Walmart Drops the iPhone 3GS 16 GB to $97– Why You Shouldn’t Buy it May 30, 2010
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Apple, Cell Phones, Rumors , add a comment
If you’ve been waiting on an iPhone, you probably heard of Walmart’s dropping of the iPhone 3GS 16 GB’s price to $97 this week and went “wow, I can get double the iPhone than the 8 GB iPhone 3G and save $100! This is amazing!”
If I were you I’d wait before rushing out to the nearest Walmart, as you may have buyer’s remorse VERY QUICKLY. Why? Read on.
New Call of Duty: Black Ops Trailer May 26, 2010
Posted by Zev Rosenbaum in : Video Games , 1 comment so far
Freaking Awesome.
That’s what I think of the new Call of Duty: Black Ops. In this trailer, we see soldiers rappelling down enemy buildings, enemy buildings blowing up, and a crossbow that shoots dynamite? Freaking awesome.
From what I can gather, this game will be built around quite a few clandestine missions. Think Metal Gear Solid strapped with 20 sticks of dynamite and machine guns and you get Call of Duty: Black Ops. Oh, you also get to blows things up in a Helicopter. November 9th can’t get here fast enough! See for yourself in the trailer below.
More Details On the Mysterious BlackBerry Slider Leak Out– Coming to AT&T in the Summer? May 25, 2010
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Cell Phones, Rumors , add a comment
Wow, in summer already shaping up to be awesome for buying new phones with the releases of the EVO 4G and new iPhone, we can now possibly add to that list a new BlackBerry– that really cool touchscreen slider BlackBerry Bold 9800 we first saw a couple of months earlier.
The pix are much clearer than the ones we’ve seen in the past, and show off a couple of pretty big things, such as BlackBerry OS 6 (see above pic), the latest major update providing, among other things, a real web browser, improved media player (with its own version of Cover Flow), as well as a true multi-touch OS. Its worth noting here that the phone is also said to just be using a “normal” multi-touch screen and not the SurePress touchscreen seen on the Storm line.
The pic below is shot of the phone booting up to an AT&T screen, implying as Boy Genius Report claims, that AT&T is slated to get this monster new phone this summer!
RIM is still keeping quiet and hasn’t confirmed (or even said) anything about this phone so for the time being it’s still a rumor, but don’t worry– we’ll make sure to keep you up to date as we learn more.
Pix from TheBerryFix (here and here), and The Cellular Guru.
Caffeine – MiniReview May 23, 2010
Posted by Chaim Gartenberg in : Computers, First Look/Reviews , add a comment
Caffeine. Need. Caffeine.
Another random little Mac application. And yet, so useful. To ask a simple question – ever have to download some really big file (say, Portal) or need to sync, backup or restore your iPod (a task taking slightly less time then the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy). But even more annoying, is when you’re doing this on a laptop. A laptop, which goes to sleep to conserve battery life after around 15 minutes. So, you’re stuck either messing around with your battery settings or waiting at your computer for hours. Enter Caffeine. Caffeine is a little application that sits in your menubar, and has one purpose. Click on the little coffee cup icon, and your computer stays awake – no screensaver, no sleep, nothing. Hence the name, Caffeine.
It works flawlessly though, and is absurdly useful. Streaming an episode of Chuck from Hulu? Caffeine, eat dinner, and enjoy. Converting a movie? Caffeine. It’s singularly purposed, but incredibly useful.
So, go on – download it here. It’s free, so you’ve got no excuse. And next time where you’re trying to process a video for history class at 4 AM – at least you’ll be able to keep the computer awake.
Apple Updates the MacBook May 23, 2010
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Apple, Computers , add a comment
Looking for a MacBook with all the basic specs but not interested in spending an extra $200 on the all-aluminum design of the 13-inch MacBook Pro? Apple has announced this week some modest, yet nice updates to the MacBook line that pretty much puts the two models in the same ballpark.
As we saw in the recent MacBook Pro update, the big gains on the Macbook were not in design (the Macbook still rocks the new unibody plastic with the glass multitouch trackpad, and still lacks the SD card slot found on the MacBook Pro) but graphics and battery life. It boasts the new NVIDIA 320M graphics and a 10 hour battery, while also bumping up other specs like the Intel Core 2 Duo processor (up to 2.4 GHZ standard like on the MacBook Pro 13, compared to the 2.26 GHZ of the previous models).
The best part though is that Apple did all this while keeping the price the same old at $999 (with the Education Store offering it for $949), which is still $200 cheaper than the 13 inch Aluminum MacBook Pro. Its worth noting, however, that the Pro ships with 4 GB of RAM compared to the MacBook’s standard 2, though for $100 you could upgrade the RAM to 4 GB, and for another $50 the hard drive to 320 GB– a significant increase from the 250 GB standard of both models. All that still leaves the Macbook $50 cheaper.
Why Apple would update this to be so close to their high end line in terms of pure specs I’m not sure, but in any case– anyone out there looking for a new MacBook gonna go with this over the MacBook Pro 13?
The new MacBooks are available now from Apple.com.
GenUpload: Two weeks with KIN May 21, 2010
Posted by Chaim Gartenberg in : Announcements, Cell Phones, First Look/Reviews, Microsoft, Music, Web , add a comment
KIN 2 is the not-square one (click to high-definitionize)
So, I’ve been using the KIN 2 as my only mobile device (no iPod Touch or regular cell) for the last two weeks. Check out my impression of how it held up to the theory of being a phone for teenagers in my guest column over at Slashgear.
Sprint Releases the New BlackBerry Bold 9650 May 17, 2010
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Cell Phones , add a comment
So Sprint users, an EVO 4G isn’t what your looking for and you want something with a real keyboard instead? Maybe you were thinking of going for a BlackBerry Tour? If you are one of those people then listen up, as Sprint is releasing a new BlackBerry today that takes everything you want in the Tour and throws in some much appreciated updates.
This new BlackBerry is called the Bold 9650 (the one we saw in December of last year, and really is pretty much a Tour 2– and if you wanna be really technical, the Tour was called the BlackBerry 9630), and takes all of the Tour’s beloved features like that great full QWERTY keyboard, BlackBerry OS 5 with features like the App World and the latest BBM, 3.2 megapixel camera, clear and sharp high-res screen, and 3G and throws in some of the most wanted additional features like WiFi and the new BlackBerry trackpad in place of the trackball. The new Bold also offers double the built in memory (512 MB as opposed to the Tour’s 256 MB) and ships with an additional 2 GB microSD card in the box for even more storage.
The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is available now on Sprint’s site for $199.99 with a new 2 year contract and data plan.
So there you have it, more good news for you lucky Sprint users. So what’s it gonna be– BlackBerry Bold 9650 or HTC EVO 4G?
First Look: Microsoft Office 2010 May 16, 2010
Posted by Eli Blumenthal in : Computers, First Look/Reviews, Microsoft , 1 comment so far
A lot (if not pretty much all) of us have relied on Microsoft’s Office software for our lives over the years, whether for notes, school papers, or creating fliers. Every couple of years Microsoft introduces a major revision to the Office line, and 2010 is another one of those years. And while the basics of PowerPoint, Word, OneNote and all the other Office programs have stayed the same, there have been some pretty solid improvements that while may not be “must haves,” are without question appreciated and make Office even better and easier to use.
I’ve been testing out the beta (i.e. testing, not final) version of Office 2010 as my main Office suite for the past couple of months– using it to write papers, take notes, manage email, and create presentations; and I got to say– I really like it better than the older Office 2007. I’m not gonna go into a full out review of the new Office yet (partly because not everything is finalized in the beta I’m using), but here are a few thoughts.