Author: Gary Cutlack
Asus announcement of the day: The 15.6in All-In-One-Touch Screen PC
Yesterday, all Asus announced was some boring old motherboards. Yesterday was a very sad day for Asus fans. But today it’s back on the hot PC hardware scene with this odd little Eee-branded mini desktop.
It is the Asus All-In-One-Touch Screen PC, which has a 15.6″ 16:10 widescreen display, does wi-fi, runs Windows XP, contains an Intel Atom, has 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. Which is all you need to sit in front of staring at the internet all evening until the pains in your eyes and shoulders tell you it’s time for bed…
Sony strengthens firmware portfolio – PSP hits v5.00, PS3 now goes up to v2.50
Sony’s rigorous firmware updating schedule is marching further forward, with the company today announcing new updates to PSP and PS3 – making them both marginally better than before.
The 2.50 update for PS3 will add in support for more voice chat features via the official PS3 bluetooth headset, better integration of Sony’s 100% original “Trophies” feature, plus the quite superb ability to capture screenshots while playing certain games. This will help the internet compare Xbox 360 and PS3 games in more detail than ever before…
Void in life filled by Mario toys
It’s OK. This makes everything OK. No matter how much you have spent on Sonic The Hedgehog plushes and Transformers action figures over the last 10 years, there is always someone out there who is in significantly deeper. Whoever owns this is in over their head. There is no way back to normal society from here.
This little lot is what you would generously describe as “quite a few” Nintendo toys. There would appear to be some duplicates in the collection, but that just adds to the sense of deep, tragic waste of money and a life.
I mustn’t laugh too much. If you changed…
Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy launching MEGAHOUSES to flog the UK electronics this year
The UK phone-shifter and the American technology super-chain will soon publish their plans for selling us lot in the UK cheap electronics.
Over 100 electronics warehouses will launch in the UK under the Best Buy brand, as the tech-seller pushes out of its homeland to crush the likes of Currys and Comet over here. The plan is thanks to Best Buy’s deal to buy half of Carphone Warehouse earlier this year to push its expansion in Europe…
MSI preparing U120 Wind update as "netbook" onslaught shows no sign of slowing
This lovely little thing here is MSI’s latest update to its lovely little Wind ultraportable – the U120. Supposedly offering a slightly more elegant and adult design, the U120 is largely the same on the inside – but dumps the slightly toytown flimsiness of the original Wind for a “business” look.
So you still get the same 10″ screen and Intel Atom inside, support for regular hard drives or solid-state model if you’re a bit ‘flash’ (intentional memory pun), plus support for the emerging 802.11n wi-fi and a SIM card slot for racking up vast expenses trying to get a connection on the train…
Users of Bebo have sent their messages into space
Of all the people in the world you’d like to have communicating with alien leaders in a potential “first contact” scenario, would Bebo users really be the #1 choice? Well, that’s what’s happening, as the social networking site’s users’ suggestions for images and text to send into space as part of its ‘A Message From Earth’ project have been… sent into space.
501 messages from Bebo users – including photos of Richard and Judy and pop band McFly’s opinions on Cheryl Cole – were sent off from Ukraine’s National Space Agency yesterday in a fantastic waste of everyone’s time. Here’s Bebo’s sensational illustration of how sending messages into space works:
The messages will take a shade over 20 years…
eBay Nutcase of the Week: BT engineer given nine-month sentence for selling stolen equipment
Poor old Qamar Masood-Mirza was said to have been running an “unsophisticated” operation, in which he nicked equipment he was supposed to be installing in people’s homes in order to sell it on eBay.
The BT engineer made himself a £3k profit flogging stuff he’d nicked from his employers – money he’s been ordered to repay in return for his nine-month prison sentence for theft being suspended. BT colleagues suspected him of selling the “internet connection equipment” and looked for it on eBay – they found it and tracked Qamar down from his eBay ID, which he’d rather amateurishly registered using his real details…
Sanyo has said it's doing something to make Blu-ray lasers better
To this end, Sanyo is promising to boost the capacity of Blu-ray discs to 100GB and maximise write-speed of burners to around 12x.
It’s all thanks to clever and more powerful new blue laser diode technology, which allows up to four data layers – each packing in 25GB of deleted scenes and staggeringly dull interviews with the leading man – to be stuck into a single Blu-ray disc at TWELVE TIMES writing speed…
The viral marketing ENDS HERE – Bungie's new game is "Halo 3: Recon"
Halo 3: Recon! It sounds like a joke. But it isn’t. Halo 3: Recon is the result of all that extremely tedious viral marketing nonsense Bungie’s been doing for months now, a game that brings a new character and play style to the dull old Halo universe.
Just announced at the Tokyo Game Show, Halo 3: Recon is a completely new chapter for Halo 3 that features a NEW CHARACTER and tells the story of events leading up to the start of Halo 3. It is a “standalone expansion” which means a separate game – not a downloadable mission pack for Halo 3. More expensive than that.
Halo 3: Recon will arrive in Autumn of 2009. The full official explanation…
VIDEO: Energy & Efficiency, episode 3
This week, I take a look at fires in the house. Not as dangerous as you may initially think, plus burning wood is a superb environmentally sound and low-cost solution to home heating.
It’s also great fun if you draw effigies of your enemies on the logs, then watch them BURN.
CONCLUSION: Everyone should buy fires for the home. Watching wood effigies…
