Jun 11

MacBook Pro 2009 Review

Posted in: Apple, feature, macbook, macbook pro, review, sd, Today's Chili, top

You know those Microsoft laptop hunter spots? Apple may already have responded with TV spots of their own, but these MacBook Pros strike back at Microsoft better than any ad can: by doing.

Apple did two things simultaneously that are usually contradictory; they lowered the price of their entire MacBook Pro line while at the same time bumping up the specs. The 15-inch version now starts at $1699 and caps out at $2299, down from $1999 and $2499. What’s even nicer is that the 13-inch MacBook—which previously didn’t have a Firewire slot or a “nicer” screen—got absorbed into the MacBook Pro family and is now virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the Pro line.

Two other things changed on the build that make the Pros more appealing to regular consumers. The replaceable battery has been swapped for the same type of lithium-polymer internal battery previously found in the 17-inch MacBook Pro, which boosts battery life at the expense of not being able to be changed out in the field. This, for the large majority of people, is a good thing. The batteries last 1000 charge cycles, which at 200/cycles a year, would last you five years. Even if you go through one charge cycle every day, you’ll still make it about three years before you need to take Apple up on the $129 replacement. (The $129 includes shipping, labor and disposal of the old battery.)

In our test, the 13-inch MacBook Pro got 3:31 of battery compared to the 3:46 of the 15-inch MacBook Pro. We used the same metrics as the previous MacBook Pro test—medium brightness, Wi-Fi on, keyboard backlight on low, H.264 movie—and got about an hour more on each machine. That’s a pretty incredible jump just from a change (non-user replaceable battery) that most people won’t notice.

The other interesting swap is the removal of the ExpressCard slot in favor of an SD card slot. According to Apple, there was only a “single digit” amount of customers that used the ExpressCard, whereas tons of people have digital cameras or other devices that use SD. Again, for the vast majority of mainstream customers, this decision was a smart one. And if you really do need ExpressCard, you can still find it on the 17-inch MacBook Pro—which doesn’t have an SD card slot.

Then we have the improved LED-backlit display, which has a 60% greater color gamut than previous version. What this means to you is that even the 13-inch MacBook Pro will have a quality display even though it’s a few hundred dollars cheaper than the 15-inch. The previous 13-inch MacBook, as you saw in our review, had a screen that was obviously inferior to the Pros, and distorted very noticeably as you stepped away or viewed the screen at an angle. Not anymore. From our tests, the 13 and 15 MacBook Pros looked just about identical, and both had superior color performance compared to older machines we had around.

An even nicer picture is painted by the benchmarks. This is the first time the 15-inch has gone up over 3GHz (the CTO version), and the entire line has the ability to handle 8GB of RAM. We didn’t test this 8GB configuration, but we’re pretty eager to see how much faster it makes us in our daily work.

Both sets of scores are on par with the changes in specs on the new machines. Since the CPUs have been bumped up, the scores have risen to match. It also makes sense that the 2.53GHz 15-inch just about ties the 2.53GHz 13-inch from this year. The only weird drop is in the Integer section of Geekbench, where both machines this year have dropped. A change in Geekbench? A change in 10.5.7? We’re not sure. But these are some good numbers nonetheless.

Although the removable latch has been exchanged for a screwed in panel, you can still get to the hard drive and RAM by removing ten screws and gently lifting off the back. The entire process should take you less than 10 minutes.

The 13-inch MacBook also has one fewer audio port, instead opting for a single audio port that supports digital in and out. If you need simultaneous in and out and don’t want to go up to a 15-inch MacBook Pro, you can use a $29 USB audio adapter instead.

So is there anything bad to say about the new MacBook Pro line? No, not really. It’s cheaper, faster, has more consumer-friendly features and now even has a 13-inch option for people who need slightly more portability. Those people who were waiting for the second-iteration version of a new hardware design (a pretty smart rule to follow with Apple products in general) before upgrading can safely do so now—and get a better deal in the process. [MacBook Pros]

It’s cheaper, faster and has a nicer screen


SD card slot more useful than ExpressCard for vast majority of customers


MacBook Pro line now has a 13-inch option


Built-in battery means increased battery size, and that means about an hour longer battery life

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Jun 11

Kindle DX Review

Posted in: amazon, Books, ebooks, feature, kindle, review, Today's Chili, top

Kindle DX is the true heir to the Kindle throne, but whether Amazon’s ebook kingdom is growing or shrinking depends on the next wave of books—textbooks. In the meantime, bigger screen, cool new tricks…

I know now I have a love/hate relationship with Kindle. The drive of Amazon to make this unlikely little thing a star is inspiring in a world where most companies just go around copying each other. Amazon has, from the beginning, delivered on so many of promises of e-readers—cheap books delivered instantly to a lightweight screen that’s easy on the eyes and stays powered for days on a single battery charge.

The Kindle 2 that hit this spring was a disappointment, nothing but a Kindle 1 with a more predictable design and some novelty tricks.

The DX, arriving just months later, solves real problems of the first generation. Internally, it has native PDF support, which allows for reading of the vast bulk of formal business literature, not to mention a bazillion easy-to-download copyright-free (free-free!) works of actual literature. Externally, the DX’s larger 10-inch screen makes it better suited to handle the content, not just PDFs, but textbooks, whose heavily formatted pages would look shabby on the smaller Kindle’s 6-inch screen.

The DX also has an inclinometer, so you can flip it sideways or even upside down. I didn’t know what that was for at first—but I do now.

The DX is not-so-secretly the smartest thing Amazon could do to show academic publishers it was time to green up and get with digital distribution. But it’s a real “if you build it, they will come” strategy, because although Amazon has announced that it “reached an agreement” with the three publishers who account for 60% of textbooks sold—Pearson, Cengage Learning and Wiley (but not Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)—we haven’t seen any actual textbooks distributed to Kindles yet and, more upsettingly, we have no idea how much they will cost or what weird rights issues may be involved in their “sale.”

So while we’re sitting here, DX in hand, waiting for the real reason for its existence to come to fruition, it doesn’t hurt to talk about it as a reader for regular books, right?

I am currently a little over halfway through Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, a heavyweight champ of a book, even in paperback, that sits on my chest each night, restricting my breathing until I have no choice but to fall asleep.

As you can see from the scale shots below, the DX weighs about half as much as the paperback, a real load off my chest. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) As Kindle lover Chen is apt to point out, the Kindle 2 is just half the weight of the DX, but I counter with this lazy man’s factoid: Even using a slightly larger font, I can see the equivalent of two and a half Kindle 2 pages on a DX screen. It is, in fact, a better reading experience.

When it comes to PDFs, the Kindle DX lives up to its unambitious promise: There they are, in the menu, the minute you copy them from your computer to the Kindle via USB. What won’t show up are .doc, .docx, Excel spreadsheets or any other text-based pseudo-standards from the Microsoft people, and no images either.

The good and bad thing about the PDFs is that they appear squarely in the DX’s 10-inch rectangular frame, “no panning, no zooming, no scrolling,” as Amazon’s bossman Jeff Bezos likes to say. This is wonderful when you have a PDF like my free copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s presented in a big clear font and saved to PDF, meaning I can’t change the font size, but I don’t want to either. The trouble arises when you have something like the HP product brochure below. Damn thing was meant to be seen on a computer, with full-color graphics and the ability to zoom in on the fine print. As you can see, some print is so small, the Kindle’s slightly chunky E-Ink screen resolution can’t render it legibly.

That’s when I found that you really can zoom.

Remember I mentioned that inclinometer, that orients the screen horizontally or vertically depending on how you hold it? It’s not terribly useful for Kindle books, which are meant to look great in vertical (portrait) orientation. But when you’re looking at a PDF, and you can’t read everything, tilting the whole deal 90 degrees gets you a bit of a zoom. How much? If you think about it, that’s a little over 20%, not a lot, but a bit of a boost when you need it. The PDF support is so convenient, but means I especially miss the SD card slot from the first Kindle. It would make life with the DX a far sight easier.

So the screen is bigger, but perhaps still not big enough, at least for the text books and businessy documents. I’m happy to say that it’s finally reached the minimum required size for recreational reading, which is what most people will be buying it for anyway.

I haven’t got a lot to say about the newspaper industry that the Kindle will allegedly save, except that Kindle newspapers don’t look or feel anything like real newspapers, so they may disappoint a few old-schoolers out there. You don’t even get a fat front page of options pointing in all directions, but instead, incomplete tables of contents segregated by section. I am glad for the newspaper distribution on Kindle, but only in the same way that I am glad for the faxed New York Times cheatsheets they hand out at resorts that are too far from mainland USA to get an actual paper on time. Seriously, if this is somehow more accessible than reading a newspaper on a laptop, I’ll eat my hat.

The same goes for the text-to-speech that publishers are all frightened of. Sure, computer-generated voices are getting better, and the precedent set here might eventually shut down some voice-talent union, but in the meantime, their jobs are safe: I can’t imagine how anyone could listen to more than a paragraph. Apparently neither can Amazon: In the Kindle DX, the speech controls are buried, and you have to memorize a keystroke combination to get it working.

The DX also doesn’t give any new hope for E-Ink as a sustainable platform. The many people who bitch that color is king are not wrong, exactly, but color E-Ink is puke-tastic and far from cheap. Monochrome E-Ink may look nice by the light of your nightstand lamp—and thank God Amazon hasn’t gone and mucked it up like Sony did with that PRS (more like POS)-700—but it’s still too slow to leaf around the way you would a serious work of literature. (My best example of this is still Infinite Jest by the late great David Foster Wallace. I was surprised to discover that it’s actually finally available as a Kindle book, every glorious footnote intact albeit cumbersomely hyperlinked. I have always assumed it would be more daunting on a Kindle than in book form, but now that I have a chance to find out, I’ll have to get back to you.)

Unless E-Ink gets cheaper, faster, bigger and more colorful all at once, it’s doomed. The iPhone is an all-around worse system for book readin’, but way more people have iPhones, so it could beat Kindle by sheer momentum. And Mary Lou Jepsen’s Pixel Qi company is working on a new LCD screen that—like the OLPC XO screen she was instrumental in devising—will run on less power, be easy on the eyes in natural light, and have optimized modes for both black-and-white and color.

The hope for the current Kindles is that these boring old black-and-white textbooks we keep hearing about appear on the horizon like an army of indignant Ents. Give every college kid a DX and the chance to download half their texts to Kindle, and all bets are off.

So what happens next? Well like I said, we wait.

In Summary

Best ebook reader to date

Native PDF support

Larger screen means (almost) everything is easier to read

E-Ink screen is easy on the eyes and battery efficient, but makes pages slow to “turn” and does not come in color

Textbooks would be ideal, so let’s see the deals

$489 price tag is steep

No zooming means some PDFs will be unreadable

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Jun 10

LeapFrog Scribble & Write, Chat & Count hands-on

Posted in: education, feature, Features, hands-on, Today's Chili

LeapFrog’s Text and Learn QWERTY BlackBerry-styled educational toy for the little ones left such an impression on us that we went back to check out its latest offerings. Two things caught our eye — up first, the Scribble and Write, which is a Text and Learn-style device applied to writing skills. Designed for children about the age of three, it teaches basic letter-writing skills, making use of a roughly 3-inch LCD and attached “pen” to trace over the letters. This one is actually available now, and runs $21.99. The second item we checked out is called the Chat & Count — and it looks incredibly similar to a candybar style mobile phone. The one we checked out was actually a prototype, and not the final product, but it’s aimed at children starting at 18 months old, and teaches basic phone skills (believe us, the kids need those), numbers and counting. It’s also got plenty of ringtones and custom noises built in, which start out super cute but would likely be… grating over time. The Chat & Count will be hitting shelves sometime around December of this year, and will run you $14.99. Both of these products join Leapfrog‘s Learning Path offerings (which also includes products like the Tag Junior we’ve previously seen).

Gallery: LeapFrog hands-on

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LeapFrog Scribble & Write, Chat & Count hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 10

Will Future iPhone Games Run on Your iPhone 3G?

Posted in: Apple, feature, gaming, iPhone, iphone 3g, Today's Chili, top

The short answer: For the time being, yes. But in the future, you may want to upgrade. The long answer after the jump.

The new iPhone 3GS introduces OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible hardware. Its 3D chip—reportedly a PowerVR SGX GPU core integrated in a Samsung chip—is more powerful than the previous generation.

The Graphic Advantage of the 3GS

The new graphic processing unit provides the iPhone with a modern GPU core with 5th-generation shader-driven tile-based deferred rendering. The current 3D graphics unit is 4th-generation tile-based deferred rendering, compatible with OpenGL ES 1.1, but not 2.0.

Simply put, the new GPU is capable of a lot more tricks than the graphics engine in the first and second generation iPhones: Faster frame rates, more detailed and photorealistic shading and lighting, and more polygons.There are also other characteristics that make the iPhone 3GS a better game machine than the iPhone 3G, like a faster CPU and more memory, which allows for larger datasets—bigger worlds—and higher resolution textures.

In other words: The iPhone 3GS has better graphics than the current iPhone 3G, and there is no way around that.

The past vs the future

Just like with computers, this will undoubtedly affect the complexity of applications, games being the most obvious example. With better hardware, developers will create better applications that can do a lot more. Not only have better, more detailed graphics, but also having the capacity to introduce other things, like real time voice chat during games, or physics simulation engines.

This could mean an instant breach between the old iPhones and the new iPhone 3GS. Fortunately for developers and users, the new GPU includes a driver that supports OpenGL ES 1.1. This introduces three possible scenarios. All of these scenarios will happen sooner or later.

• First, developers can choose to develop a single game. That’s the easier, less complex option. Games will use OpenGL ES 1.1 on both machines, and the same graphical assets—same textures, same 3D models, same sprites.

This is happening now: Existing iPhone/touch games will work without any problems in the iPhone 3GS too, looking exactly the same.

• Developers can choose to introduce a game programmed for OpenGL ES 1.1, but taking advantage of the more powerful iPhone 3GS hardware to make it look a bit better and have a faster frame rate. This requires some more effort. Ideally, however, they can also choose to make a game for OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0, building both engines in the game so it plays seamlessly for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS.

This second scenario will happen soon: Companies like Ngmoco have announced that they are planning to introduce games that will run in all models of iPhone, but will look better in the 3GS.

• Finally, developers can do a 100% OpenGL ES 2.0 game, putting all their resources into this engine and making a great looking game, taking full advantage of the new GS and future hardware. This last part is important, because new hardware will be available and it will be invariably more powerful than the previous generation, allowing for more complex games and applications to appear.

This last scenario won’t happen anytime soon. 40 million devices—including iPod Touch—is a market too big to ignore. But it will happen. There will be a breaking point.

The breaking point

In fact, the breaking point may be the iPhone 3GS itself. By introducing a completely new, modern, shader-based 3D API—which is extensible and will be here for many years to come—Apple has put in place the architecture that will make its iPhone OS product line grow. So whenever the new iPhone or the new iPod touch or the new iPod tablet appears, they will be using OpenGL ES 2.x, and that means that developers will be able to scale up and down their apps with ease, without having to handle both standards.

Then, in a not-so-distant future, a developer will really push the hardware envelope and create a killer app. They will drop the iPhone 2G/3G support and set the iPhone 3GS as the minimum hardware configuration. That day, the divide will happen and everybody will think is normal, just like a five-year-old computer can’t run Crysis or Photoshop CS4.

Because that’s the real key: iPhone OS-based machines are really tiny computers running a version of Mac OS X. So get used to it, because one day people will upgrade their iPhone OS thingie not because new Apple features, but because future killer apps and games. It’s just a good thing nobody keeps the same phone for 5 years.

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Jun 10

Eye-Fi Pro wireless SD card hands-on

Posted in: feature, Features, hands-on, HandsOn, pics, pictures, review, sd, Today's Chili, wifi, Wireless

We’re all pretty spoiled in these digital days; not that long ago taking a look at a vacation’s worth of photos required a trip to the store, a couple of hours (or days) wait, and then the better part of an afternoon getting fingerprints all over a stack of poorly composed shots that you daren’t throw out because you just paid good money to have them printed. Now you pop a memory card into your computer, wait a few seconds for them to fly into an appropriately labeled folder, and then… probably forget you took them. It’s so much easier it’s hard to fathom the process getting even more simple, but that’s what Eye-Fi has done with its line of wireless flash memory cards, which beam pictures directly from your camera. The company has just announced the $149, 4GB Eye-Fi Pro to make the process even more direct, letting you send pictures straight to a computer while also adding some additional features that pros and semi-pros will appreciate. We put it through its paces after the break.

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Eye-Fi Pro wireless SD card hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 09

50 Classic Album Covers Made Awkward by Technology

Posted in: feature, Music, photoshop, Today's Chili, top

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to add technology to classic album covers. I got an absolutely huge and awesome response, over 350 entries, which I whittled down to my favorite 50, including the top three winners.

First Place — Pen Lite
Second Place — Dr. Danger
Third Place — GUI Man

Let all the thumbs load before you dive into the gallery, if you please.

















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Jun 09

When Pro Doesn’t Mean Pro Anymore

Posted in: Apple, feature, iPhone, iphone 3g, macbook, macbook pro, notebook, Notebooks, Today's Chili, top

It’s kind of amazing how much Apple got right yesterday—and what they got wrong: Their product lines are completely scrambled. The Pro designation has become meaningless and $99 iPhones look just like $499 iPhones.

It’s possible that when the subsidized iPhone 3G dropped last year for $199, a new Apple was born. We just didn’t see it clearly until today, with the announcement of the iPhone 3GS and new MacBook Pro line.

“Pro” used to be a real designation: A Pro machine was designed and built for working professionals. It had more power, better build quality and “top 10 percent” features for the users who needed it—or at least wanted to pay a lot more for it. Now, it’s just a brand.

It’s true that the unibody MacBooks were more like their brawnier “Pro” siblings than ever before—it was even the rationale behind our dual review. But there were still very real dividing lines between them: Most importantly, Pro machines had dedicated graphics cards. As of yesterday, that’s not true. The $1700 15-inch Pro doesn’t have one, and none of 13-inch newly designated Pro models have them either. Also, what kind of professional machine lacks a removable battery, anyway? (Swapping out batteries is how we got through the back-to-back Nintendo and Sony keynotes at E3 this year, though admittedly, the significantly improved battery life might be part of the answer.)

Don’t get us wrong, we love that Apple brought many of the Pro hallmarks down to their consumer machines, like the aluminum chassis, and that now high-end Apple laptops are more affordable than ever. But now real pros probably won’t even look at most of the Pro line.

The new products also don’t show how special you are for paying the most to buy the best. The cheap models and the pricey ones are identical. Your crazy high-end 32GB iPhone 3GS looks just like that other guy’s $99 iPhone 3G. Every unibody MacBook is now a Pro—whether you spend $1200 or twice as much. The old distinctions have been erased.

A leveling of class distinctions in Apple products is going to sting people who valued the affectation of elitism that came with using Apple’s top-of-the-line products. Even subtle differences—like the premium paid for the matte black MacBook over the otherwise identical shiny white one, were signals, beamed out to the others in the coffee shop, declaring who was “da boss.” You know, the guys who wore the white earbuds with pride five years ago. Admittedly, sometimes those guys need a left hook to the kidneys (and sometimes, we are those guys). Maybe it’s good to make the best technology accessible to everybody, with no indicators of who paid more for what.

Maybe Apple is trying to create good design that works for anyone and everyone. I can respect that. Still, the question remains: Does this make rich people look like poor people, or poor people look like rich people? The privileged must know.

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Jun 09

Engadget cruises with the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle (with video!)

Posted in: BestBuy, electric, feature, Features, review, Today's Chili
Engadget cruises with the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle (with video!)

Little more than a month after getting our sweaty, gloveless mitts on the Zero Motorcycles Zero S we received an offer to ride yet another high-tech wunderbike: the Brammo Enertia. Naturally our first reaction was excitement — excitement only slightly dampened by news that we’d again be using the gridlocked NYC streets as our test track. But, we risked life, limb, and the ire of many a taxi driver to get some impressions of the latest electric motorcycle to hit the streets, and grabbed some video action of it all too. Read on for the lot.

Gallery: Brammo enertia test-ride

Continue reading Engadget cruises with the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle (with video!)

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Engadget cruises with the Brammo Enertia electric motorcycle (with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 06

How To: Install Windows Mobile 6.5 Right Now

Posted in: cellphones, feature, HTC, Today's Chili, top, Windows Mobile, windows mobile 6.5, winmo

The bad news: Windows Mobile 6.5 won’t be coming out for a while, and you’ll be expected to buy a whole new phone to get it. The good: You can actually install it today, on your HTC phone. Here’s how.

Why should you upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5? Disregarding the mixed coverage the OS has gotten—which tends to compare it to more modern software like iPhone OS and Android—6.5 is much, much better less terrible than 6.1, especially for touchscreen phones You’ve probably heard about the new graphical start menu and fantastic Titanium home screen; they’re great, but there’s a lot more to appreciate. IE has been updated; all menus are now finger-friendly; the whole system has inertial scrolling; there’s been a system-wide cosmetic refresh. That’s not to mention the upcoming Windows Mobile Marketplace, Microsoft take on the App Store. On top of that, at least in my experience, it’s pretty snappy.

Dozens of Windows Mobile 6.5 Beta ROMs are floating around the tubes, collected, tweaked and prepared for your use by the kindly souls over at XDA Developers, from whom I’ve adapted this How To. Despite their unofficial-ness, they’re really quite good—the fancy new interface elements are buttery smooth, and as a whole, and enough bugs have been stamped out to make 6.5 solid enough to use as your day-to-day OS.

This How To is based around my experience with a GSM HTC Touch Diamond. The process is largely the same between the few handsets that can run 6.5, but for the sake of brevity, I’m sticking to one handset, and its QWERTYed brother, the Touch Pro. For further guidance on other phones, head over to the XDA forums (CDMA Touch and Pro, Touch HD, Sony Xperia, Samsung Omnia)

Also, the necessary disclaimer: this tutorial reaches deep into your phone’s software, which means there’s a (slim) possibility that you’ll brick your phone should anything go wrong. If you’re worried, read up on the risks here. Otherwise, follow closely and you—and your phone—should be just fine.

What You’ll Need:

• An HTC Touch Diamond or Touch Pro (GSM only. Folks with CDMA handsets—that’s you, Sprint and Verizon—go here or here.)
• A (free) account at XDA Developers
• A Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM (Lotsa choices here: Diamond, Pro)
• A Windows PC, set up to sync with your handset
• A device flashing utility (Both)
• A bootloader (Diamond, Pro)
• A device radio (Diamond, Pro—Make sure to download from the “Original” list, not the “Repacked” one.)

Before you get started, you’ll probably want to back up your contacts and personal info. I’d recommend PIM Backup, which I’ve used for years. Or you could try Microsoft’s new, free online service called My Phone. This How To will replace all your device’s software, so if you have anything worth keeping, you’ll need to back it up.

Installing the bootloader:

Many of you have probably updated, or “flashed” your devices before, but this will have been with an official, signed utility from either your carrier or handset manufacturer. What we’re doing today is installing unofficial software, something which your handset isn’t currently set up to do. Our first order of business, then, is to install a new bootloader, called HardSPL, on the device, which will allow your handset to load software from third parties, i.e., your sweet, sweet Windows Mobile ROM. Let’s go:

1. Connect your phone to your PC, and establish an ActiveSync (on XP) or Sync Center (on Vista, or Windows 7) connection to your device. You don’t need to set up any sync rules—just makes sure the connection is active. You can check this by looking for a bi-directional arrow in your phone’s taskbar.

2. Extract the bootloader you’ve downloaded, and note the location (see “What You’ll Need” for links)

3. Find your extracted files, and run the executable file (usually called “ROMUpdateUtility.exe” or something like that.

4. Follow the instructions, carefully. The software performs lots of checks to make sure you don’t goof this up, but make sure you a.) have at least 50% battery left in your phone b.) the correct bootloader c.) a host computer that won’t shut off, go to sleep or otherwise interrupt the process. Heed! Or else there may be bricking.

5. Wait! You’ll see paired progress bars on your phone and computer screen. This part of the process doesn’t take that long, since you’re only updating a small piece of software.

6. Restart your phone. The small text in the corner of your Windows Mobile splash screen will have changed to something unfamiliar, but don’t worry about verifying your new bootloader. If you ran the utility to completion and the device restarted on its own, it’s more or less a sure thing that you’re upgraded.

Installing a new device radio:

This is the most esoteric part of the process, so I’ll try not to get too deep into the nuts and bolts. Basically, your device has firmware that manages its various antennae, letting you connect to cellular networks, GPS, etc. Installing a fresh Radio onto your device usually won’t make much of a change in how your phone works. it just lets us—or rather, your soon-to-be mobile OS, manage your phone’s communication capabilities freely. Some radios can improve reception on certain networks, or even connect to entirely new mobile bands. For more info on that, I’l refer you again to XDA.

You’ll probably notice that this process is seems an awfully lot like the last stage: that’s because it is. Since we’re “flashing” different parts of your phone’s software in each step, the core utility, and general technique, is quite similar. Anyway!

7. Pair your phone with your PC, like you did in step 1.

8. Extract your downloaded radio files and note their location

9. If the radio came with its own bootloader, skip to step 12.

10. Extract your downloaded bootloader, noting location.

11. Copy the extracted radio file—it should have an .NBH extension—to the directory where you’ve put your bootloader.

12. Run the bootloader, as in step 3.

13. Follow the instructions, as in steps 4 and 5.

14. Let the phone restart. Nothing much will have changed, but you may need to perform some minor network setup. Don’t worry too much about that now, since you’re about to wipe your whole device.

Flashing the ROM, i.e. Installing Windows Mobile 6.5

This is when we get down to actually installing our new OS. This is the step that’ll take the longest, and it’s the biggest leap of faith, since you’re replacing your device’s main software. Luckily, if you’ve come this far, it’ll be a snap. Same process, different .NBH file. Onward!

15. Pair your phone to your PC (this is the last time! promise!)

16. Extract your downloaded bootloader, again, to a different location. (Or you can use the same copy you used to flash your radio; just make sure you delete the radio file from the directory)

17. Extract your Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM, which should be an .NBH file of about 80-100MB, to the same directory that your bootloader is in.

18. Run the bootloader, and follow the instructions. Same warnings as before—don’t let your PC or phone sever the connection at any point.

19. Sit and wait. This time it’ll take a bit longer, but shouldn’t top 15-20 minutes.

20. Your phone will reset, and you should see a fresh Windows Mobile 6.5 splash screen. It might look hacked or unprofessional—don’t be alarmed! The guys who so graciously put together these ROMs, which often take a good deal of tweaking, leave their marks on the software in various ways. Anyhoo, you’ll have to let your phone run through a set of initialization routines for a little while. Just follow along.

21. WinMo should automatically guess your carrier and apply the appropriate connections settings. If not, you can do it from the device’s Settings page, found in the top level of the new start menu. As for the settings parameters, Google is your friend.

Conclusion:
Congratulations! You are now the proud, semi-legal owner of a Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone! It’s hard to imagine wanting to switch back, but if you do, just repeat the above process with a different ROM. There are plenty of 6.1 installs, including the official carrier versions, available from the same place you found your 6.5 download.

Resources:

• XDA Developers
• ModMyDiamond

So that’s about it! Please add in your experiences in the comments-your feedback is a huge benefit to our Saturday guides. Good luck with your flashing (firmware only, please), and have a great weekend!

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Jun 05

Project Natal Won E3, and Maybe the Motion Control Wars

Posted in: e3, feature, Microsoft, Today's Chili, top, xbox 360

Wii MotionPlus will make the Wii better. Sony’s very impressive motion control demo will be better than Wii MotionPlus. But Microsoft stole E3 and may have already won the motion control wars with the announcement of Project Natal.

Keep in mind, the name “Natal”—referring to a city in Brazil—doesn’t really do the platform’s infancy any justice. It should really be called “Project Prenatal,” as the peripheral’s dev kits just shipped to the first set of developers this week.

But after testing the system and getting a good look at what makes its motion tracking tick, I’m going to fanboy out a bit on the platform, as responsibly and logically as I can. Here’s why I think Natal is a watershed in motion controls.

For a Motion System It Facilitates Passive Entertainment
People are lazy. If we can use a remote instead of changing a channel on the television five feet away, we’ll use a remote. And I’d argue that if we can login to our preferred entertainment by just sitting on the couch (through Natal’s facial recognition), we’ll do that next. Is talking or gesturing more simple than channel surfing on a remote? Not necessarily, but…

Voice Recognition Is Still Promising Technology
Just because we haven’t managed to perfect voice recognition doesn’t mean we should write it off in every product into the future. It’s getting better all the time, helped by increased processing power, and once you integrate voice into a system, it allows you to jump deeper into any tree of menus than most UIs allow. For instance, on an iPod, you have to navigate through a handful of separate screens to get to a particular artist. With voice recognition, you’d just say that artist’s name.

Natal Can Support Peripherals Too, You Stupid, Stupid Idiots
If there was one thing I couldn’t stand hearing again and again at E3, it was that Natal would force all gamers to mime controls in every game. Not true—at least, not for any reason made clear to me. Programmers would be free to include all kinds of controllers should they chose to. And if Natal’s cameras are tracking 48 points on your body in 3D space, and its software can distinguish you from various non-human objects, I find it hard to believe that you couldn’t hold an actual steering wheel to play a racing game, if you wanted to. Personally, I’ve grown a bit sick of tripping over plastic controllers in my living room, but I’m sure that third-party devs and hardware manufacturers will be happy to integrate and sell all the acrylic modular baseball bats you can stand.

Natal Can’t Cost More Than a Party’s Worth of Wiimotes
No one knows what Natal will cost. But you know what? I doubt it will cost more than $242, the amount a Wii owner needs to spend to outfit their console with controllers for four people. Microsoft was not specific as to the number of gamers supported simultaneously in Natal’s multiplayer (to be fair, we haven’t seen the system fully tracking wireframes beyond two people at a time). But a future in which a console’s price isn’t doubled by its peripherals sounds pretty appealing to us.

Natal Tracks 48 Points, Nintendo and Sony Track 1, Maybe 2 Points
Sony’s Wiimote-like demo was the best physically-based motion tracking I’d ever seen. It was pretty freaking impressive to watch augmented reality replaced Sony’s controller with a sword, whip and even bow and arrow. But even with two controllers, Sony and Nintendo’s systems are really only tracking two single objects (perfectly) in space. So when you are swinging that sword with so much flourish, the human figure is just an arbitrary placeholder. How will you dodge? Or should I say, how will you feel like you’re dodging? The D-pad, I can almost guarantee. OK…so how will you kick?

Natal Would Be Too Good To Be True…In Nintendo or Sony’s Hands
Other companies could (and have) made infrared body-tracking cameras. Why are we so confident in Natal? Aside from our positive hands-on experience, Natal has Microsoft middleware/dev tools behind it. Where few third parties have wielded the Wiimote with as much finesse as Nintendo, and Sony is traditionally mute on how companies can unlock the power of their complicated hardware architecture, Microsoft launches Xbox products with the software necessary to make them work. Oh, and Microsoft is approaching Natal with 100% earnestness, calling the platform “the endgame.” Sony’s motion control, according to Sony, is less important.

The Coolest Mind In Motion Controls Says It Exceeds Anything He’s Seen
Johnny Chung Lee, the same guy behind those crazy-awesome Wiimote mods, is working on the project. And he says this about it:

The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I’ve seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature “Manhattan project” with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.

That quote’s more than just hype—it’s educated hype.

Also, if you haven’t seen Lee’s video showing off the potential of headtracking in displays, do so right now. Why? Because I’m all but positive that headtracking is one of many unannounced features in Natal that will change the way we think of 3D, without a 3D display.

I don’t know that Natal will render the PS3’s motion controls (or Nintendo’s new Wii MotionPlus) completely worthless overnight. I do think there’s a level of speed and accuracy (60 fps!) with which Sony will be able to duplicate a good old blunt instrument, possibly even better than Natal. (Then again, no one has actually played Sony’s prototype.)

But an idea as bold as Project Natal, in the hands of Microsoft, which has been on its game, so to speak, with the 360…yeah, it took E3 in my book. And next year, when there are some actual games to see on the platform, it damn well might take E3 again. [Project Natal on Gizmodo]

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