SlashGear's September Review
Blimey, it's been quite a month. SlashGear has been packed to the metaphorical gills with lovely juicy tech, and they don't come much juicier than the fresh fruit of Apple. The Cupertino cuties have been making headlines with their new iPod range – the updated fifth generation and the rather mini-like Nano with its svelte metal casing. It's not all been good news, however, as the latest update to OS X causes some users problems and the company is forced to admit that some MacBooks are suffering random shutdown issues.
Also taking a beating is Sony, who just can't seem to ride the PS3 wave smoothly these days. First shipping numbers are way way down on what was expected – thanks to manufacturing delays – and then, if you managed to find a console, your wallet will get gouged when you buy a game for it. We're talking $76 to $84, which is heavy stuff on top of a machine costing $425 upwards. Sony attempted to stem the bad press by taking $59.99 game pre-orders, but is it enough?
Nintendo is counting on the answer to that one being no, as more details slosh out about its much-anticipated Wii console. Now with a release date of November 19th and an estimated price of $250, it seems a fair bet that there'll be quite a few kids finding Wii under the tree this Christmas.
Still, there's more to life than playing games and SlashGear rolled out some excellent reviews this month, including a great follow-up on how our MoGo Bluetooth mouse is doing. There was also some essential reading for anyone in the market for either a memory stick or a DAP; the former took the shape of a rigorous group testing for SanDisk's Cruzer series, while the latter was their surprisingly competent Sansa e280, which our very own Rue Liu found to be a strong alternative to the ubiquitous Nano.
Nevertheless, the DAP giving Apple the most sleepless nights has to be Microsoft's Zune, officially announced this week and with official information finally hitting blogs all over. There are plenty of questions still to be answered, of course. Will the WiFi be crippled to the point of, well, pointlessness? Will the 12hr music/3.5hr video battery life prove its downfall? Is the $249.99 price going to remain competitive up until the November 14th release? Until we know for sure, the analysts and wannabe-pundits are having a field-day.
September really has been a bumper month, you'll agree – the wraps finally got taken off the cellphone world's worst-kept-secret, the Treo 750v, the Blackberry Pearl caused Exchange users everywhere to drool a little down their freshly laundered shirts, and the ultra-thin Samsung Trace encouraged all of us to skip dessert and do a couple more sessions on the treadmill. Meanwhile, the Nokia E62 hit Cingular and the company rolled out a whole bevy of music phones.
Strangely enough, it's been things of the sky which have got the most attention here on SlashGear this month. The striking Paper Airplane Table earned its fair share of admirers, but it was two extremes of remote controlled flight that really caught interest. On the more serious side, the Plantraco Carbon Butterfly is a marvel of micro-engineering – 3.6 grams including electronics and engine, thanks to the high-tech carbon fibre frame – while at the more fun end the Micro Mosquito RC Helicopter was at one point so popular the SlashGear servers crashed under the strain.
And so the site itself has come in for some tweaking, too, with a squirt of AJAX, new servers and a generally good polish. Most noticeable is the swanky new comments system, which no longer demands a page refresh before your ponderings are posted, and the ability to "slash up" or "slash down" other commentors if you agree or disagree with them. We'd like to thank all our readers, new and old, for their continued support and input – here's to an even fuller October!