For those not wishing to splash out a few hundred pounds on the excellent Creative ZiiSound Bluetooth speakers, Creative have further ranges of Bluetooth speakers on the market.

The D100′s are the cheapest, but if you want to retain the apt-X sound system of the ZiiSound, there’s the D200′s.  Just £89.99, these are a lot cheaper than the £279.99 asking price of the ZiiSound. Indeed, Amazon are currently selling them for just £69.99.

In the simple box you get the D200 speaker system, power adapter, quick start guide and various warranty and technical leaflets.

To benefit from apt-X you need to have a compatible transmitter. The iPhone/iPod Bluetooth doesn’t have this by default, so you’ll need a plug-in “dongle”. These retail at £40, but if you follow this link, you can get one for half price (for a limited time only – the discount is shown at checkout). Creative have confirmed to me as well that these are compatible with the new iPod releases.

There’s an equivalent USB version for plugging into your PC or laptop, and this too is available at half price.

On the top of the speaker is a Bluetooth connection button as well as buttons for volume up and down. On the rear is the power connector, power button and an “Aux in” socket, allowing you to connect to the speakers without the need for Bluetooth.

There’s no dock for an iPod/iPhone, but if don’t own one then you’ll probably be glad of the speaker’s smoother lines that are the result.

The speaker itself is gorgeous - glossy black with a black fabric grill on the front. However, and you’ll see from the photographs, that glossy plastic picks up dust and hair extremely easily. It’s about 41cm in length (10cm height and 10cm depth) and weighs a little over 1.5kg.

So,  connecting up power and turning on, you will be greeted by a light that is between the Bluetooth connection button and the volume controls. Hold the connection button down for a few seconds and this light will flash blue, indicating that it’s ready to pair. Pair this with your device and you’re done. The volume controls, which I believe is a rocker, rather than individual buttons, are best held down rather than stabbed lightly. The Bluetooth should work up to about 10 metres away.

I tried it out with a combination of Thunder, the stirring end title music from the recent Star Trek film and, for audio tests, the Chris Moyles Podcast. The sound is absolutely cracking – it has excellent bass, it goes to a high volume without distortion and the all round sound is balanced. I was mightily impressed. And, at this point, I wasn’t using an apt-X transmitter – plugging that in, the sound has an added richness that simple Bluetooth just can’t provide.

Summary of Creative D200 Bluetooth Speaker

An extremely attractive and excellent sounding speaker. About the only negative point I could find is the slightly stiff volume buttons.

Excellent value for money.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 22nd September 2010.

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After much saving my daughter recently bought herself a laptop. Or rather, she gave me the money and left it to my judgement to get her one.

I came across the Samsung R530 quite early on and took her to try it in Currys. What I didn’t realise at the time is the sheer number of configurations of the R530 there are available.

The version I ended up getting appears to be exclusive to DSG (Currys, Dixons and PC World) – it has an Intel T4400 processor, 500GB hard drive and 4GB of memory. With the latter installed, I assumed the version of Windows 7 it came with would be the 64 bit one. I was wrong, so only 3GB is usuable (I submitted a query through Samsung support about this but never got a response), which is disappointing.

Unlike many of the bland looking laptops available, this one has a lovely dark red finish on its lid – something my daughter didn’t like at first, although she now describes it as “very stylish“. Inside, the keyboard is black and has a silver surround. Indicator lights are on the front and the whole track-pad has a blue light around it. The track-pad is easy to use and is multi-touch.

There are only 3 USB ports available, but there’s also an HDMI connector along with a VGA. It has a DVD writer and there’s also a 3-in-1 card slot on the front. Wi-fi is b/g and n but there’s no bluetooth. The supplied 6 cell battery will probably see a couple of hours of life, but it’s not fantastic.

The keyboard is good quality and easy to type on – it even has room for a numeric keypad. The screen is particularly good – with a glossy screen the colours are really vivid. It’s 15.6″ in size has a 1366×768 pixel resolution and has an LED back light. When it turned up in the post I was at work, and had many admiring comments about the quality of the screen. Graphics are built in.

Sadly, I spent a long time waiting for Windows to install and, particularly, a long time waiting for Samsung software to install – this includes a lot of trial software as well as other stuff that I really don’t need. I then spent a long time uninstalling it all. Once done, I used the Windows backup tool to create a disk image. The Samsung does come with its own backup software, which creates backups on another partition – a partition that you set-up yourself. It appears to put too much emphasis on the idea that this is THE backup solution – no, it’s not. In the case of a drive failure, a backup on the same disk isn’t going to help. And, by default, it wanted to use HALF the disk for backups. I turned it off.

Unfortunately, Samsung do not provide any kind of recovery disk and, again, queries about this were met unanswered by Samsung.

As if often the case, Samsung have included some full third party software for DVD playback, etc. There’s also an excellent piece of webcam software to make use of the quality webcam that’s built into the laptop called YouCam. As with the rest of the software, this is courtesy of Cyberlink.

At this point, I’ve turned to my daughter for her pros and cons…

Likes:

• Brilliant keyboard
• Lovely screen
• Very stylish
• Good value

Dislikes:

• Heavy
• Shows fingerprints clearly

Thanks to Quidco, I was able to use a money off voucher and get cash back so it cost a little over £437.

Summary of Samsung R530

Excellent keyboard and screen and superb value for money. Lacks Bluetooth and should have the 64-bit version of Windows 7. Average battery life and little heavy. More disappointing is Samsung’s lack of support -  an inability to respond to queries, let alone include proper recovery disks.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 16th September 2010.

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With the arrival of my Dell PC running Windows 7, I had to wave goodbye to my Logitech Quickcam Zoom webcam. I’d had it for many years but Logitech had stopped providing drivers before Vista, let alone Windows 7. For the time being I’ve been using my daughter’s Quickcam Express (she doesn’t need it as her new laptop has a 1.3 MP camera built in) but it’s low quality image looks appalling on video calls. Which is, to be honest, odd as both have a 640 x 480 resolution. I suspect the Zoom was simply a lot better quality.

As I recently complained about on Twitter, the usual sources of reviews (magazines, websites) rarely seem to review peripherals – keyboards, mice, webcams, etc. I therefore found choosing a new webcam difficult. After much looking around the lesser-known brands in Maplin, I decided to stick with Logitech (the Microsoft webcams, which initially interested me, seemed to have erratic reviews from consumers). Now, choices of webcam seem to veer between cheap low resolution versions and expensive high definition versions. The best price-point I found was the Logitech HD C510, which cost £37.99 from Play.com.

The C510 has 1280 x 720 video and an 8 MP still photo facility as well as a built-in microphone. The “stand” twists around to grip most monitors and laptop and as the camera itself twists on the case, the stand can be used to cover the front for travel purposes. My monitor is quite thick (it’s a relatively old ViewSonic) and it struggles a little to hold in place. With the stand opened up the main part of the camera is less than 7 x 4cm with a thickness of less than 1cm. That’s pretty compact!

I think I’m going to start a campaign against over-packaging. At least Logitech haven’t tried to make claims about their “greenness”. Never-the-less, the webcam, even open, is quite compact yet the box is way too big for its purpose (it could easily be in a box half the size). The box contains, apart from the camera, a small padded carry pouch, driver CD and a thick manual in 1001 different languages (okay, 14). The manuals come in plastic bags, as does the camera, etc. The camera even has an extra wrap of plastic around the stand for unknown reason. If you’re supplying a CD, why not include the manuals on that? Or, better still, as the drivers on the disk are usually out-of-date, why not include a single slip of paper which includes a URL of where you can go to download the drivers, software and manual?

Anyway, back to the camera. The supplied software includes the normal Logitech video software which I find excellent – it’s now improved with easier uploading to Facebook and YouTube. Additionally, they provide motion detection software and others that can be downloaded. Additionally, an on-screen controller can be configured to appear whenever the camera is in use. They also try and include their own video calling software, but with Live Messenger and Skype all providing the same, I can’t see why you’d want to.

I’d make a video myself using the camera but, I’ll be honest, I’ve more of a face for blogging than videos. Having said that, I did record a video and a still from that video can be seen in the gallery below¹. However, a video demonstration would be nice so, until I pluck up the courage and start video reviewing properly, I hand over this part to Chris Pirillo, who has reviewed the product on YouTube, using the webcam to make the video.

Summary of Logitech HD Webcam C510

An easy to use camera with good software and excellent picture and sound quality. One mark off, though, for it’s high price.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 16th September 2010.

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1. yes, it is a bit messy. It’s a busy family house, what more can I say? [↩]