Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard

It’s like cats and dogs sleeping together

Microsoft has long been criticized for using an “embrace, extend—and extinguish” strategy across its business. You know, embrace a standard, extend it by adding new proprietary standards, and then extinguish the competition that can’t use the proprietary standards.

Well, we’re truly through the looking glass with Microsoft’s new Universal Mobile Keyboard, folks. This mobile Bluetooth keyboard is what you’d expect: rechargeable through micro-USB with a decent action but a little too compressed. There’s also a very clever cover that does double duty as a stand for your tablet, with two different viewing angles supported. The keyboard has the typical volume controls, multimedia buttons, and a compressed cursor layout as other mobile keyboards do. So far it’s a snore, right? What’s so unusual? Well, it’s clear that someone at Microsoft wearing an evil Mr. Spock goatee had a say in the design.

Game Streaming 101

Everything you need to know about game streaming and what it means for the PC. By Marco Chiappetta

Game streaming is huge. It accounts for epic amounts of web traffic and is even an integral part of some companies’ survival strategies. Look no further than Nvidia’s GRID and GameStream technologies, plus the meteoric rise of Twitch.tv’s traffic— it’s now the fourth largest peak traffic producer on the Internet, just behind Apple and ahead of Hulu—to know that game streaming is big business.

Billions of dollars are spent on games every year and being able to access them in some form from virtually anywhere, and on any device, is appealing to almost all gamers. Developers are keen on the technology, too, because they can make their game for one platform and stream it to almost any other.

The State Of Play

The gaming industry is booming, but could it be heading for a crash?

On 26 April 2014, a team of documentary makers turned up part of an unlikely story in the arid expanse of the New Mexico desert: a trove of some 700,000 buried Atari cartridges. The discovery of this 8-bit burial ground, assumed for many years to be little more than an urban legend, was a reminder of the near-destruction of the videogame industry in the early 1980s.

A number of factors led to the spectacular crash. The industry was flooded with poor quality consoles, and the home computer was emerging in the form of the Apple II, the IBM 5150, and the Commodore 64. Consumers were becoming interested in a piece of hardware they could upgrade, rather than one with features rigidly set in stone by its manufacturer.

Are Online Communities Killing Tech Support?

Mark Oakley asks whether traditional technical support has been usurped by the online space

"iTunes is currently unavailable. Try again later."

So for the tenth time or so of trying, my Apple TV refused to load my latest iTunes movie purchase. I had intended to spend the evening watching a film that I'd missed when it was showing at my nearest multiplex. The kids were asleep, my wife was out for dinner with a friend and I had a good stash of chocolate by my side. I was all set, but the last piece of the puzzle refused to play ball. Apple had let me down.

Google Chrome Tweaks

There's usually more to your bog standard internet browser than it may first appear, and unless you spend some time looking through the preferences, you may miss out on some useful setting that can help you get more out of your online experience. This is especially true when it comes to security. Recently, we looked at Internet Explorer and found a whole heap of security features that many users may miss if they simply use the browser 'out of the box'. With Firefox, we uncovered a mass of hidden options, some of which we took a closer look at. These options can be used to tweak all aspects of the browser, freeing the software's shackles for those who want to really push its limits.

Lossless Data Compression

David Briddock examines the history of data compression algorithms

Any efficient communication system relies on some form of data compression. Even morse code, invented for telegraphy in 1838, used shorter codewords for common letters, such as 'e' and't' in English. Most communication relies on a lossless solution, where the compressed data can be restored to exactly the same state as before.

Escape Dead Island

Now that's some solid advice...

Escape Dead Island is a terrible excuse for a videogame. Relying heavily on good will brought about by the first two titles in the series, this iteration arrives hoping to win over the same audience on name value alone. In short, don’t be fooled. Loosely fitting in to the plot set by the first Dead Island, you’re given the opportunity to take control of Cliff Calo. a genuine pillock of a human being whose personality and attitude grate from the offset - 'Let him die’ will be a constant thought process that infects your brain. It's not hard to understand why either: the man whines constantly from the off. ruining any chance there may be something appealing about him. Fatshark, it seems, is attempting to play off the long-running concept of a disenfranchised and obnoxious youth who finds himself through a traumatic experience, but the writing never reaches such lofty heights. Instead, he’s a nightmare of an individual tasked with slicing his way through a horde of zombies.

PNY Wireless Media Reader

Michael experiments with wireless streaming to Android devices

The PNY Wireless Media Reader is a playing cardsized device that allows you to share media content to various mobile devices. This functionality is achieved by the PNY product creating its own wi-fi network. Mobile devices joining this network will first need to have downloaded the PNY Wireless Media Reader app in order to access the data.

Ace Utilities 5.8

If your PC is bogged down with file clutter and registry problems, clean it up and optimise it with this toolkit

Windows runs fine for a time, but sooner or later it begins to slow down because of the build up of junk files, unnecessary registry entries and errors, log files, invalid shortcuts, startup programs and software. It is inevitable and frustrating, but fortunately there is no shortage of clean-up and tune-up tools to remove the junk and optimise the system. Ace Utilities does exactly that.

HP Officejet 5740

Mark assesses HP's new multifunction office friendly inkjet

Multifunction office printers usually have all the styling of a breeze-block, so I was pleasantly surprised when the well-rounded HP Officejet 5740 turned up. Having been an IT Manager once, I have a very ingrained aversion to inkjet printers in the workplace, but HP has managed to back plenty of functionality into what is a relatively inexpensive device.

Seagate NAS Pro 4-Bay

Seagate goes fishing in the small business server pond

Having recently reviewed the new Seagate 2-Bay NAS, I was curious to see how its 4-Bay Pro model compared. I'd found the basic NAS to be a little underpowered, and Seagate had suggested that the Pro might be more to my liking.

The storage options available on this equipment 4TB (2x 2TB), 8TB (4x 2TB), 16TB (4x 4TB) and 20TB (4x 5TB). The review model came with 16TB installed, and with that capacity, using Seagate's own 4TB NAS HD drives. For those interested, Seagate also makes a two and six bay variants of this design so you can have as little as 2TB or as much as 30TB being distributed.

Belkin Wemo LED Lighting Starter Kit

Belkin's world of Wemo plants some spring bulbs early

Belkin has been slowing building it Wemo range, and this is kit pretty much defines what people expect when you talk about 'home automation'. It provides a couple of Wemo LED 60 watt equivalent bayonet cap bulbs, and the critical Wemo Link box to enable them to be controlled.

The Link provides a bridge to connect the blubs to your local wi-fi, reducing the technology needed in the actual bulbs dramatically. Technically, I think it uses a form of Xbee to facilitate communication with the Link, which in turn uses wi-fi to connect to the rest of the universe.

Google's Lollipop problem

Has Android 5.0's 'unstable' rollout soured Lollipop?

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the arrival of Android 5.0 Lollipop: a revamped look, improved security features, lockscreen notifications, a guest user mode, better battery management, and so on. Yet the shine of Google’s newest mobile operating system has been more than a little tarnished by persistent problems with the rollout of the software - unforeseen delays, major bugs, bricked devices and user complaints have all been causing headaches for Google and the company’s Android engineers.

Intelligent Energy Upp Starter Kit

A portable hydrogen fuel cell for your mobile devices

The Upp is unlike any portable USB power bank we’ve seen before. Most have a battery, similar to the one in your smartphone or tablet, that’s charged from a wall socket. The Upp is a hydrogen fuel cell, which uses a technology that converts hydrogen into electricity.

This technology sounds futuristic and has been mooted as a more energy-efficient alternative to petrol engines and laptop batteries for years. But fuel cells have previously been bulky, so we were impressed that the Upp is small enough to fit in your bag. It’s still a beast compared to other power banks though (weighing 620g), and is comparable in shape and size to a large torch.

Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 (10in)

A 10in Android tablet with a quirky design

Many tablets are designed to resemble the iPad, but the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 takes a different approach. Not to be confused with the 8in Yogas and those versions running Windows 8, this Android tablet has a cylinder on its bottom edge (in landscape mode) that houses a flip-out stand. This can be used to prop up the tablet at a slight angle for easier typing or at a 45- or 90-degree angle for watching videos.

Nero 2015 Platinum

Burn your files to disc or stream them to all your devices using this handy suite of programs

Nero’s disc-burning program has been around for ages and has now evolved into a suite packed with other media-related features. The latest 2015 Platinum release includes the core Nero Burning ROM software for burning DVDs, Blu-rays and other optical discs, as well as applications to manage, share and edit your video, audio and image files on your PC.

Amazon Fire TV

Tell this set-top box what you want to watch

There are plenty of devices for watching streaming video on your TV, from Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, to smart TVs themselves, but almost all of them get their interfaces wrong. They present you with a grid of icons, similar to the homescreen of a smartphone or tablet, and you then search for what you want to watch either by clicking on each icon and then scrolling through long, juddery lists that are slow to load or by typing search words using a fiddly on-screen keyboard via the remote.

Toshiba Satellite CL10-B-100

This £199 Windows 8.1 laptop is no bargain

Chromebooks are great budget laptops, but they can only run web apps, which is limiting if you have a favourite Windows program that has no online equivalent. The Toshiba Satellite CL10 is the first in a small wave of £200 Windows 8.1 laptops designed as an alternative to Chromebooks.

The CL10 looks surprisingly stylish for such a cheap laptop, with a bronze-coloured casing and a subtle checked pattern on the lid. It’s reasonably sturdy and weighs just 1.1kg, rising to 1.3kg with its charger. Combined with its respectably long battery life of seven and a half hours, this means it should be ideal for use on the move.

Adobe Premiere Elements 13

A turning point for home video editing

Software developers often try to make video editing less time consuming and intimidating by simplifying the process with automatic editing facilities. But we’ve never seen the appeal of twee templates and automatic editing options that randomly throw video clips together. Thankfully, Adobe Premiere Elements 13 has a new' Video Story feature that removes much of the effort and complexity, yet produces surprisingly good results.

Amazon Fire Phone

Amazon's oddball 3D smartphone

The ruthlessly competitive smartphone market is dominated by Apple and Samsung, with former front runners like Nokia and BlackBerry now relegated to the status of has-beens, so Amazon is brave to launch its own smartphone. And this is a particularly bold move because Amazon’s Fire Phone is the quirkiest, most distinctive phone we’ve seen in a long time.

Remembering... Y2K

Grab your radiation suit and head for the hills, David Hayward recalls the turn of the new century

Fifteen years ago today, panic ensued. In a matter of days, so it was claimed, planes would fall out of the sky. The financial industry would collapse, and all money and property would be null and void. There would rioting and the collapse of society as we know it. And this is our personal favourite: the nuclear weaponry of a dozen warmongering nations would suddenly become active and rocket toward their 1980s cold war targets.

Digital GIS

David Briddock treks from maps to graphical information systems

A marriage between cartography and computers appeared quite logical, yet it was a journey that took decades to complete.

Humax STA-1200BSW Soundbar

Michael has been comparing his waistline with that of a soundbar. He lost

Described as the "World's Slimmest Soundbar", the STA-1200BSW has been developed by Humax, a company better known for its settop boxes (STB). This product consists of the actual soundbar, a subwoofer, a remote control unit and various leads packaged in a box whose size might make you wonder about the slimmest claim.

Once everything is unpacked you quickly realise that the 'World's Slimmest' claim takes no account of the soundbar's width, which stretches to 1200mm. Other dimensions are a depth of 20mm and a height of 37mm. The subwoofer, by comparison, is box-shaped with dimensions of 195 x266 x265mm.

Viewsonic VX2880ML

Mark discovers those customers Viewsonic's new 4K screen is going to impress

The number of monitor makers that includes 4K offering in their ranges is expanding rapidly, and ViewSonic has joined their ranks with the VX2880ml.

Its VX series consists of primarily consumer focused products. However, I can see this particular design being favoured by business users who want high-resolution media presentations and use CAD/ CAM applications.

Visually, this is an attractive design, with a narrow bezel on all sides and a somewhat quirky two-part metal stand. Those not wanting to use that support can utilise the VESA 100 mount on the back.

New year’s revolution

You’ve read about how triple-A will define your next year - now find out why Xbox One’s indie lineup could end up putting all that in the shade

There was a time, a few years back, where even the most casual observer could tell you what 'indie game' meant: "It's like Mario, but the story's probably about the creator's folks getting divorced, or the outbreak of SARS or something." Thanks to legions of mistyeyed 16-bit enthusiasts, each as eager as the last to prove that the medium could serve to offer better stories than 'kill a lizard, kiss a woman', the retro, 2D, plaintive platformer certainly had its time in the sun - not least on Xbox 360. Think back to the very best of XBLA and you'll find games that took a single well-worn genre and warped one piece of its make-up into an unfamiliar shape - Braid (mechanics), Fez (perspective), Super Meat Boy (difficulty) and Limbo (colour) all pulled this trick. And it was a great one, proof that the ingenuity of creators more interested in challenging players than indulging them could be successful (and, yes, profitable - an inside source told us Jonathan Blow could afford to build an actual time machine, which he did and now uses to fly to his detractors' births and shout at their parents about the importance of a solid education in philosophy).

SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive 32GB

Mark reviews a storage device that confronts all his expectations

It's not often that this gnarled reviewer finds a device that I'd almost class as magical. But the SanDisk Connect Wireless Flash Drive is almost that, and threw many of my initial expectations out of the window in short order.

Handling it for the first time it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduct that this is a nicely made, slightly large by modern standards, USB flash memory device.

The review model has a 32GB capacity, but that's easily modifiable, because the Connect is actually a mobile caddy for a micro-SD card that you can easily remove and replace, should you want more space.

How to be a tech guru

The ancient art of solving any computer problem

Expert’ is a relative term – by which I mean it’s a term that our relatives use. “Ask Luis, he’s the computer expert,” my mother-in-law will say, to anyone who

will listen. I’ve spent more than twenty years fixing other people’s problems, so I’m used to being called an expert, but the reality is that every family has its own expert.

To qualify, you just need to be the youngest adult in the room that owns a PC. Sooner or later, your grandma or your uncle or your sister-in-law will mention that their laptop is broken or iTunes keeps crashing, and you’ll feel guilted into taking a look at it. Whether or not you ultimately manage to fix it makes no difference; you’ll still be the computer expert. After all, you’ve just spent a frustrating Sunday afternoon downloading drivers or booting in and out of Safe Mode, so you must know what you’re doing.

Block annoying pop-ups forever

Most browsers now block pop-ups automatically, but stopping them in programs, apps and games isn’t as obvious Robert Irvine explains how it’s done

Block ads in software using Ad Muncher

Millions of web users use Adblock Plus (adblockplus.org) to filter online ads and pop-ups. and you may even be familiar with uBIock (bit.ly/ublock360), which we’ve recommended several times this year. But effective though they are, both these tools rely on your browser to be running, which means ads can still reach your PC via other means.

Assassin’s Creed Rogue

The other November outing for Ubi’s stabtastic series

If the game’s title doesn’t make it entirely obvious how Ubisoft views this game, then its PR might: released on the same day as Unity, and given a fraction of the publicity, Rogue sneaked under many people’s radars as stealthily as the titular character on a mission. It’s been thrown out there – on last-gen, no less – as a sort of nod to those who saw Black Flag as the greatest innovation in Assassin’s Creed since Altaïr hid knives up his sleeves, but it’s clear that Ubisoft is still much more willing to back the safer, iterative style of Unity.

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD

The class of 2011 are making their mark four years on

Back when we were at school, classes could barely get through a day without locking an unlucky victim in a supply cupboard or happy-slapping someone. if you'd handed us a variety of arcane weaponry, it probably would have resulted in even bigger swear words being carved into desks. Trust Final Fantasy to turn what amounts to a group of 14 mismatched teenagers into a swashbuckling group of handsome young things who spend their free study periods honing each of their particular brands of superpower before tramping off to combat Nazi-like military evil. As silly as it might sound (and we're not even taking into account that most of them are named after playing cards), there's something fitting about the scholastic setup - Type-0 forces you to relearn just what a Final Fantasy game is.

Creative Sound Blaster Inferno

Creative’s lukewarm budget cans are all about compromise

For £40, you don’t expect to have your earlobes massaged into a state of rapture by an eSports soigneur while the last living castrato sings you lullabies about how great you are at noobstomping. It’s a question of compromise – you know you’re not getting the absolute best package at this price, so which attributes are you prepared to slum it with or do without, and which do you value above all else?

This humble correspondent wagers none among you mentally cast comfort into the wayside while reading that. Who cares what the bass response is like if you can’t bear to wear the bloody things? Well, the situation isn’t quite that dire for Creative’s Sound Blaster Inferno headset, but regrettably it’s comfort that feels most lacking from this offering.

Gigabyte P35X V3

Rivalling desktop graphics is tough for any notebook, but in a thin ’n light?

When Nvidia pulled the wraps off its GeForce GTX 980M mobile graphics chip, the internets burst alive with much rejoicing; at last, here was a laptop GPU that could give the best desktop graphics cards a run for their money. Well, kinda.

Make no mistake, the 980 looks mega on paper. With 1,536 Maxwell-style shaders and a baseclock north of 1GHz, the 980M is one hell of a GPU by any metric, including the desktop. What it’s not is unique in history. In fact, to reach what’s arguably the golden age of laptop gaming you have to wind the clock right back to 2005 and the GeForce Go 7800 GTX, a mobile GPU with the same number of pipes and shaders as the fastest desktop graphics of the day.

Dying Light

Rage, rage against the coming of the night.

I’d forgotten what it’s like to run for my life. It’s pitch-black in the city of Harran; slums, tower blocks and imperial apartments all equally anonymous in the dark. Behind me, the Volatiles ululate, disoriented as I duck through holes in fences, dodge round the more-sedentary dead, and bound over the rooftops. A single Volatile is more than a match for me. When an entire pack is chasing, pausing is a death wish, so I barrel headlong into the dark, bouncing off walls and trash. Not since the opening scenes of the original Pathologic have I been so disempowered. It’s only when I screech to a halt in front of a cliff that the pack catches up.

Western Digital My Passport Ultra Anniversary Edition 2Tb

Western Digital releases a limited edition My Passport Ultra

I'm happy to admit I'm a big fan of Western Digital My Passport drives, and I've covered many of them for Micro Mart over the past decade. I know it's been that long because the latest design is a volume limited 'Anniversary Edition' commemorating 10 Years of My Passport products. Physically the Ultra Anniversary Edition bears an uncanny likeness to the Ultra My Passport Metal Edition, and looking at the specifications I'm reasonably confident that they're of the same core construction.

Transcend Digital Music Player MP710

The ultimate fitness and daily commute companion?

It's been a long time since we've had a dedicated music player in our hands. These days we tend to listen to our music collection through our phones, which is very good, but does pose a bit of an issue at times due to the size and weight of the device. However, the Transcend Digital Music Player offers superb playback of music in a neat 88 x 44 x 10mm package that weighs just 39g and looks for all the world like an iPod Nano. That's not all, though.

Lexar JumpDrive M20 Mobile USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Lexar creates a Janus device that presents two faces to USB connectors

Many tablets and phones, these days support a standard called OTG or USB On-The-Go. It's a standard that allows a USB port to flip direction, allowing USB devices to work as if they were plugged into a PC. By inserting a flash drive you can augment what storage you device includes, and it's generally easier/faster to connect up a flash drive to the PC to transfer documents you can access later on the phone or tablet.

Devolo dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit

Devolo strains to make electrical house wiring match four twisted pairs of gigabit Ethernet

I've reviewed many Powerline networking adapters over the years, and of these Devolo's are some of the best. I like the simplicity of its designs, and how they normally work out of the box without any encouragement. Where I've taken exception to Powerline equipment in the past is when gigabit Ethernet ports are added into the equation, ignoring that the technology isn't capable of that speed (or even half that level).

Stone-age technology

Phones, tablets and processors always seem to be improving, yet some tech has barely advanced in decades. We look at the stone-age technologies that are in need of a bit of evolution

Voicemail

Does anyone actually like voicemail? Born from the dying embers of answering machines, it once seemed useful - but not any more. Often you’re forced to wade through menus, pressing random digits on your handset to hear a rambling message with no actionable points, which would have been far better expressed in an email - despite the limitations of that medium, as we’ll discuss below.

Voicemail has evolved somewhat over time. Voice messages can now be attached to emails, or automatically transcribed by services such as VoiceCloud. Google also offers its own Google Voice transcription service, if you happen to be one of the three people worldwide who use Google Chat.

But none of this is enough to give us hope. The best we can wish for is that in the future our various personal systems become so interconnected and clever that they’re aware if we’re available to take a call or not; and if we’re not, they can invite people to call back later, leave a brief message to be automatically transcribed, or just leave us in peace.

The true cost of crapware

Preinstalled pests or added value? Either way, this clutter will clog up your machine. Mike Jennings looks at how much you can save by cutting it out

Unboxing a new laptop can be an emotional roller coaster. You peel off the plastic, gently raise the lid, tap the power button and watch with bated breath as the screen and LEDs blaze into life for the first time. Then, the familiar Start screen appears and» your face falls when you realise it’s littered with ugly, unwanted Live Tiles for programs you never asked for. Switch to the desktop and things aren’t much better - you're confronted with a mess of confusing extra icons and attention-grabbing pop-ups.

Crapware can have a real impact on performance: having to load up extra software means your PC takes longer to boot and uses more memory'. All those additional processes running constantly in the background can also tie up your hard disk and CPU, slowing down the applications you might actually want to use. Crapware is almost always easy to remove, but when your system comes with dozens of preinstalled packages - not all of them easy to identify, and some potentially masquerading as important system tools - it’s understandable that many choose to live with it.

But then you may start to wonder why you bothered spending all that money on a powerful PC, only to waste its resources in this way. Or, to turn the question around, what’s the value of the performance you can gain by ridding your system of crapware?

Promoting your business on Facebook

Social networking can help your business reach a vast audience. Kevin Partner explains how to make it work for you

With more than 1.3 billion active users, Facebook is the world’s largest social network by some margin - and its commercial future is built partly on encouraging businesses to use it as an advertising platform. This makes it a welcoming place for companies of all sizes, but the challenge is to create a campaign that serves your needs, rather than merely lining Mark Zuckerberg's pockets.

One of Facebook’s greatest strengths is its broad spread of users across age ranges, educational levels, incomes and genders; unless you have a very targeted demographic to aim for, there’s a good chance of reaching some potential customers. Even if you primarily target other businesses, Facebook is a good place to start: employees of prospective clients will be using it even if their company doesn’t have an official presence.

Before you begin to plan a Facebook marketing campaign, it’s important to work out what you want to achieve. In almost every case, promotional efforts should aim to improve your bottom line; simply chasing follower numbers isn’t necessarily the correct strategy - it’s important to build the right audience rather than merely aiming for the largest possible one.

Assassin’s Creed: Unity

A new time period, a new protagonist, and new consoles promise to usher a new era for the Assassin’s Creed series, but does Unity manage to deliver? by Murali Venukumar

Familiarity breeds contempt; or at least that’s how the old adage goes. I’ve tried approaching Assassin’s Creed: Unity with new eyes, but it’s near impossible to separate it from the past. The past, in this case, is an endless stream of Assassin’s Creed games looking to capitalise (pun intended) on the success of the first titles in the series. The weight of history is sometimes difficult to shed, especially as gamers have grown ever more jaded, seeing through flimsy bi-annual iterations and lore diluted with overuse. The series, as it stands, is in danger of becoming another yearly release, troubling absolutely none of the end-year GOTY chart builders. Some would say it has already crossed that line.

Just Dance 2015

Ubisoft’s latest dancing game makes sure no one stays off the floor with its wide variety of songs and easy accessibility. by Gagan Gupta

Love them or hate them, but you can’t deny the appeal of dancing games and their ability to get even the most two-left-footed dancer trying his luck on the floor. On face value, Just Dance 2015 seems like just another sequential update, and it largely is. It has the standard fare of an updated tracklist, better visuals and overall presentation, and some additional features. But the one thing it does, which makes the game immensely more accessible than any of it’s predecessors, is remove dependency on any of the additional PlayStation or Xbox accessories to play the game.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Exo suits are awesome, but are they the game changer the Call of Duty series requires? by Arjun Kumar

It’s that time of the year again when a new Call of Duty is unleashed upon the world, but instead of greeting this year’s instalment with feverish excitement, it has been greeted with apprehension. A large part of that can be attributed to the colossal f**k up that was Call of Duty: Ghosts, with franchise fatigue coming in as a close second. But to my surprise, developer Sledgehammer Games has delivered an enjoyable Call of Duty game with a solid single player-campaign, with enjoyable, fastpaced multiplayer to boot. The game isn’t without its issues, but it is without a doubt a massive step up from last year’s effort.

Parallella

Supercomputing for under £100

I've been following the Adapteva Parallella project since interviewing its creator, company founder Andreas Olafsson, about his Epiphany architecture a few years ago. To encourage adoption, Olafsson launched a Kickstarter project to create a development board: the Parallella. Billed as the first 'supercomputer' for under $100, the $99 board combined a dual-core ARM processor and FPC A with a 16-core Epiphany-III coprocessor and proved a smash hit - so much so that it's only now, around two years later, that I've finally been able to get my hands on a review sample thanks to a partnership with RS Components.

Never Alone

Never Alone hasa wonderful concept. Its the first I of Upper One's planned series of World Carnes, which interactively explore different cultures of our planet. Never Alone focuses on the culture of the Inupiat tribe. Based on a tribal fable, it tells the story of a young girl who is separated from her village during a harsh blizzard. Wandering through the snow, she encojnters a friendly arctic fox who guides her through the storm, and helps her search for home.

The game is beautifully presented. The story is narrated in the Inupiaq language (allegedly by a 'master storyteller'), and sees the player encounter all sorts of strange creatures from the culture's myths and legends. A mysterious owl-man gives the girl a bola, which she uses to break barriers, while the fox can contact and manipulate spirits that the girl can ride as mobile plahorms.

EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 P2 Platinum

As CPUs and GPUs become more efficient, the number of occasions where you will find yourself in need of a kilowatt or more from your PSU is diminishing.

However, there are some rare situations in which your average 750W model won't be sufficient, such as when running an overclocked quad-SLI or CrossFire setup with an cverclocked CPU (or two); in these extreme scenarios. EVGA has you covered with the SuperNOVA 1600 P2 Platinum.

Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102

The Toshiba Encore 2 WT10-A-102 is a 10in tablet running Windows 8.1 at a competitive price. There’s also an 8in version of the Encore 2 available for around £170, but those wanting to use their Windows tablet for work will probably appreciate the extra space.

Those extra inches will certainly make a big difference to anyone looking to be productive on the road and, usefully, the 10.1in Encore 2 comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This gives you a licence to use the software on the tablet, on a smartphone and on a PC or Mac, making it great value. Be sure to activate your Office 365 subscription within six months of activating your Windows 8.1 licence, though, otherwise you’ll miss out.

Linx 7

The Linx 7 is the cheapest Windows 8.1 tablet we’ve ever tested. At only £80 it immediately grabbed our interest, and this was piqued even further when we found out it comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This alone is worth around £50, and will let you use the Office suite on one PC or Mac, one tablet and one smartphone, so you’re not even limited to just using Office on the Linx 7 itself. You can even get a £30 rebate if you trade in an old tablet, although the appeal in doing this will very much depend on what tablet you might have lying around.

SERIF PagePlus X8

Creating a worthwhile update to the excellent PagePlus X7 must have been no easy task, but X8 has many new features and has addressed PagePlus X7’s most notable omission: its lack of a baseline grid for lining up text elements across columns. PagePlus X8 also has improved photo editing, better support for electronic publishing and the ability to insert an existing PDF into your own publication and preserve its appearance.

PHILIPS Brilliance 288P6

UITRA HD (4K) screens have continued to drop in price as 28in 3,840x2,160 TN panels become cheaper to produce. We’ve reviewed several of these screens in recent months, but we’ve yet to see one we think is better than a high-quality, 2,560x1,440 resolution screen.

Philips’s Brilliance 288P6 seems to use a similar TN panel to equivalent-priced Ultra HD monitors, displaying near-identical characteristics. At the default settings, our calibrator reported a sRGB gamut coverage of 92.9 per cent. Most colours were well served, with bright greens and yellows looking rich, although deeper reds, blues and purples lost some of their vibrancy; the sRGB coverage rose to 95.2 per cent after calibration.