Leather Clad laptop tested

LEGION Hardware asks itself whether budget AGP upgrades are really, really worth it. Actually LH tests a HIS Radeon X1600 Pro with 256MB memory and supports new technologies like AVIVO, SM 3.0, Crossfire and H264 HD. LH shows that moving from the X700 Pro to the X1600 Pro for example is marked by a significant increase in performance, which makes the investment worthy. Note that the X1600 Pro actually uses slower DDR2 memory and has a slower core speed.

Tomshardware reviews two affordable graphic tablets, which are the digital equivalent of a slate and a pencil. One is from Genius and is called the Mousepen. It is cheap at £35 and covers a 8-inch x 6-inch area. There is also an optical mouse that you will probably not use that much. The other tablet is a Wacom Graphire 4 Classic, a much superior product, but at a much higher price - Wacom products are more likely to be used by professional artists. The concept of value for moneyness couldn't be truer.

Leather clad is no longer the preserve of long-legged, sexy laddies. The Asus S6F's most notable feature is the hand pressed leather used rather than the cheap plastic. The S6F comes with its own presentation bag and special leather mouse - watch out for the smell when your hand sweats. Anyway, it is a Core Duo model with a 80GB HDD, Wifi, and a DVD burner. You will be impressed by the 1GB memory and the 11.1-inch WXGA LCD screen. Impressive but wickedly expensive.

Sysopt tests the Coolermaster iGreen power 500W PSU. Coolermaster advertises an efficiency of up to 85% on this PSU. It has up to 12 connectors and uses an intelligent 120mm fan for the cooling. It is silent and is also ready for SLI and Crossfire. It also comes with a three year warranty and the reviewer was impressed by its stability and the fact that it exceeded its peak capacity rating by 100w although the initial price - or investment in this case is significant.

Hardwarezoom presents an article on the TwinMos Ultra-X 140X 4GB Compact Flash card. CF offers the maximum capacity for memory cards and are therefore the most suited if you are planning to take lots of High res photos for example. The TwinMOS 140x is the fastest card in CF format with speeds of up to 21MB/s and write speeds of 16.2MB/s. In the review, it is compared to a 80x model from Lexar and to the Seagate 4GB microdrive - which fits in CF slots. The 4GB model is not that much expensive, especially when compared to SD or MMC.

Laptoplogic tests three ultraportable laptops. The Sony Vaio, The Thinkpad X41 and the Panasonic W4. They are not cheap as you can guess and even if Dell's latitude X1 is not included, the three on offer do provide more power than average users will contend with. Good ultra portables offer a particular mix of performance, weight and autonomy. Each of those laptops reviewed offer their own peculiar mix and the final conclusion as usual is - choose your laptop carefully. µ