Smart Box Design has released a special version of Triples to celebrate the upcoming US Election, and it is on special offer as well.

For a limited period, Triples Election Edition will be available for download. This special edition of Triples features all the capture and fun of the original version, but with political party extra features. The game board is enhanced with stars and stripes pieces and includes the political option to play either as a Democratic or Republican. See who wins more often!

Five difficulty levels to keep you challenged and entertained
Play against the computer or your friends
Stunning Hi-Resolution color graphics
Engaging OS 5 enhanced sound effects (5.2 for Sony)
Quick and easy to learn with in-game playing and strategy tips
Includes official rules and winning strategies to improve your game
Tracks your win-loss record per level
Try different scenarios with undo last move
Customizable settings: jumping, capturing, difficulty level and statistics
Perfect for that five-minute break or long commute

Give us your ratings of the current mobile operating systems in order, and if you like feel free to add your reasons why you like or dislike them.

For me, it is 1) Symbian (S60 or UIQ) 2) Palm OS 3) iPhone 4) Windows Mobile 5) Blackberry

The ASUS Eee PC took the world by storm last year and showed that it is possible to build an affordable laptop style device which combines functionality with portability for a couple of hundred pounds. ASUS has recently updated the Eee line, but at a cost which puts it in the same price range as a budget laptop. I loved the Eee PC for a couple of months, but soon found myself less than overjoyed by the small screen and keyboard which both hampered the Eee for serious use. Within a short period of time it ended up back in it's box and subsequently on eBay and was never seen again. I then purchased a full Acer laptop which also found itself back in it's box quite quickly- it was a brilliant piece of kit, but one which was too expensive for my needs. All I need to do with a laptop is write freelance articles and reviews for 247 plus some basic browsing and email collection, so then time came to look at something simpler again. Myself and Neil met up for a coffee one day and I duly spotted the Acer Aspire One in a local electronics retailer- it was priced at only £249 and with a specification including an 8.9 inch TFT bright screen, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of flash memory it looked like good value. Neil spent some time inputting Linux commands to see what exact version of the OS it ran, which caused some concerned looks from the sales assistant whom I presume thought he was hacking into their network. After some time Neil confirmed what version of Linux it was running, I had no clue what he was talking about so bought it anyway.

In The Box

In the very cute and small box you get an AC adaptor, a recovery DVD and a user manual. Not exactly a prolific set of accessories, but they do the job. I have nothing else to say about the extra bits because they are as uninspiring as could be.

First Impressions

This review is actually my first impression of the Aspire One and the keyboard and screen are proving to be a hit already. The screen is perfectly viewable in bright sunlight and the keyboard is also 'much' better than the Eee version. I only use two fingers to type with, despite writing for hours each day, and this style seems to suit the Aspire keyboard set up. Like the Eee, the initial keyboard set up bears no relation at all to the symbols on it but a quick change of settings and reset solved that particular issue. Once changed to UK English (is there really any other kind?:) all of the punctuation and symbols are set up exactly as you would expect on any standard keyboard. There is obviously no Windows key, but the 'home' key is in place for quick switching to the main menu set up. The main menu is very basic with a standard icon set up split into four groups-

CONNECT- Browser (Firefox), Messenger, Email, RSS Reader, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Hotmail

WORK- Writer, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Calendar, Contacts, Calculator, Notes- basically OpenOffice with some extra applications included.

FUN- Media Master, Photo Master, Games (Tetris, Bubble, Puck, LLK Game, SuperTux, Bubble Shooter, Butterfly, Bubble Snooker, Checkers, Mahjong, Volley Balley), Webcam, Paint. As you can see the majority of the games come from Absolutist, and a lot of these are demo titles.

FILES- My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, My Downloads and My Files. These are really just shortcuts with My Files being the main file manager included.

All of the above leaves 3.7GB out of a total user memory of 6.4GB free, so you may wish to remove some programs that are of little use to you.

There is a SETTINGS button at the bottom which includes a couple of curiosities such as '3G/WiMax' which is a possible indication of future improvements to the system. There is no SIM card slot and obviously WiMax is not exactly available yet, so there must be a reason for this setting?

The screen resolution is 1024x600 pixels which makes for a pin sharp display, but may potentially cause some issues with video playback (more on that in part two) and there is a webcam situated just above the screen display which is handy, if not well specified.

All in all, my first two hours with the Aspire have been very positive and the battery is holding up quite well- down to 46% after 2 hours with Wi-Fi enabled which is way above the quoted 'up to 3 hours' battery life. The weight, form factor and general build quality are superb and better than the Eee in almost every respect. This feels like a mini laptop from a hardware perspective and the inclusion of Linux is the only giveaway that it is not a fully fledged Windows unit.

The Atom processor should be slow for some tasks, and despite not being a powerhouse it has so far powered everything along quite nicely. It could be quicker considering the efficiency of the software on board, but this is not a device where speed is of major importance- if it is powerful enough to playback movies and the demands of other multimedia activities I will be more than impressed.

Tomorrow I will look at the multimedia capabilities of the Aspire One and should have some more conclusions regarding battery, general performance and how practical this mini laptop really is...

Clove has some new Aspire One's coming soon with much better specifications than this one, but at the same price.

Have you got talent? Are you passionate about your PDA and have the ability to communicate in a clear and concise fashion?

If you can answer yes to the above questions we would like to hear from you. We are looking for 'good' people to write news articles for the 247 sites.

It doesn't matter what devce you own. If it can be classed as a PDA / Smart mobile device we want to hear from you. If you visit every day and want to contribute and make yourself heard let us know by emailing shaun (at) mailstm.co.uk. There are some good perks to being involved.

The Treo Pro in the spotlight has been posted at the Palm Blog and highlights some of the recent web articles concerning this device- "Love at first sight? Could be. There's certainly some pretty powerful infatuation going on with the Treo Pro, with everybody from The New York Times to the Huffington Post and BoingBoing taking note. One Engadget reader called it "a nicely formed smartphone packed with necessary features for the business folk. And with Windows Mobile on it one can count on it likely having the best compatibility with the business's email." (Another Engadget reader declared "I'd go back to a Palm device for this.")

On TreoCentral, they're weighing both the price and the size, and wind up with a thumbs up: "Wow, I'm pumped. $549 is a great unlocked device price. The size is also great - almost identical to the iPhone 3G, but slightly narrower and slightly thicker." At GQ's Material Interest blog, the headline duly notes "Oh, that's so much better than the Palm Amateur," admiring the Treo Pro's "elegant...and slimmer form factor."

CNET's Crave calls it "enticing," while over at Gizmodo..."

Does anybody really know what smartphone market share is? is new at Mobile Opportunity- "The source is Nielsen Mobile, formerly Telephia. The interesting thing about them is that they do much of the service quality monitoring for the operators, so they have much more direct access to mobile usage information than folks like IDC and Canalys, the people usually quoted for smartphone share.

Wired was focused on Palm's loss of market share, which is indeed striking (but not exactly news). But take a look at the chart again; there are a couple of other items that I think are more newsworthy.

The first surprise is that Nielsen shows Apple in fourth place in smartphone share. That's wildly different from what Canalys, the source usually reported, has been saying (link). Here's how they compare for Q4 2007..."