Isaiah's Tech

So, today i should not have had school due to freezing rain and snow, but the school board didn't cancel the buses. I was stuck at school all day and did the same thing that i usually have to do there: work, sleep and more work. So, these next couple of days will be brutal for me. I have lots of blogging to do. Luckily, during lunch today, i did all of the research for my CA next week. So yes, i have lots of blogging to do. It is CES this week and instead of pulling everyone's press conference summaries, i figured that i might as well make my own. I'm going to to LG's after i do 2 lengthy blog posts. I expect at least 5 blog posts today. Wish me luck. Before i talk about anything CES-wise, i'm going to talk to you about regular stuff. Non-CES stuff.

2 days ago, i mentioned that MSI is making a MacBook Air-killer, the MSI X-Slim 320. MSI has recently announced that the price of their X-Slim would be in between, just $700 and $1,000 USD, which is much cheaper than the MacBook Air's base price of $1,800. This laptop is just 3/4 of an inch (1.98 cm) thick, weighs 2.9 pounds and still manages to have a 13 inch widescreen. It's extremely thin and weightless, just like the MacBook Air. What may be a problem though, is the fact that it is running Windows Vista, which is terrible. Other than that, it looks good to me.

So, there is a new rumour that the search engine king, Google, is developing it's own router. See. I told you Google is planning to take over the Internet. That's all that has to be said about this. Keep in mind that this is just a rumour and has not been confirmed. Although, Google "won't comment on the story."

So a 6-year old from Virginia has just done the impossible. Well, technically, it's not impossible, but the chances of this happening is pretty slim. He drove himself to school. Yup, a 6-year old drove himself to school. The kid's name is undisclosed in the article, so we'll call him 'Boy.' So, Boy missed his school bus in the morning and while his parents were sleeping, he took the Ford Sedan to school. How the boy got the keys in the first place and how he knew his way to school is beyond me. Anyways, he drove almost 6 miles before getting into an accident. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. But, get this. After he got into the accident, he got out of the car and started to walk to school. Now, that is a warrior. Boy ended up being taken to the hospital by the cops and Boy ended up telling the police that he "learned how to drive by playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam." Boy even mentioned that he wanted to get to school because "he did not want to miss breakfast or PE." Unfortunately, "the parents of the 6-year-old are both charged with child endangerment and the kid and his 4-year-old brother were both put under protective custody. The mom is currently being held without a bond, while the father was released on a US$ 5,000 bond." Talk about amazing.

Remember the HTC Touch HD i talked about in one my first blogs? Well, it is now out in India. If you want to know all of the specs of the phone, just read my blog post about it, in the link. Moving along. The HTC Iolite was recently leaked. This 2.8 inch touchscreen phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS and Wi-Fi. Iolite may not be it's official name, since it may just be a codename. The Iolite will run on Windows Mobile 6.1 and will use TouchFLO3D, for it's touchscreen needs.

MSI X-Slim 320 (and picture): http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/01/msis-super-thin.html
Rumour: Google Router: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/07/1844239&from=rss
6-Year Old Drives Himself to School (and picture): http://ps3.qj.net/6-year-old-misses-bus-drives-self-to-school-learned-from-GTA-Update-now-on-CNN/pg/49/aid/127768
HTC Touch HD in India: http://www.techtree.com/India/News/HTC_Touch_HD_Comes_to_India/551-97487-893.html
HTC Iolite (and picture): http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_iolite_leaks_through_an_onilne_retailer_surely_looks_nice-news-724.php

So, when i got home from school, i quickly found a video of the Macworld keynote on Apple's official site, so i decided to watch it. It was pretty boring. I was yawning through most of the iLife and iWork stuff. At one point, i actually fell asleep and then i woke up about a minute into him talking about the 17 inch MacBook Pro. So, i had to rewind it a bit. You can view the Macworld keynote at this link. Macworld seemed kind of dull to me, but luckily, CES is already starting. Although, not the presentations. Right now, i think, is when you can try out the stuff that are on display there.

So, how did the Playstation 3 do in 2008, compared to 2007 in sales? Sony reported that in North America, they saw a 40 percent sale increase in 2008, compared to 2007. If we do some math, that is approximately 3.6 million units. During the 10-week holiday season, they also mentioned that their sales rose 130 percent compared to the 2007 holiday season. This is good news because i hope that Sony doesn't give up on this system. Since i'm hearing rumours that they might as well start the Playstation 4 production now, since the Playstation 3 is so upsetting. I still feel that 2009 will be an even bigger year and that PS3 sales will continue to increase.

So, this morning, DivX, released the new DivX 7. It will have "enhanced support for high definition video output and surround sound audio." It will show "high-quality digital video at up to 1080p HD resolution." It is now available on the new DivX website. I use DivX to watch any high-quality movies and then i use VLC media player for everything else, so this is good news. I've already downloaded it.

At CES this year, is Corsair. I trust Corsair, with my RAM needs. I have 2 GB of RAM in my current rig and that's thanks to Corsair. But, at CES, they showed it's new "Flash Voyager USB thumb drives." These USB's have an overwhelming 64GB on one single chip, damn 64GB? Yes. Uh-oh, looks like in 2009, there will be a war for which company can put more memory on USB sticks. Looking at this picture, they look to have a weird shape to them. But anyways, no price for this product was mentioned in the article from ZDNet.



Hitachi is at this year's CES and they are showing some new displays for us. "The 2009 line of UT HDTVs will expand primarily by carrying a more mainstream pricetag and now standard 1080p / 120Hz features." Hitachi has a new and thinner 35 inch LED backlit display, measuring about 15mm thick. Hitachi also had their 50 inch UT plasma from CEDIA on display. I don't know if the CEDIA was the same display that was shown last September, so yeah. Hopefully, i'll be receiving more news on that. I still think that the new LG and Samsung displays have surpassed Hitachi in every aspect. Anyways, CES is now here. Expect a barrage of blogs whenever i get the chance. For school, i have a Culminating Assignment that i have to write in-class on Tuesday, so i will be trying to finish all of that research either tomorrow or Thursday. Macworld out the window, luckily CES is there to pick up that slack.

Oh! By the way, thanks to everyone that has visited my blog ever since i started writing, just over a month ago. I received about 300 visits in first month. In the beginning, the visitors were slowly coming in, but for the last few weeks, i've been getting a lot of anonymous visitors, which is fantastic. I hope you like what i write because i love talking about tech and new news.

Playstation 3 Sales (and picture): http://www.gamespot.com/news/6202751.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;1
DivX 7: http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/divx-7-launches-with-enhanced-hd-support-498602
Corsair at CES (and picture): http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=675&page=6
Hitachi at CES (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/06/hitachi-unlimited-ces-theme-shows-some-realistic-boundaries-fo/