The desktop and laptop killer that they won't make

Netbooks are the latest rage.  They are light and portable, and have enough power to do basic internet browsing  , word processing and other light computer chores.  Are they good for editing movies and photos?  No.  Are they good for gaming?  Absolutely not.

Netbooks are perfect for performing the tasks that 75% (pure guess) of computers are used for.  Web and email.

Enter the smartphone.  First the Apple iPhone, now the Motorola Droid.  These are sophisticated computers.  Not smart phones, but computers that happen to be phones too.  The iPhone 3gs and the Motorola Droid both pack a 550 MHz processor.  The new Google Nexus phone has a 1 GHz processor.  There are tons of netbooks out there that are being sold with the 1Ghz ATOM processor.

So, today's smart phones and netbooks are close or equal when it comes to computing power.

My Droid came with 16GB of storage standard and can be upgraded to 32GB by simply replacing the MicroSD card.  16GB or 32GB is plenty of storage for a netbook.  We are not talking about a machine that we will be archiving family photos and videos on.

There should be dockable home and mobile computers that can interface with our smart phone.

How about a laptop that has nothing but a screen and keyboard that you can slide your droid into.  Once inserted you can use a full size keyboard and monitor with your droid.  You have fast 3G internet speed.  Most people would need nothing more than this.  The droid would draw minimal power at this point, because the phone's screen could remain off.   The laptop dock would need power, but only for the LCD monitor.

At home, we have a similar docking station, one that has interfaces for our keyboard, mouse, monitor and printer.  When docked, the droid could even be used as an additional input device, making use of custom touchable icons.

It's ingenious.  Your mother needs a cell phone and computer?  Give her the Droid and a dock and she's all set.

I'm not sure if the video output of the Droid is high enough resolution for an external monitor, but I have no doubt it would be easy to do.  The current Droid may be a little underpowered as a netbook, but the new Nexus phone and all smartphones in the future should be able to handle day to day computing tasks with no problem.

I'll bet we won't see something like this at CES.  I wonder why?  I can't be the first person to have thought of this.

Good things about Windows

It's not official yet, but a lot of people and news sources are proclaiming Windows Vista to be a disaster. Some are comparing Vista to be a disaster on the scale of Windows Millenium. Some sites will tell you that Microsoft is about ready to cut bait on Vista and move on to the next OS.

I personally have taken great pains to remove Vista from my laptop and install Windows XP instead. I don't consider myself to be a typical user, however. I expect great performance from my applications, and from my computer hardware. I wasn't getting it.

I'm not down on Microsoft, mind you. There will be growing pains with any major new OS release. There are more computers out there now than when XP was released. A ton more peripherals are on the market now also, both old and new. Still, people expect their applications and components to all work seamlessly with the next OS. It is a reasonable, yet hard to deliver upon expectation.

Moving forward, let's take a look at a few of the good things about Windows Vista. I have put together a poll of 20 random Windows Vista user to find out what they LIKE about Vista. That's right, some people actually found some GOOD point regarding Vista. I asked each person in my informal survey to name three things they like about the OS.

Let me preface the review of this chart by saying that a lot of the things some people consider positives about Vista, other people consider negatives. In the next day or so I will publish a similar article entitled "What people dislike about Windows Vista".

Not surprising, almost everyone surveyed approved of the Aero theme in Vista. It is very aesthetically pleasing, and it is something I missed when I went back to XP.

The other positives many people agree on are Security and the Search features. Vista feels and I think actually is, very secure. The UAC (User Access Control), while a pain in the butt at times, does make it fairly difficult for someone to hijack your PC. The Search features of Vista are nice also, but it comes at a cost. The indexing service in Vista seems to ALWAYS be running in the background, and is ALWAYS hogging our valuable PC resources. Is it worth it?

Several people identified the interface as being superior. I'm not sure if they meant the UI was actually better, or just prettier.

The rest of the items on the list were noted by just a few. I've had problems with performance, the compression utility, compatibility and stability in my trial run with Vista. Apparently others have not.

Vista - pretty and secure. Next time I'll look at what survey respondents considered to be weaknesses of Windows Vista.

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars PC game review

The PC game I am reviewing is Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. This game takes place all over the world. You take the promising role of the commander of either the GDI (good) forces or the NOD (evil) forces. Also, if you play through it, you get to unlock the Alien side which can be used to play matches against the computer or online against other people. The goal of this game is to take over the remaining Tiberium fields, which they use to do all the things we uses gas for. This game is very interesting because by trying to take over Tiberium fields, it is meant to show how we might be fighting for gas when it gets dangerously low.

The graphics are very good and once you raise an army, it is fun to zoom in a lot and look around your base like you're a soldier, noticing the detail of the buildings all the way to the trigger on an infantry's gun. Being able to choose your game speed is a great feature for both new and experienced players. The online matches are a very cool feature for this game as you pit your best strategy against the best of players in exiting 20+ minute battles. For me, being able to customize your own maps was a great part of playing this game, although the options for this were not as good as the earlier versions of this game.

It is unfortunate for someone to have to point out the bad points of this game. I would say that one disappointing aspect of this game is the short story line. It feels like the game has been rushed to an end. Also, if you do not have high speed internet, online battles will leave you handicapped, as your opponent walks right around your army while you watch what they did five seconds ago. One more bad thing about this game would be that if you are not a pro at it, opponents will usually take you down and the same goes for the higher-leveled computers.

In conclusion, this is a very good game. It has great replay value and I would recommend it to all of my gaming friends. If you like strategy or action games, this will be a perfect game for you.

HP Pavilion A6400Z desktop computer review

The HP Pavilion a6400z desktop features an AMD 2.6GHz Processor with 2 GB RAM and a storage space of 320 GB. It uses Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic as its Operating System.

The desktop is a part of the HP a6400z series. All the desktops in this series have the same design irrespective of the configuration. The chasis is simple matte with a glossy black finish and even has a dedicated slot for a graphics card. One of the best features of the desktop is that it has a huge storage space i.e. 320 GB which is more than enough for the average user like me. A large storage space means that i no longer have to resort to deleting any of my data due to lack of space and also that i don't have to go around making DVDs to store the large amount of data once the disk gets full which happened to me a lot when i was using my last PC.

I have been using this PC for the past three months and it has not given me any sort of problems except for some virus problems which were sorted by Norton Antivirus which came preloaded in the Desktop with a 15 month subscription.

The RAM is 2 GB DDR2 dual channel SD RAM (here 2GB means two RAM chips of 1GB each installed in two slots). This means that i get an extra slot and if i want to upgrade i can simply take out one RAM chip from one slot and install another one in its place.

There is a graphics card option with this model, i got an integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE graphics card installed so that i have no problems running my vast collection of games and get the best of the graphics.In my opinion the graphics are the best that i have ever seen.

Another featture that made me buy this desktop was that it has front side ports for USB and audio and a 15 in one card reader so that you don't have to turn to the back of your Desktop every time you want to attach a USB device, which happened to me a lot with my old PC as i constantly needed to attach my Flash drive with my PC.

The best thing about the PC is that it comes with a one year hardware and labor warrenty.It also comes with a one year free software support and a one year toll free support for any kinds of problems and troubleshooting that you may require.

Many people think that it is just an entry level machine and lacks the power needed for resource-hungry applications but that is totally untrue. I have myself done some serious programming in C++ and JAVA using this machine and it just works as smoothly as butter would melt on a toast.

My dealer sent over people for installation of the PC, but I had myself installed the PC well before they arrived. To rate the machine on a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it rating of 4.5 as it has lived up to my standards of work. The PC on the whole is great and i know that i will keep reaping its benefits for a long time to come.

Assassin's Creed PC game review

Today I'll be reviewing Assassin's Creed for the PC, released April 08, 2008 (North America) this game was a highly anticipated title for not only the PC, but also the PS3 and the Xbox360. Slap this baby in your DVD drive and once you've got it installed you'll see why it was so highly anticipated, or at least you'll think that you see why. At first, Assassin's Creed comes off as a very promising title with a lot of awesome potential, but that's also where the problem starts, its always just that and nothing more, potential. More about that later, let's take a look at what the game is actually all about.

Assassin's Creed is more or less a stealth-action game, with the emphasis being mostly on action. You play as an assassin named Altair who works for the assassin's brotherhood, defending the then-in-turmoil holy land from would be Christian usurpers during the Third Crusade (sort of). That's right, actually there's a huge twist in the game's plot and it also happens to be the biggest twist of the entire storyline, and it has to do with your own character's very identity. I won't bother to explain it now but suffice it to say that Assassin's Creed gives away its biggest and only real interesting story aspect not more than 15 minutes into the game, really setting itself up to be boring right then and there.

Now let's get on with some action, the game is sort of broken up and winds up playing out in chapters, the core quest of the game being a list of 9 men who you need to assassinate in order to complete your main quest, sounds easy right? sounds exciting right?, think again. In order to complete the assassination of each man you'll find yourself having to head into town, go the the "Assassin's Bureau" listen to some dialog that you probably won't care about, climb a bunch of view towers to figure out where you need to go investigate by either Interrogating, Eavesdropping, or Pickpocketing some poor saps (depending on whatever the mini-map icon calls for) and you will rinse and repeat these menial tasks something like 27 or more times before you've killed all 9 of these "bad men", of course there are some other things that you can do along the way, such as rescue citizens from guards who are harassing them, look for various city flags, slaughter town guards, climb extra view towers or do the occasional "informant" quest, come to think of it, yes..this game is really...really...repetitive, but for every 15 menial tasks that you accomplish (flag fetching not included) you'll receive and additional bar added on to your life, meaning that you can then take one more hit than you could before.

All of that said, believe me the game does have some noteworthy points about it. For example, the combat mechanic starts out really simple but later on develops into actually being a lot of fun, the animations from Altair's arsenal of counter attacks are fluid, smooth, realistic and are usually pretty damn brutal. Oh, and did I mention, the graphics are top notch (provided that you've got the hardware for it) this game is frickin' beautiful but very demanding, my machine barely handles this one. The "free-running" aspect of the game is also pretty fun, while checking it out as I played my cousin commented that he felt more like we were watching an action movie as I fled, leaping over rooftops down into the streets and hurling busy peasants out of my way while being chased by a flock of angry guards. Finally given that the game is essentially a port from the Xbox360, Ubisoft did a fantastic job of updating the controls for the PC, using the mouse and keyboard in the way they have it set up feels a little un-natural at first, but once you get used to it you'll have Altair working like a holy land defending killing machine.

All in all, Assassin's Creed harbors some good ideas and is definitely a start for what I can almost guarantee will be a continuing franchise, some say that it was the saving grace for Ubisoft as a developer. I say this game has its flaws but is definitely not one for the trash heap, and if they can improve on this formula and throw in a little more seasoning, we could be looking at an incredible sequel. If you're planning on buying it, definitely worth waiting for the price to drop at least, in fact if you're going for a console version, just rent it.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare PC game review

Being a fan of the Call Of Duty series myself, I have anticipated this game very much especially after knowing that Call Of Duty 3 would not be released for Personal Computers but this game is well worth the wait.Call of Duty 4 , now isn't this a long awaited game , specially because COD3 was only released on the consoles. Well this anxiety is the reason why COD4 got so high rating, but the situation is a bit different.

When you load it you think about all the hoo haa that you hear, and hold thumbs that it would be what you hoped it would be.You start up the MP game and WOW......3 hours later you are still testing it and all you can do is play and play.One of the most intense and visually stunning FPS games I've ever played. On the same par if not better than Bioshock. Kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.You and your company just can't die, plus weapons in this game are an absolute joke, firing a gun does not have a smallest recoil, and weapons like they dont have any weight at all , you can even fire rocket launcher like its a toy, these people obiviously have no idea about real battlefield, its like they where born on a moon. With no gravity and physics, its gameplay is dull.

Online multiplayer is good also - it has a level up system which makes you want to aim for something. sound effects like the sound of the guns and explosions and the new fps system where there is no healthh bar is a great idea.This game's multiplayer team deathmatch is so much fun, I played it for almost 10 hours straight! Tips: For the multiplayer, use these perks & guns: Gun: M16A4, attatchment red dot sight. Perk 1: Special grenades X3. Perk 2: Deep impact. This allows you to fire through almost any material. Perk 3: Stopping power. This allows more bullet damage. I got these tips from watching X-Play pro tips.

COD4 Modern Warfare is a big change from their previous WW2 series. With much better graphics (eg, the rain and scenery is so well done..along with the explosions and fire) as you'd expect. A solid single player campaign with intense scenarios and combat, with realistic tactics and probably similar missions used by American in previous wars and battles.The single player campaign, although shorter than would be ideal, is absolutely breathtaking from beginning to end. The online multiplayer is the real kicker though. It is just about perfect; I could literally not think of one weakness or oversight. Graphics are great, sound is amazing, control and feel are second to only one (HL2). These are all praises I would have heaped on CoD (1) back in the day, Infinity Ward has done an amazing job keeping this franchise fresh and enjoyable.

Toshiba Satellite A210 laptop review

Last year for my job I bought a Toshiba Satellite A210. Here's a quick look at this versatile laptop.

1GB RAM - 2x512MB DDR2 (667 MHz)

Backing this up is an ATI RS690M/SB600 chipset combination and 1GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory, which is an impressive amount given the price tag.

200GB SATA HDD

Making it easy to store huge quantities of files, as well as save games and movies direct to your laptop, a 200GB hard drive is in place.

AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-60

Dual core AMD Turion X2 TL-52 processor which is clocked at 1.60GHz with an 800MHz FSB and 1MB L2 cache.

Microsoft Windows Vista

DVD Super-Multi Double Layer Drive functions

15.4" Wide XGA TFT with TruBrite

The screen is a 15.4-inch widescreen unit and is pixel-sharp thanks to its TruBrite coating and 1,280 by 800.Where this laptop works best is in the home. Its vibrant 15.4-inch screen provides a strong picture for multimedia use as much as home office tasks. DVD movies look great, and so do digital photos, so multimedia enthusiasts will feel right at home.

ATI Radeon X1200 GPU

Powering the graphics is ATI's Radeon X1200 chipset which has 128MB of dedicated video memory plus the ability to use up to 700MB of system memory.It ran up a score 3,181 in our 3D Mark 06 test so it'll handle the latest gaming titles with most of the detail cranked to the max.

802.11b/g WiFi, 10/100Mbps wired Ethernet and a V.92 modem.

As usual with a Toshiba notebook, all the software to get you up and running is pre-installed; Norton Internet Security 2007, Ulead DVD MovieWriter and Microsoft Works 8.5.

The majority of the remaining ports are housed in the left hand side; VGA, S-Video, LAN, two USB 2.0 ports, the card slot and a 4-pin FireWire port. The right side makes do with just two more USB ports and the modem port, joining the optical drive.

Inside the A210 is nestled in some cardboard inserts. Accessories (accessory brochure, manual and power adapter) are packed in cardboard and there is a minimum of plastics. A thin cloth wrapper protects the A210's screen and lid (which is finished in 'Onyx Blue Metallic' color).

This is a refined and understated looking notebook.The light colour keys look good but quickly become discoloured so need cleaning frequently. i found it quite easy to get used to having a flat pad instead of a tracker ball mouse although i do sometimes click on it by mistake. It is fast enough to run a few programmes at once and hasn't crashed yet. It weighs only 2.7kg.