Content and news by Rob Williams

Google on Thursday launched its latest mobile search effort that links users to sites that have been designed specially for smaller screens.

To enable such a feature, Google has crawled the Web for pages built using XHTML and compiled a separate index from its standard search engine.

Read all about it at Beta News.

In an email to Fortune, chairman Michael Dell wrote, “If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers.” While hardly a firm basis for expecting Mac OS on Dell-branded machines, it nonetheless got keyboards clicking as experts weighed the benefits and pitfalls of such a deal.

Now that’s a big blow to Microsoft I’m sure. But.. this is a guy who doesn’t allow customers a choice of AMD processors, but would be more than happy to offer a ported OS? At any rate, check out the posting here.

Economical videocards of today allow users to experience all the same DirectX 9 eye candy that higher end models offer. This is quite a change from the past when both ATi and nVIDIA removed important features out of their low-end graphics processors in an attempt to cut costs. Times have changed for the better, and hopefully this will bring the world of full-fledged PC gaming to more consumers.

If you are looking for a budget card, check out the review at PC Stats.

NZXT takes the chassis of the Nemesis and slaps on a more stylish and sleek front panel. It’s not as crazy looking as the Nemesis but it’s still one great gaming case.

Head over to Insane Tek for the full review.

The chosen combination of Pentium M 770 and GeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB make for, without doubt, the fastest gaming laptop ever to grace HEXUS Labs, and I keep repeating this, ad nauseum, but it’s just so damn quiet. The screen’s pretty sharp, the keyboard’s above average, and the chassis looks pretty cool. With the £2099 asking price and gamers in mind, I’d urge Dell to pre-configure a model with a 7,200RPM hard drive for faster loading and, perhaps, look into a better base warranty. Other than that, though, I’m struggling to find bad points about it without resorting to nitpicking.

Check out the full review for this killer laptop at Hexus.

The OCZ PowerStream is equipped with three adjustable voltage rails, these include the 12V, 5V and 3.3V rails. Found on the back of the PSU is three LEDs along with three potentiometers for voltage adjustment from the outside of the case. The LEDs are tri-colored to allow voltage warnings for both over and under voltage. An over voltage will turn the corresponding LED red and an under voltage will turn the LED yellow. A green LED indicates a voltage within tolerance.

Check out the full review of this awesome PSU over at Big Bruin.

Greetings from the Central Wastelands! We’ve had a very interesting week, garnering a nice selection of E3 awards while the beta continues its steady progression. Auto Assault earned two awards for E3 2005, a Golden Cog (http://www.stratics.com/content/goldencogs/2005/golden_cogs_2005.php) from The Stratics Media Group for Best Gameplay, the other from TenTonHammer with an Editor’s Comment (0) -->

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and is also sometimes referred to as High Dynamic Range Imagery (HDRI) or High Dynamic Range Rendering (HDRR). The Dynamic Range is the ratio of the largest value of a signal to the lowest measurable value. Current 16-bit integer-based formats use colour component values from 0 (“black”) to 1 (“white”), but don’t allow for what is known as “over-range” values, for example, a whiter-than-white highlight glinting off a piece of metal.

This is an absolute fantastic article that I highly recommend checking out. This HDR tech is much cooler than I originally thought, and the screenshots will tell you what I mean. You can check out all the details on the technology over at Bit-Tech.

3D Chipset have the latest Beta Forceware drivers, the 77.62. They only work for 6 and 7 series cards, so I am sure that the only benefits to these drivers are for the upcoming 7800 GTX card.

If you want to check them out, head over to 3D Chipset.

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT) has sued four online retailers in California and Virginia for selling pirated software, the world’s largest software maker said on Wednesday.

Microsoft said it had received complaints from consumers and businesses who had purchased software from CEO Microsystems Inc. and Wiston Group Inc. in California. In Virginia, Microsoft sued #9 Software Inc., East Outlet LLC and Super Supplier LLC.

Microsoft is seeking an apparent $1M from each retailer. That should teach them. Read all about it at Yahoo News.

Mushkin Enhanced Memory Systems is a name familiar to most enthusiasts, one that holds great reputation for performance and quality. Today I will be reviewing the Mushkin XP4000 Redline memory kit. The Extreme Performance series (XP) is designed for hardcore PC enthusiasts, featuring tight timings of 2-2-2 and extreme overclocking potential. The XP4000’s main rival is the OCZ PC-4000 VX, which features many of the same qualities and performance specifications; hence I will be putting them head to head. So, read on to find out which to see how Mushkin’s XP4000 modules held up.

This is amazing looking memory. DDR500 @ 2-2-2! But, these timings require a nice 3.3v – 3.5v jolt, so I would imagine they would get real hot. Check out the full look at ByteSector.

It is hard to believe, but it has been since October 18th of last year since AMD released a faster speed grade. That CPU was the Athlon 64 FX55 which was released along with the 4000+, and came 5 months after the FX53 and 3800+. Then a picture of me, a bunch of our my lan party guys, and some model went up on the FX product page. Now back to the FX55 release. That was an astonishing 8 months ago, and is a far cry from 2000 when CPU releases were like full moons. You knew you were having one coming every month.

They easily overclocked it to 3.0GHz, so with a fair amount of tweaking, I’m sure it can go much higher. Check out the in-depth look at AMD Zone.

This week we made the first of several steps towards improving the process of gaining skills and skill points after ascension. In coming weeks, we will continue on this path, and will work to address the difficulty of unlocking items and runes for use in PvP. • Changed the XP requirements per Comment (0) -->

GamingNexus: First off can you talk about what products AGEIA is developing?
Andy Keane: AGEIA is developing the PhysX technology. This technology includes the PhysX processor, its supporting driver software and the PhysX software (NovodeX). This processor is expected to be available in PC add-in cards by Christmas 2005.

Very interesting interview. It seems that the prospected price will be between $250 – $300, pricy! It will also require a seperate power connecter and will eat up around 25w. Check out the full interview at GamingNexus.

NEW YORK – Gaming enthusiasts have figured out how to run unauthorized programs and games on the U.S. version of
Sony Corp’s new handheld game console.

Like its rivals, Sony had tried to keep its new PlayStation Portable on a tight leash, installing controls so it couldn’t run programs and games not vetted and licensed by the company.

Of course this was only a matter of time. It’s always just a matter of time. Check it out at Yahoo News.

Published on June 16, 2005

The prospect of overclocking a computer system can be intimidating for a computer newcomer, to say the least. The idea is simple enough; make the computer’s processor run faster than its stock speed to gain more performance without paying for it. The execution of this idea though, can be anything but simple.

Another great guide from PC Stats! Check it out here!

Stratics is pleased to announce our next UO House of Commons Developer Chat with the developers of Ultima Online on Thursday, June 16th. It will be at 5:00PM PDT / 7:00PM CDT / 8:00PM EDT / June 17th 12:00AM GMT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC. The topic of discussion will…..

If you want to get to 600DDR speeds with tight timings, TCCD chips are your only choice. If you want some of the best-implemented TCCD sticks made (and soon to be the only ones made), then Corsair is the deal. What surprised me most was how high the memory would go without any tweaking at all. Talk about plug and play overclocking! I have owned many sticks of Corsair over the years and have never had even one issue at all with any of them not exceeding my expectations in quality, reliability and sheer speed when overclocked. The TWINX1024-4400C25PT once again lives up to Corsair’s high reputation.

The memory turns out to be extremely speedy as one would expect. Check out the full review at BigBruin.

For those that have seen our earlier Vantec AeroFlow review this AeroFlow 2 has more cooling performance as it uses a more powerful fan. We have to say that the noise from this fan was not bad either, quite acceptable. The overall result being that this Vantec AeroFlow 2 is more powerful than the AeroFlow.

Seriously great looking cooler! How well does it perform? Check out the review at A1 Electronics.

I have the pleasure of introducing you to a fine keyboard from TypeMatrix. Nowadays, keyboards come in many different sizes, shapes and colors. This is a truly unique and innovative device that you might find helpful if you type a lot or suffer from an injury. Today, we have the TypeMatrix EZ-reach 2030 (QWERTY) Keyboard for review.

Companies first, have to realize that putting ‘EZ’ in a product name is NOT cool. At any rate, this is a very unique product, and you can check out the review at Think Computers.