The PC Report

There’s nothing particularly special about the design or layout of this keyboard/mouse combo – it’s just a standard look with a pretty standard set of buttons; nothing too flashy or special. On the inside though is something unique and a first for wireless keyboards and mice: both the keyboard and mice of the Logitech Wireless Desktop MK710 have a 3 year battery life from a pair of AA batteries.

Of course, the claim of 3 years battery life may not be true for all; it’s based on a standard 2 million keystrokes per year and various conditions for the mouse. However even so you won’t need to change those batteries for several years saving you from the hassle and saving the environment from waste. If you’re European and want this package it should be available to you this month. Americans will have to wait until April to get their hands on the Wireless Desktop.

If you feel like being an early adopter to 3D display technology then the Acer GD235HZ might interest you. It’s a 23.6-inch 16:9 120Hz display that is fully compatible with Nvidia’s 3D Vision shutter glasses, and is therefore perfect for 3D gaming, if you have a compatible Nvidia graphics card that is. It’s also got a 1920×1080 resolution so it’ll be perfect for Blu-ray 3D movies when they start being released.

The monitor will set you back US$399, so it’s more than your standard 24″ display, and the Nvidia 3D Vision kit will set you back a further US$199. If you really want 3D right now though, go ahead because the monitor is available now.

Sliding into your hands by Spring 2010 is the new range of Cyborg R.A.T. gaming mice from Mad Catz. The mice are designed to look like something a gamer should have, with many, many programmable buttons arranged all over the place to give it a very “high-tech” look. The mice also feature an up to 5600dpi laser and adjustable weights – all something you need if you’re a pro gamer.  There are a total of 4 mice, all that have different features, with prices ranging from US$49 up to US$129.

Unfortunately the monitor I use does not have height adjustment, and it was too low for my liking so I searched around for a simple and effective method to raise the height of the monitor. I discovered the simple CD monitor stand. All you have to do is find some old CD cases (preferably with no CDs in them) and tape them up into a block shape for your monitor to sit on it. It may not look the greatest, but it’s simple, easy to make, and you can adjust the height in the future by removing/adding more CD cases.

If you’re one of the lucky few with a new motherboard that packs a USB 3.0 port then this new adapter is the perfect device to speed up external hard drives. The Brando Unitek USB 3.0 to SATA adapter will connect up your old (or new) SATA hard drive via USB 3.0 and a standard power jack. There is even an option to connect IDE hard drives via an extra dock.

The device will cost you US$48, which isn’t bad for a device using new technology. The upside is that the adapter will instantly turn your HDD into an external, USB hard drive with theoretical speeds of up to 500MB/s; the downside is that there is no enclosure for the hard drive so you’ll have to be careful when transporting the hard drive around.

You can grab one now from Brando, and the device will support your hard drives up to 2TB capacity on your Windows 7, Vista, XP or Linux machine.

As it turns out, this monster of a monitor has been on sale for a while now, but as it costs US$6,499 only the military and a few hardcore gamers have been able to afford it. This quad-DLP screen is huge: 43 inches in size and packing a nice 2880×900 resolution via its 32:10 resolution. The panel doesn’t require any special hardware or drivers and has a blazing fast response time of “less than .02 milliseconds.”

Of course, if you can stomach the price you can buy three of these monitors and arrange them around you for some car racing action, or as Ostendo claims, future multi-monitor CRVD applications. If you’re interested in buying one, you can right now from Ostendo, but keep in mind that US$6.5K price tag

OpenOffice has a very interesting idea about what mice should be like.  They seem to have created a monster of a mouse named the OpenOfficeMouse with 18 (yes, 18) programmable buttons and an analogue “Xbox-360 style” joystick. The mouse comes with button profiles for the latest OpenOffice as well as profiles for games and applications such as Adobe Photoshop and World of Warcraft.

One problem though, the mouse is really ugly. It reminds me of serial-port mice from 15 years ago – plain, boring and white with no button style at all; nothing at all like the latest mice from Logitech or Microsoft. Also, the eighteen buttons comes at a price: US$75 to be exact. If you fancy all the functionality, head over to OpenOfficeMouse to find more information.

Apple chose the perfect time to release new products – just before the release of Windows 7 tomorrow. Apple has released a bunch of new products today for the “holiday season” – a new range of iMacs, MacBooks and Mac Minis and also updated the Mighty Mouse (now know as the Magic Mouse) and the Apple Remote.

First off is the new iMac range (pictured above) which look much closer to the LED Cinema Displays as expected. While there still is no blu-ray in these new iMacs, we do see a nice spec bump. The new desktops come with either 21.5″ (1920×1080) or 27″ (2560×1440) 16:9 widescreen displays in the same aluminium enclosures. What really is great to see though is the inclusion of Intel’s Core i5 and i7 range in the top end models.

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One of Australia’s largest science institutions, CSIRO, recently announced that it had earned around AU$200m (US$183m) from its WiFi patent battles with some of the worlds largest computer companies. CSIRO owns the patents to the 802.11 wireless standard they made in 1996, a standard they claim is used in over 800 million devices worldwide at any moment.

Over the past years they have been battling some of the largest companies over these patents, including Microsoft, Intel, Netgear, Dell, HP and more. It looks like all this money from the court cases and settlements has finally pooled to quite a sum. CSIRO will soon announce how the money will be spent, although we’re sure the money will go towards more research within the company.

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Seven years ago 802.11n started planning and development; two and a half years ago 802.11 draft-n was released and devices begun using the spec. Now, years after we all started using draft-n and no major changes have been made, the IEEE has finalised 802.11n for all of us to use. Since there are no major changes, all of your draft-n devices will work with new finalised 802.11n equipment – and still at the 300Mbps we saw in draft-n

The finalised specification should be published sometime in October with devices to follow.