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Home , Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader

16 ingear TECH & NET timesonline.co.uk/ingear 07.09.08 17

Getty Spore HHHHH PC, Mac, £40. DON’T PANIC TECH Age 12+ What to do next, when you’ve NIGEL POWELL ANSWERS YOUR TECH-RELATED QUERIES designed games as big as The readers: it’s a war story Sims and Sim City? Well, the latest When I try to defragment Take a look at StoreGate I also suggest you consider project from Sims creator Will Qmy Windows XP A(www.storegate.co.uk), a Standby Buster (£15 from Wright tackles life itself. Spore computer, a message which offers 2GB of storage for tinyurl.com/59wvsd), a tracks a single species from its appears saying: “Please run remote-control off-switch; or The Reader’s metal free or larger capacities from beginnings as a single-celled Chkdsk/f”. What does this an Intellipanel (£22 from case feels tougher, £3.49 a month. organism to the point at which it mean and what should I do? tinyurl.com/5t88p3) — a Mark Harris lighter and slimmer (at The needed is no colonises space. Each phase is a GC, via e-mail multi-plug adaptor that 8mm) than its rivals more complex than a tiny mini-game in itself, varying from browser plug-in, making it deactivates all the kit attached simple plankton-munching to build-and-conquer strategies. Spore’s strengths lies in its vision; you can The computer is telling you ideal for use via internet cafes to it once the PC is shut down. magine holding a library of spend hours stretching limbs and adding fangs to your creation, then feel parental pride as it finds new Athere are some broken files or a friend’s computer. homes with other Spore addicts online. This is a magnificent achievement, a gorgeous combination of in the palm of your hand, search- on your hard disk that need However, be aware that large How can I make copies of art, science and technology that asks the big questions without forgetting to have fun. Stuart Andrews ing them in seconds and reading fixing. While this may indicate photos can take a long time to Qour son’s wedding video a serious deterioration of your them on crisp screens that look as The Reader has built-in upload, especially from a tiny for distribution? I have good as paper. Now imagine going hard disk, it may also be the web cafe in the back of beyond. Windows XP Home Edition. memory to store around 160 result of a minor glitch. into a bookshop that’s not your , as well as two memory card Facebreaker HHHII PR from north Wales Iregular one and being told that the nov- Unless you know how to Is it okay to switch off the slots to allow for thousands more The 6in display Xbox 360, PS3, £40. el you want to buy is written in a Age 12+ use Windows system tools, I Qpower supply to my The hard way is to connect language you can’t understand, or that works well in low light, suggest you take it to a repair computer system when it is Ayour video playback device the novel a friend has lent you is indeci- although you will need shop and ask it to fix the files, (camcorder, VHS machine or Designed as a counterpart to EA not in use? pherable. Welcome to the world of the £39 PRS-ACL1 and then give the disk a quick MG, via e-mail DVD player) to your PC and ebooks. backlight case to use Sports’ excellent Fight Night once-over. use a video capture program Last week, Sony and Waterstone’s, the Reader in the dark Round 3, Facebreaker plays Alternatively, download It’s a sound idea to switch such as Pinnacle Studio the UK’s largest chain of bookshops, boxing for laughs. Latino the free hard-disk diagnosis Aoff all your IT appliances (www.pinnaclesys.com) to launched the , a paperback- loverboys take on Japanese teen software HDD Health from when they’re not needed, to download the video so you can sized device that can hold up to 160 queens with outrageous hooks www.panterasoft.com and see avoid wasting electricity on edit and burn with the ebooks in its memory. A crisp, mono- and bristling uppercuts that send what it uncovers. standby current. The only footage. The easy way is to go chrome 6in screen lets you skip through opponents 10ft into the air. reason to leave a computer on to www.snappysnaps.co.uk, and magnify text. In Sunday Unfortunately, Facebreaker is not I am planning a trip is if it does regular night-time find your local branch and ask Times tests, the screen was easy to read half as much fun as it thinks: the Qabroad and want to use backups of your data to an for its prices on video both in bright light and indoors, and presentation can’t be faulted, but the controls are so unintuitive and the single-player game so an online storage service to online service, but even then duplicating and transfer the unit’s slim metal case felt tough and brutally difficult that you barely get a chance to learn the ropes before you find your boxer slumped back up my photos. Can you you should tell the software to services. I vote easy, unless well made. Flicking through electronic against them. Facebreaker picks up when played with friends in the game’s winner-stays-on Couch suggest any sites? switch off the PC once it has you fancy a bit of work. Thumb-operated Royale mode, and it’s great to be able to create a custom fighter with your own face from a digital pages using the control pad was easy, GC, via e-mail finished. [email protected] buttons flick from one photo. All the same, many other fighting games knock this one out of the . Stuart Andrews although the menus were rather slow to page to the next and respond. back. The E Ink screen However, unlike ’s Kindle blacks out between ebook reader, launched last year in the The bookmark every page turn US and expected to go on sale here soon, button lets you there’s no way to search inside text (for mark your place in characters’ names, for instance), look the text. The up words in a dictionary or download Reader can store ebooks to it without using a computer. hundreds of The Sony is selling for £199 and bookmarks for comes with a disc containing 100 classic each ebook (and conveniently out-of-) books, which you can load onto your Reader using a home computer. When you’ve exhausted these, you can down- load more from the 4,638 titles on sale at www..com at a 20% dis- count on the cover price. A tempting offer . . . until you dis- cover that ebooks bought for the Sony Reader can’t be copied, shared with your friends or transferred onto other makes of reader. Nor can you buy ebooks for the Sony from some rival insisted that every new ebook includes mat; Borders has partnered with iRex, a tional laptop or displays, reason could be that ebooks are still rela- bookstores, including Amazon and Bor- DRM. spin-off company from Philips, that pre- and can be viewed without strain for tively new, with standards that have yet ders. The cause is digital rights manage- The problem is that three major UK fers PRC () files; and Amazon hours, from almost any angle. They cur- to be finalised. It’s also likely that each ment (DRM), the copy protection tech- booksellers are each touting their own is likely to use its proprietary AZW for- rently only display in black and white, company hopes to dominate the ebook nology similar to that used by Apple’s ebook readers with three different DRM mat for the UK launch of the Kindle. and all three black out the display for a market the way Apple does online music iTunes online store. Many publish- systems — none of which is compatible This aside, the three readers are quite moment when turning a page. All can, if sales. Apple’s iTunes store enforces its ers are nervous about consumers freely with any of the others. Waterstone’s similar. All use innovative “E Ink” required, read material transferred from own DRM system and still accounts for copying and sharing ebooks and have and Sony are using the popular EPUB for- screens that use far less power than tradi- your computer in other formats. Plain about 80% of digital downloads. text files, Adobe PDF documents and There may yet be a way out of this basic Jpeg images are all compatible, so DRM nightmare. WH Smith offers its you can read, say, a car maintenance ebooks in a variety of formats to suit manual stored on your laptop as a PDF. most readers (except the Kindle), and HOW THE RIVALS MATCH UP The iRex iLiad (£399) sports a large 8in there are dozens of websites that sell that lets you scribble digital ebooks without DRM protection or even notes in the margins of ebooks, and wi-fi allow completely free downloads. connectivity. It’s heavier and somewhat (www.gutenberg. clumsier to use than the Sony Reader, org), for example, offers more than although it too comes with 50 classics. 25,000 free downloads that should work In the US, Amazon’s Kindle, with a 6in on all three readers here — although you screen and enough memory for 200 won’t find the latest airport blockbusters ebooks, has helped boost ebook sales to among its classic and out-of-print titles. around $17m (£10m) in the first half of As ebooks become more popular, they this year. The Kindle costs $359 (£202), are also spreading beyond dedicated but includes a free mobile internet con- reader devices. There is a choice of ebook nection for downloading books while software for the iPhone, for example. Sony PRS-505 Reader iRex iLiad away from a computer, for subscribing to If there’s a message to take away Price £199 Price £399 Price $359 (£202, available in US only) daily newspapers or blogs, and even for from all this, it’s don’t plump for a Screen size 6in Screen size 8in Screen size 6in basic web browsing. Two new Kindles reader before you’re ready: ebooks are Memory 192MB, MS and SD cards Memory 128MB, MMC and CF cards Memory 180MB, SD card are believed to be in the pipeline for next not predicted to make up even 1% of Holds 160 books Holds 80 books Holds 200 books year: one matching the slimline style of book sales until 2010. This first genera- Connectivity USB Connectivity wi-fi, USB Connectivity Mobile internet, USB Sony’s Reader, the other with a larger tion of ebook readers may suit frequent Battery life 15 hours Battery life 10 hours Battery life 7 hours screen suitable for academic books. travellers and bookworms, but make Weight 9oz Weight 15.3oz Weight 10.3oz So why the insistence on locking your choice too early and your ebook readers into a single retailer? Part of the story may not have a happy ending.