Tech Junky

There is a lot riding on the shoulders of T-Mobile’s G1 Android phone. In some ways, it carries the collective hopes of Linux, open source and Google fans everywhere. It’s open, collaborative and community-based, in other words, everything the iPhone and Windows Mobile aren’t. As so many onlookers crowd around this newborn phone, there’s no way it can hold up all of their expectations—and it doesn’t.

Verdict:
The G1 phone and the Android operating system are not finished products. There are only three working Google Apps here—Gmail, Maps and Calendar—while Google Docs, Google News, Google Reader, Google Shopping, Google Images, Google Video, Blogger and Picasa are nowhere to be found. What’s the deal?

We have high hopes for third-party coders to fill in gaps Google intentionally or unintentionally left in this OS. There’s already a video player, and we’re sure VLC will try and port some kind of version over. But your question is not whether the phone will be great down the line, it’s whether or not it’s good enough for you to buy it now.

The answer depends most on who you are. Despite all the UI quirks and bad design decisions, it’s still better than other smartphone OSes out there. It’s not perfect, but for people who like tinkering, its cons are outweighed by its pros such as Gmail and the Marketplace. Hopefully Android updates and more ports of Google apps will augment not just future phones but this one too. This isn’t something you’re going to give your mom for Christmas, but if you’re an adventuresome gadget guy with some money to spend ($179) on a totally new, pretty exciting venture, then why not?

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In recent years the gaming industry has had a huge growth. We’ve seen new gaming consoles, great looking games and an increase in the number of people playing them.

We are presently in the seventh generation of video games which focuses on consoles released since 2004. The current generation is having a console battle between Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s XBox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii. A person buying a console will surely get baffled in deciding between these three. If you’ve only ever owned a PC and played online games like Party poker, then the world of gaming consoles can certainly seem confusing. One thing to keep in mind is that every machine will have it’s own plus and minus points and you need to take your desicion based on how you want to use the console.

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Fujitsu just announced their latest Lifebook A6220 laptop. The new notebook comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive, ultra wideband wireless data transfer, HDMI port, and swappable shells, which can be used to change the colour/design of your laptop. The 15.4-inch notebook has in it’s heart the Centrino 2 platform, with a p8400 Core 2 Duo processor. It has 4 GB RAM and ATI Radeon HD 3470 discrete graphics. The swappable shells come in red, purple or gold and sell for $20. The Lifebook A6220 is available at $1299 or $1499 configurations.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently revealed MacBook’s updated version. The update brings new features to the laptop including Nvidia graphics, a glass multitouch trackpad, solid state drives, LED backlit display, a thinner casing, a bit of price reduction and more cool features.

Sony has now made the Firmware 2.50 available for the PS3. The latest update brings in some cool and new features.

The new features include:

* A scene search feature has been added to the [Video] category that shows you the scenes from a video and lets you select one and watch it. You can access it from [Scene Search] in the control panel that is displayed during video playback.

* Support for Flash 9, so you can actually watch videos while surfing the net on your PS3.

* The [BD/DVD Settings] option under [Settings] is now known as [Video Settings] * Multiple video content items can be now played in order. This option is available under [Video Settings] -> [Sequential Playback]

* Improvements made to the [Sign Up for PlayStation Network] and [Account Management] options now let you create and manage an account more easily.

* Another feature has been added that allows the PS3 system or wireless controller to turn off automatically when not used for a certain period of time. This feature is available under [Settings] -> [Power Save Settings]

This firmware update brings in some good features. You can get it via the System Update option or optionally download it and use a USB to update your PS3.