Content and news by Rob Williams

Peripheral and storage device maker Lexar, in conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission, has issued a voluntary recall of some 66,000 Lexar FireFly and 1 GB Secure II USB flash drives because the units could overheat and present a risk of burn, fire, or injury.

Who would have thought a simple thumb drive could potentially have a fire hazard? This is no joking matter though. If you own a Lexar drive, make sure to see if you have one of the recalled models.

The deal between AMD and Dell is already done, as we reported some time ago. The companies are just looking for the best timing to tell the world+dog about the deal. Dell is the last big customer that explicitly refuses to buy AMD desktop CPUs but that’s all over now, according to a senior executive I talked to from AMD.

Once again, this comes from the Inq. This is one rumor I hope to see come true though. I don’t want to see it stop at the desktops though… Dell AMD laptops is what I’m waiting to see. Enthusiasts don’t buy Dell desktops. Come on!

It was somewhat of an event when Sophos, the Abingdon, UK-based antivirus company, released a statement in their latest Security Report that urged people to switch to Apple Macintosh computers. According to the report, “the continued dominance of Windows-based threats has prompted Sophos to suggest that many home users should consider switching to Apple Macs, to shield themselves from the malware onslaught.”

I find it hilarious that an anti-virus company tells you to switch OS’s, when they make most of their cash from Windows based PCs. Though… if you play it safe you have nothing to worry about. Really.

Check out this DS Lite + Brain Age pack Nintendo gave to President Bush for his birthday. That’s pretty neat, but I wonder if he’ll play it. With no sons in the house, we doubt there was a Nintendo or Sega Genesis to be found. Well, it’ll give him something to do when his iPod runs out of juice.

I can’t think of a more appropriate game, really. It will be interesting if he actually does play it..

AMD’s Athlon 64 FX lineup will get a few speed bumps within the next few months. The first speed bump will come next quarter in the form of the Athlon 64 FX-64. This part will be a Socket AM2 part and have a 125-watt TDP. It will presumably have a 3 GHz clock speed, as AMD likes to bump the clock speed of the Athlon 64 FX lineup in 200 MHz increments. The Athlon 64 FX-64 will be AMD’s desktop flagship processor until Q3’07 when the Athlon 64 FX-66 arrives. This part will have a 125-watt TDP as well and presumably be clocked at 3.2 GHz unless AMD has some other trick. It will be based on the 90nm Windsor core and not the upcoming 65nm Brisbane core.

According to the charts, we should be seeing some AMD 65nm action this quarter. Many of the ‘budget’ X2s with 2*1MB of Cache are replaced with 2*512Kb models. If you are looking to purchase a new AMD, it may be worth holding out for some of the 65nm models though.

eBay has added Google Checkout to the list of payment options banned on eBay. A recent update to the Accepted Payments Policy includes Google Checkout (click on ‘Show’ next to ‘Some Examples’ to reveal the list). More comments on this action can be found at the eBay Strategies Blog.

I guess the question is… who didn’t see this coming? It’s no surprise that eBay/PayPal has a monopoly on their hands, which sucks because consumers will continue paying PayPals rediculous rates. Maybe we will see Google sue?

With technology buzzwords becoming so commonly used in daily life, Webster and Oxford have both begun to include some new terms in their latest editions. Some of their newest additions include: adware, biodiesel, codec, digicam, google (as a verb), geocaching, hacktivism, mash-up, rewriteable, ringtone, spyware, and texting.

They really know how to stay current. I’m fine as long as they don’t add l33t or 0wn3d in there.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — July 6, 2006 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that sales for the second quarter ended July 2, 2006 are expected to be approximately $1.215 billion – a 52 percent increase compared to the second quarter of 2005[1] and a nine percent decline compared to the first quarter of 2006. The company’s prior guidance for the second quarter anticipated overall sales to be flat to slightly down seasonally from the first quarter of 2006.

You can read the full press release here.

Cases & Enclosures
• ICute 0508ULA Computer Case – Overclockers Club
• POWMAX 3304 Black mATX Case – 3D Gameman

Cooling
• Spire VertiCool & DiamondCool – Driver Heaven
• Spire VertiCool II CPU Cooler – ThinkComputers
• Sunbeam Silent Whisper – Gideon Tech
• Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II (Chipset Cooler) – MadBoxPC
• Zalman CNPS8000 Low Profile Heat Pipe CPU Cooler – BigBruin
• Zalman VF700-AlCu LED VGA Heatsink – FrostyTech

Memory & Storage
• Corsair Twin2X2048-8500C5 2GB DDR2 – Virtual-Hideout
• Enermax Intelligent Backup – Pro-Clockers

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Das Keyboard II – XYZ Computing
• Enermax Aurora Aluminum Keyboard – Virtual-Hideout
• Logitech’s G3 Laser Mouse – Extreme Tech
• MSI StarCam 370i – Hexus
• Razer Krait – GotFrag
• Super Talent 2GB MEGA Screen MP3 Player – techFEAR
• USB Headset MS-TECH LM-120 – Technic 3D (German)

Video Cards & Monitor
• ATi makes a “Cool” move – NGOHQ
• Galaxy Geforce 7900 GT – Pure Overclock
• HiS Radeon X1600 Pro 128MB Single & Crossfire- Guru3D
• HIS X1300 512MiB HyperMemory x1 PCIe – Hexus
• Inno3D GeForce 7300GT DDR3 SLI – PC Modding Malaysia
• PowerColor X1900 GT – Bjorn3D
• Sapphire X800 GTO AGP 256MB Video Card – PC Apex

Etcetera, Complete Systems & Contests
• Averatec 4155 Ultra-Portable Widescreen Laptop – BIOS Magazine
• YouTube, Microsoft’s Bad Week, Dell XCS Concept PC, and Samsung’s New Cameras – Digital Trends

There is no shortage of mousepads to choose from when you are looking for a new purchase. That makes it difficult to figure out which one, is the right one. The S&S has potential, as it was co-developed by actual gamers.

It turns that the fancy Nvidia G80 chip taped out, and in working silicon stage it will have 32 pixel Shaders and, as predicted, have 16 vertex and geometry Shaders. Nvidia wants to stick with a two to one ratio and assumes that the games of tomorrow will need twice as many pixels than they will need vertices and geometry information.

Since this comes from the Inquirer, this is all speculation. 32 Pipes is along the right line though, so it’s not really surprising. The doubling of the Vertex Shaders is interesting though.

The most recent AMD roadmap is also very clear to state AM3 “supports either DDR2 SDRAM or DDR3 SDRAM, but not on the same motherboard.” This is great news for upgraders, as there is a very clear upgrade path: CPU, motherboard, and then memory. This also infers that AM3 CPUs will have both DDR2 and DDR3 support on the integrated memory controller. DDR3, like DDR2, has 240-pin, but the two formats are not pin-compatible.

It apears that the biggst change will be the HT3.0, but other than that it will be quite similar to AM2. There are also no immediate plans to base AM3 on the LGA socket, which would have been nice.

There have been a slew of updates released to the Steam system, one that specifically will improve RO load times on older machines. Various small fixes have been attended to also though. To update, simply restarted your Steam.

• Added new filesystem for use with Red Orchestra – users will be automatically converted on launch. Improves load times in Red Orchestra on low-end systems
• Improved Steam startup time
• Reduced CPU usage/processing time during downloads
• Improved content download rates
• Optimized downloads to skip unused files
• Updated reliability and usability data collection
• Localized country names in purchase wizard
• Fixed case where downloader could stall
• Fixed case where the steam:// protocol handler wouldn’t get restored on launch
• Fixed purchasing issue if the user had an expired logon ticket
• Fixed rare crash when browsing for servers
• Fixed cybercafe’s not being able to use the ‘Do not save personal information on this computer’ settings option

After an incident that occurred on a popular television show’s internet stream, the Australian government has once again demonstrated that it simply does not understand the internet by indicating that they intend to regulate streaming video. I wonder what these geniuses plan on doing with porn streamed from Europe?

What won’t Australia do? Streaming internet video is not going to be an easy task. It would be so much easier if they let people simply watch what they want to watch though…

Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named “Leopard” in the upcoming World Developer’s Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If “Leopard” is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple’s remarkable market share gain next year.

It may be fast and efficient, but it’s still not going to run all the Windows programs we’ve come to rely on. Especially games. It will be interesting to see how it turns out though.

With the bulk of Blu-ray writers launching at 2x write speeds, a higher speed media seems a little premature. However, TDK brought Blu-ray media rated at 6x to the 8th Annual Data Storage Expo in Japan and expects to launch media rated at 4x before the end of 2006. The 6x media is a single layer 25GB Blu-ray disc which probably won’t reap benefits until 6x drives come out. We are guessing we won’t see 6x drives until at least later this year or early 2007 given the launch trends of previous optical standards.

Whoever here has a Blu-Ray recorder, raise your hand. Seriously, it seems like we are really getting ahead of ourselves. At least with this type of production, things will be well underway when prices come down.

The new GDDR4 memory has a data transfer rate around 2.4Gbps on a 32-bit bus. Samsung is shipping the new 80nm memory in 512MB configurations, which is likely configured in 16×32 layouts. Samsung also claims that this 2.4Gbps GDDR4 showed a 45% power savings when compared to 2.0Gbps GDD3. The reduction in power is clearly a welcomed trend

Though impressive, Hynix has already produced even faster DDR4. Regardless, it’s good to see it being finally shipped out.

Apple today has introduced a new model of its iMac that will truly replace its aging eMac. The new iMac is most identical to the current 17-inch iMac, except for several minor specifications. Firstly, the new unit still ships with an Intel Core Duo processors running at a base speed of 1.83GHz. This is in line with the current 17-inch iMac, which costs roughly $400 more.

I’ll be the first to say it… who cares? $900 still seems high when we are talking about the mass amounts of PCs.. err Macs that schools would need.

WALTHAM, Mass. – July 5, 2006 – Novell today announced two new innovative programs for Linux training designed to promote education around open source. Novell unveiled its “Train the Teacher” series, the industry’s first free week-long boot camp for Linux* educators. In addition, Novell is the first Linux vendor to partner with Thomson Course Technology, the world’s leading technology education publishers, with the release of a series of new joint SUSE® Linux Enterprise courseware offerings. As a result, students and teachers interested in Linux have compelling new options for building their expertise on the increasingly popular open source platform.

You can check out the full press release right here.

Cases & Enclosures
• Antec Atlas – A1-Electronics
• Coolermaster Centurion 534 Case – Motherboards.org

Cooling
• Lian Li NC-01 Notebook Cooler – Overclocker Cafe
• Zalman VF900-Cu Videocard Heatsink – FrostyTech

Memory & Storage
• Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 DDR2-667 2GB – PC Stats
• Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 2GB Memory Kit – HotHardware
• OCZ Mini-Kart 1GB – Byte Sector
• Super Talent T800UX2GC4 – Overclockers Online

Motherboards & CPU’s
• Abit and DFI tackle ATI’s CrossFire Xpress 3200 – Tech Report
• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe WiFi – Phoronix

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• AZIO BTD603-122 USB Bluetooth Adapter – Think Computers
• Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 Web Cam – Hardware-Pacers
• XG Laser 2500 & Optical 2000 Mice – 3D Gameman

Etcetera, Complete Systems & Contests
• Blackberry 8700c – Digital Trends
• LG KG800 ‘Chocolate Phone’ – BIOS Magazine
• OCZ Mini-Kart USB Flash Drive Giveaway – XYZ Computing