Acer DX241H review

We’ve seen Linux-based software used before to provide a quick way to boot into a basic, internet-enabled OS, but usually it’s been in a motherboard or laptop. Acer’s DX241H extends the idea to the world of monitors.

From the outside it looks like any standard 24in monitor, and it has the usual 1080p resolution. The difference is that at the rear, alongside the standard HDMI and D-SUB outputs, are four USB 2 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port. Hook these up to your keyboard and mouse, an external hard disk or USB thumb drive and your network connection, and you have a standalone internet-cum-media playback terminal. No need for a PC at all, in fact.

Switch on the DX241H and in around ten seconds you’re thrown into Acer’s proprietary UI. This is dominated by six buttons: one launches a simplified version of Google Chrome (complete with Adobe Flash compatibility), while the rest provide links to popular social networks and search engines, with YouTube, Twitter and Facebook alongside Bing and Yahoo.

A group of buttons in the bottom-right of the screen hide the Acer’s true selling point, though: the CyberLink-developed clear.fi software. This picks up any DLNA-compliant client on your network, as well as files on drives connected to the USB sockets at the rear, for music, movie and photo playback.

In practice this is a good idea, but it’s ruined by poor performance and design. The chip used inside the DX241H clearly isn’t up to task: HD clips on YouTube and BBC iPlayer were unwatchable thanks to constant juddering; only SD clips played smoothly. Video file playback was better: we managed to get some of our test 720p clips to run smoothly, but we found file compatibility patchy, with many files failing to play and some causing the Acer DX241H to crash.

The UI doesn’t help. It’s slow and unresponsive, with options taking a couple of seconds to initialise once selected, and graphical glitches mar the slick-looking software. You can’t build playlists, the device navigation interface doesn’t support mouse scroll-wheels, and the lack of tool-tips makes already-unfamiliar icons even more difficult to understand.

Issues abound elsewhere. There’s no indication of network connectivity once you’ve left the setup wizard. Photo slideshows are plagued by sluggish image transitions and playback controls that are unresponsive in the extreme. The browser is better, gaining a SunSpider score of 4,119ms, but that's not much compensation.

Image quality, meanwhile, is a mixed bag, with colour accuracy not far behind the A-Listed ViewSonic VP2365wb, but a low contrast ratio of 238:1 gives a slightly washed out, tepid look. The built-in speakers are nothing special either.

The Acer’s main attraction is undoubtedly its software front-end but, when the software is this poor and the price this high, we can’t possibly recommend it, either as a standalone device or a PC monitor.

Author: Mike Jennings
PCPro

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Creative ZiiO 10in review

Creative has not one but two tablet models available for purchase, and they're both dirt cheap. We reviewed the Creative ZiiO 7in a while back, and this larger model, with a 10in 1,024 x 600 screen, is almost as reasonable. It will set you back a mere £200 – a full £199 less than the cheapest iPad 2.

Despite the low price, the ZiiO doesn't look bad. It comes in a subtly sparkling matte-charcoal plastic case, with the ZiiO logo etched tastefully in the bottom right corner below the screen.

Inside, though, the ZiiO has clearly been built to a budget. The 1GHz Creative ZiiLabs ZMS-08 CPU is an old single-core design, and it's backed up by a mere 8GB of storage (though this can be supplemented thanks to a full-size SD card slot).

Such mediocre hardware yields predictably poor performance, with a generally laggy feel to menus and browsing operations. The ZiiO’s SunSpider score of 8,158ms isn't as quick as recent dual-core Honeycomb-based tablets, and its BBC desktop homepage load time of nine seconds is again slow. A score of 2,219 in the Android-specific Quadrant benchmark wasn’t bad, though, and the ZiiO proved perfectly capable of playing most current games smoothly.

The processor isn't the only place corners have been cut. There's no 3G option, and battery life is well below average, managing just 6hrs 53mins in our video loop test. The system software is behind the times too – a Creative-modified, but smartphone-oriented version of Android 2.2. There’s no access to the Android Market, and Creative's ZiiO Space service is no substitute.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the screen. Image quality leaves an awful lot to be desired, with viewing angles so poor you must take care to hold the tablet directly head-on – tip it even slightly away from the perpendicular and the image fades rapidly from view. It’s very drab too, reaching just 157cd/m2 at maximum brightness, while colours have a noticeably yellow cast to them.

Worse, the ZiiO's touch controls are implemented with cheap resistive technology. It responded poorly to our prods and pokes (the navigation and multimedia controls below the screen are particularly frustrating), and it doesn't support multitouch, so you can't pinch to zoom.

The ZiiIO’s one distinctive feature is support for Creative’s Bluetooth-based APT-X wireless audio codec, which connects to a variety of the firm's wireless headphones and speakers.

Overall, though, the ZiiO 10in is simply unpleasant to use, making it a poor choice despite the low price. If you’re looking for a bargain basement tablet, we’d recommend the Advent Vega instead, or Creative's own ZiiO 7in at a now very cheap £150.

Author: Jonathan Bray
PCPro

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Gadgets - Latest Apple iOS 5 rumours

Although the wires are abuzz with iCloud rumours, it’s been confirmed that Apple's iOS 5 is also on the agenda for the WWDC next Monday. Here are some speculatively juicy morsels to keep you going till next week.

Widgets
That’s right, little green droids, run for the hills – your ace is an ace no longer. Expect the next iDevices to support live widgets, shoving weather, news and drunken Facebook statuses into your gadget-gorged face.

Notifications
The achilles heel of iOS has always been the basic notification system which has left much to be desired in terms of functionality and unobtrusiveness. Android and webOS have destroyed Apple in this arena, but hopefully we can expect a notification bar with scrolling messages as opposed to the rudely interrupting box that’s currently present.

Nuance voice recognition
Voice recognition powered by Nuance technology should ensure that developers can harness our voices for all sorts of innovative navigation and entertainment purposes. Expect motivational shouts and orders for catapulted avian armies to fill up train carriages shortly.

Music streaming
If iCloud integration isn’t present in iOS 5, we’ll eat our Macbooks. We can’t wait to stream our entire collection of tracks without using up a single gig of memory on our iPhone – until we go into a tunnel and lose signal, that is. Check out our wish list for more possible features.

Twitter built-in
Taking a leaf out of Windows Phone Mango’s book, iOS5 may have native Twitter integration with the ability to upload content directly to the gargantuan micro-blogging site. Expect an influx of accidental, inebriated tweets from your entire address book in the near future.

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Gigabyte unveils S1080 tablet and M2432 Booktop

Gigabyte has unveiled two new devices at Computex 2011. The first is a new 10.1-inch tablet, the S1080 running Windows 7 on a platform packing a 1.66GHz dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor and 2GB of RAM. The second is the new M2432 Booktop with a bundled docking station that also packs a “desktop-class” GPU matched with 1GB of VRAM.

The Gigabyte S1080 Windows tablet is one of the most powerful Windows 7 tablets to arrive on the market. Its dual-core Atom and 2GB of RAM should give it decent performance for the current-generation of Windows 7 tablet devices. It is also equipped with a 320GB hard-drive, GMA 3150 graphics with a VGA output and WiFi b/g/n, along with Bluetooth 3.0. It also incorporates a front-facing 1.3-megapixel webcam. A high-speed USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, gigabit Ethernet and an audio socket, along with an SD card reader, provide connectivity. It weighs in at around 1.9 pounds.

The Gigabyte M2432 Booktop will ship with a Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost 2.0. Its 14-inch LED backlit display has a resolution of 1366 x 768. Onboard graphics is delivered by an integrated Intel HD 3000 GPU. Other hardware highlights include a USB 3.0 port as well as THX sound. The keyboard is a chiclet design and is matched with a multi-touch trackpad. It weighs in at around 4 pounds.

The Booktop will also ship with a bundled docking station, which integrates a separate NVIDIA GT 440 GPU with 1GB of DDR5 RAM. This allows the Booktop to be connected to up to two external monitors. The docking station includes six additional USB ports, an HDMI out, a D-Sub and DVI port.

Electronista

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Viewsonic intros two new ViewPad tablets

Viewsonic has introduced two new tablets at Computex 2011. The Viewsonic ViewPad 10Pro will arrive with Windows 7 and Intel’s Oak Trail platform. The 10Pro will also have Android capability and is aimed at enterprise. The Viewsonic ViewPad 7x will be powered by a combination of Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 platform and is aimed at the consumer segment.

The Viewsonic ViewPad 10Pro will be powered by Intel’s Atom Z760 1.5GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM. It will ship with Windows 7 Professional and is capable of launching Android 2.2, but in virtualization mode only. This may limit the potential for the device to run Android apps smoothly, but it will make it useful for quick launching a web browser for example.

The ViewPad 10Pro also incorporates both 3G and Wi-Fi 802.11n. Its 32GB of RAM is expandable by microSD, as well as through USB. Its 3500mAh battery is rated for 4.5 hours of use when playing 1080p video showing marked power consumption improvements over the previous generation of Atom chips. It will run for up to 6 hours for lighter duties.

The Viewsonic ViewPad 7x’s 1024x600 7-inch LED display supports up to 10-point multi-touch input. It also packs an HSPA+ radio for 3.5G speeds and supports DLNA media sharing and SRW TruMedia. It weighs 380g and incorporates front and back cameras and is capable of video conferencing. When it ships, it will arrive with Android 3.0.1 (Honeycomb).

Electronista

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