General Gaming Article |
- 40% of Tablet/Smartphone Owners Use It While Watching TV
- Google, Samsung Reschedule Android Event for October 19 in Hong Kong
- Google Announces Quarterly Results, Kills It Again
- Browser Extension of the Week: Google Calendar
- Cooler Master Lets Xornet Mouse Out of the Cage
- "Computer Expert" and Other Geeky Badges Added to Girl Scouts
- Performance Testing for the Common Man: Fast, Easy Benchmarks You Can Run Right Now
- Will Seagate Unveil A 5TB HDD At CES In January?
- HP Likely to Keep PC Division, Dell Nods Approvingly
- Michael Dell Loves Windows 8, But Not Android
| 40% of Tablet/Smartphone Owners Use It While Watching TV Posted: 13 Oct 2011 03:06 PM PDT
Odds are good that if you own a tablet or smartphone, you use it while watching TV. A new Nielson survey says that 40% of people with at least one of these devices use it daily while sacked out in front of the TV. Users of eReaders, though, not so much. Only 14% of that group admit to using the device in front of the TV. It is important to note that these are just the figures for daily use of mobile devices. If you factor in those that say they engage in this behavior a few times a week, you have the overwhelming majority of users. When asked just what is so important, most users say they check email, browse the web, and use social networks. To be frank, it's a little surprising that the 40% figure isn't higher. Some content companies are taking note of the trend by releasing companion apps for popular programs and channels. The opportunity to tie in advertising on mobile devices with TV programming will likely push more companies in this direction over time. Do you use a mobile device while watching TV? Image via Nielson |
| Google, Samsung Reschedule Android Event for October 19 in Hong Kong Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:46 PM PDT
The event will be held at 9:30 AM Hong Kong time, which means that across most of the US, it's going to be happening in the early to late evening. Google's Andy Rubin and Samsung representatives are expected to speak. The event will be streamed live on YouTube, for those not able to make it to the other side of the globe. In addition to unveiling Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung will be revealing the new flagship Nexus phone, the Galaxy Nexus. The device is expected to have a dual-core SoC, 720p screen, and Android Ice Cream Sandwich. We can't wait. |
| Google Announces Quarterly Results, Kills It Again Posted: 13 Oct 2011 02:23 PM PDT
In the earnings call, Page talked up Google's successes this last quarter. Despite the gloom and doom reporting around Google+, Page offered up some real numbers for the first time. Apparently the social network has passed 40 million users. There have also been 3.4 billion photos uploaded uploaded to the service since launch. Chrome too is taking off with over 200 million users, and Android Ice Cream Sandwich is just around the corner. It appears that the slowing of economic growth last quarter didn't hit Google's bottom line at all. The company has all the appearances of an unstoppable juggernaut with over 30,000 employees and growing. |
| Browser Extension of the Week: Google Calendar Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:17 PM PDT
Once installed, the Google Calendar extension places an icon next to your navigation bar. Provided you're already logged into your Google account, giving the icon a click will provide you access to your upcoming calendar appointments without having to open up a new tab or navigate away from what you're browsing. As if this wasn't convenience enough, Google also included the ability for the extension to read appointments in hCalendar format from any site you browse.
With a click of your mouse, qualifying appointments, dates, and events can all be added to your calendar for later review and as reminders. No fuss, no muss. That's a whole lot of workflow streamlining baked into a single extension. Be sure to check every Thursday for another edition of Maximum PC's Browser Extension of the Week.
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| Cooler Master Lets Xornet Mouse Out of the Cage Posted: 13 Oct 2011 12:06 PM PDT
Don't mistake minimalistic and inexpensive to mean this is a barebones mouse destined for the clearance bin. Noteworthy features include anti-slip rubber side grips; a textured stealth black finish; 2,000 DPI sensor you can adjust on-the-fly between 500, 1,000, and 2,000 presets; Ultra-Step Scroll Wheel Encoder for absolute control over slight movements; an 8KB microprocessor to store button assignments, advanced macros, and other mouse customizations; an Anti-drift Control Sensor, and high-quality Omron micro-switches supposedly good for at least 5,000,000 clicks. The CM Storm Xornet will be available this month for $30 MSRP. Image Credit: Cooler Master |
| "Computer Expert" and Other Geeky Badges Added to Girl Scouts Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:49 AM PDT
"Girls told us they want more challenge, and we've responded with substantive, focused, fun new badge offerings that will prepare girls for lifelong success," said Kathy Cloninger, Chief Executive Officer, Girl Scouts of the USA. "What we need today are more adult volunteers to help girls bring these leadership experiences to life." The Computer Expert badge can be obtained by a Brownie, which is a Girl Scout in second or third grade. And we're totally cool with that, so long as Brownies and other Girl Scouts still find time to sell those awesome Samoa cookies. |
| Performance Testing for the Common Man: Fast, Easy Benchmarks You Can Run Right Now Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:45 AM PDT From Enumeration Comes ElucidationBenchmarks are for the pros, right? Gordon Mah Ung disappears into the maw of the Maximum PC lab for days, and emerges to tell the world whether the next CPU or chipset matters. I'm often hunkered down in the basement lab at the Case House, running endless series of games and 3D tests on graphics cards to find that sweet card just right for your budget. Every now and then, though, you need to check the performance of your system. Maybe it seems to be running sluggishly. Perhaps you just got a new graphics card, or doubled your installed DRAM. So you want to run some quick performance tests to see if your system is indeed more sluggish than before, or faster with that upgrade. What you want to do is run the appropriate benchmark. Benchmarks are simply standardized methods for testing performance. They may be standalone applications specifically designed to test performance of a particular component (like a graphics card) or the entire system. Another type of benchmarks uses an actual application as the test, but these often only tell you how your system or component behaves with that one application. This isn't a comprehensive tutorial on how to run benchmarks for repeatable results; if you want to know the skinny on benchmarking methodologies, check out Gordon's article on that topic. Instead, we'll be diving into the world of quick and dirty benchmarking: testing your system as a quick way to see the impact of changes, or as troubleshooting tools. In addition, this is benchmarking on a budget. We'll be using benchmarks or applications available at the best possible price: free. In some cases, the free benchmark may be a stripped-down version of a more robust test; if so, we'll mention that. Our trip down benchmarking lane is also divided up by categories: CPU, graphics, storage, and system tests. But before diving into the specifics of individual tests, let's take a look at the two key reasons an everyday user might want to run benchmarks. Let's begin, shall we?
Something ChangedSomething in your system has changed. Maybe it was an intentional change on your part—you added more DRAM, dropped in a second graphics card, or finally plunked down some hard earned coin for a shiny new SSD. Maybe you're tweaking your system, trying to overclock it to the maximum stable setting. In that case, you need to make one change at a time, and then run a couple of benchmarks. For maximum stability testing, you may want to run them for several hours. Or perhaps the change is something you noticed. Your system suddenly takes longer to load applications—or is it just your imagination? Your frame rates go from butter smooth to chunky monkey—or maybe it's just that new game? Whatever the change, it's time to run a few performance tests. The right benchmark may tell you if that new SSD really is faster than your old 10,000RPM Raptor RAID 0 setup. Or it might tell you that something's gone wrong with your graphics setup, if 3D benchmarks are suddenly in the tank compared to a few weeks back. New System BaselineYou've just finished installing Windows 7, along with the 3,542 required updates. All the drivers are current, and your new system is humming along nicely. What's the first application you should install? Why, a benchmark of course. Better yet, install several. Some would say you should install some type of dedicated burn-in application. However, I've discovered over the years that a good benchmark—or sometimes, multiple benchmarks run at the same time make excellent burn-in apps. You also want to set a performance baseline. For that, you need to run a systems benchmark, a storage test and a 3D benchmark. Depending on what applications you run most often, it may also be worth running benchmarks that replicate how those apps work—game benchmarks if you're a PC gamer, or a benchmark like Cinebench if you're into 3D modeling and rendering. You want to run those tests before you clutter your system up with applications, many of which may run background applets or pre-load DLLs during system boot. That way, you establish a baseline for the performance of your new system. So if you get to a point where the system seems to get sluggish, you can run those same tests and compare to the original results. My general rule of thumb is that if my heavily loaded system that's been running actively for six months or more running less than 10% slower than the baseline, I'm still good. If overall performance exceeds that, I begin to look at ways to declutter the system. Okay, you've got your baseline performance measured and recorded. But what benchmarks should you use for your baseline? Let's look at a few. System BenchmarksSystem benchmarks typically generate a score that's an aggregate of different performance metrics, including CPU, memory, storage, graphics, and some tests that reflect combinations of those individual subsystems, like video playback. There are numerous system benchmarks available, of varying pedigree and cost. For general system benchmarks, I've gradually settled on FutureMark's PC Mark. It's not perfect, but the free basic version of the most current PCMark 7 exercises your system pretty well. I've used other tests, like Passmark and Novabench but none of those seem to really thrash the system. PCMark can also be a great stability test—if PCMark crashes, it's because something is dodgy with your system, not the benchmark, provided the benchmark has been properly installed and updated.
PC Mark is considered a synthetic benchmark, since it's not an actual application, but it is built with actual instructions recorded from using the built-in applications that ship with Windows. If you want to update to the advanced version, though, it costs $40. That's certainly cheaper than the $250 PC World charges for a single user version of PC WorldBench 6. The upside to spending the $40 is that you also gain access to one of the best applications-based disk benchmarks around. (The basic version doesn't give you access to the storage test.) The PCMark 7 storage test is built on Intel's original RankDisk benchmark, and uses recorded behavior from actual applications to hammer the drives. Another useful—and free—system test is PC Wizard, from the same people that bring you CPU-Z, the popular CPU and system ID tool. PC Wizard also give you a set of individual tests for different subsystems that can be useful.
There are other free benchmarks available, as we noted, but most don't really exercise a Windows 7 system particularly well. Phoronix builds a benchmark that works with both Linux and Windows, but as with many similar open projects, it requires a certain amount of manual effort and script writing to get it to work. CPU and Memory BenchmarksSometimes it's worth testing just the CPU. I once noticed that my system seemed to suddenly be running sluggishly. After running a couple of CPU tests and comparing it to my baseline tests, the CPU seemed to be running almost 50% slower. At first, I suspected heat throttling, but the core temperature was around 40 degrees C at idle. Then I discovered that the BIOS update I'd installed had reset the CPU to its lowest clock speed. This would never happen to a retail CPU, but the new BIOS didn't know how to handle the engineering sample CPU I was running, and set it to the clock frequency of the slowest product it knew. There are several useful CPU specific benchmarks worth using. One old standby is Prime95. Prime95 is a pretty geeky benchmark, spitting out a set of results for different sets of fast Fourier transforms, and running different thread and core counts before completion. It's probably more useful as a stress test. One torture test I often run when burning in a system is to run a combination of Prime95 in blend mode while simultaneously running the older 3DMark 2006 benchmark. If the entire system can run those two benchmarks in concert for a few hours, the system will almost certainly be stable for gaming.
The processor test built into PC Wizard, mentioned earlier, is also a good, relatively quick test. It's not as useful for torture testing, but sometimes you just need some quick performance validation. I'm not a big believer in memory benchmarks. Those results often don't translate well into actual performance. But the memory and latency tests in PC Wizard, like the CPU tests, are good for validating what your memory is doing.
StorageUnless you're doing a lot of comparative tests of hard drives or SSDs, you probably won't be running drive benchmarks often. They're not that useful as diagnostic tools, either. Drive failures are sudden enough that running a benchmark might just push it over the edge if it's ready to fail. Benchmarks can be useful in helping you decide when it's time to de-clutter your SSD. As SSDs get close to being full, performance may radically fall off. If the result of a storage benchmark is much slower than your baseline test—20% slower or more—it's time to clean the crud off your drive. Given that you're not going to run disk benchmarks frequently, a free benchmark sounds like a good idea. The problem: most free storage benchmarks aren't all that robust. One popular test, CrystalDiskMark, is a synthetic test, but has been updated to work more effectively with SSDs and will even run on the Windows 8 developer preview.
Graphics & Game BenchmarksThere are more graphics benchmarks than you can shake a stick at, and many of them are free. Most of these have only marginal utility, because they don't always tell you how well your system might behave in an actual game. What is cool is that a benchmark, like the various versions of 3DMark, make it easy for you to compare your system with thousands of other systems, since they give you the option of collecting data online. Benchmarks like 3DMark and Unigine Heaven are designed to completely thrash your graphics card. It's like the difference between putting your car on a dynamometer to get a theoretical idea of how well your car can perform and actually running it on a road course.
On the other hand, no one game benchmark is perfect. They can only give you a rough idea of how well your system might do in a particular game or genre. So you really need to run game tests that reflect your tastes in gaming. Running first person shooter benchmarks won't help you determine how your system might run a real time strategy game, for example. The other problem with game benchmarks is more subtle. Running one or two tests and looking at average frame rates doesn't always give you a good feel for how a game might play, as The Tech Report discovered. Game benchmarks that generate average frame rate results are useful for comparing different cards, but if you want to really dive in and see how a game runs, you may need to actually run that particular game. The other problem is that most games don't have in-game benchmarks. Those that do are often simplistic, running a pre-collected bunch of frames and giving you an average frame rate. One step up is when the game test shows you minimum, maximum, and average frame rates. The best game benchmarks give you both a front end to launch the benchmark and graphical results. One example is the benchmark applet that ships with Metro 2033.
The real issue, though, for the casual benchmarker, is that you often have to own the game to run the benchmark. If all you want to do is run a few tests to get a rough idea of how your system might perform, dropping $50 on a game just to run performance tests seems a little extreme—especially when you consider the technology in games varies considerably from one title to the next. There are free, standalone game benchmarks available, however. Here are several good ones.
We can't finish our discussion on game benchmarking without talking about Fraps. Fraps is a tool that lets you benchmark any game. You run Fraps, set up recording parameters, then play the game. The problem with Fraps is that you often need to run through the game a number of times to get a repeatable result. But it's a useful tool if you've got the patience. Applications BenchmarkIf you want to see how your system runs a particular application, you'll need to run that application. Many are available as demos, so you can often download them and see how well they run. The downside is that quite a few lack built-in benchmarks. User communities are often helpful. If you're running a professional graphics application or high end image editing tool, user communities often have links to application tests you can run. Bear in mind that many of these take some work to run. You can find a few benchmarks specifically designed for certain professional applications. SPEC, the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, offers a number of benchmarks for high end applications like 3DSMax, Solidworks, and Lightwave, but they all assume you actually have the application, and just supply scripts and data files. SPEC ViewPerf is an exception, and can demonstrate how your GPU and system might run a set of these pro apps, but the scenarios are a little artificial. Also, Cinebench can test how your CPU and GPU work with Maxon's Cinema4D, but will also give you a clue as to how your system might perform with software 3D rendering in general. The bottom line is that application benchmarks are complex and difficult, but the only way to test how your system might run an application critical to your work. Final ThoughtsIf you're not constantly comparing hardware, then benchmarks aren't something you'll run often. But there's a wealth of tools available to test the performance of your system. They're useful diagnostic tools, can help you hit a stable overclock and tell you when your system performance has deteriorated beyond acceptable parameters. Best of all, many of them are free as well as useful. |
| Will Seagate Unveil A 5TB HDD At CES In January? Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:13 AM PDT Got a hankering for some massive on the run file storage that Seagate's humongous 4TB external hard drive just can't fix? Give it time, folks, give it time. Seagate has been upping storage capacity for its drives on a pretty regular basis, and even though that 4TB drive debuted just last month, a Middle Eastern salesman for Seagate has hinted that a 5TB model will be unveiled as early as next January. "Five TB is on the way," a salesman named Christian says at the 6:52 mark of this interview with tbreakTV, "And I think that within three months you will see it." That was after spending the previous minute talking about Seagate's advances in HDD technology and its quest to be first to market with new devices. Christian suggests that the 5TB drive will utilize five 1TB platters, unlike the previously released GoFlex Desk drive, which used five 800GB platters to achieve its total storage size of 4TB. Seagate told Tom's Hardware that the news and timeframe of a 5TB drive "isn't any real revelation." So, there we have it. Remember that CES 2012 runs from January 10 to January 13. Hopefully the flooding in Thailand doesn't affect development of the rumored new drive. |
| HP Likely to Keep PC Division, Dell Nods Approvingly Posted: 13 Oct 2011 11:04 AM PDT
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, HP is rethinking its plans that were set in motion by former CEO Leo Apotheker. After crunching the numbers and analyzing the market place, HP executives are fast coming to the conclusion that the company is better served by holding onto its PC division, which added $40.1 billion in revenue and $2 billion in operating profit to HP's bottom line in its last fiscal year. There's also a trickle down effect to spinning off the world's largest PC business. HP would lose its leverage with component makers and ultimately end up paying higher prices for parts it can get at bulk discounts. Either way, HP plans to continue selling servers, but would lose its price advantage when it came time to stock up on processors, hard drives, and other parts. Count Dell CEO Michael Dell among those who believe HP should hold onto its PC division. At the Dell World conference, Mr. Dell offered up three reasons why HP shouldn't go through with a spin off or sale, according to Mashable. "It's a growth market," Mr. Dell said, pointing out that there will be 2 billion PCs within the next few years. He also said that "from a cost standpoint, you can have enormous scale." Finally, Mr. Dell explained that once you sever your client business, employees of those companies are less likely to buy your other products. "We know from our history there is enormous connection from one device to another," Mr. Dell said. |
| Michael Dell Loves Windows 8, But Not Android Posted: 13 Oct 2011 10:27 AM PDT
"We are very aligned with Microsoft around Windows 8," Michael Dell said at Dell World 2011. "You'll hear more about Windows 8 from us and see a wide range of products released." What, no Android love? Dell may just want to be friends with Google's operating system, which is unsurprising considering the less-than-impressive sales of the Dell Streak. "Android is certainly another opportunity as well, but that market has not developed to the expectations they would have had," Michael Dell told journalists. Then again, V3.co.uk reports that Steve Felice, (the company's consumer, small and medium business division president) said that thus far, Dell's mobile releases were small and mostly just testing the waters, so maybe they didn't give Android enough of a chance? The Wall Street Journal reports that additionally, Dell plans on sticking with the x86 chips offered by AMD and Intel rather than switching over to ARM-based tablets. The company also feels that mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will continue to be secondary devices heading into the future, supplementing – rather than pillaging – PC sales. |
Samsung and Google were originally slated to have an event at CTIA this past Tuesday to announce the new version of Android, but it was not to be. In the wake of the death of Steve Jobs, both companies decided to postpone the event. We finally have a 
Google just announced its 
Since Google gifted the users of Google Calendar the ability to access the contents of their accounts even when there's no internet connection to be found, many of us have come to rely on the reliable and easy to use service even more than we already did when it was still strictly an online-only affair. For anyone that relies on Google Calendar to help them navigate their day, the 
Cooler Master is under the assumption that not all gamers want a mouse with four hundred buttons and funky features like a built-in transmogrifier. If you find yourself shaking your head in agreement, you might be interested in Cooler Master's new Xornet mouse. Inspiration for the Xornet came from "gamers focused on minimalistic designs," and what CM ended up with is a lightweight rodent with a claw-grip design and affordable price tag.
For the first time in 25 years, the Girl Scouts organization is completely overhauling its system of badges with an all-new collection "aimed at giving girls the skills they need to succeed." Some of the longtime popular badges will remain, like Cook, Naturalist, and Athlete, all three of which are "as relevant today as they were in 1912," but among the new ones are high-tech accomplishments like Digital Movie Maker, Geocacher, Website Designer, and even Computer Expert.
Market research firms International Data Corp (IDC) and Gartner both report that HP still sits on top of the world as the largest PC maker, shipping more units than other computer maker in the third quarter. Given that HP is maintaining a sizable lead despite all the turmoil surrounding the company's past, present, and future, why on earth would HP go forward with plans to sever its PC business? That's a question HP itself is having trouble answering, and it now looks as though newly appointed CEO Meg Whitman wants to back off plans to spin off or sell HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG).
The tablet war has pretty much been a two horse race: Apple vs. Android. (Yeah, we know about the PlayBook, but let's be realistic.) And that race has been like a blowout as the iPad 2 has been galloping away from the competition pretty handily. Microsoft's hoping to hit the ground running with Windows 8 sometime soon, however, and they've just got a boost from Dell, who says they plan on heavily supporting the upcoming operating system.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's 
