| No BS Podcast #187: Now With More Murph Posted: 12 Jul 2012 11:18 AM PDT 
Our long national nightmare is over: after an absence of nearly four years, former editor (and current contributing writer) David "The Murph" Murphy guest-stars in the all-new Episode 187 of the No BS Podcast! Dave joins Deputy Editor Gordon Mah Ung and Senior Editor Nathan Edwards to talk about Surface, Microsoft's ambitious forthcoming tablet. We've all had some more time to play with Windows 8, and we share our feelings. Would you switch to Windows 8?
Would you use it on a slate?
Would you use it on your desk?
Is the Metro store a mess? Would you use it on a phone?
Would you, could you, with touch alone?
Can you use it to do work?
Do the OEMs think Ballmer's a jerk? We ran out of rhyme, but it's our biggest discussion of Windows 8 yet. Because like it or not, Win8 is coming. And it's best to be prepared. We also discuss the 2008 Dream Machine (fond memories!), the 2012 Dream Machine (vague hints!), Android 4.1, and more! Plus, a discussion of the seven-case midtower roundup from the upcoming September issue, and of course an all-new Rant of the Month! Computer trouble? A secret to share? Opinions? Need advice? Just need to get something off your chest? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are not standing by. |
| Steam Kicks Off Its Annual Summer Sale Posted: 12 Jul 2012 11:12 AM PDT Hopefully you don't have anything planned for the next couple of months, because the Steam Summer Sale is here and chock full of the kind of price cuts that make competitors weep. Each of the next ten days will bring new deals and discounts on a wide variety of blockbuster games, indie games, game packs and more. 
Every day through July 22, nine new titles will be pulled out of the pool, highlighted and given a particularly deep price slashing. (You can see today's titles in the picture above.) Other titles will be sold at a discount during the same time frame, and there will be random "Flash Sales," which discount a small handful of titles for a limited time frame -- you know, to keep you coming back and checking the site often. There's also a "Community Choice" deal that lets users vote for which of three titles they want to receive a discount for a limited time frame. The title that gets the most votes gets a discount, with a new trial up on deck every 8 hours. These aren't second-tier titles, either; the current contenders are The Witcher 2, Saints Row the Third, and Batman: Arkham City. OK, enough talk: veteran PC gamers already know how the Steam Summer Sale works, anyways. Consider this post more of a PSA than anything else. Which games catch your eye? Good luck getting them, as the Steam servers are getting absolutely hammered right now and tossing up frequent error messages. |
| Viacom Pulls Streams of "The Daily Show" and Others Offline Following DirecTV Spat Posted: 12 Jul 2012 10:26 AM PDT Bruhahas between satellite television providers and studio networks rarely deserve a mention in the hallowed e-pages of Maximum PC, but the spat between Viacom and DirecTV recently took a turn for the worse that may interest dedicated cord cutters. Viacom's demand for a $1 billion increase in its contract with DirecTV prompted the satellite company to instead yank Viacom's stations from the air -- Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET, more, all gone. In response, Viacom yanked any full, streaming episodes from its properties' various websites. Wait, what? 
Part of the reason DirecTV balked at renewing Viacom's contract, you see, is because the various Viacom stations have been seeing massive drops in viewers in recent months. DirecTV refuses to pay an additional $1 billion for fewer viewers. (Makes sense!) The satellite provider chalks up the piss-poor results to the fact that Viacom's content is widely available online, either directly from, say, the Comedy Central website or on streaming services like Hulu and Netflix. So, kiss streaming the Daily Show and the Colbert Report from their respective websites goodbye, at least for now. Fortunately, Viacom told GigaOM that its content will continue to be available through online services that pay for it -- such as Netflix, Hulu and iTunes -- so you'll continue to find Tosh.0 and the South Park crew yukking it up online, but only if you drop some dough for the privilege. |
| 13 Cool Things We Saw at Comic-Con 2012 Preview Night Posted: 12 Jul 2012 10:17 AM PDT San Diego Comic-Con is just getting started, but it's already packed with cool things to delight our inner fanboys and -girls. We're here repping our parent company at the Future US booth (#4445, if you're in the neighborhood), which features a one-of-a-kind zombie-proof 2013 Hyundai Elantra schemed up by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman himself. Nothing in that previous sentence was a joke, by the way. We actually have a zombie-proof Elantra at our booth. It has spikes. And a hydraulic cannon. 
Pretty sure this thing ain't street legal.
Anyway, we took a break to wander the show floor before the wall-to-wall crush of fans and cosplayers and cosplaying fans that is Thursday and Friday at Comic-Con, and we saw some cool things. What kind of cool things? This kind: |
| Plextor Introduces M5S Series Solid State Drives Starting at $100 Posted: 12 Jul 2012 08:09 AM PDT  Plextor, which largely built a name for itself with high end optical drives back before you could buy a DVD burner for less than the cost of a movie ticket and tub of popcorn, is largely focused on solid state drives (SSDs) these days, and the company's newest contender in what's now a crowded field is the M5S Series. The M5S line represents Plextor's fastest SSDs to date, boasting up to 73,000 read IOPS and 70,000 write IOPS courtesy of "exclusive firmware."
Read and write transfers are pegged at up to 520MB/s and 390MB/s, respectively, though numbers only tell part of the story. According to Plextor, the special firmware it cooked up is a recipe for sustained long-term high-speed computing performance sprinkled with side entrees like Instant Restore, Global Wear Leveling, and Bad Block Management. There are three capacities to choose from, including: - 64GB (PX-64M5S): $100
- 128GB (PX-128M5S): $160
- 256GB (PX-256M5S): $300
We've seen some high-performance SSDs approach (and dip under) $1 per gigabyte in recent weeks, so Plextor's drives are a little pricier than what you might find by shopping around. Street pricing could end up lower than MSRP, however, as they have with Plextor's M3 Series. Image Credit: Plextor Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Ultima IV Reimagined in Free-to-Play Reboot Posted: 12 Jul 2012 07:45 AM PDT  If you grew up playing games on the Commodore 64 and, later down the line, 286/386/486 IBM compatible PCs, there's a good chance you spent many hours serving Lord British, the mostly unkillable ruler of Britannia (save for an incident during an Ultima Online beta test). Well, you can stop longing for days gone by and re-experience (or experience for the first time) the series with a new, free-to-play title called Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar.
BioWare Mythic is bringing the Ultima series back, though Ultima Forever isn't a completely new title. Rather, it's a reimagining of Ultima IV. "We've basically taken the Batman reboot option. The Spider-Man reboot option," Paul Barnett, creative director at BioWare Mythic, told Kotaku. "What we've down is we've picked Ultima IV, because think Ultima IV is really cool, and it's neat, and it's ace, and then we've made it so it's small groups of people, three or four people down [in] the dungeon, going through the world of Ultima, going in to see all the famous towns and all the NPCs and the entire world is available." For those of you new to the series, Ultima IV was unique in the fact that it challenged gamers not just with leveling up and/or conquering an evil, but with developing a virtuous character into a spiritual leader with a focus on the Eight Virtues, including Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Honor, Sacrifice, Spirituality, and Humility. Barnett says the Ultima reboot will play fast and is "clicky," but promises fluid fun combat as opposed to "tactical and mind-numbing." There will be 3D characters, hand-painted backgrounds, and conversation trees, along with single-player and cross-platform multiplay. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Yahoo Voice Hack Attack Compromises 453,000 Passwords Posted: 12 Jul 2012 07:14 AM PDT  Do you use Yahoo Voice? If so, go change your password immediately. Hackers collectively known as D33Ds Company are taking credit for an SQL injection attack on a Yahoo subdomain believed to belong to Yahoo Voice. The hackers posted a document containing 453,492 plaintext Yahoo user accounts and passwords. The original website where the stolen information was posted appears to be down for the moment, but there are no do-overs on the Internet, and all that sensitive data is currently floating around torrent sites and other portals.
"We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat," the D33Ds group stated in its data dump, according to Arstechnica. "There have been many security holes exploited in web servers belonging to Yahoo Inc. that have caused far greater damage than our disclosure." D33Ds Company said it was withholding information about the subdomain "to avoid further damage," though TrustedSec did a little digging and found a dbb1.ac.bf1.yahoo.com string in the data dump, which points back to Yahoo's Voice service. Yahoo has yet to issue a statement on the security breach. Image Credit: Flickr (Yodel Anecdotal) Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Nexus 7 Teardown Reveals $152 Material Cost Posted: 12 Jul 2012 06:46 AM PDT  There was a lot of discussion about whether or not Amazon was making or losing money on each Kindle Fire it sold when the device first launched, and with Google recently introducing its Nexus 7 tablet, many are wondering if Google is in the same boat. Based on a preliminary teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli, it appears Google and Amazon are employing a similar strategy in the 7-inch tablet space, with only about $20 separating each one's respective slate.
Google's 8GB Nexus 7 retails for $199 but costs $159.25 to build, which includes $151.75 for parts and another $7.50 attributed to manufacturing costs, according to IHS iSuppli. The 16GB version costs $166.75 to build ($159.25 for parts, $7.50 to manufacturer). By comparison, Amazon's 8GB Kindle Fire costs $20 less at $139.80, which breaks down to $133.80 for parts and $6 earmarked for manufacturing. "Google's Nexus 7 represents less of an attempt to compete with Apple Inc.'s market-leading iPad, and more of a bid to battle with Amazon's Kindle Fire," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, teardown services for IHS. "The two platforms are similar in many regards, including the use of the 7-inch display, the eschewing of 4G wireless connections in favor of Wi-Fi, support for virtually identical battery lives and the same pricing for the entry-level models. However, the Nexus 7 has superior specifications to the Kindle Fire, giving it a more attractive feature set that may make it more desirable to consumers." If competing with the Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7 stands out with a higher resolution display using in-plane switching (IPS) and a quad-core processor, along with an embedded camera and near-field communications (NFC) chip, all of which Amazon eschewed in its tablet. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Kouziro FT103: A 21.5-inch Android AIO Posted: 12 Jul 2012 05:50 AM PDT  All-in-one PCs have become quite popular lately, with their shipments consistently growing at a faster rate than that of run-of-the-mill desktop PCs. Despite the impressive growth, vendors don't seem content with just Windows-based AIOs and have now started experimenting with the form factor. AsusTek's Transformer all-in-one PC, which dual boots Windows 8 and Android, is a case in point. Then there is the far more unusual Viewsonic VCD22, a 22-inch device that runs Android 4.0 and lacks a battery. But if you think that the VCD22 is the only device of its kind, you're wrong. Japanese company Kouziro is readying a similar Android-powered AIO/display.
Kouziro's FT103 is an Android-powered touch-screen monstrosity. It has a 21.5-inch touch-screen display (1080p), 1GHz TI OMAP 4428 processor, 8GB storage, two USB 2.0 ports, microUSB, microSD card slot, HDMI, Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, microphone, headphone jack and webcam. The battery-less FT103 tips the scales at around 11 pounds and measures 512.8 × 24.8 × 353mm. It is set to debut in Japan later this month with a price tag of around $437 (¥34,800). Image Credit: Kouziro |
| Toshiba Announces 'Highest Capacity' 2.5-inch 10,500 RPM HDD Posted: 11 Jul 2012 11:50 PM PDT  Toshiba today announced the launch of four new 2.5-inch enterprise HDDs, each with a rotation speed of 10,500 RPM. According to the company, the highest capacity drive in the new "AL13SE" line-up, the 900GB AL13SEB900, is also the "industry's highest capacity" drive when it comes to 2.5-inch HDDs spinning at 10,500 RPM.
"AL13SEB900 achieves an industry-leading 900GB capacity by using an improved perpendicular magnetic recording technology head and a disk with an enhanced magnetic layer to realize an areal density of 856 Mbit/mm2 (552 Gbpsi)," the company explained in a press release. Thanks to its higher linear recording density, the AL13SEB900 boasts an internal transfer rate of 286 MB/s, which is around 32 percent higher than its predecessor, the MBF2600RC. Another area where the AL13SEB900 significantly improves upon the MBF2600RC is power consumption. It is said to be 41 percent more efficient than its predecessor in this regard. The other 2.5-inch enterprise drives announced by Toshiba are the 300GB AL13SEB300, the 450GB AL13SEB450, and the 600GB AL13SEB600. While the press release is mum on pricing, it does say that volume shipments will begin next month. 
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