Nuggets: Twin marvels from Fuji

Nuggets is a daily update on the latest software and hardware releases provided by our very own gadget man, Mr Justin Pearse. At the end of the month we will provide a roundup of our favourites which you could win in our monthly Nuggets competition.

Heard a rumour about a plan for a new gadget or software? Seen a device on your travels you'd like to know more about? Tell 'Nuggets' and we'll get you the facts.

Fuji has (non-identical) twins

Fujifilm has announced it will launch its MX-600 Zoom digital camera in March. The MX-700 camera (yes this is the predecessor to the 600), which received some favourable reviews on ZDNet has grown a whopping 3x zoom lens and now uses a 1.5m pixel CCD (that's a charge-coupled device) to give a 1280x1024-resolution image to exclude pixels on the edge of the image thus giving a clearer picture.

As an incentive to get you to part with £549.99 of your hard earned money, Fuji is including 12MB of SmartMedia storage as a launch offer, enough to capture 68 images. It comes with all the usual accessories, such as video cable and TWAIN drivers for downloads.

At the lower end of the market is Fujifilm's XGA digital camera, due to be launched next month. This is designed for first time users. You get 850,000 pixels with resolutions of 1024x768 and 640x480, ideal for creating Web pages.

However, Fuji is being a tad tight with memory, you only get a measly 2MB SmartMedia card and it runs on AA batteries, as opposed to the Lithium Ion battery of its smarter cousin. Buy this for your younger brother and get the MX-600 for yourself.

TIP:

A little bird told 'Nuggets' this morning that Fuji is also about to launch a Mega Pixel camera sometime next month. There are no facts available yet, as soon as there are we'll let you know.