It's been a busy week here at TechRadar cameras, with launches coming early in the week from Nikon and Panasonic, but it was Pentax that grabbed all the headlines this week with its brand new compact system camera that has been designed by Marc Newson and is already causing a divide in the office.

If you've missed any of the big news this week, here's a chance to catch up with everything that's been happening, each with links to the full story. Don't forget, you can join us over on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with all the latest news.

Pentax news

It's been the biggest story of the week, as the new mirrorless camera from Pentax was finally unveiled on Thursday. Pentax first entered the compact system camera market with the Q last year, but the new camera is a much bigger offering and features support for existing K-Mount lenses. It's also been designed by Marc Newson, and its distinctive design is something we predict will either be loved or hated. Check out our Hands on: Pentax K-01 review with video to help make your mind up.

It wasn't all good news this week for the company however, as it revealed that the Pentax Q had not lived up to expectations saleswise.

Nikon news

Nikon refreshed its compact camera line-up this week, with a number of new models entering the range. These included the Coolpix P510, a 42x optical zoom bridge camera, the Coolpix P310, an upgrade to the high-end P300 camera and the Nikon Coolpix S30, a waterproof and shockproof camera that is the company's very first "family" camera.

Last year, it was reported that compact camera sales had declined by around 30%, but that doesn't worry Nikon, the company told us. In fact, they say they're still growing in a shrinking market.

Canon news

No camera launches this week from Canon, but a new printer has been unveiled. The PIXMA MG4150 is a Wi-Fi enabled all in one printer designed to appeal to students and families.

The release came in the same week as it was announced that Canon's President Tsuneji Uchida will step down, with his role being filled by the current CEO, Fujio Mitarai.

Panasonic news

Another company to unveil its spring range of compacts, Panasonic announced seven new cameras this week. These include the superzooms TZ25 and TZ30 and two new rugged cameras. Have a look at our Hands on: Pan
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Having kickstarted the Data Liberation Front movement inside Google, and as an advisor on open source matters, Brian Fitzpatrick knows the inner workings of the search giant very well indeed.

We caught up with him at OSCON in Portland, Oregon.

Linux Format: How did the Data Liberation Front come about inside Google?

Brian Fitzpatrick: It came from a number of things. I guess it first started when I graduated from college, and I couldn't take my email with me. And when I got to Google, I did open source stuff for a year and a half, or two years, and we were asking: "What else can we do in the Chicago office that's philosophically equivalent to open source, but not necessarily open source?"

I talked to a lot of people, and we were told to always focus on the user. I thought, 'I'm not going to be the guy to make Google the next two billion dollars – but what can I do that's going to make a big difference?'.

So I saw that we're getting to a point where big companies have a lot of data – where people are storing data in other companies. We don't need another kind of lock-in in the world, right?

The way I saw it was, Google never locked users in for search. Why do you use search? Is it because you have a two-year contract? Did you buy a piece of hardware to use it? No! If you don't want to use it, you just use another search engine. Who gives a damn?

The way we keep you as users is to make it better. Rapid innovation, rapid iteration. So we thought, 'If we make it even easier for people to leave our products, we're going to be forced to iterate even more quickly, and make our products better'. Everybody benefits from that, right?

Users benefit from it, and we benefit because we're competing really fairly. I mean, as an engineer, I'd much rather build a better product than build bigger walls around a product.

LXF: Kind of unusual...

BF: Well it is unusual, but the thing to remember is that, today, we're in an unusual world. Fifteen years ago, if I had told you, "In 2011 there's going to be a global distribution centre that costs almost nothing to send things on," what would you say? You'd be like, "Oh come on! Is it teleportation?"

But here we are in 2011 with the internet. It's a game-changer – it has changed the game in so many ways. And this is another one. It's really easy for people to switch software, and it's really easy for people to try new software.

And that's great – people who, in the past, have been very afraid of computers embrace them. They'll try new things really quickly.

LXF: Was the Data Liberation Front scratching an itch within Google – like engineers wanting to move data around in their own projects?

BF: Sure, as an engineer I don't want to waste my time schlepping bits from one place to another. If it's easier for you to take it out, it's easier for you to get it in. We want to go both ways on that.

I think a lot of people misunderstand why we do it. I think they understand why we do open source – they say, "Oh, Google wants everyone to think they're nice and cuddly." But the fact of the matter is, it's good for our business. It keeps us competitive. If we start building bigger walls, and leave our products to lie fallow, what's goin
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Essential iCloud guide: Introduction

Poor old MobileMe. It tried hard, but never quite delivered. Expensive, sometimes slow and saddled with a clumsy name, it has long had the air of an unloved child.

Its development cycle was long and drawn out. And by the time Steve Jobs announced the end of its short and undistinguished life, just two years after its rebirth from the ashes of .Mac, few were inclined to shed any tears.

Yet it wasn't all bad. The email service was stable and largely dependable. It synced our contacts, so we didn't need to tap them all in on an iPhone keyboard, and the calendar tool always made sure we turned up on time, wherever we happened to be.

Apple knew this as well as anyone, which is why it chose to preserve those parts, jettisoning the web publishing, photo gallery and iDisk, as it set about building iCloud.

Housed in a vast data centre in North Carolina, iCloud is Apple's next-generation online service. It syncs your iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod touch. It can track a lost device, copy your iPhone snaps over the web so they're safely backed up on your Mac, and synchronise your iWork files so that whatever device you're using, downtime is never wasted time.

Over the next few pages, we'll show you how to set up your Mac and iOS devices to use iCloud, how to sync your apps and data, and how easy it is to back up your documents to the web. You'll soon see that MobileMe's demise really was the iCloud with a silver lining.

Whether you're moving an existing MobileMe account to iCloud or setting it up for the first time, Apple has applied its trademark logic to the process to make it as simple as possible.

The most important step you need to take is to make sure all of your devices are up to date and running the most recent versions of each headline app. Here we'll walk you through the process, step by step.

Update your Mac

To take advantage of all of iCloud's features you need to be running OS X Lion. This is now well bedded in and although some older machines appear to run a little slower than they did under Snow Leopard, it's generally proved to be fault free and enjoys good compatibility with existing third-party hardware and software.

iCloud requires Lion version 10.7.2 or later, which is the version currently being shipped through the App Store (£21). If you upgraded to Lion when it shipped back in July and haven't touched it since then, run Software Update now to downloaded the latest revision before going any further.

Lion only works on Macs running on an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, i5 or i7, or Xeon processor. That precludes the earliest Intel Macs and anything running a PowerPC processor.

It requires a minimum of 2GB of RAM, 7GB of hard drive space and Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. This was the first version of the OS released via the Mac App Store, through which the 4GB installer must be downloaded.

If you're on a capped broadband deal or you don't have broadband, then all is not lost. Head for a bricks-and-mortar Apple Store if you have one within reasonable driving distance and download it there using the free Wi-Fi.

Alternatively, order the £55 OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive from http://store.apple.com/uk/product/ MD256Z/A. It's over twice the price of the downloaded edition, but it does come on one of the best-looking thumb drives we've ever seen.

Update iPhoto/Aperture

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The Compaq Presario CQ57-366SA won't win any awards for its looks, but does offer the things we look for in a budget machine. It's solid with a decent screen and great speakers, and the sort of internal specifications we'd expect at this price.

However, even though this is a budget machine, we'd still appreciate something a little nicer to look at.

The Compaq is a solid black brick seemingly devoid of colours, shades or textures. It's boring and uninspired but, as mentioned above, solidly built – with only a small amount of flex detectable around the chassis.

We were also pleased to discover that it's not as heavy as it looks, but it isn't the lightest at 2.5kg.

Leaving the aesthetics behind, usability is perfectly acceptable. The keyboard has wide buttons and a good depth of travel but, despite the amount of space on the chassis, feels cramped. There's no numeric keypad or quick-access hotkeys to be found, but, like most laptops, you can alter volume and media playback by holding down the Function key and using the F-keys.

While the touchpad is responsive, it's also the exact same shade of black as the rest of the chassis and therefore wonderfully camouflaged.

Where the Compaq picks up again is with the screen. It's got a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, meaning you can enjoy 720p HD videos – although the full 1080p experience is out of reach. We found that although the screen was very bright, it wasn't as sharp as we've seen elsewhere. The Super-TFT coating helps, but ultimately we'd pick this for working on documents rather than watching Avatar.

Having said that, the Altec Lansing speakers are very good indeed – so we'd definitely be listening to music while we worked.

£350 won't buy you the greatest components on the market, but the basic user will find everything they require here. The first-generation Intel Core i3 processor is backed up by a capable 4GB of RAM and a standard integrated graphics chip that will handle video streaming from iPlayer or YouTube but stops short of advanced editing suites.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater '05: 184 minutes
Cinebench: 7839
3DMark 2006: 1464

There's a DVD rewriter and a standard 320GB hard drive for storing programs and media.

Better battery

Pleasantly surprising was the 184-minute battery life the Presario posted on our benchmarking tests. It's good to see budget laptops lasting more than three hours and, with careful usage, we reckon you could squeeze even more out.

The only noticeable omission in terms of connectivity is the lack of an HDMI port for connecting to a high-definition external monitor or TV. You'll have to make do with the standard VGA Out connection or buy an adapter for one of the three USB ports.

There's an SD Card expansion slot and an Ethernet port in case you don't want to use the 802.11n Wi-Fi connection to access the internet.

The Compaq Presario CQ57- 366SA is a perfectly acceptable budget laptop, with special mention going to the battery life and speaker system. It doesn't look, or perform, like a standout laptop and there are alternatives – such as the Acer Aspire 5742 – but if you're searching for a basic machine for the next year or two this is a good pick.

It's a good week for anyone who's been thinking of upgrading the graphics in their PCs.

AMD has unleashed its new Radeon HD 7950 chip on the world, and what Sapphire has created with it is nothing short of stunning. In fact, we reckon it's possibly the only high-end graphics card worth buying.

Also through the TechRadar labs have been several laptops and TVs and an interesting new designer camera from Pentax.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 review

As good as the reference version of the AMD Radeon HD 7950 is, the Sapphire HD 7950 OverClock edition is just better. In fact, we think it's the best graphics card on the planet right now, offering as it does a potent mix of performance and a pleasant price. The raw performance of the HD 7950 is a known quantity now, as is its overclocking potential, and with the Sapphire backing it's an even better GPU. There's also the power-saving goodness of the AMD ZeroCore Power technology which turns off most of the GPU when it's not needed. Quite simply this is the only card we'd consider spending cash on if we were looking for a serious GPU upgrade.

Toshiba 32RL858B review

The Toshiba 32RL858 is one of those TVs where you find yourself forever double checking that its price is really as low as you thought it was. After all, it offers online smart TV functionality, a Freeview HD tuner, a Full HD resolution, DLNA and USB file playback, Edge LED lighting and even 100HZ processing, despite costing under £400. Toshiba has been quietly but surely making the budget end of the TV world its own in recent years, and the 32RL858 is a perfect example of just how much Toshiba has learned, and why the brand is now hard to beat for anyone on the hunt for a good TV for not much cash.

HP DM4 Beats Edition review

The HP dm4-3000sa is a capable portable laptop for those who want style while they're on the move. Admittedly, it's not packed with power - HP has bundled a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-2450M processor, a 500GB SATA hard drive and 4GB of memory with space for two more sticks if you fancy an upgrade - and there are lighter machines for the money, but the Beats credentials give it the street cred to attract students and younger users. Anyone who does invest will be rewarded with a solid performer capable of work and play on the move, but those with demanding needs will want to look at portables backed up by a bit more grunt.

Hands on: Pentax K-01 review

The Pentax K-01 is clearly an attempt by Pentax to stand out from the wide variety of options that are now available in the ever expanding compact system camera market. It seems unlikely that the company would ever be able to take on the marketing might of existing giants such as Panasonic, Sony, Nikon and Olympus, so it needs to do something to create waves. That's exactly what the K-01 achieves. Whether or not those waves are for the right reason, is difficult to tell.

Packard Bell EasyNote TS11 review

There's no doubt that the EasyNote TS11 is a friendly machine. From its decorative pattern, to the social networking hotkey, this seems
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