Sennheiser - PC 350 Review

Sennheiser - PC 350

You can tell a lot from a box. The packaging these headphones come in is slick looking, sturdy and well designed (there's no moulded plastic to hack through and bust your scissors on here). And the PC 350 set itself is built along exactly the same lines.

In fact the build quality is first-rate, and these headphones are solid and yet still relatively lightweight and really comfortable to wear. With their spacious ear cups cushioned with over a centimetre of black foam, we're going to go out on a limb here and state that the PC 350s are the most comfortable pair of headphones we've ever worn. Which is handy when you're settling in for a long session of Unreal Tournament.

The ear cups twist through ninety degrees, so the unit can be stored or transported flat, and there's a microphone boom attached, which again is sturdily built and flexible in the middle so you can bend it to whatever position you find most beneficial. A volume control and mic mute button sit half-way down the headphones lead, which attaches to your sound card's speaker and microphone ports via two standard 3.5mm jacks.

Right. Prepare for a trip to superlative city, where there's a bargain sale on "excellent", "fantastic" and "amazing". The sound these little fellows produce is all three of these rolled into one and then seasoned with a little more "superb". Playing games with these headphones, we noticed little nuances of noise that we'd never heard before.

In Race 07, the sound of pit mechanics tinkering in the background was bursting with detail - spanners turning, pit crew members mumbling, the lot. The bike on RedLynx Trials 2 sounded brutally raw. Guns in Half Life 2 were meaty and chunky, and the echo effects indoors were highly realistic.

The all-round clarity delivered was quite astonishing, and then same was true when listening to music. If there's one slight downside, it's that the musical performance with heavier rock tracks lacked just a touch of bass oomph. But we must stress this is a very slight nit-pick; we're not talking holes in the sound or anything like that.

The microphone is also a quality affair, and perhaps best of all, the PC 350's smooth styling makes the wearer look like he or she should be piloting Blue Thunder (or possibly Airwolf). It's true, the headset isn't cheap, but this is top-end audio hardware so you can expect to pay a premium. Besides, if you hunt around online you can get it a fair whack cheaper than the RRP.

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Epson - Perfection V500 Photo Review

All-in-One printer/scanner/copier machines are all the rage at present, especially if you're trying to run a home office or small business on a fairly limited budget. However, the frustration for dedicated amateur and semi-pro photographers is that most multi-function machines manage to do several tasks reasonably well but none of them to a high enough degree of excellence.

For this reason, a dedicated photo scanner or printer will always appeal to the keen snapper who demands high quality reproductions. Epson has been aware of this for some time and its Perfection Photo series has concentrated on meeting this need for those who don't have huge amounts of money but have plenty of enthusiasm.

The main joy about the Perfection V500 Photo is that it caters for a wide range of standard and non-standard formats and it doesn't keep you hanging around before it starts scanning. It's designed to be visually cool in jet black with a silver strip around the middle. Controls are kept to the usual minimum: four one-touch buttons at the front for power and sending to PDF, e-mail and conventional printer, plus a USB 2.0 port at the back to connect to your PC.

The first thing you notice when you unpack the contents is that you have not one but two film holders. The first can contain up to twelve frames of 35mm film and a maximum of four 35mm transparencies, while the second will hold one frame of 6 x 12cm medium format film, a much neglected photographic format. Once inserted in the relevant holder, you align them next to the appropriate indicated letter on the document table and away you go. Using 6,400dpi optical resolution and 3.4 optical density, the results are impressive.

There have been two big improvements from the previous models in this series. The first is the use of ReadyScan LED technology (making it the first Charged-Coupled Device scanner to use white LED as a light source) which delivers faster scanning speeds, allows almost instant start-up (even when the machine has been idle for a while) and is low on power consumption.

The second is the upgraded software. Epson Scan has now reached version 3.2 and incorporates several new features, including Digital ICE Technology which removes dust and scratches from colour film (but alas, not mono), as well as advanced backlight correction and colour correction. The additional supplied software is the standard Epson Creativity Suite plus the well-respected Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 (for PC) and 3 (for Mac) and ABBYY FineReader Sprint 6 Plus 1 to import your scanned text documents into your favourite word processor.

Should you wish to use the scanner for multi-page documents then an automatic document feeder is an optional extra, although it will only hold 30 sheets of A4 and you have to replace the scanner cover to use it. Maybe use the All-in-One for that task then...

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Canon - PIXMA MX850 Review

This is Canon's top-of-the-range multifunction machine for the SOHO market. The PIXMA MX range differs from the MP range in offering four-colour print, though it provides a separate, pigmented black ink for printing black text, too.

The substantial MX850 - it's nearly as deep as it is wide - has a built-in Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) which, like the print engine, can operate on both sides of the paper in one job. This means you can perform duplex copying, to produce a two-sided copy of an original, though you'll have to wait for it.

We believe Canon still has trouble with the drying time of its inks as, every time it prints in duplex mode, it waits nearly 10 seconds between finishing the first side of each page and starting the second. A 20-side black text print job took just under nine minutes to complete and a 20-side copy took the best part of 10 minutes. These times are long enough to make busy people resort to single-sided printing and ignore any resource savings.

The machine itself follows Canon's usual sleek lines, styled in black and silver and with a comprehensive control panel running nearly the full width of its front. Controls include quick-dial buttons for the built-in fax facility, a number pad for phone dialling, a 62mm LCD display for previewing photos and an easy-to-use navigation ring, though without the supremely ergonomic click-dial of the high-end PIXMA MP machines.

As well as printing, scanning and copying, the MX850 can handle most memory card formats for direct photo printing and has a PictBridge socket if you prefer to connect your camera with a cable. There's also a facility for direct printing of CDs and DVDs, using a separate holder which slots in once you've pulled down a flap inside the all-in-one.

More conventional printing can come from a feed tray at the rear or a cartridge which slides in underneath, both of which can take up to 150 sheets of plain paper or 25 or so photo blanks. Print quality of both plain text and colour graphics is clean with little ink spatter, and photo images, while not as good in the lighter tints as from the six-colour PIXMA MP machines, are perfectly serviceable for day-to-day use.

If you search about for consumables you can find Canon's original ink cartridges at low prices, giving a cost per page for black print of around 1.8p, with 2.2p for colour. The printer's heads should last the life of the machine, so cost of ownership should remain low.

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Microsoft - Sidewinder Mouse Review

The first rule of Sidewinder Mouse? Download software from the Web. With no disc included in the otherwise comprehensive packaging, the bright startup guide is insistent that that's where you start. It's a 14MB download you need, and cleverly it's grouped with standard mice rather than the gaming menu under Microsoft's tree structure.

This, then, is Microsoft's long-promised re-entry into the PC gaming hardware sector, to which it made a token gesture with the release of an Xbox 360 gamepad for PC, but otherwise left alone since abandoning the original Sidewinder gaming line many years ago. The new Sidewinder Mouse is promised to be the first in a line-up of accessories aimed very much at the serious gamer.

As is clear when you examine this new rodent. It comes, for instance, with a separate box of weights that you can add and remove to customise it to the feel you desire. This box also doubles up as a cable anchor, so you can restrict the length of the USB lead with which the mouse attaches itself (this is a strictly wired rodent, which is just as gamers seem to like it).

Likewise, it supports one-click DPI readjustment, so you can easily make the device more or less sensitive using three buttons mounted into the centre of the unit. The default variables are 400, 800 and 2000dpi, although these can be configured using the software. A bonus is a small LED screen built into the mouse that tells you the current DPI setting, although this is more novelty than anything actually vital.

The software turns out to be something of a treasure trove. One of the features of the Sidewinder mouse is a 180-degree quick turn, highly useful in first person shooter games. Given that the Sidewinder has a left button, right button, quick launch button (with the Vista-only assignment of opening your games folder), DPI buttons, scroll wheel and two side buttons, you can assign one of these to the quick turn function in the aforementioned software and still have plenty left over.

One other fascinating addition is the ability to record a macro. Should you encounter a game where you need to occasionally repeat the same manoeuvre - a run and strafe, for instance, or consistently shooting at the same place to remove an obstacle - you can record a macro to memorise this, and a click of one of the chosen buttons will then perform the function for you.

It's a feature we've not found full use of yet - and we tested the mouse across a range of RTS and FPS games, none of which really required such a stringent repetition of an action - but we can still see its value in perhaps an RPG, where repetitive actions can be more prevalent.

It's a selection of features that lives up to the gamer-focused approach of the device, and while the majority are very much take-it-or-leave-it, it's hard to find many other devices on the market that demonstrate such depth of thinking.

The bonus at the heart of it is that it's a neat mouse to actually use. It's chunky yet ergonomically comfortable, and even in standard day-to-day working operations we've become very accustomed to it. There is, however, a problem. And that's its size.

The Sidewinder is quite a beast of a peripheral, and those with small to medium sized hands are recommended to give it a test drive before shelling out for one. This big-handed reviewer was more than pleased with it, but has colleagues who quickly passed it over. There's also an argument that Logitech's latest gaming mice more than give the Sidewinder a run for its money.

Yet this is still an intriguing product, and one with real merit to it if you take your games seriously. It's too expensive, really, for a standalone everyday mouse, but is still a promising sign of things to come from Microsoft's rejuvenated Sidewinder line.

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Vodafone - USB Modem Stick Review

There is a school of thought that says the days of the traditional ISP are numbered. Why? Because of mobile broadband. With every UK operator now offering a modem that uses USB, is self-installing under Windows XP and Vista, and that offers connections for download at up to 3.6Mbps, you can see why.

These modems are really designed for use out and about with laptops but there is nothing to stop you plugging one into your desktop PC when you want the connection there. If there is a price war, and unlimited access comes down to a point where it competes with traditional ISPs, then the choice between fixed and mobile broadband is a no-brainer. I'll take the mobile, please.

Vodafone isn't content with the 3.6Mbps scenario, though, and has started to roll out 7.2Mbps download speeds. Starting in December last year in a few Central London postcodes and some airports, the plan is to gradually increase the coverage. Along with this launch came two modems capable of the higher speed.

Both are USB devices, and both are available for the same pricing, which could be free depending on your contract choice. The boringly named USB Modem 7.2 is a bar-of-soap style device, white in colour, with a red band that pulses when data is being transmitted. It connects via a USB cable and comes with short (19cm), and long (80cm) cables.

Meanwhile the USB Modem Stick is, as its name suggests, designed to plug directly into a USB port. It is smaller than the USB Modem 7.2 and looks like a slightly oversized flash drive. It comes with a cable which could prove very handy if the stick obscures a second USB port that you want to use, as it did on our test laptop.

The desktop software which self installs when you connect either modem to your laptop or PC includes an SMS module with contact manager. It shows data usage in both volume and time for the current and previous months, which is handy if you are on a limited use tariff and need to keep an eye on things.

During testing both modems worked perfectly. We were not in a 7.2Mbps zone when we tested them, but they both found a 3.6Mbps connection and worked with that. You can tell what speed you are connected at by the colour of a light on each of the modems and by checking the desktop software.

Finding a 7.2Mbps connection is likely to be a challenge for many at this stage, as only some airports and London postcodes are up and running. However, Vodafone does have plans for a wider rollout, and in the meantime the 3.6Mbps connections should be solid and stable if our experience is any kind of indicator.

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