Amstrad's shock entry in Console entertainment battle It had been widely assumed that the next generation entertainment console war would be a two-horse race between Sony and Microsoft, traditional industry leaders Sega and Nintendo having comprehensively failed to come up with anything remotely interesting. Foxinternet's motoring and cool gadget correspondent can now reveal a shock British challenger in the battle which has been raging between the American and Japanese giants. Yes, Amstrad has brought out a new version of the ZX Spectrum. Seriously. If you don't believe me, go to Dixons and look. The first, rubber keyboard, Spectrum amazed people in the early 1980s with its ability to make annoying bleepy sounds which even now Nokia have been unable to improve upon. Later versions were even more impressive, being essentially the same but with a tape recorder and later a disk drive bolted onto the side. The new version, known as the Amstrad Emailer (the Sinclair and Spectrum trademarks having been abandoned, presumably due to the fact that Sinclair products tended to break even earlier than Amstrad ones) also features a built-in phone and the ability to send and receive email. And now you can download your Spectrum games from the internet instead of having to use a dodgy tape-recorder. But the traditional Spectrum trademark novelty keyboard is still there - this time a tiny, plasticky pull-out mess on a string rather than a big spongy rubber job. Coming in at only half the price of a PS2 and with all the games being free to download, this new cutting-edge games console is destined to be a hit with the new generation of games players who never before had the chance to play such glitchy classics as Jet Set Willy and Monty Mole.