Apple's Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" to be Available this Friday

At Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference this past June, the company announced that OS X "Snow Leopard" would become available to consumers in September. Well, there's good news for Apple fans, as the OS' release date has been pushed up to this Friday, the 28th. Even without knowing what the latest version entails, if there's one reason to get excited, it'd be for the $29 US upgrade price.

What makes Snow Leopard a little bit interesting is that it's not a release that focuses on unveiling new features, and that's no doubt the reason for the $29 price tag. Rather, the goal is to release a product that's more secure and faster, both of which are helped by the fact that about 90% of the OS has been re-written - the first time that's happened since OS X first debuted in 2001.

As a result, many aspects of the OS will feel much faster, including Finder, Mail, Time Machine and even QuickTime (which becomes QuickTime X). How all these optimizations affect install size is staggering. Apple claims that after upgrading to Snow Leopard, you will regain up to 7GB of hard drive space, as a result of the latest version taking up half the size of Leopard.

Another major feature of Snow Leopard is the fact that almost the entire OS was coded with 64-bit addresses in mind, so you're really going to be taking full advantage of your processor, more so than Windows or Linux would avail you. It will be interesting to see if consumers, after upgrading, notice notable speed gains, because with all the time and effort Apple's developers have put into the latest version, it'd sure seem likely.

For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software developers to write applications that take advantage of multicore processors. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.

WinX DVD Ripper - Free Ripper that Works

I received an e-mail last week from Digiarty Software, which asked us if we'd like to post news about its free DVD ripper application. I don't usually jump at the opportunity for the main reason that there are so many applications like this around, but this one might very-well be worth your time. By all coincidence, the same day I received the e-mail, a friend of mine was looking for a free DVD ripper, so he was the perfect guinea pig.

Little did I realize, but there is actually a lacking of reliable free DVD rippers out there. My friend had tried five or six different applications he found, and none successfully ripped the DVD out of the box. So as a last-ditch effort, he tried the same DVD ripper that was linked to me in the e-mail, and surprisingly, the process finished without a hitch. Impressive.

From the looks of things, the software is rather robust, offering the ability to rip to a variety of formats, including AVI, MPEG, MP4 and more - even Flash-based FLV. Taking things a step further, the application offers light tweaking to each profile, such as the ability to adjust the bitrate, resolution and so forth. Have a copy-protected DVD? It doesn't matter according to the product page... this can handle 'em.

If there's one caveat, it's that it looks as though there's no way to simply rip the DVD 1:1 to your hard drive. Rather, the only option is to convert to another video format. This might be fine for most people, however, since full DVD rips to take up a fair amount of hard drive space. Either way, if you are looking for a free ripper, give this one a try.

WinX DVD Ripper is a free software program that facilitates ripping the content of a DVD to computer hard disk drive and converting to popular video formats. It supports all types of DVDs including normal DVDs, CSS protected DVDs, commercial DVDs, Sony ArccOS DVDs, all region 1-6 DVDs and most of popular video formats such as FLV, AVI, MP4, WMV, MOV, MPEG1/2 as output video formats.

id Software Considering Skipping Rage for Linux?

For gamers running Linux as their primary OS, the choices are unfortunately limited. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to believe that gaming wasn't the main reason that most people either dual-boot their PC, or never give Linux a try in the first place. The former can be said for me. While I run Linux as my main OS, and Windows XP in VMware for "simpler" tasks (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop), the reason I still keep my machine as a dual-boot is strictly because of gaming.

While the gaming landscape on Linux isn't too stellar, there are a lot of choices, depending on your tastes. If you're looking for a commercial game, though, things are different. Companies like S2 Games and id Software have been some of the very few to deliver commercial games to Linux, which made us appreciate them even more. Who doesn't like to have masterpieces like Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and others available to them?

Sadly, as games become more and more robust, and tied to libraries specific to Windows, the chances of seeing blockbuster commercial games is beginning to wane. This was highlighted by a letter that an Ubuntu forum member sent to John Carmack, which asked about the possibility of seeing Rage available for Linux. His response couldn't have been more clear:

"We are not currently scheduling native linux ports. It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision..."

Well, I for one am planning to game 'er up in Quake Live often, but I highly doubt that hundreds of thousands of others are going to join me. Linux gamers are facing a harsh reality, though, because if one of the leading supporters of gaming on the OS is looking to step out, what does that tell us about the future? What in your opinion needs to be done to continue to attract both developers and gamers alike to Linux? Let us know your thoughts in the thread!

The codebase is much, much larger, and the graphics technology pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized. It probably wouldn't be all that bad to get it running on the nvidia binary drivers, but the chance of it working correctly and acceptably anywhere else would be small. If you are restricted to it only working on the closed source drivers, you might as well boot into windows and get the fully tested and tuned experience...

Tech Roundup - August 24, 2009

Motherboards & Processors
• AMD Phenom II X4 965 - TweakTown
• Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition - Motherboards.org

Displays & Video Cards
• ASUS EHD3-100 Dual Hybrid TV Card - Bjorn3D
• Gigabyte GTX 285 2GB OC - TestSeek

Memory & Storage
• Crucial 128GB SSD - Bjorn3D
• Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB - Bigbruin

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Cooler Master SNA 95 Notebook Charger - Overclockers HQ
• World's Most Unique Gadgets - Digital Trends

Cooling
• AeroCool V12 and Touch-2000 Fan Controller Panels - TestSeek
• Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler - OCModShop
• Corsair Hydro H50 CPU Cooler - Metku
• Scythe Kaze Server 5.25" Fan Controller - PCShopTalk
• Thermaltake Massive 23 ST Laptop Cooler - Hi Tech Legion

Chassis & Power Supplies
• Lancool Dragonlord PC-K62 Chassis - Hardware Canucks
• ThermalTake Element G - Overclockers Club
• VIZO Luxon & Arius EX HDD Enclosure - PureOverclock

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Asrock Ion 330 Nettop PC - Pro-Clockers
• HP Pavilion Slimline s5160f - Digital Trends
• Samsung Solstice Cell Phone - Digital Trends
• The Overclocker Issue #6 - The Overclocker