Remembering… Box art

David Hayward spent a lot of time looking at boxes

Computer and video game box art, or cover art, was once just as important element of game marketing as the game itself. Who cared if the game consisted of a stickman running a wire-thin strip of landscape, dodging ASCII characters? If the box art displayed something totally amazing, then the game invariably sold.

Chillblast Fusion Quartz

All you need in a desktop PC

Big PC boxes are traditionally known as ‘towers’. This one takes the term pretty literally. It could comfortably house the headquarters of a small country’s secret police. Bucking the trend for show-off neon-lit fishtank systems, there are no windows. What happens inside is the stuff of tales told by mothers to frighten their children. We shall not speak of it.

Magix Video Pro X8

Magix update its top-of-the-range video editor

VideoPro X8 is the latest version of Magix professional video editing suite. Admittedly it’s a product with a fairly hefty price, yet as our American cousins would say, it provides a lot of bang for your buck.

And for those that simply dabble with video editing or only throw together the odd celebratory slideshow, Magix offers a comprehensive range of more affordable alternatives. But make no mistake: Pro X offers as much as, if not more than, many professional editing suites, which could cost you five times as much.

Archos 70 Platinum

An inexpensive device with a great display

The 7" tablet market has grown significantly in recent months, with users much preferring more manageable devices, rather than something that’s 10 inches or more.

Archos has risen to that demand and produced an interesting range of 7" Android tablets, from the GampePad through to the top-of-the range 70b Helium. This Archos 70 Platinum comes in second to the Helium, so you can expect some pretty decent specifications.

Synology DiskStation DS216j

Synology delivers a new j series NAS box for the discerning user

I really liked the DS215j, and so I would have been rather shocked to have spurned the DS216j given that it’s remarkably similar in almost every respect. The outside is almost identical, being a minimalist exercise in high quality plastic and form-is-functionality. Synology has been using this dual-drive design for a while and evidently sees no compelling reason to change it now.

HP PageWide Pro 477dw Multi-Function Printer

HP takes inkjet printing and drags it screaming into this decade

Using inkjet technology for multi-function printers isn’t very cost effective, even if people like the quality of the output.

Up till now the answer was laser or wax thermal printing, though both have corresponding limitations in colour representation, speed and cost. What people needed was inkjetlike results but laser speed and post of ownership, if those aren’t mutually exclusive demands.

Magix Audio and Music Cleaning Lab Premium

Is this the ultimate sound and music editor?

Afew weeks ago, I reviewed the Video Audio Cleaning Lab from Magix, designed to fix and enhance any problems you have with your video sounds. Well, this latest product is the big brother of that package, so it’s quite capable of fixing the same problems, yet it can also handle a whole lot more as well. The name of the product on review is the Magix Audio and Music Cleaning Lab Premium. The Premium tag indicates that it’s the top of the range in this series, and one that includes some very sophisticated sound editing features.

Element Gaming Palladium Keyboard

There’s nothing toxic about this heavy metal peripheral

The Palladium gaming keyboard is a midrange peripheral sitting neatly between the entry-level Thorium and higher-end Beryllium mechanical keyboard from Element Gaming.

Although the Palladium is a membrane keyboard, it does offer something slightly different from the competition in terms of its design, feature set and price.