Marantz ZR6001 and ZC4001: Plug and play music
MP3 PlayersIf, like Crave, you're a sound junkie, then getting decent audio around your house is something you take very seriously. Setting up speakers all over your house can be annoying and messy, however. Before you know it, you've got a tangle of wires running up and down the walls of your formerly civilised looking home. Or you can opt for a wireless solution but be prepared to fork out more cash than you'd pay for a holiday to New York.
Fortunately for all you audiophiles, there's an easier and slightly cheaper solution that lets you stream digital sound around your house without needing a degree in engineering. It's called the Marantz Weave system and it uses your home's mains network to pump sound around your house. Using the Weave system you can listen to your DAB radio, CD player, TV, DVD player and anything else that plugs into the amp anywhere in your house that has a mains outlet. Continue reading...
Lexmark X2470: A smashing bargain
PrintersLast week Lexmark sent us a shiny new X2470 Everyday Compact All-in-one printer, but we broke it. It wouldn't have been so bad if we'd taken a sledgehammer to it in a rockstar-inspired frenzy of destructive petulance, but it was sheer cack-handedness on our part.
Luckily, Lexmark saw the funny side and sent us a replacement X2470. We got this one working without any issues, and have concluded that it's a pretty nifty device. It looks a bit odd -- as if bits are missing from it, or Lexmark was running low on beige plastic -- but it delivers decent prints for a £60 printer/scanner.
Samsung E900: Slide over, Chocolate phone
Mobile PhonesIt's no secret that Samsung like making slider phones, but recently they've taken a hefty blow from their rival LG, who've made the extremely popular Chocolate phone. We knew that Samsung wouldn't take this lying down.
Last month we described the E900 as a potential Chocolate killer, but we weren't sure when or where it was going to be commercially available.
Segway on hire-purchase: only daredevils need apply
GadgetsIn Italy, it's hard to cross a road without getting run over by a speeding Vespa. Cars have to jostle for space next to the stream of brightly coloured scooters that transport a cross-section of Italian society from A to B.
Segway may have had a similar vision for it's upright electric scooters in America, but they still remain a curiosity in the land of car addicts. The Crave team has collectively had only a handful of sightings of the Segway Human Transporter, despite frequent trips across the Atlantic.
How can I upgrade my laptop?
How can I upgrade my laptop? It's running like a dog and I've tried everything to speed it up. I'm at the end of my tether.
SanDisk goes after the iPod iPuppets
MP3 PlayersIf you've been on public transport this past week, you'll have noticed what looks like a counter-culture uprising against the iPod. Posters and stickers have appeared showing chimps, donkeys and sheep listening to music on iPods. Underneath the images there are taglines like 'are you an iChimp?' and, 'Don't follow the iPack'. One advert shows a man strung up by iPod headphones, like Pinocchio, beneath him the tagline reads, 'have you become an iPuppet?'
The adverts have a pseudo-street graffiti style. The stencilled graphics and ancient typewriter font give the impression of an underground movement against cultural homogenisation. But visit the idont.com Web site espoused by the ads and you'll uncover a different story. Far from a triumph of AdBusters or a campaign financed by Naomi Klein converts, these posters are actually SanDisk's new marketing campaign.
SanDisk is Apple's archrival. Since May 2006 SanDisk has been the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer, behind Apple. Its e200 player looks very much like the nano, but unlike many other iPod clones it sells well. Continue reading...
Crave Talk: BBC to stream live World Cup games
TelevisionsEmployers across the UK gasped a collective sigh of exasperation as the BBC announced its plans to broadcast all its World Cup games on the Internet. Viewers will be able to log on to the Web site and watch every World Cup 2006 game at the same time as they are shown live on BBC TV.
The service is likely to decrease the chances of employees calling in sick on the morning of crucial World Cup games. But it is also likely to increase the time they spend randomly hammering keyboard buttons, pretending to work and squinting at a browser window.
This could be the biggest productivity zapper since Ebaum's World. Emergency service co-ordinators will stop taking 999 calls; planes will fall from the skies; the Home Office will abandon the borders and illegal immigrants will flood our shores...
Crave welcomes the move, even if it means working society will implode for the next few weeks, and during Wimbledon, when the BBC will again Webcast matches. But one major concern is how Aunty's Web site will cope with the enormous influx of viewers desperate for a look at the games. Continue reading...
Microsoft's Virtual Earth: 3D heaven
SoftwareMicrosoft's UK release of Virtual Earth has blown us away with its high-quality imagery and ease of use. We love the improved satellite image quality -- we can see the trees in our back garden, while with Google Earth we sometimes had to guess which of the blurry houses was our palatial residence.
The 3D imagery, or the 'birds eye view' as Microsoft calls it, is stunning -- it blows Google Earth's tilt functionality out of the water. Microsoft claims it will have birds eye views of 235 square miles around London in the coming weeks, but we were surprised that many of the tourist hot spots, such as Tower Bridge, Oxford Circus and Buckingham Palace were missing at the moment. We were hoping for 3D views of the Queen sunbathing in the grounds of Buckingham palace, but no such luck.
It also seems crazy that they haven't mentioned getting 3D views of other major cities in the UK -- surely it would have made more sense to get 50 square miles of the five biggest cities in the UK, rather than getting 3D views of unexciting London suburbs like Croydon (as pictured above). Brummies, take to the streets in protest! Continue reading...
O2 BlackBerry 7130g: Hands-on with the 7100x successor
Mobile PhonesWe've been lucky enough to get our hands on the O2 BlackBerry 7130g, launched yesterday, which is the successor to the O2 BlackBerry 7100x. As you can see, it looks more like a mobile phone than any other BlackBerry device to date and measures a relatively pocket-friendly 56 by 115 by 18mm. Compared to the 7100x, it's not only smaller but lighter by 2g and we like the new design, which is smoother and rounder.
The 7130g is similar to the 7100x in size, but has the same dedicated side convenience key and mute button as on the T-Mobile BlackBerry 8700g. The most original aspect of the handset is the new keypad, which is reminiscent of a mobile phone keypad but has a Qwerty layout and isn't as cumbersome as the 8700g's flat and squashed full keypad. Continue reading...
Win a Crave t-shirt: one week to go!
GadgetsThere's just one week to go in our Win a Crave T-shirt competition, so put your thinking cap on, dig out your typing mittens and rattle off your entry. We have ten t-shirts to give away to the people who submit the best reviews of products or programs by 12 midnight on Thursday 8 June, so it's time to share your thoughts about your favourite gear.
Available in one slimming colour (black), with a stylish white Crave logo on the front, these t-shirts aren't available for sale or rent -- the only way to get one is to win it. Write a witty and insightful review of a product from the Reviews section of the site, or a helpful and entertaining review of a program from the Downloads section, and your outpourings will automatically be passed on to our judges, who will award t-shirts to the authors of the ten best reviews. Click here for full details, and remember, your reviews must reach us by midnight on 8 June. -ML
Zepto Znote 6615WD: a Viking's laptop
LaptopsScandinavia rocks. Sweden's famous for its adult entertainment, Denmark gave us kick-ass bacon and Norway invented the paper clip, the humble device that kept our world in order in the dark days before the Internet.
That last one's hard to top, but Denmark has gone a giant leap further than pigs flesh and sent us its Znote 6615WD, from the country's biggest laptop manufacturer Zepto.
On first impressions, this Viking laptop didn't exactly rape and pillage our fancy. It's a sort of greyish, beigeish colour and left us wishing Asus hadn't taken back its bright yellow Lamborghini VX1, or that Sony hadn't taken out a restraining order against us for the attempted kidnapping of its Vaio TX2.
BenQ W100: No more acid trips
Home CinemaThe cheaper end of the DLP (Digital Light Processing) projector market is plagued by the dreaded 'acid-trip', or 'rainbow' effect, a kind of visual distortion that causes red, green and blue motion-blur artefacting when you flit your eyes across the screen. To paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson (he of gonzo journalism fame), there is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a projector in the depths of an ether binge. It's an odd thing to witness, and is principally caused by the projector failing to refresh the picture's component colours fast enough. Last year's Dell MP2300 is a prime offender of this, but the BenQ W100 (pictured) seems to have avoided it, despite the meagre 500 price tag. Continue reading...
Google Calendar: Not a PDA killer yet
SoftwareHave you ever bought a PDA and spent the first month religiously adding calendar entries, but then given up, frustrated with dodgy handwriting recognition and the fiddly keyboard? If so, then Google Calendar could be the service for you, especially as it's free.Â
Crave has been a Gmail addict for a long time and loves the way we can find ancient emails by searching on keywords. We now use it as our virtual memory, emailing ourselves morsels of useful information -- gone are the days of scraps of paper littering our desks. The fact we can now do similar things with Google Calendar is so good that our palms got hot and sweaty trying out the features.
We loved the fact that you can add entries to the Calendar without filling in tedious forms, but weren't as impressed with the Gmail integration. It works okay with simple emails you send yourself, such as 'Lunch with Bob on Friday', but doesn't do well at scraping event information from long, gossipy emails. Google wins a big gold star, though, for even attempting this and we're confident that it will improve over time. Continue reading...
Dell XPS M2010: Mutant 20-inch laps-top lives!
LaptopsWhen Dell showed off its 20-inch Mobile Concept at this year's CES, it was greeted as a gimmick -- an attractive but freakish concept apparently doomed never to see the light of day.
Undeterred by the sceptical CES crowd, and buoyed by positive user opinion from its official user forums, Dell has made the bold move of pushing its 20-incher to market, largely unchanged but now bearing the name Dell XPS M2010.
The laptop (or 'laps-top' as Crave calls it) was shown in its full glory at last week's Ultimate XPS Experience, and it's just as imposing a sight as it was in Las Vegas. It has a faux-leather exterior with a clever folding design that includes a full-size detachable Bluetooth keyboard and leather carrying handle with anodised hinges. Continue reading...
Sony D-VE7000S: portable DVD for World Cup exiles
Home CinemaCrave's beautiful 32-inch Sharp LCD is about to hijacked by a World Cup-obsessed partner so we are currently looking into alternatives. Sony's new DVD Walkman caught our eye this morning -- the timing was perfect.
According to Sony, the D-VE7000S DVD Walkman has a 7-inch LCD widescreen, isn't much bigger than a DVD case, and weighs about the same as a hardback novel, so it's ideal for the tattered exile. The three hours of battery life is enough for a Hollywood epic or six episodes of Sex and the City, with the latter our preferred choice for World Cup escapism. (We recommend watching the Games People Play episode, in which Samantha meets a sports addict: it will provide some much-needed empathy with your predicament.) Continue reading...
Humax HDCI-2000: The World Cup in hi-def, for free!
Home CinemaFootball. Opium of the proletarian mind. You may find 22 men kicking a ball around a patch of grass about as exciting as embroidery, but at least there's the possibility of a ringside seat at some good old ultraviolence. And if bloodshed's on your mind, then high definition is what you need: what finer way is there to watch a hooligan deranged on Stella bottling a Scandinavian in a comedy horned helmet? And the BBC's new free-to-air hi-def satellite channel could be the way to do it.
A new Humax box, the HDCI-2000, will let you watch the new hi-def satellite channels without a Sky box, and without paying a subscription. The BBC will be broadcasting the World Cup in hi-def and has already screened programmes such as Bleak House and Planet Earth. Continue reading...
Sony LocationFree: the ultimate PSP accessory
Home CinemaYou wait 80 years for a device that'll stream television from the living room to wherever you happen to be, and then two come along at once. Yesterday we were drooling over the chocolate-bar-shaped Sling Media Slingbox; today we're ogling the paperback-book-sized Sony LocationFree base station (first encountered at CES). Both these products squirt television signals around your house, or around the world using a broadband Internet connection. This means you can get Lost in your garden, or stay in touch with The Office from a hotel in Japan.
Unlike the Slingbox, the LocationFree base station doesn't contain a TV tuner, so you need to connect it to a set-top box, PVR and/or DVD player using the two sets of composite inputs. On the plus side, the base station includes a wireless transmitter, so you can make a wireless connection to a PSP or a laptop PC running the LocationFree Player software (in contrast, you'll need a separate wireless router for wireless Slingboxing). You can then wander round the house watching live television, programmes recorded on your PVR, or a DVD. You can register up to eight devices with the base station (although you'll need to buy extra copies of the Player software if you have more than one PC), but you can only stream television to one device at a time -- so if you send both your kids down the garden with a PSP each, one of them will end up eating worms. Continue reading...
'Office in a Bucket': an inflatable room
GadgetsHere at Crave we spend all day sitting around in gorgeous white spheres evaluating beautiful tech products. So imagine our delight to hear that we can now inflate a pure white office in our gardens at home as well, and keep up the good work on those lazy summer evenings when we're blogging away at home. The bliss. All you need is the Office in a Bucket (OIAB) -- it's like Steve Jobs has built you a garden shed.
The trusty OIAB does exactly what it says on the bucket. Simply pull the fabric out of the bucket, plug it into a power source and the fan in the base of the bucket will inflate it in about eight minutes via a terrifying umbilical membrane (see picture). There's no door system, but you can clip it shut for "added privacy", according to the OIAB's manufacturer Inflate. Continue reading...
Sharp MP-B300: But too blunt to slay the iPod
MP3 PlayersHere we go again. These are Sharp's new MP-B200 (512MB) and MP-B300 (1GB) MP3 players. The Sharp MP-B300 can be expanded with miniSD cards. The players measure 49 by 88 by 9mm and include direct audio encoding, an FM transmitter, voice recorder and FM Tuner.
To make things easier, we're going to be using a simple checklist from now on. This will make it easier for you, our readers, to see at a glance why we're seeing so many unexciting MP3 players appear on the market. Hopefully, by standardising our response to new players, we might even find that a manufacturer reading Crave realises where it's going wrong and steps in to save the day, so here goes... Continue reading...
Slingbox makes its UK debut
GadgetsThe Slingbox has arrived in the UK and has just been awarded Crave's unofficial title of 'best thing ever'. Forget the Noxon 2 Audio, this is huge.
The concept is simple: it lets you watch what's on your home television set from any Internet-connected PC anywhere in the world. You simply connect the Slingbox to your home network, and its built-in digital and analogue tuners pipe Freeview or terrestrial TV over the Internet.
You can then access the video feed via the Slingplayer software from any broadband-connected PC, controlling your TV as if you were at home.
The Slingbox is shaped a bit like a chocolate bar and is extremely easy to install. We got the whole thing up and running within ten minutes over the weekend intending to watch Big Brother Live from our holiday home in Brighton. Unfortunately the weather was pants so we stayed at home and watched Fifth Gear in the bath on a wireless laptop, thanks to Slingbox. Continue reading...
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