Hello and welcome to another Yankeefan review. This one took me a very long time since it is 2 reviews in one so please comment for advice so this isn’t a total waste. By the way if your reading this Confused you can use this for your website!

This story will be very long so sorry!

If you have never read one of my reviews before this is what I usually include:

-Game modes
-Extras
-What other reviewers thought.
-Online Play
-Controls
-Graphics
-Learning Curve

But since there really is no extras other then creating a player, I will get rid of that part of my review and add New Features since there are plenty of them in this game.
Review for MLB 07 The Show

What other reviewers thought

Gamespot PSP-8.0 PS3-8.2
IGN PSP-7.9 PS3-7.7
Game Modes

There are a lot of game modes in MLB 07 The Show for PSP and PS3. They are season mode, Road to the Show, Home Run Derby, King of the Diamond, Exhibition, and Manager Mode.

Season Mode Season mode is a season where you manage every aspect of your team. You choose your amount of games, who you want in your lineup, who is on your pitching staff, and who is on your inactive roster. The only disapointing thing I found about this mode was that there was no draft option. Otherwise, it is a very well made mode for this game.

Road to the Show

This is the newest mode to the game. In this mode you create a guy and work your way up to the majors from Spring Training to the end of your career. Your goal is to become a member of the baseball Hall of Fame. What I really like about this game is that it has goals for your guy in each game and when your guy isn’t doing anything it fast forwards it to the next time you have a goal to complete. Also there is cameras for when your at bat and in the field so it really feels like your in the field. What I really don’t like about this mode is the way they keep your player. You can be batting like .500 with 30 HR and 102 RBIs and they will drop you down to the AAA minors team and then call you up and drop you back down again. Another thing that really bothers me is the amount of times you get hurt in the game. I got hurt 2 times in 5 months. This is the newest mode of the game.Home Run Derby PSP only Well the Home Run Derby mode is something that you can only find on the PSP. Its where you choose any where from 2-10 people and have them face off to see how many home runs they hit without getting out. You can have as much as 10 outs where if you don’t hit it over the wall it is an out. This is a great mode to do with a buddy or do by yourself.

King of the Diamond-PSP only

King of the Diamond (KotD) is a arcade based baseball game where you choose a pitcher and a field player and play against either someone else or the computer who also has a pitcher and field player. In order to get points you either have to hit a homerun or hit the ball where there are no cardboard cut outs. Also, on a ground ball you need to hit it not so close to the fielder. This game is another fun mode to have with somebody else.

Exhibition

A mode where you play against the CPU or another person where you play a regular baseball game.

Manager Mode

Manager mode is a pretty cool mode where you coach every aspect of the game. Whether it is take a pitch, hit and run, or swing away. Can be really fun if you want to be in the Manager’s shoes. This mode can get a bit boring after awhile.

Franchise Mode-PS3 only

Franchise mode is like season mode only its over a period of time and you have to do 162 games. I like this mode the best since I like making trades and bringing people up from the farm system to try them out to see who I have in the future. A feature I like about Franchise mode is the ability to draft people to your team, and that is exactly what I do : )

Those are all the modes for the PS3 and PSP version.

New Features

Well the PSP version has plenty of new features that are the same as the PS3. So here are the new features:
Adaptive Pitching Intelligence (API)

Adaptive pitching intelligence is when your catcher gives you, the pitcher, a suggestion as to what pitch to throw and where to locate it. API doesn’t just randomly make a suggestion, it makes its decisions based on the situation at hand, the score, and the matchup. It takes in account the pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses.

Baserunner Targeting

To make baserunning easier, MLB added baserunner targeting. Baserunner targeting is where you can control any baserunner by pointing the analog stick in the direction he appears on the diamond. Once the runner is targeted, you’ll see the baserunner icon blink on the diamond display. You can send him to any base by pressing the button.

Umpire Personalities

This is by far a love or hate relationship feature. The reason I say this is, it can either benefit your pitcher, or really screw up the game. Depending on the personality of the umpire he can either have a tight or a wide strike zone or maybe somewhere in between.

Pitch Command System

This is the last new feature of MLB. This new feature shows the confidence your pitcher has in each pitch. The more successful you are with each pitch, the higher the confidence gets in that pitch. If the hitter hauls one off you, the confidence in the pitch you threw will go down.

That is the end of the new feature section of my review.
Online

The last part of the review is online mode. Online is the same for both systems.

In online mode you will witness:

MLB Gamecast- MLB Gamecast is a part of online where it shows how your favorite team is doing in real life. With Gamecast you can see Major League Baseball games Live! You can now select to view the ticker in the icon bar. Once there you will see the score, position of baserunners and more all in Real-time.

Online Player Card The online player card allows you to see more information about yourself and other online players than ever before. The look and feel of the player card provides an easy way to view vital player info. This card gives you a great idea of ability and sportsmanship.

Online Leagues Does your friends live far away and you can’t play a league with them at your house. Then start a league with up to 30 teams with full stat tracking, league leaderboards, playoffs, and a league champion. Bragging rights are on the line!
The Score for MLB

This is the last part of my review. I will now show you the final score for MLB 07 The Show out of 10.

PSP
Overall 8.2

Gameplay 8

Graphics 7

Sound 9

Learning Curve Around a half hour

PS3

Overall 8.9

Gameplay 9

Graphics 9

Sound 8

Learning Curve Around an hour

Both games can be improved a little. The graphics for PSP needs to show a little more improvement because this years game was too much like last years game. As for the PS3, the game is still a little glitchy even with all the time they had. Both games are a must get for baseball fans.
PSP 8.2
PS3 8.9

Please comment to tell me how I can make my reviews better!

*Images courtesy of Gamespot.com

Run away!! It’s coming!!

Most of you may not know, but I, your beloved Cynthia – writer of weird and interesting technology – is going to college in the fall. And, of course, I’ll be bringing technobabbleonline with me to annoy all my roommates and teachers! I’ll be starting a new segment, “From the Dorm Room”, in which I’ll write about my findings with students and technology. It’ll definitely be something to watch out for, so crack your knuckles and be ready to remember those college days!

Windows Vista has been out for a few months now and I think it’s time to tackle whether it is worth it or not to upgrade. While Microsoft would love everyone to upgrade to Vista that will hardly happen. Unfortunately, all the OEM computers (HP-Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, etc.) are shipping their computers with Vista pre-installed, therefore giving the consumer no choice. The only OEM that does give you a choice (though however small) is Dell. If you purchase certain laptops or PC’s (usually the cheap and less powerful) from Dell you can choose Windows XP or Vista.

I have been thinking about switching to Vista for months myself but decided to wait until I could see how it performs on a PC/laptop built for Vista. Well the time has come.

A friend of mine, that just returned to Canada, needed to buy a laptop to communicate with his parents in South America. I offered my services to help him choose his laptop. He was under a budget which pretty much left no option for a MacBook so we had to look at some budget laptops.

So we had HP-Compaq, Toshiba, Acer and Gateway to choose from at the retailer we were at. Immediately we ruled out HP-Compaq as they like to install a lot of un-needed software. We also ruled out Toshiba because they can’t seem to build a computer with a good cooling system. We eventually ruled out Gateway because they just looked cheaply built. Acer was all we had left.

You’ll remember that I bought an Acer a while back and reviewed it on this website. It had been a very good laptop. One thing that really stands out is the screen quality. It has great contrast and colour. The downside was that at the time a $699 laptop came with a Celeron-M instead of a Core Duo or AMD Turion processor. All I can say is that sometimes that laptop is not a pleasure to play World of Warcraft on, but that’s not what I bought it for.

Anyways, we hooked ourselves up with a Turion X2 at 1.8GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 120GB hard drive, ATI graphics and the normal bells and whistles that come with those computers (integrated microphone – a major plus for a laptop, bluetooth, and wireless-G card). Oh, and of course, it had Vista on it.

I was actually excited to see what Microsoft had done with the Operating System and was keeping my mind clear of negative thoughts.

As soon as we got it home we opened it up. OK, one of the things you sacrifice when buying an Acer is that you don’t get backup CDs. They actually make you burn your own. Unfortunately, the program that was supposed to do that kept locking up when we started the laptop up. In fact we had to disable it from startup. Whether that was due to Vista or not was not a question. That was just a sign of poorly written software.

So that finished and we had to install Windows updates. Man that was annoying and it wasn’t the updates that were annoying, it was the Wi-Fi software Vista comes with. Vista will not automatically connect to a Wi-Fi source. That is extremely annoying. Every time I wanted to connect to my wireless connection I had to go down to the task bar (or whatever it’s called now) and click connect.

Once past that we were able to download the updates. About ten restarts later we were back in business. We then immediately proceeded to uninstall Norton and install AVG Free. AVG works great under Vista and takes far less resources than Norton.

I was then curious to see what kind of resources we were using. I was surprised to see that both processor cores were working about 5 to 7% all the time. Oh and the RAM usage. That was crazy. We were looking at 750MB of RAM used (or memory as Windows memory manager isn’t that specific). That is nuts considering I can keep my laptop below 180MB at all times.

One thing I can say is that that laptop has great battery life with those Turion processors. We installed World of Warcraft and were playing it and forgot to plug it in. The thing played flawlessly (and I mean with out any frame-skipping – which is unusual for World of Warcraft) until it just shut-off three hours later.

We did have a problem a couple days ago when we tried to update World of Warcraft on his computer. It would not patch. In fact it would not even load World of Warcraft. This error is Vista related.

Another thing I noticed with Vista is that Microsoft made everything needlessly hard to find. When you right-click on the desktop to change you desktop options you can only change your background. Add/Remove Programs is now Programs and Features. Why the heck did you need to change that Microsoft?

The new start menu is cool but without the search function it just isn’t usable if you have a lot of programs.

All these changes are something that I would get used to, but why should I? I like Windows XP. It works great. It’s mostly secure. Efficient on resources. Easy to use. That coming to mind I searched for a way to change Vista to look like XP. You can’t. You can change it to look like Windows 95 but not XP. Why would you do that Microsoft? Some of us liked XP, you know.

Anyways, in my adventures to upgrade to Vista, I’ve been scared off. In fact, I’d much rather change to Ubuntu. And it’s free.

If I buy another computer, it will be a Mac. Sorry Microsoft. Vista. Sucks.

Recently we put out a request for writers. I have known this guy since I was invited to be a part of Sony’s Playstation Underground group called the Gamer Advisory Panel (GAP for short).

He’s a great writer and really knows his way around a Playstation 3. George joins us as a Playstation 3 reviews editor.

Welcome to technobabble, George.

To those of you who would like to write for us check out this post for the info.

According to a Google press release, Google will be participating in the upcoming 700MHz wireless spectrum auction under a few conditions. Google wants the FCC to approve that the spectrum can be used for the following:

* Open applications: Consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
* Open devices: Consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;
* Open services: Third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and
* Open networks: Third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee’s wireless network.

Google hopes that the FCC will take them seriously as they are willing to part with 4.6 billion (yeah that’s right, billion) dollars for the spectrum.

This is great and it also seems that Google may use this for an upcoming wireless system. Perhaps including cellphones and wi-fi for internet.

Do you have that feeling where the walls are closing in on you, like you need more space to move around? Well I hope not but your data might.

An external hard drive is a great way to add storage to you computer and the best part is that you don’t even have to open your PC up.

Most external drives like this are USB compatible. This is great because most computers have four of six USB connectors.

Check out this deal from Futureshop for a 250GB External Hard Drive.

Disclaimer: We are in no way affiliated with Futureshop and are not being endorsed in any shape or form for this post.

I just couldn’t let this sit. While I was trying to troubleshoot a problem with my Playstation 3, I was told that more information was needed to help diagnose the problem.

So what did I do? I booted up MS Paint and got to work ending up with this file.

I was so proud of it, and due to the fact it took me two and a half hours to complete, I wanted to post it here for you guys to see.

Cheers!

Do you love technology? We do too and we want you.

We are expanding our writer force to deliver more tech news to everyone. Technobabble is a place for every tech user that is experienced or not, young and old. We try to help people understand technology in an effort to promote the use of technology.

What’s in it for you? Well you get recognition as writer on the website. If you have your own website we will also link to that. We don’t have any paid positions yet but down the road it could be quite possible. We may also want you to moderate comments on the website.

What kind of experience do you need to have? The only experience we require is, well, none. Of course if you have written for a website before that would be considered an asset.

If you think this matches you then here’s what you gotta do:

- Write 3 posts about some technology in recent news in the fashion if what you would read on technobabble
- Give us a link to three technology news websites that you enjoy and explain why
- Pick a post on technobabble that you think was really interesting and explain why
- Tell us why you would like to be a writer for technobabble

When you have done that just send it all in an email to Jeff at technobabble001@gmail.com.

We will review every entry but will only reply to those who are accepted.

Nintendo has announced a new Zapper to go along with first-person shooters. Reggie (Cheif Operations Officer – Nintendo America) says it will come packaged with games later on in the year. The new zapper is an attachment for you Wii-mote and nun-chuck forming a gun.

The new stearing wheel will be coming with Nintendo’s new Mario Kart game. Reggie says this will level the playing field for all Kart racers.

Joystiq has some great coverage on the Zapper and the new steering wheel.

During Sony’s E3 Press Conference yesterday, the first announcement was the new PSP. We here are technobabble weren’t able to attend E3 but the folks at Engadget could. They have some great shots of the thinner and lighter PSP.

Sony says the PSP is 17% thinner and 33% lighter than the previous PSP and will come in silver, black, and a special edition Star Wars white.

While the unit is still the same it can now output video to your television. That is a great feature. You will be able to play games, watch UMD video and video, display pictures and play music through your television. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

The only noticeable hardware change is the position of the speakers. They are now up near the top of the screen. This will help with sound volume as the old version had the speakers located underneath your fingers.

If you would like to see some shots of the new PSP at engadget’s website click here.