It’s that time again, time to review some of my cherry picked smaller stories of the week for those that might have missed them. This time round we’ve got an Adobe Flash update that doesn’t suck. OK, sucks a little less. Flash 10.1 beta was unleashed to the willing public with GPU video acceleration for certain Nvidia cards on Windows, but perhaps more importantly reduced CPU usage across all platforms. What does this mean? YouTube that doesn’t make your Mac or PC red-line that’s what. A step in the right direction Adobe, maybe Flash isn’t a lost cause after all. I’ve certainly seen some improvements on my netbook and Mac. (more…)

Welcome to Pixelated Geek’s Weekly Tech Wrap-up, a quick and humorous run through of some smaller stories from the world of consumer electronics and technology.

First batter up is the hideous looking OpenOffice Mouse. This beast features a full 18 buttons, 63 programmable profiles and even an analogue joystick! What more could you want from an instant carpel tunnel surgery inducing monstrosity? How about a soon to hit street price of $75 (£45)? Obviously not a fan of the Magic Mouse, a World of Warcraft-loving gamer decided his mouse didn’t have enough buttons and went ahead and set up a company to do it better. WarMouse is aiming this at the OpenOffice, MMO playing crowd and they might go potty over it, but I think I’ll stick to my trusty Logitech thanks. (more…)

The ATI 5870 series

In recent years, few graphic cards have managed to capture the imagination of the PC building community. The recent release of the ATI 5800 series has turned the market on its end and people are lining up to get their grubby little paws on the latest iteration, the 5870 series. Its the first card on the market with native DirectX 11 graphics technology, the card boasts 2.15 billion 40 nanometer transistors, pumping out 2.75 teraflops of power,  1600 stream processors, a memory bandwidth of 153.6GB/sec and a clockspeed of 850mhz. The graphics powerhouse supports up to 3 displays simultaneously with independent refresh rates and resolutions or they can be combined into one large display using the new ATI Eyefinity system. Dual-Link DVI and displayport with a resolution of 2560×1600 is included as is HDMI 1.3 with a native resolution of 1920×1200.

5870

The 5870 can support up to four cards in CrossfireX mode for an incredible boost in power. This beauty definitely has the hunger of a beast, requiring at least 500 watts (600 is recommended for crossfire) to run a complete system. It also requires two six pin PCI-E connections. This baby is fantastically powerful, vastly outperforming its brethren, but this greatness comes at a terrible cost. Finding one of these beauties for sale has proven difficult. Retailers like Microcenter and Newegg have had a hard time keeping the cards in stock and with good reason; ATI has had major supply issues trying to churn this thing out. With demand well outpacing production, we may not see another large shipment of the 5870 till very close to the holidays. While this powerhouse does exist (and exist very well it does!) it certainly doesn’t feel like it does. Overall ATI’s new top dog very much lives up to its own hype and is king of the pack when it comes to graphics processors. Nvidia, the ball is in your court.

Ever looked at your boring old Windows desktop and thought: ‘I really wish I could be playing Left 4 Dead right now’. Come on, admit it, we’ve all been there. But now thanks to UltraBE and the excellent free desktop customisation software Rainmeter you can feel like you’re in the game when you’re going about your mundane day-to-day office working duties. Word processing has never looked so good.

For full instructions and the theme download head on over to UltraBE’s deviantART Left 4 Dead HUD Desktop.

[Via LifeHacker]

The countdown on MekTek Studios’ website is counting down the hours to the release of the FULL MechWarrior 4 (plus all expansion packs) … FREE.

From a quote left by the forum admin:

“In honor of BattleTech’s 25th anniversary, Smith and Tinker has authorized MekTek.net and MekTek Studios to distribute MechWarrior 4 (along with its expansion packs) completely free. For years, MekTek.net has been the central point for online distribution of MechWarrior 4 expansion packs. Now they can provide the core game free to the fans as well. Keep an eye on BattleTech.com – the free download will be available soon!”

He also noted about the new franchise reboot coming as well:

“MechWarrior fans have been hoping, praying and anticipating a new game in the famed franchise ever since the last expansion pack for MechWarrior 4 was released in 2002. Now, seven years later, their prayers have been answered. IGN has the very first details about MechWarrior reboot that is currently in production at Smith and Tinker and Piranha games. Yes, that’s right, reboot. Instead of this game becoming MechWarrior 5, the developers have decided to completely re-launch the entire franchise, calling this new title MechWarrior.”

Personally, I can’t wait :D

We’ve just been notified by Microsoft that the Office 2010 public beta will be launched next month for all to download. The closed Technical Preview that’s been running for quite some time now, is being replaced by an open beta for the next phase of testing.

Included in the beta release will be ‘exciting new features’ which have been added to the server products such as SharePoint.

Whether this will mean there’s something new for the average Jo I’m not sure, but having been part of the Technical Preview, I’m looking forward to seeing a more complete product.

We’ve seen the ads and all that stuff about hosting a Windows 7 launch party. Let’s face it. It’s a ridiculous notion to host a launch party for Windows 7, at least in my book. Apparently, the folks at Funny or Die feel the same way, giving us such a ridiculous and hilarious parody.

[Source]

http://www.vimeo.com/7132858

Most of us RPers have left the pen and paper type games behind for video games…

This video shows you the work in progress of a team named “Surfacescapes” that might get us all playing pen and paper games again!

If this concept does get marketed, I’m definitely going to try finding my old character sheets! ;)

Not sure if you have heard, but a while ago Microsoft was inviting people to sign-up to be chosen to host a Windows 7 party.  It was a viral marketing campaign full of fail right from the start. I mean, look at the “inviting” video below.

Some people actually opted in for a chance at getting a Windows 7 party pack.  You might be thinking, why would anyone want to do that?! Well, hosts that get chosen actually get a full retail copy of Windows 7 in the pack.  One guy actually managed to convince Microsoft that he’ll be hosting a legitimate Windows 7 party.  After scooping up the free copy, he puts up the rest of the party pack up for sale on eBay.  Below are the excuses to why his “guests” didn’t come to the party:

Pete: I’ve got to work the drive-thru that night.
Reid: I’d love to come but I heard there is going to be Windows there.
Colin: Feeling too antisocial to come to a computer party :(
AJ: FidoNet relay forgot to pay their modem line’s phone bill, evite got delayed
Chris: Found out Windows 7 not available on 5.25″ floppy.
Kevin: I’ll be over as soon as I shut down my laptop. XP still has 72 updates to go.
Bryan: I was going to come to your party, but then I got high. I still have XP and I know why, yeah yeah, because I got high, because I got high, because I got high.
Andy: Didn’t realize you needed to own a computer to use Windows 7.
Mike: I was going to come to your launch party but then a girl called.
Ira: Sorry, my guild has a raid.
Adam: Thunderbird on Ubuntu sent your evite into the spam folder because it said, “windows 7 party.”
Amanda: I was going to come to your launch party but then a girl called.
Charles: Bing gave me the wrong directions.
Rich: MS-BOB not compatible with Windows 7. Not interested.
Mark: Needs more than 640k ram, which is more than I was told I would ever need.

So, if you’re up for paying $50 for a bunch of Windows 7 party swag, hit up his item page.

Engadget is running a post about the head of Microsoft public ridiculing of an iPhone wielding employee, tact is certainly not something Ballmer is known for. The best part of the post has to be the Steve Ballmer/Donkey Kong mashup, which I just had to post up here for you all. Truly inspired guys, inspired.

[Via Engadget]