You may have heard that the format war is officially over, HD DVD has been defeated by Blu Ray and the world is now at peace.

So the world isn’t really in crisis over this situation but there are still a massive amount of Xbox 360 HD DVD drives on the market. Where does the EeePC even remotely come into this? Good question, I’ve been playing with all kinds of hardware over the years and one problem I keep running into is the fact I don’t own, or have ever owned an external CD/DVD reader for my PC. This would be extremely handy for all of those times I’ve had to repair, fix or restore computer systems that lacked a (working) drive of their own.

This is a great addition for installing operating systems, games and just about anything else you could ever need on the EeePC with out any hassles.

On February 6th 2008 Microsoft reduced the suggested retail price of the HD DVD player to $129USD, following Toshiba’s announcement to discontinue all HD DVD players Microsoft decided to officially discontinue the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.

Lucky for the consumer most retailers are currently having a “fire” sale on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, For as cheap as ~$40USD ($45AUD) you can own this awesome player/reader for use with any PC, Mac or Xbox 360.

You will find it impossible to find a USB CD/DVD enclosure and a CD/DVD/HD DVD Drive together for this price, so this really is a once only deal, I’m sure that once these drives are gone…..they will be gone.

Yeah i know, HD DVD is dead tech but this won’t stop the drive from functioning.

Guryhwa decided to upgrade his EeePC as he felt it needed just a little more grunt.

Source

The most violent video games around could soon be sold in Australia after the Federal Government said it was considering updating the classification system for games to include an R18+ rating.

Unlike films, magazines and other publications, there is no adult classification for games in Australia, so any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board.

Any changes to the censorship regime must be agreed to by the Commonwealth and all state and territory attorneys-general. The previous government was reluctant to put the issue on the agenda.

But a spokeswoman for the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, confirmed the issue of “whether or not to allow an R18+ classification” for games would be discussed by censorship ministers at the next Standing Committee of attorneys-general (SCAG) meeting on March 28. It will be the first time the issue is discussed since November 2005.

Source

I’ve had a few people asking over the last week, I’m a student, would it be able to handle with the typical environment I deal with each day?

The answer is Yes. And from a video at daily motion it seems they decided to take question for a test drive.

It’s always good to know how much, or how little our technology can take. Who knows what you might encounter.

The new version of EeeCTL has been released and as usual this update fixes issues, adds new features and is a recommended update.

New features:

- Back light control in 0511 style with ANY BIOS (twice brighter than 0401)!
- Suspend configuration is applied on shutdown to fix PCIE issues.
- Improved Vista support.
- Brief documentation on 0.2.* features included.
Other features:
- FSB speed control.
- PCIE speed control.
- CPU voltage control.
- Fan speed control(incl. used-defined automatic mode).
- Temperature monitor.
Notes:
- 700(2G) is still not supported.

You can now support Dci and EeeCTL by donating.

Download EeeCTL 0.2.3

Last time we covered the much anticipated Everex Cloudbook it was on track and ready for a February 15th release. This date has now changed.

Find your $399 CloudBook at Walmart.com and ZaReason.com beginning 2/21/08.

So the release date has changed, the Cloudbook will soon see a wide public release. The guys over at Laptop Magazine unboxed their Cloudbook yesterday and decided to expressed some feelings with a overview of the upcoming (released) umpc.

It’s Saturday and I finally got the chance to implement Google ad sense into the web site, yeah I know “ads” we all rather dislike them but I’ve gone about them in a way that I very much like.

Q: How in the world could I ever like ads?
A: If you have registered, enjoy a 100% ad free scalegamer experience on top of many other great features you already have access to.

Q: Any else change today?
A: You can now and Donate to Scalegamer and help support the website. Just some housecleaning and fixing a few small bugs. The search and login issues are now resolved and i’m very happy about that.

If you do have any problems fee free to contact us anytime.

That wraps it up for the changes, simple and easy.

So you have an EeePC and decided that playing with open office just wasn’t as fun as it used to be and need something to fill the void. Well you can sleep easy tonight because I spent my weekend testing a few titles on the EeePC to show how much grunt this little beast really has.

Sorry for some of the loading times, these tests where done over wireless.

• Max Payne
• Far Cry
• Mugen
• Call of Duty
• AudioSurf
• Super Mario 64
• Peggle

Read →

A vulnerability has been identified in the version of Samba included with Xandros, This effects the version Xandros that ships with the Asus Eee PC. Rise Security has discovered that root access can be granted using the exploit.

We recently acquired an ASUS Eee PC (if you want to know more about it, a lot of reviews are available on internet). The first thing we did when we put our hands at the ASUS Eee PC was to test its security.

While Samba is part of the pre-installed programs on the Eee PC is not enabled by default, we are currently awaiting updates from Asus on the status of a update to prevent this.

Read details at Rise Security ?