Windows 7 Beta 1 is Leaked

Just hours ago, Windows 7 Beta 1 (Build 7000) was leaked on major torrent sites (mininova.org, the thepiratebay.org and btjunkie.org). Microsoft was supposed to announce Windows 7 Beta 1 at CES in January and it would have been available only to selected beta-testers.

The news about leaked version was first available in Russian and Chinese forums and then the leaked version made its way to torrent-sites. Only the 32 bit version of Windows 7 Beta 1 has been leaked and there are rumors of Windows 7 Beta 1 64 bit version being leaked soon too.

We can confirm that the current leaked version 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD is a real deal and it is working fine. (full Story)

IPod Touch Second Gen

Apple has also released the 2nd gen iPod Touch. Yes similar to iPhone 3G. Slimmer, lighter and has a back chrome aluminum case. Wow, that looks nicer than the iPhone 3G back case.

ImprovementBuilt-in speaker ~ lets you hear the music, dialogue, and action without headphones, perfect for casual listening.

Volume controlVolume buttons are built into the left side of iPod touch, giving you easy access to the most frequently used controls.
Longer battery lifeProvides up to 36 hours of audio playback or 6 hours of video playback

Rock ’n’ run with Nike+.iPod touch now includes built-in Nike + iPod support. Just slip the Nike + iPod Sensor (available separately) into your Nike+ shoe and start your run. The sensor communicates wirelessly with your iPod touch, tracking your time, distance, and calories burned. It even gives you voice feedback on your progress.

The new iPod Touch is available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB and priced at $229, $299 and $399 respectively.
Video and pictures after the break.

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Is the PlayStation 3 Dying?

Fallout from the November sales data continues to mount for Sony and its PlayStation family. CNNMoney's Silicon Alley Insider column pulled no punches in its assessment of the numbers calling the PS3 "A sinking ship" in light of its sales declining 19 percent compared to what it did last year. While that's a bit melodramatic, it's hard to argue with their conclusion that the PS3 needs a price cut soon, and a substantive one at that. Ten year lifespan or not, it stands on the brink of falling behind the Xbox 360 by an insurmountable margin.

The article attributes the PS3's struggles to three key reasons: its higher price tag, no one caring that it plays Blu-Ray, and the lack of system selling software.

Acknowledging the price issue, the other two fall into a much more gray area. Blu-Ray shows more signs of life with each month that passes since it won the HD format war. Netflix announced at the beginning of December that it had seen a dramatic rise in Blu-ray renters, hitting its year-end target over a month early, and that's in spite of an extra fee they added for the format. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment president David Bishop also said in a recent interview with Home Media Magazine that Blu-ray sales are growing at a rate of 200 to 300 percent over last year's figures. (full Story)

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

The luxurious, unlocked Windows Mobile–based Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 has plenty of features. But it also has plenty of bugs. And at an exorbitant $799.99 (list), I simply can't imagine anyone buying it when there are so many other solid options available for much less—especially in this economy.

The 5.1-ounce X1 is clad in silver metal, but ultimately feels like a slightly clunky rectangle (4.4 by 2.1 by 0.7 inches, HWD), without the rounded corners of devices like the BlackBerry Storm and iPhone 3G. Closed, it's dominated by its supersharp 3.1-inch, 800-by-480-pixel screen, with a bunch of action buttons and a small touchpad below it. Slide the screen to the right and you'll see a usable QWERTY keyboard of small, squarish, slightly bumpy, well-separated keys, but the top row of keys is a little too close to the screen, making them a bit hard to hit. The phone doesn't have an accelerometer—the screen image rotates only when you open or close the keyboard. On the back, there's a 3.2-megapixel camera with an LED flash. There's a microSD card slot under the back cover. (The X1 rejected our 16GB card, even though Sony Ericsson claims the phone should accept cards up to 16GB.)

The X1 offers two major software features that you won't find on other Windows Mobile phones. The big one is the Xperia Panel interface, a new, interactive way of using your home screen. Press the Xperia Panels button and you'll be presented with a set of varied home screens, each with a different take on your media, the clock, the application launcher and/or your PIM information. The home screens are attractive and well thought-out, and on the whole the interface is more usable than the slow TouchFLO you get on the HTC Fuze.

The second feature is a customized version of the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser, which is faster and displays pages more accurately than Microsoft's Internet Explorer Mobile. But Opera seems much more loosely plumbed into the system than on the competing Samsung Omnia. During testing, when I went to the Google Panel to do a search, for instance, the phone launched the inferior Internet Explorer browser.

The Panel interface relies on the 800-by-480-pixel screen to show its miniaturized panels. The downside of the high-res screen is that it takes Windows Mobile's already-small interface elements down to a tiny size. There's a stylus in the corner of the phone, and you'll want to use it, because with itty-bitty buttons like these, using your finger is out of the question.

A quad-band EDGE phone with HSDPA 850/1900/2100 and HSUPA, the Xperia X1 should hit AT&T's and foreign networks at the highest speed possible. When using the X1 as a modem for a Windows Vista PC, I achieved download speeds of around 700 kilobits per second, lower than I expected. On T-Mobile's network, the phone drops to much-slower EDGE speeds.

The X1 is not a great voice phone; its earpiece is a bit quieter than I'd like, and I heard some clipping at top volume on AT&T's 3G network. Voices are well rounded at lower volumes, but that won't do in a noisy outdoor area. The speakerphone suffers from the same issues. Transmissions sounded a bit rough and fuzzy, with lots of background noise coming through. Speakerphone transmissions sounded muddy.

The X1 theoretically works with both mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets and features a standard 3.5mm headset jack for wired headsets. But our X1 had some trouble connecting to both Plantronics Pulsar 590 and Motorola S9 HD stereo Bluetooth headsets. I finally got the S9 HD connected on the third try. The phone does not offer voice dialing. The good news: Talk time was just shy of 7.5 hours on my tests, an impressive result for a HSDPA handset.

I also experienced some stability and connectivity issues. My first sync with a Windows Vista PC took 30 minutes and ended with a crash. My first attempt to connect the X1 to a WPA2 Wi-Fi network also failed (though I was able to connect eventually). On my tests the X1 was also plagued with strange delays. Whether I was hooking up a headset or pressing 'resume' in the media player, sometimes the phone would just seize up for 10 or 15 seconds.

Plenty powerful, the X1 should run Windows Mobile third-party applications well, according to our Spb Benchmark and CorePlayer performance tests. On Spb's general-purpose benchmark tests, the X1 performed better overall than most other Windows Mobile devices, with the exception of the Samsung Epix. The high-resolution screen drags down video frame rates somewhat, but the X1 still came out ahead of popular devices like the Samsung SCH-i760 and Motorola Q9 series. The device has GPS but doesn't come with any mapping or driving-directions applications. (full Story)

Techs Biggest Broken Promises of 2008

We Start with a Micro Fuel Cell ...

Amicro fuel cell

Holidays? What holidays? Here at PCMag, we're too busy thinking about the Consumer Electronics Show coming up in early January to stop and smell the nog. We're getting e-mails and phone calls from PR reps by the boatload, each one promising a new product that will revolution the consumer electronics landscape as we know it.

The only thing is, plenty of these products never actually make it to market.

Naturally, this got us to thinking. How many products have we been promised in the past year that never actually hit store shelves? In honor of both the impending CES and the end of the calendar year, we've culled together some of tech's best unfulfilled promises of 2008.

Fuel cells in laptops: As we look more and more toward alternative energy sources, it make sense that laptop manufacturers would also be searching for a change from the old-fashioned lithium ion battery. For a few years now we've been promised the advent of the fuel cell--a more efficient technology than its predecessors. Unfortunately, we're still stuck in the development stages.

Check out the rest of our disappointments, after the jump...

MemJet printing: This technology was going to revolutionize the way we print, outputting anywhere from 60 to 360 pages per minute. Sadly, the technology has been pushed back to 2009. We'll believe it when we see it.

Microvision PicoP: 2008 was the year of the tiny projector for plenty of companies--not Microvision, though. The PicoP won't be seeing the light of day (or even a dimly lit board room) until 2009.

Palm Nova OS: Oh Palm, remember when you had the smartphone world in, well, the palm of your hand? The company's eagerly awaited OS didn't debut in 2008, but rumor has it that we'll be seeing it at CES 2009. Right Palm? Riiiiight.

The Phantom: The irony of this company's name has not been lost on the tech blogosphere. Phantom Entertainment promised this gaming system for years, without much of anything to show for it. However, the company does get points for actually having released an honest-to-god product this year: The Phantom Lapboard keyboard made its debut in June--a full two years after its original release date.

RealDVD: This "studio-blessed" DVD-ripping software got close to release--really, it did, if only all of those pesky movie companies hadn't gone out and sued the company over copyright issues. Whoops...

Ultra-wideband for PCs: Where was this low-energy, high-bandwidth technology in 2008? In the ether, naturally.

Duke Nukem Forever: Of course we'd be remiss if we left this perennial vaporware favorite off the list. 3D Realms has been promising this first-person shooter for a staggering 11 years. It's kind of the "Chinese Democracy" of the video game world, only Axl finally got off his leather pants and release that one. Perhaps some kind of Dr. Pepper-related promotion will finally light a fire under the programmers... (full Story)