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We go hands on with Toshiba's new Satellite U925t, one of the cooler new Windows 8 tablet and laptop hybrids we've seen.

The best thing about Windows 8 is that everyone is finally rethinking the laptop. For decades, we’ve stuck with clamshell devices that all look roughly the same, but now things are getting a little crazy. Toshiba’s not the first company you think of when someone talks about innovative design, but lately, the manufacturer has been upping its game and delivering some unique products. Hot off the heels of its ultra widescreen laptop, Toshiba has revealed the Satellite U925t, a horribly named, but very cool new tablety, laptopy convertible PC running Windows 8.

There are other companies trying out crazy new designs for Windows 8, which is itself a crazy rethinking of Windows built around touch. Some designs, like the one shown by Samsung yesterday, are quite similar to the U925t, but Toshiba new tablet is less about the gimmick of sliding out a keyboard and more about how much of a benefit it provides. It probably won’t be as thin as some of its competitors, but Toshiba appears to have put build quality first. Holding the U925t in tablet mode is nice. It’s heavier and thicker than an iPad (3.2lbs), but with a 12.5-inch 720p screen, 128GB solid state drive, and new Intel Core i5 processor, it’s in a different league when it comes to power. This is a full PC.

Much like a smartphone QWERTY keyboard, the keyboard and touchpad on the U925t slides out. Once it’s fully extended, you can bend the screen up as far as you want, up to a full 90 degree angle. Unlike many competing laptabs, Toshiba’s appears to have solid hinges and a good sturdy feel to it. You can easily adjust it to any angle you want and it stays in place. There’s nothing worse than spending a grand on a computer only to have the screen flop around. The screen is also made of Gorilla Glass, so you don’t have to worry about breaking it.

The hinged screen also has the benefit of being a lot closer to you than a traditional laptop, making the touchscreen more natural to use, and with Windows 8, the only fun way to use it is by touching it.

Common smartphone features like a 3-megapixel rear camera, front camera, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth, an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer are also present, which should make the U925t a good tablet as well. The keyboard is backlit as well, so typing in the dark won’t be a problem.

Toshiba told me that the Satellite U925t will be available on October 26 when Windows 8 ships, but a price hasn’t been finalized. It will likely retail for a little more than $1,000 — maybe around $1200 or so. 

Sony releases its best HD remake collection yet, collecting all three PS2 era games onto one disc for the Ratchet & Clank Collection.

Sony has been cleaning up lately with repeated dives into its back-catalog for PlayStation 3 remakes and collections. The latest from the publisher is both, amounting to a collection of HD remakes from the PlayStation 2 era of Insomniac Games’ Ratchet & Clank series. The Ratchet & Clank Collection gathers together Ratchet & Clank (2002), Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (2003), and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2004) onto a single disc, complete with a shiny new 1080p makeover as well as support for 720p stereoscopic 3D.

There’s no question that this is a sharp-looking collection. In truth, it’s really one of the prettiest of the recent run on HD remakes that we’ve seen yet, on any platform. The Ratchet games lend themselves very well to this sort of visual makeover, and the new coat of paint makes everything really pop on a typical, modern-day HDTV. The overall improvement across the three games is in fact so dramatic that the pre-rendered cutscenes suffer by comparison. Not only are they presented in their original 4:3 aspect ratio — compared to each game’s new 16:9 widescreen view — but they look positively ancient next to the newly HD gameplay.

Beyond the visual upgrades, there’s really nothing new to speak of. Each of the three games are content-complete, with even the multiplayer mode from Up Your Arsenal revived, allowing up to eight players to duke it out on the PlayStation Network. There are Trophies for each of the three titles, of course, but the HD remakes are otherwise identical to their decade-old predecessors.

What’s amazing is how well these games have aged. As fun as it was to play 2011′s Team Ico collection – Ico and Shadow of the Colossus — both of those games ultimately felt rather clunky by today’s standards. That’s not so with the three Ratchet games. There’s a very detectable technical improvement as you move from Ratchet & Clank to Going Commando to Up Your Arsenal, but all three are nearly as smooth to play overall as the current-gen Ratchet games are. Even the visuals aren’t all that different; the current-gen titles feature improved facial expressions and more dazzling special effects, but the general feel carries across the generations very well.

There are a few funny quirks to the Ratchet & Clank Collection, some unique to this PS3 disc and some merely holdovers from an earlier era in gaming. All three of the games default to inverted camera controls on the right analog stick. You can change that easily enough in the menus, though in an amusing twist, the first two games actually have the nerve to refer to inverted as “normal.” Insomniac got things straight for Up Your Arsenal; you still default to inverted controls, but at least the menus refer to them as such.

The only real flaw I could find with the collection relates to the accessibility of each game. Once you’ve fired up one of the three titles, there’s no way to back out to the game selection screen to hop into another. You have to actually bring up the media bar, quit the game, and load it up all over again. It’s annoying when you’re reviewing the collection and jumping from one game to the next matters, but most players probably won’t even notice.

The only real complaint that I walked away with — and I don’t hold this against the collection as a whole, though I hope Sony takes note — is that the Ratchet & Clank Collection isn’t available for the PlayStation Vita. There is literally no reason why any of these three games wouldn’t be playable on the handheld… so why aren’t they? The Vita is fairly starved for content at the moment, and I’d frankly much rather play an HD remake of games that I’ve played before on that small screen, while on the go, rather than on my big TV.

That pretty much covers it. The collection also includes a digital version of each game’s manual as well as a download code that offers early access to the playable demo for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. This is, in my opinion, Sony’s best collection of HD remakes yet. If you’re a fan of the Ratchet series then there is no reason not to snatch this one up, even if you’ve played through all of these games before. The visual and technical improvements are dramatic, and the early adventures of Ratchet and his robot pal Clank are still as fun as they ever were.

Amazon has launched the Android Appstore in Europe. People in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain can now shop for apps on Amazon.

The European launch of Amazon’s Appstore for Android has been expected for a while now. The company has just announced that it is open for business in the UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. Each country will enjoy a localized version of the mobile app store available now. This brings the popular “Free App of the Day” and other Amazon promotions to many European customers. It also means access to personalized recommendations, customer reviews, and 1-click payments.

Amazon’s Appstore offers something different from Google Play because, as Jim Adkins, Vice President of Amazon Appstore, points out “We evaluate and test games and apps before making them available in the Appstore”. That means a smaller selection, but potentially higher quality apps and games. The exclusive promotions that Amazon runs have been especially popular in the U.S. and so there’s little doubt they’ll prove popular in Europe too.

Existing Amazon customers with Android devices are likely to give the Appstore a try, but the company may need to release the Kindle Fire for the service to really take off in Europe. Amazon’s Android device is not currently available in Europe — it seems content licensing deals could be holding up the release.

Interestingly in Germany, France, and Italy it will be called the “App-Shop”, in Spain it is “Tienda Apps”, and in the UK it is the “Amazon Appstore for Android”.

While Rogers has had LTE available in Canada for a while now, it has been slow to share the LTE love with its faithful companion, Fido. Earlier this year, we looked at hints of Fido getting 4G LTE, and last month Fido even officially stated that 4G LTE was coming soon. Roger’s budget sub-brand is now finally catching up to speed with 4G LTE, with service in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Saint John’s, Toronto and Vancouver all going live today.

So what works with Fido’s 4G LTE service? At the moment, the only official product is the Fido Mobile Hotspot. This device is capable of sharing its 4G LTE goodness with ten different devices. Don’t want to wait for 4G LTE handsets to show up through Fido? You can use any compatible, unlocked 4G LTE phone with Fido’s new SIM cards.

Fido does have further expansion plans for Fido’s 4G LTE service, with intentions to bring LTE network access to 20 million Canadians by the end of 2012. Some of the cities mentioned by Fido for expanded launch of the LTE service include Moncton, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Québec City, Kingston, Ajax, Pickering, Oshawa, Oakville, Burlington, and several others. More information on Fido’s 4G LTE service can be found at their website.

The next volume of Professor Layton's adventures on the Nintendo 3DS may be his last.

In continuing the trend of the series’ relationship with the west, Nintendo and Level-5 have announced a brand new Professor Layton game for the Nintendo 3DS just before the last one is ready to come out in the United States.

During Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct event that saw a pair of unusual games get announced for the resurgent handheld, Level-5 and Nintendo also unveiled Professor Layton and the Legacy of the Super Civilization A. For a series known for convoluted titles, we’ve got to applaud Level-5 for outdoing themselves.

While the trailer for Layton’s latest outing shows off the same sort of whimsical art and puzzling that made the franchise an institution over the past half decade, it’s also a bit ominous. Level-5 claims that Legacy of the Super Civilization A will be Professor Hershel Layton’s “final adventure.” Not the last game in the series mind you, but the last outing for the titular protagonist.

Don’t fret, oh ye fans of enormous brown top hats. Hershel Layton will be back for at least one other game. Level-5 is still tinkering on its Capcom collaboration Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, wherein Layton and Phoenix Wright will take turns pointing at stuff.