My Ramblings

Every now and then, we get a chance to take a look at something that is a little outside of the tech world. A few months ago as I was contemplating a vlog series entitled “Bits, Bytes and Beer”; we received a very cool package in the mail. It was a set of shot glasses made from Himalayan Pink Rock Salt. It seemed a very fortuitous product to hit our lab and one that we certainly want to go into detail on now. So, let’s take a quick look at the Root7 Pink Himalayan Rock Salt shot glasses.

When you think of “smart phones” you tend to think of two things. Android and iPhone (at least in the US that is the school of thought) this is despite the fact that there are many other operating systems available. There is Windows Mobile, WebOS, Symbian, and even others that are less common. Still the big battle seems to be between Apple and Google. Of course Google no longer makes a smart phone, so we are really talking about iOS Vs Android.  Both sides have fans that would make the most ardent religious zealot look like an indecisive teenager. Because of this you cannot always trust what is written out there about the two.

Has AMD reached a point where they can no longer count on nVidia's bungling? Are we seeing a return to an even playing field after a year of failure from the green team? We know that AMD has a great GPU in the Radeon 5000 series GPUs, but are they ready to face head to head competition? Time will certainly tell on this one, but there are some very telling indicators that things might not be all sunny now that box sides have a DX11 GPU.

You have heard me say that today’s IGPs (Internal Grpahics Proccesors) are not for gaming. I have made sure that I qualify that and say that they are not for high-end gaming and that you cannot use them as such. But, am I right? I know that you cannot play a game like FarCry 2 and that even SIMS 3 bogs them down, but is that a fair representation of all of them? I have a feeling it is not. Where did I get this feeling? Well while I was playing around with the little H55N-USB3 I got a weird thought in my head. Maybe it was from watching the Portal2 trailer again, or maybe it was just one of those times when I really think about what I am doing and if I am giving the whole picture.  With that thought in mind I installed the original Portal and wanted to see what I could get from it.