Laptop purchases now take 80% of computer purchases.

Although this could mean that most people are building their own, or their desktops are more powerful and moved less from when they purchased it (and so they last longer). It seems that most people don’t need the awesome power and speed that could only be accessed by owning a desktop.

I don’t think desktop PC’s are going down. It must be due to some lurking variable that laptop sales are expanding while desktop sales are expanding. Maybe this is only OEM?

Most people who do engage in gaming, primarily use a console to do so, and their online capabilities since PS2 and Xbox now enable playing online with friends. A feature that used to only be unique in PC gaming. Except the cost difference between a console and a full-fledged PC; had OEM PCs with similar capabilities costing around 3-4 times a dedicated gaming console.

Read up on this Gizmodo article for more information and numbers regarding the topic.

World's first portable Blu-Ray Player

Apparently, Panasonic is manufacturing a Portable Blu-Ray player with an MSRP of $800.

Here are the specs:

• High-Resolution 8.9 Widescreen (SVGA) LCD
• LAN (connects to Viera Cast & Youtube, Pacasa, Weather)
• Play back Blu-ray discs, DVDs, CDs (Rewritable or not), high-def JPEG photos(Disc/SD), and DivX
• HDMI output
• 7.1 surround sound HD audio
• 2.5-3 hour battery life (5-6 hour battery available separately

It’s a good showcase of technology, but I doubt that it will sell. On a screen that’s less than 10 inches diagonal, I doubt that people would really care whether the content is HD or not. 10 inches, isn’t 1080p overkill? I mean 720p is good for smaller screens less than 37″, but 1080p? (Most people can’t tell the difference between 1080p and 720p in a 32″ screen unless they’re sitting withing ~4 ft of it) Even if they did, I’d highly doubt that they’d shell out the >600 dollars difference to get to that level.

With 400 dollars, you can get a portable DVD player( w/ case car charger, Divx playback, but slightly smaller screen but larger battery life) and a Blu-Ray player. As for youtube, I’m pretty sure everyone has a desktop or a laptop by now.

On the bright side, I’ll applaud it for combining 3 devices into one (almost). Although it does youtube, it’s definitely not a netbook. Environmental footprint one device is probably alot less than a similar device and a larger device.

What I would like to see, in the future, a push towards more digital content. Universality in multi-media playback, Wifi, USB, Small screen and long battery life. Yeah, okay, just give me a netbook that can pull off 720p video playback.

Splinter Cell Conviction is the next game in the Splinter Cell series. Conviction has gone through a lot of changes. It’s a lot more fast paced, more brutal, and more immersive than the previous Splinter Cell games. It’s supposed to come out on PC and Xbox 360 later this year. Below is an walkthrough of the demo from this years E3 by Maxime Beland who is the creative director of Splinter Cell Conviction.

Steampowered.com is having another 50% off weekend sale. This time featuring Empire: Total War, and Empire: Total war Special Forces Edition.

If you’re going into college and have to part with your trusty desktop computer, and also you haven’t the funds to purchase a Macbook, then you’ll probably be going with a name-brand laptop.

Most colleges have a minimum requirement for a laptop, personally I’d check that first. But overall, here’s what I would recommend buying and paying for when looking at laptops for college.

Avoid: If you’re going to a college and you’re expecting to lug these things off into class, then I’d Avoid the following.

• Screen size: 16″ or over
• Weight of 7 lbs or more
• Screen size: 7″ or less
• Anything else is fair game.

Look for:

• 9-15″ screens
• Hard drives of at least 80GB
• At least 2GB ram

Notetaking, microsoft word, basic photo editing, spreadsheets, web surfing, e-mail: Here you have 2 paths you can take. If you’re good with a small screen (10″ or less) then you could go with a netbook, which is a small ultra-portable that usually weighs no more than a kilogram (2.5lbs). Those are slightly slower than regular laptops, but if you have patience then there’s really no point in having to lug in extra weight. If you don’t like teh small screen and small keyboard, pretty much any laptop will do you justice. 2GBs of ram and 80GB hard drive here is more than enough for what you want to do, even on Vista.

Recommendation:

1. EeePC’s 904HA with it’s 6 cell battery (>7 Hours) will allow you to fly. Overclock it with EeeCTL when you need the extra boost. 9″ screen.
2. There’s nothing wrong with a refurbished computer, it saves you money and it’s practically new (except for a few aesthetic blemishes). The Systemax Pursuit 4164 meets all the requirements brought up in this article for the above.
3. (Thx. Penguinmaster25 for this one) The 13-15 inch Acer Timeline will debut eventually. It has memory and hard drive space to boot, but sacrifices processor power to keep battery life running around 8 hours long. At 3.5 lbs (1.5x the weigh of a netbook) and $600,  Timeline will probably rise into popularity due to its intuitive interface, compact design, expandability, and energy efficiency.

Video Editing or Encoding/Gaming/Advanced Calculations/3D design/Heavy Multitasking: This is breaking into the bank and reaching up more towards the top of the line. But that still doesn’t mean that you have to sell out more than $800. ASUS makes some pretty good ones, if you see a mobile graphics card inside a PC, that pretty much is the only requirement for this category. Along with at least 160GB disk space, 3GB ram, Athlon X2 or Intel Core 2 Duo T5 series or upwards. With video editing, you may want to break the 15″ screen rule and go for a resolution of at least 1360×768 (preferable 1440×900 or above). Also it won’t play crysis.

Recommendation:

1. Asus’ X83vB packs performance and style. The recent price drop and high reliability for under 700 dollars (even with tax and shipping) makes it a good deal for this category, even without being too heavy or too large.
2. Or the Dell M1330 for a more compact build/screen and bigger brand name without compromising on performance.

Ultra-thin: This is a compromise between the previous 2 categories.

1. HP Pavilion dv2z - High Capacity, energy efficiency, compact, large battery life, LED screen, energy efficient yet relatively powerful Athlon Neo X2 processor blurs the line between netbooks and laptops.
2. Otherwise get a tablet PC or a macbook air.