The old cliché “good things come to those who wait” can certainly be applied to the computer industry.

The pace of change is continuous, and the Medion 6615 PC is just one example of that, having just been given a £100 price drop in the January sales compared with its price before Christmas.

That pitches it at £579, which is a low price for a desktop computer featuring Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor running at 2.4GHz.

Intel’s rival AMD has recently started making similar, cheaper processors, but the Q6600 remains faster than any AMD chip we’ve tested. The ‘quad’ means it is effectively four processors in one, letting it do more things at once, while speeding up some individual programs and games.

The rest of this computer’s specification is also impressive. Vista Home Premium runs smoothly on the 2GB of included memory and there’s a whopping 1TB (that’s 1,000GB) of hard disk space.

It’s actually two 500GB hard disks, using Raid technology to makes them appear as a single one. Having two hard disks increases the amount of noise the PC makes, and the lack of vibration dampeners, as found in pricier PCs, added to the very loud, annoying hard disk clicks.

In reality there’s only 840GB of storage once you take into account Vista’s installation and other programs installed on the system.

The software is all Tesco [www.tesco.com] branded, since Medion is selling the 6615 exclusively through the grocer. The deal includes Tesco’s Complete Office (which is Ability Office rebranded), Tesco Easy Record, Internet Security (made by Panda) and Photo Restyle (again a rebranded Ability utility).

Part of the reason for the low price is that there is no monitor. The graphics card, an Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT, can connect to analogue monitors, using the VGA port, or high-definition TVs using the HDMI port.

Once plugged in, casual gamers will find it can produce smooth game play on medium detail settings, but newer DirectX 10-branded games will require an upgrade.

On the front of the case there’s a single DVD writer and a panel that, once it’s uncovered, offers easy access to USB ports, a memory card reader, headphone and microphone jacks and two Firewire ports for connecting camcorders.

There are also sockets – for capturing sound from a hi-fi, for example – and composite and s-video inputs for connecting a video recorder. This gives the option of digitising an old VHS tape collection, for instance, although this may require extra software.

Although capturing video takes a little bit of know-how to get set up, the 6615 is versatile enough to handle them.

Extras come in the form a cheap wired keyboard and mouse and a remote control (with a disappointingly bulky USB receiver) giving the 6615 some Media Center credentials, which are strengthened by the TV tuner.

This accepts digital (Freeview) television transmissions, and it can also be configured to accept free satellite channels if you connect a compatible satellite dish to it.

The software is high quality stuff and, on the whole, it adds up a powerful system for the price. It’s not perfect, though, since most PCs don’t make this much noise and the one-year warranty is often bettered by other manufacturers.

Once upon a time, the idea of watching videos through a spectacle-like device was a thing for science fiction. As we progress, realisations of human imagination come to be, one after the other. Vuzix is a company famous for creating wearable screens, one of which is the iWear AV920 model. 

Vuzix AV920 features a 62-inch virtual big screen. It reportedly works on almost any audio/video device with video out connectivity, even the video ipod. The company touts iWear AV920 as the “best mobile experience yet” what with its high resolution visuals. Usable for five hours before the lithium-ion battery runs out, what better way to spend time idly during the Holidays

As of late, there are rumours circulating that Vizux would be releasing a revamped version of the iWear AV920. One of the rumoured upgrades would be the ability to create a chain of interconnected AV920s for gaming on a single console. Whether the upgrades are true or not, we could only wait and see.

Gone are the days when USB flash drives equal limited storage space. The new Buffalo release even surpasses the already impressive 64GB USB flash drive. Buffalo, a Japanese company, introduced a new 100GB USB flash drive to the consumer market.

It uses Buffalo’s TurboUSB technology which makes it 24% faster than ordinary. Using both MLC and SLC and hence, forming a hybrid, the new Buffalo USB SSD flash drive is about as big as a business card and weighs 2 ounces.

The price? Get this: a whopping €664 for the 100GB flash drive. You won’t catch me dead shelling out that much cash for anything similar in nature. But hey, if you have cash to burn, why not?

What with the iPod’s domination of video and music players it’s sometimes hard to remember that there are other brands, but the Zen 4GB from Creative is well worth considering.

Such a player can hold some 1,000 songs. We didn’t fill it up, but after adding three average-length films and 250 songs we still had room for more.

The Zen 4GB has a 2.5in screen and is capable of video playback at full speed - some players drop frames from the video, making watching action films less fun, but that’s not a problem with this one.

An extremely clear screen and great sound quality from the supplied headphones often made us think we were viewing video from the comfort of a living room. Luckily we remembered just in time before trying to get comfortable and put our feet up on the train’s seats.

The music player is sleek and small, and fitted easily into a pocket. However, the navigation buttons, which sit on the right-hand side of the player, are small and fiddly to use, especially if your fingers are larger than average.

Once we had mastered it, navigating the attractive menu system was straightforward. The index navigation, which lets users search by the initial letter of each artist, is impressive and made it quick and easy to find songs. Album of the Day, on a click, chooses a random selection of tracks from a random album and plays them, which also meant not having to keep taking the player out of our pocket.

As with video, audio quality is excellent, and even at full blast it retained its class, with clear and undistorted music at deafness-inducing volume. The FM tuner worked well. A battery life of up to 25 hours of music playback is claimed, and we were able to watch a 90-minute film and listen to several hours of music without any problems.

It plays lots of common video formats and unlike the iPod, music and video can be transferred with a standard USB cable and Windows.

Trevor Baylis created the first wind-up radio 16 years ago for use in areas where mains electricity was intermittent or non-existent.

Since then the inventor has applied the same technology, consisting of a wind-up generator and a rechargeable battery, to other appliances, this music and video player being the latest.

The EMP-MX71 has a high-grip, rubberised surface and the trademark winding handle on the back.

Winding it steadily for 60 seconds gave over 30 minutes of music, and the battery can also be charged from a USB socket for up to 20 hours’ playing time. A selection of connection cables are provided so that you can charge a mobile phone from the device and it has a small, bright torch built into the top.

The media player itself has an adequate 4.6cm screen, but it’s not as bright and clear as some of its rivals. It plays a range of formats including MP3 and WMA as well as MP4 video. A software converter is provided for videos. An SD card slot in the side can be used to boost the player’s 2GB of memory.

Audio can be recorded using the EMP-MX71’s internal microphone or by connecting the supplied line-in cable to an audio source. There’s also an FM radio, which uses the headphone cable as an aerial. The headphones themselves have an unusual design, but are both comfortable and produce better-than-average sound.

Sound quality in general is good with noticeable bass. If you could use a source of portable power and need a well-configured media player, this is the ideal combination gadget.

Sharp and Toshiba have agreed to collaborate closely in their LCD and semiconductor businesses.

The electronics giants will initiate the partnership in fiscal 2008, which they hope will allow each company to make full and effective use of its respective strengths and resources.

This will include Sharp’s capabilities in LCDs and Toshiba’s expertise in advanced semiconductors.

The alliance will start with an expansion of reciprocal procurement, whereby Sharp will get system large-scale integration chips (LSIs) for LCDs from Toshiba, and Toshiba will obtain Sharp’s LCD modules for TVs of 32in and larger.

System LSIs for TVs are increasingly required to support advanced functions and higher levels of performance alongside the core role of image processing.

Sharp aims to satisfy about 50 per cent of its total demand for system LSIs for TVs in fiscal 2010, while Toshiba aims to meet 40 per cent of its demand for LCD modules in the same year.

The LCD TV market has seen rapid growth in recent times, driven by falling prices and the upcoming digital switchover in the UK, and is showing no signs of abating.

Sharp and Toshiba aim to secure a leading position in the LCD TV market, and reckon that they can overcome the increasingly intense global competition by joining forces.

A small digital camera developed by scientists at Microsoft Research in Cambridge could help treat short-term memory loss.

The idea is the Sensecam allows people to recall events while they view the pictures captured by the camera. An entire day’s events can be captured on a memory card and the images downloaded to a PC.

Software developed by Microsoft Research’s Sensor and Devices group convert the pictures into a short movie that displays the images at up to 10 frames per second, allowing a day’s events to be viewed in a few minutes.

In one trial, a woman with memory loss caused by an infection could recall 80 per cent of events six weeks after they happened.

Emma Berry, a neurophysiologist who works as a consultant to Microsoft, said: “Not only does Sensecam allow people to recall memories while they are looking at the images, which in itself is wonderful, but after an initial period of consolidation, it appears to lead to long-term retention of memories over many months, without the need to view the images repeatedly.”

Originally developed as a memory aid for healthy people, it is now in clinical testing for those with memory impairment, such as dementia. It could even provide some hope for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Sensecam is worn around the neck and automatically takes a wide-angle, low-resolution photograph every 30 seconds. It contains an accelerometer to stabilise the image and reduce blurriness, and it can be configured to take pictures in response to changes in movement, temperature, or lighting.

Steve Hodges, manager of the Sensor and Devices group at Microsoft Research UK said that the wide-angled lens means users don’t have to point the camera at anything and it captures most of what the wearer can see.

The strange-looking Ameo certainly catches the eye, with a large, colourful touchscreen and a keyboard that clings to the screen by magnets.

When open it looks like a kind of Tom Thumb notebook PC. These magnets are so strong that you need to keep them away from credit cards - but then the Ameo won’t fit in a wallet pocket.

Its capabilities are hard to pin down, too: as well as being a phone, it’s almost a handheld computer. It has an 8GB hard disk but it also offers impressive data transfer speeds for web browsing.

The Ameo is controlled in several ways - there’s that full keyboard, though the small keys mean you wouldn’t want to use it for lengthy documents. Then there’s the touchscreen to run programs - it uses the Windows Mobile 5 operating system.

Remove the keyboard and it is used like a tablet PC - it automatically scrolls down the screen as it is tipped one way, and up as you twist it the other. And because there’s a good 3-megapixel camera, there’s a dedicated button for that as well. Smartphones traditionally have poor cameras, so you can see why this machine’s hard to categorise.

You don’t have to be a couch potato to appreciate that digital photos, videos and music are more captivating when enjoyed on a large-screen TV and a home cinema system rather than a small PC screen.

Wireless media streaming devices such as the Showcenter 250HD connect to a TV, allowing users to browse and play any digital media stored on a networked computer from the comfort of the sofa.

Pinnacle says the Showcenter is plug-and-play, but we found that stretched the truth. It lacked drivers to install in the first place and it was in fact quite difficult to get our existing wireless network to recognise it.

There are three ways of adding it to a network: using your PC’s own wireless network facility (if it has one), a wireless router or a network cable. The poorly written instructions offer little help to the inexperienced user in this area and do not even state which version of Windows they refer to. We were disappointed that Pinnacle has not improved upon the ease of setup, given that the device’s forerunner, the Showcenter 200, had compatibility problems with some wireless routers.

Even once set up correctly, the Showcenter failed to impress us on a number of counts. Its unintuitive and unresponsive menus are hindered by the poorly laid-out remote control. Performance was also unimpressive: high-definition video playback - one of the device’s selling points - suffered from blocky patches and was less smooth than we would have liked.

Our four-megapixel photographs also took longer to appear than we expected. Annoyingly, they were obscured by a ‘loading’ message each time we clicked through to the next one, and often appeared skewed.

To the Showcenter’s credit, it can stream a wide variety of music and video file formats as well as bought downloaded tracks that are copy-protected. It is also similar in appearance to a typical DVD player and shouldn’t look out of place next to any other AV equipment below your television. However, its good points are not enough to outweigh the Showcenter’s shortcomings and as such it is difficult to recommend.

 Watch and record television with Miglia’s USB device

An entertainment centre that can be used to record and watch digital TV on Apple Macs has been launched by Miglia.

The Miglia TVMini+ plugs into a USB2 port and comes with a 10-bit analogue-to-digital converter, which is said to help people get the best digital and analogue TV reception.

The Electronic Program Guide also gives people a guide to their favourite shows and can be set to record programmes. The included Miglia TV software will also let users transfer recordings from their Mac to an iPod, iPhone, or Sony Playstation Portable (PSP).

TVMini+ comes with a two-year manufacturer warranty and costs £85.

After flirting with groundbreaking ideas such as like twin-lens cameras (to make both long-range and wide-angle shots possible without bulking up the thickness of the camera), Kodak has now returned to producing more conventional compact cameras.

Like the 8-megapixel model, the V803, this 10-megapixel version has neat looks in a cute, round-edged body.

The lens is an industry-standard 3x zoom, and the screen is an average 2.5in. The camera is flexible enough to suit varied lighting conditions, so it can in theory shoot in poor light without the flash.

In practice, higher ISO settings, to make the most of the sensitivity available, resulted in too much noise. The camera fared rather better in situations with decent light, using a lower ISO setting.

The wide range of scene settings, with modes for landscapes, fireworks and children, sport, and scenes lit by sunset or candles. In all, there are 22 settings, so there should be something for most occasions, providing you have the wherewithal to work your way through all the options in time.

Menus, at least, are clear and easily accessible and for beginners the clearly labelled buttons on the back make things simple. The delete button on the V1003 includes an undelete function so it’s possible to restore a shot you rashly wiped (though you have to change your mind straight away). On top of all this, it’s competitively priced for a 10-megapixel camera.

Like many digital cameras, though, there’s noticeable shutter lag - the time between depressing the button and the picture being taken - which can be annoying.

In all, then, it’s not the perfect camera. But for a novice who wants to explore the world of digital photography, who wants something simple but not simplistic and who doesn’t want to break the bank, it’s a good choice.

Ofcom has announced its plans to auction off more of the radio spectrum to make way for more digital services.

Airwaves that will be freed up by turning off the analogue TV signal in 2012 is expected to result in providers offering more digital TV channels and ultra-fast wireless broadband over the next decade.

A consortium that includes the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sony and the Dixon’s retail group lobbied regulator Ofcom to reserve the freed-up spectrum for free high-definition TV services over Freeview, have been disappointed.

Although Ofcom has packaged the available spectrum into key uses, it said it will ultimately be up to the market to decide what services it wants to deliver.

The regulator said this approach was likely to generate greater value for the public. It also said advances in digital compression technology and a new transmission standard, called DVB-T2, means HD channels could be delivered over digital terrestrial TV without the need for allocated spectrum.

Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards said “We believe [this] is the fairest, most transparent and most efficient way of assigning this spectrum, in the face of many, many conflicting demands for its use.

“It maximises flexibility in a fast changing media environment; It promotes awarding spectrum to those that will make the most of it and value it most, allowing them to trade their licences and deliver benefits to society, and will create new opportunities for new technologies and services… leading to the potential for… greater choice and lower prices.”

The auction will start in 2009, with key areas of use tentatively earmarked for national digital terrestrial TV in high or standard definition, cognitive radio - a new wireless technology which can deliver broadband - high-speed mobile broadband and mobile TV. Ofcom also plans for part of the spectrum to be used for 25 new local TV stations across the UK.