Zath - UK Tech Blog

Take a second to look around you. How many devices are connected to your TV right now? Four? Five?

It’s easy to get lost in the mess that surrounds our devices, and with so many peripherals connected to our TVs you could be dealing with a serious spaghetti junction problem before you know it.

The only problem is, achieving a truly neat, cable free (or cable hidden) experience is tough; you can’t just start drilling holes everywhere y’know, you’ll lose track of everything in no time. Want a better solution? The TruLink Wireless HD Kit may just tickle your fancy… [Read more…]

Following its announcement at CES 2010, anticipation of the Boxee Box’s release has been high amongst the many media lovers in the world. It’s unique external design, powerful hardware which promises to play anything you can throw at it, as well as software that many will have used before make this accessory the one to beat on paper, but how does it work in practice? And can it stay ahead of its competition with a relatively small team of developers? Let’s take a look!

Hardware

The design of the Boxee Box is best described as ‘quirky’. If you’re looking for another modular, black box to hide discreetly next to your TV, then you may have to look past this particular one! That’s not at all a bad thing, though. Looking at the press shots of the box, you’d think it was a mile high, but it fits nicely underneath my TV without any problems. [Read more…]

The market for desktop PC stereo speakers is somewhat saturated these days, and that’s not at all a bad thing. It means we have choice. Choice of style or substance, to splash out or to be conservative with our cash or vice versa in both cases.

Sure, you could go down to your local electronics store and pick up a pair of basic, but decent sounding speakers, for about £20-30, but that’s all they’ll be: decent. That’s why I like having the choice of going a little bit more premium, if you will, and that’s why I was eager to take a look at the Edifier Prisma Speakers after enjoying the Soundbar from the same company, so much late last year.
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Nearly a year ago I wrote up a quick post about my Apple iPad pre-launch thoughts/questions as they were at that time about this new tablet device, would it be a netbook and Kindle replacement and whether I should buy one — given the questions posed about how would you use an iPad, I certainly wasn’t going to be in a rush to get one…however, I did end up buying an Apple iPad on the day of release here in the UK – that being the 16GB WiFi version, ie. the cheapest option while not being tied into another monthly mobile data expense.

In my opinion, the Apple iPad is one of those devices that you don’t need as such, but it’s very cool to actually have one to use when you have a definite use for it. For instance, it’s good for simply checking email, browsing web pages, using Twitter while sat on the sofa in front of the TV – obviously you could do that with your phone/netbook/laptop, however the iPad lets you do it in such a compact device that is just enjoyable to hold/use/touch – plus it doesn’t generate huge amounts of heat that you’d encounter from resting a laptop on your lap.
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One of the major criticisms of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro when it was originally released was that the 1.6 version of Android which the phone used was somewhat outdated severely limiting the number of the apps that the user could use, but now it’s been updated to use Android 2.1 so we thought we’d have a look at how the phone fared, especially given we’ve already reviewed the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Mobile phones have been getting smaller and smaller pretty much since they originated and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro, much like its name suggests, is proudly carrying on that trend. But has some functionality been sacrificed in order to get its size down? It’s kind of a mixed answer…
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