When it comes to computing, our general philosophy at Maximum PC is that bigger is better. More, speed, more memory, more power--as far as hardware goes, there's no such things as excess. Software, though... Software's a little different. Big, feature-packed utilities and applications are great, but we prefer apps that show a little restraint.
That's why we've put together a list of 30 apps that kick ass without taking up a lot of space. Every program in this list can be downloaded for free, and takes up less than 2 megabytes of space. Read on for more!
What the heck is taking up all that space on your computer? Find out with SpaceSniffer. Like WinDirStat and a few similar programs, SpaceSniffer scans your drive and creates a visual representation of all the stuff that's on it, so you can see at a glance what's cluttering your boot drive. From there you can right-click to interact directly with files and folders—anything you can do from the right-click context menu, like delete, cut, copy, and paste, you can do in SpaceSniffer.
Ever notice it's hard to sleep at night after staring at your computer screen all evening? It could be the color temperature of your monitor. F.lux is a simple app that matches the color temperature of your screen with the lights in your room, and with natural light in the morning. Go easier on your eyes; you only get one pair. Presumably.
CPU-Z has grown to be one of the most valuable tools an enthusiast can access. It gives you the nitty gritty on what clock speed your CPU is running at, what it idles at as well as what stepping and revision it is. CPU-Z also gives you quick info on your motherboard, RAM and GPU too. On a rigs, we often use CPU-Z to verify that our CPU is running at its rated speed. Believe it or not, but sometimes a motherboard will incorrectly set the multiplier for a CPU and unintentionally under clock the chip. We put a load on the CPU with Prime95, and then use CPU-Z to verify that all is what it should be.
Windows' file copying and moving can be a little arcane, and the interface lacks much useful information. TeraCopy is designed to copy and move files as fast as possible, with plenty of options not available in Windows Explorer, like pausing and resuming, error correction, and test copying. It can also integrate seamlessly with Windows to replace the default file movement system, unlike similar programs like FastCopy.
Think Windows 7's built-in indexed search is fast enough? Think again. Everything, from Void Tools, is a ultra-light-weight indexed search app, that makes looking for files jaw-droppingly fast. Like, instantaneous.
If you don't believe us, try it out for yourself—we guarantee you'll be impressed. Indexing is remarkably fast (a minute or so per hundred gigabytes indexed) and Everything's system footprint is minimal. You can only search in filenames, but regular expressions are supported and the speed is phenomenal.
Core i3/5/7 chips are great at handling thermal and power loads. Instead of simply crashing or locking up your box, most Core iX chips just throttle the clock speeds down until the heat is manageable. That's great, except you don't really know if you're giving up performance because your heat sink or case air flow is underperforming. Since the chip throttling doesn't appear as an error in the OS, you'll have to rely on the wonderful TMonitor. This utility monitors the clock speed of each core in real time and even shows you what the Turbo Boost level of the chip is. Fire up TMonitor, and load up your CPU with a good work multi-threaded load such as Prime95. TMonitor should show all of the cores running at maximum clock speed and without any sags. Let it run for at least 15 minutes to an hour. If the TMonitor shows large sags on some of the cores, you have a thermal issue with your system.
Pretend that you're an editor at a web site that just came across a prototype phone from a fascist-like computer company. Great ! Well, that is until the company's illegal security contractors start kicking in your front door. What are you go do? You should have Darik's Boot and Nuke handy. Simply download the pre-built ISO, burn it to disc, and when needed, reboot to the disc. DBAN will begin nuking your PC's storage subsystem and any hard drive it can detect. For many of us who don't live the Hollywood, high-adventure lifestyle of a web editor, DBAN's probably more handy for wiping old machines before you sell them or give them away.
At 28K in size, Delayer is truly tiny. But it's actually one of the most useful apps we have on our rig. We use Delayer to create some automation around our basic applications. It does what the name suggests, and allows you to create delays in launching Windows applications. It's handy for running sequences of programs, setting up your taskbar icons in a preferred sequence, and even creating pop-up reminder messages.
Because we are constantly swapping out systems, drives, and components, this one's a no-brainer. Eraser is a highly secure data removal tool. It's effective because it doesn't just delete your data, it completely nukes it all by overwriting it with patterns of data generated specifically to prevent future recovery. Best of all, it's free.
We like uTorrent because it's a lightweight (400K), fast, simple, and easy-to-use BitTorrent client that boasts many of the features in bigger clients such as BitComet. It supports UPnP, it automatically adjusts your bandwidth usage based on network activity, and you can customize the client via the uTorrent's App Studio. And did we mention that it's fast. Like many of the apps on this list, it's also free.
We all know that we should be using multiple passwords for multiple accounts. But do you do it? No. Why not? Because it's impossible to remember all the passwords. KeePass is great because it handles this for you. A 256-bit encrypted database keeps all of your passwords locked down and accessible via Windows or even mobile devices.
We'll keep this short and simple. The Gmail Notifier displays an icon in your system tray whenever you receive new messages, displaying subject, sender, and a snippet of the message.
We've been a big fan of CCleaner (formerly Crap Cleaner) for many years to help decrappify Windows. This donation-ware (but still available for free) application's main appeal is dumping out unused file areas to save space, but it also features a registry cleaner and can securely delete free space on your hard drives if need be. It's well worth the install and it doesn't oversell itself as being able to rejuvenate your system like some clutter-clearing applications do.
This is our default file archive package, partially because it's free, but mostly because it's power, flexible, and effective. The 1.09MB 7-Zip unpacks all manner of archive formats, including ZIP, TAR, GZ, and the application even has its own file format—7z—which is remarkably efficient at compressing files. It also supports 256-bit AES encryption, and can be configured to utilize multiple CPU cores.
Color Cop is a multi-purpose color picker that allows users to determine the color (and coding) of any color on any given screen. If you're trying to find the color of something particularly detailed, you can also use the magnifying tool to select individual pixels, ensuring that you find the color that you're looking for. Awesome software for graphic designers and Photoshop enthusiasts.
IrfanView is a photo and video viewer that allows you to perform basic editing and color corrections. You can organize images or movies into slideshows, access the paint tool to draw over your image, and change the skins on your toolbar. You are also given access to a series of effects and filters to further alter your image. The real kicker, though, is that IrfanView supports a huge range of file formats. All free, in an app less than 2mb. Impressive.
Easy Thumbnails has a pretty self explanatory name, and that's a good thing. Basically, opening Easy Thumbnails puts you into your computers directory, where you can select any image that you'd like to resize. For batch jobs, it's a real time saver, as you can simply choose a series of images, choose a new size for them, and have a series of thumbnails ready to post wherever you'd like. Easy Thumbnails also saves original copies of your images, incase you're not happy with your resize. A handy little program.
Resize Enable
Resize Enable is interesting in that there isn't even an interface to the program—you simply install the small file, then you are able to resize nearly all windows on your desktop—including the ones that you couldn't prior. This helps consolidate all of your open windows without the need minimize so much. Very handy.
Nail it1.10 installs to your taskbar, and basically allows you to 'nail' any given window in your OS. What does this mean? Well, if you a nail a window, that window will stay on the top, no matter how many other windows you choose to open. If you're tired of your nailed window, you can un nail it, and assign the nail to a different window. There are a ton of practical things you can achieve with this app—we found that nailing an analog clock to our desktop kept things a bit more classy.
Internet Traffic Report
Internet Traffic Report is a nifty app that loads into your toolbar. The icon represented in the toolbar is the performance rating for which designated internet path you choose to monitor; using the configure tab, you can choose which region of internet you'd like to monitor, or switch monitoring between servers altogether. Basically, ITR is a GUI that allows you to find and diagnose bandwidth issues, wherever you are.
LogMeIn Hamachi2 is an easy-to-configure utility that sets up a Virtual Private Network to let you securely access remote networks. Simple, secure, and free for noncommercial use, it's perfect for creating mock-LANs for LAN gaming at a distance, or for creating a virtual office network. Use in conjunction with UltraVPN to securely control your PC from anywhere.
Strange things happening to your PC? HijackThis, from Trend Micro, generates a full report of everything that's running on your computer. Helpful forum denizens (yes, such things exist!) can then help you parse your HijackThis log for anomalies, like spyware and malware. If you're feeling especially brave, you can use HijackThis to remove unwanted files yourself, but the software itself will helpfully remove anything you ask it to—including important things. So be careful.
If you're in the habit of buying new laptops (or off-the-shelf desktops), you're familiar with the stupendous array of bloatware that can ship with new computers. PC Decrapifier should be your first download on a new computer. Run it once and get rid of all the crap. And dream of a future in which software companies don't pay hardware companies to include crapware on new PCs. Not bloody likely.
Not everyone can put out the cash for Ultra-X's RST Pro (RAM Stress Test Pro) tools but Memtest86+ is likely more than enough for the average enthusiast trying to trouble shoot an ailing system. An offshoot of the original Memtest86, the utility is constantly updated to support new processors and chipsets and will even work with Sandy Bridge CPUs and AMD's new Fusion chips. Simply download the pre-built ISO from the web site, burn it to a disc or create a bootable USB stick, plop it in the ailing PC and boot to it. Memtest Plus will immediately being running test patterns across the memory. Any errors or problems will be flagged.
If you think running your favorite game is a good stress test of your CPU, you're wrong. While games are good at testing a GPU, they don't do squat to a CPU. If you really want to squeeze your CPU hard, use Prime95. Download it, unzip the file and click on the Prime95 executable. It'll ask if you want to search for Primes or just do some stress testing. Select stress testing. You should then get a menu of different stress tests and what subsystems they stress the most. Your system should be able to finish any of the tests without any errors or crashing. If something blue screens, you likely have a thermal, power or RAM issue with your box.
If you take screenshots with any sort of frequency, you know that the standard screenshot functionality in Windows just doesn't cut it. There are a lot screenshot tools floating around, but our favorite is Greenshot, which is tiny, efficient, and has all the features we need.
Greenshot gives you a lot of flexibility in how shots are saved—whether they go to a folder, the clipboard, or straight to Photoshop. It also lets you choose exactly how you want to take shots. You can assign different hotkeys to take full-screen shots, custom-area shots, single-window shots and more.
Now, we're not going to claim that every person needs a hash calculator. If you only download software from trusted location, and don't compile anything yourself, you're probably safe without one. But when you DO need a hash calculator—if you want to make absolutely sure that the file you download is bit-for-bit identical to the file you wanted—you should get a good hash calculator. Thus, HashCalc.
HashCalc is small, fast, free, and it shows you hashes in pretty much any format you can think of. What more could you want?
Alright, technically this is two apps, but they work together to serve a single purpose.
That purpose? Taking back control of your context menu. Whether a full on shell extention, or a regular context menu item, these two programs from NirSoft have you covered, allowing you to disable any item in your context menu that you no longer want. For full instructions for using ShellMenuView and ShellExView, see our how-to article right here.
Multiple desktops are a classic form of desktop organization, but have never had native support in Windows. Fortunately, there have always been third-party solutions that inject desktop-switching functionality back into the OS.
There are a lot of options available, but there's several good reasons to choose VirtuaWin: it's Open Source, tiny, doesn't use many system resources, and it gives you all the functionality you need to manage programs across four virtual desktops.
If you're the kind of PC power-user for whom even hotkeys aren't fast enough, you might want to think about mouse gestures. Without even having to reach for the keyboard, you can bind pretty much any action you can think of to customizable mouse gestures using StrokeIt. Adolescent pun-name aside, StrokeIt's an absolute necessity for anyone looking to use their mouse for more than just pointing and clicking.
MSI's recently unveiled X370 notebook is now available for order and, depending on which vendor you go through, will ship right away. The X370 is a budget-conscious ultraportable priced at $599 and built around AMD's dual-core E-350 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) platform. It's a sexy looking notebook, at least in the pictures we've seen, and at 3.1 pounds, you won't throw your back out lugging it around.
"We designed the X370 for those who want a fully functioning notebook in a compact form, with long battery life," noted Andy Tung, vice president of sales for MSI U.S.
MSI claims the the X370 will keep chugging along for up to 10 hours. Other notable features include a 13.4-inch widescreen display, AMD Radeon HD 6310 discrete class graphics, 4GB of DDR3 memory, 500GB hard drive, SRS Premium Sound speakers, HDMI, 1.3MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
Newegg has the X370 stocked and ready to ship, or if you don't mind waiting 1-4 weeks, Amazon is selling it slightly cheaper at $580.
Picture, if you will, the year 1981. A year prior the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; in 1981, the first Space Shuttle, Columbia, blasted off into orbit; a royal wedding, involving a Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, took place; MTV was born; personal/residential satellite dishes are approved by the FCC; the first HIV/AIDS deaths were reported; Pac Man is exported by Japan in a successful attempt to sabotage US worker productivity; President Ronald Regan is shot and takes his frustrations out on Libya, sending ships to the Gulf of Sidra to the outrage of "President" Colonel Momar Khadafi; and a small business machine company called Commodore introduced its second personal computer, the Vic 20, and a legend was born.
The Vic 20, even by 1981 standards, was very...underpowered. Consider that the first IBM PCs also began shipping in 1981, and compare the two machines:
Vic 20
IBM Personal Computer 5150
RAM
5 Kb
16Kb, expandable to 64Kb
ROM
16 Kb
64 Kb
OS
Commodore BASIC
IBM PC/DOS (MS/DOS)
Processor
MOS 6502A
Intel 8088
Math Co-Processor
None
Intel 8087 (optional)
Clock
1.0227 MHz
4.77 MHz
Video
Screen: 22 columns by 23 rows. Character dot matrix: 8 by 8 or 8 by 16 (User programmable). Screen dot matrix: 176 by 184 with up to 16 colors.
Depends on installed Graphics card. Typically: Text mode 40 / 80 character X 40 lines) Graphic mode: Monochrome CGA was common (320 X 200 or 640 X 200)
Color Palette
16 Colors
Monochromatic
Sound
3 + Noise
Price
$300
$1,595 - $3,000
There were a couple things going for this little machine: it was small and plugged into a TV, and it was cheap and made personal computing accessible to nearly anyone. As the Vic 20 was my first computer, this is my list of factoids that you may not have known about the venerable Vic 20. Enjoy!
1. The VIC in VIC20 stood for Video Interface Chip, and was originally designed to be used in arcade gaming machines. When no one wanted to buy the chip, Commodore engineers built a computer around the chip.
2. The '20' in Vic20 is thought to have stood for several different things: o A reference to the 22 maximum characters per line on the screen o Or a reference to the maximum amount of memory the system had (5k + 16k = 21k) o But according to Michael Tomcyzk, an ex-Commodore employee, "it just sounded good."
3. The Vic20 accomplished a number of 'firsts' in the computer industry: o It was the first computer to sell over 1 million units o It was the first home computer to sell for under $300 o It then became the first colour home computer to sell for under $100 o The VicModem was the first modem to sell for under $100, and the first modem to sell 1 million units. o It was the first computer K-Mart sold. o It was the first computer many consumers 'upgraded' from, when they bought the new Commodore 64.
4. For many geeks, it was their first computer. On this esteemed list include the likes of Linus Torvalds, and MPC'ers Gordon Mah Ung and EIC George Jones. Mr. Torvalds had this to say about his Vic 20:
"The VIC-20 was indeed my first computer. It's a long time ago, so I won't say I remember what my first program I wrote was, but I assume it was the same old
10 PRINT "HELLO LINUS" 20 GOTO 10
that everybody wrote in BASIC ;)"
He goes on to say that playing the game Money Money, which displayed machine-code 'flakes' on the side, made him realize that there was something behind BASIC and that realization, amongst other factors, led him to begin programming in machine language on the Vic20.
5. In Germany, the Vic20 was sold as the VC20, a play on a popular Volkswagen brand. This was also done for practical reasons, as the German pronunciation of "Vic" sounded an awful lot like the German pronunciation of "f*ck"
6. William Shatner was hired to be the official spokesperson for the Vic 20, and from there, went on to champion numerous other products like Priceline, Loblaw's here in Canada, World of Warcraft, and of course, became the champion of colonary regularity with Kellogg's Bran Flakes.
7. The amount of free memory on the Vic 20 (3583 bytes) is roughly the equivalent number of characters on a typed sheet of paper.
8. Despite the Commodore 64 being the far more powerful computer, the Vic20 was still a popular seller, due to its very low price, $595 vs. >$300
9. Commodore sold memory expansion cartridges of 3K, 8K, and 16K. 32K and 64K were also available, but from 3rd party resellers for the low,low price of $149 for 64K!
10. BBS services such as CompuServe could be accessed with the Vic20
11. The Vic20 was popular not just because it was cheap, but because its cartridge system gave it a plug and play usability which was infinitely faster than loading software from the tape drive.
12. Yes, it used a tape drive. Nothing said slow like waiting for Moon Patrol to load up to play.
The flash memory used in everything from smartphones to SSDs is about to get a lot more efficient in the wake of the latest advance from Intel and Micron. The companies announced today that they have successfully shrunk NAND flash memory so it can be manufactured using a 20-nanometer process. The practical upshot of all this is that future devices are likely to be packing more memory for less money.
Flash memory made using the new process will be denser than the current 25nm NAND. The technology is set to be used in the creation of new 8GB MLC NAND flash chips where the memory itself uses 30-40% less board space. The chips will be produced by IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), a joint venture between Intel and Micron.
Samsung is in the process of building 20nm NAND for use in SD cards and other devices, but none have hit the market yet. Analysts predict 10-nm NAND is a possibility in the next several years. For the time being, we can expect the new 20nm Intel/Micron flash chips to be in mass production in the second half of the year.
The seizure of file-sharing domain names by US authorities has been a hot button issue for the last few months, and the practice is not expected to stop any time soon. Taking away site's domain name is a blow to be sure, but many sites just set up shop at another address. A new Firefox extension aims to make the process easier, and poke at the copyright police at the same time.
MAFIAA Fire was officially published to the Firefox Add-on gallery today, and will be ported to Chrome soon. This extension will be used to maintain a list of seized domains and automatically reroute users to the new web address if one has been set up. Webmasters are being encouraged to register alternate domains ahead of time in anticipation of eventual seizure.
The developers of the add-on have stated they will be working on additional extensions and plug-ins soon. MAFIAA Fire will be open sourced in the coming days, so expect variants of it to start popping up. The extension is available from the Mozilla site.
Once a month, I get together with friends for sushi. We call it 'Sushi-Con' and we descend on Sun-Sushi, on Reseda Blvd. in Northridge. (It's an open invitation, check my Facebook wall for the next one. Or follow DavidGerrold on Twitter.) The conversation is generally free-spirited and meanders through such territory as favorite movies, science fiction books, ebooks, rock music, classical music, anecdotes about people not present, interesting scientific advances, current and future technologies, and whether or not the perfect cucumber roll includes oshinko.
A few weeks ago, one of the folks asked for advice on a new computer. Several folks made immediate recommendations, based on previous experiences both good and bad, but I, playing the part of wise-old-pundit, simply looked across the table and asked, "What do you intend to use it for?"
"You know. The usual stuff."
"Ah. The usual stuff. Okay, what's usual stuff?"
That's when the fun began. Everybody at the table had a different definition of 'usual stuff.'
At the table, we had a dozen people. Most use Windows, but two use Linux. Three were Mac users. One had an iPad.
Most used Word for writing, but several also used Final Draft. Three needed processing power for editing videos and artwork, they use Flash, Avid, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Several people at the table were avid gamers and needed high-end video cards and powerful processors. One or two needed large amounts of storage space for large media collections. The professional programmer wanted compile speed and multi-tasking. The two people who hosted websites were concerned about broadband speed. Someone else who kept in touch with her grandchildren via Skype wanted clear pictures going both ways, so she talked about camera quality and internet connections. The composer wanted a high-end sound card with MIDI plug-ins. And that was just the beginning. Everybody uses their computer differently, everybody self-mods, and everybody has a different set of 'usual stuff.'
The conversation then wandered into, "Well, what's your 'usual stuff,' David?' and 'What would you build for yourself?'" Good question. Always a head-scratcher. While my current machine is pretty much keeping up with my needs, I've noticed that I'm already designing my next one in my head.
First, the case. I want a tower case with lots of room inside and two hot-swappable drive bays in front. One of the bays will be for my music collection. When the 2tb drive is no longer sufficient to hold my music collection (and I am rapidly approaching that point), I want to be able to clone it onto a 3tb drive and keep going. (By the time the 3tb fills up, there should be 4tb drives available.) Just as important, I want to be able to pop an extra hard drive into one of those hot-swappable bays so I can clone my data drives and store backups safely offsite.
Still on the case, I want it big enough for a heavy duty video card, and roomy enough that ventilation will not be a problem. I want all the components to be as quiet as possible and wherever possible, soundproofed, because I don't like an audible background hum, unless it's me humming along like Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. I recognize that adequate ventilation and silence are mutually exclusive conditions. Nevertheless, I shall dream.
Motherboard and chip? Sandy Bridge motherboard with USB 3.0. Something that will stay in the zone for a while, even as the zone moves forward. Intel hasn't announced a 6-core CPU for Sandy Bridge yet, so I'll settle for a 4-core CPU and keep my fingers crossed. Sandy Bridge promises a faster system architecture, so that has to be the deciding factor.
Water-cooling and over-clocking? Well, sure, okay, that would be nice, but not essential. I know my own habits—it's more important to me that my machine be as silent as possible. I have to ask myself, am I shooting for raw speed and power because high numbers give me geek-cred—or am I shooting for overall usefulness? Obviously, usefulness. Your mileage may vary. As effective as the Bose noise-reduction headphones are, I want to wear them on the airplane, not in front of the computer.
RAM? In my current machine, an i7-920, I've discovered that 9gb of RAM is insufficient. 90% of what I do in life is research and it's not unusual for me to have over a hundred tabs open in Chrome, at the same time puttering around in Photoshop with 6 or 8 large multi-layered files, and three humongus Excel spreadsheets, and 3 or 5 large files that I'm editing open in Word, and an assortment of additional utilities as well. To say that uses up a lot of memory is an understatement. 12gb would be my absolute bottom end for RAM, but ideally I'd shoot for at least 16gb of the fastest RAM I could find, I'd max out the motherboard.
Hard drives? Obviously, I want the operating system (Win7) to run on a solid-state drive, at least 160gb, but 250gb looks like the sweet spot to me, and then two inboard 3tb drives for data. I have more than 2tb of music in my collection and another 1tb of video files I'm editing. I'm tired of having them scattered across four or five smaller drives.
Video Card? I play Starcraft II. My old GTX-260 can run a 30-inch monitor with all the effects turned up to eleven at 105fps. So almost any of the current crop of video cards will likely suit my gaming needs. But more important, I also do a lot of video editing and photo-processing so video power is a consideration. I have a 30-inch screen. The HP ZR30W is a great display, especially where color accuracy is critical, such as in photo-editing or video-processing. But I want to run a second monitor next to it, another 30-incher? Or maybe a triptych of big screens, so the video capability has to be there for that eventuality. I want some serious RAM on that video card (or cards).
Sound Card? Most motherboards include pretty good sound capability these days, but I've always gone for the top-end Sound Blaster in the past and w ould want to do that here. I teach writing workshops and occasionally some organization or other asks me to give a speech. I record those courses and speeches and occasionally edit them for distribution. A couple times, I've recorded musical presentations as well, so I want a professional-level ability to record and edit and reproduce sound accurately. When I listen to music, I like multi-channel surround, so I want a sound board that will let me run 5.1 channels—and a speaker system good enough to do it justice.
Keyboard? I use an ergonomic board. I'm currently using a Northgate Evolution. It's out of production, but it's a great keyboard with old-fashioned clicky-style keys. The Avant Stellar also has the same clicky-feel, but it's not an ergonomic design. I'll stick with my current board for now, despite some of its quirks.
Mouse? I don't need a gaming mouse that looks like the Batmobile. I do need one with good sensitivity, but almost any of the high-end Logitech or Microsoft mice will do.
Webcam? I don't Skype very often, but when I do I want a good video signal going out. I do like the Logitech webcams that have HDTV capability.
And finally…the big question. Do I want a special case-mod?
Oh, absolutely.
I've always admired the graphic design that Mike Okuda did for Star Trek. (Remember the DS9 tribble episode where they recreated the look and feel of the original Enterprise? Thank Mike Okuda for taking the point on that.) So as long as I'm dreaming, let me dream of a case mod that looks like it belongs on the Enterprise, something that feels like the classic tricorder. For me, classic Star Trek is the real Star Trek. That's the starship I grew up on.
This is my own particular dream machine—not necessarily yours. In my thinking, not every component needs to be a bleeding edge, screaming-fast, state of the art, next generation, wet-your-shorts, bust-your-wallet technology. I want a machine that is powerful enough and versatile enough to keep up with the demands of the next few years of software. For the kind of investment this machine would represent, it should have a projected lifespan of at least five years of usefulness. More if I've dreamed well.
This is the real point of the 'David Gerrold Dream machine.' It's cost-effective to build for longevity. The usefulness of a computer should not be measured in months. And when a machine finally does get replaced, it should still enough life left in it that it can be used as a backup machine or a server. The machines we build today deserve to be more than boat-anchors tomorrow. That's what I believe.
Okay, now I throw it open to you, the readers. What have I missed? What would you recommend?
—————
David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website, www.gerrold.com
It's all fun and games, that is until a major association throws its weight around and tells everyone that your game sucks. That's basically what the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is doing to Amazon. In an open advisory about Amazon's Appstore distribution terms, the IGDA said it "applauds Amazon's efforts to build a more dynamic app marketplace," but voiced "significant concerns about Amazon's current Appstore distribution terms and the negative impact they may have on the game development community." What exactly has the IGDA so riled up?
A number of things, really. One of the complaints the IGDA has is that Amazon reserves the right to control the price of games, as well as the right to pay 'the greater of 70 percent of the purchase price or 20 percent of the List Price.'
"While many other retailers, both physical and digital, also exert control over the price of products in their markets, we are not aware of any other retailer having a formal policy of paying a supplier just 20 percent of the supplier's minimum list price without the supplier's permission."
The IGDA also takes issue with Amazon dictating that developers cannot set their list price above the list list price 'available or previously available on any Similar Service.' So what's the big deal? According to the IGDA, "if you want to sell your content anywhere else, you cannot prevent Amazon from slashing the price of your game by setting a high list price. And if you ever conduct even a temporary price promotion in another market, you must permanently lower your list price in Amazon's market."
The IGDA had a lot more to say on the matter, which you can read here.
If you're a Comcast subscriber, go ahead and bust out your old Sammy Hagar cassette and start belting out "I Can't Drive 55." All you need is enough green, and you won't have to drive through cyberspace at a piddly 55Mbps. Comcast has been busy laying cable and now offers its newest and highest-tier Internet speed, "Extreme 105," to more than 40 million homes from coast to coast. What can you do with 105Mbps Internet?
According to Comcast, you can download a 4GB high-definition movie in 5 minutes, a 1.5GB standard definition flick in 2 minutes, a 300MB standard definition TV show in 20 seconds, and 10-song, 40MB music album in just 3 seconds.
"This speed tier continues to expand our portfolio of Internet service offerings and takes them up to a whole new level," said Cathy Avgiris, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Communications and Data Services. "With it, we're powering the digital home of the future, where entire families using multiple devices – laptops, gaming consoles, tablets, smartphones – can all take advantage of high-bandwidth applications simultaneously ensuring they each have a great online experience."
To enroll in Comcast's Extreme 105 service, you'll have to fork over $105 per month for 12 months as part of the company's Triple Play bundle. The service comes with a wireless home networking gateway, and if you're not down with the Triple Play bundle, you can still order the Extreme 105 tier on a standalone basis, though only if you don't mind parting with $199/month -- yikes!
Pricing bugaboo aside, Comcast's 250GB data cap still applies, which we find a little bogus. After all, if you're forking over a high premium for blistering fast Internet access, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect a looser fitting cap, or remove it altogether.
What are your thoughts on Comcast's Extreme 105 service?
Are you under the impression that the modern day browser war doesn't amount to a hill of beans? Try telling that to Mozilla, who is in a dogfight with Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Google (Chrome) for browser dominance. With plenty of ad dollars at stake and control over emerging Web standards, browser makers have vested interest in grabbing as much market share as they can. Mozilla, whose second place Firefox browser is at serious risk of being overrun Chrome, announced a new rapid release development cycle, with an early version of Firefox 5 now up for grabs.
Previously there were three channels with which to test new features in Firefox. These included:
Nightly test builds: Includes features not tested by Mozilla QA
Firefox Beta: Broadly test the stability of new features and improvements in the next version of Firefox
Firefox Final Release: Deliver the polished and stable features in Firefox to hundreds of millions of users
Now there's a fourth channel called "Aurora," which Mozilla says is a place users can go to test the latest features and innovations. The first version of what will end up being Firefox 5 landed in the Aurora channel earlier this week, which is similar to Google's "dev" channel for Chrome. Firefox 5 is expected to go into beta form on or around May 17, with a final release scheduled for June 21.
In case you missed it on Wednesday night, the embargo was lifted on early reviews for Research in Motion's first tablet device, the BlackBerry PlayBook. A veritable flood of reviews hit the web for the device, which debuts on Tuesday, April 19 -- but it's off to a bit of a rocky start so far.
AppleInsider has collected some of the most prominent BlackBerry PlayBook reviews around the internet, and it's kind of a good news, bad news scenario for Research in Motion on their first time at bat in the tablet world. While the seven-inch hardware is given mostly praise, the software running it appears to be unfinished and as widely reported in recent months, even completely lacking in critical areas such as email, calendar and contacts.
The New York Times' David Pogue didn't dance around the subject of what was wrong with the PlayBook, exclaiming "R.I.M. just shipped a BlackBerry product that cannot do email. It must be skating season in hell." He also summed up the rather significant hurdle that RIM faces with potential buyers: "Remember, the primary competition is an iPad -- the same price, but much thinner, much bigger screen and a library of 300,000 apps. In that light, does it make sense to buy a fledgling tablet with no built-in e-mail or calendar, no cellular connection, no videochat, no Skype, no Notes app, no GPS app, no videochat, no Pandora radio and no Angry Birds?"
Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal was a bit kinder to the PlayBook, but called it "a tablet with a case of codependency" since a BlackBerry handset is (at least for now) required to do email, calendar and contacts on the tablet. "In my view, even though Bridge is a neat technical feat, it makes the PlayBook a companion to a BlackBerry phone rather than a fully independent device," Mossberg stated.
The news for RIM isn't all bad, however. Bloomberg's Rich Jaroslovsky praised the PlayBook's form factor and battery life, even going so far as to say the tablet could very well put RIM back in the game. "Who would have thought that the maker of some of the world's least exciting smartphones would have produced a product this slick?" Jaroslovsky concluded. "The PlayBook makes BlackBerry relevant again."
Now that the critics have spoken, all eyes will be on the retailers come Tuesday, April 19 as the BlackBerry PlayBook lands in stores nationwide in a Wi-Fi only edition matching the iPad 2 pricing and configurations by starting at $499 for 16GB.
The sky isn't falling, the world isn't about to end, and PCs aren't dying. Why, then, is market research firm Gartner bugging out? Call it an overreaction or a temporary blip as tablets settle into the marketplace (or a little of both), but according to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totaled 84.3 million units in the first quarter of 2011, a 1.1 percent slip from the same period one year ago. Doesn't sound like much, but Gartner says the shipment results are indicative of a potential sluggishness, not just a normal seasonal dip.
You can also chalk it up to overconfidence in the market. Gartner previously predicted a 3 percent growth in the first quarter of 2011, so a 1.1 percent slide means the research firm missed the mark by 4.1 percent.
"Weak demand for consumer PCs was the biggest inhibitor of growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Low prices for consumer PCs, which had long stimulated growth, no longer attracted buyers. Instead, consumers turned their attention to media tablets and other consumer electronics. With the launch of the iPad 2 in February, more consumers either switched to buying an alternative device, or simply held back from buying PCs. We're investigating whether this trend is likely to have a long-term effect on the PC market."
Piling on the panic, Gartner says that if it weren't for the professional segment growth, the PC market could have experienced one of the worst declines in its recent history.
Not all PC makers were affected by the decline. Both Lenovo and Toshiba bucked the trend by noting first quarter growth to the tune of 16.6 percent and 5.3 percent respectively. HP, meanwhile, performed below the worldwide average yet still maintained the No. 1 spot. No company was hit harder than Acer, however, which noted a 12.2 percent decline, though still held onto the No. 2 spot ahead of Dell.
FBI investigators tried a new approach to taking down a zombie PC gang. For the first time ever, federal authorities in the U.S. seized control of the bad guys' servers, a move that required the U.S. Justice Department to seek permission from a judge in order to carry out the sting. After doing so, authorities were able to counter-attack by issuing their own commands, programming the malware to shutdown, and also log IP addresses of infected machines.
With this information, authorities can turn around and notify ISPs about which machines are compromised, which can then share that information with the victims, according to a BBC report.
While this is a new approach in the U.S., the same tactic has been used elsewhere. Dutch police took a similar approach when it shut down the Bredolab botnet, prompting privacy gurus to question whether or not such a move was legal.
In this case, the FBI was targeting the Coreflood botnet. Coreflood is estimated to have infected some 2.3 million machines, resulting in millions of dollars for its operators.
Spotify, the popular European music streaming service that's still trying to figure out how to break into the United States, is making some changes that will hit current users of its free service like a gut punch. Announced today in a blog post, the total listening time for free users has been cut in half from 20 hours a month to just 10 hours. Ooph. And starting May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1, 2010 will only be able to listen to individual tracks five times per month (if you signed up after, there's a 6 month grace period).
"The changes we're having to make will mainly affect heavier Spotify Free and Open users, as most of you use Spotify to discover music -- on average over 50 new tracks per month, even after a year," Spotify said. "Plus, the average user won't reach the limit on plays for 7 out of 10 tracks, after a year of using Spotify. For those of you using Spotify to find new tracks to enjoy and share with friends, these changes shouldn't get in the way of you doing that. Rest assured that we'll continue to bring you the biggest and most diverse music catalogue available."
News of the changes has sparked speculation on what was really the driving force behind Spotify's decision to shake things up. The U.K.'s PaidContent brought up three possible scenarios:
Simply put, Spotify may have made the changes because it can.
To offset the cost of bandwidth and/or royalty payments.
Pressure by the record labels.
Plausible as all three sound, Spotify rejected the notion that there's a hidden agenda, saying "It's not due to bandwidth issues and it's not a premium conversion strategy -- we want to make that extremely clear. It's not related to the U.S. launch."
Motorola might have been the first to market with an Android Honeycomb tablet, but its next tablet could very well be based on Gingerbread instead of the tablet-specific OS. That's according to an Engadget article detailing Motorola's plans for an enterprise tablet.
The popular tech blog claims to have been briefed about a 7-inch enterprise tablet by a "helpful tipster." According to a slide leaked by Engadget, the new tablet will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread and feature a dual-core 1GHz OMAP 4 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB NAND, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, and USB connectivity. It is said to sport a 7-inch LCD display.
Further, it is clear from the slide that the tablet will be designed to weather difficult work environments. It is expected to enter beta testing in October, 2011.
Security firm AVG has come out with a new product called "AVG Family Safety" designed to "protect today's tech-savvy but increasingly vulnerable children online." That reads a lot like 'parental controls' to us, and from what we gather, that's basically what it is. In addition, AVG claims this wonder tool can filter unwanted communication from online predators and cyber-bullying from over 80 different social network sites, while also allowing you to monitor chats and network threads.
"At AVG we are aware that many parents are concerned they might not have the necessary tools to effectively protect their children from online threats. Parents need to feel safe in the knowledge that their children understand and are protected from web-based dangers," said J.R. Smith, CEO, AVG Technologies. "With 'AVG Family Safety,' AVG is taking its expertise in security technology and expanding it to new areas of online protection for the modern family.
"Parents don't want to feel like it's a fruitless exercise trying to tell their children they can't be online alongside their peers and involved in social networking," said Smith. "Kids are early adopters of the latest ways to communicate – which arms them with technical skills but not the worldly awareness of threats and untoward behavior."
AVG says its Family Safety software acts as a virtual guardian for bumbling teens and kids, allowing them to roam freely through cyberspace while keeping them protected. It can prevent kids from giving away their address, and you can receive SMS or email alerts in real time when something undesirable occurs.
AVG Family Safety is available now for $20 (1 year subscription, 3 PCs).
Earlier this year at CES, gaming peripheral maker Razer showed off its "mobile PC gaming concept design" called Switchblade. Essentially a netbook concept for gamers on-the-go, the Switchblade one-ups other handheld consoles by combining a dynamic keyboard, mobile gaming mouse (if required), and touchscreen display all rolled into a single device. No longer just a concept, Razer went and formed an alliance with Intel, the world's largest chip maker, and Tencent, China's leading provider of games and Internet services, to promote the Switchblade in China.
"This is the first time three of the biggest technology brands in China have come together," said Min-Liang Tan, CEO and Creative Director, Razer. "We're united by a common goal to deliver the best portable gaming experience to as many gamers as possible. With the Razer Switchblade's adaptive tactile keyboard, Intel's range of processors, and Tencent's popular games, this is no lofty goal -- it's happening now."
Razer said it built the Switchblade from the ground up with a focus on enhancing the user experience for playing PC games on a handheld device. Driving the device is an Intel Atom processor, and on the software side, Razer says several popular Tencent titles have been optimized to run on the Switchblade, including Dungeon and Fighter, Crossfire, League of Legends, QQ Speed, and a bunch more.
It will be interesting to see how Chinese gamers receive the Switchblade, and whether or not Razer opts to eventually market the portable gaming machine in the U.S. market.
It looks like Intel isn't the only chip maker looking to out-muscle ARM in the tablet market. According to a recent job listing on AMD's website, the company is looking to hire Android driver development engineers, preferably those with experience in video decode acceleration. Reading between the lines, it appears AMD envisions itself powering an Android tablet sometime in the near future.
"The Linux Base Graphics team is looking for Android Driver Development engineers to help us evolve our driver stack for new platforms and in line with the development trends in the Android ecosystem," the job listing reads. "Experience with video decode acceleration within the Android web browser or video player application would be an asset. Experience with webm and/or OpenMax would be a bonus."
Both AMD and Intel have up to this point conceded the tablet market to ARM, with Nvidia getting into the fold as well. But more recently, Intel has shown a strong interest in pushing its Atom platform into mobile products, including tablets and possibly smartphones, and AMD's eventual entry could set the stage for interesting battle between several industry heavyweights. What's more, the added competition would further motivate ARM, Nvidia, and Intel to stay on top of their game with faster, more power efficient mobile processors.
Netbooks, as popular as they became, never fully embraced the concept of dual-booting operating systems. A handful talked about releasing dual-booting netbooks, even fewer actually did, not including pre-boot environments like SplashTop. Should companies building tablets look to resurrect the idea of multiple OSes on a single device? We don't know, but Gigabyte intends to find out.
According to Yahoo News, Gigabyte is gearing up to launch two Android tablets this year, one of which will also run Windows. It will ship in October and come with an as-yet undetermined version of Android and Windows 7. The idea is to satisfy both casual and business users with a single device.
That isn't the only tablet Gigabyte is working on. Gigabyte Senior Vice President, Richard Ma, say his company is planning to launch both 7-inch and 10-inch tablets in July. The larger ones will run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and the smaller ones will come with Android 2.2.
According to Ma, all of these tablets will sport an Intel Atom processor inside, will not include any USB ports, and will all sell for less than $400.
Long gone are the days that you had to stay tethered to your desktop to check email, surf the Web, play games, and get work done. It's all about computing on the go, and even a 'slow' year in the mobile PC market still ends up being a pretty good year overall. According to market research firm DisplaySearch, mobile PC shipment growth will scale back a bit in 2011, but remain incredibly strong overall.
Year-on-year growth is expected to be 27 percent in 2011, down from 30 percent in 2010. The slowdown in growth is due to a decline in mini-notebook shipments and waning demand in emerging markets, DisplaySearch says. Picking up the slack, however, are traditional notebooks and tablet PCs.
"Two of the main drivers for mobile PC shipment growth over the last few years are expected to sputter in 2011: mini-notes and emerging markets," said Richard Shim, mobile computing analyst for DisplaySearch. "Only one of these segments is expected to bounce back. The mini-note market is falling rapidly as brands are looking to exit the mini-note segment and invest in the latest high-growth segment, tablet PCs."
As for the diminishing mini-note demand, DisplaySearch says mini-notes will remain in the market, but mostly in price sensitive areas, like emerging markets and education.
Intel is pulling out all the stops to get a foothold in the mobile and embedded device markets currently dominated by British chip designer ARM. Both the "Oak Trail" Atom platform that Intel began shipping to OEMs a few days earlier and its 32nm successor, codenamed Cloverview, are capable of running Android.
Running Android, however, doesn't guarantee market success and Intel will need to curry favor with tablet vendors if it hopes to take the attack to ARM. That is precisely what the Santa Clara-based chip maker is rumored to be doing with a new strategy dubbed PRC Plus. So what exactly is this plan all about?
According to a Digitimes report, which cites sources close to notebook vendors, Intel is offering a $10 subsidy on each chip to encourage "first-tier notebook vendors" to adopt its chips for their tablets. This strategy is said to have been chalked out after protracted talks with Google.
Is this the beginning of the end for "Wintel"? This is a question that will be asked with increasing frequency in the near future. The hitherto firm bond between Microsoft and Intel, while still pretty much intact, is now beginning to slacken in this new world where Apple's oversized iPods are cannibalizing PC sales. In this new world, Microsoft and Intel are no longer opposed to the idea of working with each other's rivals.
Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on the current state of Wintel and what the future holds for this partnership.
Just because invasive DRM always ends up as the star of the show (genre's tragedy, for those wondering) that is the gaming industry's struggle against piracy, that doesn't mean it's the only option. Case in point: popular Half-Life 2 spin-off Garry's Mod. It all started a couple days ago when certain players began experiencing a very peculiar glitch.
"I need help with my Garry's mod. Everytime I launch Garry's Mod, it starts up then about 5 seconds later after it is done loading, it crashed with the Engine Error: Unable to shade polygon normals (#################)," reported one of many confused users on the game's forums.
Those same users were then banned from said forums faster than you can drop into your best Ackbar warble and say, "It's a trap!" Why? Turns out, they were pirates, and they took the bait hook, line, and sinker.
"Yesterday I made pirate versions of Garry's Mod pop up an error. This error only happens when people pirate the game. 48 hours ago there were no results for this phrase on Google. As I type this there's 717 results (and climbing by the minutes)," creator Garry Newman said on his personal blog.
"The overwhelming response has been supportive. Which to be quite honest I don't really understand. If EA or someone does something like this people go crazy. Maybe it's the motive."
Oh, and that string of numbers that appears next to the error message? That's the user's Steam ID. See, Steam keeps track of which accounts have dropped coin on a legitimate copy of the game, so it's a simple matter of glancing at the list and rendering a verdict. Smart, huh?
Newman, however, wasn't content to pop open a bottle of champagne and declare piracy down for the count. Far from it, actually; he ended on quite the sobering note.
"A few people have commented that GMod sales are going to spike due to this. I doubt it. I doubt there will even be a visible change in the sales. Pirates don't really react well to being punished, they just find another way – which is inevitable," he explained.
"The point here is that 99% of the people pirating GMod are using a crack for Steam, not a crack for GMod. They can apparently play any game on Steam for free. So now their life is a little bit harder. They have to crack Steam AND Garry's Mod."
Even so, this is definitely a step in the right direction. After all, it's a solution that doesn't see legitimate customers suffering the most. Since big publishers still can't seem to get it, let us spell it out: that's a good thing. Seriously, we know the economy was a sort of shaky there for a bit, but you guys really shouldn't have fired Captain Obvious. You clearly need him around the office.
When it comes to computing, our general philosophy at Maximum PC is that bigger is better. More, speed, more memory, more power--as far as hardware goes, there's no such things as excess. Software, though... Software's a little different. Big, feature-packed utilities and applications are great, but we prefer apps that show a little restraint.
MSI's recently unveiled X370 notebook is now available for order and, depending on which vendor you go through, will ship right away. The X370 is a budget-conscious ultraportable priced at $599 and built around AMD's dual-core E-350 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) platform. It's a sexy looking notebook, at least in the pictures we've seen, and at 3.1 pounds, you won't throw your back out lugging it around.
The flash memory used in everything from smartphones to SSDs is about to get a lot more efficient in the wake of the latest advance from Intel and Micron. The companies announced today that they have successfully shrunk NAND flash memory so it can be manufactured using a 
The seizure of file-sharing domain names by US authorities has been a hot button issue for the last few months, and the practice is not expected to stop any time soon. Taking away site's domain name is a blow to be sure, but many sites just set up shop at another address. A 
It's all fun and games, that is until a major association throws its weight around and tells everyone that your game sucks. That's basically what the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is doing to Amazon. In an open advisory about Amazon's Appstore distribution terms, the IGDA said it "applauds Amazon's efforts to build a more dynamic app marketplace," but voiced "significant concerns about Amazon's current Appstore distribution terms and the negative impact they may have on the game development community." What exactly has the IGDA so riled up?
If you're a Comcast subscriber, go ahead and bust out your old Sammy Hagar cassette and start belting out "I Can't Drive 55." All you need is enough green, and you won't have to drive through cyberspace at a piddly 55Mbps. Comcast has been busy laying cable and now offers its newest and highest-tier Internet speed, "Extreme 105," to more than 40 million homes from coast to coast. What can you do with 105Mbps Internet?
Are you under the impression that the modern day browser war doesn't amount to a hill of beans? Try telling that to Mozilla, who is in a dogfight with Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Google (Chrome) for browser dominance. With plenty of ad dollars at stake and control over emerging Web standards, browser makers have vested interest in grabbing as much market share as they can. Mozilla, whose second place Firefox browser is at serious risk of being overrun Chrome, 
In case you missed it on Wednesday night, the embargo was lifted on early reviews for Research in Motion's first tablet device, the BlackBerry PlayBook. A veritable flood of reviews hit the web for the device, which debuts on Tuesday, April 19 -- but it's off to a bit of a rocky start so far.
The sky isn't falling, the world isn't about to end, and PCs aren't dying. Why, then, is market research firm Gartner bugging out? Call it an overreaction or a temporary blip as tablets settle into the marketplace (or a little of both), but according to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totaled 84.3 million units in the first quarter of 2011, a 1.1 percent slip from the same period one year ago. Doesn't sound like much, but Gartner says the shipment results are indicative of a potential sluggishness, not just a normal seasonal dip.
FBI investigators tried a new approach to taking down a zombie PC gang. For the first time ever, federal authorities in the U.S. seized control of the bad guys' servers, a move that required the U.S. Justice Department to seek permission from a judge in order to carry out the sting. After doing so, authorities were able to counter-attack by issuing their own commands, programming the malware to shutdown, and also log IP addresses of infected machines.
Spotify, the popular European music streaming service that's still trying to figure out how to break into the United States, is making some changes that will hit current users of its free service like a gut punch. Announced today in a blog post, the total listening time for free users has been cut in half from 20 hours a month to just 10 hours. Ooph. And starting May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1, 2010 will only be able to listen to individual tracks five times per month (if you signed up after, there's a 6 month grace period).
Security firm AVG has come out with a new product called "AVG Family Safety" designed to "protect today's tech-savvy but increasingly vulnerable children online." That reads a lot like 'parental controls' to us, and from what we gather, that's basically what it is. In addition, AVG claims this wonder tool can filter unwanted communication from online predators and cyber-bullying from over 80 different social network sites, while also allowing you to monitor chats and network threads.
Earlier this year at CES, gaming peripheral maker Razer 
It looks like Intel isn't the only chip maker looking to out-muscle ARM in the tablet market. According to a recent job listing on AMD's website, the company is looking to hire Android driver development engineers, preferably those with experience in video decode acceleration. Reading between the lines, it appears AMD envisions itself powering an Android tablet sometime in the near future.
Netbooks, as popular as they became, never fully embraced the concept of dual-booting operating systems. A handful talked about releasing dual-booting netbooks, even fewer actually did, not including pre-boot environments like SplashTop. Should companies building tablets look to resurrect the idea of multiple OSes on a single device? We don't know, but Gigabyte intends to find out.
Long gone are the days that you had to stay tethered to your desktop to check email, surf the Web, play games, and get work done. It's all about computing on the go, and even a 'slow' year in the mobile PC market still ends up being a pretty good year overall. According to market research firm DisplaySearch, mobile PC shipment growth will scale back a bit in 2011, but remain incredibly strong overall.
Intel is pulling out all the stops to get a foothold in the mobile and embedded device markets currently dominated by British chip designer ARM. Both the "Oak Trail" Atom platform that Intel began shipping to OEMs a few days earlier and its 32nm successor, codenamed Cloverview, are capable of running Android. 
Just because invasive DRM always ends up as the star of the show (genre's tragedy, for those wondering) that is the gaming industry's struggle against piracy, that doesn't mean it's the only option. Case in point: popular Half-Life 2 spin-off Garry's Mod. It all started a couple days ago when certain players began experiencing a very peculiar glitch. 
