Content and news by Rob Williams

The nXZEN (pronounced “nex-zen”) uses a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and a two microphone array setup to help improve noise reduction. Gennum ships the headset with two flavors: the nXZEN and the nXZEN Plus, which allows users to plug the headset into an MP3 or CD player for stereo sound and have the ability to answer incoming calls with the push of a single button…

Check out the full review over at Legit Reviews.

Today, you can have nourishing, toasted wholemeal bread with a smidgeon or two of caviar. And that’s good, isn’t it? But believe us when we tell you that, some time soon, things will far better still – with lashings of the black stuff spread on top. For some of you. Probably.

Check out the full article over at Hexus.

Bellevue, WA. – December 22, 2005 – Valve, a leading entertainment and technology studio, unveiled a 64-bit version of its Source game engine technology today. The first 64-bit Valve games released will be native 64-bit versions of Half-Life 2 and Lost Coast, and have been developed to take advantage of AMD Athlonâ„¢ 64 FX processor-based systems – the ultimate 64-bit gaming platform for PC enthusiasts.

It’s about time we have another 64-Bit game to toy around with, and we already know how great it is! Let the benchmarking ensue. Check out the full press release here.

Home theater PCs are very popular these days, being able to use your PC to listen to the radio, watch movies, watch TV, record TV etc is something that more and more people are doing. What happens when you are on the road traveling with your laptop computer? Or maybe you only own a laptop. Finally a company has come up with a solution for you the laptop owner, Sicuro has developed a PCMCIA card that plugs into your laptop that allows you to do almost everything you can do on your home theater system, but it is portable. Sound interesting? Read on to find out more…

Check out the full review at Think Computers.

We have decided to revisit the Ballistix sticks for various reasons. Previously our testing was limited, now it is not. Ontop of this, CCU and I had a suspicion that Micron’s yields are very strong right now. The results show this, and are quite impressive for a $120 set.

Check out this great review over at EclipseOC.

We all know GeIL as a popular memory modules (RAM) manufacturer. GeIL sent us a small amount of their copper thermal compound. This tiny niche market is being dominated by Arctic Silver. Many large manufacturers fail to create high quality thermal compounds that can deal with the latest Arctic Silver products. Today, we are putting the GeIL copper thermal compound face to face against one of the best thermal compound solutions in the market. You’re right; it’s the Arctic Silver 5. We are going to find out about it pretty soon.

Check out the full review at NGOHQ.

Fremont, CA (December 22, 2005) – Corsair Memory, Inc., a worldwide leader in high performance memory and cooling products for enthusiasts and overclockers, today announced that it has furthered its commitment to the gaming community by hosting the first Corsair BattleField 2 (BF2) Infantry Cup online tournament. In association with Team Dignitas, one of the world’s top ranked gaming teams, online registration will take place on Team-Dignitas.com and tournament logistics will be handled by these professional gamers to ensure a successful tournament. The first Corsair BattleField 2 Infantry Cup will include sixty-four (64) teams from around the world to compete for the tournament title and prizes.

Check out the full press release here.

A new BIOS for the AW8 series has hit the Internet from the
folks over at Abit and implemented in this latest revision is support
for Intel’s Presler and Cedar Mill processors among other notable
improvements, while one of the major advancements is the belated support
for DDR2-800. This DDR2-800 (1:2 CPU:DRAM) ability comes after some
enthusiasts have accused Abit of blatant advertising attempts with its
memory.

Head on over to Phoronix for the full read.

One of the first companies that understood the importance of a
quality mouse pad is Func Industries. In this review, I will be taking a
look at Func’s concise, reputable line of gaming mouse pads. Though Func
was the first gaming pad company on the scene, they currently are not
alone. I will also be examining two vastly different pads from another well
renowned gaming pad company, Steelpad. Furthermore, I will check out the
latest pad from Steelpad’s sibling company, IceMat.

Check out the full roundup at A True Review.

Sometime ago I started experimenting with Avisynth in ffdshow, for filtering DVD playback in real-time. I soon found an extraordinary Avisynth script written by Didee on Doom9’s Avisynth forums called Limitedsharpen. This script was designed for the pre-processing of video and film prior to being encoded and burned to DVD or stored on hard drives. However I found if its settings were turned down enough it could be used in real time for DVD playback with amazing results and consequently Live TV as well.

Check out the full article at HardwareXL.

The old 32-bit processors that we all loved such as the Intel Pentium 4 and the AMD Athlon XP, could not address more than 4GB of memory. While this was an issue the move to 64-Bit computing did away with those concerns. Did you know that the current Intel Pentium 4 (EM64T) and AMD Athlon 64 (AMD64) desktop computer processors can handle 1024GB (1 Terabyte) of memory…

Check out the full article over at Legit Reviews!

When one seeks to quiet their computer system while retaining
from eliminating any of their cooling components they often turn to
noise dampening products for their fans as well as turning down the fan
speed. One of the areas often overlooked by enthusiasts is the noise
emitted from the power supply. With us for this review, we have the
SilverStone PP02 Power Supply Acoustic Cover, which is a simple yet
unconventional product for silencing your system.

Check out the full review over at Phoronix.

Michael J. Fox is heading Back To The Future for a fourth time-traveling movie. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, admits he’s in negotiations for a final film in the series – but only if they make his character as old as he is in real life. The former Spin City star wants to take over Christopher Lloyd’s eccentric scientist character, Doc, in the sequel.

This is not really tech news, but these movies were so great. I’m glad to see that another is likely in the works. Who would have thought? IMDB

Blake Ranking was a Eustis High School senior and still aching from a horrible crash three days earlier when he posted those words on blurty .com, a site for Web logs.

“It was me who caused it. I turned the wheel. I turned the wheel that sent us off the road, into the concrete drain . . .,” he wrote as his best friend, Jason Coker, 17, lay in a coma at Orlando Regional Medical Center. “How can I be fine when everyone else is so messed up?”

Blogs are a serious business, so I don’t know why anyone would post anything that they want to retract later. At least he get’s what he deserves. Check it out at Sun Sentinel.

PearPC, the PowerPC processor emulator capable of running Apple’s Mac OS X on x86, has released version 0.4.0 after more than a year’s wait. “This is the first release with G4 support by Daniel Foesch (you have to enable it in your config). Other features include support for native CD-ROMs (no need for images) and endianess safety (i.e. you can run PearPC on big-endian systems).” The full changelog is here, downloads are here.

If you feel like testing your patience and to have a little fun, check it out.

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.—21 December 2005— Seagate (NYSE: STX) and Maxtor (NYSE: MXO) today jointly announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Seagate will acquire Maxtor in an all stock transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies, Maxtor shareholders will receive .37 shares of Seagate common stock for each Maxtor share they own. When the transaction is completed Seagate shareholders will own approximately 84% and Maxtor shareholders will own approximately 16% of the combined company. The value of the transaction is approximately $1.9 billion.

Read the full Press Release.

U.S. prosecutors have charged three men with copyright infringement for allegedly selling modified Xbox consoles that enabled the original video game machine from Microsoft to play pirated games.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday named ACME Game Store co-owners Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, as well as Pei “Patrick” Cai, 32.

There’s no way that these dudes didn’t see this coming. What do you expect.. really? Check it out at News.com.

The Tech Zone is reporting on a new style of keyboard with just 53 keys. Departing from the normal QWERTY keyboard setup the ‘New Standard Keyboard’ designed by John Parkinson measures just 12.5 inches wide x 5 inches deep x 1 inch thick and is arranged in alphabetical order. The keyboard has been designed with ergonomics in mind keeping all keys within easy reach of the home position. The only question is, will everyone be willing to relearn how to type?

If you check out the article at the Tech Zone, I really can’t understand how that is a better layout. We are all used to the way to type now, so why bother changing. Check out the posting at Slashdot.

CNN is reporting that Google just acquired a 5% stake in AOL for $1 Billion, shutting Microsoft out of the deal.” Under this new agreement, among many other things, Google Talk will now interface with AOL’s instant messenger according to the announcement on Google’s site. From the announcement: “Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said: ‘AOL is one of Google’s longest-standing partners, and we are thrilled to strengthen and expand our relationship. Today’s agreement leverages technologies from both companies to connect Google users worldwide to a wealth of new content.’

In addition, Google is giving AOL $300 Million credit to purchase adwords. Wow, I don’t really see how Google wins. Check out the posting at Slashdot.

There’s a ton going on today! Centon is one memory manufacturor that doesn’t seem to get too much attention, but they seem to push out some very worthy modules. InsaneTek is taking a look at some of their DDR2 memory, and the only downside is that it’s only 1GB. Viper Lair is taking a look at the Corsair Voyager 4GB thumb drive, which we also took a look at a few weeks ago. They put it through many benchmarks and some unique tests!

If you are all about high-end, then you may want to check out GamePyres review of the Plextor PX740A burner. It doesn’t have an S-ATA connector like the 716SA, but it’s still a very worthy contender. If you are looking to buy a new laptop, but want to be able to game on it then you will want to check out Bit-Tech’s review of a great setup from Alienware, which comes with a 6800 Go!

Cases & Enclosures
• Mapower MAP-H31SS 3.5″ eSATA External Enclosure – Big Bruin
• Thermaltake Mambo – A1 Electronics

Cooling
• CoolJag JFK-1 Heatsink – Pro-Clockers
• EKL V8 AMD Athlon64 Heatsink – Frosty Tech
• Sunbeam Silent Storm – TweakPC
• Thermaltake Volcano 4005 – NV News

Memory & Storage
• Centon Advanced A2X512S26400LL 1GB Dual Channel Kit – InsaneTek
• Corsair Flash Voyager 4GB – Viper Lair
• Kingston 2GB DataTraveler Elite AES-128 Encrypted – PC Stats

Motherboards & CPU’s
• ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe – Bit-Tech
• Asus A8R-MVP Radeon XPress 200 – GamePC
• EPoX 8NPA+ SLI – Motherboards.org
• EPoX EP-5LDA+ GLi – Overclockers Online

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Bluetake BT450Rx I-PHONO Mini Headphones – Hardware Pacers
• HEC Win Power 480W – Techniz
• Logitech G7 – ByteSector
• mCubed miniNG 2 Channel Fan Controller – Think Computers
• Plextor PX740A Dual DVD/RW – GamePyre

Video Cards & Monitor
• ATI All-IN-WONDER X800XL PCI-E 256mb – Tech-Mods
• ATI Radeon X1800 CrossFire – AnandTech
• Gigabyte GV-RX18L256V-B Radeon X1800 XL 256MB – Hexus

Etcetera & Contests
• Alienware Area-51 m5700 notebook – Bit-Tech
• ARP Survey Contests – Rojak Pot
• Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t 2513 – Trusted Reviews
• Only 11 more days in the Extensive Mods “Holiday Ditty Contest” – Extensive Mods
• Universal Virus Database – Think Computers
• Verizon Motorola RAZR V3c – Design Technica
• VIA VT310-DP SFF – SFF Tech
• X-Micro Video MP3 400 – TweakPC