At first glance, it looks like your average Mario platformer. The box shows Mario jumping over to some Bricks, while avoiding a Goomba with a Tandooki tail. But then you put the game cart into the 3DS, and this is where it shines. This review will be seperated into “Graphics”, “Gameplay”, “Audio” and then a summary of the game in general.

Graphics
Well, since New Super Mario Bros in 2006 was a disappointment (ie. it was 2.5D (some 3D elements while everything else was 2D tiles/sprites) instead of pushing the DS to it’s visual limit with a 3D rendered level), I personally can say that this is like a pocket Mario Galaxy. Sure, you won’t be getting all the sexy visuals that Mario Galaxy on the Wii provides; but it gets pretty damn close to it without becoming a dogs breakfast in the process.

When playing in traditional mode without 3D effects, on-screen visuals are crisp, clean and sharp. You can clearly see what’s lying ahead, either something to help you, or hinder your progress. However, Mario 3D Land excels in the 3D visuals department. Sit back, knock that 3D slider to the max, and watch objects become realistic. It’s almost like that object is sitting in front of you. On some levels, I found having 3D visuals enabled made the game almost bursting out of the 3DS screen. Pretty damn cool.

I’ve yet to see any rendering issues, but I have seen a little bit of clipping at times. Nothing serious, but sometimes some clipping will suddenly appear, then disappear. While most objects have been recycled from Mario Galaxy, some new enemies and objects appear in-game, which is always welcome in a Mario game because it breathes some new life into the game, rather than the traditional host of Goombas, Koopas, and you know the rest.

Gameplay
Nintendo has taken Mario Galaxy’s engine, pulled all that planet gravity jazz out of it, thrown in some new abilities for Mario, and made it feel like like Mario 64. And that’s a good thing, since Mario Sunshine’s engine was utter trash. If you’ve played Mario Galaxy, then that is a bonus, newcomers will need to spend time playing around with the control system. Sadly, no switchable controls like the ones in Mario 64 DS. The only gripe is that I found the levels too easy, and I’ve already cleared half the game on the same day I bought it!

Unlike how each world section (ie. World 1, World 2, etc) in older Mario games were theme-related (ie. Grasslands, Water, etc), each “World” in Mario 3D Land may have elements of the “theme”, but not all of it. For example, you might find a water level in a snow world, or a desert in a completely random world. It’s things like this that make it less of “Oh yeah, another boring level ahead”, and more “Oh wow, that level was good, this one looks even better!”.

Another cool feature is the item hold system, if you get a better powerup, it switches like it does in Super Mario World – for example, if you have a Tandooki Mario suit on, and get a Fire flower, you’ll turn into Fire Mario with your Tandooki suit in reserve. Makes switching back and forth between powers quite easy.

So, what’s the plot? Yes, it’s the tranditional setup. Bowser kidnaps the Princess, again for the umpeeth time. No cake involved though. There’s also some rather amusing cutscenes in the mix, I got a laugh out of the World 4 beginning cutscene.

Audio
Most music has been recycled from Mario Galaxy series (note to self: stop saying “Mario Galaxy”!) but there is some welcome additions to the party, either remixes of classics or completely original tracks. Sounds also have been recycled, but there are some remastered ones (ie. tandooki tail, etc) and power up/take damage sounds. Mario himself makes the traditional sounds he usually makes, but there’s a few new ones in the mix.

Either way, Mario 3D Land in the music department isn’t earcancer and provides a nice balance between classic and recent Mario title music.

Overall Verdict
Hands down, this is a solid Mario title. I like it a lot, and if you’re looking for something to test out the 3D functions of the 3DS, give this game a shot. Despite the game being a little too easy at times, it’s a winner for any Mario veteran. Don’t just dismiss the game as being another rehash of a exsting game – play the game first before you judge.

Coburn’s verdict? Well, I’d award this game 2.75 out of 3 stars. That missing 0.25 of a star is just that it’s a little too easy (in certain parts) and sometimes the controls can be a little annoying, but with those gripes aside, it’s a winner.

This is the Huawei SONIC. Simply put, it’s a bargain 3.5″ Capactive touchscreen smartphone that runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) on a 600Mhz CPU coupled happily together with powerful GPU.

Let’s cut to the chase.

Build Quality
Despite being made in china, the phone itself doesn’t feel like it’s a toy. By that, I mean, it survives a drop off a ledge onto a lino floor that’s about 2 metres off the ground, face-down. It’s an all-round solid build and should survive a lot of drops. The touchscreen and buttons aren’t spongy nor “soft”, so that’s a plus.

Features
Huawei went into overdrive here and offered a smashload of goodies. Here’s some screenshots to show you what’s on offer.

Some apps have been installed from the Market, so the list isn’t 100% stock. One of the best things here is the Smart Traffic Monitor. It’s like a watchdog, you set how much data you want to use per day and if you break that quota, it’ll either ask you to chew into tomorrow’s allowance or switch off 2G/3G data. Also can be used to monitor your data usage on Unlimited data plans. HiSpace is a crap Android Market ripoff. There’s also a built-in Twitter and Facebook client to the right of the Dialer app (also seen in the “Streams” app).

Huawei have copied the iOS “jelly” icon editing mode and it shows – tap and hold, and the icons jiggle around like jelly. It even allows you to quickly uninstall apps by tapping on the X overlay! (Sadly, drocap2 failed to take a screenshot while in the icon jiggling mode.)

Here’s something to chew on. The instruction manual states a high-capacity eMMC card is already embedded into the device. For those who don’t know, the eMMC is a cheaper alternative for storage. Sadly though, it is not high-capacity. It’s more like 16 megabytes (yes, megabytes!) of storage. We have proof – look at the “Internal SD Card” information in the screenshot below. Luckily, the phone does come with a 2GB MicroSD already inserted into the device.

EDIT: The internal storage can be accessed via plugging the phone into a USB port and tapping “Mount SD Card”.

The phone also comes with a 3MP Camera without any Flash, and that’s pretty run-of-the-mill. The photos the camera takes can be a little ugly at times. There’s also a nice Music app, and Fast Boot – which is pretty much hibernate on PCs.

Performance
While it won’t match up to it’s big rivals, for a sub-$200 Android smartphone, it’s got a gutsy Qualcomm MSM7xxx chipset that has a 600Mhz CPU driving the show. There’s also a Ardeno 220 GPU that runs the graphics side of the phone – which offloads GPU work onto the GPU itself, to save the CPU from rendering 3D content.

Even on the stock ROM, it’s still speedy. Huawei really have taken care with the OS and tweaked it to perfection. There is a little bit of lag when answering calls, and the lock screen can be a little unresponsive. These are minor, but can be annoying when the phone decides to pause for a moment when you need a phone number.

Quirks
The Android Market also has a habit of re-downloading installed apps for no apparent reason (and I didn’t even press the update button nor is auto-updating enabled). We’re not sure if this bug is only on this device or if it affects others too.

There’s also the lag issue, but that’s been already addressed above.

Coburn’s Verdict
The HUAWEI SONIC is a budget phone that will serve the casual geek nicely. The sleek look will raise an eyebrow, and it’s powerful CPU will handle a fair amount of tasks. The SONIC’s included software is more than enough to manage your working life: there’s a calendar, notepad, Documents to Go, and heaps more.

Highly recommended. My personal comment is that it performs beautifully and having Android 2.3 on the device out-of-the-box without needing a ROM update is a bonus too.

MiLi Power Crystal compared to the 5000mAh Power Brick.

No, it’s not a pocket HDD. What you see above is a Generic Chinese Power Brick, that is charging off my MiLi Power Crystal as per the official name of the device. We got this one from eBay, search under “5000mAh power bank”. Postage was fast from Hong Kong – we ordered it Thursday last week, and got it on Wednesday. Price tag? Well, $38 USD which was ~$32AUD due to the high Aussie Dollar.

The device in question is on the right of the photo above. It’s a 5000mAh (5 Amps) Power Brick, which comes with a dozen or so different changeable heads for charging iPods, iPhones and iPads. It also has 2 USB ports, so you can charge two devices at once.

The 2 USB Ports are labelled “OUT 1″ and “OUT 2″, which supply 1000mAh (1Amp) and 500mAh to your devices respecively. Combine a Y Cable to MicroUSB cable, and you’ll get 1.5Amps.

Operation

Unlike other power bricks, this one has a decidated On/Off button. When the brick is turned on, the 3 LEDs shine to tell you how much juice the brick has left in it. One LED means you’ve got 0% to 30% juice remaining, Two LED mean you have 31 – 70% juice remaining and Three LED mean you’ve got 71% to 100% juice remaining.

To recharge, simply plug a USB Cable into the “In” Port and plug it into a USB Wall charger or USB Port. Depending on the power the USB Port can provide, charging can take quite a while.

Documentation

The information booklet provided isn’t in perfect english, but it’s not poorly written too.  It’s understandable, which is a plus. It also states what to do and not do. No driver CDs are included.

Included Gear

What you’d get is the following:

1 x USB Male to MicroUSB Cable (Charging Cable, also known as USB On The Go) Cable
1 x USB to Changable Head Cable (Includes a packet of different heads to charge different phones, devices, etc)
1 x 5000mAh Power Brick
1 x Instruction Booklet

…and that’s pretty much it.

Verdict

Personally, this device is your ideal companion for keeping your iPhone, iPad or other device charged over a long journey. It’s a keeper, and it shows that even if it’s made in china, some good-quality products can come out of that country.

This is an updated version of my Black Ops review that I did on my blog, which can be viewed here. Call of Duty has been around for some time on the Nintendo consoles, starting from Call of Duty 2 on the Nintendo GameCube and it’s sequel, Call of Duty: Big Red One. The latest installment in the series is CoD Black Ops for the Nintendo Wii. You are an agent called Mason on a mission to kill some targets.

Gameplay
Black Ops’ gameplay is pretty good on the Nintendo Wii console. When I first started playing it, I thought “Ugh, this is going to chug on the Wii hardware” – but to my susprise, it didn’t. You can use the Wiimote and Nunchuck, or the Classic Controller with or without the Classic Controller Pro add-on. Wii Zapper support is available.

Having played CoD: Zombies on the iOS (Apple iPod/iPhone) platform, I prefer the dual stick control of the Classic Controller, as it provides everything I need like Sprint, Jump, Shoot, Aiming and a hell lot more controls. With any game however, it’s control system suffers from a few quirks. If there’s a lot of action happening on-screen, you’ll have to double tap the shoot button to shoot at certain times. I don’t know what that’s about, but apparently a update or “patch” as the game developers call it fixes that issue.

Graphics
Judging from previous CoD Wii game screenshots (Call of Duty 3 & World at War) and in-game visuals, graphics are a step up from CoD: World at War for the Wii. Of course, you won’t have your sexy 1080p HQ character models, but the result is like the PC on Medium Quality – not fancy, nor ugly. Some explosions have comic effects, like the grenades that explode in snow.

Lag is minimal, but I have found that the game does chug a bit if there’s a lot of stuff being processed. Of course, the Wii hardware only has a 730Mhz PowerPC CPU and 96MB of System RAM that pales in comparison to the big boys (ie. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, or the PC version) but Treyarch has done a very good job at keeping the game running smoothly.

At times, the subtitles will jump ahead of the in-game cutscenes, and if your Wii’s Disc Drive gets a little too hot or the disc has stratches, disc read errors will occur and the audio will repeat itself, like “Come here… *pause* Come here… *pause*” while the game attempts to correct itself (often dumping you at a “Disc can’t be read” screen, where you can eject the disc, wipe it with a cloth and reinsert it, making the game attempt to continue what it was doing). Sometimes you’ll think the game is really lagging, when the game is actually in a “Slow-Mo” effect, like breaking in though a window or something. A little confusing, but a nice cinematic effect.

Audio
The in-game audio is decent. There’s a selection of background music from older Call of Duty games that help keep the tense atmosphere. Some more-upbeat tracks play as you approach your targets. Most of the time, though, you’ll hear gunshots, booms, whistles and phizzes as bullets go flying around the place, mowing down enemies.

Replay Value isn’t much, apart from collecting Intel that you missed to get the skinny on what you’re doing – Intel can be viewed on the main menu. However, the Nazi Zombie mode returns and it’s incredibly fun, with the character that you play as in that mode making witty comments like “THIS WILL END THEIR SUFFERING! MWHAHAHA!” and “What? This cannot be!” as you send them the Zombies back to their graves.

Crunch Time
Overall, if you can’t afford CoD 5 on the PS3, PC or Xbox 360, the Wii version is highly recommended. It is a very solid port of the main CoD 5 game, and if you can forgive it’s flaws, it will provide hours of game play, including some flying missions, stealth kills and my personal favorite, blowing up stuff with explosives. The Zombie mode could do with some more maps, but I’m sure that they’ll come in a later update.

Treyarch, I salute you for this nice Wii CoD: Black Ops port. Highly recommended.

Ratings:
Graphics: 75%
Sound: 80%
Replay Value: 69%
Final Score: 74%

Having ordered one of these SSDs a week or two ago off eBay for building another computer to keep my hardware skills up to scratch, it arrived after a short delay. As pictured above, the SSD doesn’t use the SATA power connector, instead it uses a standard 4-Pin connector.

The SSD was made by a manufacturer called “KingSpec” and I ordered mine off a eBay Hong Kong supplier. Of course, this wasn’t a cheap clone of an SSD, this is an industrial grade SSD. Or so the sticker says.

I opened up my computer’s case, plugged the SSD into it’s SATA ports and booted up my LiveDVD (read: evaluation version of an OS in DVD format) of Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 and immediately jumped to the Disk Ultitity. My PC, a AMD Phenom II X2 with an ASUS Motherboard immediately detected the SSD and configured it accordingly.

With a few clicks, I was ready to start the benchmark. Would the SSD be fast enough to pass my expectations? The results are show below.

As you can see, read times (the line in blue) are quite fast – peaking at 50.1Mb/s. The green line is the seek time, and it looks like dust, as the benchmarked seeked or accessed random parts of the flash chip. Finally, the red line shows the write rate, which starts off at about 31MB/s and as the benchmark gets more intense, it drops down to about 16-17MB/s with some spikes. Of course, for something that size, it’s not going to be that fast if you compare it to something which the competitors have to offer.

At the end of the day, the SSD was blazing through all the tests I threw at it, and my installation of linux was zooming as it loaded apps up at really fast speeds.

Buying one of these suckers are highly recommended for their performance, and the price won’t sting your wallet or break the bank.

The multi-platform title, Sonic Unleashed, by Sega is like your traditional Sonic game, racing through levels, collecting rings, avoiding Dr. Eggman’s evil army and traps. However, it also adds a night-time freeroaming mode, that reminds me of Super Mario 64, where Sonic becomes a Werehog, and can use his claws that can kill enemies in a single hit.

Having played the Xbox 360 version of Sonic The Hedgehog (released in 2006), I was disappointed. Sonic Unleashed brings Sega back into the game in my books. Read on to find out how it fares.

Sonic Unleashed is quite interesting. In the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, The world map consists of “Hub Worlds”, and as you progress, you visit various places like Spagiona and Apotos. When you’re in a hub world, you can go to a store and buy stuff to give the professor in return for bonuses, talk to people, complete side-quests, and access the Gaia Gate. The Gaia Gate usually has 3 acts to each world in Day and Night modes, some being completing laps of the level, time trials, or various other missions.

Sun and Moon Medals also play a role, in order to access the levels at Gaia Gates, you must have a certain number of medals to access them, this is shown by a indicator on the HUD saying your current Sun and Moon levels. For example, if you want to get into an Act that’s classed as Lv 4, and you’re currently Lv 3, you have to find more sun or moon medals in already-completed levels, or hand over items to the professor to get medals.

The Act’s level requirement also tells you the difficulty. For example, let’s say the level “Yadda yada” is a level 6, that means that the level will be verging on the tough side. I strongly recommend stocking up on lives before entering levels, unless you want to be greeted with “GAME OVER” because you pressed the wrong button. Or fell into an hazard on your last life. Not to mention, some key combos you must enter to continue are timed, and if you fail, you’ll either go an alternate way through an Act, costing you a rank at the “End of Act” ranking screen, or fall to your doom.

Night time mode is styled after Super Mario 64, but only with a Werehog. By destroying Dr. Eggman’s army using attacks and smashing objects, you can get experience, which makes it possible to enhance your Werehog’s abilities, and turn him into a lean, mean, fighting machine. Unleash Sonic’s “Unleash Gauge” (which fills up after you defeat enemies and break objects) in Werehog form, and your attack power will increase dramatically for a short amount of time.

The physics in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are quite unique, powered by Sega’s Hedgehog Engine, which makes it feel more realistic. If you’re running at top speed as indicated in a bar gauge on top of your ring count, unlike classic Sonic games how you can brake suddenly, if you do that in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic goes sliding until he can regain control of his legs.

This “sliding” can be useful to quickly aim and take out an army of Eggman Robots. Running in Werehog mode is quite fun, Sonic uses all fours to keep him running at speeds that no normal Werehogs can reach. Glitches in these versions are minimal, apart from some funny but annoying ones, like being able to drown for no reason when you’re out of the water. It’s a pity Sonic can’t swim.

In the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions, it’s all different. Loading Screens have a horrible “Ding Ding Ding Ding” as the progress icon rotates around, which will send you insane if you play the game just to beat it in one night. I have the Wii version as well, and reports indicate that it’s a direct port of the PS2 version, only with controller adjustments and modifications. The Wii versions’ in-game videos are from the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, but they are still high quality and don’t suffer from pixelation or upscaling artifacts.

Sonic’s physics in the Wii and PS2 versions can be quite flawed, for example, Sonic thinking he’s falling for a few seconds when he’s on solid ground until the game corrects itself, and also not being able to move the camera can be annoying too due to the sometimes-restrictive camera angles. The HUD is also different, as seen below.

Sonic’s Werehog physics aren’t the same in these Wii and PS2 versions compared to the Xbox 360/PS3 version, and suffer from a few bugs and random things. Apart from that, the Wii and PS2 versions are good to play, if you don’t have an PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Graphics in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions are HD ready, and the Wii and PS2 versions have low-polygon versions of models to save CPU processing and GPU rendering time. Sometimes, boxes will randomly disappear than fall apart when smashed on the Wii version, possibly due to the game thinking it’s running out of graphics memory. Connect the PS3 and Xbox 360 on HDTV (1080p/HDMI) and the quality is instantly boosted.

The game soundtrack is fine, along with some nice background tunes and sound effects. Putting the voices setting to Japanese on the PAL version of the game (Xbox 360 version, in my case) is quite funny, in which Sonic sometimes sounds like a chipmunk.

Sadly, there is no multiplayer, but the content in the game will keep you busy for hours. Well, it’ll keep you busy playing in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 versions anyway.

Overall, I’d suggest taking a look at Sonic Unleashed. Even if you think modern Sonic games are rubbish, try the PS3 or Xbox 360 version of this game, and it’ll raise an eyebrow. Overall final results:

Sonic Unleashed (Xbox 360/PS3 version)

Graphics: 88%
Sound: 90%
Gameplay: 91%
Replay Value: 72%
Total Score: 86% (B+ Rank)

Sonic Unleashed (Wii/PS2 version)

Graphics: 68%
Sound: 83%
Gameplay: 85%
Replay Value: 42% (Yes, not much replay value and not many side-quests)
Total Score: 69.5% (C- Rank)

Images Credit: GameFaqs.

Melissa & Joey is an original American Broadcasting Company show starring Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence. In January 2010, ABC Family ordered 10 episodes for the show’s first season, which premiered on August 17, 2010 on the ABC Family channel. The series marks the second time Hart and Lawrence have co-starred together in an ABC Family production; their first was the 2009 TV Flim, My Fake Fiance.

On October 8, 2010, ABC Family announced their order of an additional 20 episodes for the first season. The mid-season finale for season one aired on October 26, 2010, with the series returning in Spring 2011 (North Hemisphere season) .

About the show

Mel is a local politician from a political family. When a family scandal leaves her niece, Lennox, and nephew, Ryder, without their parents, Mel takes them in. Meanwhile, Joe is a former commodities trader left bankrupt and as a result, ends up being someone who is searching for a job. So when Mel finds it hard to handle an instant family and her own life, she hires Joe to become the family’s new male nanny, or “manny” as she calls it.

The TV show has not aired here in Australia as of yet, but after contacting a few television networks such as the SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) or ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) to air it here in Australia, they have mentioned that once they obtain the rights to show it, they will consider airing the show. This may take a while, as the actual show hasn’t finished their first season yet.

Just recently, I got confirmation that 100 selected countries will received the rights to air the show, however, if Australia is on that list or not is still a mystery. The UK has been confirmed to be receiving rights to air the show.

The show itself is quite unique, and has a good sense of humor. Unlike other drama shows like Neighours or Home and Away, Melissa and Joey ticks the right boxes with it’s mixture of funny acts and humor. So, to the people reading this in Australia, we might be seeing this show sometime soon on our local TV Networks.

Looks can be deceiving, but it's not an iPad.

This tablet PC arrived at Coburn’s Domain Headquarters a few weeks ago. It was sent from Hong Kong, and took a weekend to get over to us in Australia.

We’ve got unboxing pictures and more after the break – click the “Read more” link to find out how the device goes. Click the images to view their high-res versions.

Classified as a portable internet device/”MID” as overseas manufacturers like to call it, I carefully opened the package and unboxed the device. Being the geek I am, I decided that I’d run this Android tablet PC through it’s paces.

The first thing that I noted was the box had some very odd imagery, and almost fooled me. The front of the box, as pictured above, had a image of a iPad on it. Thinking that I scored an iPad for less than $100, I quickly examined the box. No Apple logos in sight, just a MID logo in green writing.

Inside the box was the device itself, screen protectors and charging adaptors. The manual was written in Engrish (poorly translated from it’s original language) and had some pages in the middle missing. Note the iPhone-like adapter that has the 2 USB and Ethernet port on it.

The tablet PC came pre-charged. After booting the device up, I skimmed the manual for some fun and it said “Charge battery fully before use”. Oops, I didn’t do that.

Looks were quite nice, to be honest. Going clockwise around the device, on the front you’ve got the webcam, screen and back button, at the top edge you’ve got the power button, on the right you’ve got Menu, Volume Up and Down keys, on the bottom you have speakers, charging port, expansion adapter port (30Pin – like what they use on the iPod/iPhone – don’t try connecting your Sync cable to it, you’ll blow the device up) and MicroSD card slot. The left hand side has no buttons. It’s also smooth, no sharp edges.

With the device unboxed, I proceeded to run the device through it’s paces. To be honest, boot up was on the sluggish side. There was a lot of crappy apps there that didn’t really make much sense like a Chinese hack of the Android Market called “App Market” and really lame apps like “My Music”, “My Photo” and “My videos” that didn’t do anything but lag or crash when I threw videos onto the device. They were later removed, and the tablet’s performance rose slightly.

Speaking of videos, playback was pathetic. Despite it saying major compatibility with AVI, MP4 and MKV just to name a few, it actually did not play any of the videos that I tested it with. I threw a episode of some random anime that I had on hand in MKV format. It started to play back… then either crashed or character faces turned into a pixelated pile of garbage. Oh dears.

I then tested an movie that I ripped from a Top Gear DVD. Failed that too – it did play back but only the audio, the video was desynched. Later on, I found that movies would only playback reasonably if they were encoded in MP4 at a low bitrate – that’s a no-go if you’re looking to watch an action movie on the device itself!

The specifications say it uses a 533Mhz VIA WonderMedia 8505+ CPU, when it does not. In fact, it’s a budget crappy VIA WM8505 CPU running at 300Mhz, NOT the advertised speed. That’s another strike against the tablet. Battery runtime was above par.

The 256MB of DDR RAM seems to help the tablet keep up with the load, WiFi performance is acceptable and the LCD touchscreen is 800×480, which makes it pleasant to read – not eye-strainingly small. 2GB of internal memory is also acceptable.

With all that aside, would you be recommended by Coburn’s Domain to buy one? The answer to that is a NO. Whatever you do, don’t buy Chinese made tablet PCs off eBay. Just don’t. You’ll waste your savings on one and will be pulling your hair out in frustration as the tablet struggles to load apps. Go buy the Samsung Galaxy Tablet instead or the Dell Streak – trust us, you’ll be thankful you did.

Score Card:

Looks & Style: B
Performance: D+
Endurance: C+
Final Result: C-

Final Comments: “It would be a good tablet PC if it actually ran at the speed advertised. But for what it’s worth, it’s just a piece of sh*t”.

Our friends at TechCrunch looked into the Macbook internals to see how Apple has crammed all the components into this tiny computer, and they found out that you could get a serious skin burn if you decided to go couch computing. As a result, it’s recommended that you should get a pillow, lap desk or even put a laptop cooler on your lap to protect your private parts and legs.

Inside of the new Macbook Air are Toshiba flash chips along with other space-saving techniques which are the usual Apple tricks of sandwiching boards together, turning components into Tetris pieces, and so on. The startup times of this new Mac puts full-featured Macs to shame, with startup times of up to 10 seconds and resume-from-sleep within 5 seconds.

The Macbook Air comes in 11″ and 13″ screen sizes for Apple customers/fans can make a multiple choice on if they want a large or small screen.

Interested readers can read the full report at TechCrunch.

Some computer users might not of have heard about this program. Neither did I until i got it a few days ago.

This program, TerraTec Home Cinema Editing Program, came with my $128 AUD Elgato EyeTV DTT TV Tuner.  I tested it out by trying to edit my Digital TV Recordings using the program called “Cut” which is one of the tools that came with the TerraTec Home Cinema software package. It will come in handy, due to the fact that I can delete the TV advertisements from my recordings to try and save space on my computer’s hard drive.

The best part about TerraTec Home Cinema is that it records in the MPG file format. This allows my WD Mini Media Player will play the files on my TV or even via a compatible projector. I can also burn it onto a DVD.

Below is a screenshot of the software in action.

As the picture shows, you have all the functions of a remote for viewing the movie. At first I couldn’t understand how to use it, but after a few attempts,  I got the hang of it. It may cost you time and effort, but it’ll make you happy in the end when playing the edited video/movie file without the annoying TV ad breaks.

The Verdict

After I tested out my first recording and cutting out the ads, when i played it on my WD Mini Media Player, the audio was coming first before the video, also known as audio video desync. After doing some fast forward or rewinding on the Media Player device, the video was fixed, but only intermittently. The edited video played back properly on computer.

The TerraTec Home Cinema Editing package is a nice piece of software, and the fact it records as MPG files is useful for encoding and conversion programs like VirtualDub and other apps. 6 / 10 Stars.