Dispatches from the Reviews Editor
Charles has been in tech publishing since the late 1980s, starting with Reed's Practical Computing, then moving to Ziff-Davis to help launch the UK version of PC Magazine in 1992. ZDNet came looking for a Reviews Editor in 2000, and he's been here ever since.
I'm off on holiday tomorrow (hurrah!), and like a sad geek (sorry, technology journalist), I thought I'd take an ultraportable notebook and a 3G datacard along with me — just to keep in touch with news and current affairs, you understand.
Lenovo proudly informs us that the ThinkPad is now 15 years old, and is partying tonight in Soho to celebrate the fact. Unfortunately I can't be there, but the anniversary reminder does bring back a few memories...
Oh dear. Within a week of making off from the launch of the HTC Touch with the smartphone in my hot little hands, I've killed it.
Samsung UK's Product Marketing Manager for the Q1 Ultra UMPC, Dinesh Chand, was in yesterday to show off the device, which is about to ship in the UK.Since it was unveiled at CeBIT in March the Q1 Ultra — which like its Q1 predecessor will cost £799 — has shed its fingerprint reader.
To Cannes with HP for the 60th Film Festival, where the tech giant is a major sponsor, scattering vast Scitex-printed posters around key sites along...
Our colleague Seth Rosenblatt over at Downloads.com in the US has put together a useful guide to open-source and free software that mirrors what Adobe offers in its Creative Suite applications.
Microsoft Live Labs recently unveiled a Technology Preview of a new browser called Deepfish, which is designed to make web browsing on small-screen mobile devices a much more satisfying experience than it currently is.Unfortunately, the initial beta program was limited to a small number of users, and we didn't make it in time.
Our much-travelled Technical Editor Rupert Goodwins is currently deep in Intel briefings at IDF in Beijing, but he's managed to dodge the PowerPoint for long enough to send us this pic of a prototype Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC):What's new about this one is (a) it's running Vista, and (b) it's powered by Intel's as-yet-unannounced '2007 Mobile processor'. There are two separate models, one of which is capable of running Vista's fancy Aero graphics — for around 4.
We're moving offices over Easter, and after much cajoling from our office manager, I'm finally clearing out ZDNet UK's lab space. It's hell in there, with more entangled power leads, cat 5 cables and other random bits of tech flotsam, not to mention jetsam, than you can shake a stick at.
So, I'm talking to a helpful and informative German gentleman from navigation specialists Telmap about the company's BlackBerry-based solution, and he's giving me the low-down on the technology at the back end that pushes out the maps you need in a clever way. "Ach, I have told you too much: I'm going to have to kill you!