The Inspire 5700 is a 5.1 speaker system with a digital decoder. It accepts optical as well as coaxial inputs-so make sure that you have a soundcard like the Creative Audigy2 or Z5 with the extra drive, which has these outputs. Analog inputs are also provided on the decoder but onIy for the rear and front.

The decoder supports the EAX, Dolby Digital and DTS formats. There are plenty of settings on this unit­you can switch a stereo output to an up-mixed 5.1 sound plus switch between analog, optical and coaxial inputs. Separate volume controls are also provided for the front, rear, center and subwoofer.

The IR remote control is an added luxury. The center channel is larger than the front, rear satellites. The 30W subwoofer coupled with the satellites really packed it in whilst playing Metallica, and neither did the bass distort terribly when its volume was turned up.

The optical drive is a regular 24x CD-ROM drive. This laptop has the bare necessities-if you want to connect to your office network you have an integrated RJ45 connection. If you want use a dial- up, the 56K modem is also built into it.

For: The biggest plus is its price tag; a very affordable laptop with all the necessities. A good mobile solution for someone who only needs to check mail and make presentations.

Against: This laptop is quite heavy approximately 3 kg! We sorely missed a CD writer. Besides, the mic and headphone connections should have been on the front panel.

The ‘V’ in stands for VIA. This laptop is a steal for those who long for a laptop but cannot afford one. At a mere 30,000, (taxes extra and if you shell out a couple of hundreds more, you’ll get a leather carry-case) it is a decent buy for those who are not into any kind of serious number crunching or gaming.

The laptop sports a very modest configuration. The silver machine houses a VIA C3 processor running at 1 GHz. There are four USB 2.0 ports very useful. Unfortunately, the connections for the headphones and mic are inconveniently placed on the rear panel of the laptop.

The audio is tinny and nothing should be expected from it definitely not for those into speedy audio ripping. The graphics are average and just about managed to get through the Quake benchmark running in the ‘Normal’ setting, clocking a very average 25.9 fps. The laptop somehow managed to get through the Business Winstone and Content Creation benchmarks but with scores on the lower side.

The CX7300 is a 3.2 mega pixel camera-extremely simple to use for someone who does not know the ABCs of photogra phy. The ca mera is comfortable to hold­shaped like the Sony Cybershot series with the left panel curved to allow your hand to grip it better. All the buttons are within thumb’s reach. As far as scene presets go, there are only two-the Auto and the Night Scene mode. Movie Mode is the tandard motion-capturing mode.

Then there is the ‘dedicated’ delete button! It’s your job to figure out how well this assists a user-we didn’t. Unfortunately, there is no Video-Out connection on the ca mera, only a USB port provided for image transfer. It supports SD and MMC storage cards in addition to its 16 MB storage space. Maximum resolution offered is 2096×1560, though this is merely depicted as three stars and labelled ‘best’ according to the camera.

Another dedicated button, Flash, allows you to turn off or enable Red-Eye Reduction. There is no Macro mode but it wouldn’t be useful since there is no optical zoom. The test photographs taken were very average. The camera picked up certain details like text on batteries but anything smaller was blurry. Details on the motherboard and specular highlights were average.

For: It is an ergonomic camera with very easy-to-use functions such as flash, which are all explained on the LCD display. It offers up to 16 MB internal memory. Against: There are no additional settings to play around with-very few scene presets. There is no Video-Out.

Anodized Aluminum-that’s what the Maxtor One Touch external hard drive is made of. This particular Maxtor One Touch device has 300 GB of storage space! It is extremely easy to set up and get going, and has the extra advantage of being placed vertically with the help of a plastic stand.

Unfortunately, the stand does not grip the drive at all and this increases the chances of the hard drive slipping out of it, if moved around the desktop or server. The device has two FireWire ports and a USB 2.0 port. A button on the front panel can be configured to back up a particular folder/volume/drive on a system. Once the configuration is done, just press the button and the backup begins.

The software bundled along is quite extensive. The manual is comprehensive, with information on everything from setting up The drive to configuring the software. The software interface is not alien, but it takes a while to understand backup and restore options. Backups can also be saved like templates, known as ‘data sets,’ and you can even configure scripts to run the backup.

The backup software, Retrospect, allows you to compress the data being backed up to the external drive. Even though the drive speed is 5,400 rpm, it could transfer up to 580 MB of information in just 31 seconds! Plus it is super-quiet.

For: The software included with the drive is expansive and really useful the ‘one touch backup’ is a great time­saver. Virtually no sound emanates from the external drive. The One Touch is a great option for a small office, since there are other storage capacity options available for this model.

Against: The stand for the drive is rather flimsy and breakable.

This hard drive runs at a speed of 7,200 rpm and its average access time as per SiSoft Sandra was only 6 milliseconds! Even the 580 MB of information we transferred to the drive took little over half a minute. Bounce Back Express is very easy to use as its entire interface is rather Spartan; you won’t find too many frills here.

The configuration option too includes only the bare minimum-there wasn’t much to play around with. All that you need to specify is the source and destination locations. For the self-employed person who needs a backup solution without knowing too much, technology, this is it.

For: Very stylish indeed-the build quality is excellent. The stand provided clips onto the bottom panel. There is no way this drive can be ‘pushed around’ easily.

Against: The documentation provided with the drive is very limited-a skimpy booklet is all you will get.