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 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:
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,30 2003 - tech
Saturady Tech Madness - tech
(hx) 01:56 PM CEST - Aug,30 2003 - Post a comment
  • Microsoft gains FCC approval for its Xbox wireless adapter - Microsoft has come one step closer to offering its wireless Xbox adapter for the Christmas buying season by gaining Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for the device on August 28. The chipset in the MN-740 wireless adapter appears to be supplied by Atheros Communications, possibly its 2.4GHz AR5002AP-G chip, which supports 802.11b/g. The device also features user-configurable 128-bit WEP (wired equivalent privacy) security. It will compete with other products on the market such as Linksys’s WGA54G Wireless-G game adapter. According to its quick start guide, users will be able to play multi-player games with either Microsoft’s own Xbox Live online game subscription service if the device is connected to a broadband Internet connection or users can use the device to create a wireless connection for System Link (console-to-console) play (requires two Xbox video game systems and Xbox System Link play certified games).
  • FBI arrests Blaster worm author -  A suburban Minneapolis teenager is under arrest for unleashing the so-called Blaster worm (MSBlast.B) that infected thousands of computers. Jeffrey Lee Parson, 18, of Hopkins, Minn., was arrested by federal agents and seven computers were seized from his home Friday before a scheduled court appearance, according to broadcast reports. The youth is accused of writing one version of the Blaster infection that disabled more than 500,000 computers worldwide, an official with the FBI told the Wall Street Journal. Another (more detailed) story can be found here.
  • Music industry claims MP3s are traceable - Recording industry lawyers have claimed that detailed analysis of the data in MP3 music files can prove the files were downloaded illegally from an online file-sharing network. The revelation came with the release of court documents relating to a case against a New York woman. She is accused of sharing 1000 songs through a peer-to-peer file network, using the online pseudonym "nycfashiongirl". She claims to have made the MP3 files found on her computer from CDs that she owned.  But lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the world's largest record companies, write in a court document: "The source for nycfashiongirl's sound recordings was not her own personal CDs." The RIAA says the username of another computer user was found in the header of one of the MP3s. Headers are routinely used to store a song's title and length, but some MP3 compression software may also add information such as the username of the person who created the file.
  • US sponsors Anonymiser - if you live in Iran - A pact between the U.S. government and the electronic privacy company Anonymizer, Inc. is making the Internet a safer place for controversial websites and subversive opinions -- if you're Iranian. This month Anonymizer began providing Iranians with free access to a Web proxy service designed to circumvent their government's online censorship efforts. In May, government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets. An estimated two million Iranians have Internet access.
  • Microsoft Mulls IE Changes - Microsoft is preparing changes to its Internet Explorer browser because of a patent verdict against it, the company said Friday. The changes could affect a large number of existing Web pages, experts said. "In response to the ruling, we are evaluating our options and may take precautionary steps in terms of any changes we may need to make to IE," Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said. He declined to detail what sort of changes Microsoft has in mind.
  • A Watch Powered by Snake Oil  - Like a deflector shield protecting the Starship Enterprise from its enemies, a new watch promises to shield the body from "electronic pollution" from cell phones and other gadgets. The Philip Stein Teslar watch contains a chip that works with the battery and coil to create a frequency that neutralizes the electromagnetic fields emanating from devices like cell phones, computers and radios, according to the company. The watches are currently available at Bloomingdale's New York and Royal Jewelers in Massachusetts. Prices range from $600 for the basic to $2,000 for a diamond-encrusted model.
  • Off-topic: Make Your Own Lava Lamp  - This great lava lamp formula was submitted to Oozing Goo by the concoction master retro272. Thanks to his experimentation, many many many (maybe 12, maybe 1200) lava lamp scientists have successfully circumvented the annoying gag gift store at the local mall. This formula gets the Oozing Goo seal of approval.
  • AMD 64 Technology & Compilers - Applications can be ported to the AMD64 in different ways. The simplest one is to try to recompile it with a 64bit compiler (if such application comes with source codes). However, it's difficult to reach high efficiency this way because it may need fine tweaking to the new architecture in spite of the standards of the higher-level programming languages. In particular, porting can include the check for links stored in 32-bit variables, bit masks and binary offsets.
  • Macrovision SafeDisc v3.1 Incorporates New Anti-hack & Copy-control Technologies -  Macrovision announced the launch of SafeDisc version 3.1, designed to upgrade its CD/DVD-ROM copy-protection against hacking and unauthorized copying of protected titles. SafeDisc v3.1 builds upon the security wrapper that PC games publishers have used to protect over 200 million CDs worldwide, and provides effective and time-efficient security tools for PC games developers themselves.
  • Pioneer announces DVR-5100H-S - new DVD recorder with 80GB hard disk drive - Pioneer Europe NV announced its new DVD-R/RW recorder, the Pioneer DVR-5100H-S, capable of storing a massive 102 hours of broadcast programmes, films and digital camera footage. The built-in 80GB HDD provides consumers with unrivalled ease of use and new functionality, such as the One Touch Copy function that allows programmes stored on the HDD to be copied at high speed to a disc with just one press of a button. Users can also watch the beginning of a recorded programme whilst still recording the end - perfect for those who arrive home half way through their favourite show.
  • NV36 and NV38 to be Showcased at Computex 2003? - Sources among graphics cards manufacturers claim that a number of companies plan to showcase their NV36- and NV38-based graphics cards at Computex Taipei 2003 in late September. The NV36 is believed to be a successor of the NV31 also known as the GeForce FX 5600, whereas the NV38 is a follower of the NV35 aka the GeForce FX 5900 GPU.
  • HW Review round up (CPU/RAM) - AMD XP 2600+ 333FSB CPU | Kingston HyperX 512MB DDR PC3500 | OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Dual Channel Gold Memory(video) | Tiger CPU-Tunnel
  • HW Review round up (Cooling) - Asetek WaterChill Watercooler Kit | Quiet PC Radial Fin Cooler | Zalman ZM80C-HP VGA Cooler | Zalman CNPS700A-AlCu Cooler
  • HW Review round up (MB) - VIA KT400A Motherboard roundup | Asus A7N8X-X nForce2 | ATi P4 chipset on ASUS P4R800-V | Abit IC7 i875P | AOpen AK77-600 Max | DFI LAN Party NFII Ultra Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-8S648FX | Soltek KT600-R | Shuttle XPC SB61G2 Barebone | Soyo KT600 Dragon Ultra VIA KT600
  • HW Review round up (Storage) - LG GCC-5241P external combo | Plextor PlexWriter PX-504UF
  • HW Review round up (Video) - Choosing The Video Card Thats Right For You | ASUS V9950 GeForceFX 5900 128MB | MSI GeForceFX 5600 128MB || ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro | ATi Radeon 9100 IGP RS300 Chipset | GeForceFX 5600 Ultra vs Radeon 9600 Pro
  • HW Review round up (Case/PSU) - Extremecase Picasso Black Steel Mid-Tower Case | Lian Li PC-37A Mini-ATX Aluminum Case | Logisys Acrylic LED Case Feet | Waterfield iPod Case || Silverstone SST-ST35F-G02 350W Power Supply
  • HW Review round up (Misc) - Justcom Pro JC104P 4-Port KVM Switch | Kensington's WiFi Finder | Neuros MP3 Digital Audio Computer | iAudio CW300 MP3 Player | Minolta DiMage Xt Biz (camera) | NEC E606 3G mobile phone | Samsung SGH-C100 Dual-band Cell Phone
  • ATI Radeon Tweak Guide v1.5 - This guide will take you through configuring your system for best compatibility/performance along with your ATI Radeon graphics card, covering options available with the latest Catalyst Drivers. For reference sake, this guide was prepared using an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro AGP videocard using an Abit NV7-133R nForce (AGP 4X) and later an Abit NF7-S nForce 2 (AGP 8X) motherboards running Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Catalyst 3.5/3.6 Drivers.
  • Wing IDE 1.1.10 - Wing IDE (download) is a powerful development environment for the Python programming language.
  • RAM Defrag 2.55 -  A new version of RAM Defrag (download) is available.
  • Fresh UI 6.35 - 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.
  • PowerArchiver 2003 8.6 - PowerArchiver (download), the popular file archiving tool, has been recently updated to version 8.6. The update contains some bugfixes.
  • Norton Personal Firewall 2003 6.0 - Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall 2003 (download trial version) keeps hackers out and personal data in. Its robust defenses include intrusion detection, application control, and privacy protection in one easy program. It hides your PC from hackers, blocks suspicious incoming connections, stops malicious programs from spying on your system, and prevents confidential information from being sent out without your knowledge.
  • ZoneAlarm Pro 4.0.146.029 - Zone Labs (download) has released an update for ZoneAlarm Pro 4.0. The version 4.0.146.029 addresses a compatibility issue for users running eTrust EZ Antivirus, adds additional functionality to defeat so-called "shell exploit" and Device Driver Attack.  
  • AntiVir Personal Edition 6.21.09.20  - The AntiVir Personal Edition (download) offers the effective protection against computer viruses (detects and removes over 70,000 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.
  • NeroMediaPlayer 1.4.0.6 - The Nero Media Player is specialized in playing back audio data, offers a large range of functions and effects for the perfect reproduction of audio CDs, MP3, MP4, WMA, AIFF, WAV files etc.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.6.2 - Media Player Classic (download WinXP/2k ~ Win9x/Me version) 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.
  • Quintessential Player 4.0 Beta Build 60 - Quintessential Player is a non-conventional looking audio player for Windows. Nothing comes close to the level of attention and detail put into this player. It's easier to use and much more powerful than ever. QCD Player continues to bring the latest in CDDB support as well as all the latest digital music features.
  • AC3Filter 0.70b  - AC3Filter 0.70b should offer better quality, especially on low bitrate content and has an improved DPLII downmix matrix.
  • mIRC v6.1 - The most known IRC client has been updated to version 6.1 (download). With this new release they hope to address most, if not all, of the comments, requests and remarks (over 166 changes!) they received after the release of version 6.03, a year ago. Lots and lots of new features and functions have been implemented. They are now using Visual C++ .NET 7.0 to compile mIRC.
  • Driver Collector 1.0  - Driver Collector finds and collects the installed driver files for the hardware you select on your PC. After it collects the files, the program copies to your hard drive, in a specific folder.
  • WinDVD Tweaker 4.39 - WinDVD Tweaker is designed to allow users of the WinDVD playback software to enable some hidden settings and allow for maximum playback pleasure.
  • ASUS Detonator 45.23 - Asus has released a new set of branded Nvidia Detonator drivers version 45.23 for Win9x/ME ~ 2000/XP. This driver is specifically for Asus graphics cards only: V3xxx / 6xxx / 7xxx / 8xxx / 9xxx series. (thanks Warp2Search).
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,29 2003 - tech
Nightly Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 03:12 AM CEST - Aug,29 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • From Doom to Zoom - J. Carmack Chases After Space Race Prize - The competition to build and fly a rocket ship into space and back is heating up as the Jan. 1, 2005, deadline approaches for the X Prize. Sure, it may seem like a long way off, but in the world of rocket science 16 months is a blip in time. More than 20 teams from around the world are vying for the $10 million prize. Among them is Armadillo Aerospace, a research and development team out to prove you don't have to have big bucks for a big launch. The man at Armadillo's helm is no rocket scientist. He's a computer programmer. John Carmack, co-founder and owner of id Software, started Armadillo Aerospace more than two years ago. Once a side project, it's grown into a big chunk of his life, Carmack says.
  • Next gen consoles spark concern - The next generation of consoles could shake up the games industry, with a game costing tens of millions of dollars to develop, say experts. Making a title for the successors to the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube could run into $20 or $30 million, game developers meeting in London were told.  But the price of a game in the shops is likely to stay the same.  It could mean many smaller software firms going bust or joining forces with other small companies.
  • Computer game boosts children's' language skills  - A simple computer program that teaches children to distinguish between sounds can dramatically boost their listening skills. It can allow them to progress by the equivalent of two years in just a few weeks, the game's creator claims. The game, called Phonomena, was devised by David Moore of the University of Oxford, UK, as an aid for children with language problems, but he says his latest trials also show that it can help any child. Other experts, however, are reserving judgement until independent tests are carried out.
  • Solar-powered Big Brother is watching you - A solar-powered wireless surveillance system that beams video images from remote cameras back to a central server using Wi-Fi hit the market yesterday. The system, dubbed SolaCam, has been jointly developed by wireless firms Proxim and Hutton Communications. It combines Proxim's Tsunami MP.11 802.11-based point-to-multipoint wireless kit with IP video cameras, and receives all its power requirements through solar panels.
  • Addonics Ships Serial ATA Converter - Addonics Technologies is now shipping a conversion kit intended to give you an even broader selection of hard-drive technology: It offers a way to convert a 2.5-inch internal parallel ATA drive into an external Serial ATA drive. The resulting drive is capable of connecting either to a PCI Serial ATA adapter with an external port (priced at $37) or to a CardBus Serial ATA adapter ($55), according to Addonics. The drive model must be of 9mm height, and the kit can be powered from either a USB port or an AC/DC power adapter (data and power cables are included). The Addonics Mini ExDrive carries a list price of $55.
  • Super fast Linux supercomputer goes online - The Department of Energy (DoE) powered up the US's fastest unclassified supercomputer this week, a 11.8 teraflops behemoth to be used in scientific research. Powered by 2,000 Intel Itanium2 processors HP Integrity servers running Linux, the monster system will be used for applications in the fields of environmental and molecular sciences, including chemistry, biology, climate and subsurface chemistry. The supercomputer find its home at the DoE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
  • Gateway Takes a Shot at Cameras - Gateway has introduced its first digital cameras, unveiling four models as part of its ongoing strategy to boost its stake in the consumer electronics market. The new cameras consist of two M-series models for first-time digital camera users and two T-series units for experienced users, says Matt Milne, Gateway's general manager of digital solutions. Prices range from $130 to $400.
  • Philips chips to flip TV displays - Philips will unveil new chips at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin on Thursday that it hopes will make it easier and faster for its manufacturing customers to begin producing televisions with LCDs instead of CRTs. The electronics giant will demonstrate the chips during the show, which runs Aug. 29 through Sept. 3.
  • Samsung launches photo phones - Samsung this week announced three new mobile phones, two of them with built-in camers. One of the models, the SGH-X600, has a 640 x 480 camera with a tilting range of 180 degrees forward and back, and is mounted on top of the phone, with an LED mini-flash located around the lens. Weighting only 80g, the GPRS phone offers a 1.6in, 16-bit colour screen with 16-bit doubling as a viewfinder. It also includes Java games.
  • How Anti-Piracy Technologies are Transforming Digital Media  - When the smoke cleared, DVDs had been crammed with more layers of copy protection than any other consumer format, and probably more acronyms too. Each of these is described in more detail later in this article.
  • Gigabyte in talks to acquire Elsa - Gigabyte Technology is negotiating to acquire Germany-based graphics card maker Elsa, according to sources. Talks have been underway, and initial agreements have reportedly been set, sources added. The acquisition could be finalized as early as late September, according to sources.
  • Asustek to launch own-brand graphics cards using ATI solutions in 3Q - Asustek Computer, a key customer for Nvidia's graphics chipsets in Asia, expects to launch own-brand graphics cards featuring ATI solutions by the end of this quarter. The two sides expect to officially announce the news in late September, according to sources.
  • Product: Canon PowerShot G5 review - The new 5-megapixel Canon PowerShot G5 cuts to the front of the line in Canon's lineup of point-and-shoot digital cameras. At $800, this isn't the camera to get your mom started in digital photography. But the G5 will appeal to hobbyist shutterbugs who can't afford the $1,500 price that digital SLRs command.
  • Neuros Audio Computer Rethinks MP3 review - A new company on the scene, Neuros Audio, took a long hard look at this market space and is now shipping what the company has dubbed an 'audio computer'. It features an FM tuner and transmitter (transceiver), support for the open source encoder Ogg Vorbis, and a Linux music management app. It can not only record FM radio, but can sample and save music playing on an FM station and find similar material via the Web when the player is connected to your PC.
  • Asus PC-DL with 875P Chipset for Intel's Xeon review - With its 1-MB L3 cache, Intel's Xeon was poised to take the workstation market by storm. Unfortunately, the Intel E7505 chipset isn't the greatest match for the CPU, as it only supports dual DDR266. Asus decided it needed to tackle this problem. And tackle it did: it developed a board that aims to enhance performance with an 875P desktop chipset and dual DDR333.
  • Kingston HyperX 512MB DDR PC3500 - On the heatspreaders, is a sticker indicating the ram type. We can see that the ram is rated for PC3500 operation, which is 434MHz. The timings are rated at 2-4-4-8-1 (CAS Latency 2), which is pretty good, though not great. Not to worry though, as the ram can do better, but those are the SPD settings detected in the BIOS, so we'll be fixing that when we get into testing.
  • Seagate Barracuda 160 Gigabytes HDD Review - If you're in the market for additional storage, or have the opportunity to select which drive comes in that new PC you're looking at buying, we can assure you that this drive - in a RAID configuration or stand-alone - is a great investment that should reward you with years of great storage performance.
  • IOGear COMBO 3.5" ION Drive (60GB)  - The ION Combo External 3.5" Hard drive (60GB) is stylish and supports both Firewire and USB. It operates at 7200 RPM and has a seek time of only 8.5 milliseconds. It is made for people who cannot install internal hard drives or do not have IDE ports left available. It arrives with the Samsung SP0612N HDD or something very similar, which has countless features.
  • The Teac DV-W50D DVD+R/RW Drive Review -  It seems that Teac's goal of an affordable drive that has everything you want, while trimming the features you may not miss has its pluses, but along with those pluses are a few minuses. Overall, the Teac DV-W50D DVD+R/RW CD-R/RW Dual Format Drive performed fairly well in all of our benchmark tests, but there is still room for improvement.
  • Contemporary Integrated Sound Solutions - As for sound quality, many add-on sound cards are still better than integrated audio solutions. The reason is simple: mainboard makers try to reduce the cost at any rate. They choose cheap codecs, and don't care about proper screening of audio components. That's why a user may consider purchasing a sound card to be a better decision than using the integrated audio.
  • Hitachi CML152 15 LCD Monitor Review - Techwarelabs has posted a review of Hitachi CML152 15" LCD Monitor.
  • Zalman 80C-HP Heatpipe VGA Cooler w/ optional fan (Video Review) - The Zalman 80C-HP Heatpipe VGA Cooler w/ optional fan makes one fantastic VGA cooling product. It fits just about every Video Card & is relatively easy to install. With the massive heatsink on the front & back coupled with the heatpipe & 80mm fan it will definitely keep even the fastest Video Cards cool.
  • Zalman 400W Power Supply Review - You call yourself a modder? You have nice blue LED fans, a blue motherboard, blue video card, blue UV reactive cables, a sweet window cutout . and a big ugly silver power supply. Not a lot of people mod their power supply, maybe a UV reactive acrylic cover, but who really anodizes it to match their case? Anodizing is quite pricy, and spray paint just doesn't look all that great. Don't forget all the power you need to run all those little gadgets! Today we'll be looking at a ZM400A, a black 400W power supply from Zalman. They say its silent, very silent, but also deadly.
  • Altec Lansing 5100 Speaker Review  - In the end if you are looking to replace those old speakers, the Altec Lansing 5100s is a good setup for those looking for a system that's price, performance, and style are all evenly mixed.
  • Logitech Cordless Click Plus Review  - If you can settle for a symmetrical, ambidextrous oval shape and no Forward and Back buttons (just the two main buttons, clickable scroll wheel, and Quick Switch), the Cordless Click offers the same RF technology for $40.
  • The Definitive ATI Bios, Softmod and Tweak Guide - check it out!
  • OVERCLOCKING THE NFORCE2 A BASIC GUIDE - There are essentially two types of overclocking - front side bus and multiplier. Motherboards have a clock chip that generates a signal. This signal controls how fast the board's circuits run. This speed is measured in millions of cycles per second, or Megahertz. Today's current crop of motherboards run at stock speeds anywhere from 100Mhz to 166Mhz. Additionally, there is circuitry that enables the computer's processor, or CPU, to run at a multiple of the board speed, hence the term multiplier.
  • DVD2SVCD 1.2.1 Build 1 - Freeware DVD2SVCD is a completely automated frontend for converting DVD, PVA and AVI files to SVCD.
  • WinDVD Platinum 5.1.5.5 (costs money) - WinDVD Platinum 5 (download) 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.
  • RegSeeker 1.30 - RegSeeker includes a powerful registry cleaner and can display various informations like your startup entries, several histories (even index.dat files), installed applications and much more ! With RegSeeker you can search for any item inside your registry, export/delete the results, open them in the registry.
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,27 2003 - tech
Evening Tech Mania - tech
(hx) 11:42 PM CEST - Aug,27 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Cyborgs unite! - Steve Mann is not only a pioneer in wearable computers, an electrical engineering professor and the star of a documentary titled "Cyberman." Mann also is the first cyborg rights activist.  A native of Canada who teaches at the University of Toronto, Mann became famous in the 1990s for roaming the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus as a graduate student outfitted with chunky glasses that augmented his vision, a bulging, hip-mounted PC that boosted his memory, and an antenna that broadcast to the Internet whatever he saw. Since then, Mann has slimmed his "eyetap" apparatus down to a more manageable size and has purchased a former Toronto nightclub to use as a home, a design laboratory and a sort of tech-art gallery.
  • Hubble Captures Mars Close-Up - The Hubble Space Telescope's newest picture of Mars shows summer on the Red Planet just as it makes its closest pass by Earth in 60,000 years. The image, taken on Tuesday 11 hours before the closest approach, shows in fine detail the scarred surface of Mars, including the 270-mile- (450-km-) diameter Huygens crater near the center of the image, according to a NASA press release. Another pictures can be found here.
  • Symantec Embraces Product Activation - Software giant Symantec is adding product activation technology to all of its upcoming consumer products, starting with Norton Antivirus 2004. Customers who fail to activate the software by contacting Symantec within 15 days of installing it will be left with a nonfunctioning application. Symantec executives say the product activation process is so simple most users won't mind it. They also say they're confident the measures will pay off by preventing large-scale piracy operations from thieves who bootleg Symantec programs and sell them to unsuspecting customers.
  • Has Sobig Picked a New Target? - Romanian researchers claim to have discovered a variant of the Sobig.F virus that looks to mail and domain name servers at Time Warner Telecom for information about how to modify its behavior. The first Sobig.F virus contained an encrypted list of the IP addresses of 20 servers. At a predetermined time, the virus would contact each server in turn until one responded with the URL of a file, which the virus would then try to download and execute.
  • Amazon declares war on spoofers - Amazon has filed lawsuits in the US and Canada against 11 companies that it alleges have stolen its identity to send out spam. In what it said was a strong message to spammers, Amazon accused the companies in question of 'spoofing' - fooling people into thinking that the online retailer had sent them emails.
  • nVidia eyes PlayStation 3  - ATI beat out nVidia earlier this month for the right to provide the graphics chip for Microsoft's next game machine. That followed ATI's March announcement that it had struck a technology development deal with Nintendo, presumably to supply the graphics technology for the successor to the GameCube.  The king of the console industry hasn't made any commitments yet, though. And while Sony (SNE: Research, Estimates) has preferred to own the technology components in past PlayStations, it might be mulling some changes this time around. "The reality is nVidia is not sitting in a vacuum," said Erach Desai, an analyst with American Technology Research. "They are in discussions with Sony for the PS3."
  • Plextor 8x dual format drive will write 8x to 4x DVD+R media - Recently some rumors appeared on the internet that the PX-708A, Plextors latest dual format DVD recorder, would write 8x at 4x DVD+R media. The drive should be available in stores within the next two weeks and 8x DVD+R media is currently scheduled for release in about a month or later.
  • Toshiba unveils next-generation DVD recordable drives for mobile computers - The Toshiba SD-R6112 drive supports 2x DVD-R, 1x DVD-RW, 1x DVD-RAM read, 16x CD-R and 10x CD-RW, allowing users to take advantage of multiple technologies in a single drive. The SD-R9012 supports 8x DVD-ROM, 16x CD-R and 10x CD-RW. Both drives include buffer underrun technology and a 2MB buffer. The tray loading drives are also shock resistant and feature low energy consumption, making them ideal for laptop design.
  • 10 Terabit Ethernet in 2010? - Now that NTT has announced a reliable 100 Gigabit per second transmitter/receiver pair, the progression may be 1 wavelength for 100 Gigabit Ethernet, 10 wavelength (10 x 100 Gigabits per second) CWDM (Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing) for 1 Terabit Ethernet, and 100 wavelength (100 x 100 Gigabits per second) DWDM for 10 Terabit per second Ethernet in the near future.
  • VIA to release dual DDR KT880 chipset - VIA Technologies will release another chipset supporting the K7 platform from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), according to the company. The KT880 chipset, supporting a 400MHz FSB (front-side bus) and dual-channel DDR400 memory, will be the latest and last entry in VIA's K7 chipset line. Shipments are to begin in late September or early October, the company disclosed.
  • Overclocking a Pentium 4 2.4C to 3.6GHz - The popular motherboard maker MSI has made an article on overclocking a Pentium 4 2.4C (800MHz FSB) to an amazing 3.6GHz, in order to show the great overclocking possibilities with their 848P. To do this they used their new 848P Neo motherboard, a Pentium 4 2.4C and the memory they used was GEIL PC4200. In their first expirement they managed to get their 2.4GHz Pentium 4 up to 3.6GHz by cranking the FSB up to 300MHz.
  • Creative Audigy2 Platinum eX Sound Card Review - The Audigy2 Platinum eX an a perfect choice for a gamer, but wouldn't suite an audiophile or a professional musician.
  • Leadtek A350Ultra TDH MyViVO Edition 256MB FX5900 Ultra VGA Review - Overclockers New Zealand has posted a review on Leadtek A350Ultra TDH MyViVO Edition 256MB FX5900 Ultra VGA.
  • MSI FX5600VTDR128 Review  - The MSI card is unique in that it has its own media center remote control and software (ala Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs). It would have been a great idea if it was implemented properly. Firstly, there is absolutely no mentioning of it in the printed manual. However, that wasn't a major problem because installation was straightforward; all I needed to do was to put the CD in the CD-rom and installation started automatically. After installation, one press of the power button on the remote control turned on the program.
  • Samsung Syncmaster 192T LCD Monitor Review - If you need a large LCD monitor with excellent picture quality then the Samsung Syncmaster 192T could be just what your looking for. Is it good value for money and how well does it perform, read on to find out.
  • BIOS Guide Revision 8.0 Interim Release 1  - Adrian has updated his premier BIOS optimization guide to 8.0 Interim Release 1. "Finally, a reminder that the BIOS Optimization Guide is protected by an anti-leeching mechanism so please check your firewall settings. If you are using Norton Firewall, please turn off Browser Privacy. If you are using ZoneAlarm, please turn off Cookie Control and Ad Blocking. Otherwise, the page will keep reloading itself. "
  • How to remove Lovesan Virus Guide - Check it out.
  • KaZaA Lite K++ 2.4.2 - A new release of the ad- and spy-ware free version of KaZaA is available from here.
  • Fresh Diagnose 6.20 - 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.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.6.1 - Media Player Classic (download version for WinXP/2k ~ 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. It supports viewing through ActiveX controls of Real and QuickTime files.
  • Microsoft Virtual PC 5.2 - Microsoft Virtual PC is a powerful software virtualization solution that allows you to run multiple PC-based operating systems simultaneously on one workstation, providing a safety net to maintain compatibility with legacy applications while you migrate to a new operating system. It also saves reconfiguration time, so your support, development, and training staff can work more efficiently. Please use the following serial number when installing the Virtual PC for Windows Trial Version: VPT5-1181-2302-9277-6447 -- This serial number will expire on September 27, 2003
  • nVidia Refresh Rate Fix MKII v2.20 E  - If you have a nVidia graphics card, you'll probably know about the very common bug, that occurs together with the nVidia Detonator drivers under Windows NT/2000/XP: Normally, you can't get a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz in the OpenGL/Direct3D modes, which makes you very blind after a while of gaming. ;-) I programmed this tool, to fix this bug, since I could not find an existing tool for this on the internet, which is compatible with the new official Detonator v28.32+ > drivers. There already were some tools around that supported the older Detonator versions."
  • VIA IDE mini port Driver 3.20b  - If you are having IDE troubles with your system it's recommended that you download and install the IDE miniport driver just made available on the Drivers Page, for increased IDE performance and stability.
Early Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 12:12 AM CEST - Aug,27 2003 - Post a comment
  • SoBig will spawn yet another variant - Another variant of the SoBig virus is likely to appear some time after 10 September, antivirus company Sophos has warned. SoBig F, which caused chaos globally last week, is the sixth version of the worm, although only that variant and SoBig A are still infecting PCs.
  • Why computer virus writers are useful and we should thank them - Zone-H has conducted an interview with Professor Samuel D. Forrester, one of the most famous immunologists in the world. Dr. Forrester is on the run this year to get the Nobel Prize for his recent discovery of the mechanisms of aggression of over-reacting immune cells and antibodies, as he talks about the reasons why virus writers are coding more and more viruses.
  • Netgear flaw triggers 'accidental' attack - Network hardware maker Netgear has warned its customers of a flaw in some of its router products that could set off an "accidental" denial-of-service attack. The problem occurred because of a flawed implementation of the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which is a method commonly used by network devices to contact special "time" servers that pass on the correct time and date. This information is important for routers because they generate a variety of time-sensitive logs. The flawed routers work fine until one of their periodic requests for the correct time goes unanswered. If for whatever reason the time server is unavailable, the flawed router will continue sending requests until it is answered.
  • Lik-Sang settles mod chip case out of court - Former online retailer Lik-Sang International has settled a case brought by Sony out of court, undertaking to cease trade in any copyright circumvention devices and paying an undisclosed compensation sum. The company, which formerly operated the popular online game retail site Lik-Sang.com (now under new ownership and unaffected by this decision), has also agreed to cancel its appeal against the ruling in favour of Sony by Hong Kong's High Court in March.  However, it continues to fight similar cases against Nintendo and Microsoft, both of whom were involved in the action against the company in September of last year which won an injunction against it for selling copyright circumvention devices.
  • Game makers try to plug brain drain  - European publishers Eidos, Ubi Soft and Atari, formerly Infogrames, are shifting key business units to North America, the world's largest market, and most companies are trawling Eastern Europe for highly skilled but cheaper programmers. Meanwhile, as more top games result from tie-ins with blockbuster films, Hollywood's influence on the industry has grown, drawing many of the brightest young developers, graphic artists and programmers to Southern California to hone their skills.
  • New PS2 to go on sale in UK next month - According to GamesRadar, Sony will finally release the new PlayStation 2 model in the UK next month - and it'll be available in silver as well as the traditional black. The new version of the PS2 - which was first released in Japan back in May - includes a host of new features primarily relating to the machine's DVD playback facilities.  Along with standard DVDs, the new PS2 (which is cosmetically unchanged) will also be able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW discs and supports DVD progressive scan playback, which can provide far higher quality images than the current PS2.
  • BT to trial 1Mb ADSL in October  - BT Wholesale is to begin a six-week trial of a new 1 Mb ADSL service aimed at home users, the monster telco confirmed today. The trial starts on October 6 following internal tests during September. The monthly wholesale rental for the trial is L23 (ex VAT) with L50 (ex VAT) for activation.
  • No More Backup or Drive Install Woes  - Maxtor likes to emphasize how easy backing up your system is with its OneTouch external hard drives ($199.95 to $399.95, direct, depending on capacity). But the drives are also the easiest way to add hard drive capacity in chunks of 120 to 300 gigabytes.
  • AMD revives Duron line - The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker confirmed Monday that it has begun selling three new Duron chips--running at 1.4GHz, 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz--in China, Latin America and other developing markets. An AMD representative, however, emphasized that the new chips are available only in developing markets in limited quantities.
  • Minolta Dimage F300 Digital still camera -  Conclusion, the Minolta DiMage F300 is a superb camera in terms of quality and results. It gives you the capability to get clear and crisp 12 x 18 print outs for your picture from printing shops. With the comfort of audio, video, and picture capabilities the F300 will satisfy any user. However it is a heavy device that is generally not meant to be a pocket based camera. This camera is a good middle range product that can satisfy novice and professional photographers.
  • Netgear Cable/DSL 54Mbps Wireless Router - The WGR614 packs a lot of features into a small stylish unit (Much more stylish and futuristic looking than any other router we have come across). The four port switch, 802.11g wireless technology support, SPI and NAT protection and a wealth of information in the administration web interface makes this a choice router/firewall for anyone who is new to networking and hardware firewall protection. We are not saying that this is exclusively for beginners.
  • Samsung SP1614N Review - MBReview has posted a review of the latest line of Samsung hard drives, the SP1614N.
  • Serial ATA HDD Roundup - The models are not the latest - the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 wasn't tested yet, and the Maxtor drive turned out to have 60GB platters again. Nevertheless, I hope this roundup will be useful, and it will be updated as new models. Conclusion: "So, if you need speed go with the WD360GD, if you need a sizable drive take the WD2500JD which also demonstrates excellent performance. If size is not critical for you, the Samsung or Maxtor can be a good choice too. At the same time, the Seagate Barracuda ATA V line looks already dated."
  • OCZ EL DDR PC4000 Gold Dual Channel Kit - OCZ's packaging has changed since we've last looked at their OCZ EL DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum. Rather than two individually packaged ram modules, we now got both of them in the same package. This of course doesn't really mean much, but it does make it clearer that this kit is a matched pair.
  • Albatron GeForce FX 5900PV 128MB Review - Beyond3D has posted a review of Albatron GeForce FX 5900PV 128MB video card. "What we can probably surmise from this is that the 45.23 drivers are buggy or are having problems with the DX9 HLSL compiler but their Cg compiler is right on the money in so far as rendering quality/fidelity is concerned in Tomb Raider AOD. From a performance perspective, there are some differences between the two compilers when using the GeForceFX 5900PV + 45.23 drivers but this only applies when Anti-Aliasing is used. Later in this review, this game will be benchmarked using both compilers."
  • Opteron 244 with AMD-8000 and nForce3 Pro 150 - Sure, it's expensive. In comparison to the dual Xeon 3.06 GHz/1MB chips, they're less expensive, and performance is comparable between the two. Although if you're investing in a dual processor setup, you should really examine which applications you run and which processor will run better for your particular software config. Nevertheless, AMD's recently released Opteron 144 model offers all the same performance in a 1P environment as the 244 processor, but costs around $300 less, well below the price of a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz.
  • VIA K8T800 Chipset Preview - Dual Opteron in Action - The Dual Opteron solution is going to give people big bragging rights. For this reason, you will find that people with extra cash wanting to buy one of these setups, will be going straight for a set of 244 Opteron processors or the newly released 246 (2GHz) processor, which currently cost almost two grand US for a pair - not for the faint-hearted! It will be interesting to see what happens when more companies release motherboards with the K8T800 chipset but it won't be a hit with the enthusiast market due to the limitation of ECC memory given the added cost and lack of overclockability of the type of RAM.
  • A64 3100+ K8 Quake 3 benchmarks - Here is another commonly used benchmark Quake 3 Demo 001 (1024x768x32) that you can use to gauge the performance of AMD K8 3100. The benchmark is done using Tyan Radeon 9700Pro with 1 x 512M Corsair XMS3500C2. Drivers used Catalyst 3.2 (7.84).
  • XP/2000 Tweaking Guide 1.4 - Tweaking Guide for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 brings together all tweaks for Microsoft Windows XP/2000 such as Internet, Miscellanious, System Performance and User Interface related tweaks into a single easy-to-use centralized helpfile.
  • volt mod for 5600ultra and 5900 - Travis' leadtek 5600 did [email protected] volts and with the volt mod [email protected] volts... my red generic 5600ultra does a bit more with watercooling....check out this thread!
  • Cool Info XP 4.0.2 - Cool Info XP (download) is a system information, inventory, audit & diagnostic utility. It provides all the information you could ever need to know about your hardware, software and other devices, including: CPUs, modems, BIOS, drives, graphic cards, drivers, files, fonts, network, internet, printers, software, multimedia and DOS and Windows memory.
  • Super Utilities 1.65 - Super Utilities (download) is a collection of tools to fix, speed up, and maintain your PC! These utilities include Disk Cleaner, Registry Cleaner, Uninstall Plus, StartUp Manager, Folder Guard, Tracks Washer, Driver Backup, Auto Shutdown, Windows Manager and Process Manager. With a cool and user-friendly interface makes it easy for anyone to use Super Utilities. These powerful tools will keep your system running faster, cleaner and error free.
  • BlindWrite Suite 4.5.5 - Blindwrite Suite (download) is the best 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 use with an cd-rom emulator like Daemon Tools.
  • TVTool 8.2.5 - TVTool (download trial) that enables your video card TV-Output. Version 8.2.5 contains the English and German language files. Also important routines to control the TV mode have been optimized which should improve the stability and performance. Several bugs have been fixed, for example the energy settings for the monitor are turned off during TV mode and are restored correctly now.
  • Motherboard Monitor v5.3.4.0 - Motherboard Monitor will try to access one or more of the following chips: LM75, LM78, LM78-j, LM79, LM80, WinBond W83781D, WinBond W83782D, WinBond W83783S, WinBond W83627HF, Asus AS99127F, GL518SM, GL520SM, ADM9240, ADM1021, ADM1020, MAX1016, MAX1016a, FMS2701, VIA686A, THMC10 and THMC50 on your motherboard and provide you with information about your motherboard's temperature, voltages, fan speeds and CPU temperature.
  • Realtek ALC Drivers v3.48 - The ALC driver is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio CODEC designed for PC multimedia systems. This driver supports all ALC Audio-Codecs from ALC100 up to ALC655.
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,25 2003 - tech
Early Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:49 PM CEST - Aug,25 2003 - Post a comment
  • Hackers cut off SCO Web site - SCO's Web site was largely out of commission until Monday morning, a representative of the Lindon, Utah-based Unix and Linux seller said Monday. Performance measurement statistics from Netcraft indicated that the site had been down since Friday night. In a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, numerous computers simultaneously send so much data across a network that the targeted system slows to a crawl while trying to keep up with the traffic it's receiving. The SCO representative could not say where this weekend's strike originated.
  • Sobig.F May Have Started on Usenet - The Sobig.F worm, which is estimated to have infected more than 100,000 computers and generated tens of millions of e-mails, could have begun life disguised as a pornographic picture in a posting to a handful of Usenet newsgroups. Details of one posting made using the account were released by Easynews. It shows a posting on Monday August 18 at 19:46 GMT (3:46pm EDT) to six newsgroups: alt.binaries.amp; alt.binaries.boneless; alt.binaries.nl; alt.binaries.pictures.chimera; alt.binaries.pictures.erotica; and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female.
  • Free GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP Available  - In a bid to help administrators preempt a possible wave of new virus outbreaks, GFI today released a freeware version of GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP 8, its email content security solution. The freeware version scans inbound and outbound mail using a single anti-virus engine, and can be used as additional protection by companies who do not yet perform virus scanning at mail sever level or at the gateway, and by those who run just one anti-virus engine. The freeware version can also check message bodies and subjects for keywords; this feature can be used to detect inappropriate mail.
  • Intel snips desktop Celeron prices - As expected, the chipmaker on Sunday cut list prices by as much as 14 percent, to below $100, on its Celeron processors for low-priced desktop PCs. The cuts pave the way for the introduction of a 2.7GHz desktop Celeron in the future. This time around, Intel's largest price cut was on its fastest Celeron. It decreased the price of the 2.6GHz desktop chip by 14 percent, from $103 to $89. Intel also dropped the price of the 2.5GHz Celeron by 7 percent, from $89 to $83. Its 2.4GHz Celeron was reduced by 6 percent, from $84 to $79.
  • Edison's light bulb replacement any soon? - Three local companies think it's about time to change Edison's light bulb. They say that light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are the future of illumination. Most people are familiar with the glowing red LEDs used as indicators, to show that there are messages waiting on your answering machine, for example. But today's LEDs can be used to light up restaurants, Broadway stages, and even bridges. No one knows how quickly the shift to LEDs will happen -- the technology has been around since 1962 -- but most experts consider it inevitable. And this is an overwhelmingly positive tech trend: By some estimates, LEDs could reduce global energy use for lighting by half by 2025. But to be prepared for the possibility of more blackouts between now and 2025, you can already buy an LED-powered flashlight today -- for less than $20.
  • Silent pump for water-cooled PCs developed  - A new water-cooling system for computer chips has been developed that incorporates a clever pump with no moving parts. The system, developed by Californian start-up company Cooligy, aims to silently solve the problem that the faster chips get, the hotter they become. In the near future, the chips in high-speed laptops and desktop PCs will generate so much heat that traditional air cooling systems will struggle to cope. Simply increasing the speed of the fans used will increase the noise they make and the risk of mechanical failure. So a number of companies are now working on systems that use water to draw heat away.
  • Macromedia retools MX family - Macromedia will soon announce the next generation of its MX product line. New in the family are Dreamweaver MX 2004, featuring support for the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) standard, and Macromedia Studio MX 2004, which combines new MX tools with Freehand MX for an integrated development suite.
  • Tiny Hitachi drive hits 4GB  - The 4GB Microdrive, a miniaturized version of a hard drive used in PCs, can be used by a wide range of devices to store data files for computers or image files for digital cameras, among other uses, the company said. The San Jose, Calif., hard-drive maker is offering samples now and plans to ship the 1-inch drive in volume in November. The company expects the 4GB Microdrive to sell for $499. Lexar Media sells 2GB and 4GB flash memory cards that cost as much as $799 and $1,599, respectively, according to its online store.
  • Microsoft in talks with SiS on Xbox2 south bridge order? - Microsoft is in talks with Taiwan-based Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) on potential orders for a south bridge chip for the Xbox2 game console, according to high-level SiS sources. Some market rumors reported that SiS had already landed the order, but company sources declined to confirm it. As the Xbox2 will not be released until 2005, it is still too early to say anything for sure, the sources said. According to market rumors, SiS has also landed chipset orders from IBM and European distributor Medion. The company, however, refused to comment on the reports.
  • Tachyon G9600Pro Review - The G9600Pro made a great compliment to the system and is an easy size to deal with. A welcome refresh from some of the klunkier cards that are gargantuan in size from the nVidia side of the house.
  • Chaintech FX71 Apogee (GeForce FX 5600 Ultra) review - Each company which puts out the FX series cards has to use the same GPU. Therefore, the manufacturers have to do what they can to distinguish theirs from the other guys. And Chaintech has certainly done that here. No other 5600 card on the market that I know of lights up. I mean that adds coolness points right there. Plus the fact that one of the LED's is activated only when under load. So very cool there. This card has got to be the tops of the 5600 series in my humble opinion. Another review can be found at MonkeyReview.
  • 18 P4 boards Shoot out - AOpen, Intel, and, Soyo rank high in the feature they offer. AOpen has Serial ATA RAID and FireWire together with numerous other useful features, but factory overclocking beyond our tolerance levels disqualifies it. Intel offers a fast chipset and even Gigabit Ethernet, and was the winner of our benchmark tests. Soyo overshot the mark here. Its board offers two Serial ATA controllers, plus Ultra ATA RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, and overclocking features that will delight all fans of overclocking. All very nice features, but they make this board the most expensive in our group test by a wide margin.
  • Sound Blaster Audigy Review -  Gaming is really where this card shines. No cracks, no pops, no static. Just pure in your face ass kicking! I've tested on every type of game I own, from RPG to RTS to FPS and let me tell ya, there is nothing quite like being able to hear rockets fly by your head and take out the guy right behind you. You can actually hear the gibs deteriorate. In Cossacks, there's nothing quite more impressive than the sound of a battalion of cavalry bolting across the screen, and the Audigy does a very good job of picking up and amplifying even this small sound. Dialogue is also an area where this card shows it's potential. It follows the "lip" movements perfectly and there aren't any cracks or pops while they speak. This is a definite plus as I personally have a hard time paying attention to dialogue when I cant even follow their mouth movements I think it's cause I get flashbacks as my days as Godzilla but that's another story.
  • Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Review - Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 is a stunning product. Although biggest available storage capacity is only 160GB when some other manufacturers have 250GB drives, performance and silent operation noise raise this new Seagate absolutely one of the best SATA drives available. Especially to basic use and -machine this fast, silent and rather cheap SATA drive is excellent choice. Only problems that I encountered were quite big heat production and a little objectionable compatibility with different RAID controllers.
  • WD Raptor RAID Performance  - In this article, HardwareZone explore the performance of two Western Digital Raptor drives combined using the rather well-known Silicon Image SiI3112A SATA RAID controller. The results in the next few pages will give you an idea of the Raptor's RAID performance as compared to a 10,000RPM SCSI drive. We picked an older Seagate Cheetah 36ES drive for this comparison as its performance is more or less in the same ballpark. We'll also compare its results with some 15K SCSI drives.
  • Linux 2.4.22 Stable Kernel  - Marcelo Tosatti has officially released another stable 2.4 Linux kernel (fixes)
  • PHP 4.3.3 Final - The PHP developers today announced the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.3 (download). This release contains a large number of bug fixes and we strongly recommend that all users of PHP upgrade to this version.
  • WebStripper 2.58 - WebStripper (download) creates an exact copy of the site which you can browse offline whenever you want without having to connect to the internet.
  • CopyToDVD 2.2.8 - CopyToDVD is the easiest way to backup your files. Integrated to the shell or used as a normal application, CopyToDVD works with all CD & DVD Writers to create the cd type of your choice.
  • Nvidia WDM Driver v2.09 - Innovision3D's FTP has now offers a new video capture driver WDM for Nvidia based graphics cards.
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,24 2003 - tech
Evening Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 11:03 PM CEST - Aug,24 2003 - Post a comment
  • University of Kentucky Supercomputer Breaks The $100 Per GFLOPS Barrier - Researchers at the University of Kentucky have constructed and demonstrated an innovative new, scalable, parallel supercomputer that achieves application performance of more than 1 billion floating point operations per second (GFLOPS) for every $100 spent on building the machine. The approach used to design and build this machine makes it cost-effective for solving a wide range of problems, from drug design using computational chemistry to design of quieter printers using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Thus, this breakthrough, that was not reached with Opteron processor but plain old Athlon XP2600+ Barton, is not only a milestone, but also will enable many more scientists and engineers to use computational models.
  • Red star at night is their delight -  Mars holds court in the sky this week as the Red Planet makes its closest approach to Earth since our ancestors lived in caves. "It is amazingly bright," said David Hudgins, a lecturer in astronomy at Rockhurst University. "You cannot possibly miss it." The fourth planet's lopsided orbit around the sun has been bringing our neighbor ever closer to us until early Wednesday, when it will be less than 34.65 million miles away -- barely a ringtoss in celestial terms. According to a computer model, the last time Mars was closer to Earth was 57,617 B.C.
  •  Japan ready to market "robot suit"  - Japanese companies are preparing for the commercial launch of a "robot suit" that helps aged or physically disabled people walk, get up the stairs or seat themselves to relax without a chair.  Trading house Mitsui and Co. and some 30 other Tokyo firms plan to set up a joint-venture in April or May next year to market the powered suit developed by Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University, officials said Thursday.
  • LANMash 2: The LAN That Overcame All Odds  - While the rest of the THG Lan Party Squad was busy covering Quakecon, THG covered a LAN party in Canada that almost never happened due to the largest power outage in North American history. Gamers will not be denied. The staff running the LANMash 2 event in Toronto put the pedal to the metal and found a way to make this lan party happen despite all of the odds.
  • VIA KT600 Boards Roundup - VR-Zone has posted a roundup of nine different VIA KT600 boards.
  • Nero 5.5.10.50 - AHead Software has released an update for the old 5.x serie. (thanks SavagenNews)
  • VisualBoy Advance 1.6a - Visual Boy Advance (download ~ what's new) is a GBA/GB emulator that runs with Windows systems.
  • CPUCooL 7.2.7  - CPUCooL (download) is a program that monitors temperature, fan speed, and voltages for many motherboards. This new version adds SIS963 south bridge and a few new motherboards.
  • Remove Hotfix Backup Files 1.2.0  - Removes Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs Registry entries.
  • Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition 3.51 - The Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition software package provides support for high-performance Serial ATA RAID 0 arrays and redundant RAID 1 arrays on select Intel 865 and 875 chipset-based platforms using WinXP or Win2k.
  • Jet-Audio 5.17 - Jet-Audio (download ~ what's new) features an impressive home audio system interface, including independent A/V components for Digital Signal Processor, Audio CD Player, Digital Audio (MP3, RA, etc.), MIDI (MID, MOD etc.), and Digital Video (AVI, MPG, MOV, etc.), along with a Mixer and a Remote Controller.
  • Coding Workshop Ringtone Convertor 4.5.1 - 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.
  • Fresh Diagnose 6.20 - 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.
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,23 2003 - tech
Morning Tech Reading - tech
(hx) 01:39 PM CEST - Aug,23 2003 - Post a comment / read (2)
  • Hackers Steal 13,000 Credit Card Numbers - The Navy has canceled 13,000 credit cards used for government expenses after discovering that hackers had downloaded card numbers and billing records, Defense Department officials said. Citibank, the card issuer, has found no unusual activity in the card accounts since the hacking began in July and no fraud related to the incident had been reported as of Thursday, according to a Defense Department official. Officials and investigative teams from the Navy and Department of Defense are still trying to figure out what vulnerabilities the hackers exploited and how to prevent such attacks in the future.
  • Feared Attack From Computer Virus Fizzles -  A feared Internet attack resulting from a fast-spreading computer virus fizzled Friday. Security experts said they contained the virus by identifying and blocking computers key to coordinating it. Instructions written into the latest version of the "Sobig" virus, which has caused enormous headaches since it began appearing Tuesday, called for infected Windows machines to try to download a program that, until the attack began at 3 p.m. EDT Friday, had an unknown function. Experts feared the program could have deleted files, stolen passwords or created rogue e-mail servers for spreading junk e-mail. But when the appointed time came, all the virus did was visit a pornography site, said Vincent Weafer, security director with Symantec Security Response. "There is nothing malicious, just a standard sex site," he said.
  • Woman burned by exploding cellphone - A mobile phone has exploded in a woman's face while she was out shopping. The blast caused burns to her face and neck. The freak incident happened in Amsterdam earlier this week. According to local reports, the phone switched itself off when the 33-year-old women dropped the phone. When she switched it back on again, the phone exploded. Paramedics arrived quickly on the scene to treat her for her injuries. According to witnesses, the phone concerned was manufactured by mobile giant Nokia.  A spokesman for Nokia confirmed that while the phone was made by Nokia, the battery was not. Nokia intends to carry out an investigation into the incident but has warned that some replacement batteries, while cheaper, lack some essential safety features.
  • Nanoparticles to pinpoint viruses in body scans  - An injection of magnetic nanoparticles into your bloodstream could reveal precisely where harmful viruses are lurking. The particles are coated with antibodies to a particular virus, so they will form clumps that should be visible on conventional body scans if that virus is present. The team working on the technology, from the Harvard Medical School's Center for Molecular Imaging Research in Charlestown, Massachusetts, have already managed to detect viruses in body fluids and tissue samples. They hope to be able to detect viruses in patients' bodies within a couple of years. Much of the technology has already been tested in humans, so the scientists are confident that it will be safe.
  • Toshiba debuts smallest HDD MP3 player - Toshiba has launched what it claims is the thinnest, lightest and smallest hard drive-based portable music player yet to grace the market. The player, the Gigabeat G20 MEG200J is just 1.27cm thick, a smidge thinner than the 1.55cm iPod. It measures 8.95 x 7.65cm and weighs 138g - the iPod is 10.25 x 6cm and weighs 158.76g. Inside its limited edition dark "sapphire" blue or standard aluminium shell, the Gigabeat packs in a 20GB 1.8in hard drive.
  • AMD to ship Athlon 64s as Athlon XPs - AMD's upcoming Athlon 64 low-end variants, codenamed 'Paris' and 'Victoria', will not be offered as 64-bit processors but as 32-bit upgrades to the current Athlon XP line. Paris and Victoria emerged earlier this year, when they were revealed to be cut-down versions of the Athlon 64. At the time, it was assumed that was simply a matter of their smaller, 256KB L2 cache. Paris will be fabbed at 130nm, and is due to ship sometime during Q4 2003. Victoria will debut late Q2 or early Q3 2004. However, it now appears that the chips will not operate in 64-bit mode. The Athlon 64 supports three modes of operation: 32-bit 'legacy' mode, dual 32/64-bit 'compatibility' mode and pure 64-bit mode. The last two require a 64-bit OS, and are essentially sub-modes of the chip's 64-bit 'long' mode.
  • ATI R360 Speed and Performance Revealed - According to X-Bit Labs, ATI's new graphics monster will utilize a new type of VPU cooler, a more efficient one to cool down the powerful 0.15 micron R360 VPU running at astonishing 450MHz.. Other features of ATI graphics cards will remain untouched: the product will come equipped with D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out connectors. Both versions of the R360 with either 128 or 256MB of DDR SDRAM memory will be clocked similarly and will score 6750 - 7000+ marks in the 3DMark03 benchmark, suggesting that R360 is something more than an overclocked R350 and we should expect architectural improvements as well.
  • MSI-8918 Personal Cinema FX5200 Video Card Review  - In the ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 PRO review we mentioned that ATI held the lead in the sector of video cards with additional multimedia features. The guys in Santa Clara have apparently realized that and finally counterattacked. The pioneer was expectedly Micro-Star International which seems to be the only manufacturer of video cards on NVIDIA's chips that readily offers additional features such as a remote control with the MSI FX5600-VTDR128 (MS-8912). The only thing left to do is to add a tuner and replace the FX5600 with the FX5200 to get... So, meet the today's hero MSI-8918 Personal Cinema FX5200.
  • Chaintech FX71 5600 Ultra Video Card Review - The Chaintech FX71 5600 Ultra video card has a functional purpose behind its sexy looks, too. The enclosed design was designed to produce better cooling for today's demanding graphic processors. By using Gas Turbine Technology (GT), it can average around 10-15°C better cooling than other standard methods. The Gas Turbine technology works in the same way, for the most part, as an airplane engine.
  • Aerocool Golden Crown Review - A cfm rating of 38.41 while only giving off 26dBA of noise is quite impressive. This comes close to the noise levels of some 92mm fans at the same dBA. The higher performance fan provides an equally impressive ratio with 51.5 cfm at only 34 dBA.
  • Zalman CNPS7000A-CU - HardwarePacers are looking at the Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu Pentium 4 Heatsink which also fits AMD 462 and 754 sockets. The Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu is a Pentium 4 heatsink that is very competitive with a pure copper heatsink and a fan that spins from 1350 - 2400 RPM where it can be controlled with a Zalman fan controller. Estimated Price: 49- 65 USD
  • P4 Cooler Shoot out - Gamers Depot has posted a shout out between two of the latest P4 coolers from Zalman and Thermaltake.
  • OCZ EL DDR PC3700 Premier Dual Channel - OCZ Premier Series PC-3700 features OCZ EVPR Extended Voltage Protection, a circuit protection feature designed to allow performance enthusiasts to tweak their systems without the worry of invalidating the warranty. OCZ Premier Series PC-3700 memory has been optimized for use with the Intel i865/i875 chipsets in dual channel configurations.
  • Gigabyte GA-7VT600L KT600 Motherboard Review - The KT-600 chipset is NOT going be VIA's saviour. It is 5% slower than Nvidia's nF2 Ultra400 on average. In extreme cases, i.e. Q3A demo, the gap is as wide as 14%. In terms of overclocking, KT-600 is no match for Nvidia's nF2 due to the lack of PCI and AGP locking.
  • 3DMark2001SE scores of K8 3100+  - Here is a chart showing the score obtained by a Tyan Radeon 9700Pro running 512M Corsair XMS3500c2.
  • Soyo P4I875P Dragon 2 Platinum Edition - The price is a bit steep at around $190 USD, and the overclocking options are lacking, but that isn't to say this board is entirely bad. The Dragon 2 PE is packed with storage options. The PATA and SATA RAID ability is extremely nice, but it is certainly overkill for a lot of people. The integrated sound and Gigabit Ethernet are major pluses. The sound quality is just as good, if not better than my Sound Blaster Live! Extras such as the 6-1 card reader with USB and Firewire are a great addition if you use a lot of portable devices that require memory card storage. The software bundle is equally useful with several Norton products.
  • Lite-On LTR-52327S - The LTR-52327S really has a lot going for it. While it is not a real speed increase in areas like reading or writing, this drive is a killer rewriter. Additionally, the LTR-52327S is smaller and more attractive than its predecessors - not to mention the fact that one can find this drive on pricewatch for a mere 45 dollars.
  • Lite On LTN-526 52X CD-ROM Review - When it came time for me to build a new PC to augment my main PC and take over duties of DivX encoding I needed a cheaply priced yet reliable optical drive. I chose the 52X Lite On LTN-526 CD-ROM for it's price ($16.99 at NewEgg) and also due to complete customer satisfaction with all of my other Lite On products.
  • A+GPB HSS168 Virtual 3D Headphone Review - When you go to LAN parties you're usually not allowed to bring your speakers. You are required to bring a pair of headphones. If you are a casual gamer at home or listen to music on your MP3 player are you bored of your basic earphones/headphones? ModSynergy has posted a review of  A+GPB HSS168 Virtual 3D Headphone.
  • IOGEAR GME321R Phaser RF Wireless Mouse W/ Laser Pointer - If you like trackballs, and need to be able to walk around, sit back / relax, while still being able to control your computer, this is the absolute best trackball you can get.
  • Firewalls and Internet Security Guide - PC Stats has posted a new guide about Firewalls and Internet Security.
  • Lapping Guide - Ever heard about lapping? Well lapping is a process of making a heatsink flat. We want the metal-to-metal contact between the heatsink and CPU die and/or chip to become one. The more contact both have, the better cooling is achieved. This guide is going to be straight forward, telling you how to lap a heatsink of any kind straight up. So listen.
  • Hard Drive Data Recovery Guide - PC Stats has posted a new beginners guide about Hard Drive Data Recovery.
  • System Optimization Guide 2003 - Design Technica has published a System Optimization Guide.
  • BSPlayer 0.86.501 - BSplayer (download) is a media player that plays back all kinds of media files ( avi / mpg / asf / wmv / wav / mp3...) and specialises in video and divx playback.
  • 36 Winamp Plugins - Techconnect have posted TechConnect has posted a list of 36 Winamp plugins.
  • Opera Without Java 7.20 Beta 4 - Opera's new looks are complemented with exciting features such as the Personal Bar and Pagebar, hotclick, improved window handling, bookmarks search, redesigned preferences, new shortcuts, extensive drag and drop, and support for Unicode and LiveConnect. You can download a new beta 4 from here.
  • Eudora for Windows 6.0.0.20 Beta - Eudora provides easy to use email features plus the extra customization for the most advanced user. It gives you the best of both worlds. Version 6.0 has the exact same feeling and features than v5 with the anti-spam added, so I don't plan to upgrade soon.  If you already running the previous beta, they've disabled the SPAMeliminator, it's only available in paid mode now.
  • MotherBoard Monitor 5.3.4.0 -  A new version of MotherBoard Monitor, the program that shows the temp of your motherboard and cpu, fans etc.
  • VMware 4.0.12 Build 5592 - VMware Workstation (Win32 ~ Linux rpm / .tar) is virtual machine software for technical professionals. It lets you run multiple versions of operating systems simultaneously on a single computer. Quit wasting time configuring hardware, installing software, rebooting/reconfiguring systems. Spend more time developing, testing, and deploying applications and delivering support.
  • CPUInfo 2.1.0 Final - CPUInfo shows detailed informations about the processors on the mainboard. It detects the processor type and manufacturer, the clock ratio, level 1 and level 2 cache and the processor instruction set extensions.
  • I-Worm.Sobig.F Virus Stopper 1.2 - Now is the peak of Sobig virus epidemic. The worst thing is that you have to download tons of unwanted messages that infected by this virus. This program (download) is intendend to help you to deal with this infected flood.
  • Lite-On CD-RW Firmware - LiteOn have released some new CD-RW firmware updates for the following drives: Lite-On LDW-401S ( 4X 4X 12X + 40X 24X 40X ) DVD+RW Firmware DR4ES0E.zip (2003/08/05) and Lite-On LTR-52327S ( 52X 32X 52X ) CD-RW Firmware R52QS09.zip (2003/08/25).
 Gameguru Mania News - Aug,22 2003 - tech
Friday Tech Mania - tech
(hx) 12:12 PM CEST - Aug,22 2003 - Post a comment / read (1)
  • Do you speak cyber-slang? - The latest in computer jargon and slang terms have made it into the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English. 'Cyberslackers' (workers who spend all day on the web), 'data smog' (the wealth of often-contradictory facts and figures online) and 'egosurfing' (looking for references to yourself online) are all included in the latest dictionary, along with more than 3,000 other words.
  • Microsoft issues three critical alerts - Maybe I've mentioned some of these patches already, but once again :) Microsoft has released three new patches, all for problems which it rates as 'critical' - the highest level of security alert.  The first fixes two serious problems in Internet Explorer 5 and above. Exploiting both flaws, a hacker could build malware onto a web page that would be automatically run on a computer using the unpatched browser. The second addresses an unchecked buffer in Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), which are part of Window's database handling capabilities. This flaw can be exploited either by a web page containing malware or code received via email. Number three is a re-issue of a critical DirectX patch for versions 5.2 and above. It covers a problem with the DirectShow section of the software.
  • Officials Look to Unearth Internet Worm Writers  - They write menacing software with names like "Blaster," "Welchia" and "Sobig" that worm around the Internet leaving destruction in their path, and on Thursday detectives and computer security firms were hot on their trail. Computer virus writers have unleashed an unprecedented outbreak of computer worms this past week and while finding them will not be easy, experts generally believe they are ego-filled computing geeks out to impress others. "Every major law enforcement agency is looking into this. At the end of the day, we want to prosecute," said a cyber crime investigator at the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, who asked to remain anonymous.
  • Net anonymity service back-doored - The popular Java Anonymous Proxy (JAP), used to anonymise one's comings and goings across the Internet, has been back-doored by court order. The service is currently logging access attempts to a particular, and unnamed, Web site and reporting the IP addys of those who attempt to contact it to the German police.
  • Using Spyware to Report Pirates? - Software has been making surreptitious checks for "piracy" for over a decade, yet these checks are usually limited to the software itself, and not data on the user's machine. Do you feel software publishers should have the right to peer into users data, if their software suspects foul play on the machine, or should it do the easy and intelligent thing and just stop working?
  • Fuji unveils 0.8in hard disk - Japan's Fuji Electric this month revealed the latest development in the ongoing shrinkage of hard disks: the 2cm (0.8in) platter. The current standard in micro disks is the 2.5cm (1in) platter.  Drives based on the platter are already in development, Fuji said, though commercial products are still some way off. Fuji expects them to be used in handheld devices like cellphones and PDAs, which have traditionally been drive-less products. Each platter is fractionally larger than 2cm and just 0.4mm thick. The magnetic medium Fuji is using provides a data density of 80Gb per square inch, allowing the disk to offer an unformatted capacity of 6GB.
  • Motorola unveils eight handsets and one 'secret weapon' - According to sources, the V690 is made by Chi Mei Communication Systems (CMCS). It features a 128×160 color panel, a hidden antenna, a digital camera with built-in flash-light and support for video streaming. It will be targeted at the Asia-Pacific region initially. Other handsets launched by Motorola include the A835, its second WCDMA 3G handset. It features multi-call function, A-GPS, MMS support, built-in Bluetooth, MPEG-4 support and MP3 functionality. According to the vendor, its maximum download speed is 384 Kbps, with a maximum upload speed at 64 Kbps.
  • Pricing for Athlon 64 leaks - When AMD introduces its 3200+ (2GHz) Athlon 64 on the 23rd September, it will charge around $399 for the single channel DDR 754 pin model. In October, it will introduce a 3400+ version of the chip. And its Athlon 64 FX, which is a 940 pin dual channel DDR chip, is expected to cost over $650, but will not use AMD's "PR" rating.
  • The Envy of Mobile Gamers  - The ability to take PC gaming on the go is not recent, but it's only recently that such gaming got good. Now VoodooPC is trying to make it near great. As with the vendor's desktop systems, the VoodooPC Envy M460 Gamebook is both cool-looking-eight exotic colors are available-and pricey at $3,299. Despite the flashy colors, this is far more than a vanity box. Inside are two new mobile milestones: The ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 GPU and a desktoplike 7,200-rpm 60GB hard drive. The screen is a bright, crisp, 15-inch SXGA+ unit (1,400-by-1,050). Games and video both look stellar, making this panel a perfect companion for the new Radeon, with its 64MB of 333-MHz DDR SDRAM. MPEG blockiness is nicely controlled by the chip, and 3-D performance is aided by the 12 pixel-shader operations per cycle.
  • Maximize Performance and Image Quality  - The first thing you're going to need is a tool called FRAPS, made by Rod Maher, who lives down under in Australia. FRAPS is essentially a frame rate speedometer. The app counts page-flips, which occur every time a new frame of animation is displayed on-screen. Each of the page-flips comprises one frame per second. FRAPS had been freeware/donateware for a long time, but starting with version 2.0, it's now a commercial app that costs $30 bucks to register....
  • Take a Walk on the High End 24-bit Audio Side - High-end PC sound cards can deliver 24-bit sound quality at up to frequencies of 192 kHz. Two suppliers dominate the high-end category: Creative and Terratec. THG have tested several of their cards' that are geared for the highend sector: Creative's Audigy 2 Platinum EX and the Audigy Platinum and Terratec's Aureon Sky and Aureon Space. Their tests show how the two vendors' offerings meet the demands of the cream-of-the-crop category.
  • ATi FireGL X1 Vs. NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000 - HotHardware has a showcase with benchmarks on the ATi FireGL X1 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000.
  • Image Quality Showdown: ATI vs. NVIDIA - NVIDIA and ATI's latest graphics cards are more than capable performers, but how do they compare in the visual quality arena?  See who comes out on top in this article.
  • NVIDIA Detonator FX 45.23 -  With its new driver v45.23, NVIDIA attempts to do more than just address issues associated with a few games. NVIDIA says the v45.23 is the first driver based on its own optimization guidelines. THG compared the new driver with its predecessor, the v44.03.
  • MSN Messenger upgrade blocks Trillian  - According to Neowin.net, Microsoft is forcing people to upgrade to newer versions of its instant messenger application and is shutting its doors to third-party IM products such as Trillian.
  • Nero SIPPS 2.0.42.13b - Key features of SIPPS: Very good sound quality at a low bandwidth Easy accessible functions, also for beginners Free registration at our registrar server Encryption technology, so that there is no danger of calls being overheard Easy-to-use answering machine with remote inquiry feature Telephone conferences with up to two other parties Call recording Compatible with MSN Messenger (in development stage) A variety of user interfaces (skins) Custom ringing tones Continuous product development and regular up.
  • Media Player Classic 6.4.6.0 - Media Player Classic (Win9X/ME ~ Win2k/XP) 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. It supports viewing through ActiveX controls of Real and QuickTime files.
  • VideoLAN 0.6.2 - The VideoLAN Client can read the stream from the network and display it. It can also be used to display video read locally on the computer : DVDs, VCDs, MPEG and DivX files and from a satellite card. It is multi-plaform: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Solaris, QNX, iPaq... The VideoLAN Client and Server now have a full IPv6 support.
  • Miranda 0.3.1 Beta - Miranda IM (download) is a multi protocol instant messenger client for Windows. Miranda IM uses very little memory and is extremely fast. It requires no installation and can be fitted on a single floppy disc. Its powerful plugin system makes Miranda IM very flexible. Only the most basic features are built in, but there are currently more than 150 free plugins available for download that allows users to extend the functionality of Miranda IM.
  • Zoom Player Version 3.20 Beta 2 - Zoom Player (download) is a robust Media and DVD Front-End Player. It was designed to be simple at first glance while being remarkably dynamic and flexible when used to its full potential and works in two modes. A Media mode which can play any file supported by DirectShow (any file which plays in MediaPlayer) and a DVD mode which uses pre-installed DirectShow DVD filters to play DVD content.
  • Dell ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Driver 7.91.2 - Dell's FTP has now offers a new ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 driver v7.91.2.
  • Sony DRU-510A and DRX-510UL DSS v1.0 utility - Sony have released a new utility that allows you to optimize the read/write speed of your DRU-510A and DRX-510UL DVD/CD rewritable drives only. (thanks Warp2Search)
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