Reviews Round-up: The ultimate laptop?

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An ultimate ultra-portable laptop, a smartphone challenger, a innovative DVD Burner and a cutting edge server all hit the lab bench this week. Oh, and a printer too.

Sony VAIO VGN-Z31VN/X

Brother MFC-6890CDW - MFP printer review

Oh Brother, it's another printer. A compact multi-function printer is a great idea, especially at such an affordable price, but a few issues rankled our reviewer such as a dodgy web interface, and a lack of an ADF for duplex scanning. Slow print speeds didn't help either.

LiteOn iHAS 324 DVD burner review

This DVD burner aims to protect your data once you're done with your discs by erasing them. While it did the job, it did it slowly. And it didn't manage to answer the question of why you wouldn't just break or shred the discs in a cheap to pick-up-machine.

Sony VAIO VGN-Z31VN/X review

Ultra-portable laptops always cost a pretty penny the price of all that power and feature set needing to be miniaturised. Then netbooks came along making ultra-portables seemed even more ridiculously over-priced. However, the fact remains that there's still a world of difference between a netbook and a real laptop and if you want the finest example out there and have the cash to spare Sony's VGN-Z31VN would be it.

Samsung Jet S8000 review

Samsung is about to release an Android powered phone but this isn't it. Still, there's no a lot that the Jet can't do, with the standout feature being a full Exchange client bringing professional email support to a non business orientated phone. It's certainly an impressive piece of hardware and we really love the AMOLED screen but as a business tool we're not convinced.

IBM System x3550 M2 review

Dell and HP have stolen a march on IBM with their Xeon 5500 Nehalem based servers so has IBM got something special up its sleeve with this new rack server? Highlights include build quality and hot-plug power supply redundancy.

Benny Har-Even
Benny Har-Even

Benny Har-Even is a twenty-year stalwart of technology journalism who is passionate about all areas of the industry, but telecoms and mobile and home entertainment are among his chief interests. He has written for many of the leading tech publications in the UK, such as PC Pro and Wired, and previously held the position of technology editor at ITPro before regularly contributing as a freelancer.

Known affectionately as a ‘geek’ to his friends, his passion has seen him land opportunities to speak about technology on BBC television broadcasts, as well as a number of speaking engagements at industry events.