Well, would you look at that.  Just yesterday we were comparing the Xappr iPhone gun to that of Laser Tag.  And today, by chance nonetheless, Hasbro goes and announces a new Lazer Tag gun for 2012 complete with an iPhone/iPod Touch slot.

Unlike the Xappr, the Lazer Tag Blaster  can operate independently of the iPhone, though your experience will be significantly enhanced with one of Apple’s iOS devices mounted in the holder.  With the free Lazer Tag app downloaded you’ll be able to face off against both virtual enemies or up to 24 real human players.  The HUD as Hasbro calls it, will show you your upgrade options as you succeed in defeating your enemies from battle to battle, as well as the ability to view your remaining power (as in life), enemies in the area and ammo reserves.

The Lazer Tag iPhone guns are capable of firing a virtual shot up to 250 feet and run on 6 AA batteries.  One Blaster will cost you $39.99, while a set of two nets you a $10 discount making the final price $69.99.  They’ll go on sale August 1st.

Press release below

LAZER TAG 2012 PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS

From the makers of the popular NERF blasters comes the revolutionary LAZER TAG system, combining the power, precision and excitement of live-action blaster battles with the high-action, strategic, augmented reality gameplay of traditional video games. To experience the LAZER TAG game, players download the free LAZER TAG app to their iPhone or iPod touch device, connect their device to their LAZER TAG blaster, and find themselves immersed in a world where video games and real life connect. Using either single or multi-player mode, players can engage in a LAZER TAG match featuring either real life worlds or virtual opponents. Each LAZER TAG blaster equipped with a device has a virtual firing range of over 250 feet and contains a ‘Heads Up Display’, or HUD, which allows players to keep track of their gear and remaining power, while also providing a view of the augmented reality targets and enemies in the area. A virtual leaderboard keeps track of each player’s profile and, with every successful mission, players will gain in-game access to upgradeable attacks, missions and gear. With LAZER TAG blasters, the stakes are high, the game is real. Don’t just play it, live it.

The 2012 LAZER TAG product line includes:

LAZER TAG 2 BLASTER Set
(HASBRO/Ages 8 years & up/Approx. Retail Price: $69.99/Available: August 1, 2012)
Get into the game with the ultimate LAZER TAG 2 BLASTER set, brought to you by the makers of the NERF brand. Set includes two LAZER TAG blasters. For enhanced augmented reality gameplay, simply download the free LAZER TAG app to an iPhone or iPod touch device and then connect the device to the blaster to activate the immersive gaming experience. When in multi-player mode, blasters are equipped with a virtual firing range of over 250 feet and an on-screen ‘Heads Up Display’ which, for the first time with LAZER TAG, allows players to see the lazer and keep track of their gear and remaining power. In the solo campaign, the blasters provide a view of the augmented reality targets and enemies in the area. Performing well in combat and mastering levels will increase players’ stats on a virtual leaderboard, as well as unlock upgrades for attacks, missions, gear and firepower. Game may be played in single-player mode, or in multi-player mode with up to 24 people. Players can also play LAZER TAG without a device using the blaster’s classic multi-player mode. Each blaster requires 6 AA batteries, not included. Available at most major toy retailers nationwide and on HasbroToyShop.com.

LAZER TAG Blaster
(HASBRO/Ages 8 years & up/Approx. Retail Price: $39.99/Available: August 1, 2012)
Live the mission and conquer opposing forces with the innovative LAZER TAG blaster, from the makers of NERF products. For solo campaigns, players begin the game by simply downloading the free LAZER TAG app to an iPhone or iPod touch device and then connecting the device to the blaster. Players are then immersed in a live-action virtual gaming experience like no other. The on-screen Heads Up Display reveals virtual foes and targets in single-player mode and real-life worlds in multi-player mode, all while keeping track of remaining power and hits. Playing the LAZER TAG game as a single player allows players to use skill and strategy to master levels of increased difficulty, earning points and rewards along the way. Multi-player mode pits players against enemies in an epic competition where ability, energy and instinct rule. LAZER TAG blasters boast a virtual firing range of over 250 feet! Game may be played in single-player mode, or in multi-player mode with up to 24 people. Players can also play LAZER TAG without a device using the blaster’s classic multi-player mode. Available in either white or yellow; each sold separately. Each blaster requires 6 AA batteries, not included. Available at most major toy retailers nationwide and on HasbroToyShop.com.

Android docks are finally coming into their own in a big way. As someone who has a love/hate relationship with alarm clocks (doesn’t everybody?), a dock that can double as an alarm clock, completely controlled by the phone…that’s the future. The phone is the center of our world, and everything else plays around it. The bedroom clock may be the first serious step in that direction, and the Philips Fidelio AS111 Android Dock is a brilliant  step forward.

The AS111 is a very succinct, simple device. It has a MicroUSB connector for Android smartphones, though will charge any device with a MicroUSB port. It connects to devices via Bluetooth, and only Bluetooth. Android does not currently support audio out through USB, but all Philips Android docks do, so when Android does support it, the AS111 will be ready (after a firmware update to the hardware).

It has a round base with a clock on the front, speakers on the top, and little else. On the back there’s an AUX-in port for wired audio playback. When connected to a device via Bluetooth, the media buttons on the top can control music playback (play, pause, next and previous track). There’s also a button to turn on and off phone charging, which some users will find very attractive for conserving energy. Finally, there’s a night light on the underbelly of the dock. It has a slight orange hue and is very calm and pleasant. The brightness of the clock LED can also be adjusted.

Setup and installation is very easy. The dock works off of the software, so once the Fidelio app is downloaded, just connect the dock to your phone and the rest happens automatically. The clock will set its time based on your phone’s time.

I’ve used the AS111 for over a month and it is an exceptional device. I’m very satisfied with using it day in and day out. The stereo speakers aren’t all that powerful, but as a clock they don’t need to be. If I listen to music in the bedroom, it’s quiet anyways. Even with just 4W of power, I am satisfied with the quality of audio. Obviously bass is lacking, so you psychopaths who listen to Skrillex before clocking out won’t find this dock too appealing. Everyone else will.

All clock features are controlled through the free Fidelio app. As I discussed in the Philips Fidelio DS8550 Speaker Dock review, the software is okay and improving, though on Android compared to iPhone there are some major differences that both improve and can be a bit of a nuisance. Because it isn’t limited by Apple’s restrictions, alarms set will automatically enable when connecting to the dock (by activating the Fidelio app). This sounds great, but unfortunately it does this any time the phone is connected to any charger. If you only charge with this dock, the then’s fine, but if like most Android users you charge either more than once a day or connect to a computer, the Fidelio app starting every time the phone gets power is annoying. This feature can be turned off, but even after I turned it off it kept starting the app when connecting to a power source. Turning it off would also require starting the app every night if you want to use the dock as an alarm clock.

Otherwise the software is good, but messier than the iOS version. It’s slower than it should be and a little clunkier. While writing this review, I found another firmware update, which does speed up the app and clean some of the minor nags I found. It’s better, but still not as good as the iOS version.

The Fidelio AS111 dock on its own is excellent, the best I’ve seen to date. It has a proper balance of size, build quality, looks, and power. The software may need a little work, and perhaps some adjustments from Google, but all in all I highly recommend the AS111.

Editor’s Rating:

4.5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Bottom Line: A great Android dock that replaces typical alarm clocks and clock radios.

Pros:

• Solid audio quality
• Simple, intuitive, and sleek design
• The hardware has everything users can desire from a clock

3D displays have been pretty good over the past few years, though they are still rare. The first sets only released three years ago, and every year since has only seen two or three new models. In late 2011 ASUS released the first 27″ 3D monitor, the VG278H, which is the best thing for 3D. The only way to really improve the quality of your 3D gaming at home is to increase the size of your screen.

As far as monitors go, aside from built-in 3D Vision support, the VG278H is pretty bland. It has high-end specs like 400cd/m2 brightness, 120Hz refresh rate, internal speakers and a 2ms grey-to-grey response time, but that’s all powering a 1920×1080 resolution. For a 27″ panel, that’s pretty low, and it’s noticeable, especially if like me you have at least one other monitor. But let’s take an organized look at the display.

Hardware

As mentioned, this ASUS is a high-end gaming display. Response times are fast, the screen gets deathly bright, and the speakers are pretty good to boot. Not as good as the Playstation 3D Display‘s, mostly from muffled bass and some tinny highs, but otherwise good.

Let’s talk about screen resolution. Today, widescreen (16:9) is the standard for most PC displays, though few still sell as 16:10. My opinion on the matter is that 16:10 is better, and that if you’re going to have multiple displays, the best way to do it is to have them side by side vertically, so you get a 3600×1920 display, instead of 5760×1200. That’s just more sensical to me, and if that’s the case, why is it any different with two monitors? Especially for gaming.

That said, at 27″ most displays in the past have bumped up the resolution to 2560×1600 or 2560×1440, depending on the aspect ratio. The VG278H does neither, and likely for two reasons: reduced cost and less stressful for gaming. Because of how hard processing 3D is (or rather, how it basically requires twice the graphics computing power because it’s doubling the image), running a game in 3D is already twice as hard. Upping the display from 1080p, or even 1200p, to (in this widescreen case) 2560×1440 is a big step, one most gamers don’t go to.

There is an unwritten expectation from screen sizes, one that ASUS is disrupting under the guise of 3D. Acer will release their own 27″ 3D display as well, also 1080p. I don’t like this decrease in pixel density. It only works if players sit farther away from the display, and in this case, that doesn’t happen. I’ve tested a number of games in 3D (with more write-ups, like Skyrim, to come), and yes, sometimes pixels are visible. They’re more visible when not in-game, and impossible when playing in 3D, but dropping to 1080p isn’t progress. Keep the stupid widescreen, but leave the resolution where it belongs.

The VG278H has an HDMI 1.4, Dual-DVI and VGA port, as well as audio in and audio out. Menu navigation is conducted through four buttons, plus a preset button and power button. The buttons are all easy to press, but not nearly as simple as the touch-sensitive buttons on BenQ’s XL2420TX or Dell’s Alienware OptX from two years ago. There’s also a dedicated display switch between HDMI, DVI and VGA.

Finally there’s the Vision 2 built-in IR transceiver, which sits at the very top of the relatively small bezel. It’s adjustable about 40 degrees, which is very convenient for gamers who like to kick back and stay below the monitor.

Color Reproduction and 3D

I’ve tested the VG278H in a number of ways, including picture editing, vision-based benchmarks, everyday use, and gaming. Out of the box the VG278H is pretty accurate, and required minimal adjustment and calibration. As mentioned, the display gets uncomfortably bright, which is especially good for games. I tested all of Skyrim on the VG278H and even with Lightboost (built into the monitor) not active, at max brightness the active shutter glasses couldn’t drown out that much light. After 30 minutes my eyes were watering.

Video and game quality is great, but would be better if the display were glossy. Glossy screens are troublesome for a few reasons, mostly that they are highly reflective. I thought it might be a problem, especially while wearing reflective glasses, but as I found with both the Playstation 3D Display and the VG278H, that’s not the case. 3D gaming on the VG278H during daytime, however, was infinitely easier than on Sony’s display.

The built-in presets are also very well calibrated for their intended uses. Theater Mode is bright but manages colors very well except for a slight green hue (especially in darks), while game mode has slightly higher color saturation and vibrancy. With Skyrim, though there isn’t such incredible color in the game, the VG278H did help bring the world to life with color oversaturation and incredible brightness. And, of course, 3D and the larger 27″ size.

Image from PC World

Though in my rant above about regressing in screen density, with the VG278H I was able to really sit back and chill out while 3D gaming. The 22″ displays are too small and 24″ screens are big, but not enough to kick back with a gamepad. The 27″ is big enough to pull that office chair lever and lean back after a hard day’s work. That extra distance, of course, makes it more difficult to notice the lower screen density.

3D quality is also very solid, though that’s more of a software issue versus hardware. I noticed no screen slowdown when playing in 3D (except for occasional graphical hiccups, from the GPU strain). Built-in Lightboost is convenient, though I only found it helpful when playing in a room with plenty of sunlight.

The real benefit of the VG278H over other 3D displays specifically for 3D is the adjustable 3D Emitter. The 20 degrees of rotation is a huge improvement over the standalone emitter, which has to be set for however you’re sitting. For players like me who change how they sit based on the game, mood, or time of day, that’s a lot of hassle gone out the window.

Conclusion

For the retail price of $680 (available for as low as $620), including one set of 3D Vision 2 glasses (retail $150, available for around $70), the VG278H is an expensive panel, even at the lower prices. Then again, I haven’t found a single 3D display that can provide the same high-quality 3D gaming. There simply isn’t one. BenQ’s offering is still a 24″ panel, and we’ll have to wait and see how Acer’s upcoming 27″ competitor stacks up. But considering their last penny-pinching display, it may save on price but skimp out on quality. We’ll have to wait and see.

Right now, there is no better 3D display than the ASUS VG278H. It provides excellent picture quality straight out of the box, is easy to use, and provides almost all of the amenities one can hope for in a monitor. For the price, I’d have expected touch-sensitive buttons and a better swivel stand, which while adjustable tends to turn the whole stand instead of just the screen.

Editor’s Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Great

Bottom Line: Excellent picture quality right out of the box. Very bright, very big, and with a built-in 3D emitter, very convenient.

Pros:

• Great picture quality
• Very bright, even in sunlight
• Larger size makes 3D gaming way more fun
• Swivel 3D emitter is a gift from the heavens

Riverboats are hardly a desired destination.  Thanks to the M/V Aria that is all about to change, or did change in April of 2011 when this astonishingly, awesome river boat set sail.

Don’t be fooled by M/V Aria’s 147 foot length – it can accommodate up to 32 passengers.  That boils down to 16 cabins and a set of amenities fit for a king.  And by king we mean 240 square feet of opulence complemented by a giant picture window in each cabin that greets guests every morning with a panoramic view of the Amazon river.  Those traveling in a pact, or a family, can find extra space by opting for the 4 room suites that can be interconnected, which provides almost 1000 square feet of space. Other amenities include air conditioning, private baths, luxury toiletries, fine linen bedding, an outdoor jacuzzi, indoor lounge, exercise room and more.

Expect a one night stay to set you back about $1000-$1500.

I’ve seen many TVs, but few have the simplicity, style, and dazzling high-quality picture as…a Playstation branded TV? Yes, you read that right. Not only is Sony’s first “for-gaming” TV crazy good, it’s an HD 3DTV for $500. I can’t remember the last time I played console games on a display that looked this good. The clarity, the accuracy in colors, the excellent backlight that only brightens the picture and not the screen…color me impressed.

It’s sad then that the only reason I can’t recommend it to everyone today is the tiny size and first-gen design quirks. Almost nothing else limits this brilliant TV.

Inside the Box

The Sony Playstation 3D Display a TV that doesn’t follow typical television nomenclature (Vizio VX32L, Sony Bravia XBR HX929, other terrible names that mean nothing to users.). Whoever started naming TV sets must have hated marketers, and this TV bucks that trend. Instead, the full name is too long. “Sony Playstation 3D Display” is too long. PSTV, or Playstation 3DTV would be far simpler and better. For the purposes of this review I’ll keep the name PSTV.

Out of the box, two realities immediately hit home: it’s a small TV and the TV is all you get. The PSTV is a 24” TV, as small as home TVs get. For comparison, most 24″ HDTVs are 720p and under $300. The PSTV is strange for it’s screen size; it’s a small TV but a large computer monitor. The integrated speakers are like elephant ears, and take up a lot of horizontal space. More importantly, the display itself is awfully small for a TV set, whether it’s for games or TV viewing. But more on screen size later.

When opening the box, users will find only three things: the PSTV, a set of 3D glasses, and the power cable. It really is as bare-bones as TVs go, which is good because Sony keeps things simple, but how about a remote? No remote is included and Sony currently doesn’t have one available (media controls are available through the Playstation 3 using a Bluetooth remote or controller). The PSTV does have an IR sensor, so universal remotes do work with the set.

Build and Design

The PSTV is slim, and surprisingly so. For a 1080p display, it crams all of the essentials while maintaining excellent picture quality. With a completely black coat remeniscient of the Playstation 2 design (the older finish, not the newer PS3 original glossy decal or updated gunmetal matte), and it looks great. Product shots provided by companies of their own products generally make those products look better than they actually do. In this case, Sony is dead on. The PSTV looks great, and on the whole it is really well designed.

But piece-by-piece, there are three major snags. The first is the lack of ports, or rather, the lack of a coaxial port. The PSTV includes two HDMI ports and Component ports, and that’s it. For a TV, this is a surprise. The only way to watch cable through the PSTV is to have an HD-ready cable box (which most of us still don’t have), or through your game console. My office cable box is SD-only, but I was able to watch streaming TV through my Xbox 360 (thanks to the Verizon IPTV app). Unfortunately TV streaming for the PS3 is still in its fledgling stages in the US.

The controls are also very oddly placed on the back right of the PSTV, and they are hell to reach. With no included remote this is especially tiresome. The menu system is designed with those poorly placed buttons in mind. It points to which button to press for what action, and the menu navigation is very fluid and easy to use, the best I’ve ever seen on a TV.

Picture and Audio Quality

As I said above, the picture quality is excellent. When I met with Sony representatives a few months back, they said the PSTV was completely a Playstation-branded initiative. Sony Electronics, which builds Bravia TVs (among many other things) didn’t make it. The focus was clearly on perfect picture quality, and they did a damn fine job. The only thing that really matters with any display is great visuals, and the PSTV nailed it. I’ve never seen a TV that looked this good for under $1,500.

The only problem I’ve found is the very glossy display, which because of the screen’s small size and how close I regularly sat in front of the TV to see it, compounded glare and reflections. The closer you are to a reflective surface the more reflections and glare you’ll see, and the PSTV is oh so guilty of the crime of reflection.

I am also very impressed with the backlight, which produces no lightbleed or oversaturation at any brightness. This is uncanny among both TVs and monitors, and damn amazing for an LCD panel. Colors are very accurate, and the framerate is consistently excellent. This is because of the 240Hz refresh rate, which seems incredible but is designed for two people simultaneously playing in 3D (more on that in ‘3D Quality’).

The built-in speakers produce adequate sound for a display of this size. I wouldn’t recommend them for serious gaming though. I regularly had trouble placing directional audio, and the sound in general was light and at higher pitches tinny. At higher volumes the sound cracks. For regular TV viewing or light gaming the built-in speakers are good, but more serious gaming or for watching movies I recommend using a dedicated 2.1 speaker set.

3D Quality

3D is unique on the PSTV because it uses Sony’s own developed technology called SimulView. SimulView displays two different images on the same screen for two different people to watch simultaneously, and each will only see the picture intended for them. It works by using the included (1) shutter glasses to only show half of the picture. That’s why the PSTV has a 240Hz refresh rate: 60Hz for each eye, for two players.

Today there are only games that support SimulView, including Motorstorm Apocolypse, Gran Turismo 5, Killzone 3, and Super Stardust HD. I tested all of the games, and SimulView works great. It greatly improves playing coop on a single display. I never found a lack of clarity, and there shouldn’t be. The human eye sees at 24/25Hz, so 60Hz per eye is more than enough.

General 3D image quality is also excellent, though it really depends more on the game than the display. The screen produces crisp 3D picture, and there is very little movement from bobbing heads (moving your head side to side produces a slight movement of the image on the screen). It isn’t the best 3D I’ve tested, but the combination of excellent picture quality and very good 3D quality makes it the best 3D display to date.

My only concern regarding 3D is the small display size. Over the years my biggest complaint for 3D gaming is that the screen needs to be large for the 3D effect to be meaningful. Computer monitors max out at 27″ for 3D, and 3DTVs can get very large but often come with their own 3D glasses and technology. Even with larger screens 3DTVs are relatively smaller because of the greater distance from the TV than a computer monitor. PC gaming has so far provided the best home 3D setup, though that will likely change with better 3D projectors.

At 24”, the PSTV is small for both a TV and a 3D display. This minimizes the 3D effect unless you’re sitting very close to the screen. Because 3D today goes into the TV (deep) instead of outside the TV (in your face), closeness to the screen is only a problem your grandmother will complain about (“if you sit that close to the TV you are going to go blind!). The overall 3D experience, unless you’re very close to the TV, is lacking. For two players this poses a unique problem of being very physically close to one another while playing, though relatively speaking a single 24″ display provides more picture than a 50″ TV going split-screen.

Conclusion

The Playstation 3D Display has the best video quality of any TV three times its price. It may be one of the best gaming products ever built, and I hope to see more in the future. As the first Playstation TV it has a few design mistakes (no remote, poorly placed buttons), but the exceptional build of this TV is undeniable.

The biggest problem, both for everyday users and 3D gamers, is the size. 24” is small for a TV. It fits on a computer desk, though it doesn’t make the best monitor. Text isn’t very clear, and it doesn’t make for the best computer monitor. But for anyone with one display interested in getting a second, the PSTV is a great option for viewing media, playing games, and even for applications such as picture and video editing.

As a standalone TV, the PSTV lacks a coaxial input but works well with today’s game consoles. If you’ve forsaken cable TV for internet TV and videos or have an HD cable box, the PSTV will fit right in. College students and anyone on a budget can’t find a better deal than this. Assuming it meets your needs, I highly recommend the Playstation 3D Display. If it doesn’t, wait until Sony puts out a model twice the size. With this kind of quality, the company would be crazy not to.

Editor’s Rating:

4 out of 5 stars

Great

Bottom Line: The best TV you can buy for $500. Excellent video, perfect for gaming, but it needs to match your conditions. A perfect display as a secondary PC monitor/game console TV at a workstation. There’s a reason why it fit in multiple gift guides.

Pros:

• Excellent video quality
• Solid 3D reproduction
• Minimalist hardware and software design

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that comparisons between the iPhone and Playstation Vita were abound, even though they are very different devices. The iPhone, obviously a phone, and the Vita, obviously not a phone, still carry a lot of the same characteristics. And for better or worse, even game consoles like the Nintendo 3DS, DS, and PSP have had a run for their maker’s money because of products like the iPhone.

Then again, considering how the two devices are so vastly different, this comparison won’t be a direct head-to-head. Instead, we’ll compare both based on equal ground, or as close as they get to it.

Display

From my testing of the Vita and the iPhone 4S, along with a number of other handhelds and smartphones, this is a tough call. The iPhone 4S has Apple’s retina display, a 326ppi 960×640 resolution screen that is extremely dense. It uses a high-quality 3.5″ TFT capacitive touchscreen that has, ever since the original iPhone, worked well in direct sunlight.

Meanwhile, the Vita has a 220ppi 960×544 OLED display, which is significantly less dense while on a 5″ screen. On the one hand that means that colors will be more vibrant and saturated, with darker blacks, but the downside is that the display won’t be nearly as visible in bright conditions. Recent OLED displays I’ve tested, including the Samsung Galaxy S II and Epic 4G Touch, are visible in direct sunlight, but that’s thanks to Samsung’s double-pane SuperAMOLED+ system. Sony uses a different glass model for their OLED display.

The benefits of OLED are this: more vibrant colors (to the point of exageration), deeper blacks, and less power drain. TFT, however, is brighter, more accurate, and has been used for decades (and is thus a more refined technology). So what really makes the difference here is the size and density. The Vita is bigger at 5″, and for video and gaming the density won’t be as important as for reading text.

Winner: PS Vita, but it’s close. If the iPhone were larger, or perhaps if we compared a different phone like the HTC Rezound (which has a 720p TFT display), the results would be different.

Processor

At this point, it’s safe to call the iPhone’s A5 processor old. It’s been around since last April in the iPad 2, and the chip in the iPhone 4S is even underclocked to 800MHz. The Vita, according to some developers, has an average clock speed of 800MHz but can go up to 2GHz. However, at that high speed the power drain will be significant, so most games are expected to play between 800MHz-1GHz. Both are based on the ARM Cortex A9 design, but Sony’s chip also shares many similarities with the PS3′s Cell processor. It’s a quad-core chip (compared to the iPhone 4S’ dual-core), though as of now it’s unclear just how powerful the chip is. It will take developers some time to really stretch it out, as it did with the Cell CPU.

The only big difference here is that the next iPad, likely to release in the April/May time-frame, will have an updated processor, likely the A6. The next iPhone won’t have it until the holidays, but I expect it to have the same 1GHz frequency but be a quad-core chip. The Vita, on the other hand, won’t receive any major upgrades, but it will remain more powerful than the next gen iPhone and all other competing smartphones for at least two years. Still, that isn’t a long time. However, today, the Vita clearly has the more powerful processor.

Winner: PS Vita, thanks to a CPU with twice the cores and the potential to be 2.5x as fast as the current iPhone.

Storage

Storage is a big deal…but in this case, not to Sony. The PS Vita requires some sort of storage to play games and get apps, but doesn’t come with any whatsoever. Vita owners have to buy external storage, and specifically need Sony’s new Playstation Vita Card storage, not SD cards. The pricing isn’t bad: $20 for 4GB, $30 for 8GB, $60 for 16GB, and $100 for 32GB. I’ve asked Sony a few times concerning the speed of these Vita-specific flash cards, but haven’t received any response as of yet. SD cards are known to be unfortunately slow, so slow in fact that pro-grade camera manufacturers are dropping the format and creating their own for their cameras.

The iPhone 4S starts with 16GB and goes up to 64GB, with $100 between the three models. There’s no expandability with the iPhone, but at least it has internal memory to begin with. The Vita actually requires it and forces owners to put down at least an additional $20 just for 4GB. That means to match the iPhone 4S, in terms of storage today, you’d have to pay $310 for the Vita and a 16GB memory card. Then again, put down $350 and that amount of memory storage is the same as a 32GB iPhone 4S, which retails for $400 (plus 2-year service contract).

Winner: iPhone 4S, because it comes storage to begin with and doesn’t attempt to cheat buyers out of more money for required data storage. Until Sony gets back to me regarding their memory card speed, and unless it’s faster than typical (slow) SD cards, the iPhone is the winner, though at higher densities the Vita is a less expensive prospect.

Wireless Connectivity

The PS Vita comes in two models, Wi-Fi only and with 3G. The iPhone 4S meanwhile is a phone, though is also limited to 3G speeds. The kicker for the iPhone is that on AT&T, it has access to what AT&T loves to call 4G (though Apple refused to agree to such marketing for the device because it isn’t true 4G), though both Sprint and Verizon iPhone models are stuck on the slower 3G network. 4G allows for up to 28.8Mb/s data transfer rates, and in my experience is as fast as Sprint’s 4G network, offering roughly 8Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up.

That immediately dings the Vita, because it could, theoretically, have double the transfer speed. Worse yet for the console, contracts are only available in the US through AT&T. Without LTE online gaming is impossible, and with only 3G speeds apps and streaming videos will be slower than what nearly every smartphone released in the past six months. Including the iPhone 4S.

Winner: iPhone 4S, thanks to faster speeds and availability on more carriers.

Camera

The Vita has two VGA cameras (640×480), one on the front and one on the back. The iPhone 4S has an 8MP rear camera and a 1.3MP front camera. If that’s not enough, the iPhone 4S is today considered one of the best camera phones available.

If, for some reason you think I need to go on…the Vita has no flash, no hope for taking great pictures, and is only there so developers can potentially make use of it.

Winner: iPhone 4S, because it isn’t a tacked-on piece of junk.

Battery Life

Judging battery life between a gaming console and a phone may appear unfair, but in fact it’s the PS Vita that has the unfair advantage, especially if it’s the Wi-Fi only model. Not only does it sport a beefier 2210mAh battery, compared to the iPhone’s 1432mAh. The Vita’s 5″ display may be more power hungry, but OLED is less power intensive than LCD displays. And the iPhone is always connected because it’s a phone. Even then, Sony averages 3-5 hours of gameplay, 5 hours of video playback, and 9 hours of music playback. The iPhone 4S claims twice the video playback time, 4.5x the music playback time, and can browse the internet for 6 hours over 3G or 9 hours over Wi-Fi.

As for gaming? There aren’t specific numbers for the iPhone 4S yet, but I’ve been playing games like Grand Theft Auto III and the recent update to Rage HD, and it certainly lasts over five hours.

Winner: iPhone 4S, which has a smaller, less-dense battery but still creams the Vita.

Price

Normally, price would be easy to determine because every year a new iPhone released alongside a new iPod Touch. That didn’t happen with the iPhone 4S, meaning the current iPod Touch is the same as last year. It’s as powerful as the iPhone 4, so the iPhone 4S stands alone. Pricing for it is simple: $200 plus a two-year contract, with a $54.99 base price on AT&T. That comes out to roughly $1520 over two years, for the very minimum, and that’s assuming users have the older pricing scheme. Based on today’s minimum pricing, it would be $1640.

Meanwhile, the PS Vita will retail for $250, or $300 for the 3G model with a base $15/month, without a contract.  If there were an equally powerful iPod Touch, the story would be very different. The only alternative for the same power is the iPad 2, which at the base model retails for $500, double the price.

Winner: PS Vita, thanks mostly due to no new iPod Touch.

Gaming Capability

Gaming prowess is by far better on the PS Vita than the iPhone 4S, for three reasons. First, it has physical controls on top of the full touch controls found on the iPhone and any smartphone. That means not only do users get essentially a PS3 gamepad built into the Vita, the large 5″ display is a multi-touch touchscreen, and the back is a touch-sensitive panel to boot.

Second, as mentioned above, the processor is faster, more powerful, and has more cores. And third, the display is much larger (as mentioned above), providing a more inclusive gaming experience.

Winner: PS Vita, because it’s built to be a gaming machine.

Games

It’s a long-standing tradition that game consoles sell because of the number and quality of games released for it. The iPhone (and smartphones in general) have slowly changed that thanks to how easy it is to develop games and how so many people have smartphones.

When the PS Vita releases outside of Japan, it will have 12 launch titles. That number is expected to grow to 30 within the first few months after release. The iPhone, in the meantime, will accumulate at least another 1,000 games between the time you read this and the Vita’s actual release. The sad truth is most of those games will be 99 cents or free and not provide a “true” gaming experience.

However, the iPhone has a large number of excellent games available to it. They may be hard to find, but the fact is the Vita will be lucky to have the kind of game sales that iOS developers get.

For games, the dealbreaker for anyone, there are three important questions: will the quality of Vita games far surpass what we see in iPhone gaming today? Will there be a lot of PS Vita games, both full releases and mini games (ie board games, card games, minor apps that are fun for a few minutes at a time; not traditional console games)? And will the Vita see a lot of hacking, game emulation, and remote gameplay through the PS3? There’s no reason not to expect a higher quality of games coming to the Vita than the iPhone, though there are only 34 planned full-release games that we know of thus far. The Vita has already been hacked for remote play of PS3 games like Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3, meaning that the portable console can play full-fledged home console games via Wi-Fi streaming.

However, we already know that the iPhone can do the same thing through OnLive (though the service isn’t currently active on iOS; it is available on Android and waiting for Apple’s approval). Plus games on the iPhone can be played with an external controller, so long as the game supports it. Big-name titles like Infinity Blade 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies are only found on iOS.

There’s no denying that the iPhone has more games, and because of the sheer number will likely always have more better games than the Vita. Furthermore, because of how many iPhones are out there (and all iOS devices), it will take a few years before some developers take the Vita seriously, if at all. It’s sad, but for now, true. So many of the current iOS games sell so well that they can keep lower prices. High-end games like Infinity Blade 2 go for under $10. There are so many deals from developers that many drop down to a buck. The state of gaming on iOS is, right now, way better than not only the Vita when it releases in February, but frankly better than any dedicated console period. It may even be better than the PC.

Winner: iPhone 4S, because the current gaming ecosystem on iOS far surpasses any other gaming machine, dedicated or not.

Overall Winner: iPhone 4S (by a hair)

It’s close. Very, very close. However, what the better gaming device really comes down to, as it always does, is the value and quality of the games that are available for said device. In this case, Sony is fighting an uphill battle with the PS Vita, at least for now. With the potential to make not just most, but all PS1 (and even potentially PS2) games available for the Vita through the company’s Playstation Certification program (or just making those games available period), that can change. That tide can change overnight.

However, as of now the Vita doesn’t have that capability. Everything else regarding the games available has been bettered by the iPhone, and without the push from PS1 and PS2 games, the Vita will likely never prove to be the better gaming device because of a lack of content. It’s a sad, but clear and apparent truth.

Even then, it’s very close. The PS Vita has better gaming controls and is a better designed device specifically for gaming, even if the display has a lower resolution and is less visible in bright conditions. 5″ vs 3.5″ for a gaming screen is no comparison. The Vita beats the hell out of the iPhone when it comes to control, not only because it matches the touchscreen and has physical buttons and analog sticks, but because it combines both for gameplay and has the rear touch panel to boot. It really is a mobile game developer’s dream.

The iPhone 4S takes the cake in too many categories though. It kills the Vita with a better camera, at around double the battery life (for gaming, and way more for almost everything else), and carriers available for 3G. We all know that the rise and fall of portable game consoles has depended on battery life, and just as with the PSP this is a weakness with the Vita. Only this time, it’s weak against not a Nintendo offering, but against a very capable cell phone.

A few very close points are pricing and storage. If there were a new iPod Touch released with the A5 processor, then pricing would be a clear win for the iOS device. But as it stands now, the iPhone 4S is the only one available (the iPad 2 would lose in pricing because of it’s high $500 price tag), and the two-year contract cost far outweighs the potential pricing of the Vita, even the 3G model for $30/m. And with storage, on the high-end the Vita could win (assuming users purchased the 64GB card and 3G model), but because Sony is releasing the Vita with no internal memory, the result is confused consumers who must spend more money to do the console’s basic functions…like saving games and using downloadable apps. Even then, the storage pricing is still more expensive than all iPhone 4S models (with a 2-year contract) except for the 64GB model, and, once again, only if you get the Wi-Fi Vita.

Based on our scoring method for comparisons, the Vita could have easily won if it shipped with internal memory. External memory is always slower than internal memory, but until I hear back from Sony regarding the speed of their memory cards, that’ll remain a mystery. If the Vita were available through other cell carriers, or if it at least had AT&T’s 4G (HSDPA/HSPA+ 28.8Mbps), it would score better.

What I don’t doubt is that over time these scores will change. The Vita will eventually ship in bundles that are more price friendly and with some storage options. The next-gen iPhone will also likely ship with a new iPod Touch. By this time next year there will also be a handful of Android competitors, and tablet gaming will finally come into it’s own. But when the Vita releases, it will face the fiercest competition Sony has ever faced in the mobile space, from a device that isn’t going away anytime soon. The only way I can see Sony staying ahead is by utilizing it’s enormous catalog of PS1 and PS2 games, and by making prices of those games competitive so everyday iPhone gamers will actually be coaxed into buying a dedicated mobile games console instead of just living the one-device life.

Update~ As TheVerge just wrote, minutes before this article was published, the PS Vita now has a second launch bundle that’s the 3G model with an 8GB memory card, one free PSN game, and a month of free 3G data. That bundle is available for pre-order now through Amazon. Does it change our score?

Because the score is so damn close – not only is it 4-5, but it’s a point of contention in nearly every category – and because this new bundle offers a reasonable amount of storage for the console, it may indeed turn the tide.

As mentioned above, games is the most important thing, which is why I’m going to say that, in this case, the new bundle won’t change the winner in this comparison. However, our scoring system for comparisons is pretty clear cut. So I’ll leave this decision up to you guys. What do you think? Does this new bundle put the PS Vita ahead of the iPhone 4S? Post your thoughts in the comments below and, if the majority of you think we should change the score, we will.

I hate Bluetooth headsets. They all have two problems: they’re uncomfortable and battery life sucks. Considering that making phone calls more comfortable is the whole point of a wireless headset, Bluetooth sets are generally garbage. But recently I’ve seen a positive change, thanks mostly to two recent headsets. One of those is the Plantronics Marque M155.

Unsurprisingly, the Marque is sleek and small, measuring at 2” long and a quarter inch wide and thick. It has one “home” button on the outside, an on/off switch on the bottom, and a volume rocker on the top. A microUSB connector fits snugly on the back. A glossy black finish with silver rims gives the Marque a very clean design, even though the glossy surface picks up fingerprints all too easily. On a device this small, that’s barely noticeable, if ever. I have to say that it looks very similar to the iPhone 4/4S. Or at least the black model.

While I wouldn’t call it an innovation, the key ingredient to the Marque’s success as a BT headset is the lightweight build. It’s tiny, and after wearing it for several hours on my admittedly sensitive ears, I wasn’t bothered by it whatsoever. No other on-ear headset I’ve tested has worked so successfully like the Marque. Plantronics offers a number of different wear styles, including a speaker cover (designed to stay in the ear without pressing against it tightly), which can be worn with or without the plastic ear claw. In any case, users have four major choices of how to wear the Marque. My personal preference has been to use the claw, which delegates the Marque’s weight between the top and inside ear.

Battery life is spectacular. Claiming just five hours of talk time, I’m impressed by the idle time. I left the Marque on for several days while making calls on and off and it lasted – on the original charge – for four days. That is to say, without even charging it once myself. Straight out of the box, it lasted four days with moderate use. After fully charging it for the first time, the Marque can last up to a week with conservative use, and easily several days (anywhere from 4-6 hours of consecutive talk time per charge).

Another long-time problem with Bluetooth is the difficulty in setting it up. Pairing devices is cumbersome, even for seasoned technophiles. Plantronics solves this with two methods. The first is a voiced step-by-step walkthrough when first turning on the device, which is exceptional. The second, specific to iOS and Android devices, is an app that helps users pair the Marque (or any Bluetooth device) to the phone. The app may seem overkill for just a pairing process, but Plantronics includes a number of additional features in the app to make it worth keeping.

When first testing the Marque with my iPhone, I was surprised to find that immediately after pairing an icon of a Bluetooth headset with a gauge sat beside the battery life percentage. I don’t know how Plantronics managed it (and will update with an answer when I get one), but that gauge actually shows battery life of the headset. To my knowledge the Marque is the only headset to do this, and it only works on the iPhone. Android devices did not display any icon specific to the Marque.

Because the Marque is capable of voice commands (internally, not the phone’s voice command functions), there are a number of useful features found only on this headset. Every time the Marque is powered on, it states how much battery life it has left, for talk time. Users can answer calls by simply saying “answer”, or “ignore” to ignore the call. This feature isn’t perfect; I’ve found that about 25% of the time the Marque failed to answer the call because it either didn’t hear what I said or didn’t understand the command. When it does work, it makes for a really hands-free device. Users don’t even have to press the talk button on the headset.

The aforementioned app, MyHeadset(which is different on iOS and Android, with far more options on iOS), includes a pairing guide and walkthrough, a sound-check (so you can confirm that the headset is working properly before making a call), two (dumb) games, and even product support. For confirming that the audio works alone the app is invaluable…I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve made calls with BT not activating for some reason. Or how many times I’ve made test calls just to confirm that the headset is indeed active

I made it clear that Bluetooth headsets have been a pain in the ass for the majority of the technology’s existence. The Marque, as the lightest and most convenient Bluetooth headset I’ve ever tested, would with nothing else already be a great headset. Combined with simple voice commands and gestures and a strikingly useful app, the Marque M155 is the best on-ear Bluetooth headset, period. Nothing else compares. If you have hated using Bluetooth headsets and have stuck with wired sets that come with the phone, the Marque will convert you.

Editor’s Rating:

4.5 out of 5 stars

Excellent

Bottom Line: The Plantronics Marque M155 is the best in-ear Bluetooth headset I’ve ever tested. Highly recommended.

Pros:

• Excellent battery life, both for talk time and idle time
• Very lightweight, comfortable to wear for hours at a time
• Voiced phone answering and spoken battery life are both extremely convenient
• For iPhone users, battery life displayed on the phone is brilliant
• Free app is useful for setup and general use

Skyrim is the biggest game to release in 2011. It may not have the sales numbers of, say, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but it didn’t suffer with over 10 million copies sold. And with over 100 hours of gameplay in a single run, it’s by far one of the deepest and literally biggest games to ever come out. So I did what any sane man would do: I put in 100 hours in 3D.

First, the test rig. My PC isn’t anything special, but it’s powerful enough to get the job done. Here are the specs:

• 3GHz Quad-Core AMD Athlon Black Edition
• 8GB RAM
• ASUS P5N-e Motherboard
• Zotac GTX 580 (courtesy of Nvidia)
• ASUS VG278H 3D display (courtesy of Nvidia)
• Seagate 7200RPM 1TB

• Mouse: Logitech G700
• Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Stealth
• Gamepad (used to play Skyrim [in full lean-back mode]): Wired Xbox 360 Controller
• Speakers: Razer Mako 2.1
• Headset: Logitech G930 (my main headset, though I switched between several tested headsets as well)

Technically speaking, there are 115 hours of logged play time (though roughly 10 hours is unplayed, just me leaving the game on while doing chores or grabbing a bite, while another five are my brother giving it a try). 33/50 achievements have been unlocked, and the majority of the game has been completed. The only main quests I haven’t done are joining a side in the civil war, joining the Dark Brotherhood (when given a choice to join, I chose to kill the Brotherhood interviewer and then kill the rest of the Brotherhood), and actually completing the few last major missions. For all intents and purposes, the game is nearly complete; I expect roughly 10-15 hours to finish, if I complete all additional missions without picking a side in the civil war.

I played countless hours with the Nvidia 3D Vision 2 glasses, which in many respects proved to be one of the best 3D gaming experiences I’ve ever had. I believe this is for two reasons: first, the larger 27″ display is better suited for 3D (the bigger the screen, the better the 3D effects). Second, the world of Skyrim is extremely well done for 3D. It’s not perfect (far from it), but all too often I was left impressed with the quality of 3D employed in the game.

To get the full 3D effect, several adjustments must be made to Skyrim. First, depending on your hardware, turn down the performance. Without 3D enabled I could almost max out the game, but with 3D enabled I turned it down to high spec, turned off antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, lowered texture quality to medium, and turned of FXAA. I hate radial blur, so I turned it down to low (though for performance it wasn’t necessary). I left all viewing distances at max. The screen resolution was 1920×1080.

Next, in Skyrim itself, I did two things immediately after trying to play. First was remove the in-game crosshairs, and second was to lower the HUD opacity. Other players may want to do more to remove static and non-3D artifacts, such as subtitles and navigation arrows as well. All of these take away from the 3D effect because they are in 2D. If you’re feeling especially hardcore, turn the HUD opacity off completely and rough the game without a HUD. With the opacity low enough the HUD bars won’t mess with your vision.

3D Quality

Once you’re all set, the world of Skyrim looks pretty fantastic in 3D. Depth is very subtle, and it doesn’t strain the eyes. It’s one of the few games I’ve been able to play for hours on end looking about and, when I took the glasses off, realized just how far I was focusing into the screen.

Because Skyrim is such a giant open world, 3D helps in several key ways. First is enemy distance. While distance can generally be measured by the size of enemies, those sizes vary greatly in Skyrim. Giants, Dragons and Mammoths are huge, bears are pretty big, people are mid-sized, and there’s a ton of smaller creatures. But when a Dragon attacks and it’s flying around, trying to shoot it with an arrow is tough because it’s hard to gauge the distance. 3D actually helps here.

For combat, 3D is mostly helpful for archery. It makes distance less tricky to determine. While I generally played as a heavy armor combatant, with 3D it actually proved easier to play the part of a thief, sneaking around and closing in on the kill, or keeping enough distance to never be spotted. Distance is extremely important in this sort of gameplay.

Coming back from Vegas, I can safely say that if you ever go, don’t walk to a hotel that looks like it’s a few blocks away. It’s not New York; a block is a mile walk. The reason we have trouble telling that is because of how massive the hotels and buildings are. Then again, most people don’t pay attention to depth perception in Sin City.

In Skyrim, depth perception proved helpful as well. Some distances are just too hard to tell properly playing in 2D. I’ve tried scaling mountains and climbing 90 degree walls (on my horse, of course), and sometimes it’s just impossible to get up a certain path. From a distance, it’s nearly impossible to see  just how far they are.

Throw on those 3D glasses and after adjusting to the depth, suddenly that distance becomes clear. It still takes some practice; after all, we make the mistake in everyday life, so we’re just as likely to make the same mistake in a game. But I will say that with the 3D glasses I was able to avoid trying to scale some ridiculous mountains because, as I looked from a distance and getting closer, it was very clear how far they were (and that the fast travel feature would save me some time and hassle), and that some things just were not meant to be climbed.

Flaws in Skyrim’s 3D

The 3D isn’t perfect though. My biggest complaint is the night sky. Stars appear in 2D, so they appear in double with 3D enabled. And because they’re each tiny specks, that turns out to be a pretty big problem (though how often do we stare up at the night sky, let alone in a game?). The 3D crosshairs (not the in-game, but NVidia’s) aren’t perfectly tuned and jump in and out of focus, especially when the object aimed at is very close.

Additionally, as mentioned above, the HUD layout is completely flat, so when focusing on something very far, health, stamina, magic, and navigation all appear in double. Especially for health this proves to be very troublesome, and I found myself bouncing between focusing on something far and close, but only a few centimeters apart. To feel that experience, imagine sitting on a laptop and staring at the very top, and then focusing on something 20 feet away just above the laptop from your point of view. Then go back and forth a few times. It’s exhausting.

A final issue is depth, or rather too much of it. I turned my depth setting down as far as they went because even focusing on distant objects, I’d have double vision. This generally occurred with static objects, like walls or buildings. Moveable objects appear to be more malleable, but if you look at a chair or wall, very often it appears in duplicate form.

Final Thoughts

Skyrim is definitely a winner for 3D, with several precautions to be taken first. With a powerful GPU it will certainly be a lot of fun, and I think it makes the nature of the game – the entire world as a playground, a second life in an ancient Nord world – more real. More exciting. During my testing I went through several versions of NVidia drivers as well, each offering better performance than the last and fixing minor gripes here and there, so there’s no doubt it’ll look and feel better as time goes one.

If you look at anyone’s gamepads, chances are they are the original PS3 or 360 controllers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; both Sony and Microsoft put thousands of hours of research into making their controllers perfect, and though neither is, both are very solid. But after five and six years respectively, has there really been nothing so much better?

I found one that is, and from what I’ve seen thus far, it is glorious. From Mad Catz, who over the past five years has undergone a complete transformation and introduced a large handful of great products. The MLG Pro Circuit Controller is not only the most customizable gamepad I’ve ever seen, it’s also the toughest. I spent a few minutes just pushing and pressing on it, and it’s as solid as gamepads come.

Customization is a big deal for the Pro Circuit. Every controller ships with two sets of thumbsticks and two d-Pads, all of which are interchangeable and replaceable. They come in two styles, PS3 and 360, so thumbsticks can be concave or convex, and the d-Pad can be full or separate button. Even the faceplate and palm rests can be replaced with different styled plastics, like glossy or a textured plastic coating. Additional styles can be purchased separately online. It even comes with weights, up to 70 grams, that are completely interchangeable.

I spent a little while holding and playing with it, and you may be turned off by the $130 price point, but from what I’ve seen thus far, the MLG Pro Circuit may be the last controller you’ll ever need. One problem that Mad Catz has found is people who play often, people like myself, go through controllers fairly quickly because they wear out, break, have ripped cables…there’s always something. Mad Catz thinks it has fixed all of these problems. The cable is tethered and screws onto the controller, the build is solid, and it’s all completely adjustable.

Of course, it is wired, which is because of the “MLG” part of the controller. Pro gamers don’t want a wireless controller because they’re slightly slower and have some lag, and such controllers are illegal at professional gaming tournaments. While I’d love to see a similar wireless controller, or a build that works both wired and wirelessly, this one is not like that. The other thing to note is that while you can get both thumbstick models, there is a difference between the 360 and PS3 models. For gamers who own both consoles like myself, because of branding and licensing issues, there won’t be one Pro Circuit Controller that works on both consoles. Both models will work on the PC.

The MLG Pro Circuit Controller is available now, though I haven’t found it available anywhere except for the Xbox 360 version on Amazon, for $100. That’s for the controller, two sets of thumbsticks and two d-Pads, a 9′ threaded cable, and a carrying case for all of it. Varying and additional thumbsticks, d-Pads, cables, face plates and other accessories will all vary and will be available later on.

It may be one of the most important tablet computers shown at CES this year, not because of a unique build and design, but because it’s made to play full-fledged PC games. Project Fiona isn’t your everyday tablet; in fact, its about as far as you can get from an iPad or Android tablet. And that, along with some high-end and completely secret hardware, is the secret sauce that may make Fiona worth forgetting about any other tablet coming out this year.

After all, don’t you want to have a full-PC running in a tablet?

Razer, the gaming peripheral company that has recently grown to manufacturing a high-end gaming laptop (the Razer Blade), is working on a 11″ gaming tablet that functions just like any other tablet – full touchscreen, built-in battery, etc. – except that it currently has Windows 7 Touch Edition and will eventually ship with Windows 8. Besides for that it’s a gaming laptop sans keyboard, with built-in gamepad controllers on both sides of the tablet. The design is a little clunky now, but it’s not set in stone exactly how it will end up.

In speaking with Razer, I asked about possible designs where the controllers are separate and/or attachable, and it’s currently something that the company is researching. The tablet itself is pretty thick at a full inch and fairly heavy too. It runs an Intel i7 CPU, full-power (not the ultrabook low-powered models), so it can be anything from 2.4-3GHz, though likely dual core. It will also have a high-end GPU, though it’s unclear which model it will have, likely an Nvidia 600 model, but without knowing what Nvidia is planning in the future for their GPU line it’s impossible to tell.

However, the plan is to release the tablet with Windows 8 for under $1,000, thereby making it a perfect gaming tablet that can potentially replace gaming laptops. Ironically enough, it would in a sense compete with Razer’s Blade laptop.

I played Space Marine at 720p (the screen display was actually 1280×800, which is strange because it looks like a widescreen display (16:9), but has a standard PC 16:10 resolution. The game ran smoothly, but the control setup was a bit strange. Like joysticks on the Playstation Move Navigation Controller or Razer’s own Hydra controller. Holding the entire device is…well, it’s big. Razer reps assured me that the battery will last at least 1.5 hours, which means that more basic functions like email and web-browsing should last much longer, especially if Windows 8 has significantly better power management functions as expected.

The game quality was great, and though I’d love to know what the settings were, that info wasn’t shared. Once again neither were the specs. Project Fiona is expected to fully release, likely under a new name, in Q3 or Q4 this year. But it’s also all experimental, so we’ll have to wait and see. Because if suddenly people can play on the go, and it’s under $1,000, there will be a line around the block to pick one up.

With how quickly MMORPGs pop onto the scene and subsequently disappear, it’s somewhat hard to give an accurate review immediately after launch.  With MMOs, you not only have to review the initial content and accessibility, but you also need to keep going back to it after content updates and such, in order to keep people informed of the viability of the product.  With that being said, I’ve spent the better part of the past month playing the hell out of the Old Republic so that I could get a really accurate feel of the game before writing this.  While I’ve touched on some of the things I’ll bring up here in other posts, this should be more than enough to give you a full picture of the game.  Also, while I see people making comparisons to this game and World of Warcraft – I have never played WoW, so you won’t hear any of that here (though I may make references to Galaxies).

The first thing you have to bring up when talking about Star Wars: The Old Republic, is how masterfully crafted each of the individual story lines are.  Each story could have been sold as an individual single player game, and people would have been happy about it – that’s just how good they all are.  Not only is the writing superb, but the fact that Bioware chose to make EVERYTHING in the game be presented with full voice is just something you don’t expect from an MMORPG.  Yes, everything from major cut scenes, to every mission (even the few “fetch and gather” missions), to idle NPC chatter is all voiced, so you don’t have to worry about reading text; the only caveat to that is that when someone speaks in an alien tongue.  Then there are subtitles to tell you what they’re saying, but even those parts are fully voiced – albeit in the alien’s language.

The graphics in the game are also pretty much spot on, and on par with every other of Bioware’s single player RPG experiences.  The cut scenes and cinematics are brilliant, even the things you see constantly like when you land your ship on a planet don’t ever really get old to watch because of how nice they look (although if you’re in a hurry you can skip them with a space bar press).  There were only a few times when I noticed some sprites that looked off – in the Cadimimu Flashpoint, at one point you fight a Wookie with a flamethrower, and he spawns some tiny creatures to attack (I don’t know what race they are) – those ads looked like my son’s “Mighty Beanz”.  Other than those however, everything else I took in looked exactly as it should.

I have to say that after coming from Galaxies, I found the initial planetary exploration to be lacking – but that was before I reached Tatooine.  Most of the starting two planets are relatively small in comparison to what I was used to, but Tatooine actually felt extremely vast.  The size of the Dune Sea was incredibly intimidating just by itself.  While I still think Galaxies had larger worlds with more to explore (sadly, there’s no POI’s in The Old Republic), the worlds in The Old Republic look better, and feel more fleshed out; until you get into the “cities” that is.  For whatever reason, the areas that should have the most NPC population in them feel incredibly sparse.  Walking into the seat of the Empire, you would expect (in my opinion) to see people milling about all over the place, and that just isn’t the case.  Maybe they’re just trying to save resources so that more people can play – but it makes you feel like one of tens in a city, instead of one of hundreds or thousands.

The combat in The Old Republic feels like standard fare for an MMO, but it works exceptionally well – especially PvP.  Those who knew me in Galaxies knew that I always ran around in “overt” status because I love to PvP (hence the reason I played Lineage 2 for so long).  Now I joined a PvE server because I wanted to be able to have a break and get enough data for the review, but in my opinion that made the PvP even better.  There was no griefing or anything like that – only people who wanted to be involved in the PvP.  Warzones are a great way to introduce people to PvP as well.  They are essentially instanced arenas where you have a specific goal (and killing actually isn’t the primary goal).  There’s my least favorite – Hutt Ball, where two teams fight over a ball, and try to get it into their team’s scoring zone.  It’s kind of like a mix of football and soccer, with booby traps all over the place.  It’s also the only game where Republic and Imperial players can both end up on the same team.  It’s my least favorite , though because it’s the one that has the least amount of strategy (at least if you play in a public group).

Then there’s the Voidstar, which is a heck of a lot of fun.  At first the Imperial players are defending, and the Republic players are attacking.  There are two doors that need bombs planted on them (planting one on either will do) for the Republic forces to proceed in the level, and once planted they take twenty seconds to detonate.  There’s then two more sets of doors (same process), before a player can recover the datacore.  Once that is done, the sides switch, and the Imperial players have to BEAT the time set by the Republic team.  It’s great because it really focuses on teamwork, and strategy is needed.  The final Warzone (for now), and my undeniable favorite one to play, is the Alderaan Civil War.  If you’ve ever played Battlefield 2042 then this may seem familiar:  each side spawns in a drop ship and have to take a craft (speeder) to the planetary surface.  Once there, you need to take over three gun batteries in order to have them fire on the opposing side’s drop ship (and stop them from firing on yours).  This Warzone relies HEAVILY on strategy and communication so that you know where you need to go when you spawn in order to be the most effective.  Whichever Warzone you play though, PvP is a heck of a lot of fun here.

Combat and PvP is all well and good for your average MMO, but what about something for those that don’t want to be out there fighting?  In Galaxies there was a large number of crafting professions that one could take up (I myself tried my hand at being a chef after getting a rare Mandalorian wine recipe), and the crafting there was deep to the level of insanity – so how well is it in The Old Republic?  To put it simply, it is both shallow and deep.  Let me try and clear that up a bit here – it takes all of maybe two days to max out your crafting and gathering skills leading to my saying it’s somewhat shallow, however the things you can make in the end and how you go about getting schematics and such is pretty deep.  To start with you pick three “crew skills” (you can drop any you pick to learn more at any time, though you lose all progress in a dropped skill) – these are classified as crafting skills (makes stuff – duh), gathering skills (gets you the materials to make stuff), and mission skills (gets materials, and schematics).  You can send your companions (when you get them) away for X amount of time to perform one of these skills and bring you back something from them.  That much is all pretty cut and dry, but it’s the actual crafting that’s not.  When you craft something, you have a chance to have a critical success, upping the level of the item (or getting s fancy word like “prototype” added to it).  When you disassemble something you have the chance to learn a schematic for the next level item, so you’re constantly making things and disassembling them to try and better yourself.  I’ve seen some people create some pretty amazing gear, and I can only guess how much better it will get with time.  Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get super deep into it yet as I was playing so many characters, but it’s definitely something I’m looking forward to getting into soon.

There is also the space combat, which seems like a mixed bag for most people.  Unlike Galaxies which used a “twitch” system (think Wing Commander), The Old Republic presents us with an experience that could best be described as an “on rails” shooter.  It’s very much like the Starfox games, wherein you have a third person view of your ship, and you can move it around, shoot, and do barrel rolls.  It’s a really fun way to take a break from quests, but it can be really rewarding in its own right.  I literally leveled from twenty to thirty on one character by doing nothing but space missions and PvP missions (they reset daily), because of the tremendous experience rewards they give.  The only thing that got to me, was that when I thought I unlocked more missions, I ended up just playing harder difficulty versions of the same things I was doing before (no, scenery change doesn’t count as a new mission) – other than that though, if you liked the Starfox games you’ll like this.  Even if you don’t like it, the great part is that it’s totally optional, and you’re not going to miss out on any story at all by not doing the battles.

As in EVERY MMORPG worth anything, guilds are also a huge part of The Old Republic.  I was lucky enough to get into a very good guild (Alea Iacta Est or AIE for short), but really there are NO shortages of viable guilds in this game (at least not on my server).  The guilds have a member cap or 500 (I think that’s what it is), which leads large guilds like AIE to have more than one guild – luckily the chat system is extremely flexible, and a large guild can make one channel for everyone to join for cross guild chatting.  I wish there was a way to password protect this, but as of now there’s not (again, not that I know of – if I’m wrong please let me know), although I suppose there isn’t a reason yet because you’re not competing against your own faction (not YET, but that is supposedly coming).  The guild system in general might be a bit barren right now, but Bioware has talked a number of upgrades that are in the works – things like Capital Ships!  This will certainly be an area that I watch for in future write ups.

The thing that causes every MMO to either live or die, is the amount of content added to keep players happy, and the support of the dev team to patch bugs and glitches, and a Star Wars MMO is no exception to the rule (even though Galaxies still had some glitches when it closed that it did when it was in beta.  To that end, Bioware has already been outstanding – putting out patches the day after big bugs have been found and reported, and announcing a ton of new content to start rolling out later this month.  It will be really interesting to me to see it Bioware keeps this pace up, but I’m extremely hopeful from what I’ve seen so far.

Editor’s Rating:

5 out of 5 stars

Perfect!

The Bottom Line:  This has to be one of (if not THE) best MMO launches I’ve ever seen – the game is sublimely deep and robust, with enough of a dramatic and cinematic presentation to enable it to stand alongside of Bioware’s other single player offerings.  In my opinion, Bioware has come out and shown again that they are after the title of “Kings of the Western RPG”, and they’re damn well close to getting it.

Pros:

• The cinematic scenes are phenomenally good to the point of being able to be in a single player AAA title
• Not just one, not two, but a whopping SIXTEEN fully voiced stories, each running 30+ hours long
• More than enough content for a newly released MMO

Cons:

• So…much…walking (at least until level 25).  You’ll be begging for a speeder by then.
• The worlds feel strangely empty, especially in large cities where you would expect people
• The game unloads all of its textures when you Alt-Tab out, and it can be kind of irritating

You can pick up Star Wars: The Old Republic from Amazon for $59.95, and you can look me up on my main character on the Keller’s Void server, named Caldaron Al’Uthra

If you’re like the rest of the world, you’ve got your SNES and Genesis games stored deep away in the caverns of your basement.  Once a year you unearth them, stick them in their appropriate slot and quickly discover (again) that your console of choice barely works.  No more, provided of course you’ve got a PC.

The Retrode is like no other gaming console.  Why?  It’s actually not a console at all.  In fact, it acts a conduit for your games and controllers such that they can work with your PC.  You simply jack it into your computer’s USB ports and load up an emulator of choice (yes, you need to download and run an emulator).  After that, it’s as simple as transferring the cartridge’s ROM data to your computer’s memory and playing like it’s 1984.  Alternatively, you can use the Retrode adapter to connect your SNES or Genesis controllers to your computer, or simply use it to load the game’s contents to your computer’s hard drive – it’s up to you.

The Retrode adapter will go on sales January 23rd for $85.

Looks like Netflix has more competition as VUDU emerges as an up-and-coming player in the movie rental biz. Both offer instant streaming movies, but Netflix requires a membership while VUDU is more of on-demand service. Both have loads of titles and releases, but which one is best for you? Read on to find out!

Background

Netflix has become the No. 1 provider of on-demand Internet streaming media and DVD-by-mail rental programs. Membership for Netflix includes either a DVD-by-mail rental program or unlimited streaming, with the option to have both for a higher membership fee. VUDU only provides an Internet streaming media option that features on-demand service so you only pay for what you watch, making it a video-on-demand program.

User Friendly

Netflix members will find that it’s quite easy to rent DVDs by mail or watch streaming movies, TV shows and more. Once you sign up online, whenever you want a movie, you go online and search for the movie title/show name and begin watching (that is if you have streaming membership). Those who have only DVD rentals choose their “wish list” and then get movies mailed to them. With no due dates, users can keep movies as long as they want before returning and starting all over again with their next desired movie.

With VUDU, you get to stream directly to your VUDU-friendly device any time you’d like to watch movies. Just connect your HDTV, Blu-ray player, computer, or PlayStation 3/Xbox360 to the Internet and select VUDU as an option. Sign up for a free account and then browse through their selection of titles and then watch. You only pay per movie since it’s on-demand based.

Winner: Tie since both are fairly easy to use. All you need is the Internet and you’re on your way to movie enjoyment!

Compatible Devices

Netflix offers quite a wide variety of compatible devices users can choose from. Its streaming service is available on devices, including: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, iOS devices, some Android-based phones and tablets, the Windows phone, a few Internet-connected Blu-ray players and even some Internet-connected HTDTVs, TiVo or Roku, D-Link, home theater systems form the likes of Panasonic, LG, Sony, Samsung and Insignia. A great perk is that you can easily connect multiple devices to one account and then jump from device to device, while still leaving off at the same point you did on the last device.

VUDU also has a bunch of devices where its services will work, such as PS3, Xbox 360 (it requires an Xbox LIVE Gold Membership, though), computers (PS and MAC) and even Apple’s iPad.  VUDU also asserts that it’s “available on virtually every Internet-connected Blu-ray player and HDTV on the market.”

Winner: Netflix, obviously, offer more compatible devices so it’s a no brainer here!

Titles

Everybody knows that Netflix has quite the assortment of titles in its service. With more than 100,000 movies and TV shows on DVD and Blu-ray (even unrated and NC-17 ones) and “tens of thousands” of titles available for streaming (both TV and movies, along with many HD options), users can find old favorites and discover new ones.  VUDU users have access to 20,000 titles (and growing), including titles the same day they hit DVD. VUDU also claims it has the “most HD titles on demand” with more being added weekly. Their biggest claim to fame against Netflix is that they offer titles faster than Netflix would, stating that it takes Netflix 28 days later to have a new release on DVD and up to seven years for it to hit its streaming service.

Winner: VUDU wins here since it offers new releases a lot faster than Netflix.

Membership Perks

VUDU was bought by Walmart back in July and this provided a huge step for the company as it launched VUDU streaming directly on Walmart.com for instant viewing. VUDU also offers a $5 credit for newcomers and offers HDX quality that makes viewing just like it is in the movie theater, featuring 1080p True Digital video and rich Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround sound. Users can now also use the website of America’s largest retailer as yet another outlet. Netflix allows for a month’s free trial so that new users can test out the service.

Winner: Since Netflix offers unlimited streaming along with DVD rentals, there is a bit more bang for buck, and wins here.

Content

Netflix’s ability to land some big deals with movie companies has afforded them a wide assortment of content, from TV shows to movies. Since they’ve landed some pretty good content deals, users will find a great selection of TV shows from the likes of CBS, ABC, FOX, NBC and BBC libraries. Deals with Sony, NBC Universal and DreamWorks Animation (which is exclusive, but doesn’t start until 2013) also provide a large variety of content. But VUDU also scored some major content deals, too! They’ve been able to establish content licensing contracts with all major movie studios, as well as more than 50 smaller and indie studios, and that means a large library that might not be as large as Netflix, but is definitely on its way there.

Winner: Netflix steals it here by having a wide assortment of TV shows and older movies that can’t be so easily found nowadays.

Speed of Service

VUDU’s minimum speed requirements for its services is: 480p: 1 Mbps for SD; 720p: 2.25 Mbs for HD; and 1080p: 4.5 Mbps for HDX. Netflix recommends that its users have a minimum speed of 500 kbps (0.5 MB) to get maximum results for its service.

Winner: Tie

Quality

VUDU offers movies in HDX, which delivers the highest quality true High Definition 1080p content available from any Internet, broadcast or satellite on-demand service. It also provides rich Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 surround sound and offers many HD titles. Netflix also has HD movies and is capable of streaming 1080p video.

Winner: VUDU’s had the edge with its HDX and 7.1-channel surround.

Limitations

Netflix users saw a price hike for using both streaming and DVD-by-mail rentals, which many might consider a limitation. Since VUDU’s services are on a per-movie basis, you can easily rack up a high tab if you go movie crazy.

Winner: Netflix has less limitations for the money; they just offer more.

Price

Netflix charges $7.99 for unlimited streaming movies OR unlimited one-disc at a time rental service ($11.99 for 2 unlimited). For those that want both, they’ll have to dish out $15.98 a month. Netflix also offers Blu-ray discs for an additional $2 a month. Unlike Netflix, VUDU is s available without a monthly subscription or contract with some movies available to rent for just $2 for 2 nights. But some movies can cost up to $5 a pop (HDX is the most expensive option, but usually it’s SD for $3.99 and HD for $4.99). You can also opt to purchase the video and this various per movie.

Winner: Netflix’s monthly charge doesn’t look so bad compared to VUDU’s per-movie charge.

Overall Winner

Netflix wins! VUDU might be quickly crouching on Netflix’s tail, but it still hasn’t overtaken the popular movie rental service. Its low monthly fee and numerous titles proves it can’t be beat!

The iPad single handily changed the tablet market as we know it.  Composing emails, jotting down notes, watching videos, playing games and even drawing on the touchscreen device is feasible.  However, you’ll need a stylus to achieve this last feat, that is assuming you want some level of detail.  To achieve another level of detail, though, you’ll need a stylus like no other, the iPen.

You see, other styluses for the iPad work in a passive manner.  In other words, they simply act or emulate a finger tip, but thanks to their point they provide a tad more accuracy; in other words not much more.  The iPen, however,  is the first active digitizer stylus that lets you write, draw and paint with accuracy never seen before on the iPad.  Much like those digital pens, which instantly transcribe your hand written notes to your computer, this devices uses a small dongle that plugs into your iPad’s 30-pin dock.  It uses a combination of infrared and ultrasonic technology along with the iPad’s touchscreen to provide pinpoint accuracy similar to that of a stand alone drawing tablet.  They’ve even managed to incorporate “palm rejection” technology, which detects when your hand is resting on the iPad’s screen and prevents it from interfering with what you’re working on.

Now, don’t get us wrong.  We’re not suggesting that design professionals should ditch their Wacom tablet, but for anyone looking to draw or take notes on their iPad should take a very close look at the iPen.  And as it happens so far over 1700 people have done just that on Kickstarter.com, raising the manufacturer $162,333.

Cregle Inc., the folks behind the iPen, plan to ship the product in January of 2012 for $89.  They’re currently working with a variety of app developers to integrate their technology. For a full list hit the source link, which is where you’ll find additional demo videos.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for a quick recap on our entire holiday gift guide. Just in case you’re super late, don’t fret! Just check out the links below for the topic you’re interested in.

T-Mobile Smartphones

Sprint Smartphones

AT&T Smartphones

Verizon Smartphones

Xbox 360 Gaming

Playstation 3 Gaming

Videogames

Media Players

3D Tech

Last Minute Gifts (everyday electronics)

Happy holidays from your friends at Gadget Review!

Let me preface this by saying that this is not a full fledged review, but rather some observations from my first four days inside the game world.  The review is still at least a few days off, and I’d like to make sure I get the whole guild experience for it as well – but for now I can chronicle what I’ve been through, what I’ve done, and what I’ve seen.  This of it as my adventurer’s journal; a telling of the adventures that I’ve been on, and something you can use to gauge if you’ll be interested in the game after all.

The first step after setting up the basic account stuff, was to select a server – and let me tell you there are a TON of servers right now.  In all honesty, there wasn’t much of a question for me of what server to get on – I had been listening to “The Instance: The Old Republic Edition” since its inception, and decided that I would join Keller’s Void with them so I might have a chance to meet up with the hosts (hasn’t happened yet).  Just a quick FYI, if you don’t listen to it and you like game related podcasts, you should give it a shot, as I’ll be referencing that cast throughout this writing.  Now Keller’s Void (and ironic name since my girlfriend’s last name is Keller, and I’ve been able to make many “adult” references to Keller’s Void) is a server that has a LOT of the biggest guilds on it – AIE, Not Safe for Wookies, GAF, and Rebel Squadron to name a few – so it’s pretty much heavily populated all the time.  Before the actual launch I was only seeing five minute queue times, but now I see forty-five during peak times.  Not a big deal – that’s to be expected right after launch.  On a positive note, I haven’t had a single bit of lag once in the game, so they really have their netcode down pat.

Next came setting up my character – now I didn’t really research anything when I went into this (I actively kept out of the Beta), and wanted to go with what “felt right” to me.  I had initially thought on Bounty Hunter because the guys at The Instance: TOR were dead set on how bad ass they would be.  I also had played a Bounty Hunter throughout my years in Galaxies – however I played a Rodian Bounty Hunter, so as soon as I saw that Rodians weren’t a race option I decided on a different route.  As much as I like Force Lightning, I had to go Sith Inquisitor with a Pureblood Sith as my race.  Now I have to say, while I understand limiting the races that you can start as, I really was upset at only having such a limited number of choices, especially when races like the Trandoshan are in the game, but not playable.  It’s a small irritation though, and one that will hopefully be addressed in future expansions.

With my Inquisitor Caldaron created, I set off on my journey into the (for me) unknown.  After watching the epic opening cinematic, I was deposited on Korriban to begin my story – and the story started out great.  I had never seen such a personal story (and FULLY voiced mind you) in an MMO before.  Normally there’s just a small cookie cutter story to get you going, and then you’re on your own (at least in the ones I’ve played – I’ve still never played WoW), so it was refreshing to be presented a good single player experience.  The dialogue wheel – a staple from BioWare games – is also a great touch, and really helps fleshing out the story and making it your own.

Quest after quest I went on – running and running.  Throughout these four days I’ve done a crapload of running.  I actually went and paid the money to upgrade my press edition to the Digital Deluxe edition, because it came with a vehicle – only to find that the vehicle was level locked to level 25 minimum (warning to those thinking you won’t have to run much then).  At any rate, the first thing I did after reading a recommendation on the AIE forums was to go to the fleet right away and get crew skills, and let me tell you waht – I’ve become a rich man since that.  I picked up slicing, artifice, and archeology as my three – the latter two to make lightsabers, but the first for pure credit gains.  At level fifteen, I was running around with almost 100k credits just because of good slicing payouts, and while it meant soloing a lot of the time, it was worth sending my companion away for the cash.

There are neat little things to get you to explore the worlds out there called “datacrons” which give you a permanent bonus to your attributes, and they’ve become my new obsession.  There’s a limited number on each world (I’ve found three on Hutta, three on Korriban, and five on the Dromund Kaas – as I just got my star ship though, I haven’t been anywhere else), and finding them is a huge sense of accomplishment.  I’m sure that there’s guides online to finding them, but it’s so much fun to do it on your own here.  Besides ones that give the stat boosts, there are also others that give you “matrix shards” and I’m hoping to find where to use those at soon.  While Star Wars: Galaxies might have had a lot more area to explore on its worlds, they didn’t have things like this (only points of interest) to encourage deep exploration.

I’ve been able to get into a number of parties to do things like Warzones (PvP instances that are a hell of a lot of fun) and Flashpoints (instanced “dungeons” with some decent loot) and something really important to note that the game doesn’t do a good job of explaining is how to get “social points”.  You see, there are a number of different ranks that control the gear your character will get besides their level.  Dark and Light ranks, Valor rank, and Social rank all contribute to you being able to equip certain things.  For the longest time I had a quest that required me to get something that required “Social Rank 1″, and while I had partied with people on my starting planet I never got any points for it.  The reason for that, is because Social Points are awarded when you’re in a conversation with other people in it – that means that while you may have fought with people to finish a mission, unless you watch the end dialogue with them you won’t be considered to be “social”.

I still have a LOT of game left – I’ve just hit 18, and haven’t completed “Act 1″ yet, but I’m hoping I can send the kids to their grandparents for a few days here (and maybe the old lady will go shopping) so I can power through at least one story before writing the full review.  I also have to experience the whole crafting system, which is super deep in and of itself from what I’ve seen…and that whole guild thing – I really am looking forward to getting in one for that.  Who knows, once I finish with Caldaron’s story, I might just go and make a fat Twi’Lek (yes, the game lets you make fat characters which is great) Bounty Hunter after all just for the fun of it.  I know I’ll eventually get through all eight stories – but that’s a long way in coming.

If you’re in Keller’s Void, hit me up with a friend request and I’ll be sure to accept it, and check back in a few days or so for the full review – unless I decide to do another entry like this for the next Act.  Until then though, may the Force be with you.

Christmas is coming up fast, and Chanukah will be here in just a night. And you’ve been putting off on getting presents for your friends, family and everyone else. Well, we’ve got you covered at Gadget Review with quick gifts that won’t kill your bank account and still provide a memorable holiday experience for the whole family. Or, gifts for those you really love, really cherish, or for those who you know won’t really use them so it’s like a gift for you. Take a look!

Stocking Stuffers

ArcadeFreek Controller Tips

ArcadeFreek has been making controller tips for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for a few years now, and after gaming on both consoles since they first released six and five years respectively, my original and new controllers are all completely worn out from use. The ArcadeFreek controller tips have not only saved my day; the different types of controller tips are great for different things, such as arcade games, 3rd person vs first person shooters, and even specific types of play (like sniping vs standard running and gunning). And at $10-$15 a piece, they’ll fit in the stocking, keep your wallet safe, and improve gameplay exponentially. Especially if your analog sticks are as worn down as mine.

Plantronics Marque M155

There are only a few bluetooth headsets that are worth ever looking at, let alone buying. Or giving. The Marque is one such headset. It’s lightweight, has a long battery life, and has multiple options for how to wear and use it. Plus you can answer calls just by saying “answer” when calls come through, or ignore them by saying “ignore”. And it’s so light you’ll forget you’re wearing it, even after a few hours. Just don’t lose it in the stocking!

iTwin

Data security may not be interesting to most of us, but if you have to keep your data secure, or know someone who does and who’s been struggling to do so, iTwin is a simple and easy solution. Data is stored only on your computer or the computer you’re using with the iTwin USB connector. So plug one into your home or work computer, and the other into any other computer, and it’ll instantly upload (and download) whatever data you want onto that computer. That data can only be accessed with the USB connected on both ends, so it’s secure unless you lose it. Thankfully, all data has to go through iTwin’s servers, so if you lose one end it’s easy to fix: just unplug the other end, or report it to iTwin and they’ll cut it off in case you can’t unplug it.

Alesis TwoTrack

Recording your voice or a conversation shouldn’t be so hard. But frankly, it is, and most smartphones today still don’t cut it. Especially if you’re in a noisy environment or just have too much background noise. The Alesis TwoTrack solves this by using two microphones close up to keep the unwanted sounds out and the conversation you want crisp, loud, and clear. Plus it’s very lightweight, has a long battery life, and has expandable data.

AViiQ Portable Charger

Have multiple USB-enabled devices? I know I do, with multiple phones, media players, and tablets always running through my hands for review. But even if you don’t, and just have multiple devices that need to be charged, there’s no reason to use 3/4 wall outlets. The AViiQ Portable Charger powers 3 USB devices using just one power cable, and will connect a fourth to your laptop for powering the device and transferring data. Cables can be neatly tucked away, every piece of the setup has it’s own little pocket, and it’s just a neat way to keep your cables clean. There’s no better electronics companion for the road warrior with too many devices.

Pivot Power

I can’t say how many times I’ve had to use one of those standard, stiff power extenders. They’re great, but they are a solid piece. If more than one of your power cables are big boxes, then some of those spaces will be blocked and half of the value gets flushed down the toilet immediately. Not with the Pivot Power, which has five rotating outlets so every one can turn, giving each enough space for even massive power bricks. Closing up into a circle, the Pivot Power may not seem like a great gift, but if you know someone who complains way too much about their cabling system, they may think you’re crazy for such a gift, but they’ll be thanking you five minutes after opening it.

Apple iPod Nano

The iPod Nano is great, in case you didn’t already know. We looked at it this year and last, and it’s still excellent. Several storage and color options, FM radio, decent battery life, and now the option to use it as a watch? Sounds like a winning gift every time.

Hitachi G-Drive Slim

When it comes to the Macbook Air, one thing you don’t want is to pack along hardware with it that looks like crap. Hitachi’s G-Drive Slim is not only one of the thinnest external hard drives you can purchase, it’s the best looking one by far. Using a USB 2.0 connector, it’ll work with any Mac immediately, no reformatting required (though with Windows-based PCs you’ll need to tinker a bit). But it really doesn’t matter what computer you use the G-Drive Slim with, because the size and design are just so great that you can throw it in your pocket when on the go, but then you wouldn’t be able to show it off.

Under the tree

OnLive Microconsole + Wireless Controller

OnLive, the streaming game service, is not only available on computers, built directly into TVs, and as a microconsole. It now works on Android smartphones and tablets (and soon will work on iOS devices too). So however you want to play, either on the road, at home, at the office or wherever, you can. Throw their new wireless controller into the mix, which can connect to most devices via Bluetooth or to a computer or microconsole with the included USB dongle, and now that experience comes with a gamepad so you can kick back and enjoy. No need for a high-end or $300+ console.

Samsung Series 7 Chromebook

The Samsung Chromebook may not have looked like it was gift-worthy, but if you think so then you read my review wrong. The Chromebook is great for one very specific audience: non-computer savvy people. It has all the bells and whistles anyone could need, all the simple functionality and cutesy features that make computing fun, and all the basic requirements to do just about anything a new user could want. Plus it’s cheap, is updated regularly by Google, and has a very good build and design. Tech-savvy users may not appreciate it, but its a great alternative to buying a Mac for 2-3X the price.

Kobo Touch

The Kobo Touch isn’t just your typical eReader. It’s a fun and superbly designed piece of hardware that stores all the books you’ll ever need, for a low price of $100. The contoured back is easy to grip, the touch screen is perfectly sensitive, the software is impeccable, and the design is as minimalist and beautiful as has ever been seen on an eReader. But it’s also the little things, like how putting the Kobo in sleep mode has a cartoonish face sleeping. The Kobo Touch is the greatest reminder that reading is about fun, enjoyment, excitement, and shouldn’t be dulled on an electronic device.

Philips Fidelio AS111

When it comes to speaker docks, the Philips Fidelio AS111 reigns supreme in the reasonably-priced range. With a clock, alarm function, special app for Android, Bluetooth, and a solid speaker, for $99 the Fidelio AS111 is the perfect bedside companion. It’ll charge your phone, play music, tell time, be your personalized alarm, and do it all looking sleek.

For your favorite person ever

Playstation 3D Display + Extra Glasses

It’s the gift I wouldn’t expect to see, and you probably wouldn’t either. A 3DTV that’s specifically made for gaming, for the PS3, and works with two people looking at one screen and seeing two different images…the Playstation 3D Display is 3D tech at it’s finest.

Xbox 360 Limited Edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Console

It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is already the biggest game this year, and every one of your friends is playing it. Up the ante with the full MW3 Xbox 360, which features a 320GB hard drive, two custom-painted new (with the improved D-pad) wireless controllers, and of course the game. The stunning paint job worked wonders for the photoshoot, and it looks just as good in real life. Whether it’s for yourself or a friend, a big hard drive and an awesome-looking Xbox is the way to go. This bundle does not disappoint.

Sonos Play: 3

It’s rare when someone tells me what products are good. But a few weeks back I had a contractor say that he installs the Sonos Play: 3 in nearly ever house he works on. People cannot get enough of the incredible sound system. Not only does it boast some of the highest-quality sound you can get on a speaker system, it features over-the-air music controls through your phone. Plus you can set up multiple Play: 3′s around the house and they’ll all work together, giving you a housewide sound system. You may think one’s enough, but after you get it, you might just change your mind about that.

Macbook Air + Thunderbolt Display

I can think of no better gift than the most expensive one on the list: a Macbook Air combined with a Thunderbolt Display. The MBA is a kickass machine, and the Thunderbolt Display practically turns the laptop into a desktop with a giant screen, high-speed data transfer over Thunderbolt, and enough connectors to make you forget that yes, it’s a laptop dock. And when you’re ready to go, just unplug two cables and be on your way. There is no more impressive display of proper computing solely on a laptop than Apple’s latest Macbooks combined with the Thunderbolt Display, and the MBA line is just the best you can get for it’s price.

3D Tech is slowly taking hold. Most TVs sold today support 3D in the smallest sense, with refresh rates of 120Hz or more. 3D can be found on cameras, phones, and game consoles, and this holiday is the best time to get into 3D if you haven’t already. And if you have some 3D hardware already, be it at your media center, your workstation, or even in your pocket, now is the perfect time to upgrade. Take a look at some of our favorite, must-have 3D hardware!

ASUS VG278 3D Monitor + 3D Vision 2

3D needs to make its way into the home, and while most new TVs support 3D in some respect, most computer monitors don’t. Yet, with smartphones and 3D cameras growing in number, handling all that 3D media is going to have to be done somewhere. That somewhere starts, and ends, with the computer. 3D monitors have been available for a few years, but the ASUS VG278 is the first with NVidia’s 3D Vision built directly into the hardware. No need for extra cables and accessories spewing across the desk, just a monitor and your glasses to enjoy all the 3D content you can get, right at your PC. And thanks to the larger 27″ screen size, the 3D effects are easier to see than ever. Add onto that NVidia’s latest version of their 3D glasses, the 3D Vision 2, and you get bigger lenses that cover more space and block more external light, and a better, lightweight design that is easier on the face for longer periods of play. At the same time they still fit over glasses, still last 10-12 hours of continuous use, and now charge with a MicroUSB cable, so your cell phone charger will work with the glasses.

LG Thrill (AT&T)

The Thrill is the second 3D-ready smartphone in the US, and the first to feature a Nintendo 3DS-like depth slider. Compared to the Evo 3D, the Thrill has some very neat 3D options, such as instantly turning 3D pictures and video into 2D, and automatically adjusting the depth when both shooting and viewing pictures. Plus it’s the only 3D-ready phone on AT&T, so if going into the 3rd dimension is your thing and you have a contract to fulfill/upgrade, the Thrill is your phone.

HTC Evo 3D (Sprint)

The HTC Evo 3D may be the only 3D smartphone on Sprint, but it’s also a powerful phone that easily replaces the very popular Evo 4G. It includes not only a handful of excellent features like a powerful processor, an improved 4G antenna and a more ergonomic design, but two 5MP cameras and the ability to shoot 720p 3D video. After we reviewed and enjoyed it, the Evo 3D is a solid phone, with or without the 3D. And the 3D is good to boot.

Playstation 3D Display + Extra Glasses

There are too many potential 3DTVs gamers can choose from, but only one that is built from the ground up for 3D gaming, and even more specifically, for the Playstation 3. The Playstation 3D Display may be small at 24″, but this 1080p TV has two things no other TVs have: SimulView and the Playstation guarantee. The latter means you know the quality is up to snuff (and in my time playing with it, that is absolutely true). The former allows for two players to wear their 3D glasses, watch the same screen, but see two completely different pictures. That’s thanks to the display’s 240Hz refresh rate, which can switch between two different pictures – one for each player – 120 times a second. That means no more splitscreen, and the 24″ monitor will suddenly seem twice as large for two players. The 3D effect really comes to live with scaling multi-leveled platforms and giant levels, and so many games on the Playstation 3 already have far reaching games like that. God of War 3, Infamous 2, Killzone 3…these are all games that really take advantage of the 3D effect, and with this display – built from the ground up by the Playstation team – you get every bit of that.

Nintendo 3DS + Starfox 64 3D and Super Mario Land 3D

I wasn’t sold on the 3DS for a long time, for several reasons: the 3D games weren’t up to snuff, there weren’t many games anyways, and the pricing was just obnoxious. Then games like Super Mario Land 3D, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Starfox 64 3D came out; the price dropped from $250 to $170; and now Mario Kart 7 releases on December 4th. Those new games combined, plus some crazy holiday deals (like finding the 3DS for as low as $100…good luck finding it!) are killer reasons to want Nintendo’s newest portable console.

After the post I made on Thursday, and the subsequent closing of all of the official Galaxies servers Thursday night, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia and wanted to reminisce  with you all.  If you have never played Galaxies, this will give you a taste of what all you missed, and if you did play I hope you’ll share some of your memories with me in the comments below.  At the end, we can even talk about if this is really the end for Galaxies (hint: it’s not), and why this outcome ended up happening.  Now come with me to a time long, long ago in a Galaxy far, far away…

For eight long years Star Wars: Galaxies captured the imaginations of gamers everywhere, and while Sony made some mistakes along the way (some much more grievous than others), Galaxies was one of the most fully fleshed out MMORPGs to this date.  Name me another MMORPG that has not one explorable world, not two, but a whopping twelve planets for a player to wander in.  And these weren’t just small maps either; each planet was a fully fleshed out world, and they were giant – most were the size of your standard MMORPG world.  Each of these planets was chock full of memorable locations from the Star Wars universe as well – not just empty spaces or random bullshit. Want to see Nym’s stronghold on Lok?  Galaxies had you covered on that one.  Or how about the Royal Palace on Naboo?  Yep, you could have explored the whole place.  You could even hand out in an Ewok village on Endor is you wanted – Galaxies offered the complete “new story” experience.

I remember one of the most terrifying moments in my life as a gamer happened in Star Wars: Galaxies.  I was a bounty hunter tracking a lone Jedi on Tatooine.  I had tracked this guy across the desert, and I was finally getting close to his location in an area that looked like a dinosaur’s graveyard.  There were large bones everywhere, and since this was my first time in this particular part of Tatooine, I didn’t pay much attention; my mind was focused on the prey.  Creeping forward, I saw him meditating and I struck.  After a few seconds, the Jedi started to run and I thought it was because I had him – until I got hit for massive damage from nowhere.  That was when I saw why he was really running: an Ancient Krayt Dragon had spawned behind me, and was proceeding to use me as a toothpick.  I tried to run, but it was too late – the lesson was learned, but I can still remember the abject terror of seeing that giant dragon where there was none before.

Experiences like that were commonplace in Galaxies though, and I’m sure my story is only one of thousands.  PvP (player versus player) was such a key part of Galaxies – unlike in The Old Republic, you chose which faction you belonged to (Empire or Republic), and you could change any time you chose by paying the price.  It led to a lot of people being double agents and such, but damn was it fun.  To initiate PvP, you simply went from covert status to overt, and then you could get involved in any fight.  In order to stop people from going overt, striking, and then going covert again to avoid retaliation, the devs were smart and put a cool down on going covert again (I believe it was an hour, but don’t quote me on that).  It made for a great dynamic for sneaky types, because you could hide in plain sight, and only join a battle when your side needed help.

Another thing that Sony really did right with Galaxies was how they treated non-combatant classes – and there were a lot of them.  Sony realized that a lot of people would be happy just being in the world, and didn’t need to be out there shooting things constantly.  This was before the time of FarmVille, and casual gamers were drawn in to the world by being able to become things like dancers, musicians, and chefs.  These people were integral to the world too; dancers and musicians could buff you and make playing a lot easier, chefs could make items that would heal or buff you as well.  I myself was a Master Baker for a time, before I realized that the entire crafting system was so deep that you would have to do that and only that to remain competitive.  Ingredients would change quality constantly, and the planets and areas that would have the best stuff would be different all the time, meaning if you weren’t always following those things your final products would be of lower quality that everyone else’s.

Galaxies was also great in the fact that it allowed not only player housing, but entire player controlled cities and governments.  These weren’t the main cities that you know from the Star Wars universe either – just get enough people together and find a clear area on a planet, and you could start your own city.  When enough people joined your city would even be rewarded with amenities like a Star Port and a Cantina.  You could even vote for who would be the mayor of the city, and place either Republic or Imperial bases to assist in its defense.  It was these little touches that made the game just so much more amazing than any other MMORPG out there, and it’s the loss of these things that sadden me more than anything else.

Yes, Galaxies had its share of issues – you couldn’t walk into the Geonosian Bio Lab on Yavin IV without seeing hordes of people AFKing with “/target geonosian, /attack” macros running (to be fair, I did this as well).  There were a number of graphical and animation glitches that never got fixed over the eight years it ran.  And let’s not forget the travesties of the combat update, and the dreaded NGE (New Game Enhancements).  Those two things single handedly ruined the game for a good portion of the subscribers, so much so that players staged protests in the game world, which at that point in time was something that hadn’t been done before in other games.  Unfortunately these things caused a lot of people to miss out on the joys of the space combat that came in the Jump to Lightspeed expansion – one of the best expansions I’ve seen in an MMO.

Even after all of the missteps however, Galaxies still retained a loyal fan base – people were still giving Sony their $15 a month time and again.  So what happened?  I’ve read theories other places saying that subscription rates were too low to justify keeping servers open – but that surely can’t be the case.  When DC Universe Online started to see severe drops in the subscriptions, they switched to the “Free to Play” model, and saw a large resurgence.  Sony has also used the free to play model on other MMORPGs before as well, so wouldn’t it stand to reason that they would do the same here, and not just shit-can eight years of hard work?  It is the opinion of this writer that Lucas Arts is where the blame should land for this.  They have another Star Wars MMORPG coming out five days after their license expires with Sony – why would they want to potentially confuse people as to which one they recommend playing?  After all, it’s not a big jump to see someone walking in the store to buy a Christmas gift for a child, and not knowing the difference between Galaxies and The Old Republic, and picking up Galaxies by accident.

It’s incredibly sad that it ended up coming to this, but all good things do have to have an ending, that way we can appreciate what they were.  There more than likely won’t be another MMORPG that aspires to do what Galaxies did – they’ve all seemed to fall into the same “WoW rut” anymore.  So what does that mean for the gamer that never was able to get into the game – it the opportunity lost forever?  Well yes and no – yes, the opportunity to get on the actual “official” servers are gone for good (barring some miracle), but some places have been working on emulators for years and are starting to let the public in.  SWGemu.com is one of these places, and while you need the original, discs (downloaded copies won’t work, but you can find the discs dirt cheap if you don’t have them), they seem to have the most robust “pre-CU” experience out there.

Going forward, there probably won’t ever be another MMORPG quite like Galaxies, and while that’s a sad realization to come to – at least it was here for a time.  I haven’t even hit on how brutal some of the “dungeons” were (I remember fighting for my first piece of Mandalorian armor fondly), or about how varied the race selection was (rather than the only humanoid aspect of The Old Republic), but I think I covered enough for one day.  In the future, hopefully others will continue to learn from the right things that Sony did with the game, and stay away from the wrong (officially Sony even said that the NGE was a mistake, and from now on they’ll listen to players).  There are a number of great new MMORPGs coming out like Kingdoms of Amalur and of course The Old Republic, so there are things to look forward to.  I just felt that this fallen star needed to be remembered for what it was – a pioneer that was far ahead of it’s time.

As I sit here downloading the installer for one of the most anticipated MMORPGs in a long time, I’ve been able to think about what all brought me to this point, and where exactly all of my excitement for this came from.  Rather than waste time in the eventual review on this, I wanted to make a post now so people would be aware where I was coming from in that review.  Three years ago, BioWare and EA announced Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the buzz was pretty much instantaneous.  I was one of the many that played the single player “Knights of the Old Republic” games and loved them.  The time period, so rich with the amount of books and stories written about it, had been pretty much ignored by game makers in order to focus on the “Vader Era” some three thousand odd years later.

Sony tried to make an MMORPG based in that time period: Star Wars Galaxies.  Galaxies was actually the first MMORPG I had ever played – I had played the MUD “Medievia” for years prior, but that’s not a real MMORPG.  I loved Galaxies; loved the freedoms of it, loved the player cities, loved everything about it – until Sony decided to abort it and put in the God awful “Combat Update” patch that sent the game straight into the proverbial toilet.  I was one of the people screaming that Galaxies wasn’t set in the Old Republic, Jedi could not be everywhere, and shouldn’t even have been able to have been played at all (I so strongly believed this that when I earned the chance to become a Jedi, I stayed Bounty Hunter).  When I quit Galaxies, I bounced from game to game – Lineage 2 held my attention for a long time, but it never felt like home; same with EVE Online.  So it should come as no surprise that when this game was first announced, I got more excited than I had been since my son’s birth.

To me, this is the promised land of Star Wars goodness, and the potential is there for just about anything to happen.  Jedi and Sith running around in limitless numbers?  Check.  A rich and lush story for each character class?  Check.  A time period that Lucas hasn’t screwed up yet? Check.  Oh, and how about every line of dialogue is fully voiced?  Yeah – it’s got that too.  Not to mention what promises to be one of the more robust set of mechanics that we’ve seen since WoW exploded onto the gaming scene.  I’ve read forums where people compare the SWTOR to being a “WoW in space”, but while there are similarities (because if you have the chance to borrow from something that makes a ridiculous amount of money yearly, wouldn’t you?) there are some really neat innovations as well.

The companion system is just one of those neat new things.  If you haven’t read anything on it yet, think of it as a more advanced version of your assassin brotherhood in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood/Revelations.  You get up to five NPCs on your ship, and you can assign them to do different tasks to help you out.  Going to need a certain material to craft your next armor piece but don’t feel like hunting for it yourself – send one of your companions to get it.  Or maybe you have all the components and think that crafting is boring; they’ll do that as well.  You can send them on a number of missions other than those two, and each time they go and come back they get their own XP, and gain their own levels.  The beauty is that even when you’re not playing these guys will continue to do any task you set them to.

Little things like that, and big things like having one of the biggest stories in MMORPG history are what has fueled my excitement for this game to galactic levels.  Speaking of the story, if you’ve ever played a BioWare game, you know they have a thing for dialogue wheels, and giving the player choices that can make them more good or more evil.  Well SWTOR doesn’t disappoint in that area either – you can play a Sith that’s as much of a dick as you want to make him, or a Jedi who might not be as pure as Yoda, and the game is designed so that your choices can make that happen.  Your end game equipment will even change depending on how good or evil you are, and which side you choose, which is a great little touch to throw in.

Unfortunately there are only eight races and eight classes to start with – and for some reason those races are all humanoid (I was a Rodian in Galaxies), but I’m sure there will be expansions in the future to change all of that.  You also have to remember that each class has two different specializations that they can be, meaning sixteen different choices there. SWTOR has the potential to really be “the next big thing” with MMORPGs, and I’m very hopeful that is will accomplish that goal.  This is what Star Wars fans like myself have been begging for.  This is what we hoped Galaxies would be, and we were disappointed there – but I don’t think disappointment will be found here.  The Galactic Civil War starts on December 20th, and I hope you all take the plunge and join me.

If you’re in the game, you can find me on the server “Keller’s Void”, and if you want to meet up and such just ask for my name – I’ll be sure to give it to you.