Content and news by Rob Williams

Apple users who’ve wanted to watch Blu-ray movies natively in their OS of choice have been left in the dark thanks to either licensing issues or Apple’s preference to focus on its own streaming content, but any way you spin it, the deliberate lack of Blu-ray functionality sucks. Fortunately, a new player from Macgo appropriately called ‘Mac…

It’s been quite a while since I last checked out Valve’s official ‘Steam Hardware & Software Survey’, so given we’re fresh into the second-half of the year, I decided to see where things stand. A lot has changed since last October, and as we’re currently in the preparation stage of a GPU test suite overhaul, the information to be gleaned from this…

With the mobile game craze seemingly unable to reach a peak, and with Sony, Microsoft and even Valve making it relatively easy for indie developers to publish their games for mass consumption, it might seem like there is no downside to the settling on indie game development as a career choice. But, as it seems, it’s not as easy as it…

If you keep up with current tech trends, you’re likely aware that where audio/video cables are concerned, the market is chock-full of snake oil models. Even just a couple of months ago, we linked to a story at PC Mag that compared five HDMI cables to each other, ranging from $3 to $120, and their conclusions stated that all of them displayed…

It’s no secret that mobile broadband is expensive when looked at from a ‘per GB’ standpoint, but did you realize that mobile data is one of the most expensive resources on earth? In fact, in a loose comparison, it could be even worth more than gold, because I’m quite sure you’d have a lot more to show for half a million dollars worth of gold…

We’ve just entered the second-half of 2011, and looking back at the first six months, we can reminisce over some of the major events that have occurred within the music industry. In March, Amazon launched its cloud-based music storage service, which allows users to store all of their Amazon MP3-purchased music for free, and up to 5GB to…

AMD last week released its first Llano-based desktop processors, the A8 and A6 series, and it appears that this week, the products will be making their way onto e-tailer shelves. At the time of writing, it seems that only Newegg currently has stock (we checked four others), and even there, only two of the four models are being offered…

It’s been about a month since Apple announced its upcoming OS X 10.7 ‘Lion’ at its developer conference, and with news that it has just hit its ‘Gold’ status, a release is virtually imminent. Typically, once an OS X version goes gold, it will hit store shelves within two weeks, but being that Lion will primarily be distributed via the Mac Store app…

In ye olde days, overclocking was a mysterious art, one that few would dare venture into. Today? It seems to be almost as common as simply using a PC – at least in enthusiast circles. Whether it be your CPU, GPU or memory, overclocking is a quick way to squeeze extra performance out of your hardware. But how about overclocking…

If it seems like AMD’s Llano desktop processors have taken forever to get here, it might be because… they have – or at least it feels that way. When I first heard of Llano and what AMD planned on doing with it, I couldn’t wait to see a release. After all, with it, it means that both Intel and AMD now have true hybrid processor designs, combining…

It’s been known for a little while that OS X 10.7, ‘Lion’, would offer support for the ATA ‘TRIM’ command, but for those who weren’t planning to make the leap to Apple’s latest OS, that became a tough feature to ignore. Well, don’t fret, because it turns out that the 10.6.8 update Apple rolled out last week quietly added the feature in.

More often than not, if I return to a game after not touching it for a while, I’ll start my quest over from the start, to take in the game as if it were my first time through. In fact, I am currently doing this with Mafia II for the third time, and have been loving it. Well, imagine if you were to purchase a game where starting over from scratch simply wasn’t possible…

At tech site ITworld, there’s a feature called ‘I’ll Try It!’ where one lucky (or unlucky) person gets to live for seven days doing something unconventional, to see how they’ll get by. Normally, I’d be up for all sorts of challenges, because how bad could they be? Well, a recent challenge laid out by the site and bestowed upon one editor makes me…

On the lookout for a higher-end graphics card, but value both temperatures and acoustics? MSI, with its Radeon HD 6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition (*phew*) may have just what you’re looking for. In our tests, it often settled right beside more expensive offerings, and where acoustics and temperatures are concerned, it can’t be beat.

Last week saw the release of Mozilla’s latest Web browser, Firefox 5, while this week, e-mail lovers get treated to a fresh Thunderbird release, also versioned 5. “What happened to 4???” Great question, but one that’s easily answered. The ‘rapid release’ schedule that Mozilla created for Firefox and its back-end Gecko also…

Looking to get your mobile game on, but don’t want to spend too much cash? If so, the upcoming handheld ‘nD’ might be right up your alley. It’s being developed by Robert Pelloni, creator of the upcoming Bob’s Game for the Nintendo DS (and nD), and his project is truly ambitious. He aims to build each of these units and not make a profit…

Earlier, we posted about the trio of patches that were released for Crysis 2, which introduces alongside bug fixes an ‘Ultra’ mode and DirectX 11 support. We were unable to provide a video to actually show you what has been updated, however. Well, since then, EA has sent along an official comparison video that will leave no doubts in your mind…

As expected, EA and Crytek today released a couple of patches for Crysis 2 that enables an ‘Ultra’ mode, DirectX 11 abilities, and the opening of an ‘Advanced’ graphics configuration menu. With these upgrades, the game becomes more like the original Crysis in terms of customization, and it’s nice to see. Many gamers believe…

We took a look at GIGABYTE’s ATX A75-UD4H motherboard a couple of weeks ago, and in the post, I mentioned that I’d love to take a look at an mATX FM1 board since that seems to be the perfect platform for what AMD’s upcoming Lynx chips are going to be offering. Well, lo and behold, an ASUS F1A75-M PRO showed up last week…

Alright, I’m not sure how I let this one slip under my radar, and I really can’t believe it’s been a full fifteen years since Quake hit the PC, but it’s true. The game that followed in the footsteps of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom wouldn’t have been easy to fill, but Quake managed to do the job. At its release, Quake had truly incredible graphics…