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"Right now we're the only vendor with a review up because our system got through your testing and another three weeks of use as a comparison system. But we're the ones with the 'unstable' scarlet letter on the review as well."

Update: Since this post went live, Falcon Northwest resubmitted a Mach V with full production-level hardware and BIOS software. It has showed no signs of instability after enduring another set of performance and stability tests and idling for three days. Accordingly, I have removed the editor's note the review.

That's what Kelt Reeves, … Read more

Unlike many video game studios that hire animators and 3D artists with backgrounds in game design, Ubisoft reports that it can now recruit traditional painters, illustrators, and graphic designers to design a video game world.

The game studio did just that in creating Rayman Origins, a game for which it translated traditional 2D art into video game scenes via its new digital-art tool, UbiArts. Rather than having to reinterpret 2D art into 3D-rendered imagery, UbiArts lets 2D talent directly create a game.

Rayman Origins, set for a November 15 release, is the latest game in the long-running franchise. Rayman was Ubisoft's first hero and the first major franchise for the publisher in 1995. Since then, Ubisoft has released three more games in the franchise and positioned it as an art-centric game with picturesque graphics and environments.

According to UbiArts inventor and Rayman creator Michel Ancel, Ubisoft wanted to return to the roots of visual creation.

"We wanted to work with people who haven't typically worked in the gaming industry to get a fresh perspective," Ancel said from France. "So we found artists of all kinds--people in animation studios, painters--and we used a scanner to take their home drawings and put them directly into an engine." … Read more

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is not just a cliche poetic statement, it's also an enormous hurdle to overcome when searching a topic with just a picture as a reference point. The chances of you using different words to describe a picture than someone else is quite high when you're trying to find an image on the Web. Thankfully, Google Images has a feature that lets you use images to search for related topics as well as images similar to it. Here's how to use it:

Step 1: Navigate your browser … Read more

Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and Note that blur the line between smartphone and tablet, George Lucas has made more changes to the original Star Wars trilogy for release on Blu-ray, and Apple loses yet another prototype iPhone at a bar.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

All the excitement these days may be centered around supersmall laptops, from ultraportable to ultrathin to ultrabook, but there's still a place for PCs on the opposite end of the spectrum. There are few things more fun for a laptop reviewer than unpacking and setting up a massive 17- or 18-inch desktop replacement laptop. To be fair, many of these systems hardly qualify to be called laptops at all; some are so massive, and have such poor battery life, that you'll essentially set them up once and never move them again.

We've had a bit of a … Read more

The Origin EON17-S is typical of a boutique gaming laptop. It takes the very latest high-end parts and stuffs them into a slightly customized version of a Clevo 17-inch laptop chassis (Clevo is a Taiwanese manufacturer that makes generic laptops other computer companies tweak and rebrand as their own). What you end up with is a powerful system, hand-assembled and tested, but without the inventive proprietary industrial designs companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell can bring to their own gaming systems.

The real advantage Origin brings is its ability to offer not only overclocked CPUs (not something you'd typically … Read more

Unable to visit the ice world of Hoth in the Outer Rim Territories? Check out these Wampa-inspired shoes by Adidas Originals.

During the first few scenes of "The Empire Strikes Back," Luke Skywalker checks out an asteroid, but gets more than he bargains for after an 8-foot-tall Wampa slaps him across the face.

After gaining consciousness in the ice creature's lair, Luke uses the Force to regain his lost lightsaber and pulls a Ponda Baba on the Wampa's arm. Now you can sport some fresh kicks representing the albino monster, which will surely be a hit with the ladies.

Adidas describes the shoes--officially known as Campus 80s Wampa--as made with horsehair, with contrast red stitching, a Wampa tongue badge, and a laser cut Wampa logo. So fly.

The shoes aren't on sale yet on the official Adidas Originals Web site, but they should appear there soon. Other notable pieces in the Adidas Star Wars Fall/Winter 2011 collection include the Hoth shoes, Forum Low RS AT-AT shoes, and other hideous but incredible items.

(Via Sneaker Freaker and My Wampa) … Read more

Today Nvidia unveiled its latest high-end laptop GPUs, the GTX 570M and 580M. That's not a huge surprise: the new GTX cards round out the "500 series" of GT and GTX graphics that have been available throughout the year. One feature Nvidia's particularly touting is the GTX 580's Optimus automatic switching, which should offer up "5 hours of battery life in Facebook," in case you measure your juice through social networking.

Nvidia promises that the GTX 580M is the fastest laptop graphics card anywhere, ever--the benchmark comparisons were leveled against the AMD Radeon … Read more

Anyone who purchased the original Xbox during its launch window quickly came to know its behemoth of a controller, now nicknamed "Duke." This massive beast was barely capable of being handheld because of its anti-ergonomic dysfunctions and wacky button placement.

With Microsoft's announcement that a remastered HD version of Halo: Combat Evolved would be hitting the Xbox 360, we were instantly transported to that awkward time of figuring out which one of our fingers was supposed to reach for those black and white buttons.

Apparently we weren't the only ones. According to Giant Bomb, 343 Industries (… Read more