Like pretty much everyone in my age group, my first foray into online gaming was on a PC. It was on a Pentium 3, and it was Half Life online, using a 56k dialup connection. Since then, online gaming on the PC has given me many good memories, from Command and Conquer, Team Fortress 2 and even draughts. But is PC gaming dying out? More…

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Engadget, always the first with the hottest technology scoops, have already run three articles on the upcoming Dell E-series of netbooks or ultra-compact laptops – whatever you prefer to call ‘em. The latest Engadget article spills the beans on the expected config of the E-series netbook. Whilst this isn’t new news to tech-fans it’s worth mentioning here since we’ve covered the MacBook Air and Asus EEE in some depth previously.

Both the Mac and the Asus were lacking in some areas I felt. The Macbook Air for me was too physically big; thin yes, but the size of a tea-tray. Fine for business execs about town with their briefcases, but not what I would be after. The Asus EEE is certainly neat but perhaps lacking in oomph or a decent screen res.

Has Dell hit the medium point just right? Judging from the buzz over at Engadget they just might’ve. Clearly from the ‘leaked’ slides Dell has both Macbook Air and EEE in their sights. It’s almost certainly no coincidence that they’ve christened this the E-series.

Engadget tells us we’re looking at an August launch with prices starting at $299. No UK pricing or availability is known as yet.

P-j

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People are split firmly into two camps with regards to their view of the OSX Operating system. There are those that love it and those that haven’t tried it yet.

Up until now OSX has been strictly “for Macs only” (aside from hacking around getting an illegally modified version installed on a PC), but Psystar, a Miami company, announced this week of the launch of the £200 “Open PC” that is capable of running an unmodified Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

When you compare the configuration of the OpenPC with that of a Mac Mini you find that “the Mac Mini costs 150% of the price of the OpenPC while offering poorer performance, smaller storage space, and RAM”.

Apple ran an authorized Mac clone program for a stint of about two years in the mid-to-late 90’s, but upon Steve Jobs’ return to the business this was ceased.

Following the announcement by Psystar earlier this week, their website crashed under the load. The company said its web traffic peaked at over 30,000 hits per second on Monday, causing an outage; so there’s an undoubted demand for what they are offering.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the Apple legal team respond…

Matt Grest
Head of Future Development
PlusNet

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Over at Engadget there’s rumour of Microsoft’s successor to Vista being on the cards for a late 2009 release. Apparently “several industry sources” are now saying that a very early version of the so-called ‘Windows 7′ OS has been shipped to ‘key partners’, and that Microsoft is now looking at the second half of 2009 for a release.

Those with a lot of disposable income tempted by the knife-thin Macbook Air announced the other week could do worse than check out the first benchmarks and the superdrive and USB connector.

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Pocket-lint today have published pictures of what unnamed insiders claim to be the ‘big news’ due to be announced in Steve Job’s keynote speech later today.  The blogosphere has been buzzing with rumours of what exactly the ‘Something in the Air’ slogan is all about. Could these pictures really be the rumoured MacBook Air?  We haven’t got too long to wait before we find out.. the Macworld 2008 keynote takes place at 9am PST (that’s 5pm UK time). More…

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MacWorld has got Apple fans frothing at the mouth. Rumours over at Engadget are that the new MacBook ‘lite’ will be dubbed ‘Air’.. More…

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