The PS3: so quiet!

How I got the PS3 is a story in an on-itself. As most people I had plotted my course to get one. Money was not the issue. I went to ebay and started bidding on one before the launch. On my first attempt on a particular machine, no matter how much I would bid, this one guy was automatically beating me. I lost the deal. Then i smelled rotten fish when that guy writes to me saying "the guy who won decided not to buy, are you interested?". I felt so abused I didn't even answer. This was a BAD ebay experience.

I was pissed off so I decided that instead of giving 2 grands to some pimpy faced kid in his parents basement, I would give it to Ulyses. One of the construction workers from Mexico working on my house at the moment. I told him he needed to stay in line all night and I would pay him $700 extra for the service. He was game. So we show up the day before and all the places in line were already taken. People had been staying in line for 3 days. I felt so naive. No game.

However, my assistant, the ever resourceful "The Kelly Stine", had more than one trick in her sleeve and within 2 weeks had scored me a unit. God bless you Kelly you are the best :).

So I fired up the unit and there was the big surprise. NO NOISE. I really thought the unit was off. Then I saw the little lights blinking so I knew I was on the right track. THIS THING HAS NO FANS. What is funny is that the unit is actually kinda chunky, it isn't the best looking piece of hardware in my opinion, it looks, huh.... like a pregnant brick. But the noise, or lack thereof, was an instant hit with me.

Then the built in noises, like the "tick" when you select an option are copied from the PSP. I LOOOOVE the PSP. And so to be driving this big bad monster while it makes itsy bitsy noises from the PSP is actually a nice touch.

Look, I love my 360 as much as the next guy and Gears of War is a GREAT game, but now the 360 sounds like a diesel tractor to me. Everytime I fire it up I cannot help but be bothered by the noise.

KUDOS to SONY for such a powerful unit in such a quiet package. Much appreciated as it will take it rightful place at the center of my basement entertainment center.

marcf

Lenovo X60, Sony UX and NYSE: Finger driven

What do all these things have in common? touch screens. Touch screen are neat, they enable you to talk to the computer with your fingers which for a lot of task we do with the mouse is a natural.

I actually started on this trend with the UX. I was looking for a small computer on which I could read scientific papers and this little beauty came along. It is a gorgeous little thing. Completely un-usable (screen too small, 2 hr battery life?) but the concept is great.

I participated in the NYSE ringing the bell of RedHat. It was something to see, I mean the floor itself. The pods are all equiped with touchscreen. They have no space for mice :)

My idea is to use touch-screens for DJ'ing, another passion of mine. I will blog about that in more length. The other, more intellectual thing, is to use it to read papers. In that case the feature that is needed is the tablet so I can look at papers like it was meant too.

So I got me myself the latest touch tablet from Lenovo, the x60. All in all I am truly very pleased with the X60 from lenovo. While the design is no SONY, at least it is no DELL either :) It is solid, a nice design, and more importantly the SCREEN WORKS WITH THE FINGER. See I don't want any of these tablets that come with pens and such. I lose the pens. I can't lose my fingers however (in theory). It works well with the fingers. Since I am a techno-fetichiste, I have taken to growing 4 of my finger nails. I first started clipping "clip on nails" on my thumb but that didn't work too well and it is one more thing to lose. Now I just let them grown and file them in such a way that they are sharp and give me great precision on both the UX and X60. IT IS NICE, feels very intuitive I just TOUCH the stuff i want. It works from a UI standpoint.


The future is tactile!

marcf