Tech Eye: Damn you, bright new things

Unlike Madonna, we are growing old with dignity, so we know it's always best to hedge our bets when some newfangled format threatens to usurp its aging rival. However, we must admit, like all aspects of our wretched life, we have only learned through the bitterest of mistakes.

Take videos, for example. No sooner had we bet the whole house on the success of the superior Betamax format than VHS muscled its way into the market, and condemned us to years of watching the same 10 videos repeatedly. And when Minidisc came in we immediately burned all our CDs, convinced we had the format of the future. Oh, how we gnashed our teeth at that particular folly, especially as the error messages on our cheaply made Minidiscs started popping up quicker than evangelists when an apocalypse is nigh. And no sooner had we restocked on fancy-schmansy VHS videos than DVDs came in and ruined us yet again, both financially and socially (the only person to invite us around to swap videos now is Mel Gibson - even we wouldn't sink that low, and the only good violent stuff he has is The Passion).

So this new gizmo from Denon, the craftily-titled D-F103 DAB, has thrown a bit of a security blanket round our format-ravaged shoulders. Yes it has a CD player, but this is largely just for ripping tracks onto the hi-fi's 40GB hard drive. It also packs in internet radio beside DAB, FM and AM on the function dial. It's got plenty of inputs for USB connectivity for further online adventures and it will cost you around zł.5,600.