Once installed, you will be greeted with a whacky video with generic 3D animation, music, and sound effects. I don’t know who they’re trying to impress with this - it’s more like something you’d see at a press conference, not really meant for end users. Oh well, it can be skipped.

The first thing you’ll want to do of course, is create your first Avatar. At first, I thought these XBOX Live Avatars sat somewhere in between the Mii and PS Home in terms of complexity. As it turns out, they are much simpler than Mii avatars, and it with fewer customization options, it will be harder to get the avatar to look just like you (if that’s your intention).

I got my avatar to look somewhat like me, at least for people who are already familiar with me. There were no eyes available that look like mine, so I opted for the sunglasses. Also, the shoe selection just sucks, but anything is better than what Mii avatars offer ;)

Gamer pictures can now be based on a ‘photo’ of your Avatar. This gives a chance to share your look in games that don’t normally support actual avatars in gameplay (there are only a select few that do at this time).

Overall, the interface is a huge improvement to what I thought was one major disadvantage the XBOX 360 had in contrast to the Playstation 3. I am going to play around with it some more, and share my thoughts in my upcoming XBOX 360 vs. Playstation 3: Two Years Later article. Be sure to read the original article, as well as one written by a developer for both systems back when the PS3 first came out.

One major concern is preventing piracy of course, but this also takes care of people using modified versions of online games with cheats and hacks programmed in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Join us as we talk about the Nehalem architecture, what’s new, what it means today, and what it will mean in the future. We also take a look at the first three CPUs to be released using this architecutre; Core i7, for desktop CPUs. Server and Mobile CPUs will come at a later time.

Not only is the design of Nehalem fascinating, its performance also makes for an interesting read. So check out our full review!

With capacities reaching into the 128GB range, corporations have to find more interesting ways to set themselves apart from the pack. I mean, a 128GB drive is nice, but what could be better? How about if it was made of 18 carat solid gold?

Super Talent is now offering an 18 carat gold version of their 8GB Pico USB Flash drive. Available on a pre-order basis only, with 3-4 weeks of lead time, it’s sold to resellers at $599.

The Pico is already sturdy, waterproof, and fast. With a solid gold case, and laser-etched logo (free of charge!), there is pretty much nothing equal to this drive.

The results are… well things aren’t looking good for AMD, and with Core i7, it could get ugly. Check out the full review for all the details!

If there’s one thing the 360 desperately needed, it was a new interface. The old one was slow, ugly, clunky, and just annoying to use overall. This is especially noticed right after using the PS3 and its slick, smooth interface. However this new one is quite a departure from anything we’ve seen… ever… So only time will tell how it’s going to be accepted. The new Avatars are getting the most attention, and they look to be sort of in between the super-simplified Mii and the over-complicated PS Home avatars. If you own any XBOX Live themes, it will become the background in the New Experience.

This means that our yearly look at the XBOX Live vs. Playstation 3 will be delayed for a few weeks. I usually write it in mid-November, but it will have to wait until I can use the new interface for a while.

Of course, simply comparing them would be boring, and pretty much useless for our readers. After all, who in their right mind would run a $50 CPU at stock speed? Nobody, that’s who! That’s why we overclocked each processor as far as it would go, and compared them at those speeds.

The result of the overclocking brings each CPU well past 3 GHz (with the Celeron running at more than double its rated clock speed), so the battle becomes much more intriguing.

The war is over - and you just have to check out the shocking result.

The plan was to re-familiarize myself with all the original NES Mega Man games, in preparation for a review of Mega Man 9 which is being released this week on all three consoles. Of course, I bought Mega Man 2 on Wii Virtual Console as soon as it came out, but amazingly that is the only Mega Man game available for Wii.

Since my NES is packed away in storage, the next best solution is *gasp* emulation. I haven’t emulated games in a long time - I never had the need to really. Most of the games I liked to play are available on Virtual Console and many have been re-released for DS and PSP. Retro gaming is actually alive an well, thanks to handheld platforms.

So after picking up an emulator (I opted for Nestopia, which works very well in Vista by the way) I had to find a controller. As it turns out, I am very picky about controllers, especially for playing older games. When I play an NES game, I want something that is as close to an NES controller as possible. When I play SNES, I want a SNES controller. That’s why I love the Wii Remote and Classic Controller so much; they do a very good job of emulating the feel of the originals (I just wish we could remap the buttons on the Classic, so we can use Y and B as B and A - if you’ve played Super Mario All Stars on SNES, you will know what I mean).

But for the PC, decent controllers are few and far between. There are custom controllers out there - NES and SNES controllers converted to USB that natively support the latest operating systems. Cheap adapters are out there as well; everything from the NES controller to the DualShock 2 can be used with these. I needed one now though, and my choices were the XBOX 360 controller (no thanks, that cross pad is absolutely wretched), the gamepad that came with the Foxconn GeForce 7950 GT we reviewed last year (appreciate that they threw it in, but the cross pad is even worse than the 360’s), or one of my Playstation 3 controllers - DualShock 3 and original SixAxis. These controllers are pretty much perfect, as they have a nice cross pad feel, and a layout similar to the SNES.

If you’ve tried to install a SixAxis or DualShock 3 on a Windows Vista PC, I think you know where I’m going with this. It is actually identified in the Game Controllers section of the control panel, but doesn’t seem to accept button inputs.

After some quick Googling, you might have come across a plethora of blogs from about a year ago, saying that the PS3 controller will work with Windows if you just replace the original USB HID drivers with an open-source version called libusb. You might have installed that driver, only to have your keyboard and mouse disappear after rebooting, because your USB controller has been completely disabled. Yup, happened to me too - dig out the old PS/2 mouse or keyboard you still have laying around, and get rid of those drivers! (now I know why motherboards still have these ports!)

Anyway, libusb will not work with Vista, so we’re back to square-one.

However, there is a solution. A Chinese programmer has put together a PS3 controller driver that works with standard USB HID. That driver is called SixAxisDriver, and you can grab it right here. Simply run the install, load the driver, reboot Vista, and your controller will be identified and will start working! I should mention that this only works in 32 bit versions of Windows.

how to use the PS3 controller in Windows Vista:

• Plug in your PS3 controller (SixAxis or DualShock 3)
• Download and install this driver
• Load the driver
• Reboot
• Done!

Just to make things clear, this driver DOES work in Windows XP (32 bit). However, the old method also works with XP, so this isn’t big news for them. This method is better than replacing your Windows drivers with those open-source ones though.

Now, time to get back to those Mega Man games, and prepare myself for Mega Man 9! Quickman’s stage still pwns me to death.

That is unfortunate too, because to be honest, Abit didn’t deliver on their usual high standards this time around. With a few poor design decisions here and there, and one huge flaw that will make you wonder “WTF where they thinking???”, the A-N78HD is not a great followup to last year’s NF-M2 nView.

The GeForce 8200 “mGPU” is a great chip to build an AMD motherboard around though, so performance was great for the most part. Be sure to check out our review for the full details!