The PDP-5020FD is a member of the distinguished Kuro line from Pioneer that delivers unrivaled & top notch performance. Pioneer via the production of an this extra-ordinary HDTV proves that it reigns the plasma industry even though high quality does come with a price. Comparing with other competing brand is a bit costly but when in comes to Kuro series, the PDP-5020FD offers the cheapest price.

Design

Pioneer maintains the sleek look of its plasmas in the Kuro KRP-500M with a shiny black frame surrounding the screen. The clean sheer look is perfect, though the screen is not flushed with the frame, leaving a thin strip that reflects bright lights that may become distracting. Moreover, this set comes with a solid-looking, non-swiveling stand that limits viewing to only one position.

Pioneer re-designed its remote for this year and some of the changes aren’t quite welcome. The new remote ditched the different shapes for secondary functions and replaced these with tiny, uniformly-sized keys, added more buttons and arranged these in a neat grid that lends itself to frequent remote-pressing mistakes. The direct access to the TV’s inputs and glow-in-the-dark buttons are nice touches, though. The menu system was also overhauled, and gratefully, the changes implemented here are well-thought of and are quite welcome.

Screen/picture clarity

As usual, the PDP-5020FD gives the deepest black in HDTVs. This is expected, as Pioneer made the contrast ratio five times more intense than the previous models, affording never-before-seen black levels that pave the way for breathtaking images, impressive shadow details, and vibrant colors. There are color accuracy issues, with red and green deviating slightly from HD standards, but generally, these are not deal-breaking ones. The anti-reflective screen is also among the best, giving exceptional picture clarity even with open windows and bright lights.

Equipped with a dejudder and 72hz. refresh rates, the PDP-5020FD smoothed images and played Blu-ray discs without apparent issues, though some artifacts may arise when the dejudder is engaged. The plasma also deinterlaced 1080i sources and resolved standard-def materials quite well. Even as PC monitor, the PDP-5020FD resolved every line of the 1,920×1,080-pixel PC signal, when connected as digital.

Features

The PDP-5020FD is a non-Elite model in the Kuro line, so its features are relatively fewer. Picture control settings are limited, and it doesn’t have color temperature presets; it has seven picture presets, including the Optimum mode which adjusts intelligently according to ambient conditions. The plasma has four HDMI ports, an Ethernet port that allows streaming over the home network, USB port and an assortment of connectivity options. Other features include side-by-side picture-in-picture viewing, anti-burn features, and power-saving modes.

The PDP-5020FD is undoubtedly an expensive HDTV, but for home theater enthusiasts, splurging on this TV may just be the right decision, as this TV surely rocks when it comes to picture quality. It also has advanced features that ensure pure entertainment, so you certainly wouldn’t go wrong with the PDP-5020FD.

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Opera has announced v10.5 of its browser this week in an ‘alpha’ format (read: this isn’t even beta yet, casual users stay away). Despite this, however, it represents a potential game changing update for the company.

According to the respected benchmark of suites run by specialist site betanews.com Opera 10.5 not only boosts the speed of its web browsing performance, but jet propels it to speeds in excess of anything we’ve even seen from the beta and developer versions of Chrome.

To put this into some context Betanews uses a benchmark whereby the speed of Internet Explorer 7 is classed as 1.0 using Windows 7 making all other browsers results relative to this. Consequently, IE8 scores 1.55, Opera 10.2 5.85, Firefox 3.5 11.12 (3.7 alpha 13.29), Safari 4 20.83, Chrome 22.5 and Opera 10.5 24.5.

This is a monstrous turnaround and is also backed up by a stylish redesign of the interface which makes us think why oh why has Opera not classified this v11.0. Where more stable versions of Opera 10.5 can go from here, nobody knows!

So Opera 10.5 represents a real twist in the tale. How will other browser developers respond? Well, can only rub our hands with glee at the prospect of finding out.

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Proving a more credible than the usual water cooler talk is an exclusive from the Financial Times in which the well respected (if disturbingly pink) paper is placing a lot of faith: Apple is planning a “major product announcement” next month which it believes will be the company’s long awaited iTablet (mock-up shown).

Backing this up is some digging the FT has done which reveals Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January. Of these 26 January is believed to be the key date. Of course this doesn’t prove anything. The Cupertino giant has long held events in January as part of its commitment to MacWorld, though its 2010 plans have been less certain after it controversially announced it would no longer be attending after 2009.

The optimistic would then say Apple must be looking to kick off its own replacement show with a major bang. Naïve or not, there is some credence here since iPhone, iPod and Mac lines have all been recently updated leaving them little scope to be modified again so soon. Secondly it has long been known that Apple is working to tie-up deals with all sorts for content providers, from TV and film studios to magazines and broadsheets newspapers. I’d also argue Apple has largely tread water since the original iPhone was announced, with much of what has followed being evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

All in all then, we’ll allow ourselves this little flight of fantasy and say maybe, just maybe… after all it’s Christmas!

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The extensive breakdown gives you more information that you could possibly want or need, but key highlights include a 3.7in WVGA AMOLED display, HSUPA, a 1GHz chipset, wireless n, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A2DP, aGPS, a 5MP camera with LED flash, digital compass and accelerometer. Remarkably, this whole package also comes in at just 119 x 59.8 x 11.5mm and weighs 130g, slightly less than the iPhone despite the larger screen size.

On the downside, Google has continued the trend of Android phones with very little native memory. Just 512MB is installed, though a microSD expansion slot supports cards up to 32GB and comes with a 4GB card included. Charging also uses the new industry standard micro USB which keeps in line with Google's preference for open standards and there's a 3.5mm headphone jack as well.

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I've reviewed quite a few previous FE series cameras, and the fairest thing I can say about them is that some have been better than others. There were a few really dire ones, such as the 2006 FE-150, the 2007 FE-230 or the 2008 FE-290, but some others were really not bad, such as the 2007 FE-250 or last year's FE-340. The FE series has always been at the lower end of the Olympus product line, and a long way from the company's flagship cameras like the E-620 digital SLR or the innovative Pen E-P1.

At first glance the FE-5020 looks like any typical low-cost ultra-compact. It has an all-plastic body, and is available in a range of four colours; black, brown, metallic blue or white, with chrome-coloured plastic trim. It's a very slim and lightweight camera, made for slipping into a shirt pocket for a night out, and is designed with an eye to style. The overall build quality is about what you'd expect for a budget camera. The actual fit and finish is reasonably good, but the materials feel cheap. The plastic is quite thin in places and the camera feels a bit flimsy and fragile, especially the battery/card hatch which looks like it could snap off with little provocation.

The deep colour and shiny finish of the body certainly looks good, but the high-gloss surface feels quite unpleasant to the touch, with an almost oily quality. It is very difficult to grip securely, and the crowded rear panel leaves no room for the thumb, which makes the camera awkward to handle. It's very difficult to hold the camera one-handed without blocking the flash with the right middle finger. The controls on the back are cheap-looking rounded transparent plastic buttons which provide little tactile feedback, with recessed labels that are difficult to see in dim light.

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Design and Build

It looks like slightly downsized DSLRs as far as the ultrazooms is concerned but its overall dimensions of 5.3 x 3.7 x 5.7 inches are in fact similar to the Nikon D3000 (18 - 55 mm kit lens: 5 x 3.8 x 5.6 inches). The Fujifilm S200 outweighs the Nikon roughly by 5 ounces, which mainly comes from the extra 353 mm of its focal length than that kit lens. The overall build looks robust and solid.

Display/Viewfinder

The 2.7-inch LCD monitor consists of 230k dot composition and effortlessly adjustable to the 11 - brightness level. It is great for outdoors but can be overwhelmed by the right combination of bright outdoor light. Its electronic viewfinder (the 0.2 inch) is of about 200k dot composition and offers 11 - brightness level adjustments of the monitor and 100% coverage.

Modes and Menus

The Fujifilm S200 has abundance of menus and submenus but they are all highly intuitive. The menu process selected via the mode dial is the same for every shooting mode. Automatic shooting modes in specific scenes have less user inputs that can be choose from, but those may vary from mode to mode too. It is time consuming when it comes to changing the default settings, depending on the actual changes involved and number of modes but the Fujifilm S200 offers users great flexibility on tailoring images to their liking.

Controls and Ergonomics

The Fujifilm S200 has a perfect hand-grip-body shape with rubberized material nicely wrapping around the front of the grip. Sufficient clearance for the movement of fingers from the lens barrel allows the shooting finger falls naturally upon the shutter button. Even though buttons, dials and switches appear almost every where on the body, Fuji manages to strategically install them in effective way to minimize unintentional activation of those switches and buttons which in turn giving the Fujifilm S200 a nice overall feel.

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The original Storm was BlackBerry’s first attempt at a touchscreen phone and while it wasn’t a complete disaster it didn’t quite conjure up a whirlwind of adulation either. We’ve known several Storm owners and none of them were overly complimentary about the handset’s long term performance. The main issues were down to the build quality (the side-mounted plastic buttons falling off), the bizarre decision by BlackBerry to not equip the handset with Wi-Fi and the lack of responsiveness from the SurePress screen.

The first of those two issues seem to be solved on the Storm2, but while the new SurePress screen used on this model has been greatly improved, we’re not sure it’s going to prove any more popular than the previous version.

Nevertheless, some niggles with the design remain. Despite having a 3.5mm headphone jack, we don’t like the way the jack is mounted on the side of the handset as it tends to snag when you’re taking the phone in and out of a pocket. Also, the phone feels quite thick and heavy, certainly much more so than the iPhone or Hero.

The handset runs the new BlackBerry OS v5.0, which includes a number of useful additions. One of the best of these is the updated cut and paste functionality. If you want to cut text, say from an email, and paste it into the web browser you now just have to call up the BlackBerry menu and choose Select. This places two selection tabs that you can position to mark the areas of text you want to cut. Although the system is similar to that used on the iPhone the selection tabs are much larger and more finger-friendly so they’re a good deal easier to position. There’s also updated Maps software and you can now access the clock and connections menu directly from the home screen.

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So what's different? Well, the BL40 is a tall slim candybar phone with a solid glass touchscreen front. In contrast, the BL20 is a shorter slider phone with a keypad and no touchscreen.

Build quality isn't quite on the same level as the BL40, either, as the front is made from plastic, which will pick up scratches far more easily. In fairness, that's the only major issue we have with the build quality as the rest of the BL20 is well put together with no hint of wobble in the all-metal slide mechanism and a general solidity to the whole thing.

Also absent is a headphone jack. Instead, you must use an adapter (included) that plugs into the micro-USB slot on the side if you want to use your own headphones - the earphones LG provides are adequate for making calls but next to useless for listening to music. This is all the more of a shame as a microSD slot under the battery cover means you could potentially fit plenty of music on this phone. The adapter does at least include a microphone and button for answering and ending calls.

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Nokia’s Series 60 operating system has been around since 2001, so it’s perhaps not all that surprising that when you place a Series 60 handset next to an iPhone or Android phone the OS looks a little tired. Maybe this is why Nokia has decided to use a completely different OS on the N900, its latest Internet tablet/mobile phone hybrid.

Instead of Series 60 it’s opted for its newer Maemo operating system, which is based on Debian Linux. This is not the first time it’s used Maemo on one of its devices – the OS previously put in appearances on the N770, N800 and N810 Internet tablets – but it is the first time it’s been used on a device with mobile phone functionality.

In terms of looks, the N900 is certainly not the most attractive phone that Nokia has produced. The design is big and brutish, something that is highlighted by the fact it’s around twice as thick as most other touchscreen phones on the market at the moment (it measures 59.8(w) x 110.9(h) x 19.5mm (d) and weighs 181g with the battery).

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With all this said there were some good reasons why the first edition wasn't deemed 'Pro' enough to be a MacBook Pro. Primary among those was the lack of a FireWire 800 port, which is one of the most desirable additions to this new model. Other new features include a long overdue SD card reader (quite how Apple held out for so long is beyond us) and the backlit keyboard, which is now standard even on the entry-level model.

All of which go someway to appeasing our complaints from the 2008 version. However, just when you think Apple has steered a course toward friendship and reconciliation with the real world, it finds another reason to court controversy. This time it's with the battery, which unlike last year's model isn't user replaceable. This, so says Apple, is so it can fit in a higher capacity battery without increasing the weight of machine. Consequently this new model features a 58 Watt-hour capacity unit compared to the 48 Watt-hour one from last year, but still weighs just a smidgen over 2.0kg

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