Latest News - Page 5072

RIM's heavily anticipated PlayBook tablet is getting closer to launch and they took a big step yesterday in getting ready with the announcement that app submissions are now being accepted. Better get your Adobe Air firing now, because a real treat is in store if you get your submission approved before launch: a free PlayBook of your very own.

Yep, the giveaway is official that was first announced at the PlayBook's unveiling and the rules are pretty simple. Develop an awesome app, get it approved by RIM, score a free PlayBook. Limit's one per customer, not one per app, so don't go thinking you'll be able to tile your shower with them.

Michael Bay's new Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon official teaser has been released.

The teaser is just that, not much footage but there are leaks of news that Buzz Aldrin plays himself in current time, the popular Megan Fox is out (after disputes with the Bay himself), Fergie's husband (Josh Duhamel) reprises his role and of course Sam Witwicky and his parents too.

Want secret NASA data? Want the FBI chasing you down? Want to be on the run and live a life of looking over your back? Look no further than your trusty TweakTown news post.

NASA has sold a bunch of PC's and components from NASA's shuttles from four different centers - Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers as well as Ames and Langley Research Centers. The various bits had reportedly "failed sanitization verification testing" or, weren't tested, period.

Space X has successfully launched a large capsule into Earth's orbit today, with this success it makes them the first private corporation to reach this milestone.

Elon Musk made a fortune by co-founding PayPal and lives the kind of life Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) but, in real life. He's a billionaire who is also the founder of Space X. He is also the co-founder of Tesla Motors and has spent $400 million of his own fortune to advance Space X to it's current point in time.

The European Commission has issued a fine to AU Optronics, Samsung, LG, Chimei InnoLux, Chunghwa Picture Tubes and HannStar Display after the companies held so called "Crystal meetings" between 2001 and 2006. The fine? 648.925 million ($857.49 million).

The goal of these meetings was for the 6 companies to agree on product range pricing and the minimum prices of LCD's, with the intent of the agreement to boost their own profits. All 6 companies knew it was illegal and tried to cover it up.

Crucial have just added Thermal Sensors to their Ballistix line of memory - the memory comes in two-flavors. The first being the DDR3-1866MHz capable, available in 2GB and 4GB dual-channel kits, with triple-channel 6GB kits also available.

Secondly, they have the DDR3-2133MHz available in 2GB and 4GB dual-channel kits. The new memory incorporates a new thermally improved design and a built-in thermal sensor. The new kits are also compatible with Crucial's recently announced Crutial Ballistix Active Cooling Fan.

Sitting down? Hopefully you are because this news is a little shocking - Intel has teamed up with AMD, yes... teamed up. They've also joined up with Dell, Lenovo, Samsung and LG to phase out the VGA and LVDS display connectors by 2015.

HDMI and DisplayPort will be pushed up to default connections (which is being pushed now). AMD has said that it will discontinue VGA and LVDS outputs from most of it's products by 2013 following this by a complete stop by 2015.

Intel doesn't pull the curtain back on Sandy Bridge until next month, but production on products has been underway for a little while now and various products are leaking out with the new chips inside.

Enter, Alienware M17x. Benchmarks are looking good with 3DMark 06 results showing 2GHz Core i7-2630QM machine running Intel's integrated graphics scored 15,940, while a 2.2GHz i7-2720QM with AMD Radeon HD 6900M graphics scoring 20,155 marks, and a 2.3GHz i7-2820QM chip paired with a GeForce GTX 460M GPU did 16,957.

Almost all of the SSDs on the market today are packed inside small 2.5" cases. That is all fine and good if you are building up a mobile machine or a SFF rig, but if you want more performance out of a desktop PC with lots of open 3.5" bays, 2.5" SSDs are not ideal. RunCore has launched a new and very awesome SSD that uses a 3.5" form factor. The reason for the 3.5" size is more space for storage.

The new SSD packs in a full terabyte of storage capacity. RunCore says that the small 2.5" SSD simply is too small to put in enough flash storage for all the storage that your average user needs on a desktop. I can attest that tiny 60GB or smaller SSDs are more trouble than they are worth for many computer enthusiasts.

The massive 1TB SSD uses the SATA III 6Gb port for connectivity and is blazing fast. The SSD promises performance of over 500MB/s. The large number of flash chips inside the SSD are divided in two groups. That means that inside the single enclosure is a pair of SSDs and each has its own Sandforce 1200 controller. The dual SSDs inside mean that you can switch the SSD to RAID support for data mirroring. The read performance of each SSD is 285MB/s and write is 275MB/s. Pricing and availability are unknown, but this thing will be crazy expensive. I expect it to be well into the thousand dollar range or higher.

We all know that the Intel Sandy Bridge processors are on the horizon and with the parts will come the need for a new mainboard if you plan to upgrade. NVIDIA has issued a press release today that notes most major mainboard makers have licensed its SLI technology to put into their Sandy Bridge boards. The companies include Intel, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and EVGA.

The SLI tech is licensed to use on the SLI-certified P67 mainboards. "The combined processing prowess of Sandy Bridge and NVIDIA SLI technology will provide consumers with the building blocks for the ultimate gaming PC platform," said Joel Christensen, General Manager of Intel Client Board Division at Intel Corporation. "Both NVIDIA and Intel continue to share a combined passion for furthering the PC as the definitive platform for gaming, and this combination will surely be attractive to anyone building or purchasing a brand new PC in 2011."