BT Vision is the telecom giant's on-demand TV service and, for better or worse, we on Techradar have been plugged into it since May 2007. At the heart of the system is the V-Box, a network enabled PVR capable of serving up content from BT's online library or Freeview TV.

History tells us early adopters are cursed and our early experiences with the fledgling system did indeed leave us cursing. The V-Box was highly crash-prone and the content offered by BT underwhelming.

We weren't put off and nor was BT. Doggedly it updated and upgraded the original V-Box's firmware, ironing out its problems and - credit where credit is due - created a solid, dependable and reliable hard disk recorder. Software updates couldn't however cure the V-Box's most striking ill - it was pug ugly.

All that - and more - should be changed with the arrival of the new BT Vision+ box.

Features and performance

Straight out of the box, the Vision+ box feels like a slick and modern piece of home entertainment kit. Gone is the old machine's dower gun metal grey and in comes piano black.

When you move beyond the glossiness of the new machine, however, finding differences between it and the old machine becomes a challenge. Their specifications, for example, are near identical - twin Freeview tuners, 14-day EPG and a 160GB hard disk.

Sure the two machines' rears look radically dissimilar, but they both sport the same slew of connectors, albeit in different arrangements. That said, the Vision+ box has every connector you're likely to need.

BT claims the new black Vision+ box is more energy efficient than the old one. It's suggesting a drop of 12% and asserts the improvement helps the machine "meet the new more demanding EU energy regulations". We can only applaud that improvement.

The new remote is - as you'd expect - black, but beyond that looks remarkably similar to the original. BT claims the newer device has bigger characters on its buttons to help in reduced lighting.

There are also a few extra buttons on the machine itself, notably a handy instant record button and a standby button too.

Setting it up is simple and fast - wire it all up, switch it on and you'll be up and running in minutes. Quite why BT has emblazoned "start enjoying great TV in just 30 minutes" on the box is a mystery.

In use - once more - the difference between the old box and the new Vision+ machine are hard to spot. Indeed, try as we might, we couldn't spot any UI improvements, tweaks or changes. That in itself is no bad thing - BT has developed its interface well.

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With 500GB disks now shipping as standard on all but entry-level PCs and 2TB disks costing less than £130, storage space has never been more abundant or affordable.

So the recent proliferation of companies offering online data storage products and services might seem surprising – except when you factor in the features and benefits online storage offers that could never be met by local storage alone.

Among the list of unique benefits are fully automated backups, synchronising files between different PCs and sharing files with colleagues, friends or even the whole world. Here we investigate these benefits and take a look at four products that claim to offer all of these services and more.

File synchronisation

USB flash drives enable us to carry large amounts of data around in our pockets. But in order to benefit from them we must be organised enough to make sure that they always contain the files we're likely to need.

An online service also suffers from this problem to some extent, but it has several advantages over using a thumb drive. Going online lets you access a document from several computers or mobile phones while also allowing you to modify that document from any of those devices and then make that modified version accessible.

LIVEDRIVE: Online backup services allow you to access your files wherever you are

You could create a document on your desktop at home, read and modify it on your laptop in a hotel room and then work on the updated version when you get back home, all without any manual moving of files.

A typical additional feature is that previous versions of files are saved, so you can roll back to an older copy if you've made a mistake or decided you don't like your changes.

File synchronisation is the tech behind all this functionality, and while it's very useful, you should be aware of its potential problems.

Say both you and a colleague start to edit the same file at the same time. When you close the file it's written to the online drive but if your colleague then does likewise, without special precautions, it would mean that your edit gets lost.

HUMYO: File locking is a must if you want to share the same file with different people

If you intend to use this service collaboratively, you'd be advised to check that it offers a suitable fix for such conflicts. The classic solution is to employ file locking so that as soon as one person starts to edit a file, subsequent access to that file won't be allowed until the first person has finished editing it.

File sharing

Although the main benefit of file synchronisation is the ability to work on files from several computers, another is the way it allows you to share those files between a small group of individuals who can also modify them.

SUGARSYNC: You can also set it up to allow read-only access to certain people you dont want to edit your files

Samsung, the famed Korean jack-of-all-technologies, is having another go at mastering the Android phone scene, after making a bit of a mess of it with last year's original Galaxy.

The i7500 Galaxy was a brave first attempt, but Samsung threw it away, alienating early adopters by not bothering to update the phone past its basic Android 1.5 operating system.

Seriously, there are petitions all over the place. Some men are still very angry about it all.

And now, learning from past mistakes, comes the Samsung Galaxy Portal - which looks pretty much identical and features... Android 1.5. Oh well. Let's give it a chance.

First impressions of the Portal are good. Nobody's going to be won over by black plastic in this day of hyper-alloy unibody combat cases and NASA-derived coatings, but at least the Portal feels solid - and the grippy, rubberised-effect of the back cover should minimise dropping/pavement catastrophes.

In fact, the Portal manages to be thicker and generally chunkier than last year's Galaxy, measuring 13.2mm thick compared to last year's model's 11.9mm.

The OLED screen of the previous Samsung Galaxy i7500 has been dumped, in favour of reliable old LCD technology - coming in at a thoroughly middle-of-the-road 3.2-inch in size.

It's bright and big enough, and if you haven't yet used a modern smartphone you'll be staggered by the HVGA resolution.

The phone's button layout is a slightly tweaked version of the original Galaxy's control array, which sees acres of the finest black plastic bent into a curved, yet unintelligible collection of icons you might expect to see on the command console of an alien space vessel.

You don't get a trackball or optical pad - directional controls are taken care of by a clickable d-pad reminiscent of old video game controllers.

But this is actually fine - text editing is much easier with a reliable, clicky button.

Moving the cursor back three characters to correct a typo in an important, what-time-is-dinner-related text message is much easier when you can simply BASH-BASH-BASH a button three times, rather than fiddle about scrolling a little wheel into position - or even worse, trying to poke the screen at the relevant point.

The screen is also impressive to use - capacitive tech means it's solid and glassy, and it's every bit as occasionally patchy as most other touchscreens out there.

You'll soon get used to pressing a bit harder around the edges. Even Apple hasn't mastered that yet with the iPhone.

The standard Android buttons are all present, but there's no explanation of what they do. The 'Menu' button doesn't say 'Menu' - all
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