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GAMER PC PC : DISCUSSION

Top 10 predictions for CES 2010
Posted in Gamer PC | December 12, 2009 2pm

CES is such a tease.  You go there and get all worked up about stuff you can’t take home.  I’ve been to another place like that’s like that but there’s a restraining order against me and I heard the security guard made a full recovery.  I kid, I kid.  What was I saying?  Oh, predictions for 2010!  We’ve seen consumer spending rise a little during the holiday, but not by a lot.  As such I feel that this CES will be a lame-duck stepping-stone year for both the gaming and tech industry. I would be very surprised to see big risks and big product releases this year.  As such, my list is pretty conservative.  Here’s what I think will go down.10.  Someone will make a television that’s skinnier than the other guy’s skinny television“Oh, you made a paper-thin TV?  My company did too, but it’s got a ten billion pixels MOAR!”  This is the unofficial pissing contest of CES.  I’m also looking for the sidekick spectacle:  the obligatory HOLY COW THAT’S A BIG TV announcement.  My prediction this year is that someone will show what will be the world’s largest OLED television and it will cost a bazillion dollars.  Let’s just brace ourselves for the unrequited lust that will soon follow the price tag.09.  Dual-core Atom netbooks rise and dominateScratch that -- Asus has apparently made them available for pre-order already, reports I4U news.  No news here!  Still, I think we’ll continue to see the line between netbooks and notebooks blur.  I give it 2 years before the term is redundant and we’re just calling the big notebooks “fatties”.On the gaming front I feel like Nvidia’s ION platform didn’t get the respect it deserved, so we’ll see where they go with ION2 technology at this show.  I think gamers would like something affordable that didn’t weigh like a sack of potatoes to take on the go and am interested to discover what OEMs will do with it.  There are other non-ION solutions that do similar things that have been floating around as well.  Maybe those guys will take their branding initiatives more seriously this year, too (cough cough).08.  A nerd will speak about corporate merger cataclysmsHey, wouldn’t it be funny if Intel bought Nvidia?  There’s been a rise in rumor chatter about it.  When you consider who purchased AMD it’s only natural.  This won’t actually happen though: What will happen is that you’ll be at a cocktail party and some smug analyst will bring it up and kill everyone’s buzz.07.  Cheaper PlayStation & BLU-Ray productsWe saw a massive spike in PS3 sales when the price dropped to $299, so we anticipate they’ll either introduce new console bundles and/or reduce the price of the PSPgo as well.  I also anticipate that both faster and cheaper BLU-Ray drives will be announced to keep up with market demand.  I imagine someone will be offering a 12x or 16x drive out by 2011.06. 3D gaming products will be shoved down our throatsDear James Cameron,It’s cool dude, but please stop.  Thanks,- y
05.  Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will show new motion controller stuffSony’s also generated a fair share of buzz around the motion-sensing controller – if they’ve some killer app for its launch it will be at CES.  I think a lot of people would like to see motion-controlled Wii games taken up to HD standards, and Nintendo has plainly stated that no HD-Wii is due any time soon.  Microsoft and Sony will be happy to scoop up that market share with Natal and the controller formerly known as GEM.04.  Did I hear six cores?  Eight cores?!!The announcement will reveal the next generation of multi-core processors for server environments, but the latter part of that sentence will go in one ear and out the other for gamers.  We want the juice and we want it now!

 03.  Tablet / Surface PC gaming sees some maturityI attended former Alienware CEO Nelson Gonzalez’s speech last month at the University of Miami at TheLaunchPad, an event organized for business students to hear from entrepreneurs.  Mr. Gonzalez had a lot to say about digital tabletops and his vision for where that stuff is headed, so I can’t help but wonder if there’s not a hot item release in the near future there.  When I jokingly belted out “new tablets confirmed?!!” he laughed.  I think we’ll see something.02.  Google Android + Chrome will have its dayCES has been the springboard for the iPhone (and it’s cult, and I say that affectionately) for many years now, and I think Google is going to attempt the same this year with the recent launch of the DROID and other slick-looking do-everything phones.  I’m sure they’ll also have Chrome OS on the floor and offerings with dirt-cheap netbooks.  Maybe a Chrome OS Asus netbook?  With touchscreen?!! Crazier things have happened.So!  Those are my precictions – a marginally exciting but mostly stepping stone year for the electronics world.  Do you think something bigger is coming?  Sound off in the comments below!  Oh, and my number one CES prediction:01.  Steve Jobs will talk you into buying something trendyJust saying.

NETBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

The CES Guessing Game: What will Asus do?
Posted in Netbook PC | November 25, 2009 10am

The Consumer Electronics Show is soon descending on Las Vegas, herding in thousands of geeks from around the globe to see the latest and greatest lusty gadgetry.  Asus will certainly have a booth there … but what the heck will they be bringing?  I propose a contest: A guessing game of sorts. Let’s see if the WePC community can predict what some of the surprises will be at year’s show.  After the show I’ll send three special boxes of Destructoid swag (usually games, clothes, and booze) to the contributors who nailed it with the most accuracy.  I’ll kick this thing off with my best stab at it. (gulp)Theory #1:  Asus will reveal a 3D entertainment product of some kind

This is the year of 3D PC devices.  It was trendy in the 80’s and it’s trendy again.  I know a lot of technical advances have been made in this field and that it’s now supported in the home by high-end televisions, but I’m still kind of skeptical by its place in home entertainment.  I suspect that's probably because I’m on my way to becoming a cranky old man who will soon be telling children that (back in my day) we only had 2D and you were lucky to find an Atari game where the protagonist wasn’t a handsome rectangle. Asus recently revealed a true 3D gaming notebook and, with the big push around James Cameron’s Avatar movie and game, I suspect everyone will be hoping and wishing and praying that 3D will pull back some of the gaming PC gaming market away from the home consoles.  I suspect the result will be a new uber-high-end gaming notebook with a generous display area and 3D capability.  It won’t be cheap, but it will make pants drop.  Maybe it will look like a Designo MS instead of a notebook.  Theory #2:  Asus will launch a convergent netbook and phone device

 The netbook is the swiss army knife of the computer industry.  It’s shrinking size and growing processing power is enabling OEMs to put a little more utility into these devices, so I imagine that we’ll also see some kind of hybrid netbook-phone device from Asus this year.  Once again I’ll cry conspiracy and pounce on Brian’s mobile post, assuming that these might be little teasers of what’s coming.  I’m also tired of reading stories from gaming industry analysts quizzing Sony and Nintendo about the lack of phone support in their handheld gaming consoles.  Somebody’s doing it. It may be Asus.   Theory #3:  Asus will drop the bomb with a dual-screen oLED netbook

For a year now the gadget sites have been honing in on Steve Job’s much-rumored tablet pc.  The latest gossip indicates that their tablet will feature OLED technology and work like a giant iPod.  Is Asus going to take this lying down?  No way, CES is too important of a show not to show up with something that steals the spotlight!  Let’s consider Brian’s mention of flexible OLED and the Dual Screen notebook concept we saw earlier.  We know that Asus will reveal the WePC crowd-sourced computer at the show, so it leads me to conclude that a marriage of the two ideas is perhaps how they’ll attack this thing.One part tablet PC, one part netbook, one part phone.  It will be partially flexible, the screen will be larger than Apple’s offering, and more reasonably priced and powerful than anything else on the market.  I anticipate that this mythical device will have one touch-screen that’s optimal for tablet use and/or virtual keyboard.  It will also have an integrated camera and will be so light that you’ll be able to hold it like a book and peck away with your finger or stylus while you stand.  Next year’s model will run Chrome OS and make a lovely cup of coffee if the WePC community demands it.Well, that’s my best stab at it.  What do you think Asus will bring to CES in 2010?  PS.  Destructoid will be in Las Vegas for the show – here’s our coverage from last year.

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

What is the ideal size of a touch screen?
Posted in Notebook PC | September 19, 2009 11pm

Did you know Asus was working on making video conferencing standalone systems?  The news smacked me in the face yesterday – I was reading my daily slew of tech news when I came across this thing: A $300 Skype computer with a touch display.  I suppose its essentially a striped-down netbook with a sexy 7-inch touchscreen.  The first comment on Gizmodo nails it:
“Seriously, what's taking so long to adopt real and simple videophone setups at home?” -beyondthetech
What’s interesting is that this is the second-generation model: Asus decided to scrap the first one because navigation was tricky (ever used a photo printer’s navigation?) so they supplemented this with a touch screen.  Awesome idea, guys!  I’m thinking of moving across the nation so my computer-backwards family will be getting one of these.
The price is right (though a splurge, for sure) and the 7-inch screen seems just right for this 5-button application … but what about other screens with address books or other apps that may follow?  What about those poor people with sausage fingers or the geek that will insist that this device run Ubuntu instead?  Seven seems small.
 
 
Touch computing on regular PCs

A stylus for my Nintendo DS? Awesome. PCs? Meh.More and more touch screens are permeating every day computing, and the majority of them are on the small side (perhaps due to cost).  Tablet PCs only caught on in niche industries as working with a stylus can be unnecessarily exhausting for every day use.  The answer?  Don’t ask people to.  Make screens big enough so we can work with our meaty thumb prints.What’s a good enough sized-screen?If you were considering a touch-sensitive PC, what size would you buy?  What’s too small or too much?PS. Asus is giving away computers!  Check out this survey for details.

NOTEBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Moving files & preferences between PCs still sucks
Posted in Notebook PC | September 12, 2009 7am

Conventional wisdom says that you should have two hard drives: one for your OS, one for your files.  However!  All of your software will (by default) store your program preferences on your OS drive.  No problem, right?   Sure, until you need to move to another PC.  If you’ve got a few gigs of stuff I hope your afternoon is free!Moving files is easy.  Everything else is not.Do I seriously need to load and unload all of my bookmarks to get work done each time?  And you expect me to remember my passwords? Pfft!   The industry will say “Oh no, you’ve got it all wrong!  We’ve got USB thingies, Internet services, Wifi, Bluetooth, Direct connect, and OS transfer wizards” … and I say “baloney”.  It’s not your fault, honey!A good IT manager knows that a problem that appears to stem from a person or individuals may not be directly linked to the individual(s) but instead of the system they often cannot see past because they are a part of it.  A shrewd IT manager doesn’t have time for that and will ring up the company credit card on storage towers and pass buck on the OS manufacturer, because they have the money to do something about our bad habits.  When you give someone a computer with a My Documents folder and desktop that dumps stuff to the native drive by default it breeds immobility by default.  So we’ve become trained to using computer storage like donkey carts.  Move stuff in, move stuff out.  We’ll do better than this someday, so we may as well get the conversation going now.My data needs to be in one awesome place right now, not compromised copies of it   Unless I’m lugging around my monstrous gaming laptop, the files I want are never on the computer that I’m on.  My netbook? I can’t even store my music library, much less my artsy fartsy stuff. It would cost me a fortune to put them on a cloud.  What am I do to?  Compromise what I can transfer and carry, and the methods I use.  I have no choice because the technology to make this painless, awesome, and inexpensive isn’t here yet.  You’re kidding yourself if you don’t see that we’re barely scraping by.Jean Aw touched on this a few weeks ago and all sorts of answers came in.  While most people use a mix of portable storage and internet-based file swapping (I’m sorry, Mobile Me guy)  not a single person said “you’re all doing it wrong, here’s the holy grail!”.  Instead, we resort to all kinds of pseudo-convenient methods that work for us. No matter what you think your awesome file management solution is, you compromise. We choose what files get to go along for a ride with us.  We can only put so much on USB keys.  There are only so many hours in the day to allow gigs of data to move between Wifi/Bluetooth.  In the age where terabyte storage is less than $100, this seems… what’s the word… dumb?

 Without a doubt, all of our data needs to be on the Internet once (a) access to the web becomes more ubiquitous (b) more secure and (c) cheaper for storage.  Until then we have to continue evolving the donkey cart.  The latest evolution is this:

What is it?  SD-XC is new memory format that can store up to 2 Terabytes in a normal-sized SD card (actual size pictured).  Most people don’t know what to do with 500GB, so a card like this is a bounty.  Think about a computer that’s based on perpetually syncing with SD-XC: when it’s time to get up and go, I take this card with me and use it to boot another PC.  It has a perfect sync of my OS and data and countless drivers so I can boot any computer with all my junk already on it.  A local hard drive can act as a caching mechanism to get around SD-XC speed limitations (300/mb sec) while it persistently updates the card.  When I’m done, I have all my files.  Think of it as ReadyBoost for your entire file catalog, up to 2 TB.  I’m too much of a coward to sew a USB drive under my fingernails, but it’s tempting.  Here’s a wacky sci-fi idea:  Make a keyboard recharge a wrist watch that holds this card, and make the watch connect wirelessly.  Madness!  If you never have to shower or get mugged that’s the ticket right there.  Eh, well maybe not.How could we make this better?Forget what you normally do. What would be the most ideal way you’d like to transfer/sync data between 2 computers?