Byte Of Tech

Micron CEO Dead After Plane Crash

2012-02-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

Micron Technology has announced in a press release today that CEO Steve Appleton was killed in a plane crash. The plane was a fixed single wing engine Lancair. Steve attempted to land at the Boise airport but his plane went up in flames before he was able to land. Steve reported problems with his plane to air traffic controllers before the crash.

Steve was the pilot, and the only person in the plane at the time. He had a passion for flying and owned over 20 planes. Steve joined Micron back in 1983. He became CEO and chairman in 1994 after working his way up in the business all the way from the factory floor.

Micron makes a variety of products such as NAND and DRAM memory that is found in many consumers computers.

My condolences go out to the family of Steve Appleton.

Microns press release can be found here.

Windows XP Still Top Dog, Windows 8 To Steal the Show?

2012-02-02T12:25:00.000-08:00

One would think that by now Windows XP's market share would have been greatly diminished by Windows 7. Apparently that isn't happening.

As of right now XP still has a 47% market share. This is amazing considering Windows XP was actually released to the world over 10 YEARS ago.

I can see three different possible reasons why the OS is still going strong.

1. The Economy is not doing that great and people still do not see the use of upgrading their PC's operating system if their current one is sufficient when money is an issue.

2. Windows XP is still widely considered the "best OS", which I highly doubt.

3 Or maybe its just that the other operating systems suck? I don't believe this likely as Windows 7 was widely seen as a successful operating system, fixing what Vista was lacking and adding plenty of new features.

I am currently loving windows 7 and am glad I am using it over XP. Is it worth the 100$? Yes I think so. Would I buy windows 7 right now considering Windows 8 beta is months around the corner? Probably not.

Lets just hope that the Metro UI Microsoft is implementing in Windows 8 isn't a letdown. Microsoft is betting a lot on Windows 8 being a great OS for both PC's and Tablets, but I hope this doesn't lead to a diminished experience for PC users.

The Windows 8 beta is widely expected to show up sometime in the next few months.

7950 Hits The Market

2012-02-01T22:50:00.000-08:00

The 7950 is now available online from many stores like Newegg or TigerDirect. The new GPU has been met with mostly positive reviews from tech sites from what I can tell. All of the sites have been giving the 7950 props for superior performance and value over the 580 GTX. This should bring down the price of the 580 GTX in order for it to compete with AMD's new GPU. The 7950 also uses less power than the 580 GTX and runs cooler, however is slightly more noisy.

Overclocked models are already out on the market. XFX, Sapphire, ASUS and PowerColor's OC'd cards can currently be found on shops around the web. Availability on the 7950 is somewhat poor at the moment, with many models currently being out of stock.

The cheapest 7950 I can find at the moment is the Sapphire 7950 for $460 from Newegg, which is a deal when you consider the cheapest 580 GTX is selling for $500, around $470 if you do a mail in rebate.

Image from AMD

Valve Brings Steam To iOS And Android!

2012-01-26T17:36:00.000-08:00

Yes folks it has finally happened, but not exactly in the way you would think.

The Steam App will allow you to talk to your Steam friends, purchase games off of steam and read any steam news. This would be really useful to catch Steam's amazing sales that they frequently have around holidays. What this app will not allow you to do is play any steam games... which shouldn't be too much of a shock... Skyrim on a phone?

Both apps can be currently downloaded from the Andriod Market and Apple App Store. The Steam App on the Andriod Market currently has a rating of 3.9/5. The app however is in beta and requires an invitation to log into it. Most reviewers that give the app a 1/5 complain that they do not have access to the beta.

More Xbox Rumors Floating About

2012-01-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

So the internet has graced us with another Xbox rumor courtesy of Kotaku. This rumor states that the new Xbox will prevent used games from being played.

The whole idea sounds totally insane and is sure to anger a lot of people if it turns out to be true. This would make people games become worthless if they no longer play the game or don't like it and want to sell it.

Does this mean that if you take your game over to you friends Xbox to play one night that it wont work? That's a good way to anger all your fans right there.

Image from Xbox.com

Rumor: Radeon 6670 In New Xbox

2012-01-25T23:19:00.000-08:00

There are many rumors around the internet about the new Xbox, and one of them is saying that the Radeon 6670 will make its appearance in the new Xbox. The Radeon 6670 can be found at sites like Newegg for as little as $75.

I must say I am a little disappointed that a 6670 might be put into the new Xbox. How will gaming graphics ever improve if we keep putting low end cards into the systems? I understand that it is a console, and it needs to be cheap in order to sell. But It just kills me to know that PC gaming always gets held back by inferior consoles. The new Xbox is said to have 6x the graphic performance than the Xbox 360, but think how much better graphics we could get on consoles if they didn't use budget cards.

Maybe its just me bitter about consoles.

Image from AMD.

Apple Still Going Strong, Posts Record Sales For Q1 2012

2012-01-24T18:04:00.000-08:00

Apple just broke a ton of their own records this quarter. The tech giant managed to make over $43.3 billion in sales and made over $13 billion in profit. Profit this quarter was more than double last years.

Apples numbers never cease to make me. They managed to sell $37 million iPhones this quarter, which is an 128% increase over last year. Apple was not able to meet the demand of consumers for their new iPhone 4S. "We made a very bold bet in the quarter about what demand would be, and we were short of supply throughout the quarter," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO.

iPads also sold incredibly well, selling over 15.4 million iPads, which is up 111% from last year compared to the same quarter. Tim Cook stated in their conference call that the Amazon Kindle Fire did not have any noticeable effect on iPad sales. This comes after a report saying that the Kindle Fire would hurt the iPads sales.

Mac sales we also up 26% for the year.

Click here to see the press release of Apples financial results

Guild Wars 2 Beta Soon

2012-01-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

That's right! ArenaNet just finished their first closed beta test and soon hope to open up to beta to press and eventually members of the general public. This is great news as it will bring another highly competitive MMO into the market which can hopefully compete with others like WoW, Rift and the newly released SWTOR.

Guild Wars 2 will follow in the previous games footsteps and will not require a subscription fee to play the game. Instead, players will instead be able to purchase expansions to add more content to the game when they are released.

I cant wait to try out the beta and see if it is able to live up to all of the hype currently surrounding the game.

More information about Guild Wars 2 can be found at the Guild Wars 2 official website.

Image from ArenaNet's blog

Diablo 3 Beta, When Will it Ever End?

2012-01-23T23:55:00.000-08:00

Diablo 3 was originally scheduled to be released in late 2011 but was pushed back to early 2012. I am starting to think that early 2012 is not going to happen either.

Blizzard has a real bad (or good?) habit of pushing back release dates on their games whenever they feel that it is not yet ready for prime time. While this no doubt is better for the game, it really leaves Blizzard fans feeling let down. I guess I am starting to get used to things being pushed back by Blizzard, but I have to say that it is starting to get annoying.

On Jan 19th, Jay Wilson the game director for Diablo 3 announced a whole boat load of new system changes being brought into the beta. The first major change is the removal of the Mystic artisan. The Mystic artisan was supposed to be able to enchant players items, but now that apparently isn't going to happen. Next they removed the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube which enabled players to sell items and break down items into materials anywhere in the world. This lead to a change in the town portal having no cooldown and having to go to the Blacksmith artisan to have items salvaged. Character stats were also totally changed and are now integrated into the inventory UI.

Anyone who has played the Diablo 3 beta knows that these are some really serious changes. These are not changes that are easy to go back on because they change the whole dynamic of the game. You used to be able to dungeon for ages and just salvage tons of items out in the field of battle, but now you have to go back to town and use NPC's to do it. Blizzard thinks that this will break up combat and allow people more time to look at any possible upgrades players may be able to equip from their adventures.

These types of major changes indicate that this game is nowhere near completed. I cannot see this game being released anytime in the next 3 months, which is somewhat depressing considering the last Diablo game was released in 2001. My bets are on a May or June release date at the earliest.

RIM names new CEO

2012-01-23T19:46:00.000-08:00

Last night RIM announced that Thorsten Heins would be appointed to the CEO position. Previous CEO's were Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsille. Mike Lazaridis will become Vice Chairman of RIM's board, while Jim Balsille will also remain a director of the board.

Mike Lazaridis has stated that he plans to buy $50 million dollars worth in RIM shares and says he has confidence in RIM's new leadership.

Hopefully Heins is able to restore some investor confidence to get RIM back on track. While RIM still holds a large amount of market share in Canada, the rise of Andriod and the continued success of iOS is eating away at RIM's precious market share. RIM is currently trading at $15.67 on the TSX. Its shares were selling for over $60 a year ago and the stock is currently trading below book value.

Take a look at RIM's press release here http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=5358.

RAM Prices

2012-01-23T00:22:00.000-08:00

Last summer after classes were over, I bought computer parts off Newegg.ca to make myself a new computer. I purchased a pair of G.SKILL RAM sticks for a total of 4GB and thought I was the king.

Boy was I wrong. Months later RAM prices started to drop like a rock. 24 GB of Corsair DDR3 1600 RAM is selling on Newegg.ca right now for $147. The price of that RAM is $6.1 per GB. The RAM I purchased cost me $27.5 per GB. It's crazy to think in only a year and a half the price of RAM has dropped that much. We are only a couple years away from DDR4 RAM so get ready for even LOWER DDR3 prices, that is unless you actually still care about DDR3 when that happens!

Best of CES 2012

2012-01-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

While I would definitely say that this CES was not really exciting compared to other years, there were still some really interesting and innovative products that showed up.

LG 55" 55EM9600

LG's new OLED screen has only a 4mm bezel and adds white as a possible pixel color in addition to the already red, green and blue pixels. Not only does that screen have superior image quality compared to other plasma and LCD screens, but it is also much more power efficient. Don't expect to see this TV in your living room anytime soon however, as it will most likely cost a small fortune to purchase one when they are released, until they manage to bring to cost down that is.

Razer Project Fiona

What is this? Well this is Razers' new prototype tablet that is running Windows 8, named Project Fiona. As you can see it is much different than traditional tablets with the inclusion of the 2 handles on the sides with buttons and movement sticks. Hopefully Razer can find a way to turn this device into a mobile gaming monster. I am hoping to see this turn into a real product in the future, but here is hoping that it doesn't end up costing a fortune or is incredibly underpowered. Since it is a Razer product, I expect it to be "For Gamers, By Gamers".

Nokia Lumia 900

How often do you hear people talking about the newest Nokia phone that just got released? Well that is about to change with the Nokia Lumia 900. With specs like a 8 MP camera, 4.3" AMOLED display and a LTE radio, who wouldn't be talking about it? Not to mention the thing looks beautiful! The phone will be running Windows 7 and will work on AT&T's LTE network. Apparently the phone might be sold to consumers sometime around March and will probably cost the same as the other LTE phones currently are.

Photos taken from Cnet, Nokia and Geek.com