Hook up this guitar to your iPod, MP3 player or any other music device to jam along with your favorite music. The MiJam guitar has a fret board and four groovin’ sound effects - heavy metal, chorus, acoustic and bass. Built-in rhythm with tempo control and easy thumb-picking action lets you feel like a real rock star. Requires 2 “AAA” batteries (not included). Measures 22″ long.

Guitar Hero lovers will definitely love the mi Jam Guitar that enables anyone to play the guitar in tandem with a digital audio player hooked up to it, such as iPods, MP3 players, CD players, and even the humble personal computer. This four-fingered musical device enables you to strum the bar in order to get some basic cords and riffs with the option to have background rhythms to disguise your lack of musical ability. Features include tempo, pitch, and volume controls that help you be in tune at all times, while the strum bar is a great assistant for those who have difficulty picking the right notes, riffs, and chords. The mi Jam Guitar retails for £26.99.

The miJam Guitar adds a simple drum beat and guitar-like sounds to your iPod’s music. Three knobs adjust the Guitar’s overall volume, the pitch of its guitar noises, and the tempo of the drum beat, which can be turned on or off with a rhythm switch. You use the chord keys at Guitar’s top to activate a specific chord, then hit the strum bar at Guitar’s center to play notes. A whammy bar lets you warp the notes as they’re playing, and a style selector button toggles between “heavy metal,” “rock,” “blues” and “bass” guitar types, each with different sounds. Four AA batteries are required, causing the Guitar to light up in green and blue when inserted; an on-off switch is found next to the audio-out and in ports.

Designed to meet the exacting needs of CAD and GIS applications, the imagePROGRAF 600 (iPF600) is a welcome addition to your business. Featuring vivid colors and precise line and text, it’s a dependable solution for A1+ production where quality and productivity matters. The iPF600 incorporates Canon’s 5-color dye-and-pigment reactive ink system for optimal results in your business. A one-inch dual print head gives reproduction of 1200 dpi, a 4 Pl droplet size and an impressive total of 15,360 nozzles. The reactive ink system ensures it’s adaptable across different applications with vivid color reproduction, solid image consistency and high quality text with less bleeding.

You can work with a wide variety of media types. Plain paper, CAD, recycled, glossy, proofing, synthetic, poster, fine art, sign media - they’re all handled effortlessly with the iPF600. Connection is either via the latest-generation, high-speed USB 2.0 interface, or Ethernet. Combined with the new print head and reactive system, you can expect superb production at twice the level of some competitor devices. In fact the cassette media-feeding system enables new sheets to be fed prior to the previous sheet being ejected, so the device is perfectly at home when used as a powerful color office printer. The integrated cutting device won’t let you down either and keeps on performing for years to come, without ever needing replacement. Simple desktop set-up means you’ll be up and running with the iPF600 in no time.

A rich set off software application plug-ins are incorporated and PosterArtist enables you to produce head-turning posters - with no experience whatsoever! The iPF600 also incorporates 4 media paths - a roll, a cassette and two manuals - and automatic switching of roll media for additional convenience. And unlike some large format devices, it’s compact and quiet - so it’s the output not the noise that gets you noticed.

esigned for the exacting needs of CAD / GIS applications, the iPF600 is a welcome addition to your business. With vivid colours and precise line rendering, it’s the perfect solution for 24″ (A1) prints where quality and productivity matters.

• Encompassing the new Canon 1” print-head with an impressive 15,360 nozzles and 4 picolite droplet size for exceptional detail and quality in your prints.
• New 5 colour dye and pigment ink system ensures excellent reproduction.
• Sharper, thinner line and high black density for CAD plan production.
• Vivid colour and solid image consistency for superb signs and posters.
• Blistering speeds with A1 prints in 36 seconds (draft mode).
• Convenient 4-way media feeding with automatic switching between media types.
• Easy to use intuitive software including poster creation software (PosterArtist) and HDI Driver for CAD applications.

The imagePROGRAF iPF600 is a 5-colour dye / pigment ink 24” (A1) large format printer, bringing vivid colour and 1200 dpi rendering with outstanding line reproduction, solid image consistency and high quality text reproduction.

It was only a matter of time before Samsung put out a speakerless version of the innovative YP-K5 MP3 player. The YP-K3 delivers the goods in an even sexier–if ever-so-slightly bigger–body than the iPod Nano. But it’s priced for the masses at $119 for 2GB and $169 for 4GB, undercutting the iPod’s tag. Samsung says an 8GB model will be out by summer, which makes sense given the company’s good footing in the flash memory market.

Out of the box–which is nearly identical to that of the full-size iPod, interestingly–the K3 is simply stunning. Its glossy front is trimmed with chrome, giving it a sleek and stylish look. When you turn the player on using the side-mounted power/hold switch, the touch-sensitive controls light up, reminiscent of Philips’ GoGear line of players. The controls consist of four directional arrows, as well as Select, Menu, and Back keys. Like the K5, the YP-K3 takes some design cues from the LG Chocolate phone, right down to the availability of black, red, and green versions–sorry, no white. The red version in particular is truly gorgeous, and the backlit controls give it a very jukebox-like appearance.

The Samsung YP-K3 looks nice, if not very familiar. More than any similar competitor, it mimics the iPod nano, with a glossy slab front, chrome accents on the side, and the headphone and proprietary USB port on the bottom. The glossy front hides touch sensitive controls, and we usually aren’t fans of these controls, but on the YP-K3, they worked fine. Still, hardware controls always feel more sensitive and responsive to us, and the touch buttons couldn’t speed up the process of scrolling a long list of song titles.

The interface is standard Samsung fare - menu icons made up of tiny dots that morph from one to the other. The screen itself is disappointing, a 1.8-inch OLED display. Colors seemed a bit washed while viewing JPEGs, and even the visualizer was unexciting. Navigating the menus is very easy, and with few features or customization options, there is little to expect from this simple player’s interface.

But it is the music playback and general track handling that really matter. There’s a couple of settings you can apply to tracks alongside the ‘normal’ sound output; vocal, bass boost, 3G sound and concert hall. They didn’t seem to make a huge difference to music playback, but we found the general quality was pretty good through the supplied in-ear headphones.

We’d have liked a customisable setting or two on the equaliser, but then we’d also have liked support for more music formats, the ability to display album art and the ability to record audio. We aren’t concerned about the lack of video playback, but some people might be.

The most significant difference with the Pearl compared to other BlackBerry devices though is its size. It measures in at 107 by 50 by 14.5mm and weighs a mere 89 grams, making it one of the lightest PDAs on today’s market.

From a physical perspective, everything about the Pearl oozes quality from the ultra sturdy release buttons for the back tray to the smooth rounded keypad that fits with the contour of the phone — we really wish more phones were designed to look this way. Even the Pearl’s added accessories speak style — a lamb skin tote, a smooth Bluetooth headset or a docking station that puts your phone rightfully on display.

You will want to make sure your nails are perfectly manicured before using this phone though, as all eyes will be on you once the “pearl” comes out. RIM has done away with its standard track wheel at the side and replaced it instead with an addictive luminescent ball that resembles a pearl. It navigates in all directions and is much more responsive than previous BlackBerry tracking devices.

One of the most significant of these is a trackball. Instead of using a D-pad like virtually every over handheld and smartphone, you move around and select things on the Pearl’s screen with a small roller-ball. RIM’s implementation of this is well done, and I found it very easy to use. I’m not sure it’s superior to a D-pad, but it’s at least as good, and it’s definitely better than just a scroll-wheel..

Aside from its keyboard, the Pearl is well supplied with additional buttons. On both the left and right side are what’s called “Convenience Keys.” By default the one on the left side lets you do voice dialing, while the one on the right opens the camera application, but these can be changed to whatever applications you prefer.

BlackBerry PearlAlso on the right side are a pair of buttons to increase or decrease call volume.

On the left side of the Pearl is the headphone socket and the device’s mini-USB port. I’m not happy about the location of either one of these. If you’re carrying this smartphone in your pocket with the headphones plugged in, you really want the socket to be on the top of the device. And the fact that the Pearl’s mini-USB port is on its side means that no company is going to be able to create a cradle for it.

Overall, the Pearl lives up to most of it expectations — we recorded a talk time way above the 210 minutes suggested by the vendor, and found navigation and other key areas of functionality up to scratch in comparison to similar devices on the market. It may not be quite “stealth” yet in terms of operation (Stealth was BlackBerry’s previous name for this phone overseas) but it is RIM’s first foray into the consumer space, and based on the popularity of its business-type models with consumers already, we think BlackBerry could have market, with this little Pearl, wrapped up in a clamshell.

The D810 is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900), tri-band 3G (850/1900/2100), GPRS and 3.5G HSDPA capable smart phone. It performs quite well for voice calls, with reasonable in-call quality, but we found the volume is too soft, even at the maximum level. We also noted a slight echo at full volume. As with most smart phones the D810 isn’t as loud or clear as regular mobile phones. In particular, it is difficult to hold a conversation with background noise, such as busy city traffic. The D810 is equipped with plenty of standard phone functions including a hands-free speakerphone, speed dialling, call history, and a 1000 entry phone book. Being a 3G handset, the D810 is also capable of video calling thanks to a front mounted VGA camera.

Running the popular Windows Mobile 5 operating system, the D810 naturally has mobile versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player 10 and Pocket MSN. Both the built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and the GPRS/EDGE wireless functionality make the D810 an excellent email device. The standard Windows Mobile messaging application supports push email from a Microsoft Exchange mail server, as well as standard POP3 and IMAP email accounts such as Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo! Mail. Also standard is infrared (IrDa) and Bluetooth 2.0, with support for Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), meaning users can wirelessly stream music to a compatible pair of Bluetooth headphones.

Running the Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Edition operating system on a 400MHz Samsung CPU, the D810 is reasonably powerful. Out of the 128MB of flash ROM and 64MB of SD-RAM, the user has approximately 58MB of storage space available out of the box.

My personal favourite feature of the Dopod D810 is the wide range of connectivity options. Dopod have covered every base in long- and short-range connectivity. Starting with the long-range options, every type of 2G and 3G network is supported: GSM 850, 900, 1800, and 1900MHz and WCDMA/HSDPA 850, 1900, and 2100MHz. On the GSM networks GPRS and EDGE data protocols can be used, and on 3G networks the high-speed HSDPA protocol is supported. WCDMA is used if HSDPA is not available.

WiFi, Bluetooth, infrared, and USB keep you connected to local devices for synchronization and data transfer. The sales package includes a USB data-cable, which charges the handset while transferring data! The D810 uses the lightweight ActiveSync application on Windows machines for data transfer; except on Windows Vista where the software is part of the operating system.

Major features

• 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz connectivity
• 3G: WCDMA/HSDPA 850/1900/2100MHz connectivity
• WiFi 802.11b/g WLAN connectivity
• 65,536 colour touch screen TFT LCD @ 240 x 320 pixels
• 360° scroll wheel
• Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone Edition
• Samsung SC2442 400MHz processor
• 128MB Flash ROM and 64MB SD-RAM
• MiniSD memory card support
• 2mpx digital camera
• Bluetooth version 2.0, infrared, and USB version 2.0 connectivity
• SMS/EMS, MMS, and (push) e-mail support
• Bundled functionality/PIM applications