Finally a good name!

Ok this weekend I was sitting at home, when it struck me, the name for tech nerds like me for news on computer stuff, and then was born: X86news, for some it will seem silly but for me it seems like the most obvious name in the world for PC nerds who want to read PC related news, So I will be moving my blog there as well to X86news.blogspot.com I plan to post on this more frequently as the name implies it will deal more with News.

And without spoiling too much it will indeed evolve into more.

FroYo for the Desire.

So I bought a HTC Desire to replace my Nokia E51 phone, and although on paper they can much of the same, I'm glad to say that the Desire is a lot better, but I will write a review on that later.

So about a week ago Sunday afternoon, I was searching for updates like crazy because HTC announced that us Desire folks would get an update, basically it was updating Android 2.1(Eclair) to Android 2.2(Frozen Yoghurt aka. FroYo), doesn't sound of much does it? Well thanks to some tweaks in the compiler this "small" update brought along with it about 450% extra performance to Android devices, atleast in tests, so do your phone feel 450% faster? Well of course not to be honest, it's definitely faster, I can do things I didn't do before, so the improvement is there, that there's no doubt about, just don't expect your phone to compete with your laptop(just yet! :P), there were other things, like Flash, which I enjoyed a lot, I often watch pages that are flash only, Zero Punctuation most often I would say, and it ran perfect, when the video loads it lags a little but when that's done the video might as well take place on your computer, that's how nice it runs, which blew my mind as I've seen PC's I wouldn't dare move in on a flash heavy site as escapistmagazine.com. They also updated the camera, with the gained performance they were able to bring along 720P recording, it's not perfect, but it's still damn impressive, when the lighting is ok everything looks just sweet. Then there's just a few things like a HTC app that allows you to turn on the light for the camera, and that's one impressive light! if you have one and you don't feel like sending it in for repair, I suggest you don't leave it on for very long at the time, or atleast keep to the dimmest of the 3 light settings, not that it matters it would still serve well as a light tower one foggy night, that's how damn bright this thing is :P. Keyboard has been updated as well as the messaging system, it's now a lot easier to change language, and to attach files to your messages.

This is one of these updates that makes you have a renewed interest in your phone, I find myself just going through the menus, cleaning up messages or something like that because it's a joy to toy around with the phone and see that AMOLED screen just breeze through the menus and pictures.

One last thing I want to comment on, is Google's Naming scheme, it's pretty damn epic, I'm into tech in PC's and they will name their architectures with Latin, or greek, words and city names, where I think Google is the only one who thought; How about them desserts? In case you're wondering the next Android will be named Gingerbread, there's a little confusion as to what version it will be, if Google will jump to 3.0 or it will be 2.3, but that doesn't matter because FroYo is definitely with the time, and we can relax before demanding our next update.

Why Tablets aren't the future.

Ok so when the Ipad came it didn't hit my Geek spot at all, I've already grown past the time where every little shiney thing with an LCD screen impresses me, but I'm starting to feel like Zero Punctuation who had similar complaints about the Wii, it's gimmick, every time I say this no one agrees with me and they will come up with weak weak excuses for what you could possibly use a tablet for, even the Android and Windows tablets doesn't excite me at all. The points I hear are usually along these lines:

• It's light and easy to bring with you
• You can do homework on it
• You can read books on it.
• You can watch movies and stuff on it
• Social Networking
• It would be great at a hospital(Possibly the weakest)

Light and easy

So it's light yeah it's true about 700 grams, it's not super light, I think you will get surprised by the weight of it, that being said it's definitely lighter than a Laptop, but you don't need to hold a laptop like you would need to hold this tablet, you can actually write on the laptop withouth having to looking directly down to write and to see what you're writing, plus as much as they have improved touch screen you won't be able to use this like you would a normal keyboard, you can't feel the key's there's no indicator for F and J which is important if you want to type away.

Homework

Homework, yeah I guess if you want to do it in the most awkward way possible, again this is something the laptop does, and better, Any laptop or netbook atleast have USB so you can easily access a printer, which is usually something you need to do doing homework..

For reading books

This is one I've read a lot, so let me start with some basic facts. reading on a backlit LCD, OLED, or LED LCD screen isn't good for your eyes, it causes eyestrain, of course I will hear people claiming that that doesn't happen to them and they must appearently be super human, sadly this is the internet so I'm pretty sure they are full of it, I've been studying on laptops and PC's for 6 years and reading and entire book on my laptop is unbearable, I have good eyes, I don't need glasses but there's things I'm just not going to subject myself to.

Plus if all you needed it for was reading, why get get a 3.rd or 4.th thing with a screen obviously not made for long term reading? Get an E book or buy the book in hard cover if you want, buying a $500 + Ipad or other tablet is just overdoing it and not even doing it right in the first place.

Personally I've been considering the Kindle DX, yeah it's single purpose, but I have a billion multipurpose stuff it doesn't bother me having one device that just does one thing and does it well.. Plus the Kindle is surprisingly good for several things like reading PDF's and doing it on a screen made for reading(Non backlit E-ink) should be a lot better than on any Tablet laptop or any LCD device.

Watch movies

Ok If you have a netbook try this, hold it like you would a tablet, and imagine you're watching a movie or an episode of some series on it, first of all these tablet I've seen so far is not made for standing up, and why the hell isn't it a lot more prefereable to do so on your Laptop or even phone? I put Avatar on my HTC desire, and although I was skeptical I found that it worked really well, I only use it to get time going while I'm traveling and I for one reason or another don't want to use battery on my laptop. But I can't imagine watching an entire movie on my phone, I would watch chunks if I wanted to see an entire movie I would just set up my laptop since it has an adjustable screen, I can even watch blu ray on my laptop, so why would you want to try and watch movies on a tablet?

Social Networking

Social Networking is good, I'm not an obsesive that will twitter out everytime I get home from work, but it has a nice social feel to it that you can watch what people have to say or just get updated about things in general, and guess what, every phone, Laptop, Netbook and fucking thing has it, so why is it needed on yet another thing? I mentioned the Kindle earlier, yes it has access to Social Networking as well!

For use at a Hospital

This one was one I got told after I attacked some fanboys trying to seriously learn them a thing or two about critical thinking. While yes I'm sure you could set up a cool futuristic system with tablets at hospital beds, although the tablets they currently have seem to work pretty well and won't cost $500+ and you would have to over complicate something that is already damn complicated.. Not to mention how often someone would try and steal them.

And I find it funny that a fanboy who've ordered two already for his own personal use will use this as an excuse when it's clearly not his plan to start a hospital.

I know the Ipad have sold like 3 million already, but I'm pretty sure that most of these were for the gimmick crowd or people with too much money. Considering how many Wii's that are sold it wouldn't surprise me if it will sell a lot more, it's just sad in my opinion. The Wii did have some actual uses I thought about getting one my self so I could stay in and exercise but I kind of realized how silly that was and have taken up bicycling instead, but at least you had the option. I don't feel you have the option with any tablets.

In the end the tablet will only serve as an alternative to your laptop or your phone once you decide to use it for that, only if you're a really hardcore fanboy you would torture yourself with reading books on it and force yourself to use it as a laptop, in that case have fun living in a complete denial.

The underdog vs the Chihuahua

Ok, so first of all I've always been a "dogs" person, but this post will be about Apple, yaaay.

Anyway a long time has passed since my last post, it seems everytime I start writing something I save it and decide later it was all horrible and give up fixing it, so I think I have atleast 10 pages of text in my "Drafts folder"

But! let's get to it.

So about a month ago Apple released a new phone, the Iphone 4, So what's new about this phone? well it's definitely faster than the older ones, although I don't think the 3GS was slow, but more speed is always welcome, it has some design changes which I couldn't care less about, and it has a nice screen, however it's still not a OLED screen like the majority of Android based phones are using, but it's a screen with probably the best resolution out there for a phone screen, so that's good, and the only thing that really touches my geek spot. But then comes the turn off that makes me swear once again to never buy from Apple.

Apple, or Steve Jobs proudly presented the phone as magical, which doesn't really bother me that much, just comes off as stupid but yeah he then goes through some of these new features, one of which is the Antenna(most of you probably already knows where this is going). And how it's built into the chassis, interesting but by no means new, and I didn't know there was problems with the old antenna design, but yeah here it comes, the problem is that this antenna is on the outside if your chassis, and Wlan bluetooth and 3G signal doesn't combine well, so if you're left handed, like me, or just have the phone in your left hand and decide to use it like you would a phone, well your hand will connect the antenna for the bluetooth and Wlan with the 3G antenna, signal gets fubar and you drop a call. What was Apples reaction? Well seeing that a lot of the new phones don't have this issue I think the first step was to put something over the part of the antenna that got short cuircuited, not that Apple would ever admit that, but that will become clear later.

first there was the email, of a happy Iphone 4 owner who got a reply from Steve Jobs when he asked about this very issue, the only response from Mr. jobs was: Just hold it differently.

So there was so much of an issue that Apple decided to hold a press conference. Well like a 12 year old who got caught for something bad, Steve Jobs response was basically; But everyone else was doing it too! except they weren't Nokia and RIM(Blackberries) both went out against Apple because Apple in it's attempt to claim that there was no design flaw said that Nokia and Blackberry had the exact same problem(which they never had). And then they went on to claim that there really was no Antenna issue, but if you had bought a faulty Iphone 4 they out of their goodness of their hearts were prepared to give you a free cover, but not because the phone had any flaws...

It's this arrogance and complete disregard of it's customers I find to be so dispicable that I would never support such a company, now you might find it to be a little excessive, but this isn't the first time this has happened, google Mac Screen yellowing, or Timecapsule issues it took the two years to finally start replacing defective Timecapsules, 2 years!? They didn't even fix this problem they just gave you a rubber casing for your designer phone and told you to stop whining.

How anyone would put up with this when there are many alternatives out there is beyond me.

So where does my title come into all this? I've pretty much always been cheering for the underdog to win, in Processors I've always wanted AMD to do better because I feel they usually made great products that was the same quality as Intel, and they are trying to compete with them. While Apple have always been complaining about how big and mean Microsoft is, while it might be pretty true they don't seem to try and compete, They make their own terrible system to try and grab market and they make sure it's completely closed off so they won't have to compete with others. Ok Microsoft have an unfair advantage too and I really hope with forces like Google we will finally see someone break open this closed Microsoft deal, but that's no excuse for Apple to be worse than Microsoft when it comes to be anti-competition,. so as much as I've tried to like Apple, their arrogant attitude just puts me off and makes me hate them more than Microsoft.

And as much issues you might have with Microsoft atleast they seem to try, it didn't take them long to go from Vista to Windows 7, and there are things that Windows just does better than any Linux OS, and that's having performance as well as being user friendly, I try and hope desperately that tomorrow is the day that Ubuntu or someone else gets to run games and flash as good as Windows does it, but the fact is right now they don't even come close. I am currently running Ubuntu on a laptop at home, I keep it updated and all that, but I just can't use it as much as I use my Windows PC, with office stuff it works perfect and I can see them enter the world of offices and servers without problems, but casual surfing and stuff? Not yet.

But yeah to end this on my title, The underdog usually knows he's the small one and will therefore work extra hard for you and deliver you great stuff, while the Chihuahua will just bark it's head off and never shut up, and given the power it would just chew off it's owners face.

Apples worldview

So there was some news today, the journalists at Gizmodo for two weeks ago was offered an unseen prototype of what might be the upcoming Iphone, it was lost by an Apple employee, and found by this other guy who appearently didn't know the employee, it's explained that he tried to get a hold of other people from apple using the phone. He then sold it to Gizmodo, nothing unusal there, it's like someone selling information or pictures to journalists. Gizmodo then broke the story, showing this prototype, Apple requested it back, and again, nothing unusal there, Gizmodo returned it.. End of story? Well of course not, because Apple is well known for wanting to keep their secrets and being quite the attention whore.. If you sense my dislike of Apple it's because of the latest news, first they called the police on the Gizmodo Journalist, using a law from the 1800(litterally!), and now they are pursuing the guy who found the phone in the bar, Proving that if you are are Tech Journalist and basically do exactly what other journalists are allowed to do, Apple will go Nazi on your ass. I've heard a lot of excuses about how it was theft and etc. bla bla bla, no one got hurt, no one did anything unusual, and had the laws been right Apple would have been told to stfu and accept that press is here for the people and not for Apples PR. And before people start telling me how the guy should have given it to the bartender and so on, ask yourself what you would have done, or might already have done in the same situation? I doubt you are so holy then.

This really gets to me because it's clearly an attempt to scare of others from breaking a story like this, when it shouldn't and it's potentially also an attempt to get some PR, if that's the case we see that Apple don't care if they get someone fired or put in prison for their own benifit. I would call for a boycott of Apple, this is simply too unethical to scare of press like this. I've already been a life long Apple boycotter :P never bought any Apple products, and now it seems I never will.

Here's the original stories @Gizmodo @Theinquirer

I would like to add one last point to all this, it has been suggested that Apple dropped the phone in the bar in the first place for someone to pick it up, I don't believe that actually, I think it's most likely some Apple Employee dropped it by accident, but I do think that this whole manhunt bs is pure publicity, and Apple loves it.

Apple vs Adobe

So this has been up quite some places, most noteably a employee of Adobe lashes out and tells Apple to go screw themselves, which is nice.

Now there's something that is true for every company, even Apple, every company you can think of, when they make a decision, follow the money! Do you honestly believe that Steve Jobs "concerns" are true? There's a lot of made up excuses out there, that he won't allow flash on the Iphone/Ipad/Ipod Touch because it will somehow take up more power, wich isn't that true, with the right optimisations there should be no problem there, most other phones can without loosing a lot of battery over it, I've read two opinions on this that I found to probably be more correct than the other bs, btw quickly the dumbest I've heard is that Steve Jobs is angry with Adobe for focusing on windows or whatever, I'll maybe get back to that.

No the two most accurate ideas I've heard is that Apple as a company doesn't want Flash applications to compete with the App Store, wich makes pretty perfect sense to me, there's a lot of apps on the Iphone that could easily be replaced by a web based Flash, you kind of see why they would do it, especially if you see it from a financial perspective, It does seem odd especially now with the Ipad that is suppose to be the internet machine, and with Flash being a pretty big part of the internet I think they will eventually give that up.

The other reason I was surprised to read and I never thought about, A lot of the flash you see around the web is Flash based, and appearently Apple have their own iAd wich will now have room to shine.

Now both of these ideas are somewhat stupid and even unethical, but the worst was definitely the decision to dictate what code languages they will accept onto their App store, Now if you thought Microsoft was bastards for theire ways of doing things, even they aren't that bad, like Microsoft aren't big on Open source, but they still allow development for games using OpenGL(An open source competitor to Microsofts DirectX) They will sometimes be a little slow with implementing it, but they won't tell you: No! you can't run Quake Wars on this OS. that would be madness, and yet that's exactly what Apple is trying to do, I'm not sure if I belive the idea that it's about Adobe this time, more of Apple trying to control their own market more.

I just realized writing this, if they are able to pull this one off they essentially dictate the terms they can work under, they Won't lazy work, and they will "fire" you from the App store if you don't follow their rules, what you realize after a while is, if they can pull this off they practially have developers hired to do work for Apple without Apple paying the developers to work, now I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't require developers to work every day and so on, but it's still getting people to sell your product, does anyone know who made that voice rapping thing program for the Iphone? Nope, but we all know it comes for the Iphone.

I think the whole, Steve Jobs doesn't like them! thing is old and over, and more a cover, remember Steve Jobs was fired as the CEO before they hired him again, now I don't know exactly what the reasons were back then but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't re-hire him to let him act like a child. The issues are always concerning competition or something else, and I find that much more likely to being the motivation rather than Steve Job's personal feelings towards the CEO of another company. Like the whole google thing, the Android is becoming a real competitor to the Iphone, or rather Android based smartphones, So yeah don't belive the drama, because that's all it is, these people only see money.

Kim

Randomly signing out.

AMD's first good laptop CPU?

So it's no secret, if there was a scale or a marker between AMD and Intel and the middle represented complete objectiveness, Yes I am indeed closer to AMD than Intel, why? Simple, AMD is the smaller company, but they are also the only company competing with Intel, So for the idiots I so often read being way too fanboyish in this "fight" rooting for AMD's demise, I always tell, well it's going to suck without AMD you wouldn't have the I7 or the entire Core 2 Duo/Quad if AMD had never been there to compete, you would probably still be struggling to keep you Prescott P4 cold, and sucking on Hyperthreading on a singel core CPU.

But as much as I like AMD I've always told myself I won't buy a bad products, not even from AMD, I didn't buy the Phenom because of the whole TLB thing, and I haven't bought a laptop with AMD, I've sometimes suggested it just to find that yeah it was cheap, but it sadly gets very hot, the reason for this I guess is that AMD is using a arrchitecture for all their CPU's that originally was intended for Desktop and Server use, and it seems they can never get a CPU to be as cool or efficient on laptop as Intel. Intel not too long ago released the Atom CPU, it's basically making a CPU as powerefficient as possible, but also as small as possible and it won't really need to be a great CPU performance wise, so a singel core 1.6GHz Atom will perform about the same as a 900MHz Pentium 3, but that's still pretty cool because the Atom really uses a small amount of energy. So I was looking with interest at AMD's competing offering, and there were the Neo CPU that is basically a cut down Athlon 64, so I was skeptical with how good it actually be, I've only had my hands onto one model the HP DV2 And I have to admit the design was sexy, but it was sadly the typical AMD laptop experience, it was hot and not really as close to the Atom as I'd like. Well lately I service the Packard Bell Dot M/A NC900 netbook PC, and my favorite kind of service, stresstesting! And I'm happy to say that after about 20 hours of stresstesting it's not too hot, it's in fact perfect, the design is sexier and even smaller than the DV2, the screen is HD despite the fact that it's only 11.6" It has a nice webcam, and it has onboard ATI graphics, you should be able to watch HD movies on this little bastard, the CPU is a 1200MHz Athlon 64, now the Original Athlon or K7 core was in fact faster than Pentium 3 and this is the Athlon 64 core so this should be quite a lot faster than the Atom CPU, I haven't yet been able to check the Battery yet, but this is definitely a small and lovely laptop I'd love to own with AMD in for once.

What excites me about this is this laptop represents the way I want AMD to go, like Intel they should offer complete platforms and make them good, they already do that, like the Puma platform, but the Puma has the performance, but lacks the experience you get with a Intel Centrino Duo mobile, fast and cool, and it seemed like AMD needed to find something to work from, the one thing AMD would excel at, is platform, they have the best low power chipset, they are both cool and very powerful compared to Intels onboard offerings. With the right CPU or mobile architecture they will not only be able to keep up with Intel on Server and desktop machines, and as I've said a million times, I want competition all over, that means progress, my favorite scenario is AMD 49 and Intel 49% constantly fighting over the last two percent with a lot of great products.

But yeah this does more show that the Athlon 64 when scaled down and tweaked makes a very decent mobile CPU, it's far from having an actual mobile architecture just yet, I do however belive it gives the Mobile team at AMD goals and guidelines, and damnit I want a competing AMD laptop platform! hehe.

I'm still working on the Part 2 of my PC guide the Cheap gamer part, but the thing is I have to do some research plus I work a lot of overtime So hang in there, it's coming! :P.

The laptop I talked about is here