Content and news by Rob Williams

For whatever reason, news seems to be slow today, so I am doing what I can to scrounge up some good tidbits. Gaming site GameTrailers has posted a part two to their Final Fantasy retrospective, although I was unaware of a part one until I seen Joystiq’s blog post. If you are an FF fan, this is a must watch. There will be thirteen parts in all, each discussing a different game in the order of release, I assume. Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior for the NES were the first console RPGs I really was drawn to, so the videos are somewhat nostalgic to me. Great watch for any FF fan.

Due to the madness of E3, the first episode of the Final Fantasy retrospective got lost in the fray. You can watch the first episode above and then as a special gift from us, check out the second episode after the break. The other eleven episodes are expected to come out weekly.

Source: Joystiq

As much as I personally dislike Windows Vista, it’s hard to deny the fact that it’s usage is constantly growing. Personal gripes aside, Net Applications reported that Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems online last month. Personally, I find that quite impressive. The article also mentions that OS X usage has dwindled slightly in the past month, but evened itself out with what was reported in January.

Vista’s increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000, both of which have dropped in usage since January. Windows XP, for instance, accounted for 85.02% of all machines that month but was down to 81.94% in June. Windows overall total has remained flat, ranging between 90.01% and 90.46% through the first six months of the year.

Source: Computer World

Things are looking good for Sony. Very good. Just last week, they dropped the price of their popular console to $499, and sales proceeded to skyrocket. This is reassuring for all current PS3 owners, but I am sure like most others, I am still waiting to find a killer app. Sadly, that doesn’t look to happen until next year. In all seriousness though, things are looking up for the PS3, and it might not be too long before it’s direct competition with the Xbox 360.

PlayStation fans: feel free to throw up your arms in unanimous rejoicing. Today, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced in a press release that PS3 sales have increased by more than 135% at the company’s top five retailers. It looks like the price drop to $499 was an extremely wise decision.

Source: PS3 IGN

Firefox 2.0.0.5 was just released last week and already there is a vulnerability that you should be well aware of. It seems that the bug resides within the password management feature, eg: allowing Firefox to remember your login and password. If a website hosts certain JavaScript code, it will be able to steal all of your password information. heise Security has a proof-of-concept demo, which shows just how well the vulnerability works. If you visit trusted sites, you should be in the clear, but it’s wise to be careful when visiting sites that have the ability to execute JavaScript. No word on when a fix will be available.

Discussions between heise Security and Mozilla developers describe a debate among Mozilla developers over removing this feature, since “evil” server pages can steal passwords from browsers whether the user has opted for password management by Firefox or not. Apple’s Safari is vulnerable in the same way. Current workarounds include disabling JavaScript in Firefox or avoiding the use of Firefox password management on sites where users are allowed to post JavaScript pages.

Source: Linux.com

It seems like we were just treated to the 1.80 firmware upgrade, and then the 1.81, and then 1.82, but here we are with 1.90 in our sights. At the time of writing, this update is not available on our shores, but reports are saying that we should be receiving it at “any time”. Some interesting additions include an eject disk option, emotions, CD output to 44.1/88.2/176.4kHz, the ability to change the video settings once in a game, ability to add bookmarks in the browser, new XMB backgrounds and more.

Last month, it was noted that a future firmware update would include further refinement to the upscaling feature of the console, but there hasn’t been a peep out of Sony since. Hopefully that is still in the works and will be seen in 2.0.

Plus, we’re looking forward to doing some serious testing of in-game video quality now that it’s easier to swap settings and you can toggle upsaling. But we’re most excited because this puts us closer to firmware 2.0, which we’re guessing will be announced at Leipzig next month and be a pretty big deal. Look for firmware 1.9 Stateside soon.

Source: Gizmodo

Daniel Robbins, founder of the Gentoo Linux distro, posted last week in his blog that he’d like to have Gentoo back… kind of. Essentially, the Gentoo Foundation may be disappearing, which won’t mean much for the end-user right off the bat. However, Daniel, being the originator, finds the move completely insulting. I’d agree with him, but I have no idea how these business decisions are made. However, Gentoo is my primary operating system, so whatever happens, I hope it helps keep the distro going strong.

As the creator of Gentoo, the guy who led the project from its inception through my departure as Chief Architect in May 2004, and the guy who actually set up the Gentoo Foundation, I find this to be somewhat insulting. I set up the Foundation at the request of quite a few extremely vocal Gentoo developers who were tremendously passionate about the need for Gentoo to be rushed into a not-for-profit entity before its time.

Source: Funtoo Blog

Like a fine wine, installing 4GB of RAM requires an acquired taste. Not everyone likes wine, and not everyone needs 4GB of RAM. However, with Vista and the future looking to change that, many are considering a move on up. Today we are taking a look at a kit that’s not only priced right, but has some overclocking headroom as well.

I am not necessarily the paranoid type, but Google’s hoarding of personal information has me seriously skeptical. So much in fact, that in the past week I’ve changed my default search engine in Firefox, as my way of sticking it to the big Goo’. Ask.com has been trying hard in the past year to play catch-up with the other search engines and has been doing an outstanding job. They recently revamped their entire website and now, according to Ars Technica, they will be offering a new anonymous surfing service called AskEraser.

The tool, called AskEraser, will ensure that users’ search records will not be retained by the company in any form for any period of time. Users will be able to set AskEraser settings in their privacy preferences, and the company says that the settings will be clearly displayed on results pages so that users will always be aware of the privacy status of their Ask.com searches.

Source: Ars Technica

It’s difficult to even pretend that I am surprised, because quite frankly, I’ve been waiting for some high-rank game developer to finally state the obvious. We’ve taken a hard look at AGEIA’s PhysX numerous times since the summer of ’05, and have virtually come to the same conclusion, although our main gripe was the absolute lack of software. Carmack states that multi-core CPU’s are going to prove much more beneficial, and in the future, using GPU’s as a processor will prove even more useful.

Carmack was interviewed by Boot Daily for a piece on Intel’s Core 2 QX6850 chip, where the godfather of the first person shooter genre said that that GPUs and multi-core CPUs will be able to do all the work needed for physics in future games. ‘Multiple CPU cores will be much more useful in general,’ said Carmack, ‘but when GPUs finally get reasonably fine grained context switching and scheduling, some tasks will work well there.’

Source: CustomPC

Longhorn… that was a cool codename. As it turns out, using Vista is just as difficult as trying to push a cow, so Longhorn really felt right at home. Even before Vista was launched, we heard rumors of the next codename, Vienna. Also a cool codename, in my opinion, but apparently not so much in the eyes of Redmond. The next version of Windows has been renamed to “7”. Although Longhorn seems appropriate for Vista, I am hoping our “7” operating system is not going to mimic the movie Se7en.

The switch was disclosed at at a Microsoft sales training conference in Orlando this past week as part of the company’s new “iterative” information-sharing plan, which aims to provide customers and partners with more and more info as part of a predictable release schedule. Microsoft also confirmed that 7 is scheduled to be in development for three years, which we kinda-sorta already knew.

Source: Engadget

I was going to take it easy on the news this weekend, but some things just have to be posted, such as the Intel price drops, which have just hit Canadian e-tailer NCIX. As you can tell from the title, the Quad-Core Q6600 at 2.4GHz is a mere $289. By comparison, I bought an E6600 2.4 Dual Core from the same e-tailer this past February for $377. In the span of a few months, the cores have doubled and the price decreased significantly. The true value of a Quad-Core for most people is debated, but $289 is a sweet price regardless of how you look at it.

• Q6600 2.4GHz Quad-Core – $289CAN
• QX6850 3.0GHz Quad-Core – $1,179.99CAN
• E6550 2.33GHz Dual-Core – $184.99CAN
• E6750 2.66GHz Dual-Core – $206.99CAN
• E6850 3.0GHz Dual-Coree – $292.99CAN
• Q6700 2.66GHz Quad-Core – $574.99CAN

I am having a ridiculous time looking away from picking up a Q6600 for my primary workstation, which still uses an AMD single-core. That would be quite the upgrade. Heck, it’s hard to think that it wouldn’t be a great upgrade, unless of course you have something faster already. NewEgg seems to be a little slow on the draw, but they, like NCIX, lowered the price of the Q6600 to $299. As far as I can tell, no other price drops are in place yet, and they also do not have any of the new 6×50 processors.

• Q6600 2.4GHz Quad-Core – $299USD

Oh, and for those interested in knowing what these beasts can muster, you can check out our QX6850 and Q6600 reviews.

Despite the fact that it’s Friday, news is slow. So this gives us a perfect chance to unveil a new feature of our news, where we give you the skinny on our upcoming content. Techgage publishes a minimum of five content per week, whether it be reviews or articles, so there is always something to read whenever you stop on by.

In the coming week, you can expect a review of the Gigabyte 8600GTS card that you see in the thumbnail. This mid-range DX10-capable card is slightly more expensive than the competition, as we will see, thanks to the fact that it uses a robust and completely passive cooler. Greg is currently grinding on a review of Synology’s DS207 NAS, which recently received a firmware upgrade that revamps the entire feature-set.

Those on the lookout for a 4GB kit of ram will want to stay tuned, as I take a look at OCZ’s latest DDR2 high-density kit, which rolls in at DDR2-800 5-4-4. Also in the weeks to come, we will be reporting from the AsylumLAN 29, which takes place in Evansville, Indiana. Since I’m trying to keep healthy, I’ll try my best to keep my hands off Bawls, but I can’t make any promises.

From a gamers standpoint, Unreal Engine 3 is nothing but impressive. However, it appears Silicon Knights, developers of Too Human, have found enough bugs to warrant a lawsuit. The suit regards a breach of contract and fraud, namely because UE3 doesn’t do certain things it claims to, and also because bugs have slowed development of the game.

Lawsuits for such things seems foolish, but SK has claimed to have taken these issues to Epic time and time again, only to have them brushed off. Mark Rein, of Epic, states that they believe all the charges are unfounded, and they intend to fully defend themselves.

The lawsuit further alleges that Epic in fact never intended to deliver Unreal Engine 3 as a fully functional game engine as promised. Instead, Epic collected licensing fees from Silicon Knights and others in order to fund the development of its own video game, Gears of War.

Source: DailyTech

At a time when every FPS-diehard is shaking in anticipation for Crysis, Ubisoft comes along and announces the next game in the Far Cry series, creatively called Far Cry 2. Well, at least they didn’t call it ‘Far Cry 2.0’. Want some info? Screenshots? Video? Teasers? Well you aren’t getting any, sadly. Despite the absolute lack of information, Ubisoft expects to ship the game in Spring 2008.

Simply entitled Far Cry 2, the new addition to the franchise is being developed for PC by Ubisoft’s Montreal studio (original developer Crytek is currently pouring tears into Crysis) and is scheduled for a Spring 2008 release on PC. Aside from the above logo, apparently dragged behind Ubisoft’s car before it was uploaded, no further images relating to the sequel have surfaced. Expect loads of jungles, obnoxious henchman and distant weeping.

Source: Joystiq

When ASUS first announced their Eee notebook computer at June’s Computex, we knew it wasn’t going to run Windows. It’s a serious budget platform that will retail for $199. Add a Windows license to the mix and the price would increase 50%. Well as it turns out, Xandros Desktop Linux will be the official operating system for the Eee. For those unaware, Xandros is a Linux distro that appeals most to the novice crowd. Like Linspire, it’s designed to be something you can jump into without worry. However, it’s not free. So to have a Xandros license and -still- keep the Eee at $199 is impressive.

The Eee PC 701 comes with two interfaces. The first desktop is meant for users who may have never used a computer before. As Jonney Shih, chairman and chief executive of Asustek, said at the system’s introduction, the name, besides being a play on Nintendo’s popular Wii game system, represented a threefold repetition of the word “easy,” as in “easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work.”

Source: DesktopLinux

When Intel launched their P35 chipset in late May, it brought both DDR3 and the 1333FSB to the table. Not too many people were terribly impressed on the FSB front however, considering most enthusiast motherboards have been able to hit that regardless of whether it was ‘official’ spec or not. There were some compatibility issues though, which many manufacturers seem to be taking care of now.

Gary Key from AnandTech takes a look at fresh BIOS’ for NVIDIA 680i-based boards that make 1333FSB ‘official’. They threw in their QX6850 and were left quite impressed overall. It turns out that the 680i manages to surpass the P35s performance in some regards, but lags slightly in others.

Both chipsets showed their strengths in certain areas and held on tight in the others. In applications that are GPU or storage system sensitive, the 680i consistently finishes first in most of our benchmarks. It is only in the memory bandwidth, CPU throughput, or latency sensitive applications that we see the Intel P35 chipset pull away although the differences for both are minimal in most cases.

Source: AnandTech

Notebooks are great. They offer portability and freedom. Where they lack though, is overall performance when compared to our desktops. Voodoo tries to bridge the gap between desktop performance and notebook performance, which is one reason why their offerings are so expensive. The H:171 offers an X6800 Extreme processor, 7950 Go GPU, 17″ screen capable of 1920×1200, and 600GB worth of total hard drive space. Yes, it has -three- 2.5″ hard drives. Voodoo produces some of the most gorgeous PCs on the market, but the H:171 will be somewhat exclusive given it’s $5,000 price tag.

The ENVY H:171 (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) was just announced. It has an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor, a Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GPU, and a whopping 600GB of disk space spread across three 200GB HDDs.

Source: Gizmodo

No need to do a double-take here, and yes, OCZ -did- just release DDR2-1600 modules two days ago. In an attempt to take the top spot in the enthusiast market, which they have, they have just announced a blazing-fast DDR2-1800 kit, with 8-8-8 timings with a 1.9v voltage requirement… the same as the sticks released the other day. As usual, pricing is not yet known, but they are not going to come cheap.

Sunnyvale, Calif—July 19, 2007-OCZ Technology Group, the worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today unveiled the next step to achieving maximum performance on the latest PC platforms with the launch of the World’s first production PC3-14400 DDR3 modules. These OCZ kits are meant to set industry performance standards as well as accelerate the development of next-generation enthusiast platforms.

Source: OCZ Press Release

Keeping track of finances can sometimes prove to be a huge pain, but there are many commercial programs available to aide in your trek to keep track of everything. Of course, there are free alternatives as well, and that’s where GnuCash comes in. It might not offer as many features as Quicken or Microsoft Money, but it’s certainly feature-packed, given the price. Up until now, it’s been available on Unix systems only, but the latest 2.2.0 version finally brings a binary to Windows. If you are a *nix user, you might also want to give KMyMoney a try, which I’ve been pleased with in the past.

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.2.0, the new stable release of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software. With this new release series, GnuCash is available on Microsoft Windows for the first time, and it also runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX.

Source: GNOME Desktop

We posted last month that the artist formally available in record stores, Prince, was planning to release his latest album in a UK newspaper. Well, that has come and gone and the result was outstanding. Over 2.8 million copies of the newspaper were sold that day, 600,000 more than the same day the previous month. The music companies are not amused, but I find it hilarious, frankly. I am not a fan of Prince, but this had to be done by someone.

The Mail reported sales of at least 2.8 million papers last Sunday, compared to the June’s Sunday average of 2.276 million, according to figures obtained by the Guardian. Mail on Sunday managing director Steve Miron pegged the cost of the promotion at £1.25 million, including a £250,000 payment to Prince for the rights to the album.

Source: Ars Technica