Content and news by Rob Williams

If you’ve never heard of Mushkin’s infamous Black Level II BH5, you should be ashamed of yourself and quit this computer
hobby. Well Mushkin is back with blazing fast Winbond UTT BH5 but with a pretty red heatspreader.

Check out the full review at InsaneTek.

Clocked at 2.8GHz, the FX-57 continues the “San Diego” core AMD released with the FX-55, but is stepped up a paltry 200MHz faster. What’s interesting is that 200MHz on the Intel side of things doesn’t always mean that great of a performance gain – not so with AMD. Additionally, the revamped memory controller tweak introduced on the FX continues in this new chip and it means it’s not as particular as previous designs were with varying memory configurations.

If you are the ultra-gamer who needs the fastest, check out the review at GD Hardware. It comes in at 2.8GHz, and while the review doesn’t get into overclocking, I’m sure it would easily touch 3.4GHz at least. At least it should, considering the $1,000 price tag.

I just would like to spread the word and let everyone know, you can now find DVD Decrypter at: http://www.dvddecrypter.r8.org After a lot of hard work, I’ve brought the website back! The bad news is I lost all my programers which means until I find a new team I will only provide version 3.5.4.0 for download. If you have programming skills please e-mail me AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!! I’m looking for a wide range of people including reverse engineer, C++, C+ or anyone who knows how to update and maintain software programs!!

Glad he got the site back on it’s feet. I know a lot of people who were upset about the halting of the program. Read all about it here.

Users will be allowed to make three additional CD copies for their own use and to store the music files on their computer in a protected format from Microsoft.

Sony BMG’s new copy-protection effort comes with at least one downside: PC users are unable to transfer the songs to Apple’s popular iPod portable music player, because Apple has declined to make its software compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Media digital rights management (DRM) system.

Bah! These companies wonder why people are so quick to crack these schemes. We can pay $15 for a music CD, and not even be able to port it to the iPOD? Why not just download the album protection free instead? Sound good Sony? Read about it here. (No, I’m not endorsing that :P)

Published on June 18, 2005

In a strange twist, researchers at software giant Microsoft have ideas about how to improve BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, even though BitTorrent is often used for sharing copyrighted music, movies, and TV shows without the copyright holder’s permission.

Now that’s interesting. In the future, I could see people downloading Microsoft software illegally, via Microsofts means. Nutty. Check out the full posting at Red Herring.

Intel unveils a new advance Wi-Fi chip technology. The new technology extends the variable bandwidth current solutions use. The new solution will support data rates over 100 megabits per second, while at this moment 802.11g and 802.11a reaches a theoretical datarate of 54 Mbit/s.

Check out the full read over at Data Fuse.

The first beta of Longhorn Server looks like it will hit in early August, according to comments made earlier this week by Microsoft officials during a live chat session.

In the Wednesday online chat, Bob Muglia, the senior vice president in charge of the Windows server software line, fielded numerous questions, including several about the upcoming beta of the next generation server. He reaffirmed Microsoft’s earlier promise to deliver the beta this summer, shortly after the beta of the client edition of Longhorn goes public.

In August they are going to hold a chat dedicated to the Beta, which in itself is interesting. They don’t usually hold chats for a specific product. Check out the full posting at Information Week.

Although there are many ways to build your own remote relay for your computer, whether it be from dismantling an old garage door opener or building one from scratch, today we have a rare look at one of Logisys’ products thats under development. Today, we’ll be sharing some of our initial thoughts regarding the Logisys Remote Multifunction Panel.

Check out the full review at Phoronix! You can expect to see our review of this product in the coming days as well.

Antec is very well known for making excellent power supplies, cases, cooling fans etc, when I first heard about V-Cool, it immediately caught my eyes and ears. Why you ask? Well its simple, I just simply don’t want to risk the warranty of an expensive graphics card by replacing the stock cooler.

Check out the review at NGOHQ.

The Evercool NW11F-CLB825CA/LD2 is a socket 478 Pentium 4 heatsink based on a fairly standard design principle. Its clear plastic fan glows a nice bright blue thanks to three carefully placed LEDs, and noise levels are generally moderate. The extruded aluminum finned heatsink section is augmented with a 25mm diameter copper core insert that rests directly on the Pentium 4’s integrated heat spreader. The copper core helps to improve thermal transfer throughout the aluminum portion of the heatsink.

Head over to FrostyTech for the review!

Today more than ever before we are fortunate to have quality mice geared toward gamers. The most recent Logitech product that is making headlines is the Logitech® MX™518 Gaming-Grade™ Optical Mouse. Thanks to the staff at Logitech we are able to bring you our look at this sexy looking new mouse made just for us gamers.

Head over to NGOHQ for the full review.

This product is quite different than other cases on the market because of the Air-Conditioning Cooling System. This AirCon system will keep the inside of the case cooler than ambient outside temperature. A perfect solution for today’s super-fast computer system parts which radiate lots of heat. Also, the case has a sturdy steel construction. Watch the Video to find out more…

Head over to 3D Gameman for the full review.

Last time we took a look at a bag from Tom Bihn, we found that it was not your conventional laptop bag. It was a more stylish and modern bag. If that bag wasn’t quite your style we have another Tom Bihn bag for you, the ID. The ID is a more conventional laptop bag that you are used to seeing. So let’s get this review started and see if this bag can live up to the precedent that the Tom Bihn Buzz Laptop Bag set in it’s review.

Check out the full review of the bag at Think Computers.

The Xpert display is what puts this ram into a different category then the rest of what is on the market. With a 10 digit led display readout, LED bar activity lights, and Corsair sail logos on either end, you can’t go wrong. This display can display a variety of things, of which we will get into a little bit later.

Years ago, who would have pictured modules with a display? Thanks to Corsair, it’s possible. Check out the full review at Legit Reviews.

Meridian Technology is primarily a case manufacturing company that was started back in 1985. Their most recent creation is the line of XClio power supplies with SCFT (Super Cooling Function Technology). The XClio line ranges from 300W to 550W models, meet ATX12V v2.0 specs, and use a low-noise 120mm fan for cooling.

Check out the full review over at Extreme Overclocking.

Whenever a new game comes out there are always concerns of bugs and compatibility issues with certain hardware, Battlefield 2 appears to be no exception. Already there are numerous reports of problems with the multiplayer browser, which can lock up and performs sluggishly. Considering BF2’s emphasis on multi-player, this is an issue that EA/DICE should definitely look into for the game’s retail release next week. Some ATI users have also reported problems with BF2, but we didn’t encounter any issues during our testing with CATALYST 5.6 other than a few flashing textures at 2048×1536 with the X850 XT Platinum Edition, NVIDIA users are encouraged in the demo to use beta drivers, ForceWare 77.30, these are actually newer than the beta drivers NVIDIA provides on nZone!

They are comparing the two top offerings from both ATI and NVIDIA. Worth a read if you are looking to upgrade for this game, like so many are. Check it out at Firing Squad.

The two vendors had been offering a PC system running on an Athlon64 3200+ and Windows XP x64 Edition for just $250. In addition, customers could pick up a server system with two Opteron 246 chips and Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition for just $500. Those prices, which basically include Windows for free along with the motherboards, are well below market prices and were meant to tempt resellers, system builders and other partners to get on the 64-bit bandwagon. Microsoft only recently rolled out its 64-bit desktop and server operating systems for AMD’s chip and hoped a little brainwashing from 3pm to 10pm would push things along.

That IS a great deal, so it’s no wonder that they ran out so quickly. It’s going to be funny to see if the attendance to these events keep up though. Read the posting at The Register.

Just in case you’ve seen that web page floating around implicating Dell in some wacked out government conspiracy by suggesting they fit a 4mb keylogger between the keyboard end of some guy’s 600m and the Ethernet adapter, we’d like to point out a few key bits, having been inside a Dell laptop or forty.

Obviously, this is false. Why would Dell install keyloggers in laptops. One would think, that a company as large as Dell, would realize that someone, out of the millions of customers, would notice such a thing. Still.. it’s another funny hoax. Read Engadgets view.

Within minutes after the meeting was convened, the hackers – or ‘security researchers’ as they are known – had successfully lured a Windows laptop onto a malicious wireless network.

The unusual March gathering, a summit of sorts between delegates of the hacking community and their primary corporate target, illustrates how important security has become to the software behemoth.

Very unique gathering for sure. Good read though, you can check it out at Silicon.com.

NEW YORK – Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system.

“It’s terrible,” De Raadt says. “Everyone is using it, and they don’t realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, ‘This is garbage and we should fix it.'”

That’s an intense comment. Linux is hardly garbage. Complicated to some point, maybe. But garbage? Of course, it’s not surprise that he’s a coder for a BSD variant. Check out the full article at Forbes.