£5.99

MONTHLYNEW

IN…

MAC BOOK PRO LAPTOP

IPOD NANO 5TH GENERATION

IPHONE 3GS

FREE INSIDE THIS MONTH:

SANDISK MICRO SD CARD READER

HTC hero

•Competition

•Laptop review

•Stuff-4-sale

•Next month

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•PSP go

•Samsung Q1 ultra

•Ubuntu Linux 5.10

•Competition

•RC cars

IF YOU CAN ANSWER THIS QUESTION.

WHAT MEMORY CARD FORMAT DO SONY ERICSSON MOBILE PHONES SUPPORT?

A.MICRO SD

B.SD CARD

C.M2

D.MINI SD

With all the hype around Apple's still-mythical tablet, it's easy to forget that HP has been making a 12-inch consumer tablet for several years.In fact, the product that started life as the HP tx1000, and is now called the TouchSmart tm2, is one of the only convertible tablet laptops aimed at mainstream entertainment consumers; most tablets are intended for medical, educational, or other specialized markets.While convertible tablet laptops, which have screens that rotate 180 degrees to fold down over their keyboards, have never been a mainstream product, there's a certain appeal to using the multitouch touch-screen features, and carrying them around in your arm like an oversize Kindle.

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In our anecdotal hands-on use, the tm2 screen was not as fast and responsive as, say, an iPhone or iPod Touch, and the cursor dragged just slightly behind our fingers. That said, the option to use a finger or digital pen is a nice one, and there's a custom touch interface you can launch from a button on the side of the display.

That custom interface gives you access to touch-friendly photo galleries, as well as Web-based apps such as Hulu and Twitter.With a standard Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, optional discrete ATI graphics, and Windows 7, it's also a easy to speculate that the tm2 will be more powerful and easier to adapt to traditional computing tasks than Apple's tablet.

BRAND NEW APPLE IPAD

FROM BIRMINGHAM£249.99

USED 3RD GENERATION IPOD TOUCH

FROM LONDON

£109.99

BRAND NEW ACER ASPIRE 3000 LAPTOP

FROM MANCHESTER

£199.99

USED SONY WALKMAN NWZ-S616F MP4 PLAYER

FROM NEWCASTLE

£59.99

BRAND NEW JVC GR-D250

FROM SCUNTHORPE

£89.99

WIN AN XBOX 360 ELITE AND A REVIEW ON THE NEW MACBOOK AIR

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What better way to test Sony's new PSP Go than to take it on holiday?Yup, I thought so too. But after two weeks in Spain how did the download-only Go stack up?

Well, good and bad, but first a quick history lesson. You probably know the handheld gaming story by now but if not here is the gist.

Nintendo has historically dominated the handheld market with the Game Boy. Sony entered the market in 2005 with the PSP. Aimed at adults and with a great screen, movie playback and net access the PSP seemed sure to gain the upper hand against the ugly and seemingly faddish Nintendo DS which launched the same year.

How wrong we were. Brain Training and a sleek redesign gave the DS market domination. Meanwhile the PSP appealed to core gamers only and despite building up a solid user base the lack of releases and failure of the disc format for movies has slowed growth.

The original Q1 looked great – Samsung definitely got the

design part right. Unfortunately the great design didn’t extend to

usability, and the lack of built-in keyboard definitely counted against the Q1.

That said, a built-in keyboard is only worthwhile

if it’s usable, as the Sony UX1 proved – the slide-out keyboard on the UX1 was

just too tiny to use.

First up, let me say that I’m still not entirely convinced that there is any need for the Ultra-Mobile PC platform. With ultra-portable notebooks like Sony’s TZ11MN, Asus’ U1F and Samsung’s own Q40 already offering very lightweight computing on the move, I can’t help but wonder who would choose a UMPC over a conventional ultra-portable machine. But it’s clear that my personal views aren’t inline with the technology industry, with the likes of Samsung, Sony, Asus, Intel and niche concerns like OQO firmly behind the handheld computer model.

Ubuntu is described as 'Linux for human beings' -- the name is an ancient African word, meaning 'humanity to others', and also 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. As you might expect from this, Ubuntu is big on sharing: it is, and will remain, free of charge (although support

can be bought), and comes in regular six-monthly updates under the guidance of charismatic South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who also has the distinction of being the first African citizen in space.The latest Ubuntu version, 5.10 (also known as the 'Breezy Badger'),

was launched in October 2005, and -- from its name at least -- sounds an improvement over version 5.04 (a.k.a. the 'Hoary Hedgehog'). It has

had glowing reviews, won awards, and gone to the top of download lists. For distro-watchers, Ubuntu is based on Debian.

A free operating system sounds consumer-orientated, but Ubuntu is pitched at the enterprise -- witness the recent announcement that it has

been certified for use with IBM's DB2 database. The main source of commercial support is Shuttleworth's Canonical organisation, but a

number of other companies offer services in Europe, including some 13 in the UK.

Ubuntu is straightforward to download from the Ubuntu site, in two forms, each of which fits on one CD. The same disks are also available

by post -- and at present even these are free -- to anyone with an account at the open-source community services site Launchpad.

What operating system do Apple laptops and pc’s run on?

A. Mac

B. Windows

C. Linux

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