NiniaPimp Magazine

How badly do you want a roster update? That’s the big question you need to ask yourself when contemplating a purchase of MLB 11: The Show for the PSP. The latest edition of Sony’s baseball simulation adds little to its two most recent predecessors aside from some minor tweaks to gameplay and new Major League rosters for the 2011 season. While this is still the best baseball game out there for a handheld, if you have either last year’s game or the 2009 model, you can skip this year and check back next spring.

AI pitchers are believably imperfect in this year’s game.

With that said, there’s no denying how good MLB 11: The Show is on the diamond. This PSP game includes a lot of the best features of its PlayStation 3 big brother, which has been the best arcade baseball sim for a number of years. Most of the key modes of play are included. The role-playing-like Road to the Show leads the way, letting you create a wannabe slugger or ace and guide him to major league stardom. You can also take control of a team in season play, manage a club from the dugout, play one-off exhibition matches, and crank dingers in the home-run derby. All of the MLB rosters have been given an overhaul to reflect offseason signings, so Carl Crawford is now with the Red Sox, Adam Dunn is with the White Sox, Jayson Werth is with the Nationals, and so on. Online support was strangely pulled from the PSP version of the game after 2009, but you can still play ad hoc games against friends locally. There is also no option for full franchise play controlling a club over multiple seasons, nor are there any training modes to help you with pitching, batting, or fielding. Despite lacking a number of common features, this is a game with a great deal of depth.

Road to the Show is much the same as it was in past years, so plate appearances remain all-or-nothing deals. Fail in your goal, and either you come away with zero training points to be put toward skill improvements or you actually get docked. This system is neither as fair nor as authentic as the PS3 game, which handed out points even for failures. On that platform, for example, batters got rewarded for such things as working the count, hammering the ball deep, or doing just about anything else to keep the opposing hurler on his toes. This system should have been ported over to the PSP.

On the diamond, MLB is as strong as ever. Gameplay basics are similar to those in the past couple of games. Just about every pitch, swing, and fielding attempt plays out exactly as it does in real baseball. The pitcher-batter duel has been tweaked a bit to add even more realism. AI pitchers have more chinks in their armor. Their control isn’t as perfect as it has been in past years, leaving you free to take more pitches and work counts. You absolutely have to take your time in the batter’s box, because if you flail at everything and anything, the pitcher recognizes this and starts throwing balls all over the place. Pitching isn’t quite so lifelike, due to AI batters that all seem to have the eye of Ted Williams. It can be hard to get them to chase anything out of the zone. Strikeouts are more commonplace than before, but you still have to go right across the plate with meatballs far too often to avoid walks.

That giant glove isn’t the only park feature that’s able to catch the ball.
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There are a number of key differences between Assassin’s Creed II and its follow-up, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, but if there’s one that some PC enthusiasts will appreciate the most, it’s that Ubisoft’s stringent copy-protection scheme has been jettisoned. This is cause for celebration in itself, though it’s the captivating beauty and joyous exploration that make Brotherhood another standout in this ever-evolving franchise. The Assassin’s Creed games have gone to great lengths to depict their environments and circumstances with painstaking historical authenticity, and Brotherhood is no exception. Its stunning re-creation of Rome will have you occasionally gasping at its beauty–the sun so bright, you can almost feel it warming your skin. A disappointing story, some audiovisual glitches, and a few other missteps might occasionally yank you from your reverie. But if you worried that a direct sequel released so soon after Assassin’s Creed II would feel rushed or incomplete, then rest your mind: Brotherhood is a big, high-quality sequel deserving of both your time and money.

6305818This heartbreaking circumstance is one Ezio understands all too well.None

Brotherhood doesn’t quite have the same emotional impact as its fantastic predecessor, however. Once again, you don the robes of master assassin Ezio Auditore. After a battle at the family’s villa in Monteriggioni, Ezio’s nemesis, Cesare Borgia, steals the all-important artifact known as the Apple of Eden. With the help of Caterina and other old friends, Ezio heads to Rome to retrieve the Apple and rid the city of Borgia influence. There’s a bit of drama when an associate is accused of betrayal, but for the most part, Brotherhood’s plot is the most straightforward in the series, and because Ezio exhibits little personal growth, there’s a hint of staleness to his escapades. You don’t play just as Ezio, however: you once again take on the role of Desmond, the modern-day bartender-turned-lab-rat who relives Ezio’s memories inside a machine called an animus. He has a greater role to play in Brotherhood than in the previous two games combined, and his endgame actions lead to an astounding finale that rivals Assassin’s Creed II’s for pure shock value.

The plot may not be intricate, but a cast of excellent characters makes it easy to stay invested. One of them is Salai, Leonardo da Vinci’s assistant and a mischievous rascal who enjoys flirting with Ezio as much as he does playing dice. You meet him in a set of missions called The Da Vinci Disappearance, which were released as premium downloadable content for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. Salai’s impish grin and cascading curls make him an excellent addition; however, most of Brotherhood’s leading players are returning ones. You once again spend time with Caterina Sforza, Nicolo Machiavelli, and Ezio’s sister Claudia, though the game’s most memorable presence is that of a new character: Lucrezia Borgia, Cesare’s sister–and lover. Lucrezia’s sharp tongue is matched by her severe, almost vampiric appearance, and she isn’t afraid to test the boundaries of human decency in the pursuit of power. Wonderful voice acting brings all of these characters to life. When Claudia stands up to her overbearing brother, you hear the strength in her voice and appreciate how much she has grown. Salai’s overt lustfulness might make you squirm, but a charming voice-over gives him too much clever twinkle for you to ever lose patience.

The best jumping sequences are those that let you get into a smooth rhythm.

While Brotherhood’s story falls short of series standards, its sense of place and time is as impeccable as fans could possibly hope for. You spend the majority of the time in Rome, and while you may miss exploring multiple cities, the city is nevertheless huge and gorgeous, brimming with so much visual variety and exquisite detail that Brotherhood feels as consequential as its forebears. You might roam into a cathedral to discover a palatial view punctuated by red tapestries and golden candelabras. Citizens wandering the streets munch on apples, carry lanterns in the evening, and flirt with each other behind pillars. The music enhances the atmosphere with operatic soprano warbles and French horn melodies. The production values are unfortunately undercut by occasional bugs. Combat might go eerily silent, or the music might not kick in when you scan the city from atop a perch. Button prompts may not appear when they’re supposed to, and on some machines, menu text may not display. The way citizens might suddenly pop into view can be distracting–as can occasional frame rate hitches during cutscenes. There is also a series of missions framed as flashbacks in which Ezio is to appear in different clothing. However, if you don the special armor set included with this version, he might not be shown in the proper clothes in these missions. These are minor but noticeable blemishes in a game that otherwise looks and sounds superb.

Within this grand world is a ton of stuff to do. The staples of the series–rooftop platforming, blending with crowds, silent assassinations, rhythmic swordplay–have all returned, and most have been enhanced or adjusted in some way. It’s as joyous as ever to bound across roofs and climb to the tops of towers. Lifts that rapidly fling you to a rooftop are a great new addition and provide a second of high-speed thrills, though the movement mechanics are generally the same as before–it’s the architecture and level design that have been altered for the better. As in Assassin’s Creed II, you may search for glyphs hidden on walls and on rooftops, and they are perceptible only when you activate eagle vision. Finding one allows you to solve a puzzle, which in turn unlocks a small hint of a larger mystery. While most of these glyphs took only a modicum of effort to find before, many are now hidden on sizable landmarks with tons of nooks and crannies to explore. Expect to put in more effort if you hope to uncover more of the conspiracy that drives the series. Luckily, it isn’t wasted effort: ledges and outcroppings are carefully and intelligently placed, which makes it a pleasure to climb these structures, whether you opt for a keyboard and mouse, or prefer to plug in a controller.

I’m on a boat!

Many towers you climb don’t allow you to simply ascend with little care; they require more conscientious navigation. In fact, numerous towers not only require climbing, but must be burned to the ground as well. The Borgias have spread their influence around Rome, and to undermine their rule, you destroy their edifices. Before you can do that, you must assassinate a commander in the vicinity. Often, your target will flee if you directly engage the guards that surround him, so you will want to approach carefully. In many cases, this gives you a chance to put a new weapon, the crossbow, to good use. Not only is it handy for picking off one of these key figures, but it’s also useful should a number of enemies charge you on horseback. In any case, once you have offed the key officer, you may climb to the top of the nearby tower and torch it. Afterward, you automatically take a leap of faith into a hay bale or wagon of leaves conveniently placed beneath, while melodramatic organ chords signal the importance of your endeavor.

Eliminating Borgia influence is important because you then gain access to local vendors, though this access isn’t immediate. The economy, an interesting but messy feature in last year’s installment, has been fleshed out in smart ways. As before, you must spend money to make money, but Brotherhood’s catalog contains a lot of big-ticket items. If you want access to blacksmiths, doctors, tailors, and so on, you first must purchase and renovate their shops. Not only does renovating an empty storefront give you access to supplies, but it also begins to generate income. As you bring in money, you eventually purchase landmarks, which cost a tidy sum. In addition, the PC version includes an online investment feature. By holding the space bar on the map screen, you can see where other players are investing their money. Investing in a popular business increases the amount of cash you earn from it, and you earn specialty items when you reach certain investment milestones. You also find such items (prayer beads, diamonds, jars of leeches) when looting corpses and treasure chests, and when tackling escaping pickpockets. These items can be offered to designated vendors in return for high-quality weapons, tougher armor, and the like.

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Acer’s inventive Iconia laptop falls into that exclusive category we sometimes call executive laptops. These are typically high-priced, highly designed systems that look great on a CEO’s desk or in the first-class airline lounge. But they’re also usually underpowered, overpriced, and too reliant on gimmicks that offer little in the way of actual utility.

The high-concept feature that sets the Iconia apart is actually two: two 14-inch touch screens. Instead of a screen and a keyboard, the Iconia ditches the keyboard for a second screen, which can be used either as an extended desktop or for a virtual keyboard. (We’ve seen a similar concept before, but with dual 7-inch screens, in the Toshiba Libetto W100.)

In practice, it works better than you might expect. Onscreen typing is still nowhere near as intuitive as the real thing, but a few generations of iPhones and iPads have trained us to tap-type without too much trouble, at least for short writing tasks. The experience is much closer to typing on an iPad than typing on one of the many Windows tablets we’ve tried over the years–and that’s a good thing.

There were still frustrations with the Iconia, however. The onscreen keyboard had a hint of a lag, although it would probably only affect the fastest of touch typists. The onscreen touch pad is too small, and lacks the kind of touch gestures a purely software touch pad could easily offer. And, most annoyingly, the CPU is one of Intel’s last-generation Core i5 processors. By moving up to the current generation of CPUs, the Iconia could have faster performance, longer battery life, and better graphics.

One final positive note: unlike other so-called executive laptops we’ve seen, such as Dell’s Adamo XPS, the Iconia is arguably reasonably priced, at $1,199–not a budget system by any means, but less than we’d expect to pay for two 14-inch touch screens.

The Acer Iconia packs its dual screens into an unassuming package. The thick, heavy chassis has a light bronze lid with black accents, and is not nearly as sleek as this week’s other high-end laptop, the Samsung Series 9. Boxy to a fault, we can only imagine the engineering required to fit the two 14-inch displays in safely. The Iconia feels sturdy enough, but it’s also too heavy and bulky to easily tote around.

Flipping the clamshell open, it’s almost like looking at two iPads joined together at the center hinge. Both screens have glossy edge-to-edge glass with black bezels and no other buttons, controls, or accessories (except for a tiny pinhole-style Webcam above the top screen). The hinge folds all the way to 180-degrees, so both screens can lie flat against the table, although that does block the bottom-mounted speakers. From our experience, there’s no difference between the two displays, but only the bottom one uses a 10-finger input gesture to pop up the onscreen keyboard.

To get to that keyboard, either touch all10 fingers lightly on the bottom screen, rest your plams on where the palm-rest would normally be, or hit the dedicated physical keyboard button located on the side of the left hinge. The pop-up keyboard that results is similar to what you’d see on a horizontal iPad, but it is bigger, with generous letter keys and large Enter, Shift, and Arrow keys. A few customization options are available, including larger or smaller F-keys and the overall key pitch.

It will never be as intuitive as typing on a physical keyboard, but with a little practice, we found it to be about as easy as an iPad keyboard, which is to say that it works for basic interactions and writing blocks of text up to about 500 words. There’s an audio cue for typing that clicks with each keystroke if you turn it on, but there is nothing resembling haptic feedback, which would be very useful in this situation.

While the keyboard doesn’t autocorrect or autoformat on the fly like the iPad does, there is a “smart input” feature, which behaves like T9 predictive text–but it was incredibly annoying to use, literally covering up whatever you’re typing with a huge list of possible words. We quickly turned it back off.

The virtual touch pad that sits underneath the virtual keyboard also could have been better. It functions well for controlling the cursor on the top screen, but lacks multitouch gestures, and is surprisingly small. You’d think with a software-driven virtual touch pad, it could be as big as you wanted. The top screen allows for Windows tablet gestures, such as swiping down as a page-down command, but it’s not as smooth as the tap-and-drag controls on an iPad (which is the large touch surface the Iconia is most likely to be compared to).

With that in mind, Acer has still done a decent job of crafting a touch control ecosystem within the limitations of the tablet support built into Windows 7. Tapping with five fingers on the bottom screen brings up a jog wheel that launches touch-friendly photo and video apps, a social media aggregator, as well as a two-screen custom Web browser and access to some systems tools, including power options and the capability to turn off the backlight for either screen. The bundled software seems well made, but the learning curve for using these proprietary apps instead of the standard apps and Web sites most of us already use make us unlikely to use them regularly.

Both 14-inch displays have a 1,366×768-pixel native resolution, which is what we’d expect on a midsize laptop such as this. The top screen seemed brighter to us, perhaps because the lower screen has an additional Gorilla Glass protective coating–not that it prevented either screen from being a fingerprint magnet.

Despite the fact that this is a big bulky laptop, you miss out on several typically standard features. There is neither Bluetooth, nor an optical drive, nor–shockingly–an SD card slot. You do, however, get a USB 3.0 port.

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First, a bit of clarification. In case you didn’t realize it, Etymotic has four versions of its ER-4 MicroPro series earphones, each of which retail for $299. According to the company, here’s how the differences break down:

The Etymotic MicroPro ER-4B is “for binaural recording monitoring and used in professional settings.”

The Etymotic MicroPro ER-4S is the company’s “stereo monitoring earphone and geared to those listening through a powered recording or ‘front of house’ monitoring board.”

The Etymotic MicroPro ER-4 is the most mainstream of the bunch, designed for those using a portable audio device as their primary audio source.

The Etymotic MicroPro ER-4P, reviewed here, is the latest version of the 4P. Etymotic says it’s made for the professional traveler who uses his or her earphones on planes as well as professionally.

To be clear, the ER-4Ps and ER-4PTs are essentially the same products, but they’re packaged differently. The ER-4PT has different adaptors for plane use and also comes with a Channel Matching Compliance Graph that states to the owner that his or her ER-4PT has passed all accuracy tests and each channel has been hand matched and certified within 2 dB over a defined audio spectrum.

(If you’re still confused, check out Etymotic’s Web site for a more detailed explanation on the ER-4 MicroPro model line. As an aside: that’s way too many model numbers for four very similar products. We’d suggest Etymotic pare down its number of SKUs to make things as simple as possible for shoppers.)

OK, now on with the review. The first thing you’ll notice about these Etymotics is the earphones themselves are somewhat long, slender cylinders that make you feel as if you’re almost jamming sticks in your ears, which is not a bad thing in this case. Several Etymotic models are shaped this way, and we only point it out from an aesthetic standpoint that these guys protrude from your ears a little more than some earphones.

They come with a two different “Accu-fit” noise-isolating eartips (foam and silicone rubber) designed to complete seal your ear off from the outside world. You and you can also get personalized “Custom-fit” eartips, which Etymotic offers for $100 extra.

Overall, the ER-4PT earphones are well-designed, with a thick main headphone cord that splits off into two braid-reinforced cables going to each earphone. (The ER-4PT’s have a two-year warranty). One complaint: The plastic surrounding the right-angle headphone plug is on the thick side and if you have a case on your smartphone or portable audio device (say, an iPod Touch), you may not be able to get the plug all the way into your device’s audio jack (this reviewer couldn’t plug into his iPhone without removing its case).

It’s also worth noting that because you get such a tight seal with these earphones, you really can’t hear much of the outside world, which may be dangerous if you’re walking around town and need to be aware of some audio cues from what’s going on around you. We also noticed that we heard the cord rubbing against our clothing as we walked. So ideally, these earphones are better suited to stationary listening. (Both issues are common among all such in-ear headphones.)

As for the sound quality, we really like it. The ER-4PT has a leaner–and we’d say more accurate–tonal balance than most in-ear headphones in its price class. That is, it lacks the overly ripe bass common to many high-end in-ear headphones. The ER-4PT’s treble clarity and precision let you hear exactly what’s going on in the recording.

We started our auditions comparing the ER-4PT with the less expensive Etymotic HF5 in-ear headphones while listening to Gregg Allman’s new “Low Country Blues” album. The two headphones share a similar sound, but the ER-4PTs’ lower bass and midrange have a richer and more satisfying balance. The recording has a lot of bass, and we feel the HF5s are lacking in that regard.

That said, if you really like a lot of bass, the ER-4PTs may come up short. They definitely have less low-end oomph than the Monster Turbine Pro Gold in-ear headphones. Listening to “Green Onions” from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “The Live Anthology” CD set, the drums sound dynamic and powerful and the guitars really cut through over the ER-4PT. The Turbine Pro Gold add weight and punch to the bass, but the drums’ attack is softened compared to the ER-4PT. The Turbine Pro Gold is still a good headphone, just not as accurate as the ER-4PT.

The accuracy of the ER-4PT makes it easy to hear the difference in sound quality between two live Bob Marley CDs, the recently released “Live Forever: Live at the Stanley Theatre” and “Live at the Roxy.” The Stanley record has a coarse, mildly distorted quality, so the drums’ cymbals sound fuzzy. The Roxy songs are more vivid and clear, and you can hear that the audience is really having a great time. The ER-4PT can tell you more about the music than lesser headphones would, and when the music sounds good, you hear it–that’s what you should expect from earphones that cost $300.

Freelancer Steve Guttenberg contributed to this review.

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Unlike the consumer-oriented Platinum Pro905, the Lexmark Prevail Pro705 is designed for office use with a button-based control panel, an autodocument feeder (ADF), and other features to encourage smooth business work flow. At $200, the affordable and speedy Pro705 will be a helpful office assistant, but we hesitate to recommend it if you’re printing a lot of photos.

Design and features
The Prevail Pro705′s gray-black color palette is typical for an office printer, but its smooth edges and rounded paper input tray shave off the sharp corners and make the device look more streamlined than the traditional rectangular office printer. It measures 9.8 inches tall, 18.3 inches wide, and 15.4 inches deep so it’s easy for anyone to move and reposition around the office.

Physically, the front of the device is much more involved than the simple touch screen on the Platinum Pro905. Instead of a big touch-screen LCD, the Pro705 opts for a small 2.4-inch color LCD display with a cluster of shortcut feature buttons surrounding it on all four sides, as well as a directional pad for scrolling through menus and a number pad for dialing numbers on the fax side.

All the new printers from Lexmark include an “Eco Mode” button marked with a green leaf on the right side that triggers two-sided printing, copying, and faxing using the duplexer on the back. Lexmark also reduces your ecological footprint with Energy Star certification, and the company even includes an XL-capacity black cartridge in the box–to our knowledge, Lexmark is the only printer vendor to provide this service. In fact, most of them ship printers with a starter cartridge that contains less ink than the refills you’ll need to buy in the future.

The paper tray sits on the bottom and gives the Pro705 a unique advantage over the competition. Instead of having just a simple tray like so many others before it, the printer has a silo drawer built into the base that adds more heft and durability to the 150-sheet container. Coupled with a 10,000-page duty cycle, a 150-sheet stack should be enough for a small business.

The printer also has a small media card reader for direct prints, as well as an open PictBridge-compatible USB port that you can use to load photos for printing off a USB flash drive.

You can connect the Pro705 to a host computer using an 802.11n wireless setup or with a hardwired USB port. With the included driver disc, we were able to set up the printer to communicate using both technologies in less than 10 minutes; just make sure you have your network log-in and password available.

The printer is one of many to feature Lexmark’s newest Vizix individual ink cartridges: one with black pigment for printing text and three dye-based yellow, cyan, and magenta cartridges for color photos. Using the XL-capacity cartridges, which offer a better overall value for the page yield, we calculate the price of black ink as 5 cents per page and color ink as 3 cents per page. Both rates are about average for a small-office printer, but the HP Officejet Pro 8500 costs less per page and significantly less over time if you print a high volume of pages. HP’s printer can also handle 5,000 more prints per month than the Lexmark, with its 15,000-page duty cycle.

The Pro 705 ships with minimal paperwork to conserve paper, and you can find most of the instructions, warranty information, and promotional offers on the CD included in the box. Along with the drivers that support Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X, the CD also automatically installs several Lexmark productivity programs on your computer.

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