PlayStation Vita

Here's a preview of what gamers can expect from the PlayStation Vita before the end of 2011.

Basic Overview

• Available in two models, the PlayStation Vita will go for $250 or $300, a Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi/3G version.
• Armed with a 5-inch OLED touch screen, the Vita also allows players to interact with games through a rear touch panel. Under the hood the Vita packs an ARM Cortex-A9 core (4 core) CPU and a SGX543MP4+ GPU.
• It's 16:9 screen sports a 960x544-pixel resolution, which is flanked by a front-facing camera that can take 640x480-pixel photos. An identical lens is placed on the back to bring "augmented reality to a new level." Like the Nintendo 3DS, iPad, and iPod Touch, the Vita will make use of motion control. This is accomplished via a three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer.
• PlayStation Vita games will ship on a Vita Card, but the device can also make use of a memory card slot, multi-use port (USB, etc.), and accessory port. The PlayStation Vita will accept Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections and the 3G model can connect to AT&T's 3G network.
• Like the PSP, the PlayStation Vita is also a portable media player supporting various audio (MP3, AAC, WAV), video (MP4/H.264), and photo (JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG) file types.
• The battery on the PlayStation Vita remains a bit of a mystery, but rumors have it it'll roughly net 4-5 hours of use.

Hands-On Experience

People were stunned at how little the PlayStation Vita weighs. They were expecting more of a heavy, bulky type feel to it like the original PSP. Instead, the PlayStation Vita is lightweight and fits very comfortably in your hands.

The rear touch panel is smooth and can sense multiple touch gestures and contact points at once. The buttons on the face of the Vita are tight and responsive. It's D-pad is a departure from the PSP's. It doesn't feature four separate pieces. Instead it is a multi-directional dial that doesn't seem to allow for the precision the PSP's D-pad does.

Graphically, the PlayStation Vita is impressive. At times it seems on par with PlayStation 3 quality, just on a smaller screen.

Fujitsu Lifebook 2013

Fujitsu has introduced this concept 4 in 1 laptop, tablet, phone and camera for next year as part of their Lifebook series. Just to get a little into what this "4 in 1 package" brings, the camera seems like it can be seperated from the Lifebook and used as a digital camera. The tablet is also detachable and usable on its own, or it can function as a keyboard laptop or a tablet for taking notes. The phone, which integrates the functions of the central processing unit, music player, as well as the storage space, also has a special container.

Taking a look at the picture above, it seems like once you place the tablet into the slot that the sensor picks up on it and converts the tablet into a full QWERTY keyboard touchpad. In addition, once you connect the tablet, it immediately begins to share the hardware and data and thus contributes to the performance of the laptop, or in some cases completely independently perform some functions of the computer. The Fujitsu Lifebook 2013 comes from designer Prashant Chandra, who submitted the design to a competition held by Fujitsu.

"The proposed Lifebook is a laptop computer concept based on the principle of 'shared hardware,'" explains Chandra. "Currently a lot of hardware is wasted when we use separate devices, as there is often a lot of 'repeat' of data stored and features. For example if I have my songs on my music player, why do I have to block the same amount of storage on my laptop? Similarly, if I have a processor sitting in my tablet, why can it not also run/assist my laptop? If I have a fully functional camera with its own memory and image processing power, why do I need to have it repeated in my laptop?"

Look forward to the new Fujitsu Lifebook set to come out in 2013.

OS X Lion 10.7.3 Update Available

For those of you running OS X Lion, you'll notice if you run Software Update thats there's a new version to the OS, version 10.7.3. The new version weighs in at 730MB, but offers a few changes that everyday users will notice. Apple notes improved compatibility with Windows files sharing, a resolved Wi-Fi connection issue when waking the system from sleep, fixed graphics performance issue for older Macs running ATI graphics, eight new supported languages, plus a few other bug fixes. Also, there's RAW image support for more cameras built-in and a variety of AD (Active Directoy) Service updates.  

Windows 8 Uses Less CPU/Memory Than Windows 7

For those of you who've played around with Windows 8 Developer Preview will know that it uses less RAM than Windows 7. To demonstrate, Microsoft used a low powered netbook which had just 1GB of RAM, booted Windows 7 SP1 and the Windows 8 Developer Preview and after they had both been at idle for a while, it was found that Windows 8 was using a lot less CPU and Memory compared to Windows 7 ( 5% vs 1% and 404 MB vs 281 MB).

One of their goals was to make sure that all machines that are capable of running Windows 7, would also be able to run Windows 8 without a problem. Microsoft managed to surpass these expectations by making Windows 8 even less resource intensive.

How did Microsoft make this possible you might ask? Windows 8 made use of a new feature known as memory combining. In a nutshell, Windows looks at system RAM use, finds duplicate code that could be running for a variety of reasons and removes these duplicates from the memory so that you only have one copy of the code running, thus freeing up memory. The number of background processes that Windows 8 uses has also been reduced by 13. This is quite a large amount and should make a big difference and increase performance.

Windows 8: Will Manage Your Passwords

Thanks to the new Metro UI, it’s inevitable that Windows 8 will find its way onto many tablets once it’s released. As a result, this will probably mean that users will find themselves changing between their tablets and desktop PC’s.

This will also mean that users personalized settings and passwords will also need to be manually entered for each system that you log into, or at least this used to be the case. With Windows 8, Microsoft is hoping to solve this issue that has always plagued users who work on multiple machines. In their latest post, Microsoft has gone into lots of detail explaining how they are hoping to solve this problem. What they’ve devised is a built in credential manager in Windows 8.

It’s advised that you should have different complex passwords for every site that you log into. Of course this is easier said than done and lots of people use the same password for everything. This new password manager in Windows 8, will allow you to store all these passwords and then fill them in automatically for you when you go to that site.

Of course they’ll be encrypted to prevent hackers from getting them, and all you’ll need is a single master password for Windows 8 and you’ll be able to use them all. Microsoft’s plan with Windows 8 is that users can log onto any Windows 8 machine with their Windows Live ID and all their details, settings and passwords will be automatically pulled down to that machine. This will hopefully save plenty of time and make things much more convenient for Windows users.

Obviously this feature will be optional as I’m sure that there’s many security concious users who won’t exactly be too comfortable having all their passwords stored in one place, but it’s nice to know that the feature is available.

Super Bowl XLVI Recap

Well guys, it seems we came up short of a Super Bowl victory again. In my opinion, we had that game won. The missed catches on that last drive by the Pats is what lost the game for us. The first attempt to Wes Welker was crucial, as it would have put us in the Red Zone. The 2^nd and 3^rd to Deion Branch and Aaron Hernandez also crucial plays as it would have given us the 1^st down to keep the chain moving. All these balls where placed right on the money by Tom Brady, but the lack of the receivers not making the plays when it mattered the most is what cost us the game. 

The Giants deserve this victory. They came out and played better then us, made fewer mistakes and capitalized on the plays they needed to. My hat goes off to all you Giants fans. 

Now with Super Bowl XLVI over, the only thing to look forward to is March Madness and the NBA Playoffs. Their is still a little bit more time before that happens, but till then Sundays are going to be pretty boring. What did you guys think of Super Bowl XLVI? Now that it's over, what sport(s) do you look most forward to watching? Let me know your opinions in my comments.  

My Blog

Alright folks, I'm having some trouble still getting Google to approved my AdSense. I'm trying to figure out what the deal is, but of course you can't physically call someone to find out the whys. I've taken all the technical post down that I know might be very helpful to a lot of you till I can find out what the problem is. The first time around I got reject for insufficient content. That was fixed and now it's difficult site navigation.

If anyone looks at the site, what's so difficult about it? Navigating through my blog site in my opinion is NOT difficult at all. I've made sure their are no broken links, took down all photos and now all my original blogs.

I've had friends get approved with less content, broken links and non-original content, but yet when they looked at my blog site they couldn't understand why I wasn't. I'm going to give this a few more try's and if no luck, Google can just kiss it. With as many visitors as I get daily, I don't see how they can go wrong with not approving me. The content I had up before was relevant in the sense that it's useful info to many people, both tech and non-tech savvy. Wish me luck guys and if you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know in my comments.

Super Bowl XLVI

It's only a couple of hours away before Super Bowl XLVI kicks off. I'm super excited and looking forward to the Patriots potentially winning another one. On that same note, I'm also hell-a nervous about the potentiality of losing. I keep telling myself, anyone but the Giants again. Then during the regular season it's the Jets. This game in my opinion will come down to who can make the fewest mistakes on the field. Also, the Giants aren't going to have that lucky BS miracle helmet catch by Tyree. I still say to this day we were robbed out of that Super Bowl. Tonight, it comes down to who wants it more. No miracle catches, no bad ref calls, only football. Everything will be laid out on the field and at the end of the night; only one team can walk away with the Lombardi trophy. Will it the Giants or will it be the Patriots? Let me know what you guys think.