Google perks up Gmail video chat with extra pixels
Google has announced it has given Gmail's video chat something of a spring clean, adding some image enhancements to the service.
Serge Lachapelle, Product Manager at Google, was the lucky person to be chosen to announce this to the world on the Gmail blog, saying about the new settings: "The higher resolution video uses a new playback mechanism which enables widescreen VGA and frees up valuable resources on your computer."
Enhancing chat
To enable the all-new enhanced video stream, you have to Visit the Gmail Labs tab under Settings and turn on 'video chat enhancements'.
Once done, you should see a noticeable difference. Actually there is one caveat, whoever you speak to on the video chat has to have the setting turned on as well.
The new settings will also give you a bigger chat window and there may well be other enhancements that Google has not yet revealed.
Once you turn on the settings on, then any new features will automatically be added to the service, which is a bonus.
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IDF 2010: 'Intel doesn't design actual products'
Never mind the technical details of Sandy Bridge or the 50Gbps silicon photonics link; what Intel wants to create is not just chips but platforms and services - and it's depending on Genevieve Bell's Interaction and Experience Research Lab to make them right.Bell is an anthropologist as well as by training; her father was an engineer, her mother another anthropologist and she spent much of her childhood on field studies among aboriginal tribes.
With that background, she looks at what makes new technologies successful in a very different way. Take electricity.
Consumers already had gas lights and oil lamps and candles but an electrical supplier in Niagara made electricity interesting by throwing glamorous parties with women – known as the electric fairies - in diaphanous frocks standing on electrical wires and clutching lightbulbs.
The way the latest iPhone adverts don't mention that it's a phone? That reminds her of the way Bell labs persuaded people to buy a second phone with the 1959 Princess phone, a telephone that came in five colours and was advertised with the slogan "it's little, it's lovely, it lights; at no point," points out Bell, "did they suggest that it makes a telephone call or talk about how many calls it makes or how long the cord is or that you might need a phone plan…"
Thinking about experience
It's not easy teaching the engineers at Intel to think as much about the experience as the product that their technology will create, says Bell but she thinks it's vital.
"Intel doesn't design actual products," she explains – and her lab isn't trying to create products that OEMs will just put their name on. "But unless we know what we need to deliver ultimately, it's hard to design things right."
Before the Experience Lab, she was working with the Digital Home team; a job she jokes that she got because of her criticism of Intel's ill-fated Viiv platform; while Intel engineers were promising to "unleash the PC in your TV" she was pointing out that people already had a screen in their living room and they didn't want it to behave anything like a PC.
"We put up with things in PCs that we would never put up with in a TV. Imagine the first time the TV told you it needed a new driver or the first time your Tivo said it needed to defragment before you could record a programme – or the first time your TV blue screened!"
Instead, she says, Intel should have been asking "What is the essence of TV that people love so much? What is it that's so compelling that we still organise our day, our time and our furniture around it?" The very un-PC answer is that "People love TV because it's not complicated. It's one button to a story they care about."
TVs "not bigger PCs"
The same goes for many of the scenarios where Intel thinks the PC will end up. "TVs are not just bigger PCs," says Bell pointedly;"phones are not just smaller ones – and cars are not just PCs with wheels."
It's not just about shoe-horning an Atom chip into the dashboard or the fridge (the Experience Lab is working on projects to use facial recognition to identify drivers and passengers and on a kitchen system that would recognise ingredients and even accidents like spilling coffee).
"The Lab is about how we move from defining experience as a list of features to something more intuitive – and to do that we need to ask the right questions. When you know why people love something you can work out how to make it even more beloved and you can answer some questions about how you create something that will be loved in the future." Another useful question to ask is "What do people hate?"
You wouldn't know it from projects like Viiv, but Intel has 15 years of experience in social science research, cognitive psychology, human factors engineering and design.
For the first time though, the Experience Lab combines social scientists with engineers and both disciplines will work on research projects like facial recognition that works in real time by offloading work to a cloud service – or to spare cycles on another PC in the home.
"We need to move from things we know about people to things we can hand to engineers," Bell says; "and rather than having an anthropologist standing up and saying 'we can build this' I have engineers who can make that happen". Bell and her colleagues have spent over a decade working out what people love; over the next ten years she wants Intel to build more of them.
One idea; "Intel is always very interested in thinking of how you move stuff around; that include human IO, not just compute IO. Think of different sorts of interactions, new forms of input methods that go far beyond simple replacements for the mouse and keyboard."
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Tech firms dominate Best Global Brands list
Coca-Cola may hold the coveted top spot for the best global brand, but a list out this week shows that when it comes to brand names that resonate around the globe, technology firms dominate.In the top ten brands, according to Interbrand, seven are tech based. These include big hitters like IBM, Microsoft and Google who are in second, third and fourth spot respectively.
Other technology companies heading up the top ten include Intel (7), Nokia (8), Disney (9) and HP.
Tech domination
And you don't have to look too far down the list for other gadget companies. Apple and Samsung make the top 20 (17 and 19), while Canon, Sony, Amazon and Nintendo are in the top 50.
It's not just where the brands are in the list which paints a picture, however, but how much their brand value has changed.
Interbrand reveals that Nokia, though at number 8, has lost 15 per cent brand value.
While Apple is at number 17 but gained 37 per cent brand value – one per cent more than Google in number 4 and the biggest rise by any company in the list.
With these numbers, the list may be quite different next year.
To see the full list for yourself, go to www.interbrand.com.
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In depth: 10 best 3D TVs in the world today
If you're looking for the best 3D TV, you've come to the right place.We've got the ten best 3D TVs on the planet - both LCDs and plasma - and put them all in once place for your decision-making pleasure.
The jury's out on which TV tech is best for 3D, but we can already summarise the differences.
There's a feeling that for sheer 3D effects – especially in terms of depth and leap effects – the bright-and-breezy LCD sets from Samsung are the most effective. The downside is that LCD TVs do seem to be affected by 'crosstalk' – when each eye sees part of the image intended only for the other eye.
Sony and LG's 3D TVs, meanwhile, are much cleaner, though not quite as impressive when it comes to the sheer impact of their 3D effects.
Plasma, meanwhile – only from Panasonic, so far – appears to be clean and free from crosstalk, but oh so dark. The glasses get rid of a huge amount of brightness to leave a rather dingy image, but arguably the most impressive and comfortable overall image.
Crosstalk remains a real and tiring barrier to enjoying 3D, especially over extended viewing periods. Plus, of course, its effect runs counter to the clarity of the HD Blu-ray images that 'alternate frame' 3D was designed to keep – so choose carefully and try before you buy.
That's right, folks, you're being experimented on. That's for sure, and we expect the second generation of 3DTVs to be a good deal less 'crosstalky'.
For now, here are the 10 best 3D TVs in order of awesomeness!
10. LG 47LD950
What a spectacle, but LG's 3DTV reaches only for the SkyThe 47-inch 47LD950 boldly eschews the latest active shutter tech and sticks with a passive, offset approach that's best suited to Sky's new 3D service.
Using enthrallingly affordable 3D glasses that cost pennies rather than hundred of pounds, this unique 3D TV rams home that particular message by including a stunning four pairs in the box.
There is a catch. LG's approach of effectively having two images slightly offset from each other on the screen at the same time – rather than two Full HD images shown concurrently – does mean a less detailed picture.
As well as comfy glasses, the Sky 3D picture looks impressively natural and more vibrant than 'posh' 3D Blu-ray and features no 3D crosstalk. Brilliant! Or is it?
The price is a less-than-convincing 3D effect that divorces the foreground from the background, and 3D Blu-ray pictures don't look quite as detailed as they do on active 3D TVs, though it puts in a decent 2D performance.
Read: full LG 47LD950 review
9. Samsung 40C7000
Slim pickings for 3D on this Edge LED setThe first 3D set to reach our test bench back in May, Samsung's 40C7000 is nothing if not a head-turner. It's a sliver of a thing at just 27mm thick thanks to its Edge LED backlighting and some cutting-edge production techniques.
Using the sole pair of £100 glasses included with this TV, 3D enjoys some subtle depth and distance effects, but the screen size as a whole proves to be too small; the 3D effects become more impressive the nearer you sit to the screen, but 40 inches is not enough for the 3D action to become truly immersive.
Meanwhile, on-the-fly 2D-3D conversion proves gimmicky at best, but works better with a regular Blu-ray disc than from TV. Elsewhere in Samsung's 7 Series you'll find the 46-inch 40C7000 and 55-inch 40C7000 LED TVs, and the 50-inch PS50C7000 and 63-inch PS63C7000 plasmas.
Read: full Samsung 40C7000 review
8. Samsung LE46C750
Budget 3D for the masses?The LE46C750 was the first serious attempt to make 3D available to the less well heeled, though now it's joined by Sony's HX803 Series. This 46-inch LCD model uses standard CCFL lighting and sells for around the same price as a decent flat TV – and a wedge less than any other 3DTV.
With Sky's 3D channel, the performance is strikingly bright and colourful and the active shutter glasses don't wipe out nearly as much brightness as some rival 3D platforms – though motion doesn't look quite as clean and sharp as with Samsung's 9 Series screens.
On both Sky and 3D Blu-ray there's clear evidence of that arch nemesis of 3D LCD TVs, crosstalk noise – it's subtly visible almost all the time, causing the image to regularly look a little unfocused and shimmery.
At least there's a an effective 2D-to-3D conversion feature, which does add a genuine sense of 3D space and depth, though once again, it's blighted by crosstalk.
Read: full Samsung LE46C750 review
7. Philips Cinema 21:9 Platinum
Super-wide 3D for the super-richThe Philips Cinema 21:9 Platinum Series is Philips' first 3D TV, and it uses the same active-shutter 3D tech as the others tested here.
During our short preview, the 3D performance of this 58-inch Full LED-backlight set was excellent. Watching in the 21:9 aspect ratio is a lot more comfortable on the eyes than traditional 16:9 sets – the added screen space really did add to the sense of depth.
However, while Philips says it has gone to great length to eliminate 3D's biggest weakness – crosstalk (where the two images bleed into each other) – we found this to be a significant issue.
Crosstalk is more pronounced than on Panasonic VT20 plasmas, though this is a breath-taking 2D and 3D TV.
Read: Hands on: Philips Cinema 21:9 Platinum review
6. LG 55LX9900
LG's most ambitious TV to date?Nothing the Korean giant has done before quite prepares us for the amount of innovation and extravagance it's thrown at the 55LX9900, a 55-inch TV so jam-packed with technology – including active 3D playback — that it's likely to have its rivals scurrying for cover.
Somehow combining a 31mm depth with direct LED backlighting, the 55LX9900's 2D performance is spotless.
3D images look impressively detailed and crisp, even in dark image areas, with action sequences demonstrating expert fluidity and clarity. There's a catch; crosstalk. Parts of the picture can appear with ghostly echoes of themselves to the left and right of their 'real' position.
The sense of depth isn't as profound as it is on Samsung and Panasonic 3D TVs, either, though arguably that makes particularly deep 3D content easier on the eye. A 47-inch 47LX9900 is also available.
Read: full LG 55LX9900 review
5. Samsung UE55C9000
A big 3D reputation – and an even bigger priceIt's also available as the 40-inch UE40C9000 and 46-inch UE46C9000, but we're tempted to say that the 55 inches of screen within Samsung's flagship 9 Series LED-backlit LCD TV is the bare minimum you should be looking for if you're after top-draw 3D.
Designed with money-no-object flair and just 33.9mm deep, this LED-backlit LCD screen hosts genuine depth and retains colour vibrancy.
Crosstalk is evident, but it's minimised – to a point – by Dual Black Insertion that ups the 60Hz per eye refresh rate to 240Hz. Unfortunately only one pair of 3D glasses are included, though they keep the on-screen 3D action looking bright and vibrant.
2D is lush, with a host of other features that go a little of the way to justifying its enormous price tag – including Internet@, a Freeview HD tuner, extensive media playback and a slinky (though rather stuttering) 'Touch Control' remote.
But with significant crosstalk issues and a price that simply seems ludicrous when compared to the 3D competition, the UE55C9000 is style over substance.
Read: full Samsung UE55C9000 review
4. Sony KDL-40HX803
Cheap and cheerful with crosstalk suppressedSony may be making a belated splash with 3D, but it looks committed; from three full TV ranges this HX800 Series screen is its mainstream proposition.
Also available as a 46-incher (KDL-46HX803), these 74mm-deep Edge LED TVs are 3D-ready – you'll have to add the 3D gubbins (an emitter plus a pair of glasses) for £150.
A sense of depth and brightness are admirable, as is Sony's attempt to disguise the inevitable crosstalk issue – especially during fast-moving 3D footage.
'3D upconversion' is less impressive, with fizzy and unrefined images not a patch on Samsung's 2D-to-3D efforts, though at this low price – even with the 3D gubbins added on – the KDL-40HX803's 3D Blu-ray performance is great value.
Read: full Sony Bravia KDL-40HX803 review
3. Sony KDL-52HX903
Relatively clean 3D, but it's an optional extra onlyDeeper than sets in Sony's LX903 series, this 'Cinematic' HX903 uses Direct LED backlighting. The other big news about the 52-inch 52HX903 is that it is 3D capable, although you'll need to add an optional 3D kit containing a transmitter (£50) and as many active shutter glasses as you want (£99 each).
If you want 3D capabilities built in, you'll have to buy Sony's edge-lit LX903 models instead. The same applies to the 46-inch KDL-46HX903.
Pictures suffer from crosstalk, leaving images looking unfocused, though less of it than on the 3D sets from Samsung and LG. Indeed, there's sufficiently less of it to leave the 52HX903's 3D pictures looking mostly rather enjoyable. Especially since they remain impressively bright and colourful even with the (unusually comfortable and light-shielding) 3D glasses on.
Sony's 2D to 3D conversion system is rather less aggressive than Samsung's, with its 3D effect really being very limited in depth – but clean.
Read: full Sony Bravia KDL-52HX903 review
2. Sony KDL-60LX903
3D flagship in 'Signature' styleIt may be out-muscled in size by Panasonic's 65-inch plasma, but Sony's flagship 'Signature' KDL-60LX903 LED-backlit LCD TV is bigger than anything Sony has produced for yonks.
Slim at 64mm and sporting the brand's minimalistic Monolith design, this 60 incher holds its size well, but it's heavy.
Its 3D pictures are equally solid, offering a captivating experience, though crosstalk is there if you look for it. Happily, that's not a major issue and the KDL-60LX903's sheer size helps earn it some 3D stripes. Meanwhile, 2D to 3D conversion proves nothing more than a novelty. Shame.
This screen – and its identical 40-inch sibling, the KDL-40LX903 – ships with two pairs of the brand's TDG-BR100 3D glasses, which are reasonably comfortable and add to the feeling that the KDL-60LX903 is a bit of a bargain. That impression is sealed by its 2D performance, though you'd best stick to Freeview HD and Blu-ray.
Read: full Sony Bravia KDL-60LX903 review
1. Panasonic TX-P65VT20B
The bigger the better? You betcha!It follows that if a 3D screen is big enough to fill your field of vision, it's more likely to deliver an immersive stereoscopic experience. And that's true of the biggest – and best – 3DTV so far, though the 65-inch TX-65VT20 (and its little sister, the 50-inch TX-P50VT20) isn't as glamorous as we'd like in spite of its bronze finish.
The inclusion of two pairs of glasses is generous, though they're uncomfortable and let an annoying amount of light in. So it's lights-off time for 3D, not least because the only plasma 3D Series of TVs so far lose considerable brightness in 3D mode when compared to its LCD rivals.
Just as well, then, that the TX-P65VT20 has as immense black level response and far less obvious crosstalk issues than you'll find on any active LCD 3D TV. It's not immune to the tell-tale double ghosting of objects in the mid-to-far distance, but the overall image is crisp and convincing.
There may be no 2D-to-3D conversion circuitry and there is room for improvement, but this enormous Panasonic plasma arguably serves up the best 3D TV pictures currently available.
Read: full Panasonic TX-P65VT20B review
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AMD to release next-gen graphics pre-Christmas
AMD Director David Hoff has confirmed to TechRadar that there will definitely be new AMD graphics cards available before the end of the year. "It's going to give people some nice things to think about for the holiday shopping," he said.
Hoff was chatting to us in the St. Regis hotel, San Francisco, just down the road from where Intel was tearing down the IDF show at the Moscone Centre. AMD showed off its new Fusion APU, the 18w Zacate chip.
Hoff was also happy to speak about it's upcoming new range of DirectX 11 graphics cards. "It's certainly more than changing a sticker," he said with a grin. "I wouldn't say it's an absolute, complete from the ground up new architecture .It's a nice, different architecture."
Range refresh
It's been a full year since the launch of the HD 5000 series, the first DX11 GPUs, and AMD is only now facing serious competition from Nvidia's competing Fermi cards. Because of the lack of competition the AMD representatives agreed that was the reason there had been no change in the price of its cards since launch.
"We're right about that point where we should do a refresh," Hoff said.
"A one year cadence is about the best you're ever going to see on a new architecture," he continued. "We've got another unbelievable launch, with a wide range of products. That's about the best we could dream of."
He confirmed that it wouldn't just be the high-end card hitting the shelves by Christmas either. It wont be the full lineup, but we will see multiple SKUs of the card with the complete range following very quicky.
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Exclusive: Why YouView's UI is vital
YouView's User Interface will play a vital role in its eventual success or failure, according to CEO Richard Halton, with the way in which people find their programmes on the platform likely to evolve over time. YouView, formerly known as Project Canvas, is the scheme by major UK bodies such as the BBC, BT and ITV to get IPTV into the general public's living room.
Speaking to TechRadar, Halton indicated that there getting to the variety of on-demand and catch-up content would not be limited to a single route.
Different strokes
"We feel that you have to offer lots of different ways to find your content," said Halton at the launch of the YouView brand.
"The way I tend to talk about it is even the same viewer will want to find content in different ways.
"Your mum might want to go backwards in time on the EPG but she might also find it easier to find it by search.
"Search is important – but we are interested to see what the route it is that people use the most."
Evolving
Halton believes that YouView will evolve as patterns of user behaviour become clear, and that this will help define the user interface.
"It is software and in terms of developing you can continue to develop it," added Halton.
The final version of the UI has only been glimpsed, but it's clear that those involved realise that there is little point in having a wealth of linear, VOD and pay options if people cannot find them.
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Microsoft bans blood spurts from Windows Phone 7 apps
Microsoft has published its guidelines for developers looking to create programs for its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.The main theme seems to be 'squeaky clean' with a particularly stringent focus on banning elements with violence and sexual themes:
"Sex / Nudity – Images that are sexually suggestive or provocative (eg sexually provocative touching, bondage, masturbation); provocative images that reveal nipples, genitals, buttocks, or pubic hair.
"Content that a reasonable person would consider to be adult or borderline adult content (images, text, or audio)."
Realistic violence
The banned content continues:
"Realistic or gratuitous violence, including depictions of the following:
"Decapitation, impaling, blood splatter/blood spurting/blood pooling, or gore. Exploding body partsï€ . Guns/weapons pointed toward user/audience. Strangulation/choking. ï€ People or creatures on fire. Cruelty to animals. Audio of humans or animals suffering. Involuntary or physically-resisted sexual interactions with violent or illicit overtones."
However, it appears some gore may be allowed, but developers will have to go through the relevant game certification bodies (ESRB, PEGI, and USK) and the ratings certificate issued supplied with the application.
If you want to see the full list of regulations regarding developing for the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 platform, check out the PDF.
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Vodafone, Orange and O2 to create own mobile OS?
The heads of the top European mobile networks look set to have a meeting in the near future to discuss the possibility of making their own mobile OS.Stéphane Richard, CEO of Orange, has called some operating systems 'Trojan horses' in getting their services into the hands of consumers, and has called a meeting in Paris to discuss the possibility of taking a stand in an interview with French publication Le Figaro:
"On 8 October I've invited bosses of Vodafone, Telefonica [O2 in the UK] and Deutsche Telekom [T-Mobile] to Paris.
"We want to talk together on the possible creation of an operating system, the "Trojan horse" used by Google and Apple to establish their own relationship with our customers."
Open world
"We advocate for the world to be as open as possible. Between the four of us, we serve nearly one billion customers and have real clout and ability to influence the industry.
"This could take various forms: a joint venture, a small factory in common applications, we'll see ... We do not want to be followers but take the reins in innovation."
We've no idea if this would be a whole new operating system or one based on Android or Symbian without any of the 'Trojan Horse' services - but we'll be interested to see what the meeting yields in Paris.
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BT to offer free fibre optic upgrade to customers
BT customers who subscribe to a bundle of broadband and calls will be offered the chance to upgrade to the fibre-optic BT Infinity for no extra cost when it is available in their area. BT's Infinity is still available on a relatively small scale, but the telecoms giant will now be offering superfast broadband for £17.99 a month, with a three-month £7.49 window at the start of the contract term.
John Petter, managing director of BT's Consumer division, said: "Fibre is the future of broadband and BT is raising the speed and standard for customers nationwide.
Head and shoulders
"BT Infinity is head and shoulders above other services when it comes to value," he added
"We are the only company offering you an upgrade to fibre for no extra monthly cost and the only company to offer free line installation across all new bundles."
BT is aiming to roll out its fibre optic network to two thirds of UK homes by 2015 and insists that it is making 'significant progress' towards this.
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LG CEO quits over poor smartphone sales
LG Electronics' CEO, Nam Yong, has resigned from his position and will be replaced with one of LG's original founders.Yong has apparently been given the push due to declining sales in the mobile phone sector, which has seen phones go from being a third of LG's revenue to a quarter, with the mobile arm publishing a loss in Q2.
Koo Bon-joon will take over the reins, and will be tasked with reshuffling the mobile phone arm and help push it back up into the top three manufacturers worldwide.
Imminent switch
The switch will be made from 1 October, showing that LG is desperate to get new impetus in its drive back to popularity.
LG has also announced plans to bring out an Android tablet in the near future, as well as a series of budget Android phones - plus we've got the new Windows Phone 7 handsets coming soon.
But none of these have gained the critical acclaim or hype surrounding rival products from Samsung, HTC or Apple, so LG has its hands full if it's suddenly going to push back the sharp end of the smartphone grid.
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Intel: Blu-ray hack is real
The 'master key' which unlocks the encryption for HD content has been posted on the web and is legitimate, according to Intel.High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, which is the DRM used to make sure high-definition content is protected and can't be copied illegally, has been made public and a number of websites have published the code.
While this doesn't mean that anyone can start playing HD content on non-licensed devices, it does mean that the potential is there for chipped products to enter the market which can play non-protected material.
Speaking to Fox News, Tom Waldrop, a spokesman for Intel said: "It does appear to be a master key.
"What we have confirmed through testing is that you can derive keys for devices from this published material that do work with the keys produced by our security technology.
"This circumvention does appear to work."
Chips shopped
HDCP is used in most HD products, from Blu-rays to set-top boxes to videogames, so the announcement that the code is now in the hands of hackers is a worrying one for the entertainment industry.
However, Intel believes that mass market piracy isn't on the cards, with Waldrop noting: "For someone to use this information to unlock anything, they would have to implement it in silicon – make a computer chip.
"It would be a lot of work and a lot of expense to do that."
Even though HDCP has found not to be hacker proof Intel – a partner in the technology – is adamant the encryption tech is still the best around.
"HDCP remains an effective component for protecting digital entertainment," he explained.
"It relies on these licensing agreements to ensure that implementations are done appropriately, and there are legal enforcement methods available for cases where it is done inappropriately."
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AMD shows off Atom crushing netbook chip
AMD has demoed a new low cost, low power mobile processor for netbooks and cheap notebook PCs. Known as Zacate, the new chip was shown giving Intel's much more complex and expensive Core i5 processor a spanking in several popular PC games.
The demo took place in San Francisco as AMD cashed in on the presence of the tech community at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF).
The basic details of Zacate go something like this. It's a dual-core processor based on AMD's new low-power Bobcat core and it packs an integrated DX11 graphics core. Rated at 18W, there will also be a 9W model known as Ontario. Both will be made by Taiwanese foundry TSMC in 40nm silicon.
Overall, the new chip is tiny. Much smaller, for instance, than an AMD Phenom II quad-core processor. Smaller, of course, means cheaper. But more on pricing in a moment.
Not much more is known about the new Bobcat core and the demo did little to change that. Instead, AMD focused on the graphics performance of Zacate.
Surprisingly, AMD chose an Intel Core i5 laptop as the comparison platform. Core i5 is traditionally found in relatively expensive mid-range laptops rather than netbooks and cheaper portables.
Owning Intel
Nevertheless, Zacate was shown kicking out around 50 per cent more frames per second in the Batman: Arkham Asylum beat-'em-up. In the City of Heroes super hero game, the delta was more like 100 per cent.
Admittedly, AMD was using a slightly elderly graphics driver on the Core i5 system. But the point remains – if Zacate has the edge on a Core i5 in games, it will absolutely destroy an Atom-powered netbook.
Question is, will it actually compete with Atom? When AMD first introduced Zacate and Ontario, we got the impression they were very much a budget chip for netbooks. Now it seems AMD has higher ambitions for Zacate, pitching it as a competitor for Intel Pentium and Core i3 laptop PCs priced around $500 or £400.
Despite the chip's impressive graphics performance, that might be a little ambitious when you factor in CPU performance. Still, the lower power Ontario derivative bodes extremely well for netbooks systems. It should make for £250 netbooks that run Windows 7 properly and can cope with both HD video and a little gaming on the side.
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Mortal Kombat dev gets hands on 'powerful' PSP2
In a presumably unguarded moment, a developer working on the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot has revealed he has used a PSP2 and has called it a "powerful machine".That's right, a PSP2, which actually hasn't been announced yet.
Speaking at PAX 2010, Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick revealed he had used the handheld which Sony denies all existence of, explaining: "We have a PSP2 in the house and we're looking at the engine, like what can it support.
"Always a big thing for us is the performance. We're running at 60 fps, what can we do and do we have to build all the art assets over.
"We're definitely looking at them. PSP2 looks like it's a pretty powerful machine. We don't have a 3DS system in house yet, but we're looking to get one, and we'll certainly look at what its power is."
PSP2 a go?
This isn't the first time a dev has spoken about the PSP2, PlayStation 3 magazine PSM3 managed to squeeze out some information earlier this year from Lost Planet 2 creator Jun Takeuchi.
But with both E3 and Gamesconn passing, it seemed that maybe the industry was telling a white lie about the handheld.
Thankfully Himmerick's comments means that the PSP2 looks like it is alive and very much kicking.
So, when will we see the handheld? Surely if it exists, Sony would like to get it out for Christmas and make sure that it competes with the upcoming UK launch of the 3DS?
Sony has contacted CVGabout this, noting: "We haven't announced any news on PSP."
Which is fine by us as it seems the folks at Mortal Kombat have done it for them.
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12.1m BlackBerrys shipped in last 3 months
RIM shipped a whopping 12.1 million BlackBerry phones in the second quarter of 2010, nearly twice as many as it managed in the same period last year. The BlackBerry has been a global success for the Canadian phone giant, and the 12.1 million has played a bit part in a revenue rise of 31 per cent.
Interestingly, RIM is now saying that it has shipped 115 million smartphones to date, and expects to ship another 13.8 to 14.4 million more in the next three months.
Rising Torch
The figures have been helped by the huge success of the BlackBerry Torch, which has been the RIM's most successful GSM smartphone launch ever, despite not winning critical acclaim in our BlackBerry Torch review.
The BlackBerry Torch has yet to be given a UK release date, but is expected to take its bow on this side of the Atlantic on October.
It hasn't been all plain sailing for RIM this year, however, with the company having to defend itself from government claims that it should not be excluding them from its encrypted data.
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In Depth: 7 of the best Linux remote desktop clients
Seizing control of someone's computer might seem like a violating act of aggression, but sometimes it's necessary.We've known people to run remote desktop sessions against the machine they're actually using (it sounds crazy, but there was more than one desktop running), so don't imagine you can't find some use for it.
While real Unixers may like to sing songs about SSH and the command line, you may need to gain access with a graphical desktop, and that's where remote desktops come in.
For many people, the tried and tested method is VNC, and it features in a lot of clients in this test. But there are other protocols and types of desktop. In fact, the growing vogue among these clients is to support multiple protocols, so whatever desktop you're targeting, and whichever server it's running, there should be something suitable here.
Obviously, over the course of these tests, we sometimes weren't running exactly like for like – but that gives a fair test of the differing protocols too. For example, although NoMachine NX supports VNC connections, we tested its performance against its own NX server, which seems to make sense.
We didn't test the TightVNC client, mainly because it's very close to the TigerVNC implementation – they have a common codebase, but TigerVNC has a few more features.
How we tested...
The key to a good remote desktop is getting the responsive feedback you need to use it well. It's no good if the screen looks perfect, but it takes two minutes for each keypress to register.
We tested our ability to play Armegatron remotely. This OpenGL lightcycle game requires split-second timing, as well as the display to be refreshed often. The results are somewhat subjective, but the matches won out of ten are in the tables at the end.
The clients were tested against a local machine on a Gigabit LAN running the VNC server software Vino and the official NX server for the NX clients. RDP functionality is mentioned but wasn't tested.
The clients ran on a 3GHz Core 2 Duo machine running Fedora 13.
Krdc
Since we gave Vinagre the opportunity to work with Vino, its Gnome compatriot, we thought we'd use a standard KDE desktop on the client and server side and try Krdc with the Krfb server.
Somehow, even though it's implementing the same VNC protocols that everything else does, this combination is about the worst thing after TeamViewer in terms of responsiveness. It worked much better with the standard VNC server and Vino than with Krfb.
A less than auspicious start, but wait: Krdc is actually pretty good. Aside from the NX clients and Remmina, it was the only client on which we stood a chance of surviving a round of Armegatron. The responsiveness and frame rate were great, even if Krdc did still suffer the same background redraw problems as other VNC clients.
If your viewing needs change, it has an easy button to switch between full and scaled viewing modes. There are tabbed views for multiple connections, and the panel on the right, rather like Vinagre, also displays a list of bookmarks, recent connections and servers discovered on the local LAN.
There are plenty of settings for the client itself, but a disappointing set of choices for configuring the connection – you get the choice of high-, medium- or low-speed connections, and the software works out which features to use from there. We found this a bit annoying and limiting.
Aside from that, using Krdc was trouble-free, and it also supports the RDP protocols used for Windows remote access. If someone adds an NX plugin, it could become even more useful. If you run KDE and need an occasional VNC client, there's no compelling reason to change.
Verdict
Krdc
Version: 4.4.4
Web: www.kde.org/applications/internet/krdc
Krfb is a bust, but the client side of this pairing is a rare gem.
Rating: 6/10
RealVNC
This tiny Java-only client can be downloaded from the RealVNC site, but it's also contained in the RealVNC server software itself. Navigate to the correct port in your browser and the app will download and run, assuming you have Java set up properly.
If you want to build it from source, the Makefile is a bit outdated, so you'll have to edit it and substitute javac for jikes.
You wouldn't really expect a Java client to top the performance stakes when it comes to something graphically intensive, and this client did little to change that perception. Despite the fact that we couldn't manage to coerce it out of 256-colour mode for the duration of testing, it still managed to crawl along.
The only reason we didn't spot more glitches on the display was because we weren't really sure what murky-dither patterns were intentional. Needless to say, the other options available are pretty shabby, and we couldn't get encryption to work at all (which is probably a good thing considering the speeds we managed).
It comes across as a faithful replica of the native RealVNC client. The TigerVNC client is a fork of the VNC code, so more or less comprises the bits from RealVNC and TightVNC, although development has continued on these.
So, it resembles a slightly less pleasant version of TigerVNC and doesn't perform very well. If it had sound support, it would probably swear at you and tell you how rubbish you are. However, in an emergency, a Java client is a good standby.
You might not need to be able to see everything perfectly to perform a server-saving operation, so it's worth knowing about.
Verdict
RealVNC Java Client
Version: 4.1
Web: www.realvnc.com
It isn't pretty or quick, but it works well enough to keep for emergencies.
Rating: 2/10
Remmina
Though not be the officially Gnome-endorsed client, Remmina certainly looks at home on the Gnome desktop with its GTK stylings. The well-designed layout works just as well on a small notebook as a giant desktop monitor.
A minimalist main display contains a toolbar and a list of available connections. Once connected, a new window spawns showing the remote desktop. Multiple connections are managed by easy-to-navigate, named tabs.
The useful toolbar controls are visible all the time, enabling you to rescale the display quickly to fit the available space, go full-screen or even individually control the horizontal and vertical scale of the window.
Unlike some of the clients, you don't get very fine-grained control over the protocol options such as compression, but it does at least give you a choice of colour modes and the four-step quality control, which seems to be a reasonable way of managing bandwidth and CPU use. Managing connections and bookmarking them is intuitive, although there's no automatic discovery.
In the responsiveness stakes, Remmina managed to wow us with its performance during the Armegatron test – not only was it playable, it was barely distinguishable from running the game locally, except for a slight (but crucial) delay relaying keyboard taps. There are no chat or file transfer facilities for basic VNC connections, but these are available for RDP links, which are also supported by this client.
As we were finishing off this Roundup, version 0.8 of the software was released. Among the new features is support for NX sessions! This makes Remmina the client with the widest range of protocol support, to top it off.
Verdict
Remmina
Version: 0.8
Web: http://remmina.sourceforge.net
Great features, great performance – we don't know how it could be better.
Rating: 10/10
TeamViewer
TeamViewer is quite a big name in the world of Windows and the software has many major corporate clients, but it's little used or considered on Linux. Linux support has been in beta for some time, and the software only runs with the help of Wine. It does work though, and offers features beyond the usual Linux clients.
The first advantage, and in some ways disadvantage, is that this client uses a proprietary protocol that enables clients to link up through a central server, which manages a connection from one site to another.
An advantage is that, with a variety of clients on offer, you can view a remote system from practically anywhere, even on locked-down systems that wouldn't allow an SSH connection, or from behind corporate firewalls. Also, it runs on Windows and Mac, so it's an easy way to cater for all desktops.
The quality of the connection is poor though. It can render a nice desktop at a slow frame rate, or an unreadable desktop at something approaching a nice speed.
However, there are added benefits from the proprietary protocol. It can manage audio (badly) and there's a little chat client, file transfer and some form of VoIP service. We were unable to get the latter working.
Connections are managed by dishing out a PIN on one machine, and the user at the other end typing it in, which isn't as secure as its authors may want you to believe. There's a free version for noncommercial use, although you get an annoying, repetitive popup.
While it has some feature ideas that would be worth implementing in the next generation of Linux remote desktops, at the moment this is a non-starter for Linux.
Verdict
TeamViewer
Version: 5.0.8b
Web: www.teamviewer.com
Sadly unusable proprietary horrorfest, but it has some nice features, nonetheless.
Rating: 3/10
TigerVNC
As soon as you run TigerVNC, you get a good idea of the kind of people who invented it and why. A tiny request pops up and asks for the server you want to connect to – there are no bookmarks, or lists of located servers on the network. If this were a wrench, it wouldn't be one with a moulded ergonomic grip.
If you click the Options tab though, you'll find there are plenty of settings – ones relating to the connection and the protocols at least. While the software will automatically select the options for you, you can specify things such as colour depth and compression level if you like.
High compression will reduce the bandwidth needed for an effective desktop, at the expense of more CPU cycles being required at both ends. In use, running against the Vino and standard VNC servers, TigerVNC performed reasonably well.
Of the VNC clients, it was much faster than Vinagre, but not quite as responsive as Remmina. There seemed to be a few more refresh problems than most of the other software, with elements of windows shearing off occasionally, and the damaged background not being redrawn for a few seconds.
In terms of response though, it was easy to find the cursor (it renders as a dot, even if the display cursor doesn't keep up) and the keyboard seemed fine. The display is in a single window with scroll bars if it doesn't fit the local screen – there's no scaling, other than running full-screen.
This client is capable enough, and has obviously been designed mainly for admins, but even so, some rudimentary comforts would have been appreciated. You might be a hardened network engineer, but still appreciate not having to type in IP addresses every time you want to connect to something, after all.
Verdict
TigerVNC
Version: 1.0.9
Web: www.tigervnc.org
Plenty of options and it runs pretty fast, but there's little UI to speak of. Shortcuts would also be welcome.
Rating: 4/10
Vinagre
Although the name of this app sounds like some thing you'd put on a salad, you'll normally find it entitled Remote Desktop Viewer in your Gnome menus, because it's a standard part of the Gnome desktop. On running, an ordinary-looking window opens.
The panel on the right displays discovered servers and any bookmarks. The main part of the window is for the client connection to the server, which can be run full-screen or within the scrollable confines of this window.
If you open multiple sessions with different servers, the remote displays will appear in a series of tabs. The Bookmarks are OK, but can be confusing – there's little to distinguish them from discovered servers.
Like the other VNC clients on test here, it's reliant on the server and the features it supports in terms of performance issues.
We tried Vinagre with the standard VNC server and with its 'other half', Vino. The latter, like Krfb, is a GUI front-end and a VNC server, designed to make it easy to share desktops across computers. We had no trouble connecting to the remote screen, or using the options with the Vino server for features such as JPEG compression or different colour depths.
One curious problem we had was that the cursor often didn't update on the display very frequently. This doesn't seem to be an issue with the connection at all, because menus opened and other GUI elements were displayed almost instantaneously.
Fullscreen mode also proved impossible for us to escape from – the auto-hiding toolbar refused to come out to play, leaving us to yank the rug from under the client to get back to the desktop.
Verdict
Vinagre
Version: 2.30.1
Web: http://projects.gnome.org/vinagre
Simple to use and performs well, if you avoid full-screen mode.
Rating: 5/10
NoMachine NX Client
The NoMachine philosophy is quite simple and easy to buy into. Imagine a world where a computer system has such foresight that even its very method of displaying something on the screen is split into a server-client software relationship. Now imagine that after many, many generations of this, the one true way has been lost, and it's just now a very complicated, overblown display driver.
NoMachine wants X to rediscover its greatness, but too much stuff has been added without thought to the server– client relationship. That's why its approach is completely different to the standard VNC setup.
The NX protocol works over SSH. This brings security and a few other things not native to the RFB protocol used by VNC as standard. It also uses smart methods of encoding and compressing data, and clever use of caches to minimise the bandwidth required. And if you can save the bandwidth, you can do other cunning things with it – why not also ship over the audio feed from the host machine, for example?
An advantage of using the SSH connection is that if you have a user account on the target machine, you can just log in as normal and start a new X session. The corollary is that it's hard to 'grab' a screen that's already running, although the NX machine can do that through a standard VNC connection instead if necessary, or by launching a shadow session.
Shadow sessions work well, and depending on the setup, the remote machine may have to confirm the connection. For whatever reason, this tends to be markedly slower than spawning your own X session.
As well as VNC, it also supports RPC for Windows machines, with a similar interface, so it can be used as a general remote access tool. Although the client software makes it easy to configure connections and save them as settings, it doesn't really give that much love to the desktop users.
Somehow you end up with a whole host (intended) of software installed to do a simple job. There are no tabbed views or anything pretty, and you have to set up sessions in a different application than where you launch them from. But all that goes by the by when you see it run.
Whatever magic pixies sit in the pipes pushing the data through, they do an incredible job. NX on NX definitely gives the best user experience, though a lack of server software for Windows and Mac make its application outside the Linux lab a bit limited.
Verdict
NoMachine NX Client
Version: 3.4.0-7
Web: www.nomachine.com
NX connection makes short work of even demanding apps, and plays sound too!
Rating: 8/10
The best Linux remote desktop client: Remmina 10/10
Leaving aside the clients that don't work that well, there's almost a war of ideology going on for the top spots. There's no doubt that NoMachine, although it eschews standard VNC (you can still use it as a VNC client), performs excellently.
In the tests, the OpenGL game was fluid and playable. And while it was fiddly to set up, in use it was better than most. The NX protocol may well be the future, but the client software still has a lot to learn from the user experience guys.
The KDE entry, Krdc, performed well, in spite of its disastrous early start with the companion server. That could really be a problem for the Krdc people, because users will likely use them together and be disappointed with the slow performance. If you're running a KDE desktop and need a simple VNC client though, there's probably no need to search further.
TeamViewer provided an interesting diversion to the main event. It wasn't anywhere near as responsive as the main contenders, while we had concerns about security and the 'phone home' nature of the connection. Having said that, it did layer on extra features.
The NX servers do handle sound, but there are some additional options that could be useful when used in a corporate environment.
The winner, by some distance, was Remmina. Performance was exemplary, but that's not the full story. It had the best feedback and responsiveness of any client, and if you didn't know better, the remote desktop might have been a normal-speed local machine.
More than the performance though, this client had the best mix of features, and a sensible and well thought-out interface. Although it did split into multiple windows, the controls are always accessible.
As well as discovering clients on the network, it has a good way of storing connections, which would still work well if you had to deal with lots of desktops. Support for NX makes this an all-round winner.
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Review: Samsung R590
Samsung has impressed us immensely throughout this past year by producing a range of great laptops at decent price points, and the run of good form continues with the R590.It may be one of the more expensive machines from Samsung, but it delivers on all fronts, making this a very flexible option.
Samsung has implemented a new paint scheme with this laptop, and the dark blue swirl pattern makes it stand out from the crowd. However, as with all shiny machines, it does quickly pick up smudges and smears, so will need the occasional wipe to keep smart.
The 15.6-inch screen features an edge-to-edge plastic finish which looks great, but does produce distracting reflections. It's a very bright panel, however, and colour reproduction is great as a result, but the contrast isn't quite up to that of the excellent Medion. Nevertheless, holiday snaps and movies look great.
Build quality is excellent and the solid chassis provides a firm base for the keyboard, which is spacious and very comfortable to use. The isolation-style keyboard is put to great use – and the dedicated numeric keypad is one of the more spacious here.
A nice touch is that the touchpad is framed by four blue LEDs which makes locating and using the device in the dark very easy.
Everyday performance is excellent. The Core i5 450M's ability to Hyper-Thread, whereby each of the two cores can run two separate tasks, means the laptop can run multiple applications and still show no signs of lag. This means those interested in running resource-heavy programs – or simply after as much performance as possible for their money – should look no further.
Powerful graphics
The powerful Nvidia graphics card also means the laptop will play the latest games with ease, and editing photos and watching DVDs is a walk in the park for this machine.
The 500GB hard drive is standard at this price, and you can watch or burn DVDs using the in-built optical drive.
Portability isn't the laptop's strongest suit, and the 201-minute battery life is not a great result. Nevertheless, we expect 180 minutes from the latest machines, so this score from such a powerful laptop isn't actually too bad – although obviously it can't compete with the impressively mobile Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG.
The R590 is further evidence of Samsung creating some truly great laptops lately. The new design is great, as is the power, performance and usability on offer, making this laptop hard to ignore.
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In Depth: Hands on: Facebook Places review
Facebook has officially announced Facebook Places for the UK enabling you to post location-specific information to Facebook.The link is now live in the iPhone app and you can also access Places on other handsets through touch.facebook.com.
Be warned that by using Places your location will automatically be posted to your wall for all to see - there is no pre-warning about this specifically though there is a more general warning. However, to be fair to Facebook, Places is opt in, so you only check in if you have authorised it.
You do also get a warning if you define a new Place as you'll see. So let's get started. Your iPhone app will highlight that Places is now available - if it's the latest version of the app of course.
Click on the Places icon to see a list of your friends' locations. The eagle-eyed among you will note that this image is taken a lot later than all the others. That's because, when we first tried Places at 8.30 this morning, none of our friends were using it. This has now changed!
This is what you'll see if you can't connect to the internet (good work, Vodafone).
However, if you have some semblance of connectivity, a list of local businesses will then appear. You can click the + icon to add a new one - we'll show you this screen shortly.
So we've decided that we're at a place called The Corridor (a shopping arcade). As you can see, you can say what you're doing there as well as tag other people in your status update.
Using the options menu in the top right you can also flag inaccuracies in the location data.
Clicking the Check in button will take you to this screen where you have to agree to use Facebook Places. THIS IS THE ONLY PRIVACY WARNING before sharing your location, so take heed.
Facebook says that "check-ins are defaulted to friends only (unless your master setting is everyone) and minors will not appear in posts or check-ins to anyone but friends, you can also always remove any check-in from your phone or on the web."
"Users have full privacy control and can customise these settings as well as amend them from a mobile device."
If you chose to add a new place on the first Places menu screen, this is what you'll see. Define the type of place it is, click Add, and you'll see a warning about making places public as well.
When you check in, your location is shown in your News Feed, and it will show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.
Facebook says that if you prefer not to appear in the 'People Here Now' section on a place page after you check in, you can uncheck the appropriate box in your privacy settings.
Facebook has obviously built some pretty robust privacy settings around this, but from our first look at Places it's still confusing as to what you need to configure and what's best to choose. The verdict is decidedly 'use with caution'.
As far as the actual service goes, we think Facebook's first foray into location-aware has success written all over it. Why? Because, providing you're willing to share your data, the whole thing is so easy. Using Foursquare or Google Latitude? You won't be for long.
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Sport plus girl plus controversy = Google win
Google's fastest rising searches for the week have underlined a hard fact of the internet: hot girls are popular, sports are popular, and when the two collide with a pang of controversy the rest of the internet might as well stick its feet up for the day and wait it out. Proof of this was the fastest rising search for the week from London's being Ines Sainz, who is apparently an American sports reporter who has been given a torrid time in a dressing room.
Sport and controversy collide for the number two spot as well, with the News of the World's Ricky Hatton cocaine story pushing the Hitman back into the public eye.
Inbetweeners
The popularity of E4 show Inbetweeners is clear, with the Bafta-winning comedy about four teenage boys at school picking up a very credible fourth spot, ahead of Champions League – which returned with a bang this week - and those seeking the Halo Reach review.
Charity Help for Heroes is making a big splash at the moment – as testified by a top 10 placing – and a stint as X-Factor guest judge pushed Pixie Lott into 15th place.
Also noteworthy is the arrival of mymaths – a site that promises to bring maths alive, possibly in the same way as Dr Frankenstein's monster.
Google's fastest rising searches for London this week
ines sainz
ricky hatton
vma 2010
inbetweeners
champions league
chantelle and preston
halo reach review
nadal
e4
help for heroes
nfl
the wanted
tour of britain
fantasy premier league
pixie lott
mtv
eztv
lady gaga
mymaths
formula 1
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Review: Medion Akoya P6625
The Medion Akoya P6625 provides fantastic all-round power and portability at a great price, meaning those on a slightly tighter budget should look no further here. Despite costing £210 less than the Lenovo ThinkPad L412, this laptop provides increased performance. The Intel Core i5 430M processor is joined by 4096MB of memory, and makes remarkably quick work of running everything from web browsers to music editing software.
Along with the Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost, this excellent performance is made possible by Intel's Smart Cache technology.
The Core i5 processor family boasts an impressive 3MB of cache, allowing the processor to keep working data closer to hand and increase performance, without having to always access the standard memory (RAM).
The laptop also features switchable graphics and, at the touch of a hotkey above the keyboard, you can choose to run either a resource-light integrated Intel or power-hungry dedicated ATi GPU.
The former will give you maximum battery life - a solid 228-minutes - but poor graphical performance, while the latter provides the sort of power usually associated with a gaming machine, but battery life drops to 150 minutes. This gives you the flexibility to choose between portability or very impressive multimedia performance.
The 15.5-inch screen also impressed immensely and provides great colour vibrancy, making it great for multimedia use and watching movies.
The chassis is built from a matt-black plastic with a shiny palmrest. It's a little uninspiring and the palmrest very quickly attracts smudges and smears, but ultimately works well enough.
Spongy keyboard
The keyboard is comfortable with a light – if a little spongy – action that will suit those who regularly type up documents, and there's also a dedicated numeric keypad included for those who regularly work with spreadsheets.
802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet are included and allow you to network at the fastest speeds currently available.
Along with HDMI for connecting to external high-definition (HD) sources, such as your HDTV, an eSATA interface is also included and will suit those who want to regularly back up data to compatible external hard drives at impressively high speeds.
All in all, we were extremely impressed by the Akoya P6625. The performance on offer – both everyday and especially graphical – is truly exceptional for the price, while the screen and general usability also impress.
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Review: Asus K52JC-EX089V
Asus is a Taiwanese laptop manufacturer which produces a whole host of laptops to cater for a broad variety of requirements. The K52JC-EX089V is a machine that doesn't stand head and shoulders above the competition, but still makes a genuinely solid option. The 15.6- inch screen features a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution and pictures are sharp enough to enjoy web browsing and word processing without issue. Unfortunately, it is a surprisingly dim screen, which won't suit those that work in bright light conditions.
Colours suffer as a result of this and the Medion Akoya P6625 provides much greater vibrancy.
Understated design
An understated but attractive brown design is employed. The lid is very shiny, yet hides smudges easily, but does attract fluff and dust quickly. The matt plastics of the chassis are tough and Asus' IceCool design successfully keeps the laptop at a comfortable temperature by drawing hot air away from the palmrest.
This is helped by the low heat of Intel's Core i5 processor which, running at 35 watts, produces less heat than many other available processors. As a result, this is a comfortable machine to use for extended periods of time.
The laptop features the same variant of Intel Core i5 processor as found in the Medion and Packard Bell Bell EasyNote TX86, but proves the most powerful of the three in everyday performance.
This means, thanks to the Intel Hyper-Threading technology built into the chip, you'll have no issues multi-tasking all but the most resource-intensive applications, although if you want that little more power for your money maybe consider the Samsung R590, which features the Core i5 450M processor which runs at a faster clock speed.
This laptop also boasts Nvidia's Optimus Technology, run via a dedicated Nvidia graphics card. Performance is sufficient for photo editing and playing games, but if you're a multimedia enthusiast, the Medion or Samsung make more powerful options.
Portability is decent, and the 2.4kg chassis won't be a pain to carry around. Similarly, the 249-minute battery life is useful without being exceptional.
You'll also find 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet included, as is an integrated webcam for taking photos or videochatting with friends and family.
Aside from the disappointing screen brightness, the Asus K52JC-EX089V impressed us on a number of levels. Power and performance are great, while the design, usability and portability on offer make this a great all-round machine for the family.
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Weird Tech: AR cake features Keanu riding a unicorn
Faced with the challenge of making a "decorative cake" recently, Brooklyn-based Justin Blinder did what any interactive designer with poor baking skills would do: he made an augmented reality cake. Using a "simple BCH marker" found on the web, Blinder iced it onto the cake and programmed it using openFrameworks and ofxARToolkitPlus.
Being somewhat pressed for time, he opted for a "conservative and traditional" design, comprising a unicorn-riding Keanu Reeves and a few dolphins. Sadly even Keanu couldn't detract from Blinder's "mediocre" cake mix:
TASTY: Cool tech can't make up for poor skillz
"The main lesson learned is that Augmented Reality will only compensate for poor cake making skills in the right company," lamented Blinder. Hit this video for an action replay of the process.
Remote-controlled soldiers
It's no stranger to controversy, that's true, but has DARPA gone too far this time? Its latest neurotechnology research could see soldiers remote-controlled by ultrasound, according to Arizona State University neuroscientist William Tyler.
He's been working with the US Department of Defence to develop a "transcranial-pulsed ultrasound" able to directly stimulate brain circuits from outside the brain – without surgery.
MIND BENDING: DARPA insists it won't be using the mind-control helmets to give soldiers orders…
The technology involves a small chip placed inside a helmet. Able to reduce stress and anxiety, heighten alertness and even reduce the effects of traumatic brain injury, it means DARPA can now get further into the minds of soldiers than ever before. Hmm - warriors who don't feel pain despite lasting brain damage? What could possibly go wrong…
Spartans take to the skies in London
Microsoft went to unusual measures to mark Tuesday's launch of Halo: Reach this week. Pigeon-feeding tourists in London's Trafalgar Square and various other spots around the world were surprised to see a jet pack-wearing Spartan blast off for a brief flight before landing back in-between two additional Halo soldiers.
Predicted by Microsoft to be "the biggest game of the century", Halo: Reach is a prequel to the original series. Fortunately no children were harmed during the spectacle, although goodness knows what old Nelson would have made of it all.
Poo pastimes
And for those with the odd desire to track their bowel movements, here's the iPhone Poo Log app. According to the App Store, it's what "every iPhone and iPhone Touch has been waiting for".
EUGH: Pebbles or liquid?
We're not so sure, but no detail has been spared in the application, which allows you to record essential details such as delivery, size, shape and number of particles, as well as letting you pursue a selection of "poo pastimes". What's your poo telling you?
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SanDisk announces Sansa Fuze+
Flash specialist SanDisk has announced its latest touchscreen media player, with the Sansa Fuze+ range starting at £69 for a 4GB version. The Sansa Fuze obviously sold well enough for SanDisk to continue its media player range, and it is billing the Sansa Fuze+ as 'delivering a best-in-class combination of features, ease of use and value.'
"The Sansa Fuze+ is the most versatile portable media player available for under €100," said Tom Bailey, senior director, AV retail, SanDisk.
Sophisticated
"We developed an entirely new product to provide consumers with a stylish, affordable device that performs exactly as a sophisticated yet easy to use player should," he said.
The player offers a QVGA LCD 2.4 inch capacitive touchscreen, along with extensive codec support and comaptibility with Mac, PC or Linux and an SD slot to expand the player's storage.
The Sansa Fuze+ is available in red, white, black, blue and purple and has a UK release date of mid October
The 4, 8 and 16 gigabyte versions are priced at £69, £79 and £89 respectively.
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SanDisk announces Sansa Fuze+
Flash specialist SanDisk has announced its latest touchscreen media player, with the Sansa Fuze+ range starting at £69 for a 4GB version. The Sansa Fuze obviously sold well enough for SanDisk to continue its media player range, and it is billing the Sansa Fuze+ as 'delivering a best-in-class combination of features, ease of use and value.'
"The Sansa Fuze+ is the most versatile portable media player available for under €100," said Tom Bailey, senior director, AV retail, SanDisk.
Sophisticated
"We developed an entirely new product to provide consumers with a stylish, affordable device that performs exactly as a sophisticated yet easy to use player should," he said.
The player offers a QVGA LCD 2.4 inch capacitive touchscreen, along with extensive codec support and comaptibility with Mac, PC or Linux and an SD slot to expand the player's storage.
The Sansa Fuze+ is available in red, white, black, blue and purple and has a UK release date of mid October
The 4, 8 and 16 gigabyte versions are priced at £69, £79 and £89 respectively.
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Review: Acer Aspire Timeline X 4820TG
Acer's range of TimelineX laptops is built predominantly for consumers seeking performance and portability. To this end, the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG-5454G50Mn proves to be a great consumer option with its impressive power and stunning design. The laptop comes with a large 6-cell battery which sticks out awkwardly from the back of the laptop. With 661 minutes of battery life available, however, it's hard to complain. The sizeable battery does add a little weight and, at 2.3kg, the laptop isn't the lightest machine around – but we think it's a fair exchange considering the outstanding battery life on offer.
Build quality is also excellent and the brushed-aluminium lid and chassis not only look smart, but provide excellent protection for all the internal components. The material is also very resilient to scratches and doesn't attract dust and dirt, making it ideal for life on road.
The 14-inch screen features a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution and is bright, crisp and clear enough for reading and editing even the most detailed of documents. The lid folds back almost 180 degrees to the chassis, but the shiny Super-TFT screen coating creates reflections in bright light.
The firm, flat keyboard is very comfortable to use and the spread-out keys reduce typing errors. As a result, you'll find this a very comfortable machine if you plan on spending a lot of time typing.
Usually a massive battery life means the employment of a low-powered, resource-light processor. Here, however, the powerful Intel Core i5 450M chip proved extremely capable and produced a solid benchmarking result, just losing out to the Samsung R590.
Future-proofing
You'll have no problem running everything from word processors to media editing suites, and the power is such that it provides you with a great deal of futureproofing, so you won't have to upgrade for at least three years.
Similarly, the ATi graphics card makes photo and HD video editing possible, and the latest games will also run, albeit with settings turned down.
The 500GB hard drive provides comprehensive storage for all your files and folders, and there's also a DVD optical drive for watching films or burning backup discs, for example.
802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet make this laptop a great choice for those looking to connect to the internet via wireless or wired networks.
Overall, the Aspire TimelineX 4820TG-5454G50Mn impressed us immensely. Its excellent battery life and build quality is coupled by very capable performance to make it a great option for those regularly on the road.
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Facebook Places for UK: all you need to know
Facebook has announced this week that its location-based service Places has come to the UK. Places first arrived back in August in the US and the more eagle-eyed of you will have spotted that there has been a dormant link to it on the UK Facebook iPhone app since then.
Its arrival in the US sparked something of an outcry from privacy supporters who felt letting others know where you are at any given moment could turn you into bait for stalkers.
But that was last month, which means we have had a bit more time to digest just what Facebook Places means to everyday users of Facebook and not just fan the flames of the privacy debate.
So, here are some of the facts about Facebook Places and just why it's going to be a social-network game-changer:
It brings social networking into the real world
It's all very well speaking to your mates online or liking their status updates, but it isn't as good as meeting up face to face over a drink or two.
Facebook Places allows you to do that, keeping track of where your friends are.
It's a recommendation engine
If you spot that someone goes regularly to a certain café, then it's probably because they really like the place – or they fancy the waitress. Places opens up where you live and may offer different places and things to see and do.
This is similar to what Foursquare has done, but changed going to places into a game of one-upmanship.
It turns your phone into the main place for Facebook
Twitter's explosive growth isn't just to do with the amount of celebrities using the thing but because it is so easily accessible from a mobile phone.
Facebook has gone some way to improving its phone apps, but the service is still primarily looked at on a computer.
Places gives the mobile phone version of Facebook a massive USP – it means that there is now a reason to use the social network on your phone as well as your desktop.
Makes bumping into people that little bit easier
It's fair to say that most of us don't actually meet up with the majority of our friends on Facebook. Some may want to keep it that way, but Places is focusing on the ones who wouldn't mind meeting up with real people once every so often.
So, if you sign up you will be notified if a person is in a similar area to you. This could also act as a warning if you definitely don't want to meet up with a particular person.
It changes friends into tour guides
If you are going to a place you have never been before and someone on your network has been there, Places allows them to offer travel advice, recommendations and the like.
It can be used to boast
If you use your status to boast about all the cool things you are doing on a day to day basis, then you will be de-friended. It's the British way – nobody likes a boaster and nobody likes that you are having such an awesome time all of the time.
With Places it means that you aren't actually doing the boasting, the service does it for you.
So if you happen to be in Kenya one week, Tokyo the next and up the Eiffel Tower the week after, Places will let your network know.
It'll kick-start your social life / stop you missing out
There's nothing worse than peer pressure making you do things, but at least it gets you out of the house. Facebook Places will let you know just what you are missing out on when you say no to an event, even though you are free to go to it.
Once you see updates of all your mates going to your favourite bar, then you will probably end up going along, which isn't exactly a bad thing.
Facebook Places certainly isn't for everyone. If you just use Facebook to laugh at what your 'friends' from school have done with their life, then you will have no use in finding out who is where and when.
But Facebook is a social network and for those who want to be social then it does open up the possibility of meeting your friend group face to face and not through a computer.
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