Latest News - Page 3221

A-DATA has today announced a very cool self-developed application it calls OStoGO. This allows one to easily set up an A-DATA branded USB Flash Drive to install Windows 7; particularly handy if the user doesn't have an optical drive and / or likes to decrease the install time by using a quality high-speed flash drive.

As to whether or not the application will work for other branded flash drives is not known for sure. The application will be released in early November.

For PCs without optical drives such as Netbooks, UMPCs and MIDs, installing a new OS could be a time-consuming task. With A-DATA OStoGO software, users are capable of converting bootable DVD to USB flash drive and install OS themselves via bootable USB flash directly. Featuring user-friendly interface (UI) and one-click-conversion, OStoGO can easily solve your installation issues by three simple steps. First, insert your Windows 7 DVD(*1) into optical drive. Second, plug your A-DATA USB connector into a USB port. Thirdly, specify drive letter and click start. Then, the Windows 7 setup system is fully transferred into the USB flash drive(*2)! Now you can setup windows 7 at a blazing booting speed by A-DATA USB flash drive!

The move to Solid-State for storage is an inevitability, we all know it is coming (in fact really it is here). The issue now revolves around how this will be delivered to the consumer. Will it be in a standard form factor like SATA or SAS? Or sill it show up in a more...interesting format.

Something like the Fusion-io's PCI-e interface. This concept has enabled Fusion-io to provide some very impressive performance numbers. This is of course due to the fact that they are not held up by the SATA or SAS controller but can access the bandwidth of the PCI-e bus directly. The problem is that this method is not inexpensive to make. As such the cost of owning one it also very high (which is a huge understatement).

But Fusion-IO is looking to try to bridge the gap between their ridiculously overprices enterprise class cards and the enthusiast's wallet. These new cards will be labeled the Fusion-io ioXtreme and ioXtreme Pro. On the surface the only differences are cosmetic. Internally they are very different. The Pro Version allows you to setup multiple cards in a RAID setup while the ioXtreme is for single drive setups.

Intel recently launched a new firmware for their 34nm SSD drives. Unfortunately, as of last night, there seems to be a growing number of people that are finding their expensive solid-state drives dead after the installation. The sequence of events seems to follow these lines;

Firmware updated successfully, reboot into windows, new drivers/updated drivers installed, reboot, disk mount failure. This issue has popped on more than a few forums including HardOCP and Intel's community support forum.

As of this writing no one seems to know what the direct cause is. Personally I have a feeling that the issue is due to the way the current firmware writes information to the drive, the new one is more-than-likely changing the write and read tables. This could be nothing more than people updating without blanking the drive to ensure that the tables match the state of the drive (all zeroes). We will try to contact Intel about this and see if this is the case. Of course if this is the case I have to wonder why the update utility would not write zeroes to the drive during the update to prevent this. Perhaps (again if this is what is happening) Intel needs to rewrite the installer to do this during the update to prevent future drive failures.

GIGABYTE has today announced seven new P55 based Intel motherboards which include a trio of the latest technologies that GIGABYTE refers to as GIGABYTE 333 Onboard Acceleration.

GIGABYTE's 333 Onboard Acceleration is seen on GIGABYTE's P55 series boards with USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 and 3X USB Power features.

"GIGABYTE is excited to be able to introduce our latest 333 onboard acceleration technologies on our market leading P55 platform," commented Tony Liao, Associate Vice President of Marketing at GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. "Through close cooperation with several industry leaders including NEC Electronics Corporation, Marvell, and Seagate, GIGABYTE is able to provide our customers with several next generation data transfer and storage technologies that will have a far reaching impact on how people interact with their digital media for many years to come."

Late last week we gave you an exclusive look at GIGABYTE's upcoming P55A motherboards. We promised this week we would also give you a look at the upcoming GIGABYTE EX-58 EXTREME2 motherboard.

As with the refreshed P55A motherboards, the EX-58 EXTREME2 motherboard carries the same "333" theme. The triple three theme means that SATA3, USB3 and triple power USB has been added to the new version of the popular EXTREME motherboard for the high-end Core i7 processors.

We covered the three new additions to a lot of detail (with pictures) in our post last week about the new P55A motherboards, so we won't go over all that again here. Instead, just visit the news post here.

Whilst not likely to spark much interest, BlackBerry Storm 2 is set to be released in a few days for $179 after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The official press announcement explaining key features and changes can be located here.

/26/2009 - BASKING RIDGE, NJ, and WATERLOO, ONTARIO - Verizon Wireless and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced that the BlackBerry® Storm2™ smartphone will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications stores, online at www.verizonwireless.com, and through business sales channels beginning Oct. 28. The BlackBerry Storm2 with BlackBerry® OS 5.0 evolves the BlackBerry® touchscreen platform with hundreds of hardware and software enhancements - including new SurePress™ "clickable" display technology and built-in Wi-Fi® - delivering the exceptional multimedia experience and communications capabilities customers have come to expect from their BlackBerry smartphones.

Today we visited the Taiwan Broadband WiMAX 2009 trade show in Taipei City and got a look at a range of different devices and applications which are somehow broadband or WiMAX related.

The Taiwan government has invested a lot of money into WiMAX and it is one of the first countries in the world to have at least quite a bit of this sort of wireless "4G" broadband connectivity available for consumer use.

We saw a range of netbook enabled with WiMAX, along with MIDs and other personal internet devices, but for us, by far the coolest thing we saw at the show was the WiMAX-enabled taxi. It's a next-generation taxi cab that is fully connected with WiMAX. It at first seems kind of futuristic, but this is an actual Taiwanese cab and the person sitting in the driver seat is the owner of the car and a taxi driver. It's in operation right now.

Now that the DirectX 11 capable Windows 7 operating system is officially launched along with the existing availability of AMD/ATI's DX11 capable Radeon 5000 series graphics cards, a few DX11 based tech demos have become available for download on the net.

Middleware developer Unigine has become the first to release a fully functional DX11 demo called "Heaven". It weighs in at 127MB and can be downloaded from FileShack now.

In the benchmark, a disembodied camera pans through a floating fantasy town with grassy hills, paved roadways, and a square with a dragon in the center. The user can press keys to enable or disable tesellation, which increases the polygon count of various objects, from the dragon to walls, floors, and rooftops. The Heaven benchmark also lets you jump into the world and walk around, should you want a closer look at some of the eye candy.

Last Friday Microsoft held its Taiwan Windows 7 launch at the grand Formosa Regency hotel in Taipei City and we just had to go along and check it out and see if there were any surprises in store for us on the hardware side.

Microsoft invited its vast amount of software and hardware partners to showcase their newest products running Redmond's new super doper operating system. There were all-in-one systems, small notebooks (netbooks) and normal notebooks on display for all to see, touch and use.

There was nothing terribly new or exciting on display, but one product that did catch our attention and one that has actually been on the market for some time already, is the Dialogue FlyBook V5 notebook running Windows 7 Ultimate, of course. We haven't seen it before and haven't seen it covered much online before, so we thought we'd tape it.

So the Zune HD launched over a month ago along with a new and improved version of the Zune Desktop and Marketplace. Just before the launch we heard the gang from Redmond telling us how they would stock their version of the App Store with incredible applications and games for the Tegra inside the Zune HD.

However one month later and we have not see even a single new game or App in the Zune Marketplace. This is highly disappointing and a sure way for Microsoft to lose the fight with Apple and their iPod Touch and iPhone. When we reviewed the Zune HD here we found the hardware and performance to be outstanding and more than a match for the Apple offerings (in many cases much better). The problem as we saw it then (and now) is that MS does a terrible job at follow on and marketing.

This is a perfect example; their decision (surely a marketing one) to keep their Marketplace closed has probably driven many developers away from it. Yet MS has not done anything to add to this area either. We do not see any of the graphically impressive 3D games we were promised before launch. We do not see anything.

Coinciding with the launch of Windows 7, ATI has chosen to release its latest Catalyst driver suite, the 9.10s. These are the first Catalyst drivers to bring full official support for AMD/ATI's latest range of Radeon 5800 series GPUs.

Apart from that, there's just the usual run of bug fixes mentioned; nothing in particular regarding performance improvements.

Highlights of resolved issues

(Video at the bottom) Today we were invited to the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei. We were given an exclusive hands-on look at its upcoming and refreshed Intel P55 Express based motherboards for Core i5 and Core i7 Lynnfield based Socket 1156 processors. Namely, we are looking at the P55A-UD6 and the P55A-UD4P.

GIGABYTE had actually planned to implement SATA3 support in its first revision P55 motherboards that were launched back in June around Computex time, but due to some controller issues, a delay was an unfortunate result.

Marvel has since fixed and improved its single disk and RAID 0 supporting SATA3 controller and now we see one of the first motherboards on the market to support the next generation storage system. At the moment, there is no RAID 1 support, but a GIGABYTE product manager mentioned in our meeting that Marvell may come out with a new firmware a little later adding that ability. Also, GIGABYTE told us that they saw up to a 30% increase in performance when going from a SATA2 to SATA 3 hard drive under HD Tach, measuring both burst and read speeds. Not bad.

Codemasters all excited by the demonstration of its upcoming car racing game DiRT 2 during the recently finished Windows 7 launch event in NYC, sent us over a tech video off the game for us all to see.

The video shows firstly the difference in image quality between DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 and goes on to show some of the extra graphics processing ability of DX11 and Windows 7.

Also announced is that you'll be able to buy this game all around the world by around December 4th, depending on where you are located. Of course, right now, you'll need a DX11 video card from AMD to enable the fancy DX11 features.

The adoption of any new peripheral technology requires a few things to happen. The first is the need to form a viable idea, the next is to establish some form of standard and the third is partner support in the form of supporting hardware, and follow on products. It is usually this third item that causes products to fail.

In the case of USB 3.0 we find that products are coming but there does not seem to be any built-in support for them yet. The reason, according to the ranting of a senior technology manager at what is being called a "top tier PC Manufacturer" , is that Intel is not planning to include support this new technology in its chipsets until 2011. This bit of news has yet to be confirmed or denied by Intel, which is nothing new as they rarely comment on rumors like this or on future products.

AMD and NVIDIA have commented on this and say that Intel is purposely dragging its feet over this and delaying the release of this new standard. Now I can see NVIDIA getting annoyed with this as they are stopping chipset design and manufacture for now, but AMD can implement it on their own time frame.

The Windows 7 Blog page has just made mention of two new tools available pertaining to Windows 7 migration. These tools comprise the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and Compatibility Center which together will give you enough information for you to feel comfortable making the transition without any issues.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor scans your PC to see if it's ready for Windows 7. It checks to see if your PC meets the system requirements, lets you know if your processor is capable of running 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and gives guidance on your upgrade options. It also tells you about any known compatibility issues with the most commonly installed software programs and devices connected to your PC. If an issue can be resolved, it suggests next steps for you to take before installing Windows 7.

The Windows 7 Compatibility Center helps you easily check the compatibility of thousands of devices and software programs for 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Usually, you won't need to do anything to ensure compatibility. If you do, the site goes beyond just telling you what will or will not work. It also provides links to drivers and software updates to help get your PC running with the latest software.

If you had any doubts that Windows 7 is going to be a good thing for Microsoft you only have t look at the news from Amazon this morning. Apparently the new OS from the team in Redmond, Washington has pre-orders that exceed those made for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Right now the only item that has sold more copies in the same time frame is the Dan Brown Book The Lost Symbol.

This is an impressive feat for an operating system and shows that many early naysayers about Windows 7 might be proven seriously wrong in the end. As for how Windows 7 is doing Vs Vista... Well according to Amazon they have more preorders right now than total Windows 7 orders.

However, this is a consumer based number and as yet does not show how businesses are adopting Windows 7. So while the case seems to be rapidly closing for Windows 7 in the consumer market in the US, the jury is still firmly out for business adoption. Then again, those numbers will be slow to show up anyway as they usually take a year to 18 months for adoption of a new OS in any medium to large company.

Intel has added another model into its lineup of Core i7 LGA-1366 based processors this week; the Core i7 960. This variant comes clocked in at 3.2GHz (24 x 133) with a max Turbo Boost speed of 3.43GHz.

The Core i7 960 is touted to displace the Core i7 950 from its existing price-point of around US $562 (in 1000 unit tray quantities). As evidence of that, popular American retailer Newegg.com has listed the OEM part (chip-only) at $589.99, a mere $10 higher than the retail box of the Core i7 950 listed on the same store.

We just got back from the Viewsonic press conference in Taipei city that concluded only a couple of hours ago.

At the event, Viewsonic launched a slew of new notebooks, but notably missing were any new netbooks or nettops. There was talk of an NVIDIA ION based netbook being launched today, but that wasn't to be either.

We managed to go hands-on with the brand new ViewBook Pro notebook. It is Viewsonic's CULV notebook that comes with an Intel Core 2 SU7300 processor and 2GB of RAM, with the option to upgrade to 4GB of DDR3 memory. Viewsonic claims 8 hours battery life, but that can be extended to a maximum of 12 hours by adding in a secondary battery in the optical drive bay area.

Sony is much like Apple when it comes to pricing. They tend to get quite a bit extra for the name and the "design" of their products. However, Sony might be looking into changing that as the economy and flagging sales (not to mention losing money on the PS3) have hurt their profit over the last year or so.

To combat this, according to a rumor at Digi Times, Sony might be looking to marketing a line of low cost LCD TVs. These new TVs will come in both 32 and 40 inch flavors. While there is no information or speculation about the price of the 40-inch flavor it is rumored that the 32-inch could be as low as $465 USD, perhaps even lower when they finally make it to the US.

This is an effort to get the Sony brand name back to its status as a leader in the global TV market. Of course no one is saying if the quality is going to be comparable to their current line. Hopefully the cut in price will not mean a reduction in quality, but only time will tell on that. Of course this is if this rumor is true. It is very possible that none of this will come to pass and Sony LCD TVs will remain at their current price levels.

There is a new list of the top 10 technologies that will be strategic for companies in 2010.

The list was compiled by the Gartner who defines a strategic technology as one that can have a significant impact on the enterprise within two years.

So what is on the list? What new technologies should you be concerned with for 2010? After each we will give you a little of our take.