Content and news by Rob Williams

I missed it.. but it looks like Google had one cool feature up it’s sleeve, and now it’s gone.

“Google has unceremoniously, and without comment, yanked its latest labs “project” after less than twenty four hours. In ‘Google X’ a software engineer had replaced the main text navigation bar on the Google home page with a Mac OS X-style dock. A row of eight icons zoomed and shrank as the mouse hovered over them, the row itself shuffling to make room for the expansion – exactly like Mac OS X’s dock.”

Read the full article at The Register.

If you want to know more about Cell Microprocessors, check out the article at AnandTech.

“As microprocessors became more powerful, the software followed – multitasking environments were born. The vast majority of computer users, however, were still focused on single application usage, so microprocessor development continued to focus on single-threaded performance (single application, single task performance).”

Head over to AnandTech for an indepth view.

Wired posted an article today with a Blind Gamer. This is something I have not thought about that much before.. but wow.. it’s definately unqiue.

“Michael Feir is an avid gamer. He spent so much time playing games in college he created his own online gaming magazine. But Feir doesn’t play the best-selling games and has never seen World of Warcraft — he’s blind.”

Great read. Check it out at Wired.

“The EVGA e-GeForce 6200 TC Video Card is based on the NVIDIA NV44 Chip and comes with 64MB of DDR memory. The TC stands for TurboCache which essentially means it takes system memory automatically for a total of 256MB. While this is certainly not a product for the hardcore gamer it does play all the latest games. It would be an excellent inexpensive quality product for a HTPC. Watch the Video to find out more…”

Check out the full review at 3D Gameman.

Hexus has CeBIT content coming out their yin and yang. Here are their Wednesday Updates:

XFX go Extreme with Smart Car
FIRST LOOK – RAPTOR-GAMING K1- gaming keyboard and M2 Gaming Mouse
Gizmondo out this week
ATI Celebrate 20 years in style

“In our third giveaway this year (and our 7th consecutive drawing), we’re teaming up with one of the best performance/cooling stores in the world. Sidewinder Computers has a perfect Reseller Rating of 10 and we’re proud to have them sponsor this month’s contest.”

To learn more, check it out at MikhailTech.

“From a prospective purchasers perspective, and one who has no preference which companies’ microprocessor is installed, then the obvious comparison is between an AMD or Intel NVIDIA SLI system, and for the present, if the numbers we have are correct, and we believe they are, then the choice is looking decidedly obvious – an AMD based NVIDIA SLI system looks set to simply wipe the floor with an Intel Pentium 4 SLI system.”

Results are.. not so impressive. Check it out at Hexus.

Are you a hardcore gamer that still uses the basic, bland mouse? Are you looking to add improvements to your gameplay, so you don’t look like a noob online? Logitech’s MX510 Series of mice are great, but they looked to improve it even more, by adding the ability to change the DPI on the fly. How does this mouse do in our review?

“I’ve got to take my hat off to Ultra Products. First, they took a mundane power supply and turned it into a showpiece that you would want people to see hanging in your case. Now, they’ve taken another mundane product and turned it into another item you will want folks to see hanging in your case. Ultra has taken the knowledge they garnered by doing those amazing finishes on their power supplies and applied it to their line of case fans which they call Titanium.”

Wow, what gorgeous looking fans! I can’t believe I called a FAN gorgeous! Check out the review at PimpRig.

“The quest for more speed and more power keeps going on. Not content with letting NVIDIA catch up to its Radeon X800 XT PE series, ATI has launched a series of new PCI-Express (PCIe) based cards. Today, we are reviewing a card from HIS that uses the new speed king chip from ATI, the Radeon X850 XT PE.”

Check out the review at Bjorn3D.

” Motherboard manufacturers are consistently stretching the limits when it comes to developing motherboards, especially high-end products that are geared towards the lucrative enthusiast market. The last few years have seen great advances in the world of motherboard technology, more or less with expansion to more robust and powerful BIOS’ as well as advanced engineering techniques for power delivery. We’ve seen manufacturers dump older legacy ports, then bring them back, then dump them again. We’ve seen a tremendous effect on motherboards thanks to the rise of modding. Anyone else remember when motherboards were always green or worse, that horrid brown color?”

*shudder*, I do. Check out this cool article at Motherboard Review.

“I really like Corsair’s “Cool”. They took an incredible design and tweaked it to perfection. Having installed a few water cooling units myself, it took me about 40 minutes to install this kit. I honestly believe that if Corsair had included an instruction manual instead of a CD, the whole process would take anyone about 30-40 to complete.”

Check out the full review at Legit Reviews.

“Finding the perfect accessories to go with your HTPC can be a daunting task. Since I like to play games on the big screen a good quality game pad is a necessity. Having to sort through all the different makes and models, wireless, wired and etc can really be a pain. This is where today’s review comes in to play, literally. The item being reviewed? None other than Logitech’s newest creation the Cordless Rumblepad 2.”

Check out the review at HTPC News.

“The product I have on review today isn’t just an MP3 player, it’s an MPV player, which means it has video capabilities built in too. The iBall is an interesting and innovative product from GeIL, a company you may know of for its great value and high performance memory products.

GeIL’s latest venture is a product line it calls DAViD, an acronym for Digital Audio Video intelligent Device, and the first product to grace this line is a tiny MPV player they’ve christened the iBall.”

Definately a unique looking MP3 player. Check it out at 3D Velocity.

“The highly treasured Winbond BH-5 is gone from the market; thus begins a new search for the enthusiast’s new best friend. Currently contending for the right to be BH-5’s successor are: OCZ’s VX (Voltage Extreme), Micron’s G and Samsung’s TCCD. Today I’ll be looking at PDP Systems contribution to the enthusiast market, the 512MB PC3200 Patriot Memory w/ XBL Technology featuring Samsung’s TCCD ICs. PDP Systems is a relative newcomer to the memory market, at least relative to the likes of corporate giants Crucial, Corsair, Kingston and OCZ, and while their prior inexperience was shown in our review of their value module, I expect great things out of the Patriot XBL.”

Take a look at the full review at TechFreaks.

“There are a lot of speakers on the market these days, but all the excitement is with the high end. What do we do about everyone else? Logitech answers that call with the X-530’s, a good looking set of speakers that sell for a modest price. But how do they perform? Lets find out!”

Check out the full review at Future Looks.

“SANTA CLARA, CA—MARCH 16, 2005—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, is proud to announce that the top systems listed on FutureMark’s 3DMark05 performance league tables are all based on NVIDIA SLI technology. NVIDIA SLI-powered systems currently hold the top 20 positions on the 3DMark05 Hall of Fame.”

I hate to say this.. isn’t this obvious? It also costs twice as much to get that 80% increase in score in the program. Check out the full press release here.

“So, you built that “best bang for the buck” rig last year… you spent about $1200, got an Athlon 2500+ XP that you overclocked, an nForce2 Ultra board, a gig of PC-3200 memory, a couple of SATA hard drives and a Radeon 9600Pro video card. It played Call of Duty, Battlefield Vietnam and even did a decent job with Far Cry and UT 2004. You thought this system might last you a while… maybe a couple of years. That is, until Doom 3 came out.”

Check out the full review at Overclockers Intelligence Agency.

“Memory bandwidth is a phrase which is thrown around an awful lot these days. We hear about the memory bandwidth of a DDR module, the comparative bandwidth of Athlon 64 and Pentium 4, and the extra bandwidth you can add by running an enthusiast brand memory stick. Today, we’re doing two things. The first is explaining just what exactly memory bandwidth is, and how it relates to latency. The second is taking a look at 4 different modules of DDR memory and finding out which of these provides the best memory bandwidth performance for your enthusiast system.”

This is an awesome shootout, with lots of info. Check it out at Bit-Tech.

“These days it seems like every memory manufacturer is bringing out at least one PC3200 speed kit designed to run at low latencies. These kits are also able to be overclocked beyond PC4000 speeds with good timings. Today we’re going to look at one such manufacturer, Ultra Products that has just released their new low latency PC3200 ram into the market place. And they are doing it with a little twist, Ultra Products has specified speeds and timings for their PC3200 XL ram up to PC4200 speeds.”

Check out the full review at System Cooling.