LG Manual Details Piracy…

LG may well find itself in some trouble with studios after its user manuals were found to contain details of how to watch illegally downloaded material on LG’s hardware.

Seems like a bit of a misstep...

The whole kafuffle stems from the release of a line of HDTV’s from LG that boast USB ports, allowing users to plug external storage directly into their displays and watch any content that they’ve got stored on those drives directly on their LG TV. Of course, the assumption might be that such content has been legally obtained, but LG’s own manual doesn’t seem too fussy, showing pirated content in its diagrams of the functionality.

French Government Pushes for End to Passwords

It seems that the French government considers the whole “input your password” method of account security to be a little dated, instead advocating a system of ‘digital certificates’ for access to accounts.

Nothing like a nice, secure password

Word of the change comes from TechRadar, which has it that the latest plan comes directly from France’s secretary of state, Nathalie Kosciosku-Morizet, whose brainchild the whole digital-certificate project is in the first place. It’s certainly an interesting prospect, and one that only gets more interesting the more you read about it, particularly its applications when it comes to official documentation. Indeed, it seems the certificate won’t be accessible to too many services.

Buffalo to Release PS3-Specific Drives

It seems that Buffalo is to launch two new drives, specifically made to cater to those of us using Sony’s PlayStation 3 console as a media player, and somehow, it seems an interesting prospect.

TGDaily is carrying word of the two new drives from Buffalo, news of which has hit in the same week as the announcement that Microsoft is to offer a 250GB external drive for sale, initially at least, only in Japan for its Xbox 360. Still, the drives from Buffalo seem a little heavier-duty than Microsoft’s offering, boasting fully 500GB of external storage for the Sony device.

Sub-€500 PC Competition Build

In December, we ran a competition on Boards.ie to see who could build us the most impressive PC without going over a budget of €500. When I asked if we could do an example post, Ryan had boasted before his first attempt that he could “easily” fit in a copy of Windows, but after several builds not quite affording a hard drive, he gave up on it.

Still, that wasn’t enough to deter Boards.ie member, and eventual competition winner, Orcrist666. As we’ve said above, the whole point of the competition was to build a PC for under €500, but this one goes a bit above and beyond…

We’ll take it from the top…

Power Supply:

Since this is a build that’s being put together on an absolutely minimal budget, it’s not going to be using a phenomenal amount of power.

Click through to see our page for the AXP power supply

Not using too much power means not having to spend a tremendous amount on a high wattage power supply. Orcrist666’s build uses a fairly simple 500W AXP power supply, which has been well reviewed by just about everyone who has bought it. It’s a little noisy at times, but overall it’s a solid piece of kit.

Considering the fact that the AXP Power Supply ATX weighs in at just €34.86, it’s not a bad old deal at all. A solid base for a budget machine.

Walk Towards the Light

Chinese company Dream Cheeky seems to have a solution at hand for anyone who wants to prove just how popular they are. Their new USB Webmail Notifier will casually sit beside your PC while connected to your email account, before lighting up to notify you of every new email you receive.

Dream Cheeky done good on this one

The device can even add in a sound to make it more obvious that someone is demanding your attention, or maybe it’s just another crappy newsletter heading into your inbox, but hey, it lights up and makes sounds so who cares!

Google Docs Cloud Getting Bigger

Google has announced that over the next few weeks they’re expanding the capabilities of Google Docs to give you the ability to upload all file types to the cloud. As Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB, the great unwashed have been told have been told that it’s now possible to backup “large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud”.

Google Docs may have increased capabilities but also increased competition

One of the offshoots of this move may be some damage to the USB drive market as many out there may see Google Docs as a more convenient, and cheaper, option for accessing your files on different computers. For any Google Apps Premier Edition customers (anyone?… anyone?… Bueller?) they have been told that they will now also be able to “seamlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications”. Look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs over the next few weeks to confirm that these features have arrived.

Last Minute Christmas Gifts

Good morning all. Those of you who keep up with us on Twitter will already know that 1300 today is the closing date for people who want orders to be delivered to them in time for Christmas via An Post. With that in mind, there’s a little under three hours to get last minute orders in.

There are a few things that will always go down well, won’t break the bank and just about everyone will find a use for over the coming year that we think will make fine last-minute Christmas presents for those who haven’t managed to get all of their shopping done yet (and let’s not kid ourselves, we’re firmly in that category ourselves).

Western Digital Elements 1TB:

Western Digital’s Elements 1TB external hard drive is a simple enough thing to pick up for Christmas, but it’s also one of those “gifts that keeps on giving.” Moreover, it’s only €79, which means you can grab one for your nearest and dearest without bankrupting yourself.

Click through to see our page for the WD Elements 1TB hard drive

There’s nothing like giving someone the gift of not having to worry about deleting things; it’s relatively simple, but hard drive purchases are something that tend to get put on the long finger until, eventually, you realise you’ve got a fast-filling hard drive in your main machine and nowhere to put whatever is taking up your space.

Better still, there’s nothing like being there when someone is restoring a machine from a backup and having the self-satisfied little grin that says, “He only has that backup because picked up the drive.”

It’s the little things that help make it through Christmas, but the promise of being able to be smug later on is a bonus. You can check out the Western Digital Elements 1TB in more detail on our product page for it if you’re interested.

All We Want for Christmas

Over the next few days, we’ll be posting a single blog post from each member of the Komplett.ie staff that details a single item they’ll be giving this Christmas, and one that they’ll be hoping to receive. It’s a simple enough plan, and today we’re starting out with Shelton from RMA, we’ll continue on to Ryan tomorrow

It’s something that works a little better than a recommendation, if only because we’ll be genuinely trying to pick out gifts for other people that won’t break the bank… and genuinely hopeful about what we might be bought

From Shelton:

Shelton didn’t tell us just who he was buying for, but when we asked him what he’d be buying for someone this Christmas he managed to get a link to me nice and fast, so it seems as though he’s put some thought into it at least.

Click through to see our page for the WD TV Live Media Player

Shelton’s pick as a gift is something that we’ve seen a bit of a rush on over the last couple of months, Western Digital’s TV Live Media Player, usually shortened simply to WD TV Live Media Player.

For those not familiar with Western Digital’s TV line, they essentially allow you to play media directly from an external hard drive to your TV, without any bother. For those who have already use the lighter Media Player that WD makes, the networking options really do give this one a bit of a bump.

As the customer review on the product itself says, “All drives connected to the player are easily accessed from any PC/Laptop in my home network.” It’s always nice to be able to say that the customer review on a product is a five-star review.

Western Digital’s WD TV Live Media Player is €125, which isn’t bad at all considering what it does.

Special Offers – Week of November 30th

Good afternoon all, hopefully we find you well this practically arctic afternoon; it’s nice that it’s at least cleared up a little. Anyway, for those of you who read the blog regularly you’ll already be aware, but for anyone new we tend to post our special offers for the week on a Monday afternoon. It gives you guys the most time to consider picking something up while it’s priced down, or to try and persuade the husband/wife that you need a new GPU for work… so it works out best for all concerned.

All that aside, this week we have some nice products knocked down, including a mouse, a GPU and a really excellent Razer gaming mouse mat.

Logitech MX518:

The Logitech MX518 is a solid mouse, with a hand-shaped moulded body boasting an array of buttons (totalling eight). While most will be pushing for laser mice, for all their enhanced accuracy, this is optical, meaning the DPI will be a little lower than most higher end lasers.

Click through to check out our page for the Logitech MX518

Don’t let the fact that it’s optical discourage you though, it boasts a resolution of 1.6k DPI, so it should be more than accurate enough for most of us, bar the more competitive gamers out there. It’s also very well reviewed, which is always nice to be able to say, because our own recommendations will never speak as loudly as those that come straight from people who’ve bought a piece of kit and felt strongly enough about it to come back and put a comment on the page.

Even the review headings are overall lovely, including, “Just bought a second one… and it’s still a winer,” Excellent Mouse,” “Fantastic Mouse,” “Great mouse,” and “What a mouse!” I don’t like to harp on too much, but I do love seeing feedback from customers on an item like this

Logitech’s MX518 is a solid mouse, knocked down by fully 20% this week to €28, which is always nice to be able to say.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5770:

I tend to say this a lot when it comes to special offers on GPUs, but it bears repeating, when it comes to graphics cards, most people are shopping for something specific, or have something in mind. So it doesn’t do too well to keep talking about them endlessly. If you’re at all interested, you should check out our detailed product tab for the card.

Click through to see our page for the Radeon HD5770

Still, there are some bits and pieces that pretty much everyone will want to know about a card they’re looking at, and those are things we can talk about here. Sapphire’s Radeon HD5770 boasts 1GB of GDDR5 RAM and an 850MHz clock speed. It’s also got an output resolution of 2560×1600 and support for DirectX 11, which is likely to be more important to those looking at future-proofing a machine than just casually upgrading. It also supports up to three displays, for those who absolutely must watch everything at once.

The Radeon HD 5770 is a solid card, and down to €138 now, so there’s not much more to say about it.

Razer Destructor:

I’ll be honest, I’ve never had to actually talk about a mouse mat here before, it’s something in which I have a level of interest best classes using terms like “sad.” Razer’s Destructor is actually a lovely mat, it measures 35cm x 28cm, which should be big enough even for those of us who like to use relatively low mouse sensitivities.

Click through to see our page for the Razer Destructor

Aside from everything else, I’m assured that there are still very good reasons to use a decent mouse mat in our modern world or laser and optical mice that track perfectly well on a good old-fashioned desk. Not least of those reasons is the fact that most decent mice will now boast elegant little Teflon feet to help them skid their way around your desk with less friction. The only problem is that you’ll fairly quickly wear down your mouse’s Teflon feet on a lot of desks, so a mat is always good for that.

The other big one is that anyone who moves from place to place or games in friends houses will find that their mouse sensitivity needs to be changed depending on how well the laser/optical sensor picks up the surface. While Roccat’s Kone is excellent for this (saving multiple profiles) it’s also very nice to just be able to just bring your gaming surface of choice with you.

Anyway, for this week the Razer Destructor is down by 15% to the nice, round price of €30.

Windows 7 Download Tool Further Delayed

Microsoft’s Windows 7 download tool has been further delayed after the initial revelation last week that it contained an awful lot of code that wasn’t really Microsoft’s to use, violating the GNU General Public License along the way.

For those unfamiliar with the Windows 7 download tool, it may well not seem like too big a deal, but in a world where netbooks are still proving more popular than many were prepared for, many users are finding that, without an optical drive, there are some fairly significant blockages to actually getting a new operating system onto their devices. Unfortunately, it seems they’ll have to wait that bit longer for the Windows 7 download tool to be available.