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Tech News From Around The Web

No Immediate Price-Cuts for Intel Core 2, Upcoming Models Leaked

Posted on November 18, 2008 8:23 AM by Rob Williams

Those who were hoping for immediate price-cuts of Intel's Core 2 line-up are out of luck, as the company posted their updated processor pricing list yesterday and listed not a single one. The lone update to the list was of course the addition of the Core i7 line-up, which I'm assuming every-single person reading this already know enough about. If you don't... you might be doing too much snoozing and not enough reading the top of our page!

In other related news, DailyTech found themselves with a leaked list of upcoming non-Core i7 processors, including 65W versions of the Q9550, Q9400 and Q8200 Quad-Core chips. These will be priced at $369, $320 and $245, respectively. This equates to a $52 - $54 price hike compared to their 65W counterparts. Personally, I'm not quite sure that power savings of a 65W CPU will ever negate the $50 premium, but prices are very unlikely to remain high for too long.

Another notable release is the Q9000 2.0GHz Quad-Core mobile part. It will become the first "affordable"  Quad-Core offering for notebooks and will sell at $348/1,000. It's still high compared to desktop counterparts, but far more affordable than previous mobile offerings. Lastly, for those looking to pick up an Intel X-25M SSD, it might pay off to wait, since it's set to drop $75 on November 30th. You can see even more releases and price-drops over at DailyTech through the link below.

Intel also hasn't forgotten about its other businesses when it comes to price cuts. Intel's multi-level cell (MLC) X25-E solid state drives (SSDs) have been burning up the benchmark charts thanks to its highly optimized memory controller. The street price for the 2.5" 80GB X25-M -- and its 80GB 1.8" X18-M counterpart -- will drop from $600 to $525 on November 30. 160GB variants of the X25-M/X18-M will show up in the first half of 2009 and will initially be priced at $990.

Source: DailyTech


SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive Offers Superb Disk Image Mounting

Posted on November 18, 2008 7:46 AM by Rob Williams

Yesterday, I posted about a cool little application that allowed you to both create and mount ISO disk images, but little did I realize, that application pales in comparison to some of the free competition. Thanks to one of our eagle-eyed readers, we now see what might be the ultimate free solution.

SlySoft, creators of the ultra-popular AnyDVD and CloneDVD applications, offer a completely free tool called "Virtual CloneDrive", which improves upon ISODisk in almost every-single way. Rather than limit you to just the .ISO format, CloneDrive supports that, as well as DVD, CCD, IMG, UDF and BIN files. Nero's NRG format isn't supported, not surprisingly. I think it's safe to say that by using proprietary formats like that, you are only going to suffer a headache down the road.

When launched, the application will offer a few simple questions, as seen below. You can select up to 15 virtual drives, which the OS will see as "BD-ROM Drive". Yes, that's right. This application doesn't only mount CD and DVD images, but can also handle Blu-ray. You can also set the application to mount previously used images when next used, as well.

You can't create images with this tool, but there are many others out there that can do it for you. CloneDrive definitely looks to be the best solution available for mounting disk images though, and you can't beat the price. Thanks to Ron for the heads-up!

Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Image files generated with CloneDVD or CloneCD can be mounted onto a virtual drive from your hard-disk or from a network drive and used in the same manner as inserting them into a normal CD/DVD drive.

Source: SlySoft's Virtual DriveClone


Dell Offering Core i7 PC with Included 20-inch Widescreen for $999

Posted on November 18, 2008 7:14 AM by Rob Williams

I don't make it a point to look around and hunt for great hardware deals, but while visiting Dell's website last night, I happened upon one of their "XPS Winter Savings" deals that seemed too good to be ignored. Until the 19th (6AM PST), the company is offering a fully-featured XPS machine, complete with Core i7 processor and 20-inch widescreen monitor... for $999.

So how good is this deal? If you were to build your own Core i7 machine right now, the least-expensive motherboard would set you back $220, while the CPU itself would bring the tally up another $300. Tack on 4GB of RAM ($75), a 500GB hard drive ($65), ATI's HD 3450 ($30), ODD ($25), chassis ($80), miscellaneous peripherals and modest PSU ($150), and the total would sit at $945.

So where exactly is the steal? Well on top of the pre-configured PC, they also throw in their SP2009W 20-inch widescreen, valued at $240. So in total, the machine to build separately would cost $1,185, or $999 through this offer. It's not a mind-blowing deal, nor is it a deal most of our audience is looking for, but for a PC that offers Intel's latest and greatest, looks good and comes complete with a monitor for $999... it's definitely an interesting deal.

This deal expires first thing tomorrow morning, but it's not the only one Dell is offering. You can keep checking back to their event page to scope out the latest deals.

Source: Dell Core i7 Machine - $999


Tech Roundup - November 18, 2008

Posted on November 18, 2008 2:45 AM by Rob Williams

    Memory & Storage
  • G.Skill DDR3 1600 Triple Channel - Bjorn3D
  • Patriot Viper PC3-16000 4GB Memory Kit - Hardware Logic


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