Tech News

Intel to drop the Pentium brand?

Posted on December 1, 2005 12:16 PM by Rob Williams

First Netburst goes out the window, and now it may be that the venerable “Pentium” name is headed for retirement, as well. The Inquirer is reporting on a Japanese PC Watch article which claims that the Pentium brand name will not be used for Merom and Conroe when they launch. Instead, Intel will apply the term “Intel Core” to the new architecture, much like Netburst was the name of the Pentium 4 architecture. The “Intel Core” name isn’t likely to be the one that consumers will be most familiar with, however, since platform-centric brands like Centrino will be more heavily emphasized.”

Who knows whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but we may see soon enough if this proves true. Check out the posting over at Ars.

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Why Can’t Microsoft Just Patch Everything?

Posted on December 1, 2005 12:15 PM by Rob Williams

If smaller software companies can patch all of their bugs serious or minor, ZDNet’s George Ou asks, why can’t Microsoft — with its massive army of programmers and massive budget — patch all of its vulnerabilities? Had Microsoft fixed a low risk browser vulnerability six months ago, perhaps we could have avoided last week’s zero-day exploit. Currently, more than two dozen Windows XP issues remain unpatched. Ou thinks Microsoft ought to fix them all.

I never thought of this before, but it’s very true. Are the programmers twiddling their thumbs? Check out the posting at Slashdot, which links to a ZD Net blog.

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Rivatuner 2.0 RC 15.8 Released

Posted on December 1, 2005 11:53 AM by Rob Williams

Today Guru of 3D brings you a new release of the inmensely popular GeForce/Radeon tweaking tool RivaTuner. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of ForceWare and Catalyst drivers. This new 15.7 update is as expected extremely large. Please check the “What’s new” information for a specific explanation of the update. There are some very interesting new items in there!

They urge that the amount of changes is huge, so check out the new version here.

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Hardware Roundup for Dec. 1

Posted on December 1, 2005 11:52 AM by Rob Williams

This year has flown by so fast; I can’t believe we are in December already! Now it’s time to start thinking about treating yourself, or treating others with cool tech toys, and these reviews should help. For great air CPU cooling, you can check out the review at Xtreme Computing today. The VapoChill Micro is tilted, like many other heatsinks now adays, to provide better heat dissipation. Scythe has just released a new heatsink also, called the Samurai Z. Check out the review at Pro-Clockers to get the low down on that one.

If you are are still looking for a 1GB memory kit, 3D Xtreme takes a look at the new OCZ PC-3200 XTC set. We took a look at that set last month, and it proved to be a great set for not much money. Tweak News is taking a look at an interesting PSU by Zalman. It’s interesting, because I had no clue that Zalman made PSU’s! It looks like a solid deal though, so definitely check that one out.

    Cases & Enclosures
  • Danger Den DD12V-D4 Water Cooling Pump – OC Mod Shop
  • Enermax Laureate (EB205U-S) – Phoronix
  • Sansun SN-C001 BAT- TweakTown
    Memory & Storage
  • Corsair DDR1 2GB Memory Roundup – Legit Reviews
  • OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Gold GX XTC 2048MB Memory – 3D Xtreme
    Etcetera & Contests
  • Dream’eo Enza Portable Media Centre – ByteSector
  • Epson PictureMate 100 Printer – Trusted Reviews
  • Jackson Armor Card – Pimp Rig
  • Samsung DVD-R120 DVD Burner – MrPCPro
  • RecoverSoft Data Rescue PC – Emergency Hard Drive Recovery – Extensive Mods

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Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 Final Released

Posted on November 30, 2005 12:36 PM by Rob Williams

It was a long time coming, but it’s finally here! Here is what’s new in the new Firefox version:

  • Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
  • Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
  • Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
  • Improvements to popup blocking.
  • Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
  • Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
  • Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience.
  • Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
  • Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
  • Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
  • New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
  • Many security enhancements.

Instead of heading to Mozilla.org like always, you can now head to Mozilla.com. I just hope some of my favorite extensions of updated quick to work with the new version!

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ASUSTeK A7G with ATI RADEON Mobility X1600 – First Hands-On Look!

Posted on November 30, 2005 12:17 PM by Rob Williams

Been wondering what to expect from ATi’s up-coming Mobility RADEON X1600? We’ve exclusively done some testing on an ASUS laptop running the Mobility X1600.

This is a quick look, but a good one if your notebook has to have ATI inside. I am actually impressed with the performance. It certainly puts my 5200 FX to shame! Check out the quick article at Hexus.

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G-WG: A New Life for Old Games

Posted on November 30, 2005 12:14 PM by Rob Williams

Dear fellow gamers,

If your place is anything like our home, also known as Pann’s Playhouse, you’ve had to shove your old game system stuff out of the way to make room for the new games and systems as they come out. Especially at the holiday season, you’re probably already moving aside perfectly good gaming equipment as you’re making way for all that new Xbox 360 goodness. Instead of giving the dust bunnies a nesting ground, I hope you’ll consider donating those things for a worthy cause.

The Get-Well Gamers (http://www.get-well-gamers.org/) foundation, now in its fourth year, accepts donations of used games, game systems and accessories then divvies them up across their growing network of children’s hospitals. As stated on their website, they will even accept items that are inoperable since they can frequently repair them up or patch together a working system together from salvaged parts.

So, free that forgotten Gameboy from your sock drawer and excavate your N64 from the back of the closet. The lint balls and dust bunnies won’t miss them, but they will make a huge difference in the life of a child.

Have a wonderful holiday and good gaming in ’06!

I have posted this e-mail in it’s entirety because it’s a great cause. If you have an old system that you never touch anymore, this is a great cause to donate it to!

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$600 Notebook Roundup

Posted on November 30, 2005 12:11 PM by Rob Williams

The problem is that notebooks are still not quite upgrade friendly, so you’re usually stuck with what you get out of the box with the exception of a memory or drive upgrade. So the worry is that cheap notebooks make you sacrifice far too much to even consider, but do they in reality? Special holiday deals aside, $600 is the sweet spot for entry level notebooks these days, so what do you get for $600? That’s what we’re here to find out.

This is a fantastic roundup. Anand takes a look at numerous models within a great price range, and gives you the best one overall. Check it out at AnandTech.

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Hardware Roundup for Nov. 30

Posted on November 30, 2005 12:09 PM by Rob Williams

If your notebook computer needs an upgrade in the hard drive dept., then you will want to head to Viper Lair and check out the review of the Seagate 100GB 7200RPM, which should prove plenty of storage. It’s somewhat pricy, but it will prove to be fast enough for your needs and give you lots of room to play in. Maximum CPU is taking a look at the Bluetake set that we reviewed on Monday, and they ended up with some similar conclusions. If your sound is not up to par, then you may consider the Logitech Z-5450 that Tech Zone is looking at. They are a tad pricy, but provides quite a boom.

    Cooling
  • Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra TC – Frosty Tech
    Memory & Storage
  • Nu Tech Dark Shadow 256MB MP3 Sunglasses – Big Bruin
  • Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB – Viper Lair
  • Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.9 Hard Drive Review – Rojak Pot
    Motherboards & CPU’s
  • Gigabyte K8N51PVMT-9 – AMD Zone
    Video Cards & Monitor
  • BFGTech GeForce 7800GTX OC 256MB – Hardware-Review
  • e-GeForce 7800 GTX BlackPearl 512MB – Full Review – Hexus
  • Matrox DualHead2Go – Bit-Tech
  • Matrox DualHead2Go Analog Edition – PC Stats
  • XFX 6800GS SLI Video Card Review – Motherboards.org
    Etcetera & Contests
  • ATITool 0.25 Beta 10 – techPowerUp!
  • Beginners Guide to Installing Windows XP – A1 Electronics
  • Contest: Win one of ten Intel dual core bundles! Hexus (UK Only)
  • Tech Reports System Guide – Tech Report

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KDE 3.5 Stable Released

Posted on November 29, 2005 11:56 AM by Rob Williams

November 29, 2005 (The Internet) – The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined, making KDE the most complete, stable and integrated free desktop environment available.

    Notable changes include:

  • Konqueror is the second web browser to pass the Acid2 CSS test, ahead of Firefox and Internet Explorer
  • Konqueror can also now free web pages from adverts with its ad-block feature
  • SuperKaramba is included in KDE, providing well-integrated and easy-to-install widgets for the user’s desktop
  • Kopete has support for MSN and Yahoo! webcams
  • The edutainment module has three new applications (KGeography, Kanagram and blinKen), and has seen huge improvements in Kalzium

I especially like the addition of adding SuperKaramba in there… now I don’t have to compile it with each new install. To check out all that is new, and download the sources, head on over to KDE.org.

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Moving a Beginner to Linux

Posted on November 29, 2005 11:44 AM by Rob Williams

This article goes over one person’s experience when moving computer beginners from Windows to Linux. This is not always a smooth transition, but this this case a computer which was barely working was salvaged and there was an easy switch from one operating system to the next. Casual computer users almost always use Windows but the article observes that they could just as easily be using a Linux distribution, which would save money and extend the life of their computer, while avoiding many of the security hazards to which new users are most vulnerable. This is not a HOWTO so much as it is a personal experience, but it relays thoughts and observations which all people who find themselves often helping their friends and family with computers will find interesting.

Check out the full article at XYZ Computing.

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New at techPowerUp: CPU Database

Posted on November 29, 2005 11:41 AM by Rob Williams

The CPU Database lists all modern CPUs together with important characteristics like codename, real frequency, multiplier and cache size. At the moment it holds almost 300 entries and is constantly updated with new info.

Now this is a great list! If you want to do some research, definitely check out the indepth list at techPowerUp!

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Hardware Roundup for Nov. 29

Posted on November 29, 2005 11:25 AM by Rob Williams

Driver Heaven is taking a look at one of the most unique cases you may see ifor a while.. the NZXT Lexa. While most cases are like boxes, the Lexa is curvy and almost looks like a bulldoser. Bigbruin and OC Cafe are also looking at some sweet cases also, if the Lexa is too far out for you. A new mousepad is like new socks.. it feels great! Pro-Clockers is taking a look at the fUnc 1030 mousepad, which is hefty, but looks like a winner. Lastly, if you are you in noise cancelling or want to learn more about it, check out Bona Fide Reviews!

    Cooling
  • 5-Way Radiator Round-Up – Phoronix
  • Swiftech H20-Apex “Extreme Duty” Series Liquid Cooling Kit – 3D Gameman
    Etcetera & Contests
  • BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 8.6.1 Posted! – Rojak Pot
  • LCD & G-LCD software Overview and Downloads – OC Inside
  • MSI: Editors LANParty 2005 in a Sado-Maso-Bondage-Club – Tweak PC

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Vista to arrive early?

Posted on November 28, 2005 11:39 AM by Rob Williams

MICROSOFT seems to be planning an August release for Vista, despite the fact that it claims that it will not hit the shops until December 2006.

Business Week has received a copy of the internal blog of Vole executive Chris Jones,which said that he will not get his bonus if Vista is not shipped with high quality and with the ‘soul intact’ by August 31st, 2006.

We all know how this could play out, but hopefully it will amaze us, if it actually does come out early. Check out the full news post at The Inquirer.

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Call of Duty 2 Boycott?

Posted on November 28, 2005 11:19 AM by Rob Williams

IF SOME questions don’t get answered, most Call of Duty, Call of Duty United offensive and Call of Duty 2 servers will be shut down for 24 hours, users have threatened.

The Call of Duty gaming community appears to be united to carry on this strike. This could be the first massive online strike – boycott and is scheduled for December 17th.

This is interesting, and it would be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully the company will do something, even before this date. Read about it at The Inquirer.

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ATI RADEON X1600 PRO and XT come into focus earlier than expected

Posted on November 28, 2005 11:16 AM by Rob Williams

EXUS has just learnt that that ATi’s largest Add-In-Board (AIB) partner, Sapphire Technology, has finally started to ship its range of products based on the ATi RADEON X1600 GPU (RV530).

Even though, relative to some of ATi’s own RADEON X800 based products, the performance gain of RADEON X1600 is questionable, it seems that because there are apparently huge shortages of all ATi product in the channel, means that the RADEON X1600 is still likely to sell well.

Check out the full article at Hexus.

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Hardware Roundup for Nov. 28

Posted on November 28, 2005 11:08 AM by Rob Williams

Happy Monday! There’s many reviews going ’round the web today. Viper Lair is taking a look at the Zalman 9500, which has to be one of the sleekest CPU coolers available. Stay tuned, because we will be having a review of this cooler in a few weeks. PimpRig is taking a look at my personal favorite when it comes to memory. The Corsair XMS 4000 is a 2GB flavor, and is FAST. Of course, if you are looking for a new motherboard, there are many of those reviews out there for you as well.

    Memory & Storage
  • Corsair TwinX XMS PC4000 – PimpRig
  • OCZ Dual Channel PC-3200 Gold GX XTC – Think Computers

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RIP N-Gage

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:42 AM by Rob Williams

In an extremely shocking announcement, Nokia said it will no longer put development time into the N-Gage, meaning no more new versions or updates. This comes as an enormous surprise after the N-Gage was so popular and awesome! Nokia also said it’s not done in the mobile gaming market yet. The company plans to crawl back into the mobile gaming market in 2007—reason: who knows? See you later N-Gage. Out of all of the taco-ear phones, you were my favorite.

It’s always sad to see a system go unsupported, but this really had nothing going for it, compared to the other portable game systems on the market. Check out the posting at Gizmodo.

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Icemat 2nd Edition Mouse Pad Review

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:20 AM by Rob Williams

Looking for a large mouse pad that will never warp or move? Then look no further – the Icemat 2nd Edition mouse pad is just the thing!

Take a look at our review of the Icemat 2nd Edition mouse pad and see what’s good and bad with this heavyweight!

Check out the full look at this cool mousepad at Rojak Pot.

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SimpliSoftware RW HD Tach v.3.0.1.0 Benchmarking Software

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:18 AM by Rob Williams

This is a basic and simple to use hard drive benchmarking utility program that compares drives to an existing database provided by the software or allows you to compare drives head to head in a benchmarking drag-race.

Check out the full look at one of my personal favorite benchmarking tools at Think Computers.

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HitmanPro 2.3.1 is released!

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:15 AM by Rob Williams

The Internet sits are full dangers. On many Internet sites visitors are misleaded or are abused using your computer security leaks in your browser (for example) to provide spyware the opportunity to setup shop. Protect the privacy of your computer with Hitman Pro 2.

Check out HardwareXL for more info.

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Mushkin REDLINE Memory Giveaway! – 3 Days Remaining

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:14 AM by Rob Williams

MVKTech has teamed up with Mushkin Enhanced Memory to offer our readers and audience a chance and some lightning fast memory. Back in June 2005 we reviewed Mushkin’s HP3200 REDLINE DDR400 1GB Kit and was very impressed with this ultra high performance ram, now MVKTECH is going to share that performance with you! If you want to get your hands on some of the fastest ram in its class, you know the gig, just post in our forum contest thread to win 1GB of Mushkin Redline series DDR400.

Check out the full contest details over at MVKTech and enter!

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NVIDIA Linux SLI Primer

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:12 AM by Rob Williams

By now you’ve probably read numerous NVIDIA SLI guides for
constructing a Windows gaming rig but for your viewing pleasure today we
have our first Linux SLI primer, as the NVIDIA Rel80 drivers are on the
heels of a public launch, which bring fourth initial SLI support. In
this guide, we share some basic information for choosing graphics cards,
power supplies, and motherboards that are NVIDIA Scalable Link Interface
certified. In addition we share a few tidbits about the Linux software
setup along with screenshots.

It’s too bad that there are not more games in Linux to usually warrant an SLi setup, but hopefully now that it’s available, companies will be quicker to support it. Check out the great guide over at Phoronix.

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Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO 2GB Kit Review

Posted on November 27, 2005 11:11 AM by Rob Williams

The 2GB XMS3500LLPRO kit comes with LED activity lights that gives that bling factor to your rig and will surely turn heads. Although it may not be as cool as the Xpert series, these Pro series packs a punch. Rated at DDR438 or 218MHz, these modules offer low latencies at 2-3-2-6 1T with just 2.7V. This is great for most users as you will not need a motherboard with extensive VDIMM option as the 2GB XMS3500LLPRO kit works best with just 2.7V. Although we were able to run Memtest at 2-2-2-5, we were unable to boot into Windows due to the limitation caused by the on-processor memory controller. The 2GB XMS3500LLPRO kit also showed decent overclocking for a 2GB kit and operating DDR510 with only 2.7V is pretty impressive.

Check out the full article over at PC Modding Malaysia.

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DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR Expert Review

Posted on November 26, 2005 12:43 PM by Rob Williams

When I first heard that DFI is coming up with a new “Expert” version of this board, I was wondering if they could really improve things so much that it warrants a new product. Yes they did! There are a lot of improvements compared to the older LanParty NF4 series. For example you can finally run four 512 MB memory modules at 1T timing.

1T timing for four modules? Wow, this board just keeps getting better. It may not be worthy of an upgrade from your standard SLI-DR, but this board is the board you want for your SLi rig. Check out the full review at techPowerUp!.

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