The Zone

Okay, time for some really weird gaming news before we enter our Bioshock-induced weekend stupor. First up is a crazy story about a dog swallowing a Wiimote whole - a 3-year-old Labrador retriever started spitting up blood and his owners brought him to a vet to be x-rayed only to find a Wiimote stuck somewhere between his throat and his stomach. Some belly rubs later the wiimote was extracted - in chunks. Too bad for the poor dog and his owner - he had to fork out two weeks' allowance to buy his mom a new Wiimote!

Check out more crazy stuff after the break!

Announced at the recent IFA show in Berlin, Casio's 300fps (while shooting video and 60fps while shooting 6 Megapixel pictures) camera is still under development, but this video is all it takes to show how fast is fast. in comparision, the fastest full-frame DSLR, the Canon 1-D Mk.III (Nikon's D3 doesn't win - it takes only 8fps in full frame) shoots at 10fps up to a 100 frames. Then again, if you halve the Canon's resolution, and have an insanely fast image processor, you could pull off this trick. We wonder what the dude is doing at the end with his gaping maw.

When you think the Japanese are not crazy enough over their hobbies, this piece of news shows you how fandom can get you in trouble. Six bureaucrats from Japan's Agricultral Ministry were reprimanded for editing the Wikipedia entry on Gundams at work. One of them has 260 articles to his name. 260 wikis!!

"The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam," said ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura. LOL for us.

In other happenings, there's a new WiFi shirt available for you mobile warriors that goes blink blink whenever you wander towards a WiFi access point. The cooler thing is that the WiFi logo itself is detachable and stuck on to other good things such as your backpack, your car, dog/cat, kid..... It works with Wireless-B and G networks as well!

Who would have ever thought that a flash hard drive would be so expensive??? Well, you DO get 640GB worth of data, but if you smart alecks are placing your page file on it, be prepared to shell out for more than USD19000 and a whole load of data. The good things about this flash-based drive is that you get loading speeds as fast as your DDR2 memory runs, and it's PCIE based, not to mention that heat output is negligible.

So who's buying? I know I would want one. 

Yesterday at the World GameMaster Tournament Malaysia Finals, we managed to cradle Asus' baby of their notebook family, the Asus Eee PC. Unfortunately the battery was flat so we weren't able to check out its OS and applications. We still managed to get a nice, hands on look of its build, interfaces, and features.

Click the jump for more pictures!

If a price of a product indicates its spec sheet, then we wouldn't be 'blown away' by the Sony VAIO UX-series UMPC, thanks to its 1GB of RAM, Core 2 Solo processor, 48GB SSD, 1.3 Megapixel camera and a 4.5" 1024 x 600 screen, but hell, in a world where small does not come cheap, its as good as it gets! Interestingly, its sticker price is USD2500, which makes it out of reach for us puny journalists here in Malaysia (well, most of us anyways), but there's another competitor which Sony should fear - the EeePC from Asus. Now that's what I call a proper UMPC race :P

Looks cute eh? Certainly, there are some minus points to be had with such a tiny keyboard and screen, but hey, a million has been sold to an unnamed government, it sold out in Taiwan, and a certain shop in USJ ran out, or rather, is running out of stock. Only RM1299 gets you 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a 4GB SSD (with 1.3GB free space) and ultraportability. Too bad we couldn't win one - we mistakenly registered as media at the photoshoot contest. *sob sob* Anyways, there's also the upcoming 8GB model, along with a cut-down 2GB 'surf' version which omits games and the like for a lean mean machine. And black units are coming soon, so enjoy yours while you can :D

Billy Chasen, an artist of sorts, has made the headlines this morning as he presented his masterpiece:

Yes, that's a 4th Gen iPod and it still works! thanks to a dock connector embedded into the whole 'contraption', you can still charge and swap tracks. No idea on how you're able to use the rest of the functions like say, skip tracks and such, though so this would be the world's biggest iPod shuffle! Note: the 4x2 LEGO bricks!

More pics after the jump!

Dan from UNEASYsilence made doddling around on the Asus Eee PC that was officially launched today a bit more flavorful - he installed OSX onto it! Although the steps he used were a wee bit illegal, it proves one thing - the Eee is taking it all in its stride. That's one up for cheap computing!

I'm not sure what to make of the rumors that Sony plans to revive their little robotic canine companion by integrating it with the Sony PS3 and PSP; it sounds like a neat idea in theory, but whether it will actually be successful is another thing.

I remember coming across the Aibo a few years ago in a Sony showroom in Sydney and while I was impressed with it, I wasn't compelled to buy it. The original Aibo was a very expensive toy, and coupled with the expensive PS3, I doubt it will fly off the shelves. It should make an interesting technological showpiece though. Plus you don't need to worry about toilet training it.

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Can't stand to do anymore Christmas shopping? Drop by the PLAYex! 07 exhibition this weekend from the 14th to 15th of December at MidValley Exhibition Centre, KL, as the latest exhibition to celebrate games, gadgets, comics, and figurines will go live!

Besides huge discounts on popular games, there will be mini DotA and Counter-Strike competitions, trading card battles, online games showcase courtesy of MyCNX, Gundam figurines exhibition, and other cool stuff to check out! GameAxis Unwired Malaysia will also be there so don't miss out on our special promotions and games! :3

PLAYex! 07 Official Website 

Lucky people Pc Games Hardware got their mitts on NVIDIA's latest triple-SLI configuration which includes three 8800 Ultras, a 1200W PSU and Crysis. Unfortunately they weren't able to play the game 'smoothly' as it only maxed out, at ultra settings at 37.9fps. If this isn't an indicator of how all our rigs suck, nothing else can drive home the point that Crysis is a resource hog. The latest hogzilla, anyone?

For the last few months, HWM Malaysia ran a series of Photo-Video guides sponsored by Sony, as seen above. What do you think of it? We value your feedback so if you found it insightful or useful, let us know! Likewise, if you thought that it could be improved, shout out about it here.

Too shy to comment here for fear of exposing your email address? Send your feedback to editorial@my.hardwaremag.com. The best feedback or comment will get a FREE Kingston 2GB DataTraveler USB Flash Drive. Only open to residents living in Malaysia! Closing dateline is next Friday, 21st of December 2007, so don't miss out on this one time offer!

(BTW when we say best feedback/comment, we don't mean 'best attempt to butter up to us'. The most constructive and useful feedback will earn the prize so don't just say "Yeah I think your guides were okay" or "Your guides suxkz0rrs") 

  
This lucky dude named Dominick V. Strippoli recently got his hands on not one or two of the uber-fast MTorn 16GB SSD drives, but nine of them, affixing them in a RAID 0 config and benchmarking the wicked setup using almost all of the real-world performance benchmarks including notoriously slow Vista load times, Crysis and Photoshop. Interestingly, to get the setup running at its full speed, you really need the best RAID controllers, something which pushes the cost envelope higher. Check out his review here - SSD Drive Review. Super high speed computing, anyone?