Stories by: Matthew Overington

It's no secret that software firewalls are less secure than hardware versions as they're prone to viruses, and can be disabled by malicious software. Danish software developer, Danware, has taken an interesting and unique approach to circumvent the problem by creating a firewall that runs as a software driver, and not a conventional application or service.

Apple's iBooks are designed to offer a less-expensive alternative to the impressive flagship PowerBook range. The company offers two models - fitted with 12- or 14-inch displays, and either a 1.33GHz or 1.42GHz PowerPC G4 processor.

The only drawback in society's massive move towards digital photography seems to be how to actually view the photos. Crowding around a family computer to run through slide shows is a hassle, but many consumers find the relatively high cost of network media players hard to justify for the occasional slideshow night. The Photo Album from SanDisk is a simple flash media reader designed to display photos, MP3s, and video files on a lounge room TV.

It has been a long time coming, but digital television is just starting to take off in Australia. Most channels are broadcasting supplementary content in addition to their regular programming, with SBS and ABC leading the way. Many vendors are looking to capitalise on the boom by offering digital set-top boxes designed to convert these digital signals into a format that can be played back on the average TV.

Apple's AirPort Express with AirTunes is designed to share an incoming broadband connection between up to ten computers wirelessly, while at the same time allowing users to play back music through speakers connected to the unit.

Netgear's MP101 wireless digital music player is built to share audio from a PC or an Internet music streaming service to a home stereo. It works over either an Ethernet or wireless connection.

Buffalo's LinkTheater is a top-notch network media player packed with powerful features. On paper, it's an impressive piece of kit. The device handles a massive range of video formats including DivX, XviD, QuickTime, WMV and all flavours of MPEG. It also supports all common audio formats ranging from MP2, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA, M4A and AC3, and popular image formats. In fact, given the solid codec support, there's very little that the device won't play. The progressive scan DVD player also has no trouble reading burnt DVDs and CDs, and offers full support for HDTV formats right the way up to 1080i.

Pioneer's take on an entertainment system for handling media playback, gaming and office tasks is a striking piece of kit. The silver plastic tube resembles a barrel with a handle cut into one side for transportation. At 8.7kg, and measuring 36cm long by 23cm in diameter, it's portable but sufficiently bulky to deter anyone from carrying it over long distances.

While most media devices on the market either include a hard disk for storing content locally, or are able to play files stored on a networked PC, the Mediagate MG-35 has a bet each way. It's both a network media player and a portable storage device rolled into one. It's designed to pipe video and audio content across a network and play it back on a TV or home stereo system, but can also be used as a portable hard disk to move files around or play media stored on its internal drive.

USB memory keys are fantastic for moving files around between locations, but the relatively slow read and write speeds of flash media mean that it can take quite a while to fill a 2 or even 1GB memory key.