Content and news by Rob Williams

After refreshing our knowledge about hard drive technology we finally got to sit down and take a closer look at the new Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ. This is Samsung’s first offering to the Serial ATA2 market and we were curious if it would live up to the high standards SATA has laid down.

Wondering if S-ATA2 is for you? Check out the review at 3D Accelerated.

You have not seen too many mousepad reviews on our site. After I invented the lighted mousepad concept, the GlowPad, I just didn’t seen any that interesting mousepads around. A year ago I spotted this product that is bit more unique than the rest of the competition. Ulti-mat is a Finnish product that offers durable and slippery mousing surface for hardcore gamers. How this is achieved is what makes the product so different from others. Read on to find out more and also see what other possible uses this kind of metallic mousepad can have. In MetkuMods style naturally! ;)

Check out the full review at Metku Mods.

A short walk from Fulham Broadway tube station, past the evil edifice of Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, lies the London headquarters of Rockstar Games. The glass and steel structure is a far cry from the gritty streets of San Andreas. But it was here that I had the opportunity to play both the Comment (0) -->

According to the latest update to w3schools browser statistics, Firefox has climbed to 25% of the browser market and Internet Explorer 5/6 has dropped to 64.8%. W3schools is a very popular site with web developers and has shown Firefox increasing and Internet Explorer decreasing since before Firefox hit version 1.0 (although they classed it as just Mozilla back then). If you add the full Mozilla suite’s market share to that of Firefox, then the Mozilla browsers are just under 30% market share now.

As much as I love Firefox, the fact that it is becoming more popular doesn’t impress me, but the fact that IE usage is decreasing makes me satisfied. Check it out here.

Chief Executive Eric Schmidt shared the dirt in Seattle last week at the Technology Alliance luncheon: “Every few months we announce a new strategy,” he said, “which is basically the old strategy modified.”

So that’s what it takes to reach a $266 stock price.

Well, it’s obvious Google has one hell of a strategy, that works. Check out the full article here.

For the month of May in our Phoronix contest, we asked our readers “What do you look for most in a computer case?” Well, now that the contest is over, we have randomly selected a mere 500 of these results to publish. Check out this 10-page article to see just what enthusiasts like you are after in a computer chassis.

Wow, this is a huge list. Some comments are extremely half-assed, but fun to read none-the-less. Check it out at Phoronix.

After our first successful monthly contest here at Phoronix, we are back at it again this June. For this month, we have THREE items to award TWO randomly selected participants. These items include one Ripper XL, one Mad Dotz Monster Pack, and one Mouse Bungee (white). The June question of the month is “What three items are most important in making an excellent mouse pad?

Entering is easy, so check it out at Phoronix.

Today we’re looking at a rather rarely-seen-reviewed and inexpensive computer peripheral—the “card” reader. In terms of “cards”, it is referring to the CompactFlash/Smart Media/Secure Digital/Microdrive/xD-picture/Memory Stick type of card products used today in the extremely popular market of portable media devices. However small it may be, I realized recently (in a bit of frustration) that your card reader’s performance is something that no matter what portable media device you have, is important.

Great portable device for reading/writing to your memory cards while on the road. Check it out at Think Computers!

The Inquirer has a lot of leaked info on the new ATI CrossFire. How accurate all of this info is, we can’t be sure until it’s officially unveiled at Computex.

Apparently, you will need a “Master Card”, which is an official ATI produced video card, that will connect to your other ATI card. ATI is supposed to be the only company to produce the Master Card. You can actually see a picture of the card here.

They also have a picture of how the two cards will be connecting, via the external dongle. You can see that pic here.

The editor notes that unlike SLi, CrossFire will improve ALL games, not just the ones with set profiles. Also, two X850XTPE’s beat out two 6800U’s by 10% in 3D Mark 2005. They even said that it is 60% faster in NFSU: 2, and 100% faster in ‘a’ Splinter Cell game.

More information and stats can be found here. Again, the resource may be incorrect on some things. We will find out a lot more I’m sure this coming Tuesday, so stay tuned.

Corsair continues their watercooling line with products from Swiftech. Sure they didn’t actually manufacture it but they do make a nice bundle at a great price. Plus you get a green bracket that Swiftech doesn’t offer.

Check out the full review over at InsaneTek.

Finally, Ahead has released a trial version of NeroLinux, which you can snag here. It still will cost a lot if you wish to purchase it though, but it is still worth checking out.

You can check out our review of the program here, for info. Thanks to Fabio for letting us know about the free trial.

We all know that OCZ has made themselves very famous for reliable and fast memory and they just released this Titanium series that is supposed to be stable for servers, gamers etc. We got a sample of their dual kit to try out to see how it performs and if it really is as stable as they say it is, so we decided to compare it to OCZ gold series and a pair of Mushkin sticks to see the difference.

Check out the full review at Red & Blackness.

Home Theater PCs are all the rage these days, but is it possible to find a model that can fit into your living room without looking horribly out of place? While most geeks can easily build one from a small-form factor PC, it might look strange sitting next to your TV and VCR.

Check out the full review at Toms Hardware.

You’ve tweaked and tweaked your system, but you realized your ram is holding you back. Now as most overclockers know, you can gain some stability and a few more MHz from your RAM if you up the voltage. Unfortunately a lot of motherboards max out around 2.8V while most quality ram sticks can increase their top speed safely by just pushing up the ram voltage to 3.0V.

This is quite an innovative product! Check it out here.

All wrapped up in the very stylish G5 XPC chassis, the ST20G5 has a whole lot going for it. Until Shuttle pair nForce4 with the G5 chassis, there’s arguably no better teeny PC to place a Socket 939 CPU and a PCI Express graphics board into.

Check out the full review at Hexus.

PCI Express isn’t just about increased bandwidth. It also offers better power management, including native hot-plug support. And, although the physical interface is not backwards compatible, the driver architecture is. So PCI products can rapidly be moved over to PCI Express with little rewriting of software needed to make them work.

The articles primarily targetted to people who do video editing on the computer, but it’s a great article, and explains a lot about the PCI-E technology. Check it out at Hexus.

The board is based around the 6th generation Intel 8500 core logic and supports 4-way, 64-bit Intel Xeon Processors, and the chipset also has full dual-core Xeon support. It has the ability to use 16 DDR2-400 ECC Registered Memory modules, supporting hot-swap, memory raid – sparing/mirroring.

Wow.. that’s all I can say. You gotta check out the pictures.. this is one incredible looking setup! Check it out at Hexus.

A good tripod is a necessity for any serious photographer. And when it comes to tripods, the Italian firm of Manfrotto is an expert.

Today, Adrian will take an in-depth look of the Manfrotto 190PROB professional tripod, which is sold in the US as the Bogen 3001BPRO. Let’s see what this professional tripod can do!

Check out the full review over at Rojak Pot.

Of all the games now on the market that offer native Windows and Linux support, one of the most popular games has been Doom 3 from id Software. Earlier this week a new patch (v1.3.1302) was released to the general public and here at Phoronix, we have analyzed the performance of this latest patch and now our findings have been published.

For the indepth look and comparison benchmarks, head over to Phoronix.

This is the ultimate Home Theatre PC case! What sets it apart from others is the Vacuum Fluorescent Display and Remote Control. The VFD shows a wealth of information and it’s quick and easy to set up. Additionally, the included Remote Control completes this case and makes it a top product in the HTPC market. The overall build quality and design are exceptional plus it has great air circulation and plenty of room to work. Wow! Watch the Video to find out more…

For the full video review, head over to 3D Gameman.