Review The arrival of a tablet from HTC, the company that has run the furthest and fastest since picking up the Android ball was always going to be something of a Big Deal but in some ways the new Flyer is a surprisingly odd fish.
In-flight entertainment: HTC’s Flyer
To start with it doesn’t run Honeycomb but Gingerbread. Personally, I’m inclined to think Honeycomb has been released into the wild a bit half-baked, so this may be a smart move on the company’s part. Indeed, the Android 2.3 OS is clothed in the always impressive HTC Sense overlay. Read the rest of this entry »
Product Round-up If you’re looking to get the biggest bang for your thin-screen buck, then the 40-42in TV category is the sweet spot. It’s here that the most competitive price points jostle with bleeding edge features.
Almost to a man, our group combines high-performance Freeview HD 1080p screens plus some level of Internet connectivity. These TVs will also stream media across your home network, although, as I discovered, file compatibility can be all over the shop. Some screens even offer 3D compatibility, be it Active Shutter or Passive 3D.
Such feature richness was unheard of just a few years ago; it’s indicative of just how fast the TV market is evolving. When it comes to buying a new TV, we’ve never had so much choice.
LG 42LE4900
If you’re looking for an affordable, yet stylish LED thin-screen with good on-line content support, then this LG ticks the right boxes. There’s plenty of useful functionality on offer. video file playback is particularly good, with AVIs and MKV supported both across the network and from USB flash drive. Convenient if you have hi-res downloads stored on a NAS. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The low end of Iomega’s StorCenter range, the StorCenter ix2, is noisy, slow and lacking quite a few features you’d expect on a £300 Nas. The new StorCenter daddy, the ix4-200d, is in a different league in the speed and noise categories though, which you’d expect for 600-plus quid.
Low power, high capacity: Iomega’s StorCenter ix4-200d
Inside its squat, 16.7cm tall case, there’s a 1.2GHz Marvell 6281 CPU with 512MB Ram and four hard drives offering 2TB, 4TB and 8TB capacities. These are chopped into Raid 5 by default, although Raid 10 and JBOD formatting is also available.
There are two USB ports and two gigabit Ethernet ports on the back with one USB port handily placed on the front. There’s no eSata port to speak of though. A blue-backlit LCD is built into the front face, cycling through free space, time, date, IP address and current function. The current function, combined with two buttons, lets you select whether or not to transfer the contents of USB devices to the internal hard drives. Read the rest of this entry »
The US Federal Communications Commission wants Google to explain how its voice service application blocks costly calls to rural areas.
The commission sent a letter to the Mountain View company on Friday, asking for details by October 28 on its much-discussed Google Voice web application. The query comes two weeks after telecom giant AT&T accused Google of violating FCC open-internet policies with Google Voice.
At issue are FCC rules that let the country’s rural phone companies charge long-distance providers exorbitant fees to access their local landlines. The law was originally designed to help local phone firms survive despite low call volumes.
While long-distance outfits like AT&T are required to connect to these local markets, Google Voice blocks the calls and avoids the extra expenses. Google argues the FCC rules apply only to broadband carriers and not the creators of web-based software applications.
The FCC today told Google it must provide information on how Google Voice calls are routed, how its restrictions are implemented, and how it identifies the telephone numbers to which it restricts calls.
In a length statement to Google’s telecom and media counsel in Washington, Richard Whitt, FCC wireline bureau’s chief Sharon Gillet wrote: “In light of pending commission proceedings regarding concern about so-called ‘access simulation,’ the commission’s prohibition on call blocking by carriers, as well as the commission’s interest in ensuring that ‘broadband networks are widely deployed, open, affordable, and accessible to all consumers,’ we are interested in gathering facts that can provide a more complete understanding of the situation.” Read the rest of this entry »
