Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:19 PM CEST - Sep,14 2003
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- Through the Solar Looking Glass -
Imagine sitting at your office desk, looking through floor-to-ceiling windows.
You look past dozens of tiny, translucent, 1-centimeter silicon squares
suspended about every square foot or so between dual windowpanes. The little
squares shift like automated, almost invisible Venetian blinds. The miniature
squares follow the sun's rays, so they don't impede the view in any direction.
The entire module -- a clear plastic pane between two glass panes -- functions
like a translucent sundial, letting you tell time with its shadows. The glare
that once bounced off your computer monitor no longer exists. And the sun's
intense heat, which once led to window-shade tug-of-wars with co-workers
longing for a little natural light, no longer beats down on you. You
comfortably tap at your keyboard under natural, abundant, ambient light.
- The cheap way to the stars - by escalator - At the heart of a
space elevator would be
a cable reaching up as far as 100,000km from the surface of the Earth. The
earthbound end would be tethered to a base station, probably somewhere in the
middle of the Pacific ocean. The other end would be attached to an orbiting
object in space acting as a counterweight, the momentum of which would keep
the cable taut and allow vehicles to climb up and down it.
- EFF looking for petition signatures to stop the RIAA suits -
I don't _any_ petititions, but well. Electronic Frontier Foundation has put up
a petition to
send to Congress. They already have 22247 signatures so far! They claims that
anyone who signs the petition over the weekend will have their name on the
document we deliver to Congress. Make your voice heard (thanks
CDFreaks)
- Acer to debut 15.4-inch wide-screen notebook at Computex - Acer
expects to
debut its 15.4-inch wide-screen Centrino notebook at Computex 2003. The
new notebook, manufactured by Compal Electronics, will target the consumer-use
market and be available in October, according to sources. Acer also plans to
launch two other wide-screen Centrino notebooks in 2004. The notebooks, with
screens measuring around 12 and 14 inches, will be key tools for Acer to
further explore the global business-use notebook market, sources said.
- Proxim and Ericsson deliver Wi-Fi hot spot solutions to China Mobile -
Sweden-based Ericsson recently announced that
it will incorporate Proxim's ORiNOCO AP-2000 Wi-Fi access point (AP) as
part of the wireless solutions it is delivering to China Mobile. Proxim's
ORiNOCO AP-2000's dual-slot functionality allows migration to high-speed
54Mbps wireless data rates through simple addition of 802.11a or 802.11g PC
cards in the second slot.
- Creative Advances PC Audio Standard to 7.1 Surround - Creative
Technology Ltd has announced the introduction of
the
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card and Creative GigaWorks S750 speaker
system. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS is the first 7.1 Sound Blaster available
and is ideally matched with the Creative GigaWorks S750 speakers which are
designed to deliver the power and performance needed for the full 7.1
experience. On top of the shift to 7.1 output capability the new Audigy 2 ZS
series adds built-in DTS-ES decoding to the already existing Dolby Digital EX
decoding.
- Half-Life 2, ATI, NVIDIA, and a Sack of Cash - Starting with
articles like
this one, Valve told the world that the ATI 9800 Pro was nearly three
times faster in some cases than the formerly competitive NVIDIA offering, the
5900 Ultra. Curiously, this happened at an ATI sponsored event, "Shader
Day". But the story hasn't stopped there. NVidia released
this
response, essentially claiming that their new drivers, that were available
to Valve at the time of their press conference, would make for vast,
legitimate performance improvements.
An
interview with Massive, the creators of the Aquamark 3d benchmark, seems
to confirm this opinion - that the NV3x chipset wasn't designed around any
certain API very well, and the drivers are critical in achieving good
performance...read
more
- AquaMark 3 - Time for nVidia to face the reality? -
Non-AA performance of the Detonator 50 drivers has increased performance
fairly well across the board which nVidia should be congratulated on but
it is nowhere near enough to compete with ATI and the raw power and DX9
efficiency the Radeon 9800 Pro is generating. nVidia had it their way for
quite some time with DX7 and DX8, but as more DX9 related games and benchmarks
start emerging, ATI are going to be able to produce a better name for
themselves with the R350, as it is clearly better optimized for DX9 compared
to nVidia's flagship which seemingly just can't stand the heat at the present
time.
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 vs. ATI RADEON 9800 comparison - Well, the
performance difference between NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900, ATI RADEON 9800 and
their faster analogues appeared not very high: 10-15% in the heaviest work
modes. The pricing on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra and ATI RADEON 9800 Pro
exceeds that on the non-Ultra and non-Pro versions much more than by these
10-15%. On the other hand, DirectX8 shaders were the maximum our today's
benchmarks could really involve, while in case of DirectX9 shaders RADEON 9800
will definitely be much faster.
- HW Round-up CPU/RAM -
AMD Opteron 246 |
Geil
PC-4200 1024Mb |
Kingmax SuperRAM DDR433
- HW Round-up - MB -
Abit IC7
Max3 i875P |
Abit IC7 Max3 i875P (video) |
Abit NF7-S nForce2 |
Asus A7V600 VIA KT600 |
Asus A7N8X-X nForce2 |
Biostar
iDEQ 200T SFF PC |
DFI Lanparty nForce2 Motherboard |
EPoX 8RDA3+ nForce2 |
EPoX 8KRA2+
KT600 |
MSI
848P Neo |
QDI
P4I865GA-6A i865PE (German) |
Shuttle XPC SB61G2 |
Shuttle SN45G
Barebone |
- HW Round-up - Storage -
Coolmax Gemini USB v2.0 External Drive Enclosure |
Sony DRU-510A: 4X DVD-RW Drive |
Crucial 128MB USB Flash Drive |
CS-256B MP3 Player USB Flash Drive Combo
- HW Round-up - Video -
Creative GeForceFX 5900 Ultra |
Gainward CoolFX GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB |
Gainward GeForceFX 5600 Ultra |
Chaintech Apogee A-FX71 GeForceFX 5600 Ultra |
nVidia QuadroFX 3000 ||
Radeon 9800 Non Pro Flash Guide |
Sapphire Radeon 9600
- HW Round-up Display -
LG Electronics 1510S 15" LCD
- HW Round-up - Case/PSU -
Antec Minuet Slimline Case (German) |
Chenbro XPIDER Gaming Case |
Casetek 1010B Case |
CaseWraps Corrosion Case Wrap |
Kingwin K-11 Aluminum Case |
Lian Li PC-60H3
Ddesigner Aluminum Case |
PolyGFX CaseSkin |
Yeong Yang Casper A106 Case |
XPCases XSuper-Alien Case
||
CWT Blue Edition 300W PSU |
Seasonic Super Versatile 200W mATX PSU |
SilverStone SST-ST40F 400W PSU (1) |
SilverStone Strider SST-ST400 PSU (2) |
Tagan TG380-E00 380W PSU
- HW Round-up - Cooling -
Arctic Cooling Super Silent 4 Pro Cooler |
Asetek WaterChill Kit |
CoolerMaster Musketeer Fan Controller (1) |
CoolerMaster Musketeer Thingie (2) |
Coolink Cool Tank1 Power |
Coolink Typhoon Copper Liquid Block |
Thermalright SP-94 Copper Heatpipe Heatsink (video)
|
Thermalright SLK-947U Cooler |
Thermaltake Silent Boost Cooler |
Verax P16Cu Silent Pentium4 Heatsink |
Slit Edge
Performance Water Block |
Speeze VultureSpin |
Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu Cooler |
Zalman Zm80c-hp GPU Cooler
- HW Round-up - Peripherals -
Coolermaster EAK-US1
Q Alloy Keyboard (1) |
Coolermaster Q Alloy Keyboard (EAK-US1) (2) |
Keysonic Illuminated Mini Keyboard |
Sharkoon Luminous II Keyboard (German) |
Icemat
|
GTW Electronics Keyring Digital Camera
- HW Round-up - Sound -
Xitel INport Brings Clean Audio In |
Creative
Megaworks THX 2.1 250D Speakers (German) |
M-Audio
Revolution 7.1 Speakers |
Zalman 5.1 Headphones |
Zalman ZM-RS6F Surround Sound Headphones
- HW Round-up - Mods -
Kingwin Thunder Liquid CCFL |
Vantec Nexus NXP-201 LED Mod |
Sunbeam Meteor LED Light Stick |
Tiger-Electronics roter LED Fan
- HW Round-up - Network -
Multi-Tech RouteFinder RF550VPN Gateway |
Netgear Router / Print server & Wireless Network Adapter
- HW Round-up - Misc -
Apple
iPod 15GB (German) |
Asus MyPAL A620 (German) |
JET AUDIO iAUDIO CW300 MP3 Player |
Eska Multimeter |
SanDisk Digital
Photo Viewer |
Asante
6-in-1 USB2.0 Card Reader
- Beginners guide to backing up a DVD movie - Welcome to this
beginners guide to backing up a DVD movie. This is intended for people
totally unfamiliar with the process and will try and not get technical so
everything remains easy to understand.
- Interim Release 3 of the BIOS Optimization Guide Available -
Adrian's Rojak Pot just posted
the Interim Release
3 of the new REVISION 8.0 BIOS OPTIMIZATION GUIDE with 30 new BIOS
options!
- Windows Server 2003 SP 1, Beta-1(1069) - Though, Microsoft hasn't
informed beta testers through an email yet, beta
testers can download files
from BetaPlace and can access
Windows Server 2003, SP1 newsgroups. (thanks
ieXbeta)
- CDex v1.51 -
CDex is a tool to do all
sorts of things audio related. Mainly focused on ripping and converting,
things like turning your home Compact Disc collection into an mp3 collection
on your hard drive become extremely easy. With built in support for many
encoders you won't find any shortage of options for your media files. The new
version fixes normalization problem, play digital CD function,filename
generation when % character was in trackname and adds better support of USB
drives when using Native NT SCSI library option.
- DVD Plus Identifier v2.3 -
DVD Plus Identifier
retrieves and interprets the ADIP of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs.
- BeSweet GUI 0.6 b83 - BeSweet
GUI 0.6 b83 enables the DVD2AVI checkbox for AC3, MPA, MP2 and PCM
files.(thanks Doom8.org)
- eXtreme Movie Manager 2.0 allows -
eXtreme Movie Manager 2.0 allows adding and deleting covers in the covers
manager, deleting all fields of an entry and the number of exportable covers
has been increased.
- QuickTime Alternative 1.12 -
QuickTime Alternative (download)
will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions)
without having to install the official QuickTime Player. As a bonus, Internet
Explorer will play all QuickTime movies that are embedded in a webpage. You do
need a media player that is capable of playing QuickTime files. The included
Media Player Classic supports it and works very well.
- Opera 7.20 Beta 11 -
The current changelog is still quite long and includes various fixes such
as several page stalling/never loading issues, several issues where scrollbars
wouldn't appear and loads of others.
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Updated:10:31 PM CEST Jun,20
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