Content and news by Rob Williams

What’s most interesting about this edition is everything that’s not actually Windows XP: buyers will receive replica (e.g. not working) installation CDs of Windows 95, 98, Me, and 2000, Windows box origami, memorial stamps, memorial stickers, a memorial video from the man himself, and a special early “preview” version of Windows Vista, whatever that means.

Japan is certainly unique, but this is actually a funny pack. It would be rediculous to buy it if you already had WinXP, but it’s still different none the less. Check out more at Engadget.

One reason that many people don’t like jumping over to java coding is because it’s very complex, and difficult compared to something like C++. Even the latest version of C++ 2005 has a built-in IDE, which makes choosing Java even more difficult. It’s looking like Sun is finally moving up to the plate though, and is offering a Studio Creater program that looks a lot like Visual Studio… and it’s FREE.

Check out the full flash animation on the official site here. News snagged from Digg.com.

Ubuntu the Debian-based distribution funded largely by Mark
Shuttleworth that is focused upon building a viable desktop operating
system powered by Linux, as well as enterprise software after it has
received DB2 certification from IBM, has released their preliminary BETA
release for the upcoming v6.04 build. Unlike Breezy Badger (v5.10) with
its “Colony” development builds, Ubuntu has renamed the development
snapshots for the v6.04 release to “Flight”. The name for this upcoming
release is also going to be known as Dapper Drake. Continuing on with
their six month release cycle, Ubuntu 6.04 will be making its presence
in April of 2006. Today we are checking out Kubuntu (the KDE version of
Ubuntu) 6.04 Dapper Drake Flight 1.

Head on over to Phoronix for the full pictorial.

Everyone needs more storage, especially if you travel a lot with your laptop. We also need security and it is recommended we do regular backups. The new trend seems to be toward USB thumb drives, but the speeds just aren’t there yet, and the capacities are great for moving a few documents but not major files and programs. The next choice you then have is to either upgrade your hard drive or get an external hard drive, either choice is not great one. External hard drives are big and bulky for the most part and upgrading a laptops hard drive is usually costly and the technology isn’t there yet for large capacities. The same thing partially applies to desktop PCs as well, sometimes a CD or DVD is just not big enough to transfer the data you need, so you have to get a big and bulky external/portable hard drive. Today I have something for review that I found really cool and useful, it is a very small USB powered 2.5 inch hard drive from Apricorn called the Ez Bus.

Check out the full look over at Think Computers.

My game play is all about Battlefield 2 right now. The OCZ EL-DDR PC4000 Gold Edition kit has proved without a doubt to me that two gigs are a very worthwhile investment for gamers. You could get a rough feel for this in our graph but within a game, you get the emotionally positive feedback that does not translate well into rote figures and results. If you are not a gamer, I think you may be better off saving your upgrade dollar right now as the benefit isn’t earth shattering elsewhere.

Of course this memory if not very overclockable, but is recommended to those who have no interest in overclocking to begin with. Check out the full review over at Overclockers Cafe.

If you’re in the market for a top of the line external DVD burner keep this one at the very top of your list. It’s loaded with bleeding edge features and looks great. Additionally, it also can be connected to a USB2 or Firewire connection. What sets this drive apart from others is the ability to burn Dual Layer media at 4x. Burn, baby burn! Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full review at 3D Gameman.

Back in August of this year, we had reviewed the Abit AW8
motherboard, which is based upon Intel’s i955X Chipset, and overall we
were much impressed by its abilities on not only the performance front,
but also the Linux compatibility and build-quality we have come to
expect from the engineers over at Abit. At hand today, we have the Abit
AW8-MAX, which packs in a few tweaks and additions than what was built
into the AW8 vanilla.

Head over to Phoronix for the full review.

As we mentioned earlier the fans although only 60mm in size have 11 blades and according to the specs should not produce much noise, well for 60mm fans anyway. Having said that the size still has me in doubts about the overall performance, even with them acting in a push pull configuration.

Check out the full review at Xtreme Computing.

Professional Joysticks have advanced pretty far since the days of the Atari joystick, some of you may be too young to remember them, but they had a square base, 1 button and a short stick coming out of the middle. None of the stuff you see on today’s joysticks, and game pads were non-existent, unless you count the pads that came with Intellivision, I guess that was sort of a game pad. Today’s joysticks are pretty complicated, especially the high-end ones, with many buttons and customizations available to the professional gamer. Saitek is one of the companies that specialize in professional joysticks and game pads. Today for review I have the Saitek Cyborg Evo Force joystick. It could be considered a professional joystick for the hardcore gamer or enthusiast. It features many buttons and customizations, and has the force feedback feature as well.

Check out the full review at Think Computers.

The Athlon 64 X2 line is at the forefront of dual core technology, and while we’ve covered off the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and 3800+ in previous reviews, the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ and 4200+ processors offer a more compelling mix of high-end performance and feature a more mainstream pricing structure.

Head over to Sharky Extreme for the full review.

Well, it is that time of the year again. With Halloween done and over with its time for Thanksgiving and, before you know it, the holiday season. Every company realizes this and has made sure the stores are packed with cool new gadgets, gifts, and gizmos. This guide is going to go over a few of the items which appear of the wishlists of a few of the XYZ Computing staff members. Nothing too formal, but you can get an idea of some of the cool products to keep an eye out for this season.

Check out the full guide over at XYZ Computing.

id Software has released v1.0.5 of Quake 4 and contained
inside of this latest release is a great deal of fixes/improvements from
the interface to console commands. In addition, the Linux SDK for Quake
4 is now available for download. Although none of these changes
specifically relate to the frame-rate performance of this fast-paced
first person shooter, are there any other improvements to note? With us
today we have benchmarks from this latest id Quake 4 build.

Check out the full performance look at Phoronix.

All too frequently, we hear tragic stories of how videogames are allegedly to blame for violence and corruption. Please join me in my crusade to help turn that misconception around and show that games (and the people who play them) have a lot of great things to offer.

Pann

As we alluded to in last month’s preview, F.E.A.R. is the first notable attempt in a year at toppling the crown of valves epic Half-Life 2; a game that also seemed to have some similarities to busses where time keeping is concerned, although none at all when it comes to a rewarding experience.

What we looked at then seemed extremely promising but have Monolith come up with a classic, and should we all be searching for a spare pair of pants?

Check out the full review over at Guru 3D.

Gen Con So Cal kicks off at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California this Friday, November 18 and continues through Sunday, November 20. NCsoft will be there and invites you to stop by booth 129 to say hello to members of the community and development teams of various NCsoft games.

We’ll be having special NCsoft Free Game times in the eGame Arena LAN Center, featuring Guild Wars, City of Heroes, City of Villains and Lineage II. At the booth, there will be trivia contest, raffles, Lineage II PvP tournaments and gameplay with Guild Wars, City of Villains, City of Heroes, Lineage II and Auto Assault! We hope to see you there!

KDE (K Desktop Environment) has unveiled its first release
candidate for the upcoming KDE v3.5 series. Implemented in KDE v3.5 RC1
are a good deal of changes and improvements. These latest
implementations range from re-writing parts of Kate to improving Kicker
and KHTML for Konqueror. The first LiveCD distribution to be built with
the first release candidate for KDE v3.5 has been Klax. This
distribution, which is based upon Slax, utilizes this K Desktop
development release while also updating various other packages.
Coincidently, the GNOME v2.13.2 development branch became available
earlier this week in anticipation of GNOME v2.14 that is scheduled for a
preliminary release in March of 2006. As of right now, KDE v3.5 is
targeted to be released on Wednesday, November 23, 2005.

Take a first look at the next version of this popular desktop over at Phoronix.

The use of notebooks also as game pc replacement extends more and more,
because prices are getting lower. So we made a ranking of mobile graphics
chips. Everyone, who wants to know how performant his graphics chip in the
notebook is, can easily get an overview in our new “mobile graphics card
ranking”. Hafe fun with this Ranking and a good overviews! The 3DChip-Team.

It’s not English, but it’s easy to understand! Check out the full guide at 3D Chip.

Legit Reviews has recently had the opportunity to look over SEVEN PC2-6400 memory kits from some of the most popular enthusiast brand lines here in North America. Our three memory kits came from A-DATA, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ, and SyncMAX. All of the kits are rated at PC2-6400 or DDR2 800MHz and are meant to be used in overclocking situations. While all seven brands are rated at 800MHz, this is where the similarities end…

This is a great article if you are looking for some DDR2. They compare some of the hottest modules from A-Data to SyncMax. Check it out at Legit Reviews.

There are a couple great memory reviews today, including the OCZ XTC PC3200 at techPowerUp! and GeIL ONE PC3200 at Pro-Clockers. Both are 1GB kits but offer some serious overclocking headroom. Of course, if you missed our review of the OCZ XTC, you can check it out here. If you are looking for DDR2 though, X-Bit is taking a pair of Kingstons for a test run.

Accessories
• The Black Knight HP Gaming Mouse Pad – A True Review

Cases & Enclosures
• Antec P160W P160 Aluminum ATX Mid Tower – TweakNews
• Max-In-Power B9701C9 ATX Case – Cowcotland

Cooling
• Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro – Hi-Tech Reviews
• Gigabyte GV-NX66T256DE Silent Pipe II Cooler – Sudhian
• Noctua NH-U12 & NH-U9 Cooler – Legion Hardware
• Thermalright SI-120 Heatsink – OCIA

Memory & Storage
• GeIL ONE W BH5 PC3200 400MHz DDR – Pro-Clockers
• Kingston HyperX KHX7200D2K2-1G – X-Bit Labs
• OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Gold GX XTC – techPowerUp!
• Patriot Dual Channel 2GB DDR PC 3200 – AMD Zone
• Samsung Spinpoint 250GB PATA – Tech-Mods

Motherboards & CPU’s
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ CPU – AMD Board
• ECS KN1 SLI Extreme – Hot Hardware

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Antec Phantom 500 & TrueControl II 550 PSU – Noticias 3D
• CoolMax CW-650T 650W PSU – Club OC
• Logisys Black Illuminated Office Pro Keyboard – Extensive Mods

Video Cards
• ATI All-In-Wonder X800XL – Viper Lair
• Gigabyte Radeon X1800XL – TweakTown

Etcetera
• A Digital Photography Odyssey, Volume 1: The Digital Lens –XYZ Computing
• Building a change management lab for a Microsoft Server environment – Geek Extreme
• Fuji FinePix E900 Digital Camera – Design Technica
• Highspeed PC Tech Station – Paradise|OC
• Modding: Metal Leafing – Case Mod God
• Talk Back: Vol. 3: All Hands On Decks – Design Technica

Press Release
• OCZ Technology Announces the Revolution CES 2006 Celebration, Co-hosted by DFI – Read PR

Microsoft Genuine Windows Validation process now works in Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. Firefox users can manually install the Windows Genuine Advantage validation Firefox plug-in available on Microsoft’s website to complete the Windows validation process.

Well about time Microsoft supported something other than IE for this type of thing. Check out the full posting at NeoWin.