Micro Four Thirds System

 

There has been some buzz around the Micro Four Thirds system lately and people wondering what this means for you. Well Panasonic and Olympus designed this system for people who want the advantages of having interchangeable lenses and compact cameras while still maintaing good image quality. These camera’s a quite a bit different from Four Thirds as the Micro Four thirds system doesn’t have the mirror or pentaprism, this is to reduce size and weight. These camera’s are really designed for people who want a small camera, prices are unknown at this point and could be pretty expensive. The Advantage’s of the Micro Four Thirds system are Smaller yet “fast” compact lenses, Micro Four thirds can have lenses of equivalent focal length yet a much smaller size. Less Noise, and Good depth of field.

The problem with Micro Four Thirds is your not looking through the Lens which some people will prefer, instead it uses an Electronic viewfinder or live view on the rear screen. The Lens mount will be different than the regular four thirds however adapters will be available for those who want other lenses. Right now there is only one officially announced Micro Four Thirds camera by Panasonic. The DMC-G1. Meaning you won’t be able to get one just yet. This system has a long way to go in order to be good alternative. Prices could be high and lenses have to be made. I’m excited to see where this system will go but I wouldn’t get one myself. You can find some information on various sources throughout the web, my suggestion is to just google it.

Dell’s New All-In One

On Thursday dell announced a New 24” All in one to go along with their other 20” ONE.

It will come in a Regular version and a Product RED version. This all in one will be very powerful coming with a 2.3GHz Quad core processor. And 4GB of RAM. The computer comes with some more multimedia features that I will go over later. The computer is also a pretty competitive in the Graphics department. The ONE will include a 9600GT which should keep the Casual gamers happy. The computer comes with a slew of ports and connections including an 8 in 1 media card reader.

 

Dell is calling it a Premium Multimedia Experience. The ONE includes an optional Blu-ray drive and full PVR capabilities for all you multimedia lovers. Dell has also included JBL stereo speakers with a subwoofer, This should improve sound quality for games and multimedia. The ONE also includes a Wireless keyboard and mouse on the better model. Right now dell has the most customizable all in one at this time. The computer will come with up to a 750GB Hard drive and Dell allows you to use the computer as TV with the tuner which I think is a good option. Overall I think this computer is very competitive with apple’s, Hp’s and Sony’s all in ones. However I still don’t think anyone has matched apples elegant design of the iMac. Some people are disappointed that dell didn’t offer a 64 bit version of windows vista. This doesn’t really matter unless you use very memory demanding applications. If you want more information you can visit dell.com

Celebrate Halloween In Style – Scare the crap out of yourself with Dead Space

 

Dead space is the latest terrifying release into the survival horror genre. Seemingly drawing inspiration from the original Alien movie, Dead Space puts you in the unfortunate shoes of a space engineer named Isaac Clarke. You are part of a team of three sent to investigate a distress signal, which as we all know is never a good start!

The source of the distress signal is a mile long mining ship, the USG Ishimura, which has been infested by aliens. You are soon separated from the rest of your team and must utilise your space engineer type tools in order to defend yourself from the onslaught of Xenomorphs trying to eat your brain. This leads to some very interesting, never seen before combat as most situations aren’t as cut and dry as your typical shooter. For example a quick headshot which would normally be sufficient won’t help you at all in Dead Space. Instead you need to systematically severe the limbs of your assailants to ensure they don’t keep coming at you. This is an unusual twist to the typical headshot routine and will force most gamers to rethink their strategy.

For the most part the fighting is extremely frantic and directly in your face due to the overly resilient and aggressive nature of your enemies. Luckily for you, in addition to your array of mining tools and flamethrowers your character has a few special abilities to keep the bad guys at bay. Stasis allows you to temporarily slow and stop time giving you precious extra seconds to dismember those nasty aliens. Telekinesis lets you move objects around and is useful for both puzzle solving and combat.

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Windows 7

 

Recently Microsoft began releasing more information on Windows 7. Most people seem to be confused on what exactly the purpose of this os is. Windows 7 is like Microsoft’s “Solution” to vista, From what I’ve read is seems to be a great improvement over Vista. It has been stated that it is significantly faster and more compatible, with this it seems Microsoft is learning a lot from vista. They are making it easier to find and use things by placing what used to be separate settings together. I think this will make the system a lot better. They are also pulling out some office interface queues for other programs that come pre-installed on windows. Paint and word pad will now have the Ribbon and some interface changes to make finding things easier.

Microsoft’s aim with windows 7 is to try to get people to enjoy using windows again. Windows 7 will include changes to the core to allow better compatibility and faster performance. It will also include interface changes to make things easier for the average pc user. Microsoft is taking some advice and allowing you to customize security to your needs by making as slider in UAC (user account control). This allows you to set the security to catch things, they have also thrown away the sidebar as far as we know. However gadgets are now placed on you desktop making the placement your choice, While part of me likes the idea another part of me hates that it will create clutter on the desktop. There is also supposed to be some task bar enhancements in other pre-beta releases. I can’t wait to see where Microsoft is going to go with windows 7. Yes even as a Mac user I am still really excited to see this! Microsoft is supposed to be releasing windows 7 in 2010. 

New Cowon MP3/PMP’s

Cowon recently introduced new players for music and movies. I have to say these are the best looking players I have seen. They are sleek yet include so many formats you’ll be amazed!  The cowon includes a new interface which is a huge improvement over the previous versions. The O2 comes with 4.3” touch screen which displays 16.7 million colors. The O2 will include some of the best battery life for a player in it’s category, 18 hours audio and 8 hours video.

This player cannot compete with apple’s iPod Touch simply because if doesn’t have the features. It does include some widgets such as calculator notes etc. The player however is something that you will never need to re-encode any videos or audio for. I won’t list the formats as it would take too long. The player will come in 8,16, 32GB Storage editions. It will be out today in the U.S.

The S9 is cowon’s other new player which is a smaller, sleeker version of the O2 with some goodies. The S9 is a 3.3” media player with an AMOLED capacitive touch screen that is once again 16.7 million colors on a 480 X 272 res screen. This player is quite powerful measuring in at 500MHz Dual core processor. The player includes many gadgets into one, with an FM tuner, Bluetooth, TV tuner, TV-out and G-sensor Accelerometer with 40 hour battery life. That’s impressive! However if video is your thing then this is not the player for you as it only supports it’s screens native resolution, meaning you do still have to re-encode you video for this player. You will be able to find some information on Cowon’s site.

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