HP - Officejet Pro K5400dn review

It's becoming the norm for small offices and home users to buy a printer that's multifunctional, including the usual trio of copying, scanning and printing functions - and if you're lucky it'll send a fax as well. However, the problem with most all-in-one printers is that they'll do all their functions reasonably well, but only one or possibly two exceptionally well.

If you're on a particularly tight budget and the bulk of your output is going to be printing text documents and presentations, with maybe a scattering of photos, and you need to produce a lot quickly, then HP's latest could be ideal for you. It's a printer; nothing more, nothing less.

From the moment you lift it from the box, you realise this is no flimsy, lightweight model. It's unusually broad for a single-function printer (overall it's 495 x 466 x 207mm) and weighs a meaty 9.5kg. A 250-sheet, front-loading input tray juts out from the centre with an extendable output tray above.

A front panel houses four separate HP Vivera ink cartridges and under the lid are two slots for the printheads. Once installed, it's just a matter of installing the software and connecting the USB 2 lead and you're ready for action. There are four simple control buttons on the lid (Cancel, Resume, Power and Configuration Page) plus an indicator for the depletion state of the various cartridges.

What this model has which the standard K5400 model lacks is a duplex unit that snaps into the back of the machine, and a networking facility. For around another £70, the K5400dtn version includes an additional 350-sheet feeder tray that fits underneath the current input tray. On the other hand, both the duplex unit and the extra feeder tray can be purchased separately and added later if you feel the need.

For performance and quality, be prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Whether it's colour prints or plain text documents, this workhorse shoots those sheets out like rockets at a maximum resolution of 4,800 x 1,200 dpi. Documents are printed at quoted speeds of up to 36ppm black and 35ppm colour in draft mode, and 12ppm black and 15ppm colour in normal mode.

Colours are sharp and authentic (although without the vibrancy you'd expect from an exclusively photo printer) and the Vivera inks ensure that your photos in particular remain smudge- and water-resistant and are fast-drying.

Vista ready and Mac compatible, you can be sure that this printer will be instantly accessible and functional without having to download extra plug-ins or patches.

Buffalo Technology - MiniStation PS120U2 review

There are plenty of portable, external hard drives around, so what does Buffalo's new MiniStation offer that its competition doesn't? Its main claim to fame is a technology called TurboUSB, which Buffalo has measured at up to 64 percent faster than a straight USB 2 connection.

These small black- or silver-cased devices contain 3.5-inch, 5,400rpm drives, mounted in shock-resistant chassis, so they should resist a bit of wear and tear, although no specific claims are made for the results of drop tests. Sockets at the back cater for a mini-USB and a 5V power jack. In most cases you won't need this separate power lead, as all the power needed is drawn through the USB cable.

In fact, it's hard to think of a situation where you'd need to connect both cables, as you would have to have a PC with two separate USB hubs, where you couldn't draw enough current from either to power the drive from one socket alone.

The USB cable exits from the side of the mini plug and a groove round the MiniStation case enables you to wrap the cable round it and press it into a clip, moulded into the USB plug. It's not the tidiest of solutions, but is more convenient than carrying a cable separately.

Plug the drive into any Windows XP or Vista-based PC and it will be seen as an extra drive automatically, without any driver installation. However, to get the most out of the MiniStation you need to install the TurboUSB driver and enable the technology, which we're guessing is a form of on-the-fly data compression.

We tested transfer speeds for a 1GB mixed basket of files and saw a 65 percent increase in write speed when TurboUSB was turned on. The difference in read speed was much less, at around 8 percent, but both improvements are definitely worth having.

Other software supplied with the drive includes Memeo AutoBackup which, as the name suggests, is an automatic backup utility. It's Wizard-driven and in three steps you simply select the destination for your backups, which files to copy and give the ‘backup plan' a name.

There's also Secure Lock Ware, which acts as a drag ‘n' drop encryption/decryption applet, to secure information on a file-by-file or folder-by-folder basis. If you're thinking of buying the drive to increase the storage space for a laptop, having a quick encryption tool is a bonus.

Sennheiser - MX 560 review

Sennheiser has built a deserved reputation for designing high-performing ‘phones at reasonable prices, and if you're not willing to spend hundreds of pounds on high-end models from companies like Shure, they should be your first port of call.

The new MX 560 headphones are updates to the company's already extensive range of in-ear models, and are available in a range of five colours, most of which are finished with a rather elegant metallic/pastel effect. Like most of Sennheiser's in-ear range, they're extremely light, to the point where they feel completely hollow, which can cause some issues, as we'll highlight below.

The rest of the design is pretty swish, though; there's a silver panel running down each earpiece for aesthetic value, and they are fashioned into a ‘hook' design to help them fit more comfortably in the ear. This does admittedly make them pretty comfortable to wear, but a combination of the completely circular design (rather than a shape moulded to fit the ear), smooth finish and light weight means that they fall out quite easily, so you'll have to use the foam earpiece covers supplied to really make them usable.

Elsewhere in the box you'll find a leather carry-case and ‘cable winder', which is well advertised on the packaging but almost impossible to find. When you do notice it tucked away inside you'll realise why: this is simply a piece of rubber with two earpiece holders and a hole to feed the cable through, the ‘winder' mechanism being the action of you physically wrapping the cable around a bit of rubber. Since the main cable is rubberised to improve flexibility and durability, it had a tendency to unwind itself and invoke the ‘spaghetti junction' effect, rendering this added bonus almost useless.

That's about it in terms of accessories and design, so we'll move on to the all-important performance to see how the 560s fare in today's ‘bud earphone dominated market. Sennheiser makes a point of headlining its ‘basswind' system for added bass response, a predictable move considering the advantages of the design for handling lower tones.

We were sceptical about the impact this would really have, considering how difficult it is block out ambient noise with these designs, but in fact we were impressed. There's distinct bass here, and while not as punchy as ‘bud designs like Shure's SE420, it's encompassing enough and combines very well with mid and high tones to produce a nicely rounded sound environment.

Minor issues such as a faint but audible hiss during quiet points in songs (which didn't seem to be due to our test media players or tinnitus), along with the fact that audio separation isn't as clear as you'll find with other designs, are not really an issue when you look at the price. The MX 560s retail for £19.99, which, when you throw in the leather carry pouch and (cough) cable winder, means you're getting a hell of a lot for your money.

GeForce 9600GT Sonic 512MB review

The last round of high-end graphics card launches saw plenty of cards at the top end, but nothing to speak of in the highly lucrative mainstream market. True, both ATI and Nvidia attempted to redress the situation with the HD2600 and GeForce 8600, but neither really cut the mustard in the mid-range market.

It wasn't until the launch of Nvidia's GeForce 8800GT (G92) that a mainstream card appeared that was worthy of the name, swiftly followed by ATI's HD3870 and HD3850 and a whole range of pricing policies.

Now Nvidia is back with the first of the next generation of graphics cards, the Geforce 9 series, the first of which is the 9600GT. And unlike nearly every other launch of a new desktop graphics core in recent memory, the first example of the new generation isn't some pixel-blasting high-end card but rather a new addition to the mid-range market sector. The reason for this lies in what powers the 9600GT; the G94 core, not some huge, power-hungry chip but the smaller, cut-down sibling of the G92 used by the 8800GT and GTS.

Built on a 65nm process, the G94 has 505 million transistors - some 250 million less than the G92 - and has only 64 stream processors (the 8800GT has 112) but they are clocked higher at 1,625MHz (the same as an 8800GTS). The 512MB of GDDR3 runs via a 256-bit interface and, together with the standard memory clock speed of 900MHz (1,800MHz effective), gives the 9600GT a memory bandwidth of 57.60Gbps.

Palit's Sonic range is the home of the company's overclocked cards and the 9600GT Sonic carries on the family tradition by having a core engine running 50MHz over the reference speed at 700MHz, while the memory clock has been tweaked to run the 512MB of GDDR3 at 1GHz (2GHz effective), which is 100MHz faster than standard.

Palit has done away with the reference cooler and instead used an attractive, gold coloured radial cooler, the height of which makes the card a two-slot design; which is handy once you see the ports on the expansion plate, a very impressive array given the price of the card.

First off there are two stacked Dual Link DVI ports, to the right of which sits an optical S/PDIF port (a cable for which is supplied) while to the left and under the cooling grille sit two surprises. The first of these is an HDMI port while the other port is for a DisplayPort output. Palit's 9600GT is the first card we have seen with this.

Performance-wise the 9600GT Sonic doesn't hang about and, given its price point, it's impressive. Tested with World in Conflict's built-in demo, the card gave an average frame rate score of 57fps at a 1,280 by 1,024 pixel resolution. And when it comes to the modern day slayer of graphics cards, namely Crysis, it holds up quite well, giving a score of 49fps when tested at the same 1,280 by 1,024 resolution.

Gigabyte - GA-X38T-DQ6 review

Let's talk chipsets. Intel introduced its P31/P33/P35 family of Core 2 Duo chipsets six months ago, but it left a gap at the top of the range for an Extreme performance chipset that would replace the venerable 975X Express.

The problem is that 975X supports dual ATi graphics cards in CrossFire but you only have two options for PCI Express. You can assign all 16 lanes to a single graphics card or divide them in two and give eight lanes to each card in CrossFire. That sounds rotten but it doesn't present a bottleneck in the real world as PCI-E has so much bandwidth, however 975X doesn't support the latest 1,333MHz FSB and certainly won't be compatible with Intel's next generation of 45nm CPU. Added to that 975X is twinned with the ICH7 Southbridge, which is looking a bit long in the tooth when it comes to the quantity of USB 2.0 and SATA ports supported.

You might think that P35 is the answer to this particular problem, as it uses the latest ICH9 Southbridge and supports the 1,333MHz FSB, but there's a significant problem here. Although you'll have seen P35 motherboards with dual graphics slots, the 20 lanes of PCI Express are assigned in a fixed pattern with a full 16 lanes going to the primary graphics slot and the remaining four lanes for the PCI-E x1 expansion slots.

If you plug in a second graphics card it shuts down those PCI-E expansion slots, which is unfortunate if you're actually using them, and means that the second graphics card only gets four lanes of PCI-E. That's fine if you're running dual Radeon X1600s but a problem if you have X1900s in CrossFire and a serious headache if you have gone the whole hog and use Radeon HD 2900XT cards.

It's taken a long time, but enter stage left the X38. This new chipset answers all of those problems in one fell swoop as it supports dual graphics slots and each slots gets a full 16 lanes of PCI-E. In addition we're talking about PCI-E 2.0, which has double the bandwidth of the original PCI-E, which will be handy when PCI-E 2.0 graphics cards go on sale. In addition it supports Penryn 45nm processors and a 1,600MHz FSB and of course it has the ICH9 Southbridge.

This Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 makes the most of the new chipset and has four DDR3 memory slots which can accommodate up to 8GB of 1,600MHz DDR3, provided you are running a 1,600MHz FSB, which currently means that you'll have to overclock or the memory speed will be capped at the 1,066MHz or 1,333MHz of your CPU.

We overclocked a QX6850 CPU from a 1,333MHz FSB to 1,520MHz very easily and raised the FSB of a Core 2 Duo E6700 from 1,066MHz to 1,280MHz, so you have plenty of scope to overclock, however we have seen higher performance from P35 and P965 motherboards.

Intel has taken the bold step of introducing some overclocking features with X38. There's support for XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) which works with compatible DDR3 memory that contains SPD settings that boost performance. The other tool is a piece of Intel software called Extreme Tuning Utility, however our review sample didn't come with this software.

In the main the layout of the GA-X38T-DQ6 is very tidy, which is what we've come to expect from P35 boards. Like so many manufacturers, Gigabyte has specified Ferrite Cored Chokes, solid aluminium capacitors and small MOSFETs as well as an extensive passive cooling system that links the Southbridge to the Northbridge and power regulation hardware.

Unfortunately the latches for the memory slots are too close to the top graphics card slot and the graphics retention devices are very awkward to release when you have dual-slot graphics cards. Added to that the primary SATA connectors require you to feed the cables in very close to your graphics card and the eight-pin ATX-12V power connector is tucked in very tightly behind the I/O panel.

We were also unhappy that there isn't a power LED on the board, so you can't be sure whether it's safe to work inside your PC.

There's a long line of ports and connectors on the I/O panel, which is just as well as there are no brackets in the package, apart from some eSATA adapters which connect to up to four of the eight internal SATA connectors.

In addition to the two legacy PS/2 ports there are coaxial and optical audio connectors, eight USB 2.0 ports, a mini Firewire, six-pin Firewire, dual Gigabit LAN and six audio mini jacks. If that's not enough, and you have appropriate connections on your case, there are headers for four more USB ports and one more Firewire.

Samsung - X22 review

Samsung has been steadily building up its range of laptops, from the diminutive Q45 up to a selection of 15.4-inch desktop replacements. One of the latest arrivals to the line-up is the X22 (NP-X22T000/SUK), a model with a 14.1-inch screen that's primarily aimed at the business user.

If you didn't know which part of the market the X22 was being aimed at, just one look at it will put you right, as its austere graphite grey finish (which has a strange, slightly rough feel to it) gives the game away. Somehow the design doesn't put us off, but there is a surprise when you open the lid, as you are met by a brushed aluminium finish which helps increase the feeling of really well made notebook.

Powering the X22 we reviewed was one of Intel's Core 2 Duo T7250 processors which, clocked at 2GHz with 2MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz FSB, will enable the X22 to make light work of everyday office applications. Backing up the CPU is Intel's PM965 / ICH8M chipset combination and 1GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory, clocked at 667MHz; that's fine for the pre-installed Windows XP Pro, but the laptop supports up to 4GB of memory should you want to go further.

Yes, this version of the X22 comes with good old Windows XP installed (you can hear the cheers from here) but if you must have Vista, other X22 versions come with it.

The graphics are powered by an ATI Mobility Radeon HD2400 chipset with 128MB of dedicated memory, so you won't be doing much games-playing on the X22, but no surprises there.

Output from the HD2400 powers a 14.1-inch screen which has a couple of niggles about it. Firstly, the disappointing resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels, and then the glossy coating, which really does reflect light. That's, not what you want in an office environment, and it's a shame because, apart from that, the screen is rather good with decent colour definition and clarity. A 1.3-megapixel camera is installed in the top bezel of the screen.

Built into the left-hand side of the chassis are two stacked USB ports, a LAN port, a VGA port and an HDMI port, all useful additions to a business notebook. There is also a PC Card slot under which is a 5-in-1 card reader. The right-hand side is dominated by the optical drive but there is room for another USB port, two audio ports and the modem socket. In addition to the wired Ethernet and modem you also get 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N wireless networking and Bluetooth.

For storage there is a 160GB, 5,400rpm hard drive and an 8x LightScribe DVD burner to allow you to back-up data quickly and effortlessly.

The keyboard is a fine example of the breed, with keys that are nice and responsive with little if any flex to the backing plate. The whole thing is a joy to use, as is the touchpad which is smooth and responsive without being overly sensitive.

Samsung has compromised battery life against portability with the X22. It weighs in at a tad over 2.2kg, which is pretty impressive for a laptop of this size, but to get down to that weight the designers have used a pretty meagre four-cell, 2,600mAh battery.

This does the X22 no favours when it's off the mains, managing just a shade under two and a half hours when tested. It might make three hours in real life conditions with all the power-saving settings turned on, but that's a tall order.

Kodak - EasyShare 5500 review

This is the EasyShare 5300 all-in-one's bigger sibling, intended for small and home office (SOHO) use. It has two advantages over the simpler machine, which account for it costing nearly twice as much. It comes with a 35-sheet Auto Document Feeder (ADF) and a clip-on duplexer, which turns the paper over so you can print on both sides of the paper in one task.

Both machines share a common ancestry, with the same print and scanning engines, paper trays and similar control panels. Slightly surprisingly, the colour LCD display on the EasyShare 5500 is smaller than on the lower-priced machine, but for a device aimed at businesses, this is probably reasonable. The accompanying control panel is easy to use, with illuminated function keys and a square of navigation buttons.

The device can take A4 plain paper and 15 x 10cm photo blanks, with the photo paper held in a sliding tray that's pushed into the front of the machine when you want to switch media. There are two memory card slots, which between them take all the common types, and a pair of USB sockets for connecting PictBridge cameras or optional WiFi or Bluetooth adapters.

The ADF makes scanning of multiple pages much more straightforward, but the usefulness of the duplexer is marred by the length of time it takes to produce double-sided pages. A single-sided, five-page text document takes just under one and a quarter minutes to print - around four pages per minute - while a 20-side, duplex document takes over six and a half minutes - just three sides per minute.

Another oddity of duplex print on the EasyShare 5500 is the loss of some of the page headers. It appears duplex pages have a bigger unprintable margin at the top of a page than single-sided ones. This would be reasonable, if it were mentioned in the documentation or flagged in the printer driver.

Print quality is good, with photo prints being particularly vibrant and clear, though colour on plain paper looks a bit insipid. Colour copies are more accurate than from some of the machine's rivals, though.

The headline running cost figure of 7p per print, which Kodak makes much of, is achievable if you buy the Photo Value Pack, which uses a thin but still serviceable photo paper. A simple black text page on plain paper will cost you just under 3p, which is at the high-end for an all-in-one at this price.