3DCOOL BLOGS

2007-10-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

Samsung's big advances in tiny chips.
That 128 gb iPod isn't all that far off, neither is SSDs (solid state drives) with more that 32 gb of storage that won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Electronics giant Samsung has shown off what it claims is the world's most powerful chip for use in memory cards.

The 64 gigabit (Gb) chips could be used to make 128 gigabyte memory cards, commonly used in MP3 players, capable of holding the equivalent of 80 DVDs.

The chips are built using circuits with a minimum feature size of just 30 billionths of a metre (nanometre).

Rival firm Toshiba has said it is also working with similar technology. Both firms will release products in 2009.

Flash advance

Flash memory is a so-called non-volatile computer memory, primarily used in memory cards, USB drives and MP3 players.

Non-volatile memory retains information even when there is no power to the device.

Samsung said there was currently "exploding demand" for flash memory as a storage medium in a range of applications.

The new chips are designed to be used in a specific type of memory known as NAND flash.

NAND is one of two types of flash memory and offers higher storage and faster speeds than the cheaper NOR flash.

NOR is commonly used in low-end applications where smaller memory capacity and slower speeds are acceptable, such as in cheaper mobile phone handsets.

Samsung has said that a single chip could be used in an MP3 player capable of holding 18,000 songs.

Combining 16 chips would allow 128GB devices, the company said, making Flash a rival to hard drives.

"This has the biggest storage capacity of a single memory chip ever developed in the world," Kwon Hyosun of the firm told AFP.

Toshiba announced its plans to use 30nm technology earlier this month.

"Our goal is to gain an edge over rivals by supplying the most advanced chips before anyone else," a spokeswoman for Toshiba said at the time.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Eric

2007-10-23T03:18:00.000-07:00

Video Guided tour of Mac OS X Leopard
There is some slick stuff in that new OS from Mac. It promises to be the most important release to date for Apple.

With just one week left before Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard becomes available, Apple has posted a guide tour to show users some of the newest features of the operating system.

The video shows Stacks, Coverflow, Quick Look, Time Machine, Spaces, Mail and several other features.

Apple officially announced the release date for Leopard earlier this week. Calling Leopard “the richest OS X release yet,” Apple will begin selling the operating system on October 26.

Leopard will cost $129 is available for pre-order from the company’s Web site.

Read and see all about it here, courtesy of apple.com. Blog intro courtesy of macworld.com.

Eric

2007-10-22T03:21:00.000-07:00

"Orange Box" emerges as video game sleeper hit.
Seriously now, how many different ways can you re-package Half-Life 2?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!) - What do you get when you throw together a 3-year-old video game, two sequels, a multiplayer variant a decade in the making and a quirky concept game involving a gun that shoots teleportation holes?

If you're Valve Corp, one of the best-regarded independent video game studios, you get "The Orange Box", which is winning rave reviews and emerging as a sleeper hit.

The main game is "Half-Life 2", a shooter set in an Orwellian future where aliens walk freely among us. The game came out in 2004 but is going strong thanks to two expansion packs, 2006's "Episode One" and now "Episode Two".

"We wanted to provide a mix of gameplay mechanics and environments," Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi said of the latest installment.

"We try to give you more of an epic scale than we've done before."

As Valve was putting the finishing touches on "Episode Two", it was also wrapping up "Team Fortress 2", an online multiplayer combat game. The original "Team Fortress" came out in 1996 as a popular free modification for the game "Quake".

"'Team Fortress 2' and 'Episode Two' were kind of on a collision course release-wise," Lombardi said of the decision to sell the games together.

"We said do we want them competing or complementing each other?"

Read all about it here, courtesy of in.reuters.com

Eric

2007-10-19T03:29:00.000-07:00

It's official - Mac OS X Leopard lands October 26th
With over 300 new improvement, it's Apples most robust and feature paced OS ever.

A Leopard is set to join the Apple family, the latest in a string of animal-named products aimed at taking a bite out of the competition.

Apple calls Mac OS X Leopard its biggest operating system upgrade ever. At $129, it's due in stores Oct. 26 and promises 300 new features.

Leopard, which replaces OS X Tiger, arrives as Apple is having a record year. Its stock has doubled in 2007, from about $85 a share in early January to nearly $170 now. It has sold more than 1 million iPhones, the year's most hyped and discussed tech product. And Apple's iPod business remains strong. New iPod units recently introduced include a video-capable Nano, a small media player that is the most popular in the line.

While much of Apple's attention has been focused on non-computer activities, Leopard is aimed at a core goal - selling more Macintosh computers. The new operating system has loads of new stylistic bells and whistles, with two notables:

• Time Machine automatically backs up files without your involvement and lets you "turn back time" to retrieve a lost file. It's different from other backup utilities in that with "a couple of setup clicks, you're done," says Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller. "Everything is automatic."

• Boot Camp gives you the ability to run Windows on a Mac. All you need to do is buy a copy of Windows software, and you can run both platforms on one machine.

Read all about it here, courtesy of apple.com and blog intro by indystar.gns.gannett.com

Eric

2007-10-18T03:21:00.000-07:00

Asustek Eee PC goes on sale in Taiwan
Boy, this sure would make a great "stocking stuffer"! (Notice the OS that they use.)

Asustek Computer's low-cost Eee PC notebook has gone on sale in Taiwan with pricing at online retailers at around NT$11,655 (US$358). This is much higher than the price of US$199 Asustek originally promoted for the portable PC, but this was to be as expected as Asustek recently admitted that the lower price would only be available for bulk purchases of a model with lower specifications, and which is intended for emerging markets.

The model now on sale in Taiwan features a 7-inch LCD display, 4GB solid state storage, 512MB DDR2 RAM and runs on an Intel mobile processor. Weight is given as 920g. The devices also features three USB 2.0 ports, Wi-Fi b/g connectivity, a VGA output, two audio jacks, Secure Digital (SD) card reader (which according to earlier reports also supports SDHC cards), webcam, speakers, and LAN and modem ports. Battery life is listed as 3.5 hours.

As previously reported the Eee PC comes loaded with a customized Linux-based operating system and a suite of software applications. These include the Firefox web browser, email and instant messaging clients, Skype, and OpenOffice 2.0. In line with Asustek's aim of promoting the Eee PC for educational use, a collection of children's learning software which covers subjects including science, math and languages is also included. Additionally, the Eee PC supports multimedia functions and includes a selection of games. Whether or not users will be able to add additional software through repositories maintained by Asustek is unclear at this stage.

Asustek has set up a service network in Taiwan including toll-free call center, service center, and a drop off/collection service with a local chain of convenience stores. Interestingly, it is explicitly made clear that the service center will not support issues related to the installation of Windows XP on the Eee PC although Aststeck notes that the hardware does support the operating system.

According information on the Asustek website a total of four models can be expected to be available.

Asustek Eee PC specifications
	Eee PC 8G	Eee PC 4G	Eee PC 4G Surf	Eee PC 2G Surf
Display	7-inch
CPU	Intel
OS	Linux (hardware Windows XP compatible)
LAN	Yes
Wireless LAN	Yes
Memory (DDR2)	1GB	512MB	512MB	256MB
Storage	8GB	4GB	4GB	2GB
Webcam	Yes		Yes
Battery	4-cell 5200mAh: 3.5 hours		4-cell 4400mAh: 2.8 hours

Source: Company, compiled by Digitimes, October 2007

Read all about it here, courtesy of digitimes.com

Eric

2007-10-17T03:12:00.000-07:00

Apple drops price of DRM-free iTunes
The Cupertino based company prices DRM-free music the same as the "leaded" version...0.99 cents.

This report was updated midday to reflect that Apple has confirmed the DRM-free iTunes price drop.

Apple has dropped the price of its iTunes Plus songs that have no digital rights management (DRM) software protection and allow owners to move song files freely from one device to another.

The 256kbps DRM-free song files were originally priced at $1.29 per song with a lower per-song average price for buying an entire album. iTunes now seems to be offering the same files for 99 cents per song, the same price it charges for its usual 128kbps DRM versions.

"iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers, and now we're making it available at an even more affordable price," Tom Neumayr, senior manager for iPods, Apple TV and iTunes, said in a statement. "We're adding over 2 million tracks from key independent labels, in addition to EMI's digital catalog, and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

The change closely follows Amazon.com's launch of its own digital-music store.

As of September 25, Amazon.com began offering 256kbps DRM-free MP3s for between 89 cents and 99 cents each, depending on the song.

While Apple has made no formal comment as to why it's decided to reduce its DRM-free iTunes prices, Amazon's new music store could be the reason.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.com

Eric

2007-10-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

Hard Disk Drive to get smaller in size, with bigger storage and cheaper?
Hitachi's new technology breakthrough unlocks the 1 tb limit...

A single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi.

The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk.

Hitachi said the advance would fuel the "terabyte era", with a 4TB drive able to hold more than a million songs.

Hard drives store data by magnetising the surface of the disk in a pattern which represents the data in digital form.

The data is stored digitally as tiny magnetized regions, called bits, on the disk. A magnetic orientation in one direction on the disk could represent a "1", while an orientation in the opposite direction could represent a "0".

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Eric

2007-10-15T03:14:00.000-07:00

Plasma TV's are off limits in Aussie Land
Apparently, plasma TV's are "the major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions from households."

MOST current plasma television sets would be banned from sale in Australia within a year under onerous mandatory energy requirements recommended in a report commissioned by the Federal Government.

The consulting firm Digital CEnergy, which prepared the report for the Government's Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011.

The report was commissioned in response to a fact sheet released this year by the Government's Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee, which said television power consumption was increasing at an alarming rate as consumers upgraded from low-power cathode-ray TVs to energy-guzzling plasma and LCD behemoths.

It found TVs were fast overtaking fridges, heaters and air-conditioners as the major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions from households.

Read all about it here, courtesy of theage.com.au.com

Eric

2007-10-12T03:15:00.000-07:00

***FRIDAY FUNNY***
Video of girl playing Star Wars on a ...trumpet!
This gives a whole new meaning to "that blows". Seriously, this is a pretty amazing vid.

There are many things that make the following video amazing. For starters, it’s called “Star Wars Trumpet” — that should be enough right there. But no, it gets better. For the trumpeteer is a girl named Stacey Hedger, who appears on stage wearing the finest black unitard with silver sparkle-fringed sleeves the 1980’s had to offer. And just when you think you’re about to be blown away by her unbelievable horn skills… she proceeds to pump out the most cacaphonous, ear-splitting rendition of the Star Wars theme imaginable. Thankfully, this doesn’t stop her from using her trumpet as a deadly blaster! And doing a killer Charlie Chaplin impression!

Read all about it here, courtesy of bestweekever.com

Eric

2007-10-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

AMD's Quad-Core Phenom Model and Clocks Revealed
They look good on paper, but will AMD's new CPU's deliver the goods?

AMD has confirmed the model name and clock speed of the upcoming quad-core Phenom processors and plans to launch them as scheduled in Nov/Dec while Phenom FX will launched in Q1 next year. AMD plans to add higher clocked Phenom FX and Phenom quad-core processors in Q2 next year.

Phenom FX-82 will be clocked at 2.6GHz or higher while the faster FX-8x model could hit 3GHz. FX-82 DVT samples will be available in Q4 while production will kick off in Q1 2008 while FX-8x DVT sample and production is slated for Q2 2008.

Phenom 9600 and 9500 clocked at 2.4GHz and 2.2GHz respectively will be the first quad-core Phenom processors to hit the market in Nov. Phenom 9700 clocked at 2.6GHz will come along slightly later in Dec. A faster iteration of the quad-core Phenom will come along in Q2 2008 while DVT samples will be available in Q1. Most likely, it will be called Phenom 9800 and clocked at 2.8GHz.

Read all about it here, courtesy of VR-Zone.com

Eric

2007-10-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

Six Ways to Catch Your Favorite TV Shows
Don't thinks just TiVo for this one, the options are always nice.

With the fall television schedule in full swing, many of us are back in the habit of plopping down in front of the tube at night to catch the latest installment of our favorite show when it's scheduled to air. That means clearing your schedule to watch the show and then sitting in front of the TV for a whole hour just for 43 minutes' worth of programming. That doesn't seem very productive, does it? Luckily, this viewing season there are more ways than ever to catch the latest episodes of your best-loved shows without becoming a slave to the prime-time television schedule. So forget the fall lineup as you know it, because this year you're going to watch TV on your terms

Read all about it here, courtesy of lifehacker.com

Eric

2007-10-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

ASUS Motherboard Ships With Embedded Linux, Web Browser

This MoBo isn't cheap, but it does introduce a very slick idea...embedded Linux OS.

The good folks over at ASUS have sent over the P5E3 Deluxe, which is based upon Intel's new X38 Chipset and continues in the usual ASUS fashion of pushing new (and often unexpected) innovations onto the motherboard. Without spoiling the review of this motherboard that will be published shortly, the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe is one of the most innovative motherboards we have seen to date and it packs one very exciting and unusual feature. Embedded onto the P5E3 Deluxe is a Linux environment that features a Firefox-rebranded web browser and the Skype VoIP client! Within five seconds of turning on this $360 USD gaming/enthusiast motherboard, you can be using Linux and surfing the Internet. On this motherboard the feature is known as ASUS Express Gate, which is powered by something called SplashTop. SplashTop is an instant-on Linux desktop being created by DeviceVM. SplashTop isn't even launching for a few more days (October 10), but in this article we have more details on this embedded Linux environment as well as screenshots and our thoughts with what will hopefully come next for this Linux environment.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Phoronix.com

Eric

2007-10-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

15 Ridiculously Useful Website
This is a great list of websites, that you can use everyday!

Crossfit
A free fitness website that posts a new "Workout of the Day" every day. The workouts focus on total body fitness. The workouts are used by military personnel, athletes, and normal people. The site also contains an index of the exercises used in the workouts complete with videos and slideshows. They offer a newsletter for those willing to pay. It is an outstanding site for both fitness gurus and average Joes.
Lonely Planet
This site offers, among other things, an outstanding resource for anyone researching travel destinations.
Retail Me Not
A catalog of online coupons posted and reviewed by users. The coupons vary from sites like Polo to Amazon to Papajohns.
Web MD
Provides a reference for anyone looking to diagnose his or her symptoms or research medical issues. It is a good place to visit before making that, oh so expensive, trip to the doctor.
Epicurious
A source of cooking information ranging from recipes to techniques to restaurant reviews.
E-How
A reference site for just about everything else. Want to k now how to wax snow skis? Make pizza dough? Install a bathtub? This is the place.
Kayak
Combines search results from several different travel websites and presents them in a very user-friendly interactive format.
Bartleby
One of the better academic research websites I've come across.
Monster Jobs
Looking for a job? Need a resume?
How Stuff Works
A very cool website that contains explanations of those mysteries in life that you just can't figure out. A few examples are Murphy's Law, Pickpockets, and Light Sabers (Yes, light sabers).
Product Wiki
A wikipedia-type product review website. All reviews and articles are written and updated by the site's users.
What Should I Read Next
Can't decide what to read next? Simply enter a book title and/or author that you like and the site will recommend a number of books for you.
The Universal Packing List
This is a very unique website I found that creates a packing list for you based on information you provide regarding your trip and intentions/plans.
Happy Median
Enter your location and a friend's location and this site will tell you where you should meet (Halfway).
Musicovery
Seriously, the coolest music-related site I've seen. You choose the mood, intensity, and genres of the music you would like to hear and the site will provide you with a virtual web of music to explore. The web evolves with each choice you make. You can click on any song in the web at anytime.

Read all about it here , courtesy of webupon.com.com

Eric

2007-10-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

***Friday Funny(ish)***
Painting of Tica by Dru Blair. This is not a photo...really
Amazing results from good old fashioned skill and dedication

Read all about it here, courtesy of drublair.com

Eric

2007-10-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

New Zune vs. New iPod showdown, specs compared
Strange how Microsoft comes out with a revised Zune just a few weeks after the new iPod...

The new Zunes are official so let's get to it: a spec-by-spec scrap between Redmond's new Zunes and Cupertino's formidable iPod foe. Unfortunately, Microsoft failed to mention the all important battery performance of their new gear in addition to a few other minor details. Microsoft fans will tell you that's due to an iPhone-like surprise close to the November launch while haters will jump to the conclusion that this is a definite sign of trouble. Still even without that morsel, there's plenty of data to masticate for comparison.

The Zune 80GB certainly holds its own when pitted against the 80GB iPod classic on a specification table. That's not the case, however, with the iPod touch as long as you're willing to sacrifice the bytes for the touch's bigger display and heftier price tag. It's a tougher call on the flash-based Zune vs. the iPod nano -- just how important is WiFi to you on a 1.8-inch display? None of this, of course, accounts for the oh so important user experience or the ecosystems supporting their respective players. As such, we'll reserve final judgment until we have the new Zunes in-hand. Until then you'd best dig in fanboys, that November release is a long way off. The tables that follow will provide the fuel to fight the flame wars in the weeks to come.

Update: Battery data updated with information found on Amazon.com.

The Zune 80 with its big 3.2-inch display fits right in between Apple's iPod classic and iPod touch models. As such, we'll give you all three in a side-by-side comparison. Since Microsoft is a bit light on the specs, we've plugged in the information we reasonably expect to carry over from the 1st generation Zune -- otherwise, it's To Be Determined:

Read all about it here, courtesy of engadget.com

Eric

2007-10-03T03:34:00.000-07:00

Americans wrong about computer security: poll
I think clueless or lost would be a more apt term than "wrong"as sad as that is to say...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans believe their computers are protected against viruses and spyware, but scans found that a large number had outdated or disabled security software, according to a poll released on Monday.

Fully 87 percent of Americans polled said they had anti- virus software, 73 percent said they had a firewall and 70 percent said they had anti-spyware software, according to the survey by security software maker McAfee Inc (MFE.N:Research) and the National Cyber Security Alliance.

But when pollsters asked to remotely scan the respondents' computers, the story turned out to be very different.

While 94 percent of those polled had anti-virus software, just half had updated it in the past month, the survey showed. Eighty one percent had a firewall protecting private information, but just 64 percent had enabled it. And 70 percent said they had anti-spyware software, but only 55 percent had enabled it.

Spyware not only monitors what a computer user does, but can also install software without the user's consent and interfere with the computer in other ways.

Bari Abdul, a McAfee vice president, said most viruses were not written by attention-seeking hackers looking to pull a prank.

"Most of the action has gone to stealing identity," he said after speaking at a cyber security conference sponsored by the National Cyber Security Alliance.

Nine percent of those polled reported having had their identity stolen, he said.

Read all about it here, courtesy of uk.reuters.com

Eric

2007-10-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

New Sony XEL-1 OLED TV
Sony goes back to it's roots and builds innovative and desirable products once again.

Sony introduces their first commercial OLED TV named XEL-1.

The stunning XEL-1 is what Sony teased on their site in Japan Friday. The XEL-1 is an 11 inch display that is only 3mm thin.
Other stunning performance indicators include a dramatic 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a low 45W power consumption.
Sony has put the ultra-thin display on a pedestal with a flexible arm. At 11 inches the Sony XEL-1 is a nice stylish desk accessory.
The first Sony OLED TV has a resolution of 960x ×540px, but takes input resolution up to 1080p.
The Sony XEL-1 has an integrated digital TV tuner for Japan. Other features of the Sony OLED TV include USB, LAN interface, 1x HDMI port, headphone plug and S-Force sound.

Overall measurements of the XEL-1 are 287×253×140mm.
Sony plans to start shipping the XEL-1 OLED TV on December 1st for 200,000 Yen (~$1,740). This is a very high price for an 11 inch TV, but it is the first OLED TV you can buy. Early adoption always has its price.

Read all about it here, courtesy of i4u.com

Eric

2007-10-01T03:24:00.000-07:00

Hard Disk Drives Near Capacity Limits
What, a terabyte isn't big enough for you? Sheesh!

You may have heard about or even experienced yourself the problem of buying a new hard disk drive to install on your old (and sometimes not that old) machine and facing some size limitation, i.e. your old system does not recognizing the full capacity of your hard disk drive. In this tutorial we will explain why this happens, list all hard disk drive capacity limitations that have ever existed since the PC was created and show you how to fix them.

A capacity limitation can occur for several reasons, such as a hardware limitation, a limitation of the file system your hard drive is using or a limitation of the operating system you are using.

First, let’s understand how data are stored on hard disk drives.

Hard disk drives are sealed system containing one or more magnetic discs inside. Each side is simply called side or head, because for each side there is a magnetic head available for reading and writing data. Each side of a magnetic disc is divided into several concentric tracks or cylinders. Then each track is divided into sectors. Each sector holds 512 bytes of information. The minimum unit the hard disk drive controller can access is the sector, meaning that if it has to read just one byte from a given sector, it must read the entire sector.

The number of bytes inside a sector is fixed, it is always 512 bytes. But the number of tracks, sectors per track and sides (i.e. heads) a hard drive has will depend on the model. The number of heads, tracks and sectors per track a hard disk drive has is called geometry.

If you multiply the number of heads by the number of tracks and then by the number of sectors per track you will find how many sectors a given hard disk drive has (for newer hard disk drives the manufacturer announces the number of sectors the drive has, instead of its geometry). Multiplying this number by 512 will give you the total capacity of a hard disk drive in bytes.

Read all about it here, courtesy of hardwaresecrets.com

Eric

2007-09-28T05:13:00.000-07:00

***Friday Funny***
This gives a whole new meaning to lounge lizard
Hey, it's Friday and we all need a laugh.

Yes, This is For Real.

Tony, or by his Flickr sobriquet manmadepants, submitted this amazing photo to our Featured Photos Pool. In his own words...

I swear on my life this is 100% real. I was walking down the street looking for stuff to photograph and this guy is just sitting outside a coffee shop with this 80 year old woman and he is taking these little sofa things out of a bag. Then he opens another compartment in the bag and there are about five lizards like this guy. Then he would pose them and they would just sit there like this. Don't really know why.
He didn't really explain much but he did say they take about three months to train them to do this. I didn't bother asking if he only trained his lizards to sit in relaxing human posses or if there were other ones too. The whole thing was just to oddly perfect, I really didn't need him to go in to detail.

Also I like the surprising detailed craftsmanship of the sofa. Now I can say I've truly seen it all!

Photo by manmadepants via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

Read all about it here, courtesy of laist.com

Eric

2007-09-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

Gateway mimics new iMac with "one"
At least you could have loaded linux, to be even more Mac like! sheesh!

PC maker Gateway today fired a salvo at Apple with a new all-in-one home desktop that bears strong design similarities with the recently introduced aluminum iMac. Called simply the One, the design is far sleeker than Gateway's earlier Profile systems and fits the entire design within a single metal shell just 3.6 inches deep. The entire front face is black to hide the borders of the 19-inch widescreen LCD and blend into home decor, such as the living room. The One also builds on Apple's minimalist emphasis: where the iMac plugs all cables directly into the back, the One feeds gigabit Ethernet, four USB ports, and AV ports to the external power adapter to take clutter away from the desk. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are standard and eliminate the need for a wired mouse or keyboard. Other echoes of Apple's design are found in a slot-loading, side-mounted DVD burner as well a main casing with three USB ports, one FireWire, and audio in/out connectors. The new design has a 5-in-1 card reader and is easily opened to replace the hard drive or memory, however. Buyers can also add a mounting kit to hoist the One against a wall, or a USB TV tuner for watching live programming.

Gateway says it will ship the series in late October with two retail models and a single online-only version. The retail line starts at $1,300 with a 1.5GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, and Intel X3100 graphics; a high-end model boosts speed to 2GHz, memory to 3GB, hard disk space to 500GB, and adds Mobility Radeon HD 2600 dedicated video for its higher $1,800 price tag. Both have a 1.3-megapixel webcam hidden in the chassis, Gateway says. The online model sits in between the two store models with the same hardware as the base PC save for a 400GB hard drive and Radeon HD 2600 chipset. It should be available for $1,500.

Read all about it here, courtesy of electronista.com

Eric

2007-09-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

If Apple never existed
I shudder the thought.

Back in 2005, I wrote a column depicting a day in a fictitious world without Microsoft. Now I want to turn the tables and imagine a world without Apple.

I arrive at the office, courier bag slung over one shoulder, Peet's coffee in one hand. It feels earlier than it is, probably because I'd been working on deadline until late in the evening.

The problem with writing about home computers is keeping track of all of them. There are times I wish a single home computer standard existed, but that's a pipe dream. Still, HC's have come a long way since the early days of the Altair and Compupro boxes.

When I arrive at the office, several large boxes are awaiting me. The new Harmon Kardon home entertainment computer is in one of the boxes. Harmon is trying to establish a new category, the "HEC". I say, to HEC with it. Who wants to get locked into one type of media, when the CD is perfectly adequate? The Harmon PR rep had spoken eloquently about how transferring the music from a CD to the magneto-optical drive built into the Harmon HEC meant you could have as many as thirty CDs on tap at any one time. But once in the HEC, you couldn't get the music out, locking you into Harmon gear forever.

I plopped myself down at my desk and pulled out the Tandy NB5000 portable computer. It's a neat device, not much bigger than a large paper notebook, with an 80-column LCD screen. It had been a long, arduous process getting the Ziff-Davis IT department to approve the Radio Shack NBCs. Apparently, buying the utility software to convert the text format to something the DEC minicomputers could recognize was expensive.

I found myself wishing that one of the big computer companies had dived into the market for HCs, but alas, they had ceded the territory to the big consumer electronics companies. Sony, Toshiba, NEC and others had gobbled up companies like Amiga, Atari, and the various CP/M hardware companies in the late 1980's, and proceeded to deliver dozens of different HCs. It was really a hobbyists dream and nightmare both. All the different devices were pretty cool—except that getting your data from one to another was a real mess.

This was all exacerbated by the dozen or so companies building microprocessors for HCs, all of which had different instruction sets, different word lengths and different bit order. But it was job security for writers like me, who could make sense of it all to end users. No one company had gained enough traction to set a single standard.

I read over my roundup on the latest 200MB magneto-optical drives, then transferred it to the 5MB floppy built into the side of the NBC. The NEC unit was clearly best, but Sony's was a close second, due to its support for both the standard 200MB format and a Sony proprietary format that was also 200MB. However, the proprietary format could store up to twenty minutes of video, making it a sort of poor man's Laserdisc. I popped out the floppy drive and walked over to our production team.

The roundup needed to be edited, then formatted for the various electronic mail blasts as well as the print version. We had four people dedicated to reformatting the text into formats that the various mail readers on the several dozen HCs could understand.

I returned to my office just as the phone rang. It was Steve, a PR rep from a new company starting up Santa Clara. "Hey, we have a pretty neat gadget. It's about the size of a cassette Walkman, but uses a tiny MO drive to hold three hours of music. It only weighs about eight ounces. Want to check it out?"

"Sure," I said. "Might be a cool gadget for our holiday gift guide."

"One other thing. I've picked up a new account. They're building these HCs using off-the-shelf components and the same magnetic disk technology used in minicomputers and mainframes. It even runs a kind of UNIX."

I sighed. "How much does it cost."

"That's the great part. It's under $10,000."

"Steve, that's too much for most families."

"Hey, it's really cool. You know, Loyd, you've got to learn to think different."

You might wonder how this rather bleak scenario might exist if Apple had never come to pass. Despite not being a Mac user, it's my belief that Apple acted as a catalyst for the industry. Prior to Apple, there were a host of home computers and business-oriented PCs, either running proprietary operating systems or some variant of CP/M. But even CP/M machines often couldn't talk to each other.

Had there never been an Apple, the IBM PC may never have emerged, which then set off the tidal wave of innovation + standardization that allows us to have cheap PC technology today. Apple has had a tremendous impact, both directly through its suberb industrial design and efforts to simplify technology, and indirectly, by stimulating competition that eventually resulted in the PC ecosystem we have today. What do you think?

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-09-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

Halo3 has landed
The most anticipated games in recent history, hits store shelves after 3 years of development.

Halo 3 is an interesting mix of established protocol and intriguing new stuff. For example, the gameplay doesn't stray too far from Halo 2, which, in turn, didn't exactly reinvent the original Halo. Don't take that as a negative, because it means that Halo 3 plays extremely well, with the same types of light tactical considerations that have made the series stand apart from other, faster-paced shooters. The balance between your guns, your grenades, and your melee attack has always given Halo a unique feel in the genre, and those same considerations apply today, both in the campaign mode and in multiplayer. You'll also have new weapons and items to consider, such as a host of Brute weapons. One example is the spiker, which is an exciting automatic pistol that fires quickly and decimates opponents, especially if you're holding a pair of them. Another is the mauler, which is a one-handed shotgun that can level enemies up close. You'll even find weapons so huge that your movement speed slows when you carry them. When you use these weapons, the camera pulls out to a third-person perspective so you can see your missile pod, plasma cannon, or flamethrower as it fires. And then there's the gravity hammer. Originally shown in Halo 2 (where it wasn't usable by the player), the gravity hammer is a large melee weapon that will wipe out most regular enemies in one swipe. Needless to say, it can be especially fun in multiplayer settings. The end result is gameplay that feels wholly familiar without retreading the same ground too heavily.

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET.com

Eric

2007-09-24T03:18:00.000-07:00

Intel says WiMax is coming next year - this time for sure
Ummm, yep sure it is. Can I sell you some great ocean front property in Idaho while were at it?

One thing was very clear at this week's Intel Developer Forum, the semiannual gathering of hardware and software developers sponsored by the semiconductor giant: If it's small and mobile, Intel wants to put a chip in it. The lumbering rectangular towers we so often refer to as PCs have become passé, and according to Intel, are increasingly taking a back seat to a new breed of laptops, ultramobile PCs, mobile internet devices and cell phones.

In his keynote on Wednesday, David Perlmutter, senior vice president of Intel's Mobility Group, described mobile users with "insatiable appetites," hungry for ever more mobility and connectivity.

The company plans to sate this hunger with something called Montevina in mid-2008. Montevina, which will become the company's next-generation Centrino mobile platform, is based on Intel's 45-nanometer fabrication technology. It will support things like DDR3 memory, Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback, as well as an integrated Wi-Fi/WiMax module the company calls Echo Peak.

What that means in plain English is that Montevina notebooks will be faster and low-power, will include support for the latest optical storage standards, and will presumably be ready to connect with the latest wireless networks out of the box. As testament to the clout Intel wields, a number of laptop manufactures like Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba and Panasonic have already committed to using Montevina.

Key to Intel's wireless strategy is the standard known as Mobile WiMax (IEEE 802.16e). Yes, that's the same WiMax you've been hearing about -- but not seeing -- for close to five years now. But according to Intel, as well as Sprint Nextel and Clearwire, WiMax really will be ready for its public debut next year.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Wired.com

Eric

2007-09-21T03:32:00.000-07:00

***FRIDAY FUNNY***
Top ten laughably bad tech ads
Hey, it's Friday why not end the week with a good laugh...

The tech industry has a rich and hilarious history of being unable to promote itself as anything other than unutterably dorky. Originally we were going to call this 'The top ten worst tech ads', but as we hunted around we discovered these are pure gold. They are shockingly bad, but you'll derive so much pleasure from watching them it didn't seem right to use 'worst' anymore.

Anyway, we've collected ten of our favourites -- in no particular order -- that made us laugh, either because they feature lycra, awful singing, pathetic old technology, Steve Ballmer or some combination of all of the above. -Ian Morris

Steve Ballmer sells Windows 1.0
You've got to love Steve Ballmer. Now Bill Gates is stepping down from the day-to-day running of Microsoft to concentrate on being a full-time good guy, Ballmer is pretty much in charge at Redmond. Anyone who saw his monkey dance will know why that's a little scary.

Anyway, this video is him selling Windows 1.0. And while it's funny for all the wrong reasons, you have to respect Ballmer for not caring what people think of him. We can't imagine Jobs doing this.

Update: Several commenters have pointed out this was an internal MS video that wasn't broadcast. Fair enough, our mistake. It's still incredibly funny. And there's still no way Jobs would do it.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Crave.Cnet.co.uk

Eric

2007-09-20T03:35:00.000-07:00

Intel QX6850 Quad Core Extreme Processor Review
AMD needs to get it in gear and challenge the mighty Intel.

Earth to AMD......earth to AMD........come in AMD.........where are you?

A lot of us are asking that question these days, and to be honest, AMD had better arrive on the scene soon, as INTEL's most recent releases offer only a modest improvement over their predecessors. Looking at it from purely a business standpoint, Intel is doing it right: Why compete against yourself? Until AMD gets their act together and releases a processor that forces Intel's hand, there's really no point in bringing any major upgrades to market. While that may be good for Intel's bottom line, its bad for us enthusiasts who wait with baited breath for the next best thing.

All of this should change toward the end of the year, as Intel's Penryn and AMDs Phenom are now on the horizon. But for now, we're basically limited to refreshes of Intel's current Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad lines of processors.

Today we take a quick look at Intel's QX6850 Core 2 Extreme. For those of you with no mortgage, no bills, a great job, or rich parents, the QX6850 is currently the pinnacle of the processing world.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Hardwarelogic.com

Eric

2007-09-19T03:47:00.000-07:00

Is Vudu the new Tivo?
A new challenger comes to dethrone the King, with a few tricks up it's sleeve of course.

Remember that famous Qwest commercial where the guy checks into a hotel and is told that the in-room entertainment offers "every movie ever made?" We're still not quite there yet--but it's not for lack of trying. Over the past few years, more and more on-demand entertainment solutions have become available, but they've all seemed hobbled by one problem or another: lackluster content offerings, pricey subscription fees, and lengthy downloads (Akimbo); limited selection and middling video quality (MovieBeam); requiring users to connect their PC to their TV (CinemaNow, MovieLink); or forcing customers to buy rather than rent content (Apple's iTunes Store via Apple TV). It's exactly those sorts of shortcomings that Vudu was designed to avoid. This small set-top box connects to your TV and streams--for immediate viewing--your choice of any one of thousands of Hollywood movies, including titles from all the major studios (often released in the same week as they're hitting DVD). Video and audio quality is impressively above average, and the $400 box allows users to rent movies for $1 to $4, or to buy them (as a permanent download) for $5 to $20. To be sure, Vudu has its share of issues and caveats, but the easy-to-use Vudu may well be the closest thing to a video store in a box that we've seen to date.

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET.com

Eric

2007-09-18T03:16:00.000-07:00

Do you really need Surround Sound?
The answer will surprise you.

If you are looking to buy a new desktop PC for gaming purposes, you’d surely want to get a good set of speakers to go with it. That's when you get confronted by "the choice"? Should you splurge on a full 5.1 speaker system or should you just get the cheaper but less impressive 2.1 speaker system?

The 5.1 speaker system consists of two front speakers, two rear speakers, a center speaker and a subwoofer. That's six pieces of hardware right there. The 2.1 speaker system, on the other hand, consists only of two front speakers and a subwoofer. Hardly impressive, but certainly a lot cheaper.

As far as audio supports goes, most motherboards already have 5.1 audio support built-in, so that is not an issue at all. Most PC games also support full surround sound with 5.1 channel support. The only question is whether a 5.1 speaker system will really improve your gaming experience. Read on and find out!

Read all about it here ,courtesy of TechARP.com

Eric

2007-09-17T03:16:00.000-07:00

The Look of Perfect: Analysis of Graphics Accelerators Performance During Media Playback
NVIDIA vs ATi, you will not guess the results on outcome of this battle...

Today, a PC cannot be imagined without capabilities for playing multimedia content. Even cheapest entry-level PCs are equipped with an audio adapter, let alone a graphics core. The leading developers of computer chips are trying to endow the modern PC with a still broader range of multimedia capabilities to entice users into upgrading their hardware.

Products with rich multimedia functionality are not necessarily, by the way. For example, a few years ago Intel introduced its integrated 7.1 audio controller called Azalia that could output audio to progressive speaker systems and supported a number of innovative technologies. ATI, the graphics division of Advanced Micro Devices, has introduced an ATI Radeon X1250 graphics core integrated into AMD 690 chipsets which allows to connect modern TV-sets to the PC via the new HDMI interface.

Having a lot of multimedia features is good, but the quality of implementation is no less important. The sheer support for 7.1 audio doesn’t guarantee that modern games and movies will have a high-quality sound – you need an expensive sound card for that. As for HDMI support, you shouldn’t expect a PC with an entry-level CPU and an integrated graphics core to transform into a home theater after you add a HDMI connector to it. More likely, you’ll have to buy a standalone graphics card and a more advanced CPU.

It is about the quality of implementation that we are going to talk in this review.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Xbitlabs.com

Eric

2007-09-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

Microsoft XP Service Pack 3 coming soon!
With nearly 1000 fixes, and the pledge of support until 2014 MS gives us a viable alternative to Vista.

Service Pack 3 For Windows XP

Those who are still hanging onto Windows XP (32-bit) will be heartened to know that the Service Pack 3 programme is chugging along nicely. In fact, Microsoft is scheduled to wrap up the Technical Beta and release Service Pack 3 for public beta testing within the next two weeks.

Although Microsoft is ending the sale of Windows XP through retail and OEM channels by end of January 2008, this does not mean they are ending their support of Windows XP. While some publications claim that Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP by 2009, that's simply not true. Microsoft will continue to support Windows XP up till August 4, 2014 under their Extended Support Policy. Naysayers can take a look at the Support Lifecycle for Windows XP Professional for example.

As Windows XP nears the end-of-life though, it is Microsoft's policy to release a final service pack to wrap up all those hot fixes and patches released over the past few years. A Sayonara Service Pack, in other words. What this means is a much easier patching process for those who still want to stick with Windows XP. Almost a thousand Windows XP updates in a single download.

It doesn't matter if you are still using the original, unpatched Windows XP or Windows XP Service Pack 2. You can upgrade directly to Windows XP Service Pack 3. You can also slipstream Service Pack 3 into your Windows XP installation media. This allows you to install a fully-patched Windows XP SP3 without going through the ardous process of downloading and installing the many, different updates.

Read all about it here, courtesy of TechArp.com

Eric

2007-09-13T03:44:00.000-07:00

HP's Blackbird 002 Hands On Review
Does this Blackbird have what's it takes to fly high?

Whether it's cars, aircrafts, houses, motorcycles, or computers people always seem to like hearing about the most exotic products on the planet. HP's latest and greatest desktop computer offering bears the name of one of the most mystical aircrafts of all time, the SR-71 Blackbird. We can't say for sure whether the choice of name actually comes from the famous surveillance aircraft or not, but we would venture to say this is the case. See, besides the name, the two have quite a few other common attributes.

The SR-71 Blackbird was on the cutting edge of technology, pushing the boundaries of what was deemed achievable. It was the first aircraft that was designed to reduce its radar signature, and while it would fail in this respect it helped pave the way for future stealth aircraft. Perhaps more notably, the Blackbird was the fastest aircraft ever produced, officially reaching speeds of Mach 3.2 and unofficially reaching even higher. The actual top speed remains classified to this day. The extremely high speeds required some serious out of box thinking to achieve, so the Blackbird was built from flexible panels that actually fit loosely together at normal temperatures; only after the aircraft heated up from air friction would the panels fit snugly, and in fact the SR-71 would leak fuel while sitting on the runway before takeoff. After landing, the surface of the jet was so hot (above 300°C) that maintenance crews had to leave it alone for several hours to allow it to cool down.

So how does all of that relate to the HP Blackbird 002? In terms of components and design, the Blackbird is definitely on the cutting edge of design and technology, and it features several new "firsts" in computers. When we consider that the Blackbird comes from a large OEM that doesn't have a reputation for producing such designs, it makes some of these firsts even more remarkable. Talking about the temperatures that the SR-71 reached during flight was intentional, because the Blackbird 002 can put out a lot of heat. No, you won't need to let it cool down for several hours after running it, but the 1100W power supply is definitely put to good use. If electricity is the fuel of the 002, saying that it leaks fuel while sitting idle definitely wouldn't be an overstatement. And last but not least, the Blackbird 002 is fast - extremely fast - easily ranking among the best when it comes to prebuilt desktop computers.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com

Eric

2007-09-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

Vista Made "Easy": 50 Tips and Tricks
If your going to use Vista, you might was well tweak it

Like driving a new car, adjusting to a new operating system takes time. Discovering new features and functions (so that's how you adjust the steering wheel!) helps to shorten the acclimatization period, letting you turn a mass-market product into one customized for you. Do you prefer bigger, better-looking icons? Is increased security worth a few extra clicks, in your eyes? Would you like to link all your gadgets to the new system the right way—the first time? Then we've got the guide for you.

We'll walk you through Vista's many neat features and more than 50 tips on installing Vista optimally, configuring it for you and your family, improving system speed, and turning up its coolness. When we're through, you'll have made the new OS uniquely yours. — next: Tips 1 through 10

Read all about it here, courtesy of www.extremetech.com

Eric

2007-09-11T03:33:00.000-07:00

EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked vs. 256MB "standard" card
Does size matter? The answers will surprise you.

Introduction

EVGA is a familiar name to most PC hardware enthusiasts and are known for their lifetime warranties and 90 days setup-up program. They were founded in 1999 and are located in California. This past year they have made a name for themselves in the motherboard low end and high end enthusiast market with their motherboards based on NVIDIA nForce 680i chipset.

In this evaluation we will be looking at the EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked in comparison to an EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 512MB non-Superclocked as well as an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB.

The EVGA 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked features 512MB of GDDR3 video memory; that is double the standard 256MB for this GPU. We want to know if 512MB will really affect the gameplay experience in a positive way with this level of GPU. What we are going to do is test this video card in comparison to a standard 256MB GeForce 8600 GTS at the same clock speeds to see if memory size will affect performance at all.

The moniker “Superclocked” indicates that this video card is “highly” factory overclocked; at least you would think so. The EVGA 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked’s GPU is running at 706 MHz (31 MHz over the reference design of 675 MHz). The video card memory, however, is not factory overclocked at all. The memory comes clocked at precisely 2016 MHz (1008 MHz actual), which is the reference memory frequency for GeForce 8600 GTS cards.

Overall, these overclocking frequencies are highly underwhelming. When we think of "Superclocked" we expect more than 31 MHz on the GPU and no overclock what-so-ever of the memory. To compare the advantage of EVGA’s “Superclocked” we will compare the EVGA 8600 GTS 512MB Superclocked to EVGA’s own standard clocked 8600 GTS 512MB by downclocking our Superclocked to the non-Superclocked speeds. We want to know if the extra $20 the Superclock carries ($259.99) versus the standard clocked 512MB ($239.99) is worth it.

If you would like to read more about the GeForce 8600 GTS architecture you can read here.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

2007-09-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Upcoming Movie Trailers Based on Video Games
If it wasn't for re-makes and video games, Hollywood would have nothing to film.

From Super Mario Brothers (1993), Street Fighter (1994), to Mortal Kombat (1995), Pokemon (2002-2007), Final Fantasy (2001) and Doom (2005), video games have been key story lines for many successful movies. We have examined the upcoming movie releases and selected the top ten upcoming movies based on video games. All of these movies are in production and moving forward, therefore movies that have stalled in production were not included.

Read all about it here, courtesy of gunslot.com

Eric

2007-09-07T03:35:00.000-07:00

HP's Blackbird gets highest PC review rating vere from CNET...9.3
I don't know if the Blackbird is really this good or if someone is getting paid to sing HP's praises...

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Rich Brown
Reviewed on 9/5/07 Release date: 10/1/07

HP's Blackbird 002 is the first product from the collaborative design and production minds of HP and its year-old boutique acquisition, Voodoo PC. The result is a system that makes an unexpectedly large dent in what we expect from high-end gaming PCs. In addition to its unique appearance and a Mac Pro-quality interior design, HP and Voodoo have done for $5,600 what would cost significantly more from other vendors. They've also managed a technical innovation with this system that expands your graphics upgrade options, and that could also benefit DIY upgraders in general. The Blackbird 002 will satisfy any well-off gamer looking for a unique, expensive showpiece desktop. For the rest of us, let's hope that future, more affordable products from the HP/Voodoo team-up show so much polish and creativity.

The angled lines of Dell's XPS 700 series systems tweaked the idea of the typical desktop case. HP's Blackbird 002 takes that reinvention even further, with its design that looks like an accordion floating on a cantilevered base. Two slot-loading DVD burners and a spare 5.25-inch bay hide between the ridges that run down the front of the Blackbird, and a row of ports and a media card reader pop up from a cleverly concealed, spring-loaded mechanism on the top.

Aesthetically, the Blackbird 002 probably lacks universal appeal. It's imposing, a quality that doesn't always work in, say, the living room. On the other hand, fat-walleted gamers willing to pay a lot of money for high frame rates might appreciate what HP and Voodoo have going on here. We like it mostly for technical reasons; by pushing air through the bottom-side vents made possible by its elevated case, the Blackbird 002 gains more cooling and airflow.

As unique as we find the exterior, the inside is where the Blackbird 002 truly separates itself, starting with the latch. Rather than requiring you to turn the massive case around to remove its side panel screws, HP and Voodoo installed a latch on the side panel's front side edge. You simply pull the latch and the side panel swings open on a set of hinges. Once you get a look inside the case, the Voodoo influence becomes instantly apparent--and not just because of the "Voodoo DNA" label.

The first thing that becomes apparent about the inside of the Blackbird 002 is how clean it is. The graphics cards, power supply, hard drives, and their attendant cables are for the most part concealed behind a series of removable plastic walls (the graphics cards sit behind their own secondary hinged door). This segmenting, which we've seen before from Voodoo systems, benefits overall heat management, and because the internal partitions are removable--including the graphics card door--you can clear the way when you want to add more memory or another expansion card.

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET.com

Eric

2007-09-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

Apples unveils new "touch" iPods and slashes price on iPhone
In a single move Apple has wooed the digital media masses with the new "touch" iPods and peeved off the early adopters of the iPhone with a $200 price drop on the phone.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveils an updated line of iPods at San Francisco's Moscone Center on Wednesday.

Jobs shows off the new iPod Touch, a phoneless iPhone. It looks just like the iPhone, with the same size screen but it's thinner. The iPod Touch has the multitouch interface borrowed from the iPhone, with the same home screen. It also has the accelerometer that transfers the screen from portrait to landscape mode, the same 3.5-inch widescreen display and Wi-Fi. The 8GB costs $299, while the 16GB will cost $399. Both models will be available this month.

Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET.News.com

Eric

2007-09-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

HP's "Blackbird 002" Landing this Monday
I don't really know why HP wants to jump into the high end boutique pc market...

We, along with a number of other publications, just got tipped off to HP's plans to launch a new desktop called the HP Blackbird 002 next week. (Sorry, no, we think it's separate from the HP Virtus we already saw.) The email's after the break, but the long and short of it is Voodoo seems to be marrying its high performance PC line with HP branding. The short list of what you need to know:

BIOS-based overclocks
Heat-optimized aluminum chassis and foot
Liquid cooling system for CPUs and GPUs
Tool-free upgrades for CPU, GPU, drives
Pricing between $2500 and $6500, ouch!

More after the break.

Introducing HP Blackbird 002

HP Blackbird 002 is a machine born from the minds of gamers, created with gamers in mind. Designed by a core group of gaming enthusiasts at HP and performance computing experts from VoodooPC, HP Blackbird 002 offers gamers new levels of innovation and versatility. Every element of HP Blackbird 002 – from its aluminum chassis to the cast-aluminum foot – contributes to its dynamic look and its extreme performance.

Built with industry standard components, it is also designed to encourage gaming enthusiasts to make modifications to existing hardware and upgrade to future generations of performance hardware. Features like the removable side panel and interior/exterior back panel LED lighting make it convenient for gamers to get inside the machine and tweak it.

To ensure performance meets each Blackbird owner's expectations, every HP Blackbird 002 is configured to the individual's preference when it is purchased and ships with a completely open BIOS, allowing for total customization.

Although the system was designed with gamers in mind, it is also ideal for anyone needing a performance machine. People looking for a PC to handle demanding tasks such as photo, video and music editing will also love the innovation packed into HP Blackbird 002.

Product Highlights

Industry Standard Components – HP Blackbird 002 is the most versatile and configurable performance PC in its class, simply because industry standard components are used throughout the machine, making modification easy and driver conflicts a thing of the past.
Full System Liquid Cooling – HP Blackbird 002 is the first in its class to feature full system, maintenance-free liquid cooling that draws heat away from the CPU, motherboard and GPUs. The factory-sealed system does not require the periodic maintenance other systems demand and keeps the machine running quiet.
Thermals – Heat is the enemy of performance PCs, and the three biggest heat generators are the CPU, the GPUs and the power supply. HP Blackbird 002 isolates each heat source in its own thermal chamber, ensuring that cooling air isn't contaminated with heat from one component on its way to cool off another one. The HP Blackbird 002 can handle the heat.
Easy Access – The machine invites users to pop the hood and tinker away. HP Blackbird 002 and its removable side panel, interior and back panel lighting, and Voodoo-style wiring provides easy access for enthusiasts to fine tune their machine's performance.
Tool-less Upgrades – HP Blackbird 002 does not come with a toolkit. All the components, from the CPU and GPU to the hard drives and optical drives, can be removed and installed sans tools.
Flexible Overclocking – The HP Blackbird 002 standard BIOS allows user-controlled overclocking. LCS systems are factory overclocked.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Engadget.com.

Eric

2007-09-04T04:37:00.000-07:00

Does Quad Core Matter?
Only until there is coding to fully utilize Quad Core, is when we will see an appreciable differences. Until then, still with the fastest dual core you can find.

ntel began shipping its quad core line of desktop processors late last year, starting with the Core 2 Extreme QX6700. Later, the company shipped the mainstream Core 2 Quad Q6600. Today, Intel has three current products with four cores in its product line, the Core 2 Extreme QX6850, the Core 2 Quad Q6700 (essentially a QX6700 with a locked core multiplier) and the aforementioned Q6600, which can now be found for well under $300.

Now that we have a dual-core CPU, the Core 2 E6850 running at the same clock frequency and front side bus speed as the QX6850, it's worth revisiting the issue of whether or not users need four cores.

Part of this was prompted by an interesting comment made by AMD Chief Technical Officer Phil Hester in our podcast interview with Phil in our last podcast. Phil suggested that a dual core CPU with a carefully tuned cache structure might be better for end users of office applications than a quad core CPU.

Do you really need four cores in your PC? Certainly, we've seen a lot of new PCs ship with quad core CPUs, aimed at a variety of users. These range from flagship gaming rigs from the likes of Falcon Northwest and Voodoo PC ship, to HP's mainstream Pavilion m8120n home PC, which can be found as low as $1,150.

Let's see if we can find a few answers.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ExtremeTech.com

Eric

2007-08-31T03:35:00.000-07:00

How to keep you PC secure from Hackers
They didn't even mention the safest bet of all...don't own a computer! ;)

In many ways, the internet today resembles a digital version of the wild, wild west. There are a lot of ways that you can potentially open up your computer and allow “bad guys” in. Then you have companies like Symantec that turn all this into a game of “cops and robbers”, with your PC as the battleground and your wallet as collateral. This is not to say that companies like Symantec don’t have a purpose. They certainly do, and they help guard your computer against “bad guys” when you are stupid enough to allow them in in the first place.

If you are using a computer, you need to obey certain laws of common sense so that you don’t give your computer away as an early Christmas present to some hacker. These basic laws of common sense are:

Do not click on any links in an email which is not solicited.
Do not install little-known shareware applications to your computer.
Not hanging out with the “bad guys” means you’re a lot less likely to get zapped by them. This means you’re a whole lot safer when you’re not surfing warez sites, porn sites, and other sites of questionable material. The owners of such sites usually have a lower sense of ethics and you’re more likely to encounter PC infections on such sites.

Now, there are more than 9 ways to give your PC over to hackers. But, I am going to focus on some of the “biggies” that I see people do. I don’t fault people if they have done some of these things. It’s really easy to trust everybody until they prove otherwise, but unfortunately, that’s risky when you’re talking about the internet.

So, without further ado, here are 9 ways you can hand your PC (or your identity) over to hackers, spyware applications, and advertising agencies.

Read all about it here courtesy of pcmech.com

Eric

2007-08-30T03:32:00.000-07:00

Why Apple Can't Stop iPhone Hackers
If you build it, they will hack it...

It sure sounds like a steal. On Aug. 31, George Hotz plans to trade in his iPhone for a metallic blue Nissan (NSANY) 350Z sports car and three brand-new iPhones. But the 17-year-old's device is no ordinary Apple phone. Hotz hacked his iPhone and unlocked it so that it can be used on a variety of cell-phone networks, becoming the first person known to have done so. The person buying Hotz's phone, Terry Daidone, believes he's the one getting the deal because Hotz has agreed to work for him at his cell-phone refurbishing company, CertiCell.

Daidone says he doesn't plan to sell unlocked iPhones just yet. Rather, he says that he wants Hotz to teach CertiCell's technicians the secrets to unlocking other kinds of cell phones. But that could change—if he can clear up legal questions surrounding the practice of unlocking mobile phones. "As the need arises to unlock phones, we should be at the forefront of that," Daidone says.

Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T), the sole authorized supplier of the iPhone in the U.S., are doing what they can to make sure that legal clearance never comes. The two companies have put their lawyers on the case, applying pressure on hackers involved in unlocking iPhones to try to get them to stop. Much is at stake. AT&T has been hoping that as the exclusive provider of the iPhone, it will see a surge in new customers and monthly service charges of at least $60 from each one. Apple is supposed to get a cut of the revenues. If iPhones are unlocked, they can be used on the wireless networks of rivals like T-Mobile USA—and AT&T gets zippo. AT&T wouldn't comment for this story, while Apple didn't return a request for comment.

Read all about it here, courtesy of businessweek.com

Eric

2007-08-29T03:41:00.000-07:00

***300th Post!***
Far Cry 2 Hands on Preview
By God, I think we have a solid contender for Game of the Year and Game Best Utilizing DX10 Horsepower!

Ubisoft Montreal gave its first public showing of the pre-alpha build for its first-person-shooter Far Cry 2, currently in development for PC only, at PAX 07. Taking over development of the series from the Crytek, creator of the original Far Cry on PC, Ubisoft Montreal will now have to compete with the German developer when Crytek's Crysis launches in November. That's a massively daunting shadow to be working under, but based on the looks of this early build, Ubisoft Montreal is taking the challenge on full-bore.

"My job today is to take your preconceptions of what Far Cry 2 was supposed to be, and pretty much burn those to cinders," said Far Cry 2 creative director Clint Hocking at the event. Hocking, whose past roles include creative director for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and lead designer for the original Splinter Cell, made it clear what would return in the sequel: exotic locales, open-endedness, realism, and immersive gameplay. Unlike in Ubisoft's own Far Cry Instincts reimaginings, there won't be mutant powers or anything else that couldn't roughly realistically happen. And rather than placing gamers in the lush island environment of the original Far Cry (and now Crysis), Far Cry 2 will take players to a 50-square-kilometer African landscape.

This doesn't mean there won't be jungles, but the jungles will be joined by savannas and deserts, with wildlife and weather patterns appropriate to the area. Using a proprietary engine, environmental elements like trees and clouds will be generated procedurally, ensuring distinct looks for these objects in-game. All areas will load dynamically, and everything in the world is destructible down to the pixel, according to Hocking. He demonstrated by using a sniper rifle to shoot off the branches of a distant tree, one by one.

Complementing this expansive, interactive environment will be what Hocking described as open-world gameplay--exploring the harsh habitats of Africa at your leisure while building relationships with other characters and taking on sidequests. You begin the game in a central African hospital dying of malaria. Where you go from there depends on your choices, Hocking said. I've heard developers make this promise before, so we'll see if it's as dynamic as he claims.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Shacknews.com.

Eric

2007-08-28T03:22:00.000-07:00

The End of PC Gaming: Part II
Why won't the media let this go? It's no secret pc gaming will continue to lose ground as the cost of building /maintaining / updating pcs skyrockets.

Not going to happen

We've all heard the news by now, gaming on the PC is dead; the console has won.

This declaration has left a few people, including myself, scratching our heads.

Mark Rein from Epic Games, who was in charge of the development team on Unreal Engine 3, as well as being responsible for the creation of titles like Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War has pointed out the cost problems of developing DX10 games. The price of a higher end DX10 compatible PC graphics card does not compare favourably to the price of a console, in some extreme cases you will pay double the amount for a graphics card than you would for a console. More to the point, a console is ready to be plugged into a TV and played, whereas you have just gotten started on building a gaming PC by purchasing a graphics card, there is still much work to be done and money to be spent.

id Software has declared the same outcome. The PC will become second fiddle to the console; their programmers will focus on developing games primarily for the console and then port them to the PC (maybe). They are so convinced that this is the way to go that they have attached Xbox 360 controllers to every single PC at id, to get their programmers in the console mindset. This move reflects their new philosophy; where once they focused on pushing graphics cards to the utmost limit, now they will focus on gameplay, and ensuring the games will run on any system, not just high end systems.

The Good(?), The Bad and The Ugly

It's hard to spot the good in this move, unless you own a store that sells games. Less PC games is certainly not a benefit to the PC gamer, nor is it likely to improve console gaming to any great extent, except to speed up the release dates for sequels and provide more retail shelf space. Console gamers don't demand groundbreaking new experiences in gaming as vocally as PC gamers, unless you are talking about certain, very specific new features. The console experience benefits more from being able to pick up a game and master the basics in a very short amount of time, allowing the player to get to the meat of the game, usually the fancy graphics and powerful bosses. There are certainly exceptions, mostly published by SquareSoft or EA Sports, that can require more from the casual gamer than your average console game, with either a lot that needs to be learned before you are proficient at the game, or with a huge memorable story line.

It seems unlikely that id Software or Epic are planning to devote most of their development teams energies to that type of game, when many console gamers would be happier with a Gears of War sequel. The PC gamer enjoys having a huge learning curve as long as the game is immersive enough. When the rewards are there, either through the storyline or the sheer joy of the challenge presented in taking over a city, country, planet or universe, a PC gamer will quite happily invest serious amounts of time to be able to complete the game. In certain games there is no set ending to your play, the games leaves you in an open environment once the main storyline has been completed where you are free to do whatever you wish. Many PC gamers thrive on the complexity that goes against the basic premise used when programming a top selling console game.

Read all about it here, courtesy of PCper.com

Eric

2007-08-27T03:22:00.000-07:00

iPhone gets unlocked twice, and AT&T gets fired up
Everything was going fine, until the "Cease and Desist" papers came along from those pesky Lawyers.

It was bound to happen: AT&T is going after the ~~commercial snakes~~ groups trying to profit from the iPhone unlocking. Apparently they can hunt these mercenaries down. You can still 100% unlock with the TurboSIM method but, once again, there is only one way to really blow up the Death Star: Support the iPhone Dev Team to get the FREE software unlock and keep advancing native software development for the iPhone.

Press Release August 25th, 2007
iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com). was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).

After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops.

Until an assessment is made of the potential of legal action, Uniquephones is unable to release the unlocking software for sale. The company spokesperson also said that the company would also be evaluating what to eventually do with the software should they be legally denied the right to sell it. A substantial delay caused by any legal action would render the unlocking software a less valuable commodity as well as creating unforeseen security issues for the company

Oh, and keep your eyes open during tomorrow and the weekend because the shit is about to hit the fan. [iPhone Unlocking]

Read all about it here, courtesy of iphonapps.org

Eric

2007-08-24T03:44:00.000-07:00

Intel quietly announces 2.8 GHz notebook processor
That would be the same 2.8 GHz X7900 Intel Core 2 Due Extreme found in the recently launched uber iMac 24 inch model

Leipzig (Germany) – Intel officially introduced a new Core 2 Extreme model for notebooks: The X7900 model increases the performance for high-end notebooks with a clock speed of 2.8 GHz.

According to heise online, the processor comes with the regular 4 MB L2 cache and support for FSB800, which was introduced earlier this year as part of the Santa Rosa platform. As the X7800, the new 7900 is also rated at a thermal design power of 44 watts, which means that you will not be able to find this CPU in your average notebook, due to its special cooling needs.

The tray price of the chip is $851. The company did not say if and when it will reduce the price for the X7800 version.

The first customer to get this high-end processor was once again Apple, which quietly began offering the chip two weeks ago for its new iMac. A 2.8 GHz iMac with a 24" monitor is currently offered from $2300, which translates into a $250 premium over a 2.4 GHz (non-"Extreme") model. Intel gave Apple preferred treatment before when it provided the company with 3.0 GHz Xeon quad-core processors several months before the chip was officially announced.

Read all about it here, courtesy of TGDaily.com

Eric

2007-08-23T03:37:00.000-07:00

DX10: The Good, The Bad and The Pretty
Bottom line: You can live without DX10, in the near future this will probably change as games will be made specifically for DX10.

Ever since its announcement, DirectX 10 has been one of the most anticipated developments in PC gaming since the move from 2D sprites to fully 3D polygonal bad-guys. By completely redesigning its venerable Application Programming Interface (API), Microsoft is promising better than ever effects, a more streamlined programming methodology and improved performance. All of which is meant to lead to better looking, more stable, less hardware limited games. However, we all know that this hasn't yet proved to be the case.

Immature hardware drivers, a lack of games, and enough (Vista) bugs to make even Bear Grylls think twice has meant that seven months since Vista launched, and a full nine months since the first DX10 capable graphics card arrived, we have yet on TrustedReviews to look at what DX10 truly has to offer. But, after umpteen driver revisions and a whole slew of Vista patches, we finally feel that performance, stability and game choice is sufficient to warrant a first glimpse at both the visual improvements and supposed boost in performance we can expect this new platform to provide.

Read all about it here, courtesy of TrustedReviews.com

Eric

2007-08-22T03:39:00.000-07:00

Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB
ATi / AMD isn't dead yet, and shows real promise for staying competitive with Nvidia

By the time you come to the last page of this review there will be little doubt that ATI is back in the videocard business, big time. After the inevitable stumbling following its takeover by AMD, its engineers and staff fleeing to nVidia, its head offices being consolidated, the five billion dollar arm of ATI is flexing its mighty muscles once more. ATI, now confusingly called AMD, (or is it ATI ?) has blitzed the market with a big red slice of silicon known as the Radeon HD 2900XT graphics processor. nVIDIA, which has gotten used to having free reign in the videocard market, must be sweating at the sight of Crossfire finally working with killer effectiveness.

In this review PCSTATS will be benchmarking a pair of Diamond Multimedia Viper Radeon HD 2900XT 1GB videocards, alone and in Crossfire at stock and overclocked speeds. If high end gaming is your past time, fragging at high framerates your Joi de Vive, PCSTATS has laid down seven frag-tastic pages of videocard benchmarks! Everything from synthetic 3DMark tests to DirectX9.0 and DirectX10 game titles are represented.

ATI, DirectX10 & Vista

Given the upheaval of a post-merger situation, the slow adoption of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has actually worked in ATI's favour. DirectX 10 game titles like Crysis, Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Unreal Tournament 3 are still on the horizon, rather than being old hat before it even launched the Radeon HD 2900XT graphics card. Consumer demand for DirectX 10 compatible videocards is only set to ramp up from now on.

Nothing gets the juices flowing more than a couple of top of the line videocards fresh out of the box. Diamond Multimedia is getting back into high end videocards, and what better way to reintroduce itself than by releasing a videocard based on AMD's blistering 720 million transistor Radeon HD 2900XT GPU, with a staggering 1GB of GDDR4 memory no less! It's ATI's absolute best technology available, and PCSTATS has two of these bad boys on the test bench today. Yes, we're happy campers. :) The ATI Radeon HD 2900XT VPU core runs at 743 MHz while the 1GB of GDDR4 memory hums along at a very sweet 2 GHz! In pairs, the Diamond Viper Radeon HD 2900XT is ATI Crossfire compatible on supporting motherboards.

You to can share in the joy of a flagship gaming experience, but with a retail price of $520 CDN ($499 USD, £243 GBP) per Radeon HD 2900XT1GPE videocard, it's not for the faint of heart. It takes two Diamond 2900XT1GPE videocards to enable Crossfire; I'm sure you can do the math on that.

Diamonds' retail package includes two DVI to analog converters, a Component output cable, a S-Video/Composite VIVO cable, a DVI to HDMI adapter and one CrossFire Bridge connector. The Diamond Viper videocard PCSTATS tested did not come with any games, but then again only Company of Heroes and a couple other demos can show off the videocard's DirectX 10 powers anyway.

Read all about it here, courtesy of pcstats.com

Eric

2007-08-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

Ready to make the switch to Mac?
A dedicated site for making the transition from PC less painfull and much easier...

You've found the Switching to Mac community with information about Switching to Mac and Mac vs PC! We are here to help with all your Switching to Mac and Mac vs PC questions. Make sure to drop by our Switching to Mac Forum and see how easy Switching to Mac really is...

Sharing Files Between a Mac and a PC

August 20th, 2007 by Mike

My First Mac just published a really good step by step article on how to share files between a Mac and a PC, or in other words, how to setup a Network between a Mac and a PC. This type of setup is a good choice for anyone who uses both Mac’s and a PC’s in their day to day computing and need to have a permanent connection between them.

Read more to find out how to setup shared network folders on each system, there are several steps that you will need to follow but it is not very difficult with help from this useful article…

Posted in Articles | No Comments » Send this to a friend

I’m going to jinx myself….

August 16th, 2007 by Mike

Here is Testimonial from one of our Switching to Mac Forum members, JamesJM. It is very entertaining and thought it should be posted on the main Switching to Mac site.

“I am NOT a superstitious person…. but I gotta admit I’m a bit queasy about posting this.

When I was a PC guy it never failed that when I upgraded, or added anything new, I would inevitably be forced into the ‘troubleshooting guide’ because I would encounter at least one, and sometimes several, of the “If such and such is not working” lists of things that could go wrong.

Those happen for Apple people as well… I read about them all the time. ie: “iPhoto 08′ Preferences Will Not Open”.

It has not, as yet, (take note of that jinx thing), happened to me, however, not once…. could life GET any better, I ask you?
Read the rest of this entry »

Read all about it here, courtesy of switchingtomac.com

Eric

2007-08-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

Linux set to become next "dominate OS"
Don't say I didn't tell you so!

Comment Open source moves at a different speed to commercial software. This has become apparent over the last decade as Linux and its open source fellow travellers (Apache, Open Office, MySQL, Firefox ,et al) gradually established their position in the software world.

It may have been frustrating for the open source activists, more vocal than numerous, who had been hoping for more instant gratification than the software market delivered. Nevertheless, Linux and many of its associated open source products continued their forward march.

Server dominance

Figures from IDC, in May 2007, show Linux accounting for 12.7 per cent of the server market by revenue compared to Windows with 38.8 per cent of the market. Most of the remainder is Unix, although IBM mainframe still has a share.

However, these figures are for servers shipped from the major hardware vendors (HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, etc) and omit some important facts. In particular, the number of "constructed servers" is very large and they nearly all run Linux. How large? Well Google, for example, builds all its own servers and is estimated to be the fourth largest builder of servers in the world - after HP, IBM, and Sun. It's not the only ISP that does this, but its activity is so great that it distorts the market stats.

Linux probably doesn't trail Windows by much and it will almost certainly dominate in time. The determining factor is the emerging economies where Linux is growing at a much faster rate. Linux has two very important advantages for developing economies such as China, India, and Brazil:

It can be used to establish a local software industry with local skills.
The cost of adopting it is lower by far than any alternative.

If you examine the enthusiasm for Linux in these rising economies you quickly see that it is government led, with governments mandating Linux for their own IT needs. Bear in mind that in most countries government accounts for 10 per cent of the IT budget and the drive to Linux becomes clear.

The Microsoft threat and GPL 3.0

Microsoft, the main loser in the rise of Linux, has been doing what it can to derail it, most recently through vague legal threats to enforce patents against Linux distributors that it does not partner with.

The Linux community has responded by issuing a new Open Source License, GPL v3. This license binds all distributors of Linux to treat all other distributors equally in respect of patent protection. Thus, if you protect one distributor, as Microsoft has done with Linux distributors Novell, Inspire and Xandros, you agree to protect them all. Microsoft is thus forced either to drop its patent threats or cease to handle Open Source products such as Samba, the dominant Open Source file and print capability.

Microsoft's patent threats are, most likely, saber rattling with no intent of initiating legal action. The goal is probably to make corporate users of Linux feel a little uneasy. Microsoft must have watched the sorry course of SCO's legal action and can have little doubt that it would suffer a severe commercial backlash if it were foolish enough to take legal action against Linux.

Linux on the desktop, eventually

Linux has made least headway on the desktop for one obvious reason. It has no significant commercial backer on the desktop. The open source approach to software development usually produces products built by software developers for software developers. While Apple's OS X is making clear inroads into the Windows desktop monopoly, the Linux PC still languishes with minimal market share. The Mac OS X marketing slogan "it just works" is reasonably close to the truth. With the Linux PC the slogan could be "it's just for developers".

This situation changed a little with the advent of the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, which was much easier on the user, but not anything like as easy as OS X. Ubuntu is, nonetheless, the shape of Linux to come. Linux is being made easier as it gradually becomes the de facto educational software platform in developing countrie - stimulated to some degree by the Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) initiative. Ultimately, this movement will establish a genuine low cost computing Linux PC market, but it will take time.

However, it could be accelerated by the success of Apple. The bigger Apple's success, the more PC manufacturers will want to control the PC OS and for that to happen either Microsoft will have to open Windows up or Linux will become a much better supported option.

Read all about it here, courtesy of theregister.co.uk

Eric

2007-08-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

10 Reason to buy an iPhone
Uhh, like I really need 10 reasons?...

The Tale of My iPhone Purchase
Before I get into the ten reasons why you should buy an iPhone, let me begin with my own purchasing story. Remember how everybody was going crazy the day the iPhone was released? Well I was right there with them. Yes, I was out and about with the masses at the mall. I had what I thought was an absolutely fool-proof and ingenious plan to get my iPhone...I went to an AT&T store instead of an Apple store. This later proved to be quite stupid, more on that later.

When I got to the mall, I headed to the AT&T store. I saw a cop standing outside the door. I'm thinking "he's blocking the damn door, how dare he come between me and my iPhone!" So I attempt to squeeze by the cop to get into the store, and he stops me. I said in a snarling tone "I'm here to get an iPhone!" and he replied in a bemused fashion "So are they..." As soon as he said that I turned my head to my left and saw a large crowd standing in line. Feeling like an absolute fool I said "Oh, I see" and then went to get in line.

So I'm standing in line and I started chatting with some of the other folks. To my utter and everlasting horror, I discovered that I'd run into an Apple Cultist. Yep the guy two people ahead of me was a true Apple Cultist and worse yet...he was a know-it-all-Apple Cultist! Ugh! Somebody save me! He kept babbling on and on about how great Apple is and how much he knew about this product or that product. He especially kept babbling on about the iPhone, touting this feature or that feature. Like I didn't already know about all of it from all the hype beforehand? I needed this self-important dingbat to regurgitate all of it again? After about ten minutes of it I'm standing there thinking "SHUT UP! DAMN YOU! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST SHUT YOUR FREAKING MOUTH! IT'S JUST A DAMN PHONE!!! SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!" Mercifully, other people intervened and actually said something so that the know-it-all would not bore us all too much longer.

Well the time came and went and then a terrible thing happened, the store manager came out and said that they only had so many iPhones left. We all started freaking out! OMG! What if I can't get my iPhone? Noooooooooooooooo! The Apple store is probably sold out by now too! Terrible news!

So then we find out the next terrible announcement: They are out of 8GB phones! OMG! No! Do I take a 4GB and settle for it? Or try my luck at the Apple store? Stupidly, I decided to buy a 4G phone. I got one of the last ones and headed back to my car with my prize, smug with satisfaction that I'd gotten the best of the masses. Or did I?

After I got my iPhone home, I unpacked it and hooked it up to my computer and all that. Well it wasn't long before I realized I'd made a terrible mistake! 4GB wasn't nearly enough storage space! I easily filled that up with videos, music and photos. I'd seriously goofed.

So I did what any self-respecting geek would do, I took it back to the AT&T store and then drove to the Apple store and bought an 8GB instead. And now I'm a happy camper indeed!

Read all about it here, courtesy of ExtremeTech.com

Eric

2007-08-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

Core 2 E6850 - The Sweetest CPU of All
As things stand today, this is the one to get...

Has it really been only just over a year?

Thirteen months ago, we wrote our first review of Intel's Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. Since then, Intel has been a juggernaut, shipping new CPU models based on the Core 2 architecture, including the first quad-core desktop CPU, built by embedding two Core 2 dies on a single package and sharing the front side bus, as well as mobile and server CPUs based on Core 2.

Last month, Intel began shipping newer processors, built around the new G stepping, and increasing the front side bus speed to an effective 1333MHz. At that time, we took a look at the mainstream Core 2 E6750 and the new member of the Core 2 Extreme line, the QX6850.

Today, though, we look at the CPU that's really the current sweet spot in terms of price/performance ratios: the Core 2 E6850. Clocking in at 3.0GHz, this sub-$300 CPU runs at a marginally higher clock speed than the original Core 2 Extreme X6800, but is priced nearly 75% lower. Just as importantly, the E6850 is rated at a TDP (thermal design power) of 65W. We decided to pop in an E6850 in our standard test platform, built around an Intel P35-based motherboard, and put the CPU through its paces. We compare the results against a Core 2 E6750 and AMD's fastest mainstream desktop CPU, the Athlon 64 X2 6000+.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ExtremeTech.com

Eric

2007-08-15T03:39:00.000-07:00

Mitron SSD (Solid State Drive) 32GB
The first of many reviews of the up and coming new HDD format...

Solid State Drives are making great strides towards offering performance that matches and in some cases exceeds the best high-end consumer drives on the market in our limited benchmark results. We are in the early stages of testing several SSD products under an operating system (Vista) optimized for them. We also have a new test suite designed to emphasize actual applications that the typical business or home user might utilize on a daily basis, along with updated game benchmarks.

While iPEAK and test applications like PCMark05 based on iPEAK have served us well and are certainly one of the best tools to show the pure performance capabilities of a storage device, it does not work properly under Vista. It is also getting long in the tooth as the ability to generate meaningful trace files with newer desktop chipsets and drive sizes is severely limited at this time. In fact, the results generated in our first iPEAK benchmarks with the MTRON drive did not match our upcoming application results nor did they match the performance capabilities of the drive based upon current tests. This leads us to believe that current chipset and drive technology will soon surpass the capability of current test programs to properly generate meaningful results.

Beyond that, as we found out with the MTRON drive your choice of core logic chipset can make a difference in the overall performance of the drive. Exactly why the latest Intel desktop chipsets have an apparent 80 MB/sec ceiling for sustained transfer rates with the SSD products is still a mystery to us and the drive manufacturers. We are still testing other Intel chipsets and will report these tests results and any updates from Intel or the drive manufacturers in our next article. In the meantime, using this drive with the Intel ICH9R provides the speed of Wile E. Coyote while we liken the NVIDIA 680i to the Road Runner: just a little faster and apparently a little smarter when it comes to SSD products.

Our limited testing shows both the strengths and weaknesses of this particular drive when comparing it to one of the best performing consumer desktop drives. The read and write speeds are incredible for an SSD and its vastly superior access and random read rates generate very competitive scores in our application tests. Add to this the fact that the drive is completely silent, offers greatly improved thermals relative to pretty much any mechanical drive, and the ability to withstand extreme vibration and shock, and you have an absolute winner on your hands. Well, almost.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com

Eric

2007-08-14T03:24:00.000-07:00

5 Tech Myths
Extremetech goes Myth-Bustin' to uncover the truth about 5 common Tech Myths

Sometimes it's just like playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. You may remember the old arcade game, where you pound on plastic moles with a rubber mallet as they pop up out of little holes.

Sometimes myths propagate mysteriously, just like the old "telephone" game, where you'd sit in a big circle with your classmates and whisper some phrase in the next person's ear. By the time the phrase makes its way around the circle, it's something completely different.

ther times, companies may change their plans, but old information dies hard, so keeps reverberating through the system like some standing wave that never quite goes away.

Let's take a look at a few we've tackled in the past year or so.

Games for Windows Live: Must Pay Micro$oft $$$
It is true that Games for Windows Live is a premium service, and has an annual fee associated with it. The confusion revolves around what exactly you get with the free (Silver) version, and what you get for extra cost (the Gold version.) As GfW Live evolved, Microsoft kept updating us on the features, and some of the stuff that Redmond initially suggested would cost money got moved into the "free" column.

I still see people post that they'd never pay money just to get voice chat. Please, let's just stop. Voice chat is something built into the free GfW Live Silver account. What you get with the premium $50 per year version is matchmaking services and game achievements.

I also need to note that if you already have a Xbox Live Gold account, then GfW Live Gold is folded into that at no extra cost.

Now, if Microsoft would stick with this and not change their story again, maybe this meme will die out.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-08-13T03:25:00.000-07:00

Samsung SyncMaster 275T Review
When 24 inches just won't do. This 27 inches could be the next "must have" in gaming displays!

Not everyone has the desk space for a 30-inch LCD monitor like Dell's UltraSharp 3007WFP or HP's LP2065. Not to mention, that big 2560x1600 resolution is a lot of pixels for your 3D graphics card to drive. On the other hand, some people want a bigger screen than the many 24-inch models on the market. If you want something in-between, new 27-inch LCD monitors could be just the ticket. Featuring a resolution of 1920x1200, these displays are very large, but not quite as overwhelming as 30-inch monitors.

Samsung has just released a contender in this category, the SyncMaster 275T, and the unit is loaded with outstanding features like multiple USB ports, six-color hue/saturation adjustment, and component video input. The SyncMaster 275T can be found online for roughly $1,100–1,200, making it about the same price as Dell's 30-inch 3007WFP (and for that matter, the same as Dell's 27-inch model).

Does the performance of this promising panel match its impressive feature set and handsome aesthetics? Let's find out.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-08-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

DX10 Hardware already obsolete?
In a word yes,...sortof...

REPRESENTATIVES from the almighty Vole have been speaking at Siggraph over the last few days, and what they've said hasn't exactly lowered the blood pressure of many attendees.

Microserfs were there to espouse the greatness of DirectX 10.1, the next revision to the DX graphics spec, which is due to arrive with Windows Vista SP1.

Here's the thing. DX10 hardware - such as the GeForce 8800 or the Radeon 2900 - won't work with the new 10.1 features. The 0.1 revision requires completely new hardware for support, thus royally cheesing off many gamers who paid top whack for their new hardware over the last few months on the basis of future game compatibility.

But these gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently.

We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a miniscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires Vista SP1, and also requires developer implementation.

With developers struggling to justify including DX10 features in their games (see the recent comments by John Carmack and Mark Rein), they're going to be about as likely to further limit their product's market as they are to start developing NES games again. This is especially true given the incredibly limited benefits 10.1 is bringing to the party.

Read all about it here, courtesy of theinquirer.net

Eric

2007-08-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

New iMac reviewed
I want two please, make mine 24" with all the trimmings!

Although the white, thin-profile iMac form factor has had a long and venerable run since its introduction as the iMac G5, many felt it was time for a change. In the weeks leading up to the unveiling of the new iMac, the Applesphere twittered with rumors of aluminum enclosures, Santa Rosa chipsets, and the death of the 17" iMac.

Most of the iMac speculation turned out to be right on. The 17" iMac is no more, with the product line streamlined into two 20" models and a single 24" behemoth. Gone is the matte display, too: the new iMacs have a glossy display—and come with a black cloth to keep the extremely-reflective display smudge free.

Apple kept the same form factor but drastically revamped the look. The sleek white look has been replaced with anodized aluminum, and there is now a black bezel around the display—which is now under glass. The Apple logo on the chin of the iMac is now black. It's very different, and after two years of having a white iMac G5 or iMac Core 2 Duo in our kitchen, the anodized aluminum iMac is going to take some getting used to.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Arstechnica.com

Eric

2007-08-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Preview
Does Blizzard have what it takes to keep it's mega MMO rolling in new subscribers and cash?

We all knew it was coming. Then it was rumored it was coming. Now it's here: the next World of Warcraft expansion, titled Wrath of the Lich King. Among the announced features, the additions include new battlegrounds, quests, items, zones, and a new Death Knight hero class. It's a deceptively basic list, but World of Warcraft has always been a game that really has to be played to be sold on.

To save precious demonstration time, Blizzard had a full array of level 70 characters available to rent out for the day. I chose a prefabricated Undead Mage, who came equipped with piddly blue items and a purple mount, the Yaris of the Warcraft lot. The thing kept breaking down at all the wrong times, with boars and Viking-men repeatedly dismounting and punishing me for my carelessness, eventually rusting my armor to the point of no repair. As a result, my playtime consisted of a set of multiple excursions to all corners of the Howling Fjord zone, where I would inevitably encounter some new level 72 enemy that would do my poor Mage in. This preview is an account of these doomed trips, like an apocalyptic version of National Geographic. My initial trek lead me from the basic grassy knoll of a starting area to a long rope bridge extending between two land masses, with a vast precipice below. Looking out away from the bridge, I spotted a row of dragon heads far off in the distance, some kind of gargoyle-esque display. Moving in that direction I came upon the camp of Nifflevar, where mounted enemies riding on the backs of dragons circled overhead, and men wielding giant axes stood defending the various tents. Being the Undead daredevil that I was, I rode straight through the dangerous fort, issuing a cry of "olo" as I charged. However, without a map to guide me, I found myself stopped at the edge of a cliff, with no way down and a train of angry Vikings on my tail. I leapt into the air in desperation, only to be saved by a well-placed ledge. Impossibly stuck, surrounded by death on either side, I prepared myself for a meeting with the Spirit Healer

Read all about it here, courtesy of Shacknews.com.

Eric

2007-08-07T03:25:00.000-07:00

Building a computer for your significant other (and getting her to do all the work!)
We build a ton of pcs for ourselves, it's now time to have one built for our "better half".

Let's get one thing clear from the start: This is not a guide on how to build a "girly computer." If you're hoping to find a list of pink PC components or information on how to bedazzle the crap out of a PC case, you might as well stop reading. My girlfriend of more than three years, Glenda, hates that stuff.

She is, as I'm sure many significant others of people who read this site are, a self-professed computer geek. More than most, even. She doesn't need any help getting things done in Windows. She's not afraid to change a registry entry or two. She loves video games—PC or console—and wants some fairly beefy hardware. The only problem is, she's not into hardware. She knows what all the important parts are, but she doesn't have an interest in PC components and certainly holds no romantic ideals about building her computer herself. Maybe you can relate?

I built a nice Shuttle small-form-factor PC for her a couple years ago, but it's getting pretty outdated, so now's the time for an upgrade. So I made Glenda a deal. I would take her list of what is important to her in a PC, and select and acquire the parts. Then she would have to build it, and write about her experiences doing so here. This will be a little different than many of our Build-It articles—more personal, less generic—but it may provide a nice template for those of you considering a new PC for your better half. Continued...

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-08-06T02:28:00.000-07:00

AMD's Opteron hits 3.2 GHz
Is this too little too late for underdog AMD?

"AMD has no answer to the armada of new Intel's CPUs."

"Penryn will be the final blow."

These two sentences have been showing up on a lot of hardware forums around the Internet. The situation in the desktop is close to desperate for AMD as it can hardly keep pace with the third highest clocked Core 2 Duo CPU, and there are several quad core chips - either high clocked expensive ones or cheaper midrange models - that AMD simply has no answer for at present. As AMD gets closer to the launch of their own quad core, even at a humble 2GHz, Intel let the world know it will deliver a 3GHz quad core Xeon with 12 MB L2 that only needs 80W, and Intel showed that 3.33GHz is just around the corner too. However, there is a reason why Intel is more paranoid than the many hardware enthusiasts.

While most people focus on the fact that Intel's Core CPUs win almost every benchmark in the desktop space, the battle in the server space is far from over. Look at the four socket market for example, also called the 4S space. As we showed in our previous article, the fastest Xeon MP at 3.4GHz is about as fast as the Opteron at 2.6GHz. Not bad at all, but today AMD introduces a 3.2GHz Opteron 8224, which extends AMD's lead in the 4S space. This lead won't last for long, as Intel is very close to introducing its newest quad core Xeon MP Tigerton line, but it shows that AMD is not throwing in the towel. Along with the top-end 3.2GHz 8224 (120W), a 3GHz 8222 at 95W, 3.2GHz Opteron 2224 (120W) and 3GHz 2222 (95W) are also being introduced.

The 3.2GHz Opteron 2224 is quite interesting, as it is priced at $873. This is the same price point as the dual core Intel Xeon 5160 at 3GHz and the quad core Intel Xeon 5355. The contrast with the desktop market is sharp: not one AMD desktop CPU can be found in the higher price ranges. So how does AMD's newest offering compare to the two Intel CPUs? Is it just an attempt at deceiving IT departments into thinking the parts are comparable, or does AMD have an attractive alternative to the Intel CPUs?

Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com

Eric

2007-08-03T04:56:00.000-07:00

CoolerMaster Cosmos Computer Case
Quite possibly the best and most attractive case to come along in a long long time.

Very few cases stood out at this year’s Computex show in Taiwan. The only exception to that was the Cooler Master Cosmos. Not only did this case stand out from all of the rest but they were everywhere. Many companies that don’t sell cases wanted to have a Cosmos displaying their products in their booth. At first glance you can tell that the Cosmos is a high quality case just like all of the products in the Stacker line. For the last couple of years Cooler Master has lost a little market share to the likes of Thermaltake and Antec but with the Cosmos they are looking to take it back. To do this they went with the tried and true formula, quality parts, excellent design and a lower price.

Today we are going to look at the Cooler Master Cosmos in detail. Once we get done with product packaging and random images we are going to build a daily use workstation inside of the Cosmos and see how it performs visually, acoustically and let you know if we had any difficulties. By taking this approach with our case reviews you will know everything there is to know about the Cosmos just like you built it yourself.

About Cooler Master

Cooler Master was formed around a decade ago with a goal of providing the very best thermal solutions. Over that time CM has expanded their operations from heat sink cooling systems and now manufactures cases, fans, power supplies and other miscellaneous products for the PC industry.

Read all about it here, courtesy of realworldbenchmarks.com

Eric

2007-08-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

Lost Planet Performance and Directx 10
Is DX9 actually better in terms of performance to DX10?...yep

We have all been waiting for a PC video game to be released into retail with “native” DirectX 10 support. We all thought Crysis would be the first game to be delivered with this support, but it isn’t here yet unfortunately. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, is now for sale and does boast DX10 support. Lost Planet’s roots are planted in the Xbox 360 but it has been ported over for PC gamers. There have been many upgrades made to the PC version of the game, namely DX10 functionality and at least one DX10-only feature. When you launch the game you can chose to enable DirectX 9 mode or DirectX 10 mode. The graphic upgrades from Xbox to PC include resolution support to 2560x1600, improved shadow quality, parallax occlusion normal mapping, image-based ambient occlusion, higher detail textures, the use of vertex texture fetch for the animation system and depth buffer reads improved for soft particles.

Read all about it here courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

2007-08-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

Hacking Vista: Speeding Up Your Web Browser and Network Connection
If your going to use Vista, you might as well tweak it and make it the best you can.

The following is a complete chapter from our recent ExtremeTech book, "Hacking Windows Vista." Our two previous excerpts from this book include Optimizing Core OS Components and Speeding Up the System Boot.

Your browser and network subsystem play a major role in the use of your computer. People are spending more and more time using their web browsers and the Internet, making the web browser the most used application on many users' computers. Now that you have optimized almost every major component of the operating system, let's cover the most used application and components it is dependent on, the web browser and the network that connects you to the Internet.

First you will optimize the speed of both Internet Explorer and Firefox by tweaking the number of active downloads. Then I show you some great utilities that will increase the speed of your downloads, followed by tweaks that will speed up your network.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-07-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

OCZ Introduces DDR-3 1800 speed RAM
It's really nice to have this spiffy new and fast RAM, now we just need a motherboard to truly take advantage of it.

Memory based on the exciting new Micron Z9 memory chips for DDR3 first appeared a couple of weeks ago and we looked at it in Super Talent & TEAM: DDR3-1600 is Here! As predicted in that review, it was only a matter of days until most of the major enthusiast memory makers began talking about their own products based on Micron Z9 chips. Some even announced availability of the new kits in the retail market.

As explained in the past, all memory makers buy raw memory chips available in the open market. Some memory makers do not like to talk about the chips used in their DIMMs, as they consider that information proprietary, but this secrecy does not normally last very long. It is rare to see a memory manufacturer with a truly exclusive supply arrangement with a memory vendor, but several companies have been trying very hard to do just this, and we may see more of these attempts in the future.

Read all about it here, courtesy of Anandtech.com

Eric

2007-07-30T03:28:00.000-07:00

Ageia Island: Is it Time to Buy a PhysX Card Yet?
If you have a spare $15o laying around, go for it...

We weren't too kind in our initial review of the Ageia PhysX physics accelerator in May of last year. At almost $300, it was expensive, and from what we could tell, it didn't do much of anything. One of the first supporting games was Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and the additional physics interactions displayed were definitely underwhelming. Not to mention, adding the PhysX card didn't improve performance much. We closed out our negative review by saying that the card had potential, and, "We could be singing a different tune in six months. By then, perhaps there will be dozens of titles on the shelves, and maybe they'll deliver really impressive new physics interactions with the PhysX card. We'll be happy to revisit this card at a later date."

Unfortunately, it has taken much longer than six months for PhysX support in AAA titles. In fact, the next really big game to deliver the kind of enhancements we were expecting from the card is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, just released. The game ships with a special "Ageia Island" mission that's heavily accelerated by the PhysX card and does a much better job of showing off what hardware-accelerated physics in games can be.

PhysX cards from BFG and ASUS are now around $150, roughly half of what they cost upon launch. This makes them more attractive prospects. We stand by our initial review, but we wanted to take another look at the card with a new AAA title that offers a much better experience. Continued...

Read all about it here, courtesy of extremetech.com

Eric

2007-07-27T03:22:00.000-07:00

AMD reveals 4-Way CrossFire & New Roadmaps
Is AMD planning a coup against Intel? Only time and benchmarking will tell...

Introduction

The following roadmaps and slides are information that was released at AMD's Analyst Day this morning in Sunnyvale, CA. Most of these obviously do not require a lot of narration, so we will leave you to the slides. You might want to take a look at our 3-way CrossFire & Phenom at 3GHz news post this morning as well as our "AMD's Direction and Next-Gen Bulldozer Revealed." All the news this morning has certainly inspired many thoughts and feelings to be expressed in our AMD forum. Please feel free to join.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

2007-07-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

Five Tech Mistakes to Avoid
Here are some great tips to keep your PC safe and secure.

A friend of ours was amazingly proud of installing his first ever wireless network. He's not what you'd call technical, so this was a fairly major accomplishment. That is, until we asked how he protected it and he said, "That weep thing."

"WEP?" we asked.

"Yeah, that."

"Why didn't you use WPA or WPA-2?"

"Huh? All it said was WEP."

This user made two mistakes. He didn't upgrade the firmware on his Belkin router (the latest firmware comes with the latest encryption technology), and he didn't protect his wireless network as well as he could have.

In chatting with friends, surfing tech forums, and sifting through our email, we've come up with a list of five common tech tasks that lots of folks overlook. Here they are.

Mistake Number One: Leaving your Wireless Network Unprotected
That nameless guy in the intro did the right thing in enabling WEP to protect his wireless network. It wasn't, however, enough. If he'd updated the router's firmware, he'd have had access to better options.

Read all about it here, courtesy of extremetech.com

Eric

2007-07-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

Malware Removal Guide
It's as easy as 1-2-3...

It's that time of year again folks, where I remind you of the great importance of running a clean, secure and efficient Windows operating system. The first step is get that box all cleaned up! Follow this guide, it's as simple as following each step, installing and then running the software!

Disclaimer:
Read the instructions on each of the pieces of software that your installing so you know how it works. Also, please remember, I nor 3DCOOL will be held responsible should your pc blows up or, something equally bad happens to it. This is a guide to help you, and can only help pc's that are stable enough to run the software. Use at your own risk.

Read all about it here, courtesy of mywebpages.comcast.com

Eric

2007-07-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

Sony VAIO VGN-TZ12VN
The first mass produced solid state hard drive laptop goes into mass production, courtesy of Sony.

The big question is whether you can actually tell the difference when using a notebook with an SSD as opposed to an HDD, and I’m glad to say that you definitely can. When I reviewed the TZ11MN I mentioned that it was a little sluggish at times, but I’ve encountered no such issues with this machine. Applications open incredibly quickly and Vista as a whole just feels far more responsive. Of course some of this improvement is no doubt due to the 2GB of memory installed, as opposed to the 1GB seen in the TZ11MN. However, my Samsung Q40 definitely feels more responsive since being equipped with an SSD, and since I was previously using it with a standard HDD and the same amount of memory, it’s clear that an SSD does make a discernable difference to everyday Windows work.
The down side of a solid state drive is capacity, and just like my Samsung, this Sony ships with a 32GB drive, which is pretty meagre by today’s standards, even for ultra-portables. In fact, the TZ model one rung below this one ships with a massive 100GB hard drive! But I’m generally of the opinion that you really don’t need masses of storage space in a notebook, especially one as thin and light as this. If you use a notebook for work, there’s almost no amount of files that can fill up 32GB. What eats up hard disk space is stuff like music and video libraries – stuff that is far from necessary on a machine that’s supposed to be a work tool. If however you’re looking for an ultra-portable machine for personal use, you may want to look at one of the cheaper TZ models with a traditional drive.

Read all about it here, courtesy of TrustedReviews.com

Eric

2007-07-23T03:20:00.000-07:00

Great Free Files: 20 Fantastic Open Source Downloads
Don't be fooled, these files are as good as or in some cases better than the paid for counterparts.

The very earliest days of the PC revolution were soaked in idealism. People shared their knowledge with one another freely; the very idea of charging for software was an anathema. The early days of the Internet had a similar rosy view of the world.

Today, of course, all that has changed. But there are still plenty of idealists out there, sharing their work with the world freely, and asking others to work cooperatively with them. That's the underlying idea behind the Open Source movement. People create software, and allow others to download and use it freely, and let them modify it as well.

This idealism can create great software. That's where Firefox got its start, for example. But there's plenty of great, free Open Source software beyond Firefox. I've rounded up 20 of my top Open Source favorites. Their sophistication and power will surprise you; you'll find everything from a universal instant messaging program to powerful multimedia and graphics tools, security software, and beyond. The programs show that Open Source adherents aren't wild-eyed zealots--they produce plenty of great software.

Read all about it here, courtesy of PCWorld.com

Eric

2007-07-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

Five dirty truths about clean technology
An interesting perspective on the "get green" craze.

perspective: The planet is changing. The complacency is changing. The energy business is changing.

And--after more than two centuries of hydrocarbon use and 150 years of extracting oil--history is changing as a growing number of companies and public-sector entities try to transform the fossil-fuel era in real time.

The clock is clearly ticking as we confront these critical issues, but we should keep the hours, minutes and seconds in perspective. The economic and environmental consequences stemming from our poor energy choices have been building since the Industrial Revolution. So it's unrealistic to think that we can scrub the skies overnight.

We can't. And we won't.

Most meaningful technology transformations usually take up to 100 years, which is why it may already be too late to solve our current energy problems, especially given the growing evidence that production in the world's largest oil fields may be peaking. The long lag time to fruition is generally due to a lack of workable innovation and perspective; it's hard to understand the future when you've never been there.

Read all about it here, courtesy of CNET News.

Eric

2007-07-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

React OS: Here comes the Windows Nemesis?
IS this the OS that makes transitioning from Windows seamless and painless...maybe.

ReactOS is a free and open-sourced operating system based on the Windows architecture, providing support for existing applications and drivers, and an alternative to the current dominant consumer operating system.

ReactOS 0.3.1 Mainly, the work focused on rewriting certain parts of the ReactOS Core (kernel, HAL, bootloader, etc). It’s very hard to sum up the huge Changelog in an outline, but briefly:

Freeldr was improved
HAL’s key areas have been significantly improved (irql-related, bus support, kd-functions)
The Kernel experienced a massive rewrite of incompatible parts (and is still in the process of improvement)
Run-time library (Rtl) got a lot of improvements and bugfixes
Bugs were fixed in kernel-mode drivers and a better USB driver was added
Registry-support has been greatly improved thanks to addition of “cmlib”, a library shared by the boot loader and the kernel to handle binary registry hives; it even supports binary registry hives created by Windows
More fixes in the Win32 subsystem and user-mode DLLs
Boot video driver (and a splash screen) was added

Read through the changelog, and you will see the amount of changes in this release!
However, there are a few things worth mentioning. First of all, please don’t forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS (due to stability and compatibility concerns). And second, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware.

Note: This project is still in Alpha state .. But has shown massive improvements which is a good point.

Read all about it here, courtesy of tuxenclave.wordpress.com

Eric

2007-07-18T03:27:00.000-07:00

DDR3 Memory: Not Ready for Prime Time
The air apparent to the memory throne, is not quite ready yet. Given time, price cuts and optimized memory controllers on motherboards this will become the new standard.

Time for another memory transition!

Well, not quite. DDR3 memory has arrived on the scene, but the move to DDR3 memory is looking a lot like the transition from DDR SDRAM to DDR2. What's happening is that newer memory trades off latency for bandwidth.

The recent release of the Intel P35 and G35 chipsets is the beginning of the shift to DDR3, a new memory technology that builds on the foundation built by DDR2. We've seen a plethora of DDR2-based P35 and G33 motherboards arrive on the scene, but only a handful of DDR3-based boards. Part of the reason for this is the high cost of DDR3. Right now, 2GB DDR3 kits, consisting of a pair of 1GB modules range in price from $400-$500. Speed doesn't seem to be a factor, with DDR3 1333MHz pairs costing roughly the same as DDR3 1066MHz kits.

These types of transitions are always painful. Make the jump too early, and you'll end up spending way too much money for expensive RAM that drops quickly in price—and get to help debug new motherboard BIOSes in the process. Jump to late, and you may end up with a motherboard that can't take newer CPUs and only older memory.

Today, we're taking a look at performance of DDR3 versus DDR3 memory across a wide array of applications. We benchmarked on both dual-core and quad-core CPUs as well. But before we dive into the numbers, let's take a look at the technology. Continued...

Read all about it here, courtesy of Extremetech.com

Eric

2007-07-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked
TechARP lays the smack down to hard drive "urban legends"...

The Hard Disk Drive Myth Guide

This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk drive that are still being propagated in many discussions. As you read through this guide, you may think that some of these myths may have been made up. We wished it was true. We collected these from discussions we heard or read over time.

To be honest, many articles have covered these topics. It would have been easy for someone to do a quick search online before imparting their opinions to newbies. Unfortunately, it became apparent to us that some folks just prefer to trust their innate instincts over logic and knowledge. As such, these hard drive urban legends have remained more popular than the simple truth. So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!

Read all about it here, courtesy of TechARP.com

Eric

2007-07-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
Intel kicks it up a notch and tries to further it's lead from rival AMD.

We finally have it! After well over a year of asking nicely, rudely and creatively - we know when AMD's next generation microarchitecture is being launched.

Well, sort of.

Barcelona, as you maybe remember, is the code name for AMD's next-generation server processors. AMD recently announced that in August, it will unleash Barcelona unto the world at clock speeds of "up to 2.0GHz." But Barcelona only applies to the server world, and today we're reviewing a desktop microprocessor, so when do we get to see AMD's brand new Phenom processors on the desktop?

We'd expect Phenom in our hands 30 days after Barcelona's launch, making it approximately September/October by the time you'd see a preview/review and widespread availability about 30 days from that. If all goes perfectly, AMD's Phenom chips should be in customers' hands by November or December at the latest.

Penryn, Intel's 45nm update to its current Core 2 processors, will also make its debut at the end of this year, potentially spoiling AMD's launch party. A few possibilities exist with Penryn:

1) Penryn could launch across the board at all clock speeds and at competitive prices, quite possibly the worst case scenario for AMD, or
2) Penryn could launch strictly at upper clock speeds/price points, allowing AMD to have an easier time competing at lower speeds, or finally
3) Penryn could launch at lower clock speeds and price points, giving AMD an equally hard time as in the first scenario

It's important to recap AMD's impending launch as we've had yet another round of price cuts, making buying a new CPU today very attractive.

Read all about it here, courtesy of anandtech.com

Eric

2007-07-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

Spam filter cost lawyers thier day in court
I really want to laugh about this, but I just can't....

The trouble at Franklin D. Azar & Associates began with pornographic spam.

Last May, the Aurora, Colo., law firm was being bombarded with offensive messages, and enough of it was seeping through the company's spam filters that employees complained to management. IT administrator Kevin Rea was told to do something.

What happened next, as detailed in federal court filings, shows how the fight against spammers can backfire. Spammers have been using increasingly sophisticated techniques to evade filters, so that over the past few years and despite predictions to the contrary, unsolicited e-mail continues to plague businesses worldwide.

On the morning of May 21, Rea dialed up the spam settings on the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 used by Azar & Associates to block unwanted mail. The changes made it harder for spam to land on the desktops of company employees, but they also had one unforeseen consequence: The Barracuda Networks appliance began blocking e-mail from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice advising company lawyers of a May 30 hearing in a civil lawsuit.

Azar & Associates lawyers blew their court date, and this week, the judge overseeing the matter ordered the company to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case. Rea did not return a call seeking comment on the matter.

What happened to Azar & Associates is unusual but reflects a legitimate worry for law firms.

"This is an IT guy's nightmare if you work in a law firm," said Matt Kesner, chief technology officer with Fenwick & West, a Bay Area law firm with about 250 attorneys. "It doesn't take a very high percentage of false positives in the anti-spam world to misidentify a crucial piece of correspondence."

Fenwick & West has missed e-mailed court notices in the past, although it has not blown court dates as a consequence, Kesner said.

Over the past 10 years, U.S. state and federal courts have increasingly done business electronically in a move to become more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

This charge has been led by the federal court system, which uses an electronic document system called Case Management/Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) in nearly 200 courts across the country. All federal bankruptcy and district courts use CM/ECF, and soon it will be standard in the appellate courts, according to Richard Carelli, a spokesman with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Read all about it here, courtesy of infoworld.com

Eric

2007-07-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

5 Worst Websites
Time picks the worst of the web..., some may surprise you...well, actually not.

Here is the first one as a teaser...

Our main beef with this online dating site is its power to cause utter despair. eHarmony claims its more "scientific" approach to matchmaking differentiates it from competitors — its users complete extensive personality questionnaires, in order to connect them to others based on compatibility. In early 2006, eHarmony announced that more than 16,000 couples had married during the previous year as a result of meeting on the site, citing a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. That's about 90 people finding love every day, a track record bound to inflate expectations. On a more typical dating site, where users are prone to making snap judgments based on photos and sketchy profiles, if you don't find that special someone you're less likely to take it personally. It's easier to shake off because, after all, that's hardly the real you up there on that site. But if you've taken the time to answer eHarmony's 436 compatibility survey questions and paid its premium charges ($21 to $60 a month, depending on how many months you prepay), and the site then delivers terrible recommendations — or worse, rejects you as unmatchable — what do you tell yourself then? The company's advice, to stick with it for several months to improve your odds of finding a soul mate, sounds all too self-serving (the longer you use the site the more you pay). The site also discriminates against gays.

Read all about it here, courtesy of time.com

Eric

2007-07-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

Microsoft served with XBOX 360 lawsuit
Come on now, $5 million for two scratched games? Don't get me wrong, that Gears of War game is really valuable...

By JESSICA MINTZ
AP BUSINESS WRITER

SEATTLE -- A Florida man who claims Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 scratches game discs has sued the company, saying the consoles are "negligently designed and manufactured."

In the lawsuit filed Monday in a Florida federal court, Jorge Brouwer says Microsoft has received thousands of complaints but has not replaced all scratched discs. The lawsuit seeks class-action status.

Brouwer said his Xbox 360 scratched two games, "Gears of War" and "Madden NFL 07," and that Microsoft offered to replace them for a $20 fee. He is seeking more than $5 million in damages, according to the court filing.

Last week, Microsoft extended the warranty for the Xbox 360 consoles that completely stop working due to a vague condition the company calls "general hardware failure." This is a separate issue from the scratched discs, though Brouwer's lawsuit cited it as evidence Microsoft "is well aware that the Xbox 360 console has been defective since its introduction to the marketplace."

Microsoft denied the allegations.

"Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs," spokesman Jack Evans said in a statement.

Read all about it here, courtesy of seattlepi.nwsource.com

Eric

2007-07-10T04:44:00.000-07:00

World of Warcraft on iPhone
Two of my most favorite things, together in perfect Zen like harmony like Peanut Butter and Jelly!

After having finally gotten an iPhone yesterday after much hassle in tracking one down, I discovered Telekinesis, a wonderful app that runs on your Mac and provides a web gateway for controlling it through an iPhone-friendly interface.

Naturally, I tried running a variety of applications using my iPhone as a controller and screen for my Mac, but the most impressive was World of Warcraft. While performance was hardly smooth, I could control several actions in WoW through the iPhone interface. Most notably, I could read and respond to in-game chat without too much of a problem.

I recorded the experience and posted a video here on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

To clarify, WoW is running on the MacBook Pro that you see in the beginning. The iPhone just serves as a separate screen and controller connected over the internet. The iPhone's CPU is NOT running the game.

Read all about it here, courtesy of everythingdigital.org

Eric

2007-07-09T03:17:00.000-07:00

In Depth iPhone Review
It's not perfect, but perfect enough to wake up the major players in the cell phone biz...

The Apple iPhone. (Cue theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey)

The anticipation has been building for months. Even before the keynote in January, rumors of the iPhone were everywhere. Then at MacWorld San Francisco, Steve Jobs dropped the bombshell of an integrated phone and video iPod along with a real non-WAP web browser.

Looking back now, things seemed so different then, in my coverage of the announcement I talked the most about the phones features, rather than the user experience. And that’s what the iPhone has come to symbolize. It doesn’t have 3G speeds, GPS, Adobe Flash or stereo Bluetooth capabilities, but judging from the long lines and sold out stores this past weekend it doesn’t seem to matter that much.

What does seem to matter is making the experience easier and more convenient, and having it all in one device. When Apple launched their ads at the beginning of June, everyone went nuts. My parents and even my grandma called me when they saw the ads and were interested in getting one (until I told them the price was $500).

The content of the ads (unlike most other phone ads which tell you what their products can do) showed you what the product does along with how it gets done. People could see how easy getting around the phone was, and that’s what they wanted. What good is a phone if the features are too difficult for most people to utilize?

But would a huge bug with the data and phone service be enough to sour my experience?

Read all about it here, courtesy of thetechlounge.com

Eric

2007-07-06T04:54:00.000-07:00

XBOX 360 will cost Microsoft more than $1B
Yup, that's a billion with a "B"

SEATTLE -- In another setback for Microsoft Corp.'s unprofitable entertainment and devices division, the company says it is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360 video game console.

Microsoft declined to detail the problems that have caused an onslaught of "general hardware failures" in recent months but said Thursday it will extend the warranty on the consoles to three years.

The glitches, and the bad publicity, could weigh the company down as it claws for market share in the highly competitive console market. In May, the Xbox 360 ranked No. 2 in unit sales behind Nintendo's Wii, but still beat out Sony's Playstation 3, according to data from NPD Group.

"We don't think we've been getting the job done," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player, a distant competitor to Apple Inc.'s powerhouse iPod. "In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking."

Bach said the company made some manufacturing and production changes that he expects will reduce Xbox 360 hardware lockups, but he declined to identify the problems or say which others might remain. Microsoft said it will record a charge of up to $1.15 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, to cover the additional costs associated with the warranty extension.

The news comes just days before the video game industry descends on Santa Monica, Calif., for its annual E3 conference, and it could overshadow Microsoft's plans to build buzz for holiday season video game releases and "Halo 3," a much-anticipated shoot-'em-up for the Xbox 360 set to launch in September.

The software maker also said Thursday that sales of the game console fell short of expectations for the fiscal year that just ended.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, estimates that Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $6 billion since 2002.

Read all about it here, courtesy of seattlepi.newsource.com

Eric

2007-07-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

Video games rob reading, homework time: U.S. study
Straight from the "I can't believe someone spent money on this research" files....

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Boys who play video games on school days spend 30 percent less time reading and girls spend 34 percent less time doing homework than those who do not play such games, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

But they said video games do not appear to interfere significantly with time spent with family and friends.

"Gamers did spend less time reading and doing homework. But they didn't spend less time interacting with their parents or their friends, nor did they spend less time in sports or active leisure activities," said Hope Cummings of the University of Michigan, whose study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The study comes as U.S. doctors voice growing concern about the long-term effects of video games.

Prior studies have linked prolonged video game play with attention difficulties and poor academic performance. And some doctors have suggested the games interfere with social development and might be addictive.

Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater at the University of Texas at Austin wanted to see how these games affect academic pursuits and social relationships.

They gathered data from a nationally representative sample of kids aged 10 to 19 in 2002 who tracked their activities on a random weekday and a random weekend day.

Of the 1,491 who participated, 534 adolescents or about 36 percent played video games. About 80 percent were boys.

They found boys spent an average of 58 minutes playing on weekdays and one hour and 37 minutes playing on a weekend day. Of those sampled, girls spent 44 minutes playing on a weekday and an hour and four minutes on a weekend day.

Read all about it here, courtesy of reuters.com

Eric

2007-07-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

Top Linux Coders losing the Will to Code?
This does not bode well for the Linux faithfull.

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

By Don Marti

Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex.

That is the view of Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of USB and PCI support in Linux and co author of online book Linux Device Drivers.

In the latest kernel release the most active 30 developers authored only 30% of the changes, while two years ago the top 20 developers did 80% of the changes, he said. Kroah-Hartman himself is now doing more code reviewing than coding. "That's all I do, is read patches these days," he said during a discussion at the Linux Symposium in Ottawa last month.

In theory the kernel development process involves changes going from the original author through a file or driver maintainer, to the maintainer of a major subsystem such as PCI or SCSI, to Andrew Morton for testing and finally to Linus Torvalds for a kernel release. But Kroah-Hartman said the process was much more complicated: "I tried graphing that, and that's not what happens. It's a mess. There's routing all over the place."

A graph of all the developers involved in the upcoming 2.6.22 release, as well as of the relationships of who reviewed whose patches, extends to a 40 foot print out with names in small type. The graph is on display at the Ottawa event.

The "mess" results in innovative features becoming integrated into Linux distributions much more quickly, according to Jonathan Corbet, author of the camera driver for One Laptop Per Child and another writer on Linux Device Drivers.

Previously, when developers maintained both "stable" and "development" kernels, it could have been two to three years before a feature made it from development to mainstream users. Today, by contrast, the newly released Fedora 7 distribution has the power saving tickless kernel functionality, which came out in the 2.6.21 kernel in April.

Enterprise Linux distributions that pick a single kernel.org release and maintain it for five to seven years are another reason for the complexities. Instead of waiting for a stable upstream release and then modifying it to include new functionality from development kernels, an enterprise distribution can support any of the 2.6 releases, which come out every two and a half months. Corbet said: "The patch loads carried by the distributors have shrunk quite a bit."

Read all about it here, courtesy of computerworlduk.com

Eric

2007-07-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

Gangs flooding the Web for prey, analyst say.
The good news at least we know thier organized, the bad news is we're the target.

(CNN) -- On December 8, Australia suffered a sneak-attack from malevolent forces based in the former Soviet states. The weaponry was a multi-million fusillade of bogus e-mail touts targeting customers of iiNet, owner of Ozemail, one of the most popular Internet providers in the country.

The barrage overwhelmed company servers, which saw e-mail traffic spike from a daily average of 12 million messages to nearly 20 million -- 98 percent of which were spam -- and caused a 10-minute delay for users.

"We're seeing a lot of spam coming from China and Eastern Europe," says Greg Bader, chief information officer of iiNet. "They are organizations that are obviously very well set up and funded in order to release the volume of email they're pumping out."

Cybercrime is big business. The FBI estimates that computer-related crimes -- such as virus attacks and identity theft -- have cost companies and consumers $400 billion in the United States alone, according to a September report.

Disappearing are the days of high-profile attacks by teenage hackers motivated less by monetary gain than creating mayhem. Organized gangs now use "KGB-style tactics" to recruit programmers in universities to write software for high-tech crimes, according to a recent study by IT security firm McAfee.

As the talent pool grows, so do the tactics employed for computer crimes. The localized e-mail assault in Australia this month shows how cyber criminals now favor targeted attacks rather than widespread releases of malicious software, or "malware," such as the MyDoom computer worm which struck around the world in 2004.

In the past year, digital threats grew 163 percent, according a report by IT security company Trend Micro.

Read all about it here, courtesy of cnn.com.

Eric

2007-06-29T03:33:00.000-07:00

Tech's 10 Most-Hyped Product Launches
Some of this list will surprise you, others will make you laugh...

With the release of the iPhone Friday, Apple will complete what some are calling the most hyped product launch in technology history. Whether or not that's true, there's no doubt that the frenzy has reached epic proportions, with constant articles, photo galleries and commentary in this and countless other publications. But the iPhone is hardly the only tech product to launch with a high hype factor and heavy expectations. Here is a look back at some of the other high-profile launches that got the tech industry talking.

Here, Steve Wozniak, a man who knows something about changing the world, rides the Segway, the product that was supposed to change the world but didn't.

Prior to its launch, the Segway was known by its code name, "Ginger," and was expected to change the way people would get around--and even factor in to the way cities were designed. The product was hyped by people like Steve Jobs far ahead of its launch. But while it is a sophisticated product, its high price never allowed it to have the impact its inventor, Dean Kamen, hoped it would.

Read all about it here, courtesy of new.com

Eric

2007-06-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

Fake Microsoft Security Bulletin in the Wild
Don't get fooled by this, if you see it simply delete it!

If you (or someone you know) receives an e-mail about a zero-day exploit affecting Microsoft Outlook do not, under any circumstances, click on the links embedded in the message. It’s a phishing scam folks. The Security Bulletin (MS07-0065) it points to doesn’t exist. And just because it can never be said too often, I’ll say it again here. Microsoft does not alert users to security issues via e-mail. Ever. That’s what Windows Update is for. Details from Sophos are available here.

In the closing paragraphs of their announcement, Sophos describes why this vector has become so popular for phishers and hackers – people have learned that patching their systems against exploits is part of their “job” in keeping their systems running properly but haven’t yet completely grasped the potential vulnerability that awareness creates if they allow themselves to be duped into reacting to messages like this.

“Security bulletins from Microsoft describing vulnerabilities in their software are a common occurence, and so its not a surprise to see hackers adopting this kind of disguise in their attempt to infect Windows PCs,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “The irony is that as awareness of computer security issues has risen, and the need for patching against vulnerabilities, so social engineering tricks which pose as critical software fixes are likely to succeed in conning the public.”

In examples seen by Sophos experts, the emails have contained the recipient’s full name, and the company they work for, in an attempt to lull user’s into a false sense of security.

“By using people’s real names, the Microsoft logo, and legitimate-sounding wording, the hackers are attempting to fool more people into stepping blindly into their bear-trap,” continued Cluley. “Users need to be on their guard against this kind of confidence trick or they risk handing over control of their PC to hackers with criminal intentions. They should also ensure that they are downloading Microsoft security updates from Microsoft itself, not from any other website.”

Read all about it here, courtesy of blogs.zdnet.com

2007-06-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

Security Vendor Question Accuracy of AV Tests
A set of standards to measure anti-virus effectiveness? Imagine that!...

Symantec, F-Secure, and Panda Software design a new testing plan to better reflect the capabilities of competing products

Antivirus software is frequently tested for performance, so picking a top product should be straightforward: Select the No. 1 vendor whose software kills off all of the evil things circulating on the Internet. You're good to go then, right? Not necessarily.

The increasing complexity of security software is causing vendors to gripe that current evaluations do not adequately test other technologies in the products designed to protect machines.

Relations between vendors and testing organizations are generally cordial but occasionally tense when a product fails a test. Representatives in both camps agree that the testing regimes need to be overhauled to give consumers a more accurate view of how different products compare.

"I don't think anyone believes the tests as they are run now ... are an accurate reflection of how one product relates to the other," said Mark Kennedy, an antivirus engineer with Symantec.

Representatives of Symantec, F-Secure, and Panda Software agreed last month at the International Antivirus Testing Workshop in Reykjavik, Iceland, to design a new testing plan that would better reflect the capabilities of competing products. They hope all security vendors will agree on a new test that can be applied industrywide, Kennedy said.

Read all about it here, courtesy of infoworld.com

Eric

2007-06-26T06:17:00.000-07:00

RIAA gets sued, yes you heard me right.
Tonya Andersen, the Oregon disabled single mother who was originally sured by RIAA, turns the tables on RIAA by leveling a lawsuit against them. Go Tonya go!

Tanya Andersen, the disabled single mother in Oregon who had been defending herself against baseless copyright infringement allgations by the RIAA for almost two years, until the RIAA finally dropped its case against her, has filed a lawsuit for malicious prosecution, Andersen v. Atlantic. Included as defendants, in addition to the record companies, are the RIAA itself, Safenet (which owns MediaSentry), and Settlement Support Center LLC.

Read all about it here, courtesy of recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

Eric

2007-06-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

Windows XP: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Breathing new life in 'ole reliable...

Just lately it seems to be the fashion amongst writers on the internet to compare and criticise operating systems. While one user talks up the merits of Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista on her blog, another is quick to criticise Ubuntu’s lack of user friendly features and available software. In this article I am here to sing the praises of the old dog Windows XP. Once the all singing all dancing multimedia darling, XP is now the older brother of the much younger and trendier Windows Vista. While Vista can be the life and soul of the party, it is still very much a problem child for many users who are frustrated with incompatibilities, poor driver support and degraded performance in multimedia applications and games. If, like me, your Vista experience wasn't all you hoped it would be, read on as we take another look at Windows XP and find that you really can teach an old dog some new tricks.

Security

One of the biggest shocks long time Windows users had to face when upgrading to Vista was the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls. Microsoft's answer to the problem of rampant malware on Windows machines was a barrage of security checks which can quickly become daunting. While emulating this feature might seem like a bad idea, UAC is a partial solution to a very sticky problem and the alternative, allowing malware to continue to spread unhindered, is not really an option. Although you can't have Vista style user account control under XP, there are a number of alternatives. An aggressive firewall product such as Outpost firewall not only monitors internet traffic but also alerts you when programs misbehave or perform potentially dangerous operations. Outpost costs $39.95 per year and includes a regularly updated spyware scanner.

Sudown is similar to UAC and allows you to temporarily elevate the privileges on a limited account to that of an administrator account in order to run programs such as installers. Sudown is less intrusive than UAC but arguably less secure and less complete (you may find that you still have to log into the administrators account under some conditions). Sudown is a free utility and is available from sourceforge.

Read all about it here, courtesy of ezinearticles.com

Eric

2007-06-22T03:24:00.000-07:00

Dell let's customers avoid "bloatware" on new PC's
It's about time consumers are given that choice...

Dell Inc. is allowing its customers to decline the unwanted software applications loaded on new PCs, after hundreds of users complained about such "bloatware" on a company blog.

Many software companies pay PC vendors to install their applications on new computers, hoping to gain new customers or persuade users to upgrade to a new version. But customers say it can take a savvy user hours to remove unwanted programs, and those who are less sophisticated may never be able to reclaim the wasted memory.

On Monday, Dell agreed to give buyers of certain PC models the option to avoid what the company calls "preinstalled software." Buyers of Dimension desktops, Inspiron notebooks and XPS PCs can now click a field in Dell's online order form that will block the installation of productivity software, ISP (Internet service provider) software, and photo and music software.

"Since we launched IdeaStorm, there has never been a shortage of conversation about 'bloatware' here! Well we've recently taken action on your feedback on this topic, and we're working toward giving customers more choice in the amount and type of software that is preinstalled on their systems at the time of purchase," Dell said on the blog.

The company has also loaded an extra "uninstall utility" program on Dimension and Inspiron computers sold in the U.S., making it easier for new computer users to remove software they don't want.

Read all about it here, courtesy of pcworld.com

Eric

2007-06-21T05:45:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Pleads With Consumers to Adopt Vista Now
Looks like Microsoft is feeling the ill effects from the lack of Vista love...

"Microsoft has admitted, in an email to the press, that 'some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they've heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release.' The company is now pleading with customers not to wait until the release of SP1 at the end of the year, launching a 'fact rich' program to try to convince them to 'proceed with confidence'. The announcement coincides with an embarrassing double-backflip: Microsoft had pre-briefed journalists that it was going to allow home users to run Vista basic and premium under virtual machines like VMWare, but it changed its mind at the last minute and pulled the announcement."

Read all about it here, courtesy of apcmag.com

Eric

2007-06-20T05:24:00.000-07:00

Nvidia XFX 8800 Ultra Extreme
When that puny 8800 GTX isn't nearly enough...

So, GeForce 8800 Ultra deserves the title of today’s fastest gaming graphics accelerator. However, we have also confirmed the results of our preliminary testing that we carried out some time ago: the advantage of GeForce 8800 Ultra over GeForce 8800 GTX may vary from a few percent to 20%, but on average equals 8%-15%. We have detected only two cases when the performance gain from GeForce 8800 Ultra can bear real practical value for a gamer: F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl , both tested in 1920x1200 resolution.

In a few other games, such as Prey , Gothic 3 or Neverwinter Nights 2, we can claim that this solution features some performance reserve that may be efficient again in 1920x1200 resolution. GeForce 8800 Ultra may reveal its advantages even better in higher resolutions like 2048x1536 or 2560x1600, but there are very few monitors that can handle resolutions like that and they are pretty expensive. Nevertheless, we are going to check this out in one of our next articles.

All in all, GeForce 8800 Ultra could be a disappointment for an end-user, because it doesn’t boast any significant advantages over the GeForce 8800 GTX except for a few individual cases described above, but costs considerably more. Nevertheless, the solution is still the today’s fastest single-card gaming solution, so Nvidia did successfully strengthen its positions as the manufacturer of world’s fastest gaming accelerator. They have also demonstrated that their technical potential is sufficient to raise the frequency of such complicated chip as G80 without pushing its power consumption beyond acceptable limits – something former ATI Technologies failed to achieve with their R600. Anyway, Nvidia did attain their primary goal: to prove their technology leadership in the consumer 3D market.

Read all about it here, courtesy of xbitlabs.com

Eric

2007-06-19T03:20:00.000-07:00

Apple's iMac overhaul tracking for mid-to-late summer
Please let it be made in stainless steel, with 2 gigs of ram, a high end Core 2 Duo and a Nvidia 8800 series card!

Apple Inc.'s hotly anticipated iPhone device will have a few weeks to bask in the limelight before the electronics maker returns focus to its Mac business with a pair of redesigned iMacs positioned to catch the tail end of the educational buying season.

People familiar with plans for the next-generation consumer desktops say Apple hopes to unveil the new systems sometime between the latter half of July and mid-August -- a timeframe well suited to garner sales from higher-education individuals and back-to-school shoppers in general. Those same people add that the Cupertino-based Mac maker may also have a few smaller surprises in store for fans of its Mac line around the same time.

As was reported exclusively by AppleInsider in March, Apple engineers have been toiling long-hour days on a pair of radically redesigned 20- and 24-inch iMacs that will be both slimmer and sleeker than today's offerings. When the project manifests later this summer, it will represent the first major industrial design overhaul to hit the flagship all-in-one consumer Apple desktops in nearly three years.

Omitted from the makeover will be Apple's 17-inch iMac model, people familiar with the project have said. The entry-level offering will reportedly become the subject of considerable neglect, and may eventually meet the same fate as the firm's now defunct 12-inch PowerBook and soon-to-be sacrificed Mac mini.

Earlier this month, the Internet was rife with unsubstantiated rumors that Apple would use its developer conference (last week) to introduce new iMacs clad in "brushed metal" enclosures. AppleInsider, however, advised against those claims, explaining that the company would instead use the annual gathering to focus on Mac OS X Leopard, third-party iPhone development, and its software strategy in general.

While Apple's current iMac line remains in relatively good availability, supplies should begin to constrain in the weeks ahead, especially through high-level dealers. The company continues to fill new orders for existing models, but checks within the supply chain indicate that it is doing so through smaller volume shipments.

Apple last updated its iMac line in September, when it upgraded each model with Core 2 Duo mobile processors and introduced a 24-inch model to the family.

Read all about it here, courtesy of appleinsider.com

Eric

2007-06-18T03:13:00.000-07:00

ciffSolid-state hard drives will be cost effect by 2009
This is the last piece of the puzzle to get modern pcs up to speed...

Solid-state hard drives will become cost-effective for many enterprise users in 2009, a report by a US analyst has suggested.

Jack Gold, proprietor of J Gold Associates, believes that solid-state drives (SSDs) — hard drives based on non-volatile flash memory, rather than moving parts — will have a 15 percent share of the notebook market by 2011. SSDs are a relatively new technology and still command a significant premium over the cost of a traditional hard drive. However, they are faster, of higher capacity, better for battery life and far more resistant to shock than traditional drives.

"By 2009/10, we believe the premium for SSDs will be under $200 (£101) per machine," Gold said. "Given total cost-of-ownership savings of $50 (£25) per machine and the additional potential benefits, we believe many companies will deploy SSDs within this time frame. Therefore, we believe most enterprises should plan on deploying SSDs to their mobile workforce, at least in higher-end machines, in the 2009/10 time frame."

Gold's report also predicts that a decline in the price of SSDs over the next two years will result from the emergence of "many additional suppliers" of the technology.

SSDs are currently supplied by companies such as SanDisk and Samsung, which both have 32GB models. The premium that SSD technology commands is demonstrated by the fact that Samsung's 32GB SDD costs £350, while a standard 100GB hard drive costs just £65.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.zdnet.co.uk

Eric

2007-06-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

Sony to cut the price of PlayStation 3
Even packed with all it's goodness it still is losing ground (sales) to the XBOX360...

OKYO (AFP) - Sony is trying to decide by how much it will cut the price of its PlayStation 3 console as consumers want it reduced, its chief executive said in an interview published Friday.

"That (price cuts) is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine," Howard Stringer told the London-based Financial Times.

He admitted that Sony faced tough competition from rival Nintendo's Wii video game console, which is enjoying stronger sales than the PS3 and has a lower price.

"Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours ... because it's cheaper," he said, adding there was "no question" consumers wanted a lower price.

Sony slashed the price of the PS3 by 20 percent in Japan ahead of its launch here last November as it prepared for a fierce fight against cheaper games consoles from rivals Microsoft and Nintendo.

Even after the price reduction, however, the PS3 is still by far the most expensive of the three main next-generation video games consoles on the market and many analysts say Sony will need to lower the price further.

Rival Nintendo is enjoying strong sales of the Wii, known for its motion-sensitive controller, outselling the PS3 by more than five to one in Japan in May, according to research from publisher Enterbrain.

Sony's video game division suffered a huge operating loss in the last fiscal year and is expected to remain in the red this year.

The success of the PS3 is considered vital to a revival at the Japanese giant, which is in the midst of major restructuring under Stringer, its first foreign boss.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.yahoo.com

Eric

2007-06-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

ATi Radeon HD 2900XT vs. Nvidia 8800 GTS 320MB part II
Frame rates get closer for ATi, but that image quality needs some work

e are going to make this evaluation short, sweet and to the point since we have already performed a major evaluation of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT. Please read that evaluation first to get the lowdown on the new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT video card and all the specifications therein.

In our initial evaluation we made comparisons with a 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS as well as a GeForce 8800 GTX. We found the performance of the 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS bested the Radeon HD 2900 XT in everything we threw at it. Our conclusion was that the 640 MB 8800 GTS was the better value, you simply get more for your money. What if there is an even better value now?

The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT is closer in price to the 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS. At the time of launch we did not feel it was explicitly needed to compare the Radeon HD 2900 XT to the 320 MB version of the 8800 GTS, after all the only difference is memory capacity between the two 8800 GTS configurations. However, prices on the 320 MB 8800 GTS have fallen drastically since that launch. You can find video cards such as this factory overclocked Leadtek for $259.99 with all the rebates, or this standard clocked EVGA for $289.99 before rebate and $269.99 after rebate.

When you compare this to the lowest price we could find on Newegg of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, $409.99 you will see a very large gap in price. What is surprising though is the large gap in performance as well, and it doesn’t swing the way you would typically think. In our minds we are taught that you get what you pay for, the more expensive item will be the better item, but in this case, we might be seeing a complete reversal of that!

We know from testing that there is little performance difference between the 320 MB and 640 MB GeForce 8800 GTS video cards. The GPU is exactly the same between both, same clock speeds, the only difference is the amount of RAM. With the performance of the 320 MB 8800 GTS being close to the 640 MB 8800 GTS, and prices being so low, we had to see how this compares to the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT which is more expensive.

We are going to jump straight to gaming on the next page. For system setup specifications look here. We are using the latest drivers officially supplied by ATI which are known as 8.37.4.2, these drivers have all the performance tweaks that are found in 8.38 which have been rolled up into Cat 7.5.

Read all about it here, courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

2007-06-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Safari 3 (beta) vs. FireFox2 vs. IE7 on Windows
The browser wars are heating up, you might be surprised by the results.

At the World Wide Developer Conference this week, Apple announced the availability of Safari 3 for the Windows operating system. Today, we put the Safari 3 beta to the test to see how it compares to Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 on Windows. What we found didn't impress us very much. Although Safari offers slightly faster page loading, the beta is extremely unstable and suffers from interface deficiencies that make its value on the Windows platform questionable at best.

Windows quirks

The most glaring flaw of Safari 3 on Windows is its utter lack of stability. The prerelease beta status of Safari 3 obviously must be taken into account when evaluating the program's reliability, but the problems I faced during testing really exceed tolerable limits for beta software. The Firefox 3 alpha build I reviewed last week is far more stable and robust than the current beta build of Safari 3. Safari hangs and freezes frequently, and once it completely locked up my system, necessitating a hard reset. Unlike Firefox, Safari 3 can't automatically restore the previous browsing session after a crash. Instability makes testing a frustration, but I don't think that this problem should be interpreted as an intractable failing of Safari 3 in light of the program's prerelease status. Although I think it is likely that Apple will resolve these problems before issuing an official release, I strongly discourage users from testing the current Safari 3 beta on a production system.

Read all about it here, courtesy of arstechnica.com

Eric

2007-06-12T03:38:00.001-07:00

Microsoft slipping errr... I mean buying into the "dark side"?
Unification of Operating System's take a step closer to reality.

Don't fool yourself into believing Microsoft has gotten all "warm and Fuzzy" cozying up with Linux. This all comes down to selling more software and the "bottom line". Think about it, if software writers and developers only have to focus on once source code, then you can do more with less people and time, while charging any price you want for that piece of software.

Microsoft has appointed a director to lead its interoperability efforts with Novell.

The two companies have been trying to sell a combined proprietary and open-source software package to businesses since they announced a deal in November. Through a jointly run Interoperability Lab, they intend to make Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 run on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. The companies will also market each other's products.

Tom Hanrahan, former director of engineering at the Linux Foundation--which was formed by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group--will head up the Interoperability Lab and take the job title of director of Linux interoperability. Hanrahan is a Linux veteran, having overseen a large team of kernel developers in a former role at IBM's Linux Technology Center.

Novell appointed Susan Heystee in December to manage its relationship with Microsoft.

Both Hanrahan and Heystee look set for a turbulent ride in what has already proven to be a controversial relationship between the companies.

Read all about it here, courtesy of news.com.com

Eric

2007-06-11T03:18:00.000-07:00

Public In The Dark About 95% of Software Bugs
Most people are too lazy, don't care or don't want to learn about this "stuff"...

An IBM security director is estimating that the 7,247 software vulnerabilities disclosed last year are a fraction of the 139,362 that actually were discovered.

By Sharon Gaudin
InformationWeek
Jun 5, 2007 11:56 AM

Most people are grossly underestimating the number of vulnerabilities in the software they're using at home and at work, according to a security director at IBM.

Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategy at IBM's Internet Security Systems, said in a blog that 7,247 software bugs were publicly disclosed last year. The issue, though, is that he estimates that there also were 132,115 undisclosed vulnerabilities discovered last year. That means only 5.48% of them were disclosed to the public.

"To be sure, 139,362 new vulnerabilities in a single year is a colossal number, but is it wrong?" asked Ollmann in his blog entry. "Too many people underestimate the number of vulnerabilities in the software they use at home and in the enterprise office. Public vulnerability disclosures provide only a small window into the total number of vulnerabilities uncovered on an annual basis."

What does that mean to the IT or security manager trying to protect their network?

"If you're basing your protection strategy upon keeping up solely with public vulnerability disclosures, you're missing almost 95% of the vulnerabilities actually out there (this year)," said Ollmann. "If your defense systems are designed to protect against specific vulnerabilities (i.e. signature-based), it probably means that it was designed to protect a subset of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Preemptive protection engines are needed for the remaining 97% of annual vulnerabilities."

Where's the disconnect between bugs discovered and bugs reported?

Ollmann said it's a multipronged problem. Sometimes, for instance, vulnerabilities discovered internally by the vendor are generally patched silently. And flaws often are reported to the vendor who then keeps quiet about them until they can come up with a fix for them. Sometimes researchers simply think a bug is too "lame" to bother reporting.

Read all about it here, courtesy of informationweek.com
Eric

2007-06-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Technology literacy age drops
At this rate, by the end of the decade I will be replaced in my job by someone still in diapers...scary.

Anita Frazier, an industry analyst for the NPD Group, said that one reason for the drop in adoption ages for consumer electronics devices is their increasing ease of use. Not surprisingly, the electronics device that kids use most often is the television, with parents reporting that their children turn on the TV an average of 5.8 days a week.

The long-standing joke in computer help desk circles is that the best question to ask those having trouble with their computers is "Sir, is there a child in the house?" For a particularly hilarious riff on this idea, watch Wes Borg's "Internet Help Desk" video on YouTube.

Now a new study by the NPD Group, "Kids and Consumer Electronics Trends III," underscores just how early kids can start handling the household tech chores. According to the report, the average age at which kids begin using consumer electronics (CE) has dropped from 8.1 years in 2005 to 6.7 years in 2007.

While all consumer electronics devices saw an earlier age of adoption, the survey showed that the biggest age drops were in the use of DVD players and cell phones.

Read all about it here, courtesy of sci-tech-today.com

Eric

2007-06-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

XP vs. Vista - The re-match, this time it's ATi's turn
Yup, nothing to see here, XP is still faster in frame rates than Vista *yawn*

We recently published an article that compared framerate performance between Vista and Windows XP in multiple current gaming titles. We wanted to do this because there were many claims that Vista was a poor gaming operating system, or at least that it didn’t perform as well as XP on the same hardware. Up to now, it’s been claimed that poor driver support has crippled Microsoft’s new operating system. We wanted to try to associate hard numbers to this issue and take an industry accounting of what users can expect from Vista. We even went so far as to test two different video cards and driver sets. Both were from NVIDIA, and included a 7600 GS and an 8800 GTS 320MB.

However, our scope was more limited than we realized. After the article, a consistent criticism was that we did not include ATI hardware in our evaluation, so any claims that we made were unqualified. Our readers were absolutely right. One of the reasons that our content is better than most publications is that because we have the best readership in the industry and we listen to them.

It wasn’t a conscious effort on our part to specifically exclude ATI hardware from the original article. It was merely the fact that we had NVIDIA hardware on hand at the time, so we used it. Given ATI’s track record lately, we simply did not have any ATI cards on hand in our former [H] Consumer offices in Austin. The original plan was to just use one video card, but later we thought that two would be better. Who knew that three was actually the right number? We also wanted to keep the experiment as simple as possible. We wanted the article to be about operating systems, not hardware. For this reason, including ATI wasn’t at the forefront of our minds.

Another criticism was that we used "old" drivers from NVIDIA. This was mostly very bad timing. The article was in its very last stages when the new drivers were released and had already been written and approved for publish (not a quick or easy process). That said, it would definitely have been best to include the latest drivers in the article. We simply didn’t know that new drivers would be coming out. As of late, NVIDIA has been of little help as they don’t know when their own drivers are pushing out. To address this issue in this ATI article, we contacted ATI to ask them when their next driver release would be. They did us one better – they gave us the beta drivers that were going to be released as WHQL on May 23rd, which are now known as Catalyst 7.5. In this instance, we’re dealing with the latest and greatest. And just for good measure, we took a few of the games that performed extra-poorly with our NVIDIA hardware in our last article, and gave them another run on the new 158.18/158.22 drivers to see if there was any effect.

Read all about it here courtesy of HardOCP.com

Eric

2007-06-06T03:20:00.000-07:00

Dell thinks Ubuntu makes hardware more fragile
At least they back peddled and decided to honor their own warranty.

Recently, folks like Slashdot and others reported that we are no longer offering extended warranties or CompleteCare on Ubuntu-based systems. User johnnyk submitted an idea on IdeaStorm asking us to bring back warranty options for these systems. The short answer—we will soon.

Here’s the deal: due to an ordering system glitch over the weekend, we inadvertently removed the extended warranty and CompleteCare options associated with Ubuntu systems from the configurator on Dell.com We’re working to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible. We expect to reinstate all extended warranty options and Complete Care service for the E1505n notebook later this afternoon. Any orders placed to date will ship with the warranty the customer ordered.

Customers who ordered systems when the extended warranty and CompleteCare option weren’t available will have the opportunity to upgrade at original price. More details soon.

Read all about it here, courtesy of direct2dell.com

Eric

2007-06-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

RIAA accused of extortion and conspiracy
How come this just doesn't surprise me?

In a new Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, the defendant has filed the following five (5) counterclaims against the RIAA, under Florida, federal, and California law:

1. Trespass

2. Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030)

3. Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201)

4. Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523)

5. Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code §§ 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. § 559.72 et seq.

Answer and Counterclaims*

Ms. Del Cid is represented by Michael Wasylik of Ricardo & Wasylik, in Tampa, Florida.

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Read all about it here, courtesy of recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

Eric