Review: Palm T|X Handheld
Posted by Brain-in-a-Jar
After hearing all the hype about Palm’s T|X Handheld, I was quite excited to actually get my hands on one. The specs looked pretty sweet… 100 mb user accessible built in storage, SD / MultiMediaCard expansion slot, MP3 and video playback on a 320 x 480 color display, and most importantly, Wi-Fi. Having now had the device for a few weeks, and using it daily, I find it delivers everything it promised. Yet, somehow I’m left wanting more.
Features
The device itself, while still a little thick to carry in a pocket, packs in an impressive amount of functionality. Its 312 MHz processor is fast enough for just about everything you’d want to do on a system this size. MP3 and Video playback is smooth, and even the tiny speaker built into the unit can produce a surprising amount of sound in an otherwise quite room. Watching small widescreen videos is a breeze when the unit’s display is switched to landscape mode. The included Documents To Go handles Office files with little trouble, opening attachments to e-mails received on the unit (even if editing them is a little difficult without a keyboard).
Speaking of e-mail, the standout feature of this handheld is probably its 802.11b Wi-Fi connectivity. While the connection is occasionally inexplicably slow, the T|X can communicate with Wireless B and Dual-Mode access points employing WEP, WPA, or WPA 2 as well as plain old unprotected sites. 
Palm did a nice job of extending this functionality throughout the handheld’s apps; just like on your regular computer, the internet connection is not limited to one specific program, but rather is available to all internet aware apps. Browsing the web with the included browser is painless on the configuration side, but many pages don’t display well or won’t function at all due to a lack of support for the proprietary browser. Perhaps my favorite part of this integration is in the included Addit application. Whereas on non-connected handhelds it allows you to browse software titles and choose them for download and installation at the next HotSync, with the T|X you are presented with the option to download and install immediately if connected to a wireless network. Unfortunately, this on-the-fly installation process is less than perfect, and seems to fail about 1 in 8 times, but it’s still a nice feature.
Running under all of this is version 5.4 of the Palm OS. This means improved Graffiti 2 functionality, a variety of ugly color themes that will have you running back to the default, and the occasional unexplained system freeze. All in all, it’s still the little OS that could, and it’s what we’ve got until Palm really gets a Linux-based Palm OS off the ground.
Computer Connectivity
As with the other Palm handhelds I’ve reviewed, HotSync connectivity, wired or Bluetooth-based, works as advertised on a Mac with the included HotSync and Palm Desktop software, as well as to Apple’s iApps with iSync. No surprise here. As usual, though, I found myself using it with Mark / Space Software’s The Missing Sync 5 (see review) for Palm OS. With the T|X and a handful of other current generation handhelds, this means a long awaited and rather impressive level of integration with Address Book and other apps. Everything from contact pictures to multiple addresses to birthday and IM fields are now transferred flawlessly. For iCal entries, Calendars are translated into Palm Calendar Categories, and events created on the device go where you’d expect in iCal rather than just ending up untagged in your default calendar. All in all, this hardware / software combo has finally made me a happy man when it comes to iApp integration.
Closing Thoughts
As I mentioned earlier, despite the attractive package and respectable feature set I couldn’t help but find myself somewhat underwhelmed by the T|X. While the product itself worked virtually flawlessly (although I did find a re-boot necessary more than once), I had trouble figuring out who the intended market for this device is. At $299, it is not geared towards the student user. Serious business users are likely to favor Palm’s Treo line. In this day and age a handheld that connects via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi hotspots just doesn’t feel “connected enough�. Palm, for it’s part, seems to feel the same way, as they seem to be concentrating on their Treo line of smartphones. Even as someone without a smartphone in my day-to-day life, I found myself frustrated trying to find an open hotspot, or by my inability to access Google Maps on the street, where I actually need it.
Verdict
Palm’s T|X handheld is, overall, a very functional and well-designed product, packing a pretty good punch at a $299 price tag. If you don’t want to pay the service charges associated with a smartphone, you’ll find a lot of the functionally in the T|X, assuming you’re able to constantly pop in and out of Wi-Fi hotspots. Still, this organizer doesn’t feel all that different than the ones Sony was making three or four years ago. I think there’s only so far you can go feature-wise without going the smartphone route.
Price: $299
Rating: 7.5 out of 10 Stars
Pros:
• Enough power and memory to handle any handheld application
• Near-perfect Mac integration via third-party software
Cons:
• Even at $299, you’re probably better off spending the extra cash for a Treo if connectivity is a priority
First look at Intel’s Yonah processor - Less “power” in our PowerBooks?
Posted by Lab Rat
Now that Apple is moving its line over to Intel, we have to start paying more attention to the Intel side of the rumor world. AnandTech posts an Exclusive First Look at Yonah, the Intel processor believed to be making its way into the upcoming Apple laptops. AnandTech posts some extensive benchmarks comparing a 2 GHz Yonah chip to a Pentium D, as well as to two AMD desktop chips (an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and an X2 3800+).
Hopeful Mac fans looking for a resounding victory of the dual-core Yonah over AMD’s chips will be a bit let down as the Yonah lags behind AMD’s chips in almost every test (although to be fair, the Yonah chip is expected to appear in portables, so the fact that it can compete at all with AMD’s 64-bit dektop chips is reason enough to celebrate). Most notably (and unfortunately for PowerBook users) the Yonah seems to be ill suited for video editing/encoding tasks, at least in the early Yonah system AnandTech tested. However, the performance is very close over all, and in power consumption (a key area for laptops) the Yonah blows the AMDs away. In fact, while running at a full 100%, the Yonah uses less power than the AMD chips while idle.
That is pretty amazing.
We asked our source at Apple if this could mean we will start hearing rumors of dual Yonah processors in upcoming Apple laptops. He admitted he didn’t know, but that if performance was less than stellar, he would not be surprised to see a special amped-up version of the 17-inch PowerBook geared specifically towards editors and media professionals. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything on that front, but in the meantime, the Yonah benchmarks do seem to back Steve Jobs’ claim that Intel was the right move for competitive performance with low power consumption. It remains to be seen, however, if the move will ultimately mean less “power� in our PowerBooks.
Apple releases Broadband Tuner 1.0 for high-speed connections
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
Apple has released Broadband Tuner 1.0, a utility that optimizes network settings to help reduce latency in broadband connections.
From the Apple Website
About Broadband Tuner
The Broadband Tuner allows you to take full advantage of very high speed Internet connections that have a high latency (5 Mbps or greater). The installer tweaks some system parameters.
There is an optional uninstaller that can be used to restore the settings that were in effect at the time just before the system parameters were changed.
What does the Broadband Tuner do exactly?
The installer increases the default values for the size of the TCP send and receive buffers. With larger buffers more data can be in transit at once. A startup configuration file is also updated so that these changes will persist across restarts.
The system parameters are sysctl variables that are set as follows:
net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072
net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 358400
kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 512000
This change has a system wide effect and is applied even if the network is not high speed connection with a high latency, with the exception of modem connections for which the system uses small default TCP buffer sizes.
Review: Black & White Platinum Pack (Mac)
Posted by Helper Monkey
If there’s one thing the 2002 movie Kung Pow: Enter the Fist taught me, it’s that few things are funnier than seeing a cow doing Kung Fu moves. With that in mind, it is no wonder I had such high hopes for Feral Interactive’s strategy game Black And White. I mean, not only do you get to watch an “udder-ly� (sorry) bad-ass cow kick some butt, but you can actually control the butt-kicking!
Black And White, for those who do not know, is sort of a cross between the Sims and strategy games like Civilization and Warcraft. B&W casts you in the role of God. Well, not God, per se, but A god in a world with many “gods�. You are not necessarily the biggest fish in the sea here. You need to build up your power and skills in order to take down the other would-be Jehovahs and claim your spot at the top of the biblical food chain.
To do this you will need followers. Your powers in Black and White grow in direct relationship to how many people believe in you. Initially, you start the game with two followers whose son you rescue from drowning. You follow them back to their village, and they spread the word around about your wondrous deeds to gain you more followers.
The name Black and White refers to the 2 tactics you can take to increase your powers. You can choose to continue to do great things for your followers, and be a caring and loving god, or… you can have real fun, and be a total jerk. Either way, you will ultimately gain in power, either out of respect and adoration, or out of the fear of your vengeful wrath. Sort of like “The Force� in Star Wars, you can tap into great power through either good (white) or evil (black).
“Neat Boss. You’re really gonna do damage with this skill later.� You are guided through the game by your conscience.
Black and White starts off with a fairly lengthy (and a bit slow moving) tutorial guiding you through the basics of being a god, like helping villagers complete various tasks, performing miracles, and just navigating the world in general. The navigation system is, to say the least, “unique� in Black and White, and does take some getting used to. You are represented on screen by a hand (the �hand of god, as it were�). You can get from place to place by double clicking an area of the map, or by dragging yourself through the world with your god-like digits. While long, the tutorial is necessary, however, as the game is not overly intuitive, and the manual gives few pointers in strategy. You are guided through the tutorial by your conscience, which is represented onscreen by an angel and devil on your “shoulder�, sort of like old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
What sets Black and White apart from other games is its unique blending of genres. Similar to the Sims, you spend a large portion of your day making sure the villagers are happy (or unhappy, if that is your choice). The villagers are actually quite “needy�, and the temptation is strong to just throw them in the ocean some times. I admit I found it much harder to be a loving god than an evil god. You also need to help manage your village, and help it grow. More villagers mean more power for you.
Choose your creature wisely. He is the one who will drive your crazy for the rest of the game.
To help manage your village, you are given a pet, of sorts. Your “creature�, as the game refers to it, reflects the path you have chosen. If you are a nice a loving god, a good choice might be the cow I am so fond of. A path of evil and destruction might work better with a more aggressive tiger-like creature. Your creature is your emissary on the island, and helps you to control your villagers. It is up to you to actually shape whether your creatures is god or evil. You raise the creature from infancy, teaching it how to behave and interact with your followers. When your creature becomes powerful enough, it is time to start flexing your god-like muscle!
I find the creature battles are the most fun aspect of Black and White. It’s not that the combat system is overly refined or anything (this isn’t Tekken after all) but it reminds me of those giant robot battles of Voltron days gone by. Anyway, if your creature can best another god’s creature, you can expand your empire.
If this sounds interesting or fun, then I apologize for misleading you. It isn’t. I know Black and White has been a very well respected franchise on the PC and received many favorable reviews. I really wanted to like this game, but I had a couple big problems with it that I could not get past. First on the list is the “unique� navigation system I mentioned. At first I thought, “Cool, this is new!�, then after a couple hours I thought “Damn, this is annoying!� The navigation scheme in this game is so “unique� it actually distracts you from getting into the game. I found myself constantly having to think about what my mouse and keyboard had to do to get the game to do what I wanted IT to do.
The second problem with the game is it just isn’t fun. While playing Black and White I experienced one of those rare moments as a reviewer where I realized that if I didn’t HAVE to be playing this game for the purposes of the review, I would have stopped playing hours ago. The whole “keeping the villagers happy� got very old very fast. I wanted to smash the lot of them. Raising the creature isn’t any more fun. Your creature learns by your praising it when it does well, or by your smacking it around when it does something wrong. I am no animal rights nut, but I found it disturbing beating that damn cow for throwing a villager around. The sounds it makes are pitiful, and you feel like a bully.
No, that’s not an umbilical chord, it’s a leash. If you don’t mind walking your dog at 2 AM in the rain, then maybe taking care of this pet is right up your alley.
The Black and White Platinum Pack consists of the regular Black and White, which I just was rambling on about, and the “creature Island� expansion pack. On Creature Island, the focus is less on keeping the villagers happy (which was not fun), and more on the raising and training of the creatures (which was also not fun). In fact, even your creature gets a creature to raise. You must run them through various tasks to build their skill set and help them both grow. You can guess how fun I found trying to get my creature to train another creature was.
Conclusion
There is definitely a large market for this type of game, and I admit I am not it. While I enjoy time-consuming simulation games as much as anyone, this was definitely not my cup of tea. Perhaps fans of the Tamagotchi virtual pets would find taking care of such needy villagers and disobedient pets fills a void in their lives. I already have two young children, and I do not need to spend my free time listening to more.
Black & White Platinum Pack (Mac)
Price: $29.95
Pros:
• Interesting idea
Cons:
• Very hard to navigate environment and control creature
• Tedious gameplay will turn off some players
Rating: 4 of 10 Stars
New virus preys on Mac-users’ sense of superiority
Posted by Igor
Just weeks after a report praising OS X’s near invulnerability when it comes to computer viruses, a new Mac-only virus has appeared and is spreading like wildfire through the Mac community. Mac users receiving an e-mail from someone they know with the file attachment “Win_Sux.zip� should think twice before opening it, although few apparently are.
Why is this virus spreading so quickly?
Jim Opet of Symantec explains, “A typical e-mail with the ‘Win_Sux’ virus has a subject heading of ‘Top 100 reasons why Macs are Better than PCs’. To a Mac user, the prospect of discovering 100 fresh arguments for why a Mac is better than a PC is even more irresistible than the promise of nude Anna Kournikova pictures.�
“I couldn’t help myself,� says Jeff Kirsh, a 23-year-old Mac user of 10 years. “I have so many ‘Windows-PC’ using friends who are always giving me crap about my Mac not being able to play the latest games or not being able to sync my Palm and cell phone. I was dying for some new material for our arguments.“
How deeply does this need to bash Windows run in the Mac community? Well, apparently pretty deep. Whereas most Windows-based computer viruses simply need to entice the user to click an e-mail attachment in order to spread, the Mac-only “Win_sux� virus operates a bit differently. In order for their Mac become infected, a user must first click on the attachment, then print out a form, fill in all required fields in the form, fax back a notarized copy of the form to a 1-900 number (at a charge of $1.99) then wait 24 hours for a second e-mail to be sent to them. This second e-mail asks the user to complete a brief online survey (10 to 15 minutes depending on their connection speed) where they are asked for their personal banking information. Only after the user has completed the survey and manually entered the addresses of up to 100 of his friends and relatives does he actually get to see the list of reasons why the Mac is better than a PC.
“The worst part,� says Kirsch, “is that the list only has 94 reasons. It is a total rip-off. Oh, and it deleted my pictures and system folders. That sucked too.�
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