Product Review: Dell Streak

My cell contract came due recently so I got on the market looking for a new phone; logically it only made sense that I investigate a smartphone, so that's what I did. I'm not an Apple person so the iPhone really had no interest for me, and this was before the Windows phones came on the market so I figured I'd go Android. Factor in the point that I knew I would be looking for a tablet soon and the Dell Streak started coming up in my mind more and more. I've been using it for a little over two months now and thought I'd comment on it.

I LOVE it.

I won't go into technical details, you can get that from the review I linked earlier, but I will talk about it from a user perspective. The number one question I get asked is about the size. Compared to an iPhone or the windows phones, yes it's big, but considering how much more real estate I have in the screen I can easily live with it. I've seen people watching videos on their phones and I wonder how they do it, my phone plays HD in a 5" screen that can be seen not only by myself, but also a select audience. Furthermore, it fits in any of my pockets with no problems; at the end of the day you need to store your phone someplace and I have no problem finding a place to keep mine.

I put the Kindle app on it and am now reading ebooks with the greatest of ease. It's not quite as nice as what I've seen from the Kindle, but it's also small enough to carry easier than a Kindle, plus I don't have to think about bringing a reader along; if I leave the house I have my phone, which has my books on it. I've also found a comic book viewer which allows me to carry quite a suppl of reading wherever I go and I gotta say the color screen is nice for that. And all that goes without even mentioning movies or TV shows.

I have access to all my email accounts along with a keyboard I can type on and text messaging is a snap, again with the help of my large on screen keyboard; I've never texted before because of the hassle of the keypad or miniature keyboards on phones. I've even started using Facebook and Twitter more since I always have something I can update with in my pocket.

A 5 meg camera on board, with both a forward and backwards facing lens means I always have a decent quality camera in my hands, again with a display big enough to view what I take. The camera is pretty light hungry, but then so are most digital cameras so I can live with it.

I have to say, the one question I can never understand is "How can you talk on it?", but I've been asked that more than a couple times. Honestly it's a dumb question, the phone is big enough to actually reach from your ear to your mouth, meaning you can always hear whats being said and don't have to worry about getting your voice to carry to the mike, unlike most phones that only reach to just past your cheekbone. To those people I ask, "How do you talk on it?"

Not much more I can say, I love it and it almost never leaves my hand. Sure it's a little big for some applications, and it's a little small for others, but Dell did a helluva job making the best fit possible; it's big enough for 95% of my daily usage and small enough to take with me everywhere, unlike a full sized tablet or a regular smartphone, which is one or the other. I honestly don't see it ever being a big seller, due to it's size, but I literally cannot recommend it enough. Sure I'd like to see my OS get updated and I'd like my battery to last longer, but I'm not aware of any instance where I wouldn't be saying both those things anyway.

I'll make it short and simple, if you need a phone and feel you might use it for more than just a phone, take a look at a Streak. I know for a fact I won't be looking for a tablet this year, there is nothing they have to offer that my Streak doesn't do.

5 Hottest Video Game Females: Not the Main Character

Inspired by Top 5 with Lisa Foiles I think I'm going to do a top 5 from time to time and well Lisa Foiles is definitely in the running for number 1 of my top 5 hot female geek culture divas.

By the way Laura Croft doesn't make my list, one she's the star and two well she was ruined forever thanks to Angelina Jolie. The other rule here is that video game girls from fight games aren't included. Let's face those are total T&A characters so they are all hot why debate the issue. Anyway lets proceed shall we:

Number 5 - Batman Arkham Asylum: Harley Quinn

I definitely like the new outfit it fits her character and well, her better, than the stupid court jester outfit. She's insane, dirty, and lethal and her appearance definitely spiked my interest in the game. I even like the voice but then again I had and still a have a crush on Jennifer Tilly so for me those voices are annoying in a good way.

Number 4 - Dead Rising: Jessie

Unlike my buddy Rob I found the first Dead Rising to frustrating to finish but still logged a lot of hours and some of those hours were to admire the virtual artistry that went into Jessie's two most prominent attributes.

Number 3 - Half Life 2: Alyx Vance

Video games have striven to capture the cute, spunky, smart, and butt kicking geek dream girl for ages and usually they fail and the character just becomes annoying. However, Valve did an amazing job with Alyx. I actually found (and find) myself enjoying the stupid training and story pieces purely because of her character.

Number 2 - Dragon Age: Morrigan

Until I played Dragon Age Origins I would have advised you to get out more if you said you actually felt some attachment to a video game character. However, Bioware did an amazing job with this game and I actually felt a pile of guild and regret when I ended my character's relationship with Morrigan simply to get the achievement for bedding Liliana. I still did it but you know that decision was pretty much why I never finished that game.

Number 1 - World of Warcraft: Lady Sylvanas

Lady Sylvanas, what can I say she's a bit evil, mean, bossy, uppity, and damn hot for an undead gal. I'm always confused why all the other undead are gross rotting zombies but Sylvanas still has it going on. Every time I found myself in Undercity I made a point of going to the Lady's court just to check her out as she was way better than all the Night Elves dancing around in their underpants in Stormwind.

Honorable Mention - Fable: Lady Grey

I'm not talking about the undead Lady Grey in Fable 2 but the original present demanding blonde of the original Fable, you know the Fable that didn't suck. Really there was nothing appealing about this woman's personality but I still ran around fetching her presents so that says something.

Boxee Impressions from Canada

I started this Boxee review quite a while back but got side tracked due to work and computer issues. Now that I got things under control and have had time to play with Boxee I figured I'd complete the review because my good buddy Rob was asking me about it.

If one watches or reads any technical, business, or culture media one would likely have heard of the Boxee Box. Hell they had it in Men's Health gadget list a few issues back: you know the one with Olivia Munn in it ...

The Boxee Box hardware isn't cheap and dropping $200 on something for a review isn't in my budget. However, you can download and install Boxee for free on almost any computer that can be hooked up to a TV so I installed Boxee on my old laptop and it worked fine. I could even control it with a Andriod app on my phone as a remote control.

My first impression of the interface wasn't initially positive but after a few minutes I got use to it and it grew on me. At a glance Boxee is quite an application. It can access Netflix's streaming service, Vudu, television network streaming sites, and pull media from my main PC across my home network. With out a doubt the most robust media management application available that I know about.

After playing with Boxee for the last couple days I've made some discoveries. First off if you live in Canada your not going to use Vudu so you lose the ability to rent videos on demand which is something you can do with AppleTV, XBox, or the PS3. Another short coming is that the Netflix app will not work in Boxee for Canadian Netflix customers. It seems to work but you'll notice your accessing the American media catalog, which by the way is way better than the Canadian, and if you try to watch anything it just hangs when trying to connect to the Netflix servers. However, other than that it seems to work pretty well. Not a bad selection of television to pick from (even with living in Canada), some nice apps that still work for Canadians, and it seemed to stream across my home network PC to Boxee Laptop. It does hiccup and fail to stream some listed network television from time to time but no surprise there, you are accessing free internet content what do you expect for free.

In a nut shell if you live in the US I'm thinking this is a pretty good deal even if you shell out the $200 for the Boxee Box itself. However, for Canadians that is a pretty expensive price specially when you know Americans are getting a lot more for that money but if you have a spare computer around I say hook it up.

Final word if you like internet media such as The Escapist, Revision 3, YouTube, or even The Guild. Boxee brings all that to your big screen instead of your computer. For me that made setting up the laptop worth while.

Red Dead Redemption

I gotta say, so far 2011 is stacking up to be a great year for video games from 2010! I was completely blown away by how much I enjoyed Mafia II, and now I'm rockin' Red Dead Redemption on a level I never expected. If you clicked the links on the games above you'll notice that while I linked the Mafia II website I chose to use the Red Dead Wiki for the other, and there's a reason for that, there is just that much going on.

I have only ever played one Rockstar game, Red Dead Revolver, a pathetic attempt to bring a spaghetti western to life, a genre which I don't think should have ever lived, let alone be bastardized in a video game, but I digress. I have avoided the GTA series due to my aversion to sandbox games, and what I perceived to be weak story-lines, so this game was something of a risk for me, but one I'm glad I took.

I won't go into great detail, but I will note what I like: a decent story with a quest driven narrative, great characters, especially the main, John Marston, stunning scenery and background detailing, and attention to detail that makes failure to immerse yourself impossible.

To be fair it's not without problems, horses can be painful to maneuver, weapon mechanics aren't as streamlined as they could be, and the side quests can be a little too immersive, to the point of distraction from the main story. The problem I found with this was I got a little bored with hunting and gathering and almost quit playing the game; I actually had to take step back and get myself in the campaign again. The whole balancing act between side and main questing took a bit to catch onto, but now that I have it I find they go hand in hand very nicely.

Really not much more I can say, I've already bought the DLC expansions for it and looking forward to complete everything. I even downloaded an app on my phone that is essentially a checklist for the game, it's just that massive, there is no other way to keep track of it all.

Your Highness (Restricted Trailer)

I have to say this looks funny:

The type of role you could see Jack Black doing, but your soooo glad he isn't going to be going way over the top with it.