Belated Techradar Tuesday: seven reasons why Apple should make a netbook, and why laptops are just handbags

First up, a feature: seven reasons why Apple should make a netbook (and a few reasons why it shouldn’t). Here’s one of the reasons why it shouldn’t:

An HD Touch would be more compelling

Take one iPod Touch, make it twice the size, give it some desktop-style apps and you’ve got something that no other computer firm can deliver (or, we suspect, even imagine). You’d have all the things you expect from an iPhone, plus decent e-book reading and document editing. How great would that be? Bluetooth support for an external keyboard, 3G modem as an option, best computer ever.

Then, a column: if Confessions of a Shopaholic was about tech instead of handbags, we’d think it was great. Tech Firms! You’re doing it wrong!

…the tech industry is just like the fashion industry. It sells you stuff and tells you you’ll look like Audrey Hepburn or Brad Pitt; six weeks later it’s shouting “You look like your gran!” and telling you to buy something else or kill yourself. An overpowered laptop is no different to a £1,000 It Bag: it’s just more crap that helps fuel credit crunches and contributes to climate change. When we’re eating each other for food and having fist-fights with polar bears in the High Street, we’re going to regret it.

The column isn’t up yet. I’ll post the link when it is.

Update

Here’s the link: why netbooks prove that the tech industry’s gone nuts.

Techradar Thursday: cool things in the labs, clown computing and 3D gaming

Two by me, one by Neil Mohr that I thought was really interesting. First up, Cloud Computing – or Clown Computing?

So much for the cloud.

Can we really rely on web-based services and software? If you’re expecting us to say no, surprise!

Then a look at some of the interesting things Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and Mozilla have got cooking in their labs including:

4. Google Mars
Fancy looking for Martians or discovering whether The Watchmen really do have a base on the Red Planet? Google Mars brings the power of Google Maps to nearby planets. Sadly Street View and Local Search aren’t yet available, so if you’re trying to find a kebab shop you’re out of luck.

This piece by Neil Mohr caught my attention: 3D gaming. Is it ace, or is it arse?

At its best with Left 4 Dead, some primal instinctive part of the brain lights up as you realise you now have depth perception. Zombies flailing towards you suddenly have a natural order and a beauty as they spiral in space with a well-placed shotgun to the head. Blood spurts in awesome Jackson Pollock-esque fashion onto your virtual camera lens that views this apocalyptic world. This is the 3D at its best; it works straight out of the box complimenting the gameplay, even enhancing it.

Yay! But it’s a qualified yay:

At its worst, though, it’s a frustrating mess. A crosshair that makes you feel you’ve drunk five pints, constant ghosting from lights and effects, while struggling to make the stereo effect work at all without inducing eye-strain. Somewhat akin to magic-eye pictures, it’s an effect that you gradually get more and more used to or not at all.

Techradar Tuesday: Half-Life 2 The Movie, and a shopping list for Microsoft

The days run away like horses over the hill…

Is Half-Life 2 the future of indie movie-making?

The potential is mind-boggling, but let’s be honest: we’re not quite there yet. The constant fast-cutting in Escape from City 17 can’t disguise the fact that some of the in-game footage doesn’t quite gel with the real footage, the Combine Citadel looks like it’s been glued into the background with Pritt Stick and we’re pretty sure that none of the $500 budget was spent on the script.

Overall, though, it works – and to our eyes it’s no worse than the CGI in the most recent Hulk movie, which cost $150 million to make and still looked like it had been thrown together on a ZX Spectrum by an angry toddler.

Six companies Microsoft should buy:

Microsoft isn’t short of cash, and it recently – and unsuccessfully – offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

The idea was to catch up with Google, but the big G isn’t the only firm doing well in areas where Microsoft isn’t. So perhaps Microsoft should widen its net.

From video and music to shopping and social networks, we think these six firms should be on Microsoft’s shopping list.

Game shop buys cheap supermarket consoles to resell. It’s legal, but is it ethical?

I know I’m late to this – it happened in October – but I hadn’t seen this story until I read a reader’s letter in the new issue of GamesTM magazine. The gist: Sainsbury’s was flogging consoles at a loss, and a significant proportion of those consoles were bought not by punters, but by managers of games shops. According to MCV:

The latest round of price slashing kicked off at Sainsbury’s over the weekend, with the retailer cutting £30 off the price of Xbox 360 and Wii hardware – an offer which meant the 360 was available for under £100. Armies of staff from GAME, Gamestation, CHIPS and numerous independents then swooped to snap up the cut-price consoles.

“With 360 and Wii on sale at these prices we allowed our store managers to supplement their stock by buying consoles from their local Sainsbury’s,” explained GAME Group CEO Lisa Morgan.

“Availability was very inconsistent, but on the whole it was a worthwhile exercise. Our strategy is centred on giving our customers choice, good value and having the best possible availability going into the Christmas period.”

That’s “good value” in the sense of “ensuring nobody can get it cheaper than we sell it for”, I presume. The Telegraph wrote:

Lisa Morgan, the chief executive of Game, confirmed that the retailer’s store managers had bought almost 1,000 of the estimated 2,000 consoles sold by Sainsbury’s. The consoles were later resold in Game stores.

What do you think? I’m sure such behaviour is legal, but is it ethical?

The new Xbox avatars are pretty good

And they’re available publicly at http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/gamertag/avatar-body.png (replace “gamertag” with – yes! – your gamertag).

I’m gutted that you can’t put your avatar in a kilt – at least, not unless you want your avatar to have (a) a mini-kilt and (b) tits. Anti-Scots discrimination, or something.

[Via PlasticbagUK]

Dead Space (Xbox 360)

I’ve mentioned this game a couple of times now, but now that I’ve actually finished it (on the easiest level, naturally – I’m rubbish at games) I thought I’d do a quick review. Why? The timing of its release was terrible: instead of shining like an oasis during the summer games drought, a period so bad that people (well, me) spent hard-earned cash on crap such as Fracture because there was sod-all out, it came out just as big hitters such as Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3 were on their way to the shelves – which means there’s a good chance it’ll be overlooked. That’d be a shame, because it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game for ages.

Reviews have said it’s derivative, which it is: a lot of Alien, a bit of Doom and a soupcon of Prey. They’ve said it flags a bit in the middle, which it does. They’ve suggested that the story is a bit rubbish, which it is. And they’ve said the scares are of the simplest, open a box, AAARGH MONSTER kind. Which is a wee bit unfair.

There are indeed plenty of open a box, AAARGH MONSTER scares in the game, but what Dead Space is really good at is establishing a constant feeling of dread. Imagine your testicles were filled with explosives, and the explosives were really quite volatile, and you’re on a bus being driven by an idiot, and it turns onto a cobbled street, and there are lots of holes in the ground, and the driver speeds up, and you know that sooner or later your balls are going to blow up. You know it’s going to happen, but you don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen.

Dead Space is a bit like that. But with AAARGH MONSTERS instead of balls.

It’s not a 10/10 game by any means, and it’s not a 9/10 either, so if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t buy anything unless Edge has okayed it then you might not bother. But it’s worth getting hold of pre-owned, or when it hits the bargain rails, or on eBay, because it’s about ten hours of solid entertainment. It’s the game I’d hoped Doom 3 would be – dumb, derivative, gory fun.

Three-word videogame review: Dead Space (Xbox 360)

Scary. Gory. Excellent.

Some quotes the makers of Fracture could put on the cover

“Possibly not the worst FPS ever made. Possibly.”

“Hardly earth-shattering.”

“Several hours of tedium – guaranteed!”

“I wish I’d spent my money on crack instead.”

Sage advice for astronauts

If you’re in the future, and you work on a spaceship, and you get a call telling you to go and check out some remote colony because contact has mysteriously been lost, do yourself a favour and call in sick that day. Skive for your life. The only reason space colonies, and the drifting spacecraft spookily orbiting above them, stop communicating is because they’ve been overrun by bloodthirsty monsters. This is scientific fact.

Eurogamer reviews sci-fi horror game Dead Space.

“RealPlayer: like the Black Death, but made of software”

Feeling ranty? Techradar’s just uploaded “48 things we hate about tech“, which enabled yours truly to cheer himself up by being nasty about things. Any I’ve missed?