Most of my clients have Board Rooms and in those rooms are large displays connected to PC’s.

So there is always a need to be able to control a PC but also be cable free.

Three wireless technologies exist in this market :-

RF (Radio Frequency), Bluetooth and now 2.4Ghz Wireless.

RF is the oldest and least exciting, distance and line of sight plays a part.

I recently tried out the Wireless KeySonic Compact Keyboard with integrated Touch Pad (Model 540)

As the picture above shows it’s basically a laptop keyboard style and is ultra thin and light.

You use the supplied USB Dongle in an available USB socket on the PC and with zero configuration it just works.

The rage of 10m is equal to Bluetooth but much better than RF.

The build quality was pretty much what I expected from a Sub £30 product but saying that it looks and feels adequate for the task at hand.

This an entry level dual format HD reader it can read Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks.

It ships with an OEM version of PowerDVD 7.3 capable of playing back both formats (if your PC meets the other spec requirements).

It requires a SATA connection and comes supplied with a SATA cable.

The drive is about 1″ longer at the back than other drives I have seen.

The drive was relatively quiet on playback.

This drive is a DVD burner but it can’t burn Blu Ray or HD-DVD so this is a reader only for those formats.

The cost is circa £70.

Summary

Having access to 3 digital formats DVD/HD-DVD and Blu Ray from a single drive makes this a great addition to an existing HTPC or Entertainment PC.

The cost of PowerDVD alone is about £25 so the bundle makes this really good value for money.

On a side note Cyberlink have removed HD-DVD support in PowerDVD 8.0 so this is your last chance to get  HD-DVD playback software.

Specs

Blu-ray Disc and HD Dvd-rom drive

I’m all for PC’s taking different form factors and these look nice (I think) not sure about the wood effect one.

PC Mag has one in for review and give it 3.5 out of 5.

As their review points out this is in direct competition with Apple’s Mac Mini.

The Dell Studio Hybrid can however be configured with a blu ray drive and output HD over HDMI so this becomes interesting for those wanting a tidy/small PC based HD experience.

Link: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2326614,00.asp

I have hands on experience with a multi-touch capable device the iPod Touch. So I know what a flowing and fluid multi-touch experience should be.

So I was very disappointed watch the these videos of how multi-touch has been implemented on the Dell Latitude XT.

The best way for you to judge is to watch the videos.

First up we have one from Dell about installing it and using it.

Next up we have hands on review from Gottabemobile

Finally another video review here (sorry no video embed).

Link: http://blog.laptopmag.com/exclusive-hands-on-with-dells-xt-tablet-now-with-multi-touch

What I get up from watching these:

1) Using multi-touch while the laptop is in the traditional clam shell configuration is really counter intuitive. This only makes sense to me in Tablet mode.

2) Multi-touch sensitivity and accuracy of response seems to be an issue.

3) The lack of CPU power on the Latitude XT is a problem (watch the lag on opening photo gallery or clicking and manipulating images, not fluid).

4) Only having 3 gestures sounds very limiting.

The Laptop screens of the future are going to get very smudged up with all this pointing going on.

On a more positive note this is a good free upgrade for an existing XT owner and Dell should be commended for trying.

However its fairly obvious that Dell’s implementation of multi-touch is very 1.0 and pretty clunky.

I’m not making this up in Walt Mossberg’s video review of the 3g iPhone he says a couple of days in his two week trial the battery didn’t last the full day.

He goes into this topic around 2:20 of the clip below.

Now you can imagine the problems having a phone with a non removable battery that doesn’t last a full day. You end up with no form of communication.

All that GPS, 3g, Google Maps, Visual Voicemail go out the window if the device doesn’t have the juice to turn on.

In the keynote for the iPhone 3g Steve Jobs took great pleasure in announcing “better battery life”.

Can you imagine a keynote where the claims were a bit more realistic.

Hi, I’m Steve Jobs

This is the iPhone 3g, we think its cool, we think you going to love it, isn’t this just amazing, look at that screen its gorgeous, but if you plan on using it all day the battery probably wont last. 

Anyway watch Walt’s review which is generally positive but he does point out the fact its more expensive to own than 1st generation iPhone.

Link: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080708/newer-faster-cheaper-iphone-3g/