Content and news by Rob Williams

Apologies to the fanbois, but I am about to kill some nice AMD dreams. Reverse Hyperthreading does not exist. It’s one of the bigger loads of bluff and bluster cooked up in a long time.

AMD doesn’t have any such technology. It would like to have it but even the upcoming K8L quad core won’t be able to present a dual or quad core as a single core to the Operating system.

I am one who personally won’t care either way if reverse hyperthreading comes to be, but it -would- be an interesting concept. If it’s not true.. then where did the idea originate?

Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 RC has been released. Microsoft has been garnering a lot of attention recently with the public betas of its Internet Explorer 7.0 browser, so the Mozilla Foundation can now steal a bit of that limelight.

If you like to live on the bleeding edge, go check out what’s new. Firefox tends to be unstable enough as is, so I will hold off until an official release.

Some of you may recall the lawsuit brought by several Hollywood directors against companies which edit movies for sex, language, and violence. The companies would trade consumers an off-the-shelf DVD for an edited one. Well, the CBC is reporting that Judge Richard P. Matsch has found that this practice violates US copyright law, and ‘decreed on Thursday in Denver, Colo., that sanitizing movies to delete content that may offend some people is an “illegitimate business.”

I was never one to understand this foolish censoring to begin with, but it’s good to know it’s actually not appropriate. Chances are, if you are watching a movie with such material, you don’t care either way. Else you would not be watching it.

This article presents an interview with Angela Beesley, Elisabeth Bauer, and Kizu Naoko. All three are leading Wikipedia practitioners in the English, German, and Japanese Wikipedias and related projects. The interview focuses on how Wikipedia works and why these three practitioners believe it will keep working. The interview was conducted via email in preparation of WikiSym 2006, the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, with the goal of furthering Wikipedia research.

This is not a pretty looking interview, but it’s packed with information for those who want to know the in and outs of the Wikipedia.

Ornithopters have been around for a while, but a professor at the Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has made progress with his. It flew for 14 seconds and covered a third of a kilometer. However it landed with a bit of a crash. Interestingly it uses a glow jet turbine from RC aircraft.

Fourteen seconds doesn’t exactly show much hope for the future of Ornithopters, but they are still very cool to watch.

In an effort to create a more definitive resource for the
collectivism of Linux-compatible hardware, Phoronix.com has announced
the creation of Phoronix LCH. Phoronix LCH is a community-driven
indexing system where anyone can contribute by sharing their Linux
hardware successes and failures. The database is completely free to use,
and Linux users are invited to participate, or those that will be making
the Linux jump shortly.

This is not the first of it’s kind, but it’s shaping up to be invaluable. Definitely check it out and add to if your hardware is not listed!

Las Vegas, Nev., July 10, 2006 — MALIBAL, LLC, a world leader in innovative laptop design and development, today announced the addition of several NVIDIA® GPU options to its line of Veda Series™ notebooks. Available immediately, customers now have a choice between Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7900 GTX 512MB GPUs, Dual NVIDIA Quadro® FX 2500M 512MB GPUs or a single NVIDIA Quadro® FX 2500M 512MB GPU.

You can read the full press release here.

Cases & Enclosures
• Antec NSK2400 Micro-ATX Chassis – Virtual-Hideout
• BTX Form Factor Case Guide – BTX Form Factor
• Cooler Master X Craft USB – 3D Gameman
• Tuniq 2 PC Case – Virtual-Hideout

Cooling
• AlphaCool Slot-In Alu-UV Reservoir – Xtreme Computing

Memory & Storage
• Crucial PC2-8000 DDR2 Memory – 3D Gameman
• OCZ DDR PC-3200 2GB Special Ops Edition – TechSpot
• OCZ DDR PC-3200 2GB Special Ops Edition – Think Computers
• OCZ DDR2 PC2 7200 Platinum XTC EP – Overclockers Online
• Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 DDR2 SDRAM – Bjorn3D

Motherboards & CPU’s
• AM2 motherboards both from MSI and ASUS – DNR Hardware
• Foxconn 975X7AA-8EKRS2H Intel 975X – Viper Lair
• Overclocking the Athlon AMD XP-M chip – TechDomain
• Tyan Tiger i7520SD S5365 – Phoronix

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Coolermaster eXtreme Power Duo 650W PSU – Pro-Clockers
• Everglide s-500 Professional Gaming Headphones – Big Bruin
• Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 – XYZ Computing
• Scythe Stealth Semi-Fanless Power Supply – ModTheBox
• Super Talent 2GB MEGA Screen MP3/FM/Video Media Player – Bona Fide Reviews
• Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player – Digital Trends

Video Cards & Monitor
• BFG Tech GeForce 7900 GT, 7900 GTX and 7600 GT OC – Hexus
• EVGA e-GeForce 7900GTX 512MB SLI Video Card – Motherboards.org

Etcetera, Complete Systems & Contests
• Canon PowerShot S3 IS – BIOS Magazine
• USB Cafe Pad – MadBox PC (Spanish)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 Review Part 3 – Rojak Pot
• WSVG’s Intel Summer Championship – techFEAR

Lavalys have recently announced their latest version of the popular Everest benchmarking program, and have included some notable updates. We take a quick stroll through to see what has been updated and added. Is it worth a buy or upgrade?

If you are serious about your audio or gaming you need to get off of the onboard sound and switch to The X-FI. There is a lot going for this card with all it’s little extras and the different gaming modes. I didn’t even get a chance to get into the cool things about EAX and Macro sounds. With all the benefits of this card I can’t see any reason not to at least buy this entry level X-FI sound card.

Check out the full review over at Modders-Inc.

The second Day of Defeat: Source Free Weekend has begun. This free trial period features all the new content added in the Summer Update to Day of Defeat: Source, including the new gameplay type (Detonation), new missions (Jagd, Colmar) and gameplay and technology enhancements. To join the ranks, visit www.steamgames.com and set up a free account. All Steam users also receive free access to the recently added Media area, which features the DoD movie shorts and a growing collection of game trailers.

If you have not played this great game yet, here’s your perfect chance. Step to it men!

Dubbed the Mega mPC 945, MSI is offering a robust little unit which is built around Intel’s 945G chipset, and loaded up with integrated features that help it standout from the pack. We’ll run the Mega mPC 945 through its paces and size it up to see just what this Small Form Factor PC brings to the game. From design, ease of assembly to performance and features, we’ll try to give you clear picture as to just how “Mega” the Mega mPC 945 stacks up.

Check out the full review at HotHardware.

Enter the new CK-1022-6 Freedom, touted as a Super Tower / entry-level server case from Asys. Yes, that’s Asys, with a Y. Can’t say that I’ve ever come across any of their cases before, but the product information sheet looked promising. And the pictures showed it was no slouch in the looks department either. There were also some interesting features I wanted to check out a bit closer. This might not be such a bad case after all.

Check out the full review at OCIA.

Thermalright is one of the foremost cooling companies in the overclocking community. They have been around for many years providing that extra edge needed to keep your system cool. Although their lineup has changed quite a bit recently, many users out there are still cooling their CPUs with the Thermalright XP-90 and the XP-90C. Today we will take a look at the famous XP-90C and see what it can do in a current S939 setup.

Check out the full review over at techPowerUp!.

Hand Picked 5ns GeIL Chips. Enhanced SPD for Dual Channel DDR motherboards. Tin Coated Platinum Copper Heat Spreader. They have memory chips that works well with overclock, they are cheap and you also can see your RAM temperature if you have a windowed case. DDR memory is not dead (yet).

You can read the full review at MadBoxPC. Bring your Spansish translator!

Snapdrive.net allows you to upload, share and save files in an online hard drive. Non-registered users can upload files up to 20mb in size. With a free registration you are allowed to upload files up to 100mb and a total of 2gb per account. Why bother carrying around a pen USB drive when SnapDrive offers the same thing for free!

This is a new service by our gracious host, used for hosting whatever you want. If you are looking for a new storage solution, check it out.

The basic setup of the Hunt is to find your given target (your Quarry) by asking around and tracking their last known location. Along the way you’ll find a variety of weapons from blunt objects to firearms. A “Money for Kills” table tracks the most-used weapons in recent matches, and rewards higher based on the more obscure weapons you use to kill.

One thing is for sure… this game is different! Different is good though, and The Ship breaks away from any specific genre. You can except our review of the game next week!

GWN: Compared to video’s I saw in 2004 to recent videos on-line, Tabula Rasa has seen cataclysmic stylistic changes. What prompted them?

Long: A couple of years ago we took the product to E3 in 2004 and we showed the product with its original style and the average reaction was that they didn’t really understand it. With that in mind we only really want to make successful games, we had to re-evaluate what we had done and that it wasn’t right for the market or the success we had envisioned. We kept some of the back story, the different alien races, and the symbolic language that Richard had created, but then we gave the gameplay more of a shooter feel. The weapons are more traditional, though you still have powers, but their more intelligible than using drumsticks to kill things. Much more straight-up sci-fi.

Odd. I must’ve been one of the few who thought the original videos and screenshots ROCKED. I am disappointed with the turn they have taken, but still have high hopes. Read the full interview at Game World Network.

Shack: MMOFPS, with the first letter, of course, standing for Massive. Tell us how Huxley brings first-person shooters to a massive scale.

KJ Kang: Unlike previous FPS games, Huxley is being developed with a focus on massive combat instead of one-on-one fights. Huxley’s space consists of the Persistent World, which is a living space that can accommodate a maximum of 5,000 people, and a battle area that accommodates up to 200 people. Players can hold parties to perform missions and quests through Persistent World.

This is a great interview if you want to learn more. I am skeptical of another MMOFPS, but this one has some serious potential. Not to mention wicked graphics!

We test three different retail computer systems sporting the “Windows Vista Capable” badges and tell you if it’s a gimmick to move systems or if you can really expect an acceptable user experience. We even throw in a bit of a preview of Vista’s features as well.

What exactly does it take to be a Vista qualified system? Well according to the PCs used here.. not too much. I am not really sure of the point behind running Vista on a budget PC. I mean, Vista must cost half of the what the PC does?