Alex Rulex

eBid vs eBay!

2008-07-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

If you are an "eBayer" then you really have to take a look to this quick review about their best rival... So let's read before and comment after! =)

Advantages for Buyers:

Due to the recent massive changes on ebay such as a huge hike in listing fee's, changes to the search that is now in favour of the big boys that ebay have done special deals with, and changes to the feedback system etc, many Ebay sellers have flocked over to Ebid because it is free for them to list. Many sellers pass on these savings to their customers.
Go and look through the many categories on eBid. It is amazing how things that are often bid to impossible prices on Ebay, are selling for a lot lower prices on eBid. So it looks like many buyers are missing out on some fantastic deals, because they think that ebay is the be all and end all.
Ebay was good, back in the old days before Wall Street took over, but eBid is growing day by day and sees more and more new items added and many at bargain prices. The reason for this is because the sellers are being ripped off on ebay.

Advantages for sellers:

The people on the forums are friendly and helpful.
You save lots of money by realistic fees. You do not have to pay listing fees and you only pay 3% final value fees if you are a silver member. Gold subscriptions can be purchased for 7, 30, 90, 365 days or a Lifetime membership can be purchased for £49.99 and this gives free listing fees and free final value fees.
You get up to 6 free eBid shops which are fully customisable.
Listing can be done item by item, or by bulk listing. Ninja listing tool will be available shortly to allow bulk offline listings.
The eBid owners Gazza and Mark are in touch with the sellers and listen to what they have to say" listen to their views and actually implement useful suggestions that are brought up.
There is a genuine sense of community spirit at Ebbed.
A good feature of eBid is the Feedback. There is a "Request Feedback" button that you can use to remind your seller or buyer to leave you feedback. You can also edit what you have said if you were too rash in leaving negative or positive feedback.
eBid listings are optimised for search engines. Google and Yahoo pick up listings very well.
This is my favourite auction site because it has good deals for buyers, provides a cheap listing alternative for sellers and you get a human response to queries!
Unlike eBay your listings are shown on all the eBid sites worldwide.

Auzentech: new audio card X-Fi with HDMI 1.3

2008-06-18T02:27:00.000-07:00

Auzentech has announced the new audio card Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater 7.1, a PCI Express solution based on the known Creative X-Fi audio processor, built with external and internal HDMI 1.3 interfaces, the internal one will works only via Nvidia hardware.

This new card can manage high definition audio tracks, in Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Among all the supported standards, Dolby Digital and DTS are highlighted because of the one cable connection to multi-channel systems and for the EAX 5.0 useful for gamers with the positional audio experience.

According to what reported by the vice-president and General Manager of Creative audio distribution, Steve Erickson, they have worked on a new architecture for the X-Fi processor in order to reach the best integration with PCI Express interface.

Two new Core 2 family processors

2008-06-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

Intel is preparing new Core 2 Quad processor series, characterized by a reduced cost in comparison to others on the Market: these cpu will be marked as "Q8000 series", the first one will be named "Core 2 Quad Q8200".

Technical specifications are a clock frequency of 2,33GHz, combined with a quad pumped 1.333 MHz BUS clock: the L2 cache will be 4Mb, for an official price of 203$ for 1.000 processors stock.

The 4Mb L2 Cache, combined with a 45 nanometer, will allow to obtain a limited die surface for these processors. These characteristics justify the low price for a quad core cpu.

Instead of Q9000 Core 2 Quad models, these processors won't integrate VT and TXT Intel technologies.

Intel will also introduce a new series of processors Core 2 Duo, the E5000, built with 45 nanometer die. The first model of this series will be the E5200 Core 2 Duo, it will have a 2.5GHz clock frequency and a BUS speed of 800 MHz with 2Mb L2 cache. Attended price will be around 84$, always for 1.000 units stock.

MSI Wind: up to 500 thousand units deliveries in the 2008

2008-06-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

Micro-star International, also called MSI, is particularly confident in the capabilities of the proper Wind notebook and is convinced to be able to reach a deliveries volume between the 300 and the 500 thousand units within the end of 2008.

According to Joseph Hsu, the company president, Wind's deliveries will help MSI to reach 2 million of notebooks shipped in the 2008. The preceding year MSI has been able to achieve 1,1 million notebooks deliveries.

MSI has aimed on all the emergent markets like East Europe, Central and Southern America, China and India. They are convinced that this strategy will take them in the top ten notebooks producers in the 2010, reaching a volume of deliveries of 4,5 million of units.

Intel and USB 3.0 development

2008-06-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

Some days ago we have spoken about protests made by AMD and NVIDIA towards Intel, guilty, according to the two competitors, to make obstructionism on USB 3.0 development. Always according to AMD and NVIDIA, this abearance would put Intel in a position of advantage, about 6-9 months, in the release of a compatible chipset with the new standard, with negative repercussions on competitors products.

It's what comes from pages of an Intel employee's blog, Nick Knupffer. Intel is not developing USBs 3.0, but specification for the host controller, that allow the realization of USB 3.0 compatible components.

Mr. Besides Knupffer confirms that Intel is spending a lot of money and resources in those specifics that will be free for all. They are sending back the accusations from AMD and Nvidia. Always according to Mr. Knuppfer Intel would not have released a complete documentation yet because those specification aren't ready.

2010: PCI Express 3.0 video cards

2008-06-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

The new specifications will allow to sensitively increase the quantity of power directly furnished to the video card from the Slot. A peak of 300 Watts will be reached, capable of power up next GPU generation that producers will introduce in the market next year.

These display adapters will be based on a 3 Slots design, to be able to support the higher temperature. New cables will be used, a 2x4 pins, presumably very similar to those 2x4 pins currently used by some top range video cards able to deliver more power.

The slot on the motherboard will be the same as the PCI Express 2.0: so mechanical and electric compatibility with the PCI Express 16x will be maintained, as already happened changing from PCI Express 1.0 to PCI Express 2.0

VMware Fusion 2.0: Now support Mac OS X Leopard Server

2008-06-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

During the last Thursday, VMware has declared that Fusion 2.0, famous virtualization software for Mac, will also support Mac OS X Leopard Server.

The new functionality will be available in the next public beta release, the implementation was possible thanks to a variation on the Mac OS X Leopard Server license that allows users to initialize the operating system in a virtual environment.

The software will support up to 8GB of ram for each virtual machine and many other important characteristics like dual-core processors and 64-bit operating systems. Users will have the opportunity to use different server OS, for example: Windows Server 2003, Linux and Mac OS X Server. VMware Fusion 2.0 distributed as a free update to all Fusion 1.x users.

Nokia will release "cheap" touch screen mobile phones

2008-06-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Within the end of the year, Nokia will start selling cheap touch screen mobile phones - this is what come from some recent declarations of Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia senior vice president, to the press agency Reuters. Therefore Nokia has the intetion to propose solutions starting from entry level.

Presumably the new solutions touch screens proposed by Nokia will be based on the Symbian S60 and can be simply used with fingers or using a stylus furnished with the telephone.

Vanjoki has declared that the arrival on the market of the Apple iPhone has incremented the attention towards touch screen technology, creating a large market in which Nokia is interested. The Finnish company is working on a prototype denominated Tube.

The competition starts to be very hard: we remember that Apple is introducing the new iPhone 3G, while the Korean Samsung has announced the new Samsung i900 Omnia, that will presumably be launched on the European market during July.

Wine 1.0 soon available!

2008-06-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Developers of Wine, legendary implementation open source of Windows API, have confirmed through a post appeared on the official site of the project, to be next to the end of the job for the final release of Wine 1.0. According to Alexandre Julliard, leader of the project, the throwing of Wine 1.0 will happen next 20 June.

The throwing will happen therefore in proximity of the fifteenth anniversary of the project: in reality it doesn't exist one precise day for the birth of Wine, nevertheless the most meaningful dates are June 1 st 1993, when Dan Dulitz announced to be writing something similar to Wine and July 8 th 1993, when the first voice was published in the ChangeLog of the project.

Currently Wine is able to run over 1300 Windows applications inside Unix environment, for example Microsoft Office 97, XP and 2003 and Internet Explorer 6. Always thanks to Wine, many users are able to play games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars without any problem.

From the source code of Wine some important commercial derivations were born besides as Cedega and Codeweavers; particularly this last one has gotten a certain notoriety thanks to the support of Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Picasa.

HP DreamColor LP2480zx: a billion of colors!

2008-06-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

At Berlin we had the opportunity to see the first display TFT HP endowed with DreamColor technology: the model HP DreamColor LP2480zx with a 24 inchs LCD and a native resolution of 1920x1200 pixels.

The true novelty of the HP DreamColor LP2480zx is to seek in the data element related to the chromatic range: the company declares a chromatic range equal to 1 billion of colors (for each red, green or blue channel 10 bit are used), versus the typical solution of 16 million colors to which we are used to.

HP DreamColor LP2480zx allow digital creator to solve one of the most complicated problem: colors lack of coherence during the process of creation of the image.

Price? Around 3499$!

Movement sensors for Playstation 3

2008-06-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Also Sony is working on a controller with movement sensors as the famous Wii remote. According to indiscretions brought by the authoritative GamesIndustry, the new controller will be composed by two separated unit, each one with an accelerometer.

According to GamesIndustry sources, Sony commercial partners already have the new peripheral in order to let them envelope new products supporting this controller. It's not clear when Sony will officially announce the new gamepad for PlayStation 3.

The actual console controller for the new generation of Sony, the SixAxis, is endowed with a system of gyroscopic sensors that allows to translate the rotational and translational movements in simulated actions, but it doesn't have an accelerometer. SixAxis doesn't even support vibration, Sony has introduced the evolution known as DualShock 3.

Also Microsoft is going to introduce on the market a controller with accelerometer and advanced characteristics. In this case, even if there are no official confirmations, the controller will have four buttons in the frontal party, an analogical stick, a microphone and it would interact with the Live Vision camera.

Kuma dual core? AMD confirms these CPU

2008-06-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

AMD has denied the news of a cancellation for their own processors roadmap of the CPU known with codename "Kuma", dual core solutions for the market entry level segment.

Jake Whitman, spokesman of AMD, has confirmed that AMD is lined up at the present moment for the throwing of the Kuma processors family for the second halves 2008. This is what declared and taken back by the site cnet:

"We're still on track to launch a dual-core--code-named Kuma--part in the second half of '08. It will be 65 nanometers, still be based on the Star's core. So, that's coming."

"We have never said anywhere along the lines that Kuma was somehow associated with Phenom. Dual-core Phenom? I've never seen that on a road map."

It's the case to analyze in detail how much declared. The AMD spokesman confirms that during the second halves of the year new processors dual core will be introduced , derived directly from the architecture note with the name in code of Star and built with productive technology of 65 nanometris initially denying the information appearedonline.

Specifying these processors are based on Star series core, it's clear that these cpu will have the same typology of core that is currently present in the cpu Phenom X4 and Phenom X3. We suppose that these processors won't integrate cache of third level or L3, present instead in the other two solutions, to help containing general die dimensions and production cost.

The future existence of processors Phenom Dual Core is also denied, but in this case a precise statement is necessary. AMD won't use the brand Phenom for processors dual based core on architecture Kuma but it will continue to adapt Athlon X2 for such cpu. Anyway these new processors will use identical core as Phenom X4 and Phenom X3, made exception for the cache L3, so it's not wrong to refer to these processors as solutions Phenom Dual Core to underline the presence of the new architecture instead of the K8 typically used for the cpu Athlon X2.

New display LCD EzLink with USB 2.0 interface from Asus

2008-06-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Asus has recently announced the availability of the new series of monitors LCD EzLink, composed by two models VW223B and VW202B. This new series name is refered to the technology of connection EzLink, that allows to connect more monitors to the computer through a common USB 2.0 interface, providing all the necessary flexibility for multi-screen applications.

Both the models VW223B and VW202B climb on panels LCD Wide Screen with a resolution equal to 1680x1050 pixels, while the diagonals are respectively of 22 and 20,1 inchs. The displays have a 15 pins D-Sub connector and a USB 2.0. In case of USB connection, it will be necessary to install a special driver that will manage windows positioning on the various secondary monitors. Here you are all the detailed specifications:

AMD and Havok, accord of collaboration

2008-06-13T03:56:00.001-07:00

AMD and Havok have announced an accord for a collaboration to optimize the effects of physics simulation using the CPU and GPU AMD solutions. We remember that Havok Inc. have been purchased from Intel for 110 milions of dollars. Rick Bergman, senior vice president and responsible of the division Graphics Products Group of AMD, has declared: "With the growth of the complexity and the visual fidelity of the video games, AMD wants to draw advantage of the opportunities to improve the experience of game. Collaborating with the leader of the sector for what pertains to the physical simulation by software, AMD is able to optimize their own bases to offer the best possible visual experience to the videogamer." Inside the plan of collaboration Havok and AMD anticipated the optimization of all the Havok's technologies for the operatività with the processors AMD x86, further to a complex phase of study for the exploitation of the characteristics of parallel computation of the GPUs ATI Radeon. The choice of AMD is particularly meaningful and represents an answer to the acquisition of Ageia from NVIDIA the last month of February. AMD thinks that the approach of Havok, whose technologies are based on open standards, will result in a convincing game experience for what concern the physics simulation in comparison to the Physx of Ageia.

Firefox 3.0 will be released on June 17

2008-06-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

Mozilla Foundation has finally made known that Firefox 3.0 will be released next 17 June. After 34 months of intense job, the developers have finally established that the new version of the popular web browser is ready to be released.

According to what affirmed in a post appeared on the blog of the development team yesterday, the indicators that show the maturity of the product seem to be: the feedbacks received by the consumers, the state of trepidation of the community and the press, the availability of compatible versions of good part of the existing Add-Ons and a wide community of tester that assures that the new release is compatible with the majority of the websites.

At the same time a third Release Candidate of Firefox has been released. The difference between the preceding version RC2 is only one and regards a bug that exclusively tormented the version for Mac OS X. The versions of Firefox 3 RC3s for Windows and Linux systems have not suffered some change instead.