The Acer Aspire One has certainly taken the world by storm, proving itself to be the first viable competitor to the dominance established by Asus and their Eee PC. The so called “netbook” market has also exploded, less than year after Asus introduced the first Eee PCs. Netbooks, also known as subnotebooks, are low-cost laptops designed primarly for Internet usage and other tasks that don’t require lots of power.

It’s been some time since I first unboxed the Aspire One and then got a 6-cell version to test and compare with. The 6-cell version will be the one I am reviewing since it’s the one I’m currently using.

Specifications

The Aspire One is slouch when it comes to hardware. Like most current-generation netbooks it uses the Intel Atom N270 CPU.

• Processor: Intel Atom processor N270 (1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache)
• Chipset: Mobile Intel 945GSE Express Chipset (DDR2 400/533 MHz)/Mobile Intel 82801GBM Chipset
• Operating System: Windows XP Home
• RAM: 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz SDRAM Single Channel (512 MB onboard, 512 MB in SODIMM slot)
• HDD: 2.5″ 9.5mm 120 GB 5400 RPM
• Expansion: SD™ Card reader, Multi-in-1 card reader: Supporting Secure Digital™ (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Reduced-Size Multimedia Card (RS-MMC), Memory Stick® (MS), Memory Stick PRO™ (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card™ (xD)
• Display: 8.9″ WSVGA high-brightness (typical 180-nit) Acer CrystalBrite™ TFT LCD, 1024 x 600 resolution, LED backlight, 262K colours
• Audio: Two built-in stereo speakers, built-in digital microphone
• Webcam: Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam, supporting 0.3 megapixel resolution
• Networking: Acer InviLink™ 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
• Ports: 3xUSB 2.0, VGA, Headphone/Microphone, RJ-45, SD Card and Multi-in-1 card reader
• Battery: 5200 mAh 6-cell Li-Ion
• Power Supply: 30 W adapter with separate power cord
• Keyboard: 84-key (US version?) keyboard with 1.6 mm (minimum) key travel
• Weight: 1.26 kg (2.78 lbs.) for SKUs with hard disk drive and 6-cell battery pack
• Dimensions: 249 (W) x 195 (D) x 36 (H) mm (9.8 x 6.7 x 1.42 inches) for SKUs with hard disk drive and 6-cell battery pack

Reference: Acer Aspire One User Forums

What’s nice is that the Acer Aspire One (AAO) comes with a level of hardware that has typically been reserved for netbooks costing $500+. I paid $430 for my version several weeks ago, and the price drops coupled with the introduction of a new 160 GB/6-cell model will push the price down even further. In my opinion, this simply makes the AAO the best value for the money.

I’ve put question marks (?) beside specifications that I could not confirm. For example, the 3-cell battery is listed at 2200 mAh everywhere, but the 6-cell has been rated differently based on my searches. Assuming double the capacity would not be a bad approximation. Additionally, I’m fairly certain that the 84-key keyboard applies only to versions with US-keyboards, since the Canadian versions come with a bilingual/international keyboard.

Update: 6-cell capacity is 5200 mAh

My 6-cell battery is indeed a 5200 mAh unit, but I’ve seen other 6-cell batteries available online, possibly from third-party suppliers, that offer the higher capacity of 6600 mAh.

The weight of the AAO is very acceptable. The 3-cell weighs about 995 g (2.19 lbs) and the 6-cell version about 1.26 kg. (2.78 lbs) While that represents a weight increase of close to 27% for the 6-cell version, it did not feel like it was that much more. Keep in mind the absolute increase in weight of the 6-cell over the 3-cell is only 265 g, which is less than a can of pop. Thus, either version was easy to carry and you won’t need a huge weight-bearing rucksack to carry it around. In fact, I use a MEC Small Carry All to port it around and have found it fits everything, including the AC adapter/power cord and my Logitech VX Revolution mouse, quite nicely.

Design and Build Quality

While look does not matter much in the long run, many people would still like a device that looks stylish rather than looking like it came through a time machine from the past. The AAO manages to look fairly decent. Closed, both the white and blue versions look very sleek with their glossy finish. Being less than 1.5″ thick also helps.

When open, there is a gap between the screen and the body that may bother some, but overall it’s not a big deal. Both the the white and blue versions have screens with big black glossy borders. (about 1″ thick borders) For the blue version, this colour fits in nicely, but for the white version it is too much of a contrast and doesn’t improve the look. Overall, the AAO does a good job of not looking like a toy, though there’s some definite room for improvement.

One slight problem is that it’s tricky to open the screen of the AAO using only one hand. There is no latch; instead the hinge is spring-loaded and snaps shut. To open the screen you must wedge your fingers into the small gap between the screen and body, then hold the body down with one hand while you push the screen back with the other. This is because the AAO is so light (or the hinge so tight) that it’ll simply lift off the surface its resting on if you try to open the screen without holding the base down. I usually ended up having to grip the screen from both the top and bottom (near the gap between the hinges) to open it.

The AAO does feel solid and the build quality is definitely top-notch. I didn’t have any worry about thinks breaking, snapping or coming loose on the AAO.

Keyboard

With one of the distinguishing features of a netbook/subnotebook being its small size the usability of the keyboard/trackpad becomes a major issue. Many people do not even like regular-size laptops because of the differences in layout. With the small size of netbooks, a full-sized normal laptop keyboard is just not possible. With this in mind, it’s important to look for a keyboard that makes the right tradeoffs, sacrificing in areas that you can afford to lose out on, while keeping the major pieces intact.

For a keyboard, this means preserving the size of the most-used keys and most importantly, keeping a normal/traditional layout. I simply cannot deal with a non-standard layout as having to re-learn and switch between layouts is just a pain.

In this respect, the AAO succeeds as the keyboard is decently sized and keeps a fairly sane/normal layout. I’ve seen the key size specified as either 89% or 95% of “full-size”, but I never bothered to pull out the calipers to confirm or deny either of these. I will say that typing on the AAO was very easy to do, as I didn’t have any sort of “adjustment period” or initial awkwardness. Typing felt very natural and did not feel cramped. I’ve tried the original Asus Eee PC (now known as the 700-series) and found the keyboard to be just too tiny - it felt bad right away, and I was constantly hitting more than one key while typing. I had no such issues with the Aspire One. Furthermore, the keyboard was firm and responsive; it did not feel squishy or have too much flex to it and was on-par with other laptop keyboards in this respect.

One other thing to note that only applies to the Canadian version of the AAO is the bilingual keyboard layout, as you’ll no doubt notice in the keyboard pictures. As I noted during my initial unboxing, the “bilingual” layout makes two alterations: The Left-Shift key is halved to make room for the Backslash/Pipe key and the Enter key is an inverted L-shape that takes up two rows. (There is also another Backslash/Pipe key next to it)

I’m not exactly sure why Acer decided to cripple the Canadian version with this weird keyboard layout. It might have something to do with language laws and having to support both English and French in the market, but even that doesn’t make sense to me since it doesn’t appear to be easier to type French characters on this weird layout. In my opinion, Acer should’ve given the customer the option between a regular (US) keyboard layout and a bilingual one. This layout took a little time getting used to, and initially I was mistyping, especially with the shorter Left-Shift and Enter key being further away from the “home” position. Typing Windows-style paths is still a pain thanks to the weird location of the Backslash key. However, some of these problems can be solved by remapping keys using software like SharpKeys.

This is a fairly major issue with the Canadian Aspire One, as many people have expression discontent on retailer websites like NCIX; I almost did not get my AAO because of this. However, in Acer’s defence, most laptops in Canada are now unfortunately being sold with this weird layout.

Overall, I was very impressed with the keyboard, especially since I knew that other netbooks had done so poorly before. As a testament to its usability, a majority of this review was written on my Aspire One’s keyboard.

TrackPad

The trackpad offers a stark contrast to the keyboard as it’s not that great. Because the AAO is wider than the Eee PC 901 it was able to fit a larger, more usable keyboard. However, the AAO is about the same depth as the the Eee PC 901, so this results in much less area for the trackpad. (Thanks to CNET UK for the comparison photos)

Acer thus had to compromise. With space at a premium, the right and left buttons were relocated to flank the touchpad area instead of being below as is the norm. This results in a weird layout that most won’t find to be natural. I did not find the trackpad to be that bad compared to other laptop trackpads, though this may be because I despise trackpads so much that it’s hard to dislike this one even more. I will admit that the button placement was quite an unfortunate trade-off, however this doesn’t affect me that much since I almost always use a mouse when I can.

Screen

Acer chose to use a fairly standard 8.9″ LED-backlit 1024×600 screen. This type of screen is featured on most other current netbooks and is a huge improvement over the 800×480 resolution of first-generation netbooks. At 1024×600, it’s a step down from my old Inspiron 5100, which had a 15″ non-widescreen at 1024×768. However, it’s also much more vibrant thanks to the LED backlighting, which also reduces power consumption.

The screen has a glossy finish, which extends to the rather large black border around it, which is around 1″ thick at the top and sides. Glossy screens tend to make colours more vibrant but can also cause problems with glare if there are bright lights directly behind you. However, the screen was very sharp and attractive and I did not have any readability problems.

Like most laptop screens, the AAO’s offered good readability at different horizontal angles, but did not fair as well at vertical angles. With the screen tilted too far forward, colours got washed out, while tilting the screen back dramatically increased the contrast.

A slightly larger screen would’ve been nice since the border around it is so large, but 8.9″ is probably a pretty common size OEMs and the next common size up was probably too large.

Storage

The Aspire One I bought came with a Hitachi 120 GB 2.5″ SATA 3 Gb/s HDD. (Model number HTS543212L9A300) The full specifications of this drive can be found at Hitachi’s site. Some other reports have stated the AAO may also come with a Seagate 120 GB HDD; it’s likely Acer is using multiple suppliers, as is the norm.

Initially, Acer had said the AAO would come with an 80 GB HDD, but this changed just before release to the current 120 GB model likely because of price drops; you may still see references to the old 80 GB drive floating around, but I believe these to be erroneous. Since then, a 160 GB version has been announced.

Some Linux versions come with an 8 GB SSD; this SSD proved to be problematic with Windows XP, as many users have noticed when trying to install Windows XP onto this version of the AAO. For this reason, Acer has decided not to release a SSD version with Windows XP. (Though there are Linux HDD versions)

The drive performed fairly well as far as laptop drives go, posting a 47.0 MB/s average transfer rate and a 17.3 ms access time. These obviously cannot compare to a desktop drive, but keep in mind for most uses of the AAO this sort of performance is more than enough. A cold boot usually took between 1:15-1:20 (mins:secs), but this was after most “bloatware” had been removed. (More on that soon)

Expansion Ports

The AAO includes two memory card readers. One is a multi-card reader typical of most laptops (supporting most any memory card type on the planet) and the other is strictly for SD cards. The latter drive was intended to be used for the 8 GB SSD Linux version, where space was at a premium; by inserting an SD card one could increase the storage space as then the SD card’s capacity would be transparently added to the overall system storage space. This obviously isn’t necessary for the HDD version.

Beyond that, you get a generous three USB ports; two are on the right and the third is on the left side. Also on the right side are the speaker/mic mini-stereo jacks and a lock slot. The left side also features the DC power in, VGA out and a 10/100 Ethernet (RJ45) jack. A small vent for internal airflow can also be seen here.

Included Software (Windows XP version)

The AAO comes without Windows XP installed; when you first boot up you’ll be prompted to select either the French or English version to install. (This is Canada, after all) Since the AAO has no optical drive, you may be wondering where the OS is installed from. The answer is that the 120 GB HDD has been partitioned so that there is a ~6 GB hidden “Recovery” partition that the AAO uses during installation or a reset to factory defaults. The bootloader copies over the installation/recovery files from here onto the main partition and runs the usual Windows setup automatically; there’s very little you have to do.

This process took about 10 minutes, after which the AAO is booted up into a normal “fresh” Windows installation. I say “fresh” because there is some “bloatware” installed that you’ll want to remove to optimize performance, especially with the somewhat limited resources of the AAO.

Acer included the following software that I removed: MS Office 2007 Trial, MS Works, McAfee SecurityCenter (Antivirus and Personal Firewall) 60-day trial and WinDVD. All of these are completely unnecessary but many laptop manufacturers include this nowadays so I cannot uniquely fault Acer.

There’s no need for MS Office 2007 and certainly not MS Works when older versions of Office work fine; and, of course, there’s the free OpenOffice which should work well for 95% of what most people do. The McAfee software felt slow, so I switched over to AVG Free 7.5. (Kaspersky is a good paid solution as well) I have no idea why WinDVD was installed, as not only is there no optical drive to use it with, but the version was extremely old and dated to something like 2003.

There may be some other software that you can remove if you want, but rest assured you’ll spending at least a few minutes removing the unnecessary software that comes preinstalled.

Wireless and Networking

The AAO comes with a fairly standard 802.11b/g adapter based on a Atheros chipset. It would’ve been nice to see a draft 802.11n adapter included, as this is proving to be quite a revolutionary improvement over previous standards. However, I can’t really complain since the price of the AAO is so low.

There have unfortunately been some issues reported with this wireless card. It appears that sometimes it mysteriously “disappears” from the Device Manager, usually after coming out of hibernate or standby mode. The solution to reboot to get the device to show up again, but that’s far from ideal. This may be a hardware or BIOS-related issue and there is a substantial discussion on this issue at the (unofficial) Acer Aspire One User Forums.

I have only experienced this issue once, but it was very annoying nonetheless. Hopefully Acer will release a BIOS update to correct it, as it appears to be somewhat widespread.

Webcam and Audio/Speakers

The speakers on the AAO are nothing to write home about. They don’t get very loud and even so, when maxed out there is noticeable distortion. This may be because they are on the underside. If you listen to music you’ll definitely want to use a pair of headphones or external speakers with the AAO, as the built-in ones leave much to be desired. They should be good enough for something like VoIP, though. The speaker-out and mic-in mini-stereo ports were acceptable. With a decent microphone you shouldn’t have any problems.

The webcam is only a 0.3 MP unit (640×480 resolution), but it performed very well in low-light/room-light conditions. It’ll be good for videochat using a program like Skype. There is also a built-in microphone positioned just to the left of the webcam. It does a decent job of picking up sound directly in front, but there was still some background noise. It’s obviously not as good as using a headset but should be decent enough for quick chats.

Performance

I had no trouble with the performance of the Aspire One during Internet use or general multimedia use. Launching browsers, including an extension-heavy Firefox 3.01, was fairly quick and browsing did not seem slow. Watching YouTube or using other Flash-based video players was very smooth and I did not notice any problems or stuttering. The 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU and 1 GB of RAM was more than enough for these actions.

Additionally, watching DivX/Xvid videos at common resolutions presented no problems, even when the video was being streamed/played back from over the wireless connection. Watching DVDs (after making an image and mounting using virtual drive software) also worked great. (For a complete codec package, I suggest the latest-and-greatest ffdshow package. This has been the only set of codecs I’ve ever needed)

With this in mind, the Aspire One makes a great general-purpose machine, useful for 90% of what 90% of the people will do on a regular basis. To push the limits, I tried a few games, such as one of my old time favourites, Guild Wars. (Original debuted in 2005 - and I have all the expansions/campaigns since) Guild Wars worked fine even at the native resolution of 1024×600, albeit with most of the graphical settings turned down. This was necessary to preserve a decent frame rate during the action-sequences with lots of mobs and effects. Peggle, the great arcade game from PopCap Games, worked flawlessly, as did most old-school emulators such as ZSNES.

Don’t expect to play the latest or even last-generation games on it. You’ll likely have to go back to 2004/2005 to find 3D games that have a chance of running decently on the integrated GMA 950 graphics. There is a great discussion at the Aspire One User Forums about games on the AAO.

To further test the AAO beyond its boundaries I installed the latest version of Eclipse (Ganymede), my favourite IDE, on to the AAO. Eclipse is a great IDE with an awesome plugin system (similar to how extensions make Firefox great) but is notorious for being a resource hog. Eclipse took quite a while to load up, but once this was finished working in it was acceptable. Compiling Java source into bytecode was a little slow as well as this was most likely due to having only 1 GB of RAM and a single-core CPU. Again, the AAO is most definitely not designed for this but the fact that it’s possible is a testament to the amount of power you get for a $400 compact machine.

Battery Life

Comparison of 3-cell and 6-cell units

With the 3-cell version I was getting around between 2:30-2:40 (hrs:mins) of run time. This is unfortunately quite low and hampers the usefulness of the AAO when taking advantage of its mobility. With the 6-cell version, I was consistently getting more than 5 hours of run time, making this version one of the longest-lasting laptops I’ve ever owned.

Is the 6-cell worth it?

This is the question on everyone’s mind: Is it worth the extra weight/bulk (and to a lesser extent, the slighly higher price) for the 6-cell battery version
of the Aspire One? From my experience, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” The extra weight (about 265 g) is not that much and I hardly noticed it even when doing a side-by-side comparison and trying to detect the difference. In day-to-day usage, it definitely won’t be a big problem. The extra bulk may look somewhat ugly, but in reality it’s not that noticeable, especially if you’re parked in front of the laptop doing work, which is where you’ll be 95% of the time.

6-cell battery

For a more details, see my full comparison of the 3-cell and 6-cell versions of the Aspire One.

Miscellaneous

Acer original shipped all Aspire Ones with the same sleeve/protective case. This case is a simple pleather-exterior/fabric interio cover that doesn’t add any padding but prevents scratches if you’re putting your AAO into a bag/pack with other items. Because the 6-cell version’s battery sticks out, it did not fit properly in this original sleeve/case. Acer has since said they would offer the proper sleeves to those who bought the 6-cell version and got the old case.

However, my 6-cell version did come with the new, proper sleeve. You can see some pictures of the two sleeves below. The original sleeve is the one that opens on the short side, while the new 6-cell sleeve is the one that opens on the longer side. You can see the two sleeves are slightly different in dimensions. The original sleeve is longer but less wide. Both fit the respective models quite well, but you’ll likely want to invest in properly-padded protection for your AAO.

Another issue is the fan noise from the Aspire One. It’s somewhat of a high-pitched whine, though not noticeable unless your room is completely quiet. Some may be more sensitive than others. I didn’t find it to be that much of a problem, but if possible try to listen to one before buying just to make sure. Thankfully, some people have been working on a utility to lower the fan noise/turn the fan off based on the CPU temperature.

Conclusion

I’ve been using my Aspire One for close to a month and I have to admit that I’m in love with it. It’s stylish, functional and was surprisingly cheap. Other netbooks/subnotebooks manage to excel in one or two of these categories, but in my opinion the Aspire One offers the best combination, doing well in all areas. In my opinion, it’s the strongest netbook currently out there.

It should be noted that Dell has recently released their much-awaited Inspiron Mini 9. Though I had high hopes for it, it appears that Dell has dropped the ball on this one. While it’s attractive and comes in a nice form-factor, Dell completely butchered the keyboard, removing the entire row of Function keys as well as moving quite a few other keys around, resulting in a layout that I am sure I could not get used to. There’s also no options for HDDs either, only SSDs up to 16 GB.

I welcome any comments or feedback, please post them in the comments below!

Update: AC Adapter Compatibility

I’ve gotten quite a few questions about the voltage compatibility of the AC adapter, something I should have addressed in the review. To sum it up, the the AC adapter is indeed compatible with 100-240V, so buying one in NA will not preclude its use over in the EU/UK or elsewhere. You’ll just have to change the cable/plug that goes to the wall outlet. Click the photo below to see a larger picture of the AC adapter’s specifications.

Input is clearly marked as 100-240V.

Photos

The rest of the Aspire One photos can be seen over at my Zooomr account

After much speculation yesterday, marked by a leaked web comic and finally an acknowledgment by Google, Google Chrome, the much anticipated web browser, is here.

I encourage you to download it and give it a try, as I did as soon as it came out. Here are some of my initial impressions.

Overview

Google released a fairly long web comic that delves into quite a bit of detail about Chrome - it’s not your typical comic! Touted as being built “from scratch”, Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, the same one that powers Safari and Konqueror.

The first thing you notice is how minimal the “Chrome” or UI of Chrome is. If you’re used to a half-dozen toolbars, buttons and widgets all over the place, Chrome will seem like a greenfield to you. By default, there is only a tab bar and then an address bar containing back, forward, a combined reload-stop button and the address bar. There are also buttons for bookmarking a site and for page and browser settings. The bookmarks bar is not displayed unless you specifically change that setting.

Keyboard shortcuts are also present so that you don’t have to click through context menus. If you’re used to the keyboard shortcuts of Firefox and IE7 you’ll be pleased to know that most of them transfer over without change: Ctrl-T opens a new Tab, Ctrl-W/Ctrl-F4 closes a tab, Alt-D focuses the address bar and Ctrl-J opens Downloaded Files.

The address bar also functions as a search bar, and this combination just makes sense. It’s something I’ve always been doing using Firefox Quick Searches

By default the home/start page is set to set to show an Opera-style “Speed Dial” page containing most recently-accessed pages/bookmarks. You can also configure Chrome to restore the previous tabs/websites on startup, which is my personal preference ever since I started using Firefox.

Features

Chrome integrates Google Gears to speed up supporting web applications and is an obvious effort by Google to self-promote. This is substantial since the download link for Chrome is on the main Google search page - no small feat considering only the most popular/important services get that sort of attention and furthermore the link is positioned dead center beneath the search field.

The address/search bar

Chrome allows for quasi-Site-Specific Browsers by use of “Application Shortcuts”, which can be set for any website but are meant to be used mainly with web applications. These allow you to open the target URL in a browser window that does not have the menu or address bars and essentially serves as a blank canvas upon which the web application’s own UI can be displayed.

This is similar to other SSBs such as Mozilla Prism or Fluid for the Mac, as they aim to bridge the gap between desktop and web applications to make their integration more seamless.

However, like Google Blogoscoped points out, using such non-browser interfaces may condition the user to be more lax when entering their credentials and makes phishing attempts more viable since no URL is displayed. This is curious since security, “sandboxing” and general safe browsing were so high on Chrome’s feature list - this feature seems to help undo some good user practices of always confirming the URL before entering credentials.

There are also some nice little enhancements as well - the combined address bar/search bar is very much like Firefox 3’s “awesome bar”. Chrome also allows you to dynamically resize any textarea element, without the site designer having to code this specifically in JavaScript or some other client-side technology.

Performance

Each tab/window is a separate process and thus will show up separately in Task Manager; Chrome also offers its own Task Manager but the memory usage reported here differs from that in the Windows Task Manager. To get the full picture, you have to click on the “Stats for nerds” link, which takes you to about:memory

This page displays the full memory usage details, and also, surprisingly, displays memory usage for any other web browsers also currently running! (I have confirmed that it will display Firefox 2/3, IE7 and Opera 9)

Much talk has been made of this feature; indeed while it does use more resources, it also prevents a single site from bringing down the entire browser as only that tab/window will be affected. To test this out, just terminate one of the instances of chrome.exe and you will see that tab’s screen into a “sad tab of death” with an amusing message.

JavaScript

Though JavaScript falls under the category of `Performance` I felt it deserves its own section because of the importance of JavaScript in web applications. Chrome uses the Google-developed V8 JavaScript engine, which has also been released as open source.

The main points of V8 are outlined at the Google Code page for the project, and are quite interesting. One of the main improvements in performance is the use of a Virtual Machine (VM) for processing JavaScript.

The V8 Virtual Machine is different from say, the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) in that it compiles JavaScript source directly to machine code; there is no intermediate byte-code representation used and hence no interpreter is needed for this. This seems to indicate that JavaScript performance might be faster on Chrome since there’s no intermediary. Google provides some benchmarks to confirm this.

From some informal/unscientific preliminary testing, the V8 JavaScript engine in Chrome does appear to be quite fast; loading the same Digg topic in Firefox took longer than it did in Chrome. (Roughly 14 secs vs. 8 seconds over a few trials - and Chrome did not have the benefit of AdBlock Plus) I’d be very interested to see how Chrome stacks up against Firefox 3.1, considering the rumoured performance boosts coming with it.

If Chrome has anything going for it, it’s definitely the lightning fast JavaScript performance. Coupled with the crash-proofing this makes it ideal for use in web applications.

Development

Chrome comes with a nice DOM inspector reminiscent of Firebug. Using it is dead simple; you just right click and select “Inspect Element” and the inspection window will pop up with the element highlighted. Here you can see the full DOM tree as well as the computed CSS styles for the element.

There’s an included JavaScript console for executing code/commands/expressions on-the-fly and while there is a JavaScript debugger included, it seems at this time to be a command-line only tool, far less user-friendly than Firebug.

Not ready for prime time yet?

Of course, Chrome is marked as Beta by Google, something we’ve come to expect since Gmail has been in beta for longer than the company has been publicly traded. Nonetheless, there are still some features that are sorely missed.

The one thing I absolutely love about Firefox is the vibrant developer community and subsequent widespread availability of quality, useful extensions. This has produced such gems as the aforementioned Firebug and Adblock Plus.

For now, extensions/addons are not part of Chrome but may be added in a later version. In the meantime I don’t think I’ll be even close to ready to switch, as I’m very stubborn. I don’t use that many extensions but the few that I do are “must-haves” and I just can’t browse without them.

Lastly, there are always privacy concerns, especially from a company as big an involved as Google. Though you can turn off the sending of usage statistics, there will always be some with their tinfoil hats on.

Conclusions

All things considered, Chrome is a very good entry into the browser market. While I don’t think it’s ready to take on Firefox or IE yet, it does provide competition. So as long as Chrome continues to support standards (which I think it will, since it uses the WebKit renderer and Google has also been forthcoming with their support for web developers), I won’t have a problem with it. I won’t be switching over to it anytime soon, but at the very least it’ll be a useful development tool to verify/test my websites on to make sure they look proper in Safari/Konqueror/Chrome.

Update

I’ve since completed my full review of the Aspire One. Please read if you’re interested.

With the 3-cell battery you’re going to get less than three hours of run time on the Aspire One. Most reviews I’ve read report a battery life of around two and a half hours. I can confirm this, as I got just over 2h:35m of run time before the Windows power management automatically put the Aspire One into hibernate with 3% of battery life left.

This was with the wireless LAN enabled and the screen at just over half-way brightness. I was doing regular desktop activities like browsing the Internet for most of the time, though this is far from a scientific test as I didn’t keep track of exactly what I did or did not do. I have the subjective feeling that the Aspire One might have trouble making it through a full-length feature film during an airline flight with only the 3-cell battery.

Thankfully, that’s where the 6-cell comes into play. The 6-cell does not add that much bulk or weight to the overall package and even though it may look unsightly in the pictures, it is well worth the additional battery life. In any event, you will hardly notice its presence during use - I can wholeheartedly recommend the 6-cell version, especially with the recent price drops and introduction of an additional 6-cell version with a 160 GB HDD at a lower price than the previous top-of-the-line Aspire One.

Check out the rest of the photos here.

The 6-cell battery also adds some more tilt/slope to the Aspire One so that it’s more inclined towards you; supposedly this results at a better angle for typing but I didn’t perceive things to be better or worse after this. The 6-cell also prevents the screen from fully extending backwards, though as you’ll see from the photos, the screen can still swing back plenty.

Overall, getting 5+ hours of run time will make you confident that your Aspire One will make it through most movies and still leave you time for a game of solitaire.

As a final note, I’m still working on my full review of the Aspire One; expect it soon, depending on my schedule and free time.

Update

I’ve since completed my full review of the Aspire One. Please read if you’re interested.

I’m still forming my final opinion of the device but my initial impression was very positive - I don’t have any major complaints. The device is well-designed, stylish, easy-to-use and very snappy. The 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 that powers the laptop is more than enough for the things you’ll the Aspire One - and it supports hyper-threading and so shows up as “two” cores in Windows.

The Canadian Keyboard

The one downside to the Aspire One that is specific to the Canadian version is the inclusion of a “bilingual” keyboard layout. Apparently, it is required(?) that laptop vendors sell a version of the laptop with this layout in the Canadian market, so many laptop vendors are just switching completely over to this layout for their Canadian versions in order to simplify things and not have to deal with multiple models. This keyboard layout differs from a standard “US” keyboard layout in two ways:

• The left-shift is shortened to half-size and a pipe/backslash key is placed to the right of it, between the left-shift and the ‘Z’ key.
• The enter key is not on a single row, but is instead an inverted L-shape. Another pipe/backslash key is placed to the left of it, in between the enter key and the quote (”) key. Thus, the pipe/backslash key is moved down from the “QWERTY” row to the “ASDF” row.

This is an absurd layout and probably no one more than I hates it; it makes no sense that a “bilingual” layout would require such a ridiculous change. However, after typing on it for a bit, it becomes apparent that it’s not that horrible. The biggest problem is the poor positioning of the backslash key, which makes typing Windows-style pathnames difficult. The extra key near the left-shift can hopefully be remapped using the registry editor or some helpful utilities.

Photos

Expect a full review in the future. In the meantime, check out of some of the unboxing photos below or see the full set in my Zooomr photostream.

I was at EBGames last week and they were having a sale. Many of the titles with the red-discount mark (of shame?) were laughable and typical of the “shovelware” companies throw out just to capitalize on a popular gaming system like the Nintendo Wii. However, one caught my eye: Bully: Scholarship Edition for Wii was only $24.99 CAD. It’s easy to justify an impulse buy like that, especially when I had heard great things about the original, which was released for PS2-only back in 2006. (The “Scholarship Edition” is a re-released version for the Xbox 360 and Wii and contains additional content; it debuted on March 4th, 2008)

Turns out this “bargain-bin” game has been one of my better purchases for Wii. If you like the GTA-style of games, you’ll probably like Bully, as I learned.

Bully is not all about bullying

With a name like Bully you’d expect the game to be all about tormenting the helpless and the weak. However, that’s far from the truth. While the game’s does give you the freedom to be a tyrannical bully, your main objective is to rise in the social hierarchy by gaining the respect of your classmates, and the first group you’ll be courting are the nerds.

Make no mistake: Despite the original PS2 version being released almost two years ago, the Wii-port of Bully is no half-baked attempt to milk revenue from another platform. The control scheme has been completely redesigned to suit the Wii-remote and Nunchuk’s motion sensing capabilities. Find yourself in a fight? Start punching to defend yourself, in almost the same manner as boxing for Wii Sports.

The missions are varied enough to keep you interested; not every one is about transporting item ‘X’ from point A to B. (Though quite a few of them are) You might find yourself providing VIP protection to a member of the nerd clique so that he can safely get to the library. Or, you might find yourself trying to pull off the most ridiculous prank on unsuspecting classmates in the nighttime past curfew. Add in the bevy of classes you are to attend (you are at school, after all), and you’ll almost never find yourself with nothing to do. As is usual with Rockstar games, the game play is well-scripted and the voice acting superb.

An A- for gameplay

Some minor complaints are warranted, though. Firstly, the day-to-day routine of classes and curfew do get tedious at times. After all, it’s supposed to be a sandbox environment, but the rules do make you feel caged in at times. However, the sandbox mode is balanced with realism: You are at a strict preparatory school, after all - and it’s not as if you can’t skip class (truancy) or defy curfew, but such actions won’t go unnoticed by the patrolling prefects of the school - these are the Bully equivalent of the police in the GTA-series of games. Like GTA, you’ll find yourself frequently running from these authority figures.

It’s hard for me to define exactly what makes Bully: Scholarship Edition and other similar Rockstar games so great. Maybe it’s the sandbox-style environment or maybe it’s the right amount of realism coupled with just enough zany characters and over-the-top situations. Or, maybe it’s the attention to detail and great variety of game play offered (from the various mini-games) that make it never seem too boring. But, more than likely, Bully succeeds because it offers the perfect blend of these elements.

Bully has turned out to be one of my favourite games for Wii. While it’s true that Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart and Guitar Hero 3 have used up a lot of my time, Bully provides a refreshing break from the norm. If you’re looking to escape from the Mario-esque universe and pick up a more mature title, Bully is up for serious consideration, especially if you can find it at a good price.

Addendum: Memories of Skool Daze, anyone?

When I first started playing Bully, I was immediately reminded of an old Commodore-64 game I’d played in my younger years called Skool Daze. More than one person has also noticed the similarities. Bully is a modern-day incarnation of Skool Daze and worthy of the title; like the old game it features a good non-linear sandbox-style of gameplay that reveals excellent game design.

Addendum #2: Bully Soundtrack

The music in Bully is really quite great, one of the few soundtracks that’s made me interested, so I did a quick search. Turns out the soundtrack was composed by Shawn Lee and the entire track listing is available for free on eMusic. I do encourage you to download them and give them a listen!

I recently watched Michael Moore’s Sicko and was very impressed by the effort put into the documentary. I wasn’t a fan of Moore’s previous work in Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine, but Sicko does a great job of presenting the case for change in the US health care industry. Moore uses his skill very effectively to showcase the hardships caused by the current system on normal, everyday Americans, and in the end one is left almost with a feeling of shame at what has been donein the name of the almighty dollar. The film accomplishes its goal of making people aware of the need for change.

While the movie presents a strong message, and is accompanied by Moore’s humorous wit as comedic relief. This is almost a necessary counterpoint to the gravity of the situations he discusses - many of them are simply heartbreaking. Moore’s skill in using these, and his effective segues between scenes are key to making this documentary, which is almost two hours long, an engaging experience.

As a Canadian, I can tell say that the typical Canadian’s viewpoint is well-represented in the movie, and there is no hyperbole here. We truly do take pride in our system, and for us, it would be not only weird but unheard of to have to decide which finger to re-attach after a devastating injury, based on the cost of the operation. As Moore points out, this is reality of quite a few people in the US, who simply have no recourse for these sorts of non-life threatening injuries.

I was most impressed, however, with Moore’s vociferous defense of his movie on CNN, after they aired a piece somewhat critical of it, in order to present an opposing view. (They aired the piece just before they interviewed him) Moore quickly posted a rebuttal of the piece, and stood by his facts. The next day, he appeared on Larry King Live to debate these points with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and journalist for CNN. The exchanges were heated, and neither side backed down. Moore appeared to declare war on CNN, perhaps prompting CNN to backdown somewhat.

Whatever you think of Moore, you have to give credit to someone who stands by their position and spends so much time to elaborate their position. He certainly commands respect from CNN, if they’re willing to response to each of his points in a rebuttal of Moore’s rebuttal. Keep an open mind, but definitely go and see this movie, if only to become more aware of the situation.

I’ve recently had a few experiences with some companies and thought I’d share my thoughts. It’s really quite interesting to see the level service offered by big companies, and how they can differ so widely - they’re not all bad.

Some are bad, of course, and don’t seem to put any effort towards customer satisfaction, and continue only to operate because there is no viable competition. This is unfortunate, as this puts the customer in between a rock and a hard place - with the result being a feeling of losing one’s hard-earned cash.

Good: UPS

First up, UPS, the package delivery company everyone seems to love to hate. However, my experience with them was great. Back at the end of April, right after I’d finished school, I needed some way to get a lot of my stuff back home to my parents’ for the summer. A moving company was impractical; I didn’t have enough stuff to warrant using their service, which had a minimum fee and would probably end up costing me between $600-$800. UPS was thus a natural choice.

They shipped my computer, monitor, two big boxes of clothes, and a few other boxes cross-country for only about $120 CAD. I shipped the stuff on Monday morning, and it arrived Friday afternoon - which for me, was a fast transit time. They even found my home despite the confusing road signs in the area. And, of course, nothing was damaged in transit. The only caveat would be that you have to be able to get all of your stuff to one of their stores for shipping.

Average: Purolator

I recently ordered some stuff from Dell Canada, and Purolator simply could not find my house to deliver it. Mind you, there are confusing road signs present in the area, but this is no excuse - other shipping companies have managed to find my house, and furthermore, Purolator previously had no trouble delivering other packages from Dell. I phoned them twice, clearly explaining my location to the customer service rep., and pointing out to them that it was clearly shown on Google Maps.

Now, I know that Purolator knows how to use Google Maps, since they use the service on their own site to help customers locate shipping centres, etc. However, despite all of this, they just couldn’t find my house and must’ve given up. I ended up having to go into their shipping centre to pick up the package.

As a side note, most of the half-dozen or so people I saw at Purolator picking packages were also collecting purchases from Dell Canada. I guess Purolator has a deal with Dell Canada, which must explain why everything I’ve ordered from Dell has come via Air - even though shipping’s free! So, I guess I can’t complain too much.

Bad: U-Haul

When I was moving at the end of the school year, my friends and I (like most students) rented a U-Haul truck to transport our belongings. First of all, their pricing scheme is downright deceptive. Many trucks are emblazoned with ridiculously low prices like “$29.95!”, but this is only if you adhere to the equally-ridiculous usage rules. These basically amount to keeping the truck in-town, not traveling over a certain number of kilometers, not using the extra moving tools, and probably ensuring that you don’t drive by any crying babies.

Realizing that there would be a huge demand for these trucks near the end of the school year, my housemate diligently called U-Haul and reserved the truck a month in advance. One day before we had to move, U-Haul called us to confirm that the truck was still available… in another city. My housemate had to take a train to the other city (over an hour away), then drive the U-Haul back into town - all at his expense. When he signed out the U-Haul, he was promised that free “extra mileage” would be added to the deal since he had to drive the truck the extra distance back - a promise that not surprisingly, wasn’t kept.

Besides the inherent safety issues that come with operating a U-Haul (the OPP’s inspection of 220 U-Haul vehicles yielded 109 failures), their entire operation seems just a little on the sketchy side. It seems as almost any business can become a U-Haul authorized partner - this means, for example, you might be returning your truck to a place that also doubles as a laundromat or dry cleaners.

However, there’s little alternative - if you need a moving truck, and want the convenience of being able to drop it off in a different city than you rented it at, U-Haul seems to be your own option.

If you are using a web-based e-mail provider, chances are you’re using either Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo!’s Mail, or a combination of the three. These are the “big three” when it comes to web-based e-mail services. Microsoft and Yahoo’s offerings have been around for about 10 years or so, with Gmail, the upstart, only being about three years old. Together, these services boast millions of users and bring in huge advertising revenue for their respective companies. But which one is the best for you?

Before Gmail, web-based e-mail was anemic: storage was limited to only a few MBs, and functionality was limited. Indeed, you probably couldn’t get by just using a web-based service, and probably just used it for temporary stuff, relying on your trusty desktop e-mail client and POP3 service for most stuff. Gmail spurned innovation with its announcement of 1 GB of storage, later upgraded to 2 GB and beyond, and made web-based e-mail a viable alternative to desktop clients. There was no question at the time that Gmail was far superior to both Microsoft and Yahoo!’s offerings. However, things have changed in the three years since then, and Microsoft and Yahoo! have both fired back with new and feature-filled web-based e-mail services that offer serious competition to Gmail. How do they stack up against the young champ?

Gmail

Before we start, I’ll admit that I’m just a little biased. I’ve been using Gmail for close to three years, and it has served me well. I forward most of my POP3 accounts to it, since they have low limits on how much e-mail can be stored server-side, and this has the added benefit of allowing me to access my e-mail anywhere. (Though this can be said of any web-based e-mail account) Gmail, for me, offered a quick, clean interface that was refreshing.

Ease-of-use

Having said that, there are some true benefits to Gmail beyond the fact that I like it. Firstly, ease-of-use - Gmail excels in this area. As mentioned before, the interface is clean and to-the-point. When you log in, there’s no “Today” screen that forces you to click another link to get to your inbox; your inbox appears right away. Gmail also supports keyboard shortcuts, to make things easier.

The one shortcut I really liked was CTRL-S saving your composed e-mail as a draft. Since this is such a common shortcut in desktop apps, it only makes sense that it should work with web-based e-mail as well. Furthermore, Gmail also will automatically save your e-mail while you are typing, so even if you forget, you’ll be safe. Another protection built in prevents you from accidentally navigating away from the page while you’re composing an e-mail. This is pretty much a necessary feature for e-mail services, as it’s all too common to accidentally hit the “Back” button or click a link.

One fundamental difference that Gmail implements is the use of “Conversations” rather than just listing all the e-mails you’ve received. Basically, e-mails you’ve sent and replies you’ve received from a particular person, originating from a particular e-mail are grouped together, very much like a threaded conversation on a forum. This takes some time getting used to, since all other e-mail clients do not organize mail messages like this, but the learning curve isn’t that steep, and it is a superior method of organizing e-mail since it reduces clutter.

Another different aspect is the use of labels. Gmail doesn’t support folders, but rather allows you to “label” each e-mail with a different tag. While you lose the ability to have a folder hierarchy, labeling works just as well for most purposes. Additionally, mail messages can be assigned more than just one label - something that can’t be done in a traditional folder model. This allows you to group messages in a dynamic way - for example, a mail message might fall under the label of both “work” and “bills”.

Interface - Look & Feel

Gmail is fairly spartan, and while it may not super pretty, it’s very usable. The colours are all pastel and light on the eyes, and selected messages are highlighted. The background colour also changes depending whether you’re viewing all e-mails or just ones that fall under a certain label. Searching is easy, and so is the action of adding labels to messages - you don’t have to create the label before adding it, as once you add a label to a message it will be automatically created. Furthermore, messages that you’ve selected stay selected even if you navigate to a different page. This saves you the headache of having to re-select a bunch of messages because you accidentally clicked “Back”.

And, while we’re talking about the “Back” button, Gmail does a great job of preserving its functionality. While this seems like a minor point, it’s actually a big problem with Ajax application, and furthermore, an impediment to usability. Remember, all of these clients operate within the confines of a web-browser, and in a web-browser, the Back button has certain functionality that’s expected of it. Breaking this functionality will only confuse users and is a big no-no.

Space

Gmail currently offers something ~2.8 GB of space. I think this is somewhat of a mute point, since how many of us will actually accumulate that much e-mail? Just for reference: I have kept every single e-mail I’ve every received through any POP3 account since I started using the Internet, probably back around 1995-96. The size of all of this e-mail? (Measured by the size of Thunderbird’s database files) A paltry 800 MB or so. That is over 10 years of e-mail. Mind you, some people receiver more e-mail than I do, but I have found that e-mail correspondence usually becomes irrelevant a few weeks or so after it’s been received and read. After that, it’s just good for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Ads

Gmail is probably the best for this, since the ads are textual and non-intrusive. I’ve also found them to be the most relevant to me, which may or may not creep you out. Despite all the concerns, I’m really not worried. If you’re really concerned about privacy, you should not be using a web-based e-mail provider, period. In fact, you should not be using e-mail for communication, unless you’re using something like PGP for encryption.

Security - Spam

Gmail automatically blocks and prevents images from showing up in e-mails so that spammers cannot confirm your e-mail address exists. This is a good practice, and I’m happy to report the other two providers also do this. Gmail’s spam protection also seems to be quite good - I rarely get a spam e-mail showing up in my inbox. Instead, most of it automatically diverted to the spam folder, where it can all be deleted in one click. Gmail also has a nice “Report Spam” and “Report Phishing” feature, to allow it to improve its service.

Other features

Gmail allows you POP3 access to your account, without any workarounds or hacks. This is a big plus, since the other providers don’t offer this since they want you visiting their site for access, so that they gain advertising revenue. POP3 access also allows you to backup your e-mail locally, and still keep the original on Gmail - a great idea!

Gmail unofficially “supports” extensions such as Gmail Drive, allowing you to use it as an online storage medium. Here’s where the extra space might actually be useful. It also has a built in MP3 player, so you can e-mail yourself MP3s and then play them at work, or wherever you might be. I consider these to be minor additions, since there are other services if you’re really into online storage.

Conclusion

Though it sounds like I’m a Gmail fanboy, it’s really just because I’ve been using it for so long and am used to it. Gmail hasn’t been perfect, of course. There have been some horror stories, and if you learn anything from this, it’s that you can never truly trust a third-party provider to keep your e-mail safe. After all, it’s a free service, right? The best practice would be to use the POP3 access to backup e-mail locally, periodically.

Windows Live Hotmail

Microsoft’s e-mail service has had somewhat of an identity crisis. When Microsoft acquired Hotmail, they just added “MSN” to beginning of the name since Hotmail already had such a huge user base. However, with its Windows Live Initiative, Microsoft renamed the service to “Windows Live Mail”. Apparently, this created somewhat of a confusion amongst users, so Microsoft reneged somewhat, and renamed it again, this time to Windows Live Hotmail - again keeping the “Hotmail” term that has been around since 1995.

If you remember, I wasn’t too impressed with Windows Live Mail (back when it was called that), but that was almost a year ago, so let’s see how it’s doing right now.

Ease of use

Thankfully, the checkbox-problem I complained about in my original review of the service has been fixed. Checkboxes now behave like normal checkboxes. All normal e-mail functions are within easy reach, but keyboard shortcuts are nowhere to be found. CTRL-S does not save a message when your composing it, and instead you must click a button to do this. I also did not note any form of auto-saving. Furthermore, while Hotmail does protect against lost composed messages if you click on another link, it doesn’t prevent you from accidentally closing the browser window.

A nice feature is that the interface is very much like a desktop client, so for most users, there won’t be any time to “get used” to it.

Interface - Look & Feel

The interface is fairly easy to use, and much more responsive than before. It doesn’t feel too slow. There are many colour schemes, and they are all good for readability. Windows Live Hotmail chooses to use the old folder model, which isn’t bad, but after using labels, I find it just to be a bit outdated.

One big problem is that the “Back” button’s functionality is broken by Hotmail. Using the “Back” button will give weird and unpredictable results. This will unfortunately make it harder for users to adapt to the system.

Space

You get 2 GB of space, which again, is way more than enough. Users who are still using the ‘old’ MSN Hotmail, with its old interface, only get 1 GB, to give some incentive for people to voluntarily upgrade to the newer service. Microsoft is not forcing the upgrade on people, for obvious reasons - any huge forced change in interface would surely confuse and upset too many people and potentially cause Microsoft to lose advertising revenue if people were to leave.

Ads

When you first log in, you’re brought to a useless “Today” screen, and you must click your inbox to get access to the “real” e-mail part of the site. This is all in an effort to generate more ad views, as there are two big flash ads on this page. When browsing messages, or anything else, there is always a big flash ad at the top of the page. These are distracting, and often not very relevant, from my experience.

Security - Spam

I haven’t used this service enough to truly get an idea of it’s spam-block capability, but it seems on-par with the other two. Disabling of images and scanning of attachments in messages is also done, so there’s not really any danger in using Hotmail.

Other features

Like Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail, you get access to you instant messenger contacts from within the service, so this will be helpful when you’re at a computer that doesn’t have the desktop IM client. There’s no POP3 access, however, unless you use Outlook, or a clever software tool.

Conclusion

Windows Live Hotmail is much better than before, and I applaud the efforts of Microsoft. However, it’s not enough for me to recommend it - in fact, if you’re using it and are heavily entrenched, I’d even go as far to say that you should consider moving away from it to Gmail. The ads and sub-par interface may make the trouble of switching web-mail providers worthwhile.

Yahoo! Mail

Like Google’s Gmail, Yahoo!’s Mail service is also branded with the “Beta” tag. It seems that nowadays, “Beta” means available for widespread voluntary use, and that we could add/remove features at any time, basically allowing for a service to be in perpetual development while people are still actively using it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a change from what “Beta” software original entailed.

Ease of use

Yahoo’s client is very easy to use. Part of this is due to its interface, which is probably the closest of the three to resembling a desktop client. Everything pretty much operates as it would in a desktop client, and this functionality has been accomplished with JavaScript - quite an achievement. Keyboard shortcuts are nicely supported, as is CTRL-S for saving a message that you’re composing. Furthermore, there is robust protection against losing an e-mail you’re composing - if you try to close the window on an unsaved message, you’ll get a prompt to ensure this is what you want to do.

Folders are used for organization, and messages can’t be tagged. (Though they can be “flagged” for follow-up, like in traditional desktop clients) It’s easy to select messages, and search for them. All of the buttons to perform actions are large enough to be easily clicked, and the preview pane is a nice feature present in most desktop clients, but missing from Gmail. You can also open messages for a full-view by double-clicking on them in the message list - another nice feature copied from desktop clients. Overall, Yahoo!’s mail client is very easy to use.

Interface - Look & Feel

With the client emulating the look & feel of a desktop one very well, there isn’t much to dislike here. If you’re familiar with using a desktop client and are reluctant to move away from that, Yahoo!’s client does a great job of maintaining the continuity of a desktop client in the environment of a web browser. Opening a message or composing a new e-mail will create a new tab at the top of the screen in a sort of multiple document interface. Thus, you’re not forced to navigate away from your inbox while you’re composing a message or reading one - a deficiency with Gmail. If you find yourself reading multiple e-mails at a time, Yahoo!’s client will excel in this area. Though, some might frown upon this multitasking.

As expected, organizing e-mail is as easy as clicking the column headers at the top. You can even right click on messages or folders to bring up a context menu of actions that you can perform on the item - just like in a real desktop client. With all these JavaScript enhancements, you might expect things to be slow or sluggish - but on the contrary, I found the client, in its current version, to be quite fast. I guess that all the experience Yahoo! has gained from developing their User Interface Library in JavaScript has paid off.

Yahoo! has also gone to great lengths to preserve back-button functionality. Though you might expect the “Back” button to have a somewhat ambiguous function in a traditional desktop e-mail client, it worked well in Yahoo!’s client and didn’t do anything unwanted, like navigating away from the mail site.

Space

Yahoo! somewhat surprised everyone by announcing unlimited e-mail storage back in May. (It’ll be rolling out to all users soon enough) While this may seem like a “one-up” on Gmail’s previously-leading capacity of near 3 GB, for me, it’s not really that big of a deal. Again, I just don’t see the need for so much e-mail storage, when a digital pack-rat such as myself has only managed to accumulate 800 MB of e-mail over > 10 years.

Ads

There’s basically one big image ad on the right-hand side. From my experience, it was a static image, and not a flash animated ad. This is less intrusive than Hotmail’s, which is usually a flash-animated horror at the top of the page, but still not as peaceful as Gmail’s textual ads, which also seem to be more relevant. (I only saw eBay ads at Yahoo! Mail) Also, Yahoo! forces you to view a “Today” screen after you login - you must click on your inbox to open it, as it’s not displayed automatically.

Security - Spam

Again, though I’ve had my Yahoo! Mail account for some time, I haven’t really used it enough to come up with a good conclusion. From my experience though, the spam detection is pretty darn good. Images aren’t automatically displaced in e-mails, and you’re pretty much safe while using the site.

Other features

You get access to Yahoo! Messenger, and so you can IM your people on your contact list from the mail client. An RSS reader is nicely integrated with the client as well, and since it’s more and more relevant nowadays, you’ll be able take advantage of these services from any computer that has Internet access. A calendar is also nicely integrated with the service.

Like Hotmail, you cannot access the service through a POP3 client, if for example you wanted to backup your e-mail locally. There are workarounds, of course, but having native support for it like Gmail would’ve been preferable.

Conclusion

Yahoo!’s Mail is a great service. They’ve put a considerable effort into making it as close to a desktop client as possible. While some people may not like that within the confines of a web browser, I think it’s great - especially when it’s executed as great as Yahoo!’s implementation. Things are fast, and there isn’t really any sluggishness like with some poorly-implemented Ajax web-apps out there. If you’re thinking about moving over to a web-based e-mail service, and are too familiar with a desktop client to abandon it, Yahoo!’s Mail service is for you. This, combined with the ease-of-use and unlimited space pretty much make it a serious competitor to Gmail.

The verdict

As I’ve said before, I’m a bit biased. Gmail has been my client of choice for many years, so I’m not keen on switching anytime soon. Having said that, Yahoo!’s client is a great alternative - but the two take different approaches. Yahoo!’s tries to emulate the desktop experience as much as possible - this can have its pros and cons. Though it’s easier to adapt to using it from a desktop client, it doesn’t feel as “simple” as Gmail’s. Gmail aims for a slick, clean, and new approach to web e-mail as, it does away with folders and the traditional message list in favour of labels and a conversation (threaded-messages) approach.

My advice would be this - if you’re heavily entrenched into Gmail, stay with it. Same goes for Yahoo! Mail. However, if you’re using Windows Live Hotmail, you may want to consider your alternatives, however painful switching e-mail addresses might be. I just can’t recommend it, at least not when compared to the alternatives. If you’re not heavily using a webmail client and would like to, take a spin with both Gmail and Yahoo! Mail and see which one works best for you.

I recently got The Beatles’ latest compilation album, entitled Love. Released back in 2006, the music was originally compiled and produced for the Love Cirque du Soleil performance. For those of you not familiar with the Canadian act, Cirque du Soleil, it’s basically a lot of acrobats and dancers doing impossible and eye-catching things against the backdrop of extravagant and novel stage setups.

I’m a fan of The Beatles, so naturally I was excited to listen to this album. Since it’s a soundtrack to a theatrical production, all of the tracks blend into one another and it’s best to listen to it as a whole, at least once. I was pleasantly surprised with what George Martin (the producer of most of The Beatles original studio albums) and his son, Giles, were able to accomplish. Basically, they’ve taken the sounds from songs you know and love, and mixed them together to produce some nice results. The album flows very well, which is expected since it’s part of a bigger production.

At the most basic, songs from similar eras in The Beatles’ career have been blended together. For example, Drive My Car - The Word - What You’re Doing is a seamless blend of those three songs, but in addition to that, they’ve taken the guitar solo from Taxman and some of the background horns from Savoy Truffle and integrated them for a nice effect. Another good example is at the start of the second track on the album, Get Back. It starts off with the guitar chord from A Hard Day’s Night, then moves into the drum-solo beginning of The End. Then, something that sounds like the orchestral swell from A Day in the Life finally leads into the bass-heavy tune of Get Back. The song then blends into the next track, Glass Onion, very nicely. There are plenty of other examples - Strawberry Fields Forever is a good example where many bits of other songs have been blended together.

Some of the other mixups are less compelling. For example, Blackbird - Yesterday simply has the instrumental part of Blackbird tacked onto as a prelude to the beginning of Yesterday. It still sounds good, since they’re both acoustic guitar tunes.

I think the best part of the album, however, is reserved for big fans of The Beatles. As you listen to it, you get the treat of “discovering” all the different parts of certain songs that have been woven into the main melody. In particular, if you’ve listened to the Anthology albums released in the mid-90’s, you’ll notice that quite a bit of that content has been remixed into songs on this album. (While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Strawberry Fields Forever and A Day In The Life come to mind in this context.

As a side note, I read an article in Wired (which I can’t seem to find on their website) detailing the technical aspects of the sound system in use for the Cirque du Soleil act. As they wanted the best musical experience for everyone (since it’s The Beatles, after all), they couldn’t go with a conventional sound system. Instead, they installed hundreds of speakers in a circle above the stage, and installed two speakers and one center channel for every seat. There are over 2000 seats for the venue, and George and Giles Martin apparently went from seat-to-seat tweaking the sound levels until everything was perfect - a feat that took months.

Overall, Love is a great album to have, even if some of the tracks aren’t all that different from the original ones. It’s a definite buy for those who were even remotely obsessed with The Beatles at any point in their life.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, well-designed and functional PC gamepad that works well across many games, the Xbox 360 Controller is a good choice. Besides fitting well in your hands, and offering the standard feature set, it’s got the backing of Microsoft, ensuring that it’ll work well in all of the games that come out with the new Games for Windows branding. Quality is top-notch, (as expected, since the controller is in wide use with the Xbox 360 system), and it’s available in both a wireless and wired version. I decided to buy the wired version over Christmas, and here’s my quick review on how it’s been since then.

Introduction

Let’s face it - not all PC games work well with just the defacto keyboard and mouse combination. Don’t get me wrong - the vast majority do, and for these, the keyboard and mouse is more than enough. In fact, PC gamers have always looked at consoles with disdain because of a lack of control options. Many of us (myself included) could not imagine playing an FPS on a console because of the lack of keyboard and mouse control. However, there are certain game types that do work better with a gamepad, and when a good one comes along, you don’t want to be stuck fiddling with your mouse and keyboard in a vain attempt to enjoy the game.

For me, this moment came when I got Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Admittedly, this game could’ve been designed to work better with a keyboard and mouse, but the way it was made just made it damn near impossible to play without a gamepad. So, I decided to get an Xbox 360 Wired Controller to improve the experience.

But why wired? Clearly wireless is better, is it not? Well it depends on your needs. I knew I wouldn’t be using the gamepad all the time, but only occasionally. Thus, the benefit of going wireless for me didn’t outweigh the additional cost, and additional trouble of having to use batteries. Also, to use the wireless Xbox 360 controller with a PC, you must buy a separate wireless receiver that plugs into your PC - adding another dongle to the mix. For me, it didn’t make sense for something that wouldn’t be used that often - however, if you are going to be using it constantly, wireless is definitely the way to go. And, of course, if you have an Xbox 360, either one of these controllers will also work with it - consider it an added bonus.

The gamepad itself is pretty much standard as far as PC gamepads go. There are two analog sticks, one in the top left corner and the other just right of the bottom center. Both can also be pressed/clicked for another button function. The standard four-button group of thumb-buttons is unchanged from the original Xbox controller. However, the black/white buttons have been redesigned as left/right buttons above the front analog triggers, so your index fingers have a little more work to do. This is a better setup, as it reduces the number of buttons your thumb has to work. Lastly, there’s also the start and select buttons, which are in the top center, just around the Xbox “ring of light”. While the “ring of light” button is useful when used with an Xbox 360, it’s less so on the PC, unless used with titles with the Games for Windows branding.

How it plays

I have been using this gamepad for several weeks now, mostly with the previously mentioned Lego Star Wars II, and with Need for Speed: Most Wanted. These are ideal games for gamepads. I’ve also tried in a little bit of Flight Simulator X, but that’s more of a joystick game and it wouldn’t go well with any gamepad.

Installation is easy, as it just connects to any USB port. You will, however, need to download the drivers for it, which are available at Microsoft’s site. (I’m not sure if you need this if you’re already running Windows Vista)

The first thing you notice is how comfortable the controller feels in your hands. The shape and fit are definitely top-notch. My hands aren’t that big, but I had no problem reaching any of the buttons or triggers. If you have huge hands, it might feel a little small. Microsoft has sure learned a lesson or two about design and functionality, when you compare this controller to the original gigantic Xbox controller that many people did not like.

In games, all of the buttons and analog controls worked well and were responsive. About the only complaints I had was that the D-pad could be a little to control. For example, when pushing left or right, it’s easy to accidentally activate one of the adjacent diagonal directions. This isn’t a problem most of the time, but if you’re using the gamepad for retro gaming, say in an emulator for an old console system, this could be a problem. Many of those older games require precise D-pad control. However, this is a problem I have noticed with many PC gamepads, and the 360 controller is actually not as bad as some of them. My second (minor) complaint was that the buttons can feel squishy. Though they provide good tactile feedback when they’re pressed, if you push too hard you can feel them squish down more. This, however, is inevitable with type of contacts used, which I assume are the rubber push-button type.

Other observations

Another good reason to get the 360 controller may be due to Microsoft’s weight in the PC arena - they have the ability to effect changes in the market. Something that is sorely needed for PC gaming is some sort of standard controller. This will help game developers to make interfaces that they are sure will work across a wide variety of systems.

Since Microsoft has a near-monopoly on the PC market (at least those used for gaming), they are best poised to introduce something like this. While the standard DirectX inputs for controllers have worked well for games, (thus removing us from the ancient days where controller support had to be specifically built into the game, much like soundcard support back then), it still leaves many unknown variables to the game designer.

Default controls don’t work well across a wide variety of game controllers, forcing designers to include customization options. While this isn’t bad per se, it adds an extra level of complexity - something that shouldn’t be required for playing games. Complicating the situation further is the fact that many companies provide configuration software for the game controllers they make - adding yet another level of configuration.

Conclusion

One thing that consoles have had that PC games were sorely lacking was a unified, default controller that game designers could count on. This seems like something simple, but it goes a far way to making games easier to play. While I used to decry the lack of control customization in consoles (the “if it’s not complicated, it’s not worth it” argument), I’m leaning the other way right now. The Xbox 360 controller could be the thing that brings a default controller to the PC finally, since it has the weight of Microsoft behind it.

Furthermore, most gamepads for the PC generally offer the same features nowadays. The Xbox 360 controller takes these features, and puts them in a standard package that is, most importantly, comfortable, easy-to-use and quality-made.

Lastly, when you go to the store, you may notice that they are selling an Xbox 360 controller “designed for Windows”, or something to that effect. It may even cost more than the “standard” 360 controller. Don’t worry about this - get whichever one is available and cheaper. There is no difference between the two. The only thing to keep in mind is that with the wireless controller, you will need the receiver as well.