Showing posts with label 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Nokia announces the N8.

Nokia has announced their new high-end model, the N8. This smartphone puts a great accent on multimedia and social networking. It has pushing capabilities to various services such as Twitter, RenRen and Facebook, and you can even view Web TV directly on the phone (CNN and National Geographic for example). Plus, you'll have free GPS navigation (+maps), forever.
A 12 mega-pixel camera has been implemented, with HD video recording capability. The N8 brings the new Symbian 3 operating system (how about Maemo, Nokia?). What it has inside isn't that impressive as the camera is, and we are talking about a modest 680 MHz ARM 11 processor and 256 MB RAM memory. It has 16 GB internal memory, which can be expanded with another additional 32 GB (microSD). There is a 3,5" capacitive touch screen, with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels.

The quantity of internal memory is too much, in my opinion. Nokia is far away from being an important "player" in the domain of smartphones. Their previous high-end model (N97) was a disaster, and this happened mainly because of really slack performance especially when more data is present on storage memory. Because the improvements at processor and RAM are not that important, a great pressure is being put on Symbian 3.

In my point of view, this smartphone doesn't bring enough change compared to previous models so it won't reach the success. Moreover, it could be a disaster, like his "smaller brother", the N97. The phone will be available in more colors, at a price of 370 euros without any taxes. Shipping starts from the third quarter of 2010.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

OpenArena (Quake III) game for Linux.

Most people refuse to use Linux because they say that there are no games. This is completely false. Linux is a great operating system, capable of running games (if they are designed for it), just like Windows. OpenArena (Quake III) is a good example. It runs exactly like on Windows, but on Ubuntu Linux.

There are even possibilities for running Windows designed games on Linux, by emulation, with a program called Wine. But I'll detail this into a future article. So, go on Ubuntu Software Center and search for OpenArena. It installs in minutes, and no additional configuration needed.

Please note that 3D accelerated graphic drivers are needed. If your computer doesn't run natively a 3D accelerated driver, go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers and select the driver (if available).