Now I understand the marketing hate that Steve Jobs has against Bill Gates. They need each other.

One of the biggest surprises from CES 2010 came from the Lenovo Booth. We had some time to sit down and chat with Lenovo and go over their new product line. The ThinkPads are receiving a bit of a redesign while still staying true to the original. It was very interesting to see a ThinkPad in a color other then it’s classic matte black. During this we were all unprepared for the Notebook that awaited us. There sitting in the corner of the booth surrounded by a bunch of people rested the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid Notebook. So what sets the Notebook apart from the rest. The Concept of the Notebook is that you can remove the screen from the Notebook and it become a Tablet. Though the Tablet does have limited computing power it’s still an amazing concept.

Check out the Video Above of the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid Notebook

The headset’s inventor, and Psyko’s “Head Psyko”, James Hildebrandt told us that he spent a long time disassembling traditional speakers in an attempt to learn how sound works in our heads. By moving them around and contemplating how the sound reached his ears, he made the breakthroughs present in Psyko’s psychoacoustic masterpiece.

All of this auditory bliss is handled by the headset; your computer will not know the difference between this headset and any other 5.1 surround device. Yes, this is currently only available to the PC market, and demand has been steep. There is a bit of a backlog of orders as peoples’ orders are outpacing Psyko’s manufacturing. XBOX360 models, also with mics, are currently being tested and should be out around midyear.  Once the PC ordering blitz calms down I would personally love to pick up a pair.

 

PC vs MAC parody videos are a dime a dozen.  But every once in a while one catches me off guard. I don’t know what it is about people instructing little kids to say “adult words”, but it’s damn funny.

What is LEGO Universe really about?

In the universe of LEGO, something is causing a maelstrom to rid the universe of its imagination.  It is up to every LEGO good spirit to rid these evil LEGO spirits by using more imagination.  Launching this year for PC only, LEGO will launch an MMO like no other.  I know that sounds cliched but it is a type of MMO that I have never seen before. Reason being is that the only MMO I have ever played was World of Warcraft.

But the idea of a MMO game where there is no leveling caught me off guard.  I didn’t know what to expect from LEGO before the exclusive presentation I was invited to.  The whole point of the MMO is not to “level up” your character but to “level up” your imagination by completing quests and collecting different LEGO bricks, mini-fig parts, and special LEGO accessories.

Create your own universe

With all these collected LEGO bricks you can build custom in game items or you can bring it into your own private property and build your own LEGO land.  Just like what you would do in real life. This was one of the main features of the game that really caught my attention. You buy bricks, build a model and play in it in your home.  With this private property you can build anything you can imagine and invite your friends to play in it.  Build a house, build race cars and a race track, or even build puzzles for your friends to figure out.  Again, the only limit is your imagination which is what the LEGO brand is all about.

More from my meeting with LEGO Universe at CES, screen shots, and a trailer after the break.

 

LEGO Digital Designer Integration

Don’t have time to or don’t want to go through questing to pimp out your private property? Use the free LEGO Digital Designer to design your own creation and import that into the game.  So, instead of designing something with that tool and buying it, you can just send it into the game and play in it virtually.

Summary

LEGO Universe is a perfect marriage of existing LEGO products.  Just think how a LEGO video game, not tied to any movie or franchise, built with many LEGO sets, add in the LEGO Digital Designer tool, and top it off with LEGO MindStorms scripting.  Now put all that in a bowl, mix it up, and put that online on an MMO scale.

LEGO Universe has me anxiously awaiting a beta invite.  It looks so fun to play for anyone at any age.  If you have an imagination, you can help the LEGO Universe.

Now, Infinity Ward is developing a patch as fast as possible, and it appears Microsoft is helping deal with the gap in between. As reported over on 1up.com: “…players caught using the glitch will be suspended, according to Xbox Live’s director of policy and enforcement, Stephen Toulouse.”  On the PS3 however, it appears that the opposite is true, noting that that a Sony representative said “I don’t believe we are banning people for using the glitch.”

[via 1up]

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.

Talking of YouTube, Google introduced skippable pre-roll adverts this week to YouTube in an effort to finally make some meaningful money from its enormous purchase. It’s not the first time Google’s tried pre-roll adverts however, with previous efforts seeing a 70% bail rate before the video actually starts. Google’s hoping with skippable 15 second ads it will be able to see which ads fit and are acceptable with which content. Google also started the roll out of 1080p video for all the content that’s been uploaded in full HD. Couple this with the improvements Adobe is making to Flash and you might even be able to watch them without having to pack a Core i7!

Swindon is set to become the UK’s first free Wifi town rocking free WiFi across the entire city. Dubbed the ‘Swindon Mesh’, the £1 million wireless network will allow all residents completely free access to the internet. Residents who want greater speed, ‘up to 20Mbits’, will be able to pay Digital City UK for higher bandwidth, but a vast majority should be set with the free service. Those passing through will also be able to hook up via a PAYG scheme in which prices have yet to be set, let’s hope they’re at least competitive. Work starts December and Digital City UK is expecting to roll out the service to all Swindon residents come April 2010. Great, but sorry Swindon I still don’t want to live there, do you?

Talking of Wifi towns, the MPAA shut one down. Yes that’s right, the MPAA shut down a whole town’s municipal wifi after it detected a single copyright infringement. That’s what happens when you give companies the power to crush the little guy without due process or trial. So, if you’re expecting to connect for free in Coshocton, Ohio, sorry you’re out of luck for the foreseeable future just like the 100 or so active residents.

So we’ve seen the Beatles unleash music on apple shaped USB drives, but how about movies on flash drives? OK, you’ve got the odd movie distribution service via SD card, but I think novalty shaped flash drives with your favourite movies on them tops a lowly SD card. Yes that’s right, I’m talking about JJ Abram’s Star Trek hitting the small screen courtesy of some fancy flash drives. The movie comes pre-loaded onto a flash drive shaped like the new Star Trek logo so once you’re done watching the movie you can proudly display it as a piece of Star Trek memorabilia next to your model of the Enterprise and Warf’s head. Michael Bay fans haven’t been left out either with Transformers 2 set to follow soon on appropriately shaped flash drives. Yours for the bargain of £17.99 a pop. Think I’ll stick with the Blu-Ray but maybe that’s just me.

This week has also seen the shuttering of the Pirate Bay torrent tracker. Now it’s not all bad news for those amongst you who use BitTorrent as they’ve set up a Magnet link repository. For those uninitiated, BitTorrent has evolved to support a decentralised structure using the DHT and PEX protocols. Now what that means for you and your, umm, linux downloading friends is that you no longer need a .torrent location file to find and download files over the p2p network. In fact if you’re running one of the more up-to-date clients such as uTorrent or Azureus, you’ve had the magnet-link capability for a while and probably didn’t even know about it. The Pirate Bay is so certain that it’s search engine and magnet-link repository is the way forward for BitTorrent that it’s been canvassing other torrent trackers in an effort to get everyone to move over to the decentralised system. Whether this is a sinister plot by the Pirate Bay’s new owners or an honest to goodness evolution of piracy (and legal p2p) is unclear at this stage. What is clear is that this is an end of an era for BitTorrent and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.

Facebook, everyone’s favourite stalker hangout has made yet another move to conquer your life away from the computer this week. The PS3 saw an update that includes a somewhat weak browser based Facebook integration a rather rushed effort on Sony’s part to match the Xbox 360 which has proper Facebook and Twitter integration. OK, you might want to brag about your Achievements or Trophies to your mates on Stalkerbook or Twatter, but seriously, who is going to sit in front of their TV and use this on an 8-foot interface? I mean the Xbox doesn’t even have a web browser so how are you going to check out the links and pics that your friends send out via TwitFace?

Talking of Facebook, if the fuzz ever comes a knocking, your inane status updates could count as an alibi. Yes, you heard right, a 19-year old Harlem resident was cleared of charges resulting from a mugging in Brooklyn by an alibi provided a status update made on Facebook from his Dad’s house at the time of the crime. Am I the only one who could see this as being really easy to fake? You could just automate a status update, VNC into your computer or just get someone else to update on your profile for you from your computer. Still the courts subpoenaed Facebook for the IP address of the computer that made the status update, which of course pointed to his Father’s house where he claimed to be at the time of the mugging.

Last but not least from my picks of the week, Google Chrome OS. OK, it’s basically an OS built inside Chrome browser. I’m not surprised, that’s exactly what I thought it was going to be. What I am surprised about is that it won’t run on everything, Google doesn’t even support HDDs! I get that it’s meant to totally rely on the cloud for all data and applications, but not even supporting HDDs for local storage? Let’s just say it’s probably not aimed at me, or you reading this for that matter, but perhaps, maybe those non-tech-savvy buying netbooks might get used to it, I’m not sure though.

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.

So patch 3.3 approaches. Icecrown awaits. It is more than likely the final content patch of Wrath of the Lich King, if history holds true.  While this expansion was the best content Blizzard has released to date and probably the best expansion any MMORPG has ever seen, I can’t help but get the same, predictable end-of-expansion blues I’ve not yet managed to dodge in all of my years in this genre.  EverQuest, DAoC, WoW… When each of these games approaches an expansion, I am at once thrilled by the promise of new, amazing content and yet standing in one spot, sporting my now outdated Tier 8.5 set going “So wait, WTF am I doing this for, now?”  I have an answer, I think.

That answer being that I keep playing for love of the game itself, not the cheesy “I PLAY TO LOVE MY FRIENDZ” answer every asshat in the game gives.  No, I don’t play WoW to make friends.  Yes, I do play WoW WITH my friends and we have a damn good time doing it.  But they aren’t what ties me to this game, to this world.  The game itself is.  The mechanics, the UI, the classes and their interactions are all what keeps me coming back for more.  Pride in what I’ve built.  I know there are 10,000 other Mages in WoW who are “better” geared than I, but I take pride in my Mage.  I’ve built him from some rag wearing bear parts peddler in Eversong to being a well oiled machine of fashionable fiery death.

But as predictable as taxes, death and post movie theater popcorn bowel movements, the late expansion blues have hit me square in the gut.  You’d think I’d have learned to move, by now.  The dread feeling of “Now everything I do, all the hours I raid are for nothing” sets in.  And so I slack.  I slack hardcore, I spend more time in other games.  But I pine for my home on the interwebz always.  Any game I play, be it MMO or not, I am constantly comparing their features, classes and shortcomings to my beloved World of WarCraft.  It is only temporary, as it always is and always has been.  More a product of my own mind than anything the game is sending my way, I’d suppose.  Perhaps a little burn out, as well?

There are some things that can be done to combat this type of burn out, because that is exactly what it is.  You can do a number of things, all of which I am currently doing to keep my passion for WoW in some sort of mental cryostasis.

• Level an alt.  Not in the typical fashion, either.  Make it a class, race or even faction you’ve never tried for whatever reason.  Try a new server type for the alt.  I’m currently leveling an Alliance Priest.  Swore I never would, which makes it almost taboo exciting!
• Stop raiding.  I’m just about there.  Four nights a week in a time zone that is not my own for what feels like, to me, very little return is, well, not fun.  So I’ve been slowing my raiding to a slow trickle.  To a point where I feel I’m only putting in what I get out.
• Try some other games.  I mean of all varieties.  Try another MMO, like WarHammer or Aion.  You’ll find your love for WoW rejuvenated as you realize WHY it is as big as it is.  Try other genres to fill your time.  I’ve recently given my soul to League of Legends and I love it.  32 – 1 – 9 with Evelynn, yeah baby! =D
• Dust off some old games.  Fallout 3 and L4D have been getting extra attention from me lately.  Good times with good friends.

All that aside, WarCraft patch 3.3 is looking to be an insane new level of fun.  After watching the preview videos for Icecrown Citadel at Blizzcon, I have to say, I cannot wait to step in there and start kicking ass.  Arthas, to me, is perhaps the most compelling villain in the history of gaming.  His story arc is the most human I have seen gaming produce in a long time, and to see this particular story come to an end… No, not just come to an end, but to do so at MY hands?  I feel that situation will truly be worthy of the word “Epic”.

The class and cosmetic changes in the patch look meaningful as well as just plain fun.  You can find the patch notes here, and they will be updated throughout the PTR process.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dirty bastard named Ryze I need to go beat the ever living snot out of, damned overpowered ultimates….

I leave you with a visual reminder of why Worgen Druid Aquatic forms are going to fail.

LOL AQUA LYCANZ GONNA NEED A BIGGAR BOAT!!11!

www.doghousesystems.com

I just received my new desktop machine from them last week.  I got the Armor VS model.  Tossed 8 Gigs of RAM in that baby and she was still under $1,200.  Having just had a baby recently, I drooled over getting an awesome gaming PC for that price.  But I figured hey, its entry level price, the PC will probably be middle of the line at best.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  This thing flies.  I mean flies.  In WoW at peak times, in Dalaran, maxed settings, I get over 60 FPS.  Over 60 in 25 man raids, as well, again with everything maxed out.  I get almost 75 in maxed settings Left 4 Dead.  I is a happy panda!  I don’t have any of the super high end games like Crysis to test it with, but I can only assume I would find similarly pleasing results there, as well.

My little setup.

Again, I can not describe with how happy I am with the performance of this machine.  No “Optional” trial software, no crap running in the backround I don’t need, these guys at DogHouse ARE gamers.  They know how we want our PCs to arrive.  It came with WoW Pre-installed and Pre-Patched.

If my pleasure level with the machine itself was a 10/10, then my review of DogHouse’s customer service would be about a 12/10.  It started early, too.  When I ordered the machine, I had to call their sales department to ask if 8G of RAM was possible in an Armor VS, since the choices on the order form were 2G and 4G.  After a moment, they came back and not only told me 8G was possible, but to reload my browser.  I reloaded my browser, and lo and behold, in that moment, they ADDED a choice for 8G.  If that isn’t prompt shit, I don’t know what would be.

The excellent service continued throughout the next 2 weeks.  They emailed me, letting me know the PC’s status, asking a few setup questions so that upon arrival, I could simply uncrate my glorious machine and get to pwning n00bz.  So it is roughly 2 weeks after I placed me order that FedEx arrives with my big box of joy.  Now, if I love DogHouse Systems, I fucking hate FedEx.  I watched the dude carry it from his truck to my door, dropping it once and hitting the door I opened for him with it.  Twice.

I get it to my little Nerd Lair, set it up – Which by the way, if you’re computer retarded, DogHouse sends a full color, lamens terms, very well labeled instruction binder on how to set it up – to find out that the bumbling idiot from FedEx managed to bend the housing on the top case exhaust fan.  What the fuck, FedEx?  So I call DogHouse, let them know my problem, and while I am far from computer illiterate, I’m not confident enough to go digging around in my new PC trying to fix this, so a gentleman named Sina walked me through getting the fan unhooked until they could ship me a new one.  Thats right.  FedEx fucked up, and DHS is fixing the problem.

These guys have my future business for all PC purchases and I can not stress enough how pleased people will be ordering from them.  If you need a new gaming rig, whether you’re looking to spend $1,000 or get the absolute top end shit, this is the place to go, geeks.  Keep up the good work DHS.  You guys rock.