Computer Systems - Page 34

Many computer buyers are opting for notebook computers today for the portability and smaller space requirements that they offer. However, there is still a market for desktop computers. Many gamers, enthusiasts, and businesses still prefer desktops.

The notebook has pretty much taken over in many categories with the average home user and office drone preferring the smaller notebook to more bulky desktops. For some uses, the desktop is still popular through and among the most popular growing category of desktops are small form factor machines.

When we reviewed the original ASRock ION 330-BD Nettop after we saw it displayed at Computex, we were suitably impressed by a solid little computer that could smoothly playback Blu-ray HD movies and impress with a good price and stunning looks and build quality.

Intel have put into swing their Core i7 Custom Desktop Challenge as of October 5 which allows participants to sign up online and be in with a chance to pick up some nice prizes such as Intel processors, a netbook, Flip HD camcorder, 160GB SSDs and more.

So, everyone loves taking a stab at nVidia for its rebranding and why not, it is fun and very easy to do. Plus re-branding is pretty dishonest.

So I wonder what the reaction will be with AMD's new "Vision" labeling system. To me is seems like a re-hash of their older "AMD Game" labeling.

The labels are meant to take the place of the usual stickers that list out the actual CPU and GPU names. They come in three flavors (just like AMD Game) and are; AMD Vision, AMD Vision Premium, and AMD Vision Ultimate.

Each of these levels is pretty self-explanatory but are intended to give consumers a simpler way to determine a systems performance. According to AMD CMO, Nigel Dessau, "Today's consumer cares about what they can do with their PC, not what's inside," Which is not entirely accurate as according to many polls brand name recognition accounts for a large amount of purchases.

So will the new AMD Vision Labels help? I am not so sure as consumers become more tech savvy they will want to know what's under the hood of their computer purchases more and more. Hiding this behind a blanket label could put some people off.

Well well well, AMD is getting back into the thin and light game. After a few years of claiming the netbook was a fad and not really anything that AMD was interested in we see that AMD is preparing to release their platform for Ultra-Thin notebooks.

As is now typical with AMD this is a market they talked about and even demoed last year. However they were late to the ball game as Intel managed to get their CULVs into most thin and lights first.

So why would you be interested in AMD's version? Well there are a few reasons. The first is not as big of a deal as it sounds; this is 1080P playback for video. Now I love my HD TV and Projector, I even love the Blu Ray player on my notebook, but I my notebook is a 20-inch book so I can actually see the impact from 1080p Blu-Ray.

Since most thin and lights are between 13-15 inches 1080p on that size screen just does not make sense. Yes, you could connect it to your TV Via and HDMI or Display Port out but who is really going to do that.

The next item is actually the most important of the group; battery life.
Although no exact details were given AMD is claiming that with their newest ULV CPUs you will get an extra hour of battery life. Of course what you get in real life Vs what is put on paper are two different things. If AMD can really do this it will help out quite a bit as right now Intel is leading them in this race.

Last on the list is gaming. Now on a netbook I say that gaming is pointless and should not even be considered. It was a foolish idea for nVidia to push ION at the netbook and not reserve it for the nettop. All that Aside AMD is claiming a 77% better gaming experience over Intel's current platform. Sounds big on paper but in reality it was not a hard thing to do. Intel is not known for their powerful gaming GPUs so while it is nice to see it is not really a big deal.

At the time of writing we only know of two manufactures that are looking into using the new AMD ULV CPUs and platform (Asus and Acer) but you can be sure that more will follow.

This is something interesting, a company has created an Atom based system board that can operate at just under 4.5 Watts.

The company's name is InHand Electronics, they put together a system board they are calling firefly. This is the world's smallest and most power efficient Atom single board computer.

To get this size they did not remove functionality. I have you have both onboard DDR2 and an expansion slot for an extra SODIMM.

In most current systems you need to have an additional power board to run the system and offer the same performance as the Firefly. The Firefly can act as a stand-alone board but also has spots for daughter cards to increase functionality.

Well, well, well; Acer is going to have another go at releasing the Predator. This is the same system that had massive cooling problems earlier this year.

By massive we mean that some were reported to have actually caught fire.
So now they are going to put even more heat generating hardware in the box and stuff it inside that nice eye catching orange case.

The new specs are looking like;
Core i7-950 @ 3.06GHz CPU
6GB of DDR3 RAM (up to 12GB)
Intel X58 Express Chipset (board manufacturer not mentioned)
1TB SATA HDD @ 7200rpm
2x Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 1GB,
Blu-ray disc drive
11x USB 2.0 ports
2x eSATA ports
Multi-card reader
Two Gigabit Ethernet

I hope they upped the cooling in this system first.

It has been a while since I have done any major Apple news and while I was feeling the beginnings of withdrawals I found a blurb on Apple's plans to build a new data center in North Carolina.

It seems that North Carolina passed a bill to give Apple a nice $46 million state tax credit. The new site will only have around 50 full time employees but for some reason NC is claiming it will create 250-300 jobs in the region. I am not sure what math they are using but that sounds a little off to me.

No matter the data center will be good for the local economy, I just wonder if it will actually help the consumer, after all it won't be in place to prevent another iPhone upgrade fiasco that is sure to happen when iPhone 3.0 hits. But maybe just maybe it will impact iPhone 4.5...

Read more here.

There may be good news in VistaVille, It looks like the 2nd Service Pack for the much maligned OS has gone RTM (Release to Manufacturer).

Although there is not a firm release schedule quite yet the RTM stage means that the new update is finalized and ready to go. One nice improvement over previous SPs is a single installer for both Vista and Server 2008 making distribution easier.

Fixes in the new pack include full support for Via's 64 Bit CPU, ability to record directly to BluRay media and other improvements for performance and compatibility.

Read more here

Looks like Citrix has found a new way to compete with VMWare; they are going to give XenSever 5.0 away for free.

Of course the Express Version has been free for a long time, but Citrix is claiming that the enterprise version is also now free. The problem is one of features. According to Roger Klorese "the new free XenServer does not include high availability, advanced StorageLink storage integration, persistent performance management, or monitoring -- which continue in Enterprise Edition and Platinum Edition -- or dynamic provisioning services -- which continue in Platinum Edition."

Citrix is a new comer in the Virtualization market, but have scored a big win by partnering up with Microsoft and getting a great Interoperability deal between their XenServer product and MS' Hyper-V.

True Citrix's new Free XenServer has its issues and limitations, including missing many enterprise class features, but to get an enterprise class virtualization product for free is still a good thing.

If you are more of a VMWare fan you can grab VMware's ESXi server for free also.

Read more here at Roger Klorese's Blog.

With CES out of the way, Thecus Technology has announced some of their plans for the upcomming CeBIT in Hannover. First up are their new N7700 and N8800 NAS servers. The N7700 houses 7 SATA drives for massive storage and can be stacked with an additional five N7700's. If you have room for the NAS in the rack, the N8800 comes in a 2U form factor and ups the ante a bit with an eigth drive. Both support iSCSI making it easy to centrally manage and deploy storage for an entire network.

It looks like there is a new Bug in SQL server that can allow for remote detonation of the server. Well ok not detonation but this newly discovered flaw can allow for remote execution of code.

According to MSA (Microsoft Security Advisory)961040, the flaw affects SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 (with SP 2 or lower) SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, MSDE 2000, WMSDE, and Windows Internal Database.

SQL 7.0 With SP4, 2005 with SP3 and SQL Server 2008 are not affected.

Read more here.

***New information***

In Part III of our XenServer 5.0 soap opera, I have been contacted by Citrix directly who are stating that XenServer 5.0 does indeed have Windows 2008 Server support.

They explain that they lack of Widows 2008 server in their supported OS page was an "our bad" mistake. They have also provided me links to their "what's New" page that references Windows 2008 server. The What's new page goes on to state "Tuned for Windows - XenServer adds support for Windows Server® 2008, has been optimized to run Windows-based workloads (up to 30% faster) and has been certified on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server through Micrsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).". XenServer 5.0's installation Guide also lists Windows Server 2008.

**** Citrix has sent links to Microsofts VSSP for both XenServer Embedded Edition and Standard XenServer ****

I have asked Citrix about the installation issues that many are reporting with XenServer 5.0 and Windows 2008 Server (BSODs during install etc). I will follow up with their response.

*** Citrix's response to this is a potential fix contained in Update 1 for XenServer ***

XenServer 5.0 What's New.

Read the original article here.

The follow on is here.

Yesterday I wrote that Citrix's XenServer and XenDesktop 5.0 do not have native support for Microsoft's Windows 2008 Server. I have received a couple of e-mails disputing that statement. I thought I would clear some items up.

First: In September 2008 Microsoft and Citrix announced they were working on inter-operability between Server 2008 and Xen this was in relation to the HyperVisor product only. Meaning they were working on ways of porting VMs between the two products and allowing VM's on Server 2008's Hyper-V to be "Virtualized" (or delivered) through XenDesktop.

Second: I referred to "the desktop version of XenServer" I should have said XenDesktop. XenDesktop is not literally speaking a Desktop VM product. It is a means for delivering a virtualized Dekstop to remote users.

Third: I am not talking about XenSource (which was bought by Citrix) or Xen Project but Citrix's implementation of these products. Citrix's Xen 5.0 line of products does not have native support for Widows Server 2008.

What has yet to happen is complete validation and functionality of Windows 2008 as a guest(or virtualized desktop) in either of these products. To get Windows 2008 server to run on XenServer you have to custom configure quite a bit and set it up as a hardware VM not the stock type (as I linked in my article).

Interoperability announcement here.

**Edited November 25 2008 for clarity**

Software is a funny thing sometimes. When you buy a piece of brand new software you think that you are going to get the latest and greatest compatible with all the other latest and greatest software out.

Sadly that is not the case with Citrix's new Xen 5.0 Virtual server software. There are issues with XenDesktop's ability to deliver Virtulaized Windows 2008 Server desktops and XenServer will not run the OS Natively. This flaw takes away from the opening up of the RAM support in Xen Express which was limited to 4GB but now supports up to 128GB

This short coming will hurt the VM hopeful as many people currently using VMware and Sun's Virtual Box have no problems with Microsoft's latest server OS.

XEN 5.0 compatible operating systems listed here.

There is a work around to this for Citrix's XenServer if you want to spend the time here.

Diamond Multimedia and Smooth Creations today announced its impressive looking Broodling liquid cooled PC gaming system.

The gaming system is a result of joint effort between the two companies and is based on AMD's Spider platform. It is powered by a 2.4GHz AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-Core CPU and AMD 770-SB600 based ABIT AX78 motherboard with 4GB of Kingston DDR2 memory. Cooling is provided by the CoolIT Eliminator with combination of air cooling and liquid / TEC chilling.

As far as graphics go, Diamond's Viper Radeon HD3870 X2 is used along with a 500GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 HDD and Lite-On 20X DVD+/-RW drive. Power is supplied by the 1250 watt Cooler Master Real Power Pro power supply.

The case gets a wicked paint job by Smooth Creations with a scary looking skull design which says, "Don't mess with me!" Take a look for yourself below...

Acer has long been known for its standard notebooks and systems but not so much for its new line of gamers products.