I would need to get a PC so I could use it in tandem and move files around.”
HP Jornada 420, pounds 400, stockists on 0990 474747. ” It’s easy to use – I was messing about on it without using the manual. The calendar is better than a paper diary, and I love being able to fax and e-mail directly from it The only problem is that it isn’t Mac-compatible. Tested by script editor Gina Anderson, 34, who is more used to a Smythson diary and Gucci notebook.

Phenom Express H220 Handheld PC, pounds 599, information 0870 607 5544. But how practical are they for sorting the chaos of your everyday life? We asked six people, ranging from the experienced user to the complete novice, to try out six different electronic organisers for a week … They claim to be as useful as the all-conquering Filofax, as well as offering lots more features. Given the huge outlay required to develop a cutting-edge computer game, can publishers make their money back if a game is only aimed at over-18s? And with kids usually more computer- literate than their parents, can parents be sure that their offspring won’t find a way to play the game anyway? Of course, the arguments are the same as the ones over video censorship, but when a video game was tentatively mentioned in connection with the Colorado school massacre, it’s hard to brush the copycat scenario away.Back to Xatrix, however, which has put together a game which is bloody but exciting, and has a remarkable look to it. The idea that video games are just for kids disappeared when Sony promoted its PlayStation by putting consoles in nightclubs, but the image is still of an industry ruled by Mario and Sonic, with children being the most important customer. Not, then, for kids.Of course, there will be editorial written about how this will corrupt the youth of today, but, extreme though it is, it is no more violent than the average Tarantino movie.

It is set in an underworld which is brutally realistic in its use of language, realistically brutal in its deployment of gore, and with a multiplayer option which is named “gangbang”. And, more recently, the inclusion of a developing plotline and persuasive characterisation have put Half-Life on the top of the pile.
So what was left to games developer Xatrix to take things a stage further? Its new game Kingpin – due out next month at pounds 39.99 – is certain to court controversy. Once the 3-D engine which runs the game had been established, there was huge potential, and developers exploited it: after the Nazis of Wolfenstein came the monsters of Doom and Quake. From the early days of Wolfenstein, the immersive atmospherics of the 3-D game – where the lower part of the screen is busy with the image of your right hand clutching one of a series of deadly weapons as you rush through an increasingly complex environment – have been compelling. The first-person viewpoint has been one of the most important additions to video games in the Nineties. games.Kingpin. Or, in 1982, when the gormless “One Step Further” came in at an uncertain seventh place, and the then editor of Smash Hits, one Neil Tennant, declared, “That’s definitely not the last we’ve heard of Bardo.” These days, of course, there’s little scope for such embarrassment, as British entries are overseen by Jonathan “Una Paloma Blanca” King.