The Kensington ComboSaver Portable Notebook Lock (K64560EU)

As all-in-one devices designed to be easy to move, laptops remain a high value item that can benefit from being ‘physically’ restrained.

Virtually every laptop produced in recent years has a ‘Kensington-slot’ somewhere around its edge to add this physical protection option.

Kensington Lock Slot on an Apple MacBook

However, traditionally the cables available are long, heavy and only able to be bent or coiled to a very limited (large) radius - making them totally impractical things to carry or take with you if travelling.

The Kensington ComboSaver Portable lock is designed to address these issues.

The cable itself is 3.5mm thick and is steel covered in a tight and soft transparent sheath. It extends comfortably (with only minimal resistance) up to 1.8m and returns naturally - self coiling (i.e. a contracting spring) to a compact overall length of just 7.62cm after use. Total weight is 116g.

The compact lock has four wheels - each with 10 position settings (the numbers 0>9) producing 10,000 possible combinations. It has a soft rubber end plate to prevent any scratching or marking to your computer.

The lock itself, T-Bar for insertion into the computer slot is on the left.

After passing the cable around something solid, the lock is engaged by first inserting the visible T-Bar through the slot on the computer and rotating the lock barrel itself by 90 degrees (also rotating the T-Bar inside the machine).

With the combination correctly set the end button can then be pressed, this causes a second solid tab to extend from the lock through the Kensington slot on the machine. It is this second bar which prevents the lock and T-bar from being from being rotated and removed from the slot.

The number wheels should then be rotated to leave the lock attached securely.

Attached and securing a Sony VAIO laptop to a desk.

The combination can be readily changed by using a small horse-shoe shaped pin tool attached to the ‘loop-end’ of the cable. By inserting this into the button end of the lock and giving an eighth of a turn (so that the yellow markings visible above line up) the combitiion can be changed to your choice.

The loop end of the spring, complete with tool to change the combination.

Kensington encourage you to use their website to register your lock to an email address. This will enable them to later email you a reminder of the lock combination/pin should you ever forget it.

Illustrative Retail Packaging

Packaged in its box the product measures 176mm x 150mm x 33mm and weights in at just 191grams.

The best UK price is currently £19.99 online available at PC World (www.pcworld.co.uk).

Make sure you use their Collect@Store service if you want to buy it in store as it is normally priced up at double that (30 pounds) in store! Using Collect@Store you can get the web price.

[Also, if searching their site it has a poor search function and this item is found readily using 'combosaver' but not 'kensington'!]

After the use this model has been given so far, it still returns to a good coil after prolonged usage periods but does require a brief wait for the neatness of that coil to be restored.

More pictures are on the product detail page.

This is only possible because although a network cable contains 4 wire pairs (8 wires), only 2 pairs (4 wires) are actually needed for a computer connection. The other 2 pairs (4 wires) are therefore able to be used for other devices if you are stuck without enough cables.

[Note: Despite this being possible, you should always run more lengths of wire than you think you will need to every point when doing a new cable lay! This 'doubling up' solution can be less than ideal for various technical reasons, and can also only be used once to get you out of a jam!]

With the mass adoption of the structured cabling philosophy into offices - where computer network connections are carried alongside analogue and digital phones across standard installation of cat5e etc network cable - Hellermann Tyton have a range of color coded ‘cool’ ports designed to support different combinations of devices.

The Coolport colour scheme:

• Purple: 2xData (all pairs used)
• Red: 1xData + 1x(4Wire)Telephone (all pairs used)
• Blue: 1xData + 2x(2wire)Telephone (all pairs used)
• Amber: 3x(2wire)Telephone (1 pair unuse

The coolport itself measures: 6cm (wide) x 7cm (front to back) and they are 4cm high.

It is strange they picked a case design that only supports 3 devices - given that for 2 wire telephony a fourth telephone could easily be supported (the unused pair on the yellow/amber coolport).

Although hard to photograph, the output ports are clearly labelled on the back of the device:

While this is a little irelevant on the Purple (2 x PC) coolport, for the mixed use (telephony and computer) models this will be essential because all pins are visibly present (the copper contacts) on all of the coolports sockets.

The coolport has it’s ‘input’ socket on one end and the outputs on the other:

Unlike the official product illustrations, on production versions for two output devices, the third rj45 socket is NOT fitted. Instead a clear plastic tab fills its space. This is something that will certainly save headaches should an end user ever be reconnecting their cables.

This brings us onto the subject of build quality. For a plastic cased device, the coolports clearly fall into that category where the plastic strength is best described as “strong where it needs to be, - but perhaps a little sparing elsewhere”.

The mounting holes and tabs on the back are certainly strong, but the sides do flex slightly to the touch - and that clear plastic tab is clearly designed to be easily ‘knocked out’ during assembly of 3 device models

That said, the quality of the plastics used themselves is clearly high premium, and for any lightness they certainly don’t feel ‘cheap’ to the touch.

While there are plenty of network cable economizers out there, the coolports sail against convention by having a socket on the cable-run end, rather than a short (6″) protruding hard wired lead.

To me this is a major plus for two reasons: Firstly it is far more versatile as you can postion the split wherever you like without needing a further join (i.e. up on the users desk, rather than 6inches from the wall outlet), indeed you might even be able to avoid 1 join completely depending on how your cable run is terminated.

Secondly the cable ends on other types of splitter are rarely ‘hooded’ - meaning there is a strong likelihood the clips will break off some of them during installation / usage.

Additionally they are presentable and suitable for visible installation in ’soft’ environments - something which a high percentage of their competitors certainly arn’t, typically looking very ‘rough’.

They are available ‘white-boxed’ as a pair, or (also as a pair) complete with 4 network patch leads (2 short) in retail blister packaging. The premium for the retail boxed version is such that its probably not warranted just to acquire 4 network cables.

The white-box packaging measures: 14cm x 7.8cxm x 4.4cm. The dimensions of the coolports themselves are given above. Complete, the whitebox weights 125g with the product inside.

For the avoidance of doubt, they are bidirectional - either can be used at either end.

The Exspect 468 is a clear silicone skin case for the ipod touch which comes complete with a thin but more rigid than usual screen protector.

Inside the packaging you will also find a cleaning cloth to give your display a pre application clean and a ’soft card’ to assist with getting an air bubble free union.

The screen protector appears to be of the slightly more ‘rigid’ design and will stay perfectly flat self supported, when compared to the more top-of-the-range highly flexible ‘film’ type of screen protector. (Note: The screen protector is not fitted in any of the photos here).

Also included is a strap for attaching to the case:

Most worthy of the note is the back of the case, in addition to a number of ‘breathing’ holes, there are also two very long vertical ‘belt’ slits/slots. These slits and openings connect right through to the inside of the case and anything that goes through them will come into contact with the shiny faced back of the ipod.

Despite having these rather questionable openings on the rear, it does feature the necessary opening on the front to allow the ambient light sensor to work:

This is worthy of note as some of the clearest illustrations on the retail packaging and manufacturers website suggest it does not have the aperture - and the design of the packaging itself makes it impossible to see this area clearly inside and confirm that it does.

The bottom of the case has a full width opening for the essential dock connector and headphones socket:

Despite some other case designs featuring an opening much more tightly cut to the two ports in question, this is not actually much of an issue as the exposed area lines up neatly with size of the matt-black base end of the ipod touch.

The strap attaches onto a small silicone loop on the side of the case.

Personally, while I would give the silicone loop iteself a good lifespan, if the strap was to be used reguarlarly as the sole point of support and subjected to repeated shock strain I’d be tempted to consider giving the loop a far shorter life span for staying in one piece attached to the case.

Generally the skin fits ‘reasonably’ well to the ipod. While there is certainly reason to be cautious about pressing too tightly, this could definitely do with being just one tad more snug. There are certainly more ideal skins out there. Hopefully this is something that can be improved with future production runs.

Its main failing however is the belt slits on the back. Although they are probably the right size for most belts they are far to long for the case itself. Indeed I think that a reasonably amount of that slight looseness of the case can be placed at their door.

Using the slits with a belt would certainly result in scratches to the back of your ipod, unless you have a full-body ‘invisible shield’ wrapper on inside.

Not using them however is far worse because, due to their length, they allow the back of the skin to slide ‘open’ with the slightest touch, meaning that any items sharing a pocket - or hand - with the ipod, would probably find a way to make ‘good contact’ with the back of the ipod.

Coupled with the slightly rigid screen protector, I think you should give this case a miss.

Currently in stock at HMV where it appears to be their standard issue ipod touch skin.

It is worth remembering that this is technology that simply was not available two years ago - when most people would have said it wasn’t feasible either!

With an office full of Dell USFF machines only capable of driving one display, we decided to try one of these adaptors for a project to extend a user’s desktop up onto a wall-mounted HD TV and use that to stream live share prices.

The Videk adaptor comes in a clam-shell of plastic retail packaging, once you have got inside you’ll find the adaptor itself, a Quick Start Guide, software mini-CD, as well as a USB cable and a DVI to VGA adaptor.

The most important item in the quick start guide is that you must install the driver before letting the PC see the USB device.

Note: That is a mini-CD. This was actually a wee bit inconvenient as our physically locked machines all had vertically mounted DVD drives that didn’t have the necessary little catches to hold a miniCD, however the driver itself was very happy to install direct from a flash drive.

Within Windows the driver supports the standard behaviours of either mirroring the primary display or extending your desktop onto it, it can also be designated the primary display.

The inclusion of the DVI-to-VGA converter was a much more welcome surprise, the PDF product information sheet on the Videk website suggested it was to be an optional extra.

Videk currently have three models in this range:

(2494V)  AN2410 - USB 2.0 to VGA Display Adaptor £49.50

(2494D)  AN2420 - USB 2.0 to DVI Display Adaptor £54.50

(2494HD) AN2440 - USB 2.0 to High Resolution DVI Display Adaptor £59.50 (~118USD)

[They also have a model in the older casing, the 2496 USB to VGA adaptor - supporing resoluions up to 1024x768. The older casing was much more tacky looking, although we shouldn't blame Videk for this, as it also appears to be a generic casing, turning up on the sadly sole current product at Maplin.]

As we would be using it with a large HD screen we went for the AN2440 High Resolution model - which adds support for 1440×900 and 1600×1200 resolutions and also, according to the pdf product information sheet, could be the only model to support the DVI to VGA adaptor. [Or is the only model to come with it.]

Design wise, it features what appears to be the current standard casing for all models based upon DispalyLink’s supplied circuit blueprint.

However you should keep in mind that performance and capability will depend on how much your manufacturer has been willing to spend inside.

The DisplayLink chip does compress the data - or rather decompress it - so the signal is not being sent as a video signal across the USB link, therefore the higher the screen resolution you want to connect, the more memory needed inside the box and the faster it needs to operate.

The unit itself has just two connections, so yes - it is a host-powered device as well. The DVI output connector is at one end and the mini-USB input connector the other.

Once connected the device itself reminds you of a hardware dongle, however as the ‘bulk’ is attached to the display end, rather than the computer end, it can be easily hidden away leaving just a slim USB cable reaching the computer.

Our objective was to extend a users desktop onto a HD television screen and use that to display a window containing an array of fine-textual information.

Previously we were a tad apprehensive about whether there would be abundant compression artefacts on the screen or whether the Display Link chipset could really cope with such constantly updating information right across the screen.

The results were amazing, in fact we were blown away. No matter what I dragged onto the TV I could see no compression artefacts or other problems and the screen updating was also perfect, there were no ‘delta-type’ compression lags either.

The image above is a photograph of the HD television screen with an Internet Explorer window. Notice how fine the text is on the word “Internet” in the status bar. I can assure you any blurriness is just due to the camera, and was not present on the screen.

So it now appears you can now essentially connect your monitor and displays by USB cable - outsourcing the video/display signal to a point much closer to the display itself.

However the mere thought of connecting a monitor to a computer using USB will still seem very shocking and ‘wrong’ as you are setting it up - and for quite a while afterwards!

Some entries were previously here, all others will now join them. We hope to begin restoring and moving content shortly.

All new random pages will be here.