In today’s world where fossil fuel is enervating and most of the energy is now being utilized from either sun or wind, basically engaging natural resources, everyone is trying to make its resources more energy efficient and environment friendly. Most of the companies are using green technology and many are investing most of their money [...]
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Short version: The drive performs as well as any other, and the e-ink display is handy. It’s up to you to judge whether it’s worth the extra cost. Features: E-ink display shows label, free space, USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 interface Included Smartware backup software On-drive encryption MSRP: $150/320GB, $180/500GB, $200/640GB Pros: Bus-powered E-ink display is handy and works great Interface and drive are as speedy as expected Cons: Slightly ’spensive Full review: We’ll keep this one short: the main feature being reviewed here is the e-ink display on this thing, and I may as well just tell you that it works great. I can’t make a call for you on whether it’s worth the slight, but noticeable, premium, but you can rest assured that it’s useful and works well. The drive is very straightforward, as drives should be, and has both a USB 2.0 interface and a FireWire 800 one. I conducted an informal test of drive speeds by copying files totaling ~1GB on and off the drive, and these were the results: As you can see, USB 2.0 copies at the expected 20-30MB/s, though multiple small files to the drive does tend to bog it down, as is often the case. FireWire 800 didn’t trip at all, providing a constant 40-50MB/s. The drive comes with nice little short, white cables for both USB and FireWire 800, and thoughtfully includes a FireWire 800 to 400 adapter. The SmartWare software loads as a virtual disc when the drive is mounted. While I would rather it simply mounted two partitions, like LaCie does, but it didn’t bother me much. You can turn off the VCD but it’ll keep a menu bar or task bar element there for access. You may have seen the software before, and maybe not; it’s straightforward and backing up is simple and customizable, letting you choose which types of files to back up. It maps your entire drive every time you start it up, which is kind of annoying, but at least you know its information won’t be out of date. Of course you can also lock the drive; it’s provided with 256-bit encryption accessible through a password program that launches from the virtual CD. Or you can turn it off and it’ll load up instantly. The SmartWare software is also where you customize the e-ink label. You can put up to 12 characters, anything that fits on a 13-segment display. So no hearts or stars, sorry. If you’ve got the money to get a few of these, this is a great way of keeping track of his and hers, or which is audio backup and which is video backup, that sort of thing. I mean, you can always label a drive with a bit of masking tape and a sharpie, but this is more official, and looks cooler. Conclusion The price is a lot to ask if you’re looking for a lot of plain storage : 30 cents/GB for the 640GB version, and you can get drives for as little as 10 cents/GB. But if you want for something sleek and portable, and the e-ink appeals to you, this drive should serve you just fine. Product page: Western Digital My Passport Studio
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We could be looking at the end of RadioShack , boys and girls. The company is said to be exploring a strategic partnership, or outright sale, possibly to Best Buy. I don’t see why Best Buy would be interested: what does RadioShack sell that’s either A) not already available or B) entirely too niche for its Wal-Mart approach to selling consumer electronics? JPMorgan Chase is supposedly in charge of figuring out how to handle the merger or sale or whatever it ends up being. The only reason why Best Buy might be interested is because of RadioShack’s success in the cellphone business. I guess RadioShack does a fairly OK job of selling phones and accessories and whatnot, and its small stores could play into Best Buy’s “we need more, smaller stores in malls, people!” modus operandi. Or, and this is a twist, perhaps rather than selling to Best Buy (or someone else), perhaps RadioShack could use some of the money it has on hand—$900 million—to gobble up some other store! Now that would be unexpected. I’m trying to think the last time I bought something from RadioShack… it might have been solder for when I hacked my Xbox1 in 2003. So yeah, it’s been a little while. The store always seemed sorta dingy to me, like the lighting was messed up. Wiki’d
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To say we were a tad flabbergasted that Modern Warfare 2 ’s 5 map pack DLC costs $15 is about right. We weren’t exactly outraged. It’s just a video game after all and really doesn’t matter that much. But $15 is a bit much for five maps with two of the recycled from previous Call of Duty games. Infinity Ward’s Creative Strategist Rob Bowling disagrees. He calls it an investment. Well, Creative Strategist is just code for Public Relations so he kind of has to say that. NowGamer A lot of people think they should be getting the old maps for free. Don’t you think 1200 MSP is a little bit expensive for what is essentially three new maps? Rob, I have no doubt that anyone who downloads this map pack is going to get their money’s worth. They’re going to feel their investment is worthwhile. Because if you’re playing Modern Warfare 2 like myself or many other people do every night, that’s actually going to give you a bunch of new mileage and a bunch of extra gameplay – to really explore and discover them and to really, you know, come up with new tactics and experience them in a whole new way. Regardless of what the price is you’re going to feel your money’s well-spent.
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If you follow e-readers, you might have seen the post I wrote not long ago detailing and judging the various secondary features e-readers are sporting in order to catch the eye of the spendy book-lover. I am ashamed to say I missed a very important one: extremely low price. I mentioned it in passing, but the truth is that once a device like this creeps below $100 or so while retaining its fundamental function, it gains access to a few different markets, a circumstance worth looking at. The Kobo e-reader is the spark that set this post off; at $150, this 6″-screen, 0.1″-thin, half-pound device is among the very cheapest e-readers out there, yet Kobo also runs its own bookstore, which has the usual classics and bestsellers — probably 90% of what gets sold for e-readers. It’s going to be sold at Borders , and with its modest price tag might make for more of a temptation to browsing customers. But as long as consumers are being bombarded with promises of Android , touchscreens , cool dual-screen form factors , the Kobo is going to look mighty shabby in comparison. And by the time Kobo gets some press and is widely available, we’ll probably be hearing about all the cool stuff that’s going to happen next year. What’s a cheap, functional e-reader to do? Sell in bulk. The e-book is a loss leader, right? If someone spends $150 on a reader, you can be sure they’re going to get their money’s worth by buying at the very least 10 or 20 books and magazines a year with the thing. I don’t know why more e-readers aren’t being sold at or below cost. Sony made the same mistake with the PS3 — if they truly had a “10-year plan” for their device, why were they so chary of losing money at launch? Nobody is going to buy a PS3 and no games, and nobody is going to buy an e-reader and no books. We talked in the podcast about the Alex and things like co-branding with publishers and subscription models. I think that in the coming tablet wars, the only way e-books will be able to stay above water is with volume. And in order to have volume, they’re going to need to be able to make a real value proposition when there’s an iPad or Chrome OS tablet in their customer’s hand. As much as I like the Que , for instance, few will buy one at $650 when you can get a tablet computer for far less. Sure, they don’t do the same things exactly, but tell that to the consumer looking at full-color e-books on the iPad and desktop-class web apps in Chrome OS . There’s only one thing to do: get them prices down! E-reader sellers have been living in a land of milk and honey for the last year; although their devices are yet unfamiliar to most people and probably aren’t selling as well as anyone hoped, they were a class to themselves and people justified spending $350 because “that’s just how much these things cost.” This year should change that, and the iPad’s strong sales should strike fear into e-readers’ hearts. Amazon is already hedging its bets. What to do? Are they doomed? Hell no. But you better believe they’re going to be niche a year or so from now. Once the place of the tablet in a person’s tech lifestyle is established, I personally think people will find room for an e-reader, but it’s going to be hard to justify spending a lot. To return to the Kobo, however, a cheap device that replaces a whole class of paper books and mass-photocopied lecture notes could be a breakthrough for a University. English majors could probably get by with the 100 free books that come pre-loaded on the thing. Or a teacher-administrated set of locked Kobos in a middle school classroom — no more dog-eared copies of Where the Red Fern Grows : “Choose two heart-rending dog stories from the eight available on your Kobos, children. Your progress will be monitored — and your tears .” Seriously, though. Kobo, being first and foremost the cheap, basic option out there, should capitalize on that — as far as one can capitalize on being inexpensive. Call up school districts, libraries, universities, and hey why not, government agencies. Think of the amount of paper used in duplicating bills and memos for interns and editors to read! Of course, if any great amount of marking up is required, that’s a bust for the Kobo, which has very little in terms of input, but it still could be very useful in the right situations. They’ve also got apps for the major smartphone platforms, which is a good selling point for big, homogeneous groups like enterprise and government. The thing is that Kobo needs to bite the bullet and start selling these things for peanuts. If they want to get a leg up on the other e-readers, to say nothing of survive the onslaught of tablets, they need to get a million units out there stat . Apple’s got a 10-iPads-for-$4970 deal right now, but to outfit a class of freshmen at that price would bankrupt Croesus. But if Kobo calls up UCLA and says “Psst – special deal for you, my friend, Kobo eighty dollars, you buy at my store,” I think they can guarantee themselves quite a few sales, though it may mean a lot of work by some party in localizing lecture notes and so on to the e-book format. If the state or city won’t bite, then offer deep student discounts. Just get them out there. The gist is this: the only way e-readers are going to stay healthy a year from now is by either being one of the few leading brands (Kindle, nook, etc) who can sell at a premium, or by selling their product in thousand-packs for deep discounts. Schools are the obvious target for this kind of sales tactic, but like the Alex, Kobo could also work with publishers and stores to re-brand and customize, as they’re likely doing with Borders. Of course, at this point it’s still speculation and guesswork as to the buying patterns of the book-buying public, so we’ll see how it turns out, but for a non-premium device like the Kobo, I think the course is clear.
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The Origin EON15 gaming notebook is a computer after our own hearts. Instead of a crazy and so-called radical computer case that the company no doubt spent too much money developing, the Origin EON15 is packaged in a no-frills casing. This means more power for the money, kids. And we like the cheap power. A 15.6-inch 1080p LED backlit display is feed by a Core i7 and 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 or 280M affair. The company offers 7,200 RPM or SSD hard drive options along with between 4GB and 8GB of memory. All this fun starts out at a reasonable $1,899 if you can past the circa 2001 computer casing. We can. [ Origin PC via Electronista ]
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The beauty of the Internet is that it demands instant analysis of every single development to come out of Peoria. The Nintendo 3DS —out of Kyoto, which is not Peoria, I’m afraid—was announced overnight, time zone permitting. It will debut at E3 in June, and it will forever change the way you and I… do something . Something video game-related, methinks. If one thing’s certain, it does mean that 3D is here to stay. I’m sorry. Say what you will about Avatar , but it made quite a bit of scratch. Then CES came around, in January, and every single TV manufacturer held presentation after presentation, laser light show after laser light show, trumpeting their fancy 3D TVs. None of the TVs are compatible with each other, so if you buy Company A’s TV and your neighbor buys Company B’s, y’all can’t get together to watch the World Cup in 3D—the glasses won’t allow it. The GameCube barely displaced any water—what did it have, those Metroid games, Resident Evil 4 , a couple of Mario games? It did well enough, but compared to the PS2 (and Xbox , I guess) the GameCube was sorta a disappointment. Granted, comparing any other video game system to the PS2 is like comparing a light bulb to the sun, but you can only beat what’s put in front of you. Wii ! Yup, Nintendo got tired of the hardware race, so it slapped a Bluetooth sensor bar to white shelled GameCube, called it Wii, then sat back and let the money a-roll in. It completely changed gaming. Now, rather than relying upon the “hardcores” to buy the latest Earthbound , Nintendo could convince Grandma and Grandpa, and your girlfriend, to play Wii Sports till their arms fall off. You’ll note that it took Sony and Microsoft a few years before they realized, “Hey, this motion control business is quite nifty. Maybe we should get in on it?” And they have! I have no time for motion control—you can pry my mouse and keyboard from my cold, dead hands~!—but clearly there’s money to be made here. If Sony and Microsoft can’t make money selling Fling Paint , then there’s no money to publish things like God of War and Fable . So this 3DS thing (here’s the full English press release )… Nintendo describes it as letting you play games “with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.” As someone who wears glasses—I’m blind as a bat, and nowhere near as cuddly—, let me be the nine millionth to say “Obrigado!” The 3D TVs at CES were largely pants, but I did get to play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in 3D (thanks to some sort of Nvidia trickery ) a few weeks ago. It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but if given the option, provided it’s affordable—I’m not buying a $1,000 monitor and glasses and a new video card!—then why not? Nothing wrong, per se, with a little added depth as I try to left-click over a Bad Guy’s face. The 3DS, which should come out around this time next year, will be backwards compatible with your current DS library. My DS library is quite small ( Chrono Trigger and those Final Fantasy remakes), so I could give a toss about backwards compatibility, but I’m sure there’s those of you who have more than a few games, games that you wouldn’t want to “lose” when upgrading to the 3DS. Upgrading may not even be the right word, since the 3DS is totally new hardware. It’s not like going from the DS Lite to the DSi , or from the DSi to the DSi XL . The point is, this is Nintendo saying, “Hi guys! Remember how we made motion control cool, bringing it to the masses? We’re going to do the same thing with 3D now. Kthxbye!” And now we wait for Sony to announce a 3D PSP of some sort…
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All the cool kids are playing SSDs these days. So much so that every manufacturer wants of piece of the sweet cherry pie. Even Plextor who was previously known as an optical drive/media company has a set of 64GB and 128GB SSDs available now. Too bad these options tastes more like a supermart-made pie than your grandma’s home cooking. Features : 128GB capacity 64MB on-board cache SATA II interface MSRP of $399 Pros It’s an SSD so it’s quiet and rugged Cons Slower than other drives at same price point No TRIM support Review : SSDs are all about speed. That’s all that really matters so I’ll cut to the chase. This drive is fast, where fast means it’s quicker than standard spinning disk hard drives. And it should be since it’s a SSD hard drive. But it’s also slow as it has noticably slower read/write speeds verses other SSDs in the same price range. This is important. Only a niche group of computer enthusiasts are willing to drop $400 on a 128GB SSD hard drive. It’s crazy expensive when 1TB desktop drives can be had for around $70. Obviously these people are willing to spend good cash for speed. But this first generation Plextor simply cannot stand up to late generation drives from Corsair, Crucial, or OCZ. I tested the SSD using HD Tune Pro 4.01 and it’s slower than even the year-old OCZ Vertex 120GB model. The advice here is to pay attention to your SSD purchase. There are a ton of different options available now and not all of them are worth your money — like this Plextor drive. But that’s just because of its high price. It’s a fine drive and I would have no qualms about having it in my computer, but it needs to be priced at least a $100 less. Product Page
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Hello John Biggs – I would like to be the CrunchGear intern. At 28 years of age I’d probably be the oldest, creepiest intern that CrunchGear has ever hired. That being said, I don’t look a day past 26. I should also tell you that I’m taller than most people so I would be good at seeing over smaller, scrawnier geeks at trade shows. Although since I’m so old, I’d probably get tired at around noon. Those words began the e-mail I sent on May 31st, 2007, in response to a post titled Desperately Seeking CrunchGear Intern . I ended the e-mail by saying, “Thanks for your time and I’ll be floored if I hear back from you…” And I was floored. I was truly floored. Up until that point, gadget blogs were a read-only affair for me. I was on the outside looking in, thinking how insanely wonderful it’d be to write about gadgets for a living. My dream job–absolutely, 100% my dream job. Little did I know it’d turn into a nightmare. Just kidding. It has been, continues to be, and will always be a dream job for me. I can honestly tell you that there hasn’t been a single day I’ve woken up and wished I didn’t have to go to work. I hope that’s come through in my 4,036 posts here. In that spirit, I want to make it clear that I’m not leaving for any reason other than having perpetual, ever-present, non-STD-related ants in my pants. I made it almost three years at CrunchGear, which is longer than I’ve made it anywhere else. I truly loved my time here. Those of you who have been reading CrunchGear for a while may recall that one of my favorite games in the whole wide world is SimCity 3000. I look at my work here as a city I’ve been building for a while. It’s big, it’s sprawling, and I’ve used up every tile of space. It’s beautiful and I love it, but it’s time to start working on a new city. My CrunchGear city isn’t perfect by any means, but I’ll hopefully use what I’ve learned here to build another great city. I’ll be joining fellow CrunchGear alumnus Peter Ha over at Techland , where I’ve been doing weekly video reviews for a while. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, the timing seemed right, and I can promise you that what I’ll be doing over there won’t be all that different from what I’ve been doing here. There will be more videos, more weird “what is this doing on a gadget blog?” types of posts, and more bright blue instead of bright orange. I can’t thank the readers here or my fellow writers enough. Words couldn’t possibly express how grateful I am to be doing what I’m doing but, as a writer, I should probably try. To the readers: I love you guys. You’ve made me a much better writer. You’ve taught me the importance of thorough research, the importance of trying to keep straight-up news posts non-biased, and the importance of keeping my videos short and entertaining. I’m sure there are a few of you who may be happy to see me go but I hope there are more of you who have felt like you’ve gotten your money’s worth from me. Readers are absolutely the lifeblood of any good site and I tried to keep that idea at the forefront of my mind during my time here. To the writers: You guys are hands down the best crew I’ve ever worked with. It takes a special kind of crazy to work here—long hours, frozen budgets, stolen coverage, miles upon miles of trade shows, exploding live blogs, worn out keyboards, and wondering if what you do for a living really makes an actual difference in the grand scheme of things. I can tell you that what you do does, indeed, matter because I still remember what it was like to be a reader. And a big, big, big thanks to John for turning me from a reader into a writer. I’m going to miss this place terribly, but I’m excited for what’s next. Thanks for the memories, everyone. I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind, with some of my firsts and favorites: Firsts! First post ever: WiiWare: New Indie Wii Shop Channel Games in 2008 First scuffle I got into with a reader, who it turns out owned the site I was bad-mouthing: Old Crap-Ass Phones That Cost Way Too Much First big-boy interview: Interview With Acer President Gianfranco Lanci First post that made me truly skeptical of PR and marketing: Who Else Got Burned By An ‘End Of Summer’ Promise? First on-camera video review: Samsung Juke review First live podcast: Live CrunchGear podcast today at 1:00 PM, Eastern Favorites! Recommendation Rescinded: Comcast’s TiVo interface How come nobody told me about the Dallas airport? Review: Keychain Breathalyzer + Flashlight All About Linux 2008: Great Moments in Linux History Line for Boston Apple Store stretches four city blocks Video Review: Flip Mino digital camcorder Two Boston-area magicians involved in bar brawl, each sustains massive loss of hit points Sweater Friends Real Bigfoot carcass to be shown this Friday…or not Review: Penguin Home Soda Maker CrunchFail: Doug and Greg crash and burn at Rock Band challenge Blogger frustrated with iMovie, sees man on Segway Review: Health Energy Potion Video Review: Snuggie Blanket Smittens: World’s dumbest mittens Video Review: Batter Blaster pancakes in a can Simpsons ‘Comic Book Guy’ apparently selling lawn darts now MIT’s EurekaFest showcases high school students’ problem-solving prototypes Review: WristOffice mobile device holder An open letter to the creator of the pretzel dog Breath-based glucose sensor developed (and why it may never make it to market) Ah, good times. Thanks again for the memories, CrunchGear. Don’t be a stranger.
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From now on, any story about “hackers” or “hacking” will be accompanied by a link to the song “ Halcyon And On And On ,” as made famous by the movie Hackers . With that in mind: who made more money last year, Wall Street fat-cats or hackers? The U.S. FDIC says that online scams cost businesses $25 million last year . These scams include phishing and other associated nonsense, which you really ought to be smart to nowadays. The most common way for people to be bilked out of their money is that they’re tricked into giving away the bank account info. You get an e-mail from “Citybank” that says something is wrong with your account, or that it needs to be “verified” or whatever. So you put your info in, and now some punk kid in St. Peterberg or Kazan has your bank info. Have fun dealing with that! I’ve said it at least 80 million times in the past year: do not go around giving your info to anybody. Nobody!
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