NEW YORK: Toshiba’s 14-inch Chromebook 2 is one of the best of the crop (HP, Dell, Asus and Samsung also make them), mainly because of its high definition screen. It’s sleekly designed (most Chromebooks resemble MacBooks) and quite light, at 1.35kg.
It also has a fantastic battery life, at around eight hours of real-world usage (from 11.5 hours claimed usage). Its specifications are deliberately light (2GB Ram, 16GB storage drive, Celeron processor) because it’s designed almost solely as an online access machine. The fact that users can’t run Windows software on them isn’t quite the setback it once was, either, with most mainstream programs now available as online applications of one sort or another.
For most people, projectors sit right up there with pagers and fax machines in terms of the tech zeitgeist timeline. They’re big, clunky and it often feels like users need an engineering certificate to get one hooked up. ‘Pico’ projectors, with their miniature form, have been trying to modernise the genre for some time.
But up to now, the quality has mostly been pretty poor. Celluon’s new PicoAir (and companion PicoPro) goes some way to providing a workable alternative. Aside from better image quality, it’s incredibly convenient and easy to kick off – just pair it with an iPhone, iPad, Android device or laptop and start beaming away. It uses lasers instead of conventional lamp technology and can project a high-definition (720p) image, movie or presentation to an equivalent size of (up to) 250 inches. Its main physical connection port is HDMI, but it also connects via wifi or DLNA to any laptop, iPhone, iPad or Android device.
Apple Mac Mini 3 Price: from €520 Rating: ****
Mac Minis have never been as big a hit as the company’s signature iMacs, even though they’re almost as well powered and cost less than half the price.
It probably has something to do with a preference for getting the full-on computer-in-a-screen design of the bigger machine. Still, if you already have a decent monitor, keyboard and mouse, this makes for a superb, cost-effective way to get the best desktop PC experience around. The small, unobtrusive Mini has four USB 3 ports and two Thunderbolt ports as well as SD card and gigabit Ethernet ports. It also has audio-in and headphone connections. The base model has an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of Ram and a 500GB hard drive.
