Microsoft Reduces Price Of Xbox 360

As we told you in Xbox 360 Prepares For Price Drop, it looked like Microsoft was preparing to lower the price of the Xbox 360 gaming console, and it came to be this week.

If you’re feeling a bit confused by the three options out there, and don’t know what to get your family for the holiday season, hopefully we can clear that up some for you.

Xbox 360 Core Arcade Bundle - This one has a suggested retail price of $199.99, and while that can seem enticing, you will soon find yourself purchasing a hard drive to attach to it to download maps for various games and other content.  It also does not include the HDMI cable to get high definition support on your TV.  It also lacks an included ethernet cable for connecting to the Internet.  We do not recommend buying this version.

• Xbox 360 console (without hard drive)
• 256 MB Memory Unit
• Wireless controller
• Xbox LIVE Silver membership
• Composite AV cable
• 5 Arcade LIVE titles (included on disc): Feeding Frenzy, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, Pac-Man Championship Edition, Uno

Xbox 360 Console Includes 60GB Hard Drive - While this one still lacks the HDMI cable, it includes the all important hard drive and headset if you plan to play online.  This one will get you online and playing and is probably the better “starter” set.  Retail price is $299.99.

• Xbox 360 console
• 60GB detachable hard drive
• Wireless controller
• Xbox Live headset
• Standard AV cable
• Ethernet cable
• Detachable faceplate
• Xbox Live Silver membership

Xbox 360 Elite System Console Includes 120GB Hard Drive -This one gives you everything, but you pay for it at a suggested price of $399.99.  It is also the only version that comes in black.  This is great for your die-hard gamer, but for kids or families, we would still recommend the 60 GB version.

• Xbox 360 Elite console (black)
• 120GB hard drive
• Wireless Controller (black)
• Xbox Live Headset (black)
• HDMI port
• HDMI cable
• Xbox Live Silver membership
• One-month subscription to Xbox Live Gold

If you look around for these, especially towards the Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States, you may to find even better prices or bundles, so keep your eyes open for it.

Microsoft Launches $300 Million Dollar Ad Campaign

While discussing ad campaigns isn’t the normal subject matter for StarterTech, this new one from Microsoft is just too odd to pass up.

While this new campaign is apparently designed to try to steal some of the thunder from the popular Mac/PC ads, but at least those ads remember to mention what exactly the product is that their advertising.  Microsoft is only mentioned once in this ad towards the end, and it’s in relation to computers made dome cake… ooookay.

The spot first aired Thursday night, and according to the SFGate, by Friday Microsoft was calling journaliss to explain the ad.  Never a good sign in an ad campaign.  Perhaps Microsoft would do better to have spent that $300 million on making Vista more user friendly to the masses.

2.4 GHz vs 5.8 GHz Cordless Phones

There are a lot of choices when it comes to buying cordless phones, but two of the most common options you’ll see are 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. What does this mean, and why should you care?

All cordless phones operate on a frequency, like radio waves.  As frequencies get more crowded, the Federal Communications Council (FCC) will open another one so that consumer goods can move to one with less intereference.  When cordless phones first came out they operated in the 46 - 49 MHz spectrum, but when those got crowded with remote control cars, walkie talkies and the such, they moved to 900 MHz.

It was after 900 MHz filled up that they moved to 2.4 GHz, and with the increased range, and lack of devices in that area, things seemed fine… and then Wi-Fi popped up.  The wireless computer technology has quickly gobbled up that frequency, and while some have reported interference issues, I never saw it happen when I still had a phone in that range.  5.8 GHz is still fairly new, well out of the Wi-Fi range, and seems to be doing swimingly well for the time being.

So, if you are looking for a new cordless phone, even if you do not have Wi-Fi in your house, your neighbors very well might, so we highly recommend making sure you go ahead and head into the 5.8 GHz range.

More Thoughts On Google Chrome

Having played with Google Chrome for another day, I have some more thoughts on it.

With the exception of the fact I am missing having the capabilities of shooting screenshots inside of it, I could easily see myself switching to this browser full time, but for now it will have to be my secondary browser.  However, I will say if you are still using Internet Explorer only, give Google Chrome a try and you will be amazed at the world of difference.  If you are already using Firefox, I would recommend staying there for now.

Evidence You Should Avoid Blu-ray

We mentioned a while back that we recommend you avoid Blu-ray, but now it isn’t only us, but also the people who manufacture it.

As we said in our previous article, we here at StarterTech feel Blu-ray may end up having too short of a lifespan, and you should just continue on with your standard definition DVDs until downloads inevitably take over as the dominant format.  Today there were two stories in the technology news that seemed to bolster the idea that we may have been correct in our suggestion.

First off comes this amazing quote from Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK, to the website Pocket-lint.  It seems during the course of the interview with one of the original backers of the format, Mr. Griffiths said:

“I think [Blu-ray] has 5 years left, I certainly wouldn’t give it 10.”

While the interview moved on to other subjects, that is surely a very revealing comment to the concept that high definition formats will be replaced with downloads and the consumer electronics companies know it.

Just adding more fuel to this fire is the news that LG Electronics is launching a new Blu-ray player called the BD-300 which will not only playback the HD discs, but stream television shows and movies from yoru Netflix account.  This is the first I have heard of a device doing both of these jobs, but at $399.95 suggested retail price, it seems like a good price point for the two merging technologies.

I think this does just add another log to the file that Blu-ray is expected to have a short lifespan as a home entertainment format, and if you can hold outwith what you currently have, I would be highly reluctant to invest in programming on the Blu-ray format.

In the end it is up to each consumer what they do, but I think that this time it is fairly obvious that patience may not only be a virtue, but may save you some money in the long run from not buyng all of those new discs.

What Is Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a new web browser from the number one company in search engines, Google.

That being said, is it worth your time to check out?  The “browser wars” that spawned during the Netscape/Internet Explorer days was an ugly time on the Internet as websites fought to figure out how to make themselves look good in both.  This problem still crops up somewhat with Firefox/Internet Explorer/Safari/Opera/Flock out there.  The good news is Chrome is written on the same base code as Safari, so it shouldn’t be too hard for webmasters to get their sites working with this one.

An unusual move here at StarterTech, I’m embedding a screencast of the new browser in use from another site.  This was created by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins whom I work with over at Mashable.

Mark did a good job of covering the pros and cons of this new tool, but overall it looks promising.  I have been using it for most of the day with little to no problems.  Will it replace Firefox in my life?  For now it won’t due to a lack of addons that I use on a regular basis, but I will be using the two in conjuction when I can.

I will say if you are still just using Internet Explorer, please change.  It is by far the worst browser, and you need to check out alternative browsers for sure.  You could certainly do worse than Chrome, and we will be revisiting this subject as we gain more experience with it.

Have you tried it yet?  What are your thoughts?

Top Posts of August

As StarterTech is all about making sure you learn as much as possible, we’re going to start telling you at the beginning of each month which five posts from the previous one were the most read.  Hopefully this will help more of you discover what you may have missed, or it may just serve to refresh your memory.

What Happens If The Cloud Goes Down -Cloud computing is all the rage, but what do you do if it fails you at a crucial moment?

When To Purchase Electronics -With the upcoming winter holidays, everyone wants to know the best time to pick up those elctronics on everyone’s wishlist.

What To Do When Your Cable Modem Stops Working -Nothing is more frustarting then when your Internet conenction dies for no good reason.  This will give you some ideas on how you may get it back up quickly.

TSA Approves New Laptop Bags For Faster Screening - The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has approved new computer bags that may ease your passing through security at airports.

This Just Proves That No One Is Safe From Computer Viruses -When even NASA can get viruses, can anyone really be safe?

International Travellers Hit With Heavy Fees On Their iPhones

If you travel internationally for business, and you have an iPhone, you can expect to be paying quite a bit for the right.

AT&T, the lone carrier of the popular phone in the United States, announced new plans this week for those users who travel internationally.  The new plans run $120 a month for 100 megabytes of international data use or $200 for 200 megabytes. AT&T sees this is a bargain as under the old plans, a 3-minute video on YouTube, approximately 2 mb, would have run a customer $40, so this should seem like a bargain to some. Mind you, these amounts are on top of your normal fees, so this could get quite expensive very quickly.

If you are only traveling for one month, there is another small hitch in that you can not pre-arrange a cut off date for the service, so you have to contact them as soon as you are done traveling so that they will turn off the service and stop charging you for it.  If you forget to inform them, or are a day late (they have said they won’t prorate), then you pay for another month.

This is one of those situations where it shows how lack of competition is a bad thing.  The locked in exclusivity to AT&T through 2010 keeps people such as myself away from it, no matter how much I desire having one of these devices.

15 Tools On The Web To Help With Hurricane Gustav

The Internet can be used for any number of purposes, and getting information on pending storms is just one of them.

You can look up just about anything online these days, and detailed information to prepare for a natural disaster is no different.  With Hurricane Gustav preparing to hit the United States, there are any number of places to get information that may be important to people in the path of the storm, or those who have loved ones in the line of fire.

General

Flickr.com -Popular photo sharing site that allows you to tag your photos with keywords, making it easy to see images associated with Gustav.

Google Earth Overlay - The popular Google Earth tool for looking at satellite imagery of the world from Google has an overlay that shows you the path of Gustav.  The data is updated every 10 minutes.

Technorati.com - The leading blog index aggregates entries from thousands of blogs and makes it easy to look up those tagged with Gustav.

Twitter.com - People can mark messages related to Gustav with #gustav, and then using a tool such as Twemes.com, you can see all the messages being posted about it.  You can also follow GustavAlerts for automatic alerts from the weather services.

YouTube - People will be posting videos of the hurricane and it’s aftermath as it happens.

Information Resources

FEMA.gov -The Federal Emergency Management Agency site in case it is needed once the storm has passed.

Gustav Information Center - A quickly assembled social network on the Ning network is laboring to bring you information.

RedCross.org - If you are in the path of the storm, the Red Cross can tell you where to go, and if you just want to assist with donations, their site can help you with that also.

Weather Sites

AccuWeather.com - Hurricane center on AccuWeather.com has numerous maps and projections.

Intellicast.com - Has a wide assortment of maps specific to winds, precipitation, storm tracks and more.

MyFoxHurricane.com - A sub-site of the Fox affiliate station in Tampa provides lots of information on incoming storms.

Weather.com - The website of the Weather Channel has detailed analysis and maps.

Weather.gov - The official website of the National Weather Service.

WeatherBug.com - A popular desktop client for weather information offers information on their site and mobile devices.

WeatherUnderground.com - The popular weather site has a page set up dedicated to maps and projections of where the hurrican will land and with how much force.

Comcast To Limit Bandwidth

The largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the USA, Comcast, is set to begin capping bandwidth usage of their residential customers effective October 1st.

The ISP is going to cap bandwidth for their residential customers at 250 gb a month.  This would be the equivalent of 125 standard definition movies, or 50 million emails.  In other words, about 99% of their customers will never come close to that amount of bandwidth in a month.  For those that do use that much, if you go over for one month they will call and warn you, if you go over twice in six month period, you will be banned for 1 year from the provider.

They say this new policy has been enacted to make sure all customers have a pleasant Internet surfing experience, but the truth is that they just don’t want to build more infrastucture to handle additional Internet demands.  More and more devices in our home are demanding Internet usage, and by Comcast capping the bandwidth, they are essentially saying that all that has to stop.  Well, welcome to the 21st century, it’s only going to get worse.

Pretty much everywhere in the world offers faster Internet speeds than we do, with unlimited usage and at a lower price than we charge in the USA.  Something is not right here, and it’s time to tell the ISPs how wrong they are getting this and they are essentially going backwards.