Toshiba has launched a new satellite, if you’ll pardon the pun.  There’s nothing to laugh at in this awesome new laptop with an AMD A8 quad core processor and compact but functional design.  Next to a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air, the new Toshiba Satellite looks a little like a brick.  It’s nearly 1 1/2″ thick and weighs in at nearly 6 lbs, but packed with all these features, there clearly had to be compromises somewhere.  Similar to trying to find the best satellite tv, finding the right Toshiba laptop takes some time.  Reading reviews online or consulting well known experts is one way of finding the perfect match for you, so we’ll be showing you a video unboxing of the Toshiba Satellite P755D-s5384 from Newegg TV to help you decide.

Features and Specs

The Toshiba Satellite has an attractive new finish which the reviewer describes as a futuristic wood grain.  It’s sleek, and gray, and the shiny Toshiba logo is loud and proud on the back.  There are lots of ports on this laptop:  SD Card reader, USB 2 and USB 3 ports, VGA ports and a Blu-Ray combo drive capable of reading and writing CDs and DVDs.

The battery will last about 4 hours with ordinary use, but using energy saver features it can be stretched to 5 hours.  4 gb of RAM are included, expandable to 8gb.  The hard drive is as easy to access as the RAM;  just open a port in the bottom and push the tab back, and voila.  Easy to change out the RAM or the hard drive, if you want to upgrade.
Toshiba Satellite P755D-s5384

According to the infographic here, current owners of the iPad are very likely to buy the next model within 6 months of its release. It’s looking like the iPad3 may sell faster than the hottest hot sauce at Hot Sauce Planet!  Also, people who currently have iPads tend to have relatives who also own an iPad.  Do you fit the descriptions below?  Read on:

Now, with the GOP Iowa debates and caucus ready to roll out within the month, and the stakes are so high for Republican hopefuls, social networking is probably more important than it has ever been in politics.  Social media is where people are getting most of the information they pay attention to these days, and for good or ill, it’s where any serious politician has his or her best chance of swaying the opinions of the people they seek to represent.

Personally, I’m a highly supportive fan of Google+ at the moment.  I think everyone should ditch “The Hulk” and come on over to the new side of social networks — and I’m not so sure about comparing G+ to Silver Surfer, not because I have anything at all against the one time herald of Galactus, but only because, well, Silver Surfer is, while cool, still a very obscure hero.  There is nothing obscure about Google or it’s new social networking genius.  I would probably re-write this and compare Google+ to someone else.  I just don’t know who, yet.

Finally, the cat is out of the bag. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Hubert predicted this morning that Apple will begin manufacturing its next-generation iPhone near the end of August. The corresponding estimate of a release date places the next iPhone’s arrival sometime in late September. The prediction appeared in a research note following some meetings in Taiwan, which are believed to have been with some of the tech giant’s parts suppliers. This seems to go right along with other predictions made by people who watch Apple Inc professionally — namely, market watchers and analysts. For the past two months, the most widely suspected release date for the next iPhone has been September, or perhaps even October. Approximately two million units are projected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Not only is the latest and greatest upgrade to Apple’s line of best selling smart phones expected, but there is also the possibility that the Cupertino based company is planning to unveil another version of the iPhone at the same time. The main attraction of course will be the iPhone 5, but a less expensive iPhone, rumored to be called the iPhone 4s, could also be on the way. The cheaper iPhone could be sold with prepaid calling plans, opening the iPhone up to scores of overseas markets where Android is a major competitor. It would also bring higher domestic sales of iPhones to people who market research suggests would love to use iPhone, but can’t get it on their carrier, or without a long term contract. So far, Android has been a leader in this area.

Rumors about a new, iPad 3 with a retina display have been circulating since the iPad 2 came out in April this year. While people seem enthusiastic about the possibility of a third-gen iPad, it’s not very likely that Apple would release one so soon after its most recent update to that device.

“It’s only been three months,” said Steve Barrents, analyst, “so it doesn’t make sense that Apple would cut with another revision right now. Most likely, a new iPad won’t appear until Q1 of 2012. That’s the way Apple rolls.”

So, iPhone hopefuls, rejoice! iPad wanters, patience is a virtue.

The only news that was received over the weekend was on Saturday, April 23rd, 2011, where Sony stated that it was undergoing a “time consuming” task of rebuilding the network’s infrastructure. The weekend passed with no further news. On Monday, April 25, 2011, the only news that was received was that Sony was attempting to resolve the conflict “quickly” but had no new information on when services would be up and running again. Many began to wonder when, or if the network serviced would ever resume. On Tuesday, April 26, Sony releases the news to the public that the network has been hacked, and calls upon the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for assistance regarding the investigation on the identity of the hacker or hackers. On Wednesday, April 27th, 2011, Sony posts a Q&A session, telling the users that their credit card information was encrypted and secured, and planned on having the network back and available by Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011. Days pass, and no promising, or even useful information is learned, Until May 2nd, 2011, when Sony announces that 24.6 million SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) accounts were potentially compromised.

The previously stated deadline of Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 passes, with the network still down, with no return in sight. Sony sets a new dead line of the end of that week, May 7th, 2011. On May 6th, 2011, Sony announces, once again, that the deadline will be missed, while they are on the final testing stages of the new system. On May 10th, 2011, Sony releases it’s final statement, saying that it will take “a few more days” to get the network back and running. Finally, on Saturday, May 14, 2011, PlayStation Network is useable again. A change that all users will notice upon logging in for the first time, is that due to security reasons, every account password must be changed. Most services have been returned to their original state, except that the PlayStation store will continue to be unavailable for a longer period of time. Having been through this large ordeal, I now hope PlayStation has the proper security to avoid a conflict of this nature to never occur again.

It all began last year in August, when my PayPal account was hacked for the first time. In a period of just 4 hours, over 38 fraudulent charges appeared against my bank visa debit card, all from the same PayPal account identified with beejive.com. There were thousands of dollars in charges and the alert emails I was getting were coming in steadily, even as I rapidly dialed up the bank and PayPal to try and straighten the matter out. Yes, they could tell my account had been hacked and was under some kind of attack or scam — but it would take days to completely resolve. I spent days feverishly browsing my direct tv schedule guide and freaking out.

After that, I had pretty much had it with PayPal. I told them I wanted my entire account destroyed, wiped off the face of the planet with no way of ever being used again. The helpful PayPal security agent on the phone insisted what happened with my account was a very rare thing, and could never happen again — but I still wanted nothing to do with PayPal after the incident and all the inconvenience. It took them three weeks to comply with my wish to shut down my account.

Flash forward to this year, in June. A week ago I accepted a freelance job that requires a PayPal account for sending payments. I figured “It’s been a year. What are the chances of anything like that happening again, ever?” Like a foolish person I went ahead and signed up a new account and got “verified,” (which means that you basically tie your bank account information directly to your PayPal account — or perhaps your Visa debit card instead.) Either way, a few days into this I was feeling fairly confident that the past had been just a terrible coincidence, something that could never happen again.

Then today happened. My account got totally hacked. I am quitting PayPal for good this time. No freelance job is worth this.

Earlier this week, the hot news was all about Google’s Gmail getting hacked from China, in which the personal details, account information, and email messages of many people including senior US government officials were compromised. This alarming news set off a firestorm of security buzz, and brought up some reasonable arguments about whether government officials should even be using free Gmail accounts for their personal communications. That, however, is a story for another day.

Today’s story should have the rest of the world who uses other cloud or Web based email account services shaking in their boots. The same hacking behavior that was noticed in Google Gmail accounts has been detected in Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail today. Users of both the Hotmail and Yahoo Mail services were also targeted by phishing attacks, which is what the kind of attack launched against Gmail earlier this week.

In the case of Yahoo Mail, the attackers forwarded or sent an email message that contained two attachments. One of these was a malicious document and the other an unsuccessful cross-site scripting exploit designed to steal the user’s Yahoo Mail cookie in order to access the user’s account, but thankfully the attacker’s code did not function as intended. This kind of phishing attack has a sub-category in the hacking speak, called spear phishing. Microsoft attempted to completely avoid the question of whether or not Hotmail account holders had been spear phished. “Microsoft is not aware of any Hotmail customers being targeted by the specific phishing attacks that occurred earlier this week,” a spokesman said. “We actively prosecute malicious entities that violate the law through spam, phishing and other attacks.”

This is good news, but not if there is a growing number of attackers and account holders whose information has been compromised by hackers. Unless a large company makes it their business to become actively aware of attacks like this, the trust of the public will diminish for that company.

One thing Google did right was to come out ahead of the game and release the news itself. By doing this, Google managed to keep its customers feeling confident that it could handle tying up the loose ends of this hack attack, and would be able to provide secure services to its Gmail subscribers. Because Google released a proactive statement, it was viewed as a sign of strength. Users like to feel protected, or at least that if the worst should happen and their accounts get hacked, their web mail provider is capable of locking things back down and getting it under control fast. Google did just that.

As someone who has used Mac.com and MobileMe – albeit, each for limited amounts of time – let me be the first to say that I would whole heartedly welcome a change from an email address @me.com to one at icloud.com. The me.com address drips with a certain unavoidable narcissism. Why they didn’t leave new subscribers with the option to have @mac.com email addresses, I’ll never understand. That was actually a very prestigious address to have. So, I think, would be icloud.com – though still not nearly as great sounding as mac.com.

I’d also love to have a file storage service from Apple that could actually compete with Gmail. Yes, I went there. Gmail has provided its users with practically unlimited file storage for years now. It’s very reliable. It’s also free, and yet some people will pay for brand prestige regardless of functionality. As a MobileMe subscriber, I’ve paid close to $50 per year to remain a member with an email address, 10 gb of online storage for files, videos and photos, and backups. That’s kind of insane, considering that Google has had better, more reliable services than this for the past six consecutive years with no major outages or security breaches that couldn’t be fixed quickly.

I am not as enthusiastic about the purported “music locker” feature of iCloud as I would be about a huge price reduction for all the other services. Why should we have to pay for an email service that is, pardon me, inferior to Gmail in fundamental ways. Or a web hosting and file storage system that isn’t practical and can’t be effectively used via FTP for for hosting your own domain in any meaningful regard? Find My iPhone, the feature that seemed to make MobileMe worth it for a while there, is now free. What is left to pay for? Syncing? That can also be accomplished using Google. Since its infancy, Apple’s .Mac platform which evolved into what is now known as MobileMe has been fraught with developmental inadequacies, severe limitations in functionality, and disappointing lack of features and support. If Apple wants to play in the cloud market, it had better take a few notes from the real professionals — at Google.