Black Friday: What's Your Take?

With all of the rampant pre-black Friday sales materials floating around, the real questions is simple: "What, if anything, does it mean to you?"

I have seen some seriously deep discounts on Blu-Ray players and HD TV's. But what if what you are wanting to buy is not on sale, for example the Wii. What then? Do you just buy some soon to be outdated technology because it's on sale? 

Some, if not most, of the items really reduced in price will be outdated and not made again. That is why they are getting such cheap cuts. But the good stuff, the stuff that is new and oh so very pretty, well, the deals won't be that good.

A good rule of thumb for "Black Friday" ads is this: If you planned on buying that "type" of technology, check it out, otherwise, buy what it was you were going to buy in the first place. Don't just buy something because it is on sale!

Google Chrome Goes Non- Beta in 2009

I never thought I'd live to see that day (and still might not) that Google actually released something from beta into a full fledged release! 

Hopefully this "release" will include some decent, Firfox like, plug-ins or add-ons.  Something along the lines of FireBug or FireFTP would be very useful, and handy. I have seen several blogs and forums begging Google for these features. 

Chrome has a lot of potential, but so far their have been no updates or patches or any news of fixes for it's ailments. If I need testing or work related Internet, I use IE 7. 

The other side of the coin, aside from functionality and what is released, is what kind of role will Chrome take in the future of the browser wars? Chrome is thought to be very popular. It is great for quick browsing and such. Is Microsoft worried about losing stock? Even with IE 8 in Beta right now? And let's not forget about the mighty Firefox.

The browser wars are heating up more and more and it seems that Chrome is destined to take it's place on the medal podium, somewhere...but where?

Do You Twitter?

Although it has been around for some time now, it seems that the idea of "Tweeting" is just catching on to some groups.

I personally just recently started taking a look at Twitter. I have spent some time with Facebook and MySpace over the years, but "tweeting" was new to me.

The social networking phenomenon has exploded with the likes of Facebook and MySapce in recent times.  To some, this idea is as foreign as Kimchi. The idea of blurting out "what your doing" to a vast audience of people around the world whom one does not know, can be a little intimidating.

To some though, this can be an invaluable tool for venting or simply keeping connected to friends and co-workers via a simple Internet interface. 

The service is free, and can be used with a variety of plug ins (Digsby, TwitterFox) and can even used to send the "tweets" to your cell phone.

Twitter isn't like your typical Instant Messaging, where you relay text in real time to others you are connected to. With Twitter, you simply post a message, of no more than around 160 characters, and anyone and everyone can read it. Anyone viewing you message can reply to it directly or in general. 

There are some private replies and "Direct" messages as well with Twitter. These can be for more of a one on one conversation.

All in all Twitter is not a bad form of social networking, nor is it a Instant Messenger killer. In the end it begs me to ask the simple question: Who needs to be that connected?

Target + Netbooks

Recently it seems, that Target has started selling and pushing Asus Netbooks. The models in stores tend to be older, more out dated ones, but decently priced (for Netbooks.)

According to their website, rraget now sells several brands and configurations of Netbooks. This is a delighfully surprising find. 

Some of the manufacturers listed were Asus, HP and MSI. Their Prices are competitive, but not a major under cut of current market rates.

As far as can be seen, most of the new Netbook models and styles can only be found via the online store.

It tends to make one wonder if this is a play at the market share of Amazon. Amazon has long since sold countless varieties of Netbooks, even before they were popular.

Molecule: Mega Computer

This new super computer called "Molecule", is impressive to say the least. With an astounding possible 10,000 Intel Atom processors, it's a whole lot of computer love.

Here are some more stats on the beast:

• High concurrency with 20,000 threads of execution — 40 times more than a single rack x86 cluster system
• High throughput with 15TB/sec of memory bandwidth per rack — over 20 times faster than a single rack x86 cluster system
• Greater balance with up to three times the memory bandwidth/OPS compared to current x86 CPUs
• High performance with approximately 3.5 times the computational performance per rack
• Greener with low-watt consumer CPUs and low-power memory that deliver 7 times better memory bandwidth/watt
• Innovative Silicon Graphics Kelvin cooling technology, which enables denser packaging by stabilizing thermal operations in densely configured solutions
• Operating environment flexibility, capable of running industry-standard Linux(R) implementations, with Microsoft(R) Windows(R) variants on some configurations

[Gizmodo]

Vista Capable Debacle

There are some people who were brave enough to trust the above sticker and upgrade their machines to Vista, and watch the failure commence.

Now there are lawsuits and trials waiting to be had to figure out why these stickers were placed on machines that either could barely run Vista, or not handle its' massiveness at all.

I had a 4 year old laptop that could run it; slowly, without my NIC working, etc., but it worked! It seems that everyone feels the right to sue everyone over every little thing, so why not sue Microsoft over false labeling.

According to this article, posted on Gizmodo, Microsoft "lowered the hardware standards to appease Intel." That would be an interesting change of events. 

But at the end of the day, Microsoft still pushed the sticker to be on sub par machines. That's' a fact that's not going to change, regardless of who they point their fingers at.

Will Apple Design Their Own Search Engine?

According to an article on TechCrunch, it seems that Apple may be creating their own search engine.

While this may come as surprise to many (including my self) it is not that new of an idea for a computer mogul to "get in the search game." Microsoft has been doing it for years.

While Apple is tethered to Google's browser for Safari, making a break might not be a bad idea.

Proof That Macs Can Crash Too

This image, from Gizmodo, shows the very simple fact that yes, Macs can lock up, crash, s#%t-the-bed, etc.

According to the Gix post, this is an iPhone display at an AT&T store. The system is a Mac computer running whatever Mac OS. The displays used to run XP.

The gray box in the center of the display is called a "panic" message. Something about the system halting. Interesting...

Windows 7 Microsoft Pages

Upon some snooping around today, I came upon the official Microsoft Windows 7 page(s). The pages are not that much, except they offer some low level information about the upcoming OS. 

The site also gives links to specific information for developers, enterprises and the "press." I also found the "Windows 7 Team Blog." This blog has some interesting tid bits about Windows 7 including differences between it and Vista / XP, new features and product development phase updates.

The blog does talk about the unveiling of Windows 7 at this years PDC in LA. Some quotes from people who were given pre-Beta loaded machines for demos are available there as well, if you wanna get some inside opinions on it as it is so far.

Windows 7 Taskbar Improvements

Gizmodo has a video of the new Windows 7 Task bar in action. It looks to be impressive and neat. 

I am still a a little confused as to how this is really different from XP or Vista's task bar. I mean, the icons are larger, but you still can drag and drop to it. It doesn't seem to be that different to me.

Maybe I am missing something here. I must say that I love the wallpaper on the PC. It gives one the underwater feeling.

Uber Cheap Netbooks? There Will Be a Catch!

Ever since the birth of the Netbook, or rather the classification of sub notebooks as Netbooks, many including myself have asked the question: Why are they still so damn expensive?!?

As far as overall pricing some Netbooks range from $300, for the older model Asus Eee, to $600 for a HP Netbook that is the same as a Celeron laptop.

While there is speculation that these costs will be coming down with newer and cheaper chip sets and the falling price of RAM, to believe that any of these Netbooks will ever really be below $200, to me is folly. 

LCD's simply can't come down that low and there is still a lot of electronics in the machines. So when I hear, or see someone offering or talking about an $99 Netbook, I am skeptical at best.

It seems that to get the cost low enough that the average person would look twice at a Netbook, they have to come with a "data plan." This is like your typical cell phone cellular minutes and data plan where you sign up for 1 - 2 years and get deep discounts on the hardware. I can't imagine who, aside from the heavy traveler, would ever need this kind of deal.

It is of my own personal opinion that the best way to get Netbook costs down is to stop trying to make laptop spec'd Netbooks, and make less powerful devices.