specs

Forgive me if I'm absolutely sick and tired of military shooters. It seems that no matter what time of year, there's always a war game that's ready to thrust you into some third-world country and have you shoot a bunch of bad guys for 8 to 10 hours.

The format is severely outplayed, so it's no surprise that going into Spec Ops: The Line I was expecting more of the same. Thankfully, Spec Ops deviates away from conventional shooters to the point that it can be enjoyed independently, all while maintaining a very mature and gritty storyline. It's one of the first games to really vilify war, rather than reward it.… Read more

CheckMySpecs is a free utility that scans your PC, posts its specifications online, and ranks it, letting you compare your machine to other users' PCs. The software claims it doesn't collect or post any personal data, but it does display your PC's name and all your running programs as well as a lot of information about your installed apps, Internet connection, and whether you're using a firewall. If that's not alarming enough, you're basically given no chance to review the data or decide if you want to post it online; as soon as you click … Read more

What's next for Kindle hardware?

Well, a credible source has told CNET that Amazon will unveil a second-generation Kindle Fire this summer and that it's targeting July 31 for a launch event.

While we can't confirm the date, there's been plenty of chatter about new Kindles coming soon. Most recently, DigiTimes, which has been pretty spotty on the rumor front, reported that Amazon was "considering launching" a new $199 7-inch tablet with a higher resolution 1,280 by 800-pixel display "at the beginning of the third quarter."

The DigiTimes article cited the … Read more

Purportedly leaked specs of Research in Motion's new BlackBerry 10 line show a new all-touch smartphone that has a higher resolution screen than the Retina Display on the iPhone 4S, according to BlackBerry news site N4BB.com.

The specs include details of both the BackBerry 10 L-series, an all-touch-screen device, and the N-series, which features the traditional physical QWERTY keyboard.

The L-series has a 768x1,280-pixel screen resolution and has a screen that is 55mm wide; the N-series is 720x720-pixel resolution, with a 52mm to 53mm wide screen, according to an internal document that also shows images of the … Read more

iStat Menus is a comprehensive set of system monitoring tools, providing a quick-access view of system activity in your menu bar.

Formerly a free preference pane, iStat Menus is now a paid, standalone app--but it offers a lot of functionality to justify its price, along with a clean interface and very low system overhead. You need to open iStat Menus when you're configuring it, but most of the time you'll only see the app in an array of highly configurable menu-bar icons. iStat Menus can help you track CPU activity, memory usage, disk usage, disk activity, network activity, … Read more

Intel is offering more specifics on the features of future Windows 8 tablet at a conference in Beijing. It's a laudable goal, but can Intel make it happen this year?

Underneath the glass will be beat an Atom Z2760 "Clover Trail" chip: dual-core capable with "burst mode" (for quick bursts of performance when needed) and Hyperthreading -- the latter allows a dual-core chip to behave in quad-core-like fashion in some cases. … Read more

I can't blame you for not being excited by the "new iPad." With the screen turned off, there's really nothing to indicate that it's changed at all.

Obviously, the big update to the third-generation iPad is the vastly improved screen. We hear about product screen improvements all the time, so it's easy to diminish what Apple has done here. I think the QXGA-resolution screen is an impressive feat, but you can choose to believe the hype or not.

But the screen's not the whole story. Did you know that the new iPad is … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Just as dual-core chips represented the pinnacle of mobile devices last year, quad-core phones are shaping up to be the must-have feature on any premiere smartphone.

The problem is, do consumers really care?

Sure, the tech media and analyst community obsess over specifications, and at a show like Mobile World Congress, it's hard to fault a vendor for putting its best foot as competitors vie for their share of media attention. But with chip technology advancing so quickly, we're increasingly getting to the point where having the fastest processor doesn't necessarily equate to having the best … Read more

Nearly 18 months ago, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laid out plans to introduce a $100, education-focused tablet. While the design and features of that original mockup have changed, at CES 2012, OLPC and Marvell finally introduced a working model, the X0 3.0.

We briefly covered the announcement during CES week, but in getting some hands-on time with the device and speaking with the developers of this unique tablet, it got me thinking. With its low-power, low-cost approach to tablets, is there anything useful the XO 3.0 can teach consumer tablet manufacturers?

Honestly, to avoid burying the lede too much here, I'll say that I'm not sure it can. What sets the XO 3.0 apart from consumer tablets is that consumers won't actually have access to it.… Read more