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!
Regional carrier MetroPCS managed to get its 4G LTE network up and running before Verizon, and now they are out the door with the first LTE smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy Indulge pack LTE data and a free copy of Iron Man 2 on the MicroSD card. How nice. Of course, that SD card is phoning home to the carrier, but what could go wrong?
This new "Intelligent" SanDisk SD card is designed to send usage statistics back to MetroPCS. Each time the card is accessed, it will contact the carrier to log the use with a content analytics server. The carrier says this will all be anonymous, but we imagine users will get the creeps should they learn their content consumption is being monitored at all.
MetroPCS says it will use the aggregated data to assess the effectiveness of their content tie-ins. We'd really like some details on what data is being transmitted, and how one could go about stopping it. It might be wise to just swap out that SD card to be safe; unless you really want to watch Iron Man 2 on your phone.
The Next Web is reporting today on a plan in Beijing for the Chinese government to institute a program of tracking the citizenry using their mobile phones. If you think you've figured out why they would do this, you'd apparently be wrong. Officials claim the "Platform for Citizen Movement Information" will be used to monitor traffic flow. Sounds completely reasonable, right?
Whenever one of Beijing's 17 million cell phone users switch on their device, its location as determined by the towers would be fed into a government database. Using dynamic analysis, the staffers will be able to track the flow of population distribution. At launch, the system will not be available for use by average people, but over time the intention is to offer personalized travel reports to commuters.
We don't deny that having real-time population flow could be useful for avoiding traffic jams, but there are plenty of opt-in location services to do this. It just seems a little too convenient that the government would get a huge mountain of location data on citizens'' movements.
Blog host Wordpress.com is one of the world's leading content platforms, but it has been hammered today by a gigantic distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). Wordpress has described the assault as the largest they have ever endured. Unsurprisingly, many sites have been having serious stability issues as a result.
According to Wordpress itself, the DDoS amounted to multiple Gigabits and tens of millions of packets per second bombarding their servers. As for the culprits? No one is sure yet, but the highly coordinated effort indicates political motivation. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has said the attack may be politically motivated; targeting one of the platform's non-English blogs.
Wordpress managed to stop the attacks several hours ago and is currently recovering. Now begins the search for answers. Surely they cannot afford another downtime like this. Presumably they'll be checking to make sure no one sent a threatening letter to Anonymous.
Not just a childish dream, Video Game Testers spend hours trying to perfect - and break - your favorite titles.
The Good: You get to play games for a living! Also, many game producers and designers start their careers in Product Test
The Bad: Your first few projects will likely be mediocre or subpar games. Are you sure you want to spend 140 hours playing Generic Shooter 7??
The Ugly: You may end up on the graveyard shift. You won't make much money. And no one cares about your suggestions for improving the game. Just focus on the bugs, buddy.
We've probably all spent some time entertaining a common childhood geek fantasy of becoming a professional game tester. Who hasn't had the thought, "How cool would it be to get paid to play [insert favorite game franchise here] all day?" While many of us let go of that dream, dismissing it as unrealistic, a select few actually go on to achieve the illustrious title of Game Tester-- and even to make a career out of it. We say "select few" because game testing is an extremely demanding job, one that requires an immense devotion to gaming. There's a saying amongst game testers: "Game testers don't play the games. We break the games."
A Day in the Life
There are a lot of preconceived notions about what it's like to be a game tester, the most prevalent being the idea that you get paid to sit on your ass and play your favorite games all day. Don't we wish. That's actually far from the truth. In fact, most companies refrain from even using the title "Game Tester," preferring to use the term "Quality Assurance Agent," because it's not testing a game; it's testing a product. But c'mon, who dreams about being a Quality Assurance Agent?
A game tester's typical day is relatively straightforward: clock in, play the assigned game, take a lunch, then back to playing an assigned game some more, clock out, and go home. Key word here: assigned. That's right; the games are assigned, not chosen. After all, someone has to test Dora the Explorer. Fortunately, the more sedate games don't usually require a lot of testing, so odds are that you'll be playing some of the bigger titles. Of course by "play" we actually mean "test," which isn't quite so straightforward, and variespretty greatly depending upon the stages of development.
As soon as there's code written, there's testing to be done. Game testers will generally work in small groups, testing tiny snippets of the game under short deadlines. Keith, a game tester for Sega remembers his first week there, "They showed me to a chair with a controller and told me to see if I could make anything weird happen by running around and jumping on things," he said. "I spent the whole day just jumping around. I couldn't even tell what game I was playing since the main character was made up of just a few triangles." While that doesn't seem quite as fun as actually playing video games all day, for a true game tester, the excitement comes from seeing a game progress, from the transition from triangle man to THOR: God of Thunder.
Things get a bit more interesting as development approaches pre-alpha stages. The testing teams get larger and deadlines get a bit longer, because there's so much more to test. This is the part game testers love, playing a level for hours, trying to come up with creative ways to break the game. As Keith puts it, "It's the creative part of the job that I like, getting to spots you're not supposed to go, or killing something that is supposed to be invincible." Of course finding the bugs is only half the battle. Once a bug is found, there is a lot of testing needed to find the minimum requirements necessary to recreate the bug, after which a report is written and submitted to the development team.
It isn't until a game reaches alpha or beta stages that a game tester really gets a feel for the game as a whole. At this point, deadlines can sometimes be weeks long, making it possible to play through the entire game several times to iron out the last of the glitches, grammar mistakes, and oddities.
Every step of the way, the diligent game tester is taking notes on every minute detail and glitch, and writing reports for every bug. While this detailed oriented, paper work part of the gig is probably not quite how you imagined this dream job being you were a kid, for geeks who genuinely enjoy testing, trials, breaking things and watching a game evolve,game testing can be just as rewarding as getting the all-time high score in Halo: Reach.
The Game Tester's Path
If the prospect of becoming a game tester still appeals to you now that you've got an idea about it's really like, you'll probably be happy to know that it's actually not all that difficult to actually make the leap to becoming a game tester. Often times, a high school diploma (with some previous testing experience) will be enough to get a foot in the door. And if you're afraid your friends or family might criticize you for pursuing a pie-in-the-sky dream job, make sure they know that game testing is an entirely legitimate career. As a senior test director, it's possible to have a six digit yearly salary, though climbing that corporate ladder will generally require a four-year degree, working as a game tester also opens doors to other related ventures, such as game design, programming, and marketing.
While the ideal game tester will be perceptive, well organized, and creative, it's crucial to have some previous testing experience- and simply playing a few open betas doesn't count. You need to demonstrate that you can not only find bugs, but can also categorize them and report them in a concise yet detailed manor. The best way to do this is by practicing with limited public alpha and beta versions of upcoming games. Dedicate your time to honing your stills at bug reporting, and document the bugs you help fix. It will look great in an interview when they ask you what you would do if you found a graphical error, and you can pull out a specific example of a report you've submitted before.
It's also very beneficial if you can demonstrate at least a basic understanding of software testing techniques, such as Error Guessing, Boundary Value Analysis, Traceability Matrices, and Equivalence Partitioning. Many applicants may not have heard these terms, which puts you at a huge advantage if you've studied up. The same goes with various development models, like the V-Model, Waterfall Model, and Iterative Model.
It's also likely that you will be given an assessment test as part of the interview. This can often be the most difficult part of the hiring process. It will test your knowledge of various terminologies, testing methods, and testing tools. It also tests things that can't readily be learned, like general perception. The perception test generally consists of an image or video clip where you are asked to take in as much detail as possible. It is then followed by another image or video clip that is nearly identical to the first where you are asked to identify what is different. Practicing this on your own before the test can make a significant difference.
Since game companies look to hire testers in time to get their games ready by the holiday season, later summer and early fall are usually good times to look and apply for positions. Oftengame testers are hired as temps first, partially due to the high turnover rate for testers who don't realize how demanding the job is, but also because the need for testers dies down once the game is complete. Still, if you perform well during your temporary placement, it's not uncommon to be offered a full-time position at the end of your contract. After all, there will be more games to test (and break).
The Start of a Dream Career
Game testing can be an entire career all on its own, or it can be used as a stepping stone to penetrate other aspects of the gaming industry. If you decide to stick with the path of Quality Assurance, you can quick work up the ranks tobecome team leader, up to Project Leader, through Project Manager, all the way up to Senior QA Director, where you'll have a cushy paycheck and fat retirement package.
On the other side of the coin, many people use game testing to make connection that lead to other opportunities. With a bit of programming experience, it's easy to transition into a game programmer position, or if you pay close attention to the steps a game goes through during the pre- and post-production phases; becoming a game producer is also just a small hop away. Becoming a game tester is not justa childhood dream, but can also open the door to just about every aspect of the gaming industry.
What about you? Want to become a game tester? Maybe you already are? Tell us about your experience, or what your dream geek job is, in the comments.
Microsoft and Google are joining forces to hunt down what they believe is a patent troll that goes by the name GeoTag. According to a ZDnet report, GeoTag has sued more than 300 businesses for allegedly infringing on a patent related to geotagging technology. Many of these legal targets also happen to be customers of Bing Maps and Google Maps services.
"The suits have placed a cloud on Plaintiffs' web mapping services, have caused customers to seek relief from the Plaintiffs, and have created a justifiable controversy between Plaintiffs and GeoTag," the filing said.
The twin powers have asked the District Court of Delaware to invalidate U.S. Patent 5,930,474, which is for an "internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information," and are also seeking a "preliminary and permanent injunction" that would prevent GeoTag from suing any more of their mapping service customers.
"In this case, we are seeing two giants who separate their fierce competition in various fields from a common interest in curbing trollish behaviour," said Florian Mueller, founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign.
Do you remember mucking around with Autoexec.bat, Win.ini, and floppy drives, or typing Win from the Windows directory to load Microsoft Windows? Our apologies if you've tucked these memories away in a place you thought they'd never be resurrected, but if you want feel all nostalgic reminiscing on your long journey from DOS to Windows 7, you have to check out this nearly 10 minute YouTube video.
Poser "TheRasteri" attempts to follow an upgrade path through every major version of Windows. To do this, he set up a virtual machine with MS-DOS 5.0 using VMware. The video begins with the narrator explaining that "this is an experiment to test the upgrade facility of Microsoft Windows operating systems" in hopes of "shedding light on how the Windows upgrade process has changed over the years."
Surprsingly enough, the entire upgrade path goes mostly without a hitch, and by the time he got to Windows 7, some legacy applications remained, like Card File, Recorder, Terminal, and Reversi, among others. Pretty impressive that, should you want to, you can upgrade through nearly two decades of Windows OSes.
Time Warner, parent company of Home Box Office (HBO), announced the expansion of its authenticated online video streaming service, HBO Go, to more than 1,400 movies and TV shows. The expanded content essentially doubles HBO Go's catalog, which now includes every episode of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Deadwood, as well as current shows like Boardwalk Empire, Entourage, and True Blood.
"HBO Go is the most robust collection of high quality, exclusive online content," said Eric Kessler, co-President, HBO. "The combination of HBO's linear channels, HBO On Demand, and now the expanded HBO Go gives our subscribers an unmatched value proposition."
HBO Go offers certain HBO subscribers instant access to streaming content at no additional charge. These can be watched on either a PC or Mac via a browser based application. Unfortunately, it's not available to users who subscribe to HBO through DirecTV, and instead is limited to Comcast Infinity TV, Verizon FiOS, Cox Advanced TV, and AT&T U-Verse customers. That's too bad because this has the potential to be awesome, and the Sopranos catalog alone is worth the price of admission.
You were right to think that there's a lot of bad drivers out there. According to a State Farm survey, nearly one in five drivers (19 percent) admitted to surfing the Internet while sitting behind the wheel of an automobile, USA Today reports. These are people who drive at least once a week. In addition, 35 percent said they send or receive text messages while driving, too. The survey pinged 912 licensed drivers in November, but the proportion of dangerous drivers might be even higher.
"That 19 percent might be underestimating the actual use of smartphones to access the Internet while driving, because the majority of the respondents were in the age range of the 30s," says Cindy Garretson, director of auto technology research at State Farm. "The largest uses of cellphones tend to be the younger-age population. We would be very interested to know what that number would be if the focus was on the young adult market."
If it comes as any consolation, the majority of drivers say they only surf and text while stopped a traffic light or are otherwise stopped in traffic. Statistics show that isn't always the case. In 2009, nearly 5,500 people were killed and 448,000 injured in distracted driving crashes. Some 18 percent of the fatalities were the result of using a cellphone rather than paying attention to the road.
So maybe we're exaggerating a little when we say Asus stole our idea for a cardboard case, but for the record, former Maximum PC Associate Editor and current Contributing Writer, David Murphy, beat Asus to the punch by three and a half years. Printed in our October 2007 issue and viewable online here, The Murph went up against Senior Editor Gordon Mah Ung in our $500 PC Build Off challenge, and in an attempt to save a few pennies to apply to other upgrades, Murphy stuck his parts inside a cardboard box and called the abomination a system. If you thought his idea was brilliant, you'll love Asus' motherboard box/case concept.
Starting in June, Asus will begin shipping one of its mini ATX motherboards in a cardboard box that transforms into a makeshift PC case, ZDnet reports. While Jeff Foxworthy fans might end up using it as a permanent home for their parts, Asus says it's intended to serve as a temporary enclosure while enthusiasts shop for the perfect case. The fact that it reduces shipping waste is a bonus.
Asus is literally thinking inside the box with this one, and we have our doubts it will catch on. The bigger concern for worry warts is that it will catch fire, though if your PC is emitting sparks, you're in trouble no matter what. But there's also the ugly aesthetics, lack of protection from spills, pets, and kids from using what amounts to an open air enclosure, and did we mention it's fugly as sin?
What's your take on this concept? Is Asus being novel, or is this one doomed from the start?
The whole Sandy Bridge situation is finally starting to settle down, allowing Intel to put the chipset snafu behind them and move on. So too can OEM system builders, who have been receiving corrected 6-series motherboards since mid-February. That includes Puget, who announced it's now shipping systems using the corrected B3 revision motherboards.
"We are excited to be among the first to provide the corrected product," said Jon Bach, president of Puget Systems. "We have leveraged our great relationship with Intel, Asus, and channel distribution to work quickly on behalf of our customers."
Puget's applying replacement boards across its entire lineup of Sandy Bridge systems, including its Echo, Deluge, Obsidian, Serenity, and Spirit systems, as well as custom builds.
Other system builders have also started shipping corrected boards, and we've also seen a handful of new B3 motherboard announcements from all the major players, including Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI.
Intel's hoping Thunderbolt, the spec formerly known as Light Peak, will change the world. So is Apple, which introduced Thunderbolt with its recently retooled MacBook Pro computers. That's fine and dandy, but AMD doesn't get what all the hoopla is about. After all, what's the point of Thunderbolt if we can get this whole USB 3.0 thing rolling? That's basically how AMD put it, CrunchGear reports.
"Existing standards offer remarkable connectivity and together far exceed the 10Gb/s peak bandwidth of Thunderbolt. These solutions meet and exceed the bandwidth utilization of many peripherals," an AMD spokesperson said.
According to AMD, if given a choice, consumers would rather ride it out with USB rather than futz around with daisy chaining devices to their monitors. On top of that, aren't mini DisplayPorts fast enough already?
"The DisplayPort 1.2 standard offers up to 17Gb/s of peak bandwidth for displays...Many AMD based platforms support USB 3.0 which offers 4.8Gb/s of peak bandwidth, AMD natively supports SATA 6Gb/s with our 8-series chipsets. The total bandwidth stated for a Thunderbolt channel is only 20 percent higher than one PCi Express 3.0 lane and about 52 percent higher than a single USB 3.0 port," AMD's talking head added.
Interesting choice of words, because 52 percent sounds pretty significant to us, though AMD's other points are well taken.
Henry Chow spent more than 40 years at IBM in various positions, including more than a decade as General Manager of IBM's Greater China Group where he was responsible for overseeing IBM's operations in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Now the 65-year-old former GM will spend time on AMD's Board of Directors, the chip maker announced this week.
"Henry's experience and insight gained by overseeing a multi-billion dollar technology business in China are invaluable assets to AMD," said Bruce Claflin, executive chairman, AMD Board of Directors. "China is one of the most important technology markets in the world and AMD is committed to furthering our growth in the Greater China region."
AMD's Board of Directors made headlines earlier this year after it ousted Dirk Meyer as the chip maker's CEO, who resigned in a "mutual agreement with the Board" back in January. The search is still on for a permanent replacement, and Chow will be a part of that process.
Maybe someone told MSI to put its money where its marketing mouth is at, because that's exactly what the hardware maker did. If you're at all familiar with MSI's graphics cards and motherboards, then you've undoubtedly seen MSI pimping supposed "Military Class" components, like highly-conductive polymerized capacitors (Hi-c CAP), Super Ferrite Choke (SFC), and other fancy terms. But is MSI blowing a bunch of hot air?
Perhaps not. Take this for what it's worth, but MSI went out and "hired a third-party professional laboratory -- Integrated Service Technology Inc. -- to perform temperature, stress, and humidity tests according to the U.S. Department of Defense components standards."
MSI says it uses Hi-c CAPs on its motherboards, such as those commonly used on aerospace and military products. And according to the hired third-party lab results, MSI's parts passed MIL STD 810G tests for low pressure, high temperature, low temperature, vibration, and shock. So too did the SFC and aluminum cored solid capacitors.
What you make of these results is up to you. The fact that MSI hired a lab to test the results might seem a little sketchy, but it's worth noting that IST Inc. is an accredited laboratory doing business since 1994 rather than a fly-by-night operation.
For all the gritty details of the testing report, download this ZIP archive.
Even though Intel and AMD haven't introduced boards with native USB 3.0 support, third-party manufacturers like NEC have stepped in to fill the void. Chances are if you purchased a high-end motherboard within the last several months, it's equipped with USB 3.0 ports. But is your case's front panel? Depends on when you bought it. Corsair's Obsidian Series 800D and 700D full-tower cases ship sans SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support, but before you hand it down to little Johnny in order to upgrade to a new chassis, consider Corsair's inexpensive USB 3.0 upgrade kit.
Corsair says the $15 upgrade kit takes just minutes to install. It consists of a front I/O panel with and a wiring harness and USB 3.0 cable that you route through your case and plug into an available USB 3.0 port. The installation manual recommends snaking the cable through the Obsidian's water cooling cutout in the back of the case, where you can then plug the cable into your motherboard's rear I/O panel's USB 3.0 port.
"Our Obsidian Series cases are designed and built to last through years of system builds and upgrades, and our customers are on the leading edge of technology and of USB 3.0 adoption," said Ruben Mookerjee, VP and General Manager for Components at Corsair. "We are pleased to provide an upgrade kit that allows Obsidian Series owners to bring a USB 3.0 port to the front of the case, making it easier to connect USB 3.0 devices."
The upgrade kit is available now direct from Corsair.
You don't necessarily need to rock a digital SLR camera to get the benefits of a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, in case you were wondering) image sensor. According to market research firm iSuppli, digital still cameras have started adopting CMOS senors in place of CCDs (charge-coupled devices) at a rapid rate. By 2013, iSuppli says there will be more CMOS point-n-shoot cameras than CCD equipped ones.
"After many years of using CCD technology, original equipment manufacturers (OEM) like Sony, Canon, Kodak, Casio and Samsung now are turning to CMOS, which has narrowed the image quality gap with CCDs to a great degree," said Pamela Tufegdzic, analyst for consumer electronics at IHS. "This has allowed DSC makers to enjoy the advantages provided by CMOS sensors, including lower power consumption and reduced cost."
There were 30.7 million CMOS shipments for DSCs in 2010, and by 2013, iSuppli figures that number will increase to 71.1 million. By 2014, there will be more than 85 million DSC CMOS units, iSuppli says.
One of the main benefits with CMOS is lower power consumption, which leads to longer battery life. They're also cheaper to produce and support multiple channels of sensor data to be read out simultaneously at high speeds. So in other words, tomorrow's point-n-shoots will take better pictures, last longer before needing to swap the batteries, and be cheaper to boot. Sounds like an all around winning combination.
If you always wanted an iPad and could care less about the upgraded features of the iPad 2, you're in luck. Apple has gone and slashed $100 off the price of every original Pad model. That means you can pick up the 16GB for $399, 32GB for $499, and 64GB for $599, while the 3G models of the same capacities now run $529, $629, and $729, respectively.
Apple yesterday announced the iPad 2, which will go on sale March 11 at the same price points that the iPad 1 used to be listed at. The iPad 2 adds a slimmer profile, lighter design, new OS, dual-core processor with stronger graphics performance, new color options (available in both black and white), and both rear- and front-facing cameras.
With the price cut in place, Apple has a pretty good grip on the tablet market. The original iPad is now dated, and some would argue was always dated to begin with, but it set the bar by which every other tablet was measured against, and now the cost of entry is only a buck shy of $400.
Turns out Nintendo's upcoming 3DS handheld console has a few more tricks up its sleeve. In addition to a 3D display -- the 3DS's flagship feature -- Nintendo announced two upcoming collaborations, one with AT&T that will allow the 3DS to automatically connect to more than 10,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, and another with Netflix to stream movies and other content on the gaming device. Suddenly the 3DS looks a lot more appealing.
"There is great potential to increase the number of people who enjoy video games by opening up new game-play opportunities that are only available through the use of 3D," Iwata said. "Nintendo 3DS will be the most connected Nintendo device ever, with its ability to link people via local wireless connections, while at the same time connecting them to people and content worldwide via hotspot connectivity."
The 3DS launches March 27 in the U.S. at $250. Gamers will get their 3D groove on without any special 3D glasses or other peripheral hardware. But at $250, some gamers have criticized the price point, particularly as 3D has yet to win over the masses. That could change with the 3DS.
Nintendo also announced the development of a new 3D Super Mario game. The game is being developed by the same team responsible for Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Will.
We're on the ground at the Game Developer's Conference, and – to put it as eloquently as possible – stuff is happening. New games, old games, release dates, bold proclamations about the state of the gaming industry – there's a little (or a lot of) something for everyone. Now imagine if there was a single place where you could find all of that information. How ecstatic would you be? Ecstatic enough to click a button? Ecstatic enough to read more? Well then, click that button to, you know, read more. PCGA Reports "Significant Growth" for PC Gaming in 2010 – Long story short: a whopping 20 percent increase to the tune of $16.2 billion dollars. China, of course, contributed the most with $4.8 billion, but precisely zero regions showed any sort of decline in PC gaming. Which leads us to...
Microsoft: "PC Gaming is Not Dead" – Whoa, what? No way. First Battlefield 3 Single-Player Footage Drops (The Ball?)– DICE has released a solid, uninterrupted nearly three minutes of Battlefield 3 single-player footage, and it's... divisive. On one hand, it's absolutely, mind-blowingly gorgeous. On the other, though, it's Call of Duty. Scripted, linear, full of tight spaces and small, scripted skirmishes while some guy barks orders at you. It's Call of Duty in a Battlefield costume, and we're really not sure how to feel about that. However, we saw a live gameplay demo of the game during the show, and after we've digested it a bit more, we'll have our full impressions up on the site.
Notch on Piracy: "If a Pirated Game is a Lost Sale, Should Bad Reviews be Illegal?" – Minecraft creator Notch gave other developers a nice tongue-lashing for their restrictive approaches to piracy. The gist? If people aren't willingly buying your game, then maybe you're the one at fault. "If you just make your and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week," he concluded. Minecraft Creator Announces New Game, It's Not What You Expected – Hypothetical situation: you've just created a brand new indie sensation – let's call it "Brineshaft" – and it's time to begin work on your next project. What would you do? Did you say, "make a fantasy strategy title with collectible card game elements"? Well, that's what Minecraft creator Notch is doing. Meanwhile, you're probably conforming by working on Brineshaft 2, which leads us to the obvious follow up-question: what the hell is a Brineshaft? Magicka: Vietnam Is a Thing That Exists – This is hilarious. Magicka – already known for its formidable mastery over the spell that is parody – is aiming its lampoon gun at an entirely unexpected target: Vietnam. Yep, fantasy wizards fighting in the wartorn jungles of Vietnam. If anyone else were doing it, we'd be horrifically offended. As is, we can't stop giggling. Serious Sam 3: BFE Coming This Summer – Two words: 16-player co-op. (Or is that four words? Three? Damn hyphen science and its diabolical complexities!) Alice: Madness Returns Dated for June 14 – This long overdue sequel looks grim and stylish, and word on the show floor is that it plays like a dream. Which is a good sign, because it's nearly finished. Fingers crossed that it lives up to its potential. (Also, it'd be the first good thing with American McGee's seemingly cursed name attached to it in ages. Even so, Bad Day LA. Never forget, everyone. Never forget.)
As PC users, we're conditioned to think of software as something you run from within an operating system, and an operating system as a collection of files that you save to a hard drive, and then run at boot. However, you've probably run into some software that breaks this mold: "Live" operating systems, which can boot from a CD or USB drive, and applications that can be run directly from a CD, without the use of an OS. These can be some of the most useful tools at a hardcore computer user's disposal, but it can be hard to keep track of a bunch of different pieces of bootable media.
In this how-to, we're going to show you how to keep all of your bootable programs and operating systems on a single piece of media, using free software called XBoot.
1. Install XBoot
XBoot installation is simple: Just head to the project homepage at http://bit.ly/fR7zcz and scroll to the bottom of the page to find the download link for the most recent version of the software. Download the .zip file, and extract the executable inside. Even though XBoot is a stand-alone executable file, and doesn't require installation, extract it to someplace you'll be able to find later (and don't just run it from within the zip archive) because later on it will create new files in its home directory.
When you try to run the executable, you may be informed that you don't have the most recent version of the .NET framework (see above). Unlike a lot of software, XBoot is not packaged with the .NET installer, so you'll have to track it down yourself. Fortunately, the latest version of the framework can always be found for free at http://bit.ly/eVxEHT.
2. Prepare Your Disc or USB Drive
If you're going to be installing to an optical disc, you don't have to do much preparation—just make sure the computer you're going to be using is capable of booting from a DVD, if you're planning on using one (which you probably should be, since few Linux distros are small enough to fit more than one on a CD).
For a USB thumb drive, you'll want to start by backing up any files currently on it, then clearing the drive. Make sure you've got a drive big enough to hold whichever distros you want to run, then give it a quick format by right-clicking the drive and selecting Format from the context menu. This will help you make sure the drive's clear, and also that it's using the FAT32 file system, which is necessary for many Linux distros (above).
3. Create Your Multi-Boot Disc
Now that you've got the latest version of .NET installed and your boot media ready to go, you can run XBoot. When you first start the program, you'll be greeted by a mostly blank window (below). This is where you specify the programs and operating systems that you want to include on your disc or thumb drive. If you've already downloaded a program (in ISO form) you can simply drag and drop it onto this part of the window to add it to the list.
Unfortunately, only files on a list of supported files will work in XBoot, so if you try to drag a certain file onto the window but it tells you that it's not recognized, you're probably out of luck (below). When this happens, the program will display a list of supported files, and you can find information about additional files that work using Grub4DOS ISO emulation at the XBoot project homepage.
If you would like to add an additional program supported by XBoot, but you don't already have the ISO file, click File > Download. This will open a window with the list of supported bootable files. Select one, then click the Open Download Page button, which will link you directly to the webpage where you can download the ISO file.
Once you've populated your list with every file you want to include, you're ready to create your disc. If you're planning to use a thumb drive you'll need to specify a bootloader to use, but the default (Syslinux) should work fine. If you're creating a bootable DVD, you're ready to go—just click Create ISO.
The program will spend some time combining all the ISO files into a single bootable ISO. When it's complete, it will give you the option of booting your virtual boot disc in a virtualizer included with XBoot called QEMU (above). If you want to try running an ISO file at any time in QEMU, you can access the emulator from the second tab at the top of the XBoot window.
If your ISO file works as expected in QEMU, you're ready to burn it to disc (using Windows 7's built-in ISO burner, or other software of your choice). XBoot names the ISO it creates "xboot.iso" and places it in the directory where the XBoot executable is located.
Many have promised wireless HD video streaming; Netgear is the first to actually deliver it. The 3DHD Wireless Home Theater Networking Kit, which consists of a pair of Netgear WNHD3004s, delivers amazing performance. On the other hand, it's so expensive ($230 street) that you could almost hire an electrician to string Ethernet cable.
The kit contains two devices that look much like Netgear's old routers: One functions as an 802.11n wireless access point that you hard-wire to your router, and the other functions as an 802.11n wireless bridge that you hard-wire to your home-theater PC or other device that you wish to add to your network. What makes the 3DHD Kit unique is that each WND3004 uses a Quantenna chipset that transmits and receives four data streams using a 4x4 MIMO antenna array. The boxes are identical, with a three-position configuration switch (Auto, AP, Bridge) and a four-port, 100Mb/sec switch.
Netgear's 3DHD Home Theater Wireless Networking kit features a 4x4 MIMO chipset from Quantenna.
The WNHD3004s come from the factory pre-configured (one as an AP, the other as a bridge) and pre-paired. We suggest you leave them that way. For whatever reason, our eval units stopped communicating when we moved the bridge from one room to another, so we did what we usually do with wireless devices when we want to make a clean start: We used a paperclip to reset them both. Whoops.
The documentation Netgear puts in the box covers very little, so we had to troubleshoot the problem more or less in the dark. The user manual did mention that you can link additional bridges to the AP using the Wi-Fi Protected Setup buttons on the fronts of the devices, but that didn't work no matter the distance between our two. So we set about poking around the AP's web interface and discovered that WPS was turned off (the help file in the firmware indicates that the AP will do this automatically if it detects "suspicious activity," whatever that means). Once we turned it back on, we immediately paired the two devices and were back in business.
We placed the AP in our closet, next to our router, and put the bridge in our home theater inside a wooden entertainment center with our home-theater PC. The home theater itself was designed to deliver great acoustics, which we accomplished by building a room-within-a-room: The room's exterior shell is framed with 2x6 studs, but there's a second top and bottom plate about an inch away from the first forming a second wall with 2x4 studs. This second wall is canted by about two degrees, so that the room's front and back walls are not parallel (this is to prevent the formation of standing waves). To further deaden the room, the cavities between the studs are stuffed with a double layer of R19 insulation bats, and the interior walls and ceiling are clad with two layers of drywall. Many a Wi-Fi router has had trouble even reaching client devices inside this room (which doesn't matter to us, practically speaking, because the room has four CAT5e drops). You'll find more details about the room here.
We ripped our copy of the Blu-ray version of Spiderman 3 and copied it to an Intel Atom-powered Lenovo IdeaCentre D400 running Windows Home Server for our test. We then used SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive to mount the ISO image on our home theater rig and played it using Cyberlink's PowerDVD 10. At least we tried to. We gave up after just a few minutes because of too many dropped frames and a soundtrack that cut out constantly. Fortunately for Netgear, we decided that the problem was with the home server machine, not the WNHD3004. When we copied the ISO image to a networked desktop PC running Windows 7, watching the movie using the wireless connection was indistinguishable from watching the movie using the clients Blu-ray drive. Impressive.
Netgear tells us the WNHD3004 is capable of wirelessly transmitting several high-definition video streams simultaneously, but we did not test this claim ourselves. The only reason for doing this in a home environment that we can think of would be to stream HD video to different rooms in the house, which would entail buying multiple kits, configuring each of the extra WNHD3004s as a bridge, and pairing each of them with the one WNHD3004 configured as an AP (Netgear does package the devices singly, but we couldn't find single units for sale anywhere online).
In any event, the WNHD3004 does exactly what Netgear promises: It can stream Blu-ray video, including its associated high-definition audio stream (that's a maximum data rate of 54Mbs/sec) without wires and without hiccups. That it was capable of doing this even in the challenging environment that is our home theater is even more impressive.
But the price tag is pretty steep and there are other, less-expensive alternatives—such as HomePlug AV and MoCA—that might work as well. (They at least don't require new in-wall wiring.) These alternatives won't work for everyone, of course: It can be difficult to ensure quality-of-service with HomePlug AV (especially if you have old wiring or are running a lot of Z-Wave devices), and most MoCA devices are designed for CableTV—versus satellite—installations. But we'd suggest looking into them, as well as the cost of installing Ethernet cable, before buying the WNHD3004.
Regional carrier MetroPCS managed to get its 4G LTE network up and running before Verizon, and now they are out the door with the first LTE smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy Indulge pack LTE data and a free copy of Iron Man 2 on the MicroSD card. How nice. Of course, that SD card is 
The Next Web is reporting today on a plan in Beijing for the Chinese government to institute a program of 
Blog host Wordpress.com is one of the world's leading content platforms, but it has been hammered today by a 
Microsoft and Google are joining forces to hunt down what they believe is a patent troll that goes by the name GeoTag. According to a ZDnet 
Time Warner, parent company of Home Box Office (HBO), 
You were right to think that there's a lot of bad drivers out there. According to a State Farm survey, nearly one in five drivers (19 percent) admitted to surfing the Internet while sitting behind the wheel of an automobile, USA Today 
So maybe we're exaggerating a little when we say Asus stole our idea for a cardboard case, but for the record, former Maximum PC Associate Editor and current Contributing Writer, David Murphy, beat Asus to the punch by three and a half years. Printed in our October 2007 issue and viewable online 
The whole Sandy Bridge situation is finally starting to settle down, allowing Intel to put the chipset snafu behind them and move on. So too can OEM system builders, who have been receiving corrected 6-series motherboards since mid-February. That includes Puget, who 
Intel's hoping Thunderbolt, the spec formerly known as Light Peak, will change the world. So is Apple, which introduced Thunderbolt with its recently retooled MacBook Pro computers. That's fine and dandy, but AMD doesn't get what all the hoopla is about. After all, what's the point of Thunderbolt if we can get this whole USB 3.0 thing rolling? That's basically how AMD put it, CrunchGear 
Henry Chow spent more than 40 years at IBM in various positions, including more than a decade as General Manager of IBM's Greater China Group where he was responsible for overseeing IBM's operations in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Now the 65-year-old former GM will spend time on AMD's Board of Directors, the chip maker 
Maybe someone told MSI to put its money where its marketing mouth is at, because that's exactly 
Even though Intel and AMD haven't introduced boards with native USB 3.0 support, third-party manufacturers like NEC have stepped in to fill the void. Chances are if you purchased a high-end motherboard within the last several months, it's equipped with USB 3.0 ports. But is your case's front panel? Depends on when you bought it. Corsair's Obsidian Series 800D and 700D full-tower cases ship sans SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support, but before you hand it down to little Johnny in order to upgrade to a new chassis, consider Corsair's inexpensive USB 3.0 upgrade kit.
You don't necessarily need to rock a digital SLR camera to get the benefits of a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, in case you were wondering) image sensor. According to market research firm 
If you always wanted an iPad and could care less about the upgraded features of the iPad 2, you're in luck. Apple has gone and slashed $100 off the price of every original Pad model. That means you can pick up the 16GB for $399, 32GB for $499, and 64GB for $599, while the 3G models of the same capacities now run $529, $629, and $729, respectively.
Turns out Nintendo's upcoming 3DS handheld console has a few more tricks up its sleeve. In addition to a 3D display -- the 3DS's flagship feature -- Nintendo 
We're on the ground at the Game Developer's Conference, and – to put it as eloquently as possible – stuff is happening. New games, old games, release dates, bold proclamations about the state of the gaming industry – there's a little (or a lot of) something for everyone. Now imagine if there was a single place where you could find all of that information. How ecstatic would you be? Ecstatic enough to click a button? Ecstatic enough to read more? Well then, click that button to, you know, read more. 
No comments:
Post a Comment