Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

I’m sure that most of you have heard about Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE video game service that lets players compete against each other over an Internet connection. Similarly Microsoft also has a Games for Windows LIVE service that will let you play against other people on your PC, and starting today the service is being offered to consumers for free. Previously this costed $49.95 per year, unless you were already an Xbox LIVE subscriber.

Don’t worry, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t even know about LIVE for Windows games. The fact is that the service hasn’t really taken off on Windows despite its overwhelming success on the Xbox. Heck, it’s been out for over a year and there are only 11 LIVE enabled games for Windows right now:

• Battlestations: Pacific
• The Club
• Fallout 3
• Gears of War for Windows
• Halo 2 for Windows Vista
• Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
• Lost Planet Extreme Condition – Colonies Edition
• Shadowrun
• Universe at War: Earth Assault
• Viva Piñata for Windows
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

So why haven’t Windows game developers been taking advantage of the new technology? What I’ve heard is that they too had to pay in order to incorporate the LIVE service in their games, but that’s no longer a problem. Microsoft has decided to drop all costs for developers as well, which means Games for Windows LIVE is free for both consumers and developers!

This is a very intelligent decision by Microsoft. I have quite a few friends who have been thinking about switching to a Mac, but since they play lot of games on Windows they don’t want to deal with the hassle of switching between multiple operating systems. This is going to be yet another thing to keep the gaming community tied to Windows.

[image via Wikipedia]

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This article was written on October 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

The new Google Reader is pretty nice but Google still needs to integrate it into many of their other services. In the mean time you may want to check your news at the same time that you are checking your email. You can do so with this amazing Greasemonkey script that will show a link for your feeds in the sidebar of GMail. It will also show you how many unread feeds you currently have and when you click on the link it pulls up your unread articles! Pretty nice!

The person that created this script is the same person that made my favorite Greasemonkey script called GMail Conversation Preview. Using that script you can right click on any message in your Inbox and it will show you a popup window with the contents of the message. It saves me so much time and lets me quickly read my messages.

Honestly, GMail should have a feature similar to Google Reader where you can click on article’s title in the collapsed view and it will expand it without the need to take the user away from their Inbox. That would make reading emails a lot quicker but until then I will be using GMail Conversation Preview. It would also be cool if Cooliris was compatible with GMail but it doesn’t seem to work.

Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip!

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This article was written on October 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Download Squad must have their deal huntin’ glasses on today because they snatched up a one-time offer by Handango. For today only (until midnight Central Time) you can get CodeWallet Pro 6 for free on your Pocket PC. You don’t have to sell your soul, sacrifice a goat, or anything along those lines. They do require that you enter in some of your personal information so that they can give it to the mafia, but the bright side is that you don’t have to drop a dime on the app itself.

So what’s CodeWallet Pro all about? It’s actually a nice little program that is used to securely store credit card numbers, passwords, account information, and anything else that could land you in bankruptcy if it’s ever lost. In all seriousness I have installed a trial of this program before on my PocketPC, but I never actually used it. It might come in handy if you’re a business person with dozens of accounts, credit cards, and the like. If you just have a handful of accounts though it will be more work than its worth.

This deal is only for the Pocket PC version which doesn’t include their desktop client. The desktop version is actually kind of nice because it will sync with the one on your Pocket PC, but you’ll have to shell out $25 to get that. I’ve never been a fast typer on the Pocket PC which is why I prefer to do my work on the desktop, but I’m also too cheap to shell out the $25 for the other program. Guess you can’t complain when it’s free.

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We’ve seen plenty of data to show that Android is the hottest-selling smartphone OS among US buyers today, but now we have a stat point to show that it’s doing pretty well in cumulative terms as well. According to ComScore’s latest estimates, Android had 26 percent of all US smartphone subscribers in the quarter ending November 2010, bettering Apple’s iPhone for the first time. The major victim of Android’s ascendancy has actually been RIM’s BlackBerry, whose lead at the top contracted by 4.1 percentage points (nearly 11 percent less than the share it had in the previous quarter). Guess those Verizon iPhones and dual-core BBs had better start arriving pretty soon.

ComScore: Android jumps ahead of iOS in total US smartphone subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on February 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

No, you didn’t read the title of the article wrong. With all of the Vista bashing going on we thought it would be fun to take a step back and see what the initial consensus was of XP when it launched back in October 2001. Since so much time has passed it is easy to forget the messages that were filling the forums and reviews.

I’ve never recommended that anyone go out and drop a few hundred dollars to upgrade their computer to Vista, but at the same time I’ve never told anyone to downgrade a newly purchased machine to XP. When Windows 7 is released in 2009/2010 the same thing is going to happen, and a new wave of “Windows 7 sucks, I’ll stick with Vista” messages will undoubtedly be sprawled across the Internet. Isn’t it obvious that with time comes maturity?

Here’s our recap on Windows XP’s first year of existence:

1. [09/08/2001] This forum post happened one month before the release of XP, and it was in response to someone wondering whether an XP upgrade is worthwhile. Guess XP wasn’t really considered a major upgrade…

   I don’t see as a really big upgrade personally. It does contain some more integrated features, like CD Burning and a firewall along with some more networking options, but I don’t see it as much of an upgrade over 2k. Win9x, however, is a different story.

2. [05/16/2002] We’ve quoted this CNet article before, but it is a really good representation of the issues people faced 6-months after the release of XP. Sound familiar?
   

   Microsoft’s latest operating system just turned six months old, and most would say that it’s neither a failure nor a raging success. While XP promised the latest and greatest multimedia, security, and ease-of-use features available, many users have not yet upgraded, fearing the hefty system requirements and potential compatibility disasters inherent in a major OS upgrade.

3. [09/09/2002] Almost a year after the release of Vista this UK site primarily covered the performance of the operating system, but also had this to say about software compatibility:
   

   Having a PC that is up to the task of running Windows XP isn’t the only issue that has rankled with PC users. Perhaps even more of a bugbear has been compatibility. The truth is that XP just doesn’t work well with a lot of older software and hardware.

4. [09/12/2002] It’s been about a year since the release of Vista, and I still think it’s astonishing the people who criticize Vista without having tried it. This forum is a shining example of the same thing happening to XP:
   

   dont goto XP … ive heard bad stuff about it 2 … more than the others

5. [Sometime in 2002] I’m not sure exactly when this was written, but it was sometime in 2002. It’s essentially a guide of what to expect when upgrading to XP, and they mention the same thing about the minimum requirements that I tell people who want to upgrade to Vista:
   

   Face the facts. If you’re running the minimum 233-MHz Intel or AMD compatible processor, 64-MB RAM, 1.5 GB of free disk space, Super VGA (800×600) video adapter and monitor, and Microsoft-compatible keyboard and pointing device, you aren’t going to be happy with Windows XP. Nor will you be able to enjoy all the features that XP offers. It would be like driving a Ferrari with a Ford Pinto motor.

You might be saying to yourself that there wasn’t as much XP bashing as there is with Vista, but you also have to consider how many more opportunities people have to be vocal about their experiences. There weren’t many blogs back in 2001, forum activity was generally light, and sites like MySpace and Facebook didn’t exist. You didn’t have the opportunity to create a “XP sucks” Facebook group to see how many thousands of people you could get to join.

Another thing you need to realize is that some of the Vista opinions are based on experiences people had with pre-release versions. Microsoft decided this time around to open up Vista Beta testing to the public early on so that they could get feedback, and users didn’t have to pay a dime to test it out. I remember when I wanted to test XP I had to fork out $10 just to download the Release Candidate, and boy was that a driver nightmare at the time. Millions of people tested out Vista, and I know several people who haven’t tried it since then… therefore skewing their perception of the final operating system.

The reason I defend Vista is because it’s been a great operating system for me as a consumer. I think it looks better than XP, performs better in most areas, and hardly ever nags me (ex. Vista installs necessary device drivers in the background automatically instead of popping up with a window). So don’t rush out to buy the operating system, but if you get a new computer I don’t see any reason as to why you shouldn’t get the latest version of Windows.

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