Sony is remaining coy about hefting the hard drive on the PS3, not to mention whether a slim version will drop later this year.

However, their man in Australia has suggested that if you want more space or stashing TV shows via PlayTV and the like, you may as well do it yourself.

Now, we've known we could do this for some time, but its pleasing to hear that the man is giving mod lovers the world over a chance to tinker.

According to our mates at CVG, Michael Ephraim told Aussie paper The Age that the hard drive was "non-proprietary" and that, "As we all know, the price of hard drive space is coming down. If we [make the drive bigger], fine, but if we don't do it, the consumer will still have choice."

Excuse us while we give our PS3 a lift and turn it into the proper home hub Sony should have dropped this time last year.

Archos is taking square aim at Apple today, bringing their super slick TV+ streamer to the UK to kick some Apple TV ass.

It's due to be officially unveiled here in Blighty on Wednesday, but we've managed to get a sneak preview of what we can expect.

Packing a massive 250GB into the top end model (with an 80GB edition also hitting the shelves), TV+ also includes a full web browser, something you won't find on Steve Jobs' so-called pet project.

Then there's a full EPG for snaffling shows up to a week in advance, not to mention access to the Archos Content Portal, letting you download and rent movies or just watch the news if you fancy.

And then there's the plain old streamer, letting you spy video you've got stashed away on your PC. Bear in mind everything will need to be encoded in MPEG4 and WMV though. You'll have to buy plug-ins direct from Archos if you want to use more formats.

Music wise it'll handle MP3s and AACs. And don't forget you can beam over snaps too.

Elsewhere, you won't find any HDMI ports, so hi-def isn't nearly as fun as it could be. Still, with that much space and that many features, it's not a terrible gripe.

The 250GB version will clobber you for £240, with the 80GB coming in at a mere £170.

We'll be getting a full hands-on on Wednesday, so be sure to check back for full video and image gallery.

Filed under: Peripherals

If you've never tracked down just the right desktop widget to display your PC vitals, perhaps analog gauges are your last hope at harmony with processor utilization. DIY Life has a nice how-to on how to hack your very own old-school gauges to work off of USB and, you know, gauge stuff. Unfortunately, the hack is pretty involved -- we set ten of our finest interns to the task, and only three of them made it back with all their appendages intact -- but don't let that frighten you too much, our interns are a rowdy lot.

 

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Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia really ought to keep on eye in the rear view mirror these days, as its Korean competitor is slowly creeping up from the back with entries like its latest media-oriented smartphone, the G810 -- a successor to the G800. The phone breaks from Samsung's fascination with Windows Mobile and goes the Symbian route, also touting HSDPA data, a 2.6-inch QVGA display, a 5-megapixel camera, GPS functions, WiFi, 150MB of memory (plus a microSD slot), and Bluetooth 2.0. The new handset is expected to be introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, and will likely retail for around €580. If you've been brushing up on your Czech, hit the read link for more in-depth info -- otherwise, you might want to stick to the via.

[Via Unwired View]

 

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Forget that shrinking nonsense Intel keeps talking about -- squeezing battery-sipping processors inside minuscule form factors -- it's totally played. We got here some numbers on Intel's new Skulltrail gaming platform, featuring dual quad-core QX9775 processors and other ridiculous specifications designed for besting the likes of AMD and that pesky Crysis frame rate. If you want to get into all the tech nitty gritty, the read links have all the bullet points to satisfy, but here's the long and the short of it: those eight Xeon cores and various other server-inspired innards blow away every sort of competition in multi-threaded applications, and other single-threaded CPU-heavy tests put the QX9775 near or at the front. Unfortunately, the board is held back by its use of DDR2 800 FB-DIMMs, which landed it a bit behind the QX9770 and QX9650 Core 2 Extreme in Crysis benchmarks -- one of the few benchmarks that Skulltrail even felt any competition from the rest of the pack. It seems like the board mainly shines when it has multiple graphics cards to back it up, and it's also clear that the Crysis Everest won't be bested by CPU juice alone. There aren't any specifics on price or release date yet, but expect to pay $600 or more per CPU.

Read - Hot Hardware
Read - PC Perspective
Read - Techgage
Read - Custom PC

 

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