Gadgetory

this week on the cnet tech review the buzz report goes to comic-con apple works its magic again HTC and motorola face off in a drawing on droid prizefight and I count down our top five back-to-school tech pics it's all coming up right now hello folks and welcome to the cnet tech review rounding up our hottest videos of the week and telling you what's good and what's bad in the world of tech and offering up some tech wisdom in the form of the bottom line I'm Brian Cooley in from Hollywood let's start off with the good stuff last week while I was filling in on this show for Molly she was off gallivanting around the San Diego Convention Center covering comic-con for the buzz report and once you see the required outfit I think you'll be glad that she went instead of me hi I'm Molly would welcome to the bus report special report from comic-con comic-con is about so much more than comics as you know there's video games TV movies speaking of video games tell us a little red Falcon Armageddon and then of course comic-con is all about promoting movies there's movies that are coming out like Battlefield LA Green Hornet kind of owns this show then there's movies that are just cool and geeky like transformers you've got people getting in and out of pods for aliens because it's coming out on blu-ray and there's this nice big booth for tron featuring the light cycle which I think I'm totally going to steal because it looks hella fast you turn that off real quick TV big deal here at comic-con lost was pretty much made here true blood is huge CBS is premiering its new show Hawaii five-o here and then AMC has this new show called blocking dead I want to go now can we go now are we done also Big Bang Theory huge a comic con who knew in a hot dense state the nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started waving ganna coolio trove began to drew Neanderthal develop toes another huge trend at comic-con toys figurines and collectibles for example collectibles for the very serious collector what are you guys in line for the Hasbro booth here as Bros toy shop you needed a ticket all weekend but right now there's no ticket needed so no fight are there actually are there new toys being released that you're excited about yes it's a pre-release right yeah they're doing a lot of the some special edition toys and releases I'm the new sergeant slaughter figure from GI Joe they're debuting here and then I guess they're going to be available on hazardous website or that's what they've done every other year so see and so normally you had to get a ticket how you actually I went to this yesterday you have to go upstairs wait in line for about two hours to get a ticket to wait in line for another five hours to get a ticket so it's really not worth it unless you want to go put it on ebay and make money but i just want sergeant slaughter so I'm good also turns out comic-con is kind of hot as in horny it's Marilyn Monroe with Mickey Mouse boobies and although it may not seem like it anymore comic-con is in fact still about comics actually super serious comics we are currently in the presence of greatness in Wonder Woman greatness alone they have in this glass case the first appearance of Wonder Woman Wonder Woman's first cover and the first issue of Wonder Woman plus in this case there's like the first Superman which is going to go on auction the first Batman it's unbelievable and I'm not going to touch anything because most of this costs as much as my house the other thing everybody will tell you about comic-con is that it is all about the unbelievable costumes thank you you know yesterday I got my picture taken a lot as Mollywood hosted the bus reported buzz out loud but then i put this costume on and everyone wants to take my picture as Wonder Woman thank you have I mentioned how much I love it here ok so you got your movies your TV your comic books your costumes and then there's just everything else and that's it for the bus report I'm Hollywood thanks for watching just leave me here I'm with my people I like yes Jack Sparrow we get it we like her too and we'll be glad when she's back here on the cnet tech review next week earlier this week Apple announced a host of upgrades to their imac mac pro and cinema display lines that's all well and good and if you want to see those reviews head over to cnet TV com now there weren't any real earth-shaking Apple developments but there was one little peripheral that really piqued my interest take a look hi I'm Scott Stein senior associate editor at cnet com and this is the new Apple Magic Trackpad an apples made a lot of multi touch devices recently the ipad the iphone their macbook and macbook pro lines with their tremendous multi-touch touch pads that are also clickable the people who are left out desktop Mac users but not anymore Apple has made this device to essentially take that multi-touch click pad that's on a macbook or a macbook pro remove it and make it a bluetooth device for your desktop that's pretty much exactly what it is for $69 it's not exactly cheap but it does offer some great feel if you're used to using a macbook or a macbook pro it feels exactly like that but even bigger and it has inertia lulling which is a new feature on macbook touchpads in addition it has click zones it has touch to tap it has three finger and forefinger even multi-touch so all that stuff they're used to in the macbook and macbook pro experience one thing that's really nice about the design is it lies completely flush with the bluetooth keyboard that comes with imax so it really feels like a one-piece type design you could put it right next to it or split it apart I think it actually looks nicer even with that keyboard than without and that's pretty much it accepts double-a batteries or rechargeable batteries in fact apple has released a battery charger addressing the fact that you're going to be having a lot of bluetooth devices between a keyboard a trackpad and a mouse now while this magic trackpad is meant to be used on Macs and you're going to get all that multi-touch support on max Apple does say that it works with Windows devices you'll have to play around and see how it works for yourself you'll also need a software update which should be available now which enables all the track pads configuration elements you leave that in order to enable touch to tap or click zones or any additional configurations that you want to like you have on your macbook and macbook pro so for those of you who have never used a macbook or macbook pro large trackpad what you're looking at here this entire surface is a multi-touch trackpad but also it's all clickable the bottom part and even the top part is clickable thanks to the way this is seated just to let you know so you can move across this but you can also click on it anywhere now this is meant to replace a mouse not exactly although it could for many people certainly all of the multi-touch and clicking can be used to the capacity that you were to use a mouse we really do like a mouse for a lot of its accuracy and we've enjoyed apples mice recently quite a bit it's going to be up to the user to decide certainly they're aiming for this to become a mouse replacement potentially in the future we wondered it seen it will the minus ever really die well maybe this is another step towards it I'm Scott Stein and this is apple's new magic trackpad goofy name aside I like the magic trackpad in fact if it works with my iPad and my apple bluetooth wireless keyboard I can kind of cobble together a next-generation laptop sort of here's something else I probably won't be doing this year running out to buy an electric car but that doesn't mean they're not worth looking at maybe just a little further down the road check out my test drive now in the midst of ishii I'm ease its cheeks look full of acorns its belly full of lithium and it's on track to hit us showrooms late in 2011 this Mitsubishi is more proof that electric cars are here or finally back depending how bitter you are about GM's EV one anyway let's get in the Mitsubishi I meet and check the tech let's walk the architecture of our chubby cheeked little friend and it all starts back here in the engine room that's where pretty much everything lives on this car underneath this cover we find the guts of what makes an EV run first we have an ECU an electronic control unit that runs all kinds of things from power output to the use of power for heater or air conditioner regeneration to power when you're coasting or braking very important box you've also got an inverter it takes the DC power that comes out of a battery turns it into the AC power that the motor needs that motor by the way is underneath here a 330 volt motor rated at 63 horsepower and about a hundred and thirty foot pounds of torque it's hooked up to a transmission but it doesn't change gears it's a one speed it's a reduction box really now where are the batteries those live around the side actually the batteries are kind of invisible part of the relative genius of Mitsubishi she's packaging but they've done is they've stuck them underneath the floor in the passenger compartment so you don't see them and that's good now how do you charge those batteries here's one way this is the fast way this is the quick charge port that would require a special quick charge device that's going to give you an 80% charge in just 30 minutes but more likely you're going to charge on this side of the car where we have the lower voltage port in here you've got to hook up for this charging gun that just clicks right into place and it goes to either a 110 connection or you can take off the adapter here and you've got a 220 plug here's the problem you got to pack a lunch using either of these 14 hours for a full charge on 110 7 on 220 but at least you'll find them in a lot of places now even taking this car home to charge up isn't problem free I had to try three different outlets to find one on a 15 amp circuit that had a light enough load that it wouldn't throw a breaker while the car was charging and your garden-variety medium duty extension cord not a good idea it only adds to the bottleneck of getting current into this thing carry a heavy duty cord along with this car's fairly short one beside the eye whoa okay that's the first weird things is a right hand drive car Japan domestic market products another indication this guy's not ready for prime time in the left hand driving part of the world yeah but inside the car we have a modest amount of technology this is not a cabin tech story folks the radio will tell you that and I mean radio that's a good old 1980s era single din am FM CD that isn't the point although you can get a double din LCD in dash nav at least that's what they envisioned for this car now under the instrument panel that's where this car gets really interesting left gauge that's your charge like a gas gauge and your gear indicator will get to the gears in a minute well the gear in the middle you've got your speedo and kilometers in this case around it is a mode indicator with a dial that needle will show when you're charging on the far left there let's regen either coasting or breaking then you've got a little eco band when you're driving very lightly the way that it wants you to for best range and then you got a big old fat power area when you're really getting into it and tapping the kilowatts on the rights of multifunction gauge I usually kept it in the remaining range mode like you see there tells you how far you got to go before you're calling a cab now I have an issue between that and the other gauge which shows charge they don't really agree the charge gauge right now shows what about Oh 75% charge but that range gauge only shows 59 kilometers which is about fifty percent of the possible range so somewhere these two were working on different algorithms now on to that gear lever pretty common stuff until you get down the bottom of the gate so Park reverse neutral Drive we all understand that then there's eco then there's be here's how these work drive gives you access to the cars full power and standard regeneration profile when you're coasting or breaking eco gives you very limited power and aggressive regeneration be gives you access to the power of D with the aggressive region of eco is how it kind of sorts out 0 to 60 yes in about 13 or 14 seconds top speed around 80 miles per hour range about a hundred miles is the promise but after a full charge overnight we only saw a max of 80 kilometers on the distance to dead gauge okay what's it like to drive one of these guys well the first thing you notice is the quiet and not just the quiet but the overall lack of sound you don't have the engine revving and running and vibrating you don't have the gearbox with its vibration and harshness you also don't have the gear changes that are constantly giving you inputs as phases of the engines operation change all those things add up and you don't realize how distracting and how noisy in the broad sense a combustion car ISM when that all goes away the electric vehicle like this one feels very nimble very speedy and very effortless on the downside I find I'm always second-guessing their way on using the car because I'm concerned about remaining state of charge so you drive in a very shall we say Prius owner kind of way which means you're doing good things for your range but not necessarily good things for traffic flow you know I also was driving earlier today it was kind of cold but I didn't turn the heater on because I know that takes electricity to heat the fluid that goes into the heater radiator I said go on a risk it you make friends everywhere you go in this I mean I find partly because the car is cute that Chevy chipmunk look in the front is kind of a heart melter at the same time people do think it's awfully small even though I don't think it's that small it's a hell of a lot bigger than a smart fortwo but it does print very sort of petite and it prints very narrow to and generally speaking aside from the powertrain and the way that you behave to accommodate it it's like driving what a honda fit it feels like a very similar kind of car ok let's price this little mitsui I'm Eve as well as we can I love right-hand drive born to be a mail carrier okay about thirty thousand dollars is the word very roughly for a rival in maybe q4 of 2011 a full year after let's say the Nissan Leaf but if that is the price and if the 7500 dollar tax credit from the feds is still in place we have a low twenty-thousand-dollar car here that is simply fun to drive and gets a great public reaction folks think it's really cute want to scoop it up and take it home and give it a hot bath and a meal if this is all true Mitsubishi might have a hit on their hands now if that little electric chipmunk didn't sate your appetite for v's keep an eye on cnet TV com for our upcoming video on the nissan leaf which is coming to market soon it's pretty impressive ok folks time to take a break but come right back to find out how to take your iphone 3g back to the way it was 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 I'm Brian Cooley continuing on with the good the end of summer still a ways off but for some parents the start of another school year can't come soon enough whether they've got wide-eyed freshman or seventh year seniors I've got a few tech suggestions for how to start the semester off rights you can't begin to help your kid pick back-to-school clothes please don't but give me a few minutes and I can probably make you less than useless when it comes to picking back-to-school tech I'm Brian Cooley with a top five best back-to-school tech products according to our editors here at SEMA starting with number five audio engine five yeah I had a big WTF bubble over my head too until I checked out the review these are great sounding powered speakers plus they have two inputs to their booming 50 watt per channel amp a USB port for charging your portable wallet plays through one of those inputs just overall a great marriage of pc speakers and stereo speakers and also a great marriage of dorms and loud music number for the sony playstation 3 now you may think of this as the ultimate screw off device but well it is the console itself is now slimmer games are in hi-def blu-ray movies since the get-go and now adding netflix streaming often an HD approach this guy as reverse psychology your kid might get so sick of great entertainment that homework will be a refreshing change number three the barnes & noble nook now in the time it will take for the ipad to kill off this entire category we think the nut can earn off its low price the Wi-Fi only version is under 150 bucks has that cool color LCD for navigating has expandable storage a changeable battery generous book loaning ability and it handles PDF and epub docks which at least makes it possible for school materials number two the iphone 4 is not our pick no we give the editors choice to the competing HTC droid incredible it's fast in every way on a great network does a great job with that android operating system which is hot as a pistol these days and has an 8 megapixel camera and a bigger screen than the iphone and it doesn't have the cloud of funky antenna issues looming over its head before we get to our number one top tech product for back-to-school a lot of folks email here asking how the folks at cnet editors and others got our jobs that scene that what did we study well we did a little straw poll here's what we found out English is number one disproving at least for the time being that you can't get a job after that tied with that with journalism and communications then comes a big middle section of marketing degrees Business Administration drama and musical theatre that explains brian Tong and art then you get to computer science butting up against religious studies okay now time to reveal our number one tech product for back to school it's apple's ipad now first the bad news your kid will be late to every class because they'll constantly be stopped by people who want to look at the ipad touch it ask them how they like it it just hasn't lost its mojo yet now the good news is the ipad is a netbook an e-reader a gaming device a photo frame and a large screen ipod music and video all at once team that up with apple's slick bluetooth keyboard and you can really get some serious work done on it that's the good news for the full details on these top-notch tech products for back-to-school go to back to school cnet com i'm brian cooley thanks for joining us for this top five also be sure to check out Brian tongs favorite back-to-school smartphone apps on his latest episode of tap that app that's up right now at cnet TV com now let's move on to the bad when Apple announced the iphone 4 and its new operating system iOS four the company was very upfront about the fact that this new operating system wouldn't give iphone 3g users all the same benefits of users of the later models naturally that didn't stop many 3g users from installing the upgrade anyway and quickly regretting it that's where Beatty comes to the rescue and shows you how to go back to the way it was a lot of you iphone 3g owners may have upgraded to the latest iOS four but if you aren't really happy because your phone seems more sluggish or you aren't getting the benefit of multitasking anyways you probably wish you could go back i'm brian songs from cnet com and i'll show you how to downgrade your iphone 3g back to iphone OS 3.1 point three now big things to lifehacker for showing me how to complete the downgrade process this method has worked consistently for iphone 3g users but as always proceed with caution now to get started we'll need to have a few things in place first up get the restore file for the iphone OS 3.1 3 now it still might be on your computer's hard drive from previous updates so on a Mac look for it here and for Windows users you can find it at this location on your hard drive if you can't find it head on over to I clarifies website where all the software updates have been archived and look for this specific file you'll need one more piece of software called wreck boot it's mac and windows compatible and you can download it from this location it's a utility that will help us finish the downgrade process alright let's get to it the first thing you want to do is connect your phone to your computer and then power it down by holding the power sleep button and sliding to power off once it's off hold the power button and the home button together for 10 seconds then remove just your finger from the power button and remain holding down just the home button for 10 more seconds this will put the phone into device firmware update mode now if you did it correctly itunes will show a prompt that it sees a phone in recovery mode and you can press ok you'll see your phone in the devices sidebar in itunes and make sure you click on it then to initiate the downgrade process on a Mac hold the option key on your keyboard and press the restore button with your mouse from Windows users hold down the shift button while you click restore now you'll have to locate the iphone OS 3.1 3 firmware file and select it as the one you want to restore your phone with the restore process will start and it takes about 10 minutes once it's done you'll probably see an error message like this one and your phone will show a connect to itunes screen but don't worry guys this is totally normal now open up the wreck boot app we downloaded and click exit recovery mode you're going to want to wait a few seconds and your phone will then get out of recovery mode and will now be ready to sync with itunes with the previous iphone OS 3.1 3 installed now i want to emphasize this is specifically for the iphone 3g this does not involve any jailbreaking and you might have different results but this worked for us but that's how you downgrade your iphone 3 from iOS 4 20 s 3.13 use it wisely okay all in all not a terribly hard fix but it's a shame folks have to do it at all and the Apple could just install some kind of master undo button on iTunes and now it's time for this week's bottom line with so many different flavors of droid phones out there now picking the right one can be a vexing proposition so let's make it even worse let's pit two droid phones against one another in the prize fight ring to see which one is the winner now the droid incredible has a one in one prize fight record so far and BTS back to show us how it stacks up against it's cocky newcomer what's up prize fight fans i'm brian Tong and we have another blockbuster battle for you it's a prize fight put gel between the HTC droid incredible and the motorola droid x our judges for this fight our senior editor Bonnie boom-boom chopped senior associate editor Nicole heights coldly and you know who all night long Tom will take all three judges blind scores and average them out to the nearest tenth each round the final prize fight score will be an average of all rounds using the same decimal system get ready for some droid on droid action first round of sexiness and durability the droid incredible has a compact and slender profile that fits in your hand it's rubberized surface can take a beating and even if the ladies like the topographic design I'm still not a fan of the triple layer booty now the droid x has a whopping 4.3 inch screen for its main attraction but this phone is large it's not comfortable to hold and it's even taller and less pocket friendly than another prize five favorite the evo 4G translation this thing is huge the incredible takes this round with the 4.3 and the droid x gets a 3.7 next round his controls and user interface the incredible features HTC's Sense UI and its hands down our favorite flavor of Android with its elegance and customization and it really makes Android less intimidating to newbies even with its learning curve Nicole and Bonnie didn't like the optical joystick but it doesn't take away from the device for me the joy tax to get some love here for its ro physical navigation buttons and the superhot swype keyboard option built in but the motoblur interface isn't as polished as the sense UI and why did they decide to swap the home and menu buttons that are pretty much the same on all flagship android phones this one's close but the incredible just gets the edge of the 4 and the droid x gets a 3.7 after averaging two rounds the incredible leads by half a point but there's plenty of fight left round three is features these phones are almost identical under the hood with 3g Wi-Fi Bluetooth and GPS they bring all of androids goodies like voice search batting cages GPS turn-by-turn directions and voice to text what's shakin bacon but the droid x is the new kid on the block and being able to use it as a mobile hotspot and hook it up to a TV with its hdmi out put it on top the droid x takes its first round with a 4.7 and the incredible gets of for next round is web browsing and multimedia when it comes to web browsing to multimedia these guys are almost carbon copy clothes of each other browsing is pretty smooth on both phones and they feature multiple windows and bookmark previews now the incredible features HTC Sense UI media player which is elegant and cleaner compared to the droid x is standard player which really needs some help but forget about all that the droid x is 4.3 inch screen enhances every experience by making web surfing looking at photos and watching movies that much better x marks the spot and the droid x gets off / pick 5 and incredible get 24 so after averaging four rounds the droid x has gained control leading by two tenths of a point but this is still anyone's fight the final round at the sides at all is called quality and performance we've tested these phones in different environments from New York City to the Northern California suburbs and San Francisco the incredibles call quality was mixed with Nicole and I experiencing more clicks and fuzz compared to the droid x Bonnie had a signal with no flaws and it was pristine in the NYC but I've heard better phones from verizon now we were also able to squeeze out a solid five and a half hours of battery juice when talking over 3g and that is impressive now the droid x was equally as good in New York for Bonnie with excellent call quality but Nicole and I still heard a few pops and breaks over here our labs were able to pump out seven and a half hours of talktime on the droid x and that's even more impressive performance is king and in the final round the droid x gets a 4.7 and incredible gets of four so let's average out all five rounds and in a prize fight where the incredible took the early lead the droid x kept chipping away and takes this battle 4.4 to 4.1 and is your prize fight winner both of these phones are great pics for verizon but in this case size and features matter i'm brian song thanks for watching we'll catch you guys next time on another prize fight I'll get you some ice for that hand BTW the bottom line this week this time bigger is better bigger screen bigger battery bigger bang for your buck of course you may have to go to your tailor and get some bigger pockets sewn onto your clothes well that's our show for this week everybody Molly's back next week with an all new tech review until then fresh video comes out of the oven every day at cnet tv.com go taste it see you next time thanks for watching