Thursday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:17 PM CET - Nov,20 2003
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- GGMania RSS Headlines - GGMania now has
an experimental XML
RSS 1.0 feed. Please test it out and see if it works. This allows you to
grab a headlines of the news on the front page. If you have a news aggregator
program, you can process the news file in the same way you would from other
sites offering similar feeds.
- Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers - The 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals said Tuesday that
the FBI is not legally entitled to remotely activate the system and secretly
use it to snoop on passengers, because doing so would render it inoperable
during an emergency. In a split 2-1 rulingthe majority wrote that "the company
could not assist the FBI without disabling the system in the monitored car"
and said a district judge was wrong to have granted the FBI its request for
surreptitious monitoring.
- New Round of DMCA Letters -
Users of
Bit Torrent and E-Donkey get a visit from the DMCA fairy via Comcast
headquarters. As Kazaa became the primary focus of the RIAA's pirate-hunt,
many users fled to alternate networks like E-donkey or began using Bit-Torrent
(see past article on Bit Torrent) in the belief they might be able to avoid
the piracy police. According to this thread in our Comcast forum, that isn't
the case. The E-donkey crackdown isn't surprising, since it's a mainstream p2p
application, but the Bit Torrent film crackdown has even more traders fleeing
to newsgroups and IRC.
- Encrypted cell phone foils eavesdroppers -
CryptoPhone, a unit of privately held GSMK, said a European model of its
encrypted GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone is available
immediately for $2,270 (1,900 euros), and a U.S. configuration will ship by
the end of the year. Two CryptoPhones are necessary to have a secure
conversation.
- Tape Drive Alternatives Unveiled -
Three companies at Comdex are challenging the viability of tape backup,
offering alternatives that tackle the same task. Iomega's solution is a drive
and high-capacity removable disks. Fastora is hyping a one-drive NAS device,
while Nexsan's answer is a two-unit storage array. Iomega and Nexsan both
claim their storage products are cheaper than tape alternatives and their
message seems to be the same: the tape drive's days are numbered.
- Dream Screens -
PCMag has rounded up five plasma and five LCD screens ranging from 30 to
43 inches diagonally, with prices ranging from about $3,000 to $9,000. Most
are at the low end of that range. These displays are still much more expensive
than standard CRT television sets, which is why market research firm
iSupply/Stanford Resources projects that CRTs will maintain an 80 percent
market share worldwide in 2007. But for TVs 30 inches and larger, the CRT
share will drop to 51 percent, and other designs will take over. Plasma will
account for 13 percent of the 2007 market, and LCD a whopping 23 percent,
iSupply predicts
- Intel to cut P4 chipset prices on December 28 - Intel, preparing
for its upcoming
Grantsdale line, will cut 865 series chipset pricing by as much as 6.3% on
December 28. According to Intel's roadmap, it will launch Grantsdale P and
Grantsdale G chipsets supporting the new-generation Socket T (LGA775) Prescott
processor in the second quarter of 2004. Since the entry-level Grantsdale GV
and Grantsdale GL will not be introduced until the third quarter of next year,
Intel has decided to keep the prices of the 845 series flat, with the
exception of the 845GE chipset.
- Comdex Fall 2003 Coverage -
Day 1 /
Day 2 /
Day 3 @ THG.
- AMD's Athlon64 FX-51 Processor review - Nevertheless, AMD still has
a beast of a processor here which will satisfy any gamer. Hopefully we'll see
AMD announce some more models for this family to make this CPU line a bit more
attractive. If AMD would release a 1.8 or 1.6 GHz Athlon64 FX-51 models, it
would make the platform much more viable. As of now,
AMD's Athlon64 FX-51 is nearly twice as expensive as today's Pentium 4 3.2 GHz,
as Intel has been rapidly slashing prices on their high-end models to make way
for their upcoming P4EE models.
- Motherboards round-up -
Athlon 64 Motherboard Showdown |
ASUS K8V Deluxe (Wireless Edition) on VIA K8T800 |
Albatron & FIC K8T800 Boards |
Shuttle's XPC SB75G2 small form factor system |
VIA PT880 Chipset review
- Ten ATX Power Supplies Compared -
Ten ATX power supplies were evaluated on features and performance ranging
in size from 400 watts to 550 watts. Each PSU was tested under controlled load
conditions (~300 watt combined load). All ten power supplies survived the
rigors of testing – not one gave up its smoke!
- Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB review -
The Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB utilizes the same 412 MHz core and 730
MHz DDR memory clock speeds, which is the main reason for ATI upgrading the
cooling hardware. The heatsink is copper and the main unit creates a maze of
ducts for airflow to not only cool the GPU but the DDR memory as well. As with
the ATI card, the Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256-MB is a heavy piece of hardware
and almost on-par with the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra boards.
- PowerColor RADEON 9800 XT ( XR98T-D3) 256MB DDR review - It's darn
tough, when you get right down to it.
The Power Color Radeon 9800 XT isn't a breed apart from other 9800 XT
cards. It is in fact the twin of the Sapphire, with a little nicer makeup.
That might make a difference in dating, but doesn't really help all that much
when it comes to laying out 500 smackers for a top performing card.
- Gigabyte GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB Video Card review -
As to the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra card, this is just a reference solution:
it wins and loses right the same way. In the shader tests the NVIDIA card
mostly loses the battle. The price will be a determining factor! If it's
$70-80 cheaper than the top RADEON 9800 XT, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra can be a
success (but remember that the cooler is pretty bulky and not that quiet).
Another review can be found at
Overclockers New Zealand.
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro review -
ViperLair take look at the performance of the Catalyst 3.6, 3.7 and Omega
3.6 build, for comparison numbers against the FX5900.
- GeXcube Radeon 9600Pro 128mb EXTREME review - The GeXcube
Radeon 9600Pro EXTREME is your typical ATI 9600Pro reference card with a
twist. Unlike most 9600Pro who uses 3.3ns or even 2.8ns memory chips, this
unique 9600Pro version uses 2.5ns chips. Thus, the EXTREME monicker. Aside
from that, there is no other difference.
- Ultra320 Hard Drives With 15,000 RPM - In comparing such
high-class hard drives,
it's practically impossible to recommend one particular model for all
possible uses. In addition, apart from the raised requirement of cooling -
which cannot in any case be got around in professional use - none of the
models revealed failings.
- 160GB External Drive - The drive that Seagate uses it its
80GB-per-platter drive that packs
two platters for a 160GB total storage - it's the same unit we've reviewed
in an Serial ATA formfactor. This means you have the same 8MB cache and
7200rpm spindle rate that looks good on paper, but more importantly, since
each platter has such a high density, the transfer rates are really good.
- Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus & TX4 SATA Controllers Video Review -
The Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus & TX4 SATA Controllers offer excellent
performance at a very reasonable price. These controllers are capable of RAID
0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD and support most Operating Systems. The TX2plus model only
has two SATA connections but the TX4 has four SATA connections which will
satisfy even the most demanding storage needs.
- The Plextor PX-708UF DVD+R/RW Drive review - Overall,
the Plextor PX-708UF is a great looking drive. The drive is a little
large, but not so large that it feels like a hulking mass on our desk. The
added base unit also helps to minimize the amount of valuable desktop space
being used. The only thing left to do is put the drive through a few tests to
help get an idea of what to expect in everyday performance.
- Ximeta Netdisk (80 GB) review -
The
Ximeta Netdisk is the first device to offer connectivity to your computer
via USB 2.0, as well as connectivity to an entire network via an Ethernet
connection. The NetDisk is currently the only offering from this corporate
youngster, which describes itself as "a data storage solution company focusing
on the growing trend toward networked information storage, in which storage
systems are linked on a network via Ethernet."
- MPIO 1.5GB USB Storage Drive - These tiny devices fit in your
pocket and offer capacities ranging from a nearly-useless 16MB to a covetable
1GB. Unfortunately, that
1GB storage drive would set you back around $260.
- Auravision (EluminX) Laser Mouse review -
The
Laser Mouse looks just as great in dim lighting. The deep blue sapphire
glow from the scroll wheel is very similar to that of the EluminX keyboard and
compliments it quite nicely. The semi-transparent bottom allows the red
optical lighting to shine through the rear and the blue glow from the wheel
through the sides. Looks very nice. It's smooth and silent. Very similar
feel to most Logitech mice.
- Philips Key Ring 003 MP3 Player review - DesignTechnica has posted
a
review of Philips Key Ring 003 MP3 player.
- Alcoholer 4.1 final -
New version is out. Also this is last version of Alcoholer (download).
This new version adds MDS/BWA Editor, DaemonScript, fixes problem with
TwinCreator and maybe some bug fixes too.
- DivX 5.11 -
DivX Networks
has released a new version of DivX, bringing the latest version number to
5.1.1. This version introduces some new features, bugfixes and improvements.
- WinAmp 5 RC8 -
Nullsoft Winamp (download
RC) is a fast, flexible, high-fidelity media player for Windows. Winamp
supports playback of many audio (MP3, OGG, AAC, WAV, MOD, XM, S3M, IT, MIDI,
etc) and video types (AVI,ASF,MPEG,NSV), custom appearances called skins
(supporting both classic Winamp 1.x/2.x skins and Winamp 3 freeform skins),
audio visualization and audio effect plug-ins, blah blah.. :)
- Call of Duty: system hangs or VPU recover error messages playing game
- patch - This issue affects the following configurations: RADEON
9500/9600/9700/9800 Series, CATALYST 3.8 and later drivers. Some users have
reported that after the game is launched, the system may hang or produce a VPU
recover error.
Download patch directly from ATI.
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Updated:03:04 PM CEST Jun,20
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