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- In Depth: Is it worth upgrading your old PC for gaming?
- Buying Guide: Best PC gamepad: 6 reviewed and rated
- Review: Lenovo ThinkPad B560
- Review: Asus X52F-EX894V
- Tutorial: Microsoft Excel shortcuts to save you time
- Review: Sony VAIO E Series
| In Depth: Is it worth upgrading your old PC for gaming? Posted: 31 Jul 2011 01:00 AM PDT Old PCs can be found everywhere. There are millions of them out there, languishing under beds and at the back of cupboards slowly collecting dust. The poor things, it seems such a shame. One of the big advantages of the PC is that you can upgrade easily - or so it's sold by the industry at large. Surely you can take an old machine and, by adding extra kit here and there, turn it back into something worthwhile? What should you upgrade first? Can you just throw a half-decent graphics card into an old rig and make something of it? Can cast-off PCs be made back into useful members of the gaming community? Now, enter our base system on which we'll be experimenting. From the dusty recesses of the office, we unearthed a rather neglected desktop. Inside, we had a 2.11GHz AMD Sempron chip coupled to a 512MB Sapphire HD 5550 graphics card and 1GB of RAM, all plugged into a Biostar MCP6P-M2 board and running Windows XP from a 160GB IDE drive. Even in its day it wouldn't have turned heads, but now it's almost repugnant. Basically, it's a two-year-old budget system. It's still OK if you just want to run some boring old productivity stuff, but it struggles to render recent games at… well… any settings, really. Given the pick of the office's not inconsiderable pile of hardware, we tested various upgrades to see what made a difference and what didn't. Where are the bottlenecks in the performance, and how easy are they to fix? It turned out to be a bit more difficult than we imagined… The latest 3D games naturally lean heavily on the graphics subsystem. Very heavily. So all you need to do to turn a mediocre has-been into a gaming powerhouse is add a decent card, right? Bish-bosh, job done. Our base system's Sapphire HD 5550 card is decent enough in its own way, and would be perfectly happy if you stuck to playing around on the desktop, but once you start getting all three-dimensional it begins to fall flat on its pixelated face. Our suite of games benchmarks revealed a very sluggish system by anyone's standards - and it's no fun playing games that you know can look a whole lot better. Graphics card upgrade First, we tried a Radeon HD 5850. Not quite the cutting edge of graphical goodness, but it's a capable card nevertheless.
We tracked down a 1GB Sapphire 5850 Xtreme, retailing for around £100, at which price you can't complain. It required a 6-pin power connector, which our PSU had, and it's not too big physically, either. Fitting the card was easy, drivers installed, benchmarks away and… The results were most disappointing. The 3DMark06 benchmark showed an improvement of less than 6 per cent, and the game benchmarks didn't fare much better. World in Conflict did manage a decent boost, getting on for double the frames. However, both Far Cry 2 and Lost Planet 2 merely added a frame or two, which isn't quite what you might hope for, what with your wallet being £100 lighter. Heaven's complete reliance on graphics hardware did at least show us where that money had gone, because the score we garnered from it nearly doubled. Hurrah! Being impressed by artificial benchmarks is all well and good, but what we didn't get in this instance is any decent increase in actual game speeds. Boo. Time, then, to get a bigger gun. Doubling the budget, we dropped AMD's Radeon HD 6950 in place, which is quite a hefty piece of hardware - literally and metaphorically. At 270mm long, it proved a tight squeeze, but our erstwhile case could take it thanks to the lack of drive bays at the bottom of the machine. It's something to check before you drop cash on a similar upgrade, though, as many older cases weren't designed to handle such beasts. Power up After fitting the extra firepower, we fired up the benchmarks and, once again, were completely unimpressed. This time we'd spent twice as much money, only to be more disappointed. 3DMark06 and Heaven 2.5 actually went backwards a bit and the games themselves weren't much happier. All in all, our new £200 upgrade was rubbish. To be fair to the HD 6950, it does scale much better than the 5850 did, something we saw by cranking up the resolutions. And, of course, we have a card designed for a 64-bit OS and drivers, running on a 32-bit system - which didn't help either way. What we've proved here is that a powerful, and expensive, graphics card isn't the magic bullet you might think. There's a hefty bottleneck at play here, and that bottleneck is the processor. Our 2.11GHz Sempron simply can't feed the graphics card fast enough. Heaven shows that the cards are doing their thing, but the rest of the system isn't up to it. Spending £100 on a mid-range job is hardly recommended, and spending more is bordering on lunacy. The only advantage in a proper high-power card is that you can easily move it to another system later, so it's not money completely wasted. A quick look through the motherboard specification also revealed that our base system is running PCIe version 1.1, while everybody and his pixel-pushing dog is sporting version 2.0. This is another reason for our upgrades failing to impress. It's not quite as bad as you might think, though, because the accepted wisdom is that the PCIe bus is so wide that bottlenecks elsewhere are more important. Just to prove the point, here are the numbers that matter: PCIe 1.0 and 1.1 shift 250MB/s per lane, in theory. Actually, it fluctuates a bit and (what with overheads and so forth) you really get somewhere between 150 and 190MB/s, which is a maximum of a tad over 3,000MB/s on a 16-lane card - still healthy stuff. PCIe 2.0 doubles that, exactly, by doubling the base clock. Running on the older PCIe spec will have cost a few frames per second on our benchmarks, which we can ill afford to drop at these low rates. No matter what is says in the adverts or on the back of the box, a sexy graphics card on its own can't perform miracles. Time to change tactics.
All these benchmarks are running under DX9, because we're still chugging along under Windows XP. Since we've changed only the graphics card, we've just quoted benchmarks that will show an improvement. What we've proved is that just throwing money at the graphics card isn't the answer. The HD 6950 even manages to go backwards (which we put down to the 32-bit drivers). You've been warned: putting a decent graphics card in something too old is a profitless exercise.
Throwing decent graphics cards at our test case has proved itself to be a bit of a failure, so it's time to look again at what else we can improve. One easy, and hopefully obvious, solution is to throw some more memory at the rig. There are two DIMM slots on the motherboard, but only one of the slots is populated, giving us 1GB system memory; paltry stuff. An extra 1GB stick will set us back only about £12, too. It may not make a huge difference to benchmarks - in fact, we're a little surprised it made any. Where the extra RAM does show is during more general use, fiddling around on the desktop, loading files and whatnot. Windows is a greedy fellow and giving it twice as much space to roam means less swap file action and fewer annoying pauses. For the price of a pint and some fish and chips, you can't complain. Next, we come to the processor. This is what was holding back the graphics card, so we decided to upgrade to the fastest chip the board could handle. It proved a frustrating business. As we dipped into the secret drawer of processors and tried fitting a few, we found that the best the motherboard would take was an ancient Athlon 64 3800+. An improvement over the Sempron, sure, but hardly a huge leap forward. It has only one core, for a start. Still, the Athlon is lovely and cheap, and if you can find one new on sale, it'll set you back only about £19 (we checked online and www.novatech.co.uk had some available). The benchmarks showed that we did indeed have more mathematical power. Cinebench and X264, both straight tests of number-mangling prowess, proved it. Though not that much more, it must be said. World in Conflict was particularly pleased with the new processor, as we anticipated from the more processor-orientated game. Far Cry 2 and Lost Planet 2, meanwhile, were much less impressed, and the Heaven benchmark didn't budge, which shows how good it is at singling out the graphics card for testing. For under 20 quid, you can't really gripe - our machine is better. We've hardly created a gaming powerhouse, though, just a machine that's slightly less rubbish than the one we started out with. The next step in the process is clear: we return to our graphics cards and see if the extra oomph helps get the balance back. We fitted our £100 HD 5850 with the new processor and, well, we got pretty much what we expected. A moderate improvement, but hardly worth the money. Our new graphics card still didn't have a match in the processor. The Heaven 2.5 benchmark showed that we had all that graphics power on board, but it wasn't translating into good gaming. Although we were closer to our goal, at a total cost of £131 it didn't look like good value at all. Getting the balance right between graphics and processor is key to upgrading old rigs. However, before we start to get serious and upgrade the motherboard, which desperately needs doing, we take a different tack again.
Adding an extra GB of memory does little to our tests, but Windows did enjoy it. Changing over to an Athlon 64 3800+ processor helped for CPU-intensive operations, and showed that graphics and processor work in tandem. However, we still needed to upgrade the graphics card to see decent improvements. The HD 5850 now squeezed out a few more frames per second with its new partner than it managed on its own, but it was still being held back.
Our faithful old machine was running Windows XP, which is now positively archaic. Is running a 32-bit system holding us back? You may well be upgrading older machines with Windows 7 anyway, but what will it do for your game power? While we were at it, we decided to upgrade the storage as well. The 160GB IDE drive was a little small and we had nice SATA connectors on the motherboard doing nothing. What could an SSD do? Blazing speed, obviously - or so we thought. Although the BIOS appeared happy, Windows was not. It simply wouldn't boot from an SSD. After initially suspecting the drives, we realised that it was the motherboard again and its lack of AHCI support. There was nothing we could do about that, so it was back to regular HDDs. We added a SATA-based 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda, and put a fresh copy of Windows 7 on it. Lastly, we threw two 2GB memory sticks on the board. Well, why not? Upgrading Windows cost about £75, the hard drive was £65 and the memory another £30 or so, bringing the cost of this exercise to £170, a not inconsiderable sum. And possibly more than the base rig was worth even new… Direct results Upgrading Windows for gaming purposes has its ups and downs. Yes, you get DX10 and DX11, which means you have all the latest shiny effects and 64-bit code. Plus you get access to a lot more system RAM. If you've got 64-bit versions of software, then you can now run them - witness Cinebench, and the little bit of extra speed it finds. It's just as well, because the 32-bit version we used on XP actually runs slower on Windows 7. We could now run our tests under DX10 and DX11. Unfortunately, if the quest is all about speed then this is no good thing. It's far more demanding and the scores subsequently went down. However, it turned out that switching back to the DX9 versions of the benchmarks didn't help, either. Sometimes you just can't win. We had one last test to consider - to see what moving to a factory-fresh SATA drive and 64-bit drivers had done for our hard drive: wonders, as it transpired. We doubled the average read and write data rate, according to ATTO (though this doesn't show in the games benchmarks, of course). Did this mean Windows would boot faster? No. In fact, it was about 15 seconds slower - now a full minute. Sometimes you could just slap Windows… Our upgraded machine at least looked modern, and it gained access to all the latest software. In general use, the hard drive and extra memory helped to make it more responsive, but we've still not really addressed the main problem of poor gaming performance. Windows isn't a bottleneck here, then. No matter how attached you are to XP, or to DX9's slight speed edge, you can't hold back the march of time. You've got to upgrade Windows eventually, and while it'll give little improvements here and there, it'll do nothing for gaming other than frustrate you when you try to run DX10 and DX11 stuff. Looking for the performance upgrade, then, we don't think it's money well spent here, either.
Upgrading Windows isn't cheap, which might explain why Microsoft has so much money. Our upgrade from XP means that 64-bit software and DX10 and DX11 are ours. What it doesn't do is make our system any faster, although the desktop looks nice and modern. As ever, Windows gets more demanding. This is no performance upgrade, and if anything it only highlights the inadequacies of our box. It isn't always very good at running 32-bit software, so you might find that things actually go backwards. Still, our hard drive upgrade is a nice one; £65 brings an almost 10-fold increase in storage, as well as a doubling of the data rate.
Now then, time to get serious. All we've learned from our mucking about upgrading this and that is that what we really need is to fit a decent processor - and our motherboard is too old for that. So it's time to change the board. Since this is a biggish job, there's no sense in aiming too low. We went straight for a six-core Phenom II 1090T. At about £150 a pop, they're not cheap, but we'd finally have oodles of six-core power. Our new board was an Asus M4A89GTD Pro, about £90 worth and capable of interesting overclocking experiments. On top of this, we'd need new memory: a pair of 2GB DDR3 sticks added £32-ish. All this brings the bill to about £250 - about half the cost of a modest new PC. Remember, we're still running everything under XP with a pedestrian 512MB graphics card. Heaven 2.5 once more refuses to budge. It doesn't matter how much processing power you throw onto the board, it's all about the graphics card here. 3DMark06, which is much more skewed to CPU power, at last gets a decent hit, nearly doubling. The two CPU benchmarks, as you might have guessed, go ballistic. It all goes to show just how fast processor development is; a decent modern chip will absolutely slaughter the old guard. The machine also feels completely different at the desktop, nice and responsive. Right, we've spent £250 and started to get interesting scores, but now our system is unbalanced again. Where once it needed processing power to match the card, now it desperately needs graphical power. So it's back to our HD 5850 and 6950 cards and more furious benchmarking to see whether we can at last get some decent chuffin' results. Which we can. The HD 5850 finally has a chance to run and we have, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, decent playable speeds. The 3DMark06 benchmark nearly doubles again and Heaven more than doubles. The game benchmarks start responding, too. At last, our upgrade candidate is a games machine, which is just as well as we've now spent £350 and it's still running an obsolete OS on an IDE hard drive. Smart money Spending another ton to move to an HD 6950 doesn't repeat the trick, though. Since we're sticking to our original resolutions of 1,280x1,024, it doesn't have a chance to flex its GPU muscles. At these more sedate dimensions, and with no 64-bit drivers, it's not much better than its older cousin. Again, spending the extra here would be something of a waste, which did surprise us a little - we expected more for our money now it was on a decent board. The law of diminishing returns is in full effect in the world of graphics cards, and those last few frames get costly. We were really tempted to combine the Windows and drive upgrades with the processor and motherboard and graphics card upgrades to see what the result would be. At least, we were until we started adding up the figures and realised that way madness lay. At this point, all that would have been left of our original box would be the case, power supply and optical drive, and our upgrade would have set us back about £500. This isn't really an upgrade, it's building a whole new rig. Time to calm down and think again. Upgrading is one of the PC's great advantages, but it's a fast-moving field and machines are quickly left behind. To be realistic, after more than a couple of modest upgrades of an ageing computer, it's time to stop and think carefully about what you want the machine to do. It's possible to waste quite a lot of money on something that's never really going to perform well enough to justify the subsequent lightness of your wallet.
This is the big upgrade. It's also the most expensive, but it doesn't half make a difference. Suddenly, our tired old rig has a spring in its step. Although it needs a new graphics card to carry the extra power right through to the game frame rates, we're at last in decent, playable territory. We jolly well should be, as it's cost £350 to change the board, chip and memory, and add an HD 5850. Notice that stretching another £100 to the 6950 again proves to be a waste, at these resolutions anyway (1,280x1,024).
Conclusion So we've answered our original question. Yes, you can turn an old dog into a gaming machine - of course you can. You just can't do it without spending rather a lot of money and replacing nearly everything, making your old PC a bit of a Trigger's Broom (or Ship of Theseus, if you're more classically minded). Once upon a time, you could beat the system by building rigs out of bits and it would be cheaper. Even if you had only a couple of major components, it was worth buying the rest separately. Those days are long gone. Today, margins are tight, competition fierce and progress rapid. You'll rarely put together a decent system out of separates and save money. The same goes for any major upgrading. The balance between processor and graphics card is all-important: too much either way is wasted effort. And watch those resolutions, too. If you don't run a big monitor then many high-power cards aren't as attractive as they think they are. For instance, witness our 5850 and 6950 scores with the Phenom 1090T at 1,280x1,024 - is that really worth £100 to you? The PC is made of parts, but works as a whole, and you need to upgrade it with this in mind. The cost of fitting fast, modern kit is dissipated unless all of the sub-systems can cope. This effectively means that any serious upgrade means a new board, chip, graphics and RAM. And at this point you need to consider costs carefully. Looking again at our original test system, all we can really recommend is adding another GB of RAM and hunting down an Athlon 64 chip. This would cost a reasonable £31 and gives a little boost all round - nothing spectacular, but the desktop feels much more lively and you get a few frames a second more here and there. Maybe scouring other piles of old hardware or eBay for a better graphics card would be worth it, but getting serious about upgrading it proved to be an expensive and frustrating experiment. Drive time The only upgrade that really worked was the hard drive. Switching to a modern SATA drive had an immediate effect and, although not speeding up games as such, made everything feel more lively. You can never have too much storage, either, and drives are easy to transfer between systems. You can get a lovely, all-shiny, all-new, all-sorted-out proper games rig for £750 (take a look at Chillblast's Fusion Rocket). You'll get a nice new version of Windows, too, plus big, fast drives, a new keyboard that isn't full of crumbs, and a new mouse and all the rest. It pains us to say it, but it's worth saving up and getting a new box if you're more than a couple of years behind the curve. It's tempting to think that you can upgrade some faithful old PC you found hidden away somewhere into a games box, but once you've passed a certain point it's time to take the old fellow out for a long walk, with a spade in one hand and a shotgun in the other. 
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| Buying Guide: Best PC gamepad: 6 reviewed and rated Posted: 30 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT For most PC gamers, the mouse and keyboard combination is the ultimate way to control our games. The mouse offers lightning-fast responses that are essential for positioning the camera or lining up the scopes for a headshot. On the other hand - literally - is the keyboard. Its plethora of keys has been etched into our muscle memory through years of web browsing and typing, giving us options and control that most gamepads can only dream of. However, it's not as clear-cut as it first seems. While the mouse and keyboard is undoubtedly the best control method for certain genres - such as first-person shooters and real-time strategy games - for other titles this means of control can feel awkward or unwieldy. Third-person hack 'n' slash games and racing sims in particular suffer from this. There's also the issue of console games catching up with PC titles in some respects. While this might seem like heresy to some PC gaming purists (the current generation of consoles struggles to compete with even mid-range PCs, after all), console games have become more complicated and in-depth than their 8-bit ancestors. As they've evolved, so too have the gamepads we play them on. Modern gamepads have adapted to become flexible and give us better control over our more complicated games. Some are able to overcome obstacles such as having a limited number of buttons with macro functionality, while others offer features that the mouse and keyboard combination can't, such as force feedback. In this roundup, we've gathered six gamepads that cover a range of prices and designs. Some are models from the current generation of consoles adapted to work with the PC, others are based on the console's own gamepads and some are entirely new designs. Having a gamepad connected to your PC doesn't mean that you're dumbing down your gaming experience - in some respects you're actually broadening it. But which gamepads offer you a viable alternative to the trusty mouse and keyboard, make gaming more fun and are worthy of your money? This is exactly where this round-up comes in. Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows - £28
The Xbox 360 Wireless Controller is small enough to hold comfortably in your hands, with easy access to all the buttons. Unlike the PlayStation 3's DualShock controller, and gamepads that have been influenced by that design, the dual analogue sticks on the Xbox 360 pad aren't aligned horizontally. Instead, they're placed in a far more natural position that makes long gaming sessions more bearable. The build design in general is great, and it feels incredibly comfortable to hold. Unfortunately, the D-pad is bulky and unresponsive - a real let-down when you consider the other areas in which this gamepad excels. As you should expect from a product created by Microsoft, there are no compatibility problems when using this controller with a Windows PC. Plugging in the wireless dongle lets you control your games without having to be sat right next to your computer, and the gamepad is identified and installed in seconds. The controller does need two AA batteries that will need to be replaced often - and that can be annoying. Verdict: 87% Sony DualShock 3 PS3 Ccontroller - £28
Unlike the other gamepads we've tested here, the Sony DualShock 3 PS3 controller doesn't officially support PC compatibility. So why is it included? Well, there are a number of unofficial drivers you can download that enable your PC to interact with the controller. Typing 'DualShock 3 for PC' into Google brings back plenty of options. Most offer force feedback and even wireless capability via a Bluetooth dongle. If you don't have one, you can connect it via the supplied mini USB lead. BtSix 1.4 is an excellent choice that allows you to use all the features of the DualShock - including the tilt motion control. This controller has a built-in rechargeable battery that charges up when plugged in via USB. Installation is tricky, but the controller is sturdy and full of features. It's well built and, if you're familiar with the PlayStation's iconic controller layout, adapting it to PC games takes no time at all. The 10-year-old design is not the most comfortable of shapes, however. If you have a PS3 then this is a free and convenient solution. Verdict: 81% Genius Wireless Grandias 12V - £20
There are good and bad points about the Genius Wireless Grandias 12V. Unlike most of the other gamepads of its price range, this one is wireless and it also has a vibration function. On the downside, it feels like it's made out of cheap materials. The buttons are plasticky, and they can sometimes fail to register unless you push them hard. There were instances when they behaved erratically, performing actions when pressed that they weren't supposed to. The dual analogue sticks also feel slightly uncomfortable to use after a while, as they're relatively small and don't offer the thumb support of larger sticks. The macro function lets you bind a number of complex moves to a single button press. While some might consider this cheating, it can help make gaming with this pad a lot more intuitive and easy. For 2D platforming games, this is a perfectly accessible, cheap control method, with the added bonus of wireless support. However, for serious multiplayer gaming the unreliable buttons make this controller a defi nite no-no. Verdict: 61% Thrustmaster 3-In-1 Dual Trigger Game Pad - £20
The Thrustmaster 3 in 1 Dual Trigger Game Pad isn't attractive. It's thick, bulky and sits rather uncomfortably in your hands. This is mainly due to the additional third shoulder trigger buttons. After a while, the gamepad starts to gel, and the buttons are responsive, as are the analogue thumb sticks. Looking about with them may not have the immediacy of the mouse, but it compares favourably with other, more expensive, gamepads. You'll need to configure the buttons yourself, which is an annoying distraction after the Xbox 360 controller's plug-and-play simplicity. The buttons are springy and responsive, and most feel comfortable to use, but the shoulder buttons are a bit too thin for comfort. Along with the standard USB connection, there's a PlayStation 2 connector, which gives a little extra value. This is a budget gamepad that does the job, but it takes time to configure, and the supplied software and Thrustmaster website aren't much help. It's not a terrible gamepad at all, but there are better models out there. Verdict: 71% Trust GXT 28 - £18
The Trust GXT 28 is closely modelled on Sony's DualShock 3 gamepad, though unlike the Razer Onza Tournament Edition adaptation of Microsoft's design, the GXT 28 does nothing to improve an established gamepad style. The GXT 28 is lightweight and feels hollow, but the buttons do feel nice and responsive, and give a satisfying click with every push. Each thumb stick also feels good to use, with the right amount of resistance. This might not be the flashiest gamepad out there, but at least it does the job competently. The design is comfortable, and will feel familiar to anyone who uses Sony's official gamepads. There's a turbo mode, but it's only really of use if you're terrified of developing RSI from fast button pushing. For most gamers though, this novelty feature won't be used often. You can plug the GXT 28 straight into a PS3 too, which adds value. Trust has been making game peripherals for a long time, and it's come up with a cheap yet reliable alternative to the offi cial PS3 controller. Verdict: 69% Razer Onza Tournament Edition - £48
You might be forgiven for thinking at first glance that this is an official Xbox 360 controller. The shape and design are almost identical and the build quality is top-notch. There are a few subtle differences, though. The D-pad is much improved and actually usable - something Microsoft's official controller can't boast. Another great addition is the glowing face buttons, which help to make gaming in the dark a lot easier. This gamepad also comes with two buttons carefully placed at the back of the pad that can be used to recalibrate the gamepad on-the-fly. You can also twist the analogue thumb sticks to tweak their sensitivity without pausing your game. The gamepad itself feels incredibly comfortable, using the same ergonomic design as the official Xbox 360 pad. It's quite a bit lighter as well - due to the lack of wireless functionality and the need for batteries. While it would have been nice to have it wireless, the long cord goes a long way to compensating for this. Overall, this is a great gamepad that improves on an already excellent design. Verdict: 92% 
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:30 AM PDT While Lenovo's ThinkPad range usually appeals to business users, its cut-price ThinkPad B560 is a well-built machine that should suit anyone after a cheap portable. It'll suit regular travellers and commuters too, despite a less-than-impressive battery life. At a glance, it's obvious that this is a ThinkPad. Lenovo's trademark plain-black design is used throughout, from the solid lid to the interior. The body is textured and does a great job repelling dust and fingerprints, even if it's not very exciting. The chassis is just 34mm at its thickest point, making it perfect for slipping into a bag. It's also light enough to carry around with ease, so anyone who needs a portable for working or staying in touch on the go will be well served. However, the battery only lasted 134 minutes when we watched a film, a poor effort that was beaten by many other laptops around this price. You'll get longer life when doing simpler tasks, such as browsing the web. However, still pack your charger on trips. One feature we were surprised to see is the fingerprint scanner, a security feature usually found on more expensive business machines. The 802.11n Wi-Fi support allows fast wireless web browsing. Ample storage There's also an eSATA port for connecting external hard drives for speedy data transfer. You already get 320GB of built-in storage, enough space for thousands of photos and songs and only the Samsung RV510-A08UK has more. However, connecting an external drive is useful if you want to back up your important files. We enjoy using Lenovo's firm and comfortable keyboards, which are perfectly sized with bevelled keys. Our only complaint is that the Function and Ctrl keys have been swapped around, and we were constantly hitting the wrong one. This is only an issue if you use Windows shortcuts, however. A back-up shortcut key above the keyboard allows you to copy your important files instantly. If you enjoy browsing your photos or kicking back occasionally with a film, you'll love the Lenovo's vibrant 15.6-inch display. It's not as sharp as the HP's compact screen, but the glossy coating brings images to life. The built-in speakers do their job, but don't have much power even on top volume, so you'll want to use a pair of headphones or a separate pair of external speakers when listening to music or enjoying a movie. Multimedia power is limited as the Lenovo uses basic integrated graphics. Gaming is impossible with all but the oldest titles, but you can still play around with your photos and even high-definition (HD) video streamed impressively well. We were impressed by the resilience of the Intel Pentium processor, which performed well in our benchmark tests. You can listen to music while working on your office applications or browsing the web and you'll experience no slowdown, while software loads quickly. Only the Acer Aspire 5742 and Asus X52F-EX894V offer better performance for this kind of money. Tech Labs
Battery Eater '05: 136 minutes For this price, the ThinkPad B560 is a steal. Impressive power and satisfying usability, as well as the solid and portable body, make this a great laptop for use at home and on the road. 
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT The Asus X52F-EX894V is powered by an Intel Core i3 processor, which provides strong performance for those on a tight budget. It's not just performance that impresses though, with plenty of other surprising highlights and few flaws. Despite using the same processor range as the Acer, the Asus has only half the available memory, with 2GB installed instead of 4GB. This laptop therefore produced weaker results in our benchmark tests. However, you still get incredible performance given the cut-down price. And retailer saveonlaptops.co.uk is offering a free upgrade to 4GB at the time of writing. You can edit your photos and have a quick play around with your home movies, but you won't be able to play the latest games, as the integrated graphics can't cope. Still, film fans will be pleased as you can watch DVDs via the built-in drive or stream your favourite movies or TV shows over the internet in high definition (HD) from sites such as BBC iPlayer. The Asus coped admirably and catching up with last night's telly was a smooth experience. Tech Labs
Battery Eater '05: 111 minutes This is also a great way to enjoy your media, thanks to the excellent screen. The 15.6-inch display isn't as sharp as the compact screens of the HP Pavilion DM1-3100sa and MSI U270, but but it's bright and pleasingly vibrant. The 320GB hard drive gives you enough storage for thousands of photos and full-length music albums, like the other laptops here. You also have a 4-in-1 memory card reader, which can be used to back up your data or expand the available storage. Three USB ports are available for connecting peripherals. Home entertainment If you need a home entertainment machine, this is definitely a good choice. However, if you need something to take on the road, you should look elsewhere. The 2.7kg chassis is fairly heavy, while the battery died after less than two hours of use. The HP and MSI are much more portable and suitable for regular travellers. Still, as a desktop replacement machine, this is a sturdy and attractive option. The lid is reassuringly solid to protect the screen, while the plastic frame is tough enough to withstand some serious punishment. An understated dark grey design might lack the colour of the Acer, but it's smart and immune to fingerprints. The isolation-style keyboard is similarly well built with firmly mounted keys. 'Isolation-style' means the keys protrude through individual holes cut in the laptop's chassis, which separates them out – making it perfect for touch typing. There are also no open gaps in the board that could let crumbs and other debris into the laptop's interior. We were also impressed by the Altec Lansing speakers which, while lacking power at top volume, produced a crisp and clear sound. You'll still want a decent pair of USB speakers if you want to enjoy a movie with friends, however, unless your heads are about a foot from the screen. Alternatively, you can use VGA and HDMI connections to hook up a television. We were highly impressed by the X52F-EX894V, which offers a great deal at a surprisingly low cost. Top performance and a colourful screen mean you can fully enjoy HD films, while the excellent keyboard makes it as good for work as it is for play. Only portability lets it down. 
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| Tutorial: Microsoft Excel shortcuts to save you time Posted: 30 Jul 2011 03:00 AM PDT Start speeding up the way you use Office Excel by setting it up to reflect your personal needs. Open Options from the Tools menu, File ribbon or Office button, then work your way through the options on offer. Set up how many worksheets you prefer new workbooks to contain from the General section, and choose a default format and location new files are saved to from the Save section. When entering data, make use of the Fill Handle to dramatically speed up data entry - just type in a figure, then click and drag the fill handle down or to the right to duplicate the number or formula in each of the selected cells. The Fill Handle can also speed up entering a row or column of consecutive dates, including days, months or years. Type the first entry as normal, then click and drag using the right mouse button - if you've typed Monday, for example, you can fill out weekdays or all seven days of the week as you drag by selecting the appropriate option. The Fill Handle isn't much use for entering the same figure in non-adjacent cells, but there's a workaround. Select the cells you wish to include by Ctrl-clicking each, then type the cell reference, number or absolute formula before pressing Ctrl and Return. Navigating a large spreadsheet can be a real hassle, so instead of manually scrolling to the cell in question, simply type it into the Name box and press Return to jump straight to it. If you frequently use a specific figure, such as VAT, in your workbook calculations, save time by defining it as a constant - switch to the Formulas ribbon and choose Define Name. Type the term (VAT in our example) into the Name box and its amount (20) into the Refers to box before clicking on OK. Now just type VAT instead of 20 into your formulas, and when the VAT rate next changes, you can update the entire workbook to the new rate simply by changing the figure for VAT in the Name Manager. The quickest way to enter an unknown formula is to click the fx button and then follow the wizard to choose the appropriate one for your needs. Office Excel 2007 and 2010 users will also find a host of formulas conveniently organised into categories on the Formulas tab. When copying and pasting formulas from one cell to another, they're treated as relative, which means the cell references are based on where the cells are in relation to the cell containing the formula. Quickly create absolute formula references using the $ character, so cell A1 becomes $A$1, for example. Last, but not least, if you need to style your spreadsheet in Office Excel 2007 or 2010, make use of the Cell Styles function instead of manually highlighting or colouring cells. Select an already formatted cell, then click the Cell Styles button on the Home tab and choose New Style. Name it up and click OK - in future, click Cell Styles again to format your cells from the Custom section. Quick-fire charts The quickest and easiest way to create a chart in Office Excel isn't Chart Wizard - just select the cells you wish to include in your chart and then press F11. The Chart Wizard is bypassed and a chart instantly appears on the screen. Once that's done, just right-click on the various elements to customise the chart. Excel shortcuts Alt and Return: Start a new line in the current cell instead of moving to the next one. F11: Generate a chart from the currently selected data. Shift/Ctrl and Space: Select the current row/column. Alt and =: Total the selected cells. Ctrl and Shift and $: Format selected cells as currency with two decimal places. Ctrl and ;: Insert current date. Ctrl and Shift and ': Paste value from the cell above. Shift and F11: Insert a new worksheet. Ctrl and PageDown/PageUp: Move between worksheets. Ctrl and D/R: Fill cell with the contents of the cell either above (D) or to the left (R). 
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| Posted: 30 Jul 2011 02:30 AM PDT Sony has a different VAIO range for each type of user, but has always valued solid multimedia performance and good looks for all its laptops. Curiously, though, the Sony VAIO VPCEEL1E1E (E Series) didn't produce the usual spark of excitement for us. By shunning an Intel processor and instead opting for an AMD E-350 Vision CPU, Sony has kept the cost down. And while there's no dedicated graphics card, AMD's Vision brand of CPUs includes the integrated graphics chips in the form of the Radeon series. The VAIO has an integrated Radeon HD 6310 that will handle some pretty demanding programs. We got a respectable score of 5651 from our 3D benchmark program, and were impressed when we loaded up some high definition (HD) video. Tech Labs
Battery Eater '05: 177 minutes The screen is well suited to watching movies or light gaming, thanks to the Super-TFT coating that gives it that distinctive reflective sheen. The native 1366 x 768 pixel resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio are standard nowadays for comfortable movie watching without the letterbox black boxes at the top and bottom of the screen. We also found we could get good viewing angles from the screen. Good usability When it comes work, you'll find the usability is pretty decent. The touchpad has a textured coating which makes it comfortable to use and stops you slipping or brushing it accidentally. It is responsive and both the left and right-click buttons are chunky and feel solid. The same can be said of the full-sized keyboard, which is designed with Sony's favoured isolation-style keys and gives you plenty of space, so you won't end up hitting the wrong button when typing at speed. There's a dedicated numeric keypad added in, as well as Sony's now standard VAIO, ASSIST and WEB hotkeys. The chassis is sturdy, apart from the lid, which flexed quite badly when we pressed on it. The black embossed design unfortunately does little to stand out from the crowd. Connectivity is standard fare, with four USB 2.0 ports, VGA and HDMI sockets for connecting to an external monitor, and an Ethernet cable for hardwired internet access – something you might not need, because the VAIO is equipped with 802.11n wireless capability. Admittedly, we are so used to seeing Sony turn out brilliant high-end laptops, that when it produces a simple mid-level machine (at a reasonable price) we are left feeling somewhat underwhelmed. There are a number of positives to take away from the laptop, however, particularly if you plan to watch a lot of HD video from services such as the BBC iPlayer, or if you want to use your machine for working at home. The keyboard is up to Sony's usual high standard and will benefit students or writers. All in all, this is a good, if unremarkable, mid-level laptop from Sony, especially if you value the VAIO brand. 
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