Tech News

10 Operating Systems We’ll Never Forget

“Those were the good ole days”. How many times have you heard that? Personally, I’ve caught myself saying that many times in the past, but it’s a feeling we can all relate to. We all have fond memories of the past, and technology tends to be part of that. If you’ve been using computers for more than a few years, you probably have your own fair share of memories that bring a smile to your face. But how about an entire OS’?

Computerworld is taking a brief look at ten operating systems that we’ve left behind, but refuse to forget about. These are classics… no Windows XP or Mac OS 9 here. Ever hear of CP/M-86? I didn’t, but I don’t feel too bad since it pre-dates DOS, and was designed to run on 8080, 8088 and 8086 PCs. How about AmigaOS? Mac 7.0? GEOS 2.0? NexTStep (pictured below)?

Personally, my fond memory of an OS is with MS-DOS 5.0, which ran on my speedy 286 (frequency escapes me) and monochrome monitor (let’s hear it for black and barf!). My first major computer mistake was made on the same PC, when I went to format a floppy disk and accidentally formatted the hard disk. I tend to not pay attention to most things now, and back then, things were no different. If “Are you sure you want to format non-removable disk” didn’t clue me in, I’m not sure what else could’ve! Oh well, lesson learned.

Do you have fond memories of OS’ that have passed? Post about them in the related thread!

And the operating system, called NeXTStep, was frankly exciting. Its graphical interface was built around Display PostScript, so it was sharp and scalable. Underneath, it was built on a solid structure of Unix, including a Mach kernel and BSD code. And for the developers, it had an object-oriented application layer and tool kit. This made it much easier to code for than other platforms.

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WD Enters Solid-State Market with Acquisition of SiliconSystems

In talking to Western Digital in the past year or two – even as recent as CES – we could tell their vibe towards solid-state storage was rather “meh”. But, given the obvious potential (and reality) of the technology, we knew it would be only a matter of time before they either created SSDs themselves, or acquired another company who already does.

Those common-sense predictions proved themselves correct as of this morning, as WD has announced the acquisition of SiliconSystems for $65 million in cash. SiliconSystems has been in the solid-state game for a while, although not with regular consumers. Their products targeted the integrated and business user, but now under WD’s roof, we’ll undoubtedly be seeing consumer and enthusiast-based products from them in the near-future.

Anyone who’s ever taken a look at an SSD or read about them can probably tell you that they are a good thing. The major downside is longevity, especially with MLC-based products, but that’s sure to be improved with time. Aside from that issue, they’re far faster, more reliable, small and make absolutely no noise. It seems like a huge win/win from all perspectives. The pricing is still not perfect, but even that’s looking better each and every month.

So where’s other companies in this, such as Seagate? Well, at last check, the company was planning to begin their own SSD production sometime in 2009, although we haven’t heard from them much since. That doesn’t mean much though, as they could very well be tying up loose ends and preparing to ship their own product within the next few months. The market is too competitive, so it makes no sense to wait too long.

“We are delighted to have the SiliconSystems team join WD,” said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. “The combination will be modestly accretive to revenue and margins as a result of SiliconSystems’ existing position as a trusted supplier to the well-established $400 million market for embedded solid-state drives. SiliconSystems’ intellectual property and technical expertise will significantly accelerate WD’s solid-state drive development programs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, providing greater choice for our customers to satisfy all their storage requirements.”

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Are Macs Really More Expensive than PCs?

The Mac vs. PC debate has been going on for about as long as… well, as long as both platforms have been available. For the most part though, it’s usually the users of each platform that are involved in the debate, but in recent years, it’s been the companies themselves. Apple arguably started it all when they began releasing their Mac vs. PC TV commercials, and while they were humorous, I’m not quite sure how successful they were in turning people away from the PC.

It took quite a while for Microsoft to decide to take action and actually defend themselves, but we began to see the fruits of that a few months ago, with a huge ad campaign entitled “I’m a PC”, which showcased normal everyday people who love their Windows PCs… not some smarmy dude. Now, Microsoft is taking things one step further… by poking at Apple’s pricing.

The mediums Microsoft has chosen for this is both the TV and Internet, and it’s no surprise that this has come about, as just a few weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the rather blunt comment that given the recession, not too many people are interested in paying $500 for a badge. For the sake of not turning a simple news post into an article, I won’t express personal opinions here, as I’ve made them enough in the past.

Regardless of what I think though, the ads are quite straight-forward. Their test subjects are given a certain amount of money, say $1000, and are told to go purchase a PC. On the Mac side, that’s difficult, given the lowest-end MacBook is $999. Rather, one lady ends up buying an HP notebook, valued at $699, and picks up a printer and other accessories as well… and still has $100 to pocket. You can read the link below for more on this, and then put your two cents down in our comment thread.

David Webster, a general manager in Microsoft’s central marketing unit, said that while some people are enticed by lower prices alone, some like to think of value in terms of what else they could spend that money on. In the online campaign, Microsoft tries to play up those things. Webster said Microsoft is also trying to play up the variety of the PC marketplace, saying a customer is likely to get “a better fit” with Windows.

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iTunes to Begin Variable Pricing on April 7

Earlier this year, Apple announced that iTunes would soon become 100% DRM-free, which was great news for many, myself included. As I mentioned around the same time, I had no prior interest in using iTunes for the DRM reason, and well, if it wasn’t DRM, it would have been the 128Kbit/s bitrate. But since then, both factors have improved, and I’ve been taking advantage of the service quite a bit.

In the same announcement, Apple also divulged information about upcoming changes to their pricing scheme. As it stands now, pretty much every song on the service is sold at a flat rate of $0.99. I have never really seen an exception – I’ve even seen 10s songs being sold for the same price. But starting on April 7, that’s going to change. Rather than a simple flat rate, we’ll see three different price points: $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29.

From how it appears, “hot” music will be priced at $1.29. So if you want the latest single from a popular artist, don’t expect to see it for $0.99. It’s of course up to the record companies to decide which tracks sell for such a rate, but you can expect anything in a top list to be available for that price. The majority of the music is sure to stick to the $0.99 pricing, although it’s not too clear what exactly will qualify a song to be priced at $0.69. If I had to guess, anything that’s not a huge seller, or older tracks, will likely see the lower price-tag.

There’s speculation hovering around what will happen thanks to this change, and personally, I can’t see it going over too well with consumers. I also don’t expect everyone who is in the habit of purchasing the latest singles for $0.99 to begin purchasing them for $1.29. In the end, the record companies still may come out ahead, but I’m highly doubtful we’ll see records broken with new singles anytime soon.

Some music industry veterans are criticizing the 30% hike price, saying the timing is tone deaf because it comes in the midst of a recession and at a time when spending for online music appears to have reached a plateau. “This will be a PR nightmare,” predicted former EMI Music executive Ted Cohen, who is managing partner of digital media consulting firm TAG Strategic. “It is for the music industry what the AIG bonuses are for the insurance industry.”

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Seagate Unveils BlackArmor 440 – Great Design, Huge Storage

If there’s one technology that’s become huge over the past few years that I’ve been most pleased with, it would have to be network-attached storage. The concept is simple… have a dedicated box on the network that you can copy files to and share between computers. It’s also great as a backup solution (and one I rely on heavily). Things like that become even more important for a business, which is why Seagate has unveiled their BlackArmor 440.

Although targeted at small businesses, there’s no reason a media-heavy home user couldn’t take full advantage of what it offers. I don’t know about you guys, but I have to say that this is one of the best-looking NAS boxes I’ve ever laid my eyes on. It’s also larger than most, and demands respect. The pure black matte and glossy aesthetic adds even more to the appeal.

This thing is built for security, so it offers a slew of hardware and software-based solutions. Each installed drive comes wrapped in a sturdy casing, or “armor”, and are of course hot-swappable. Also included are a variety of security features you’d expect to see, such as password protection and encryption. You’ll also notice the LCD display, which displays relevant information, although we’re unsure what exactly.

Though this is one great-looking solution, it’s not inexpensive. The 2TB model comes in at $799.99, while the 4TB jumps to $1,199 and 6TB to $1,699. Expensive, but if you run a small business, the extra security is usually worth it.

Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 storage server is a comprehensive business continuity solution to store, protect and secure your small business data and digital content. With multiple internal drives, BlackArmor NAS 440 is a self-contained network storage server designed with flexibility in mind. Centralize and expand your storage to reliably manage access. Securely manage and share digital business assets, locally or remotely through Seagate Global Access service.

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NVIDIA Announces APEX, PhysX Made Easy for Developers

At a press briefing earlier today, NVIDIA took the time to give us all an update on what’s been happening with PhysX, and also introduced a new tool for game developers called APEX. It seems like everyone wants to release game-optimizers lately (Intel and AMD announced their own this week also), and NVIDIA isn’t going to be the one man out. APEX is a modular API that can be plugged into any game engine, in order to aide developers in correctly implementing PhysX into their games.

APEX also features modules, which can be plugged in to offer more functionality. So far, clothing, vegetation and destruction (all self-explanatory) are available, with more in development, such as turbulence. The goal of APEX is to make thing easy on the developer. Once implemented into a game engine (some engines already have it, including Unreal Engine), developers could right-click a tree, for example, and then explore the various physics options with PhysX. The same would go for any in-game object.

Because APEX is modular, it’s designed to be plugged in anywhere, including various author tools and also game consoles. During use, developers will also have access to PhysX platform analyzers and visual debuggers, in order to critic their work and look at ways for better optimization. According to the company, APEX is already being used to help with the development of a few upcoming games, including Sacred 2 and Shattered Horizon.

The best part of Apex might be that it’s free to PhysX developers, which is no doubt a wise choice. PhysX already gained a major boost when NVIDIA bought up AGEIA, and free intuitive tools to work with is a huge plus to developers. Sadly, NVIDIA didn’t announce any new PhysX-enabled games, but did mention that both PhysX and APEX have been picked up my major publishers, so we can only hope we’ll see more titles that support the technology soon.

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MotionDSP Releases vReveal – CUDA-Based Video Enhancer

It’s no secret that NVIDIA is trying hard to push their CUDA technology, but while it might be the next-best-thing where computing is concerned, there hasn’t been much reason for people to be excited. The past year has been quite good to the company though, with many partners finally releasing applications that take advantage of CUDA, and GPGPU in general. The most prominent was Badaboom, a video encoder.

Last fall at NVISION though, another application they showed off was from MotionDSP. Their vReveal software, which also uses CUDA, implements “CSI-style” (that term needs to die) technology to improve your video in various ways. Low-light? Shoddy image quality? Need a video larger? Too much shaking? These are just a few of the things that vReveal tackles, and by taking a look at their samples, it seems to do a fine job.

What makes this product interesting is two things. First is the price, of $50. Advanced video fixer-uppers normally cost into the hundreds. Second, it’s simple to use… almost too simple. But given the audience its targeted for, it pretty much has to be. Because it runs on the GPU, through CUDA, the process is supposed to be five times faster than what a CPU would be capable of. Pretty bold claims, but believable given what we’ve seen before.

With vReveal, consumers can dramatically improve the quality of videos captured by cell phones, digital cameras and other handheld devices. It uses familiar one-click touch-up tools to stabilize, brighten and sharpen flawed videos. It has the unique ability to increase detail in low-resolution videos and to remove video “noise,” such as graininess and pixelation. The application can even capture print-quality still images from enhanced videos.

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Class Action Against Best Buy’s Price-Matching Policy

In the past week or two, we’ve been posting about Office Depot’s less-than-stellar selling practices. One thing I made sure to mention, though, was that Office Depot is in no way the only company to stoop to such low levels, and it sure didn’t take too long before dirt surfaced on another company: Best Buy.

The target here is Best Buy’s price-matching policy, which seems to contradict itself depending on where you look. On their website, they make it sound like getting a price-match will be a hassle-free task, but according to an internal memo sent in 2006, that’s not the case at all. In fact, employees are directed to exhaust every possible angle in order to not award a price match.

In the memo, there’s a list of things to look for, to help build a case against the price match. For the most part, I agree with all of them, because if the model isn’t the same, or if the other store is going out of business and are offering products at below-cost, it doesn’t make business sense. The problem is that trying to get a price-match on product for legit means is too difficult, and that the company severely contradicts itself.

I’m going to hold off further comment until I see how this plays out. I make no secret about disliking Best Buy (and many others for that matter, including Best Buy’s Canadian counterpart Future Shop), but it’s one thing to accuse a company of doing something and them actually doing it. I’ll be interested to see where this goes. Until then, I’ll continue to wonder why people don’t just purchase the product at the store with the lowest price to begin with.

Best Buy’s defense for the existence of this document is that its author is a “long-standing employee with a sense of humor.” Further evidence provided in the complaint belies that claim. Numerous Best Buy customers are cited as saying the retailer refused their requests on multiple occasions, or in cases where they already purchased the item, Best Buy told them to return it and pay a hefty restocking fee if they wanted to buy from a competitor with a lower price. This, of course, defeats the entire purpose of trying to get a price match in the first place.

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AMD Demonstrates Live Migration on Opteron Platforms

Last month, I posted about my newfound love for virtualization, which came as a result of me actually taking the time to experiment and see all of what was possible from a home-user’s perspective. Given I run Linux as my primary OS, the draw has been there for a while, but it took just one final push of seeing a news story about it to make me pull the trigger.

Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve run my virtual machine through VMware Workstation pretty much everyday and haven’t had any major issues, so I’m still quite pleased. But while I have rather simple needs for virtualization, the story is far different in IT environments, where virtualization may be used to deploy desktops to company employees, or to allow testing of software throughout various OS configurations. All of it is very cool.

Cool might be taken to a new level with a video AMD just released though, which takes a look at VMware’s ESX software that allows you to actually perform a live migration with your virtual machines. On hand during the experiment were three near-identical AMD servers, Barcelona, Shanghai and Istanbul, with the VM residing on the first. With a few clicks, the host literally moved the virtual machine from Barcelona to Shanghai, and then from Shanghai to Istanbul, all with just a minor lag (the entire process took seconds, though). Impressive stuff.

Live Migration of virtual machines across physical servers is key to providing superior flexibility for managing today’s data centers. Additionally, AMD is highlighting its continued, cooperative development efforts with Microsoft as evidenced in Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, which is available today as a beta and adds support for AMD-V technology with Rapid Virtualization Indexing. The new 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor provides scalable performance for both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and has received support from all four global OEMs.

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Intel to Drop Prices in April, Introduce New i7 Models in May

Last November, Intel launched their long-awaited Core i7 processors. These were well-received, and rightfully so. These new CPUs came out on top on most performance charts, some by a rather significant margin (remember the differences with ray-tracing tests?). But, one factor that worked towards early-adoption was something Intel had no control over… the state of the economy.

With millions losing their jobs, who wanted to go out and spend at least $1,000 on an upgrade or completely new build? Not too many, but despite that, i7 has no doubt sold pretty well given the circumstances. Well, if you are one of those looking to upgrade rather soon, it might be wise to hold off a bit longer. According to industry-tracking website DigiTimes, Intel will be dropping a few prices come April, and also introduce a few new models shortly after.

On the Core 2 Quad side, Intel will be focusing mostly on the “S” (low-power) models, although the Q9300 will be seeing a 19.92% decline to $213. Not too bad for a 2.50GHz CPU with 6MB of L2 Cache! In late May, Intel’s first follow-ups to their i7 line-up will be unveiled. This will include a new high-end Extreme chip, the i7-975, at 3.33GHz, and also the new mainstream i7-950, at 3.06GHz. Pricing is expected to be $999 and $562, effectively wiping the i7-965 and i7-940 off the map (those will likely see price drops, however, and not simply disappear).

For the rest of the known price-drops, check out the original findings at the link below.

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Further Reports of Office Depot’s Selling Practices

Two weeks ago, we reported on a story that claimed customers get the rough end of the deal if they opt out of Office Depot’s extra services, included with their notebooks and some other products. The story goes, if you want to purchase a notebook but decline a warranty, chances are the employee (with the backing of the manager) will claim that what you want is out of stock.

We followed-up the following day with an official response from Office Depot’s HQ, which claimed that these practices are not condoned by the company, and any employee found acting in such a shady way would be dealt with appropriately. Well, that’s all fine and good, but there might be a good deal that Office Depot is not telling us, and again, I have to stress that Office Depot is not likely the only company to partake in such practices. I have little doubt that many brick and mortar stores have their faults.

Since we posted these two articles, we’ve had two posters post some pretty interesting stories in our forums, one who is actually an Office Depot manager. The other, a previous Montgomery Ward employee, who has some anger-inducing stories of his own. The stories our Office Depot manager has is enough to really open our eyes wide though, so it’s a recommended read. These stories go far beyond the schemes already mentioned.

The budgets are based on the stores volume. Average budgets are around $400 each day. We must email our District Manager (DM) a midday update and a final number at closing. You can bet that one will get a call from the DM within the hour if these numbers are low or at “0”. We get statements like “What are you doing about this???” “If YOU can’t get this done…. I’ll find someone who can!!!” “I’ll bet there are lots of (out of work) former Circuit City managers that could get it done!!!… They’d love to have your job!!!”

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Internet Explorer 8 Gets Released – Worth a Go?

I’m not sure how I missed this, but last Wednesday, Microsoft finally released the next major version of Internet Explorer, 8.0. Made first as a beta last spring, Internet Explorer 8 touts most of what you’d expect to hear from a new browser release… better performance, better security, more features, et cetera. But does IE8 live up to all the hype – or better yet – compete with the fierce competition?

According to Nick Mokey at Digital Trends, not so much. He mentions that while IE8 is an incremental improvement over 7, it doesn’t bring enough useful features, or enough refinements, to change the fact that it’s a browser for those “people who don’t care“. After taking a quick look at the browser myself, I’m going to have to agree. In my quick tests, the performance didn’t seem that great – on an application level, not a page-loading level – and the browser is simply ugly when run under Windows XP.

As you can see in the screenshot below, there is a lot of dead space in the toolbar, and rather than importing my Firefox toolbar bookmarks, it simply left it all blank. I also find the location of the address bar a little strange, but that’s definitely a matter of opinion. IE 8 isn’t a horrible browser, but I’m definitely not impressed in my initial experiences, and I can for the most part agree with Nick’s points as well. Microsoft really needs to scrap IE as a whole and build a new browser from the ground up. It seems to be the only way we’re going to get a browser that’s truly competitive (you know, ignoring the fact that IE owns 75% of the browser market).

The premise behind Accelerators seems to be taking one step out the usual copy-and-paste routine we all play while Web browsing. Normally, for instance, you might find the address of a business, copy it, open a new tab, load Google Maps, and paste it in. With Accelerators, you can highlight it, click a blue icon beside the highlighted text, hover over “Map with Live Maps” and the map will flash open beside it in a square mini window.

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Sharkoon’s FireGlider Mouse Targets Serious Gamers

The last time you decided to purchase a new gaming mouse, statistics show that it was probably produced by Logitech. If you are more of a hardcore gamer, then maybe you strayed a little off the beaten path and chose one of Razer’s or SteelSeries excellent offerings. The truth is, although there are many, many gaming peripheral manufacturers out there, few are what many people would consider quality.

German company Sharkoon wants to help get their name onto this list, and their first true gaming mouse, FireGlider, shows that they are taking all of the right steps to do so (some might disagree with me). This company isn’t known for a particular type of product, as they make a huge variety, from cases to card readers to fans to power supplies to… well, you get the idea. With so many products under their belt, I was surprised to see just how cool the FireGlider looks, and even without touching one, I wouldn’t mind giving one a try.

As you can see in the shot below, the FireGlider features a not-so-unique flame scheme (although it is unique for a mouse), a weight system (a la Logitech G5), seven buttons in total (six of the fully configurable), a DPI rating of 600 – 3600 and many comfort features that look to make this mouse a total joy to use. The best part might be the expected price of €25 ($32.50 USD). Looks like quite a bit of mouse for the buck. We’ll have to wait for the reviews to roll in to find out its true worth, though.

Six of the seven buttons can be programmed with various functions through the included software. The various programming options enable easier day-to-day operations as well improving performance in gaming applications. In addition, through the software users can save individual macros to the onboard memory. Via the DPI selector, the resolution can be adjusted in six levels from 600 to a maximum of 3600 DPI. The selected DPI level is represented by various color combinations on the mouse.

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NVIDIA Pays Out Even More, Scales back NVISION

Things might be a little (hah!) heated between AMD and Intel, but NVIDIA hasn’t been able to stay out of the news for all the wrong reasons either. It’s been no secret that NVIDIA has had troubles with mobile graphics chips, and the fix for those seem to be coming to an end, at least the company’s pocketbook could hope so. During its 2009 fiscal year, NVIDIA paid out $43.6 million to cover these faulty chips, which included the chips themselves and also the labor to have them replaced.

This is in addition to last year’s $196 million paid out for the same purpose, bringing the total to $239.6 million for this issue. Ouch. Even for a massive company like NVIDIA, that kind of loss doesn’t go unnoticed. In an unrelated note, NVIDIA has also announced that it will not be holding an NVISION conference this year, thanks to, wait for it… the state of the economy.

I’m sure that’s fine for many people though, since money seems to be tighter than ever, and it’s hard to want to spend a fair amount of money on travel unless it’s for vacation. The company will instead host smaller, more targeted events, and we can assume those are not for the public, and would likely be of no interest to the public. NVIDIA expressed great interest last year to hold another NVISION, so we may very well see one next year if the economy gets back into tip-top (or at least close) shape (and if the company itself can pick its revenue).

As early as 2007, Hewlett-Packard listed laptop models affected by the graphics chip glitch. In August of 2008, Dell also listed affected models. And Apple said in October that it would repair faulty graphics chips. There have also been recent reports of Nvidia graphics chip issues with Apple’s new MacBooks, though Apple, to date, has not confirmed that these alleged issues exist.

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AMD and Intel’s Feud Heating Up

Things are beginning to get a little ugly between AMD and Intel, but the state of the situation varies depending on who you ask. When AMD first announced plans to open up a new fab with the help of outside companies, Intel had something to say about it immediately. After all, AMD licenses various technologies from Intel, such as x86, and they believe that carrying over this license to the new venture is a breach of contract.

As the story goes, Intel licenses x86 to AMD, and according to them, the license could only be utilized when the company retained a certain structure, and of course, Globalfoundries, is a far cry from AMD’s original fab structure. AMD, however, stresses that there is no breach of contract going on, and that it’s Intel who has breached their own contract by accusing the company of breaching the contract. Whew.

According to AMD, these accusations from Intel are nothing more than an “attempt to distract the world from the global antitrust scrutiny it faces“, but I’m still willing to bet that it’s more the fact that Intel believes the contract was breached. There’s far too much bad publicity to gain from such a move if they’re wrong, so it’s highly unlikely they’re doing this just to divert attention for a while. If this issue is not resolved within two months, Intel is threatening to void AMD’s license immediately, with the help of the courts. It’s doubtful that will happen, but the next two months are going to be extremely interesting.

In our conversation with the company, AMD made a strong distinction between a technology license agreement, in which one company furnishes another with a vital ingredient or special sauce necessary to the function of a product, and a patent license agreement, in which two companies agree not to sue each other for intellectual property (IP) infringement. AMD’s point here is rather simple: AMD neither needs nor receives any technological help from Intel when designing x86 processors. In the event that the cross-license agreement between the two companies were to be canceled, there’s nothing stopping AMD from continuing to build its current products or designing future ones.

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Why is North America Lagging in Internet Speed?

When it comes to broadband in North America, it’s easy to become envious of other parts of the world, where 10Mbit/s connections are laughed at. ISPs in Japan, for example, offer a 150Mbit/s service for only $60. In the US, it would cost you between $90 – $150 for a 50Mbit/s service. Or in another example, you can score an 8Mbit/s service in London for $9 a month, while in New York, a 1Mbit/s service would cost you $20. These are not small differences, so what’s going on?

A blog at the New York Times tries to tackle the issue, but I’m not quite sure the answer is clear-cut. One fact pointed out is that DSL is still ultra-popular overseas, and recent iterations of the technology now allow up to 100Mbit/s speeds, which is mind-blowing. When I first got DSL in 1999, the limit was 3Mbit/s, and I thought that was the theoretical limit. I guess I was wrong.

With DSL, the closer you are to the phone company, the faster your speeds. Since many stations are placed in large but dense neighborhoods, many more are experiencing great speeds… speeds that we could only dream about. That and other facts don’t really answer the question of why North American’s get gipped though. We are so technologically advanced, but when it comes to broadband, it’s sure hard to believe that.

Even without any change in government policies, Internet speeds in the United States are getting faster. Verizon is wiring half its territory with its FiOS service, which strings fiber optic cable to people’s homes. FiOS now offers 50 Mbps service and has the capacity to offer much faster speeds. As of the end of 2008, 4.1 million homes in the United States had fiber service, which puts the United States right behind Japan, which has brought fiber directly to 8.2 million homes.

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Follow-Up: Office Depot Lies to Customers to Boost Profit…

Yesterday, we linked to a story that discussed issues that could arise when purchasing a notebook at Office Depot. The story stated that if you didn’t opt into additional services, such as an extended warranty, then chances are that the employee would simply tell you that the notebook is out of stock. Although it’s not likely typical of all Office Depot employees, some have come out to admit that these practices do happen.

An Office Depot representative have sent us their official response to this matter:

“First, as part of our commitment to providing office supply solutions to our customers, we offer numerous products and services, including service warranties and other complementary products and services for many technology products. These offerings are similar to other sellers of consumer electronics. Office Depot’s objective is to offer such products and services to our customers, without regard to whether a customer purchases or does not purchase service warranties or other complimentary products and services. Although we offer a variety of sales promotions, like most retailers, we sell customers only what they wish to purchase. We do not have, nor have we ever had, policies or strategies contrary to this objective, and we do not condone sales practices to the contrary.

Accordingly, we do not have any policies or sales objectives to limit the sales of laptop computers to only those customers who agree to purchase service warranties. Office Depot has been recognized with numerous awards for our commitment to customer service, so please know that we take this issue very seriously and will take the necessary steps to ensure that we continue to enhance the customer experience and promote quality in our customer-related processes. We are currently in the process of reviewing this situation, and if any associates have deviated from our sales objectives and policies, then they may be subject to disciplinary action, including termination.“

The last line does well to sum-up how the company feels about this situation, which is good. I’m uncertain if Office Depot employees work on a commission (I’m awaiting a response on that), but if so, then that would be a good reason for a pushy worker. If not, then I’m uncertain why regular employees would feel so inclined to push services, when it doesn’t really benefit them in the grand scheme. Either way, Office Depot is certainly not the only company to ever have been guilty of something like this, but it’s at least nice to know that they are taking matters seriously.

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Fusion-io Announces ioDrive Duo, Offers 1,500MB/s Read Speeds

If there’s no shortage of one thing, it would be solid-state news. Just earlier this week, we linked to a story that showed crafty Samsung employees playing around with 24 SSD drives in RAID, and the end result was without question, impressive. The problem with a setup like that, though, is the bulk… 24 SSDs won’t fit in a chassis, and it would look awful cluttered hanging out of one. So what is the next-best thing?

Well it might be the ioDrive Duo, by Fusion-io. This is a company we’ve talked about a few times in our news section already, and for good reason. The company seemingly came out of nowhere, but their products are incredibly fast, and as far as I’m aware, they are the first ones to actually release an SSD based on a PCI-E card. Their Duo brings things to the next level though, and almost matches the insane 24 RAID setup we saw just the other day.

For Read bandwidth, you’ll get about 1500MB/s, and for Write, you’ll see 1400MB/s. To put it into real perspective, with this drive, you could copy a full DVD movie (~4.5GB) from one part of the drive to another, in around ~3.2 seconds. That’s insane speed. For IOPS measurements, the drive boasts 186,000 Read and 167,000 Write, in 4k packet sizes. Not surprisingly, pricing is not mentioned, but you can be assured it’s going to be well over $10,000 when it launches this spring.

Based on PCI Express x8 or PCI Express 2.0 x4 standards, which can sustain up to 20 gigabits per-second (Gbytes/sec) of raw throughput, the ioDrive Duo has more than enough bandwidth to obtain industry-leading performance from a single card. The ioDrive Duo can easily sustain 1.5 Gbytes/sec of read bandwidth and nearly 200,000 read IOPS.

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Fake iTunes Cards Sure to Give Apple a Headache

Apple can’t seem to catch much of a break lately. First, Steve Jobs is forced to go on a mini-hiatus due to health, then a renegade app store gets released, then the company releases an iPod shuffle that’s getting more flack than praise, and now fake iTunes cards are being sold that is going to cost them, big time. When you purchase a gift card for either yourself (why would you do that?) or for someone else, you don’t save money on the purchase, but it acts like money. So, a $50 gift card would net you about fifty individual tracks on the service.

But what if you were able to purchase a $200 gift card for $2.60 USD? That’s the issue plaguing the company right now, as these cards happen to be rather popular in, where else, China. Thanks to the fact that someone was able to crack the code and create key generators for the cards, a seemingly limitless number of cards can be produced and sold, and for extremely cheap.

There are a few oddities and issues that arise from this. If people purchase $200 worth of music/movies and whatever else on iTunes, Apple owes the content providers for those. So for each fake card sold, you could argue that it’s $200 straight out of Apple’s pockets. The oddity is that Apple only offers gift cards in denominations of $15, $25 and $50 on their website, so how on earth does a $200 card work?

In the console game “Tony Hawk’s Underground 2”, there was a billboard for Napster in the New Orleans level I’ll never forget, and it really hits home here. The tag-line was simply, “Steal money to buy music”. It was of course meant as a joke, but it’s ironic that it’s absolutely true where this scheme is concerned.

For example, when you buy a fake iTunes card at Taobao, the seller simply sends you a voucher code that would have been printed on the real card. The code arrives via Taobao’s own instant messaging software, most likely in order to make collecting evidence in a criminal investigation nearly impossible. You then simply redeem a voucher code in the iTunes application and voila — you end up with a virtual $200 credit in your iTunes Store account, and all for only $2.60.

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NVIDIA Launches Program to Invest in GPGPU Companies

If you’ve been paying attention to the state of the graphics market at all, you are probably well aware that NVIDIA is the biggest and most out-going company when it comes to general purpose computing on the GPU (GPGPU). They’ve been taking it seriously since before anyone else would even talk about it, and as it stands now, there are a few applications on the market that take advantage of their CUDA technology (Badaboom, TPMGEnc, Elcomsoft’s security software, TotalMedia Theater and others).

Because they care so much about GPGPU technology (and they pretty-much have to), the company has announced their “GPU Ventures Program”, one that allows up-and-coming companies a chance at success, as long as their product and technologies are focused on running accelerated on the graphics card. If NVIDIA likes what the company is doing, they’ll consider investing between $500,000 and $5,000,000 to make sure the product happens. It goes without saying, that kind of money is exactly what a company with large dreams needs, and this move also shows just how important GPGPU is to NVIDIA’s future success.

It’s pretty obvious that NVIDIA is going to be looking for developers who are utilizing CUDA, and although that would give NVIDIA an obvious advantage in the market, at least where GPGPU is concerned, there is a total lack of competition right now, until OpenCL becomes a lot more mainstream (OpenCL code would run on all certified GPU products, from any vendor). If you happen to own a company who fits the bill for what NVIDIA is looking for, you can apply on their website.

NVIDIA Corporation, inventor of the GPU, today announced the launch of the GPU Ventures Program, a new global initiative whose aim is to identify, support and invest in early stage companies leveraging the GPU for visual and other computing applications. NVIDIA is also launching the GPU Venture Zone website, a portal to publicly showcase the innovative GPU applications being developed by its ecosystem partners.

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Report: Office Depot Lies to Customers to Boost Profit on Notebooks

Alright, so I’m sure that a very few number of our readers run to Office Depot anytime they need a new notebook, but chances are good that we all know someone who does. After all, their prices seem so tempting in the flyers, but those prices are sure to change once the customer strolls into the store, thanks to extra services that employees attempt to tack onto the receipt. This practice is nothing new, though.

What might be new is the fact that it seems fairly common inside of Office Depot to tell the customer that the notebook they want is out of stock if they opt out of the extra services (such as an extended warranty), even if it is in stock. Companies like this don’t make a huge profit on items like this, so in order to help improve the matter, they sell these extra services which is just padding, since most customers will never take advantage of them.

This isn’t so much a rumor as fact though, as some employees have come out of the woodwork to verify these shady practices. I’m highly doubtful that Office Depot is the only company who lies to the customer to get more money. They are probably one of the few to lie about not having stock, though. Of course, when it comes to a notebook, online is always the best way. Better prices, and no pushy salesmen/women… what’s not to like?

Laptop was later contacted by a person going by the name Rich, who proved himself employed at Office Depot with a current check stub. Rich said, “I have witnessed lying about the availability of a notebook, and have been told to do so myself. Once I was talking to the customer and, while I am actually speaking, my manager comes on the radio and tells me to say it is out of stock if they aren’t getting anything with it. I always ignore him and sell it anyway because lying to the customer is flat-out wrong.”

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Apple Releases Third Generation iPod shuffle

Apple today announced a brand-new iPod shuffle model that they claim is the world’s smallest, and unless anyone else disagrees, I think it might be true. The new form-factor is half of the size of the previous shuffle, and at 1.8″ tall and 0.3″ thin, it’s smaller than a AA battery, and a wee bit shorter than a house key. No surprise, Apple designs the shuffle to be a fashion accessory, and for the most part, it looks good. I can’t help but feel it’s way too small for my personal tastes, though.

Aside from the addition of more storage (4GB), the touted new feature on this model is “VoiceOver”, a technology that reads out the song artist and titles for you. Yes, it sounds like a robot, but I’m not sure it’s meant to be used for serious matters. Because the shuffle lacks a screen, this voice is designed to aide in finding your way around your music collection. With it, you can select different playlists or songs, before switching to them.

For that to work well though, you’d have to make sure your collection is sitting on the shuffle in an ideal fashion, and everything should belong to a playlist, else it’s going to take a while to find the song you’re looking for. The player itself features no buttons, and those are rather stored on the earbuds cord in a convenient location. That fact there brings me to another huge “con”, though. Because the earbuds are tied into the shuffle, you’d be unable to use your own, or upgrade to headphones. If you don’t mind Apple’s earbuds though, this might not matter too much.

Update: According to a response from Apple to CNET, the company will be allowing third-party manufacturers to produce earbuds/headphones that will work in the new shuffle. An adapter will also be made available to allow you to use your own headphones. It’s nice to have the option, but that suddenly brings the shuffle much higher than its $79 USD price tag.

You’ve probably made multiple playlists in iTunes. One for your commute. One for the gym. One for just chilling out. With the new iPod shuffle, you can sync your playlists and always find the perfect mix for your activity or mood. VoiceOver tells you the name of each playlist, so it’s easy to switch between them and find the one you want without looking.

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Samsung Pairs 24 SSDs Together in RAID for Ultimate Speed

We all know that SSDs are fast, that much is no secret, but just how fast are 24 strapped together in a RAID configuration? Well, freaking fast, of course. Some Samsung employees decided to find out first-hand what benefits such a configuration would entail, so they took 24 256GB models (~$11,000 USD), put them in a high-end system, and then went ahead to see what kind of benefits could be exhibited, and yes, it’s all quite drool-worthy.

In one test, they opened up the full Microsoft Office suite (looks like eight applications in their taskbar). From the moment they pushed enter, the entire suite was on their screen ready for action in half of a second. That’s impressive, but I preferred the next test, which opened up every-single application in the Start menu. In 18.09s, the drive configuration was able to open up 53 applications. Insane!

I admit, I’m not completely sold though. The performance is fast, but I’m curious if that many drives were really even needed. I believe that using just 12 would have delivered results quite comparable to this. After all, their Iometer tests showed bandwidth of 2Gbps, but given that these drives each have a limit of 220MB/s Read, the bandwidth theoretically should be somewhere in the ballpark of 5,280MB/s. And where SSDs are concerned, latencies aren’t a real issue, so 24 drives seems to be total overkill. Either way though, the performance is incredible, and these tests really go to show just how large of a bottleneck storage is in our current PCs.

Samsung techies linked 24 of the company’s 256GB SSD drives together in a RAID with the hopes of making the fast SSD drives even faster. Basically, we all know that hard drives are holding other components in computers back, slowing down our day to day usage. But I’ll be honest in saying that I didn’t things were this bad. While almost no mortal could afford to build this amazing rig, suddenly that SATA3 technology isn’t looking so impressive.

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ASUS Ships Eee Top PCs to Retailers

ASUS announced yesterday that their all-in-one “Eee Top” PCs are now available, and you can order one from a multitude of e-tailers for $600. I’m not quite sure what to think of the Eee Top yet, but we have one here and I’ll be posting an article for it within the next week. It’s an interesting concept though, and from what we saw at CES, it has some definite potential.

Some say that the $600 price tag is a little high, but I’m not so sure I agree. For the most part, it has similar features as an Eee PC netbook, but those cost between $300 – $400 as it is already. What the Eee Top’s higher price gets you is an all-in-one PC with a 15.4″ touch-screen LCD, and also a mouse and a keyboard. The unit isn’t too bad to look at, either, so I actually find the price to be pretty reasonable – at least at first glance.

I do have two complaints off-hand though. The first is that since this is a desktop PC, it should include Intel’s Dual-Core Atom variant, not the single-core model that most of the netbooks are currently using. This might have been harder to pull off than I realize though, I’m not sure. Maybe things had to be kept strict to keep it within the $600 price tag, but it sure would have been nice to see. The second is the lack of an ODD, but given this is essentially a netbook in a desktop, it’s not much of a surprise that it’s missing.

I’ll be giving the Eee Top a good test this week, so stay tuned for the full review.

ASUS, the award-winning innovator of the Eee series products, today announces immediate availability of the Eee Top ET1602 touch-based computer. Designed as an intuitive Internet device and central communication hub, the Eee Top integrates a 15.6″ touch screen, an Intel Atom based system, and an easy to use graphic interface making today’s computer a transparent, user-friendly experience for the entire household. Available now through ASUS North American authorized dealers, the Eee Top 1602’s introductory MSRP is $599 USD. A companion external DVD drive is also available at an introductory MRSP of $64 USD.

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AMD’s “March AMDness” Bundles Help You Save Cash

It’s no secret that the economy is in rough shape right now, and it’s because of that, that many are looking for ways to save their hard-earned cash, or at least not splurge. If you happen to need a computer upgrade though, or want to build a new machine, AMD has teamed up with various e-tailers to offer some pretty sweet discounts when you take advantage of bundling. Considering AMD’s processor line-up is already well-priced, the additional savings are just the icing on the cake.

E-tailers partaking of the “March AMDness” (get it?) event include Newegg, Mwave, ZipZoomfly, Canada Computers, NCIX and Memory Express. For ECS fans, the company has also teamed up with Newegg to offer special deals, using their motherboards.

Out of all those, Newegg has put the most effort into their AMDness sale, and offer you the ability to first choose the CPU you want (out of five) and then choose a motherboard or GPU that you wish to bundle. The other sites offer fixed bundles, so it’s nice to be able to actually fine-tune your selection here. It’s a pretty good selection, too. If you are really looking to save some dough, you can pair up an X3 710 2.6GHz with an ECS A790GXM-A for just $209… and that’s without the $15 mail-in rebate. That’s a great deal, any way you look at it!

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