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 Gameguru Mania News - Oct,09 2003 - tech 
Thursday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:46 PM CEST - Oct,09 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Offtopic: Forty-second ecstasy tablet test developed  - A new technique that rapidly analyses ecstasy tablets could provide an early warning system for rogue pills and also police help trace illicit manufacturers. The method uses Raman spectroscopy to produce a fingerprint for each ecstasy tablet. This reveals the concentration of the active ingredient MDMA plus the identity of any toxic contaminants.
  • Have chess computers surpassed the strongest grandmasters? - In a few weeks Garry Kasparov will take on X3D Fritz in a high-profile man-machine chess match. It is very difficult to figure out who should be the statistical favorite, because computer ratings are somewhat different from human FIDE ratings. Every two or three months, the Swedish Chess Computer Association (abbreviated SSDF in Swedish) publishes a rating list, estimating the strength of the top chess computers. The ratings are based upon thousands of games hosted by SSDF members, between commercially-available computer programs running on specific hardware. Different versions of the same program are treated separately. Thus the top seven in the July 2003 SSDF list were all various versions of Fritz or Shredder, running on the most powerful hardware used by SSDF members (256MB Athlon 1200 MHz). (thanks Slashdot.org)
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2003 First Look - FrontPage still integrates with the rest of Office and employs shared Office features like the Picture Manager and Clip Organize. But it's now intended for serious Web authors and businesses that want to build sites based on data sources in XML, OLEDB, or Web services formats. Many advanced features, like Web logs and data-driven news pages, require Microsoft's SharePoint services. Sleek new features make the highly automated, business-oriented FrontPage 2003 worth the upgrade. A more efficient interface eliminates the vertical Views bar and replaces it with a tabbed interface on the editing screen, giving you quick access to site management and editing featur.
  • Nokia phone explodes - again - A Dutch teenager suffered burns to his leg when his Nokia mobile phone exploded in his trouser pocket on Monday. This latest incident comes less than three months after a woman, also from The Netherlands, suffered burns to her face and neck after her Nokia handset exploded.  At the time Nokia blamed the incident on a non-Nokia replacement battery being used.
  • MS plucks Sierra Wireless for smartphone - A Canadian modem company, Sierra Wireless is to introduce a smartphone based on Microsoft's Smartphone 2003 platform next year. The 'Voq' looks like a candybar phone, but its keypad opens to form a fold-out QWERTY keyboard. Flextronics will manufacture the device, which runs on GSM/GPRS networks. Sierra is targeting business users in North America and Europe where it does most of its business.
  • VIA KT880 Specs - AMDboard has the specification of the first known mainboard to use the newly born. Coming from Abit, the KV7II offers the latest technologies thanks to this new chipset coupled with the now popular VT8237: 6-channel audio, SATA 150, RAID, USB2.0, LAN 10/100, and most of all, the new VIA Quad Band Memory 533 (QBM) technology that allow 8.5GB/s bandwidth.
  • 64-Bit Takes Off - Equally key is a 64-bit CPU's ability to recognize and use a lot more RAM. Today's 32-bit chips, such as AMD's Athlon XP and Intel's Pentium 4, can address up to 4GB of RAM split between the OS and applications. Few PCs have that much memory, and even fewer apps use it. But with ever-more-complex software, that limitation may become a bottleneck, making Athlon 64's ability to address a whopping terabyte (1000GB) of physical memory very attractive. But you will need a 64-bit-capable operating system, new hardware drivers, and 64-bit applications to fully take advantage of such a chip, and therein lies the rub. AMD knew 64-bit desktop computing wouldn't be ready for prime time right away, so it made its 64-bit Athlons hybrid CPUs that can also run today's 32-bit app and PCWorld's initial tests show the chips run them very well.
  • 19" LCD Monitors Round-up - X-Bit Labs have compared 11 monitors from Iiyama, LG, Nec, Samsung and Sony. They take look at the pixel response time parameter, monitor brightness, contrast ratio, color temperature and quality of color rendition.
  • Pentium 4 3.2GHz "Extreme Edition" review - There's really nothing new to this chip other than the 2MB of L3 as apposed to the normal 512KB L2 Cache that does help boost performance under certain loads - after all if tons of extra cache on a chip was the main indicator of performance for desktop PCs, wouldn't we have seen that done by now?
  • DVD Burning: The Complete Guide - PCMag tested 23 burners to find the ones that rock, and select the best DVD authoring software from among the 6 front-runners.
  • Creative Audigy 2's Platinum Pro Features Sound 7.1 (and DTS) review  - Anyone who is not thinking of doing anything more than playing games or a DVD, an Audio CD or audio files in general, the Audigy 2 ZS is certainly the best choice in terms of the ratio between possibilities and cost. On the other hand, if you like to connect and disconnect various types of equipment and perform elaborate recording, you will more likely need the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro. In the case of multimedia and musical creative activities, the external housing makes it easy to use and offers a range of possibilities that will soon prove to be indispensable. Whatever the case and whatever the version you choose, the ZS has become the non-professional sound card that offers the best audio quality on the market.
  • Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 300 GB Monster review  - With a behemoth capacity of 300 GB, the DiamondMax is the biggest hard drive so far. Can the 5,400 rpm drive with just 2 MB of cache also deliver the performance for our times?
  • Ximeta NetDisk review - Ximeta's NetDisk can both serve as a USB 2.0 external drive or plug into your LAN via its 10/100 Ethernet port. But does its LAN feature make it an inexpensive NAS device?
  • VapoChill XE [Socket 478 P4] - The chaps at Hexus.net took the most advance cooling solution avaliable on the retail market and coupled it with the highest performing CPU (which a mounting solution was avaliable for the cooling solution to use) - The Pentium 4 EE CPU.
  • ATI Catalyst Suite 3.8 (Driver) Review - So, there we have it, the new features of the ATI Catalyst 3.8 in a nutshell. ATI have given all users something to play with here, "but you have not covered gaming performance!" I hear you all saying. Well, this set of drivers are more about the added features, not the optimization. Only one game has been pumped up in terms of performance and that's Tomb Raider Cradle of Life, which no one gives a damn about anyway.:) So, expect performance to be the same as your Catalyst 3.7 release in all your other games. Another reviews can be found at EnvyNews, Beyond3D
  • Linux 2.6 Kernel Stability Freeze - Linux Creator Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.0-test7 Linux development kernel and declared a "stability freeze".
  • Mozilla Firebird 0.7 RC1 - Mozilla Firebird (download) is a free, open-source and cross-platform web browser for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and other operating systems. It is small, fast and easy to use, and offers many advantages over other web browsers, such as the tabbed browsing and the ability to block pop-up windows.
  • WinGuard Pro 2003 5.5.3.43 - Give yourself peace of mind from people tampering with your PC with WinGuard Pro 2003 - Free Edition, stop people changing your settings, accessing unauthorized programs, and important files.
  • HotDog Professional 7.03 - HotDog Professional 7 includes some great new features making this latest version the most robust, flexible and user friendly text-based HTML Editor on the market.
  • InstantGet 1.45 - InstantGet (download) is a powerful and efficient download manager and accelerator, InstantGet splits downloading files into multiple sections, downloading each section simultaneously to increase downloading speed up to 5 times faster.
  • Nero version 6.0.0.19 changelog - Nero have finally provided a lengthy changelog to Nero Version 6.0.0.19.
  • Easy CD-DA Extractor 6.1.0.2 - Easy CD-DA Extractor (download) package includes  CD-Ripper, CD-Burner, and Music File Format Convert.
  • TVTool 8.3.1 -  The main problem is the black borders around the picture on the TV screen. These can be very annoying for most applications like DVD-playback or decoding. TVTool (download trial version) is a completely software based solution to this problem. TVTool has many features, such as dualview, which makes simultaneous output to the TV and monitor possible.
  • VG Clipboard Master 1.0 - VG Clipboard Master is very useful program which provides extended clipboard capabilities, helps you to work with computer, saving your time and it is easy to use. Windows clipboard can only store one item at a time but using VGCM you can copy a lot of different objects to the clipboard at the same time.It is easy to customize your clipboards list.
  • Plextor Europe releases firmware 1.02 for PX-708A/UF drive - Plextor Europe has released a new firmware version for the PX-708A/UF DVD recorder, along with the changelog.
  • RivaTuner Script Pack For Catalyst 3.8 - Guru3D has posted an udated SoftR9x00 and ATIOverclockingAntiprotection (this patch script allows you to remove driver-level overclocking protection on certain ATI RV250/RV280/R300/RV350 based boards) for the new Catalyst 3.8.
  • Omega Drivers 2.4.87 - Omegadrive has released his Omega Drivers version 2.4.87 based on ATI's Catalyst 3.8 display drivers that were released last night.
 Gameguru Mania News - Oct,08 2003 - tech
ATI Catalyst 3.8 Drivers - tech
(hx) 09:55 PM CEST - Oct,08 2003 - Post a comment / read (9)
The official ATI's Driver page is now offering the Catalyst 3.8 drivers (WinXP ~ Win9x/ME) for the Radeon family of videocards. ATI entitled them as "the biggest and most improved software release in ATI history". For example, they claim performance improvements to applications that use the Z-buffer in certain ways. Tomb Raider frame rates improve as much as 20%. Giants - Citizen Kabuto also runs significantly faster. Other titles may also be improved.  There are fixes for games like IL2 Stumovik Forgotten Battles, Tiger Woods, Flight Simulator 2004, CounterStrike (setting 800x600/32/100Hz followed by enabling triple buffering no longer results in display corruption), Serious Sam 2, Project A3, Midnight Club 2  (corrupted textures on 7500), Neverwinter Nights, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (image corruption) and XIII demo.
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:05 AM CEST - Oct,08 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Hacker Wargame Research Project - The wargame is a specially designed internet connected network running Microsoft Windows 2000 Servers with IIS, Exchange and MS-SQL. Each participant (that's you) will have to complete 3 specific hacking goals on these Microsoft based servers, so you gotta know how to hack a 'doze box to play our little game. We will be studying how you complete the goals for our "cognitive research" which is the study of how people think.  If we select you to participate in the wargame research project, and you are successful in achieving the three project goals and follow the simple steps we outline, you will be paid a minimum of US$250.
  • Shift key breaks CD copy locks - In a paper published on his Web site this week, Princeton Ph.D. student John Halderman explained how he disabled a new kind of copy-protection technology, distributed as part of a new album by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton. Under normal circumstances, the antipiracy software is automatically loaded onto a Windows machine whenever the Hamilton album is run in a computer's CD drive, making traditional copying or MP3 ripping impossible. However, simply holding down the Shift key prevents Windows' AutoRun feature from loading the copy-protection software, leaving the music free to copy, Halderman said
  • Software drives users to crime - Instead of preventing piracy, the current crop of software product activation schemes could actually encourage it. Nice article, check it out..
  • Off-topic: Two Americans, Russian Win Nobel Prize in Physics - Alexei A. Abrikosov, Anthony J. Leggett and Vitaly L. Ginzburg were awarded the prize for their work concerning superconductivity and superfluidity.
  • Nokia Launches N-Gage Handset - Nokia on Tuesday launched its much-hyped N-Gage game phone, taking on Japan's Nintendo in a bid to break into the red-hot gaming market and offset its slowing growth in global handset sales.
  • First 2-Megapixel Camera Phone Debuts - Casio Computer has become the first cellular telephone maker to announce a handset that can capture still images at 2-megapixel resolution. The phone is on show at the Ceatec Japan 2003 exhibition, which opened Tuesday just outside of Tokyo.
  • PSX Specs And Price Revealed - Sony Corp said on Tuesday it would begin selling the "PSX," an all-in-one game console and entertainment system, in Japan by the year-end. The PSX would feature a satellite TV tuner, DVD recorder, hard disk drive (HDD) recorder and PlayStation 2 game player.  A version with a 160-gigabyte HDD will sell for 79,800 yen ($719) and be able to record up to 204 hours of television, the company said. It will also sell a 250-gigabyte version for 99,800 yen.
  • Asus unveils DiGiMatrix PC that looks like a Hi-Fi separate - Asus have introduced its latest barebones PC, the DiGi Matrix, but looks like Hi-Fi separate rather than a PC. It is designed to combine various Hi-Fi and Video separates in one box including a CD player, TiVo style Personal video recorder, MP3 player, DVD player in a box, but while not looking 'out of place' under the living room TV.
  • TDK Shows Off Stylish MP3 Players - TDK on Tuesday announced an expansion of its MOJO line to include several new portable MP3 players. TDK also noted the Mac compatibility of three of the new units, which use USB to connect to Macs or to Windows PCs. The MOJO 256F ($190) sports a digital FM tuner, 256MB of internal memory, and a slot for an MultiMediaCard or SD card flash memory expansion media. The device can also record voice memos or FM radio streams to its internal memory. It sports a backlit text display, seven equalizer presets for different musical styles, a user-programmable EQ mode, and four playback modes. It supports up to 20 programmable FM radio presets.
  • New Discs Double DVD Storage - Pioneer, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, and Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, the latter better known by its Verbatim brand name, have said they have developed prototype discs that can hold up to 8.5GGB of data and will show them at Ceatec, according to statements from the companies.
  • SiS unveils 16GB quad-channel Rambus chipset - The chipset provides a quad-channel memory bus designed to take 1.2GHz RDRAM for 9.6GBps of memory bandwidth. Up to 16GB of memory is supported. SiSR659 samples will be available in the fourth quarter, the company said.
  • AMD Duron Applebred vs. Athlon XP Thoroughbred - Recently AMD introduced its new durons.  The chaps at MadShrimps bought one of them, the 1.6GHz version. The most interesting part of this cpu is its core voltage, only 1.5 V. This CPU begged to be compared with an Athlon XP, dlt3c (known for reaching speeds up to 2700Mhz!). Is the new Duron an equally good overclocker ? Maybe even better ? Find out in this review..
  • ATI Overclocking Antiprotection  - The script was tested and seems to work fine on RV350 based boards and Catalyst 3.7, however it must function properly on the rest drivers and hardware too. Any feedback from locked RV250/RV280/R300 owners is welcome.
  • HyperSnap-DX 5.30.01 - HyperSnap-DX 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, 3dfx, Voodoo and Glide mode games.
  • nVidia Detonator 50.21 for Win2003 Unofficial - Station-Drivers have posted an unoffical new set of Nvidia Detonator Drivers 50.21 for windows server 2003.
 Gameguru Mania News - Oct,07 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:33 AM CEST - Oct,07 2003 - Post a comment
  • Microsoft fixes broken patch - Microsoft releases a cumulative patch for Internet Explorer this weekend (download), plugging a security hole that had been used by Trojan horse program QHosts to compromise consumers' PCs. The patch--the fortieth that Microsoft has issued this year--seals several security holes in Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0 for all versions of Microsoft Windows. The giant deemed the patch critical to all versions of Windows, except Windows Server 2003, which runs with more security in its default installation.
  • Four Plead Guilty to Software Piracy - In case you missed it a 3 days ago, according to court documents, Myers, Katz and Kapechuk were all participants in the "warez scene," an underground online community consisting of individuals and organized groups who use the Internet to engage in large-scale, illegal distribution of copyrighted software. In pleading guilty, Myers admitted that he was a member of several leading warez groups, including "DrinkOrDie," and that he acted as a distributor or courier for those groups, the statement said...
  • Leaked game code raises cheating fears  - The leaked code is thought to include the game's physics engine, which provides realistic movement and was key to Half Life's success, as well as its sound effects system. These components are not enough to construct the game in its entirety but could, in theory, be used to put cheats into bogus versions of the game that could be used in online tournaments.  Having access to the underlying code from which the finished game is built might let a programmer write cheats straight into the game, says Ross Atherton, deputy editor of UK magazine PC Gamer.
  • Advanced chip opens door to software choice - A computer chip designed to run more than one operating system at a time could break Microsoft's stranglehold on PC software. Plans for the chip were announced last week by Intel, the world's largest maker of processor chips. Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously. Analysts are saying it could be one of the decade's most significant breakthroughs in computer technology.
  • Panasonic Unveils Three New Cameras - The new model being unveiled at Ceatec, the DMC-FZ10, now pairs the Leica zoom lens with a 4-megapixel CCD (charge coupled device) image sensor that can deliver pictures of up to 2304-by-1728-pixel resolution. There are four main resolution modes down to 640 by 480 pixels (VGA), and a fifth mode that delivers 1920-by-1080-pixel images that match the resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio of high-definition televisions. This HDTV mode is designed to match such televisions, many of which have memory card slots for displaying images captured with digital still cameras.
  • Intel cuts prices with more aimed at AMD to follow - Desktop Pentium 4 price cuts of 15.5-34.5% planned for October 26 will bring the price for the top-tier 3.2GHz processor sharply lower to US$417 from US$637. The new price cuts are widely seen as timed to take on the 64-bit Athlon 64 processors rolled out by AMD in late September. The Athlon 64 3200+ with 754 pins is priced at US$417 and the more powerful Athlon 64 FX-51 carries a price tag of US$733. The Athlon 64 3200+ and 3000+ for notebooks are priced at US$417 and US$278, respectively.
  • IBM Updates ThinkPads - Big Blue is releasing the R50 and T41 models, both of which come with a new Active Protection System that is designed to better protect hard drives. Comparing APS to automobile air bags, IBM officials explained that the system can detect sudden motion--such as the notebook being dropped or jerked because of a kicked power cord--and react by stabilizing the head of the hard drive.
  • Alienware Offers Significant System Discounts for game developers - Alienware announced today a new program offered exclusively to video game developers. The Alienware Game Developer Program allows game designers access to cutting-edge Alienware gaming systems at greatly reduced cost. In addition, the program boasts a dedicated sales and technical support staff, specially-trained to respond to game developers' needs.
  • Nokia Sees Millions of N-Gage Phones Sold in '04 - According to Reuters story via Yahoo reports, Nokia is expecting to sell several million units of the $299 device in 2004.
  • Creative SoundBlaster MP3+ review - Unlike the higher-end products Creative is known for, the MP3+ is a 16-bit stereo device, pure and simple. The small 2 x 4in module hooks up to one the host computer's spare USB ports - from which it draws its power - routing audio data through its processor and out to a set of analog and digital output ports: gold-plated RCA jacks, an S/P DIF for digital audio and a standard 3.5mm socket for headphones. Next to the headphone port is a handy volume dial. The unit comes with velcro strips to attach it to your notebook's cover, or there's a clip-on hook so you can slip it onto the display.
  • Tyan Tachyon G9800 PRO-M 128MB review - Hexus has posted a review of Tyan Tachyon G9800 PRO-M 128MB video card.
  • Inno3D GeForce FX 5900 review - Hardcoreware has posted a review of  the "non ultra" 128MB version of the GeForce FX 5900. "The 5900 compares directly with ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB in both specs and price. We test it directly against that card, along with a 9800 Pro 256, and a 9700 Pro. The Inno3D version comes with a nice dual fan heatsink light up with blue LEDs. Is that enough to make it recommendable though? It all depends on how the 5900 chipset itself performs!"
  • BroMagic 17 DVI LCD Monitor review - TweakTown has posted a review of the BroMagic 17 DVI LCD Monitor.
  • AMD Athlon 64 3200 , VIA K8T800, nForce3 150 RETAIL board reviews - Hexus.net has published a review of the AMD Athlon 64 3200 , VIA K8T800, nForce3 150 in retail board form.
  • SBS 2003 review - With the release of Small Business Server 2003 expected on Oct. 9, Microsoft has fired a shot across the bow of the SMB server appliance market. The new, slimmed-down version of SBS 2003 standard edition offers everything most small businesses would need, and at an attractive price point, making the product an alternative to low-priced, proprietary server appliances.
  • Detonator 52.10 Performance Comparison - 3Dcenter.org has published a performance comparison of the soon to be released 52.10 Detonator FX drivers.
  • 3DMark and Quake results of 33 cards  - Using 3DMark2001 SE and Quake III Arena, DarkHardware have gathered benchmark results of 33 video cards, ranging from the lowly Radeon 7000 to the marvelous Radeon 9800 Pro. The text is in Turkish, but the tables and the charts are clear enough to be understood by everyone.
  • Security Update for Windows Media Player (KB828026) - A security issue has been identified that could allow an attacker to execute commands on a computer running Windows Media Player. You can help protect your computer by installing this update (WMP9 ~ 6.4~7.1.9.0 for WinME) from Microsoft
  • Microsoft DirectX Control Panel 9.0b (build 9.000.0902) - This is the Control Panel for Microsoft's DirectX 9.0b with a variety of configuration settings. To install, please copy the directx.cpl into the Windows/system32 folder.
  • Bart's PE Builder 3.0.15 Beta  - Bart's PE Builder helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.
  • Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition - Adobe has released a freeware version of the Adobe Photoshop Album.
  • Alcohol 120%-52% version 1.4.7.1005 -Tthe latest retail and trial versions of Alcohol 120% & 52% are out. Dated 10-5-03, here are many fixes and updates. Alcohol 120% is CD/DVD emulation and recording software that allows users to copy discs. Store your most used or important CDs as images on your computer and run them at 200x speed from up to 31 virtual CD or DVD drives. Alcohol is compatible with more than 99% of drives available. It supports the latest image file types including - MDS, CCD, BIN, CUE, ISO, CDI, BWT, BWI, BWS, BWA and many more.
  • Elaborate's Clone DVD 1.3.9.8  - CloneDVD extracts, transcodes and writes any orginal DVD title you like to a single recordable DVD.
  • Fresh Download 6.20 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite software, mp3 files, video files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software, no spyware.
  • Fresh UI 6.45 - Fresh UI (download) is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know: Customizing Windows User Interface, Optimizing system settings, Optimizing hardware settings, Customizing Windows application settings, and Control user environment with policies.
  • Real Alternative 1.09  - Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer/RealOne Player.
  • jv16 PowerTools 1.4.1 Beta 2 - jv16 PowerTools is a full set of tools to keep your computer up and running. Until now your computer might have been the one who is in charge, but with it you can take the control.
  • Nero Burning Rom 5.5.10.54 - Ahead Software has released some minor update for Nero version 5.5. The changelog is not yet available.
  • Plextor PX-708A firmware v1.02f -  Plextor Japan has released a new firmware version 1.02 for the Plextor PX-708A/UF DVD recorder.
  • Latest Bios and Drivers (ASUS, Abit, AOpen, MSI, LeadTek and Tyan) updates - OnlyNewsZ let us know they have posted an extensive list of the latest drivers and bios updates for ASUS, Abit, Aopen, MSI, Leadtek, TYAN, CMedia, and nVidia.
 Gameguru Mania News - Oct,03 2003 - tech
Friday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 10:42 PM CEST - Oct,03 2003 - Post a comment
  • Hackers rediscover war dialling - Hackers are again using war dialling to break into corporate networks, security experts have warned. NTA Monitor said that companies are not taking sufficient precautions against war dialling, which involves scanning telephone lines to find unsecured modems and create backdoors into corporate networks.
  • Messaging worms could infect at lightning speed  - A computer worm transmitted via instant messaging programs could, in theory, infect half a million computers within 30 seconds, simulations have shown. Instant messaging (IM) applications let users to type messages directly onto each others' computer screens via the internet. This has become a popular alternative to email among home users and office workers.
  • Sony to unveil all-in-one PSX game device next week - Sony Corp said on Friday it would unveil its all-in-one PSX game device to the public next week. The PSX, which packs a TV tuner, DVD recorder, hard-disk drive, and the Playstation 2 game player into a single white box, will be unveiled at the CEATEC Japan 2003 industry show in Makuhari, near Tokyo, on Tuesday, Sony said in a statement. Sony plans to launch the machine in Japan before the end of this year, and in Europe and the United States early next year, but a spokesman for Sony said on Friday the exact launch timetable and pricing were yet to be decided.
  • Nintendo halves UK, European GameCube prices - Nintendo today said it will cut the price of the GameCube console in Europe, slashing the cost of the console by up to 50 per cent to L80 ($132) in the UK and _99 ($115) on the Continent.  It also cut the console's price in Japan, by 29 per cent to Y13,999 ($126). The Japanese and European price shifts follow a similar move last week to drop the US price to $99.
  • DivX is ready for its sequel. Is Hollywood? - Digital media upstart DivXNetworks may yet see a Hollywood ending for its controversial video format. The San Diego-based company is perhaps best known among file swappers, who for years have used its highly regarded DivX compression technology to speed video downloads--with or without the permission of copyright holders. Now DivXNetworks is hoping for a sequel as the technology partner of choice for film studios and consumer-electronics makers working to bridge the Internet and television.
  • Toshiba Shows Off Blue Lasers - Toshiba will show a prototype laser diode for optical disc systems that are expected to hit the market around 2006. The company will use the Ceatec exhibition, which begins next week just outside of Tokyo, to demonstrate a recently-developed blue-laser diode that is several times more powerful than current commercial models and has what Toshiba claims is the lowest noise figure of any such laser diode yet developed.
  • Toshiba delays fuel cell - Toshiba is showing off the latest version of its fuel cell for portable devices, but problems with the new technology mean it will not be commercially available until 2005. The company's announcement at its demonstration Friday in Japan postpones the release of its fuel cells by a year. Fuel cells offer the promise of a powerful, long-lasting and very cheap power source in a tiny package. A number of companies have created fuel-cell designs, but none has made it to the production phase. Toshiba claims its latest attempt at the technology has created a product that is capable of providing an output of 1 watt per hour for approximately 20 hours of operation, using a 25 cubic centimeter fuel cartridge containing high-concentration methanol.
  • Matsushita Cooks Up 'Kebab' - Matsushita Electric Industrial, better known by its Panasonic brand name, has developed a networking protocol that it says will make it easier to control future networked home electronics devices via the Internet. The protocol, called "Kebab," was designed to get past the problem caused by changing IP addresses of domestic broadband connections, the Osaka-based company said in a statement. Such high-speed network connections don't usually have fixed addresses but rather are assigned a unique IP address each time they are connected to the Internet or are forced to renew an address after a certain period of time.
  • Great Gadgets for Kids of All Ages - In the past, U.S. companies created gadgets that ended up on the must-buy lists of adult consumers, such as the Palm PDA and the TiVo digital TV recorder. But companies may find it trickier to envisage high-tech gadgets for children. Many children's toys claim to be high-tech. Take Hasbro's Super Soaker EES Tempest, for example. This electronic water gun is powered by "Air Pressure Technology" that can operate in "Stealth mode." Pulling the trigger halfway not only squirts water but also activates "cool" sound effects and blinking lights to intimidate an opponent.
  • Sound Blaster Goes Wireless - Creative today announced Sound Blaster Wireless Music, an easy to use wireless music system consisting of a RF remote control with built-in LCD screen and a digital receiver designed to play entire MP3 and WMA music collections stored on the PC anywhere in the home. The innovative remote control allows users to access and select their music on the built-in LCD without having to use a TV for music navigation. The digital receiver works seamlessly with existing 802.11b or 802.11g wireless networks and connects to any powered speaker or home stereo system. The Sound Blaster Wireless Music is slated for availability in October 2003 with an estimated street price of US$249.99.
  • Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition review - The enthusiast with ultra-deep pockets will have a choice between two monster CPUs that go about their respective work in differing ways but tend to achieve similar results. The 3.2GHz Extreme Edition puts Intel back in the very high-end performance game. For that alone, it's a decent CPU. A niche product for a niche market, and it's sure to tempt all those who had their minds fixated on the Athlon FX-51. Competition is always a good thing for the consumer. It's positively rife here. We just hope that Intel decide to leave the Extreme Edition CPUs multiplier unlock. £650+ of your money deserves that treat.
  • Triplex REDai Millennium Silver R9600 Pro 128MB review - Overclockers New Zealand has posted a review of Triplex REDai Millennium Silver R9600 Pro 128MB video card.
  • ATI 9600 Pro vs Nvidia 5600 Comparison Review - Techware Labs has posted an ATI 9600 Pro vs Nvidia 5600 comparison review.
  • Uninstall Hidden Windows XP and 2000 Programs - We all want to uninstall everything Windows doesn't completely need to run optimally. Problem is, some programs you don't want taking up space hide away. They're next to impossible to find, much less remove.  This old Windows tweak will help you immediately.
  • Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Update - When you use Internet Explorer 6.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to view a MIME type file attachment that is handled by a custom ActiveX control, it may take a long time to view the file, particularly if the file is very large. A supported fix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem that is described in this article.
  • DirectX 9.0b Control Panel - 3Dcenter.org have posted the DirectX 9.0b control panel.
Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:57 AM CEST - Oct,03 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Trojan Horse Hijacks IE - Computer hackers have found another way to exploit an unpatched hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser, using a specially designed attack Web site to install a Trojan horse program on vulnerable Windows machines. The Trojan program changes the DNS configuration on the Windows machine so that requests for popular Web search engines like Google and Alta Vista bring the Web surfer to a Web site maintained by the hackers, according to warnings from leading security companies. Another story can be found here.
  • Official: crackers have broken into GPRS billing  - Some time today, the GPRS world will reveal that it has a security vulnerability which has seen an undisclosed number of its customers ripped off. They've been trapped into connecting to malicious content servers, by hackers penetrating the billing system. The first international phone company to admit that they have installed a solution - one offered by Check Point - will be the German phone provider, E-Plus. The scam is called "the over-billing attack." It works quite simply because of a link from the Internet world - unregulated - to the normally tightly regulated GSM planet. "Network administrators face an exponential onslaught of attacks that to date have traditionally been confined to the world of wire line data," was the summary from Check Point.
  • Microsoft Sued for Weak Security  - Microsoft faces a proposed class-action lawsuit in California based on the claim that its market-dominant software is vulnerable to viruses capable of triggering "massive, cascading failures" in global computer networks. The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsoft's security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system. The suit claims unfair competition and the violation of two California consumer rights laws, one of which is intended to protect the privacy of personal information in computer databases. It asks for unspecified damages and legal costs, as well as an injunction against Microsoft barring it from unfair business practices.
  • Nintendo unveils piracy-proof console (iQue) for Chinese market - I already mentioned it a few days ago, but this article has more details: "The game device--dubbed iQue Player--is said to be capable of playing both SNES and Nintendo 64 titles, and will sell for 498 yuan (US $ 60), including the memory card, according to games web site Total Video Games.  It will be sold from mid-October in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. Software can be downloaded onto the 64MB card at 48 yuan (US $ 5.80) per title at selected licensed shops, and 10 titles will be offered at the launch of the console, including Mandarin versions of the firm's trademark software title Super Mario series."
  • Panasonic Unveils New 4-Megapixel Digicam - Panasonic Consumer Electronics has introduced its DMC-FZ10 Lumix digital camera. The new 4-megapixel digital camera sports a 12X optical zoom. Expected to hit stores in November, the DMC-FZ10 has a suggested retail price of $599. The DMC-FZ10 Lumix sports a F2.8 large aperture Leica DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens with 13 elements in eight groups and three aspherical lenses, according to Panasonic. The 12X zoom is the equivalent to a 35-420mm zoom lens on a conventional 35mm camera.
  • ATI Radeon 9800 XT Review - Beyond3D has posted an ATI Radeon 9800 XT review and here is what they think: "So, all in all, much as expected the Radeon 9800 XT is another speed bump that pushes ATI's performance a little higher. Although you wouldn't base a $500 purchasing decision on it, adding the Half Life 2 game to the bundle will sweeten the deal somewhat."
  • PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 256 Review - Hardcoreware has posted a review of PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 256.
  • 9800XT vs GeForceFX 5950 - Unofficial Half-Life 2 numbers  - Anandtech has published some unofficial Half-Life 2 numbers, comparing the Radeon 9800XT and GeForceFX 5950 in the forthcoming game benchmark
  • Plextor PlexWriter PX-708A Review - The Plextor PlexWriter PX-708A is currently the fastest DVD+/-RW drive on the market with its 8X DVD+R write performance. We experienced no problems burning content to any of our test media and were able to heavily multi-task while doing so. The included software suite is very robust and complete compared to other DVD writers on the market. It should be a while until we see the next generation of dual format DVD writers hit the market so if you have been waiting to make a DVD writer purchase, now is the time and the PX-708A is what you will want.
  • Samsung 172W LCD Life at 16:9 review - Widescreen is a new way of viewing life, at least your computer life. Widescreen or 16:9 started to become popular as Plasma displays entered the market. Today Shawn "Toxic" Baker, the man addicted to 16:9, takes a look at Samsung's 172W LCD monitor. Interested in viewing life at 16:9? If so, read on and discover the benefits of the new dimensions.
  • Acronis True Image review - Acronis True Image 6.0 is your ultimate data insurance policy! It takes an exact image of your hard disk drive or separate partitions for complete backup, and allows you to restore all of their contents, including operating systems, programs, personal data and settings. In the event of fatal software or hardware failure Acronis True Image protects your data, even when ordinary file backup software does not work.
  • OpenOffice 1.1 Ships - The OpenOffice.org group, after several months of testing, has released the final version 1.1 of its free open-source productivity suite. Version 1.1 is more compatible than previous releases with rival Microsoft Office, according to the OpenOffice.org group. It is loaded with new features, such as the ability to generate PDF files (in Adobe's Portable Document Format) and the ability to export presentation documents to Macromedia's Flash format, OpenOffice.org says. This release offers improved XML support, too, the group says. The update is available as a free, 70MB download from OpenOffice.org (Win32 ~ Linux), and it also ships with various Linux distributions, according to Louis Suarez-Potts, community manager for OpenOffice.org.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.21.09.20  - The AntiVir Personal Edition offers the effective protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation. In order to make possible an easy operation, the AntiVir Personal Edition is developed to the essential points.  The private and individual use of the AntiVir Personal Edition is completely free of charge. Bandwidth Monitor Extreme 1.55  - The freeware version contains many features which help make it the best free bandwidth monitor you can download. If you're using dsl or cable and are capped, BMExtreme can help keep track of your use and contains information about how much you have used daily, weekly, and monthly.
  • VirtualDub 1.5.5 - VirtualDub (download) is a video capture and processing program. It features fast capturing, process files larger than the 2 gigabyte limit, optimized for linear editing, support for Motion-JPEG, MPEG-1 video and layer 3 audio, real-time and near-realtime video processing, video job queues, and much more.
  • DVDPlus Identifier v2.4 - DVD Plus Identifier retrieves and interprets the ADIP of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs. The ADIP contains a variety of parameters such as disc manufacturing information and supported write speeds. All this information is especially useful for uniquely identifying discs when comparing the quality of different discs.
  • RivaTuner 2.0 RC 12.14 - RivaTuner is a powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA based cards. All series of Detonator drivers have a lot of undocumented registry entries. Some of them don't affect anything, but some are very useful. In general they cannot give you big performance boots but they can improve image quality and solve some compatibility problems. This utility will help you to change all undocumented registry entries.
  • Nero 6.0.0.19  - Nero 6 (download Nero 6.0.0.19 ~ Nero Vision Express 2.0.0.19 ~ Nero Media Player 1.4.0.7 ~ Nero Mix 1.4.0.7) is a flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use application designed to write both data and CD audio to CD-R and CD-RW discs. It supports ISO 9660 images as well as ISO mode 1 and XA mode 2, and allows for on-the-fly disc recording in addition to overburning (if supported by hardware). Nero also supports multisession and mixed-mode recording, HFS, ISO/HFS hybrid, UDF, PSX, OFAS (optimal file access speed), track-at-once (TAO) and disc-at-once (DAO) writing, digital audio extraction, and more'
  • ACDSee 6.0 - ACDSee (download trial) digital photo software makes it easy to import, view, organize, print, enhance, share and archive your digital photos. ACDSee is easy to use for everyone from beginner to professional level, and also powerful and flexible enough to meet your needs as your image collection grows.
  • XboxMediaCenter - XboxMediaCenter has playlist + slideshow functions as well as the ability to function as a full replacement Xbox dashboard. These and more features enables the Xbox running XboxMediaCenter to fully function as a multi-media jukebox. 
 Gameguru Mania News - Oct,01 2003 - tech
Wednesday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:20 PM CEST - Oct,01 2003 - Post a comment
ATI Launches RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT - tech
(hx) 02:01 AM CEST - Oct,01 2003 - Post a comment / read (6)
ATI Technologies Inc.today announced two new video cards - the RADEON 9800 XT and the RADEON 9600 XT. In addition to improved DirectX 9 performance, the cards will offer two big extras: easy overclocking and a free copy of Valve's upcoming Half Life 2 game. The 9800 XT will sell for $499, and the 9600 XT will cost $199; company executives say they expect to start shipping both cards before the end of October.
The RADEON 9600 XT, the world's first visual processor developed using a low k dielectric process, features four pixel pipes and 128MB of graphics memory and delivers unbeatable performance for under $200. Recent reviews have shown the RADEON 9600 XT to outperform cards twice its price in today's shader-intensive DirectX 9 games. Gamers will enjoy the stunning visual quality that the RADEON 9600 XT delivers, which renders in full precision at all times. The card will also be available in stores and online in October from ATI and its board partners.

Customers purchasing ATI's RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT will also get a free copy of Half-Life 2 when the game ships. "We chose to partner with ATI because of their outstanding DirectX 9 performance," said Gabe Newell, Founder and Managing Director, Valve. "Half-Life 2 relies heavily on advanced shader technologies to give the game a realistic and immersive environment. ATI's DirectX 9-class RADEON(TM) cards are the best choices for playing Half-Life 2."
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,30 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 09:18 AM CEST - Sep,30 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Hackers Exploit Internet Explorer Flaw - New attacks using the vulnerability include a worm that spreads through America Online's Instant Messenger, and a malicious Web site that silently loads snooping software on victims' machines, according to independent security expert Richard Smith. Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
  • Ukraine hosts computer destruction championship - Over 300 self-confessed computer addicts have participated in a competition in the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya to destroy their own hardware in a spectacular fashion. The event, dubbed the "First Open Computer Destruction Championship", was organised by a local FM radio station with the professed aim of raising young people's awareness of the dangers of spending too much time in front of a computer. The competition comprised three main events - throwing a keyboard, kicking a computer mouse, and the most popular, the "creative destruction" of computer monitors.
  • Microsoft to reveal more Longhorn details - At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, the Redmond, Wash., software maker will detail Longhorn's underlying graphics and user interface technology, code-named Avalon. Microsoft describes Avalon as "a brand-new client platform for building smart, connected, media-rich applications in Longhorn." Avalon will introduce the ability to create applications with a new style of user interface and greater resolution than Windows currently supports, according to the company. Microsoft in May said Longhorn would support a screen resolution of 120 dots per square inch or higher. With Windows XP, typical 17-inch displays support a resolution of about 95 dots per square inch.
  • Samsung advances processes for 4-Gbit flash, 512-Mbit DRAM - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said Monday (Sept. 29) it has developed a 4-Gbit NAND-style flash memory and 512-Mbut DRAM using advanced manufacturing process technologies. However, the company did not say what memory interface the memories comply with, or when they would be mass produced. The NAND-flash device was fabricated using a 70-nm process technology. The DRAM was made using an 80-nm process, Samsung said. In addition Samsung announced what it called Fusion memory, which includes the monolithic integration of memory with logic.
  • Triplex Wireless Ti4200 8X Review -  Triplex gave us a possibility to try out their rather special videocard. A Geforce 4 Ti4200 which has a Wireless TV-Out connection onboard! If you have a PC in one room and a TV in the next and want to watch those BMW-movies on your TV, then this video card might be for you!
  • Turn Your GBA Into a Game Console - This is a mod of all mods for the GameBoy Advance. Essentially converting it into a game console with an ability to attach a joystick, output video to a TV or an RGB monitor, and provide power management to get around wasting those batteries. The result is amazing and breathes new life into your GBA, even if you only decide to do the joystick mod.
  • Athlon FX-51 2.2Ghz @ 3.05Ghz - A crazy guy from Japan has overclocked his Athlon FX-51 (2.2Ghz) to over 3Ghz! He uses ASUS SK8N with the new 1003.003 BIOS that allow you to change the multiplier. The multiplier is set to 14x up from the default 11x but the current version of CPUZ cannot detect the actual multiplier as yet.
  • Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Review - First of all, should we install Microsoft Office 2003? Does it run on our machine? Uses it even more CPU, Memory and harddisk? Does it have improvements? All those questions are answered in this review.
  • LOTR:Return Of The King Trailer - The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King trailer (9MB) is now available.
  • Shadermark 2.0 - ShaderMark 2.0 (download) is a DirectX 9.0 pixel shader benchmark. All pixel and vertex shader code is written in Microsoft's High Level Shading Language. ShaderMark provides the possibility to use different compiler targets + advanced options.
  • Recover4all Professional 2.23 - With the Recover4all Software (download) you can easily recover (undelete) files that were accidently deleted under Windows.
  • MultiEx Commander v3.9.68 - MultiEx Commander is a tool with a WinZip-like interface that can open more than 140 different game archive types, such as PK3 (e.g. Call of Duty), PAK (e.g. Quake2), BIG (e.g. C&C : Generals). Not only can all the files in such archives be extracted, MultiEx Commander also supports replacement of files in the archives by user-files (file importation), creating a powerful modification ability of existing games by MultiEx Commander.
  • Browser 8.02 Build 105 - Avant Browser (download) is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile web browser. Avant Browser is a multi-window browser which features with many functions such as Pop-up Stopper, Built-in Google Searching, Safe Recovery, Integrated Cleaner and Advanced Browsing Options.
  • GAIM 0.70  - Gaim (download) is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
  • Nvidia Linux AMD64 Drivers v1.0-4499 - Nvidia has released a new set of Linux AMD64 Drivers version 1.0-4499.
  • nVidia Detonator Drivers 45.32 and 45.33 - Guru3D now offer two "new" sets of detonator drivers for download. Despite the upcoming Detonator drivers 5x.xx release it seems that NVIDIA still is working on the 45.xx build. They are Detonator drivers 45.32 for both Windows 9x/ME and Windows 2000/XP. The drivers are 100% NVIDIA reference releases. We don't know just yet if they are WHQL certified though.
  • Nforce driver v2.64 - AOpen FTP has been updated with the latest Nforce driver version 2.64 (Dated 09/28/03). Download: XP Server #1 | W2K/XP #2 | W2K/XP #3 | W2K/XP #4 | W2K/XP #5 | Win98/ME Server #1 | Win98/ME #2 | Win98/ME #3 | Win98/ME #4 | Win98/ME #5 (thanks Warp2Search).
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,28 2003 - tech
Pentium V Details - tech
(hx) 11:23 PM CEST - Sep,28 2003 - Post a comment / read (8)
According to TheInquirer, the chip will sample internally at Intel in January 2004 and will take between four to six months to get to market. The Pentium 6 will follow a very similar schedule. The Pentium V is likely to fly along at between 5GHz to 7GHz, have 2MB plus of level two cache, be built on a 90 nanometer process, and have a stackable design. The processor we believe, sits in the LGA 775 pin socket, and above it is a very thin heatsink. But, according to sources close to the firm’s plans, another permeable heatsink can sit between this and another microprocessor module, giving a stackable design. The Pentium V could have a front side bus speed of as much as 4000MHz, the source claimed, although this may be reserved for the next chip along, the Nehalem.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,27 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:01 PM CEST - Sep,27 2003 - Post a comment
  • Feds nab second suspect in worm attacks - The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday that a juvenile had been arrested in connection with the release of a computer worm that spread in the same way as the MSBlast worm. The suspect is thought to have created and released a worm that exploits a security flaw in Microsoft operating systems, according to a statement released by the Justice Department. The worm--known as Spybot.worm.lz, Randex.E and RPCSdbot--infects systems by taking advantage of a security flaw Microsoft revealed in mid-July.
  • U.S. State Department Blames The Welchia Virus - After the shock and horror of September 11, 2001 the U.S.A. decided to fortify its borders with the passage of the Patriot Act. One aspect of the Patriot Act was to upgrade the State Department's Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), which contains more than 12.8 million records from the FBI, the State Department and U.S. immigration, drug-enforcement and intelligence agencies. Among the records are the names of at least 78,000 suspected terrorists. On September 23rd CLASS ceased to function for several hours due to the detection of a computer virus, and thus, for that time nowhere in the world was a U.S. visa issued. With no immediate backup system ready, thousands of visa candidates found themselves in a state of limbo.
  • IM Worms Pose Growing Threat - Currently, there are about 60 published IM vulnerabilities, according to Eric Chien, chief researcher at Symantec Security Response in Dublin, Ireland. Those range from security holes that could be used to crash IM clients in denial-of-service attacks to flaws that could allow attackers to remotely install and run malicious code on computers running the vulnerable IM clients.
  • Off-topic: Curvy aircrafts could silence sonic booms - As tickets for Concorde's final flight go on sale this week, an American aerospace company has demonstrated a way to modify a supersonic jet to dramatically reduce its sonic boom. The work could pave the way for a new generation of business jets quiet enough to fly at supersonic speed over populated areas. Sonic booms are one of the biggest drawbacks of supersonic flight. They are the thunderclaps caused when shock waves created at the nose and tail of an aircraft meet as they travel to the ground. Where the shock waves overlap they reinforce each other, creating the boom. Concorde's boom is so loud that the plane is forbidden from flying at supersonic speeds over land.
  • Nintendo's Game Boy to go wireless - Motorola's semiconductor unit will supply chipsets for a wireless adapter for use with Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Advance SP. The 2.4 GHz radio frequency chipset will let as many as five players link up wirelessly with one another, Motorola said Friday. The chipset contains a 32-bit RISC architecture-based processor and a RF transceiver designed to work in the TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) protocol.
  • Wireless Cards Give Your PC Access Anywhere  - Currently two technologies are in use, with a third expected later this year. Sprint and Verizon use CDMA/ 1xRTT, which has a theoretical maximum data rate of 144 Kbps; typical real-world throughput speeds range from 40 to 60 Kbps (slightly better than that of a 56K modem). AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile use GSM/GPRS network technology, which is a bit slower. This technology has a theoretical maximum rate of 110 Kbps, with realized speeds ranging from 20 to 40 Kbps. By year's end, AT&T will launch EDGE, a new technology that promises to boost real-world data rates to 100 Kbps.
  • Nokia launches trendiest phone yet - Nokia continues to try and find new mobile phone form factors that might supersede the classic rectangular shape, this time with the 7600 an almost square handset, with the number buttons placed on either side of the 16-bit colour, 128 x 160 screen. Weighing a mere 123g and measuring 8.7 x 7.8 x 1.86cm, the 7600 is one of the lightest and smallest dual-band GSM and 3G (WCDMA) phones in the world, Nokia claims. It's a "unique marriage between technology and design", the company says - just what trendies the world over are looking for, it believes.
  • Playscreen tablet style portable DVD player - The PlayScreen by JoyTech claims to be the worlds first 'Tablet Style' Portable DVD Player with Integrated 16:9 Widescreen 7inch TFT Monitor. At only L299.99 from Play.com the truly portable device comes complete with a Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery, and In-Car Adapter for true 'Play Anywhere' entertainment. It also uses Integrated Stereo Speakers, combined with full Dolby Digital and DTS compatibility.
  • New DivX video application for AMD Athlon 64; Dr. DivX - The new version of the official DivX video encoding application, called Dr. DivX: AMD64 Edition, is planned to be distributed for a limited time as part of a special program to customers who purchase the AMD Athlon 64 FX processor in a box ("PIB") or AMD Athlon 64 FX processor-based systems
  • U_S_Robotics 802.11g Wireless Turbo Multi-Function Access Point (USR5450) review - U_S_Robotics 802.11g's wireless access point is based on Texas-Instrument's 802.11g chipset and features upgradeable antennas, superior range and viable data rate speeds. It's a good all-around 802.11g product, but a 100Mbps access point it's not.
  • ASUS V9950 GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB review - With 256MB of memory, meaning chips on the back side of the PCB, ASUS have created the worlds first AGP8X copper sandwich. Not very tasty (I did try to eat it, the dentist appointment is next week) in the traditional sense, but in the world of consumer graphics and all that entails, very tasty indeed.
  • Corsair TwinX 4000 vs OCZ Gold 4000 - The Madshrimps share their experiences with OCZ and Corsair's PC4000 memory modules.
  • AMD Opteron / Xeon Comparison under Linux - Hexus.net has tested Opteron/Xenon under Linux.
  • Athlon 64 Chipset Comparison: ALi, Nvidia, VIA  - AMDZone compared the Athlon 64 Socket 754 chipsets ALi M1687, Nvidia nForce 3, and VIA K8T800.
  • Omniquad Personal Firewall 1.0.1 - Omniquad Personal Firewall (homepage) it keeps your computer shielded from hackers by blocking all unsolicited network connections and traffic to your computer, yet you can browse the web unaffected. In addition to making your computer invisible, it gives you a full control over what programs on your computer gain access to the Internet. This product is available in 2 editions: Freeware and Professional. The Professional edition includes hacker tracing, IP blocking and selective port opening and can be purchased for $39.
  • Kerio Personal Firewall 4.0.4 - Kerio Personal Firewall (download) represents smart, easy-to-use personal security technology that fully protects personal computers against hackers. It is built on ICSA-certified security technology. It is free for home and personal use.
  • GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner 3 Build 20030922 - GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner (download) checks your network for all potential methods that a hacker might use to attack your network. By analyzing the operating system and the applications running on your network, GFI LANguard N.S.S. identifies possible security holes. In other words, it plays the devil's advocate and alerts you to weaknesses before a hacker can find them, enabling you to deal with these issues before a hacker can exploit them. (thanks SavageNews)
  • Messenger Plus! v2.21.57 - Messenger Plus! Extension (download) is a program that adds functionalities to the MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger.Some of the added features are logging, personalized Away Messages, transparency effects, and a feature to minimize all MSN Messenger windows to the system tray. Now supports MSNM 6 as well.
  • Real Alternative 1.06 - Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer.
  • QuickTime Alternative 1.15 - QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player.
  • WinDVD Platinum 5.1 B05.015 ($69.95) - WinDVD Platinum 5 (download trial) is the ultimate DVD software player, providing you with the finest quality video and audio playback. Watch movies with a theater experience right on your computer or laptop.
  • Bart's PE Builder 3.0.13 BETA - Bart's PE Builder (download) helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. This will replace any Dos bootdisk (even masterpieces like modboot and Bart's Network Bootdisk) in no time.
  • Mozilla v1.5 RC2 - Mozilla v1.5 Release Candidate 2 is available for download.
  • Matrox Parhelia Win2k/WinXP driver - Matrox has released a new Parhelia driver for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,26 2003 - tech
Friday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:26 PM CEST - Sep,26 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Digital downloads defeat piracy policies - Around a quarter of business software in use in the UK is illegal and the problem is growing, according to the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Mark Floisand (pictured), UK chairman at the BSA, said that there are a number of reasons behind this growth, not least the fact many companies are unaware that they are using pirated or unlicensed copies. A common entry point is the growing number of websites that offer pirated software, often called warez, and the ease with which illegal software can be downloaded from the internet. The technical commands have become less complex, and transferring files has been helped enormously by the growth of broadband connections, the BSA said.
  • Motorola and Nintendo Join Forces to Define Wireless Portable Gaming - According to press release, Motorola  is supplying high-speed, low-power chipsets to enable an advanced wireless adapter accessory for use with Nintendo's GBA and GBA SP. This fusion of Nintendo's leadership in the portable gaming market and Motorola's own wireless communication technology together create wireless gaming history; enabling a revolutionary portable gaming experience for users. The 2.4GHz radio frequency (RF) chipset enables up to five players to play each other wirelessly, allowing for flexible, mobile game playing. The wireless adapter with the new Game Boy Advance software "Pokemon FireRed" and "Pokemon LeafGreen" will be launched in Japan first half of 2004.
  • Alcatel handset rings in MMS changes - Alcatel has launched a new handset that can transmit images, sound and text at the same time.
    The 'One Touch' 735 mobile phone also has the functions now expected of third-generation handsets, including a four-colour, progressive x8 zoom digital camera, multimedia messaging service capabilities, GPRS roaming and 1.8MB of memory. Other features include 3D gaming using the 128x128 pixel screen (held horizontally for panoramic views), a patented five-direction 'DriveKey' designed to give the feel of playing console games, and three sample games that come bundled with the phone (there is also a facility to download more).
  • Computex Fall 2003: Day Three/Four : THG coverage | Computex coverage of Case trends and products | Computex 2003 Day 3 @ Ninjalane (& Day 4 including large gallery of Booth Babes) | TweakTown Coverage | OCWorkBench coverage(day4)
  • Dell announces LCD TV, digital audio player, and music download service - As expected, Dell announced several new products Thursday, including a music player and a music download service, designed to help the Round Rock, Texas, company ease its way into the digital home. Dell also introduced a 17-inch LCD television and a new Axim personal digital assistant during a conference call for analysts and the media.
  • Microsoft shows off prototype camera - Microsoft is showing around a prototype product, called the Ring Cam, designed to make web conferences more like face-to-face meetings. Combined with web-conferencing software that Microsoft acquired this year, remote-meeting participants would be able to view and hear a live, 360-degree image of participants in another location.
  • New chip device speeds up disk drives - Dubbed the 88i6535 Serial ATA system on a chip, the device ups the data rate to 3 gigabits per second and handles tasks such as managing the disk drive interface and converting analog signals to digital data. The new chip is suited for devices such as blade server computers, laptop computers, portable music players, personal video recorders and car-navigation systems.
  • Intel revs up Celeron to 2.70GHz - The .13 micron desktop chip is built using the 478 pin arrangement and has a 400MHz system bus. It costs $103 when you buy lots of them.
  • Seagate Enters External Hard Drive Market  - Seagate Technology Inc. entered the external hard drive market on Wednesday, announcing 160-GB and 200-GB models that have already begun to ship to retailers.
  • FutureMark Clarifies Run Rules  - In a statement released yesterday, benchmark maker FutureMark laid out a refined set of guidelines that seek to limit application-specific optimizations to its 3DMark03 benchmark.
  • Casio Exilim EX-Z3 Digital Camera Review - The Z3 is stylish and well built; it has an extensive set of features; the day-to-day controls are well thought out; and the larger screen is a nice inclusion. Transfer of images from the cradle is straightforward as is battery recharging. Macro image quality and detail is also very good. There are key-chain cameras on sale that are smaller than the Z3, but these have fiddly controls and a tiny display. There are larger cameras on sale that take higher quality images, but these are awkward to carry around. The Z3 is a nice compromise between the two extremes and in this regard it will certainly find a niche.
  • AMD Athlon 64 Based Notebook PC Review - The notebook weighs about 2.5 kg. Judging by a powerful battery and a bulky cooler AMD's new processor is not a competitor for the Intel Pentium M. It's not that light and slim. Well, the mobile Athlon 64 differs from the desktop one only in a metallic cover on the die, that is why the Mobile Athlon 64 3000+ consumes up to 85 W. This particular sample consumes 81.5 W. As a result, the AMD Mobile Athlon 64 is targeted at powerful notebooks like DTR (desktop replacement) and universal models, i.e. the models which actually work in the steady-state conditions and which, if necessary, can function in the offline mode. Hence its main competitor will be the Intel Pentium 4-M.
  • AMDs Athlon 64 and FX-51 Battle Intels Pentium 4 Extreme Edition - Sudhian Media has posted a comparison review between AMD's Athlon 64 and Intel's Pentium 4 "Extreme Edition"
  • Crossover Mission II Water Cooling Kit Review - Viper's Lair take a look at the Crossover Mission II Water Cooling Kit.
  • PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510W Deluxe PSU Review - EnvyNews has posted a review of PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510W Deluxe PSU.
  • Zalman ZM400A-APF 400watt PSU Review - The implementation of active PFC (Power Factor Correction) means a higher power factor (94% at full load, up from 75%) and less harmonic resonance. Active PFC uses active elements such as IC, FET and diodes to create a PFC circuit, whereas passive PFC uses passive elements (as the name implies) such as an iron core inductor. Although the passive method is more cost efficient, the power factor is significantly lower and harmonics are greater and harder to control, leading to higher levels of EMI. Another advantage of active PFC is that it can accept a full range (90-260v) of AC input, so no 115/230v switch is necessary (notice the sticker between the on/off switch and the plug).
  • Samsung Syncmaster 192T Review - Design Technica has posted up a review on the Samsung Syncmaster 192T. "Of the LCD panels we have seen, the Samsung 192T stands out as the all around best performer. While ghosting is inherent to all LCDs, it was minimal enough to make games playable, the image quality overall was excellent, as was the display's brightness."
  • Video card review mania - Gainward GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 1600XP 256MB Golden Sample | XFX GeForce FX5600 Ultra 128MB | Albatron Gigi FX5600 Ultra 128MB  | BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5600 Ultra Video Card
  • M-Audio Revolution 7.1 review - Ohls-Place has posted a review ofe M-Audio Revolution 7.1 and they liked the card: "So what do I think of the Revolution 7.1 and is it worth the $100.00 price tag? I absolutely love it, period. I have now taken my Promedia 5.1 speakers and added my Bose Wave radio as a second set of speakers to creat a 7.1 stereo system and let me tell you it will rock your socks off and even my wife is totally stunned by how well it sounds."
  • TEAC DW-548D Combo Drive Review - EnvyNews has posted a review on TEAC's DW-548D Combo Drive. The burner is rated 48X Read, 24X Rewrite, and 48X Write and the DVD at 16X.
  • Logitech MOMO Racing Wheel Review - Fans of driving simulation games tend to be among the pickiest lot when it comes to controls. If money is spent on a wheel, it has to be high quality and needs to provide an experience somewhat close to that of actually being in a car. These wheel kits used to be pricey and beyond the reach of most gamers, but thanks to Logitech those days are over. The MOMO Racing wheel offers a nice wheel system for a good price. Will this wheel kit get you where you want to go, or will it drive you around in circles?
  • Flash your Hercules 9800 to a 9800 Pro!  - The Madshrimps have written a descriptive guide on how to get the maximum out of your Hercules 9800 None Pro.  "You need to have Samsung (2.8, 3.0 or 3.3ns) in order to flash you're video card correctly. Ask your vendor or look at the labels on your video card. All Hercules 3D prophet 9800np cards seem to have Samsung 3.3ns memory."
  • Make your Xbox rock at 1.4GHz -  Firm on the show floor in Taipei is offering the chance to buy an Xbox that uses a Celeron 1.4GHz/256K cache chip rather than the feeble 733MHz Pentium III that ships with the console. Friendtech is also offering a mod for the Xbox which provides S-Video and A/V output, 5.1 surround sound and a hard disk upgrade. The package it sells includes the console, a gamepad, an S-Video AV cable, a bag, a power cable and manuals. The chip inside this machine can be switched from a so called "standard speed" of 740MHz to a "turbo" speed of 1480MHz.
  • The Athlon 64 FX at 2.8 GHz - When working with this system, a few interesting facts popped up. The system was actually running at 14 x 200 MHz, and could be set at multipliers ranging from 4 (800 MHz) to 14 (2.8 GHz). All AMD Athlon 64 FX are de facto unlocked and it seems that the maximum multiplier for this stepping is 14.  The only thing from stopping you from overclocking with the multiplier seems to be the BIOS. The ASUS SK8N inside the nVENTIV Mach II featured a special ASUS bios that allowed us to change the CPU core voltage and multiplier.
  • AGP Secondary Lat Timer BIOS Feature Published - Adrian's Rojak Pot  just posted a special update of the new REVISION 8.0 BIOS OPTIMIZATION GUIDE. This time they have specially released the AGP Secondary Lat Timer BIOS feature. "This mysterious BIOS option has plagued me (and many BOG readers) for months. Even a search on the vaunted Google search engine revealed just 17 links! All of which had virtually no information on this BIOS feature. Two links actually point back to Adrian s Rojak Pot. The name itself is very misleading as the AGP bus does not have a secondary latency timer. But even certain motherboard manufacturers insist that it does nothing but point to the location of the mysterious secondary latency timer of the AGP bus."
  • Macromedia Studio MX 2004  review - At only $899, Studio MX is an incredible bargain. It delivers not only the four stellar authoring programs but also ColdFusion MX 6.1 Developer Edition for building and deploying Web applications and services. The only deal better is the Macromedia Studio MX 2004 with Flash Professional version, which for only $100 more delivers the more robust Flash developer (with advanced features such as support for forms, database connectivity, an enhanced video encoder, and more). PCMag has posted a review of programs that have been updated for this release: Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash.
  • Python 2.3.1 Final - This is a bug-fix release for Python 2.3 and supersedes the original Python 2.3 release. No new features have been added in Python 2.3.1. Instead, this release is the result of two months of bug hunting. A number of obscure bugs that could cause crashes have been fixed, as well as a number of memory leaks.
  • Google Toolbar 2.0.102 - Google Toolbar increases your ability to find information from anywhere on the web. The toolbar appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar.
  • BitTorrent 3.3 - According to the official BitTorrent website, long awaited release 3.3 is out (direct link).
  • KaZaA Lite K++ 2.4.3 - Kazaa Lite K++ 2.4.3 is now available for download.
  • Real Alternative 1.05 - Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files. This way you can play RealMedia files without having to install RealPlayer.
  • QuickTime Alternative 1.14 - QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime files (.mov, .qt and other extensions) without having to install the official QuickTime Player.
  • Avant Browser 8.02 Build 102 -  Avant Browser (download) is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile web browser. Avant Browser is a multi-window browser which features with many functions such as Pop-up Stopper, Built-in Google Searching, Safe Recovery, Integrated Cleaner and Advanced Browsing Options.
  • Hot CPU Tester v4.0 -7Byte's Hot CPU Tester Pro 4 is a system health and stability tester. It tests CPU, chipset and virtually all parts of motherboard for errors/bugs, defective parts and components.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,25 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 08:10 AM CEST - Sep,25 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • U.S. immigration system hit by virus - The U.S. Department of State struggled Tuesday to quell an outbreak of the W32.Welchia Internet worm on the department's computer systems. The worm infestation slowed e-mail systems at the massive federal agency and prompted technical staff to suspend network links between Washington, D.C., foreign embassies and consular offices for nine hours to halt the worm's spread.
  • OpenSSH patches second flaw - The open-source project for secure communications technology, known as OpenSSH, plugged a second security hole on Tuesday that affects only users who have turned off a critical security feature. The flaw appears in an open-source implementation of the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAMs), a technology adopted by Sun Solaris, Linux and BSD systems to let system administrators easily change the way users log into computers. The default login procedure could be changed to a smart-card-based procedure using a PAM, for example.
  • KaZaA sues RIAA for copyright infringement - Sharman Networks is suing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for distributing replicas of its P2P file sharing software.  Sharman says the RIAA has distributed versions of KaZaA Lite with warning messages to potential infringers, which it deems "monopolistic and conspiratorial" behavior. In July a Judge nixed an attempt by Sharman Networks to stop the distribution of RIAA-flavored KaZaA software using Antitrust legislation. That failed, but this time it's trying again.
  • California bans spam - California Gov. Gray Davis signed into law a toughest measure in the United States to crack down on "spam," the unsolicited e-mail increasingly clogging electronic mail boxes. The bill would allow penalties of $1,000 per unsolicited e-mail and up to $1 million for spam campaigns in a bid to deter e-mail marketing firms.
  • Florida man is first convicted by jury under digital piracy law - A Florida man has been convicted of selling hardware to illegally tap into DirecTV satellite broadcasts, becoming the first person to be found guilty by a jury under a 1998 federal law against digital piracy.  Whitehead is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 26. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison and fines of up to $2.75 million.
  • Anti-swap CD hits the racks - In his new album, Coming From Where I'm From, Anthony Hamilton reflects on his roots and the directions in which they have led him. His CD, meanwhile, offers a glimpse of the direction the music industry is taking to prevent rampant piracy. The disc has two sets of music tracks: one set of "encrypted" songs that can be handled by CD players but cannot be ripped on computers, and a duplicate set of tracks in the Windows Media format. These can be downloaded from the CD to a computer and then transferred to portable devices or recorded to home CDs.
  • E-paper may offer video images  - A dramatically simple idea may finally make "electronic paper" displays a realistic prospect. If so, animated versions of a newspaper could, one day, be unfurled like a roller-blind on a flexible wireless display.
  • Via Shows Smallest PC Processor - Small enough to fit on the end of a finger, the Nano-BGA (Ball Grid Array) version of Via's 1-GHz C3 processor measures .6 inches by .6 inches. It was announced on Wednesday by the company's chief executive officer, Wen-chi Chen, during a keynote speech at the Via Technology Forum, which is being held here with the Computex exhibition.
  • GoForce ready for mobile market  - Buried between a general company overview and several product launches, Nvidia yesterday launched the world's first graphic processor with megapixel camera support at Computex Taipei 2003. The processor is the company's first step into the handheld market. Company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang joined four other Nvidia executives at the presentation. The vice president and general manager of handheld products at Nvidia, Phil Carmack, introduced the GoForce 2150 chip for the PDA and handset market. He explained how the new chip supports handhelds equipped with high-resolution (up to 1.3-megapixel) digital cameras, offers the broadest panel support and consumes the least power among competing chips.
  • BIOS Optimization Guide Updated - Adrian's Rojak Pot  just posted the Interim Release 4 of the new REVISION 8.0 BIOS OPTIMIZATION GUIDE with 30 new BIOS options.
  • Outlook 2003 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup - Backing up your Microsoft Outlook information is quicker and easier with the Personal Folders Backup feature. Personal Folders Backup creates backup copies of your .PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2000 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up. Each .PST file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .PST file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving ("Archiving Folders"). Personal Folders Backup lets you back up any or all of these .PST files.
  • Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility - Windows 2000 Registry Repair Utility (Windows XP Professional Utility: Setup Disks for Floppy Boot Install) can help to repair some types of registry corruptions.
  • KaZaA P2P 2.5.2 - The KaZaa Media Desktop (download) is a second-generation peer-to-peer file-sharing service with which you can search and download media files from other KaZaa users. The new version features Improved Privacy Protection, Search for audio/music, documents, image, playlist, software and video files, etc.
  • Samurize v0.93d - Samurize is a program that with low resources (about CPU: <1.0% on a Celeron 600) displays information from PerfMon and lots of other info, right to your desktop. It's higly configurable to suit every need.
  • News Interceptor 1.08  - Version 1.08 of News Interceptor is now available.
  • 1by1 1.39 - 1by1 is a very small sized player which is not only small: It plays whole directories without any playlist. Navigating through your tracks has never been so easy.  Available too: 1by1 command set for IRAssistant, a nice tool to control applications with an IR remote controller, mpglib.dll: Decoding library for MPEG Layer III and Layer II. Needed if you don't use an MP3 ACM or MP3 Plugin, Compressor & Wider is a WinAmp DSP plugin of 1by1's audio enhancer (WinAmp "Pimp"-Installer).
  • WinZip 9.0 Beta 2 - Please remember that this is a beta test version. It is possible that some of the new features in this version will not be included in the final release. For details on the changes, please see the What's New In WinZip 9.0 Beta page.
  • MAME v0.74 - MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and currently runs 1800+ classic (and even some not so classic) arcade games.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,24 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:13 AM CEST - Sep,24 2003 - Post a comment
  • AMD Touts Power Athlon 64 Chip for Media, Games  - As I already mentioned today AMD today showed off PC games and home networking technology using its new Athlon 64 processor that the chip maker hopes will steal a lead on much larger rival Intel Corp. AMD unveiled four Athlon 64 processors targeted at desktop and notebook computers ranging from $417 to $733. Another story can be found here.
  • Intel's Newest P4 Challenges Athlon 64 - Systems running AMD's new high-end Athlon 64 FX-51 processor outperformed a test system using Intel's as-yet-unpriced processor on most tests. Additional test results of the new AMD Athlon 64 are also available.  While it didn't best AMD's top chip in early tests, the new P4 HT EE, which was announced last week at the Intel Developer Forum, makes for a much closer race. Intel's new CPU did outperform PCs running today's fastest P4 chip on all tests. It also outran a system with AMD's new mainstream processor, the Athlon 64 3100+, in some tests.
  • Windows for 64 bits - Microsoft today announced the availability of a beta, or preliminary, version of its Windows XP operating system designed for desktop computers running the new AMD Athlon 64-bit microprocessor, as opposed to a standard 32-bit microprocessor.
  • Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition - By taking an Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz CPU and adding 2 MB L3 cache, the result is an extreme CPU. Intel probably thought of that when naming it, as the name is "Extreme Edition". Intel Pentium 4 3.2 GHz Extreme Edition is a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with an additional 2 MB L3 cache. According to Intel itself, it's targeted at the gaming and enthusiast market, which sounds good, but how much of a difference does the extra L3 cache really do? And is this a CPU capable of holding on to the performance lead for Intel until Prescott is launched?
  • Patchwork design may give speedier chips - Sun researchers led by Ivan Sutherland have developed a simple prototype system capable of transferring 21.6 billion bits of data per second. The Sun team says "capacitive coupling" could eventually be used to transfer a trillion bits of data per second. The fastest desktop computer can transfer data at about 50 billion bits per second.
  • Nvidia Unveils Graphics Chip for Handhelds - Looking to break away from its traditional PC graphics market, Nvidia introduced on Tuesday its first graphics chip designed to be used in handheld devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants. The GoForce 2150 was unveiled at the Computex exhibition in Taipei, which runs through September 26. Smaller than a fingernail, the GoForce 2150 includes a 64-bit 2-D graphics controller and supports more than 70 different display interfaces, including TFT, LCD, and OLED screens with a resolution of up to 320 pixels by 480 pixels, Nvidia said in a statement.
  • Taiwanese optical disc makers present 8x speed DVD-R/+R at Computex - Ritek, CMC Magnetics (CMC) and Prodisc Technology, Taiwan's three first-tier optical storage disc makers, all presented their new 8x speed DVD-R and DVD+R discs at Computex.  Ritek displayed 52x CD-RW and 4x DVD+RW drives, thumb drives and card readers, while CMC showcased its LCD TVs, portable MPEG-4 players and DVD recorders. In addition to selling the products under its Teon brand in the local market, CMC will also seek business with OEM clients in the US and Europe, according to the company. In addition, BenQ presented its 8x DVD-Dual drive, the DW800A, at Computex yesterday. The new product, at a suggested retail price of about NT$12,000, allows 8x DVD+R and 4x DVD+RW writing, 12x DVD-ROM reading, 24x CD-R and 10x CD-RW writing and 40x CD-ROM reading.
  • T-Mobile First in Line for Nokia N-Gage  - Deutsche Telecom's T-Mobile International division Tuesday said it will be the first carrier in the U.S. to offer the new Nokia N-Gage platform with an complimentary wireless plan.  In a promotion starting October 7, T-Mobile said it will offer the online gaming platform for $299 including a charger, rechargeable battery, stereo headset and USB cable. The wireless carrier is also offering free wireless game play for 30 days and a combined total of $50 worth of free voice and text messaging. The provider said its regular unlimited access package for N-Gage starts at $9.99 per month.
  • PalmSource touts OS 6 features - Version 6.0, code-named Sahara, will be launched Dec. 29, PalmSource said Monday at the PalmSource Developer Conference in Munich, Germany. The operating system will continue to be marketed alongside the current OS 5, with OS 6 aimed at higher-end devices.
  • Hush Debuts Fanless Pentium 4 PC - Good looks and near-silent operation don't come cheap, though. The Hush ATX, which will be available at the end of October, is priced starting from $1204 and doesn't include a monitor or a keyboard, according to Stuart Brown, the company's founder.
  • Abit Protects PC Health - Abit Computer wants to make the task of keeping PCs healthy and running smoothly a bit easier. To do this, the company has begun building a microcontroller, called µGuru, onto some motherboard models to improve system monitoring without draining resources from the processor, Abit spokesperson Janet Webskowski said Tuesday at the Computex exhibition in Taipei. The first ATX boards (which measure 9.7 by 12.0 inches) to incorporate the new chip are on display at the show, which runs through September 26.
  • Lite-On LDW-401S DVD+R(W) review  - Is the LDW-401S the best solution for you? It's hard to say. If you don't need to write to DVD-R/RW media, the LDW-401S is an excellent choice. However, if you're looking for the flexibility a dual format DVD writer offers, you might be better off with a drive like the Sony DRU-510A, Plextor PX-708A or if you're on a budget, Lite-On's new DVD+RW, the LDW-411S.
  • CDFreaks' CD and DVD media database - More and more people start to understand the importance of using quality media. Not only are there more and more reports of people who have lost data because the use of cheap and low quality media, also compatibility becomes more and more an issue with DVD recorders. You can now search by drive model or firmware, media speed/brand/maker or even ATIP numbers and searching for multiple items will give more specific results.
  • Bart's PE Builder 3.0.13 Beta  - Bart's PE Builder helps you build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.
  • Opera 7.20 Final - Opera Software today unleashed the final Opera 7.20 (download w/o Java / with Java) for Windows, making the latest in Web technology available for the millions of users in need of a better browser. This version fine-tunes speed and performance, adds support for bidirectional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, and lets users of the ad-sponsored version choose to receive either relevant text-based ads served by Google or generic graphical ads.
  • HyperSnap-DX 5.30.00 - HyperSnap-DX 5 (download) 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.
  • Nero Burning ROM 5.5 and 6.x patches - Today Ahead released two new patches for the critical buggy Version of Nero 6.00.15 and 5.5.10.50. These patches seem to fix a bug that Nero had with the Plextor PX-708A drive which caused the drive not to finalize a DVD recording session properly.
  • Foobar2000 0.7 - Foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include ReplayGain support, low memory footprint and native support for several popular audio formats.
  • XPlayer 2.2.7.1 - XPlayer is a extremely fast and light-weight multimedia player that plays back all types of media files, which include avi, mpg, asf, wmv, wav, mp3.
  • X-BIOS Editor v1.0.3 Build 520 RC3 - BIOS Editor (formerly NVIDIA BIOS Editor) enables you to change the sign-on message text & color, GPU & memory clocks, hidden features like SBA (Side Band Addressing) and much more. This program will support all BIOSes from TNT2 and up to Ti 500. Except TNT and TNT2 with old version of Control Block (less than version 3).
  • Kiss Technology DP-450/DP-500 Firmware 2.7.1 - KiSS Technology have updated their firmware to version 2.7.1 for the following DVD / DivX players: DP-450 and DP-500.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,23 2003 - tech
Athlon 64 Launched - tech
(hx) 08:56 PM CEST - Sep,23 2003 - Post a comment
As promised, AMD today launched the Athlon 64 desktop CPU, offering 64-bit computing while stile remaining compatible with all 32-bit software. The AMD Athlon 64 processor is available in Model 3200+ for desktop computing, priced at $417 in 1,000-unit quantities, and Models 3200+ and 3000+ for notebook computing, priced at $417 and $278 in 1,000-unit quantities, respectively. The AMD Athlon 64 FX processor is available in the FX-51 series, and is priced at $733 in 1,000-unit quantities. Here is a list of reviews (with plenty of benchmarks): THG, Digit-Life, AMD Zone, AnandTech, Tech Report, Gamers Depot, HardOCP, UK Gamer, Sudhian, AMDDB1, AMDDB2, FiringSquad, AthlonXP, HotHardware, ExtremeTech.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,20 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 10:46 AM CEST - Sep,20 2003 - Post a comment
  • New Worm:W32/Swen@MM  - W32/Swen.A@MM spreads via e-mail and network shares. The Microsoft Product Support Services Security Team is issuing this alert to advise customers to be on the alert for this virus as it spreads in the wild. More details can be found at ZDNews
  • Spammers Now Need Permission in Britain  - Spammers beware. Britain has announced that those sending unsolicited e-mail must get recipients' agreement in advance. Violators will be subject to fines of 5,000 pounds (US$8,000) or more and possible lawsuits from those they've targeted. The rule, aimed at shrinking the heavy traffic of junk e-mail messages, also applies to unsolicited text messages sent to mobile phones, the government said Thursday.
  • Magnets attracting wireless attention - This week, Troy, Mich.-based manufacturer Fonegear began selling cordless cell phone headsets that use the properties of a magnetic field. The headsets, which cost between $60 and $80 each, are the first wave of mass-market electronic devices that use a new generation of magnet-powered wireless technology. The next to debut will likely be routers that let home stereos and televisions wirelessly connect with a personal computer to play songs or movies, sources said.
  • Behind the Infinium Phantom Console - Many of us are well aware of the buzz surrounding the Phantom gaming console and the promises made by the company developing it. The chaps over at HardOCP look past the hype and press releases and take an honest look at who's behind the Phantom and the success of their previous ventures. (thanks Jan S. Mahler)
  • StompFest 2003 LAN Coverage - Mikhailtech has a write-up of this year's StompFest, a 250+ person LAN, with thousands in prizes from ABIT, DFI, Hitachi, Kingston, and more. Here's a quote: "By noon the place was packed, though surprisingly there was still enough room for everyone to set up their PCs and mingle. SF was so much more than just playing games, as meeting up with others was just as fun. Tournaments (both official and not) were played with almost every imaginable game, from CS, MOHAA, RTCW (Enemy Territory), UT2003, and BF1942 to StarCraft, WC3, AOE2, and the list goes on. Though internet access was limited, the local network ran perfectly with single digit pings for the majority of the time"
  • [Star Wars] Darth Vader's face revealed - Here is the man who will become Darth Vader in the final instalment of the Star Wars film series. Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker who becomes Darth Vader. George Lucas's sci-fi epic promises all manner of surprises as horrific circumstances ensure that Anakin Skywalker turns into the tortured Darth Vader.  And, as this first picture shows, director Lucas has his designers on track to neatly jigsaw 2003's Jedi Knight with 1977's evil leader of the Death Star. The new, as yet untitled film, due for release in 2005, is actually Episode III in Lucas's series, which began in 1977 with Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.
  • Windows to Power ATMs in 2005  - By 2005, 65 percent of bank ATMs (not including free-standing machines in places like convenience stores and casinos) in the United States will use a stripped-down version of Windows. About 12 percent of the machines will use the operating system by the end of this year, according to Gwenn Bezard, an analyst at market researcher Celent.
  • Has NV40 Been Taped Out? - Unofficial sources report that Samsung supplied some 10 thousands of its recently announced GDDR2 memory chips with extreme speed to NVIDIA for samples of the code-named NV40 GPU-based graphics cards. This suggests that the Santa Clara, California-based memory manufacturer has taped out the NV40 chips and now is ready to make some graphics cards based on the very early silicon implementation of the NV40.
  • Fake AMD  - The following photos are of a Genuine AMD XP2400+ Cpu, and a fake XP2400+ CPU received on 29th August 2003. The suppliers names will not be revealed under any circumstances.
  • HIS brings OTES to ATI - DarkHardware managed to grab some information and pictures of the new DHES cooled HIS Radeon 9800 cards. The card is a standart 9800 or 9800 Pro, furnished with a huge cooler. The information is in Turkish, but pictures speak for themselves. :)
  • A look at S3's DeltaChrome- So there you have it. The DeltaChrome is coming, and it looks like it might hit the meaty part of the market at just the right time. We're all pretty nervous about the GeForce FX line's performance in DirectX 9 games, especially with Half-Life 2 imminent. A competent alternative from a new player might be just what's needed. S3's new GPU looks pretty decent on paper, and we're all hoping not to see a replay of that fiery car wreck scene again. I have a pretty good feeling about the DeltaChrome's prospects, especially in the middle to low end of the market, where S3 will likely be concentrating its attention at first.
  • Archos' AV320 New Movies on the Move Multi-Media Box  - Last year, Archos revolutionized the handheld world by offering the first hard disk video that was compatible with the MPEG-4 compression format. Today, Archos is back with an even more polished product that has a screen nearly 4 inches in size.
  • First look at Apple Power Mac G5  -  After testing a loaded ($4,349 direct, after we opted for more RAM and upgraded graphics) dual 2.0-GHz Power Mac G5 on a range of high-end content creation applications and comparing the results with a similarly configured (and priced) Dell Precision 650 Workstation running dual 3.06-GHz Xeon processors, we see that indeed the G5 is generally as fast as the best Intel-based workstations currently available.
  • 6-Way 1GB DDR500 Round-up - LegitNews has published its 6-Way 1GB DDR500 Round-up
  • Corsair Hydrocool 200 Water Cooling - The Madshrimps test the Corsair HydroCool 200 water cooling solution on an AMD and Intel system. "Performance wise this is a big yes for everyone who doesn't have the time or knowledge to assemble a custom water cooling solution"
  • Plextor PX-708A (DVD+RW) review  - With their new PX-708A drive Plextor has released the world's first 8x DVD+R recorder which means that it's possible to record a complete DVD in less than 10 minutes! Another thing that's interesting is that Plextor has made this drive a dual format recorder, meaning that it supports both the DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) formats.
  • Aquamark3: Accurate Benchmarking for Old and New (DirectX9) Apps?  - Massive released its new AquaMark 3 benchmark earlier this week and its utility is very promising. For one, NVIDIA's latest drivers are shown lacking. And that's just for starters.
  • DirectX 9 Performance: 5900 Ultra vs. 9800 Pro  - Sudhian Media has posted a comparison review between the 5900 Ultra against the 9800 Pro. Here is a result: "So what does this mean for you and for Nvidia? From what we have seen, Direct X 9 performance is not up to par with the Radeon 9800 Pro, and even the 9600 Pro is able to outscore the 5900 Ultra on one map in Halo. With little performance increases being provided by the new drivers, Nvidia is going to be left behind."
  • Networking 101: Served Right - This guide will go through the common wording, the different protocols, teach you in a few steps what is needed to set up a home network. They are hoping after reading this article you will be able to decide which type of network would suit your needs better, either Ethernet or Wireless (802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g).
  • Sun StarOffice 7 review - Sun's new StarOffice 7 is, to begin with, a vast improvement over its predecessor. The new features incorporated into StarOffice7 make it one of the premiere office suites currently available, and its low cost certainly makes it the best value. If you're used to OpenOffice.org or StarOffice 6, the first thing you'll notice about StarOffice 7 is that it starts much more quickly. New functions include export to PDF and Macromedia Flash; a configuration manager which makes it easy to set up a secure, shared work environment; and accessibility enhancements that add support for alternative input devices and third-party accessibility applications (which are not included with the suite) such as voice recognition utilities.
  • Internet Explorer 6 SP1 Update - Internet Explorer shuts down unexpectedly (download patch) because of an access violation. This problem may occur if you have set Windows and buttons to Windows XP style. The Windows and buttons option is on the Appearance tab of the Windows XP Display Properties dialog box. If you have installed the August Cumulative update you already have newer files than above mentioned patch and do not need to install it.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.6.4 - Media Player Classic (Win2k/XP ~ Win9x/ME) is similar to windows media player 6.4 but with features pertained to minimalist advanced users. It also supports DirectX 9 and VFW drivers for capture.
  • 1by1 1.38 - 1by1 is a very small sized player which is not only small: It plays whole directories without any playlist. Navigating through your tracks has never been so easy.  Available too: 1by1 command set for IRAssistant, a nice tool to control applications with an IR remote controller, mpglib.dll: Decoding library for MPEG Layer III and Layer II. Needed if you don't use an MP3 ACM or MP3 Plugin, Compressor & Wider is a WinAmp DSP plugin of 1by1's audio enhancer (WinAmp "Pimp"-Installer).
  • MyIE2 0.8.2038 Final - MyIE2 (download) is a multi-tabbed browser based on the IE core (IE5.x or above required). It can open multiple web pages within one browser window, and uses little system resources. MyIE2 has a greatly integrated & customizable interface which supports Skins, Plug-Ins, IE Extensions, & specific toolbars (example: GOOGLE Toolbar).
  • Avant Browser 8.02 Build 101 -  Avant Browser (download) is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile web browser. Avant Browser is a multi-window browser which features with many functions such as Pop-up Stopper, Built-in Google Searching, Safe Recovery, Integrated Cleaner and Advanced Browsing Options.
  • SecureFX 2.2 Beta 1 - The SecureFX (download) client application lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2 connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers. It has a simple Explorer-like interface, so it's easy to learn and use.
  • SecureCRT 4.1 Beta 1 - SecureCRT (download) gives you an encrypted SSH session with both SSH1 and SSH2t servers. SSH security goes far beyond the basic secure logon, rerouting data or local applications using TCP/IP ports through an encrypted channel. The VCP utility secures file transfers using SFTP.
  • WinGuard Pro 2003 5.5.18 - Give yourself peace of mind from people tampering with your PC with WinGuard Pro 2003 - Free Edition (download), stop people changing your settings, accessing unauthorized programs, and important files.
  • Fresh Diagnose 6.30 - Fresh Diagnose (download) is an utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard information and more.
  • Fresh Download 6.15 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite software, mp3 files, video files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software, no spyware.
  • Fresh UI 6.40 - Fresh UI (download) is the fresh solution for configuring and optimizing Windows. Loaded with hundreds of useful hidden settings, this software covers the customizing and optimizing technique that you'll be glad to know: Customizing Windows User Interface, Optimizing system settings, Optimizing hardware settings, Customizing Windows application settings, and Control user environment with policies.
  • Pioneer DVDR-106 firmware (v1.07) - Pioneer has released a new firmware for their popular DVDR-106 also known as the A06.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,18 2003 - tech
Thursday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:57 PM CEST - Sep,18 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • SSH security glitch exposes all Linux and BSD networks, patch re-released - A critical security flaw in SSH (OpenSSH patch and advisory ~ CERT CA-2003-24 advisory) has been revealed that threatens servers worldwide. SSH is a widely used encrypted remote management shell for Unix, Linux and BSD platforms. Experts say attackers have been exploiting the vulnerability to gain access to systems illegally for months.
  • Hackers push new software for attacks - Security researchers on Tuesday detected hackers distributing software to break into computers using flaws announced last week in some versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.  The threat from this new vulnerability -- which already has drawn stern warnings from the Homeland Security Department -- is remarkably similar to one that allowed the Blaster virus to infect hundreds of thousands of computers last month.
  • Is Big Brother is chillin' in your next DVD disk package? - In the latest technological "advance" to further whittle away our right of privacy, Tesco has unveiled a scheme to embed a radio tag in of all things, DVD packaging at a supermarket in Sandhurst. This marketing tool gone 007 (Austin powers would never approve, these things were taboo in the 70's) will be used to track the movement of products as they are lifted from the shelves, beeping happily all the way to the home. I don't know about you but I don't like paying to be surveiled.
  • Intel to launch gaming CPU - Intel is going after PC gamers with a special processor called the Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading Technology, Extreme Edition, announced at the Intel Developer Forum here this week. Company executives say the new chip will begin shipping to PC vendors in 30 to 60 days, but didn't announce pricing. The CPU will include a 2MB Level 3 cache, which should help boost its performance in demanding applications such as graphics-heavy games. Today's Pentium 4 processors include a 512KB L2 cache, but no L3 cache (in fact, none of Intel's desktop processors include an L3 cache). At launch the processor will run at 3.2 GHz, the same speed as Intel's current top-end Pentium 4
  • Leadtek unveils new WinFast DV2000 - an internal digital VCR - Leadtek Research has unveiled the WinFast DV2000. A new multimedia center for video processing. The WinFast DV2000 sports a IEEE1394 port and supports DirectBurn enabling to connect your PC directly to DC/DV sources and record video directly to files. In addition, an add-in connector is bundled providing 2 more IEEE1394 ports.
  • NEC Improves Notebook Fuel Cell - NEC has reduced the volume of a prototype fuel cell for notebooks--unveiled just over two months ago--by 20 percent while maintaining the same power output, the Tokyo company says. The company unveiled its latest fuel cell at the World PC Expo show in Chiba, Japan, according to Diane Foley, an NEC spokesperson in Tokyo.
  • Nanotech to cut chip transistor sizes - By 2010, one billion PCs and 2.5 billion handheld devices as powerful as Pentium 4 systems will be linked in a global computing network, according to Intel's president and chief operating officer, Paul Otellini. By 2005 our processor transistors will be down to 65nanometres (nm), with all the benefits in reduced size and power consumption that that will bring," said Otellini. "By 2007 we'll cut that to 45nm, then 32nm by 2009, and in 2011 we expect to be at 22nm, smaller than DNA molecules are wide."
  • Video Cameras Round-up - PCMagazine reviewed eight consumer DV camcorders that cost $1,000 or less. Two are slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, three others are just a tad bulkier, and two are traditionally shaped camcorders. They also tested the Sharp VL-Z7U: Its unique split-body construction delivers remarkable comfort during shooting.
  • Sony Clie PEG-NX80V Review - If you've been wanting a general-purpose digital camera but what you really need is a PDA, Sony seems to have the answer-the Sony Clié PEG-NX80V ($600 street). The NX80V is the most highly evolved of the Clié NX series, with a large 320-by-480 display, a usable (but not lovable) QWERTY keyboard, a Sony Wireless LAN CF slot, an MP3 player, a voice recorder, AV remote control, and saving the best for last, a truly usable 1.3-megapixel camera.
  • NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Review - Adrian's Rojak Pot has posted a review of the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra graphics card.
  • Gainward Powepack FX Ultra/1600 GS CoolFX (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra) review - Well, judging by the overclocking scores the water cooling is really effective. The system was equipped with NO additional fans. The overclocking helps a lot to the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. But is it worth such an unreasonably high price? Not sure. But nobody talk Matrox out of selling its Parhelia at high prices. I think there'll be few Gainward Powepack FX Ultra/1600 GS CoolFX cards released. Primarily for enthusiasts.
  • ALi M1687 Athlon 64 K8 Reference Mainboard Review - The Athlon 64 (Socket 754) will be officially announced on 23rd September 2003. ALi which has been quiet for the past 1 year is back in the market. ALi/ULi offers a long ready solution for the K8 and it is the M1687 + M1563.  M1687 is ALi's new generation North bridge that offers a high-performance and cost-effective solution for PC systems. It supports the AMDR K8 Processors.  With AGP 1x/2x/4x/8x support, M1687 provides system designers with enough headroom to interface with different graphics solutions to fulfill various market requirements. The M1687 introduces HyperTransportt bus, a next generation link bus that can reach up to 6.4GB/sec to K8 CPU side and up to 1.6GB/sec to our south bridge side in bandwidth.
  • Four Way AMD Athlon XP Heatsink Shootout  - Here on the other end of the scale, we have an excellent cooler from ThermalTake which performs very well. While it doesn't cool as well as the Jet 7 or Aero 7+, it is extremely quiet that you cannot hear it. It's going to be perfect for a lot of people and it's definitely one fan that hasn't sacrificed performance for noise. Overall we have an excellent job by ThermalTake and an original design, in contract to the TR2-M2. Thanks to its excellent cooling and ultra low noise, we don't see any reason not to give it our Editor's Choice award.
  • Intel Stock 3.06GHz Copper/Aluminum Heatsink Review - FrostyTech has posted an Intel Stock 3.06GHz Copper/Aluminum Heatsink review
  • CoolMaster Aero 4 Lite Heatsink Review - There are a total of three different cables you must deal with when installing the Aero4. Because of the voltage thirsty blower, CoolerMaster used a 4 pin Molex to connect the power to the fan. There is also a 3 pin connector to handle the RPM monitoring functions and of course the fan controller itself.
  • CoolerMaster Jet 7 CPU Cooler Review - You like noise? this is your cooler !, the radial fan makes a tremendous amount of noise while it's spinning at it's highest RPM, The cooler performs better than the Aero 7 with only a 1800t-bred !, however it makes more noise than the Aero 7 though, Installation is easy, the looks are fantastic. Another review can be found at VoidedWaranty
  • Plextor PX-708 DVD Burner Review  - Techconnect has posted a review of the Plextor PX-708 8x DVD burner.
  • MSI CR52-M (52/32/52) CD-RW - The 40x default write speed is one other thing that is a first to CD-R/W drives. There are advantages and disadvantages about this feature we talked about earlier in the review. If for some reason you are burning CD's constantly then maybe this isn't the drive for you considering you would have to hold the eject button down for 3 seconds every time you insert new media, and while that may not seem like a big deal to some we can understand that could get really annoying. Some of you may find this feature to be top notch being able to choose what speed you want to write at, and writing at 40x speeds and being pretty quiet at the same time is a bonus.
  • Samsung SF-555P Multifunction Laser Printer Review - TweakNews has posted a Samsung SF-555P Multifunction Laser Printer review.
  • Early XGI Benchmarks - Definitely interesting as this is what we can expact performance wise. The test platform is a 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 system with 512 MB DDR memory. The software used, as stated 3D Mark 03 and the end result is the overall score at defailt benchmarking: Volari Duo V8 ultra - 5500-5600 3D Marks, Volari Duo V5 Ultra - 4000+ 3D Marks, Volari V8 Series - 3000+ 3D Marks, Volari V5 Series - 2000+ 3D Marks, Volari V3 Series - 1000+ 3D Marks.
  • Workstation platforms compared - Clearly, the Xeons at 2.66GHz outran the dual Opteron 240 setup in most of our tests. With its faux-quad-processors via Hyper-Threading, our dual Xeon Tiger i7505 system ripped through multithreaded tests, absolutely devastating the competition in Cinema 4D rendering. As new Xeon DP chips with 1MB cache, higher core clock speeds, and 800MHz front-side bus speeds with dual-channel DDR400 memory become available, the Xeon should become even more formidable. Obviously, Intel is not taking the Opteron threat lightly.
  •  XP vs. Pentium 4 : The Ultimate 32-bit CPU Showdown  - The winner of this 32-bit CPU showdown goes to Intel Pentium 4 for its excellent performance, consistent performance scaling and reasonable pricing strategy. Although AMD gave Intel a good fight to the end and lost the showdown, they did not walk away empty-handed as we have decided to award them the Best Value award for its excellent value offered by both the Athlon XP 2500+ and Athlon XP 2600+ processors.
  • How To Overclock An Opteron - The person was running an Athlon 64 3200+. While keeping the memory at a 1:1 ratio, he was only able to raise the FSB from 200 to 215MHz. However, if he changed the memory speed from 200MHz to 166MHz, he was able to increase the FSB to 239MHz (and at least be stable enough to run 3DMark).
  • NVIDA's Money Lures EIDOS To Pull Patch  - EIDOS Interactive, the publisher for Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness issued a patch a couple of weeks ago for the game which happened to include a way to use the game as a DX9 benchmark. Since it shows NVIDIA hardware performing slower than ATI, EIDOS has pulled it down. (thanks GamersDepot)
  • KDE 3.1.4 (Linux) - KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
  • Mozilla 1.5 RC1 - Mozilla is an open-source web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability.
  • MSIE6.0 SP1 Web Page Does Not Load Correctly - When you browse the Web, you may notice that frames on some Web sites are not displayed correctly, and the HTML code may not be fully rendered. This issue may occur after you install the Internet Explorer hotfix from the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article: 331596 - Data Is Truncated When You Download a Gzip-Encoded Excel File in Internet Explorer. Download update from here.
  • OE6 SP1 Update: MAPI Address & ResolveName Do Not Return Names - MAPIAddress and MAPIResolveName Do Not Return Names for Distribution Lists When Outlook Express Is Your Default E-Mail Client. Download update from here.
  • Windows Media Player 9 Update - Microsoft has issued a new knowledge base advisory in which the software company announces the availability of a fix (WinXP/2k ~ WinME) for a "Slight Delay When Windows Media Player 9 Series Switches Files Streamed from a Windows Media Services 9 Series Server". The symptoms you may experience are: When you stream files from a Windows Media Services 9 Series server, you may notice a delay of five or six seconds when you switch between files.
  • Game Editor 1.1 - Generate games for Linux, PocketPC and Windows in a single executable file. With few clicks, export games to any supported platform.
  • Trillian Basic 0.74E - The current version of Trillian Basic is 0.74E. It is available free of charge with no ads and no spyware.
  • SpamPal v1.51 beta - SpamPal sits between your email program and your mailbox (POP3/IMAP4), checking your email as you retrieve it. Any email messages that it considers to be spam will be "tagged" with a special header; you simply configure your email client to filter anything with this header into a separate folder and your spam won't be mixed up with the rest of your email anymore.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.21.09.20.0916 - The AntiVir Personal Edition (download) offers the effective&free protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation.
  • AIDA32 3.78.7 Preview - AIDA32 (download) 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.
  • PowerStrip 3.46 Beta Build 418 - PowerStrip (download) provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide range of graphics cards - from the venerable Matrox Millennium I to the latest Radeon 9700DV and Matrox Parhelia.
  • Coding Workshop Ringtone Convertor 4.5.5 - The Ringtone Converter (download) is a software program for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac systems that allows you to add new ringtones to your mobile phone without the need for cables or expensive premium rate SMS services. The Ringtone Converter supports most makes and models of phone including Audiovox, Alcatel, Ericsson, HTC, Kyocera, Motorola, Nokia, NEC, Panasonic, Philips, Sagem, Samsung, Sony, Sendo, Sharp and Siemens handsets, with more added every month.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,17 2003 - tech
Evening Tech Mania - tech
(hx) 02:27 AM CEST - Sep,17 2003 - Post a comment
  • New ssh exploit! - The systems in question are FreeBSD, RedHat, Gentoo, and Debian all running the latest versions of OpenSSH. The attack makes an enormous amount of ssh connections (check these threads too) and attempts various offsets until it finds one that works permitting root login.
  • Ballmer to crackers: this PC ain't big enough for the both of us - The recent deluge of Internet worms and security vulnerabilities affecting Windows will not affect Microsoft's ability to "innovate", CEO Steve Ballmer pledged yesterday. Ballmer told an audience at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, California, that "better security and constant innovation go hand in hand". Essentially this was a message for the markets- all these security problems are not going to slow our production of newer, bigger, more expensive stuff. On the plus side, Ballmer acknowledged that Blaster and the like are causing customers "pain" and that patching is a problem. He said Microsoft felt "humbled by the events of the last few weeks"....heh good one :)
  • Off-topic: China nears first human space flight  - A month-long countdown to the launch of China's first astronaut began on Monday, according to reports Unnamed space program officials told the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po that the historic flight would take place shortly after the week-long celebrations that mark the anniversary of communist rule. These begin on 1 October. The exact date will not be decided until about a week before the launch, the officials said. They also disclosed that the Shenzhou spacecraft will carry a single Chinese astronaut into space. The chosen "taikonaut" will be selected from a group of three candidates shortly before launch.
  • Off-topic: Sleep position gives personality clue - Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are. Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, has analysed six common sleeping positions - and found that each is linked to a particular personality type.
  • Pentium 4 Extreme Edition  - The Inquirer is reporting that during the IDF opening today Louis Burns from Intel demonstrated a video showing a mysterious new desktop CPU. According to Intel this new processor will be targeted at high-end gamers and computing power users. They were not demonstrating the Prescott, but something unheard-of, the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.20GHz! This appears to be a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with an additional 2MB L3 cache memory. The Inquirer thinks that these Extreme Editions will be repacked Intel XeonMP processors with a Socket 478 housing instead of a Socket 603.
  • Apple Revamps 15-Inch PowerBook - The new 15-inch PowerBook tops out with a 1.25GHz G4 processor; 2GB 333MHz DDR RAM max; SuperDrive (on the high-end model); lighted keyboard (high-end model); FireWire 800 and 400; USB 2.0; Bluetooth; ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (64MB DDR); 60GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive (80GB on the high-end model; and Gigabit Ethernet. The low-end model is AirPort Extreme Ready, while the high-end model has AirPort Extreme built in. The 1GHz model with a Combo drive will cost $1999, while the 1.25GHz SuperDrive equipped model is $2599. Both configurations are available immediately.
  • Xerox Updates Color Laser Line - New are the Phaser 6250, a fast color laser printer available in several configurations, and the monochrome Phaser 3450. The 6250DT, which retails for $3399, is a desktop printer with 512MB of RAM standard and 600-sheet paper capacity. The 6250 series of printers range in estimated retail price from $1999 to $3899, the same price range as the four Phaser 6200 models. Through the end of September, however, Xerox is offering a $300 rebate on three of the four Phaser 6200 models to drop the price below the predecessors; no rebate is offered for the basic 6200/B.
  • Seagate spins 100GB platter - Seagate Technology on Tuesday said it has pushed the data-density envelope in the disk-drive industry, announcing a product that squeezes 100GB onto a single 3.5-inch platter. Seagate's new product is part of its Barracuda 7200.7 family of drives. The drive has two platters, for a total capacity of 200GB. It can use the more-traditional parallel ATA interface or the newer serial ATA interface (SATA).
  • NVIDIA Accelerates PCI Express Adoption - NVIDIA today reaffirmed support for the PCI Expresst architecture by announcing that the Company is currently developing a complete family of next-generation desktop, mobile, and workstation graphics processing units (GPUs) that are designed to take advantage of the added bandwidth that the new I/O interconnection standard delivers.
  • Athlon 64 for desktops coming on Sept. 23 - AMD's best chance to break into the business PC market will begin on Sept. 23 when its 64-bit Athlon processor for desktops and mobile PCs is scheduled for release. The chipmaker touts the key point that its 64-bit architecture also runs 32-bit software, switching between both platforms effortlessly, without any emulation layer.
  • Graphics Boosters For OpenGL Workstations  - THG has posted a comparison between 4 ATI ProGL cards vs 4 Nvidia ProGL cards.
  • Corsair TwinX1024-4000Pro DDR Memory Review - Corsair's TwinX1024-4000Pro memory modules are easily the coolest looking DIMM's on the market, bar none. Sure there have been other companies to incorporate LED's on a stick of memory, but Corsair have taken this to the next level.
  • IsoBuster Pro 1.5 Beta9 - IsoBuster (download ~ changelog) is a CD/DVD and (Disk)Image File data recovery tool, that can read and extract files, tracks and sessions from CD-i, VCD, SVCD, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, DVD, DVCD and others. It also supports the following image file formats: *.DAO (Duplicator), *.TAO (Duplicator), *.ISO (Nero, BlindRead, Creator), *.BIN (CDRWin), *.IMG (CloneCD), *.CIF (Creator), *.FCD (Uncompressed), *.NRG (Nero), *.GCD (Prassi), *.P01 (Toast), *.C2D (WinOnCD), *.CUE (CDRWin), *.CIF (DiscJuggler), *.CD (CD-i OptImage) and *.GI (Prassi PrimoDVD).
  • XPlite and 2000lite Professional v1.0 GOLD - XPlite and 2000lite are powerful configuration utilities for Windows creating a modular Windows operating system where YOU are in control.
  • XMPEG 5.02 - This program decodes MPEG1 (Audio & Video) and MPEG2 streams and offers you the possibillity to re-encode them in the format you want. Actual evolutions makes Xmpeg faster, more stable, and offers more options.
  • kX Project Drivers 5.00.3534f  - The kX Audio Driver package includes driver system files and setup files as well as a powerful audio mixer application (the kX Mixer), which acts as a Graphical User Interface, providing access to many of the driver's internal functions.
  • Microsoft IntelliPoint & IntelliType v5.0 drivers - Microsoft have released version 5 of their IntelliPoint & IntelliType (Microsoft IntelliPoint v5.0  / Microsoft IntelliType v5.0), keyboard and mouse software. I don't recommend to install these drivers much, seems the older version 4.1 is better.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,16 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 02:40 AM CEST - Sep,16 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Sobig.F likely began on porn newsgroup - The FBI subpoenaed an Arizona Internet service provider to trace the culprit behind a fast-spreading e-mail virus that security experts said may have first been posted to an adult pictures Internet site.  One expert said the Sobig.F e-mail virus was disguised so that anyone who clicked on a link purporting to show a sexually graphic picture became infected with the self-replicating worm, which then spread itself to other e-mail addresses. "Sobig.F was first posted to a porn Usenet group," said Jimmy Kuo, research fellow at antivirus software maker Network Associates. Usenet is a popular forum on the Internet where computer users with similar interests post and read messages.
  • Insiders blamed for most online movie piracy - Most pirate copies of popular movies circulated online are the result of leaks by industry insiders rather than home or cinema copying, according to US research. A team from AT&T Laboratories and the University of Pennsylvania created software to track movies in the US box office top 50 uploaded to file-sharing networks between January 2002 and June 2003. Seventy-seven percent of films uploaded during this period were apparently created during production or distribution. Some simply appeared online before their cinema release - meaning they must have been leaked.
  • PGP makes email encryption easier - PGP Corporation today introduced simpler email encryption in which the burden of securing email messages is shifted from the client to the network. PGP Universal software suite, launched today, represents a new architecture for the company. The complexity of email encryption systems has long been a factor holding back deployment. Some vendors have responded to by repackaging encrypted email as a Web-based service.
  • Microsoft offers $179.99 Xbox bundle for holidays - Microsoft Corp. on Monday unveiled its holiday promotion for the Xbox video game console, offering the unit, two games, and a two-month trial of its online service for $179.99, which previously was the price just for the console. Microsoft said the bundle would include the LucasArts game "Star Wars: Clone Wars" and the THQ Inc. (nasdaq: THQI - news - people) game "Tetris Worlds Live." The "Clone Wars" game usually retails for $49.99, while the "Tetris" game sells for $19.99.
  • PC makers to unwrap holiday desktops - HP's low-price Compaq Presario desktop will include a 2.5GHz Intel Celeron processor, 128MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and a CD burner. The desktop, which will hit stores later this month, will cost $459. HP's Presario models S5100NX, S5200NX and S5300NX will offer 2.6GHz Celerons, 2.7GHz Celerons and 2.5GHz Pentium 4 processors, respectively. The desktops will come with between 256MB and 512MB of RAM, 80GB or 120GB hard drives, a CD burner and DVD-ROM drives. Prices on the desktops, which will arrive in stores in early October, will be $559, $659 and $779, respectively, HP said.
  • Canon Breaks Digital SLR Price Barriers - The impressive Canon EOS Digital Rebel SLR carves out a new niche in the ever-harder-to-define prosumer digital camera market. With a street price of $900 ($1,000 with an 18- to 55-mm lens), the 6.3-megapixel Digital Rebel costs about the same as the Olympus E-20N, the Minolta DiMage 7Hi, and other prosumer cameras.
  • AT&T Offers Windows-Based Smartphone - Motorola and Microsoft launched a clam-shell format cell phone Monday, based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone software. Mobile network operator Orange SA will distribute the phone for use on its UK network from October, and AT&T will offer it in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, the companies said Monday. The MPx200, measuring 1.9 by 3.5 by 1.1 inches, allows users to surf the Internet, access their e-mails, and synchronize the phone with their PC. It includes an SD slot with a 16MB memory card (a 2GB card is available) and an external speaker for listening to MP3 and Windows Media files; it can also play videos using Windows Media Player. A detachable camera is available separately. In the UK, the MPx200 will cost $383 with an Orange contract.
  • AMD K9 to Come in 2005? - X-bit lab's sources claim that actual details of the K9 architecture will be announced in a year, sometime in Fall 2004, whereas, in case everything goes well, the AMD K9 microprocessors will emerge in 2005 or 2006. Nevertheless, we may discuss some compulsory and very probable facts about the K9 processors even now.
  • Borland builds out C++ wares - Borland on Monday bolstered its C++ toolbox with the introduction of a new IDE and an application lifecycle management suite. Borland C++BuilderX is a multiplatform IDE for Windows, Linux, and Solaris that provides a brand-new visual development environment. It is compiler agnostic and supports compilers from Intel, Microsoft, Sun Forte, and Metrowerks. The tool enables platform portability via a new Borland C++ compiler and a C++ framework.
  • Creative 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 Ultra Review  - The 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 Ultra is the showcase product in Creative's 3D Blaster family as it leverages the maximum potential of NVIDIA's GeForce FX platform. Based on the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, the 0.13-micron GPU operates at a frequency of 450MHz and is matched with 256MB of DDR memory running at effective speed of 850MHz that communicates over a 256-bit memory bus. The 3D Blaster 5 FX 5900 Ultra utilizes the AGP 8X interface and features NVIDIA's CineFX 2.0 engine.
  • Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro Graphics Card Review  - Gigabyte has simply followed the ATI reference design for the G9600 Pro with only one modification, that being a slightly smaller PCB. Without a doubt, the ATI Radeon 9600 Pro based video cards are aimed at the more cost effective mainstream market, coming to the market without making a dent in your wallet while still maintaining decent performance.
  • Memorex Dual-X DVD recorder review  - The Memorex Dual-X left us with a pretty positive feeling. As a plain DVD-Writer it's superb as it wrote every brand of DVD-R and DV+R media that we put in it without problems at the certified speed of the media. This includes unknown Hong Kong media identifed as AN31 as well as more known brands like Princo and Verbatim. As a CD-Writer it's also good, but it's bad that Memorex do not provide CD-R discs that works with their own writers! And it's lagging behind the competition with a write speed of only 16X compared to 24X for many competitors.
  • FPS: The Quest for more - Ever wondered why it is exactly everyone keeps striving for more frames per seconds from games? Is it simply for braggin rights or is there more to it? After all we watch TV at 30fps and that's plenty.
  • Windows Longhorn M5 (Build 4029) Leaked  - Last night, build 4029 of Microsoft's next big thing, Windows code-named "Longhorn", was leaked to the web by the gang over at #betas on irc.ufnet.org. Despite for the fact that it was compiled back in June, this is still the latest milestone-build of Longhorn that ever surfaced outside Microsoft's campus. The most noticeable changes compared to the previously leaked build 4015 are an somewhat enhanced sidebar as well as minor improvements that have been made throughout the infamous Plex-skin. (thanks ieXbeta)
  • HB++ 1.02 Compiler - HB++ 1.02 the true basic compiler for PalmOS with RAD environement is now available with new cool features.
  • AquaMark Benchmark 3.0 - AquaMark3 allows PC users to easily measure and compare the performance of their current and next-generation PC systems. It provides a reliable benchmark which helps users to configure their systems for the best gaming performance. The AquaMark3 executes a complete state-of-the-art game engine and generates 3D scenes designed to make the same demands on hardware as a modern game. The utilized game engine, the krasst Engine, has been used in Aquanox and AquaNox 2: Revelation as well as in the upcoming RTS Spellforce by Phenomic Game Development. It is accepted industrywide and well-known to deliver high-performance graphic effects with superior quality.  Technically, AquaMark3 utilizes recent hardware features of the new DirectX 9 API, such as PixelShader 2.0, while staying fully backward compatible to DirectX 8 and 7 graphics hardware. The graphics and game engine features activated can be configured in fine detail to allow the performance measurement to be adjusted appropriately for the target system. Some nice benches can be found at MadShripms
  • Game Editor v1.1 - Game Editor is an interactive multimedia tool for game development, with a simple and intuitive interface and a rich set of features which allow anyone, even with little or no programming knowledge at all, to develop 2D games for personal computers and mobile devices.
  • VisualBoy Advance 1.7 Beta - Visual Boy Advance (download) is a GBA/GBC emulator that runs with Windows systems.
  • Fresh Download 6.15 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite freeware/shareware, mp3 files, movie files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software (which steal your bandwidth) , no spyware.
  • AVG Free Edition 6.0 Build 518  - With AVG 6.0 Free Edition and you will be able to use it without any limitations for life of the product. However you must agree to the AVG Free Edition license agreement and fill in the simple questionaire form.
  • WinZip 9.0 Beta 2 build 5611 - Improvements in WinZip 9.0 (what's new ~ download) concentrate on its core functionality: compression, capacity, and a new, advanced data encryption capability. Using WinZip 9.0, you can compress more data, compress it better, and protect your sensitive documents with far greater security.
  • Hmonitor 4.1.3.3 - Hardware Sensors Monitor has been updated to version 4.1.3.3. Hmonitor has much more functions than MotherBoard Monitor, for example, including thermocontrol features and COM/PerfMon API support (quoted from the author).
  • Plextore Firmwares - Plextore Europe has released a new firmwares for PX-708A and PlexWriter Premium(-U) V1.04. More information can be found on the Plextor website.
  • nVidia 51.75 Detonator Driver *BETA* - 3dChipset has posted the Detonator 51.75 for your download pleasure. Files are dated: Aug 28, 2003. Checl also this article at TechConnect called "nVidia Answers the Detonator 51.75 leak"
  • GamersDepot on Detonator 50 Drivers - NVIDIA's Det50's don't quite grab the high-needed performance boost we had hoped for - granted they still have some time to improve upon them. However, we can now conclude as to why NVIDIA wanted Valve to use these in the recent testing we did in Half-Life 2 - they make the image quality look like crap as a way to boost performance.  The choice for which graphics card to buy is quite clear to us. Do you want to buy a video card that uses DX9 "Smoke and mirrors" to emulate performance, or one that provides best-of-class performance and image quality in one package. You'd truly have to be a NVIDIA fan-boy to buy one of their cards given the current state of affairs.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,14 2003 - tech
Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:19 PM CEST - Sep,14 2003 - Post a comment
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,13 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:30 AM CEST - Sep,13 2003 - Post a comment
  • Limited Office 2003 release set for Monday -  Select Microsoft Corp. customers will get early access to several of the vendor's new Office System products on Monday, the company said.  Volume buyers who bought Microsoft's Software Assurance maintenance plan and subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network service will be able to download the Office 2003 suite applications, the OneNote note-taking tool and several other applications starting Sept. 15, Microsoft said in a statement sent via e-mail. Microsoft originally planned to offer the products online Oct. 1, but the company said it moved the release forward because customers are eager to start evaluating the new products.
  • Microsoft to Issue Security-Fix Rollup  - Microsoft has been wavering as to its Windows XP service-pack plans. But now it appears that the Redmond software maker is, indeed, going to issue a service pack prior XP Service Pack 2, which is expected around the third quarter of next year. Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Windows XP consists of 22 previously released critical and security updates for Windows XP rolled into one convenient package," say Microsoft on its BetaPlace beta-testing site. "Installing this item provides you the same results as installing the individual updates." Rumors of such an interim security rollout have been circulating for about a month. On an online chat on Blaster, held August 18, Microsoft officials gave conflicting information as to whether the company planned such a security rollup.
  • How to Steal $65 Billion - What we do know is that there is somewhere between 250,000 and 750,000 identity theft victims every year. While many cases are small, the U.S. Secret Service reported in one year investigating more than 7,000 cases with an average cost to victims and financial institutions of $217,000 or a total cost of about $1.5 billion. The American Banking Association reports identity fraud losses to its members of around $1 billion per year and the credit card companies absorb around $1.5 billion per year in such fraud losses.
  • Microsoft goes to Hollywood - This week, the Redmond, Wash.-based company sent in its underlying video-compression code for vetting by the Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers (SMPTE)--a first for Microsoft and a marked departure from the company's longtime commitment to keeping its technology proprietary. In doing so, Microsoft is aiming to provide a viable successor to MPEG-2, a compression standard that is the foundation of satellite, cable, video-editing systems and DVDs.
  • Mandrakesoft plan to sell Ads In v9.2 - Mandrakesoft has decided to sell ads in the free version of their upcoming 9.2 release.
  • Want 50Mb per second? Forget fibre - Finnish company Teleste, a European supplier of network kit for cable operators, has signed a co-operation agreement with the second biggest Dutch cable operator Essent Kabelcom to develop and deploy a fast IP-based data access technology called Ethernet to the Home (ETTH).  ETTH offers speeds up to 10 Mb/s data speed to residential customers without the need of active consumer premise equipment, and up to 50Mb/s symmetrical data connectivity to business customers.
  • USB adds support for streaming devices  - The USB Implementers Forum released on its Web site the USB Video Device Class Specification Revision 1.0, which is designed to make it easier for hardware makers, specifically streaming-media makers, to have their devices plug into and be recognized by personal computers.
  • off-topic: Coolest thing in the Universe revealed  -  The coolest thing in the Universe is now a cloud of sodium atoms in a laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Physicists from the MIT-Harvard Centre for Ultra-Cold atoms have chilled 2500 sodium atoms to within half a billionth of a degree of absolute zero, the temperature at which atomic oscillation slows to a standstill.
  • off-topic: Bug beat on CD - The bizarre innovation -- an "optical biocomputer" if you must know -- is the brainchild of an Australian scientist, Cameron Jones, who as well as being a mathematician with a record of published research also owns a nightclub and bar in Melbourne, New Scientist reports. Jones' pet area of research is how signals can be transmitted through biological cells, which grow in a so-called "fractal" way, like tree branches.
  • Sharp to sell 3D laptop - The Mebius PC-RD3D, billed by Sharp as the world's first 3D laptop, goes on sale Oct. 27 in Japan and is planned for release later this year in the United States. The computer display produces 3D images by sending a slightly different image to the right eye and the left eye at once by bending them in different angles, according to Sharp. The special screen has applications in architecture, medicine, science and gaming. The $3,000 (U.S.) laptop switches back and forth between its 3-D feature and a regular display by a push of a button. The company hopes to sell 1,000 of the laptops a month, she said. Sales plans for Europe are still undecided.
  • Canon Unveils Colorful Elph - Canon USA has introduced the PowerShot Digital Elph SD10, a 4-megapixel digital camera that comes in four art deco/tech colors. The new model is scheduled to ship in mid-October at a suggested retail price of $449. The camera will be available in a choice of colors that Canon calls grand piano black, iridescent white, satin bronze patina, and platinum silver. It measures 3.6 by 1.9 by 0.7 inches and weighs 3.5 ounces. Except for its color scheme, the new model has many of the same features as other units in Canon's well-regarded Elph line of digicams.
  • CineFX (NV30) Inside - I've missed this article a couple days ago, but it's definitely worth reading. If you will find the first three pages of the article to be too technical and complicated, still be sure to have a look at page 4. You will find an easy to understand performance analysis of the CineFX architecture and a comparison to the ATi's R3x0 part.
  • A Colorful BlackBerry  - BlackBerry fans will be happy to welcome the RIM BlackBerry 7230 handheld ($400 plus monthly service charges), the first RIM model with a color display and 900-, 1,800-, and 1,900-MHz tri-band GSM/GPRS coverage for international use. You can use the 7230 for voice calls, Internet browsing and enterprise e-mail, and two-way SMS. Rudimentary contact, task, and scheduling tools keep the 7230 out of the running as a PDA, but that's the idea: The 7230 is being marketed as a data viewer and a wide-coverage phone for mobile professionals.
  • HP Ipaq H2210/H2215 review - The H2210 is the first in the 2000 series and marks the end of the Ipaq 3000 family. Based on a new Xscale PXA255 processor and Microsoft's new PDA operating system, Windows Mobile 2003, HP claims this model offers more power and longer battery life. But many PDA makers have made similar boasts.
  • Gigabyte K8NNXP nForce3 150 Mainboard Review - Powered by nForce3 platform processors, GA-K8NNXP supports the brand new 8th generation AMD AthlonTM64 processor to deliver a high performance platform with dual support for 32-bit applications and increasing 64-bit computing needs.
  • 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.
  • MySQL 4.0.15 - MySQL 4.0.15 (changelog ~ download) has been released.
  • NVIDIA Detonator 51.75 Performance Comparison - AMDMB has published a quick performance comparison of the newly released 51.75 Detonator FX drivers that were sent to the press. From these quick tests, it is clear that the new release 50 Detonator drivers from NVIDIA aren't going to offer big performance gains for the current generations of video games. The purpose of this driver release is twofold: to improve DirectX 9 performance, and to make NVIDIA more competitive against ATI. Whether this driver accomplishes that in games like Half-Life 2 remains to be seen.  In addition, Guru3D has posted some Detonator 51.75 & AquaMark 3 Results.
  • Complete Audio Converter Lite/Pro 3.1 - Complete Audio Converter Lite/Pro (download) is a utility to convert or fast batch convert audio files from one to another format. The supported audio formats are MP3 (including VBR), WMA, WAV, ADPCM, GSM, DSP, MP2, PCM (uncompressed Wave), OGG Vorbis, G721, G723, G726, A-LAW, U-LAW and RAW; you can even make your own formats. All of the format parameters like frequency, bitrate, channels, etc. can be configured.
  • ICQ Pro 2003b Alpha - The last 2003a version was released long time ago. Now you can download an updated "b" release.
  • Trillian Pro 2.0 Final  - Trillian Pro 2.0 Final (download) has now been released to members. They have finally added Jabber support.
  • TVTool 8.3 - TVTool (download) that enables your video card TV-Output. The TVTool context menu function, which is one of the most popular features, has been improved significantly in version 8.3. Now this function has its own tab, which allows the configuration of 5 movie players. Also the 768x576 mode was added for the SAA7102 and 7108, and the TV detection can be forced now.
  • Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 5.02.1003 (Official) - The Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility installs to the target system the Windows* INF files that outline to the operating system how the chipset components will be configured.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,10 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 02:58 AM CEST - Sep,10 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • 12-Year-Old Sued for Music Downloading - The music industry has turned its big legal guns on Internet music-swappers — including a 12-year-old New York City girl who thought downloading songs was fun. Brianna LaHara said she was frightened to learn she was among the hundreds of people sued yesterday by giant music companies in federal courts around the country. "I got really scared. My stomach is all turning," Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother. "I thought it was OK to download music because my mom paid a service fee for it. Out of all people, why did they pick me?"
  • Accused Hacker Surrenders - A hacker who has acknowledged involvement in computer break-ins at New York Times Co., Yahoo Inc. and other large corporations surrendered on a federal arrest warrant from New York. Adrian Lamo, 22 years old, turned himself in to marshals at the federal courthouse in Sacramento, said Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Karen Twomey Ernst. Patty Pontello, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney in Sacramento, said the warrant was sealed and she didn't know what the charges were.
  • Winamp 2.91 Buffer Overflow - Winamp 2.91 uses a default plugin called IN_MIDI.DLL used to play MIDI files. The versions prior and equal to the 3.01 of this plugin let an attacker to execute code on a victim simply setting the "Track data size" value of a MIDI file to 0xffffffff.
  • Microsoft Opens Office Online - Microsoft launched Office Online, an updated version of its Tools on the Web site, on Tuesday. The site, at Office.Microsoft.com, gives users access to templates, clip art, and other information designed to help them use Office products more effectively, Microsoft said.
  • Sony Promotes Memory Stick for Video - The smaller Memory Stick Duo cards can also be used with an adapter. Recording is in MPEG-4 at 15 frames per second and can be set at one of four quality levels. "High quality" records 384 kilobits per second at 320-by-240-pixel resolution, and "long play 2" records at a 64-kbps data rate at 176-by-144-pixel resolution.
  • New Memory That Doesn't Forget  - According to Motorola, samples of the new magnetoresistive random access memory, or MRAM, chips will be distributed to developers by the end of 2003, and cell phones and PDAs incorporating MRAM should be on sale by mid-2004. Unlike conventional high-speed memory devices, MRAM uses magnetism instead of electrical charges to store data -- making it, in a sense, a back-to-the-future technology based on the same laws of physics that enabled the creation of audio and videotape recorders as well as hard drives.
  • AMD unwraps faster Opteron 100, 800 CPUs - AMD rolled out two new Opteron processors, one each for its 100 and 800 series of chips. Both the Opteron 146 and 846 had been widely anticipated. The former is aimed at single-processor systems, the 846 for four- and eight-way machines. Both are clocked at 2GHz, like the Opteron 246 release a month or so back. Now that the 100 and 800 series have caught up with the 200 series' highest rated chip, AMD will soon release the 248 at 2.2GHz, later this month or early October.
  • Opteron 146 2GHz Review  - Now in regards to the 146 its performance is identical to that of the 246, and it is meant for single CPU workstations. It is paired nicely with the Asus SK8N which is now in revision 1.03 and now with the latest bios has DDR400 support. At as low as $213 it is becoming more attractive. The 146 should cost lower than the 246 which currently comes in at $900.
  • Triplex Para-Souls R9600Pro 128MB VGA Review - Overclockers New Zealand has posted a review on Triplex Para-Souls R9600Pro 128MB VGA.
  • Creative 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 Ultra Review - Beyond3D has posted a Creative 3D Blaster 5 FX5900 Ultra review.
  • Zalman ZM-RS6F 5.1 Surround Headphones review - Hardware Pacers take a look at the Zalman ZM-RS6F headphones for 5.1 sound configuration.
  • TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide v3.0 - Tweakhound's Eric Vaughan has updated his Windows XP tweaking guide to revision 3.0.
  • Notebook - Laptop Tweak Guide - Notebooks are very common now, as they're much more affordable than they have been in the past. Well equipped 'books from companies like Dell start in the $700 to $1000 range if you shop around and look for discounts. But no matter what you pay for a notebook, you'll likely have the same complaints as most other notebook owners. Your notebook drains its battery like you never thought possible and you can't figure out why it's so sluggish compared to a similarly-equipped PC. Don't worry, young grasshopper, there is hope yet. After following a few steps, your notebook will be faster, more useful, last longer, and do so much more than you imagined it could.
  • WinGuard Pro 2003 5.5 - WinGuard Pro 2003 - Free Edition (download), stop people changing your settings, accessing unauthorized programs, and important files.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.21.09.20.0908 - The AntiVir Personal Edition (download) offers the effective protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation.
  • Messenger Plus! 2.21.55 - Messenger Plus! Extension (download) is a program that adds functionalities to the MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger chat program. Some of the added features are logging, personalized Away Messages, transparency effects, and a feature to minimize all MSN Messenger windows to the system tray. Now supports MSNM 6.1 as well.
  • Style Studio 3.5.28 - Whether you're creating a new website, editing an existing site, or converting a site to use CSS, Style Studio (download) is designed to make all your CSS and HTML tasks easier.
  • SecureFX 2.1.7 - The SecureFX (download) client application lets you choose between SFTP or FTP over an encrypted SSH2 connection for secure transfers, or standard FTP for non-secure transfers. It has a simple Explorer-like interface, so it's easy to learn and use.
  • USB 1.1 and 2.0 Update for WinXP - This update addresses the "Availability of the Windows XP SP1 USB 1.1 and 2.0 Update" issue in Windows XP and is discussed in Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) Article 822603. Download now to install the Windows XP SP1 USB 1.1 and 2.0 update. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.
  • nVidia 45.33 Detonators Flicker Fix -  NVIDIA was made aware of an issue involving the GeForce FX 5900 series of graphics cards where some users have reported a slight "flickering" of the image on their screen, visible on a light color background in certain 3D scenes.  In examining the information available, NVIDIA has determined that the issue may involve an interaction between select combinations of the graphics card, system, monitor, other electronic components and the application which creates noise or signal interference. If you are experiencing this issue on a GeForce FX 5900 or GeForce FX 5900 Ultra card, you can download this driver fix. The fix can be found also at 3DGPU
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,09 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 03:40 AM CEST - Sep,09 2003 - Post a comment
  • Hackers jump through holes in Microsoft patch - Security experts are warning Microsoft customers about silent Internet attacks that exploit a security flaw in the Internet Explorer Web browser, potentially allowing remote attackers to run malicious code on vulnerable machines. The vulnerability is similar in scope to those exploited by devastating worms such as Nimda, Badtrans and Klez, according to one security company. And, to make matters worse, the flaw is one Microsoft said it fixed weeks ago. The security hole, known as the "Object Data vulnerability," affects Internet Explorer (IE) versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0. It concerns the way that IE processes HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages containing a special element called the Object Data tag. If properly exploited, the vulnerability could enable an attacker to place a malicious computer program on a user's machine. No user actions would be required aside from opening an e-mail message or visiting a Web page containing the attack.
  • Police smash UK's biggest credit card fraud ring - Three men are facing long jail sentences after pleading guilty, Friday (Sept. 5) to running the UK's biggest ever credit card fraud at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The trio stole details of 847 cards of Heathrow Express rail passengers who had paid for their journey by credit cards. They passed on the infor a gang of forgers who cloned 8,790 credit cards for use in the UK and on the Continent. The cloners were able to use only 10 per cent of the numbers, pocketing L2m for the gang. Police estimate that the gang could have gained L20m if all the credit card numbers had been used.
  • RIAA sues 261 evil-doers  - The RIAA has kicked off its new revenue generating suing practice in style, filing lawsuits against 261 file traders. The music label mob has methodically reached this point. After filing over a thousand subpoenas, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is now going after the worst of the bunch with good old fashioned lawsuits. The file traders could pay up to $150,000 per illegal song swap, if they are found guilty.
  • Off-topic: Soundless Music Shown to Produce Weird Sensations - Mysteriously snuffed out candles, weird sensations and shivers down the spine may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans. British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.
  • Bugpower, the energy of the future - This sci-fi scenario may lie in the not-too-distant future, thanks to a pair of US-based scientists who say they have invented the world's first efficient "bacterial battery." In a Pentagon-backed project, University of Massachusetts researchers Swades Chaudhuri, an Indian, and Derek Lovley, an American, say the battery's source is an underground bacterium that gobbles up sugar and converts its energy into electricity. Their prototype device ran flawlessly without refuelling for up to 25 days and is cheap and stable.
  • Intel Debuts Itanium 2 Pair For Dual-Processor Servers  - Intel on Monday released a pair of new Itanium 2 processors designed for dual-processor servers. The low-power 1GHz Itanium, once code-named 'Deerfield,' consumes about half as much power as its predecessors, said Intel, and aims for a home in entry-level, front-end enterprise systems. Intel sees it as a competitive alternative to entry-level RISC-based systems. The second CPU, out of the 'Madison' family, is a 1.4GHz Itanium with a smaller cache and lower cost than its siblings, and targets dual-processor servers, high-performance technical and scientific computing systems, and clusters, according to Intel.
  • Taiwan makers to begin white LED volume production by end of 2003 - Taiwan's LED manufacturers will reportedly be able to start producing white LEDs by year-end. They hope to benefit from increased demand created as more mobile phone makers choose white LEDs for their backlight panels and lighting sources, said industry insiders.
  • Apple announced 40GB iPod, reports 10M sold tunes - Apple announced today that its music store, iTunes, has now sold over 10 million songs. Apple launched its store in May and the service is only available to American Mac users, which makes the 10M sound even bigger figure. To squeeze everything out from the Apple-worshipping music market, company launched yet another version of its culture icon, iPod digital audio player. The new model has 40GB of storage space and comes with a price tag of $499.
  • Historic Linux File Archive  - The files include snapshots of the early Linux archives including sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu, and early distributions such as MCC (Manchester Computing Center) and SLS (Softlanding Linux Systems), which were some of the first attempts to make Linux easy to install and use. The early RedHat releases are also included, as is early Suse, Debian, Slackware, and Blade. The early distributions ran on machines as small as 386's with 2-4 MB of RAM, so these could be fun ways to resurrect ancient hardware.
  • Ahanix SilenX 350 PSU review - Simply put, the unit performs very well for its humble looks. While it may not have the power to run hardcore gaming machines, it should handle any average machine quite nicely. It offers rock solid performance with nearly no attributable noise.
  • Gainward CoolFX detail shots - During the Cebit - Eurasia which happened this week in Istanbul, the chaps over at DarkHardware managed to took some detail photos of the Gainward's oncoming CoolFX 5900 Ultra product. As far as we know, these are the first shots of the CoolFX showing the underside of the card, as well as the water pump and the reservoir.
  • NV40 Rectifications - NV40 Rectifications: supports FP32, FP16 and FX16 natively. Whether there is any performance difference between FP16 and FX16 is unknown, and whether there are any truly non-FP32 units is also unknown. 175M transistors, 600Mhz core clock, 1.5Ghz effective GDDR2 ( Samples already shipped to nV - 16 memory chips per board ); Not taped-out yet, or if it did, tape-out failed. To tape-out sometime this month.; 8 pipelines, Speculation: probably 8x2 and no 16 zixel trick ( not worth it with 4x+ AA, which is really a minimum with 48GB/s of bandwidth ) - Maybe such a bypass path for low-end models ( NV42/NV43 )
  •  Gainward Geforce FX 5900 Ultra 256mb golden sample Info - A very thorough bundle is provided by Gainward, by buying the Ultra 1600 XP pack your mid range PC can be brought bang up to date with 5.1 sound and firewire capability.
  • Club3D RADEON 9800 PRO review  - Our aristocratic guest, Club3D RADEON 9800 PRO graphics accelerator, made a very favorable impression, due to beautiful box and rich accessories set. The performance of this solution also appeared very high, and the technology behind R350 chip from ATI proved that this solution will suit for gaming experience not only with the today’s games, but also with the games of tomorrow, which will be rich in shader effects and complex geometry.
  • Abit Siluro GeforceFX 5900 OTES review - HardAvenue check out Abit's latest entry into the mid-high performing videocard market, with the Abit 5900 128MB OTES videocard. There's no need to be confused here, it is slower than a 5900Ultra, but better than a 5600Ultra, and presumably better than both the 5800 and 5800Ultra, and should be better than a 5700Ultra should it be released. Yep, no reason to get confused at all.
  • Dual Channel OCZ Premier PC3700 2x256mb review - SubZeroTech has posted a review of Dual Channel OCZ Premier PC3700 2x256mb. "As things have been developing here at the Subzerotech lab I have noticed that a few memory manufacturers are selling PC3700 memory with chips that given the proper environment can perform at and above PC4000/DDR500 speeds. This, of course, is a good thing for consumers, since some of us can manage to purchase PC3700 and then in our high end motherboards run it at much higher speeds and in some cases lower CAS latencies as well."
  • Sony VAIO PVR-W500GN1 review - Sony's latest VAIO desktop is certainly not your typical home PC. The Sony VAIO PCV-W500GN1 all-in-one PC ($1,999.99 list), billed as the ultimate entertainment PC, is a powerful computer and full-blown entertainment center in a sleek, metallic silver all-in-one package. Sony improved on an already excellent design by upgrading to a 17.5-inch wide-screen display, a more powerful processor, and a DVD recordable drive.
  • ASUS A2H Notebook PC Review - This is a very good business-type notebook. It has an almost ideal arrangement of the components and nice appearance. The price is not that bad as well - $1390 for the sample tested.
  • Ximeta 80 GIG NetDisk review - You see, the Ximeta NetDisk is not only an 80 GIG 7200 RPM, USB 2.0 external hard drive, it is also an Ethernet drive.
  • Jazz Hipster J9940W Surround Sound review - Altogether, this is one of the best compact systems I've ever seen for home audio or PC audio. Now given, you can't beat a set of two-12s and some huge speakers, but for the consumer who wants to find a pre-built system or great quality speakers; this is really the way to go. I can assure you that you will in no way whatsoever be disappointed in this 5.1 Home Theater System, it's worth every hefty penny out of your pocket, and trust me you're going to need a lot of pennies to purchase this system!
  • Samsung Syncmaster 172MP 17" MF LCD monitor review - Samsung has done nothing but improve on a good product with the 172MP. For ~US$700, you don't only get a decent 17 inch LCD monitor, but also a mini-multimedia center with full component and composite audio and video capabilities. All that is needed is a 5.1 sound decoder onboard and you would be set. With a press of a button, you can lean back in your office chair and turn your workstation into essentially a livingroom to watch your favorite TV program or watch a DVD.
  • Alienware Mousepad Review - Its the mouse mat surface that really makes the difference... The smooth side of the mouse mat is ideal for surfing the net and basic computer functions, but the rough textured side of the mat is ideal for gaming and desktop publishing as it has a precise and solid feel to it.
  • Polaroid PDC1050 Digital Camera Review - The Polaroid PDC1050 is a good camera for people entering the digital camera world, parents and kids looking to learn and have fun for that matter. There were some quirks such as the LCD screen that lags, and looks interlaced. What I don't know about this camera if it's based on the CMOS or CCD design. Other than that, the Polaroid PDC1050 is a good camera.
  • i-Mate Smartphone 2002 Review - So, if a PDA means a handy organizer, electronic library and mail in one you should definitely have a look at smartphones. Fortunately, some of them (like Nokia 3650/7650) are not dearer than a tandem of a budget phone with GPRS and an inexpensive PDA. The smartphone reviewed is not cheap (about $900), but if you are an absolute fan of the WindowsCE, the i-Mate is the only possible solution for you.
  • Nokia 6800 Review - The Nokia 6800 is a workhorse of a phone, which savvy business travelers will fall in love with. If you read a lot of cell phone reviews, you will find that Bluetooth connectivity is almost a must in most phones to get top praise, but we have to ask if it is really necessary.
  • How to remove IHS from the Pentium 4 CPU - The Madshrimps let us know they have published a how-to for removing the IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) from the Pentium 4 processor.
  • Turn your AMD Duron Into AMD Athlon XP CPU - If you take a closer look on AMD Duron and AMD Athlon XP processors you will notice only tiny difference: the L2 bridge is not locked on the Duron processor. If you lock it again, everything should work and the processor will have an L2 cache of 256KB!
  • Athlon 64 Benchies - The results are really impressive, good work AMD! :)
  • AMD Athlon 64 FX - Wondering how the AMD Athlon 64 FX performs? Whether it is a match for Intel's Pentium 4? What clockspeed it runs at? Or what socket and motherboard it uses? Hardware Analysis' daily column has some more info and detailed photos of AMD's latest as they are in the process of running a multitude of tests on the Athlon 64 FX they've just received.
  • Driver Comparison - 3DChip has published a comparison article pitting various versions of NVIDIA's drivers against each other on an nForce2 system equipped with a GeForce 5900 Ultra. The versions tested are 44.03, 44.65, 44.90, 45.20 and 45.23.
  • GIMP 1.3.20 - The GIMP (GNU/Image Manipulation Program) is a very nice graphics manipulation application that works on many operating systems, in many languages, on many file formats and is used for a variety of computer imagery purposes.
  • OpenOffice 1.1 RC4 - OpenOffice.org (Win32  ~ Linux) is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite.
  • Tweak FX 1.32  - Tweak FX is a configuration tool for Windows XP. It uses plugins- like XTeq X-Setup. Up to now Tweak FX contains more than 35 plugins and you can add more from: smilianov.dir.bg. In addition to that Tweak FX is licensed under the GNU License, and source code is included into the installation.
  • Trillian Pro 2.0 RC1 - Trillian Pro 2.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available for testing by members. This version includes a lot of new features and functionality, as well as fixes issues that people have been having with 1.0.
  • Zoom Player Standard (Beta) 3.20 Beta 3  - Zoom Player Standard (download), a flexible feature rich Media Player that for all its features and goodness remains bloat-free. And Zoom Player Professional, which on top of being a great Media Player, incorporates the most powerful DVD Front-End you could imagine (and is even a few features you didn't think of imagining).
  • Network Monitor - Tembria Network Monitor (download demo) is designed to help network administrators and IT staff to automate the monitoring of network services for unexpected conditions. Whenever an unexpected condition arises such as server or service becoming unavailable, Tembria Network Monitor will detect the event and notify you using one or more of its built-in notification mechanisms.
  • Cpu-Z v1.19b - CPU-Z is a diagnostic tool that provides information on your CPU, including processor name and vendor, core stepping and process, processor package, internal and external clocks, etc.
  • ATi RenderMonkey 1.0 Build 39 -  RenderMonkey is a suite of open, extensible shader development tools for both current and future hardware that allows programmers and artists to collaborate on creating realtime shader effects. (thanks Warp2Search)
  • Realtek RTL8139(A/B/C/D/8130)/810X series Drivers v6.06 - Realtek has released a new Drivers for the RTL8139 (A/B/C/D/8130)/810X series, this time version 6.06.
  • Voodoo4/5 Amigamerlin 3.0 XP Drivers Win2k/XP - Amigamerlin v3.0 Final Driver for 3dfx Voodoo4/5 Win2k/XP has been Released. Please note that lite versione requires manual 3dfx tools add-on after archive unzipping on hard disk. Clicking on Download button at the bottom of a page you may also read Release note while on line help for both driver setup and setting is available in Amigamerlin 3.0 XP installing procedure and Amigamerlin 3.0 XP Best Settings sections of this site respectively.
  • Omega Drivers Based On Catalyst 3.7 -  A new set of Omega Drivers, based on Catalyst 3.7 has been released. They are based on the official Catalyst 3.7 ATI drivers. (9x/ME/2k/XP). The 9500->9700 and 9700->9800 hacks are now two separate files, this will fix some incompatibility problems in 9500 cards not liking the 9800 optimizations. (2k/XP). The 9x/ME drivers still don't have the hacked driver incorporated, sorry. (9x/ME)
  • Lite-On CD-RW Firmware - LiteOn have released a few new CD-RW firmware updates for Lite-On LDW-401S, Lite-On LTC-48161H, Lite-On LSC-24081MX, Lite-On LSC-24082KX.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,07 2003 - tech
Sunday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 08:02 PM CEST - Sep,07 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Prices Drop on Console Games  - The good news for computer game players is that prices have come down significantly and are likely to stay down throughout the coming holiday season, especially if the U.S. economy continues to struggle. The trend has been obvious for months. A year ago, it was almost impossible to find a game for Xbox, GameCube or PlayStation 2 with a list price under $50. Today, it's much easier to find a game for $40, or less. For example, most of the 21 GameCube titles -- 71 percent -- scheduled for September release will cost $40 or less. About half of the 29 PS-2 games and 28 Xbox games coming out this month will be under $40. GameBoy Advance titles, which have typically sold for $30, are dropping in price as well; 10 of the 26 new titles will be selling for $20.
  • The TV Tech Tussle - Coming to a Screen Near You - At least three flat-screen technologies are vying to replace the boxy television set as TV makers accelerate their biggest design change since they replaced black-and-white with color. With screens just a few inches thick and often measuring 40 inches or more diagonally, TVs using plasma or liquid crystal display (LCD) technologies are one of the most desirable products to reach electronics showrooms in years.
  • BA flights cancelled as computers crash - Hundreds of British Airways customers have had their flights cancelled or delayed after a world-wide computer failure. Screens went blank at BA check-in desks across the globe as the company's computerised passenger and baggage handling system failed. BA said a problem within the hub of their system, based near Heathrow, led to a power outage.
  • Google celebrates fifth birthday - It is now an internet giant, used by millions of people every day in more than 80 languages. The search engine site moved to its first office, actually a garage, in Menlo Park, California on 7 September 1998. This move was helped by the $1m in funding it received from investors, family and friends shortly before.
  • Deadly Inspiration? - The family of a slain motorist has filed suit against the maker (TAKE 2) of a video game that two teens claim inspired them to shoot at passing cars on a Tennessee highway. Grand Theft Auto, a video game that allows players to "fire" on people and cars in realistic, shoot-'em-up fashion, is a cash cow that propelled manufacturer Take Two Interactive to the top of the video game industry. For the middle and high school students who play the game for hours on end, it's a means of escaping the mundaneness of teenage life. But for two stepbrothers, 16-year-old William and 14-year-old Joshua Buckner, that escape turned deadly earlier this summer. They told police they were emulating Grand Theft Auto on the night of June 25 when they took shotguns to Interstate 40, near their Newport, Tenn., home, and opened fire on vehicles.
  • Cooltech Idrastation Liquid Cooling System Video Review - The Cooltech Idrastation Liquid Cooling System is an all-in-one solution but installation does require some case modification. Unlike normal liquid cooling setups which take up valuable space inside the case, this product is external. Overall this product is very well built and offers excellent performance.
  • Zalman CNPS7000 Heatsink Review  - Voided Warranty has posted a review of Zalman CNPS7000 Heatsink.
  • Thermal Paste Comparison - OCAddiction takes 3 of the more popular brands of CPU thermal paste to see what type of performance you can expect from each. " It is good to know that the Ultra II is not electrically conductive. This makes it safe to spread over video card GPUs and Northbridge chips. It would be dangerous to spread conductive paste over video cards GPUs and Northbridge chips because if even just a tad amount touches electrical bridges, shortage will occur. This has happened to me before. I was lucky my video card didn't end up cooked."
  • How To Destroy Your Computer - This article will explain to you, the user, the most common ways by which you can cause your computer to cease to function. Follow the instructions carefully and you will shortly find yourself making appropriate contributions to the all-important service sector.
  • Spyware Protection and Removal Guide - I spy with my little eye... IP xx.xx.xx.xx reading this page right now, so learn how to protect, and remove software that keeps tabs on you. - Version 1.0.0
  • The Tweaking Experience 2.0 - Formerly known as Lex's tweaking guide, from windowsxp.homedns, The Tweaking Experience is now bigger than ever, while actually being smaller than ever. The now 5 meg file contains an easy to read tweaking guide packaged in a simple installer (hence is an executable).
  • Knoppix 3.3 (Pre-release) [Linux] - Klaus Knopper has released a pre-release of Knoppix 3.3 (changelog ~ download) Kernel 2.4.22 with xfs and HIGHMEM (4GB) support; cloop 1.02 (block layer rewrite); katomic reinstalled (got lost somehow in the past release); unofficial new development boot options for testing: toram, tohd=hda1 (copy CD to ram/HD and run from there); wipe (though it's useless. ;-); pon gprs option for GPRS internet access.
  • Messenger Plus! 2.21.0054 - Messenger Plus! Extension (download) is a program that adds functionalities to the MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger chat program. Some of the added features are logging, personalized Away Messages, transparency effects, and a feature to minimize all MSN Messenger windows to the system tray.
  • DVD Region-Free 3.05 (SHW) - DVD Region-Free (what's new ~ download trial) is an unique, effective and easy-to-use DVD tweaking too that allows you to watch all region DVDs on any DVD drive(especially RPC2) even if it has been locked. You don't need flash firmware which is sometimes dangerous, useless or unavailable.
  • DVDIdle Pro 3.05 is  (SHW) -  DVDIdle (download) extends the lifetime of your DVD drive and makes DVD drive keeping cool and quiet.
  • File Scavenger Hard Drive Install v2.1 (SHW) - File Scavenger (download) is the most comprehensive award-winning file undelete and data recovery for NTFS disk volumes on WinNT/2k/XP.  Due to the simplicity of our software, you do not have to be an expert to recover files overwritten or lost by accidental deletion, a virus, corrupted hard drives, a broken RAID, accidental hard disk reformatting, etc.
  • Ranish Partition Manager 2.44 Beta  - Partition Manager is a freeware program that partitions hard disks. It will help you to install and dualboot Linux and multiple copies of Windows.  For example, it will let you to run Win ME, Win 2k, and Linux on a single box. Also, using Partition Manager you can copy, move, and resize disk partitions.
  • Opera 7.20 Beta 9 build3106 -  A new Beta-version (w/o Java) of Opera 7.20 is available (download beta9).
  • MAME v0.73 - MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and currently runs 1800+ classic (and even some not so classic) arcade games.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,06 2003 - tech
Saturday Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 12:48 PM CEST - Sep,06 2003 - Post a comment / read (6)
  • "Homeless hacker" may surrender to FBI  - Adrian Lamo, the so-called homeless hacker who claims responsibility for a series of high-profile electronic intrusions over the last two years, is negotiating with the FBI to surrender over criminal charges.  Lamo, 22, said his attorney is talking with the U.S. Attorney's office in New York City over unspecified allegations of criminal misconduct. On Thursday, FBI agents showed up at his parents' home in Sacramento, Calif., Lamo said in a telephone interview Friday evening, during which he would not disclose his location. "(The FBI agents) went to my parents' house to try to find me there," Lamo said. "Since then, I've been told they're looking for me. But I've had no direct contact with them."
  • IBM accused of poisoning workers - IBM has been accused of running an unsafe workplace which resulted in an unnaturally high incidence of disease among its workers in a series of recent filed, hotly contested lawsuits filed in the US. Almost 200 former and current employees (or their families) are parties to the suits, which allege that the computing giant did nothing to safeguard the safety of workers handling chemicals known to be hazardous to people since the mid-1980s, until ten years later - well into the 90s. In that ten-year period, IBM workers were subject to various forms of cancer or their children were born with birth defects at a higher frequency than the general population, the lawsuits allege.
  • Off-topic: Tiny atomic clock could make smarter missiles -  A matchbox sized atomic clock could be used to build more accurate automated aircraft navigation systems, its US military creators say. Scientists at the Office of Naval Research have developed a functioning atomic clock measuring 40 cubic centimetres in volume - about the size of a matchbox. The Ultra-miniature Rubidium Atomic Clock is so precise that it will lose only one second over 10,000 years. It also uses just one watt of power. Existing atomic clocks are many orders of magnitude larger - typically around 4,800 cubic centimetres - and normally consume around 50 watts.
  • Off-topic: Ecstasy Study Botched, Retracted - A researcher who a year ago published startling research showing that the drug commonly known as ecstasy can cause Parkinson's-like brain damage has retracted his study. George Ricaurte, the Johns Hopkins Medical School researcher who performed the research, said his lab did not administer ecstasy, or MDMA, but methamphetamine, to the primates in the study.  
  • PS2 and Xbox to see price cuts - in weeks - Both Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox are set to see price cuts in the coming month as the battle for Christmas sales dominance kicks off earlier than ever - with both companies also planning a range of other promotions. The PlayStation 2 price is set to be cut to L129.99 in the UK within the coming months, according to sources who spoke with our sister site Eurogamer.net today - a cut which brings the console in line with the Xbox and GameCube, and indeed with the price of the hardware on the continent.
  • LCD TVs From Dell? - Dell is expected to break into the consumer electronics market this year with the release of a line of LCD television sets, according to an analyst in Taipei. "Dell will have some alliance with Korean and Taiwanese panel vendors, and they would like to make LCD TVs," says David Hsieh, director of Taiwan market research at DisplaySearch. Dell is expected to begin selling LCD TVs before the end of this year, he adds.
  • BenQ debuts US$999 digital projector - BenQ yesterday announced the immediate availability of its digital projector - the PB2120. Priced at US$999, the projector also announced BenQ's entry into the sub-US$1,000 digital projector category.
  • Sony Ericsson 3G phone set for January launch - Sony Ericsson will launch its first 3G handset early next year, the company said today. The phone, the Z1010, was unveiled last February. The clamshell handset looks not unlike the Z600 tri-band GSM/GPRS phone the company launched earlier this week. It will launch in January 2004.  Like the Z600, the Z1010 contains a digicam for picture messaging. However, it also sports a second 480 x 640 camera for video calls inside the case, alongside the 16-bit colour screen.
  • Epson touts new FeRAM material as nearly fatigue-free - Seiko Epson Corp. has developed a new ferroelectric material for ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM). The company claimed the material tentatively named PZTN will significantly improve endurance cycles. PZT is one of the more promising materials for FeRAM but is subject to fatigue. Memory performance deteriorates about by 50 percent after 1 billion rewrites, Epson said. An FeRAM memory based on the new material exhibited minor deterioration measured in just several percent after 1 billion rewrites, according to Epson.
  • Dell Finally Ships Axim ROM Update - Dell is shipping a long-awaited ROM update to its Windows Mobile 2003 Axim handhelds on CDs, a company representative says. The ROM update fixes performance problems related to the firmware needed to make the Windows Mobile 2003 operating system work with its Axim handhelds, says Jess Blackburn, a Dell spokesperson.
  • Pentax Readies Three New Digicams - Pentax has introduced three new digital cameras, ranging from the 5-megapixel Optio 555 to a 3.2-megapixel model, the Optio 33WR, that is designed to be watertight. In between is the 4.23-megapixel Optio S4. All three models are compatible with both Windows systems and Apple Macintosh OS X and OS 8.6 through 9.x. Pricing will be announced when the products ship in October.
  • Fanless MSI GeForce FX 5600 to arrive soon  - Japanese and Korean websites, including Darkcrow, PC watch, etc., announced that localized versions of fanless MSI GeForce FX 5600 videocards will go on sale in the middle of the month (depending on the region). There are three models total: FX5600-VTD256-J, FX5600-VTD128OC-J andFX5600-VTD128-J.
  • MSI KT6 Delta (VIA KT600) Motherboard Review - As regards the speed, the MSI KT6 Delta is a bit inferior to the average motherboard based on the nForce II chipset. On the other hand, of the three KT600-based motherboards tested, this one was the fastest. Besides, the board demonstrated a superb memory operation under the most aggressive timings. At the expansion options, this board ranks among the best: 4 SerialATA channels, Gigabit Ethernet, possibility to create two RAID arrays, support for 8 USB2.0 and 3 Firewire ports.
  • ATI's All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro graphics card - The All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro is the latest step in the evolution of ATI's video-capable line, and it's a worthy successor to the All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro. It sounds cliché, but the AIW 9800 Pro really is a one-stop video card solution, excelling at everything from 3D graphics to TV viewing to video capture. The very capable hardware is aided by a fantastic software bundle that ATI is obviously committed to improving. Another very positive review can be found at ViperLair.
  • ATI to Attack Entry-Level Market with RV351 and RV381 VPUs - ATI Technologies is set to start sampling of its code-named RV351 chip shortly in order to mass-produce it in late Q4 2003 or, more probably, in Q1 2004. The chip will have 4 rendering pipelines, DirectX 9.0, AGP 8x support and other features of the RADEON 9600 (aka RV350) product line. ATI will redesign the VPU a bit in order to reduce manufacturing costs. Most likely, the main trump of the whole RV350/RV360 VPU family - their high core-speed - will not be inherited by the RV351 due to price constraints. Obviously, you should expect some 275 - 325MHz VPU, 400 - 500MHz memory and a simple PCB with 64- or 128-bit memory bus.
  • PowerColor ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB review - There are many video cards in today's market making it important choosing the correct video card. In the PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro (256MB) review, it was shown that the Radeon 9800 Pro was the finest video card in the market. With technology changing every day, ATI always tries to be one step ahead. ATI did a suburb job in the production of the ATI 9800 Pro.
  • NVIDIA vs. ATI: Desktop GPU DX9 Showdown - Gamers Depot has posted pretty interesting article called  "Desktop GPU DX9 Showdown!" which looks at the Pixel Shader 2.0 DX9 functionality within a gaming environment. "Who are we to argue with NVIDIA’s wishes? They’ve been insisting that synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark 2003 don’t reflect actual game play - yesterday we took them up on that in the mobile space, and today we look at the desktop cards. Using a Beta build of Halo (version 1.5) and the newly released Tomb Raider Patch, we’ve been able to provide an early peak at Pixel Shader 2.0 performance – even 1.1 and 1.4 performance as well."
  • Pioneer DVR-A06 DVD Writer: The War +/- Won't Happen -Two years after the launch of the first mass-market DVD writer, Pioneer has brought out its sixth generation device, the DVR-A06 boxed version and the DVR-106 OEM version. The Japanese manufacturer, a member of the DVD Forum and an enthusiastic advocate of the -R and -RW standards, is nevertheless offering a hybrid product that the company says can read and record to multiformats. The guys at THG put the company's compatibility claims to the test.
  • DVD±RW/DVD±R TEAC DV-W50D Drive Review - This drive can be recommended even for very demanding users. No grave flaws or problems were noticed. The impression is generally positive, though it burns CD-R and CD-RW too slowly, and I hope that its next versions will have it lifted it up to match the up-to-date level. Since the OEM manufacturers is Pioneer, a leader on the DVD-R market, we can see that it finally accepted the DVD+RW format.
  • Philips 180MT 18" LCD Monitor/TV review  - The Philips 180MT is a wonderfully stylish monitor and TV, and would be a great addition to any home office or dorm room. While the ghosting was too intense for gaming and high speed action, this multifunctional device fits the bill for an all purpose, casual use system.
  • Microsoft Adds Tilt To the Mouse Wheel - ExtremeTech has posted a review on the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer with Tilt Wheel Technology. They say: "In a nutshell, horizontal scrolling is a must-have for accountants. For regular web surfers with larger monitors, it's not worth the extra money."
  • Samsung YEPP YP-55i MP3 Digital Audio Player  - If you're looking for a device that is ready to roll when you are, and ya wanna take it right out of the box and head outta the door without reading the manual, this is your product. You can pack in the fact that it gives you 192MB of storage capacity, and you can use it as a removable hard drive, MP3 player, digital voice Recorder, FM radio, and gives you the ability to encode your own MP3's. Well what do you think?
  • Microsoft to Unleash Harmony End of September - Microsoft is planning to launch its next release of Windows XP Media Center Edition (codenamed "Harmony") on September 30.
  • Arrowkey product recovers CD/DVD data from unreadable discs -  A new product to recover data from unreadable CDs and DVDs is available from ArrowKey. Titled CD/DVD Diagnostic, it is used to retrieve damaged files corrupted by a defective drive, bad software or from user error. The software maker claims CD/DVD Diagnostic recovers data from unreadable, scratched, or corrupt CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW discs. CD/DVD Diagnostic bypasses Windows file system and ignores the original software that created the lost data file. Whether the bad files were created by Roxio Easy CD Creator, Ahead Nero and DLA, digital cameras that record directly onto discs, other proprietary PC or Macintosh software, or are even audio disc files, CD/DVD Diagnostic can find, retrieve and copy the files to your hard drive.
  • Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for AMD64 First Look - AMD's move to 64-bit processing is much more challenging, as they are targeting home users, gamers, and everyday business folks. In these markets, the amount of software, drivers, and subsequent headaches rises by leaps and bounds. AMD's goal is to succeed where all of its competitors have failed, and succeeding in this goal not only requires flawless execution of the 64-bit hardware, but cooperation from some of the biggest names in the industry as well. There's little doubt that the key player in this equation is Microsoft, whose release of Windows XP for AMD64 will be the litmus test to see if the world is ready to accept AMD's take on 64-bit computing, or if the platform will be headed for obscurity.
  • NTSC-J, PAL, and SECAM TV Tuner Hotfix for DirectX 9.0b - DirectX 9.0b was released on 7/23/03 to address the MIDI security issue identified in bulletin MS03-030. A small number of non-security fixes were also included in the release. One of these fixes caused several TV Tuner capture card/driver combinations using video formats other than NTSC (NTSC-J, PAL, SECAM) to no longer initialize correctly on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Symptoms include loss of capture functionality and potential inability to set/retain device capture settings. This hotfix, documented further in Knowledge Base article 825116, has been issued to correct the flaw.
  • Internet Explorer Object Data Remote Execution Vulnerability - eEye Digital Security has discovered a security vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer that would allow executable code to run automatically upon rendering malicious HTML. Dont allow your system to remain vulnerable, this is a very critical hole, and should be patched immediately. As MSBlaster shows, you can't take these kind of holes too lightly.
  • Fresh Download 6.10 - Fresh Download (download) is an easy-to-use and very fast download manager software that turbo charges downloading files from the Internet, such as your favorite software, mp3 files, video files, picture collections, etc. Unlike any other similar utilities, this software is 100% free, no charges, no banners in the software, no spyware.
  • ASUS PC Probe 2.21.05 - Asus PCProbe is a convenient utility to monitor the computer's vital components: fan rotation speeds, voltages and temperatures.
  • MSN Messenger 6.1 Beta Build 114 - It's now officially available from Microsoft's FTP.
  • MySQL Control Center 0.9.3 - MySQL Control Center (download) is a platform-independent GUI administration client for the MySQL database server.
  • BlindWrite Suite 4.5.7 (SHW) - Blindwrite Suite is a set of tools to reproduce or clone any CD, even protected ones. Blindwrite Suite is the most powerfull tool to create a perfect copy from your original CD for personal private copy. Blindwrite Suite can also create CD audio from MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, Monkey's audio and be used with a CD-Rom emulator like Daemon Tools.
  • CDRWIN 3.9e (SHW $39) - An updated version (dated September 5, 2003) of CDRWIN v3.9e is available for download.
  • Nero InCD v4.05.3 - Ahead's FTP has been updated with new InCD version 4.05.3, as usually changelog is not available.
  • ATi Linux Drivers 3.2.5 - ATi have released an update suite of drivers for Linux.
  • Catalyst 3.7 Installation Problems? - There has been some discussion that some users find it difficult to install the new ATI Catalyst 3.7 drivers and the new Control Panel...
  • Catalyst 3.7 Performance Comparison - The new Catalyst 3.7 convinced me. It's a little bit slower without AA and AF in RTCW/Quake 3 but also massively faster in MDK 2. With AA and AF it's a little bit faster in UT2003 and massively faster in MDK 2 and Serious Sam 2.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,04 2003 - tech
Thursday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:10 PM CEST - Sep,04 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Five new flaws for Microsoft  - Microsoft has released a quintet of new patches, the bulk of them for applications. Only one is rated 'critical', with two 'important', one 'moderate' and one 'low priority'. The 'critical' flaw is in Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) technology which could allow hackers to take control of Windows PCs. The two 'important' flaws also affect key applications. The first concerns a buffer overflow problem with a WordPerfect converter and affects all versions of Office 97 and above. The second patches a flaw in all versions of Word currently supported and could allow a specially crafted macro to take control of a host PC. Users of Access are also advised to patch a 'moderate' flaw in the 97, 2000 and 2002 versions of the software. The final patch is a 'low priority' fix for Windows NT4, 2000 and XP. A flaw in the network built input/output system (NetBIOS) may reveal random data when queried by specially designed malware. (thanks VUNet) [patch#1 ~ patch#2 - patch#3 - patch#4 - patch#5)
  • Romanian Student Suspected as the Blaster F Worm coder - Fifteen years behind bars for a crime that took but 15 minutes to execute. This is the maximum prison sentence facing 24-year-old Romanian Dan Dumitru Ciobanu, suspected by authorities of developing the low-grade Internet worm "Blaster.F" that security experts suspect took him maybe a quarter of an hour to write. The penalty once again has stoked the debate about appropriate sentencing for a crime that until recently was dismissed by law enforcement officers as a relatively benign prank by tuned-in teenagers trying to prove a point. But with a wave of increasingly strong Internet bugs, including last month's original Blaster worm and the Sobig.F virus, inflicting billions of dollars in damage, a zero-tolerance sentiment has begun to emerge. In Romania, a person found guilty of the new cybercrime law, which covers online fraud, hacking and virus-writing, faces a sentence of three to 15 years, more than twice the maximum sentence for rape.
  • First Look at Eudora 6.0 - If you're shopping for an e-mail client, you might want to consider an old friend: Eudora is releasing version 6.0, its first significant upgrade in almost three years. The newest version of the longstanding e-mail program provides new tools to help you stop the onslaught of spam, deal with long e-mail threads, and in general get organized. Eudora 6.0 is available in three versions: The full version costs $50 per year ($40 as an upgrade from earlier versions); a sponsored version is free but includes ads; and a light version, also free, doesn't contain ads, but offers fewer features. For example, it lacks an automatic spelling checker.
  • Surprise! Sony's AIBO Is a Dog  - The $1,599 Sony AIBO ERS-7 is $300 more than the previous version (the ERS-210A listed for $1,299), has a white, nearly hour-glass figure, a more curved, canine-like face, floppy, translucent ears, and a tail that wags almost naturally when you pet the electronic pooch. This is also the first AIBO that Sony is willing to refer to as a dog. Company officials said that there was a real effort this time to make the AIBO's movements more doglike; designers even studied the way dogs move
  • PHP growing surprisingly strongly on Windows. - Although PHP is universally thought of as implying Linux, Apache and MySQL, nearly 7% of PHP sites (when counting by ip address) run on Windows. This has doubled over the last year, and on its current growth trajectory PHP will overtake Cold Fusion as the most popular non-Microsoft scripting language used on Windows during the next year.
  • Phoenix Developing DRM-Equipped BIOS - BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies said it is currently shopping a digital-rights-enabled BIOS system to top PC OEMs, the most aggressive use of DRM technology to date. Phoenix executives said Wednesday that they've developed a prototype version of its Core Management Environment (cME) using DRM technology in conjunction with Orbid Corp., a DRM technology provider. The software was designed to assist content providers to authenticate and track software moving from PC to PC
  • EPoX 4PDA2+ v2.0  - HotHardware has posted a review of EPoX 4PDA2+ v2.0 motherboard.
  • ASUS GeForce FX 5900s - V9950 & V9950 Ultra review - The differences between the two 5900 variants are actually rather small and so can be encapsulated now, rather than in some lengthy explanation. The Ultra model has 256MB of onboard RAM and a core clock speed of 450MHz, whereas the standard version comes with 128MB of RAM and a clock speed set to 400MHz. Other than that, the two products are exactly the same. However, many vendors often choose to enhance their editions with additional features so we shall take a closer look at the Asus V9950s.
  • MSI CR52-M 52/32/52 CDRW Review - Since the CDRW occupied most of the disc, we can see the CR52-A2 inching closer to its maximum thoroughput. The drive tops out at about 51x, and averages about 39x through the disc. CPU usage was low as well, so the drive shouldn't drag your system to a halt when reading data CDs.
  • Samsung 1710/1750 Laser Printer Review - Keptech has put up a Samsung 1710/1750 Laser Printer review.
  • Gaming Rigs Round-Up - There are a few in the world that truly make a unique product worth buying and claiming its uniqueness. Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Overdrive PC, Voodoo PC, and Zeus PC are a few to mention. Each offers a different kind of machine, and not some kind of production line PC that never stands out from the rest.
  • Esselbach Storyteller CMS System ~ MG Edition 1.21 - Storyteller CMS (download) is a powerful Website Content Management System written in the PHP scripting language and designed for high traffic websites. It supports up to 99 websites in the same database and is ready for the next MySQL generation with InnoDB tables.Main Features:
  • Eudora v6.0. - Eudora is the best email program for people who get lots of email. Eudora now is licensed in three ways -- Sponsored mode, Paid mode and Light mode.
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.21.09.20 (Updated)  - The AntiVir Personal Edition offers the effective protection against computer viruses for the individual and private use on a single PC-workstation. In order to make possible an easy operation, the AntiVir Personal Edition is developed to the essential points.
  • WinDVD Platinum 5.1 B05.011 (expensive shareware) - WinDVD Platinum 5 (download) is the ultimate DVD software player, providing you with the finest quality video and audio playback
  • GAIM 0.68 - Gaim (download) is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.
  • Tweak FX 1.31 Rev 2 - Tweak FX is a configuration tool for Windows XP. It uses plugins- like XTeq X-Setup. Up to now Tweak FX contains more than 35 plugins and you can add more from: smilianov.dir.bg.
  • W32.Blaster.Worm Removal Tool 1.0.6.1  - Removal tool to clean the W32.Blaster.Worm infections. It will terminate the viral process, delete the worm files, dropped files, and delete the registry values that were added
  • DVD Plus Identifier v2.2 - DVD Plus Identifier retrieves and interprets the ADIP of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs. Since the packaging of a disc is not a reliable way of identifying it (e.g. different brands can still have the same manufacturer and some discs don't even have any labeling whatsoever) "DVD Plus Identifier" now offers a 100% reliable method to distinguish between discs.
  • Free Via Hypertransport Analyser v1.0 for AMD64 - This tool, the HyperTransport Analyzer, can be run on any AMD64 based system regardless of vendor, and displays the actual bus width and frequency, both upstream and downstream, of the HyperTransport link between the CPU and Chipset.
  • ATI Catalyst 3.7 Drivers - A new ATI Catalyst drivers (WinXP  ~ Win2k ~ Win9x/ME) are out! . The ATI Catalyst software suite is the ultimate in performance and stability. The release notes for this release can be found here ~ specific corruption, slowdown or AA fixes are included for games like UT2003, Neverwinter Nights, and TRON 2.0.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,03 2003 - tech
Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:21 PM CEST - Sep,03 2003 - Post a comment
  • Israeli Scientists Crack GSM Mobile Call Security  - An Israeli scientist said on Wednesday his team had found a way to break into mobile phone calls made on the popular GSM network, allowing eavesdroppers to listen in on calls and even take on a caller's identity. The GSM Association, representing vendors who sell the world's largest mobile system, which is used by more than 860 million consumers in 197 countries, confirmed the security hole but said it would be expensive and complicated to exploit. Professor Eli Biham of the Technion Institute in Haifa said he was shocked when doctoral student Elad Barkan told him he had found a fundamental error in the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) code.
  • Off-topic: Scanner pictures body's hidden fat  - A new kind of machine could soon be coming to your local gym - one that requires you to stand perfectly still. In 30 motionless seconds, the machine locates and measures your body fat. It could then tell you exactly where you could do with losing a few pounds and even advise you on exercises for your problem areas. If the body fat scanner turns out to be accurate enough, its makers hope it could one day help doctors spot disease.
  • SCO bills first 1,000 Linux users - SCO will start invoicing Linux users in the next two months, with the first batch of bills being sent to around 1,000 US users. Failure to pay under the highly controversial UnixWare licensing scheme, which was introduced for Linux users in July, is likely to result in legal action, the company warned.
  • Symantec Raises Subscription Rates - Symantec quietly increased subscription renewal rates for its entire line of security products last week, citing the rising cost of fighting viruses and other malicious code worldwide. The company is upping subscription renewal rates by $5 on all of its products. That means users of the company's popular $50 Norton AntiVirus software will pay $19.95 for each additional year they download virus definitions.
  • Sony Ericsson unveils Xmas phone line-up - Sony Ericsson today launched three new handsets it hopes to tempt buyers with this coming Christmas. The clamshell Z600 comes with the now almost obligatory built-in digicam. Photos can be sent by MMS, or zapped straight to a PC using the phone's Bluetooth link. The tri-band GSM/GPRS handset features a main 16-bit colour display and a smaller, secondary unit on the back of the phone. The Z600 supports 32-voice polyphonic ringtones and sounds
  • Nokia 3650 vs Sony Ericsson P800 Review - Mobile Phone technology moves on at a fast rate, most come with cameras and some with video, SLCentral compared the latest heavyweights from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Which one is worth your money, is it better to go with the cheaper 3650, Or is it wiser to spend the extra cash and grab the P800?
  • Google sucked into RIAA/P2P fight - Following a court ruling in favour of the RIAA, Sharman Networks, the developers of the popular Kazaa P2P site, sent a letter to Google requesting that it remove links to certain sites. Fifteen sites are thought to be in breach of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and are said by Sharman Networks to be running unauthorised copies of its Kazaa P2P software. The letter demanded that Google should "immediately remove or disable all access to the infringing material". Google has now removed the URLs from its search listings.
  • Blaster boy cries foul over arrest - In his first interview, Blaster.B suspect Jeffrey Lee Parson has claimed that he is not the loner as portrayed in the media.  Talking to US TV programme NBC Today Parson complained that many of the people who have been interviewed about him are not his friends. He added that he had a wide network of associates who were supporting him since his arrest. "I'm not a loner. I have a very supportive close group of friends. I'm not reckless, I don't do drugs, smoke or drink," said Parson.
  • Realtek launches eight-channel AC'97 audio codec - Taiwan-based IC designer Realtek Semiconductor today announced the launch of the ALC850, claiming it to be the world's first eight-channel AC'97 Rev 2.3 audio codec. Fully complying with the new AC'97 Rev 2.3 specification, the ALC850 provides a jack-sensing function (surround, center/LFE, front-mic, surround back), a PCBEEP generator, and interrupt capability, the company said.
  • Clié PEG-UX50 is handsome, innovative, powerful, and expensive - None of Sony's PDAs look boring, but the company has outdone itself with the new Clie PEG-UX50-a cleverly designed keyboard-based unit that has more traits in common with a laptop than a conventional handheld. Unfortunately, one of those traits is a high price tag-$699. The 6-ounce, Palm-based PDA may look like a miniature notebook, but at 4 by 3.5 by 0.75 inches, it's a lot easier to carry. The wide 2.75 by 1.75-inch display offers 480-by-320 resolution, and my shipping unit's screen-which also can be flipped around and over to resemble a diminutive tablet PC-was clear and sharp with excellent colors.
  • Toshiba Portégé R100 review - The dazzling Toshiba Portégé R100 notebook ($2.299 direct) is an impressive 2.4-pound ultra-ultraportable (most ultraportables weigh 3 to 4 pounds) with a full-size keyboard, 40GB hard drive, and 12.1-inch XGA display. The only flaw in this otherwise impeccable system is low battery life-an unavoidable trade-off given the system's diminutive size.
  • Affordable 19" LCD Monitors  - Many 19" LCD monitors that will debut this fall will cost less than 1000 euros (US $1100). THG survey these new monitors and gauge their performance in games, movies, colors, and calibration.
  • Integrated Graphics Performance: It's all in the chips - If you're planning on using your computer as a gaming station as well as a workstation, your best bet is to stay away from integrated graphics. The performance of Intel's i865G Extreme Graphics was nowhere near convincing in a gaming environment, making us wonder what exactly the self-serving "extreme" adjective described. Extremely slow, maybe?
  • AMD's Athlon FX beats Intel's Pentium 4 3.2 GHz - The Athlon FX on Windows XP 32 bit beats Intel's latest release 3.2 GHz but that's still the Northwood core, of course. In the Sandra memory test, Athlon FX delivers 5600 MB/s while an Intel Pentium 4 3.2 on Canterwood 875 with DDR 400 of course only delivers 5000MB/s. In Quake 3 , which was always considered Intel's playground and patch, the Athlon FX is slightly under nine per cent faster on AMD's processor rather than Intel's "brain of a PC". In Unreal 1024x768, it's close to 18 per cent advantage in AMD's favour. 3Dmark03 at 1024x768 shows that the FX is two per cent slower than on Intel. Pcmark03 is faster on Intel by five per cent since this is an Intel heavily optimized application while the memory score is 18 per cent faster on Athlon FX due to its integrated memory controller.
  • Asus nForce3 SK8N with AMD Opteron 240 Review - HardwareZoom has posted a review on the Asus nForce3 SK8N with AMD Opteron 240.
  • OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Dual Channel Memory Modules Review - If you are going to be running your system at stock speeds, there is no need to purchase this ram. But, if you are out to squeeze every ounce of performance from your rig, this is the real deal...
  • HighPoint e.SATA Review - Dan's Data has posted a review on HighPoint's e.SATA system.
  • Western Digital Caviar SE Serial ATA Hard Drive  - WD Caviar SE Serial ATA (SATA) 250GB is not just all about capacity, it is also lightning fast drive. If you are need of a fast and big drive, WD Caviar SE Serial ATA (SATA) 250GB is very good choice. Especially RAID performance was very good and although price is quite high you get what you are paying for: fast, a lot of storage space and reliable drive with 3 year limited warranty. 36db operating noise is quite high but it is just a little annoyance.
  • Samsung Yepp YP-55V MP3 Player Review - The Samsung Yepp YP55V offers larger-than-average storage capacity compared to other MP3 players, yet is still much more affordable than going the MP3 jukebox route. With features like an integrated FM tuner and USB hard drive capabilities, the YP55V stays true to the Yepp roots.
  • WinAll: Flaw in NetBIOS Could Lead to Information Disclosure  - A security issue has been identified in Microsoft Windows that could allow an attacker to see information in your computer's memory over a network. This vulnerability involves one of the NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NetBT) services, the NetBIOS Name Server (NBNS). With this service, you can find a computer's IP address by using its NetBIOS name, and vice versa.
  • Windows Embedded Evaluation Kit - Windows XP Embedded delivers the power of the Windows operating system in componentized form. The evaluation software allows you to build runtimes that are valid for 120 days after installation. Before you download or install the evaluation software, confirm that your computer meets the minimum system requirements.
  • DCOMbobulator 1.00  - The DCOMbobulator (download ~ more freeware goodies) allows any Windows user to easily verify the effectiveness of Microsoft's recent critical DCOM patch. Confirmed reports have demonstrated that the patch is not always effective in eliminating DCOM's remote exploit vulnerability. But more importantly, since DCOM is a virtually unused and unneeded facility, the DCOMbobulator allows any Windows user to easily disable DCOM for significantly greater security.
  • Virtual Woman Millennium Beta Test v0.935  - Your girlfriend just got some competition. In this Windows Virtual Reality Game build and compete against Virtual Women with full artificial intelligence, choose ethnic type, personality, location, clothing etc. Throw away solitaire forever! Features 3-D graphics, Sound and Digital DNA support. Must try to believe. As this is a beta test, some features are restricted or currently unavailable. They will be added shortly. Special Features: Artificial Intelligence Engine, Synthesized voice for opponents, support for Digital DNA files, Intelligence updates via the web, powerful customization options. Testing the parameters for a unique virtual human file format (Digital DNA) that will allow these files to be customized and traded over the web via file trading services. (thanks Beta.Intercom)
  • DivX 5.1 - DivX (changelog ~ free_version) is a package that includes all the DivX codec, player, utilities, and documentation that you need to play DivX files. DivX codec is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This codec can reduce an MPEG-2 video (DVD format) to ten percent of its original size. DivX is a digital video compression technology based on the ISO MPEG-4 standard.
  • Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2.6 - Simple DirectMedia Layer supports Linux, Windows, BeOS, MacOS Classic, MacOS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. There is also code, but no official support, for Windows CE, AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, NetBSD, AIX, OSF/Tru64, and SymbianOS.
  • DVD2SVCD 1.2.1 Build 2 - DVD2SVCD is a completely automated frontend for converting DVD, PVA and AVI files to SVCD. By completely automated, I mean, you just select the file or dvd you want converted and hit GO, everything else is taken care of by the frontend.
  • Micatoge XPlayer 2.2.6 Beta 2 - XPlayer is a powerful but easy to use media player. It uses much less memory and CPU Resources than other player.
  • Mozilla Thunderbird 0.2 Final - Mozilla Thunderbird (Win32 ~ Linux) is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. The goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language.
  • IrfanView 3.85 - IrfanView (download ~ plugins) is a fast, simple freeware image viewer and editor that supports all major graphic formats, including BMP, DIB, JPEG, GIF, animated GIF, PNG, PCX, multipage TIFF, TGA, and more. In addition, it features drag-and-drop support, directory viewing, TWAIN support, slide shows, batch conversion, and modifications such as color depth, crop, blur, and sharpen.
  • HDD Health 2.1 Build 159  - HDD Health (download) is a full-featured failure-prediction agent for machines using Windows 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000 and XP. Sitting in the system tray, it monitors hard disks and alerts you to impending failure. The program uses Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) built into all new hard disks, and can predict failures on your hard drives. A host of alerting features include email, local pop-up messages, net messages, and event logging, while using no system resources.
  • Dell Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Driver - This package updates the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell _only_) driver and enhances the overall product performance on Win2k/XP.
  • Realtek ALC650 Drivers v3.49  - The ALC650 is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. Download driver from here.
  • VIA ATA RAID Driver 2.02 - VIA has released new ATA RAID Drivers v2.02 for VIA VT6410 IDE RAID controller and VIA VT8237 & VT6420 Serial ATA RAID Controller
Evening Tech Mania - tech
(hx) 12:35 AM CEST - Sep,03 2003 - Post a comment
  • Asteroid danger in 2014 downplayed - They say that there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet. The chances of a catastrophe are likely to become even slimmer once more measurements of the asteroid's orbit have been made. The current odds are based on 51 observations made since the giant rock was spotted by a US programme in New Mexico on 24 August.
  • PS3 will play PS2, PSone games - Sony Computer Entertainment boss Ken Kutaragi has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 will feature backwards compatibility with the PS2 and PSone, ensuring continued support for older software formats in the new hardware.
  • Games suffer from 'geek stereotype' - The blunt message was delivered by Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, to a meeting of game developers in London. She told her audience that games had the potential to change people's lives, offering them the chance to experience a wide range of emotions in a safe environment. Despite growing sales of video games, there was still a problem of perception, said Ms Fryer, with games still seen as something for "geeks and guys". 
  • Hitachi adds antenna to RFID 'mu-chip' - An RF identification "mu-chip," which Hitachi Ltd. claims is small enough to embed in currency suffers from one drawback: It requires an external antenna so that its 128-bit identification number can be read. Hitachi said Tuesday (Sept. 2) it has developed a version of its RFID mu-chip that uses bumping technology to embed an antenna on the die. The chip captures some of the energy of the incoming wireless signal and uses to transmit its ID number to a reader. The mu-chip can be embedded in bank notes, gift certificates and documents, Hitachi said.
  • Will CDs and DVDs Disappear? -  A new report entitled "From Discs to Downloads" states that 20 percent of Americans participate in some form of music downloading activity, and half of those admit to buying fewer CDs. The report says that in five years' time, a third of all music sales will come from downloads, and video file sharing will increase as well. Forrester expects that almost 15 percent of the movie rental business will come from on-demand movie services; as it stands now, 20 percent of "young file sharers" has already downloaded a feature film from online services.
  • Sony DVR Packs Plenty of Storage - A new Sony hard-drive based video recorder will go on sale in November, capable of recording for two weeks nonstop, the company said Tuesday. The Cocoon CSV-EX11 uses a pair of 250GB hard drives to record up to 342 hours (over two weeks) of video in the lowest of three quality modes. Standard mode cuts this to 171 hours, while high quality mode reduces this further to a still-respectable 114 hours--or just under five days.
  • ATI's R360 to be called the Radeon 9800XT - The Radeon 9800XT will end up at 425MHz+ for the chip and 700MHz for memory and there are likely to be DDR I and DDR II cards, it appears. 425MHz and more for a 0.15u (micron) chip seems like a real engineering challenge. Increasing the speed from 325MHz for R300 to 425MHz for R360 is also quite a challenge.
  • Major suppliers to show off their high-end graphics processors at Computex - Nvidia plans to introduce two graphics processors - the NV38 for the high-end market and NV36 for the mid-range and high-end markets - at Computex 2003, according to sources. It is unclear whether ATI Technologies will display its new R360 chips during the show, but many industry observers say the company should not miss the opportunity in the competition between the world's two largest graphics solution providers. XGI expects to introduce the updated version of its current Xabre GPUs, but may not adopt the Xabre name for the new product, while VIA plans to display its high-end Delta Chrome GPUs, which support the latest DirectX9 standard, sources said.
  • Olympus Readies Camera for Shutterbugs - Looking for a digital camera that both photo enthusiasts and novices can share? The new Olympus C-5000 Zoom, scheduled to ship in October, offers something for everyone. Olympus has set a $600 list price for the 5-megapixel camera, and expects it to sell for about $500. Accessories, however, could drive up the cost of ownership.
  • AOpen Aeolus GeForce FX 5600S 256MB Video Card Review - Well, this is an average card based on the FX 5600. I already mentioned before that such cards do not need extra 128 MB at all.
  • Panasonic CW-8122-B Slimline Combo Drive - For those serious about cramming as much performance into their small form factor system, the Panasonic CW-8122-B Slimline Combo Drive is a near must have.
  • ASUS CRW-5224A-U Review - ASUS CRW-5224A-U external drive is definitely a good buy if you want to have an external drive. It fully complies with its claimed specifications. It is speedy at reading any types of media and extracting audio tracks, and quite good at reading damaged disks. The LEDs and buttons on the front panel make it easy to use it. It also comes with all necessary accessories - you don't need to purchase a cable or find a driver, just plug it in and enjoy.
  • Philips 180MT 18" LCD Monitor/TV  - The Philips 180MT is a wonderfully stylish monitor and TV, and would be a great addition to any home office or dorm room. While the ghosting was too intense for gaming and high speed action, this multifunctional device fits the bill for an all purpose, casual use system.
  • Mushkin PC3200 Level II Dual Pack DDR RAM - Mushkin has been around since 1994 and generally provides good memory for enthusiasts and average end-users. All of their memory is backed by a lifetime warranty and is tested in motherboards for compatibility. Another good quality about Mushkin is that they fine tune their memory for operation at tight timings by using their own custom PCB and memory chips. Let us move on and find out how well the PC3200 dual kit fairs.
  • Microsoft MN-500 switchWAP and MN-510 USB WiFi adapter review - If you want to setup a small network at home or at the office, you should seriously consider the Microsoft WAP/switch and whatever else fits your needs, (Microsoft has USB WiFi adapters for desktops, PCMCIA WiFi cards for notebooks, and PCI Ethernet adapters).
  • Swiftech MCW5000 CPU Water-Block - Installation was a breeze. For the AMD setup, simply put the water-block on the socket, and attach the clips. You then turn the screws until it's finger tight, and you're done. Putting together the Pentium 4 setup is even easier. No tools are required, and the water-block install just needs a couple of clips to snap into place and you're done.
  • Corsair HydroCool 200 review - Let's see how the Corsair HydroCool 200 stacked up to the competition! For reference, the ambient temperature ranged between 22.4C - 23.8C throughout approximately 36 hours of testing.
  • Ergo Diver Keyboard  -  This is not just any keyboard, this is a keyboard designed by gamers, for gamers. They boast that this keyboard is supposed to make playing games easier because it is designed around the W, A, S, D playing position.
  • GFX Demo Page - This page offers a cool collection of demos. Check it out! (thanks Warp2Search)
  • HB++ for PalmOS available - Peter Holmes Consulting has launched a new programming language for PalmOS called Handheld Basic or Hb++. It's a Visual basic like programming language/IDE with database and hotsync capabalities that produce true 68000 prc. You can also check some benchmarks.
  • DivX Operational Player 1.2 - This is a player of the new generation which allows you quickly and conveniently use advantages of digital technologies. This player supports formats: AVI, MPEG, MP3, WAV, WMV, AU, ASX, ASF.
  • Bandwidth Monitor Pro 1.26 - Bandwidth Monitor Pro (download) is a utility that displays and logs your network adapters bandwidth usage. It supports logging of all your network adapters at once and has a detailed transfer history.
  • Revolution 7.1 Drivers  - M-Audio has posted a new Windows XP Driver (direct link) for the Revolution 7.1, bringing it up to version 5.10.00.0041.
 Gameguru Mania News - Sep,01 2003 - tech
Monday Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 10:47 PM CEST - Sep,01 2003 - Post a comment
  • Mobile Games Selection Grows - The Nokia 6600 phone supports Bluetooth, which Kirsi (Nokia's senior manager for games applications) believes will pull more people into multiplayer gaming. While players can currently play one another over their normal mobile connection, Bluetooth brings other factors to mobile gaming.  The technology is cheaper and more likely to get a group of people in the same room playing together, he said. He expects players will help and work more closely with someone in the same room than someone out of sight. That will then get people used to the concept and more willing to use their regular mobile connections for gaming, he said.  Nokia will also launch in October its N-Gage gaming phone, announced in February, and has set up a publishing unit to develop games for it. The N-Gage looks more like a games device than a phone, and will be marketed as such, Kirsi said.
  • Summer's Greatest Gadgets - Summer comes to a close with the Labor Day holiday in the United States, but some of the season's coolest wares will become available in the months ahead. Japanese technology companies introduced a variety of hot gadgets over the summer months and expect to ship many of them this fall. Digital cameras with ever more options for their price are among the new entries. Also watch for ever smaller digital music players, enhanced by continuing shrinkage in storage technology.
  • Panasonic intros credit card camcorder - Panasonic announced three products based on SD Card technology, at the Consumer Electronics Show IFA in Berlin last week.  All three devices are small enough to fit in a trouser pocket: the world's first MPEG2 SD camcorder, the world's thinnest digital camera, and an all-rounder product with functions for taking films, taking photos, recording memos and listening to music. The D-snap camcorder SV-AV100 weighs a mere 156g and is a small as a credit card. It attains the standards of the current large camcorders with 10x optical zoom and records in MPEG 2 format (which is also used in DVD videos), and in MPEG 4 format. A 512MB SD memory card can store up to 20 minutes of DVD-quality video, or 3.5 hours of standard MPEG 4 video. Photo snapshots are made by the camera in VGA quality (640 x 480 pixels).
  • Origami helps cellphone cameras to focus  - Picture-messaging phones may be about to get a whole lot more intrusive. Thanks to a novel and ultra-cheap micromotor technology, cellphone cameras should soon be able to zoom and focus with the same precision as the autofocusing lenses used in expensive stills cameras. 1 Limited of Cambridge, UK, has found a novel way to make a thin sheet of a piezoelectric ceramic material work like a motor. It can move whatever is placed on top of it, or it can be rolled into a cylinder to grasp and move a miniature camera lens.
  • Biostar iDEQ 200s SFF Review - The iDEQ 200S is really clean looking. It's constructed of brushed aluminum. The front bezel is made of clear plastic with a silver finish beneath it. The 200S certainly has a style of its own, having more of a sleek, professional looking exterior rather than flashy and "eye boggling" like some other (windowed) SFF PCs out there..
  • Seasonic Super Tornado 300watt PSU Review - One of the major features of the Super Tornado is Seasonic s S2FC, or Smart and Silent Fan Control. S2FC is a temperature controlled fan control that does not increase the speed of the fan linearly with the temperature of the power supply, but rather uses a combination of delayed increase in RPM and exponential increase in RPM to produce the desired result. As you can see in this Seasonic diagram, the fan speed increases at a faster rate as the power load on the PSU increases, resulting in a higher heat output and more required cooling. The fan speed is therefore not directly linked to the load upon the power supply, but is still indirectly linked.
  • Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB with DDR-II  - The layout of the card is to the letter of the ATI specs so you know it's going to work and work properly at that. After all, if ATI can't get it right themselves, who else would? The overclocking of the card for a full pressed card was fantastic. Its software bundle, while small, is enough to keep you occupied enough till you get yourself some high-end games and take full advantage of the hardcore VPU you have brought yourself. In all, the Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro 256 has taken it all when it comes to performance, style, overclocking and a good price tag.
  • nForce2 Ultra 400 Mainboard Roundup - Digit-life has published Nvidia nForce2 Ultra 400 Mainboard Roundup.
  • AOpen AK77-400 MAX KT400a review - The AK77-400 MAX is a feature rich board that includes many of the computing luxuries in use today. This motherboard comes with integrated LAN, Serial ATA, Firewire, ATA/133, and AGP 8X.
  • EPoX 8KRA2+ Review - The 8KRA2+ comes with many of the expected features and offers both SATA and PATA RAID. It has 400MHz FSB and DDR-400 (single channel) support, AGP 8X, USB 2.0, IEEE 1394, 100Mb LAN, two SATA connectors (VIA controller supporting RAIDs 0, 1, and JBOD), and four ATA-133 connectors (two off the Highpoint controller that support RAIDs 0, 1, 0+1, and JBOD and two off the VIA Southbridge).
  • Microscope Pen Review - "Technically, this item is a gadget to me, since it has absolutely nothing to do with PC's. I will be using this Microscope Pen to assist me in some examinations in the future, and I can very easily see where this product can, and should be used. Continue on as I look at this 100x magnification portable microscope"
  • ALi/ULi M1687 K8 chipset Overview (1) -The Athlon 64 (Socket 754) will be officially announced on 23rd September 2003. ALi which has been quiet for the past 1 year is back in the market. ALi/ULi offers a long ready solution for the K8 and it is the M1687 + M1563. M1687 is ALi's new generation North bridge that offers a high-performance and cost-effective solution for PC systems. It supports the AMDR K8 Processors. With AGP 1x/2x/4x/8x support, M1687 provides system designers with enough headroom to interface with different graphics solutions to fulfill various market requirements. The M1687 introduces HyperTransportt bus, a next generation link bus that can reach up to 6.4GB/sec to K8 CPU side and up to 1.6GB/sec to our south bridge side in bandwidth.
  • Athlon 3100 SiSoft Memory Benchmark  - Athlon 3100 SiSoft Memory Benchmark using AXP 3100 running 1 x 512M Corsair CAS 2, 5-2-2 on *** chipset single channel DDR400.
  • NV35 supports pixel shader 3.0 - According to TheInquirer, the NV35, Geforce FX 5900 Ultra already has support for pixel shader 3.0 but there is no any driver publicly available that will support it. u The same source implied that when Nvidia tested pixel shader 3.0 internally, there was a hardware problem.
  • How to Reinstall Windows w/o Losing Your Data - Over time, Windows loses stability. If you keep a computer for more than two years, at some point you're going to have to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows from scratch. But contrary to popular belief, you won't have to reformat your hard drive (with one exception, discussed below). The bad stuff you need to get rid of is all in your Windows folder. PCworld have posted a new guide called "How to reinstall Windows without Loosing your data".
  • The interactive XP, T-Bred and Barton painting guides updated - The interactive AMD Athlon XP, T-Bred and Barton painting guides of the OverClocked inside workshop area are now updated with a new feature to lower the Vcore down to 1.10 Volt (in 0.025 Volt steps).
  • GIMP 1.3.19 - The GIMP (GNU/Image Manipulation Program) is a very nice graphics manipulation application that works on many operating systems, in many languages, on many file formats and is used for a variety of computer imagery purposes.
  • BlindWrite Suite 4.5.6 - BlindWrite Suite is the best set of tools to reproduce or clone any CD, even protected ones. It's the most powerfull tool to create a perfect copy from your original CD for personal backup use. BlindWrite Suite can also create CD-audio from MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA, Monkey's Audio and be used with an CD-ROM emulator like Daemon Tools.
  • Magic Utilities 2003 v2.20 - Magic Utilities (download) is a cute program designed to make your computer clean and more stable. These utilities include Uninstller Plus,StartUp Organizer,Process Killer.Magic Utilities enables you to easily and safely uninstall programs;inspect and manage the programs that automatically start when your turn on or logon to your computer;lists and controls all currently running processes(system and hidden processes are also shown).With a cool and user-friendly interface makes it easy for anyone to use Magic Utilities.
  • Nero 6.0.0.15 and InCD v4.0.5.03, MediaPlayer 1.4.0.6 - A new Nero v6.0.0.15, InCD 4.0.5.03 and MediaPlayer 1.4.0.6 have been released, no changelog yet :]
  • A-Tuner 1.5.44.4523 - A-Tuner is a small tool for changing Anti-Aliasing (including all unofficial modes),Anisotropic Filtering,Vsync MipMap LOD (Level Of Detail) and Bias settings on your Nvidia card and should work with Nvidia Detonators 23.11 - 45.23 and Win98/ME/2000/XP.
  • OpenGL Extension Viewer 2.04 - This program displays the vendor name, the version implemented, the renderer name and the extensions of the current OpenGL 3D accelerator.
  • Logitech WingMan Software 4.30 Beta  - Logitech WingMan Software is software for Logitech's Game Controller series. This is the latest automated self-installer of Logitech WingMan Software.
  • Firmware Fix For Deskstar 75GXP and 60GXP  - Anyone who has one of those drives should download the firmware update immediately to reduce the risk of hard drive failure and data loss. (thanks StorageReview)
Call of Duty Demo Gameplay Performance - tech
(hx) 09:37 PM CEST - Sep,01 2003 - Post a comment
NVNews has posted quite interesting article on the gameplay performance of the Call of Duty demo. Here is an excerpt:
Although Call of Duty uses a heavily redesigned Quake 3 engine, the performance on a GeForce FX 5900 was staggering. I'm no programmer, but I was happily surprised to finally experience a well coded game. I wish I could say that about Battlefield 1942 *sigh*. Even the FX 5600 Ultra didn't have much problems coping with a heavy load of polygons. The gameplay is very similar to that in MOH:AA, but it is much more exciting and intensive. The guys over at Infinity Ward concentrated more on a team based work rather than a single soldier fighting mode:
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