This year has seen a revolution in game consoles, with a new focus on social gaming and cloud technology. The Nintendo Wii U has completely remodelled the classic controller, whilst the PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 are gearing up to transform game titles from physical DVD discs to internet installations. But these brand new console releases come with a hefty price tag, and the accompanying games only add to the rocketing costs that players face nowadays.

So, whilst you wait for console costs to drop, here are some of the best alternatives that will make sure you don’t go without your gaming fix.

Online games and emulators:

There is a huge online market for instant games, with sites such as EA and MoneyGaming offering everything from action to casino classics. You may sometimes be required to sign up with a player account and make a small deposit, but you can usually take advantage of promotional offers and even turn a profit whilst playing (which will certainly help you afford that Xbox 720 by Christmas time.)

However, if you have your heart set on a specific rare or discontinued title then emulators are a great solution. These can be downloaded straight to your PC and all you require to play is a cheap, USB compatible controller, which is available online or from gadget shops.

Mobile Gaming:

Smartphones have advanced significantly over the years, offering players impressive graphics and a high quality gaming experience. However, tapping some buttons on your phone isn’t quite the same as playing from your favourite console. Well, that’s where mobile gaming accessories come into play.

Portable game controllers connect straight to mobiles to allow you to game from any location. iPhone users can play with the iControlPad from £45 and Android gamers will be impressed by the stylish PowerA Moga, which costs around £30. Although a little pricey, these accessories are a fantastic way to keep entertained and, with free and affordable mobile games, they are easy on the bank balance.

Stream games to your TV:

Mobile gaming is all well and good, but sometimes you want to see your favourite game titles blown up on the TV screen. For around £65 you can purchase the OnLive, which allows you to stream full console games to computers, phones and TVs without the need for big bulky hardware. A microconsole links the OnLive to the television and works impressively well.

Similarly, MHL can connect your smartphone to your TV screen and is much more affordable, at less than £10. The smartphone controller accessories even connect to some Android apps, to allow the use of PlayStation 3 and Wii remotes whilst playing.

Microconsoles:

Microconsoles give you all the fun of playing your favourite titles on the TV, but at a fraction of the cost.

The console taking the industry by storm at the moment is the Ouya. Priced at under £100, the Ouya will be released in June and will allow players to enjoy Android games with a physical controller. Its creators also promise that it will be open to hacking, meaning avid gamers can use the microconsole to play emulator apps on.

  
Image courtesy of Stratageme.com at Flickr

GameStick is another microconsole very similar to the Ouya, except that it is smaller in design and cheaper in price. PlayJam, the creators of the device, are a game developing company, meaning that the software support on the GameStick is likely to be better than that of its rival.
 

Bluestacks, the app player that allows you to run Android apps on your PC has now been launched for Mac. With a huge library of apps available it allows users and developers to experience these apps on their desktops or laptops.

The big appeal of Bluestacks is for playing games, many of which don't have native ports on the desktop. I installed Angry Birds and the game worked well with no lag.

Some apps don't work so well such as those that require specific hardware like GPS receivers but in general with its intuitive interface, Bluestacks is a clever piece of software.

Download Bluestacks now.

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It's not very often that Shropshire gets a web conference and last nights ShropGeek Theory of (R)Evolution certainly didn't disappoint. The four speakers gave fascinating insights into their past and current projects and it was interesting to see the success and failure.

Jake Smith from JP74 spoke about app and systems development for creative awards organisation D&AD. Specifically he talked about the challenges they had to overcome to develop a system to allow judges to be able to use second generation iPod Touches for casting votes on entries at Olympia in London.

Neil Kinnish and Mike Kus gave a fascinating account into their start-up WorkFu and the highs and lows of the development process, attracting investors and eventually calling day on the project.

To end the evening Paul Annett, Creative Lead for the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), spoke about the challenges behind the new Gov.uk website and how integrating the many different services the government offers into one place. His focus on usability was especially interesting and how through feedback in testing the site has evolved into what it is today.

A big thanks to Kirsty Burgoine for organising the evening and I look forward to next years event!

As you reach the end of your contract for your current broadband connection, it is worth considering a different provide, who might give you a faster broadband speed for a better price. As demands increase on your internet connection, it can appear that your download speeds are slowing down and everything is working just a little bit more slowly.

Despite this very few people actually make the effort to switch. Even when neighbours and friends have already made the switch and can’t stop raving about how easy it is to download movies at super-fast speed, there is still a sense of loyalty that appears to work and a bit of a fear of the unknown. You assume that even after making the switch, after comparing all the deals, that after a few months, you will realise that nothing has really changed at all. Your Internet speed will seem to be more or less the same as the previous connection and you will simply be frustrated.

Surveys have shown that broadband customers, on an average, in the United Kingdom are using and paying for services that are as much as 40 % slower than what’s been advertised by the providers. In many instances, while paying for 12 Mbps (megabits per second); a customer is receiving only around 7 Mbps.

The kind of broadband connection and speed you will get largely depends on your postcode. If you are living in a big city, you will be able to avail more reliable, faster and varied services from your broadband provider. On the other hand, many rural and other small towns and areas don’t enjoy such services and have to make do with much slower broadband speed, sometimes even below 2 Mbps.

While the average broadband speed across UK is around 7.84 Mbps, a study conducted this year by uSwitch compared speeds across the country from January to June this year against the same period last year. The results showed that 29 % of UK postcodes (among those tested) received lesser than 3 Mbps speed, while 21 % received speed below 2 Mbps.

The study also revealed that postcodes in south east of England fare best, with five of its cities making it to the top 10 fastest broadband cities’ list. Postcodes that recorded the highest or fastest average broadband speed in the United Kingdom are:

1. London (13.362 Mbps)
2. Belfast (11.315 Mbps)
3. Liverpool (11.154 Mbps)
4. Milton Keynes (10.6 Mbps)
5. Swindon (10.415 Mbps)
6. Portsmouth (10.402 Mbps)
7. Luton (10.247 Mbps)
8. Walsall (10.025 Mbps)
9. Stockport (9.798 Mbps)
10. Southampton (9.55 Mbps)

Meanwhile, The Midlands and northern parts of the United Kingdom recorded the lowest broadband speed.

Therefore, before you sign up for broadband services with a new provider, the following are some of the tips that you should follow:

• Compare the different broadband service providers and their deals and offers in your area, along with their strengths and benefits. Check what these providers promise, against the speed that they actually deliver.
• It is advisable to check the coverage they provide, along with the average speed supplied in the area. There are many websites that are related to broadband speeds, which can help you find average speed in a postcode, using postcode availability checkers. A broadband speed checker will also help you ascertain if the speed provided meets your requirement and satisfaction.
• Assess and analyse what speed you require, before going ahead buying a new broadband connection. If you do not stream TV or use the Internet for downloading heavy files, a fairly reasonable broadband speed would be more than enough.
• In case you do not find the broadband speed satisfactory or much lower than what’s advertised, you can switch to another broadband provider without incurring any penalty.

Internet and broadband service providers are continuously working towards bettering their services by investing millions of pounds. The government has set the target of a minimum of 2 Mbps speed across the United Kingdom by the year 2015.

Written by:
Nathan Morgan has been an IT professional for 14 years. His work is currently focused on Linux servers. He has encryption experience including the deployment of True Crypt and similar packages, and detailed knowledge of document scanning solutions to transform off-line archives into accessible digital data.
 

We have an exciting offer to give away free copies of 1AVMonitor, the remote surveillance video and audio software.

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With all the negativity around Windows 8 I've not been in a rush to try it. Being a Mac user I already have a great OS and last week's upgrade to Mountain Lion again reaffirmed my allegiance to the Apple ecosystem.

Apple got a lot right with iOS, the security, the simplicity and the app ecosystem. We've seen a lot of these features ported back into OS X in Lion and Mountain Lion. Microsoft is going for a more radical approach of designing an almost brand new interface called Metro and making it the heart of Windows 8.

A lot of the criticism of Windows 8 revolves around Metro and how it's central to the OS, yet does so much differently from previous versions of Windows. We've seen hints of Metro in Windows Phone and in the Xbox interface which I've never liked - it's small annoyances like giving a four way input controller the option to go 6 ways.

Installation was very similar to Windows 7 and took around 20mins through Parallels.

Once rebooted you enter a few details and you're presented with the Metro desktop.

On the bottom left there is a link to the desktop, this takes you to a desktop that is very similar to Windows 7 but without a start menu. You can get back into Metro at any time via the windows key (cmd in Parallels).

Metro integrates with Facebook, Live Messenger, SkyDrive, Xbox Live and a number of other services. Feeds for News (below), Weather, Maps, Travel and Finance are automatically included by default.

Any additional programs you install that would normally appear in the Start Menu are added to the Metro Interface instead. All settings that were previously in control panel are integrated with Metro.

Metro is quick to use but takes a bit of adjusting to get use to, I like how you can easily get to it at any time through the Windows key. By rearranging icons within Metro you can quickly customise it to your work flow. As more developers integrate with Metro I imagine it will get stronger and stronger.

I will admit that I'm a fan of Metro, it's a refreshing change for Windows and coming from OS X it's good to see the simplicity that Windows often lacked shining through. 

With Windows 7 and XP It was hard to argue the benefits, in the past ten years we've seen so many great new features in OS X, from time machine, dashboard, mission control, expose and spot light yet you couldn't really say the same for Windows. With Windows 8 Microsoft had to try something different and whilst some parts work well with other parts don't.

Back in 2001 when Apple released OS X there was uproar, OS X did things differently, in a lot of cases it did things worse than OS 9 and did a lot less. Many of the Apple faithful resisted the move for years, yet today could anyone argue that those hard decisions were not for the best?

Microsoft is at the same cross roads now, it knows it has to do something different to stay relevant and keep up with the competition, it has to make hard decisions that it knows will upset some of its core audience.

Yet hopefully what will come from it is a much smarter, simpler OS, it will take time and I imagine at least another Windows release but the changes Microsoft are making now will set them up for the next decade, to compete with the likes of Apple and Google.

We've already seen parts of the puzzle come into place with the launch of Outlook.com, Skydrive and Metro. It's a massive gamble and one that I hope works out for Microsoft.