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В конце июля произошло весьма важное событие: конференция разработчиков Desktop color printers from Oki Data have so much in common with each other that I'm all but convinced there's a printer-design machine hidden somewhere deep inside the company. Dial in the price you want, and out comes another printer that looks almost the same as every other Oki color printer, prints output with the same strengths and weaknesses, and is faster than anything else in its price range. The C3400n ($400 street) LED printer is the latest example. And it's priced right for both small and home offices.
Setting up the C3400n on a network is much like setting up any small color laser. The printer measures 11.4 by 14.8 by 18.9 inches (HWD) and weighs 46.2 pounds, which is lighter than some low-cost color lasers, but heavy enough so you'll probably want help moving it into place. You can then remove the packing materials, load paper, plug in the power cord and network cable, and run the automated installation routine.
The C3400's engine rating is 20 pages per minute for monochrome and 16 ppm for color, which is a pretty good clip for a $400 laser. More important, I timed it at a total of 10 minutes 44 seconds on our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com), which makes pretty good clip an understatement. No other printer at $400 or less has come close to that, and even the $500 Editors' Choice Lexmark C522n was a touch slower, at 11:19. 
As with other Oki printers, output quality overall is best described as more than adequate for most business uses but slightly below par for a color laser. Text characters have crisp edges and are well formed; most of our test fonts were easily readable at 4 points. That would normally count as unequivocally high quality, but the toner is also so shiny that it reflects light under some conditions, making the output hard to read from some angles. For example, I found the text almost impossible to read if I put the pages flat on the desk in front of me under my desk lamp, but I had no trouble at all when I held the paper up at an angle, moved it to a slightly different position, or turned off the desk lamp. With typical office lighting, this issue won't come up, but it may be more of a problem in a home office, which is more likely to have lighting from something close to point sources (such as incandescent light bulbs). 
Graphics are easily good enough for any internal business use, with eye-catching, fully saturated color that makes them suitable even for things like PowerPoint handouts. But I also saw posterization (with colors changing suddenly where they should change gradually), a tendency to lose thin lines, and registration issues (with the different colors not lining up properly, leaving slices of white between blocks of color). That adds up to enough flaws so I wouldn't use the C3400n for things like a brochure to hand out to potential customers.
Photos were good enough to print Web pages with photos on them, but almost every photo I printed was oversaturated and a little dark, giving the colors a muddy look. I wouldn't count on the C3400n for printing something like a client newsletter with photos, much less anything that needed still better quality. 
For obvious reasons, I'd like the C3400n a whole lot more if it had better output quality. But for most business purposes, the output is more than acceptable. And if that's good enough for your purposes, you'll love the C3400n for its speed.

The Sharp LC-32D40U Aquos isn't the least expensive 32-inch liquid crystal widescreen television out there, but it provided the most natural, realistic picture I've seen among similar displays. Add to this a stylish design and plenty of quality video connections, and the LC-32D40U is an HDTV that earns our Editors' Choice. 
The LC-32D40U's table stand requires some minor assembly and attachment before use, but the lone wrench needed for the task is provided in the box. After placing the 43-pound HDTV on its new perch, I took a moment to admire the display's all-black styling, which features a gloss-finished bezel inset within a matte-finished frame. Two integrated stereo speakers (10 watts each) are located below the screen, minimizing the display's width. With its stand attached, the LC-32D40U measures 25.6 by 32.3 by 10.8 inches (HWD), and the display panel is 4.6 inches deep. On-display controls are located on the top right edge of the TV, and the oversized power button would be easy to locate and operate with your eyes closed. 
The LC-32D40U provides a near-ideal set of video inputs, including two HDMI ports, two component-video connections, and a single RF input that feeds the TV's analog (NTSC), digital (ATSC), and Clear QAM (unencrypted digital cable) tuners. The LC-32D40U's native resolution is 1,366 by 768 pixels, which slightly exceeds the resolution of a 720p HD signal. The display lacks a DVI or VGA input for PC use, but I found that PC resolutions up to 1,280-by-720 (720p) are supported via the HDMI inputs. Even so, I'm mildly disappointed any time a TV fails to provide at least one video input that allows access to the display's full resolution. 
The TV's remote control is a long, sleek design with a flat shape that is easy to hold and operate with one hand. A fully backlit keypad provides ample spacing between buttons, for good tactile feedback. Universal controls located at the top of the remote can be programmed using codes provided in the manual to operate additional A/V components such as a DVD player, a VCR, or a cable/satellite set-top box. One feature missing from this otherwise premium remote is discrete input selection—a feature found on the Westinghouse LTV-32w3 HD's remote. 
After I connected an outdoor antenna, the LC-32D40U's auto-scan feature quickly found the digital (and analog) broadcast channels here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The TV lacks an option to restrict the auto-scan to only digital channels (which offer better image quality than analog), but the resulting channel list can be edited quickly and easily via the setup menu. That menu also provides a signal meter for optimizing antenna placement for digital reception, but I found its readings were inconsistent, with many channels reporting very low or nonexistent signals despite excellent picture quality. My Dish Network ViP622 receiver confirmed this, observing normal signal levels when using the same well-aimed antenna. 
Prior to any testing or viewing examinations, I always ensure that an HDTV's picture settings are adjusted for optimal image quality. (For more on how to do this yourself, check out our «How to Calibrate your HDTV» guide.) The LC-32D40U provides a standard set of picture controls that include color-temperature presets and a backlight-level adjustment. Unfortunately, the TV's standard menu screens don't provide advanced color settings, but professional calibrators and videophiles can access these controls in its hidden service menus. Impressively, the LC-32D40U's picture was almost perfectly calibrated right out of the box. I selected the medium color-temperature preset and a slightly reduced color (saturation) setting to achieve the most realistic results. I perform my critical viewing examinations in a completely dark lab, so I set the TV's backlight to its lowest, and most eye-comfortable, level. — Next: One Word: Wow. 
One Word: Wow.
My initial impressions of the LC-32D40U's image quality can be summed up with one word, «Wow.» The visual compromises of less costly LCD HDTVs such as the Westinghouse LTV-32w3 HD and the ViewSonic N3260w become starkly obvious when viewed alongside the LC-32D40U, which has superior representation of color and dark detail. For example, while watching a San Francisco Giants baseball game in HD, I found that grass that glowed like Astroturf on the Westinghouse TV appeared realistic and detailed viewed on the LC-32D40U. The Giants players' gray uniforms were appropriately neutral, whereas they appeared overly blue on the Westinghouse. Perhaps most critical, the LC-32D40U revealed more fine details in dark scenes than the ViewSonic and Westinghouse TVs, which «crushed» these details into an indistinct shade of black. 
Looking at some carefully chosen scenes from my «torturous trio» of DVD movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Fifth Element, and Gladiator) I found the LC-32D40U performed well. The significant film grain of Raiders and Gladiator was managed with finesse, without overly softening the image, and colors appeared natural. I use part of the «Well of Souls» scene in Raiders to check for motion smearing on LCDs, and the LC-32D40U minimized this annoying artifact better than the Westinghouse LTV-32w3 did. That said, the opening scene in chapter 12 of Gladiator revealed that the LC-32D40U was slow to detect the film cadence (24 frames per second) of this movie, but the imagery looked quite good once the TV's 3:2 pulldown feature was engaged. 
With its backlight set to maximum, the LC-32D40U also turned in an excellent ANSI contrast ratio of 989:1; at minimum backlight levels, this ratio dipped only slightly, to 974:1. Critical to these impressive results were the best black-level measurements I've recorded to date from an LCD HDTV. In fact, the LC-32D40U's minimum backlight level was perfectly optimized for minimizing eyestrain when viewing in dark environments, and this setting also provided the best color-saturation results. Color tracking was admirably linear too compared with the Westinghouse and ViewSonic 32-inch models, which exhibited color shifts in the darkest portions of the image. 
I'm admittedly biased toward the excellent color representation possible with modern plasma displays, but the LC-32D40U proved to me that a well-made LCD can be as impressive at sizes smaller than plasma manufacturers would ever consider. With a great picture, good-sounding speakers, and a stylish design, the LC-32D40U is a treat for the senses. It's an LCD HDTV that is worthy of PC Magazine's Editors' Choice. 
Sub-ratings: Image Quality: Value: Usability:

The JBL On Tour Plus is a compact portable speaker designed with the Sony PlayStation Portable in mind, though it is equally suited to any audio source, including MP3 players, laptops, and even desktop PCs. It's got an integrated sliding cover, a glossy black finish, and a rugged carrying case, so it's sure to turn heads when you're on the go. The speaker also comes with a plastic attachment mechanism for the Sony PSP that lets you stand the gaming device on top of the speaker to share your gaming and movie experience with friends. 
Crafted in glossy black plastic and trimmed in chrome and matte silver plastic, the On Tour Plus measures 7 by 3.5 by 1.3 inches and weighs just 12 ounces. A pair of 1-inch neodymium drivers are covered by small metal grilles (the On Tour Plus is capable of producing 3 watts per channel). To the right of the speakers, you'll find the volume up/down buttons. An integrated cover slides back to reveal the speakers, and rubber strips along the bottom keep the unit from sliding around. 
 >On the back, underneath the cover, is a port for AC power. There's also a battery compartment for four triple-A batteries for when you're on the road or aren't near an outlet. Next to the power port sits a line-in jack, and there's an included audio cable to connect any audio source via its headphone jack. JBL thoughtfully provides a zippered rigid ballistic nylon case that holds the speaker, the folding PSP attachment, the AC adapter (secured in Velcro straps), and the audio cable. 
Operation is very simple. With the speakers powered up, just connect your MP3 player and hit play. If you press the two volume buttons simultaneously, the On Tour Plus goes into mute mode. When it's running on battery power, doing this turns the speaker off. The PSP holder has rubber strips to keep your PSP in place (standing atop the speaker), and it is adjustable to achieve an optimal viewing angle. You can also put whatever MP3 player you have (I used a 30GB iPod) in the holder, though not every device fits perfectly. 
The On Tour Plus is a little louder than you'd expect from a speaker with such small drivers, but the sound won't exactly fill a room. As for audio quality, the highs are emphasized almost to the point of sounding harsh, and there isn't any low bass to speak of, though the upper bass is strong enough. The mids have enough detail for many music types. Apparently the speaker doesn't handle a lot of complex, loud music very well. I noticed that Led Zeppelin's «Good Times, Bad Times» became a bit of a mess by the middle of the track. Still, vocals and horns aren't too tinny and the overall listening experience is pleasant. 
Given the size and price of this speaker, I'm pretty satisfied with its performance. The unit's design is solid, compact, and attractive, and it matches PSPs and black iPods very well. This is a good choice for portable indoor sound in smaller rooms.

It seems that barely a week goes by without the introduction of a new shirt-pocket GPS navigation system. The newest arrival is the Voya 350 from Averatec. At $379.99 (direct), it's a small, portable GPS with a 3.5-inch screen; despite its price, it doesn't cut corners or compromise. 
With a screen that's quite viewable in all lighting conditions, the Voya 350 comes preloaded with Navteq street-level data for the entire United States (all 50 states, folks) and Canada, and it includes approximately 1.6 million Points of Interest (POI). Data is stored on a 1GB SD memory card. Like many new GPS systems, the Voya 350 is equipped with a SiRF Star III GPS receiver. This advanced chipset offers excellent sensitivity and fast satellite-acquisition times. As a result, the Voya 350 performed as well as other SiRF Star III devices I've tested, and I was able to track at least six satellites from the center of my office, 10 feet away from the window. On the road, the Voya 350 never lost satellite lock except, of course, in the Holland Tunnel. 
 >The Voya 350 measures 0.8 by 4.5 by 2.9 inches and weighs 6 ounces including its 1,100-mAh lithium ion battery, which can power the unit for up to 4 hours. Unlike the TomTom ONE with its built-in antenna or the Garmin nüvi devices with their flip-up patch antennas, the Voya 350 has a «stub» antenna (not included in the above dimensions) that protrudes out of the top of the device. Still, it remains small enough to fit into your shirt pocket. 
The front of the Voya 350 has individual hardware buttons for Power, Menu, zoom in and zoom out. There's also a four-way jog control that lets you navigate though menu options, or, when in the map mode, change views or toggle the zoom. I felt, however, that the four buttons were too small and, with a separation of only 0.2», it was easy to hit more than one button at once. I really like that the Voya's front panel also has an opening for a forward-facing speaker. Many GPS units locate their speaker on the back panel so that it faces the windshield when the unit's in use. The forward-facing speaker ensures that the voice prompts are loud enough to be heard easily. There's a volume control in the settings menu, but it's static, meaning that the volume on the Voya 350 isn't adjusted based on vehicle speed. 
Mercifully, the main map view is relatively uncluttered. Like most GPS devices the Voya has the traditional 2D north up, 2D track up, and 3D track up views, but it also adds another display mode that I've not seen in too many devices: 3D north up. You probably won't use this view too often, but it is an interesting one to play with. In the lower left corner of the map there's a menu button, which is easier to hit than the hardware menu key. The current street name is displayed at the bottom of the screen along with your current speed. 
A tap of the menu key (or button) brings up the main menu. This menu is quite simple, as it offers only three choices: Destination, Go Home (along with an option for setting your home location), and Settings. The menu structure of the Voya 350 is likewise simple to use. The settings menu contains only six options, and each of those can be completely configured on one screen. 
The Voya 350 has routing options for quickest route; using major, shortest or local roads; and including or excluding ferries, toll roads and carpools. There's also an option for either reduced turns or the normal amount of turns. It's interesting to note that for a portable GPS, the Voya 350 lacks routing options for either bicycles or pedestrians. An interesting feature that is included, however, is a speed alert. You can set it to alert you when you reach a specific speed, or you can choose an auto alert that will notify you based on the type of road you're on. The Voya 350 warns you that the auto alert many not reflect the actual speed limit and should be used for reference only. If you're like me, you'll probably just disable this option entirely. 
Like the settings menu, the destination menu has a single screen consisting of six options: Address; Intersection; Points of Interest; Favorites; Recent; and City Center. When you tap the Address icon, you are presented with a choice of input methods: City First, or Street First. By default, the Voya 350 chooses your current state, but on this initial screen, you have the option to change the state for your destination. If you choose City First, an alphabetically arranged keyboard pops up with an input field for the city name. As you type in letters, a two-line scroll window displays cities matching your input. Next you enter the street name, using the same input method, followed by the street address on the third screen. For the street address, the keyboard automatically changes to a numeric keypad to speed your input. 
The navigation screen adds additional data across the bottom of the screen showing your estimated time of arrival, remaining travel time, and distance. Across the top of the screen is the name of the road for your next turn. A graphic display then provides that turn's direction. The right side of the screen shows the distance to your next turn and a progress bar indicating the relative distance to it. A destination options menu lets you cancel the route, define a stopover, select roads to avoid, set a detour, or create a new destination. 
In my road tests, the Voya 350 presented no surprises. Both the shortest and the quickest routes generated to our test destination were exactly the same as those on the Navteq-based Garmin GPS devices. While it doesn't support text-to-speech, the Voya's voice prompts, available only in a single female voice, were complete. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Voya 350 supports multiple point destinations via its «stopover» feature. Multipoint routing is normally something you find only in more expensive devices. 
Though the Voya 350 doesn't have all of the bells and whistles found on some GPS products, such as a slide viewer or an MP3 player, it does basic navigation quite well. For the budget-conscious consumer, it's a fine choice.

Earlier this year Gateway scored a hit with its FPD2185W 21-inch widescreen LCD monitor, which garnered an Editors' Choice award for its image quality and features. The company's latest offering, the FPD1975W ($229.99 direct), is a serviceable 19-inch widescreen model that doesn't quite live up to its bigger sibling's performance rating.
Like the 21-inch model, the FPD1975W is housed in an attractive black case with a thin-bezel design. Five function buttons mounted on the right side of the panel are used to adjust image settings, such as brightness, contrast, and gamma, via the OSD (on-screen display) menu system. The Auto button automatically adjusts the screen's position and pixel-timing values (a method of fine-tuning the image wherein the monitor's clock synchronizes the monitor's pixels to the graphics card's pixel clock) to a factory default setting, and the Theme button lets you choose between four settings that are optimized for specific applications, such as movies, games, Web browsing, and everyday use. The monitor comes with a standard tilt-only stand, but for an extra $69.99 you can buy a height-adjustable stand that also lets you tilt, swivel, and pivot the screen 90 degrees for portrait viewing. It also includes a four-port USB 2.0 hub and is outfitted with a cable-management clip. 
Unlike the FPD2185W, which features S-Video and component video ports, this model is limited to one DVI and one analog port, both of which are located on the rear of the panel next to the power jack. The monitor, however, does come with a dual-link DVI cable. For $29.99, you can add a space-saving USB speaker bar that clips onto the bottom bezel. The speaker bar delivers decent audio quality, but it's just too tinny for music playback. I'd rather listen to tunes on a speaker system that is capable of some bass response. 
 >With a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 1,440-by 900-pixel resolution, the FPD1975W supports the HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) protocol for displaying high-definition (720p) images through the DVI interface. I watched the widescreen version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on DVD and was mostly impressed with the panel's performance. I did notice occasional motion artifacts throughout the viewing, though. I saw similar results while playing a round of Doom 3, and there was also evidence of ghosting, but no more than I would expect from display with an 8-millisecond pixel response rate (black to white).
When displaying patterns from our DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com) tests, the monitor had trouble reproducing light and dark shades of gray, which led to some loss of shadow and highlight detail on our test images (a flaw that will likely go unnoticed by all but the most demanding photo enthusiasts). Bright whites were marred by a very slight bluish tint, which I was able to fix by tweaking the color levels. Still, the colors remained somewhat muted and not quite as vivid as I would have liked. Viewing-angle performance was as advertised: 150 degrees horizontally and 135 vertically, and the panel did an amazing job of displaying small (5.3-point Arial) fonts.
The FPD1975W ships with the EzTune utility, which automatically adjusts the screen image to match the panel's orientation (portrait/landscape). And as a security measure, there's a Kensington lock slot that lets you tether the display to your work area using an optional cable lock. Gateway also provides a somewhat chintzy one-year warranty covering parts and labor, and telephone support is not toll-free. You can upgrade to a three-year warranty plan for a reasonable $30.
Although the Gateway FPD1975W does not measure up to its more impressive 21-inch sibling, it is worth considering if you're in the market for an affordable widescreen LCD monitor with a few convenient features.
Don't miss our LCD display comparison chart.

Research In Motion (RIM) throws away its suits and ties with the Pearl, a delicious little multimedia smartphone that—surprise!—>just happens to be a BlackBerry. Slimmer than a closed RAZR, it is the first BlackBerry to ship with a camera and musicvideo players. This little gem is guaranteed to become a winner with the young and mobile. 
As thin (0.6 inches) as a closed RAZR V3m and as narrow (2 inches) as a standard candy-bar phone, the Pearl is very easy to slip into your pocket. It also looks extremely stylish, in black with chrome accents. BlackBerry partisans will immediately notice one major difference: After six years, RIM has ditched the scroll wheel in favor of a glowing trackball set right below the screen. That's a bold move, but give it a chance; I really like it. Not only is the trackball well positioned for one-handed use, you can finally move the cursor horizontally without resorting to a key combination. 
The 240-by-260 screen is very bright, much like the screen on the BlackBerry 7105t. Of course, something had to go to make the Pearl this tiny, and it was the keypad. Not only does the Pearl use RIM's hybrid SureType keyboard, which puts two letters on each key and relies on predictive text to guess what you meant to type, the keys are really, really small. I definitely felt more comfortable typing long e-mails on the Motorola Q or Nokia E62. But I got used to the Pearl over the course of a few days. Though I wouldn't write a full-length article on it, I could reply to e-mails without stressing. 
You'll see new features as soon as you turn on the Pearl. A new home-screen theme displays your new messages and calendar items right on the main screen. But the biggest changes are the addition of a camera, music and video players, and a microSD card slot. The card is tucked under the battery, but since a USB-connected Pearl appears as a hard drive on your desktop, you probably won't be removing it much. You can store files in the 64MB of onboard memory, too, and send and receive files using Bluetooth 2.0. 
A quad-band worldphone, the Pearl has strong reception and sharp, clear audio. The speakerphone is loud enough for indoor and in-car use. Transmissions, however, sounded digitally compressed on the other end, but I've been having trouble with T-Mobile reception in my area, so that may account for this problem. Background noise doesn't drown out voices. 
The Pearl hooks up to Bluetooth headsets for calls, but not music. I was able to walk about 12 feet away from the phone before hearing pops and clicks. Thrillingly, this is the first BlackBerry to support voice dialing, using the excellent VoiceSignal solution, which you can trigger with a wired or Bluetooth headset. You can even use your own MP3s as ringtones. Battery life was good as well, at about 8 hours 30 minutes of call time. 
The camera, music, and video players are all of startlingly high quality, but they each lack one or two key features. (Corporate users shouldn't freak out about the new media features. BlackBerry Enterprise Server owners can lock out any of these options.) The 1.3-megapixel camera, with a little flash and a self-portrait mirror, takes strikingly sharp pictures with excellent color balance outdoors, though I did see some annoying JPEG artifacting. Indoors, color noise becomes quite noticeable. You can change the white balance and compression rate, but there are no burst, macro, or video modes. The Pearl's music player handles MP3, AAC, and WAV audio files, and it even shows album art. But you can't search by album, artist, or title, though you can organize songs in folders and play the contents of a folder. Videos look absolutely terrific at 24 frames per second, but the video player has no full-screen mode, and you can only navigate through long files in increments of three minutes. 
Unfortunately, RIM's desktop suite handles multimedia rather clumsily. For example, there's no way to easily reformat songs, videos, or pictures for optimal display or playback on the phone. In fact, all that the poorly named Media Manager application essentially does is let you move files into the internal memory. Though the Pearl supports popular music and image formats, re-encoding video for the phone requires an unfortunate amount of geekery.— Next: Business as Usual 
Business as Usual
That said, the desktop suite, as always, excels at business-oriented tasks. It lets users sync contacts, calendars, and notes with Microsoft Outlook or Notes. It ships with a modem driver; I got speeds of around 100 Kbps using the BlackBerry Pearl as a USB modem on a laptop. (T-Mobile tells me that this feature isn't officially supported.) For Mac users, PocketMac for BlackBerry will presumably support the Pearl in the future, though it doesn't yet. For now, you can send and receive files via Bluetooth, access Mass Storage mode for multimedia, and use the Bluetooth modem. 
BlackBerry's traditional push e-mail strength remains the same, with the ability to merge POP3/IMAP, Yahoo! Mail, and corporate accounts seamlessly through T-Mobile's BlackBerry Internet Service, displaying them together or on separate screens. One new feature is the ability to save attachments on the MicroSD card and attach files to your e-mails. The BlackBerry Web browser is decent at delivering information, though it mangles page layouts. A built-in OZ IM client supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! instant messaging, one at a time. 
 >The Pearl's closest competitors are the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 and Verizon's Motorola Q. The Pearl offers a better e-mail experience than either of them, and it makes the Sidekick III look like a somewhat primitive boat. Both competitors, though, sport full QWERTY keyboards, and the Q has a much smoother music and video syncing experience, thanks to Windows Media Player 10. The Palm Treo 700p, meanwhile, remains our Editors' Choice for keyboarded smartphones. Although it's a bit more bulky, the Treo offers the same main features as the Pearl and adds high-speed networking, better desktop software, and a terrific third-party ecosystem. 
The BlackBerry Pearl is a delight. It combines truly excellent push e-mail, a gorgeous screen, a relatively high-quality camera, and the beginnings of some great media functionality in a very pretty package. As long as you can cope with the little hybrid keyboard, it's a much classier and more powerful alternative to the Sidekick and other BlackBerry models.

After getting my hands on and testing the shiny new Falcon Northwest Mach V ($6,995 direct, $8,095 with 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor) powered by Intel's cutting-edge Core 2 Extreme (aka Conroe) processor, all I could say was, «Wow.» This rig smokes my current set of benchmark tests, significantly raising the bar for any system that comes after it. If this performance is any indication of what to expect from the average Core 2 CPU, AMD should be very worried.
Besides its phenomenal processor, the Mach V test machine came equipped with a full 2GB of system RAM, two 150GB, 10,000-rpm SATA drives in a RAID 0 array, and two ATI X1900 3D cards linked in a CrossFire configuration. 
Sporting a sweet color-shifting automotive paint job, the Mach V's case hue morphs from a forest green to a purple haze as you walk around the system. Two front doors hide the optical drives, USB ports, and front cooling fan. Inside there is plenty of room for additional drives and other expansion cards. Chilled by a slick liquid cooling system, the Mach V is much quieter than fan-filled high-end gaming systems. 
No matter how cool the system is, the big story here is the test results. When comparing this system with the previous-generation Falcon NW Mach V and the Polywell Poly 590SLI2-FX62—both with AMD's fastest processor, the Athlon 64 FX-62—this latest Mach V with Core 2 Extreme blows them away. Its SYSmark 2004 SE Internet Content Creation score of 604 is unbelievable, especially in light of the previous record holder's significantly lower 422. To put that in an even better perspective, most of today's high-end PCs score in the mid to high 300s. For content creators, such as digital artists and 3D effects mavens, this means that they'll be able to get their work done that much faster. Its CineBench score is just as awe inspiring: It broke the 1,000-point barrier by 88 points—until now a score of 600-800 was considered excellent. Again, this will help rendering models and scenes go much faster. (For a look at all the jaw-dropping test resultscheck out our in-depth benchmark-test chart.)
With 3D speed befitting a gaming machine, the Mach V rocked the gaming benchmark tests, with the notable exception of the Doom 3 test at 1,600-by-1,200. Predictably, the Polywell 590SLI2-FX62, with its speedy nVidia GeForce QUAD SLI graphics setup, won that drag race, because of the GeForce card's affinity for OpenGL gaming. However, the Mach V was triumphant on the DX9 and HDR-heavy (High Dynamic Range makes scenes more lifelike but uses more system power to do so) Splinter Cell Chaos Theory test. The machine churned out a totally playable 63 frames per second at a mind-bogglingly sharp 2,560-by-1,600 resolution with anisotropic filters set to 8X. 
At over $8,000 (with screen), the Falcon NW Mach V isn't for everyone, but it currently is the desktop to have if you absolutely, positively have to have the highest frame rates and best multimedia performance.
Don't miss our gaming desktop comparison chart.

After reviewing the (now discontinued) Editors' Choice Ricoh Aficio G700 last year, I was looking forward to running the Ricoh Aficio GX3050N ($250 street) through its paces, expecting even better speed and higher-quality output. Unfortunately, what I got was slightly slower speed and significantly lower output quality. Given its low price, the GX3050N still has much to recommend it for a small office, but it's not the clear winner I expected it to be. 
The first thing you need to know about the GX3050N is that, like its predecessor, it doesn't fit well into either the laser or ink jet categories. It's technically an ink jet, but the ink is a viscous gel that dries almost instantly. Not having to wait for the ink to dry lets the printer behave more like a laser, laying down lots of ink quickly and churning out pages at laser-like speed. 
With the G700, the output was comparable with lasers as well, making the printer directly competitive with—and best compared with—low-cost color lasers. With the GX3050N, however, text quality is way below par for lasers, and photos are way below par for ink jets. What you're left with is a printer that's faster than any ink jet or color laser in its price range, but at the cost of output that's below par in both categories.
The GX3050N measures 10.4 by 19.3 by 16.4 inches (HWD) and weighs a hefty 30.9 pounds. Setup is typical for an ink jet that uses separate cartridges for each color and includes a network connector. Simply load paper, install the four ink cartridges, plug in the cables, and run the automated installation routine. 
I ran the GX3050N through both the ink jet and laser versions of our business applications suite. (These differ only in the length of the two long Microsoft Word files in monochrome and color: 12 pages each for ink jets and 50 pages each for lasers.) On the ink jet version of the suite, I timed the GX3050N at a total 6 minutes 59 seconds (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for the timing test; www.qualitylogic.com). That's just a tad slower than the G700—which is disappointing, since the GX3050N's speed rating is nearly 50 percent higher, at 29 pages per minute for both monochrome and color. But it's the fastest ink jet I've ever seen; the next fastest, the HP Officejet Pro K550 Color Printer, took 9:08, more than 2 minutes more. On the laser version of the suite, the GX3050N came in at 15:24, which makes it easily faster than any color laser near its price. (The HP Color LaserJet 1600, for example, took 18:53.) 
 >Unfortunately, output quality is below par compared with either ink jets or lasers. Most standard fonts for business use, like Arial and Times New Roman, are well formed with easily readable characters at 8 points or larger, but only one passed that test at 5 points. As long as you don't need to print with small fonts—for desktop publishing for example—that's good enough for business use.
Graphics are good enough for any internal business use, including things such as PowerPoint handouts. I saw banding, however, and, as with many printers, a tendency to lose thin lines. Photos were appropriate for things such as customer newsletters and printing Web pages with photos on them. 
All of these comments on speed and quality are based on using the printer with Ricoh's proprietary driver. But because Ricoh insisted that the GX3050N's output quality is better than the G700's, I also looked at results using the PCL driver that also comes with the printer. Indeed, the quality was a bit better with the PCL driver than it was with the proprietary driver, but at a tremendous cost in speed. Using the PCL driver, the GX3050N took more than three times as long for the ink jet version of the business applications suite, at 21:31 total, and about two and a half times as long for the laser version, at 38 minutes. For most purposes, I'd stay with the faster speed and the slightly lower quality that you get with the proprietary driver. 
In addition to its fast speed and network connector, the GX3050N offers better than usual paper handling for the price, with a duplexer for two-sided printing, a 250-sheet paper tray, and an optional 100-sheet tray ($126 list) to let you keep two types of paper loaded at once—a useful convenience in a small office that may often print documents where the first page is on letterhead, for example. If you want top-quality output, this is obviously the wrong printer to get. But if business-quality text, graphics, and photos are all you need, the Ricoh Aficio GX3050N can handle small-office printing at a high speed for the price.
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The Epson Perfection V750-M Pro ($799.99 direct) shares most of its traits with the Epson Perfection V700 Photo. Both claim an optical resolution of 6,400 pixels per inch (ppi); both deliver among the best-quality scans I've ever seen; and both cost enough to be of interest only to serious photographers, particularly those with a large library of negatives and slides to digitize. But where the target market for the V700 is the serious amateur photographer, the V750-M goes one step further, aiming at both serious amateurs and professionals. 
The difference in emphasis shows in the V750-M's better optics, with an antireflective coating on the CCD lens and a high-reflectivity mirror. This gives the V750 better resolution than the V700 in terms of the ability to resolve detail, despite the same 6,400-ppi rating for both scanners. 
The V750 also comes with an additional tool for removing scratches—a fluid-mount kit. Both scanners i