Category Archives: In the News

Tech news and opinions

Google Chrome OS looks interesting…

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It has been announced that Google will be releasing a brand new operating system, called the Google Chrome OS. The operating system will be very simple according to many sources, as it will be initially aimed at netbook users.

There hasn’t really been a confirmed release date, but guesses start from as early as tomorrow. However, Google has mentioned on their blog to stay tuned for more updates in the Autumn.

Google has said that they will be launching various web-based apps for the system, which will be great for computers short of hard drive space and RAM. Also, Google wants the apps to run on Windows and Mac too, so their audience should expand even further.

Google already has some brilliant online apps such as Google Docs, so having these available on other operating systems should be easy.

I think having another OS in the collection could have consequences to some other Linux versions such as Ubuntu. Linux version such as Ubuntu have had a big part in the netbook world, but Windows XP has also had increased popularity.

I think Google will have think about the fact that if it was my decision, I’d just install XP. And I think a lot of other people would think the same. Google is going to have one hell of a job to win people other.

But on the other hand, with the success of the Google Chrome web browser (now being regularly used by over 30 million users – according to Google), maybe they have a chance. We’ll have to wait and see.

O2 gets another top-knotch smartphone – the Palm Pre

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Well if you have been reading the tech news lately, you’ll know about the new techy phone – the Palm Pre.

It’s been eagerly anticipated by many people, mainly because it looks like a brilliant competitor to the iPhone. It’s got some brilliant features and looks pretty cool too.

But today, it was revealed that O2 will be hosting the new phone in the UK, which ads it to the collection of fancy smartphones.

I think it is good that all the fancy top-knotch smartphones are ending up on the O2 network, but I do think some of O2’s competitors should get a chance too. To be fair, T-Mobile did get the Android phones which could be very promising, but some of the other networks haven’t really got much to say for themselves.

I think it would be nice to see an iPhone on another network. If O2 would let some other networks have some of the really high-end phones, I think it would be good.

iPhone/iPod Touch 3.1 already in the making!

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Yep, just a couple of weeks after the release of the might 3.0 software, Apple is already handing out beta code for OS 3.1.

There’s very little information about it at the moment, but as far as GEEK! is aware, Apple is testing the new software and handing it out as a beta to developers.

Hopefully it will iron out a few of the bugs in OS 3.0, because I have found a few and they really annoy me. For example, I have quite a few buffering issues with the YouTube app on the iPod Touch. It seems to work for a while and then stop buffering altogether unless I close and reopen the app. It’s not me loosing WiFi signal or anything… it just seems to be a little bug.

Ah well, hopefully it will be released before too long.

There is a little information about what’s included in the update on Wikipedia, if you are interested. Looks like some interesting stuff…

USB 3.0 to be shipping with PCs by end of year!

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It’s good to know that USB 3.0 is expected to start arriving on PCs and laptops from the end of this year.

The new Superspeed USB means that transfer speeds will rise from 480mbps to a whopping 5gbps. That means that if you are constantly transferring big files to USB drives, you’re in luck.

It’s being predicted that the new USB format will start shipping towards the end of the year, with it being available in a few high-end PCs. From 2010, it’s expected that about 26 million PCs will ship with USB 3.0. And by 2012, it’s expected that the number of PCs with USB 3.0 will be way over 300 million.

I’m very excited by the news, but it does mean that my laptop and PC will probably need upgrading. I can probably just upgrade the motherboard in the PC, but in the laptop it will be a bit more difficult. In addition, all of my USB 2.0 devices will seem horribly slow after USB 3.0 arrives.

Ah well, no worries for now. But you know, it’s a bit of a pain when you have so many outdated USB devices that transfer really slowly. Never mind.

Firefox 3.5 live

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Mozilla has recently launched the final version of Firefox 3.5.

Personally, I haven’t got round to downloading it yet, but I’ll have a crack at upgrading tomorrow, and perhaps post a review sometime over the next few days if I find anything boastable about the new version.

If you’d like to get the latest version, you can either download the upgrade from www.firefox.com or grab it from the Check For Updates link in the Help menu of Firefox.