Friday, February 15, 2008
Go to this site, register and make sure the sony fanboys don't take over!
http://www.gamernook.com
Macbook Air, looks at the price of...everything else.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Apple has succeeded in making the world's thinest laptop, on top of creating the worlds most useless ultraportable laptop on the market. The original arguement for the system was that business professionals who traveled a lot would be the primary user for this type of system, but with poorer battery life than most 17" laptops, this doesn't seem to be the case. And it's complete reliance on Wi-Fi, means you better not be going to far off the beaten trail as you can't plug into Ethernet for an ultra fast connection, and for those really remote locations can't even tap into dail up (Though I suppose on that note I wouldn't want internet at that speed).
I can see why they didn't include a disc drive, because you won't watch movies when you have this computer, not because you don't want to, but because it'll cut your movie short when it's battery runs out.
Unless of course you install Windows Vista. That's right, Windows Vista actually runs better on a Macbook Air than Mac OSX does. The battery life goes from barely 2 hours to almost 3 when you run Vista without bootcamps Apple drivers and utilities. (When you install you can either install it as another OS, or install it via Bootcamp with Apple Drivers and utilities). That's a shock isen't it? Well, not for those of us that use Vistsa, but I'd like to see Apple run those kind of commercials.
I suppose I'm being a little rough, there are two laptops that have worse battery life than the Air, namely a no-name brand piece of shit, and a uber ultra portable, ultra powerful Asus system. But for the Asus it makes sense, it has a high end processor, graphics card, bigger harddrive, and a disc drive. And even then it's right behind the Air in battery life.
So maybe performance is where the Air leads? Second? Maybe fifth? No? Well, it scores behind just about every system again, except for the Sony Tx series, which only has a single core processor.
So what does the Macbook Air excel at? Well apparently some people think it looks nice, I think it's too small to be comfortable to hold. Except this to be a flop like the first Apple Phone.
Labels: apple, Macbook Air, Windows Vista
Grab a number, and take up arms
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Our great Empire, Microsoft, is fighting a multi-front war. We must prove our loyalty to this great company. Deny your children iPods, for they speak the Devil's tongue; abandon your wives their iMacs, for they taint their minds; forgo the damnable iPhone, and it's treachery.
Microsoft does not need your help, but it's faithful are rewarded. The new Zune will be a powerful strike against Apple, and even the old Zune, not forgotten will get a powerful upgrade. Slimmer, sleeker, and more powerful the new Zune's are Microsoft's newest arm, which will grapple and slowly strangle the filth-infused Apple company. Help it die faster, reject those tainted iPods.
Sync is Microsoft's latest and largest leap into the automobile market. It is a powerful lunge, and grants us the ability to control all number of electronic devices wirelessly in our car with nothing more than our words. Performing flawlessly, this software/hardware collaboration is currently only available on Fords, but we all know it's a matter of time before it spreads to a standard in the market.
The Xbox 360 is rushing ahead, dominating once more the market it is coming to own. The Wii slows, as it's game line up is still being strangled. The PS3, now plagued by hardware problems in their new cheaper $399 model, continue to fall. Halo 3 has paved the way, and continues to strive forward. Halo 3 holds the record for fastest selling anything, ever, in all time and history. It could only have sold better if it had been free. (But that would make it open source, which would make it bad). With a slew of high end, action packed, story gifted games in store for the holidays, victory is nearing.
In the PC world, Mac is growing, nearly 5.4% now, this must be stopped. Too many fools have fallen to the temptation of their cheap collection of shitty pre-installed programs. They must learn that true power and control exists only on the PC, with Windows. Hell the new Leopard version of OSX is pulling 'new features', from XP's list of features. Showing it is a ways behind Microsoft and the powerful Vista OS.
Windows Vista on the other hand, is performing admirably, raking in Microsoft more profit and growth than ever. It is a call back to the days of old, as the last time Microsoft showed such signs of growth was 1999. This is a good sign, Vista sales, along with first time profits for the Xbox 360, show Microsoft is winning the multi-platform war. Pockets run deep, and none deeper than Microsoft's.
Glory be to the Empire!
Labels: Console Wars, microsoft, Microsoft vs Apple, mp3 players, MP3 wars, OS wars, Xbox 360
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Through brilliant Marketing, Microsoft has launched Gamefuel. A Limited Edition Halo 3 soda, which gives Gamers life. (Proven to make Bioshock twice as enjoyable) This new soda has a powerful taste and plenty of kick to keep you up all night. We at the office have started stacking up and challenge you all to try and obtain (for yourselves), more Gamefuel than us. The winner must send a picture that obviously shows more Gamefuel, and they will recieve a gift from around the office. At the moment, you have to best 444 cans.
In other news:
In a recent study, it has been proven that the success of gaming platforms is based on a simple four categories which I will explain here.
Stage one: Stage one is the most important, but still only a piece of the puzzle, this relies on the system itself, it's appearance to the general public, it's abilities, and it's mother companies public relations. Consider this the body of the car. At the moment, this places the 360 at the top, followed by the Wii. Obviously the PS3 is the worst looking one at the moment. (360 is known to be powerful, sleek design, time on the battlefield, long warranty, Microsoft's powerful backing The Wii has innovative features, but no power to back it up, the smaller design is a plus and minus. The Nintendo name is still quite powerful The Playstation 3 has the most power (though it is untapped due to poor programing tools), but is seen as overly expensive and too reliant on new technology (untested technology), the Sony name is a plus and minus at the moment, and is known to be weakening. The system itself has been called the new 'George Foreman Grill')
Stage Two: Quite possibly the next most important piece. The wheels, or rather, the games. Again here the Xbox 360 smashes the opposition, with more games and better games by a substantial amount. The Wii has interesting ideas and some good games but no third party support. By contrast the PS3 is losing it's third party exclusives, and even losing the titles all together (even the games made by Sony tend to go to the PS2). Here you see some big full new times on the 360, and some small, worn tires on the other systems.
Stage Three: This one is something that has been around for a while but you cannot always do without public support. Marketing, not the systems, but the champions. Halo 3 has Gamefuel, which I have 444 cans sitting in my room. Many others have begun to harvest this sweet, sweet beverage, in an effort to have a collection that long lives it's Limited Edition time frame. (Helps when the game is so popular the over-priced Legendary Edition is sold out before the game launches (I know it's overpriced, but my name is on one of those editions)). The system itself is being modeled after the glorious Master Chief, Zune's are being launched with the Halo 3 art style, players have gone so far as to build life-like replicas of the armor (minus the shield of course, still under the R&D department). This will help pull the system through dark times and brighten the bright days a hundredfold. Nintendo still has this to call upon through characters like Mario and Link, but many other characters have begun to fall. Sony on the other hand, has no real iconic figure. Cloud being one of their best bets, but he lies forgotten under a pile of rubbish. This is the fuel, the energy to help fuel the engine. Which brings us to;
Stage Four: The part the Gaming industry cannot directly effect, you, me, us, the gamers. The general public. We are the engine. We are fueled, powered, run on the wheels, and are held together by the system. Stage four is easy to obtain when the other three pieces are put together, and at the moment the Microsoft Xbox 360 is racing a glorious BMW M5 to the lead, while the Sony Playstation 3 is more like the Chevorlet Camero falling behind the Nintendo Wii, which is making impressive time with a Mitshibishi Eclipse.
Labels: Gamefuel, Halo 3, microsoft, nintendo, PS3, Sony, wii, Xbox 360
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
From reliable sources it is now discovered that apart from the excellent three year warranty(A generous step since this will cost Microsoft close to a billion dollars), Microsoft will be giving the system a price cut close to Christmas time. This price cut, so we hear, is anywhere from $80-$120 off. This will place the price point on top of the Wii, discarding the cheap price as an advantage. With all the exclusive games (and even some of the non-exclusive) titles coming this Winter, we should see an incredible increase in Xbox 360 Sales.
As a side note, Sony is launching a new version of the PS3 (didn't it just come out?), this one offers another 20GB for $100 more, still sounds like a bad deal to us, but maybe to some people they REALLY need that extra space. Sony claims the increase in space is in preparation of their eventual launch of movie downloading services. (Wasn't this the original idea? HDDs still too small?)
Microsoft for the Win!
Labels: microsoft, Playstation 3, Sony, Xbox 360
Sunday, June 10, 2007
The Empire is recovering from it's Death Star (Rightful Monopoly) being destroyed by the Rebels (US Government). Through it's amazing success with Windows Vista, it is beginning to regain lost ground. Amazingly enough since Apple tore the legs out from under Open Source software it inadvertently destroyed its only ally, and thus only chance of defeating the all powerful Microsoft.
In a sudden turn of events Microsoft finds the fearful US Government on it's side in an anti-trust investigation. Turning aside Goggle's complaint, obviously the Bush Administration can do something correct. The complaint was that Microsoft's new Vista Operating System was too good, and thus made much of Google Desktop irrelevant. Somehow Google saw this as making Windows too anti-third party software (I find the entire fact that Microsoft has to worry about this, since Apple refuses to allow third party software at all on its OS).
As a side note Google is nearing it's own anti-trust investigation, it's search software, currently holding majority control, likes to pull up information for us. And of course, by accident, pulls forth Google related items first.
Labels: Anti-trust laws, Google, microsoft
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Continuing to bring new innovations to the world, Microsoft follows Vista's release with 'Surface' the incredible new touchscreen interface. Unlike most touchscreens Surface allows for multiple contact points with it, along with interface cameras (to identify items, and read bar codes), and the Vista OS built into a 30" screen.
Possibilities start to grow with this new Hardware from the department that gave us the Xbox 360. Many businesses already plan to start using the new System, such as T-mobile, which they will use to display new phones and features for Customers. Though at 3-5 grand it is a little ways away from home use, Microsoft plans to have home systems cheap enough in 3-5 years. (Considering Microsoft's abilities, we expect it in 2 at 1.8-2.6k)
Home use could be anything from a drawing table for the kids, a photo book to show guests, a notepad for the family, or just something fun to play colorful effects on. Personally I look forward to a multi player setup for games, especially for Strategy War Games, (Real-time can be done now, because many cursors can now interface on the screen) allowing two players to direct troop movements and wage war at the same time, on the same screen.
Microsoft has done it again, it's possible our walls and all will be made to this basic design decades from now. Only Microsoft knows what the future will hold.
Microsoft's iPod Amnesty Bin keeps Zune coders on the up and up
Friday, May 25, 2007
Rex Sorgatz apparently visited Microsoft's Zune HQ and spotted this plastic "iPod Amnesty Bin" sitting at the entrance, complete with its not-so-subtle message. We're leaning towards the Microsoft stunt end of things (you think they had a "PowerBook Amnesty Bin" outside of J Allard's office?) since if you look closely, you'll notice all the full size iPods look like the same 4G model. Oh, someone also seems to have dropped in a 2G shuffle -- maybe a staffer with access to one of those rumored flash Zunes?
Sony really knows how to screw its customers
We know there are many costs associated with the complicated process of screw production -- especially the process of fabricating special screws -- but this $82 unit really hurts. Although to be fair, the above Sony screw might not have been Sony itself screwing a customer, but rather some screwball retailer drilling down on Sony's behalf.
Labels: Sony
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
When you're in grade school you learn that the government protects its citizens from Monopoly power. Given that all companies exist to create a monopoly, and that some of your government representatives have trouble understanding how the Internet works, you can't really blame the companies, or the politicians when a technology company creates a monopoly. At least you can't if you as an industry watcher don't even see it yourself.
After you see it you can call and complain all you want.
After talking about Ryu Hayabusa's First Rule of Engagement in my last article, I thought I'd point out a prime example of how it's done right. I'll admit that even I didn't see this until recently, and its my job to look for these things. I'll admit that I admire the guy who orchestrated this so well.
The entire computing industry has a common competitor who came like a thief in the night. Microsoft, Apple, Linux, Dell, HP, Acer, AMD, ATI, you name them, chip makers software makers, anyone that's involved in the PC platform has a competitor that you, as one of my most intelligent readers, might not even know of. If you do, you probably haven't seen the depth of their recent strategy.
This particular nefarious plan started with a poorly implemented Act of government, as most nefarious plans do. This one was the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Those in some fields of the industry have already assessed and boarded my thought train, but let me let the rest of you on.
Some of you are too young to remember Ma Bell, but it used to be that you could only use the telephone company's telephone equipment with their telephone "network". The government said, "Hey, we pretty much paid for that network, so stop using your monopoly we gave you to milk people for 999$ telephones." Now you can buy a whole host of products like wireless phones of all sorts, and fax machines, that utilize the phone lines in your house. Thanks Government.
In 1996, the government decided that this had worked out pretty well, so they were going to do the same to the cable companies. Thanks to the hard work of your elected officials in 1996, we can now attach all sorts of devices, like computers to our cable networks, and easily integrate our HDtv signals into our media centers ..... ... hmmm ....
What happened?
As far as I can make it, the FCC allowed a reprobate named Cable Television Laboratories, also called CableLabs, to convince them that the best way to implement the 1996 legislation was through a magical device called a CableCARD. Then the convinced the FCC that if they decided on a communication protocol for the device, it would hamper future technological advancement on their part. The FCC saw what terrible things standard protocols like TCP/IP did for the internet, and gave CableLabs a hefty bit of leyway. We won't get into defining the verb "convince" in this article, but here is where it gets fun.
So reading through an article 6 or 7 years ago, I remember reading a comment about how pc's would become more like tv's, and tv's more like pc's, until one of them was the winner. I dismissed this out of hand as a PC was far more of a platform then a TV. CableLabs, a "non-profit" consortium of the cable companies [btw, why can you make a company whose sole purpose is to promote the buisness of another company, and call it "non-profit"?], is using their monopoly power to destroy the computer industries chances as a media center platform.
Lets compare:
Cable Company Media Center Solution
Cost: Monthly fee.
Computer Industry Media Center Solution
Cost: 4k-ish.
For the lazy, the general idea is that the cable companies are offering cableboxes with DVR capability and now IPTV/ondemand solutions, for the cost of rental fee of the settopbox.
Because of idiocy, to get HDTV, on a computer media center, you must have
- Windows Vista - hey, we love it and have it, no problems here
- Expensive CableCARD tuner - fine, its a bit pricy but whatever
- Computer Certified by CableLabs - wait... what?
I bet I lost some of you on that last one. The lazy can translate that last requirement to Dell.
That's right, you need a rediculously overpriced prepackaged computer from one of the big boys to get HDtv on your media center.
Do you hear that? Thats the sound of every independant shop/builder that bought those amazing HTPC cases with their VFD's and passively cooled HDCP-complaint video cards, similtaniously crying out in pain.
Thats the sound of the entire multi-billion dollar computer industry unable to do something as simple at let me watch and record my HD Sopranos.
Nice one CableLabs, seriously, kudos to you.
Where do we go from here?
This article is not as coherent as one could hope for from a 4am writing, but at least I come bearing gifts.
You have two options.
1 -
Get in touch with the guy you don't remember voting for.
Explain to him that you can't record the Soprano's (something he probably sees as a common goal amongst the people who remember voting for him), because the FCC is letting the Cable Companies use their monopoly of the cable business to give them an unfair advantage in the media center business (something it's his job to be preventing). Remind him that this is the first time you've ever felt strong enough about an issue to consider calling (ie: harassing) him, and that all of you're friends agree with you that the government (don't let him think you're blaming him, politicians hate to be blamed, they get cagey) should be doing something about this.
Hopefully he'll try to do his job to stop you from harassing him about something that most of his voters care about.
2 -
Get in touch with any large computer companies you can think of.
Some might find it apalling to consider this option, but I'm a realist. I want Microsoft, and the rest of the large Cap companies to start considering purchasing enough cable companies to have voting majority in the CableLabs consortium.
Your best bet is to do both.