Content and news by Rob Williams

The company says the software’s new Flash video encoder will deliver some of the industry’s highest-quality video at the smallest file sizes. A new plug-in will allow video editors to export creative work directly for the Web in Flash Video format, which is “playerless” and embedded directly in Web pages.

As previously reported, analysts have touted the new tool, released in beta form in July, for those Web video capabilities. They said the software could give Microsoft’s Windows Media technology, RealNetworks’ Real format and Apple Computer’s QuickTime format a run for their money.

I personally can’t wait to see how good the new Dreamweaver is, but if Flash is your thing, check out the posting ZD Net.

The Asus A8N-SLI Premium includes IEEE 1394a Firewire, two Gigabit NICs, 7.1 channel audio and an additional Serial ATA/RAID controller (for a total of 8 SATA headers). In terms of expansion, the motherboard offers up one PCI Express x1 slot, one PCI Express x4 slot and three traditional 32 bit PCI slots to the two PCI Express x16 sockets. Finally, the board can be used with any Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX CPU currently on the market, and up to 4GB of PC3200 DDR-RAM can be installed.

Check out the full review at PC Stats.

SAN FRANCISCO (LinuxWorld Conference & Expo)—09 Aug 2005—Novell and MySQL AB today announced an agreement to deliver enhanced, combined support for key components of the popular open source LAMP infrastructure stack. Under the reseller and joint-support agreement, the only accord of its kind between a Linux* vendor and MySQL AB, Novell will now offer subscriptions to the MySQL Network commercial database service directly to its customers. As a result, customers can now deploy a true enterprise-class open source foundation for their IT infrastructure with confidence.

“As the largest social networking site on the Web, Friendster’s 19 million registered users rely on a system that handles over one billion database queries a day,” said Dave Kochbeck, director of technology at Friendster. “We have found MySQL running on SUSETM Linux to be the ideal combination for us. With the availability of MySQL Network direct from Novell, many more customers will now benefit from affordable, enterprise-grade database technology backed by Novell’s world-class support team.”

Check out the full press release here.

The Thermaltake Armor has its faults but with a few tweaks here and there I really believe Thermaltake can deliver a Case capable of stellar performance and quality. At $160 I feel we have to be hard on this Case, Cooler Master, Lian Li and Silverstone would all fall into this price point. We need to see features like aluminum Power and Reset buttons, and replace other areas that are plastic with something that will last – overall this Case is a great stepping point for Thermaltake.

Check out the full review over at 3D Xtreme.

While there’s no doubt that there is a demand for the 8800, with many retailers reporting it outstripping supply, it has to be said that there is no real technical reason why you should want to own an 8800. Its old technology in a new shell and even that loses its appeal very quickly.

Wow, this phone is amazing looking! Head over to Hexus for the review!

No matter what, we found these SteelPad Steel sound 5H gaming headphones to be very comfortable and give very good sound reproduction. We were more than happy with them as we are sure you will be as well.

Head over to A1 Electronics for the review.

Cooler Master’s Centurion 5 was a great case that provided good airflow with great looks. The Centurion 531 is one of Cooler
Master’s newest Centurion cases that continues the same trend.

Head over to InsaneTek for the full review!

If you use your mouse a lot and haven’t gotten yourself a good
mouse pad, then you don’t know what you are missing. Just the other day I
gave my friend a spare gaming pad that I had and he was simply amazed at
how smooth the mouse moved. This explains why more and more people are
throwing away those cheap pieces of plastic and going with quality. It also
explains why more and more companies are producing high quality gaming
pads. Ulti-Mat is no exception, producing what they call a revolutionary
mouse pad targeted to serious gamers.

Check out the full review over at A True Review.

Well My future’s so bright I gotta wear shades… Ok, now I’m showing my age here because not many of you got that I bet. Any who… Today you get blinded by the light; we have for your viewing pleasure the Logisys Double CCFL Fan Kit. Logisys has become a fairly standard brand in the computer market and is known for quality products. I like lights, flash and whatever makes my case stand out from the rest at a LAN. I was excited to be getting this item for review; will it live up to my hopes and aspirations? Read on and let’s find out. Before I start let me throw in a thank you to Logisys for this fine piece of lighting.

Head over to Think Computers for the full review!

Compucase may not be the first name you think of when shopping for a case, but as the US source for HEC Group cases, they may be worth consideration the next time you want to find a new home for your system. Today we are taking a look at the HEC Group 6C28 ATX PC Case. The case is a mid tower model that combines a good mix of looks, features and functionality, even if the name leaves a lot to be desired.

Check out the full review at Big Bruin.

The Samsung MP0804H has certainly gone through a lot and it shined in its tests. When used as an external unit, its faster than NAS units and has a lot more capacity than typical flash drives. As an internal drive, I felt an immediate rejuvenation in performance.

Head over to Overclockers Online!

With a CAS of 1.5 at 400MHz DDR this is some seriously sexy memory! The complete timing is a blistering 1.5-2-2-5 at 400MHz DDR. While this is brilliant it can be overclocked to 600MHz DDR using a timing of 2.5-4-4-7. It’s available in a single 512MB module or 512MB and 1GB Dual Channel kits. Affordable memory that kicks butt! Watch the Video to find out more…

Check out the full video review over at 3D Gameman.

Centon has given us a first look at an overclocker-calibre dual-channel DDR memory kit. The two 512MB GEMiNI PC3200 dual-channel DIMMs we are testing in this review are rated to run at 200 MHz with 2-2-2-5 timings, at a voltage of 2.6V. The GEMiNi memory seemed to like running with 2.8V and it easily passed the 240 MHz mark with 2-2-2-5 memory timings. Pretty impressive! To get past 242 MHz however, we had to dramatically increase voltage to 3.4V!

Very nice, DDR480 speeds at 2-2-2 timings is nice. Quite the jump in required voltage though to get higher.. Check out the full review over at PC Stats.

Looking to mod out your rig with some CCFL tubes and fans? Overwhelmed by the number of choices? Well today’s review might help you narrow down your choices a little bit. Logisys has provided us with their 120mm CCFL can and a 15″ CCFL light. Yes, 15″. Perhaps the only 15″ on the market!

If you want to add some life to your PC, check out the full review over at Phoronix.

When one overclocks in the 32-bit world, we expect higher results. After all, a faster computer should lead to faster processing no matter the application, right? The next logical question is whether benchmarks would see similar results in a 64-bit computing environment? PCStats thought it would be interesting to see how overclocking is affected on the WindowsXP x64 Edition platform by illustrating both 32-bit and 64-bit benchmarks for an AMD Athlon64 4000+ based system. Would the test platform be stable enough to overclock successfully? Would WindowsXP x64 Edition require a more stable processor than its 32-bit counterpart does?

Interesting idea, and I’m surprised I didn’t investigate this further myself. Sadly, as expected, the results didn’t prove as high as they did on the 32-Bit version. Check out the full details over at PC Stats.

SAN FRANCISCO (LinuxWorld Conference & Expo) – Aug. 8, 2005 – Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SEBL), a leading provider of customer-facing solutions, and Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL), a leading provider of infrastructure software and services, today announced that they have extended their partnership to provide support for Siebel business applications on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. The broadened scope of complementary offerings will enable their customers to deploy mission-critical Siebel applications on an open source platform, backed by enterprise-class support and the flexibility to choose from a wide range of hardware options.

Siebel Systems’ product development team will work directly with Novell’s engineering organization to take full advantage of Novell’s Linux platform. The extended development partnership will deliver support for standards-based computing solutions and optimize the Siebel suite of applications to meet the performance and scalability needs of the most demanding business requirements, while providing a lower total cost of ownership to the enterprise.

Check out the full press release here!

Till today, notebook users have to content with a single hard disk and often a small one at that. Hard disk sizes of 40GB and 60GB are not only unheard of but actually in common use!

Today, we are going to take a look at the new Seagate 120GB Momentus 5400.2 PATA notebook hard disk, which not only comes with 120GB of storage space but also 8MB of cache!

Now our notebooks don’t have to suffer with a lack of HDD space! Check out the full review over at Rojak Pot!

Summarising the Quiet PC/TNN 300 system is quite simple, really. It’s a niche product that will appeal, in no uncertain terms, to a select bunch of users that value silence above all else. If you happen to be one of them, the TNN 300 is a pretty unique product that will appeal to you. For the rest who don’t mind the noise made by a few fans, you’ll wonder what the fuss is about. We try to view products in relation to how well they fit their intended purposes. In that case, then, the Quiet PC/Zalman TNN 300 system is a well-executed idea with significant practical benefits to the right type of buyer.

Head over to Hexus for the full review!

ATI, and by inference Rockdirect, has hit back with the Mobility RADEON X800 XT 256MB GPU, boasting hither-to unseen levels of notebook performance. Put quite simply and without adding hyperbole on top, it’s the fastest mobile 3D solution to date, and it’s almost as fast as a desktop ATI RADEON X850 XT 256MB. That’s serious food for thought, isn’t it?

Check out the full review of this killer notebook over at Hexus!

Here we have updated our earlier review guide list of ATI Radeon graphics, video cards that are currently available. We have included what we hope is enough details allowing you to see clearly what differences there are between the different types of ATI Radeon graphics, video cards made without making our review table list somewhat over complicated.

Check out the full guide at A1 Electronics.