Price Check: Multifunction devices

You can get a combined printer, scanner and copier at some pretty keen prices these days. But for the home user, and even small offices, that means a lot of clutter. Especially now that you can get all-in-ones with a respectable performance in all areas, as well as a low price tag. ...more

Bad times keep rolling for Dell

Just a few days after recalling more than four million fire-hazard laptop batteries, Dell has announced results that show profits have fallen by more than half. The computer giant released its second quarter results for the period ending August 4 yesterday. Profits slumped to $502 million, which is 51 per cent lower than this time last year. ...more

EFF warns against plans to strengthen mobile security

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has spoken out against a proposal by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) to beef up mobile phone security. The civil liberties body argues the proposals offer little to end users and only serve to support commercial companies' desires to lock down phones, software and content. Seth Schoen, staff technologist at the EFF said: 'We should be working to make cell phones more like PCs rather than making PCs more like restricted cell phones. ...more

Infinifilm comes to DVD

A new way of presenting DVD-based material is coming with New Line's infinifilm system. If you already own a DVD player, the best way to describe infinifilm is via the Matrix DVD (I thought most DVD players came with this disc as standard these days) and its White Rabbit section. In that, whenever the viewer reached a point in the film where some supplementary material was available, a small white rabbit would appear on screen signalling the viewer to press the 'Enter' button - and this would open up the extra video footage. ...more

Eolas patent on Web plug-in technology rejected

The controversial Eolas Technologies patent looks like it is about to be rescinded by the US Patent Office. The office has confirmed that it has rejected all of the 10 patent claims that it re-examined. The patent office review follows a multimillion dollar court case. ...more