Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews

MenuMeters vs iStat Menu – Monitor this…

April 2, 2012 – 08:00:02

I got my first apple product at the start of 2007, shortly after receiving an instalment of my student loan. My Black MacBook. It was top of the range at the time with a Core 2 Duo processor and one whole Gigabyte of RAM (which I later upgraded to two). At the time I didn’t know anything about Mac’s so I let a friend of mine (who later betrayed Apple for Linux) get it all set up. Among the various pieces of software that he installed, one of them was a very handy app called MenuMeters. The idea of MenuMeters was that it kept an eye on your system for you – your CPU load, RAM usage, Networking utilisation and a few other bits and pieces.

I took it for advantage that it was the only tool of its kind until recently discovering that iSlayer (the guys behind the very cool iStatPro dashboard widget) have a product that is quite similar – iStat Menus.

So this left me with a bit of a dilemma – do I keep using old and faithful MenuMeters, whose core functionality has remained the same for 5 years now or move to something a bit newer and bit more flashy. Time to weigh up the differences. MenuMeters is incredibly easy to install. Open the .dmg and double click the .prefpane. This installs MenuMeters into your system preferences, making it incredibly easy to activate and customise.

Within the preferences you can activate CPU, Disk, Network and Memory (RAM) monitoring – which, after choosing your preferred layout, looks a little something like this:

I have chosen the graph layout for my CPU and it shows each of my 8 cores – this takes up quite a bit of room on the Finder bar, but you can also display just percentages over even one average for all cores.

The Network tool gives you an overview of your transmit and receive speeds as well as giving you statistics from each of your networking devices in a clear manner.

The RAM tool lets you see at a glance how much RAM you have available/used, but also gives you a more in depth look at how your RAM is being utilised.

Finally the Disk tool (one I rarely use) lets you see when there is disk activity (read or write) alongside the drives currently mounted, their mount point and filesystem.

So there it is – good trusty old MenuMeters – now let’s look at iStat Menus 3.

iStat Menus runs as an application and it’s install is as easy as unzipping and placing in the Applications folder. Upon launching it for the first time we are invited to install the application before being allowed to customise it. The first thing to notice is that this is only a trial version and that fully featured version will cost $16 (£10). As a result I am expecting very good things from this application.

Straight away you can see that there are many more tools to choose from. In addition to that of MenuMeters, iStat also has Disk Usage, Temperature (and other built in sensors), Battery and Date & Time (if you feel the need to change from the Mac default clock). Looking first at CPU – iStat has the same features as MenuMeters but gives us the ability to fully customise the appearance. If we wanted we could have bars, graphs, piecharts and percentages if we wanted, although I feel that with 8 cores, I might run out of room. The same customisation applies to the rest of the monitoring tools but beyond that not much is different. We still have the used/free totals for RAM and the bandwidth utilisation for Networking.

The real difference comes when we look at the drop down menus each of the tools has to offer. The information available is much clearer and well presented. For the CPU you can see the history of all your cores, even if you only have an average displayed. It also shows us the top processes as well as the GPU memory usage and system active time as opposed to just uptime.

The RAM tool lists the top 5 processes so that you can easily clean up memory space, as well as a RAM usage history.

Disk Activity gives us a read/write history of the main drive as well as current speeds, while Disk Usage gives us the free/used space per drive. Note that here we do not have the drive mount points although as the drives are always mounted in the same place (/Volumes) it isn’t really a useful tool to have.

Finally the Network tool gives a detailed graphically representation of transmit/receive, but unlike MenuMeters, hides the inactive interfaces (you can see here that as bluetooth is turned on, it is displayed).

The addition of a sensors tool gives an incredible amount of information of system temperatures. Not only can you display the value of each sensor separately if you wished, just /look/ at how many there are to choose from. You can monitor temperature, voltage, fan speed and even current and power. An incredible amount of information – especially if you are an enthusiast.

Finally, iStat has one more trick up it’s sleeve with the combination tool – this allow’s you to display icons and menus as separate entities; If you just want CPU icons you can have them, or if you want the sensors menu but no icons, you can have it. This means you can thoroughly customise all the tools you want to see, along with all the ones you want at your fingertips, but not taking up space on your Finder bar.

So what’s the tally? Well MenuMeters has great functionality for a free system – its lightweight, customisable and unobtrusive. iStat, however, has incredibly detailed information, great looks and a plethora of customisation options but it does cost £10 after the 14-day trial period.

So the choice is yours, but for me, I have the feeling iStat might be sticking around…

Check out iStat Menu and some other great Mac widgets over at http://www.islayer.com/apps

MenuMeters is available from http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters

Tags apple, istat, mac, menumeters, review, tools | Permalink | Comment (0)

Hardware Reviews

Acer Revo R3700 Review

March 30, 2012 – 23:34:20

Over the years I have built computers for everything. Servers, gaming machines, family PC’s – I’ve built them all. All, that is, except a media PC. I’ve had gaming machines that I watched movies on and I have servers that have streamed media to my iPad but I have never had a machine that was physically connected to my TV. Untill now that is. Building a media PC can be a difficult process – you need to get the right balance of power to money and have to take things such as aesthetics and acoustics into consideration – after all, no one wants an ugly noisy box sitting underneath their TV.

Enter the Acer Revo R3700. I picked up one of these systems for £200 from eBuyer.co.uk after a recommendation from my older brother, who has a couple of the older models dotted around his house (EDIT: Turns out he has actually had at least one R3700 for a while now…). I had spent a month or two debating between the Revo or a Zotac ZBOX but didn’t want to spend more than £200 which I would have upon buying the ZBOX.

Starting with looks, the Revo is designed to fit in with modern-day TV systems. Its shiny black shell has a metallic finish, the Revo logo taking up one side leaving the other one bare. The chassis has a sturdy feel despite the surprisingly low weight of the system. Included in the box is a two-pronged stand for a standing setup, and a mounting bracket which uses the VESA standard – allowing you to mount the Revo on the back of the TV.

For ease of use, Acer included a wireless keyboard and mouse with the system, which can sit on a coffee table in a very unobtrusive manner, as I have discovered over the past few days.

Looks are all well and good but a pretty box that doesn’t do much wouldn’t be worth the money. Luckily the Revo doesn’t fail to deliver. The specs of the system are pretty impressive given its small size, using a 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 – a dual-core hyper-threaded processor, designed for great performance at low power (max 13W). Add to that 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500GB hard drive and you already have a pretty decent system.

However, the true power of the Revo lies in the NVIDIA ION GPU which handle all media processing. The ION is a low power graphics chip which has the ability to handle 1080p films and even games. Not only can it happily handle bluray quality movies and TV shows but it allows for the full Windows experience which keeps the computer running smoothly.

For output, the Revo has an HDMI and a VGA port for visuals along with a standard 3.5mm jack and optical SPDIF for audio. For input the Revo has 5 USB 2.0 ports (4 rear 1 front) along with 3.5mm audio in and a SD/MMC/XD/MS card reader.

The Revo was supplied with a stock version of Linpus Linux. This saved on the cost of the device as there were no licensing fees for Windows but the quality of Linpus was awful. While wireless worked out of the box there was no 1080p support meaning that I had a maximum resolution of 1042 x 768. On top of that, there are very few repositories included, so when I tried to update the system, there were no updated packages available. I couldn’t even download a kernel.

With Linux a write off I opted to install Windows, as it offers the best support for my prefered media software – Plex. Plex runs on my server and allows for streaming over the network (or internet) of my movies, TV shows, music and pictures. This could have been an arduous task, given that the Revo has no optical drive, however I happened to have a USB stick with a copy of Windows 8 on it, ready to install.

The install process was quick and the Windows 8 setup was painless and smooth. Within an hour I had a fully function media system including Plex, XMBC and Spotify to handle all my media needs. Additionally the Metro UI allows for really easy navigation from a sofa, especially for someone like me whose eyesight isn’t quite the best to easily find all the programs I need. Apps like The Telegraph allow you to browse the headlines while the Weather app gives a summary of the day’s/week’s weather accompanied with beautiful visuals.

This little system has been a great investment. It is unobtrusive and quiet (Oh so quiet!) while being powerful enough to handle everything I throw at it. Coupled with Windows 8 it opens up a world of media possibilities.

Tags acer, computers, media, revo, windows 8 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hardware Reviews

Hands-On: The PSP Vita

February 1, 2012 – 14:39:19

It’s rare that I am in the right place at the right time – normally the cool stuff happens when I decide to stay at home, or have to study. It was the curse of my childhood that I missed the good parties and when I did attend them something bad usually happened.

So it was a nice surprise when I walked into a Game store in Reading yesterday evening, while I had some time to kill, to find that they had a Demo version of the PSP Vita. Even better was that the shop was practically deserted, meaning that I could get some hands on time with the monster.

The above photo shoes the PSP in the Hand – its a pretty big machine. At almost 2cm thick, you know it’s there, but once you adjust to the chunky feel, it almost becomes an extension of your arm. And it is light. While you can feel the Vita with your hands, the weight barely registers, meaning you don’t tire of it quickly.

The 5″ (127mm),m 16:9 capacitive, multi-touch screen has a resolution of 960×544 which struck me a surprising low given the 960×640 resolution of the significantly smaller iPhone 4, yet it looked rather good. Supporting 16 million colours, the clarity of the screen was better than that of the PSP S&L or the PSP Go, both of which I have owned in the past. Additionally, the backlight was strong and you don’t have to strain your eyes to see what’s going on. Finally, the sensitivity of the screen was spot on, allowing for smooth navigation of the menu systems both on the Vita homescreen and in game as well.

While we are on the subject of software – this PSP was running version 1.52 showing that the old PSP software has been ditched in favour of a whole new interface built around touch. That being said the menu system seemed to have no real structure – unlike the old PSP software which seperated your media into categories, the Vita seemed to randomly place its icons, mixing Games into Videos, Pictures and Music.

The dual analogs are a welcome addition to the front of the Vita, allowing for more interactive play in games like Uncharted which utilises one for the character movement and another for the camera – much like many of the current console RPG’s on the market.

The back Touch Panel allows for an added degree of interaction in games – although there wasn’t much on the demo model that supported it. The only game available on the device with back panel integration was Uncharted 3 where it was used for some actions like climbing ladders, traversing walls etc, however it really felt like this was a last minute addition to the game- some of the demos seen when the Vita was first announced showed some really interactive gameplay where the back panel almost became another dimension in itself but this wasn’t reproduced well in Uncharted.

Getting down to the bare circuits so to speak, the Vita has a quad core ARM Cortex A9 at its core, giving the software a really smooth feeling. App’s open quickly (although games can take a very long time to load) and you can swap between them instantaneously, while closing an app or game completely is as easy as a swipe of the finger. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is the SGX543MP4+ which might look like a mouthful, but is also Quad-Core – giving the Vita an octo-core platform to base its games on. Hopefully this overhead will make for some really nice multi-threading in future games to bring really great performance.

In-game performance of the PSP was smooth…once the game loaded. Wipeout was fast paced and vivid (although that didn’t make me a better player) and the graphics were clean and crisp. While 6-axis control wasn’t enabled, Wipeout is said to support it, which would be a wlcome addition and work much better on a portable platform that on the console.

Everybody’s Golf, besides having a very Japanese twist (which I liked), has some cool capabilities too, such as using the motion sensor on the Vita for a first person game – you have to physically ‘look’ down the fairway to see where your shot went.

It was hard to tell from the limited time I had with the Vita but it did seem that there is no internal memory, which could explain some of the loading times for games. Personally, I am a little disappointed that a next-gen platform couldnt fit in a bit of flash memory – although no doubt its planned for a later hardware refresh.

Sony has confirmed that the PSP will launch in the UK with a 4, 8 and 16GB memory card available for it, but with no 32GB option some gamers have been more than a little annoyed. The shot below shows the memory card slot on the right, and the USB slot on the left.

In terms of connectivity, there will be two versions of the Vita available, one with just WiFi and one with added 3G (supported in the UK by Vodafone) allowing online play on the move. Additionally, both devices have built-in GPS and WiFi location services which makes the prospect of a maps app very likely.

The Vita is due for worldwide release on the 22nd February for both 3G and WiFi versions. So far 25 titles have been confirmed for US release, with the UK number seemingly a lot lower. The unit will be priced at £229.99 with games retailing at around £35.

All Images:

Tags console, Game, hands-on, Next-Gen, PSP, Reading, Sony, Vita | Permalink | Comments (2)

Blog Reviews Site Updates

Featuriffic vs Minimalist

August 19, 2011 – 14:23:28

Every time I think about a re-design of the blog I fight an internal battle between a straightforward and simple layout and a cool ‘hacker-like’ theme, filled with transparencies and cool images. I’ve always enjoyed the so-called Fantasy User Interfaces you see on TV on shows like CSI and 24 and in movies like Die Hard 4 which are full of swift animations, sleek window design and overall damned good looks. (Check out Mark Coleran’s work)

On the flipside, when it comes to blogging the key focus is the writing, and smooth minimalist designs that really bring the focus back to the text can be very attractive. So when I chose my current theme, I thought I was getting a mixture of both. An interesting and eye catching design but with a clean and straightforward layout for the posts. But it took me a while to settle on a theme, and even now I’m not particular sure I like it. So I thought I would give you a look into the themes I narrowed it down to.

The Minimalist

Surprisingly, a large proportion of my choices were in this area. I think its hard because at times I want my site to be a full featured site, with daily updates full of interesting news and articles collected from all over the web. Conversely, I have no time to do any of that and my site reverts to a standard blog, and the minimalist themes suit that style of writing better.

Elegant Grunge

Besides having a cool name, this theme offered a nice blend of dark and light. I love charcoal greys and really thought the contract of the header and body was attractive. What I didn’t like was the way it tended to mangle my tweets on the right hand side, and the lack of justification in the sidebar made it feel untidy and distracting.

Simple Dark

Another elegant theme, the dark gradient really appealed to me, as did the better separation of the twitter posts, making it much easier on the eyes. I only steered clear of this one as I often use dark themes and wanted to go for something with lighter colours.

Margot

Another neat theme with a good contrast between light and dark. Once again however, the lack of support for my Twitter feed caused me to toss this one aside. The design is very smooth however, and very much appeals to me if I were just reading/writing posts.

The Pretty

These few themes were ones that I found visually attractive. I actually have a lot more, but I am trying to move away from this sort of style and into something a bit cleaner and more professional.

Motion

Motion is a beautiful theme to look at, incorporating transparent bars and a futuristic background along with a clearly separated sidebar area. However, it’s almost a little too distracting and really takes away from the posts themselves. In this case, eye candy isn’t everything.

Game Site

Game site is a theme designed for news and articles. It was originally made for games but can be used along with wordpress categories to create a fully integrated platform, with featured posts, thumbed posts, javascript and ajax functionality. However, in order to do all that considerable time must be spent in configuration along with graphics design and implementation. Far too much work for me…

The Blend

These are the themes that I felt had a nice mix of simplistic layouts but pleasing to look at as well.

White Gold

This theme uses a 3 column layout – something I normally don’t like, but its blend of colours and slight 3D looks from the shadows makes it feel very natural. When it comes to reading, the layout is simple and concise although it doesn’t seem to like line breaks in text. For someone like me who loves paragraphs as a way to break up subjects or topics, it was a major downside to an otherwise great theme.

Desk Scape

Perhaps by the time you are reading this the above theme is how my site looks. This is because Desk Scape is the one other theme that I would really consider sticking with. It’s layout is clean and simple with great use of layers. The one problem that turned me away from this theme is the post summarising which occurs beneath the most recent post. As I would be moving towards a blog, this would be one feature that I think would decrease readability and flow.

zeePersonal & zeeSynergie

Both these themes have a nice clean feel to them and each provides an easy to read post. One thing that I really don’t like about them however is their use of the categories as a sidebar, and difficulty in making them a top bar. However as simple but attractive layouts go, these two are pretty good.

So there you have it. My current theme was the best out of this bunch although there are still plenty out there if I ever feel the need to change. What do you think? Drop me a comment (top right) and let me know!

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Reviews

OmmWriter for Mac

July 5, 2011 – 13:58:53

Minimalist writing apps are becoming the new ‘in’ thing to be writing with. The appeal of a distraction free environment promotes the idea of concentration, lack of clutter and freedom to create. With that in mind, and with my mind always concentrating on three things at once, I thought I should check out some free minimalist writing apps for my Mac. OmmWriter I was the first one I got my hands on.

So this is OmmWriter for Mac. It’s an interesting interface and certainly not without its charm but I’m not really sure about the text noises and relaxing music.

The music gives me the feeling that some massive monster is about to leap out and grab me – years of playing video games have taught me not to trust gently melodic music (read: Limbo) and even though there is a selection of tracks, none really help me at all; much better just to switch it off as far as I am concerned.

For some reason the text noises remind of the tree spirits from Princess Mononoke with their gentle clicking and chirping in the background as I type. However due to the sporadic nature of my touch typing skills, it means that the noises tend to be a little disjointed and almost more of a distraction than I would like. However if I was wearing headphones and not just using my normal speakers I could see how it would be more ambient and relaxing.

The font size is a tad on the small side as well although I believe there is a setting to change that (there was). The background is nice however, and certainly is calming if not a tad modern for my tastes. The ability to also use grey or white as a canvas instead of the background is also refreshing.

Also, the cursor and text settings are quite nice and the ability to switch to plain text font makes for a relaxing environment – at least for me anyway. The problem I fell with a lot of these apps is that everyone is different and what appeals to one writer to actually be another writer’s worst nightmare.

I think what is important is that this app is free and all neurotics aside, it does what its means to do – stops you getting distracted from what you’re writing. When I first started writing this piece, I was simply testing the features of OmmWriter I and yet I have just written a review on it, totally disregarding anything else I was doing moments before.

I still prefer IA Writer on the iPad for its lack of anything. OmmWriter’s settings can almost make you want to tweak, keep changing the sounds or the background music until you find something you are more “comfortable” with. And being a top notch procrastinator I can tell you that sometimes, getting those settings “just right” can can take enough time in itself.