Windows is FeedDemon, which is available to download for free. Interested? Let’s take a closer look…
NOTE: If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, we recommend reading our ‘What is an RSS Feed’ article before reading on
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