So you got your shiny new notebook for back to school and your thinking to yourself, maybe I should pick up a spare battery! I'll save it in my bag for emergency use and life will be great.
Well son, I've got some tips for you!
I always get asked at work about batteries and I thought I'd share my good knowledge with you! the faithful readers.
So here we go,
Tip #1 Don't expose the battery to intense heat! if you have a laptop (esp P4 chips!) that runs extremely hot, or if a fan is failing on you, don't expose your battery to high temperatures, its best to disconnect the battery while plugged into the wall. Heat ruins batteries plain and simple, it speeds up the charge process, but also speeds up the discharge process!!
Tip #2 don't expose the battery to extreme cold! most manufacturers store their batteries around 60f. Throwing lithium ion batteries in the fridge is useless, and throwing them in the freezer will destroy them!
Tip #3, if you are plugged into the wall, remove your battery when its fully charged! Your AC adapter will constantly be delivering a charge to the battery which will try to "top off" the cells, this creates a constant charge/discharge cycle which adds unneccesary aging to your battery!! Typical batteries are engineered for about 600/800 charges over the span of 1 to 3 years. If you can remove your battery easily do so! and keep it somewhere cool (not cold).
Tip #4, ensure that your battery contacts are always clean! you can clean contacts with a rubber eraser (much like the ones on the back of a pencil) and also ensure tehre is no dirt or crap in the battery bay.
Tip #5, Don't let a lithium ion battery lose its charge completely! always charge back up at around 10% if you can, its also good to discharge the battery once a month to this level before charging it back up again and NEVER charge up a battery before its about to be put in prolonged storage.
So there you have it folks, my 5 magical tips to helping your battery last as long as possible (because hey those suckers are expensive!) A couple more things that you should know about the way a battery works, even when retaining a full charge, batteries start to lose their charge immediately, even while not in use, some speculate that leaving it connected to your notebook sucks juice out of it faster but the reality is the charge starts to die over time when its not plugged in and Heat will cause it to lose its charge more rapidly! Batteries will never last forever so follow these simple steps and you'll be getting more use from the juice!
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Mysteries of the laptop battery
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
iMac unboxing
ohhhhhhh sweetness, its here, ITS REALLY HERE! the new iMac, full unboxing photos, thin keyboard glory and the glossy spectacle that is the impressive 20" screen, whoever said size doesn't matter lied. check it all out after the jump! Warning! lots of photos to load, if your on dialup, you may want to grab a snack
I didn't believe Adam when he said it was here, I thought he was teasing, street date isn't untill tomorrow! BUT ITS HERE! we unboxed this baby and my god I've never sqealed so much over a computer in my life, is it the be all and end all? maybe not but its sweet regardless.
So there you have it kids! the iMac unboxed, 20" model, super sexy, love the keyboard! wish it packed a bt mouse but hey, you can't have it all for THAT attractive of a price tag.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
BIOSHOCK
oh fuckin eh this is what gaming is ABOUT!
Incredible environments, graphics to die for and gameplay that is simply perfect.
THIS is what all shooters should be about. If you don't have your copy then go buy one now, I fucking mean it.
I wish the collectors edition was available up here in Comox but alas I had to settle for the regular version of the title. I'm just glad to own it on launch day.
When I finish the game expect a review. But don't expect it tomorrow :P
one small gripe, brand new disc loaded in console finished the first level and upon loading the second, CAN NOT READ DISC FAILURE! frack me.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Samsung M620
OK I know I took forever, like for freakin evarrrr. But I am doing it now so you can forgive me (especially you, ROB!)
I decided to post my review of the Samsung M620 Music phone that launched simultaneously on Telus and Bell (Kinda like what Verizon and Sprint are to the US)
This is a super thin Candy Bar styled phone but what sets it apart is the fact that it has two differen't sides to it. The "front" is the phone, with a teensy screen and the back is the mp3 player with touch sensitive controls and a wopping 2.1 inch display. The displays are both very bright wtih the larger of the two supporting a higher DPI.
overall I like this phone, you get a Battery "wallet" with it, which is basically a big ugly case that gives it an insane amount of talk time (6.5 hours on a full charge)
The keypad is great, I loved it, texting was a breeze as long as your vision isn't overly hyperopic. I do not really care for the teensy screen, I would have preferred two huge screens instead of one tiny and one large.
The phone has no removable battery which is another negative point against it (hello iPod anyone?) but due to its extremely slim form factor I can not say I am all that suprised.
another unfortunate thing is that the ESN sticker is on the face of the phone and is QUITE unsightly, I am willing to bet most users will be removing theirs, Making life oh so joyus for those of us who have to service the phone for our customers.
Call quality is exactly what I expect from Samsung, the phone seems very durable albeit very shiny at the same time so I am not sure how it will hold up to scratching.
I suggest bumping the sensitivity of the touch pad to maximum because anything else was not nearly responsive enough for me.
the camera is poop. 1.3 megapixel poop. extremely myopic and grainy despite its resolution, colour was weak and extremely washed out looking. I would not use the camera at all.
Transflash is hot swappable, which it'd have to be in a phone of this design, great move anyway.
pics for your drooling pleasures. Shot with a pentax K100D.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
My Heart just STOPPED
It's delayed. Till Next year.
This isn't happening!
NO!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm so upset...
I mean it really was a hard punch in the face for me when Nintendo delayed Zelda TP on me. I had been dying for some more quality work to match up to the experience Metroid Prime and Resident Evil 4 had given me. That's not to say Nintendo did a bad job of it (I played the CRAP out of Twilight Princess it rocked!) But we all know that the delay was for the launch of the Wii.
Smart way to move more Wii units though, as if it wasn't already in huge demand.
I've recently read that the Playstation 3 is getting a TV Tuner of some kind and DVR fuctionality. I have not heard when this is taking place or how much it is going to costs but I do recall myself having this conversation with a friend a few weeks ago. I was staring at my xbox and thinking to myself, this thing could easily be a DVR instead of just a stupid windows media extender.
I'm currently debating some parts to build my ultimate dream computer. I'm still torn between windows and Mac.
I think if I build a windows tower, I will definately have to be a home theater pc. I then can't decide between hd-dvd or bluray. hmm and there are no graphics cards yet that support HDMI. So many hurdles :P
Thursday, July 19, 2007
not really that technological, but entertaining still.
so I have an unhealthy fascination with celebrities, check this out:
Oh my god that was funny. Funny to the izzo.
Anyway, so I don't really have much to write about except the Samsung M620 has been released by both Bell and Telus.
I haven't seen the unit yet, but when I do expect some shots of it. It's got front and back baby yeah thats right. Phone in the front, mp3 in the back, camera in the front, big LCD on the back its neat but not sure if I'd use it as a phone or not...
Check out the pics here at the boy genius report
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Game Review : Crackdown
I finally cracked down and reviewed crackdown. Har Har, check it out after the jump!
In Crackdown you play the role of a super agent thats been created to clean up a city thats befallen to 3 intense gangs.
There is one central island, the Agency which acts as a home base and three surrounding islands that comprise Pacific City into 3 districts. Your job is to kill the Ultimate gang boss, which is dubbed a "Kingpin" but to do so, you need to take out the current gang leaders to weaken the Kingpins defence.
Crackdown is designed as an open ended environment and its up to you to choose who's ass you are going to kick next. There is a wide array of weapons (although I felt there could have been more) and a great assortment of vehicles. You have 3 agency vehicles that will morph ala transformers style as your driving skill is increased. Driving is loads of fun but gets boring quickly as pedestrians will constantly get in your way and you inevitably obliterate them with your car. This ofcourse pisses off the local law enforcement and you will either have to kick more ass against your allies or just go lay low for a few minutes till they cool off and forget about it.
As you progress through your skills you will have more accurate shooting, higher jumping, better strength to lift things etc... The more you use your differen't skills, the more they level up, With the exception of agility, you gotta climb and jump your way to find these orbs that will give you more "agility points" and thus level up your Character to jump higher, move faster etc.. its TONS of fun jumping from building to building in search of these orbs and occasionally you'll find hidden orbs instead of the agility orbs. Hidden orbs will add points to all skills and there are 300 of them in total (500 Agility orbs).
What I really like is that certain skills will reflect not only in your stats but also change your appearance, the changes are subtle as you go through the game but if you download the new patch and install the new expansions you can play "Keys to the City" mode and see just how dramatic the physical changes to your character are if you do them rapidly.
One of Crackdowns greatest strengths is its controls, You can easily lock onto a hostile by pressing down on your left trigger, this is also however one of Crackdowns most annoying faults because after killing a target you can still "accidently" lock back onto a fallen foe. Frustrating if you have several bitches that need to get their slap on. I usually just toss a Grenade (by pressing right bumper) into the mix and watch all that shit blow up.
The framerate is very smooth in crackdown and VERY very occasionally I have noticed slowdown, but when I do its usually because I've piled up a huge amount of cars and have tons of pedestrians around when I decide to blow the entire thing up. Draw distances in this game are amazing, I will fire a rocket from ontop of a skyscraper and literally watch that thing fly over to the next island, impressive to say the least.
I love the graphics in this game, they aren't for everyone as they are very comic style but the contrasts and colours are just brilliant, the textures are rich as well. Lots of particle effects and great physics.
Multiplayer is great on Crackdown as well, but one thing that continually pisses me off is finding a player on Xbox Live to play with! I get more luck loading the demo to play with people rather than my full copy of the game.
Now what is weak about this game? Variety. It's all the same shit, there is almost NO variety in this game, don't buy it for a deep story line, because really all this game is about is ass kicking and cool cars. Sure there are "Agility Races" but they are more annoying than anything, an easy way to up your agility skill. There are also vehicle races but they are not very much fun at all (same reason as I wrote above about driving) However I'm a picky gamer and you may disagree about the extra missions. The real meat here though is ass kicking and everything else is a VERY secondary option.
This is a great game to pick up and play if you feel the need for wickedly huge explosions, insane jumping and tons of ass kicking. You may not want to sit there and play the whole thing through, then again, I did and I had tons of fun doing it, I wasn't wowed by the gameplay, but the graphics really impressed me. I put it in my reccomended pile.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Wow! those Xbox guys really are something else
and I totally mean that in a good way. I just got off the phone with the Xbox repair center peeps and I gotta say what a cool dude! we gabbed about games, he gave me some tips for Oblivion and was just all around a really cool person to chat to.
Usually the people at warranty centers are fucking assholes but this simply wasn't the case! This guy was better than ANY Nintendo rep I've ever talked to before (you hear that nintendo?) Anyway whats wrong with my box you ask? no its not the red rings of death, its just a horizontal alignment issues while displaying anything in progressive scan. It's annoying and I can't read any red text or anything.
Anyway, so they are sending me a coffin, it should arrive in a few days, expect lots of pics of it.
