Name: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Nvidia)

Type: Direct X11 compatible graphics card

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £199

Nvidia's Fermi GPU wagon continues to spout out top-notch cards at low prices, and perhaps none are more appealingly spec'ed and priced than the GTX 560 Ti. It tears into the sub £200 market by some margin if you shop around, but can it compete with the stellar cards AMD are touting at similar price points? Read on to find out.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti can be seen as a direct replacement to the GTX 460, with the "Ti" suffix denoting a premium build over the straight GTX 560 card. In the sub £200 RRP bracket it's a direct competitor to AMD's Radeon HD 6870. However, due to judicious overclocking headroom, you could even pit this one against the priceier Radeon HD 6950. Looking back at the legacy Nvidia GTX cards, it's worth noting that though the GTX 470 is effectively made redundant by the GTX 560 Ti, the massive price drop on the GTX 460 as a result of this new card makes it well worth a look for those on a tight budget.

Though an incremental update with the GF114 GPU here when compared to the GF104 of its GTX 460 predecessor, low-leakage transistors and the addition of an extra Streaming Microprocessor add up to 384 CUDA cores and 64 texture units to play about with. That's a lot more graphical horsepower to play about with, and though the heat-management systems aren't quite as robust as seen in the GTX 580 and GTX 570, you'll still be able to tweak the BIOS settings to overclock the 560 Ti relatively safely out of the box.

All this adds up to a card that's on average as much as 28% more powerful than its GTX 460 predecessor. Crank up to whopping 2560x1600 resolutions on Direct X 11 gaming content and with the memory clock speed pushed to 2,390 MHz, we were seeing improvements over the last gen card of as much as 35%.

In fact, in terms of Direct X 11 the Nvidia card wins out across the board in comparison to the Radeon HD 6870, making it going forward the card of choice out of the two for those looking to play this generation's most demanding games. If however you're looking to put Direct X 10 gaming performance as the deciding factor, it's a closer run race, with the AMD card coming out the victor.

Verdict:

The GTX 560 Ti is a superb card, make no mistakes. Its handling of Direct X 11 at all but the very highest resolutions make it a mid-range card to be reckoned with and with plenty of headroom for a fair bit of overclocking, you'll be able to tweak the card into performing feats well beyond its price bracket. The real problem is that this price bracket is now a crowded one, with many rival cards offering equal-or-better performance rates straight out of the box. It's horses for courses with Radeon's similar cards vs the Nvidia set-up, and you won't want to make a hasty decision when picking between the GTX 560 Ti and a Radeon HD 6870, particularly in terms of Direct X 10 performance. But with this model now selling for under £170, the bang-for-buck ratio is undeniable.

PC gaming is dead, eh? Best not tell that to the folks over at Razer; they've got a big new campaign very much reliant on the idea that it's alive and kicking still.

Leading the charge is the viral video above, promising something "big" is coming on the 26th of August. Could it be this?

That's the Razer Switchblade, a portable gaming PC with a multitouch LCD screen and a keyboard made up of multiple OLED keys that dynamically change symobls depending on the application or game being played. It's very cool, and was one of our "best in show" at this year's CES.

It may be diminutive in size, but the announcement of launch details for the Switchblade would be as "big" as anything Razer have ever put out, so fingers crossed the device is out of the prototype stage and is now ready for gamers grubby mits.

The golves are off! Dell founder and current CEO Michael Dell has put his best quip on the table, mocking rival HP following the news that they're abandoning webOS and looking to sell off their PC division.

"If HP spins off their PC business....maybe they will call it Compaq?" joked Dell on his Google+ account, referring to HP's $25 billion acquistion of Compaq back in 2005.

"They are calling it a separation but it feels like a divorce," the Dell boss added later.

The whole HP move must be a weight off Dell's shoulders. Dell had slipped behind HP as the world's biggest PC seller back in 2007, forcing Michael Dell to step back into the driving seat of his company after stepping away briefly in order for Dell to once more become top dog.

Still, it shows that PCs and laptops are in an increasingly precarious position, with the rise of the tablet showing no signs of slowing.

They're dropping like flies! First we reveal that HP are to ditch support for the webOS mobile platform they'd acquired little more than a year ago, and now in a total shock move the company are also looking to sell off its Personal Systems Group, responsible for their laptop and desktop computers.

Revealed in the company's latest earnings report, HP stated that "Personal Systems Group (PSG) revenue declined 3 per cent year over year with a 5.9 per cent operating margin,"but that "PSG remains the PC market leader in terms of units, revenue and profit share."

It looks as though HP will now focus on B2B and investments in the public sector rather than consumer projects.

"The exploration of alternatives for PSG demonstrates our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and sharpening our strategic and financial focus," said Léo Apotheker, HP president and CEO.

"In March we outlined a strategy for HP, built on cloud, solutions and software to address the changing requirements of our customers, shaped heavily by secular market trends that are redefining how technology is consumed and deployed. Since then, we have observed the acceleration of these market trends, which has led us to evaluate additional steps to transform HP to meet emerging opportunities.

HP are now rumoured to be entering into a $10 billion deal to buy software company Autonomy Corporation.

"We believe the acquisition of Autonomy, combined with the exploration of alternatives for PSG, would allow HP to more effectively compete and better execute its focused strategy," continued Apotheker.

"We believe exploring alternatives for PSG could enhance its performance, allow it to more effectively compete and provide greater value for HP shareholders. PSG is a world-class scale business with a leading market share position and a highly effective supply chain and broad reach and go-to-market capabilities. We believe there are alternatives that could afford PSG more autonomy and flexibility to make strategic investment decisions to better position the business for its customers, partners and employees."

Strategic alternatives for the firm could include a greater separation of HP's consumer and enterprise divisions, with the aim for a possible Google/Motorola style buyout further down the line.

HP have estimated a 12-18 month transitional period is to follow.

Wires; who needs 'em?

Certainly not PC or Mac users. Where once wireless mice and keyboards were an expensive indulgence, plagued with signalling issues and lag, these days it's possible to pick up top-notch wireless input devices at little-to-no extra cost from their wired counterparts.

However, it's a wide and varied market, with plenty of great gadgets vying for your attention.

Rather than claiming to pinpoint a handful of "the best" mice and keyboards, we instead thought we'd pick ten items based on different users and usage scenarios.

Click below for our round up of wireless mice and keyboards for all occasions.

Apple's latest OS update, Mac OS X Lion, touched down at a remarkable £21 last month, but was limited to in-store and Mac App Store download sales. The latter of which is fine if you've got a healthy web connection, but a nightmare if you're stuck in the dial-up dark ages.

Thankfully then, Apple have now made OS X Lion available from their online store in a physical format via a USB thumb drive.

However, it looks like Apple will be penalising anyone who doesn't go through their Mac App Store portal, charging £55 for the stick for those who haven't tried their desktop digital store front.

Still, we say it's at a steep price, but that initial £21 download price was a steal to begin with we guess.

Pick it up by clicking here.

iMacs, Apple's lustworthy all-in-one computers, are a bit out of reach of the majority of penny-watching students. That may change next week however, as rumour has it that the Cupertino kings are preparing to launch a budget-friendly version of the machines, aimed at volume buyers and college-goers.

Considerably lower spec'ed than the current standard iMac line-up, the budget version is rumoured to featre a 3.1GHz dual-core processor and AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. If rumours prove true, it's expected to cost less than $1,000 (£610).

Compare this to the standard entry-level iMac 21.5 inch iMac model with 2.5 GHz quad-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, 500 GB hard drive, and identical AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with dedicated memory doubled to 512 MB. That sets you back $1,199 (£730) stateside.

So, is 200 bucks worth a considerable downgrade in specs? Or is a month or two of avoiding the booze in order to bag the standard issue iMac a better bet? With the budget iMac expected to be revealed next Tuesday (August 16th) you may have to make that decision sooner than you'd think.

Via: 9 to 5 Mac

Apple's annual WWDC conference for 2011 kicked off with the usual fanfare we've come to expect from the cult of Mac. As well as the launch of the iCloud service and iOS 5 update for mobile devices, OS X Lion for Macs was also demoed by SVP WW Product Marketing Phil Schiller. Stating that PC growth is declining by 1% every year while Mac sales grow by 28%, he stated that it wasn't just the hardware catching consumer's eyes, but the Apple software too, with OS X Lion hopefully continuing the trend.

Over 250 new features will hit OS X Lion, of which Schiller showed off 10. First up was improved multi-touch with gestures, giving tap-to-zoom, pinching and two finger swiping "an incredible, physical realism that's never been possible in a PC operating system before." Apple have learnt a lot from iOS it seems and are looking to integrate as many suitable IOS features as possible to Macs for an increasingly converged software ecosystem.

Full screen applications were then demoed in OS X Lion, with Safari (now featuring iOS' tap control), iMovie and dozens of others packing out a screen with a simple swiping gesture.

Mission Control too was demoed, accessible by a single gesture and allowing for multiple desktops and dashboard widgets. Gestures let you swipe through each separate element and app displayed by Mission Control, with animations seeing them cascade off the screen. From what was shown, it seems a more fluid way of scrolling through your applications and desktop content than ever before, with gesture controls that genuinely seem intuitive.

The Mac App Store also gets a revamp with OS X Lion, with Schiller stating it's quickly become the number one online portal for buying PC software. The store is now built directly into Lion, with updates including in-app purchasing and push notifications. Delta updates, allowing for easier app patching, will also be included.

The new Launchpad gesture was also demoed. For those who are now more used to iOS than OS X, a simple pinch of a touchpad will pull all your apps and applications into a grid-like display, further showing the convergence between Apple's mobile and desktop software.

A new Resume function for apps was shown too, bringing you right back to the exact point or function of an app you were last at when the app was closed. Likewise, auto-save functionality will now come as standard, allowing you to browse multiple versions of documents as they are incrementally saved. Allowing for simple "versioning", you don't end up with multiple files either as only the deltas are saved.

Airdrop was another new feature introduced. It acts as a replacement for Sneakernet, allowing for peer-to-peer sharing and ruling out the need to courier thumb drives between pals' houses. Working a lot like Dropbox, the application will let you see a list of your pals, allowing you to quickly share files, fully encrypted with next to no set up needed.

The final addition is a totally revamped Mail client, which received rapturous applause. Two or three column views as well as full screen are now available, with a favourites bar for quick access to regularly viewed contacts, messages and folders. Search is also improved, recognising repeatedly used subjects or contacts, allowing you to build rules for specific search criteria too. Just like text messaging or the Gmail client, a conversation view is now available in the OS X Lion Mail tool too, hiding all the FWD and RE clutter that lengthy messages create.

Other features mentioned but without any details being revealed were a Windows Migration assistant, FileVault 2, built-in FaceTime and a Lion Server add-on.

Pricing comes in at $29.99, which is remarkably $100 cheaper than previous upgrades, with the whole package around the 4GB download mark. Interestingly, OS X Lion will only be available via the Mac App Store, so be prepared for a hefty download unless Apple ever decide to ship a boxed version. It'll touch down in July. The iCloud features also revealed will be supported by OS X Lion too.

The first commercially available laptop to feature Google's Chromium OS has just popped up for sale online. The Australian made Kogan Agora will set you back £269 and is available now.

Chromium could be considered the open-source little brother of Google's refined Chrome OS. As an open source project, it will have constant tweaks and updates applied by the wider development community at large, but may also be a little bit buggier as a result too.

In terms of hardware, the Agora features a 1.30 Intel Celeron M with 1GB of RAM, backed by a 30GB solid state drive. Portable at 1.32kg, the 12 inch laptop only manages 3.5 hours of batter life, though does squeeze in a webcam for VoIP calls.

"While Chromium is still in its early stages, we know the operating system is innovative technology which represents the future of computing" said Ruslan Kogan, boss of Kogan.

"It may take some getting used to for some to operate entirely in the cloud, but the massive benefits for the end user are driving acceptance of entirely web-based services.

"What we've found from talking to our customers is that many of them are already using cloud services without even realising it. They're uploading photos to services like Flickr, storing all their contacts in Gmail, and even hosting files on DropBox."

Click here for more info on the Kogan Agora.

Sony's VAIO notebook family gets an update today, with both their S-Series ultra-portable range and F-Series machines boasting powerful innards thanks to the addition of i7 processors.

Looking at the S-Series first, the i7 included features Turbo Boost overclocking, and is backed up by a DVD Burner, and optional SSD and AMD Radeon HD 6630 GPU upgrades.

Screen size is 13.3 inches, running at 1600 x 900, with a battery life of 15 hours if you cough up for the $150 optional "slice" battery. There's also the choice to upgrade to an optional Blu-ray drive too.

"Users these days want a laptop that will last for hours without charging, is small and light enough to carry around with you but doesn't sacrifice any of the performance and power that you'd find in a full-sized PC," said Mike Lucas, senior vice president of the Networked Technology and Services Division at Sony Electronics.

"You can fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Tokyo or attend a full day of classes on just one charge with this S Series laptop when combined with the optional sheet battery."

Per-orders for the new S-Series open today, starting at $1,350.

Sony's VAIO F-Series gaming machines also go on order today. With a 16.4-inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD display, quad-core Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M (1GB) or 520M (512MB) graphics and as much as 750GB of storage, they're looking to stand alongside ultra-portable gaming rigs from the likes of Alienware.

A backlit keyboard, USB 3.0 connections, a HD webcaman and S-Force Front Surround 3D technology along with Dolby Home Theater v3 support round out the machines, available from $1,100.

As if college kids on campus weren't having a wild enough time as it is, Microsoft are launching a pretty incredible deal to ensure new and continuing US students work hard and play hard during the next academic year.

If you can prove your student status and head down to a participating retailer, picking up any Windows 7 desktop PC or laptop worth $699 or more will also bag you an Xbox 360 Slim edition with 4GB of storage.

"Are you about to head to college this fall for the first time? Planning another year on campus? Worried what next year has in store? Wondering what you'll need, how you'll succeed or what fun adventures will be around the corner? We can't predict the future but here at Microsoft, we've come up with a way to help you succeed in the coming year, while building on the fun and friendships that are key to your life," said Microsoft's Kristina Libby of the deal.

The offer begins on May 22nd, and while retailers set their own end date, they all roughly end around the first week of September.

No word on a UK equivalent of the deal right now, though French and Canadian readers should keep their ears to the ground as Microsoft are said to be planning something similar in those territories too.

Click here for more info.

Tablets are hurting sales of laptops and desktop computers, according to data from the main hardware groups.

HP saw sales of these items slide 23% in the past quarter, according to CNET, while Dell saw a 7% dip in this category and at Acer it was down 16%. Tablets, on the other hand, are soaring; 47 million iPads are expected to sell this year, up to 108 million next year according to technology research house Gartner.

So does this represent the beginning of the end for laptops and desktop computers? Probably not. Research from Forrester shows that most people who buy tablets are also keeping up to date on their other computer equipment too: 44% of those buying a tablet had also bought a PC in the previous year.

After all, no matter how cute it is, a tablet isn't a replacement for a PC or a laptop. Tablets are great for Twitter, reading newspapers and browsing, but you can't really work on it, not really. The keyboard on the iPad is good considering it's a touchscreen, but until Apple introduces haptic (tactile) feedback on the keys, there is no contest if you need do any more than just a little bit of typing.

Case in point: The man sitting in Starbucks the other day, with his iPad on a stand, hooked up to a full size mouse, a removable keyboard and a USB stick. The iPad is cute, but what you have in front of you now, mate, it's called a netbook.

Three have announced that they will be the 3G network of choice when Google's Chromebook laptops launch in the UK.

"I'm sure by now that lots of you will have heard the exciting news from Google. Over in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Centre, Google announced the arrival of Chromebooks, and we're really excited to be their 3G connectivity partner in the UK," said Three's David Kerrigan over on the company blog.

"Three is delighted that we've been selected as the 3G connectivity partner for the Chromebook launch in the UK. We'll have more details to share in the next few weeks so stay tuned."

Three have grown in popularity thanks to their generous data packages, which would obviously be of benefit to a mobile pretty-much-online-only machine. IT'll be interesting to see whether Three will offer subsidised Chromebook hardware to go along with their data contracts, but as yet no details have been revealed. We'll keep you posted as and when announcements are made.

Samsung have just posted an official preview clip of their Series 5 Chromebook computer, one of the first machines to hit stores this summer running Google's web-based Chrome OS. Revealing that a white model is also on the way, click the video above to give it a look.

Thin and light, the 12.1 inch machine runs on an Intel Atom dual-core processor, and is designed to make use of cloud storage and apps (hence the relatively small 16GB SSD). As a result, you'll get faster boot times, heightened security and more timely system updates.

Set to touch down in June on the 24th, you'll be able to pick up the Wi-Fi only model for £349 and the 3G variant for £399.

Samsung have become the first company to reveal a Google "Chromebook" netbook computer, the Series 5, running the search giant's Chrome web-based OS.

The core specs read as:

. CPU: Intel N570 1.66Ghz Dual Core

· I/O Ports: 2 x USB, SIM Card Slot, 4-In-1 (SD, SDHC, MMC), VGA Dongle, DC-in

But that only paints half the picture. Running Google's web-centric new OS, it has the potential to be far more secure than a Windows PC as all programs and definitions are constantly updated from a central location. You also need less local storage as so much info is stored in the cloud, also resulting in near-instant boot times.

Available from Amazon and PC World on the 24th June, the 3G Wi-Fi model will retail at £399 and the Wi-Fi model has a price point of £349. With current exchange rates as they are however, thats roughly £100 more than our US counterparts will be paying. Poor show, Samsung.

Apple have just released the details on the 2011 refresh of their all-in-one iMac desktop computer range. Out with miniDisplay ports and in with superfast Thunderbolt connections is the order of the day, with Intel's Sandy Bridge cores doing all the hard work.

Available in 21.5 and 27 inch models, the top-drawer model packs in quad-core 3.4GHz Core i7 processors and AMD Radeon 6970M graphics processors. With screen resolutions of 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 for the 21.5 inch and 27 inch models respectively, it's a shame that the range stubbornly sticks with 8x SuperDrive DVD burners with 4x double-layer burning rather than a Blu-ray option.

HD FaceTime cameras are also included for the first time. Storage is between 500GB and 1TB as standard, with an option to boost up to 2TB as part of a custom order.

"With next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, Thunderbolt technology and a FaceTime HD camera, we've made the world's best desktop even better," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

"Our customers love the iMac's aluminum enclosure, gorgeous display and all-in-one design. With next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, Thunderbolt technology and a FaceTime HD camera, we've made the world's best desktop even better."

Pricing starts at $1,199 for the 21.5-inch iMac with a 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, going up to $1,999 for a 27 inch one with a 3.1 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6970M and 1TB hard drive.

Those looking out for the i7 models in-store will be out of luck; they're configure-to-order models only, with eye-wateringly high prices to match.

The sun is shining and summer's just around the corner, which makes it high-time a refreshed iMac range was announced.

It was last June that Apple's all-in-one desktop last got a revamp and if their annual product announcements are anything to go by, paired with news coming in from Crunchgear that iMac stock is running low, it appears brand new models may be sitting just over the horizon.

So what can we expect to find in the latest iMac models when they eventually touch down? Thunderbolt connections, as seen in the latest MacBook Pro machines are a safe guess, allowing for superfast data transfer rates. Intel's fresh Sandy Bridge chips could make an appearance too.

We'd expect to hear an announcement sometime in the next few weeks from Apple.

Any things you'd like to add to the iMac wishlist? Pop them in the comments section below.

Name: GoFlex Slim (Seagate)

Type: 320GB ultra-portable external hard drive

Specs: Click here for full specs

Price: £73.20 from Span

Image Gallery: Click here

Who said computer storage devices couldn't be sexy? Seagate's latest portable external storage drive, the GoFlex Slim is so svelte and small it may well replace your USB flash stick as your pocketable drive of choice. But does its performance match its good looks?

There's no denying that Seagate have managed something quite remarkable with the GoFlex Slim drive. At 9mm thick, it's roughly the same thickness as your average Bic pen, and thinner even than the slinky iPhone 4 smartphone. What's even crazier is that it manages to be .5mm thinner than your average 9.5mm standard SATA internal drive. It's still fairly wide and long at 4.1 inches by 3.2 inches, but there is only so small you can make a 2.5 inch drive chassis, and Seagate are definitely pushing the envelope here.

The drive's small size of course leads to at least one concession, and that here lies with overall storage capacity. 320GB is hardly anything to write home about in the external drive stakes these days, and the overall cost-to-capacity ratio is quite expensive, with the average price for the drive around the £80 mark. If large capacity is a necessity for you, look elsewhere, but again for a drive this size 320GB remains impressive.

The drive supports both USB 2.0 and the much faster USB 3.0 connections, and comes packaged with a USB 3.0 backwards-compatible cable. The actual drive itself is comprised of two parts which snap together; the main drive unit with a standard SATA female connector at one end, and an adapter part with a male SATA connector and a Mini-USB 3.0 port for attaching the supplied cable. This flexible design allows for pretty much any connection to be supported providing you snap in a sold-separately GoFlex adaptor. With USB 3.0 currently the fastest peripheral connection available (at least until Thunderbolt drives become the norm) the need for other adapters are unlikely to be much of an issue however. Of course, the SATA connections also mean you'll be able to hook the drive up with a SATA internal drive, no matter what the manufacturer, which is a great addition by Seagate.

Flexibility is extended by the drive's built in software. Though available in two pre-formatted styles (a black chassis with NTFS file system for Windows and white chassis with HSF+ formatting for Macs) pre-installed software drivers give full read/write access across both platforms anyway. It's a thankful addition, and much better than having to use the FAT32 universal standard which frustratingly caps file sizes at 4GB.

All this good work would be for naught however were the GoFlex Slim a sluggish performer when it comes to transfer rates. The drive, with its 7200 RPM speed, has so far proved a consistent joy to use. Testing USB 2.0 transfer speeds, we saw an average of 27.6MBps and 37.5MBps for writing and reading speeds respectively. As you'd expect, USB 3.0 speeds were significantly better at 82.3MBps for writing and 102MBps for reading. They're not category topping speeds, but are very nippy nonetheless, and again particularly impressive given the drive's size. Even during prolonged use the drive stayed quite cool too, despite the lack of any visible ventilation slots.

Capping off an impressive package is the Seagate Dashboard software suite. It bloats the drive by some 195MB with mostly unnecessary software, but don't turn down the optional installation of the Memeo Backup Premium application. It's a simple-but-excellent tool for backing up important files or entire drives, with clever visual representations of the volume of specific file types, as well as customisable backup schedules that should ensure your data is never lost.

Verdict:

You could argue that the GoFlex Slim's relatively small capacity makes it poor value for money, and in that stake alone you'd be right; there are plenty of drives that offer more space for your buck than the 320GB on offer here. However, few drives can balance portability and performance as deftly as this catwalk-ready little number, and the inclusion of very good back-up software more than makes up for any storage shortcomings. Slip this into your jacket pocket and you'll unlikely go back to your USB flash drive ever again.

The much-loved Commodore 64 PC is to rise like a phoenix from the flames this summer, reborn as the souped-up C64x

Housed in the same old-skool casing as the original Commodore 64, the updated C64x will have specs fit for a modern day PC.

A 1.8Ghz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, Nvidia graphics chip, HDMI port, up to 1TB hard drive, 2 or 4GB RAM options and an optional Blu-ray player will all fit snugly inside the brown chunky keyboard.

And, for you older gaming geeks hankering for a bit of 8-bit retro playtime, it'll even come with an integrated C64 emulator.

Pre-orders start at around £365 ($595) with the first units set to ship in May.

The internet should be seen as a basic human right, according to to Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. Speaking at the 20th International World Wide Web Conference in India, Berners-Lee emphasised the importance of the internet as a neutral media not controlled by large corporates or governments.

"Today, Egypt is communicating online with the people. The common man is in a position to give feedback to the government. ... There is a problem of jurisdiction. There is a problem of coordination among law enforcement services across different countries. Which aspect of the internet should be governed by what sort of international organisation. Currently, there is a lot of discussion going on whether it should be done through countries or independently," Berners-Lee said.

50% says yes
The internet can be a significant tool for communication between people, and between governments and people, but a human right? 50% of us believe the internet is important enough to be considered a human right, according to a poll by the BBC conducted last year.

27,000 people across 26 nations were polled, with 87% of Chinese respondents saying they see the internet as a fundamental human, compared with 75% of Americans. Commenting on Chinese internet censorship of which sites its citizens can access, former US president Bill Clinton said last year: "Governments should not prevent people from connecting to the Internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly in cyberspace."

When technology evolves
"This is what we believe: technology alone is not enough. Faster, thinner, lighter: those are all good things. But when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful, even magical. That's when you leap forward."

This is the narrative for Apple's new advertisement for the iPad 2 (video below). While the gadget in question is very pretty indeed, the words go to the heart of another issue: how technology is a tool that changes how the world works. If the internet is indeed to become a human right, advanced, intuitive gadgets will be an integral part of this.

Technology is moving away from being these clunky machines to becoming sleek and interactive - and with this a little more human. What the iPad narrative is talking about is the point where the tech is so good it is no longer about the machine, but about what you can do with it. It's evolution - now isn't that fascinating.