With the spotlight turned on education after Apple’s latest media event, iTunes U has gotten a facelift as well as some important resource pages on Apple’s Web site.

(Credit: Screenshot by Joe Aimonetti)

iTunes U is a source for hundreds of thousands of lectures, videos, books, and other resources originating from many of the world’s leading educational institutions. There are thousands of subjects to choose from for those wishing to supplement their education using an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or PC.

To get better acquainted with iTunes U, Apple has put up a help guide for new users on its Web site. It gives a general introduction to iTunes U and covers, among other things, how to download the iTunes U iOS app and set up an iTunes account, what support options are available, and how to adjust iTunes U settings on a Mac or PC.

You can also learn about iTunes U Course Manager, a Web-based tool that instructors can use to create and distribute iTunes U content for their students. If your school has an iTunes U site, you can gain access to the Course Manager tools through your site administrator. Apple’s iTunes U support site offers articles on general subjects such as how to access Course Manager and create your instructor profile, and more specific topics like how to create a podcast with GarageBand.

The iTunes U support site also includes several articles on how to use the Public Site Manager, which iTunes site administrators can use to manage the public content available on their iTunes U sites.

If you are an educator looking to use technology in your classroom, iTunes U is a great place to start, either by accessing content from universities and other educational institutions around the world, or by creating your own content to help your students. Of course, iTunes U is also great for those looking to continue their learning after school.

Have you used iTunes U to teach or learn? Let me know about your experience in the comments!

There was a ruckus. Which I expected.

But the post also generated some great questions. Which I hadn’t. So let’s take a look at some of the more common and persisting questions from my article, and flush some more of the myths surrounding the decidedly-not-magic HDMI down the drain.

Is it true all HDMI cables are the same?
Forgive my bit of sensationalism in the title. Of course, two cables from different manufactures are likely to be physically different (though every cable company buys HDMI cables from only a handful of Chinese manufacturers). The picture quality, though, is going to be the same. Because of how the HDMI technology works, it’s not possible for the cable to do anything to the picture but make it disappear. If the cable is defective, you’re likely to get no picture or “sparkles,” which look like white dots or snow. If you get this, return the cable; it’s broken. If you’re getting an image, it’s exactly what your Blu-ray player or cable box is sending, 100 percent. There are images showing sparkles in the original article.

You talk about long runs of cable. I need to run 100 feet of HDMI cable through my walls to a TV in my bedroom. Are you really saying I only have to spend $50?
Well…sort of. I did some testing on cheap, long HDMI cables. The more expensive cables were more likely to transmit the data over long runs with a wide range of equipment.

Before a bunch of you say “HA! SEE!” let me explain. When the cheaper cables worked, they looked exactly the same as the expensive cables. It’s just the expensive cables were more likely to transmit all the data. Some of the cheap cables would either have sparkles or not have any picture at all. Sometimes, they would work with some equipment, but not with others (i.e., one TV, but not another, or from one Blu-ray player but not another).

Regardless of what you choose, it is vital to test the cable before you run it through the walls. Even if you do, if you change equipment (TV, receiver, Blu-ray player), the cable may not work. It won’t hurt to try a cheap cable from a place like Monoprice. If you want to set it and forget it, a better made cable may be worth the investment. Straightwire is worth checking out, as they make a decent cable (tested in my original test) and are delightfully free of the standard cable-industry hyperbole.

One possible trick, though, is if you’re only running cable/satellite, you’re only sending 1080i. All the cables I tested could handle 1080i easily. Even 1080p/24 is easily transmittable. It’s 1080p/60 that’s tricky. Thankfully, there are very few sources that are 1080p/60 (games, really, and some concert Blu-rays).

Whenever I look at HDMI cables at a store, they list data rates like “15Gbps.” What is the difference between these data rates? Will I notice when using my Xbox 360 or PS3?
There are four types of HDMI cables for the home, and only four types:

• High speed (Category 2)
• Standard speed (Category 1)
• High speed (Category 2) with Ethernet
• Standard speed (Category 1) with Ethernet

Standard-speed HDMI cables are rated up to 1080i. They might do more than this, but they’re just rated for 1080i. High-speed HDMI cables are rated well above 1080p, which is the maximum possible resolution from your Xbox and PS3.

Even 3D doesn’t require more than what’s possible over a cheap high-speed HDMI cable. Check out my article on “How 3D content works.”

You can buy a high-speed HDMI cable for a couple of dollars, so just buy that and don’t worry about the rest.

You’re an idiot!
You have no idea.

I bought an [expensive name brand -GM] HDMI cable, compared it to the one I got for free with my satellite, and there was a HUGE difference. You’re an idiot.
Do you know that last guy? Interestingly, I also got letters saying the exactly opposite, that they bought a better cable, saw no difference, so they returned it. I see two potential possibilities.

The first is flawed testing. I recently did an article about the “Problem with A/B comparisons.” If your testing methodology is flawed, you can get all sorts of weird results. Without being in the room, I don’t know what you saw or how you tested it. Maybe you did see something, but it wasn’t the cable.

There’s also the problem of expectation. Having just blown $100+ on something, most people want it to work. So they’ll see what they want to see. We all do this. The virulence of some of the comments on the original article were hardly surprising. People don’t like being told they were wrong/got ripped off.

I was told I needed a special HDMI cable for my new 240 Hz LED to work.
Never buy from that store again. You were lied to, either maliciously, or by someone who has no idea what they’re doing. Either way, avoid. The maximum resolution possible from any consumer equipment is 1080p/60 (which, as mentioned above, is rare). That 1080p/60 is converted by the TV internally to 120Hz, 240Hz, or whatever. All that’s ever transmitted over HDMI is 1080p/60 from your Blu-ray player, or 1080i from your cable/satellite box, 720p from your Apple TV or whatever.

In theory if you have a home theater PC, it could output more than 1080p/60, and a High speed HDMI cable could transmit that higher resolution/framerate to the TV. But why would you want to? The TV, if it accepts that higher rate (it probably won’t) will just convert it back down to 1080p/60, then up again to 240 Hz.

All HDMI cables can handle 1080i. High-speed (Category 2) cables are rated up to 4,096×2,160p24. In other words, even if you buy one of Sony’s new 4K projectors for $25,000, your $2.50 high-speed HDMI cable is rated to carry all that resolution.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple may have spent $100 million in its legal assault against HTC over what it believes is ripped-off technology used in Android mobile devices.

That’s according to Dan Lyons, who posted on his blog today about the rumored $100 million price tag for legal expenses for Apple’s first set of claims against the company.

If true, that represents a significant cost–even for a company as cash-rich as Apple–for little gain. After more than a year of legal wrangling, the U.S. International Trade Commission came down in Apple’s favor for only one of 10 patents, which HTC says it is readying a workaround for. The ITC also gave HTC several months to implement the workaround.

Apple is pursuing legal action against a number of Android players because it wants to halt the growing momentum of Google’s mobile platform. Ultimately, however, it will likely have to settle with some sort of resolution and cross-licensing agreement, although the companies are far apart in agreeing who would pay for what.

Apple has another claim pending with the ITC, and is fighting off claims of infringement from HTC. Apple is also embroiled in an even more complicated and wide-ranging lawsuit with Samsung Electronics.

While $100 million may seem like much, it’s mere spare change for a company that earned a profit of $6.62 billion in the third quarter alone. Apple is expected to report a blowout fourth quarter tomorrow.

Though this may not be the final form the Spersonic, it closely resembles other leaked images.

(Credit:
androidphones.com)
]]> http://preetel0.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/htcs-next-super-phones-waiting-in-the-wings/feed/ 0 preetel0 http://preetel0.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ipad/ http://preetel0.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/ipad/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:29:49 +0000 preetel0 http://preetel0.wordpress.com/?p=131 ]]>

Steve Jobs introduces the iPad at Wednesday’s media event.

While it’s still too soon to tell if it can live up to the insane amount of hype that preceded its introduction, the iPad is, more than any other product the company has made, the quintessential Apple device.

From the almost entirely homegrown technology, to the addition of the books counterpart to its iTunes media hub, to taking a risk on the middle category between smartphones and laptops, the iPad completes the picture for Apple in a lot of ways.

Steve Jobs used “revolutionary” to describe his company’s newest device Wednesday, and while that’s more than a bit over-the-top, the iPad does epitomize Apple’s evolution. Before he even introduced the tablet Wednesday, Jobs brought up Apple’s three main sources of revenue: the

iPod,
iPhone, and
Mac have made Apple a $50 billion company. By basically discounting the iMac and other desktops (which makes sense, desktops have been headed downhill for a while), he pressed the point about what Apple has become: It’s “a mobile device company,” he said. “That’s what we do.”

Though he didn’t say it specifically, he meant it as opposed to a computer company–a name they dropped in 2007–and as opposed to just a hardware and software maker. With few exceptions, Apple makes portable media-centric devices, and of those, the iPad is the one that brings all of Apple’s businesses together.

With the iPad, Apple has a device that rounds out the company’s product line and also moves the company forward toward being the spoke in the wheel that is the world of media and technology. Making something that fits between a smartphone and a laptop has been a goal for the consumer technology industry for more than a decade. The most recent attempt has been the Netbook. The iPad easily makes Netbooks seem boring and staid, and too close to the same old form factor, the computer. The iPad is taking a different tack: taking tasks that were too big for an iPhone and puts them on a device that isn’t pocket-sized, but is more convenient to carry around than a 13- or 15-inch laptop.

It’s risky, of course, to try to jump start a category that has never been proven. But it’s also part of Apple’s M.O.: the company has a vision for the mobile computer and media industries, and a lot of confidence in its abilities.

One-stop shop
That extends to the company’s manufacturing and design. Apple has positioned itself so that it has to rely on very few outside sources to create the device. Plus, any sort of content you want on the iPad has to be, with few exceptions, bought through Apple as the middleman.

Looking back now, we should have seen this coming over the past few years: Apple wanted a new way of building their MacBooks, so they came up with the manufacture process where it’s cut from a single block of aluminum. They wanted to make their own chip, so they bought PA Semi and created the “A4,” which notably cuts Intel out of the equation. They also have their own battery technology and are using IPS, or in-plane-switching LCD technology, for the screen that allows quicker response times for viewing video and wider viewing angles. And all of the content for the device must pass through one of Apple’s own online retail stores: iBooks, iTunes, or the App Store. Plus, if you consider the sweet deal on the 3G wireless plans (AT&T, no contract, month-to-month), Apple clearly dictated the terms with AT&T.

The tablet comes with its own built-in e-book store, called iBooks.

The introduction of the iBooks store also snaps into place the final piece of the iTunes puzzle. Beyond music, movies, TV shows, audiobooks, podcasts, games, apps, and iTunes U educational material, books was the only thing missing. Yes, newspapers and magazine content did go mostly unmentioned during Wednesday’s presentation, but it’s conceivable those deals are still getting worked out behind the scenes and could be added later to the iBooks site.

Also worth noting: Apple didn’t have to do the iBooks site itself. There are a variety of e-book apps that already exist and could have easily delivered books to the iPad. But again, Apple does things its own way, and books are very much a part of what appears to be a plan to be the gatekeeper of all media.

Secret guinea pigs
In terms of the ways users interact with the iPad, this is a culmination of stuff Apple has been working on for years. Anyone who’s ever bought from iTunes, played a game from the App Store, or gotten used to a virtual keyboard was being secretly trained for the iPad.

With the iPod, Apple got us used to purchasing media without a physical copy–no CDs, no DVDs. With the iPhone, they taught us to think in terms of touch screen interaction–pinching and zooming, swiping, and a virtual keyboard, the utility of third-party applications, and having the Web in your pocket. All of those things are the main features of the iPad. And as Jobs said Wednesday, 75 million people that own an iPod Touch or iPhone “already know how to use the iPad.”

And that’s Apple’s philosophy for all of its products, you’re supposed to “get” it, or intuitively know how to use a device the first time you pick it up. As opposed to the first iPod though or the first iPhone, the iPad is so similar to other devices we already have experience with that this really can be said to be for the average consumer with perhaps a casual interest in technology.

On that note, there’s also some subtext in the initial reactions to the iPad by the tech-savvy set, e.g. most of the people in the room today when Jobs unveiled it and the same people who thought this would be the magical device that changed everything. You may have seen the flood of negative responses on Twitter, Facebook, and at various blogs to what the device can’t do. There’s a whole separate story to be written about the hype and letdown cycle that comes from these Apple events, but more important is what the iPad’s capabilities and technical specifications illustrate: Apple is going to do what it wants.

The company likely doesn’t care that some very vocal people want it to have an HDMI out port, or support Flash, or allow multiple apps to run at the same time. Just like it’s going to go its own way on having a removable battery in the iPhone, removing FireWire from MacBooks, and making glossy screens standard. Apple’s target is not the geek set who care about browser standards; with this iPad, the target is your mom, who probably just wants to read e-books in color, check her e-mail, and watch some episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” next time she’s on an airplane.

Following the launch of its turn-by-turn navigation app for
iPhone, Magellan has released its Premium
Car Kit for iPhone and
iPod Touch. The Premium Car Kit features an amplified speaker for spoken directions, a Bluetooth speakerphone for hands-free calling, a built-in GPS receiver that should improve positioning compared with the iPhone 3G’s built-in GPS as well as adds GPS positioning to first-generation iPhones and the iPod Touches.

The mount lets you rotate the iPhone to portrait and landscape views, and has a built-in charger. Essentially, it will behave exactly like TomTom’s Car Kit; however, the Magellan kit has an adjusting arm that will let it accommodate an iPhone or iPod Touch with a protective case.

The Magellan Premium Car Kit will cost $129.99. When TomTom’s kit debuted for slightly less than that price, it was universally regarded as too expensive, so we can already guess what sort of reception Magellan’s kit will get.

Magellan’s Premium Car Kit for iPhone is available now for preorder

(Credit:
Nokia)

Cleaning your office/desk is an annual preholiday ritual at CNET. It’s amazing what you can collect in a year, and because I’m the polar opposite of a hoarder, I actually look forward to the task. Mostly I toss old press releases and outdated cables–I promise that I recycle everything that I can–but occasionally I’ll find a museum-worthy gadget from another age.

Take for instance, the Nokia Fun Camera, which I found at the bottom of a box filled with old wired headsets.

Back before cameras made it into phones, they existed briefly inside attachable accessories. If memory serves, Sony Ericsson developed one of the such products, but Nokia jumped on the trend as well. And as Nokia usually does, it did so wholeheartedly. The orange and red Nokia Fun Camera, aka the PT-3, is shaped like a tear drop. You’ll notice a few buttons, a circular display, and a detachable viewfinder. The camera lens and flash sit on the back side, and the whole thing comes on a lanyard for taking it on the go. And you thought wearing a Bluetooth headset around the neck was silly.

Smile!

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

You can use the Fun Camera by itself, though you must connect it to a compatible phone or USB cable if you want to get pictures off the camera. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to perform a transfer by either method so I couldn’t test the image quality. I haven’t seen a USB cable that uses the old Nokia connection in years, and the only compatible phone I could find–a Nokia 2115i Shorty from Virgin Mobile–is missing its battery.

Still, I did connect the phone and the camera to see what would happen. The fit between the two devices is secure, even if it’s a cumbersome arrangement and the plastic flap covering the camera’s connecting pins gets in the way. The body feels relatively solid, it’s lightweight (3.17 ounces), and it fits easily in a pocket.

It’s a complicated contraption.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

The camera uses two AAA batteries; after inserting them I was surprised to see that it worked without any problems. The circular display and four controls to its left side serve as your primary interface points; the shutter sits the top side of the camera. The aforementioned viewfinder that fits in the hole on the camera’s left end is rather curious; I don’t understand the point of the fish-eye effect, but there are tiny brackets that frame the photo for you.

Features include a self-timer, the bright flash, a choice of photo resolutions, and the unique option to take round photos. The camera’s 1MB of memory can hold anywhere from 12 to 53 images, depending on the resolution.

We never reviewed the Nokia Fun Camera, but CNET Asia has a review from 2004. They liked its funky appearance, but weren’t pleased by the image quality. To paraphrase their review bottom line, the the PT-3 does the job as a tiny camera, but you’re better off waiting for a real camera phone. If you’d like to buy it, you can get the Fun Camera from Unlimited Cellular for $3.99.

One hack reportedly resulted from a Kindle DRM challenge issued on Israeli forum Hacking.org. On that site, an Israeli hacker known as Labba claims to have created a tool that lets e-books stored on the Kindle be transferred as PDF files.

A U.S. hacker has written a program to crack copyright protections on the Kindle for PC application.

(Credit:
Amazon)

A U.S. hacker who goes by the name “i♥cabbages,” meanwhile, created a program called Unswindle that promises to convert books stored in the Kindle for PC application into a different file format.

The free Kindle for PC app lets book buyers read their books right from their PCs without having to buy a Kindle reader. Unswindle has to be used in conjunction with MobiDeDRM, a program by another hacker named “darkreverser.”

Posters on i♥cabbages’ blog give Unswindle mixed reviews, ranging from “works like a charm” and “worked flawlessly” to descriptions of various errors.

Unswindle’s creator originally detailed the tool on December 17, and posted two updates on the program Tuesday. One noted that Amazon has demonstrated that “it (unlike Adobe Systems) takes its digital rights management, or DRM, seriously: it has already pushed out a new version of K4PC, which breaks this particular script.”

In a second update, the hacker notes that “the K4PC update may not actually have been targeted at Unswindle, as Amazon seems to have done nothing in particular to make the basic approach more difficult. In any case, I’ve updated Unswindle to handle the 20091222 version of the executable. We’ll see if Amazon throws out another new build in short order.”

CNET has contacted Amazon for comment and will update this post as soon as we hear back.

The Amazon hacks are, of course, just the latest DRM hacks. In 2005, a group of hackers that included a 17-year-old and a man noted for cracking the anticopying protections on DVDs released PyMusique, a program that essentially stripped DRM from iTunes’ songs.

The $779 Acer Aspire 5738DG takes a different approach than the 3D Vision product from Nvidia. While the Nvidia rig requires a desktop PC with a high-end video card, a dual-link DVI connection to a compatible 120Hz LCD monitor, a USB-connected emitter box, and a set of active, battery-powered glasses, Acer’s laptop is mostly software-driven, using a special screen coating and standard polarized-lens glasses to produce the 3D effect.

Like the Nvidia 3D vision setup (previously reviewed here), movies and photos need to be rendered in a 3D format to be used, but virtually any video game will work, as long as it makes use of actual 3D data to generate its characters, settings, and in-game objects.

Acer versus Nvidia: Very different 3D setups
Before we even get to which 3D system works better, it’s important to note that they are packaged and sold entirely differently. Nvidia’s 3D Vision requires a bundle of specialized hardware. At a minimum, the active glasses plus the USB emitter cost $199. But since 120Hz LCD monitors are still not common (and Nvidia only lists two officially compatible models, along with some DLP TVs and projectors), it’s practically a requirement to purchase a bundle including the 22-inch Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ for $598. On top of that, a desktop (not laptop) GPU–generally GeForce 8000 series or newer–is also required. Basically, you’re looking at $600, plus the cost of your desktop PC (although there’s a good chance you may already own a compatible PC).

Acer’s Aspire 5738DG is a much simpler complete package. For $779, the 3D-ready laptop includes a basic pair of cheap plastic polarized glasses, plus a second pair of completely ridiculous-looking clip-ons for those of us who already wear glasses (the Nividia specs fit easily over even our gigantic glasses). Acer’s is a more convenient, and more portable, overall package.

But does it actually work?

We were dubious of the 3D claims made by the Aspire 5738DG, especially after a sneak peek at the technology several months ago. That demo was wholly unimpressive and led us to expect the technology not to work at all. But after taking some time to play around with different screen positions and get used to its quirks, Acer’s 3D laptop exceeded our admittedly low expectations.

The system includes several built-in demo videos, and they ranged from middling to mildly effective. Putting on the glasses, you have to tilt the lid back and forth until you find the sweet spot–for us it was about 120-degrees back, and with us sitting about twice as far from the screen as we normally would. The effect works best with objects that recede into the distance, where we could get an excellent level of 3D immersion. Objects that popped out of the screen toward us just got blurry or out of focus, and didn’t work at all. It’s also important to keep your head still to main just the perfect angle.

The screen also has what appears to have a series of fine lines running horizontally across it, even when you’re not using any 3D software. It’s a distracting look, and certainly not something you want to put up with during everyday computing.

Since there isn’t a 3D section on Netflix or the iTunes video store, playing games in 3D is what the Aspire 5738DG is really for. The process is slightly more involved than launching a game normally, but not by much. Launching the TriDef 3D application from the desktop opens a listing of compatible programs. You can have the system scan for them, or drag and drop the apps yourself (by dragging the desktop launch icon for a game into the TriDef window).

TriDef offers a small number of specially tuned game presets, for titles from Call of Duty 4 to Left 4 Dead, but most games will simply have to use the “generic” preset. We loaded up a few games, and compared the experience with our Nvidia 3D Vision rig, which was hooked up to a Maingear small form factor PC equipped with dual GeForce GTX275 GPUs and an Intel Core i7 CPU.

Keep in mind that by way of comparison, the hardware on the Aspire 5738DG was easily outmatched, with only an ATI Radeon HD 4750 graphics card and a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 CPU.

Testing games in 3D

In our first side-by-side test, Batman: Arkham Asylum would barely run–we had to dial the resolution down to 800×600 pixels and turn all the graphics settings to low or off. Running the TriDef 3D software in the background didn’t help matters — pressing ALT-SHIFT-MINUS turns the processing off and on, and the frame rate took a major hit in 3D mode. Unfortunately, the Aspire 5738DG wasn’t able to run the game in 3D properly, even with after we downloaded a custom profile for the game from TriDef–the effect popped in and out randomly, making for a very disjointed experience.

By way of comparison, we were able to run the same game at high settings easily on our Nvidia 3D Vision desktop rig, and the 3D effects were excellent, adding context and detail without getting in the way of the game. To be fair, this is a game specifically tuned for 3D Vision, and one of Nvidia’s preferred demos showcases for the technology.

Our next test was Call of Duty 4–an older game more suited to mainstream laptop components (we’ve even played it on an HP Mini 311 Netbook). This was a much better match for the Aspire’s hardware, and the game ran reasonably well, with 3D effects that were for the most part impressive. Our only issue was with the laser sight on our gun, which sat uncomfortably in the foreground, forcing us to close one eye when aiming down the sight (which kind of defeats the purpose of 3D gaming). If you dig around the 3D options (by pressing ALT-SHIFT-F1), you can turn the laser sight off, as well as tweak the 3D depth.

With same game using the Nvidia 3D Vision system, we got a crisper, clearer 3D image (although the active shutter Nivida glasses make everything seem dark, and we had to crank up the brightness)–and we didn’t have the same troublesome laser sight issue. The Nvidia 3D software’s custom settings for this game made everything look right.

Just as were about to give up on the idea of a 3D laptop, a colleague suggested we try Half-Life 2. It turns out that the TriDef software works especially well with games using game developer Valve’s 3D engine. Half-Life 2 looked great and ran smoothly, and the effect was a reasonable substitute for Nvidia’s more complicated 3D Vision technology.

On the more casual side, Sega’s Mini Ninjas worked well, but onscreen text, including the in-game menus, vanished in 3D mode. We’ve heard anecdotally that World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead also produce good results.

Which 3D technology is right for me?

We could have easily gone down a list of a dozen games, noting bugs, quirks, and occasional success stories, but the point is that the 3D technology in the Acer Aspire 5738DG clearly isn’t the kind of easy to use, widely supported toolset that is going to break through to the mainstream anytime soon. The entire process can be best described as “finicky.”

As a mainstream laptop, the Acer Aspire 5738DG is fine 15.6-inch Core 2 Duo workhorse, with middle-of-the-road specs and Acer’s typically solid construction. We especially like the wide, flat keyboard and separate number pad–but the fine horizontal lines on the display are a constant distraction.

But if you specifically want to play the handful of games that work really well, and don’t mind the not being able to crank up the graphics settings, then this is worth at least a test run; but we strongly suggest an in-person demo first, and checking the TriDef Web site for custom profiles of your favorite games. The Aspire also has the benefit of being an all-in-one solution, with nothing external to buy or configure.

If you’re serious about 3D gaming, however, Acer’s package can’t hold a candle to the Nvidia 3D Vision. Even though that system is expensive, complicated, and has an exacting set of hardware requirements, the effect worked (to varying degrees) with every 3D game we threw at it.

The results ranged from mildly interesting to completely mind-blowing. With some of the games not specifically supported by Nvidia, including the new MMO game Aion, and the racing game Fuel, the 3D effect still worked well, but some objects were out of place, and onscreen text could sit uncomfortably in the foreground.

While the effort required to put together an Nvidia 3D Vision setup is cumbersome, we’ve heard that some PC makers are working on compatible laptops, which is a development we’d be keenly interested in seeing.