Category: Hardware

Xbox Announcment

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:entertainment-category ]So on May 21st, Microsoft is going to announce the next Xbox…

This, of course, is not surprising after the PS4 announcement  earlier in the year, but it is a little later than most had thought.

Sony has not done a very good job at building excitement over the PS4, the initial launch party was highly lacking in detail and sounded much like the PS2 and PS3 announcements.  Namely full of high ambitions that will never come to pass.  Unlike Sony though (the PS4 will be successful, the only question is how long it will take), Microsoft has a more to lose and gain.

Microsoft is on the cusp of becoming a dominant player in home entertainment, they’ve spent a lot of time and money moving the Xbox 360 away from being just a game console and towards a multimedia console.  The new Xbox by all the indicators will go even farther and if they come up with something really good, they could make a big move in this area.

I am still on the fence if I’ll buy a new console this generation.  I don’t really play many games any more but if the Xbox or PS4 upped the media ante, it might tempt me in to buying one.

I still don’t like the fact to get most of the apps and games on the Xbox you must have an Xbox live gold membership, it seems like a yearly tax to me.  But even that I can handle if the right features are present on the device.  What are those features?

  • Robust video format support (DivX, Xvid, avi, MKV, etc)
  • Streaming standards (DLNA at least and Windows file shares would be nice)
  • A good interface for DLNA
  • Quiet operation
  • IR remote control support
  • Blu-Ray

Some nice to have features would be:

  • Standard form factor, make it fit in with the rest of my media hardware
  • HDMI pass through, with the option to stream the video out via DLNA

We’ll see what happens at the announcement, but I suspect we won’t get all the details right away.  Either way, by the end of the year we’ll have two new consoles to choose from.

ASUS ZenBook UX31A

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]I’ve been using my Acer Timeline 1810T notebook for almost 4 years now and it was finally time to upgrade as it no longer supported some of the functionality I needed.

Specifically, while it did have a processor that supported virtualization, the latest version of Visual Studio for Windows Phone no longer support the specific processor in the Timeline.  That left a few questions about what I wanted to upgrade to.  A few items were important to me:

  • Full “desktop” class CPU
  • High resolution display
  • Small and light

The Timeline was an 11.6″ display and I like the format but the keyboard was a bit small and running Visual Studio on a small display was always challenging.  I decided to take a look at the 13.3″ Ultrabooks that have become available in the last few months.  It came down to two, an Acer S7 and the ASUS UX31A.  At the top end of the range, both had an Intel I7 dual core CPU, full HD display and were thin and light.

In the end I decided to go with the ASUS as it was several hundred dollars less and had one feature I really liked, a non-glare screen.  A pet peeve of mine is high gloss screens, they show up every little reflection and make it hard to work on.

My first impressions are very positive, it’s fast and I mean REALLY fast.  Boot times are down to seconds and the I7 chews through pretty much everything I through at it.  Run time looks to be in the 4+ hour range under heave load (both using the processor and WiFi at the same time).

The HD resolution makes it looks spectacular, but it is a little dense, I’ve set Windows to 125% of normal to start with, I may move it back down to 100% at some point but I’ll see how it goes for a while.

Here in Canada we sometimes get the “multi-lingual” version of notebooks, they have a different keyboard layout and I do hate them.  I just can’t type quickly on them.  Fortunately ASUS seems to have woken up to this fact and it looks like they’re shipping US keyboards on their Canadian product now.  The only small issue I have with the keyboard is the placement of the power button.  It’s at the top right, where the delete key is usually on a laptop, just to the left of it is where the delete key is.  It looks like this was thought of though as the power button must be held for a second or so, making accidentally hitting it when trying to do a Ctrl-Alt-Delete not a big issue.

The unit itself is very well-built, is a nice dark metallic colour and it feels good.  The front edge of the keyboard is a little too thin, if the keyboard is above your hands its not very comfortable, however that is a very rare case so I can forgive it.

The only thing really missing is the Ethernet port, it comes with a USB dongle but it’s only a 10/100 adapter so it’s a little slow.  I’ll probably have to pick up a gigabit adapter at some point, but not a big deal either.

Overall, a very nice Ultrabook.

ASUS VivoTab Smart

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]I’ve been using the Surface RT for a while now and the overall experience of RT is good, but there are some limits that just don’t make it a very good choice for my primary tablet.

On the other hand a whole host of new tablet’s have been hitting the market which features Windows 8.  I had been holding out for the Surface Pro but I’ve realized the 11.6 inch display is just too big to be primarily a tablet.  A friend picked up an HP ENVY x2 which features an Atom processor.  The last Atom based netbook I had was underpowered to say the least.  However the current generation of Atom processors seem much better so I decided to take the plunge and pick up the ASUS VivoTab Smart, a 10.1 inch Atom based tablet.

The hardware is pretty nice, not nearly as well made as the Surface, but pretty solid for a plastic based housing.  Two camera’s, an SD card slot, MicroHDMI and MicroUSB are all in attendance and welcome.  The unit comes with 64g of built in storage and some pre-installed bloatware, but nothing to bad.  2g of ram is good for most tasks.  Windows 8 is there as well of course, but not the Pro version.

One of the weak points of the Atom processors have always been multi-tasking and that continues to even the current generation.  Working on multiple things at the same time brings noticeable lag to the unit, but still continues to function.

A nice feature of having a full copy of Windows is being able to upgrade to pro and then RDP in to the tablet.  Working from my desktop to install all the apps I’ll be using is much nicer than working on the small screen of the tablet even if I had hooked up a keyboard.

After a couple of hours of using there are a few issues with this first generation device:

  • There is a small edge all the way around the device which is uncomfortable to say the least if you are holding it pressed between your hands.
  • The auto dim/brightness feature is a little sporadic, ASUS has released two driver updates since I received the unit and it’s a little better but is still too sensitive.
  • The device goes to sleep after a few minutes of being “off”, which does conserve battery but it apparently ignores the settings in Windows so you cannot avoid it.  This means it takes a few seconds to wake up when you go to use it again.
  • When opening a full screen app, the screen will go black for a second some times, looks like a video driver issue.
  • Even the 10.1 inch display is slightly too large with the 16:9 aspect ratio.  Perhaps a 9″ tablet would be better…

Overall it’s a good start, but it needs some time to mature.

I certainly think that an Atom based tablet with the build quality of the Surface would completely destroy Windows RT, there’s no reason to have RT with this kind of solution available.

 

PS4 First Impressions

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:hardware-category ]Sony announced the PS4 last week and I have been a loyal PlayStation owner since the beginning.  But I think that’s just about done.

Over the last couple of years my gaming has moved from minimal to zero.  I don’t even remember the last time I actually played a game on either my PS3 or Xbox.  I guess it’s time to admit I’m no longer a gamer 🙁

So really, what would I use a PS4 for?  Streaming video and playing BluRay’s.  On that count I can find much cheaper alternatives than the PS4 (even though they haven’t announced a price yet).  Ok, but beyond the fact I probably won’t buy a PS4, what did we find out about it?

Ah, not much really:

  • New controller that looks kind of boxy.
  • 3D camera, AKA Sony admitting Move failed and Connect won.
  • 8 core processor and 8 gig of RAM.
  • BluRay support (as if that wasn’t going to be there, Sony owns the standard after all).
  • Flashy demo’s that won’t turn out to be real games like every other PlayStation announcement.

In the end we didn’t even get to see the hardware.  And why are they announcing it 8 months early?  I know Sony stock is in the tank and they need a big win, but really?  All they’re going to do is demolish their PS3 sales.

Honestly it doesn’t really interest me anymore, it looks to be impressive hardware but not something I’ll be investing in.

Maybe if they put it in to a standard AV chassis instead of some stupid custom form factor I might get one just to play with it, but otherwise I think it’s a pass.

Microsoft Surface Pre-Order Update

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]In a previous post I detailed the ordeal I went through with my pre-order of the Microsoft Surface RT tablet.  At the end of that post I mentioned I was still waiting for my escalation on the $50 promo code and now I can finally relate the rest of the story.

Just as a quick refresher, I pre-order my Surface on Oct 16, 2012 for delivery by the 26.  It didn’t arrive until Oct 30 and Microsoft was dishing out $50 promo codes to those that didn’t receive their orders on the 26th.  I had two problems with the promo code, first it meant I had to purchase something to get it and second it really wasn’t enough.

On the Monday when I was still waiting for the Surface to arrive I had requested an escalation on the promo code and was told I would expect back an answer from their tier 3 group within 72 hours.  I didn’t receive anything and I called in again on the Thursday to follow-up.  Apparently they had sent out an e-mail to me on Wednesday afternoon but it didn’t get to my inbox.

They sent a follow-up e-mail and after a few more days of back and forth on Monday Nov. 5th they offered me a $200 rebate on the purchase.

I probably could have held out for more, but I have to admit the person from tier 3 support was very good and didn’t try to generate false sympathy or any other tricks to get me to cave to the $50 promo code so I decided it satisfied all the issue I had and accepted it.

I have to say that the pre-order experience was terrible and the support after the missed date was worse.  However at the end of the day I did receive the table a few days late but managed to get an almost %40 discount on it so it all worked out.

Will I be buying a pre-order from the Microsoft Store again?  I don’t think so, as there is a new Microsoft store opening soon close to me.