King of the QWERTYs

Capacitive touch screen devices are all the rage today with the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, HTC Hero and BlackBerry Storm. However, there are still many people who want a non-touch screen forward facing QWERTY device that is heavily focused on messaging. While I tend to bounce around quite a bit between different devices, the forward facing QWERTY form factor is one of my absolute favorite. To help you figure out which of these devices might fit your needs we are going to present a three part feature (with a summary post too) looking at the best QWERTY devices running the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian operating systems available from US wireless carriers. The three selected devices are the RIM BlackBerry Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x.
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Touch screen smartphones are all the rage today with the iPhone, Palm Pre, and Google Android devices. However, there are still millions of people who enjoy a messaging experience on forward facing QWERTY smartphones. We will be taking an in-depth comparative look at the top three smartphones running Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry operating systems.


Bottom view of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).


Left side of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).


Right side and top of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).


Back view of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).


Here you can get a glimpse of how each of the three keyboards compare to each other.


The BB Tour, Dash 3G and E71x forward facing QWERTY keyboards.

Microsoft beefs up Xbox 360's entertainment offerings with 1080p HD streaming

It hasn’t beat out the Wii, but Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is doing fine in second place in sales of the current generation of videogame consoles. It helps that it costs quite a bit less than the PlayStation 3, though a lot of that price difference comes in the form of the PS3’s Blu-ray drive. Today, Microsoft is answering its competitor’s 1080p video playback in the form of “instant-on” streaming of films and TV shows via the Xbox Live service.
While Xbox Live supports Netflix’s video-streaming service, the 5.1 channel, 1080p HD titles, available starting in the fall, will come from Microsoft’s Zune Store, which presumably will usurp many of the functions of the video section of the Xbox Live Marketplace. You can use the Xbox Live Parties feature with video streams, allowing you to watch the same movie with up to seven friends who are online Xbox Live subscribers and take turns talking back to the screen using voice chat.
The catch, of course, is that you need to be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber to get many of these enhancements—a $49.99 annual expense. No details were announced about how much additional cost the 1080p streaming titles would require to watch. Both the Wii and PS3 have the same connectivity as the Xbox 360, but haven’t offered as robust a set of entertainment features to date. As the E3 expo continues, we’ll see if Sony and Nintendo have a response to Microsoft’s latest developments.

AMD to ship DirectX 11 GPUs this year

If you’re planning to put down some cash for a new GPU, you might want to wait. At COMPUTEX, AMD announced that it plans to deliver DirectX 11 GPUs to support Windows 7 later this year, ahead of the competition.
DirectX 11 brings with it three major improvements to the DirectX API:
Tessellation - Allows higher definition 3D models to be created.
Compute Shader - Parallel processing capability
Improved multithreading - Better support for multi-core CPUs
Rick Bergman, senior vice president of AMD’s products group called DirectX 11 “the biggest inflection point in graphics in 10 years.”
The new GPUs will be based on 40nm fabrication technology and produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
What all this means is that it’s now a bad time to spend much money on a GPU, certainly a high-end one. While DirectX11 is backward compatible, I expect that there will be a performance overhead similar to that you see with DirectX10.1 running on DirectX10 hardware.
Check out these cool DirectX 11 demos caught over at COMPUTEX (via HEXUS):

Sony unveils PSP Go, motion-sensing

At E3 no big surprise was Sony's unveiling of an updated portable gaming controller, the PSP Go. Big surprise was the unveiling of a motion-sensing device to combat the Ninetendo Wii and Microsoft's new Project Natal.
Kaz Hirai (CEO of Sony's Networked Products and Services Group) introduced the much-anticipated the PSP Go, also known, he joked, "as the worst-kept secret" in the video game business.

The PSP Go, Hirai says, will feature 16 gigabytes of internal Flash memory; built-in Wi-Fi; integrated Bluetooth and a new system, Media Go, which will be the application used on the PSP Go to access the PlayStation Store. It is expected to be available on October 1 in the U.S.

PSP Go has slideout controls.

The PSP Go will also come in lavender.

Resident Evil comes to PSP with the Go.

The Sony motion-sensing system is still in the deveopment stage and won't be available until the spring of 2010. The controller has a real one-to-one relationship between the person wielding it and what is seen on-screen. And it also offers tension-based control, such as pulling back the string on a bow to shoot an arrow.
Here. Sony shows off motion-sensor controls where a real person controls the avatar of a knight.

Assassin's Creed demo.

Square Enix would be releasing "Final Fantasy XIV" exclusively for the PS3 in 2010.

A scene from Final Fantasy XIII.

God of War III gets introduced at E3

Sony Consumer Electronics of America President and CEO Jack Tretton introduced an upcoming game, "MAG," which can support 256 simultaneous players, including people playing remotely.

AMD announces ATI Theater HD 750 "HDTV on a chip"

Some owners of home theater PCs (HTPCs) want as much of the same experience as a typical cable user as possible, which means they need to install CableCards into their systems to access scrambled digital channels and the like. For those whose TV needs are less demanding, a PC with a TV tuner can get you unscrambled cable channels and over-the-air HD stations. AMD is courting the latter group with the launch of its new ATI Theater HD 750 video chip, which the company promises will provide superior image processing and signal reception compared to its competitors (and, presumably, AMD/ATI’s previous entries in this arena).
The new chipset supports NTSC, ATSC, and ClearQAM broadcast signals to fulfill many of your U.S.-based TV-watching needs, and lets you record broadcasts in such formats as H.264, DivX, and MPEG4. If you make use of Windows Media Center, you can schedule recordings to tape on your hard drive, as well as pause and rewind live TV. None of this is revolutionary stuff, but one novel wrinkle is that if the ATI Theater HD 750 is coupled with an ATI Radeon graphics card, ATI Stream technology (which harnasses a GPU’s processing power for CPU-like tasks) can be used to speed the transcoding process.
AMD hasn’t announced any specific products that will make use of the new chipset, but the company promises that its partners will release them starting later this year and that they’ll take the form of discrete PCI Express cards, USB sticks, and “other” solutions (whatever those turn out to be).

Acer Aspire Timeline: A thin-and-light notebook with 8 hour battery, gestures for $598

The world’s second-largest laptop manufacturer, Acer, introduced the U.S. availability of its Aspire Timeline series of business notebooks that average more than 8 hours of battery life, the company says.
The Aspire Timeline is a thin and light mainstream notebook that combines Intel’s ultra low-voltage processors with a palatable price tag: the series ranges from $598 to $899. The company is calling the series “all day computing” notebooks because you can (theoretically) work from 9 to 5 without stopping to plug in and recharge.
(Wondering about those battery life figures? The company says it measured systems using Bapco’s MobileMark 2007 Productivity benchmark test and got more than 9 hours per notebook.
There are three flavors of Timeline: the 3.5-lb., 13.3-in. AS3810 is a road-warrior companion; the 4.2-lb., 14-in. AS4810 is best for bigger hands (and those who need an integrated optical drive); and the 15.6-in., 5.3-lb. AS5810 manages a dedicated numeric keyboard on the old laptop size standard.
All models are less than an inch thin (and just over an inch at their thickest).
Outside, a brushed aluminum finish provides a little bling and a multi-gesture touchpad (pinch, flick, swirl, scroll) provides the power to manipulate the system. Inside, you’ll find either Intel Pentium, Intel Core Solo or Intel Core 2 Duo ultra low voltage processors and 3GB or 4GB of memory, a high-definition CineCrystal LED backlit widescreen display (16:9 ratio), Gigabit Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11b/g Draft-N, a Crystal Eye webcam, built-in digital microphone and two built-in stereo speakers.
The systems are also lead- and mercury-free.
Like Dell, Acer offers many configurations, but here are some examples:

Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T-6415
Intel Core 2 Duo processor SU9400 (1.40GHz, 3 MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, 10 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
13.3-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
4 GB of DDR3 1066MHz dual channel memory (runs at 800MHz)
500GB SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11a/g/Draft-N wireless LAN WiFi certified
Bluetooth 2.0
3 – USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
Standard 6-cell Li-ion (5600 mAh) Battery
3.5 lbs.
12.67” (W) x 0.92” to 1.13” (H) x 8.97” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $899.99

Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810T-8480
Intel Core 2 Solo processor SU3500 (3MB L2 cache, 1.40GHz, 800MHz FSB, 5.50 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
14-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
4 GB of DDR3 1066MHz dual channel memory (runs at 800MHz)
320GB SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
8X DVD SuperMulti double layer drive
Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11a/g/Draft-N wireless LAN
3 – USB 2.0 ports
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
Standard 6-cell Li-ion (5600 mAh) Battery
4.2 lbs.
13.32” (W) x 0.94” to 1.13” (H) x 9.44” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $699.99

Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4657
Intel Pentium processor SU2700 (2MB L2 cache, 1.3 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 10 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
15.6-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
3GB of DDR3 1066MHz memory (runs at 800MHz)
320GB(3) SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
8X DVD SuperMulti double layer drive
Acer InviLink Nplify 802.11b/g/Draft-N wireless LAN
4 – USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
6-cell (5600 mAh) Li-ion Battery
5.3 lbs.
14.88” (W) x 0.97” to 1.16” (H) x 10.19” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $598.00

Morro (Microsoft Security Essentials)

Microsoft's free security software is almost here (in beta form, anyway). Microsoft intends to make Morro available as a download next week on Tuesday the 23rd, and you'll want to act fairly quickly in order to get a copy.

On Tuesday, the first 75,000 individuals to visit www.microsoft.com/security_essentials are supposed to receive access to Morro, or, as it's also known, Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft's not making any promises beyond that point.

Of course, the company might expand the offering, depending on demand and so long as its servers don't get swamped. Just don't say we didn't warn you.

Anyway, Microsoft Security Essentials is supposed to remove malware, spyware, and viruses, and provide real-time protection against malware and viruses, too. And although part of the reason it's being put out in a limited batch is so that further tests can take place, reports say that the software's in decent shape.

Ed Bott, for example, recently tested it and wrote, "I'm sufficiently impressed by MSE in operation to give it a more in-depth workout on multiple systems here."

So if you're looking for an alternative to other free forms of protection, consider staying especially near your computer on the 23rd.