Santa Banter

Ho, ho, ho, boys and girls, only three months left until Christmas and Tatung is already making free with silly publicity photographs. Can Santa grow a beard by Christmas?

What we want you to do is put words into Mother Christmas's mouth or a caption to the picture, and send it to PCN at Evelyn House, 62 Oxford Street, London W1A 2HG. The finest example of sparkling wit wins £20 in this Laughline competition - we'll announce the winner in issue 81.

Switched On To Innovation

Here it is at last, the ultimate computer peripheral. Computerworld has just launched a reset-switch box for the Spectrum, Oric/Atmos and Electron.

This mind-blowing bit of kit, which features a plastic ABS box with a superior on/off switch, saves wear and tear on the power plug of these machines. One special feature is its availability in three different colours, red, black and white, to allow tasteful matching to your machine.

The most amazing thing about the reset-switch box is the price, a snip at £4.49.

PCN thought it should be easy to design a cheaper, do-it-yourself version so here goes. It consists of a switch. It's that easy. A variety of these are available, but it should be possible to pick one up at the nearest Woolworth store for a modest sum (certainly under £2). The best kind is one with screw connections so you don't have to do any of that nasty dirty soldering.

Next Week

Hands Up
How small can micros go? We have the answer, with Pro-Tests of hand-held micros from Casio and Psion.

Two's Complement
Ashton-Tate's dBase III gets the twice-over in this review.

C64 And More
We show you how to order your Commodore 64 about with this survey of available commands.

Gameplay
Reviews of the latest games for the Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC464.

Programs
Another nail in the coffin of the old English pub - we offer you dominoes on the Spectrum.