If you’ve recently purchased a new laptop, chances are that it came with Windows Vista installed on it. Now, depending on how easily you can adapt, that might be a little bit of a problem. Even though Vista has been out for about a year now, many users are still reporting on having a hard time with the new operating system. Some consumers just can’t get all of their peripherals to work properly, others are experiencing horrendous performance issues, while still others just hate the changes that Microsoft made.

One solution to this dilemma would be to take Apple’s advice and just “upgrade” back to XP. If you’ve already gone ahead and tried this approach, though, you may have noticed that this causes another problem — quite a serious one actually. XP refuses to install!

So what’s the problem, you ask? Well, let’s think about this chronologically, shall we. Windows XP is old. No wait, let me rephrase that: XP is ancient! This means that the software and the drivers included with the installation package are just as old; that’s six years to be precise. Back in 2001, when XP debuted, Microsoft expected motherboards to interface with hard drives via an IDE cable. But, six years down the road, PCs and laptops manufacturers have all dumped IDE in favor of SATA, which is faster, allows for hot swapping of drives, and insures better data integrity and reliability. This all sounds wonderful, until you consider that Microsoft never included any SATA drivers with their XP installers. So now what?

Fortunately, there is a fairly easy way to rectify this problem. The necessary SATA drivers aren’t included with the standard installation disc, so we’ll have to add, or slipstream, them using a neat little tool called nLite:

• First off, we’ll need to download and install nLite, a freeware application developed and hosted by Dino Nuhagic. The latest version can be found at www.nliteos.com. I got everything up and running with version 1.4.

• Next, we’ll need to locate and download the appropriate SATA driver. Since it took me quite a bit of time and effort to locate the necessary drivers, I’ll do my part to simplify the task by hosting the driver I used here.

• The only other thing that we need now is an XP installation disc – hopefully a legal copy – into which we’ll slipstream the SATA driver.

Okay, now that we have the right software and the correct driver, let’s get started. Since we’re going to be adding a component to the standard Windows installation files, we’ll have to extract the files from the CD. While doing so, it is important to make sure that the file structure stays intact. By far the easiest way of getting all the right files onto your system is to simply insert the CD, head over to My Computer, right click the CD directory, hit copy, and then paste it to the desktop. Once that is done you’ll be ready to get started with nLite:

• Once nLite is launched, go ahead and skip the first screen which only contains information about the program.

• The second screen will ask you to locate the Windows installation, which will be on the desktop if you followed the instructions above verbatim. Once you’ve located the correct directory, hit OK in the selection window and wait for nLite to analyze the directory. If you’ve identified the correct directory, you should be able to see the Windows version, what service pack you have, the version number and installer size. If you don’t see this information, chances are that you’ve identified the wrong directory.

• The third page isn’t really that important, so skip it and make sure you get to the Task Selection page, since that’s the part where paying attention becomes important; it’ll be where you tell nLite what to do with the Windows installation files. Depending on what version of the Windows XP installation disc you have, you might want to alter a few of the settings. However, for the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that we’re dealing with a standard Microsoft installation disc that already has Service Pack 2 installed on it, and that we’re not interested in slipsteaming in any other components, hotfixes, addons or tweaks. So, with all these considerations in mind, go ahead and check the third box down, labeled “Drivers,” as well as the very last one, labeled “Bootable ISO.” Click next when done.

• We should now be at the Drivers page; this is where you should locate the correct driver for nLite to slip into the installation. In the bottom right hand side of the window, right above “Next,” you should see a button labeled “Insert.” Click it, and then select “Multiple Driver Folder.” Doing so should bring up yet another window within which you’ll have to locate the folder that the SATA driver, which you should have downloaded earlier, resides in. Clicking OK in this, as well as in the next window, should bring up a list of possible SATA drivers. Now, if you know exactly what hardware you have, go ahead and select the appropriate driver. However, if you don’t know exactly what you need, then you might want to try the fourth one from the bottom — that’s the one that worked for my HP DV6500T. Clicking OK again should kick you back to the Drivers page; go ahead and click next.

• This next page is really straightforward. If you feel that you’ve set everything up correctly, hit OK, and watch nLite got to work — okay, well maybe there isn’t that much to see…

• After nLite finishes working its magic proceed to the next page, where you’ll have to complete one last task. Now that nLite has analyzed and modified your XP installation files, it’s going to want to know what it’s supposed to do with the newly created files. Your two best options are either to burn a new XP installation disc directly from within nLite, or to have the program create an ISO image which you can then do with as you please. In my case, I went ahead and created an image (just in case I happen to loose the CD at some point), which I then burned to a disc with Alcohol 120% (there are plenty of other applications, such as Nero, that will do the exact same thing).

If you successfully followed the steps outlined above, then you should now have a brand new installation disc for Windows XP. The only remaining step is to insert the disc in your laptop and reboot. If everything went to plan, your machine will recognize the drive and start the installation process, which should be the exact same as it would otherwise be. If you have any remaining questions, please feel free to post a comment down below, and I’ll try my best to assist.

Note: This slipsteaming process will only work if you want to install Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

Series: Dual-Booting: XP and Ubuntu

Part I | Part II | Part III

I’ve been in the market for a new laptop for about half a year now and I’ve finally made up my mind and purchased an HP DV6500t. I was looking for a widescreen laptop of about 15″ in diameter with a decently fast “Santa Rosa” Intel chip and a decent nVidia graphics card. I also didn’t want to spend more than $1,500 in total (including taxes). Having looked at everything from Asus to Toshiba, I finally homed in my search on an HP, and eventually the DV6500t.

BUYING EXPERIENCE

I knew for quite some time that I wanted a new laptop, and so I was able to do quite some searching for the best places to buy my new DV6500t. Trolling between various sites, along with the occasional visit to a brick and mortar store, made it quite clear that if you want a specific laptop with certain chips, cards, and features, you’ll want to make your purchase from the manufacturer directly.

Buying from HP.com was easy and quite straight forward. I had no trouble selecting what I wanted, and it was always clear what I would end up getting and paying for it. Unfortunately, buying directly from the manufacturer has one major drawback: you’ll have to wait longer to get your new machine, since the item in question won’t be built until you order it. So, after three weeks of waiting, somewhat impatiently, I finally got my DV6500t – kudos to HP and FedEx for accurately predicting the correct arrival time, though.

PACKAGING

When the doorbell rang, I hurried to the door. Upon seeing the box, it was immediately clear what HP was doing to save itself some money. There on the porch, sat a plain cardboard box with nothing on it, save for a few rather large shipping placards.

Within this rather simple box, I found my new laptop wrapped in plastic and snuggled securely between two molded Styrofoam braces. Also in the box, I found the extra 12-cell battery that I ordered and all of the paperwork – plus a few ads. Oddly enough, the regular battery was packaged safely in a bubble wrap sleeve, while the bigger, potentially more dangerous, 12-cell was wrapped in a simple, pink, plastic bag.

The important thing is, though, that the laptop arrived safely all the way from China, even though the packaging was extremely basic.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

From a visual standpoint, if you can’t get a Mac Book, this is probably the next best thing. Unfortunately, as soon as all the plastic covers are removed, you’ll see every fingerprint, dust particle, wipe and scratch. The problem is especially prevalent on the shiny, piano-lacquer lid.

Apart from the visuals, the laptop feels solid and the ergonomics are decent. All ports and media bays are conveniently located on either side of the laptop, negating the need to reach around the back of the machine to connect peripherals.

Another feature that becomes immediately apparent is the fact that the DV series doesn’t have a latch. The lid is held down in the close position by sole means of hinges, which actually works really well, and aids in giving the machine a sleeker appearance.

SCREEN

The DV6500 series features a 15.4″ glossy screen with a native resolution of only 1280 by 800 pixels. The color reproduction is decent, but the screen suffers from a rather narrow viewing angle; color will look off unless you are perfectly in front of it. The problem is especially prevalent with darker colors. Black levels aren’t great either, but the screen performs adequately if you’re not doing anything more than basic text editing. To be fair, however, for under $1,500, you can’t reasonably expect to get anything drastically better than this.

Colors and black levels aside, however, one issue I do have with this relatively cheap display is that it has a glossy finish, as opposed to a matte finish. Why the hell would anyone prefer to have a display that reflects more light than is absolutely necessary? Glossy screens are usually advertised as being capable of producing a better viewing experience, but for a laptop this simply cannot be true. Glossy screens are only nice in a darkened environment, which is not exactly the average setting for a mobile user. If you happen to be using your DV6500t in a averagely lit room, than there is a fair chance that you’ll see a sharp, almost mirror-like reflection of your environment. I can’t stand it, but I’m sure that it does appeal to some.

KEYBOARD

The keyboard is pretty nice, with good key travel and decent flex. The key layout is pretty average for a Windows laptop. The F1 through F12 keys also serve as special function keys for: help, print, Internet, output switching, sleep mode toggling, locking, increasing brightness, decreasing brightness, play/pause, stop, previous and next, respectively. The home, page up, page down, and end keys are featured along the right side of the keyboard. Typing isn’t overly noisy, producing no more noise than what I’ve come to expect from laptop keyboards. The noise shouldn’t be enough to upset anyone around you in a quiet environment.

Unfortunately, keyboard ergonomics isn’t a strong point for the DV6500t. Hand positioning could have been better, but for a value laptop it isn’t too bad I suppose. The main problem I have with it stems from the fact that the touchpad has been perfectly centered in the middle of the laptop (for additional visual appeal), but this causes problems when typing. The alphabet keys are positioned on the left hand side, causing the user to place his (or her) right hand over the touchpad. This awkward hand placement results in erratic cursor movement while typing.

TOUCHPAD

The largest benefit of the touchpad is that it can be turned off to avoid accidental tracking—but that’s really the only high-point. The touchpad also features the standard left and right click buttons under the touchpad, but, in my opinion, these two buttons have too much travel, causing them to feel a little cheap.

Tracking isn’t perfect either. While the cursor’s reaction to the finger isn’t really a problem, the touchpad feels awkward once the laptop heats up. Depending on what you are doing the laptop will generate more heat, causing the touchpad to become quite warm. Using the touchpad once it’s warm produces a really awkward sensation, which might very well be considered annoying depending on personal preference.

QUICKPLAY

Just under the Altec Lansing speakers and to the right of the power button, there is a touch sensitive control strip, lined with media control buttons. The strip is rather elegant, but for everyday use, you’ll only find yourself using three of the functions: mute, volume up and volume down. In addition to audio control buttons, the strip also features media control buttons (i.e., play, pause, stop, forwards, backwards). To the very left of the strip, there is also a DVD button, which launches HP’s playback software, which as you might have guessed isn’t that great.

ACCESSORIES

One of the advantages of ordering a machine directly from the manufacturer is that you can choose exactly what you want your new computer to come equipped with. I opted to include a variety of extras such as built-in webcam, fingerprint reader and Bluetooth.

• FINGERPRINT READER

The fingerprint reader is a neat feature and works pretty well once you get used to performing the correct wiping technique. In order to set up the fingerprint reader, you’ll have to associate your prints with the machine. The software wants a minimum of three prints, but you can choose to include as many as you want.

I know that some people might be a little hesitant about using a fingerprint scanner to log in because of a variety of concerns, most of which are actually misconceptions. First off, setting up your computer to use the fingerprint reader does not mean that you can’t still log in using your regular password. Others might be worried about the fingerprint scanner from a security standpoint; someone might steal your machine, manage to get in, steal your fingerprint, and thus steal your identity. Well, this is not a problem either, as your actual fingerprint in not actually stored on the hard drive – in fact your print isn’t stored at all. When you first swipe your finger to register it, the scanner analyses your print for identifying features, and then takes those results and hashes them to create an irreversible number. So, on all subsequent scans the same happens and then if the numbers match, you’re in.

Using a fingerprint to log in might be convenient and easy, but there are a few problems with the reader and the accompanying software. First of all, when Vista starts up you have to select the fingerprint icon before you can swipe. This is only a minor gripe, but it’s one that has surprised almost everyone who’s used my laptop. The second complaint I have is the positioning of the fingerprint reader, which on the right side, directly under the direction keys. When using the direction keys or the other buttons in that region (page up, page down, end, and home), it’s pretty easy to accidentally trigger the reader, causing the software to sound a beep and display a pop-up.

• WEBCAM

Along with the fingerprint reader and the imprint finish, HP also included a simple webcam with the laptop with the configuration I chose. The webcam, however, leaves a lot to be desired; it simply isn’t that great. In fact, the webcam included in the DV6500t is, by all quantitative measures, worse than the one in preceding models. Instead of outputting an XGA resolution (1024 by 768) like previous models, the webcam in the DV6500t is only capable of producing VGA imagery (640 by 480). The reasoning behind this decision seems to have been that most applications, especially conferencing apps, have trouble handling high-res video in real-time (due to insufficient bandwidth and latency issues). On the bright side though, some reviews have claimed that the new webcam is far better suited for low-light situations than the previous edition. Regardless of this claim though, it would have been nice to be able to choose the resolution you want to use. Oh, well…

GRAPHICS CARD

Graphical performance is another area where HP decided to go down the cheap road. My initial intention was to purchase the DV6500z, which is the AMD variant. Unfortunately, at the time the best graphics card that HP offered for this laptop was the GeForce Go 7200, which just happens to be one of the most antiquated graphics chips available. Not only is it dog slow, it’s also two generations old. Now, considering that HP is marketing the DV brand as an “Entertainment” laptop, the decision to offer nothing else but the 7200 is downright appalling. And then, to make matters even worse, the next move they made was to get rid of the 7200 and replace it with the 7150, which is even worse.

Now, in all fairness to HP, it seems that this only happened because they were trying to get rid of the 7200 in order to replace it with a better card. Unfortunately, by the time they had upgraded the AMD-based model, I had already purchased the DV6500t.

The DV6500t offers a better, far more up-to-date, graphics card, but it’s still pretty far from ideal for anyone interested in any movie editing or gaming – even casual gaming. The GeForce Go 8400M GS that HP now offers in the DV6500t (both in the Intel, as well as the AMD based versions) comes with an impressive sounding 383MB of memory. Gee, that sounds like a lot… Well, it’s not that great. Only 64MB of that 383MB is actually on the graphics card itself; the other 319MB are shared with other hardware elements. If you’d like a far more serious graphics card, like a 7600GT for instance, I’d recommend checking out some of the newer Dells.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES

BUY: HP DV6500 | MORE INFORMATION: HP.COM

With only one day to spare before the start of the infamous Intel Developer Forum, AMD announced plans for another processor design. With this latest chip, AMD is hoping to make up for its recent loss of market share to its arch rival, Intel. What makes this new chip proposal interesting is the fact that these new chips will only have three processing cores. That’s right: tri-core CPU’s. Intended to be part of the upcoming Phenom lineup, AMD says that it hopes to market its newest creation towards budget minded multi-taskers, and that it will be available in the first quarter of 2008.

Making processors is a tricky business. When you’re building chips where certain parts are on the order of only a 100 atoms across, you’re bound to have failures. Usually when things go haywire in the manufacturing process, the manufacturer is forced to discard the product and start over. Unfortunately, each time you’re forced into this position, you’re wasting time, energy, and, most importantly, money. Especially for a company that’s in such dire straits as AMD, any loss of money in the manufacturing process is unacceptable.

The announcement of this new chip right after the introduction of “Barcelona” makes perfect sense when you think about it. Suppose that one of those newly introduced quad-core chips gets to the end of the line, only to fail a quality control test because a single core failed to work properly. What do you do? Well, just label it as a tri-core, test it, rate it, and ship it.

This practice isn’t new at all: practically every chip vendor does it. Intel’s Celeron and AMD’s Duron chips were the same as Pentium 4 and Athlon, respectively, just with some cache memory disabled. Even though there might be a few thousand defective transistors on the chips, they still function properly, although just not as fast.

Since the tri-core Phenom chips have only just been announced, we can only speculate about how these chips will perform. What this move from AMD might suggest, however, is that the yields from the new “Barcelona” lineup aren’t turning out as well as AMD expected, and that maybe the glitches which caused the initial “Barcelona” delay haven’t been completely solved. Either way, though, this move allows AMD to make money off of products which it would otherwise have dumped in the trash.

Just the other day, I reported that HD VMD was looking good to be the third candidate in the race for supreme leader in the HD format wars.Apparently three wasn’t enough, and so now there’s a fourth contender: the Chinese-made CH-DVD. Slated for an unspecified release in 2008, the new format isn’t looking all that impressive. It’s pretty much what’d you’d expect to see from China, an HD DVD knock-off.

According to Ars Technica, this isn’t the first time that China has tried to steal – uhm, I mean “create” – a standard for technology that’s already in wide use around the world. Back in late 2003, China tried to introduce the Enhanced Versatile Disc (or simply EVD) with the intention of stealing some of the DVD’s popularity. China’s efforts to “innovate” have also extended into the world of 802.11 Wi-Fi encryption; in late 2003, the Chinese tried to impose their WAPI standard on the international community by forcing companies who wanted access to the Chinese market to partner with one of eleven Chinese firms that licensed the standard. Needless to say, this effort, along with countless others, like an XML alternative, failed as well.

The reason behind this seemingly rampant copying of standards is actually a simple one, namely cost. With the current state of Western patent systems (both here and in Europe), companies have little problem patenting every action they undertake. As a result, it’s practically impossible for anyone to introduce a product for which they won’t have to pay a laundry list full of licensing fees. Going back to the EVD example, if China had managed to introduce their own DVD standard, they would have saved anywhere from $13 to $20 per player in CSS and MPEG-2 licensing fees – and that’s only for video playback, so add a few bucks more for the rest of the machine. The severity of the problem becomes even more evident when you consider China’s historically poor economy (yes, I know it’s expanding rapidly), as well as the fact that you can walk into any Wal-Mart and pick up a DVD player for next to nothing.

The same applies to China’s attempt to introduce a new Wi-Fi standard. The profit margins on electronics are razor thin, and in some cases (such as with the PS3 and Xbox 360), they don’t even exist! So, anything that (legitimate) Chinese companies can do to avoid having to pay additional fees is going to be attempted. Even though we might never actually see CH-DVDs here in the US, I’m sure that we can continue to see more and more tech-clones out of China.

While the two heavy weights slug it out in a high-priced battle of consumer favoritism, why not just have the little guy sneak up from behind and deliver the necessary coup de grace? While your competitors are slowly but surely lowering their prices to the magic number, why not just come in and start there directly?

That’s exactly what London based New Medium Enterprises was thinking when they announced plans to use traditional red-laser optics technology to deliver high definition content to consumers. The new format, dubbed HD VMD (which stands for “High Definition Versatile Media Disc”), was first demoed early last year, but only managed to generate a little hype. Even though the concept was played down by the bigger names and their high-profile, over-priced formats, New Medium Enterprises stuck with its guns and continued development.

The technology behind HD VMD is ingeniously simple. Instead of trying to impress the industry with fancy new names and brand new laser technologies which require the complete retooling of entire production lines, New Medium Enterprises decided to take existing DVD technology, beef it up a little, and combine it with the leading edge in compression technology.

In order to be able to store hi-def movies in resolutions up to 1080p, the company has managed to boost the maximum number of data layers on a standard DVD from 2 layers per side to 4 layers – maybe even as high as 10, according to some reports. HD VMD discs would, therefore, be able to store anywhere from 20 GB to 50 GB, which is plenty of space to comfortably fit a full length feature presentation. Commercial releases would be encoded using a proprietary HD VMD codec, but players should also be able to play MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV 9, and H.264.

The real beauty of this new format comes from the fact that it uses what is essentially old technology. Since HD VMD’s don’t require new laser technology, they should play just fine on current generation DVD players once they have undergone a simple firmware upgrade. This simple fact means that this new format will be able to hit the market in late October of this year at incredibly low prices. The first batch of players is slated to cost no more than $199.

Such a low price would mean that if the company manages to market their new format properly they should have no problem appealing to the average Joe, who might be far more willing to a few hundred instead of a few thousand.

There are, however, a few problems that I foresee with this new format. Blu-Ray and HD DVD have been out for over a year now, which means that those two formats will have far better consumer brand recognition by the time that HD VMD hits the streets this October.

The success or failure of HD VMD won’t depend solely on public recognition and acceptance. New Media Enterprises will also have to convince the movie studios that their format it a worthwhile investment and that they should start releasing movies in the new format. Many studios might be very hesitant to sign on with a new format, especially since so many of them have already invested a fortune in the production and marketing of either Blu-Ray or HD DVD – even both in some cases. The only studio is have signed up with New Media Entertainment so far is Mel Gibson’s Icon Studios.

And then there’s always the computer market; they’ll need even more convincing. Talk to any geek about which next gen format they would like to see succeed and the answer will undoubtedly be Blu-Ray. Why, you ask?

The potential for mass data storage is so much greater with Blu-Ray when compared to the other candidates. Storing 50 GB, which is the rumored upper bound on HD VMD, is quite trivial on a Blu-Ray disc. With a VMD disc, you’d have to squeeze 5 layers onto each side of the disc to get close to 50 GB, while the same task on a Blu-Ray disc only takes two layers. At this year’s CES, Ritek revealed that it had developed a technique to drastically increase the storage capacity on Blu-Ray discs to a maximum of 250 GB.

This new format has potential, but I’m afraid that it might be too late in the game for anyone else to come in and steal the glory from either one of the current leaders.

Ever since Intel introduced their Core 2 Duo processors last year, it’s been nothing but hell for AMD. In order to stay competitive with their rapidly aging architecture, AMD was forced to drastically cut prices in order to present the customer with a better value than Intel. Knowing that they’d forced AMD into a corner, Intel made them sweat even more by cutting their own prices. Consumers couldn’t have been happier; the two market leaders were waging an all out price war, and they were reaping all the benefits. The situation was looking quite bleak for AMD, who still didn’t have a 65nm chip out while Intel was already announcing possible release dates for its new 45nm lineup.

After numerous complications and delays, AMD has finally shipped the industry’s “first native X86 quad-core mircoprocessor” lineup. As is traditionally the case, this first lineup of quad-core chips has been designed for server applications; expect to see the desktop oriented lineup, codenamed “Phenom,” as early as December, 2007.

Now that the chips are out of development and available in the market they have lost their “Barcelona” nickname, and are now know as the 2300-series and 8300-series of the existing Opteron lineup. As you may have guessed, the difference in the numbering corresponds to the difference in their performance and pricing. The 2300-series constitutes the affordably priced low-end, and looks something like this (“HE” stands for “High Efficiency”):

From the rushed analysis on a variety of early reviews, it would seem that the 2300-series provide excellent value in terms of price over performance, along with excellent efficiency. That being said, however, it would also seem that the 2300-series fails to regain the lead from Intel in terms of raw processing power, but that was to be expected. Early benchmarks suggest that the new Opteron parts perform better than their perspective Intel rivals when it comes to floating-point calculations, but fail when compared in terms of integer calculations. As it currently stands, the 2300-series is probably most appealing to those who already have compatible AMD systems and are in the market for a quick and easy upgrade – provided that their software scales easily from dual-core to quad.

Those yearning for AMD parts and good performance might want to look at the higher-end of the Opteron spectrum:

Unfortunately, there aren’t any hard numbers out yet on the true performance of the 8300-series, but AMD, however biased they might be, claims that its 2.0Ghz 8350 is capable of beating its 3.0GHz dual-core cousins by as much as 50 percent. Such claims, if true, will make for quite a few exciting benchmarks battle between AMD and Intel. For AMD’s sake, let’s hope that it’s one that the company can win, because if it can’t there will be even less hope once Intel unveils it’s new 45nm lineup. However, if these new chips manage to break even with Intel (that’s probably the best we can hope for at this point) it should allow AMD a little more breathing room while they regroup and refocus their efforts on some more high-end parts.

There is a lot of testing left to do, so plan on hearing more about “Barcelona” in the weeks to come.

Reviews Out So Far:

• Anand Tech
• The Tech Report
• Ars Technica

And a list of all Opteron CPUs

For anyone who’s followed the rumors and speculation leading up to today’s announcement, there really wasn’t anything all too surprising: the “classic” iPod got it’s usual size upgrade, the Nano gained some weight; and, as everyone expected, the new kid on the block is the Touch, an iPod-only iPhone. However, despite the fact that nothing Apple did today was all too stunning, Apple fans everywhere still went wild as usual.

Like most of these things, the keynote started off pretty tame and got more exciting as it went along – albeit only a little. Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent the first few minutes praising the success and popularity of the iTunes music store, and then got down to business.

Ringtones

The first announcement was met with quite some applause. Apple will now – finally – allow iPhone owners to customize their ringtones. Amusingly, the applause quickly died down when everyone realized how ludicrous Apple’s ringtone customization system really is. If you want to make your favorite tune into a ringtone, you’d better hope that it’s one of the 500,000 “participating songs,” because if it’s not, you’re simply out of luck. And if you manage to find a tune you like, you’ll have to pay another 99 cents on top of the song price to actually make it into a 30-second ringtone. So, do you still want that custom ringtone?

The New Shuffle…huh?

After a little more iPod praise, Steve was ready to “start out easy” with the new “refreshed” iPod Shuffle. It took me a while to figure out what was new with this model: Was it the design? No. Maybe the size? Nope, same old. Steve’s ego? Possibly. Oh wait, it’s the color!

All Apple did to the Shuffle was give it a new paint job. The player now comes in silver, blue, green, purple, and (Product) Red. It still only holds 240 songs (on 1GB), and it still costs $79.

The Overweight Nano

A little further up the price curve, you’ll find the new iPod Nano, which Apple’s site still describes as being sleek. Yeah right! If a video iPod ever mated with a first generation Nano, the resulting product would be short and disproportionately wide, and that’s exactly what this new Nano is. Fortunately, some of the better traits from each of its possible parents are also present, like a solid state drive, a stainless steel enclosure, and the ability to play vidoes, run basic games, and display images.

The screen is 2 inches wide, and sports 76,800 pixels – that’s 240 up, and 320 across. Apple claims that you’ll be able to get up to 24 hours of battery life out of the device if you’re listening to music, but only 5 hours if you do little else but watch videos. The new fatty Nano comes in two size: 4GB and 8GB. The 4GB weighs in at $149, while the 8GB model will go for about $199.

The “Classic”

After 5 similar keynotes, this iPod needs little introduction. It’s so iconic that Steve thought it would be appropriate to name it the iPod Classic. Unlike the fatty Nano, the 6th generation “Classic” actually lost a little bit of weight, making it even thinner. Don’t let its slim appearance fool you, however, it packs a whopping 160GB of storage – if you’re willing to pay for it, that is. If you’re keeping track, that means that you’ll now be able to squeeze an astounding 40,000 tunes in your pocket, as opposed to the first iPod, which only held a 1,000 songs.

The Classic also sports a new interface, designed to incorporate CoverFlow. You’ll also be able to browse your songs on one side of the screen, while viewing the cover art for each perspective album on the other half. Well, so much for the elegance of the interface…

Much like the new fatty Nano, the Classic will also be housed in “an anodized aluminum and polished stainless steel enclosure” – no word yet on how this new combo stands up to scratches. The Classic comes in two sizes as well: 80GB, worth 20,000 songs; and 160GB, which is good for 40,000.

All of this sounds really great, until, or course, you find the Buy page and see the price. Apple wants $249 for the 80GB and $349 for the 160GB.

iPod Touch

Oh, and one more thing: remember that iPhone that never really took off and that everyone wanted as an iPod-only device? Well, lo and behold, it’s here, and it’s called the iPod Touch. The Touch is slightly smaller in size than the iPhone, but besides that, it looks pretty much exactly like it.

Not only does it look too much like the iPhone, it does almost the exact same thing, except for make calls, obviously. The Touch uses the same interface (that was not invented by Apple) to navigate through menus, photos, videos, and music. The cheap version even comes in the same disappointing storage capacity: 8GB.

The unit features a 3.5” inch display, that makes it ideal for viewing photos, watching movies, and not to mention, surfing the Internet. To make Internet access as easy as possible, Apple cleverly included a 802.11b/g Wi-Fi antenna into the unit. The touch also has an accelerometer and light sensor just like its cousin, so that it can determine its orientation and environment to properly adjust the display for the optimum viewing experience. According to Apple, the battery should be good for anywhere between 5 and 22 hours, depending on how many videos and songs you put it through.

The Touch only comes in one color, but at least you can choose which of the two meager storage options you’d like: either 8GB or 16GB. The 8GB goes for $299 and the 16GB goes for $399.

iPhone Price Drop

Steve concluded the keynote by saying that Apple will be discontinuing the 4GB iPhone, and lowering the price of the 8GB model from $599 down to $399. Interestingly, according to Engagdet.com, this annoucement elicited the greatest applause from the audience, suggesting that this was the only real piece of news that really took everyone by surprise.

Watch the Keynote

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The Big Bang of the digital audio revolution occurred exactly 25 years ago, on the 17th of August, 1982. This was the day that a Philips factory in Langenhagen, Germany, pressed the very first commercial Compact Disc, and propelled the world forward into the digital age of music.

The idea of a Compact Disc was first conceived of in 1969, but serious research wasn’t started until almost a decade later in 1977. Another two years later, in 1979, Philips teamed up with Sony to create an ominous sounding joint task force of engineers to create a new digital audio storage disc. The result of the year long collaboration was the (somewhat) famous “Red Book,” a color-bound book containing the agreed on technical specifications for all future Compact Discs.

With everything else agreed on, it was only a matter of time before the first band agreed to have their material pressed onto Compact Discs. The very first title to be released out of the Langenhagen factory on August 17th , 1982, was ABBA’s 1981 album The Visitors.

Not too long after the introduction of Compact Discs, the industry saw a plethora of variations of the shiny optical disc: the CD-ROM (1985), the CD-Recordable (1990), the MiniDisc (1992), the CD-ReWritable (1997), to name a few. Compact Discs turned out to be the launching pad for the digital music revolution, which not only introduced easy data storage, but also brought us a dark side. Lossless copying, mindless music sharing, and poorly encoded MP3 all paved the road to the music industries’ current DRM-laden, paranoid state. Regardless of the present, however, the Compact Disc was an amazing invention, and deserves recognition as such.

Happy Birthday, Compact Disc!

The whole thing started when a man, who calls himself “Magus,” in Atlanta, Georgia, went out to his local Target and bought himself a brand new Xbox 360 Premium for $350. After unpacking his new console, he noticed that there was something out of the ordinary on the rear of the console: an HDMI port, right alongside the standard component connection. Not expecting to discover this port, Magus snapped a few pictures and uploaded them to ShackNews.com. From there it wasn’t too long before almost every Xbox fanboy on the net found out about it, and asked the inevitable question: is it true?

Well, according to a Microsoft e-mail, it most definitely is.

Earlier this spring, HDMI already found its way onto the Xbox 360 Elite, but there was no mention at the time that the Premium console would soon sport the same feature. In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft told ShackNews that only the Premium model will have the HDMI port and that “retailers are gradually introducing HDMI-enabled Xbox 360s into the channel to meet demand.”

From the looks of it, Microsoft wanted to sneak this new update into market channels with as little fuss as possible. Probably because the Playstation 3 already had an HDMI port from the beginning, and as such this new addition to the 360 is a year late in comparison. In response to whether other changes were made, Microsoft responded that the company is busy “constantly updating the console’s more than 1700 internal components and therefore will not comment on details of specific components.”

HDMI might be all the rage, but please keep in mind that you might not see any visible improvements over your current setup. The two big draws of HDMI are improved image quality, and fewer cables; however, both of these claims might be a little exaggerated. Most will probably not notice the subtle image improvement, and that cable mess behind your TV will remain.

HDMI is capable of carrying both video and audio information over the same connection, but for the majority of setups you’ll still want multiple cables. For instance, if you have a Dolby Surround setup hooked up to a receiver, you’ll have to choice whether you want the HDMI cable to lead from the console to the TV or from the console to the receiver, and from there you’ll also have to decide how the other supplementary components will be invited into the loop. If I were to switch over to an HDMI-enable Xbox right now, I’d still need two cables to hook up both the plasma and the receiver; that would be the same number of cables I use to get the job done now.

Unless you are really keen on having a slightly better picture quality, you’ll be hard pressed to find a compelling reason to upgrade. And on another note, please keep in mind as well that the Xbox “Falcon” is slated for release this fall, and it will also feature an HDMI port on top of the new 65nm components. However, if are you planning on getting the new Premium, you can tell if it has the HDMI port by reading the spec information on the side of the box.

In short, many will be quite pleased with this addition, but if you can hold out a little longer, I’d suggest waiting for the “Falcon.”

DRM is a bitch when it comes to copying music for a friend, but pretty soon we’ll have another reason to hate it. Apple recently filed a patent suggesting that in the near future you might not even be able to charge a friend’s iPod, let alone slip him a few tunes.

Apple’s patent outlines plans for providing each and every iPod with a specific charger, without which that iPod (or iPhone) won’t charge. Each charger will come equipped with a simple circuit to determine if and when power can be supplied to the attached device. The plan behind this seemingly totalitarian scheme is actually rather benign; it’s all about protecting your iPod from theft. Actually, on second thought, it might still get stolen, but hey, at least it won’t charge. Good thinking, Apple!

According to the patent, if your iPod is plugged into an unauthorized charger, leaves a specified geographical location, or if a timer expires, and no PIN is entered, it won’t charge, causing it to slowly wither and die, producing yet another beautiful Apple paperweight.

How exactly Apple decides to implement this technology will also determine how many people they will piss off as a consequence. If Steve decides that he needs even more money, this patent might allow them to “pull a Sony,” and force customers into buying only Apple chargers, docks, and peripherals. However, if they want to avoid any more bad press about this “anti-theft” idea, then it would behoove them to license this at a moderate price to third-party manufacturers, along with having users enter a PIN before charging the device, so that it can still be used with a friend’s charger.

However, if this patent falls through, or if you just want to feel more secure, a better approach to protecting your iPod would be to simple disguise it, preferably like something that no one would ever want to steal: a brown Zune! If that sounds crazy enough to work, check out Hide-A-Pod.