Latest News - Page 2753

CES 2015 - We visited Thermaltake here at the Consumer Electronics Show 2015 in Las Vegas, where we were taken around their suite to check out all of the various goodies they had on offer.

Starting with the Core X9, something I hadn't seen in person until today, which is a gigantic slab of chassis beauty. The Core X9 is quite a large case, supports DIY liquid cooling solutions, plenty of cooling options, and so much more.

The biggest point with the Core X9 is that it is stackable, so you can place one on top of the other for dual system action.

CES 2015 - Intel is pushing further into the wearables market after announcing a strategic partnership with eyewear maker Oakley. Intel will provide hardware and Oakley is going to roll out luxury and sports eyewear products mixed with smart technology - a great test platform for Intel's Curie ship.

"The product has to be authentic for us to be credible," said Colin Baden, CEO of Oakley, during a session at the Oakley booth. "If we are going to produce something that has this augmented experience, we can't have the front row laughing at us. We have to have the respect of the people who have represented us for the last 40 years, and if we fail at that, then we are making something that is novelty. And we are not about novelties. We are about real science and real technology."

CES 2015 has seen a large number of wearable-related news, as companies produce cheaper, functional smart devices.

Based on the Games Workshop Warhammer board game, UK indie developer Chilled Mouse have just announced their Steam release of Warhammer Quest - due to hit the e-shelves on January the 7th, 2015.

The basics of this game have been described in their recently issued press release as - "Lead a party of brave adventurers through the dangerous winding dungeons of the Warhammer world in the search for wealth and glory, as players uncover and explore new settlements. In their quest for legendary weapons, players encounter enemies including evil Night Goblins, dangerous Orcs, gigantic River Trolls and hordes of the evil Skaven, hellbent on destroying the band of adventurers."

As with any game looking to keep its player base - You level up your heroes through battle, gaining new abilities, spells and blessings along the way as you continue on the path to become one of the Heroes of the Legend and play as various races including the Marauders, Dwarf IronBreakers, Grey Wizards and Wood Elf Waywatchers.

CES 2015 - Performance hardware company Mushkin has announced its STRIKER series of solid state drives, with read and write speeds up to 565MB/s and 550MB/s.

The drives will be available in storage capacities ranging from 240GB up to 960GB, but pricing details weren't released. Utilizing the Phison PS3110-S10 controller, the STRIKER SSDs have the following specifications: quad-core, 8-channel, 256-bit AES encryption, SATA 3.0 support, high-speed MLC NAND, 2.5" 7mm form factor, and user-upgradeable firmware.

The Mushkin STRIKER SSD series will launch during Q1 2015 in all size capacities.

CES 2015 - Audio maker Scosche publicly launched its sportCLIP collection of earbuds for athletes and active people. The company showed its sportCLIP BT Bluetooth headset and sportCLIP 3 with tapIT remote and mic during CES 2015.

The earbuds promise good quality sound with integrated controls so wearers can play/pause music, skip tracks and adjust volume directly with controls located on the cable.

The Scosche sportCLIP BT and sportCLIP 3 will be available during Q1 2015 for $79.99 MSRP and $34.99 MSRP.

CES 2015 - 3D printing specialist MakerBot is attending CES 2015 to help promote its MakerBot 3D Ecosystem, designed to drive interest and innovation in the booming 3D market.

The company is promoting new MakerBot PLA composite filaments, MakerBot 3D Professional Services, a new mobile true remote printing and monitoring service, and the MakerBot Kit for MODO 801. Its PLA composite filaments will be available in late 2015, the company noted.

"We know there is a lot of hype around 3D printing," noted Jenny Lawton, CEO of MakerBot. "We also know that 3D printing is not plug-and-play. It can be challenging and that is why a major emphasis is on creating a MakerBot 3D Ecosystem that helps make 3D printing easier and more accessible. At CES, we want to ground the hype and showcase how educators, businesses and real users have incorporated MakerBot 3D printing into their daily work and lives."

CES 2015 - Sennheiser has launched its URBANITE XL Wireless headphones during CES 2015, offering the new headphones to deliver high-quality sound.

The headphones make use of the apt-X codec and has Bluetooth and NFC support to mobile users. A touch control panel is located on the right ear cup so wearers can easily adjust volume, skip tracks, and receive and make phone calls. Voice prompts also are available.

With the Sennheiser URBANITE series, we've created a range of headphones that deliver an emotional, powerful club sound on the movie," said Dr. Christian Em, director of product management at Sennheiser. "But the generation of Millennials knows more and demands more. Now we can offer the URBANITE design including wireless freedom."

CES 2015 - Six15 Technologies has introduced a new wearable headset designed for heads-up data delivery and text messaging during CES 2015. The glasses allow wearers to maintain their situational awareness while out and about, because they don't need to look down at a mobile device.

The new glasses connect to a device via Bluetooth and have a built-in rechargeable battery that provides up to 1,500 text messages sent and received during one battery charge. Six15 will release thermal and visible cameras for the headset, designed to assist in using business applications.

"Our glasses are a more realistic and less obtrusive application to wearable tech and head-mounted displays, unlike other devices currently in the market that have struggled to go mainstream," said Rich Ryan, CEO of Six15 Technologies. "Merging some of the capabilities we have delivered to defense customers with some of the key attributes of the consumer market, our new device is a testament to how advanced technologies can provide solutions to a wide range of problems from everyday issues, to safety in a warehouse, to critical medical data in an ER, to GPS displays for first responders."

CES 2015 - Audio company A-Audio has unveiled the Rose Gold Lyric On-Ear Headphones during CES, the first addition to its LUX line.

The headphones have a diamond-quilted leather band and octagonal bezels located on each ear cup. The ear cups have memory foam padding to better isolate sound and still feel comfortable. A-Audio also provided dual jacks so owners can share music with friends, along with 40mm customer drivers and anti-vibration aluminum.

The headphones will be available for early-access in February, sporting a $199 MSRP.

CES 2015 - Optoma announced it acquired NuForce at the end of 2014, and didn't waste any time before adding to the NuForce line, launching the NE750M and NE800M earbuds. It's good to see Optoma decide to continue expanding the NuForce product line in 2015, and launching something so quickly after the acquisition.

The NE750M are made up with an aluminum body that was designed to be comfortable and durable. Owners can answer and disconnect from calls directly through the earbuds, along with navigating their playlist.

The NE800M are made from carbon fiber, promising reduced vibrations that help provide a clearer sound quality. With a frequency response from 10Hz to 40kHz, there is a bit of additional sound quality delivered when compared to the NE750M.

CES 2015 -Seagate has managed to fit 500GB into an amazingly slim external hard drive. The aptly-named Seven is only 7mm thick, and is intended for users on the go who require plenty of storage capacity. The Seven connects via the speedy USB 3.0 interface, and is manufactured from premium steel to withstand the rigors of portable use. Even with its rugged exterior the Seven manages to be aesthetically pleasing and feather light.

The Seven is thin even in comparison to a modern smartphone, and below we can see the size of one of the first 500GB HDDs. Storage has certainly came a long way, and with SSD manufacturers beginning to encroach upon the external storage market Seagate is upping their game to compete by offering the highest capacity available in external storage devices, and now also the thinnest.

The city of Shenyang, the largest city in Northeast China with more than 6 million residents, could have been home base for the North Korean government's secretive Bureau 121 hacker group, according to defector Kim Heung-Kwang.

Kim left North Korea in 2004 and previously served as a computer science professor in Pyongyang, saying some of his students graduated and began hacking for the North Korean government.

"Bureau 121 began its large-scale operation in China in 2005," Kim recently said in an interview published by CNN. It was established in the late 90s. Team members entered China separately - in smaller groups - 20 members at a time. When they entered China, they came under different titles. For example an office worker, an official with a trade company or even as a diplomatic staffer."

Storage Visions 2015 -Chris Bross from DriveSavers stopped by the TweakTown booth to discuss the latest in data recovery technology. Increasing HDD capacity presents numerous problems, both with storing data and with recovering it. We also recently had the opprutunity to tour DriveSavers labs, and covered the data recovery process in our DriveSavers Data Recovery Site Tour - Your Data, Recovered article.

New drive technologies, such as helium drives and SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recovery), add another layer of complexity that DriveSavers has to master to continue to offer data recovery services. New types of software layers and filesystems also present more hurdles, but DriveSavers maintains close contact with all storage vendors to enhance their data recovery services.

CES 2015 -HDDs are evolving to address new challenges in the datacenter, and the Seagate Kinetic line offers a radical new way of improving performance and reducing TCO. Hyperscale customers are constantly looking for refined systems to lower operating costs, and new data storage methods to address the massive influx of data.

Kinetic drives interact with an open-source Seagate-developed API that eschews normal filesystem implementations in favor of more robust Key/Value Object storage. The Kinetic platform also dramatically reduces host overhead and removes CPU processing from the majority of tasks.

The Kinetic drives are physically similar to normal HDDs, but connect via a dual Ethernet connection. This provides multipath and fail-over capabilities. The drives can also perform disk-to-disk data migration and other tasks independently.

Storage Visions 2015 -Shawn DuBravac from the CEA stopped by the booth to discuss market trends and challenges facing the broader PC market. The emergence of mobile devices has challenged the PC market, but growth has returned as users are upgrading their computers to new operating systems. Tablets were projected to kill the PC market, but sales of tablets have actually began to decline.

CEA organizes CES, the world's largest tradeshow, but is also an ANSI accredited standards body. They also feature several policy groups and research firms. As the internet of things expands, CEA is tracking market trends. There are many theoretical uses for embedded sensors, and this will eventually result in over 50 billion devices connected to the internet. Shawn discusses some of the emerging trends.

Storage Visions 2015 -Mike Chen from Marvell stopped by the TweakTown booth at Storage Visions 2015 to display the Altaplus controller along with a new SSD that has an integrated controller on the NAND package. NVMe has several performance advantages, but also enables low power operation modes particularly well-suited for mobile applications. Marvell is delivering both PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 SSD controllers that feature robust LDPC error correction technology.

There are multiple lengths in the M.2 standard, and here we can see the difference in size between the different solutions.

Using a standard SD card for scale we can observe the amazingly small size of this NAND package. What makes this solution unique is the fact that it is actually a fully functional SSD. The controller is embedded into the NAND chip, which allows for ultra-dense configurations. This small SSD contains 128GB of Toshiba flash.

Storage Visions 2015 -Dinesh Bahal from Sandisk stopped by the TweakTown booth to discuss Sandisk's latest offering, the SSD Plus. The SSD Plus is an entry-level SSD based upon second-generation 19nm NAND.

The SSD Plus comes in 120 and 240GB capacities, and is geared specifically for the entry-level market with a price of $70 and $110. Sandisk also announced the mSATA variant of the Ultra II. The mSATA Ultra II comes in capacities of 128, 256, and 512GB. It will retail for $74, $116, and $221 and will reach the market this quarter. Both SSDs also come wich Sandisk's toolbox, which eases data migration and simplifies drive management tasks.

NFC is a fantastic addition to any audio or technology device, unless you own an Apple product. All you've got to do is enable it, tap your phone on the system and you're connected and good to go in a matter of seconds. Don't believe me? Take a look at our overview of the Artic S113BT and see how easy it is on my Samsung Galaxy S4.

Patriot's BeatStreet has this great feature, but you can also connect it to your device through general Bluetooth methods or even a 3.5mm AUX cable, enabling you to listen to your tunes as you please. As with most of these products, it's charged via a microUSB port located at the rear of the device and features the ability to work as a hands-free device for your smartphone.

Daring to be a little different, the Patriot BeatStreet also doubles as a clock, giving you a white light display at the top of the product.

Following suit of their high performance/high capacity flash drives, Patriot are extending their SSD series - launching the Ignite.

The Patriot Ignite SATA III SSD is claimed by Patriot in their latest press release as "one of the fastest drives available, the Ignite has record shattering speeds and impressive capacities to boost PC performance at a cost efficient value." Being released in 480GB and 960GB versions, these SSDs are Patriot's largest offerings yet.

To help you fill your spacious drive and access your programs as fast as possible, the "Patriot Ignite utilizes the new Phison S10 controller to reach a maximum sequential read and write speeds of up to 560MB/s and 545MB/s respectively and backed by a SATA III 6.0 Gb/s interface." This speed and storage comes at a price however, with the 480GB edition set to cost you $214.99 on release this month alongside it's bigger brother, the 960GB, which will cost users $404.99.

If quick and easy storage is on your mind, Patriot have just announced the release of their next-generation Supersonic Magnum and Rage USB flash drives. Both of these products feature USB 3.0 capabilities and massive storage options.

First off the rank is the Supersonic Magnum 2, 3.0 USB Flash Drive - boasting read and write speeds reaching 400MB/s and 300MB/s. As quoted in a recent press release, "it's the fastest high capacity/high performance USB flash drive on the market". They aren't joking about high capacity either, with 256GB and 512GB options to be released all wrapped up in their study matte black industrial grade metal housing.

Said to be able to withstand forces of 15Gs, this product also comes with a handy detachable cap to help keep everything clean - however you'll likely lose it as always seems to happen with these products.