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Monday, November 19, 2007

In pictures: Your retro technology

We asked you to send in your retro technology pictures - and you delivered. Marcel  Wierckx has an Apple Mac Classic as a doorstop . What would Steve Jobs say?

We asked you to send in your retro technology pictures - and you delivered. Marcel Wierckx has an Apple Mac Classic as a doorstop. What would Steve Jobs say?

Stephen Marshall has a Alpina handheld mechanical calculator which dates from around 1961.  He said: It still works perfectly and is surprisingly easy to use."

Stephen Marshall has an Alpina handheld mechanical calculator which dates from around 1961. He said: "It still works perfectly and is surprisingly easy to use."

Rick Collier sent in a photo of an ancient Ferrograph F307 amp from the 1960/70s. The sound card on his PC and a digital radio provide the audio.

Rick Collier sent in a photo of an ancient Ferrograph F307 amplifier from the 1960/70s. The sound card on his PC and a digital radio provide the audio.

Chris Dodkin has a classic arcade machine, Defender, in his study. It dates back to 1980.

Chris Dodkin has a classic arcade machine, Defender, in his study. It dates back to 1980.

Rick also has a few more classic machines in his collection...

Rick also has a few more classic machines in his collection...

Murray Futardo is a serious collector. He has a huge collection of handheld consoles. "I love them for their old school graphics and funky  case designs," he said.

Murray Futardo is a serious collector. He has a huge collection of handheld consoles. "I love them for their old school graphics and funky case designs," he said.

This is Paul Shuttleworth's Epson HX-20, considered the first laptop. Made in 1981 it had  16K of ram.

Paul Shuttleworth has an Epson HX-20, considered the world's first laptop. Made in 1981 it had 16K of RAM.

Andrew Scott says his Sinclair Spectrum is "very dear" to him. He is finishing his PhD in computing and says the Spectrum "changed my life".

Andrew Scott says his Sinclair Spectrum is "very dear" to him. He is finishing his PhD in computing and says the Spectrum "changed my life" as it taught him programming as a child.

Dylan Smith is also a Spectrum fan. To celebrate the computer's 25th anniversary this year he  built a Diagnostics board to help fix old Spectrums.

Dylan Smith is also a Spectrum fan. To celebrate the computer's 25th anniversary this year he built a Diagnostics board to help fix old Spectrums.



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News: Pushing the PC gaming boundaries

Crysis
Games like Crysis can demand high-specification hardware


The PC remains a big player in the games market but in recent years its cutting edge has been blunted.

The vast majority of games are still played on PCs rather than consoles; typically casual games played on cheap desktop machines or online games, such as World of Warcraft.

The industry is currently experiencing a renaissance in innovation as the trinity of new hardware, developer ambition and tools come together to improve experiences.

The introduction of chip technology with four cores, effectively quadrupling processing power, graphics cards using DirectX 10 tools and developers keen to push powerful machines to the limit are resulting in games which set new graphical benchmarks.

In some cases these machines are desktop behemoths; near supercomputers in a box that are delivering game experiences beyond the wildest dreams of console owners.

The latest games, like Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3, are taking advantage of quad core processors, and twin graphics cards. These are the play things of hotrod PC gamers - the enthusiasts who see their machines as customisable dragsters delivering the pinnacle of performance.

Tricked out PC
High end games PCs are important to the professional players
Michael O'Dell

"PC gamers see themselves as the elite gamers," said Michael O'Dell, who runs the professional gaming group Team Dignitas and manages Birmingham Salvo, a team in the Championship Gaming Series.

"High end games PCs are important to the professional players and hard core because the extra processing power can make that millisecond of difference between success and failure, and whether you win prize money or not."

For the hardcore the extra grunt of the most powerful desktops improve the FPS (frames per second) in FPS (First Person Shooter) games.

"My gamers are always moaning about their FPS (frames per second). They always want more and some of the newest games are very demanding on the hardware."

For these gamers, whose reaction times put them in the superhuman category, more frames per second means a smoother experience.

So how much more powerful are these high-end PCs than the latest generation of consoles?

"It's absolute nonsense to think that consoles are at the cutting edge," said Roy Taylor, vice president of content relations at Nvidia, the world's biggest manufacturer of graphics cards.

"As good as consoles are, they are so far behind the PC gaming experience that there is no comparison.

Unreal Tournament 3
Unreal Tournament 3 will help hardware sales

"In terms of raw processing power, the high-end PCs are at least three times more powerful."

Nvidia provides the graphics grunt for the PlayStation 3, while rival ATI provides the imaging hardware for the Xbox 360.

Mr Taylor points out that the latest graphics cards can draw twice as many pixels, twice the screen resolution, as a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

The latest games are employing DirectX 10 tools developed by Microsoft, which are used by developers to get the best out of the high-end and middle-range graphics cards.

Mr Taylor said the new tools and the new hardware had given developers a library of effects to play with.

Nvidia's latest high-end graphics cards, the 8800 series, can easily produce graphical effects that tax the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, such as motion blur, depth of field and volumetric smoke.

Mr Taylor said: "Fog, smoke or mist in games until now have been flat and don't respond to objects. Volumetric effects mean they are dynamic - a helicopter can now displace cloud or smoke, or a character can step through the fog realistically."

But these sorts of effects come at a price.

A quadcore Intel machine with twin graphics cards and four gigabytes of ram - at the high end of the PC gaming experience - can cost more than £2,000, six times the price of an Xbox 360.

Nvidia's flagship graphics card, the 8800 Ultra, costs more than £400 although a cut-down version, the 8800 GT, costs from £120, about the same price as a Nintendo Wii.

Rival ATI also sends a high-end graphics card which supports DirectX 10, costing from about £120.

Modded PC
PC gamers love to "mod" their machines

Hardcore PC gamers also specialise in customising their "rigs", with unique cases and intricate cooling systems.

The gaming experience they deliver can be exceptional.

Playing Crysis with the screen resolution set at 1920x1200 with all effects switched up to very high and anti-aliasing turned on, the game is breathtaking to look at and puts consoles titles like Gears of War and Call of Duty 4 into the shade.

"We worked really closely with Intel and Nvidia and even had engineers from Nvidia on site for the last year," said Bernd Diemer, a producer on Crysis at developers Crytek.

"We wanted to be an early adopter. When we started Crysis the current hardware wasn't available or being planned. There was no DX10 or the latest graphic cards. They were not even on the drawing board."

They went to a special effects company in Hollywood to create a render movie of how Crysis could look - and that movie has been the benchmark for the firm.

"We got pretty close. In some areas we even surpassed it," said Mr Diemer.

He said PCs gave gamers the "best possible experience".

Crysis boasts realistic breakable environments - a goal of developers for many years.

"In some areas we have managed to set a new standard. We've managed to push it a bit further," he said.

Crysis is at the forefront of a wave that is delivering blockbuster titles to PCs and making console owners envious of their PC gaming friends.

"The PC is finally back up where it belongs," said Mr Diemer.

He added: "The innovation is happening on the PC; but that's always been the case."



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News: Sony cuts game designers' prices

PS3
Sales of the Playstation 3 have picked up since prices were cut
Sony has halved the price of a software development kit that designers need to make games for its PlayStation 3 (PS3).

The attempt to woo game designers follows last month's price cut on the PS3 itself.

Although its predecessor dominated the games console market, the PS3 has struggled against the Nintendo Wii.

PS3 sales are particularly important for Sony because it plays the Blu-ray high definition DVD format, which is competing with the rival HD-DVD format.

Sony says that sales of the PS3 have improved since its price was cut from about $599 (£292) to about $499 in the US, Europe and Japan.

Sales of the PS3 in Japan beat the Wii for the first time in the week beginning 5 November.

The PS3 is technologically more advanced than the Wii, but that makes it more difficult and expensive to develop new games for it.

Many of the companies that originally designed games for the PlayStation 2 are now bringing out versions for the Wii.

Sony says that the price cut is part of its efforts to cooperate with software developers in the hope that they will design more games for the PS3.



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News: Amazon debuts digital book reader

Kindle book reader, Amazon
The device is on sale now from the Amazon store


Online retailer Amazon has unveiled an own-brand wireless electronic book reader called Kindle.

The paperback-sized device is on sale immediately in the US for $399 (£195). It can store up to 200 books in its onboard memory.

Kindle does not need a PC to be loaded with books, blogs or papers - instead content arrives via wireless.

Amazon said 90,000 books, including bestsellers priced at $9.99, were available for Kindle at launch.

New addition

"We've been working on Kindle for more than three years," said Amazon boss Jeff Bezos in a statement.

"Our top design objective was for Kindle to disappear in your hands -- to get out of the way -- so you can enjoy your reading," he said.

Content is delivered to the device via the EVDO wireless network - this could limit the gadget's overseas appeal as the technology is not widely used outside North America.

Owners of a Kindle do not have to pay to use this wireless network, Amazon pays the access costs and only charges for any content downloaded to the reader.

This does mean that any Kindle owner could be paying to read many blogs and papers they could read for free online.

A subscription to the New York Times costs $13.99 per month on Kindle. A popular blog, such as BoingBoing will cost $1.99 per month for Kindle owners.

Amazon.com homepage, Amazon
Amazon changed its homepage to promote Kindle
Owners sending files they already own to their Kindle will incur a ten cent charge.

Amazon said it took less than a minute to download a book via this network to the Kindle. Newspapers, blogs and magazines that owners have subscribed to are automatically updated on the gadget.

The memory can be boosted by using SD cards but Amazon will keep back up copies of any and every book purchased for Kindle so they can always be re-loaded on the device.

It has a low power digital ink screen and can last 30 hours between recharges.

Those buying a Kindle gets an associated e-mail address so if that person is sent Word documents or PDF files, these are converted for reading on the device.

The keyboard on the device lets people annotate and make notes on documents and send messages.

The Kindle also has buttons that link it directly to the Oxford American Dictionary and Wikipedia.

Amazon is not the first company to produce an e-book reader. Many other companies have tried similar devices but all have failed to win over large numbers of customers.

In early November, Sony released the second version of its Reader that also sports a digital ink screen. The first version of the Reader was criticised because of the restrictive digital rights management system it used.

Also this month, Epson Seiko showed off a prototype e-reader only three millimetres thick. There are no announcements about when, or if, that gadget will go on sale.



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