Friday Fives: What's on show at Cebit 2010
CeBIT, held each March in Hannover, Germany, is one of the biggest showcases of new computer technology in the world, and this week Computeractive has been there to check out all the latest products that'll be on sale over the next six months. With thousands of exhibitors there are just too many to list, so we've boiled it all down to the the best products that represent five key trends from this year's show.
1) Loud Laptops
Laptop computers don't have a great reputation when it comes to sound quality, and with good reason: most have tiny, tinny speakers packed into the case as an afterthought. This year, though, several of the biggest computer names at Cebit have been showing portable computers that, they claim, are designed to sound great.
The Asus NX90 is certainly eye-catching: it's huge and completely covered in brushed aluminium. And, alongside some unusual features such as the two touchpads - one on either side of the keyboard - it has a powerful sound system provided by Bang and Olufsen IcePower. Its speaker enclosures have a volume of 108cc, and although it's very hard to judge the quality of sound in a busy trade show we can testify to the volume on offer.
A similar product was also on show at the stand of Asus's key rival MSI. Its GT660 gaming laptop packs a Core i7 processor, Blu-ray, two hard disks and Nvidia 285M graphics, but also a 2.1 sound system from Dynaudio - again, it's impressively thunderous.
2) Smart Storage
Network attached storage devices are to be found everywhere at the show, with the manufacturers seemingly adding new functions each and every year, but a few in particular stood out. The new Thecus N4200 has an unusual case with two displays, but there's also a lithium-ion battery in the back - if the mains power supply fails, this gives it enough power to shut down properly, saving your data.
Not to be outdone, rival Qnap was demonstrating its new QMobile tool for the iPhone and iPod Touch - this gives access to the multimedia functions of its NAS devices from any Apple mobile handset.
3) Neat Networking
Network storage aside, there are plenty of clever networking products on show. We particularly liked Devolo's new Smart+ powerline network adapters: instead of using LEDs to indicate the network status, these use an LCD display to provide far more information on the status of the network. The company was also showing this prototype of a new product due in September - this little white box will run at speeds of up to 500Mbps:
Also, good news for anyone who was tempted by our review of the AVM Fritzbox but couldn't stretch to the price: the company is launching a new, simpler model with the ISDN functions removed and a much lower price. The Fritzbox WLAN 3370 includes 802.11N networking, and should cost around £115 - it'll be available in a few months.
4) Powerful Programs
Although Cebit includes hall upon hall of new computer hardware, there are also dozens of software vendors showing off their new tools. As we reported previously, security firm Kaspersky Lab used Cebit to launch its new PURE antivirus product - read our story on that here.
Another clever new tool could be found on the Laplink stand. The company is adding a new feature to its PCMover software called the PCMover Image Assistant. This allows users to move both programs and files from a hard disk image to a new PC: so, for example, if you have an image backup of a Windows XP computer, and that fails, you can use the tool to move your programs onto a new Windows 7 PC without having to first reinstall XP. As well as appearing in future versions of PCMover, it'll be included with some disk imaging tools from O&O.
5) New and Unusual
From USB keys in every imaginable shape to foldable pianos to somewhat tasteless computer accessories (don't ask) there's all manner of odd goods on show at Cebit. Some look downright awful, but then there are a few unusual products that caught our eye. Thermaltake's Tt eSports brand may have a very strange name - that extra "t" is not a typing error - but its new keyboard might appeal to gamers or workaholics: reach around the back and there's a small fan that can be clipped onto the top of the keyboard to keep your fingers cool during frantic activities such as gaming or filling in an online self-assessment tax form at the last possible minute. The keys also illuminate in any one of 256 colours.
Also, while Asus and MSI compete to show the biggest range of unusual PCs - from 3D desktops and laptops to concept models and Asus's Bamboo range ("panda friendly", we're assured), there's one computer that really sticks out: the Eee Keyboard.
We saw a prototype at last year's Cebit, but with the finished product due in May this device finally seems to be ready for the market. It has a 5 inch capacitative touchscreen built in, runs Windows XP and can link up to your television via an ultra-wideband transmitter. It uses an Atom N270 processor, 1GB of memory and will be available with 16GB or 32GB of solid state storage - expect to see it on sale for less than £600.
Sage password advice from Lifehacker
Passwords. They keep our details and web accounts safe, but they are a real pain to remember. I have to rely on the good nature of our IT department every time I come back from holiday because I invariably forget my password.
The temptation is to try and avoid having to remember them whenever possible, but this can be a big problem, especially if your laptop is stolen.
Lifehacker gives some helpful advice in their article ‘Your passwords aren’t as secure as you think; Here’s how to fix that’.
It was something of an eye-opener for me. I hadn’t realised that the Pidgin instant messaging software stores all of the passwords as plain text. They have a good reason for doing so (not giving a false sense of security) but as I had never known this I still had the false sense of security.
Thankfully there is plenty of useful advice on how to keep your passwords safe with password managers that use encryption. Well worth a read.
Use Freefilesync for large file transfers
Installing Windows 7 alongside Windows Vista was convenient but I was a little lazy moving my files. When I couldn’t put it off, I dragged and dropped the files from my backup to the Documents folder. Realising that this would take some time, I went off to get some dinner.
Sadly, I returned to find that there had been an out of memory error while copying one of the files. I clicked on Retry but then it happened again.
So I went back to what I’d used to make the backup in the first place, and should have used to restore it, Freefilesync.
This is a clever (and free) utility that can be used for large file transfers or for backups. It compares two folders (including subfolders) and then copies files between them so they become identical.
In this case, where there are gigabytes of files to copy, it has the big advantage that you can save the job and come back to it later on if you are interrupted (I dislike leaving my computer on overnight). It also meant that there was no problem with the fact that I had got halfway through the files when I had to cancel copying.
Files can be compared either by size and date, or by their contents and there are several templates for how to handle situations where a file with the same name and location exists on both sides. These rules can be overruled for individual files.
Just as importantly, you can decide what happens when files are deleted, with the option to copy them to another folder, just to make sure nothing important is lost.
Head in the cloud, feet on the ground
As useful as online storage is, keeping it in sync with my local files has been something of a headache.
The Windows Live SkyDrive is pretty generous with 25Gb of storage space online, but there’s no Sync app provided. You may remember that I found out Live Sync doesn’t use the online storage the hard way.
I may have found the answer in the form of Gladinet. Once installed on your computer (Windows only though 32- and 64-bit versions are available) it can connect to the SkyDrive folder as if it was a network drive.
I’ve installed the Free Starter Edition and my first impressions are favourable. I’ve downloaded files directly to my SkyDrive folders and worked on them in other programs.
The Premium version comes with extra functions for Google Docs, more advanced backups, encryption for better security and instant messaging support. There’s a comparison table here. All this costs US$40 and there are referral deals if you can persuade friends to sign up as well. Teachers and Students are eligible for discounts too.
Edit Zoho documents with Microsoft Office
Editing documents in the cloud is great when you are on the move, but online editors are rarely as capable as their online equivalents. The Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office lets you sign in to Zoho with Word or Excel 2000 and later to edit documents.
Word 2007 asked me how I wanted to open the document with options including HTML (the choice I made) or rtf and others.
Once the document has been imported it is just like a normal document on the local computer but you do have to remember to save it back to Zoho using the Zoho buttons.
Strongly recommended.
Great guitar themed desktop
The days of being able to show off a flashy image on your desktop and think that's enough to impress are sadly over.
If you want inspiration of just what is possible, you won’t go wrong by taking a look at Lifehacker.com. The most recent is a rather good picture of a Fender Stratocaster guitar with some clever custom menus.
The good thing about Lifehacker is there are explanations of how to work on the bits round the edges; it’s not just about the image any more.
One day I will get round to following the instructions for my Ubuntu laptop.
