Can you spare $14K for a curvaceous LCD?

Subject: General Tech | April 29, 2013 - 04:38 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: LG, curved lcd

You thought 72"+ HD panels and 4K TVs were expensive?  Wait until you get a load of the price tag attached to the first curved OLED displays which will hit the market in South Korea for a mere $13,569; each.  At just 4.3mm thick and 17lbs they won't be hard to position in your home, if you can afford the asking price of one, let alone the three you would need to get proper multi-monitor performance.  The Inquirer begged for an official release date and price for the UK and were disappointed as are those in North America who have been waiting for these for several years now.

"SOUTH KOREAN ELECTRONICS FIRM LG has announced that it will launch the world's first curved OLED TV this summer, pipping rival Samsung to the post to take the lead in OLED technology."

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• McAfee discovers Adobe Reader security flaw @ The Inquirer
• The NVIDIA Control Panel Memory Leak Problem @ TechARP
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Deal for Apr 29 - Two Dell P2213 22" 16:10 Monitors with Stand @ $297

Subject: General Tech | April 29, 2013 - 03:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: deals

If you want to set up dual monitors with as little fuss as possible and not spend too much doing it then today's deal might be just the thing for you.  At just under $300 you get two 22" 1680 x 1050 TN displays plus a stand to ensure that they are level with each other, something that can be difficult to accomplish without a stand.

L4D2 Beta Coming to Steam For Linux This Week

Subject: General Tech | April 29, 2013 - 07:25 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: valve, steam for linux, steam, pc gaming, linux, l4d2, beta

Users of Valve’s Steam for Linux client will be getting access to the beta version of Left 4 Dead 2 later this week. The L4D2 beta will come with the new Enhanced Mutation System (EMS), which adds advanced scripting options to the multiplayer zombie survival game.

In fact, all Left 4 Dead owners will get access to the new beta release via the Steam client (not just the Linux platform) for free. The beta will appear in the all games list as a separate download from the main Left 4 Dead 2 game. It will allow beta players to connect to beta servers and other L4D2 beta users.

The EMS system is the biggest addition to the beta currently. It gives developers access to custom script logic as well as custom spawn points and control entities. New maps, characters, and weapons are beyond the scope of the EMS, however.

Interested gamers should keep an eye on their Steam games list as well as the Left 4 Dead blog.

Additional Google Glass Specifications Discovered By Developer

Subject: General Tech | April 27, 2013 - 08:42 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: wearable computing, ti omap, omap 4430, google glasses, android 4.0.4, Android

Earlier this month, Google announced some of the key specifications of its Google Glass project. However, the company left out just how much RAM the device would have or what the exact System on a Chip (SoC) would power the Android device.

Now that the Google Glass glasses are making their way to developers, those as-yet-unknown details are fairly-certain. Google Glass developer Jay Lee managed to access the device using ADB and discovered that the device offered up 682MB of RAM (accessible to developers) and a Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 SoC. Google Glass likely has 1GB of total RAM, but the operating system and other necessary device-level processes are likely responsible for reserving the remaining 342MB chunk of RAM. The TI OMAP 4430 is the same SoC that is powering the Amazon Kindle Fire and a number of other mobile devices released last year. Because of battery life constraints, Google is most likely not running the chip at its maximum 1GHz clock speed. In the Google+ discussion, developer Kevin Fitch speculated that it is likely clocked at 600MHz due to the cores’ BogoMIPS scores.

The remaining Google Glass specifications include Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream sandwich), 16GB of internal storage, a 5MP camera, and support for both 802.11g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It is essentially a mid-range smartphone hidden away inside a pair of glasses. At $1500, the first round of Google Glass was solely for developers, but once Google rolls it into production next year, judging by the internals, it should be much cheaper.

Are you excited for Google Glass? If you are curious about the software or hardware, Jay Lee is taking questions on his Google + thread.

Deal for Apr 25th - Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" IPS @ $405

Subject: General Tech | April 26, 2013 - 01:27 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: deals

If you are shopping around for a 24" IPS LCD then today's deal might be custom made for you. The Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" IPS is currently discounted by 26% and comes with free shipping. It is a full 1920x1200 display with HDMI, DVI-D and DisplayPort inputs and even better it has a ghosting time of 11 ms and an input lag so low as to be undetectable which makes it perfect for gaming.

Dell UltraSharp U2410 24" IPS-panel LCD Monitor with HDMI & DisplayPort
Dell is offering UltraSharp U2410 24-inch LCD Monitor for $404.99 with FREE shipping. Use $99.01 instant savings and extra 10% coupon code: 0Q0C74SWNZC42$ to get final price.

Only 346 days to go ... where will you be when WinXP dies?

Subject: General Tech | April 26, 2013 - 01:23 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: winxp, microsoft

In just under a year the venerable Windows XP OS will hit end of life and will no longer be supported by Microsoft.  This could be a rather unpleasant experience for many businesses that still rely on WinXP to provide compatibility for legacy applications.  Windows 7 is becoming more difficult to acquire, with Microsoft pushing Win8 as their preferred product to sell with systems and introducing Win7 to executives is daunting enough without trying to explain why their Win8 computer now looks more like a cell phone.  That is bad enough, but explaining to them why a custom built peice of software will no longer function due to incompatibility will be even worse and pointing out that the issue could have been prevented if they had only approved your budget requests to upgrade the software will be less than helpful.  Your younger users will never notice, they are far more concerned with convincing someone that they should be allowed to work on whatever device is their current favourite but you can be guaranteed you will be spending time with upper management explaining why Microsoft doesn't care that they don't want to switch OSes and that due to security agreements with clients those managers have no choice but to upgrade.  The Register put together some numbers showing how unprepared the UK market is; the situation in North America will be similar.

"The lack of a business case was cited as the key barrier to Windows XP application migration in 79 per cent of these organisations. This is why large volumes of unsupported applications post-Windows XP are a concern for 80 per cent of CIOs and IT leaders."

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• Win One of Five Antec Mobile Product Bundles @ eTeknix
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Razer takes a moment to Vent, announces Razer Comms

Subject: General Tech | April 26, 2013 - 02:46 AM | Scott Michaud
Tagged: razer, Comms, Teamspeak, Ventrillo

The Steam overlay makes text communication easy between any combination of friends in game and out. Despite the popularity, just about every team has a voice over IP (VoIP) solution to coordinate within a match. Talking is simply superior to typing while simultaneously attempting to not get yourself killed, crashed, or otherwise not-winning. Teamspeak and Ventrillo are the two most popular solutions for clan voice communication; while both are free applications for clients, some uses require server license fees over and above the actual server cost itself.

Razer found a niche it wanted to fill.

Razer Comms is a free service, currently in beta, for text and audio chat. Using the overlay metaphor, the application tries to be very unobtrusive to the game it rests upon. The service apparently uses good-quality codecs, according to the little hear-say I overheard the last couple of days. They also advertise that the service, since it is not owned by the clans which use it, will hide each user's IP address. While there is very little you can do to someone by knowing their IP address, and most of that could be circumvented by powercycling your modem, it does have some limited advantages.

In terms of a business model, unless the service develops some way of gaining revenue, the only way I can rationalize Razer funding this project is boosting their brand power. Razer already has some level of infrastructure from their Synapse projects and it is possible that the company is willing to eat the loss with the expectation of increased hardware sales. If this service will continue to be both free and ad-free, I cannot see any other reason for Razer to bother besides: eat the loss, make gamers happy, and wait for them to want a new mouse or tablet.

I can also see a slim chance, a very very slim chance, that Razer hopes to contiuously expand this service into a full gaming platform as Valve did with Steam. A fun thought, but nothing I would actually expect at this point.

Razer Comms is currently only available for English Windows users, although other languages will arrive soon.

Can 3,000,000 Surface buyers be wrong?

Subject: General Tech | April 25, 2013 - 02:43 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: winRT, win8, surface, microsoft, sales, Surface Pro

Believe it or not, according to The Inquirer's sources Microsoft managed to sell three million Surface and Surface Pro tablets, accounting for 7.5% of sales in the first quarter of 2013.  In comparison Apple accounts for a hair under 50% of branded tablet sales, with Android tablets making up the rest of the market.  For a company not generally associated with hardware, apart from the Zune, Microsoft has made a definite impact on tablet sales with their new OS and hybrid machines.  They do not define the split between Surface and Surface Pro, nor mention how many buyers did not realize the limitations of WinRT, regardless this is good news for Microsoft if not for some of their traditional partners such as ASUS and Acer.

"TABLET UPSTART Microsoft managed to capture 7.5 percent of the global 'branded' tablet market in the first three months of the year."

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