Hardware – Page 9

The iPad: Did Apple jump the shark, or is it a tablet for the masses?

January 28, 2010January 29, 2010 Doug Groves Apple, eBook, Gaming, iPad, netbook, tablet10 Comments

Well, iPad day has come and gone, and with it the dreams of many an Apple fan, if our internal emails here at rgbFilter are any indication. In the weeks leading up to the announcement of the new iPad, there was all kinds of rampant speculation. Will it be iPhone OS, or OS X? How big will it be? Will there be a stylus? Will it magically kill both other ebook readers and netbooks in one fell swoop? If you followed the standard commentary, not just in the tech press,…

Episode 22: IPTV

January 25, 2010January 25, 2010 Doug Groves ASRock, Asus, Bayonetta, Book Of Eli, Boxee0 comment

Want to do away with your cable bill? Ryan does, so we take a look at different options, from low cost media players like the Asus O!Play Air, all the way up to HTPC setups using nettops like the ASRock ION 330 or Acer Aspire Revo. We’ve also got reviews of Book of Eli and Bayonetta on tap.

Asus O!Play Air Review

January 17, 2010April 13, 2010 kingpinlei 802.11n, Asus, eSATA, HD, HFS+ compatible, High Definition, Mac, media player, O!Play Air, PC, review, set top box, USB, WiFi, Windows40 Comments

(Editor’s note: With newer firmware available Dave has taken another look at the functionality of the O!Play. You can catch the newness that is the update here…) I’ve been checking out HD media players lately; mainly because I’m not sold on the future of content being in the form of physical media. Sony’s Blu-Ray may have won the optical media war, but for an increasing number of people – not just us tech nerds like myself – shiny plastic discs are so last decade as digital distribution takes centre stage. …

Boxee Beta now public

January 8, 2010January 15, 2010 Doug Groves Boxee, Boxee Box, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows Media Center5 Comments

As we’ve mentioned before, Boxee threw it’s hat into the settop box ring, and from the looks of what they’ve got on tap, it’s one of the better options. The announced Boxee Box hardware (made by DLink) will have HDMI out, and support 1080p video to your television, using the horsepower of Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset, and support a myriad of file formats, networked content and streams from online sources. The cut off cube look is just begging for a “Weighted Companion Cube” mod, and is actually small enough that…

Bumptop appears on new HP TouchSmart convertible

January 6, 2010 Doug Groves bumptop, convertible, HP, tablet1 Comment

The Consumer Electronics Show is gearing up in Las Vegas, and with it comes literally thousands of new product announcements. There’s nothing better in January than looking at the geek toys you’ll be wanting NEXT Christmas. One of the announcements that caught my eye is HP’s TouchSmart tm2. The specs themselves are pretty solid. Windows 7 with a Core 2 Duo, ATI graphics in a fairly thin (but not truly slim) 12.1″ touchscreen which works with both fingers and stylus, and an expected 9 hours of battery life all for…

Nexus One is the HTC Passion, Wind compatible, $530 unlocked, coming in January

December 30, 2009December 30, 2009 drsquid cellphone, google, HTC, Nexus One, Wind Mobile, Wireless1 Comment

Today documents and screenshots leaked out to Gizmodo and Engadget showing some Google pages, and HTC training materials, for the Nexus One Google phone. The HTC documents are also clearly labelled as for the HTC Passion, so these phones are one and the same. The HTC documents show that the Passion is HTC internal name for the Nexus One, but it is not clear whether HTC will sell it as the Passion in other markets outside North America. The leaked Nexus One images and videos showed the phone running ‘stock’…

Boxee Beta and Box unveiled

December 9, 2009December 9, 2009 Doug Groves beta, Boxee, Boxee Box, D-Link, Linux, Mac, Media Center, Windows5 Comments

I’m a huge fan of Boxee which is, outside of Windows Media Center, my favourite way to access media on my TV. Boxee, a social networking aware media center, has been in alpha for a long time, and Monday night’s beta announcement marked the next step for the company that wants to be your media portal to the world. With the announcement of the beta program (chock full of screenshots), Boxee has been given a new look along with new functionality. The menu system appears to have more polish, making…

HP Mini 311 with Windows 7 and ION now in Canada

December 1, 2009December 1, 2009 Doug Groves HP, ION, netbook, Windows 70 comment

Although available for some time beyond Canadian borders, the HP Mini 311 line of netbooks have finally appeared in Canada. Although still using the single core Atom N270 processor, the Windows 7 Home Premium Mini 311-1033 sports 2GB of RAM and Nvidia’s ION graphics processor along with an 11.6 inch LED backlit display for $499. The 1033’s little brother, the 311-1000 at $429 has the lower powered ION LE GPU, which has less addressable memory, and is wearing last years fashions in the OS department, with XP Home. Both, luckily,…

RED Scarlet: Film resolution for the rest of us?

December 1, 2009 Doug Groves Red, Scarlet3 Comments

The RED ONE camera has been around for a while now, showing it’s chops as a replacement for analog film for a couple of years. Since then, Red also annouced two new cameras, including the Scarlet which is aimed squarely at the prosumer market. Well, the details are out thanks to the RED user forum, and although they added a little more ‘pro’ to the pricing than originally announced, the specs are pretty impressive. The ‘all-in-one’ Scarlet fixed 8x lens and brain will be priced at $4750 (US). This price…

Stantum multitouch running on a Slate PC

November 27, 2009November 27, 2009 Doug Groves display, multi, multitouch, resistive, Stantum, Touch Park3 Comments

Stantum, who earlier this year demonstrated their innovate resistive touch screen technology which incorporates both multitouch and pressure sensitivity on a mobile screen at Mobile World Congress are showing a new update to the Touch Park software. This time it’s running on a Slate PC, which is a modded Dell Mini 10 netbook. This suggests that Touch Park has moved on up in the world to the x86 architecture found in PCs. Among the capabilities are pressure sensitivity, pixel resolution and 10 point multitouch. There’s no mention if 10 points…

Harmony Universal Remote Roundup

November 26, 2009February 16, 2010 Doug Groves Harmony, Harmony 1100, Harmony 700, Harmony 900, Harmony One, HTPC, Logitech, review, universal remote7 Comments

Before the Canadian company Intrigue Technologies (makers of the original Harmony remotes) was bought out by Logitech, obliterating the remote clutter in one’s living room or den was largely an exercise in frustration, either dealing with incomplete solutions or spending hours ‘training’ your universal remote to do exactly what you wanted to. If you were one of the few, you actually made the leap to the JP1 forums, which turned certain models of remotes into veritable powerhouses of IR control, after making a custom cable that allowed your Radio Shack…

If you smoke your Mac could be a biohazard.

November 23, 2009 Doug Groves Apple, smoking0 comment

That’s right. According to a Consumerist story, at least two individuals had their Applecare extended warranties voided because the computers lived in households that had at least one smoker. The resultant residue inside the machines was enough to have them considered biohazards by Apple. To be clear, it’s not that the computers were damaged BY the smoke, but the presence of nicotine in the computer itself. Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there…