Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 06:12 PM CEST - May,10 2003
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- Microsoft publishes US Xbox Live prices -
Renewals will start at $49.99 for a year's subscription, or $5.99 for a
month; subs can be topped up either online or with top up cards bought from
various stores. The voice communicator will sell separately for a rather
princely $29.99, but new users will also be able to buy an all-in starter kit
including bundled games, communicator and one year's subscription for a pretty
respectable $69.99.
- Mad Catz to Release Audio, Video Software for PS2 - San Diego-based
Mad Catz said the
GameShark Media Player would turn Sony Corp.'s console, when combined with
Sony's networking adapter, into a playback device for MP3 and OGG audio files,
MPEG and DivX video files, and JPEG and PNG photographic files. Mad Catz said
the software would also support HDTV displays and offer "trick-play"
functionality like fast-forward and rewind. Priced at $49.95, it is set to go
on sale in mid-June.
- E3 stirs up game console speculation - That's what video game
buffs are wondering as the industry gears up for its biggest trade show of the
year, next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which
regularly triggers major price cuts for game consoles. Sony jumped the gun
last year, triggering a widely expected round of price cuts just before E3.
But expectations for this year's show, which runs from Wednesday through May
17 in Los Angeles, are hazier, with many analysts calculating the odds as
slightly against any price cuts.
Another article called "Game Console Price Cuts Seen in Summer or Later "
can be found at Reuters.
- Microsoft Faces Fine for Security Flaw - Microsoft faces the threat
of a hefty fine after scrambling to shut down a flaw in its Passport service
that could reveal users' critical personal information. The flaw, which was
reported to the company on Wednesday, is located in the service's password
recovery system. It allowed intruders to change an account password if they
knew the user name. Adam Sohn, a product manager with the Passport team, said
the flaw has been shut down and that Microsoft is working quickly to fix the
matter. But under an agreement signed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
last August, Microsoft promised it would not give false information about
security and would improve its privacy protection. The company could face
hefty fines--up
to $11,000 per violation--if its reset password feature is found to
decrease privacy protection.
- Cops seize dorm PCs in college raid - Ohio State cops have
made the
latest raid on techie college students, seizing computer equipment from
three freshman and one sophomore. Officers charged into the students'
dormitory rooms earlier this month in a search for evidence linking them to a
file-trading network run on the OSU network, The Lantern reports. Search
warrants in hand, the coppers nicked some computers, video game manuals,
Blockbuster movie rental cards, DVDs, a microphone and a power cord.
- Toshiba Packs 36GB Onto Blue Laser Disc - Toshiba has developed a
dual-layer rewritable optical disc for use with the blue-laser-based Advanced
Optical Disc format that it is developing with NEC. The disc, which will be
introduced at the Optical Storage 2003 conference in Vancouver next week, is
the same physical size as a CD or DVD and
is capable of storing up to 36GB of data. It is one of two rewritable disc
types that make up the initial AOD format proposal, the other being a
single-sided disc capable of storing 20GB. The AOD format also includes 15GB
and 30GB read-only disc types. That compares to between 4.7GB and 9.2GB on a
DVD disc.
- ATI to Host First Public Showing of Valve's Half-Lifer 2 at E3 -
ATI Technologies Inc. and Valve
announced the
first public showing of Valve's Half-Life 2 will take place at next week's
E3. The product will be shown on ATI's RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB, the highest
performance 3D card currently available, in a state of the art theater located
in ATI's booth (South Hall, 646).
- ATI begins shipping Radeon 9600 PRO chips - ATI Technologies on May
8 announced that
it has started volume shipments of its new-generation Radeon 9600 PRO (RV350)
graphics chips, which it launched in March. Graphics cards based on the Radeon
9600 PRO chip are aimed at the mainstream market of less than US$200, ATI
said. With architecture featuring quad pixel pipes and dual vertex engines,
the Radeon 9600 PRO also features support for the latest Microsoft's DirectX
9, OpenGL feature sets, advanced anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering
technologies.
- Elpida's DDR2 SDRAM excels in Intel machine - Elpida Memory,
Inc. has announced that
its 512 Mbit DDR2 SDRAM module for high-end server applications has
performed at a data rate of 533 Mbits/s for the first time in an Intel server.
The part will be ready for volume production by this summer. Elpida submitted
its 512 Mit DDR2 Unbuffered DIMM module dubbed EBE51UD8ABFA-5C to Intel Corp.
to test it in a real prototype system. "The DDR2 DRAM actually operated at 533
Mbits/s with a 1.8V power supply in the Intel machine," said an Elpida
spokeswoman.
- Nvidia admits GeForce FX 5800 'not successful' - Nvidia last night
announced disappointing results for the first quarter of its current
fiscal year, 2004. The chip maker admitted its NV30 chip - aka the GeForce FX
5800 - was "not a successful product", and confirmed that it would launch its
replacement, the NV35, next week. The suggests Nvidia will indeed announce
NV35 at the E3 show, to be held in Los Angeles on 13-16 May, as forecast.
- Updated GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Specs - VR-Zone has received
some latest info that
the memory clock was improved from 425Mhz to 450Mhz on the latest NV35
card samples so it is now running at 450/450 core/memory clock.
- 4Ghz CPU Power - Overclocking the P4 - Although having a
workstation running 24/7 at 3.6Ghz can be called far from bad, it is in the
nature of mankind to always try harder and go higher. That's why hooked up a
Prometeia from Chip-Con to the CPU in an attempt to obtain very chilly
temperatures. With this
added cooling power the P4 when straight over 4ghz using only a small
voltage increase (1.65v vcore), while still remaining very cold indeed -31C. -
lol :)
- Fast DDR Memory from TwinMOS and Buffalo - More and more
manufacturers are luring customers with fast RAM modules. DDR433 und DDR466
are the latest creations to breathe a touch more performance into today's
computers.
So what are the advantages of fast memory in practice?.
- VIA KT400 Motherboard Roundup - VIA's KT400 is their current
flagship chipset. KT400A boards are not yet available, but it appears the
differences between the two are small that for the first time in three years
we did not get the latest demo board from VIA.
Let's now look at eight boards based on the KT400 chipset.
- Leadtek A340TDH 128MB GeForce FX5200 Review - By the look of the
scores,
the FX5200 boasts a nice improvement, circa 30%, over its predecessor GF4
MX-440 (Some of that "might" be due to a larger memory size). In memory
bandwidth intensive operations, e.g. FSAA 2X or 4X, the FX5200 provides a
35~50% increase in FPS (frames per second). The FX5200 is not as powerful
as the GF4 Ti-4200 though, around 20~50% slower. (different price
segments). All in all, the Leadtek A340THD is an excellent choice for those
who seek a budget graphic card which has a decent performance level and offers
DX9 capability.
- Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB review - Dave Baumann
at Beyond3D has published
a
review of Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB.
- ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 9000 PRO Review (video) -
The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER 9000 PRO Video Card is packaged with a ridicules
amount of goodies but still very affordable which makes it one serious
bang-for-the-buck product. This product has great 3D performance, TV tuner,
excellent Video playback, great 2D image quality and much more.
Watch the Video to find out more.
- Lite-On LSC-24081MX (external combo) review - The guys at
CDRLabs.com have
taken a look at the Lite-On LSC-24081MX drive, an external (USB 2.0) combo
drive supporting 24x read/write speeds, 12x re-write and 8x DVD-read speeds.
- Samsung 757MB CRT Monitor Review - One aspect that definitely
caught my eye was the dot pitch.
The 0.20 mm dot pitch is the lowest I have seen yet. Usually monitors come
with either a 0.297 mm or a 0.26 mm dot pitch, which to some people could very
well be unacceptable. My old CRT has a dot pitch of 0.297 mm, and I assure
you, the difference is definitely noticeable. To show you just how noticeable
it is, I can't find any difference between a refresh rate of 60Hz and 100Hz,
which others seem to pick up on quite readily. In fact, when I went from this
monitor to my old monitor, things were terrible. Text, images, you name it
suffered from chronic blurring. Needless to say, I had a very difficult time
adjusting to a 0.297 mm dot pitch.
- Samsung Msys-835P Digital Multifunction Printer Review - Tweaknews
has posted a
review of the Samsung Msys-835P Digital Multifunction Printer.
- Canon i950 + Comparison of Photo Printers -
The i950 is faster, cheaper and better than the average inkjet printer
(mean of 70 models released since the end of 2000). It gave us a nice surprise
with its moderate cost per page and the quality of its office printing, much
better than that of the earlier S900. Graphics are bright, color blocks even
and all the characters perfectly legible. Its photos are definitely superb.
The dots are invisible and no raster can be seen, even when you enlarge the
image by three. It's not easy to tell these prints from lab photos.
- Thermal Compound Shoot out - It seems to be fashionable these days
to condemn premium thermal compounds and to a certain extent one can see why.
Barring the Shin Etsu, most of the compounds here are within a few degrees of
each other. If you are using the little sachet of paste that came with your
motherboard/cooler/CPU, however,
upgrade as a matter of urgency and see those temperatures plummet.
- EVERCOOL Water Cooler WC-101 Review - The
down side to water cooling is the risk of water leaking onto the electrical
components of your computer. Water + Electronics = Bad News! In the past you
had to worry about leaks and drips. Not anymore,
Evercool has come up with a kit comes pre-built and contains everything in
one container. The question is, will it do the job and cool the CPU better and
quieter then a HSF (Heat Sink Fan)?
- Setting up an Opteron System - There's an interesting article
which include some benchmarks,
check it out (thanks Nitrox).
- DH 3D Tranquillity ScreenSaver Updated - Here is an updated
Driverheaven
screensaver. This screensaver was written using OpenGL 3D graphic
library. A GPU with CubeMap support is required to run it at its best, though
it will run on older cards. In the latter case, the CubeMap option in the
configuration dialog will be ignored.
- FlashFXP 2.1 Final -
FlashFXP (download)
is the most powerful and popular FTP & FXP Client for Microsoft Windows
9x/Me/NT/2000/XP on the market today.
- Complete Audio Converter Lite/Pro 3.0 -
Complete Audio Converter
Lite/Pro (download trial)
is a utility to convert or fast batch convert audio files from/to MP3
(including VBR), WMA, WAV, ADPCM, GSM, DSP, MP2, PCM (uncompressed Wave), OGG
Vorbis, G721, G723, 726, A-LAW, U-LAW and RAW; you can even make your own
formats.
- Audiotools 4.40 Interim 2 -
Audiotools (download
~
what's new) is a direct-to-disk recording tool with the facility to
automatically split a recording into tracks. It can split a recording into
separate tracks, either by silence detection or under manual control.
- Ad Muncher 4.5 Build 6592 Beta -
Ad Muncher (download)
is a program for Windows systems which removes adverts, popups and general
browsing annoyances from all popular browsers and web-utilizing programs (as
well as most banner displaying and popup generating programs like ICQ,
Morpheus, Kazaa, Grokster, Opera, iMesh, Bearshare, LimeWire, etc).
- Fresh UI 5.90 -
Fresh UI (download)
is a fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with
hundreds of useful hidden settings this software covers the customizing and
optimizing techniques that you'll be glad to know.
- AIDA32 v3.50/AIDA16 v2.05 -
AIDA32 is a
professional system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program running
on Win32 platforms. It extracts details of all components of the PC. It can
display information on the screen, print it, or save it to file in various
formats like HTML, CSV or XML. For corporate users, AIDA32 offers command-line
switches, network audit and audit statistics, remote system information and
network management.
- XP Pre-SP2 Patch fixes a Bug with ATA Drives -
The update addresses the "Problems When Your Computer with Multiple ATA
Drives Enters the S1 Power State" issue in Windows XP, and is discussed in
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 812415.
Download now for your computer to be able to enter the S1 power state when
it has multiple ATA drives.
- SoundBlaster Audigy 2 WHQL Drivers - Creative asia have released
v383 WHQL drivers
(mirror) for the Audigy 2. This update contains fixes to improve the
performance of your Creative Sound Blasterr Audigy(TM) 2, Audigy 2 Digital
Audio, Audigy 2 Platinum and Audigy 2 Platinum eX.This update contains only
the WDM drivers. There will not be future updates to the VXD drivers, which
are no longer supported by many third-party applications. For the best user
experience on the Audigy 2 series, please use the WDM drivers. (thanks
Warp2Search)
- Lite-On IT Firmware - Lite-On IT has released
new firmware versions for their
LTR-48246K,
LTC-48161H
and
XJ-HD166S.
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Updated:10:40 PM CEST Jun,21
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