Ultimately, this is not an issue about how to rip multiple CDs - which has been discussed to death online for the last decade - but a question of how I want to listen to music. Do I really need instant access to everything? I’m happy to keep a big bunch of e-books on my tablet, for example, without feeling compelled to copy the entire Gutenberg Project to it.Probably the best thing is for me to don a red tracksuit, get a curly perm, grow a thin moustache and say to myself: “Calm down, calm down.” Getting my open-crotches in a twist over digitising every bloody thing that comes my way is getting out of hand. The physical, tactile portability of music on a disc is a joy, not an obstacle.The process is simple: want music, get music, put music in magic box, listen. Why mess about with that? Pics+Vid Fans of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission will know that the issue of getting a rocket motor to fire at altitude has given our Vulture 2 spaceplane team plenty of sleepless nights.
Click here for a bigger version of the LOHAN graphicLast year, we constructed the Rocketry Experimental High Altitude Barosimulator (REHAB) hypobaric chamber (details here), in which we tested a couple of motors at 20mbar – roughly the equivalent of an altitude of 23,300m.Our first foray into REHAB ended in forlorn fizzling, as both Cesaroni and Aerotech igniters went pop but failed to fire their respective reloads.Enter stage left pyrotechnics chap Rob Eastwood, who brewed up a custom igniter from E-Matches, BlackMatch strands and Plastic Igniter Cord.This did the trick in the REHAB chamber, when we finally persuaded a Cesaroni 57F59-12A "White Thunder" reload in a P29-1G casing to roar mightily:All well and good, but a high-altitude test flight in July this year, with the same igniter controlled by the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board, showed that the Plastic Igniter Cord doesn't much like the cold.
So, it was back to the drawing board for Rob, who formulated a new, mightier igniter ahead of jetting out to Spain for our recent LOHAN team gathering.Priority number one for this elite squad was to test the new igniter, and although first test flight on 16 September went completely titsup due to premature balloon burst, a second blast last Thursday had the champagne corks popping.The payload comprised the igniter in an insulated case (bottom right) and a few other pyrotechnic charges we were eyeing for possible use in our emergency balloon cut-down system - all attached to the SPEARS board and set to go off at 20,000m:Chief balloon wrangler Dave Akerman worked his usual magic with the mighty orb, and we were quickly in the air without incident:Review When Asus sent the N550 to Vulture Central, I sent it back: the wrong model had been dispatched. Having seen so many tiresome comments following El Reg laptop reviews along the lines of “when I saw it was only 1366 x 768 I stopped reading”, I wasn’t going to proceed with this spec - and with more than these moans as justification.
After all, given the N-series comes equipped with B&O Icepower amplification together with SonicMaster (a tea mug sized external bass driver), having anything less than full-HD would seem to undermine the thinking behind the latest refresh for this entertainment-centric 15.6in laptop.So, lucky for me – and for those who might be persuaded to keep reading – I find myself typing this on the full HD 1920 x 1080-pixel model I’d requested. It’s an Asus N550JV-CM067H equipped with the latest Haswell chip, a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-4700HQ with 8GB of RAM and Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics. There’s also an Nvidia GeForce 750M GPU on-board with 2GB of RAM and a 1TB 5400RPM HGST Travelstar HDD.Surprisingly, there’s no solid-state drive (SSD) cache to boost disk performance. The N550JV was dispatched with the 1TB drive split into OS and data partitions with formatted sizes of 372GB and 537GB respectively. This arrangement slightly simplifies file clutter: just rummage around the data partition for that movie or installer, it’ll be in there somewhere.
And talking of data-juggling, the N550JV comes with a BD-ROM optical drive and a bundle of playback apps including Waves Maxx to make the most of its audio, and AsusDVD (a rebranded version of Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 10) to get those Blu-ray discs that we’ve all got so many of spinning away in a useful manner.Needless to say, having four internal speakers developed in collaboration with B&O and an optical drive plus a 15.6in 1920 x 1080-pixel touchscreen encased in a brushed metal lid, all adds to the weight. At 2.6kg and measuring up at 383 x 255 x 27mm, we’re looking at a desktop replacement really, especially with that SonicMaster external bass driver in tow.I get the impression that the cable for what is described as a sub-woofer (just how low it goes isn't quoted) is kept deliberately short at about 40cm (16in). It also features a rather antisocial 2.5mm multi-pole mini-jack, which is going to be a tough find if the connector fails or you fancied adding an extension lead.
My guess is that Asus knows that having the SonicMaster bass booster too far from the built-in speakers will greatly diminish the overall effect of this combination, and it doesn't want that to become obvious. It all needs to be kept in close proximity to keep the sound warm and cosy.For the most part, this is all well and good. Testing with The Bourne Ultimatum Blu-ray disc, the SonicMaster driver delivers all those menacing bass note drones and rumbles that accompany action flicks, sounds that disappear as soon as the unit is unplugged. It warms up voices too and the Waves Maxx Audio Master processing provides some useful controls if you tinker around with the advanced settings.Product Round-up If you want a tablet that is always connected to the internet, there are several options to consider.
One that involves no extra hardware expense is simply to use your smartphone as a wireless hotspot, routing connections over 3 or 4G - if your chosen mobile network lets you. Another option, which has the advantage of not hammering your phone’s data tariff and battery into the ground up their ears, is to buy a 3G or 4G pocket Wi-Fi router.The third path, which involves no extra gadgetry, is to buy a tablet with built-in hardware for 3G or 4G connections. That way you aren’t dipping into your smartphone’s data transfer allowance and you don’t have to buy, charge or carry an extra bit of kit.Or, of course, you could just buy a Very Large Phone (VLP™) and move on from this oh-so-2012 idea of having two touchscreen devices when most of the time something like a Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3, Sony Xperia Ultra or Asus FonePad will do the job of both smartphone and tablet quite well enough, all in one rather large device.
But assuming you don’t want a VLP or a pocket Wi-Fi router and would rather not drain your smartphone of juice and data, here’s a quick shufti at the 3G and LTE (4G) tablets currently available, soon to be available and sort-of available on the grey market, here in Blighty.With an 11.6-inch screen, a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 chip and 4GB of RAM, the W700 with 128GB of flash storage and an LTE modem is the pick of the current crop of Acer tablets, though I suspect you will need deep pockets. At the time of writing Acer couldn’t confirm a price nor an expected UK shipping date. Still, with those components the W700 is undoubtedly an impressively powerful machine for a tablet and can function as a genuine laptop/desktop replacement. Combine those features with a 1920 x 1080 resolution screen and 64-bit Windows 8, a high sticker price can be partly excused.As well as a traditional keyboard-cum-cover-cum-stand, the W700 can be ordered with a rather odd but also rather clever standy-uppy plastic cradle: this has an additional three USB ports (the W700 itself only has one), HDMI connector and stereo speakers, and turns the W700 into a mini all-in-one desktop PC.
With such a large screen to illuminate, battery life is reasonable rather than spectacular - a full charge will get you to around the five hour mark. At 950g it’s not quite as heavy a lump as you might expect. Putting the unknown price to one side, the LTE W700 may well be worth a look if you are after one device to serve all your desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile data needs.Buying an iPad with a cellular radio brings a significant benefit above and beyond the standard wireless connectivity: you get a GPS radio, too. That alone makes the 3G/LTE iPad the one to buy in my book. But it’s getting harder and harder to argue that Apple is leading the tablet revolution these days what with the competition getting better and cheaper - though admittedly not always at the same time.To my eyes, the iPad is starting a look just a little old hat. The UI certainly is, though iOS 7 will remedy this to some extent. The absence of storage expansion still irks. Perhaps Apple will fix this in the iPad 5, expected imminently, but I suspect not.
Of course, all of Apple’s traditional strengths are still in evidence: the excellent build quality, the impressive selection of tablet-optimised apps, the class-leading battery life and the tip-top levels of support from the shamans at your nearest Apple Store. All these continue to attract the punters and understandably so. If you have taken leave of your senses, or are simply £130 short of the iPad’s asking price, you can go for the wholly inferior if also slightly smaller and lighter cellular iPad Mini though I can’t think good reason why you would decide to do that. At £370, the iPad Mini isn’t actually a bad device just a woefully overpriced one.Pics It was the product that was almost immediately dubbed the ‘Faileo’. It was announced but never released. And it can now be yours - if you pony up enough cash to beat other bidders to a one-of-a-kind auction item.Devised by Palm co-founder and chief engineer Jeff Hawkins, the Foleo - to give the gadget its correct handle - was unveiled in May 2007. It was 10.4-inch sub-notebook that was less than an inch thick and weight just 1.1kg. It had a full-size keyboard and ran Linux. It had Wi-Fi networking and Bluetooth on board, a USB port, and SD and CompactFlash card bays.
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