Gadgetoid

This doesn’t apply to those of you lucky enough to already be rocking a brand new “brick” style MacBook Pro, but for those of us left in the dust there are other, most probably more sensible, upgrade paths available.

The compromises in the new MacBook Pro- need I mention the adaptor-hungry DisplayPort and the lack of a FireWire 400 port (instead opting for only 800) necessitating another adaptor - mean that it is not yet a viable upgrade for many old MacBook Pro owners. A new edition of OSX is on the horizon, too, which puts upgrades even further into the future for any MacBook Pro owner who doesn’t absolutely need the extra oomph. If we plumbed for the 2gb RAM option, shying away from Apple’s obscene prices, then there’s still a significant amount of performance that can be had by upgrading to 4gb.

And now you can do that for a measly £45! A hell of a lot less than the difference between your MacBook Pro and a shiny new one… particularly if you want to get a reasonable upgrade which will set you back nearly £2000.

Crucial was kind enough to send me a 4gb RAM kit so that I could run through the upgrade procedure and test the perceived performance gains for myself.

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Episode 1 of our Audio Podcast is up on t’internet ready for you to listen in. You can subscribe to our podcast with the following URL http://www.dxdec.com/gadgetoid/gadgetoid.xml

In this first episode we take a look at some notable games in the first half of 2008. It’s our first ever episode, so bear with us, we’ve made every effort to achieve good sound quality and, with the help of some Sennheiser microphones, a generous amount of filtering and some miraculous almost uninterrupted peace and quiet, we believe we’ve achieved it.

Enjoy!

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Review by Johnus Maximus

Warriors Orochi 2 is the follow up to last years crossover between two of Koei’s best selling hack and slash franchises - Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. Released in September 2008, it is also available for PS2 and soon the PSP.

Developed by Omega Force and published by Koei the game seems to take a step forward in offering the player more characters and levels, yet also manages to take a step backward in terms of playability and technical competence, enough to frustrate even a die-hard Warriors fan.

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Piel Frama have really pulled out the stops with their leather HTC Touch Pro Case. Which is a shame, because after playing with the Touch Pro itself I am massively underwhelmed and utterly unable to get excited about it. But that’s a whole different story.

If you’ve picked up the HTC Touch Pro and are enjoying its generous specifications, and sexy screen, but are decidedly disappointed with the godawful case it comes bundled with then the Piel Frama HTC Touch Pro case is probably what you’re looking for. It completely blows away the Piel Frama iPhone 3g Case I reviewed recently in terms of fit, finish and functionality and is, without a shadow of a doubt, exceptionally well made.

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The AipTek MyNote is, without a doubt, an exceptional student accessory and doubles as a pretty cheap, basic A4 graphics tablet to boot at only £129.95. Unfortunately for all those OSX using students out there it does not include OSX drivers or software.

Some of the AipTek MyNote functionality is still present natively, however, plugging the tablet into a USB port on your Mac will give you full access to both its filesystem and that of any SD card inserted into it. Additionally it will automagically function as a 1:1 ratio graphics tablet in pen mode and, by going into OSX System Preferences and turning on Ink, you can even take advantage of your computers inherent handwriting recognition.

The killer feature of the AipTek MyNote, however, is its ability to digitize your notes as you write them down on A4 paper. It doesn’t do any native handwriting recognition, but instead stores your notes as vector data in easily accessible files on internal or SD storage.

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The new IXOS XHP280 both looks the business and almost certainly does the business (no, not that business). And, at £69.99 it’s definitely not unreasonably priced for a decent surge protector. It will most likely cost a lot more to replace any single piece of your A/V equipment, even if it’s a humble games console.

Unlike some cheaper alternatives IXOS swear that the XHP280 will shrug off any surge and reset to ensure continued protection of your equipment. It also comes with a generous 2meter mains cable and will protect coaxial ariels and telecoms lines from surges too.

If that’s not enough, every socket is individually labelled and colour coded, and the IXOS XHP280 comes with cable labels to help make sense of the mass of cables that would usually be plugged in.

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The SENA Dockable iPhone 3g Flip Case proved to be my favourite of the SENA batch and thus it is deserving of the first complete review.

I received a total of 5 iPhone 3g cases from SENA, representing a broad variety of their range. It was quite a mixed bunch and the Pebble-black Dockable case wasn’t immediately a clear winner because I found myself quite partial to the tough burgundy, crocodile skin effect Magnet Flipper. The only reason why the Dockable edged out the Magnet Flipper was, in fact, the semi-neutral pebble black style which I felt a little more comfortable carrying around.

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Outdoor security monitoring just got tougher, with Swann’s entry level, solid metal OutdoorCamT. With full colour day mode and black and white night mode you will be hard pushed to find a time or place that you can’t watch comfortably from the sofa in your gadget infused home.

11 infra-red LEDs provide the light necessary for night-time monitoring up to about 5 meters.

The metal casing and sun shield keep the camera secure against the elements but aren’t likely to stand up to an intentional attack, so you’re going to need barbed wire, trenches and attack dogs to back it up.

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I don’t make any attempt to hide the fact I believe that the SlingBox is the best thing since sliced bread. Although sliced bread still keeps the lead because, once toasted and covered in peanut butter, it’s very adept at taking out crappy 1980s VCRs and forcing people into the modern world.

I am, therefore, very humbled and pleased to publish Sling Media’s announcement that they’ve made the awesome SlingCatcher available to the United Kingdom so soon after the US launch

The Sling Catcher is now available (or at least should be, but they don’t appear to have got the memo yet) at Amazon and Micro Anvika for a bargain £199.99 which has immediately dispelled all fears that the $300 US price will be translated directly into pounds in the usual just-replace-the-currency-symbol manner.

In addition to being able to “catch” and play back SlingBox streams the Sling Catcher also offers a whole host of other media streaming and playback functionality making it the ultimate companion to a bedroom television.

It goes without saying that I am keeping my ear very close to the ground with respect to the Sling Catcher and will have one in my hands to produce a full review as soon as they’re available. SlingBox owners, start your drooling!

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I realize now that I must be reaching dangerous levels of geekiness; I find myself mentally adding the word “pwnage”, complete with the deliberate typographical error and associated change in enunciation, every time I see the brand name PURE. I really wish I was joking.

Now I have got that out into the open I would like to introduce the PURE i-10 iPod Dock which took me all of approximately half an hour to form a positive opinion of.

There are few products you can pick up and immediately form enough of an opinion of to warrant bashing out a review the same day. Keyboards are a good example, particularly because one can simultaneously use them and write about them. The PURE i-10 iPod Dock is another example. The moment I removed it from its packaging this very morning, witnessed its minimalist form with a gentle nod to the iPhone/ipod Touch design aesthetic and felt its quality reassuring weight I knew it was going to be a good, solid product and further testing proved that I was not far wrong.

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