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While all the other DACs use largely conventional tactics and components, turntable specialist Pro-Ject has adopted an approach beloved of some ‘digital retro’ enthusiasts, and built a filterless DAC. Now, there’s no shame in the company supporting digital formats, for plenty of CD titles have never been released on vinyl. But this move to filterless DAC technology is no ‘me too’ digital afterthought. The basic idea is to avoid all digital filtering, which is generally thought imperative to avoid aliasing distortion at ultrasonic frequencies, and instead use multi-bit conversion at the native data rate (no up-or oversampling). The claimed benefit of this is the avoidance of ‘time smear’ due to the long impulse response time of most digital filters

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Smaller, faster, cheaper is a mantra for today’s mobile communications hardware. Texas Instruments (TI) has taken this to heart, and tossed in multi-tasking and lower power consumer as well. TI is announcing a new chip, the WiLink 7.0 , that rolls up Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, and FM radio onto a chip that takes up less room, uses less power, and costs less than current multi-chip solutions. TI says the WiLink crams all of the above into a single 65-nanometer chip, that requires 30 percent less material to build, and takes up 50% less space than existing two-chip solutions. Furthermore, TI says the WiLink will extend talk time and battery life with “Sophisticated Enhanced Low Power (ELP) technology.” TI claims the WiLink offers best-in-class 3GPP test performance; supports both Bluetooth low-energy and Bluetooth 3.0; will support WiFi Direct and Soft AP as well as 802.11 a/b/g/n; and has improved FM transmit and receive capabilities with internal antenna support

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Scientists in Seattle have made a major breakthrough in designing computer-aided design systems to allow them to build artificial life forms. In a research project which sounds like it was inspired by Will Wright’s magnum opus Spore , the group of synthetic biologists are now designing artificial life forms with the new CAD system. Meddling with Artificial Life Deepak Chandran and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle have made the breakthrough, naming their new CAD system ‘Tinkercell’ – a new technology which the New Scientist claims will, “allow biologists to meddle with the components of, say, a bacterium, and simulate the effect the change has.” “The package has a library of the components of life, from which users can pick different cells, membrane proteins, fluorescent proteins, enzymes and genes to create their organism. Tinkercell can then simulate the life form to see if it functions as expected.” For those who want to know a little bit more about the science behind the tech head over to the Journal of Biomedical Engineering .

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Despite being marketed by MSI as a netbook under its Wind brand, the use of a 12.1-inch screen and Intel Core 2 Solo processor mean the powerful and portable Wind 12 U200 has more in common with a CULV laptop than most netbooks. While the vast majority of netbooks are powered by Intel Atom processors, MSI has employed an Intel CULV processor here, alongside 2048MB of memory. The result is impressive performance for a netbook and you’ll have no problem frequently multitasking and running office applications.

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The Envy laptops represent HP’s latest premium range, and the Envy 15 is an extremely stylish laptop that successfully marries excellent performance with usability and portability. The chassis is fantastically well built, with both the lid and body having been crafted from aluminium. This means great protection for the screen and internal components, combined with excellent looks. A patterned finish has been used which won’t appeal to all, but we like it. The 15.6-inch screen features a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution, which is sharp and detailed.

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From the French designers at YBA, but made (like so many other components these days) in China, the YBA YC201 may or may not have anything definably Gallic about it, but is certainly rather natty. We’re very much taken with its use of the display to indicate the function of the nine buttons on the front: unpowered, it tells you absolutely nothing, but once fired up is very easy to use. Round one to YBA. The rest of the appearance is quite impressive for the price, the case being made mostly of aluminium, neatly shaped and fitted together and angular without having the skin piercing sharp edges of one or two brands we could mention. The remote control is a definite point in YBA’s favour, a solid-metal affair that feels and looks particularly impressive

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