Corsair Releases 64GB Voyager Flash Drive

Just earlier, I posted about storage in hard drives, and how today, you get so much for so little. Well, the same goes for portable storage, and in the case of Corsair's latest Voyager flash drive, that fact couldn't be any more true. The new model features a staggering 64GB worth of space, which is enough to hold a few full-resolution Blu-ray movies... incredible.

The new model carries an SRP of $249.99, but it shouldn't since that's not the price it's being sold at. NewEgg carries the drive and is selling for $199.99, which, unless it's changed the last time I checked, is still far less than $249.99. Normally, larger models like this come with a premium, but this one doesn't - the 32GB models are selling for $109.99, so you actually get more GB for your dollar with the bigger model.

There is absolutely no performance information on the new model, and chances are, it's probably for a reason. Generally speaking, when you add more storage to a similarly-sized device, speeds are going to decrease, but the fact remains... if you need a lot of storage in the smallest space possible, how can you go wrong with something like this?

Thanks to the 64GB USB Flash Voyager, users now have the ultimate solution for storing, transporting and backing up large amounts of personal and professional data. With storage capacity that just a year ago could only be found in hard drives, the 64GB USB Flash Voyager drive also provides the added ruggedness, water resistance and performance not found in storage drives utilizing rotating media.

NVIDIA at a Disadvantage Due to their Choice of Solder?

NVIDIA hasn't been having the best of news to pass around lately, and it sure doesn't look like that run is going to end anytime soon. New reports out of the Electronic Thin Film lab of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles (seriously!) show that NVIDIA's choice of using a solder with high-lead will suffer the fate of cracking under high temperatures (70°C+), whereas eutectic solder, used by ATI, will last much longer.

At first glance, this doesn't seem to be a large issue, but it looks like the reason NVIDIA's had issues with their mobile GPUs might be due to this solder, and what a mistake to make. To date, it's supposedly cost the company over $200 million to deal with, so changes definitely need to be made.

The problem now is that we need to wait to see a change happen, since it's not as simple as simply switching out the solder used. It requires certain changes to be made to the power delivery, and it goes without saying, anything like that is going to take more than a few weeks to thoroughly test. There's also the question of whether or not the current GPUs on the market are actually going to break down due to this solder, especially desktop cards.

Overall, Tu believes that the high-lead solder joint "has a built-in weakness" due to the thin layer of eutectic SnPb solder in the joint. "The eutectic SnPb has a low yield stress and it will deform first and lead to stress concentration and to accumulate high plastic strain energy," Tu writes. In contrast, the "homogeneous eutectic SnPb solder joint tends to have a uniform composition and much lower plastic deformation so the accumulation of plastic strain energy per unit volume is lower."

Source: TG Daily

Seagate's 1.5TB Hard Drive Now In Stock

Although Seagate announced their 1.5TB hard drive well over two months ago, it took quite a while before the model began to show up in retailers. That has apparently changed recently though, as NewEgg and a few others now have the monster hard drives in stock.

At current time, NewEgg, Tiger Direct and CompUSA all stock the drive, and for the exact same price of $189.99 - which is incredible. The price of storage has fallen so much over the past few years, that the case really is that anyone can have too much storage... far more than they'd ever need. Of course, that's what we said a few years ago about 100GB drives, but I can't see the progression keeping up. Even with today's media-hungry lifestyle, it would take a lot of effort to fill 1TB or more.

Speaking of 1TB, those drives are also worth considering, as their prices have also plummeted. When those drives first hit the market, they carried a price tag of $400, but now? $130 on average. 500GB? $70. Prices are indeed amazing, and there's no better time than now to be a storage glutton. With RAM and processor prices being what they are, it's never been easier to build a stellar PC that won't break the bank, that's for sure.

This is the ultimate drive for the ages, and it will take ages to fill it up. By now, the world knows that Seagate Barracuda 7200 drives deliver years of reliable service and high performance. In one bold move, Seagate provides the largest single capacity jump in the history of hard drives - a half-terabyte increase from the previous high 1TB.

Two Monitors Are Better Than One

I've heard from what must be a hundred different people that adding a second monitor to your setup can increase your productivity two-fold, although I'm still not sold. Now, if you had two sets of hands, then I could see how that would be the life. But as Kim Komando of USA Today claims, once you go dual, you'll never go back.

In case you are unaware how to choose and purchase a second monitor, tips are given, but believe it or not, bigger in this case is not always better. If your main screen isn't huge, then the second one shouldn't be either, and resolutions also need to be taken into consideration. If your main monitor supports 1680x1050 and the second supports 1280x1024, then the two will not melt into each other, which will make for some odd times if you run your mouse cursor along the bottom of the screen from one to the next.

The good thing about a dual monitor setup is the fact that it's more affordable than ever to go that route. Solid monitors can be had for $200, and given the amount of extra productivity that's promised, it could very-well pay for itself soon. I'm still wondering how one large monitor would fare compared to two smaller ones, though. If you have a nice 30", like the Gateway shown below, couldn't you be just as productive? Or is there something specifically about having a second physical display that keeps your attention better?

Monitors can be adjusted to different resolutions. However, flat panels usually work best at their native resolution, which is expressed by figures such as 1,600 by 1,200 pixels. The two monitors should have the same native resolution. But you may need a resolution other than the native resolution of a particular monitor, so check the monitors in the store to be sure they work for you.

Source: USA Today

Fourteen Best Linux Distros

Alright, I've been posting a lot of Linux-related news lately, but it's hard not to. There have been so many good articles lately, that I'd feel like I'm doing a disservice by not posting them. Last week, I linked to Lifehacker, who posted a good article on choosing between Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu. This week, Tech Radar ups that ante by taking a brief look at fourteen.

Despite the fact that they've chosen fourteen distros to feature, all of them are rather well-known, with the more uncommon of the bunch being Slackware, CentOS (used more in servers) and Knoppix. The article takes a look at what makes each distro unique and for whom it's built. Many of these "guides" usually overlook key points for certain distros, but this one is quite well-done, so it's definitely worth a read if you are still undecided on which distro to call home.

My heart still belongs to Gentoo... for now at least.

The main difference though is that Gentoo does not try to hide the inner workings of the distro behind easy to use GUI tools. This is a distro for those that want to know what is going on behind the scenes and get their hands dirty tweaking it. For this is Gentoo's greatest strength: the sheer amount of control that it offers the users.

Source: Tech Radar

Diamond Says 188 Cards Faulty, Not Thousands

Last Wednesday, I posted a story regarding thousands of Diamond Multimedia ATI cards that might be defective, and since then, there has been many updates. The day after that news was posted, TG Daily followed-up their coverage by relaying the message from Diamond that only 188 cards were faulty, not "thousands".

The explanation is that while Alienware sent back 2,600 GPUs, only a relative handful were defective. In Alienware's case, it was much easier to send back the entire lot than test out each card individually before doing something with it. The CEO of Diamond, Bruce Zaman, also stresses that the cards sold to the regular consumer doesn't show a higher RMA rate than is normal.

Our friends at Tech Report received an e-mail from Zaman late last week that claimed the company had been hit by fraud. To grab a quote, "A disgruntled former employee, who was terminated due to presenting fraudulent credentials, reported the story. When this person was unable to solve a very minor problem that affected less than 200 cards, many red flags were sent up, resulting in an investigation and termination."

Is this the end of it? Hard to say, but the fact is that the supposed faulty models from Diamond have been in circulation in a while, and if there were problems with "thousands", we probably would have heard about it by now. We'll have to give it another year.

While documents TG Daily has seen indicate that Alienware found higher than usual failure rates with Diamond’s cards and ended up returning its entire lot of more than 2600 graphics cards and eventually dropped Diamond as a supplier, Zaman said only 188 cards “out of many thousands that were shipped” were found to have caused problems.

Source: TG Daily

Tech Roundup - September 29, 2008

Motherboards & Processors
• ASUS P5Q Deluxe - CDR Info
• Foxconn P45A-S - Hardware Logic
• Integrated Sound Cards Roundup - InsideHW

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS EN9800GT 512MB - Overclock3D
• ASUS My Cinema-PE9400 COMBO PC TV Card - Virtual-Hideout
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 vs. nVIDIA GeForce 9500GT - InsideHW
• HIS HD 4670 IceQ Turbo 512 MB - techPowerUp!
• HIS HD4850 IceQ4 TurboX - Overclocker Cafe
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB - Think Computers
• Zotac NVIDIA 9400GT Zone Edition - Technic3D

Memory & Storage
• Corsair DHX 4GB DDR2-800MHz - Phoronix
• Crucial 32GB SSD Drive & External 2.5-inch Drive Storage Kit - Think Computers
• Verbatim 500GB Portable Hard Drive - InsideHW

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Headplay Personal Cinema System - Test Freaks
• Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Earphones - techPowerUp!

Cooling
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - TweakNews
• Glacialtech Igloo 7321 Silent E Heatsink - FrostyTech
• Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer CPU Cooler - Legit Reviews
• Thermaltake RamOrb Memory Cooler - TweakTown

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Aerocool AeroRacer Pro - 3DXtreme
• NesteQ E2CS ECS 5001 with 500W - HardwareOC
• NZXT Rogue SFF Case - Pro-Clockers

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Dell Studio Hybrid Video Spotlight - HotHardware
• Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-Ray Disc Player - ModSynergy