Dell's PDA hits UK shelves

Dell has officially launched its Axim X5 handheld in the UK and across Europe. The Pocket PC-based handheld is available in two configurations and is aggressively priced. The minimum spec model, with colour screen and 32Mb SDRAM has an RRP of ?169, while more RAM and ROM will cost you ?229. ...more

High street charity shops enjoying CD donation boom

High street charity shops are enjoying a boom in CD donations, as people increasingly store all their music on their computers. Cerebral palsy charity Scope said that its stores are receiving 'sack loads' of unwanted discs - both old and new material - as people clear out CD collections that cover an estimated 23,000 miles of shelf space across the UK. However the charity-minded are far outnumbered by those who offload their CDs on eBay. ...more

Robo racers relish tough DARPA challenge

From the deserts of Primm, Nevada, five 'autonomous' ground vehicles successfully completed the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, which is five more than last year. The Intel-backed Ivy-leaguers from Stanford University scooped the $2 million prize with their robotic vehicle 'Stanley', the visual processing for which was powered by a Pentium M processor. Stanley's time to complete the course was six hours and 53 minutes, and it was followed by two of the Carnegie-Mellon University's vehicles 'Sandstorm' and 'H1ghlander', which clocked 7:04 and 7:14, respectively. ...more

Comment: The bandwidth bandwagon

Super-fast broadband speeds have never been so boring. Contrary to the digital divide that threatened to keep much of Britain in the slow lane five years ago, 99 per cent of the nation can now access the high-speed Internet from home. The only question being, can people in your area download quickly or very quickly? Whereas having broadband access automatically meant 512Kb/sec a few years back, now it's a question of anything up to 8Mb/sec for large areas of the population, with the likes of BT and Wanadoo offering such services at very attractive prices. ...more

The price of high-bandwidth services

Oftel has published a survey of international pricing for high-bandwidth services. It covers the provision of high-speed telecom connections to consumers in France, Germany, USA and the UK. The very broad picture for the provision of broad-bandwidth connections is that the UK and France are vying for positions behind Germany and the US in terms of the price and variety of services available. ...more