I’ll be honest from the start with the review of the Belkin N+ ADSL modem wireless router — it has a flaw and it’s a pretty fundamental flaw if you want to use it for one particular purpose like I did, but more on that later…

I bought the Belkin N+ ADSL wireless router as a replacement for the ageing Belkin N1 ADSL modem wireless router which needed replacing as the “quirks” it had been finally proving too much to live with, but rather than talk about that here, I’ll update the original review after I’ve finished this one.

Suffice to say despite my reservations of buying Belkin again, I looked around some of the big well-known review sites and they seemed to like the Belkin N+ with some of them having it as their wireless router of choice. Therefore I thought I’d give them another chance.
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Vodafone has released the HTC Magic, but the question is, have they got their exclusive hands on a “magical handset”? Back in February as part of our smartphones series we had a look at the T-Mobile G1 which was the first to have the much hailed Google Android operating system, and although the O/S was impressive the hardware wasn’t, but now it is time for the second wave of Android phones, and the first of them is the HTC Magic.

The Taiwanese telecommunications company have been on the rise recently with the HTC Touch HD, Pro and Diamond all receiving acclaim and success. So who better to have a crack at getting the best out of Android, and let’s face it they couldn’t do any worse could they?
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You may remember that we’ve previously featured Pleo in which we explained that he’s an autonomous, newly hatched herbivore dinosaur called a Camarasaurus – essentially a robot dinosaur that will wander around exploring and reacting to its environment – it’s fair to say I was initially a little sceptical about Pleo the Robot Dinosaur.

In the past I’ve had a play with some of the previous robotic dinosaurs that have been on the market, such as the RoboRaptor which to be honest has never really impressed me as anything other than a short-lived novelty which I certainly soon got bored with…the question is whether the same can be said about Pleo, I’m pleased to say that there’s certainly a lot more to Pleo as a robot dinosaur than previous attempts at bringing back these long-dead creatures in a robotic form.
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So as we come to the end of our overview of the smartphone world (which has included the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry Bold, Nokia E71, HTC Touch HD and the iPhone 3G) and we meet the T-Mobile G1 – The first Google Phone! This has got to be the only phone where the operating system (O/S) has created more interest than the phone. Having said that the phone has been the centre of much attention and not all of it is without good reason.

Firstly a little background: the phone is technically called the HTC Dream (you may recognise HTC from their Touch HD) as they, along with some input from Google’s design team, designed the hardware. But what makes this phone special is that it is the first example of Google’s Android O/S which promised to be stylish, packed with features and built completely with touchscreens in mind; so it looked good, but the end result was a phone of two halves.
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So far we have covered four of the best smartphones: the Apple iPhone 3G, HTC Touch HD, Nokia E71 and Blackberry Bold 9000, and it is another Blackberry that we take a look at now. Blackberry is a massive company in the smartphone market and it is no surprise that it is the only one with more than one phone in this list – although this may also be a reflection on the inexperience of the other companies in this market.

So moving onto the Blackberry Storm the most obvious question is how different is it from the Bold, and I suppose the most obvious thing is the use of a touchscreen instead of a QWERTY keyboard. This is an attempt to open up a different bit of the market and is Blackberry’s first real attempt at a full touchscreen, obviously prompted by the iPhone.
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Of the three top smartphones that we have covered so far (Apple iPhone 3G, HTC Touch HD and the Nokia E71) none come from such a prestigious background as the Bold. Although ‘Blackberry’ only became mainstream in 2002 they did so in style soon winning over the hearts and wallets of millions of businesses and has become the number one company for business phones.

So much so that ‘Blackberry’ has almost become a noun to describe a smartphone; and if you are interested in American news you will also know that President Barack Obama has ‘fought’ to keep his Blackberry amid security warnings. So let’s have a look at the first of the two Blackberry phones we will cover — the Blackberry Bold 9000. [Read more…]