News round-up: 25 September 2008

Dell's Godzilla of the laptop world
Dell's Godzilla of the laptop world

Well, well, well... there you are, hanging around waiting for your daily dose of tech news because you can't be bothered to read the stuff as it happens.

Well, maybe we don't want to tell you about it today. MAYBE we're thinking 'it's Thursday, let's go and hang out with famous footballers and drink Schnapps!'

Wouldn't like that, would you?

Well, luckily we're not going to do that. And, to be honest, we like seeing you here everyday.

So, let's begin: We kicked off today with news of a high res 960 x 540 screen... which is hardly exciting, until you hear it's on a 2-inch display from Casio. Then it becomes all shiny and new...

Then we brought you the first in our series of articles on the new MySpace Music site, which should create some ripples in the music industry if it takes off.

Then we brought you the UK's take on such an event, which was largely positive, although it highlighted the fact Murdoch is behind the site; that should bring some fear in the hearts of the paranoid...

And then we found out that the service will launch without any significant independent labels. Shocking.

What else would you like to know about? The brain scanners designed for airports? A 3G dongle-free PC? Or how about a lesson in Facebook etiquette?

Or you might be interested in the first manned Chinese space launch... maybe we should start getting scared about how super this superpower nation is getting...

Perhaps you're Finnish and therefore have a deep-seated love of all things Nokia? Well, the news that the Nokia Tube (or the 5800 XpressMusic for the corporate types out there) is rumoured to be debuting on the 2 Oct... nothing like a good surprise to perk up your day.

But if your heart can't take such shocks, then how about a nice comforting review of the Nokia N96, which was launched earlier this week? We promise you'll be pleased with what you find... unless you happen to be an aficionado of the Apple iPhone, of course...

We also got a bit happy later in the day – mostly because Mrs TechRadar phoned and told us she was nipping off to her friend's house tonight, so has left some beer and pizza in the lounge and invited all our friends round to say sorry.

But also because of some of the lovely things Dell is doing. It's getting all environmental on us with the plan to change all the backlights in its laptops to LEDs... which is doubly nice when you realise it will save you money on electricity bills too.

We touched a mini-projector all over, and it didn't even threaten to call the police... we love you lots, Dell M109S mini-projector.

But then the Dell Precision M6400 got all angry at us when we tried the same thing with it... however, after a few pints we managed to get a hands-on with this behemoth of the laptop world, which comes with a frankly dizzying 16GB of RAM to play with.

Windows Vista might even run without interruptions on this one...

Well, that's your lot. If you feel the need for any more tech news, then keep checking back. And if you see Mrs TechRadar out at a pub having a good time when she's supposed to be round her friend's house... go and have a chat to keep her occupied.

WE have got a PS3 to re-acquaint ourselves with. Good morrow, sirs and madams...

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.