These are testing times: if you want to experience the latest advances on the Linux desktop, you have to be prepared to test things and accept that stability is a secondary feature. The continued development of KDE 4 is the perfect example. Many of its users have felt like guinea pigs over the last couple of years, while its developers have filled in the missing blanks on the path to a fully operational desktop. But for many of us, this is how we like it. Messing around with applications, tools and utilities from the cutting edge is the reason why many of us got into Linux in the first place

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ViewSonic is best known for producing LCD screens and projectors, but has been increasing its laptop range of late with a variety of high-quality portables. The latest is the ViewBook 130, a stylish CULV machine that offers a stunning screen and great usability. While ViewSonic’s ViewBook Pro seemingly lifted its design from Toshiba, this model has a unique look of its own. The combination of matt-silver and glossy-black plastics looks great, adding a degree of high-end style without increasing the cost

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Acer is one of the world’s largest laptop manufacturers and offers a truly comprehensive range of consumer machines. The Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn is its latest high-end media centre and combines a feature-packed specification with stunning performance. Powered by one of Intel’s cutting-edge Core i5 processors, this is one of the most powerful laptops you can buy at this price. Designed for fast and effective multi-tasking, it made light work of our benchmark tests and effortlessly runs even the most demanding software tasks.

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The Sony Vaio VPC-EB1SOE/WI is a new laptop targeted at the average consumer. Boasting an all new chassis design, the laptop impressed us with the level of performance, portability and usability available at such a decent price point. The 15.5-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel resolution display is typically bright and sharp, making viewing photos and videos a pleasure. Colour reproduction is also good, although colours are not as deep as we’ve seen on other Sony models. The new chassis design is very attractive, and the mock metal and white plastic finish look great, although the subtle glittery effect on the palmrest might put some off.

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The App store is jam packed with iPhone apps – we’ve previously covered our Top 10 best free iPhone apps , our pick of the 10 best free iPhone games on the planet and many more. Our complete guide to the best iPhone apps links to all the best apps you can get your hands on. But what if you just want to know the 10 apps that every iPhone user absolutely must own? Then read on… 01.

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Although the technology world’s obsession with 3D has waxed and waned over the past few decades, it’s now firmly back in fashion. Asus is one of the first to capitalise on this and the G51J (£1,699 inc. VAT) is a gaming laptop that provides hard evidence of 3D’s uses.

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Your Mac is in all probability one of your more prized possessions. Perhaps you even have more than one – a desktop and a portable, and an iPod touch or an iPhone to complete the line-up. What’s easy to forget though is that the kit itself is only part of the story.

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GIMP lovers are going to be disappointed to hear that GIMP is going away in the next release of much awaited Ubuntu 10.04. Today we take a look at installing in on Lucid Lynx using PPA. The reason for getting rid of it as cited by the GIMP developers, is that GIMP is too professional a software to be included in regular desktop version of Ubuntu. And it takes up too much of space on the disk

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Jeffrey Kalmikoff, director of design and user experience at Digg, was on a panel today at South by South West where he and Scott Belsky from crowdsourced design organisation Behance talked about how businesses could understand and utilise crowdsourcing. Before Digg, Kalmikoff worked at one of the most high-profile crowdsourced businesses – threadless.com – where user-submitted designs are turned into T-shirts. “The majority of my career has been based on crowdsourcing,” says Kalmikoff. “My interest is that I love ideas and I love sharing ideas – I love the notion that you can have an idea and work with a group of like-minded people to make the idea better.” Crowdsourcing – a term coined in June 2006, is really an umbrella term, describing multiple ways that you can source ideas, explains Kalmikoff, and despite a common misconception that crowdsourcing simply means free labour, this isn’t necessarily the case.

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The guest account present in Windows comes in handy when you want to give access to your Windows machine to someone. With Guest account, your guest user can’t install applications, and also can’t play with crucial system settings. If you are bored with the Guest Account name, you can rename it with a few clicks.

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