We're kicking off the weekend with another great deal on the V3 Software Store. From now until Monday 8 February you can get a copy of Acronis True Image 2010 for only £17.98, 55 per cent off the RRP.

Better still, it's an instant download, so you'll receive your software and serial code within minutes of placing your order.

With Acronis True Image 2010 backup software, you can schedule a regular backup of your drive, partition, or files and folders. Using differential support, each time you run a backup, only the files you have updated since the last backup will be stored. If you suffer from a system crash or buy a new PC, you can simply restore your data back to your computer.

If you're seeking drive backup software, you could also take a look at O&O DiskImage 5 Professional, which was released last week. This drive and partition backup software competes directly with Acronis True Image 2010 and is available for only £14.99 at the V3 Software Store, 50 per cent off the standard RRP of £29.99.

Posted by Madeline Bennett on February 5, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the news, I reported on Nokia's unveiling of the new Ovi Maps, which is essentially free for consumers to use - so long as they have a Symbian-based Nokia phone, of course.

I speculated in the story that this might hit the makers of standalone navigation kit such as TomTom and Garmin, but further consideration has made me rethink this.

The fact is that standalone kit tends to ship with a larger, more readable screen than your average smartphone, and this is quite important when you are trying to use the device while driving. Phones also tend to go into power-saving mode if you haven't pressed a button for a few seconds, even when connected to an external power source. And what happens if you have an incoming call just as you reach a critical junction?

Interestingly, analyst firm Canalys thinks that Nokia's mobile operator partners stand to lose from the move, since they offer their own paid-for navigation tools to customers. These often download map data on-the-fly thereby driving up mobile data use as well, whereas Ovi Maps comes with the map data for all of Europe pre-installed on new Nokia phones.

Thinking about it, I can't see why you would want to use a mobile phone for in-car navigation rather than a device custom-made for the purpose, so perhaps TomTom and Garmin are safe.

Then again, I'm sure others will disagree. Is there something I'm missing?

Posted by Daniel Robinson on January 21, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (5)

As today is Black Friday, we thought we'd get in on the act at V3.co.uk and alert you to some extra special deals lined up for you on our new and improved Software Store.

From now until Monday 30 November, you can purchase Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 1-PC, 1-Year for the low cost of £16.49, 60 per cent off the normal price.

Also from today until Monday, you can get your hands on NitroPDF Professional 6 at a massive discount of 50 per cent off the list price - so £48.27 instead of £96.37.

Nitro PDF Professional is designed to offer a complete Adobe Acrobat alternative, with a whole range of tools to create, convert, edit, combine, secure and annotate PDFs.

PCmover Professional will also be available over the latter half of the weekend for £19.95, instead of the list price of £49.92.

Finally we'll be offering AVG AntiVirus 9, the 3-PC, 1-Year version, for the low price of £14.99 over the weekend, a huge discount on the retail price of £46.99. You'll also be able to purchase AVG Internet Security 9, 3-PC, 1-Year, at 60 per cent off the list price at £19.99 instead of £54.99.

These promotions will run for 24 hours at a time, between Friday and Monday, so keeping checking the store for the current promotional discount.

Posted by Madeline Bennett on November 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It didn't take long after Google released early test code of its Chrome OS for some enterprising techies to build it and make it available as a virtual machine.

A colleague managed to download a copy of this and I took a quick look using VMware Workstation to run it, but sadly, there isn't that much to report; if you have used Google's Chrome browser, then you have a fair idea of what it's like to use Chrome OS, as the browser pretty much IS the operating system.

Once Chrome OS is available, users will have access to web apps - primary Google's own apps like Google Docs and Picasa, but not necessarily restricted to these - but Chrome has no "desktop" as there is with most other operating systems, just browser tabs, and a few drop-down menu options for functions such as turning Wi-Fi on and off on your system (Chrome OS is intended for netbooks).

The build I looked at (very briefly) seemed very slow, but then I was running it with a limit of 256MB memory on a PC with 1GB total memory in the first place, and not everything seemed to be working. I hope to get a fuller hands-on with the software in future.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on November 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The new V3.co.uk download store is live and accessible now here or via the Shop navigation links across the main V3 site. The store lets you browse through popular software titles, make an online payment and receive an immediate download and serial code. You can have your software on your computer within minutes.

In addition to an improved look and feel, the new site offers a much wider range of software from leading vendors including Uniblue, Kaspersky, AVG, Paragon Software and Avira plus many more. Other key brands will follow shortly, so keep referring back to the store. The store also supports multiple currencies so international users can order products in their local currency, unlike many other software stores.

To support the launch of the new store we have several promotional offers including discounts on Laplink PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant, AVG AntiVirus 9, Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, as well as free full software applications from Ashampoo and Acebit.

To take advantage of additional weekly promotion codes to get even better discounts on software, sign up to the Software Downloads Weekly newsletter on V3.co.uk or via the newsletter link on the download store.

Posted by Madeline Bennett on October 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those wondering whether Windows 7 will run on a typical netbook, the answer is yes. While testing out Toshiba's NB200 mini laptop, I took the liberty of installing the release version of Microsoft's new operating system and found it runs with no trouble at all.

Interest in Windows 7 on mini laptops - otherwise known as netbooks - was piqued by Microsoft's claim back at the Professional Developer Conference in 2008 that the new platform would run on such small systems.

Currently, these devices are most often shipped out with Windows XP Home edition pre-installed, since Windows Vista is simply too resource hungry to give a satisfactory experience on netbooks.

As Windows 7 is based on the same core code as Vista, many people were understandably sceptical about Microsoft's claim.

Toshiba's NB200 netbook has the typical hardware specifications seen on many other netbooks: single-core Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory and 160GB hard drive, plus a 10in display.

Like most compact laptops, the Toshiba doesn't have a DVD drive, so I used a USB Flash drive instead, first turning it into a bootable drive and then copying the setup files to it.

[A step-by-step guide on how to create a Windows 7 USB install disk is given here on one of Microsoft's blogs. Note that you need a drive at least 4GB in size.]

The install took about half an hour and re-booted the system a couple of times, after which I had a working Windows 7 netbook - see the screenshot above.

I was surprised to find that the Toshiba seemed just as responsive with Windows 7 as it did before the upgrade when running Windows XP.

However, Windows 7 rates the upgraded system with a Windows Experience Index (WEI) of just 1.0 - the lowest score possible. A look at the individual subsystem scores revealed that the integrated graphics in Intel's 945 Express chipset is holding the score down.

This means that playing the latest 3D shoot-'em-up game is probably out of the question, but in reality, most people buy a netbook like this because they are affordable, portable, and are good enough for surfing the web, email, and the odd spot of word processing, rather than for anything fancy.

Nevertheless, I was able to turn on the Aero user interface with its translucency effects (it was disabled by default after installation), and a few checks showed that the netbook was perfectly capable of playing music and video content.

So it seems that Microsoft's promise was no idle boast, and Windows 7 will indeed run perfectly well on a netbook.

Potential buyers should note that if netbooks do ship with Windows 7, the version included may well be the Starter edition, which has a number of limitations such as the Aero user interface disabled.

However, Microsoft has now lifted the earlier restriction that limited the Starter edition to running no more than three concurrent applications.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on September 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Laplink has disclosed details of an update to its PCmover tool that will enable Windows XP users to upgrade seamlessly to Windows 7, keeping all files, applications and settings intact.

PCmover already enables users to migrate their entire environment when they upgrade to a new PC, even if the replacement system is running a different version of Windows than their current PC.

The soon-to-be released version of PCmover updated for Windows 7 will enable users currently still using XP to perform an in-place upgrade to the new platform on their existing PC, according to Laplink.

The company believes that there will be demand for such a tool, as Microsoft is only providing an upgrade path from Windows Vista. XP users will have to perform a full install of the new operating system, although Windows Easy Transfer will enable users to keep files and settings.

"By taking the same logic employed for a new computer migration and applying it to the single computer upgrade process, we are able to provide users with an easy-to-use tool that performs an in-place upgrade," said Laplink chief technology officer, Jack Wilson.

Laplink also said the updated PCmover can migrate user email data from Outlook Express or Windows Mail to Microsoft's new Windows Live Mail.

As well as Laplink's direct USB-to-USB connection, the new version will also allows users migrating to a new PC to use Ethernet the same way. Using Laplink Ethernet, two computers can be connected instantly with a simple physical connection without relying on other hardware such as a router, according to the firm.

Another key feature is provision to upgrade seamlessly from a 32bit version of Windows to a 64bit one.

"If you have 32bit Vista and wish to upgrade to 64bit Windows 7 in order to address more than four gigabytes of memory, that upgrade is not supported by Microsoft. PCmover properly handles all issues related to 32-bit and 64-bit upgrades and migrations," said Wilson.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on September 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Skyfire has released an update to its ground-breaking mobile browser which lets smartphone users see web pages as they would appear on a PC, including multimedia content such as Flash and Quicktime.

Essentially a bugfix release, Skyfire 1.1 has been tweaked to improve page load times and features updated plug-ins for Flash, Silverlight and QuickTime content. It adds support for WML, the markup language used in older WAP pages.

Skyfire also said it has improved scrolling and zooming on the Symbian version of the browser, and fixed an issue whereby the Windows Mobile version would sometimes quit on startup.

Using Skyfire on my Windows Mobile 6 handset, I found little visible difference in the new version. However, pages did seem to load slightly faster over a 3G network connection, with the checkerboard background pattern showing less often when I scrolled to a part of the page that was not in the browser cache.

Embedded videos on sites such as V3.co.uk and the BBC's news site also seemed to display more smoothly. In fact, it still amazes me with just how good the video playback is with Skyfire.

To set against that, Skyfire does seem to burn through the battery life on my handset when it is in use, and this is one thing that the new update hasn't addressed.

I also fired a quick email to Skyfire asking them for any news on the promised BlackBerry version of the browser - no reply so far.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on August 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our recent Top 10 Windows 7 features article on V3.co.uk prompted quite a few responses from readers, with several asking why we didn't compare Microsoft's new version of Windows with XP, as this is the operating system most people will currently be using.

That article was actually a light-hearted look at what we like about Windows 7, now that the code will soon be available, but if you want a brief opinion on moving up from XP, read on.

Firstly, Windows 7 is much less resource-heavy than Windows Vista, but it still requires a minimum 1GHz processor, 1GB memory and at least 16GB free space on your hard drive.

This level of hardware is easily surpassed by just about any PC bought within the last couple of years, but if you have been clinging onto XP since before Vista was launched, you're probably better off investing in a new box with Windows 7 rather than installing it on your existing system.

Secondly, how does Windows 7 compare with XP? Well, as several comments to our article pointed out, Windows 7 is much closer to Vista, both under the hood and in its user interface.

But don't let that put you off. With Windows 7, Microsoft has addressed most of the things that were really annoying about Vista - such as its sluggish performance and the pop-up nag prompts - then added in some neat extras as well. This is why many experts regard Windows 7 as "Vista done right".

On the other hand, if you have held off from upgrading to Vista because of compatibility problems with software you are running on XP, then Windows 7 isn't going to solve those problems. As just pointed out, it is based on the same core code as Vista.

Microsoft currently has a beta release out of a tool called Windows XP Mode that offers Windows 7 users an XP virtual machine in which to run any problem applications. However, this requires even more memory (2GB recommended) and only works with AMD or Intel processors that have hardware support for virtualisation. It is unlikely to deliver a satisfactory experience for playing games.

That said, I've been running Windows 7 on a laptop ever since the first beta was released, with one or two applications that were written for XP, and encountered no problems at all.

If you want my personal opinion, Windows 7 is a worthy successor to XP, although it may take a short while for upgraders to get used to where some things are in the new user interface.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on July 31, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (11)

The HTC Hero has recently arrived at the V3.co.uk labs, HTC's latest phone to run Google's open source Android mobile operating system.

We'll have a full review of the device up next week, but here are some of our first impressions.

In terms of design, HTC has stuck with the same principles it employed for its first two Android devices, so we have a large touch screen above a handful of buttons and a trackball which sit on a 'chin' that juts out. On the HTC Magic, the lines and this lip were all very gentle and understated, while on the Hero the lines are a lot harder and the lip is quite pronounced. This makes the Hero look a lot more professional than its predecessors.

Also, thanks to the change from a resistive touch screen to a capacitive one, the interface is a lot more responsive and it now supports multi-touch as well.

The screen is also the best looking by far, and this comes down to not just the components used but also the addition of Sense. Much like it did with the inclusion of TouchFlo over Windows Mobile, HTC's Sense adds a layer over the Android interface to help make it more intuitive. Sense also brings in a lot of integration and a few new applications and widgets to help enhance the experience. It also gives you access to seven screens instead of Android's usual three.

Some of these include the ability to tie your contacts to your communications and social networks, so now you can see an individual's details as well as any emails, calls and messages with that person and recent Twitter, Facebook or Flickr updates.

There is also the inclusion of what HTC calls 'Scenes' which are essentially profiles, so you can set up which layouts, shortcuts and widgets you want to use in a particular situation and then change between them as you desire. Unfortunately Scenes is only skin deep, so you can't make different account or settings changes for each profile.

As with all Android devices the Hero's ease of use and functionality is closely tied to Google's services, and while there may be privacy concerns about how much information Google has on each and every one of us, the upside is that contacts, email, calendar and instant messenger are all automatically synchronised with your Google account.

The physical keyboard in the G1 was one of the best I've ever used, but it did make the device very bulky. Having scrapped that on the Magic, I turned to the virtual keyboard, which was usable but was often very annoying. I'm happy to say that the soft keyboard on the Hero is a pleasure to use, thanks to the combination of the capacitive touch screen and a much improved dictionary that can actually learn.

HTC has also bumped up the camera on the Hero to 5MP - but there is still no flash - and the company has finally included a proper 3.5mm headset jack so you can hook up your favourite pair of headphones rather than having to use the rather uncomfortable mini-USB headphones that were bundled into the G1 and the Magic.

As a whole the device generally runs pretty smoothly, but it can be be a bit slow and occasionally lags, which can be particularly frustrating when you're not sure if it's overloaded or if it hasn't acknowledged your input.

It can be easy to forget that Android is still a very young operating system and so can still be a little rough around the edges, particularly if you're looking for enterprise level features. Sense goes a long way to helping fill some of the gaps that still exist in Android and make the whole experience that much better.

There are still some bugs, missing features and annoyances - but that could also be said for every other mobile operating system and device around. It's impressive to see how quickly developers have rallied around the operating system and developed applications for it; with the possible exception of the Apple iPhone's App Store, the Android Marketplace is almost certainly the best mobile app store around.

I'm not done putting the Hero through its paces, but so far I'm very impressed, not just by the device itself but also by how quickly Android has, and is still, evolving.

Update: The full video review of the HTC Hero can be found here

Posted by Ian Williams on July 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)