Gadgetory

this week on the scene I tech review Windows Phone 7 gets a mango makeover summer movie apps coming soon to a touch screen near you blu-ray discs are almost an afterthought for our top five players and get down and dirty with Dropbox it's all coming up right now hi everyone I'm Hollywood and welcome to the cnet tech review where we collect our hottest videos of the week and tell you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech plus offer some unique tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line let's start with the good Microsoft to Steve Jobs we'll see your 200 new features in iOS 5 and raise you 500 new features in Windows Phone mango boom in fact there's so much going on with mango that cell phone editors Bonnie cha and Jessica dole court decided to split up review duties on this one take a look at their two-part first look back in November microsoft launched its new mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 and it's about to get a big ole update hey everyone I'm Bonnie toss senior editor at cnet com and I'm here to bring you a first look at some of the new features of Windows Phone mango which will officially be called windows phone 7.5 when its release this fall the update will bring more than 500 new features but a lot of it focuses on three key areas Communications absent Internet so what are the new communications features well first in terms of messaging you can now link multiple email accounts into a single inbox it's easy to set up and I like that Microsoft gives you the option to pick and choose which accounts to link because I like to keep my work email separate from my personal email it's also easier to keep track of messages thanks to the new conversation view email threads are now grouped together and marked for quick identification in your inbox so you no longer have to scroll through every single message trying to find a response in the People Hub you can now create group contacts once you've set up a group you can text or email everyone at once and view the latest updates and photos of just those group members instead of having to sort through your entire contacts feed windows phone 7.5 also makes it easier for you to post to your social networks with an enhanced live tile currently the me tile only lets you post to Facebook and see what's new in your profile but with the mango update you'll be able to post a message check in two places see notifications and set your chat status and last but not least mango is going to add support for Twitter and linkedin accounts in the People Hub unfortunately since we didn't have final software this feature wasn't activated on a review unit but we're told that it will act the same way as Facebook does so you see your friends tweets and linkedin updates right in the what's new section now I know none of these features are new to other platforms but what I like about Windows Phone is how they integrate it at all a lot of the time with competing os's to do the same things like checking Facebook you have to open a separate app but with Windows Phone it's integrated with your contacts the picture hub and other areas of the phone relevant content shows up in relevant places and you don't have to think about it or do extra work it's a smarter approach and I think it's where Windows Phone really succeeds but the challenge for Microsoft is to make everyone else understand that like I said earlier there's a lot more to the windows phone mango update and this is just the tip of the iceberg so be sure to check out our full preview for more I'm Bonnie Tom this has been your first look at the communication features of Windows Phone mango update hey everyone I'm Jessica doll court with cnet what I've got for you today is a look at some of the new app features coming your way in Windows Phone mango which will otherwise be known as Windows Phone 7.5 Microsoft has spent a lot of time and energy working on apps with this release so they may or may not have the most programs in their app store but I do give Microsoft credit for trying to integrate those apps in useful ways for example when you search for a movie or a product or a business and being you're now going to see suggestions for relevant apps that you can download and also a list of apps that you already have the same is going to go for apps and the music and pictures hubs as well you might not see every app in those lists that you think you should that's because the app publisher has to enable apps to connect with the feature in order for that to happen another app that has some really neat tools is Bing there's local Scout which is sort of like Yelp for restaurants and businesses nearby and there's music ID which is a lot like Shazam music ID essentially matches the sound of recorded music that adheres to the zune music database and it will of course help you buy those songs as well then there's being vision and this is probably one of the updates most ambitious apps it scans barcodes and also book and magazine covers posters and DVD covers to identify search results online it can also attempt to scan and translate text into numerous languages that was a little less successful for me now I did have some problems with being vision not recognizing all the images that I sent its way so hopefully Microsoft will be able to improve upon the tool before the final version is released okay now the last new feature that I want to show you is multitasking to easily switch from one open app to another you just press and hold the back arrow under the screen you'll see the apps shrink into thumbnail sizes and then you can swipe around and see and then select the open pages just remember that this is a technical preview so Microsoft has more time to refine some of its features before the update officially comes out this fall once again i'm jessica dull court with cnet this is Windows Phone mango and don't forget to check out our hands-on review of the mango preview on cnet com as Jessica mentioned they did only have a technical preview of Windows Phone 7.5 to work with so look for our full reviews of the new OS and of course new handsets when the final version is released next up we've got the latest editor's choice honoree in the gaming desktop category the digital storm ode level three combined sleek design elements with blazing performance and just one tiny little quirk hi I'm rich brown senior editor for cnet.com today we're going to take a look at the editors choice winning digital storm code level 3 so this is a fixed configuration gaming desktop but costs about 2,400 bucks and it's actually one of the best systems we've seen in this price range it has fast gaming performance and overclocked intel core i7 cpu and pretty much every feature we expect to find for this price one of the things we like most about the system is its external design this white and black case is pretty handsome and it's actually convenient to use you'll see the front panel here is nice and clean it's got a blu ray/dvd combo drive here up top now here on the top of the case there's a couple ports you've got four usb2 ports a USB 3 port firewire inputs as well as a couple of analog audio jacks and this dial here will let you control the fan speed in case you want to kind of dial down the noise as you're using the system on the back of the system you'll see one of our few criticisms you'll notice this wire coming out from the case and into the USB 3 port here in the back that actually connects this USB 3 port to the USB 3 port at the top of the case so well we're glad to see usb3 in the system this kind of external wiring is definitely an amateurish design decision otherwise you get all the ports we like to see in a system like this there's a ton of usb2 ports in the back of the system as well as 13 USB 3 slot there's a ps2 old-school mouse and keyboard jack you get eSATA as well as power D SATA there's 7.1 analog audio as well as spit if optical audio out up here now between the two graphics cards here you also get a lot of display output options you got four DVI outs an HDMI output on each card as well as a full-size DisplayPort out on each card now for gaming purposes the system probably isn't ideal if you want to set up multiple high resolution monitors but if you want to connect a large TV or a couple lower res screens the system is definitely up for the task now we mentioned the case is easy to use and by that mostly we mean it's easy to get inside there's two lashes here in the side panel they pull down the door pops off just like that it's nice and easy now inside the case it's actually something we haven't seen before this plastic plate installed on top of the motherboard covers up all the circuitry and the transistors you usually see inside a case and it definitely goes a long way towards meeting up the overall appearance here between the plate and the wiring that's pretty much invisible in the system digital storm has really done a nice job inside the case component-wise is pretty straightforward stuff for a system in this twenty five hundred dollar price range of here you've got the liquid cooling Hardware going down to an intel core i7 2600 Cassie PU is overclocked to 4.8 gigahertz making it super fast and that is how digital storm cells the system remembering you get eight gigs of ram with this pc as well as two free slots if you want to upgrade later you'll see there's two nvidia gtx 570 graphics cards and there's 21 x pci express slots on the motherboard there a little bit hard to see for the hard drives digital storm gives you over 128 gigabytes solid-state drive that has windows on it and for general storage you get a one terabyte drive down here now you can also see from all the free drive base here that there's plenty of room to expand but that said there's no cabling behind these slots so you have to do that yourself so in our lab we found the ODE level three was one of the fastest if not the fastest gaming pcs in this price category so between its speed its features it's great looking case in its aggressive price the system is an easy Editors Choice winner so I'm rich brown this is the digital storm ode level 3 that's one good-looking gaming rig but seriously there wasn't any other way to power that USB 3 port without that little pig tail sticking out the back I mean I guess you could always just unplug it skip the port on top at least that's what I would do Dropbox is probably one of the most widely known cloud storage services around but it's oh so much more than just that Sharon Vaknin has a few tips to help make you a Dropbox master hey everyone I'm Sharon Vaknin for cnet.com Dropbox is one of the great cloud storage tools like sugarsync or SkyDrive the lets you sync files with any computer when you put a file into your Dropbox you can access it on any other computer or mobile phone lots of people use it for project management as a virtual thumb drive or as a way to share files with friends but today i have for new ways to use Dropbox on my facebook page i asked you guys to give me your best tips and i'm including a couple of those two to get dropbox go to dropbox com sign up for an account and download the desktop client you'll automatically get two gigs of storage free and you'll start using it right away to upload files to your Dropbox you can upload it through the web client or drag it into the dropbox folder on your desktop but a very clever way to get things in your folder is by emailing it go to send to dropbox com where you'll get a special email address you can use to email attachments to your Dropbox so if my friend sends me an email with his new mix and I can't save it on my iPhone because it doesn't do that I can just forward it to my unique Dropbox email address and it will automatically get uploaded to my dropbox folder another company got creative and built a tool that lets you upload target links to your Dropbox for instance if a restaurant has a PDF of nutritional facts on their website you can copy the link paste it into URL droplet calm and it'll be uploaded to your Dropbox so it's nice you can find a link and upload it that way or email attachments and your files will be waiting for you on another computer or phone whenever you're ready you can automate things even more with this awesome trick no matter where you are you can use Dropbox to remotely start downloading torrents to show you I'll use utorrent but the steps are similar for other BitTorrent clients too so what you have to do on a Mac is open utorrent and go to preferences then head over to downloads and check automatically open torrent files found in and browse to select your Dropbox folder on Windows go to preferences then directories check the box next to automatically load torrents from and select your Dropbox folder since torrent files can be big set them to download somewhere else on your hard drive just remember that if you use this trick your home computer needs to stay on and running utorrent but now you can start torrance no matter where you are for whatever legal purposes you like of course like I mentioned lots of people use Dropbox as a virtual USB Drive and since you really can't forget to take it with you it's a convenient solution for accessing your documents but lifehacker points out that since it's not the default Documents folder you might forget to change the target folder to your Dropbox when you're saving documents so why not make Dropbox your default Documents folder on windows 7 or vista right click your Documents folder select properties and then on the location tab you can specify the new file path click move and then select your Dropbox folder on a Mac open up terminal and type CD Dropbox then type this command which will create a Documents folder in your Dropbox that automatically syncs with your desktop and other computers and on my Facebook page Jason Wang reminded me that Dropbox will save all versions of your docs for 30 days just go to the Dropbox web interface hover over a file and click the arrow to view previous versions of it and finally Javier left a message on my page explaining that you can use Dropbox as your own photostream with the Android and iPhone apps you can upload photos from your phone directly to your Dropbox or take photos within the application and view them anywhere and you can even make a public photos folder to share with friends and family by now though you might be wondering if 2 gigabytes is enough for all these tricks two gigs is good for most but if you need more storage don't forget that drop box gives you 250 megabytes for every friend you refer but don't start making fake email addresses and inviting yourself Dropbox is a little smarter than that if you have any more tips let me know on my facebook page and visit how to cnet com for more how to's first seen it I'm Sharon Vaknin and i'll see you on the interwebs see there are perfectly legal files that can be easily shared via torrents like linux distro images and i'm sure there are other things too while i try to think of some more let's take a break but we've still got a lot more tech review right after this welcome back to the cnet tech review our weekly video digest of all things good and bad we've seen here at cnet TV continuing on in the good we are slowly coming around to the idea that blu-ray has one and it's time to get a blu-ray DVD player but only because they have so many streaming services built-in cool easier to count down the top-5 blu-ray players that you might never use to play discs little silver discs they've sort of had their run cd/dvd even blu-ray feeling the heat of streaming delivery and digital download but that's it when you want the best video quality in your home TV room you've still got to pop in a disk I'm Brian Cooley with the top five blu-ray players according to cnet review scores and all of them by the way do a lot more than just great high-def number five is the samsung BD d 6700 we love it's huge array of streaming services it has dual hdmi outputs you'd use that if you want to run separate dedicated video and audio feeds out of it to different gear it's got a generous one gigabyte of onboard memory for features like bd-live and it can be controlled from a nap what camp these days on the other hand it's stubbornly pricing at around two hundred and seventy bucks in a world filled with 175 dollar bluray x number four is the sony bdp s 580 this guy has about the best array of streaming services except it's missing MLB com it has built-in Wi-Fi as well it's fast which is really important when you're hopping around all the features and chapters of a data heavy blu-ray disc there's also an iphone and an android control app and they're free unlike the samsung we just talked about it doesn't do 2d to 3d conversion but we think that's kind of a joke anyway the biggest drawback on this guy is Sony's custom interface for getting to all the connected stuff it could be the worst in the business classic Sony but the rest is great number three is the LG BD 670 it's kind of the opposite of the Sony it has a tremendous easy-to-use interface for all the online services also built in Wi-Fi but no onboard memory for accessing bd-live online content but we seldom find ourselves doing that anyway so who cares same lack of silly 2d to 3d conversion look basically this guy plays the hits it does all the important stuff well and leaves the gimmicks to the other ones the number two best blu-ray player right now is the panasonic DMP BDT 210 built-in Wi-Fi again great streaming services including MLB and a price right there in that hundred and eighty dollars sweet spot all great but sealing the deal on this guy is that it's the fastest blu-ray player we've ever tested fast it loading and navigating discs if you haven't tried a blu-ray deck you don't realize how important that is there's also a touch free disc tray loading technology that's a little bit much but overall this is our favorite blu-ray disc player hold that thought before I bring you to number one what are you going to feed your new blu-ray deck we just revised our list of the top 40 blu-ray discs these are great transfers the studio's really sweat it over instead of just shoveling but kinds of discs that make you remember why you still have a big old bookcase full of DVDs in your TV room go check it out ok remember I said a minute ago that the number two panasonic BDT 210 was our favorite blu-ray player so what's above that the value King that's who the sony ps3 slim that's our number one pick at just a few bucks more than the number 5 samsung deck you'll get a solid blu-ray player a high-def game console living room web browser AV streaming machine and all of that wrapped up in an easy to use interface that we like a lot now you can't play ps2 games on this guy and only bluetooth universal remotes work with it which is weird but if you're going to go to get the most for your money this is the machine for you to catch the latest cnet reviews of all the blu-ray players go to cnet click on home video they're all in there and for more top 5s like this one go to top 5 cnet com i'm brian cooley thanks for watching yeah tell me what I'm waiting for in addition to all the streaming services and web integration and fast performance maybe some cooler names really the BMP and the BDT and the DB be I'm not going to remember any of that standing in the store ps3 slim though easy to remember in addition to impossible naming conventions let's see what else is wrong with the world this week in the bed as the tablet Wars rage on for every winner like the ipad 2 or the galaxy tab there has to be a loser and thanks to Donald Bell we found another one hey i'm donna bell and today we're taking a first look at the velocity micro cruise t 301 this is an Android tablet with a 7-inch screen and a low low street price of a hundred and sixty dollars it's running a modified version of android 2.2 and like a lot of the budget tablets we see google's official apps for gmail maps and marketplace and others aren't included you get a decent email app though and the web browser is also pretty good you also notice that the apps for kindle and facebook are included right out of the box we were also able to get amazon's android app store working here but popular game downloads like angry birds and fruit ninja weren't compatible so don't get your hopes up in terms of gaining in terms of hardware I've definitely seen worse in this price range it weighs about a pound and the screen quality isn't great but the build quality is actually pretty resilient the only Achilles heel here is that the plastic on the back can be peeled off pretty easily to you that might be a feature but I would think twice before letting a kid around this on the side here you'll find a nice oversized volume switch the top has a power button and full-size SD card slot also a mini USB connection on the bottom there's a pair of speakers a headphone jack and connection for the included power adapter on the whole is an okay general purpose tablet for the money if you're buying this is an e-reader though you'll probably be disappointed by the weight and the screen quality if it's something you're picking up for a kid your kids probably going to be disappointed that they can't play Angry Birds on this and I recommend spending the extra fifty dollars on an ipod touch so that's the cruise T 301 from velocity micro for cnet.com I'm Donald Bell remember there's a difference between inexpensive and cheap though I suppose the cruise is technically bolts let's go ahead and wrap things up with this week's bottom line summer is officially here and that means the summer blockbuster movie season is already in full swing and thanks to the film tie-ins featured in this week tap that app you can enjoy the movie experience long after the house lights come up welcome to tap that app i'm brian Tong and this is the show where we cover the hottest apps in the mobile space now it's the summer blockbuster movie season and we're here to show you some of the sweetest companion apps for your favorite flicks on your iOS devices now first up is super 8 this JJ Abrams and Steven Spielberg collaboration is getting hyped up in you can be a part of it with the iphone and ipod touch app for 99 cents now you can record a short movie using a variety of gritty filters and effects create your movie with clips share them and if you're lucky you'll see a frame from super eight inside your movie get them all and you'll see a clip from the actual movie now if you want something a little more lighthearted check out the zookeeper movie app it's free for the iPhone and iPad and includes three mini-games like grabbing bananas with the monkey or leaves with a giraffe it might entertain the kids but honestly it's pretty lame so you're lucky it's free now comic book fans have a lot to look forward to this summer and fans of x-men first class get a free digital magazine for the iPad showcasing how the x-men have played an important part in historical events including how John F Kennedy plan to deal with Magneto because that really happened now not all movies have dedicated apps that work in tandem with the movies but Green Lantern fans can download the DC Comics Green Lantern app on their iphone or ipad it allows you to download free excerpts from the comic book series and bone up on your knowledge with Green Lantern 101 to get you up to speed and Captain America First Avenger fans download the marvel comics app on either your iphone or ipad for free and you'll have access to captain america first vengeance for free it's the official prequel to the movie in addition to other comics as well and let's not forget the over-the-top Transformers Dark of the Moon movie coming out the end of June now there's no official movie out but why not annoy your friends family neighbors with the 99 cents transformer sound board see what I mean alright if you guys have any other apps you think are worthy to be here that we missed send them to tap that app at cnet com i'm brian songs thanks for watching we'll see you guys next time the bottom line this week i've got butter on my phone that super8 hap is so cool here's a little film my producer shot over the weekend it totally reminds me of some of the old home movie is my parents had from when they were kids with better haircuts of course and if you haven't seen super 8 be sure to stick around for a surprise during the credits it's almost as good as the movie itself all right folks that's our show come back next week for an all-new see no tech review until then there are tons of great videos available every day at cnet TV com I'll see you next time and thank you for watching you