Foolish futurologists

Imagine that it’s 2115. Take a good look around you. It’s a fantastical place, isn’t it?

All your worldly possessions were manufactured on your levitating 3D printer. This includes your own biosphere, located in a well-to-do part of your underwater bubble city. You telework only three days a week, never get sick, and grow all your own food on your own hydroponic farm – an invention that has eliminated world hunger. Quantum broadband means that Windows 10 updates are delivered before Microsoft has even developed them. All that incredible stuff, and it’s only a quarter past nine (boom, boom!).

Epson Expression Premium XP-530

Does this printer have the world’s smallest screen?

Flat screens were amazing when they first appeared. Before then, displaying an electronic image meant accelerating a stream of electrons like some sort of fantasy, video-game weapon. This meant that however wide your monitor was, it had to be proportionally deep, making room for the picture gunners to take aim. Even the smallest screens offered far more volume than surface area, and the limit of miniaturisation was the shoebox-sized 7in black-and-white telly in your caravan.

Remembering… ZX81

A nine year-old David Hayward spent a lot of hours in a 3D maze

What a heady time the early 80s was for the computing industry. Popular electronics were offering computers for sale through dedicated magazines, arcade games were becoming more complex, and the home computer boom was just about to hit millions of consumers throughout the UK and the world beyond.

Asus Strix Claw Dark Edition

Anthony gets to grips with a new gaming mouse

Whether you’re a serious PC gamer or not, you might well be aware that there are a few well-known and popular ways to hold a mouse. You might use a palm grip, perhaps, or a fingertip grip. Or you might be one of the gamers whose grip style shares a name with the Strix Claw.

Actually, though, having a claw grip style isn’t a prerequisite for using this mouse. Asus says on its website that the Strix Claw, in spite of its name, is suitable for all grip styles. It’s also said to be ideal for first-person shooters.

SteelSeries Siberia 200 Headphones

SteelSeries revisits the Siberia V2 for a colourful refresh

SteelSeries have been through quite a number of iterations of its Siberia headphones. There are currently six different models, from the 'cheap and cheerful' Siberia 100 (€50), to the bank-account-bashing Siberia 800’s (€350). Over the years it's come up with some classic designs, The Siberia V2 is hailed as the best-selling gaming headset of all time, but the V3 wasn’t quite as popular in some quarters. Indeed, many people asserted that they would have opted for the V2 had they not been taken out of production.