Ultimate Playstation Trivia Book. Vol. 4

We’ve gathered together over one thousand of the juiciest facts, figures and shocks from the world of playstation to educate your brain and tickle your funny bone. Topic 301-403.

301. Snake’s moustache in MGS4 is based on Hollywood Western actor Lee Van Cleef’s.

302. When Harmonix was developing the Rock Band Network (which lets bands put their music into games across the series) it was codenamed Rock Band: Nickelback because the studio assumed no one would care if they saw it and it wouldn’t be leaked.

303. At one point, Tekken was going to have an extra character called Sake. He’d be a fish whose only response would be to fall on the floor and flop about.

Asus Zenbook UX303LA

A sleek and powerful ultra-portable laptop

The MacBook Air is one of our favourite laptops for some very simple reasons -it’s stylish, lightweight, sturdy, has excellent battery life, a quality screen and a very comfortable touchpad and keyboard. It’s a simple formula that makers of Windows laptops have struggled to achieve - until now. The Asus Zenbook UX303LA is the first Windows ultra-portable laptop we’ve seen that matches Apple’s flagship MacBook Air.

The UX303LA has a classy, sturdy metal build. Despite this metal construction, it’s very light at just 1.4kg, rising to 1.7kg with its charger. Combined with its lengthy battery life of just under 13 and a half hours, it’s ideal for working while on the move.

Imagination Technologies MIPS Creator CI20

A speedy rival to Raspberry Pi

Single-board computers are remarkably popular at the moment, spearheaded by the success of the Raspberry Pi. They’re used by hobbyists to control everything from Morse-code transmitters to robots, but are also fully functioning PCs that can be used for browsing the web, watching videos and programming.

Imagination Technologies is best known for developing the PowerVR graphics chip used by a number of tablet manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung. Imagination’s new £50 CI20 single-board computer has a PowerVR SGX540 graphics chip, which broadly performs on a par with the Broadcom VideoCore IV found in the Raspberry Pi. Like the Pi, therefore, the CI20 has no trouble playing 1080p videos.

Bush MyTablet 8 Inch

A Windows 8.1 tablet with Office for just £100

Bush is a company best known for cheap and cheerful white goods, such as washing machines and fridges, so we weren’t expecting much from its £100 Windows 8.1 tablet. We were therefore pleasantly surprised by the MyTablet 8 Inch. It may have an unimaginative name, but this little tablet has a lot going for it.

We expected the plastic casing to be cheap and flimsy, but the plain silver-andblack construction is rigid and sturdy. However, the narrow borders on the left- and right-hand edges of the screen means, when you hold the tablet vertically, getting a firm grasp without accidentally touching an onscreen control is difficult.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact

Sony’s small but powerful Android phone

Smartphones are now bigger than ever, with 5 to 6-inch screens increasingly common. This is great if a large screen is your priority, but for anyone with small hands these huge phones are tricky to hold and use – especially with one hand over long periods of time. This makes the Xperia Z3 Compact especially welcome.

Not to be confused with the 8in Z3 Tablet Compact, the Z3 Compact has a 4.6in screen. This is obviously larger than the 4.3in screen of its predecessor the Z1 Compact but the difference is pretty negligible. And while it’s significantly wider than the 4in iPhone 5s, it’s comfortable to handle – especially when compared with phones that are marginally larger but much more unwieldy, such as the 4.7in iPhone 6.

Magix Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium

Video editing with the kitchen sink thrown in

The ideal video-editing program should be easy for beginners to grasp, while still offering advanced features that satisfy more confident users. Magix claims the revamped user interface in Magix Movie Edit Pro 2015 Premium does just that, but we remain to be convinced.

The program didn’t make a great first impression. After downloading and installing it, there was no guidance as to how to install the templates and additional effects that set the top-dollar Premium version apart from its cheaper Pro and Pro Plus counterparts. Instead we were bombarded with pop-up adverts for a host of other Magix products.

ABBYY PDF Transformer+

Turn any PDF into searchable, editable text

PDF Transformer+ is a powerful program for creating searchable PDF documents from scans and existing files. ABBYY is best known for its FineReader optical character recognition (OCR) software. The same engine is used to power PDF Transformer+, which can recognise 189 different languages. A built-in scanner interface lets you import documents directly from either a flatbed or ADF scanner. Other features include the ability to annotate existing PDFs, convert them into a wide range of file formats and create your own PDFs from scanned documents or image files.

Nvidia Shield Tablet

A powerful Android tablet with the latest technology at a surprisingly low price

Nvidia is best known for graphics cards found in loads of PCs and laptops made by other manufacturers. It therefore came as a surprise to learn that Nvidia had made the Shield, an 8in Android tablet, until you realise it acts as something of a showcase for the company’s various technologies. Although most of these are aimed at gamers, the Shield still has plenty to offer those with no interest in games - starting with its low price of just £240 for the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model. A 32GB 4G variant is available for just £60 more.

Nowhere to hide

Hardware governs our homes, cities, infrastructure, and military. What happens when it’s turned against us? by P.W. SINGER

In late summer of 2006, the Japanese division of McDonald’s decided to run a new promotion. When customers ordered a Coca-Cola soft drink, they would receive a cup with a code. If they entered that code on a designated website and were among 10,000 lucky winners, they would receive an MP3 player pre-loaded with 10 songs.

Cleverly constructed, the promotion seemed destined for success. Who doesn’t like a Coke and a free MP3 player? But there was one problem the marketers at McDonald’s could not anticipate: In addition to 10 free songs, the music players contained QQPass malware. The moment winners plugged their players into a computer, the Trojan horse slipped undetected into their system and began logging keystrokes, collecting passwords, and gathering personal data for later transmission.