Apacer AU840 MP3 player
Price: $118

When you get the AU840 Apacer out of the box and turn it on, it looks great, like a little 7cm wide TV. The possibility of listening to music and radio, making sound recordings and watching movies and image slideshows is intriguing.

Unfortunately, that’s where it stops. The CD offered to install drivers for Windows 98 or something called a setup utility that appeared in some garbled foreign language, therefore unusable. Then we opened Windows Media Player to try and use the inbuilt sync but the software didn’t recognise the player.

So you’ll be left with a pretty device that has no driver and to which you can’t transfer any files, not to mention $100 lighter. A word of advice, Apacer — open a product and make sure it works on a few systems before selling it in Australia. 0/5

Palm Treo 500
Price: $649

The Treo 500 is more or less a lite version of the older, more superior and more expensive Treo 750. Getting around the navigation is a little more restricted as there’s no stylus or touch screen so everything must be done with the navigation key or keypad. With a smaller screen, you also get less of a glimpse of your appointments, messages etc.

It runs Windows Mobile 6, which actually feels clunkier and less refined than the Windows Mobile 5 of the Treo 750. It connects to your PC via a standard mobile or camera USB cable rather than the older pin-based cable of others in the Treo range, and while it has many of the features of its bigger, older brother, it’s an entry-level smartphone. You’ll save around $300 starting here, but you’ll miss the more sophisticated possibilities of a touch screen-based mobile device. 3/5

Driving License Success
Price: $19.95

Driving Licence Success is a straightforward program for PC that lets you load up all the rules of the road in every Australian state and test yourself on them, moving through a series of simple lessons and exercises in preparation for the big day.

Looking and feeling like a huge website, its the price of a cheap dinner out so worth it for any teens itching to get their hands on your car keys. 3/5

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Gadgets & Hardware, Mobile Phones, Software, Tech, The West Australian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.