New BlackBerry
E-mail Spy?
Texting Champs
by Engadget
by Engadget Mobile
by TUAW
by Download Squad
by WoW Insider
CNET provides the latest tech news, unbiased reviews, videos, podcasts, software, and downloads, making tech products easy to find, understand and use.
8.8 out of 10
KEF KHT3005 (black)
The KEF KHT-3005 is one compact, beautifully designed speaker package with solid aluminum satellites that feature unique driver technology to produce incredible clarity. Meanwhile, the equally astounding dual 10-inch, 250-watt powered subwoofer delivers ultradeep bass. Full Review
8.8 out of 10
KEF KHT3005 (silver)
The KEF KHT-3005 is one compact, beautifully designed speaker package with solid aluminum satellites that feature unique driver technology to produce incredible clarity. Meanwhile, the equally astounding dual 10-inch, 250-watt powered subwoofer delivers ultradeep bass. Full Review
8.8 out of 10
Aperion Intimus 4T Hybrid SD (cherry)
Six-piece home theater speaker package with slender towers; compact center and surround speakers; remote controlled subwoofer with adjustable equalization; gorgeous furniture grade real cherry wood or black gloss finishes; 10 year warranty; 30 day in-home trial; free shipping. Full Review
8.7 out of 10
Dish Network ViP622 (200-hour DVR)
Receives and records new MPEG-4 AVC programming, including local and other HD channels not available on older receivers; dual-output mode for secondary TV; can record up to three HD shows simultaneously while playing back a fourth; 30-second commercial skip; exceedingly quick response time; well-designed, highly customizable interface; search function includes history; superb remote; impressive image quality; USB port enables connections to portable media players and external hard drives to expand storage capacity. Full Review
8.7 out of 10
Sony PlayStation 3 (80GB)
Swanky design with quiet operation; all games in high-definition; PSP-like, easy-to-use interface; plays Profile 2.0 high-definition Blu-ray movies in addition to upscaling standard DVDs; built-in Wi-Fi; 80GB hard drive; HDMI output with 1080p support; no external power supply; free online gaming service. Full Review
8.7 out of 10
Sling Media Slingbox Pro-HD
Streams home TV and other audiovisual sources to any broadband-connected Mac, Windows PC, Windows Mobile, Palm, or Symbian device in the world; streams HD video (bandwidth permitting); no host PC or monthly charges required; easy-to-use software; controls almost all cable and satellite boxes and DVRs; superb video quality over home network, good video quality via the Internet; simple, straightforward setup. Full Review
8.6 out of 10
Wi-Ex zBoost YX510-PCS-CEL cell phone signal extender
The Wi-Ex zBoost YX510-PCS-CEL significantly boosts your cell phone reception and is easy to operate. Also, it uses a wireless connection to your phone. Full Review
8.6 out of 10
Turbo Charge Tc2 portable cell phone charger
The Turbo Charge Tc2 portable cell phone charger successfully delivers emergency power to your cell phone. It's easy to use and comes with a couple of surprising features. Full Review
8.3 out of 10
Sanyo SCP-5300 (Sprint)
Vibrant color display; built-in camera with flash; compatible with Sprint PCS Business Connection software; comes with extended battery; solid call quality. Full Review
9.3 out of 10
Canon EOS 1D Mark III
Extremely fast, 10-megapixel continuous shooting; very low noise; highly customizable; well-designed body with weather sealing; 3-inch LCD; abundant optional accessories. Full Review
9.3 out of 10
Nikon D3 (body only)
Full-frame sensor; well designed, pro-level weather-sealed body; very low noise, even at extremely high ISOs; fast. Full Review
9.0 out of 10
Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III
Very low noise, high quality images; 21.1 megapixels; live view shooting; pro-level build-quality and performance. Full Review
9.1 out of 10
HP Pavilion Slimline S3330f
Outstanding price-to-feature ratio; Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive; small, flexible case; great performance thanks to a speedy dual-core AMD CPU Full Review
8.7 out of 10
Dell XPS 630
Fastest gaming performance in its price category (mostly); distinctive chassis; lots of expandability; Nvidia software makes overclocking easy. Full Review
8.5 out of 10
Apple iMac (24-inch, 2.8GHz)
A minor specification update results in some significant performance gains; graphics upgrade an option on this 24-inch model; sleek, polished design didn't receive an update, but we won't start clamoring for a new design until the current one is at least 12 months old. Full Review
Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in:
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Frank @ Aug 6th 2008 6:27AM
Get a Mac.......
You'll never look back..........
TIMLITZ @ Aug 7th 2008 9:29PM
MY 11 MONTH OLD MAC CRASHED THREE TIMES.
APPLE STEPPED UP TO THE PLATE AND TOOK CARE OF IT.
THE ONLY DOWNFALL OF MAC'S CAME WITH THE NEW INTEL
PROCESSOR.
I HATE TO SEE APPLE GO DOWN THE TUBES FROM FLAWED TECHNOLOGY.
Jeremy N. Rauch @ Oct 31st 2008 12:33AM
For a vast amount of Mac-over-PC information come to haveanapple@blogspot.com. On this coming Tuesday I will be posting a 5 page essay on why Macs are better than PCs.
Ethan @ Aug 6th 2008 6:28AM
Mac vs. Windows, I say who cares because it's all about Linux yo'.
Apple ROKZ @ Aug 27th 2008 8:26PM
linux!? yo not serious
R U
SOOOOOOOOO MAC
juan tello @ Aug 6th 2008 6:46AM
macs are the best
Alphacat @ Aug 6th 2008 6:56AM
Mac vs. PC = Obama vs. Mccain :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaLvGGMpGFg
dennis @ Aug 6th 2008 7:17AM
Ok, for all those that seriously care. I was a big mac head in the mid 90's. Then I began to realize that as graphics programs were being ported to the PC in effective ways, PC hardware was becoming cheaper pound for pound. In other words, I could get a PC as powerful as a mac for much cheaper and by Windows 98 or so, the OSs were becoming effectively the same. In fact, Windows was adopting the good Mac attributes while it seemed the Mac was adopting the bad ones.
Flash forward to this year, where, for the first time in over 10 years, I bought a mac pro BUT i also installed vista on it.
Why?
The mac pro can take an insane amount of ram.
Photoshop cs4 will be the first 64 bit enabled version of the program plus it will be able to allocate more than 4gb of ram. BUT it will only be available on Windows for the frist six months or so due to Apple not supporting a 64 bit version of one of their programming languages.
Best of both worlds, yo.
mh @ Aug 6th 2008 7:33AM
not quite right. apple is providing a great 64 bit solution with core image, adobe is just too lazy to use it.
Apple ROKZ @ Aug 28th 2008 1:42PM
point taken but apple iz betr
cmoonburton @ Aug 6th 2008 7:18AM
Mac is better, way better than the PC.
iDude @ Aug 6th 2008 7:48AM
Hey Tommy--
Nowhere in your series of articles did you mention that Macs can run XP or Vista.
Also, the Mac mini, iMac, MacBook, and Mac Pro have three year warranties for less than $349.
How about the time wasted when you do / don't update virus and spyware protection? That's a real tangible for Windows chusers.
Nice job...
A brief story: I had a 4X DVD burner that had only a "Windows" badge on the box. It worked fine in my Mac. Then I sold it to an XP bud for $20. He had a 2GHz rig, Pentium 4. After a week of it not working in his rig and coaching via phone, scrounging the internet for firmwares, flashing via DOS (all horrors I had to endure while I coached him), the best we could do is burn at 2X and eject the disk after the burn. Otherwise his rig would lock up. The Windows Rage I went through for about three weeks total was not worth the $20 at all.
Remember. the iPod is the number one mp3 player on the planet not because of Mac users. Think about why. Nothing else worked / works quite as well, despite "all those options" out there for Windows users.
Tom Samiljan @ Aug 6th 2008 8:46AM
Hey iDude,
Thanks for mentioning that stuff. Yes, you are correct. We updated the extended warranty information and added a bit about how Macs can run Windows XP -- an important point!
Best,
Tom
zargon @ Aug 6th 2008 8:21AM
Mac zealots are some of the worst out there, which makes it painful to even read comments when either Macs are pitted against the PC or someone talks about Macs in a bad light. They seem to come out of the woodwork, as though they have some system to monitor the internet and save their precious Macs name.
I also find the blind Mac sheep, the people that buy Macs just because they are "cool" or "hip" and just add comments like "Macs are better" or "PCs sucks" with out backing up their claim at all.
I don't really care about Macs or PCs. I support most Windows based systems at work, because lets face it, in the corporate environment, Windows is really the only choice. But we do have some Macs that we have to support also. I could pull stats from our issue tracking system, but I am pretty sure we have as many calls per computer for the Macs as we do the PCs. This whole false bubble of Macs just working or being more secure (one of the stupidest claims since it will give people a false sense of invisibility) is just myth.
At the end of the day, I don't care what type of computer I support, I just care about getting the job done. At home is another story, I run linux on on my computers since I don't want to have to do extra work or worry. While some may say that not having to do extra work is a oxy-moron with linux, and some cases it can be. Overall, I know I spend less time supporting it then I do with Windows or OSX.
Konradson @ Aug 6th 2008 9:13AM
I've installed Mac OS X 10.4.5 (First Intel version), on a Fujitsu Scaleo Pentium 4 with 512 Mbytes. Intel or Via Chipsets.
Although Linux sounds great, You can't play with Linux, Ubuntu gives some chance. You can play with both Mac and Windows. You can use Photoshop with both Mac and Windows.
if you want Unix, use Solaris, HP-UX. If at home... Mac OS X.
Granny wants Word? you have MS Office 2008 for Mac
And what's better, it is steadier than a PC!!!
Changing parts in a Mac Workstation is easier than in a PC, no matter if it is self built or from Dell or HP.
I'm not happy with any Support from any Company. Worst, maybe ACER, and it doesn't matter if it is for home or a company with a 24/7 Gold Support with Dell or HP, or even SUN.
You'd rather know first the Company's support in your city...
good luck!!!
Joe Goodof @ Aug 6th 2008 9:33AM
A Movie sent to me this week had a dot mov suffix.. it will NOT play on my great Dell 530 vista loaded pc... sorry, Mac.
7ru7h @ Aug 6th 2008 9:38AM
Ah, the drivelings of mac fanboys... better than Comedy Central.
The biggest selling point of macs are you can boot both mac and windows, but *shock* you can do the same with pcs if you really want to. Why would one do this? Don't know or care. Another is the "unbeatable security" and "invulnerablility to viruses"
CAD says it best: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060513
As for the security and whatnot, Apple is laughable. The only reason they don't have (many, if any) viruses is because they don't have very much of the market share, and Apple has a "nice company" facade, but I wouldn't expect that to last long, especially since Apple pulled out of the Black Hat convention.
" ...scrounging the internet for firmwares, flashing via DOS ..."
Umm.... what was he using, WIn3.1??? Are you sure you know very much about pcs, let alone computers? I can tell you the problem you had, you didn't just look for the drivers or let windows install them itself (thats what xp does).
@Zargon - Good point and well made.
farmer @ Aug 6th 2008 9:51AM
PC is better for gaming, to hell with Mac. Mac is more of a work comp and who works on a computer?
dude5555444333 @ Aug 6th 2008 10:18AM
LOl, Macs suck, if you are serious then get a PC, Macs can't do gaming. Those Mac commercials are a bunch of bull too, my PC never freeze or errors, if your PC freezes or errors then you must have a piece of crap!
My PC blows Mac away.....
Specs!:
3 Gig of ram
NVidia GeForce 8600 GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Silence 610 Watt power supply
Intel Pentium 4 processor 630 with HT technology
200 GB of memory
And mah PC is 5 years old too :)
Ceejus @ Aug 6th 2008 10:49AM
Okay, here's what it all comes down to:
First, let me just say this. Computers are computers. Macs, PCs, Linux, whatever you use. And when talking about capabilities, it all depends what kind of hardware a computer has. The processor speed, the memory, the video cards, sound cards, etc. Now here's one thing that really cannot be argued with.
Now with that being said, Macs are overpriced. You'd be lucky to get 1/3 of the specs that you would with a PC for the same price. Instead of getting a PC with 4 gigs of RAM, a 500 gig hard drive, a core 2 quad, and a geforce 8800 gtx, you'd get a Mac with 1 gig of RAM, a 120 gig hard drive, a core 2 duo, and a geforce 8600 gt for the same price. It's ridiculous.
Not only that, but PCs have way more compatibility and support software-wise. So with that being said, I think I'd have to agree with the idea that Macs are nothing more than a trend. Their main emphasis is on cosmetic design. People go with Macs because they have the trendier-looking OS, the "cooler" look, and because they are led to believe that Macs have superior video and editing quality (which you can get on a PC anyway given you have a good enough graphics card). And to all you Final Cut Pro fanboys, if you want superior video editing, you would use Adobe Premiere Pro anyway, which works perfectly fine on PCs.
I'm not gonna be a hypocrite and say that Apple doesn't make good products, since I own an iPhone 3G. But the iPhone is definitely Apple's strong point, not its computers. And even then, I only own one because Apple really has no good competition in the cell phone industry yet. I'm still waiting for a better phone to come out (hopefully the Xperia X1 from Sony) seeing as the iPhone 3G, as good as it is, still has many flaws and missing features it shouldn't, similar to Apple's computers. Those flaws being no video calls, video recording, tv support, flash support, MMS (which is totally lame), replaceable battery, copy and paste, stereo bluetooth, voice commands, camera flash, zoom, focus, no joystick, no stand, no landscape keyboard, and no call recording options.
I know this is about computers and not about cell phones, but the point I'm trying to make is that when it comes to Apple products, don't judge a book by its pretty cover. Instead, focus on what exactly it is your getting performance and spec-wise.