Need For Speed: Shift Review

Need For Speed was a well known series when it came to illegal street racing, police chases, crazy crashes, and other arcade racer type features. But now all that has changed in the new Need For Speed: Shift game; where it takes a more realistic (and legal) approach to racing, with just a little arcade flair added in.

The game starts you out very suddenly– it drops you into an insanely powerful BMW and gets you to run a test lap to configure your optimal difficulty settings. You can retry the lap, of course, and also manually change the difficulty at any point in the game.

The first thing that I noticed when I started playing the game was that the controls were a lot more precise than Forza 3 or Gran Turismo 5. I found that if I jerked the stick off to the side around corners, the car would go off the track, you had to make smoother moves on the wheel to be able to keep your car under control. Being a long time Forza 2 player, this took a little getting used to. However, when I started getting the hang of it, it was great.

The game features plenty of great tracks to race on; from tight ovals to wide open road courses. It has a nice blend of real world tracks like the Laguna Seca, Road America, and the Nurburgring– as well as some purely fictitious tracks. But what good are the tracks if you don’t have any cars to race them on? Thankfully, NFS: Shift supplies you with an insane number of cars to buy an use; from old favorites like the Nissan 350z or the Mitsubishi Evolution IX– to new and rare cars, like the 2010 Camaro SS (My personal favorite), Bugatti Veyron, Pagani Zonda, and Lamborghini Reventon.

 

Someday I'll have one of these.... in real life....

But enough about the cars, let’s talk about the career mode.

Career mode is probably where you’ll be spending most of your time in the game, and for good reason. The career is great! It starts out like any other car game would– you get a few grand, buy a crappy car, and race it until you can get more cars. Simple! However, that’s where the similarities end. NFS:Shift has a somewhat different approach to it’s career mode. Most racing games focus on winning money as your main objective. But in this game, money is only a small part of the game. The main idea is to get stars and points by doing cool things on the track. Points and stars work pretty much seamlessly together, while your racing you earn points by doing different things on the track. Your actions are put into two categories: Precision and Aggression. You gain precision points for doing things like mastering corners, following the racing line, making clean passes, etc. On the other hand, you can gain aggression points by drafting, drifting, hitting cars, and stuff like that. No matter how you do it, though, the points all go together in the end.

You earn stars by doing different things, too. You get stars for getting a podium finish, getting a certain amount of points, or completing a specific task like beating a lap time  or spinning out a certain amount of opponents. Stars pretty much are your key to moving through the game. The game is divided into 4 tiers– each having a bunch of races in them. To unlock new tiers and races, you need a certain amount of stars to pass through. This really isn’t that hard to do, considering the vast amount of races that are given to you. Ive unlocked tier 3 already but I’m only halfway through tier 2.

One of the great things about this game is that you aren’t always restricted to the cars that you own in the game. For lots of the races (Like time trials and drift competitions) the game gives you a set car to use. Another cool way to try out cars is the car battles– this lets you choose between two rival cars (eg. Camaro SS vs Challenger Concept) and then race them in a best of three match. The first match starts with you in the lead, and you have to try and maintain your lead to the finish line or get ahead of your rival by 5 seconds. The second race starts with you in the back, and you have to pass the car in front of you (not as easy as it sounds). If those two races go into a tie, you go into overtime. One final race, where the cars are side-by-side.

Now, the game may have a great selection of tracks and cars, and a great career mode but…. how do the cars feel when you’re in them?

Fast.

The sense of speed in this game is unreal! Even in my first car, hitting 100mph was an adrenaline rush. In supercars like the Bugatti Veyron, I was hitting 200mph on a straight and I couldn’t even stay on the road! In this game, you always have to stay on your toes– flying around corners at breakneck speeds is crazy, and one tire going off the road can result in disaster. Many a time have I been in first place only to be ripped off the road on the last lap.

The graphics in the game are amazing as well– the cockpit views are extremely detailed and the cars and tracks are, too.

Overall, I think this game is a really good simulation title, with just a hint of arcade-style gameplay thrown in for fun. Tons of levels, cars, and the online play make for great replay value. Overall, I think this game should feel welcome in any racing game fan`s collection.

 

PS3 vs XBOX 360

It seems like the battle between Sony’s Playstation 3  and Microsoft’s XBOX 360 has been going on since the beginning of time. Fans of each console arguing and arguing and well…. getting absolutely nowhere. In this article, I am going to try and give my most unbiased thoughts on both systems (seeing as I own both) and let you decide which one you like better. Because when it all boils down to it, it’s YOUR choice.

So, I’m going to compare the consoles in three different areas: Price, Media Sharing, and Online Play. Starting with…

Price

Both consoles (The PS3 Slim and the Xbox 360 Elite) are priced at $299.99. However, they are not actually priced the same. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Here’s why:

The Xbox console is $299.99. The wireless adapter is an extra $80. Xbox Live subscriptions are around $110 per year. So if you do the math, you actually spend $489.99 on the 360… and still $299.99 on the PS3. Not to mention the fact that the price keeps going up every year for the Xbox–after five years it goes over $1000!

Media Sharing

The Xbox 360 is legendary for media sharing. It can stream music, movies, and pictures from Windows Media Center on your PC. The only problem with this is that it cannot stream from Mac OSX or Linux without (sometimes costly) third-party software. On the other hand, the PS3 is completely compatible with almost any configuration you can through at it.

Online Play

PS3 has great online play, I’ll give it that. Not only do you not have to pay for access, but you also don’t have to pay to add on a wireless adapter. Why? Because it already has one! This is one of the problems with Xbox Live; you can’t just get the console and play. When I got my Xbox 360, I had to wait MONTHS to get online service! When I got my PS3 I was able to play online the same day!

Of course, even with they extra price and hassle you just can’t beat the features and user base of XBL. Sure, the PS3 has many users and great online play right out of the box, but Xbox Live is a whole other story. First, you get the great voice chat and voice messaging  of Xbox Live. Now, the PS3 does support voice chat but hardly anyone uses it. The 360 COMES WITH A HEADSET!!!! Has this ever occurred to you Sony? Next to that, you get…. well not much. Both the 360 and PS3 have online downloadable game stores, but I really have to give it to Sony here for the great, easy to use design of the PlayStation Store. Not to mention that the PlayStation Store has more games than the Xbox service offers. On the other hand, Xbox offers add-ons to games that you already have. Sony doesn’t do this (for most of it’s games).

 

Now, my personal favorite console is the 360, but that’s just my opinion. I put all this info here in order to try and guide you towards making a sensible purchase. Now, I’m not telling you to go buy one or the other– I just put down the basic info, you can do the rest.

 

20 Cool Features In Microsoft Office 2010

It’s time. Time for a new version of Office, that is. The last version, Office 2007, sported a host of new features that some people loved, and some people hated. Ironically, this was around the same time Windows Vista was released– an operating systems with a slew of problems. Now, Windows 7 has just been released, and it’s supposed to be the real deal. It’s supposed to be able to switch most of the Vista skeptics to the newest software. Now, just around the same time as the Windows 7 release, the beta of the new Office 2010 was leaked to the public. As with Win7, the new Office is supposed to be able to convince old Office 2003 users to finally switch to the latest software. Surprisingly, I agree with them! After downloading the beta, I have had a few weeks to mess around with the new version of office, and I am pleased with the results. So, without any further ado, I will show you the top 20 features in the new Office suite that will make it worth it’s hefty price tag!

20. Background Removal In MS Word It’s happened to all of us at one point in time– you need to insert a picture of a person or a product into your document, but that darn background is too distracting! Now, in earlier versions of Word, this was a royal pain in the @%^. You would need to rely on (sometimes costly) third party programs such as Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net or even *gasp* Paint. In the new Word, however, removing the backgrounds of (simple) photos is a breeze! Just select your picture, go to Format, and select Remove Background. Easy! But wait, It’s not done quite yet. The purple stuff is not part of the picture. Actually, the purple is the part that is going to be removed. Word does a pretty darn good job of detecting the background in most pictures, but as you can see here the bottom of the poor puppy’s neck is chopped off… Brutal! Luckily, there is a simple way to get around this; just go to Mark Areas to Keep and your cursor will be turned into a pencil. Now, just draw a line roughly across the area that you want to keep and… Boom! The puppy is saved! Well… sort of. As you can see, the bottom part of the puppy’s neck is still somewhat chopped off. But a quick resizing of the box around the image will fix that.

At last... PETA is satisfied

There! That was simple, wasn’t it? Now all you have to do is click “Keep Changes” and you’re done! Way to go!

19. Taking Screenshots Within Word So, you’re doing a report on a new product in Word and you stumble upon a clip of that item on the Best Buy website. You want to snag that piece of the site and paste it into your document. Sounds simple, right? Right?! …..yeah. Back in the old days, you would have had to take a screenshot of the site using the good ‘ol print key button, then you would have had to insert it into Paint, crop the area you want, copy that area, create a new paint document, insert the clipping into that document, then save it, then in word you would insert that saved image into your document! …WHEW! Thankfully, those stressful days are over. In the new Word, there is a handy “Screenshot” button under the “Insert” tab. Click on it, and it will bring up a quick thumbnail view of all the windows you have open. If you click on one of the thumbnails, it will instantly take a screenshot of the entire page and paste it into Word. Handy, eh? But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You see, if you don’t click one one of the thumbnails and look down a little instead, you will see this little guy:

Here I am!

If you select this, it will bring you to the window of your choice and then turn your cursor into a pair of cross hairs. You can then select the area that you want to take a screenshot of and voilà!

18. Redesigned Print Dialog Now, one of the things I do a lot with Word (or any other Office application for that matter) is print stuff. Now, back in Office 2007, Print Preview (A feature I used a lot) was separate from the main print dialog. This was quite annoying as I would have to keep switching back and forth between the two dialog boxes. Now, however, Microsoft has gotten the brilliant idea to merge the two together and form one sweet print dialog.

It took years to do it, but Microsoft has finally grown some brains

The picture is pretty self-explanatory. You get the print preview on the right, and the options on the left. How easy can it get? Also, if you want more detailed options, just click on the “Page Setup” link.

For all you hardcore printer geeks out there

17. Videos and Video Editing In PowerPoint Let me set the scene for you: you need to do a big presentation on a new product that you have just created. Instead of opening a separate program (mainly windows media player…. yuk!) to play a video showing off the ultra-cool features of the product, you just play the video right inside PowerPoint! The crowd goes wild! All thanks to PowerPoint 2010. That’s right, you can insert videos directly into PowerPoint 2010. But that’s not all. Not only can you insert videos from your computer, but you can even insert videos from the web! Three cheers for Microsoft! Now, you may think that I’m done ranting about the videos, but I’m not. Theres more. Not only can you add videos to your presentations but you can also edit them! Right inside PowerPoint! Just right-click on the video that you want to edit and then click “Trim Video”. This will bring up a dialog that lets you select the start and end points of your video. So you can cut a 2 hour video into a 10 minute chunk. Not Final Cut-like editing, but it works.

16. Compressing PowerPoint Presentations

So, after you finally finish off that awesome slideshow jam-packed with sweet animations, pictures, and video– you want to send it to a friend via email. The only problem with this is that videos and pictures take up a lot of space. So your slideshow ends up being about 50MB big. No problem! The guys at Microsoft have got you covered! Just go to File>Info>Media Size and Performance

Now, as you can see in the picture. It says that media files in my presentation take up 274 MB!!! Umm…. Let’s try and get that number down into the double-digits. Just click on Compress Media and a dialog like this will pop up:

Now as you can see, there are three options for reducing the size of your presentation; Presentation Quality, Internet Quality, and Low Quality. Let’s choose Internet Quality and see what happens. Basically, a window pops up showing the progress of the compression. After that’s done, It’ll tell you how much space you saved and how big your presentation is now. Mine went down to 50 MB! Now, that’s still a reasonably big file, but it pales in comparison to the 274 MB monster it used to be. Now imagine how much space you would gain using low quality……

15. Easier Setup In Outlook

Remember the old Outlook setup? Where you had to enter in all that pesky server info? I did. Now, it was quite a breeze for me because I have that stuff memorized. But what about people who don’t know what their server is? This is where Outlook 2010 comes in. Now, when you’re setting up your account it gives you the option of setting it up manually or doing it automatically. Now, because I never tried the feature before, I did automatic.

All you really have to do is enter your name, email address, and password. Then, it searches for your email server, contacts it, and proceeds to set up your account. This took about 2 minutes for me, but it may be longer or shorter for you.

Now, unfortunately I didn’t snag any screenshots of the setup, but just imagine the normal Outlook setup window… with a lot less text fields.

14. Text Messaging in Outlook

If you text a lot with your friends or colleagues, you may like this feature of the new Outlook. Basically, you can configure Outlook to send and receive text messages from your phone, as well as regularly update your Outlook calendar on your phone. It also let’s you forward emails to your phone.

Your new best friend

Setup is straightforward– just enter some simple information like your service provider URL, user ID, and password. Now, because I don’t have a phone I can’t fully test this out. But what I do know is that you phone owners out there may want to check this out.

13. Easier Organization in Outlook

Now, back in the old days (old days being a few years ago) when you wanted to email someone you had to manually type in their email address or select their name from your contacts. Doesn’t sound that hard, right? Well, that is right. It doesn’t sound that hard… if you are only emailing the person occasionally. What if you have someone that you write to on a daily basis? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just a button that would automatically bring up a new blank message with their name already in the address field? Well, your prayers have been answered.

In the new Outlook, there is a button under the “Home” tab that does exactly that. It’s called “Team E-Mail”. Basically, when you click on it, it brings up a dialog asking what you want to name it and what action you want it to preform.

In this case, I called the action “Email Mom”. Then, I told it to create a new message with my mom’s email address in the field down below. Simple! Once you are done this, a little button will pop up in your ribbon and whenever you want to email someone again, just click it!

12. “Themes” in Excel

Themes in Excel, eh? No. Not the kind of themes that you’re thinking about. Basically, these “Themes” are for your cells. You could have note themes and calculation themes and such. To understand it more, see the picture below.

These little guys

11. Advertisements and Coupons In Publisher

Say that you are making a newsletter for you’re business and you want to grab the reader’s attention with a snappy “50% OFF” ad or maybe a coupon that they can use at your store. These are both great ways of drawing customers to your business. Now, thanks to the new Publisher, you can make great attention-getters, coupons, or advertisements in seconds! Just go to Insert>Advertisements and then your ready to go!

Snappy

10. One-Click Calendars in Publisher

Calendars. In Publisher. Easily. These are three words that took Microsoft over a decade to finally implement into a version of Publisher. Now, I’m not saying that in older versions of Publisher you couldn’t make calendars. In fact, over 70% of Publisher users make newsletters. What do those newsletters contain? Usually calendars. In older versions of Publisher, creating calendars was relatively easy, but even that pales in comparison to Publisher 2010. Yes, Microsoft finally got it right. They made a calendars button. Hover over it, and you are greeted with a dropdown showing you many different kinds of calendar themes. The themes are arranged nicely, too. You get three separate sections of the menu; “This Month”, “Next Month”, and “Recently Used”. Click on one, and the calendar appears in your document! What a concept!

The great minds of Microsoft at work

9. Send Any Document As A PDF

This is a truly great feature. PDF conversion right inside Office! By Office I mean every office application. Anything from Word to Publisher has this feature. You can find it by going to File>Share>Create PDF/XPS Document. It should look like this:

8. Tons Of New PowerPoint Themes

One of the easiest ways to spice up any dreary meeting is to add a cool theme to your presentation. Now, PowerPoint 2007 had tons of great themes, but after almost three years stuck with those themes, they’ve started to become repetitive. Thankfully, PowerPoint 2010 brought many great new themes with it– including my personal favorite: Pushpin (Pictured below)

Solid advice

8. Broadcast A PowerPoint Presentation Over The Web

Get rid of crowded rooms full of bored people and projectors forever! Seriously, it’s the digital age, everything businesses need to do can be done on computers now. Meetings included! The PowerPoint development team caught onto this pretty quickly and devised a way to do this. They call it…. well, nothing actually. Just a little button under the “Slide Show” tab that says “Broadcast Presentation”. Straightforward. I like that.

Basically what it does is gives you a link to a site. You send the link to everyone else who wants to see the slideshow and they put it in their browser. You play the slideshow and they can see it in real-time on the other end! Brilliant!

7. Captions in Word

Ever wanted to add a caption to a picture in Word before? If you were writing a report or an instruction manual, this may be important. Unfortunately, in previous versions of Word you had to manually position your blinker (I really don’t know the technical term for it) under the picture (which could really be a pain) and then type your caption. The problem with this was that it was way too annoying! Well, Microsoft has solved this in Word 2010. Just select your picture and go to the “References” tab. Then go to “Caption” and type your caption! Done!

My only problem with this is that there is no way to get rid of the “Figure 1″. There is a button that is called “Remove Label”, though. Now, i’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if I check that box it will remove the label. Right? No. Actually, it just reduces the “Figure 1″ to “1″, which is even weirder, because the reader will have no idea what the “1″ is there for. Hopefully this will be fixed in the final version.

6. Artistic Effects

Were you ever working on a project and then suddenly realized that the pictures in it were boring enough to cure insomnia? Well then Microsoft’s new “Artistic Effects” feature is right for you! Artistic Effects lets you take a picture like this:

And in a few seconds you can turn it into this!

Sweet. Want to do this yourself? Just select your picture, got to Format>Artistic Effects. It should bring down a little box and let you choose from tons of effects!

5. Brightness and Contrast Options

Are the pictures in your document or presentation too bright? Are they too dark? Do they need some minor corrections to make them look right or some silly tweaks to make them look awesome? Well, look no further than the Color Corrections button (Format>Color Correction)! It will give you a dropdown box showing you all the different preset tweaks that you can do and also it will give you a “Picture Correction Options” button for you to use if you want to do some advanced editing.

4. Compatibility Mode in Word

Compatibility in Office is a hassle. Because of all the new features in new versions of Office, Microsoft had to change the file type to better suit the new features. However, when you try and view older files in newer versions of Office (Especially Word and PowerPoint) the file layout may change, which causes problems. Word 2010 fixes this problem quite nicely. In the File menu, you get a button called “Compatibility Mode”. Basically, when you click it, it converts your older file type to the newest version. Great for businesses and home users alike.

3. Easy Business Information In Publisher

This is great for all you businesses out there that like to put out newsletters. Remember back in the old versions of Publisher, where inserting business cards was a pain? Well those days are over! In the new publisher, theres a button under the “Insert” tab called “Business Information”. Basically, it’s a dropdown box with tons of different styles of business information.

 

It looks like this

2. Design Checker in Publisher

Have you ever sent out a newsletter, then realized a few days later that there were mistakes in it? Too much spacing between the margin? Is it not optimized for commercial printing? Did you misspell a website address or a email address? Well, now you can run the “Design Checker” (Found in the File menu) which will go through your page for you and find mistakes for you. Now, you can send out the perfect newsletters anytime!

1. Email Preview in Publisher

Microsoft has done lots of people a favor by streamlining the way people send Publisher documents to each other via email. They have added a neat little button that will automatically convert your document to HTML and send it to someone. But how is that email going to look in HTML? Are there going to be formatting errors? Now, with Microsoft’s new handy “Email Preview” button, you can see what your recipient is going to see! All it does is open your page as an HTML document, inside your web browser. Simple, but effective.

 

Well, that’s all for this super-long article! I hope you enjoyed it! (You better have, because I spent several days writing it) Also, you may notice that I have not covered things like OneNote and Project. That’s because I don’t use those programs. If I don’t use them, then I couldn’t give an accurate view of them. So if you want to learn about those programs, you can go and find them on another site. I’m sure plenty of people use those programs and are willing to write about them.

 

Gran Turismo 5:Prologue Review

The Gran Turismo series is without question one of the best game franchises out there. They have always had a passion for realism and fun, and they took it to a whole new level in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. However, the game does feel a little weak… but not too much.

 

Now, although the game is very good, it seems to lack in sheer content. There are only 6 tracks to choose from (although each is beautifully rendered) and only roughly 40 cars. Not to mention the lack of some major car companies, like Lamborghini. Why is this? Well, this whole game is actually a demo of sorts–hence the prologue. The full Gran Turismo 5 game is scheduled for release sometime in March 2010, with realistic damage and over 950 cars and 20 tracks, among other tasty tidbits like NASCAR and WRC racing. But unfortunately, I’m not here to review Gran Turismo 5– I’m here to review Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. So, without any further ado, let’s play!

Now, although the game features a disappointing 4o or so cars, each one is fully enjoyable. The cockpits are rendered very realistically and each car has its own unique feel and sound. Collecting each car is truly wonderful and it actually feels like you are driving. Even details like the navigation screens and the heads-up display (à la Corvette Z06) are included in the cockpits.

Now, GT5 does lack a car upgrade feature like many of its competitors, but I don’t feel like that’s necessary. The cars are so realistic that you get that feeling of speed even if you are going only 100mph. In other car games you can put 1000hp on a Ford Focus and go well over 250, but you still don’t really feel the speed. But with this game the speed comes through very nicely even in a 95hp Suzuki Cappuccino, and I like it.

However, I was sort of lying when I said that there was no upgrade feature. It turns out that when you beat the game (get third or better in every event) you get the ability to customize features on your car without spending money, which in turn increases your performance points. In some events in the S class races (another thing you unlock) you need to keep your car within a certain amount of performance points to participate in the race.

 Overall, I think that Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is a very realistic and solid racing game, and that there is a lot of detail in things like cockpits. However, just due to the fact that there is so little content in the game–I’m giving it a 3.5 out of 5.

TV Buying Guide

It seems like more and more people are making the switch to HDTV’s nowadays. Even I just upgraded last year! But are YOU ready to take the plunge into the new realm of HDTV? If you are, then you might want to keep reading.

Now, the first major thing that you need to decide on when buying a new set is whether to get an LCD or a Plasma display. Now, LCD’s (Liquid Crystal Display) are great for the home theater and average TV watching because they fare better when the room is dark. However, when exposed to high levels of light, they tend to experience glare–which is quite annoying. Plasmas do better in high-light situations, because glare is almost nonexistent. So they would do very well in living rooms, bedrooms, and such. They are also great for gaming, as they don’t display motion blur as LCD’s do. They also have quicker response times. One caveat of Plasma TV’s is the fact that they experience burn-in. If one object on the screen stays the same for too long (A channel logo or a news ticker, for example) it will burn in to the screen, and when you change the channel, the image will still be there for a brief period of time. In extreme cases, burn-in is permanent. However, the image usually disappears after a while.

The next thing you want to find out when buying a TV is what size you want to get it in. Now, some people think that when it comes to TV’s, bigger is better. However, that is not always the case. It depends on the environment in which you are going to be using your TV. It is important to note that the bigger the TV is, the farther away you have to sit from it to be able to enjoy the experience (Ever sat in the front row of an IMAX theater? It’s not fun). Typically, 30-40 inch TV’s are best for bedrooms or other small spaces, as the minimum recommended distance from a 30 inch display is only 3 feet. For a 40, it’s around 4.5 feet. A TV that is anywhere from 47 to 65 inches will feel right at home in your living room or home theater. The min. viewing distance of a 47 inch TV is right around 6 feet, whereas a 65 inch is a massive 8 feet! Note that when you want to find out the minimum viewing distance for a TV, just multiply the size of the tv (in feet) by 1.5.

So there, two main things that you need to know when buying a new tv! Have fun!

I Got My New Computer!

Now, in the past few months I have been pretty silent. Not making any videos or posting anything to my blog. Well, It’s because that back in early September my 3-yr old Dell Dimension 9200c bit the dust (apparently the hard drive failed) and I was left without a computer. Fortunately for me, I ordered a new Dell Inspiron system and received it! Here’s the unboxing video.

New PS3 Slim Is Faster, Quieter and Cheaper?! Sign Me Up!

Over the past few months, rumors have been circulating around the ‘net saying that a PS3 Slim is going to be released sometime in the near future. Well, I’m happy to say that they were right about that, and it seems that the new PS3 is even better than we predicted.

Geeks All Across The World Are Drooling Over This Picture... Including Myself

The PS3 Slim features 2 USB ports (Just like the original), and comes in much larger sizes than the original PS3 (120 and 250 GB options are availible). Also, the new PS3 is faster and quieter than the original PS3! Sweet! Not to mention that it’s 50% smaller (as the name suggests).

However, Sony has removed the ability to run other operating systems on the Slim (though undoubtedly hackers will find ways around this). Also, we will not be seeing any new features added to the PS3 such as PS2 backwards compatability.

The PS3 Slim will ship in early September with a price tag of $299.

Speed Up Your Old Computer For Free!

Most of us have a couple of old computers kicking around the house. Whether they lie in the garage, basement or attic– these computers waste precious space. However, what may seem like an old junker can actually be a pretty useful computer with the right tune-ups.

What are these tune-ups you ask? Well, it all starts with a complete operating system makeover– you will need to get rid of your old windows operating system (Windows 95,98,ME,2000 and XP) and slap on a fresh batch of Ubuntu Linux. To do this, just follow the steps below.

1. Back-up your important files (pictures,music,documents) to an external hard drive or a set of DVD’s. Installing linux will delete everything on your system so back-up what you want to keep.
2. Point your browser to http://tinyurl.com/2cm3o5 to download the Ubuntu ISO (it’s free). This will take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours depending on your connection (keep in mind that you are downloading an entire operating system here).
3. Once the Ubuntu ISO file is done downloading, you will need to burn it to a disk in order for it to be useable. Now, you can’t just drag and drop the file to the disk for it to work– you will need to download a CD/DVD burning program and burn the disk using that. My personal favorite is InfraRecorder, which you can get for free at http://infrarecorder.org. Now, just pop a disk into your computer and burn it!
4. Once you have the disk in your computer, you will need to restart it and enter your setup menu by pressing F8 alot (if that dosent work, then try F2 F10 or F12). Then, select the boot from disk option and hit enter. Now, ubuntu will give you a few options to choose from. The only one that you need to be concerned with is the first one: Start or Install Ubuntu. Just select this option and hit enter.
5. Now, the great thing about Ubuntu is that you can run the full operating system straight from the disk! This lets you try it out before you install it. Once you play around with it for a while and you are ready to install, just go to your desktop and double-click the “Install” icon. This will bring up the setup dialog.
6. Setting up Ubuntu is pretty straightforward. The only part that you might have trouble with is when it asks you whether or not to partition  your hard drive. Now, because this is an old computer that isn’t very useful while running Windows we don’t need to partition it. Just select the option to format the whole hard disk, and go on your merry way.

There! Once you have gone through and installed Ubuntu, you now have a quicker computer that is ready to be used! This is great for people who just want to check email, instant message, do simple office work, work with pictures and do other simple stuff.

Got questions? Email me at techtalkwithchad@gmail.com or send a comment in the box below.

Google Caffeine: Better Than Bing?

 Google has just recently launched the developers preview of the new iteration of the famous Google search engine–dubbed “Google Caffeine”. It promises to improve speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search. But does it live up to that promise?

In my purely non-scientific tests, I compared the Google Caffiene developer preview (www2.sandbox.google.com) to the current version of Google (www.google.ca) and also to Microsoft’s Bing search engine (www.bing.com) and I judged them in three different category’s: Speed (how long it takes to come up with results), Relevance (how accurate the engine was in it’s results) and Index Size (how many results there were). So, let’s see the results!

Speed

Google caffeine came in first on this test– a quick search of the keywords “ipod touch 1g case” on caffeine took a mere 0.08 seconds, whereas good ‘ol Google took 0.11 seconds. (We were unable to test Bing on this one because time is not displayed in the search results).

Winner: Google Caffeine

Relevance

Again– Google Caffeine took the cake on this test with a remarkable 100% relevance rating! (10 out of 10 results brought us to an ipod touch 1g case). Bing and regular Google tied for second with 90% relevance.

Winner: Google Caffeine

Index Size

Can you guess what search engine won on this test? ‘Cmon– take your best shot! If you guessed Google Caffeine, then you are absolutely right! Caffeine blew all the other engines out of the water– bringing back a whopping 8,050,000 (8.05 million) results for “ipod touch 1g case”. Google came in second with 612,000 results and Bing came in last with a pathetic 377,000 results.

Winner: Google Caffeine

Case Closed.

The New PSP Go Looks Promising, But Is It Worth It?

At last month’s E3 press conference, Sony announced that it would be updating it’s successful PSP line yet again. This time it will he a more substantial upgrade than the PSP 3000 was. They call it: the PSP Go.

The PSP Go let's you play your favorite PSP games, as well as PS3 games!

The PSP Go (PSP-N1000) will feature a cool slider design, much like some new smartphones. Sliding the screen up will reveal all your controls, while sliding it down will allow you to store your PSP easily in your pocket.

The PSP Go is about 30% size of the PSP 3000 and about 15% lighter. The screen is a 3.8 inch LCD as opposed to the PSP 3000’s 4.2 inch display. This will help when you are traveling and want to carry it around with you in your pocket.

The new PSP will feature wifi (as in older PSP models) as well as bluetooth connectivity. This will allow you to use all bluetooth Playstation 3 controllers. A great new feature.

The PSP Go gives the classic UMD format the boot in favor of downloading the games directly from the Playstation Store. The PSP will feature 16GB of internal flash storage, which can be upgraded to 32GB with an external memory card. However, it is unclear if existing UMD games can be downloaded to the PSP Go for no extra charge. Some rumors suggest that Sony will supply kiosks that allow UMD owners to exchange their games for free downloads. However, this has not been confirmed.

The PSP Go has a release date of October 1,2009 and a suggested retail price of $355. But will it be worth the extra cash? We’ll just have to wait and find out.