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Thursday, August 22nd, 2013
| Time | Event |
| 8:00a | CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme 5200 Desktop Review The CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme 5200 system comes with this generation's best and brightest in a shiny new Intel Core i7-4770K and an AMD Radeon HD 7990. So why were we left a little cold? |
| 3:07p | Humble Bundle: Origin Edition [Updated]
In case you missed it, there's a new Humble Bundle going on right now (since two days ago). Over the years we’ve seen a variety of games offered up on the Humble Bundle; some have been pretty ho-hum, while others have been well worth the price of admission; many of the games have been indie affairs. Of course, the price of admission is practically free: it’s whatever you want, starting at a whopping $1 – yes, that's an entire dollar rather than the original starting point of a penny for the Humble Bundle. The latest version comes courtesy of EA’s Origin, and rather than the usual indie games, and you get six AAA games from EA that range from okay to unappreciated gems to major blockbusters.
Any contribution will get you all six of the following games; I’ve included the current retail (Origin) pricing on each as a reference point: Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box ($19.99), Crysis 2 Maximum Edition ($29.99), the original Dead Space ($19.99), the latest Dead Space 3 sequel ($39.99), Mirror’s Edge ($19.99), and Medal of Honor ($19.99). So if you were to buy just those six games off of Origin right now, you’d be paying nearly $150 – not that I’d suggest you do so, but if you’ve missed any of them and are looking for a diversion, they’re not bad. [And now Red Alert 3: Uprising and Populous; see below.] As an added bonus, if you pay more than the current average Humble Bundle price ($4.80 at the time of writing), you get two additional titles. Battlefield 3 ($19.99) hardly needs an introduction, and the same goes for The Sims 3 (Starter Pack – $29.99). The Starter Pack comes with the main game as well as the High-End Loft and Late Night expansion packs. So, less than $5 can currently net you eight games, most of which are worth a look, and all of which are big budget titles. The hook for the Humble Bundle is that you get to choose how your contribution is distributed. You can given any percentage to one of five charities (Human Rights Campaign, Watsi, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, American Cancer Society, and American Red Cross), or you can give a “Humble Tip” to the Humble Bundle people for their time and bandwidth involved with the promotion. You can also gift the purchase to someone else if you like. Of course there’s always a catch, right? Sure, and this time it’s pretty simple: some of the games as you might have guessed have to be used through EA’s Origin service. Now, I didn’t much care for the initial launch of the EA Downloader, which later became Origin, but things have at least improved. I don’t know that it’s equal to Steam, as transferring games between computers is a bit more of a pain, but it’s not terrible at least. Of the eight titles, three are only available with Origin (Battlefield 3, Dead Space 3, and The Sims 3 – these things come in threes or something?); the other five games can be used with either Steam or Origin – or even both! How’s that for generous? Note that you redeem the codes for the Sims 3 through the Sims 3 web page, but the instructions from EA for redeeming the expansion packs are incorrect: you need to redeem those through Origin. At least when I did it, the Sims 3 My Store Account section has “Redeem a Code”, but it only has blocks for four parts of the code, and my codes were five blocks of four characters. Oops. There was also some sluggishness with Origin as I was writing this, perhaps caused by a deluge of Humble Bundle downloads. However you want to look at it, for practically free you can enjoy some of the past three or four years of gaming action. That’s a price that’s hard to beat, and hey: it’s for charity, so feel free to be generous! There are currently just under 12 days remaining on this offer. 8/22/2013 Update: Humble Bundle just sent out a note that they've added Red Alert 3: Uprising and Populous to the Humble Origin Bundle. Anyone that has already purchased the bundle receives the keys, along with any future purchasers. |
| 5:46p | Nexus 7 (2013) JSS15Q OTA Update Rolling Out - Fixes GPS/GNSS and Multitouch Issues
We published the full Nexus 7 (2013) review today, and liked it so much we gave it our Editors Choice Silver award. I'm a huge fan of the updated Nexus 7 and have been using it since launch without many issues, but a number of users ran into a few bugs that are being fixed today with an OTA update and build number JSS15Q. We've confirmed with Google that the JSS15Q resolves these issues and is slowly rolling out to all users. The bugs previously affected both GNSS (GPS+GLONASS) dropping out intermittently which Qualcomm provides through the APQ8064-1AA SoC, and some issues with touch recognition.
Although GPS and GNSS constellation lock would happen fast and signals were fine (Qualcomm's GNSS remains arguably best in class), the fix would periodically and randomly disappear and not come back until after a restart. I have to admit I ran into this particular bug once while testing the Nexus 7 for my initial mini review piece, but didn't think much of it since it didn't happen in subsequent testing. This issue is resolved with the update, and some quick testing with GNSS reveals no dropout issues.
The other issue was a touch controller related bug which affected taps along a shared axis causing the taps to disappear and then reappear and some other issues. I didn't see this issue on my Nexus 7, and neither did Anand, possibly due in part to multiple touch controller sourcing, but it also is fixed as of the update. Users can either wait for the OTA update to hit their devices, or re-flash with the full factory image which Google has also updated via the link below. Source: Factory Images for Nexus Devices |
| 6:00p | The Nexus 7 (2013) Review Truth be told, Google has made (or at least directed the making of) some of the best tablets on the market today. The original Nexus 7 was groundbreaking in that it offered a totally usable platform, married to the latest version of Android, for $199. The Nexus 10 gave us a very quick, ultra high resolution 10-inch tablet for $100 less than the flagship iPad (and with more storage). Both were easily recommendable due to their value, but this year Google is stepping out of the shadow of value and into one of excellence. It starts with the new Nexus 7. |
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