Morning Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:57 PM CEST - Jul,20 2002
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- AX4B-533Tube - World's first vacuum tube motherboard -
AOpen Inc. announced today that it is introducing the world's first vacuum tube motherboard, coinciding with Intel's
announcement of the Pentium 4 845E chipset. The new AX4B-533 Tube Motherboard incorporates
the novel, modern-day adoption of an idea that was spawned by the invention of the
electric light bulb by Thomas A. Edison back in 1879 - the vacuum tube. "We were all
together late one night, kicking around lots of crazy ideas when I proposed it would be
really cool if we could combine the warmth and depth - tonal realism, if you will - of the
sound produced by an audio tube, with one of our state-of the-art motherboards" says
Al Peng, product manager at AOpen America Inc., an audiophile for more than 10 years.
- Graphic chips: Game's not over yet - Trident next month will unveil a
new line of graphics chips aimed at mainstream PC buyers. Video cards based on Trident's XP4
chips will offer performance comparable to the latest mid-range graphics processors,
with prices starting at $70, compared with $100 for comparable Nvidia and ATI products and
up to $400 for high-end graphics cards.
- Roll-up TV makes plastic fantastic - A glowing plastic compound is
being used to create televisions
on plastic sheets than can be rolled up--and to build lightweight information screens
for soldiers in the field.
- Holograms prepped as next DVD spin - Even before the next generation of
DVD takes shape, a Japanese venture company already is betting on what comes after that: a
system based on holographic technology, which can hold 1
terabyte on one side of a CD-size optical disk
- Earthlink wins $24 million from spammer - EarthLink has won more than $24 million
in a claim against a spammer, but the real victory is in preventing members from being
spammed, the company says.
- 'Dr. Death' toll was 215 murders - English family doctor Harold Shipman
-- known as "Dr. Death" -- killed 215 of his patients over a 23 year period, a year-long inquiry
has found.
- Apple must raise prices - This week Steve Jobs' altruism won out over
his business sense, as Apple's decided to charge $100 a year for iTools (dot.Mac) and $129
for the upgrade to OS X 10.2.
- Satellite broadband for cars goes live in UK - This is a product that will allow
trucks, vans, buses or any other mobile vehicle to hook up to broadband - sadly
though, not on the move. According to the blurb, once you're parked up, it's merely a
question of hitting a button and the system automatically points the dish at a satellite
in the southern sky. Then you're online. The service costs from £159 (ex VAT) a
month.
- Chinese Office Software Challenges Microsoft's Win98 - The monopoly of
foreign office software over Chinese market will be broken, as domestic software
developers have jointed
hands to start a project of "Chinese version" office software. The Beijing
IT Industry Promotion Center announced on Thursday that two programs named
"Yangfan" and "Qihang" (both means to "set sail") were
kicked off, aiming at working out an operation system equivalent to Win 98 within a year.
- Xbox Got More Than Game - Microsoft wants to control the living room,
with the Xbox gaming console as its centerpiece. Linux hackers want a cheap
computer, with the Xbox as its shell...
- Flight Simulator 2002 performance comparison - the Central Scrutinizer
has published Flight
Simulator 2002 performance comparison putting the GeForce3 Ti against the GeForce4 Ti.
- HW Round-Up - Matrox
Parhelia-512 128MB (video-review) / X-Micro GF4 Ti4200 / EPoX nForce2 8RGA+ / Chaintech
7VJL Apogee KT333 / ECS
K7VTA3 Rev.3.1 Socket-A / Soltek
SL-85DR2 i845E / ASUS P4T533-C i850E / TDK CyClone 48x24x48x Internal CDRW / Thermaltake GeForce4 Copper Cooler / Toshiba Gigabeat
Portable Audio Player / Altec Lansing's 641 4.1 speaker system.
- Tachyon G9000 Pro - Based on the new ATI RADEON 9000 PRO visual
processing engine (VPU), Tyan's
Tachyon G9000 Pro graphics card provides amazing performance and an exceptional
feature set - all at a truly affordable price. Gamers, digital content creators, streaming
video users, and PC enthusiasts will experience 2D/3D graphics and video like never
before. Tachyon G9000 Pro users get the best of both worlds - incredible VPU performance
from ATI, along with Tyan's long-standing reputation for innovation and reliability.
- VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4600: Overclocking Mania Continues - In this article
Xbit-labs reviewed the most advanced and expensive creation of the VisionTek company: the
VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4600 graphics card based on the most powerful gaming chip
available today, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600. Does it make sense to take chances and subject
cards like that to extreme overclocking torture?
- Buyer's Guide: Value Gaming - July 2002 - AnandTech has posted the
second installment of the AnandTech buyer's guide.
- Antivirus feeding - Did you update your virus databases? Downloads: Kaspersky Anti-Virus / Norton
Antivirus / F-Prot / McAfee (DAT / SuperDAT) / AVG 6.0
- Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 released - The Debian Project is pleased to
announce the release of Debian
GNU/Linux version 3.0. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system, which now supports
a total of eleven processor architectures, includes KDE and GNOME desktop environments,
features cryptographic software, is compatible with the FHS v2.2 and supports software
developed for the LSB
- Windows XP SP1 1078 out for Beta Testers - Windows XP Service Pack1
Beta Build 1078 has been internally released @ MS which includes MSN Messenger 5 Build 322
and Windows Media Player 9 Build 261. (download from DriversHeaven).
- BenchMarX 4 - Free, Compact, fast, sysinfo tool based on
MiTeC System Information Component with benchmarks for CPU, FPU, OpenGL, memory, HDD. Web
site to add/view benchmark results. CPU & FPU - Memory- Video (OpenGL) - HardDisk.
- Ogg Vorbis v1.0 - Ogg Vorbis is a fully
Open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format
for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and
variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive
class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher
performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.
- Windows Media Player 9 Build 261 - The new WMA Professional codec is
the first codec to enable Web-based delivery of 6 channel surround sound with
full-spectrum, full resolution audio (24 bit / 96 kHz sampling). the new version of the
Windows Media Video (WMV) codec provides a 20% efficiency boost compared with the previous
version and now introduces the ability to provide HDTV-like video quality at file sizes
half that of today's DVDs, for local playback on the PC. Download this new build
from here.
- ShellToys XP 2.0.0 - A suite of 27 shell extensions
for Windows XP/2000/Me/98, adding powerful new features to the context menu for files,
folders, windows and file-dialogs.
- kX Project Drivers 5.10.0.3521 BETA -The kX Audio Driver is an
independent WDM driver for all EMU10K1 and EMU10K2-based soundcards manufactured by
Creative Technology Ltd. and/or E-mu Sytems Inc., including the SoundBlaster Live! series,
the E-mu Audio Production Studio (APS) card, and the Audigy series of cards.
- News Interceptor 0.93 Beta - News
Interceptor (freeware) allows you to be instantly notified when your favorite Web
sites emit news of interest. It displays the news title and you can, with a simple mouse
click, read the entire news in your Web browser. It runs in the system tray and only
requires an Internet connection.
- Updated Nomad XP Drivers - Although Windows XP already includes
built-in support for most of the NOMAD digital audio players, Creative has further
optimized the drivers
to take full advantage of the new Microsoft operating system.
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Updated:09:48 AM CEST Jun,21
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