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Techradar |
- Sony announces new budget PSP model
- Sony slashes PlayStation 3 price
- Mac OS X Lion USB drive now on sale
- Nokia: Googorola deal makes us right to choose WP7
- Facebook presents 'smoking gun' in ownership claim case
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction lifted across Europe
- UK's £350m rural broadband boost detailed
- Review: Patriot Wildfire 120GB
- Buying Guide: 6 best portable hard drives for Mac
- MS Reader ebook app canned by Microsoft
- HP Pre 3 UK release date: tomorrow?
- Review: A-Data S511 240GB
- Samsung snaps up CyanogenMod founder
- Review: EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win
- Updated: iPad 3 rumours: what you need to know
- Review: AMD A6-3650
- Gears of War 3 gets a 3D makeover
- Review: Sony Alpha 35
- Motorola launches faster Defy+
- In Depth: Who's making money from your smartphone?
- Windows 8 blog opens with 'humility' over Vista
- Review: Mr Site Storefront Pro Seller
- Video: PlayStation 4 - what we'd like to see
- Review: Namesco Ecommerce
- Review: Virtual Mechanics SiteSpinner Pro
| Sony announces new budget PSP model Posted: 16 Aug 2011 01:36 PM PDT Sony has announced that a new, low-cost PlayStation Portable model will launch in Europe later this year. The new PSP E-1000 will not have Wi-Fi, but will only cost €99 - which equates to about £86, although Sony is yet to confirm a UK price. The announcement was made during Sony's Gamescon 2011 keynote, which also saw the company reveal a significant PS3 price cut. The device, which will have the same matte finish as the PlayStation 3 console, will still enable users to download games through the use of the Media Go PC mounting service. Cheap UMDsSony is also offering a host of UMD games for the device at a heavily discounted, App Store-matching price of €9.99. Those titles will include FIFA 12, Invizimals: The Lost Tribe, EyePet Adventures, plus many more, according to the official PlayStation Europe blog. While the Japanese giant's focus will undoubtedly be on the forthcoming PlayStation Vita (previously known as the Next Generation Portable) release, the E-1000 is seemingly an effort to reclaim some of the low-cost handheld gaming market from Apple. The console is set to arrive this autumn, although a release date is yet to be confirmed. Link: PlayStation Blog, Joystik 
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| Sony slashes PlayStation 3 price Posted: 16 Aug 2011 01:09 PM PDT Sony has announced a significant global price cut for the PlayStation 3 console. At the Gamescon 2011 keynote SCEE President Andrew House confirmed that the 160GB model will now cost €249 in the EU and $249 in the United States. Although there was no mention of a price cut in good old sterling, Amazon and Dixons responded by dropping the price of both the 160GB and the 320GB models as Sony's conference began. Amazon now asking just £192 for the 160GB model (down from an RRP of £249), which is the first time the console has crept under the £200 mark in the UK. (UPDATE: Sony has confirmed to CVG that the new UK RRP for the 160GB model is £199) 320GB trimmed tooThe 320GB model has also been trimmed and will cost just £215.20 (down from an RRP of £285) Sony added that the price cuts, which are also effective in Japan will apply immediately. So, if you've been biding your time to splash out on a PlayStation 3 then that time has arrived. Link: CVG 
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| Mac OS X Lion USB drive now on sale Posted: 16 Aug 2011 12:38 PM PDT Apple has made Mac OS X Lion available for sale on a USB drive, almost a month after it arrived to download from the Mac App Store. For those users insisting on owning a physical copy of the new operating system, it'll cost over twice as much as the digital download. While the Mac App Store version cost a recession-friendly £20.99, the USB drive is £55 - making it probably the most expensive flash drive ever. You can pick it up from both the online store and retail outlets. The end of physical mediaClearly Apple, is hoping to make physical software disks a thing of the past and wants you to follow suit by putting faith in the Mac App Store ecosystem. However, Lion is a pretty hefty download at 3.49 GB and not everyone has a broadband connection fast enough to achieve this in a reasonable time. From that perspective it appears that those users are being punished by having to stump up twice as much as the turbo-charged broadband users in order to get their hands on the new OS. Mac OS X Lion arrived in July boasting over 250 new features including, Versions, full-screen apps, Mission Control, Resume, Air-Drop and Auto-Save. Link: LA Times 
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| Nokia: Googorola deal makes us right to choose WP7 Posted: 16 Aug 2011 11:34 AM PDT Smartphone giant Nokia says Google's agreement to buy Motorola validates its own decision to choose the Windows Phone 7 operating system over Android. The Finnish company was roundly criticised earlier this year for refusing to embrace the massively successful Android ecosystem and choosing instead to take a chance on Microsoft's fledgling OS. However, following yesterday's blockbuster announcement that Google intends to buy manufacturer Motorola, Nokia reckons the other Android partners may struggle for prominence. Reinforces beliefIn a statement the company reiterated its commitment to WP7. "This further reinforces our belief that opportunities for the growth of Nokia's smartphone business will be greatest with Windows Phone," the statement read. "This could prove to be a massive catalyst for the Windows Phone ecosystem. "Additionally, with our respective intellectual property portfolios, Nokia and Microsoft are working together to build and nurture an innovative ecosystem that benefits consumers, operators, developers and other device manufacturers." Closing ranksThe suggestion from Nokia is that the likes of HTC, Samsung, LG and those heavily invested in the Android ecosystem may struggle if Google closes ranks around Moto hardware. Google has promised to keep Android open source, but Nokia isn't buying that. The mention of Nokia's "intellectual property portfolios" is also interesting. It seems that the major software providers are intent on getting tooled up for the forthcoming patent war. This could get ugly. Link: WMPowerUser 
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| Facebook presents 'smoking gun' in ownership claim case Posted: 16 Aug 2011 10:20 AM PDT Facebook has presented evidence that it describes as a "smoking gun" in the ownership case filed by Paul Ceglia. Lawyers for the social network have filed a document saying that a contract submitted by Ceglia as evidence in his ownership claim was actually a doctored version of another contract. Having claimed that he bought an 84 per cent stake in Facebook before it became the multi-million dollar business it is today, Ceglia produced the agreement in question which was signed by both him and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The contract appeared to show Zuckerberg agreeing to build a website called "The Face Book" or "The Page Book". PageBookHowever, Facebook says that forensic testing has revealed that this contract actually relates to a website called StreetFax and makes no mention of Facebook at all. "The court-ordered forensic testing has uncovered the authentic contract between Mark Zuckerberg and StreetFax that Ceglia attempted to conceal," the Facebook filing said. "This smoking-gun evidence confirms what Defendants have said all along: the purported contract attached to the complaint is an outright fabrication. "The authentic contract - which mentions only StreetFax and has nothing to do with Facebook - was found embedded in the electronic data from 2004 on Ceglia's computer." In July of this year, Ceglia's lawyers - they of the "we did weeks of due diligence to validate his evidence" claims - became the fourth firm to ditch him and his foundering court case. Facebook is now looking to the court for a dismissal of the case based on "the now-overwhelming evidence of Ceglia's fraud, spoliation and subterfuge." 
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| Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction lifted across Europe Posted: 16 Aug 2011 08:50 AM PDT The injunction preventing sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been suspended across Europe except for in Germany where the slate is still prohibited from sale. Unfortunately for German tablet fans, the injunction against Samsung's German arm still stands, and the company's head office is also forbidden from selling the Tab 10.1 in the land of the lederhosen. However, lifting the injunction against Samsung's South Korean head office means that the rest of the EU should be able to buy the slate once again. Return of the TabThe injunction hasn't been fully lifted though; this is merely a temporary suspension pending the outcome of the patent dispute case that Apple brought against Samsung in Germany. However, it does indicate that there's a good chance that the preliminary injunction will be completely reversed at a hearing next week. There's no indication yet if the allegedly inaccurate images of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 that were submitted as evidence by Apple had any bearing on the suspension of the injunction. 
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| UK's £350m rural broadband boost detailed Posted: 16 Aug 2011 07:57 AM PDT The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has announced how a £363 million cash injection will upgrade the broadband infrastructure in England and Scotland, following investments already made in Northern Ireland and Wales. The government has plans to provide everyone in the UK with broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps in the short term, with superfast broadband to be rolled out to the entire country by 2015. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said, "Some areas of the UK are missing out, with many rural and hard-to-reach communities suffering painfully slow internet connections or no coverage at all. We are not prepared to let some parts of our country get left behind in the digital age." Out in the sticksStrongly rural counties are getting the biggest investment, with Somerset and Devon nabbing £31 million, while North Yorkshire and Cumbria will get £17 million each. Scotland will receive £69 million in total, with the Scottish government set to distribute the funds as it sees fit. Ian Livingston, CEO of BT, said in a statement: "It is important that these funds are used wisely and so we would encourage the government to work with private sector partners who are in this for the long run, who are willing to invest significant funds and who can guarantee open and equal access to their networks. "Open and equal access is essential if competition is to flourish and end users are to benefit from low prices. Local monopolies would benefit no one." 
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| Review: Patriot Wildfire 120GB Posted: 16 Aug 2011 06:58 AM PDT It's been a long time coming, but Patriot has finally released its own SandForce-based SSD, the performance-oriented Patriot Wildfire 120GB. Like primary school kids vying for peer respect by racing up and down the school field, solid state drives (SSDs) are speed freaks. They're constantly trying to outdo one another at read/write performance, and occasionally falling over and grazing their figurative knees. We say figurative, because when an actual primary school kid falls over and grazes their knee, parents don't announce a huge recall of nine year olds the way SSD manufacturers had to when it turned out the SandForce 2281 controller had gone awry. With all that nasty business (hopefully) behind us, and new SSDs sporting a revised version of that particular controller, we can enjoy the speedy stuff without tears.
Against the cream of the OCZ crop, the OCZ Vertex 3, Patriot's Wildfire is an impressive little performer. The OCZ drive still has the edge in the real-world file decompression test, but the Wildfire takes the lead when it comes to the more synthetic benchmarks.
Patriot's Wildfire 120GB model is undoubtedly quicker than almost all previous generation SSDs. It's priced very reasonably at around £2 per gigabyte, and is capacious enough to install not just your operating system and key apps, but a good few games and media files too. Sure, you lose 9GB in formatting the drive, but them's the apples with SSDs. It's an attractive proposition from Patriot then, with its first foray into 6Gbps SATA 3 SSDs. One of the best features the rejuvenated SF 2281 controller has to offer is DuraWrite. In short, this is s a form of data compression that minimises excessive traffic to the flash cells and excessive writes. To quote the information SandForce gave us, 25GB of writes are involved in installing Windows 7 and Office 2007 to a standard HDD or SSD. With DuraWrite, that's chopped down to just 11GB. That's certainly good news for maintaining the high performance of your SSD. And this Wildfire is undoubtedly a high performance SSD. Read and write times in compressible and uncompressible data are up there with the big boys – OCZ's Vertex 3 and the new kid on the block, A-Data's S511. In fact, it outperforms both drives when dealing with uncompressible (or already compressed) data. Write times are particularly impressive in this type of task. Pitted against Corsair's 120GB Force 3 and the impressive new A-Data S511 drive – all of which use the SF 2281 controller – the Patriot Wildfire shines. Corsair's asynchronous NAND hobbles its performance, whereas the Patriot Wildfire rivals the bigger A-Data's speeds. While it can't quite keep up with the two quickest drives on the market in compressible, uncompressible and 4K random reads, the plucky Patriot Wildfire consistently impresses with write performances across all these areas. When you examine just how minimal the performance gap is in reads too, the overall speed of this Patriot Wildfire is amazing. We didn't experience any crashes or tell-tale Bios disappearances with this or the A-Data SSD, so it looks like the early dramas with the SandForce controller are over. What we're left with is a new generation of SSDs with read/write times that almost push the SATA 6Gbps interface to bottleneck their performance. It's lucky there are plans afoot to extend the bandwidth of the SATA interface further. It's the long-term perspective that's so important with SSDs, though, and in the coming months there's guaranteed to be an influx of unruly newcomers jostling with each other to be first to the end of the school field. We liked The Patriot Wildfire is a speedy, solid little SSD, and we've been impressed by the package it's put together. The drive keeps pace with the big boys of the SSD market and in some places actually manages to outshine them. We disliked There really isn't a lot to dislike about the Patriot Wildfire; prices are on par with other performance 120GB drives, but it does still run to £2/GB. Final word This Patriot Wildfire 120GB is as good as we've seen from the new class, and we can heartily recommend it for now. 
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| Buying Guide: 6 best portable hard drives for Mac Posted: 16 Aug 2011 06:15 AM PDT Portable hard drives are useful. Based on the 2.5-inch drive form factor, a portable hard disk is small, light and powered by the data transfer bus, so no additional power supply is needed. They're the ideal solution for carrying around large amounts of data. Today's portable hard drives cram ever greater capacities into smaller and smaller enclosures. The seven drives we have on test here are all known for their slimline design. Despite capacities of up to 1TB, they're convenient enough to carry around in your pocket. But it's not all about small form factor. We look at speed, connectivity and good old value for money. 1. Buffalo MiniStation 500GB - £62
This slick white drive is handy and pocket-sized. Out of the box it's FAT32- formatted, so it can't handle files of over 4GB, but it's easy enough to reformat it for Mac OS in Disk Utility. The drive is 14mm thick, and its USB 3.0 connectivity is backwards-compatible with the USB 2.0 format used by all Macs. Its read speeds were just below average, but write speeds were good. Its cost per GB of 12.4p (based on its current Amazon price) is good value for money. A solid, workmanlike performer. Attractive, well built and very portable. Verdict: 3.5/5 2. Freecom Mobile Mg 750GB - £116
This German pocket-sized portable hard drive is built to last, with its large capacity and strong, lightweight magnesium enclosure. Preformatted for Mac OS, it's the only drive we tested that offers FireWire 800 connectivity as well as USB. It's USB speeds were about average, though we'd have expected more from its FireWire 800 scores. It comes with a couple of trivial apps, but no FireWire 400-to-800 cable for older Macs. Excellent minimalist design and very good build quality make this a good choice. Verdict: 3.5/5 3. G-Drive Slim 320GB - £63
You can tell at a glance the G-Drive Slim is built with Macs in mind. Its brushed aluminium finish is the perfect match for a MacBook Pro. It's Mac-formatted out of the box too, though there's no FireWire connectivity – it's USB 2.0-only. At only 10mm thick and with a total volume of just under 105cm3, it's one of the smallest drives we tested, though at 19.7p per GB its capacity works out a little expensive, even allowing for the fact that lowercapacity drives are at a disadvantage here. Gorgeous, Mac-like and compact enough to carry around in your pocket. Verdict: 3.5/5 4. Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB - £74
Although the most expensive drive on a cost-per-GB basis, at 9mm thin and just under 86cm3, it's also the smallest. Its USB 3.0 port is housed on a removable cap that can be replaced with a FireWire 800 connector; a Thunderbolt version is coming soon too. Seagate's GoFlex Slim is NTFS formatted, but comes supplied with a driver so your Mac can write to as well as read from NTFS drives, making it ideal for swapping large files with PCs. The slimmest drive on offer here. It comes supplied with some useful software too. Verdict: 4.5/5 5. Iomega Prestige 500GB £50
This black metal drive looks gorgeous, and is the only drive tested here to come supplied with a double-headed cable to draw power from two USB ports where necessary. It's NTFS-formatted out of the box, a format Macs can read from, but not write to. Unless you have a driver such as Paragon's NTFS for Mac installed, you'll have to reformat it using Disk Utility. Build quality is very good too. It's not the most compact drive on test, but it's certainly robust. A good-looking, well-built and versatile drive with prestige to match its name. Verdict: 4/5 6. LaCie Rikiki Go 1TB £77LaCie's Rikiki Go features an integrated USB cable, but it's far too short for anything other than laptop use. Good job you can remove it and use a standard USB cable if you wish, though there isn't one in the box. At 19mm thick and just under 157cm3 it's the bulkiest drive on test, but not by a great deal. This is partly due to its 1TB of storage, which is also the largest one tested here. It's NTFS out of the box, so you need to reformat it before use, unless you have an NTFS driver installed on your Mac. It sports the biggest capacity, but it's the bulkiest drive here. Useful in-built USB cable. Verdict: 4/5 Benchmarks
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| MS Reader ebook app canned by Microsoft Posted: 16 Aug 2011 06:04 AM PDT Microsoft is waving goodbye to its Reader service, the ebook application that originally appeared back in 2000. In theory, Microsoft Reader should be flourishing; the ebook sector is one of the most burgeoning around and devices like the Kindle and the iPad are convincing more people to put down the paperback and go digital. Reader, however, has been burdened with the fact that it is built round the .lit proprietary file format – something that Microsoft is also canning. Reader rebirth?Without any real explanation, Microsoft announced on its Reader page that it was stopping the service. "Microsoft is discontinuing Microsoft Reader effective August 30, 2012, which includes download access of the Microsoft Reader application from the Microsoft Reader website," said the notice. "However, customers may continue to use and access the Microsoft Reader application and any .lit materials on their PCs or devices after the discontinuation on August 30, 2012. "New content for purchase from retailers in the .lit format will be discontinued on November 8, 2011." It will be interesting to see if Microsoft starts afresh with ebooks. There's massive scope with the sector and with Windows 8 being a more tablet-focused offering, we expect some sort of integration of ebooks to be announced by Microsoft in due course. 
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| HP Pre 3 UK release date: tomorrow? Posted: 16 Aug 2011 06:02 AM PDT The HP Pre 3 looks set to arrive in the UK tomorrow, 17 August, according to one online retailer. As well as reporting that its stock will be available on Wednesday, Clove also put to bed rumours that the handset would see a price increase in the UK, confirming that the HP Pre 3 UK price will be £360, SIM-free. It's not quite the 8 July release date that Play.com would have had us believe, but the pricing is more or less spot on compared to earlier rumours. Palming it offLaunched back in February, the HP Pre 3 runs the Palm-made WebOS, and comes with a 3.6-inch screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for all your typing needs. The 1.4GHz processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8x55 variant which we found to be impressively nippy in our hands on HP Pre 3 review. The HP Pre 3 is also making its way to Orange, so if you're looking for a contract deal the citrus-flavoured network will be one to watch; we reckon it'll come in at around £25-30 a month. 
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2011 05:59 AM PDT Hello, A-Data S511. What's that? You can read and write at over 500 MB/s? Why, that's quicker than a spelling bee champion on MDMA. In fact, in both synthetic and real-world benchmarks, this solid state drive (SSD) is quicker than OCZ's similarly SandForce 2281-controlled OCZ Vertex 3. The SandForce 2200-Series controller is at the same time a light-bringer and harbinger of doom. The read/write speeds it offers are staggering, and verge dangerously near the SATA 3 port's maximum throughput of 600 MB/s. Not only does the SSD deliver great performance to you in PC user land, it puts pressure on manufacturers to deliver a faster, better interface. That performance and promise is laced with unreliability, underperformance and – at worst – data loss. Corsair and OCZ were left red-faced after being forced to recall their Force 3 series and Vertex 3 SSDs, respectively. It all stinks a bit of Intel's B3 revision fiasco, and has probably put some enthusiasts off the SandForce 2200 series permanently. Which is a shame. Now the controller issue's been identified and remedied via firmware and hardware revisions, we can once again focus on that jaw-dropping performance. And since the OCZ Vertex 3 has been the pace setter for all SSDs until now, the A-Data S511's performances are sure to raise some eyebrows.
Real-world performance is really impressive with the S511. If you put every second saved decompressing .rars on top of each other, they'd reach to the moon. Or something. The 4K read/write figures are also a good indication of performance you'll notice in everyday use. However, incompressible data write times are underwhelming.
Is it for real? Well, in many areas it is indeed superior, yes. Read times for both compressible and incompressible data are superior, likewise for 4K random reads and writes. The latter's especially important because it's these kind of operations that your SSD will be working on during general desktop use – accessing and creating small amounts of data across the whole drive. It's also worth mentioning the reported burst speed with the HD Tach benchmark. The A-Data S511 drive clocks 475 MB/s, compared to the OCZ Vertex 3's 409 MB/s. It's one of the biggest discrepancies between the two SSDs, and represents the maximum buffer of each. Unlike the 4K random read/write performance, this won't impact noticeably on general use, but it's an indication of how differently the two drives (both controlled by that SF 2281) operate. So which feathers does the Vertex 3 still have in its cap? Quite impressive, luxurious feathers, actually: write times. It's especially apparent with incompressible data such as compressed images, films and music. A-Data's otherwise speedy SSD lags behind by around 60MB/s. If you transfer a lot of this type of data between locations, the ball's still in the Vertex 3's court. Compressible write performance is still very much the domain of OCZ's SSD. We can only speculate about the nature of that performance gap. Maybe it's a hangover from the SF 2281's revision. Maybe write times have suffered slightly in favour of reliability. If that's the case, we know which attribute we'd rather have. Regardless of its relative performance to the Vertex 3, the A-Data S511 is a fantastic drive. It is a tenner more expensive, but for that you get a healthy, reliable and – in many ways – faster SSD. We liked The big one for the A-Data S511 is the relatively high 4K read and write speeds. It's this impressive performance that makes for speedy operations within the Windows environment more than any other. As well as some impressive performance chops the S511 is also one of the cheaper SandForce 240GB drives out there. It's some £35 cheaper than the equivalent OCZ Vertex 3. We disliked Write times are still the domain of the OCZ Vertex 3. Copying incompressible files, like audio and video files, will take longer on the A-Data drive. Final word The A-Data S511 is around £35 cheaper than the equivalent OCZ Vertex 3, and for that you get a healthy, reliable and – in many ways – faster SSD. 
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| Samsung snaps up CyanogenMod founder Posted: 16 Aug 2011 05:45 AM PDT Samsung has hired Steve Kondik, founder of Android mod site CyanogenMod, as a mobile software engineer. CyanogenMod is a custom Android ROM development site; where tinkering with the source code and pushing the software in unforeseen directions is encouraged. So is Samsung looking to introduce exclusive new features to its TouchWiz Android overlay? All changeQuite possibly; with ever more me-too Android handsets finding their way on to the market, it'll become more important for manufacturers to differentiate themselves on the software side. And, with Samsung tipped to be building the next flagship Google handset, dubbed by some as the Google Nexus Prime, it will want to ensure a top notch user experience if it releases the handset under the Samsung brand to nab its own share of the sales. But what Kondik will be working on directly is anyone's guess; what we do know is that CyanogenMod will carry on regardless of his new job. According to Kondik, Samsung has no plans to license CyanogenMod – for now, at least. 
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| Review: EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win Posted: 16 Aug 2011 05:30 AM PDT What fresh madness is this? Two full-spec Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 GPUs on a single slab of silicon graphical processing goodness? Either the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win is a stroke of genius in a graphics card or it's something to do with a surplus of old graphics chips... Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460 is getting rather long in the tooth, after all. Where once it was the darling of the mid-range GPU set, now it's starting to look a little doddery on its tessellated zimmer. With the superior Radeon HD 6850 coming out cheaper in most retailers, the single-card, 1GB, 336 CUDA Core version looks on a hiding to nothing. Now EVGA is here, claiming better performance than a GTX 580 in its twin GPU GeForce GTX 460 2Win. As good as multi-GPU technology has become in the last few years, it's still going to be a struggle trying to uphold EVGA's bold claim. So can it really stand up against Nvidia's flagship, single GPU card?
Both these cards come in at the same price, but the slightly improved Just Cause 2 and DiRT 3 performance aside you'd always go for the superior GPU over a pair of weaker chips.
Select your benchmarks just right and you can happily say that this twin-GPU EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win outperforms a the EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked. You can say it happily, but you surely can't say it without feeling slightly guilty at putting so much spin on it. A clear gauge for the game graphics and image processing power that's on offer with the EVGA GTX 580 SC and this inbred child from a family of Nvidia GTX 590s is the Heaven benchmark. Forget the CPU, motherboard or any other component in your system, Heaven ignores all of them and just harasses the graphics card. The result puts the plain ol' GTX 580 ahead of the GTX 460 2Win. It's not so simple with Dirt 3 and Just Cause 2, though, as the twin-GPU card takes the wins there. But those two titles represent the only SLI (Scalable Link Interface) win in our test suite. We're comparing it to the EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked – a factory overclocked card – but we found both for the same price. The GTX 580 Superclocked is only 25MHz faster than a vanilla GTX 580 so it's not posting wildly different performance figures. If you're looking to spend this sort of cash on a graphics card then you are going to be looking for it to cope with the toughest graphical tests that you can throw at it. The GTX 580 is the top single-GPU card you can pick up at the moment, and Metro 2033 is the top system-stressing benchmark at the top-end. The extra tessellation and post-processing demands of Metro 2033 at 2560 x 1600 are incredibly GPU-intensive, and none of Nvidia's cards below the GTX 580 can get into double figures, even with an SLI. So if you want the best visuals and the best speeds then for this sort of cash you've got to buy the best single-GPU you can, not a pair of weaker chips. We liked The fact that EVGA has put one of the top SLI pairings onto a single slab of PCB is impressive, and for those without SLI-capable motherboards it gives them access to something they wouldn't otherwise have. EVGA has also slightly overclocked the GF 104 GPUs in the GeForce GTX 460 2Win graphics card, not down-clocked as with other multi-GPU cards. We disliked You can pick up an overclocked GTX 580 from the same company for the same price, and standard GTX 580s for much less. In fact you can buy two GTX 460s, clock them up to the same speeds (or higher) than the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win edition for a lot less, too. Adding in a second GTX 460 to an existing system is worth the cash, but paying over the odds for a weaker GPU setup than a single card in one fell swoop makes no sense. Final verdict As a technical achievement, the EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win is impressive, but it's far too expensive compared to a standard GTX 460 SLI pairing or a vanilla GTX 580. The EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2Win is available from Aria PC 
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| Updated: iPad 3 rumours: what you need to know Posted: 16 Aug 2011 05:20 AM PDT The iPad 2 is out, and the rumour factory has already moved on: it's predicting iPad 3 specifications including chips, cameras and retina displays - with a little bit of help from mysterious, unnamed people who can't possibly be identified. How very convenient. So what's the word on the street about the next iPad? iPad 3 release date This is the biggest rumour of all: an iPad 3 mere months after the iPad 2. An unnamed Apple employee says that the iPad 2 was a bit of a rush job, and "the third generation iPad is the one to make a song and dance about." Respected Apple watcher John Gruber added fuel to that particular fire by strongly hinting that the iPad 3 release date will be in September 2011. If Gruber is right about this and the iPad 3 features in an Apple autumn line-up, then it looks like Apple is going to start offering a new iPad every six months. Indeed, Reuters reported that the new iPad 3 is due in the fourth quarter of the year but it could well be November with the iPhone 5 taking the September release date. On 1 July, Digitimes reported that Taiwanese-based component suppliers were gearing up for production of iPad 3 and iPhone 5. However, during August, a rumour broke that Apple was set to delay the launch of the iPad 3, due to a shortage of retina displays from its suppliers LG and Samsung. The iPad 3 UK release date is a mystery With Apple unable to meet initial demand for iPad 2, we'd expect a staggered release date for the iPad 3 too: However, Apple could always follow the pattern it has with the previous two iPad launches and do it all in the new year. The iPad 3 specs include a dual-core processor... It's possible that the iPad 3 will have a brand spanking new processor, Apple's A6, but if the rumoured release date is correct then time is awfully tight: we'd certainly expect to see an A5, not an A6, in the iPhone 5 when it turns up this summer. Apple may well surprise us, of course, but we'd expect to see the same processor and graphics as the iPad 2 in the iPad 3: an A5 processor with PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics. This one comes down to the iPad 3 release date: if it's 2011, expect an A5. If it's 2012, see below. ...unless iPad 3 has a quad-core processor If the A6 is the next stage in the line - and we don't see a new iPad until 2012 - we could also be looking at a quad-core chip from Apple. Quad-core designs will be coming from all ARM partners late this year. iPad 3 display A retina display was widely predicted for the iPad 2, but of course the current iPad doesn't have a double-resolution display: for now, that's something you'll only get in the iPhone 4. Could an iPad 3 Retina Display be on the way? It's the very first thing on our iPad 3 wish list. Rumours of an HD screen on the iPad 3 gathered pace on 12 April 2011 when Digitimes reported that Apple is asking panel makers to provide screens that are capable of displaying higher image quality than the iPad 2. On 26 May 2011, we reported that the iPad 3 could launch with a Samsung-made AMOLED screen, following rumours that Apple has been in talks on the matter with Samsung execs. There have also been more LG and Samsung rumours, too. On 15 June we reported that the iOS 5 code hinted at a Retina Display for iPad 3. The iPad 3 hardware could include an NFC chip Apple's very interested in Near Field Communications, and one particularly tasty rumour at Cult of Mac suggests that the iPhone 5 will use NFC to take over nearby Macs, enabling you to use your data and settings with a flick of the wrist. Since the iPad 3 will follow the iPhone 5, if NFC's in one it'll probably be in the other too. The iPad 3 specifications will include more storage The iPad 2 has the familiar 16/32/64GB storage options, but as flash storage comes down in price a 128GB option for the iPad 3 isn't impossible - although that might depend on the current horrible situation in Asia, where the tsunami has caused chaos in parts of the electronics industry. The iPad 3 features could include a Thunderbolt port Two generations of USB-free iPads suggest that Apple just isn't interested in adding one, but the new Thunderbolt port found in the 2011 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air could be another story: it's a combined accessory/display connector with astonishingly fast performance. There could be more than one iPad 3 TUAW says the iOS 5 code features new code files for USB devices in the iOS 5 firmware, Through this, TUAW found references to an iPad3,1 and an iPad 3,2. The iPad 3 could be made by someone other than Foxconn Apple was said to be in talks with another Far Eastern manufacturer as the release of the iPad 3 nears. Digitimes says that as there was a fire at usual supplier Foxconn in May, Quanta Computer and Pegatron Technology could benefit. On 1 August it was reported that a contract had definitely gone to Pegatron rather than Foxconn. The iPad 3 specs might include an SD card slot This was widely predicted for iPad 2 and, like the retina display, didn't materialise. One for version 3, perhaps? Using a separate adapter to read camera cards is rather inelegant and clunky. The iPad 3 specification should include a better camera The rear-facing camera on the iPad 2 isn't brilliant: an iPhone 4 camera and flash would do nicely. The iPad 3 could feature a carbon fibre case Apple has hired a carbon fibre expert, senior composites engineer Kevin Kenney, fuelling speculation that the next iPad could be encased in the lightweight material. The iPad 3 price might be higher than the iPad 2... The iPad 2 didn't herald a price hike, but if the iPad 3's coming in September we don't think a massive iPad 2 price cut is very likely - which suggests that if the iPad 3 does appear then, it might be more of an iPad Pro - with a price to match. ...or maybe lower? It has also been suggested that the pricing of the iPad 3 could be lower. As it's already cheaper than most other new tablets, we call trash on this one. Could the iPad 3 actually be an iPad 2 Plus? An analyst has suggested that we could see an iPad 2 Plus on our Christmas wishlists. The so-called iPad 2 Plus isn't set to be a radical departure from the current iPad 2, with supply chain sources tipping an improved display (250-300 ppi as opposed to the current 132 ppi). 
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2011 05:02 AM PDT AMD's flagship model of its new A-Series range of desktop Llano Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) – the AMD A8-3850 – launched last month. At the same time, AMD announced a cheaper, less powerful APU, the A6-3650 – which we have now jammed into our test bench. If you haven't heard about AMD's Fusion technology before, then the term 'APU' might be a new one to you. The APU is a hybrid chip bringing together both the CPU and GPU and sticking them onto a single die. Before your eyes glaze over and the moaning starts about integrated graphics being about as much use as a chocolate teapot, hold on, because in the A-Series of APUs, the graphics performance is really rather startling. But more about that later. This isn't the first incarnation of AMD's Fusion technology, but it is by far the most powerful. The first Fusion APUs (codenamed Ontario and Zacate, versus the current codename, Lynx) had very low power ratings (Ontario 9W, Zacate 18W). They were aimed at the ultra-thin notebook market where, it has to be said, they didn't exactly set the world alight. Likewise the first of the Llano chips, the A8-3500M, was aimed at the notebook market, although it made a much more favourable impression this time around.
The engineering in AMD's new desktop A-Series is a bit of a tour de force for the design teams, because there's an awful lot going on inside a fairly small package. Built on a 32nm process, the die of the AMD A6-3650 measures just 228 sq mm, but inside it packs a fully-featured quad core processor, a DirectX 11 GPU and a fully-featured Northbridge with a transistor count of around 1.45 billion. With all this going on, it's quite some feat to keep the thermal design power (TDP) at just 100W. To put that into some kind of perspective, a Phenom II X4 940, for example, measures 258 sq mm just as a processor on its own. On the other hand, the Phenom design has something the A6-3650 lacks – namely L3 cache. The Llano Lynx parts have no L3 cache, and have to make do with just 4MB of L2 cache – 1MB per core. This puts the CPU part of the jigsaw more closely related to the latest Athlon II processors, such as the AMD Athlon II X3 450. The A6-3650 runs at 2.6GHz out of the box – 300MHz slower than it's more powerful cousin, the A8-3850. And, like the A8-3850, it lacks the Turbo Core, although this will be part of the other two A-Series APUs that have yet to make an appearance – the A8-3800 and the A6-3600. These chips have slower clock speeds, of 2.7/2.4GHz and 2.4/2.1GHz, respectively, but come with a TDP of just 65W.
When it comes to the graphics core, the A6-3650 uses the slower AMD Radeon 6530D chip compared to the A8's Radeon HD 6550D. The HD 6550D is comparable to the discrete AMD Radeon HD 5570, while the HD 6530D is more like an AMD Radeon HD 5550, with a core speed of 443MHz, 320 Radeon Cores (AMD now calls the unified shaders Radeon Cores, in much the same way as Nvidia's labelled its CUDA Cores), 16 texture units and eight ROPs. All of which means that the HD 6530D can deliver around 284 gigaflops of graphical processing power. This may be a lot lower than the A8's 480 gigaflops but it still dwarfs Intel's HD 3000, which can only summon up a mere 125 gigaflops. Oh yes, and the Intel part is only DirectX 10.1.
If you are used to integrated graphics stuttering along with single figure frame rates in most things you test them with, then the GPU in the new Lynx APU's will come as a bit of a shock. Add in a value end card like the AMD Radeon HD6670 for dual graphics and you have some highly playable frame rates.
The one thing that really stands out with the AMD A6-3650 is its overclocking ability, particularly at its price point. We were able to get our review sample to 3.04GHz (117MHz x 26) without any problems and without resorting to tinkering with any other settings in the Bios. Adjustments to the APU voltage settings should see it go much faster, but even so that's a 400MHz+ increase over the stock speed. Of course it's not only the CPU part of the AMD A6-3650 die that's overclockable – the GPU is too. You can go from the 443MHz of the HD 6530D up to the 600MHz that is the stock speed of the HD 6550D in the A8-3850, without any problems and with complete stability. That sort of overclocking, however, is always going to be dependant on the particular slice of silicon in your machine. It's also good to report that finally after all these years we have integrated graphics that actually offer some decent frame rates. Once you've recovered from that shock bit of news, the other point to take note of is that the GPU also supports DirectX 11. Sadly, both the decent frame rates and the DirectX 11 support are not available with Intel's latest HD 3000 graphics – those of Sandy Bridge fame – so extra brownie points to AMD then. There is also the added advantage that you can chuck in a cheapish discrete AMD graphics card, and by enabling the dual graphic mode you can achieve some very playable frame rates.
We did have a couple of odd moments during testing when using a graphics card in dual mode with the integrated graphics where the screen would go blank so you didn't quite know where you were in the boot cycle. Then suddenly it would wake up to show you that the OS had loaded fine, but on a couple of occasions we lost patience and rebooted. This was probably due to the immaturity of some of the motherboard drivers, and was annoying rather than alarming. The only other thing of concern is the longevity of the platform itself. With Bulldozer and the Bulldozer-based APU, Trinity, fast approaching on the horizon, the worry is that the FM1 socket will be here today and gone tomorrow. Remember what happened with Intel's Socket 1156 when the new Sandy Bridge technology appeared? Getting one of these new APU's isn't quite the future proofing move it might appear to be at first glance then. We liked There's no doubt about it, with these new Lynx desktop chips, AMD has seriously upped the ante when it comes to integrated graphics performance, especially at the price the A6-3650's been pitched at. The dual graphics option is also interesting, because it allows for some fairly intensive gameplay without having to break the bank for the discrete graphics card. One of the nice surprises of the APU is its ease of overclocking and how far it will go without having to get your hands too dirty in the Bios. Another plus point is its support of both the latest JEDEC memory frequency standards over and above the 1,333MHz base point, at 1,600MHz and 1,866MHz. We disliked Aside from the slightly immature drivers around at the moment, there is a worry that the FM1 socket won't be around for very long. Verdict We were impressed with the AMD A8-3850, and similarly the cheaper A6-3650 doesn't disappoint either 
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| Gears of War 3 gets a 3D makeover Posted: 16 Aug 2011 04:59 AM PDT Gears of War 3, an upcoming exclusive on the Xbox 360, has been given a 3D makeover despite the format being described as "niche". The Xbox 360 isn't known for its 3D capabilities but there have been a number of titles for the console released in 3D – CoD: Black Ops being one – and now another of the console's flagship games is getting the 3D treatment, albeit through some tinkering in the back end. Speaking to Eurogamer, Rod Fergusson of Epic Games, which created Gears of Wars 3, said about adding 3D: "It felt like something we wanted to have. It was a feature we didn't want to be deficient in. When you look at Gears 1, it was what people used to demo HD at the time. "It's still fledgling technology. It's still a niche feature. But it was something we could support, so we felt, why not?" Better 3D incomingUnlike the PS3, which has been properly equipped by Sony to handle high definition 3D gaming, devs that want to add 3D to games for the Xbox 360 have to use a small workaround.
The 3D signal is crammed into one 720p stream, so it is a little like 2D with added depth. The PS3 on the other hand has two distinct 1280x1470 streams. This does push the quality down, as Fergusson explained: "[Although the difference] is not huge, It's a little bit jaggier in certain areas. Instead of 720p you're at five something." Fergusson hinted that the Xbox 360 is to get improved 3D gaming, however, courtesy of the next Xbox Development Kit which will have "more support for 3D or more higher quality for native support for 3D." Fergusson explained: "We're supporting the current state of the art for Xbox. Moving forward, the Xbox will be able to take it further." This clarifies rumours back in May that the Xbox 360 was set to get the HDMI 1.4 protocol. The Gears of War 3 UK release date is 20 September. 
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2011 04:30 AM PDT The Sony Alpha A35 is the latest launch to join the manufacturer's innovative Single Lens Translucent (SLT) camera line-up, debuting a number of new technologies that look set to turn the heads of first-time entry-level buyers and upgraders alike. SLT cameras incorporate a semi-transparent mirror that splits light between the CMOS sensor and the separate AF sensor. As the mirror doesn't need to be moved out of the way to allow light onto the CMOS, SLT cameras can offer fast full-time phase-detection AF, improving performance as a result. Not to be confused with the mirrorless compact system cameras (CSCs) that are also currently available on the market, SLT cameras differ from these in that the former uses a contrast-detect AF system, which offers a comparably slower performance. Reasons to consider the SLT system cameras in place of a DSLR or CSC are many, but the technology is not without its drawbacks. Read on to discover how the SLT-A35 fares in our in-depth tests and find out whether its speedy credentials are enough to impress. FeaturesReplacing the older 14.2mp SLT-A33, the entry-level SLT-A35 boasts an upgraded featureset that - notably - includes a new 16.2mp EXMOR APS-C HD CMOS sensor, as seen in the recently-launched NEX-C3. Having impressed the photographic community with its revolutionary Translucent Mirror Technology (TMT), Sony has taken things a step further by equipping the SLT-A35 with a new Tele-zoom High Speed Shooting mode. Although the maximum burst rate remains the same as its predecessor's - 7fps - the new model enhances the performance of its continuous tracking AF by magnifying the central portion of the frame by 1.4x (producing an image at approximately 8.4mp): a bonus for sport and action photographers. There's also a respectable 5.5 fps drive mode available if you prefer to shoot stills at full resolution. The result is seamless Live View shooting that's a cut above the systems currently offered by traditional-design DSLRs. Add these features to the 1080i AVCHD movie, new Picture Effect options (which we'll discuss in more detail later), plus significantly improved power consumption performance and battery life over the SLT-A33 (440 stills compared to 340 on the earlier model) and we have what looks like a pretty complete package on our hands. That said, there's more to a camera than its feature-set, so let's take a look at how it performs. Despite being slightly lighter than the SLT-A33, there's little else to separate the new launch from its ancestor externally. Sporting a tough plastic outer shell, the SLT-A35 feels robust enough to withstand daily use. The ergonomically shaped front grip combines with a neatly sculpted rear thumb grip which - in conjunction with a lightly textured, rubberised coating - provides a firm and very comfortable purchase on the well-balanced camera body. The control layout remains the same, with well-proportioned and intelligently placed buttons spread across the camera body. To the right of the viewfinder hump, the top panel houses a button to toggle between the EVF and LCD, although the former is equipped with sensors that detect when you lift the camera to your eye, automatically shutting off the LCD and switching to the EVF. A customisable D-Range button accesses the camera's dynamic range optimizer feature by default, while the large silver shutter release - which is encircled by the power switch - sits atop the front grip. The left hand side of the top panel is home to the well-stocked mode dial, which offers a comprehensive array of automatic and scene modes, as well as Sony's excellent Sweep Panorama (with 3D options), plus the new Tele-zoom High Speed feature and manual exposure modes. A dedicated movie button - perched on the sloping section that links the top to the back panel - provides one-touch access to the SLT-A35's HD video mode, while intuitively-positioned menu, exposure compensation and AEL buttons provide fast access to their respective functions. Around the back, the Fn button calls up an interactive set of icons on the 3-inch LCD, a feature that - in tandem with the softkey access to frequently-used functions provided by the four-way d-pad - results in a handling experience that is as slick as it is simple. One surprising change is that the high-resolution LCD is now fixed, unlike the SLT-A33's vari-angle version. This makes the SLT-A35 somewhat less versatile by comparison, but - in a bid to keep costs down - Sony had to make a compromise somewhere. In bright light - although the LCD's anti-reflective coating is usually pretty effective - sometimes it's not enough. In these situations, the SLT-A35 offers an alternative in the form of its electronic viewfinder. Unlike a DSLR - which uses a solid mirror to direct light to its optical viewfinder, giving you a crystal-clear view of the scene as it is transmitted through the lens - the use of SLT technology in this camera means that an optical viewfinder isn't an option. EVFs are not without their issues, with low resolution displays, a lack of contrast and a slow refresh rate being common complaints, however they have come a long way since they were first implemented, and we're happy to report that the SLT-A35's is pleasingly usable. Offering a fairly detailed display (1.15mp) and 100% frame coverage, the EVF also has the added advantage of being able to display detailed shooting information, as well as an optional live histogram and grid lines to aid in composing your shots - traits that you don't get with an optical viewfinder. Overall impressions of the SLT-A35 are very good. While we do miss the freedom of shooting with a vari-angle LCD, the impact left by the simple-to-interpret interface, uncluttered menu system and handy on-screen hints and tips (to help beginners with the process of getting to know the camera) is very favourable. As advertised in Sony's literature about the SLT-A35's responsiveness, this camera is very quick to start-up, being ready to shoot near-instantaneously. Half-press the shutter release and whichever of the 15 AF points you have selected almost immediately glows green, indicating a positive lock on your subject. Select the continuous AF option and there's some operational noise from the kit lens as it refocuses, but new locks are acquired at speed as you move around and recompose your shots. Taking a shot is a similarly speedy process. With no discernible shutter lag to slow you down, shooting moments as they unfold with the SLT-A35 is as effortless as it is enjoyable. Whether you're snapping still life subjects on a table top, capturing landscapes out in the field, shooting a high-speed sports event or chasing around after your kids, this camera takes it all in its stride. The same can be said for shooting movies, with fast one-touch recording available via the dedicated movie button, the camera is ready to start filming at a moment's notice. Once you've finished capturing your scene, there's a short delay while the file is written to the memory card, the duration of which depends on the length of your clip. Video quality is very good, with plenty of detail and smooth panning. Sound quality is good, but the stereo microphones will pick up some operational noise from the lens as it refocuses. We shot RAW files in conjunction with JPEGs at the SLT-A35's top quality setting, and can happily report that -generally - results live up to the rest of this camera's impressive performance. JPEGs straight out of the camera exhibit a touch of softness when viewed at 100%, but nothing that a bit of post-shoot sharpening can't fix. Set to Standard mode, colours are faithful, with enough punch to bring images to life. Creative styleDelve into the Creative Style menu and the additional Vivid, Portrait, Landscape, Sunset and Black & White options provide some scope to adjust the look of your images in-camera, with decent results across the board. You can take things a step further with a new set of Picture Effects, accessed via the scene mode slot on the exposure mode dial. Like the popular effects that were pioneered by the Olympus PEN range, the SLT-A35 offers fun options like Toy Camera, Pop Color, Retro and Selective Coloring. Some of these aren't quite to our taste, but for the most part results are effective. By default, dynamic range is slightly better than some of its closest competitors, although the metering system does occasionally blow out the highlights when shooting particularly high-contrast scenes. More experienced users will be able to quickly correct this with a touch of exposure compensation, or the SLT-A35 also offers Sony's effective D-Range Optimizer feature, which broadens the range of tones captured in your shots automatically by combining several differently-exposed frames. There's also an in-camera HDR feature, which takes a succession of photos at different exposures and quickly combines them to produce a shot with an extended dynamic range. Each feature can be quickly accessed using the interactive on-screen menu (activated by pressing the Fn button on the back of the camera), although the HDR function is only available if you're shooting JPEGs alone (no RAW option).
RAW files processed with the bundled software are detailed and contain enough information to really make the most of the SLT-A35's sensor, with scope to rescue highlight and shadow detail, sharpen up your shots and remove any unwanted noise, as well as adjusting the colour output to precisely suit your taste. The auto white balance system is pretty accurate, with even indoor mixed lighting situations proving to be relatively unproblematic, save for a touch of extra warmth in the occasional image taken under tungsten lighting. There's a comprehensive array of presets available for you to select manually should this happen however - each of which can be individually tweaked - as well as the facility to take your own custom reading where accuracy is of the utmost importance. Alternatively, shoot RAW and adjust your colours to suit post-shoot. NoiseNoise is well controlled throughout the SLT-A35's native sensitivity range, with a good level of detail being maintained across the board. Everything looks clean up to ISO 400, where noise remains unobtrusive. At ISO 800, noise is visible, but retention of detail prevents it from becoming much of an issue. Images shot at ISO 1600-3200 are perfectly usable; ISO 6400 is best reserved for emergencies however. The top expandable setting - ISO 12800 - is noisy and image quality suffers, as you'd expect. The kit lens is lightweight, but feels well balanced on the camera body. It offers a rubberised zoom ring to set the focal length, which we found to be a little notchy - not a huge issue for stills but it can produce some juddering if you're recomposing while filming. Barrel distortion at the wide end of its 18-55mm focal range is quite strong, with pincushion distortion taking over at maximum extension, however neither of these traits is out of the ordinary for a bundled lens at this price point. A maximum aperture range of f3.5-5.6 means that it's reasonably fast when shooting wide-angle images, but performance at 55mm and in low light isn't so impressive. Thankfully, the camera's in-camera sensor shift image stabilisation feature comes in handy to combat camera shake. As part of our image quality testing for the Sony Alpha 35, we've shot our resolution chart with a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM lens mounted. If you view our crops of the resolution chart's central section at 100% (or Actual Pixels) you will see that, for example, at ISO 100 the Sony Alpha 35 is capable of resolving up to around 28 (line widths per picture height x100) in its highest quality JPEG files. Examining images of the chart taken at each sensitivity setting reveals the following resolution scores in line widths per picture height x100:
ISO 100, score: 28 (see full image)
ISO 200, score: 28 (see full image)
ISO 400, score: 26 (see full image)
ISO 800, score: 26 (see full image)
ISO 1600, score: 24 (see full image)
ISO 3200, score: 22 (see full image)
ISO 6400, score: 22 (see full image)
ISO 12800, score: 28 (see full image) These graphs were produced using data generated by DXO Analyzer. We shoot a specially designed chart in carefully controlled conditions and the resulting images are analysed using the DXO software. Signal to noise ratioA high signal to noise ratio (SNR) indicates a cleaner and better quality image.
JPEG images from the Sony Alpha 35 are on a par with those from the Sony Alpha 55 up to around ISO 3200.
This chart indicates that the Sony Alpha 35's JPEGs have a at least a 1EV higher dynamic range than the Canon EOS 1100D's JPEG files upto a sensitivity of ISO 3200. Sony Alpha 35: Sensitivity images
ISO 100 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 200 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 400 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 800 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 1600 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 3200 Click here to see a hi-res version
ISO 12800 Click here to see a hi-res version
The bundled kit lens offers a wide-angle setting of 18mm, making it ideal for capturing landscapes, as well as groups of people. Click here to see a hi-res version.
The metering system performs well under a variety of conditions, producing accurate exposures in most situations. Click here to see a hi-res version.
The ability to set the aperture allows scope for creating photographs with a shallow depth-of-field, for beautiful out-of-focus effects that draw attention to your subject. Click here to see a hi-res version.
The AF Tracking system does a good job of keeping up with moving subjects, with performance being enhanced by the camera's unique Tele-Zoom High Speed Shooting mode. Click here to see a hi-res version.
The Toy Camera Picture Effect produces particularly pleasing images, with warm colours and a subtle vignette that really adds impact to scenes like this one. Click here to see a hi-res version.
Lots of detail and great colours are particularly favourable traits in the SLT-A35s images, which rarely failed to impress us during our image quality tests. Click here to see a hi-res version.
This is a fine example of the accuracy of the SLT-A35's metering system, which has done a superb job of correctly exposing the horse in the foreground, set against the comparatively bright background. Click here to see a hi-res version.
Beautiful shallow depth-of-field shots are easily achievable using the SLT-A35's Aperture Priority or Manual exposure modes. Click here to see a hi-res version.
This shot of a backlit leaf showcases the level of fine detail that the camera's sensor can reproduce, as well as the faithfulness of the colours it records. Click here to see a hi-res version.
Sony's excellent, easy-to-use Sweep Panorama mode produces seamless results in a matter of seconds. The 3D panorama options are an added bonus if you have 3D TV/monitor to view images shot with this feature. Click here to see a hi-res version.
The SLT-A35 offers a new range of Picture Effects that produce uniquely stylised images in-camera: no need for any complicated post-processing. Click here to see a hi-res version. Sensor: Focal length conversion: Memory: Viewfinder: Video resolution: ISO range: Autofocus points: Max burst rate: LCD screen size: Shutter speeds: Weight: Dimensions: Power supply: Sony has succeeded in taking an already impressive piece of technology and really exploring its potential. Using their innovative SLT design, the manufacturer has created a very responsive camera that impresses in just about every aspect. With a glut of high-end features that elevate the SLT-A35 above the rank of your typical 'entry-level' camera, there's plenty to love about this model.
We likedThe fast performance of the SLT-A35 - thanks to its SLT design and intuitive handling - makes a very good impression. Couple this with superb image quality and an impressive feature-set, and we're sold. We dislikedThe fixed LCD feels like a bit of a step backwards after using the older SLT-A33's more versatile vari-angle version. VerdictOffering simple, no-fuss handling, beginners will find the camera very easy to get to grips with. There's a good range of automatic and scene modes, as well as in-camera colour and picture effects - all of which produce great results with minimal effort on the photographer's part. That said, the SLT-A35 is also a camera that will grow with you as your skills progress, offering full manual control and RAW shooting capability once you're ready to advance. In terms of performance, the SLT-A35 is highly responsive, while image quality - whether you're shooting JPEGs and/or RAW files - is equally as impressive. When it comes to finding fault with this camera, there's little for us to complain about: it's an excellent potential choice for amateur photographers and as such comes highly recommended. 
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| Motorola launches faster Defy+ Posted: 16 Aug 2011 04:22 AM PDT Motorola has unveiled the Defy+ for all your rough-and-tumble smartphone needs, bringing faster web browsing and Android 2.3 to its Gorilla-glass toting Defy handset. It may have been ever so slightly overshadowed by Motorola's other news yesterday, but the Motorola Defy+ is nothing to sniff at – the original Defy, the Bear Grylls of smartphone handsets, was something of a surprise hit. On to the specs: As well as Android 2.3, the Defy+ comes with a 3.7-inch high resolution (864x480) touchscreen, 5MP camera and 1GHz processor that is "25 per cent faster" than the original Defy. Speed demonThe faster web browser is Flash-capable and oft-used apps have also been improved with tweaks made to the calendar and homescreens. What is really impressive though is the boost in battery power - up to 1700mAh, making it the second largest on the market after the 1950mAh behemoth power pack shoved in the back of the Motorola Atrix. Of course, it wouldn't be a Defy if the Defy+ wasn't "life proof"; it is water resistant, scratch resistant and dust-proof to boot - complete with IP67 compliance. The Motorola Defy+ UK release date is set for sometime this autumn, but we'd expect to see it on the shelves with a price tag of around £25 per month or £250 SIM-free. 
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| In Depth: Who's making money from your smartphone? Posted: 16 Aug 2011 04:20 AM PDT Smartphones are big business. But who's making money from them? In these days of big strategic acquisitions it's becoming increasingly difficult to say who's profiting from what. Apple? Google? Microsoft? Chip makers? Companies that don't even make phones? It's actually all of them and more. Almost everyone in the industry is making bundles of cash from smartphones - except the mobile operators who subsidise handsets and only make money from your monthly bills. How much do they make? No-one wants to say. So where is your money going? Unless you buy an unlocked phone without a contract, you're not paying the full price for the phone; the mobile operator is subsidising the phone price and making the money back on your monthly bill. How much are subsidies?Subsidies vary; they can be "half to two thirds the cost of the device" according to Bill Morelli of IMS Research. "In Europe on a mid-range smartphone you see subsidies between 70 and 150 Euros, on a high end phone they can go up to 200 to 300 Euros," Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi told TechRadar. Between marketing and subsidies, T-Mobile and Orange spend £14 to acquire each pre-pay user and £156 for more lucrative contract users (and £160 a year to keep them); Vodafone doesn't break those figures out for the UK but it's three quarters of their customer costs in Europe, which would work out as £4 million for the UK - and it's doubled since last year. "In the US, operators try to bring the price down to $100 or $200" Michael Morgan of analysts ABI told us, "and the average selling price to the operator is $400 but you sign a two year contract. Essentially it takes that first year of your contract with them to pay off the subsidy and they start making money in the second year. And consumers are addicted to those subsidies!" Specific figures from mobile experts WDS for 2010 say US operators pay an average of $342 for HTC phones, compared to $300 for a BlackBerry, $210 for a Samsung phone, $223 for a Motorola phone, $183 for a Nokia – and $610 for an iPhone.
Uniquely, operators pay Apple a monthly fee for iPhones in use; Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimates that AT&T pays Apple $831 for each iPhone sold in an Apple Store and activated on the network; other estimates say Apple was asking European operators for as much as 40% of monthly contract prices. That's on top of subsiding the cost of the iPhone to the customer. Cost of a phone: $200 or $30 millionBut how much does it cost to make the phone in the first place? There's the cost of designing the phone - RIM tried out a hundred different case designs for the new Bold - building it, getting it tested (by the FCC in the US or the CE mark testing bodies in Europe) and then certified by the operators. An industry insider told TechRadar the cost of building a new phone is "a $30 million engineering commitment". The cost of components and manufacturing is known in the industry as the Bill Of Materials, or BOM. "With Android and other full feature smartphones, we typically see BOM anywhere from $120 to $180 to more than $200," David Carey of Techinsights told us "and the ratio of the BOM to the retail price is 35-45%". Verizon introduced the Motorola Droid with a price tag of $199; iSuppli estimated it would cost $187.75 to build ($179.11 of electronic components and $8.64 in manufacturing costs). The most expensive components are the screen and the touchscreen layer; the radio, which can be up to a third of the component costs, then there's flash memory, the processor and the case itself. For the Verizon iPhone 4, of the $175 total cost, the screen and touch screen come to $35, plus $35 for the NAND flash, $30 for the Qualcomm chipsets, $25 for the A5 processor and $20 for the physical case, estimates Carey; "then it's a few dollars for the battery, another $5 for the glass protector, a lot of other components that are under $10." For phones that come with an SD card, "you can plan on a dollar a gigabyte". Morgan told us "adding LTE jacks up the price by about $15; you have to add more antennas and you're going to have a bigger screen and a more powerful processor to do something with that LTE connection." Those prices aren't just how much it costs to make chips either; there are licences for the intellectual property in the CPU and the radios and they vary depending on the deal you can get. "For 3G, if you have no IP of your own to bargain with, if you're at the bottom of the value chain you're looking at 25% royalties which can come down to 7% if you have IP; 10 or 15% is standard," says Michael Morgan. To make phones that use the GSM standard for calls, you have to join the GSM Alliance and pay their fees; Qualcomm has its own fee for the US CDMA standard. And then there are licence costs for the phone software. OS royalties: is Android free?Again, no-one wants to put a price on the different pieces; "all deals are slightly different and no one wants to give away how much they do (or don't) pay to license software," patent expert Florian Mueller reminded TechRadar. Rumours put Windows Mobile licences at $12 and we were given estimates for Windows 7 licence fees varying between $7 and $15. The fee goes down as the number of phones manufactured goes up but it also "varies player by player, depending on how much IP you have or if you've lost a court case," explains Michael Morgan. Google doesn't charge handset makers for Android; in fact it even pays some of its $1 billion mobile search revenue and 30% Android Marketplace share to them (and to carriers) which has led to some analysts calling Android 'less than free'. That's because it wants to double the $5 a year analyst Gene Munster estimates it earns from every Android user for mobile ads by next year.
But even with Android, there's the cost of making it run on the phone and integrating custom apps and interfaces – all part of that $30 million engineering cost – and the cost of the OS is a very small part of the cost of getting a phone to market. Patent futures: ten thousand and $100And as the current spate of licence agreements and patent infringement lawsuits shows, the phone operating system isn't the only thing you need a licence for. And that's also why Google has bought Motorola. Chris Hazelton, research director at the 451 Group estimates that "there are up to ten thousand licensing agreements for one smartphone" (including the licences for components). Licences coverfeatures like playing media; Microsoft's head of IP Horacio Gutierrez estimates "royalties for codecs and other [media] technology represent 1-2% of the price to operators". He says the reason there are so many smartphone lawsuits right now is that "the industry is in the process of sorting out what royalties will be for the software stack, which now represents the principal value proposition for smartphones." That's why Microsoft is charging HTC $5 for each Android phone it makes, suing Motorola, asking Samsung for up to $15 per phone and collecting royalties somewhere in that price range from phone makers like Wistron for functionality like "tabbing through various screens to find the information they need; surfing the Web more quickly, and interacting with documents and e-books". "The sky is the limit for patent royalties, agrees Florian Mueller. "they're going to be far higher for smartphones than they used to be for earlier mobile devices, and I wouldn't be surprised to see aggregate patent fees north of $100 per device a couple of years down the road." The real winnerThat's not going to affect the price you pay for a phone though, because operators know people won't pay much more for new devices than they do today.Handset manufacturers may have to settle for lower profits; the industry standard profit on a smartphone is 20-30%, according to Morgan but for Apple it could be 40%. That's why, according to Asymco Apple's making two thirds of the profits in smartphones worldwide - around $6 billion. Everyone's making money from phones, but Apple seems to be getting by far the biggest bite. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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| Windows 8 blog opens with 'humility' over Vista Posted: 16 Aug 2011 03:36 AM PDT Microsoft has launched an official Windows 8 blog, with the opening post speaking of the company's humility and a promise not to repeat past mistakes. The shadow of Microsoft Vista looms large over the new OS, with consumers, developers and Microsoft itself unlikely to forget the catastrophic iteration of Windows any time soon. The opening post, penned by Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky, states: "We've heard people express frustration over how little we've communicated so far about Windows 8. "We've certainly learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before we have a solid understanding of our ability to execute." No traffic"Rather than generating traffic or building excitement, this blog is here to provide a two-way dialog about the complexities and tradeoffs of product development," Sinofsky continues. The emergence of the blog suggests that we're drawing ever closer to a Windows 8 UK release date, but we're still none-the-wiser as to when exactly that will be. Still, you can find out everything you need to know about Windows 8 right here on TechRadar where we've rounded up every titbit Microsoft has released about Windows 8 – intentionally or not – so far. 
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| Review: Mr Site Storefront Pro Seller Posted: 16 Aug 2011 03:30 AM PDT The Mr Site brand is known for making the process of creating and editing websites very easy. Mr Site Storefront is a new product that focuses on e-commerce. Previous Mr Site products featured basic selling tools, similar to most of the other site creation programs we've tested here, so how well does Mr Site Storefront fare with this new focus? The answer is very well. Eschewing some of the more conventional tools included with most website building services, Mr Site Storefront is an excellent choice for creating a website designed to make you money. As with the Namesco Ecommerce service, if selling products isn't your website's primary goal then you're going to find the features quite limiting. Like previous Mr Site products, all the creating and editing is done online. After logging in, we were presented with an overview showing how much money our website was making, how many orders were completed, the number of products sold and a list of our best-selling products. Creating a website is easy. You start with a blank page with a number of 'zones', into which you can drop widgets. The widgets are geared towards ecommerce and add some impressive features, like a display of previously viewed items, which give your website a more professional feel. There are plenty of themes available. You can even select a theme that interests you and then 'test drive' it. This is a good way of seeing how your website would look with the chosen theme, with the settings applied to your existing website without any changes actually being made. While the actual website creation might be a little on the basic side, Mr Site Storefront really excels in the level of detail it provides about your shop and its customers. The ability to view customers and export them to XML or Excel spreadsheets is a great touch, whilst generating reports is an essential tool for online shops. If you want a quick and simple way to get a professional and feature-rich website for selling products, we heartily recommend Mr Site Storefront. 
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| Video: PlayStation 4 - what we'd like to see Posted: 16 Aug 2011 03:20 AM PDT Sony's PlayStation 3 has overcome an early hiccup to become a powerhouse of a console – but even though it's still going strong attention has turned to a successor. As well as our extensive PS4 rumours: what you need to know about the PlayStation 4 feature, TechRadar has put together a video wishlist of what it wants to see in the next-gen console. And it's not just a bigger, faster and stronger PlayStation, but also the things we are keen to keep from the PS3 and how it will bed in alongside the PS Vita. So check out our video to see out top five things we want to see in the PS4: If you enjoyed that video, you can also take a look at our PS Vita wishlist video: 
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| Posted: 16 Aug 2011 03:00 AM PDT While many website creation programs include e-commerce tools that let you sell products through your newly-created website, sometimes they feel like an afterthought. Not so with Namesco Ecommerce, an online service that focuses on making sites for online shops. This is a great package if you're looking to make money out of your website, but if you just want to make a personal website, then the advanced ecommerce tools will be wasted, and you're better off going for a software package with a broader remit. Namesco Ecommerce was easy to get started with, and the Setup Assistant walkthrough did a good job of displaying the templates and giving us an idea of what our website would look like. Templates are divided into categories like Clubs and Organisations, Computers and Electronics, and Crafts. Each template also has a rating out of five to show how customisable it is. This let us make informed decisions about how the website would look before it was created – a far cry from the trial and error approach we had to adopt when using Web Easy Professional 8. Adding web pages to the website was a simple affair, and proved to be a case of ticking a box next to the page we wanted. Certain pages, including 'Terms and conditions' and 'Contact information', were highlighted as legal requirements – a very helpful feature that seems to have been overlooked by the other programs, and is essential for protecting your fledgling business. The list of pages you can add is dictated by the template you choose. Another great feature is the ability to collect statistics about your online shop to help you determine customer behaviour. This can prove to be an essential tool for making money as you learn which products appeal to your visitors. It might not be the most flexible of website creation tools we've tried but if you want to quickly and easily create a dependable website for selling products that protects you and your customers, then this is an excellent choice. 
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| Review: Virtual Mechanics SiteSpinner Pro Posted: 16 Aug 2011 02:30 AM PDT Rather than going out of its way to appeal to new users, SiteSpinner Pro sticks to a plain and no-nonsense approach. We found that how well you get on with it really depends on your previous experience of creating websites. If you're confident making websites and want to get started straight away then you'll appreciate SiteSpinner Pro's straightforward design. If you're new to website design, however, you may feel lost when presented with a blank page and lots of unfamiliar tools. We found that making a website from scratch took a great deal longer than with the other programs. There are plenty of tools to use when creating a website, and they let us add advanced features without the need to enter any code, but they weren't labelled brilliantly. We had to spend some time experimenting with each one before we understood what it could do. The level of detail and control you have over various actions, behaviours and objects is excellent, and SiteSpinner Pro gave us far more scope for designing and editing a website than the other tools on test. This freedom comes at a price though, and you should expect to spend a lot longer making a working website using this program. SiteSpinner Pro offers the ability to create a website from templates, but none of them look great and some are quite outdated. We don't mind a bit of depth and complexity to our website creation tools, but after using the drag-and-drop simplicity of some of the other programs, it did feel to us at times like a bit of a slog as we clicked through a number of menus and entered values into poorly labelled boxes to implement a feature that only took a few seconds in other products. There's no doubting that this is a powerful web creation package, and if you have the time and resources available to invest in using SiteSpinner Pro to its full potential, your patience will pay dividends. However, if you want to create a fully functioning website with as little hassle as possible then Xara Web Designer 7 Premium is a better choice. 
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