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

The PC guide Part 1/3 the family PC.

I'm a fan of customized PC's sure you might have to pay a little more, but it's honestly worth it!

I work at a place where we service computers, so I see what computer manufacture do wrong, most frustrating error, and this is usally cheap manufactures like Packard Bell, E-System, and Medion(Or whatever they call themselves in your country) is powersupply, and it makes sense, it's hard to tell people that, Hey this computer has the same specs as that cheap PC, but this one is better because it has a 550W powersupply! the first thing people ask me as I tell them about what powersupply is, So does it use the amount of W? and that's understandable because 550W is a hell of a lot, but of course it doesn't use that, it's simply saying what the powersupply is capable of delivering, and I think most computers are idle something like 85% of the time, and with the new innovations in powersaving your computer will be consuming basically nothing while using it for browsing the internet or writing something. I've seen computers with quadcore CPU's and dual video cards with a 400W powersupply, and I just want to pull my hair out, and I honestly didn't think anyone would use anything less than a 300W powersupply for a standard desktop, but oh no, the ones I often have to chance a powersupply on have a cheap 250W, and it wouldn't be that bad if it was only the powersupply that had to be changed, but way to often it will take down the harddisk with it.

The next thing is motherboard, I always try and keep an open mind, so when a company fails, I look forward seeing them making an impressive return, there is one company that I hate, and I hope fails! I honestly hope they never ever get success and just dissappears, they don't make competition, they're just a horrible electronics company, it is ECS, I first encountered ECS while working at a PC store where we made custom made PC's and we decided for our budget PC's we would try this motherboard maker. The worst decision ever, it was so bad that we didn't even care to try and find errors on them when they got returned, we just short circuited them, and make sure they were broken. And I wasn't surprised when I saw the same company had motherboards failing where I work now, it's a cheap motherboard in every sense, and here's the other problem with them, you get horrible performance, it's disgusting to see someone piss on consumers like ECS does it.(Yes I have a huge problem with them!) You usually get what you pay for, but not with ECS, you get ten times more value getting Asrock, wich is also cheap, but atleast gives you something useable.

My own experience is that motherboard builders you can count on is MSI, Asus, Intel, where as them you can't really count on is ECS, PC chips(also ECS owned, who could have guessed?) and Soltek, which I can with joy say aren't making motherboards anymore. Now I don't mind someone trying to make cheap motherboards, what I do mind is when someone makes complete crap! something almost guaranteed to fail because of cheap components, and horrible design.

I mentioned Asrock because I usually have good experience with them, I wouldn't use it for my own PC, but that's because I'm a nerd, if I was ever to buy a TV I wouldn't get one less that 1080P again because I'm a nerd. But I can recognize that Asrock works for most people, it's cheap, it performs decent, they have some motherboards that for my taste is a little overly gimmicky, but atleast it works wich is more than you can say about ECS's standard motherboards.

But yes now that I'm done ranting about ECS, it's about time I walk the walk, so I'm going to go through some of the details for custom made PC's for what needs you should have. There's the family PC as I like to call it, a low power PC that's not just filled with slow components, it seems to be the biggest problem of builders, they seem to think, hey let's just put the cheapest and slowest components in this PC, and that's just not the case, that will just give you a horribly bad PC.

Now motherboard, the most important is to go after a combination that works well, and if you are looking to make a family friendly PC, that not only will be low power, but also fast, responsive, and be able to play smaller games, and even HD movies if needed, you need to go for a motherboard with the chipset combination of 78xG/890G and SB7xx/SB850 why? well it's produced by ATI/AMD, it's really low power, and low heat output, so even with a dusty PC your chipset won't overheat(Trust me, I've seen it!), next thing you need is a CPU, and there's a lot out there, but today a low power Dual core is enough for most users, currently you can get AMD Athlon II x2 really cheap and really low power (65W at 2.8GHz) a quick note about AMD CPU's they are in fact pretty good quality, but! the reason some people will complain and understandably so is AMD sells two kinds, In a Box, and OEM, OEM basically means CPU and only CPU, and yeah they aren't treated the best, and sadly they seem to have a lot of errors, but I've never seen an AMD CPU sold as in a box with any problems, and you get a decent cooler with it.

Next you need memory, this is a pretty nice thing about AMD, their CPU's are very compatible with older products, currently all Athlon II's are for the socket AM3, in AMD's platforms that means it's the socket coupled with DDR3 memory, but you can put the CPU in an AM2+ motherboard as well if you want to go with DDR2 memory, it doesn't matter that much when building a PC for normal use, fact is that DDR2 memory is still performing really well, so whatever has the best price, and what you will need is anywhere from 2Gb and over, I recommend 4Gb and a 64bit operating system.

Then there's the harddisk, harddisks are pretty cheap to get a whole lot of space, a 500Gb or 750Gb is more than enough for casual use, even if you take a lot of pictures and have a lot of kids games on it. luckily there's no ECS of harddisks, I've had most good experiences with Seagate, but it honestly doesn't matter in a casual PC, DVD drives I would say it's almost the same, but if you want something quiet, Asus and. Samsung makes some great drives. now if you want to build it from the bottom up, as I would, next thing we look at is case, again do you want the big case next to the desktop, or would you like a small box under the screen? like if you want a small box you need to make sure the motherboard fits in it, and how small? The standard small, is called Micro ATX, and you can get some cases that small that they have their own custom made powersupply, if that's the case, a 200-250W is actually enough because we have already focused on making it really low power. but I would recommend getting a case where you can use a normal powersupply because then you can choose one that is low noise as well, and in case it should break it's easy to change. Now with motherboards again, you can use Micro ATX in a normal ATX case, but you can't use an ATX motherboard in a Micro ATX case, A final note on cases, don't go for the cheapest, unless you want to cut yourself, or damage your local tech guy, I recommend Antec, but they are pricey, if you just want something cheap and yet decent Aopen, CoolerMaster, I would avoid Codegen, and generally too cheap cases, the best way to recognize them is the gimmick they have while still being cheap, I have a nasty scar on my hand that is my reason(and yet I don't hate it like I hate ECS). Now powersupplies, again there's no direct ECS of powersupplies, but there's some damn cheap ones. Want quality? there's the following companies to go after. Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, OCZ, Chieftec, and Zalman, and for that PC? 300 or 450W I would take the 450W if you think you might want to upgrade, and with a 450W you could put in a pretty decent video card without problems. We're pretty close to being done, Now screen? Well most screens today are pretty ok, so one thing I would say is important is that you chose one with the right resolution, because LCD screens are build for their max resolution, so if you feel like setting it down to some other resolution the picture quality simply won't look good, the easiest way to show this is, if you have an LCD screen right now, try and put it on the lowest resolution possible, and then look at the edges of your cursor as you move it around.

Looks nasty doesn't it?

I have a 22" inch Samsung screen running with the resolution of 1680x1050, and that has a pretty decent size, and they come at a very decent price. If you don't know how you feel about the resolutions, I would try and go to a store and see if they have running examples, and feel free to explore the menu because sometimes the quality will look strange because some idiot went over and ruined the standard settings on it. If you want a more movie friendly screen you basically just need to make sure that the format is 16:9 the resolution I mentioned earlier is 16:10, today these are pretty much the only formats that matters, I liked the old 4:3 as you see on most CRT screens, but it's simply too expensive and 16:x screens work.

Keyboard mouse? Go nuts! for a casual PC it matters so little, of course I would recommend a decent Logitech kit since they work, and if you want wireless they work even better, now if you want something ergonomic, Microsoft has some really interesting keyboards, I use the Microsoft Natural 4000 myself and it's awesome!

Time to end on some notes about my choices, first of all I think someone will challenge me on why I didn't chose Intel, and the answer is simple really, Intel's low end platform doesn't belong in a family setting, their chipsets with onboard graphics is simply too weak, I am writing this on a Lenovo T500, it's a intel based laptop with their supposedly better onboard graphics at the time, the GMA4500, and yeah I can't even play HD movies on it, the 78XG/890G does it for breakfast, you can get some intel based boards with nVidia onboard, and while it's certainly better than intels own chipset on that front, it still has it's problems, with heat and power compared to ATI's offering. Intel definitely have some decent CPU's but so does AMD, and AMD's are cheaper, and faster than the Intel CPU's priced the same.

I actually planned to make this blog about small home PC, a cheap gamer PC, and the ultimate gam0r PC'z?!?!+1 But seeing how long this is already I will make them seperate. I didn't write any prices because the prices are different from country to country, and so is the lovely currency, but one we all know is the US dollar, a quick calculation fronm DKK to USD would bring this PC around 6-700$ for a complete PC.

Stay around for Part 2, which might come tomorrow.. Bwahahaa...

Fermi, late party crasher?

For those who doesn't know. Fermi is the codename for the new nVidia GPU released, or graphicscard since the specs were with memory and everything, now this was suppose to come and blow the competition away(ATI/AMD), now one thing I would like to say, I'm a very optimistic guy, almost to a fault, but when someone is delaying a release of something, even I'm not positive, and you will start to see the fanboys who will cheer the product even if it fails. Let's go back some years.. Back to the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, ATI had at that time already released a new impressive GPU the 9700 series, or R300, this card did actually blow it's competition away, nVidia had the Gefore 4 TI series, and they didn't really stand a chance, so nVidia were about to release something new and interesting, but it was delayed, and a lot of the same things were said about it as there were said about the Fermi, and the same fanboys where all happy about it, I were skeptical, although not as much as I were with Fermi, and trust me I weren't any ATI fanboy, I had a Geforce 4 TI 4200 at that time. So what happened with nVidia back then? well they released the Geforce FX 5800 later known as the DustBuster!(not by nVidia of course.), this was the definition of fail, the card tanked, it was hot and needed to use a noisy 2 slot cooler, the first of it's kind so this thing was light green when you saw it, and there were made jokes about it, and one that stuck was DustBuster. And of course it didn't blow the competition away, in some tests it even got beaten by the Geforce 4 TI4600, nVidia were quick to release the FX5900 and started competing on price which was the only reason I ended up buying a FX5900 in the end.

before that I wanted 9700 Pro or the later released 9800 series. Don't get me wrong, I had a whole lot of fun with my FX5900, it was the time of Bios flashing on graphics cards, which in normal terms mean, renaming you graphics card, the thing is usually when more cards are released, like the FX5900 and the FX5950, there's a big chance they are sharing the same GPU, and you just need to either overclock them using an application, or force them into to "thinking" they are this other card. The main difference between FX5900 and FX5950 was the amount of memory, 5900 had 128Mb usually, and the 5950 had 256Mb usually, well I bought an Albatron FX5900 with 256Mb memory, so I was pretty happy when I succesfully got it to boot up with the name FX5950, and it wasn't as easy as it sounds, because I had to make sure the timings were right, there's a lot to fiddle around with. but yes, moving along.

So when I heard the same about Fermi, I was expecting the worst, and here's why, when someone delays a release it's not because they are trying to improve it, it's usually because they are trying to fix it, and usually it's a rush to fix it, so yeah expect bad results, the same happened with Intel, when the Prescott was released.

But the Fermi came out, so how does the results look? well not as bad as the FX5800 for sure, but not great either, only 10% better in some games than the Radeon HD5870, and 150$ more expensive, plus a much higher power consumption, in fact someone showed that you were better off if you bought 2x HD5770 and ran them in Crossfire(Dual card mode), now there is another side to this, the Fermi is also used for nVidia's HPC(High Power Computing) or CUDA project, wich is using the GPU to make calculations many times faster than any AMD or Intel CPU ever could. And the Fermi does pretty well in that, and that's all great, but if they focus too much on that, ATI will take over the gaming marked, Intel tried lately to make their own GPU and Intel is the biggest tech company out there, even they had to abandon it because you simply can't jump into the market like that, many have tried, over and over again we see they won't succeed, Via, Sis, and Intel, all companies that looked like they had something interesting, but either had something that failed or abandoned it altogether. So nVidia might make the best HPC processors ever, but that won't help them keep up in the gamer marked.

Some people might notice I'm focusing on high end cards here, there's also the mid range, but yeah there's almost no competition, ATI/AMD dominates with the only DirectX 11 midrange cards out there, now DirectX is basically what effects you will see used in games, one good example of this is Doom 3, play it in DX8.1 and you will notice the lack of some effects like heat emissions and such, while in DX9 they will be there, and they will run nicely since the card is optimized for it. I hope we see some midrange from nVidia but something tells me they just aren't focused on that part of the market anymore, but we shall see, I want competition all over the place.

So yeah, I think nVidia need to get back in the game because someone who isn't a fanboy wouldn't buy a Fermi/GTX480, unless they really have too much money and don't mind their power bill being raped.

Currently ATI/AMD seems most attractive although I am a little sad they won't be seeing more competition on high end because currently the HD5870 and HD5970(wich is in fact faster than Fermi) are priced too high, and yeah some competition would probably have changed that, you can't really blame a company for making a nice profit when they can.

Ps3 vs Xbox360

So this is one I've changed my mind many times, but I feel I've finally come to a conclusion on this. First of all I own neither of the two consoles, I do own a slim Ps2 I bought just a few years ago.

The PS3!

Now in my country when the PS2 was riding high Playstation had become a synonym for consoles, So although we had grown up in a Commodore 64 household, I still thought of consoles as playstations when I was in my early teens. But I was never really a fan of the actual Playstation consoles, already back then I was more of a PC gamer. But it looked impressive for it's time, although often games on the PS2 will try and impress you with prerendered or just unchangeable animations *cough* Final Fantasy *cough* Eventually later in my days I had my own apartment, TV, and I thought, would be nice to have something for casual and social gaming, and my brother had let me try God Of War and Burnout 3 on his Ps2 slim, and I was sold. I still have the console, and I do enjoy Burnout, and even God of war 2 once in a while, but the sad thing is, they are pretty much the only games I enjoy, I bought Prince of Persia because of the good reviews it has gotten, only to in my mind compare it to God of War and find it lacking of pace. But that's just my gaming experience, the Ps2 is nice, the controllers are shit though.. We all have to agree on this, when I'm an ancient greek godkiller and I'm flying around to kill as much as possible in 2 hours, a comfortable controller would have been nice, but what I ended up with was two hooks once called hands, or when I play burnout and I've been holding down a button for a while, again the lack of comfort in the ps controllers just isn't there, so that's a huge complaint I have about Sony's approach, they've been using the same design from the very first Playstation, it wasn't comfortable back then and it isn't now.

Now, the reason I went into the fact that I own a PS2 was to basically complain about the controller and make a point about games for consoles. It was really disappointing to see they decided to try and cripple our fingers again with the sixaxis, I guess they want the controller to be the trademark for Playstation, which just brings to mind a company welcoming it's employees with the picture of a whip. and to me the trademark of the Playstation has never been the controller, it's been two things, the ps sign that you can spin around on all Playstations(I'm not sure about PS1), and the signs on the controller, triangle, circle, square and X.

Now I've been talking a lot about other stuff so now I will direct my attention to the PS3, what is my feelings and judgement about it? Well when the PS3 first came out, I was all tingly in my stomach, it looked perfect, except for the controller obviously, but it was fast, it had blu-ray, and they showed on youtube many functions it had like media sharing so you could use your PSP and show pictures simply by letting the PS3 act as a server, but then came a realisation.. This isn't a console, it's a wannabe MediaCenter, a job better suited for PC's. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually all for having a browser on my TV, I know a lot of people are against that, but when I'm sitting after a hard day of 13 hours of work, and I decide I want to just relax in my nice chair, I don't want to move around on a laptop, or walk over to my desktop PC, I would much rather pick up a controller and check some random stuff on the internet, that said that's all I want, I don't want to be able to share and use my console as a server, it's way to limited and well too powerhungry in my taste, my own server I have running at home I've made sure consume as little power as humanly possible, and one of the ways to assure that is to put in a low power crappy video card, that's not really the choice with the PS3, and even if it was.. Why would you buy a console for doing the task that any cheap PC can do better? The whole media thing with blu ray I have mixed feelings about, in one hand it makes sense, I used my PS2 as a DVD player and I was perfectly happy with it, on the other hand, it's blu-ray, DVD was an innovation because it was cheaper to build, and the quality was a lot better than VHS, there was nothing but benifits really, What's the benifit of Blu-ray? There's the obvious better resolution, but what's the price? Well there's a cartel holding up the price on blu-ray licensing, that's normal but also annoying, and there's the production issue, remember at one point the PS3 delays were attributed to the fact that they had trouble producing the Blu-ray diodes, so I don't really see any reason to go up in arms over blu-ray, especially not when we have internet getting fast enough for HD, making the internet in my mind the next step for movies, either that or some kind of read only memory card since in my eyes it's time we get past moving objects, seeing it like this: VHS Many movable objects in both media and player, DVD no moving objects in media, few moving objects in player.

And why would you buy a PS3? could it possibly be to play games on your TV and somewhat more socially when having friends over? that was my reasoning for getting a PS2, so why not just focus on making a console?

So in the end, PS3, Full of features, should focus more on it being a console.

Now the Xbox 360!

Well since I complained a whole lot about the Playstation controller, you can probably guess how I feel about the Xbox 360 controller. I love it! I bought one for my PC because I wanted to play a game called geometry wars, and it was just more fun with a controller, and I knew the Xbox 360 controller was compatible, but yeah I quickly thought: Why don't my PS2 or the PS3 have a controller this comfortable? Some complain it's too big or clumsy, but as long as it can be held in one hand, and it's small enough to lie on an arm rest on a chair, I'm fine with it. I can't really come up with any complaints about it because to be honest it's the best controller out there in my mind.

Now I know it looks like a Xbox 360 lovefest, but although that might be true, I have complained about the Xbox 360 in the past, the whole RROD problem was just inexcusable, I know they wanted to be first but that won't make you known for quality, I can promise you the next Xbox won't be reciewed well before people feel sure there won't be the same kind of issues. And obviously there's the whole paying for internet, thing.. While it's not enirely bad, it does ensure users that they have a better market with the XBLA, and according to friends of mine, better servers than i.e. Sony. But I would like it if I could atleast access internet without paying for it, and then paying for playing online and such, but ok, as I've already established I use a console for relaxed sofa playing with a friend or two.. Now I noticed a point came up here, the 360 can only have 4 controllers connected while you can connect 8 to the PS3, I will however say if I have more than three friends over it would start to feel crowded, and it never got to me that the PS2 can only have two controllers connected.

One last thing, Microsoft needs to get a new powersupply, I mean come on! it's the same as the one for the old extremely power hungry Xbox 360's, it has been through revisions and uses a lot less power right now, so it's ok Microsoft, let's cut it back a little and make it just a little smaller! I do like the fact that the newest PS2 slim and the PS3 has internal powersupplies, it just makes things easier.

Now how about the Xbox as a media player? well first of all my experience with Xbox is limited, even more limited than my experience with PS3, so maybe once I get to inspect it I will start ranting, but from what I've read and been told it's a pretty decent DVD player, and the fact that you can stream Nettflix on it is a huge turn on for me who thinks internet is our future in media. But yeah it only has Nettflix for HD, or local storage, so if you already have a collection of blu ray movies, you can get a blu-ray drive for you computer and ask yourself to do something that will make the blu-ray cartel cry.

So in the end Xbox 360, a console, and while it has other features it always seem to be focusing on games, like you would expect.

Now obviously ask me what I would go for, Xbox 360 almost all the way, if it's for a let's say youthgroup or whatever the 8 controller feature of the PS3 is pretty nice, what have pushed me to the Xbox is comfort, games and price, because if there's one thing Microsoft did right it was pushing down the price like they have on the Xbox, I could buy a Xbox 360 Elite today and I wouldn't be hurt financially by it. Now there's tho whole thing of wich one has better graphics, and honestly from the pictures I've seen it looks like the Xbox has better graphics, but the difference is so little I honestly wouldn't care if it was the other way around.

As for games, the only thing that makes me a little sad about choosing the side I have is that I won't be able to try God Of War 3 since I have completed the first two, but then again, playing the first two and you will notice how much the same they are. Now to be completely honest they have so many games in common that it was probably the thing that convinced me the least of the three I mentioned, but there are some titles for Xbox 360 that looks interesting to me.

So I think Microsoft made a console, and Sony tried and failed to make a mediacenter.

Kim Leo

Out and over...

My first entry!

You might wonder about the name of this blog? Well I've always had a fascination with the "fights" between tech companies, and today is probably the time we see some of the most interesting "fights" ever, We have Microsoft, Apple, and the mighty Google fighting over the phone market, with 3 different approaches(Well ok MS and Apple's are somewhat the same)

Now I am a little biased towards google, my friends are quick to point that out, but even from an objective standpoint, the Android platform? Genius!

First of all, Although I don't really like the Microsoft CEO, he was pretty spot on when he was on the stage yelling developers, that is the "Food" that will make these phones succesful.

When you hear iPhone, you think, funky programs, like the one that turns your voice into a techno sounding voice, or the program that can recognice buildings through the camera and gives you information about it, Apple didn't make these, developers did. Probably the best example of this evarr is Windows.

Back at school we had a teacher that called Windows for Wintendo, And I like Linux, I try it sometimes, sometimes I feel it's really fast and better than Windows, but then I feel like playing a game, and although you can play games, it will never be as easy or as good as it is on Windows, Now games isn't the only thing Windows has working for it, the whole easy to manage and install part is a big part of it as well.

And now we see Apple moving in and starting to show some powers in the Smart Phone market, everytime I see someone talking about this they point to the App store, wich as I already pointed out what will make a phone like the iPhone succesful.

Now Microsoft is coming out with Windows Phone 7, now Microsoft did something smart, Had they called this the Windows Phone Vista, yeah I guess you can already feel the disgust going through you, never ever would you touch that. So yay for marketing, And they scrapped the old Windows Mobile platform, or any connection to it with this phone, wich again was a right thing to do in my mind, having owned a few Windows Mobile phones and PDA's Yeah it was never good, it's about time we accept that. So let's hope this new platform will be worth something, and they are making sure as many kind of developers can work on this platform, Games with XNA for Visual studio, and you can already make all other kinds of applications in Visual Studio, so they are set for development as well, and yeah I can almost hear Steve Balmer Yell developers..

Now What about Google? well the really interesting thing Google did was to not build a phone, and it's true, Google never built one single phone, Even the Nexus One you can order from Googles website(If you're American!) is built by HTC. All google did was to make a platform that would be used on the phones, much like Symbian, unlike Symbian however, Googles platform is Open Source from the beginning(Symbian did go open source not to long ago). So what does this mean? Well basically, no restrictions for developers, Recently Apple removed most apps containing sexual material, And apparently Apple is very strict when it comes to developing apps for their platform, You won't have this problem with Android, you might not find it at the Google "App store" but there's nothing stopping you from installing it if you can find it. Now it's a golden rule that Porn somewhat controls what will succeed, (Betamax vs VHS anyone?), So yeah when something becomes popular, you can damn well bet there will be some kind of porn for it, TV, Internet, Comics, Magazines, and Cave-drawings(heh), and to push that away, Well as my friend George Carlin would have said: You are JWF and SOL, meaning you are pretty much on your own, I'm no porn guru, and I don't think it would be popular to overflow the App Store with Porn, But that wasn't what was going on. Now you can read a lot of details about the news, and choose yourself what you want to believe.

So with that going for Android, I would say they are definitely set for winning the mobile wars. The other great thing about Googles choice of just making the platform is, if you're a nerd like me, you will want something with the best specs, like the Nexus One or the HTC Desire, both are phones with better screens, better processors and more memory than the standard Android based phone, they are also of course more expensive, And currently if you want like the HTC Hero, you get roughly the same specs as the iPhone.

Now don't get me wrong, I might be biased but I'm not blind, a certain fact is there will be a lot of useless annoying applications cluttering up the market for Android, however time will hopefully sort them out., and I saw a company pronounced Hawaii(Spelled different, didn't care enough to google it) are about to make an Android Based phone, and my only experience with that company is one of the cheapest phones I've ever handled.. And it broke after like a week of normal use. So the "quality" control that Google might have had if they build their own isn't there. That said, I do think that obviously the worst will be sortet out, But of course it will never be perfect.

Now I haven't talked that much about the Windows Phone 7, and it's a little because of the small details there are out on it, Specs looks nice, the thing about Microsofts approach is, they aren't Open Source, but they did do like Android and just make a platform, one of the benifits about the androids approach is it's possible for companies like HTC and others to make a budget Android phone, according to what I can find about Windows Phone 7 that won't be possible, they have very specific requirements, so the benifit seems to be a little gone, to me it looks like they tried to take the best from two worlds and instead ended up with the worst, A closed platform on a phone wich price will be held up by the requirements, and no quality control(It's possible to put good hardware on crappy boards). But we shall see of course, my guess is that the Windows Phone 7 will feel almost awkwardly like an iPhone.

Now I'm actually more of a computer nerd, so this isn't my strongest field, and I have to admit I was very wrong on the iPhone when it came out, I didn't see it as a success and it undeniably have been, my reasons back then was that it had been tried before, i had the Motorola A925, you will see this is pretty much like that, and yeah it was fun for the first week or so, but eventually you got tired of the touchscreen as it wasn't very precise, and being lefthanded it had problems reading my text, when I drew it, but I did try and fiddle a little with an iPhone and that was surely not the problem. So yeah I believe I've learned from some of my past mistakes.

So if you came to me and asked what phone to buy? Well as I do with computers, I make sure to let you know the good and the bad about everything, obviously I would say that I'm more attracted to the Android platform, and would go after some kind of HTC phone with that, but if the possible app quality problem frightens you, you should take a look at the iPhone, the new Windows phone 7 however? Meh, maybe if it's cheaper than the iPhone.

One last thing, I do in fact like the fact that Apple will pressure movie studios and such to lower their prices if they want to sell on iTunes, I'm all for that, but I also like my platforms open.

I hoped you liked this post, I plan to do more, probably a bit more computer oriented, I have a ton to write about AMD and Intel if that should be of interest.

*UPDATE*

I found this article at The Inquirer, I kind of implied that the quality of apps for iPhone would somehow be better, but it seems there isn't that much control at the App Store. Atleast not when it comes to the prices of the apps. Interesting article.

-Kim Leo

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