Welcome to our blog!
Technical reviews of Computer, PC, Networking and PC Gaming, products, accessories!
Get The Facts, and reviews from people have used them!
Samsung has been nipping at the heels of Apple lately, first with a new lineup of Galaxy Tab's, and now with an official competitor to the Macbook air. The new Samsung 9 Series not only matches Apple on form factor, but manages to pack in a more modern Core i3 380UM processor, while still matching them with 2GB of ram and a 64GB SSD.
Other features of note include a backlit keyboard, 3 USB ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. At 2.31 pounds and up to 7 hours of battery life, it's certainly worth looking at if you're on the market for a new netbook without the sacrifices. It comes in at a slightly higher price than Apple's flagship ultra-portable, but is fairly reasonable when you consider that it has a more powerful CPU, ohh and it runs Windows!
With Intel integrated 3000 IGP graphics we doubt you'll be playing Crysis 2 on it, but you should be able to crush spreadsheet like its nobodies business.
Crysis 2 has been taking quite a bit of heat around the web for a perceived lack of PC polish, and while much of this criticism is unjustified, the release of a new patch tomorrow should help bridge the gap for offended enthusiasts. According to a German website (and now confirmed by Crytek), DirectX 11 support is being patched in as of tomorrow, along with a new "Advanced Graphics menu" for those who like to tweak the special effects for maximum performance.
Crysis 2 did a pretty amazing job of showing us what is still possible in DirectX9, but lets face it, if your GPU supports tessellation, you're probably an enthusiast who isn't known for being particularly reasonable about your demands, and that's why we love you!
If you were looking for a DirectX 11 killer app this just might be it. You can call it a console port if you like, but this latest update will ensure Crysis 2 will be making PC's across the globe groan for years to come.
We all know competition is great for consumers, but AMD appears to be jonesing for an all an all-out war with Nvidia over the title "World's Fastest Graphics Card". Both companies recently released dual GPU masterpieces, but both AMD and Nvidia are laying claim to crown, and AMD's Public Relations Manager Dave Erskine is asking them to prove it. With reference to the AMD Radeon HD 6990 Erskine claims it was "designed to be a game-changer", and they can back this up with benchmarks.
"Yesterday our competitor also issued a press release, announcing the launch of what they claim to be the "World's Fastest Graphics Card"– the Nvidia GTX 590. We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX® 11 benchmark from FutureMark."
"So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don't just say it."
Those are definitely fighting words, a while we are hesitate to pick a side, we feel compelled to point out our review did give the slight edge to AMD, at least using the drivers available to us at launch. Given how narrow the victory was however, we would respectfully like to abstain from expressing an opinion in a debate that is only slightly less controversial than cats vs. dogs.
Given that these cards are likely to trade title of "World's Fastest" simply through driver revisions in the coming months, your still better to buy from your preferred vendor, and leave the hair splitting to the marketing guys.
Is AMD justified in calling out Nvidia on its claim? Or is this an attempt at free marketing at its finest?
The much anticipated Google Music service is said to have been delayed due to Google's demand for cloud music rights for songs purchased through its service. But as it now turns out, Google is not the only company interested in cloud rights for media content. According to a Cnet report, Amazon is also holding similar discussions with content owners from both the film and music industries. Meanwhile, a separate report claims that Apple too is working on a cloud-based digital locker service of its own.
The largest e-tailer in the United States is planning an online digital locker service for music, films and books purchased from its site, as per Cnet' sources. If these sources are to be believed, Amazon's new service could even cover content not bought from it.
Apple is also rumored to be pursuing a similar strategy by working on a music streaming and storage service, quite simply, called "Locker," which, according to The Music Void, already has the backing of Warner.
With the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple pressing media content owners to bundle cloud rights with their content, it is more a question of when and how, rather than if, this request will be granted.
Unsurprisingly, the B810 is by far Intel's cheapest Sandy Bridge processor with a 1000-unit price of $86 per CPU. The 1.6GHz processor has 2MB of L3 cache and a maximum TDP of 35W. However, as you'd expect, the dual-core processor lacks a lot of features common to many of the second-gen Core processors, including Turbo Boost, Hyper Threading and Quick Sync Video.
We like to think that a podcast is like a fine whiskey--it only gets better with age. Which is good, because Episode #170 has been aging in a single barrel since last Friday, flavors becoming subtler and more sophisticated by the day.
Alright, that was a bad metaphor, we're sorry. To make amends, have this; 78 minutes of tech talk about OCZ's aquisition of Indilinx, Chrome Netbooks, Planescape Torment and more.
Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are not standing by.
As Amber promised in last week's Photo Awesome, we're back with Samsungs six panel display and we've downloaded a couple killer titles to boot. Ever wonder what your favorite games look like in glorious 5670 x 2160? Check out the video below to find out.
With everyone's lives on display via services like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, it's gotten to the point where it's getting hard to find anything new to talk about. Fortunately, TED, our Cool Site of the Week, plays host to enough intriguing content that after one visit, you'll never be at a loss for a topic to jaw about again.
TED--which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design--is many things to many people. Started in 1984, TED aspires to bring together the brightest minds in each of these three fields in the hopes that their shared intellect and knowledge will spark new research, ways of thinking and partnerships that will drive our species forward. In the decades since TED has evolved, welcoming brilliant minds from any number of disciplines from around the world to talk, teach and wow conference attendees, and via the internet, anyone that visits the TED website.
Access to TED's extensive library of videos is free, which is a good thing, as watching one or two of the site's offerings will lead to hours spent hip-deep in the minds of some of the world's greatest thinker, artists and humanitarians. No matter what your areas of interest are, TED will have something for you, that'll get you thinking, talking, and perhaps even inspired into doing like no other site on the web today. Oh and for all you who insist upon rocking an iOS device? TED's video offerings will work for you too. Trust us--we were as shocked as you are.
Be sure to check in next Friday for another Cool Site of the Week.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution looks good. Really, really good. And though other less innovative FPS games will fuel our gamer fire until its August release, we've got videos to swoon over. The video below showcases the very nature of Deus Ex and why we grew to love it in the first place--you can choose many ways to attack any given scenario. As proof, check out a this video showing off a level from the actual game, approached three different ways.
If aesthetics were our chief consideration, Patriot Memory's PBO Core would take the prize. Nixeus and Western Digital wrap their devices with copious amounts of cheap plastic; Patriot utilizes elegant brushed aluminum. And despite this media player's petite dimensions, it's large enough to accommodate an internal 2.5-inch hard drive.
But in a market this crowded, a media player needs more than style points to deserve our higher accolades, and Patriot needs to try harder. If you need additional storage, the PBO Core features the typical front and rear USB 2.0 ports. And like the Fusion HD, this device provides a USB Mini-B port for rapid file transfers from a host PC. The rear panel has an HDMI 1.3 port, an optical digital-audio output, analog stereo RCA outs, and a composite video output. There is no component video and no coaxial digital-audio output. The box connects to your network via either hardwired Ethernet (10/100Mb/s) or an optional USB Wi-Fi adapter.
Patriot's PBO Core is quite pretty and very inexpensive, but the Fusion HD is a better value and the WD TV Live Hub includes Netflix support.
The PBO Core's USB ports don't support a keyboard or mouse, so you'll need to rely on Patriot's above-average remote control and quirky virtual keyboard for any data-entry chores. The onscreen keyboard is particularly annoying because it doesn't display the password characters you're entering, even for a fraction of a second. On the upside, this was the only streamer of the three that is equipped with a parental-controls feature that enables you to restrict access to the box. Patriot was also the only vendor to put an HDMI cable in the box, so that you'll have everything you need to integrate the device into your entertainment center when you bring it home.
The PBO Core supports more container formats than the Fusion HD and the WD TV Live Hub, including RealMedia and RealMedia Variable Bitrate, but it has more than a few shortcomings in other areas. It's not DLNA certified, for instance, it doesn't support Flash or Silverlight, and it can't pass through Dolby Digital TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio bitstreams to its HDMI port. And like the Fusion HD, the PBO Core relies on PlayOn to stream video from Hulu and Netflix.
You'd have a hard time arguing that any company is more active in the solid state drive space than OCZ. In addition to a dizzying number of SATA-based SSD lines, OCZ also offers SSD options in USB 3.0, HDSL (High Speed Data Link), and PCI-Express, covering just about all the bases. It's easy to believe, then, that OCZ just shipped its one millionth SSD, and as far as we know, they're the only company to have done so.
"Solid state drives continue to represent a game-changing technology for both consumers and enterprise clients, and we are proud to achieve this milestone," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ. "But most of all, I wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all of our loyal customers and partners, without whom this success would not be possible."
Where things go from here will be interesting to watch. OCZ just recently acquired Indilinx, makers of the popular Barefoot controller and a direct competitor to SandForce, whose controllers drive many of OCZ's SSDs. OCZ said it will continue to utilize SandForce controllers in some of its upcoming SSDs, but it stands to reason that at some point, OCZ will want to rely on its own controllers rather than outsourcing.
After quite a lot of waiting, there are signs that Google Music could finally be preparing to launch. Cnet is reporting that the music streaming service is undergoing internal testing at Google. But insiders say that the service is still missing one essential component: the music.
Google had been working quietly with record labels to secure the necessary rights. We had previously heard that Google Music was being slated for a late 2010 release. That obviously didn't happen. There are also rumors that Google had intended to demo the service at SXSW last week. So what's going wrong?
Google is seeking cloud distribution licenses for tunes, which is different from most record industry deals. The complexity of the negotiations is the main reason for the delay. How long do you think it will take to see Google Music go live?
Here's a treat for you PC purists that, come hell or high water, you wouldn't be caught dead with an Apple device. If you fall into that camp, the only thing to do with an Apple product, should one land in your hands, is destroy it. That's what an online tax firm did, and you can watch in ultra slow motion a white bezel iPad 2 tablet being obliterated by a shotgun blast.
You might recall that FreeTaxUSA did the same thing to the iPad 1, and destroying Apple products isn't anything new. If you enjoyed the above video and can't get enough Cupertino carnage, work your way through the following videos:
Online streaming behemoth Netflix has benefitted handsomely from its deal with Starz for exclusive content, but according to the Washington Post, that relationship might be on the skids. Starz has announced that beginning this summer, new first-run series (and later movies) will only be available on Netflix 90 days after it airs. This is a change from the current set up wherein many Starz programs were available for streaming immediately.
This is part of a larger trend that sees the content holders pulling back from Netflix, who they increasingly see as a competitor. In some ways, you can't blame them. Netflix has inked a deal to produce its own content in the coming months. Showtime has also indicated that it will be removing some back catalog material from Netflix this summer.
It's an interesting time for Netflix. They must prove to the market that consumers will stick with the service long term. If they can become indispensible, content owners might have to go with the flow. What do you think the Netflix streaming collection will look like in the coming years?
A few weeks back, Google let it be known that in-app billing was coming to the platform. Now, the Big G is letting developers take a closer look at the system during a closed test. App devs will be able to upload in-app content and set a price for testing the system. Google says it will work for the developers just like it will for users when the service launches.
Apple's iOS platform has had in-app content purchases for over a year now, and developers have found it to be very lucrative. This can be an efficient way to offer a free app while still making a profit. Currently, many Android apps have companion apps in the Market that simply add new functionality to the original app. Presumably, the in-app purchase system will eliminate this confusing practice.
These in-developement apps testing the feature won't go live on the Market for everyone, but it shouldn't be long. The full in-app purchase system is expected to go live next week. How do you think this will affect the Android platform?
Asus is calling its new Eee Pad Transformer "an innovative tablet with an expandable keyboard dock," but could this also be the netbook evolved? A physical keyboard isn't something that comes with any other major tablet, however it sits front and center on the Eee Pad Transformer, when you want it to. When you don't, simply detach the head and you're rocking a portable tablet PC with up to 9.5 hours of battery life (up to 16 hours with the dock).
Let's take a look at the feature-set. The Eee Pad Transformer sports a 10.1-inch IPS panel with LED backlighting (1280x800 resolution), 10 finger multi-touch support, scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass, Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, 1GB of memory, 16GB/32GB of storage plus unlimited Asus WebStorage, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 1.2MP front-facing camera, 5MP rear-facing camera with auto focus, microSD card slot, internal microphone, headphone and mic jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, G-Sensor, Light Sensor, Gyroscope, E-compass, GPS, and an optional 3G radio.
All this comes wrapped in Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) platform with Asus' Waveshare UI. By all means, Asus has come out swinging. Looking at the spec sheet alone, the Eee Pad Transformer is portable, it's powerful, and it transforms into a netbook on the fly.
Asus said the first shipments are already underway, but didn't reveal a price or release date. Bummer.
AT&T has agreed to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion. You already know this, and you also know that Sprint is vehemently opposed to the deal. Verizon is so far indifferent, or at least that's the face they're putting on publicly. What we don't know yet is how the FCC is going to react to the proposed acquisition, and that's what the deal ultimately hinges on. If recent comments made by an FCC official are any indication, AT&T's legal team has their work cut out for them.
Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, an FCC official said, "There's no way the [FCC] chairman's office rubber-stamps this transaction. It will be a steep climb to say the least."
The un-named official, who wouldn't comment on the record, pointed out that the FCC hasn't begun to formally evaluate the merger, and even though there's some initial skepticism, it's not necessarily indicative of a final ruling. As the Wall Street Journal mentions, former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said "the hurdle...will be high" for a proposed merger between Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio back in 2007. The FCC approved the deal a year later.
"We understand that Congress, the DOJ, the FCC, as well as wireless consumers will have questions about the transaction. We look forward to answering and addressing those questions," said ATUT spokesman Michael Balmoris. "We are confident the facts will demonstrate that the deal is in the public interest and that competition will continue to flourish."
Gaming peripheral maker Razer announced this week the opening of the Razer Austin Technical Research Center. If U.S. geography's not your strong suit, that's Texas. Razer says it hopes to bring together some of the most talented technical researchers and designers in the world to Texas, where they will be in charge of creating new technologies to alter not just the gaming landscape, but consumer electronics as well.
"It really made sense to develop a technical research center in the heart of what people are calling the Silicon Hills," said Min-Liang Tan, CEO and Creative Director, Razer. "We are moving full speed ahead to change the gaming space via a collaborative effort to focus even more on our intricate and high-quality designs, such as our recently announced Razer Switchblade. We intend to bring on only the best and most ambitious team members to help make the new research center a place where dreams and new technologies come true."
Razer already operates design labs and offices in Singapore and San Francisco. The Austin facility will include a technology lab for creating new concept vehicles and technology demos, as well as focus on Human Interface Design.
Our apologies if you just sprayed your monitor with Starbucks and spit. That was our reaction too, once we learned that this wasn't an April Fool's prank, but an actual number record labels came up with when asked to estimate the damages Limewire should be held liable for. Their answer was $400 billion on the conservative side, and as much as $75 trillion on the high end. What did Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood have to say about these numbers?
Wood called the figures "absurd" and "untenable," while further pointing out that "if plaintiffs were able to pursue a statutory damage theory predicated on the number of direct infringes per work, defendants' damages could reach into the trillions. As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877.'"
As CrunchGear points out, it's also more than the entire world's GDP, yet record labels had the audacity to ask for it anyway.
"We were pleased that the judge followed both the law and the logic in reaching the conclusion that she did," said Limewire's attorney, Joseph Baio of Willkie Farr & Gallagher. "As the judge said in her opinion, when the copyright law was initiated, legislatures couldn't possibly conceive of what the world would become with the Internet. As such, you couldn't use legislative history. Instead, the overarching issue is reasonableness in order to avoid absurd and possibly unconstitutional outcome."
Kudos to Wood for effectively calling the record labels out.
Google became an open source champion of sorts when it introduced its Android platform to the world. The search giant then took it a step further by mostly turning a blind eye to third party developers who saw fit to hack the OS and build their own custom ROMs. Now we're hearing that Google is restricting access to Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), shunning developers who don't have a special agreement in place to build tablets around Honeycomb. The ones that get the nod are mostly large corporations, like Motorola. What gives?
According to MobileBurn.com, the reason for this is that Google doesn't feel Android 3.0 is quite ready for outside developers to play with. Because Honeycomb was built from the ground up for tablets, Google also doesn't feel it should be hacked and molded for smartphones, which third party developers would surely try and do.
"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," explains Andy Rubin, vice president of engineering at Google. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."
The shortcut means smaller developers and low-key manufacturers will have to wait, lest Google make the code public. If it did that, Google would have no way of stopping developers from putting Honeycomb on a number of devices, including smartphones, and the concern there is that it could translate into a bad user experience, Rubin says.
Looking to replace your janky rear-projection HDTV? There are plenty of options to wade through if you're in the market for a new TV set, including four new models that Sharp has just begun shipping. These all fall under Sharp's LE830 Series Aquos Quattron LED LCD line, which it introduced earlier this year at CES.
These include 40-inch, 46-inch, 52-inch, and 60-inch models, all of which sport Sharp's proprietary edge-lit LED X-Gen LCD panels and Quattron quad-pixel technology for a supposedly wider color palette. The new models also boast built-in Wi-Fi so you can stream content from the Internet, both through your TV and your home network.
Pricing for the new models has been set to $1,300 (LC-40LE830U), $1,500 (LC-46LE830U), $1,900 (LC-52LE830U), and $2,800 (LC-60LE830U).
It's been a little while since we checked in with Yanko Design, a "Web magazine dedicated to introducing the best modern international design." The conceptual inventions we run across are sometimes fantastic and at other times fantastically ill-conceived. One of the latest additions to Yanko Design's site is a Digital Neck Pillow designed by Jung Hwan Song and Joo Young You. How would you rank this one?
Before you answer that question, let's look at what it does:
"The frequent traveler knows having the right accessories can keep a trip from becoming a disaster. Neck pillows are notorious for promising more than they deliver," Yanko Design explains. " However something high-tech like the Digital Neck Pillow is worth exploring. It's supposed to be soft and temperature controlled and with gimmicks like an integrated MP3 player and digital sunglasses. Perfect to keep you entertained or lull you to sleep."
There's very little in the way of explaining how it all works, but it appears the shades beam images to help you fall asleep. Maybe sheep jumping over a fence, or perhaps one of Adam Sandler's modern day comedies.
Acer wants to be a major player in the emerging tablet market, which will require capable devices, tantalizing price points, and carrier support. The company is ahead of the game on that latter bit, with AT&T announcing plans to carry Acer's Iconia Tab A501 4G tablet later this year. When the dust settles, Acer hopes to have grabbed a 10 percent share of the tablet market.
In terms of units shipped, Acer is aiming to offload between 5 million and 7 million tablets in 2011, DigiTimes reports. Acer will look to get off to a good start with its above mentioned Iconia tablet. It's a 10.1-slate with a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 providing the horsepower and Android's 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS making up the dashboard. The Iconia Tab A501 is slated to ship in the second quarter of this year.
Acer will have its work cut out for it if it's to meet its ambitious goal. The Iconia in particular will be going up against the iPad 2, Samsung's redesigned, ultra-slim Galaxy Tab 10.1, RIM's Playbook, and HP's TouchPad, to name just a few of the more popular options. If Acer's to succeed in capturing a 10 percent share of the market, it will probably have to undercut the competition in terms of price.
Samsung has been nipping at the heels of Apple lately, first with a new lineup of 
Crysis 2 has been taking quite a bit of heat around the web for a perceived lack of PC polish, and while much of this criticism is unjustified, the release of a new patch tomorrow should help bridge the gap for offended enthusiasts. According to a 
We all know competition is great for consumers, but AMD appears to be jonesing for an all an all-out war with Nvidia over the title "World's Fastest Graphics Card". Both companies recently released dual GPU masterpieces, but both AMD and Nvidia are laying claim to crown, and AMD's Public Relations Manager Dave Erskine is 
The much anticipated Google Music service is said to have been delayed due to Google's demand for cloud music rights for songs purchased through its service. But as it now turns out, Google is not the only company interested in cloud rights for media content. According to a 
The first notebooks featuring the latest, Sandy Bridge-based Intel Core processors are already out there. While the Sandy Bridge architecture clearly seems to be restricted to mid- to high-end notebooks at the moment, that might change pretty soon as 
With everyone's lives on display via services like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, it's gotten to the point where it's getting hard to find anything new to talk about. Fortunately, 
You'd have a hard time arguing that any company is more active in the solid state drive space than OCZ. In addition to a dizzying number of SATA-based SSD lines, OCZ also offers SSD options in USB 3.0, HDSL (High Speed Data Link), and PCI-Express, covering just about all the bases. It's easy to believe, then, that OCZ just shipped its one millionth SSD, and as far as we know, they're the only company to have done so.
After quite a lot of waiting, there are signs that Google Music could finally be preparing to launch. Cnet is reporting that the music streaming service is 
Online streaming behemoth Netflix has benefitted handsomely from its deal with Starz for exclusive content, but according to the Washington Post, that relationship might be on the skids. Starz has announced that beginning this summer, new first-run series (and later movies) will only be available on Netflix 
A few weeks back, Google let it be known that in-app billing was coming to the platform. Now, the Big G is letting developers take a closer look at the system during a 
Asus is 
AT&T has agreed to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion. You already know this, and you also know that Sprint is vehemently opposed to the deal. Verizon is so far indifferent, or at least that's the face they're putting on publicly. What we don't know yet is how the FCC is going to react to the proposed acquisition, and that's what the deal ultimately hinges on. If recent comments made by an FCC official are any indication, AT&T's legal team has their work cut out for them.
Gaming peripheral maker Razer announced this week the opening of the Razer Austin Technical Research Center. If U.S. geography's not your strong suit, that's Texas. Razer says it hopes to bring together some of the most talented technical researchers and designers in the world to Texas, where they will be in charge of creating new technologies to alter not just the gaming landscape, but consumer electronics as well.
Our apologies if you just sprayed your monitor with Starbucks and spit. That was our reaction too, once we learned that this wasn't an April Fool's prank, but an actual number record labels came up with when asked to estimate the damages Limewire should be held liable for. Their answer was $400 billion on the conservative side, and as much as $75 trillion on the high end. What did Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood have to say about these numbers?
Google became an open source champion of sorts when it introduced its Android platform to the world. The search giant then took it a step further by mostly turning a blind eye to third party developers who saw fit to hack the OS and build their own custom ROMs. Now we're hearing that Google is restricting access to Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), shunning developers who don't have a special agreement in place to build tablets around Honeycomb. The ones that get the nod are mostly large corporations, like Motorola. What gives?
Looking to replace your janky rear-projection HDTV? There are plenty of options to wade through if you're in the market for a new TV set, including four new models that Sharp has just 
It's been a little while since we checked in with Yanko Design, a "Web magazine dedicated to introducing the best modern international design." The conceptual inventions we run across are sometimes fantastic and at other times fantastically ill-conceived. One of the latest additions to Yanko Design's site is a Digital Neck Pillow designed by Jung Hwan Song and Joo Young You. How would you rank this one?
Acer wants to be a major player in the emerging tablet market, which will require capable devices, tantalizing price points, and carrier support. The company is ahead of the game on that latter bit, with AT&T announcing plans to carry Acer's Iconia Tab A501 4G tablet later this year. When the dust settles, Acer hopes to have grabbed a 10 percent share of the tablet market.
No comments:
Post a Comment