Fed up with cheap and not-always-cheerful monitors based on TN panel technology? Then get a load of new Asus PA238Q.

At around $365, it's pricier than your average 23-inch TN screen. But joy of joys, it's got an IPS panel.

IPS, of course, stands for in-plane switching and it just so happens to be the finest panel technology known to man or beast. That's why Apple, for instance, exclusively uses IPS in its iPhones and iPads. It's simply the best when it comes to color accuracy and viewing angles.

As it happens, color accuracy is a big part of the remit for the Asus PA238Q. It's pitched as a low-cost screen for he graphics professional.

However, Asus is also claiming 6ms response times, which is very impressive for a IPS screen and makes for a tantalizing all-round package.

Cloud this affordable, color-accurate screen also be killer in-game and at the movie? There's only one way to find out.

Asus PA238Q Open goal

We've been desperate for something, anything other than a TN screen at an affordable price. Few monitor makers have been willing to deliver. Admittedly, BenQ has given us a few cheap screens with VA panels. But its most recent effort, the BenQ EW2430, was seriously disappointing. There's an open goal waiting for Asus to slide home a winner.

On paper, the Asus PA238Q certainly looks like premier league material. Along with that all important IPS panel, you get an LED backlight and a huge color gamut that captures 100 percent of sRGB. Nice. You also get a full complement of inputs including HDMI, DVI, VGA and even DisplayPort. There's picture-in-picture support, too.

The Asus PA238Q is a fine physical specimen, too. The stand is fully adjustable in all directions and hewn from the right sort of plastics. It's sturdy stuff.

The minimalist styling vibe is also loving. The overall effect is like an IBM laptop from the ThinkPad heyday. No nonsense quality, in other words.

It ain't easy picking holes in this classy screen, but one or two imperfections are visible. The review sample had the slightest whiff of backlight bleed on the right hand edge and, like all IPS screens, there's a little backlight glow at some angles when viewing very dark tones. But that's about it.

Image quality

The real clincher, though, involves image quality. Asus claims every PA238Q is carefully color calibrated at the factory and the result is indeed impressive. Rarely, if ever, have we seen a screen with such deft black, white and color scales out of the box. The viewing angles are impeccable, too.

As for pixel response, it's very good news indeed. This is one of if not the snappiest IPS panels we've ever seen.

The panel. The backlight. The chassis. The colors. The input options. The price. Frankly, what's not to like?

In this tutorial we will install an e-mail subscription service using FeedBurner for blogger. In addition, we will add the "subscribe in reader" component using FeedBurner.

You will be going back and forth between FeedBurner and your blog, so I recommend having two browsers window open, one for your blog, one for FeedBurner.

1. Let's begin at FeedBurner. Go to feedburner.google.com. You may have to enter reenter your Google Account username and password (if you are using Blogger, this is the same login information).

2. In the next screen, you are creating a feed for your blog (see figure below). Copy and paste your blog's address (including the http:// prefix) into the text box "Burn a feed right this instant." The click Next.



3. In the next screen, Identify Feed Source, choose either format (see figure below). In this example I left the default, which is Atom. You really don't need to worry about the difference between Atom and RSS; both are widely used and accepted. In short, the formatting in the Atom feed is better and more robust.


4. Click Next and you'll see a screen with the Feed Title and Feed Address that have been generated for you (see figure below).


5. You can modify the Feed Title if necessary, but don't play around with the Feed Address. Click Next.

6. Your feed has now been set up (see below). Click Next to set up and review FeedBurner Stats or click "Skip directly to feed management."


7. Let's continue setting up the Feed Stats (it's only one additional step). By tracking your readers' actions, you will learn more about what they like. Note that if you choose "I am a podcaster" on the screen shown at first, you'll see a different screen from the one in figure below. This is where you'd set up options for your podcasting, such as iTunes podcasting elements, as well as add your podcast to Yahoo! Search.

8. As you can see in figure below, using Blogging Hub example, I checked Clickthroughs as well as "I want more! Have FeedBurner Stats also track...."

• Clickthrough track how often people click back to your site.
• Feedburner Stats also tracks the popularity of items and how many people viewed the feed and click content on your feed.

9. Click Next to complete the FeedBurner setup.


10. In the future when you want to review your FeedBurner statistics, go to the Analyze tab. But for now, to add the gadget to your blog to allow e-mail subscriptions, click on Publicize.

11. Click on Email Subscriptions.


12. Click on Activate. You only have to do this once, when you first set up the Email Subscriptions.

13. Within a few seconds, you should get a message about successfully activating the service. If you get an error, lot out. Then log back in, go to your feed, click Publicize, Email Subscriptions, and try again.

14. In Figure below, beneath the large text box where it states "Copy and paste the following code into any web page..." you will see the "Use as a widget in" drop-down and then a Go! Button. I have highlighted the code so you can see which box I'm referring to.


15. This is where you need to open another browser window and log in to your Blogger blog.

16. Click on that "Use as a widget in" drop-down and choose Blogger.

17. Click Go! You'll see a screen like the one below.


18. For the Title, leave the default or change it to whatever you like (I modified to "Receive Email Updates").

19. Click Add Widget and the element is then added to the top of the sidebar in your Blogger layout (the Page Elements area). Click Save. We'll come back to this in a few minutes.

20. Go back to FeedBurner, click on Chicklet Chooser from the left sidebar.


21. Click the Subscribe in a Reader option shown, then scroll beneath the "Copy the HTML below for use in your page templates" and in the drop-down "Use as a widget in..." choose Blogger.

22. Click Go!

23. You'll see Blogger's Add Page Element box again.

24. Enter a Title if you wish. Since this widget says "Subscribe in a Reader," I left the Title Blank.

25. Click Add Widget. It is then added to the Page Elements screen, at the top of the sidebar, with no title but as HTML/JavaScript.

26. You can leave it there or you can drag and drop it wherever you'll like in your blog's layout. If you change the layout, be sure to click Save Changes.

27. Click on View Blog.

Can Intel's new X79 PC platform claim to be a true desktop solution? Or is it a thinly disguised server platform? The answer could be critical when mulling over the latest X79-compatible RAM kits, such as G Skill Ram RipjawsZ 1,600MHz 16GB.

There are two key issues at stake. The first is raw memory bandwidth. In standard trim, Intel's outgoing X58 platform sported three channels of relatively lowly clocked DDR3 memory. If anything, it pumped out more memory bandwidth than was strictly necessary. In that context, the X79 and its quad-channel controlled fed by higher clocked DDR3 DIMMs looks borderline ludicrous. The reason it exists, of course, is to ensure Intel's closely related server systems have the bandwidth they need.

Meanwhile, arguably the best thing about the new Sandy Bridge E processors that slot into the X79 platform is their immense overclocking ability. Making the most of that requires decent memory. With all that in mind, what should you make of the G Skill Ram Ripjaws Z1,600MHz 16GB RAM?

G Skill Ram Stability licked

The G Skill Ram RipJaws Z kit isn't exactly cheap, but it does offer decent value for money. Intel's new Sandy Bridge E Core i7 processors aren't cheap either. Neither are the motherboards with the obligatory X79 chipset. If you want the best, you're going to have to pay for it. But is this nattily named kt really a winner?

For starters, each kit is hand tested. It's also XMP 1.3 ready, which means it's not just any old quartet of DDR3 1,600MHz DIMMs. It's specilly developed for the X79 platform. If that's so much digital doublespeak to you, XMP or Extreme Memory Profile is a user-friendly way of cranking up various memory settings and timings without the need for hand tuning. The latest 1.3 standard generally tightens things over 1.2, allowing better performance and stability.

As for the specifics, this RipJaws Z RAM nominally clocks at 1,600MHz with 9-9-9-24 timings at 1.5V. Oh, and it's 4GB per DIMM, making for a mildly monumental 16GB overall. If that sounds like plenty, G.Skill actually does kits all the way up to 32GB. That's 8GP per stick.

We used the G Skill Ram kit for Core i7-3960X and they ran rock solid all the way from the 3960X's nominal 3.33GHz clockspeed through 4.8GHz without a blip. The X79 may be a new platform, but G Skill Ram has the question of stability licked.

As for raw performance and the question of whether you actually need four channels, we re-ran several of our benchmarks with just two of the four DIMMs inserted. The highly threaded benchmarks came back identical, while World in Conflict averaged just a single frame per second slower. In other words, not a big enough difference to rule out testing error.

But it's still early days for both the new X79 platform and XMP 1.3, so it's hard to be too emphatic about the RipJawsZ's performance. The biggest problem is that in desktop performance terms there's little need for four channels. Very few will benefit from the 16GB capacity, either.

For every few you complete, you'll get access to a hefty story mission in which the Saints fend off a major attack from one of the three rival gangs, or strike out to take some territory for themselves. These missions contain some of The Third's finest moments. Diving out of a helicopter into a penthouse swimming pool in the middle

of a rival gang party, and then wading out with a rocket launcher to the sound of Power by Kanye West was one such moment. Taking cover behind an angry, naked Russian ogre man to do battle with an army of clones was another.

Shock and awe
Story missions also put you in touch with Saints Row's surprisingly funny cast of characters. Some are just jerks. Fine, they're all jerks - but you'll separate the ones you can't stand and the ones you'll choose to drive around with you based on how much their schtick you can handle. The pimp who speaks entirely in auto-tune is amusing for the first two missions, then I endeavored never to meet him again. On a more socially acceptable level, the vengeful Shaundi make a welcome return from the second game, and the seven foot tall, turtle neck wearing Oleg is a lovable addition. The humour blends a shock and awe assault of nudity and narcotics jokes with some knowing, clever one-liners. Generally, I teetered on the bring of genuine offense, but stayed on the happy side of disgusted.

Considered in isolation, the game's mechanics are solid at best. The driving is easy and fast, even if the cars feel a little weightless. Choppers are powerful but sluggish and the shooting is almost laughably easy at points. My most powerful weapon for the first third of the game was the pistol. You'll be able to wipe out room by chaining together head-shots. The game gets around this later by throwing huge hordes of stupid opponents your way, and as you progress you gain access to ever more powerful weaponry, like UAV drones and a gloriously destructive shock hammer. The combat in SR3 is rarely challenging, but it does get pretty spectacular.

This over the top combat forms the basis of SR3's co-op survival Whored Mode (aping the Gears of Wars Horde Mode). It's a good way to get into a fast fight, as you can start huge, escalating fights with any of the three gangs by wading into their territory and shooting them, but it's made redundant by the fact that a friend can jump into your campaign at any time to play.

SR3 is mad. In fact, it barely makes any sense at all. But for all its wonky bits, there's an odd charm to Volition's decision to leave nothing on the drawing board. It's not the largest sandbox, but it is packed full of brilliant toys. Saints Row: The Third's commitment to unrestricted, ridiculous fun is unflinching, and the product is a city full of glorious slapstick debauchery.

Vital Statistics
Price $45
Developer Volition
Publisher THQ
Multiplayer 2-player co-op
DRM Stream

Needs 2 GHz dual core, 2GB RAM, 320MB DX9 card
Wants Quad core CPU, 4GB RAM, 1GB DX11 card