Perhaps unremarkably the only real ‘new’ chip is the Bermuda based R9 Fury cards, with all the rest being rebranded 200 series chips aka Hawaii, Tonga etc etc…

So to the specifications. The top end Fury cards pack 4096 stream processors, 64 GCN compute units, 4GB of VRAM and a GPU speed up to 1050MHz. It will also be the first AMD card to feature high bandwidth memory, or HBM for short. The Fury X is also the only one that’s watercooled and you can guarantee it will require quite a hefty PSU!

The R9 390X and 390 use more bog standard GDDR5 memory, although you’ll at least get a full 8GB of the stuff. The 390X will feature 2816 stream processors 176 TMUs and 64 ROPs with the GPU speed set at 1050MHz, memory speed is clocked at 1500MHz (6GHz QDR) across a 512 bit bus. The 390 non-x version comes with 2560 stream processors 160 TMUs and 64 ROPs. This card will have a stock GPU speed of 1000MHz and the memory clocked at 1500MHz, or 6GHz QDR with a 384 bit bandwidth. Price for the 390 X is around $430 with the 390 coming in at around $330.

Onto the R9 380 series. Here we have three Antigua or Tonga Pro based cards. All feature 1792 stream processors with 112 TMUs and 32 ROPs. Clock speeds should be 970MHz and memory is clocked at 1375 MHz on a 256 bit bus. These cards will come with either 2 or 4GB of memory, with prices being around the 200 dollar mark.

The R7 370 series utilises 1024 stream processors, 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs. This card is essentially the same design as the R7 265. Clock speed will be 975 MHz with memory coming in at 1425 MHz. Prices are expected to be around the $150 mark.

Last up in the lineup is the Tobago based R7 360. It comes with 768 stream processors and is essentially a rebadged Bonaire Pro chip. The GPU core is clocked at 1050 MHz and comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6.5GHz across a 128 bit bus.

Windows 8 sign in

The new Microsoft account is nothing more than a new name for a Windows Live ID. If you’ve ever used Microsoft services such as Outlook, Live Messenger, XBox live etc, then you’ve already got a Microsoft account enabled. Microsoft have simply combined all their services together allowing you to access them all by using just a single account.

The added bonus in creating a Microsoft account in Windows 8 is the freedom to store your Windows 8 settings in the cloud. This means you can setup your PC exactly how you want and the settings will automatically be saved in the cloud. Windows 8.1 even gives you the extra benefits of allowing you to syncronise passwords, profiles and apps between accounts.

So, as we can see Microsoft have designed Windows 8 with the cloud most definitely in mind. This is probably demonstrated in the greatest way when you start using SkyDrive. When you sign up for your new Microsoft account you’re automatically assigned 7GB of free online cloud storage called SkyDrive.

Like many other cloud based systems, SkyDrive is an excellent tool that enables you to access your data anywhere in the world, providing you have access to a Windows device. You can also share your SkyDrive folders with Friends, family or colleagues. Got your new holiday snaps you want to share with your  family? then simply create a new folder in SkyDrive and share to whoever you want.

You can invite via email or Facebook which makes it a great tool to share your most precious moments with exactly who you want.

So what are the pros and cons of using the new Microsoft account over the standard local login? Well I really can’t think of many if any negatives by using the Microsoft account. I guess if you’re never connecting to the internet then a local account is the only way to go, but this would probably be the only reason not to use one. Machines connected to a domain will obviously not be using a Microsoft account, however the chances are if you’re using a PC at work it’s probably running Windows XP/7 anyway!

For the average home user with internet access the Microsoft account really is the way to go. Not only does it sync all your data for use on other machines, but it seamlessly integrates all your apps and programs giving the end user a far smoother and enjoyable experience.

As of Windows 8.1 Microsoft have seemingly made it a little harder to find out where to change to a local account, the sneaky devils!

After you install Windows 8.1 you’ll be asked to sign into a Microsoft account seemingly giving you no other options. However if you click on the create new account link you’ll notice at the bottom of the next screen another link that will allow you to cancel the process and continue by logging in using your local account.

Lots of people have apparently been caught out by Microsofts poor login process and ended up creating a new Microsoft account. If you want to reverse the process simply read through the following instructions.

First off go to the start screen and type in users . Click on the first result and the screen below will pop up. From here we want to click on “Add an account”

This brings up the screen shown below,

From here we want to click on “Sign in without a Microsoft account” This will take you to the following screen,

Here we want to click on Local account. Once this is done it will take you to the final step where you can input the credentials for your new local account.

Once your details have been entered click next and you have just created your new local account!

How times have changed, nowadays it’s a totally different kettle of fish, what with boarded up shops and areas with literally whole streets looking like ghost towns. The statistics don’t lie either, as of September 2011 fourteen-and-a-half per cent of town centre shops in the UK were vacant, this figure is up by over 5% at the end of 2008. The demise in our High Street stores cannot all be blamed on internet shopping, a big chunk of the population has been financially hit hard by the recent recession, and of course you’ve got the huge, somewhat overpowering out of town shopping centres. However the rise and rise of internet shopping seems to be doing its level best to totally destroy our once loved High Streets.

Who can blame us though? We can happily browse from the comfort of our living rooms whilst watching the latest episode of Eastenders (insert woeful soap opera of choice here), add to our baskets and then just wait for the sound of the doorbell a few days later. Not only that, but the unwanted gifts that we so ungratefully received at Christmas can now be offloaded easily enough using the likes of Ebay. There’s even sites that don’t charge you for the privilege of getting rid of your tat, for example you can sell items with OLX totally free of charge!

So how are we to reverse this ever growing trend? Well I really don’t think we can. It would require millions of us to vote with our feet and embrace total inconvenience on an almost daily basis, along with actually having to move off of our comfy sofas in our comfy warm living rooms. I’m afraid to say the end could well be nigh for our beloved High Street, RIP….

Clearly this is not just a North American phenomena. Chances are even if you are using a language translator to read this article, you can spell, Groupon.

What I’m about to say may sound like I am slamming Groupon. Nothing could be further from the truth. This time last week I found a great new hoagie shop thanks to Groupon and I’m writing to you on a 32 inch display purchased from Groupon Goods. I hardly use it at all as a 3-D TV, which is what it was sold as. However the display and specs were so sharp, with its four HDMI ports, and DisplayPort adapter it makes a great monitor.

And Groupon may have met its match in PassJoy.

Currently, PassJoy is an iPhone app. Since it is IOS, there is no reason it couldn’t be used on an iPad (I haven’t tried that).

Both the merchant and consumer can think of PassJoy as little synchronized webpages. The operative word here is synchronized. In other words a coupon from a merchant that morphs over time. So here we have a coupon from a merchant that changes, does not expire.

In other words, a dynamic customer loyalty program with nothing for the consumer to manage.

This is huge.

While here at Ektek.net the focus is a fresh look at technology and PassJoy certainly passes that test I want to close with a warning to those of you who market specials with coupons.

15 years ago I was out of town on a training job. My motel had a kitchen and I was buying groceries for 10 days. The nearest store was an Albertsons, so I went there. It was a 24 hour store and it was certainly off-hours. I did not have an Albertsons “loyalty card”, i.e. barcode stamped on me. I explained I was from out of town. I had picked some items off-the-shelf where the tags standing out perpendicular to the products were “on sale”. Since I didn’t have a barcode, I wasn’t worthy of the sale price.

That was 15 years ago or more. It’s not only safe to say I have not darkened the door of an Albertsons store since. In fact, my blood pressure goes up a few points when I see their logo.

Coupons are great. And they’re worthless without employee training.

And this is one of those posts.

I am driven to make every moment count. Even if that means a moment of enjoyment. Whatever it is, I like to do it full out. Even if it is something as mundane as taking a shower. In years past I had a water resistant FM radio that hung the shower. That way, at least I can catch up with the news and weather as I’m getting clean.

Surely, I’m not alone or they wouldn’t have made water resistant shower radios. Well it’s 2013 now and technology has marched forward. Kohler, the plumbing folks have gotten into the electronics business.

Take a look at the KOHLER K-9245-CP 2.5 GPM Moxie Showerhead and Wireless Speaker.

It is Bluetooth enabled so, no cord snaking out. I’m looking to pair it to my HTPC which I put Windows Media Center on when I upgraded to Windows 8. This will let me listen to thousands of Internet radio stations, or use a Text-To-Speech program so I can have webpages read to me (or e-books or anything else).

I really like the fact that the speaker pops out of the showerhead so I can continue listening and take it with me out of the shower. The only downside to this is it can eat into the seven hour battery charge. Of course the flipside is it makes it dang easy to recharge.

The head itself is available only in white, while the enclosure itself in theory comes in both white and chrome. As Amazon is offering both, I still have to make a decision. The one decision made is, based on the reviews, I’m getting one.

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

This piece began as an entry on the Smart watch known as Pebble. It’s an amazing story in itself. A young engineer demonstrated he had a good idea when his idea of a smart watch that would be an extension of your Android or iPhone raised over USD10 million on Kickstarter.

Their first press conference at CES January 2013 definitely showed their engineers and not marketers. The colors on the video transmitted over the Internet made the CEO more blue in color than an alien on Star Trek. No matter. The hundred and fifty dollar watch comes loaded with a bunch of amazing features. It uses Bluetooth version 4 and charges inductively (via a USB port ) so the case is reasonably water resistant.

So far they have sold over 100,000 units. The display is quite readable in daylight. It is not e- ink. It is e- display. They are releasing APIs so expect to see a variety of new applications. As it is coming out of the box it can control your music show you messages and has a interesting array of timepiece faces.

They very wisely made the band industry-standard so you can get a band of your choosing. Really all in all, a success story. And it doesn’t end there.

A new Kickstarter project, the opposite of the Pebble is the CST – 01. It does one thing, tells time. Using a E-ink display it weighs 12 g and is less than a millimeter in thickness. When it comes out in September it will be the world’s thinnest watch. You can preorder now on the Kickstarter webpage for USD99.

It’s really a marvel that the electronic watch which is quite stunning in black (or white) and stainless steel is powered by an energy cell expected to last over 15 years and be recharged 10,000 times. Being this then there are no buttons or controls which have been relegated to the charging station, which does its job in 10 minutes running the watch for a month.

Even if you don’t want to buy one it’s worth to checking out the video below. Also take a look at the kickstarter page – link

I wanted to show you some personal experiments. Perhaps you of heard the saying: being on the leading edge usually means you’re on the bleeding edge. I know the single most generated comment from you guys was why I bought a Kindle and not something like a Nexus 7. I stated at the end of the day I don’t want to fight with technology after fighting with it all day long. I like my Kindle, thank you very much. Now let me show you what I am battling with now.

This is my new video creation box. The motherboard is an Asus P8Z77-V. that silver rectangle is a passive heat pump for the Intel iCore CPU. I only have one fan attached. Cooler Master did a great design. I can unclip the fan to access easily the almost covered up unused RAM slot.

This was after months of fighting with (and losing the battle) to install a sealed watercooled system. I just could not could the radiator and the fans to sync up with this case which was built for acoustic attenuation. It turns out I didn’t need it. The cooler master is doing such a great job, the RPM speed on the CPU fan attached is under 600 RPMs. That is so slow the Asus BIOS thinks there is something wrong.

The Seasonic power supply fan is built with high temperature Japanese capacitors. So the power supply fan doesn’t even come on until about 50% load. I’m not seeing that because of the 128 GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD drives set up in a RAID 0 array are not making any heat either. The blue heatsinks are an Asus passive heat pipe for the north bridge set.

Even without the panels on it hardly makes any noise at all (except the power up). The funny white things are for the dual band 802.11n wireless connection along with Bluetooth Version 4. And Windows 8 loaded quickly off of the optical media from the Slimline USB DVD device on top of the case. The monitor is a 32 inch 3-D ready 240 Hz refresh rate LED lit LCD display.

All in all it has been enough of a PITA I would rather be trying to give a root canal to a crocodile. I’m almost there. If I was there, there, the monitor would be hanging on the wall. Which brings me to one last piece in your graphic.

That is a cute little USB 2 adapter that comes with a power supply and accepts either SATA hard drives or the older PATA IDE in either 40 or 44 pin configurations. Admittedly the SATA speed is ‘only’ SATA II. USB 2 isn’t that fast anyway. A cute little kit for your tool bag that will let you handle drives from about 1988 through 2015.

Sometimes it’s the low-tech devices like this that are your best friend.

Over the decades I have listened to my antigun U.S. citizens as well as my friends in Europe.
It seems it is a lot more complicated than outlawing guns or the converse side of when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. They all are to say the least, highly controlled in Mexico. Yet in that country and others I have lived in outside the U.S. I can certainly say laws may feel good and they do not solve the challenge.

And there is a solution.

The answer is to get away from the technology involving gunpowder (or any other chemical reaction involving propulsion of solid matter).

I gave up firearms that involve gunpowder of any sort in the 1980s. After learning how Napoleon had to fight off the native insurgents using air rifles I realized the superior advantage of a subsonic (silent) mass, de-capitating a skull from the torso. My study of history shows me it’s certainly unnerved Napoleon’s men.

Certainly I am a person of peace. And there are predators who seek to prey on those of peace. I carefully submit to you you can be a person of peace and still defend your turf.
Step one as near as I can tell in any country is post the appropriate warning signs.
Step two is use unconventional defensive weapons. Two of my personal favorites are: extreme ultra Sonics and intense lasers. We’re not talking about science fiction where potential intruder suddenly finds their atoms scattered between the defense line and the sun.

And it is certainly possible to create permanent (or temporary) nonlethal damage to the hearing or vision of an intruder. The best part is potential intruder does not suspect a thing and are caught totally off guard, ending the intrusion.

An equally good part is you do not run in violation of any antiquated gun control laws since a gun was not involved.

As Peter Parker said in Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Make your defensive choices using wisdom and technology. Defense should only be used when there are no other options. And at that point use your wisdom of technology to defeat those stupid enough to resort to violence.

Age range
gender
race
number of people and time spent

It analyzes the facial features to generate statistical and contextual information for creating targeted marketing strategies. The firm maintains it provides a superior data set then what can be gleaned from CCTV security cameras because it is at eye level and inviting the customer to pay attention.

The software that is embedded within the unit provides other data such as the number of people passing over various times of the day. The system graphs how many people come into the store as well is what type and when. There is a report that one store found a double digits percentage of its visitors used a certain door and were of a certain ethnicity arriving after a certain time.

The company is quite proud of the fact they can determine this data while maintaining a total respect of privacy. All computing is done with the inside the unit itself without the aid of an external computer and does not record or transmit any sensitive information such as images or biometric data. In other words as the company says “without leaving any trace of the face analyzed”.

There also careful to point out their environmental consciousness stating all their products are made of recyclable and shockproof polystyrene and painted with water based paints.

So far they are in three countries in the EU and the United States. The company reports customers are delighted with the information gleaned and that retailers have adjusted window displays layouts and promotions based on the data.

Thankfully that is not the case. He did however want me to know that just maybe we will get an opportunity to have a point in person. He was writing to inform me that a small cadre of Microsoft Engineers appeared for an ‘intervention meeting’. Their goal was to appeal to him to go back to coaching and leading classes. As this was some of the same people that had previously counseled him on giving up on trying to help Mexico (corruption and computers mix as well as oil and water), he listened carefully.

After long consideration and numerous discussions the old man relented and has agreed to leading either private corporate classes on-site or one-on-one coaching. The Canadian firm GraceTechSolutions won him over with the assurance of supporting global availability while providing unquestioned right of refusal as Tcat’s sole discretion.

In many English-speaking countries CompTIA certification provides a level of assurance of expertise in the computer industry. GraceTech Solutions (link) and Tcat have put together an inexpensive plan for one on one online coaching so it can be tailored for exactly what the candidate needs to know about without wasting time and money on areas they are comfortable with.

Companies looking for an on-site class should be advised his training classes are anything but ordinary. Executives looking for polished shoes and a suit should keep on looking. The class delivery is heavily weighted with Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP), and with the exception of CCT, the formal class time is delivered in one weekend (as opposed to 40 hours).

Candidates should understand success is predicated on subsequent either formal group or informal self directed study time to solidify the NLP rich live event.

He told me that the deciding factor was former students of 20+ years previous relating to him a variety of classroom exercises solidly creating comprehension and still laughing about the classroom antics every time the technical sub topic comes up in their profession.

When I asked him how a firm could justify the costs of bringing over from the United States he replied with : “two words. Large numbers.” He went on to explain that the classes work best when there is 40 to 100 candidates going for the same certification. What he sets up is teams of 4-7 people on a single team. Teams earn points on items as trivial as each member of the team being back in the chair’s the very second a timed break has ended.

The fun, high energy class delivered to a large group in a single weekend dramatically slashes the overall training cost per candidate.

For more details feel free to contact GraceTech or via Ekteks contact page – link