New TomTom ONE XL

TomTom have announced a new in-car GPS unit, the TomTom ONE XL, with a larger 4.3 inch screen and sleek new design. The screen is actually slightly larger than its big brothers', the GO 510, 710 and 910 (but it is only .3 of an inch!).

The ONE XL is also now capable of getting traffic data and speed camera locations along with the other TomTom Plus services.

TomTom ONE XL will be available across Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa from May 2007. The UK variant comes with two map options:

- TomTom ONE XL for UK & ROI at £249
- TomTom ONE XL for Western Europe at £279


Pretty pricey considering the existing ONE is £179.99 with UK maps and a GO 510 is only another £20 more than an XL with UK maps! And as far as I can tell the only difference between a GO 510 and an XL is that there is no bluetooth handsfree or iPod control on the XL.

The new screen and inclusion of Plus services is nice but are they worth an extra £70 over the old ONE and only £20 less than a GO 510?

Maybe not if you just need directions and none of the extra stuff. I donno, it's all so confusing.

Fancy an 8-core Apple?

The megahertz race turned into the gigahertz race and now it's turned into the core race. How many processing cores can you fit into one computer? The latest from Apple is 8.

The new 8-core Mac Pro has two 3GHz quad-core processors from Intel that are currently exclusive to Apple. That makes it one of the most powerful desktops money can buy.

The quad-core option is still available as well in 2GHz, 2.66GHz or 3GHz options. It's also just as configurable, with over 33 million possible combinations, including up to 3TB of storage and 16GB of RAM.

These are not your run-of-the-mill computers for home emailing and web surfing though, they are for serious professionals that require the most powerful machines possible. For example, it's easy to spec one of these up with everything and have it come out at 7 or 8 thousand pounds.

So if HD video editing or something equally CPU taxing is your game, you need one of these. For the rest of us, I think an iMac will do ;-)

Elgato Turbo 264

As someone who often has their Mac churning away all night converting "things to watch on the way to work" into H.264 format, this sounds like an ideal little device to help lighten the load.

Essentially a video encoding/decoding specific chip on a USB stick to help your processor out and take the strain. Out in Europe for 99 euros, seems like a bargain if it saves as much time as it says.

Not much english language info available at the moment, but if you're German's good you might want to check out Macwelt's test report.

Is this the beginning of the end for DRM?

Today EMI and Apple announced that high quality DRM-free music will be available from the iTunes store as of next month. A potentially momentous move that consumers have been waiting for ever since the iTunes store was launched 4 years ago.

Finally, you will be able to buy the music you want from iTunes and not worry that it won't work on a non-Apple device and the bonus is it will be higher quality as well.

EMI's catalogue will be available DRM-free in 256Kbps AAC format for an extra 20 pence per track. The existing 128Kbps DRM-crippled files will still be available to buy at the same 79p price point for those people that don't either know or care what any of this means.

But what does it mean? Is it quite as pivotal a moment as people are making out? Well, I think it could well be because hopefully this will spread. First, to the other big music labels, then to the indies and eventually to the big one, video. Once consumers get a taste for DRM-free digital downloads, they are going to demand it across the board.

For me, video DRM is a much worse problem than music DRM. There is a horrible trend in the UK at the moment to offer downloadable video in Windows Media Player, with DRM of course.

Unlike iTunes, Windows Media Player isn't available for anything other than PCs, so as a Mac user and regardless of the fact that it's crippled with DRM to restrict its use, I can't download and watch any content on Sky Anytime or 4oD anyway.

This really annoys me. I hate not being able to get that content on my Mac, especially in the case of Sky where I am paying through the nose for their content already and now one delivery channel is completely closed to me. So video is doubly bad. But without the need for DRM, they could distribute video content in multiple formats, for multiple platforms.

And that must be how people without iPods have felt all this time. And that is why DRM in all forms, for all content, is evil and completely unfair for consumers. DRM-free music may even lead to increased iTunes sales from non-iPod users because now they will be able to join in the fun as well.

There's a long way to go yet, this is only the beginning, but hopefully the big content owners out there, whether music or movie studios, will closely watch what happens and if successful follow suit quickly.

Especially in the music industry, it's going to be hard for anyone to hold onto DRM; now that one of the big four has gone for it, the others will have to follow to stay competitive.

So, a good day for digital consumers. Hopefully there are a lot more to come.