In my day job I travel a heck of a lot. I think at the last count I had taken over 170 flights in the past 18 months. Don’t even ask me to work out my carbon footprint. For anyone who has been on a long haul flight you know one of your biggest problems is boredom. The in-flight entertainment is either very poor or you have seen it before, probably on the last flight you took a few weeks previous. So what’s a person to do? Take my advice and invest in an personal media player from Archos, such as the 605 Wi-Fi model.

I know for many when they first think about a personal media player they think Apple. Well in my opinion if you want movies on the go then forget about the iPod, and think Archos. The 605, 5th generation model, comes with a vibrant 4.5″ touch screen, which in my opinon is a perfect combination for those who want to watch more than just video podcasts. The addition of wi-fi and web browser means that you also get quite a pleasant Internet experience - YouTube anyone? My concern when I heard that the 605 would have a wi-fi enabled browser was that the quality of the main feature, media playing, would be sacrificed. I should not have worried as Archos have managed to deliver a great experience for both.

Given that the 605 supports JPG, MP3, AVI, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and WMV, it’s fortunate that this beast comes in 30GB, 80GB and 160GB models. Another new addition is a funky little kickstand which is sturdy enough to allow the player to stand alone without fear of it toppling over. I’ve been an Archos fan, and indeed owner, since the first generation models, and they certainly have improved in both the feature and looks department. Looks however don’t mean that Arhcos have forgotten about build quality,  and I find the player feels just right in the hand, but can also take a knock or two.

One downside to the Archos range is that if you wish to record from your TV you need to invest in the separate DVR module, which allows you to record directly from your TV. This is one of my main uses of the Archos and quite regularly find myself watching Match of The Day somewhere across the Atlantic - I can spot the jealousy of the passenger beside me who is forced to watch a re-run of The Darling Buds of May.

For me the Archos is one of the first gadgets I pack when travelling and would recommend one to anyone who spends any serious amount of time away from home.

The Nintendo Wii gives you that chance to play a totally different type of game from the Xbox 360 and PS3. When i am choosing a new game, say it was for the Xbox or PS3, the first thing i always ask myself is “What are the graphics like?” Yet with the Nintendo Wii, although top graphics are always great, they are not really a big part in my game choice. I’m asking myself questions more like “What can i get up to with the Nunchuck this time?” and “How hard can i swing my arms with this game?” So here are three games i have singled out that you and your Nunchuck can enjoy this Christmas.

Nintendo Wii Games

Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games - Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games will give you the chance to take place in events in environments that are based on venues for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. With characters from both the Sonic and Mario game series you will be able to compete as or compete against characters such as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and lots more. With the Wii controls you will be able to simulate events such as Archery, Fencing, Table Tennis, Swimming, Hammer Throw and Javelin. Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games is a great game for all the family. Whether you are 6 years old or 60, you are going to enjoy it.

Super Mario Galaxy - In Super Mario Galaxy you will travel through all planets of the galaxy battling Mario enemies along the way. As he is in space Mario will be able to perform insane jumps never seen before. Super Mario Galaxy takes all the Wii Controls capabilities into consideration, everything from pressing buttons to swinging the Wii controller around and even pointing and dragging items using the pointer. With a second Wii Remote a friend can join you on your travels and will be able to point at and collect bits of stardust and launch them at enemies. With this incredible new game, Nintendo prove once again that Mario is the king of the platform game genre.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles reveals the back story behind the fall of the Umbrella Corporation by exploring locations from Resident Evil 0, 1, 2 and 3 as well as some brand new locations. Combining first-person, light-gun style combat with interactive pathways, multiple weapons and new enemies, this is an all new Resident Evil experience that could only be delivered on the Wii. Using the Wii Remote as a gun you will experience an all new form of combat against those flesh eating Zombies.

Along with the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3 shares a lot of great titles at the moment. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (which is at the top of my game list), Need For Speed: Pro Street, Fifa 08, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008, Call Of Duty 4 and Assassins Creed to name a few and each and every one is money well spent. At the moment Assassins Creed is the PS3’s best selling game and is going down well with Playstation-heads all over the world so it would only be right to include it in my top 3 tips for the most wanted games this Christmas.

Playstation 3 Games

Assassins Creed - Assassins Creed is set in the year 1191 and you play the role of the main character “Altair”, carrying out various assassination missions over 3 different cities. As it is set during the time of the Third Crusade you can expect chainmail, horses, swords and bow and arrows. With total freedom in the game you can blend yourself into crowds, wander the streets and carefully plan your attacks on targets. Crowds will react to your movement and actions and they may help you on your mission or they could make you a target of their own. Set in a historical time and with graphics to die for, Assassins Creed is a “GottaHave”.

Medal Of Honor: Airborne - Medal Of Honor: Airborne or “Travers” as i like to call it is the latest edition of the fantastic Medal Of Honor series. Airborne puts you into the boots of Boyd Travers, Private First Class of the 82nd Airborne Division where you go through various battles during World War II. Starting each mission from the sky you can parachute your way right into the heart of the battle or strategically plan your landing in a safe zone. Once in battle you will get your chance to earn medals with various World War II weapons and become a true war hero! Medal Of Honor: Airborne will be released for the PS3 December 7th and if it is anywhere near as good as the one for the Xbox (it looks even better) then we are in for treat.

Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - Fortune hunter Nathan Drake discovers a 400 year old clue inside the coffin of Sir Francis Drake, which sets him on a journey to find the treasure of El Dorado, resulting in the discovery of a forgotten Island. Trapped and outnumbered by mercenaries Drake must fight his way through while working out the clues and mysteries that the Island possesses. The game has a great storyline and will keep you on your toes at all times. Uncharted: Drakes Fortune is very Tomb Raider-like so if you love Tomb Raider then you will love this! Uncharted: Drakes Fortune will be released on December 7th along with Medal Of Honor: Airborne.

5 years is a long time in the digital world. 5 years in the storage world is a lifetime. Think back 5 years and you probably had around 100GB tops of storage at home. In fact one of first storage systems in our office had around 500GB of storage, and this was supporting 120 people. Fast forward 5 years and the combination of the widespread adoption of personal media players, along with the ever decreasing price point of disk technology, has meant now more than ever it is the time to invest in some serious storage solutions for home.

One of the easiest ways to increase your storage capacities at home is to install a larger drive in your PC, or attach an external USB solution. Although there is nothing, in principle , wrong with this method you are limiting yourself to the full potential of shared storage at home. To overcome this limitation you should consider a networked storage device, especially if you would like to share your files among more than one computer, or media player.

The Buffalo Link Station Live (500GB model) is a beast of a solution in more than just its name. For starters you get 500GB of storage which, lets face it, should be more than enough for even the most media hungry among us. And of course with that amount of data you want fast access, and the integrated Gigabit Ethernet port takes care of that. I know for some power users 500GB may not be enough and again the Live Station has you covered with 2 usb ports which provide the ability to upgrade. I think this is one of the most important features of this device, as usb drives will continue to expand in size while dropping in price, meaning this network device should, in theory, have an unlimited life-span.

Integration is also high on the list for this device with support, out of the box, for file sharing over FTP, SMB and DLNA. The latter stands for Digital Living Network Alliance and provides a common platform for sharing files across devices bearing the DLNA certified sticker. Some of the other top manufacturers involved in the DLNA include Microsoft, Intel, Sony and of course Buffalo. Support for streaming content to your Playstation 3 or XBox 360 is also supported.

Overall the Buffalo provides an extremely feature rich network storage device and one which I would highly recommend you consider if storage is on your shopping list this Christmas.

With Christmas approaching fast and present requests flooding into Santa’s Grotto, video games are always put on the letter to Santa with both the young and the old. So to help old St Nick along, over the course of the week I’m going to fill him in on video games for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii that will be most wanted this Christmas. Today i will concentrate on the Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 Games

At the moment there is a vast amount of top games available for the Xbox 360. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Assassins Creed, Fifa 08, PES 2008, Medal Of Honor: Airbourne and don’t forget the latest edition of Xbox’s signature game series, Halo 3. But, there are 3 games being released this week that i am tipping to be big this Christmas.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - The latest game in the Guitar Hero series will give you the chance to test your skills against legends such as Slash and Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine. Beat them, unlock them, then let them stand and admire your talents while you blast out to the likes of “Welcome To the Jungle” and “Bulls on Parade.” Our very own “Guitar Hero” Nigel Cooke will be delighted to hear that! With a tracklist that boasts tunes from the likes of The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Guns N’ Roses, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Kaiser Chiefs and The Killers… Guitar Hero 3 is set to be a monster!

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men - The new action shooter from the creators of “Hitman”. The game consists of two men, a flawed mercenary and a medicated psychopath who hate each other but must work together to save themselves and possibly the ones they love. Two people can play together as both characters in two-player mode or you can play as Kane in single-player mode. This game boasts amazing graphics, a great story line and there is constant gibberish between Kane and Lynch for you to enjoy.

Need For Speed: Pro Street - Every boy racers favourite game series. Pro Street sends the modifying part of the game heads and shoulders above its predecessors allowing you to directly impact your car’s performance for the first time, as well as personalize its appearance. With a revolutionary online-play mode, social racing now has a whole new meaning and is much more competitive. Need For Speed: Pro Street is an adrenalin pumping, insane street racing beauty!

It wasn’t that long ago that GPS devices were a device only the rich and famous could afford - okay perhaps a little extreme but they were priced at the top end of the market. Today however their price has fallen dramatically, while their features are a huge improvement on the original models. I don’t really drive that often, but when I do I quite often get lost and so my recent purchase of a GPS device has been a gadget I just could not do without now. Garmin and TomTom are probably the top two providers of GPS kit and I’d like to highlight a couple of their must see products in this post.

First up the Garmin Nuvi 310, complete with Bluetooth connectivity which allows you to make and receive hands free calls. At its core is a basic GPS device which aims to get you from A to B as quickly as possible. What sets this device apart from the sea of competitors is the ability to bolt on additional features, such as European maps and speed camera locations. This makes the Navi a perfect first venture into GPS with the ability to increase its features at a later date. 3.5″ touch screen, 8 hours battery life and mp3 are just some of the other features than come as standard on this particular model.

In the same price bracket we have the TomTom One (3rd edition) which again boasts an impressive 3.5″ screen along with 3d map view but only 2 hour battery life. One of the selling features of the TomTom range is the supposed ease of use, as they promise with their plug and drive you can literally switch this device on and be navigating within minutes. The TomTom however does not have bluetooth connectivity which is one major feature missing when comparing with the Nuvi. It does however have a more detailed map view which some drivers prefer including point of interest landmark notifications.

Personally if price was an issue I’d go for the Nuvi as the longer battery life, along with the ability to add additional features to the base extend this devices usefulness. One note I would add though is that if you are considering a GPS for the car but also would like to use it on foot, be careful. A lot of the in-car models don’t work as well when navigating on foot, especially in a city with many side streets involved. If you are looking for a GPS for navigation on foot then choose one of the models for this particular task.

Digital photo frames have been around for a while now and with more and more being released every week their uniqueness and novelty is kind of wearing off, but just as with all other aspects of technology they are constantly growing and going through the technology evolution process. Digital photo frame company eStarling have “pimped up” their latest frames with a whole load of great new features and have put uniqueness back into the digital photograph frame.

The eStarling WPF-288B has an 8-inch LCD screen, 128MB memory, is compatible with Windows 2000/XP/Vista & MAC OS X and can take pictures from photo sharing websites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and more! The frame has its very own email address so you can subscribe it to photo RSS feeds or send it pictures via email from computers or even mobile phones. Each frame has its own email address but it does have a Group Frame feature where you can set up a single email address so all frames correspond to each other. You may be thinking “How is this thing receiving these emails?”. Well the answer is Wi-Fi and if no Wi-Fi is available it will still work as a stand alone digital photo frame. It can even receive text messages! either from a Seeframe Live account or authorized mobile phones.

Sadly though at the moment this is only available in the US but there are other options, they may not all have their own email address but larger frames, higher quality and Wi-Fi compatible are still available.

So it’s time for the 3rd and final part of my look at the top tier of gaming consoles available today. If you haven’t already done so I’d advise taking a look at the first and second parts of this series before reading this final instalment.

In this final part I thought I’d spend a few minutes looking at the future of the consoles as I’m sure everyone is interested in the longevity of their investment. So first lets take a look at the Nintendo Wii. I think one of the things that will keep me coming back to this fine console will be the continued innovation of Nintendo and 3rd party software developers. In the coming months Wii Fit will be released and this builds upon the excellent Wii Sports, so if you want a physical challenge while gaming then this will be the one for you. The virtual console channel should also keep you coming back for more with the likes of Donkey Kong, Zelda and Sim City available at the touch of a button. It is interesting that the loud chorus of disproval from many quarters when the Wii first launched has become more of a whimper, as the opposition has been won over with many outstanding releases and continued innovation from all parties involved.

So how is Sony aiming on keeping its band of loyal fans, as well as attracting new players into the Playstation 3 fold? Well for starters I firmly believe that 2008 will see the release of some triple A exclusives which should help boost popularity. Then of course we have the promise of Playstation Home which aims to take on the stellar success of Microsofts XBox Live. If you have not heard of Playstation Home before then think of it as a mashup between Second Life and Xbox Live. If they manage to deliver on their promise then this could indeed be a very real challenge to XBox Live. Also as more and more households invest in High Definition screens then I beleive we will see the increase in High Definition movie sales, and of course the Playstation 3 delivers one of the best Blue Ray experiences available today - and certainly one of the cheapest. In 2008 we will also see the return of rumble, something which I have missed almost as much as football during a non championship summer - and it will be backward compatible with many existing titles already available today.

Finally what of the XBox 360? First we of course have the new XBox Elite which addresses many of the issues that gamers raised with the first generation XBox 360, mainly the inclusion of HDMI. Just like the Playstation 3, the XBox 360 also now allows for the HD movie experience with the optional HD DVD accessory. I must admit I’m surprised Microsoft has not yet announced plans to integrate the player but having just picked one of these up myself, I can confirm that they are well worth the investment, and with the growing list of High Def movies becoming available you should have something to suite your movie tastes. In 2008 we should see the introduction in the UK of IPTV for the XBox 360 - yes that’s right on-demand TV using your XBox 360. This combined with the increasing adoption of Vista will of course allow the XBox 360 to maintain a strong position in the media centre marketplace.

To conclude I’d like to take you back to the first part of this 3 part post regarding my own opinion on the best console available? Hopefully these three posts have shown that each console has something for everyone and with the innovation of Nintendo combined with Raw power and media capabilities of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 the future is indeed very bright for you the gamer!

The Nokia N82 is the latest member of the Nseries family and it is packing some serious technology. Think of it as the Nokia N95’s little brother. This thing is so full of great features if it had ears they would be coming out of them.

The N82 boasts a 5 megapixel camera which matches that of the N95 along with a Carl Zeiss lens and video which is on a par with DVD quality. If that doesn’t impress you then this will… Once you have taken advantage of your quality snapper and captured plenty of pictures and videos from Saturday night on the town, you can stream them through your TV with the N82’s TV output device. Maybe your hung-over on the Sunday and your thinking to yourself “How the hell did i get in this state?” I know! Why don’t you check out those videos from the night before on your TV and find out. Any excuse to use it right?.

While we’re on the subject of Saturday nights, the N82 has an AGPS navigation device which works with Nokia Maps, now this could really come in handy while wandering around dazed and confused on a Saturday night. I am starting to think Nokia have made this mobile phone specifically for weekend binge drinkers. As part of your AGPS system the N82 will come with a free trial of voice navigation software as standard. So if you can actually work out where you are going and have the ability to tell the phone, then it will tell you just how to get there!

At the core of these great features the N82 runs with a Symbian S60 OS which makes it a multimedia computer as well, complete with web browser. While in the web browser the N82 has Wi-Fi so you’ll have that extra bit of pace while web browsing and you can access the Nokia Music Store with 3G.

The Nokia N82 will available early in the new year.

When I was growing up my brother was in a band and from time to time I would help out setting things up and packing things away at the end of the night - the worlds youngest roadie I think. I always looked forward to it as there was normally a few minutes after the kit had been setup and before sound check that I would be given some time on the drums. Although at the time I was trying to learn guitair it was always the drums that interested me most. I remember pleading with my mum to get me a drumkit which as you can imagine was met with a firm no time and time again. I don’t think my cause was helped by my nextdoor neighbour having his own drumkit which you could hear quite clearly though our walls.

Well that love of drumming never left me and over the last few years I’ve been thinking of getting back into it, however this time I needed to convince my better half of its merits. These days though wanna-be rockstars have the option of an electric drumkit which helps considerably when justification is needed. I’d like to comment on two particular electric kits at either ends of the price, and features, scale which will hopefully give you an introuduction to what is out there.

First off at the lower end of the scale is the Yamaha DD65 Electronic Drum Pads, which is a fantastic bit of kit if you are just getting started playing the drums. This was actually the kit that my nephew started with and today he is actually in his own band and I must say a fantastic dummer. The 8 pad kit, complete with 2 foot pedals, comes with a varity of drum effects, voices and pre-sets which allow you to play on kits ranging from your standard rock kit through to a steel drum. You can also plug in your favourite mp3 player and drum along to the music which I find quite a good way to pickup some of the basics. Another great feature of this kit is the ability to save your drumming performances to the internal memory so you amaze your friends with your talent the next time they are over. Although these are meant to be used with headphones you can also plug them into an external amp - useful if you really want to annoy the neighbours.

If you are willing to spend a little extra on an electric kit then I highly recommend the Yamaha DTExpress IV. One of the first differences you will notice between a kit such and this and the starter kit is the feel of the drums against the sticks. This for many is an important feature as the drummer needs to feel as though they are hitting real drums when playing and I can testify to the fact that this kit gets pretty close to the real thing. The kit itself comes with 3-zone snare and hi-hat pads, 3-zone round cymbal pads and a kick (or bass drum pedal for those not in the know). The rubber pads not only allow you to experience the feel of a real drum kit but also contribute to keeping sound output to a mimimum. This kit comes with over 50 styles of drumkit ranging from rock through to reggae and a range of songs which allow you to remove the drum beat when playing along - again I find this really useful for picking up teh basics.

I actually own the DTExpress IV and can confirm it’s a wonderful peice of kit which has taken me right back to those days playing along with my brothers band. It’s great fun, but also a kit that will meet the needs of the serious drummer and of course as it’s electric it will hopefully keep the peace in most households. Rock on !