Deals of the Day: MP3 Player and Power Supply for Dirt Cheap

For today's deals, we have a bit of a mix.
First, if you need a fancy MP3 player, but don't want to spend over 200 dollars, there is a deal at Buy.com for a Refurbished Philips HDD6330 30 GB MP3 Player. Not only does it have a stylish look, but also 30 GB to store mp3, wav, and wma (including protected) music files, and photos. From what I have read, it offers great sound quality, good headphones (amazing... for once), and a 2-inch color screen. All for less then 100 bucks.

Product purchase Page at Buy.com

Review of the product provided by cNet

The next item is an Eagle Vortec 700 watt power supply from Mwave.com. It is a $95 ATX power supply that is now FREE after rebate. Definitely a good deal to check out if building a new PC.

Purchase at Mwave.com

Still not enough, then.... how about a free 802.11 a/b/g Wireless Poster if you fill out this form courteous of Trade Pub. Why not?

Tokyo Game Show - Part.... Last

Now that TGS is finally over, let us finish up with a few stories that did not quite make it into the other two posts.

Halo 3, do I really need to describe it? Some of you should be playing it at this very moment. But the real news is that Halo 3 garnered really big crowds... in Japan. Gamers could not get enough of it, interesting since the Japanese stay away from senseless-violence American games, like Halo. However, it made a pretty huge impact, but will it be enough to raise the popularity of the 360 in that country as well?

The popular Soul Caliber series will soon have its fourth installment on the 360 and PS3. Not only are we getting the the crisper graphics and more "enhancements" to the fighters (just look at Ivy), there will also be an updated ring out system to make it more difficult for both sides to get off an easy win, with the use of barriers and breakable walls.

Capcom's pride and joy, Devil May Cry 4, had two new trailers and some playable demos on the show floor, and it is still impressing. Running at a smooth 60 fps at 720p on both a 360 and PS3, people only had good things to say as the action was fast and the controls were responsive. You will be able to find out the story between Nero and Dante in early 2008, with a PC version coming soon after.

For all the Katamari fans with a PS3, don't feel bad that Beautiful Katamari is Xbox only, since Jun Morikawa, game director of the series, has confirmed to 1up.com that a PS3 katamari game will be coming sometime in the future.

Again, there was so much at TGS to talk about, this is what caught our attention. The show is finally over, and we have enough to salivate over for the next year, no matter what platform(s) you own.

Tokyo Game Show Madness Part 2

In this post we will cover some of the key games that caught our attention so far. Now it is almost impossible to list everything in blog format, so we will just stick with games that caught our attention the most, and that is pretty popular coming from TGS.

Microsoft is trying to gain respect of the JRPG market with yet another product from those that brought you Blue Dragon. This one is now called Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360, and should arrive in the US by February 2008. While the game looks beautiful, and will contain about 40-50 hours of gameplay, some are saying it looks a little too much like Final Fantasy. Still, with an interesting combat ring system, we'll see if the game can get distinguished enough.

NiGHTS for the Wii is a remake of the original SEGA classic too few played. Now you can relive it with updated visuals, and cool motion controls that just seem to fit so well.

Ninja Gaiden is making a return, this time actually in new games. This first is Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360, and while only a trailer was shown so far, it seems to be as beautiful and bloody as ever, and is trying to be "the world's premier action game." The other one is Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for the DS, so you can hack and slash with a stylus now, and have an incredible time doing it wherever you are.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is making quite a splash, since it is the first time people are getting hands on with it. The graphics are beautiful, the gameplay is hot, and the story is crazy, what more do you want. Also, keep an eye out for Metal Gear Online if you want to take the action online with 16 player battles.

A new trailer for the mysterious PS3 game Afrika was shown, giving us an update on the progress of the game, this time with some more scenes of a couple in a jeep and walking around with a camera. Could it be the next Pokemon Snap... we'll just have to wait and see.

Playstation Network games are really starting to impress alot of people, with their emphasis on trying to be different and innovative yet still fun. Take Echochrome, a basic black and white puzzle game where you live in a world that seems to be dreamed up by M.C. Esher. You even have fl0wer, a sequel to the popular fl0w, that is still leaving some people scratching their heads.


Do you want to stay fit yet still play video games? The Wii should be your platform of choice, since not only are you getting WiiFit, but also similar fitness offerings from both Konami and Namco. Hopefully these will burn enough calories so you don't feel so bad drinking all that soda when playing Super Smash Brothers.

Stay tuned to Devicing for more updates.... if we still have the strength.

Images from IGN.com

Tokyo Game Show Madness Part 1

Yet another big video game event is upon us, this time in Japan, where most of the major game companies are showing off their latest products for their fans, and not just for the Japanese, but for everyone.

Sony seems to be heading the show with most of the news in some way or another applying to them. First to the general system news. The rumours that rumble will be finally brought back to the Sixaxis are indeed true, with the new and unoriginal name of DualShock 3. The controller still includes the motion controls, but now has vibration features similar to the DualShock 2.

Unfortunately, this is not the amazing "vibration for each button" controller we have heard about, but at least the basic feature is back, which Sony still says required a bit of work to coinside with the motion sensors. Almost all games from here on out will support it, and other games already out may include the feature with an update. Some bad news is that this new controller is only coming to the US and Europe in Spring 2008, while Japan gets it in November of this year.

Remote play between the PSP and PS3 is also hot news, where not only can you stream games and media stored on your PS3 to your PSP anywhere you go (as long as there is wi-fi), you can also turn the PS3 on and off remotely to save power when not using the feature. Definitely something to look out for.

There is some more bad news unfortunately. The "Xbox Live killer" Sony is working on, Home, is also delayed to Spring 2008. Also, there is still no talk of that infamous 2.00 firmware update to include XMB support in-game. Hopefully more will be announced soon.

It would seem the other big news from the show floor would be the plethora of new Kingdom Hearts games for multiple platforms. The DS has KH 358 / 2 Days, the PSP has KH Birth by Sleep, and Mobile platforms have KH Coded. All these games are different and seem to have different stories and gameplay elements.

Lastly, there is just too much buzz around Konami to not mention them today. During their press conference, they seemed to put a lot of concentration on their new Wii fitness game, and some interesting titles for portable platforms. They of coarse also continued to talk about Silent Hill 5, Winning Eleven 2008, and the big daddy of them all, Metal Gear Solid 4, which had yet another amazing trailer.

Devicing will cover the major games of the show in a later post, since more news is coming in each day. Stay tuned!

Pictures from Kotaku.com and IGN.com

I don't know which one to choose!

There are a few of us possibly considering dual-booting maybe Windows XP and one of the Linux variants for fun. Or maybe you're still trying to find a way to boot Windows and Mac OSX on the same computer.

Well, there is one person who is far ahead of us in terms of sheer numbers. Saikee, a member of the JustLinux forums, is boasting 137 operating systems on the same machine. The numbers include 3 versions of DOS (oldie but a goodie apparently), 5 versions of Windows (including 3.11!!!), and 145 different versions of Linux (dayum thats a lot).







I'm pretty sure you would be waiting for a 2 hour boot-up time while your machine finds all the operating systems it can boot up, but just to say you have all those OS's to choose from I'm sure would be fun.

HDMI vs. Component Video

A very interesting article done by Tom's Guide has analyzed the strong and weak points of using HDMI or Component Cables for your HD set-ups. The fact is that once you take away all of the bias about digital vs. analog, according to the article, you're not getting that much of a difference.

It states that HDMI cables, while having the convenience of carrying both high-def video and audio in one easy cable, is much more prone to have signal quality degrade over time. The problem is that most of the cables out there do not go under a strict quality assurance check to keep the cost down.

Component cables, while being analog, also have slight problems since a video signal needs to be converted from digital to analog and back to digital, which could cause a decrease of signal quality. However, since it is running on cheap analog technology, these cables can last a long time and run at longer distances then HDMI, while offering nearly identical picture quality.

The conclusion the article offers is that while we may be tempted to go with the newer technology, HDMI, it is not an absolute necessity since component offers nearly identical video quality, and most of the time it is cheaper as well.

Deal of the Day: SAPPHIRE Radeon X1950GT AGP

If your still hanging on to that AGP video card slot PC for whatever reason, and sick of playing Bioshock at 800x600 resolution, maybe a slight upgrade of your video card will keep you alive and kicking until your next build.

The unfortunate thing is, since hardly anyone uses AGP anymore, upper level cards are sometimes much more expensive then their PCI-Express counterparts. However, occasionally a good deal does come along, like this Sapphire Radeon X1950GT.

This card has 256MB 256-bit GDDR3, is HDCP ready, and can run most of today's games at close to max. All this for around $140 from Newegg, which is a little bit cheaper then my BFGTech Geforce 7800 GS OC AGP which was $150 after rebate a few months ago.

Whether you need it or not is up to you, it still won't give you Crysis on max settings, but as an intermediate card to hold you through till there are some more DX10 options, it may not be a bad investment if you can wait a bit more to upgrade. Just make sure you take extra power and cooling into consideration, and of coarse do all the necessary research before you buy.

Link to the card on Newegg.

Free Software: Miro Video Player

If you are a big fan of podcasts and internet provided video such as me, then you need a good and easy way to organize all of that content. I was sick of using standard RSS feeds that forced me to click on links and download all the videos manually.

That is where Miro comes in. Miro is an open-source video player that not only organizes your local media, but also handles podcast subscriptions, browsing youtube, bittorrent downloads, and handles all the formats you need, such as wmv, quicktime, h.264, avi, mpeg, divx, and xvid, and in full HD if available.

Podcasts are probably one of the most useful features of this program. It stores all of your subscriptions and list them by category. It will automatically download new episodes if you choose, and you can play it right there in the program. Once your done watching them, feel free to store them, or delete them right away with those options right in the UI.

I've been using Miro, previously Democracy Player, for a good number of months, and while it is still in beta, they are slowly fixing the bugs and making it better with each release. If you need a bit of organization, and iTunes is not your thing, then try this program out and see how easy it is.

Click here for the official site.

Steve Jobs Makes Apple Fanboys Wet Themselves... Again!

(picture from Engadget)

Sorry for the unoriginal title, but it's true. Steve Jobs gave a press conference today at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and gave a very impressive line up as well. If your crazy for Apple hand-held devices, you have a much larger selection this time then an overpriced phone.

First and foremost, probably the biggest buzz is the release of the same iPhone, but without the phone, for a few hundred dollars less. This product is now called the iPod Touch, which gives the same sleek design (this time a bit thinner) of the iPhone but now with a strictly media focus. It also includes Wi-fi capabilities (802.11 b/g) to download from iTunes when away from a computer (you listening Zune?), and to surf the web. Otherwise, your still getting the great touch-screen, and cover flow, with either 8 or 16 GBs of space for $299 and $399 respectively.

Also, for those that still want the iPhone, it would seem the price has now dropped to $399 for the 8 GB model (previously $599) since they will soon discontinue the 4GB line.

For the more traditional iPod users, Apple also announced the next generation of iPod's (now called iPod Classic) and iPod nano's. The iPod Classic looks the same, but now is a bit more rounded, and comes in the basic colors of silver and black, since its after Labor day and white is out of style. It even comes with the popular cover flow, in either 80 or 160 GB models, for $249 and $349 respectively.

The iPod nano is now a bit shorter and fatter, finally using up all the empty space with a bigger screen. Otherwise, it still supports your music, pictures, and video, with cover flow, and comes in 4 and 8 GB models, for $149 and $199 respectively. Keep in mind that you can only get the large color selection for the 8 GB model, the 4 GB one only comes in silver.

So there you go, lots of Apple news for you to digest. Check out the new Apple site with more information HERE.

Update: NBC Hooks Up with Amazon

Shortly after hearing the news that NBC and Apple parted ways in the video distribution market, now we have news of NBC's new partner: Amazon.com! They are supposedly going to use the Amazon Unbox service, their paid service to rent or buy downloaded video content, to distribute the NBC shows we know and love online.

But why Amazon? Rumors has it that while no official pricing was announced, Amazon is willing to accept the price increase demanded by NBC, as well as putting strict control on the content, both of which Apple had an objection to. Some good news for the end-users is that there may be a discount for those that buy multiple episodes, or the entire season of a show.

Stay tuned to Devicing for more details.

(Source)

Another Free Game That Doesn't Suck

Us here at Devicing have been fond of the indie games. The reason is that they are sometimes free, and some are hundreds of times better than most new games you pay upwards of $50 for. Here is yet another fantastic game you should all play.

Trackmania Nations!!!!!

It doesn't really matter if you are a fan of racing games, because this game is not only simple to pick up, but incredibly addicting (and we haven't even touched the track editor yet!)

This game looks amazingly good for a game that is only around 250 Megs.

The major purpose of this free game is to advertise not only Nadeo (the French company responsible for the TrackMania series), but also the Electronic Sports World Cup. The game records your best times and places you in the rankings with thousands of people from across the globe.

Oh, by the way, did I mention it's FREE?!

So there you have it, an incredibly simple, yet beautifully complex game that you can download for free and play online with thousands of people.

If you're interested in downloading the game go here

GoogPhone?

After the success of the Apple's iPhone, there have been speculations that other big companies will be sticking their ideas in the blender and seeing what concoction pops out.

The gossip is that Google is going at it and will create the David that will defeat the Goliath iPhone which is covering the market of overhyped superphones.......probably because it's nearly the only "superphone" people know about after advertising Apple did.

The guys at Engadget have speculated the rumors to be true and are backing it up with rumors that seem to be getting more and more specific. These rumors include a kickass mobile user interface based upon some Linux OS as well as everything being based in Java.

You Are Winner!


If Google releases this phone, many a google-lover and techie will want one, probably because it does more than the iPhone and does everything the iPhone does better, but with the possibility of a flight simulator in every application (if you haven't heard).

Free Software: And Yet It Moves

Looking for something to waste a few minutes on, then why not try out this perfect example to prove to Roger Ebert that video games CAN be an art form. In this simple yet elegant side-scrolling puzzle game, not only do you move your character left and right (and up with jumping), but also rotating the world to get through the game's two levels.

And beautiful levels they are, where they are composed entirely of pictures from crumpled up and ripped up paper. The puzzles, though slightly easy, will have you scratching your head for a few moments your first time, as you try to manipulate the game's physics, and try to avoid falling to death with a real sense of gravity.

Its short but sweet, and you can see a truly unique game that will hopefully evolve into something more in the future.

Download the game here.

Maximize Your BitTorrent Potential!

BitTorrent is a dream for downloading things fast, no matter what the file is. However, some just don't see the light, and it might be because their settings are just not set up correctly.

TorrentFreak has the answer. They just compiled a list of 20 tips that should help you get your download, and upload, rates to the max. They include the list of ISP's that are throttling BitTorrent traffic, and how to get around it, and even what are the perfect settings for your internet connection.

View the list here.

So like, Apple broke up with NBC, like OMG!

For all of those users that use iTunes to download and watch some of their favorite NBC shows, like The Office, you might be in for quite a surprise this month. Apple intends to pull down all of the network’s shows from its library due to what seems to be some contractual disagreements.

There are several stories on why this is happening. Apple is reporting that NBC requested an increase of prices of their individual episodes from $1.99 to as high as $4.99. Also, there have been previous reports of NBC looking to disallow the playing of their content on iPods and such, which is a major reason why most people download the episodes in the first place, just to crack down on piracy. For these reasons, Apple is taking down this content when they are obligated to distribute NBC’s content until their contract ends in December. NBC however is rejecting the statements made by Apple, saying that they only requested a "flexibility in wholesale pricing."

Whatever the main truth behind the story is, both sides seem to be still trying to negotiate the current situation. Niether side is really reliant on the other, but it is advantageous to both for a deal to be made, since both can benefit as online distributed video is getting more popular. Devicing will keep an eye on the story as it progresses.

(Source)