Acer made eMachines laptop, Fusion based

I am right now in Hannover, Germany as a one of biggest IT shows - CeBIT is to begin. Being true to myself I couldn't help and made a stop at Saturn, just to check if there is something interesting on sale. Acer made my detour useful as they had eMachines laptop with AMD E-350 platform inside. As you can check from the picture, if it is to judge by specification, it is a good laptop. For less than 400 Euros, you have yourself 4GB or RAM, 320 GB HDD, Windows 7 Home and all the normal stuff you expect like Wi-Fi card, average screen and keyboard. Best part is that this laptop will bring you pretty good battery life, HD playback and it can even run some games - all which is good in our book.  

ViewSonic Viewpad 10s is tablet based on NVIDIA Tegra 2

If you are reading mobile world news these days from WMC in Barcelona, you are probably aware that there is more and more of mobile devices with Tegra 2 chip inside. I was lucky enough to grab a short hold of one of pre production samples from Viewsonic - Viewpad 10s to be precise.

I didn’t spend much time looking for design and manufacturing quality as they will improve in production models, but instead I was focused on performance and overall experience. As expected, Angry Birds were really flying on this tablet, but we discovered another, very interesting feature. Screen is wide, with 1024x600 pix resolution and beside much more pixels compared to common 800x480 resolution in Android world, combined with physical size it add another interesting benefit. I was able to zoom out enough to have sling and target on the same screen, and at the same time birds were big enough to precisely manipulate them in shooting targets.

Just for showing off power of new NVIDIA offering, I did try Dungeon Defenders. They worked like a charm, and although I don’t like gameplay on this kind of devices, I couldn’t help but to be amazed with overall visual quality. They improved one level up after hooking up to HDTV, with game screen on display at both devices simultaneously. For this kind of performance, you need a lot of graphic power, and just to show you what I am talking about, I run Quadrant benchmark which ended in impressive score of 2128 points, almost doubling Nexus One result with same version of Froyo OS.

Best part is still yet to come as Viewpad 10s has HDMI output (full size) for connecting to HD TV set. Games and videos are flying, and I was really impressed. At the last moment I was informed that in the latest firmware (will be in implemented in final product) there will be USB host support, and it will be possible to connect HID device like mouse or keyboard to it, and at the same watch the screen on HD TV. As expected, video reproduction was flawless, with same space for improvement in up-scaling department.

If you are still asking yourself if it is good, answer is very loud yes. There are many things to be sorted, like no Android market access, but it looks good, very good, especially if price don go over $500. Last info is that Viewsonic plans to introduce two different models, one with 3G connectivity to be sold via telecom providers, one with WiFi connection available for end users in IT shops.

Crysis 2 beta leaked to torrent sites

For the first person shooter gamers, there are not so many games anticipated as much as Crysis 2. First part was known to bring even the most powerful PC rigs to the snail speed, but, on the other hand it offered one of the best looking graphics all around. If you didn't tried to play Crysis when it launched and a few years latter, you should try it - with new hardware it is completely different, much better experience. Very enthusiastic developers from Crytek team promised that Crysis 2 will again be a milestone for  visual quality in PC games, but with out high hardware requirements. It comes to no surprise that so many gamers were anticipating March release, but in unexpected turn of events, one of final internal beta build appeared on various torrent site yesterda. Many will not resist a temptation and probably will download this unfinished build, hoping it will work good and that they will enjoy premium experience sooner then scheduled. But, is it good for, well anybody? For Crytek, not good at all - this will hurt their PC sales and leave them with a question if they want to invest that much effort when they start to work on their next title. For PC gamers, in very short term and with some luck, they can enjoy some of the best eye candies out there. You can count this as a good thing, but be prepared for few consequences. This will probably postpone release date for two reasons - publisher will want to introduce more anti-theft measures, and developer will try to differentiate final version from beta as much as possible. On the longer run, one of the major hits for PC gaming market will be an undersell, making this market lower appealing comparing to console one. I for certain hope that for good of all of us, Crytek has some evasive moves ready, and believe that PC demo announcement could help to remedy situation.

Nokia and Microsoft are sleeping togather, Google may join.

After so many rumors in past few days, NOKIA move toward Microsoft WP7 mobile OS as their leading platform is not that much a surprise, but is something to think about. For the moment, this move open far more questions than it answers, but one thing is certain - NOKIA needed to to do something, and as questionable as this move is, it is still far better then no move at all. If we put aside discussion if the company should instead embrace Android, it still be good to know what were the reason for this choice. It wouldn't surprise me that answer is mix of several different factors - after all, Android market compared to WP7 market is much more mature, with several key manufacturers like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola having a really strong offerings, and joining the race this late wouldn't be easy even for NOKIA. On the other hand, Microsoft fore sure want to reclaim marketshare and this is buy for best move they could make at this moment. Knowing this facts, they probably offered much better deal then Google did. While many NOKIA customers won't be so happy about new events, I believe that this is good move for NOKIA as they recognized potential of WP7 and understand that Microsoft will do almost everything in their power to push this OS as strong as they can.