TechKnow Issue 2

Vol. 1 Issue 2

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A Tour of The PC Museum We show you the evolutionary steps that lead to the computers that we use today

Plus!

Breathe Life into Old Computers with a New OS A Look at the Origins of Office Software A Sneak Peek at Fall's Hottest Game Titles

www.TechKnowMag.com

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Contents 8

OS Cures for Old and Ailing PCs How to get an old PC running like new again with a simple free OS install

12 Gateway’s P7901h Made for gaming, the P7901h has big power at a palatable price 14 Office Origins We take a brief look at office software of the past and how it has evolved 18 Free-to-Air Satellites pt. II In part two of this three-part series, we tell you what you need to know to get your own satellite system set up 20 Buying Your First DSLR pt. II In the second part of this two-part series, we tell you what you need to know before picking a brand to go with 23 Panasonic’s Lumix DMC GH1 One example of a digital SLR, this camera distances itself from the herd by focusing on shooting videos in full HD

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26 Great Games for Less We tell you how classic games have been kept available and affordable 28 Batman: Arkham Asylum The Dark Knight’s latest foray into the video game world proves more fun than a fistful of batarangs 29 Console Gaming Corner We take a close look at what could be the Fall of Gaming... in a good way 32 A Tour of the PC Museum Full of history for nerds and noobs alike, Canada’s own PC Museum proves to be well worth the trip 34 Wi-Fire Review How to get online anywhere with this handy gadget 35 Apple News A quick look at two of the Mac’s latest products to hit stores 36 Last Call Andrew Moore-Crispin gives us his perspective on the pace of change 37 Up Next A look at TechKnow Magazine’s content for next month

TechKnow Magazine 136 Craighurst Ave, Toronto, ON, M4R 1K2 Phone: 416-898-9563 Fax: 416-487-7807

Editor-in-Chief Dorian Nicholson editor@techknowmag.com 416-823-5059

Advertising Sales Darcy Weir sales@techknowmag.com 416-898-9563

Contributing Editors Helen Bradley, Andrew Carruthers, Kevin Freeman, Gord Goble, Andrew MooreCrispin, Mike Palermo, Ray Richards, Marc Saltzman

Business Consultant Karim Rizk sales@techknowmag.com

Distribution Ontario TorStar Distribution Services British Columbia Trader Printed in Canada

by Ricter Web

Graphic Design Clipperart clipperart@gmail.com

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

3

EDITORIAL

Dorian Nicholson Editor-in-Chief

4

TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Out with the Old? Hello and welcome back to TechKnow Magazine! We’re pleased to present you with our second issue where we’ve got more great stories on all of your favourite tech toys.

We hope that you’ll enjoy reading it as much as you enjoyed flipping through our first issue. Of course, if you didn’t get a chance to pick up a copy of that one, I invite you to download a digital version from www.techknowmag.com.

This month our theme deals with tracing the many evolutionary steps that have led to the state of technology today. To get a better idea of how our computers have evolved, we took a trip to Canada’s own PC Museum, located in Brantford, Ontario. There we were able to get a look at a huge collection of computers of varying origins (many developed right here in Canada) and got to speak with the proprietor, Syd Bolton, about what significance these machines had on the industry.

The computers hold value for more than just the sentimental. These computers have marked much technological advancement as they developed, implemented new modes of data storage throughout the years and shed sizes and saved space as they improved.

An interesting page of the PC Museum website (www.pcmuseum.ca) shows how 45 computers, some of which dated back to the late 1970s, stacked up against one modern Dell desktop. The results are not surprising; the Dell beat the combined forces of all the other computers in three different fields: speed in Mhz, RAM in bytes, and hard drive memory in bytes. The hard drive space was the most impressive comparison as it showed that the modern computer had a hard drive more than 12 times the size of the 45 others combined.

Unfortunately for me, this higher capacity simply reminds me of how much we have to lose, and how they don’t make them like they used to.

My laptop’s hard drive recently died on me and, as I seem to lack the dedication required to maintain a consistent backup routine, I am forced to search far and wide looking for my lost files while borrowing a friend’s laptop. The bulk of those files that were required to make this magazine were, fortunately, found across USB keys, CDs, and various websites. However, countless other memories were lost due to absent-minded negligence.

There’s a lesson to be learned there somewhere.

The next hard drive that I buy — or laptop, should I be so ambitious — will be faster, better, stronger… ultimately better able to withstand whatever it was that brought it down after all these years (hopefully). And once I do replace the damaged equipment, I’m going to back it up

every month… no, every other week. Really, I am. And don’t give me that accusatory look; I’m sure you’ve been in my shoes before, and if you haven’t, you’re one of those wise guys who thinks it won’t happen to you. Keep thinking that way, but do yourself a favour and get your hard drive backed up anyways. It can’t hurt.

So now that leaves me with a hodgepodge of random files… Pictures from someone else’s vacation? College essays? A backup disc from December 31st, 1999? Why do I still have these?

Yet at the same time it’s a chance for a clean slate.

Knowing that all of the old detritus data has managed to sweep itself away brings me perhaps enough joy to overcome the loss of my recent misguided musings and Civilization 4 conquests. Now I’ll be able to do it all over again — but better, and more efficiently! No more will my downloads lead to the desktop which leads to a “desktop files” folder which leads invariably to the recycling bin. No more will I suffer through the slow speeds of a computer that starts up with more programs than I can recall installing. No more will I store copies of friends’ pictures from the Dominican Republic. Really, sometimes I feel like I’ve actually been there.

And once I do get a good system going, perhaps I’ll keep a record of my progress backed up on a USB key somewhere. That way if the system ever fails, I’ll be able to look at the notes that I made to myself and see where I went wrong.

And I once again invite you to do the same, lest your computer or hard drive wind up breaking and leaving you bemoaning the loss of many hard nights’ work of writing, scribbling or what-have-you.

At the same time I invite you to read further into the magazine. We’ve got the second instalment of both the FTA Satellite series by Andrew Carruthers, and the DSLR Buyer’s Guide by Ray Richards. At the same time, we’ve got a column by Andrew Moore-Crispin and a piece on how an OS might help your computer run again — providing it isn’t massive hard drive failure that put it down.

There are others, including the promised tour of the PC Museum, but I’ll leave them to you to find. There is also more exclusive content for the website on the way, so I implore you to check us out at www.techknowmag.com once you’re at your computer.

And while you’re there, do a back-up. Trust me.

Enjoy the magazine, Dorian Nicholson Editor-in-Chief

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OS Cures for an Old and Ailing PC Puppy Linux Current version: 4.2 Download size: ~100MB www.puppylinux.org $free and open source System requirements: Pentium 166MMX CPU, 128MB RAM, CDROM for CD install or a USB port Pros: - Small - Persistent Live option - Easy to install and use Cons: - Some menu items have confusing labels - While largely wizard-based, may confuse newbies

Puppy Linux 8

TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

With the pace of change, it doesn’t seem like it was long since you bought a new PC... but now, it has perhaps seen better days. Operating systems try to do more and more, offer shinier and better looking graphics, build in all kinds of useful (sometimes extraneous) programs and generally get better at what they do. These better, faster, stronger operating systems leave old PCs in the dust; the computer you bought three years ago running Windows XP might feel a little creaky now. It’s not Vista-ready, even with Window’s ambitiously low system requirements (1GB of RAM, while listed as a minimum, is not sufficient to run Vista). To say nothing of the PC or laptop you had prior to that which is likely sitting somewhere collecting dust.

We’re not going to talk about what PC belongs on your must-buy list. Rather, we’re going to discuss how to breathe some new life into that old, ailing and failing PC. The one that’s perhaps running Windows 98 or, heaven forbid, Windows ME. The PC you grabbed from a thrift store or garage sale for less than $50 all in, but that you haven’t gotten around to actually doing anything with as yet.

Don’t count on for-profit operating system companies to offer pared down operating systems. Their bottom lines rely on the irrevocable forward-march of progress. Instead, we’ll be looking at open source operating systems that can make an old PC new again.

The Cheaper Nettop Option Attempting to recreate the netbook phenomenon in the desktop space, some companies have come up with what they’re calling “nettops.” These are small, power-friendly and easy to use desktop computers that plug in to an existing keyboard, mouse and monitor to get up and running fast. They offer little in the way of disk space, relying largely on the cloud computing concept, and you’re not likely to be editing any videos or doing much in the way of photo editing, short of cropping and resizing pictures.

By using one of the Linux distros below — with the possible exception of Arch Linux, with is far from newbie friendly — you can quickly and easily turn an older PC into what is effectively a nettop. It won’t be as energy efficient as a nettop. Indeed, older computers don’t have the benefit of some of the advanced power management desktop and laptop computers enjoy today. However, it will do all of the basic computing tasks: browse the web, send and receive email, handle word processing and spreadsheet documents, view photos, play music and more.

Puppy Linux Puppy Linux is the brainchild of Barry Kauler and the core platform is his own creation. A user community creates what are called “Puplets,” app packages and tweaks to existing open source applications that optimize them for Puppy.

This canine companion is a very small, light-weight operating system that’s easy on system resources, light on storage space and that users can opt to run entirely in RAM without ever installing on the hard drive as a “persistent live” session. Persistent live means that some data is written back to the hard drive, USB key or even writable CD that houses Puppy. The boot table, which tells the computer where to find its loaded operating system, doesn’t need to be modified. That said, users can opt to install Puppy Linux and use it as a main operating system. In so doing, they’ll get a system that’s fast to start and that does just about everything that’s needed: e-mail, web surfing, image editing, word processing, spreadsheet creation, music and video.

Unlike some Linux distributions that require at least some proficiency with Linux and the terminal window, we’re consistently impressed with the way Puppy just works. Setting up wired or wireless networking and Internet access requires just a few mouse clicks, partitioning hard drives is simple. Peripherals like printers and scanners seem to work with minimal effort.

DSL - Damn Small Linux Current version: Download size: 50MB www.damnsmalllinux.org $free and open source System requirements: 486 processor, 24MB RAM, CD ROM or USB port Pros: - It’s damn small - Easy install - Low system requirements Cons: - Dated, almost historical, graphical user interface - Help can be hard to find should a problem arise

Even Puppy’s already meagre minimum system requirements are debatable. Some users report getting versions of Puppy up and running on 75MHz machines with a mere 40MB of RAM. When all else fails with my PC, I bring out my live Puppy Linux CD as it always loads without issue and allows me to diagnose computer problems.

DSL - Damn Small Linux Damn Small Linux (DSL), as the name suggests, is a tiny distro. Its development was brought about as a challenge to get a fully operational OS onto a business card CD. Remember those? They’re tiny, sometimes irregularly-shaped optical discs with capacity of 55MB. They made it. While business card CDs never quite caught on, DSL did. And through its development, its contributors promise that the distro will never grow beyond its 50MB size.

Given its small size and moderate system specs, DSL is a little rough around the edges where visuals are concerned.

However, it’s highly polished from a usability standpoint. Consider it cloud computing that was years ahead of its time.

While there’s a rudimentary word processor, an image viewer, PDF viewer, a chat client and several card games present and accounted for, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped back in time. That said, it works and it works well. Our net connection was recognized and configured immediately. We had some keyboard trouble but that was quickly rectified via the DSL Control Panel item called, appropriately enough, “Keyboard.”

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September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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Arch Linux Current version: 2009.08, 2.6.30-ARCH kernel Download size: ~365MB fore “core” package www.archlinux.org $free and open source System requirements: Pentium 166MMX CPU, 128MB RAM, CDROM for CD install or a USB port Pros: - Geek distro - Small and lightweight once installed - Looks great

DSL (Damn Small Linux), left

Arch Linux in action, right

Cons: - Not at all newbie friendly - Difficult install process Arch Linux If your PC is newer and more capable but not quite up to Ubuntu specs, Arch may be for you. Arch uses a dock style taskbar, familiar to Mac OSX users, though without some of the graphical flair. The system’s raison d’etre is in line with the theme of this article: to give older systems a new lease on life without sacrificing the niceities that we’ve grown used to in newer operating systems. Users whose machines are close to the minimums still get a workable operating system that does just about everything they need to do.

Initial setup is nowhere near as friendly as some other Linux distros. In fact, a certain level of Linuxpertise is required. Arch Linux is clearly not made with beginners in mind. Instead, would-be installers are presented with some rather unhelpful text at the top of a command line interface.

For your installation effort though, you’re presented with a clean, fast desktop. The OS is pared down because of its philosophy of “install only what you need.” Rather than saddling users with a laundry list of apps they might use, Arch gives users access to download and install the apps that are actually going to use.

Xubuntu, above Xubuntu Current version: 9.04 Download size: 617MB www.xubuntu.org $free and open source System requirements: 1.5GB HDD space, 128MB RAM (192MB for Live CD) Pros: - Good documentation - Large user community - Clean and attractive desktop interface Cons: - Higher recommended system specs - Some reported power management issues on laptops - Relatively large download size

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Xubuntu Xubuntu is a flavour of Ubuntu, the most popular (at least from a mass branding perspective) Linux distro to date.

However, it’s pared down specifically to run on older systems in Xubuntu. Many of the same positive points that make Ubuntu popular apply here too: A large user base and community that can help should a problem arise, great documentation, more and more manufacturers supporting the distro with drivers for their hardware and so on.

Xubuntu runs on XFCE, designed to be a light-weight window and menu manager.

The Live CD can be run as a session, to allow you to get a feel for the OS and decide whether it’s the right one for you. In the live session, you can choose to install the OS, repartition drives and write the boot table, but if your PC has less than 192MB of RAM, the install will not work. For these PCs, there’s a command line install option that’s present on the Live CD and only requires 128MB RAM. At the minimum system specs, you’ll have a workable PC that looks good and is easy to use. However, it will sometimes act sluggish. For best results, the recommended 256MB RAM is the way to go.

Within Xubuntu, users get the Firefox browser, Thunderbird email, a word processor, spreadsheet editor, simple image editor, PDF viewer and the like. There are also a few games.

In the Synaptic package manager, you’ll find literally thousands of programs available for free download; everything from Wi-Fi scanners to HAM radio programs, VoIP, IRC and much more.

By Andrew Moore-Crispin

Gateway P7901h Big power at a palatable price Gateway’s latest performance notebook, currently available only in Canada, kills the frills and sticks to the business of fun with some serious gaming-oriented components PC gamers have been in a tight spot for a while now. With desktops on their way out the door, spending a couple grand on a high-power tower doesn’t make much sense. On the flip side, laptops just don’t offer the sort of performance you can get from a desktop (unless you spend $5,000-plus on a machine like Alienware’s monstrous new M17x).

Gateway’s P7901h, available through FutureShop, aims to help wean gamers from desktops to notebooks by offering a surprisingly rich mobile gaming experience without leaving a crater in your bank account. It’s been stripped clean of frills (there’s no Bluetooth, Blu-ray, or subwoofer, to name a few) but what it lacks in embellishments it makes up for in its core components — the important bits of hardware that make resource intensive games run like Usain Bolt.

The Gateway P7901h, open and ready for action

Design There’s no point beating around the bush: The P7901h is a bit garish. Its black glossy lid features giant coppercoloured letters reading “FX” surrounded by a black and grey checker pattern that’s bound by a couple of silver lines.

The interior is a bit less showy — the copper frame around the keyboard seems less incongruous than on the lid, and the checker pattern on the wrist rest is so faint as to be almost invisible — but the touch-sensitive media buttons glow with what appears to be the same hue of disagreeable orange that once lit up the buttons of our parents’ VCRs. Plus, a couple of unsightly metal hooks that keep the lid locked in place when closed protrude unpleasantly on either side of the webcam at the top of the screen.

Aside from its unfortunately noisy appearance, the P7901h’s form factor is more or less standard for a 17-inch notebook. The dual-hinge design is sturdy, and there aren’t any creaks or squeaks, despite the pure plastic chassis.

The keyboard is full-sized and has a numeric keypad on the right, and the touchpad is smooth and sensitive, though the mouse buttons clack a little loudly for our liking.

A 4.1kg mass makes Gateway’s notebook a bit heavy for its category, but its 1.5-inch girth is about average. Put simply, the P7901h looks like your basic 17-inch notebook, just with some gaudy flare Gateway hopes will appeal to gamers.

Performance As we’ve already mentioned, the P7901h doesn’t have much in the way of extras, opting instead to give gamers as much power as possible for minimum price.

Under the hood you’ll find a GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB of discrete DDR3 video memory, 4GB of all-purpose DDR3 RAM, and an Intel Core2 Quad Q9000 processor running at 2.0GHz with a 1066 front side bus. These components combine to create a Windows Experience Index of 5.7. What’s more, they deliver very respectable gaming performance, as proven in our tests.

We squeezed about 45 frames-per-second out of Unreal Tournament III at maximum resolution, and over 70 when we bumped the display down to 1024 by 768.

Meanwhile, our World in Conflict benchmark resulted in a respectable 30-frames-per second with graphics settings and resolution maxed, and 65-frames-per second when we nudged the settings and resolution down a couple of grades.

Other games tested — including Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty: World at War — ran smoothly with high graphical detail and medium to high resolutions.

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Our conclusion: The P7901h is a very respectable — if not quite leading edge — gaming rig. But that gaming performance comes at a cost to other potential applications.

Many similarly priced and sized books come with Blu-ray drives and displays with a resolution higher than the P7901h’s modest 1440 by 900 LCD. What’s more, the majority of these machines also offer more robust speakers than the paltry 2 watt stereo setup included here, which lacks an integrated subwoofer.

Hopefully you have a decent set of cans lying around.

Battery Life and Connectivity We managed to eke out some impressive stretches of operation with the P7901h’s 9-cell lithium ion battery.

We got through all 125 minutes of the DVD edition of Iron Man on a single charge with the screen set to full brightness and using a set of headphones. And we enjoyed nearly 200 minutes of operation while

working on Word documents with the screen set to dim and wireless switched off. As to be expected, gaming resulted in the worst battery life. The best we achieved while playing was about 100 minutes.

The P7901h has a standard Internet connectivity package, including a 10/100 Ethernet port, 802.11 a/b/g/Draft-N wireless networking, and an old-school modem (just in case there happen to be some troglodytes in the market for a gaming notebook).

Lining the edges are three USB ports, an eSATA jack, and one FireWire port. A VGA connector facilitates hookup to most PC monitors, and if you want to jack into something with a higher resolution you can use the HDMI port. A five-in-one card reader looks after memory media while a standard ExpressCard/54 slot will let users plug in extra boards when necessary.

Again, however, the trimmings are missing: There’s no Bluetooth, infrared, or DisplayPort jack.

Recommendation: Good for Gamers The P7901h is comparable to a moderately equipped gaming desktop, and, at $1,799, doesn’t cost much more. It lacks some of the perks typically found in machines in this price range — notably a Blu-ray drive and a higher-resolution display — but that will likely be a fair trade-off for avid PC players who want to keep costs down.

So long as beautiful industrial design and high-def movies aren’t a priority, gamers would do well to check out Gateway’s Canadian exclusive.

By Chad Sapieha

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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Office Origins A brief look at office software of the past If you’ve only started using computers in the last 10 years or so, the likes of Microsoft Word and Excel may be the word processor and spreadsheet that you are most familiar with. However these programs weren’t around when computers first gained popularity and, in those days, other names like Wordstar and Visicalc dominated the market. In fact, Visicalc is often thought of as being responsible for the adoption of PCs in many businesses. This month we’ll introduce you to some of the programs that were the forerunners of today’s office programs.

Visicalc was the first spreadsheet and widely recognized to be a key factor in the growing popularity of the personal computer

Wordperfect made use of function keys and most users needed a template to remember what to press to get what feature

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Word Processing with Wordstar The first of the big name word processing packages was Wordstar which was available for the CP/M operating system used on many early computers — prior to the IBM PC. Wordstar was a text-based word processor released in 1978. While you couldn’t add images to your documents and you didn’t have a choice of fonts, it did have quite sophisticated tools for moving text around a document and for formatting text.

Wordstar commands were control key based so you would, for example, mark a block of text by pressing Ctrl KB at the beginning of the text and pressing Ctrl KK at the end. You could then copy or delete the marked block by pressing Ctrl KC or Ctrl KY. Wordstar let you format paragraphs of text using custom created tabs and you could align text, set justification and change margins.

Wordstar remained popular until the launch of Microsoft Windows — like many other text word processors it failed to make a successful transition to being a graphic based word processor and it was soon replaced in the market by Microsoft’s Word program.

In the early days of the IBM PC Wordstar faced stiff competition from another text-based word processor, WordPerfect. Wordperfect lead Wordstar in popularity in the late 80s and early 90s. With the IBM PC came the first colour screens and WordPerfect was notable for its blue screen and

white text. In fact, if you are using Word 2003 or earlier you can make your Microsoft Word screen look like this by choosing Tools > Options > General tab and select Blue background, white text - this feature was included in Word to help WordPerfect users to transition to Word by making the screen look familiar.

Comparing Features Also in the General tab in Word 2003 and earlier you will see the options Help for WordPerfect users and Navigation keys for WordPerfect users — features which helped make Word more friendly to thousands of WordPerfect users. These features no longer exist in Word 2007 but they do give some indication as to how popular WordPerfect (particularly version 5.1) was in the market.

WordPerfect could import images, show a preview of the document and it included a macro language which made it easy to create sophisticated macros which could perform tests and behave differently in different circumstances. It was also one of the first word processors to offer tables in word processed documents.

WordPerfect included a reveal codes feature which showed the underlying codes that controlled the formatting of a document. This made it easier for users to see what was happening in their documents and to troubleshoot problems — the fact that Word did not offer a similar feature was perceived by diehard WordPerfect users to be a distinct disadvantage of Word.

Later versions of WordPerfect included a one line menu system but earlier versions didn’t even include this. Instead, the program made use of the function keys, F1 - F10 both alone and when combined with Ctrl, Alt and Shift to provide access to program features. As you couldn’t see any instructions on the screen, most WordPerfect users placed a paper template on the keyboard on top of the function keys as a visual reminder of the features available and the keystrokes required to access them.

CONTEST

Calling All Readers!

Have a comment about the mag? A particular story that you liked? A favourite piece of technology that we didn’t mention in one of our roundups?

Well if that’s the case, or if you just feel like having your voice heard, send an email to letters@techknowmag.com. Not only will your letter be featured in our Letters section, you’ll also be eligible for a TechKnow prize pack.

Next month we’re giving away a copy of McAfee Total Protection 2009 to the writer of the Letter of the Month. Send in your comments for your chance to enter!

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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While WordPerfect made the transition to Windows, problems with compatibility saw it lose market share to Microsoft Word. However, it remained the program of choice for many legal offices because its sophisticated mail merge and macro functions let users create complex customized documents such as court documents very easily. Even today, no word processor can match the ease and sophistication of these early word processors in this area.

WordPerfect had a reveal codes feature which showed the codes that were used to format the document.

Later versions of WordPerfect included a menu line accessed by pressing Alt + =

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Calculating with Spreadsheets The earliest spreadsheets are credited with being a key reason for the rise in popularity of the IBM PC. These programs let users make complex calculations and analyze “what if” scenarios within hours that previously could have taken days or weeks to complete using calculators. This savings in time easily justified the cost of the computer and the spreadsheet software. The first spreadsheet was called Visicalc and like subsequent spreadsheet programs it comprised a series of rows and columns and users entered text, numbers or formulas into the cells to make their calculations.

Unlike Excel, the function prefix in Visicalc (and later in Lotus 123) was the @ symbol rather than an equals sign and the functions used “..” where Excel uses “:”. However, the legacy remains and you can still type @sum(A1..A4) in Excel and it recognizes this as a function and converts it to read =Sum(A1:A4). In addition, in the early spreadsheet programs, menus were accessed using the forward slash (/) key to display them. Even today, in Excel 2007, you can access the Excel menus using this key — the same keystroke doesn’t work in any other program and is offered to make it easier for Lotus 123 users to move across to Excel.

Although Lotus 123 was an MS DOS application it had a handy macro feature which let you create macros as sets of keystrokes that you might type at the keyboard. You could, for example, enter the keystrokes into a cell in a worksheet and then run the macro from that cell to perform repetitive tasks. These macros could also do things like gather information from a user and perform tests and act differently in different circumstances.

Lotus 123 also included a charting feature which let you create charts automatically from spreadsheet data.

Office Overlord Microsoft Office was a key reason why many older MS Dos applications failed to make a successful transition to the new Windows operating system. Microsoft Office was the first successful “all in one” office application offering a suite of applications that all looked the same, worked similarly and worked well together. The strength of the Microsoft Office suite made it attractive for a business to buy a suite of software instead of lots of standalone applications that all needed different skills to operate. When it launched, Microsoft Office was the only really good suite of applications available and while the owners of Wordperfect and Lotus subsequently rounded up sufficient good applications to create and launch competing suites of their own, by the time they did, Microsoft had the market share and the rest, as they say, is history.

If you are curious to see what WordPerfect and Visicalc look like you can download a version of WordPerfect 5.1 from http://vetusware.com/ and a copy of Visicalc from www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm. You will need to run them from a Command prompt window and preferably in Windows XP or Vista (32 bit). It’s a fun way to see how things used to be and, a trip down memory lane for those of us who remember these programs only too well.

By Helen Bradley

TECH BITS Netbooks from Nokia?

Though it comes as no surprise that netbooks — ultra portable PCs first pioneered by Acer — are soon to be manufactured by the likes of Google and Apple, another well-known company is set to make their own as well… mobile communications giant, Nokia. Considering the company’s natural inclination towards mobile products this might seem like a logical next step but it will be interesting to see how Nokia manages to market its “Booklet 3G” to compete with the already established like of Dell, HP, and the many others already fighting for netbook supremacy.

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Wireless Charging in Sight

www.techknowmag.com and check regularly for new updates!

While dreams of flying cars and teleportation are still nothing more than lofty goals, the ability to charge our favourite devices without wires is slowly becoming a reality.

Wireless chargers — or chargers that function through induction — are increasingly being bandied about on the Internet as the next big technological marvel.

Duracell recently announced its myGrid charger which will allow users to place their phones on top of the grill-like device and have them be charged through proximity. While not capable of charging objects from across the home, or even the room, it is a step forward and will be released later this year.

Now to see how those against cell phones and microwaves react to that bit of news…

You can even subscribe for free to get the latest edition delivered straight to your inbox, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to stay in the know!

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September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

17

Free-to-Air Satellites

Scoping the Satellite Install: What Needs to be Done Install the mast to a secure, rigid spot so that it is absolutely vertical to the ground and your dish has line-of-sight in all seasons. This is the hardest task.

Run your RG-6 cable as short a distance as possible from the dish to your satellite receiver and DON’T power up the receiver until everything is plugged in.

It sends power over the RG-6 cable so plugging in the cable while it’s on can cause damage.

Attach the dish to the mast and the feedhorn to the dish if you haven’t already and plug everything in.

Point the dish due south, set the prescribed elevation and turn on the receiver. Put the receiver in Setup Antenna or Signal Strength mode or the equivalent.

Point the dish to the azimuth angle and either using a satellite finder or a loud friend and your receiver, search for a signal. Starting at the azimuth angle, slowly move to the right 1 degree at a time, allowing a few seconds for the signal to be acquired. If you go 3 degrees from your original angle and don’t receive a signal, reset and slowly move to the left. If nothing is still found adjust the elevation slightly and repeat.

Strength should be in the 70’s or higher.

Ground your cables and weather seal around them.

You’re done.

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Even though we may be entering a recovery, for many people “TV dinner” may still have an “or” in the middle of it. Fortunately cable companies have been having another bellwether year despite the recession and basic cable has gone up by over 50 per cent in the last four years for some subscribers. You can fix those costs with an FTA satellite and we’re going to go through the details of choosing a package.

Firstly, you need to make sure you can have a clear line-of-sight to the particular satellite or set of satellites you want to receive from. Check out last month’s article on how to find satellites and the channels they carry and where they sit in the sky at www.techknowmag.com. Also, be aware that C-band is an older type of signal that requires a BUD (Big Ugly Dish) of about six feet in diameter. When channel searching, confirm that the channel you want is actually Ku-band. After which, an invaluable tool for figuring out line-of-sight to a particular satellite is dishpointer.com.

When you’ve decided on which bird or birds (satellites) to receive, next determine what type of dish will work best for you.

Choosing the Dish Size and Shape Dish choices are round, elliptical or toroidal. Your round dish is designed to receive a signal from one satellite at a time, focusing the signal to a single LNB (Low Noise Block downconverter) and is a good choice if you are going to use a motor to rotate the dish to multiple satellites. The key issue with round dishes, as with any shape, is picking a large enough size to receive a clear signal. In this case, bigger is always better as a larger dish will be less susceptible to “rain fade”. Rain fade is the degradation of a satellite signal due to rain, snow or ice. Of course, bigger is uglier and more expensive too — most people are fine with a 33” round dish.

The next dish type is elliptical which allows you to add multiple LNBs as the elliptical shape focuses the signal across a line, allowing for reception from different satellites. However, satellites can be as close as two degrees apart and if you want to get two that are that close together you’ll have to use a motor. Ellipticals

need a minimum of nine degrees of satellite separation.

The nice thing about multi-LNB elliptical dishes is that you don’t have to wait for the motor to turn to another satellite to get another channel. But convenience isn’t free and while instantaneously switching between satellites is great, small ellipticals are more likely to diffuse an incoming signal and therefore reduce the quality of that signal.

Finally, toroidal dishes are essentially souped-up elliptical dishes allowing a broader sweep across the sky from east to west, more LNBs and better gain (reception) than ellipticals. However, you pay a lot more for them and they’re not for the faint of heart to set up. The next thing to contend with is the type of LNB you’re going to get.

Choosing LNBs The LNB is the actual antenna that receives the signal collected and concentrated by the dish. Most LNBs are integrated with the feedhorn so sometimes you’ll see them called LNBF where “F” is for feedhorn. The feedhorn is the pole that sticks forward from the dish.

There are two basic types of LNBs, circular and linear polarized. The vast majority of FTA channels are standard North American linear polarized. When looking at FTAlist.com or LyngSat.com, just after the transponder frequency you’ll see an H or V which denotes a horizontal or vertical linear polarization or an R or L, which indicates a right or left circular

polarization. For purchase, you only need to know that it’s linear or circular for a particular channel. If you live on the east coast of Canada, consider a universal linear LNB as it will handle European satellites with their different frequency range. Also, there are now all-in-one linear/circular polarized LNBs available which are pretty handy for a motorized system but aren’t cheap by comparison.

There are dual and quad LNBs of each type. A dual LNB can feed two separate receivers from the same signal and a quad can feed four. This allows different televisions to be tuned to different channels on the same satellite feed when you have a separate receiver for each TV. When looking for an LNB, check for a low noise temperature as the lower this figure is, the better the LNB is. The same is true for noise measurements in decibels (dB).

Odds, Ends and Receivers The last major component to a system is the receiver.

Ideally you should get one with blind scan. Blind scan allows a receiver to check for unexpected transponders (bunches of channels) that aren’t documented which can lead to a nice surprise or two.

Without this, it will only check for known transponders and you’ll have to wait for a firmware update to get new transponder info. Getting a USB port versus a serial port for software updates is a better choice and finally, make sure it’s not a fake. There are quite a few counterfeit receivers out there and while a Pansat receiver may not seem like a Gucci bag, it does need regular firmware updates and your fake Pansat may just die due to no support or warranty. “Picture quality and warranty are the most important features for a receiver,” according to Dereck Dorigo of Ground Control Electronics.

The last two things you likely need are a DiSEqC (Digital Satellite Equipment Control) switch or motor and a length of RG-6 cable. The DiSEqC switch should be weather resistant and have a low noise rating. It’s used for switching between LNBs. If you want a motorized system, well, you’ll need a DiSEqC motor.

To support the motor, your receiver should support DiSEqC 1.2 or 2.2 or USALS (DiSEqC 1.3). Finally, be sure to use RG-6 cable as it is rated to cope with the still high frequencies coming out of the LNB, and it matters. Further, the longer the run of cable, the better it needs to be. So there you have it, you’ll need a dish, one or more LNBs, a receiver, possibly a DiSEqC switch for multiple LNBs or a DiSEqC motor and some RG-6 cable.

By Andrew Carruthers

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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Buying Your First DSLR

PART II

What to know before picking a brand Last month we began our exploration of the DSLR world by outlining some basic facts required to make an informed decision regarding your first camera purchase. We discovered that megapixel count isn’t particularly important, RAW format availability on your camera is, and discussed various desirable lens attributes — noting that generally the unit offered as part of a camera kit possesses few of these.

This time around, we’ll continue our examination with an in-depth assessment of key elements to look for when making a selection from among the often dizzying array of available models.

Process of Elimination Given this enormous assortment, one of the easiest ways to cull your list of purchase candidates is to eliminate models from all manufacturers save two: Nikon and Canon. Why? There are many reasons, but perhaps the most compelling relates to lenses.

If you recall, last month we discovered that while camera bodies come and go, lenses are forever — generally retaining their overall utility and much of their resale value. So why does that matter? Well, for starters, if you find you get serious about your new hobby, you’ll want to have access to the widest range of top-quality lenses that your camera can accommodate. Nikon and Canon have each been in business for nearly a century (Nikon founded 1917, Canon in 1937) and take pains to ensure backward compatibility in their new bodies with their legacy lens line-up, meaning you’ll have a selection of literally hundreds of compatible lenses.

If, on the other hand, you’ve purchased another brand of camera and find yourself ultimately limited in your photographic pursuits due to the availability of gear, you’ll discover that having made a significant financial investment in one brand, it’s often difficult to abandon it in favour of another.

Ask any professional photographer what make of DSLR they use and invariably they’ll reply with one of these two brands. Lens selection is certainly one of the reasons for this, but beyond that fact, while the entry-level and intermediate field is jam-packed with competitors, there are far fewer manufacturers that address the hardware needs of the professional — Nikon and Canon being preeminent among them.

So, in selecting a first DSLR from either of these companies, you’ll have a clear progression from novice to professional in terms of equipment, without having to abandon your old gear.

Non-Essential Features Now that we’ve covered some primary purchase considerations, it’s time to delve into what specifics to look for when evaluating an individual camera.

Aside from megapixels, two features often touted as significant by camera manufacturers would be scene modes (e.g. Sports, Kids, Landscape, etc.) and built-in image editing. If you use these as factors in making a purchase decision, you are doing yourself a disservice.

On-board image editing is pretty useless for the majority of applications. Does it make more sense to use a canned effect in-camera and judge its rendering on the tiny LCD screen provided, or, given you are going to be processing the RAW file on your PC anyway, make editing decisions in an environment where you can properly see the photo at a 1:1 scale? I think everyone can agree the latter is preferable.

Secondly, are you not buying a DSLR to give you more creative freedom and better image quality? Why then would you want the camera to make important artistic choices for you by selecting a scene mode? The only modes one really needs on a camera are Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual Mode.

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

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Major Modes Aperture Priority allows the photographer to select a particular f-stop in order to achieve a desired depth of field, while the on-board computer automatically selects the appropriate shutter speed to maintain a correct exposure. This is the most frequently used mode for the majority of photographers given it provides the highest degree of artistic control over the resultant image while still gaining significant benefit in terms automated exposure management by virtue of camera selected shutter speed.

Shutter Priority is the opposite of Aperture Priority in that the photographer controls the shutter speed while the camera decides what the appropriate aperture would be to achieve an accurate exposure. This mode is most often used by sports and bird photographers who want to ensure they are able to freeze the action in a frame without any motion blur... or to perhaps introduce blur depending on their artistic vision for the shot.

Manual Mode, as the name implies, gives complete control to the photographer for setting both shutter speed and aperture. This mode is most commonly used in flash photography, night shoots, studio work, and situations where the lighting conditions (e.g. extremes in dynamic range) are fooling the camera’s built-in meter and resulting in an inaccurate depiction of the scene.

What’s Really Important Some specifics to look for which are important include things that may not be initially obvious, such as viewfinder coverage. This may come as a surprise, but the majority of consumer and prosumer level camera bodies do not show the entirety of the scene they are capturing in their viewfinders. This results in photographers capturing extraneous details in their images and making it difficult to frame the shot correctly without having to crop the file in post. Look for a camera that has decent viewfinder coverage — at the very least 95 per cent, though higher is better.

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

Good body ergonomics are key to any purchase decision — how well the camera fits in your hand, how easily you can reach the primary controls, and how readily you can access the most commonly used functions. If you often find yourself buried in onscreen menus trying to set your camera to a particular mode of operation, you’ll be missing shots. The vast majority of the most frequently used options should be accessible from the camera body itself without having to access any on-screen menu whatsoever. Your fingers should be able to find the majority of these without the assistance of your eyes as you look through the viewfinder. Add to this the availability of a vertical grip for taking portrait oriented shots without going into contortions and you’ve got your ergonomic concerns covered.

Another often overlooked specification is battery life. If you’re out in the field and line up the perfect shot, it’s not going to be much good to you if you don’t have the power to take it. Your battery should ideally provide you with a full day’s worth of shots without having to swap.

As mentioned in last month’s article, unless you’re going to be shooting outside exclusively, and always on sunny days, high ISO performance is extremely important.

If your shots are a grainy mess at over ISO 400, you’re not going to be a happy camper. Take a few well exposed shots inside the store at ISO 800, then zoom in to 100 per cent magnification and scroll around the image paying particular attention to the areas in shadow. Is the noise (graininess) tolerable? If not, time to look at another model.

Taking your time, as well as bearing the preceding points in mind while selecting the right camera for you is paramount. It can determine the difference between embarking on an expensive and frustrating experiment, or the discovery of a lifelong passion.

Here’s hoping you experience the latter!

By Ray Richards

DMC GH1 Make: Panasonic Camera Type: Digital SLR Price: $1899 Pros: - An excellent DSLR and video camera - Shoots in Full HD, 1080p - Smaller than most Cons: - Price not for newcomers - Onboard audio not the best

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 It would seem imaging technology, when compared to most other electronics, is somewhat slow to evolve. In fact, not much had changed in the way we capture light until the advent of digital imaging, which one could argue didn’t really gain mainstream acceptance until the mid-nineties. Similarly, with digital cameras, aside from adding megapixels, there’s not really much you can do to make them a more lucrative product… or is there?

Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GH1 is the first Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera to take video capture seriously. While this is very much an intuitive step forward in digital imaging evolution, it has taken Panasonic and their GH1 to grease the wheels of other DSLR manufacturers to start incorporating high-quality video with controllability in their products. Where others have added video merely to substantiate a bullet-point on a camera’s “features” list, the GH1 shoots Full HD 1080p video at the film industry standard 24fps with the

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option for complete manual control over the capture settings.

Other “HDSLRs” that came before the GH1, like the Nikon D90 or Canon 5DmkII, made sacrifices to their video modes making them less than ideal.

Sensor and Lenses The GH1 uses a fairly new 12.1megapixel, micro four thirds CMOS image sensor (17.3mm x 13mm), which is roughly half the surface area of the APS-C sized sensors (25.1mm x 16.7mm) used in Canon and Nikon DSLR cameras in the same price range. Realistically all this means from an image properties standpoint is that your depth of field will be slightly deeper and your lens’s range is essentially doubled when compared to the 35mm standard (e.g. a 50mm m4:3s lens will look more like a 100mm lens used on APS-C cameras).

The upshot to this is that micro four thirds lenses are much smaller than their APS-C and Full Frame counterparts. In fact, with the GH1 body also being noticeably smaller than competing cameras, the overall difference in size can be quite substantial. It isn’t pocket-camera small, but the GH1 with a mid-range lens (17-45mm) is definitely more portable than a traditional DSLR. Speaking of lenses, the Lumix G Vario 14-140 (35mm equivalent is 28-280mm) that comes with the GH1 is one of the best kit lenses I’ve used. I should mention that I’m coming at it from a video-centric point of view (which I’m sure is what the Lumix G Vario was specifically developed to take advantage of), but all of the lens’s strengths will carry over to your stills as well. The F4.0-5.8 aperture is somewhat slow, but the MEGA Optical Image Stabilization and continuous autofocus — both of which work in video and photography modes — more than make up for it. Better still, the lens is virtually silent as it zooms and focuses, which is insanely impressive (and necessary) when recording video.

A Video is Worth 24,000 Words (per second) The reason HDSLRs are incredibly important from a filmmaking and video standpoint is that they offer the properties and strengths of real film cameras costing tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of dollars more. Interchangeable lenses, film-like depth of field, and excellent low-light performance are features inherent to DLSRs, but have never been available on consumer, or even most prosumer, cameras.

The GH1 uses either MotionJpeg or 17Mbit AVCHD in order to capture 1080p or 720p video. You can take RAW still pictures while recording video as well, during which the video will pause for a second on the same frame as the picture being taken. In order to offer the most cinematic look the AVCHD 1080p video uses 24 frames per second (wrapped in a 30fps codec, as per NTSC standards). On the other hand, the AVCHD 720p mode captures video at 60 frames per second,

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

which can then be used for incredibly smooth slow-motion or vivid detail when capturing high-speed images. And if you want regular ol’ video, the MotionJpeg option captures 720p at 30 frames (like most consumer level video cameras).

It’s a balance that photographers and videographers will quickly realize covers all their bases — if shooting an interview in a controlled environment, 1080p24 will give the best image-quality televisions can handle, and when the action is intense and every frame counts, 720p60 will make sure nothing is missed.

As mentioned, the GH1 allows you to control every major image setting when shooting video. Things like Aperture, ASA/ISO rating (100-1600 in video mode), shutter speed (1/4000th max), and custom white-balance means you’re getting all of the manual control offered by prosumer video gear. And if you need a quick fix, setting it to complete auto-mode is only a click away.

The audio, while better than other HDSLRs out there, is unfortunately handled automatically by the camera. Using a built-in Dolby Digital stereo microphone the audio is more than adequate in controlled areas, but the minute you go outside, or even if there is background noise, the camera picks it up incessantly. Luckily the camera has a 3.5mm mic-input jack so you can alleviate some of the noise issues with a better mic. Panasonic even sells an official “GH1” shotgun mic that connects

to the camera’s hotshoe. That said, if you’re really passionate about the audio you’ll want to use a separate (controllable) audio solution and either feed that into the camera’s input, or record it on a separate device, the downside of which is that your set-up will be far less run-and-gun friendly.

Conclusion I know I kind of skipped over the GH1’s photography features, but that’s only because of how impressive (and important) the video functionality of this camera is.

Not only that, but on the stills front, the GH1 is essentially identical to the Lumix G1… which has been around for almost a year and is well documented.

Being that the GH1 (and other HDSLRs) offer the advantages of both DSLR still cameras and video camcorders, I can’t help but think that we’re on the precipice of a completely new era of digital imagery. Why buy a $1000 DSLR and $1000 FullHD camcorder, when you can get an all-in-one solution that combines the strengths of both formats and better overall quality for a similar price? HDSLRs aren’t a product of convergence so much as a welcomed logical step forward… and it’s hard to argue with logic.

By Mike Palermo

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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Great Games for Less How classic games are kept available and affordable Old games never die — they’re simply reborn on smartphones, on the web or in the “bargain bins” of your local game store.

This is great news for those with a nostalgic leaning towards older video games — whether they fondly recall dumping quarters into Space Invaders in the ’70s, being glued to their TV playing Super Mario Bros. in the ’80s or spending all night solving puzzles on their computer with The Secret of Monkey Island during the ’90s.

Virtually every classic game, on any platform, is still around today — if you know where to look, that is.

Oh sure, there are emulators that trick the game files (ROMs) into “thinking” it’s running on its original platform, but while the emulators themselves are legal, downloading the ROMs is what violates copyright laws, if you don’t own an original copy that is. No matter, there are many legitimate alternatives.

Resurrecting a timeless classic is also fun when introducing them to friends or family for the first — speaking as someone who just introduced the 16-year-old Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos role-playing adventure to his 7 year-old son.

Consider these following ways to play older games today.

Pac-Man for mobile (right) King Kong Signature Edition, (below) Duke Nukem (page opposite)

iTunes The amazing App Store features many tens of thousands of downloadable games for the iPhone (from $99 with a Rogers plan) or iPod touch (from $259) — and portable remakes of golden oldies are no exception.

From Namco’s Pac-Man ($5.99) and Atari’s Pole Position ($2.99) to Electronic Arts’ SimCity ($4.99) and Team 17’s Worms ($4.99), countless originals and clever clones can be browsed, searched for, or purchased on a personal computer or wireless handheld device.

In some cases, new features are added to the games, too, such as new ways to control the action, multiple modes, enhanced graphics and other goodies.

The latest retro time-waster we found at the App Store was 2K Games’ incredibly deep and detailed Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution ($4.99).

GOG.com Provide the best of older PC games — for a relatively inexpensive cost — and ensure it will play smoothly on today’s computers. This is the mantra of GOG.com, a website that stands for “Good Old Games.”

Close to 200 DRM-free computer games, many of which can no longer be found in stores or online, are available for $5.99 or $9.99, and with a few new titles added each week. Examples include 3D Realms’ Duke Nukem 3D, Interplay’s Fallout, Oddworld Inhabitants’ Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Sierra’s Evil Genius, Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition, and many more.

The site recently announced a deal with Ubisoft to distribute many of the publisher’s catalogue of hits including Beyond Good and Evil (a personal favourite), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Heroes of Might and Magic, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 and Far Cry. The oldest game available at GOG.com is 1989’s Personal Nightmare from Horrorsoft/Adventure Soft, an eerie first-person-perspective adventure game about a man who returns to his hometown to find his father, the local vicar, mysteriously missing.

As an added bonus, all game downloads include extra content such as PDF manuals, developer interviews, concept art, soundtracks, digital comics, and more.

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

The Best Things in Life are Free After a computer game has been out for a while, a publisher might decide to offer it up for free online — such as Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto and Bethesda Softworks’ The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall — sometimes to help promote a sequel.

And then there are savvy remakes of console classics, such as the free Super Mario Bros 3: Mario Forever (softendo.com).

In other cases you can find older PC games at the store in the discounted “bargain bins” for just $5 or $10. And if you look hard enough, you can find a real gem poking through the pile, and as an added bonus these games don’t require the latest PC hardware to run them.

In our last outing at “big box” stores and discounted superstores (such as Walmart) we found worthy games such as Atari’s RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe ($5.99),

Ubisoft’s Peter Jackson’s King Kong Signature Edition ($7.99), 2K Games’ BioShock ($9.99), Sega’s Shogun: Total War Gold Edition ($8.99) and Eidos’ Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition ($8.99). A few minutes of browsing may lead to many hours of fun.

Happy hunting.

By Marc Saltzman

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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Batman: Arkham Asylum PC PS3 Xbox 360 Developer: Rocksteady Games Publisher: Eidos Interactive Genre: Action/Adventure Rating:

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TechKnowMag – Toronto – September 2009

“I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me!”

The line may not be Batman’s own, but it will likely ring in many players’ ears as they take up the cape and cowl for the first time and take down their first lunatic.

The game immediately immerses you in Arkham Asylum, an institution for the criminally insane, and as you get deeper inside you get the feeling things aren’t going to end as peacefully as Batman would like. This tension continues throughout and there’s always a feeling of urgency. The storyline develops logically and gives reason as to why Batman would be fighting so many of his deadliest enemies in one day… and why this could be the worst night of Bruce Wayne’s life.

Batman exemplifies the role of a hero and never compromises his ideals even when it would make crime fighting easier. The game continues in this vein by not allowing you to kill your enemies, only subdue them.

The fight mechanics are pretty simple in that there’s only one real attack button for regular combos. Where

your enemies are in relation to batman determines what type of attack you use. Combat flows well as you can change targets fairly easily and attack them in a smooth motion. Increasing your combo meter allows you to execute more devastating moves, providing that you’ve purchased the upgrades. The addition of a strong and weak attack and more predictable combos could have helped but the developers seemed to want to take combat in a different direction.

Sneaking up on your foes and choking them out or dangling from a gargoyle and grabbing an enemy discreetly are alternatives to pummelling them outright.

There are other tools you can use to fight enemies such as a batarang that temporarily disables combatants and a bat grapple that pulls enemies in close enough for you to punch them in the face.

Batman has a few abilities that make crime fighting ohso delightful. The grappling hook will let you sneak amongst the rafters and if you couple this with his glide ability you’ll be swooping down and landing on unsuspecting enemies all over Arkham. A detective vision mode allows you to track friends or foes and analyze crime scenes for clues.

There are pickups, challenges, and inmate interview tapes to be collected throughout the game so if you’re a completionist you’ll have your hands full.

The sound effects make some parts of the game downright frightening, and perfectly compliment the dark tone of the game. One of the best parts is the familiar voice-acting of Kevin Conroy, the voice of the animated Batman since 1992. Mark Hamill also does a great job of reprising his role as the voice of the Joker, making the character one of the most enjoyable (and unsettling) elements of the game.

There is no multiplayer in the game, but that has been substituted with a challenge mode in which you complete special tasks for points and are ranked among leaderboards online.

Published by Eidos and developed by Rocksteady Batman: Arkham Asylum is a must-own for all Batman fans and a great game on its own merit for those looking for engaging gameplay.

By Kevin Freeman

Console Gaming Corner One of the best quotes so far concerning the current gaming landscape as we drift from summer into fall and inexorably onward to Christmas and all that darned snow was recently delivered by IGN.com’s Ryan Geddes in an editorial suitably entitled “Gaming’s Unhappy Holidays.” Veteran scribe Geddes succinctly summed up both the disappointment and the ensuing disillusionment many gamers may feel during Q4 of ‘09 when he said, “People who play videogames don’t live in an entertainment vacuum.”

Right on, Ryan.

At issue is an oncoming dearth of top-tier games this holiday season the likes of which we’ve not seen in some time. Certainly such a drought can be blamed on the economy and the obvious impact it’s had on the industry in general. Gaming software and hardware sales have, after all, plunged in the past few months and most publishers have subsequently enacted some rather substantial workforce cuts. But that’s far from the whole story. Supplementing the effects of the economic downturn is a purposeful tactic that this fall will be employed like never before.

Tropico 3 for PC and Xbox 360

Deliberately Delayed We like to call it “fear response.” Essentially, publishers are fearful, en masse, that in the current fiscal climate and with the usual onslaught of titles that seems to accompany every fourth quarter, their game will get lost or ignored in the Christmas mix. Thusly, many of the games we expected to see in the final few months of 2009 now will not see the light of day until some frosty morning in January or February. Or later.

The obvious pitfalls of this philosophy are many and we won’t get into all of them here, but Geddes alluded to something we believe game publishers should heed.

The hard, cold fact is that gamers don’t live in an entertainment vacuum. There are plenty of other ways to blow their hard-earned dough. And considering this has already been an unspectacular year for games in general, there’s a chance that some of them may just exercise those options and/or perhaps give up the hobby altogether if faced with too many broken

promises and too many intentionally delayed products.

The list of high-end games initially expected during the fourth quarter but now delayed to 2010 is longer than Santa’s beard, including the likes of Capcom’s sci-fi thriller Dark Void, 2K Games’ hotly anticipated Bioshock 2, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy-inspired Splinter Cell: Conviction, Sega’s action-fest Bayonetta, Electronic Arts’ Canadian-developed Mass Effect 2, Rockstar Games’ intriguing Western shoot-em-up Red Dead Redemption, Activision’s potentially epic Starcraft II, and several others.

In certain extreme instances, some publishers have even delayed the release of given games for fear that other games from within the same company will steal too much of the spotlight and negatively impact sales.

And that is precisely the reason Activision has pushed back the time-traveling, time-manipulating shooter Singularity, saying its own Modern Warfare 2 simply presents too much competition.

A Reason to Rejoice Nonetheless, gamers will have reasons to celebrate. On the console side, players who haven’t yet bought in to the now-aging “next generation” of machines will have a chance to do just that at a reduced price point. After steadfastly maintaining as late as July it would do no such thing, Sony Canada has just announced it has indeed slashed the prices of its PlayStation 3 systems.

Effective by the time you read this, the 80GB PS3 will cost you $299, while the 160GB model will run $399.

At the same time, a newer, slimmer, more powerefficient PS3 should be out by the time you read this, and a 120GB version of it will set you back just $299.

Even if used strictly as a Blu-ray player, the new and improved PS3 would seem to make fiscal sense. And it’s available now.

Of course, what would Microsoft be if not competitive? To that end, it too has delivered a preholiday gift. Effective the day it was announced, the price of Microsoft’s top-level 120GB Xbox 360 Elite dropped from $399 to $329, a substantial savings in anyone’s books. Indeed, the Xbox 360 Bundle currently

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offered at many national retailers may be one of the best raw deals in console history.

For the same just-reduced price of a standalone Xbox 360 Elite, consumers will also receive a copy of Halo 3 and a wireless network adaptor.

Can Nintendo and the Wii be far behind? We find that doubtful, especially with consumer usage of the system plummeting and the need for a shot in the arm never so dire.

On the PC front, the best news of recent vintage may well be the continued existence and apparent growth of the organization named the “PC Gaming Alliance.” Many claim that the PC remains the best gaming machine available, so it’s good to see the Alliance has just added eight powerful new members to the fold. We can only hope that with groups like the PCGA leading the charge, PC gaming might someday lose its secondrate status and be restored to former glories.

But it’s the games that’ll ultimately make headlines this fourth quarter, so let’s take a gander at the most important, most anticipated, and most potentially interesting titles we can expect between now and Christmas, in alphabetical order. We’ll try, as much as possible, to shy away from humdrum sequels, though sequels are such a big part of the upcoming landscape that we can’t escape them entirely.

Dragon Age: Origins PC, Xbox 360, PS3 Developer Bioware (hello, Edmonton!) rarely turns out anything less than really good stuff (Baldur’s Gate), and that seems to be the case with its latest concoction, the dark fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins. This one’s been in development for what seems like forever, but will that matter in November when roleplayers the world over, regardless of their platform, let their imaginations soar?

Aion PC Question: How often does the PC crowd get a top-tier game that’s designed specifically for them, isn’t a console port, and isn’t a sequel of some sort? Answer: Not every often.

Aion is an exception to the rule, an original massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG ) that’ll only run on PCs and will set players free by allowing them to fly — temporarily. We have a sneaking suspicion Aion may just be as challenging as it is beautiful. .

Brutal Legend Xbox 360, PS3 What better person to fight supernatural sleazebags with nothing more than the power of his Gibson Flying V and the pure awesomeness of good old heavy metal than Jack Black? In Brutal Legend, Black, along with actor Tim Curry and metal vets such as Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead battle to lay the third-person adventure rock and roll smackdown on one another. Losers can placate themselves by cranking the game’s 100-plus old school metal melodies.

Forza Motorsport 3 Xbox 360 Gran Turismo 5 PS3 What’s this? Two games grouped together? Well, yes. Forza and Gran Turismo are each highly acclaimed racing games and rather similar in many respects, yet the latter won’t run on an Xbox 360 and the former won’t run on a PS3. Neither will run on a PC. Thusly, we offer them together as the slickest choices for high-speed auto fun in the console world

Halo 3: ODST Xbox 360 You know those ’round-the-block lineups we see on the evening news where crazed gamers line up for hours and sometimes days just to get their greedy mitts on the coolest, hippest title? You do? Then you may be interested to know that Microsoft’s manversus-alien Halo series has been responsible for a whole bunch of them. And, when you consider the most recent Halo (2007’s Halo 3) was one of the most popular/praised titles of all time, this sequel — a prequel, actually — looks set to make a big impact on 360 devotees this September.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Wii Okay, so we admittedly have no idea if this’ll be terrific or terrible. But it does shine the spotlight on Vancouver, and for that we must approve. Moreover, the last time the Nintendo and Sega mascots united for an Olympics showdown — at Beijing, and only on the Nintendo DS handheld system — the result was quite palatable. It only seems natural then that the experience should be even more engrossing when played Wii-style in the mountains surrounding Hollywood North.

Aion for PC (left), Brutal Legend for Xbox360 and PS3 (centre), and Gran Turismo for PS3 (right)

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Halo 3: ODST for Xbox360 (left), NHL 10 for PS3 and Xbox360 (right) Mass Effect 2 PC, Xbox 360 Designed primarily in Canada, this futuristic action/roleplaying game picks up where the heavy-selling Mass Effect left off, even going so far as to rewarding players who transfer in-game save files from the original. But hey! What about all that sex stuff that spurred such controversy when the original arrived in late ’07? Don’t fret — the official word is that Mass Effect 2 “won’t shy away from emotionally engaging moments.”

Modern Warfare 2 PC, Xbox 360, PS3 Few games are as anticipated as this, the sequel to 2007’s smash war-based first-person shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Fact is that people like shooting each other virtually while dressed in fatigues and looking as realistic as possible. This’ll be a huge seller, which virtually guarantees you’ll always find someone, somewhere to lob a hand grenade at.

Need for Speed: Shift PC, Xbox 360, PS3 “Lackluster” doesn’t quite describe recent installments of Electronic Arts’ ubiquitous Need for Speed franchise, but it’s pretty close. However, with the next game in the series, Need for Speed: Shift, you can confidently say bye-bye to the past. Developed

by Britain’s Slightly Mad Studios and many of the same folks responsible for authentic racers such as GTR, Shift loses a ton of the mixed signal old school NFS periphery but in turn should gain a great driving model and a ton of awesome tracks. We’ll see the results in September.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii First reactions may be, “Oh no, not another Mario Bros,” and certainly those of us who loathe Nintendo-esque plumbers won’t be convinced otherwise. But word on the street is New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii gaming system, featuring simultaneous fourperson multiplayer and scores of new levels and devices, is a truly fun sidescroller.

Look for it in December.

NHL 10 Xbox 360, PS3 EA Sports’ perennial icy favorite arrives in September of 2009 in a manner that’s likely to anger as many as it pleases. You see, EA Sports has opted to remove its hockey franchise from its original stomping ground. That’s right — NHL 10 will not be available on the PC. But that may be just as well. Apart from an improved first-person fighting routine, a new GM mode (hey, haven’t we seen that before?), and what should be a slick 360-degree passing routine, NHL 10 is generally what it was a year ago.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising PC, Xbox 360, PS3 War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing…except when it’s exploited for video games. Dragon Rising promises to turn up the heat this October with what may be one of the most realistic, gritty, and unsettling war-based tactical shooters ever.

“Dismemberment!” screams the discussion forum headlines. Consider yourself officially teased…and warned.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Wii The family-friendly Wii platform isn’t generally seen as a fear factory, but that’s about to change with the upcoming release of Konami’s haunt-fest Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. It reacts to your own reactions, takes advantage of the Wii’s unique control set, and is anything but linear. The horror begins just before Halloween.

Tropico 3 PC, Xbox 360 Isn’t it nice to know that some games ask you to build rather than destroy? In the third installment of the Tropico series — the most recent edition landed a full five years ago — players assume the role of a Caribbean island dictator during the Cold War era. The game will look great and offer a bazillion play options, and it even manages to remind us of the ancient and addictive Intellivision mainstay Utopia, one of the first civilization management games ever. Count us interested.

By Gord Goble

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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FEATURE

A Tour of the PC Museum

The IMSAI 8080, the PC Museum’s oldest computer

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The historic building is an appropriate place for a PC Museum, and now houses more than three decades worth of computers, parts, manuals and software. Built from bricks reclaimed while tearing down the local opera house, the structure was built in 1934 in an age where no one could have possibly predicted what purpose the building would serve some 70-odd years down the road.

Located on a quiet street in Brantford, Ontario, about an hour and a half’s drive outside of Toronto, the building cannot even be seen from the roadway. Unless you knew what you were looking for, you might not even guess that it is there. From the street, all that can be seen is the house of Syd Bolton, proprietor of the PC Museum.

Guiding us around to the back, Bolton takes us past tents that were used for a recent PC-Museum open house as well as a Guitar Hero competition that was put on simultaneously with some help from the city. The building stands about 20 metres behind the house, with dark windows and closed doors. Open to the public but once a month, the PC Museum is closed all other days.

“The main building is about 1000 square feet on the bottom, upstairs is a loft, which is maybe 900 square feet,” Bolton tells us as he opens up the doors and turns on the lights.

A Blast from the Past Instantly we are greeted with a room that is filled with rows and rows of computers dating as far back as 1975.

Within minutes there are 45 computers all whirring and beeping, many of which are running games, and all of which are in top working order.

We’re told that Bolton and the PC Museum have collected the bulk of the computers through donations, and by years of accumulation which Bolton has made an effort to do since he was a teenager.

“When I was 16 years old I decided I was going to have a computer museum and have as many computers as I was old,” Bolton tells us. “And I did. When I was 16 I had 16, when I was 17 I had 17. But when I was 18 it really took off.”

The evidence is easy to see. At 38 years of age, the curator of the museum should be well over 700 years

old, if the math were still in proportion. Clearly the past two decades have been productive.

Though only a fraction of the computers owned by Bolton and the PC Museum are on display in the building, the 45 present and active are playable and interactive, some complemented by appropriate games from the era that the computers were released.

“We’re on our fourth year and it’s been a really fun adventure so far,” Bolton says happily. “And we are a registered charity now and have been for just over a year. But we’ve been open here since about 2005.”

Doors Open The PC Museum actually first opened to the public in September of 2005, and so will soon be celebrating its fourth anniversary and entering its fifth year of operation.

Although it’s a labour of love for Bolton, who is a software developer by trade, the museum still takes up a good deal of time and money to run, and open house days are put on with the support of many volunteers who contribute their time free of charge.

The oldest computer on site is an IMSAI 8080, a computer that one might recognize because of its appearance in the 1984 film, War Games. The red and blue switches are unmistakable, and the computer was one of the first personal computers to be available either in a do-it-yourself kit form, or fully assembled.

Taking us around the ground floor, Bolton shows us past the IMSAI 8080 and over to a Commodore PET, a computer that has some personal significance for Bolton as it helped spur his love for computers.

“At our school we got a computer, the Commodore PET. People find that strange, that our school had one computer in the whole place, but that’s how it was in the day,” he tells us. “And I spent more time on that computer than anything, I came in early and stayed late That’s how I got started with my love of computers. That translated into my buying computers later on and collecting them… because I loved all kinds of computers.”

Now, the PC Museum not only houses almost 50 fully functional units, but also houses thousands of technology magazines dating back to the 1970s on the second floor above the chirping computers. There is even a towering wall of software stretching to the ceiling most of which is still in the original packaging, including classic games and the original Windows 1.0.

Though the facility seems to be well planned out now, Bolton said it was not always so.

“I was looking for a house and one of the criteria I had was just finding a good living space. But when I came to this place and found this back building that was a completely empty shell, I saw a canvas where I could paint my masterpiece,” he says. “I did exactly that, took it step by step, did some renovations to bring it up to modern code, and stored the computers in the house basement. Then once the building was done we moved them in and built up a group of good solid volunteers to help run the place.”

Many simply wanted to dispose of the computers, but the PC Museum is an opportunity for people to not only have their computers preserved for years to come, but also get some recognition for their generosity. Any computers donated and displayed will have the donor’s name on the placard on-site and online. In addition, if the donated computers can’t be displayed in the museum they will either be given back to those in need, or will be responsibly recycled. But no matter how many computers are at the PC Museum, there will always be some on the wish list.

“If you go to the website you can see which computers we have here and which ones we’re looking for,” Bolton says. “We’re always accepting donations.”

The PC Museum site has some great resources for those interested in reading up on some computer history and Syd Bolton is a great resource for those willing to travel to Brantford to take a trip down memory lane. It’s free admission, and it’s well worth the ride.

For more information on Canada’s only PC Museum or to find out the next open house date, go to www.pcmuseum.ca. Also, check out our exclusive pictures and videos at www.techknowmag.com.

By Dorian Nicholson

Room to Grow The volunteers aren’t the only ones that helped Bolton get his museum up and running. Many of the computers, magazines and software programs were generously donated to the PC Museum by people who had the computers, but didn’t know where to put them.

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The Wi-Fire HFWFG200(CE) hField www.hfield.com/the-wi-fire/ ~$60 Pros: - Significantly boosts Wi-Fi range - Windows, Mac OSX and Linux compatible - Low power draw from laptop battery Cons: - One more peripheral to carry when traveling - May grip loosely when mounted on some laptops

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Online Anywhere with the Wi-Fire Whether you’re a student, a business traveler or just someone hanging out in the back yard, enjoying the waning days of summer, a reliable Wi-Fi signal can be a hard thing to come by. For students, while postsecondary institutions and even some high schools work toward a ubiquitous, campus-wide Wi-Fi zone, the reality doesn’t quite meet up with the dream. There are always dead spots... often big ones.

For the business traveller trying to send a report, have a

Skype chat with family back home or just send email or browse the web, a reliable signal is vital. Hotel and airport wireless access points (APs) are often anything but accessible.

In the back yard, surfing the Net may not be strictly necessary, but it’d be nice to do. It beats sitting in the home office on a sunny day, but good luck getting a signal. The range of 802.11g Wi-Fi, the most common spec these days, is less than 100 meters (300ft) in ideal

Snow Leopard

In the Box The Wi-Fire is a high-gain directional wireless receiver antenna. In other words, it takes matters into its own hands when a reliable signal is hard to come by.

The device, which is a little larger than a deck of cards (not including the stand), can clip on to the bezel of most laptop monitors or, with its feet spread out, can free stand on a surface like a desk. It plugs into an available USB port and, in our tests on a MacBook Pro running OSX 10.5.7, Bootcamp running Windows 7 RC1, the Wi-Fire worked out of the box with no software install.

A disc is included in the package and contains drivers and wireless connection management software.

Reach Out and Connect In an office environment already buzzing with 15 available APs, plugging the Wi-Fire in resulted in approximately three times the available number of APs, up to more than 45. Interestingly, of the original 15 APs, most of which are from nearby offices and also the neighbourhood’s “ubiquitous” (though it’s anything but) Wi-Fi, only one was unprotected. Of the nearly 45 APs found while scanning with the Wi-Fire, more than five were unprotected. We’re not proponents of connecting to unknown or private APs. The former can be dangerous and the latter illegal or at least of questionable morals, but it’s interesting none the less. This fact, along with some of the names of these newly available Wi-Fi signals, suggested we were seeing residential APs from an apartment building more than 200 meters away. The Wi-Fire claims a range of up to 1000 feet (about 305 meters).

APPLE PRODUCT REVIEWS

conditions; line of sight with no impediments or interference.

All of the above scenarios and many others are stymied by weak Wi-Fi signals.

Enter the Wi-Fire.

Type: OS Mac Only $35 for single user upgrade from Leopard If we are to believe what Apple is selling us, Snow Leopards are simply faster, sexier, and easier to handle Leopards. The latest improvement to Apple’s OSX, Snow Leopard is widely touted on Apple’s site as being the “world’s most advanced OS.” Despite that statement, the changes made by the new OS are meant not to revolutionize the way Mac users interact with their computers, but instead to streamline the way that Leopard runs. With faster wake up and shutdown speeds (up to 2 times faster) as well as a faster install time with a smaller footprint (half the size, 50 per cent faster) you’ll find the change noticeable almost immediately. Add to that the fact that Time Capsule (see opposite) sync times are improved by up to 80 per cent, and you’ve got an impressive upgrade. The only thing more impressive than the improvements Apple lists is the price of the upgrade. It’s only $35 for a single user to upgrade from Leopard.

Time Capsule 2TB Type: Backup Mac or PC $549, ($329 for 1TB) Apple’s proprietary wireless network-attached storage (NAS) drive was first released in early 2008 as a backup device made to sync well with Apple’s own Time Machine. This unit here does the same thing, automatically backing up data easily and wirelessly, but this one has a 2TB capacity. That’s roughly 2,000 gigs of data that can be stored on the device, but that functionality comes with a price. With a retail price of $549 at www.apple.ca, many may question whether ease of use and all-in-one functionality are worth the added expense. To those who question though, Apple answers with a price drop of the 1TB Time Capsule, down to $329. Considering it went for the same price as the 2TB model less than two months ago, those without a backup solution might find it worth the investment. (Didn’t we tell you it’s important to back up files?)

By Dorian Nicholson

In Range hField, makers of the Wi-Fire, suggest RV and yacht owners among its potential customers. We should be so lucky. It’s a valid point though; with more and more RV parks, campgrounds and marinas offering wireless Internet access but without outfitting their grounds with Wi-Fi repeaters that pick up and spread the wireless Internet signal to a wider area, those fortunate enough to have an RV or boat could save themselves a trip around the park looking for a reliable signal. To say nothing of the wardriving public.

By Andrew Moore-Crispin

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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LAST CALL

The Pace of Change

Andrew Moore–Crispin

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Technology marches ever onward. That’s a good thing.

Unless you’re Old Order Amish...

That said, we all get wistful for days gone by sometimes.

This month’s issue theme got me to thinking about all the computers I’ve had and used over the years. I remember many of the tech toys I accumulated, from an adolescence spent fascinated by the “micro computer” and all of its potential.

My family’s first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum with, if memory serves, 64K of RAM. Dad had it hooked up to a printer that spooled out silver thermal paper no wider than a cash register receipt. Not sure what practical purpose that printer really served, save to prove retrospectively that gadget lust is hereditary.

I remember playing Horace Goes Skiing on the Spectrum’s rubber chicklet keys. Thinking back on it now, I can almost hear the squeals and screeches that the tape drive let out as it sent instructions to the computer.

Upon moving to Canada, the family got an IBM clone 86XT. Later, I got my own Atari 800XE. More accurately, my brother got it when they were being sold off from the rudimentary computer lab in his high school. I believe they were being replaced by mainframed monstrosities whose name escapes me. These dumb terminal computers had a trackball in the keyboard, taught little and cost the school board much.

My brother, suffering what I assume was buyer’s remorse after he’d grown tired of playing with it, offered to sell it to me for the low-low price of $20 more than he paid for it. Sold. I spent the rest of that day punching in commands line by agonizing line trying to get the flag and national anthem to play on the screen. After punching in hundreds of lines of code, I hit enter, only to be presented with a screen of error codes. Frustrated, I turned the thing off and decided to cut my losses.

Attempting to sell it in a garage sale (perhaps for $20 more than I paid, but I don’t remember), I met a guy that suggested, rather than selling the thing, why doesn’t he give me a slew of games on 10 separate 5.25” diskettes? I rushed out to buy said diskettes and before long, I was a master of Montezuma’s Revenge and some racing game where the cars looked decidedly like hair dryers.

The pace of change is such that my next major step up in the computer world was to a Pentium PC with a (if

memory serves) 333MHz Celeron processor, an 8GB hard drive and a whopping 64MB of RAM. I assembled the thing from parts purchased at Computer Fest, then a major consumer trade show.

Coupled with a high-speed cable Internet access, truly cutting edge at the time — I was one of the first residential installs in my city — this step up was more like a quantum leap. As if my $3,000 investment wasn’t evidence enough, I was hooked. While others my age were scrimping through summer jobs to save enough to buy a car, I was perfectly content to drop a sizable chunk of my hard-earned cash to come vaulting into the Internet age. Besides which, girls dig guys with computer skills as much as they dig guys with cars, right?

In these relatively early days of high-speed access, mIRC and Hotline were the places to be. Hotline pre-dates BitTorrent, predates Napster and crappy P2P clients like Kazaa. It was a strange world where just about anything you can imagine was available for download... if you knew where to look and didn’t mind jumping through hoops. Many Hotline servers — basically just other people’s machines — required a username and password to access. Sometimes, getting the login information was as easy as asking the proprietor. Often though, potential leeches would have to click through a series of sites, sign up for stuff and basically do anything that paid an account holder — the Hotline server admin -- a commission. Often, this would require sifting through sign-up emails to piece together the login information. “In the third sentence in the fourth paragraph, the word between ‘worlds’ and ‘fastest’ is the username.”

Today, I’m sitting here writing this missive on my laptop running Mac OSX. I have Windows 7 along with every one of the Linux-based operating systems I talk about elsewhere in the mag running in separate virtual machines using software called Parallels. I can access an entirely different operating system just by hitting command-tab.

I can’t even imagine what’s next... and I’ve got a pretty good imagination.

Next issue: a less self-indulgent Last Call that’s not a walk down computational memory lane. Promise.

Cheers, Andrew Moore-Crispin

Up Next TechKnow Magazine October 2009 Welcome to the last editorial page of the magazine, Up Next, where we give you a sneak preview of some of the things to look forward to in the next edition of TechKnow. As with every month, you can look forward to new and exciting stories in our regular sections on PCs, Mobile Electronics, Digital Photography and Video Games, where we’ll write about the latest products to enter those respective fields.

In the next issue you’ll also get a chance to read comments by fellow TechKnow readers either sent to letters@techknowmag.com or posted on the website. As we’re planning on expanding the site to include more exclusive content such as web-only stories and video content, we encourage you to take a look at www.techknowmag.com and follow along as we grow the website.

In the next issue we’ll also be expanding by adding a bigger section on Apple for all of you Mac junkies and by adding a Tech Bites section where we’ll put all of the consumer electronics news that’s fit to consume for the commuters out there. Maybe we’ll even throw in a puzzle or two. Maybe.

Let us know what you want by sending a letter.

And remember, you can subscribe to TechKnow Magazine free of charge online, or check out our backlogged issues to see about any stories you might have missed. There’s only one there for now, but there will be many more to come!

Until next time, TechKnow Magazine

Feature Story: Spooky Tech We take a look at some downright frightening (but useful) pieces of technology in our next issue of TechKnow Magazine. A combination of software and hardware is scrutinized by TechKnow staff and we find out what you can use to scare away potential bandits around your office, cottage or backyard.

Imaging While this month’s imaging section featured Ray Richards’ second Buying a Digital SLR piece and a review of the Panasonic GH1, next month has more wallet-friendly goodies in store. Ray dishes out a review on the Nikon D5000, a camera that is versatile and affordable. We even round up a few toys for videographers out there.

FTA Satellites Andrew Carruthers concludes his three-part series on free-to-air satellites with a somewhat more advanced article. Now that you have the necessary information to get a system set up, we’ll give you a few more tips on what you need to know about different satellite receivers and components.

Gaming Gord Goble continues with his comments on the console gaming world with another instalment of Gamer’s Corner. At the same time, we’ll give you our feedback from our gameplay experiences with Bayonetta, God of War 3, Dragon Age: Origins and Drake’s Fortune 2. Check out video footage online at www.techknowmag.com!

The Last Call Andrew Moore-Crispin gives us his insights on what’s happening in the world of computers and consumer electronics. Take a look at the opposite page for this month’s column. This is your place to find out what’s making waves in the tech industry and why it matters to you.

Letters Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and yours could be in print if you send it in to letters@techknowmag.com. Send us your input today to be entered into our contest and for a chance to have your name appear in Canada’s only free technology magazine!

September 2009 – Toronto – TechKnowMag

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PHOTO CONTEST

Summer Photo Contest!

Win a Copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7

We here at TechKnow Magazine appreciate the warm weather as much as any other red-blooded Canadian. Sure, this summer might not have been the hottest on record — some areas have actually been hit but unnaturally frequent cold weather and lightning storms — but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to preserve the good times with some crisp, digital pictures for years to come. In fact, it’s all the more reason that you should get out and try to snap up some summer shots while the good weather is still here.

To sweeten the deal, TechKnow Magazine is offering up the latest copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements for the picture that our photo experts deem to be the best. Two runners up will take home either the latest version of Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements, giving you three chances to win! These programs are the best that Adobe has to offer for photo and video editing, and will make touching up your favourite memories a breeze.

So what are you waiting for?

Get out there and embrace your inner shutterbug, because the summer won’t be here forever, and neither will this contest.

Details: Deadline is September 28.

Winners will be announced in October’s issue.

To enter, please send your photos with detailed information — including date taken, camera used, f-stop, shutter speed and any editing software used — to contest@techknowmag.com.

To confirm eligibility, please be sure to include your full name, address, phone number and occupation.

Good Luck!