Sony Vaio L Series touchscreen PC

Sony Vaio L Series touchscreen PC

Sony has gone all touchy feely with its latest Vaio L Series PC.The all-in-one design means the innards are out of view, hidden behind the 24in touch sensitive display. You can prod, poke and flick your way through your documents, music and movies thanks to the included touch support in Windows 7.

There's Blu-ray built in for your high def needs and there's even an HDMI input so you can hook up other devices to view on the big screen.The Vaio L Series will be available from 22 October, see Sony for further details.

Nikon D3S

Nikon D3S

The Nikon D3S features a redesigned 12.1-megapixel (effective) full frame FX CMOS sensor, with a new Dust Reduction System and a new Hi3 ISO option, which brings the effective ISO range up to 102,400.

Nikon are pitching the D3S as the best camera for low light work, frequently mentioning that the D3S will let you shoot things "your own eyes can't see clearly".

Of course you get that 720p movie mode, at 24fps too, although some might question why there is no Full HD option. Nikon addressed this question in their briefing, responding that the D3S is a professional stills camera and the video should be judged by its quality.

Movies are captured in AVI format, using Motion JPEG, which will only support file sizes of 2GB, which gives you 5 minutes of 720p video. It does have the option to trim start and finish points in-camera, as well as grab a JPEG straight from the movie, although it is only really good for web use or smaller prints (e.g. 6 x 4). You do get full aperture control in movie modes as well as access to the full ISO range, opening up the possibilities for low light filming.

Various other tweaks have been made, including some minor changes to buttons and the battery to make it easier for gloved hands, responding to customer feedback. You also get 100% viewfinder coverage in FX shooting mode.

There is a new NEF RAW image editing system built-in, which is designed to enable you to tweak an image and extract the JPEG you want, so you can send it straight out for publishing or print directly from the camera.

Toshiba Satellite P505 notebook computer

Toshiba Satellite P505 notebook computer

The Toshiba Satellite P505 is one of the best Windows-based laptops I've had the pleasure of reviewing. With its beautiful, large display, excellent Harmon/Kardon speakers, large hard drive,and blazing fast processor and graphics, this is a top-notch laptop that will fit virtually anyone's mobile computing needs. From the student all the way to professionals, this is a great system.

System SpecsTwo striking features of the P505 are the beautiful 18.4-inch display and the incredible Harmon/Kardon speakers. With full HD resolutions (1920 x 1080p), this is a terrific laptop for gaming, watching movies, HULU, or just checking email, writing, surfing the web, and any other tasks that you'd want to perform. The display is terrific and reproduces colors faithfully, and the speakers are among the best in laptops I've used, Mac or Windows.

Underneath the hood, you'll find a fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, up to a large 500GB hard drive to store all your files, music, videos, photos, etc.; and a great ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics card if you choose it. There's also the option for a Blu-ray ROM drive. Keep in mind, you can customize your laptop to fit your needs, especially if you don't need that kind of power for your work.

I/O ports include the usual you'd find on any laptop (including USB 2, etc.), but I'm happy the P505 features an HDMI output port to hook up to a monitor with full 1080p support. That's very cool and you can connect a second monitor and really get some work done.

PerformanceI installed Sony Vegas Pro 9 and Sony Production Assistant to do an earlier review, and the P505 did a fantastic job handling video editing and rendering with ease. Sure, the Qosmio is one of the absolute top-of-the-line laptops that Toshiba makes, but I'm very impressed with how the P505 handled video editing.

I did download a game from Big Fish Games, and it played back very well. The game is "The Cameron Files: Secret at Loch Ness;" nothing that will stress a system, but it still played back nicely. I'm not the biggest gamer in the world, but I can assure you this is the kind of system that will do well for PC gamers.

Windows VistaI know Windows Vista gets a bad rap, and really all of that's kind of a mute point now that Windows 7 is out, but I never really had any issues with Vista on any of the Toshiba laptops I've reviewed in the past. As usual, I had no problems with Vista on this new Satellite, and both handled some high-end software I installed, including Sony Vegas Pro 9 and Production Assistant.

I've seen other, lesser systems (you know which ones I'm talking about--the cheap laptops and desktops) that seem to just have problem after problem, but I wonder if it's more hardware-related than software? At any rate, I just wanted to mention that I have no problems with Vista, and this is coming from a Mac OS X user.

ConclusionI've used a few Windows-based laptops, and I still find Toshiba to be among the best. The starting price is $799.99, which makes the Satellite P505 a great deal for the kind of power, display, and speakers it comes with. Whether you're a student, a gamer, video editor, graphics artist, CAD designer, or working professional, this is a terrific, flexible system that can fit your needs. Visit www.toshiba.com for more information and to check out all of Toshiba's laptops and custom-build your own.