Believe it or Not, Windows XP Has a Passionate Fanbase

From the "Wow, who ever expected this?" files, Wired is reporting on the now obvious fact that Windows XP has a huge fanbase, part in thanks to the rather lackluster reception to Windows Vista. We found out just last month that XP's availability will end this coming June, and that support will end next April, so some consumers are now up in arms.

I was oblivious to such a petition to save XP, but 100,000 people certainly weren't, since that's just how many signatures the "Save XP" petition scored since launching in January. January! Will this seemingly new found love for Windows XP coerce Microsoft into extending support? Not likely, but I think it's obvious why the company is trying to get Windows 7 out the door as soon as possible.

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP. Microsoft plans to end full support - including warranty claims and free help with problems - in April 2009. The company will continue providing a more limited level of service until April 2014.

Source: Wired

Dell Admits Problematic 3008WFP's, Pulls Model from Web Sites

I mentioned last month in a news post that my personal decision between two 30-inch behemoths was with Dell's 3008WFP and Gateway's XHD3000, which we reviewed here. Although I appreciated the Dell's higher color gamut and DisplayPort inclusion, I ended up going with Gateway's offering because of the many disgruntled 3008WFP reports I stumbled across.

The biggest issue with the 3008WFP right now is with backlight bleeding, and for a monitor that carries an SRP of $2,000, such a noticeable defect is needless. The other issue is with input lag, although I'm unsure Dell would even call that a problem since it's most prevalent when using non-native resolutions.

The folks at Engadget hit up the PR at Round Rock to see what the deal is, and as it turns out, the problems were indeed widespread and resulted in a forced removal of the listing from all Dell.com web sites. Ouch. This won't affect a lot of people, however, as the waiting time for the new-fangled model has been at 6+ weeks for the past few months. Dell does assure customers that the issues have been corrected... it's now just a matter of fulfilling all those orders.

Currently the monitors are on extended lead times and in order to manage demand, the 3008 is not available on dell.com. We are managing orders on a prioritized basis and hope to have the product available to all customers in the near future.

Source: Engadget

Crytek Speaks Out on the Rasterization vs. Ray Tracing Debate

Rasterization or ray tracing? It's a somewhat heated debate right now, because while most of the industry has no intention of going the ray tracing route, Intel is pushing for widespread adoption when their Larrabee platform launches. Although ray tracing delivers arguably better results in games and other 3D applications, it's a real performance hog.

Because of Larrabee's nature, however, Intel believes moving game renderers to ray tracing would be feasible thanks to the many cores available... cores that are slow at rendering DirectX and OpenGL APIs. We know Intel's stand on things, but how about key industry figures?

PC Perspective sat down with Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, to get some of his opinions. After reading, I think it's quite clear... no one is gung-ho to move to a ray tracing method, and Cevat doesn't see it becoming a reality for at least another five years. The biggest question right now is whether or not we even need ray tracing, or if the only one it matters to is Intel, since it's their product that's going to lack in driving current methods.

So far I haven't seen a compelling example for using pure classical ray tracing. Part of the problem is that the theoretical argument is derived from looking at the performance of static geometry under certain assumptions for what sort of lighting environment and material types you have in the scene. These examples often compare a ray tracer using a sophisticated acceleration structure for storing static polygon data against a trivial implementation of a rasterization engine which draws every polygon in the scene, which produces an unfair advantage to the ray tracer.

Source: PC Perspective

April 14th Tech Roundup

Motherboards & Processors
• ASUS M3A78-EMH HDMI - Techware Labs
• ASUS P5E - Hardwareoverclock Austria
• ASUS Rampage Formula - T-Break
• ASUS Striker II Formula - Red and Blackness
• ASUS Striker II NSE 790i SLI - Think Computers
• ECS A780GM-A - Legit Reviews

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS EAH3870 TOP - Big Bruin
• Leadtek Winfast PX9600GT - T-Break
• Peak Radeon HD3850 & HD3870 - InsideHW
• "The GeForce 9-Series Multi-GPU Extravaganza - Tech Report
• XFX 9600GT XXX SLI - Bjorn3D

Memory & Storage
• Aeneon X-Tune DDR3 1333 MHz CL8 2GB - techPowerUp!
• MITRON Duplus HDD Selector - Madshrimps
• Seagate Momentus 5400.4 250GB 2.5 HDD - TweakTown

Peripherals & Gadgets
• 4IPNET MSG100 Gateway - Techware Labs
• Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter HS20 - i4u
• mStation 2.1 Stereo Orb - Overclockers Online

Cooling
• Aerocool GateWatch 2 - Techware Labs
• Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler - Virtual-Hideout

Chassis & Power Supplies
• BFG ES-800 Power Supply - Hardware Logic
• Enermax Pro82+ 625W Power Supply - Hardware Canucks
• Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P60 - techPowerUp!
• NZXT Rogue - Techware Labs
• Thermaltake Xaser VI Full Tower Case - OCIA

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Contest: EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW - GamePyre
• Contest: HotHardware Smooth Creations Rig - HotHardware
• Contest: XFX 8800GS SLI - Motherboards.org