Sony Playstation 3 Among Worst Offenders In Standby Power Draw

A recent Australian consumer agency study of a variety of consumer electronics products ranging from televisions to stereo systems to laptop PCs and DVD players, found that consumer electronics operating in standby mode are a major contributor to high power bills. Of the 16 electronic devices tested, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 were both represented.

The study found, overwhelmingly, that the Playstation 3 console was the worst offender when it came to standby power draw, drawing 5 times more power than it would cost to run a refrigerator for the same period. While it’s not specified in the article whether ‘standby’ simply meant a low power state entered into after a certain period of inactivity or the actual ‘standby’ state that the console can be placed into by switching it “off” but leaving it plugged into the wall (we suspect the former), it’s definitely time to take another look at what your consumer electronics devices contribute to your overall monthly power bill.

The report advised consumers to switch off their electronic devices at the source, rather than just from the remote control, which puts them on power-consuming stand-by mode. "This saves on money, not to mention carbon emissions," it added.

Additional Note: To find out how much power your AC-powered devices are drawing in standby and run conditions, you can use a power meter like the P3 International Kill-A-Watt.

Source: Reuters

AMD Puma Notebook Platform Springs On Computex

At Computex today, AMD released their first mobile platform since the acquisition of ATI, codenamed “Puma”. Puma consists of a K8-based processor, called the Turion X2 Ultra, as well as the new RS780M mobile northbridge with a built-in Radeon HD3200 graphics core that’s also capable of running tandem with discrete AMD Radeon GPUs, and even switching “off” the discrete GPU when extra power isn’t needed, saving battery life.

According to a new article at ArsTechnica covering the release, the really big news here is “XGP”, the new AMD External Graphics Platform, which would allow a discrete graphics card to sit outside the laptop case and connect through an external PCIe 2.0 x8 connector. However, ArsTechnica speculates that Puma will have some trouble gaining the spotlight, which is currently hogged by sub-notebooks (like the ASUS Eee PC) powered by Intel’s Atom and VIA’s Nano CPUs, whereas Puma is more of a direct competitor to Intel’s Centrino platform.

Puma is the first laptop platform AMD has released since it bought ATI, and the combined companies are betting that the emerging synergy between their respective product lines will entice buyers in ways current Intel products cannot match. Santa Clara won't be the only force to overcome; AMD will also have to draw attention to its new Puma-based products at a time when small notebook and "netbook" designs based on Nano, Atom, and Tegra are soaking up the headlines. 

Source: ArsTechnica

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 Available Now

Today, the Mozilla foundation released the newest release candidate for their popular web browser, which should be finalized later this month. RC 2 brings more bug fixes to the table, and ads some last minute polish for the final version. Since Mozilla has issued a feature-freeze, you won't see many differences between this release and the final version, if there are any other releases between the two.

The release candidate will be published on the Firefox website and pushed through the auto-updator in the coming days, but if you want to get your hands dirty now, CyberNet has a links to the files on Mozilla's FTP servers.

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 RC2 today which is right on schedule, and that means we might still be on for a June launch of Firefox 3! It’s even possible that this could be the last Release Candidate before Mozilla shoots for their world record. This time around there’s probably nothing that you’ll notice as being different from Release Candidate 1, which is a good thing. At this point they are focusing only on bugs that could keep the user from having a great experience with the browser, and if all looks well in this release it could be signed-off on to be the final version.

Source: CyberNet, Via: Lifehacker

June 4th Tech Roundup

• ASUS M3N78-EMH HDMI - Hardware Logic
• ASUS P5Q Pro - InsideHW

• Diamond Viper HD 3870 1GB - TheTechLounge
• Gigabyte GeForce 9600GT TurboForce 512MB - TweakTown
• ASUS EN9800GTX TOP - Elite Bastards
• ASUS EN8800GTS 512MB Top - Motherboards

• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX - circuitREMIX

• Vantec NexStar-SX Hard Drive Enclosure - TechwareLabs
• Banshee Gaming Headset - FusionMods
• Digital Stream DTX9900 Digital to Analog Converter - DragonSteelMods

• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP - TweakTown
• NorthQ 3580 Siberian Tiger Water Cooler - OCIA

• Corsair TX750W - Overclockers Club

• Griffin RoadTrip - ThinkComputers
• Devotec Solar Charger - I4U