Content and news by Rob Williams

“Having gotten used to heatpipes for air cooling, I had some concerns of how the Vortex TX would compare against those coolers. Overall, the Vortex TX had a strong showing and managed to more or less tie the Hyper 48 but it couldn’t hold a candle against the Hyper 6. Keep in mind that the Hyper 6 is quite a bit bigger, and uses two fans at high settings for maximum performance.”

Check out the full review at Viper Lair.

“Holding the PSP up against the DS and Gizmondo, I’d say that there’s more on the PSP for the older gamer. The WIFI function makes it an attractive proposition for mobile surfing if Sony do a deal with a UK based ISP with national wireless coverage. How many early teen kids are going to want to bother converting MPEGs to copy onto their PSP? Or music or photos for that matter? No, given the complexity of the PSP, it’d be better used and give more satisfaction the older gamer… say late teens onwards.”

Check out the full review at Hexus.

“As you may have guessed, this is more than just an external hard drive. This “MPEG4+MP3 jukebox” allows you to store images, videos, and music on the internal hard drive, organizing and playing them back however you like. It’s significantly cheaper (and smaller) than any HTPC and with the exception of games and the possible use of applications, can do all the same things.”

Check out the full review at MikhailTech.

Modders know. If you want a pimpin’ looking computer, you want to deck it out with UV and LED’s. AC Ryan, once again to the rescue, delivers Blackfire4 fans, that are both UV, and contain 4 LED’s. See how they performed, and look, in our review.

“Intel has rigged up a Wi-Fi hotspot just 80km from the North Pole, presumably so that Sir Ranaulph Fiennes and his ilk can check his email next time they take a little stroll across the ice-pack.

The hotspot was set up by two Intel employees who recently went on an expedition to ninety degrees north. The adventurous staffers installed an 802.11b/g access point at the main camp site, and a wireless LAN of three IBM T41 and T42 Centrino notebooks.”

I guess it’s only a matter of time before we get a Wi-Fi access point installed on the moon. Check out the posting at The Register.

“MARKHAM, Ontario, Apr 14, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) — ATI Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ATYT) (TSX:ATY), the global leader for PC graphics, today announced that its Radeon® 9800 SE graphics processors have been selected to power a new line of high-performance multimedia PCs by DEPO Computers, Russia’s largest manufacturer of PC systems. DEPO Ego 360 PCs powered by ATI’s Radeon 9800 SE will be available in major Russian retail stores including Eldorado, Technosila, M Video, MIR, Auchan, METRO, Beliy Veter and Polaris.”

How any PC with a 9800SE could be considered ‘High-Performance’, I’ll never know. Check out the Press Release here.

“Ask for a good air cooling solution for your socket A rig and most people around here will say Thermalright. I used an SLK 800U for a long time with great satisfaction. They have been leaders in air cooling for many years now. The SI-97 I’m reviewing here is a heat pipe type cooler and very different in design from the SLK series I’ve come to know and love.”

Great looking cooler! Check out the full review at Pimp Rig.

“In the past couple of years, games have become more and more immersive, providing lifelike graphics and rich, multidimensional sound. To keep up, PC sound systems have become more and more sophisticated with full surround sound, satellite speakers, and powerful subwoofers. Unfortunately, these systems can be expensive and they require a lot of space to be entirely effective. Luckily for space-conscious gamers on a budget, eDimensional has introduced the AudioFX Force Feedback Headset, which provides the full rumbling sound of a large surround-sound system in an affordable and comfortable headset.”

Check out the full review over at Gamespot.

There is certainly no shortage of DS2 Interviews and Previews lately, it’s great to see, since this game is going to ROCK. PDS: Will the camera in DS2 be more free than in DS1? Will we be able to look out at the world a little bit more instead of the strict Comment (0) -->

“We recently spoke with Manju Hegde, CEO and Chairman of AGEIA Technologies Inc, in order to get the scoop on their PhysX chip and the NovodeX Physics SDK, the first and only multithreaded physics API capable of unleashing the power of the PhysX chip, as well as multiprocessor gaming systems.”

This could be the next killer graphics technology. It’s a great review, so definitely check it out at Team X-Box.

“The TravelMate 8104WLMi is the first Sonoma notebook to appear from Acer, and it’s a pretty good first effort. The brushed silver finish is a bit samey these days, but it still looks good – having the Acer logo placed in the corner of the lid rather than the middle is also commendably different. With dimensions of 363 x 266 x 34mm (WxDxH) and a weight of 2.8kg, the 8104WLMi just about falls into the portable notebook category. In fact, it looks a lot smaller than it is, and doesn’t feel like too much of a burden when carried around.”

This is a great looking Notebook. They have done the usual slew of benchmarks, and it get’s some nice results. Check it out at Trusted Reviews.

“Anyone who follows MMORPGs or computer games in general knows about the phenomenon that is World of Warcraft. Even the most jaded observer has to be impressed by the success of the game, especially in a genre that many felt had peaked and was settling into a more steady growth pattern. As Comment (0) -->

” Well the rumours, innuendo and speculation continue apace today as another purported design document leak pins the Xbox 2’s specs as boasting a fairly whopping 512Mb of UMA system memory.”

Read about the rumor at Computer and Videogames. That’s a lot of Memory for a console..

Nvidia has released a new driver set today, the 71.89. It’s funny, because the 71.90 drivers, unofficially, have been on the net for a couple weeks. Here are the primary updates in the drivers:

• Support for the GeForce 6200 with TurboCache™, NVIDIA PureVideo™, and NVIDIA SLI™
• Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 1.5 support
• Resolved problem with overclocking not working when running GPUs in SLI mode.

Get the driver from the official Nvidia Site.

“Over 2.6 million people visited the Firefox website to download the open source browser in March, according to newly published data from Nielsen//NetRatings.

Men were responsible for 71 per cent of the downloads, and the data analysis firm identified the typical user of the browser as an early adopter of technology and gadgetry.”

Go go Firefox. Sure, it still has some issues, but in Security and Features, it leaves IE way behind. Read about it at VNUnet.

“Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled the public beta of its upcoming Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager application, which is aimed at integrating disk-to-disk and near-continual data protection into its server platforms.”

This is primarily for Servers, and not home use. We will see how much data is saved with this Software. Maybe. Check it out at Information Week.

Alacritech sued Microsoft in August 2004, alleging that Microsoft’s existing and future operating systems containing the “Chimney” TCP offload architecture use Alacritech’s proprietary SLIC technology. The disputed code, designed to eliminate network processing bottlenecks, crops up in the Scalable Networking Pack for Windows Server 2003 as well as Longhorn. Alacritech argues that Microsoft’s software violates two of its patents relating to scalable networking, US Patent No. 6,427,171 and US Patent No. 6,987,868, both entitled Protocol Processing Stack for use with Intelligent Network Interface Device.

Read about it at Channel Register.

“The new version of the Mac operating system will go on sale on Friday April 29, at 6pm. Jobs joked: “This is one of those rare occasions when a major software release is actually early.” Microsoft has been criticized for constantly delaying the release of Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system, due in 2006.”

Who knows.. if he’s right about how great it is, maybe we will all be looking into a Mac soon. Check it out at Macworld.

“Griffin received a unanimous voting margin from the Senate yesterday, which was actually earlier than they had initially intended. However, by urging of the Senate Commerce Committee co-chairmen, Griffin was confirmed and is now ready to take over the leadership responsibilities.”

If space interests you, read about it here.

“The Recording Industry Association of America brought 405 copyright infringement lawsuits against the students of 18 colleges and universities yesterday in a strike aimed at users of the popular file-sharing program i2hub, which runs on the university computer network known as Internet2. None of the lawsuits targeted Dartmouth students.”

It’s noted in the article that each infringed work could be a $750 to $1,500 fine. Total Number of Songs * Fine. Ouch. Check it out at Dartmouth Online.