TechSplorge

Conquer Online is an MMORPG (free download at www.co.91.com)

Gameplay: 5/10 Allow me to explain.  You open the game, you glue your finger to the ctrl button, and then you jump around and kill stuff.  There are lots of quests that you can do, and they usually include jumping to different places, but THIS time you carry items to people.

Sound: 6/10 The music is extremely asian, so if you like that, then good for you.  If you don’t, then you can turn it off, but i find it very peaceful and zen-like.  I prefer to keep the normal sound “off” though, because every time you jump… you hear a loud take-off and landing and it’s annoying after a while.

Graphics: 6/10 A creative idea, but very plain.  What the producers have done here is that they have illustrated entire maps and given them different names.  The illustrations are good, but they don’t move or change, so it’s your character against a plain background picture, and you jump around, and it gets old.

Lasting Appeal: 7/10 As I’ve stated before, CO gets old.  However, it’s strangely addicting, and I think it’s for the same reason everyone was addicted to Pokemon.   There’s no level cap, so you can reach level 200 if you spent about 100 years at it, and maybe that’s why so many people play and keep playing.

Final score: 6/10 (it sucks a lot less than other games)

I really think that this game could be better if there were an interactive background.  Also, they’ve just recently fixed the jumping problem by adding “steeds.”  Now you can ride your house around instead of spamming the ctrl button.  If you get too addicted, they offer in game currency known as cps (more valuable than the commonly used “silvers”) for a price.

Hi, I’m Nathan. If you’ve read any of the previous posts then you’ll know that none of them have been written by me. I just wanted to say that I’m going to be posting articles now. They will be mostly about games, as I don’t have a whole lot of disposable income to get cool new gadgets like ShriG

I’m a bit late, since I was gone, but Firefox 3.5 is out.

The new Firefox is more than twice as fast as 3.0 and 10 times as fast and 2.0. FF 3.5 has improved overall browsing and stability of Firefox while adding new features, such as a Private Browsing mode so you won’t get caught…erm…viewing interesting articles.

[Firefox 3.5]

Sorry I’ve been gone guys, but I’ve been at a JAVA course.

I guess since we’re on the topic of JAVA, I might as well include that the beta for JDK 7.0 is out.

[Enjoy]

Web Search Results:

Format: (Query, Winner)

1.TechSplorge, Google, in this scenario Google was the only site that had us listed. The other two sites found no results.

2.Times Record News (local newspaper in our town), Google, all of them had found relevant results. But Google’s relevancy was more consistent as you scrolled down the page.

3.Mexican Restaurant Wichita Falls, Google, all of the sites had once again listed relevant sites, but Google’s first result was an article on the top three restaurants in town, which was more helpful than the other results.

4.Cracker Barrel, Bing, this one was between Yahoo and Bing, it came down to the seventh result which showed as locations by Bing.

5.NBA Playoffs, Google, all of them displayed similar results, what made me choose Google was that they listed the video highlights which are important to a lot of us.

6.Facebook, Google, Google displayed the Facebook home page followed by the Facebook login page for an easy victory.

7.Disney Channel, Bing, Bing provided the index page and the games page in its first two results.

8.Tower Defense, Google, Google had the best TD sites and had put them in a good order to take victory.

9.MMORPG, Bing, Google’s first two results were repeats while Bing provided both mmorpg.com and the wikipedia entry.

10.Pizza Hut, Google, Google provided the site, the menu, and the quick order as its top 3. The other two had placed the wikipedia in third. I could really care less about the history behind my Pizza.

Image Search Results

1.Asus EEE PC 1008ha, Google, Google delivered the best looking pictures of the product.

2.WOW, Google, Bing had provided disturbing results. I wouldn’t allow children to use Bing after seeing this. Yahoo had good results, but Google had once again picked higher quality images.

3.Snoop Dog, Google, Google provided the most relevant and highest quality images, again…

4.Engadget, Google, Bing had relatively good results, but I ended up choosing Google due to the Engadget logo being near the top in its results.

5. Tileset, Google, Sadly, Google was the only engine to provide actual tile sets in its results. The other two engines had results of tiles, not tile sets. A tile set is a set of tiles that are placed on various maps in 2d games.

6.Zelda, Google, Google had won once again because of its higher quality image selection.

7.Lostica, Google, Lostica is a side scroller mmorpg. It isn’t very popular yet, so I decided to see how the engines would do on it. Yahoo didn’t have a relevant result whereas Bing’s first two results were relevant and Google’s first four were.

8.Sony Vaio P, Yahoo, Yahoo had actually delivered the most professional results this time.

9.Bill Gates, Bing, I guess the Bing programmers wanted to shout out to Gates by providing the best results of him.

10.Megatron, Google, Google, once again, has the highest quality images.

User Interface Test:

In the last test, I actually went to the sites and entered a search query to see how the site did with that query.

1.CNN, tie between Yahoo and Google, all three engines list CNN and its site map, but Bing does not provide an results under it. In order to reach the next result, you have to go to the next page. Yahoo and Google have good results under it.

2.Dance Dance Revolution, Google, Google provides not only images but videos in its results, beating Yahoo and Bing who only had images.

3.El Chicos Wichita Falls, Google, Both Google and Bing had a map, but google had more reviews giving a more accurate measure of whether the restaurant is good or bad.

4.Karate, Bing, Google had two horrible Karate videos, while Bing provided nice images.

5.NBA Playoffs, Bing and Google Tie, Bing provided a few scores, while Google provided news results.

Google is the obvious victor in this contest. Bing, though, shouldn’t be counted out as it is rather new. Yahoo didn’t perform too well when compared to the other two. We’ll have to see if Google will destroy Bing and Yahoo in a few months, after giving Bing a chance to develop and Yahoo a chance to ready itself with a battle for the second best search engine against Bing.

Asus Customer Service, a Horrible Experience, So Far...

I received an email from the Asus Customer Service concerning my EEE PC 1008HA. They were of no help at all. In fact, I don’t even understand the point of their reply.

My Email:

[Product Information]
*Product Type : Eee Family
*Product Model : Eee PC 1008HA
*Product S/N : EDITED OUT
Place of Purchase : Alice Computer Works
*Date of Purchase : 2009/6/10

*Operating System : WinXP

[Problem Description]

I received this netbook with an upgraded 2gb of ram and 500gb hdd from Alice Computer Works (Asus Authorized Service). The netbook shipped with out the screws on the bottom and a loose left side of the chassis (near the track pad) and a raised right side of the keyboard. My family is sketchy about shipping it back to Alice Computer Works as we have been scammed on Ebay before. We would prefer to work through Asus as we are well within our 1 year warranty. I plan to review this netbook for my blog, and I would rather not say negative things about the build quality of this otherwise great netbook. I would much rather talk about the positive performance I’ve obtained from this machine.
Thanks You,
I’ve heard wonderful things about Asus Customer support!
Shri Ganeshram

Their response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your attention to ASUS products. If you have any other suggestions, please tell us. We will try our best to improve our products and service. For more information feel free to refer to our self-help pages by clicking the links below:

Troubleshooting – http://support.asus.com/troubleshooting/troubleshooting.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

FAQ – http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Live Support – http://asuswiki.asus.com/usaSupport/index.php?title=Main_Page

If you continue to experience issues in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best Regards,

Steven

ASUS Customer Service

What puzzles me is how it took 48 hours to email me this automated response. I’m very disappointed and I’ll update soon. I like Asus, so I will send one more email and see what response I get before I do a full fledged review.

Will Bing be King?

Bing, Microsoft’s Live Search on Crack, is winning over users. But I doubt Bing will make much more than a ding on Google (the current king). Why? Right now, all I see in Bing is a decent search engine with a good user interface and a lot of hype.  If I was Google, I would definitely revamp my engine a little bit, but I wouldn’t be too worried about the threat Bing poses, at least, for now.

On the other hand, I see Yahoo being a loser here. Both Yahoo and Google have lost about .7% of their market shares since Bing’s release. For Google, this is virtually nothing, but Yahoo will need to fight back if they want to stay ahead of Bing in the long run.

If Yahoo wants to stay in the game, they should advertise their email service (after fixing their horrible spam problem) as well as their great Yahoo Games and Yahoo Answers communities.

If Microsoft wants to beat Google, they should make Bing’s website the default page of Internet Explorer instead of the annoying MSN page. They should also focus on taking down Yahoo first, so they have a larger community backing them up for the big dog.

For now, we cannot tell if Bing’s popularity and surge in market share is temporary or not. We can only wait and see what unfolds over these next few months to determine whether Bing has what it takes to be king.

EDIT: Those of you looking for which search engine provides the best results, go here.

The Gorgeous 1008HA

So I got my White Asus EEE PC 1008HA. I will soon be posting an extensive review, but for now, here is a slight overview of the system.

Looks: 5/5 Beautiful. Honestly, I think this is the best looking netbook I have seen. Its small and compact, all of its ports are hidden behind rubber covers, and the black frame around the screen is very nice. ITS ONLY 1 INCH THICK!

Design: 4.5/5 Its well designed. The keyboard is 92% of the regular sized keyboard and takes minimal adjustment to adapt to. The touch pad/ wifi and bluetooth switch above the keyboard are very helpful when trying to save battery. The battery is non-removable but I don’t mind it as it fits perfectly into the chassis and keeps the netbook slim. Though, for those of you who need more than 4.5 hours of battery life, this might not be the netbook for you (go with the Asus 1000he, it can sport over 8 hours and has a removable battery).

Durability: 2/5 This is the area which disappointed me most. On the unit I received, the keyboard was warped and the bottom of the chassis was loose. This was probably caused by the Asus Certified Upgrader who sold me the netbook with 2gb of ram and a 500gb HDD rather than 1gb of ram and a 160gb HDD. Still, it is unacceptable for me to receive a unit out of the box like this from an Asus Certified Center and I have contacted Asus via email. I am supposed to get response within 48 hours; 24 hours have passed, still no response. I will update this section if and when Asus contacts me.

Common Use: 4.5/5 This netbook is very comfortable to use and doesn’t heat up or make too much noise. The sound of the fan is minimal and typing on the keyboard actually covers it up. The glossy screen is hard to use outdoors and is the only reason the netbook isn’t receiving a 5 in this category. The OS that ships with this netbook is Windows XP and is familiar to most of us. Browsing in IE, FF 3.5 Release Candidate, and Google Chrome work fine. It gets a little bit annoying vertical scrolling more than usual but that is typical of netbooks. There is rarely a need to horizontally scroll as the screen resolution is a nice 1024 by 600 pixels. Microsoft Office and Open Office run smoothly, as do Skype and Thunderbird. Youtube and Hulu, even in HD, run great; though, I would be surprised if you could play 1080p video on this machine, and I don’t see the need to as the screen is only 10.1″ in size.

Power Hungry Tasks: 3/5 Asus bundles the laptop with a built in software that overclocks the Intel Atom N280’s clock speed in the 1008ha from 1.66 ghz to 1.75ghz. Though the n280 is only .06 ghz faster than the1.6 ghz n270 (the processor in most netbooks), its FSB is 667 mhz, much better than the 533 mhz FSB of the n270. The faster FSB allows a user to have faster RAM. The 1008ha surprisingly runs Photoshop CS3 and the included Windows Movie Maker quite well. It also handles Cabal Online (mmorpg) alright on lowest settings and plays WOW decently. More fast paced, intensive games like Quake Live and Nexuiz are playable but so slow that they aren’t worth it. Obviously, this tiny device can’t handle anything like Crysis. Other playable games include FretsOnFire and StepMania. Its good for casual gaming, but it isn’t an Alienware.

Overall Score: 3.8/5 (Good)*

*The score can be increased if Asus’s Customer Service is able to fix the durability problems I have faced with my 1008ha

Verdict: The 1008ha could be a revolutionary netbook if Asus fixes its durability problems. Its a good buy for those who don’t need a replaceable battery and don’t mind Glossy screens (otherwise, go for the 1000he). Asus did an excellent job designing the netbook, but I am still disappointed with the durability issues I am having with it.

It brings back the style factor in netbooks that has been exchanged for cheap prices. I am waiting to see what MSI, Acer, and Lenovo bring to the arena in response to Asus’s new, bold netbook: the 1008HA.

In Depth Review to Come After I Get Word from Asus

The iPhone 3GS

The 3rd installation of the iPhone OS is due today. This latest update includes features such as the unlocking of bluetooth on the 2nd Generation iPod Touch, MMS support, Spotlight Search (a search utility that searches the whole phone), shake to shuffle, Voice Memos (record voice notes), internet tethering, and peer-to-peer gaming. Of course Apple is making this free for iPhone users, while iPod Touch users, like me, have to pay $9.95.

Is it worth it?

It definitely is for iPhone users (free!), but only 2nd generation iPod Touch users should upgrade for the bluetooth support; sadly, bluetooth isn’t a built-in feature of the first generation iPod Touch.

Should you buy an iPhone?

No. The new iPhone 3GS is coming out in 2 days, and it is not very different from its predecessors. You will be getting a two year old phone that was a year ahead of its time. Also, if you are off contract with AT&T and you want the best phone out there, wait for windows mobile 6.5 on the HTC Touch Pro 2 (what I have) or buy a Palm Pre from Sprint. The iPhone is just talk. It can’t beat the user interface of the Palm Pre or the freedom of Windows Mobile.

The next few months are going to be very interesting in the smartphone market.

Asus EEE PC T91 via SlashGear

Us Americans always seem to get the good stuff last and sometimes we don’t even get it.

Luckily, this isn’t the case with the EEE PC T91 (well, we are getting it last…). This new member of the EEE PC Family sports a touch screen display that rotates 180 degrees to convert into a tablet. Instead of the normal 1.6 GHz n270, this baby sports a 1.33 GHz atom z520 processor, as well as the usual 1gb of ram, and a 16gb SSD. Connectivity-wise it fairs the normal bluetooth and wireless N standard, but it also includes options for HSDPA, Tv Tuner, and a GPS Receiver (could replace that Tom-Tom of yours). Of course, being the first tablet-convertible netbook to hit America isn’t going to come cheap. In the UK, this baby is currently priced at a steep £449, which at this moment is $733 USD. Knowing that things are generally more expensive in the UK, I predict this lovely netbook to set us Americans back between $649-$699.