Content and news by Rob Williams

“Back in 2002, Chris Taylor, most famous for his ground-breaking RTS Total Annihilation applied his “kill everything and make stuff go ‘boom’” sensibilities to the RPG world. The result was Dungeon Siege, a fun, fast-paced Diablo-style dungeon crawl where players could apply all manner of sharp weapons to the denizens of the Comment (0) -->

“I’ll save you the standard rhetoric about PSUs being an under-rated (no pun intended) part of the PC. It’s pretty clear from the explosion in “luxury” PSU availability over the last couple of years that many consumers do indeed feel the PSU requires some consideration before purchase. Whether they’re considering stable power under load, or the quietest possible unit, or simply the one with the brightest LEDs, depends on the person in question. For this reason I hope to bring some products to your attention and compare their features and performance.”

They have some great PSU’s in there, by top rate companies. Be sure to check out the review at Overclockers Austrailia.

“MARKHAM, Ontario, Mar 29, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Toronto – A panel of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has approved a settlement agreement between Staff of the Commission and ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY)(NASDAQ:ATYT) relating to allegations that in 2000 the company did not make timely disclosure of a shortfall in earnings and made a misleading statement to staff of the OSC in the context of an investigation by Staff.”

It’s Canadian money, so it’s not *so* bad. It will buy a lot of Tim Horton coffee though. Check out the PR on the ATI site.

“It’s hard to get ahold of a good tank that takes quite abit of water and is not in the way. I have seen several of them that are outside the case or mounted on the pump but they still don’t quite make the rating of a good tank. Tonight we have a very nice looking watertank from Swiftech on our hands as it’s mounted in a 5.25 drive bay slot so it dissapears out of your way, yet it still seems to be able to hold the amount of water you need to run a cool system.”

If you have, or plan to get a Water Cooling system, check out this review.

“A decision by SBC not to work more closely with Vonage, made public Wednesday, may delay efforts to fix the problem that keeps a majority of U.S. Net phone providers from successfully routing 911 calls to the right emergency calling center. Many of those 911 calls are instead sent to nonemergency operators, with no guarantee the calls will reach dispatch centers close enough to provide the most effective help”

With good, can come bad. Definitely a serious problem though, that should have been taken care of before Vonage was ever released. Check out the posting at News.com.

“The powerful Dell Axim X50v Pocket PC features a large 3.7″ VGA display that provides brilliant, clear images at 640×480 resolution. This was previously unheard of in a handheld device. The large viewing area makes documents easy to see so you can work smart and fast. In addition to the big screen display, the X50x features the fastest CPU ever placed inside a Pocket PC; an Intel XScale PXA270 Processor running at 624MHz!”

Looks like a sweet machine for sure. 624MHz? Doesn’t seem like that long ago that our home desktops were that speed. Read the full review at The Tech Zone.

“SEATTLE — Microsoft’s latest security update won’t be loaded onto your personal computer.

But Microsoft is hoping it will help keep the Internet safer from attacks.

The update is for Windows Server 2003, the software that helps prop up a large number of Internet sites by providing services to multiple users on a network.”

More security can’t be a bad thing. Read about it at KFox. You can also check out a PR here.

“Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.8 is the latest hard drive to offer 400GB of storage, but the drive offers more than just a capacity boost. By packing more data per platter than Seagate’s previous Barracuda 7200.7, the 7200.8 also promises superior performance to its predecessor. Does it deliver? To find out we’ve run the 7200.8 through a punishing gauntlet of benchmarks and real world performance tests against competition from Maxtor and Western Digital.”

Lots of space, but the price increases considerably over the next step down. Check it out at Tech Report.

“Google Blog is reporting that Google is now faster on Firefox and Gecko-based browsers. Google has started using prefetching to start downloading top results even before the user clicks on them. This allows the user to view search results faster. Prefetching is not available on Internet Explorer and other non-mozilla browsers.”

Since the Prefetching can end up giving you cookies from sites you have not visited, they urge you to configure your Cookie settings in your Firefox options if it’s a problem. Read more at MozillaZine.

“Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman who became the centerpiece of a national right-to-die battle, died this morning, nearly two weeks after doctors removed the feeding tube that had sustained her for more than a decade. Brother Paul O’Donnell, a spokesman for Bob and Mary Schindler, Schiavo’s parents, said the couple was with their daughter’s body and praying.”

Our thoughts go out to the Schiavo family. You can read the full write-up at CNN.com.

“The Albatron PX925XE Pro-R is a fine board but not one that a true hardcore enthusiast should aim for; if balls out overclocking is your thing you should look elsewhere. That said, if you have a 200FSB CPU, you can feel safe in the knowledge that the 925XE will allow you headroom up to 266FSB at least, but the same can be said of other 925XE boards.”

Check it out at Viper Lair.

“Microsoft is planning to make Windows and Internet Explorer more secure by including software to give people more control over personal information.”

At home, you can add the “shutdown -t -r 0” command to your system startup to make your current Windows more secure. Check out the article at the BBC.

“Toshiba on Tuesday announced a new lithium-ion battery — the type used in virtually all laptops — that recharges 60 times faster than current batteries and loses less than one percent of its capacity after 1,000 recharges.”

Wow.. that is truly amazing. Laptops dead.. plug it in, and in a minute.. you can use it for another couple hours. Wow. Check it out at Information Week.

“Xamlon, based in La Jolla, Calif., will release next week its preview version of Xamlon Pro Flash Edition, software that converts applications created with Windows programming languages and development tools into applications that run in Macromedia’s Flash animation player.”

This is going to be very interesting to see come to be. I would love to see how well this tech actually works. Check it out at News.com.

“Linux founder Linus Torvalds on Tuesday called for more regular performance tests on the Linux kernel, so that any reduction in efficiency can be highlighted sooner..

Currently, performance figures are only available for a few of the latest production kernels. Torvalds said it would be useful to continually test the performance of the development kernel, so that inefficient code can be spotted more easily.”

It seems that different versions of the kernal so a larger differential in performance tests. Check out the posting Comment (0) -->

“A Shanghai online game player has stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber sword for real money. The sale created a legal dilemma because China has no law covering the ownership of virtual weapons.

The China Daily newspaper reported that a Shanghai court was told Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his dragon sabre, used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3, The online game features heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords.”

What a crazy world *shrug* ABC.net.

“After years of sitting the success on of the original and an extended development cycle, Sony Online Entertainment recently launched their incredibly anticipated sequel, EverQuest II. Not so much a new game as it is a massive update, the premise of EverQuest II offers little innovation in its design; nevertheless, the experience Comment (0) -->

“Ubisoft is delighted to confirm the return of the legendary Might and Magic® brand. Credited with the establishment of the heroic fantasy genre since its first release in 1985 on PC, the brand envelops several series including the mythical Heroes of Might & Magic®. No stranger to resurrecting cult licenses, Ubisoft will Comment (0) -->

“As the successor of the MX510, USB gamer mouse will sport quick-shift controls above and beneath of the scroll wheel, allowing switching between 400, 800 and 1600-dpi without installing the driver. Reminiscent of the MX510’s contoured shape, the new ‘Gaming-Grade’ mouse has a clear, smooth coat over a space-age metallic sliver finish with various shades to give an impression of a crater surface.”

Check it out at Everything USB. You can also check out our review of the mouse here.

“You can literally uninstall your current video card drivers, and replace the single card with a pair of SLI-ready video cards and boot straight in to Windows. After installing the video card drivers again, you will then be able to use the video cards in SLI mode without ever needing to enter the motherboard’s BIOS menu. If you just want to use the standard 8x / 8x PCI-Express lane configuration with two video cards installed there is no need to enter the BIOS. However, there is the option to enter the BIOS should you want to change the configuration of the PCI-Express lanes.”

Very cool.. this should have been done from the get go. Read more on it over at Bit-Tech.