It would be most refreshing  if, for once, the public’s ingestion of a major technological gadget wasn’t abruptly followed by an acrid after-taste of controversy.  Unfortunately, once a company has evolved to the stage where its market dominance borders dangerously on the tyrannical and the only thing capable of preventing it from crossing that boundary […]

Amidst the hype, drama and fallout of the most publicised cyber showdown since the day Darth Vader gate-crashed Megaton’s Private pool party, the skilful scheming of another equally formidable force silently eluded our senses.

Few would relish the chance to trade teraflops with giant green eyes, or rile Red Beard’s rabid ROPs and yet…

In the world of Cinema I have no patience for prequels. A Prequel is what occurs when a group of shrewd producers with more cash than creativity are too lazy, shorn of ideas or scared to confront the rigorous challenge of crafting a commendable sequel and decide they will better charm critiques and audiences by […]

In May 2015 the adorably abominable baron von Intel shrewdly surveyed a billowing binary horizon scattered with ever more swift and spacious collators of digitally interpreted humanity.  Cracking his sparkling silicon knuckles for 10 fleeting nanoseconds he decided the time had come to marry sublime solidarity to mollified volatility and boldly blitzed us with a […]

We begin this concise graphically pertinent piece with a literary dispute. A multitude of expressions I use to interpret facts, qualify opinions and provide the occasional twist of linguistic amusement are accompanied by a supercilious red squiggle. You know the one. The grammatical equivalent of a security guard in an Apple Store, silently scrutinizing your […]

“x-treme” “x-plosive” “x-traordinary”. What was it about the letter X that attracted designers of anything targeted at the technologically inspired and improbably rich?  It might be hard to believe, but there are commercially viable words beginning with every letter of the alphabet that could yet secure status as equally influential marketing tools and scorch similarly […]

During a troll around the internet, at a typically late hour on an tranquil evening approaching January’s frosty departure, I had the misfortune to tread in a rather troubling tale of graphical discord.  Most would declare it nothing more than a particularly wet wave of liquid news, though I call it a tale with intent […]

If you live in Britain then, like me, you are treated to a life just short of pleasure .  Who uttered these words?  Who furnished us with this fragment of infinite wisdom. Winston Churchill? Queen Victoria? Thomas Moore? David Icke? In fact, it was none of the above.  But worthy of one of our nation’s […]

Less Control or Less Secrets? Three centuries before your eyes met with these ponderously chosen words – humour me with the tenses, it lends the site a certain character – the world of desktop computing was delicately sprawled on a pin…and a tablet and a phone and other, pernicious portable, pretenders to the swivel chair. […]

On a chill November evening in 2014, a solitary and exhausted enthusiast hitherto enamoured by most things green, black, chocolatey…. I meant PCBs. Apologies, got really confused there. Start again. A pensive PC-er previously placated by most things pix-elated and of enviable electronic eminence was ensconced at his desk. The timeless void that was this […]

Golden Era’s of anything that sounds nice, travels fast, jumps high, hits hard or permits great luxury for less graft are defined by a intricate mixture of objectivity and subjectivity.Facts are substantiated by evidence and statistics, opinions empowered by emotion and belief, but from the moment one rejoices in relativism, nothing can thrive on proof […]

Rumors, speculation, anticipation, all those words a tawdry hardware hack will employ before, during and following a showcase of gadgety gorgeousness were all as rife as one another as the ninth of the ninth revealed a ruddy east.  Speculation surrounding a single, then a double, then a triple serving of spicey apple sauce. Rumors of […]

As 2014’s second quarter neared its end, any owner or craver of a smartly priced desktop build with endless scope for future expansion was either more satisfied than a feline by the fireside, or spoilt for choice than a Butcher’s Braid. The preceding two years had witnessed Baron von Intel lovingly tailor a tantalizing trio […]

Weeks after AMD rolled out its R9 280X card (essentially a cheaper, faster HD 7970) a string of benchmarks leaked from a Korean website suggested that the performance of the company’s forthcoming flagship card might match or even surpass that of Nvidia’s imperious Titan.  Though many could mount a convincing case against the Green Team’s […]

But is all now Haswell?  Even a seasoned enthusiast would struggle not to admit that Intel’s rapidly expanding family tree has made 2013 an especially confusing year.  Back in the days when both mainstream and high end chipsets incorporated the same socket design, choosing  a new motherboard and compatible CPU was relatively straight forward and […]

As 2012 drew to a close,  the GPU rumour mill was rumbling amidst Stories that our old friend Giant Green Eyes was preparing to reveal his latest and hugely anticipated work of art. Speculation was a little vague regarding what eventually would succeed Nvidia’s GTX 680.  Initially, it appeared that the predictably titled “GTX 780” […]

Following prolonged speculation, Nvidia finally elected to unleash its 28mn pixel devourer, the Kepler, at the end of March 2012. The GTX 680 proved to be a more than worthy response to rival AMD’s HD 7970, which had made its way into the retail channel two months earlier. With both companies having now played their […]