ATI/AMD Back in the game?

AMD has not been doing all too great lately with both their CPUs and GPUs having serious problems catching up with the competition, not to mention getting ahead of them. But now it's slowly starting to look like things might be going for the better for them. With the new Radeon HD 4800 series, for the first time since ATI's Radeon X1950, they have finally made something that can actually try to go against NVIDIA's GPU line-up without getting burned. Based on the first reviews the more affordable 4850 model seems to be giving more expensive GF 9800 GTX a run for its money and the 4870 gives almost the same performance as GF GTX 260 for a much lower price. The increased competition will surely put pressure on NVIDIA and for the customers that can only mean better chips and/or lower prices and it's hard to say no to that.

Demo time: Civilization Revolution (Xbox 360)

The new Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution should be out in shops today, but a demo for it was released already last week. As a longtime fan of the Civilization series it's definitely a game I've really been looking forward to and was excited to get my hands on the demo. As they've been saying all along, it's not just Civ4 ported to the Xbox but a whole new spin-off game designed for consoles from the ground up. While it still feels very much like a Civ-game, it's clearly not of the traditional variety.

Maybe the first thing that pops up are the simple, colourful and childish (some would say ugly) graphics that make the game look like something made for the XBLA. Unfortunately after a while into the game you begin to notice that the graphics aren't the only aspect where they have chosen this path. The moment you run into the different characters and advisors in the game you begin to question whether the game was meant to be played by adults at all. Also the general gameplay is much more simple and faster and the maps are smaller which take away most of the epic feeling we've got used to in the previous games. It's not really all that bad though. The gameplay works pretty well and it's still a fun game to play. Just if you're a fan of the series, don't expect to sink into the world of Civilization for many hours at a time like you used to, and really try out the demo to find out whether this one's for you.

The iPhone effect

I think no one was really surprised when Apple introduced the new iPhone 3G at WWDC yesterday, but it's good to finally have facts instead of rumours. Most of the features were as expected and all in all it's a huge improvement on the original iPhone. One thing I'm still curious about though is the pricing model. Sure, they announced the US price of $199–299 but the full price of owning one is still unknown, and there's no word on the pricing elsewhere either. The fact that they're also locked and sold for only one specific operator in each country will surely be a problem in many cases. For example here in Finland I would never get one just because of the operator it's on.

One thing that's really great about the iPhone is the effect it has on the whole industry. As its user interface, applications and services set the bar much higher than before, it's forcing all the other manufacturers to really raise their game in many aspects. While this is great for the consumer it's going to be a problem especially for companies that haven't been doing so great to begin with. (such as Motorola) Also, with phones based on Google's Android coming to shake things up later this year, the mobile phone industry won't be showing signs of cooling down anytime soon.

Acer Aspire One the one to beat?

I know I've focused a lot on the subnote market right now but with Computex going on, it's what I'm currently really excited about.

Acer has just officially announced their Aspire One sub-note PC. For the most part the specs are the same as in other Atom-based sub-notebooks, but in my opinion they're the only one since Asus to fully grasp what I think make them so interesting: portability and affordability. With up to 10-inch displays, traditional hard drives, weight of almost 1.3kg and prices up to 500€, many of the other upcoming entries to the market have got closer and closer to their full-featured 12-inch brothers in these aspects.

Arguably the best feature of Aspire One is the price. Starting at only £199 (€253 or $390) it's giving even the original Eee a run for its money and with a weight of under 1kg it's much lighter than possibly its biggest competitor, MSI Wind PC. And when it's supposedly coming out here in Europe as early as this month, it's hard not to get excited. I also like the fresh design, different colours and the fact that they didn't make it a "cheap laptop for the kids". I only hope the build quality will be better than what has typically been associated with Acer...

Today's netbook news

There's more info on Gigabyte's upcoming entry to the netbook market, the M912 tablet pc, on their website. The specs look really good with the usual Intel Atom, Bluetooth and a 1.3Mp Camera but it also packs a 8.9-inch WXGA touch screen and storage up to 250GB. Especially with the touch screen it's surely not meant for everyone so I'm guessing it's also going for the more expensive end of the market. link

In other news, there's a rumour out that Sony might be working on a netbook of its own based on the VIA OpenBook reference. Unfortunately the CPU is of the old and slow C7-M variety and not the upcoming Nano. Nevertheless it's always nice to have some more competition as it can only mean better products and lower prices! link