Although most users don’t use encryption for their personal files, server admins will be happy to hear that the newest Seagate Cheetah hard drives come with self-encrypting technology. Meaning that the data stored on the disk will always be encrypted whether you’re using the hard-drive, removing it from a server, or retiring it. Here are the characteristics of these new hard drives: Available in capacities of 450GB, 300GB, and 147GB, the Cheetah 15K.6 family includes Seagate PowerTrim™ technology which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. The Cheetah 15K.6 FDE family offers the highest 3.5-inch hard drive reliability in the industry at 1.6 million hours MTBF (0.55% Read more »

Bioshock takes a great game engine (Unreal’s), and incredible artistic direction that successfully recreated a vintage/sci-fi city from the 1940′s and a great storyline to bring us the best game I’ve played in a very long time. Most story based first person shooters are disappointing. Over the years the genre evolved from a simple, yet fun, “you’re a good guy, they’re bad guys” script that simply pointed you in the direction of enemies, to much more complex stories that bring the game closer to a roleplaying experience, rather than mindless action. The System Shock games were one of the very few (back in the day) that gave us an unique Read more »

After Toshiba’s announcement last year, to release a 32gb card of the same kind, it is now Panasonic’s turn to enter the high-capacity range with this new model. It’s not breakthrough, nor an industry first, but it is the start of many new cards from different manufacturers with the same capacity, and this means that prices will drop sooner, rather than later. Besides having an outstanding storage capacity, it also has great resistance to high and low temperatures and can be kept and used from temperatures that go from -25 to +85⁰C. I’m not a professional photographer but if I were I’d feel very happy right now. The price hasn’t Read more »

Crysis is by far the most impressive and immersing game in terms of sheer detail and graphical quality. It combines one of the most advanced game engines ever developed with incredibly rich, lust environments and even a pinch of military strategy. Despite of how good everything looks, there are some things that can’t be overlooked. The engine isn’t flawless, you’ll see more than one glitch one too many times, and the story is mediocre at best. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad game, but it is a game that excels very little in any aspect other than it’s looks and gameplay. Read more »

For the year or so, Microsoft has been waging a rather ridiculous war against it’s customers: Consumers want to be able to purchase Windows XP for a while longer, and it makes perfect sense for them to want that. But Microsoft doesn’t want to sell the licenses. Through petitions and a lot of generated media, the deadline for “removing XP” was delayed time and time again, and right now it’s set at June 2008. From there onwards, Microsoft will stop selling Windows XP licenses. That remains true for all cases except machines such as the Asus EEE, for which Microsoft will make an exception and sell licenses until June 2010. Read more »

Big M has announced a free Operating System called Singularity, and associated tools, made in C# that will be made available to all those who sign an agreement.  They decided to release this as a proof-of-concept, but the requirements are everything but “free”. First of all it runs in Microsoft’s CLR virtual machine, which is a .NET component, which runs in Windows Operating Systems. It’s a nice addition for people in college who want insight on how a big corporation would code a fresh Operating System, if they did so right now, but other than that it’s mostly “useless” since you cannot distribute the code for commercial purchases. In short, don’t expect Read more »

Although our current-gen camcorders already have excellent quality and incredibly small sizes, it’s the first time a company has stepped forward with a “full HD” one that you can almost put in your pocket. Let’s get down to the good things before I reveal the tear-dropping price.The camera can capture video at a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution (that doesn’t even fit on my current monitor) and take 4 megapixel photos. Although the picture resolution isn’t as amazing (by today’s digital camera standards), the video resolution certainly is for something as small as:  1.3-inches wide by 4.7-inches tall by 2.5-inches deep The inwards in the camera are also quite appealing: Read more »

When it comes to cellphone web browsers there best options are Opera Mini and Safari. But since not all people can afford or purchase, in their country, the iPhone, Opera Mini is the best bet for everyone else. The latest version is, according to their claims, 50% faster than the previous one, not due to the browser program itself, but due to the server upgrades that allow them to compress pages faster before sending them to the mobile phone. For those of you who might find that previous statement confusing let me explain: Opera Mini does not display a webpage directly. The page is loaded on the Opera Servers, compressed, Read more »

Our favorite April fooling company has done it again. Although this year’s April’s Fools aren’t as funny as the mustache-bearing wisps of the past, they are certainly original and deserve credit. To start things off, they introduced a new hero class for the upcoming Lich King expansion: the Bard. Although it’s not entirely unlikely to see a class such as Bard come to World of Warcraft, the feature page was a bit exaggerated and blatantly gave away how fake this was. Starcraft 2 fans also had their share of the fun with the introduction of the Tauren marine, which is supposedly a more resistant marine from the most famous planet Read more »