News Archive
Friday, February 29th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Other
When we first reviewed NVIDIA's new GeForce 9600 GT we noticed a discrepancy between the advertised core speed and the frequency reported by the clock generator. After further investigation we can now answer what causes this.
German site
Allround-PC.com has acquired a few new pictures of NVIDIA's upcoming 9800 GX2 graphics card, which is set to become the company's flagship consumer card when it's released next month. The card will have two 65nm GeForce 8800 GPUs working in SLI on a single card, with a 600MHz core, 1GHz GDDR3 memory and a 1.5GHz shader clock. The pictures are below.
MSI has taken a step to try and reduce computer power consumption slightly by building a processor fan that is powered using only heat given off by the CPU. As the processor heats up, it causes air inside a piston to expand. That forces out the piston rod, which in turn causes the fan to spin and blow air over the heatsink, as shown in the first image below. This then helps to cool the air inside the piston, causing it to contract again, pulling the piston rod back in and cooling the CPU without needing any extra electricity. The technology is by no means a modern idea - it uses a mechanism invented in 1816 by Scottish engineer Robert Stirling - but it's never before been used on a large scale for computing purposes. MSI's fan is capable of converting 70% of the heat energy given off by the CPU into kinetic energy, and the company plans to demo the cooler at next week's CeBIT show in Hanover. However, there is no news of when this fan will become available for purchase, or what prices will be like.
Microsoft has decided that Windows Vista isn't flying off the shelves quite as quickly as it would like and has issued a price cut for three of the retail versions of the software. The retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate will see its price fall by $80 from $399 to $319, and the upgrade versions of Vista Ultimate and Home Premium will have price cuts of $40 and $30 respectively, meaning they'll now set you back $259 and $129. The price cuts will apply to 70 countries world-wide (although figures may vary slightly), and will come into place with the introduction of Service Pack One for Vista. Microsoft has already sold over 100 million copies of the operating system since its release late in 2006, but sales have been hindered slightly by users preferring to stick with Windows XP rather than move to Vista.
ASRock looks set to continue its drive towards reaching the higher end of the motherboard market with its upcoming Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi. The board comes equipped with an nForce 680i chipset and three PCI-E x16 slots, which makes it capable of running a 3-way SLI system. It supports the newest Yorkfield and Wolfdale processors with up to 8GB of DDR2-800 RAM, and features onboard gigabit LAN, WiFi, Realtek ALC890 HD audio, six SATAII ports and eSATA support. There's no official word on pricing or availability yet, but this board is likely to be one of the more affordable options when building a 3-way SLI system.
TUL Corporation - a leading manufacture of AMD graphics cards today announces Pimp my rig competition that will begin today and ends on the 16th of March where the users from all around the world can join to compete for the slowest computer in the world.
Who manages to make the slowest 3Dmark 2003 score will be pimped with the fastest upgrade on the planet, PowerColor HD3850 PCS AGP featuring ZeroTherm GX810 cooler, support for DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 and Universal Video Decode.
For more details visit:
Competition Page
Thursday, February 28th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Cases
The Apevia X-Jupiter Jr. is a very cool looking case at a very low price point. This means you can expect a flashy exterior with a traditional interior, making it a great budget LAN party case. The case comes features a door with integrated LCD temperature display and is available in a wide range of colors.
Google today introduced Google Sites, an application that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information in one place - including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text - and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organization, or the world.
"Creating a team web site has always been too complicated, requiring dedicated hardware and software as well as programming skills," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of enterprise, Google. "Now with Google Sites, anyone can create an entirely customized site in minutes and invite others to contribute. We are literally adding an edit button to the web."
The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco attracts the top creative minds in the video game industry. With that audience on hand, Nintendo announces news that reinforces its commitment to provide entertaining and enriching experiences for veteran and new gamers alike. WiiWare , Nintendo's new downloadable game service, launches May 12 and expands development opportunities for developers the same way Wii expanded the world of video game players. Wii Fit , the upcoming title for Wii, launches May 19 and introduces the Wii Balance Board peripheral. And Super Smash Bros. Brawl draws in fans of all kinds.
Today, abit launches the latest Multimedia Platform motherboard, the I-G31. With the Intel G31 chipset, the abit I-G31 supports Intel Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo & Pentium Dual-Core processors. With Intel's integrated Graphics Media Accelerator (Intel GMA 3100), the abit I-G31 not only offers advanced Clear Video Technology but also supports DirectX 9.0, Shader Model 2.0 and OpenGL 1.4. The abit I-G31 is compatible with next generation 45nm processors allowing for up to 1333FSB. To easily build a comfortable and powerful entertainment platform, the I-G31 offers an on-board D-SUB port and 5.1 CH HD audio codec. Moreover, with abit engineered features such as the abit EQ, you have a built-in hardware control center, automatically informing you in case abnormalities should occur.
Shuttle Inc, in the run-up to CeBIT, is now supplying a Mini-PC Complete System specifically suited to gamers with its optimally-tuned configuration.
"The high performance of the specially selected components is particularly striking", explained Tom Seiffert, Head of Marketing & PR at Shuttle Computer Handels GmbH. "Our proven Heatpipe-Cooling System with its automatic rotational control is supported in this Mini-PC through the 'OASIS' chipset cooling which is also based on Heatpipes.
In celebrating a milestone of High-end CPU coolers, ASUS is proud to announce the new release of 3,200 sets of limited-edition Triton 79 AMAzing CPU coolers to commemorate its popularity among global gaming enthusiasts.
Corsair today announced the HX1000W power supply unit (PSU), the world's first 1000 watt PSU to be certified under the newly-created 3-way NVIDIA SLI Technology Certification Program from NVIDIA Corporation. The Corsair HX1000W will be debuted at the CeBIT 2008 show next week in Hanover, Germany on Corsair's stand.
NVIDIA Corporation today announced that the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) communications protocol has now officially been adopted by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), paving the way for widespread industry adoption. As a result, the ESA protocol, which details the way PC peripherals can communicate with each other, will now be added into the next revision of the USB human interface device (HID)-class definition. Continued development and refinement on the ESA specification standard will now be controlled by a USB-IF sub-committee, made of up voting members from the USB-IF.
Catering to users who require quiet computing environments, ASUS has today introduced the latest thermal solution - the V-Cool Heatsink, which will be incorporated with the EAH3650 SILENT/HTDI/512M and EAH3650 SILENT/HTDI/256M graphic cards. Featuring the V-Engine concept and Intercooler technology, the V-Cool Heatsink guarantees an absolutely quiet and efficient heat dissipation that enables the most stable performance.
Corsair today announced a new 16GB high performance "GT" Flash Voyager USB 2.0 drive. The new Corsair 16GB GT Flash Voyager USB drive will be debuted at the CeBIT 2008 Show next week in Hanover, Germany on Corsair's stand.
In order to provide an alternative to flat and murky sounding onboard audio, ASUS has today released the new ASUS Xonar DX audio card. Impeccably designed for fine-tuned audio quality with 116dB SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio), it is equipped with innovative technologies like Dolby Home Theater Technologies and DS3D GX to provide crisp and clear audio quality and rich gaming sound effects.
In order to further improve the soon released X48-T3R motherboard, DFI has changed the 2nd and 3rd PCIe slots position. In the first revision they were too near to each other, which prevented using three dual-slot air cooled video cards. DFI wll show the MP version with the new layout with ThermalRight heatpipe cooler at CeBIT.
The European Commission fined yesterday US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft must now pay a record 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its position. The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers. EU regulators said the firm was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling. The fines come on top of earlier fines of 280m euros imposed in July 2006, and of 497m euros in March 2004. "Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. "As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future," Microsoft responded.
Wednesday, February 27th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
CPU Coolers
On the heels of the successful NH-U12F CPU heatsink, Noctua has released a newer, more compatible version called the NH-U12P. This version has more clearance below the fins, making it easier to install on many motherboards. It comes with the new, ultra-quiet NF-P12 fan and a tube of the new NT-H1 thermal compound.
Taipei, Taiwan, February 26, 2008 -Catering to users who need a powerful motherboard with high speeds and great expansion slot interface support, ASUS, worldwide leader in motherboard design and production, has today released the Z7S WS workstation motherboard. This innovative motherboard is equipped with dual socket 771 and utilizes the latest Intel 5400 chipset for vigorous performance. It also supports fully buffered DDR2 800MHz dual-channel memory, dual PCI Express 2.0 x16 lanes; and comes in the compact CEB form factor. With this innovative motherboard, users will enjoy convenient slot expansion and enjoy fast and efficient work efficiency.
VR-Zone informs that the upcoming GeForce 9800 GX2 launch will be delayed again till March 18th. No reasons was provided by NVIDIA, but the delay is probably due to driver issues. Right now, according to unconfirmed reports the card is scoring about 14k+ in 3DMark06, which is lower than Radeon HD 3870 X2.
Ubisoft has released two tech movies from Far Cry 2 trailer, showcasing this first person shooter sequel in the works at Ubisoft's Montreal studio. Developed for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, Far Cry 2 is scheduled to ship in Spring 2008.
Far Cry 2 Tree Regeneration Tech Trailer (HD) Online (
512.95MB)
Far Cry 2 Day and Night Cycle Tech Trailer (HD)Online (
535MB)
Mozilla Corporation today announced Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download from
here. Due to the security fixes, this update is strongly recommend to all Thunderbird users. If you already have Thunderbird 2.0.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting "Check for Updates…" from the Help menu. For a list of changes and more information, please review the
Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 Release Notes.
Tuesday, February 26th 2008
Today's Reviews
A consortium of six international companies announced they have executed agreements to build a high-bandwidth subsea fiber optic cable linking the United States and Japan. The construction of the new Trans-Pacific infrastructure will cost an estimated US$300 million.
The new cable system - named Unity - will address broadband demand by providing much needed capacity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data and Internet traffic between Asia and the United States. Unity is expected to initially increase Trans-Pacific lit cable capacity by about 20 percent, with the potential to add up to 7.68 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.
All you iPhone owners out there should know that Apple released firmware update 1.1.4 today for the iPhone. The last update - 1.1.3, introduced a few new capabilities such as the ability to customize the home page, but the only thing noted as new in 1.1.4 are "bug fixes". Please connect your iPhone to iTunes to start downloading the new software.
In June, a new PSP Entertainment Pack will also be hitting stores, featuring the famous face of the Ghost of Sparta - Kratos. Available for $199.99 (MSRP), you'll get:
- Limited-edition "Deep Red" PSP with Kratos silkscreened on the back
- God of War: Chains of Olympus game
- Superbad on UMD video
- Voucher to download Syphon Filter: Combat Ops from PLAYSTATION Store.
To coincide with the much-anticipated North American launch of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots in late Q2 2008, SCEA will introduce a special PS3 bundle. The Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 will include an 80GB PS3, the upcoming blockbuster Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and a DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller for $499.99 (MSRP). Followed by the introduction of this limited version Sony revealed another much-requested release date: SCEA will introduce the DUALSHOCK 3 wireless controller for the first time in North America in April 2008 for $54.99 (MSRP). Compatible with more than 100 PS3 games, DUALSHOCK 3 has both rumble and motion-sending SIXAXIS technologies. Of course Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will be 100% compatible with the DUALSHOCK 3.
After a few delays, the Everex CloudBook CE1200V ultra-mobile PC is finally available for purchase through
Wal-Mart for $399. The CE1200V model weighs two pounds and provides five hours of battery life, according to Everex. It features the VIA C7-M ULV processor at 1.2GHz, 512MB of DDR2 memory, a 30GB hard disk drive, the VIA UniChrome Pro IGP graphics, an integrated 1.3-megapixel web camera, built-in stereo speakers and last but not least 7-inch widescreen TFT which boasts 800x480 WVGA resolution. This small budget notebook incorporates an 802.11b/g wireless connection, an Ethernet port, two USB ports, a 4-in-1 media card reader, and a DVI-I output. The CloudBook runs gOS V2 Rocket operating system with a lot of free software from Google, Mozilla, Skype, OpenOffice.org and more.
Admittedly the majority of techPowerUp! readers are probably more interested in building their own gaming computers than buying them from large OEMs, but Dell has now launched its latest incarnation of the XPS gaming desktop. The XPS 630 is the first pre-built PC from any major manufacturer to support the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), and comes equipped with an nForce 650 chipset, two PCIe x16 slots, four HDD bays and Corsair DOMINATOR memory - the base model features an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU and a 512MB GeForce 8800 GT graphics card. Dell itself sanctions overclocking, commenting that both the CPU and memory can be pushed beyond stock speeds. The base model costs $1,299 and comes with a two year warranty, going on sale tomorrow.
Given EA's somewhat criticised reputation for takeovers (Bullfrog and Westwood come to mind), Grand Theft Auto fans may not be best pleased to hear that EA is now making a bid to acquire Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two has a number of major subsidiaries, with some of the best known being developers Rockstar and Firaxis, responsible for the GTA series and Sid Meier's more recent games such as Civilization IV; along with publisher 2K Games. The company is also responsible for other well-known titles such as Manhunt and Bioshock. EA is offering $26 per share, giving the merger an approximate value of $2.5 billion. The full press release can be read
here, and you can read on to see a statement posted by EA's CEO, John Riccitiello.
Toshiba Corporation today announced new 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD) that integrate a performance enhancing serial ATA interface: the MK1216GSG offers a storage capacity of 120GB, while the MK8016GSG has a capacity of 80GB. Mass production of both drives will start in April.
Lenovo's highly-anticipated ThinkPad X300 notebook PC, designed to compete with Apple's MacBook Air is now shipping. The ultra-thin, ultraportable ThinkPad X300 notebook measures less than three-fourths of an inch at its thinnest point, or approximately the height of a U.S. quarter coin, and has a starting weight as low as 2.9 pounds. The ThinkPad X300 notebook combines a number of leading technologies such as 1.8-inch 64 GB SSD, a 13.3-inch LED backlight WXGA+ high resolution display, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, built-in DVD burner, ultralong battery life and enhanced wireless connectivity. The ThinkPad X300 notebook starts at approximately $2,799. It is available immediately through Lenovo business partners and online at
Lenovo.com.
Memory solution provider, Power Quotient International or PQI for short today renewed its Turbo overclocking modules by introducing a reworked 240-pin DDR2-1066 4GB dual channel kit. The new kit includes two 2GB memories each made of selected 70nm modules in 128MBx8 double-sided configuration soldered on a 8-layer PCB. PQI's DDR2-1066 4GB kit is slated to work at 1066MHz (CL5-5-5-15) using only 1.92V. In addition, the modules have diamond cut heat-spreaders with a phoenix graphic design to keep your modules nice and cool. The 4GB dual channel kits will be available at the 2008 CeBIT in Hannover, Germany.
Bolstering Hitachi's position as the segment and technology leader in 2.5-inch hard drives, the company today announced volume shipment of new 5,400 RPM notebook hard drives with a maximum available capacity of 320GB. Designed to support the multi-tasking needs of consumers and commercial users balancing mobile computing and movies, music, photos and games on-the-go, the
Travelstar 5K320 delivers the right capacity and performance options to meet the needs of IT and consumer electronics manufacturers. The new drives feature optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for users requiring increased data security and enhanced availability models designed for use in 24x7 environments.
Apple today introduced new models of the
MacBook and
MacBook Pro laptops. MacBook Pro models feature the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors (running at up to 2.6GHz with 6MB of shared L2 cache), larger hard drives (up to 300GB), and 2GB of memory standard in most models. They also include the latest NVIDIA graphics processors - with up to 512MB of video memory - and an innovative Multi-Touch trackpad, first introduced in MacBook Air. The three new models of the MacBook feature faster processors and hard drives: sleek white 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz models with 120GB or 160GB 5400 rpm hard drives and a black 2.4GHz model with a massive 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive. The 2.4GHz MacBook ships with 2GB of memory standard, expandable up to 4GB across the line. Available immediately, the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models start at just $1,099 and $1,999, respectively.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it is working with IBM Corp. to deliver a powerful Windows Embedded-based plug-and-play solution to help make it faster and easier for retailers and hospitality organizations to deliver information and services to time-conscious, empowered consumers.
Qimonda AG, a leading global memory supplier, today announced its technology roadmap down to the 30nm generation and featuring cell sizes of 4F². Qimonda's innovative Buried Wordline DRAM technology combines high performance, low power consumption and small chip sizes to further advance the company's diversified product portfolio. Qimonda is introducing this leading edge technology now in 65nm and plans to begin production of a 1 Gbit DDR2 in the second half of calendar 2008.
After taking some screenshots with a special version of our GPU-Z utility, the guys over at Expreview have decided to take their GeForce 9800 GTX sample and give it a try at Futuremark 3DMark06. Using Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3GHz, 2GB of DDR2 memory, ASUS Maximus Formula X38 and a single GeForce 9800 GTX @ 675/1688/1100MHz the result is 14014 marks.
Lexar Media today announced the immediate availability of Special Edition Crucial Ballistix Tracer Red 2GB DDR2-800 memory modules. The new modules feature two rows of red activity-indicating LEDs, red ground-effects LEDs, and a red printed circuit board (PCB) stylishly covered with a striking red heat spreader with a raised, diamond-cut logo and clip-less design.
Acer plans to start offering Blu-Ray equipped laptops in the spring of this year, the company's Taiwan head explained on Monday. The executive confirmed that the computer firm will have two notebooks available with the world's first 16- and 18.4-inch widescreen notebook LCDs, capable of playing Blu-Ray movies in full HD (1920x1080) resolution. Other specifications of the portables have not been revealed, though the Blu-ray feature will likely dictate dedicated AMD or NVIDIA graphics as well as a minimum 2GB of memory. Prices should range between $1,900 and $2,240 depending on the screen sizes and configurations.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3 software, furthering the Adobe technology platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs). Developers and designers use Adobe RIA technologies to rapidly create and deploy rich, branded content and applications. The release of Adobe AIR signals the next wave of Adobe RIA innovation by bridging the real-time, dynamic capabilities of the Web with the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop. Businesses that leverage the Web as a platform are now using the latest Adobe RIA technologies to build and deploy more engaging applications with the widest reach across browsers, desktops and operating systems.
Monday, February 25th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
Biostar's new GeForce 9600 GT follows the specifications of the NVIDIA reference design to the letter. Even the cooler is unchanged. This does not have to be a bad thing. The card should be available earlier than any "special" models and also come without a price premium for overclocking you can do yourself.
Google plans on soon selling advertisment space on its web videos. They may put short video advertisments or "commercials" on YouTube and Google Video, for each video you watch. So far it is in the beta stage and they have signed up 20 customers to test the new advertisments. It will similar to AdSence, putting in advertisments that are contextually relevant to what you are watching.
Lawsuit filed against Microsoft's Vista Capable certification
A federal lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft, claiming that thier "Vista Capable" stickers are misleading. Many of the computers sporting them will only run Vista on the lowest, most basic settings. The lawsuit has been accepted by US District Judge Marsha Pechman. The issue is whether or not Microsoft tried to sell more "Vista Capable" computers by misleading customers.
New York, US and Espoo, Finland - Morph, a joint nanotechnology concept, developed by Nokia Research Center (NRC) and the University of Cambridge (UK) - was launched today alongside the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition, on view from February 24 to May 12, 2008, at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Morph features in both the exhibition catalog and on MoMA's official website.
Morph is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes. It demonstrates the ultimate functionality that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering: flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces. Dr. Bob Iannucci, Chief Technology Officer, Nokia, commented: "Nokia Research Center is looking at ways to reinvent the form and function of mobile devices; the Morph concept shows what might be possible".
As part of the total HD DVD denial, Microsoft has now started selling its Xbox 360 HD DVD drive for $49.99. The optional accessory was also officially discontinued by Microsoft last week, so be adviced that its availability from this time forward, will be limited.
After making record sales for the holiday season last year, Valve Software may now add music and video downloads to its digital distribution platform Steam. According to the company's marketing VP Doug Lombardi the new service will be operational before the end of this year.
We're also looking at other types of content like video and music,
We're definitely having those conversations and meetings, and we're reaching out to folks with other types of digital entertainment. I think before the end of the year, you'll probably see some pilot programs with other digital entertainment on Steam.
Read the full interview at
Tom's Games.
VR-Zone has obtained some details and photos of the first single GPU high-end GeForce 9 series card. The 65nm G92 based GeForce 9800 GTX (G92-P392) will come with 12-layer PCB. It will be clocked at 673MHz for the core and 1683MHz for the shader while memory clock speed is yet to be determined. The memory interface is 256-bit with 512MB of 136-pin BGA GDDR3 memory onboard. The card will come with two DVI-I and one HDTV-out. As mentioned earlier all GeForce 9800 GTX will have two SLI connectors (3-way SLI ready) and two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The card will be cooled by the CoolerMaster TM67 cooler where the fan is rated at 0.34A, 4.08W, 2900rpm, 34dBA. During 100% load the card will consume around 168W. The GeForce 9800 GTX is set to be released around April.
Three months after the introduction of the NH-U12P, which has already received more than 30 awards and recommendations from leading international websites and magazines, Noctua released today the newest version of its more compact NH-U9 series: The new
NH-U9B uses the recently announced NF-B9 92mm fan and, just like its big brother NH-U12P, will be shipped with Noctua's much acclaimed NT-H1 thermal compound.
Although the Chinese New Year festival was important to DFI's headquarters, the R&D team of DFI hasn't slowed down at all, in order to launch the new product of X48 motherboard well ahead of the preset schedule. DFI's LANParty LT X48-T3R is now just around the corner, ready to greet our enthusiasts throughout the world. This motherboard, based on Intel LGA775 socket CPU, will fully support the latest Intel 45nm process Quad-core CPU. Our LANParty LT X48-T3R features the highest end of Intel X48 + ICH10R chipset. It provides enthusiasts with a powerful strength that supports the latest CrossFire technology and the fastest FSB1600MHz, DDR3 1333 memory.
Foxconn is going to display their Quantum Force "Destroyer" Hybrid SLI board based on the MCP72 chipset over at the upcoming CeBIT. MCP72XE supports AMD AM2/AM2+ processors, PCI-E 2.0, HT 3.0, Hybrid SLI technology, a total of 19 PCI--E lanes and another 32 lanes from nForce 200 PCIe switch chip, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s and 12x USB 2.0 ports. Expect more after CeBIT starts on March 4th.
A number of Microsoft enthusiasts this week received invitations to a "limited technical beta program" for Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 1. According to the invitation, Microsoft is planning to make IE 8 Beta 1 available to the general public, as well. But before that happens, an invitation-only tet program will be conducted. The invitation describes IE 8 Beta 1 being focused on developers. Microsoft officials have said they plan to show off IE 8 at Microsoft's Mix '08 conference in early March in Las Vegas. Officials also have said they are planning to add a developer-selectable "super-standards" mode to IE 8 that would enable the browser to qualify as more standards-compliant. Microsoft still has not offered a final-delivery target date for IE 8. Microsoft released IE 7 in 2006. Microsoft officials have said they are shooting to deliver more frequent, regular builds of IE. The full text of the note Microsoft sent to IE 8 beta invitees can be see
here.
Fujitsu Limited today announced the release of its new series of MHZ2 BT 2.5" hard disk drives with world-class capacity of up to 500GB. Sales of the new series will begin at the end of May 2008. The new series responds to the growing need for hard drives in the 2.5" form factor that can handle high-volume storage for such products as digital video recorders and external hard drives.
Hynix Semiconductor announced today the launch of 2-Rank 8GB PC2-4200 RDIMM, featuring MetaRAM's MetaSDRAM technology. The HYMP31GP72CUP4-C6 effectively doubles the memory capacity of AMD Opteron-based and Intel Xeon-based systems, while lowering power consumption by up to 30% when compared to industry standard 8GB 4-Rank or 4GB 2-Rank modules. The MetaRam technology allows the use of mainstream lower cost DRAM components in the manufacture of the next generation high density DIMMs, without increasing the number of memory ranks or the load on the CPU. The 8GB 2-Rank RDIMM is built with mainstream 1Gb DDR2 SDRAMs instead of the significantly more expensive 2Gb, thus lowering the cost of the module.
Sunday, February 24th 2008
Today's Reviews
Ranger, the most powerful supercomputing system in the world for open science research, today will be dedicated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. This first-of-its-kind system entered full production on Feb. 4.
Microsoft has published a list of programs that are currently incompatible with Windows Vista SP1 "Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is an important update for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1."
Windows Vista SP1 Incompatible Programs
Saturday, February 23rd 2008
Today's Reviews
The Crysis SDK, or a compilation of Crysis mods, user created content, and other goodies, was recently punted out the door of Crytek studios. If you click "read full story", there's a big letter from the president of Crytek as to why this SDK came so late. If you'd like to nab yourself a copy, head on over
here.
It seems that America and the United Kingdom aren't the only countries caught in a sudden desire to become authoritarian. Pakistan is blocking websites that they feel either will pervert their citizens culturally or politically. YouTube recently made the list for both reasons. There's plenty of sketchy X-rated material on the website, and it's cousin, X-tube. However, it's more likely than not that YouTube was blocked in Pakistan due to political footage. To be precise, someone managed to sneak proof of election fraud, in video form, onto YouTube. Pakistan obviously doesn't want anybody to see this, so they bury the video. When it comes bouncing back later, Pakistan got mad and completely blocked out the site.
While most of us hardly even thought that Netscape was still seeing regular updates and security patches, AOL was making sure that exactly that was happening. Apparently, that's all going to stop next week, as AOL is hunting for ways to cut costs around the house. Neowin published a nice eulogy for the classic web browser all too many of us with dial-up grew to know all too well...
Netscape was founded in 1994, and quickly won customers by providing software that made it easy for people to navigate the Internet. Netscape went public a year later and saw its stock price nearly triple on its first day of trading. At one point, the company had an $8 billion market cap and 90% of the Web browser market. But soon it all went south. Microsoft introduced its Internet Explorer browser and began eating into Netscape's market share. Microsoft later paid AOL, which bought Netscape in 2000, $750 million to settle antitrust charges.
Netscape accounts for less than 1% of internet users now. Anyone known using Netscape has been sent an E-mail from the Netscape development team, urging an immediate switch to Firefox or Flock browsers.
Intel is planning on serving a heaping pile of pain to AMD's revenue/stock figures again in a few months, by developing a six-core juggernaut. While AMD is still tweaking on a way to merely get four cores to work in tandem, Intel is hard at work shoving two more cores on one die. This six-core monstrosity will be succeeded by the even beefier Nehalem micro-architecture, which could have up to eight cores on one die. Most of the Dunnington project is still top-secret, but some say that Intel already has most of the hard work done.
Intel has already put together a die, the size of a postage stamp, with three dual-core 45nm Penryn chips on it sharing a 16MB L3 cache. Allegedly, we'll see the Dunnington in either Q2 or Q3, this year
.
The title says it all. Chinese magazine Bloomberg recently discovered plans of AMD to outsource chip manufacturing. Most likely, this move would be done to reduce capital expenditure. AMD has already been testing outsourcing with IBM, and is now ready to go all the way. This is all part of a strategy Hector Ruiz likes to call "asset light". Nobody on earth other than Ruiz seems to know what, exactly, asset light is, and Ruiz refuses to elaborate upon it at this point.
Microsoft apparently didn't get the memo about HD-DVD being dead until late this week. Microsoft announced that the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 is no longer being manufactured. Those that have already been manufactured and haven't been sold yet will most likely be sold at a discounted price until they're all gone. Despite the fact that they are no longer making an HD-DVD add-on, Microsoft will still provide a full warranty for the thing. They will also provide as much support for the device as if HD-DVD didn't die earlier this week.
OCZ was the first to
demonstrate a mind-controlled gaming device at this year's CES, and now US/Australian firm Emotiv is planning to do the same. Dubbed the
Epoc, Emotiv's device is worn on the head and can detect neural activity in the brain, allowing it to be used as an input device for gaming. The Epoc is also capable of recognising facial expressions and features a gyroscope to detect head movement, meaning it could be used to create in game avatars based on players' emotions. The device is scheduled to go on sale later this year for $299 and could potentially revolutionise video gaming if it catches on.
Another day, another ForceWare driver. NVIDIA has released the 174.16 beta of its display driver, which is intended for the 9600 GT. It is available for all versions of Windows XP and Vista, and although it may support other cards the 9600 GT is the only card listed on NVIDIA's website. Download locations are as follows:
- Windows XP 32-bit - here
- Windows XP 64-bit - here
- Windows Vista 32-bit - here
- Windows Vista 64-bit - here
SPARKLE today announced the SPARKLE GeForce 9600 GT Passive Cooling Graphics Card, a mainstream graphics card product which delivers totally silent DirectX 10 operations for gamers.
SAPPHIRE Technology has just announced global availability of its exciting new HD 3870 TOXIC edition high performance graphics accelerator.
The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 TOXIC version features the award winning - and SAPPHIRE exclusive -Vapor-X single slot cooler, SAPPHIRE's implementation of Vapour Chamber Technology (VCT). This advanced cooling solution provides more efficient and quieter cooling allowing the TOXIC edition to ship overclocked out of the box, and to allow enthusiasts even more scope for performance tuning. The single slot design allows the use of multiple cards in the latest CrossFireX configurations even where PCI-Express slots are sited closely together.
Leadtek is pleased to announce the launch of new mid-range graphics cards, WinFast PX9600 GT and PX9600 GT Extreme, to cost- conscious gamers. The new cards, with all solid aluminum capacitors for ultra high durability and stability, even during over-clocking, deliver high performance through the new HCT (High-resolution Compression Technology), and present the best cost per performance ever with up to 90% performance increase on the SUB US$200 segment.
XFX officially announces its latest brainchild, the XFX Geforce 9600GT yesterday. The first born in the highly anticipated 9-series, the XFX GeForce 9600 GT pushes the gaming experience to new heights with up to 90 percent greater performance than any GeForce card in its class. This prodigal child gives a huge value for its price. The immersive entertainment experience is the powerful product of full Microsoft DirectX 10 support, NVIDIA's Quantum Effects technology, Lumenex engine as well as Unified Architecture, ensuring that this amazing new card can play the hottest games with jaw-dropping speed.
Following the huge success of the EN8600GT OC GEAR, ASUS, producer of exceptional graphical solutions, has once again introduced the world's first hardware based real-time overclocking device for graphics cards - the OC GEAR, this time bundled with AMD graphics cards in the form of the ASUS EAH3850 OC GEAR/HTDI/512M. This new version of the OC Gear will allow users to overclock both the memory clock and GPU clock for greater graphical enhancements. Additionally, the ASUS EAH3850 OC GEAR incorporates the fastest DDR3 0.8ns memory modules, and as such, will provide users with over 12% enhanced overclocking performance and gaming experiences. This powerful graphics card also utilizes the latest thermal solution - the Glaciator Fansink; that utilizes a unique fansink design to keep GPU temperatures cool.
Friday, February 22nd 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
USB Sticks
The new Classic series from A-DATA keeps the trusted and true design of traditional flash devices. The new C701 is aimed at the budget user, looking for simple and cheap flash storage.
The v1.2 Patch is 234MB, and includes multiple changes to the gameplay, user interface, networking, server administration, mod support, AI, and a few map-specific tweaks as well.
Patch can be downloaded
here.
Well, really, the title says it all. Sony is no longer offering any version of the PlayStation3 console that can actually play games that were released for the previous two Playstation consoles. At this time, the only PlayStation3 model available in stores is the 40GB model, which is not backwards compatible with anything. However, the future is not bleak in Playstation-land. Sony has long been planning a successor, which more than likely will have a larger hard drive and one or two other surprises/goodies. Unfortunately, backwards compatibility will not be among those goodies. If you're into playing PlayStation classics on next-generation hardware, you'd best get yourself an 80GB PS3 before stock completely runs out.
The Apple Air was recently pushed out into the public. The public doesn't mind it, and for those who can actually afford it, it's quite a nice laptop. It's thin, it's light, it's powerful, and it's easy to use. However, an independent firm got curious as to exactly why the Air was so expensive, so thin, and so pretty. So, they took it apart, and promptly declared it was like nothing they've ever seen, in a very bad way. Beneath the glowering surface is an ugly interior, which uses unnecessary materials, and quite possibly keeps heat trapped inside. The official statement from the investigators:
Based on the results of our teardown project, we guess Apple is not paying much attention to both workmanship of the hardware design and comprehensive cost reduction. The company seems to have focused on aspects, where its expertise lies, such as external appearance, software and user interfaces.
Enjoy. The little dashes indicate unavailable data, and the asterisks indicate unconfirmed data (which should still be reasonably accurate).
Please follow the source link for a chart of the current speculated clocks and/or specifications.
In response to one of the largest hacking scams in the history of Canada, police from Quebec raided several homes across Quebec, and arrested 16 people, between the ages of 17 and 26. Their crimes, other than making a million zombies, include creating phishing sites that earned them a respectable kickback of $45 million CAD. Canadian authorities claim that these million computers were mainly in Poland, Brazil, Manitoba, and America. Government computers may have been compromised as well, but investigators will not disclose where those computers may have been. Regardless, many of these zombies are coming back from the brink, and it seems this crisis is, for the most part, contained.
One day, a dude working for Microsoft checked his G Mail account, and then checked his Live account. He noticed that he could shove a lot more stuff on his G Mail account than he could his Live account. To be precise, Live used to hold 1GB of digital goodies, while G-Mail can hold 6.4GB. And so, this dude brought this issue to the dudes in charge of developing and maintaining Windows Live, and bumped up Skydrive storage to 5GB. This move will make several dudes who subscribe to Windows Live quite happy, and makes Live more competent with the likes of Yahoo, AOL and of course G Mail. Live Skydrive storage is officially out of beta, and available in several countries around the globe.
Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage software, which was designed to prevent piracy, is doing anything but. Cracks that get around, or even shut off, WGA are easily found by true pirates, while innocents are bagged for piracy when they've never even heard of the term. Fortunately, Microsoft has figured out how to make WGA friendly. Instead of WGA trying to use fancy code to find out if the Windows copy it is attached to is hacked, WGA will now search for the presence of common hacks, and only common hacks. This will drastically reduce the number of false flaggings, and make WGA a lot friendlier. Another large change is that the Vista version of WGA will no longer feature a "kill switch", or go into reduced functionality mode when WGA calls a hacked copy. Instead, there will be a long, politically-correct stream of dialog boxes that won't go away until you've validated. Microsoft made no mention of when this new, superior version of WGA will fly out factory doors.
One by one, the European Union territories are falling to the will of the music and movie industries. If either of those industries demands to see some information from an ISP, they'd better comply. By April 2009, if an ISP does not co-operate, then they can face legal punishment from the government. This move came after a meeting between ISPs and the recording industries, which resulted in no universally pleasing solution. The government would much rather see a voluntary solution, but understands that when that isn't going to happen, they have to step in and do what they feel is right. More secure legislation should be developed over the course of this year. Current estimates claim that over 6 million broadband internet subscribers are active pirates.
Scottish Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently unveiled epic plans to place the information of every child's health, education and social/economic status on one database for the UK to access, to much protest. The Prime Minister believes that placing all this information on one central database will eliminate confusion, streamline necessary medical care, and have all sorts of other benefits. The Prime Minister also feels that if all the information is in one central location, it will be a lot more secure, and a lot harder to lose. Most UK citizens feel that this is really not the way to be doing things, claiming that his central database would be the target of hackers, pedophiles, terrorists, and other baddies as long as the database remained operational. McAfee subsidiary SafeBoot feels otherwise. The only easy way for the previously mentioned baddies to get such touchy information is to snatch it while it's unencrypted and in transport. By eliminating several instances of unencrypted transport, and by solidifying security, things suddenly get much safer.
It turns out that stability isn't the only problem Vista SP1 has with the world. There are plenty of products that simply won't work with Service Pack 1. Now wait a minute, you might ask. This has been going on since every operating system update from the beginning of computers, what makes this one so special? When the products are from big shots like Trend Micro, Zonelabs, BitDefender, and Novell, Microsoft is more than willing to consider delaying Vista SP1 to make sure that everything will work properly. While some products are fortunate, and merely have a couple glitches, the majority of the programs listed on Microsoft's great list of incompatibility won't even start properly. The main cause of this could be anything from coding differences in the kernel to being flat out blocked. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix this by the time SP1 is released.
Valve's acclaimed puzzle-action hybrid Portal will be given a sequel, according to the game's lead designer Kimberly Swift."Well, I believe Doug Lombardi who is our lead marketing director at Valve, has announced Portal 2." said Swift in an interview with G4TV. Lombardi had previously stated that more Portal was on the way, but Swift's comment is the first mention of a true sequel to be made thus far. No further details on the project were provided. Aside from the announcement of the sequel, Portal also won the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year last night in San Francisco and has taken home the awards for Innovation and Best Game Design.
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced two new Reaper HPC solutions for enthusiasts upgrading to next generation of cutting-edge platforms. The PC3-10666 Reaper HPC Series is available in both 2GB and 4GB dual channel kits to meet the specific needs of customized gaming systems or workstations, offering perfect compatibility with the latest platforms and chipsets at a price that will be attractive to upgraders with a specific budget in mind.
Thursday, February 21st 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
Today NVIDIA announced their new GeForce 9 Series. The first product is the GeForce 9600 GT, based on the new G94 GPU. Zotac's AMP! Edition comes overclocked straight out of the box for a little bit extra performance. This can bring the card very close to the GeForce 8800 GT in performance.
Social networking giant Facebook has suffered it's first drop in members since the site was conceived, probably due to the fact that users now have a way to delete their accounts. Since January, Facebook has lost a whopping 5% of all user accounts. Why, exactly, Facebook popularity is going down the tube is a matter of speculation, at the moment. It could be that some inconsiderate Facebook application developers force users to spam their friends before they can make the application do anything. Users could simply have become tired of getting an E-mail every time they're bitten by a vampire. Perhaps Facebook was just a passing fad, and people have come to accept that it's time to move on from the social networking site.
Oh boy, more unstable drivers! If you enjoy playing with such things, ForceWare 174.13 supports the GeForce 8200, 9200, nForce 730a, 750a, 780a and GeForce 9800GX2. Here are linkies if you want to give it a whirl.
ForceWare 174.13 x86.
ForceWare 174.13 x64.
"Pirate chasing" lawyer Espen Tøndel works for the MPAA, and would love to see everyone who's ever used a file sharing network/client to download or upload copyrighted content either make reparations or go to jail. Tøndel was most recently seen in Norway, chasing a bunch of IP addresses. When Tøndel took this list of IP addresses to the police, they flat out told him that they will not chase petty criminals when murderers, rapists and other baddies roam Norwegian streets. Tøndel, infuriated, decided to take his case to higher court. He requested a meeting with the Norwegian department of justice. He instead got a flat "no" answer, and was effectively told that he might as well file suits against the pile of IP addresses, because no Norwegian police agency was going to bother itself with solving the petty piracy cases. It is unclear whether or not Tøndel has actually tried to sue the IP addresses, or if the suits utterly failed because he never could tie the IP addresses to a name.
Things are definitely looking up for AMD, especially if this little rumor turns out to be true. ASUS just might have placed a very large order of AMD Sempron CPUs. If ASUS did, in fact, buy a bunch of Semprons, it would be a sign that ASUS is trying to get AMD some market recognition, and that AMD is going to get some revenue this fiscal quarter. These Semprons would most likely find themselves in EeePCs, especially considering ASUS announced plans to make more EeePCs.
Face it, the Windows XP code is reliable, practical, useful, secure and cost-effective. Most people, especially those in the business sector, simply don't see the need to upgrade to Windows Vista. It's no news that Windows XP Service Pack 3 is coming out soon. However, Microsoft may not have considered the effect XP SP3 may have on Vista sales. If a lot of users adopt XP SP3, they may be even less tempted to move on to Windows Vista, which is ultimately what Microsoft would like their customers to do. However, Microsoft may find that XP SP3 doesn't have any effect on Vista sales at all. After all, those who want Windows Vista will upgrade to Windows Vista, no matter what XP offers. Those who want to stick with XP will stick with XP, and may not even upgrade to the latest service pack.
Solid State Drives hardly need an introduction. Putting your operating system and other important files on an ultra-quick flash drive makes everything a lot faster. Unfortunately, at this point, it also makes things a lot more expensive. Current offerings from brands such as Apple and Alienware increase the overall laptop price by anywhere from between $900 and $1300 USD. Analysts predict that this situation is not likely to get any better in the near future. They cite that the main reason has to do with actual storage offered by the SSD. 64GB of storage on the main hard disk simply does not cut it for most users, especially those willing to spend several hundred dollars just for the speed upgrade. Until big SSDs are available for a low price, they simply will not catch on. Analysts think that SSDs will catch on about five years from now.
In a desperate bid to get children off their rear ends and out into the real world, New Mexico is currently trying to get a bill passed which will effectively tax video games and televisions. At this point, the tax would be almost negligible (1% extra on all appropriate paraphernalia). Dubbed the "Television Tax", the funds gathered from it would actually be put towards noble causes. Funds will be used to...
- Develop curriculum-based programs for teachers to use on public lands and at other outdoor learning sites for outdoor education initiatives.
- Develop hands-on teaching materials for children for use in outdoor education programs.
- Provide transportation for children to experience outdoor education programs.
- Provide substantial and frequent outdoor experiences for children.
- Increase outdoor nature-oriented physical activity programs for school-age children.
With Windows and Macintosh operating system refreshes/updates abound, someone has to separate the good from the bad. PC World is doing their part by pointing out whom they fell falls into the extremely good category. When one particular review member got their hands on Mac OS X 10.5.2, they simply couldn't stop flowering it with praise. Four pages of amazement can be summed up in the following points, and elaborated upon by following the source link.
- The operating system has plenty of features which have real-world application, such as truly automated backups, document and spreadsheet preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program.
- Leopard is "startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences and innovations".
- Whatever glitches were originally in the Leopard release are all but eliminated.
The Nintendo Wii has become a strange source of physical exercise, with worldwide reports of gamers shedding pounds while sweating to Wii Sports. Seeing the extremely lucrative business that exercise can be, Nintendo decided to build upon previous success and make a Wii game sheerly built around exercise. The game, Wii Fit, requires a special controller. This controller, which has been redesigned for an American and European release, can hold 150KG and allows users to better interface with the system. Over one million copies of Wii Fit have been sold since it was released in Japan on December 1st. Expect to see this game in America by May 19, and in Europe by April 15.
Given that Toshiba has now officially
discontinued its HD DVD business, this news acts merely as an extra nail in the format's coffin. Paramount has become the last of the big six Hollywood studios to decide upon Blu-ray, saying:
We are pleased that the industry is moving to a single high-definition format, as we believe it is in the best interest of the consumer," the statement reads. "As we look to (begin) releasing our titles on Blu-ray, we will monitor consumer adoption and determine our release plans accordingly.
Universal, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios and Warner have already made the switch to Blu-ray, which looks almost certain to become the dominant high definition format for the next few years.
When the going gets rough, people simply don't see a need to spend so much on luxuries. A prevalent example is Apple. Now that the economy as a whole is slowing down, Apple is realizing that people simply aren't going to buy a gazillion iPhones and iPods this year. Considering the majority of the aforementioned devices used memory from NAND, Apple suddenly decided that they don't need to buy so much memory from NAND after all. Estimates of growth for NAND suddenly took a turn for the worse, going from upwards of 30% to a rather low single-digit number. Unfortunately for NAND, this announcement comes after NAND decided to increase capital investment by 20%. DRAM, on the other hand, has it worse. They've already predicted abysmal growth, but with a continuing demand for low RAM prices, abysmal growth translates into extreme losses.
NVIDIA Corporation, also unveiled today the first graphics processing unit (GPU) of its next-generation GeForce 9 Series that may offer the largest single-generation performance jump in the Company's history. Introduced today, the NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT GPU delivers up to 116%* more performance than its predecessor at a price below $199.
NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today introduced the NVIDIA Quadro FX 3600M professional GPU for notebook and laptop workstations. This new graphics solution defines a new level of graphics performance and advanced visual computing for designers, engineers, and scientists who demand the functionality of a desktop workstation on a notebook platform.
BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC 512MB PCI Express 2.0 graphics card for a suggested retail price of $229.99 USD. "The BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT OC offers users a great performing card at an affordable price", said John Malley, senior director of marketing for BFG Technologies.
Just like ASUS did a couple of weeks ago, today MSI listed their Intel P35 and X38 motherboards that are officially 1600FSB-ready. Look at the chart below to see if your motherboard is among the listed.
In a landmark announcement during the keynote address at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), Microsoft Corp. promised to soon allow Xbox LIVE members to play, rate and share community-created games. As the first in the industry to pioneer high-speed online gaming and high-definition games, Xbox 360 once again broke new ground by introducing a new, open distribution service for games created by the community and soon playable by its 10 million Xbox LIVE members. Community-created games on Xbox LIVE will quickly double the size of the Xbox 360 game library. By the end of 2008, Xbox 360 owners will have access to more than 1,000 games, making it the largest, most creatively diverse library across all next-generation platforms.
Havok, the premier provider of interactive software and services to digital creators in the games and movie industries, today announced that the company will offer the PC version of its award-winning physics and animation software product - Havok Complete - for download free of charge. Available for non-commercial use, Havok Complete for the PC will be freely downloadable in May 2008.
ASUS, producer of top-notch LCD monitors, has outlined plans to bring in a new collection of built-in webcam LCD monitors in 19" W, 22" W, 24" W and bigger sizes. Designed to be the most versatile 24"W LCD monitor in the market, the ASUS MK241H LCD monitor features native HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) support for Full HD 1080p video playback; and has a built-in 1.3 Mega-pixel webcam and array microphones to deliver the best video and audio online communication experiences. It also utilizes the exclusive Color Rich Technology for enhanced higher-color-gamut video performance with 130% extra color space.
Wednesday, February 20th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Notebook Coolers
The Zalman NC2000 is a notebook cooler made of a solid aluminum sheet and black plastic bottom. Two fans cool the entire underside of the notebook and can be manually adjusted as well to find the perfect balance between cooling and fan noise.
Review
USB Sticks
A-Data continues to innovate the USB Flash Drive segment with new and unique designs. The Sport series features a sturdy metal frame with rubber padding, to make it durable for use during outdoor activities. A-Data's Sport S702 will sure go well on any key chain.
Oh snap, another world record in the intense world of benchmarking. MemoryExtreme Team ITALY recently nabbed the 3DMark crown in both 3DMark05 and 3DMark06. System specs and screenshots are below. Enjoy.
- Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 5800MHz
- ASUS P5E3 WS
- 2 x 1024 Cellshock DDR3 1800
- 2 x Radeon HD 2900XT 1250MHz/1880MHz
- Ultra X3 1600W power supply
- CPU pot MM rev3
- GPU pot Tek 9 3.0
- 80 liters of liquid nitrogen
Retail stores around Japan apparently got the hint that Toshiba recently gave up the HD format war. As piles of outmoded equipment pile up, retailers are anxious to get rid of them. In some stores, HD-DVD recorders can be found at the same price as older DVD recorders. At this point, the real savings can only be found in places around Tokyo, where the original story was recorded. However, expect retailers around the whole world to begin seriously discounting HD-DVD equipment. After all, the industry has decided on Blu-ray.
New medical research confirms what hardware enthusiasts, gamers, workaholics and teenagers have known for a while: people are literally becoming addicted to technology. Professor Nada Kakabadse of Northampton University got concerned when she noticed people that had a serious problem putting away their phones, PDAs and other links to the digital world. Remarkably, Professor Kakabadse was able to link addiction to technology and addiction to sex. The professer found that nearly a third of everyone carrying a technological device is addicted. This is most likely because we are creatures of habit, and "can get addicted to anything that is remotely interesting." Professor Kakabadse also was quick to point out that technology got a lot more addicting since the introduction of the internet. Witty Inquirer writer Nick Farrell wonders how the professor could possibly avoid citing porn as a reason for this sudden burst inaddiction.
AMD today announced that it has open sourced it's AMD Performance Library (APL). Now referred to as "Framewave version 1.0," the goal of this new open source project is to further enable the performance-optimized APL and expand its functionality beyond the existing core media capabilities, ensuring developers have an accelerated conduit to high performance application development. Contributions by partners, customers and the broader open-source software development community will accelerate library optimizations and feature enhancements in-line with their respective needs while AMD software engineers will continue to be dedicated contributors to the Framewave project.
Yesterday, we brought you the news of a fine piece of Linux equipment: a £100 ($200USD) laptop built for mass deployment in classrooms everywhere. Today, we bring you news of what exactly will be under the hood. The whole kit and kaboodle runs off of an optimized Debian kernel, and has a slew of useful applications. To make things simple and to spread the Elonex ONE brand, all applications will be branded. For example, to access the internet, you use ONEInternet, to write stuff you use ONEWord...etcetera.
Anywho. As far as hardware goes, the laptop will sport 1GB of flash-based storage, 128MB of DDRII RAM, a seven-inch 800x480 screen, two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and an audio jack. Networking will be provided by an 802.11G adapter, and a 10/100 Ethernet adapter. The processor is still very much unknown, but it is likely going to be a LNX Code 8 Mobile Processor running at 300MHz. Expect official specifications, and product deployment, on February 28th.
World of Warcraft is not known as the most friendly game with the real world. With over 10 million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is the bane of gamers everywhere who want to do something out in the real world. Case in point: a former female Blizzard employee gave her husband a copy of World of Warcraft in Christmas 2004. World of Warcraft basically wrecked the man.
He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he'd play until three a.m. Weekends were worse - it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night. It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life.
Six years of marriage went down the drain, things like personal hygiene, bills, and even romance took second-stage to his World of Warcraft addiction. The poor woman eventually filed for divorce, citing World of Warcraft as the reason. Since the divorce, the woman cut back on the time she spent playing WoW. The man, however, still plays "religiously".
So, it turns out that Microsoft was developing a new version of Windows Live Messenger, released it, and is trying to get everyone on the upgrade bandwagon. While everyone running the previous/beta versions of Windows Live Messenger will be getting pretty prompts, it seems that there is a small problem. Anyone running a 64-bit operating environment, whether or not you're running XP or Vista, cannot upgrade to the latest version of Windows Live Messenger. In fact, it almost seems like Microsoft has dumped an x64 version of Windows Live Messenger altogether. The most recent version available for x64 customers is 8.1, while the current version is 8.5.
Today at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC), Logitech announced the Logitech Driving Force GT racing wheel, the official wheel of Gran Turismo. Featuring powerful force feedback and an innovative 24-position real-time adjustment dial for on-the-fly control of brake bias, traction and damper settings, the Logitech Driving Force GT gives gamers the most accurate and authentic PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) racing experience.
AMD is taking the whole concept of a next-generation product flying out of NVIDIA's factory doors with an unnerving level of calm. The main points of a press conference...
- The 9600GT, in benchmarks scores roughly between an HD3850 and an HD3870. The HD3850 can be had for $169USD, and the HD3870 can be had for $189USD. Suggested MSRP for the 9600GT: $169-189USD.
- The current offerings from AMD are more feature rich than the 9600GT. Such features are DirectX 10.1, 55nm manufacturing, and built-in HDCP encoding.
- AMD's offerings currently beat the 9600GT in terms of heat, power consumption and noise.
The validity of the second point can be debated, considering DX10.1 games are still a ways away, and most users are hard-pressed to find the exact difference between DX10.1 and DX10.
Microsoft had a rather clever idea. Why not use the worm virus for a useful purpose, such as updating Windows? Microsoft, for a while, was researching a way to make the worm code more efficient, and was going to put it to good use. That way, important security updates could spread just as quickly as viruses, if not quicker, considering that Microsoft's best were in the study. However, this idea was received about as well as the Giants victory in Super Bowl XLII. Some people cheered, but most people cried foul. Using a worm to spread things like Windows Updates would be a massive invasion of privacy, does not allow a user to say no to an update and would totally bungle up any attempt to uninstall or interrupt installation. What's worse is what would happen if a bad guy got their hands on the enhanced worm code.
Microsoft, upon hearing what users thought of a worm-based security patch, decided against using it. If the new worm they've developed will have any benevolent use, we certainly haven't heard of it yet.
Toshiba is going to buy all Cell manufacturing duties from Sony for ¥90 billion (roughly $835 million USD). Actually, they've been going to do this since October 2007. At the time, though, it seemed like Sony wouldn't have any say in the operation of the facility. Now, in the middle of February, the deal has changed. The running of all Cell manufacturing facilities will be done as a joint venture, and some more details of the sale/incorporation have surfaced. On April 1st, Toshiba and Sony will begin their joint venture. Now that Toshiba has exited the HD-DVD market, they will put a lot of focus towards SSD drives, and making the Cell processor. Toshiba will actually incorporate the Cell into some nifty new HDTV's. We'll keep you posted.
Just one day before the release of the GeForce 9600 GT, AMD has decided to cut the prices of the Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 512MB versions. The price cuts will first be felt in the US followed by the rest of the world and will see the HD 3870 go from $244 to $189 and the 512MB HD 3850 from $199 to $169. Earlier today Advanced Micro Devices also pointed out that AMD offers better performance with its HD 3870 Series, compared to GeForce 9600 GT, based on the preliminary benchmark results posted on the net. After tomorrow we'll see about that for real.
Global leaders of the PC gaming industry announced today the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization that unites hardware and software creators, game developers and publishers, and others committed to the PC gaming market with the common purpose of advancing the PC as a worldwide gaming platform.
Together, PCGA and its member companies will work to accelerate innovation, improve the gaming experience for consumers and serve as a collective source of market information and expertise on PC gaming.
Members of PCGA are Acer Inc./Gateway Inc., Activision Publishing Inc., AMD, Dell/Alienware, Epic Games, Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., NVIDIA Corp. and Razer USA Ltd.
Vista SP1 was recently handed out to some select testers, with mixed results. However, things took a turn for the worse when Microsoft tried to release one of the first updates to SP1. Update KB937287 will effectively freeze most computers caught trying to put it onboard. Most users who will get a problem don't see the issue until it is too late. There is a general consensus that users will see a certain "Configuring updates: stage 3 of 3 - 0% complete" error, and then get stuck in a reboot cycle. When Microsoft caught wind of this, they began an investigation. The report will determine how widespread the problem is, how to fix KB937287 and if this error can somehow be fixed. Until then, Microsoft has pulled the update before it can brick more computers. At this point, the best way to fix this is to stick in your Windows Vista install CD, and run System Restore from the CD. If you somehow manage to fix your PC, Microsoft urges that you turn off Windows Update until they sort out this whole mess.
TorrentFreak summed up the gist of this story in a short paragraph.
Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.
Basically, ISPs like Comcast block piracy by banning the extensions BitTorrent trackers use. BitTorrent clients are currently adapting to a new file extension, so that Comcast subscribers are once again free to download and share whatever they please freely. Please check the source link for a more detailed description of how the crack worked. TechPowerUp! does not condone piracy.
While The Pirate Bay, itself, is not involved in any crime (which is really the only reason that groups like the RIAA haven't been able to get a conviction on any of the administrators just yet), it certainly is a host to all manner of evil. Most recently, the torrent tracker found a 125MB zip file, which turns out to be the backup from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website. The torrent was actually seeded from a Harvard-based IP address, and carries all manner of information, passwords, and files. The .NFO file, in broken English, reads as follows:
Maybe you don't like it but this is to demonstrate that persons like tgatton(admin of the server) in they don't know how to secure a website.
This is the first security breach since 2005. Harvard is currently working on patching the breach, and at this point, the main website that was hacked is down.
Today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2008, Microsoft Corp. provided an exciting glimpse at what promises to be another landmark year for games and online entertainment on the Xbox 360 platform and officially announced the launch of "Gears of War 2," exclusively for Xbox 360 this November.
Microsoft has now made the second release candidate of Windows XP's third service pack available to the public, which can be obtained via Windows update after downloading a registry patch from Microsoft. You can download the registry patch
here [38KB], but before you do so it is recommended that you remove any previous beta or release candidate version of SP3 from your system. The RTM version of the service pack should become available during the first half of 2008.
VVIKOO, the professional and innovative graphics card supplier, today released its first GeForce 9 series graphics card - VVIKOO GeForce 9600GT Turbo. Equipped with the latest NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT graphics chip (D9P) and Zalman's VF-1000 pure cooper cooler, VVIKOO GeForce 9600GT Turbo can totally satisfy the gamers' and enthusiasts' desire for both quality and performance.
Reconnect, a free drop-off program to recycle unwanted computers, was introduced today by Dell and Goodwill Industries of Northwest Ohio.
- Reconnect offers consumers in northwest Ohio free recycling for any brand of computer equipment in any condition. Residents can find a drop-off location at www.reconnectpartnership.com .
- Program goals are to divert nearly 1 million pounds of used computers and computer equipment from area landfills over the next year; and provide consumer education on the importance of environmentally-responsible computer disposal. Reconnect also can help create job opportunities for individuals with disabilities and other employment barriers.
- Reconnect programs currently exist in Austin, Texas, (15 counties in Central Texas), San Francisco (Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties), San Antonio (23 counties in Central and South Texas), North Carolina (49 counties), San Diego County, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, as well as throughout the states of Michigan and New Jersey.
To better integrate with various room types in the modern digital home, ASUS, producer of high quality Digital Home products, has released a new desktop PC - the Nova P22. The space-saving Nova features an Intel Core2 Duo Desktop Processor, WiFi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0 technology for robust multitasking and communication. Operating at a mere 25 decibels, (below human hearing) the P22 offers multimedia enjoyment free of distraction. Its diminutive footprint, slot-loading drive and a classy exterior revisits the multimedia system concept on a whole new level.
Apple today introduced
Xsan 2, the first major upgrade to its easy-to-use, high-performance, enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system for Mac OS X. Xsan 2 combines enhanced performance with Apple's legendary ease of use, allowing even first-time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN. It introduces MultiSAN, which allows users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time. Fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard, Xsan is also now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.
Avatar Reality Inc., a new development entity dedicated to the advancement of online community building, today announced it will provide a sneak preview of its upcoming massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW), Blue Mars, at the 2008 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Booth 418 in the West Hall Career Pavilion. Set in Terraformed Mars in the year 2177 AD, Blue Mars will feature stunning graphics, realistic characters and endless gaming attractions that will allow players to build and simulate real-life scenarios by creating personalized characters, or avatars. The MMVW will launch in a public beta version at the end of 2008. At GDC, Avatar Reality will conduct an interactive tour of Blue Mars attractions which highlight breathtaking graphics through the utilization of CryTek's game middleware CryENGINE 2. Additionally, they will preview their scripting game development environment which enables third party developers to easily build rich 3D casual games, and their proprietary Avatar Technology, which enables realistic character appearance and animation.
Tuesday, February 19th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
The HIS Radeon HD 3850 IceQ3 comes with a high end dual slot cooler, 512 MB of fast GDDR3 memory and increased clocks at a price tag of $199. This winning combination gets very close in performance to the much more expensive HD 3870 and can even surpass it when overclocked.
Review
CPU Coolers
The Xigmatek HDT-S1283 is a massive cooler with just as big 8 mm heat pipes. With the heat pipes actually making contact on the CPU this cooler shows us something different in the way of keeping your CPU cool. The cooler is in a line of products from Xigmatek making its way into the rigs around the world.
It has been three months since Demonoid went offline at the hands of Canadian authorities. However, for some odd reason, the Demonoid tracker is responding again. Since the frontend was hosted in America, the Subdemon forums never even went down. The tracker itself is hosted in Malaysia now, and has been online for a little more than 2 days. While pirates everywhere will likely begin using the Demonoid tracker, the site itself is still down, and there has been no word from the official Demonoid team. In regards to restarting one of the most famous Bittorrent trackers of all time, founder and admin Deimos has this to say.
Money is an issue, but the real problem at the moment is finding a suitable place to host the website. There has been no luck there. And there's some personal stuff I need to take care of that takes most of my time at the moment, and that does not help.
Please check the source link for a history lesson on Demonoid.
When the Nintendo Wii was first released, several people took Wii Sports too seriously. The wrist straps to the controllers snapped, and Wiimotes went flying into a plethora of very fragile things. When Nintendo replaced the straps with much stronger ones, it seems that some people went crazy. Now, several reports are coming in that Wii gamers are facing a new problem: tendinitis, due to moving too much. Since gamers get much more physically into the game than they normally would, they try to mimic the actual movement the activity on screen would require. This stresses muscles a lot more than you'd think, especially after a long period of time. Most problems are surfacing in 30-40 year olds, who really don't play too many video games, and suddenly became very involved in Wii gaming. Strangely, it's actually children that warn adults not to get too into gaming.
It seemed that no matter what, nobody could get their A64 up past 4.2GHz. When people's chips didn't simply crap out, they got cold bugs. However, the Black Edition cards really changed things, and someone finally got lucky. An overclocker named Kris recently submitted the valid result of 4851MHz from their A64 5000+. Kris used an Abit AN-M2HD motherboard, based on the NVIDIA GeForce 7050 chipset. Nordic Hardware is currently working with CPU-Z to completely validate this claim. After all, this is a monumental achievement, considering the last A64 record was 4.26GHz.
MVKTech took it upon himself to punt another great version of everyone's favorite NVIDIA BIOS editor, NiBiTor, out into the hungry world of hardware enthusiasts/modders/overclockers. Version 3.7a mainly fixes a bunch of support issues. Namely, it fixes issues with the GeForce 8800GS, 6800XE, and QuaddroFX540. NiBiTor 3.7a also adds support for all current cards on the market running off of the G92 core. The Auto Select Timing Set is also fixed.
If you'd like to download, install, and run the latest version of NiBiTor, please go
here. We're not liable if you blow up your computer.
Well, really, the title says it all. Everyone buying a 9800GT will get the great and wonderful 3-way SLI technology, should they desire to run three graphics cards in one PC. While the 9800GT does run off of the G92 core, what really sets it apart to allow for three-way SLI is the second SLI connector on each card, and quite a few modifications to the G92 chip. The entire GeForce 9x00 series should be released by the middle of March.
Microsoft DreamSpark will provide, free of charge, professional level development programs for students in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. Within the next six months the program will be expanded to students in Australia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and many more countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Microsoft plans to include High School students in the program around third quarter 2008. Why is Microsoft doing this? Joe Wilson, Microsoft's Senior Director of Academic Initiatives, had this to say.
"We believe students can do amazing things with technology if given access to the right tools. This is a way to make sure that they have what they need to test the boundaries of what today's technology can do and also prepare for a great career at the same time. The added benefit to industry is that we're addressing one of the toughest challenges confronting employers today: attracting and developing qualified IT professionals. We're trying to help close this gap by giving students globally the opportunity to get the tools they'll need after they graduate and jump-start their careers to land that first job."
While Microsoft may initially have nothing to gain from the program, over the long-term it may have a significant effect. Students who use Microsoft's programs while in school will inevitably become more familiar with Microsoft's programs than with software from competitors. When students eventually enter the workforce they will most likely wish to continue using the software they are most familiar with and will have their companies purchase Microsoft software for them.
Samsung Electronics announced today shipment of the industry's fastest DVD burner the new Super-WriteMaster SH-S223. The SH-S223 drive offers a powerful over-speed performance features that enable consumers to burn data at high speeds - even on low speed media. With over-speed recording, users can write at 22x speeds on 16x media and 12x speeds on 8x media. The SH-S223 drive provides fast recording speeds across a gamut of different data media types including: 22x DVD±R recording, 12x DVD-RAM recording, 16x DVD+R Dual Layer recording, 12x DVD-R Dual Layer recording, 8x DVD+RW recording and 6x DVD-RW recording. The drive will be offered with SATA interface and Samsung's live firmware update program for quick firmware upgrades over the Internet. As with Samsung's complete WriteMaster optical disc drive lineup, the SH-S223 also features specific technology that ensures best-of-breed performance including SAT (Speed Adjustment Technology), TAC (Tilt Actuator Compensation) and Double OPC (Optimum Power Control). The SH-S223 is also eco-friendly designed and is RoHS compliant.
Alienware, the leading manufacturer of high-performance desktop, notebook and entertainment systems, is now equipping the Area-51 m15x notebook computer with the new 45nm Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor working at 2.8GHz. This makes the Area-51 m15x, released earlier this year, the first and only 15.4-inch notebook to feature this unique and powerful processor. Intel's new Core 2 Extreme X9000 CPU features 6MB of shared L2 cache and an 800MHz front side bus. Couple all that rough power with NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB GPU, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory and optional 64GB SSD drive and you'll get quite the idea of Area-51 m15x. "Now, with the addition of an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000, we've made the world's most powerful 15.4-inch notebook even more powerful." said Bryan de Zayas, Associate Director for Product Marketing at Alienware. For more information on the Area-51 m15x, please go
here.
While some in America, particularly the crowd on Wall Street, would tell you that America is facing a depression, anyone who chose a career field in I.T. would beg to differ. The average salary for anyone involved with I.T. reached record proportions, or $32.39 an hour, to be precise. However, the firm that performed the analysis warns that everything is not well in the world of I.T. careers. These record salaries are the end of a growth spurt in I.T. salaries, and already growth is slowing down. Over the past year, several large companies announced lay-offs, showing that less people to pay may have had a large affect on these salaries. If you're a high school junior and trying to decide what to do with the rest of your life, assuming you want to go into I.T., or you're much older and want a career change, you'll be happy to know that there is a demand for SAP talent, project managers, and data warehousing skills.
So somebody made a
video that put Mac users on the spot. So what? The thing is, what the narrator is getting at is actually true. While this "snob factor" at first sounds like a bunch of fanboyish humor, studies conducted nationwide found that Mac users fit into a ton of stereotypes. The simple version of the conlusion: Mac users are, generally speaking, "self centered, arrogant and conceited." To back up these extreme conclusions, there are studies out there showing that Mac users are...
- More likely to buy teeth-whitening products and fashionable clothes/sneakers(self-centered).
- More likely to buy organic food and eco-friendly products, regardless of how much they cost.
This isn't all bad for Mac users though. Mac users were over three times more likely to legitimately purchase music than their PC-using counterparts.
If German site called
HARTWARE.NET is to be believed, AMD's next generation of Radeon graphics cards could be released as early as June this year. According to the site, an AMD roadmap it has managed to acquire shows seven upcoming cards, the Radeon HD 4450, Radeon HD 4470, Radeon HD 4650, Radeon HD 4670, Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870, and Radeon HD 4870 X2. The 4400 cards will apparently feature 40 stream processors, the 4600 cards will have 240 and the 4800 cards will have 480 (with the X2 featuring 960 overall, 480 on each core). There is no firm indication of clock speeds, but the 4600 and 4800 cards are expected to run somewhere between 800MHz and 1050MHz depending on the model, ranging from 128MB of DDR2 to 1GB of GDDR5 memory. However, there are no details of which cards will be released when, just that the initial launch could be sometime in June. Remember that this information might not be completely reliable and shouldn't be interpreted as firm facts.
Despite much talk, Apple is currently "dead in the water" as far as negotiations with Chinese telecommunications companies go. However, Apple doesn't appear to need to be concerned: over one million iPhones have been sold in China so far. However, the clever people who live in China have a different idea than go along with corporate policy. A telecommunications company in China reported that over 400,000 iPhones, unlocked, have been activated and put onto their service. Considering that there are roughly one million iPhones in China, this means that two out of every five iPhone customers is likely to unlock theirs. What's really impressive about this is that the Chinese are still unlocking their iPhones despite many attempts to "brick" iPhones through firmware updates.
The HD-DVD camp put up the white flag just a few days ago. Now what? Universal Studios has an answer to that question: everyone goes Blu-ray. They're very happy to begin that movement. As of now, everything coming out of Universal Studios' doors will be in Blu-ray, if it's in high-def.
While Universal values the close partnership we have shared with Toshiba, it is time to turn our focus to releasing new and catalog titles on Blu-ray. The path for widespread adoption of the next-generation platform has finally become clear. Universal will continue its aggressive efforts to broaden awareness for high-def's unparalleled offerings in interactivity and connectivity, at an increasingly affordable price. The emergence of a single, high-definition format is cause for consumers, as well as the entire entertainment industry, to celebrate
NVIDIA's 174.12 beta ForceWare driver has found its way onto the internet and can now be downloaded for all versions of Windows XP and Vista. It supports just about all GeForce 6,7 and 8 series cards, although there are no release notes. The download locations are as follows:
- Windows XP 32-bit - here
- Windows XP 64-bit - here
- Windows Vista 32-bit - here
- Windows Vista 64-bit - here
It seems that the popularity of using iTunes as a distribution medium is increasing. Any titles, shows or movies that are owned by BBC Worldwide will begin showing up on iTunes pretty quickly. Episodes are £1.89 each, and discounts will be available on entire series. The BBC is taking this extremely seriously, and have dug up some old favorites to shove on iTunes. Such classic hits as "Life on Mars" and "Little Britain" will be available. Neither Apple nor the BBC will confirm the exact business transaction that allowed iTunes to sell BBC content. This is the latest partnership the BBC has announced. The BBC is also distributing their stuff via YouTube and MySpace. When asked why the BBC is doing this, BBC spokespeople told everyone that they want to make sure all their fans with iPods have ample opportunity to enjoy their programming.
Somebody took the time and effort to write a fairly neutral list of reasons why people should switch from any Microsoft operating system to Mac OS X. The full list is available at the source link, but I think you might be interested in what made the top five.
- It seems that the future of Windows development is happening largely for corporate environments and customers.
- Excellent power management in OS X. When I close the lid to my MacBook Pro, it falls asleep. When I open the lid to my MacBook Pro, it wakes up. Imagine that!
- I'm ready to experience different frustrations. OS X isn't perfect, certainly - but I already see its noticeably more stable than Windows Vista has been. Kernel Panics at least look prettier than BSODs.
- There's more interesting, useful, beautiful, and affordable software being developed for OS X
- VMWare Fusion
ARCTIC COOLING today announced the launch of the Accelero Xtreme series, which is specially designed for ATI HD 2900XT/Pro and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra/GTX/GT graphic cards as stock cooler replacement.
To combat the Asus EeePC, American company Elonex will be offering a Linux-based laptop for roughly £99 ($193/€132). Dubbed the "One", we can confirm that it will have Wi-Fi connectivity, Ethernet networking, a solid-state hard drive, at least two USB ports and audio jacks. It will also weigh less than a Kilogram. The cheap laptop was designed around the classroom. The entire case is about as tough as a turtle shell, and the business-half of the laptop (the part without the screen) can be detached from the laptop at any time, and hooked up to any type of display, in case the monitor fails. Elonex will be taking the One to Birmingham, UK, on February 28th for The Education Show. Elonex will unveil further details/specifications on February 28th.
Corsair, a worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, announced today that new record breaking speeds have been achieved within the Corsair DDR2 and DDR3 lines of DRAM memory.
Available by the end of February, two new Corsair 4GB DDR2 module speed grades are being offered for high-performance enthusiast users: Corsair 1066MHz (PC2-8500) and 1142MHz (PC2-9136) 4GB memory kits (2X2GB). The new memory modules utilize Corsair's patented DHX technology, which employs a specially designed quadruple heat sink to dissipate heat through both convection and conductive methods. The results are maximum performance and extreme over-clocking capability for the demanding gaming enthusiast.
Apple today announced that its iPod shuffle, the world's most wearable music player, is now even more affordably priced at $49 and that it is introducing a new 2GB model of the iPod shuffle for $69. The popular iPod shuffle is just half a cubic inch in volume, weighs just half an ounce, features an aluminum design with a built-in clip and comes in five colors-silver, blue, green, purple and a (PRODUCT) RED special edition.
For those who crave more performance than what four processing cores and a single graphics card can deliver today, Intel Corporation has introduced the Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform. Formerly codenamed "Skulltrail," this is one of the first enthusiast desktop platforms to support two Intel quad core processors for a total of eight processing engines and a choice of multi-card graphics solutions from either ATI or NVIDIA.
According to several graphics manufacturers, the first midrange cards from NVIDIA's GeForce 9 series will start finding themselves on market shelves on February 21st. Please take this with a grain of salt, as the old saying goes, because NVIDIA refused to comment on this, citing that they cannot comment on unreleased products. Keep in mind, also, that only a few makers will be pushing out GeForce 9 cards on the 21st. The early birds will price their cards around US$169-189 MSRP, pushing the cards they are replacing (8600GTS) down to US$139-149 MSRP. For those of you who would like an introduction to the 9600 series...
The 9600 GT adopts a 65nm process and is manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). The GPU sees an increase in processing units, 64, and memory bus width, 256-bit, over previous 8600 GTS cards, 32 and 128-bit. The GPU's performance should see an increase of over 40% compared to the 8600 GTS. The new GPU also introduces Dual-Streaming Decode technology which allows two high-definition image decoding processes to be performed at the same time and provides picture in picture (PIP) functionality.
It would seem as though despite $1 billion of R&D against such an event, a Microsoft Xbox 360 failed in front of a live audience. The infamous Red Ring of Death (RRoD) popped up in the middle of a Microsoft XNA demo. Microsoft XNA, when it works, is a very powerful and easy to use tool that can be used to develop video games. If you follow the source link, you can catch a video of the prominently displayed Xbox 360. The Game Developers Conference is currently happening in San Francisco. Hopefully, Microsoft can get a new Xbox 360 to show off Microsoft XNA. Until then, Microsoft is not going to enjoy the ridicule of several thousand developers, and many times more gamers.
In the quest to replace LED technology, Sony recently dropped ¥22 billion (£105 million/€140 million/$205 million) on OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) panel production. The large sum of cash will be spent upon "middle and large size OLED panel production technology", and plans on having something operational by April 2009. Most of the research and production will be done at Sony Mobile Display Corporation's factory in Japan. Once Sony does have an operational product, and a lot of them, they will hopefully implant them in just about everything involving a screen coming out of Sony's factory doors. OLED technology is, at this point, known for being extremely thin and obscenely expensive. If all goes well, Sony will negate the latter.
Engadget has obtained pictures from Hewlett-Packard's first ultra-mobile try, the HP Compaq 2133 UMPC. The HP Compaq 2133 features 8.9-inch scratch resistant 1366x766 (WXGA) display, ExpressCard/54 slot, Wireless LAN, integrated webcam, and optional SSD running Windows Vista or Linux. Price and availability are still to be finalized.
abit launched today the
IP35P, their latest motherboard with great overclockability. Based on Intel P35 chipset, the abit IP35P motherboard supports Intel Core 2 Extreme/Quad/Duo & Pentium Dual-Core & Celeron Dual Core processors. Besides the current 65nm processors, you are ready for the next generation 45nm processors with up to 1333 FSB. The IP35P supports max memory capacity of up to 8GB; most important of all, it supports DDR2 even up to 1066 OC, allowing you for overclocking to the extreme. Additionally, the high definition on-board audio offers the flexibility to use regular stereo PC speakers or any modern surround sound system up to 7.1 channels.
TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.
Microsoft's PR team sent out this statement regarding the recent developments in the HD DVD camp and rumors that there will be a Xbox 360 Blu-ray add-on drive in the near future:
We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. As we've long stated, we believe it is games that sell consoles and Xbox 360 continues to have the largest next-gen games library with the most exclusives and best selling games in the industry. We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room along with playback of the DVD movies they already own.
Monday, February 18th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Cases
Today we takes a look at the new Acrylic HTPC case from Sunbeam. Aside from the fact that this case is completely see-through and UV reactive, what really sets this case apart from other HTPC cases is that this case features a total of eight internal 3.5" bays. This feature makes it possible to have multiple terabytes of media storage directly in the HTPC itself.
In order to meet growing consumer demand for large capacity portable storage solutions, Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend), a leading manufacturer of flash memory products, today introduced its latest high-capacity USB flash drive - the 32GB JetFlash V60. About the size of an AA battery (61mm x 18.6mm x 9.8mm), the versatile JetFalsh V60 is small and light enough to be taken anywhere. With its enormous 32GB memory capacity, you can easily store all of your personal files, music, digital photos, and even full-length HDTV movies and still have space left for work or school documents. Already known for its eye-catching colors and surprisingly affordable price, Transcend's JetFalsh V60 is now more attractive than ever.
Toshiba has responded to claims that it plans to
give up on the HD DVD format with a rather half-hearted statement that seems to neither confirm nor deny the speculation. The firm released a statement saying:
The media reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment.
However, it certainly doesn't sound like a strong denial given that Toshiba at no point gives any indication that it is still backing the format. So there may be a slight glimmer of hope for HD DVD owners, but things still look rather bleak.
Samsung Electronics will concentrate its ongoing efforts to strengthen Blu-ray products since Toshiba virtually pulled the plug on its HD DVD products.
Samsung is expected to show more interests in Blu-ray products than rival HD DVDs
the company said on Sunday. Samsung officials have declined to further comment. The Korean electronics firm has currently been developing dual-format Blu-ray and HD DVD movie players such as the UP5000, but according to experts it will now focus on Blu-ray only with no plans to phase out any combo players.
Samsung, which has been adopting a dual-strategy for both Blu-ray and HD DVD products, is likely to cut the HD DVD portion because of aggressive marketing and closer industry connections over the technology
a market expert said.
South Korean SSD manufacturer Mtronstorage Technology announced today that it has completed the development of a new 1.8-inch ZIF-type SSD (Solid State Drive) for laptops. Mtron's new SSD with Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash memory supports PATA (ZIF-type) interface and has a maximum reading speed of 120MB/s and writing speed of 100MB/s, which is more than 6 times faster than the current 1.8-inch HDDs. Mtron expects to ship the new SSD in capacity of up to 128GB. Worldwide premiere for these drives is set for April this year.
Intel is planning to rename its brand name for the upcoming notebook Montevina platform to Centrino 2 in order to clear up confusion for consumers, according to DigiTimes. Intel has used the brand name Centrino for four generations of its notebook platforms including Carmel, Sonoma, Napa and Santa Rosa. Although the technology and specifications have continued to improve, the unchanging brand name has left consumers unable to identify the differences, which has also lowered recognition in the market. The new marketing strategy should give consumers the feeling of a tangible upgrade and will hopefully spur demand for new laptops. Intel is set to launch the Centrino 2 platform in June this year at Computex Taipei 2008 along with six 45nm notebook CPUs, all with a 1066MHz FSB.
NVIDIA finally revealed the clock speeds of the GeForce 9800 GX2 codenamed D9E-40 today to its partners. Stock speeds for all 9800 GX2 cards are set to 600MHz for core, 1.5GHz for shaders and 1GHz for the yet to be finalized in size GDDR3 memory. Hypothetically the card's performance should be slightly higher than 2 x 8800GT in SLI. Today also marks the start of GeForce 9800 GX2 working sample shipments to all NVIDIA partners, so expect more and more pictures of the cards over the net from now on. The official launch is less than a month away on March 11th, two days after the end of CeBIT 2008.
Sunday, February 17th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
Even though the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GS comes with just 96 shaders and 12 ROPs it can easily compete with AMD HD3850 and HD3870. The card offers great price/performance and is very very quiet. With up to 30% overclocking this card is every overclocker's dream being able to surpass the much more expensive 8800 GT when overclocked.
TG Daily reports that Dell has developed a new line of AMD-based machines for businesses under the OptiPlex brand. Scheduled for a global launch next week on February 19th, these new computers will be named OptiPlex 740 and 740 Enhanced. The OptiPlex 740 will come with either a single or a dual-core Athlon 64 and GeForce 6150LE graphics/chipset combinations while the Enhanced version will utilize triple-core and quad-core Phenom processors mounted on a GeForce 6150LE/nForce 430 motherboard with Quadro NVS 210S graphics.
Ubisoft has announced that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for PC, PS3 and X360 will hit North American retailers on March 18th, with the publisher offering up special limited edition for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. Priced at $69.99, the limited edition of the Sin City shooter will pack a poker chip keychain and a video disc filled with strategy movies, interviews, and a peek at the upcoming Tom Clancy RTS EndWar. Feel free to visit
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 home page for more info.
Saturday, February 16th 2008
Today's Reviews
Following closely on the heels of news that both
Netflix and
Wal-Mart plan to drop HD DVD support, it looks like Toshiba, one of the key firms behind the format, is planning to do the same. A company source is being reported as saying:
We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next generation DVD business.
An official announcement is expected to come within the next few days, and it is estimated that the move could see Toshiba suffer losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is likely to put an end to the HD format war, with Blu-ray, backed largely by Sony, looking almost certain to overcome HD DVD, which had powerful names including Toshiba and Microsoft supporting it.
Update: Toshiba denies the reports:
"The media reported that Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD business. Toshiba has not made any announcement concerning this. Although Toshiba is currently assessing its business strategies, no decision has been made at this moment."
Scythe Co., Ltd today announced the 5.25inch boom box for PC systems. This 5.25inch built-in bay speaker provides a quality stereo sound despite its restricted dimensions and power. Quad built-in concaved shaped speakers maximize the sound power. Black, silver and white colors are available to match with your PC case front panel, and silver finished speaker domes provide a luxury appearance for your PC system. Volume controller and power ON/OFF switch are built-in as an extra feature. Still suspicious of the quality of this speaker's sound? Try it for yourself to hear the sound and feel the quality of this 5.25inch bay boom box!!
It's time to suit up and join the front lines with the fastest 8800GT card in its class, the EVGA 8800GT AKIMBO card: Featuring a 65nm GPU with an astonishing GPU Core clock of 720MHz, the exclusive dual slot heat sink and fan drops temperatures as much as 25 degrees Celsius, keeping your card cool and ready to perform at any given notice. Your new secret weapon supports 2-way SLI and the latest PCI-E 2.0 standard, now is the time to lock, load, and game. Frag it up with the EVGA 8800GT AKIMBO card.
Friday, February 15th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Other
Sunbeam is well known for their four channel Rheobus fan controller. Recently, they decided to create a new version called the Rheobus Extreme which has six channels and can support up to 30 W per channel. Each channel has a clear knob that glows blue, and the brightness changes with the fan speed setting. We take a look at this new fan controller and put it to the test.
One more week and some of you might receive exactly the same ASUS EN9600GT 512MB retail package. The official release date for all GeForce 9600 GT cards is February 21, 2008.
Blizzard Entertainment today announced plans to launch a new type of tournament competition using the Arena system in World of Warcraft, its popular subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The tournaments will take place on special realms that allow competitors to instantly create level-70 characters with epic equipment, placing the focus on tactics and execution rather than normal adventuring.
Online giant Wal-Mart is taking the steps of many other big players, by confirming that in the beginning of June the world's largest retailer will only stock Blu-ray players and movies. Over the next few months, Wal-Mart will phase out all HD-DVD products and reorganize their stores to focus exclusively on Blu-ray. Gary Severson, senior vice president, Home Entertainment, Wal-Mart, U.S. commented, "We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases. With the customers best interest in all we do, we wanted to share our decision and timeline with them as soon as possible, knowing it will help simplify their purchase decision, increase selection, and increase adoption long term. We anticipate enhancing our selection with continued great values in hi-definition Blu-ray products, so our customers can further enhance their entertainment experience at home." The win of Blu-ray over HD-DVD becomes a step closer to undeniable, with Netflix and retailer Best Buy already commited to Blu-Ray. Now Wal-Mart and soon Toshiba if all reports become true.
Activision made announcement today that it is working on a new Guitar Hero: Aerosmith game built around the legendary music of America's Greatest Rock 'N Roll Band: Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer. Slated for release this June, this latest installment puts players in the shoes of Perry (guitar), Whitford (guitar) and Hamilton (bass), as they rock out alongside frontman Tyler and drummer Kramer. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith is being developed by Neversoft Entertainment for the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 entertainment systems. The Wii version is being developed by Vicarious Visions, while the PlayStation 2 game is being made by Budcat. To mark the announcement, Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock owners will have the opportunity to download Aerosmith's Dream On song for free from February 16-18 on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for the Xbox 360. "We are extremely excited that Aerosmith chose to team up with Guitar Hero, bringing one of the world's all-time best-selling artists together with one of the biggest video game brands, to deliver a new and unique interactive way for our customers to connect with artists and their music," said Dusty Welch, head of publishing for Activision/RedOctane.
IBM is launching a free multiplayer online game (
PowerUp) challenging teenagers to help save the planet "Helios" from ecological disaster. The game is part of IBM's TryScience initiative and will be launched at Engineer's Week 2008 opening on February 16 in Washington, D.C. The game, which can be played alone or together, features a planet in near ecological ruin where three exciting missions for solar, wind and water power must be solved before sandstorms, floods or SmogGobs thwart the rescue.
S3 Graphics today announced the S3 Graphics Chrome 400 Series discrete graphics processors, designed to provide the latest gaming experience for energy-efficient desktop systems and portable notebook PCs coupled with outstanding HD content playback at the highest performance-per-watt ratio ever.
Samsung Electronics announced today that it has begun mass producing of 64GB solid state drives (SSDs) utilizing the SATA 3Gb/s data interface. Some of you may be more familiar with the word SATA II, but SATA II and SATA 3Gb/s are two different terms and I prefer to stick with the right one -
SATA 3Gb/s. Back on the story, Samsung said its 64GB SATA 3Gb/s SSD, which began shipping in limited quantities earlier this month, will be available as an option within the next few weeks in selected Dell and Alienware notebooks. Able to read data at 100MB per second and write data at 80MB per second, Samsung's new SSD is up to 60% faster than SATA I (1.5Gb/s) drives and performs two to five times faster than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs), according to the company. It also consumes nearly 75% less power than typical HDDs (1.45W compared to 2.1W) and at 73 grams, SSDs are much lighter than HDDs. The SATA II SSD is comprised primarily of single-level-cell NAND flash memory.
Approaching the February 20th release date, Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage was pictured once more. This time we have some benchmark scores. The 3DMark Vantage RC0 build interface and some of the future tests are pictured below. The card that was running the benchmark and scored 4203 marks is supposed to be a GeForce 8800 GTX.
Thursday, February 14th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Cases
The NZXT Rogue is a very unique case. It combines the portability of a cube with the possiblity to install large graphic cards and high performance power supplies. A carrying strap is also included, to make carrying the black or silver cube - featuring either blue or red LEDs - to and from a LAN party as easy as possible.
It seems that Yahoo isn't the only one suffering from the failed buy-out of Yahoo by the hand of Microsoft. Sir William Gates III is reported as having lost over $3 billion USD from his personal fortune in Microsoft stock just from trying to buy Yahoo. However, Gates' fortune is just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Google bosses Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Dell founder Michael Dell all are watching their fortunes and stock values plummet "like a team of free falling elephants." Even Steve Jobs, who should be swimming in the pool of wealth his entertainment gadgets have given him, is instead watching in horror as his share price looses a whopping 40% value in the stock market. Jobs, personally, has lost over $400 million in the past six weeks.
Yes, for quite some time, once you had a Facebook account, it wasn't going anywhere. Now, fortunately for college students and people with no attention span everywhere, Facebook now allows said people to delete their Facebook accounts. This was in direct response to user complaints about not being able to delete their accounts, if desired. Even if users were able to delete their own accounts, there were no obvious directions on how to do that. Another reason that Facebook decided to allow users to delete their accounts was a reason that could have gotten Facebook sued if they did not address it: privacy. The "I didn't actually make a Facebook" E-mails were really racking up in Facebook's inbox, and Facebook sometimes made it all too easy for people to research intimate/private/personal details of users' lives. At this point, deleting your account is just a help-page away. Facebook admins are considering adding a "delete account" button.
Most of you know that Microsoft created a new Service Pack for Windows Vista, and is in the middle of getting it out to people. Some select testers, such as CNET, already have a copy of the final batch, and were obliged to give it a test drive. What they found confused and made people wonder why Microsoft worked so hard in the first place. While, yes, Vista SP1 is a lot more stable, and there are performance boosts in some areas, there are a sizable chunk of tests where Vista SP1 performed worse in than it's predecessor. The CNET tests concluded that while Vista SP1 definitely oozes with effort, most users will hardly notice the difference between vanilla Vista and Vista SP1. Most of the performance hits were seen when copying or transferring files. If you'd like to read the full review, please check out CNET
here.
An electronics trading firm recently did some professional analysis, and discovered that the standard Xbox 360 has a 16.4% chance of failing. Out of a sample group including dead 1000 consoles, 60% died due to Red Ring of Death (RRoD). While this is certainly a lot better than the 1/3 chance given during last summer before Microsoft significantly redesigned the layout of the console, it's still pretty high. Both the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii have a failure rate of roughly 3%. The firm did not specify the failure rates of specific Xbox 360 SKUs. If they did, they would have likely found that the "Falcon" Xbox 360, or any Xbox 360 with a 65nm processor or an enhanced cooling solution, would have a much lower failure rate. Speaking of the previous 1/3 failure rate fiasco, the replacement program/3 year warranty has cost Microsoft an estimated $1 billion USD to date.
This is an extraordinary week for the Blu-ray disk format. Aside from exclusive treatment from business giants Best Buy and Netflix, this week also witnessed Blu-ray sales topping two and a quarter million sales. This translates into an impressive 79% market share for Blu-ray in Europe. This epic landmark was reached two months after the previous landmark of 1 million units, which is an impressive feat, to say the least. Odd enough, HD-DVD is also trying to claim some victory. Apparently, 60% of all stand-alone players are HD-DVD.
American Technology Research analyst Doug Friedman believes NVIDIA could acquire Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) despite AMD's x86 license from Intel being non-transferable. Friedman believes that AMD and Intel's long term roadmaps are a threat to NVIDIA and cites mounting pressure from AMD's stock holders as a reason for its vulnerability to a buyout from NVIDIA. AMD's recent troubles with its quad core processors and ATI's recent weakness in the high end graphics market have only exacerbated this pressure. Friedman sees AMD and Intel's plans for integration of CPUs and GPUs as a threat to NVIDIA and believes NVIDIA anticipates this future competition as well. Combining this information with rumors that Intel is attempting to develop discrete graphics adapters of their own leaves NVIDIA in a possibly weakened position. However, AMD's extensive cross-licensing of x86 and other technologies with Intel would not be NVIDIA's only obstacle. They would also face possible anti-trust investigation from United States and European Union law enforcement agencies.
Sharp has developed new 250 mW blue-violet laser diodes which promise to bring a substantial speed boost to Blu-ray writers - up from 72Mb/s today to a maximum of 216Mb/s, equal to 6x recording speed. The new laser will be produced in two models - one 3.3mm package for laptop Blu-ray writers and a 5.6mm version for desktop drives. Samples of the new diodes are available at this time, but aren't exactly cheap: Sharp charges 50,000 Yen or about $462 per unit. The company will start mass production of both products from April 2008.
Electronic Arts has inked a deal with sports and entertainment giant IMG for a number of undisclosed projects. IMG's diverse business incorporates sports and events management, media production, broadcast content and sports training academies. "This is an exciting step in the evolution of EA Sports and our global brand marketing efforts," commented Peter Moore, president of EA Sports. "This partnership further diversifies our business by allowing us to take our brand deeper into the fabric of sports and lifestyle entertainment. In addition to developing the world's top sports videogames, IMG's worldwide licensing and media expertise gives us the opportunity to establish creative new consumer touchpoints with EA Sports, both in games and in other relevant categories." IMG will license and market the EA Sports brand in a variety new product categories, "which could include sports camps, gaming lounges, publishing products, performance apparel and more," said the companies.
Operational Amplifier (OPAMP) influences analog sound quality, because OPAMPs amplify the analog signal in your soundcard. With a higher quality OPAMP, the signal is transferred with less loss and distortion. Now all Auzentech PCI soundcards support swappable OPAMPs to provide the highest-quality audio to Auzen customers. Buyers are now offered to order the desired sound devices directly from Auzentech with the custom OPAMPs installed, or choose the amplifiers they need and install them manually. Auzentech has even prepared special
OPAMP sockets in order to improve the compatibility for each product. Go
here to see the full list of models available.
Video card giant NVIDIA, which completed the acquisition of AGEIA Technologies the day before, is now starting to port AGEIA's PhysX engine software to run on its GeForce 8 cards, according to The Tech Report. During a financial call, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hseun Huang revealed that the ported engine will bring enhanced physics capabilities to all of the company's existing GeForce 8 cards.
We're working toward the physics-engine-to-CUDA port as we speak. And we intend to throw a lot of resources at it. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if it helps our GPU sales even in advance of [the port's completion]. The reason is, [it's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes... Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA.
Huang also added that the integration shall encourage people to spend more on graphics processing hardware, and maybe start to buy two or three graphics cards, where one of them will work for physics only.
Following the
title's unveiling yesterday, publisher Electronic Arts has officially announced Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Developed by EA Los Angeles, the same studio that handled Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3 will add co-op campaign play, new units, and a new faction to the alternate history strategy series. According to the executive producer Chris Corry, naval combat has been brought "into the heart of the game design." No release estimate was provided, though PC players will be able to gain beta access by purchasing the Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath expansion or the Command & Conquer 3 Limited Collection later this year. Specifics on the beta program are slated to arrive this summer. "The Red Alert games are known for challenging hardcore strategy gamers with depth, variety, and innovative gameplay," said EA LA general manager Mike Verdu. "But they also belong to that rare breed of games that can draw in more casual players with their over-the-top stories, instantly accessible mechanics, and straight-to-the-fun design."
Announced today in Japan and set to become widely available for purchase from 21th February, this is the third new processor cooler coming from Scythe within a month. Expected to become the most expensive Scythe cooler, the Orochi may well deserve the title "overkill" with its 10 massive heatpipes, 1155gm weight and huge dimensions: 120x194x155mm (height). On top of this beast you'll find a 140mm fan spinning at 500 rpm, which may also be mounted vertically. The Scythe Orochi is compatible with all Intel P4 478/775 and AMD Athlon64 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+ Sockets. Please visit the
product page for more information.
NVIDIA Corporation today reported financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 and the fiscal year ended January 27, 2008. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, revenue increased to a record $1.20 billion, compared to $878.9 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, an increase of 37 percent. Net income computed in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 was $257.0 million, or $0.42 per diluted share, compared to net income of $163.5 million, or $0.27 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007, a net income increase of 57 percent.
Some last minute news from the informer VR-Zone. According to this information, NVIDIA has canceled the GeForce 9800 GX2 introduction during CeBIT 2008. All NVIDIA partners are ordered not to show the new card during the German computer show. The official launch date is set for March 11th and partners will receive the reference cards about a week before this date, meaning that working samples will already be available during CeBIT, but none of them will show its power.
Tomorrow at 11 am PST all PC versions of Team Fortress 2, the class-based multiplayer action game named PC Game of the Year by Gamespy.com, will receive its largest update since the product was first made available on October 10, 2007, as part of Valve's best-selling Orange Box compilation. The free update includes global optimizations for networking, graphics, and player statistics, plus improvements to Source TV for tournament viewing. In addition, this update introduces the "Badlands," a new map that pushes control-point gameplay onto vertical landscapes. Click
here for the full change list.
ASUS Intros Two 5x DVD-RW DL Optical Drives
Catering to users who require high quality multimedia experiences, ASUS, producer of top-notch optical drives, has today released the ASUS DVD-E818A2/A2T. This series of optical drives is the world's first ODD that supports 5X DVD-RW DL, and provides users with cutting-edge multimedia experiences backed with superior playback capabilities and high-speed data transfers; while built-in advanced ASUS exclusive technologies will provide a quieter, more stable and higher performance multimedia environment.
After experiencing some technical problems with its next-generation Phenom processors, AMD could now be facing some issues with its new Puma line of devices for notebook PCs, according to an analyst. Last year, AMD announced its Griffin CPU, the first processor it has designed from the ground up for notebooks. AMD is pairing its new CPU with the Puma platform that aims to take on Intel's Centrino chips in high-end notebooks. The Puma platform is slated to ship in the second quarter and AMD insists the product is on track. But one analyst has a slightly different viewpoint. "Our channel checks suggest AMD's Puma platform for notebooks may have a technical glitch. We have not been able to confirm this with AMD and if a problem exists, AMD could have a fix in the works that saves the launch," said analyst Doug Freedman of American Technology Research Inc., in a new report. On the other hand, AMD denied that there are any issues with Puma. "AMD is not aware of any technical glitches with its next-generation notebook platform, codenamed 'Puma.' Per our commitment at the AMD Financial Analyst Day in December 2007, the 'Puma' platform remains on track for Q2 2008," the spokeswoman said.
Microsoft is seeing shortages of its Xbox 360 video game console in the United States, as the company failed to anticipate strong post-holiday demand, an executive said on Wednesday. "We are really running short of product here in the United States," Jeff Bell, head of global marketing for Microsoft's games business, said in an interview. "You could say we misjudged demand. We're literally out of stock in many stores. We think this will have an impact on our sales," Bell said. "It may cause the overall industry number to be down a little bit." Microsoft sold nearly 1.3 million Xbox 360 consoles in the United States in December, when the entire video games industry gets a boost from holiday shopping. The Xbox 360 competes with Nintendo's Wii console, as well as Sony's PlayStation 3.
OCZ Technology Group today announced its partnership with Cyber Evolution (CEVO), a premier national online gaming organization that attracts teams from across the country to compete in the hottest PC and console title tournaments. In its ongoing effort to reach out to gaming communities, OCZ Technology is proud to join forces with CEVO in the mutual quest to unite gamers with the high-performance hardware that is specifically tailored for their demands.
Wednesday, February 13th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
AMD's Radeon HD 3850 Series has been on the market for a while now. Add-in-Board Partners are constantly looking for ways to seperate themselves from the competition and that's why Sapphire has engineered a Radeon HD 3850 with 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory and faster core clock out of the box. But can a card like this really benefit from 1 GB of video memory?
Despite the apparent popularity of getting the latest Windows and Photoshop versions off of BitTorrent, a new pie chart based on download statistics from torrent tracker Mininova shows that people are downloading far more than just that. Out of all the .torrent downloads that happened in the past two year, caught by Mininova, roughly half of them were television shows. The rest of the downloads break into what users would expect: games, movies, software, and "other". For an intrepid analysis of what exactly all this means, please follow the source link. Otherwise, do enjoy the pie graph.
Whilst Microsoft is in the middle of what The Inquirer calls a "hostile takeover" of Yahoo, Yahoo decided to buy a company of their own. Maven Networks recently accepted a $160 million offer to be bought out by Yahoo. It is very likely that this move was to increase the value of Yahoo. It should be noted that Yahoo was in talks with Maven long before the whole Microsoft-buying-Yahoo debacle. As part of the acquisition, Yahoo gets some fine deals with CBS Sports, Gannett, News Corp, Hearst and Sony Pictures. Yahoo will not lay off any of Maven's 70 employees, despite laying off nearly 1,000 of their own. Another large benefit to Yahoo acquiring Maven will be the sudden boost of places where Yahoo can shove their advertisements, further increasing revenue. Whether or not this is enough to fend off the "hostile takeover", we'll have to wait and see.
So, apparently the United Kingdom is considering compiling a database. Logged in this database will be the academic records of every UK citizen aged 14 or older. This isn't going over very well with anyone. To start things off, the government's track record with data isn't the cleanest (anyone remember the little incident with lost health records?). The main beef that most people have with this plan is that it gives possible employers access to the academic records of people. What's wrong with this is put into words quite elegantly, as stated by a professor from the University of London:
This disregards how people change throughout their lives. Academic records are no indication of future success. There are many reasons for the grades we get: they might reflect the teaching or a personal crisis. People who do badly at school often do well later in life. There's a danger that these records prevent change and progress for the better.
Whether the UK plans to continue compiling this database after such criticism is unclear at this point.
While people criticize the Sony PlayStation3 for various reasons, Sony appears to be doing something right. Despite large total sales leads that both the Microsoft Xbox360 and the Nintendo Wii have on the Sony PS3, the Sony PS3 is beating one console: it's predecessor. In the United Kingdom, it took the PlayStation 2 50 weeks to reach 1 million sales. Considering that the PS3 was launched on March 23, 2007, it took Sony a little less than 47 weeks (yes I did count) to sell 1 million units in the United Kingdom. Comparatively, it took Nintendo 38 weeks to sell 1 million Wiis in the UK, and Microsoft required 60 weeks to sell 1 million Xbox 360s.
In response to NVIDIA's recent interest in the mobile phone market, AMD would like to clarify that they already have a fine market share in the mobile phone market, and that they plan on increasing said market share. At the 2008 Mobile Phone conference in Barcelona, AMD unveiled three brand new Imageon processors. Out of these processors, one is a TV tuner chip, one is an audio processor, and the last is an "application processor" which can run 3D games. For full details and concept pictures, please follow the source link.
A few days ago, in an
interview, Xbox chief Don Mattrick made a confounding proclamation. The proclamation said something along the lines of "GTA IV multiplayer will be Xbox360 exclusive" (please see source link for full version). After several raised eyebrows, Microsoft clarified that this was just a slip of tongue. Instead of Grand Theft Auto IV only having a multiplayer mode in the Xbox360 version, there will instead be some exclusive content only available to Xbox360 gamers. Rockstar took this one step further, and confirmed that Sony has a little something up their sleeve for PS3 gamers as well.
The National Entertainment Collectibles Association, or the NECA for short, recently unveiled plans to unleash a fourth edition to the Gears of War (series 1) action figures. While you can't actually buy these figures yet, if you're in the market for such trinkets, we do happen to have pretty pictures and a description from NECA.
A deadly asset for the Locust Horde, the Locust Sniper is equipped to destroy humans with its high-powered sniper rifle, and is especially intent on blowing away the members of Delta Squad in Epic Games' smash hit Gears of War. Sporting goggles and a game-accurate Longshot Rifle with scope, the Locust Sniper Action Figure hits shelves this spring with the rest of Gears of War Series 1!
Well, really, what more is there to say? Just when you thought the 1920x1080 resolution offered in most retail HDTVs was something to be impressed at, a company named Astro Systems makes an über-monitor. Aside from being a 56" screen, having the extreme resolution of 3840x2160, the monitor actually boasts a lot of features. This crazy monitor can handle up to four DVI/HD-SDI connections at once, and also supports "quad view". Quad view puts all the four sources up on the monitor at once, in four equally-proportioned squares, each presumably 1920x1080. As far as price and availability go, this monitor is aimed towards "digital cinema and broadcast studio clients". In other words, people that hardly need to care about "how much".
Electronic Arts has set a launch date for Spore, the anticipated computer and Nintendo DS game from "Sims" creator Will Wright. Spore was first announced a couple years ago, and is the first major project for Wright since his phenomenal success with the Sims franchise. It allows players to create their own creatures, their own environments, and even their own planets. The goal of the game is to successfully manage a universe through five phases of evolution. The game will launch simultaneously on PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, and mobile phone platforms, on September 7. Last year, Electronic Arts announced a partnership with TransGaming to use the Cider Portability Engine as a way to more quickly port PC games to the Mac platform. Since then, EA has released several titles on both formats simultaneously, getting rid of huge delays that previously plagued the Mac community.
Microsoft Corp. today announced the results of a new survey that found teenagers between seventh and 10th grades are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online.
About half of those teens, however, said they were not familiar with these laws, and only 11 percent of them clearly understood the current rules for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software. Teens who were familiar with downloading rules credited their parents, TV or stories in magazines and newspapers, and Web sites - more so than their schools - as resources for information about illegal downloading.
Streaming videos to game consoles could be coming soon to Netflix customers. The company is surveying its customers and asking if they would likely use a streaming service to Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. The streaming wouldn't cost any more money, but would require a special install disc costing $3. The Netflix survey was posted at seanbajuice.com and reads, "Now you can watch movies from Netflix instantly by using your Internet-connected Playstation 3. Simply insert a special Netflix disc into your PS/3 to enable instant movie streaming. The disc is available from Netflix for a one-time fee of $3." The survey then asks if anyone in the household would be likely to use such a survey. There are five options from definitely not to definitely would. Netflix says streaming customers would be able to watch over 7000 movies and television series in as little as 30 seconds. Currently Netflix offers streaming video on all of its plans. The cheapest plan offers one DVD at a time and two hours of streaming video per month for $4.99/month. Unlimited streaming plans start at $8.99/month.
A woman in Washington D.C. has filed a $54 million lawsuit against Best Buy after the Geek Squad lost her $1,100 laptop when it was taken in for repairs. When Raelyn Campbell purchased the laptop she was persuaded to buy Best Buy's $300 extended warranty which offered three years of free repairs. In under a year the laptop in question developed a fault with the power switch so she took it to Best Buy where she was told it would take two to six weeks to repair. Campbell made numerous calls to Best Buy to check on how the repair was progressing and was continually told it should be fixed soon, however nothing happened so she left a message for the manager of the branch but received no reply.
Eventually one worker she spoke to revealed that the laptop had never been sent away for repair and had been lost in store - and all Best Buy were willing to offer was a $900 gift card, leaving Campbell $500 out of pocket. She then demanded $2,100 in cash, which Best Buy rejected, before contacting the Washington D.C. attorney general's office who contacted the store. The compensation was then raised to $1,100 cash and a $500 gift card, however Campbell discovered that her identity was at risk and filed a $54 million lawsuit against the firm, rejecting a further offer of $2,500 cash and a confidentiality agreement. Campbell admits that she doesn't expect to win a multi-million dollar settlement but is still chasing substantial damages.
NVIDIA's new 171.23 and 173.80 beta drivers for Windows XP 32-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit respectively have found their way onto the internet, although no new 64-bit drivers are available. There are no release notes unfortunately because the drivers are not officially available from NVIDIA, but they should support just about all current GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series cards, as well as the upcoming 8200 and 9200 cards. The download locations are as follows:
- Windows XP 32-bit - here
- Windows Vista 32-bit - here
NVIDIA, the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, and gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK.
A fire at one of Taiwan's Lite-On fabs could disrupt supplies to the PC industry, with Dell, HP and Lenovo particularly at risk, an industry researcher said on Tuesday. Lite-On's factory, located in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, caught fire after an electrical line short circuited, fortunately no one was hurt in the incident. However, the fire had caused initial damage of around T$2.266 billion ($71 million), and caused fourteen production lines of liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors to stop working. "This could have a major impact on the landscape of the desktop monitor industry in the first and second quarters of 2008, but most probably in regards to share shift rather than in overall supply and demand," said DisplaySearch analyst Chris Connery in a report. He added that Dell, HP and Lenovo - Lite-On's top contract partners - could suffer from supply distruption. But Connery added that if the Taiwan firm outsources its own production to local competitors or if the PC companies switch to Lite-On competitors the damage could be limited.
All ATI card owners may prepare for another new Catalyst very soon. The release notes for ATI Catalyst 8.2 package are already posted online
here (download in
pdf format), meaning that the new driver download links are to be posted too in a few hours. I'll update the story with active links as soon as they're up and running. Until then prepare yourself for the new Catalyst 8.2.
Performance improvements with this release of Catalyst includes Company of Heroes DX10 frame rates increasing as much as 20% across all of the ATI Radeon HD 2x00 series of products and on all ATI Radeon HD 3x00 series of products. These performance improvements are even larger (up to 30%) for CrossFire configurations.
EDIT:
ATI Catalyst 8.2 Display Driver Download
The San Jose Mercury News web site is reporting that at next week's Game Developers Conference a number of companies, including those that are normally fierce rivals, will be announcing a new effort to promote PC gaming. According to the article, which uses unnamed sources, the group will be called the PC Gaming Alliance and will involve a joint effort between companies like Microsoft, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD as well as a number of computer companies. The story states that the PC Gaming Alliance "will keep the PC competitive with game consoles to attract key game developers" and adds that it "will coordinate and expand those efforts to improve the experience of playing games on computers." The original story is found
here, while the time when we'll see if this is all true is February 18-22, 2008 in San Francisco, or the date when GDC starts.
Intel Corp. has shrunk another processor that will be incorporated into new ultrathin laptops, possibly creating competition for the processor it developed for the MacBook Air ultrathin laptop. Lenovo Group Ltd. and Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp. will include Intel's low-voltage Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV chip in laptops that are expected to hit the market soon. Like the Core 2 Duo processor specially developed for Apple Inc.'s MacBook Air notebook, Intel shrunk the new processor to make it 60% smaller than standard-size processors in its Merom family, according to Connie Brown, an Intel spokeswoman. The chip is manufactured using the 65-nanometer process, like other Merom processors. Though the size is the same, the SL7100 LV chip consumes less power and operates at a slower speed than the Macbook Air chip. It will operate at 1.2GHz, with 4MB of cache. It uses 12 watts of power, according to specs provided by Intel. The Core 2 Duo processor for MacBook Air uses 20 watts of power and operates at 1.6 to 1.8GHz. The new processor was developed independently of the MacBook Air processor, Brown said. "These [SL7100 LV processors] are similar but not identical to the Apple processor," Brown said. The MacBook Air processor was specially developed to meet Apple's needs and is also available to other PC makers, Brown said. The new SL100 LV will most likely be adopted in Lenovo's new X300 ultra portable PC.
Publisher Electronic Arts and magazine
PC Gamer have pulled back the iron curtain, revealing the existence of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. The game marks the first entry in the spin-off RTS series since the Yuri's Revenge Red Alert 2 expansion pack in 2001. That's just about everything in the way of details. Judging from the cover of the PC Magazine, it's obvious that the game is headed to PCs, but details if it will make console fans happy too are unknown. More info on Red Alert 3 are expected when the issue hits stores March 4.
Taiwan's Acer Inc, the world's No. 3 computer vendor, influenced by Eee PC and its great success among the low-cost laptop PCs, will try to accomplish the same results by introducing its own tablet. Acer, which previously said it had not planned to sell cheap notebook computers, has changed course to develop PCs to target a new customer base, the Chinese-language Commercial Times quoted company Chairman J.T. Wang as saying. The company plans to launch low-cost laptop PCs in the second or third quarter of this year, according to an unknown report. The report also notes that Acer was still developing the new model, which could be 7-9 inches wide, and could cost around $470. Acer of course declined to comment on the report, since there haven't been written proof of something final.
How this happened is a bit of a mystery, but Diamond, a company best known for manufacturing ATI Radeon graphics cards, somehow managed to print the THX logo on its HD 3850 packaging - despite the fact that
none of the company's products have ever featured the technology. Diamond simply puts it down to a mistake by a former employee, so if you see a Diamond 3850 in BestBuy which claims to come equipped with THX, don't get too excited. The company posted a statement online saying:
It came to our attention that the "THX" logo mistakenly has been printed on 3850 box. This mistake happened as result of misunderstanding of former employee. This is to confirm that this product and or any other Diamond's products have ever supported "THX". This mistake has been corrected.
So which other companies are advertising features that they don't actually offer?!
Mozilla's Firefox internet browser has gained another stage, reaching Beta 3 phase. This is the eleventh developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Please note that this donwload is not recommend to anyone other than developers and testers. Although Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now widely available in more than 30 languages, it is intended for testing purposes only. Proceed
here to download the desired Firefox 3 Beta 3.
As promised Microsoft today rolled out 11 security updates that patch 17 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Internet Information Server (IIS) and several other components and technologies. That's Microsoft's biggest patch update in a year, with six of the 11 fixes ranked as "critical" and the other five ranked "important". Check the full Microsoft Security Bulletin summary for February 2008
here or start the Automatic Update feature.
LG.Philips LCD plans to change its corporate name to LG Display upon receiving approval at the company's annual general meeting of shareholders on February 29. The new corporate name is subsequent upon the reduction of Philips' equity stake, and LG's commitment to enhanced responsible management. Once the change is approved at the annual general meeting on February 29th, LG.Philips LCD will register the new company name on March 3th. The official new trade name is expected to be LG Display, and the company will use the trademark of LG Display. The entire process to change the company name is expected to be completed by the end of June 2008.
Tuesday, February 12th 2008
Today's Reviews
While most people inside and outside America feel that the right of free speech has succumbed to weaker minds and a move towards political correctness, a recent court decision would prove otherwise. DailyTech summed up what happened pretty nicely:
A California judge in the Sixth Appellate District in Santa Clara County last week ruled that anonymous trolls on the Internet are allowed to stay anonymous. Along with remaining anonymous, Internet trolls are able to say what they like, by exercising their First Amendment rights, no matter how belittling is it.
This decision reversed a prior ruling made just two years ago, in which ten subpoenas were issued to people that would fit into the definition of "internet trolls" who took things to new extremes.
While the rest of the world is focused on being dainty, Victorian, and politically correct, the children have a much better idea in mind. The London School of Economics concluded something that many paranoid parents do not want to hear. Over 50% of respondents to the EU Kids Online survey from the United Kingdom confessed to watching internet pornography. When this survey was brought to Poland, a whopping 71% confessed to the same thing. However, this is where the good things end. Children from the United Kingdom claimed that they received a lot of "unwanted sexual solicitations"...over twice the average for the rest of Europe.
And now, time for a reality check. The above numbers were attained from a teaser to unpublished results of a survey. The results will be published sometime in June. The London School of Economics failed to define what exactly pornography was, or how old a child was according to them, in the teaser to the survey results.
In a rather vague press release, 2K Games officially licensed Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 to use in making an unknown number of undisclosed games. One of these games is very likely to be the BioShock sequel, whatever it may be. Unfortunately, at this point, it seems as if BioShock sequels will only come out once very two years (or that's what the author feels, at this point), and Ken Levine (the main writer for the original BioShock) will not be part of a BioShock sequel. Hopefully, the new titles 2K is developing will not run into the problems that developer Silicon Knights is having. Silicon is having so much trouble getting Unreal Engine 3 to work that they've sued Epic Games.
After creating RPG masterpiece Mass Effect, author BioWare went on to win several awards for their work. Now, BioWare is confirming that they plan to spread the love: a PC version of the game is due out sometime in May 2008. The best part about BioWare being responsible for both writing and porting the game is that BioWare will fix many issues in porting. Among the most obvious tweaks...
- PC-centric controls (aiming with your mouse?), with customizable hotkeys
- Higher quality textures; PC version will be capable of higher resolutions
- New decryption mini-game (for hacking turrets, etc.)
- New GUI for the inventory system
You can check out some current screenshots
here.
If you see any business moguls running around with what look like skater knee pads with cables running up to mobile devices, don't be surprised. These knee pads generate up to five watts of electricity for every step the user takes, without any noticeable effect on the wearer. When harnessed, this device can power and charge anything from iPods to Blackberries. The device mainly gains power, much like an average hybrid vehicle, during the "deceleration phase" of walking. A Canadian company called "Bionic Power" recently patented this device, and hopes to commercialize it as soon as they can.
At this point, it seems as though Intel has just about everything in the world going right for them. They're getting a lot of money, their CPUs are in just about every computer, and they have had the best products on the market for the past several months. However, AMD and the European Union don't feel like Intel got this success in a legitimate manner. And so, the European Union sent law enforcement agents to do surprise raids. The raids being sent out are searching for one thing in particular: hard evidence that Intel pressured retail stores to avoid AMD-based products. These charges are added on to similar monopoly charges already put upon Intel by the European Union.
So a company made a suite of software for their products, and released it. Big deal, right? The thing is, AMD launching AMD Overdrive is surprisingly important. Instead of various hardware enthusiast boards hosting buggy beta code, AMD hosting their software is a sign of maturity. Overdrive's upload signified that AMD is happy enough with their software to label it official, and is confident enough with the code to host it on their website.
Alright, enough chit-chat. You may download the AMD Overdrive software, which overclocks AMD processors of most sorts, and checks the overclock stability of all processors,
here.
DRAM maker Kingston has launched quite an interesting flash drive and card reader combo called DataTraveler Micro Reader. This little USB 2.0-compatible device comes with its own on-board storage that reaches 1GB, 2GB or 4GB, depending on the model, plus an expansion slot that can read microSD, microSDHC, or Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards. The expansion slot makes the drive act as a card reader, but it also offers its user the possibility of expanding the overall memory space by adding a high-capacity card. The flash drive weights only 8.68 grams (without any memory card) and supports Windows Vista's ReadyBoost feature. Backed by a five year warranty, the DataTraveler Micro Reader will start shipping later this month in 1GB version with the 2GB and 4GB models set to follow soon. The suggested prices of the new drives are $19.25, $28.25 and $42 for the 1GB, 2GB and 4GB versions respectively.
According to VR-Zone the launch date for GeForce 9800 GX2 has been set to March 11th this year. The second NVIDIA dual card will see public for the first time during this year's CeBIT. Working samples and final specs are still to be released. NVIDIA has also asked its partners to put a label on their product boxes to address concerns about end users plugging in the 8-pin connector for motherboard into the 8-pin PCIe power connector on the 9800GX2 card.
Coolink today presented its new GFXChilla VGA cooler. Employing 4 high-performance heatpipes and two large 80mm fans, the GFXChilla provides superior cooling performance at minimum noise levels. The GFXChilla is widely compatible, simple to install and can easily be upgraded. "Many users are annoyed with their noisy VGA cards and hence look for a high-quality silent solution that is easy to install and comes at a fair price", explains Timothy Chu, Coolink CEO. "Our new GFXChilla is perfectly suited for quietly cooling popular VGA cards like Nvidia GeForce 8800GT or ATI Radeon 3870 as well as older series."
No doubt this news will be met with ferocious attacks from the generally public, but it looks like internet users in the UK could soon see themselves banned from the internet for illegal film and music downloads if new government proposals are approved. Internet service providers will be legally required to enforce a "three-strikes" system - strike one means an email from the ISP, strike two means a suspension and strike three a ban. Under the proposals ISPs would be prosecuted for failing to enforce the new rules and suspected customers details could be made available to the courts. The government is yet to decide whether information on offenders will be shared between ISPs, but if so it could make it much more difficult to find a new ISP once you have been banned. This move comes as a result of six million UK broadband users downloading files illegally each year, with the proposals being officially unveiled next week.
Apple today introduced Aperture 2, the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, color vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery for viewing on the web, iPhone, iPod touch and Apple TV. At a new low price of $199, anyone can easily organize, edit and publish photos like a pro.
Microsoft has officially responded to Yahoo!'s rejection of its proposed $44.6 billion
takeover bid with the following statement:
It is unfortunate that Yahoo! has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our companies. Based on conversations with stakeholders of both companies, we are confident that moving forward promptly to consummate a transaction is in the best interests of all parties.
We are offering shareholders superior value and the opportunity to participate in the upside of the combined company. The combination also offers an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market.
A Microsoft-Yahoo! combination will create a more effective company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. Furthermore, the combination will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising.
The Yahoo! response does not change our belief in the strategic and financial merits of our proposal. As we have said previously, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!'s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.
Monday, February 11th 2008
Today's Reviews
As the Pirate Bay administrators get closer and closer to their court appearance for conspiracy to break copyright law, one of them decides to speak out for his views. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, otherwise known as Anakata, has plenty of choice words regarding piracy and The Pirate Bay. The full clip can be found at the source link in a handy YouTube video. Since most news outlets only post what the RIAA/MPAA and their equivalents tell them to, the views of a man who calls himself the brains of The Pirate Bay are quite refreshing. Anakata claims that The Pirate Bay is really "the battle against greedy corporate America." In his spot, he assures viewers that under Swedish law, the Pirate Bay administrators have committed no crime. Anakata also proclaims that his site is "the scourge of the film and music industries", and claims that the actions he facilitates through The Pirate Bay are "not stealing, morally or legally".
While just earlier today we told you that Netflix is going Blu-ray exclusive, it seems like the folks over at the HD-DVD are taking another blow. Best Buy is happy to announce a new policy: Best Buy "will give preferential treatment to Blu-ray movies and hardware when it comes to floor space and positioning in its stores." Best Buy CFO and President Brian Dunn has this to say over why they chose Blu-ray:
Consumers have told us that they want us to help lead the way. We've listened to our customers, and we are responding. Best Buy will recommend Blu-ray as the preferred format. Our decision to shine a spotlight on Blu-ray Disc players and other Blu-ray products is a strong signal to our customers that we believe Blu-ray is the right format choice for them.
Best Buy believes that their decision will help make customers "feel confident in their high-def content choices". Best Buy mentioned that they will not cease selling HD-DVD products.
The whole "Vista Capable" sticker scandal was a mess, pure and simple. However, new evidence has prompted a new anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. It would seem as though it's entirely plausible that Microsoft was indeed trying to pull a fast one past Vista customers. Everyone who was shopping for a PC, or used a relatively-new PC a couple months before the Vista release probably saw that it came with a "Vista Capable" sticker. The new evidence shows that Microsoft may have planted Vista Capable stickers on computers not ready to run Vista at all, be it the premium version or the normal version. Men from inside Microsoft did everything from reprimand members of marketing to scoff at retailers who sent letters of concern to Microsoft. We'll keep you posted on what exactly comes out of this lawsuit. If you bought a "Vista Capable" computer with a "Vista Capable" sticker on it, you may just qualify for a settlement if this case comes through for the prosecution.
In short, it has been a very bad week for Microsoft.
It's becoming very apparent now that Yahoo has issued a press release refusing Microsoft's rather high bid for the company that there's more to the idea of a Yahoo acquisition than just a shift in management. The shareholders for Yahoo are simply livid over the fact that Yahoo is planning on going forward without Microsoft. Shareholders are already pretty angry over the fact that Yahoo has lost 40% stock value since last year. Microsoft, at this point, can do two things. They can up the bid, and risk making their own shareholders unsure. Or, they can leave Yahoo to suffer, and "spear-head an attack to oust Yahoo's board". Yahoo, however, is not without it's own options. Yahoo is expected to release a statement regarding exactly why they rejected Microsoft's offer. While some would claim the refusal was due to a personal spat between a few board members, Yahoo's investment banker confirms that Microsoft really didn't offer enough money. If Yahoo had accepted a $31-per-share buyout, Yahoo could very well have infuriated shareholders even more, and been accused of malfeasance.
To help spice up and/or improve physical therapy programs, hospitals are adding Nintendo Wii consoles to the proper offices. The reasons behind putting consoles in a hospital are simple. For one thing, the Nintendo Wii simply makes physical therapy more fun. Renowned doctors throughout America have found that there are other reasons. When a game requires users to make repetitive movements that might otherwise cause them pain, the game distracts from the pain, allowing the patient to do necessary exercises. To help confirm what these doctors already know, and have put into hospitals such as the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital west of Chicago and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the University of Minnesota is performing a study on the effects of the Nintendo Wii to physical therapy. If all goes well, the results will confirm that playing the Nintendo Wii is beneficial to things such as endurance, strength, flexibility, balance, and cardio.
It's fairly obvious that most IT work is outsourced to places like India, where minimum wage and benefits are either not required or are much lower than they would be in America. However, there are huge problems with outsourcing to India, that was either overlooked or not considered at the time of outsourcing. Be it the fault of an utter lack of medical benefits, or a sheer volume of required tasks, IT departments in India are beginning to contract diseases relating to typing too much and/or too fast. Over 75% of the workers in Indian city Bangalore have been diagnosed with "musculoskeletal symptoms related to work". The most crippling, RSI, is known for putting victims through searing pain when doing even the most mundane tasks. Fortunately, only 20% of the workers with diseases suffer chronically, and with a little time off, the remaining 55% can probably function like normal. Whether or not big Western companies are willing to be humane and give said workers the mentioned time off is a different story.
While Yahoo "formal rejected" a complete buy-out by Microsoft, it would seem that they're still up for going at the great world of the internet with a partner. Since they can still be "swallowed" my Microsoft, Yahoo is looking into ways to increase their monetary value. While talks with Google and Disney are certainly under consideration, Yahoo executives currently think that merging with AOL would really bring the most benefit. And so, Yahoo executives are working on re-opening negotiations with AOL regarding a merger. Yahoo couldn't have picked a better time, considering that Time Warner recently began considering letting go of AOL.
Apple today released the Mac OS X 10.5.2 update for all users running Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.5.1 Leopard. This update includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. For detailed information about security updates, please visit this
website. To update to Mac OS X 10.5.2, use Software Update or the standalone installer
here.
Today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Intel Research demonstrated a "first" in wireless communication, jointly developed with Nokia R&D and Nokia Siemens Networks R&D. The researchers showed a wifi/wimax heterogeneous seamless hand-over based on 802.21. This makes it possible to run a video conferencing application, for example, on a mobile internet device and seamlessly roam between WiFi and WiMAX networks, with no viewing disruption. And better yet, no user interaction necessary to go find a new available wireless network and connect. View the demo at the Intel booth, or virtually
here in a blog from Intel researcher Christian Maciocco.
Ubuntu and Red Hat are the most used Linux distributions among the 35,000 members of content-management vendor Alfresco's community, the company found in its second survey of trends in enterprise open-source software usage. The surveys help inform Alfresco's technology strategy, according to Ian Howells, Alfresco's chief marketing officer. "It's important for us to know which platforms to test against first," he said, adding, "It's in users' interest to give us good data." Among Linux operating systems, usage of Ubuntu and Red Hat stood at 35 percent and 23 percent, respectively, according to the survey. Suse, OpenSuse and Suse Enterprise collectively garnered 13 percent; Debian, 15 percent; and "other" distributions usage of 14 percent. Users also reported using a variety of proprietary enterprise software. Among Windows users, Vista adoption was just 2 percent, compared to 63 percent for Windows XP and 28 percent for Windows Server 2003.
The flaws disclosed last week in Adobe System's Reader and Acrobat programs have been used to exploit computers since at least January via malicious banner advertisements, security analysts are reporting. Adobe issued patches last Wednesday for Reader and Acrobat, but the company did not detail the flaws. Problems with Adobe's software can potentially affect millions of PC users, since the company's software is widely used to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Most people regard PDFs as harmless. "From our standpoint, it appears that this PDF-based attack has been quite successful, affecting many thousands of users throughout the world," wrote Hon Lau on Symantec's Security Response Weblog. Greg McManus of iDefense Labs, the security arm of VeriSign, reported one of the vulnerabilities to Adobe in October, according to a post by the SANS Institute, a computer security organization.
Netflix believes the winner in the HD format war has been determined and said that it has begun stocking Blu-ray discs exclusively. The company said that its move is prompted by the decision of four out of the six major movie studios to publish high-def DVD titles only in the Sony-developed Blu-ray format. The online movie rental company intends to phase out HD DVDs by the end of this year and, as of now, is purchasing HD titles in Blu-ray only. The firm's current HD DVD inventory will remain available to customers until the discs' "natural life cycle" takes them out of circulation in the coming months. "The prolonged period of competition between two formats has prevented clear communication to the consumer regarding the richness of the high-def experience versus standard definition," said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer for Netflix, in a prepared statement.
NVIDIA today unveiled its first CPU. The APX 2500 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) product that is aiming for Windows Mobile handhelds. Despite the fact that it is not scheduled to hit the market until late this year, the chip is bound to raise more than just one eyebrow. Basically, the APX 2500 is a cocktail consisting of an ARM11 processor core and lots of technologies borrowed from the GeForce pool. Interestingly, the manufacturer opted not to tout the GoForce brand in this instance, but to put "Ultra-Low Power GeForce" (ULP GeForce) into the spotlight. The GeForce part comes with a programmable pixel shader integrating a programmable vertex & lighting engine. Anti-Aliasing is supported via a CSAA filter for 2D and 3D modes. The chip clocks have not been disclosed, sans the fact that the ARM11 is running at 750 MHz. API-wise, we're talking about OpenGL ES 2.0 and D3D Mobile support. NVIDIA decided to use the shortcut HD AVP (High Definition Audio Video Processor) to describe the video processing capabilities of the SoC. We have to admit that we are a bit surprised that the company did not use a phrase like PureVideo Mobile or simply continues on the PureVideo HD path. On the technology side, HD AVP includes HD video encode and decode (albeit "only" 720p) and NVIDIA claims that the video playback will not eat up CPU cycles, apparently resulting in overall lower power consumption.
Dell Inc. has refreshed its XPS laptop PC line and the Inspiron 1525 notebook, which now optionally have a built-in Wireless USB module. For an additional $150, customers can purchase the XPS M1330, M1530, M1730 and Inspiron 1525 notebooks with the new capability that enables computer peripherals and electronics devices - such as printers, external hard drives, mice, keyboards, digital cameras, and MP3 players - to connect to a system without a USB cable. Along with a built-in Wireless USB module, purchasers who select the new option will also get Belkin's 4-port WUSB hub. Wireless USB technology is based on the Ultra-WideBand (UWB) radio platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at distances up to 3 meters and 110 Mbit/s at up to 10 meters.
Scythe Co. today announced the company's lowest profile heatsink, Shuriken CPU Cooler. Shuriken is the hand-hidden weapon used by old time Ninja warrior to attack its enemy. Scythe Shuriken CPU Cooler comes with 3 most-wanted features in the cooling industry. One of them is the "Extreme Low Height" feature which makes this product to be compatible to most cases in the market. The second feature is the slim 100mm x 12mm thickness "Super Slim PWM Fan" which is originally designed by Scythe engineer to make this product as low height as possible. The last feature is the weight being super light as 355g, which is nearly the same as the box CPU cooler comes with Intel or AMD CPU. Furthermore Shuriken CPU Cooler is equipped with the famous and patent pending VTMS (Versatile Tool-Free Multiplatform System) mounting mechanism to accomplish a tool-free mounting. The supplied fan clips allow the optional use of after-market 92mm fans or the Scythe Kaze Jyu 100mm fans.
On February 5, 2008, Apple Inc. has filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, extending the Apple trademark to cover:
toys, games and playthings, namely, handheld units for playing electronic games; handheld units for playing videogames; stand alone videogame machines; electronic games other than those adapted for use with televisions receivers only; LCD games machines, electronic educational game machines; toys, namely battery-powered computer games.
Analyst predictions and rumors point out that the extended Apple trademark may lead to the introduction of another fancy iPhone like gaming device, but none of the sources available can confirm what's the next step in Apple's camp. The original story, as well as the trademark application form can be found
here.
Yahoo! Inc., a leading global Internet company, today said the Yahoo! Board of Directors has carefully reviewed Microsoft's unsolicited proposal with Yahoo!'s management team and financial and legal advisors and has unanimously concluded that the proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders.
Micron Technology today announced that it is sampling to customers and major enablers the industry's fastest 512 megabit (Mb) Mobile DRAM component, designed for the latest feature-rich mobile electronic devices. Mass production is expected in the second quarter of this year. With mobile applications adding increased computing and multimedia functionality, faster and better performing memory becomes paramount for optimizing performance.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) today announced a new way it will provide for consumers' growing need for speed. The Bluetooth SIG is developing an innovative method of radio substitution. It will allow Bluetooth enabled devices to utilize the presence of 802.11 technology to achieve faster transfer speeds. This architecture will be called 'Alternate MAC/PHY'. To cut the long story short: "This is the wireless technology equivalent of 'low hanging fruit,'" said Michael Foley, Ph.D., executive director, the Bluetooth SIG. "What we're doing is taking classic Bluetooth connections - using Bluetooth protocols, profiles, security and other architectural elements - and allowing it to jump on top of the already present 802.11 radio, when necessary, to send bulky entertainment data, faster. When the speed of 802.11 is overkill, the connection returns to normal operation on a Bluetooth radio for optimal power management and performance." It sounds great and easy, but the Alternate MAC/PHY is not expected to be published to members until mid-2009.
NVIDIA informed their partners that the voltage issue with the GeForce 9600GT cards has been fixed.
The NVVDD is change to 1.15V by placing a 0 ohm resistor at R587 and remove R561, R566, and R570. To enable load-line feature, a 0 ohm resistor is placed at R522 and 2.2nF capacitor is placed at C519 and R527 is removed.
The cards are already fixed and launch date is confirmed as previous for February 21, 2008.
Sunday, February 10th 2008
Today's Reviews
While not nearly as epic as Halo 3, sales-wise, the sequel to one of the most popular Nintendo-based multiplayer games has hit it big. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, where gamers throw famous characters from classic games at each other, sold 800 thousand copies in the first week of sales. This puts the game at the top of all current game charts, outselling Sony's Devil May Cry 4 by several hundred thousand units. Other than those two games, here are the top five games in Japan right now:
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) - 819,647 units
- Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) - 205,390 units
- Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (PS2) - 116,928 units
- Suzumiya Haruhi no Tomadoi (PS2) - 114,335 units
- Wii Fit (Wii) - 73,325 units
Just a few hours after Mozilla promised the public they were safe from hackers while using Firefox 2.0.0.12, a hacker went and found a way around the patch. The hacker, named Ronald van den Heetkamp, has this to say to the Firefox developer team.
Don't patch vulnerabilities for fifty percent, take the time and fix the cause. Because directory traversal through plugins is all nice and such, we don't need it. We can trick Firefox itself in traversing directories back. I found another information leak that is very serious because we are able to read out all preferences set in Firefox, or just open or include about every file stored in the Mozilla program files directory, and this without any mandatory settings or plugins.
Ronald van den Heetkamp recommends installing the NoScript add-on, or simply using an alternative browser, until Mozilla fixes this bug.
In a hilarious and somewhat cruel twist of fate, market research has proven that AMD sells more when Intel really lays down the advertising. Stephen DiFranco, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at AMD, had this to say in regards to Intel's advertising.
I wish they would advertise more. I beg them publicly, please advertise more. Create more demand. Some weeks in the United States there are more AMD desktops and notebooks sold than Intel.
Granted, DiFranco later admitted that most consumers hardly know the difference between AMD and Intel. However, going from a 5% retail market share to a 50% retail market share without spending any money on advertising is pretty hard to explain any other way.
Piracy really needs no introduction. The RIAA is on it like a fat kid to cake, and a sizable chunk of internet users do it. Artists and record labels are caught in the middle of things, the victim in both cases. If pirates win, they make no money. If the RIAA wins, nobody will pay for their music. And so, in what is likely to be the only time this happens, an independent record label is hoisting a white flag. All music that German record label Dependent Records owns will be uploaded directly to The Pirate Bay. Dependent Records attracted mainly aggrotech, electro-industrial and futurepop artists. Dependent Records is doing this because they had to close shop recently, but still want the artists to see some exposure.
Update: The record label
Dependent has informed us that this news posting is not true and that the owner Mr. Herwig has been an opponent of file sharing for a long time. Apparently the original news source Torrentfreak did not do their research properly.
With violent video games such as Manhunt 2 causing controversy, the British government is reconsidering the exact rating system. At this point, games are given to the British Board of Film Classification, who slaps an appropriate rating on the game. Selling games to children under the rating's age class is grounds for arrest. However, up to 90% of games needing a high-class rating bypass this system by getting their games rated by the much more relaxed PEGI system. And so, the British government decided that it was high time to change things around. No matter how things turn out, the British government wants their citizens to know that this is being done to "protect children from damaging games". They also want you to know that their definition of a damaging game involves "gross violence towards humans or animals, human sexual or excretory activity, or scenes that would show people how to commit a crime".
IBM was never known for making anything small. From some of the very first computers to the PlayStation 3 processor, IBM is one of the largest influences of the tech industry. As if to add to this success, IBM wants to be a host: to the entire internet. The thought is, at first, silly, and then unfathomable. How can one computer, let alone one company, run the entire internet? IBM claims they can pull it off with a heavily modified Blue Gene computer, which they have codenamed "Kittyhawk". The processing power of Kittyhawk would be immense. The software is too complex to explain, and will be left at "Kittyhawk will run the internet as a single application". As far as hardware is concerned, current estimates say that Kittyhawk will need 67.1 million cores and 32PB of memory.
One or two readers may have noticed the story about the PowerColor news site being hacked
last week, and it looks like it's happened again. This time things seem much more sinister though - when you visit the news page from PowerColor's
global site you are redirected to an image of the fire in Southern Germany last week on ImageShack (below) with a statement below in German which translates as "We will show whole Germany... for that must you pay... Fuck you Germany." It looks like this is the work of a group labelling themselves as
CMD-TEAM, although why an American graphics card manufacturer is being targeted is beyond me. This is exactly the same page as was hacked last time,
www.powercolor.com/Global/News.asp, although a very different message it would seem.
Microsoft has decided to end Windows Anytime Upgrade, the company's online method for upgrading basic Windows Vista distributions to the Premium and Ultimate versions of Windows Vista.
In an effort to streamline the Windows Anytime Upgrade experience for our customers and open the program to additional markets worldwide, Microsoft and its partners have decided to end digital product key distribution on February 20, 2008.
All digital keys purchased through February 20, 2008 will remain valid for upgrade. For additional information, please visit
Windows Anytime Upgrade Home.
ComputerBase.de has released a BIOS editor which allows to modify the BIOS of all ATI Radeon HD3870 X2 cards. You can edit BootUp Clocks, 2D Clocks, Low Power 3D Clocks, High Power 3D Clocks, UVD Clocks and the VCore voltage.
ATI BIOS-Editor 0.9 Beta
Saturday, February 9th 2008
Today's Reviews
Rockstar Games has relaunched the official
Grand Theft Auto IV site, offering information on characters and locations, new screenshots and five in-game movies. Grand Theft Auto IV will be released on April 29th for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Yahoo's board of directors plans to reject Microsoft's acquisition offer, according to the Wall Street Journal. The board believes that the current offer "massively undervalues" the company. Quoting sources "familiar with the situation", the WSJ said that board would not be accepting an offer below 40 USD per share, which would bring the purchase price closer to 57 billion USD, and would require Microsoft to account for certain risks, if regulators do not approve the deal. Yahoo's stock closed Friday trading at 29.20 USD. If accurate, the board apparently is generally willing to agree to the sale of the company. The two companies are likely to be heading into a gambling phase to find out if they can agree on a price. It is unclear at this time whether Microsoft is willing to increase its offer to the level of Yahoo's expectations. When Microsoft announced its intention to take over Yahoo, CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft had been in "on and off" acquisition talks with Yahoo for about 18 months. He said that he "thought long and hard about" purchasing Yahoo and believes in a Yahoo that is integrated into Microsoft "more than ever." He considered the 44.6 billion USD as an offer that Yahoo should "seriously think about".
The Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors' computers, security researchers said last week. The download section of AvSoft's S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. "They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection," he said. "It shows that anyone can be a victim. ... It's hard to protect Web servers properly." The technique used on the site has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months. The attackers open an invisible iFrame Window within the victim's browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim's computer. The malicious software is a variant of the Virut virus family. The iFrame pages are commonly used by Web developers to insert content into their Web pages, but because it is possible to create an invisible iFrame window, the technology is often misused by hackers as a way to silently redirect victims to malicious Web sites.
Samsung's slate of Blu-ray players have been plagued with issues essentially from day one, and while it has released a flurry of firmware updates over the years in an attempt to mend a variety of incompatibility issues, even its recent BD-UP5000 hybrid player is being axed early on after giving owners all sorts of fits. Apparently, one particular buyer isn't taking things lying down, and has decided to file suit against the mega-corp alleging that it has sold "defective Blu-ray players" to consumers. According to the suit, Sammy was "fully aware of the defective nature of the player [BD-P1200, in particular] at the time of manufacture and sale," and it also claims that the firm has "failed to provide a remedy consistent with the products' intended and represented uses." More specifically, the verbiage picks on the units' inability to play back select BD titles, and while some fixes have indeed been doled out, we still get the feeling many consumers have been left dissatisfied. Needless to say, this outcome should be interesting.
Two civil liberties groups have filed a lawsuit in a federal court in California in response to complaints from travelers of excessive screenings at border-entry points, including inspections of the data on laptops, cell phones and other electronic devices. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In the legal filing, the two groups ask the court to order the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division to release records relating to its policies and procedures on the "questioning, search and inspection" of travelers entering or returning to the U.S. at various ports of entry. The ALC and the EFF, which are both based in San Francisco, said in a joint statement that they filed the suit under the Freedom of Information Act after the DHS didn't respond to a FOIA request the two groups submitted last October. They added that they had requested the information from the DHS in response to increasing allegations of "excessive or repeated" screenings by CBP agents.
With the launch of the GeForce 9 series getting closer and closer, AMD is hard pressed to find something to keep themselves competitive. While the RV670 and R680 are regaining some much needed market share, they will both pale when the GeForce 9 series is released to the public. Thankfully, AMD is not going down without a fight. About the same time as the GeForce 9 series is released, AMD is releasing a little something called the RV770. At this point, it appears that the RV770 is about 50% faster than the current HD3870, which is certainly respectable. How this compares to the GeForce 9 series is still a mystery. The release of CrossFire X technology ought to really help benchmark numbers, assuming AMD can make buying four AMD GPUs cost about as much as two from NVIDIA.
The market for laptops is quite uncertain at the moment. With Apple having made/making a transition over to Intel, ASUS launching more EeePCs and an anticipated flood of cheap computers, the market could go anywhere from its current state. Analysts over at Gartner have a pessimistic view of the future. They think that the very thing that got people into laptops in the first place could doom the industry. A desire for capable, portable information powerhouses could, by 2012, push businesses and people away from laptops, and towards smaller devices such as PDAs and so-called smart phones.
A few days ago, we reported that Rockstar was in talks with a movie studio and rap star Eminem to make a movie based on Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar has a statement in regards to this. Apparently, instead of a movie being just about certain, negotiations were fouled up from nearly the start. Dan Houser, vice president of creativity at Rockstar, had this to say on the whole GTA movie idea.
Some movie producers were trying to put something together to entice us to make a movie, as studios and production teams frequently have done in the past. This proposal was no more interesting than the numerous others we receive. We never entertained proceeding with the project.
Houser also emphasized that a GTA movie is of no interest to Rockstar at this point.
Apparently, the Microsoft Zune 80s (which is red for Valentine's Day) is immensely popular. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't keep up. Upon hearing this, Microsoft decided that they did not want the bad press of not keeping a promise. And so, if you're not getting your red Zune by Valentine's Day (assuming you've already ordered one), Microsoft promises you all your money back, and a pink Zune as soon as they can get one to you, free of charge. If you qualify for the free Zune, you will most likely get an E-mail or phone call from Microsoft.
MySpace has gotten quite a bad reputation. It was put off as a "dates-r-us" for pedophiles at one point, at another it was seen as a distraction to minors, but now it seems like MySpace got a crown for the pile of dirt on their doorstep. Police departments all around America are confirming that criminal gangs (mostly local) are recruiting on social networking sites, especially MySpace. What's worse still is that gang fights will start on the internet, and then people will take them to the street. Some gangs will even post a form of propaganda, just for the purpose of getting children to join their gangs. In response to this story, some social networking sites have already declared that anything illegal or gang-related is immediately deleted and cause for an on-the-spot ban.
The Gartner and The Burton Group, two highly respected groups of analysts, confirm what consumers have been saying for the past year or two: June 30 2008 is simply too early to stop printing new licenses of Windows XP. The analysts had this to say about any OS transition:
A good rule of thumb in any OS transition is that you have to have the original and new products available for at least two years to handle customer (migration) needs
Analysts over at Gartner explain why, exactly, Microsoft should be easing off the "upgrade your OS" button. While Microsoft does a fine job of ensuring as much application compatibility as possible, they simply cannot patch up every single application on the face of the planet, especially "home-brew" applications and applications from minor things. Pushing the cut-off date off by seven more months (so that the cut-off date would be two years after Vista was first released) would give everyone plenty of time for transitions.
There are a lot more reasons, which are just about all listed at the source link, if you're interested.
The current drivers available from ATI (Catalyst 8.1) support an interesting new mode: interoperability between an HD3870 and an HD3850 in CrossFire mode. Fudzilla had both the time and resources to test this out, so they did. Before the test results are considered, please remember that these are just initial drivers. Both Catalyst 8.2 and 8.3 will offer more impressive CrossFire results. To make a long story short, and to sum up a lot of bar charts, AMD is well on their way to making Hybrid CrossFire a feasible solution for a lot of people, especially once more graphics cards can be mixed-and-matched. Please check out Fudzilla for all the benchmarks.
The most notable increase was 50% in Half Life 2. NVIDIA does not have anything comparable to Hybrid CrossFire.
Yesterday, we brought you the tragic news that Dell recently stopped selling computers based on AMD processors on their website. Today, Dell made a statement to attempt to clarify the situation. Dell explained that there is a delicate balancing act that must be done between retail, phone, and internet sales channels. Dell also assured that there will be ample supply of AMD-based computers coming through retail channels, and that Dell hasn't quite stopped selling AMD computers on their website just yet (Inspiron 531 is still available). Dell also clarified that Dell is still selling plenty of AMD-based computers online, just so long as the customers are business. To sum it up, Dell said this:
We are committed to the AMD product lines as a long-term partner to provide the maximum choice for our customers.
Following the announcement earlier this week that Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) had been shipped to manufacturing, Microsoft Corp. today confirmed that it seeded another build of Windows XP SP3 to a closed set of testers. "Yesterday, we released Windows XP SP3 RC 2 to private beta testers," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "This release catches the build up on previously released hot fixes and responds to critical feedback from previous betas." Despite the new SP3 release, the final ship date continues to be unknown. Although some reports indicate February 24th or March 23rd as final SP3 release dates, Microsoft continues to claim: "We are targeting 1H [first-half] 2008 for the release of XP SP3 RTM, though our timing will always be based on customer feedback as a first priority," The next major milestone for Windows XP after SP3 ships is June 30, when the nearly 7-year-old operating system is slated to fall off the reseller and retail availability list.
Friday, February 8th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Headphones
The HeadRoom Total BitHead portable amplifier and DAC is a great combination of both a USB audio codec and a headphone amplifier that will drive most high end cans on the market today. The HeadRoom Total BitHead sells for only $149.99 which can be considered a steal for such a product.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 ultra-portable notebook with a 13.3-inch LED backlight display (1440x900 pixels), Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 2GHz CPU, Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics, a 64GB solid state drive, 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 memory, and an ultra-thin DVD burner is now available for preorder at select retailers. The X300 was first mentioned not long ago after Apple announced its MacBook Air. This model is supposed to be Lenovo's direct MacBook Air competitor. Aside from the main hardware specs, ThinkPad X300 offers built-in 802.11n wireless module, a Gigabit Ethernet connection, broadband wireless and WiMax support, Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technology, integrated web camera, fingerprint reader and more. Major online retailers such as BestBuy (
$2,743.99) and Buy.com (
$2,939.99) are starting to take preorders now.
As part of Mozilla's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.12 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download
here. This update is strongly recommended for all Firefox users. For a list of changes and more information, please review the
Firefox 2.0.0.12 Release Notes.
American high-end memory manufacturer Mushkin has revealed that it is working on a new GeForce 8800 GT version, the 8800 GT G92 512 Mushkin HP Overclocked Edition v2. Mushkin has equipped the card with custom dual-slot cooler and 512MB GDDR3 memory clocked at 1900 MHz. The core frequency for this model has also been changed to 675MHz from the standard 600MHz. Other unique features come with the card's bundle, where you'll find a Mushkin T-shirt and USB flash drive with drivers. Expect HP Overclocked Edition 8800 GT v2 later this month for around 260 Euros.
It's apparently the season for oddball game pitches. Except, this time, the game pitch has already been accepted and is in development. Publisher Mastiff recently took up the concept for a game that will be called "Major League Eating", based off of what some call America's favorite past time. The game itself sounds like something out of a 7-year old's dream. The contest of the "world's greatest gurgitory athletes" will play much like many other fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat. However, instead of using swords and fists, the aforementioned athletes will attack and defend using "burps, belches, and mustard gas", all while making sure that they get their fair share of munchies. Mastiff's announcement did not mention any timeframe for release, or finalize any platforms.
For years, users wanted Dell to include AMD processors in Dell builds. In May 2006, Dell was happy to announce that they were bringing AMD on board. Everything seemed to be working out, until now. Dell recently announced that they're discontinuing almost all AMD-based Dell computers. The few ones that are left cannot be purchased online, and are only found in stores like Best Buy and Circuit City. This is likely to be a huge blow for AMD, and could not have come at a worse time. AMD recently posted abysmal revenue/loss figures for Q4 2007, and is running a company (ATI) that is worth 30% less than it was at the time of initial purchase. Hopefully, AMD will find more people to sell their processors.
Apparently, the RIAA doesn't feel like ISPs blocking piracy server-side is quite enough. The RIAA wants ISPS to begin implementing client-side filtering. This would work by forcing the end-user to install a program that monitors their every move, to ensure that nothing is illegal. It is very unlikely that such a move will actually come into play, because it is a massive violation of privacy and a huge breach of user rights. The RIAA feels that it would all be worth it, because it would let users that wouldn't otherwise know they're getting in a lot of trouble pirating stuff that they are, indeed, pirating.
The owner of the cables decided it's high time to repair them. The broken cables, which disrupted internet access across much of the middle east and Asia, are well on their way to becoming fully operational again. At this point, there is still an investigation going on as to exactly why the cables were broken. Five cables being broken in the course of a week cannot be a coincidence. The current timeframe for repairs is one cable by Saturday and two by Sunday. The other two cables will be repaired in the very imminent future. At this point, internet traffic has been re-routed, so this whole issue is not as terrible as some would make it out to be.
The new MacBook boasts a lot of features. Among them is one of the first attempts to put a beefy SSD into a mass-produced computer. MacBook customers have a choice between an 80GB 4300RPM drive, and a 64GB SSD. The SSD costs a whopping $1300, but some would claim that the price is well worth it. Unfortunately for SSD promoters, a little bit of investigative journalism uncovered an inconvenient truth. ARS Technica took two MacBook Airs, one with an SSD and one without, and compared the two in modern benchmarks. What they found was quite surprising: it's not worth the $1300 most of the time. While the SSD definitely eliminated hard drive lag in extremely bandwidth-heavy applications and made the overall system much smoother, it all comes down to what you're using it for. Despite the possible performance gains, ARS Techica concluded that you really shouldn't be spending $1300 on this technology just yet.
A 12 year old who had just finished his first period classes got a nasty surprise. His PlayStation Portable, which was off and in his pocket, got "intensely hot", and caught fire. The boy's jeans quickly followed suit, causing quite the stir in the classroom. According to local emergency services, the fire originated from the device's battery compartment. The exact cause as to how or why the battery got so hot remains unknown at this point. The teacher was able to remove the PSP from the boy's pocket before it caused any serious injury. The boy was rushed to a hospital, was treated for second-degree burns, and was back at school in time for recess. Ironically, the game that was loaded at the time of the immolation was "Burn Out Legends".
According to the latest sales trends, it would seem as though the Nintendo "it prints money" DS is starting to lose popularity. In fact, all handheld consoles are beginning to lose their appeal in Japan. Right after the Christmas season, sales of everything went way down, and now that we're in February, the DS is being outsold by the PSP and the Nintendo Wii. Sony ought to be happy to know that PS3 sales are picking up in Japan, most likely due to the release of Devil May Cry 4. The pretty bar chart will answer any further questions you may have on Japanese game platform sales.
2007 was an epic year for games, as over 1500 were submitted to the ESRB for rating. The ESRB recently released all the ratings they have given games in a pretty pie chart. According to the pretty pie chart, a lot more games than you'd think were actually E-rated. 59% were for "everyone", 15% were for "everyone 10+", 20% were for "teen", and only 6% were for "mature". It should be noted that this chart includes all games, not just blockbusters. It should also be noted that this chart includes all games released on all platforms, even "edutainment" platforms designed specifically around little kids.
There's no telling how legitimate these shots might be, and it's quite clear that these screens won't be giving us any juicy details about Windows 7 anytime soon, but we couldn't pass on images that purport to be the first from a super-secret test build of Windows 7 seeded to "key partners." So, anything to see here? Not that we can tell, from the looks of things we're looking at a copy of Vista with the name "Windows 7 Ultimate" tacked on, but there's no telling what's happening under the hood. We know we can't wait to pay another few hundred dollars for a barely noticeable upgrade to Vista that will re-break all driver support, how about you?
Holland-based component creator Nexus has updated its processor cooling line-up by introducing the XiR-2300 and XiR-3500. These two coolers have similar specs, come with the same fan but are set apart by the material used for their cooling fins - aluminum for the XiR-2300 and copper for the XiR-3500. The overall weight is also different - 382 grams for the XiR-2300 and 736 grams for the XiR-3500 model. Otherwise, both coolers come with a pure copper base, four 6mm heatpipes, Intel 775, AMD AM2, 754, 939/940 support and a 92mm orange LED temperature controlled fan that spins from 1200 to 2500 rpm (24 dBA at max speed). No word on pricing yet though.
Valve's Steam service for downloading PC games and digital content has gone through another milestone surpassing 15 million accounts and releasing year-over-year sales growth of 158% through the holiday season. Throughout 2008 Valve also promised to bring more community features as well as new titles such as Valve's Left 4 Dead. "PC gaming is thriving, and has evolved into an era of constant connectivity," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "That connectivity gives us the ability to have a much better relationship with customers, not just for delivering our games, but across all aspects of our business - including the design, development, and support of our games. Features like Guest Passes, Free Weekends, Gifting, and the Steam Community have been very well received both by customers and the developers who are using Steam. We are accelerating our release of new functionality in the next year as well as finding new ways to work with our partners such as the release of Steamworks, which allows them to bring the many benefits of Steam to their packaged products."
All Unreal Tournament 3 players will be flattered to know that new patch 1.2 of the game is in final stage of testing and should be up for downloads some time next week. The full list of changes is included under the "Read full story" marker.
Microsoft informs us that it will release 12 security updates next week on February 12, 2008, matching the patch record set a year ago. Seven of the 12 will be tagged with the company's highest threat ranking - critical. Among the other dozen updates listed in the prepatch notification posted to the
Microsoft web site this morning, are three slated for Microsoft Office, three for Windows, two for Internet Information Server (IIS), and one each for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Works, VBScript and JScript, and Active Directory.
OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today unveiled the OCZ PC2-8500 Reaper HPC 4GB, one the fastest high density kits in the world. Incorporating all the features that make the Reaper HPC series the top choice among gamers and overclockers, this ultra high-speed DDR2 is designed to meet the growing demand for faster high density memory for both productivity and gaming applications. With the price of top-speed DDR2 more affordable to a wide range of consumers, the Reaper HPC 4GB kits offer incredible performance at an attractive price.
A lawsuit filed today by the University of Wisconsin claims that the processor infringes on patented technology developed by one of its professors, back in 1998. Gurindar Sohi, Computer Science department chair, presented some of his developments relating to instruction level parallelism to Intel and offered to license them, but got nowhere, yet the same tech is in the Core 2 Duo, according to the lawsuit. Intel says its been talking to the Badgers for over a year now, and that it has not evaluated the complaint, which it might want to do in short order, since the University of Wisconsin is asking for the court to halt shipments of the Core 2 Duo in addition to monetary damages and legal fees.
A Steam client beta is now available. To access it, go to File -> Settings and on the Account tab choose "Steam Client Candidate" in the Beta participation section. The specific changes include:
- Fixed downloads becoming paused
- Improved download speeds
- Decreased application launch time
- Fixed URL links in chats to not include trailing punctuation as part of the link
- Changed group event notifications to open at most 8 dialogs
Thursday, February 7th 2008
Today's Reviews
The folks over at Redmond are very serious when they say that they're trying to make Windows a product developed with a lot of user feedback. The 'Save XP' petition that we reported on yesterday got some recognition by Microsoft. Beating extreme improbabilities, and documenting one of the few times a petition actually does something, Microsoft acknowledged the users' concerns, and promised that fresh Windows XP licenses will be around as long as partners and customers feel like they need them. In the words of a Microsoft spokesperson...
We're aware of it, but are listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs. That's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us.
As Neoseeker puts it, "even 3D Realms didn't believe" the latest rumors of an upcoming Duke Nukem Forever release. For those of you who don't know, there was a rumor going around that 3DRealms was planning on sending out a retail version of Duke Nukem Forever within 2008. While geeks and true fans of the series had warm smiles on their faces, alarm bells went off at 3DRealms HQ. 3DRealms was very quick in eliminating false hope, and says, with a hint of disgust, that Duke Nukem Forever is still on the "when it's done" release timeframe. While there are still a lot of months left in 2008, it's very unlikely that we're going to see any hint of Duke Nukem Forever for quite some time. Release platforms have not been announced or finalized.
Tech magazine
PC Inpact claims to have the exact Windows release dates, so it is my duty to tell them to you like they are. If this source is correct, we will be seeing Windows Vista SP1 by February 18, and the streamlined Windows XP SP3 by March 23.
For any of you hoping to get Windows Vista SP1 RTM code before it's officially ready, I suggest you head over to the source link for a detailed registry hack. Basically, this hack is a clever use of Microsoft's own code. At the run of a CMD file that was present in the latest beta version of Vista SP1, any version of Windows Vista will phone home and download whatever SP1 files it can find. Luckily for the adventurous, Microsoft will not be trying to shoot this hack down. In fact, they're happy that this time around, the hacking is completely legal, and safe. Safe, that is, until the upgrade is complete, after which you still are dealing with unfinished code.
If you understand the risks and want to play around, please follow the source link to download the appropriate files.
Sites such as MySpace and Facebook have come under fire in recent times for allowing children to post as much as they want about themselves, which in some tragic cases hooks pedophiles up to pubescent girls. For a while, this was the only type of news coming in: bad press for social networking sites of any kind. Fortunately, things are changing. A recent study conducted by the University of New Hampshire confirmed what teenagers could have told you years ago: social networking sites are nothing compared to instant messaging clients and chatrooms. The University of New Hampshire took 1,600 healthy 10-15 year olds, and asked them to report any instances of sexual solicitation while on the internet. Roughly 4% said they were solicited while on a social networking site, and 9% said they were harassed. While these figures are nothing to dismiss, much more dire figures were found when children were asked if they had ever been solicited/harassed on an instant messaging/chat client. An astounding 59% of children were harassed while instant messaging, and 19% were harassed while in a chat room.
For a while, you could only get your legal music from three main music distributors: Napster, Real Rhapsody, URGE, and Yahoo. However, there have been a lot of changes. With restriction-free music gaining momentum, with distributors like Wal-Mart providing cheaper music, and distributors like Amazon simply offering more music, business is awful hard to come by for any of those distributors. Yahoo, which at one point offered more than two million songs, has been forced to shut down the Unlimited music service. Yahoo has officially sold the Unlimited music service to Real Rhapsody, and current subscribers of Yahoo will be given a migration notice very soon, if they haven't been already. Yahoo will still be in the music business, though, and is considering offering a very limited catalog of subsidized free music, much like competitor Spiral Frog.
Google seems to have been around for about as long as the internet, and provides a necessary function. When there's something on the internet you just cannot find, Google takes less than two tenths of a second to find it for you. However, some people seem to have become awful bored with the same old way of searching for results. And so, Google remedied this issue by re-doing the way the search engine works. Google Experimental, instead of just slapping results in a user's face, gives users a lot of different options as far as how to review the results.
Aside from a list, users can view a map of results or a timeline with results chronologically organized. From there users can apply special informational filters, to further pare down the information obtained.
Dan Crowe, production manager over at Google, put the changes in place to make the user base happy. If you want to make Mr.Crowe happy, simply head on over to
Google and let Google know you want to run the Experimental search by default.
America Online, love it or hate it, has an incredible influence on the internet. While it was once a giant that everyone had to go through to get on the internet, it would seem as though times have changed. Time Warner, known for cable television/internet and for owning America Online, recently ran into some trouble. They also are noticing that AOL is not doing too well themselves. And so, what was once the internet industry leader is now going to be sold off to the highest bidder. At this point, AOL should be split into two departments. One department will run whatever AOL does involving sheer internet access. The other department, called the AOL Web Portal, includes a search engine and a lot of media.
Epic Games is well known throughout the gaming community. Most well known for their Unreal Tournament series and the Unreal engine series, Epic Games has every reason to be at the peak of their game for the PC gaming crowd. However, they are beginning to doubt their fan base. While Gears of War for the Xbox360 was an instant success for the Xbox360, the PC version of Unreal Tournament failed to take off. In an
interview, Mark Rein confirms that gaming itself has begun to move away from the PC, and towards consoles. Even inside Epic Games, a sizable chunk of employees play their games on the Xbox360. Outside Epic Games, a paltry 14% of gamers game on their computer. The reason for this, despite the superior technology the PC offers, is the sheer cost of owning and maintaining a gaming habit on the PC. While an Xbox360 is $400USD including games and extra controllers, a PC is upwards of $1000USD for a game-worthy setup, not including games, and only supporting one player at a time.
The amazingly successful Mario Kart series, which involves driving your favorite Mario World characters around in silly go-karts, is about to get another sequel. Mario Kart Wii will, as the name suggests, arrive on the Wii. Here's a list of all the fun stuff Mario Kart Wii has to offer.
- The game will include a fancy wheel controller.
- Gamers have the option to race either classic karts or bikes. Bikes are faster and can perform wheelies, but are harder to control. Tricks performed in mid-air will give the gamer a speed boost upon landing.
- There will be 32 tracks. 16 are brand new, and the other 16 are remakes of previous favorite courses.
- Gamers can play against up to 4 people on the same Wii, and up to 16 over the internet.
Mario Kart Wii will find itself on Japanese shelves on April 10th, and a North American/European release should follow shortly.
The incredibly lucrative, popular and successful Guitar Hero franchise, at this point owned by Activision, left gamers happy and craving an encore. Activision is more than happy to provide it, and confirmed a Guitar Hero IV before Guitar Hero III was even out the door. Activision, at this point, has no comment about what exactly is in Guitar Hero IV, other than the fact that it will be there. Fortunately, there are other ways of attaining such information as who will be in Guitar Hero IV. UK band "The Answer" recently posted a press release boasting the honor of one of their songs being in the fourth Guitar Hero. According to the press release, The Answer's single "Never Too Late" will be featured somewhere in the game, which should be released by the end of this year, if everything goes well. If not, well, there's always next year. We'll keep you posted.
Being the avid gamers you all are, I'm sure you know that there have been some pretty ridiculous game concepts that went to market, and some pretty good concepts that never went into production. Be it ridiculous or not, the Indy hit "Juno" could possibly show up at your local video game store in the near future. Considering that the movie is a moving comedy with heavy dialog and little action, whoever takes this game up is in for a whopper of a challenge. If they pull it off though, Juno could become quite the franchise. There are very little details on this idea at the moment, other than plans to turn Juno into a game for "casual gamers". How, exactly, they will turn Juno into a video game for the masses is unclear.
SAPPHIRE Technology, industry leader in graphics upgrades for the PC, has just launched a new version of its successful HD 3850 with enhanced memory configuration of 1GB.
The new SAPPHIRE HD 3850 has 1GB of GDDR3 memory, running at 829MHz (1.66GHz effective). It has a core clock speed of 703MHz, higher than the standard model, which together with the large onboard memory delivers exciting levels of graphics performance especially in games or applications where large volumes of texture or data are involved.
IBM Cell BE PS3 Processor Shrunk to 45nm
At an ISSCC session yesterday afternoon, IBM announced details of a smaller, lower-power version of the Cell BE processor that powers Sony's PlayStation 3 entertainment system. The Cell BE is currently fabricated on IBM's 65nm SOI process, but IBM will soon move the console chip onto the company's next-generation 45nm high-k process. The 45nm Cell will use about 40 percent less power than its 65nm predecessor, and its die area will be reduced by 34 percent. The greatly reduced power budget will cut down on the amount of active cooling required by the console, which in turn will make it cheaper to produce and more reliable. Also affecting Sony's per-unit cost is the reduction in overall die size. A smaller die means a smaller, cheaper package; it also means that yields will be better and that each chip will cost less overall. All this will help Sony to slash the production cost of every PLAYSTATION3 console. Will this affect end users, only time will show. New price cuts or new PS3 models, haven't been officially announced yet.
THQ today announced that another not so Guitar Hero like music game named Band Mashups is scheduled exclusively for Nintendo's Wii console in April 2008. Band Mashups is in development at Planet Moon Studios, the studio behind such games as Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Infected and Armed & Dangerous. It will feature 150 tracks and five distinct musical styles: rock, funk/hip-hop, country, marching band and Latin. "Band Mashups takes an innovative approach to the rhythm/action genre by blending music and combat in the ultimate battle of the bands," said Randy Shoemaker, global brand director, THQ. "Using a rhythm based game-play mechanic, the game delivers 70 over-the-top musical weapons and utilizes the Wii Remote's functionality to deliver a completely original musical combat experience. Fighting with a sniper violin or flamethrower guitar is something gamers should definitely look forward to."
The updated Dell Inspiron and XPS notebooks, refreshed with the new Intel Core 2 Duo "Penryn" 45-nanometer processors, are now available for customers in Hong Kong. Dell's laptop series that feature "Penryn" CPUs are the Inspiron 1420, 1520, and 1720, as well as the XPS M1330 and XPS M1730. You can now equip these models with the 45nm Core 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz/800 FSB/3MB Cache), T8300 (2.4GHz/800 FSB/3MB Cache), T9300 (2.5GHz/800 FSB/6MB Cache), or T9500 (2.6GHz/800 FSB/6MB Cache) processors. Currently, it is unknown when the Penryn-powered Dell consumer notebooks will hit the U.S. market.
Valve Software is still working out exactly what it's going to do with Half-Life 2: Episode Three. "We don't know entirely what's happening in the next episode, but we're gonna figure it out!", a laughing David Speyrer, Episode Two project lead, has told PC Zone magazine. "There are always things we want to do that we can't because of the constraints of either the story or the arc we've laid out for the gameplay - or just time", he continued in a feature dissecting Valve's Orange Box, part one of which you can read on PC Zone's site
here. "So we shelve them and carry on. Ideas fly around here quite a bit, so we have this huge laundry list of things to try for the next thing...", Speyrer concluded. Don't expect Episode III any time soon then by the looks of it.
TG Daily claims that ATI's CrossFire X support for up to four graphics processing units, will arrive in March when a new Catalyst 8.3 driver package is released. Version 8.3 will surface, as the number indicates, in mid-March. This will be the first ever driver to support CrossFire X and scale right the performance of triple and quad-GPUs within one system. TG Daily also indicated that "Catalyst 8.3 is an important milestone for AMD in 2008 and might mean much more than just another driver." Expect hardware review sites to publish their Crossfire X reviews in the second week of March when Germany's CeBit concludes. Meanwhile, Catalyst 8.2 is set to be released on February 13th.
Apple has released a security fix for its QuickTime media player software, fixing a critical bug that had been worrying security experts for nearly a month. The update, released Wednesday, fixes a vulnerability in the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) used by QuickTime to handle streaming media. It also fixes a previously reported incompatibility between QuickTime 7.4 and Adobe Premiere and After Effects, according to an Apple spokesman. In January, researcher Luigi Auriemma disclosed the flaw by posting proof-of-concept attack code that could be used to run unauthorised software on a victim's computer. For the attack to work, the criminal would have to first trick the user into viewing a maliciously encoded QuickTime media file. Wednesday's
QuickTime 7.4.1 update is for both the Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.
Plextor has introduced two new combo HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DVD ReWriter drives, the
PX-B920SA and
PX-B300SA. The Plextor PX-B300SA is a dual-layer internal DVD drive for PCs which can read BD-ROM media at up to 6x and HD DVD-ROM at 3x. The drive can also write DVD+R / DVD-R at 16x, DVD+R DL / DVD-R DL at 4x, DVD+RW at 8x, DVD-RW at 6x, DVD-RAM at 5x, CD-R at 40x and CD-RW at 24x. In addition, Plextor has included LightScribe technology to both devices, enabling custom text and designs to be printed/burned onto discs. The PX-B920SA shares the same above specs, but is also a highly versatile Blu-Ray writer, writing BD-R (SL/DL) at 4x, BD-R (SL LTH) at 2x and BD-RE (SL/DL) media at 2x. Both drives utilize SATA connection, and 4MB of data buffer. They are also covered by Plextor's Fast Warranty Service (2-year warranty in the EU, Norway and Switzerland (Collect & Return); other countries 1-year carry-in). Expect the PX-B920SA and PX-B300SA to be widely available at the end of this month.
Wednesday, February 6th 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Graphics Cards
The PowerColor HD 3870 SCS3 Edition is a completely passively cooled Radeon HD 3870. This makes the card an excellent choice for a quiet Media PC computer. What is really amazing is that the passive card runs up to 25°C cooler than the reference design which uses a fan.
Review
Keyboards
The Razer Lycosa Keyboard is the company's first input device with the flat key type - similar to that of notebooks. Those never tend to be the best for gaming, but Razer has managed to eliminate any shortcomings with a perfect pressure point and rubber coated keys.
Infoworld started a
Save XP petition on their website. The main goal of this petition is to get Microsoft to continue handing out Windows XP licenses beyond the June 30 deadline Microsoft put out. Fortunately for Windows XP diehards everywhere, an astounding 75,000 people have signed this petition so far. Infoworld plans on presenting this petition to Microsoft when they reach 100,000 signatures. If you have not already done so, I suggest you sign the petition if you feel that Windows XP should be around a little longer than June 30, 2008.
When an undersea fiber optic cable, who's sole job is to connect countries and continents, is cut, bad things happen. Entire countries, or even continents, can lose internet access, and entire chunks of the world can appear to go offline. When one was cut a week ago, nobody really considered it that big a deal, because the owner would replace it soon anyways. However, the owner has done no such thing, has not paid for any form of investigation, and merely watches as more cables are cut. Thus far, no less than five cables that run under the ocean have been lost, all five being in the middle east. Worse still, it would seem as though the owner is not looking into the exact cause of the cables all failing within one week of each other. Hopefully, action will be taken soon, and places near Southern Asia and the Middle East will have internet once again.
Here's your update to the whole Microsoft-Yahoo situation: Microsoft may actually not have enough money on them to buy Yahoo outright. Or, even if they do, they somehow see a need to borrow a fair size of money to do this. The reason Microsoft sees the need to borrow money is the current state of negotiations. Yahoo, if they agree to be acquired, wants half the funds as a stock buy-out and half as cash. While Microsoft has $21 billion to spend on such a venture, Yahoo requires about $23 billion, and Microsoft doesn't feel like depleting the whole bank over a business deal.
However, while Microsoft works out loan terms, Microsoft may not need the money after all. Yahoo is seriously considering turning down the offer. Even if they accept any offer to be bought out, Yahoo has stated that they're more likely to accept an offer from Google...
We'll keep you posted as this whole debacle unfolds.
Sony to Split PlayStation 3 Into Several SKUs
While Sony has all but confirmed that they are killing off the 80GB PlayStation3, there has been little news as far as what will be replacing it. Fortunately for the consumer, rumor has it that Sony has a plethora of options as far as what to replace the 80GB PlayStation3 with. Unfortunately for the consumer, nothing is final yet, as far as what Sony will be replacing the 80GB PS3 with. Sony does, however, acknowledge that 2 PS3 models is not enough. Hence, we are likely to see two or three new PlayStation3 models when the 80GB model is officially dumped. However, knowing Sony, the only thing separating SKUs might be something as simple as colors.
While Microsoft was getting very excited at the prospect of having a product ready to deliver, some people from QA had other thoughts. Apparently, Vista SP1 is not ready for prime time, and Microsoft does not think it will be ready until roughly March. Ironically, the thing that made QA think twice about unleashing Vista SP1 was a report declaring that Vista might have quite a few driver incompatibilities with current machines. And so, instead of finding themselves in the contempt of hundreds of thousands of gamers, hardware enthusiasts, and system integrators everywhere, Microsoft is working hard to make Vista SP1 a very competent product.
Most of you surely know how trading on eBay works: the buyer buys something the seller is selling, and they both leave each other feedback based on their experience. If one of them stiffed the other, the feedback will reflect that, providing a nice layer of protection. However, eBay is planning on relinquishing that protection. It would seem as though some pesky buyers abused the system, and left negative feedback where none was necessary. Now, to prevent future problems, eBay is planning on eliminating the negative and neutral feedback altogether. In a quest to be politically correct and universally pleasing, eBay has taken up the mentality "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". This has left both buyers and sellers in a uproar, claiming that there is very little protection if a sale fails to come through.
Frightened by the sheer multitude of ways that a corporate network could be crippled, a consulting firm took it upon themselves to investigate the most harrowing threats to technology on the planet. Deloitte (the aforementioned consulting firm) discovered that while viruses and spyware were all well and good, the worst threat is much harder to control: human error. Anything ranging from a simple malware infection to a complete system take-down could by caused by an employee who presses the wrong button on the wrong day. Coincidentally, companies fear human error more than any other problem. 91% of survey respondents claimed they were worried about human error, while a comparatively paltry 28% were worried about contractor/third-party software.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. A branch of Nintendo in Europe went on a limb and patented a lot of uses for the Nintendo Wiimote. The most outstanding, be that a good or bad thing, are posted below.
Fans of ASUS' original Striker Extreme motherboard may be pleased to see that an image and some detailed specs of the company's upcoming Striker II Extreme have been leaked onto the internet. All the info can be seen below, as expected the motherboard looks quite impressive.
Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics reached a key industry milestone today as they began shipping prototype samples of a future product using a new, innovative memory technology called Phase Change Memory (PCM). The prototypes are the first functional silicon to be delivered to customers for evaluation, bringing the technology one step closer to adoption.
I guess the R.O.G. series is no more about expensive and high-end motherboards only, since ASUS has surprisingly showed the ROG: G-SURF 365, a motherboard that is powered by NVIDIA's mediacore nForce 630 chipset. The board looks like a toy compared to every one of its bigger brothers. It will support all Socket AM2 processors, one PCI-Express x16 external graphics, and only two DDR2 slots for up to 4GB. The ASUS ROG: G-SURF 365 is said to be available now in some stores for just under € 75.
The third title in the Red Faction franchise will arrive during THQ's next fiscal year, the publisher confirmed in a financial conference call yesterday. The company's 2009 fiscal year runs from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009. According to THQ CEO Brian Farrel, Red Faction 3 is being developed for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 at the THQ-owned Volition Studios. Released in 2001, the original Red Faction was a sci-fi first-person shooter that focused on environmental destruction. The sequel, which debuted in 2002, continued the tradition of geometry deformation, allowing players to tunnel through floors and walls. It appears the third game in the series will carry that torch, with Farrel claiming it will feature "more exciting destruction technology," reports GameSpot. An official unveiling of Red Faction 3 and more details are expected in the coming weeks.
The forthcoming PC release of Ubisoft Montreal's pre-meditated murder simulator Assassin's Creed (PS3, X360) will contain exclusive bonus missions not found within the console editions, Ubisoft has revealed. Dubbed Assassin's Creed Director's Cut Edition, the PC versions will feature four new mission types. No further details were provided, though Ubisoft boasted that the content allows "even more ways for players to explore the various locations of the Third Crusade." Assassin's Creed on the PC is expected to arrive in Europe this March.
The Xbox 360 HD DVD Player price has dropped from $179.99 to $129.99 (U.S. MSRP), Microsoft announced today. This new price is effective immediately in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Microsoft is also offering the player with five free HD-DVD movies.
After the successful introduction of the NF-P12 120mm fan in November, Noctua presented today their first 92mm retail fan: The
NF-B9 complements Noctua's much acclaimed 80 and 120mm fan series, which have been recommended by over 150 international websites and magazines, and achieves outstanding airflow and pressure performance at exceptionally low noise levels.
Tuesday, February 5th 2008
Today's Reviews
The 21 page document can be found in both XLS and PDF format.
Both can be downloaded from
Microsoft.
In case you don't feel like sifting through 21 pages of Microsoft's PR team at their finest, I took the liberty of summing up the summary. Basically, Microsoft took in a lot of user feedback, and mushed it into Vista Service Pack 1. Service Pack 1 addresses a ton of specific reliability and performance issues. Microsoft even went so far as to re-do the Vista kernel.
While some people felt that the iPhone would crash and burn, it has in fact done quite the opposite. Of those in America that own mobile phones, 28% own an iPhone. While most people would wonder how a very expensive product isolated to a single network could possibly sell so well, market analysts see this rather large market share as a wakeup call to mobile phone manufacturers. Hopefully, we'll see less generic phones in the future, and more phones that will seem to be works of art more than tools of necessity (for some more than others, obviously).
Just because children in Sweden under the age of 15 cannot be charged for a crime of digital origin doesn't mean that said child should pirate. And so, to help promote a lack of piracy, Sweden filmed a nifty little spot that will hopefully make children feel like piracy is wrong. Basically, the story starts out with a classroom full of students admitting that they pirate media. Then, a couple girls try to laugh it off, saying things like "everybody does it, it's no big deal" and "people are just putting it on their iPods". Afterwards, a man informs the classroom of the proper laws, and the children all appear apologetic, and seem like they will never pirate again. Whether or not this will have any effect on piracy in Sweden will depend massively on how this clip is accepted in Swedish society, and how many people see it.
It's pretty obvious that vandalism is not a small issue when it comes to public restrooms, especially those at rest stops on highways. The local highway patrol in Finland decided to do something to curb said vandalism. Called "SMS lock", anyone hoping to utilize a public restroom will have to text something along the lines of "open" to the phone number posted on the side of the stall, subject to standard SMS fees. While this may sound ridiculous for anyone who does not have text messaging on their phone, it actually has a sound reason behind it. Vandals may be a lot less tempted to vandalize if their mobile phone number is tagged to the crime.
Some of you may have heard of Microsoft's Surface technology, which is basically a beautiful and masterful 3D interface built for tabletops. A more informative (and slightly comedic) introduction can be found
here. Basically, Steve Balmer took a look at this in-development technology, saw a huge consumer response to it, and decided it was high-time to accelerate development and production. Hence, instead of waiting until 2011 for this thing to come out, we may be seeing it much sooner. Exactly how soon is not known at this point, but it will definitely be sooner. The business version of this technology will be unleashed sometime this Spring, if all goes well.
It would seem as though, for a while, Rockstar Games was planning on putting out a Grand Theft Auto movie. Rockstar and Take-Two wrote up a script and sent their finest men to pitch their idea out to major studios everywhere. One particular studio almost bought the idea, and everyone inside Take-Two was talking about the Grand Theft Auto movie like they were about to begin casting. Unfortunately, Take-Two and the aforementioned studio were unable to come to proper terms, and the movie is a lost dream.
Fortunately, thanks to "new management" over at Take-Two, we may yet be able to see a Grand Theft Auto movie. Until then, all we can do is wonder how awesome it would have been to see rapper Eminem spinning rhymes while popping caps in his low-rider.
While some would dismiss "cyber sex", or two people pleasuring themselves/each other utilizing technology, as a childish game reserved for hackers and 14-year-old girls from California, a doctor from the University of Portsmouth says that there is much more to cyber sex than just that. A lot more people are having cyber sex than we would like to think, and have a detrimental effect on technology. Dr Trudy Barber decided to investigate what this effect is and how deep it runs. She completed her thesis on "Creative Digital Practice and Theory Mash-up", and will present it on Friday. Until then, The Inquirer was able to interview Dr.Barber on the effect of cyber sex on the world. Much like in real life, the desire for sexual gratification has led to some interesting innovations. AOL Instant Messenger, Webcams, and various services would likely not have seen the success that they have had if not for a lot of people seeking digital sexual gratification. Dr.Barber also asserts that the digital universe allows cyber sex partners to assume roles that they have always wanted to. Please follow the source link for The Inquirer's interview with Dr.Barber.
Dell Bets on Intel Penryn for its High-End Laptops
Dell will begin offering Intel's Penryn processor as an option on several notebooks within a week or so, according to sources close to the computer giant. Although the 45-nanometer generation of Penryn processors targeted at laptops was announced back in early January, the chips haven't exactly leaped into laptop lineups. So far, Hewlett-Packard is the biggest taker of one Penryn chip: the Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB L2 cache). Dell has not specified yet which models will get the processors, but the company's high-performance notebooks, such as the XPS, are likely candidates. Intel's 45-nanometer mobile processors integrate 6MB of cache versus 4MB for the older 65-nanometer Merom generation, and the lower-end chips integrate 3MB versus 2MB for the Merom-class processors.
BiTMICRO Networks, a pioneer in intelligent flash solid state storage solutions continues its relentless pursuit for storage innovation with the announcement of the E-Disk Altima E3S320 solid state flash disk. Claiming its seat as the manufacturer of the world's first Ultra320 SCSI flash drive, this time the E-Disk Altima Ultra320 SCSI drive will offer an astounding 1.6 terabytes of storage capacity in a standard 3.5-inch form factor, a most welcome development for the highly demanding enterprise, military and industrial applications.
Microsoft has just announced a pair of new wireless mices. Unfortunately the Microsoft Hardware home hasn't been updated for some time now, and the source of the news does not give much information either. We only know that both the Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 and Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 are cordless devices, use the Microsoft HD Lasers and have a few Vista-friendly buttons. You can pick them up in March for $50 and $70, respectively.
Customers who'd like to carry more music, photos, and videos with them now have new models of iPhone and iPod touch with double the memory from which to choose. The revolutionary
iPhone now comes in a new 16GB model for $499. It joins the 8GB model for $399. And the
iPod touch now comes in a new 32GB model for $499. It joins the 16GB and 8GB models for $399 and $299, respectively.
After Chinese New Year (that is, after February 11th) Sapphire Technology will start selling a Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card with factory water cooling setup, they call it "Atomic WaterCooled" and claim to offer ultra high performance. By the looks of it below, it first reminds me of the soon released CoolIT water block, secondly of the
Leadtek WinFast PX8800 ULTRA Leviathan. In fact, if you look closely at the Leviathan card you'll notice they both use the same cooling unit, perhaps the difference comes in the water block design only. Pricing and clock speeds of the Atomic WaterCooled X2 are unknown at this stage.
High Performance Group (HIPER) has just added the new "HPU-4M780" Power Supply to their existing Type M Series which is rated for 780watts of power and continues to sport their patented mesh-design and unique gold plated connectors. The supersilent power supply has an average efficiency of 85% and is NVIDIA SLI ready with 2x 8pin and 4x 6pin connectors. This unit complies with the latest ATX12V v2.2/EPS12V v2.91 form factors and has four independent 12V rails (18A each) as well as Active PFC (Power Factor Correction). The price of this PSU is set at $139 U.S. and you can find additional information on it at
HIPER's website.
Japan looks set to get its third PS3 color with news that Sony plans to launch a silver version of the 40GB console. Dubbed 'Satin Silver', the console will go on sale on 6th March for ¥39,800 (about $360). The new PS3 will ship with a matching silver controller using the SIXAXIS technology, but will not feature rumble. Japan already has the standard black console along with a Ceramic White version, although there is no news of whether this silver model will be coming to North America or Europe.
Less than a year after the project originally came to the console, the total number of PS3 owners contributing to Folding@home has surpassed one million users - and they're still registering at a rate of 3,000 a day. Vijay Pande, who is in charge of the project, said:
Since partnering with SCEI, we have seen our research capabilities increase by leaps and bounds through the continued participation of Folding@home users. Now we have over one million PS3 users registered for Folding@home, allowing us to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally, with the goal of finding cures to some of the world's most life-threatening diseases. We are grateful for the extraordinary worldwide participation by PS3 and PC users around the globe.
The PS3 now accounts for around 74% of the total teraflop computing power of the project. For those who don't know, the Folding@home program runs simulations in protein folding and misfolding, helping scientists understand (and hopefully cure) diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's and certain forms of cancer. If you are looking to get involved in the project, you may be interested to hear that techPowerUp! has its own
folding team - all you need is an internet connection and a computer.
Industry giant Electronic Arts is predicting much greater success for Sony's PS3 console over the next year, following disappointing sales in 2007. Last year the PS3 lagged well behind the Wii and Xbox 360 in terms of sales, with the Wii coming out significantly ahead of both. However, EA is predicting that the coming year will see Nintendo sell between 12m and 14m Wii consoles, Sony between 9.5m and 11.5m PS3s and Microsoft just 6m to 8m Xbox 360s. The PS2 is still expected to sell in its millions, with estimated figures of 3.9m to 4.9m units. Meanwhile EA reckons the DS will continue to dominate the handheld market by selling 14m to 16m units, with the PSP struggling to compete on 6m to 8m. That said, Xbox 360 sales figures can be expected to drop gradually, as the market is likely to become saturated sooner given its much earlier release date.
Transcend has added a new DDR2 memory kit to its overclocking RAM series. The new aXeRam DDR2-1066+ Extreme Performance kit is dual channel ready and consists of 2x2GB modules or a total of 4GB. Able to work at 1066MHz and over the new memory modules use six-layer PCBs and 16 high-quality 128Mx8 DDR2 DRAM chips per DIMM and they are rated to work at 2.0V with timings of CL5-5-5-15. The memory also features Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP) and is cooled by Transcend's own black and gold aluminum heat sinks. The aXeRam memory kit is backed up by a lifetime warranty.
Ben Cousins, the Senior Producer of Battlefield Heroes, shared some slides, ideas and info on DICE's free 4 play animated Battlefield title. The game will be based on the Battlefield 2142 engine with "the crazy unrealistic feel of Battlefield 1942 and Codename Eagle".
More details:
- Graphics and machine specs are cut down
- Simplified Gameplay
- Matchmaking Service
- AutoPatching
- Easier Introduction into Gameplay
- More RPG Elements Introduced
Monday, February 4th 2008
Today's Reviews
NVIDIA, the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AGEIA Technologies, Inc., the industry leader in gaming physics technology. AGEIA's PhysX software is widely adopted with more than 140 PhysX-based games shipping or in development on Sony Playstation3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii and Gaming PCs. AGEIA physics software is pervasive with over 10,000 registered and active users of the PhysX SDK.
Publisher Activision today announced its intention to release new downloadable multiplayer maps for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4. The content packs should arrive this spring. No mention of pricing, map details, or a PC release was made in the statement.
We're excited about the new maps, and the added gameplay variety, and we can't wait to wrap things up and get online with everyone,
said Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling.
All Radeon HD 3870 X2 owners may be curious to know about this sample ATI Catalyst 8-451-2-080123a driver specially for their X2 cards. The 103MB package includes both Windows XP and Windows Vista drivers. Build date is 08-01-23. Use at your own risk, those drivers are not WHQL certified.
DOWNLOAD
Admittedly this isn't the
first review of AMD's new 3870 X2 running in CrossFireX, but it does seem to give a better indication of real world performance. As in the previous test, this article shows unimpressive 3DMark scores, but as the author is quick to point out, 3DMark06 is known to be quite heavily dependent on the CPU so doesn't always give a reliable indication of real world GPU performance. More interesting are the benchmarks of Call of Juarez and F.E.A.R., which show performance increases of around 50% and 75% respectively. It's important to remember that AMD's CrossFireX driver is still in development, but these figures should give a rough idea of what is to be expected. You can read FPSLABS' full article
here.
Besides
Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 was also released to manufacturing today and will be available to customers on March 1st, starting with Microsoft Volume Licensing customers. Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance coverage or an Enterprise Agreement will be able to download the new Server software toward the end of February as part of the joint Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Heroes Happen Here launch event.
NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading stand-alone provider of commercial and residential LCD, plasma, and projector displays, announced today the addition of three new wide-screen desktop displays to the popular AccuSync line, targeted to small- to medium-sized businesses, direct marketers, home office workers, system builders, and retail channels. The 19-inch ASLCD194WXM and the 22-inch ASLCD224WXM displays replace the previous generation wide products, while the 17-inch ASLCD174WXM is a new addition to this category. Each is a multimedia product, and the displays are enhanced with a new, sleek, thin design. All models are touch-integration compatible.
Prison sentences handed down to counterfeiters by a Taipei, Taiwan, court mark the end of a string of successful prosecutions by international law enforcement agencies, bringing a global software counterfeiting ring to a final halt. Between 1997 and 2003, Huang Jer-sheng, owner of the Taipei-based distributor Maximus Technology Inc., and his associates were responsible for the production and distribution of more than 90 percent of the high-quality counterfeit Microsoft software products either seized by law enforcement or test-purchased around the world.
I bring good news for those of us who don't want to spend $50 on all the games included with Orange Box: Valve is planning on releasing the games as separate titles. As Warren Jenson, CFO and executive VP of Electronic Arts (who owns Valve) so eloquently put it, "We are unbundling Orange Box and releasing separate PC SKUs". The separate SKUs are likely to arrive before March 31st, when the fiscal year ends. Pricing, availability, and release date are not clear at this point. It is also unclear whether or not the Orange Box will continue to be sold as a package, or if the Orange Box will only be sold as a bunch of split-up titles.
After hosting several public and private betas of Windows Vista SP1, it would seem as though the final code is finally ready. In fact, the code has supposedly been leaked and put on various torrents. When questioned as to whether or not the leaked code is final, Microsoft people didn't really have much to say. Regardless of whether or not pirates got a hold of SP1, Microsoft declared they made an RTM code earlier today. It is unclear whether or not they will release it today, but sources agree that a launch is imminent.
Someone with a lot of spare time and a calculator determined the exact amount of time until we run out of web domains as we know them. By the year 2011, there will simply not be any room on the internet for any more websites the way we know them. Technologically speaking, every web address, or URL, has to be translated by a master server into an IPv4 address, which is a long string of numbers, much like many license plates on automobiles. Now that everyone is making their own website, we're starting to run low on figurative license plates. By 2011, all possible combinations of numbers will be used up. Thankfully, *nix geeks have already thought up the solution: make a new IP version. IPv6 has room for a lot more addresses, and is already in the middle of being adopted to the master server of IP addresses. Eventually, routers and operating systems will need upgrading, because anything that can't read IPv6 will not be able to visit IPv6 websites or view IPv6 content. However, the master geeks over at the master server have assured us all that such grandiloquent upgrades are a long way off.
For those of us who like to control the speeds of our fans via hardware, Scythe recently unleashed a product that is sure to please. Dubbed the "Kaze Master VFD display fan controller", this interesting thing will fit in your standard 5.25" or 3.5" drive bay. The 5.25" version can handle 4 fans, assuming none of them require a current of more than 1A (12V). The 3.5" version can handle two fans of the same strength. This controller allows fans to run with between 3.7V(±10%) and 12V(±10%) of current, and also has a switch that turns them off completely. You can get them in black or silver for roughly $40.
The
5.25" version is here, and the
3.5" version is here.
Lately, most people don't know what to think about the PlayStation3. There's rumors going around that it's getting smaller, and there are rumors that a model with an enormous hard drive is going to arrive. A conference call leaked from GameStop via IGN confirms the latter rumor. It would seem as though Sony is no longer making 80GB PS3s, and is instead focusing on making a PlayStation3 with a larger hard drive. A 120GB PS3 is coming to replace it, and will ship with a Dual Shock 3 controller standard. Considering that two independent retailers and a reliable "tipster" all confirm the same thing, we may be looking at a 120GB PS3 soon after all.
Mushkin Inc. today upped the ante by adding the 800W XP-800AP power supply to its PSU line-up. The XP-800AP unit provides a comprehensive set of features including active PFC, 110-240V input, VersaPlug modular cabling, four PCIe cables with 6/8-pin adaptable connectors, user-selectable single +12V rail/quad +12V rail, 900W peak power, thermally controlled 135mm fan, 64A output at +12V, EPS 2.91 support, and industrial-grade components. The unit is backed by a generous 5-year limited warranty and Mushkin's industry-leading technical support personnel. You can buy it now directly from
Mushkin for $185.81.
All hardcore gamers and hardware experts will be very pleased to know that ASUS is working on a Intel 5400 + Intel ESB2E powered workstation motherboard. The Z7S-WS, just like Intel's Skulltrail platform which is all over the news today, adopts two LGA 771 processors, FB-DIMM DDR2 memory (6x slots for up to 24GB memory), and has 2x PCI-e x16 and 1x PCI-e x8 slots. According to the source of the news we should expect the Z7S-WS to come in March for USD $627.
During the International Solid State Circuits Conference this week, Intel is set to unveil a range of new technologies, including the
low-power Silverthorne and a new two-billion transistor, quad-core Itanium microprocessor codenamed Tukwila. The first version of Tukwila is expected to arrive in the second half of this year, and will replace Intel's previous dual-core sever chip, the 9100 series codenamed Montvale. The Montvale was based on Intel's 90nm process, while the Tukwila is based on a 45nm process. The Tukwila processor is expected to have 30MB of cache, along with Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) features including a circuit design that has been hardened to resist soft errors - which reduces the probability of a system crash. Like its predecessor, the new Tukwila Itanium processor will be aimed at the enterprise and server space. Intel's successor from the Tukwila, the "Poulson" is expected sometime between 2010 and 2011.
A little bit early if you ask me, but FUGGER from XtremeSystems has posted his new overclocking buddies: Intel D5400XS, 2x Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 CPUs @ 5586MHz (FSB: 399x14) and a duo of custom LN2 containers. Watch this
thread for more results later today.
Intel has sent out a notice to inform its partners that the X48 chipset delivery will be delayed to sometime in March. No motherboard manufacturers will get chipsets before March and that includes the first tier brands like ASUS and GIGABYTE. Intel did not give any official reason for the delay.
Intel has spilled a few more details about Silverthorne, its upcoming 45nm processor for UMPCs (Ultra-Mobile PC) and mobile internet devices (MIDs). Silverthorne was developed from the ground up for low-power devices, and Intel said today that the chip will consume no more than 2W of power and support HyperThreading (HT) technology. This means that although the Silverthorne is a single-core chip, it will appear to the host device as a two-core chip. It's unlikely to deliver the same performance boost that adding a second true core does, but it will deliver a significant speed improvement over the single-core parts that have been used in UMPCs to date. Intel didn't say how fast Silverthorne will run, but it did claim the design will scale to deliver 2GHz clock speeds with a 1W power consumption "some time in the future". Silverthorne will be paired with the 'Paulsbo' integrated chipset to form 'Menlow', Intel's next-gen UMPC platform. They're all expected to come to market in the April/May timeframe.
Microsoft said Monday it will launch a new version of its Xbox 360 game console in Japan on March 6. The company said the model, which targets new users, was launched in the U.S. at the end of last year. In Japan, its Y27,800 price tag will match that of existing models, but it will come equipped with more extras, including an extra 256MB memory unit, wireless controller and game pack. Microsoft's belated release of its latest console in Japan comes as the Xbox 360 continues to be outsold by Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 in the country.
4Gamer, prior to the soon to be announced formally Intel Skulltrail platform, has posted some first look benchmark results. You may consider this as full review perhaps the first full review of Intel Skulltrail, since the system was fully assembled and running with the Intel D5400XS Extreme Desktop Board, 2x Core 2 Extreme QX9775 (3.20GHz, 2x6MB L2 cache) processors, 2x 2GB Micron PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM FB-DIMM, and pair of ELSA GLADIAC 988 GTX 768MB (GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB) in SLI configuration. The Google translated review can be accessed
here. Enjoy the system and don't try to calculate the overall price (each CPU is expected to cost USD $1,399).
Sunday, February 3rd 2008
Today's Reviews
As most of you know, Yahoo is seriously considering letting Microsoft buy them. However, we cannot forget that more than just Microsoft would benefit if Yahoo was to consider letting someone buy them. Google would also be pretty pleased if they could get Yahoo in their pocket, much like YouTube. However, instead of place a bid in, Google sent some nasty comments Microsoft's way.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies-and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Please follow the source article for the full statement Google put out regarding this possible merger/purchase.
The launch date of the elusive GeForce 9800 series, which will once again steal the thunder from AMD, remains up in smoke. However, NVIDIA did confirm one fact: they will be showing off their new hardware over at CeBIT this upcoming March. At this point, only Albatron is confirming their booth at CeBIT, but you should expect several more booths to pop up confirming their 9800-laden spot at CeBIT.
The AMD HD 3870X2 graphics processor needs no introduction. However, as some overclockers have already found out, there's no easy way to control voltages to get extremely high clocks out of their $400+ graphics card. Assuming you do not have a VCO PLL divider bug in your card's BIOS (which will limit the core clock to 860MHz no matter what), the only thing really stopping you from reaching 3DMark record books is a pesky voltage problem. Since the power layout of the 3870 is completely different from the 3870X2, the 3870X2 voltages cannot be controlled through software.
Fortunately for all you hardcore overclockers out there with 3870X2s and meaty power supplies, extreme overclocker "Shamino" published a voltage modification guide.
Enjoy.
As most of us know, AMD was hoping to shove the triple core Phenom series (8x00) out their factory doors by next month. However, it would seem as though things have changed over at AMD. The Phenom 8400 (2.1GHz) and 8600 (2.3GHz) will both be launched at CeBIT 2008 (which will be hosted in early March). However, AMD may ditch the 8700 in favor of a B3 stepping 8750, accompanied by an 8450 and 8550 from the same stepping.
Any processor from the B3 stepping should fix up the hated TLB issue that early Phenom processors suffer. This B3 stepping will also show up in quad core parts. The Phenom 9700 (2.4GHz) and 9900 (2.6GHz) will be replaced by the B3 based 9750 and 9950, respectively.
Alienware, known for selling very high-end pre-built computers and computer parts, recently put it out there that they've made a 4TB server for personal use. The server is targeted at users who actually have 4TB of high-definition content to share across a network. The device boasts remote access via internet, so that owners can enjoy their stuff from any PC with an internet connection. The device also has your standard array of wireless access options, and can connect to multimedia sources you already own.
Anyone hoping to own or sell one had better check out
this site.
Dear D_o_S,
All of us at TechPowerUp would like to take the time and opportunity to express our sincerest condolences to you and your family, in regards to the recent passing of your mother. We are saddened by this news and cannot imagine the pain and sorrow that you are facing in this difficult time. In times like these the importance of support through family and friends is what you must lean on for comfort. We would like you to know that we are thinking of you and praying for your family. If there is anything that we may do to help, please do not hesitate to ask. Please remember that those who live in our hearts never die.
Keeping you in our thoughts,
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Lite-On has unveiled its Moldable Mouse that can be molded to any shape users prefer. It is made of non-toxic lightweight modeling clay, covered with nylon and polyurethane blend fabric, and can be shaped to fit any hand. Once molded, it keeps its shape until you are ready to reshape again. The stick-on buttons and scroll-wheel can be added to any location you like, and the device communicates via RFID. The Moldable Mouse is still in the concept stage, but it has already won a
Red Dot design award. If it makes it to production, it will be good news for lefties, carpal-tunnelers and Gadget Lab editors alike.
CNET News.com has learned that Lenovo and Fujitsu are in the process of putting together systems based on the special Core 2 Duo chip that Apple is using in the MacBook Air. The new laptops should be out shortly, according to sources familiar with the companies' plans, and will give customers a chance to see what the rest of the PC industry can do with the ultra-low-power chips. Both manufacturers did not comment on the story. Apple asked Intel to design the special Core 2 Duo chip last year as it was putting together the design that would become the MacBook Air. The chip fits into a package that's significantly smaller than the standard Intel notebook chip, and it uses less power than the standard Core 2 Duo, allowing it to fit into the slim MacBook Air without melting the inside of the package or eating the battery.
FOXCONN today announced the A78AX family of discrete motherboards based on the AMD 770 chipset with SB700 southbridge - providing a low-cost, low-power solution for the latest AMD processors. As the first motherboard manufacturer to use the SB700 southbridge across its entire AMD 7-Series chipset range, the A78AX has been configured to provide 6 SATAII connectors with RAID functionality, up to 10 USB2.0 ports, HyperTransport 3.0 technology and full support for AM2+ Phenom processors and socket AM2 Athlon and Sempron models.
Saturday, February 2nd 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Mice
The SteelSeries Ikari Laser mouse is the first ever mouse to be designed by legendary mouse pad maker SteelSeries. The mouse features a 3200 DPI laser sensor and boasts a lift-off distance of only 1.8 mm. Coupled with some never before seen features this mouse is clearly a winner.
If you're an ASUS motherboard owner and you're wondering if it will support the latest Intel 1600MHz FSB 45nm processors, the chart below will answer your question. ASUS has unleashed the list of its motherboards that will officially support FSB1600.
After cutting prices, Sony managed to sell 4.9 million PlayStation 3 video game consoles during the last quarter. Combining this with the lower manufacturing costs, and more and better games, Sony's gaming division has finally made a profit. After many quarter of repeated losses, Sony has managed to turn things around and total profit rose by 25% for the last quarter. Sony also lowered its sales goal for the PlayStation 3 from 11 million for the whole year, to 9.5 million because of the poor start, a fiscal year which ends in March.
The highly anticipated OCZ Cryo-Z phase change cooler is expecting its first shipment next week starting February 4th. OCZ plans to make an announcement on the
XtremeSystems forum on when the units will become available for purchase. The company says that each Cryo-Z unit is handtested and will be sold directly to enthusiasts. Unfortunately all units are 110V and will be exclusive to the US and possibly also Canada in the future. For more information, please wait for the announcement that will be made on the
XtremeSystems forum.
Crytek's first person shooter game, Crysis, has been reported for selling over 1 million copies in less than three month during the Electronic Arts third quarter earnings conference call yesterday. Even though the game has gone platinum, CEO John Riccitiello said that EA is "not satisfied" with the overall third quarter financial results. The company was disappointed that none of the big successes were developed internally. "We did not have any internally developed breakaway titles," said Riccitiello. "The closest thing we had to breakaway titles in 2007 were Skate and FIFA," he continued. Riccitiello expects Burnout Paradise to be another big hit, but he didn't give any more indications than that at this early stage in the game's shelf life.
Intel informed vendors that it will begin cleaning up its dual-core Xeon 3000-series portfolio. The 3000-series version 3040, 3050, 3060 and 3070, all based on the 65 nm Conroe core, are entered into the firm's product discontinuance program and are going to be phased out. The high end models 3075 (2.66GHz) and 3085 (3.0GHz) will remain available for now.
Windows Vista is known for a lot of things. Among them is eating memory, both in storage and RAM, like a fat kid through cake. The folks who made VLite, a program designed to let you custom-build a Windows Vista disk without a lot of things you don't need, were very proud of what their program was doing for people who liked a streamlined operating system. Unfortunately for VLite, Microsoft has sent a look of scorn at the makers of the software. A public outcry asks, why? After all, VLite keeps people using Vista, instead of letting them come to the conclusion that XP is more streamlined, and should be used in place of Vista. However, Microsoft's reason for not liking VLite actually makes a lot of sense. When users go merrily chopping programs and processes willy-nilly, they risk keeping Windows Vista from updating properly in the future. Basically, Windows Update would try to update a component that isn't there, making parts of Windows unstable, and possibly bricking the whole system.
As long as you understand the risks, though, and know what you're doing, using VLite should not be a problem, and Microsoft is not going to make VLite copies of Vista illegal.
While memory prices continue to fall, allowing gamers and hardware enthusiasts everywhere to splurge on memory, it would seem as though this "golden age" of cheap memory is coming to an end. Hynix, mainly thanks to ridiculously low DRAM prices, reported a net loss of a half billion dollars last year. Hynix is also none too happy to announce that they do not expect things to get much better. DRAM prices are low/falling, and are expected to stay that way for quite some time. There are currently rumors that Hynix may consider exiting the memory business, despite strong sales in NAND flash technology.
Basically, there's not much more to this story than the title: the E8400 series of Core 2 Duo processors might have a heat problem. A consensus among the more daring overclockers is that the thermal diode on-board these processors is very far off from the actual temperature of the processor, tricking overclockers into not giving the CPU adequate cooling, and tricking the motherboard into not turning the fan speed up high enough (if the CPU fan speed is controlled by the motherboard). Intel denies all of these allegations, and their very detailed response can be read
here.
For any of you getting an E8400, make sure to give it proper cooling, and to not let it go above 72.4 degrees centigrade.
When a new hit technology comes out, a lot of people tend to buy it. When a lot of different people buy the same thing, there's bound to be a few quirks and problems. There are allegations that iPods can interfere with such critical life-support systems as pacemakers. Neither Apple or the Food and Drug Administration of America took this sitting down, and promptly ran independent studies. Using a fancy scientific procedure that can be found in the source link, the FDA determined that iPods really do not have much, if any, effect on pacemaker operation. However, as big as the scientists from the FDA may be, it's awfully hard to refute the evidence against these findings. Cardiologists were listening to an iPod while performing a routine examination, and noticed a definite effect on the pacemaker. A seventeen year old requiring a pacemaker noticed that he could not hold an iPod within two inches of his chest without causing problems. It should be noted that the FDA only studied four types of iPod, and only used one type of Pacemaker.
While some schools do everything they can to facilitate children learning about computers, others draw a fine line between "edutainment" and "security risk". A high school student in Fairfax County, Virginia must visit one of the latter categories. He was pulled out of his Philosophy exam to be told that he may not graduate; he built a proxy server in his (parents') home. Dubbed "Afnani's Moo Proxy", it was used by himself and a couple technologically-adept students to bypass school firewalls. The administrator of the school networks would not have any of it. He tried to declare the server illegal, despite nothing in the usage contract saying using any proxy, let alone your own personal one, was illegal. When the student pointed out the flaw in the contract, the administrator simply changed his accusations to "repeat network abuse", which can keep the boy from walking at graduation.
The high school student has decided to comply, and has shut down all proxy servers he owns. His personal school computer account has been disabled, but he is (at this point) allowed to graduate.
Friday, February 1st 2008
Today's Reviews
Review
Headphones
The Piranha is Razer's newest effort to conquer the budget gaming headset market. It features a noise canceling microphone and a lot of other neat features that add to the value of the product which is sold at a mere $79.99.
Some interesting tidbits trickled their way back from CES 2008: Sony may be planning a new PlayStation3. This particular version of the PlayStation3 would be lighter, thinner, and prettier. This move comes as no surprise, when looking at Sony's past. The original PlayStation ended up as a very tiny PSOne. The PlayStation2 was once as large as the original PlayStation, and now is even smaller than the PSOne. The PSP underwent a similar transformation over the summer.
If this rumor is true, chances are we'll find the 160GB hard drive inside the slimmer PlayStation3.
Valve developer Doug Lombardi recently promised gamers everywhere something that is sure to be appreciated: "more Portal". What exactly consists of "more" is still in the works, but Lombardi promised something else while we wait: brand new download-able Team Fortress 2 Maps, which will arrive for all platforms, for
absolutely no charge. Valve has not said anything about possible release dates, but they have unveiled a "juicy" little tidbit about Episode 3:
In Episode One I think we left people with some big questions. After Episode Two people saw it was going somewhere. With Episode Three we want to live up to the promise of where we are taking things to; there's a lot of work being done to make sure we deliver on that promise. Exact details on what's next for Gordon are a way off; probably months not weeks.
We'll keep you posted as this shapes up.
It's not news that Comcast secretly monitors all web traffic for possible illegal activity and shuts down anything that sets off their alarms. However, there has lately been a move to push this ISP filtering one step further, and making it mandatory for all ISPs. Thankfully, the RIAA, known throughout America for taking ridiculous measures to prevent piracy, really does not see the need for the proposed solution. All the RIAA asks instead is that ISPs, instead of monitoring and filtering everything that comes their way, merely respond to the RIAA's demands to shut down certain servers and users, when necessary.
Eidos has released the first batch of screenshots for Tomb Raider: Underworld. The game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics for six major platforms including Sony Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. The latest installment takes Lara Croft to Southern Mexico on a mission to unravel the mystery surrounding the five missing days of the Mayan calendar, an apocalyptic time when the portals between the mortal realm and the Underworld dissolve, allowing ill-intending deities to causing disaster and mayhem. The full game is expected to release in December 2008. All 10 ultra high resolution (5120x2880) screenshots are
here.
In just a few hours, the administrators of the infamous Pirate Bay could be convicted of several counts of aiding/facilitating copyright infringement. The country of Sweden, after spending over two years collecting evidence, finally made a case against the five Pirate Bay administrators. However, Pirate Bay aficionados will be proud to hear that, even if the administrators go to prison, the site itself is here to stay. "In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We've been here for years and we will be here for many more."
The reason behind this is simple. The Pirate Bay servers are not located in Sweden. In fact, the Pirate Bay administrators themselves do not know where the servers are (and perhaps that's for the better). Wherever they are, you can rest assured that the site is on several servers across several countries, and none of them are going down for a long time.
The Crymod web site has posted up their first "
Crysis Weekly Update", which is an official Crysis patch status report from Crytek to the world-wide community. The first update concentrates on details of the "nearly finished from a content point of view" 1.2 patch for Crysis. Some of the changes will include new grenade indicator icon, added team colors to kill/death messages in multiplayer, and
more.
It would appear that running any of 600 add-ons in Mozilla Firefox opens up a terrible hole. When exploited, this hole allows a hacker to steal "session information, including session cookies and session history". Mozilla promises a fix by February 5th, with the release of Firefox version 2.0.0.12. While Mozilla classifies this threat as a "high risk", there is some controversy in the hacker world as to how bad this threat really is. According to a hacker, via "hiredhacker.com", this isn't as big a problem as people have made it out to be. However, it is certainly more serious than "leaking a few variables", and should definitely be patched as soon as possible.
Nokia promised a little while ago to "go green", and today it seems they are living up to their promise. Nokia recently announced plans to halve the power consumption of battery chargers to their various devices, including cell phones and PDAs. Since you obviously don't get something for nothing, the secret behind this decrease in power consumption lies in increasing the power efficiency of the original units. Nokia has already done quite a few things to help with the eco-friendly movement, including make several handsets out of recycled materials. They've also devised AC adapters that are 94% more efficient than EPA standards require.
Sometimes, photographs are taken with absolutely no recollection of exactly where they happened. Thankfully, Sony realized this common problem, and decided to do something about it. Using a process that Sony calls "GPS Tagging", the little device phones home once every 15 minutes, allowing you to effectively track yourself. You can also hook it up to your compatible Sony camera/camcorder to embed your location/the time into your pictures and videos. With 31MB of memory, it can store your trail for up to one month before needing to be emptied. It runs off of your ordinary AA batteries, which Sony claims gives it ten hours of life between charges. It should become available next month for roughly $150USD.
A relatively new company, with aspirations of great fame and fortune, is seeking to make a footprint in the IT industry. With the name Rock, Rock has decided to make one massive laptop. Dubbed the "Xtreme SL8", this machine claims roughly 15,000 points in 3DMark06. To do this, it runs the following hardware.
- 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800
- A pair of NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX GPUs
- Up to 4GB of DDR2 800
- Your choice of one 600GB 7200RPM HDD, or 1TB of 5400RPM RAID storage.
- One HD-DVD reader/burner
- 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port.
- 6600mAh battery
With this array of extreme hardware, this laptop is sure to burn holes in both wallets and laps alike.
Nintendo today confirmed earlier rumors by announcing a Cobalt/Black version of the DS Lite, which the comapny describes as "like a black T-shirt with a splash of color." The dark blue color marks the seventh shade the system has received since its inception, and stands as the next logical step on the color wheel following Polar White, Coral Pink, Onyx, Crimson/Black, and the limited-edition Gold and Metallic Rose. The newly painted systems will hit stores on February 10th.
Advanced Micro Devices got some much-needed good news this week when Gateway announced that it's trading in Intel chips for AMD Phenom quad-core processors in two new high-end desktop machines. Gateway, which has been mostly an Intel-only company for years, yesterday unveiled AMD-based GM and GT series desktop systems. And for a microprocessor company that has been struggling with missed shipment dates, financial woes and a slide in mind share, this is welcome news, according to industry analysts. Focusing on "media-hungry users," the new
Gateway GM5664 desktop is geared toward gamers and users interested in video editing or watching live TV online. Available at U.S. retailers for $1,149.99, the computer offers 2.3GHz AMD Phenom 9600 Processor, 3GB DDR2 memory (2x1024MB modules and 2x512MB modules), 2x500GB 7200 rpm hard drives, ATI Radeon HD 2400XT 256MB discrete video and hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD player and SuperMulti DVD-RW DL drive. The
Gateway GT5662, which costs $749.99, is a multimedia lite machine. This desktop uses the 2.20GHz lower-power AMD Phenom quad-core 9500 processor, a 500GB hard drive and its own SuperMulti drive to enable users to burn content onto DVDs or CDs.
The discrete graphics card market for high-end notebooks is expected to see a big turn around with Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell ready to adopt AMD's latest discrete graphics solution for their notebooks. This will increase AMD's market share to over 50% in the second quarter this year, according to a report from DigiTimes. In 2007, AMD's proportion of the discrete notebook GPU market was less than 20%-30% due to vendor concerns that Intel's relationships would change following the acquisition of ATI, and so were unwilling to adopt Intel and ATI combinations for their notebooks. Additionally, uncertainty over the Radeon HD 2000 series also impacted vendor and consumer confidence. However, in the second quarter of this year, around 55-60% of vendors' high-end notebooks will adopt AMD's M82 and M86 discrete GPUs due to their advantages in low power consumption and cost over NVIDIA's 9P, 9M and 9E notebook solutions. This can only be good for AMD/ATI if true.
HKEPC has posted information about the AMD Phenom product schedule for this fiscal year. Aside from the original Chinese article, the graphics are written in crisp and legible English. All the information you need is there.
EK Water Block today caught up with Danger Den and CoolIT, by introducing their full cover water block for Radeon HD 3870 X2. The EK's water block is available in three versions:
- EK-FC3870 X2 CF: base made of electrolytic copper, top made of quality acrylic glass and back ram heat sinks made of black anodized aluminium.
- EK-FC3870 X2 - Acetal CF: same as the original acrylic block, but the top is made of quality POM Acetal.
- EK-FC3870 X2 - CF Nickel: base is made of nickel plated copper, while top is made of quality acrylic glass and back ram heat sinks are made of black anodized aluminium.
All three versions weight about 920g and convert the HD 3870 X2 into single-slot cooled video card. The basic EK-FC 3870 X2 CF costs 109.95EUR, while the Acetal and CF Nickel models are priced at 114.95EUR and 119.95EUR respectively. All products should be available for direct purchase from
EKWaterBlocks.com SHOP.
Intel Corporation and Micron Technology today unveiled a high speed NAND flash memory technology that can greatly enhance the access and transfer of data in devices that use silicon for storage. The new technology - developed jointly by Intel and Micron and manufactured by the companies' NAND flash joint venture, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) - is five times faster than conventional NAND, allowing data to be transferred in a fraction of the time for computing, video, photography and other computing applications.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. Board of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6 billion. Microsoft's proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.
Apacer Technology has become the first memory module vendor to introduce a high-capacity 8GB DDR2-667 ECC Registered DIMM memory module for high-end servers and workstations. Apacer, which has already launched a 4GB DDR2-667 ECC Registered DIMM module, will be using this new ultra-high-capacity memory to meet the needs of the latest AMD Opteron based servers. Apacer's 8GB DDR2-667 ECC Registered DIMM is manufactured using advanced 70nm production process technology and carefully selected server-grade DDR SDRAM components, ensuring lower power consumption, high stability and superior electrical characteristics.