Here is a video demonstrating how fast Motorola Droid X is:

I know it’s been a while since I have posted something but today I felt the need to post a finding.  As the iPhone 4 ships I can’t help but wonder why all the hype?  Most Android devices do the same plus more.  With Android now having Flash 10.1 and this player, you have all the tools needed to view 99% of web content unlike Apple iPhone 4.  One of Android’s major shortcomings is its lack of compatibility with many audio and video filetypes. Fortunately, double twist stepped in to fix the audio problem, but what about video playback? That’s where RockPlayerBase comes in!

Compatible with a plethora of video formats, including MKV, AVI and DivX, RockPlayerBase combines great compatibility with a simple interface. Controls are overlaid on the screen, so you can still see the video track whilst using the controls.

When testing on the Motorola DROID, I found playback quality to be predominantly good. I tested a DVD rip encoded in AVI which played back without any problems, although audio

output was sometimes a little pitchy and inconsistent.

I also tested a 720p MKV file, albeit with less successful results. Whether it’s a hardware or software issue is debatable, but video

playback wasn’t even remotely smooth, and I was lucky if I got even a second of audio playback before having it cut off too.

FeelAndroid tested the player with various formats, and found some interesting results…

MKV
H264 High profile, 720 x 304 @ 24fps @ 405Kbps
AAC 44.1KHz
perfect quality
14 to 20 FPS

AVI
DivX 5, 704 × 1.097 @ 384 Kbps @ 24 FPS
MP3 @ 128Kbps 48KHz
perfect quality
22-24 FPS

H264 High profile, 848 x 480 @ 24fps @ 302Kbps
AAC 48KHz
lots of artefacts
no subs (ASS, Advanced Sub Station)
8 to 15 FPS

MP4
H264 Baseline profile, 800 × 3.120 @ 448 Kbps @ 30 FPS
AAC, 44.1KHz @ 151 Kbps
perfect quality
13 to 16 FPS

MP4
Main profile H.264, 1280 × 720 @ 30 FPS @ 5.994 Kbps
AAC @ 66Kbps 44.1KHz
perfect quality
3 to 6 FPS

MP4
H264 Main profile, 1920 x 1080 @ 10Mbps @ 30FPS
AAC, 44.1KHz @ 192Kbps
perfect quality
1 to 3 FPS

It’s worth noting that the FPS count appears on the screen by default, but this can be turned off by tapping on the DivX logo in the control panel.

RockPlayerBase has the promise to be a great video playback application. Hopefully, the developers will add more support for HD playback from MKV files for more powerful devices coming on to the market. The app currently isn’t available on the Android Market, but you can download the apk for Android 2.1 and 2.2 from here.

SholesMod Updater will backup all of your existing data, but if you would rather be safe than sorry do a backup of your stuff before continuing.

If you have WiFi, go ahead and enable it now as it will make the download process go by much faster.

Here we go:

1. Go to Android Marketplace
2. Search for SholesMod Updater, donate your $5 and download the app (or download from Sholes)
3. Open SholesMod Updater
4. “Your phone is not rooted”. Select Root my Phone (update.zip will download to your SD card)
5. When you get the “Reboot into recovery mode message”, press the home button and power off the phone
5. Reboot into recovery mode by holding the X key on the keyboard while powering on.
6. When the MOTO logo changes to recovery (white triangle with yellow exclamation point and phone picture ) press and hold the volume up button and then press the camera button
7. Once in the menu select Apply sdcard:update.zip with D-pad and select with center button
8. Once it’s done applying update.zip select reboot with D-pad and select with center button

Congratulations! Your Droid is now rooted, but we’re not done just yet. If all went well, you should see a new icon in your app drawer called Superuser Permissions.

Part 2:

1. Open SholesMod Updater
2. When prompted with the SU Request, click on Remember and then select Allow
3. The screen goes black and only says SholesMod Updater on the top (if it stays like that more than about a minute press the home button and relaunch the app)
4. The app will now download the recovery.img file to your SD card
5. You’ll now get a cute message saying that if you continue your warranty will be voided
6. Select “I understand the risk”
7. Are you really sure? (of course you’re sure)
8. Select Flash Recovery Image
9. Select a ROM (SholesMod 2.0.1: Bitchin Bagel) and click Select
10. sholesmod-2.0.1.rom.tgz will now download to your SD card (92.97MB… aren’t you glad you enabled WiFi?)
11. We are ready to flash the ROM. Select Flash ROM. (phone will reboot automatically)
12. Welcome to SPRecovery. Use the volume up and down buttons to move between menu options, the camera button to select them, and the power button to back out of a menu
13. At this point all of your data is being backed up and the ROM is being installed
14. Wipe data? (Say yes if you’re using 2.1) Select your option with volume up/down and select with camera button
15. Choose your bashrc (for adb shell). If you have no clue what this means, just select Windows Non-Colored and press the camera button
16. The following screen are packages that you want to install (take the asterisk off any package you don’t want/need)

* 2.1 keyboard (w/ speech dictation)
* 2.1 DeskClock
* 2.1 Launcher (home screen)
* Milestone Browser (Multitouch)
* Minimum brightness hack
* Low-Brightness app
* YouTube HQ
* News/Weather widget
* WiFi Tether
* OpenVPN
* Dropbear SSHd

17. When done selecting the packages you want, go back to the top and select Finished
18. Select packages to install (continued)

* JIT (breakage!)
* HQ Video
* 2.0 Lockscreen Vibrate Mod
* FLAC Support (Work in progress)
* Milestone 2.0.0 Widgets
* G1 IM app
* SMUpdater

19. When done selecting the packages you want, go back to the top and select Finished
20. The following screen are packages you want REMOVED not installed (place and asterisk next to any package you don’t want on your phone)

* Remove Corporate Calendar
* Remove Email
* Remove Visual Voicemail Stub
* Remove Amazon MP3 store
* Remove Facebook
* Remove CarDock

21. When done selecting the packages you want removed, go back to the top and select Finished
22. Select the gallery to install and press the camera button

* 2.1 Gallery3D (Picasa, Multitouch)
* 2.0.1 Gallery (Stock)

23. Select Music to install and press the camera button

* 2.1
* 2.1 (smoked glass)
* Milestone 2.0.0 (coverflow)
* Milestone 2.0.0 (coverflow) (smoked glass)
* 2.0.1 (stock)

24. Select Maps to install and press the camera button

* 2.1 (multitouch)
* 2.0.1 (stock/no multitouch)

25. Select the theme to install and press the camera button

* None
* Smoked Glass

26. At this point everything gets installed and the phone reboots

Congratulations! Your Droid has now taken on a new life. It’s now a good time to go to the Android Marketplace and purchase SetCPU. This will give you the ability to overclock the CPU from th stock 550Mhz speed to 800Mhz or even 1Ghz. Make sure that when you run SetCPU for the first time you choose Autodetect. If you selected Droid don’t worry. Once you’re in the app, just hit the menu button and select Device Selection. Slide the Max bar to 800000 or 100000, hit refresh and you’re all done.

If you get stuck at any time, please post your questions in the comments

You might want to enable it for troubleshooting or to get rid of the annoying UAC prompts while tweaking your system. So here I’ll describe a few methods to enable / activate the hidden Administrator account in Windows Vista and 7:

1st Method:

1. Right-click on My Computer icon on Desktop and select “Manage“, it’ll open “Computer Management” window. ( You can also open it by giving “compmgmt.msc” command in RUN dialog box or Startmenu Search box).

2. Goto “Local Users and Groups -> Users“. In right-side pane double-click on “Administrator” account. It’ll open its Properties. Deselect “Account is disabled” option and Apply it.

2nd Method:

1. Type “secpol.msc” in RUN dialog box or Startmenu search box, it’ll open “Local Security Policy” window.

2. Goto “Local Policies -> Security Options“.

3. Double-click on first option “Accounts: Administrator account status” and select “Enabled” and apply it.

3rd Method:

1. Click on “Start button -> All Programs -> Accessories“. Right-click on “Command Prompt” and select “Run As Administrator“. If you are prompted to enter password, enter the password and continue. You can also open Command Prompt in Administrator mode by typing “cmd” in Startmenu Search box and press “Ctrl+Shift+Enter“.

2. Now provide following command:

net user administrator /active:yes

3. Thats it. The Administrator account will be enabled. If you want to disable it again, simply replace “yes” with “no” in above command.

NOTE: Never activate the hidden Administrator account until required. Its better to use other general accounts for better security. Also the Administrator account has no password, so if you enable it then don’t forget to set a strong password for it.

Tegra 2 is official and put simply, it looks awesome. NVIDIA estimates that it is four times faster than the original Tegra chip while staying in the same power and thermal envelope. And looking at the diagram, we can understand why: the chip combines 8 processors: two Arm Cortex A9, one ARM 7, an image processor, an HD video decode processor, an HD video encode processor, and audio processor and a graphics processor (GPU), phew! Thanks to all this power, NVIDIA says that it succeeds in playing local 1080p video and stream HD video (flash) where competitors like Qualcomm and Intel fail. And it does it while using less power. NVIDIA’s battery life estimate is 140+hrs for music playback, 12hrs for 1080p video playback and 6 hours of continuous HD web streaming. According to these numbers, Tegra 2 consumes about 7x less than Snapdragon. The chips will come in different packages to address markets like smartphones, multimedia players, automotive entertainment, but also smartbooks. Developer boards are already available.

Devices specifications: while manufacturers are ultimately designing the various handsets, computers and tablets, we should expect to see multi-touch screen from 5″ to 10″.

Supported OS: windows CE, Linux and Android are on the list. Android is actually a much easier way to deal with Linux apps. For phones, Web OS and Symbian won’t be supported at the moment, so Palm and Nokia (and others) will be out of the game for now.

Smartbooks: It is estimated that Smartbooks will cost significantly less than Netbooks. NVIDIA’s partners will ultimately price the devices, but $199 in retail seems possible.

Netbooks: Tegra can’t run Windows, but NVIDIA says that they have Ion for the Windows market, so the idea is that if you don’t need Microsoft software, Tegra might be a viable solution.

When are we going to see devices?: NVIDIA has revealed a few partners at CES, but typically, Smartbooks and tablets should appear sooner than cellphones, because the qualification times are longer for wireless carriers. Carriers are evaluating devices right now, we’ve been told. The good news is that Tegra 2 is in volume production now.  And will mention what devices that will have the Tegra 2 chip at the Mobile World Conference on Feb 15-18 ,2010 in Barcelona

BackTrack has also updated to run from a USB Flash Drive since I last used it, but the process appears to have remained basically the same. The interesting thing about BackTrack is how easy it is to crack a WEP-encrypted network, which serves as a very good reminder to use WPA or WPA2 encryption to significantly boost your home network security.

To this end, there are a number of backup and restore utilities available for the Windows operating system. Each of these applications has a wide variety of user options and features. The one that I’m going to focus on in this review is Easeus Todo Backup, a free backup and restore utility developed by the same company as Easeus Partition Manager. We’ll take a closer look at Todo, concentrating particularly on its range of features and ease of use.

EASEUS Todo Backup Highlight Features:

* Backup entire system partition including the system state and all files to an image   file.
* Backup whole disk including the operating system and all data to an image file.
* Restore backup up image within minutes.
* Create a bootable disk function based on Linux to restore the system partition.
* Create a WinPE based Bootable CD which can support Windows 7 and Hardware Raid, etc.
* Restore system partition from Bootable CD/DVD.
* Clone disk to another one with fast file-by-file clone method.
* Mount the backup image file as a virtual physical partition to explore or copy files in it.
* Unmount the virtual partition.
* Check backup image file to make sure the system state, disk or partition can be restored successfully.

The EASEUS Todo Backup is able to run on Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server.

Easeus TODO Backup supports major Windows systems, like Windows 2000 Professional/XP/Vista/7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008.

So, EASEUS Todo Backup no doubt is a good data backup software that helps novices one (even without having IT knowledge) to backup their entire system and important data.

The marketing left a lot of people thinking that this was going to be a Taken clone, but that’s not quite true. Based on a BBC mini-series from the mid-’80s, Edge of Darkness is also a political thriller, and not simply a straight up action revenge flick. Despite this potential misdirection, you may still find it to be surprisingly satisfying… assuming you don’t mind a bit of government conspiracy with your blood-soaked vengeance.

Thomas Craven is a Boston police detective who lives alone. When his 24-year-old daughter comes to visit for the weekend, she falls strangely ill, but avoids telling him exactly what the problem is. As they head out the front door to take her to the hospital, she is suddenly shot dead by a mysterious stranger right in front of his eyes. Craven convinces the police department to let him investigate, and in doing so, he finds out that she was in the midst of uncovering some high level corruption involving nuclear weapons at her workplace. Now he must track down the truth to finish what she started, and ensure that her death does not go in vain.

Edge of Darkness is directed by Martin Campbell, the same guy who did the original BBC mini-series, but who is also best known for doing the James Bond

films Goldeneye and Casino Royale. Believe it or not, it does feel like a Bond movie in some ways, particularly with its world-threatening intrigue and evil corporation factor. Unfortunately, it also suffers from the same problem that most Bond movies do: you don’t really understand what’s going on half of the time. In the end, the most important details are laid bare, but the complicated path of clues leading Craven through his investigation do feel a bit nonsensical and overwhelming at times.

The other influence that shines through in this film is that of screenwriter William Monaghan (The Departed, Body of Lies). He is good at writing snappy dialogue for tough guys, and it is enjoyable to watch Mel spar with his adversaries, particularly Ray Winstone. It’s just too bad that Winstone’s character ends up being a bit inconsequential, and I never fully understood what his job was. Still, their performances are on the money, even if some of these exchanges are a little showy and tend to drag on too long.

It’s also true that action doesn’t come as frequently as you might hope in the movie, but when it does come, it is sudden and surprisingly brutal. The movie is rated “R” for good reason. This, along with the dialogue, is ultimately what takes the movie up a notch to make it a slightly above average film.

That being said, there are a couple of big problems with this movie that could seriously sway your enjoyment, depending on your taste. One is the aforementioned complexity and the fact that the movie really gets bogged down with exposition in the middle of the film. If you don’t have the patience for a mystery with a lot of dialogue, you’ll probably be checking your watch quite a bit. Personally, I did find that most of the revelations were interesting enough to pull me through some of the slower moments, but there’s a stretch where it really seems to lose its sense of urgency for a while.

More importantly, however, there’s a questionable choice that they make with regards to Mel Gibson’s character and how he deals with the loss of his daughter. Occasionally he has flashbacks to her childhood, and other times actually talks to her as if her “ghost” is right there in the room with him. Now I know how this sounds, and at times it does come off as a bit cheesy. However, they spend a bit of time early on building up his emotional distress, and as a result, some of these scenes do connect. Gibson’s acting manages to sell it, with the exception of the movie’s finale, which just goes way too far off the spiritual deep end.

In general, I thought Edge of Darkness was a decent thriller, with strong enough direction to overcome its flaws, and just enough guts to create some memorable moments. I do think it’s a movie aimed at an older audience, so if you’re just looking for a bad ass action flick, you might want to give it a pass. It doesn’t have nearly the same energy level as Taken, but it runs a bit deeper. Ultimately I don’t think it will fully satisfy anyone in particular, but there are worse ways to spend your money in January.

I GIVE IT A 4 out of 5 stars

When you get down to business, the iPad might not be enough for heavy users. The on-screen keyboard will take a little getting used to: unlike the thumb-driven flash of text messaging, typing on the iPad requires either a single finger stab or putting it down on a flat surface. But for casual entertainment, it manages to do plenty very well: the sort of thing likely to tempt customers who want a lightweight laptop but doesn’t really need it to do any heavy lifting.
Let me show you a list of cons of the device that are important to me!

1. NO MULTITASKING
2. NO SD CARD
3. NO CAMERA
4. NO USB PORTS
5. NO GPS ON WI-FI MODEL
6. NO FLASH SUPPORT
7. NO HDMI OUT
8. NO REMOVABLE BATTERY
9. 3G but doesn’t work with T-MOBILE
10. NO PUSH NOTIFICATIONS (that I know of)
_Don’t need to list the Pros just look at iPhone pluses and implement that into this devices and add a ebook reader. Bottom line is that its just a iPod Touch on steroids. Also me personally would have to get the 3G + WiFi version because I’m the type to have it and not need it , rather than need it and not have it.  So the lowest price for me is $629. My thoughts are to wait for a PC version of the tablet or get an Android Tablet. Let me tell you in my opinion I think Google OS or android will be more flexible Checkout the JooJoo, MSI Tablet or if interested the Archos 9.

With more and more netbooks hitting the shelves at the local computer stores it surprised me to find that there are very few dead-simple guides to creating a bootable USB thumb/pen/flash drive for a Windows 7 installation.  I cobbled together the following from VistaPCGuy and another source I don’t remember right now.

This will walk through the steps to create a bootable USB flash drive for the purpose of installing a Windows 7 OS.  These instructions assume that you have a computer with Windows 7 installed on it.

Required:

• USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
• Microsoft OS Disk (Windows 7)
• A computer running  Windows 7

Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable.  In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1. Insert your Windows 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
   d:
   cd d:boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G: by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.  After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you’re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.

I used these instructions to get my donated MSI Wind U100 Netbook loaded with Windows 7 .