Windows 7 Beta leaked!

Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) has been leaked on to the internet. This was done yesterday and is being downloaded in huge quantities through torrent networks. The download available is a 32-bit ISO image and proposedly a Beta download. It has been leaked on major torrent networks now although initially, the download was available from a Chinese File Hosting server Namipan. The download was originally leaked on a Chinese forum PCBeta. To download the Beta, please go through the links available below-

Demonoid Link: Windows_7_Beta_1_7000_0_081212_1400_iso_o-Demonoid.com-o.torrent
Mininova Link: 7000 [mininova].torrent

There are approximately a 1000 seeders and 5000 peers for the Mininova torrent. Since registrations at Demonoid are closed right now, you should download it from Mininova right now. If you want to download through the Namipan file server, you need to download first NamiRobot from the links below-

http://202.111.173.105:8011/NamiRobotSetup.exe
http://218.93.248.125:8011/NamiRobotSetup.exe

Then go to the link

http://www.namipan.com/d/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso/3cde3c2bb03773c82ce8eb766c459fd9a91f6e4d00a0179c

and there click the blue text besides the ">" sign to download through NamiRobot.

File Properties

File: 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso
Size: 2618793984 bytes
MD5: f9dce6ebd0a63930b44d8ae802b63825
SHA1: 6071184282B2156FF61CDC5260545C078CCA31EE
CRC32: AABA5A48

Please verify all the above properties before downloading so that you make sure that you are downloading the original copy. The Beta will expire on July 1, 2009.

So enjoy your download and have fun experimenting with the new Windows 7!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May the next year be as beautiful as ever before for everyone.

Windows 7 Beta : Coming on January 13th?

 

After months and months of speculation, it seems that the wait is almost over. Microsoft may officially release the Windows 7 Beta at the next month's Microsoft Developer Network Conference (MDC) slated for January 13th, 2009. Also, attendees at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could get the first public look at Windows 7 which is scheduled for 8-11 January. Although there has been no official confirmation on this specific report, Microsoft wrote on a Web site for its MDCs that attendees of those conferences, some of which are scheduled for mid-January, can expect a Windows 7 beta DVD. Some reports have suggested that Windows 7 Beta has already been made available to specific testers through invitation from ZDNet. If that is true, we can expect it anytime soon. Microsoft has expressed a desire to launch Windows 7 by the early 2010 but some reports suggest that Microsoft may even release it by mid-2009 and that too after Vista has performed very poorly on the front line market with a lot of disappointment.

Whatever it is, we stand to benefit from it and this is surely an interesting thing and we might be in for something huge. Right now, one can have a sneak peek at the Windows 7 by downloading a pre-beta from different torrent sites ILLEGALLY but surely there's no stopping the party. Let us hope for the earliest possible dates!

For more details and the absolute latest updates on when Windows 7 Beta is coming to your PCs, keep a close tabs on the Official Windows 7 site. To go there, click here.

Is iPhone a Boon or Bane for India

We are back. That's the loud and clear message from Cupertino. Apple earlier shaking the world with it's iPod now clearly is shaking the world with the new Apple iPhone. And in it's newest 3G avatar, has it got the potential to do the difference or make an impact in India? Let us see what it really has to offer to the Indians.

The Hype

Essentially, the key element to a products success and failure. More the justification of a hype, more is the appreciation and thus profits of the product. Apple had created a lot of excitement in India before it's latest launch in India and the new price reductions in the US really meant a whole lot more fun for the Indians. But it was a short lived joy. Estimates had predicted a sale of nearly 10,000 iPhones in the first month after the launch. But the excitement soon fizzled out due to exorbitant prices charged by the providers Airtel and Vodafone (Wish BSNL was there too) and iPhone hardly sold a 1,000 units in India. Too bad for such a dream gadget. Partly because of the greed of the Indian government to make higher tax money from it and partly from the service providers so that they could benefit from the good margin. Thus all the great anticipation and excitement went down hard enough for Apple to take a beating from it. Although the iPod Touch really became a huge hit in India.

The Inside Power

An iPhone right now in India is more like a BMW on the Indian streets; full of style, class and pride! The Apple iPhone offered Multi-touch support on a 3.5 inch high resolution screen which the new one also offers. The new Apple iPhone 3G other than the obvious introduction of 3G has a lot more. But since India is yet to see 3G auctions, this feature more or less goes right into the drain. The other new introductions are the new Firmwares and the inclusion of the new App Store. Designated to make your life easily, there are many Apps to choose from and range from free to highly priced piece of creations. Although the restriction limits a lot more applications but still it's a novel concept. Performance is top class due to the inbuilt Mac OSX operating system which is quite snappy and cool. The 2MP camera is quite disappointing for a novelty like this. Other than that it features the fully loaded Safari browser and other built in Mac applications to add to your ease. Although you still cannot edit your Office documents in this one as of yet. Music and Video quality is typical Apple and great. But rather than all this, what does it really have for the Indians?

The Desi Impact

• First of all, one's biggest deterrent will have to be the locking of the SIM card to the specific provider. We Indians usually love to interchange between different providers whichever is the best but this beauty surely keeps you at bay from this.
• Next, you have the lack of SMS Forwarding, Copying options and FM radio which means most Indians will have to give this a miss. The first and the last are almost essential features in every phone for every Indian.
• The next problem is the lack of 3G support in India till now which means the new tag of Apple iPhone 3G is more or less useless.
• Lack of high Google Maps support as in the US in India also adds to Indian woes.
• When the battery goes down, it means you need to go to Apple and surrender your phone to them till the time they don't finish work and that means you are without your life support (at least for Indians).
• High price means that after seeing all the drawbacks, it makes sure that you don't buy this device at all.

So eventually, what matters is how much the drawbacks are going to affect the person's life. Right now, the Apple iPhone is more like a fashion statement than anything else in India. If you are a college goer or a young dynamic youth, then the iPhone is for you but if you are a tech freak and want only the best, then you are in for a huge disappointment. So the Doctor has advised some CAUTION pills at the moment.

Which one you prefer and why? Is it PlayStation or Xbox or Wii

Which one you prefer and why?

Is it PlayStation or Xbox or Wii

Well, in this new era of technology, new gadgets are coming up to help people relax and make their lives much more easier. And the three companies here have taken the

initiative to do just that - Helping us relax. And thus, they each come up with their own gaming consoles. Their names being the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft XBOX 360.

The game console was first introduced by Nintendo in 1977 and it grew up into a fad. Almost every household had a Nintendo Gaming Consoles during the 1990s. But then came up Microsoft and Sony and changed the way we play games. All of them are a part of the seventh generation of consoles. If you want to play some serious games, buy any one of the gaming consoles and get going. OK, enough peek in the history books and let me start reviewing all the consoles one by one.

Sony PlayStation 3

Specifications

The Sony PlayStation is all about class, precision, quality and performance. The PLAYSTATION 3 is convex on its left side when vertical (the top side is convex when horizontal), and has a glossy black finish with the PlayStation logo on the left side. In it's third installment, it has completely gone High Definiton and every output can be viewed in full HD output(1080p). It also has a slot loading Blu-Ray Drive which has been patented by Sony and on which, one disc can hold upto a whopping 50GB of data. Imagine the number of games one can stuff into one Blu-Ray Disc. It also supports 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and is integrated with Gigabit Ethernet which makes it a very fast contender in the network category. It is bundled with Bluetooth 2.0 and also sports a media card reader with support for SD, Memory Stick, XD, SM and Compact Flash compatibility. The space varies from 80GB to 160GB on the PS3's SATA Drive. It is intergrated with the NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', the first of it's kind in all the gaming consoles. It is bundled with the trademark SixAxis controller.

Performance

Talking about performance, this beauty smokes out the rest of the competition in this department by a pretty big margin. The NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' really make the games feel as if you are right in the middle of the game. The PS3 in based on a IBM-designed Cell microprocessor as its CPU, utilizing seven of the eight "synergistic processing elements" thus improving performance drastically. The HD output makes it even better with playing these games in large screens and that too with great detail. The SixAxis controller has now gone wireless and that means complete full action on it. The controller has been always my favourite since the PS2 days and I still love them. Playing games on the controllers is as easy as 1, 2, 3. Watching High quality Blu-Ray movies in it's full glory is a charm on this beast which can handle almost anything. And considering the prices of HD Plasma and LCD TVs and Projectors falling fast, this will only be some time before the PS3 becomes the global No. 1 in the console market. The System Software installed as the primary OS offers a clear and easy interface to scroll in.

 
Game Titles
The gaming titles released on the PS3 is very few compared to the ones on Wii and XBOX. Also, they are very costly even if they are available. Among the top PS3 gaming titles, there is Assasin's Creed, BioShock, Burnout Paradise, Call of Duty 4, Grand Turismo and Metal Gear Solid 4 are some of the top games but these are the only handful of them.


Conclusion
If you are patient and can wait for a few months, then the PS3 is one's best bet. With full HD and NVIDIA Graphics, this console just takes you one more big step closer to reality and will amaze with it's high quality and performance. Although the lack of gaming titles and the high console price might not help it right now, but in the long run this is one superb investment. Also, backward compatibility means that right now you can play your PS2 games and have full fun. The PlayStation network offers free games online to play and is a very good network.

Microsoft XBOX 360

 

Specifications

The XBOX 360 was the first of the seveth generation gaming consoles to be introduced in the market. The XBOX 360 doesn't really look as drooling as the PLAYSTATION 3 but it surely impresses with the big power button almost at the center of the console. It looks very well designed and placed. It is HD capable(1080i) but not full HD as it's Sony counterpart but the new XBOX Elite is full HD. But the games still look very enriching and beautiful. The console runs on an ATI based GPU unlike the Sony PlayStation which uses an NVIDIA based GPU. There is Ethernet and USB connectivity but sadly it misses out on Wi-Fi and Media Card readers which makes for important and necessary connectivity options in today's generation. The hard drive spaces vary from 20GB to 120GB in the XBOX Elite, enough to store all your games and movies. The processor is based on the IBM Power PC with 3 cores.

Performance

Well, the XBOX 360 is pretty much everyone's favourite offering some great eye candy visuals. It is pretty fast too. The OS installed on it provides a great and easy menu for navigation. The ATI graphics does a pretty good job in rendering the games in high quality. But it is quite disturbing in the games to hear a noisy fan and DVD drive which is very much annoying. Again, even the XBOX's gamepad is wireless which offers good response. Another problem here is that the DVD playback offers a substandard quality which is absolutely not good considering a console which is HD capable. Moreover, it is good in performance except some minor niggles.

Game Titles 
This is one department where the XBOX rules supreme. No other console can boast of as many games it has. It has a huge number of games including quite a large number of bestsellers which have sold more than a million copies worldwide. Among the most popular and hyped releases is the Halo 3 which released amid quite a lot of anticipation from it's fans. Some studies suggested that the release of Halo 3 boosted the sales of the consoles by as much as 50%. Some of the other most popular titles on the XBOX is Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Grand Theft Auto and Project Gotham Racing. There are many more which are rated as the gaming world's best. So if you are the gaming buffs who only want a dose of a number of new games and nothing else, then you have just stumbled upon the perfect console for it. And the best part is that the game titles aren't really costly and thus make the deal even more sweeter.

  
Conclusion
So, if you want a plethora of game titles and are not finding it in many places, then the XBOX gaming console is just for you. With the perfect combination of good graphics, features and a huge collection of games, the XBOX is very easily at the top and scores in almost every department. Even the XBOX Live is superb and is a service hard to beat. So, overall this one literally beats the dust.... but no, wait. The Wii is also on the line too. Let us review it too and then take the final roll call of the winner.

Nintendo Wii

Well, so this is the final console and one which shies away from the limelight and does a lot more in the background. So let's go into the depth of this shy console. Let's see what does it really have to offer.

Specifications

This has been touted as the XBOX and PS3 killer. Why? Let us keep the surprise and it during the performance tests. But the Wii doesn't really sport some drooling specs unlike the XBOX and PS3. It has a native resolution of 480p which is nowhere even close to the High Definition mark. But the Wii is something totally different. Well it's main controller is something like a remote also known as the Wiimote and another controller which can be attached to it known as the Nunchuk. It has got Wi-Fi connectivity and a media card reader but strangely no Ethernet. It has a pretty much compact form and the white colour on it looks pretty good and stands very impressive. Other than that, not much to boast off in the specs. It bundles Wii Sports as part of it's package and is really good. Why? Here's why!

Performance

On this front, it both impresses and also goes down a bit. First of all the impressive part. How is the Wiimote exactly used? When using the Wario Ware Smooth Moves game, at times you need to turn it horizontally and grip it like handlebars, whereas in the tennis segment of Wii Sports you turn side on and swing it like a tennis racquet. It is a whole lot of fun than what the PS3 and XBOX have to offer. The tanks game within Wii Play and the boxing segments of Wii Sports require you to plug an extra controller into this remote, and the result is staggeringly intuitive. Picture a ten pin bowling minigame where you literally do a bowling motion. Or an air hockey-type game where you wave your controller around, with the movements replicated on-screen by your paddle. It's delightfully simple and yet adds a genuinely fresh perspective to what otherwise would be fairly unspectacular software. It is just too much fun. Well here's the bad part for the hardcore gamer. Games like Call of Duty and such such won't run absolutely on the Wii. So for the gamers who want the best of these games won't get the fun on Wii. But in terms of gameplay, this one is much much better than all XBOXes and PS3s. Playing multiplayer on this makes it double the fun.

Game Titles

Well, there aren't many game titles for the Wii. But the bundled Wii Sports and Play are just more than enough to compromise for the lack of titles. The Wii Sports offers Tennis, Golf, Bowling, Boxing and Baseball. All of them are just so interactive. It will seem as if you are just playing the game yourself. Nowadays, even doctors prescribe playing on Wii to obese people who do not do any exercises. It is just so absorbing in the gameplay.

Conclusion

So the conclusion for this. Well for gameplay - 10/10. And at the end of the day, what one really wants is some relaxation and fun and that's the basic motto of all the consoles and Nintendo seems to have struck the right chord by following the basics. Very addictive gameplay, superb and great ideas conceived by Nintendo. It is also the cheapest console available in the market which just makes it even more attracted too. Nintendo can now proudly say that 'Wii rule'.

The Final Winner

Well it has been tough to differentiate all of them. Eventually, the console which has to be crowned the winner has to be the XBOX 360. With great performance, gameplay and a plethora of new game titles, this console impresses everyone and leaves the competition far behind. This is ideal choice of a person wanting the ultimate from their console.

But The PS3 and Wii weren't far behind.

If you want performance and quality at the highest level, have the money to spare and have the patience to wait, then the PLAYSTATION 3 is your ideal partner for relaxation.

If you want sheer gameplay and fun at the highest level closer to reality, then the Wii is just the ideal candidate for your home's special place. It is one special console and Nintendo surely deserves a whole lot of appreciation for the effort gone behind it.

So with this, we can safely call it the end but with more and more advanced technology coming up, the console war can only heat up at this moment and just make it even more interesting for us. Till then, happy playing on your consoles.