This is The Samsung Galaxy SIII

According to a Vietnamese site this is soon to be unveiled Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-9300). that has a 4.6” 1184×720 screen, 1.4 Quad-Core CPU, 1GB of Ram, 8MP camera 16GB storage and a MicroSD slot.

There is a plastic casing around the device in the video to keep the final design a bit of a secret. The 2050mhA battery will come with NFC capability.

More photos at XDA

The Lens Cups

I’ve had these lens cups for a couple of years now and I have been using small one as pen holders as I hate the metallic innards of the mug. I really can’t remember where exactly I got them from but they are pretty wide spread at the moment and available at a number of online retailers now and easy to find. The quality isn’t that great as the as the lens/cup cover doesn’t stagy on for the black small cup which is irritating even though I don’t use the cover.

You can get those 2 cup from Photojojo even though it isn’t the place I got it from. The black 24-105mm lens cup is sold for almost 6.5KD and the white 70-200mm travel mug will cost you 8.5KD.

Photojojo

The Sony PS Vita

Being a gamer, I was thinking of getting the PS Vita ever since it was announced. But because of the underwhelming sales I thought I should hold out for a while anticipating a price cut just like what happened with the Nintendo 3DS. But I was caught of guard when I saw that XCITE were selling the 3G version for 105KD which was a very good price. The first thing you notice on any device these days is the screen. And the PS Vita’s 5″ 960×544 bright and crisp screen is just great.

The second analog stick is a godsend. People were asking for it ever since the release of the original PSP. Having it makes gaming much more natural especially if you are a console gamer since both XBOX and The Playstation both have dual analog sticks.

The console has just been released so the game library isn’t that big at the moment. You can play the games either via a physical game card or a digital download which is my favorite. The problem is the the PS Vita doesn’t come with any built-in memory so you would have to buy a memory card if you plan to download games, demos or even watch movies.

The battery is a problem with the device. During my gaming sessions I managed to get 3 hours max from a fully charge battery, that was with full brightness, wifi on and no sim card installed.

All in all I would say that the PS Vita is a pretty capable device that would be better if there was a bigger game selection but I’m sure that will be coming along on the near future.

The ZOTAC ZBOX

While looking for a good media center PC for a friend I decided that the ZOTAC ZBOX bare bone  an Intel Atom 1.8GHz dual core CPU is the way to go, as I had an extra HDD and RAM after my Mac Mini and Macbook Pro upgrades. And I don’t recommend 2GB of RAM for anything, having 4GBs makes the devices run much smoother with lesser hiccups.

Installation of the HDD and RAM were pretty straight forward and opening up the case was easy as it has thumb screws. I needed an internal DVD for the OS installation (you can make a bootable USB drive though) as the ZBOX doesn’t have a built-in DVD drive. The device is also quiet an slim so its very well designed to be visible beside/underneath a TV. Also Installed Boxee on it for TV show/movie organization and metadata gathering.

It also has a ton of connections and ports such as: DVI, HDMI,LAN, USB 2, USB 3.0, Built-in Wireless LAN N. It also has an Nvidia Ion chipset which make playing HD movies a buttery experience.

The device costs around 60KD from amazon without delivery. Also worth mentioning in the ZOTAC NANO an even smaller form factor that has an AMD CPU.

The Keyboard is Here

Last week I mentioned that I got the Asus Transformer Prime Android tablet but the keyboard was still stuck in my Aramex’s mailbox back in the States. Yesterday, it arrived and I hooked the keyboard to the tablet which was a easy process and gained some extra functionality.

The device looks great as I mentioned in my tablet post, it is wonderfully built and designed, the keyboard dock fits perfectly into the overall design. Asus did an excellent job.

I still think that the software is a bit lagging. Android ICS 4.0 was just released but also to take into consideration that the physical keyboard form factor isn’t standard. So we’ll se if the developers make use of it.

I still have to test it out thoroughly before passing final judgment, that might take a couple of weeks.

The Asus EeePad Transformer Prime

I managed to get one of those elusive Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime more than a week ago but was too lazy/busy to even get it out of the box and play around with it.

As soon as I read that ICS upgrade was made available for the Transformer Prime (it ships with Honeycomb 3.2) I decided its time to test it out.

Asus did a great job with the Transformer Prime continuing what they did with the Asus Transformer. But this time around they made a much sleeker device. Weighing just 586 grams lighter compared to the iPad 2′s 601 grams (not that you’ll notice it) and is a hair thinner, The transformer prime is a great piece of hardware.

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Macbook Pro SSD Upgrade

After having the problem with my SSD in my PC build a few weeks ago and having to order a new one. I kept experimenting with my “faulty” SSD and see if I missed something. After playing around with it for a few days  discovered that it ran fine as a data drive (opposed to a boot disk). So I thought I might as well try sticking it in my Macbook Pro.

I’ve opened up every computer I’ve owned but still I had to research the matter before diving into it. After a quick read it was confirmed that it was pretty straight forward and that I had all the tools necessary for the job.

After unscrewing the bottom of the Macbook Pro (I have the unibody 2010 edition) and popping it open, you can see the HDD in the bottom right secured by a latch. removing the latch and the SATA connector completely releases the HDD. And from there its just a matter of replacing the HDD and putting everything back together.

There are a number of benefits to having a SSD such as:

• Speed: boot time is 18 seconds from pressing the power button to read use and having 3 programs running (Pixelmator, Safari and MarsEdit).
• Silent: Because SSD has no moving pars it is virtually silent and also there is no vibrations.
• Slightly better battery life.

The 2 major and only disadvantages that SSD have in my opening are price and capacity. but in time we “should” get there.

This is the first day of using the MBP after the upgrade so I’ll be watching if it acts up.

What a 5MB Hard Drive Looked Like in 1956

In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first ‘SUPER’ computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a ‘whopping’ 5 MB of data.

Via The Next Web

Samsung 830 SSD: Take 2

So I just got my new SSD that is supposed to replace the defective one I had already installed in my latest PC setup. I really hope that the problem was with the previous drive and nothing else. I should have the new drive installed later today.

PC Build Problem 2: Faulty SSD

I hit another problem during my PC Assembly, this time it is more critical. After installing windows and downloading all the latest drivers I kept getting the blue screen of death “BSOD”. I had no idea why at first, so I started troubleshooting. Rechecked all cable connections and then started downloading the Windows updates one by one, just to make sure its not a driver problem. This took a long while as you would imagine but the problem resurfaced again when I left my PC on overnight. I decided to restart in safe mode and let it run. It ran for a few hours then Windows just freezes and hangs which leads to another BSOD. Another format/reinstallation of windows letting windows run for a few hours and it crashes again. confirming that its a hardware problem. So I am currently waiting for my replacement drive but in the meantime running Windows on a regular HDD. The couple of days that windows ran on SSD were great and I am really hating the magnetic hard drives at the moment.