Latest News - Page 2858

It wasn't long ago when Sandisk unveiled the world's first SSD with 4TB capacity, but now we're hearing about 8TB and 16TB SSDs - things that should really begin to excite everyone.

The storage giant believes that flash-based storage devices will begin leaving mechanically driven HDDs for dust when it comes to both performance, and capacity - in at least one market segment. Mission-critical storage applications are very important, as is the entire enterprise storage market. Sandisk now plans 6TB and 8TB drives by next year.

Sandisk has confirmed 6TB and 8TB Optimus Max SSDs for next year, but even better, we have 16TB drives on the map for 2016. Right now, the price per GB is still higher than most would like it - sitting at around $2 per GB for consumer SSDs. But by 2017, this will drop to close to $0.50, which is when we should see some gigantic, and much cheaper SSDs.

Google has been slapped by a class-action lawsuit, accusing the company of forcing smartphone manufacturers to use the Google search engine by default. Google's alleged actions ultimately led to higher smartphone devices, which hurts customers and their ability to purchase devices at lower prices.

"It's clear that Google has not achieved this monopoly through offering a better search engine, but through its strategic, anti-competitive placement, and it doesn't take a forensic economist to see that this evidence of market manipulation," said Steve Berman, Hagens Berman attorney. "Simply put, there is no lawful, pro-competitive reason for Google to condition license to pre-load popular Google apps like this."

The class-action lawsuit was filed by the Berkeley-based lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California - and says manufacturers have to agree to the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA), so Google apps are available pre-installed.

Most have been wondering when we'll see the Oculus Rift headset released to consumers, with that all being thrown up in the air after Facebook acquired the VR startup. Well, that announcement has been made at the Facebook F8 developer conference.

Oculus VR has said that it will release the Rift to consumers next year, but there are a few big, and good reasons why we're not getting it this year. The company is hiding an even better Rift inside the secret "Valve Room" in its Irvine, California-based HQ. Crystal Cove is the best public display of Rift so far, but this new Rift in the "special room" is reportedly even better.

Chris Dixon, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, talked about this next-gen prototype, saying: "Crystal Cove is 50% of what they are running in LA. You go into a room. It's a special room. Fancier headset. ... In user testing it gets to a level of realism where almost all people feel that it's realistic". He continued: "Imagine everything you can see now, but it's a little bit pixelated. Eventually that [pixelation] will go away".

We knew it was coming, with a tease yesterday that the next Call of Duty would be centered around a private military corporation (PMC), but now Activision has officially announced Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare takes the first-person shooter in a new direction, with the PMC that has turned on the United States government. This organization is led by Frank Underwood Kevin Spacey, who plays the villian of COD: Advanced Warfare. The new game allows players to use an exoskeleton, and much more.

The trailer above also shows off some hoverbikes, weaponized mech suits - something similar to Titanfall - funnily enough, from ex-Infinity Ward co-founders who formed Respawn Entertainment. Sledgehammer Games has said that it has concentrated on next-gen consoles and PC for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, with the game coming out on November 4, 2014 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Microsoft is again warning Internet users of a sophisticated scam, with the company most notably discussing tech support scams. In this particular type of scam, a caller will be informed of an infected laptop or PC, which can be cleaned up if the user pays a "hefty fee" for service.

A scammer that ran this type of Microsoft tech support scam operation in the UK and received a four-month suspended sentence - a lenient sentence that he likely wouldn't have received in the United States - with many scammers going unchecked by law enforcement.

"What's really alarming is that this type of scam shows no signs of slowing down," Microsoft said in a blog post. "Increasingly, we hear via our frontline support team, and even from friends and family, that these scammers are getting bolder, targeting not only individuals but also businesses. It is appalling that they're taking advantage of your trust in Microsoft in an attempt to steal your money. It's immoral, it's disrespectful and it's certainly illegal."

Blu Products has been making all sorts of smartphones that run Android and are affordable to buy off contract for a while. The latest offering from the company has surfaced and it is called the Blu Life Pure XL. This phone is notable because it has a high-end Snapdragon 800 processor.

Often Blu's devices have lower performing hardware inside. The phone has a 16MP rear sensor that is 1/2.3-inch for higher quality photos. The front camera on the smartphone is an 8MP auto focus unit. The Snapdragon 800 processor is paired with a quad-core Krait 400 GPU. The OS is Android 4.2.

The smartphone has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. A cheaper version of the phone can be had with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The screen is a 5.5-inch unit with 401ppi and full HD resolution. NFC technology is integrated for easy pairing. The smartphone is available as of today at Amazon for $399 for the 32GB version with 3GB of RAM. On May 9, the 16GB storage and 2GB of RAM version will launch for $349.

Dell has pulled the wraps off some new computer systems including new Inspiron notebooks and All in One PCs. The new notebooks include the Inspiron 14, 15, and 17 5000 series notebook computers. Dell is aiming these machines at students that need a laptop they can take around campus. The 15 and 17-inch machines in the series have backlit keyboards and full HD touch displays.

Those touch screens support 10-finger touch and have scroll, zoom, and tap. The laptops have various 4th Gen Intel Core processors and battery life of up to 8 hours for the Inspiron 14. The Inspiron 15 is good for runtime of up to 7 hours and 33 minutes. The new AIO machines include the Dell Inspiron 20 and 23. The 23 uses 4th generation Core processors and have full HD displays.

They also have 10-point finger capacitive touch. The Inspiron 20 AIO uses Intel or AMD processors and both AIO machines have MaxxAudio for improved audio playback. All of the notebooks are available as of now with both AIO machines landing on May 6. The Inspiron 14 will start at $749.99, the 15 starts at $649.99, and the 17 starts at $449.99. The Inspiron 23 AIO starts at $579.99 with the 20 using AMD power starting at $449.99 and the Intel version starting at $579.99.

Eve: Valkyrie is set to become one of the biggest games of the year, especially since it will launch alongside the Oculus Rift when it arrives to consumers (hopefully) before the year is out.

CCP, the developer behind the game, has just announced that the game has moved from the Unity engine, over to Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. CCP has ditched everything it had from the Unity engine, building the game from the ground up on Unreal Engine 4. Eve: Valkyrie's Lead Game Designer, Chris Smith, explains: "It gives us familiarity. It gives us a great engine, I've worked in Unreal before. It gives us ready made accessibility into the market".

He continued: "I'm not a business person, so for me it's just a great engine that renders a great game. It allows me to express what I need to express on a tool I'm familiar with. On the code side, everyone seems to be adapting very quick. What you're seeing today is from nothing in January to now. We had a great demo before, but turning it into a real boy? Something that you want to play a thousand times that has systems that can be expanded upon... this is the game now".

When GameSpy announced the plan to shut down its multiplayer client service, many game developers were looking to find an alternative solution to replace the now defunct multiplayer client. Many of the older games were still being played, so it became a necessity to get a replacement.

Today, sources point out that Halo: Combat Evolved whose multiplayer action was powered by GameSpy is now replaced by GameRanger.

It is also now known that Electronic Arts, 2K, Activision, Epic Games and Bohemia interactive will be migrating its game's multiplayer client to GameRanger once GameSpy shuts down on May 31st.

Google has struck quite the cord with consumers with its Nexus line of smartphones, but what will the Nexus 6 materialize into? According to the latest rumors, Google will continue production with LG as it did with the last two Nexus smartphones, with the Nexus 6 being based off of the upcoming, and unannounced G3 smartphone.

The company has confirmed it will be launching the Nexus 6 in the second half of this year, which it has done with the previous two Nexus smartphones. The Nexus 6 will reportedly feature a fingerprint scanner, like Apple's iPhone 5S and Samsung's Galaxy S5. We should expect some serious horsepower, with a 5.2-inch QHD display, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 505 SoC which will see a quad-core processor clocked at 2.7GHz, 3GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of on-board flash storage.

LG will reportedly bake a 5.5-inch QHD panel onto its G3, so a 5.2-inch panel on the Nexus 6 would see a slight shrink. We should also expect the Nexus 6 to see the next major version of Android on-board, hopefully arriving with Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is going to be one hefty first-person shooter, with it requiring a massive 50GB of HDD space. Not only that, but you're going to require 64-bit Windows 7 or Windows 8, and a very up-to-date CPU.

The game requires an Intel Core i7 processor, or AMD equivalent, with GPU requirements being much more relaxed: just an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460, or AMD Radeon HD 6850. Next-gen consoles don't escape the huge storage requirements, with around 47GB being used by Wolfenstein: The New Order on the PS4 and Xbox One consoles.

Wolfenstein: The New Order joins a growing list of games that require a serious amount of HDD space, with Titanfall using around 50GB, Battlefield 4 using countless 1s and 0s, too.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), currently the No. 1 mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion in the world, has sued an alleged Internet pirate, seeking $32 million in damages. Steven Messina, 27, is accused of uploading 141 UFC pay-per-view (PPV) events to The Pirate Bay and other online websites - and even included a PayPal donation link for his troubles.

Messina was able to operate below the radar until he started claiming to be the "Provider of Best MMA & Boxing rips online!," which is when the UFC began to take notice.

UFC President Dana White has talked sternly against Internet piracy, and seems ready to share the same Draconian approach that music and movie copyright holders held years ago. However, people trying to monetize on pirated PPV events should expect to be busted eventually, especially if their operation continues to grow at a rapid pace.

While Google Glass has been regarded as a major advancement in wearable technology, the general public has been, for the most part, hesitant to purchase a pair of Google Glasses themselves. While I am sure that there are thousands of early adopters, techies, and trend followers who have dived head first into the world of Glass, the $1500 price tag makes it very hard for many consumers to swallow, including myself.

According to new estimates, Google Glass is only comprised of about $80 in components which leaves one to wonder why exactly the new technology is worth the $1500 premium that Google has placed on it. Now before anyone jumps on me, I am sure that manufacturing, packaging and marketing cost are factored in as well, but at tops, I see Glass being worth only about $350-500. I also get that Google needs to recoup some of the R&D cost on Glass, but even then a $550-700 price tag would see fair.

When Teardown.com broke Google Glass down piece by piece, the company itemized each part and figured out the fair-market value on each component. Looking at the bill of materials below the most expensive piece of the whole device is its processor, coming in at $13.96, and the next highest component being the non electronic parts including the frame and such which accounted for an additional $13.63. Overall the entire list comes out to just under $80, and assuming that Google orders these parts by the tens of thousands, I am willing to bet they only pay about $50-60 per Glass device they ship.

Forty-five years ago, a group of former executives from the then industry leader, Fairchild Semiconductor, broke ground on a company that would eventually become the second largest chip maker in the world. I am of course talking about Advanced Micro Devices or more commonly known as AMD. AMD's founding members include: Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger.

Today AMD is a massive powerhouse in the tech world and is responsible for many of the PCs that you are reading this story on. For many others, AMD is the fuel behind the intense gaming session they had last night, and even the reason so many got into custom PCs in the first place. My first custom built PC was based around an affordable AMD processor, and without such consumer-focused company, I may not be here today writing this article. So from the bottom of my heart, and everyone here at TweakTown, Happy Birthday AMD!

EMC Corporation just announced a new addition to the VNXe product line, an entry-level VNXe3200 storage array that starts out under $12,000. Available in Q2 of 2014, the new VNXe3200 is touted to be three times the performance of the previous VNXe models. It is designed to take advantage of new flash technology via the EMC FAST (Fully-Automated Storage Tiering) software which makes it well suited for virtual applications. Each VNXe has a maximum capacity of 200TB and is capable of both NAS and SAN. Several pre-configured bundles are available on the EMC online store and the entry-level bundle appears to be configured for 3.6TB of raw capacity.

The new VNXe features include:

In addition to the new VNXe product, EMC also announced an upcoming security feature enhancement for the VNXe family, Data-At-Rest-Encryption for VNX (VNX D@RE). Using controller-based encryption, it is designed to help customers eliminate data access from unauthorized drive removal and supports any drive type, speed and capacity. The new encryption feature is expected to be available on the new VNX Series as a non-disruptive software upgrade in the third quarter of 2014.

Over the last year or so, we have heard companies like NVIDIA and Valve both brag about how local game streaming is the future of home PC gaming, but very few of us has had the chance to experience it first hand. That is about to change though as Valve has just announced that it has opened up its Steam in-home game streaming beta to the public.

In-home game streaming works by linking up two PCs on the same home network, and using the Steam Client to stream the game from one PC to another. While this may sound novel to some, it is actually quite cool. This would allow a steam user to play a game on their big screen TV without having to lug their gaming PC into the family room. Valve says that users wishing to try out the feature need to pay close attention to the recommended hardware for things to work properly.

Valve recommends at minimum, a quad-core CPU, h.264 compatible GPU, and 4GB of RAM on the host PC, while the client PC needs to at minimum feature a h.264 compatible GPU. Wired Gigabit Ethernet is a must, and a direct connection to the router by both PCs is optimum, meaning several switch hops could induce unwanted latency into the system. To try out in-home game streaming for yourself, head over to the In-Home Streaming group on Steam that has been linked below.

When Activision rolled out Skylanders and it was a smash hit and generated big money in recurring sales for the action figures in addition to software sales, competitors were certain to try to get in on that action. Disney stepped up not long after with its Disney Infinity game that let gamers put their favorite Disney characters into a game.

Disney is now getting ready to launch a new version of its game called Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes. The game will have over 20 new interactive figures and the Avengers are part of the crew. The game itself will have original storylines written by comic book author Brian Michael Bendis.

The game will also have a toy box mode that lets players create and share custom levels. Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, and Hawkeye will debut this fall along with the game. Additional characters will come later. Versions for PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, and Xbox One will be offered when the game launches this fall.

Right now the biggest consumer HDD you can buy is 6TB, but what will 2015 bring? Well, Seagate is looking into the future, with its Chief Executive Officer, Steve Luczo, teasing a roadmap to 10TB... something that could happen next year.

During Seagate's most recent earnings call, the CEO promised to move from the current highest 3.5-inch mechanical drive capacity of 6TB, right up to 10TB very soon. Luczo said to analysts: "I just don't see those price erosions sustaining themselves, given the capacity points that we have to deliver over the next year. Going from 6 to 8 to 10 terabytes, that's a lot of technical investment as you know, it's also a lot of test investment".

Don't get too excited though, as the shift to these gigantic HDDs would be made available in limited quantities. Luczo continued: "As you get to the 6 and the 8 and the 10TB drives, the lead time on those drives is going to be pretty significant whether or not that's wafer-related or whether or not that's test related. So you are not going to kind of be able to call up and say "by the way I need an extra 500,000 8TBs I forgot to order," because they are just not going to be there and the industry can't respond that quickly".

From today onwards, those who now purchase selected NVIDIA GTX desktop video cards can now get a copy of Watch Dogs. The video cards that qualify for this game are NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN, 780 Ti, 780, 770, 760, 690, 680, 670, 660 Ti and 660 desktop GPUs.

The promotion has started from today onwards, and will be available for a limited time through retailers like Amazon and NewEgg. Once you receive the code, you can redeem it via Ubisoft's Uplay digital store. However, you can only start playing the game on May 27th.

Its not really surprising to see Watch Dogs being bundled with newer video cards. Watch Dogs is optimized keeping NVIDIA in mind as it includes certain enhancements such as TXAA and HBAO+, similar to what was found in games such as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.

Micron Technology may hike its prices of DRAM chips by May as their inventory levels are running low and the supply of DRAM from other manufacturers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix is also insufficient.

Few memory device makers have also reported that Micron has already raised its quotes to reflect the short supplies of DRAM chips. What also makes it worse that other DRAM manufacturing leaders are having issues of their own.

Samsung is affected by low production output of DRAM chips because of its migration towards 25nm process. Because of this, the South Korean based company is having tough times to meet with PC OEM contract orders. Samsung said that it is expecting a more balanced DRAM supply and demand by 2014, along with strong consumer and enterprise SSD demand to accelerate the process.