Philips HQ5853 Shaver

Philips HQ5853 Shaver

 

 

The product of Philishave's sharpest minds.

The Philishave HQ5853 is the latest addition to the Philishave reflex action range, the closest shaving razors Philishave make. It's a three rotating head machine, as you can see in the photos. Each head moves about so that the bit that shaves, is flat to the skin, giving a closer shave. The advantage of the Reflex action range over cheaper models is that as well as the heads, the whole supporting frame moves, providing contact with the skin in more places. For example, with the old models, when shaving around the chin and jaw line, only one head would really be in contact with the skin. With the Reflex model, all three heads are working. This speeds up the shave and means you don't need to concentrate as much; a good thing in the morning.

In fact, the 5853 has a whole load of little tricks hidden away. While you're dragging it across your face, the heads are pivoting, the frame is moving and 45 little blades are slightly lifting hairs out of the skin so that the 45 cutting blades can trim them closer before they sink back in. It's an ingenious way of reducing the problem of having a protective guard between the blades and your face, a precaution that I think you'll agree is necessary.

All of these subtleties are designed to enhance the performance of the razor, making the big question whether they actually work. The answer is yes. I have now used the razor for the time they suggest you allow for your skin to get used to it and I have gone from being very disappointed with it to loving it. It's quicker than my electric razor, giving me that little more in bed(!) It doesn't drop hairs, meaning that I can shave in front of the bedroom mirror instead of having to wait for the bathroom mirror to de-mist. It's smaller than a bottle of shaving foam, meaning that I have that little bit more room in my washkit when I'm away (the battery lasts for three weeks) and it is a beautiful piece of kit, and apart from the colours, is extremely well made and designed. However, these are mostly obvious benefits of having an electric razor. The thing that stops most people is the closeness of the shave, and on that issue I have a couple of interesting points. When I began to use the shaver, I was rather disappointed with its performance. Philishave give you some basic guidelines on how to use you shaver but these didn't really help me. They suggest that you stretch you skin and then run the shaver over your face. It was a week before I worked out that I was pressing too hard. No pressure at all is needed, the shaver just needs to be touching your skin. A week later, I had my second shaving breakthrough. If you run your fingers just infront of where you are running the razor, pressing quite hard to stretch your skin, the hairs really stand up, making the shave much closer. The final shaving breakthrough I made only a few days ago. Philishave suggest that you either shave before washing your face or wait some time after washing before shaving, until your face is dry. I started shaving before washing my face but discovered that it is better to wash, wait five minutes and then shave. While you sleep, grease builds up on your face and the razor seems to work better with this cleaned off. I have now got the shaving art and can honestly say that with care and practice I think it is possible to make the Philishave go almost, if not,as close to the skin as a wet razor. They haven't paid me to say this (I wish), I just really think that they are making a good product. Even if you don't believe it, consider this: The extra amount of hair that you shave off with a wet razor will have grown back in half an hour anyway.

I was wondering how to sum up this razor. I think the best way to do it is to state the simple fact that I will not be wet shaving again. It's quick, convenient and the results are good. However, if you're convinced and want to buy one, I do have some advice:

Don't bother with the very top of the range, simply get the latest shaving technology. For example, the shaver I reviewed retails at around £124.99 and has exactly the same shaving technology as the top of the range which retails at £159.99. The high end models tend to be full of gimmicks that you pay exorbitant amounts of money for. Mine had a charge indicator, a sideburn/beard/moustache trimmer (that worked very well), a nice case and a cleaning brush. I wanted for nothing more. Get a rechargeable. Not having a cord is good and you can take the model I reviewed on holiday for up to 23 days without needing to charge it. Take time to get used to it and experiment. You can get an excellent shave. There are even some shavers such as the Philishave "Coolskin" which have a money back guarantee so you can try them.

If you need, Shaver Razor Replacement Head Blade for Philips   Only 11.33

Yamaha DJX Keyboard

Yamaha DJX Keyboard

Music to your ears?

For a long time now, Yamaha have been synonymous with very high quality audio products for the professional user and absolutely top notch sound gear for the home user. More recently the sudden growth in dance music has meant that even more now than ever, home users too are hoping to "get their hands dirty" so to speak and have a go at this music making business. In answer to this, Yamaha have put some of their very latest and highest specification audio synthesis and sequencing hardware into a neat little package (see above and below pictures) and stuck an incredibly low price tag of £269 onto it!. This may seem underpriced for a keyboard with such high hopes but as you will find out this natty piece of kit is definitely worth more than the sum of its parts...

The obtrusively large package arrived one rainy Thursday morning attached to an annoyed looking courier. There was an immediate movement around the office as everyone suddenly woke up to see the contents of the box. I, being the boss and general head person, chose to open the box and was confronted with a relatively heavy but complex looking piece of kit with the DJX logo engraved into its surface. "It's a keyboard!" came the cry from someone behind me. "You're fired!!!" came the reply from me. The immediate surprise was the lack of an AC adapter which, after consulting the instruction manual, was found to be an optional extra!. This problem is solved in one of three ways:

    Buy a power adapter...
    Buy a stupid amount of batteries which will be drained in a matter of minutes.
    Use one of your own power adapters, "at your own risk".

We chose option 4, the unlisted option only available to very influential online media journalists. You guessed it!, we blagged one from Yamaha. Once set up, the keyboard was ready to roll. Before I go any further, I know you tech heads out there are waiting in anticipation of the technical specifications. The best place to go for these is the Yamaha website.

The first thing you notice when you switch the unit on is the sudden burst of animated antics on the generously sized LCD screen and then, as you tap one of the keys, you are greeted not with the usual calm piano sound of many similar keyboards but by some heavy 160bpm dance bass heavy action. You immediately realise that the speakers on this thing are absolutely stunning and can deliver extremely crisp and undistorted audio up to some ear wrenchingly loud volumes. It also comes to your attention that there are a large variety of buttons switches and dials to fiddle with! (simple things -ed). Contrary to most pieces of electronics aimed at the home user market, the dials, switches and buttons on the DJX are all of use to you and essential to be able to get the most out of the unit.

There are a large number of sounds built into the keyboard. 283 in total with 168 specific to the keyboard itself the rest being General MIDI sounds plus 1 sound bank for user use. You also find at this stage that the quality of the sampled instruments, kits and effects is quite superb and comparable easily with many of the much more pricey units on sale currently. All these sounds can be tinkered and tailored to suit your own styles and requirements via a series of detailed menus available via the buttons placed around the main display.

You also find the assortment of provided songs and music styles. These are all of the "dance" and "r&b" genre and range in style from classic dance, through trance, hardcore, jungle all the way to even fringe and abstract beats. Mostly, these tracks are of a high quality and also come with their own loops, synchs, patterns etc...

The "DJ" facilities on this keyboard are fairly unique to a consumer end machine. Accurate control of tempo, bpm, and pitch are achieved either numerically or by using the dials, pitch wheel and ribbon controller. Control of the "groove" and "track" of the song are also available by similar methods. Many effects and digital sound adjustments are available such as flange, chorus, reverb and the suchlike. These are all again of an exceptionally high quality and available in a variety of styles an genres. User samples can also be imported to the keyboard via the mic and line-in ports to the rear. A total of ~6 seconds of audio can be recorded onto the unit from outside and then fiddled with to the users content. In a matter of minutes you are able to create some fairly decent sounding dance tracks and mixing them with others in realtime, cool eh?

One important feature of many modern keyboards is the ability to connect directly with computers or midi interfaces. This ability combined with high level of professional features within this keyboard ensure a high level of functionality which amateurs and advanced users will be impressed with. We had it connected to our test computer and ready to run in a matter of minutes. We tested using standard windows media player, cubase and cakewalk and in all circumstances the keyboard performed exceptionally well.

The keyboard has some interesting recording features as well allowing you to pre-set your own songs and styles. This is very handy for live performances or for or complex pieces since you can set the keyboard up exactly how you want it in a high level of detail. For example, if you want to change the DSP effect from chorus2 to symphony half way through your performance, you can pre-set the unit to do just that. Overall I can safely say that we were suitably impressed with this keyboard. It looks good, plays well and well deserves the ISR WOW! award!

Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!

 Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!

Creative Labs have done it again!.  This time  with their latest creation, Soundblaster Live!.  This ground breaking soundcard promises unprecedented audio quality and flexibility.

As you can see from the above specification, this certainly is a superbly specified piece of equipment.  We chose to test it out on two systems.  One 200Mhz processor based average home user PC and one 450Mhz processor based professional music station with keyboards amps, surround sound, multiple speakers and a 21" monitor.  In both cases, the card was easy to install and if in doubt, the instruction manual is clear and provides useful tips on installation.  Cabling up, again, was simple enough except in the higher specced system which was a full tower case, the CD audio cable didn't quite reach the CD drive.  Useful on board support is also provided for DVD players and the card connected directly to our PC DVD Encore Dxr2 card.

Once installed it is a simple matter of tidying up and restarting your computer, the CD autoruns and can install the drivers plus the impressive suite of software

Once restarted I was immediately impressed with a gratifyingly realistic lightning bolt startup sound which replaces your standard windows startup "noise".

A start menu item for you soundcard has now been added and it's time to play.  In all cases, be it MIDI file playback, MP3, WAV or even RealAudio, this soundcard surpassed my expectations.  Sound Quality was superb and with Environmental audio in use, the realism was admirable.  On the standard Home PC setup, it sounded good but on our professional audio station, it sounded GOOD!  this is no amateur card and on our pro sound setup, the quality of the digital surround sound and depth of the sound stage were superb.  Playing back DVD films showed off the low noise floor and in game sounds and effects were enhanced using the new DirectX EAX extensions which are processed on board.

This card also makes use of Creative Labs soundfont technology.  This lets you control banks of samples for use either to play back as per a sampler (using a keyboard) or to use as sounbanks for use with MIDI playback.  The card uses its own generous 16MB of memory together with extra available system memory to give you a largely unlimited amount of space to play with.  Combining this with a decent keyboard results in a really rather good DJ mixer station.

Overall I can safely say that this card is REALLY DAMN GOOD.  The sound quality is amazing and the software and drivers provided mean you have a stunningly good sound station to work with!

Minimum System Requirements:

    CPU: IBM PC 100% Compatible
    Processor: Pentium® 75Mhz or faster Intel® Processor
    Memory: 8MB
    Hard Disc Space: 12MB.
    Operating System: Windows 95 / 98 / NT 4.0
    Hardware: SVGA 256 colour monitor, game port.
    Software: Games would be handy.

ISR Roundup:

    Pros: ABSOLUTELY STUNNING.
    Cons: I wasn't too impressed with the cabling.
    Price: £CALL
    Competing Products: Lots of sounblaster clones around.
    User friendliness: 93% - Very easy!
    Does it do what it says on the box as well as it says on the box: 98% - It is a soundcard.
    Features: 99% - Absolutely thousands.
    The 'Fun' factor: 80% - It really is fun.
    Summary: Really rather good!

ISR Overall Rating: 5 ticks - Maximum score

Sony PlayStation 2

Sony PlayStation 2 - Revealed

Mmmmmmm... Power!

The Playstation 2 is a new breed of machine. Rather than being simply a "games console" this machine is a 'Computer Entertainment System' which promises to blur the boundaries between music, films and games.

For all you techies out there, here are the specifications of Playstation 2:

    CPU: 128 BIT "Emotion Engine" - A superbly powerful graphics engine capable of producing near to life effects.
    System Clock: 300 MHz - Equal in power to a Pentium II 300Mhz machine
    System Memory: 32 MB Direct Rambus - We would have preferred 64, but who's arguing...
    Memory Bus Bandwidth: 3.2 GB per second - Shows how much data can be transferred between memory and CPU per second
    Co-Processor: FPU (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator x 1, Floating Point Divider x 1) - A powerful workhorse
    Vector Units: VU0 and VU1 (Floating Point Multiply Accumulator x 9, Floating Point Divider x 1) - A fast system for manipulating 3D objects in realtime - ish
    Floating Point Performance: 6.2 GFLOPS - Means the machine can perform 6.2billion calculations per second
    3D CG Geometric Transformation: 66 Million Polygons Per Second - Doubtful.. probably nearer 20 million
    Compressed Image Decoder: MPEG2 - lets the machine handle full motion video easily
    Clock Frequency: 150MHz - The most powerful PC Graphics card to date only works at 110Mhz
    Number of voices: ADPCM: 48 channel on SPU2 plus definable by software Sampling Frequency. - Equal if not better than CD Quality.
    Interface Types: IEEE1394, Universal Serial Bus (USB) - All the latest methods of connecting peroipherals to your machine
    Communication via PC-Card PCMCIA - Hopefully this means network cards and modems galore
    Disc Media: DVD-ROM (CD-ROM compatible) - The ideal format since each DVD can hold ~1.2Gb of data, this allows for larger more complex games

As you can see, playstation 2 certainly has impressive specifications. The expansion slots and DVD drive even let you use it as a home cinema system.

The system is fully backward compatible with old playstation games and controllers ( though new controllers will be brought out for this machine ).

The Video Blaster WebCam Go

 The Video Blaster WebCam Go

Creative say: “It's a WebCam... It's a Portable Camera... All in One!! Use it for NetMeeting® videoconferencing or video capture, then simply unplug the WebCam Go and go! Take it anywhere, photograph anything, and bring the pictures back to your computer to share with the world.”

At a little over USD100 that’s quite a claim, and it’s true. This stylishly shaped multi-purpose camera works well on your computer, or straight out of your pocket. And it’s all very simple to set up and use. It runs straight off a USB port, so one of those is needed.

As a stand-alone camera, it’s hinged lens straightened, the WebCam Go fits neatly into your pocket. It’s comfortable in the hand and the viewfinder and shutter controls are well positioned and comfortable to use.

Rotating the lens housing adjusts the focus from about 8 inches to infinity. This works well, but is the only aspect of the camera that feels less easy to understand and use. Infinity is marked as an icon of a mountain range, but the addition of marks for focussing at a few meters and nearer would make the focussing of the camera as simple and effective as it’s other features.

The types of images that the camera takes is controlled using 3 buttons on the back of the WebCam Go. You click through to choose still images or short video clips, with the option of taking an immediate or a delayed picture in both cases – simple. The images storage is generous, holding 92 still images, or a number of short video clips.

When you return with your pictures and plug the camera in at your computer and open the control software, the images can be downloaded from the camera as jpegs and small avi files, ready for more processing or immediate inclusion in web pages. Simplicity itself!

When the WebCam Go is attached to a computer it provides a whole new range of video features. With the hinge between the lens and the body of the camera now bent, the WebCam Go sits securely on top of your monitor on the two neat gripper rubbers on it’s base. NetMeeting colour video conferencing worked immediately and provided an impressively high quality picture. Adjusting the hinge and the camera’s orientation puts you in the center of the picture.

The desktop controls allow WebCam Go to be used for video capture, saving the video files in avi format. WebCam Go also “just worked” through Windows Media Encoder, to provide streamed video to a web server – the Web Cam of it ’s name.

Not satisfied with all these features, Creative have included more in WebCam Monitor. With this you can use a movement or timed trigger to capture stills and short videos. And the software will even ftp them to your web site, automatically on both dial-up and permanent connections. A very useful feature is the inclusion of a template web page that auto-updates with the software. The motion triggered setting stores 10 seconds (about 19MB) of video, and can post the time-stamped opening frame to a web server. The timed capture setting creates 3KB files, either every 3 seconds on the continuous setting, or at any pre-set regular interval.

WebCam Monitor, with a permanent connection to a web server on the Internet, allows for low bandwidth display of changing situations through it’s regular updating of small still images. This provides a very low cost, fast download, remote display option to anyone with a leased line. Password protection of the web page could control access to the display.

Whether you want still images for your web site, or streamed video, at higher bandwidths, or video conferencing, then WebCam Go does it all.

To sum up – you plug and WebCam Go plays – easily and well – allowing you to get on with it. WebCam Go is for those who want results not hassle, and quality at a good price.

    ISR RATING: 4/5