Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:04 AM CEST - Aug,22 2002
- Post a comment / read (3)
- Diamonds are forever, and you could be too - A Chicago company says
it has developed a
process for turning cremated human remains into diamonds that can be worn
as jewelry. The ash is first purified in a vacuum induction furnace at 3,000
degrees Celsius (about 5,400 F). It is then placed in a press under intense
pressure and heat, replicating the forces that create a natural diamond. It
takes about 16 weeks.
- AMD 2600/2400+ Reviews - With the Thoroughbred Revision B core AMD
has given new life to the Athlon XP, and it couldn't have come at a better
time.
The
Athlon XP 2600+, for the most part, offers performance competitive with the
Pentium 4 2.53GHz (PR);
the same can be said about the Athlon XP 2400+ and the Pentium 4 2.4B. There's
no clear performance advantage in either case for the vast majority of
applications, but where AMD does hold the advantage is in price. The Athlon XP
2600+ and 2400+, once available, will retail for significantly less than their
equivalently performing Intel counterparts. There is many reviews:
HotHardware /
VIA
Hardware /
Overclockers.au /
AMD Zone /
AnandTech /
HardOCP
/
FiringSquad /
Aces Hardware /
Tech Report /
Xbit
Labs /
Tom's Hardware.
- XP 2700 with 333Mhz FSB - According to The Inquirer,
AMD's next
speed step will be a 2700+ which will use a 333MHz front side bus (FSB).
But AMD may also attempt to introduce other features into the 2700+ if
engineers can make that work.Those could include Barton like elements such as
SOI (silicon on insulator) and a 512K cache but that's dependent on whether
the designers can make these elements work in a 2700+ chip. The target date
now for the 2700+ is October but while the engineers can introduce a 333 FSB
with few if any problems, we understand that they are having difficulties
making the SOI process work.
- AMD Opteron Preview - "AMD
Opteron processors are targeted to the desktop, server and workstation.
The performance is very promising to the current needs and we believe that it
very competitive to the upcoming Intel Itanium which is based on 64-bit
Technology too.", said Wee Yep Yin, Marketing Manager for South Asia Pacific,
AMD Far East LTD. "AMD's x86-64 technology will soon enable the industry to
advance software development on all fronts with x86 compatibility, while
providing the capability of delivering 64-bit technology benefits."
- Neon Strings Tested - In the last years has become the Case-Modden
all the time popular.
Some beautify their casing with Window Kits or cold light cathodes.
- VIA EPIA Mini-Itx Motherboard - Unlike most motherboards available
today the EPIA
boards have the CPU soldered to the board, so upgrading the CPU is not an
option. The Eden CPU is unique as it is passively cooled. That's to say it is
cooled by a great looking heatsink and does not have a cooling fan. The
Motherboard is therefore completely silent. Via have been able to achieve this
by opting for a relatively slow, by today's standards, CPU speed of 533Mhz and
using their ultra low power Eden core. The CPU runs at a mere 1.2v. Because of
it's low power consumption I have been running the EPIA using a tiny 107 Watt
power supply and despite powering the Motherboard, CPU, Hard drive and CD Rom,
the setup ran flawlessly throughout the four day test period.
- Unibrain Fire60 External 60GB Review - Moving to the rear of the drive
you notice two built in 400Mbps FireWire ports, a power on/off switch along
with the connector for the transformer to plug into. Looking around the drive
the only other notable feature is the LED at the front of the drive. This is
just a simple Power/Activity LED.
Portable products seem to be coming up more and more these days, and a big
emphases is placed on how well products look as well.
5-way KT333 Motherboard Roundup - Overclockers bring you the
round up of five contemporary AMD DDR boards based on VIA's KT-333
chipset. The collection includes: Albatron KX-400+, Asus A7V-333, Chaintech
Apogee, Epox 8K3A+ and Soltek DRV5.
- Nokia 7650 Review -
Nokia's
choice of screen is excellent: there are some beautiful touches
(anti-aliasing around the clock, and a fine caption font based on MacOS Techno
font; and some not so nice touches: a utilitarian menu font that appears to be
monospaced, even though it isn't, and a choice of only three themes.
(The T68 has more). The camera produces some interesting images. The three
modes are landscape (VGA), a truncated portrait (80x96) and a night mode.
Things get interesting at night, as you know, and the camera can produce some
interesting abstract effects. There's 4 MB of RAM for images, which are
captured in JPEG format, even though the imaging application can display
several other formats including PNG and TIFF.
- Known USB Issues in Windows XP - WinXP has a whole host of known
USB issues. USBMan has the
complete list with fixes and work-arounds in the newly updated USB Guide
for Windows XP
- DirectX 9.0 API Specification document - Betaplace has released the
latest version of the DirectX D3D API to compliment the Beta 2
documentation. We recommend you review both the SDK documentation and this
specification to assist development using Beta 2 DirectX D3D.
- Office XP Service Pack 2 released -
Service Pack 2, a 15MB download, is supposed
to
enhance Office XP's performance, security and stability, while fixing a
wide range of glitches.
- Netscape 4.80 - Download links:
Netscape 4.80 for Windows /
Netscape 4.80 for Linux 2.2 /
Netscape 4.80 for other unix systems.
- Unreal Tournament v436 IpDrv server fixes - Epic Games has issued
small
fixes for the Win32 and Linux servers of Unreal Tournament, their
acclaimed multiplayer shooter. The fixes replace the IpDrv module with one
that addresses a Denial of Service attack bug along with a server lag problem.
- DVD Region-Free v1.0 Final - You don't need to flash any firmware
which is dangerous or unavailable.
DVD Region-Free
also disables region check for popular software-based DVD players such as
PowerDVD, WinDVD and CinePlayer. Other features include Region-Free for RCE
DVDs, Macrovision-Free, Operation-Free and run self at DVD players startup
automatically.
- HyperSnap-DX 4.52.01 -
HyperSnap-DX 4 is a screen capture and image editing tool for MS Windows.
It captures screens from standard desktop programs and even those hard-to-grab
DirectX, Direct3D, 3Dfx Voodoo and Glide mode games. HyperSnap-DX 4 can
capture frames from many software DVD players and other video playing
software.
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Updated:09:48 AM CEST Jun,21
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