The cassette tape has had a long and storied life, with notable events such as the Beta and VHS wars, the miniaturization of the physical cassette and the advances in magnetic reading technology. Although tape media undoubtedly still have life in it as a recording format, the signs have been starting to appear in recent years, the biggest of which is the advent of alternative recording medias such as DVDs, Hard Drives, and the subject of today’s Preview, Flash memory recording.

                                              The CX7 doesn't seem so small in this shot.
 

It’s been a long time coming, but a quick peek through the internet air waves reveal that AMD is getting back on track after being sidelined by a crippled buffer – related glitch way back in late December of 2007 – an eternity in the computer industry. Perhaps this heralds more than the CPU getting back on track.

Canon ImageNation continues Canon’s tradition of refreshing their product lines and bringing in some very significant and highly anticipated releases at the same time. ImageNation Summer ’08, aside from having an appropriately tropical theme, gives those in the media industry the same experience as all previous ImageNation events – that is, we’re still as excited as ever to cover everything’s that new in the Canon line-up!

                                             A bit more sand, some orchids leis, and a little bit of sun - a perfect image for summer!

While it’s no longer the month of hearts, I bring to you something that’s worthy of a romantic February 14^th evening in a swanky restaurant – with a little geeky twist.

                                             A "traditional" marriage proposal (maybe with pants and leather shoes instead?)

From my early work as a sales manager for a PC components retail shop in Greenhills, I can say with rule-of-thumb authority that the majority of Filipino buyers don’t actually know what parts to look for, and thus end up with (usually) the cheapest parts with the least number of features. This is not always a negative development, as many capable boards with low, low price points exist on the market.

                                              The font for the first two letters remind me of a certain manufacturer...

I can’t wait for the science-fiction worthy day when communication devices and their related screens get transferred into our body / eyes through nanotechnology. But that’s not the topic here. There are many advantages to having everyone not peer down at their mobile device’s screen, whether texting, checking their schedule, or looking through some media.

                                             A sharp lesson is about to be learned.
 

Perhaps it’s no longer incentive enough for a gamer to beat a game and call it a day. Games are left half-finished, cheats are found, work-arounds taken advantage of. It’s a sad state of affairs. It is fortunate then, that there are more and more people who choose a living out of producing products that immerse the gamer in their respective game worlds. The MindWire V5 is the latest creation of immersion, if I may create a pun (sorry – couldn’t help it).

                                             It's a Taser for your game console!
 

Being buried under cool stuff has its own disadvantages, like getting all of them to play nice on the test bench before the tester goes crazy keeping all of the benchmarks, settings, numbers and hardware straight, plus running the same benchmarks over and over, and over again.

                                              A pair of Palit 9600GTs due for SLI running waiting for their turn on the bench.

The recent flood of videocards based on Nvidia’s latest have not abated, but we deem it important not to get out of touch with the opposition, as it may be. Thus we dug up this Asus EAH 3850 OC Gear edition for you readers’ perusal – a supposedly mid-level card overwhelmed by the green team that is Nvidia.

Realism has long been an elusive goal for our games and game producers. It is true that many advances has been made in the visuals department of almost any game shipping today, and sound is a strong point of games, especially FPS types. While our eyes and ears are saturated, the rest of the body is left alone. With the FPS Vest, this no longer holds true.

                                             For the SWAT in all of us.
 

Forget GHz and MHz, forget RAM amount and how large your storage is. To measure the abilities of the user, there’s only a few numbers that we can easily refer to. Since geekiness is an unsubstantial quantity at best, we’ll settle for something more concrete, like typing speed.

                                             Where's the boost gauge?
 

Sony is gearing up for the year with a new, focused laptop contender for the local market, plus a re-emphasis on the Cybershot line’s unique and excellent features. Sony made sure to re-acquaint us with an expo entitled “Summer Pleasures 2008” – an event running the gamut of the whole Sony product line. We lead you through the event as we saw it.

                                             The Cybershot line is going through a mini - Renaissance; it was one of the main focuses during the event.

There’s no other word for it – we’ve been *inundated* with videocard test samples the past week-and-a-half, the majority of which consists of the brand new 9600 GTs, a couple of 3000 series Radeons, and some of the first top-of-the-line cards that are just becoming available this very week. Before we give you the lowdown and a benchmark foundation for all the important videocard generations covered recently, we’ll lay it out here in the blog clearly so that you guys will know what to expect.

                                              If only Santa was this prolific in his gift-giving...
 

Movie buffs and uber-geeks rejoice! The quintessential walking, “talking”, lovable movie prop is back, and it’s re-doing its more / most famous scene in the Star Wars franchise: serving as a projector. I am of course, talking about R2-D2.

                                             If it walks and "talks" and slots into a Tie-Fighter, I'll be all over this!
 

This post started out as a normal tech post regarding a malfunctioning toy and ran the gamut to turn into a personal rant about lawyer-addicted people and the hyper-sensitive parents. So as not to bore you readers to death or anything, here are just the highlights of how an increasingly high-tech environment causes misinformed actions and opportunistic displays to take place.