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

Note this is Dell’s Offer Price and is likely to change.

This is my recommended buy with a couple of caveats.

1) Some users have reported banding where the colours on the left and right aren’t as strong as those in the middle.

2) There may be an Input Lag issue (bad for fast moving objects like video games).

Both these things would perhaps rule out the 2709W for graphic designers or gamers.

However less demanding users may not even notice and outside of these issues the monitor gets a good write up (see cnet review below).

The price is what makes this a recommended buy.

If you purchase this through Dell’s Home and Home Office (i.e. not the business channel). Distance Selling regulations should protect you in the event you are unhappy with your purchase.

You will need to return the goods immediately and I would recommend you purchase with a credit card for additional protection.

Check with Dell prior to ordering your consumer rights in relation to returning goods.

No modern appliance is perfect so do some homework.

Product Link:

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=170559

Review Link:

http://www.cnet.com.au/desktops/monitors/0,239029427,339289509,00.htm

If you don’t know what input lag is:-

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dell+input+lag&search_type=&aq=f

In this relatively tiny form factor Iomega has a generous 320gb 5400 RPM hard disk.

The great thing about these is they are USB powered so you don’t have any additional power cables to carry just the supplied USB cable. When you are connected to your PC the USB Port/Cable powers the drive.

I have issued these drives to many remote users over the years and not once had a problem which is saying something as they are portable and more likely to get bashed about.

This 320gb model has about 298gb of available storage. It comes formatted Fat32. Some of my files are large so I always format new storage as with the NTFS file system that can deal with them better.

Tip: As great as these drives are they are also a security risk. With server like storage capacities you could end up leaving the equivalent of your companies’ data in the back of a taxi.  Check out something like TrueCrypt for additional security. Link: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php

The cost at £94 inc VAT for the 320GB version is reasonable but cheaper lower capacity models are available. (see Amazon, Dabs etc).

Grab one of these and go do some backing up! Just keep the drive in a safe place.

I heard some good things about Samsung Hard Disks on the Internet, so I thought I would give them a go.

I needed an internal SATA 3.0 500gb. My main criteria was Cost per GB, reliability, operating noise and performance.

You take such a gamble when you get a new hard disk, some are quiet, some are noisy, some make chunking noise, some don’t.

So between the good reputation from peers/users I chose the Samsung HD501LJ

So how does it meet my criteria?

Cost Per GB: 13p Per GB

Reliability: So far so good, build quality looks good too. Installation was simple.

Operating Noise: Excellent virtually silent.

Performance: I haven’t done any technical speed tests but anecdotally in use this seems very fast. I back up my data to ISO format and I can create a 20gb ISO in about 5 minuets. 

Summary

I have had nothing but a good experience so far. The key issue is reliability and that will only be known after time.

Co-incidentally My Dell XPS 420 shipped from Dell with the same model the HD501LJ

So a recommended buy from me, but if you have a different story share it with the world in the comments.