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Want to know what you can expect from a Dell laptop? Read our review of the Inspiron 1525.

Well. The N10 “netbook” from Asus.

If history has taught us anything over the thousands of years besides you should never accept a giant wooden horse for a gift or remake a horror film more than once, it’s that making something completely pointless is still pointless even if the said thing is good. Things like the ‘charge while you play’ adapters for the wireless xbox 360 controllers, yes lets take a wireless device and give it a wire to make use of… well yes you get my point. Stupid.

The point I’m getting at is the whole “netbook” idea in general. I see no real need for them; they are a needlessly small version of a normal laptop which runs Vista more slowly than the average laptop anyway (or PC since Vista is a POS!). I awoke to the delivering of the N10 one morning with the hope of being able to try some games on it. While this was possible, it was somewhat undesirable. I played through the first couple of levels of Condemned criminal origins on medium settings and the laptop chugged along reasonably well, but fell flat on its face when the screen had more than 1 character on it; which sadly meant 90% of the game. At this point I got bored and passed the N10 to my loving girlfriend who proceeded to play through Indigo Prophecy on it in ONE SITTING. Anyone who says girls don’t game, you are wrong.

On to the main features of the netbook, the overall look is nice. It has a stylish, neat and tidy exterior and some sexy looking blue lights which contrast the black interior keyboard + screen very nicely. Brownie points here Asus, your designer knows what he’s doing. As for features, there’s a TON of software included with the N10. Mostly though, it’s stuff that the average person would never ever use such as fingerprint recognition (seriously). All of which just seem to make Vista run even slower than normal. (more than 3 minutes to startup and be on the desktop without the egg timer icon.) The processor inside is somewhat underpowered for everything that is going on. Windows Vista sucks the life from the poor old 1.60GHz cpu like a gigahertz vampire.

There really isn’t much to say about the N10. It’s a small, underpowered netbook with a heck of a lot of pointless software included, that would have benefitted a lot more from running XP. The half-decent graphics card included is a good idea, but falls short because the rest of the specs are low-end. And for the price of around £500 you may aswel save a few more 0’s and get a macbook or a proper gaming laptop.

We will be at the show for the Friday (Press Day) and Saturday, so will have plenty of time to get as much information and news as we can from the stands. Images from the stands, press releases, etc will all be uploaded as soon as they are taken.

We will be video recording at the event.  We are hoping to get a good look at the latest gadgets at the press releases, and looking at some of the cool tech on show.  Hopefully we will also be getting some interviews done. All the video will be compiled and released as a special edition of the bitcast.

Sam and Ian will be wearing their brand new bitcolumns hoodies and t-shirts, so if you see us walking around the event feel free to come up to us and say hello. Would be awesome to meet some of our readers.

And if this is not all exciting enough, here is a video of what you can expect to see at The Gadget Show Live:

Here’s how to fix it in byte size easy steps!

Step one:

With no images/files open in PS, go to Edit / Color Settings. Change the top drop-down setting to Monitor Color, and uncheck “ask when opening” too.

Step two:

Go to View / proof setup / and click Monitor RGB.

Step three:

Open up any random image in photoshop.. Go to File / save for web. But we aren’t actually going to save anything. Uncheck “Convert to sRGB” (depending on versions of photoshop this will be either in the save for web settings as a tickbox or only visable after you click a dropdown arrow next to the preset option).

Step four:

close photoshop and restart. Go to the comments section and thank Bitcolumns.com for sharing the love!

Sex on-anodised-aluminium leg.

In my honest opinion (and I have to clearly state it’s my opinion else it will be a lashing) Mac is just so much easier, not to mention sexier and I grant them full credit for pricing the iMac and Macbook ranges how they have over the years. I went Mac in 2008 and never looked back. I love the simplicity, the style, and not a single blue-screen-of-death EVER again.  Being a web-designer and illustrator, the huge iMac screen is a major benefit, too. I no longer have to scroll to view a design fully; but best of all I don’t have to fork out for a 24”LCD separately.
I was fortunate enough to get a Macbook at a hugely discounted price at launch. Back then; the average retail was well over £1000. The Core 2 duo spec would not be anything new, either. But despite Apple being quite last week to bring out dual core in their laptops, they still floored the competition with the style and design, as always. I will be buying myself a new iMac ASAP.

“But you can just install OSX on a PC!”

All seems peachy until you hear or read this old chestnut from an anti-macboy/girl. While this is true, it really doesn’t have much weight. For a start, it’s not all about the operating system. You could put a Ferrari Enzo body kit on a Ford Fiesta; it would still be a Ford Fiesta. Ok ok I admit I am a fanboy to a certain extent. But I can see the flipside of the argument of “Why would I pay 50% more for a Mac when I can get  a desktop just as powerful for half the price? You pretentious ^@!£”$!” and to answer it in a simple way without any bias, no one is forcing you to,  are they? The reason designer things are more expensive is because they look better on you. The reason iMac is more expensive than the latest desktop belter is because it is powerful, simple, full of capabilities straight out of the box and doesn’t look like what it is. I encourage anyone to look at the latest iMac design and tell me it looks like a computer with a straight face.

As of, well.. now, you can pick up a brand spanking new 20” 2.66GHz iMac straight from Apple.com for £949. Seriously. Even the top of the range 24” 3.06Ghz version is a mere-in-comparison £1,799. It seems Apple have responded in the midst of a worldwide eco crunch, and have became a little more competitive with prices.

I guess in a way, people with my opinion (and it seems Apple, too) have given in to all the million billion trillion bleating lambs moaning that they don’t want to pay so much for a Mac, have won. The choice really is yours, but now has never been a better time to come over to Mac for quality, power, simplicity and style; and you can buy one without starving for a month between paydays, so you can’t complain any more.

Unless you want to play games of course, as Mac’s are still about as useful as chocolate teapot’s in that department.

Get used to it, it's not going anywhere.

Founded as an intelligent little search engine by two students at the Stanford University in California in 1998; US$150+ billion corporation in 2009. Sergey Brin and Larry Page certainly made their parents proud. With the days when ‘the internet’ was something nerdy kids talked about at school now a distant memory, everyone has used, or at least heard of Google. It’s presence is undoubtedly the biggest on the Internet when it comes to, well, anything. Search engine, advertising, satellite maps, software, email, videos (youtube.com, Google owned) and many others; Google really knows how to multi-task.  Want something? “Google it.” Indeed.

So how did two students go from bedroom coding to billion-dollar-business in such a relatively small amount of time? Well, simply put, Google gets around 90% of their revenue from advertising and most of their capital from investors. In 2008, Google was worth US$157 billion; only US$3 Billion short of consumer electronics giant Apple’s worth. Now, to put that into perspective for you, Apple have been around for over 40 years making powerful yet simplistic and stylish computers, laptops that fit in envelopes, CD-killing culture phenomenon’s (and in recent years, ones with phones built inside of them that DON’T look like bricks) and much, MUCH ground breaking and innovative stuff. Google has been around for 1/4 of that time. I’ll bet Forrest Gump wishes he waited a couple of years to invest his money in Google instead.

Another way the lads at Google like to earn the pocket money is by buying up fellow Internet Behemoth’s. As most will already be aware, Google bought Youtube.com in 2006 for US$1.6 billion after its exploding popularity; It seems they don’t like it when other websites steal their headline limelight. I would like to predict that Twitter, due to its current booming success will be the next to wear the “Google owned“ tag.

If not, they could always buy bitcolumns in a few years!

ASUS will be providing six bloggers with an ASUS computer. For 4 weeks, the users will use their product and write about their experiences to a dedicated blog on the Mobile Computing website (a minimum of three 200 word+ posts per week). ASUS are seeking users who will give as much feedback as possible, but all responsibility for blog content will be held with the blogger and Mobile Computing.

At the end of the period, ASUS will give each blogger an Eee PC 901 as a special thank you for their time – except the owner of the blog which attracts the highest number of readers, who will be able to keep the notebook they have been writing about.

The 6 blogs will be focused on each of the following:

• ASUS G71V quad-cre gaming notebook
• ASUS M50 multimedia notebook
• ASUS N80V business notebook
• ASUS Bamboo U6V eco-friendly notebook
• ASUS Eee PC S101 fashion netbook
• ASUS Eee Top All-in-One PC

ASUS and Mobile Computing are inviting users to apply to take part by
completing an application on the Mobile Computing website no later than
the 15th March 2009.

The DSi is the second refinement to the Nintendo DS that we have seen since it’s initial UK release in March 2005, and the UK launch of the Nintendo DS Lite in June 2006. The i after the name brings with it a lot of new features and changes, including:

• A 12% reduction in thickness
• The addition of two cameras (one inside, and one outside). The DSi boasts a 0.3 megapixel digital camera for 640 x 480 pixel pictures, and a camera in the hinge that acts as a webcam. You can even edit pictures on the DSi touch screens!
• A built in web bowser. That’s right, you can surf the internet straight out of the box on the DSi, no more needing to buy a DS/DS Lite browser game pack.
• Download and play games onto the console. The DSi features DSWare, a new online store that uses the current Wii Points system to allow you to buy games over the internet.
• SD Memory Card capabilities. The DSi loses the GBA slot and replaces it with an SD card slot, allowing you to download all the games you want.
• Longer Stylus. When it comes to Styli size does count, and this new one is 4.5mm longer than previous generations.
• Improved aduio features, and speakers. Means you get more advanced pitch and playback options, as well as better quality sound.

The DSi also sees an improvement in hardware, with 16MB of RAM (4x that seen in the DS and DS Lite) and 265MB of internal flash storage (1024 times more than the original DS!!!!, and only half of what the Wii has). But limitations also have been implemented, and these include the hardware prohibition of homebrew software, as well as region locking some software (due to internet services customised ot each region).

Overall this seems to be a huge leap forward in the DS range, and could give a clue to what Nintendo are likely to release in the future, adding even more functionality to their consoles.

We are hoping to secure an interview with Jason Bradbury, one of the show’s presenters. He is someone who is mad about tech, gaming, and what is coming out in the future (reminds us a bot of bitcolumns, to be honest). But we dont wanna be the only ones asking the questions, so we want you to submit your questions. Whether it be as a comment here, in an email to sam@bitcolumns.com, or via twitter (just @bitcolumns us with your questions).

We will bring you more news on the event as we get it, but to start with, here is the press release we recieved today.

THE ULTIMATE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS EVENT

FIRST EVER GADGET SHOW LIVE COMES TO BIRMINGHAM

Do you have a thirst for new technology, an obsession with the latest gadgets, or simply can’t get through the week without researching the latest must-have kit? Why not head down to the first ever Gadget Show Live (NEC 17-19 April 2009), set to be the UK’s largest interactive technology event. Based on Five’s successful TV programme, gadget hungry visitors will all get the chance to see, try and buy the very latest in consumer electronics.

With a wide range of exciting, interactive and informative features, expert advice, how-to sessions, demonstrations and exhibitors, the event showcases over 120 of the biggest names in computing, photography, mobile communications, gaming and home entertainment under one roof.

The Gadget Show Super Theatre will bring to life all the high-energy features from the TV show, with spectacular action packed live performances, world record attempts and challenges hosted by The Gadget Show’s very own Jason Bradbury, Suzi Perry and Jon Bentley.

Suzi Perry says; “The Gadget Show Live builds on the excitement of the TV programme and develops it into a creative, dynamic and fun-fuelled event. Packed with top class exhibitors and a raft of innovative features, it’s an unrivalled opportunity for anyone with an interest in gadgetry to have hands-on access to the very latest technology on the market, all in one place.”

Those who know their Spore from their GTA should head to the Game Zone which features both new launches and classic games, giving novices the chance to compete for prizes whilst showcasing the talents of top international competitors. Technophiles looking for here-and-now answers to their gadget questions should head to Geek Squad Counter Intelligence which features one-to-one advice offering immediate solutions on any technical issue.

Providing advice from independent experts, the How to Theatre will give practical tips on getting more out of your tech – from guiding you through the latest in 3G mobiles to creating an online video blog. In Car is a must visit for anyone looking for the latest gadgetry on the move, where you can view and access a range of customised vehicles fitted out with the latest in in-car kit.

Other features include; The Gadget Hall of Fame, a gallery of 20^th century design icons; a Future Home Feature showcasing state of the art technology for the home, and the Gadget Test Track where visitors can test ride the latest in personal transportation.

Jason Bradbury adds “I’m really excited about The Gadget Show Live. It’s going to be packed with cutting-edge exhibits and really interesting ‘hands-on’ interactive features. Most of all, it will be a great opportunity to meet the viewers who share our passion for technology.”

The Gadget Show Live will be taking place at NEC Birmingham from 17-19 April 2009. For further information and to book tickets visit www.gadgetshowlive.net. Tickets cost from just £12.95 (+ £0.95 booking fee). Entrance to The Gadget Show Super Theatre costs just £4.

Notes to editors:

Advanced adult ticket price: £12.95 (+ 95p booking fee)

Advanced child (under 12) ticket price: £5 (+ 95p booking fee)

On the door adult price: £16

On the door child (under 12) price: £6

There will be three performances per day in The Gadget Show Super Theatre; 11am, 2pm and 4pm. Tickets will be priced at £4

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