ComputerDumb.com

Posts Tagged ‘wired’

Inventing excuses after losing, dying, or in general just playing like crap is a time-honored tradition among gamers. We’ve heard them all — teammates who don’t pull their own weight, cheaters, tons of lag, screen glare, and worst of all, faulty or unresponsive controllers.

So here’s the bad news: Razer’s Onza TE will make covering up your ineptitude with hardware-based justifications even less tenable. But don’t panic. The good news is you might not have to make as many.

At just $10 more than Microsoft’s standard-issue wired controllers (and the same price as the wireless versions), the Onza TE is … [Read More...]

As an artist, I’ve always wanted some sort of one-to-one input when working in Photoshop or zBrush. I’ve used several of the traditional input tablets, but I’ve never been fully satisfied. I still ended up drawing on paper and scanning the results. It’s just more natural.

Input tablets have been constantly improving in the decades they’ve been around. But the technology remains imperfect. The pressure-sensitive pad sits on the desk, separate from the screen, which takes away some of that natural feel you get from drawing with a pen, especially when trying to add tiny details to your work.

So … [Read More...]

From its humble beginnings as the Netflix box to its current status as one of the pre-eminent media streamers, Roku has come a long way in just two years. And while the new Roku 2 XS doesn’t really move things forward much, it does just enough to retain that title.

If you’re keeping track, the XS usurps the XDS as the new king of the new series, with the XD and HD following in its path. I’ll just go ahead and say it at the outset: Ff you already own a previous gen, 1080p-capable Roku, this is probably not the … [Read More...]

My head started hurting after the first hour of using Mac OS X Lion. Two words: inverted scrolling.

That’s correct — Lion’s default scrolling behavior is to scroll down when you swipe up on your multitouch mouse, and to scroll up when you swipe down, just like you would on an iPad.

This modification in scrolling clearly illustrates Apple’s ambition with Mac OS X Lion, which was to make the Mac operating system more like the mega-popular iOS software powering not just … [Read More...]

The best home theaters are the ones that make you scoff at the very notion of going to an actual theater.

The key ingredient: a pro-grade projector, something that bathes the dark end of your living room in such jaw-dropping color and clarity, you’ll routinely find neighbors at your door holding popcorn and candy.

The M-Vision Cine 230 is among the few projectors to accomplish that without the need for a second mortgage. Digital Vision’s big, homely black box relies on a single chip, so it costs significantly less than most 3-chip models. But you’d never know that from the … [Read More...]

Razer’s gamepad is finally out—was it worth the wait?

We’re no fan of the console-ification of PC gaming, either, but you’ve got to admit, Microsoft has had the gamepad market locked since it introduced the USB Xbox 360 controller more than five years ago. In that respect, it’s not really surprising that the first real challenger to Microsoft’s super-solid wired controller is, itself, an Xbox 360 controller: the Razer Onza.

The Onza was first revealed more than a year ago at CES 2010, so consumers have had a lot of time to ask questions like, “Is Razer really going to … [Read More...]

Razer’s gaming mice are taking a generational leap with the new 4G Dual Sensor technology, the company announced last week. Unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the latest versions of Razer’s Mamba and Imperator mice are its first “4G” dual-sensor mice, which means that they feature both an optical and a laser sensor. 

Calling the 6400dpi dual-sensor system the “most precise and advanced sensor technology”, Razer USA president Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff said: “We worked closely with many pro-gamers to fine-tune the sensor under intense gaming conditions, ensuring it achieved a level of tracking accuracy that met their high-level demands.”

As … [Read More...]

A bronze statue of power

How far can you take a Sandy Bridge processor? We’ve heard that even extreme overclockers seem to hit a wall just beyond 5GHz with Intel’s darling new chip.

Whatever the limitations, Maingear seems content to take its Shift Super Stock to the brink of madness by clocking the 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K to 5GHz.

The company credits some of that high overclock to its new partnership with CoolIT and the use of a massive and exclusive 18cm EPIC cooler. EPIC, in this case, stands for Enhanced Performance InterCooler. Perhaps even more impressive, you can’t even find … [Read More...]

Mothers, lock up your gamers. The PlayStation phone has arrived.

And while it’s a bit on the chubby side, we think that, for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play, big is beautiful.

You could almost call the Xperia Play the shorter, fatter cousin to the svelte Xperia Arc, which Sony Ericsson once described as the “world’s thinnest smartphone.” At .62 inches, the Play looks positively bulky compared to its Xperia-line relatives — a veritable Jan Brady to the Arc’s Marcia.

But Sony Ericsson had to … [Read More...]

There’s a really famous road — maybe you know it. It’s paved with good intentions. And by now you should know all too well where it leads.

It must have been aggravating for ViewSonic — which has made Windows-based tablet PCs since 2001 — to see its market destroyed by the Apple iPad in 2010. So the company did what it (and everyone else has) had to do: embrace Android.

The result is the ViewSonic ViewPad 10, a 10-inch, dual-booting Windows-Android tablet with a lot of heart and lofty goals, and an utter disaster on nearly every front.

To be … [Read More...]

It’s safe to say there are few companies paying as close attention to the sound, construction and design of the lowly clock radio as Tivoli Audio.

Co-founded over a decade ago by hi-fi–audio veterans Henry Kloss and Tom DeVesto, the company quickly built a reputation for making beautiful-looking and great-sounding radios with stark retro styling. Tivoli systems have big tuning knobs, analog clock faces and come in handsome wooden boxes.

The company is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the release of another well-designed table top system, the Model 10. Like other Tivoli radios, there’s a base unit that runs by … [Read More...]

Undeniably attractive and super skinny, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc is ready for a career as a runway model.

This fashionable specimen measures a mere 0.46 inches thick at its thinnest point, the middle of the concave arc that runs vertically down the back of the phone. It manages to make my iPhone 3GS look almost obese in comparison.

Slimness is a virtue in devices, as it reduces that embarrassing Visible Phone Line in your pocket. But premium phones usually have a bit of heft to them, and in that respect, the Xperia Arc feels a little too thin. Flimsy, even. … [Read More...]

We’ve recommended Dropbox in so many features & how-to’s we’ve lost count. It’s an amazing service that just keeps getting better, but the company has found itself in hot water with the FTC over concerns of anti-competitive behavior related to its file encryption.

Wired has done an excellent deep dive on the full FTC complaint against Dropbox, however the main allegations stem from the way Dropbox says it handles your files, and what it actually does in reality. Many of these complaints have resulted in changes to its terms of service, but the FTC is investigating competitor’s allegations that the … [Read More...]

The Veer is ridiculously small. Almost Zoolander ridiculously small.

When you first grip the thing in your hand and try out the keyboard, you think, “Oh man, this is never going to work.” But after a few initial typos, it’s actually not that bad at all.

At 3.25 inches long, the Veer is tiny, stealthy and unassuming. It’s so small, it’ll even fit in the coin pocket of your jeans. The back of the black model has a rubberized texture that keeps your brain from mistaking it for a large, smooth pebble.

The 2.6-inch touchscreen is minuscule compared to giant … [Read More...]

There’s a reason most cheap in-ear headphones sound that way: They only use one driver in each ear, which limits the audio range. If you want more life, more spaciousness and more oomph out of your favorite
tracks, upgrade to some dual-driver earbuds.

On these models, each earpiece contains two separate speakers— one to handle the high and mid frequencies, and one to handle the bass. This separation creates a more rich and filled-out sound that makes
any kind of music sound better. A dual-driver design is also especially good for listening to high-quality audio from lossless … [Read More...]