Tech Olive

The guys over at Connecti.ca have apparently gotten their hands on the HP Slate, with photos and all. They did a short mini review and “the official verdict is ‘meh’”. It’s no iPad killer and all it really is is a touchscreen netbook, which means it’s not extremely fast and responsive. However, it does have Flash and a camera, as well as USB and HDMI ports.

Again, the 32GB HP Slate will sell for $549 and the 64GB version will cost $599. Both sport a 8.9-inch, multitouch display at 1024 x 600. The internals include a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530, Intel integrated graphics, and 1GB of non-expandable RAM.

via [Connecti.ca]

Trine‘s first DLC has finally been released, adding a whole new level to the game. In celebration of the DLC’s release, Steam is is offering Trine for $5.00, a whopping 75% off! The new DLC also comes with a title update that fixes a few bugs:

• Added free DLC level – “Path to New Dawn” (available upon completion of the game)
  • Thanks for playing and supporting Trine!
• Added information about experience and secrets to the Inventory menu
• Added version number information to the main menu
• Fixed a respawn bug in Iron Forge level (in co-op) near the first gate

[Press Release, Store Page]

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in the tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

As eternal fans of indie games, it’s no surprise that The Bargain Bin would reflect that, and this week is no exception. As a special deal of Beat Hazard‘s launch week, Steam is knocking 25% off the new indie game’s $9.99 price tag, now only costing you $7.49 for a short time.

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The past week’s best news…

The Mamba Files: Month 4 – The RMA Process
- This month on the Mamba Files we’re taking the series in a different direction. Instead of a focus on the Mamba itself, we’re going to focus on how well Razer’s RMA and customer support works and just how easy it is to get proper support and replacement for your faulty Razer products. And, of course, we’ll have a quality update on the Mamba at the end of the article.

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Unsurprisingly, it has been confirmed that Valve will be holding a press event at E3 for Portal 2. Instead of taking place at E3′s convention center, the press event will take place on June 14th at the Regal Movie Theater just down the street from E3. So, it’s safe to assume by the location that the press will be treated to plenty of game footage, and perhaps even some live gameplay.

Am I the only one that thinks this small, dark venue makes it a perfect environment for GlaDOS to turn the press event into a complete massacre? I urge all press that are attending to bring a gas mask and their orange jumpsuit.

Microsoft Office 2010 has finally reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) stage, which means that development on the new Office suite is complete and ready to be distributed. Microsoft will first give copies to manufacturing partners and OEMs, then businesses will get it, and then finally customers should expect to be able to grab a copy sometime in June.

“RTM is the final engineering milestone of a product release and our engineering team has poured their heart and soul into reaching this milestone. It is also an appropriate time to re-emphasize our sincere gratitude to the more than 5,000 organizations and partners who have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products. Since the start of our public beta in November 2009, we’ve had more than 7.5 million people download the beta version – that’s more than 3 times the number of 2007 beta downloads.” — Microsoft Corporate Vice-President Takeshi Numoto.

So, it looks like Microsoft benefited from using a beta testing program (just like Windows 7), something that they didn’t use for Vista.

[TechNet Blog]

When it comes to computer security, many people often say that Mac has the better edge, simply because they’ve been told that, but CNET sat down with Marc Maiffret, a famous and professional hacker and interviewed him about his success and the security state of Microsoft and Apple. Here are just some of the interesting quotes from the interview (Apple fanboys beware):

“Now when you look at Microsoft today they do more to secure their software than anyone. They’re the model for how to do it. They’re not perfect; there’s room for improvement. But they are definitely doing more than anybody else in the industry, I would say.”

“It’s even a little scarier with them (Apple) because they try to market themselves as more secure than the PC, that you don’t have to worry about viruses, etc. Anytime there’s been a hacking contest, within a few hours someone’s found a new Apple vulnerability.”

“And the Apple community is pretty ignorant to the risks that are out there as it relates to Apple. The reason we don’t see more attacks out there compared to Microsoft is because their market share isn’t near what Microsoft’s is.”

To read the complete Q&A, head on over to CNET.

While there are no exact numbers yet, NPD’s March sales report states that Modern Warfare 2 is the #2 best-selling game ever. Second only to Wii Fit, MW2 had just taken the #3 spot last month and is rising rapidly. Hopefully NPD will release the actual numbers so we can see exactly just how close the two games are in sales.

via [Game Informer]

To celebrate the first episode’s launch of Sam and Max‘s third season, Steam is offering an exclusive bonus to anyone that pre-purchases the entire season.

“Purchase in the first week and get 3 Team Fortress 2 items: Max’s Severed Head, Max’s Pistol, and Sam’s Revolver. Check out the TF2 blog for the details. Offer extended to Steam pre-purchase owners, must own Team Fortress 2 to use items.”

And, if you’ve got doubts about the second season’s awesomeness, then head over to WorthPlaying and grab the first episode’s demo.

[Store Page]

If you’re currently sporting Firefox 3.6 or Google Chrome, then you’ll love what we have to tell you. Google announced this morning that they have added drag and drop support to attachments in Gmail. This means that you can easily just drag and drop a file anywhere in the Gmail window. This will bring up a special box in the area that’s usually reserved for attachments. Simply drop the file anywhere in the box to upload. This prevents from having to click on the Add Attachment button and waiting for Windows Explorer to pop up and having to locate the file.

As far as there only being support for Firefox 3.6 and Chrome, Google says that this is the case because of some missing features in other browsers that makes this drag and drop feature impractical.

So who else is excited about this?

[Official Gmail Blog]