In Depth: The tech behind London 2012

The man in charge of Acer's London 2012 involvement is sat in front of one of the desktops PCs that the company is providing in the thousands for next year's Olympics, explaining that he would love for his team of engineers to be bored out of their minds when the Games roll around.

"If they are bored then everything is going well," explains Michael Trainor, the project manager for the Acer Olympic Project.

Acer is just one of a group of tech partners for the London games tasked with making sure that everything runs smoothly; for the Taiwanese computer giant that involves preparing, providing and supporting an estimated 13,500 bits of kit over 107 Olympic venues.

The scale of the project is clear, despite there being nearly 250 days until the opening ceremony on 27 July, Acer is already preparing thousands of PCs to hit the eventual total of 11,500 desktops and 1,100 laptops, as well as 900 powerful servers and a variety of monitors.

This work is being done in a secret location in Canary Wharf at the headquarters of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), and the collaboration between the various tech partners has gone well so far.

"There's no room for politics," says Trainor. "The success of the tech team is the only significant thing for everybody involved."

Companies involved include worldwide partners like Atos, Airwave, Omega, Panasonic and Samsung, London 2012 partners that include BT, and official London 2012 supporter Cisco – so no shortage of technology stakeholders.

Acer's servers are at the heart of LOCOG's operation running all key applications from HR right the way through to accreditation and scheduling applications - and the company is providing Gateway games rack and games tower servers and Altos admin rack servers.

But it will be the PCs that garner the most attention, with Acer choosing its Veriton L670G as its standard desktop, which will be powering the specialised Atos software that will keep people across the Olympic venues abreast of what is going on, including commentary teams, other media and athletes.

The PC has been designed to be economical in its power use and, critically, to have a small enough footprint to be ubiquitous without getting in the way.

"Every PC has the same motherboard and the same RAM," adds Trainor, which simplifies the process of repairing and replacing faulty units.

The Athlete's Village will offer up access points to the isolated network, although competitors will also be able to take their own laptops and connect to the internet.

The logistics around an operation this size are fascinating - each sport has its own pod of computer equipment laid out in LOCOG HQ, and when a test event is run from an Olympic Venue it is shifted across and then back to the building.

Athletics has the biggest pod of computers, but every discipline from the Olympics and Paralympics is represented in the testing lab.

When the summer arrives, the computer equipment will be moved to the venues, and when the Paralympics finish it will be up to LOCOG what is done with it.

The technology and infrastructure is monitored from a special technology operations centre (TOC) with banks of people and monitors assembled in front of boards reporting any emergencies with Sev 1 the most critical - something that everyone involved is keen to not occur.

Trainor explains that the computers being used, including the Veriton desktop and the TravelMate laptops, are running with a 1-2 per cent failure rate.

"We can't run the Olympic project like we would any other business," he continues. "The operational requirement over such a large area means we will be doing zero repairs on site.

"If something fails then we will swap out the PC immediately. There is a reparation department within LOCOG."

When TechRadar asks Trainor what worried him most in terms of what could go wrong he professes to be relatively confident for the time being, although ramping up the staffing for the London 2012 period will be the trickiest job.

"We need to go from a relatively small UK operation up to 350 staff, and we are recruiting staff with similar skills to those being sought by other businesses in Canary Wharf," he explains. "And I'm hoping they will be the most bored individuals at the games."

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In Depth: TechRadar's best gear of 2011

TechRadar's best gear of 2011

Every year, we review hundreds of bits of hardware here at TechRadar, and every year the standard gets better and better. The phones get more advanced, the PCs get faster and the TVs get a picture quality we never though possible.

Of course, it can be hard to follow all those reviews, especially when some products get so much hype, but turn out to be disappointing.

Well, we say the best kit always rises to the top, and the list below is definitely the cream of the crop. Our experts selected the products that stood out far above the rest, either because of having top features, excellent quality, a bargain price or all of the above, so you can be sure that this is the best kit of 2011.

Best LCD TV: Philips 46PFL9706H

This Philips set wins out for one very good reason: it produces quite possibly the best 2D pictures we've ever seen from an LCD TV. The Moth Eye filter and direct LED backlighting create an astonishingly good contrast ratio, and the Perfect Pixel HD processing engine helps to create truly beautiful images.

It's smart, too, with plenty of internet-connected features, and 3D support. We should stick in a special mention here for the Samsung UE60D8000, simply for its sheer wow factor. With an almost invisible bezel and impossibly slim form factor, it's as much a work of modern art as it is a television.

Read TechRadar's full Philips 46PFL9706H review

Best plasma TV: Panasonic TX-P55VT30B

Proving that 2011 was a hell of a year for TVs, we not only had the best LCD picture quality ever, but now the best plasma TV ever. This TV sits at the top of Panasonic's range, and it really shows. Images are bright and full of colour, with 3D images a vast improvement over previous plasma models. There's almost no crosstalk (ghosting) at all, meaning you can enjoy visually rich films at their very best.

Read TechRadar's full Panasonic TX-P55VT30B review

Best Blu-ray player: Panasonic DMP-BDT310

This top-of-the-range Panasonic Blu-ray player packs in an extraordinary feature list, including iPhone control, Skype functionality and 2D to 3D conversion, but also manages to produce excellent video performance with 2D or 3D content. And yet, somehow, it's also brilliantly easy to use. It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for and then some with this unit.

Read TechReadar's full Panasonic DMP-BDT310 review

Best compact system camera: Sony Alpha NEX-7

This camera might be pricey and oddly shaped, but its massive pixel count and the best EVF we've seen to date won us over. The tough, lightweight magnesium body helps too, and the manual controls and excellent video quality from the 24-megapixel sensor are ideal for professionals.

It's a close run thing with the Panasonic G3, though, which has an EVF and an articulated touchscreen to help capture images from all sorts of angles.

Read TechRadar's full Sony Alpha NEX-7 review

Best DSLR: Sony Alpha 77

OK, we admit that, strictly speaking, this isn't an SLR, because it has a fixed translucent mirror rather than a standard moving mirror, but to the average user it's the same thing. Well, apart from the fact that it has a phenomenal 12fps maximum continuous shooting rate, full-time autofocus in live view and video mode and an electronic viewfinder (EVF) in place of an optical viewfinder.

The EVF is the same one as in the NEX-7, and it comes as close to an optical unit as we've got yet, but it also shows a range of useful data. The icing on the cake is the A77's 24.3-megapixel sensor, which captures heaps of detail.

Read TechRadar's Hands on: Sony Alpha 77 review

Best compact camera: Canon PowerShot S100

Canon's S95 was one of the most popular compact cameras around, but the company has managed to improve on it with this model, primarily by updating the sensor technology to improve low light performance. Slight modifications to the body also make the S100 much more comfortable to hold and use one-handed that its predecessor, while raw shooting and manual control make this a top all rounder in a small package.

Read TechRadar's full Canon PowerShot S100 review

Best phone: Samsung Galaxy S2

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is here for one simple reason: it absolutely blew away the competition when it was released. It proved that you could have slim good looks and dual-core speed with a big, beautiful screen in one package.

Everything about it works brilliantly, from the obvious, such as the slick interface on the Super AMOLED Plus screen, to the little things, like the speed of the GPS. Samsung raised the bar for mobile phones massively the day the Galaxy S2 came out.

Read TechRadar's full Samsung Galaxy S2 review

Best tablet: Apple iPad 2

The tablet market has grown hugely since the original iPad renewed the world's interest in larger touchscreens, but the iPad 2 was where it really started to grow up. The criticism that tablets were for consumption, rather than creation, were blown away by the combination of dual-core power and apps such as GarageBand, Codify and ArtRage.

The iPad 2 is slicker, thinner and lighter than before, with great apps for absolutely anyone, making it the best tablet out there.

Read TechRadar's full Apple iPad 2 review

Best gaming product: Nintendo 3DS

When the 3DS first arrived, we were massively impressed with the hardware. The analogue Circle Pad feels easy to control, the 3D effect is immediately impressive, and the augmented reality games that are built in really showed off what you could do with the hardware.

But it suffered from a lack of high-quality games for most of 2011, which held it back. Now we've got the likes of Super Mario Land 3D and Mario Kart 7, we're reminded what an engrossing gaming experience the 3DS offers.

Read TechRadar's full Nintendo 3DS review

Best audio product: Atomic Floyd SuperDarts

There are two things you need to know about the SuperDarts: they are really quite expensive; and they sound absolutely amazing. There's no question about it – these headphones are brilliant, and if you can afford them, you should get them. Every nuance and piece of detail in your music will be picked out, and you'll just want to listen to everything anew. Even the Kevlar cables are superb, ensuring that you're not struggling with knots when you want to be listening to your music.

Read TechRadar's full Atomic Floyd SuperDarts review

Best sat nav: TomTom Go Live 825

TomTom already made the best sat-nav devices around, and yet this is even easier to use and more powerful. It's slick and polished in the extreme, with features such as spoken road names and signposting at motorway junctions. There are options for traffic and safety camera updates as well, making this the best sat-nav choice on the market.

Read TechRadar's full TomTom Go Live 825 review

Best ebook reader: Amazon Kindle 4

The latest Amazon Kindle is smaller and lighter than before, but also significantly cheaper. It feels much more mature when it comes to software, and the screen is the best it's ever been. The Kindle Store is still the best place for picking up ebooks, though we will say it's a shame there's no 3G option. That doesn't detract from this being a bona fide bargain.

Read TechRadar's full Amazon Kindle 4 review

More top gear of 2011

Best laptop: Apple MacBook Air 11-inch

The MacBook Air has had an incredible transformation over its life, going from a slower but lighter laptop offering to one of the speediest machines around. With Intel's Sandy Bridge processors powering it and an SSD providing the storage, it comes on from sleep almost instantly, yet offers a huge amount of battery life.

The addition of a Thunderbolt port even means that its relative lack of ports doesn't have to be an issue in the future. This is just an astonishingly fast and polished laptop for its diminutive size and weight.

Read TechRadar's full Apple MacBook Air review

Best desktop PC: Dell Inspiron One 2320

The Dell Inspiron One 2320 is one of the few PCs to really nail the middle ground between computer and media hub. The 23-inch, 1080p screen is great for watching movies on, and it comes with a remote control that lets you get away from the mouse and keyboard.

Conversely, it can also be controlled using its touchscreen. Even the speakers are pretty good for a standard all-in-one PC, and the whole thing can be wall-mounted. It's not a super-powerful gaming powerhouse, but this is a superb home PC for just about any user.

Read TechRadar's full Dell Inspiron One 2320 review

Best printer: HP Photosmart 7510

The Photosmart 7510 wins out here for getting the basics very, very right: it offers stellar printing quality at good speeds. It may not have the most comprehensive feature list, but it's easy to use thanks to it's touchscreen interface, offers double-sided printing and has ePrint and AirPrint functionality. If you want printing done right for a reasonable price, look no further.

Read TechRadar's full HP Photosmart 7510 review

Best processor: Intel Core i5 2500K

Astonishing performance. That's it. That's why the 15 2500K is here. In one move, Intel made its previous range of top-end chips look silly in comparison. It can be overclocked to an astonishing degree, features improved on-board graphics with a blisteringly fast Quick Sync Video feature for encoding video, and all at a mid-range price.

Read TechRadar's full Intel Core i5 2500K review

Best graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 580

You can't argue with raw power, and the GTX 580 has it coming out of every vent. It's the fastest single-GPU card out there, and for those who need to push some serious pixels, there's no better option. The price, admittedly, is a little on the steep side. Okay, quite a lot on the steep side. But for those looking for the best DirectX 11 performance possible, this is the card.

Read TechRadar's full Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 review

Best motherboard: ASRock Z68 Pro 3

This motherboard gets the nod because there's not better value option on the market. It may not be the most friendly for really serious overclockers, and it doesn't support multiple GPUs, but it doesn't skimp on the other high-end features, meaning this is the perfect board to put in a high-performance, low-cost machine.

Read TechRadar's ASRock Z68 Pro 3 review

Best monitor: Asus PA238Q

Normally, when we talk about a monitor with an IPS screen, LED backlighting, HDMI and DisplayPort support, a 100% sRGB gamut and a stand that's adjustable in all directions, we're talking about spending many hundreds of pounds. But this astonishing screen from Asus is just £250. There's been no slacking on the image quality at the price, making this a beautiful monitor that's a true bargain. This is as close to a perfect monitor as we've seen yet.

Read TechRadar's full Asus PA238Q review

Best SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB

The key thing with this SSD is its use of the SandForce SF-2000 controller. Combined with OCZ's flash knowhow, it's capable producing double the speed of earlier drives in this SSD. Only a year ago, you could barely dream of speeds this fast, and though it's true you'll have to pay a big price for the performance, there's no doubting that this is drive to get is speed is your aim.

Read TechRadar's full OCZ Vertex 3 240GB review

Best RAM: G.Skill RipJaws-X 4GB

Though Intel's Sandy Bridge platform has reduced the importance of RAM overclocking, that doesn't mean it's a dead art. These sticks aren't just a bargain at around £50, they're also capable of some serious overclocking. There simply aren't any of the usual trade-offs with this 4GB set, making it the best RAM you can pick up for Sandy Bridge setups right now.

Read TechRadar's full G.Skill RipJaws-X 4GB review

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In Depth: PC tech in 2012: what to expect

PC tech in 2012: what to expect

With 2011 drawing to a close, it's time to look forward to the technological delights heading our way courtesy of the most resilient and consistent innovative computing platform of them all, the trusty old PC.

This time last year, we got it right on Intel's Sandy Bridge and a relatively stagnant year for PC graphics, were let down by AMD's Bulldozer and jumped the gun on tablets and apps.

For 2012, it's looking like the roles are set to reverse for CPUs and GPUs, laptops PCs are going to be better than ever and the tablets will finally make the mainstream. No really, this time it's true.

Not a vintage year for CPUs

The great hope for the end of 2011 and in turn 2012 and onwards was the arrival of AMD's long awaited – almost mythical - Bulldozer chip, otherwise known as the AMD FX processor. It duly arrived and utterly disappointed.

Not long after, Intel unleashed its latest high chip, the Core i7-3960X, and our worst fears were confirmed. Without any competition at the high end, Intel is taking its foot off the gas. The Core i7-3960X is the fastest PC processor on the planet. But it's only a little quicker than Intel's existing Core i7-990X. More to the point, it could have been much faster. Intel has switched off two of the cores.

Intel says that was always the plan. But we've little doubt things would have been different had Bulldozer presented a stiffer challenge. Anyhow, the prospects for a big leap in high end CPU performance in 2012 are pretty much zero.

At first glance, things don't look much better back in the mainstream. Details of Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge generation of 22nm CPUs have been trickling out. The bad news is that neither core count nor clocks are due for a big change. Four cores remains your lot and clock speeds will top out at 3.5GHz nominally and 3.9GHz with a little Turbo action.

However, the shrink to 22nm will also bring a much more powerful integrated graphics core. If nothing else, that should mean Intel's QuickSync video encode engine gets an upgrade and that should mean insanely quick encode times.

As for AMD, well, we can't see anything too exciting on the horizon for desktop PCs. It'll be all about pricing its new Bulldozer processors to make them as competitive as possible.

Graphics glut

If processor power isn't on the up, at least 2012 should be a good year for graphics. AMD's Radeon HD 6 Series GPUs haven't exactly set the world alight. But we're just days away from dishing the dirt on the new 7 Series and it looks very promising indeed.

Admittedly, AMD's new high-end GPU won't be cheap. But it will put downward pressure on the prices of run out 6 Series boards in the first half of 2012. As more affordable 7 Series cards come on steam, your bang for buck will only improve.

Ultrabooks are coming

Grudgingly we must concede that while Apple perhaps didn't invent the ultra-slim, ultra-light notebook computer, it did establish it as the next big in laptop computing. But like so many Apple products, the MacBook Air has never been particularly affordable until relatively recently. But it's still a Mac.

The good news is that 2012 should see the arrival of whole armies of MacBook Air trampling Ultrabooks from the big names in PC manufacturing. Te Ultrabook is an Intel concoction and the idea behind it isn't terribly radical. At its simplest, it's a thin and light laptop PC with solid state storage.

But as prices for SSDs come down and advances in chip manufacturing make desktop performance possible in ultra-compact form factors while extending battery life towards the al-day ideal, the ultrabook adds the final ingredient to the recipe Apple has been simmering with the Air. Affordability.

Intel wants Ultrabooks to top out at $1,000. In the UK that's means something around £800. That's slightly less than the £849 starting price of the Apple MacBook Air. It's also much cheaper than current high-performance thin and light systems such as the Sony Z. For an idea of what an Ultrabook looks like, check out Asus's delightful Zenbook UX21 .

Of course, Intel's major contribution to the Ultrabook sector in 2012 will be mobile processors from the upcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge family. These won't have a huge impact in terms of performance. But at a given performance point, they'll put the kybosh on both prices and power consumption.

By the end of 2012, you'll be able to choose from a wide range of superlight, relatively highperformance laptop PCs that go all day on a single charge and delivering a computing experience that's indistinguishable from most desktop PCs.

Windows 8 makes the PC tablet-friendly

The tablet PC is the idea that just won't die. In fact, last year we prgonosticated 2011 could be the tablet transition happened, what with Intel's Atom maturing and Apple's iPad 2 pushing the basic tablet concept into the mainstream.

Needless to say, it didn't happen. Is there any reason to think 2012 will be any different? Yes, actually, there is. Microsoft is finally taking mobile platforms seriously and the next release of Windows will include a proper touch interface, not the feeble, half baked efforts we've seen up to and including Windows 7.

If that sounds like a familiar refrain involving promises from Microsoft that never make the transition into reality, may we point you in the direction of Windows Phone and its cutting edge Metro UI. This tile-based interface forms the starting point for Windows 8's tablet edition and it's on another level to anything Microsoft has previously achieved. It even makes Apple's iOS look a little old and crusty.

ARM vs x86

Of course, the arrival of Windows 8 also presages the emergence of an even biger question for the future of the PC. Can it survive death by a thousand cuts from a swarm of ARM-powered chips and devices. Moreover, can a PC be a PC without an x86 processor?

The issue here is the arrival of the first version of Windows with support for ARM rather than x86 processors. It would be a bold prediction to suggest Windows on ARM was going to be the next best thing. But it does add to the general momentum towards a blurring between conventional x86 PCs and ultra mobile ARM-powered devices.

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