BenQ is pushing its Joybook Lite T131 as a netbook with a 13.3'' screen. Powered by an AMD Sempron 200U CPU, it runs on Windows Vista, includes a 320 GB hard drive and a six-cell battery allowing you to enjoy the 1280 x 800 pixel resolution screen for up to three hours.


It's a suprisingly powerful spec, but is it really a netbook or an entry-level notebook? BenQ will certainly be relying on the fact that it weigh just 1.8 kgs, but there's no news yet on what kind of price it will sell for.

> Product Surey: Netbooks

> Product Survey: Laptops

Software and accessories are now crowding around the iPhone. Two of them have passed through our hands. The first is used for viewing photos in 3D and the second to boost the built-in speaker. So?

Let’s begin with the 3D. Manufactured by Wazabee, 3DeeShell is a 3D casing for the 3G iPhone. You’ll find a plastic casing in the box of this accessory (3 colours available, blue, gold or red), a plastic film to protect the screen and a special filter for creating 3D effects.

The principle is simple:

1. Take two photos close together of the same subject. Avoid fast moving young children in favour of a plant or other static object.
2. Ask 3DeeCamera, on sale for 79 cts on Appstore, to fuse the two photos to prepare the display in 3D (this gives a sort of soup of mixed up pixels).
3. Place the filter on the screen and hey! the image appears in 3D and gains in depth.
   

This is the ideal scenario. In practice, we needed to start over several times to get a good result. Our opinion: at $49,99 (not including postage on the manufacturer’s site) an amusing but relatively expensive gadget.

Watch out as the casing is not compatible with the iPhone Edge. You can however use the filter on the screen on this model without the plastic. This is much less practical however as whenever there’s the slightest movement, you lose the 3D effect that you’ve spent so much time trying to get.

Now let’s move onto the audio side. For several days I recharged my iPhone Edge on a rather unusual holder. It’s the AirCurve, from Griffin Technology. This transparent polycarbon object claims to amplify the acoutics from the speakers on your iPhone. It uses a small hole in your docking cable and also serves as a recharger.
In practice, the AirCurve recharges your phone alright but its sound amplification feature doesn’t convince. You do get a small effect but you don’t get anywhere near what you get from mini speakers.

For 20 euros, the AirCurve is a nice charger with slight amplification. Better than nothing if you can’t link up to a power source as well.

Confusion surrounds announcments from Microsoft about a possible new console that could be released in 2010.

A few days ago, Steve Ballmer, the the company's CEO announced that the new Xbox would include a 'natural interface' and a built-in camera capable of following the user's movements and voice recognition--just like the famous Project Natal, then.

The development was denied almost immediately by Microsoft's gaming arm, which had previously said at E3 that not only would Project Natal function on every version of the Xbox 360, but also that no new Xbox models were planned in the near future. Larry Hyrb, the Xbox Live Director of Programming, also clarified some of his boss' comments, saying, ''we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time.''

Without any firm details on a release date for Project Natal, speculation is only likely to continue ...