Review In October 1996, the Ricoh GR series of 35mm film cameras was born. They were some of the company's first compact cameras aimed at the enthusiast and pro snapper where image quality and the resolving power of the lens were the paramount considerations, and not just a tiny package. A digital GR that aims to follow those illustrious forbears in terms of image quality, usability and sheer panache has its work cut out...

Intel's as-yet-unannounced Celeron M 4xx series - the first budget-priced processors derived from the chip maker's 'Yonah' core - have gone on sale in Japan, according to local news sources.

Samsung has shown off a mobile phone that's little bigger than a credit card. The ultra-slim handset - dubbed the Platinum Cardphone but more labelled with the more prosaic model number SCH-V870 - measures just 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.9cm and weighs 81g.

Sonos will this month cut the price of its multi-room digital music system. Its latest ZonePlayer wireless playback device, the ZP80, provides the same core functionality as Sonos' ZP100. However, to get the price - and the size - down, Sonos has stripped out the integrated amplifier used to drive speakers directly from the ZonePlayer.

ATI is preparing to release a cut-down version of its Radeon X1900 XT and XTX GPUs, reducing the chip's pixel shader complement from 48 to 36 and knocking back its clock speed. The part will ship as the Radeon X1900 GT, it has been claimed.

ATI has formally renamed its Radeon Xpress 200 chipset to CrossFire Xpress 1600, the company's website reveals. Such a move had been anticipated - a number of motherboard makers have already begun cutting and pasting the new name into existing product documentation.

Fujitsu has announced the world's third notebook to incorporate an HD DVD drive, following the lead set by Toshiba and, more recently, Acer. However, the 17in machine is not expected to appear until June.

Fujitsu will this month ship a monster high-definition PC-TV hybrid that incorporates not only four TV tuners - two for digital and two for analogue broadcasts - but also twin 300GB hard drives and a dual-layer enabled Blu-ray Disc recorder.

BenQ is to sell its optical drive operation to fellow Taiwanese manufacturer LiteOn IT. This gets it closer to shedding the last of its component businesses and focus entirely on end-user products, including phones, notebooks and consumer electronics equipment.

Intel is set to stop shipping motherboards based on third-party chipsets, or at the very least significantly reduce its dependency on other companies' products, investment bank Friedman Billings, Ramsey Group (FBRG) has claimed.

Logitech will next month fill out its iPod-oriented portable speaker line-up with a mid-range set designed to provide up to ten hours' playing time using four AA batteries, though it's bundled with an AC adaptor for on-shelf playback too.

Air France is to allow passengers to use their mobile phones once airborne on certain flights, though only for text messaging and data applications, the airline announced last week - voice calls will be interdit for the time being.

Review I’m going to go out on a limb here: the SPV M600 from Orange is the best Windows Mobile smart phone I have ever used. It’s not perfect - that would be an overstatement - but if you’re after a smart phone with PDA functionality, the SPV M600 is the one to get. It’s way ahead of Orange's SPV M500 when it comes to functionality, and the upgrade to Windows Mobile 5 has made a huge improvement too...

Transmeta is once again working for Sony and Microsoft. The processor power-reduction technology specialist said it would once again provide design and engineering services to Sony, which licensed Transmeta's LongRun 2 anti-leakage process in January 2005, leading to a two-year services deal being signed in March 2005.

ATI will unveil its long-awaited SB600 South Bridge chip next month, a senior company executive has revealed. The product is set to help the company limit its dependency on its South Bridge-chip partner ULi, now owned by ATI's arch-rival, Nvidia.

Who exactly is winning the handheld wars? Sony says it is, and Nintendo says it is. Sony says the PSP is selling faster, from launch, than the PSOne or PS2. The PSP is selling neck-and-neck in the US and Europe with Nintendo's DS. In Japan, however, the DS is clearly trouncing the PSP. Whatever the reality is of who is edging out who, Sony's learning some tough lessons in the handheld market. For the first time in a while it isn't a clear market leader. And, worse, not only are the fanboys not with Sony, but key software corporations aren't either.

UK mobile phone network O2 has formally launched its XDA IQ smart phone, as exclusively revealed by Reg Hardware last month. The IQ incorporates a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900MHz) GSM/GPRS radio with EDGE support. The phone also has Bluetooth 1.2 and 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless connectivity on board.

Review Round-up This week's no-holds-barred product assessments from around the web...

Review It's generally a waste of a lot of money to go for a top-of-the-range card from any manufacturer. Unless you really, really need that extra little bit of performance, it makes more financial sense to go for the next card down. This is especially the case with ATI's X1900 XT and X1900 XTX - the XTX's performance advantage over the XT simply isn't enough to justify its higher price...

Suddenly, all sorts of small companies are crawling out into the sunlight to tout alternative optical media technologies that will support HD content without the need to move from the current red-laser technology to tomorrow's blue-wavelength lasers.