Latest News - Page 3231

Ok this is pretty cool and bears some coverage. AMD has shipped it 500 Millionth x86 CPU. That is a pretty big number if you ask me. It comes in combination with AMD's 40th year in business. To celebrate AMD is giving away four HP Pavilion Dv2Z notebooks.

The contest is part of AMD's recent plunge into social networking and will be a twitter based contest. The way this works is that you have to follow @AMD_Unprocessed on twitter. Every other Monday starting on the 27th of July @AMD_Unprocessed will tweet an AMD related question. You should answer Via Direct Message these correct answers will be put into a drawing for one of the four Dv2s. This cycle will repeat for the next two months.

Not too terribly hard to enter, or course you never know what question they will ask, but I am sure that whatever it is can be found quickly by checking out AMD's website unless I am completely missing the mark.

So what do you get the Geek who has everything? Normally I would say a date with a real girl but barring that I would say that a 49 port USB hub would about cover it.

Yes, you read right. There actually is a USB hub with a full 49 ports on it. The device is being made by Cambrionix and is selling under the inspired name of "49 Port Professional USB Hub." And can be picked up for around $650 US dollars.

It is actually being marketed as a development and testing hub (which makes sense really) and appears to be a useful tool for mass testing of USB flash drives.

There is nothing like a new cool gadget and Fujifilm has one. This is a 3D Digital camera for the masses. The new camera is a small compact device that is capable of capturing 3D Images that are viewable without the need to special glasses.

The concept behind the capture is surprisingly simple; through the use of two lenses (similar to the old stereoscopic viewers) the camera is able to combine different fields of view (depth) into an image or movie that is fully 3 dimensional.

Fujifilm will also offer a special printing process for these images. The new FinePix REAL 3D W1 should hit the stores in Japan early next month followed by a general release late next month.

It was not that long ago that Mushkin announced its UltimateFX line of add-in video cards. The announcement showed that Mushkin was ready to enter the world of graphics (just like OSZ did) and they had some nVidian offerings in the works.

Today we hear that Mushkin is now working on an UltimateFX version of the Radeon HD4850. The new Radeon HD 4850 will feature a completely custom build. The cooling system looks a lot like the one found on the Sapphire HD4670 offering though. Specs are; 800 stream processors, 256-Bit memory interface, 625MHz/1986MHz CPU/Memory stock clock and 700/2020 for the OCd version. There will be three ports for output (DVI, D-Sub and HDMI).

All this will come in a handy wooden box. There is no indication on when you can get these nor how much they will cost you once ready.

Intel has just announced their release of a 34nm NAND flash cell in an SSD. But while this is pretty cool news all on its own; the real news is that this will reduce the price of the existing 50nm versions.

According to Intel the move will help reduce the prices of the 50nm MLC SSDs by up to 60%... but that is 60% off of the original prices not current market prices.

The new pricing for the X-25-M 80GB will be $225; this is indeed 60% of the original $595. The problem is that you can get the X25-M 80GB for $324 from NewEgg this makes the new reduced price about 30% off the current market. The 160GB flavor of the X25-M will be $440, you can get the X25-M 160GB for $629 right now.

So with all the news about the P55, and the next generation of the X58 (complete with a few USB 3.0 ports) it is nice to get some news on the pending release of the Core i5 and the 1156 Version of the Core i7.

According to some new information we have some specifications and even pricing for the new CPUs.

If the details put together by HKEPC is correct the entry level Core i5 750 will be a little under $200. I will run at 2.66 Ghz, feature 8MB L3 cache, and will have four Cores but will lack HyperThreading.

Despite the bad news that SATA 6G might not hit the retail shelves until after September we do have some good news. It looks like we might see some new USB 3.0 boards hitting the market soon.

A picture of what is supposed to be an Asus P6X58 is floating around the Internet showing off tow of these high-speed ports. The chip behind them is the NEC µPD720200.

The new ports are blue instead of black (I wonder how that will work on the boards that have been making USB ports Yellow).

Recently Kingston made news by being the first to have a 128GB Flash drive out and on the market. Kingston was not satisfied with this capacity and so decided to do a one up and release a 256GB version.

The new drive will sell under the label of DataTraveler 300. The new drive will run under the USB 2.0 standard. It will feature the same Password Traveler software as the DT200 that allows you to create a hidden, password protected area for your private documents.

Pricing is a little high at $935 (more than some 256GB SSDs. This price will make the DT 300 a toy for only a very small number of people.

Last week we told you that Microsoft received a call from Apple asking to remove the "laptop Hunters" ads. At the time we were told that MS thought it was a joke and laughed it off.

The story said that Apple claimed that since they had reduced the price of the Mac Books by $100 then the ad was no longer accurate. Now this in itself is funny as there is very little about Apple ads that are accurate. It would be interesting to see someone ask for the ads claiming that Macs do not crash, and have no security problems to be removed. But that is for another story.

What is interesting is that some lawyers (perhaps looking for s bit of the spotlight) say that Apple might have a case. Now I am not sure what part of the world they are from but the ads clearly say what they are comparing. So if the MS ad says you can get a better 17-inch laptop for X dollars less than a Mac or for under a certain dollar ammount; and someone finds one then the ad is accurate.

Amazon can take back your content without your consent. That is the message that is perfectly clear with the recent removal of George Orwell books from their new Kindle platform.

According to numerous reports around the internet the Book Animal Farm and 1984 were deleted from users' accounts and books after the publisher decided they no longer wanted to offer them through the Kindle service.

Now in the world of print this would mean that the book could no longer be purchased from the store. If you bought one before they pulled it would still be yours.

Ok, I do not know about you but I am getting a little tired of all the whining going on over IE8.

After MSFT said they would remove the option to use IE in Windows 7 for the EU it looked like people would finally be happy. However that is not the case for Opera.

No they claim that not have IE available to the user (but leaving the rendering engine etc on the OS) is not enough. Apparently removing the IE option and allowing the buyer/OEM/VAR to put whatever browser they want is not going to "restore browser competition on the desktop". Gee since there will be no browser available to the user doesn't that mean the user is free to choose?

We have another contender for the stupid comment of the day. This one was made by a member of the US government. It serves not only to entertain us but also to show a disconnect between the powers-that-be and reality.

It seems that a senior member for the US State Department feels the FireFox, the free Internet Explorer Alternative, is too expensive to implement and maintain.

Now the embarrassing comment came at a town hall meeting at which a staffer asked Hillary Clinton if the State Department could use the alternative browser.

You know maybe we should start a new series of awards to honor people that just do not think...oh wait there is already one of those out. Well ok let's just make sure that this guy gets on the list for one.

According to WBIC in Indiana, an 18 Year Old was online playing World of Warcraft when he made a threat to blow up a commercial airliner. Now this is not something you bandy about in an online community that is monitored. You would not even say this out loud in a public place.

Well you can probably figure out what happened. A Moderator noticed the messages and contacted the authorities about them. The idio...Um I mean the person's IP was found, traced and the FBI showed up at his door.

So you have your new iPhone with OS 3.0 and have been enjoying tethering for the last month due to a couple of handy little hack out on the web.

Not wanting to take the plunge and dive into jailbreaking you just made a slight modification in order to get what has been advertised from Apple.

It should come as no surprise then that Apple is working very hard to take this option away from you. After all they do not feel you should have it without paying (a ridiculous amount) for the service. According to testers of the new iPhone OS 3.1 Beta the trick that allows for tethering has been removed as has the MMS hack.

Are you thinking you need the absolute fastest laptop on the planet? If you do and you have the cash you might want to check out the latest offering from Rock Xtreme.

The new Xtrem 790 and 840 would seem to have the top spot hands down. They each have at least one GTX280M and support for up to 6GB of DDR3 The Xtreme 790 has a 17-inch HD display, up to 1.5TB of storage (three 500GB drives in RAID),and an Intel Core i7 CPU.

The Xrtreme 840 features a larger 18.4 Inch display and Support for SLI GTX 280Ms and Core 2 Duo or Quad CPUs. Other nice extras on the 840 are customizable lighting, touch sensitive buttons and eight gaming buttons that can be setup for each game.

Ghost has finally moved out of the Alpha stage and into Beta. The cloud based virtual desktop is free to use and features a few nice tools for productivity and for fun.

We took a quick look at G.ho.st and found it useable but unfortunately a little slow for our tastes. The OS looks like a linux distro and has a "Go" button and the usual desktop icons. You can upload documents and files to your Virtual G.ho.st drive.

This allows you to work on them from any Web Connected computer. It was opening uploaded files that we found to have the biggest issue. The default system has Zoho for document editing. It tool over 5 seconds to open and display a short rtf (rich text font) document and was unable to display a pdf we used.

MSI has come clean about its new Cyclone Radeon HD 4890. The new line of will all feature the RV-790 GPU, 1GB of GDDR5, a 256-Bit Memory interface, Solid Capacitors, SSCs and a monster of a fan.

The fan itself will be a full two slots and have four heatpipes. These will be cooled by a 100mm fan.

The three models will be the R4890 Cyclone (850Mhz/3900Mhz), the R4890 Cyclone OS (880Mhz/3900Mhz) and the R4890 SOC (1Ghz/4000MHz). Availability should be in the next few weeks. There is no word on pricing as of this writing.

Ok this has to be the coolest accessory to ship with a game ever.

According to a YouTube video the new Game Modern Warfare 2 will have a Prestige Edition that will come complete with a working set of night vision goggles.

But that is not all, inside this awesome edition of what is going to be one of the best games to hit this year. You get the game, the ability to download the original game, a handy head for displaying your new NVGs, a book full of artwork that is only found on the limited editions and a steel box to keep your DVD in.

You know, one of my favorite things about announced products is the vast amount of fake pictures, screen shots, etc that hit the internet.

Now that Google has let Chrome OS out of the bag the number of supposed shots taken at developer's conventions, clandestine meetings, and in secret bunkers (ok I made those last two up) are growing at an alarming rate.

No one really knows what Chrome OS will look like except for a very small minority of developers. It is rumored that it will hit the market late this year or early 2010 but nothing is set in stone.

There is good news for netbooks; well it is good news for people that would like HD on their netbooks. It looks like Intel may have decided to increase the allowable screen resolution to 1366x768 this will include the coveted (by some) 720p range.

This move allows for netbook makers to use the N series Atom instead of having to go with the Z series. The size of the display is still limited to 10.2-inches. So if you do get 720p HD resolution you are still getting a very small display to watch it on.

Intel has been trying to establish a clear distinction between the low powered netbook and more mainstream notebooks. However many manufacturers would prefer to keep this line blurry as it enables them to market the netbook as a low cost notebook alternative.