Tech News From Around The Web

Majority of People Prefer Real CDs Over Downloadable Music?

Not too often do the results of a report pique my interest, but one recently held by two firms in the UK does, and it likely will for music-lovers of all stripes as well. Despite how it seems right now, it looks as though the majority of music purchasers equipped with broadband Internet would still rather purchase the actual disc in the store, rather than online in a downloadable format.

Given the absolute popularity of iTunes, Amazon's music store, Zune Marketplace and all the others, I would have thought the absolute opposite (I'm personally very fond of actual CDs, and usually buy one or two a week), but in one thousand conducted face-to-face interviews, 73% prefer a disc copy, and of those, 66% are between the ages of 14 - 18. Yes... the majority of people today who prefer the real thing over a download... are youngsters.

It's hard to settle on such a small percentage of music buyers, but numbers like these are very pleasing, at least to me. I'm such a big fan of buying music in the store (lossless quality being the number one draw), it gives me a little bit of hope that downloadable albums and songs are not going to kill off these retail music stores as fast as I originally imagined.

Credit: ricktherazor

Still, subscription and music streaming services are apparently doing their part to help people decide which music (CD or otherwise) to buy. According to The Leading Question's research, those who pay for a subscription service such as Napster spend more on CDs than the average music buyer (£16.87 per month, compared to £11.37). The same applies to people who listen to streaming music—those people spend £12.17 per month on CDs and £7.02 per month on downloads, compared to £3.81 per month spent on downloads by the average music fan.

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Corsair Releases "Extreme" SSD Line-up

It's hard to say that the SSD game is heating up, because in reality, it's been hot for a while. A day doesn't go by when a company doesn't release a new model - even companies we've up to this point have never heard of - but it's all good, because as these new products get released, the prices go down. That's a good thing, as the price has been the greatest deterrent for most people, so if trends from the past year are anything to go by, manageable densities should become a real viable solution very soon.

One company who's been releasing quality SSDs for a while is Corsair, although unlike the majority of their competition, they aren't releasing what seems like a dozen different series. Rather, they're keeping things simple, and up to this point, we've seen Legacy (for older PCs, so they are slow) and also Performance, which is for those who want - you guessed it - the performance.

The company has just released their third series, called Extreme. The name basically says all, but with a 240MB/s Read and 170MB/s Write (sequential), the performance definitely earns it its name. Using the ever-popular Indilinx Barefoot controller, the new SSDs support both user-upgradeable firmware and updateable features, such as the TRIM command, which will be built into Windows 7.

Corsair didn't touch on pricing in the press release, but you could likely expect to see the 128GB top-end model sell for just under $400, and the 32GB for $150.

"The combination of the Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung flash memory, and 64MB of on-board cache delivers blistering, stutter-free performance, eliminating the bottleneck imposed by traditional mechanical hard disks," said Jim Carlton, VP of Marketing at Corsair. "The new Extreme Series SSDs are ideal for use as primary drives in desktop and notebooks systems, and also for RAID 0 configurations in high-performance desktops for enthusiasts who want extreme performance."

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25 Brilliant Bookmarklets to Boost Browsing

If you're asking yourself, "What the heck is a 'bookmarklet'?", don't worry... I didn't know what one was either until I spotted an article over at TechRadar. As you likely assumed, 'bookmarklet' is a portmanteau of 'bookmark' and 'applet', and how they function is actually pretty cool. Are you aware that right now, you can excecute JavaScript code in your address bar, and it will actually do something?

It can, and that's the design behind bookmarklets. We all save bookmarks, and inside of those bookmarks are the raw URLs of the page we want to return to later. Since JavaScript can be executed straight from the browser's address bar, you can create a new bookmark, replace the URL with code of your choice, and have quick access to cool functionality... all without touching an extension or plugin.

So what can you do? Well, on the simple side of things, you can change background colors, font styles, increase font size, highlight URLs, list mailto: URLs and a lot more. Some is more useful than others, but if you create certain features you find yourself using on a regular basis, they're well worth looking into. As an example, say you love the Verdana font (include me in that camp), you can execute this code in your address bar:

javascript:void(document.body.style.fontFamily='verdana')

That again is quite simple, but the functionality can get very creative also. There are many listed at the source article, so give them a try. Many don't actually work for me, even while using the latest version of Firefox, so success on your given setup may vary.

Most modern browsers have been around for years, so you might think the developers would have perfected them by now. Yet every time you go online you'll probably run into a host of browsing problems, from navigation issues, to pages you can't read clearly, and disorganised sites where it's difficult to find the information you need.

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Tech Roundup - July 17, 2009

Motherboards & Processors
• Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P - Hardware Overclock
• MSI G41TM-E43 - Motherboards.org

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS My Cinema EHD3-100 Dual Hybrid TV Card - Think Computers
• Gigabyte GV-R435OC-512I Radeon HD 4350 Half-Height - PCSTATS
• Samsung's 52" LN52A850S1F A850 LCD HDTV - PCSTATS

Memory & Storage
• A Storage Performance Retrospective - Tech Report
• OCZ Vertex SSD - PureOverclock

Peripherals & Gadgets
• GIGABYTE GM-M7800S Swarovski Crystal Mouse - TweakTown
• JETART MP2000 Multifunctional Mousepad - OverclockersHQ
• TomTom One 140 S GPS - Digital Trends

Cooling
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler - Hardware Canucks
• Evercool HPK-10025EA CPU Cooler - PCShopTalk
• Evercool HPK-10025EA CPU Cooler - TopReviewShop
• GELID Silent Spirit CPU Cooler - OCModShop
• GELID Xtreme & GC2 Thermal Paste - Bjorn3D
• Noctua NF-S12B FLX Case Fan - Legit Reviews
• Zalman CNPS10X Extreme CPU Cooler - PC Perspective

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Cooler Master Gladiator 600 Chassis - GamePyre
• In Win 'Na HDD Enclosure - Hi Tech Legion
• PC Power & Cooling Silencer 910W Power Supply - Overclock3D
• Thermaltake Element G Chassis - APH Networks
• Thermaltake Element G Chassis - Hi Tech Legion
• Ultra Power Supply Tester - Computing on Demand

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• ASRock NetTop ION 330 - Phoronix
• Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook - HotHardware
• Samsung HMX-H106 Camcorder - Digital Trends

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