Intel Genuino 101

It’s no secret that Intel has been trying to break into the maker market. The company’s Quark chip, a process shrink of the ancient Pentium microarchitecture, proved a poor alternative to mainstream microcontrollers in the Galileo. Then its successor, the Edison, paired the Quark with an Atom core in an attempt to rectify performance issues, but lost out to rivals thanks to a maker-unfriendly form factor and highdensity connections. Will Intel’s third attempt, the Genuino 101, finally win over the maker community?

Remembering… Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2

David Hayward has fond, but painful memories of his Speccy

After Sir Clive sold his company name to Sir Alan (although he wasn’t a Sir back then), it was a significant blow to the home computing community. What was to happen to the much loved Spectrum? Where next for the games? The future remained uncertain.

For a mere £5 million, which is peanuts by today’s standards, Alan Sugar’s Amstrad became the new owner of the Sinclair brand and its range of home computers. That was in April 1986, and it wasn’t long before we began to see what was to become of the Spectrum computer through the pages of Crash and other such notable magazines of the time.

Asus ROG Gladius Gaming Mouse

Anthony looks at a mouse that encourages a bit of DIY

Over the past ten years or so, I’ve reviewed a fair few gaming mice from a huge range of companies. Generally, they’ve been impressive, but one or two of them, through long-term use, revealed themselves to have some significant weaknesses, which it would have been impossible to see at the time of review. Chief among these problems were broken cables and unresponsive buttons.

Advanced SystemCare Ultimate 9

Roland tries an all-in-one package that cleans, optimises and protects your PC

Advanced SystemCare is available in three versions: Free, Pro and Ultimate. The first two are clean-up and tune-up tools, with the free version offering just a few basic tools and the Pro version including many more. The difference between these two and the Ultimate edition is real-time virus and spyware protection. In the Ultimate package, on test here, you get all the tune-up and clean-up tools, plus security too.

BrydgeMini Aluminium Bluetooth Keyboard for iPad Mini

Those wanting to be productive with their iPad get a boost

Since Apple launched the iPad Pro, more people have been considering using their iPad for more than Candy Crush.

Specifically for those with an iPad Mini, Brydge has created a Bluetooth 3.0 keyboard accessory that effectively turn their tablet into a tiny PC, of sorts.

Devolo Home Control Starter Pack

Devolo is riding the Z-Wave to the future of smart devices

In the past couple of years Devolo has delivered some very classy Powerline gear, but now it's branching out into IoT territory with its Home Control range.

By way of giving your home control ambitions a kick start, Devolo has bundled three items into an appropriately named Starter Pack. It includes the all-important communications hub or ‘Central Unit’, and alongside that a door/window contact and a smart metering plug.

Gigabyte P57W

A reasonably priced laptop that combines both performance and looks

We’ve had a few high-performance laptops through our doors recently, each as good as the last and each offering some pretty impressive mobile gaming.

We thought we’d seen everything the industry has to offer – until Gigabyte sent us its latest gaming laptop.

Ashampoo Burning Studio 16

The latest version of this uninstaller packs a useful collection of extra tools, as Roland Waddilove discovers

Burning Studio 16 is the latest CD, DVD and Blu-ray burning software from Ashampoo. Many existing features have been improved in this version, and there are some new features too. Although the price on the website says £39.99, if you download and install the fully working 30-day trial and click the Buy Now link in it, you can get it for the knockdown price of £15.99. Discounts on Ashampoo products are huge if you know how to get them.

Raspberry Pi 3: Fancy A Fresh Slice Of Pi?

David Crookes cuts into the latest Raspberry Pi and licks his lips in anticipation...

In February 2015, the Raspberry Pi Foundation believed it had a record breaker on its hands. An impressive five million Raspberry Pis had been sold in total, which just edged it above the ZX Spectrum and led to early claims that it had become the biggest-selling British computer of all time. Then someone mentioned the Amstrad PCW range had sold eight million and was also very much British, and it caused a bit of backtracking.